As you know, my name's Chris. I'm 29, have been married almost 4 years and have a 7 month old daughter. We live in Sierra Madre, which is about 15 miles NE of downtown Los Angeles and next to Pasadena, where I grew up (my wife's from Indiana). My next door neighbor growing up was an Engineer with the Pasadena FD, which probably started my interest in the fire service. My father-in-law is also a retired volunteer FF.
Got my B.S. in Safety and Health from the University of Southern California after originally starting as an architecture major (that lasted 1 semester). Started out working for a small consulting firm developing safety programs for highly hazardous chemicals (petrochemical, cold storage, water treatment, etc.). Then went on to be the Safety Engineer at the Los Angeles Times, then a Safety Trainer at a major oil company (started as Tosco, which got bought by Phillips Petroleum, which merged with Conoco to become ConocoPhillips all during my time there). Left that job last fall and currently work for an insurance broker doing safety audits of public schools.
Started out in EMS back when I was at the Times. We had an in-house Medical Department that was shut-down, and I was asked to help the Security Department put together a Medical Emergency Response Team consisting of First Responder trained personnel. I ended up leaving that job shortly after that for other reasons, but got my EMT training through the company that did the FR training there while I was at the oil company.
All of my jobs have involved some degree of fire safety and hazmat activity as well. Oversaw the high-rise life safety program at the Times for awhile, served on both the local and national emergency response teams for the oil company and do a lot of fire safety in my current job. So, when we moved to Sierra Madre a little over 2 years ago, I decided I wanted to join the Sierra Madre FD (the only all volunteer department in LA County). Started attending drills as a guest last January, was made a Trainee last June and was voted on as Probationary Firefighter in December.
I do some volunteer instruction for a local Red Cross chapter and am currently scheduled to be one of the instructors for their Emergency Response (aka First Responder) course this coming fall. I'm also actively involved in the American Society of Safety Engineers and am just finishing up (next week) my year as President of one of the local chapters.
