American Chief Podcast

Send us Fan Mail The American Chief Podcast isn’t a training platform. It’s a place where successful operational ideas and time-tested general practices meet real personal experience—stories and lessons that firefighters of every rank can relate to, think through, and put to use in their own departments. Episode 1: Fire departments are like snowflakes — no two are the same. In this inaugural episode, Chief Kurt Nass explains why he's telling these stories, and takes listeners on a personal journey through some of the fire departments that shaped how he thinks about the job. In this episode Why Kurt decided to start telling these stories now, and how a song by the band Metric gave the memoir — and this podcast — the motivation Growing up around the Hadley Township Fire Department, and what it means to respond to calls in a town where everybody knows everybody A first "culture shock" moment visiting a two-truck volunteer department in Michigan's Upper Peninsula Discovering funding gaps between departments at the fire academy Selling retired Hadley apparatus over the years, including a 1994 pumper that became the newest truck in Sentinel, Oklahoma's fleet Delivering a 3,500-gallon tanker to Umpire Volunteer Fire Department in Arkansas  What the trip to Umpire taught Kurt about funding, terrain, and operating "different, not wrong" Quote of the episode "That's not a lesser fire department. That's a fire department doing exactly what ours does, with a completely different set of tools and a completely different map." About the host Kurt Nass is a small-town Michigan fire chief with more than 35 years of firefighting experience, including over 20 years as chief of the Hadley Township Fire Department. Coming up New episodes twice a week, plus a monthly special episode featuring noteworthy fire service professionals. If this episode resonated, share it with another firefighter — that's how this show grows. Support the show