Training for the Tone

A sturdy log cabin and a stately white two-story are tucked in a secluded grove ringed by wheat fields on this sleepy summer morning in southern Sedgwick County.

Spoiling the rural ambiance is a decrepit, weatherworn 90-year-plus rental house that’s been on Pinaire property since the 1940s. For months, it has been a hands-on training station for dozens of county firefighters. Today, it burns to the ground.

But before the big blaze on this June day, Capt. Larry Tangney ’00, a 16-year veteran from County Fire Station 33 northwest of Wichita, is here to hone his skills and pass them to younger firefighters. The 42-year-old teams with Cory Hayes, 33, who has been on the department for more than a year. They're here among 75 firefighters from some of the eight stations that cover 636 square miles in District 1.

Tangney and more than a half dozen other Wichita State alumni risk their lives as Sedgwick County firefighters.

Like others who live, sleep and work together in 24-hour shifts, their time is divided between education and exercise, watching TV and shooting the breeze, and waiting for a fire to douse or a chance to use their EMT training in a car crash.

Despite ongoing budget and political squabbles, they believe that serving others and working in teams counts most. “It’s very important that in a fire station you know each others’ strengths and weaknesses, so you can work together, just like a family,” says Tangney, who in May was named Sedgwick County Firefighter of the Year by Insurance Women of Wichita. “Because when that tone goes off, you know you can trust everyone to help anybody.”

Training for the tone is what helps firefighters face the known and improvise when unknown dangers arise.

That’s what’s brought Tangney and Hayes to the drill. They suit up meticulously for their first group training exercise while firefighters waiting their turns haul in more gear. Fred Pinaire ’76, along with other family members and friends, lounge nearby in lawn chairs. Everyone’s watching and waiting.

“Are you ready?” Tangney asks Hayes. Both are swaddled with florescent, fire-retardant jackets, pants, boots, gloves, helmets and facemasks. They are fed air from weighty black tanks cinched to their backs. They are well-protected — but not totally safe — from the flickering fire and dense smoke that waits. “Are you ready?” Tangney asks again. Hayes nods.

They pass briskly through the door and steadily advance up a twisty wooden staircase. “All the way up, I’m talking to him about things to be concerned about. How to pull the hose. Climbing the stairs. Finding the fire through the smoke. Where to attack it and how to keep it from growing,” Tangney says. After more than 10 minutes of teaching inside the smoldering ruin, the pair retreats outside, drops their sooted gear on the grass and takes part in a post mortem.

“I had to tell Cory, right before we went up, to put that hatch (face shield) down,” Tangney says. “Sometimes they forget those things. They’ve got a lot on their minds, like working the fire. But we’re here not only to show them that, but to help them remember the basics. I want these newer firefighters to understand that being at the head of the nozzle is the fun of the job.

But it’s also serious work. He might be sent out to a fire tonight, and he’ll know better what to do, because this is how we trained today.”

That fierce pride is shared by Gary Curmode '74/81/83, who has been Sedgwick County District 1 Fire Chief for more than eight years. Prior to that, he served on the Wichita fire department for 23 years.

The biggest struggle in managing the department’s $10 million annual budget is replacing declining revenue, Curmode says, which makes it harder to hire more firefighters, provide better pay, keep stations open and buy new equipment. “They have a lot of pride. You can be down on the economy and all the problems it’s caused, but when we hear that emergency call come in, hey, they forget any problems and give first-class service.”

As a rookie in 1972, Curmode took advantage of WSU’s budding fire science program, which once trained hundreds of promising firefighters. He earned an undergraduate degree in secondary education and has master’s degrees in administration of justice and urban affairs. “The Hugo Wall School of Urban and Public Affairs is an excellent school, with excellent professors, state of the art facilities — and it’s nationally known,” Curmode adds.

Untold numbers of county firefighters have taken WSU classes, but it often takes years to stack up enough credits to earn a degree because of the 24-hours-on, 48-hours-off shifts they work. Those who have persevered and now serve include Capt. Robert Conger ’00, Firefighter Walter Langford ’87, Firefighter Kevin Duncan ’02 and Capt. Walter Rooney ’91.

Rooney, 45, and a self-described “fire prevention guru or geek,” is typical. He became a firefighter in Long Island, N.Y., in 1976. He’s been with Sedgwick County since 1981, but it wasn’t until a decade later that he finished his general studies degree, with emphases in psychology, management and science.

“I’ve used the knowledge in the coursework I got there, especially the psychology and motivational techniques,” says Rooney, who works with people to make sure buildings are safely constructed to try to head off disastrous and expensive blazes. “I use that more and more as I get older. It allows me to use my education every day.”

Duncan, 27, also has a general studies degree, including emphases in criminal justice, ethnic studies and sociology. He was hired quickly in 1999, only nine months after applying, and is halfway through a year-long program in Winfield to become a paramedic, which is more medical training than most firefighters receive. “I hung out a lot at the city station that was near my house when I was a kid,” says Duncan, who calls himself a “trauma junkie.”

“My mom always said that I’d probably end up as a firefighter or in the military. Since I was six years old, I used to ride my bike up to Station 16. They had a captain up there I’d talk to. I got a lot out of that contact. It made a pretty big impression.”

So did the media’s heroic but sometimes skewed portrayal of firefighters/paramedics. “I grew up watching EMERGENCY! on TV in the ’70s. I saw one of those the other day, and everything was really out of date. Like, Dr. (Joe) Early asking for D5W and saline. Their stuff was state of the art 30 years ago, but some of the stuff they tried would kill a patient today. What we have now may be obsolete 10 years from now,” Duncan says.

Including his days with the fire reserve, Duncan has already seen a lot, including the aftermath of the 1998 DeBruce grain elevator explosion and the 1999 incident in which toddler Jesse Kraus was saved after falling in a well.

“I’m guessing that 95 percent of our calls are medical,” he says. “That’s why I’m training so hard. I don’t want to be on the sidelines. If you’re standing in the door, I’m going to say, ‘Get out of my way.’ A lot of people think that it’s all about putting the wet stuff on the red stuff, but it’s a very dynamic profession. No day is the same day. It’s knowing that people had something go majorly wrong in their life, and we’re trying to make it a little bit better.”

County Fire Station No. 33 sits out in the wheat fields near 53rd St. North and 151st St. West. It’s 6:30 p.m. on a Sunday and five guys are gathered around the dining table chowing down on chicken fried steak, pasta salad and toasted bread. The 10th inning of a College World Series game is on the tube. The concrete block dormitory, the TV lounge and the weight room are cool, dim and empty. The station’s fire engine, squad truck and water tender gleam.

In the station’s office, Tangney is surrounded by work schedules, blasts from the radio dispatcher and a humming computer. There’s a bulletin board noting road closings, burn permits and routine maintenance. It is a place at rest, but he seems a bit restless.

It reflects the way in which he got into firefighting. He left community college after a knee injury ended his baseball plans, was a forklift operator in Texas for two years, then returned to Wichita to attend WSU and work for Star Lumber. “I needed something else,” he remembers. “Something was missing. In 1986, I decided to take the firefighter test. I was motivated by my brother, who was on the city fire department. I saw how he had a great career and helped people and enjoyed his life.”

Other things attracted Tangney. “I called other people and talked to them about the job. You see a lot of task-oriented people, people who want to find a solution to something. I could show you 10 different people, and all these firefighters could solve a problem. They might have different approaches, but they could all solve it,” he says.

The county’s busiest stations circle the southern half of the city, and Tangney cut his teeth there in his early days. “You had a rural population, a city population of Haysville, a suburban population, agricultural areas and areas like South Broadway. A very diverse area to serve, and there was always something going on. I learned a tremendous amount,” he says.

Tangney has been at Station 33 since 1996. He was promoted to lieutenant in 2000 and finished his WSU degree in general studies, with emphases in sociology, psychology and business. Last September, he was made a captain and has spent much of the past year as accreditations manager for the department, so it can soon be recognized as a research and development station by the Commission on Fire Accreditation International.

He knows other projects are coming his way — and wouldn’t mind pursuing a master’s degree at WSU. “Wichita State did do a lot for me. Sociology was interesting. One class was really an extension of another. They stacked together like pancakes, especially when I got to write papers about the social interaction by people. And this job is all about helping people.”

But sometimes helping people has been hard. “In 1991, when the tornado came through Haysville, the unit I was on had already made 20 or 30 calls,” Tangney remembers.

“It was a tough day. You go out and you pick up a baby that’s 3, and it’s the same age as your baby. I gave it CPR. And the baby didn’t make it. I learned a long time ago with my first crew that everyone deals with it a little differently. I feel very sorry for that family, but it’s all a part of life. But babies are the toughest.”

Dan Close is an associate professor in the Elliott School of Communication at WSU. His grandfather, District Chief C. E. Holder, retired in 1962 after nearly 40 years with the Wichita Fire Department.

Fire Science

Headed by Dr. John Leslie, WSU’s now defunct fire science technology program was housed in the College of Engineering and flourished in the 1970s and early ’80s. “The program changed my life. I wouldn’t have gone to college if WSU didn’t have the program at the time,” says Mike Corn ’85.

Now a fire and safety specialist at St. Francis-Via Christi Medical Center, Corn credits his professional success to his training at Wichita State.

Like Corn, other WSU fire science graduates have gone on to build successful careers.

Bill Nestelroad ’86, for instance, works as a fire protection system specialist at SimplexGrinnell in Wichita. And Jim Kater ’89, who earned a bachelor’s degree in general studies after the program was discontinued, became a chief fire prevention inspector. He is the fire science coordinator at Butler County Community College.  

— Jeremy Jaso