Episode 323: How a Fire Department Decides What Tech to Buy with Eric Linnenburger

The biggest constraint most fire departments face is not money. It is being shorthanded. Over 90% of a typical fire budget goes to personnel, which leaves almost nothing for the next great tool and no spare bandwidth to chase every vendor at the trade show.

Hello Smart Firefighting Community!

Welcome to another episode of covering real world innovations via interviews with fire service and technology industry experts that empower YOU to develop your very own Smart Firefighting strategy.

Eric Linnenburger spent roughly twenty-six years climbing every rank at Westminster Fire Department on Colorado's front range, then found out on a Friday that he was a deputy chief starting Monday. He is also the voice behind Ops Talk, where he digs into the people, the work, and the ideas moving the fire service forward.

This conversation gets into how a real department decides what technology to buy, what kills a bad idea fast, and the honest state of the playbook around lithium-ion and EV battery fires.

Topics covered:

• The Friday-to-Monday jump from battalion chief to deputy chief
• The schmedium model: a six-station department that runs like a 35-station region
• Bringing the right stakeholders to the room before buying anything
• Force multiplier versus one more screen for an overloaded firefighter
• The RFID system that looked great on paper and just moved the work
• Apps that stuck: tablet command and on-scene translation
• Lithium-ion and EV fires, blankets, and guidelines that have to evolve
• Data centers and energy storage as the next risk on the horizon
• Wildfire in the urban interface and the Marshall Fire wake-up call
• Clean data, open APIs, and avoiding vendor lock-in with CAD to CAD

So take a listen to hear what he has to share.

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