Hello world, welcome to WFHR's Rapids Report, proudly brought to you by Crockett Septick
for this August 4th, 2025, have your host James here, and right now we're going to talk
with our friends at the Port Edwards Fire Department.
We have Fire Chief Dustin Leece with us right now.
Dustin, thanks for being here.
Yeah, thanks for inviting me, appreciate it.
Appreciate the time, man.
I have to tell you, and the audience already knows a part of this, but I wanted to be an
actor.
I've been enacting since I was 7 years old, been doing jobs like this for a very long time.
But my first love was firefighting.
Sure.
When I was a little kid in Chicago, our first field trip, we went to the Chicago Fire Department,
and I have been blown away ever since.
I think firefighters are superheroes.
I admire the work so very, very much.
And for a long time, we've been looking to have more firefighters on the air with us.
So I really appreciate the time and the ability to be able to kind of focus on what you guys
do over there.
We have some great events coming up.
We're going to get to in a bit, tell people how they can be involved.
But before we do, Dustin, I thought this is a great opportunity to kind of day in the
life of a firefighter.
And what it is to do this job and what it is to be a part of this world.
And if you don't mind, I'd like to kind of start right there.
Sure.
So for us in Port Edwards, we're all a volunteer staff.
So you do your normal daily job, your 40-hour week job, you wear a pager.
And if you're available to come when the call comes in, we'll take you any time.
I get people's lives are busy and hectic and everything in between.
But we have a lot of great volunteers that take time out of their day.
A lot of husband and wife couples that are on the department, that come, they help, they
go on calls, they'll do these events with us, really trying to make it a more of a family
focused environment around the fire department.
So I like having kids around, show them the fire trucks, all the things.
So like you talked about, you know, when we get into the events, we actually have, when
we do the events, they come bring their children with and their children actually help out
do the events with us.
So it's actually, you know, try to make it a very much a family environment.
And then you foster hopefully the next generation of firefighters to help bring them in.
You know, fair, I know especially in the city where I'm from and all that, how much of
a family tradition it is to your father was a firefighter, a grandfather was a firefighter
and continuing with it and keeping that kind of legacy going with those things.
But you hit it on the head too, what can light up in a kid with seeing something like this
and who knows where they end up as an adult and hopefully doing this kind of work or volunteering
or something.
You never know what can go from that.
It's part of why we're so thankful when our fire departments are represented at touch
of truck events and things like that.
Anything we can do to do that, along with I think building bridges and making people
more and more comfortable, not just reaching out to a fire department, but you know, being
a part of events and volunteering and some of that.
When it comes to the amount of people that we have on those pages that are available,
how many do we have exactly with that?
And right now our department is at 21, roster of 21.
I do have a couple more applications that are in right now.
So hopefully my maximum that I can get to is 30 members.
Okay.
So we're getting there.
I mean, I took over in June of last year as the fire chief.
When I took over there was nine members on the roster.
So now going from June of last year to August of this year, we went from nine to 21 members,
which is amazing.
I love it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There's a lot of businesses out there that would kill for those numbers.
Right.
That's fantastic.
And in this day and age where we need it so badly, we need people in the good people
in these spots, a big tip of that had to you and your staff and everybody for bringing
those numbers up and for doing this work in general.
I will probably ramble about that a couple of times in this interview, but we cannot express
enough as a community, as a city, as a state.
How much we appreciate all of our firefighters and the work that's being done.
Yeah, for sure.
And when my full time job is actually with Wisconsin, I was very department.
That's where I work full time.
When I got hired in there in March of, oh gosh, March of 2009, I was one of, I think,
20 numbers on the list to get hired.
Now when we hire people, if we have enough people, just to fill the vacancies that we have
on the list, it's crazy.
We, it's one of those, it's, it's, it's very much of farming and some other industries
that were, were constantly trying to, not only get younger people involved in and want
to care about and be a part of, but reminding people of how important these industries are
and how much, but you know if they weren't there, you know, for sure, and I don't want
it to come to that or anything.
The more attention, the more awareness we can bring to this stuff is, is not only I think
our responsibility as a radio station, as a community, it is to support these things.
And certainly to reminding our, one of the other things that happens, and this happens
a lot, I notice with politics, but it really happens with a lot of other industries too,
especially city run industries.
To mom and dads, to parents out there, to guardians out there, when you're, you're talking
about these industries, especially around kids, they're hearing how you talk about them.
Yeah, for sure.
You know, regardless of how that conversation goes, that might skew how they are when they
are older and wanting to be a part of these things.
I encourage people to remember that when you're thinking of this stuff, when you're talking
about them, certainly be yourselves, we're Americans, we're going to speak our minds,
that's what we do around here, but doing it with context, doing it with some understanding
that it's not just you in the room or it's not just you that is affected by that stuff.
Yeah, for sure.
And that's what I said.
It's such a big shift to make more of a family environment at the fire station, because
like I said, you are seriously fostering the next generation of firefighters, I guess
you'd say.
When it comes to being a volunteer and being a part of things, and we're going to touch
on this a little bit later, but it help people can find out more if they want to be involved.
But when it comes to that process, if you're coming into it and you've never done anything
like this before, and taking somebody like for the audience that doesn't know, I am 6'1
and just skin and bones, I got muscle to me, but I mean it's hard to tell.
But somebody like me, I walk into that industry and I want to help, I want to be a volunteer,
and even you can train even me, you can get even me up and going on this.
Yep.
Everyone wants to come in, you don't have to have any training at all, we'll send you
to firefighter school to get you certified in firefighter, which takes about about a semester
of night classes, and you'll get from entry level all the way to fire one and hazmat operations,
which is basically the low end of the toilet bowl, I guess you'd say, because you can get
up the firefighter too and hazmat technician and all those kinds of things, but the semester
long first intro into it is only like a set of semester long evening classes.
So it doesn't take a lot of commitment as far as that stuff goes.
Obviously, once you start getting into like EMS, the medical side, that obviously takes
more time, but as far as the firefighting goes, a lot of that basic stuff that you'll
learn in school, and then we'll teach you more on the job once you're actually at the
fire department in working, and we get a couple of structure fires, or we do some trainings,
you know, to kind of give you more of a bigger background than who's just the minimal
buff school will give you.
Really appreciate that.
It doesn't, before we move on, is there something or anything that you think that you've
seen whether it's in TV shows or movies, or just in general in society that when it comes
to our firefighters that we kind of get wrong, or maybe we just misunderstand, because
I know when I've talked to others in other industries similar, like, oh, yeah, there's
this one thing, or something.
Yeah.
I mean, you guys all have Dalmatian, is that right?
You know, we're always sitting on the chairs and playing cards at the stage, you know,
stuff.
You know, those kind of things, obviously, we don't do, we're way too busy, like this
year, we're 50 calls ahead of last year, at this time, as far as how many calls we get
at the department, and we cover 95 square miles for our department, for fire and EMS.
So I mean, you take that, plus people having families, and they're full-time jobs.
It's a big commitment from a lot of people to do, and I can't say enough good things
about the people at Port that put in their time, or any of the volunteer departments, or
even the police departments, the reps, fire, any of them, you know, it's still a big
commitment, even if it's not, or even if it is, your full-time job still takes a lot
of audio.
We appreciate you.
You have, there's some events coming up with our Port Edwards Fire Department.
I wanted to touch on some of those.
Which ones you got coming up?
Yeah, so August 31st, from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m., we partnered with the Port Edwards Police
Department, and the Elks Club of Wisconsin Rapids, who will be hosting a bike rodeo, along
with that bike rodeo, will also be hosting a Brought Fry that we teamed up with the Port
Edwards Band Club Committee.
So they're going to be doing it hosting a Brought Fry with that bike rodeo.
So in the proceeds from Brought Fry, we're going to go directly to the Band Club, so that
way they, I think they have a trip coming up this summer, I believe, I don't remember exactly
where it's to, but all the proceeds from that are going to go directly to them, and then
our athletic association from the fire department is also going to match whatever proceeds
they make to do a donation, to help pay it and fund, just in case some kids that, you
know, they're maybe they can't afford to go on this trip.
Hopefully we can help get more kids on it, and just, you know, get our community more
involved.
That's a very cool event.
Sounds awesome.
We'll be talking about it on our morning shows, making sure to promote it, and get the
news out there about that, that's fantastic to hear about.
And you have another event coming up, and this one hits close to home for me.
There's a long, there's, I've learned more and more I get older, that you got to choose
your battles wisely.
I'm trying not to get too bent out of shape about everything, it's tough, but there are
certain hills that I'll die on, and I really believe that everybody, every citizen should
know CPR.
Yeah.
I, I, I, I, I, I'm like, the, some of these techniques that really, there's no downside
to knowing.
The knowledge just stays back there, and hopefully you never have to use it, but if you do,
man, how many times have we been in this situation, or hollering for, hey, does anybody
know this?
Right.
What a world it would be to just know that, hey, who's going to do it, actually, you know,
and people getting up and like, oh, you got it, or what have you?
It's knowledge that everybody would be benefit from, that we could all use.
And I, I think that it's something that hopefully the farther we go, we go along in this
game of life and everything that more and more people are knowing it, and the more and
more of the knowledge gets out there, you guys are doing something really cool involving
this.
Yeah.
So we're going to be hosting a, what, I'm calling a community CPR event.
So anybody from the community, poor, nacusa, rapids, it doesn't matter where they come
from.
I don't care.
It'll be on September 6th from 8 to noon, but I'll be teaching actual CPR.
It'll cost a person $10, which is just the cost of the card.
So I send in the money and the info and the card gets directly emailed to you after the
class.
But yeah, you'll learn CPR, the Heimlich maneuver on not only adults, but kids as well,
you learn kids CPR as well as adult CPR, just some good things because I mean, if you
look at static or statistics over the years, and when someone goes into cardiac arrest,
that first five minutes, there's a good amount of oxygenated blood left in the body.
And obviously us as first responders, we're not there yet.
We know we have to get the call, then we have to show, you know, get there.
So it's a huge thing to have someone in the community that's able to do CPR right
away.
It makes a huge difference on that person's outcome.
That's an interesting thing.
I didn't know that.
That's interesting, Stan.
Look at forward to that one.
We certainly will be highlighting that and again, bringing that one up before it gets
here.
And Dustin, before we let you go, I didn't want to talk a little bit about something
we were you touched on earlier.
It sounds like you still got a little room on that roster for volunteers or for people
that want to be a part of things over there.
If people want to find out more or reach out to you, how can they do that?
So yeah, they can reach out to me via email.
My email is pfd.chief at portedwardswi.gov or you can call the station directly.
The number to the station is 715-842-3421.
In those ways, you can find out more about being a firefighter.
You can also go on the village's website.
The village's website, if you go on the ported words under fire department, there's a job
posting in there for firefighters.
Click on that.
It has the requirements, it has an application with it, and who to email it to, which would
be Scott Stewart, who is our P.O.C. president.
Those are the easiest ways to do it.
If you happen to be driving by the station and you see the doors open or vehicles in the
parking lot, feel free to stop in and we'll give you a show around and even handy an application
if you want.
Dustin, I'm going to be there every day with disguises, making you guys like constantly
show up around and everything.
It's James again.
Just pretend you don't recognize.
Oh, funny must have it.
Just for the audience to know, if you're looking for that information, you can reach out
to our staff here and we'll make sure you get it.
Otherwise, I threw into the old search engine ported words fire department and all of that
popped right up from me, Dustin, so I encourage you to do it that way as well, if whatever's
easiest for you just reach out and certainly support our ported words fire department
whenever you see them at events or anything come by, say hi, learn more about the great
work that they're doing over there.
Dustin, thanks so much.
This was awesome.
Thanks for hanging out.
Appreciate it.
Appreciate it.
Thank you for joining us for another edition of WFHR's Rapid Support, proudly brought to you
by crack and septic here at WFHR.com.
