Irving firefighters say that, once upon a time, their profession prized dirty uniforms and minimal protective gear as marks of grit.
But with a more modern emphasis on health and long-term stability, that culture is changing to reflect a desire to keep firefighters at their best for years to come.
For a fire department to succeed, it needs a strong culture of camaraderie and trust.
Since firefighters work 24-hour shifts, that means they spend a lot of time together. That's to say nothing of responding to emergencies.
Roy Harvey is an Irving firefighter who's been in the field for 30 years. He said the team gets close working the long, intense shifts the profession demands.
"I mean, you've got these guys' lives in your hands and you're trusting them with your life," he said.
Harvey added that Irving firefighters are hard workers devoted to the city's residents.
"Even if we're shorthanded, they just go above and beyond," he said.
And "firefighter," it turns out, is a bit of a misnomer. That's not because these folks don't fight fires, but because it's not even close to the only thing they do.
It might be more accurate to call most firefighters "everything" emergency responders. They perform CPR, dress wounds and reverse overdoses. They rescue folks from swift water and icy roadways. They comfort victims of crime. They defuse mental health crises. And yes, they even pull the occasional cat out of a tree.
The job is dangerous and oftentimes unpredictable. The CDC's National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health described firefighting as "one of the most at-risk occupational groups," given firefighters' exposure to "physical, chemical, biological and psychosocial hazards" at work.
But despite the job's inherent challenges, when it comes to bringing in recruits and getting them to stick around, the Irving Fire Department is honing in on something special.
A century of evolving culture
The Irving Fire Department officially turned 100 years old last year, even though sources vary on the exact start date. But 2025 was the centennial because the first record of the department's existence — a receipt showing the purchase of a fire hose — is dated to 1925.
As late as the mid-1960s, in what some might see as a bit of poetic irony, it was standard practice across the country for local funeral homes to shuttle people to the hospital in a hearse. That's since changed.
But it's not the only adjustment in recent decades.
For firefighting culture, health itself is a much higher priority than before.
Captain James Malone leads recruitment efforts for the department. He followed in the footsteps of his father, Captain James Malone Sr., who served as an Irving firefighter for over 30 years.
Malone said firefighters in his father's day faced a slew of health problems that have since been recognized and addressed. He remembered his father once saying about himself that if he lived past the age of 60 — which he did — he'd be "beating the odds."
A common point of pride was gear with signs of wear.
"Back then," Malone said, "if you were a rookie under my dad and you're wearing brand new gear, he'd make you go roll around in the soot until your gear was dirty because you looked like a rookie."
"Well, you were also rolling around in carcinogens and all kinds of stuff," he added.
Malone explained that nowadays, "it's no longer a sense of pride to be dirty, it's a sense safety to be clean."
"Firefighters have changed their attitudes as far as gear — we're talking the last 15 years," he said. "That gear started getting washed after every event."
Also long gone are the days of going headfirst into dangerous situations with little protection and "eating smoke", which often involved direct inhalation of contaminants.
Today the department has a full-time staff of 425 paid professional firefighters. That team serves a city with more than 250,000 residents, including the Las Colinas area. They have state-of-the-art protective equipment and get regular checkups to make sure they're not at risk of cancer or other health problems that come with the job.
Malone said the culture has also shifted away from one where emotions were bottled up and firefighters were left to sift through the aftermath of challenging calls in isolation. Mental health is a key part of safety, too.
"Now we have chaplains that can help people if they want someone to speak with and we have psychiatrists that can help them out," he said. "But it's also preemptive: they do things like yoga classes."
That's part of why so many Irving firefighters are in it for the long haul.
Bringing in the next generation
According to Malone, Irving is home to one of the best-paying fire departments in the state. When it comes to recruiting, they attract more talent than they could possibly hire.
Last year more than 1,000 potential recruits threw their hats in the ring, all coming together to take the Civil Service exam. Less than 20 of them would be brought aboard, but the rest are still on a list for consideration through September.
"The good news for the citizens of Irving is that we get to hire the top few percent of 1,000 instead of the top few percent of 30," Malone said.
Those new recruits are joining the department with new job protections in place. Last fall, the Irving City Council unanimously approved a collective bargaining agreement between the city and the Irving firefighters' union.
In a statement sent to KERA earlier this month, city officials said the FY 2025-26 adopted budget adds four new firefighters as part of the final agreement, with just over $484,000 allocated for personnel and operating costs.
"These costs were built into the current budget and support the agreement's focus on improving safety and efficiency without raising the tax rate," officials said.
The statement noted, "Additional staffing in years 2 to 4 of the contract may require tax rate increases to fully fund."
This is the city's first collective bargaining agreement with the firefighters, and it'll last almost through the end of the decade. Once it expires, negotiations will be on the table again.
Got a tip? Email Andy Lusk at alusk@kera.org.
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