"I was part of the culture of silence. I pushed, I dealt with whatever, didn't say anything, got back in the rig, kept moving forward. That's what strength looks like."

David Dachinger spent twenty-one years at the Ridgefield Fire Department in Connecticut and retired as a lieutenant. He was a company officer, responsible for the wellbeing of the people riding with him. He finished his career having never heard of PTSD and not knowing what EMDR was.

Then he retired, and the quiet arrived.

In this conversation David describes what happens when the calls come back: the ones you forgot happened, resurfacing in your sleep, years after the last shift. He and Greg talk about what the job bills you for after you stop working, and why so many firefighters never see the invoice coming.

David also says the thing the therapist community needs to hear. First responders can smell inauthenticity in about two seconds, and you get one chance to help someone who has finally asked. Trust can be lost in seconds. When a first responder calls a clinician, that is their 911 call, and you do not put them on a waiting list.

Greg knows that from the inside. He waited two and a half months for an appointment while he was in a bad place, and he says so on tape.

The episode gets into EMDR in plain language, what the therapist shortage actually looks like from both sides, and why our families never signed up for this job but pay for it anyway. David's book title says the rest: there are not enough helpers to help the helpers.

This episode is dedicated to Firefighter/Paramedic Raymond "Tim" Nobes, Ridgefield Fire Department, who David served with. End of watch June 22, 2022.

This episode discusses PTSD, mental health, and suicide. If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text 988 (Suicide and Crisis Lifeline), or call the Fire/EMS Helpline at 1-888-731-3473. You are not alone.

"We need to start thinking about the people the same way. The biggest asset you have is the people."

Dr. Sara Jahnke has spent nearly twenty years studying firefighter health. She directs the Center for Fire, Rescue and EMS Health Research at NDRI-USA, she is president of Science to the Station, and she sits on the board of the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation. She was also raised by a fire chief, from kindergarten through her senior year of high school, which is the part that explains the rest.

She calls herself a full-time nerd. She's actually the person connecting nearly everyone working on this problem.

In this conversation, she walks through what the research says now, and some of it is not what the fire service assumes. Firefighting was re-evaluated by the International Agency for Research on Cancer and classified as a known carcinogen, and she explains what that process looks like from the inside and why it changes what is possible in legislation. Shift work carries its own classification. Sleep consistency, not just sleep quantity, turns out to be an independent risk factor for illness and death. Elevated blood pressure raises your risk of a cardiac event on the fireground twelvefold.

But she is just as interested in what is going right. Smoking rates in the fire service are now lower than the military and lower than the general population, and she argues the mechanism was peer pressure, crews deciding this is not who we are. Divorce rates for men in the fire service came back lower than the general population across forty-three departments from Maine to Guam, a result her analytics team ran repeatedly because nobody believed it. For women in the fire service, the same data came back high, and she says so plainly.

Greg and Sara get into sleep, nicotine pouches, shift schedules, start times, why "cleared for duty" is not the same as healthy, and what a department actually owes the people who work for it. Amy asks the questions that pull all of it out of the echo chamber.

Sara also talks about 360 Responder Health, Medical and Safety, the clinic model she built with Kepra Jack and Denise Smith, and about Science to the Station 2026 in Kansas City, November 3rd through 5th, the gathering she still calls Nerdstock.

This episode is dedicated to Firefighter/EMT Mark Mansfield, Overland Park Fire Department, end of watch April 6, 2002.

"It's easy to say 343, 344. But it's really one loss, three hundred and forty-four times."

Frank Leeb spent nearly thirty-two years in the FDNY and retired as a Deputy Assistant Chief in June 2024. He is now Managing Director of the First Responder Center for Excellence. He is also the only person we asked to come back.

This conversation was recorded just after the twenty-fifth anniversary of September 11th, and Frank told us something we did not expect: he had not talked about his day anywhere else. Not in an interview, not on another show. He walks us through all of it, hour by hour. The six a.m. train into the city with his son-in-law and a member of his volunteer department. The moments of silence outside quarters at 76 Engine, where he was captain. The firemen's memorial five blocks away, where firefighters from Florida, Texas, Italy, London, Vermont and Oregon had come to stand. Headquarters in Brooklyn at two in the afternoon, because when you make staff chief, headquarters becomes your last firehouse. The bagpipes at sunset outside Ten House, and the band leader calling into the crowd for people to shout the names of who they were honoring. And then, near eleven at night and running on nothing, a subway ride to Queens to stand in a kitchen for a friend's last tour, because that is what you do.

He got home at one thirty in the morning. He left at six.

Frank also does the arithmetic the fire service has been doing quietly for twenty-five years: 343 lost that day, 344 counting the fire patrol member, 453 since from occupational illness, and 152 more added to the memorial wall who were already retired on September 11th and came back to help anyway. Approaching a thousand people. The FDNY ceremony could not be held at St. Patrick's Cathedral this year because the cathedral is not big enough.

Amy, who was living in New York that morning, asks him the question underneath the whole day: does it fill your cup, or does it empty it? His answer is the reason this episode exists.

He also talks about his friend Tony Mastrelli, who died at fifty-eight of occupational illness in November 2024, and whose memorial shirt Frank is wearing while we talk.

This episode is dedicated to Firefighter Anthony "Tony" Mastrelli, FDNY Ladder 56 and East Farmingdale Fire Department. 1991 to 2024.

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Frank Leeb's books, including In the Mouth of the Dragon: Toxic Fires in the Age of Plastics, second edition, co-authored with Deborah Wallace. https://fireengineeringbooks.com/search.php?search_query=leeb

"The Story of the List" by retired FDNY Captain Frank Leto, on how scribbled names on yellow legal pads became the department's official missing and deceased list. Frank calls it the one must-read piece on September 11th this year. https://www.firerescue1.com/fdny/the-story-of-the-list

First Responder Center for Excellence, free online training: https://firstrespondercenter.org

Unseen Exposures is presented by SPOKE: https://www.spokemovie.com

Music: White Mountains by Zambolino Source: https://freetouse.com/music Royalty Free Music (Free Download)