Firefighter Cancer Awareness:

It’ll Never Be You…Until It Is

No one wanted to face the truth, but now it's clear: I had a death wish. It permeates firefighting, just like soldiers in wars. It’s the bravado of young, ignorant romantics who dream of dying for something grand. I had it. I have it still, only now, I go about it responsibly.

Firefighters have a 68% cancer rate, 14% higher than any other modern profession. We knew we needed to be careful, but there was no definitive plan to protect us. We were told our bunker gear should be sent off to the cleaners and suggested that we should shower after every fire, but out of the other side of their mouths, the Brass would lecture us if we weren’t in service and call-ready within a half hour of being discharged from an incident. I honestly thought in some half-drunken chivalric part of my mind death was the cost of doing business.

That sentiment nested inside the minds of so many firefighters, police officers, and soldiers one would think it was implanted in childhood, and for many of us, it was. My father, grandfather, and great-grandfather fought fire in San Francisco since 1906; if you’ll count my Grampa Art, then eight years old, helping to build shacks in Dolores Park—then Mission Park—for the refugees of the Great Fire. My grandfather was forced to retire after a heart attack on the job; my father actually worked three years after contracting throat cancer, retiring with 33 years of service and, as rumored, the highest-awarded firefighter in The City’s long firefighting history. Unfortunately, the tradition I perpetuated was not valor but service disability retirement.

I contracted cancer of the Olfactory Nerve in 2016 and again in 2020. After two major cranial surgeries and a total of a half year’s worth of radiation treatments, I’m currently in remission, a little worse for wear, and a new man. The zealot masquerading as a tragic hero had to die so that I could accomplish the bigger mission: preparing the next generation of lifesavers and protecting them from disease.

Previous generations had no idea how inexorably deadly firefighting was. The data was not known; it hadn't even been collected. Even if it was apparent, they hadn’t the technology or equipment to effectively shield them from the dangers. But now, we have no excuse. It’s time to bury the generational ignorance and malignant habituations in favor of living beyond the dangers of death and disease, outliving the first five years of retirement, the current life expectancy of firefighters. Sufficient literature, agencies, and programs—backed by evidentiary science —are preaching a new sentiment: a mindset for firefighters’ long-term survival. We are on the precipice of change, and I am proud to be helping with the advance.