"The bottom line is I care because I'm tired of losing my friends."

Chief Frank Leeb spent more than three decades in the FDNY, rising to Deputy Assistant Chief and serving as Chief of the Fire Academy, Chief of Training, and Chief of Safety before retiring in 2024. He has been a volunteer firefighter with the East Farmingdale Fire Department on Long Island since 1983. Today he leads the First Responder Center for Excellence, and he has one message for the fire service: if leadership is not protecting its people from what they cannot see coming, leadership is not doing its job.

Greg and Amy sit down with Chief Leeb at FRCE 2026 in Iowa to talk about the toll nobody puts on a recruiting poster: friends lost to suicide, careers hollowed out by PTSD, and cancer moving through firehouses in numbers the fire service is only beginning to confront. They discuss the World Health Organization's reclassification of firefighting as a Group 1 carcinogen, why the dangers of this job do not discriminate between career and volunteer, and what it actually means for a chief to protect a firefighter's blind side.

Chief Leeb is the author of the best-selling book Cornerstones of Leadership: On and Off the Fireground and co-author of 30 Fires You Must Know.

This episode discusses suicide and mental health. 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.

GUEST LINKS

Cornerstones of Leadership (book): https://fireengineeringbooks.com/frank-leeb/

First Responder Center for Excellence: https://www.firstrespondercenter.org

RESOURCES MENTIONED

IARC classification of firefighting as Group 1 carcinogen (WHO, 2022): https://www.iarc.who.int

Firefighter Cancer Support Network: https://firefightercancersupport.org

Unseen Exposures is presented by SPOKE, a documentary about occupational cancer in the fire service. Learn more at https://www.spokemovie.com

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Music: White Mountains by Zambolino

Source: https://freetouse.com/music

Royalty Free Music (Free Download)