"I work in a business where I see line of duty death reports all the time. I'm like, I don't want you to die."

Nicole Prorock keeps the books for the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation and the First Responder Center for Excellence. She is also a volunteer firefighter, EMT, and station officer with the New Market District Volunteer Fire Company in Frederick County, Maryland. The person who accounts for America's fallen firefighters spends her nights riding the ambulance, and she has one goal: fewer names to count.

Greg and Amy sit down with Nicole at the FRCE Mental Health and Wellness Symposium in Iowa to talk about the losses that hit closest to home, including suicides at her own fire station, and why you can never tell from the outside what someone is carrying on the inside. Nicole shares her path from CPA to firefighter, the brother she lost to leukemia at 21, and the promise she is keeping on her fiftieth birthday: racing the Ironman World Championships in Kona as a fundraiser in his memory.

She also explains the volunteer fire service most of the public never sees: the unpaid overnight crews, the fundraising for gear and apparatus, and what it takes to keep a suburban community covered when the career staff goes home at six.

And she says the most radical thing anyone has said on this show: that she wants FRCE's prevention work to put the Fallen Firefighters Foundation out of business.

SUPPORT NICOLE'S IRONMAN FUNDRAISER https://ironmanfoundation.donordrive.com/participants/4273

This episode is dedicated to Battalion Chief Joshua D. Laird, Frederick County Division of Fire and Rescue Services, who died in the line of duty on August 11, 2021. "Just do the right thing."

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.

LINKS National Fallen Firefighters Foundation: https://www.firehero.org First Responder Center for Excellence: https://firstrespondercenter.org Battalion Chief Joshua D. Laird memorial: https://www.firehero.org/fallen-firefighter/joshua-d-laird/

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

Follow the show, and if this episode moved you, a rating and review helps more firefighters find it.

The number one killer of firefighters isn't fire. It's their own hearts.

Kepra Jack was an ER nurse and pre-hospital coordinator, married to a firefighter, when a 44-year-old friend didn't wake up for shift change. That question, why are healthy people having cardiac events, became 15 years of first responder medicine: a primary care practice built for police, fire, EMS, dispatch, military, and their families, annual medicals for departments of every size, and national work with the IAFF, IAFC, and NFPA.

Kepra owns HeartFit For Duty and is a founding member and vice president of Science to the Station, the nonprofit connecting fire service researchers with the firefighters their work is meant to protect. In this conversation: the 2022 decision that classified firefighting itself as a carcinogen, why 83 percent of fire service research has happened in the last two decades, the bro science problem at the kitchen table, what families never get taught about supporting their firefighter, NerdStock (the fire service science conference that ends with a circus), and the three things anyone can start today: real food, a primary care doctor, and actual sleep.

Her closing challenge: establish with a mental health provider before you need one. And it is never too late to change your risk factors.

Resources: science2station.org, and reach Kepra at kepra@heartfitforduty.org

This episode is brought to you by SPOKE, our Founding Premier Sponsor and Film Partner. Watch the trailer at spokemovie.com

Dena Ali was a police officer for five years before an episode of Rescue Me showed her that women could be firefighters. Eighteen years later, she's a Battalion Chief with the Raleigh Fire Department, founder of North Carolina's statewide peer support team, Program Manager of Behavioral Health for the First Responder Center for Excellence, and author of Hope Out of Darkness: A Guide to First Responder Mental Wellness.

Recorded live at the FRCE Health and Wellness Symposium at the University of Iowa, this conversation covers the ideas at the center of her book: hope as a cognitive skill built through struggle, the surprising research on play and humor, psychological safety as the freedom to fail (with lessons the fire service can steal from NASA after Columbia), and the practical mechanics of peer support, from the kitchen table conversation after a bad call to asking someone directly whether they're thinking about suicide.

Her hardest-won stance: first responders are not victims. They carry more protective factors than most people, and the solutions in her book are human solutions, not just fire service ones.

Content note: this episode includes frank discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text 988 (US) any time.

Get the book: Hope Out of Darkness at fireengineeringbooks.com or Amazon.

First Responder Center for Excellence: firstrespondercenter.org

This episode is brought to you by SPOKE, our Founding Premier Sponsor and Film Partner. Watch the trailer at spokemovie.com

IN MEMORY OF
SENIOR FIREFIGHTER JOSH LULL
RALEIGH FIRE DEPARTMENT · RESCUE 16 · C-SHIFT
END OF WATCH APRIL 19, 2026