Episode 237: Fostering Global Best Practices & Collaboration at the World Fire Congress with Victor Stagnaro & Gary Krichbaum

Episode notes

What is the World Fire Congress, and how does it benefit firefighters?

Hello Smart Firefighting Community!

Welcome to another episode of covering real world innovations via interviews with fire service and technology industry experts that empower YOU to develop your very own Smart Firefighting strategy!

In this episode:

How does the World Fire Congress bring nations together to tackle fire prevention and safety issues?

What’s the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation (NFFF) mission at the Congress?

How do global collaboration and best practices address common fire service challenges?

Hear from Victor Stagnaro - the CEO of the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation (NFFF) - and Gary Krichbaum - the Managing Director at NFFF.

The World Fire Congress brings together nations to address fire prevention, challenges, and health and safety issues in the fire service. The National Fallen Firefighter Foundation (NFFF) plays a key role in event coordination, with a mission to honor fallen firefighters and prevent line-of-duty deaths and injuries.

The Congress promotes collaboration, sharing of best practices, and tackling common issues in the fire service globally.

So take a listen to hear what they have to share!

Head to www.smartfirefighting.com to discover how SFF accelerates innovation for emergency responders, to find out when our next event is, or review our curated resources!

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Chapters

1. 0:00 Intro to the World Fire Congress miniseries
2. 0:37 Victor Stagnaro and Gary Krichbaum of NFFF join
3. 0:52 What the World Fire Congress is
4. 1:46 The NFFF mission
5. 2:38 Connections from nation to nation
6. 3:51 Voluntarily sharing information
7. 5:24 Common problems around the world
8. 7:04 Credit to the team
9. 7:57 What they're most excited about
10. 9:21 How to get involved
11. 10:07 Wrap
12. 10:26 Outro

Questions answered in this episode

What is the World Fire Congress?

Victor Stagnaro describes it as nations from all over the world coming together for a common goal: to look at fire prevention and the different challenges the fire service is facing, whether wildfire, high rise, or emerging technologies, and see how they can together come up with solutions to those problems as well as health and safety issues the fire service faces every day.

Hear it at 0:52

What is the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation's role in the World Fire Congress?

Gary Krichbaum says the Foundation partnered with the U.S. Fire Administration for over a year and took on the role of event coordination as well as some administrative functions. Victor Stagnaro adds that it aligns with the Foundation's mission to honor fallen firefighters and prevent line of duty deaths and injuries, allowing them to expand beyond the borders of the United States.

Hear it at 1:22

What common issues did countries share at the World Fire Congress?

Gary Krichbaum says recruitment and retention were discussed a lot, and just about worldwide everybody is having those kinds of issues. He notes that folks realized these problems are not just theirs and they can work with each other to figure out best practices.

Hear it at 3:13

What are communities of practice at the World Fire Congress?

Victor Stagnaro explains that each community of practice will be connected to a session topic such as fire tactics in residential buildings, energy storage, or climate change. Over the next two years, these communities of practice will gather, come up with recommendations, and hopefully some solutions as they approach 2026.

Hear it at 5:58

When and where is the next World Fire Congress?

Victor Stagnaro says the UK has already agreed to host the next World Fire Congress in 2026.

Hear it at 2:38

Transcript

Machine transcript of the published audio. Names may be misspelled and some sections are missing.

Ep 237 transcript

Fostering Global Best Practices & Collaboration at the World Fire Congress with Victor Stagnaro & Gary Krichbaum

Speakers: Kevin Sofen, Gary Krichbaum, Victor Stagnaro

Source: Whisper medium.en machine transcription of the published Podbean audio (no original transcript found in Drive), lightly cleaned. Speakers were separated by voice clustering and then checked and assigned by hand at every speaker change. Gaps where the model returned no usable text are marked [inaudible m:ss].

[0:00] Kevin Sofen: Welcome to this mini series of the Smart Firefighting podcast. Today, we're exploring the inaugural World Fire Congress hosted by the U.S. Fire Administration on May 7 and 8, 2024 in Washington, D.C. This groundbreaking event unites global fire service leaders to address critical issues such as climate change impacts, emerging technology risk, and firefighter health and safety. Enjoy this three-part series as we hear from multiple stakeholders about the key takeaways and the exciting potential for future collaboration in the Global Fire Service. We are live here, the World Fire Congress, with Gary Krichbaum and Victor Stagnaro from the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation. It's been a lot of work and effort to this moment. How are you guys feeling? And tell us a little about what the World Fire Congress is and NFFF role in it.

[0:52] Victor Stagnaro: The World Fire Congress is a group of nations of all over the world that are coming together for a common goal, which is to look at fire prevention, look at the different challenges the fire service is facing, whether it be wildfire, high rise emerging technologies, and see how we can together come up with solutions to solve the problems the fire service is challenging in addition to the health and safety issues that the fire service is facing every day.

[1:22] Gary Krichbaum: Yeah, so we've partnered with the United States Fire Administration. We've been working on this for a little over a year. And we are, the Foundation has taken on the role of event coordination. We've also been engaged with some of the administrative functions of it, but you know, it was a great partnership. We feel very blessed that they asked us to do it.

[1:46] Victor Stagnaro: And Kevin, I'll add the mission of the Fallen Firefighters Foundation is to honor every fallen firefighter that dies in the line of duty, and we did that internationally today at the beginning of the ceremony. Our other mission is to prevent line of duty deaths and injuries and to prevent fires. So it really aligns with the mission of the Foundation, and it just allows us the opportunity to expand beyond the borders of the United States.

[2:10] Kevin Sofen: Well, kudos to everything that NFFF is doing, and it's nice when the plan comes together. It's quite the operation there, and Gary, I see you back there leading Incident Command, and it really is an incredible operation. So kudos to you and everyone at USFA. And again, it's May 6th, I believe May 7th, lost track of day here, but what do you hope are some of the takeaways and what do you hope the World Fire Congress, what kind of ripple effects do you hope it creates throughout the fire service around the world?

[2:38] Victor Stagnaro: Well, I think we've already seen some of that. We're seeing the connections made from nation to nation that were never made before. We're learning about efforts being made by the World Bank many other organizations that we had no idea of their operations and the things that they're doing in the fire service space. So we're already seeing this collaboration coming together, and it's just going to continue on. The UK has already agreed to do the next World Fire Congress in 2026, and these communities of practice are also going to be very valuable to keep addressing the challenges we're facing.

[3:13] Gary Krichbaum: Yeah, and I tell you, Kevin, it's very interesting for everyone to come together and have very common issues within their country, particularly I heard some discussion a lot this morning about recruitment, retention, just about worldwide, everybody's having those kind of issues. So I think I see a lot of folks, you can see the light bulb going off going, hey, this ain't just us. We can work with each other, try to figure out best practices. And I think by doing that, then some of these issues that we're having in the fire service in the United States that we can learn from other countries what they're doing.

[3:51] Kevin Sofen: One word that I saw Lori put up there, Dr. Lori Moore mentioned the voluntarily share. It's not necessarily something that no one's required to be here. This is completely voluntary. And the idea is how can we continue to share ideas, share best practices to help protect citizens, help protect first responders. What are your kind of, what are your thoughts any kind of hot takes in regards to the sort of willingness of the World Fire Service members to want to participate and align with USFA and N triple S mission and the World Fire Congress mission.

[4:23] Victor Stagnaro: I would add it's the traditional and valued traditions of the fire service to share information, to work together with one another, to try to prevent line of duty deaths and injuries. And that's just, you can see that expansion throughout with every nation that's here. And I can tell you there's nations that would like to have been here, but because of visa issues or just the fact that they were able to register late, were not able to be here. So I can see this expanding much greater in 2026 when the UK takes it over.

[4:56] Gary Krichbaum: So the other interesting part that I found is, the US Fire Service, basically from the beginning, we've always tried to make things better, leave it better for the next generation of firefighters that are coming up. And that's a worldwide effort. And so the fire service is the fire service, what I've learned so far. Doesn't matter which country you're in. We all love the fire service. We understand the fire service and we want the fire service to continue to get better.

[5:24] Kevin Sofen: And I'd heard from whether it was countries like Fiji or Barbados or Brazil or America, they all said the same thing. Hey, we all share the same problems. It may seem different and kind of some of the structures and the dynamics are different, but the problems are, for the most part, the same. And with that kind of, we can identify the problems, but what's gonna happen the rest of the time here and what do you think are, you know, maybe even touch on these communities of action and sort of how we can take the lessons here learned that we're learning and apply it to continue to address these problems with solutions.

[5:58] Victor Stagnaro: I'm sorry, I can't remember his name. Mark from UK mentioned at the very beginning, you know, this collaboration component. We may have some of the answers, But we don't have all of them. And so collectively, we'll be able to resolve some of the issues that we're facing every day. The next couple of days this afternoon is going to be fire tactics, fire operations in residential buildings. We're also going to be talking about energy storage, climate change. There's a whole host of things throughout the next couple of days that will be covered. And that's what each community of practice is going to be connected to one of those sessions. And in the next two years, these communities of practice will gather, come up with recommendations and hopefully some solutions as we approach 2026.

[6:41] Gary Krichbaum: It's going to be exciting the rest of the day and all day tomorrow. We have the top speakers from around the world going to give presentations on those topics to give a little bit of background. We're going to open it up and have some discussion between the countries. And I'm looking forward to the dialogue. I'm looking forward to all these experts coming in and again, sharing that information.

[7:04] Victor Stagnaro: And Kevin, if I could add one other thing, I just want to give Gary a lot of credit for organizing this entire event. His leadership has brought fire service leaders and from the United States. We have our fellows group, we've got honor guards from California to North Carolina. So this is a national event within the international event. So it's really Gary's leadership that has enabled us to do that.

[7:30] Kevin Sofen: Thank you for being the tip of the spear.

[7:32] Gary Krichbaum: Well, thanks, and believe me, it's not me. So the fantastic team that Victor, and thank you for all the kind words, fantastic team that we have behind the curtains. I cannot say enough good things about them again. Most of these folks are folks that come together for our Memorial Weekend, and we went straight from Memorial Weekend into this event, and they have done a fantastic job, and just couldn't, we could never have done this without the help of them.

[7:57] Kevin Sofen: A couple of quick final questions here. What are you most excited about with the initiation, the inaugural World Fire Congress in terms of what will happen next? I know I kind of asked this question of what we need differently, but what's excited you most about what's happened so far and what do you really hope is kind of the, some of the lasting impacts of this initial inaugural World Fire Congress?

[8:19] Victor Stagnaro: I would say the, well, continue with the collaboration that's going on. The other unique piece of what we're watching right now is we're watching history being made. We've got a front row seat to it. And the idea that this is gonna go on for generations, this is the inaugural one. So the ability to address the fire service issues, including health and safety for firefighters globally, the impact that will have, bringing in experts from all over the world. And there are a lot of great experts that have been working on firefighter health and safety issues that we're not aware of because we've become so insular. So I think the opportunity to do that is just gonna be phenomenal and have a global impact.

[9:02] Gary Krichbaum: So the real satisfying moment for me will be years down the road when we come up with something that made the fire service better. And then we can look back to these two days and realize that the seed was planted here. And that's exciting. That's exciting. It should be exciting for everybody in the fire service.

[9:21] Kevin Sofen: And if people are listening to this, they weren't here, How would you suggest people get involved with the efforts that USFA is doing and Triple F is doing, World Fire Congress? What are some, any ideas of how people can continue to get involved and be proactive within this whole initiative?

[9:35] Victor Stagnaro: Well, I would say look at what the US fire administrator is doing in the US. We have the fire administrator summit on fire prevention and control. A lot of the same concerns are being addressed domestically. You can look at the proceedings report, the reports that came out of those meetings and then get involved in October when there's going to be another summit on fire prevention and control and just get engaged with how you can support those programs. And there's lots of opportunities to do that.

[10:04] Gary Krichbaum: I don't have anything to add.

[10:07] Kevin Sofen: Well, on behalf of just the fire service around the world and Smart Firefighting and all the partners involved, Victor and Gary, it's a pleasure to know you, collaborate with you, and honor to be here and excited for the positive ripple effects that the World Fire Congress will have around the world. We're very grateful that you're here and supporting the event.

[10:23] Victor Stagnaro: Thanks for doing that, Kevin. Thanks, Kevin.

[10:25] Kevin Sofen: Take care. Thanks, guys. Thanks for listening to today's episode. What did you think? What'd you learn? Hopefully something, right? Please reach out on social media with your thoughts on this episode and any other suggestions for future content. We look forward to capturing more important stories across public safety and are here at your service.