CouveCast episode 9 Interview with Vancouver Fire Chief Drake

In this episode meet the new Vancouver Fire Chief, John Drake. We'll talk about his goals for the department and learn about how his impressive background helped shape his vision. 

Transcript

Introduction 0:00

Welcome to CouveCast, the City of Vancouver's official podcast hosted by Steve Harris. Each episode is a mix of city insights, stories, behind the scenes, and hopefully a few laughs along the way. No jargon, just real talk with the people shaping Vancouver's future. One episode at a time.

Steve 0:18

Welcome to CouveCast, the City of Vancouver's official podcast. I'm your host, Steve Harris, and today we will be talking with Vancouver Fire Department's new chief, John Drake II. Chief Drake brings over 38 years of public safety leadership experience to the City of Vancouver. He was acting fire chief in Los Angeles and holds a doctorate degree in policy planning and development. Well, Chief, thanks for joining me. Pleasure to be here, Steve. Uh first of all, we got to attack a little bit of that background. What what were your duties in LA? What what was it like going from Los Angeles to Vancouver?

Chief Drake 0:51

There are there, first of all, I want to say that there is quite a few commonalities between the cities, just a lot smaller scale in Vancouver. Some of the same challenges, complexities that I had in LA as the emergency operations commander, because we dealt with fire suppression, emergency medical services, multi-casualty incidents, hazardous materials, high-rise, wildland urban interface, many of the challenges of a large city are common here in Vancouver.

Speaker 2 1:17

Yeah.

Speaker 1 1:17

Just smaller scale.

Steve 1:19

Yeah. So when you say smaller scale, we've talked about this uh earlier. So, like generally in scale size, what are we talking about difference between the responsibilities in LA versus Vancouver, Washington?

Chief Drake 1:33

Well, from what I always call the most important thing that we do is provide service to the community that we serve. So I would draw a nexus between the communities. In Vancouver, we serve 300,000. In the city of Los Angeles, it's well over 4 million.

Steve 1:48

Wow.

Chief Drake 1:49

And plus our regions. From a budgetary standpoint, uh with the budget that we have here in Vancouver, I'd say it's about one-ninth the budget that it was in LA.

Speaker 2 1:59

Quite a difference.

Speaker 1 2:00

Yeah.

Speaker 2 2:00

But a wealth of experience you bring to us.

Chief Drake 2:06

And yeah, I've I've uh learned a lot about the community and the city here, but I'm not surprised at a lot of the challenges. In fact, I think that one of the major reasons I'm here is to bring that macro level perspective and bring some of the things we've learned from a larger city to make a safe and prepared community here in Vancouver.

Steve 2:25

Oh, that's great. Um is it quite a shell shock going from responsibilities in somewhere the size of LA to our community here?

Speaker 1 2:34

Somewhat.

Speaker 2 2:34

Yeah.

Chief Drake 2:35

Somewhat, but I I have to tell you, the shell shock is on economies of scale. It's actually like as I said, a much smaller scope, but no less important. Yeah. We're still here to protect lives and property, so it is no less important. And in fact, that's why we're pursuing aggressively one of my major agendas is to develop a comprehensive plan for the city of Vancouver. And we're finding in the in this process that there is many commonalities between that and LA. Just economies of scale are what's different. But you didn't have to think about any volcanoes in LA, right? That is the one thing that I didn't do much preparing for. So that is that is the one that might be different.

Steve 3:15

Yeah. So speaking of uh things you're going to be thinking about here in Vancouver, what what are your top goals for the Vancouver Fire Department?

Chief Drake 3:25

Well, Steve, since I since I just had you asked me that because I do have a background in strategic planning. And the reason I do is I've always been a huge believer in making our organization better. And in LA, I thought there was plenty of areas that we could improve. And I wanted to learn the best way to do that. And so I went to school and and got the degrees that you mentioned earlier. And I'm bringing that here to Vancouver in the process of developing a comprehensive strategic plan where we are going to develop a renewed vision statement, which is futuristic, where we want to be in three to five years, a mission statement, which is our purpose, our reason for existence, why we show up to work every day.

unknown 4:06

Yeah.

Chief Drake 4:07

And values. Core values are extremely important too, because they affect the culture of the organization. And additionally, what is really important is that I noticed the department didn't have before I got here, were goals. So there are certain goals that we have extracted in our environmental scan and processes that we use to determine how to better serve our community.

Steve 4:27

Okay.

Chief Drake 4:27

And the goals I'll mention real quick. Sure. I'll read them real quick to you. There's eight of them. I'm not going to memorize this, but I'll I don't have memorized either words, but deliver exceptional public safety and emergency services. That's our number one goal. It was in LA and it is here. To promote a safe, healthy work environment that effectively manages personal and organizational risk is number two. Okay. Number three, develop and maintain innovative prevention services that promote public safety and reduce risk. And an additional goal would be to commit to a progressive, respectful, organizational culture that advances belongingness, engagement, and access. We also, as another goal, want to cultivate collaborative partnerships, interactive leadership areas. And we're we're working on being a regional leader here with a high performance organizational program that we are running ever at Vancouver. And then responsible performance management. We also want to foster personal growth, professional development, and organizational succession. And we don't want to leave behind the importance of innovation and technology. So we're going to identify, implement, and integrate emerging technologies as well. And then be more proactive. I always say it's important to have a position where you're engaging in proactive leadership as opposed to reactive supervision. On a proactive side, we're going to strengthen our disaster preparedness, response, and community resilience as well. So these are some of the major endeavors that we've got. And we spent actually months in soliciting input from our internal and external stakeholders, from elected officials and our civilian sworn staff, from our regional partners, from the law enforcement partners, to determine how we can make Vancouver a better fire department. And that's why this plan will be more substantive because of all the inputs of everybody as a team.

Steve 6:19

Okay. And you're you were saying three to five years you're thinking for uh implementing all of all of these changes or additions?

Chief Drake 6:25

We're calling it the 2026 to 2029 strategic plan. And it's called a safe and prepared community because it aligns with the Vancouver Cities Plan, where they've identified from their public safety partners, more specifically the VPD and the VFD, sure. They want us to help make a safe and prepared community. So that's we're entitling our plan. And we're doing that through response times and all emergency resources and pursuing the goals that I just mentioned.

Steve 6:52

That's excellent. I want to ask you uh the the service area of Vancouver. Um what what generally is the the would that entail?

Chief Drake 7:05

Vancouver is about 45 square miles, the city itself, and we have a community of around 200,000.

Speaker 2 7:13

Okay.

Chief Drake 7:14

However, we do have a contractual agreement with District 5 that adds another 100,000 to that. So we serve about 300,000 in our community here.

Speaker 2 7:22

And how many how many fire stations do we have? 11. I shouldn't know that, but I'm glad you told me. There are 11. Eleven.

Chief Drake 7:28

Okay. Um as opposed to LA, which was 107.

Steve 7:34

That that's quite a difference. That's quite a difference.

Speaker 1 7:36

We're drawing comparisons.

Steve 7:38

And so so with fire, it's really um because you know, I've been to the some of the fire stations, most of the fire stations, um, it's really 24-7. You have it actually have the ability of uh of fire staff to sleep on site um so that it could be ready for you know during the night or where any time really.

Chief Drake 7:58

Yes, they work on a platoon schedule, and it is 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Holidays aside, you you've always going to need law enforcement, police, and fire. As far as as the sleeping thing that you mentioned, uh this this department's actually getting a lot busier. In 2024, they responded to 38,422 calls for service.

Steve 8:20

Wow, that's amazing. You just know that number off the cuff.

Chief Drake 8:23

That's the first time I looked at that. How'd you know that? And in 2025, just last year, that increased 3.86 percent to 39,907. So we're anticipating in the future more than 40,000 calls per year just in our geographic area.

Steve 8:38

What do you attribute that that increase to? Is it is the population or uh is there or or is there one particular reason for that?

Chief Drake 8:48

I'm gonna say E, all of the above. Population and emigration uh into the city is certainly a into and out of the city. The numbers are reflecting that the community is growing larger and larger. And the city of Vancouver is also looking at annexing property in District 6 and uh regional fire authorities and other things. So I think the city is gonna continue to grow and the challenges will become greater all the time. And the call load will increase, but predominantly a larger number of people, but greater demands on the fire service. It's I'm learning that uh this this department is not a slow department.

Steve 9:23

And you'll be you'll be ready for it.

Chief Drake 9:25

I'm ready for it.

Steve 9:26

Uh so speaking of the fire department, what what services do the uh Vancouver Fire Department have? Emergency services?

Chief Drake 9:34

911 services and just about anything you could think of in the way of emergency medical services to fire suppression, hazardous materials addressing the wildland urban interface, multi-casualty incidents, uh, even even in the Columbia River, we do shipboard incidents. There's so many different things we do in technical rescue that uh we're providing a wide range or array of services. And in fact, we work with our regional partners to do the same over in Portland across the bridge with our law enforcement partners in Vancouver. So regional, yeah. Yes.

Speaker 2 10:11

So I'm guessing as chief. All risk.

Speaker 1 10:13

I'm gonna say all risk.

Chief Drake 10:14

Yeah. As chief, anything that comes up in any of those categories you you just mentioned, you're you're gonna be apprised of any situation. Especially bigger uh topic ones.

Speaker 1 10:24

Yes, we we respond when people need us. Yeah. Yeah. To just about anything they call us for.

Steve 10:30

Yeah. Um so interestingly enough, sort of uh uh coincidentally, we just covered uh a series about Be Ready Vancouver, um how folks should be prepared. And um, but that also includes uh, you know, doing the the the fire drills in their home and being ready in case there's a fire. Um how important is it to uh to for people to practice those and be ready for something that comes up like that?

Chief Drake 10:54

It's actually extremely important because uh one thing to remember as this city grows, the larger scale incidents that we're challenged with could tax us beyond the resources that we typically have on duty at one time. And that's why the regional partners are so important. But I also look at it as our community as partners. We need the community to help us serve them at times too. If there's a major earthquake, having gone through earthquakes in LA and brush fires, we rely on our community, our community emergency response teams. In fact, as I mentioned, one of our major strategic plan goals was to strengthen disaster preparedness response and community resilience. So we do that through a prepared community. Or as you mentioned, exit drills in the home and community emergency response teams volunteers, uh, whether it's initiating smoke alarm programs. There's just so many programs on a non-emergency and an emergency basis that we partner with in our community also. And school drills too, right? School drills too. Yeah. We have a a robust fire marshal's office that does a great job of trying to prevent things. We always say we want uh prevention, preparation, response, and recovery. So we're all service. We want to make sure that we address our community need from A to Z.

Steve 12:07

Prevention goes a long way. It does. Yeah. Um so keeping with that, with that theme for a moment, with the Be Ready Vancouver, if if there was some sort of catastrophic event, something here that that happened that it's always talked about, what would your role be in something like that? What what do you what are your top things you're gonna be thinking about?

Chief Drake 12:27

As consistent with the what we've identified on our plan, a safe and prepared community. Right, we we are aggressive. Depending on what the situation is, obviously. But we're working on so many things right now, what we call a standards of coverage process, where we identify what the community need is and where our stations are. We look at the distribution of our resources, uh, we look at reliability and where most of the incidents are, a how many resources we staff in those stations and the number of stations. So, what would my role be if we had a major conflagration or a major earthquake is to ensure we do the best job in regional partnerships. As I mentioned earlier, we have we're right now conducting a high-performance organization program. We have partnerships with Portland, Clark Cowlitz Fire and Rescue, District 3, District 6, Gresham, our law enforcement partners and VPD, to name a few. And we're collaborating with them on an emergency service level level to help all of them build their strategic plans, but also incorporate the incident command system processes that are necessary for us to coordinate all of our actions together. So in non-emergency events, we're prepared with event action plans, and in emergency incidents, we're prepared with incident action plans. We're again proactive leadership versus reactive supervision is where we're headed.

Steve 13:45

And some uh I'm guessing some regional drills as well.

Chief Drake 13:48

Regional drills, yeah.

Speaker 2 13:49

Practice that.

Speaker 1 13:50

Absolutely.

Steve 13:51

How helpful is it to do those drills and practice those things with regional partners?

Chief Drake 13:54

It's extremely important because we want to make sure we have interoperability. We want to make sure that we have radio communications and we have common platforms on which we operate. It's why I'm always repetitively and resoundingly reinforcing the importance of the incident command system. It's through the incident command system that we quarterback plays. So you might say, well, what am I doing? I'd like to think that I'm helping quarterback the Vancouver Fire Department and the region in helping us all provide optimal services together collaboratively.

Steve 14:27

And I'm guessing uh some good ideas come from some of those drills. Some things maybe could have been done differently. Oh, and we attack it this way.

Chief Drake 14:38

The drills are extremely important. Yeah, they uh they help us not only be prepared from all the way from the initial response, but from donning our personal protective equipment relative to the type of emergency to talking on the radios to interacting at emergency incidents, when we're deploying resources on Division A or Division Z of a brush fire or Division 12 or Division 14 of a high-rise fire.

Speaker 2 15:02

Okay.

Chief Drake 15:02

All that coordination, the more important it is, and I'll tell you the benefits of the incident command system. When you employ this system, you're running these audibles or these plays that we said that are already prepared for when you're you're talking about it helps us bring organization to our emergency incidents. It also helps us provide accountability of our personnel and delegating responsibility to each agency, one flank of a fire or another, one floor of a fire and a high rise. Transfer of command as higher levels come into the organization and even responsibilities or alliances with the state and the federal government in protracted incidences. So it also f facilitates safety of our personnel and adherence to Hispanic control. So it makes us better at emergency operations.

Speaker 2 15:49

Let me ask you this.

Chief Drake 15:58

Boy, that's a great question. The majority of false alarms are exactly that. They're false. But in serving our community, we never want to compromise public safety or emergency services. So we don't take a chance on that. We still respond. When we have automatic alarms or flow alarms, whether it's smoke alarms, we still respond because we want to go to that incident and make sure that that community is safe and we're also here to protect property and lives. So if we were dismissive of that, we would be remiss in our public safety obligations.

Speaker 2 16:32

True enough. How do you engage with the public uh to ensure public trust and and promote the safety um awareness of peace?

Chief Drake 16:42

Right now we're starting with our plan. Yeah. We've been reaching out to our community, we've been reaching out to, as I said, all the internal and external stakeholders we can. Because if I try to approach a plan for this organization, insular in my approach, or didn't solicit input, it wouldn't be a very good plan. Because it's through knowledge base, through soliciting those inputs that you learn what you need to do in so many respects that makes us better. So the community does help us not only with their resilience, but also with information we need as to how we can facilitate services to them.

Steve 17:16

Okay. Um so as you know, uh the city's been going through supplemental budget. Um how do you prior to prioritize uh spending when budget is limited?

Chief Drake 17:27

That is a great question because that is an ongoing process. Yes, and I I do that all the time. I'm I'm looking at what we owe our 300,000 people because they are my priority, and we have great people in this organization who embrace that same ideology. I'm very proud of all of them. I prioritize based on what the community needs are. I take a look at what the call loads are. As I said, it's increasing 3.86% per year. Emergency medical component calls are ascending. So we look at what's the best deployment. Again, we'll do that through an analysis of a standards of cover that looks at where our stations are, what we have in those stations, where the most of the call loads are, what types of calls they are, and the community is what dictates our response model and the type of resources I go for budget in. Whether it's going to be a truck company, an engine, a squad, and the majority of the calls that we go on are medical calls, too. So we want to ensure that we're addressing those that community need, and we do that by soliciting their input and looking at data. It's important that we are mining data and we use measures of effectiveness to determine that we're providing optimal services. And it's an ongoing iterative process. The budget is very much the same process. I I include in those supplemental budget requests our needs based on what we're analyzing in those calls, call them performance metrics.

Steve 18:54

Okay. Uh well, Chief, we're just about out of time. So I want to thank you so much for joining us today and being a part of Couvecast. Um, thank you very much. Steve, it's been a pleasure. Thank you. If you want more information about the Vancouver Fire Department, check out the website at cityvancouver.us/fire. And if you haven't already, now is a great time to get yourselves prepared. Until next time.