Chief Nick Luby-Alameda Fire Department.

Nick Luby is the Chief of the Alameda Fire  Department.

Host Scott Piehler talks with Chief Luby about the 150 year history of AFD, the changing role of the Fire Service, and AFD’s successful, cutting edge C.A.R.E. team, which responds to those experiencing metal health crises. The C.A.R.E. team is providing solutions for those in need, while keeping police and ambulance personnel free to respond to time-critical situations. 

Show note: This episode originally aired on KCSM-HD2 on Sunday, June 14, 2026
 
Full show archive for all past episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAlamedaConnection

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:05

Good morning and welcome to the Alameda Connection on KCSM HD2. I'm your host, Scott Peeler. 150 years ago in 1876, fire service in Alameda meant horse-drawn carriages and dalmatians. And if a firefighter was responding to a call, they were going to a fire. Today, that first responder is likely going to an emergency medical call. My guest today is Nick Luby, the chief of the Alameda Fire Department. In addition to fire and EMS calls, the Alameda Fire Department is at the cutting edge of mental health treatment. The care team is specially trained to respond to individuals experiencing psychiatric crises, meeting the client where they are, addressing underlying problems, and finding solutions, keeping ambulance and police personnel free for critical emergencies. That's Nick Luby, Chief of the Alameda Fire Department, my guest this morning on the Alamedo Connection. Well, good morning, Chief, and welcome to the Alameda Connection. My pleasure. A little background. Where were you born? Where'd you grow up?

SPEAKER_00 1:06

I was born in Jersey. Both my parents grew up in New York. They're uh they met um Upper East Side on Manhattan.

SPEAKER_02 1:13

I'm a Long Island by birth, so.

SPEAKER_00 1:15

Okay. Yep. That was where they met back there and they grew up there. They went to Jersey. I was born in Jersey about four. I moved over to Pennsylvania, a small town called Wyoming Missing, Pennsylvania, right outside of Reading. Our claim to fame is Taylor Swift, uh what I'm told. Lived in Wyoming Missing for a little time and then uh moved to California in the mid-80s. What brought you to California? My dad. Okay. Came here. I was 12 at the time, junior high school. Not the best time to be uh doing transition uh like that, but we made the best of it. The best part about it is I met my wife uh in junior high school. She was 11, I was 12, and we're still hanging out together and still getting along.

SPEAKER_02 1:52

You're one of the first people I've met that can beat me because I met my wife when she was 14.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

Everyone's like, Did you start dating? No, we didn't start dating in junior high school, but we it was when we became friends.

SPEAKER_02 2:01

I love it. What led you to a career in fire service?

SPEAKER_00 2:03

I was the kid that was uh a lifelong dream. As I said, I grew up in a town, small town, about 7,000 in Pennsylvania that had a volunteer fire department. I was the kid that would jump on his bicycle every time he heard a fire engine going down the street and chase the fire engines. Being a volunteer department, they had a big siren that went off into town. So I knew when there was a call going out, and then I would basically try to listen for the sirens and ride my bike to try to figure out where they were going and spent some time hanging out at the firehouse and helping the crews wash engines. And favorite part of the Fourth of July parade in town was the fire engines. Everything was fire engines, and that's where it started. Started as a seed as a child. The kid that chased fire engines for a hobby uh got it into my system, and I lived out a dream.

SPEAKER_02 2:46

So, mom and dad, when your kid says I want to be a firefighter, don't laugh.

SPEAKER_00 2:49

Yeah, don't watch out. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:52

You've been EMT, paramedic, swiftwater rescue, you've done pretty much everything. Is there an aspect of fire service you like more than another?

SPEAKER_00 2:59

I like all aspects. And the reason I say I like all aspects, because all aspects come back to the core, the core part of why I like the fire service, and that is serving the public. I mean, I love helping people. I really like helping people on their worst days when they are at their worst moment to be able to come and help them find solutions and resolution to their situations. Coming up through before I got to the chief level, I was very engaged in the incident management side, emergency preparedness. I was participant on one of 28 national FEMA urban search and rescue teams and got deployed to Hurricane Katrina and several other hurricanes along the Gulf Coast. Also served on an incident management team, a type one incident management team on the federal side that went to a lot of wildfires and wildfire management, incident management along those. Everything comes back to the core, and that's helping people and customer service and serving the public. And to this day, that's where I get my most joy.

SPEAKER_02 3:50

When uh lay people toss around the term EMT and paramedic, they tend to use them interchangeably. What's the actual difference?

SPEAKER_00 3:56

Emergency medical technician, EMT is your basic level on the emergency side when you get into like the first responder realm of the fire service or any any of the first responder side of medical services. So EMT is what I would say is the foundation to build off of. Paramedic is just taking off that foundation and building on it.

SPEAKER_02 4:15

What would be a skill that a paramedic have that maybe an EMT might not?

SPEAKER_00 4:18

So EMT is all your basics, bleeding control, you know, splinting fractures, childbirth along those lines. Paramedic, you're getting into advanced life support. You are given a plethora of medications that you can administer that are given to us uh under doctor's orders. You're starting IVs, we can innovate, placing the tube down the throat to secure the airway. We can do decompressions of the chest, we can put needles into the chest, release air if there's air in the chest, that's not allowing the lungs to expand. So there's a complete advanced scope on the paramedic side. Some people will say paramed uh EMT school was harder than paramedics. Well, I don't agree with that. There was a lot more memorizing and a lot more hours involved with it. But the nice thing you can help people as an EMT, nice thing with being a paramedic, you can even help them that more. Truly actually have the ability to save lives and change outcomes for individuals. What is a day in the life of a fire chief? Every day is a different day. I still put out fires, they're just not flames. I mean, that's reality. And my mentor said, like, you know, as I moved up, one of my mentors is like, oh, the difference is of being fire chief, is you still get fires every day, but you can't call for a second alarm because nobody's coming. Challenge when you get to be the fire chief, you still have the fires, but you can't be calling them, and the fires are administrative in nature. So the day of a fire chief, it is very administrative, and that is one of the probably the challenges is trying to balance the administrative side, which it just keeps coming. And there's always projects that you're working on, and there's always initiatives when you're working on, and then there's you know personnel things, and there's interacting with the community, and the balance is also staying connected with the workforce and the firefighters out there, which are really what makes it operation run. Without the firefighters or the fire, you know, staff that work with me every day in and day out, we're not a fire department. We can buy million dollar, two million dollar fire apparatus. You can have a fire chief, but without the individuals that are going on the calls and those that are behind the scenes supporting them, we're not a fire department. Someone told me the fire chief's job's the easiest job. All you do is sit and say yes and no. I did find it's not that simple, but that was a Miami friend of mine from Miami Dade, Florida that said that, oh, yeah, fire chief's easy job. You say yes, no, yes, no. He he made it sound awfully easy. Every day is a different day. After this, I'll probably spend my afternoon writing grants, seeking grant funding to help support the organization. Tomorrow's a lot of community events to wrap it all up. A lot of it's administrative. As you move up, because I am an operational person, that is where my heart is. Uh that is a tough transition to do. I never thought I would be a fire chief. That was never my aspiration. I just wanted to be a firefighter. People always have to step up to the next level to be able to keep the organization being successful. And that's kind of how I ended up in an executive management level. Never, ever was an aspiration of mine. I just kind of kept getting told, hey, time to go to the next level because you have to keep the organization moving.

SPEAKER_02 6:55

For those who might be unfamiliar, let's go over the location and the coverage area of the four Alameda station.

SPEAKER_00 7:01

Station one is downtown off of Park Street, covers the east end of the island. Station two is off of Webster, covers everything that would be on the west end all the way out to Alameda Point. Station three is pretty much middle. Grand Street over by the Grand Street boat ramp covers the middle of the city, and then Bay Farm is station four. So those are the general geographic locations and areas they cover.

SPEAKER_02 7:23

There was a station five out on the point. It's been in and out of the news. Where are we with station five?

SPEAKER_00 7:30

When the and when the Navy was here, there was actually two fire stations out there. There was what we call Station Five or District Five, and then there was another station located by the control tower, which was really the aircraft rescue station for airplanes that went down, and then station five covered the base. And it's my understanding they had up to 25 firefighters on duty a day. There was shared mutual aid resources. So in theory, the city had about 50 firefighters on duty a day between Navy federal firefighters and city firefighters. Base close 96-ishish. The day they closed, they handed a fire station over to the city of Alameda and we staffed the station. We kept the staff to about 2008, the recession, and that's when the station was closed. But we do use it as our training facility. You'll still see fire apparatus out there and you'll still see firefighters, but it's it's a strictly our training site. That is one of the gaps that has been identified by the organization and actually through studies, standards of coverage study that was conducted in 2024, community risk assessment study that was also conducted in 2024, says that we need to return fire services out there. We cannot meet the NFPA National Fire Protection Association requirements for our response times, the federal standards. We just can't, station two is the closest station, and we just certain parts of that base we cannot get to. We're continuing to build out there, more residentials moving out there, call volumes increasing out there. Will I be the one that actually puts a shovel in the ground? I'm learning probably not. You know, I thought things move would hopefully move faster, but I also have been working in government long enough to realize that there's a process and it takes time. As long as I'm here, I'm gonna keep pushing forward to try to return the fire services out there that are that much more needed every day. What I try to always share with the community, I have heard people say, I don't live out there. Why does it affect me? Well, the reality is the station that actually protects you may be the one that has to go out there because there's no fire station. What I call the pebble in the pond effect, the impact ripples across this whole community of Alameda. When people say, I don't see the need, it's not going to help me. It helps you actually more than you think it will. Until you call for service, you don't realize what's happening in the background, and there's gaps that happen across the city as we're moving resources around throughout the day.

SPEAKER_02 9:29

And I think the last thing in the world you'd want to see is something like an Admiral Maltings or a St. George distillery go up.

SPEAKER_00 9:34

Oh, that would be catastrophic.

SPEAKER_02 9:35

There's some fuel out there. There is. You assumed the position of AFD chief just about four months after Chief Joshi from APD came over from Oakland as well. Coincidence? 100% coincidence.

SPEAKER_00 9:45

So we knew each other pretty well over there, but don't get me wrong, I called him and said, How is it? How is it over in Alameda and stuff? And he said it's amazing. You really should come check it out. But yeah, it's strictly coincidental.

SPEAKER_02 9:57

Were you looking for a change? Did Alameda reach out? What prompted the move across the bridge?

SPEAKER_00 10:01

I think I got to the point I wanted to move up and try something new. I actually had applied for the job in Oakland. We'll just say I wasn't selected. I wasn't selected for the position. And then this job opened, and I think just the culmination of the downward pressures of having a larger department and and also the opportunities that Alameda brought. The dive team, as I stated, I came from a small town. I'm on the latter part of my career, and I was kind of excited about the opportunity to come back to a small town experience, even though we have big city challenges. I mean, we all know Alameda. It's it's it's it's such a great little environment and community to be a part of, and it reminds me a lot of the town I grew up in. At this point in my career where I want to be, the stress is always there, but I would say the phone doesn't ring as much throughout the night. I've never looked back. I miss a lot of my coworkers in Oakland, but the nice thing is they're right there. Right. And we interact all the time. One of the nice things is I've been able to build even stronger relationships between the two jurisdictions that didn't exist before I got here.

SPEAKER_02 10:55

What's the percentage of calls that are EMS versus fire?

SPEAKER_00 10:59

Uh for 2025, 69% of our calls. So 70%, what's this round up? 70%. Industry will say 70 and 80% for EMS calls. There's a history behind that. Fire department originally went to fires. We had horses, we towed steamers, we had dalmatians running through the streets, and that's the history. You had used to have to actually pay for fire service. And if you didn't have the placard on your building for that particular fire service, they actually would let your house burn down. So it was like the original version of insurance. And it's evolved over time. In the 70s, we started making this transition over into the EMS because we saw the added value that the fire service could do. I was the first when we started putting our feet in the water for the EMS side of it. Fire stations are strategically positioned throughout communities, which allows us to have that four-minute response time on a medical emergency. Once we figured that out as the fire service, we realized like this is a great added service to have. And on top of that, we've done a great job of fire prevention. The amount of fires and fire losses has continued to go down through fire prevention, fire code adoptions, building code adoptions. Prior to that, we were spending a lot of time going to fires. Now we had a lot of time, potentially was still available in a day. And that's how we added the you know the medical side of it back in the 70s. EMS, major part of the job, major focus. Now we're getting into mental health response, mobile integrated health, community power medicine. We continue to expand. I don't know where it'll be in 20 years. It'll be different than I am see it today. But the fire service, whatever the problem is, you call the fire department. Right. That's when no one else knows who to deal with it. Well, that just give it to the fire department. They'll figure it out. We will continue to evolve. We've evolved you know over the last 150 years, especially you know, Alameda's 150 years this year. And it'll continue to evolve. We are actually getting ready to start carrying whole blood. So if you actually give uh blood transfusions in the field or start blood transfusions on trauma patients, they're always looking for ways, better ways to save the lives.

SPEAKER_02 12:47

As we said, you came chief in October of 21. The CARE community assessment response and engagement team launches its pilot in December. Did you bring that? Was that in place when you got here? What was the genesis of that?

SPEAKER_00 12:59

That was all in process. That was a council decision that was made prior to my arrival. If you recall, the George Floyd incident had happened and the city of Alameda also had an in-custody death of Mario Gonzalez. Prior to my arrival, there was the council's direction and there was a committee established to try to find alternatives. And one of them was the creation of the care team. The fire department was selected to run a pilot program for one year. In full transparency, a lot of the work was already in process. Staff was already working on it. I assisted in getting it across the starting line, but there was a lot of back-end work that was already in process and continued after I got here by um fire department staff, city staff, and we haven't looked back since.

SPEAKER_02 13:37

Let's talk about exactly what the care team does. Who's manning the care team? What are they responding to, and how does that play into the rest of the system?

SPEAKER_00 13:44

So we are a unique program. We're the only paramedics that have been given the authority by Alameda County Behavioral Health and Alameda County Emergency Services. So we have the ability to place someone on a psychiatric hold. We also have contractors with Alameda Family Services that provides two main functions. One, they provide us 24-hour on-call support. We do have to have a licensed clinician as part of the process if we are going to place someone on a hold to ensure their safety or the safety of others. They also do a very extensive case management. So when we do make an engagement with a client, it's not just a one-time thing. It gets transferred over to Alameda Family Services and they start an intensive case management. To back up a little bit, the care team is a mental crisis response team. That is what it was designed for. People that are in mental distress, mental crisis, perceived as been mental crisis, whether they're a student at an AUSD school, a CEO that's just having suicidal thoughts, or somebody that's unhoused on the streets that's having their own struggles. We covered a wide bandwidth. The goal is to go out there and get them the care they need and the support they need. I use the saying, you know, get them off the merry ground. Because historically, an ambulance will go out, they'll transform to a hospital, they'll be in the hospital for a little bit, or they'll go to a psychiatric facility for a little bit, they get discharged, and they're right back in the same situation. The goal of the care team is to interrupt that line of reoccurrence.

SPEAKER_02 15:00

The numbers are amazing because your drop in transports to psychiatrical medical facilities has dropped from 85% of encounters to 37% of encounters.

SPEAKER_00 15:09

That's another primary goal of the program is alternative destinations or not to transport. The number one goal is when we have an engagement with a client is to come up with a safety plan. And sometimes it's take two, three hours of us sitting there working with the client, working with the family, working with Alameda Family Services to come up with a plan to remain at home or wherever they are. And then Alameda Family Services will pick it up to try to get them connected with the services they need. In Alameda County as a whole, our hospital systems are overwhelmed. Our emergency departments are overwhelmed. The beds are not there, the staffing is not there. The care team not only is an alternative which allows police officers to be freed up for higher priority calls, we are also reducing the impact on whether it's Alameda Hospital, Highland, John George, a psychiatric facility, so that beds are available and that our resources are available. And every time the care team goes out, that used to be an ambulance. So now there's an ambulance available for a heart attack, some kind of traumatic event, a car accident that used to not be available because they were uh transporting someone to the hospital for a mental health crisis.

SPEAKER_02 16:10

Two-part question. What makes a good firefighter and what makes a good Alameda firefighter?

SPEAKER_00 16:14

So firefighting's a team. Everyone has different skill sets. I had an engineer that drove the apparatus that had come from Mexico, was fluent in Spanish. That was a great skill to have. There was a woman that was my firefighter on there, a little on the smaller side. If we had to squeeze into tight spots or get into a crawl space, she was the one, you know, that got tapped. Like, hey, this is your spot. Unfortunately, you'd go to calls of sexual abuse with women, and she would be the person that would probably be best to interact with them. And then the fourth person on our rig was an ex-NFL player. Wow. And if I needed a door knocked down, it's your turn. Can you open that door for me? Kind of thing. So it's no standard, there's no mold for what a perfect firefighter is. I say the one thing that needs to be happened is have integrity and compassion. And it doesn't change for Alameda. Okay. There's nothing special about Alameda. I will say it's nice if you know how to swim. We do put people through extensive water rescue training and rescue swimmer training and boat ops and all that stuff. So that is a nice thing to have. And then we do have the only rescue dive team in East Bay. The sheriff also has a recovery dive team. We are actually only set up to dive in the first hour, hour and a half of a underwater rescue. Okay. After that, it's recovered and definitely most transition into recovery. So other than that, I'd say every firefighter should have integrity, compassion, and bring all that with them. And then whatever other skill set you bring, whether it's bilingual, whether it's superhuman strength, whether it's superhuman smarts, everything comes together to make the full team. What's the toughest part about fire service on an island? We don't have converging support. If I was in Oakland and I had a big fire, I got Berkeley coming from one side, I got Alameda County coming from the other side, I got Alameda City coming from this side, and then I got Contra Costa County coming or Moraga Rinda fire coming from the other side. So your support's coming from all different directions. When you're on an island, our support only comes from one direction. Right. And then it has the challenges of we're being supported by tunnels, we're being supported by bridges. For Bay Farm, you have limited access through several roads that come in off 98th or avenues. So being able to get the support is probably the biggest challenge of being on the island. Tsunami warning. What should the average Alamedan actually do? The studies say that a full, what we call a full inundation tsunami at the high, the highest level, statistically happens once every 974 years. Okay. A 7.0 greater earthquake on the Hayward Fault statistically could happen seven to eight times uh in 974 year span. Right. So point being, uh I'm much more concerned about an earthquake on the Hayward Fault than a tsunami. Not saying I'm not concerned about tsunamis. You know, we do get the warnings. What I share with people is listen for the information. We will push the information out. We'll let you know if you need to relocate. As soon as that comes out, we are working closely with our state and regional partners to bring in the data and federal partners at the tsunami warning centers. The first move is to put the warning out. And then as it evolves, is when they pull in the data and the sensors are starting to pick up. And that's how we're able to cancel them. I always encourage people don't run your cars, don't start driving. You know, we will work to get you the information out. Be as patient as you can. Just know that we are working in the backgrounds to pull in as much information. We're probably meeting every 15 minutes. What I think a lot of people don't realize is the center of the island is actually above any inundation. So there's a we call it the there's a donut hole on the room. It's basically Grand and Central, isn't it? Pretty much. I mean, if you go on uh any of the OES websites and look on, you know, it's Almida inundation maps, even for a complete inundation, which a 10 feet of water rise, the center of the island is not touched. We actually are working very closely with California OES right now, and we're supposed to be meeting with them in the next couple weeks to actually re-examine the inundation maps because I've always said your inundation maps show this. Like there's water. Are we talking like six inches of water? Because everything's sloping up, right? If six inches of water is not like a big deal. It's problematic, it's problematic, but I mean we get six inch puddles during heavy rainfall. So I've been working with them to try to like refine these because we are finding like these maps lean on the worst case scenarios and they don't differentiate actually in the water heights. So we're trying to get to maps that actually, if it's six, eight inches, you know, no one's gonna get washed away. They're gonna have some water up to their ankles or their calves. And one other thing is just stay away from the waterways. Right. Stay do it. If you hear a warning, I will tell you that. That is not the time to go to the marina, and that's not the time to go stand on Crown Beach. Someone always said, What about tsunamis? I say, Are you prepared for the earthquake? Fair enough.

SPEAKER_02 20:39

I have a friend of mine, Bob Bianchi, he's a retired firefighter EMT from Hudson, New Hampshire, and he once told me that he could tell from a fire scene that most of the house fires he fought were in homes that weren't particularly well kept. What are some basic fire safety tips that you wish more people would understand?

SPEAKER_00 20:56

I'd start with electrical overloading. Outlets are not really designed to have power strips on them. I know the industry, everyone makes power strips, and I know they make the little things that plug in, and then you can put six things in there. Just be cognizant what you're plugging in. If you're plugging in heaters, you're done. Like you shouldn't be adding anything else after. Heaters in the winter season are always a concern to us. If you are using a room heater, A, make sure it's on a, you know, not an overloaded circuit. Don't hang stuff on it, don't put anything around it. If you suspect that your house, especially old knob and tube wiring, it is an expensive upgrade to change. Knob and tube in general is okay as long as it's not damaged. The problem is you get rodents into your attic and they start gnawing away at stuff. So if you're doing a remodel, you're not keeping your knob and tube. Like there's no option there. I always recommend trying to transition away from the knob and tube. Other than that, have a fire extinguisher in your house. I mean, most fires can be quickly extinguished. If it gets big, don't try to extinguish it. Get out. Don't leave stuff cooking. Right. I'm just running to the store. Something happens, the bridge goes up. Next The boiling pot runs out of water, and you know, next cabinets are going. So, all common sense stuff. My big one is pots. If you are boiling water and not from the fireside, the medical side, and you have kids, we all know the handle gets turned in. Do not leave it where someone can bump into it. I've seen some really horrific burns from oil and water scolding incidents.

SPEAKER_02 22:20

So one of my favorite annual events of yours is the Franklin Park pumpkin giveaway. Your folks really get into that.

SPEAKER_00 22:26

That is the International Association of Firefighters. So local 689 Almeda Firefighter Association. That's 100% their event that they do year after year. They get pumpkins donations. So that's your firefighters, right? You know, on the labor side. And the kids love it. They're all out there volunteering their time. They secure the pumpkins, they set it all up. My first year here, I was like, what are we doing? A pumpkin patch? Yeah, come on by, Chief. And I I mean, I'll be honest, it's not a fire department thing. That's all that's all the membership and them doing it. And they love to do it. And I went out there and just to see the kids and smiles on their faces and everyone walking away with pumpkins, like definitely one of the highlights, Fourth of July parade, another another highlight. All those events, everyone that works in the fire department, you know, we really want to give back to our community. It's really important to us to know that we are more than just a 911 service, we are a full service organization.

SPEAKER_02 23:14

Congratulations on the 2026 fire truck face-off from the folks at Golden State Apparatus. $1,500 for the food bank. How's Bosco?

SPEAKER_00 23:22

Bosco, I don't know. I think I mean he might be traumatized. He had to kiss the fire chief. Bosco has his own Facebook page, and there was a picture of him sitting in the backseat of his owner's car with his head resting on the backseat with a caption, you know, I'm on my way to meet the fire chief. He doesn't look very poor guy. Did not look very happy about it. I heard he uh gave a good squeal as he uh get the ride over there. But what a great event. 31,000 votes we ended up getting record for the competition. It started as literally my public information officer. You know, we got an email saying, Hey, do you guys want to be a part of this from Golden State? I was like, Yeah, sounds like fun. And then it just got it got legs of its own. And next thing I know, you know, I'm up for kissing pigs. I'm like, became a full-time job for about like 10 days of trying to, you know, we crashed the server because our community was so engaged. I had no idea how much fun it was gonna be. Our city communications director, Sarah Henry, came up with the Bosco idea and said we knew we had hit fatigue because we've been through several rounds of this. And she goes, How bad do you want to win? I go, Well, I'm competitive. I would I want to win. Will you kiss a pig? And I'm like, Yeah, I guess that's what I gotta do to win, I'll kiss a pig. I didn't even know I hadn't met Bosco yet, but now Bosco and I uh have become quite uh connected in more ways than one. That's a little bit more. It was a good event, and like you said, the w the winners, the food bank, the way they do their donations is they shared with me fifteen hundred dollars really actually is equivalent to ten thousand dollars because of how they cure their supplier. I volunteer there, and yeah, what they do with that money. So that was like that's pretty cool that we were able to have that escalator built into that donation.

SPEAKER_02 24:58

You've gone from kissing pigs to being the grand marshal of the upcoming July 4th parade.

SPEAKER_00 25:02

And everyone says Bosco's gonna be with me. I'm not sure that's true, but um 150 years. August 29th of 2026 will be our 150-year anniversary of serving this community.

SPEAKER_02 25:13

Anything you can tease, because I see a thing on the on the city's website says there's a thing on that day.

SPEAKER_00 25:18

There's a thing, it's in process. There's a bell in front of Fire Station One, which was the original bell that used to be on the Web Street Fire Station, and then it went to the City Hall tower. If you look at old pictures of City Hall, it used to have a bell tower on it. So that bell now sits in a piece of concrete in front of Station One. We call it a time capsule because we're really curious of all the things that have been dropped in the hole on top of it. Like everyone cigarette, I mean, obviously a lot of cigarette butts will be in there. And so the department's goal, and it's a grassroots effort, it's not a city sponsored thing, it's through donations and what will hopefully be, you know, some volunteer hours. We're hoping to take that bell, relocate it to the other side of the firehouse, build a little replica of what the old bell tower looked like on um city hall, and actually mount the bell and actually have a plaque there that actually tells what the history of the bell is. Oh wonderful! So that that's what we're hoping. Okay, but we'll see if we get there. I I think we're gonna get there. I do think we're gonna get there. We we're we're drawing up trying to get a structural design completed for it and submit for permits so that we can move forward with that. But that's it. Dedication of that bell. We also since 2017, several chiefs have been trying to complete the firefighter memorial. We actually just ran electrical last week for that. The sculpture is done, the pleneth is done, the sign is done, all the granite's been engraved. So now we're just slowly starting to try to put it all together, and we're hoping to also do a dedication for the members of the organization that gave the ultimate sacrifice, and that will be at station three.

SPEAKER_02 26:37

You've got a company coming in from out of town. You have to take them out to three meals. It can be breakfast, lunch, dinner, three dinners, it can be bites and notches. What three restaurants in Alameda are you going to?

SPEAKER_00 26:46

Can I go to two restaurants? You can go to two restaurants for one meal. And then two. If that's the case, go for it. Conveniently for me or my current office is homescale for breakfast. Also, I'm a fan of Jim's down on Lincoln. Sandwiches, again, uh geographically, my go-to is Marley G's for their Italian club. Oh, yes, very good. Which is yeah, not great for the waistline, but good, but it definitely is good. If that's closed, off the sandwich board for Gene's special. And then dinner, I'd say saltbreaker. Been there several times, and it's always a good experience.

SPEAKER_02 27:15

Uh, website, socials, way people can keep up with what's going on with AFDA.

SPEAKER_00 27:19

City website. Type in city of Alameda Fire so you don't get confused with Alameda County Fire. That does go back and forth. We do keep our website up to date. It's got our standards of coverage report. We've completed a facilities analysis, so that will be on there soon. So all the reports are on there, and we try to keep all the pages updated there. And then we're on Instagram, we're on Facebook. I have a great public information officer. I won't lie. Social media is not my strong point, but definitely have individuals that do it. We actually started an audio visual team recently. I mean, they've been around, but we've actually codified who the program is. So we actually have our little own AV team of firefighters that have taken a passion to editing videos, shooting videos, and all those things. We are on all the main social media outlets.

SPEAKER_02 28:00

Well, let the team know if they need a voiceover guy. I know somebody.

SPEAKER_00 28:03

You know, you got you got connections.

SPEAKER_02 28:05

Chief Nick Luby of the Alameda Fire Department. Thank you so much for spending time with us here on the Alameda Connection.

SPEAKER_00 28:10

It's been an honor and a privilege to be able to spend time with you, and I appreciate all you're doing for the community.

SPEAKER_02 28:14

Well, thank you. Take care.

SPEAKER_00 28:15

Okay, take care.

SPEAKER_02 28:18

Thanks again to Chief Nick Luby of the Alameda Fire Department for spending time with us here on the Alameda Connection. To keep up with what's going on at AFD, you can check out their website. It's part of the city's website, which is alamedaca.gov. The easiest way to get there is just do a search for Alameda City Fire Department. They're also on Instagram and Facebook where their handle is Alameda City Fire. Don't forget, Chief Luby will be the Grand Marshal of the July 4th parade this year, and mark your calendars for Saturday, August 29th, when the department will be celebrating their 150th anniversary. As a reminder, if you're in Alameda and see someone experiencing a mental health crisis, you can contact the care team by calling the Alameda Non-Emergency Line at 510-337-8340. Explain the situation and the dispatcher will assess if that is a proper usage for the care team. Coming up next Sunday on the Alameda Connection, my guest will be Kathy Weber, the Executive Director of the Downtown Alameda Business Association. They're the ones responsible for the business district that is Park Street. They're also the folks behind the Art and Wine Fair and the Rock and Roll Beer Stroll. If you enjoy this show, head to BayariaRadio.org where you can cast a vote for the Bay Area Audiocaster of the Year Award. Thanks to the California Historical Radio Society for providing the location for my sit down with Chief Luby. And thanks, as always, to guitarist Bill Hart for our theme music, Beachside Isle. I'm Scott Peeler. Catch you next Sunday, the Alameda Connection on KCSM HD2.