AFD Fireline Episode One: Chief Mike Cayse

Welcome to our first episode of AFD Fireline. 

In this inaugural episode, we talk with Asheville Fire Department Chief Mike Cayse. 

Chief Cayse takes us from his beginnings in the fire service in Cincinnati to his retirement, and then to Asheville, where he takes the helm of the Department as Chief. 

We also discuss ongoing capital projects, Chief Cayse’s goals and vision for the department, and the creation of the new Foundation for the Asheville Fire Department. 

For questions, comments, or suggestions for the podcast, please send those to afdpio@ashevillenc.gov

Foundation for the Asheville Fire Department
https://foundationafd.org/

New Fire Station 9

https://www.ashevillenc.gov/projects/oakley-public-safety-complex/

More information about AFD's Citizen Academy 

https://www.ashevillenc.gov/department/fire/fire-education/

Be sure to like, comment, and subscribe. 

For more great AFD content, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, X, and our YouTube page. 

Until next time … "Stay safe, stay sharp, and take care of your own." 

Transcript

Introduction

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to the AFT Fireline, the official podcast of the Asheville Fire Department. Join us as we share important updates, sticky tips, and real stories from the men and women who serve our community. Whether you're a resident, a firefighter, or just curious about what happens behind the scenes, this podcast is your front row seat to all things fire and safety in Asheville. Let's get started.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

Welcome

Episode synopsis

SPEAKER_01 0:23

to our first episode of AFD Fireline. In this episode, we talk with Asheville Fire Department Chief Mike Case. Chief Case takes us from his beginnings in the fire service in Cincinnati to his retirement, and then here to Asheville, where he takes the helm of the department as Chief. We also discuss ongoing capital projects, Chief Case's goals and visions for the department, and the creation of the new foundation for the Asheville Fire Department. All right.

Why Asheville Fire created this podcast

SPEAKER_01 0:52

So, Chief Case, you are our first guest here on the podcast. Tell us why you wanted to launch this podcast for the department and the community.

SPEAKER_00 1:01

Wow, that's a great question. Uh, it's really important for us to communicate with uh not only our firefighters on the inside, but also our community out there. Unfortunately, when they call us, it's usually because something bad is going on, and we want them to hear from us uh so they can know more about the fire department in a situation that's not so stressful for them. And we want our firefighters to know what's going on as well. So this is our mechanism to create this podcast so that uh they can hear firsthand uh tidbits about what the Asheville Fire Department is and what's going on within our organization.

SPEAKER_01 1:32

And Chief, you've been with the department for a little over two years now. Let's talk a little bit about your fire service history. How did your fire career

Chief Cayse's career history

SPEAKER_01 1:40

get started?

SPEAKER_00 1:41

Well, I'm going on 40 years now in the fire service. So I started uh in 1986 uh as a volunteer out of high school and very quickly really found out that I loved that calling. Uh became a part-time firefighter for a local uh department near my hometown, and then uh wanted to do it more and more and more and uh got hired full-time uh for a small department just outside of Cincinnati and stayed there a couple years and then got hired with Cincinnati uh in 1990 as a full-time firefighter. Uh I loved that job. And uh not too long after that, I became uh I started working my way up the ranks uh and really uh just dove in full, full speed to this to that organization and retired after 34 years full-time service with them and uh needed another job. And so I started looking around and uh I found uh online a bunch of other departments um that were looking for uh chief officers and uh really wanted to come to the mountains. I've had a calling to the mountains for for a big chunk of my life. I was an avid backpacker for a long time and uh uh used to come down to Asheville to hike the Appalachian Trail and the and uh some of the other mountains around here. So when this job opened up, it just seemed like a great fit.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

Perfect.

Is there a call that stands out?

SPEAKER_01 3:02

Early on in your career, is there a call that really just stands out in your mind that is just one that's gonna be with you for the rest of your life or or something that happened at your job that just really stands out?

SPEAKER_00 3:16

Well, I think every firefighter throughout their career has those calls, you know, and and most of them unfortunately we see a lot of bad stuff. And so uh most of our firefighters, they they hold that stuff inside. But what one thing I will say about the calls that I've made in my career that have really drawn me to this, this, this, this career, if you will, is how all of those calls bring the community of firefighters working together together even stronger. We be uh and I joke about it, I talk about it, and I mean it, that our our our career is a family. Um you have your family at home, but those calls going um all the time together to uh make somebody's worse say their life better makes you as a as a group of firefighters on a fire truck even stronger and more of a family. So if I were to answer your question, I would say the call all the calls together made me um realize how great a family this is and how this is this job is a calling as well.

From Cincinnati to Asheville

SPEAKER_01 4:17

And you had said you were familiar with Ashwell, you've been here to hike. So what was it like taking a job almost over 300 miles away from where you spent your entire career?

SPEAKER_00 4:27

Yeah, leaving uh leaving Cincinnati was a hard call. It was a it was a it was a tough decision. My entire network, if you will, uh was in Cincinnati. My family was there, my uh my friends. Um I mean, I I kid when I came here, I needed a contractor to do something, and I didn't even know how to find somebody that could, you know, what who's an air conditioning contractor, who's a you know, who's a roofing contractor. I I didn't know how to do that, but back home, I would I could have told you who the best ones are, and I could have told you what firefighters do that as a side job, right? So um so picking up and leaving was really difficult. I knew one person in this community, uh, and I I communicated with him quite a bit before um coming here. And he he was a huge help. He helped me understand what Astral was and how it is a different community than other communities, and he helped me understand uh what I already knew and the fact that uh the people here are great and the organization itself was a really well-respected organization.

Learning about Asheville Fire

SPEAKER_01 5:25

And when you decided to take the position as fire chief, how did you familiarize yourself with the department, our firefighters, and their vision for the future?

SPEAKER_00 5:35

So when I when I first was offered the job, it was in, I want to say August, September, but I couldn't start until January. And so um what that did was afford me the ability to come back and forth from Cincinnati to here um and meet with all the staff ahead of time and get to have a better understanding of how great an organization this was and how many different things this organization does. So twice a month I dri I either drove or flew here and would pick a different chief officer or different branch manager or different bureau chief or whatever, and and say, tell me all things about your bureau. Tell me all things about what you're doing, what would you change, what would make it better? And I just continued to do that for those three months or so leading up to the my start date. And that enabled me to um start running as soon as I was able to got here. I didn't have to learn at that point. I'd already heard and we were able to make a lot of movements a lot quicker that

Goals and Vision for AFD

SPEAKER_00 6:38

way.

SPEAKER_01 6:38

And talk to me about your overall goals, vision, and philosophy for the Asheville Fire Department.

SPEAKER_00 6:44

I'm really big on a continued focus on our working conditions in the community, how what kind of fire stations we live in, what our capital improvements are and what we need, um, our need for newer, more modern fire apparatus, um, our our our fire stations being um much uh meeting modern standards, uh, and our work hours. Our firefighters, I mean, we work 56 hours a week right now. We're just now getting to the point um where we're starting to take a hit in that. We're not we're we're gonna knock it down from 56 to 52.6 starting on August 1st. And that that's a huge plus there. So my focus, if I summed it up, is working conditions, our capital uh projects and improvements that we can do uh as it relates to fire stations and fire apparatus and our our our mental health of our firefighters.

Creating the 4th Shift

SPEAKER_01 7:33

And talking about cutting those hours, one of your major goals for the department is currently in the implementation phase, creating that fourth shift. Talk to me about why this goal is important to you and how it will benefit the department.

SPEAKER_00 7:46

Yeah, this um moving to a fourth shift is a big deal in the fire service. Uh, I come from a long line of fire service uh family members. My great-grandfather started as a firefighter in Hamilton, Ohio. He worked six days on, one day off. So that's a big difference in what we are doing now in the fire service. So we here in Asheville, by agreeing um to start and support a force shift, are making history, if you will. Um the Asheville Fire Department has always been in the forefront. We've always been in the lead. And in this case, um, we're showing the state of North Carolina that we are gonna transition to this forced shift, that we are committed to our firefighters and making their lives better. Um if if if we were to not be out in the forefront and these other agencies, other departments, other cities throughout the state were to um adopt that before we did, uh, we would lose a lot of great firefighters simply because they're they're moving to better their lives, better their families um environment and everything else. So um this has been a this is a big deal for us. I'm excited to be on the ground floor of it, and I'm excited that uh uh we're embracing it as as we

New Station 9

SPEAKER_00 9:00

are.

SPEAKER_01 9:00

And another big project happening right now that's in development is a new station nine. Tell me about how this process has worked and why it's needed.

SPEAKER_00 9:10

Uh we kind of talked about it a minute ago when we were talking about our um our capital investments, right? So uh I when I first came here, one of the things you asked earlier, what did you do to prepare? Is uh I toured the different fire stations that we had. You know, we've got 13 fire stations in this community, and a big chunk of them are 50 years old or older. Uh, and they don't meet the modern standards that are out there. And so uh before I arrived here, the city did a capital study of all their uh facilities, and fire stations were recognized as having a tremendous need for upgrade or replacement. And station nine in Oakley was one of the ones that we identified as needing a great uh um needing a needing rebuilt, redone because it wasn't meeting the modern needs of the fire service. It had it was missing things like um uh decon rooms, um modern alerting procedures. It didn't meet any of the ADA requirements to for the community to visit. And and fire stations are part of the community. When you when you um see a fire station, it it it it takes on the feel of the community. Um they adopt the members of that fire station adopt that community. And we there's no bigger um proof of that than Hurricane Helene. Uh our community went to the fire stations in in an effort to get information, to get help, to find out um where they can get food, where they can get water. Um and Station 9 in Oakley is a small place with very little parking and very little ability to support the community around them. They did a great job while they were there. Those firefighters um went over and above, but now we're we're investing back in the community and we're putting up a modern facility that has a ton of different assets in it that can support um the needs of the people that um we want to be there for.

SPEAKER_01 11:04

And the department recently conducted

Internal Command Climate Survey

SPEAKER_01 11:06

an internal command climate survey. Can you talk to me about where we are with that right now?

SPEAKER_00 11:12

Certainly. Uh it's real important um as an organization for us to get the pulse uh of our firefighters and of our members and and how they how they feel that things are going and and what what um giving them some input into um what's important to them as well. It does me no good to sit in my office and fire headquarters and say, I think we should do this or I think we should do that. It's better for me to hear from our firefighters, this is what's important to us. And so we did this survey, and the survey came back saying identifying several areas where we could improve as an organization or we could serve the firefighters' needs uh a lot better. Um so we've we've taken that uh and really, really uh gave it a high priority for us. So much so that we've assigned a battalion chief to lead those efforts to ensure that um all of us are held accountable um for that communications um uh back and forth so that our members know that we we hear what you said and we are acting upon what you have said.

The Foundation for the Asheville Fire Department

SPEAKER_01 12:14

And we recently announced the start of the foundation for the Asheville Fire Department. Can you tell me a little bit about that foundation?

SPEAKER_00 12:23

Absolutely. So there are a lot of things that um our budget won't allow us to support our firefighters for, right? We uh every every department in the city has their own budget, and budgets are finite, and you can only do so much. And we put a lot of our emphasis on our community and the responses to the community. Well, what this foundation will allow us to do is change some of that um that direction to recognize our firefighters. So when the foundation was put together with its board, they adopted what we're calling the four Rs. Those four Rs taught are the Rs that relate to what we can do for our firefighters. So one of those Rs is response, another one of those Rs is resilience, another one is recognition, and the final one is remembrance. So in those, we want to remember our firefighters past and present and the great things that they've done, or those that have given their life in the line of duty to serve our community. We also want to be able to recognize our firefighters for the great work that they're doing by providing them with opportunities to um, you know, have off-duty get-togethers or um have the annual recognition banquet where we can celebrate their promotions and in front of their families. Uh, we can celebrate the awards that they've earned through uh hard work throughout the year. And then with resilience, we want to we want to look at a couple different things. Resilience for our community, resilience for our firefighters in case there's a another storm and we can help them out with things like that. But also resilience refers to their mental health as well. Um this is a tough job, and our firefighters see a lot of things that cause them to hold a lot of things inside. Uh, and and and over time that eats at you and causes a lot of um uh health issues, mental health issues. So we want to uh through this foundation support them by creating different resilience methods that can help them uh have a healthy career. And finally, in response, um, there are a lot of things that this foundation can do to support our firefighters that we can turn right back into our community uh and the way we respond and the equipment we respond with and things like that. So this foundation um it it's its actual name is the foundation for the Asheville Fire Department. Uh they they have created a website called foundationafd.org is how you can find them. And in that right now, it's in its very early stages. It was just formed in last May. Uh that that website will show you the board members, it will show you a way to donate, if you will, at some point. Um, but this whole this whole purpose of this is to be able to give back to our firefighters and in return give to our community.

SPEAKER_01 15:02

And for all the listeners, I will be sure to put all of that information on the foundation for the Asheville Fire Department in the description so you'll be able to find that easily. So as we close out,

Future goals for AFD

SPEAKER_01 15:13

Chief, tell me some of the other future goals that you have for the Asheville Fire Department.

SPEAKER_00 15:18

Yeah, we publish that internally through our strategic plan. We do a five-year strategic plan. As our community may or may not know, we are an accredited agency. We're one of very few in the United States that holds that accreditation status, meaning we've had outside people come look at us and and um to see how we do business and and compare us on a scale to see that we um best serve our community. And we've reached that. Uh that combined with our uh other ratings and other community um uh awards that we have show that our our community um is served by a very, very um excellent fire department. But with that, you don't just get that and let it go. You have to have a continuous plan, and that's when we use that strategic plan, which is part of that accreditation, to outline what we want to do in the future. One of the biggest things that I'm working on with our with our organization, uh, and our firefighters have taken it have taken it on um uh with with all kinds of vigor and desire to do it, is to increase the level of pre-hospital care that we give to our community. So most organizations give uh pre-hospital care in this state at the basic EMT level, and we're working to put every firetruck and every fire station uh up to the advanced EMT level, which uh allows us to give uh interventions with medicines to help uh in your worst moments to help reverse uh what's going on and provide you in a better position to transfer you to Buncombe County EMS and take into the hospital at that point. Um so pre-hospital care is a big deal for us. It's where we do most of our business, most of our runs are medical, and uh it has the biggest impact on our community. Another one, just for our firefighters, is professional development. We want to develop them into the leaders that they are. We want to develop their skill levels that they have to accomplish their goals, but also we want to prepare them for the next generation. And as we give them either education or experiences, as we develop them and teach them about the things that it takes to run a fire department, whether that is uh capital planning, strategic planning, um budget management, whatever that is, we by doing it's not as simple as just getting on a fire truck. Somebody has to plan how many fire trucks we need, where to put them, uh how many people go on them, all that kind of stuff. And that's part of their professional development. So we want to really push um that as we move forward. And finally, uh we've done a really good job here of building relationships. And so I want to continue that. I mean, it was that relationship building that brought fire administration, the city manager's office, the city council members, and everyone else together to agree that the force shift was a good deal, right? So the values of um of relationships are a big deal. Uh my relationship with the Firefighters Association uh is continuing to evolve and continuing to grow, and we both uh now recognize how uh by working together you can achieve more. So those would be some of the goals right there.

Citizens Academy and what our members do

SPEAKER_01 18:14

Perfect. And I have one follow-up because I learned during our Citizens Academy that we recently held that the community overall didn't realize the amount of medical care that we provide. Can you talk to uh that as to why the fire department has to kind of step up on that um and why we, you know, are offering that more and more?

SPEAKER_00 18:36

Yeah, but most it's funny, when you talk in and you go out in the community, they don't realize all the different things that uh fire department actually does. They don't just sit in a fire station waiting for a call for a fire. And the Citizens Fire Academy, I would encourage everybody here that is listening to this to consider um enrolling in that and seeing for themselves what that is. But they that's where you see that our medical calls are probably the most prevalent call that we make. And that's not uncommon in the fire service as a whole. So I would say roughly 80% or more of our runs, our responses are for medical calls and not just fires. That's why when we talked earlier about how important it was and how big a deal it was to increase our pre-hospital care level so that we can prepare you more uh and help you even more, um, it becomes a major um objective of this organization. So but look into that Citizen Fire Academy. It's gonna talk not only about our medical calls, it's gonna talk about how emergency management is run in the city of Asheville. It's gonna talk about how we deploy people all over the state and country for our swift water rescue teams. Our Hazardous materials team is recognized as one of the best in the country. Uh so there's all kinds of things that this organization does other than respond to fires.

SPEAKER_01 19:51

And uh listeners, I will put uh details on the Citizens Academy in the description, and you can follow us on social media to find out when that next sign-up will be.

Chief Cayse's legacy and the legacy of Asheville Fire

SPEAKER_01 20:00

So, Chief, closing out, what would you like your legacy in fire service and your legacy here at Asheville Fire to be?

SPEAKER_00 20:08

Wow, what a great question. Um If I had to have uh I mean a legacy, I I would love um for this organization to know how much um I love the members of this organization and how ultimately every single decision, every single um every every every single interaction is for our members because this organization is of and by its members and its past members. It's it's the it's a it's retired folks got us to where we are here. So um if I had a legacy, the uh the the foundation would be part of that because those four R's um are for our members. Um and the fact that we we are pushing better working conditions, I I want that legacy to be we're here for the firefighters that make up this great organization.

SPEAKER_01 20:56

We hope

Outro

SPEAKER_01 20:57

you enjoyed this first episode. We are planning to release episodes quarterly for our first season. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for future podcasts, please send them to AFDPIO at actual nc.gov. I'll have that email address in the description. Be sure to like, comment, and share this podcast, and subscribe to have our episodes downloaded right to your device as soon as they're released. Until next time, stay safe, stay sharp, and take care of your own.