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Why CRR Programs Fail After the First Year — And What the Ones That Don’t Have in Common

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  Original Post Most CRR programs do not fail dramatically. They do not collapse under the weight of a bad decision or a public failure or a budget cut so severe that the program simply disappears overnight. They fade. Gradually, quietly, in ways that are easy to rationalize at each individual step and almost impossible to reverse once enough steps have accumulated. The smoke alarm program that ran twice a year starts running once. Then it gets postponed. Then it gets replaced by something more urgent. The home safety assessment data that was supposed to inform prevention strategy never quite gets analyzed. The company officer who was genuinely engaged with CRR gets promoted and the person who replaces them was never brought into the culture. The partnership with the Area Agency on Aging that was going to extend the department’s reach into isolated elderly residents never gets past the initial meeting. Nobody decided to let the program fail. Nobody woke up one morning and chose to ...
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I Had a Plan to Become Fire Chief. Here’s Why Missing It Was the Best Thing That Happened.

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Read Original Post | July 12, 2026 The Paper Route I never felt particularly smart growing up. I say that not as false modesty but as an honest accounting of how I understood myself for most of my early life. School was something I tolerated rather than excelled at. Mostly C’s in middle school. I had to maintain a 3.0 to drive in my family, so I graduated with a low 3.0 — exactly enough, not a point more. What I did have was an appetite for work that I cannot entirely explain. It started at eleven with a paper route. Through my teenage years I worked in a cabinet shop, a race shop, doing yard work, as a clerk’s helper at a grocery store. I typically had two jobs at a time and picked up every odd job placed in front of me. Nobody told me to do this. I just could not seem to stop. I mention this because it matters later. The work ethic was always there. The direction took longer to find. Brazil Before I landed in the fire service I spent two years living and working in Brazil. I did not ...
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