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Retiring Fire Chief Weighs in on New Chief, Department
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A fire department is more than sirens and turnout gear. It’s a workplace culture, a retention problem, a medical response machine, and a public promise that has to hold up at 2 a.m. We sit down with Columbus, Mississippi Fire Chief Duane Hughes as he prepares to retire after 31 years in the department, and he tells the truth about what changed and what still needs work.
We get into how the job used to run on “conditioning” and top-down control, why that mindset shifted toward empowerment, and what actually keeps firefighters from leaving. Hughes breaks…
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