New La. fire chief fights from air

By Ellyn Couvillion
The Advocate

DENHAM SPRINGS, La. — One of the first duties of Johnny Leos, the Denham Springs Fire Department's new chief training officer, will be to train firefighters with the skills to fight fires in high-rise buildings - certified aerial operators, .

That's one reason Fire Chief Ivy "Woody" Cutrer brought him on board, Leos said.

"My specialty is aerial apparatus," Leos said.

The Denham Springs Fire Department will be getting a new ladder truck - its first - this spring, Leos said.

The truck's ladder, which will have a large basket at the end for firefighters, will extend 104 feet, roughly nine stories high, counting the angle of the ladder, Leos said.

"You have to train people to use them (the ladder trucks) and take care of them. They're going to be required because of the commercial construction coming in," Leos said.

Leos came to the local fire department in November, after five years as a regional coordinator for the LSU Fire and Emergency Training center in Baton Rouge.

His 42-year career includes 28 years with the New Orleans Fire Department, from which he retired as a fire captain in 1994. Fourteen of those years were on ladder trucks.

Leos was one of 14 people chosen recently chosen to work on the second edition of a textbook on aerial apparatus used by firefighters to prepare for certification, he said.

Leos' career in firefighting began when he was a shipboard firefighter in the Navy, in the 1960s.

He's also worked as a firefighter with a NASA sub-contractor at the federal space agency's test facility in Mississippi.

Later, before going to LSU, Leos worked as a fire captain and training officer with the Washington Parish Fire District 7, in Bogalusa, where he lives.

After retiring from the New Orleans Fire Department in the mid-1990s, Leos took a four-year hiatus in a different industry - music.

Leos served as the production manager for Cajun musician Jo El Sonnier in Nashville.

It turns out that Leos, growing up in Bogalusa, played the drums in a band called Smoky Creek that toured and opened for such acts as Barbara Mandrell and the Oak Ridge Boys.

The Denham Springs Fire Department, where Leos now serves as chief training officer, numbers 25 members.

To join the department, firefighters take a civil service test, then attend a fire training academy, before being tested for various certification levels.

Leos will be working with the firefighters to advance their certification in different roles.

"We've got a really good department here. We've got good people," Leos said.