Storytelling: Bringing public value to life in the fire service

Editor’s Note: Jan. 19–25, 2026, marks the 7th annual CRR Week campaign. The 2026 CRR Week theme, Emergency Response, shines a spotlight on how fire departments’ response efforts are a vital part of Community Risk Reduction. This year’s toolkit emphasizes emergency response strategies that reduce risk, save lives and strengthen community safety. Learn more at the CRR Week resource center.

By Fire Chief Christian Tubbs

When I wrote “Beyond response: Leading the fire service toward lasting public value,” I reflected on how our profession has long defined success by the number of calls we run, how fast we get there and whether we leave the scene better than we found it. The older I get, the more I realize that while those measures matter, they only tell part of our story — and often the smallest part.

The fire service’s true value is not confined to the emergencies we resolve, but encompasses the trust we build, the risks we reduce and the relationships we strengthen long before the tones drop. Yet, those elements — trust, prevention and legitimacy — are often the least visible to the communities we serve.

| MORE: A call for real stories from the fireground, fire station and beyond

Any fire chief who has sat in front of a city manager, a board or a skeptical audience knows that facts alone rarely move people. Numbers matter — but they don’t breathe. They don’t inspire. They don’t reassure a community that its fire department understands its fears, its hopes or its vulnerabilities.

That is where storytelling becomes essential. Not as a marketing tool, not as a gimmick, but as a leadership responsibility, because if we cannot tell the story of our public value, we cannot expect others to understand it.

Storytelling is how communities come to know who we are. They hear about:

• The inspector who found a hazard before it became a tragedy
• The firefighter who stayed behind to comfort a child after a medical call
• The defensible space inspector who helped a homeowner understand and reduce their wildfire risk
• The CPR class graduate who saved a life before our arrival
• The quiet act of compassion that never makes the news but changes someone’s day

These stories — large and small — shape the community’s belief about what we stand for, what we value and why we matter.
But if we, as leaders, fail to tell these stories, the community will fill in the gaps on its own, and its version may not reflect the mission and values we work so hard to uphold.

Why it works

I used to believe storytelling was simply a communication skill — something you did to make a point. It wasn’t until much later in my career that I learned it is far more than that.

Research has shown that stories activate parts of the brain that facts alone never touch. Stories trigger connection, empathy and memory. They foster understanding. They make complex ideas accessible. A well-told story can turn data into meaning, initiative into impact, prevention into practice, and strategy into a lived experience.

Dr. Mark Moore teaches us that public value requires more than performance; it requires legitimacy. Storytelling is one of the primary ways we build that legitimacy. It ties our actions to purpose and our purpose to the people we serve.

Furthermore, one of the lessons I have learned repeatedly throughout my career is this: If we do not define our narrative, someone else will — as nature abhors a vacuum.

Fire service leaders must be the narrators of their organization’s public value. This has nothing to do with ego and everything to do with stewardship. If the community only hears about us when something burns or someone is hurt, then it will continue to believe that is all we do.

But when the community hears the fuller story, when they learn about the home you saved not by responding but by preventing, when they hear how evacuation preparedness contributed to a life saved or when they discover how a defensible space inspection protected an entire neighborhood, suddenly our value is no longer abstract. It is real. It is personal. It is theirs.

Part of the plan

Every chief knows what it feels like to build a strategic plan they believe in, only to watch it sit untouched on a shelf. Too often, the missing ingredient is not effort — it’s narrative.

Your strategic plan explains what you intend to do, whereas your stories explain why it matters.

When you tell the story of the elderly couple who followed your wildfire mitigation guidance and saved their home, the term “hazard mitigation” suddenly has a human face. When you share the story of a firefighter who sought early help through your wellness program and is now thriving, “member well-being” becomes more than a line item. When you tie stories to strategy, your plan stops being a document and becomes a direction.

Internal messaging

We often think of storytelling as something we do for the public, but it is just as important inside the walls of our stations.

Culture is not built by posters or slogans. It is built by the stories we tell and the behaviors we celebrate:

• The firefighter/paramedic who calmly led a complex medical call
• The engineer who took the time to coach a new firefighter
• The prevention officer whose persistence caught a serious hazard
• The crew whose professionalism turned a bad day into a manageable one for a resident

These stories reinforce what “right” looks like. They communicate values far more effectively than any memo or policy ever will. They remind our people that their work has meaning, even when no one is watching.

External messaging

One of the biggest challenges we face today is communicating the community’s role in safety and preparedness. Wildfire risk reduction, CPR readiness, evacuation planning, home hardening — these cannot be mandates alone. They must be shared commitments. Storytelling can shift a community from passive expectation to active partnership.

In 2017, a devastating wildfire in an adjacent county escalated fears of a similar event in our county. Through storytelling, the Marin County fire chiefs worked with elected officials and community leaders to enter into a tax-funded joint powers agreement creating the Marin Wildfire Prevention Authority. This agreement has transformed our county’s approach to mitigating wildfire risk.

When residents hear that someone “just like them” saved a life with early CPR or protected a neighborhood by maintaining defensible space, it changes their sense of responsibility. It helps them see their place in the big picture. It moves them from bystanders to stakeholders. Stories change what people believe is possible.

Capture your stories

If you think, “We don’t have enough stories.” My experience tells me otherwise: We simply haven’t built habits that help us capture them.

Here are simple ways to begin:

• Ask for one story a week at leadership meetings.
• Encourage captains to submit stories from their shifts.
• Look for stories in after-action reviews, not just lessons learned.
• Tie stories to values — make the connection visible.
• Share across multiple platforms, both internal and external.
• Celebrate quiet successes, not just high-profile incidents.

Stories are everywhere — in every station, every shift, every unit. We simply have to listen.

When leaders embrace storytelling with intention, something shifts:

• The organization gains clarity.
• The community gains understanding.
• Trust deepens.
• Strategy becomes real.
• Prevention becomes valued.
• Culture strengthens.
• The fire service becomes more than a responder — it becomes a partner in the community’s safety, resilience and identity.

Ultimately, storytelling helps us answer the most important question any community will ever ask its fire department: Are we safer, stronger and more resilient because you are here? A well-chosen story, grounded in truth and purpose, helps us reveal the answer.

Final thoughts

We are operating in a time of increasing complexity — wildfires intensifying, expectations rising, technology evolving, fiscal pressures mounting and the demands on our people growing. In this environment, numbers alone will not lead us. Strategies alone will not sustain us. Budgets alone will not define us. We must give our communities — and our people — the narrative that makes sense of the work we do and the value we bring.

Long after the smoke clears and the incident is resolved, the story remains. In the end, it is our stories — quiet or dramatic, simple or profound — that reveal who we are, what we stand for and why our work matters. That is the power of storytelling, and it is time for us, as leaders, to use it.

| WATCH: Community risk reduction: 3 Ps for success

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