It seems that many Americans are looking for ways to serve their country. A former federal prosecutor became the deputy commissioner of legal affairs for the NYPD. A former lieutenant general in the Marine Corps and commander of 90,000 Marines is now the police force's deputy commissioner of counter-terrorism.

We were recently asked to participate in a survey of where we thought the fire service would be in 10 years. One of my predictions was that fire departments will be run as corporations, complete with an actual corporate executive at the top and emergency professionals heading various divisions. This freedom would allow a fire chief to do exactly what needs to be done, avoiding the spiraling political, legal and budget wars that have increasingly complicated a chief's life.

Similar to vice presidents, a chief of response operations would head incident and disaster responses, and a chief of emergency medical services would be responsible for emergency response, non-emergency transport and preventive care. A broad array of deputy and battalion chiefs would continue to operate as they do now, with slight shifts in response capabilities, and physicians' assistants and/or nurse practitioners would be added to the EMS roll call.

Many officers have said that they don't want to test for a fire chief's position because they're content within the ranks of battalion chiefs, company officers or captains. Although some prefer the shift schedule, a good portion do not want to tackle the increasing responsibilities that today's fire chief must deal with on a daily basis: budget and finance, politics, risk management, liability and human resources. The possibility of incidents expanding from local and county levels to a state or national one also is daunting to today's officer.

Who better to handle these administrative or corporate role than a trained executive? An increasing number of fire chiefs travel down that road when they pursue Chief Fire Officer Designation, participate in the Harvard Fellowship program or work toward master's degrees in government administration. However, there's still quite a few who just want to run the department's responses in a hands-on manner.

What happens when corporate America arrives in the fire station? Besides a raft of new buzzwords, beware the policies and paperwork! A magnifying glass the size of a Hubble telescope lens will be used to scrutinize every bit of standard operating procedures and paperwork. There may be good news, however: While your new corporate CEO — type is spinning in politics, finances and acronyms, you can go back to being the fire chief you dreamed of being when you first joined the fire service.

If corporate America does swoop in, you will be expected to step up to the plate with your emergency services knowledge. You're going to have to be the best CEO — chief emergency officer — you can be.

As we consider what may be in store for the fire service 10 years from now, we can't ignore what's happening today, especially in terms of health and safety. This month's issue tackles some traditionally taboo subjects that we believe need to be discussed openly. Health and safety go hand in hand. You can't perform your job in this industry safely if you're not healthy — not for long. Instead of flipping past an article that doesn't pertain to you, we challenge you to read it and be better prepared to take care of the health of yourself and your personnel.

jwilmoth@primediabusiness.com