Alhambra’s Fire Chief, Jeffrey Ragusa, oversees all aspects of the multiple divisions within the Alhambra Fire Department, including 72 employees and four fire stations. The Fire Department is responsible for providing fire safety, emergency services, and the delivery of emergency medical services to the community. Last year, Alhambra FD responded to over 7,600 calls. Here’s how he does it.
5:30 am – Rise and shine
Chief Ragusa lives in Altadena with his wife, eighteen-year-old son, and seven-year-old daughter. About a year ago, Chief Ragusa started making it a point to see his daughter before leaving the house in the mornings. After he gets up at 5:30 am to start his day, his daughter hears him and gets out of bed around 6 am.
“I used to tell her to go back to sleep, but now I let her get up with me,” he says. Together, they make a pot of coffee for Mom, but Chief Ragusa himself waits until he gets into the office to have his coffee, saying that “I have the best barista in the world that works with me.”
Then, he gives his daughter a hug, tells her to get ready for school, and he sets out to get a jump on his work day.
6:30 am – Listening to podcasts on the commute
Today, Chief Ragusa is heading to Montebello for a Los Angeles Area Fire Chiefs Association (LAAFCA) meeting. On the way, he puts on a podcast about finance — his commute is the only chance he gets to really listen to these. He has a couple of podcasts he subscribes to, which cover the financial world (mostly stocks, precious metals, and crypto) and a little bit of geopolitical news.
7 am – Leading an Officers Academy at LAAFCA
Chief Ragusa isn’t only Alhambra’s Fire Chief, he’s also President of the Los Angeles Area Fire Chiefs Association. It’s a rotating position that he holds for the year, so his first order of business today is to lead the LAAFCA meeting. Today’s meeting is an Officers Academy featuring guest instructors, which helps prepare people who want to move into leadership roles within the fire service.
“We had people from all over LA County, and we also had people from as far as Idaho come for the class,” he says. His main job at this meeting is to welcome everyone and set the stage for the speakers, but he also wanted to make sure that the three representatives from the Alhambra Fire Department (a battalion chief and two officers who had just passed the captain’s test) knew that he was there to support them, too.
As Alhambra Fire Chief and LAAFCA President, one of his passions is promoting mental health, so this training came as something he’s been pushing for this year.
10:30 am – City staff meeting in Alhambra
Every Monday, all the division heads in Alhambra meet for a staff meeting to brief our City Manager, Jessica Binnquist, on any updates, pending programs or projects, and anything that relates to city business within their divisions.
11:45 pm – Checking in on trainees
Currently, Alhambra FD has three trainees in its eight-week program. After the city staff meeting, Chief Ragusa goes to check in on their progress. Today, they’re “throwing ladders,” which the Chief says is what they call truck operations.
“It’s a pretty grueling eight weeks. We usually have a decent success rate, but it’s also how we weed them out. If they don’t make it through the academy, then they don’t go on to their probationary period,” Chief Ragusa explains.
1 pm – Interviewing a potential new captain
As Fire Chief, Chief Ragusa interviews every potential captain for the department as part of their promotion review process. There are three candidates on the captain’s list — the list of people eligible for a promotion, after passing an exam — and only one available spot, so he takes his time getting to know the candidates and evaluating their readiness for the role of captain.
According to the Chief, there are three things that make a good fire captain. “Operational readiness is a nonstarter,” he says. “You must be good at your tactics, you must understand how to keep your crew healthy, and you must understand how to serve the public.” This is a pass or fail, but thankfully all three candidates have it.
“For me, the next one is you have to be approachable,” he continues. “Pretty much every firefighter is approachable to the public, that’s kind of our nature. They’re drawn to kids, elderly, people in need. But the second part of being a good captain, to me, is being approachable internally.” Being approachable means you’re going to be a captain who can recognize the organization’s needs early.
His last qualification is having a servant’s heart. “It’s truly a great industry, where almost all of our guys, especially here in Alhambra, are driven to serve the community.”
2 pm – The reason he waits to drink coffee
“I do really love coffee, but I don’t drink it in the morning because they always have a pot on upstairs [in the fire station],” Chief Ragusa says. “As the fire chief here, I have the privilege of being at the station, so it gives me the opportunity to walk upstairs and chat with my team while I grab a cup of coffee. I don’t buy coffee from anywhere, I make it for my wife and I get it here at work.”
For the rest of the afternoon, he takes care of work at the station. He’ll catch up with his battalion chiefs about any needs for the day, then walk around the station checking in on the captains, engineers, and firefighters on duty. “You have to be available and present,” he says.
6 pm – Attending the Alhambra City Council meeting
Twice a month, Chief Ragusa attends the Alhambra City Council meetings.
If it ends early, he’ll go right home to see his family before they go to bed, but if it’s late and they’re already asleep, he takes the rare chance to go to the gym.
11 pm – Having a late dinner and getting ready for bed
“I don’t eat breakfast, but I’m known to eat at 11 o’clock at night before I go to bed,” Chief Ragusa says. Evenings are also his opportunity to spend time with his son, who doesn’t get up as early in the mornings.
Usually, his late night dinners are leftover from what his wife made for dinner. He loves to eat meat and doesn’t like vegetables, but he still forces himself to eat them to be healthy. At the end of the night, he’s in bed with his wife by midnight and ready to do it all again tomorrow.
