A Conversation with Dr. Lori Moore-Merrell

Thank you, Teresa. Thanks again. I’m appreciative of the opportunity because as you noted, we’re doing this in December with the anticipation of rolling in January and — certainly a bittersweet for me, but — a departure for me in January, on Jan. 20, with the administration change.

And so, I’m excited to be able to have some messaging to the fire service as a whole, and certainly to our momentum as the 1 voice of the U.S. fire service.

Yes, of course. So, that’s a great question, first of all. So, the U.S. fire administrator is a presidential appointee. So, I was appointed by President Biden in October of 2021. So, usually the fire administrator is appointed in between September and October, the first year of a presidential administration.

And so, given that President Biden decided to not run for reelection, then the election determined that there must be a change in administration. With that, then, all Biden appointees typically would be compelled to resign their positions before the start of a new administration. And so, in compliance with that expectation, I will be doing that and render my resignation official on Jan. 20 of 2025.

Absolutely. Another great question. Wow.

So, here’s what’s going to happen. So, I will depart, as I said, officially on Jan. 20. And at that point, Chief Donna Black will begin acting as the U.S. fire administrator. Now she will onboard as deputy fire administrator on Dec. 16, 2024. So, she’ll be in her role as the deputy administrator for about a month before I depart.

And then Donna, Chief Black, will begin acting. So, she’ll act up in the fire service, very familiar with acting up into an officer position. So, Chief Black will become the acting fire administrator on Jan. 20. At that time, we will have an acting deputy fire administrator. So, Superintendent Eriks Gabliks, who’s our superintendent of the National Fire Academy, he will then act as the deputy fire administrator.

So, everybody gets that and of course the fire service, certainly. We all move up in rank to cover the positions until a new fire administrator is named. And it is — traditionally, it has been around the September, October time frame.

So, we’ll anticipate that with this administration, though anything, certainly, is possible.

Exactly.

So, that’s what happens. The new administration will, just like you’re seeing even now post-election, we see a lot of the president-elect’s selections for a lot of the cabinet positions. And you’ll start to hear some of the next level, lower than cabinet, undersecretaries and things like that.

You’ll start to hear some of those appointments coming forward. You’ll start to hear even the next level of appointments that will happen. There’s usually about 400 appointments that are made in any presidential term or administration. And so, if you want to know what those are, there’s a book called the “Plum Book.”

And the “Plum Book,” you can just look that up, but it will tell you all of those appointments that have to be made. Now, there are 2 different types of appointments. There’s a presidential appointment that the president just outright appoints, or there is a Senate confirmed, which means the president selects, but they must go through a Senate confirmation.

So, the fire administrator position, until 2 administrations ago, was a Senate confirmed and should be put back, in my opinion, as a Senate confirmed position because of the level of operation. But as of today, we are a presidentially appointed. Now, can that candidate be selected by the president-elect?

Of course, at any time, but because the fire administrator is a high-level, clearance position, which means you have to go through an extensive background check through the FBI. Now, why does it take so long? That was your question. The reason is that that higher level security clearance requires extensive background check.

And that takes a good number of months. It happens, but imagine it’s not just the fire administrator. There are up to 400 going through that same background check. So, they are all in line. The FBI has its hands full and trying to do all of those checks. And so, it’s a very busy time and they move as quickly as they can.

But these take time, and they must be done with due diligence. And done correctly. So, often it is September, October before we get an appointment for a fire administrator.

Well, first of all, thank you for the very kind words. It has been an absolute team effort. It’s been the whole of the fire service and I know that those who’ve listened to this podcast have heard me before say that when I came in here, there was a lot to be done.

And I called on the national leaders of all of our national fire service organizations and said to them, "You know, I’m here, I’m willing to serve, but I’m going to need you all to step up and let’s do this together." And they all did. Everybody I called in every national organization was ready to go and really anxious for the fire service as a whole to move forward. And so, it has been an extreme, broad-based effort on everyone’s behalf and the team efforts like never before. And it was an effort that had people clamoring to be part of it.

And that’s what you want. I think what we’ve done together is start a movement, and that movement is called the Fire Service One Voice. And it is setting aside our own missions sometimes to work together on a common challenge for all of us.

And so, that’s what has happened with these national orgs, is they’ve come together with an established — really USFA as the lead, which we’re supposed to be, and they have aligned, and we’ve moved forward together, and that momentum must be maintained. And so, that is one of my greatest hopes, that you guys don’t even know that I left, that it’s still the momentum carries on and it moves forward.

So, for me, just getting that movement going has been a real highlight and seeing the coming together of leadership and aligning and relationships being built. And these relationships really being leveraged to do good things, to make change and to bring positive, real movement in the fire service as a whole to accomplish things.

The other thing — of course, as you know, Teresa, for me was the one goal I had coming into this — is we’re going to have a new data system by the time I leave, right? Whenever that was going to be. And so, that to me is a linchpin, having quality and quantity of data to be able to inform the fire service at all levels of government — national, state, local — is vital to us knowing how to protect our people, how to protect our communities.

What are the risks? How do we respond to those risks? How do we train? How do we prepare? All of that is tied up in the data. The information we need to move in any of those directions is in the data. And getting that data that turns into, you know, going through a series of analytics, turns into real intelligence.

That’s information that can be leveraged in all of those areas. It’s absolutely key. And our legacy system was completely incapable of delivering anything that was helpful to us in that regard. And so, day one, as you know, that was the questions that I started asking, how do I do this? How can I move it forward?

And so, we had paths created, doors opened at every turn, and I believe divine intervention as well, to be able to help us move forward with developing NERIS, our National Emergency Response Information System. It’s been all hands. We’ve encouraged people to step up and be involved. The whole of fire services had the opportunity to comment on it, to encourage, to offer information to make it better.

And that is still ongoing. But on Nov. 4 of this year, 2024, we launched NERIS. And so, as we spent —

And part of that was identifying a vehicle in S&T. So, collaborating with our partners over at Science and Technology at Homeland Security, having an external performer, and they selected — S&T selected — everybody’s trustworthy research organization of UL Fire Safety Research Institute. They are the performer.

They’re the ones who built the system. The system is being built externally but maintained by USFA. So, everything has been put in place to be successful, to be able to deliver on the mission to the fire service. And so, that data system is going to be the linchpin, I believe, to operating the mission of USFA going forward.

It’s going to be the linchpin for the fire service nationally. It’s going to be the linchpin at the state level for laws and implementation of changes at the state level and the fire marshals. It’s going to be the linchpin at the local level for local fire departments to be able to have the resources they need and deploy the way they need to. To protect their communities, to respond to the adverse risk events that have happened, not just fire, but all hazards. And this data system is going to inform at every level of that operation.

I love that, Teresa, because that’s part of what I’ve watched you change. I’ll just point that out. We’ve had a lot of staff change here in USFA and elevating to let you all know that you are part of the fire service and you, like many, have just shined forward and you become the face of USFA.

You become connective tissue to the field. And so, getting known as USFA staff is huge because you said, local fire departments, they don’t know necessarily who to contact at the federal level when they need help. And so having a face and a name, they feel connected and it’s those relationships that absolutely matter.

I think that will be part of the legacy, I hope, is those station visits, because we’ve been very diligent for 3 1/2 years to make sure that wherever we went, whatever conference I was speaking — and I’ve had lots of opportunity and I’m grateful for that, and hope that we’ve delivered some real messaging that’s made some change.

But on the ground in those stations, listening to the guys who are riding the trucks every day and what are they concerned about, what do they care about, what do they need, keeps us on track. It keeps us making sure USFA is relevant. We don’t operate in an ivory tower. We don’t operate as a separate entity.

We are part and just woven into the real fabric of the fire service as a whole. So, that has been important.

I do appreciate you mentioning the summit. That must continue. That’s in our legislation. We’re supposed to have and host an annual conference. And so, it is done and was set in Fire Prevention Week, annually.

And that will continue. It has to go forward. And that’s an expectation that I will leave behind that USFA leadership must continue that annual summit. And I believe the fire service at large will hold USFA accountable to that because that is the point in the year that we come together and say, all right, what have we accomplished?

What’s the good thing? And where are the gaps? What are we going to work on together next year? And so, it’s that reset every year that is critical to us being effective, efficient as the nation’s fire service. But then, also, the World Fire Congress — that was monumental, too, wasn’t it?

It was a time when we could take a shot that can we do globally what we’ve done in the U.S. in bringing the fire service together? And I can tell you that not only was the gathering of 56 nations plus the UN, plus the director general of the European Union for Disaster Response and many others. World Bank — and we could go on and on to come together and spend time talking about common challenges and how can we work together.

But the bigger thing is not the meeting itself. The bigger thing has happened is the network that’s been built globally. We have communities of practice around 5 challenges plus a main stakeholder group. They’re meeting monthly. Some of them are meeting every other month, but we’re having up to 35 nations on some of these communities of practice calls.

It’s amazing to me — and the readout that I got just a couple of weeks ago from all of the U.S. leaders in each of those communities of practice telling me what they’re talking about and what they’ve accomplished and what they’re assembling and how they’re delivering on sharing information and knowledge exchange, I got cold chills hearing, because it’s really an evolution, maybe a revolution, right, that is happening with the global fire service. And again, connective tissue.

Because we are connected, and we share these challenges. And everyone knows that you go to any city in the nation and firefighters are the same, right?

They are the same. But that is also true globally. You can go to any nation, and we have, and visited and tried to learn in many nations, and they are the same. Firefighters, fire officers are the same. And so, that has been a real, not only a blessing to me, that I think the network that’s been established hopefully will carry on perpetuity because there’s a movement, there’s a momentum behind it and a need to go forward.

Well, first of all, I don’t want to leave, but that’s our reality. We follow the rules, you serve your term, you take your mission, and then you move to next. And so, that’s what I will do. With that, however, I’m excited about we at USFA, we’ll carry on. And I’ve told you, and I will tell staff in January, our all-staff gathering that we’re going to do, we call it our USFA Organization Day, and we’ve had several of those in my term, but that’s when I will share with everybody. I have full expectation, and the fire service, the nation’s fire service is going to hold USFA accountable to carry on. I want it to be such that you all as the leaders of USFA, that you don’t even know I’ve left, right?

And that’s how an organization should carry on. That the leader should be able to step away and it continues just as if they were still here. And so that’s what I want you all to do.

I know Chief Black is going to come in. She’s ready to hit the ground. In fact, she’s been with us through all of the One Voice efforts.

She’s been at the World Fire Congress. She’s been at every summit. She’s testified at the round table in the summit. So, it’s not like she’s a stranger to what we’ve been doing. So, I know she is going to come in with that momentum. She will carry on, and we’ll wait and see what the next fire administrator, who that is, and hopefully that they are, too, associated with what we’ve been doing already and that they come in and just carry on as if we don’t miss a beat and go forward.

So, that’s my expectation. That’s my hope for USFA because USFA has a mission. It was established 50 years ago and that mission, we must deliver it to the fire service. That’s our responsibility. It’s not just the mission. But as leaders, if you work here as staff, you are part of USFA. You’re part of that responsibility to deliver that mission to our stakeholders who are the fire service and the nation, those who are impacted by fire.

We are responsible to reduce their risk, to make sure they have safe, efficient and effective response and to carry on in their safety and well-being in perpetuity. So, that’s my hope for USFA.

Yeah, that’s exactly right, Teresa.

You know, I don’t know what is next. There will be. I’m looking for next already because that’s what I do. I know I’m in —

That’s right, I operate as a change agent, so we’ll find another mission and I’ll do my best to lead there as well.

So, we’ll see what next is. I won’t be far away. I’m not going to, you know, fall off the face of the earth. So, I am around, I’m available to those who need help and advice, so certainly won’t be far and won’t be hard to find. So, I am excited about — you know, I’m a person of faith, so I’m excited to know what God’s got next for me.

Well, first of all, Teresa, you weren’t supposed to make me cry. So, everybody who knows me, I — my tear glands are attached to my heart.

So, thank you, Teresa. You have been very special to me as have many of USFA staff, all of them, and those who’ve stepped up into new roles to lead. You’ve done fantastic jobs. You’re going to continue to do fantastic jobs. And I am going to hold you accountable. I am going to be obviously watching USFA. I’m going to be listening, I am going to hold you accountable to carry on and do what you’ve been doing and do it well.

And those that we’ve brought in, there’s some stellar people who are now working at USFA. Incredible leaders that are coming out of the nation’s fire service. They’re excited. They’re coming together as teams. And we’re breaking down silos inside the organization. You’re communicating. I’m going to anticipate that you’re going to continue to do that, and you’ll have to hold each other accountable to do that.

But for the nation’s fire service and the leadership, I would also say that we all have to hold each other accountable to continue to communicate the way we have, to come together, to leverage our relationships, not go back into our silos, but continue forward, deliberately making the effort to go above and beyond to work with each other.

Don’t just go back into your organization and your own mission and think that’s enough. It’s not enough because we have whole of fire service from everything from risk reduction to the event happening, to the response to that event to the aftermath of that event, and the data and the learning. And then it becomes very circular back into how do we train on that.

All of this matters, and people are engaged at every step, but we must have a continuity across all of those spectrums because that’s the whole. And it’s the whole that matters. And when we work together in solidarity, that’s how we get things done. And we get things done in our communities, at the state level and certainly at the national level when the White House and Congress takes note of our nation’s Fire Service One Voice. That matters. And so, I will be watching. I will be holding an expectation and a hope that this continues.

Thank you. And it’s been an honor to serve with you. It’s been an honor to serve with my colleagues within USFA. But within FEMA, within Department of Homeland Security, with our colleagues at the White House, it has been my great honor to have served as the U.S. fire administrator. So, thank you.