<body><div><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=3tL2n7_1H0zhMbu00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=3tL2n7_1H0zhMbu00" width="1200" height="963" >Marion County Fire Rescue has lost 528 employees in five years, union officials told county negotiators in February. That is roughly the size of the whole department.The county spent millions training young recruits, only to watch many of them leave within two years for agencies that pay more. Money explains part of it. It doesn’t explain why experienced, respected firefighters left too, or why others retired the first day they could, even with financial incentives to stay and a department that badly needed them. To understand that, you have to look at leadership.That kind of answer doesn’t come from a single news story. It comes from years of knowing the people and watching the patterns. Here is the pattern I see.We’ve been told this beforeIn early 2023, the department lost two members to suicide within weeks. Afterward, the International Association of Fire Fighters named two overarching problems at MCFR. One was “a lack of trust in management.” Members also told the IAFF they didn’t trust the department’s own peer support team. Some believed what they shared would reach management and many feared that asking for help would have consequences on their careers.The department responded with programs: mental health screenings, counseling, a wellness plan. Those were real steps. But programs don’t fix trust. People do, by how they behave when it’s hard.What happened to Vic PayetteOn Oct. 28, the department lost Victor “Vic” Payette, a 20-year firefighter who rose through the ranks with strong reviews year after year. No single thing explains a death like his, and I won’t pretend to. He carried what many firefighters carry from the job, and from life.But I know what the department did to him in his last year. After the Station 21 hazing, he was accused of covering it up. He was never interviewed, was never shown the evidence and was fired. The county reversed the firing six months later and took him back as a demoted driver/engineer.That is organizational betrayal: when the institution you’ve given your career to turns on you and won’t hear your side. And Payette’s case is not the only one. The department still holds pre-termination hearings without first questioning the employee or giving them the evidence they’d need to answer the allegations.Payette’s wife, Ashley, told me what it did to him. People he believed would never turn away from him did. After he got his job back, someone called across a Walmart parking lot, “Hey, Vic!” He answered, “Oh, you’re allowed to talk to me now.”Peer support didn’t show upAshley told me Vic said he had reached out to the department’s peer support network twice, well before the week he died. He also asked her whether the family could get help through her health coverage instead of the county’s self-insured plan. I can’t know why. But it’s fair to ask whether he wanted help from somewhere outside the department’s reach.Many in the department have told me they don’t trust that a call for help will get the right response, or that what they share will stay confidential and won’t be used against them later.I have confirmed that the department’s peer support team did not activate after the Station 21 hazing in 2025. No one from peer support checked whether anyone else at the station had been hazed. That mattered: after leaders’ very public announcements, few would have come forward on their own. No one went to comfort a crew that had watched its teammates arrested and fired in a very public way. And peer support did not activate after Payette died.It did activate six weeks earlier, after an MCFR fire dispatcher also died by suicide. It activated after a young recruit, Lewis, died in an accident. Those responses were right. So why not after Station 21, and why not for Vic?I think the difference is who is at fault. Peer support proactively shows up for tragedies the department doesn’t have to own. When the department itself is part of the story, it waits for people to call the hotline.I’ve also heard, in confidence, from at least half a dozen employees who filed complaints of bullying or harassment against supervisors. They say their complaints were passed to the very leaders they accused and no one from peer support checked on them while they lived through the fallout. If peer support exists for people in turmoil, it’s hard to think of a clearer case.That’s backward. Organizational failures are exactly when the department needs to move first: name the injury, address the betrayal people feel and go to them. It shouldn’t take a psychologist or a memo. Split up the stations. Figure out who is at highest risk. Go talk to them.The peer support team may be full of good people. What it lacks is leadership willing to send it where the department is the problem.And what if the answer that team came back with was leadership?How trust is builtThe rest of us know how trust works in our own lives. You build it by being consistent, by showing up when it’s hard and by saying sorry when you get it wrong.Apply that to the fire family. Imagine 20 years of delivering, then being accused and finding your word counts for nothing. Imagine being cut off from your department during an investigation and then fired. Now imagine that no one from the department’s own support team calls.The same goes for chiefs. After Station 21, the department forced out Battalion Chief Clint Balik, a respected officer with a near-perfect record. Every battalion chief watching learned what can happen when you’re on the wrong side of a decision from the top. Battalion chiefs are especially exposed because they have no union to stand behind them.Firefighters notice who gets protected and who gets thrown away. When discipline comes this erratically, without due process, it adds another layer of stress for people already working through trauma and personal struggles and makes it harder for them to keep their emotions and their health steady.Marion County Fire Rescue, my heart is with youI write this from outside your family. I’ve never worked a 24-hour shift, ran into a burning building or carried home what you carry. What I have done is spend years listening to you, reading your records and watching the patterns, and I offer what I’ve learned with humility.You are my fire department. I believe I speak for the hundreds of thousands of us who depend on you when I say we want you to succeed. I think the people in the department know that. It’s why they take my calls.The new contract’s $20,000 raise and 24/72 schedule will help with recruiting. But no raise rebuilds trust. MCFR needs leadership that shows up for the hardship, not just the celebrations. Until it does, the programs won’t work and the department will keep training firefighters for someone else.If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide &amp; Crisis Lifeline, available 24/7.To learn more about the Station 21 incident, go to ocalagazette.com and type “hazing” in the search window.</div></body>

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Marion County Fire Rescue has lost 528 employees in five years, union officials told county negotiators in February. That is roughly the size of the whole department. The county spent millions training young recruits, only to watch many of them leave within two years for agencies that pay more. Money explains part of it. It doesn’t explain why experienced, respected firefighters left too, or why others retired the first day they could, even with financial incentives to stay and a department that badly needed them. To understand that, you have to look at leadership.

OPINION: Marion County Fire Rescue doesn’t have a program problem — it has a trust problem

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Ocala Gazette

Marion County Fire Rescue has lost 528 employees in five years, union officials told county negotiators in February. That is roughly the size of the whole 

OPINION: Marion County Fire Rescue doesn’t have a program problem — it has a trust problem

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