The first hint of real trouble for the Beverly Hills Fire Department came in February, when one of the firefighters shared that their child’s school had been canceled due to COVID-19. The next day, Battalion Chief Scott Stevens received the same news about his child’s school. “Then the next morning, it was my [child’s] school,” recalled Captain Brad McHenry.
As essential workers, firefighters didn’t have the option of returning home to help spouses cope with the extra workload. Instead, the members of the 95-year-old department had to reconfigure routines, implement new protocols, and adjust to a strange new world of firefighting in the era of COVID-19.
