The Darley/National Fallen Firefighters Foundation (NFFF) Thought Leadership Essay Contest asked one question: How can AI improve firefighter health, wellness, and safety?
The responses came from active fire service members who are grounded in reality: wearables that detect cardiac strain early, the killer behind 63% of on-duty deaths in 2025. AI that turns maydays and LODDs into training every firefighter can learn from. Early-warning systems that flag an at-risk brother or sister and offer help outside the chain of command. Or robots that take the first look in IDLH environments, so we stop sending humans to do what robots can do.
A common thread runs through every essay: we’ve gotten better at surviving the emergency, but now the next frontier is surviving the career. Artificial Intelligence won’t fight the fire for you, but it can cover your blind spots and be a proactive support tool for the fire service.
The writers were also tough critics of AI: Who sees the data, and could a wellness flag follow a firefighter into their career file? Is this protection, or is it surveillance? Who owns a firefighter’s data: the department, the vendor, or the firefighter it came from? And when AI spots a struggling member, can a machine that cannot feel ever replace the human sitting across the kitchen table?
We need a crawl-walk-run approach that starts small, stays transparent, and lets the tool prove itself.
Winners will be announced in September, and the contest returns in 2027. To everyone who had the courage to put their ideas on paper: thank you. To anyone thinking about where this profession goes next, stay tuned for 2027. We’d love to hear your voice.
Learn more at Darley Essay Competition
