Earlier in his career, John Durham pursued a path in radio work at an Austin AM station, but now he has a different set of messages he wants to broadcast as Lake Travis Fire Rescue’s new assistant chief of fire prevention division.

Durham, who has worked as an inspector and emergency planner with Lake Travis Fire Rescue since 2006, is aiming to educate and raise awareness among residents and businesses of some steps they can take to avert potential fire and disaster risks that the Emergency Services District 6 has identified as potential threats.
The role, which is essentially that of a fire marshal, will enable Durham to spread the words of prevention and adopt programs that will save, most importantly, lives and then money in the long run.
Early in his 32-year fire and emergency services career, Durham noticed that a pro-active mentality could avert or lessen the damaging effects of fire and disasters.
“I developed a passion early on in my fire service career to work diligently toward educating myself on how best a jurisdiction or a fire department … could best go about educating its community, raising awareness of fire safety and other emergency disaster preparedness and mitigation,” said Durham, who replaced former fire marshal Bill Miller.
Developing a bond with the community leads to an increased understanding among the public of the fire department’s goals to have more buildings up to code and less fire and disaster risks.
“If you don’t take that first step of laying down that foundation of education and awareness with your community, then the efforts that you make trying to enforce building codes and fire codes are a lot more difficult because you have to try to educate people along the way,” Durham explained.
Jim Linardos, fire chief of Lake Travis Fire Rescue, said Durham will advance the district’s fire prevention efforts to the next stage of services that the area requires.
“We’re really excited about where we think he can take the fire prevention division,” Linardos said. “His talents and abilities are well-suited for what we need in this community now. We expect to see some great results.”
As the district enacts its Strategic and Master Operations plans and tackles issues such as preventing wildland fires, flooding and other threats, it will promote residential automatic sprinklers, fire protection systems and other fire prevention tools and programs, Linardos said.
“Some of John’s responsibilities will help him focus on community risk and reduction. [He will ask] what is our risk, what has changed in our risk and what are our target hazards and how are we going to focus on making sure we don’t get a fire in this building,” he said.
Linardos said fire prevention is a double-edged sword of sorts, but one that no community should be without.
“We have, in fire service, both prevention and suppression. If you look at it, one is trying to put the other out of business, but we’d rather prevent fires than have them. It’s a lot more inexpensive and a loss less impact on the community and it’s a lot safer,” the fire chief said.
The increased effort is partially borne of fiscal necessity.
“Right now, we are having challenges meeting the demand of this community. That’s not going to get any better. There’s just not a lot of money out there to fund the fire department. We are heavily understaffed and we have to rely on taking our prevention systems to the next level to assure we have less fires in the future,” Linardos said.
It will take all the partnerships the district can forge to bear the heat of tighter budgets and disparate cities with agendas of their own to accomplish its mission.
Durham will run the fire prevention division with one less staff position until the economy turns around.
“He’s going to have to be working and leading at the same time which is tough, but everyone is going through that right now,” Linardos said. “We can’t really do any of this on our own. We have to work with the cities to make it work, and John’s got the skills and abilities and desire to do that.”
As Durham wishes to educate the community about fire prevention, he began educating himself at a young age, sometimes whether he knew it or not.
His insatiable curiosity as a child in Midland with electronic gadgets and weather laid the foundation for his future interest in fire service.
“As a kid, I was notorious for tearing stuff apart. I would get old radios, TVs and lamps and anything — especially anything electronic — I could get hands my on and just take it down to the bare bones and try to figure it out,” he said.
When he was 2, his mother found him sitting on top of picnic table in backyard talking to the clouds.
“She said I knew right there you would have something to do with weather,” he recalled fondly. “That interest has played very well into my career in emergency management and fire-related meteorology,” Durham said.
His family moved to Westport, Conn., where another experience sparked his interest in firefighting.
He remembers his mother suddenly grabbing him by the arm and rushing him out of the house.
“There was a distinct odor and a clanging sound that to this day I’m not sure what it really was,” he recalled.
A few minutes later, firefighters arrived in a fire engine to assist like knights in armor galloping in on their horses.
“I was immediately enamored with this big red shining truck and these guys with these hats and coats on and from that day forward I had this desire to be a firefighter,” Durham said, adding that there was apparently some problem with the heating appliance in the house.
Another less-hazardous childhood incident furthered his interest in the avocation.
Renowned illustrator and author Leonard Everett Fisher visited Durham’s elementary school to read his book “Pumpers, Boilers, Hooks and Ladders: A Book of Fire Engines,” which was about the evolution of fire apparatus from early days of hand-drawn and horse-drawn pumpers to motorized fire engines.
Fisher signed a copy of the book for Durham, which he still treasures today.
“That is one of my most prized possessions. That further reinforced the interest I had in this profession,” he recalled.
When he was older, his family moved again, this time to Houston where as a high school student he volunteered as part of a emergency response team, which is similar to the Explorers Post program for youths interested in law enforcement careers.
“We would monitor the Houston Fire Department for major incidents and fires in our area on the west side of Houston. If there was a major incident we would hop in our cars and drive out there,” Durham said.
Although they were young, team members assisted in crowd and vehicle traffic control. He rounded out his experience with first aid training and volunteered at Houston Children’s Zoo as well.
He got a taste of fire service when, after year at University of Arkansas, he served as volunteer firefighter and EMT at the Keene Volunteer Fire Department near Cleburne.
“After doing that, I absolutely fell in love with the work,” he said.
He applied to Fayetteville Fire Department in Arkansas and several months later got an unexpected call from its fire chief, whom he had not spoken with or met, asking him to come to work that Monday as a firefighter.
“He said, ‘If you want a job, be here Monday morning,’” Durham recalled of his first job offer. “That began my professional career in fire service, and I’ve been doing it ever since.”
In Fayetteville, he developed an interest in code enforcement, fire prevention, inspections, public fire education and fire and arson investigations by befriending the fire inspector and helping him on cases.
“I really like the investigations because I’ve always liked to get my hands dirty and what makes stuff tick or in this case, what went wrong,” said Durham who also is a private pilot and amateur radio operator.
He moved to the Austin area in 1986 to serve as a volunteer firefighter and fire marshal from 1986-88, but he put his training and experience in investigation to use as a fire inspector with the Round Rock Fire Department from 1988-96. During that time, Durham also was a fire academy instructor at Taylor Fire Academy at Austin Community College from 1990-96.
Before joining Lake Travis Fire Rescue, the Cedar Park resident was fire marshal and emergency management coordinator at Bell County and City of Morgan’s Point Resort and deputy fire marshal and deputy emergency management coordinator at Pearland from 2003-2006.
Durham has had several stops along the way, and he said frankly that he had yet to experience the combination of camaraderie and commitment anywhere else that he has at LTFR.
As he tackles issues inherent to a fire marshal’s position, he approaches the job with a positive outlook, especially his efforts in prevention.
“Surely, somewhere in there I’ve probably saved at least one life with [prevention], and if I’ve done that, it’s all been worth it. That’s the prize we try to keep our eye on here,” Durham said.