Fire Chief John J. Salka, Jr.

John Salka is a 30-year veteran of the New York City Fire Department and currently holds the rank of battalion chief. He is the commanding officer of the 18th Battalion in the Bronx and has served previously in several of the FDNY's busiest and most active units. His tenure as an officer in the department has included instructing at the Probationary Firefighters School, the Captain's Management Program, and the Battalion Chiefs Command Course. Chief Salka has been decorated for bravery several times over his 20-plus years of service in the FDNY and served as part of the Incident Command Team at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 and the weeks and months that followed.

Chief Salka is a contributing editor for Firehouse magazine and has been published in Fire Engineering and several other industry publications. In addition to his writing, he has been lecturing and presenting training seminars throughout the United States for more than 10 years and was awarded Fire Engineering's Training Achievement Award at PennWell Publishing's Fire Department Instructors Conference in 2001. His latest literary accomplishment is his book, First In Last Out, Leadership Lessons From The New York Fire Department, published by Penguin Books and his leadership lessons are the subject of his most recent articles and corporate lectures.

John and his wife Dawn have been married for 20 years and are the proud parents of five children, John, James, Maureen, Brian and Colleen.

In his new book, Battalion Chief Salka, a nationally recognized speaker and author with years of service in several career and volunteer departments, looks at both the similarities and differences in the engine company operations practiced by fire departments throughout the United States and discusses in detail the equipment, staffing, and operations of engine company firefighters at structural fires and emergencies in urban, suburban, and rural settings.

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"What makes the FDNY thrive is its tradition of developing extraordinary leaders. In FIRST IN, LAST OUT, John Salka distills the principles of FDNY leadership into a compelling, practical, and highly readable guide that every leader and manager will want to read and reread."

--Captain D. Michael Abrashoff, U.S. Navy (ret.), author of It's Your Ship

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