Sedgwick County firefighters weigh in on schedule change
The county switched from a 24-hour shift and 48 hours off to a 48-hour shift and 96 hours off rotation.
Firefighters at Station 32 tell me that with the schedule change, there's more time to recover and feel ready to come to work, thanks to more consistent nights of sleep.
A couple of months ago, the fire department surveyed its team and found 92 percent of firefighters favored the new schedule.
Captain Don Boone for Sedgwick County Fire District 1 has worked under the old schedule for over 20 years.
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'So you really didn't realize it until we changed to this new schedule. And now it's like after those four days, that first day, I'm ready to go. It kind of refreshes you,' Boone said.
Firefighters are at home more mornings since they're at the station two days in a row and get four days off.
'We're seeing right now that overall, a lot of benefits of it. Our personnel are liking it. They get to not commute as much and travel in and out of the station,' Williams said.
That's what Boone says he experiences in his day-to-day life.
'With this new schedule, you end up with two days in the in between where you're actually you get to wake up with your family and spend mornings at home with your family. So it's been really beneficial in that way,' Boone said.
Leadership says this schedule change does require flexibility in their daily work schedule to not affect response time.
'We've realized when we went to the schedule that we had to be real cognizant to be better at rotating our crews out so that they weren't on long-duration scenes without being switched out,' Williams said.
A small price to pay for Boone.
Without even the thought of being woken up in the middle of the night. It kind of relaxes you more, and you are able to get better sleep more consecutively at home. That's the big piece of it, you know, because everybody sleeps better at home,' Boone said.
The fire chief says he's seeing a reduction in sick leaves in the short amount of time the schedule change has been in effect, as well as an improvement in morale.
He also says it's all being done without adding to the budget.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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CNN
8 hours ago
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These ‘miraculous survivors' weathered plane crashes, shark attacks and other deadly disasters. They weren't prepared for what came next
Air travel safety Airplane crashes Visual artsFacebookTweetLink Follow Brendan McDonough was driving home in his white Ram truck one Sunday afternoon when he spotted the first sign of trouble— a plume of smoke rising into the pale blue sky above the golden yellow foliage dotting the Arizona mountain range. He was listening to the radio at the time, but the smoke turned his thoughts to other sounds: the 3,000-degree inferno that roared like a freight train as it bore down on a group of trapped firefighters; the anguished cries of his friends calling for help on a radio; and the crinkling of orange body bags as the remains of men he called his brothers were carried away. It was the worst day of his life: June 30, 2013. That's when a wildfire overran an elite group of firefighters known as the Granite Mountain Hotshots in Yarnell, Arizona, killing 19 of them. McDonough was part of that group, but survived because he was standing lookout some distance away. The blaze marked the greatest loss of firefighters in a single day since the 9/11 attacks, and a new identity for McDonough: the lone survivor. He tried to live up to his new hero status. He gave motivational speeches and wrote a book that was made into a Hollywood movie. Strangers picked up his dinner tab wherever he went. Some approached his table while he was eating out with his family and started bawling after thanking him for his service while he sat there awkwardly, watching his Chicken McNuggets grow cold. When people asked how he was doing, he stuck to the hero script: 'Lucky to be alive. Blessed to be here. One day at a time.' But what he didn't tell them is that he often had to drink just to take the stage for his speeches. He didn't tell them he was turning into an emotional zombie at home and growing detached from his family. He couldn't tell them why he, a former heroin user with a felony record for theft, was the only firefighter who survived the Yarnell Hill Fire while men he deemed more deserving of life had perished. 'I felt lucky to be alive, but I was dying inside,' he would say later. When he spotted the plume of smoke, McDonough pulled off the road and sat in his truck for a moment with the motor running. It had been a year since the disaster. Then he reached into his glove compartment and pulled out a 9mm handgun. He placed the gun against his left temple and started to cry. We call men and women like McDonough 'miraculous survivors.' They emerge in almost every news cycle after deadly disasters such as the recent floods that killed at least 129 people in Texas. They are people like Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, the lone survivor of Air India Flight 171, which crashed in June right after takeoff in Ahmedabad, India, killing 241 people aboard and dozens on the ground. But Ramesh, sitting in seat 11A, somehow escaped. A worldwide audience saw him emerge like an apparition, dazed and limping, from the flaming wreckage. He lost a brother in the crash and would later tell stunned onlookers, 'I don't know how I survived.' Ramesh joined the same grim fraternity that also claims McDonough. They somehow survived disasters when so many around them perished. They are people like Ari Afrizal, a construction worker who survived the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami by clinging to a raft for two weeks and eating coconuts he pried open with his teeth. And Juliane Koepcke, the sole survivor of a 1971 plane crash in a Peruvian rainforest that killed 91 people. After lightning struck her plane, the teenager somehow survived a 10,000-foot fall – still strapped to her seat – and then spent 11 days hiking through the jungle to safety. Their stories have spawned a genre of death-defying storytelling in TV shows like 'I Shouldn't be Alive' and books such as 'Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why.' They reveal our fascination with ordinary people who cheated death — the ones who 'went to the edge of the horizon, the other side of the rainbow.' But what happens after those survivors return from their glimpse of eternity? Many discover there is no black box they can consult for clues on how to move forward. Surviving a disaster often leaves a permanent mark, said Rafael Yglesias, whose novel 'Fearless' — about a passenger who walks away from a plane crash — was inspired by a 1989 United Airlines crash in Sioux City, Iowa, and was made into a movie starring Jeff Bridges. 'The event itself can sometimes be a few seconds, but often people live with it for the rest of their lives,' Yglesias said. 'The real consequences for them are in the years that follow.' Some survivors crash and burn. Others experience a psychological and spiritual transformation that goes beyond struggles with survivor's guilt. Here are the stories of three people who survived some of the most high-profile disasters of recent decades. They teach us something not only about the nature of survival, but about living as well. It's been more than 40 years, but people still tell the story of what happened to Brad Cavanagh when he set sail in the Atlantic one afternoon on a ship called the 'Trashman.' Most of the authors and filmmakers who tell Cavanagh's story focus on the lurid details: the 110-mph winds and towering swells that looked like 'walls of liquid granite'; the gut-twisting screams he heard as one of his crewmates was eaten alive by sharks; the crewmate who yelled 'We're all going to f**king die!' as Cavanagh and four others fought to survive with no food and water for days in an inflatable boat with no motor or sail. But after surviving the sharks, Cavanagh encountered another predator that seldom makes it into his story. 'It's a beast,' he told CNN. 'And it's insatiable.' In October of 1982, he had joined a crew of four in Maryland for a routine yacht delivery. They were scheduled to sail the boat to Florida. Their ship ran into a hurricane and capsized. It sank so quickly that the crew barely had time to alert the US Coast Guard. They managed to climb into a small lifeboat, but one of Cavanagh's crewmates was severely injured in the escape. Her blood attracted sharks. As they drifted without food and water, the injured crewmate died in front of them. Two others, delirious from drinking seawater, slid into the ocean and were killed by sharks in front of Cavanagh and another crewmate. At one point, Cavanagh stood up in the raft and yelled to the sky, 'God, you f**king suck!' The Coast Guard never reached them. But five days later, a passing Russian freighter rescued Cavanagh and a crewmate, Deborah Scaling. Their story has been retold in documentaries and books as a testimony to human resilience. Cavanagh's crewmate, by then named Deborah Scaling Kiley, wrote two books about her ordeal and became a motivational speaker. She talked to CNN in 2008 about her experience. A fitness specialist and yoga instructor, she exuded confidence and resolve during the conversation. 'You can never give up,' Kiley said in explaining why she survived. 'No matter how bad it gets, something good is going to come out of it.' Four years after that interview, and three years after her 23-year-old son drowned on Cape Cod, Kiley died at her home in Mexico. The circumstances of her death were not disclosed. Today, Cavanagh is the Trashman's lone survivor. The 64-year-old lives in Massachusetts with his wife and two children. He operates tugboats and moves yachts up and down the coast. It's a wonder he can still get out on the ocean after what happened. Four decades later, he can't see any good that's come from his ordeal. When asked if the experience made him a better person, he said, 'No.' Does he think his story has made a difference to others? 'I'm not aware of any of those things for other people,' he said. 'What I'm aware of is that I'm still in crisis mode.' Cavanagh embodies one paradox of miraculous survivors: The same qualities that enabled them to survive a disaster can hamper their ability to resume a normal life afterward. He said he believes he survived because he knew how to operate in crisis mode. Every second at sea counted. He had to decide which crisis to solve next and then immediately move to the next one. Cavanagh still makes his living on the sea — although he said he has 'terrible anxiety about things in the water.' He returned to the ocean, he said, because 'it's what we (his family members) do. It's what my dad did. In my ancestry, I've got sea captains and people who raced in the America's Cup.' But he hasn't been able to turn off his crisis mindset. 'Every day in my life, I'm in crisis mode,' Cavanagh said. 'I'm trying to solve whatever the problem is that anybody has.' He's gone to therapy, but he said he gets distracted by what he notices — another problem to solve. 'It's just a huge waste of time because I can't solve problems while I'm in therapy,' he said. 'I look at them (therapists) and I just sit there, and I'm like, 'Your faucets are dripping. I have go in there and change the gasket to your faucet.'' Anger helped him survive at sea. He was angry at the Coast Guard for not rescuing him; angry that people died in front of him who could have been saved; and angry that he needed to talk to lawyers and investigators after the accident when he just wanted to forget it. Cavanagh said he's also facing another challenge. 'The beast is insatiable,' he said. 'It's the media.' He said there are times when his PTSD subsides, but then a journalist will call and ask him how he feels, and it kicks up again. He now tries to avoid email. 'It's a cyclical thing,' he said about the media attention. 'I would bet you everything that this won't be the last time somebody calls. It happens every few years when 'Shark Week' needs a thing,' he said, referring to the Discovery Channel's annual week of shark-themed programming. Will Cavanagh ever stop living in perpetual crisis mode? Another survivor offers an answer to that question. Like Ramesh, he too survived a plane crash. But he found a way to tame the beast. Spencer Bailey has a ritual. Almost every morning, he awakens, turns to his wife, Emma, and greets her the same way. 'I tell my wife I love her,' Bailey said. 'Then I'll just lie in bed for 10 to 15 minutes and slowly open my eyes and take breaths and remind myself that I'm still here. I've realized what a gift it is to simply take a breath.' On July 19, 1989, he was with his older brother, Brandon, and their mother, Frances Lockwood Bailey, on United Airlines Flight 232 when a faulty part in the DC-10's engine exploded in mid-air. The explosion cut the plane's hydraulics, which control steering. The plane crash-landed at the Sioux City, Iowa, airport, sliding into an adjacent cornfield and killing Bailey's mother and 111 others. Bailey and his brother survived along with 182 other people, but he became a symbol of the crash. A news photographer snapped a photo of a National Guardsman, anxiety written on his face, carrying Bailey's limp frame from the billowing black smoke of the wreckage. The photo made the cover of Time magazine and was reproduced around the world. Because pilots aren't expected to land an airplane after a catastrophic loss of hydraulics, the media dubbed it 'the miracle in the cornfield.' Bailey also is immortalized in a bronze statue, mimicking the photo, that stands in Sioux City as part of a memorial to the crash response. Bailey said looking at a statue of himself is akin to an 'out of body experience.' 'I never felt like I'm looking at me,' he said of the statue. 'I felt like that boy was someone else. I have no memory of the crash.' But Bailey has his own personal memento of the disaster: the white Avia sneakers he wore that day, which he keeps in a Ziploc bag in a closet of his New York City home. 'It's not something I display proudly,' said Bailey, now 39. 'In a lot of ways coming to terms with being a survivor was something I struggled with. I didn't want to identity with it.' Today, the boy in the photo is a strapping 6-foot-3 and the owner of the Slowdown, a media company. He's also the author of a book, 'In Memory Of: Designing Contemporary Memorials, which examines public art and spaces — such as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington — that commemorate tragic historical events. Bailey's chosen profession is not a coincidence. After hearing people tell his story for years, he joined the beast. 'I became a journalist to take my story back,' he told CNN. For much of his life, Bailey said he ran from his survivor story. He hid his identity from classmates. He was depressed from facing 'a motherless void' after the crash. But he told his story for the first time at his high school graduation. The rapt audience was silent when he finished. The experience was liberating. Years of therapy, and of telling his story, have helped, he said. 'We're all survivors, each in our own way,' he said. 'We all go through extraordinary life events, some more extreme than others. I feel lucky to be here, but I also think everybody else should, too.' His only memories of his mom come from others. His older brother, Brandon, remembers the crash. He recalled their mother wrapping her arms around her sons, as if she was their guardian angel, as the plane tumbled to the ground. Others told him his mother was a creative woman who dabbled in art and designed children's clothes. He sometimes wonders if his mother passed her love of creativity down to him. 'Whatever she instilled in me in the three years and 11 months that we had together on this Earth — she instilled values that transcend the moment,' he said. Bailey paid homage to his mother before he got married. He flew his now-wife Emma to his mom's gravesite and showed her the house his mom grew up in. He then took her to the Sioux City airport where Flight 232 crash-landed. Bailey, who said he has no fear of flying, said the runway was covered with weeds and cracks. 'It's hallowed ground,' Bailey said. 'It's the same place where my mom left this Earth.' Art has also become a refuge for Bailey. He said he was able to gain perspective on his loss by immersing himself in the artwork of a Japanese-American sculptor named Isamu Noguchi. 'It (Noguchi's art) helped me understand that my experience is just this tiny speck within a much larger constellation of humanity across time,' he said. 'It's this idea that we're all in this plane together.' Bailey said he once worried that he'd never stop being the boy in the photograph. But through art and telling his story, he was able to mourn the loss of his mother and move forward. 'It's allowed me to come to terms with it and almost harness it — not as a superpower, but as something that I can channel,' he said about surviving the plane crash. 'I guess it's all about … accepting that I'll always be processing it.' McDonough pressed the gun against his head. Tears streamed down his face. He heard himself say, 'Pull the f**king trigger! Pull the f**king trigger!' As he sat in his car that October day in 2014, he thought about his wife, Alison, and their daughter, Michaela. How would they react to hearing news of his suicide? What would the area's emergency responders — many of whom he knew — think upon finding his body? He then heard another sound. It was the Katy Perry song, 'Firework,' on his car radio. In the song, Perry sings about someone who feels like 'a waste of space' and is buried 'six feet under screams' that no one else can hear. She urges them to 'ignite the light' and persevere. 'If you only knew what the future holds,' she sings. 'After a hurricane comes a rainbow.' McDonough listened. He lowered his gun. Then he tossed it in the back seat and drove home. But that decision was only the beginning. He knew he couldn't ignite the light on his own. Finding community is what had saved him from the beginning. McDonough had a troubled background when he applied to join the Granite Mountain Hotshots at 21. He saw firefighting as his last chance to salvage his life. Their leader, Eric Marsh, took a chance on him, and the Hotshots became his new family. Marsh became a mentor and a big brother figure: tough, but wise and full of grace. Fighting wildfires is brutal work. It's a young person's job that requires exceptional physical fitness. McDonough's crew routinely made six-mile runs, wearing full gear, in scorching temperatures. They fought zig-zagging fires that created columns of smoke so large they could be seen by NASA satellites. The firefighters usually carried only chainsaws, drip torches and hand tools. 'It's the only natural disaster we combat,' he told CNN. 'We have nothing to combat tornadoes, monsoons and earthquakes. With wildfires we say, 'We're standing our ground. You stop here.'' McDonough began to stand his ground against the guilt and shame that engulfed him. Finding a new community helped. It began with new mentors. A week after he placed the gun to his head, a counselor approached him at a commemorative event for firefighters and asked how he was doing. Buzzed from drinking, he decided to depart from his lone survivor script. He told the counselor he had considered killing himself the week before but couldn't pull the trigger. He told her he felt like a failure as a father because he was so depressed all the time. He told her he didn't think he could go on. Then he took another sip and looked for her reaction. She raised an eyebrow, then referred him to another counselor. Several weeks later, he found himself yelling in that counselor's office, venting about his guilt and shame. She responded with a challenge: 'Are you willing to put in the work?' Then he found another source of help: faith. A local pastor invited McDonough to come to a Christian recovery group and share some of his story. The pastor was shrewd. He could tell McDonough was struggling, but he appealed to his firefighter's sense of duty and pride in telling him other men needed his help. By the time McDonough spoke to the group, he had written a memoir about the Hotshots and the Yarnell Hill Fire. Actor Miles Teller played him in a 2017 movie adapted from the book. But he said he felt like an imposter, a shell of himself. He didn't know how to explain that to the recovery group. They thought he had everything, but he kept wishing he had what they had. 'They didn't understand that's not the reason you want to be known,' he said. 'I don't want to be known as the lone survivor.' More meetings with the pastor and counselor followed. One night, the tension culminated with McDonough sitting in his truck, praying for a way out of drinking. 'Reveal yourself to me,' he prayed. He wasn't answered by the sound of a celestial choir. But he felt something shift. He didn't have the same hunger to drink anymore. 'I still felt pain, but I felt at peace with the pain because I didn't have to run from it,' he said. In time, McDonough found a new group of brothers and sisters in church and in the recovery group. Today, he is the co-owner of two Christian-based substance abuse treatment centers, Holdfast Recovery and Anchor Point. McDonough said the groups are open to all faiths — and people with no faith — but especially to first responders who struggle with PTSD. He's now married, and he and his wife are raising three kids. He said his sobriety has lasted for eight years now. He's also returned to firefighting as a member of a city fire department. 'My life has been on an upward trajectory,' he said. Although McDonough no longer wrestles with 'the beast' as Cavanagh does, he said he still must be vigilant about his self-destructive tendencies. Surviving a disaster is dramatic, but there's another challenge that awaits people like himself and Ramesh, the Air India survivor, he said. 'This gift of survival is a beautiful thing, but that's not enough,' he said. 'You must have a team around you. But that's only good if you use them.' There's a final lesson miraculous survivors like Bailey, Cavanagh and McDonough offer. They help us expand our definition of heroism to include anyone who has survived something horrible with their humanity intact. For any survivor, the ability to greet the morning each day with gratitude and courage — especially if they've returned to the place that caused them so much pain — well, there's something miraculous about that, too. John Blake is a CNN senior writer and author of the award-winning memoir, 'More Than I Imagined: What a Black Man Discovered About the White Mother He Never Knew.'
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