David Denniston is a strong advocate for firefighter safety, health, and well-being. For the past 25 years, Chief Denniston has shared this message with emergency service organizations across the entire country on the local, regional, state, and national levels. He has presented and spoken at tradeshows, conferences, and meetings and has been the keynote at many events. His passion for keeping emergency responders safe has never wavered and is the core of every presentation he does.  During COVID, Chief Denniston saw the need to continue emergency responder well-being and training and launched a couple of webinar platforms to reach even more responders. The webinars have reached over 26K live viewers, with almost as many recorded views consumed after the events. These webinars have been viewed in 48 states and four countries.  Each has a strong message of emergency responder safety and leadership responsibilities.

Since December 23, the Chief has been leading a national effort based out of NY to digest and understand the proposed 29 CFR 1910.156 by OSHA. While Dave agrees 100% that most of these changes are needed and overdue, he is concerned with the logistics of how this is being rolled out and the possible negative impacts it could have on emergency responders and the Authority of Jurisdictions that oversee them. This is especially hard-hitting for the volunteer fire service, which is still the backbone of the American Fire Service. Denniston firmly believes that by working together, we can make this an even stronger living document and effort to improve responder safety.

On April 5th, 2024, Chief Denniston filed public comments with OSHA, addressing some concerns and possible solutions.   I have read his concerns and agree with the context of his comments, and I would ask that OSHA allow Mr. Denniston a seat at the table and the opportunity to help navigate a solution that we can all live with and gain from in the name of safety.

My signature below acknowledges that I am asking OSHA to consider these comments and allow us a seat at the table moving forward. By working together, we can and will take major steps in reducing the annual line-of-duty deaths and injuries to our emergency responders.