You don’t really understand the fire service until you’re standing in the firehouse, trying to keep up with the rhythm of conversations — part jokes, part trauma, part adrenaline. That’s where I found myself one afternoon at the Apopka Fire Department, invited into a world I knew very little about. I never got to see the tower truck that day, but I got something more valuable: the people who ride it.
I sat down with three of Apopka’s finest – Lieutenant Justin Joseph, Engineer Thomas Garner, and Firefighter Jacobe Brown – to get a look behind the sirens. What I found was a powerful mix of passion, humility, and dedication, from three very different men with one shared mission: serve, protect, and grow stronger together.
Joseph, Garner, and Brown provided me with real, unfiltered conversations about what it means to serve in one of the fire service’s most intense and specialized roles. And for a journalist-in-training like me, getting that kind of access was humbling.
Tower Truck 101: What makes it different?…