WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) — Richard Barnett has been fighting fires in the Air Capital for three decades. He credits his success to the lessons he learned while serving in the Air Force.
“I hadn’t seen a whole lot of the world,” Barnett said. “Hadn’t seen much outside of Missouri, maybe Oklahoma and Illinois, and I felt I wanted to do something bigger for myself, bigger than myself.”
This southeast Missouri native found his calling serving as an Air Force firefighter.
“You know, average firefighters, they’re going to specialize in structural and EMS and things like that, whereas with Air Force firefighters, we do have the aircraft that were supposed to protect as well, so we’re learning about the inventory of the aircraft, the different types of jet fuel that they’re going to use,” he said…