Chief Knowles Has Loved Every Day of His Career. Here's How You Can Too.

Walk us through your career journey. How did you get to where you are today?

I'm more mechanically minded, so college was not my first choice. My mom and sisters got the brains of the family as teachers and chemists, while my brother and I got my dad's side: hard work, building houses, fixing cars.

I come from a long line of veterans. Coming out of high school, I knew I wanted to serve my country. I joined the Navy, two years active, then six years in the reserves. When I came back, I knew I wanted to continue to serve, just this time through public service.

I started as a jailer at the Catoosa County Sheriff's Department, worked my way to patrolman, and was a detective when I left about ten years later.

When a position opened up at the Chattanooga Fire Department, I applied. It was competitive back then, only twenty to thirty spots for two to three thousand applicants. I got in, started at the bottom, and worked my way up: firefighter, lieutenant, captain, battalion chief, then assistant chief over special operations, which covers technical rescue, including rope rescue, trench collapse, vehicle extrication, and swift water. This area was and is a passion of mine.

When the Fire Chief position opened, I put my name in the hat, went through the process, and the mayor appointed me. I'm grateful every day. It's an honor to lead this department.

What does your ideal team player look like?

1. You have to have a heart for service. You have to want to serve others, not just your community, but your brothers and sisters in the field. We live together a third of our lives every year. These people are your family. You serve them just as much as the community you’re protecting.

2. You have to be a team player. You cannot do this job by yourself. The minimum we go in on a house fire is two people. If you're not willing to work as a team, you won't make it in this profession.

3. A commitment to always making yourself better. Things change constantly in training, equipment, and standards. If you're stuck in your ways and not willing to learn, you won't make it. The equipment we had twenty years ago is completely different from what we have today. You have to know it like the back of your hand because that equipment is what keeps us alive.

Mental health is a major challenge in first responder careers. How are you approaching it?

It's one of my biggest priorities.

A lot of it starts inside the fire station. We live together so much that we know each other well. If somebody's quiet and they're not normally quiet, you notice. And you reach out.

A lot of the help comes from just sitting around the kitchen talking. That's where a lot of mental health support happens in this profession. Any incident we had, we'd get back, and I'd ask everybody: "Is everyone okay?” And they need to know that if they're not, that's okay. It used to be a big stigma that because we're fine running into fires, nothing bothers us, but it does. 

The message today is, “It's okay not to be okay.”

As a department, we've built out a peer support program with about 15 members, from firefighters all the way through chiefs. If there's a bad call, that team will come in off duty to go sit with that station. Not walking in and saying "are you okay?" but just starting a conversation, and letting it get there naturally.

You mentioned that applicant numbers dropped in your industry during COVID and have been growing since. How have you approached hiring and growing your talent pipeline in light of that? 

For a while, we were only getting a hundred or two hundred applicants per class. This year, we're over five hundred for the October academy. A few things have moved the needle:

• The mayor and city council stepped up and gave firefighters and police officers a significant pay increase. That kept people from leaving and brought new people back in.

• We opened up our borders. In the past, you had to live in Tennessee to work for the city of Chattanooga. Someone could live in Memphis and commute in, but not across the state line in Ringgold. That’s now been changed. 

• About four years ago, we created a community outreach and recruitment coordinator position. That officer is in schools, colleges, and job fairs, out in the community, selling the fire service to anyone who will listen.

• We started prep sessions. Before the physical ability test, we offer voluntary workout sessions with our fitness instructors. They take applicants through the movements they'll need, run them through the obstacle course, and help them get ready. You can see the difference when test day comes. We do the same thing for the written exam, with study sessions led by fire officers walking people through what to prepare for.

The more applicants we have, the better choices we have for improving this profession and this department.  

What advice do you want readers to remember?

Find something you love to do and go all in. If you love what you do, you never work a day in your life. I have not had one day in my fire service career where I didn't love coming to work. If you're coming into this profession, know that you have to be adaptable. If you're not willing to change and learn new ways of doing things, you'll get stuck.

Listen more than you talk. Communication is everything.

Tell people the why. If they don't understand why a decision was made, they'll come up with their own reason. People don't have to agree with every decision I make, and they're not supposed to. But if they understand why I made it, most of them can get behind it.

Do you miss being in the field?

Every single day. There's a radio on in my office so I can listen to everything going on. When a fire kicks off or a vehicle extrication comes in, that adrenaline still kicks in. You want to go.

But that's not my job anymore. My job now is to run the department. To make sure our men and women have the equipment they need to do their job safely. To make sure they go home. That's the most important thing to me, not just serving our community, but serving the people who work here.

Thank you so much for sharing, Terry.

If you'd like to learn more about the Chattanooga Fire Department, find more info here.