Dennis Childress is an author, lecturer, and instructor who recently retired from the Orange County Fire Authority in Southern CA after just over 39 years in the Fire Service. He's authored a great number of articles in fire service publications nationally on subjects from training to wildland, and is on the team of authors responsible for the Firefighter's Handbook by Delmar in its third printing. He's one of the team of eight put together by the NWCG and NFPA to create the nationally distributed Urban/Interface Firefighters Series a couple years ago. Dennis holds an Associate in Arts degree in Fire Science and a Bachelor of Science Degree in Fire Protection Administration. He is a Certified Fire Officer and a Certified Chief Officer with the State of CA. He sits on the NFPA 1500 Committee representing the CA Fire Service as well as STEAC (Statewide Training and Education Advisory Committee) for the CA State Fire Marshal. He's also been on the Executive Board for the Southern CA Training Officer's Association for over 10 years. He is the Team Leader for the Level 1 Fire Command curriculum series for State Fire Training and instructs in both levels of Command (Fire and Chief Officer) as well as ICS and a number of "S" classes in CA as well as other states on a regular basis.