Jeremy Craft Lehi Fire Chief: Emergency Services, Community & Growth

Lehi Fire Chief Jeremy Craft shares his journey from Montana to leading Utah's fastest-growing fire department. Explore EMS evolution, firefighter cancer initiatives, youth programs, and Lehi's public safety history.

Jeremy Craft Lehi Fire Chief: Emergency Services, Community & Growth

Lehi Fire Chief Jeremy Craft shares his journey from Montana to leading Utah's fastest-growing fire department. Explore EMS evolution, firefighter cancer initiatives, youth programs, and Lehi's public safety history.

Jeremy Craft on Serving Lehi: From Montana Mountains to Fire Chief

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A Lifetime of Service: How Jeremy Craft Became Lehi's Fire Chief

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Episode Overview

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Episode Highlights

Key Stories from the Interview

A Spark on Bald Mountain

The Call That Proved Training Matters

Honorary Captain for a Day

Building a Department to Match a Growing City

Changing a Flat Tire, Changing a Relationship

Call to Courage

Adapting or Dying

Historical Insights About Lehi

Community and Legacy Themes

Memorable Quotes

Related Lehi Topics

Photo Opportunities for Historical Archive

Full Transcript

Jeremy Craft Lehi Fire Chief Interview - Roots & Branches of Lehi Podcast

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A powerful conversation with Lehi Fire Chief Jeremy Craft about a lifetime of emergency service, saving lives, building community trust, and leading a fire department through one of Utah's most dramatic periods of growth.

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In this episode of Roots & Branches of Lehi , host Ryan Harding sits down with Lehi Fire Chief Jeremy Craft to explore the story behind one of the city's most vital community leaders. Originally from a small town in Montana, Jeremy's journey into emergency services began at just 14 years old and ultimately led him to Lehi, Utah , where he has spent decades serving and protecting the community. His path reflects not only personal dedication, but also the evolution of public safety in a rapidly growing city.

Jeremy shares a behind-the-scenes look at the Lehi Fire Department , revealing that modern firefighting is far more than responding to fires — it is deeply rooted in emergency medical care , public education , and community connection . As Lehi continues to grow, his leadership has helped expand the department from two stations to four, while maintaining a strong culture of service. From life-saving calls to youth programs and firefighter health initiatives, this conversation highlights the people, values, and systems that keep Lehi safe — and why that work matters more than ever in a fast-changing community.

For anyone interested in Lehi Utah history , public safety growth , emergency services , community leadership , or the real stories behind first responders in Utah County, this interview offers both historical perspective and practical insight. Whether you are a longtime resident or new to the area, Chief Craft's story provides essential context for understanding how a small-town fire department adapts to serve one of America's fastest-growing communities.

Prefer to listen? This episode is also available on <a href="https: <a href="https:

Jeremy Craft

Fire Chief, Lehi Fire Department

1990s–Present

Ryan Harding

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At 14 years old, Jeremy accompanied his father — a police officer and search-and-rescue volunteer — on a medical call for a heart attack victim on Bald Mountain in Montana. Accompanied by an emergency room nurse who encouraged him toward paramedicine, that single day on the mountain set the course for his entire career. It is a story about how a small moment in a small town can ignite a lifetime of service.

Jeremy recounts pulling a 16-month-old child from a bathtub. For all intents and purposes, the child was gone. But the crew went to work, performed their jobs, and got him back. The child was flown to Primary Children's Hospital with a bleak outlook — yet years later, he graduated high school with no deficits whatsoever. For Jeremy, this call affirmed why preparation, repetition, and calm under pressure save lives.

While serving as Fire Chief, Jeremy received a call about a terminally ill young man with less than 48 hours to live who wanted to visit the fire station. Mascots from around the region came with him. Firefighter Aaron Fuller — now a captain — carried the non-ambulatory child through the station. Jeremy placed a fire hat and shirt on him, buckled him into the front of the engine, and asked if he would be the chief's captain for a few minutes. The boy smiled. Jeremy still gets emotional telling the story: "That was the day I remembered what true service was all about."

When Jeremy arrived as chief, Lehi had two fire stations, 35 full-time personnel, and 35 part-timers. Today, the department operates four stations with 82 full-time staff. More importantly, he says they preserved the culture: "I didn't want to just be an answer to a 911 call. I want to be a part of the community." Their cardiac arrest survival rate is among the highest in the state, a point of deep pride.

Jeremy describes a department culture where crews are expected to pull over and change a flat tire if they see someone stranded. They carry stickers in their pockets to hand to children at the grocery store. It is a philosophy summed up simply: "If you care about the community, you find ways to serve them." These small acts, he believes, build the trust that matters when the tones go off.

Four years ago, the department launched a free two-day camp called "Call to Courage" for young women ages 14 to 18. Participants rappel, cut cars open, drag fire hose, and hear leadership lectures from successful women in fire and beyond. The camp filled up in two days this year. Jeremy notes the transformation from day one to day two: "They have a spirit of they can do anything." One graduate has already become a firefighter.

When staffing numbers dropped, Jeremy realized the department's traditional hiring process — testing on weekdays — was eliminating candidates who already had jobs or were in school. He moved testing to Saturdays. Numbers "skyrocketed." His philosophy: "You either adapt as an organization, or you die." He also helped establish a five-city training consortium to share resources and reduce costs across northern Utah County.

This interview offers a unique window into how Lehi, Utah has changed through the lens of its emergency services. Chief Craft's perspective reveals how public safety infrastructure evolves alongside population growth:

Throughout the interview, several broader themes emerge that reflect the values and challenges facing Lehi as it grows while trying to maintain its character:

This episode connects to the broader Roots & Branches of Lehi archive. Explore these related topics to deepen your understanding of Lehi's history and community:

To enhance this community profile, consider adding these visual elements to the historical record:

Chapter 1: Introduction to Roots and Branches of Lehi

Ryan Harding: Welcome to Roots and Branches of Lehi, the podcast where we get to know the faces, stories, and lives that make up our community. I'm Ryan Harding, and I started this podcast as a way for us all to connect with the people we live alongside. Growing up in a small town, I learned that connections go beyond blood. They're built through shared experiences, friendships, and the moments we celebrate together. Each week, we'll sit down with someone new from Lehi to share their unique story, their passions, and what they love most about living here. So whether you've been here for years or just arrived, join us as we deepen our roots and reach out to our branches one story at a time.

Chapter 2: Meet Jeremy Craft, Lehi Fire Chief

Ryan Harding: Welcome Jeremy Craft, the chief of the fire department for Lehi City, right?

Jeremy Craft: Yep, fire chief. Yeah, fire chief.

Ryan Harding: Perfect. Great. Glad to have you here and glad to get to know you a little bit better and get to know your position, get to know what you guys are doing here for Lehi City. And so this will be good to chat with you for a second.

Jeremy Craft: Yeah, thanks for inviting me. I'm excited to share our story.

Chapter 3: From Montana to Lehi – Jeremy's Journey

Ryan Harding: So let's start with you then, I guess, first. Tell me, you know, you're from here or where you from originally?

Jeremy Craft: I actually grew up in Montana. Yeah. And then the job brought me here, actually. I've been down here since '93. A few years.

Ryan Harding: I grew up in North Dakota myself, Bismarck, and we'd go through Montana all the time coming down here to visit my grandparents in Utah. Love Montana. It's a very beautiful state. So came down here to Lehi. So that job directly brought you here then?

Jeremy Craft: The story goes like this. I grew up in a small town in Montana and my parents both volunteered for the local ambulance. My dad was search and rescue. My dad was a police officer, mechanic, police officer. One day when I was 14 years old, he took me on a medical call. It was outside of town, for a gentleman having a heart attack on what we call Bald Mountain. It's kind of like Mount Timpanogos. And really from that day forward, I just wanted to be a paramedic. I was with an emergency room nurse up on the mountain and she told me paramedic is where I should go. So after high school, I went to college on some sports scholarship stuff, but ultimately I just wanted to be a paramedic. And there wasn't really an opportunity in Montana back in the early '90s. So my grandparents lived in Salt Lake. I came down here to pursue that, and in my pursuit of paramedicine, fire service is a bonus. They go hand in hand in Utah. And so that's where it all started. That's how it started — on a mountain in Montana in the '80s.

Chapter 4: What a Fire Chief Actually Does

Ryan Harding: Talk to me about, you know, because you're the fire chief and so a lot of times people think fighting fires, which is part of your job, but from what I understand, east of the Mississippi and west of the Mississippi it's a little different?

Jeremy Craft: There used to be a hard line like that. We do what's called fire-based EMS. Actually, 85% of what we do are emergency medical calls. But on the east coast, they still have traditional fire departments. They don't really do medical. They'll go out on car wrecks to do extrication, but medical is all handled by private ambulances. In my opinion, and of course I'm biased, for the taxpayers this makes much more sense. We play dual roles and it takes less staffing to do the medical and the fire, and we serve the community well.

Ryan Harding: I'm guessing there's not a lot of fires all the time, right? What percentage of your calls are actual fires?

Jeremy Craft: Actual fires, we're probably 5%. And I'm not talking just house fires. We have dumpster fires, car fires, field fires. The reality is we're the only industry that you're ever going to find that we work just as hard to put ourselves out of business as we do to put out fires. We do that through building code enforcements and getting better building codes so buildings don't burn, public education on fire safety. It wouldn't be fun, but no fires would be awesome.

Chapter 5: A Day in the Life of a Firefighter

Ryan Harding: Tell me kind of a typical day for somebody that works for the fire department. What does that look like?

Jeremy Craft: For me, they're different. I do a lot of meetings every day. I like to believe I'm a servant leader. When I get to the office in the morning, I'm usually there 30 minutes before I'm supposed to be. Go through emails. I do a lot of work legislatively in the state to try to help with retirement and cancer and mental health. I try to do a lot of that work early before people get there. Then I start working on department stuff — budget season, I'm working on budget. We just opened another fire station, so really for the last three years that's what I've been doing. There's not a typical day. I also currently am the vice president of Western Fire Chiefs Association, so I got to fill in some work for them during the day.

Ryan Harding: What about a typical firefighter?

Jeremy Craft: We do 48 on, 96 off. Day one, they'll do a pass off with the crew that's leaving. Hey, this is broken. Hey, we noticed this. Hey, we've been going out on this patient quite a bit — they've fallen down, things like that. They immediately go out and start checking off the equipment. They usually spend about an hour to an hour and a half just going through every single tool, every band-aid. Make sure the equipment runs and we got everything we need so when the tones go off, it's there. And then at least in my department, I'm huge on physical fitness. They'll go into PT, spend an hour to an hour and a half working out. That usually takes them to about 10 in the morning. A lot of them at that point will do training — they're already hot and sweaty, so they'll go out and pull some hose and do some training. Come back in, shower, go to the grocery store on day one. They generally buy all their food for lunch that day, dinner, breakfast the next day, lunch and dinner. In the afternoon usually some EMS training, and most of the day is centered around training. At 5:00 it's their time essentially if they're not on calls. But we know that a lot of them kind of hang out just to build that bond that is so necessary to have with the crew. Calls can come at any time. You can pop a fire and be out there for six hours and your whole day is shot. But that's pretty typical without calls interjected.

Ryan Harding: How many are on a crew?

Jeremy Craft: It depends on what type of apparatus they're running. In Lehi, if it's an engine company, they'll generally put three on the engine and two on the ambulance in that house. That's Station 81, 83, and 84 that we just opened. And then 82 is a truck company — takes a lot more people, that's the big ladder truck. Four on the ladder and two on the ambulance. That's what we call minimum staffing. When we get a call, they leave. We drop everything we do. I'm a very mission-driven person. Everything we do surrounds our mission. Our mission statement is our family serving yours. And at the core of our mission is a 911 service. Nothing else matters when the tones go off, but serving that mission.

Ryan Harding: You also take the fire truck to these things even though it's not necessarily a fire?

Jeremy Craft: They're all firefighters and they're all medically trained. On a medical, why does a fire engine or fire truck go? Well, it's very simple. Two people may be able to perform what's necessary medically, but they can't move a patient and continue to perform things that are medically necessary. If we have a patient that's grandma fell down on the second story of a home and she's got a hip injury, they can splinter up and give meds for pain, but they can't move her out of the house effectively without doing further harm. So we always send that engine out for extra personnel. Car accident — another really great example. The paramedics will be doing the medical care while the engine company can be extricating, putting them on a backboard. On a fire they come together as a company and fight fire together. We have four stations, so four companies on every day in Lehi.

Chapter 6: Jeremy's Path to Leadership

Ryan Harding: How long have you been fire chief?

Jeremy Craft: I've been here in Lehi as the fire chief for about 10 and a half years. Tell me your path to becoming fire chief. I moved from Utah and worked for a private ambulance company for a couple years, got to paramedic school. Got hired by Provo Fire. In the meantime, I was working part-time for South Davis Fire — that's kind of where I got my start. At Provo, I got hired as a paramedic firefighter. They run very similar to us and I just loved what I was doing. I'm kind of a progressive person — I like to learn. In the fire service you have promotional exams. I'd been on the job about seven years and an engineer's position opened up. That's the person that drives fire apparatus. I didn't want it but I wanted to take the test. I took the test and did well enough they offered me the promotion. I felt like at that point I really couldn't say no, and I knew I wanted to be an officer someday. It gave me the experience of all the positions below an officer. I took the job and for two years I drove the fire engine. Some people absolutely love the job and I absolutely hated it. I love driving, but on medicals they don't have as much responsibility and I want to be in the action. After about two years, I either got to go to captain or go back to paramedic. I took the captain's test and promoted to captain. Honestly, at that point I was like, okay, this is where I want to be, this is probably where I want to finish my career. I was pretty young for a captain. A couple years later there were big changes happening — new fire chief, a bunch of the old-timers had retired, and battalion chief openings came up. I didn't really want to work for the people I thought were going to be at the top of the list. Not because they weren't good people — I just didn't feel like they were progressive. I wanted to be in a progressive department. I had a conversation with my wife and she said, 'Well, you're in a predicament, aren't you?' I said, 'I kind of am.' She said, 'Well, here's the deal. You either shut up and work for whoever promotes, or you get busy and promote yourself and push this department to be progressive.' That's what I did. I was a battalion chief for almost eight years, and some things happened in that department and I just didn't feel like upward mobility was going to happen for a long time. A buddy of mine called and said, 'Hey, there's a fire chief opening in Lehi. We think you'd be great. You should apply.' And so I did. And here I am.

Ryan Harding: Is there a lot of difference between battalion chief and fire chief?

Jeremy Craft: Huge difference. Battalion chief is on shift with personnel. You're in the action still. You're over all four stations when a platoon's on, but they're still running calls. They still sit down and have meals with the crews. As the fire chief, I'm more administrative. I can affect change faster being in charge, but I don't necessarily get to run the calls anymore.

Ryan Harding: What things are you most proud of over your tenure?

Jeremy Craft: Some of the things I'm super proud of is the growth of the department. When I got to Lehi we were two fire stations, 35 full-time people, 35 part-time people. It was a good department, good morale, they knew how to serve the community well. That wasn't something I had to give them — they already had it. We're now four fire stations, 82 full-time people. In my opinion we've kept that culture. My mantra when I got there was I didn't want to just be an answer to a 911 call — I want to be a part of the community. Because the fire service is such decentralized leadership, it's really difficult to keep that, but we've been able to do that. We're usually cutting edge in paramedicine. Our ROSC rate or survival rate from cardiac arrest is one of the highest percentages you'll find in the state. Recently, me and two of my colleagues started what's called the Utah Firefighter Cancer Initiative. We got statewide early cancer detection testing for firefighters in Utah. We're right in the middle of the process of standing our clinic up because our cancer rates are astronomical.

Ryan Harding: Any idea why that is?

Jeremy Craft: Buildings burn and the carcinogens are in them. Our bodies are superheated, our pores are open and all that stuff comes in. Our turnout gear protects us from heat and steam, but it's not sealed up and so all that stuff gets in. In the past it was a badge of honor to have dirty gear. But those carcinogens were in that gear. Now you won't find dirty gear. If we hit a good fire, they take their gear off, put it in a bag, bring it back. We have special machines that wash that out. But the materials we're building — chairs and tables and stuff in our homes — have more carcinogens than ever. So it's a problem.

Chapter 7: Community Engagement & Youth Programs

Ryan Harding: What kind of things do you do to be part of the community?

Jeremy Craft: We do a lot of public education. Super inviting to the community. If you look at the fire stations I've built, they have a lot of windows so people can see us working and it's inviting. We just stood up a team two years ago called our SAFE team that goes out and does really big public education stuff. More than that, we have this culture of we help when needed. If one of my engines is going to the grocery store and they see somebody on the side of the road with a flat tire, they're expected to pull over and change that flat tire. When they're at the grocery store, they're expected to interact with the public. We have a program called Sticker in Your Pocket. Wish I could say it was mine, but they had it. We have little fire department stickers. You won't find a firefighter that doesn't have one. Every time they interact with a child, they hand them a firefighter sticker. We have a big open house in October in conjunction with Fire Safety Week where we invite kids over to do firefighter activities. One of the ones we're super proud of is a camp called Call to Courage. It's for young ladies 14 to 18 years old. We bring them in for two days. It costs them nothing. We put them through firefighter paces, do leadership lectures from really successful females in the fire industry and outside. We've been doing this four years. We've gotten one firefighter out of it. But more than anything, if you watch them when they come in on day one versus when they leave on day two, they have a spirit of they can do anything. They do rappelling, we cut cars open, they drag fire hose. It's become super popular. I wish we had the capacity to do more — we're doing 25 to 30 ladies a year. It's just stuff like that. For me, it's super easy. If you care about the community, you find ways to serve them.

Jeremy Craft Lehi Fire Chief: Emergency Services, Community & Growth