Brian Marek is the type of colleague everyone wants on their team and the employee every boss wants in their organization. A self-starter with a can-do attitude, Marek worked for the Muskegon, MI, Fire Department for 21 years—most recently as a fire mechanic—until his retirement on Dec. 1, 2019. Marek’s dedication to learning and desire to expand and promote the emergency vehicle technician profession within his state has made him the recipient of the 2019 EVT of the Year award.
A lifelong learner
Marek began his career in the fire service as a volunteer firefighter at the age of 18, working alongside his father. Although his family owned a junkyard, Marek enjoyed fighting fires and wanted to make it his full-time career rather than joining the family business. Five years after he began as a volunteer, Marek was hired full time at a professional department.
From 1998 to 2011, Marek worked as a firefighter at the Muskegon Fire Department, but when the opportunity arose in 2011 to be promoted to fire mechanic within the department, he couldn’t hide his enthusiasm. Although he never had any official mechanical training growing up, Marek had always had an interest in mechanics and how vehicles worked. “It came full-circle,” he said. “From working in a junkyard early on to now being able to spend my days working on trucks. It’s where I wanted to be.”
What he soon realized, however, was that he had a lot to learn. Of the fire mechanics that he replaced, none of them were certified EVTs—it’s not a requirement—but earning that certification was a personal goal of Marek’s. “It was something I wanted to do for myself,” he said. “I wanted to prove myself to other people and show that I had met this standard. I think that EVT certification is a very important thing in our industry to try to promote.”
The path of EVT certification, he soon found, is no simple task. Dedicated to improving his craft, however, Marek took to studying. “Lots and lots of studying,” he said with a chuckle. Marek has all 22 EVT certifications, including Master Fire Apparatus EVT, Master Ambulance EVT, Master ARFF EVT, Law Enforcement Tech EVT, Management EVT, as well as ASE Master Medium-Heavy Vehicle Tech and ASE Master Automotive.
Learning has been a passion for Marek for as long as he can remember. “It’s a hobby to me,” he said. “At night, we had a lot of time to kill at the station and if I didn’t have something in my hands to study, I didn’t know what else I was going to do.” What he loved about completing the certifications was that he was learning something about his career every night. “Just a little bit here and there. Every time I read something different that the EVT Certification Commission put out, it made me want to do and learn more.” But it’s not just about educating himself—Marek shares his passion for education with others, as well as his desire to promote EVT certification.
Sharing the knowledge
The Muskegon Fire Department runs fire mechanics, making Marek both a firefighter and mechanic. While this dual position came with its challenges, Marek said it allowed him to better educate those firefighters he worked alongside. “I’d be the one driving the truck and fixing it, and I believed that gave me the opportunity to educate the firefighters I worked with,” he said. He pointed out that there can be separation and miscommunication in departments that operate a separate garage or outsource mechanics. “If a fellow firefighter had an issue with the truck, I could educate them on how something works or why something is broken or how it broke,” he said.
Marek also took a similar approach outside of the Muskegon Fire Department. For the last few years, he has worked to spread EVT certification awareness across the state of Michigan. In fact, he has even taken the initiative, along with a partner from the Detroit Fire Department, to create the Michigan Association of EVTs, the first association of its kind in the state. Marek’s dedication to expand EVT certification within Michigan is apparent—he has traveled on his own dime to different state and regional EVT association meetings to learn how to get his own association off the ground. “We’ve had some good support trying to get it going, from Spartan and the Texas Association of EVTs,” he said. The goal of the association would be to increase the number of EVTs in Michigan, among other things. “In some states they won’t even let you touch a fire truck without being an EVT,” he noted. “That’s what I am hoping for in Michigan and for all the states, eventually.”
He believes a key benefit of associations is to spread awareness and education to everyone within the fire service. “Associations don’t just educate EVTs … they educate fire chiefs and administrators, too,” Marek said. “You can educate all the EVTs you want but if the administration doesn’t buy into it, it’s just a piece of paper at that point. When the administration wants to use that standard, that is a benefit for the entire fire service.”
Challenges and advice
Through his eight years as a fire mechanic, Marek has found a lot of things he loves about the job. “It feels good to take an emergency vehicle that’s not working, fix it and then see it go respond on a call,” he said.
Going forward, however, he notes that the fire service has larger challenges to deal with, including finding technicians. “Nobody in the private sector wants to go down this path for some reason,” he said. “The fire service needs to find folks who have the dedication to want to do extra testing and certifications to become EVTs … and it’s tough.” Marek believes that the fire industry needs to look to promoting younger folks within the fire service and the younger generation needs to step up.
And he has advice for those mechanics reading this article who are not certified: “I say go out there and do it. Get the list and just study. With me not having any formal college degree in this, I just studied my butt off and had no problem passing the test. So just try it, go for it. You have nothing to lose.” But most importantly, he said, “Never stop studying. Never stop learning.”
The 2019 EVT of the Year Award is sponsored by Spartan and co-presented by Firehouse and the Fire Department Safety Officers Association (FDSOA). Marek will be honored at the FDSOA’s Apparatus, Safety and Maintenance Conference, Monday, Jan. 13, 2020, in Scottsdale, AZ.
