An Unprecedented Baby Boom at Windsor Fire and Rescue Services
Thanks to the brave men and women at Essex County’s largest fire department, 2025 saw a thirty-alarm fire in local maternity wards. The Drive sat down with the firefighter who made sure this historical quirk was commemorated on film for posterity.
Speed is of the essence in firefighting, but Rick Miller didn’t mind finishing last this one time.
An active firefighter in his eighth year of service with Windsor Fire and Rescue Services, Miller welcomed his first child one week before Christmas 2025. Miller’s daughter, having snuck in just before the close of the year, was the thirtieth of thirty babies at Windsor’s municipal fire prevention and protection authority last calendar year—enough for two full soccer teams with ample substitutes.
As Miller explains, Fire and Rescue currently boasts an uncommonly young workforce in the wake of a wave of coincidentally coordinated retirements and buyouts. The department currently employs 258 “on the floor,” full-time firefighters, meaning the 29 pregnancies (including one pair of twins) equated to one for every ninth service member. (What’s more, the baby boom grows even louder when you factor in ancillary and support staff, like dispatchers, several of whom also had babies last year.)
Miller and his wife were delighted to learn they were expecting in late April of last year, by which point they were already aware of a half-dozen colleagues with newborns and several more with upcoming due dates. “Every time somebody in our department has a child, our fire dispatch team puts out an email notice welcoming them into the fire family,” explains Miller, speaking with me during a rare moment of quiet when both our respective infants were down for an afternoon nap. “We kept getting these emails— two, three a month. Within the past few years, we’d noticed an uptick, but this was unheard of.”
Around this time, Miller came across a Good Morning America segment on a “baby boom” at the Chandler, Arizona fire department; the piece featured a group photo of “18 or so” new parents and their kids. “I wondered if we were going to come close to that,” he recalls. “If so, I thought it would be pretty cool to get a similar photo.”
In the end, the remarkable shot—we think it speaks for itself—was captured by Jessica Tulio, a professional photographer specializing in family and “lifestyle” shoots who happens to be married to a Fire and Rescue servicemember. As Miller explains, the production was no small undertaking: the logistics involved triangulating dozens of nap schedules, securing shift coverages, locking down a fire truck, begging for agreeable weather, and ensuring enough real estate, food, and parking space for 29 service members, the 30 babies, and dozens of grandparents, partners and spouses, and siblings.
In the end, the Fire Service settled on a March Sunday morning at 10 a.m., and everybody showed up. The VIPs arrived in uniform: The new additions were outfitted in custom onesies showing off the International Association of Fire Fighters and Windsor Fire and Rescue crests.
“Everybody moved heaven and earth to be able to participate,” says Miller, who credits Chief James Waffle and the Fire and Rescue administration for their critical support. “I can’t thank the members, their spouses, and all their other children enough for making the time to show up. In our line of work, we talk often about family, that closeness, and that brotherhood and sisterhood: looking back on it, it really overwhelms me.”
As a new dad, Miller is delighted to be figuring things out in parallel with so many colleagues. “The Fire Service is a family and the station is your home away from home” he relates. “I always say the firehall’s been a great precursor to parenthood in terms of the skills it teaches you. We learn to cook, clean, cut the grass, and ultimately truly make a home in a way I think translates a lot.”
Miller, like several of his colleagues, represents a second-generation in the vocation; he still recalls visiting his own father at the fire station, and he has photos of himself in those environs when he was about the age his daughter is now.
As Miller already knew well, a firefighter’s schedule poses unique challenges but confers real benefits for family life. “There’s a lot of sacrifice—we do miss a lot of birthdays and holidays,” he explains, “but our shift schedule means we’re able to do a lot of things other parents can’t. I get to spend four days a week with my daughter!”
While Miller really does think he has “the best job in the world,” his recently life has featured contours the new parents reading this will know all too well. “Some days its tough,” he confirms. “When you’ve had a fire all night long, you’ve slept for 45 minutes, and you come home and your spouse hands you the baby. Your kid doesn’t care what went on the night before!”
Still, few firefighters show up at the station expecting or desiring a frictionless life. “When you’re trying to cook dinner and your kid starts crying and you need to tend to them,” he relates, “well, the same thing happens in the fire service. When a call comes in, you’ve gotta put everything else down.”
Whatever the future holds, Miller and his colleagues will always have their one-of-a-kind photo to crystallize this period in their collective life.
“I know she’s not going to remember it,” he admits, “but I’m always going to think about these moments with my daughter even as she grows up.”
He and 28 others.
