Inside Oakland

On April 30th, Inside Oakland is going somewhere you've probably never been before.
It's heading inside Fire Station 1, home of Oakland's Emergency Operations Center, for an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the nerve center that keeps our city safe. And we're sitting down with the man who runs it all: Oakland Fire Chief Damon Covington.

Chief Covington is Oakland through and through. A Bishop O'Dowd grad. A man who heard a calling in his early 20s and answered it, joining the Oakland Fire Department as a firefighter-paramedic over 26 years ago. Since then, he's held virtually every rank in the department, from engineer to battalion chief to deputy chief, before being appointed permanent Fire Chief in October 2023.

The Oakland Fire Department covers the city with 500 uniformed personnel across three shifts, and responds to roughly 96,000 emergency calls each year; more than 80% of which are medical emergencies. Chief Covington oversees it all, and now he's ready to talk frankly about what it means for your business, your nonprofit, and your neighborhood.

We will also hear from Elliott Jones, Program Manager of the Oakland Fire Department’s Mobile Assistance Community Responders of Oakland (MACRO) program. Jones joined OFD in November 2021, and helped launch MACRO in April 2022. The program deploys teams that provide basic first responder aid, connect residents with health and social services, respond to low-level emergency and non-emergency calls involving individuals experiencing mental health-related incidents, and serve as community advocates on the ground.