Brian Cummings, a retired former Los Angeles fire chief, joined Station 19 as the fire technical adviser, not entirely knowing what he would be doing on a day-to-day basis. But that didn’t really matter. When the opportunity arose, his wife, Mallory Lewis, said take it. Perhaps that was because, in a way that feels fated, Cummings’ career trajectory was eerily similar to Station 19’s Captain Andy Herrera’s.
Right after World War II, in 1947, Cummings’ father, Lewis Cummings, joined the Los Angeles City Fire Department during a period of time when there were only two firehouses where Black men could work. Lewis was eventually promoted to engineer (the person who drives the truck), so naturally, Brian Cummings spent a lot of his childhood in and out of firehouses.
Eventually, the firefighting bug caught Cummings, and he left UCLA, where he was pursuing an engineering degree, to join the Los Angeles Fire Department.