Jason Silvestri has been working as a state certified Firefighter/Paramedic for over 25 years, having served 21 years in Brevard County, Florida with a dual fire and EMS transport system. Silvestri started his career as a volunteer firefighter at age 18 and completed almost 9 months of training right out of high school to become a state certified Firefighter/EMT. He was immediately hired as a full-time firefighter marking the beginning of his career. After 2 years as a Firefighter/EMT, Silvestri went back to school to become a state of Florida Firefighter/Paramedic. After 2 years working in a primarily fire-based system, Silvestri decided to advance himself and was hired in a much bigger dual fire and EMS transport system. During his past 25 years in the fire service, extensive schooling and teaching of specialty class opened many doors which allowed him to expand his knowledge base and increase his experiences in the profession he passionately loves. Silvestri currently holds numerous specialty qualifications and certification on the structural side of firefighting and has moved up through the ranks in the National Wildland Firefighting community in his 16 years of wildland.
As a Firefighter/Paramedic and Wildland officer, he has performed many functions that always began by starting at the bottom and working his way up allowing him to appreciate and understand everyone’s job and the part that everyone plays to make an incident successful. Silvestri has served as a lead Incident commander, tragic MCI’s, officer on both structural engines and wildland engines, and has worked on western hand crew for 6 years; eventually working up to Squadboss and then Crewboss. He has also worked as driver engineer on both structural engines, wildland engines, and aerials. He was lead instructor at local State of Florida approved fire academy and lead instructor for Maritime Firefighting training center in one of the busiest ports in the world. He has worked with Federal agencies on federal land as Prescribed Burn Manager and Pile Burner. Additionally, he was an NWCG instructor, a Florida Forest Service Instructor, and has been Nationally Argeous Red Card certified for the past 16 years. Silvestri has taken the lessons learned in his experiences with a 911 structural department that averages over one hundred thousand calls annually, the experiences he has had out west on wildfires and his experiences as a paramedic to better understand the mental and physical demands of high stress jobs.