For some firefighters, success is measured by emergencies handled and lives saved.
For Lt. Kris Siegert, it’s measured by something harder to count: the fires that never happened.
After 16 years with the Mt. Lebanon Fire Department, including the last nine leading its Fire and Life Safety Education program, Siegert has retired, leaving behind a program that has expanded far beyond the traditional classroom.
“I had a blast doing this stuff,” Siegert said. “I always found it fulfilling and rewarding. Exhausting, but very rewarding.”
And to top off a career of service, Siegert received the Power of Red Award from the American Red Cross, just days after his official retirement in June, alongside firefighter Brian Loughridge and Jefferson Elementary School student Shivansh Shivansh.
On New Year’s Day 2026, Shivansh used what he learned in a fire and life safety class from Loughridge and Siegert to help his family escape a home fire and call 9-1-1. It’s just one of many examples of the impact the program has had on students.
Siegert joined the department in 2009 after returning home to Mt. Lebanon with his wife, Marina, and their growing family. Before the fire service, Siegert worked in veterinary medicine, followed by a stint in commercial diving in the Gulf of Mexico, where he serviced underwater pipelines and infrastructure.
“It was the only job I had that didn’t keep me up at night,” he said of diving. “You would just get up, do what needed to be done, and then you go to sleep.”
But after losing several friends on the job, he decided it was time for a safer career and returned to veterinary medicine before ultimately joining the Mt. Lebanon Fire Department.
“I liked the idea of giving back to my community,” he said.
Not long after becoming a volunteer firefighter, Siegert discovered a passion for education.
His oldest son had just started kindergarten when then-Fire and Life Safety Educator Mike Stohner invited him to help teach fire safety lessons at Lincoln Elementary.
“I got to teach my son’s class and his peers,” Siegert explained.
The experience changed the course of his career.
“This is amazing,” he remembered thinking. “I like working in veterinary medicine, but this is the most rewarding, fulfilling, fun job I’ve ever had.”
When a full-time position became available, Siegert stepped into the role that he would hold for the next nine years.
Rather than rebuild the department’s longstanding education program, he focused on strengthening it.
“We had been teaching in schools for 30 years at this point,” he said. “I didn’t have to make new connections.”
Instead, he updated lessons using new technology, examined fire data to identify modern risks and adapted the curriculum to reflect changing hazards facing families.
One of the biggest turning points came after a house fire in which Siegert helped rescue a 17-year-old boy with Down syndrome — a student at Mt. Lebanon whom Siegert
and the other firefighters had never met, despite their extensive involvement in the schools. The teenager survived, but the experience exposed a gap in the department’s education efforts.
“It opened up an opportunity to being like, ‘Hey, where are the kids that we’re not reaching? Where are the most vulnerable kids in town? And how can we get to them?’”
Working alongside Mt. Lebanon School District staff, Siegert helped develop specialized fire safety lessons for students in life skills and support classrooms. The instruction needed to be more hands-on,
more direct and tailored to a student’s individual needs.
“I didn’t do this alone by any means,” Siegert said. “I had a ton of help.”
Some of the program’s biggest successes came quietly.
Siegert recalled one high school student who never spoke during fire safety lessons for two years. Then, during the third year, another student asked a question.
“The boy who had never spoken to me turned to that child and told him everything I would have said, word for word,” Siegert said. “Just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not working.”
Over the years, Siegert expanded the department’s educational reach beyond elementary school, adding kitchen fire safety lessons for middle school students, weather preparedness for driver’s education classes and fire extinguisher training for high school seniors.
He also built a volunteer network that now includes firefighters, EMTs and even parents who help teach lessons alongside department staff.
“I’m actually proud of how we were able to grow the programs,” he said.
His work also gained attention outside Mt. Lebanon. Siegert presented the department’s adaptive fire safety curriculum at conferences in North Carolina and Cambria County, sharing lesson plans with educators from other communities.
“As far as I can tell, we’re the only ones doing what we’re doing at this level,” he said. “There’s no reason that it can’t be more.”
Despite the many accomplishments, Siegert is reluctant to take credit.
“The stuff that people want to celebrate … this was my job,” he said. “The expectation is to reduce risk in the community, to reduce the fire danger and keep people safe.”
His successor, Josh Sadoway, better known to the kids he’ll be teaching as Firefighter Juice Box, said Siegert’s influence extends well beyond lesson plans.
“He’s taught me everything about the program, about building the relationships with the school district and the non-school district facilities,” Sadoway said. “You’re kind of the face that a lot of people in different parts
of the community interact with.”
Sadoway said he hopes to build on that foundation while bringing his own style to the role.
“I’m excited to establish my style of teaching with the program,” he said. “So they can learn how cool it is to be a firefighter and how cool fire safety can be.”
Siegert believes that fresh perspectives will only strengthen the program.
“It’s time for a fresh face, fresh ideas and fresh style,” he said.
As he settles into retirement, Siegert is looking forward to a different kind of adventure. With both of his sons leaving home this year — one for college and the other to attend Interlochen Arts Academy — he and his wife are preparing to become empty nesters.
“Traveling is high up on the list,” he said.
But if there’s one lesson he hopes every Mt. Lebanon student carries with them long after leaving his classroom, it’s a simple one.
“Everything’s less scary when you have a plan,” Siegert said. “You don’t have to be an adult to do the right thing.”