Fayetteville Fire Department to begin cancer screenings: 'We want everyone to go home well'

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. (WTVD) -- The Fayetteville Fire Department is making a concerted effort to reduce the risk of cancer for its firefighters. The US Fire Administration reports firefighters are 14 percent more likely to die of cancer compared to the general public.

Retired Captain Jay Leonard told ABC11 that most firefighters he knew didn't worry about cancer much when he was working for the Fayetteville Fire Department in the '90s and 2000s.

"You never thought about those things...cancer was just really never one of those concerns," he said.

Leonard said he didn't see it coming when he was diagnosed with melanoma skin cancer in 2014.

"I had a spot on my jaw, a small brown spot the size of my fingernail. I had it for five years. It was looked at but never, never tested," he said.

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Leonard said it hasn't been determined if his cancer diagnosis was directly caused by his 30-year career fighting fires in Fayetteville. However, he and the Fayetteville Fire Department said the diagnosis was part of a disturbing trend they were finding among their firefighters.

"In more recent years, we've actually lost six firefighters due to cancer, and countless numbers of retirees have went on to pass away from cancer after retirement," said Fayetteville Fire Department Asst. Chief Adam Ferguson. "But it's more recently, that we've actually started to connect cancer to firefighting and we've known this has been an issue for a while. But in 2022, we lost Battalion Chief John Bowen to firefighter cancer and it was actually ruled a line of duty death, which was a first for us."

After requests from the fire department, the city of Fayetteville allocated $45,000 in the 2025 city budget for the first time to incorporate cancer screenings into firefighters' annual physicals.

The department said it is just their latest milestone in working to mitigate cancer risks for their fighters. Officials have also installed more advanced washing machines called extractors at stations, more protective gear, and have begun encouraging firefighters to take measures like changing their gear and linens more frequently.

"We don't want our folks to just go home," Ferguson said. "We want everybody to go home well."