The Minneapolis fire chief is retiring on Wednesday, but he isn't leaving the community that raised him.

After 31 years with the Minneapolis Fire Department, Chief Bryan Tyner is calling it a career. But he wasn't the little kid who grew up playing with a fire truck.

"I wanted to be an NBA power forward, but only grew up to be six one, so that didn't work out," Tyner said.

Tyner grew up in north Minneapolis

"I had a great childhood growing up in north Minneapolis. I mean, even then, it was probably one of the tougher parts of the city, but certainly not like it was now, but we had a community on the north side," Tyner said. "So there's still a sense of community, but I don't feel like it's as tight-knit, maybe, as it was in the past. We see a lot of things that most people never see and experience."

It's something that attracted him to the job.

"Really, it was the ability to kind of serve the community — the community I grew up in — and feed my inner junkie by being able to go into fires and all of these medical runs and all of these other things," Tyner said. "So when I came on, I was just happy to be here. You know, I didn't have really any notions that I would become a chief."

But he would rise through the ranks, working for a time at station six, the busiest station in the city on the fourth busiest rig in the country. Tyner went from firefighter to captain, eventually rising to chief in 2020.

"Life really changed after the pandemic, and then when you combine that with the, you know, riots behind the George Floyd killing. I think life really changed for a lot of people at that time," Tyner said.

He says it was the hardest time in his career.

"I think being a Black man, you know, I had a lot of the same feelings that the rioters had a lot of the same anger, but at the same time, I had a duty to protect the city and, you know, make sure that we didn't burn down the city. And so I really leaned into that part of it, and kind of had to put everything else on the back burner and try to deal with that later. So, it was a lot of conflict for me personally, at that time, compartmentalizing, absolutely," Tyner said.

Tyner knows the toll firefighting can take on your mind and was part of the change to get first responders the help they need.

"Well, we didn't have anything when I was a firefighter," Tyner said. "Mental health, a lot of times, you know, we should just call it burnout. If a guy, you know, just kind of, you know, checked out or whatever, we didn't really recognize it as PTSD.  We always thought that that was something that soldiers suffered."

The business he will leave unfinished is his push for a larger department.

"So firefighting is really designed to be done with four-person crews, and right now we're running all of our engines with three-person crews," Tyner said. "We really need 45 more people in order to meet the NFPA standard of four people on a rig. As far as the city I'd like to see us continue to grow closer together." 

"It means everything. It's been the honor of a lifetime," Tyner said when asked what it meant to him to be such a big part of the Minneapolis Fire Department's history.

Tyner is not part of the nationwide search for the next chief.

He will now serve as Executive Director of the Phyllis Wheatley Community Center, continuing to give back to the city that raised him.