Other communities in the United States were also experimenting with advanced emergency medical care. Pittsburgh's branch of Freedom House paramedics are credited as the first emergency medical technician (EMT) trainees in the United States. Pittsburgh's Peter Safar is referred to as the father of CPR. In 1967, he began training unemployed African-American men in what later became Freedom House Ambulance Service, the first paramedic squadron in the United States. Almost simultaneously, and completely independent from one another, experimental programs began in three U.S. centers; Miami, Florida; Seattle, Washington; and Los Angeles, California. Each was aimed at determining the effectiveness of using firefighters to perform many of these same advanced medical skills in the pre-hospital setting in the civilian world. Many in the senior administration of the fire departments were initially quite opposed to this concept of 'firemen giving needles', and actively resisted and attempted to cancel pilot programs more than once. In Seattle, the Medic One program at Harborview Medical Center and the University of Washington Medical Center, started by Leonard Cobb, M.D., began training firefighters in CPR in 1970. Dr. Eugene Nagel trained city of Miami firefighters as the first U.S. paramedics to use invasive techniques and portable defibrillators with telemetry in 1967. Dr. Jonathan Wasserberger helped actualize the teaching curriculum associated with this innovative training in 1973.