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This episode is sponsored by a company I've literally been using for over 15 years now and that is 511.

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Now my introduction to their products began when I started wearing 511 uniforms years ago for Anaheim Fire Department.

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Now I've talked about the range of shoes they have and how important

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So if you want to hear more about 511 and their origin story, go to episode

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338 of Behind the Shield podcast with their CEO Francisco Morales.

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Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast as always. My name is James Gearing.

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And this week it is my absolute honor to welcome on the show,

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veteran firefighter, rope rescue guru and the man behind Ronin Rescue, Mark Pfeiffer.

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Now in this conversation, we discuss a host of topics from Mark's journey into the fire service,

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firefighter fitness, cancer, sleep, advances in technology, redundancy and rope rescue, training,

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learning from international teams and so much more.

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Now, before we get to this incredible conversation, as I say every week,

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please just take a moment, go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show,

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leave feedback and leave a rating.

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Every single five star rating truly does elevate this podcast,

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therefore making it easier for others to find.

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And this is a free library of well over 900 episodes of the show.

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So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories

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so I can get them to every single person on planet Earth who needs to hear them.

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So with that being said, I introduce to you Mark Pfeiffer. Enjoy.

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Well, Mark, I want to start by saying two things.

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Firstly, thank you so much to Ryan Allen for connecting us and we'll get to how you guys know each other in a minute.

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And secondly, I want to welcome you to the Behind the Shield podcast today.

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Well, thanks a lot for having me. It's great to be on the podcast.

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I mean, we talked about Ryan in a minute, but when he had mentioned it and I looked you up,

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are you on like 908 or something right now?

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Like it was an incredible number.

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Yeah, now it's amazing what happens if you just don't stop.

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The number gets bigger and bigger.

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Yeah. So congratulations to you for keeping with it.

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Thank you. Thank you very much.

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So where on planet Earth we finding you this afternoon?

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I am in Penticton, British Columbia. That's where I live.

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It's kind of a weird thing for people internationally.

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Not quite north of Spokane, but if you went north of Spokane, kind of, you would be a little bit east of me.

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Most people know where Spokane, Washington is.

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If I started mentioning some of the smaller areas in Washington that I'm north of,

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I'd probably just say I'm in Penticton, BC.

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Yeah, so about 450 kilometers east of Vancouver.

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So 300 miles, sort of thing, 280 miles east of Vancouver.

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I still work as a firefighter down at the coast in Vancouver.

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So I do that commute. We're on 24, so we do that.

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We do that commute. We're on 24, so we do seven shifts a month.

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So I drive back down to the coast seven times a month.

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So with that, I'm just going to jump in.

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People are going to be groaning because I talk about the firefight work week all the time.

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What is the work schedule for you guys in a week?

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So we came from the two days, two nights, four off system, two tens, two 14 nights, four off.

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I worked that for well up until last October.

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So we're talking 28 years and moved into this 24.

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Some of the departments in Metro Vancouver.

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So for people that aren't aware, Metro Vancouver's 20 or 25 different cities

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that all have their own fire department.

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A lot of them have their own police department.

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So we border multiple cities.

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So some of the cities have gone to 24 on, 24 off, 24 on, five days off.

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My city's gone the other way, which is 24 on, 48 hours off, 24 on, four days off.

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So it's kind of a mix depending.

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And of course, the paramedics are still running 12s, at least they're alpha cars.

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They have some different car schedules, but generally say 12 hour days, 12 hour nights.

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And they do two days, two nights.

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The police are still running days and nights.

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And I don't know if they do tens and 14s or 12s.

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So you can figure out that everybody's mixed now.

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You have no idea which platoon you're matching with within your own city,

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let alone the cities next to you.

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See, I've had this conversation with so many people.

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And as I'm sure you're aware in the training that you do, Ryan's a perfect example.

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You know, there you guys are doing tens and 12s and you see us a lot.

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So tens and 14s.

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And you see us a lot where it morphs and people go, OK.

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And I agree with this 100 percent.

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And the fire service specifically, it makes more sense for us to be there 24 hours.

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I always argue by the time 12 hours are gone, I've barely finished my checkouts, workouts,

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you know, training, etc.

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I can't imagine coming in and then having to do all over again.

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But the crazy disconnect that you can have a firefighter doing the exact same job in,

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you know, in Canada and Vancouver that's working 42 hour workweek and then Orange County,

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Florida, you've got a firefighter working 56 hours a week.

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Same exact job.

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And then, you know, if you add in understaffing, now you're working 80 hours plus because of

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mandatory overtime as well.

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Yeah, it's I know I've done a lot of training worldwide and even in Europe.

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I mean, it's your original area.

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I mean, Great Britain, we'll call it close enough to Europe.

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But when I train, I train a lot in Belgium and they were doing one on one day on two

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days off, one day on two days off and just rotated that shift.

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But they also get a bunch of weird days off in there.

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It's very hard to track what they were doing per se.

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But yeah, so you travel around.

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I was doing some competitions in Taiwan and they go to work until they go home.

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And people say, well, yeah, I go to work until I go home.

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But think like three months.

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And so you do these competitions and you're like, why are all these people's families

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here?

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Like, why are they all showing up?

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Why are their kids here?

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There's big hugs and everything.

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Well, it's because they literally haven't seen their family in months.

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It's like the military, they just disappear.

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They go on tasks, they go on, you know, deploy, they go to base, whatever.

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And then they come back when they're done, they're stint, whatever that might be.

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And so, yeah, you get to see a lot of that.

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We have a pretty nice schedule.

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I mean, I can't complain about it.

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Is there things that could be better?

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Of course, there's always things that can be better.

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But when you travel around and see how some of the other firefighters, even in some of

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the states, you know, you talk about Orange County, I've worked with a lot of guys out

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of like Knoxville, their private fire, you look at their pay and their hours and you

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go, I don't really have a lot to complain about.

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Yeah, no, I think this is what I talked about.

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What you have got or the 2472, which I think would be the most consistent because, you

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know, we're trying to get away from only one day between a sleepless night and a sleepless

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night, you know, in these patterns.

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But, you know, I think that that should be the industry standard, you know, and I've

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talked about this a lot.

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We have unions that represent us in North America.

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And I'm baffled because in most other industries, that's one of the first things that they put

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down is, all right, well, let's standardize a work week first before we talk about anything

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else.

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And then how long can you be without sleep is usually in the trucking industry and aviation

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and everything.

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And so I think what you guys and, you know, some departments that have moved to it now

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in Florida and some of the Northeast, you've got the schedule I think we should all be

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doing.

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It's spreading the word to the rest of the fire service.

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I just had two Firefire wives on the show and one of whom her husband worked for a CDF,

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California Department of Forestry, and he could be gone for a month at a time.

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That's a month on shift, not, you know, here and then off at a base and whatever, like

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24 hours straight for 30 days.

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And it's pure insanity.

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And you align that with a lot of the mental and physical health issues that we have that

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either retire our people or even worse, kill our people.

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You know, it's one of those conversations where we really have to all come together

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and say, look, enough is enough.

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You know, what you guys are doing, in my opinion, is what we need to move to or a version of.

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Yeah.

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And I mean, we looked at the two different processes and that was the one we decided

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upon because of the health benefits or I guess the not the detriments that the other one

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had compared to that particular schedule.

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The big concerns, I mean, firefighters being firefighters everywhere is everybody would

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rather have the five days off.

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But I, my business partners at the company that we own and get into that later too, they're

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both on a different department.

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They border my city.

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So I'm south of Vancouver.

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I work in a place called Delta.

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If you ever take a ferry out of Tawas into Vancouver Island, you've gone through my city.

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If you've ever shipped stuff into Delta port, you've been through my city sort of thing.

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But the city next to us, Surrey, they've gone to the one on one off one on five off and

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they're destroyed.

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I mean, that one day off is a right off of a day a lot of times.

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Like they're not there.

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It's by miles will be a work three days.

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Yeah.

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When I worked in California, Anaheim, so, you know, way south of where you are, it was

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one on one off four times.

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And then the end of that, that four tours, they called it, you'd have a four or six.

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So that was a full 56 hour work week.

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And you know, yeah, but I mean, so I know like by day two, by day three, you are just,

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you know, exhausted.

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So by spreading them out, and this is all the, the sleep experts that I've had from

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pretty much every profession that would be parallel to us from all the branches of the

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military to the sporting community.

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They're all like, you know, you, you people are crazy, you lost your mind.

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You need to have X amount of rest and recovery between 24 hours without sleep or really shit

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sleep and the next one.

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So yeah, I mean, understanding that space and why we need it, you know, and I think

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I get it, you know, some of us, a lot of us live a long way from where we work and there

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is that, oh, it's easier to smush shifts together, but that goes against the actual health conversation.

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Yeah, I mean, a couple of odd points to that, I guess, is like Vancouver's got an incredibly

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crazy housing market.

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It's been, you know, rivaled with, I think the latest stats is like the medium income.

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You need more than average medium income to afford a house in Vancouver.

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And now you get that conversation where people are wanting a certain shift pattern so they

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can work a side job in order to make more money to get housing.

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And now what's the bigger stress?

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Is the bigger stress being at work more or is the bigger stress that home life stress

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where you can't afford to live in the city that you're actually working in.

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So now you're moving out further and further, you're driving two, three hours to get to

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work.

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You know, I don't know what the answer to that is, but it certainly seems to be, you

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know, a compounding problem.

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I forget if it was my German guest, but there was someone I remember where they actually

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gave affordable housing to their first responders.

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And I love that.

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I mean, obviously, assuming it's a kind of a home that you would want to live in, but

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giving some sort of, you know, tax break to the people that are protecting that city so

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they could afford to live in these neighborhoods.

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Well, I think what's touch wood is going to happen eventually.

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We're going to have that event that all of a sudden you want your first responders back

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to your home community and it's going to be, they can't get there or they're going to be

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there in days because of the infrastructure.

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We had a flood event here in November, I'm guessing 2021, a big atmospheric river and

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it truly was not like, you know, a pineapple or express or a wet week.

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Like I want to say there was over 250 millimeters of rain in the mountains and like less than

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a day.

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It took out all major routes out of Vancouver, like bridges gone.

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It took weeks to get bridges back up.

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They brought in the military, you know, there's, I volunteer with local SAR.

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We were picking people off the roofs in local communities and things like this.

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But now you look and you go, I mean, I got on a plane.

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I flew back to Vancouver.

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I've been around long enough.

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I have that means, but you get some new firefighter that's making 60% of first classes.

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What's what they start with.

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Now you're going to ask them to fork out a thousand bucks.

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00:14:29,600 --> 00:14:34,760
Cause of course the airlines did no favors by, you know, ensuring the pricing was held

226
00:14:34,760 --> 00:14:40,840
when the disaster struck, you know, having to fly back to Vancouver now to go to work

227
00:14:40,840 --> 00:14:42,440
in order to get back on shift.

228
00:14:42,440 --> 00:14:48,120
So the other one that's going to come up, I think with us with this 24.

229
00:14:48,120 --> 00:14:55,000
So we get the urban interface much like the States will deploy structural firefighters

230
00:14:55,000 --> 00:14:56,000
to those incidents.

231
00:14:56,000 --> 00:15:01,640
So BC wildfire runs wildfire when it starts crossing into city boundaries, it ends up

232
00:15:01,640 --> 00:15:06,320
with structural firefighters doing either structural protection or sprinkler protection

233
00:15:06,320 --> 00:15:08,560
or a combination of both.

234
00:15:08,560 --> 00:15:14,320
And now we're coming from 24 hour shifts and those can be eight to 14 day deployments for

235
00:15:14,320 --> 00:15:15,320
us.

236
00:15:15,320 --> 00:15:22,720
So how do we come off of our shift, move into that 12 hour shift pattern, come out of the

237
00:15:22,720 --> 00:15:26,800
12 hour or whatever that is and move back into the 24.

238
00:15:26,800 --> 00:15:30,560
So I think there might be some challenges with that this summer as well.

239
00:15:30,560 --> 00:15:31,920
Yeah, absolutely.

240
00:15:31,920 --> 00:15:34,680
Well, I appreciate the, uh, the tangent.

241
00:15:34,680 --> 00:15:38,200
I think it's, it's so important to get all these different perspectives rather than just

242
00:15:38,200 --> 00:15:40,840
say, you know, Oh, this is the way it should be done.

243
00:15:40,840 --> 00:15:44,000
But you know, I mean, these are all factors that need to be discussed and obviously the

244
00:15:44,000 --> 00:15:45,320
pay and then the fire service.

245
00:15:45,320 --> 00:15:48,960
I mean, I worked in Anaheim, I'd say when I was at Anaheim, I was paid for the firefighter

246
00:15:48,960 --> 00:15:49,960
should be paid.

247
00:15:49,960 --> 00:15:52,520
I mean, it was, it was appropriate.

248
00:15:52,520 --> 00:15:57,120
And then I had a, like a 40% pay cut when I went to Florida and, uh, you know, I was

249
00:15:57,120 --> 00:15:58,960
back on the, in the meat grinder.

250
00:15:58,960 --> 00:16:02,200
Um, I want to start at the very beginning of your journey though.

251
00:16:02,200 --> 00:16:05,880
So tell me where you were born and tell me a little bit about your family dynamic, what

252
00:16:05,880 --> 00:16:08,760
your parents did, how many siblings?

253
00:16:08,760 --> 00:16:13,000
I lived in the ultimate nuclear family from the seventies, right?

254
00:16:13,000 --> 00:16:18,240
Um, I tell jokes to, so I was born in the city that I currently work, city of Delta,

255
00:16:18,240 --> 00:16:20,000
which is just, uh, south of Vancouver.

256
00:16:20,000 --> 00:16:24,920
It's a suburb of Vancouver, 150,000, 200,000 people kind of thing.

257
00:16:24,920 --> 00:16:27,280
Obviously a lot smaller when I grew up.

258
00:16:27,280 --> 00:16:33,800
Um, and the guys and girls that I work with now laugh cause I grew up right on the, uh,

259
00:16:33,800 --> 00:16:34,800
United States border.

260
00:16:34,800 --> 00:16:38,200
There's a little piece of land, a peninsula called point Roberts that belongs to the United

261
00:16:38,200 --> 00:16:42,480
States and it's only accessible by land through Canada.

262
00:16:42,480 --> 00:16:46,840
You could fly in or boat in to get in, but otherwise you got to come in through Canada.

263
00:16:46,840 --> 00:16:49,280
And so I lived on the street that paralleled the border.

264
00:16:49,280 --> 00:16:54,240
We would get on dirt bikes at eight, 10 years old, ride that street, cut through the border.

265
00:16:54,240 --> 00:16:56,080
Like the border guard wouldn't even get up.

266
00:16:56,080 --> 00:16:57,080
Oh yeah.

267
00:16:57,080 --> 00:16:58,080
Like he knows where we live.

268
00:16:58,080 --> 00:17:00,480
Just, oh, it's the kids riding dirt bikes again, right?

269
00:17:00,480 --> 00:17:06,360
Go down, ride the gravel pits down in point Roberts, turn around, ride home.

270
00:17:06,360 --> 00:17:12,240
And so, I mean, as I've grown up and now work in Delta and, you know, seeing different things

271
00:17:12,240 --> 00:17:16,360
with the border, I was down in New York, you know, just after nine 11, I've been a firefighter

272
00:17:16,360 --> 00:17:21,900
for awhile and seeing how that changes, you know, no one can really believe that we actually

273
00:17:21,900 --> 00:17:27,840
just grew up in road motorbikes, you know, city streets with no licenses under age, crossing

274
00:17:27,840 --> 00:17:29,600
international boundaries.

275
00:17:29,600 --> 00:17:31,800
And nobody seemed to care.

276
00:17:31,800 --> 00:17:37,200
Um, and I understand there's a lot of complexities that go with that, but, you know, that was

277
00:17:37,200 --> 00:17:38,720
kind of the childhood life.

278
00:17:38,720 --> 00:17:42,040
My father was a firefighter, same department that I'm with.

279
00:17:42,040 --> 00:17:46,520
Uh, he passed from occupational cancer after he retired.

280
00:17:46,520 --> 00:17:53,560
Uh, mom stayed at home, raised myself, only child, you know, uh, typical kind of late

281
00:17:53,560 --> 00:17:57,080
seventies, early eighties upbringing, riding motorbikes.

282
00:17:57,080 --> 00:18:00,520
Maybe that wasn't that typical, you know, playing out on the streets till the street

283
00:18:00,520 --> 00:18:03,320
lights came on where there was street lights.

284
00:18:03,320 --> 00:18:09,840
Um, went to high school at the local high school, you know, nothing like that.

285
00:18:09,840 --> 00:18:14,880
Uh, you know, very unremarkable from that point of view.

286
00:18:14,880 --> 00:18:16,240
I'm sorry to hear about your dad.

287
00:18:16,240 --> 00:18:18,280
How old was he when he passed?

288
00:18:18,280 --> 00:18:21,800
Uh, 72, I want to say.

289
00:18:21,800 --> 00:18:24,200
So it was one of those things.

290
00:18:24,200 --> 00:18:30,080
He was Eastern European, born in Germany, uh, came over after the second world war,

291
00:18:30,080 --> 00:18:34,480
became a firefighter in Calgary and then moved out to Delta.

292
00:18:34,480 --> 00:18:39,680
Um, when Delta was kind of expanding back in 1970.

293
00:18:39,680 --> 00:18:44,880
And uh, when he retired, he was very tight lipped about stuff like that's that Eastern

294
00:18:44,880 --> 00:18:45,880
European.

295
00:18:45,880 --> 00:18:46,880
It's my problem, not yours.

296
00:18:46,880 --> 00:18:48,240
I'll just got it out.

297
00:18:48,240 --> 00:18:53,760
Um, and then when he passed, his doctor actually had said to me, why don't you go for a work

298
00:18:53,760 --> 00:18:55,920
safe pension for your mom?

299
00:18:55,920 --> 00:18:57,240
Cause it's going to be line of duty.

300
00:18:57,240 --> 00:18:58,240
And I'm like, how do you figure?

301
00:18:58,240 --> 00:19:02,640
And he goes, Oh, cause he's had these problems since before he retired.

302
00:19:02,640 --> 00:19:05,560
He's been treated for different cancers.

303
00:19:05,560 --> 00:19:09,840
I think he had four or five cancers when he died.

304
00:19:09,840 --> 00:19:10,840
Um, yeah.

305
00:19:10,840 --> 00:19:15,760
So, but yeah, he had been treated for those since he was on the job.

306
00:19:15,760 --> 00:19:22,240
And so, yeah, he, I mean, he had a decent enough retirement, but like 15 years or whatever,

307
00:19:22,240 --> 00:19:25,960
kind of being able to 14, 12, something like that years being able to get out.

308
00:19:25,960 --> 00:19:29,160
I mean, you always want to be retired for as long as you were employed.

309
00:19:29,160 --> 00:19:32,120
That would kind of be the goal of that.

310
00:19:32,120 --> 00:19:36,320
But, uh, I mean, he came from the era as he used to tell the stories that they would only

311
00:19:36,320 --> 00:19:38,840
use air packs at chemical fires.

312
00:19:38,840 --> 00:19:42,400
You know, you think about the humor in that statement at this point.

313
00:19:42,400 --> 00:19:47,160
I mean, we're obviously not in insulation with horse hair, like the old days, but still

314
00:19:47,160 --> 00:19:50,280
I, we only used air packs at chemical fires.

315
00:19:50,280 --> 00:19:53,640
That's kind of an interesting statement, right?

316
00:19:53,640 --> 00:19:54,800
Absolutely.

317
00:19:54,800 --> 00:19:56,760
What about the immigration story?

318
00:19:56,760 --> 00:20:02,680
I love hearing, you know, all these kind of international immigrant stories, the good

319
00:20:02,680 --> 00:20:08,200
and the bad, because I think, you know, with a lot of modern day rhetoric, um, immigrant

320
00:20:08,200 --> 00:20:12,400
has almost become like a swear word these days, you know, kind of spat at people.

321
00:20:12,400 --> 00:20:16,640
Um, and I get the difference between illegal immigration and immigration, but I feel there's

322
00:20:16,640 --> 00:20:19,040
been a kind of blurring of the lines.

323
00:20:19,040 --> 00:20:24,600
Um, but there's so many, you know, incredible stories of people that went to this country,

324
00:20:24,600 --> 00:20:28,320
you know, full of hope and, and built a life for themselves and their families.

325
00:20:28,320 --> 00:20:32,120
So if he, if he told you at all, what were some of the things he talks about being a

326
00:20:32,120 --> 00:20:36,240
German immigrant around world war two times?

327
00:20:36,240 --> 00:20:39,680
Um, that's, that's interesting.

328
00:20:39,680 --> 00:20:40,680
Yeah.

329
00:20:40,680 --> 00:20:45,240
Cause he, so when he came over, he knew new English.

330
00:20:45,240 --> 00:20:52,520
Um, his youngest memories are actually, uh, coming out of cellars and seeing roads melted

331
00:20:52,520 --> 00:20:54,920
and things like that.

332
00:20:54,920 --> 00:20:58,840
Um, they made their way by ship into Halifax.

333
00:20:58,840 --> 00:21:00,080
I have some of the rings.

334
00:21:00,080 --> 00:21:01,280
I don't even know what they're worth.

335
00:21:01,280 --> 00:21:04,720
I never bothered getting them assessed, but they took a lot of their money, put it into

336
00:21:04,720 --> 00:21:10,720
gold, melted it down as jewelry, stitched it into the clothing, came in through pure

337
00:21:10,720 --> 00:21:17,760
21 and Halifax, and they were over on a sponsorship program, uh, to go work on a farm outside

338
00:21:17,760 --> 00:21:20,120
of, uh, Calgary, Alberta.

339
00:21:20,120 --> 00:21:27,000
And so they took the train across, uh, and this would have been mid fifties, I guess.

340
00:21:27,000 --> 00:21:32,080
Um, so he was, you know, teenager late teens sort of thing, maybe early fifties.

341
00:21:32,080 --> 00:21:37,120
Um, and he says he remembers his mommy, mom, giving them some money in Montreal to go get

342
00:21:37,120 --> 00:21:41,840
bread and he came back and he's like, this is all I could find.

343
00:21:41,840 --> 00:21:45,640
But he was amazed at the way the bread was because he had lived basically on rations

344
00:21:45,640 --> 00:21:47,760
his entire life.

345
00:21:47,760 --> 00:21:52,400
And so like, like the bread soft and stuff, you can't beat somebody with this bread.

346
00:21:52,400 --> 00:21:55,280
He remembers, remember him telling that story.

347
00:21:55,280 --> 00:21:58,760
Um, you know, it was just his mom that he came over with.

348
00:21:58,760 --> 00:21:59,760
His father obviously died.

349
00:21:59,760 --> 00:22:02,400
He was a German soldier, died during the war.

350
00:22:02,400 --> 00:22:08,000
Um, and then they lived outside of Calgary, Alberta.

351
00:22:08,000 --> 00:22:13,860
He learned English in the schoolyard and yeah, there was a lot of, uh, it wasn't popular

352
00:22:13,860 --> 00:22:15,680
being German in those years.

353
00:22:15,680 --> 00:22:18,000
I can imagine more Japanese.

354
00:22:18,000 --> 00:22:20,960
Yeah, there was, there was a little bit of problems back then.

355
00:22:20,960 --> 00:22:27,280
So, um, he spoke with a stutter for a long time, spoke English with a stutter.

356
00:22:27,280 --> 00:22:31,600
Um, he worked his way through that as he went up through the ranks and obviously had to

357
00:22:31,600 --> 00:22:33,000
speak more with fire department.

358
00:22:33,000 --> 00:22:34,440
He retired as a deputy chief.

359
00:22:34,440 --> 00:22:37,440
Uh, he had to have better speaking skills.

360
00:22:37,440 --> 00:22:40,560
So he ended up going to school to do that sort of stuff.

361
00:22:40,560 --> 00:22:45,600
Um, but at the end of the day, yeah, there was, he literally taught himself English.

362
00:22:45,600 --> 00:22:49,760
He knew Polish and German, although I didn't realize that.

363
00:22:49,760 --> 00:22:56,320
Um, when I was 12, I met my grandmother, his mother, and, uh, they started speaking German.

364
00:22:56,320 --> 00:22:57,920
She started speaking German to him.

365
00:22:57,920 --> 00:22:58,920
He answered in German.

366
00:22:58,920 --> 00:22:59,920
I almost fell over.

367
00:22:59,920 --> 00:23:03,600
Like, what do you mean you speak another language?

368
00:23:03,600 --> 00:23:06,800
That might've been like, I was thinking that could be useful.

369
00:23:06,800 --> 00:23:08,400
Like I could learn another language.

370
00:23:08,400 --> 00:23:09,400
Thank you.

371
00:23:09,400 --> 00:23:14,280
And, uh, but when he came over, he kind of just pushed that life aside and said, Hey,

372
00:23:14,280 --> 00:23:18,000
we're Canadians now we live in Canada.

373
00:23:18,000 --> 00:23:19,000
That's that.

374
00:23:19,000 --> 00:23:20,600
I mean, it was a different history, right?

375
00:23:20,600 --> 00:23:25,000
I mean, it's, you're coming from a time in history where it wasn't popular.

376
00:23:25,000 --> 00:23:27,520
There was a lot of atrocities, obviously that were done.

377
00:23:27,520 --> 00:23:31,000
And so he wanted to start a new life of fresh.

378
00:23:31,000 --> 00:23:35,880
And I said, I didn't, wasn't aware of a lot of that until later in life.

379
00:23:35,880 --> 00:23:36,880
Yeah.

380
00:23:36,880 --> 00:23:37,880
Well, thank you for sharing.

381
00:23:37,880 --> 00:23:40,760
I mean, this is, these are the, you know, the, the colors that make up this country.

382
00:23:40,760 --> 00:23:44,720
And again, you know, you've got a little boy that's coming out of a horrendous war, but

383
00:23:44,720 --> 00:23:47,760
I've always kind of made this very clear.

384
00:23:47,760 --> 00:23:53,280
We paint entire nations with one brush and I, there's no way in hell that all German

385
00:23:53,280 --> 00:23:57,440
people knew what was going on under the Nazi flag at that time.

386
00:23:57,440 --> 00:23:59,800
And a lot of them were probably just defending their lands.

387
00:23:59,800 --> 00:24:03,560
You know, they were being bombed and, you know, there was an invasion ultimately, or,

388
00:24:03,560 --> 00:24:09,400
you know, a recapturing, I guess, of foreign countries and ultimately German itself.

389
00:24:09,400 --> 00:24:15,480
But you know, allowing that trauma to stop there and allowing the next generation to

390
00:24:15,480 --> 00:24:20,660
go back to being, you know, good people again, rather than holding it over their heads for

391
00:24:20,660 --> 00:24:22,040
decades and decades and decades.

392
00:24:22,040 --> 00:24:25,720
We need to remember all the bad things that happened, but you know, I don't believe that

393
00:24:25,720 --> 00:24:27,680
all Russians want to invade Ukraine.

394
00:24:27,680 --> 00:24:32,120
I don't believe it all Israelis are happy what's going on in Gaza, you know, but you

395
00:24:32,120 --> 00:24:36,280
know, until we stop it and then give the rest of the people the benefit of the doubt, but

396
00:24:36,280 --> 00:24:40,440
we weren't directly involved, then we're just going to keep perpetrating this, this

397
00:24:40,440 --> 00:24:44,800
message and creating, you know, hurt people.

398
00:24:44,800 --> 00:24:46,800
And as I say, hurt people, hurt people.

399
00:24:46,800 --> 00:24:48,360
Yeah, it's interesting.

400
00:24:48,360 --> 00:24:53,720
He tells a story as a kid, there was a cow in the, the back of his, the property, they're

401
00:24:53,720 --> 00:24:56,640
moving around a lot inside of Germany.

402
00:24:56,640 --> 00:25:01,980
And he said the cow is in utter pain because no one is milking it for days, but nobody

403
00:25:01,980 --> 00:25:05,620
would dare go out and milk the cow because if they got caught milking the cow, because

404
00:25:05,620 --> 00:25:09,900
everything went to the German army at that point, they would be shot.

405
00:25:09,900 --> 00:25:14,760
So at the end of the day, someone just shot the cow, put the cow out of its misery because

406
00:25:14,760 --> 00:25:16,120
nobody wanted to milk it.

407
00:25:16,120 --> 00:25:19,040
Although that's all that was required because they would have been shot for milking the

408
00:25:19,040 --> 00:25:20,040
cow.

409
00:25:20,040 --> 00:25:24,960
Like, and you just, you talk about that, just like the perplexity of chaos that goes there,

410
00:25:24,960 --> 00:25:29,680
like how broken a system becomes when that sort of stuff happens.

411
00:25:29,680 --> 00:25:30,680
Absolutely.

412
00:25:30,680 --> 00:25:35,760
And again, usually from the tyrannical few that negatively affect a whole country.

413
00:25:35,760 --> 00:25:36,760
Yeah.

414
00:25:36,760 --> 00:25:42,520
And as amazing as a young boy, you'd remember a cow being in pain or having this problem,

415
00:25:42,520 --> 00:25:45,280
but not being able to do anything about it for fear of death.

416
00:25:45,280 --> 00:25:48,200
I mean, it's a cow.

417
00:25:48,200 --> 00:25:49,640
Yeah, exactly.

418
00:25:49,640 --> 00:25:50,640
Exactly.

419
00:25:50,640 --> 00:25:55,240
Well, back to you as a young boy, you ended up being in a very physical profession.

420
00:25:55,240 --> 00:25:59,160
What were you doing as far as exercise and sports during your school age?

421
00:25:59,160 --> 00:26:02,200
I played a little basketball in high school.

422
00:26:02,200 --> 00:26:10,800
I played soccer for a good portion of my growing up years.

423
00:26:10,800 --> 00:26:12,840
Swam competitively for a few years.

424
00:26:12,840 --> 00:26:17,600
So kind of was always involved in some type of sport or another.

425
00:26:17,600 --> 00:26:25,220
I joined the cadet system when I was, I guess, earlier teens.

426
00:26:25,220 --> 00:26:31,280
And it wasn't so much that that was sport, but it kind of pushed me more towards, I guess,

427
00:26:31,280 --> 00:26:35,000
I've worked either, I've worked some form of government my entire life, pretty much.

428
00:26:35,000 --> 00:26:38,680
So I guess it kind of steered me more in that direction.

429
00:26:38,680 --> 00:26:43,560
And then when I was my last year of high school, I joined the reserves that I left for basic

430
00:26:43,560 --> 00:26:46,640
training like five days after high school finished.

431
00:26:46,640 --> 00:26:49,560
So it was one of those times.

432
00:26:49,560 --> 00:26:51,680
It wasn't that high school was a miserable time.

433
00:26:51,680 --> 00:26:55,240
I just, I think I keep in touch with one person from high school.

434
00:26:55,240 --> 00:27:00,160
Most of the people I keep in touch with are people that I ended up serving in the military

435
00:27:00,160 --> 00:27:02,000
with.

436
00:27:02,000 --> 00:27:04,460
So what took you into the military specifically?

437
00:27:04,460 --> 00:27:07,480
Were you thinking about that when you were in high school or were you thinking about

438
00:27:07,480 --> 00:27:09,720
the fire service?

439
00:27:09,720 --> 00:27:12,160
I don't know if I, it was much like my son.

440
00:27:12,160 --> 00:27:16,040
Like my son for the longest time was like, I don't want to be a rescue guy.

441
00:27:16,040 --> 00:27:19,840
Yet he's competed at Grimp Japan and now he's going to Seville.

442
00:27:19,840 --> 00:27:24,880
And I think for the longest time, I didn't want anything to do with the fire service.

443
00:27:24,880 --> 00:27:28,280
You can remember as a kid, you know, your dad coming home and there'd be times where

444
00:27:28,280 --> 00:27:31,480
like, Hey, your mom's like, Hey, you got to stay quiet because your dad's sleeping because

445
00:27:31,480 --> 00:27:37,440
he had a terrible night or, you know, he went through a floor a couple of times, you know,

446
00:27:37,440 --> 00:27:41,200
herniated, hernia at one point, herniated disc at another point.

447
00:27:41,200 --> 00:27:45,800
And so, you know, those injuries that occurred, you kind of think, well, is that really what

448
00:27:45,800 --> 00:27:46,920
I want to do?

449
00:27:46,920 --> 00:27:49,560
So I joined the army instead.

450
00:27:49,560 --> 00:27:53,800
That's, I didn't really think about it at that point.

451
00:27:53,800 --> 00:27:55,280
And maybe it's you're too close to it.

452
00:27:55,280 --> 00:27:56,280
I don't know.

453
00:27:56,280 --> 00:28:01,400
I mean, I know when my kids came to the fire station to visit me, they'd be more interested

454
00:28:01,400 --> 00:28:04,960
in watching TV than they would be at looking at a fire truck.

455
00:28:04,960 --> 00:28:07,480
And maybe it's because you're so close to it.

456
00:28:07,480 --> 00:28:11,880
It's, you know, it's not that familiarity breeds contempt, but it's, you know, one

457
00:28:11,880 --> 00:28:14,000
of those types of things.

458
00:28:14,000 --> 00:28:19,480
And so with the cadet program here, it's, I use the word paramilitary quite lightly.

459
00:28:19,480 --> 00:28:21,720
I mean, it's sponsored by the department of national defense.

460
00:28:21,720 --> 00:28:24,880
You wear a uniform, you go away on camps, that sort of stuff.

461
00:28:24,880 --> 00:28:30,960
You learn how to shoot rifles and march and fly planes and do leadership things.

462
00:28:30,960 --> 00:28:34,400
And so, yeah, it was a bit more of a direct lineage.

463
00:28:34,400 --> 00:28:41,320
I'd been accepted into military college for a full ride, sort of, I'd say like your West

464
00:28:41,320 --> 00:28:42,600
Point, but not like your West Point.

465
00:28:42,600 --> 00:28:44,280
So we're a military college in Canada.

466
00:28:44,280 --> 00:28:48,400
You don't need a Senate, you know, permission or a senator's permission or a waiver to get

467
00:28:48,400 --> 00:28:49,400
in.

468
00:28:49,400 --> 00:28:52,120
You don't need to really apply.

469
00:28:52,120 --> 00:28:56,840
But at that point in the nineties, the Canadian military, they didn't really want to give

470
00:28:56,840 --> 00:28:59,640
you what you asked for per se.

471
00:28:59,640 --> 00:29:04,680
So I thought I would just try it out by enlisting in the reserves for a couple of years.

472
00:29:04,680 --> 00:29:09,360
And during that time, I think I did about four and a half years full-time service.

473
00:29:09,360 --> 00:29:12,240
Always as a reservist, Canada's a bit different.

474
00:29:12,240 --> 00:29:17,400
They were cutting entire regiments at that point in time, but they still needed the staff.

475
00:29:17,400 --> 00:29:23,840
So they bled from the reserves staff to fill the full-time regiments.

476
00:29:23,840 --> 00:29:25,280
It was almost impossible to get in.

477
00:29:25,280 --> 00:29:28,760
And then towards the end of that, they just bled the reserves dry because they brought

478
00:29:28,760 --> 00:29:32,000
those full-time regiments back on to full strength.

479
00:29:32,000 --> 00:29:34,520
But they needed, obviously, trained soldiers to do that.

480
00:29:34,520 --> 00:29:39,800
So it was one of those, you know, cyclical events in life that happens.

481
00:29:39,800 --> 00:29:40,800
Yeah.

482
00:29:40,800 --> 00:29:42,800
And it was a good time.

483
00:29:42,800 --> 00:29:44,640
I mean, I really enjoyed my time in the reserves.

484
00:29:44,640 --> 00:29:45,640
I learned a lot.

485
00:29:45,640 --> 00:29:48,520
It's an influential part of your life.

486
00:29:48,520 --> 00:29:55,160
For all the negative you hear about the military, I can't speak ill of it.

487
00:29:55,160 --> 00:29:59,980
You're at a time from like 16, 17, till I think I was like 22, which is an influential

488
00:29:59,980 --> 00:30:01,080
time in life.

489
00:30:01,080 --> 00:30:07,600
And they do teach you some valuable lessons about teamwork, about responsibility.

490
00:30:07,600 --> 00:30:09,120
I did my section commander's course.

491
00:30:09,120 --> 00:30:11,320
I think I was 19 years old.

492
00:30:11,320 --> 00:30:12,560
You're calling in aircraft.

493
00:30:12,560 --> 00:30:14,280
You're calling in machine gun fire.

494
00:30:14,280 --> 00:30:16,080
You're calling in artillery.

495
00:30:16,080 --> 00:30:23,040
What other 19-year-old in the world gets to learn how to clear a Russian trench line with

496
00:30:23,040 --> 00:30:24,680
combat arm support?

497
00:30:24,680 --> 00:30:29,360
Like the responsibility that they put on you, they treat you like an adult.

498
00:30:29,360 --> 00:30:32,600
And for the most part, you act like an adult.

499
00:30:32,600 --> 00:30:37,360
And it's something I think that the fire service, at least in my areas, could really learn from.

500
00:30:37,360 --> 00:30:40,320
If you treat people like children, they're going to act accordingly.

501
00:30:40,320 --> 00:30:46,640
If you can train them properly and give them the responsibility that they should have with

502
00:30:46,640 --> 00:30:51,360
the positions that they're in, most times they'll amaze you and actually do what they're

503
00:30:51,360 --> 00:30:55,600
supposed to do and probably come back with some pretty decent feedback on maybe how to

504
00:30:55,600 --> 00:30:57,760
do it better.

505
00:30:57,760 --> 00:31:03,120
And that was somewhere where I think the military experiences could have a direct influence

506
00:31:03,120 --> 00:31:06,280
in a positive fashion in the fire service.

507
00:31:06,280 --> 00:31:11,360
It's so interesting that you say that because I think the only difference between the really

508
00:31:11,360 --> 00:31:17,200
good fire departments, and I would say Anaheim, for example, was one where we were trusted.

509
00:31:17,200 --> 00:31:21,600
When there were literal simple commands that the captain would say at a fire like, lay

510
00:31:21,600 --> 00:31:26,080
one, lay two, lay the bundles, we're going to do a heat hole, strip, whatever it was.

511
00:31:26,080 --> 00:31:30,400
And that was all need to be said because there was a high level of training and a high level

512
00:31:30,400 --> 00:31:35,040
of kind of the orchestra that was all of these pieces.

513
00:31:35,040 --> 00:31:39,200
And then there was a high level of trust because you'd been trained extremely well.

514
00:31:39,200 --> 00:31:41,320
There was no need for micromanagement.

515
00:31:41,320 --> 00:31:47,400
And then that bled into a lot of these firefighters and engineers and captains running entire training

516
00:31:47,400 --> 00:31:51,240
divisions because they were trusted and they knew they could teach them well.

517
00:31:51,240 --> 00:31:56,240
Conversely, the departments that were very lacking that I worked for, it was the polar

518
00:31:56,240 --> 00:31:57,240
opposite.

519
00:31:57,240 --> 00:31:58,240
The bar was set very low.

520
00:31:58,240 --> 00:32:03,180
The training was just check in boxes and therefore you had all this micromanaging.

521
00:32:03,180 --> 00:32:05,400
So what is your perception?

522
00:32:05,400 --> 00:32:11,160
It can be the fire service and obviously what you're doing now on the role of humility in

523
00:32:11,160 --> 00:32:15,680
leadership.

524
00:32:15,680 --> 00:32:20,920
Buddy of mine Shaggy, Chris Williams, Zones Vertical Integrity Rescue down in Texas.

525
00:32:20,920 --> 00:32:22,480
And I'm trying to remember the quote.

526
00:32:22,480 --> 00:32:23,640
He got it from somebody.

527
00:32:23,640 --> 00:32:27,480
It's like if service is beneath you, leadership is beyond you.

528
00:32:27,480 --> 00:32:35,040
And I think that speaks to that humility piece where you're not going to know everything.

529
00:32:35,040 --> 00:32:40,400
I mean, I went through the basics of leadership training in the military.

530
00:32:40,400 --> 00:32:44,780
The leadership training we do in the fire service, I would suggest isn't leadership

531
00:32:44,780 --> 00:32:45,780
training.

532
00:32:45,780 --> 00:32:50,560
I don't remember taking what I would consider a leadership course in the fire service.

533
00:32:50,560 --> 00:32:56,280
I took a lot of emergency scene management programs and how to do budgeting as a battalion

534
00:32:56,280 --> 00:32:58,920
chief or whatever.

535
00:32:58,920 --> 00:33:03,880
But I never really did a leadership component to that as I would view it.

536
00:33:03,880 --> 00:33:08,480
And so I think it has to come from somewhere else right now.

537
00:33:08,480 --> 00:33:15,080
So it's people that have played in team sports and have been defeated or have done other

538
00:33:15,080 --> 00:33:16,080
things.

539
00:33:16,080 --> 00:33:22,280
I mean, you want to get your ego checked, go walk into any military school and you'll

540
00:33:22,280 --> 00:33:26,280
learn very quickly that there's people there that can do things much better and much faster

541
00:33:26,280 --> 00:33:28,160
than you can.

542
00:33:28,160 --> 00:33:34,120
It's I think any athletes, I go back to my son just because I mean, his experiences are

543
00:33:34,120 --> 00:33:36,720
closer in memory to mine.

544
00:33:36,720 --> 00:33:38,320
He swam at a fairly high level.

545
00:33:38,320 --> 00:33:40,880
He made Olympic trials.

546
00:33:40,880 --> 00:33:46,300
And so he thinks he's all that in a bag of chips walking around the local club.

547
00:33:46,300 --> 00:33:49,920
You go to Toronto or you go to Indianapolis and you're swimming in pools where they got

548
00:33:49,920 --> 00:33:53,800
fireworks and doing like a US national competition.

549
00:33:53,800 --> 00:33:56,800
And there's people swimming there that are swimming at Olympic level.

550
00:33:56,800 --> 00:34:03,960
And you realize that there's always somebody out there that can do this better than you.

551
00:34:03,960 --> 00:34:08,080
He learned that there, I've learned that along the way, whether it be in business, whether

552
00:34:08,080 --> 00:34:14,720
it be going to these crimp competitions, whether it be at the fire service.

553
00:34:14,720 --> 00:34:18,280
I mean, I've been one of those unusual people, maybe it's a tangent for later.

554
00:34:18,280 --> 00:34:23,520
I've been part of a rescue intervention crew and I've been the cause of a rescue intervention

555
00:34:23,520 --> 00:34:25,440
crew being deployed.

556
00:34:25,440 --> 00:34:30,520
And so you really got to sit down at times and think about what you did to cause those

557
00:34:30,520 --> 00:34:36,160
situations and what you've done to help mitigate those situations.

558
00:34:36,160 --> 00:34:39,980
And the fire service, and I don't mean to knock on, I mean, it's been my chosen profession

559
00:34:39,980 --> 00:34:47,800
for 29 years, but I mean, I wrote up a fairly lengthy after action report for the last one

560
00:34:47,800 --> 00:34:51,240
when I tore out my shoulder going through a floor.

561
00:34:51,240 --> 00:34:54,760
And I mean, the first line of it is, this is my fault.

562
00:34:54,760 --> 00:34:56,440
Like I'm the guy who fell.

563
00:34:56,440 --> 00:35:02,960
I mean, there's a bunch of other contributing factors to this, but at the end of the day,

564
00:35:02,960 --> 00:35:06,600
I was the one who went through the floor and there's certain things that I could have done

565
00:35:06,600 --> 00:35:09,520
and there's certain things that apartment could have done.

566
00:35:09,520 --> 00:35:12,840
But I've found a lot of those things just get pushed aside.

567
00:35:12,840 --> 00:35:13,840
They get hidden.

568
00:35:13,840 --> 00:35:15,200
Nobody wants to see it.

569
00:35:15,200 --> 00:35:16,900
It brings up liability issues.

570
00:35:16,900 --> 00:35:19,680
It brings up sometimes leadership and management issues.

571
00:35:19,680 --> 00:35:22,240
It brings up training issues.

572
00:35:22,240 --> 00:35:26,880
And instead of eating the elephant one bite at a time and just go, okay, let's start chipping

573
00:35:26,880 --> 00:35:29,140
away at this list.

574
00:35:29,140 --> 00:35:33,880
We just kind of hide it and hope it doesn't happen again.

575
00:35:33,880 --> 00:35:34,880
You're nodding.

576
00:35:34,880 --> 00:35:35,880
You I think seen this before.

577
00:35:35,880 --> 00:35:36,880
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

578
00:35:36,880 --> 00:35:37,880
No, I preach.

579
00:35:37,880 --> 00:35:39,600
No, because I've had that.

580
00:35:39,600 --> 00:35:43,600
I mean, even I'll say Anaheim, which was phenomenal.

581
00:35:43,600 --> 00:35:47,760
There were a couple of near misses that when I was on scene that I witnessed and another

582
00:35:47,760 --> 00:35:48,760
one, it happened.

583
00:35:48,760 --> 00:35:54,780
I think it was a shift before and they were big events and it wasn't really discussed

584
00:35:54,780 --> 00:35:58,680
and it wasn't really sent to the kind of near miss.

585
00:35:58,680 --> 00:36:00,840
We can all learn from this system in the fire service.

586
00:36:00,840 --> 00:36:02,800
It was kind of it was an embarrassment.

587
00:36:02,800 --> 00:36:04,000
So it was swept under the rug.

588
00:36:04,000 --> 00:36:10,160
And then a much more devastating one, the last place I worked at Disney Springs, which

589
00:36:10,160 --> 00:36:16,200
is the kind of shopping area outside Disney in Florida, the pulse shooter went there first

590
00:36:16,200 --> 00:36:17,880
and that was his original target.

591
00:36:17,880 --> 00:36:22,480
And it was just sheer luck that there happened to be a load of sheriff's deputies all there

592
00:36:22,480 --> 00:36:23,820
at the same time.

593
00:36:23,820 --> 00:36:28,520
And they have him on video with all the guns and in a stroller and then going back to the

594
00:36:28,520 --> 00:36:31,520
car, packing everything up and then going straight to the nightclub and killing all

595
00:36:31,520 --> 00:36:33,420
those poor people.

596
00:36:33,420 --> 00:36:35,440
That was also swept under the rug.

597
00:36:35,440 --> 00:36:39,760
You know, I know about it and it is public knowledge, but it was never discussed with

598
00:36:39,760 --> 00:36:40,760
us in the fire.

599
00:36:40,760 --> 00:36:42,080
So we never, okay, here's what we're going to do.

600
00:36:42,080 --> 00:36:43,080
Here's what we're going to change.

601
00:36:43,080 --> 00:36:44,880
We're going to do more work with law enforcement.

602
00:36:44,880 --> 00:36:47,360
Let's really think about this active shooter stuff.

603
00:36:47,360 --> 00:36:52,400
Nothing, you know, and it's, you know, I say that because we need to, we need to learn

604
00:36:52,400 --> 00:36:56,640
from these because there's no greater gift than a near miss, especially if no one was

605
00:36:56,640 --> 00:36:58,400
seriously hurt or killed.

606
00:36:58,400 --> 00:37:01,140
That is the ultimate opportunity for learning.

607
00:37:01,140 --> 00:37:02,280
It's a freebie.

608
00:37:02,280 --> 00:37:06,120
But if we brush that under the rug and then someone dies the next time because we never

609
00:37:06,120 --> 00:37:08,880
fixed it, shame on you.

610
00:37:08,880 --> 00:37:09,880
Yeah.

611
00:37:09,880 --> 00:37:16,960
And it's, I think you'd probably agree where a lot of the incidents we're going to, some

612
00:37:16,960 --> 00:37:20,960
of them might be more complex because of the complexities that we as a society are putting

613
00:37:20,960 --> 00:37:24,960
on the pressures and complexities we as a society put on ourselves and on our first

614
00:37:24,960 --> 00:37:25,960
responders.

615
00:37:25,960 --> 00:37:29,240
But a lot of these incidents have happened in the past.

616
00:37:29,240 --> 00:37:30,480
I mean, it's a different place.

617
00:37:30,480 --> 00:37:34,360
It's a different name, but they've all occurred before.

618
00:37:34,360 --> 00:37:39,720
And if we can learn from somebody else doing it, if you can learn from my mistakes, you

619
00:37:39,720 --> 00:37:44,040
know, it's funny, just another tangent.

620
00:37:44,040 --> 00:37:47,680
We were putting a spare truck together just like two days ago at work and we're all we

621
00:37:47,680 --> 00:37:49,280
could find was an old set of jaws.

622
00:37:49,280 --> 00:37:53,240
And so it's the old, not the new like Hummaltr where you've got the one line and both the

623
00:37:53,240 --> 00:37:55,040
systems are running inside of that line.

624
00:37:55,040 --> 00:37:56,520
It's the old two line system.

625
00:37:56,520 --> 00:38:03,040
And one of the firefighters pulled the system apart, not realizing that it's a loop system.

626
00:38:03,040 --> 00:38:05,280
So he's trying to put his thumb over this.

627
00:38:05,280 --> 00:38:09,280
And I'm like, no, don't do that either because you don't want hydraulics pressurized into

628
00:38:09,280 --> 00:38:10,280
your skin either.

629
00:38:10,280 --> 00:38:16,040
But it's like, you got to close this valve here and remove both of these to make this

630
00:38:16,040 --> 00:38:17,040
work.

631
00:38:17,040 --> 00:38:21,600
And it's these, you know, and that's just a humorous little incident, but it's those

632
00:38:21,600 --> 00:38:24,200
learning things that we've lost over the years.

633
00:38:24,200 --> 00:38:25,320
They've been lost in time.

634
00:38:25,320 --> 00:38:30,320
They've been lost within organizational knowledge and culture that needs to still be out there.

635
00:38:30,320 --> 00:38:34,400
If we still have this equipment and we obviously still have these fires and these hazards that

636
00:38:34,400 --> 00:38:40,400
occur, then let's make sure that we're passing those bits of knowledge on to those next people

637
00:38:40,400 --> 00:38:44,680
so that they don't have the same problems or the same injuries that I did.

638
00:38:44,680 --> 00:38:45,680
Absolutely.

639
00:38:45,680 --> 00:38:46,680
Yeah.

640
00:38:46,680 --> 00:38:48,480
And I think again, it goes back to the humility.

641
00:38:48,480 --> 00:38:52,240
You know, there's a lot of finger point and I hear it all the time now about these Gen

642
00:38:52,240 --> 00:38:57,480
Z's, you know, and it's like, well, these Gen Z's as you mentioned, are the ones flying

643
00:38:57,480 --> 00:39:01,080
drones and in charge of rockets and, you know, fire jets.

644
00:39:01,080 --> 00:39:03,920
These are the same kind of generation that we're talking about.

645
00:39:03,920 --> 00:39:10,760
So they can be molded and mentored into phenomenal firefighters or soldiers or whatever you need

646
00:39:10,760 --> 00:39:15,020
if you have the humility to find out what they do know, find out what they don't know

647
00:39:15,020 --> 00:39:17,000
and then raise them up.

648
00:39:17,000 --> 00:39:20,800
And you know, they obviously in turn are going to be well versed in technology and some of

649
00:39:20,800 --> 00:39:25,400
these other things that my generation is really trying to struggle overcoming.

650
00:39:25,400 --> 00:39:31,440
So again, you know, if you're a humble senior man, for example, when someone comes in, as

651
00:39:31,440 --> 00:39:34,960
long as they're willing to put in the work, you will mentor them.

652
00:39:34,960 --> 00:39:36,320
You will teach them the old ways.

653
00:39:36,320 --> 00:39:38,640
And then you'll also, as you said earlier, give them the opportunity.

654
00:39:38,640 --> 00:39:39,640
Like, what do you think?

655
00:39:39,640 --> 00:39:43,720
If you know, you've got a fresh set of eyes, if this was the problem, what would you do?

656
00:39:43,720 --> 00:39:46,540
And they may bring something in that you'd never thought about that becomes the next

657
00:39:46,540 --> 00:39:48,160
go-to in the fire service.

658
00:39:48,160 --> 00:39:50,000
Oh, it's interesting.

659
00:39:50,000 --> 00:39:53,320
Within Ronin, we hire full-time, I call them kids.

660
00:39:53,320 --> 00:39:56,280
I mean, they're 20s to late 20s.

661
00:39:56,280 --> 00:39:57,760
They're all trying to be firefighters.

662
00:39:57,760 --> 00:39:58,840
So they come, they work with us.

663
00:39:58,840 --> 00:40:02,520
They mostly do our rope access and rescue standby teams.

664
00:40:02,520 --> 00:40:03,760
And you know, they gain knowledge.

665
00:40:03,760 --> 00:40:05,880
We end up giving them courses as well.

666
00:40:05,880 --> 00:40:09,240
And eventually they get hired with fire and end up working for us part-time, teach in

667
00:40:09,240 --> 00:40:13,800
or whatever else, you know, the future brings.

668
00:40:13,800 --> 00:40:19,840
And so you're talking this, you know, this is millennial generation, the Gen Z, whatever.

669
00:40:19,840 --> 00:40:23,160
And so you start chatting and you get these, you know, why are you doing that?

670
00:40:23,160 --> 00:40:25,120
Like they're asking us.

671
00:40:25,120 --> 00:40:26,120
That's a really good question.

672
00:40:26,120 --> 00:40:32,000
Now that I sit down and think about it, because they're just, they didn't go through the 18

673
00:40:32,000 --> 00:40:34,040
steps to get to where we are today.

674
00:40:34,040 --> 00:40:39,240
They're just looking at it as step one, which we're looking at as step 18, but we're biased

675
00:40:39,240 --> 00:40:42,240
by those previous 17 steps.

676
00:40:42,240 --> 00:40:46,340
And now all of a sudden they're looking at it going, well, wait a second, why are we

677
00:40:46,340 --> 00:40:49,440
doing this without that, you know, bias?

678
00:40:49,440 --> 00:40:54,200
And so where there is teaching them some of those things so that they don't get hurt and

679
00:40:54,200 --> 00:40:59,320
they don't, you know, do the same mistakes we did, there's also trying not to teach them

680
00:40:59,320 --> 00:41:06,960
the biases that are intrinsic in some of these systems that we grew up with that they are

681
00:41:06,960 --> 00:41:10,720
completely, it's completely foreign to them.

682
00:41:10,720 --> 00:41:15,720
And I mean, it's even in the fire service, we have a lot of new people we've grown, I'd

683
00:41:15,720 --> 00:41:19,080
say a quarter of our job or a small job, a couple hundred people.

684
00:41:19,080 --> 00:41:23,680
I bet you a quarter, if not more, are brand new.

685
00:41:23,680 --> 00:41:30,200
And it's post COVID and during COVID most fire departments, like we did nothing, like

686
00:41:30,200 --> 00:41:34,120
we wrapped ourselves in bubbles and stayed separately and then got on trucks and ran,

687
00:41:34,120 --> 00:41:38,120
called and deconed ourselves, wrapped ourselves back in bubbles and went and stayed separately

688
00:41:38,120 --> 00:41:39,360
again.

689
00:41:39,360 --> 00:41:41,440
And so the culture completely shifted.

690
00:41:41,440 --> 00:41:46,040
And then you get these new people that come in that ask that question, why are we doing

691
00:41:46,040 --> 00:41:47,040
this?

692
00:41:47,040 --> 00:41:53,280
Well, back in 1987, we used to, you know, but it's, and I'm not saying, you know, turn

693
00:41:53,280 --> 00:41:58,120
on a dime, change the culture, away you go, but there really is something to be said for

694
00:41:58,120 --> 00:42:03,320
taking five minutes and actually critically analyzing why they're asking that question

695
00:42:03,320 --> 00:42:07,880
and that point that they're coming from.

696
00:42:07,880 --> 00:42:13,320
And you know, to the flip side of that, we had a podcast where we brought on, called

697
00:42:13,320 --> 00:42:17,000
it, I think Gen Z and rescue, and it was some of the young people that we had working for

698
00:42:17,000 --> 00:42:18,000
us.

699
00:42:18,000 --> 00:42:23,360
And we asked them things like, what in high school prepared you for the workforce?

700
00:42:23,360 --> 00:42:25,240
Nothing.

701
00:42:25,240 --> 00:42:28,600
What in university prepared you for the workforce?

702
00:42:28,600 --> 00:42:30,160
Nothing.

703
00:42:30,160 --> 00:42:35,440
And then some of the shock they got, we run them through Sprat rope access training.

704
00:42:35,440 --> 00:42:38,880
And one of the girls was saying she was going through a rope access course.

705
00:42:38,880 --> 00:42:43,480
So one of the guys, somebody, you know, just a student off the street, it was a mixed class

706
00:42:43,480 --> 00:42:47,840
of Ronan staff and paying clients.

707
00:42:47,840 --> 00:42:50,840
Guy failed at like 10 in the morning and it was, yep, see you later.

708
00:42:50,840 --> 00:42:51,840
Goodbye.

709
00:42:51,840 --> 00:42:52,840
Have a nice time.

710
00:42:52,840 --> 00:42:56,320
And they're used to a system where it's like, wow, we'll give you a retest or why did you

711
00:42:56,320 --> 00:42:57,840
fail that?

712
00:42:57,840 --> 00:43:02,560
And so, you know, some of our systems may need to tweak, but also they need to tweak

713
00:43:02,560 --> 00:43:07,000
to some of our systems where there are consequences to not performing.

714
00:43:07,000 --> 00:43:09,840
I think that was pretty long and drawn out.

715
00:43:09,840 --> 00:43:10,840
Sorry.

716
00:43:10,840 --> 00:43:11,840
No, no, no.

717
00:43:11,840 --> 00:43:13,120
There was a spot on though, and I couldn't agree more.

718
00:43:13,120 --> 00:43:14,120
And it's funny.

719
00:43:14,120 --> 00:43:18,480
One of the things that I remember, and again, just a fresh set of eyes, and this wasn't

720
00:43:18,480 --> 00:43:22,960
initially in the fire services a few years later, but, um, well, two things.

721
00:43:22,960 --> 00:43:27,640
Firstly, I mean, the ultimate thing that a lot of the American firefighters need to take

722
00:43:27,640 --> 00:43:29,360
a step back and go, why are we doing this?

723
00:43:29,360 --> 00:43:30,860
Is the 56 hour work week.

724
00:43:30,860 --> 00:43:35,160
And I've just was recently saying like the people that keep voting against you getting

725
00:43:35,160 --> 00:43:38,800
more time off work 40 hours a week.

726
00:43:38,800 --> 00:43:39,800
Think about that.

727
00:43:39,800 --> 00:43:45,560
The people that say that 56 hours is ample for a firefighter work 40 hours and go to

728
00:43:45,560 --> 00:43:46,840
bed every night.

729
00:43:46,840 --> 00:43:48,520
So that's the first thing for us all to question.

730
00:43:48,520 --> 00:43:49,860
So I'll leave that right there.

731
00:43:49,860 --> 00:43:52,280
The other thing though, car fires.

732
00:43:52,280 --> 00:43:56,320
I have never seen a car fire with, oh yeah, we're just going to clean it up and then we'll

733
00:43:56,320 --> 00:43:57,800
sell it again.

734
00:43:57,800 --> 00:44:00,600
Every single car fire is a write off.

735
00:44:00,600 --> 00:44:07,840
And if you go back to basic firefighter training, class A fires is wood and paper.

736
00:44:07,840 --> 00:44:10,280
And that's what you use water for.

737
00:44:10,280 --> 00:44:15,960
Every car fire I've been on except Anaheim, it was war and it's a big class B dumpster

738
00:44:15,960 --> 00:44:17,580
fire.

739
00:44:17,580 --> 00:44:22,220
So again, you know, either foam or people laugh at it, that big old sheet that they've

740
00:44:22,220 --> 00:44:27,560
used in Europe, we just pull it over and smother it and problem solved as well.

741
00:44:27,560 --> 00:44:32,840
You know, so the number of injuries that we've had and obviously beside the roads, how dangerous

742
00:44:32,840 --> 00:44:33,840
it is.

743
00:44:33,840 --> 00:44:39,040
You know, I've dumped a whole tank on a car fire that's had a petrol leak and the mags

744
00:44:39,040 --> 00:44:42,960
are sparking everywhere, but we've always done it that way.

745
00:44:42,960 --> 00:44:47,680
But I mean, you take a step back, a car fire is a class B dumpster fire and that's where

746
00:44:47,680 --> 00:44:48,680
we should fire.

747
00:44:48,680 --> 00:44:52,940
If there's no one trapped, you shouldn't be anywhere close to the struts or the tires.

748
00:44:52,940 --> 00:44:58,760
You shouldn't be flowing just water, you know, smother it or cover it in foam from a distance

749
00:44:58,760 --> 00:45:01,640
and then walk away because no one is using that car again.

750
00:45:01,640 --> 00:45:03,180
Let's be honest.

751
00:45:03,180 --> 00:45:04,180
It's funny you say that.

752
00:45:04,180 --> 00:45:07,160
I mean, two points to this whole conversation.

753
00:45:07,160 --> 00:45:11,560
I remember pulling up on a car fire and we're it's on the opposite side of the street and

754
00:45:11,560 --> 00:45:12,560
it's a fairly busy street.

755
00:45:12,560 --> 00:45:17,120
It's not a highway, but it is a major commuter route, like triple lane road each way.

756
00:45:17,120 --> 00:45:21,480
And the boys on the back, I mean, they're they're like Dobermans all the time, right?

757
00:45:21,480 --> 00:45:26,000
They're chopping out the bit to go and I'm like, somebody chalk the tires and let's get

758
00:45:26,000 --> 00:45:29,920
some cones up and block traffic because we're going over the median here.

759
00:45:29,920 --> 00:45:33,800
And you know, at the end, they're like, well, you know, the car fire grew like we're kind

760
00:45:33,800 --> 00:45:34,800
of debriefing the call.

761
00:45:34,800 --> 00:45:39,200
And I'm like, the guy didn't want his car back anyways, I guarantee it.

762
00:45:39,200 --> 00:45:43,200
Like I tell my wife, if your car catches on fire, roll down the windows, open all the

763
00:45:43,200 --> 00:45:44,200
doors and let it go.

764
00:45:44,200 --> 00:45:46,480
Wait five minutes before you phone 911.

765
00:45:46,480 --> 00:45:50,480
The worst thing you want is that car back at that point.

766
00:45:50,480 --> 00:45:53,600
Part two, your comment about firefighter safety.

767
00:45:53,600 --> 00:45:57,340
So I don't feel that I'm that old in the fire service, although a lot of people probably

768
00:45:57,340 --> 00:45:59,000
tell me now that I am.

769
00:45:59,000 --> 00:46:08,320
I started in 96 and we didn't use air packs at car fires or at dumpster fires or for overhaul

770
00:46:08,320 --> 00:46:09,640
or for anything like that.

771
00:46:09,640 --> 00:46:14,160
Like those are considered non air pack events.

772
00:46:14,160 --> 00:46:19,160
And you like you say, it's a class A dumpster fire driving down or class B, a class A, class

773
00:46:19,160 --> 00:46:21,240
B dumpster fire driving down the street.

774
00:46:21,240 --> 00:46:24,320
And it was, yeah, we just stay out of the smoke.

775
00:46:24,320 --> 00:46:25,320
It's fine.

776
00:46:25,320 --> 00:46:26,320
Right?

777
00:46:26,320 --> 00:46:27,320
Yeah, exactly.

778
00:46:27,320 --> 00:46:33,840
Well, with that an interesting tangent, you lose your father to job related cancer.

779
00:46:33,840 --> 00:46:38,600
Talk to me about the evolution in Delta from when you first got hired, not wearing packs

780
00:46:38,600 --> 00:46:42,760
during these events to where you are today.

781
00:46:42,760 --> 00:46:44,120
Things are certainly improved.

782
00:46:44,120 --> 00:46:49,320
I mean, I think I had the first, my first set of turnout gear is the stuff I went to

783
00:46:49,320 --> 00:46:50,320
the Academy with.

784
00:46:50,320 --> 00:46:52,320
And I think I had it for 12 or 13 years.

785
00:46:52,320 --> 00:46:54,920
Like you could put your hand through the crotch of the gear.

786
00:46:54,920 --> 00:46:55,920
Oh my God.

787
00:46:55,920 --> 00:46:57,840
Like it was destroyed.

788
00:46:57,840 --> 00:47:02,400
And now I mean, there's a regular replacement gears washed, you know, it's tracked, it's

789
00:47:02,400 --> 00:47:03,400
washed.

790
00:47:03,400 --> 00:47:07,800
We're getting a, they just closed the bid for a set of like rescue gear that we'll run

791
00:47:07,800 --> 00:47:11,000
for MVIs, technical rescue, wild land type.

792
00:47:11,000 --> 00:47:16,400
So we're not wearing our full structural turnout gear except for structural firefighting.

793
00:47:16,400 --> 00:47:25,460
So when you look at that, I mean, in some 96 to today, I was talking like 28 years going

794
00:47:25,460 --> 00:47:31,240
on 29 years, but like from wearing one set of gear for everything, we would wear that

795
00:47:31,240 --> 00:47:32,360
to the car fire.

796
00:47:32,360 --> 00:47:34,000
We would wear that to the car accident.

797
00:47:34,000 --> 00:47:40,080
I would wear that jacket walking into somebody's home for a medical call later that night.

798
00:47:40,080 --> 00:47:42,260
You know, it was the be all jacket.

799
00:47:42,260 --> 00:47:47,280
You couldn't even tell what color it was anymore because it was so beat up and disfigured.

800
00:47:47,280 --> 00:47:50,640
There was no striping left on it or anything, but that was cool back then, right?

801
00:47:50,640 --> 00:47:53,800
That was the first thing you did when you got new gear, you rolled around on the bay

802
00:47:53,800 --> 00:47:57,800
floor just so that you didn't look like you had new gear on.

803
00:47:57,800 --> 00:48:04,680
And now, I mean, we just almost religiously preach to our people, wash your helmets.

804
00:48:04,680 --> 00:48:07,120
We're issued a second, a Bella clava.

805
00:48:07,120 --> 00:48:13,400
We're issued a second, the liner that goes around over your ears, your earflap piece.

806
00:48:13,400 --> 00:48:17,360
You know, you're issued a set of rescue gear coming up, your gears, you know, washed on

807
00:48:17,360 --> 00:48:19,200
a regular basis.

808
00:48:19,200 --> 00:48:26,060
And I think that's huge where that's where we do need to educate that younger generation

809
00:48:26,060 --> 00:48:30,160
of this is why we're doing this because you want to actually live and collect a pension

810
00:48:30,160 --> 00:48:31,340
out of this.

811
00:48:31,340 --> 00:48:35,040
You don't want to die doing this job.

812
00:48:35,040 --> 00:48:40,960
You don't want to be, you know, have a miserable retirement and be in pain and in agony because

813
00:48:40,960 --> 00:48:43,400
of what this job did to you.

814
00:48:43,400 --> 00:48:44,400
Absolutely.

815
00:48:44,400 --> 00:48:49,240
Well, you've been an interesting person to ask this, and this is a very unpopular observation,

816
00:48:49,240 --> 00:48:52,120
but I didn't come on, you know, create this podcast to make friends.

817
00:48:52,120 --> 00:48:54,680
I created it to change things.

818
00:48:54,680 --> 00:48:59,200
But one of the things that drives me crazy and bearing in mind, I was trained in Florida.

819
00:48:59,200 --> 00:49:03,640
I worked in California for a few years on a truck company and we had so we had the big

820
00:49:03,640 --> 00:49:10,080
old helmet, the smaller California helmet, then back to the big old New Yorker again.

821
00:49:10,080 --> 00:49:18,320
And I think what really kind of got my back up at first was this nauseating patronizing

822
00:49:18,320 --> 00:49:22,320
rhetoric on the European helmet, the space helmet.

823
00:49:22,320 --> 00:49:23,320
I have one.

824
00:49:23,320 --> 00:49:24,320
Yeah, very good.

825
00:49:24,320 --> 00:49:25,320
Good.

826
00:49:25,320 --> 00:49:26,760
So this is going to be this is going to go well.

827
00:49:26,760 --> 00:49:32,400
Now what I always say to people is what happens when you have to hold C spine in a car accident?

828
00:49:32,400 --> 00:49:35,560
Where is the first place your helmet goes on top of the car?

829
00:49:35,560 --> 00:49:37,200
I know I always did.

830
00:49:37,200 --> 00:49:39,520
You know, when you look up, what happens?

831
00:49:39,520 --> 00:49:41,000
Your lip bangs a tank.

832
00:49:41,000 --> 00:49:46,520
You know, so if you are part of the VR team or the high angle rescue team, they're not

833
00:49:46,520 --> 00:49:50,520
wearing their leather helmet unless they're doing a picture for Instagram for likes.

834
00:49:50,520 --> 00:49:54,900
But if they're real rescuers, they're wearing a different kind of helmet.

835
00:49:54,900 --> 00:49:58,080
And if you see behind me and you can see over there, you've got the schematics.

836
00:49:58,080 --> 00:50:05,000
I've got the kind of schematics of that style helmet and think this is 1937.

837
00:50:05,000 --> 00:50:09,880
And if you look at all the special operations, special forces members I've had on the show

838
00:50:09,880 --> 00:50:14,840
and the pilots and everyone else who's, you know, tip of the spear, our Navy SEALs don't

839
00:50:14,840 --> 00:50:21,200
wear tin helmets, but we hang on to that helmet, you know, and we call it history or tradition.

840
00:50:21,200 --> 00:50:22,200
And it's not tradition.

841
00:50:22,200 --> 00:50:23,940
It's history, history.

842
00:50:23,940 --> 00:50:28,720
And it's what we used to wear, but there is better technology out in the world.

843
00:50:28,720 --> 00:50:32,700
And I've had British firefighters and German firefighters, and they talk about what is

844
00:50:32,700 --> 00:50:37,200
involved in this helmet and how easy it is to decontaminate it from the carcinogens that

845
00:50:37,200 --> 00:50:42,040
get sucked in versus leather, for example, which is not only heavy and cumbersome, but

846
00:50:42,040 --> 00:50:45,880
is also a giant sponge for all things cancer.

847
00:50:45,880 --> 00:50:49,480
So in that, that is James Gearing's opinion.

848
00:50:49,480 --> 00:50:53,120
So I don't want to load the question, but what is your perspective when you have to

849
00:50:53,120 --> 00:50:57,640
at least wear a different helmet for what you are a specialist in?

850
00:50:57,640 --> 00:51:03,520
What is your perception of, you know, what we wear and do you think that we should be

851
00:51:03,520 --> 00:51:09,320
progressing with technology when it comes to what goes on our head in the fire service?

852
00:51:09,320 --> 00:51:12,200
In a nutshell, absolutely.

853
00:51:12,200 --> 00:51:15,280
We so, I mean, I have a European helmet.

854
00:51:15,280 --> 00:51:16,280
I don't wear it here.

855
00:51:16,280 --> 00:51:17,560
We don't wear leathers up here.

856
00:51:17,560 --> 00:51:19,640
It's a composite plastic.

857
00:51:19,640 --> 00:51:21,800
I wear one that's a little bit smaller.

858
00:51:21,800 --> 00:51:27,840
It doesn't have quite the large brim on the back of it because of the exact reason you

859
00:51:27,840 --> 00:51:30,920
mentioned where I look up with a tank on my back.

860
00:51:30,920 --> 00:51:34,840
I end up, you know, limiting my stuff.

861
00:51:34,840 --> 00:51:38,800
It's funny because when we go on to work sites, like we go to the port, oh, you got to be

862
00:51:38,800 --> 00:51:43,140
wearing a helmet and steel toes, your general PPE for any construction site.

863
00:51:43,140 --> 00:51:45,320
We all put on our helmets.

864
00:51:45,320 --> 00:51:48,440
Nowhere in there is there a CSA or an ANSI standard on that helmet.

865
00:51:48,440 --> 00:51:50,120
It is a firefighting helmet.

866
00:51:50,120 --> 00:51:55,800
It is not even really all that designed with the, I mean, I have a lot of helmets for other

867
00:51:55,800 --> 00:51:56,800
things.

868
00:51:56,800 --> 00:52:00,400
We'll chat about that in a second, but it's not even the way the internal structure of

869
00:52:00,400 --> 00:52:01,400
that helmet's made.

870
00:52:01,400 --> 00:52:05,320
It's not even designed to take a very hard drop on top of you.

871
00:52:05,320 --> 00:52:08,320
And like you say, yet we still wear them.

872
00:52:08,320 --> 00:52:12,600
The European one I have was given to me as a gift when I was teaching over there and

873
00:52:12,600 --> 00:52:14,800
it's reflective.

874
00:52:14,800 --> 00:52:18,440
It actually glows in the dark, which is an interesting concept.

875
00:52:18,440 --> 00:52:21,680
I mean, yes, people talk about, oh, how long is that going to last?

876
00:52:21,680 --> 00:52:23,640
Well, apparently it lasts a fair bit.

877
00:52:23,640 --> 00:52:28,360
And then when you look at the specialties, I have a Swiftwater helmet.

878
00:52:28,360 --> 00:52:30,200
I have a rope rescue helmet.

879
00:52:30,200 --> 00:52:32,440
I have a helicopter rescue helmet.

880
00:52:32,440 --> 00:52:34,480
I have a firefighting helmet.

881
00:52:34,480 --> 00:52:37,440
You know, the list goes on and on and on.

882
00:52:37,440 --> 00:52:45,040
And where my helicopter rescue helmet, if you rip the electronics off of it, it's a

883
00:52:45,040 --> 00:52:46,040
certain brand.

884
00:52:46,040 --> 00:52:48,760
I don't know, but Team Wendy, I don't know if you care if we mentioned brands or not

885
00:52:48,760 --> 00:52:49,760
on here.

886
00:52:49,760 --> 00:52:53,120
I could wear that for rope and I could wear that for water.

887
00:52:53,120 --> 00:52:56,440
I do wear other ones because it's a little lighter at times or whatnot.

888
00:52:56,440 --> 00:52:59,760
But I mean, generally those helmets are all very similarly made.

889
00:52:59,760 --> 00:53:03,000
They all meet an ANSI or a CSA standard for impact.

890
00:53:03,000 --> 00:53:05,880
You could wear them as almost a construction helmet.

891
00:53:05,880 --> 00:53:08,080
They've got different types of venting systems in them.

892
00:53:08,080 --> 00:53:09,080
So they're cooler.

893
00:53:09,080 --> 00:53:12,200
You won't get your head ripped off if you fall into the drink in them.

894
00:53:12,200 --> 00:53:15,400
All those types of things that like you say, and then we go back to firefighting and we

895
00:53:15,400 --> 00:53:19,120
put on that helmet.

896
00:53:19,120 --> 00:53:20,720
I don't know that answer the question.

897
00:53:20,720 --> 00:53:22,000
No, but it does.

898
00:53:22,000 --> 00:53:25,880
And it's just simply getting people to acknowledge that, you know, especially first, if nothing

899
00:53:25,880 --> 00:53:30,540
else stop making fun of the European one, like ours is better because it's not.

900
00:53:30,540 --> 00:53:36,040
If you accept, hey, this is really shit, but I care more about how I look than being able

901
00:53:36,040 --> 00:53:39,680
to do the job and you acknowledge that, then hang on to your shitty helmet.

902
00:53:39,680 --> 00:53:40,680
That's fine.

903
00:53:40,680 --> 00:53:44,680
But if you actually look in the mirror and go, I actually want these, we say for them.

904
00:53:44,680 --> 00:53:45,680
All right.

905
00:53:45,680 --> 00:53:46,680
So say it's actually for them.

906
00:53:46,680 --> 00:53:48,360
I want the best piece of equipment.

907
00:53:48,360 --> 00:53:52,920
I want the smallest gloves that are decks, you know, have dexterity that I can actually

908
00:53:52,920 --> 00:53:57,040
hit my Mayday button properly that I can tie knots with rather than the two pillows that

909
00:53:57,040 --> 00:53:58,320
I have normally.

910
00:53:58,320 --> 00:53:59,560
You know, I want to be the best.

911
00:53:59,560 --> 00:54:04,440
I want the best, you know, stuff because, you know, SEAL Team 6 and the SAS and all

912
00:54:04,440 --> 00:54:09,900
these other people, they're constantly getting the absolute cutting edge technology.

913
00:54:09,900 --> 00:54:18,120
But to rebuke that and to belittle technology advances, to me is, again, when you have to

914
00:54:18,120 --> 00:54:22,800
step back and you have to ask that question like you said before, why are we doing that?

915
00:54:22,800 --> 00:54:27,040
Because looking like Kurt Russell is not the servant leadership.

916
00:54:27,040 --> 00:54:31,040
That's narcissism and we have to separate the two.

917
00:54:31,040 --> 00:54:34,740
It's interesting because, I mean, I think it was the military, every ounce added to

918
00:54:34,740 --> 00:54:36,880
your foot is like a pound to your back or whatnot.

919
00:54:36,880 --> 00:54:41,720
And I mean, we already, I mean, our packs are, they've got to be 45 to 50 pounds, if

920
00:54:41,720 --> 00:54:43,020
not more.

921
00:54:43,020 --> 00:54:47,080
The particular model we have, we've got the buddy breathers and, you know, the whole battery

922
00:54:47,080 --> 00:54:50,120
pack system in there for the pack trackers and all this sort of stuff.

923
00:54:50,120 --> 00:54:55,160
And you look at the FDNY, they're back down to a base pack.

924
00:54:55,160 --> 00:54:59,920
And the reason why is, I think, probably because of the weight and the cumbersomeness of the

925
00:54:59,920 --> 00:55:00,920
pack.

926
00:55:00,920 --> 00:55:06,560
And I mean, I've been, people will laugh when I say this, I've skirted the rules a lot in

927
00:55:06,560 --> 00:55:10,440
my life and most people will go, somewhat, yeah, no kidding.

928
00:55:10,440 --> 00:55:12,520
I'm the guy that went out and bought his own leather boots.

929
00:55:12,520 --> 00:55:16,920
And I was the guy that called up a guy out of London and found a different set of gloves

930
00:55:16,920 --> 00:55:17,920
that were more dexterity.

931
00:55:17,920 --> 00:55:19,920
And I've been wearing those gloves.

932
00:55:19,920 --> 00:55:24,200
And as the fire department's progressed and we've, the thing with the fire service, I

933
00:55:24,200 --> 00:55:28,940
find here is you have to get to a certain level of seniority before anybody bothers

934
00:55:28,940 --> 00:55:30,640
listening to you.

935
00:55:30,640 --> 00:55:35,480
And I'm fortunate that I've made it to that level of seniority where I can actually influence

936
00:55:35,480 --> 00:55:37,720
some of these outcomes.

937
00:55:37,720 --> 00:55:42,800
And it's sad in a way that you have to get to that point to do it, because I'm on the

938
00:55:42,800 --> 00:55:44,080
downside of my career.

939
00:55:44,080 --> 00:55:46,200
I'm almost done.

940
00:55:46,200 --> 00:55:51,680
And so the, I mean, when I was buying my own gloves and my own boots was because I was

941
00:55:51,680 --> 00:55:53,160
kicking doors every day.

942
00:55:53,160 --> 00:55:58,300
Now I'm more standing on lawns and directing people to kick doors.

943
00:55:58,300 --> 00:56:03,320
So it's those people that are on those frontline posts that need those gloves and need those

944
00:56:03,320 --> 00:56:08,080
new boots or the better fitting ergonomic gear or the smaller and lighter helmets or

945
00:56:08,080 --> 00:56:12,040
packs because they're the ones that are out there doing the work.

946
00:56:12,040 --> 00:56:17,760
They're the ones that we need the feedback from in order to make those changes.

947
00:56:17,760 --> 00:56:24,520
And you know, it's really frustrating as I work in the public sector and I work in the

948
00:56:24,520 --> 00:56:25,520
private sector.

949
00:56:25,520 --> 00:56:30,680
And when we go and do these competitions, we sponsor a team every year to go and compete

950
00:56:30,680 --> 00:56:32,480
internationally.

951
00:56:32,480 --> 00:56:37,560
And we get some stuff donated to us and there's some stuff we just out and buy.

952
00:56:37,560 --> 00:56:39,560
And I mean, I'll throw out to Arc'teryx.

953
00:56:39,560 --> 00:56:41,440
They've been sponsoring us since the beginning.

954
00:56:41,440 --> 00:56:48,040
And we R&D a lot of their gear, packs that they have that we brought back and given updates

955
00:56:48,040 --> 00:56:50,380
to is because we go to here.

956
00:56:50,380 --> 00:56:55,760
And so we all of a sudden get this ability to constantly being able to play with the

957
00:56:55,760 --> 00:57:01,680
latest and newest equipment on the market and testing it in real world circumstances.

958
00:57:01,680 --> 00:57:07,640
And then I go back to the public sector job of the fire department and we're arguing about

959
00:57:07,640 --> 00:57:10,360
what bulky pair of mitts we should be wearing.

960
00:57:10,360 --> 00:57:11,840
It does get frustrating.

961
00:57:11,840 --> 00:57:12,840
Yeah.

962
00:57:12,840 --> 00:57:18,200
I was just talking to somebody the other day about fire conferences and I love, like for

963
00:57:18,200 --> 00:57:20,760
example, the Orlando fire conference is amazing.

964
00:57:20,760 --> 00:57:22,880
Ryan Central Florida wrote rescue challenge.

965
00:57:22,880 --> 00:57:23,880
Awesome.

966
00:57:23,880 --> 00:57:24,880
You know what I mean?

967
00:57:24,880 --> 00:57:30,440
These smaller organizations where a few firefighters get together and do something local, I think

968
00:57:30,440 --> 00:57:35,640
is phenomenal, but it kind of gets my back up a little bit when I've gone to, for example,

969
00:57:35,640 --> 00:57:41,280
fire rescue East and you know, they're saying, oh, it's the latest and greatest.

970
00:57:41,280 --> 00:57:43,260
And you're standing there going, no, it's not.

971
00:57:43,260 --> 00:57:46,600
That's the same shit you've been selling for 30 years.

972
00:57:46,600 --> 00:57:48,800
Don't tell me this is this is innovation.

973
00:57:48,800 --> 00:57:49,800
It's not.

974
00:57:49,800 --> 00:57:50,800
Show me something.

975
00:57:50,800 --> 00:57:55,720
You know, like you said, go to the go to Europe, go to the places where they are truly innovating

976
00:57:55,720 --> 00:57:57,960
because we make some amazing things over here.

977
00:57:57,960 --> 00:57:59,520
Like I love our fire engines over here.

978
00:57:59,520 --> 00:58:03,440
I mean, I think some of the, you know, like the hose rolls and some of those ideas in

979
00:58:03,440 --> 00:58:04,800
the UK are pretty interesting.

980
00:58:04,800 --> 00:58:05,800
I don't know.

981
00:58:05,800 --> 00:58:09,680
I've never tried them, but you know that I love that philosophy and I quote it all the

982
00:58:09,680 --> 00:58:10,680
time.

983
00:58:10,680 --> 00:58:13,040
You know, the, the rising tide lifts all ships.

984
00:58:13,040 --> 00:58:18,560
Every country has things they do really well and it takes humility to actually go, you

985
00:58:18,560 --> 00:58:21,580
know, Hey, the UK, okay, show us these helmets.

986
00:58:21,580 --> 00:58:22,960
Tell me, tell me what it's all about.

987
00:58:22,960 --> 00:58:24,220
You know what I mean?

988
00:58:24,220 --> 00:58:30,040
But if you just constantly refusing this technology to advance, then you're only hurting your

989
00:58:30,040 --> 00:58:32,080
people and your delivery of service.

990
00:58:32,080 --> 00:58:33,680
No, absolutely.

991
00:58:33,680 --> 00:58:37,720
Like we sent over some people, we went to the technical rescue school or the fire school

992
00:58:37,720 --> 00:58:41,800
for the technical rescue program in Belgium.

993
00:58:41,800 --> 00:58:46,840
And I mean, these are guys on this class that are, I mean, one's a former engineer.

994
00:58:46,840 --> 00:58:48,080
They're all technical rescue.

995
00:58:48,080 --> 00:58:50,280
We're all qualified in our own areas.

996
00:58:50,280 --> 00:58:51,360
Yeah, we went back.

997
00:58:51,360 --> 00:58:52,680
Let's start at the basics.

998
00:58:52,680 --> 00:58:53,980
Let's do your program.

999
00:58:53,980 --> 00:58:58,920
Let's go to your school in your country with your equipment.

1000
00:58:58,920 --> 00:59:02,000
And there's certainly things that you look there and go, no, that's not going to work

1001
00:59:02,000 --> 00:59:07,320
for us, but there's definitely things you look there and go, Hey, that's, that's a takeaway.

1002
00:59:07,320 --> 00:59:11,520
We can incorporate that into our systems and it's those weird things.

1003
00:59:11,520 --> 00:59:18,640
So while we're there, their school is on an old British army base in Belgium and they've

1004
00:59:18,640 --> 00:59:22,800
got a, I think it's a five or six story structure where they do their fire training.

1005
00:59:22,800 --> 00:59:27,880
It's an old barracks accommodation and they had a team leader course going there.

1006
00:59:27,880 --> 00:59:31,560
And so we said, Hey, you know, can we do time out here for five seconds for learning tech

1007
00:59:31,560 --> 00:59:32,560
rescue?

1008
00:59:32,560 --> 00:59:35,840
I'm kind of interested in seeing what your team leader program looks like too.

1009
00:59:35,840 --> 00:59:39,940
And so just to stand there and watch that as their team leaders go up with a scribe

1010
00:59:39,940 --> 00:59:44,380
and the tick and the information that they're recording and passing on to their people and

1011
00:59:44,380 --> 00:59:45,380
what they're doing.

1012
00:59:45,380 --> 00:59:47,960
And it's like, okay, there's some cool stuff here.

1013
00:59:47,960 --> 00:59:51,040
And then that conversation led into flow control.

1014
00:59:51,040 --> 00:59:56,280
I mean, we're a PPV department where, you know, understand flow control because I've

1015
00:59:56,280 --> 01:00:01,640
learned it in different venues, not so much in my own department, but now these, they're

1016
01:00:01,640 --> 01:00:03,380
a flow control kind of areas.

1017
01:00:03,380 --> 01:00:07,200
So they're showing me different smoke stoppers and flash over simulators and different things

1018
01:00:07,200 --> 01:00:08,360
like this.

1019
01:00:08,360 --> 01:00:14,440
So I go to that school for tech rescue and I walk away with other takeaways that I can

1020
01:00:14,440 --> 01:00:19,060
directly come back and use in the fire service in my fire service.

1021
01:00:19,060 --> 01:00:23,280
And they want us in that school because they're humble enough as their instructors to ask

1022
01:00:23,280 --> 01:00:25,360
us, Hey, so what do you think about this device?

1023
01:00:25,360 --> 01:00:26,720
Or what do you think about that device?

1024
01:00:26,720 --> 01:00:28,880
Cause they're pulling devices out of North America.

1025
01:00:28,880 --> 01:00:33,560
Now a lot of the artificial high directionals, your vortexes, your terror adapters that are

1026
01:00:33,560 --> 01:00:37,780
made over here, you know, which ones do you prefer and why and what?

1027
01:00:37,780 --> 01:00:44,100
So there's this massive sharing of information, but it's occurring and I'm using this term

1028
01:00:44,100 --> 01:00:48,800
a bit more openly, but like at the firefighter level, this isn't occurring from department

1029
01:00:48,800 --> 01:00:53,280
to department or from chief to chief or even from captain to captain per se, this is, this

1030
01:00:53,280 --> 01:00:54,880
is at the user level.

1031
01:00:54,880 --> 01:00:55,880
This is occurring.

1032
01:00:55,880 --> 01:00:56,880
Absolutely.

1033
01:00:56,880 --> 01:01:00,000
And again, it's, it's, it's humility.

1034
01:01:00,000 --> 01:01:03,240
It's literally saying, you know, show me what you do.

1035
01:01:03,240 --> 01:01:06,200
And like you said, and then it's the Bruce Lee term, you know, absorb what is useful

1036
01:01:06,200 --> 01:01:07,480
to scars, what is useless.

1037
01:01:07,480 --> 01:01:10,200
It doesn't mean it's useless to other people, but they are, that's not going to work.

1038
01:01:10,200 --> 01:01:14,000
Cause I live in, you know, I work in Manhattan and everywhere I go is a high rise or I work

1039
01:01:14,000 --> 01:01:15,480
in orange County, Florida.

1040
01:01:15,480 --> 01:01:19,440
And everywhere I go is a hundred square foot crack shack, you know, whatever it is, of

1041
01:01:19,440 --> 01:01:24,360
course there are, you know, horses for courses, but if we're not knowledge sharing, and I

1042
01:01:24,360 --> 01:01:29,200
think this is one, a real kind of eye opener to me was when you really step back, you realize

1043
01:01:29,200 --> 01:01:33,200
how fragmented certainly the American fire services, you know, and there are literally

1044
01:01:33,200 --> 01:01:36,360
cities and counties that won't talk to each other.

1045
01:01:36,360 --> 01:01:39,360
No matter knowledge share and grow together, they won't even talk to each other.

1046
01:01:39,360 --> 01:01:44,640
They won't even interact on a fire, which is absolutely disgusting and pathetic, but

1047
01:01:44,640 --> 01:01:46,040
this is what we've got to fix.

1048
01:01:46,040 --> 01:01:51,400
This, this, this ego in leadership or lack thereof, putting that humility back in and

1049
01:01:51,400 --> 01:01:56,000
realizing that we are all doing the same job, just not nationally, internationally, you know,

1050
01:01:56,000 --> 01:01:59,000
and there might be something that they're doing in Indonesia that will blow all of our

1051
01:01:59,000 --> 01:02:04,440
minds, you know, but, um, you know, if, if we don't, if we're not humble enough to ask

1052
01:02:04,440 --> 01:02:10,160
other people the way they do it and have the humility to actually listen and take a step

1053
01:02:10,160 --> 01:02:13,680
back and again, ask the question, that's the theme in this conversation.

1054
01:02:13,680 --> 01:02:16,200
Why do we even do this in the first place?

1055
01:02:16,200 --> 01:02:19,680
That is, that is where innovation occurs, you know, otherwise Steve jobs would have

1056
01:02:19,680 --> 01:02:22,040
been like, yeah, you know, abacus is fine.

1057
01:02:22,040 --> 01:02:23,840
We'll just leave it there.

1058
01:02:23,840 --> 01:02:29,120
I'm laughing because we run a leadership program with Ronan and I partnered with a fella who's

1059
01:02:29,120 --> 01:02:33,680
a team lead on Antorp fire tech rescuer, ex military guy.

1060
01:02:33,680 --> 01:02:37,880
And we're over in Texas teaching this just like two weeks ago or something.

1061
01:02:37,880 --> 01:02:44,080
And so we're doing two demos of, you know, different leadership styles for, you know,

1062
01:02:44,080 --> 01:02:46,240
leading and briefing a rescue team.

1063
01:02:46,240 --> 01:02:50,200
And Jill stands up and he's like, you know, okay, you four are with me, you're this, you're

1064
01:02:50,200 --> 01:02:51,200
that boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

1065
01:02:51,200 --> 01:02:55,480
And then he runs like he's off it or like a sprint.

1066
01:02:55,480 --> 01:03:01,960
And these five people are like looking at me like, um, I'm like, yeah, you might want

1067
01:03:01,960 --> 01:03:02,960
to run after him.

1068
01:03:02,960 --> 01:03:04,960
And it's so foreign to us.

1069
01:03:04,960 --> 01:03:09,840
Like you say, the fire service is like our team leader is literally sprinting at this

1070
01:03:09,840 --> 01:03:10,840
point.

1071
01:03:10,840 --> 01:03:15,440
Like he's told me what to do and what to bring and he's off at a trot.

1072
01:03:15,440 --> 01:03:19,640
And these guys are like, uh, wait a second here.

1073
01:03:19,640 --> 01:03:23,960
But yeah, it's, and I'm not saying that's the way, but it's like you say, it's, it's

1074
01:03:23,960 --> 01:03:30,840
a fire service internationally and picking up those differences and learning, taking

1075
01:03:30,840 --> 01:03:31,840
what you can take.

1076
01:03:31,840 --> 01:03:37,480
You got a horse for each course and I also, you know, people need to think that they look

1077
01:03:37,480 --> 01:03:38,680
so short term at times.

1078
01:03:38,680 --> 01:03:40,440
So what do I need in the next year?

1079
01:03:40,440 --> 01:03:45,200
Did I think I'd be involved in SAR again to the extent that I am at this point in my life?

1080
01:03:45,200 --> 01:03:49,480
No, the rope rescues we do in SAR and the technical rescue we do in SAR.

1081
01:03:49,480 --> 01:03:54,280
So I work on their winter team, the rope team, their water team and their helicopter team.

1082
01:03:54,280 --> 01:03:57,320
Our average rollout on a bag is a 200 meter rope.

1083
01:03:57,320 --> 01:04:02,640
600, three feet a meter, just under 600 feet.

1084
01:04:02,640 --> 01:04:05,640
We don't even have, I think we might have two in the fire service.

1085
01:04:05,640 --> 01:04:09,720
Our highest thing in Delta is like a 37, 42 story apartment.

1086
01:04:09,720 --> 01:04:15,720
Maybe the crane's down at the docks at 300 ish, you know, but when we go out in SAR,

1087
01:04:15,720 --> 01:04:22,520
putting someone out on 180 or 190 meters of rope is not an uncommon thing.

1088
01:04:22,520 --> 01:04:25,920
And you have to go back into your thought processes now and go, okay, yeah, I'm running

1089
01:04:25,920 --> 01:04:33,080
on longer ropes, I've been trained to do this, but maybe it's buried back in that far away

1090
01:04:33,080 --> 01:04:34,800
part of your brain.

1091
01:04:34,800 --> 01:04:39,360
So it's not like, you know, you learn a skill and just stay in that box because that's all

1092
01:04:39,360 --> 01:04:41,100
you're ever going to do.

1093
01:04:41,100 --> 01:04:44,080
You get tasked out, like you say, to go into the next district.

1094
01:04:44,080 --> 01:04:49,400
You have a regional emergency, which gets you called out to a wildfire or an urban interface

1095
01:04:49,400 --> 01:04:55,600
or for whatever reason, you end up moving and end up back with search and rescue teams

1096
01:04:55,600 --> 01:04:59,100
doing something different where this information just gets pulled back out.

1097
01:04:59,100 --> 01:05:01,320
So it's all valuable stuff.

1098
01:05:01,320 --> 01:05:04,080
It's just how it's applied.

1099
01:05:04,080 --> 01:05:09,320
It was interesting hearing Ryan talking about rescuing from the Orlando Eye.

1100
01:05:09,320 --> 01:05:10,320
Is it Orlando Eye?

1101
01:05:10,320 --> 01:05:13,600
Orlando Wheel, I think they call it, but the London Eye that we have now in Orlando as

1102
01:05:13,600 --> 01:05:14,600
well.

1103
01:05:14,600 --> 01:05:18,080
And I forget, I think it's 300 feet tall, if I'm not mistaken.

1104
01:05:18,080 --> 01:05:23,400
And I didn't realize that they belay people down, you know, from wherever they were sitting

1105
01:05:23,400 --> 01:05:27,480
in a harness all the way down to the roof of the building that they pay that.

1106
01:05:27,480 --> 01:05:33,320
So when you think about that, I mean, a 300 plus foot drop with a person who up until

1107
01:05:33,320 --> 01:05:37,280
that moment had no idea they were going to be descending on a rope.

1108
01:05:37,280 --> 01:05:38,520
I mean, it blew my mind.

1109
01:05:38,520 --> 01:05:42,320
And then also he was talking obviously about the climb and the kind of little access points

1110
01:05:42,320 --> 01:05:43,760
that they've got to climb through.

1111
01:05:43,760 --> 01:05:48,320
And again, you're talking about efficiency of weight and smaller lines and placement

1112
01:05:48,320 --> 01:05:49,320
of lines.

1113
01:05:49,320 --> 01:05:50,900
I mean, it was absolutely fascinating.

1114
01:05:50,900 --> 01:05:54,240
But if we're not drilling on that, that's not something that you want to be making the

1115
01:05:54,240 --> 01:05:55,720
plan on the fly.

1116
01:05:55,720 --> 01:06:02,280
No, I mean, if you're not to shoot at my fire department neighbors, but if you're still

1117
01:06:02,280 --> 01:06:09,120
a 12, 5, you know, 12, 5 millimeter rope fire department, and now you're climbing structure

1118
01:06:09,120 --> 01:06:17,320
to 300 or 330 feet, this is, you know, those systems just almost don't jive anymore.

1119
01:06:17,320 --> 01:06:22,120
You're going to do, you're going to make it more complex and cause more issues and take

1120
01:06:22,120 --> 01:06:27,880
more time than if you just took the time and learned a newer system, a smaller system,

1121
01:06:27,880 --> 01:06:31,920
a system that may be more applicable to that particular job.

1122
01:06:31,920 --> 01:06:34,400
And yes, it might mean you have to specialize a little more.

1123
01:06:34,400 --> 01:06:39,640
It might mean that you have to train a little bit more, but it's what also the client, the

1124
01:06:39,640 --> 01:06:45,160
public, the people that's paying our wage expect, you know, I mean, I was, I've never

1125
01:06:45,160 --> 01:06:46,160
been to the Orlando one.

1126
01:06:46,160 --> 01:06:47,960
I've been to the London Eye.

1127
01:06:47,960 --> 01:06:50,520
I was there one of the nights they were doing one of the trainings on there.

1128
01:06:50,520 --> 01:06:54,520
I know some of the boys from the UK that train on that and do the evac.

1129
01:06:54,520 --> 01:06:59,320
And I want to say that there was like 25 people a cabin, like, so it's not even like, Oh,

1130
01:06:59,320 --> 01:07:01,520
I got these problems at 300 feet.

1131
01:07:01,520 --> 01:07:03,560
I got 25 humans.

1132
01:07:03,560 --> 01:07:05,520
I could be handicapped.

1133
01:07:05,520 --> 01:07:08,720
They could be disabled, you know, mentally or physically, and I'm not trying to pick

1134
01:07:08,720 --> 01:07:12,680
on people, but that's a whole different rescue now than taking an able-bodied person and

1135
01:07:12,680 --> 01:07:14,700
tossing them out on a rope.

1136
01:07:14,700 --> 01:07:19,220
And so you not only got the height, you've got some other leadership and technical rescue

1137
01:07:19,220 --> 01:07:20,960
challenges around that.

1138
01:07:20,960 --> 01:07:21,960
Yeah.

1139
01:07:21,960 --> 01:07:24,960
And I mean, if we're going to be completely blunt, I mean, if they are tourists from the

1140
01:07:24,960 --> 01:07:27,840
US, they could be three, four, 500 pounds as well.

1141
01:07:27,840 --> 01:07:29,240
And I'm not saying that to be a dick.

1142
01:07:29,240 --> 01:07:31,280
I'm just saying it mathematically.

1143
01:07:31,280 --> 01:07:38,600
Well, I mean, our tech rescue, we very seldom got called out to lift large people when I

1144
01:07:38,600 --> 01:07:41,120
started the job.

1145
01:07:41,120 --> 01:07:44,280
We cut people out of showers at the hospital.

1146
01:07:44,280 --> 01:07:49,000
We've taken out windows of front entrance, like front home windows.

1147
01:07:49,000 --> 01:07:51,360
We've done, you know, and that's not unusual.

1148
01:07:51,360 --> 01:07:53,600
I mean, it's just the nature of the beast now.

1149
01:07:53,600 --> 01:07:56,360
Like technical rescue also does bariatric rescue.

1150
01:07:56,360 --> 01:07:58,080
End up picking up heavy people.

1151
01:07:58,080 --> 01:08:01,760
It's just the way it is.

1152
01:08:01,760 --> 01:08:06,240
I was almost crushed by a 600 pound guy who lost his balance and was sitting on a lazy

1153
01:08:06,240 --> 01:08:08,720
boy and I was between him and the seat.

1154
01:08:08,720 --> 01:08:12,240
And then another one that was in Anaheim, another one on the calls.

1155
01:08:12,240 --> 01:08:13,480
It was exactly what you're talking about.

1156
01:08:13,480 --> 01:08:17,680
We didn't have to take him through the window, but he was the kind of person and it's just

1157
01:08:17,680 --> 01:08:19,760
heartbreaking and he's definitely not with us now.

1158
01:08:19,760 --> 01:08:25,800
This was probably 15 years ago now, but he was one of those people that when he lay on

1159
01:08:25,800 --> 01:08:30,360
the bed, he was a pancake, like a full circle, like one of the Mr. Man books that I grew

1160
01:08:30,360 --> 01:08:31,360
up with.

1161
01:08:31,360 --> 01:08:35,320
And when we took him out, we literally had to pour him through the door and at halfway

1162
01:08:35,320 --> 01:08:38,640
point he looked like an hourglass, you know, half a circle on each side.

1163
01:08:38,640 --> 01:08:42,560
And it's so sad, but that guy was basically all but a thousand pounds.

1164
01:08:42,560 --> 01:08:45,200
A thousand pound human being.

1165
01:08:45,200 --> 01:08:49,080
And I just interviewed Tulsi Gabbard a few days ago and I was talking to her about this.

1166
01:08:49,080 --> 01:08:53,000
Like, you know, the politicians don't talk about the obesity crisis.

1167
01:08:53,000 --> 01:08:59,520
And like you said, in our lifetimes, we went from, you know, there were some people that

1168
01:08:59,520 --> 01:09:03,880
were obviously heavy, but not anywhere near to the point where we are now.

1169
01:09:03,880 --> 01:09:07,920
And in America, we're 70% overweight or obese.

1170
01:09:07,920 --> 01:09:12,680
And the comment has also been made, it's the first time in human history that they predict

1171
01:09:12,680 --> 01:09:16,760
that our children to die before us, you know, if you're part of that group.

1172
01:09:16,760 --> 01:09:20,900
So it's, you know, it's an extremely important conversation, primarily for the health of

1173
01:09:20,900 --> 01:09:25,720
our nation, but even from the hospitals and the fire departments, because the number of

1174
01:09:25,720 --> 01:09:29,320
times that I've had to take a stretcher out the back or rescue so we can slide someone

1175
01:09:29,320 --> 01:09:34,480
on a dolphin sling into the back and, you know, how humiliating for that individual,

1176
01:09:34,480 --> 01:09:37,720
you know, this is an important conversation nationally, I think.

1177
01:09:37,720 --> 01:09:40,120
No, absolutely.

1178
01:09:40,120 --> 01:09:43,960
And it's, it's funny, because it's not, I mean, not funny isn't the right word.

1179
01:09:43,960 --> 01:09:49,760
But when I go over to Europe, like Berlin, their tech rescue team, they've got bariatric

1180
01:09:49,760 --> 01:09:50,760
stretchers.

1181
01:09:50,760 --> 01:09:55,440
I mean, it's no longer just a North American or an American problem, it's becoming a European

1182
01:09:55,440 --> 01:09:56,440
problem.

1183
01:09:56,440 --> 01:10:05,360
And when you talk to my friends in Belgium, they're doing tech rescues weekly, and predominantly

1184
01:10:05,360 --> 01:10:09,720
it's because their elevators are the size of a shoebox, and they can't get the people

1185
01:10:09,720 --> 01:10:10,720
out there.

1186
01:10:10,720 --> 01:10:13,080
So they're having to take them up the stairs or out the window.

1187
01:10:13,080 --> 01:10:17,160
And as you know, from being over there, narrow streets, you can't get ladder trucks into

1188
01:10:17,160 --> 01:10:20,160
a lot of those places, higher buildings mashed together.

1189
01:10:20,160 --> 01:10:26,400
So it's all rope work now to get either the sick or the large out of these buildings.

1190
01:10:26,400 --> 01:10:31,720
Well, speaking of that, we haven't really kind of taken you on the journey of your first

1191
01:10:31,720 --> 01:10:36,920
kind of exposure to rope training, wherever that was through the creation of your own

1192
01:10:36,920 --> 01:10:37,920
rescue company.

1193
01:10:37,920 --> 01:10:40,680
So when were you first exposed to it?

1194
01:10:40,680 --> 01:10:45,920
And then what was that point that made you not just immerse yourself, because I did ops

1195
01:10:45,920 --> 01:10:49,480
and tech, but didn't ever join a team.

1196
01:10:49,480 --> 01:10:53,640
And so it was really more the knowledge rather than actually being competent at it.

1197
01:10:53,640 --> 01:10:56,400
And I'm not competent at rope rescue, I'll say that right now.

1198
01:10:56,400 --> 01:10:59,620
But you can really lean into it the same way that Ryan did.

1199
01:10:59,620 --> 01:11:04,960
So what was the exposure and then what made you jump in with both feet?

1200
01:11:04,960 --> 01:11:10,920
I guess the first exposure to rope was basic mountain operations in the military, which

1201
01:11:10,920 --> 01:11:13,400
is a whole different ball game.

1202
01:11:13,400 --> 01:11:17,600
And the crossing of those worlds was actually quite humorous.

1203
01:11:17,600 --> 01:11:24,520
The military at the time was laid nylon, two ropes, double wrapped through a steel carabiner

1204
01:11:24,520 --> 01:11:28,640
out the helicopter door you go, off the skid you go, wherever that might be.

1205
01:11:28,640 --> 01:11:31,240
You would break and leaves you.

1206
01:11:31,240 --> 01:11:33,720
There might be someone fireman belaying you below.

1207
01:11:33,720 --> 01:11:37,880
I use that term, you know, as per the old school of what it was, you know, they pull

1208
01:11:37,880 --> 01:11:39,800
the rope to try to stop you.

1209
01:11:39,800 --> 01:11:41,200
You can't do that on a helicopter though.

1210
01:11:41,200 --> 01:11:44,400
So you would have just fallen.

1211
01:11:44,400 --> 01:11:50,120
And you know, those types of things like the safety margin was definitely a little lacking.

1212
01:11:50,120 --> 01:11:55,640
And so when I came to the fire service, I joined in 96, 97, we started a tech rescue

1213
01:11:55,640 --> 01:11:56,640
team.

1214
01:11:56,640 --> 01:12:02,080
I had some rope background, so you know, get thrown on some courses to do that.

1215
01:12:02,080 --> 01:12:06,480
And it was funny and I bring up that little tangent piece earlier is so we're doing this

1216
01:12:06,480 --> 01:12:11,200
course and I am left somewhere basically I'm derigging something and they're like, Oh,

1217
01:12:11,200 --> 01:12:12,200
can you get down?

1218
01:12:12,200 --> 01:12:15,720
I'm like, yeah, just leave me one rope and I just loop it and double wrap this carabiner

1219
01:12:15,720 --> 01:12:17,600
is wrap off the side of this thing.

1220
01:12:17,600 --> 01:12:19,680
And people's heads are exploding, right?

1221
01:12:19,680 --> 01:12:22,640
Like, oh my gosh, you can't do that.

1222
01:12:22,640 --> 01:12:26,920
And I'm like, wow, I've been doing this for years, I'm still alive.

1223
01:12:26,920 --> 01:12:33,800
But yeah, and so we've seen that and I guess so I thought it was about 97.

1224
01:12:33,800 --> 01:12:40,960
I became an instructor in rope rescue for the fire department in 2000.

1225
01:12:40,960 --> 01:12:45,440
And then I took over as program coordinator for tech rescue in 2010 in my fire department.

1226
01:12:45,440 --> 01:12:56,520
And in the meantime, about 2003, I started my own company doing just rescue standby work.

1227
01:12:56,520 --> 01:13:02,920
And it didn't take us long to kind of figure out that there was a lot of people doing rescue

1228
01:13:02,920 --> 01:13:04,560
by rote.

1229
01:13:04,560 --> 01:13:11,120
And by rote, I mean, memorization of a skill, which they could apply repetitively to the

1230
01:13:11,120 --> 01:13:13,120
same scenario.

1231
01:13:13,120 --> 01:13:19,440
But as soon as the scenario changed by even a couple of degrees, all of a sudden that

1232
01:13:19,440 --> 01:13:22,160
skill set didn't fit the scenario anymore.

1233
01:13:22,160 --> 01:13:27,720
And instead of understanding the principles of why we did things, this rote process wasn't

1234
01:13:27,720 --> 01:13:29,840
really taking them anywhere.

1235
01:13:29,840 --> 01:13:32,920
And I'll be honest, a lot of what I was taught was taught by rote.

1236
01:13:32,920 --> 01:13:37,840
I mean, the military, they didn't, if they tried to explain to me, you know, what that

1237
01:13:37,840 --> 01:13:40,480
actually were the safety margins or anything in there, they couldn't.

1238
01:13:40,480 --> 01:13:44,200
But I mean, when you look back at it, the principles in the military is you didn't

1239
01:13:44,200 --> 01:13:46,780
want a soldier hanging underneath a helicopter.

1240
01:13:46,780 --> 01:13:50,120
They just wanted you hitting the ground so the next soldier could move into that door

1241
01:13:50,120 --> 01:13:53,240
and carry on and do that mission.

1242
01:13:53,240 --> 01:13:58,200
And that was the principle behind it is clear you as fast as you can off those ropes.

1243
01:13:58,200 --> 01:14:01,560
Where the fire service, you know, wanting a bit more of a safety margin, we start looking

1244
01:14:01,560 --> 01:14:04,600
at different principles.

1245
01:14:04,600 --> 01:14:10,600
About the same time, you know, into the 2000s started into rope access.

1246
01:14:10,600 --> 01:14:13,840
And then we're really, I guess, so it's always kind of been there.

1247
01:14:13,840 --> 01:14:14,840
I rock climb.

1248
01:14:14,840 --> 01:14:18,520
I started with search and rescue in 2007.

1249
01:14:18,520 --> 01:14:20,840
I was working on my own sort of business in 2003.

1250
01:14:20,840 --> 01:14:24,200
I was doing rope with the fire department.

1251
01:14:24,200 --> 01:14:30,920
And then in 2013, we ended up having enough ability as a private company to go to our

1252
01:14:30,920 --> 01:14:32,480
first Grimp Day.

1253
01:14:32,480 --> 01:14:37,400
So our first rope rescue competition and that was in Belgium.

1254
01:14:37,400 --> 01:14:40,920
And at this point, I've either competed or been staff.

1255
01:14:40,920 --> 01:14:43,680
I'm going to take a stab at about 25 of them.

1256
01:14:43,680 --> 01:14:48,280
I've competed with different teams in different languages, you know, technical advisor in

1257
01:14:48,280 --> 01:14:52,860
places like China, I've helped set them up in places like North America.

1258
01:14:52,860 --> 01:14:58,200
And going and working with other people and seeing different scenarios and seeing the

1259
01:14:58,200 --> 01:15:04,820
way other people solve these problems really is what kind of opened the eye and maybe either

1260
01:15:04,820 --> 01:15:10,720
relit the flame or, you know, poured gas on the existing flame to it.

1261
01:15:10,720 --> 01:15:15,800
And it's at the point now, even with our local SAR team, if I can, you know, give them a

1262
01:15:15,800 --> 01:15:20,440
couple of clutches to help out and provide that training, you know, we're also one of

1263
01:15:20,440 --> 01:15:25,000
the British Columbia rope rescue providers for search and rescue.

1264
01:15:25,000 --> 01:15:26,140
Why wouldn't I?

1265
01:15:26,140 --> 01:15:27,760
Because it helps out those people.

1266
01:15:27,760 --> 01:15:29,200
There's people with a passion for it.

1267
01:15:29,200 --> 01:15:33,000
Let's get them to do it so it's safe and effective.

1268
01:15:33,000 --> 01:15:36,900
And so not just safe for them, but safe for the people we're trying to rescue, not just

1269
01:15:36,900 --> 01:15:41,260
effective for us, but effective to the people we're trying to rescue.

1270
01:15:41,260 --> 01:15:43,640
And I find that a lot of that's been lost.

1271
01:15:43,640 --> 01:15:48,800
And I'm going to go, I know a bit long here, but I'll go on another one, the pike and pivot

1272
01:15:48,800 --> 01:15:50,880
really cool thing.

1273
01:15:50,880 --> 01:15:52,660
Everybody learns that it looks really sexy.

1274
01:15:52,660 --> 01:15:54,800
It's terrible for the patient, really.

1275
01:15:54,800 --> 01:15:57,840
You know, if you have a patient that's in a basket stretcher because of some sort of

1276
01:15:57,840 --> 01:16:02,600
traumatic injury, let's take an instantly flip them into the standing position and drop

1277
01:16:02,600 --> 01:16:07,840
their BP right down to the floor so we can do a move that looks really cool, opposed

1278
01:16:07,840 --> 01:16:13,000
to maybe learning a couple more rope skills and taking a little bit more effort and doing

1279
01:16:13,000 --> 01:16:14,940
it a different way.

1280
01:16:14,940 --> 01:16:22,620
And so it's going overseas and training with Japanese and Chinese and Taiwanese and Germans

1281
01:16:22,620 --> 01:16:28,560
and French and Belgians and, you know, through the different other areas that we've been

1282
01:16:28,560 --> 01:16:33,120
through America, Central America, through Canada, and picking this up and trying to

1283
01:16:33,120 --> 01:16:40,160
realize that it needs to be safe for us, but you can't hurt the person anymore.

1284
01:16:40,160 --> 01:16:44,760
You know, it's not that snatch and grab scenario per se that we all think it is.

1285
01:16:44,760 --> 01:16:48,600
So that's kind of the whole spectrum of rope rescue.

1286
01:16:48,600 --> 01:16:52,880
I mean, I'm fairly passionate about it and technical rescue in general.

1287
01:16:52,880 --> 01:16:56,680
Well, I want to get to some of the innovations from these other countries.

1288
01:16:56,680 --> 01:17:00,320
I know Ryan talked about, I think it was Japan when we were speaking.

1289
01:17:00,320 --> 01:17:05,880
But before we do, when I was listening to you on the CMC podcast, which was a podcast

1290
01:17:05,880 --> 01:17:10,960
about podcasting, it was very entertaining to listen to.

1291
01:17:10,960 --> 01:17:15,080
It reminded me of something that, again, you know, some of these observations coming out

1292
01:17:15,080 --> 01:17:18,800
the back door of the fire service through, you know, bizarre twist of fate and ending

1293
01:17:18,800 --> 01:17:21,720
up doing this for a living now.

1294
01:17:21,720 --> 01:17:26,200
I always remember, again, like you said, I mean, rote is that perfect kind of description

1295
01:17:26,200 --> 01:17:29,620
the same way as we call them, you know, cookbook medics, the guys that can't think outside

1296
01:17:29,620 --> 01:17:31,400
the pages.

1297
01:17:31,400 --> 01:17:35,800
The times when you do have, for example, someone trapped under a car and it's like, OK, we've

1298
01:17:35,800 --> 01:17:41,280
got a crib and we've got airbags or we could just turn and face away from the car, grab

1299
01:17:41,280 --> 01:17:45,480
the fucking frame, lift it up and someone drag the person out.

1300
01:17:45,480 --> 01:17:49,840
And I realized, you know, there's occasions where, you know, absolutely two is one, one

1301
01:17:49,840 --> 01:17:51,040
is none to a point.

1302
01:17:51,040 --> 01:17:55,960
And if there's not an expedient element to a rescue, you've got all the time in the world

1303
01:17:55,960 --> 01:17:58,760
to ensure all the safety stops.

1304
01:17:58,760 --> 01:18:02,760
But like you've all the Texas, there's also times where you've got to put your big boy

1305
01:18:02,760 --> 01:18:08,160
pants on and, you know, you not have time to do all the safety things, do what needs

1306
01:18:08,160 --> 01:18:13,200
to be done, get in there and get the person in a snatch and grab scenario.

1307
01:18:13,200 --> 01:18:19,280
So what have you seen, if any, about sometimes an over redundancy and safety at the detriment

1308
01:18:19,280 --> 01:18:21,240
of a patient?

1309
01:18:21,240 --> 01:18:23,280
There's a lot of ways I could go with this.

1310
01:18:23,280 --> 01:18:29,960
So to start with your initial comment, I mean, the military calls them TTMPs or fire department

1311
01:18:29,960 --> 01:18:33,920
may refer to more of them as SOGs.

1312
01:18:33,920 --> 01:18:37,000
Also hear of them as like immediate actions.

1313
01:18:37,000 --> 01:18:42,080
I've been out of the military for, I don't know, long time.

1314
01:18:42,080 --> 01:18:44,680
Double top dash down, crawl observed, communicate, sites fire.

1315
01:18:44,680 --> 01:18:47,800
I mean, they drill it into your head so hard.

1316
01:18:47,800 --> 01:18:49,420
It is an immediate action.

1317
01:18:49,420 --> 01:18:53,680
You get shot at, no one's telling you, oh, they're shooting at you.

1318
01:18:53,680 --> 01:18:57,160
You might want to throw a few rounds down range that way.

1319
01:18:57,160 --> 01:18:58,160
It is a boom.

1320
01:18:58,160 --> 01:18:59,160
It is a drill.

1321
01:18:59,160 --> 01:19:00,160
It is done.

1322
01:19:00,160 --> 01:19:03,920
Then, okay, we know something's happening.

1323
01:19:03,920 --> 01:19:05,000
Let's get control.

1324
01:19:05,000 --> 01:19:06,360
Let's do a quick frag order.

1325
01:19:06,360 --> 01:19:07,760
Let's move on.

1326
01:19:07,760 --> 01:19:12,000
It's with limited direction at that point because there was a full set of briefing orders

1327
01:19:12,000 --> 01:19:13,320
before you walked in there.

1328
01:19:13,320 --> 01:19:15,760
You have tactics, techniques, and procedures.

1329
01:19:15,760 --> 01:19:20,640
If I'm going to do a right flanker, I'm going to do a frontal assault, I'm going to do whatever,

1330
01:19:20,640 --> 01:19:22,040
that's drilled into me.

1331
01:19:22,040 --> 01:19:28,160
I went to a very long school, a long time ago, on how to do those things.

1332
01:19:28,160 --> 01:19:30,960
We did them over and over and over again.

1333
01:19:30,960 --> 01:19:37,080
There is a part of that where the leader, the commander, has to sit back and give an

1334
01:19:37,080 --> 01:19:42,840
order and direct that train, but there's a lot of stuff that was commander's intent before

1335
01:19:42,840 --> 01:19:45,200
you walked out a door and your orders processed.

1336
01:19:45,200 --> 01:19:51,240
There's a lot of operating guidelines or procedures or immediate actions that occurred to get

1337
01:19:51,240 --> 01:19:54,640
you into a place to be successful.

1338
01:19:54,640 --> 01:19:59,960
I find the fire department's SOGs, once again, I hate speaking ill of my own profession,

1339
01:19:59,960 --> 01:20:07,680
I find the fire department's SOGs are ass covering documents for management.

1340
01:20:07,680 --> 01:20:13,320
They are not what they're intended to be, which is we roll up on a scene and I say,

1341
01:20:13,320 --> 01:20:17,480
it's a tech rescue and I want you and your harnesses.

1342
01:20:17,480 --> 01:20:18,480
What does that mean?

1343
01:20:18,480 --> 01:20:23,400
Does that mean helmet, glasses, gloves, your harness with so much equipment hauled?

1344
01:20:23,400 --> 01:20:27,720
If I say, hey, you're going to be this rope, you're going to be that rope, what does that

1345
01:20:27,720 --> 01:20:29,800
mean to grab?

1346
01:20:29,800 --> 01:20:36,320
And that shouldn't be me sitting and taking time out of a rescue in a scene to say, well,

1347
01:20:36,320 --> 01:20:39,160
Billy, I'd like you to get this rope out of this cupboard.

1348
01:20:39,160 --> 01:20:46,600
No, if I say, you're rigor one, you're rigor two, there should be an SOG as to what you

1349
01:20:46,600 --> 01:20:47,600
grab.

1350
01:20:47,600 --> 01:20:49,080
I'm not waiting for you running up the stairs.

1351
01:20:49,080 --> 01:20:52,720
And that's where I mentioned that thing with Jill and Jill's like, you're rigor one, you're

1352
01:20:52,720 --> 01:20:53,960
rigor two, this, this boom.

1353
01:20:53,960 --> 01:20:57,640
And he starts running and the rest of the people are like, what the hell's going on

1354
01:20:57,640 --> 01:20:58,640
here?

1355
01:20:58,640 --> 01:21:03,160
And Jill understands and assumes based on his training, you're a professional, you know

1356
01:21:03,160 --> 01:21:09,600
what to grab to do your job and away you go.

1357
01:21:09,600 --> 01:21:14,800
And that's always in the back of my head when I run tech rescues is that golden hour is

1358
01:21:14,800 --> 01:21:18,560
trying to get it done within that hour.

1359
01:21:18,560 --> 01:21:23,240
And it's not that I'm going to short circuit safety, there are safety parameters that need

1360
01:21:23,240 --> 01:21:25,320
to be in play.

1361
01:21:25,320 --> 01:21:26,760
But there's some redundancy.

1362
01:21:26,760 --> 01:21:29,360
It's a bizarre word, isn't it?

1363
01:21:29,360 --> 01:21:32,400
Like you look up redundant in the dictionary.

1364
01:21:32,400 --> 01:21:37,200
It's not what we use it for in the rescue service.

1365
01:21:37,200 --> 01:21:43,040
There's areas where you can badmouth certain organizations, I won't people who listen to

1366
01:21:43,040 --> 01:21:44,380
this will know where they're from.

1367
01:21:44,380 --> 01:21:46,800
Why do I need to rig plates stitched together?

1368
01:21:46,800 --> 01:21:52,780
Why do I need change a projection carabiners on devices where the manufacturer says I don't?

1369
01:21:52,780 --> 01:21:56,840
Why do I need to back up pulleys the manufacturers say I don't?

1370
01:21:56,840 --> 01:22:03,600
Adding in elements of confusion, I'm adding in elements of time, I'm adding but none of

1371
01:22:03,600 --> 01:22:05,280
it's for safety.

1372
01:22:05,280 --> 01:22:11,400
This thing's never blown apart in the million cycles that it's been in its life over all

1373
01:22:11,400 --> 01:22:13,080
of the users worldwide.

1374
01:22:13,080 --> 01:22:21,120
But I'm going to back it up because somebody in some agency thought it might be safer.

1375
01:22:21,120 --> 01:22:25,200
But at the end of the day, we're eating up time for that patient.

1376
01:22:25,200 --> 01:22:30,600
And that's where I go back to, oh, the pike and pivot looks really cool.

1377
01:22:30,600 --> 01:22:32,960
Not really great for the patient.

1378
01:22:32,960 --> 01:22:34,480
We need to be timely.

1379
01:22:34,480 --> 01:22:38,740
And we need to remember there's a human on the end of that rope.

1380
01:22:38,740 --> 01:22:40,280
We think we're really cool.

1381
01:22:40,280 --> 01:22:44,840
And you know, the fire department labels it sometimes special operations.

1382
01:22:44,840 --> 01:22:46,200
I want to rescue truck.

1383
01:22:46,200 --> 01:22:47,640
You know what I do?

1384
01:22:47,640 --> 01:22:54,520
I get a medical victim from point A to a medic with the limited amount of medical skills

1385
01:22:54,520 --> 01:22:56,040
I get.

1386
01:22:56,040 --> 01:23:02,560
And my job is to get them there in at least as good a shape as I found them in the quickest

1387
01:23:02,560 --> 01:23:04,760
amount of time.

1388
01:23:04,760 --> 01:23:10,780
And so if I need to do training with my crews, so we have operating guidelines.

1389
01:23:10,780 --> 01:23:16,100
So when I tell the riders on the back of my rescue, rigor one, rigor two, they're not

1390
01:23:16,100 --> 01:23:18,080
showing up wearing nothing.

1391
01:23:18,080 --> 01:23:23,160
And when I tell the driver, grab the package equipment, top now, he knows I'm not even

1392
01:23:23,160 --> 01:23:24,320
putting a harness on.

1393
01:23:24,320 --> 01:23:29,320
He's grabbing what he needs to get medical supplies to a patient.

1394
01:23:29,320 --> 01:23:30,720
Right?

1395
01:23:30,720 --> 01:23:33,120
And it's that breakdown.

1396
01:23:33,120 --> 01:23:36,360
And you talk about over safetying it.

1397
01:23:36,360 --> 01:23:38,200
And I'll mention Shaggy back again.

1398
01:23:38,200 --> 01:23:41,920
And we said we should run a course that says let's make rescue less safe.

1399
01:23:41,920 --> 01:23:49,480
I mean, maybe not the greatest in advertising, but when we get this onerous amount of safety

1400
01:23:49,480 --> 01:23:57,160
added in to these, and this is where I truly think the competitions are doing us a disservice.

1401
01:23:57,160 --> 01:24:02,400
Because we go in, and when I started doing the competitions in Europe, even when I went

1402
01:24:02,400 --> 01:24:07,200
and trained in Europe, rescue or access to a patient is on single rope.

1403
01:24:07,200 --> 01:24:10,520
But now all of a sudden you're making it a competition.

1404
01:24:10,520 --> 01:24:11,520
What happens with competitions?

1405
01:24:11,520 --> 01:24:15,000
Well, you get insurance involved because nobody wants to get sued.

1406
01:24:15,000 --> 01:24:16,440
Now insurances get involved.

1407
01:24:16,440 --> 01:24:18,920
What do insurance companies naturally do?

1408
01:24:18,920 --> 01:24:25,540
Put as many redundancies into this system as possible so they don't have to pay anything

1409
01:24:25,540 --> 01:24:27,380
out at the end.

1410
01:24:27,380 --> 01:24:32,080
And so we get all these people from around the world doing these competitions.

1411
01:24:32,080 --> 01:24:34,080
And I've seen accidents at the competitions.

1412
01:24:34,080 --> 01:24:37,200
I'm not saying we should have been at that level.

1413
01:24:37,200 --> 01:24:43,080
But sometimes I think where we've gone to is onerously too safe.

1414
01:24:43,080 --> 01:24:50,760
And we're now creating a training scar with our people because we're almost back to rote.

1415
01:24:50,760 --> 01:24:51,760
That was a bit diatribe.

1416
01:24:51,760 --> 01:24:52,760
Is that all right?

1417
01:24:52,760 --> 01:24:54,400
No, no, that was spot on.

1418
01:24:54,400 --> 01:24:56,760
And this is, you know, there's two observations.

1419
01:24:56,760 --> 01:25:02,560
Firstly, a parallel for me was learning how to throw ladders in Florida.

1420
01:25:02,560 --> 01:25:06,360
And in Florida, in the fire academy, my fire academy was phenomenal.

1421
01:25:06,360 --> 01:25:11,800
However, this one, this was a state standard, you know, you'd pick up a ladder, 24, suitcase

1422
01:25:11,800 --> 01:25:17,480
carry, walk it to the wall, you know, put the base of the ladder up against this nice

1423
01:25:17,480 --> 01:25:20,720
open drill ground concrete area.

1424
01:25:20,720 --> 01:25:25,440
You'd walk up the rungs, then you'd pull it away, stand to the side of the ladder,

1425
01:25:25,440 --> 01:25:30,560
supposedly, you know, foot in it, but not really, and then extend it, then lay it down.

1426
01:25:30,560 --> 01:25:33,840
Then you had to rotate it and then you tie it off.

1427
01:25:33,840 --> 01:25:39,280
Then I go to California, where they go on the roof a lot in their fires.

1428
01:25:39,280 --> 01:25:43,080
And it was like, oh, shit, because I got hired from the East Coast and my learning curve

1429
01:25:43,080 --> 01:25:47,560
had to be like almost a vertical line to catch up with all these California trade guys and

1430
01:25:47,560 --> 01:25:48,560
girls.

1431
01:25:48,560 --> 01:25:54,480
But no, it was pick it up, shoulder it, stick the ladder, raise it, drop it in the window,

1432
01:25:54,480 --> 01:25:56,080
tie it off, get your ass in there.

1433
01:25:56,080 --> 01:25:57,120
No spinning.

1434
01:25:57,120 --> 01:25:59,600
And then even when they raised it, they were facing it.

1435
01:25:59,600 --> 01:26:03,600
So the foot wrapped one side, the knee was bracing it and you could literally let go.

1436
01:26:03,600 --> 01:26:05,080
And it was solid.

1437
01:26:05,080 --> 01:26:10,040
That way is just better, not to mention that you can't throw a ladder the Florida way in

1438
01:26:10,040 --> 01:26:11,040
the real world.

1439
01:26:11,040 --> 01:26:13,560
There's cars and hedges and fences and alleyways.

1440
01:26:13,560 --> 01:26:16,600
And so California was just better.

1441
01:26:16,600 --> 01:26:19,920
But the thing was you needed to be stronger to do it.

1442
01:26:19,920 --> 01:26:23,880
Male, female, whatever you needed to be a strong firefighter with good technique to

1443
01:26:23,880 --> 01:26:26,200
throw a ladder that way.

1444
01:26:26,200 --> 01:26:31,680
Then the other side, which should be interesting to get your perspective, is I think there's

1445
01:26:31,680 --> 01:26:36,520
a culture as well that pushes against what we're talking about, that sense of urgency

1446
01:26:36,520 --> 01:26:41,560
that you've got scenario A, Ferris wheel has stopped, no one's in danger.

1447
01:26:41,560 --> 01:26:44,640
Take your time, put all the safety measures in place.

1448
01:26:44,640 --> 01:26:51,440
And then scenario B, again, the vehicle is flipped, it's on someone, they can't breathe.

1449
01:26:51,440 --> 01:26:54,600
Now we need to just lift this off the person.

1450
01:26:54,600 --> 01:26:58,320
And what happens though is, and I just had a guest recently who made a grab and then

1451
01:26:58,320 --> 01:27:01,320
got disciplined by his department.

1452
01:27:01,320 --> 01:27:06,240
Danny Dwyer was on a couple of years ago, he was fired by his department for his grab.

1453
01:27:06,240 --> 01:27:11,080
Yet if law enforcement did the exact same thing, they get medals.

1454
01:27:11,080 --> 01:27:15,680
So I think that this is a really important conversation in the fire service that we have

1455
01:27:15,680 --> 01:27:19,920
shackled our men and women, even in EMS reports, it's a refusal.

1456
01:27:19,920 --> 01:27:22,960
You need to write a 12 page document on why they're a fruit.

1457
01:27:22,960 --> 01:27:24,720
No, there was nothing wrong with them.

1458
01:27:24,720 --> 01:27:26,800
They refused the fucking end.

1459
01:27:26,800 --> 01:27:27,800
Let's move on.

1460
01:27:27,800 --> 01:27:28,800
You know what I mean?

1461
01:27:28,800 --> 01:27:29,800
Again, big boy pants.

1462
01:27:29,800 --> 01:27:31,960
You got some vitals and all the rest of it.

1463
01:27:31,960 --> 01:27:32,960
Yeah, go on.

1464
01:27:32,960 --> 01:27:33,960
I mean, come on.

1465
01:27:33,960 --> 01:27:37,240
So and now our paramedics are scared because we're, you know, I had a guy in paramedic

1466
01:27:37,240 --> 01:27:42,560
school who was a giant cock, for lack of a better word, parading around like a fucking

1467
01:27:42,560 --> 01:27:47,560
idiot telling us how many medics he'd put to prison with his, you know, testimonies

1468
01:27:47,560 --> 01:27:49,320
because he's an expert witness.

1469
01:27:49,320 --> 01:27:54,280
He's an expert piece of shit that got a bunch of brand new paramedics terrified to actually

1470
01:27:54,280 --> 01:27:55,480
do their job.

1471
01:27:55,480 --> 01:28:01,200
If you do a job properly and you document it properly, that's all you need to know.

1472
01:28:01,200 --> 01:28:05,320
If they get taken into court, then hopefully your department will support you and be like

1473
01:28:05,320 --> 01:28:07,720
they did everything that we told them to do.

1474
01:28:07,720 --> 01:28:12,240
But we've created this culture of fear that if you don't do every single, like you said,

1475
01:28:12,240 --> 01:28:17,100
check every single box, you know, then you're going to get your legs cut from under you.

1476
01:28:17,100 --> 01:28:20,220
So I think culturally, this is something that we need to look at.

1477
01:28:20,220 --> 01:28:24,100
Like you said, have, you know, this is the perfect scenario in which case you do need

1478
01:28:24,100 --> 01:28:30,680
to do all the things, but also have that kind of leeway where if this is an urgent scenario,

1479
01:28:30,680 --> 01:28:34,240
you know, maybe one person does have to go in and search the house at that moment.

1480
01:28:34,240 --> 01:28:35,240
You're on a rescue.

1481
01:28:35,240 --> 01:28:36,560
There's two of you.

1482
01:28:36,560 --> 01:28:38,120
One's outside giving a size up.

1483
01:28:38,120 --> 01:28:41,600
The other one's running in and just doing a quick kind of skirt around.

1484
01:28:41,600 --> 01:28:43,120
They found someone, they pull it out.

1485
01:28:43,120 --> 01:28:44,120
Beautiful.

1486
01:28:44,120 --> 01:28:45,120
You know what I mean?

1487
01:28:45,120 --> 01:28:49,240
So I think, you know, getting, like you said, away from that rote, away from that cookbook

1488
01:28:49,240 --> 01:28:55,280
mentality and that fear we need to give our firefighter is the same leeway that law enforcement

1489
01:28:55,280 --> 01:28:56,280
gets.

1490
01:28:56,280 --> 01:28:59,280
Sometimes you have to do whatever works to rescue someone.

1491
01:28:59,280 --> 01:29:01,080
Yeah, it's interesting.

1492
01:29:01,080 --> 01:29:02,720
We just had this conversation last night.

1493
01:29:02,720 --> 01:29:06,760
We're bringing some new people on to our CDFL team, class D flight rules.

1494
01:29:06,760 --> 01:29:09,040
So in Canada, we saw short haul.

1495
01:29:09,040 --> 01:29:15,220
So you, uh, the single line underneath the helicopter for a lot of our wilderness rescues

1496
01:29:15,220 --> 01:29:19,040
and we're bringing some new people on and, you know, we're talking about crew resource

1497
01:29:19,040 --> 01:29:21,440
management and things like this.

1498
01:29:21,440 --> 01:29:26,740
But a lot of it in that particular role comes down to there's maybe you and a pilot or maybe

1499
01:29:26,740 --> 01:29:33,920
you and a pilot and a team lead and everybody almost needs to be a team leader because you,

1500
01:29:33,920 --> 01:29:37,140
there is no real cookbook for where we go.

1501
01:29:37,140 --> 01:29:43,000
You have all sorts of other concerns, density, altitude, you know, time, you know, nightfall,

1502
01:29:43,000 --> 01:29:46,400
all, you know, sunrise, all those types of things.

1503
01:29:46,400 --> 01:29:50,600
And then we go into the forest where we're literally hundreds of kilometers away from

1504
01:29:50,600 --> 01:29:52,400
any sort of road.

1505
01:29:52,400 --> 01:30:00,720
And three of you have to make a decision on safety, on aircraft viability, on patient

1506
01:30:00,720 --> 01:30:03,280
viability on all of these things.

1507
01:30:03,280 --> 01:30:08,320
And a lot of places where, where I live, I mean, I don't have cell comms for a lot between

1508
01:30:08,320 --> 01:30:11,240
when I drive from my house to the coast.

1509
01:30:11,240 --> 01:30:15,760
And there's a lot of places we go, we'll be lucky to get radio calm back to a SAR manager

1510
01:30:15,760 --> 01:30:20,540
or to the government who tasks us out or to the police who are responsible for it.

1511
01:30:20,540 --> 01:30:25,440
So there's three human beings that have to have enough skills, training and guidance.

1512
01:30:25,440 --> 01:30:29,600
And that's mentioned when you talk to the fire service is that guidance piece to be

1513
01:30:29,600 --> 01:30:34,440
able to make a decision that works for everybody.

1514
01:30:34,440 --> 01:30:35,440
Yeah.

1515
01:30:35,440 --> 01:30:40,200
Well, I think, and that's what we're actually asking our people to do.

1516
01:30:40,200 --> 01:30:46,680
If you look at an engine crew, a rescue crew, a truck crew, truck company, when we're actually

1517
01:30:46,680 --> 01:30:49,920
on the job, we are doing all of these things.

1518
01:30:49,920 --> 01:30:54,340
The problem is, you know, then they come back having done the things and they're told, oh,

1519
01:30:54,340 --> 01:30:55,340
you shouldn't have done that.

1520
01:30:55,340 --> 01:30:57,760
But, you know, I've been on a rescue and of course, I mean, you're in the middle of a

1521
01:30:57,760 --> 01:31:02,360
fricking gunfight trying to extricate a patient or, you know, there's someone hanging upside

1522
01:31:02,360 --> 01:31:04,720
down and you're trying to get them out the car before they choke to death.

1523
01:31:04,720 --> 01:31:08,540
I mean, these are things where you might have to, you know, forego cribbing at that moment

1524
01:31:08,540 --> 01:31:10,680
before that person dies, you know what I mean?

1525
01:31:10,680 --> 01:31:16,520
So I think it's just, you know, the conversation that there's always going to be a gray area

1526
01:31:16,520 --> 01:31:20,560
in medicine, in extrication, in rope rescue, whatever it is.

1527
01:31:20,560 --> 01:31:27,600
And that can't be seen as the moment you step out of the white, just know that disciplinary

1528
01:31:27,600 --> 01:31:32,120
action is coming because otherwise you're going to, it's paralysis by analysis and you're

1529
01:31:32,120 --> 01:31:37,760
going to basically stop good first responders from saving lives.

1530
01:31:37,760 --> 01:31:38,760
And it's tough too.

1531
01:31:38,760 --> 01:31:44,640
I mean, when people get into that officer's position where the buck does stop with you

1532
01:31:44,640 --> 01:31:49,800
really, like it is your decision now as to whether or not you move forward and you better

1533
01:31:49,800 --> 01:31:53,360
be able to justify that decision.

1534
01:31:53,360 --> 01:31:57,720
And I see a lot of new officers where, like you say, they get this analysis paralysis

1535
01:31:57,720 --> 01:32:03,160
type thing because either they don't have the training or they do have the training,

1536
01:32:03,160 --> 01:32:10,280
but the culture of the organization is such that they're not given that freedom of thought

1537
01:32:10,280 --> 01:32:15,040
and they're more concerned about the negative consequences of the decision they're going

1538
01:32:15,040 --> 01:32:18,040
to make than making the decision.

1539
01:32:18,040 --> 01:32:19,800
Where they're good people.

1540
01:32:19,800 --> 01:32:22,600
I mean, we're a lockstep seniority system.

1541
01:32:22,600 --> 01:32:26,720
Become an officer, an acting officer at our fire department, you're probably looking at

1542
01:32:26,720 --> 01:32:29,400
15 or 17 years of experience.

1543
01:32:29,400 --> 01:32:31,800
You know what the right thing to do is.

1544
01:32:31,800 --> 01:32:35,080
Everyone just needs to let you do it.

1545
01:32:35,080 --> 01:32:36,080
Absolutely.

1546
01:32:36,080 --> 01:32:41,160
Well, you made a comment earlier, so I'm going to have to make sure I pull this out of you.

1547
01:32:41,160 --> 01:32:45,440
You said that you've been, you know, you've run rescues and you've also been the cause

1548
01:32:45,440 --> 01:32:46,500
of a rescue.

1549
01:32:46,500 --> 01:32:50,360
So I'd love you to elaborate on that.

1550
01:32:50,360 --> 01:32:55,320
I guess as well as a start, the run, I mean, I've run a lot of rescues with the one in

1551
01:32:55,320 --> 01:33:00,360
particular when I talk about RIT and I mean, RIT's now Rick in a lot of places, Rapid Intervention

1552
01:33:00,360 --> 01:33:02,100
Crew.

1553
01:33:02,100 --> 01:33:05,120
This particular one was.

1554
01:33:05,120 --> 01:33:07,600
I want to say August of 2001.

1555
01:33:07,600 --> 01:33:15,520
It was just before the whole world kind of changed for fire departments and we had just

1556
01:33:15,520 --> 01:33:17,600
been introduced to RIT at the time.

1557
01:33:17,600 --> 01:33:21,800
It was Rapid Intervention Team under the ICS system as you know, team, crew.

1558
01:33:21,800 --> 01:33:25,760
There's a bunch of conversation around that, but we'll just call it RIT for the sake of

1559
01:33:25,760 --> 01:33:27,040
this.

1560
01:33:27,040 --> 01:33:30,000
And I remember pulling up on a scene and it was a warehouse fire.

1561
01:33:30,000 --> 01:33:31,960
It was Scott paper actually.

1562
01:33:31,960 --> 01:33:38,600
So think like minivan sized rolls of paper on fire.

1563
01:33:38,600 --> 01:33:39,600
The roof was compromised.

1564
01:33:39,600 --> 01:33:42,040
We saw that we're coming over a bridge coming down to it.

1565
01:33:42,040 --> 01:33:46,560
We could see that coming in and they had sent a crew in to try to find the seat of the fire,

1566
01:33:46,560 --> 01:33:49,320
old school fire department tactics.

1567
01:33:49,320 --> 01:33:53,480
And so we pull up and the next, we were the third, I guess, in and the next crew in had

1568
01:33:53,480 --> 01:33:54,680
been pulled for RIT.

1569
01:33:54,680 --> 01:34:00,240
And so we had walked by them just so that we could give them shit for being, ah, you

1570
01:34:00,240 --> 01:34:03,480
know, basically you guys get to watch us firefight for the rest of the day.

1571
01:34:03,480 --> 01:34:05,320
You know, what used to happen with RIT?

1572
01:34:05,320 --> 01:34:07,600
I mean, nobody wanted to be on RIT.

1573
01:34:07,600 --> 01:34:12,080
People would actually drive faster, slower to stagger what truck they came in on just

1574
01:34:12,080 --> 01:34:14,800
so they wouldn't get that job, right?

1575
01:34:14,800 --> 01:34:18,600
And back to a culture of the fire service.

1576
01:34:18,600 --> 01:34:25,080
As we're there on this RIT, are bugging these two guys on RIT, there's myself and another

1577
01:34:25,080 --> 01:34:26,960
firefighter off the back of one of the engines.

1578
01:34:26,960 --> 01:34:31,080
And there's these two guys here that were, you know, taking the piss on the door opens

1579
01:34:31,080 --> 01:34:34,120
a man door opens down the building, like 50 feet.

1580
01:34:34,120 --> 01:34:35,120
Think of a building.

1581
01:34:35,120 --> 01:34:37,960
I mean, we're talking, I think it was a five acre storage warehouse.

1582
01:34:37,960 --> 01:34:39,840
So like, we're not talking a small building.

1583
01:34:39,840 --> 01:34:45,160
I don't know what that is in US units, but like hundreds of feet across frontage.

1584
01:34:45,160 --> 01:34:50,320
And so 50, 75 feet down the road or down the side of the building door opens, the captain

1585
01:34:50,320 --> 01:34:54,200
comes out, he's missing a boot, helmets gone, jackets ripped open.

1586
01:34:54,200 --> 01:34:58,720
And we're all kind of like stunned, like, holy shit, like what, like what's going on?

1587
01:34:58,720 --> 01:35:00,000
And he's like, there's been a collapse.

1588
01:35:00,000 --> 01:35:02,840
I don't know where my people are.

1589
01:35:02,840 --> 01:35:08,040
So the four of us just kind of rocking the door, right?

1590
01:35:08,040 --> 01:35:11,060
Like there's another officer outside.

1591
01:35:11,060 --> 01:35:14,640
It was back before alarms in my fire department.

1592
01:35:14,640 --> 01:35:16,920
We've opened two stations since then.

1593
01:35:16,920 --> 01:35:23,160
So definitely a personnel staffing manpower issue at this particular point.

1594
01:35:23,160 --> 01:35:26,260
So four of us go in, two people are down.

1595
01:35:26,260 --> 01:35:30,400
There might've only been another three people on scene in the fire department at this point

1596
01:35:30,400 --> 01:35:33,600
of time, because like, this is a three, four truck response.

1597
01:35:33,600 --> 01:35:36,560
One of those trucks was a two person ladder at the time.

1598
01:35:36,560 --> 01:35:40,440
So I think we've had three, four person engines in a two person ladder there.

1599
01:35:40,440 --> 01:35:45,960
So we're talking 14 people, someone's in charge.

1600
01:35:45,960 --> 01:35:50,480
Four of us just went in the door, three are either unaccounted for or injured.

1601
01:35:50,480 --> 01:35:55,280
So I mean, you're, you're easily eating up almost three quarters of the staff on scene

1602
01:35:55,280 --> 01:35:57,680
for this.

1603
01:35:57,680 --> 01:36:00,000
And we went in, these people were buried.

1604
01:36:00,000 --> 01:36:04,400
We dug them out, what have you, you know, don't need to go too far into that.

1605
01:36:04,400 --> 01:36:11,640
Some of the takeaways from it though, was while we were in, they called the evacuation

1606
01:36:11,640 --> 01:36:15,600
and it was a bit of a shit show.

1607
01:36:15,600 --> 01:36:18,680
The chief that was in charge was an idiot.

1608
01:36:18,680 --> 01:36:19,680
I'll just throw that out.

1609
01:36:19,680 --> 01:36:26,320
He came from an old school of chiefs where they were grandfathered through positions

1610
01:36:26,320 --> 01:36:28,240
where they never took training.

1611
01:36:28,240 --> 01:36:29,240
You've been here long enough.

1612
01:36:29,240 --> 01:36:32,000
You don't have to go back and do the command officer program at the time, which turned

1613
01:36:32,000 --> 01:36:34,520
into the fire officer program.

1614
01:36:34,520 --> 01:36:37,600
And so also didn't understand a lot of the guidelines.

1615
01:36:37,600 --> 01:36:44,040
So when he calls for that evacuation, the four of us are like, is he telling us to get

1616
01:36:44,040 --> 01:36:45,040
out of the building?

1617
01:36:45,040 --> 01:36:46,440
Is he telling them to get out of the building?

1618
01:36:46,440 --> 01:36:49,360
Like we already know they can't get out of the building or they would have got out of

1619
01:36:49,360 --> 01:36:50,360
the building, right?

1620
01:36:50,360 --> 01:36:56,680
And it definitely causes some mental anguish when you're in those types of situations.

1621
01:36:56,680 --> 01:37:00,880
You talk a lot about, you know, mental health on your podcasts, you know, and I look through

1622
01:37:00,880 --> 01:37:02,520
those things.

1623
01:37:02,520 --> 01:37:09,360
Now you're making a conscious decision of, do I leave people or is he calling me out?

1624
01:37:09,360 --> 01:37:11,000
I mean, I already know the roof's compromised.

1625
01:37:11,000 --> 01:37:12,720
I saw it on the way through.

1626
01:37:12,720 --> 01:37:15,400
I have to assume he knows something I don't.

1627
01:37:15,400 --> 01:37:16,960
So you know, we ignored it.

1628
01:37:16,960 --> 01:37:17,960
We stayed in.

1629
01:37:17,960 --> 01:37:20,540
We found these people.

1630
01:37:20,540 --> 01:37:26,080
But little things about the way we vented the building, the way our RIT teams or our

1631
01:37:26,080 --> 01:37:32,200
RICs now were structured, what equipment they had, what training they had for that.

1632
01:37:32,200 --> 01:37:35,600
I mean, there was a lot of after action that came out of that.

1633
01:37:35,600 --> 01:37:40,360
And if you realized I sounded a little bit sour about after action reports at the start

1634
01:37:40,360 --> 01:37:46,120
of the podcast, you now realize why, because I was a five year firefighter when this occurred,

1635
01:37:46,120 --> 01:37:48,280
come out of, you know, time in the military.

1636
01:37:48,280 --> 01:37:51,960
So I'd seen after actions, I'd seen, I'd screwed things up.

1637
01:37:51,960 --> 01:37:57,200
I've seen things get screwed up and seen people have to take responsibility for that.

1638
01:37:57,200 --> 01:38:00,320
You know, people get hurt and injured and those types of things in the world, in the

1639
01:38:00,320 --> 01:38:04,040
military where it just didn't seem like that was the case here.

1640
01:38:04,040 --> 01:38:10,760
There was a lot of, you know, when we did the debrief on that, they brought in a lawyer

1641
01:38:10,760 --> 01:38:18,640
so that everything was under client confidentiality because of the legalities and the suing that

1642
01:38:18,640 --> 01:38:19,640
went on after this.

1643
01:38:19,640 --> 01:38:21,920
It was the biggest money loss in my city.

1644
01:38:21,920 --> 01:38:24,880
I think to date.

1645
01:38:24,880 --> 01:38:30,400
So these two firefighters that were injured or three were injured, two were trapped.

1646
01:38:30,400 --> 01:38:31,680
One never came back to work.

1647
01:38:31,680 --> 01:38:35,200
He's actually an inch and a half shorter because it broke his back.

1648
01:38:35,200 --> 01:38:36,200
Right?

1649
01:38:36,200 --> 01:38:40,960
So you look at the learning potential from an incident like that and you look how it

1650
01:38:40,960 --> 01:38:46,640
was squandered because it was put under wraps.

1651
01:38:46,640 --> 01:38:51,480
And I remember the senior men that, and I use the word senior men, just, you know, I'm

1652
01:38:51,480 --> 01:38:52,680
not trying to be sexist here.

1653
01:38:52,680 --> 01:38:58,680
It's just the term that was used to the day in the debrief ripping the lawyers and chiefs

1654
01:38:58,680 --> 01:39:04,520
new assholes in this meeting because they were like, this needs to get out and get public.

1655
01:39:04,520 --> 01:39:07,960
Like I said, the fire department has that until you're somebody or nobody, and these

1656
01:39:07,960 --> 01:39:13,520
people are somebody at that point in time, you know, and going up to bat for trying to

1657
01:39:13,520 --> 01:39:16,760
get that information out as a training aid and whatnot.

1658
01:39:16,760 --> 01:39:19,200
And what went on there?

1659
01:39:19,200 --> 01:39:21,580
And just from the mental health point of it.

1660
01:39:21,580 --> 01:39:24,160
So we got, we pulled those guys out.

1661
01:39:24,160 --> 01:39:30,400
You know, like I said, we ignored the alarms that went off the May days, the recall of

1662
01:39:30,400 --> 01:39:35,040
people, which puts you in a different mindset because obviously then you're start to contemplate

1663
01:39:35,040 --> 01:39:37,520
a bit your own mortality.

1664
01:39:37,520 --> 01:39:42,100
We get them, we pull them out building collapses after we pull them out.

1665
01:39:42,100 --> 01:39:43,820
And what do they do?

1666
01:39:43,820 --> 01:39:47,000
They give us a new air bottle, stick us back in around the corner where it's not collapsed

1667
01:39:47,000 --> 01:39:48,280
to go fight fire again.

1668
01:39:48,280 --> 01:39:51,560
I was on that fire for another 22 hours.

1669
01:39:51,560 --> 01:39:53,360
Oh my God.

1670
01:39:53,360 --> 01:39:56,320
So yeah, well, it was a staffing issue back then.

1671
01:39:56,320 --> 01:39:57,320
We just didn't have the staff.

1672
01:39:57,320 --> 01:40:00,920
They brought in neighboring departments at that point.

1673
01:40:00,920 --> 01:40:05,560
You know, we brought in three neighboring departments who, you know, kudos to them,

1674
01:40:05,560 --> 01:40:08,200
set full alarm assignments to that.

1675
01:40:08,200 --> 01:40:14,840
But when you look at the learning that could occur and what didn't occur and the mental

1676
01:40:14,840 --> 01:40:20,240
health concerns that come out of things like that, when you do those types of things and

1677
01:40:20,240 --> 01:40:23,920
the fact that there's no help for that at the day.

1678
01:40:23,920 --> 01:40:25,400
There's no counseling you go to.

1679
01:40:25,400 --> 01:40:28,440
I mean, hell, they don't even take you off scene and say, Hey, are you all right?

1680
01:40:28,440 --> 01:40:30,200
You might've had a close call there.

1681
01:40:30,200 --> 01:40:32,960
Building you're just 10 dropped around you.

1682
01:40:32,960 --> 01:40:37,160
Now it's, go put another bottle on and go around the Delta side.

1683
01:40:37,160 --> 01:40:38,160
That's still standing.

1684
01:40:38,160 --> 01:40:41,480
Maybe we can put something out over there, right?

1685
01:40:41,480 --> 01:40:46,640
And how you take that back as an officer and pass on to your crews where they say with

1686
01:40:46,640 --> 01:40:49,000
the car fire, the buildings are the same way.

1687
01:40:49,000 --> 01:40:50,760
When the building's done, the building's done.

1688
01:40:50,760 --> 01:40:57,160
There's no sense trying to hurt anybody else for shit that's written off.

1689
01:40:57,160 --> 01:40:58,160
They're dropping it.

1690
01:40:58,160 --> 01:41:01,240
I mean, they're not going to go, Oh, we saved the one back wall.

1691
01:41:01,240 --> 01:41:02,920
They're going to put, leave that for us.

1692
01:41:02,920 --> 01:41:06,940
Right now they're just going to drop it.

1693
01:41:06,940 --> 01:41:13,440
So you fast forward a few years to a couple of years ago, we were out of fire, stubborn

1694
01:41:13,440 --> 01:41:17,160
fire in the corner, couldn't gain access to it.

1695
01:41:17,160 --> 01:41:20,680
Just the way the structure of the building was.

1696
01:41:20,680 --> 01:41:24,320
The building was on grade on front and on back.

1697
01:41:24,320 --> 01:41:27,980
So one of our communities is part of our community is fairly hilly.

1698
01:41:27,980 --> 01:41:32,400
So you come in on the front, the backs on grade two, and there's about 14 feet between

1699
01:41:32,400 --> 01:41:33,400
that.

1700
01:41:33,400 --> 01:41:37,440
So you think about things like the Mary Pang fire working above fire and we didn't want

1701
01:41:37,440 --> 01:41:39,400
people working in the upper floor.

1702
01:41:39,400 --> 01:41:42,200
Got most of the fire out except for the upper floor corner.

1703
01:41:42,200 --> 01:41:43,820
Couldn't get in there.

1704
01:41:43,820 --> 01:41:48,160
So I took a crew in, chatted with the incident commander, because we were also, this is December,

1705
01:41:48,160 --> 01:41:50,040
it was below zero.

1706
01:41:50,040 --> 01:41:54,080
We're flooding neighborhoods out at this point now also creating skating rinks.

1707
01:41:54,080 --> 01:41:56,360
So there's other hazards and damage we're creating.

1708
01:41:56,360 --> 01:41:57,680
So we have some discussion.

1709
01:41:57,680 --> 01:41:59,920
We're like, Hey, we're going to go in.

1710
01:41:59,920 --> 01:42:01,120
We have a really junior crew.

1711
01:42:01,120 --> 01:42:04,960
I'll go first, I'll sound the floor the entire way in till I find the seat.

1712
01:42:04,960 --> 01:42:10,120
We'll just put out what's left of this so we can start breaking crews down.

1713
01:42:10,120 --> 01:42:13,080
So start going in, banging the floor as I go.

1714
01:42:13,080 --> 01:42:15,040
I've got two junior firefighters with me.

1715
01:42:15,040 --> 01:42:18,640
Neither one had been in a structure fire before.

1716
01:42:18,640 --> 01:42:20,840
Make it I can see the seat of the fire.

1717
01:42:20,840 --> 01:42:27,200
I'm thinking, Hey, we'll let firefighter B come up, take the nozzle, put out the fire.

1718
01:42:27,200 --> 01:42:28,200
So I slide back.

1719
01:42:28,200 --> 01:42:31,360
I never sounded the floor when I said it slid back.

1720
01:42:31,360 --> 01:42:32,360
Right?

1721
01:42:32,360 --> 01:42:34,240
You didn't even think about it yet.

1722
01:42:34,240 --> 01:42:36,200
How many people train to sound going backwards, right?

1723
01:42:36,200 --> 01:42:39,600
You sound going forward, but you don't usually swap nozzle positions.

1724
01:42:39,600 --> 01:42:43,440
Usually I'm two or three in the stock kind of thing, right?

1725
01:42:43,440 --> 01:42:46,480
Sure enough, my foot finds a hole in the floor.

1726
01:42:46,480 --> 01:42:51,440
I go to catch myself and it is the opening of the stairs going down that's been burnt

1727
01:42:51,440 --> 01:42:52,440
away.

1728
01:42:52,440 --> 01:42:56,000
And as I go to catch, I hit the pony wall that's there.

1729
01:42:56,000 --> 01:42:58,640
It's a half wall and I hit it.

1730
01:42:58,640 --> 01:43:03,920
And now it just takes me entirely backwards into this 14 foot hole.

1731
01:43:03,920 --> 01:43:07,160
So I bounce stairs, go straight down.

1732
01:43:07,160 --> 01:43:10,560
They got like the two by six rail that then goes into like a great room.

1733
01:43:10,560 --> 01:43:14,240
So I bounce off the two by six rail, hit the ground.

1734
01:43:14,240 --> 01:43:20,840
And it's funny because in 2001 when the, when they called us out of the building, there's

1735
01:43:20,840 --> 01:43:23,040
a lot of crap that ran through my mind.

1736
01:43:23,040 --> 01:43:24,640
There's only really two things.

1737
01:43:24,640 --> 01:43:27,560
I mean, I guess age and experience on the fall.

1738
01:43:27,560 --> 01:43:30,960
I had enough time to think, fuck, this is going to hurt.

1739
01:43:30,960 --> 01:43:35,160
And when I hit the ground, before I opened my eyes, I just said, don't be on fire.

1740
01:43:35,160 --> 01:43:37,160
Like you're a firefighter.

1741
01:43:37,160 --> 01:43:42,260
It's just like, I just don't need another problem to deal with at this point.

1742
01:43:42,260 --> 01:43:49,760
And so the crew I was with talking to that firefighter after he said, like, I just disappeared.

1743
01:43:49,760 --> 01:43:50,760
Like I was there.

1744
01:43:50,760 --> 01:43:51,760
I was gone.

1745
01:43:51,760 --> 01:43:52,760
Right.

1746
01:43:52,760 --> 01:43:53,800
And he didn't really know what to make of it.

1747
01:43:53,800 --> 01:43:56,160
So there was a bit of a pause.

1748
01:43:56,160 --> 01:43:59,660
And then he kind of let out a Mayday, but didn't do a who, what, where or a lunar with

1749
01:43:59,660 --> 01:44:00,660
it.

1750
01:44:00,660 --> 01:44:02,680
And he did the Mayday really quietly.

1751
01:44:02,680 --> 01:44:05,720
And I chatted with him after and I said, look, if you're going to do it, do it.

1752
01:44:05,720 --> 01:44:08,040
Like it's not like being half pregnant, right?

1753
01:44:08,040 --> 01:44:09,040
That doesn't exist.

1754
01:44:09,040 --> 01:44:10,040
You're pregnant.

1755
01:44:10,040 --> 01:44:11,040
You're not pregnant.

1756
01:44:11,040 --> 01:44:12,040
We're doing a Mayday.

1757
01:44:12,040 --> 01:44:13,040
We're not doing a Mayday.

1758
01:44:13,040 --> 01:44:14,040
And I don't mean to give the guy shit.

1759
01:44:14,040 --> 01:44:18,000
It's just one of those where it's like, what the hell, right?

1760
01:44:18,000 --> 01:44:20,040
And it's the right call he made to do a Mayday.

1761
01:44:20,040 --> 01:44:23,640
But when I talked to the incident commander who was in my group, like he's in, he's in

1762
01:44:23,640 --> 01:44:28,240
my seniority, you know, people are outside kind of wrapping hose, you know, we're just

1763
01:44:28,240 --> 01:44:29,600
going to put out this last little thing.

1764
01:44:29,600 --> 01:44:34,880
And all of a sudden it's like, you know, like what the hell did somebody just hear like

1765
01:44:34,880 --> 01:44:39,640
what, where, what, you know, so now people are on the radio trying to get confirmation

1766
01:44:39,640 --> 01:44:40,840
of what's going on.

1767
01:44:40,840 --> 01:44:45,480
Rick Crew starts to self dispatch themselves through the front door, all those types of

1768
01:44:45,480 --> 01:44:46,480
things.

1769
01:44:46,480 --> 01:44:49,760
But once again, there's a lot of learning that comes out of that.

1770
01:44:49,760 --> 01:44:51,880
I mean, like I said, that's entirely my fault.

1771
01:44:51,880 --> 01:44:52,880
I went back.

1772
01:44:52,880 --> 01:44:53,880
I sounded how I sounded.

1773
01:44:53,880 --> 01:44:56,680
I would have noted the hole when I went through it.

1774
01:44:56,680 --> 01:44:59,320
That's a hundred percent on me.

1775
01:44:59,320 --> 01:45:06,280
But having crews that have that experience, you know, I'm not where I usually am going

1776
01:45:06,280 --> 01:45:07,880
through the door.

1777
01:45:07,880 --> 01:45:10,880
I'm not doing things I usually do.

1778
01:45:10,880 --> 01:45:16,200
It's those little twists and things, you know, having the Mayday.

1779
01:45:16,200 --> 01:45:17,200
Let's train these.

1780
01:45:17,200 --> 01:45:21,280
I mean, this firefighter's a year on the job, maybe less.

1781
01:45:21,280 --> 01:45:25,160
Let's train these people that to do these Maydays, do them loud and proud.

1782
01:45:25,160 --> 01:45:29,600
Hey, if you're going to do a Mayday, do it like you're not, you're not going to get in

1783
01:45:29,600 --> 01:45:31,540
trouble or anything like this.

1784
01:45:31,540 --> 01:45:33,360
Never hit the emergency button on his mic.

1785
01:45:33,360 --> 01:45:38,320
Just did the Mayday over radio, which is why the incident commander was trying to figure

1786
01:45:38,320 --> 01:45:39,640
out what's going on.

1787
01:45:39,640 --> 01:45:44,280
He's asking dispatch dispatch is like, we've got no Mayday going here because there's an

1788
01:45:44,280 --> 01:45:48,440
obvious upper of upping of the alarms and things like this now that occur with Mayday

1789
01:45:48,440 --> 01:45:49,940
calls.

1790
01:45:49,940 --> 01:45:53,280
And so there's learning points with that too.

1791
01:45:53,280 --> 01:45:58,160
Once again, what didn't change from 2001 to I guess it was 21.

1792
01:45:58,160 --> 01:46:02,380
I went through the floor 20 years.

1793
01:46:02,380 --> 01:46:04,760
Never briefed out to anybody.

1794
01:46:04,760 --> 01:46:06,200
I wrote an after action report.

1795
01:46:06,200 --> 01:46:08,160
Like I said, the first thing on that is this is my fault.

1796
01:46:08,160 --> 01:46:10,800
Like I'm not trying to put blame on anybody else here.

1797
01:46:10,800 --> 01:46:15,860
There is a shit ton, six pages we can learn of different things from, you know, parts

1798
01:46:15,860 --> 01:46:16,860
of this.

1799
01:46:16,860 --> 01:46:19,240
I'm not blaming anybody as the guy who went through the hole.

1800
01:46:19,240 --> 01:46:25,520
There's the buck stops there, but there is some shit we can learn here.

1801
01:46:25,520 --> 01:46:28,880
Disappeared into bureaucracy of stuff.

1802
01:46:28,880 --> 01:46:32,360
Never saw the light of day again.

1803
01:46:32,360 --> 01:46:35,760
Now you mentioned mental health.

1804
01:46:35,760 --> 01:46:39,240
You've had, you know, like you said, almost three decades in the fire service on top of

1805
01:46:39,240 --> 01:46:44,080
obviously all the responses you've made on the technical rescue side as well.

1806
01:46:44,080 --> 01:46:52,000
What has been your kind of highs and lows emotionally for your career specifically?

1807
01:46:52,000 --> 01:46:54,840
Obviously that one incident.

1808
01:46:54,840 --> 01:47:01,960
I mean, when they called for us to evacuate the building, you know, the state of the building,

1809
01:47:01,960 --> 01:47:02,960
whatnot.

1810
01:47:02,960 --> 01:47:07,820
And it's one of those where you kind of think, well, okay, you know, there's a decision point

1811
01:47:07,820 --> 01:47:09,640
that has to be made here.

1812
01:47:09,640 --> 01:47:12,520
You know, there's a distinct possibility.

1813
01:47:12,520 --> 01:47:15,680
You might not make it out of this now at this particular point.

1814
01:47:15,680 --> 01:47:20,280
And that definitely plays on you.

1815
01:47:20,280 --> 01:47:27,280
And I've found with mental health stuff over the course of my career, it's the things that

1816
01:47:27,280 --> 01:47:33,080
were more out of your control, I think that caused the bigger problem.

1817
01:47:33,080 --> 01:47:39,680
You go in, someone's hung themselves, someone shot themselves, someone's been in a car wreck.

1818
01:47:39,680 --> 01:47:43,040
Those are tragedies.

1819
01:47:43,040 --> 01:47:46,920
You go to the call where the guy cut his kid in half because it was the wrong sex.

1820
01:47:46,920 --> 01:47:53,800
Those are things where it plays on you differently, I think, because it's not supposed to happen

1821
01:47:53,800 --> 01:47:59,800
or things happen that you can't control or outside of the norm.

1822
01:47:59,800 --> 01:48:03,640
And I'm not saying seeing people at a car accident is the norm, but it is kind of the

1823
01:48:03,640 --> 01:48:05,400
norm for us.

1824
01:48:05,400 --> 01:48:14,240
It's those calls where because of guideline or procedure, you were handcuffed in what

1825
01:48:14,240 --> 01:48:21,320
you did, or it's so far outside of the norm that you've really got to sit down and go

1826
01:48:21,320 --> 01:48:22,320
WTF.

1827
01:48:22,320 --> 01:48:33,680
Like, you know, the call that we had there with that writ, you know, the chief yelling

1828
01:48:33,680 --> 01:48:38,440
at you when you walk out the door because you didn't come out on that.

1829
01:48:38,440 --> 01:48:40,480
And you ask him later, well, what was your plan?

1830
01:48:40,480 --> 01:48:42,520
Like, okay, so we all leave.

1831
01:48:42,520 --> 01:48:43,520
What was your plan?

1832
01:48:43,520 --> 01:48:46,400
All we would have assessed, oh, you're going to write people off is what you're going to

1833
01:48:46,400 --> 01:48:47,400
do.

1834
01:48:47,400 --> 01:48:48,920
And I mean, cool, maybe you're cool with that.

1835
01:48:48,920 --> 01:48:52,760
But I wasn't really in the position that I was in.

1836
01:48:52,760 --> 01:48:55,840
But he wasn't even following guidelines or any procedures on that.

1837
01:48:55,840 --> 01:48:59,080
He was talking to another chief somewhere else trying to figure stuff out.

1838
01:48:59,080 --> 01:49:05,000
And, you know, that's what really kind of eats you up a little bit.

1839
01:49:05,000 --> 01:49:11,480
But yeah, I think it's more of that where we've been on calls and there's some of them

1840
01:49:11,480 --> 01:49:16,340
I just can't get into because of the legalities that still exist around them where the city

1841
01:49:16,340 --> 01:49:20,080
has ascertained that we violated policy.

1842
01:49:20,080 --> 01:49:24,640
We've more like violated guideline, but guidelines can be violated.

1843
01:49:24,640 --> 01:49:29,960
Last time I checked, and then something's happened where the city's been sued, and then

1844
01:49:29,960 --> 01:49:34,520
the city kind of throws you under the bus as part of it.

1845
01:49:34,520 --> 01:49:39,120
And that doesn't help the mental health around that because now not only are you dealing

1846
01:49:39,120 --> 01:49:46,600
with an incident that may be outside of the norm, normal what you see every day.

1847
01:49:46,600 --> 01:49:51,340
And I mean, that could be a wide scope there with what we do.

1848
01:49:51,340 --> 01:49:57,560
But now you're dealing with it in a in a silo because you can't talk about it.

1849
01:49:57,560 --> 01:49:59,960
I don't know if that answered what you were talking about there.

1850
01:49:59,960 --> 01:50:00,960
No, it did.

1851
01:50:00,960 --> 01:50:03,000
Well, it mirrors, you know, several different ways.

1852
01:50:03,000 --> 01:50:08,040
Obviously, you touched on, you know, a grotesque call that is absolutely heartbreaking.

1853
01:50:08,040 --> 01:50:10,920
And sadly, I'm sure everyone listening has some of those in their mind.

1854
01:50:10,920 --> 01:50:13,260
I know I certainly do.

1855
01:50:13,260 --> 01:50:18,700
But then one of the things that's not really discussed that I think really adds a huge

1856
01:50:18,700 --> 01:50:24,800
amount of weight to mental health challenges is organizational betrayal or organizational

1857
01:50:24,800 --> 01:50:26,000
stress.

1858
01:50:26,000 --> 01:50:31,680
And when you literally have said to a city or a county, I am willing to die to protect

1859
01:50:31,680 --> 01:50:33,960
the citizens of this.

1860
01:50:33,960 --> 01:50:35,800
This is my tribe.

1861
01:50:35,800 --> 01:50:41,480
And then when you do everything right, that tribe turns their back on you.

1862
01:50:41,480 --> 01:50:45,840
If you think about it in an ancient, you know, tribal civilization, when you're shunned by

1863
01:50:45,840 --> 01:50:48,720
your tribe, emotionally, that means death.

1864
01:50:48,720 --> 01:50:52,320
That means you're, you know, off wandering the prairie somewhere and probably not going

1865
01:50:52,320 --> 01:50:54,880
to survive very long.

1866
01:50:54,880 --> 01:50:56,600
So put us in uniform.

1867
01:50:56,600 --> 01:50:58,080
It's the same exact concept.

1868
01:50:58,080 --> 01:51:03,880
And I don't think again, you know, talking to Tulsi again, when you put all these wrong

1869
01:51:03,880 --> 01:51:08,480
people in leadership positions with these fragile egos and the self-serving and all

1870
01:51:08,480 --> 01:51:15,520
these things that, you know, have sadly corrupted what should be a beautiful, honorable profession,

1871
01:51:15,520 --> 01:51:20,320
there is a huge cost when you then betray the very people that trusted you.

1872
01:51:20,320 --> 01:51:24,760
And I think this really needs to be underlined that, you know, that organizational betrayal,

1873
01:51:24,760 --> 01:51:31,160
if you do not support the people that serve under your leadership, that is, you know,

1874
01:51:31,160 --> 01:51:36,160
absolutely behind some of the suicides and overdoses and other issues that plague our

1875
01:51:36,160 --> 01:51:38,160
profession.

1876
01:51:38,160 --> 01:51:39,160
It's interesting.

1877
01:51:39,160 --> 01:51:42,820
And I mean, it came to light again last night because we were doing threat and error management

1878
01:51:42,820 --> 01:51:45,840
as part of CRM for helicopter work.

1879
01:51:45,840 --> 01:51:51,000
But it's interesting that the TEM that they have there, they go, there's going to be a

1880
01:51:51,000 --> 01:51:52,900
problem on the plane.

1881
01:51:52,900 --> 01:51:58,120
Like we just can't get rid of all of the things that might occur.

1882
01:51:58,120 --> 01:51:59,740
Something is going to occur.

1883
01:51:59,740 --> 01:52:02,680
And so do we, and how do we trap that threat?

1884
01:52:02,680 --> 01:52:06,440
Like do we let it go because it's non-consequential?

1885
01:52:06,440 --> 01:52:09,720
Do we, you know, factor it out in some way, shape or form?

1886
01:52:09,720 --> 01:52:11,520
And I'm being very simplistic about CRM.

1887
01:52:11,520 --> 01:52:13,040
I get that.

1888
01:52:13,040 --> 01:52:18,280
And I look at that then at the fire service and go, we're going to fuck up.

1889
01:52:18,280 --> 01:52:23,480
Like if you do this job long enough, you're going to get to a point where you make an

1890
01:52:23,480 --> 01:52:25,240
error and something goes wrong.

1891
01:52:25,240 --> 01:52:28,000
It's just going to happen.

1892
01:52:28,000 --> 01:52:30,400
And the organization has to understand that.

1893
01:52:30,400 --> 01:52:36,880
Yes, there might be some organizational distress around that, some embarrassment, some liability,

1894
01:52:36,880 --> 01:52:41,980
some newspaper coverage that you don't particularly like.

1895
01:52:41,980 --> 01:52:46,160
But then taking that person, that person didn't go out the door and go, Hey, you know what?

1896
01:52:46,160 --> 01:52:48,360
I'm here to screw this guy over today.

1897
01:52:48,360 --> 01:52:49,360
Screw the city.

1898
01:52:49,360 --> 01:52:52,000
I'm going out and doing a terrible job and I'm going to kill somebody.

1899
01:52:52,000 --> 01:52:53,680
Nobody goes out the door doing that.

1900
01:52:53,680 --> 01:52:58,040
I mean, you look at the psychometrics and the physical and all the testing we do to

1901
01:52:58,040 --> 01:53:02,720
get on the job, you're getting a certain group of people.

1902
01:53:02,720 --> 01:53:08,040
And then all of a sudden, because they get put into a position or a situation where they

1903
01:53:08,040 --> 01:53:15,880
have to make a crap decision, a true dilemma with piss poor information under a time constraint

1904
01:53:15,880 --> 01:53:19,320
and once maybe they get it wrong.

1905
01:53:19,320 --> 01:53:21,840
And then you shit on them for doing that.

1906
01:53:21,840 --> 01:53:26,600
They already have some mental health issues around the basket being three quarters full

1907
01:53:26,600 --> 01:53:29,880
because they've worked here for how many years.

1908
01:53:29,880 --> 01:53:34,720
This is a bit more traumatic of a call and then you dump them out the door to go with

1909
01:53:34,720 --> 01:53:37,400
it.

1910
01:53:37,400 --> 01:53:40,080
And you wonder why people get jaded.

1911
01:53:40,080 --> 01:53:42,720
You wonder why people get angry at management.

1912
01:53:42,720 --> 01:53:45,040
You wonder why those things occur.

1913
01:53:45,040 --> 01:53:49,880
I mean, and yeah, maybe there has to be some level of discipline to it.

1914
01:53:49,880 --> 01:53:51,440
Maybe they rightfully screwed up.

1915
01:53:51,440 --> 01:53:57,680
But there was also the fact that, you know, let's look at the circumstances around what

1916
01:53:57,680 --> 01:54:00,720
happened there and why they did what they did.

1917
01:54:00,720 --> 01:54:04,440
They didn't go out to say, oh, I'm going to try to hurt a member of the public or I'm

1918
01:54:04,440 --> 01:54:07,800
going to try to destroy a piece of infrastructure.

1919
01:54:07,800 --> 01:54:13,800
That was an unintended negative consequence due to some other thought processes before

1920
01:54:13,800 --> 01:54:14,800
there.

1921
01:54:14,800 --> 01:54:18,160
I'm almost positive of it every time.

1922
01:54:18,160 --> 01:54:19,740
I've always said this.

1923
01:54:19,740 --> 01:54:20,740
Two things.

1924
01:54:20,740 --> 01:54:29,320
Firstly, when there is a gray area officer involved shooting, not the George Floyd horrendous

1925
01:54:29,320 --> 01:54:34,240
abuse of power and then not the guy had a gun and he was aiming at the officer.

1926
01:54:34,240 --> 01:54:35,240
There's no discussion there.

1927
01:54:35,240 --> 01:54:36,480
That's just a justified shooting.

1928
01:54:36,480 --> 01:54:38,320
I don't care who you are.

1929
01:54:38,320 --> 01:54:41,960
But the one he's reaching and it turns out he doesn't actually have a gun, you know,

1930
01:54:41,960 --> 01:54:45,320
and that the officer makes that split second decision and he's not doing what the officer

1931
01:54:45,320 --> 01:54:46,320
is telling him.

1932
01:54:46,320 --> 01:54:48,540
It's not like he just went up and just blasted him.

1933
01:54:48,540 --> 01:54:51,860
No one ever says how many shifts of that guy worked.

1934
01:54:51,860 --> 01:54:52,860
Was he sleep deprived?

1935
01:54:52,860 --> 01:54:55,760
And of course, obviously level of training as well.

1936
01:54:55,760 --> 01:54:58,380
But it's the same with the fire service.

1937
01:54:58,380 --> 01:55:02,560
When we make mistakes, when was their last day off?

1938
01:55:02,560 --> 01:55:05,160
Had they been forced in mandatory overtime?

1939
01:55:05,160 --> 01:55:09,920
Because I can tell you right now, 14 years into my career, I remember clearly pulling

1940
01:55:09,920 --> 01:55:16,800
out on the apron after waking up at two, three in the morning, knowing my area and telling

1941
01:55:16,800 --> 01:55:19,960
my medic partner, hey, are we going left or right?

1942
01:55:19,960 --> 01:55:23,520
I couldn't even compute left or right out of the station.

1943
01:55:23,520 --> 01:55:25,600
I was so fucking tired.

1944
01:55:25,600 --> 01:55:31,480
And now you put that scenario and I'm trying to tie belay lines and anchor points and those

1945
01:55:31,480 --> 01:55:33,120
kind of things.

1946
01:55:33,120 --> 01:55:38,040
How many of the mistakes are grounded in sleep deprivation?

1947
01:55:38,040 --> 01:55:42,880
How many line of duty deaths are grounded in sleep deprivation, getting lost in a search,

1948
01:55:42,880 --> 01:55:45,580
falling off an aerial intersection wrecks?

1949
01:55:45,580 --> 01:55:46,960
And it wasn't a lack of skill.

1950
01:55:46,960 --> 01:55:51,200
It was a fact that these people have been worked and worked and worked and worked until

1951
01:55:51,200 --> 01:55:55,400
their ability to split second think is blunted.

1952
01:55:55,400 --> 01:55:58,520
And all it takes is a slight blunting in the job that we do.

1953
01:55:58,520 --> 01:56:02,160
It can be the difference between someone living and someone dying.

1954
01:56:02,160 --> 01:56:04,040
No, absolutely.

1955
01:56:04,040 --> 01:56:11,880
And I mean, it's even more to the point of, like you say, sleep deprivation and how long

1956
01:56:11,880 --> 01:56:13,320
they've been on duty.

1957
01:56:13,320 --> 01:56:17,160
But what have they seen in their past?

1958
01:56:17,160 --> 01:56:19,760
What is the Rolodex in their head doing?

1959
01:56:19,760 --> 01:56:25,440
I can't remember that prime decision, decision making, whatever it was, where you look at

1960
01:56:25,440 --> 01:56:30,160
something and you go through a Rolodex basically in your head and you try to find a solution

1961
01:56:30,160 --> 01:56:34,920
based on a previous positive solution that you've had before.

1962
01:56:34,920 --> 01:56:41,040
And you go to two of the same calls and maybe you're tired, maybe there's other things going

1963
01:56:41,040 --> 01:56:48,360
on and you go through that Rolodex and you get a slight, okay, this is a possibility.

1964
01:56:48,360 --> 01:56:51,720
But like you say, all of a sudden you're numbed because you've been working too long or you're

1965
01:56:51,720 --> 01:56:57,340
numbed because you're tired or you're numbed because it's the 15th run that you've been

1966
01:56:57,340 --> 01:57:03,480
on and number 12 was absolutely horrific and you probably shouldn't even be at work anymore.

1967
01:57:03,480 --> 01:57:08,120
And so you screw that decision making process up.

1968
01:57:08,120 --> 01:57:09,440
Absolutely.

1969
01:57:09,440 --> 01:57:16,520
Well, I want to shift to two more areas before we go to closing questions if you've got time.

1970
01:57:16,520 --> 01:57:17,880
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

1971
01:57:17,880 --> 01:57:18,880
Brilliant.

1972
01:57:18,880 --> 01:57:19,880
All right.

1973
01:57:19,880 --> 01:57:20,880
Because I think they're both very important.

1974
01:57:20,880 --> 01:57:27,400
Firstly, we talked about humility, we talked about knowledge sharing, all these departments

1975
01:57:27,400 --> 01:57:33,800
that you've got to work with through the fire service and through Ronan Rescue, what are

1976
01:57:33,800 --> 01:57:41,440
some examples of departments that really amazed you in the high level of performance and then

1977
01:57:41,440 --> 01:57:48,280
when you kind of reverse engineer, why were those countries so good at that particular

1978
01:57:48,280 --> 01:57:51,440
skill?

1979
01:57:51,440 --> 01:57:56,520
Probably even look at that from a 10,000 foot view.

1980
01:57:56,520 --> 01:58:06,760
You deal with people like the BSPP, Paris Fire, and if you read any of the documentation

1981
01:58:06,760 --> 01:58:14,800
around the fire they had at, and I'm throwing a blank, Notre Dame, the cathedral, and you

1982
01:58:14,800 --> 01:58:20,000
look at the risk that we would perceive that they put those firefighters in and then you

1983
01:58:20,000 --> 01:58:23,800
realize they are all army.

1984
01:58:23,800 --> 01:58:25,680
Paris Fire is military.

1985
01:58:25,680 --> 01:58:29,560
You have to go through a selection to get into Paris Fire.

1986
01:58:29,560 --> 01:58:32,960
When you train with their technical rescue teams, you do a selection after you become

1987
01:58:32,960 --> 01:58:36,000
a firefighter and what you did a selection, you know what I mean?

1988
01:58:36,000 --> 01:58:39,440
It just kind of goes on and on.

1989
01:58:39,440 --> 01:58:45,360
It's hard then to compare them to a North American fire service.

1990
01:58:45,360 --> 01:58:51,600
Sometimes the junior instructor in tech rescue in some departments is picked by juniority

1991
01:58:51,600 --> 01:58:53,380
as we call it.

1992
01:58:53,380 --> 01:58:56,360
Nobody else wanted to do it, so you're the junior person.

1993
01:58:56,360 --> 01:58:57,360
Congratulations.

1994
01:58:57,360 --> 01:58:59,840
You just got assigned this task.

1995
01:58:59,840 --> 01:59:08,000
So you go from a culture where you've basically gone through a double selection process as

1996
01:59:08,000 --> 01:59:14,960
a military unit to run tech rescue for Paris Fire using a North American term to delineate

1997
01:59:14,960 --> 01:59:23,360
them versus a department where hey, congratulations, no one else wants to do this, so you're it.

1998
01:59:23,360 --> 01:59:28,440
You can't even really compare what's going to happen there.

1999
01:59:28,440 --> 01:59:32,320
One's obviously invested in that particular field.

2000
01:59:32,320 --> 01:59:37,160
They're going to go out of their way to read articles on it and get professional development

2001
01:59:37,160 --> 01:59:41,640
and become what I look as a true professional in that field, understand the principles behind

2002
01:59:41,640 --> 01:59:46,720
what they're doing, look at past errors and mistakes and find ways to move forward with

2003
01:59:46,720 --> 01:59:47,720
that.

2004
01:59:47,720 --> 01:59:50,920
And then you're going to have someone that's going to be looking at the watch going, I

2005
01:59:50,920 --> 01:59:52,400
got three years.

2006
01:59:52,400 --> 01:59:58,560
I got two years, 364 days, counting it down until they're out of there, which doesn't

2007
01:59:58,560 --> 02:00:05,320
do the fire service, that organization or that individual any help.

2008
02:00:05,320 --> 02:00:14,080
If you want to look at specifics, I do find everybody, and I mean, this sounds like a

2009
02:00:14,080 --> 02:00:21,060
very wholesome and very family friendly conversation at this point, but everybody brings something

2010
02:00:21,060 --> 02:00:27,240
and everybody has something that's just totally off the rails that you just wouldn't do.

2011
02:00:27,240 --> 02:00:31,640
The Asian countries, I don't mean to, I'm not trying to ballpark people together.

2012
02:00:31,640 --> 02:00:36,000
I understand there's differences between Koreans and Taiwanese and Chinese and Japanese.

2013
02:00:36,000 --> 02:00:37,360
I've been to all of those places.

2014
02:00:37,360 --> 02:00:41,200
I have friends at all of those places, so just bear with me while I look at it from

2015
02:00:41,200 --> 02:00:46,720
a higher view, but their individual skills, phenomenal.

2016
02:00:46,720 --> 02:00:52,840
We did a hundred meters, so 330 foot rope climb at a competition in China and Chongqing.

2017
02:00:52,840 --> 02:00:56,440
The Chinese, you're tethered to your partner with a one meter, three foot, three and a

2018
02:00:56,440 --> 02:01:00,680
bit foot lanyard, so you're climbing together.

2019
02:01:00,680 --> 02:01:02,160
The fastest team was a Chinese team.

2020
02:01:02,160 --> 02:01:05,040
They climbed that in seven minutes.

2021
02:01:05,040 --> 02:01:06,040
I did like 20.

2022
02:01:06,040 --> 02:01:07,040
I'm 50 now.

2023
02:01:07,040 --> 02:01:08,040
Like give me a break, right?

2024
02:01:08,040 --> 02:01:14,960
Like I thought I was doing okay at that, but it's been mentioned.

2025
02:01:14,960 --> 02:01:18,000
I don't know if it was even mentioned on this podcast or something I was listening to earlier

2026
02:01:18,000 --> 02:01:24,280
today where the Asian culture, I've got gray hair under this hat.

2027
02:01:24,280 --> 02:01:26,640
I get naturally deferred to there.

2028
02:01:26,640 --> 02:01:30,520
That whole senior person thing really means something.

2029
02:01:30,520 --> 02:01:35,920
And so their junior people don't have the command and control experience that they should

2030
02:01:35,920 --> 02:01:38,040
in a lot of those positions.

2031
02:01:38,040 --> 02:01:43,140
Great individual rescuers, they have some command and control gaps.

2032
02:01:43,140 --> 02:01:49,960
You go over to a place like Europe, their tech rescue school, they have a special course.

2033
02:01:49,960 --> 02:01:55,120
Like you go do your tech rescue, then you go to the team lead for tech rescue course.

2034
02:01:55,120 --> 02:01:59,160
And you have to get so many hours and what have you.

2035
02:01:59,160 --> 02:02:00,960
And people fail this course.

2036
02:02:00,960 --> 02:02:04,720
That's another thing that's probably unheard of in a lot of places in the fire service.

2037
02:02:04,720 --> 02:02:07,280
What do you mean I could actually fail this?

2038
02:02:07,280 --> 02:02:11,360
When I went to tech rescue school there, when I went to their academy, you wear a blue helmet

2039
02:02:11,360 --> 02:02:12,400
on week one.

2040
02:02:12,400 --> 02:02:16,840
At the end of week one, you have to do an obstacle course, a rope course.

2041
02:02:16,840 --> 02:02:18,360
You have to do a crawl to crawl pick.

2042
02:02:18,360 --> 02:02:24,400
So a single rescuer pick off from single rope from ascent basically.

2043
02:02:24,400 --> 02:02:25,880
You have to write a written test.

2044
02:02:25,880 --> 02:02:31,280
If you fail those, you wear your blue helmet instead of a red helmet in week two to indicate

2045
02:02:31,280 --> 02:02:36,600
that you're not actually up to par to be in week two until you pass those things.

2046
02:02:36,600 --> 02:02:40,560
Which around here, I mean, I'm pretty sure I'd get in trouble if I did that in a recruit

2047
02:02:40,560 --> 02:02:44,240
class.

2048
02:02:44,240 --> 02:02:47,320
So you do two more weeks then for your tech rescue stuff.

2049
02:02:47,320 --> 02:02:48,960
So week one's kind of individual skills.

2050
02:02:48,960 --> 02:02:52,000
You do a couple more weeks to get your tech rescue skills.

2051
02:02:52,000 --> 02:02:56,400
At the end of that, you write another test and you pick into a hat and you pick out one

2052
02:02:56,400 --> 02:02:58,280
of six scenarios.

2053
02:02:58,280 --> 02:03:02,200
One of the scenarios is building a highline by yourself.

2054
02:03:02,200 --> 02:03:06,400
You pass or fail now based on that.

2055
02:03:06,400 --> 02:03:08,240
After that, you go back to your unit.

2056
02:03:08,240 --> 02:03:09,640
You do a bunch of years.

2057
02:03:09,640 --> 02:03:15,800
Then you go to their team lead school, which is another, they're failing 30, 40% of the

2058
02:03:15,800 --> 02:03:20,800
team leaders that go to that school.

2059
02:03:20,800 --> 02:03:24,040
I bring that up because I always like to bring context to these conversations.

2060
02:03:24,040 --> 02:03:28,840
To turn around and say, I find team leaders are better in Europe does a disservice if

2061
02:03:28,840 --> 02:03:34,200
you don't understand how they got there.

2062
02:03:34,200 --> 02:03:40,080
And so when you look at how they got there and a lot of their team leaders come from

2063
02:03:40,080 --> 02:03:45,480
the military, a lot of them are Red Sash or Red Cord people, which is their mountain warfare

2064
02:03:45,480 --> 02:03:46,480
stuff.

2065
02:03:46,480 --> 02:03:47,480
They're also, this is Belgium.

2066
02:03:47,480 --> 02:03:49,120
It's a small country.

2067
02:03:49,120 --> 02:03:53,120
The fire services, it's not nationalized, but consider it is.

2068
02:03:53,120 --> 02:03:59,960
They're regional, but my buddies in Antwerp and in Namur, which Namur is like an hour

2069
02:03:59,960 --> 02:04:01,640
and a half drive to Brussels.

2070
02:04:01,640 --> 02:04:06,240
When they had the bombing in the airport, they drove to Brussels.

2071
02:04:06,240 --> 02:04:08,960
It wasn't like, oh, that's another city or another problem.

2072
02:04:08,960 --> 02:04:10,320
They drove across the country.

2073
02:04:10,320 --> 02:04:12,520
It's a four hour drive across the country.

2074
02:04:12,520 --> 02:04:15,640
So I mean, once again, put things into context.

2075
02:04:15,640 --> 02:04:20,200
So they come from a different background than we do, but they're commanding control.

2076
02:04:20,200 --> 02:04:25,440
I find fairly interesting in the way they do things.

2077
02:04:25,440 --> 02:04:31,920
They use smaller teams and they do it a hell of a lot faster than we do.

2078
02:04:31,920 --> 02:04:35,000
Do we would say that there was some safety concerns?

2079
02:04:35,000 --> 02:04:37,480
They'll do single rescuer access.

2080
02:04:37,480 --> 02:04:40,200
I was trained in school or schools to do that.

2081
02:04:40,200 --> 02:04:45,680
They put in checks and balances prior to going on to single rope.

2082
02:04:45,680 --> 02:04:46,940
Rope can never touch an edge.

2083
02:04:46,940 --> 02:04:50,440
You have to put in a small re-anchor if you're going over an edge.

2084
02:04:50,440 --> 02:04:52,000
They teach you how to bolt.

2085
02:04:52,000 --> 02:04:53,080
They teach you how to drill.

2086
02:04:53,080 --> 02:04:54,520
So you can do that.

2087
02:04:54,520 --> 02:04:56,200
You have to be on a whistle stop device.

2088
02:04:56,200 --> 02:04:58,880
If you're not, you have to have a prusikin with you as well.

2089
02:04:58,880 --> 02:05:00,000
So it is.

2090
02:05:00,000 --> 02:05:04,640
You have to test the system while tied off, completely proof load it before you remove

2091
02:05:04,640 --> 02:05:06,160
that last safety.

2092
02:05:06,160 --> 02:05:07,640
So they have checks and balances.

2093
02:05:07,640 --> 02:05:14,100
There's also some administrative documentation type team lead stuff they do to do that.

2094
02:05:14,100 --> 02:05:16,560
So they put people into play faster.

2095
02:05:16,560 --> 02:05:21,820
So it's unfair to say, yes, they're faster than us because I mean, they are faster than

2096
02:05:21,820 --> 02:05:25,040
us, but they're trained to do that as well.

2097
02:05:25,040 --> 02:05:28,000
So as you travel around, you see that.

2098
02:05:28,000 --> 02:05:32,680
And then you also see things that just blow your mind.

2099
02:05:32,680 --> 02:05:36,640
Fire Department of New York talking about bailout kits with some of their, they have

2100
02:05:36,640 --> 02:05:42,740
a committee for bailout and we're playing with this little 3.3 millimeter firefly device.

2101
02:05:42,740 --> 02:05:47,400
It's made by a company up here in Canada and we're playing with it for like escaping off

2102
02:05:47,400 --> 02:05:50,640
a line at the end of a helicopter if you get treated or whatnot.

2103
02:05:50,640 --> 02:05:52,880
It's a bailout style device.

2104
02:05:52,880 --> 02:05:57,080
And a guy from New York reached out to me and said, hey, you know, I saw this on a podcast

2105
02:05:57,080 --> 02:05:59,080
or whatever, kind of interested in it.

2106
02:05:59,080 --> 02:06:04,240
I said, it doesn't meet any NFPA standards, blah, blah, blah.

2107
02:06:04,240 --> 02:06:06,480
We'll just have our engineers look at it.

2108
02:06:06,480 --> 02:06:12,280
Like there's a whole different level of, you know what I feel like I would have to fight

2109
02:06:12,280 --> 02:06:13,280
to get this in.

2110
02:06:13,280 --> 02:06:15,420
I'd have to go to NFPA committees.

2111
02:06:15,420 --> 02:06:17,800
They don't even view that as a problem.

2112
02:06:17,800 --> 02:06:22,680
Like if they want something, they'll just have their people implement it, right?

2113
02:06:22,680 --> 02:06:31,000
And so to work with people like that is another level of, you know, just when you see an organization

2114
02:06:31,000 --> 02:06:36,200
at that size doing stuff, it's really quite unique.

2115
02:06:36,200 --> 02:06:41,920
Another thing I see overseas and stuff that to bring back here, you had mentioned it where

2116
02:06:41,920 --> 02:06:45,320
some fire departments won't even talk to the city next to them.

2117
02:06:45,320 --> 02:06:51,880
The city next to us, it's a bit unique because I do train that other city with Ronin as well.

2118
02:06:51,880 --> 02:06:55,580
So between the two cities, we work together fairly well.

2119
02:06:55,580 --> 02:07:00,280
Our techniques, our procedures and everything on rope are pretty much the same.

2120
02:07:00,280 --> 02:07:01,680
You go, that's going east.

2121
02:07:01,680 --> 02:07:06,280
If you go west, that city's on 12.5 doing dedicated main dedicated safety.

2122
02:07:06,280 --> 02:07:10,700
We're an 11 mil department doing twin tension rope.

2123
02:07:10,700 --> 02:07:16,000
Our gear barely will even work together, let alone the command and control structure.

2124
02:07:16,000 --> 02:07:18,280
Our people know what dedicated main dedicated safety is.

2125
02:07:18,280 --> 02:07:20,980
I don't know if their people know what twin tension is.

2126
02:07:20,980 --> 02:07:23,520
So we couldn't even interface with them if we wanted to.

2127
02:07:23,520 --> 02:07:24,840
It would just be such a challenge.

2128
02:07:24,840 --> 02:07:29,000
It would probably create a safety issue unless you broke the rescue into components where

2129
02:07:29,000 --> 02:07:32,640
they just dealt with one person, you dealt with another.

2130
02:07:32,640 --> 02:07:40,400
So yeah, to see it in that avenue and then to go to places in Europe and Asia where they

2131
02:07:40,400 --> 02:07:45,080
coordinate at a national level and they train at a national level.

2132
02:07:45,080 --> 02:07:51,920
I mean, when I compete over there, I'm competing with a Belgian team in Spain coming up.

2133
02:07:51,920 --> 02:07:56,900
They'll give them like a fire van to drive from Belgium to Spain.

2134
02:07:56,900 --> 02:07:58,760
Like that's 22 hours.

2135
02:07:58,760 --> 02:08:03,100
You imagine your fire department giving you something in Florida to drive to Knoxville

2136
02:08:03,100 --> 02:08:05,400
or giving me something in Vancouver to drive to LA.

2137
02:08:05,400 --> 02:08:08,320
Nah, it'd be a hard no on that.

2138
02:08:08,320 --> 02:08:09,320
Right?

2139
02:08:09,320 --> 02:08:10,320
They're paid.

2140
02:08:10,320 --> 02:08:14,800
They actually, their fire departments will fund them and sponsor them to go because they

2141
02:08:14,800 --> 02:08:16,920
see the value in this.

2142
02:08:16,920 --> 02:08:22,040
So it's a totally different mind concept and trying to bring that back here and get some

2143
02:08:22,040 --> 02:08:29,120
of that implemented is a challenge, but it's a challenge that's worthy to do.

2144
02:08:29,120 --> 02:08:31,360
What about the fitness side?

2145
02:08:31,360 --> 02:08:36,080
When I think of the Sapa, Pompier, Paris, I think of that kind of muscle up they do

2146
02:08:36,080 --> 02:08:37,560
on that little shelf.

2147
02:08:37,560 --> 02:08:42,200
And every single time I've seen those bloody firefighters, they're in phenomenal shape.

2148
02:08:42,200 --> 02:08:48,040
And you look, I mean, I had the two French brothers on that did the 9-11 documentary,

2149
02:08:48,040 --> 02:08:51,120
the Bataclan attacks and the Notre Dame.

2150
02:08:51,120 --> 02:08:54,680
They did all of them and all of them incredible documentaries.

2151
02:08:54,680 --> 02:08:58,640
But you look at the physical exertion that was the Notre Dame fire.

2152
02:08:58,640 --> 02:09:02,640
I mean, it was horrendous and terrifying and hot.

2153
02:09:02,640 --> 02:09:08,360
And I think back to the Europe, excuse me, back to the US, and I've said this a thousand

2154
02:09:08,360 --> 02:09:13,480
times, my ocean lifeguard guests are held to a fitness standard.

2155
02:09:13,480 --> 02:09:19,480
If you can't compete at a certain level or finish these tasks, you cease to be a lifeguard.

2156
02:09:19,480 --> 02:09:22,000
My Navy SEALs, my SAS, et cetera, et cetera.

2157
02:09:22,000 --> 02:09:25,600
If you don't hit the bar, then you're gone.

2158
02:09:25,600 --> 02:09:32,760
And yet in police and fire and EMS in North America, our unions and administrations fight

2159
02:09:32,760 --> 02:09:33,800
fitness standard.

2160
02:09:33,800 --> 02:09:35,520
And it blows my fucking mind.

2161
02:09:35,520 --> 02:09:40,560
And then like you said, you look at the Belgians, the French, the Swedes, all these other firefighters

2162
02:09:40,560 --> 02:09:42,400
around the world, not including the UK.

2163
02:09:42,400 --> 02:09:45,040
I don't think they're held to a high standard.

2164
02:09:45,040 --> 02:09:50,240
But there are these clearly these good fitness standards because their first responders look

2165
02:09:50,240 --> 02:09:54,200
like they are ready to do the job that they are paid to do.

2166
02:09:54,200 --> 02:09:59,360
Yeah, I mean, I agree with you 100% on it.

2167
02:09:59,360 --> 02:10:04,320
I mean, we put these teams together to go compete.

2168
02:10:04,320 --> 02:10:07,400
One of the things we tell them, like we'll put a training thing out.

2169
02:10:07,400 --> 02:10:08,760
Part of it is, you know, rig a line.

2170
02:10:08,760 --> 02:10:12,400
Part of it is make sure you can run 5K in like 30 minutes.

2171
02:10:12,400 --> 02:10:13,400
Like so what's that?

2172
02:10:13,400 --> 02:10:15,760
Three miles, three and a half miles, whatever that is in the US.

2173
02:10:15,760 --> 02:10:19,960
But like some sort of that's not an off the record fitness standard sort of thing.

2174
02:10:19,960 --> 02:10:22,320
That's a six minute kilometer.

2175
02:10:22,320 --> 02:10:24,400
I can do that at 50.

2176
02:10:24,400 --> 02:10:28,720
Like these are things that you need to be able to do.

2177
02:10:28,720 --> 02:10:33,080
And part of it, I think, is I mean, a lot of this comes full circle.

2178
02:10:33,080 --> 02:10:36,360
It's the professionalism in the job.

2179
02:10:36,360 --> 02:10:38,560
Someone said it to me the other day.

2180
02:10:38,560 --> 02:10:42,980
When I got hired on the fire service, you know, it's like being a soldier.

2181
02:10:42,980 --> 02:10:44,760
It's what I was.

2182
02:10:44,760 --> 02:10:46,920
It's what I am.

2183
02:10:46,920 --> 02:10:53,200
And at some point, it went from being a calling to being a career.

2184
02:10:53,200 --> 02:10:55,480
And at some point, it went from being a career to being a job.

2185
02:10:55,480 --> 02:10:59,680
And at some point, it went from being a job to being a paycheck.

2186
02:10:59,680 --> 02:11:05,520
And I delineate those four things because I'm not saying there wasn't fat people when

2187
02:11:05,520 --> 02:11:08,320
this was a calling.

2188
02:11:08,320 --> 02:11:13,360
But if it's my calling and it's what I'm doing, I'm always a firefighter.

2189
02:11:13,360 --> 02:11:14,360
I drive down the road.

2190
02:11:14,360 --> 02:11:16,400
I drive four hours to get to work.

2191
02:11:16,400 --> 02:11:19,280
I got rope rescue equipment in my car.

2192
02:11:19,280 --> 02:11:20,940
I will stop.

2193
02:11:20,940 --> 02:11:23,640
People would expect that of me.

2194
02:11:23,640 --> 02:11:30,340
I also, you know, when I volunteer with SAR here to go hike five, six kilometers into

2195
02:11:30,340 --> 02:11:36,320
the back country, put two people down 200 meters on a cliff face to hang out with a

2196
02:11:36,320 --> 02:11:40,280
patient, sleep on the ground overnight, get picked up by a helicopter in the morning and

2197
02:11:40,280 --> 02:11:44,240
then pull all of those people off the side of that cliff.

2198
02:11:44,240 --> 02:11:47,480
There's a certain level of shape you need to be in to do that.

2199
02:11:47,480 --> 02:11:51,000
And you're not doing anybody any favors if you're not in there.

2200
02:11:51,000 --> 02:11:57,240
And you're kidding yourself if you think that, oh, well, you know, this is such a rarity.

2201
02:11:57,240 --> 02:11:59,480
I'll be able to just sidestep it.

2202
02:11:59,480 --> 02:12:02,240
It is until you can't.

2203
02:12:02,240 --> 02:12:09,320
And you look at that 2001, so as a five-year firefighter, I'll go and say I was probably

2204
02:12:09,320 --> 02:12:13,760
in decent shape at that point in time in my life.

2205
02:12:13,760 --> 02:12:16,480
We blew through an air bottle rescuing those.

2206
02:12:16,480 --> 02:12:18,960
Everybody, we were zeroed air.

2207
02:12:18,960 --> 02:12:20,080
They were out of air.

2208
02:12:20,080 --> 02:12:22,800
We were out of air.

2209
02:12:22,800 --> 02:12:28,480
And if I can, if I'm running out of air in that kind of shape, moving boxes of equipment

2210
02:12:28,480 --> 02:12:34,640
and rubble and stuff that's falling over, I mean, we're talking a rubber rubble pile.

2211
02:12:34,640 --> 02:12:39,520
My head was like probably 10 feet from the roof of that structure.

2212
02:12:39,520 --> 02:12:41,280
I mean, we're talking a massive warehouse.

2213
02:12:41,280 --> 02:12:44,480
I was probably 18 feet of rubble I was on.

2214
02:12:44,480 --> 02:12:45,480
Right?

2215
02:12:45,480 --> 02:12:51,280
So, digging through that and back then, like I said, there was like 12, 14 firefighters

2216
02:12:51,280 --> 02:12:52,280
on scene.

2217
02:12:52,280 --> 02:12:54,360
It's not like you're swapping me out.

2218
02:12:54,360 --> 02:12:58,520
Like you've got to be able at that point to have the physical fitness to do this job.

2219
02:12:58,520 --> 02:13:03,560
There's just, you can put lipstick on a pig and call it whatever you want, but that's

2220
02:13:03,560 --> 02:13:05,560
just the way it is.

2221
02:13:05,560 --> 02:13:06,880
Well, I'm always very fair.

2222
02:13:06,880 --> 02:13:11,080
I mean, the other side of the conversation is that the environment that we work in sets

2223
02:13:11,080 --> 02:13:12,080
us up for failure.

2224
02:13:12,080 --> 02:13:16,980
And, you know, sleep deprivation, for example, has massive hormonal implications and it does

2225
02:13:16,980 --> 02:13:19,800
cause weight gain and all these other things.

2226
02:13:19,800 --> 02:13:22,800
So it is not just on the firefighter to get in shape.

2227
02:13:22,800 --> 02:13:27,400
It's also on the organization to create an environment of fitness, an environment of

2228
02:13:27,400 --> 02:13:31,240
rest and recovery so that then we can put that bar up.

2229
02:13:31,240 --> 02:13:36,400
We can implement a fitness standard nationally and we can hold the best people to that standard

2230
02:13:36,400 --> 02:13:41,200
and they hopefully will have long, you know, productive careers and then long, healthy

2231
02:13:41,200 --> 02:13:42,200
retirements.

2232
02:13:42,200 --> 02:13:46,160
To oppose a fitness standard is a slap in the face, not only to the people we serve,

2233
02:13:46,160 --> 02:13:50,240
but to the families of the first responders who then barely make it past retirement.

2234
02:13:50,240 --> 02:13:54,600
Well, I mean, part of it goes to, so we had to do this thing.

2235
02:13:54,600 --> 02:13:55,600
I'm trying to remember the name.

2236
02:13:55,600 --> 02:13:58,000
I think it was called FireFit when we were doing it.

2237
02:13:58,000 --> 02:14:01,120
And it was a set of tasks scored.

2238
02:14:01,120 --> 02:14:03,680
Then you had to do the combat challenge to get hired.

2239
02:14:03,680 --> 02:14:07,360
And they wouldn't take anybody unless they were 90 percentile or higher.

2240
02:14:07,360 --> 02:14:13,760
And that's 90th percentile of the public, of General Pop or higher.

2241
02:14:13,760 --> 02:14:16,960
So if you have no fitness standard on your fire department, why don't you just hire whoever

2242
02:14:16,960 --> 02:14:18,620
you want?

2243
02:14:18,620 --> 02:14:21,880
Why do I have to be in that kind of shape to get hired?

2244
02:14:21,880 --> 02:14:26,960
And then furthermore, training, yeah, I need to go and do my inspections.

2245
02:14:26,960 --> 02:14:28,440
I need to ensure my crews trained.

2246
02:14:28,440 --> 02:14:30,240
I need to ensure my crews fit.

2247
02:14:30,240 --> 02:14:37,360
And why isn't fitness on the same playing field as making sure they can tie a rope or

2248
02:14:37,360 --> 02:14:41,360
pull a pre-connect off of the fire truck?

2249
02:14:41,360 --> 02:14:45,240
Because I'd be really interested to see, I'll retire out in a couple of years.

2250
02:14:45,240 --> 02:14:49,840
I'd be interested to go and do that test and see what the difference is between it.

2251
02:14:49,840 --> 02:14:55,640
Because you hired me at an above 90th percentile and then it kind of, it's do whatever you

2252
02:14:55,640 --> 02:14:57,960
want your entire career.

2253
02:14:57,960 --> 02:15:03,640
But like I said, back to the beginning, if you're not concerned about me during my career,

2254
02:15:03,640 --> 02:15:08,560
why are you concerned about me when I got hired?

2255
02:15:08,560 --> 02:15:13,840
When I retired out to do the podcast, there was a ticking clock.

2256
02:15:13,840 --> 02:15:18,000
And if I didn't make some money, because I basically cashed out my retirement within

2257
02:15:18,000 --> 02:15:22,200
a year and a half, I was going to have to go back into the fire service, which again

2258
02:15:22,200 --> 02:15:23,200
would have been a different department.

2259
02:15:23,200 --> 02:15:26,400
And actually, funny enough, it's a department that just moved to 2472.

2260
02:15:26,400 --> 02:15:29,800
So that would have been much better.

2261
02:15:29,800 --> 02:15:34,600
But being proactive and hopefully being humble enough to not assume that I was going to be

2262
02:15:34,600 --> 02:15:37,680
good for the next test, I went and did a CPAT.

2263
02:15:37,680 --> 02:15:40,880
I'm like, well, let me get one done, make sure that I can do it well.

2264
02:15:40,880 --> 02:15:44,800
And then I'm not just all mouth and no trousers, yapping on a podcast.

2265
02:15:44,800 --> 02:15:48,960
But also then it's there set ready for the hiring process.

2266
02:15:48,960 --> 02:15:49,960
And I forget the number.

2267
02:15:49,960 --> 02:15:51,920
It was either 720 or 740.

2268
02:15:51,920 --> 02:15:57,960
But anyway, it was fast and this was like 47 years old, 46, 47.

2269
02:15:57,960 --> 02:16:00,320
And they go, that was literally the record.

2270
02:16:00,320 --> 02:16:02,520
We've never had anyone do it that fast.

2271
02:16:02,520 --> 02:16:06,760
And I'm not telling this to be like, oh, wow, I'm so made quite the opposite.

2272
02:16:06,760 --> 02:16:13,080
All it means that a diligent firefighter that took his fitness seriously at almost 50 years

2273
02:16:13,080 --> 02:16:15,840
old was still able to smash the CPAT.

2274
02:16:15,840 --> 02:16:21,840
Now conversely, Orange County, when I worked for them, it was 1020.

2275
02:16:21,840 --> 02:16:25,920
If you just pass the CPAT and we'd have people like try two or three times and then everyone

2276
02:16:25,920 --> 02:16:28,360
be high fiving when they got 1019.

2277
02:16:28,360 --> 02:16:33,800
I just remember thinking, no, this is not the mentality we're supposed to have.

2278
02:16:33,800 --> 02:16:38,920
Like I'm not saying, you know, make the CPAT your everything you train for.

2279
02:16:38,920 --> 02:16:44,760
But if you're not at least, you know, like nine-ish, eight-ish, then you're absolutely

2280
02:16:44,760 --> 02:16:48,080
going for the absolute lowest bar there is.

2281
02:16:48,080 --> 02:16:49,080
And this is the problem.

2282
02:16:49,080 --> 02:16:50,560
I agree with you 100%.

2283
02:16:50,560 --> 02:16:52,680
For a lot of people, it's become a paycheck.

2284
02:16:52,680 --> 02:16:53,940
And that's not what this is.

2285
02:16:53,940 --> 02:16:55,360
This is a calling.

2286
02:16:55,360 --> 02:17:00,280
This profession burns so hard in my heart that five years out of uniform, I'm doing

2287
02:17:00,280 --> 02:17:05,520
a podcast trying to advocate for this profession because what we do is, you know, and what

2288
02:17:05,520 --> 02:17:10,840
you guys still do is the most honorable profession I think there is hands down.

2289
02:17:10,840 --> 02:17:15,080
I love military and police and everything is great, but the fire service to me is the

2290
02:17:15,080 --> 02:17:16,420
pinnacle.

2291
02:17:16,420 --> 02:17:20,680
So that is why, you know, when you see these standards slipping and then it goes back to

2292
02:17:20,680 --> 02:17:26,480
our conversation, you ask a Gen Z, you know, look at this and they'll be like, why do you

2293
02:17:26,480 --> 02:17:28,480
not have fitness standards?

2294
02:17:28,480 --> 02:17:32,280
And no one can answer it because it makes no fucking sense.

2295
02:17:32,280 --> 02:17:36,400
So this is why it's such an important conversation and there's no downside.

2296
02:17:36,400 --> 02:17:38,020
We are better at our job.

2297
02:17:38,020 --> 02:17:41,240
We are more likely to get out the fire ourselves and more likely to be able to make sure that

2298
02:17:41,240 --> 02:17:44,640
our men and women to the left or the right of us get out.

2299
02:17:44,640 --> 02:17:46,680
Then we're more likely to affect a rescue.

2300
02:17:46,680 --> 02:17:51,720
And then most importantly, we go home every night and then we have a long retirement,

2301
02:17:51,720 --> 02:17:57,040
which you guys have earned and then get to play with your grandkids and still be healthy.

2302
02:17:57,040 --> 02:18:02,400
But if we allow this bar to get lower and lower and lower, what we see is exactly what

2303
02:18:02,400 --> 02:18:03,400
we're seeing.

2304
02:18:03,400 --> 02:18:05,200
Men and women not even making it to retirement.

2305
02:18:05,200 --> 02:18:10,040
And if they do, the number everyone throws around is five years, five years later, they're

2306
02:18:10,040 --> 02:18:11,040
dead.

2307
02:18:11,040 --> 02:18:13,000
And that's just, you know, that's because we've allowed it.

2308
02:18:13,000 --> 02:18:14,000
It's that simple.

2309
02:18:14,000 --> 02:18:15,000
We've allowed this to happen.

2310
02:18:15,000 --> 02:18:19,600
Yeah, it's interesting because I mean, to your point, I think you'll see where I'm going

2311
02:18:19,600 --> 02:18:20,600
with this in a second.

2312
02:18:20,600 --> 02:18:23,320
So I managed for SAR as well for, and it's volunteer here.

2313
02:18:23,320 --> 02:18:25,320
It says volunteer search and rescue.

2314
02:18:25,320 --> 02:18:29,400
And part of the stuff that I'm worried about when I deploy SAR people out is, okay, if

2315
02:18:29,400 --> 02:18:33,620
it's a death, like SAR members don't have to go and do deaths.

2316
02:18:33,620 --> 02:18:37,120
It's a voluntary thing for body recoveries.

2317
02:18:37,120 --> 02:18:41,320
And I'll look for the paramedics and the coast guards people and the fire that are in or

2318
02:18:41,320 --> 02:18:45,400
police that are inside of the SAR team to have them do that.

2319
02:18:45,400 --> 02:18:50,920
If there's, you know, very dangerous things, I go back to looking at, I'm going to use

2320
02:18:50,920 --> 02:18:55,040
the word here, the professionals that do this every day.

2321
02:18:55,040 --> 02:18:59,640
And sometimes I piss off some of the SAR members that are the butcher, the baker, the candlestick

2322
02:18:59,640 --> 02:19:00,920
maker.

2323
02:19:00,920 --> 02:19:05,420
But it's like, I know what this is going to lead to.

2324
02:19:05,420 --> 02:19:09,160
And I know what the outcome of this is because of what I do.

2325
02:19:09,160 --> 02:19:13,320
And if I can shield you from that for a little bit longer, why wouldn't I?

2326
02:19:13,320 --> 02:19:18,120
So yes, we have this group of people and that's a, in SAR, that's kind of a given thing.

2327
02:19:18,120 --> 02:19:22,560
Like that using the professionals, I hate using that word in that way, but I think you

2328
02:19:22,560 --> 02:19:24,080
understand what I mean by it.

2329
02:19:24,080 --> 02:19:29,360
People that are doing this as a profession, not just as a volunteer to do those because

2330
02:19:29,360 --> 02:19:31,360
we expect that of them.

2331
02:19:31,360 --> 02:19:35,640
And then now you go back and you have this conversation that we've just had about fitness,

2332
02:19:35,640 --> 02:19:40,120
mental health, you know, and all that, and you go, well, hang on a second here.

2333
02:19:40,120 --> 02:19:42,560
The general public expects that of you.

2334
02:19:42,560 --> 02:19:43,640
They expect you to be fit.

2335
02:19:43,640 --> 02:19:47,080
They expect that if there's something bad going on, that you're going to be the people

2336
02:19:47,080 --> 02:19:50,000
that's going to show up to deal with it.

2337
02:19:50,000 --> 02:19:56,360
And if I have to have a choice between using a lay person and a first responder, then I'll

2338
02:19:56,360 --> 02:19:57,360
use the first responder.

2339
02:19:57,360 --> 02:20:00,040
And I'm not trying to say those lay people aren't professional in what they do.

2340
02:20:00,040 --> 02:20:01,640
They're great people.

2341
02:20:01,640 --> 02:20:05,640
But it's interesting how our minds naturally tend to go that direction.

2342
02:20:05,640 --> 02:20:11,840
Yet, what supports are there, like you say, like there's no fitness standard.

2343
02:20:11,840 --> 02:20:15,000
Even look at training standards.

2344
02:20:15,000 --> 02:20:20,720
Outside of passing fire officers exams and maybe the odd pump test, have I had to pass

2345
02:20:20,720 --> 02:20:23,400
a test in 30 years?

2346
02:20:23,400 --> 02:20:25,820
Yeah, no, exactly.

2347
02:20:25,820 --> 02:20:29,520
And it goes back as well to that leadership versus the officer classes.

2348
02:20:29,520 --> 02:20:33,240
You've got the pieces of paper that will get the little pin on your lapel.

2349
02:20:33,240 --> 02:20:37,800
But have you actually been given the tools to effectively do that job?

2350
02:20:37,800 --> 02:20:39,240
No.

2351
02:20:39,240 --> 02:20:45,380
And that's, yeah, I'm not saying it's any better anywhere else, but they definitely

2352
02:20:45,380 --> 02:20:51,320
do take a little bit more time in other parts outside of North America to make sure they're...

2353
02:20:51,320 --> 02:20:53,520
And we're talking, you know, like first world type countries.

2354
02:20:53,520 --> 02:20:56,680
I mean, obviously I've trained in some third world type countries where they're just lucky

2355
02:20:56,680 --> 02:20:58,560
to have someone show up and try to put something out.

2356
02:20:58,560 --> 02:21:02,720
But, you know, they definitely, like I said, that I brought up that team leader program

2357
02:21:02,720 --> 02:21:06,280
in Belgium just to see what are they teaching their team leaders.

2358
02:21:06,280 --> 02:21:11,400
And it's a very different program than what we would teach our fire officer.

2359
02:21:11,400 --> 02:21:18,000
And the fact they call it a team leader and we call ours a fire officer should speak volumes

2360
02:21:18,000 --> 02:21:20,280
as to what's actually going on there.

2361
02:21:20,280 --> 02:21:21,280
100%.

2362
02:21:21,280 --> 02:21:24,920
Well, I want to hit one more area.

2363
02:21:24,920 --> 02:21:26,460
Let's talk about Ronin Rescue.

2364
02:21:26,460 --> 02:21:30,680
But I thought what was interesting when I did some research is also the Ronin Charitable

2365
02:21:30,680 --> 02:21:35,440
Society to talk to me about the company, but also talk to me about the altruistic side

2366
02:21:35,440 --> 02:21:36,440
of the company.

2367
02:21:36,440 --> 02:21:38,680
Oh, the company, I mean, it's easy.

2368
02:21:38,680 --> 02:21:40,280
There's a bunch of us that are rope geeks.

2369
02:21:40,280 --> 02:21:42,160
Like you had Ryan on here.

2370
02:21:42,160 --> 02:21:43,160
We have a whole bunch of them.

2371
02:21:43,160 --> 02:21:46,840
I mean, Ryan and I were in Japan together for Grimp.

2372
02:21:46,840 --> 02:21:48,640
I've met...

2373
02:21:48,640 --> 02:21:51,460
Ryan's come and worked for us and, you know, we've done stuff for him.

2374
02:21:51,460 --> 02:21:57,320
So yeah, we have a group of people that are really passionate about rope and about rescue

2375
02:21:57,320 --> 02:22:00,560
and about helping people in general.

2376
02:22:00,560 --> 02:22:03,920
And it sounds corny.

2377
02:22:03,920 --> 02:22:05,240
You know, companies are there to make money.

2378
02:22:05,240 --> 02:22:06,240
I get that.

2379
02:22:06,240 --> 02:22:07,240
And it's...

2380
02:22:07,240 --> 02:22:10,880
And I've mentioned this on other people's podcasts.

2381
02:22:10,880 --> 02:22:15,800
There's times with this where you...

2382
02:22:15,800 --> 02:22:18,480
There's things we do that I don't think should be private sector.

2383
02:22:18,480 --> 02:22:24,480
I mean, the training, sure, but like the rescue standby and some of that work we do, we were

2384
02:22:24,480 --> 02:22:30,600
on a site, we were down underground in a building structure doing some rescue standby.

2385
02:22:30,600 --> 02:22:34,380
They come up, there's a bit of an issue going on outside.

2386
02:22:34,380 --> 02:22:39,520
Someone's broken in, climbed up a tower crane, jumped off, killed himself.

2387
02:22:39,520 --> 02:22:41,920
First aid attendant on a site vomits.

2388
02:22:41,920 --> 02:22:46,720
Our three people on the site are all professional first responders in their other life working

2389
02:22:46,720 --> 02:22:48,480
part time for us.

2390
02:22:48,480 --> 02:22:50,920
They're like, hey, let us take care of this.

2391
02:22:50,920 --> 02:22:52,320
They move forward.

2392
02:22:52,320 --> 02:22:54,440
They don't bill me for that time.

2393
02:22:54,440 --> 02:22:56,880
I'm not billing the client for that time.

2394
02:22:56,880 --> 02:23:02,040
But you see where now there's a part in here with...

2395
02:23:02,040 --> 02:23:05,040
This is a public sector concern.

2396
02:23:05,040 --> 02:23:11,880
We're doing public sector work there where we can't bill that to somebody, but yet somebody's

2397
02:23:11,880 --> 02:23:14,040
expecting to get paid, right?

2398
02:23:14,040 --> 02:23:16,440
Like, that's not lost on me.

2399
02:23:16,440 --> 02:23:21,880
Some of what we do should be in part of the public sector.

2400
02:23:21,880 --> 02:23:22,880
It really should.

2401
02:23:22,880 --> 02:23:24,400
I mean, I've been in the public sector my entire life.

2402
02:23:24,400 --> 02:23:28,720
I've been doing Ronin for 20 years and some of that should be there.

2403
02:23:28,720 --> 02:23:31,720
So with that in mind, we do perform rescue work.

2404
02:23:31,720 --> 02:23:33,800
We do rescue standby work.

2405
02:23:33,800 --> 02:23:39,680
We do rescue work around the country, around the world for different types of projects.

2406
02:23:39,680 --> 02:23:43,820
And some of it's because it is remote areas and they don't have fire services.

2407
02:23:43,820 --> 02:23:48,380
Some of it's because fire service won't respond to those types of areas.

2408
02:23:48,380 --> 02:23:49,800
And that's where our younger people start.

2409
02:23:49,800 --> 02:23:51,440
And then we also do a lot of training.

2410
02:23:51,440 --> 02:23:55,000
So we train rescue worldwide.

2411
02:23:55,000 --> 02:23:59,320
I mean, to list off, we've been through Afghanistan, Libya.

2412
02:23:59,320 --> 02:24:01,720
We're going into Lebanon to do some humanitarian work.

2413
02:24:01,720 --> 02:24:07,200
I could talk to that a bit more with the society type stuff.

2414
02:24:07,200 --> 02:24:13,560
Central America, the states, Western Europe, parts of Eastern Europe, Asia.

2415
02:24:13,560 --> 02:24:18,880
And part of it is to bring best practices back to us and pass those along.

2416
02:24:18,880 --> 02:24:24,320
And part of it is to bring our best practices to them.

2417
02:24:24,320 --> 02:24:29,120
And it's been a real honor to be able to do that over the years, to do something that

2418
02:24:29,120 --> 02:24:36,200
we love for other people that love it as much as we do and be able to make those differences.

2419
02:24:36,200 --> 02:24:41,480
You know, when you hear back from a client that says, hey, we pulled this rescue off

2420
02:24:41,480 --> 02:24:47,760
and we used a technique that we taught you and it worked, it's really cool because you're

2421
02:24:47,760 --> 02:24:53,560
doing a direct positive influence in more than one person's life in there.

2422
02:24:53,560 --> 02:24:54,920
So that's kind of what Ronin is.

2423
02:24:54,920 --> 02:25:00,120
Like I said, we've been around for 20 years and the elevator tagline kind of thing is

2424
02:25:00,120 --> 02:25:05,940
rope access and rope rescue training and services worldwide.

2425
02:25:05,940 --> 02:25:07,120
So you mentioned Lebanon then.

2426
02:25:07,120 --> 02:25:09,400
Let's talk about the charitable society.

2427
02:25:09,400 --> 02:25:15,120
Yeah, so it's not a charitable society per se.

2428
02:25:15,120 --> 02:25:18,760
It's a not for profit because there's a bunch of hoops that have to get jumped in in Canada,

2429
02:25:18,760 --> 02:25:22,600
much like I think your 401k or some sort of weird thing down there.

2430
02:25:22,600 --> 02:25:23,600
That's not it.

2431
02:25:23,600 --> 02:25:24,600
Yeah, something down in the state.

2432
02:25:24,600 --> 02:25:25,600
501c I think.

2433
02:25:25,600 --> 02:25:26,600
401k is our pension.

2434
02:25:26,600 --> 02:25:27,600
401k is your pension.

2435
02:25:27,600 --> 02:25:28,600
Yeah, that's the one.

2436
02:25:28,600 --> 02:25:29,600
The 501c's.

2437
02:25:29,600 --> 02:25:32,240
And there's a bunch of rules around that.

2438
02:25:32,240 --> 02:25:35,560
And it's not that I'm trying to skirt the rules.

2439
02:25:35,560 --> 02:25:37,560
I just literally don't have the time.

2440
02:25:37,560 --> 02:25:40,160
Like I would have to pay people to get that set up.

2441
02:25:40,160 --> 02:25:43,200
And it doesn't seem like a good use of money.

2442
02:25:43,200 --> 02:25:48,440
I could take your money to pay people to set up how to use your money or I could just use

2443
02:25:48,440 --> 02:25:49,440
it.

2444
02:25:49,440 --> 02:25:51,460
So that part of it's a not for profit.

2445
02:25:51,460 --> 02:25:52,880
So Ronin is a business company.

2446
02:25:52,880 --> 02:25:56,280
We do have a not for profit in the charitable society.

2447
02:25:56,280 --> 02:26:05,200
And what we started that with was doing transitions for military into emergency services.

2448
02:26:05,200 --> 02:26:11,120
And about every 18 months, and that's been skewed now because of COVID, but we would

2449
02:26:11,120 --> 02:26:17,760
run either a construction safety officer program or run a rope access program or run the 1001

2450
02:26:17,760 --> 02:26:27,760
1 and 2 fire school or whatever that case may be for serving military or just getting

2451
02:26:27,760 --> 02:26:32,200
out sort of thing that are transitioning, regular reserve NATO countries, although we

2452
02:26:32,200 --> 02:26:35,520
had an Israeli like that's fine sort of thing.

2453
02:26:35,520 --> 02:26:40,520
We're not taking communist countries or something along those lines, but people that are trying

2454
02:26:40,520 --> 02:26:45,600
to get out of the military and make a career into the fire service.

2455
02:26:45,600 --> 02:26:50,920
And we've generally had also, I mean, I served in military, my business partner served in

2456
02:26:50,920 --> 02:26:52,020
the military.

2457
02:26:52,020 --> 02:26:55,640
One of our full time staff is generally a veteran as well.

2458
02:26:55,640 --> 02:27:01,240
And we've had a pretty good success rate with about every year that person will get hired

2459
02:27:01,240 --> 02:27:02,240
on the fire service.

2460
02:27:02,240 --> 02:27:06,840
And we get that we bring them in, we understand it's a stepping stone to go on to those types

2461
02:27:06,840 --> 02:27:07,840
of things.

2462
02:27:07,840 --> 02:27:11,240
And then they generally come back and work part time for us on their days off.

2463
02:27:11,240 --> 02:27:21,000
But yeah, trying to help them bridge that gap from military service into fire service,

2464
02:27:21,000 --> 02:27:27,960
just because most of us had been there and had seen that it is a bit of a different life.

2465
02:27:27,960 --> 02:27:30,840
There's certain things you do in the military that just kind of frowned upon in the civilian

2466
02:27:30,840 --> 02:27:32,160
world.

2467
02:27:32,160 --> 02:27:39,200
And there's some natural tendencies for those organizations to align.

2468
02:27:39,200 --> 02:27:46,960
Part of that this year has now been reached out to by the Red Cross in Lebanon about providing

2469
02:27:46,960 --> 02:27:48,560
them training.

2470
02:27:48,560 --> 02:27:50,720
And it's not 100%.

2471
02:27:50,720 --> 02:27:55,320
I'm giving it about a 90 right now because the funding is coming now, excuse me, out

2472
02:27:55,320 --> 02:27:59,440
of Geneva, out of International Red Cross headquarters.

2473
02:27:59,440 --> 02:28:05,240
And we'll go into Lebanon and teach rope rescue to their rescue team.

2474
02:28:05,240 --> 02:28:09,920
And we've had some conversations on the ground with some different people.

2475
02:28:09,920 --> 02:28:11,640
That's one thing about being former military.

2476
02:28:11,640 --> 02:28:16,720
We do have some contacts still to make sure we're not putting our people into harm's way.

2477
02:28:16,720 --> 02:28:19,360
We're donating some equipment and what have you.

2478
02:28:19,360 --> 02:28:22,520
Our people are donating some time to go over there and do this.

2479
02:28:22,520 --> 02:28:25,440
We've talked to the Israelis about that.

2480
02:28:25,440 --> 02:28:28,160
Is there a problem here sort of thing?

2481
02:28:28,160 --> 02:28:32,120
What we're located, they're like, absolutely, it's the Red Cross.

2482
02:28:32,120 --> 02:28:34,520
They're there to help people.

2483
02:28:34,520 --> 02:28:36,520
We have no conflict with them.

2484
02:28:36,520 --> 02:28:38,360
Feel free to do it.

2485
02:28:38,360 --> 02:28:41,780
And the reason I mentioned Israel is because if we have to get out of Lebanon, it's either

2486
02:28:41,780 --> 02:28:46,760
flight or the other borders are kind of not ones you really want to cross, Syria, things

2487
02:28:46,760 --> 02:28:47,760
like that.

2488
02:28:47,760 --> 02:28:50,880
So, you know, and sure, we're making our people safe.

2489
02:28:50,880 --> 02:28:53,400
We take a look at these types of things.

2490
02:28:53,400 --> 02:28:58,680
We talked to different people within our government organizations as well about, you know, the

2491
02:28:58,680 --> 02:29:02,560
Canadian military had a training mission in Lebanon as well.

2492
02:29:02,560 --> 02:29:06,320
Some of our people that are going over our former military as well.

2493
02:29:06,320 --> 02:29:12,320
So they understand what we're getting ourselves into sort of in that sort of context by being

2494
02:29:12,320 --> 02:29:17,640
able to go over and help and, you know, be a platform for them to be able to go to the

2495
02:29:17,640 --> 02:29:21,880
IRC, the International Red Cross in Geneva and get more equipment and get funding for

2496
02:29:21,880 --> 02:29:25,400
some, you know, like I said, the training is costing nothing, but they're going to cover

2497
02:29:25,400 --> 02:29:30,240
us getting over there in some aspects and what have you and be able to provide this

2498
02:29:30,240 --> 02:29:31,960
training to them.

2499
02:29:31,960 --> 02:29:35,560
And they deploy outside of Lebanon as well.

2500
02:29:35,560 --> 02:29:37,720
I've talking to my contact there.

2501
02:29:37,720 --> 02:29:41,960
They've been in places like Egypt and other places doing structural collapse and doing

2502
02:29:41,960 --> 02:29:47,080
these types of rescues, sort of like your was it the White Helmets in Syria?

2503
02:29:47,080 --> 02:29:50,960
They're the only organizations that are there providing this.

2504
02:29:50,960 --> 02:29:55,600
The militaries of those countries are too focused on the conflicts that are going on

2505
02:29:55,600 --> 02:29:58,480
within their own borders to worry a lot.

2506
02:29:58,480 --> 02:30:02,960
So it's these volunteer organizations that are doing a lot of that humanitarian work.

2507
02:30:02,960 --> 02:30:08,400
And the least we could do is go over and try to help out in some aspect.

2508
02:30:08,400 --> 02:30:13,120
In traveling around the world and doing this, people are people.

2509
02:30:13,120 --> 02:30:19,400
I mean, I remember being in Libya right around the NATO bombing time and it was just after

2510
02:30:19,400 --> 02:30:22,520
and people getting murdered a lot of times.

2511
02:30:22,520 --> 02:30:28,800
And you go down to the market to have a dinner and people are there just trying to sell fish.

2512
02:30:28,800 --> 02:30:29,800
Right?

2513
02:30:29,800 --> 02:30:34,240
Like they don't give a rat's ass about who's bombing who generally.

2514
02:30:34,240 --> 02:30:37,080
They just want their kids to grow up.

2515
02:30:37,080 --> 02:30:39,360
They want their family to be safe.

2516
02:30:39,360 --> 02:30:41,080
They want to do their trade.

2517
02:30:41,080 --> 02:30:44,480
They want to make some money and move forward with life.

2518
02:30:44,480 --> 02:30:45,480
Right?

2519
02:30:45,480 --> 02:30:49,640
And so many places in the world that I've traveled that have been failed states are

2520
02:30:49,640 --> 02:30:54,280
in conflict at that time.

2521
02:30:54,280 --> 02:30:59,160
Outside of the people doing the shooting, everybody else just wants to get on with life.

2522
02:30:59,160 --> 02:31:04,240
I mean, even Afghanistan as in Kabul and you go and rug shopping and people want you to

2523
02:31:04,240 --> 02:31:05,480
buy their stuff.

2524
02:31:05,480 --> 02:31:06,480
Right?

2525
02:31:06,480 --> 02:31:08,360
Like it's they're just trying to make a living.

2526
02:31:08,360 --> 02:31:11,120
Like they're not wrapped up in the politics of that.

2527
02:31:11,120 --> 02:31:17,280
And if they can try to get by that without being wrapped up in the politics of it, perhaps

2528
02:31:17,280 --> 02:31:18,280
we can then too.

2529
02:31:18,280 --> 02:31:22,480
And then go over and assist some of these.

2530
02:31:22,480 --> 02:31:27,800
We're not going to assist terrorist organizations or things like that, but an actual humanitarian

2531
02:31:27,800 --> 02:31:31,360
front that's trying to do good by all means.

2532
02:31:31,360 --> 02:31:35,720
If that's the least we could do is to try to go there and help people.

2533
02:31:35,720 --> 02:31:39,760
I'm so glad we discussed this area because it ties into what we were saying earlier,

2534
02:31:39,760 --> 02:31:43,760
whether it's the Palestinians or Israelis or, like you said, the Syrians.

2535
02:31:43,760 --> 02:31:48,920
The number of videos I saw coming out of Gaza, coming out of Syria with the white helmets,

2536
02:31:48,920 --> 02:31:53,520
coming out of the Ukraine and Russia, like the firefighters are the firefighters.

2537
02:31:53,520 --> 02:31:56,360
They're the same people as you and me.

2538
02:31:56,360 --> 02:32:02,760
And none of them were dreaming of entering this place in the West Bank or this country,

2539
02:32:02,760 --> 02:32:04,320
Ukraine.

2540
02:32:04,320 --> 02:32:08,880
They probably just wanted to complete their shift, train a little workout, be a little

2541
02:32:08,880 --> 02:32:12,400
better than they were when they started their shift and then go home to their kids and spend

2542
02:32:12,400 --> 02:32:15,000
time with them and have dinner with their family.

2543
02:32:15,000 --> 02:32:20,200
And the moment we separate the normal human beings of these countries with the actions

2544
02:32:20,200 --> 02:32:26,440
of again, like I said, the tyrannical few, more often than not, we allow the tar and

2545
02:32:26,440 --> 02:32:29,120
feathering of an entire nation and we lose that.

2546
02:32:29,120 --> 02:32:32,020
And then they become them, them and us.

2547
02:32:32,020 --> 02:32:35,960
But when you actually travel the world and you immerse yourself in other cultures, you

2548
02:32:35,960 --> 02:32:39,440
see that we have 90% commonalities.

2549
02:32:39,440 --> 02:32:42,840
And the difference is usually are ones that you actually celebrate if you're not a giant

2550
02:32:42,840 --> 02:32:44,220
shit bag.

2551
02:32:44,220 --> 02:32:49,760
It's only these fucking tyrants and people that are just, I mean, it all boils down to

2552
02:32:49,760 --> 02:32:50,760
money and power.

2553
02:32:50,760 --> 02:32:51,760
That's it.

2554
02:32:51,760 --> 02:32:57,920
Most of these, whether it's Afghanistan wanting to be the tribe or whatever it is, the regular

2555
02:32:57,920 --> 02:33:00,320
people and I've heard this from so many military members.

2556
02:33:00,320 --> 02:33:04,920
I ask them, what's, tell me about kindness and compassion amidst the battlefield that

2557
02:33:04,920 --> 02:33:09,600
you're in and the indigenous, the kindness of the indigenous population and our men and

2558
02:33:09,600 --> 02:33:14,000
women in uniform, the people helping people, that's what it boils down to.

2559
02:33:14,000 --> 02:33:18,640
So I applaud you for doing what you're doing because not only are you actually helping

2560
02:33:18,640 --> 02:33:24,920
those people in those countries, but you're breaking down the barriers between other countries

2561
02:33:24,920 --> 02:33:32,880
and hopefully kind of allowing people listening at least to see the universal element that

2562
02:33:32,880 --> 02:33:39,160
is humanity because this division and pigeonholing in our country, for example, the last eight

2563
02:33:39,160 --> 02:33:45,160
years, which I point to all the time only leads to war and misery and loss of life.

2564
02:33:45,160 --> 02:33:50,820
But the sooner that we realized that we are all one people, the more we can squeeze out

2565
02:33:50,820 --> 02:33:51,820
the bad ones.

2566
02:33:51,820 --> 02:33:55,040
And we can actually, as I said, rising ship raises all ships.

2567
02:33:55,040 --> 02:33:57,160
Excuse me, rising tide lifts all ships.

2568
02:33:57,160 --> 02:33:58,160
Yeah.

2569
02:33:58,160 --> 02:34:01,320
And I mean, you feel like a hypocrite a lot of the times because everybody gets stuck

2570
02:34:01,320 --> 02:34:04,800
up in it and traffic and you're screaming at someone or you go on a shitty call and

2571
02:34:04,800 --> 02:34:06,960
it's like, you know, whatever.

2572
02:34:06,960 --> 02:34:11,160
But try to sit back and do the 10,000 foot view of it.

2573
02:34:11,160 --> 02:34:14,720
And I mean, a funny story, and I think you'll appreciate it.

2574
02:34:14,720 --> 02:34:18,820
We were in Taiwan and one of the days of the challenge, we're up in the jungle.

2575
02:34:18,820 --> 02:34:23,120
So we're like hour and a half drive outside of like kind of the nearest major city.

2576
02:34:23,120 --> 02:34:28,080
My business partner is firefighter in the, both firefighters, but one particular business

2577
02:34:28,080 --> 02:34:31,600
partner I was with the firefighter and his wife is a cop.

2578
02:34:31,600 --> 02:34:33,520
And as we're driving back down, there's a police station.

2579
02:34:33,520 --> 02:34:35,080
She's like, Oh, pull over, pull over.

2580
02:34:35,080 --> 02:34:37,680
I want to go say hi or whatever.

2581
02:34:37,680 --> 02:34:40,680
So she goes in there and it's kind of like, Oh, you're a cop, like, yeah, like that, you

2582
02:34:40,680 --> 02:34:42,640
know, like whatever.

2583
02:34:42,640 --> 02:34:43,640
So we get back in the car.

2584
02:34:43,640 --> 02:34:48,000
It's literally like a 30 second stop and we're driving down and there's a fire station.

2585
02:34:48,000 --> 02:34:51,680
Ken and I look at each other like I pull over, knock on the door.

2586
02:34:51,680 --> 02:34:53,620
Hey, we're firefighters from Canada.

2587
02:34:53,620 --> 02:34:54,620
Come on in.

2588
02:34:54,620 --> 02:34:55,620
You guys want something to eat?

2589
02:34:55,620 --> 02:34:56,620
They want to watch TV?

2590
02:34:56,620 --> 02:35:00,080
We did it just to get her goat.

2591
02:35:00,080 --> 02:35:01,560
But it goes to your point.

2592
02:35:01,560 --> 02:35:05,520
I mean, we're in Taiwan trying to speak to someone.

2593
02:35:05,520 --> 02:35:06,860
I mean, they don't speak English.

2594
02:35:06,860 --> 02:35:08,680
We don't speak either Mandarin or Cantonese.

2595
02:35:08,680 --> 02:35:15,000
I'd be remiss to know which language was being spoken there where we were.

2596
02:35:15,000 --> 02:35:17,280
But yeah, they're like, we're firefighters.

2597
02:35:17,280 --> 02:35:18,720
So yeah, everything must be cool.

2598
02:35:18,720 --> 02:35:19,720
Right?

2599
02:35:19,720 --> 02:35:20,720
Like, and that happens everywhere.

2600
02:35:20,720 --> 02:35:28,240
I say you talk to these folks that are Lebanese and I've been in communication with them for

2601
02:35:28,240 --> 02:35:32,600
almost six months now back and forth about this.

2602
02:35:32,600 --> 02:35:39,120
And the guy enjoys going out with his girlfriend or his wife and just live same way we do.

2603
02:35:39,120 --> 02:35:44,440
And, you know, going and doing complicated missions and learning new trades and new tasks

2604
02:35:44,440 --> 02:35:48,640
and going, hey, he's like us, but Lebanese.

2605
02:35:48,640 --> 02:35:49,640
You know what I mean?

2606
02:35:49,640 --> 02:35:52,840
It's it's just the way it is.

2607
02:35:52,840 --> 02:35:53,840
100%.

2608
02:35:53,840 --> 02:35:57,840
Well, it has been such an amazing conversation.

2609
02:35:57,840 --> 02:36:01,760
I want to make sure everyone knows firstly where to find you and where to find Ronan

2610
02:36:01,760 --> 02:36:04,480
Rescue online.

2611
02:36:04,480 --> 02:36:06,120
Ronan Rescue.com.

2612
02:36:06,120 --> 02:36:07,680
You can get me.

2613
02:36:07,680 --> 02:36:10,560
Mark at Ronan Rescue.com is my email.

2614
02:36:10,560 --> 02:36:11,560
Our Instagram.

2615
02:36:11,560 --> 02:36:15,960
If you just look for Ronan Rescue, we have a Facebook page too.

2616
02:36:15,960 --> 02:36:17,920
And I mean, we hit a lot of hits on that.

2617
02:36:17,920 --> 02:36:21,280
I mean, Instagram is where we put the majority of our stuff up nowadays.

2618
02:36:21,280 --> 02:36:25,840
I may have to get some of the younger generation to get me onto whatever the latest and greatest

2619
02:36:25,840 --> 02:36:26,840
thing is.

2620
02:36:26,840 --> 02:36:31,000
But yeah, that's where you can find us.

2621
02:36:31,000 --> 02:36:32,000
Yeah.

2622
02:36:32,000 --> 02:36:33,000
Beautiful.

2623
02:36:33,000 --> 02:36:35,680
Well, Mark, I want to say thank you so much.

2624
02:36:35,680 --> 02:36:38,880
I obviously, you know, when I went into this, I knew we were going to be talking about road

2625
02:36:38,880 --> 02:36:39,880
rescue.

2626
02:36:39,880 --> 02:36:43,440
But as with so many of these conversations, we've gone all over the place.

2627
02:36:43,440 --> 02:36:45,800
And I think it's been an invaluable conversation.

2628
02:36:45,800 --> 02:36:48,600
So again, I want to thank Ryan for making the connection.

2629
02:36:48,600 --> 02:36:51,840
But I also want to thank you so much for being so generous.

2630
02:36:51,840 --> 02:36:54,160
We've talked for two and a half hours now.

2631
02:36:54,160 --> 02:36:58,320
And so thank you so much for coming on the Behind the Shield podcast.

2632
02:36:58,320 --> 02:36:59,440
Well, thank you as well.

2633
02:36:59,440 --> 02:37:00,720
I mean, I really appreciate it.

2634
02:37:00,720 --> 02:37:03,200
I appreciate Ryan making the connection there.

2635
02:37:03,200 --> 02:37:05,040
And you just keep doing what you're doing.

2636
02:37:05,040 --> 02:37:08,400
I mean, I can't believe the amount of podcasts you're cranking out.

2637
02:37:08,400 --> 02:37:14,960
And it's just some really high quality topics and conversations that need to be having.

2638
02:37:14,960 --> 02:37:16,200
More people are better off to listen to.