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Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast.
As always, my name is James Gearing and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome on
the show, firefighter, speaker and soon to be author, Ed Munro.
Now the tragic story that brought Ed and myself together was that he was one of the first
people on scene after a horrific murder-suicide in station 81 in LA County.
So we discuss a multitude of topics from his own early life, his journey into the fire
service, working with inmate crews, mental health in the fire service, the horrendous
tragedy at station 81, the ripple effect both physically and mentally of that event, the
essential conversations we need to have in the fire service and so much more.
Now before we get to this incredibly powerful and heartbreaking conversation, as I say every
week, please just take a moment, go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the
show, leave feedback and leave a rating.
Every single five star rating truly does elevate this podcast, therefore making it easier for
others to find.
And this is a free library of well over 900 episodes now.
So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women's stories so
I can get them to every single person on planet earth who needs to hear them.
So with that being said, I introduce to you Ed Munro.
Enjoy.
Well, Ed, I want to start by saying thank you so much for taking the time and coming
on the behind the shield podcast today.
Well, thank you for having me.
So where on planet earth are we finding you this afternoon?
Right now I'm in Costa Mesa, California.
I'm obviously not in the fire station and I just came back from the cardiologist office,
which was not very exciting because they don't want me to work.
They want me to go on light duty right now, which is not great news.
So we'll see where that goes.
Costa Mesa is down the road from where I used to live.
I worked for Anaheim and lived in Huntington Beach for a while.
Oh, nice.
I graduated from high school in Huntington Beach.
I like that town.
Okay.
Well, we'll get to exactly that in a moment then.
So let's start at the very beginning of your timeline.
So tell me where you were born and tell me a little bit about your family dynamic, what
your parents did, how many siblings.
Sure.
I was born in Texas, in Del Rio, Texas on Laughlin Air Force Base.
My father was a pilot in the Air Force.
So I always say don't mess with Texas because I consider myself being in Texas.
But I've only lived there for a year and then I lived in North Dakota and Washington and
California.
I lived in Okinawa for a little bit and my parents, like a lot of military families,
they split up when I was young.
And I was, depends on how you look at it, fortunate or not fortunate enough to live
with both of my parents at different times and different places.
The result of all that was is I moved a lot.
I went to 13 schools between first and 12th grade and had a pretty interesting childhood
that a lot of people say, oh, that must have been difficult.
I didn't know it was difficult at the time.
I was just a kid living his life.
That was what was my normal.
So let's start with the pros because I've had a lot of people on that were children
of military and or some people just bounce around.
Their parents were literally gypsies and for no reason.
They were just changing cities every couple of years.
What were the pros of that kind of dynamic that you grew up with?
I had to see a lot.
North Dakota is definitely interesting.
I mean, it snows there.
They measure it by feet up there.
They don't really care about inches of snow.
In Washington, I was there when Mount St. Helens blew up and we got ash all over everything.
It was a very unique experience.
I've never seen anything like it since then.
I've lived on military bases.
My parents split up when I was in Washington and then I went with my mom to Southern California
and I started living life there in non-military settings, which was new to me.
I wasn't used to that.
I wasn't used to being around kids that had grown up together.
So that was an adjustment.
But then I went to live with my father in Okinawa.
Living in Okinawa is interesting because that's Japan.
It's Chompco Island.
It has a lot of really interesting history that's there.
I wouldn't trade my childhood, those experiences in for anything.
When I think of Okinawa, it always sends me back to that kind of concept of blue zones.
Before that, they were known as one of the highest density of centigenarians.
I think that's the right word.
People that live to be 100 or older per capita.
When I've seen people discussing that particular area, it's not just the diet.
It's almost the mentality of some of the Okinawan people.
They play together.
They've got a real sense of community.
They play instruments.
They sing.
So it seems to be an entire ethos on that island, aside from obviously the military
side, that creates not just longevity as far as a number, but an immense health span during
their life.
Oh, I would agree with that.
The population, it was not uncommon to see very old people just walking around doing
their thing, whether they're doing Tai Chi in the morning in the park or shopping.
But they definitely didn't look like they carried stress at all.
They looked pleasant and happy and content, and they were happy to talk to you.
They were very polite.
Beautiful.
Well, then, so the other side of the coin, as I have matured, understanding the kind
of the mental health and physical health of the first responders, my eyes were opened
of the immense impact of childhood struggles, trauma, wherever you want to label it at,
as we progress through.
The good thing is if they were addressed early, it became a strength as we progressed through.
But if left unaddressed, which is a lot of us, buried down, pushed away, compartmentalized,
they could in some way become a fracture to our foundation.
And then we go into a profession where we see some horrific stuff.
When you look back now with this kind of mature lens that you have, were there areas of your
upbringing that you think were struggles, trauma, whatever you'd like to describe it
as that contributed maybe later in life?
Oh, I absolutely think there were.
Both from the amount of times I relocated to when my parents split up.
Then I realized that things, looking back, things became kind of difficult.
And it wasn't until recently as I've started unpacking my own childhood, because I'm in
the process of writing a book now.
But I had to unpack that and I discovered I have a lot of resentment for my mom.
And I had to figure that out.
It turns out looking back, she was pretty violent.
Now, she loved me 100%.
She would give you the shirt off her back.
She'd give me the shirt off her back.
But she also had a hair trigger temper.
And I know my sister and I, we lived in fear of that, especially when we were in grade
school.
It wasn't a problem if we did what we were supposed to do.
But if we made a mistake, then things would get hairy kind of fast.
My father wasn't like that.
He was a lot different from my mom.
He's that guy in the military that was duty, honor, country.
I kind of picked that up from him and I appreciated him for that.
He definitely loves me and he held us to a certain standard, but it wasn't like my mom.
I didn't walk around terrified of him.
But I didn't want to hurt him all the time.
What was the reaction to that instability when you were with your mom?
A lot of times when I hear people talk about that, obviously you talk about Maslow's hierarchy
of needs.
I'm struggling with my words today.
Safety, security, love are the absolute base of the pyramid.
And so a lot of times when there's that kind of dynamic, there seems to be an overcompensation
by the child.
Always seeking approval, always trying to please the parent and also maybe even a level
of perfectionism.
So I discovered school wasn't very difficult for me.
So I always managed to get good grades.
So I managed to remove that from the equation.
I knew that if she said she wanted the house vacuumed, I knew there better be lines in
the carpet from the vacuum and I would make sure that was done.
And I would make sure I was almost always at a friend's house.
I would get everything done and then I would not be there.
And I did that a lot.
I think my sister and I both would do that.
Now my sister struggled with school a lot.
It was difficult for her.
And so because of that she'd be behind on that and then she'd be behind on things she
was expected to do at home.
We would help each other, but there were times when we just weren't able to do that.
And I witnessed a lot of things between her and my mom that I wish I didn't have to witness.
Going back a generation, because I think this is the next layer of this conversation, I
think, in the mental health space.
If we've gone as far as to look at our early life and that's how our parents behave, well,
what was their early life like?
So had you any exposure to your mother's parents and the kind of upbringing that she had that
maybe contributed to her behavior?
My mom used to say that she wasn't treating us any different than her mom treated her.
And I think that's how she rationalized it.
Now, if I did to my kids what she did to us, they'd put me in jail.
Yeah.
I mean, this is a really important conversation and kudos to you for not carrying that on
because I mean, the dominoes fall and I'm almost a thousand interviews now.
I'm at 915, 20 deep now recorded.
And so there's so many kind of overlaps of the Venn diagram and the people that have
had a struggle growing up, usually that's gone back one, two, three generations.
Like you said, that's become their baseline that they grew up in and just kind of passed
on to the child, whether it was alcoholism, whether it was a version of domestic violence.
And so if you can actually recognize that multi-generational element, that knowledge
allows you the parent today to say, all right, the buck stops here.
I'm going to try and do the opposite of what some of the things my parents did to make
sure that my children don't end up carrying that trauma from their grandparents.
Oh, I can totally see that.
And I'm glad that this is a road I never went down with my kids.
Now, I know that they'll say I was hard in other ways, but you know, in other ways, I
think I'm a great big pushover at home.
So you'd have to ask them.
All right.
Beautiful.
What about when back to when you were a school age, what were you playing as far as sports?
You know what?
It was not uncommon.
I played pickup games of, you know, football, soccer, baseball, played all that stuff, organized
sports.
I started off in soccer like a lot of kids in the United States.
But you know what?
I ended up running track.
That ended up being my number one sport into high school and into college.
I was a 400 meter hurdler and a half miler.
That's kind of what I'm built for.
I don't have the raw speed to be a sprinter and I don't have the crazy endurance to be
a distance runner, but I can run hard for a long time like a middle distance guy.
What about career aspirations?
Were you dreaming of the fire service then or was there something else in your mind?
Well when you're young, every little boy in the United States, I don't care who you are,
even the cops will admit this, they dream of being firemen.
They still dream of being firefighters.
Well, that's true.
If they could score a little higher on the civil service exam, they'd all be firemen.
Oh, we're going to get in trouble for that one.
I just interviewed two cops like three hours ago, so they had their chance to.
But yeah, you know what?
Dream of being a fireman, but as you grow up, you have different things go through your
mind.
I wanted to be an engineer at a certain point.
I wanted to be an accountant at a certain point.
It wasn't until I was in college that I realized I really don't want to have to go into an
office every day.
I wanted to do something meaningful and I wanted to do something that was interesting
and different every day.
As for various reasons, me joining the military wasn't going to be that.
I started looking around and it wasn't until I had some coworkers who were doing things
to pursue the fire service and I was talking to them about it.
I'm like, oh dude, what a great idea.
I started looking into it and I started pursuing that.
So walk me through your journey into the fire service.
Firstly when did you test?
What was the competition like back then?
Because I think that's an interesting contrast with recruitment that we're seeing at the
moment.
And then talk to me about fitness standards training, etc.
Oh, it is so much different now than it was when I was testing.
So I was in my mid-20s when I started pushing hard.
And I did a lot of things.
I started going to college and I stopped going to college and I started going back to college
again.
The guys I was going to school with were taking fire science classes so I started doing that.
And when I was 27 I started taking tests with various departments because they say why are
you taking classes?
Take tests.
I was a track athlete, retired from running in college so I was in shape and staying in
shape wasn't hard.
I just had to find a hill and find some weights and do my thing.
But I spent nine years trying to get hired.
I tested all the time here in Southern California with departments like LA City and Torrance
and Burbank and you name it.
I ended up testing with Los Angeles County who is who I work for now.
When I took that exam they had 25,000 guys take that exam.
Back then they populated really large hiring lists.
These lists tended to be in effect for roughly seven years.
So when they did an exam the whole world showed up like with my exam.
I've got to be honest walking into the Long Beach Convention Center with thousands of
guys who all look like they should be firemen is extremely intimidating.
But I did that, took the exam, turned it in and they put out a list and this list comes
out and it says, you know, eventually it says it's in band two.
I was like band two I'm never going to get hired.
Well a neighbor of mine is a medic for my department.
He's like oh no you're good.
Like what do you mean?
He goes look at this list.
The V-Band's got 18 guys on it and band one's got 100.
Band two's got a thousand.
He goes they're going to use this list for years.
You're absolutely going to get hired.
Band three had 5,000 names.
Band four had 4,000 names.
So I said alright, well two years later I finally get a thing in the mail.
Hey we want you to come down for your paperwork orientation.
It was two years into my band.
Alright did that.
So I turned in that and I turned in my background package and you know took the physical agility
made sure I had that.
But it was intimidating and then right after I think they only populated a couple classes
after mine and I kind of loosely did some math on it one day and I think out of those
25,000 guys who took the test I think they ended up hiring maybe 500.
I think that's pretty stiff competition.
I'd say so and this is an interesting conversation I just had with these two London cops who
are both retired now but when there's a conversation today about recruitment and we all know that
there is an issue and we'll unpack that later but what I don't think is being told is people
are like oh yeah but we're still able to hire at the moment.
It's like yeah you might have people on seats but understand that you know 10, 15, 20 years
ago when you were testing you had for example 2,500 people test.
I mean in Anaheim at the actual sit down written test so these are people that have already
filtered out.
One that was there was a certified firefighter, certified EMT or paramedic.
Most of them were AOs, wildland experience.
I mean this is a resume for an entrance test so when people say oh yeah I was against whatever,
if that was civilians that's competitive but we're talking like you know a yellow pages
size resume of stuff they've already done to show up like you said because people were
testing everywhere and so you know and I always preface this but I'm not saying that I was
the cream of the crop but they took 30 of us out of a thousand people so clearly there
were attributes of these candidates.
They were like this is the ideal candidate that we want.
Now if you've got 600 applying for 500 spots you're taking almost everyone so the ones
that are going to be excellent, the ones that are going to be you know moderate and then
some that maybe cause problems later you know down the road.
So I think this is the part of the recruitment conversation people don't understand is that
when you and I were testing it was so competitive that it forged all of us to be excellent on
the written test, excellent on the physical test you know what I mean.
Practice your oral boards.
I mean all these different things because that's how much the fire burned inside you
to be a firefighter, a police officer, whatever it is but now if they take almost everyone
it's a different dynamic and within that group there are some amazing candidates but we've
enlarged the opportunity for the wrong kind of person to get into that profession too.
I would agree with that and I think the fire service in general there's a lot of old traditional
culture in the fire service that's really had to look itself in the face where these
old like candidates from back when we were testing for example we understood what this
culture was going to be like and now when you have a much broader selection of people
coming in you know I think our cultures had to address that in and of itself like hey
which part of our culture can we even afford to keep and which part do we need to make
changes to because whether the old school thinkers like it or not these people are here
to stay and you know what they may not have been the ideal candidate from 20 years ago
but a lot of them still want to do a good job and they still want to go home at the
end of the day thinking that you know they have job satisfaction and everything else
just like anybody else does so I think we've had to address a lot of areas where we were
probably being hostile towards the quote unquote ideal or non-ideal candidate.
Yeah interesting yeah I think this is so in the diversity conversation for example what
I realize is the progressive answer to that is not to go out and drag net x amount of
people that are female that are this group that are that group but the mentorship programs
so again you're proactively going into these areas finding again the right kind of candidate
but then lifting them up training them giving the ability to go to the academy and ultimately
become great firefighters so it's the real kind of the wrong way of talking about the
recruitment conversation to me is that well Gen Z's they're like this they're like that
which is complete BS it's just a case of firstly they see all the fire service what it is the
good and the bad because now we have the internet which wasn't really a thing 20 years ago you
google what's it like to be a firefighter google would say it's amazing period now you google
it and you get to see as we will discuss the other side as well the job is amazing but
there's a huge room for improvement so I think that's the thing is a lot of these younger
people are looking at going that doesn't sound so great it's up to us the older fire service
to fix it so we create that same kind of shiny object syndrome that drove us to the profession
but also take care of the the environment so it sets them up to succeed not break down
absolutely I think that you mentioned outreach programs I know my department does them I'm
sure Anna I know some I think that they're it's funny you hear these guys talk about
why are we trying to do outreach I think outreach programs are great not because we're grooming
people to be firemen but because we are educating them about the job and I think that education
prior to taking the job is important both for people knowing what they're gonna get
into because I think we would both say that this job's not for everybody so I think the
only way we achieve that is by educating people hey if you might want to do this job great
hey here's this six-week show up on the weekends kind of pre-academy thing learn about it I
think it's a great idea yeah well I think it's just as powerful to show recruits that
they don't want to do the job and my my step down my bonus boy went and did our mentorship
program and after he did it for a few weeks but after he was like yeah I don't think the
fire services for me fantastic you didn't waste your time or your money on the academy
you already know and now he's a super successful mechanic so there we go you know I mean he
found his way so I think there's as much validity in helping young people check off some things
that maybe they don't want to do but like you said if you know nothing about it you
watch backdraft and go I want to be a firefighter and then they tell you to clean toilets and
you're like wait a second what the fuck is this this is my service welcome I'm trying
to teach my kids how to clean toilets I can clean a bathroom in under 15 minutes my kids
take an hour what's your problem I've shown you how to do this it's funny you get some
salty old senior man that tells you that you're not gonna make it off probation to shout at
them that's how you get it done in 15 minutes that's right yeah but then they go complain
to mom and I get in trouble there we go there we go I'm not allowed to make people cry all
right well then walk me through then what was the environment that you walked into in
LA County as far as the fitness standards and the mental health conversation if any
fitness standards were were pretty good and I didn't have an issue with those for me even
though I was hired I got hired later I was 36 years old when I got hired so even though
that's pretty old to be a new fireman I was still in pretty good shape I mean I ran division
one track and I'd always kind of maintained being in being in shape so I didn't have a
hard time with that you know carrying hoes weren't turnouts being all the aerobic demands
I had that handled now mentally it was definitely different even when I got hired you know things
like like peer support that was only still just beginning and my department had peer
support back then but nobody ever talked about it nobody ever mentioned it but you go on
on these calls and you first get in and I was very green I didn't have a lot of experience
when I got hired and I remember my very first structure fire it turned out to be you know
we get there and this place is just ripping at multiple starting points obvious like it's
almost obvious that's gonna be arson from very from the very beginning because it's
being torched from all different points in the house but when you're in the house you
know there's a there's a mom and she's dead and then the her sister is dead and her two
kids are dead and they've all been killed by a guy with a machete because it was a gang
hit and there's blood everywhere and I've been on the job for less than a month and
I go through this and point out this fire and I'm stepping over his body and I get
done and this happened right at shift change of course so I get relieved on scene by my
relief and they're like all right good job kid and I end up going home and I call my
wife on the cell phone I'm like you wouldn't believe this I just had my first fire this
is what it is and blah blah blah blah blah and I'm telling her this she goes that's
crazy you know and I think the only thing that kept that from being like an overwhelming
incident to me is because it was my first one and I had nothing I had nothing in my
proverbial cup right everybody's heard about the whole cup thing the very first thing you
put in my cup is probably that collar so it didn't bother me so to speak I think if I
had that exact same fire today I'd be like oh man that was unbelievably tough but back
then it wasn't I just remember being blown away like this job's crazy I can't believe
this what's what's to happen tomorrow it really is I mean that's why I think you get a lot
of these young firefighters and we've all been there you know you're chomping at the
bit to to go to every call and see everything and then you see the kind of the older more
mature you know firefighters and they're kind of pulling the reins a little bit and I remember
one call specifically I wrote about it in my first book we were on extrication as poor
little three-year-old was killed in the back decapitated there was a dead guy in the front
and then the the mother survived and she the little toddler was or the preschooler was
entrapped so we worked the call you know again it wasn't really much to work there was a
you know EMS basically on the mother that the engine was already handling and we were
there and they were like okay we'll let the coroner work this first and then we'll come
back and get the body out and I'll never forget this my captain Terry and engineer Paul they
DFO me and my partner to stay in the station they're like you're gonna see so much horrible
shit in your career and we had I know like three years on by that point he said you don't
need to add this to your list and so they went and actually got the body out and I'll
never forget that because you know you get young guys and they're just like wanting to
see all the shit and I tell you have to tell anyone to a new firefighter see what you have
to see and if someone says stay outside stay outside because it is death by a thousand
cuts you know and I've been that medic that's told everyone to stay back and we've got for
example like a missing homeless woman that was nothing but flesh and bone by the time
I got to her again that you don't she's dead trust me she's like really really dead you
guys don't need to see it you know get let the coroner come and they can be the other
set of eyeballs on this but that is I think an under discussed element you know to new
people is like look you know it will add up whether you can handle it whether you can't
handle it it will add up so the things that you don't need to see don't go out of your
way to see them.
That's a very tough point to get across to guys and I've done that like you don't need
to go look at that don't stare at it every now and again guys I'll go looking for like
videos that have some pretty graphic stuff I'm like why are you watching this we don't
need this we can learn the same thing from somewhere else we don't need it to be to be
graphic the death by a thousand cuts is such an apt analogy because now you end up with
the whole slide carousel right in your head that's that's another me me showing my age
I know what slides are and I know the carousel and yeah those don't go away they're there.
I've never actually been asked this but I've heard so many people say the worst thing you
can ask a firefighter is what's the worst thing that you've seen and I've literally
never had someone say that to me per se but it's interesting because if I'm proverbially
you know if I'm asked that question hypothetically my answer will be will be more specific are
we talking children we're talking drownings hanging shootings gang attacks horrible car
wrecks motorcycles I mean I have a hundred of them you know be more specific and I think
that's the real point is that there's not the worst thing that we've seen there's so
many that your carousel is going click click click click click click click click because
you can't choose one and it's not a oh poor us but I only had 14 years in the fire service
literally half of what a lot of people have and you know I was a bit of a black cloud
as well but you just accumulate this kind of you know encyclopedia of horrors and so
you know I can see how people just can't stand that question but it would be so hard to work
out to answer because you literally have this kind of you know slideshow going on in your
mind of all the horrible shit.
I had a captain once kind of call me Dr. Death because for a month I went on dead people
like every shift I somebody was dead in front of me and he's like dude you are Dr. Death
every time we're with you just we have dead people but yeah the black cloud follows you
and it's interesting you brought up that question there's a you've probably seen him his name
is Paul Combs he draws you know illustrations of the fire service.
Yeah he's been on a couple of times he's an amazing guy.
I have never met him I really want to meet him I think he's up in my area where I live
in Idaho I got to look into it but anyway he has a cartoon he drew where there's there's
sit on a subway or a bus and there's a civilian there and he's happy he's like let's see
the guy's this fire on a shirt talking to a fireman he's all happy and he asked the
exact question what's the worst thing you've ever seen and the fireman like his face is
just down and he's looking at the ground and he's not even talking there's off to the
side a bunch of ghostly images you know there's a kid and there's a couple there's a fireman
and they're all ghosts and like the little girl's asking him which one of us do you want
to tell him about and I think that's the one thing that when a civilian has that question
they don't mean to they're not being rude I mean we have a fascinating job a fascinating
career and we see things that the normal person has no concept of and I've heard firemen say
well somebody asked me that I go blah you know they get kind of indignant about it I'm
like you know what civilians don't know and they don't understand I'm like I actually
I'll half the time I'll answer a question I think they should know and I won't I won't
make it more elaborate than it needs to be I'll just tell them what it was if I'm on
my toes I'll tell them about something funny instead like a funny call something that's
more interesting and then they'll laugh about it and I'll get away from that yeah yeah I
mean it's the thing I mean you firstly you can't describe it secondly I don't know if
you had the same thing for me it wasn't the actual things that we saw the person who had
actually passed away the things that really kind of got into my soul was the screams of
the people that loved that person the people that are left behind that pain that have been
transferred I remember one we had a it was so sad it was a young guy in his 20s and they
just were dropping off a dog before they went to a theme park and he had he just collapsed
and it ended up being a brain bleed and we worked him and the code went textbook I mean
it couldn't have gone better as far as everyone just filling in their place and drugs are
on the right time and the compressions and the shocks and everything but it was a brain
bleed and there was no saving him even if he'd had it on the operating table but then
I had to do the report and I'm sitting there in the EMS area literally seven eight feet
from the room where they just told the family what had happened that's those are things
but you can't really articulate that to someone they wouldn't even understand you know when
you pull a sheet over a 15 year old gang violence victim and the whole park starts screaming
those are things that are seared into your head but you can't really articulate that
because it doesn't sound bad it's the oh the horrible stuff the guy you know under the
semi or whatever it was but to me it wasn't so much that it was actually you know the
people left behind that shared that suffering and pain and then you know those screams that
you hear over and over again.
Well absolutely there are the settings in the context in which all these things happen
all that matters all of that none of that stuff happens in a vacuum and even when you
go on somebody who was I don't want to say supposed to be dying but you know somebody
who's 85 and terminal cancer or something and you know they're weight 80 pounds and
you know that there's nothing you can do for them just being there to pronounce and watching
the way their families are it's extremely impactful the settings matter.
Absolutely well speaking of you know proactive initiatives we talked about the mentorship
program I heard you on the no one fights alone podcast and you touched on the fact that you
work with the what's the right term they use now but the the fire program for the young
offenders or prison system so talk to me about that I've had I had a young woman that went
through that program she ended up becoming a wildland firefighter one of my friends from
Orange County went through the youth you know offender program he ended up becoming a firefighter
so what was your experience with that group?
Well I never worked with the youth but I'll say that my time as a fire crew supervisor
working in our camp system and working with male inmates was probably the one thing I'm
most proud of having done in my department I love that job.
In that job you get 14 guys that are all wearing orange and this is an inmate camp and the
guards cross them over to you in the morning and you take them out and you train if it's
a fire you go to a fire and you're basically using glorified hand tools to cut fire in
line on fires and it's amazing work and when you watch them I had this moment a couple
times I would stand back and I'm watching them work and they're doing what I told them
to do and they understand what they're doing and you're like you know what I basically
I got 14 felons right here who are working together and they're doing something positive
and I bet they're achieving something that they never thought they would.
I love that job, that job is great.
I've heard a lot of people speak highly of those crews too when they show up as an extra
hand crew on a fire you know a lot of times I've heard the comment that they work like
dogs.
They work very hard especially if they bought into your program and part of that is just
being fair with them they know that they're inmates and they know that you know what they've
all had hard lives and you know what they all have issues with authority you know that's
and that makes sense but when they learn that they can trust you that you're looking out
for their best interests you know they put out for you and they understand what they
need to do and they understand that there are times when you know what their lives are
in my hands, my life is in their hands and we have a job to do and you know they would
achieve great things.
The only thing I think that's unfortunate is you would hope that more guys would use
a program like that to really kind of get turned around and some guys do.
There are a couple of the guys that are inmates on crews of mine that I'm still in contact
with that have gone on into you know like the Forest Service and built careers there
and I think that's amazing but then again I've been at camp and seen a guy come back
into camp like why are you here man?
It's like oh you know I messed up and I'm like dude there is no retirement system here.
I'm like you're not going to get a pension.
You know that right?
And they kind of laughed like yeah I know and well all right let's go back to work.
It was sad to see him come back and not get things turned around.
I think one of the issues that we have in society at the moment though is we look at
the failures you know and one thing I talk about over and over again is drug prohibition
and the epic failure of the war on drugs air quotes and people will point to Seattle and
go oh they tried it there it didn't work and it's like well you know that's because they
half-assed it.
They didn't go all in and provide all the resources for mental health and addiction
counseling and job creation like they have in countries that have done it properly but
even with you know with programs like that if you had two people that were in the prison
system and now they work for CDF or you know wherever they are now that's a huge success
and I think the mistake we make sometimes is if it's not 100 percent success rate then
we discard it you know unless it's a vaccine and everyone's telling us 100 percent then
all of a sudden we're fucking all in for some reason but then it turns out it isn't but
you know when it comes to initiatives like this welfare you know national health all
these oh well you know there was one time in the ER where this person died so let's
not do national health you know and so I think we need to get away from that.
If you had these crews of only 14 and two of the people that you know turn their lives
around that is phenomenal that is a massive success.
What was it that worked for them?
Can we build on it?
And then you know tweak it so that that other guy maybe doesn't reoffend the next time.
So I think it's really important when we hear these proactive initiatives that reduce
recidivism in prison because you're empowering someone to kind of grab hold of their life
giving them a trade because the number of people that leave a prison and then go into
the same exact environment that they had or now they're homeless because they lost the
home where they're inside instead you give them an opportunity to actually hold down
the job and then get back on the straight and narrow.
I couldn't agree more with all that and we tend to do that but at the same time we don't
hold that kind of crazy standard to other things.
I mean guys get into the fire service but then their lives implode.
We don't scrap the fire service but you know guys going into prison like hey let's do this
work program.
They want to go out there and cut fire line it's going to be hard.
Now they have to sign up for it.
I think that's kind of misconception in the public too.
They think they get sentenced to that.
Like oh that's hard labor and that's not fair.
No they have to sign up for it.
They get approved for it.
Look at who they are and if they're going to be a decent fit.
And yeah for the guys that turn their lives around I think that's amazing.
I think it's a good program.
Absolutely.
All right well then before we get to you know 2021 as you progress through your career what
was some of the other career events, fires etc that you kind of look back on?
You know what I talk when I do talks now and I recently like I was talking with our recruit
class that we had and I was telling them about how hey you guys I'm here to tell you about
the fine print on the back side of the brochure that nobody ever told me about before I got
hired.
And they said you know yeah I'm going to talk to you about one great big call but it doesn't
need to be a big sideways call.
You can have a whole career without a giant sideways call.
You can have you know the four-year-old in a pool or a 12 year old hanging that you cut
down in the closet.
You can have the guy who is in his mid-50s who dropped dead in front of his family two
days before Christmas.
I said you know what it could just be those.
Those are the normal calls.
I said none of them are normal.
And you know what those are all my calls.
I had all those.
I said that's just an example.
I said I get crazy stuff all the time but they're all the normal ones.
And there's another captain on my job that he and I were talking about it and his point
is that you know what the human brain doesn't see those as normal.
We're not really set up to see any of that.
All that stuff is just stuff that we have.
And so like highlights and stuff from my career like in terms of tragedy I've got all kinds
of stuff like that.
I've done some cool fires.
Like I was on the Thomas fire which at the time was the largest fire in the history of
California.
It got beat out by a bunch of big fires a couple of years later.
And that was 16 straight days.
That fire was crazy.
I saw crazy fire behavior.
It was fun.
I was glad nobody got hurt.
Right from that we saved half a dozen horses that nobody will ever know about.
Even their owners.
They don't know that we saved them.
They just know they came home and they had horses.
But it was great.
Beautiful.
That's exactly the answer.
I'm not looking for the gnarliest stuff.
Just things that you look back on and sometimes it's just that simple rescue or moment of
kindness and compassion that's important.
Real quick.
Please jump in.
If I'm going to talk about compassion, I think there's one call that highlights it perfectly.
You know like you get called and you've never been called to rescue a cat in a tree or whatever.
A dog in a drain or whatever.
I have literally been up to get a cat in a tree.
You know what happened?
The cat's a better climber than me and it just went higher.
We never got it and I'm sure it just walked down the line laughing at me.
I've been on all those calls.
Well this time we got a call for a lizard in a house.
And we get there and there's this little old lady and she opened the door.
I'm like, hi ma'am.
This is when I was an engineer.
And my fireman and I go to the door and knock on the door.
She opens the door.
The old lady, she's like 80 years old.
I'm like, ma'am, you have a lizard in your house?
She goes, oh yes, I have a lizard in my house.
My fireman's like, well ma'am, where is he?
And she goes, he's over there acting like he owns the place.
And he goes in there and he gets this, you know, it's up in the Antelope Valley and it's
this little gecko lizard and he grabs it and gets it.
He's like, hey, we got it right here.
Do you want to keep it?
She says, oh no.
And we take this thing and we get rid of it.
But you know what?
This little old lady maintained her house like perfect.
There was nothing out of place.
There was nothing dirty.
We knew this lizard would have given her an absolute heart attack being in her house.
And for as much as guys complain about going on like these crazy little public assist type
of calls like that, I think though that kind of call is super important to go on because
we like to her, that was going to be the big issue of her day or week or month is that
lizard in her house.
It absolutely would have given her stress that would have never gone away.
Some of the favorite calls I look back on aside from obviously the adrenaline filled
fires and some of the rescues and stuff, but were the back to bed calls where you went
on, you know, especially if it was like an elderly couple.
And I wrote a chapter on in my book about this because I think it was so pertinent,
you know, you go to their home and the husband is to say, in this case, you know, you're
in this case, it's just so full of like shame because the love of his life, you know, if
they're elderly, probably married, you know, 50 plus years has fallen down.
She soiled herself and there's nothing he can do.
And he was once, you know, a dude like you and me that would have snatched her up in
a second.
But now he's unable to because he's 80, 90 years old.
And so for, you know, men, women, whoever is on the truck or the engine that they show
up and we, you know, we pick her up, we go above and beyond and clean her up, get us
some some fresh underwear, put her back to bed.
And that's it.
It was so easy for us.
It wasn't pleasant, of course, cleaning up someone else's feces and stuff.
But a simple, you know, bath and change of clothes restored their dignity, you know,
and it restored, you know, his his feeling of being that protector that he had his whole
life.
But I remember people bitching about those calls.
I'm like, you don't understand the impact that it makes to you.
You just walk in, pick him up, check files and you walk out.
But think about for a second that journey that those two people have been through.
And he might have been, you know, a boxer and a military member or who knows what he
was or carpenter or and now he can't even pick up the absolute soulmate that he's been
with 50, 60 years.
When you frame it that way, it's such an important call for us to go on.
Absolutely.
Absolutely, for sure.
All right.
Well, then I know that there are some some areas that you can't talk about.
Obviously, this is still an active case.
But wherever you would like to go, if you want to talk to me about John and Tony, you
know who those men were and your relationship with them.
Sure, I can do that.
So Tory, Arnie and John.
So Tory, that's OK.
Tory Carlin, he was a paramedic and I've known him since I got hired.
He was at the neighboring fire station from my first spot.
And when I was a brand new fireman, that's the guy I wanted.
So he would be on calls and I would always ask him about things and what he thought.
He was always trying to kind of school me up on things.
And to me, he's my hero.
Arnie, he was a captain that got shot.
He didn't die.
Arnie was a guy I've always worked around.
At one point, we were counterparts at a fire station.
We're both engineers on different shifts.
And I kind of just always got along well with them.
We always don't bounce ideas off each other.
He was a great guy to know, still a great guy to know.
I love that guy.
John the guy, he did the shooting at one point in time.
We were counterparts at a fire station.
We're on different shifts.
We got along well.
He did a good job.
He'd been to my in-laws house.
He was a motorhead.
And so was my father-in-law.
And my father-in-law built race cars.
So I can't say that I didn't know him pretty well because I did.
These were all guys I knew for a lot of years.
And I knew they were all guys that I would have done anything for.
So I know we can't go there, but I'm just going to put something out and you don't have
to respond to it because again, it might be kind of entangled in that.
But what I always ask people, and obviously we're normally talking about people that have
a downward spiral usually in their own self-harm, whether it's suicide, whether it's some sort
of addiction element, is what were they like when they got hired?
And I think it's very easy for us in the fire service to say, this is this person today.
But how were they when they got hired?
Were they always the same personality or is there being a kind of downward spiral?
And when I talk about the job that I adore, but some of the hours that our men and women
work over and over and over again, before you even have wildfire deployments and some
of these other things, we have created an environment for us to kind of deteriorate,
to degrade.
And that can manifest in a thousand different ways.
More often than not, it's depression, anxiety, maybe drinking, maybe even worse, a darker
place.
But on occasion, it can even go the other way to homicidal tendencies.
And I've had guests on the show that have actually said, and they never did, thank goodness,
but they got to the point mentally where it wasn't just self-harm, it was harm to others
as well.
So you don't need to respond to that, but I just wanted to put that in there that every
time we have that salty person, that angry person, is that someone who's now spiraled
down to a point of crisis or were they always like that and we shouldn't have hired them?
But I think that's an important question for us to ask ourselves as a profession when someone
has reached a certain point.
I think in general, I would agree with that.
I think that we need to be able to look at the people we hire and the people we hire
need to understand why we look at that.
I don't know that we do a great job of educating people about why we need to look at that kind
of thing.
Absolutely.
All right.
Well, then let's move to June 1st, 2021 then.
Can you walk me through the beginning of that day and then how that unfolded through your
eyes?
Sure.
And I'll kind of talk to you the way I do this when I do a talk.
Please.
So, at that point, I was at Fire Station 132 in Santa Clara.
I'd been a captain for about two and a half years.
It was still the first state fire station I'd been assigned to after promoting to captain.
I think I'd been on the job 13-ish years at that point.
I knew I didn't know everything, but I knew I thought I was kind of ready to handle just
about anything because I knew who to ask if I didn't know.
They always tell you to be confident in your gear and your training and your experience
and that kind of thing.
That day, I'm in the fire station and it's an overtime shift for me.
I was in the office and we're thinking about going to lunch.
It's probably about a quarter to 11 or so and the phone rings.
I'm getting a phone call from the paramedic at the next station up the road, which is
not very close.
It's 10 miles away.
We have a lot of interface in that part of LA County.
My district was 50 square miles.
I had a lot of suburb and I had a lot of open space.
So, the next fire station in that direction was 10 miles.
It's a paramedic there and he's calling me.
He says, I pick up the phone, fire station 132, Captain Monroe.
Another line, he says, hey Monroe, it's Sparky.
I'm not fucking around.
Two tone just came in here.
He shot and killed Tory.
He shot Arnie and I need help.
For people who are listening to your show that aren't in the fire service or first responders
at all, this is such an unusual phone call because 99% of the time it's the tones going
off in the station letting you know you got to go do something.
It's rarely ever a phone call.
Definitely not a phone call from somebody you work with.
He's not calling me, telling me that a guy I know shot and killed another guy I know
and the other guy I know.
These are all guys I'm close to and I didn't know what to do.
Hopefully that helps on its way.
I did the best I could.
I got the phone with him.
My engineer was walking in the office at that time and told him to get the chief on the
phone.
I went and tried calling dispatch supervisor and I couldn't get a hold of him.
I finally got a hold of a line dispatcher.
I was like, hey, this is what happened up there and the line dispatcher said, we are
aware.
I said, all right, do you need us to go?
He said, don't go.
I'm like, are you sure?
Yes, we're sure.
All right.
I got off the phone, got my guys off the phone.
My fireman is coming in at that point and I told them what happened.
They were probably just as deer in the headlights as I was.
I said, look, John and I used to work in this fire station together.
I don't know if he's on his way here or not.
We have no idea where he is.
Let's go get our body armor on and go from there.
That's what we did with the fire engine, put it on our bulletproof vests because in my
department you have to have those from time to time.
We decided to leave the fire station.
We were going to go post up somewhere else.
I'll try and cut a lot of this out because I was going to be talking here for a long
time.
We ended up going to 81's, which is that fire station.
We got there.
I sent my guys to work.
I checked in with the captain that was already there from the assignment that had been started.
I asked him what he needed.
He said he was good.
I asked him, are you sure?
He said, yeah.
But he was pacing.
He didn't know what to do.
He was like a coiled spring without anything to rebound against.
I asked him where Torrey was and he pointed.
I saw him at Browardus Bay and he was on the ground.
I walked up to him and I hit a sturdy blanket on him.
I looked at the other captain and I'm like, hey, we need to get a flag.
He said, oh, good idea.
We weren't looking for one.
We couldn't find one so I said, hey, I'm going to take the one down off the flagpole.
That will be the last flag to fly here today.
I took that down and we went and draped it on him.
Then I posted it up next to Torrey because they didn't want him to be by himself.
The other captain walked away and I just stood there and I did my best.
I'm going to be stoic and I'm going to be with him.
He's not going to be alone because in my head I'm thinking the concrete is kind of hard
and it's going to be cold and he's not comfortable.
I wouldn't want to be alone if it was me.
I'm looking at how his body fluids are coming out from under him.
I can see the two shell casings down there on the ground between me and him.
I stood there with him and I wasn't going to be.
I was watching, I'm listening to the radio traffic and I heard a fire go out in the next
district up the road and I'm like, God damn it, that's going to be John.
He's going to be burning down his house and he's going to kill himself.
I was right.
I didn't recognize the address.
I just knew it was.
Like in that moment I realized that the second one of my friends had died but I kind of mentally
did a, well you're on your own dude.
I can't help you.
You've done this.
I can't help you with that.
I kind of mentally put him off on his own.
I stood there with Tory and I watched cops come there and put up crime scene tape and
put down evidence markers and I'm watching guys from my department break down and sob.
I'm just standing there like the stoic.
I'm going to be a guard.
I probably stood there for, we were there for a long time.
We were probably there for about two and a half hours.
I think I stood next to him for an hour, hour and a half.
Eventually the cops came and got me, they needed me to come out.
I don't want to.
I told them no I'm good.
I'm going to stand here.
They had this little deputy she took over for me and when that happened I broke down
and started crying.
The deputy that came and got me, he just held onto me until I stopped.
He probably held me for five minutes.
I just couldn't stop sobbing.
That's how all that started.
Up until that point we talked about death by a thousand cuts.
How were you emotionally and then what was your attitude towards the mental health conversation
in the fire service?
For me this call is extremely impactful.
I struggle with PTSD and depression from this call.
I think it's completely honest to say that this call plus all the other calls will got
me there.
When I mentioned off those other ones from before and a whole bunch of other ones I haven't
mentioned, that's all part of that.
At one point in my career I remember thinking that if somebody took their own life they
were this weak and I was critical of them and I would probably say a lot of nice things
about them.
Since then I can't remember when in my career exactly it was but it was definitely reinforced
with this call.
Guys break and when they break you have to hope that they're not going to take somebody
with them.
When it's in our training they say hey if you're going on a suicide call be careful
because it hurts you.
They might be homicidal.
This is honestly the first time I saw that happen.
I think that if we don't acknowledge that guys break and we aren't there to help them
then at least I try to help them.
People have to want to be helped.
That's something else that's important to understand.
That's an important thing coming away from this for me.
I've become active in things like peer support and being a mental health advocate for first
responders because when the newspapers do editorial pages and people write in on their
letters saying hey these guys signed up for this job they knew what they were getting
into.
There is not one of us who signed up for this and none of us knew we were getting into this
kind of mental stress.
Nobody knows that.
That ignorance is absolutely maddening but when I take a step back and look at what a
terrible job we've done as a profession in educating the people what we actually do we've
kind of got ourselves to blame.
We're not talking about what happened at the firehouse but the attitudes from some of the
public.
When you look at what we signed up for we signed up to show up, get on a rig, run calls
and be there in people's worst times.
For example, 56 hours a week then mandatory overtime and now you've got first responders
working 80, 90, 100 hours a week depending on the wild lands or whatever is going on
at the moment.
That's not what we signed up for.
We signed up to help.
We didn't buy into the fact that the support around a lot of our first responders was going
to get worse and worse and worse and we're going to ask to do more and more and more
with less and less and less.
That's a huge disconnect because the public still thinks that you go to the station, you
and your men and women sit around playing cards, pet the Dalmatian and then when a fire
comes in once, twice a week you go run a call.
The reality is that most fire and EMS combined services in America will be lucky if they
get their gear on the rig before the first call comes in.
On a good day they might only run five or six.
On a bad day they may not see the station for 24 hours.
This is the reality.
When I hear people say, oh, that's what you signed up for, it's not.
It has shifted dramatically from 20 years ago when I was on the understanding that we
went for 24 hours and we worked, but no one was explaining all the other things that came
into that and the breakdown mentally, physically, hormonally, emotionally, relationships that
come with that as well.
Part of that conversation is also sadly even homicide.
The irony is I was just listening when you were telling the story, the last two departments
I worked for, both of them, and these are just firefighters that I worked with and one
of them is a very large department, both of them in those stations had stories about a
previous firefighter that threatened to come back with a gun and kill them all.
Two departments, two stations within a few years of each other.
Again, this global mental health conversation, the fire service, to say that's what you signed
up for is a giant fucking middle finger to everyone who's selfishly served.
The families have watched them walk out the door every X amount of days and that's your
response rather than trying to figure out how can we support the first responders you
reply with, well, that's what you signed up for.
Oh, you're absolutely right.
We all signed up because we want to do something different and we want to have this great job
and have it be meaningful, but none of us wanted to move paper from one side of the
dust to another.
But now we're in this occupation where depending on whose numbers you read or listen to, we
kill ourselves 300 to 1000% higher rate than the national population.
Nobody signed up for our job thinking, oh yeah, that's what I want to do.
I want to kill myself one day.
Nobody's fought, but it's what's happened.
Yeah, you're absolutely right.
We didn't sign up for that.
I want to get to where you were from that point moving forward and your healing journey.
But before we do, as you mentioned, Arnie was wounded but survived.
Thank goodness.
Let's talk about him because a lot of the conversation is about the attacker.
It's about Tori who didn't survive.
But Arnie, it reminds me of Ben Vernon was one of the San Diego firefighters that was
stabbed and he always joked that the other guy that was also stabbed never gets mentioned
in the conversation.
So how is Arnie doing now?
What has been his physical and mental recovery and what are the implications of that particular
incident on his career?
You know what?
I'm going to do the absolute best I can.
I swear, Arnie, if you ever hear this, I'm doing the best I can with this.
And if I misspeak, I apologize now.
So Arnie is such a cool guy.
He actually was a sheriff before, he was deputy sheriff of the county before he became a
fireman.
He'd go out, he loved doing outdoor stuff, he'd go hunting and everything.
And he got shot and went through his spine and now he can't walk without crushes.
So he'll never work again.
I saw him at one of the, I guess you call it one of the reunion events.
He comes walking in, he's got his hand crutches, people are saying hi to him and everything
and I finally get to talk to him.
I'm like, hey brother, how you doing?
He said, hey Ed, I'm alright.
I'm looking at him like, really dude, you got to use crutches to come in here?
You think that people don't have enough sympathy for you already?
You got to like ham it up?
He starts laughing and he goes, thank you so much because I got people giving me the
whole like, I feel so bad for you because I needed a laugh.
He's got a sense of humor but at the same time I know that he has struggled a lot.
I think it's easy to imagine the kind of things he's had to deal with mentally coming away
from this.
The nightmares, the worry, the everything.
He and I have talked about that.
I don't want to elaborate too much on it but let's just say it's been really hard for him.
When you think about the event, it's not just the fact that he had a physical wound and
then even you factor in a semi paralysis.
It's also that one minute he was doing what he loved with the men and women that he loved
doing it with and he had a sense of purpose and he was part of a tribe.
Then by the squeeze of a trigger, all of that is taken from him.
I know that one of the big things that we all suffer from when we transition out, whether
fired, promoted, whatever it is, when we're away from that crew, that firehouse, camaraderie,
is that kind of feeling of being outside the circle now.
It must be crushing emotionally to have all of that stolen as well as his physicality.
One minute he's there able to throw 24s and make entry in a second floor and now he's
having to use crutches.
There's a lot for him to process.
I hope people are still kind of enveloping him and making sure he's okay.
I try to talk to him every month or two.
I always got stuff going on, but he takes my calls sometimes.
It's good.
What about you then?
So like you said, you've just been relieved standing duty and exitory now that you've
had the support of this officer that you actually kind of break down with.
What over the next couple of years was handled well and then what if it wasn't, could people
listening improve on how you kind of navigate an incident like this?
It's such a good question.
The things that we all go with the things we didn't do so great are stress debrief.
Even I knew we needed a stress debrief at that time when we were driving the rig back
down the station and we were given a meeting location.
We were supposed to have a stress debrief.
Stress debrief took on a life of its own.
It spun up into being from people involved in the call to where we had over battalions
where our guys are.
People not even involved, just guys.
They're all there.
The chiefs want to talk to us.
If you've been through stress debriefs, you realize that that's really rare.
We normally don't have chiefs at these things.
Then we finally got to having the guys involved in the call speak.
The other captain and myself, we were both more angry and claustrophobic and didn't
want to be there and didn't understand what we were doing because now we're in this room
of a whole bunch of people who weren't there, who didn't see it, who didn't experience
it.
Dad didn't know what to say.
He didn't know what to say.
We talked about what we went through and had gone through briefly, but it was all with
a bit of defiance.
If you got a problem, you go ahead and say it.
It wasn't a great stress debrief.
I don't think that that's anybody's fault.
It's just what happened.
I understand.
I'm not an expert in crisis management for the fire service posts a critical call like
that.
It's just what happened.
Coming away from that, things that were rough, I was off for a week because I flew back to
Idaho the next day.
I was scheduled to, which was good and bad.
It was good because that wasn't work.
It was bad because I wasn't plugged in to anybody.
I wasn't talking to anybody.
My poor wife was like, what just happened to my husband?
She did the best she could and then I went back to work like I planned to.
Here I am, I'm on the honor guard for our department and I'm thinking I'm going to be
involved in all of this stuff.
I shouldn't have even tried because that definitely spun me out more.
I ended up going off on stress three days after I got back to work.
Went off on stress.
Things I did well, I got tied in with a therapist who was really culturally competent.
He understood a lot.
Had something called EMDR, which was super helpful to me.
It helped me a lot.
Then I went back to work in two and a half weeks.
I thought I was good and it turns out I was kind of held together with scotch tape and
bailing wire.
I get this phone call in a few months where it's the work comp people calling me telling
me they're going to deny my claim.
It took about 30 seconds for me to relive the entire call and how nobody must believe
me, the chief still believe me, this company doesn't believe me, nobody probably believes
me at all.
What am I even doing there?
It was tough for me.
I think that phone call is probably just as damaging to me as the actual incident.
Then I ended up getting evaluated by a qualified medical examiner and we basically got the
call picked up and I had some therapy.
Even that kind of minimized.
I only was given like 10 therapy visits.
I ran out and I slowly just drifted off.
I really kind of disengaged at home and disassociated with a lot of stuff.
By the time I got help again, I had to go back to see the QME and he apologized.
He's like, I am sorry because I should have done it this other way.
I'm still talking to my therapist now but it's been a lot of difficulty in doing that
now.
Therapy is great.
I think it's important.
I think a lot of guys probably need therapy that don't get it.
I tell guys now if you think you might need to talk to somebody because we all think we're
Superman, you definitely need to talk to somebody.
They say if you're thirsty, you're already behind the eight ball as far as hydration.
It's the same thing with mental health.
Same thing, especially with first responders.
I mean, we all walk around thinking I'm bulletproof.
EMDR, one of the most exciting things when it comes to mental health being discussed
in 2024 is that the toolbox is available for our people in general is way bigger than we
understand, than we know about.
So it used to be psychiatric meds and talk therapy.
Now as we sit here, it's psychedelics and equine therapy and EMDR and microcurrent neurofeedback.
I mean, there's so many different things now.
So that's beautiful.
The problem is the people are fording and be able to get into these things.
That's the barrier to entry and it's very disappointing hearing yet another workman's
comp story.
I've had my own with injuries.
To be fair, in some of those, when I pushed hard enough, they were handled the way they
should have been.
Usually a back injury, right, pills and surgery, off you go.
It's like, well, time out, time out.
Let's go back a little bit.
But when it comes to EMDR, where I've heard the success is through addressing acute events.
I think when you understand what EMDR actually does, taking something so visceral and allowing
the brain to process it so it becomes more of a memory, it doesn't seem to have a great
impact people with more, like as we said, the death by a thousand cuts because there's
not one thing that's really haunting you.
So what element did you apply EMDR to and what were your results of that specific treatment
in your healing journey?
So when I told the story before, pre-EMDR, if I told the story, I would break down.
I would absolutely start telling the story.
That EMDR, which like you said, helps your brain to take this invasive image memory that
you have that isn't going away.
And the way it's phrased to me and the way I kind of visualize it is to put it in a box,
put it on a shelf.
I know it's there and I can reference it.
That's not a problem.
But now it's not loud in the front.
Now it's up on a shelf and I'm able to manage it.
And that was like immediate.
Like I could tell the story the next day and I was like, oh wow, that was amazing.
And I didn't break down sobbing.
Now I still get emotional.
I get teary, especially if that depends on the group I'm talking to and kind of how I'm
feeling and that kind of thing.
I still get pretty teary about it.
But I'm not breaking down sobbing.
That stopped, which that's what I needed at that time.
That's what I really needed.
Do I need to do more for that particular call?
I don't think I do.
I might for some other things.
So it's like when you say what's death by a thousand cuts.
And I may be totally wrong in this.
This is just me.
Well, I'm just a fireman.
What do I know?
I think that when it's death by a thousand cuts and you're trying to address it with
a cut or two at a time and address it and put them on the shelf, you're just trying
to get rid of each cut.
But that takes a while.
That's when you hear about people like how I've had 12, 20, 30 EMDR sessions.
Well, hey, you're dealing with a lot of different stuff and I'm sure they're dealing with all
different things at the same time.
Yeah.
For me, for example, there's nothing that really is invasive.
So if I was going to go down a route, it would probably be more just the overall holistic
side, whether it's the equine therapy or the gentle psychedelics, because there's not a
thing.
There's nothing that haunts me because there was just, as we said, there's so many.
There's not one thing that ever kind of bubbles to the surface.
And it's not something that really bothers me.
But that being said, to improve sleep quality, to improve or to reduce the brain fog, some
of these things are a little bit more behind the curtain.
If you can't specifically talk about a call, that might be an application where EMDR doesn't
work and maybe you lean into some of the other things that are also out there.
Right.
And I may very well be, I haven't tried anything else.
EMDR helped me for what I needed it to help me with.
I was just matching everything else.
So from the workman's comp point of view, let's stick with that for a second.
I, for example, just had a friend of mine from Anaheim have a cancer diagnosis.
And again, now they're having to prove, oh, was this a job related cancer and all that
kind of stuff?
And it is, it fits one of these things.
But when it comes to some of these insurance companies, I've heard it said so many times
with cancer specifically, they'll be like, well, we'll just keep fighting them.
They'll die before we have to pay them off.
And so you have that kind of corporate side in some of these workman's comp organizations.
So you've got someone who's got a cancer diagnosis.
So you've got someone who is struggling mentally, and then you're adding a plate more stress
to someone who's already stressed.
What if you were king for the day needs to change to the next person who goes through
some sort of trauma, whether it's again, over 20 years or 10 years or after an acute event
like this, that there's a reduced barrier to entry so they can focus on the healing
rather than navigating administration and red tape.
I think the biggest thing about having your claim picked up and just feel like you're
being believed and knowing that you're going to get treated like any guy who's like legitimately
sick, ill, struggling, broke and whatever.
The biggest problem that's been out there are people who have found ways to abuse the
system to get a free vacation for getting time off or just whatever.
They don't want to work.
I mean, to me, it's pretty obvious that that's what's happened.
And that's why insurance companies have become who they've become in denying things.
Like, well, we're just going to deny everything.
Then we're going to investigate all this stuff.
We're going to put the burden of proof super high.
And that's what happens.
I think the fallout and the unintended consequences when guys have legitimate issues that they
struggle and have to deal with all the stress of proving that they have a legitimate issue.
This circles around to what I said about the wildland correction system.
What's happened is the few that abuse the system, they've allowed the workman's comp
environment to go, oh, you see, it doesn't work.
You see these firefighters are corrupt.
They're cheating the system.
But that's one, two percent.
And the rest of the 98 are paying for it to the point of ridiculousness where you have
a firefighter that responded to a homicide of his friend in a firehouse that he stood
next to.
And you're questioning whether that was traumatic enough for a mental health.
What would be the right, I guess, I guess claim for lack of a better word, but a desire
to get some help is what I'm really trying to say.
You're absolutely right.
So that needs to change.
I was king for a day.
I'd fix that.
I don't know how you fix that.
Well, I mean, I think so.
Here's what I'm seeing.
Just to jump in.
What I've noticed about the fire service more recently, especially when I'm talking about
the work week, which is a dead horse that I flog like a jockey on crack, is we are so
courageous in uniform.
And again, we really are.
When you look at when you hear other people talk about what we do, they say, I could never
do that.
And for us, it's like, well, we just do it because we love it.
But we go into burning buildings.
We go in, we cut cars, we go in the tunnels, we hang off ropes, all the things.
But when it comes for advocating for our own health and the health that then directly affects
our family, we're cowards.
And we really are because we just downplay everything.
Oh, we're fine.
So again, we almost believe that I signed up for it.
What I think needs to happen is the fire service needs to unite and have a united voice and
push back and say, for example, why is it, if I'm talking about the work week for a second,
that you keep voting that we can't get more time off, yet the people making this vote
work 40 hours a week and go home to their bed every day?
Like we're not questioning, we've bought into this kind of fairy tale for so long.
And I did my whole career until I had an awakening right at the very end where we have the greatest
job on earth.
And oh my God, we got the dream schedule.
But then when you actually tell a civilian what the hours that you work, they're like,
that doesn't sound like a dream schedule.
I work 16 hours less and no one can tell me you can't go home.
I work 56 hours a week and at 730, the phone rings and like gearing, you got to stay for
another 24.
That was my reality for most of my fire service career.
So I think how we change it is we all get on the same page.
And there's a lot of commonalities now.
The work week we're starting to realize is bullshit and we just need more people.
And the way you fix recruitment is you create a better environment that then gets people
lining up outside our buildings like it used to.
And there is a little revolution starting in Florida.
The departments are starting to go to 2472, which I think is so exciting.
And if you look at the budget side, it actually saves cities and counties a crap load of money
because when they break us, it costs a fortune on the back end.
But then you start pushing for that.
We unite and now all of a sudden we force change and now everything improves, including
cancer and mental health and obesity and testosterone depletion and marriage and divorce and alcoholism
and overdoses and suicides because you're not working your people into the ground.
Is it everything?
No.
Is it a massive piece of the pie chart?
Absolutely.
But if we just say, well, yeah, we die within five years and everyone's talking about it,
but no one's doing anything to change it, then it's going to keep happening.
The definition of insanity, doing the same thing, expecting different results.
So I think how we change is we hear your stories and like 900 plus stories on this podcast
and we realize that this is a national, if not international problem in some areas that
we, if we unite the millions of first responders in this country alone, that we push back and
we demand that these systems change so that people do take care of our first responders
because we ask them to do so much.
We owe it to them to give them the kind of safety net when they need to take a knee.
I think you're right.
So we, it's been my opinion that we do a bad job of defending what we do.
And then when we get attacked by the press or the civilian segment of our society, we
just kind of roll over and take it.
We do that a lot.
Yeah.
And again, when I say cowardice, that's a harsh word.
I mean, it's true, but then you also have to fact in that so many of our firefighters
that say in this particular profession are just so exhausted.
They don't have a lot of fight left in them.
They don't.
This is why one of the reasons why I transitioned out to actually kind of regroup and be this
angry voice, you know, bang in the trash can for our people.
Because I know when I was on shift, when I got home, all I want to do is be with my family
and sleep.
That was it.
I didn't have any fight left to start, you know, trying to change the world.
But you know, when you can advocate loudly for other people and then get them to kind
of realize and do hopefully some of the legwork for them and get them to realize that we deserve
to have an environment that allows us to have a healthy retirement, we deserve to have a
work week that puts us home one more 24 hour period between shifts that mirrors every other
civilian in the U.S. pretty much.
Once we were educated enough, then we can kind of start pushing back.
And I think that's it.
I think we've we've allowed administrations and I would say even unions the trust that
they were going to fix these things.
And my whole career has come and gone.
And it's exactly the same, if not worse than when I got hired.
So we need to unite outside of organizations that say that they're there for us as a profession
and demand that we actually have the environment that allows us to heal.
Oh, for sure, I think the I think the bureaucratic inertia that exists in all those segments,
right, in departments and unions, political entities that that either back us or attack
us.
It's hard to overcome just the inertia, the direction we've been going.
Wholesale change is very difficult.
Yeah.
Well, that's what's good about the dominoes.
If the few fall in Florida, it is going to start clicking over.
And the SCBA is a perfect example.
I always say this to the guys that are, you know, the I'm going to die in my leather helmet
guy, you know, the one with the mustache and rub salt and soot in his face and on Instagram
all the time.
You know, it's like people thought that no SCBAs were cool until all their friends died
of lung disease.
And then they started wearing the SCBA.
I think the workweek is the same.
Like we are just going to funeral after funeral after funeral.
We're at a point now we need to get over, you know, it's what you signed up for.
You know, I'll sleep when I'm dead and actually have that same kind of revolution that we
did with safety gear back when bunker gear and SCBAs and masks and ticks and pass alarms
really started getting pushed forward.
But now we have to do it with the wellness of the human being inside the bunker gear.
Absolutely.
All right.
Well, I get off my soapbox now.
That was less questioning and more me just shouting down the microphone.
All right.
Well, you mentioned about writing a book.
Talk to me about what made you decide to do that and then tell me if you've had any kind
of catharsis from getting it from your mind to the page.
A friend of mine is helping me become a better speaker.
She was like, you know, you should write a book.
Like you think so?
Yeah, well, she'd read a book.
I'm like, all right.
Like I read her book.
I'm like, oh, that's not bad.
She goes, I hope you do it.
So she just told me, like, hey, just start writing stuff.
And then like I'm going to work with her on how she got hers published.
I'll probably get my stuff published eventually.
But I think the most biggest thing I've liked about it isn't that I'm going to be published
because I don't think I'm going to want to read it.
It's just me writing about me.
Me and my call is that I had to think about a whole lot of stuff I haven't thought about
a really long time.
And that's been very therapeutic to do.
You know, I've got, you know, I've handwritten out.
I mean, it looks like a like a handwriting, like a Civil War journal type of thing that
I have written all this stuff about my life and about the call and what I felt.
And that time I take to sit there and get it from my head through my pen onto this paper,
that's been unbelievably therapeutic for me.
Beautiful.
Going back to again, after action of the event as well, when it came to the whole dynamic,
the potential danger of some sort of attack within a fire service, because this is such
a unique event and sadly your department experienced it.
What have been some of the changes operationally?
God forbid something like that happens again, that there's a threat on the way to a station.
You know what, operational, I don't know that I've seen a ton of really obvious operational
changes.
I think my department in general is much more sensitive to interpersonal conflict coming
away from that.
And that makes sense.
But yeah, I haven't seen just massive policy changes.
I mean, this call is rare.
As far as I've been able to find out, there hasn't been this call anywhere in the history
of the fire service.
So I don't know.
I saw an article, I didn't have time to read it properly.
And so please forgive me if I've got this completely wrong, but it appeared when I just
scanned it briefly before we sat down that in your area, there was another workplace
shooting and then there was also a fire and a load of ammunition in the house.
Was that close to you or were they comparing a call miles away?
It might have been comparing something miles away.
I mean, they get workplace shootings out here.
I mean, that happens.
It was a warehouse, I think.
Yeah, and the guy had, yeah, there was a load of ammunition in the fire and in the house
and he'd set fire to that too.
But they had it in the same article talking about you, but I wasn't sure if that was something
that you guys had also been on or if it was further away.
I think it was Santa Rosa maybe.
I just want to get them confused.
Santa Rosa is a ways away.
Yeah, that might have been it then.
No idea what that is.
Yeah, I might.
Maybe that's what it was.
They just had two kind of Californian events side by side in this article.
Yeah, for sure.
All right.
Well, we talked about your book.
And just so you know, I publish on Amazon.
When you have your book written, that is such an easy way of publishing a book.
You know, I mean, the people back in the day would have to pursue publishers and get agents
and all that stuff.
Now someone writes a book they can publish on Amazon and it's so easy to do.
So I'm looking forward to seeing that.
Do you have any kind of idea when you want to put it out?
My goal is to have it out by the end of the year.
So if anybody's like, oh, wow, I might want to look at Ed's book by the end of the year.
Okay, perfect.
Well, speaking of books then, first closing question, is there a book written by someone
else that you love to recommend?
It can be related to our discussion today or completely unrelated.
You know what?
The book I really love recommending is Unbroken.
And that was the book about Zamparini and World War II.
Laura Hillenbrand wrote it.
That's probably my favorite thing I've read in the last 20 years.
But he was on a bomber that crashed in the Pacific and he drifted forever and got picked
up by a Japanese destroyer and was a POW.
They didn't even know that we didn't know that he was even there.
And it's his struggle coming away from going through that, coming away from it after the
war, what he went through.
I thought it was amazing.
Yeah, I've had that recommended a few times and I haven't read the book or seen the film
yet.
So I need to put that at the top of my list because it sounds incredible.
I like the book a thousand times more than the movie.
Okay, I will make sure I read that first.
I thought the movie could have done a couple of things different that would have made it
a lot more resonating.
Yeah, that happens a lot.
I always talk about Lone Survivor.
Great story.
The film did a good job, but I think what it missed was the immense courage of the Afghan
people that house him and they put their whole lives in danger.
I felt like I kind of just glanced over that, but that was a big part of that.
That it was the humanity of this American soldier in Afghanistan and their whole ethos
in the village was to risk their lives for him.
And I think that could have been.
I would totally agree with that.
His book, that was a great book.
I love that book too.
Brilliant.
All right, well then what about movies and documentaries?
Any of those that you love?
You can't really ask me about movies because I'm probably going to tell you to watch Star
Wars.
That's fine.
I'm a Star Wars nerd.
But that's true.
I'm kind of a big nerd about that kind of stuff.
So I don't really say a lot of impactful stuff when it comes to movies.
My movie quotes are all kind of silly.
You know documentaries, you know the documentary I like the best I've seen most recently is
probably Free Solo.
And that's the guy who climbs El Capitan without a rope and he does it unbelievably fast.
And I was absolutely blown away by that guy and his focus and just how he kind of put
things.
Absolutely.
Alex Honnold is someone I still want to try and get on the show one day.
I mean his perception of fear and also diligence of training.
Because you listen to these extreme athletes, the base jumpers and some of these other people
I had on the show, they're not risk averse, it's the opposite.
They understand risks so much that they practice and practice and practice.
And you watch Alex preparing for that climb.
He did just a few feet over and over and over and over again, working on handholds and grip
and everything else.
So I think there was a lot of takeaway from that when you apply it to Fire and EMS.
I'd agree with that.
All right well the next question.
Is there a person that you'd recommend to come on this podcast as a guest to speak to
the first responders, military and associated professions of the world?
Well the guy I would say you talked to last year at the Brothers Helping Brothers conference,
which is Raul Rivas.
So you talked to him already last year and that's another guy that probably should have
been a fireman, not a cop.
So I hope he hears that.
It's like this, yes Raul, you should have been a fireman.
But I would, somebody who haven't heard, I was scrolling through your list of people
you've already had.
You've had some amazing people on your show already.
It's actually kind of a really intimidating list.
I'm like, oh people will take a break when I'm on it.
No, no, no.
Everyone says the same thing.
Even some of the people that are very well known say the same thing.
So it's funny that same comment.
And I think it comes from humility.
The humble ones say that.
Maybe, I don't know who I could recommend that you haven't already had.
Well let's go to Brothers Helping Brothers then.
So just as a segue, you are speaking there this year, is that correct?
Yeah, this year, yeah I'll be there.
It's in October and he just retired but his name is Scott Ross.
He was who spun up our peer support way back when for our department.
He and I are speaking together.
That was something that we kind of got on the books in the last year or so.
So we'll be up there together.
Brilliant.
Yeah, that was so cool.
I interviewed Jeff Orange with Raoul on stage and Raoul obviously was basically the guy
that shot the Pulse shooter and then Jeff was the one who created Orlando's peer support
by chance a few months or a couple years prior.
But the irony is, I mean those two were incredible and you kind of hear the events of that day
but also the support that the people from Orlando in that particular case got from the
police side and the fire side.
The irony is the city of Orlando to this day doesn't support their peer support team.
So that's benevolent.
That's a good thing that's come out of their union.
But their actual fire department, the city doesn't support them.
It's insane.
Oh, that's horrible.
Yeah, if the guys need help, we all need help even if we don't recognize it.
100%.
All right.
Well, speaking of that, what do you do to decompress these days?
What do I do?
Well, I just bought a pinball game.
I like to play that when I go home.
100%, I got about a Stern pinball game, brand new.
It's not even a vintage one.
It's one of the newer ones and it's loud.
It's got a lot going on.
It's a great way to get lost in that.
It's pretty easy to say I work out because I do that.
I like to get out.
I've kind of started taking up fly fishing.
There's a movie called Mending the Line.
I just saw it last couple of weeks ago.
My wife and I sat down and watched it.
It's about a military guy who's going through his PTSD struggle and so much of that made
me feel weird.
It's the way he felt mirrored how I felt.
He gets into fly fishing.
It's a whole story about that.
At the end, they kind of allude to how he's built this organization around fly fishing
for vets with PTSD.
Really appreciate that movie and its message.
Yeah, I got up and go fly fishing.
I didn't really caught anything.
I just stand in the river just doing my thing.
It's therapeutic and it's amazing.
Yeah, I don't do anything that's magical.
If I'm at home, I try not to sit still staring at walls.
If I get outside, I kind of want to do something where it's not too many people.
Absolutely.
All right, well then the very last question.
I'm sure people listening would love to reach out to you, find out where you're speaking
or if you could even come to them and obviously stay in contact with you as far as the book
when it comes out too.
So, where are the best places online for people to find you?
The best place online is probably on LinkedIn.
That's where my profile is set up to address this.
Speaking my incident, my email address would be munro.fire.speaker at gmail.com.
Reach me there too.
Brilliant.
Well, Ed, I want to say thank you so much.
When I came into this and I always do this with anyone, they've had an acute event in
their life, but that's not their whole life.
It's one chapter, albeit a traumatic chapter, but it's been amazing just kind of hearing
your journey through obviously the Firefighter and Corrections initiative that's going on,
your own personal mental health journey and even learning about how Arnie's doing now
I think is important as well.
I want to thank you so much for being so generous with your time and coming on the Behind the
Shield podcast today.
Thanks for having me.
For anybody who wants to sleep, I'm sorry.
Good night.