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Welcome to episode 334 of Behind the Shield podcast.
As always, my name is James Gearing,
and this week I'm extremely excited to welcome on the show Ricky Nuttall.
Now, Ricky is a member of London Fire Brigade.
He has an incredibly powerful story.
His journey into the fire service,
the mental and physical preparation required to be a great firefighter.
The calls that he's seen, including one of the most powerful
and heartbreaking ones, which was the Grenfell Tower fire
that claimed 72 lives in the city of London.
So we talk about factors like budget cuts
and how that has a ripple effect in our ability to save.
We talk about building construction, which obviously was a huge factor
in so many fatalities in that fire and in many, many other elements.
And then we also talk about the physical and emotional toll
of serving in a first responder profession and the after effects
specifically for Ricky of that particular fire.
So we're going to talk about addiction.
We're going to talk about alcoholism.
We're going to talk about post-traumatic growth and so many other areas.
I urge you to listen to this entire conversation.
Before we get to that interview, as I always say, please just take a moment.
Go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show,
leave feedback and leave a rating.
The five star ratings truly do make us more visible
for people looking for a podcast like this.
And as I say, this is a free library for you, the audience,
whether it's individually, whether it's an entire department,
this is yours to use.
So all I ask in return is that you share these incredibly powerful stories
from these men and women that have come on and donated their time
to reach out to you, the audience, so we can get them to every single person
on planet Earth that needs to hear it.
So with that being said, I introduce to you, Ricky Nuttall.
Enjoy.
So, Ricky, I want to start by saying thank you so much for initially answering
my random Instagram message, but then for taking the time
to come on the podcast today.
Yeah, you're welcome.
It's going to be a good thing to be involved in, I think.
Yeah.
It's an important subject and yeah, I'm looking forward to it.
Absolutely. I mean, your whole career is what I want to talk about,
but obviously, Grenfell is one area that I think just needs more exposure
from the human level as opposed to the political level.
So I'm looking forward to kind of hearing your perspective
of being one of the heroic rescuers in that.
So where are we finding you on planet Earth today?
I am in London in sunny Croydon.
And if anyone over in the States knows Croydon, they'll know that it's
neither sunny nor nice.
All right.
Well, I won't show you the weather outside my window right now
because it'd probably make you a little bit jealous.
So we'll start at the very beginning things.
I like to lead people all the way through the chronological journey.
So where were you born?
And then tell me about your family dynamic, what your parents did
and how many siblings.
So I was born in Northern Ireland in Balamina.
My dad was in the army.
He was in the RIEMI, Royal Electrical Mechanical Engineers.
So my older brother Jamie was born in West Germany.
I was born in Northern Ireland.
We didn't stay in any place, any great length of time, a year here, a year there.
Then we moved to Cyprus for a couple of years where my younger brother was made
and then imported into the UK and was born over here.
And from that time on, we lived, we stayed over here.
My parents got divorced when I was about three.
Well, they separated when I was about three.
They were sort of on and off for about a year and then both met new partners.
And then, yeah, so we lived with my mum and my, who became my stepdad.
They had two children together and my dad and his new partner, who also got married,
had a child together.
So it's a complicated family dynamic, but basically there's Jamie, me and Daniel,
same mum and same dad.
Then there's David and Jason, mum and stepdad.
And then there's Billy, dad and step mum.
However, both my dad and my mum, since divorced those partners as well,
my dad is now on his third wife, no more children, and my mum is single for any
guys out there.
This is the eHarmony podcast.
All right, well, going back to that just for a second, talking about trauma,
did your dad ever talk about what it was like being a soldier in Northern Ireland?
Because I know the 70s and 80s were pretty turbulent back then.
They were, yeah.
So he was there from 80 to, from 1980 until 1982, I think, give or take.
So it wasn't there for a huge amount of time, but yeah, it was very, it was, it was
red alert constantly over there at the time.
It was still very volatile.
He had to be very careful, obviously, being British military in quite a rough part of
Northern Ireland.
So, you know, he spoke to us a bit because I suppose because of our age, our ages, when
we would discuss that sort of stuff, we were a bit too young for anything to, to be
too harrowing.
But he described several things.
I remember one story he told us, he had to go out to fix a jeep, an armored jeep that
had broken down by an estate.
And so they've had to go get out of their armored vehicle and go sort of under
protection to the jeep and then lay under the jeep whilst receiving intel that, you
know, there were militants in the area that were, that were aware they were there and
they managed to sort of just about get the jeep fixed in time and be reversing out of
out of the, or away from this estate as a whole horde of armed people sort of descended
on them.
And, you know, that story really stuck with me as a child because it made me realize as
a kid, you know, you always want to do, or not always, but you, you quite often look
to jobs like being in the army is a cool job or being a, you know, playing army games
and shooting.
And, and it's only when someone tells you a story like that, and my dad's a very good
storyteller and he, I could feel the, the emotion.
I could feel the fear when he was retelling the story, you know, you could still see it
was there.
And it's the first time I realized that, you know, being in the army isn't this sort of
cool, fun travel the world, you know, gain new skills as the adverts lead you to believe.
Sometimes it is also, you might get shot for 12 grand.
So yeah, I remember my dad telling me a few stories as a kid.
And yeah, that was, as I said, that was the first time really that I appreciated the
danger and, and potential trauma in any, any kind of job where you're putting yourself
on the, on the front line.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, I, I'm 46 now, so I grew up with the Falklands war when I was a young
boy, you know, and, and then I lived next to an M.O.D. base.
So we would sweep the cars looking for bombs before we went to school, you know?
So even though I wasn't any way, shape or form near the, you know, the very dangerous
parts of, especially Northern Ireland, that, you know, when we, when we were growing up,
that radiated all the way out to the mainland, you know, there were Manchester bombings
and London bombings and all these things where women and children were, were killed.
So, you know, and it's so sad when you look at it, that all that violence comes from,
you know, either a, you know, a fight for independence for Ireland, which there's,
you know, completely sensible arguments for that.
And then also two seemingly almost identical religions murdering each other over the minutia
of, of their beliefs.
And, and then for that poor country to live, you know, decades and decades and decades
under terrorism and, and war and murder is just heartbreaking.
It is.
Yeah.
And this is why I have, I have an issue with religion.
I don't have an issue with other people following religion or believing in things.
I have an issue myself with religion because I was brought up Church of England.
And it was only, no one explains to you when you were a kid what Church of England means.
They just say, oh, you're Christian, you're Church of England.
And you go, okay, and you wear your Church of England primary school jumper and off you go
and you go to, you know, church on a Sunday.
And it's only when you actually look into history that basically Church of England came about
because Henry VIII wanted to continuously murder his wives and the Pope had had enough of it
and said, you can't do that anymore.
So he said, well, I'll start my own religion, you know, in a sort of, you know, I know I
appreciate that as a very simplified view of it, but that's ultimately what, what we're
talking about.
And then when you consider that Church of England becomes this huge institution that's,
you know, it's supposed to stand for all of these good things and you think, well, it's,
it's spawned from something horrendous.
And quite often I find religion has been used as a vehicle for destructiveness and control
rather than what it should be for altruistic involvement in society.
It's supposed to bring societies together and bring people together.
And instead it's often used as a tool to create division, which is sad.
Yeah, very.
And then you have both extremes in every single religion, you know, and just to pick on
Christianity, for example, you know, you have so many churches and there's examples of these
churches opening their doors at Grenfell itself, you know, of all different, you know, religious
backgrounds, but then you have, you know, the covering up of child molestation and,
and like you said, murder and all these other things that have happened in these churches
history too.
So I think the core philosophies of each of these religions are important, you know, to
love, to be kind, to be, to be grateful, to love thy neighbor, you know, to go out and
do good in the world, but that can very easily be refocused to fit your own story, your own
narrative that's going to get you, you know, money and power, which I think is where we've
seen a lot of abuse, whether it's in religion or business or any other element.
Yeah, I agree completely.
I actually had a conversation with a really random one.
He was a reverend.
I was doing like a group trip to climb up to Everest base camp in Nepal.
And one of the people on my excursion happened to be a reverend or a vicar, which, which he
was, but we were chatting away and the conversation inevitably came around to religion and you
know, that old saying, you know, never discuss politics or religion.
And I just saw, well, I've got a captive audience, you know, the guy, you know, let's
have the conversation.
And I said to him, I didn't like religion because it has been the cause of pretty much
every war since the dawn of time.
And he said, without even batting an eye at it, he said, so you think religion has failed
humanity?
And I said, yeah, exactly.
That's a good way of putting it.
And he said, which is ironic because in actual fact, humanity has failed religion every
single step of the way.
He said, religion is a vehicle.
It's something that you have to buy into and believe in.
And so if you use that to, for any kind of gain to the detriment of others, so then you're
failing that religion, you're failing a set of ideals.
You're not, it's not those ideals that have failed you.
You haven't followed those ideals to the letter and ended up in a bad place.
You have bent and changed the meanings to fit your narrative so that you can get away
with or justify what you're doing.
And he said, and that ultimately is the problem.
It's humanity failing religion, irrespective of the religion.
And it gave me a completely new perspective on it.
Yeah.
And I agree completely.
And I just posted this morning, one of my favorite memes and it says, don't be a dick.
And then it's quotes, Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, mother, just all these names.
It's true.
Like that's ultimately it.
Be nice to each other.
That's it.
But if you have this thing like, oh, I think God is good and we're going to do good in
the world, accept the gaze.
Or accept the blacks or accept this or accept, then that's not good.
That's not love thy neighbor.
I'm sorry, but I disagree.
If you have this exclusionary thing where only these people that fit this mold are going
to go to heaven, for example.
That's it.
Yeah.
And sadly that again, it's the problem with humanity because it is literally that simple.
Isn't it?
Don't be a dick or just be nice.
If everyone woke up tomorrow and was just nice, everything would stop.
Like there would be no famine.
There would be no murder.
What an amazing utopic world we would live in.
But sadly, there is so much hypocrisy in the world.
A classic example of this.
I've got a lot of black friends.
My city London is a hugely, as you know, hugely multicultural setting to grow up in and to
live in.
Color has never really been something that has been at the forefront of my mind.
It's just what I've always known, the different colors and religions and different churches
and mosques and synagogues.
And it's always, always, always been there.
So I have lots of conversations about racial inequality that exists and the systemic sort
of racism that still exists in society on every level that goes back hundreds of years.
And what's always struck me is I can always have a really good conversation with, for
example, one of my friends who is British born Caribbean descent, Jamaican descent.
And we mean him can see I to on absolutely everything.
And he's all for equality.
And this should be this way and that should be that way.
And we agree on absolutely everything until you bring up homosexuality.
And then suddenly, it's bundled with fire.
You know, and you're like, how you can't you can't say that you need racial equality and
that equality is important.
And then at the same time, so the gay people don't deserve any of that equality.
Like it's got to be either equality is right or equality isn't right.
And you've got you can't pick which parts of equality you want to have in society.
And sadly, that's that's a huge issue in in society these days.
Yeah, yeah.
And it's going to be very illustrated.
The London that you love in when we get to Grenfell, because I mean, the residents themselves,
the way the community banded together, I think is is part of the story that people need to
hear and just how diverse that city is and how they came together as brothers and sisters.
But getting back to your kind of lifeline for a moment, what about athleticism?
You know, you still take care of yourself even now.
Were you a sportsman when you were young?
I'm still a sportsman now.
Thank you very much.
I was back at my second preseason football training session yesterday.
They I won't lie, they are harder and they take longer to recover from, but they are
happening nonetheless.
But yeah, I've always been into sport.
I've played lacrosse for my school team, which weirdly wasn't my posh grammar school.
In Kent, they didn't have a lacrosse team.
It was my inner London secondary school that randomly had a lacrosse team, which I thought
was brilliant.
I think it's because it's quite a violent game.
So it went down well with a lot of students.
I played that I've I played a bit of rugby, but mostly I've played football.
I've played football my whole life.
I absolutely love it.
And I'm dreading the day that my knees can no longer carry my aging body across the field.
It's an interesting perspective, though, because I've talked about this a lot.
Like back home in England, you tend to see you play football at school.
Maybe you went to college and you play football or some other sport there.
But it seems to carry on.
The pickup games, the just kicking around the park, playing the local leagues.
Men and women seem to carry on playing sports, whereas in America, we have a much more intense
level of training at high school and college.
There's a lot of money in high school, you know, football, for example, baseball.
But then when they're done, it's like from 100 to zero.
And you don't see a lot of that carryover, which is why we get a lot of these what were
great athletes now, you know, very, very deconditioned.
So I'm always intrigued at what the difference is, because, you know, I think that's what's
healthy.
You shouldn't stop playing sport just because you graduated from school.
Yeah, maybe it's because of the intensity, though, because like you said, playing football
for my school team was a very straightforward thing.
We didn't used to train other than for P.E. and we would we would literally, you know,
go and play an hour of football in a field.
And then on a Thursday evening or whatever, we'd have a match against another school.
And that was it.
But it isn't taking sport over here is not taking anywhere near as serious a match as
it is not taking anywhere near as seriously, particularly at high school and college level
as it is out there.
So it wouldn't surprise me if because of the level of training and stuff, it becomes, you
know, it becomes your whole life, doesn't it?
People need good grades so that they can play football over there.
Whereas here you're only playing football if you're getting good grades.
And it's not the sporting thing just isn't as big here.
So I think we have a much lower level of training.
We probably tax our bodies a lot less so that we can continue playing for longer.
Whereas out there, I guess, if you're being smashed for 20 years or 10 years or whatever,
but a very high level, by the time you get an opportunity to stop, you're probably quite
thankful for it.
That's a very interesting perspective.
I've never thought of it that way, but it's very true.
Like the number of people I know that in their late teens already had ACL repairs, shoulder
tears, all these things.
Whereas I think football, soccer, is more gentle.
Yeah, you can get your knees and your ankles smashed up a little bit from tackles, but
overall, you know, it's not that same load.
And you take something like baseball where you're just pitching over and over and over
and over again with that one arm, you know, these repetitive injuries they get, there's
a lot more diversity to the human movement, I think, in a game of football.
So overall as a sport, I think it's more forgiving on the body too.
Yeah, I would agree with that completely.
And anything where you're repeating the same isolated movement time and time and time again
is going to wear out that body part, I guess.
But then saying that, I guess with rugby over here, which is the nearest equivalent
to football over there for you guys, those guys don't wear any pants or helmets or anything
compared to the NFL.
And they are smashing each other and we have Sunday League, Saturday League rugby teams
for men in their 50s.
And, you know, they're still going at it, albeit a lot slower, but they're still going
at it from a physical perspective.
But again, they don't have the same intensity of training whilst they're at university
or whatever, you know?
Yeah.
Well, I think another thing is they're on the pitch the whole time.
And what's the kind of illusion for us British looking at this?
The illusion for us British looking at the American sports, like ice hockey is a perfect
example.
And that, wow, these guys are playing for 20 minutes at a time, but they're not.
They're literally rotating these guys through from the bench consistently.
So they're only on the ice for basically seconds, you know, and then they come off again.
So it's sprint after sprint and the same with the football.
You've got the offense, you've got the defense, you've got the kicker, you've got this specialist
team.
Whereas in rugby, you're playing the whole time, so you're not going from full rest 100
miles an hour.
You still got that fatigue element too.
So I think, and you know, with rugby, you're kind of, you know, you're not able to like
spear, for example, head to head because you both be unconscious.
So I think you even have to tackle a little bit more intelligently.
Yeah, yeah.
There are some subtle rules with rugby that probably get missed by people who don't know
the sport particularly well.
But there are some subtle things that you are and aren't allowed to do.
And those rules have changed with time, as with most sports, as health and safety becomes
more involved.
And they realize that actually, you know, pile driving someone's head into the ground
with zero protection probably isn't the way forwards for sport.
So, you know, rules get implemented and tackling techniques change so that you can do it for
longer without injuring yourself.
So, yeah.
Keep your teeth.
That's it.
Yeah, exactly.
All right.
Well, then transitioning to your career, had you already always dreamed of being a fireman?
Do you know what is I hate answering this question because the answer is yes.
And it sounds really geeky.
But when I was a kid, much like lots of children, I had a fascination with fire engines and
fire brigade.
And I used to love Lego as a kid.
And everything I'd get Lego were even knights on horseback with castles because I loved
all the medieval stuff.
Or it was fire stations and fire engines and fire helicopters.
And I just loved the idea of the adrenaline and the heroism of running into a burning
building to save somebody.
It's always, always appealed to me to be that, to be the person who gets to turn up and make
somebody's worst day of their life a bit better.
I believe it's a real gift to be in a position to be able to do that.
And it's even more lucky that I've managed to have a career goal, have a job that I've
wanted to do since I was, well, for as far back as I can remember, and then actually
end up doing it.
It's amazing.
So, well, how old were you when you went in?
The reason I've got started for a second, I wanted to be a fireman too.
I was exactly the same.
I had the Lego figures and everything.
However, I was told at whatever age it was now, probably 11, 12, whenever they start
doing the physicals at school, oh, sorry, you're colorblind.
So, you can't be a fireman, you can't be a pilot, anything fun you can't do.
Just so you probably work in a pizza factory or maybe pick up shit in a zoo or something.
But that was pretty much it.
And then it took me to move to America to have, because I'm not the sharpest tool in
the box, to realize, wait a second, I can see color.
Therefore, maybe I'm not colorblind.
I'm a real freaking genius.
And then when I challenged it, yes, the books, I still can't see some of the numbers,
but you asked me to name anything in the doctor's office, what color it is, I can do it.
So, that was it.
But they dissuaded me from an entire profession.
Now, I think my journey was supposed to be the way that it happened coming over here.
So, what age did you actually enter the profession?
So, I joined at 24 in 2005.
I was on the January intake in 2005.
I started training in the start of February 2005 and arrived at my first station in June
of the same year.
So, up until then, I mean, it was a long process for me to get in because
the application stage over here at the time was random selection.
So, you'd have to look in all the local papers for when they were going to start recruiting.
And then you'd have to phone a number and you'd leave your name and your address and
some personal details.
And then a computer would randomly select because that would get like, see, it was something insane,
like 5,000 applicants for every one available job or 10,000 applicants for every one available
job in the fire brigade at the time I was trying to apply.
It was an absolutely insane odds.
And so, for four years, for three years, I didn't get an application form.
And then on the fourth attempt, so at the end of the fourth year, I finally received an application form.
And then that was again back in the paper application form days.
So, you'd have to fill out your application form and post it off and wait for more instructions
and all of that.
So, it's a really long winded sort of laborious process.
But it was then a further two years from when I filled out my application form to when I actually
started training.
So, all told, it was a six year process from when I said, right now, I'm actually going to start
trying to get into the fire brigade.
It was a six year process before I actually started training.
So, you know, I had to really win it or I would have given up.
Now, for people from the States and other countries where they do have fire academy,
because that's what I did, I became a fireman first and then I found a job.
That's pretty much how we do it here.
So, from the British perspective, you basically are civilian.
You don't have any qualifications and you are at the mercy of basically a lottery to get chosen
to then be trained as a firefighter to join the fire brigade.
Yeah, exactly that.
When you go through the application process, you are giving answers that you hope are the right
answers because you want the job, right?
So, any interview situation or any application process, you're going to try and sell yourself.
The problem is you're doing it absolutely blind, which means you can't really blag it,
which is actually a really good process for recruiting the right people because you can't
con your way into the fire brigade over here.
You either are the right person for the job or you're not.
And their application process will weed out the ones that are trying to give the right answers
because ultimately they'll be the wrong answers.
Now, what about the physical test?
What does that look like to get hired?
What do you have to go through?
So, when I went through in 05, on the initial application process, there you have to go to
Southwark, which was the old training center.
It's gone now, cutbacks.
We'll get onto that.
So, that was the sort of central training venue for every firefighter in London would
go through this one training center.
It was a brilliant place.
And during the application stage, you would have to go there and do things like they'd
have a 50 kilo weight attached to a rope on a pulley and you'd have to raise it up to
ceiling height inside like 20 seconds or whatever it was because that simulates the weight of
extending a 13 and a half meter ladder if you're doing a props to face drill so that
you're the only person on the rope to extend it.
They need to know you're strong enough to do that by yourself because normally it would
be a two-man pull, two-person pull, I apologize.
So, they'd do things like that.
You'd have a bleep test.
You'd have to meet the minimum standards for that, which I think was 8.5 on the bleep test.
I don't know if you guys have that over there.
Yeah, we did end school back home where it's basically a shuttle run, but each time the
beeps get a little bit faster, so you have to keep moving and at a certain point you
hit the ceiling where that will be your score.
That's right.
Yeah, 20 meters long and you have to touch the wall at the same time the bleep goes off.
So, you can't get ahead, you can't fall behind.
And exactly as you said, it'll go up level by level and the time between each shuttle
run becomes smaller, shorter.
So, you have to run faster.
So, the more tired you get, the harder you're working.
You get to your VO2 max.
So, yeah, so you'll set those minimum requirements, which you have to meet.
Some dead lifting, some bench pressing, all quite straightforward stuff, pull-ups.
But if you don't meet those standards during the application process, you would then either
have your application terminated or you would be given like a training thing and they'd
say, right, well, go away, try again next year.
Now you know these standards, what you need to meet.
So, try and come back next year and have a go again.
And again, because of the process that it used to be, lots of those people would then
just never come back because if you imagine you've waited four years to get a form, you
finally get through and then you fall at the first hurdle, I think that's enough for most
people to go, do you know what, maybe this isn't for me.
I'll try something else.
I'm lucky.
I've always been into health and fitness and I always have.
I went to quite a rough school, so from the age of about 14, I decided it was time to
beef myself up because I needed to look like I could handle myself so that I wouldn't have
to.
And so, yeah, I was physically in quite decent shape throughout the application process
anyway.
I'm sorry, I was going to say you hit on a very good point as well and I think this is
where some people fall short whether they're trying to get a job in the UK or the US is
if you know what these tests are going to be and you've waited four years to finally get
your chance and you weren't prepared, that's completely on you as well.
You should educate yourself on what you need so that when that letter comes through the
mail, you have done all the preparation for the academic test and all the preparation
for the physical test because you can control both those elements.
Yeah, exactly.
And to be honest with you, there are no excuses.
Even if you don't know what the requirements are, be the best you can be.
If you're the best you can be and that's not good enough, then you're not going to suffer
any hardship from that.
You're going to say fair enough, I'm not good enough for this job and that's fair enough.
We can't always, I'm not good enough to be a professional football player.
I'm not going to beat myself up about it, but if I went for trials for an NFL team,
I'd make damn sure I was the best player I could be when I go for that trial.
And if that means I'm still not good enough, then I'm never going to be and that's fine.
But if I turn up and go, oh, I could have done that if I'd have trained.
Well, then you're not the right person for that team, you know?
And it's the same with the fire brigade.
I don't train to pass something.
I train to be the best I can be and hope that that's enough to pass.
Right.
Now, walk me through your training.
So you passed the physical test, you finally got the job.
What did the probation or the orientation look like as far as going from civilian to
a bona fide London firefighter?
There's quite, I would describe it as quite an intense four month training
sort of system that they put into place.
You're basically at Southwark Training Centre for four months, Monday to Friday, office hours.
I think it's like eight o'clock is roll call, that parade.
And you finish at five or half five and then you'd have studying to do in the evening
because obviously you're being absolutely bombarded with information because you've got.
I mean, when I say we turn up with no idea, there are a few people that have done
volunteer or part time retained, we call it over here, firefighters from the suburbs outside of major cities.
So they would have gained more experience and they'd have some sort of understanding
knowledge already.
But for someone like me, I'd come from an office environment and you're standing there
and someone's saying like, this is a branch, this is a hose, this is how a hose is rolled up.
This is how you bowl out a hose and you're practicing bowling out a hose, which is.
You know, your bread and butter most natural sort of thing for me to do now.
But at the time, I remember so many of us, we all stood in a line and we've got this hose rolled up
under our arms and then we roll it out like a bowling ball over here.
I know lots of brigades roll it up on the female coupling and then run along with it.
London and one of the few that that will do it this way.
But so you bowl the hose out and it's in it's folded in half before it's rolled up.
So then you've got both ends in your hand.
Then you run the end you need to the hydrant or to the branch, whatever you run that out afterwards.
Right.
And we're all standing in a line and the instructor, they said, right, course 2304 on my mark,
bowl out your hose.
So we're all standing there.
Three, two, one, bowl your hose.
And honestly, it was just like slaps of bundles of hose hit the floor and went about two foot
in front of us.
We all fall about laughing.
Oh, that was pathetic.
And the only person that wasn't laughing was the instructor who was absolutely furious.
And that was the overriding theme throughout training school.
His attitude is that's not funny.
I don't care if I've not shown you how to do it.
I don't care if you've never done it before.
If you are no good at it, you best get better quickly because there is no time for laughing
and joking.
This is training.
You are here to learn.
And it was a real sort of shock to the system because our trainers had that attitude of
absolutely everything.
If you fail, there was no humor to be had in failing because this is a life-changing
job.
This is a life or death job.
So you need to get it in your head straight away from the outset.
If you cannot do something, the next time you try, you best be able to do it.
Or you certainly best have shown some improvement because otherwise, this is not the job for
you.
And the second time we all bowled the hose out was a very, very different sort of feeling.
We were all nervous then because we're like, God, I hope I do it better than I did last
time.
And you're all trying to bowl it out.
And it was good because I remember being scared pretty much for four months.
And as a 25-year-old man at this point, I wasn't a kid straight from college or whatever.
And yet I was, when these instructors shouted at you, as we used to say on our course, once
they shout at you, you stay shouted at.
Some of the guys on the course, Blessam, were a bit like, I'd describe them as Yorkshire
Terriers on fireworks night.
Fourth of July celebrations, that little bit of shaking in the corner because of all the
bangs.
Some of us were literally like that on the course day to day because we knew it was only a
matter of time before one of us fucked something up again and the instructors would bellow us.
And they were harsh.
They'd be like, you lot are a sad excuse for firefighters.
I can't send you out into the world like this.
You're an embarrassment to this brigade.
They really tear strips off you.
And I'm like, this is day four, mate.
Give us a chance.
But it was done that way for a reason because it instilled pride.
I'm so proud of my job and so proud to serve London and to take on the trauma that I take
on so that others don't have to take it on.
And I see it as a bit of a sacrificial job.
And I don't mean to sound like a martyr or I don't want to be, I'm not asking to be labeled
a hero or any of that nonsense.
It's just, it's how I see it.
I'm happy to take on this trauma and take on this role so that other people don't have
to do that because I'm good at doing this.
Yeah.
And it is very important.
I think that's what's sad is when you see amongst some departments or some firefighters
where they lose reality, lives really do depend on you.
And so if you start being complacent, you start being lazy, you start cutting corners,
as we're going to talk about in Grimfeld just from reconstruction point of view, people
can die.
So if you're a medic and you're not on top of your protocols, your medications, your
side effects, all these things, people can die.
If you're a firefighter and you start losing your physical condition, people can die.
You forget how to tie the life-saving knots you need, people can die.
So I think that element in the academy is extremely important and it needs to be, you
need to keep that a little bit apart.
Even if you're 20 years on, you got to remember that because the moment you forget how important
your job actually is, is the day you really need to retire if you don't take it seriously
anymore.
Yeah, I absolutely agree.
I think that it's all too easy in a job where you do have some stand down time to get complacent
and let complacency set in.
For me, it's kind of back to the training thing, the sports thing.
For me, I want whatever I'm going to do in my life, I need to do it to the best of my
ability.
And that's something that was instilled in me by my granddad.
He said, it doesn't matter what you do in life, Rick, but do it the best you can.
He said, imagine your job is cleaning toilets.
Maybe not the life you want.
Maybe that's not where you want to be in life.
Maybe you're hoping for more.
Maybe you had big dreams and it's all gone wrong.
Who knows?
But at the very least, be good at cleaning those toilets because how crap would it be
to be shit at cleaning a toilet?
Absolutely.
And the first person has told me that exact analogy too, be the best toilet cleaner you
can be.
Yeah, because from that come opportunities and it says a lot about you.
And for me, with work, it is a case of, I have a risk.
Not only do I want to be the best I can be, but I have an inherent responsibility because
people that don't do my job need me to be good at my job.
And over here, we have council tax, which is the money you pay to the government for
the privilege of living in one of their rundown boroughs.
And part of that money is to cover your emergency services.
So you pay, effectively you're paying money towards the council for them to provide you
with a fire and rescue service.
So if I'm paying council tax and I get an overweight, under trained, lazy firefighter
turn up that doesn't do a particularly good job and my house burns down, or God forbid
someone I love dies, I'm pretty pissed off at that.
We have a responsibility contractually, if nothing else, to be good at our jobs.
And if we're not, things can go wrong.
And those things, when all is said and done at the sharp end of it, those things could
cost lives.
So it's really important for me.
And I would say for most firefighters in London, I would say that they thankfully share the
same view.
Absolutely.
Well, I want to get onto the other side of that equation as well in a minute, but keeping
on the ownership for a second, what did your training look like through your career with
London Fire Brigade, the physical training and just the skills training in general?
So I'm at a technical rescue center in London.
There was a change up in the way the stations were set out.
So along with closures and stuff, they did a little rejig.
And what they decided was to make five stations just strategically placed around London.
There would be technical rescue centers.
My station is one of them.
So it means at my station, we do all your regular firefighting.
But we also have the specialist rescue truck.
I'm not sure what you call them over in the States, but here they're called FRU, Fire
Rescue Unit.
And on there, we'll have specialist cutting gear for RTCs.
We have a boat and an engine so that we can go on open water or the Thames.
We have loads of rope climbing gear so that we can do rope rescue.
And we have USAR, which is Urban Search and Rescue.
So that's sort of major disasters, major incidents, could be terrorism, where there could be
significant building collapses.
An example of a recent one was a big crane collapsed over in East London in a boat and
fell through the roof of a house, sadly killing one lady who was then trapped.
And our job as USAR was body recovery.
But it's going shore the house up with wood shores and metal shores so that we can make
safe access to the lady that sadly had been killed so that we could get her out safely
and recover her body.
And that's a USAR job.
And we're one of five stations in London that does that.
So for us, our training is continuous and it's a lot.
We do a lot of training.
There isn't really much downtime at station anymore.
I know in films and stuff, I think people's perceptions of a fire station is we sit about
eating, playing darts, snooker, having a bit of a laugh, and then the bells go down every
15 minutes and off we go.
It's certainly not like that in London, certainly not a rescue station.
We are not sitting about.
We are out in the yard cutting up cars, hanging off ropes, pitching ladders, going through
lectures.
We have online training systems now where it will set out our entire year's worth of
training.
And every shift we go in, we will have some online training to do.
And it does get a bit boring because sometimes you're going over stuff and you're like, I
know this.
But that's good because the only reason we know it is because we do it so regularly.
Rather than, you know, my attitude is if I'm training and I'm learning something, we probably
should have done that more recently.
Yeah.
No, I think that's brilliant.
I mean, it's definitely, especially on 24 hour shifts that we have here, you've got
to have that rest and recovery element built in.
But, you know, I've always said the same thing.
When you pick your gear back off the rig, you sure as shit better be a better fireman
than when you first put it on that morning or that evening.
100%.
Yeah, 100%.
Brilliant.
Well, you mentioned closures.
So I want to talk about the other side.
The whole purpose of this podcast is to show the two parallel lines, the individual ownership,
whether it's fitness, you know, training, mental health, physical health, but then also
the environment.
You know, we can, there's always a blame.
Oh, this person should stop eating.
They won't be so fat.
Well, yeah, but you've also raised them in a family that ate McDonald's every day.
That's an environment that causes them to fail as well.
And I think that that's another thing that's not talked about in the fire service in
general, especially in the British fire service, because I remember growing up and seeing
strikes like my whole childhood, you know, the fire service on strikes because they were
running on bare bones then.
And I know leading up to the Grenfell disaster, Boris Johnson was your mayor then.
And there were more of the 10 million pound cuts, I think it was.
So as a fireman now, having worked as a fireman for 14 years and seen multiple departments,
I worked the East Coast and the West Coast and seen how a well-funded, well-supported
fire department can be fucking amazing and really perform when the shit hits the fan
and have the resources close enough to those events to be there when they need to be there
to save lives.
And then conversely, also work for departments that are woefully understaffed, underfunded,
seeing stations browned out and then the knock on the fact that now a rig has to come from
two districts away or two first-dues away.
And it's the reverse, people die.
So tell me about the kind of political struggles that you guys have had to endure and, you
know, some of the closures that the probably the citizens of London don't realize for the
same council tax that their level of service has dropped significantly without them even
realizing.
Yeah, I mean, the first point there is it's not for the same council tax, it's for more.
We're literally paying more to get less.
Well, to answer this question, first of all, it's important that people realize that
the way I think over here anyway, you need to view the fire and rescue services are we
are an insurance policy and that's all we are.
We are sitting at stations, albeit training and stuff, but we are not permanently engaged
in firefighting or rescue incidents like the ambulance service we have here or the police
are constantly out and about, you know, doing their thing.
We fires are less and less because of all of the community involvement that we've had,
which is a good thing.
We go around and we fit smoke alarms in people's houses.
We have targets each month to fit free smoke alarms in people's houses so that if they
do have a fire, they at the very least won't die.
They'll get an early audible warning that there is a fire, which means we'll get there
nice and quick, put the fire out, minimal damage, minimal losses.
But because of all of the fire safety stuff and the health and safety stuff, particularly
in a business arena, people can't afford to have fires because people get sued, you know,
people lose contracts.
It's, you know, it sounds like an obvious thing to say, but people literally can't afford
to have fires.
So fires are a lot less now.
So all the while we were in and out of the doors regularly attending fires, I think the
government could cope with that.
But now we're an insurance policy more than anything when it comes to fires.
I think fires at the moment in London account for about five percent of our total work.
So it's a really small percentage in terms of actual firefights.
And yes, our scope is massive and we do lots of other stuff.
But I think the government will look at us and go, right, well, you're an insurance policy.
Now, one thing I know about insurance, no one wants to pay for insurance.
No one likes paying for insurance.
I'm going to pay all this money every month in case you have a crash.
I'd rather just give you one month's money when you've had a crash.
When you've had a crash.
And that's the example of how I believe the government see us over here now.
They don't want to be paying loads of money for a service to be there in case the shit
hits the fan.
So a way of getting around that is to strip services back.
And I believe there is a very, very simple case with politicians of it's an accounting
problem.
And that's all it is.
How much do we save by shutting these fire stations?
X amounts of millions.
How many more fire deaths or road traffic collision deaths will there be per year
estimated because of these closures?
One, two, cool.
So we're saving 12 million pounds.
It's going to cost us two humans.
We can live with that.
And that's how I believe they view things.
Very, very simply.
Not from a humanitarian perspective like we do.
Not from a case of that they may only be two people in terms of numbers to the government.
But to me, they are two human lives that have families that won't see children again or
have lost a wife or whatever it is that's going on.
And when you see that trauma firsthand time and time and time again, there is no monetary
value that you can place on that person surviving.
Spend 50 million if it's going to save those two lives as far as I'm concerned.
But I'm in a very fortunate position where the budgets aren't down to me.
I'm not under any pressure from my peers that are going to turn on me and oust me from government
as soon as look at me if I don't get things right.
So, you know, it's a real it's a real difficult one in terms of cuts and stuff like that,
because it is both a monetary problem as well as a human problem.
Yeah.
Well, we have an interesting thing here.
Where we do the fire and the EMS.
So I'm a firefighter and a paramedic.
So most of the departments I've worked for, we're running, you know, 15 plus calls a shift
in 24 hours and still getting the exact same description that you're getting.
Oh, well, you know, you guys are expensive.
And my thing is this, you know, you don't question the security guard in the block of flats or,
you know, at the hotel that he's not running around like a blue ass fly all over the place.
You don't question the Secret Service protecting the president or the prime minister.
Like, well, why aren't you having shootouts the whole time?
No, you're you're you're a fucking insurance policy.
So if you want to cut it, then just give the president or the prime minister a gun and be like,
all right, I'm saving some money.
Good luck.
You know, that's not how it works, because when we have, you know, a frickin 9-11,
you know, the the London terror attacks, Grenfell, you know, whatever it is, the Vegas shooting,
that's when you need all the people.
And that's when that small amount that you supposedly saved, you lose so much more in the long run,
because it's a complete false economy as well.
So I I call bullshit on that.
If our if our economies are expanding, our populations are expanding, the value of business
in our cities is is increasing, then you have to invest in, you know, the essential,
the essential, the true essential services, like, you know, the hospitals and the police
and fire and dispatchers and all these people that create that infrastructure.
And you start shredding it away.
Eventually, it's going to be a catastrophic failure.
And then just like we saw at Grenfell, all the people responsible scurry away like like
insects into the shadows.
Yeah, but the government and I'm assuming it will be the same over there as well.
The governments rely on one very, very simple thing, and that's our ability to paper over
the cracks because we care about what we do.
Excuse me.
For instance, if we're on strike, we have a recall clause in our strike policies that says
if a major event takes place whilst we're on strike, we will without question return
to our stations, put on our fire gear and go out and deal with that incident.
We wouldn't even be getting paid at that point.
But they know we'll do it because they know we care.
And as soppy as that might sound, that's the facts of it.
I care.
I care about the people of London.
I care about the people, whether they're strangers or not, that I go out to try and help.
And that's what part of what makes me good at my job because I care.
And the governments can afford to make these cutbacks, undersource fire and rescue services
across the country because they know what I'm doing.
I don't know what I'm doing in the country because they know bottom line is if we have
to ride with old equipment or we have to go without a bit of training or if we have to
lose a fire station, which means we're now covering a bigger ground, all it means is
we will work harder and we'll try hard and we'll train harder.
And they will get the same level of service for the they'll get more work from us for
a drop in the level of quality of service that they're receiving.
So we are our own worst enemies, but for all of the right reasons.
Yeah.
And I couldn't agree more.
I mean, the UK and the US is full of people that do this for free.
They shouldn't though, because every city in town, in my opinion,
unless you're out in the middle of nowhere, should work out their budget to where they
can fund a full time police fire and EMS system personally.
I mean, that's the fundamental thing is human life.
But yeah, I mean, I couldn't agree more that that is used as a political crowbar.
And, you know, we're not going to leave people hanging.
But if people don't understand that, you know, the thinner our resources become,
the harder it is now for us to respond, then they're going to allow these seemingly
great budget cuts to keep happening.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
Exactly. And I don't see that it's going to change much either.
Yeah. Well, I saw.
So I can't remember who it was now, but someone made a great observation.
I did a whole bunch of interviews around this COVID thing to try and put good information out
around all the bullshit that I was seeing on the television.
And one of the things they made a great point, they were like,
when we create this essential work of heroism that I was seeing,
and it was the police and the fire and the hospitals,
the doctors and nurses and all this stuff.
And there were the ones like London, New York, Wuhan,
that were truly, truly getting their asses handed to them.
And then there was the other 95% of the world that was like,
well, we're not actually seeing much, but thanks for calling me a hero.
But they were shirking the blame.
Like you said, we haven't supported these people in any way, shape or form.
But let's call them heroes so that way we can put it all on them.
Because every time the shit hits the fan, it falls squarely on our shoulders.
Like you said, if the preparation and everything hasn't been done,
if the budgeting hasn't been done, if stations are closed,
we are still the ones showing up to mitigate this disaster.
And they applaud us and they call us heroes instead of saying,
we need to start supporting these people better, paying these people better,
creating larger staffing so that we're able to mitigate next time.
But if you just call us a hero, you basically brush off all responsibility too.
Yeah, absolutely. I think they're pacifying us, is what they're doing.
They're going more, if we all like over here, I don't know if you know,
during the COVID thing for the NHS, there was a, every Thursday evening at 8pm,
there'd be a clap, like a round of applause.
So people would come out of their houses and they would stand on their doorsteps
and they'd applaud. And the first week this happened, it was actually really moving.
People would be in tower blocks. We'd hear clapping from all around.
We'd parade out the front with a fire engines and a blue lights going in our fire gear.
And we'd clap for the NHS, National Health Service as well.
And it was brilliant. And then the next week it would happen.
And the next week it would happen. And we're looking and we're going,
nothing's actually changing though.
It's like push-ups for suicide.
Yeah. And I just thought, all this is is appeasement.
That's all it is, it's appeasement.
You're convincing a nation that the hospital staff and the care workers
whose lives are being lost and who are dealing with all of this trauma day in,
day out on a huge mass pandemic scale, you're convincing everybody that by giving them
a little clap that they're appreciated. And these doctors and nurses and again,
healthcare workers are going home feeling good about themselves because,
oh yeah, it was a lovely clap. You can't say absolutely nothing.
Give them PPE, give them masks so that they're not dying.
It's mind blowing to think that that's as simple as a ploy as it needs to be
to convince people that everything's okay.
Yeah, exactly.
All right. Well, I want to transition to your career.
I want to get to Grenfell, but prior to that, because I think one of the issues
we've seen in our profession specifically with mental health is,
oh, well, Ricky was at Grenfell, so therefore he has PTSD.
Well, the reality is most of us that do any of these associated professions for
any amount of time really are also going to have the cumulative effect.
I was never at any of the giant disasters that made the news.
My station prior to where I last worked was right next to Pulse.
That would have been the second company in, but I'd already left that department.
I was actually in Portugal when that happened.
So I never was there, but I had 14 years of working some really shitty areas
and then some busy areas towards the end, but saw a huge amount.
So that cumulative element, I think, is often overlooked.
So prior to Grenfell, were there any other incidents that when you look back, go,
okay, that definitely contributed to the ultimate straw that broke the camel's back?
Yeah, there definitely were.
I think it's important as well to realize what trauma is,
because a lot of people, I think, misunderstand what trauma is.
Trauma isn't seeing someone's head split in half under a train because they've committed suicide.
The trauma in that situation is dealing with the distraught partner that was with them
moments before they got hit by that train.
That's where the trauma is.
Seeing grief and absorbing all of that pain and heartache,
and seeing someone just physically break down because they've lost someone that they love and care about.
That's the stuff that crushes you.
Seeing blood and gore is just blood and gore.
It's the story behind the blood and gore, the story, the events leading up to these situations that affects you.
And when you realize that, you realize just how big the scar on your body is.
Just how big the scope for absorbing trauma actually is in one of these types of jobs.
Because very rarely do you turn up to a sterile situation with no backstory.
Even if you take an RTC, for example, you'll turn up and you can see the mechanism of the crash.
You can see what's happening here, what's happened there, where the skid's gone,
how the car's hit that car and gone over here.
And then you start to build up a picture of what happened.
And then you'll get some more information on the driver was drunk.
Why is the driver drunk?
Because he heard a row of his girlfriend.
Where's the girlfriend?
She's in that car and she's dead.
And you're like, holy shit.
That's the trauma.
When you realize the link, the sadness of the situation,
as opposed to the actual mechanics of the situation.
And that means that your scope for trauma, for absorbing trauma is absolutely huge.
It's massive.
Because it could be an almost non-event and almost nothing story.
Sorry, an almost nothing event until you get the story.
And then suddenly the importance of that event will hit you like a train.
So me personally, I'm a very, to my detriment in this kind of job,
I'm a very emotional person anyway.
And I'm an empath.
And I absorb probably way too much of the, what's the word I'm looking for?
Way too much of the feelings and stuff that you're going to get one of these incidents.
And it makes it makes a job really hard sometimes.
So the analogy I've always used is if you imagine holding a jug under a tap and filling it with water
and you turn the water on, not so it's pouring out really fast,
but just so it's running out at a nice speed.
If you tilt that jug, before that jug fills up, some of that water will start spilling out.
That to me is trauma.
You need to have your jug on a tilt for some of that trauma to escape before it overflows.
And sometimes that's your general run of the mill, day in, day out of the job.
And then every now and then a big event will happen
or something more severe that will stick your jug up the right way.
So it can no longer pour any of the other stuff out and then it just fills up and overflows.
And that's when you have problems.
That's when you then start to really suffer.
And it's important to recognize those signs so that you can retilt your jug.
Yeah, I agree completely.
And actually there's a, I just finished writing a book and there's a chapter that talks about that.
And a different analogy because it also factors in addiction,
you know, compensating for some of that.
But another area that I really only discovered doing this podcast
and listening to people's backstories is the trauma that people brought into the profession.
A lot of us are drawn to police, fire, EMS, the military,
because we were hurt when we were younger in some way.
And so the number of people I had on the show that were sexually abused,
that grew up in a drug house, around alcoholism, around physical abuse.
So we have to factor that in as well.
I think it's very important that we evolve to a point
where we're even able to let people offload that trauma at the front door.
Maybe bring counseling sessions in as part of that new hire process.
Yeah.
Yeah, I agree.
And it's funny you should mention that because
I've never made a link between the two before,
but my stepdad was physically abusive towards me, my brother, my older brother and me.
So, you know, he would beat us up and kick us upstairs.
And, you know, it wasn't at the worst end of it all, but it was we lived in fear.
Every day we were scared.
We were scared when he came home from work until we went to bed.
And we were never really sure what insignificant thing we'd have to do
for him to beat us with slippers or wooden spoons or force us to eat
tablespoons of English mustard until our faces were burning
and snot was pouring out of our noses.
It was just it was cruel, nonsense stuff that was just completely unnecessary.
And I've never ever made a link between that and then my need to help other people
and help them when they're going through bad times.
Yeah, it's crazy as a guy I had on who was one of the armed response officers in London
for the police side, Eddie Cohen, who's a high level jujitsu black belt too.
And he had a very similar story to you.
It was it was I can't remember if it was his boyfriend or stepdad, but the same thing.
They just he'd come home and just just beat the kids and it was horrendous.
And I personally, it's very different.
I had a very idyllic upbringing.
My parents ended up getting divorced, but honestly, it really wasn't that bad.
But what I did do was when I was four, I almost died in a house fire.
And I'd totally forgotten about that my whole career had been locked away.
So, yeah, that probably has something to do with ultimately becoming a fireman.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
My way of dealing with things is always as a kid has always been poetry and I'd write poems.
And I actually wrote one.
It was only a few years ago about my relationship with my stepdad.
And the NSPCC, which is a charity over here for children, for the protection of
the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children Charity set up to
rehome and protect children that are living in abusive environments.
And they actually published the poem in some of their literature literature to to send out to everyone just as a
an explanatory sort of piece, I guess, you know, this is how it feels for a child to be in a traumatic situation.
This is how the child thinks, because I wrote it as I remembered feeling at the time.
So it's a very juvenile sort of perspective.
But equally, I think it's very moving because it's just really raw and honest and sort of innocent.
And that it carries quite a sort of a big punch, you know?
Yeah. Well, and the same as the poem you wrote about Grenfell.
And I want to get to that, you know, when we when we chronologically reach it.
But I think that's it. Poetry can be very powerful.
Actually, I've got an online friend, you'd say, who's a veteran of the British military.
And poetry is his outlet.
And he's written some amazing poems on on PTSD from a soldier's perspective.
Yeah, yeah. And I don't think there's anything more powerful than if you if you are able to.
And I know it's not everyone's thing, but there is a real beauty in in trauma, which I know sounds like a bit of a fucked up thing to say.
But I really do see a real beauty in trauma if you can express it, because it can be so rewarding to get it out there and and to see it help other people.
And it's it's amazing how much your experiences can help other people, even if it doesn't change their their life in any way.
It it at the very least lets them know they're not on their own.
And quite often with PTSD, depression, you feel very alone, I find.
And if you can feel like you're not going through on your own, you can draw strength from that.
Absolutely. Some of the most downloaded episodes of this podcast aren't some of the Hollywood actors I've had on, which were amazing episodes, beautiful episodes.
But it was the firefighters and some of the other people that have been on that told their story.
Like this was when I had the gun in my mouth.
This is when I was about to get in the boat to go drown myself, whatever it was.
Those are the ones that get listened to the most, because I think people realize I'm not alone.
I'm not a pussy. You know, I should be feeling this way.
There is ways out of it as well.
I'm not doomed. But this this this is this is the cost of doing what we do.
And I agree 100 percent with you.
Seeing the trauma, we see the emotional damage of the deaths and destruction that we see.
And then the sleep deprivation, another element that people don't understand is how much that breaks down the human body, including the mind.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The sleep thing is something that's, again, so often overlooked.
I, for example, I can't sleep during the day, which.
And in London Fire Brigade, we get downtime, stand downtime from midnight until six forty in the morning.
So potentially six hours and 40 minutes of sleep.
But realistically, you won't go to your bed until probably two a.m.
Or I certainly don't. And if you get one or two shouts during the night,
you've you've you've probably had like 45 minutes broken sleep, but I then can't sleep during the day.
So I'll go back in for my second night shift.
So here we do two days as in half nine in the morning until eight p.m.
So two shifts like that. And then the next two shifts on night shifts from eight p.m. to half nine in the morning.
So after my first night shift, if I've not got much sleep, I will still be awake all of that next day.
And then I'll go in for my next night shift. And if again, it's a busy night, I'll be awake all of the next day until I go to bed that night.
So at times I could have had a few hours sleep in like a I don't know what, 56 hour period.
Yeah, exactly. And that's terrible for you long term, you know, long term health effects.
And it's terrible for you cognitively short term.
So, you know, you're driving the engine through the streets of London, which are not known for their width, you know,
and try not to kill someone and then, you know, God forbid, you are hanging off a rope or whatever and you forget to clip in your belay line or whatever it is.
I mean, one little moment can can literally cause our deaths falling off an aerial or whatever it is.
Yeah, I think it's lucky that there is just well, certainly again for me, there is just enough adrenaline in each of those situations to keep your mind sharp so far.
Crossed fingers touching wood, but that remains to be the case.
Yeah, absolutely. All right. Well, then let's get to June 14th then.
So tell me kind of, you know, your lead up to that shift and then how that unfolded for you personally.
So June 14th was our first night shift of our bank of two days and two nights.
The day itself had been just a regular day, as quite often is the case.
We went on duty at 8 p.m. It was, yeah, we did all our normal stuff and usual equipment checks.
Everything was absolutely normal and the same until we got the shout.
And I think I seem to remember getting the shout was just before midnight, I think for us or just after.
No, it's just after midnight for us. It was about quarter to one or something.
We got the shout and I remember going down to the watch room.
We've got these sort of really old fashioned dot matrix printers where the bells will go down and then the call sheet will print out a sort of real 1980s office
style and then you'll tear it off. And I remember looking at the call sheet and just having a moment where I was thinking, I can't make sense of this.
Hang on. Let's read this again. It's way, it's way off our ground.
It's make pumps 20. As far as our guidance calls, I just can't be right.
So a couple of other people came into the watch room and I saw we've got high rise fire.
Where is it? Labbroke Grove. Yeah, what we going over there for?
We're going on make pumps 20. Now, what that means is that for your listeners, there are already however many fire engines in attendance.
It could be four, it could be eight, it could be whatever.
But what they've said is it's now make pumps 20, which means we now need 20 machines in total at this incident, not 20 additional, 20 in total.
So if there's 12 there, they're basically requesting a further eight trucks. Right.
So by the time we pulled out of the station, turned right onto the main road, a call came through again from control saying this is now a make pumps 40 incident.
So before we've even got out of sight of our station, they've requested an additional 20 fire engines.
And then control came over saying there are now something like 147 fire survival guidance calls in progress.
And so again, for the listeners, a fire survival guidance call is a system set up by our control where if you phone in a fire,
they will say, are you affected by the fire in your in your flat where you are?
And if the answer is no, you'll be given, as I'm sure will come up later, the advice, stay put, which means you're not in any imminent danger.
You're not your area isn't involved in the fire. You are safer staying where you are than trying to make your way out without knowing.
Obviously, this is a telephonist on the phone at control.
They don't know what the conditions inside the building are like other than what this person is telling them.
So you can't just say, oh, well, try and rescue yourself if you can, because you could be sending that person down two floors into an inferno.
So the if you're not involved in this fire, if you're safe, your flat isn't filling up with smoke.
Just stay put. If, however, you know, it's so say you're on the ground floor or whatever and you're like, no, the fires on the 15th floor and it's safe for you to get out.
Then you can choose to leave if you want.
If, however, you phone up and say my flat is affected by the fire, I am unable to get out because of the conditions, i.e.
I open the door and smoke pours in or whatever, then a member of control will stay on the phone with you until you are either rescued or dead.
That's a fire survival guidance call. That person will give you guidance to survive that fire, you know, putting the sheets across the bottom of the door, open a window, go, you know, move into a room furthest away from the fire, whatever it is, a room where you're more easily going to be rescued and then wait for the fire brigade to turn up.
So by the time we've got to the end of our road, we now know that we are one of 28 fire engines now tearing our way towards this tower block when they were already like around eight or whatever in attendance.
And we know that 147, not people, flats are involved in fire of people saying they cannot get themselves out.
Crazy, crazy.
Yeah, it is the enormity of what we were going to just hit us like a ton of bricks. We were like, holy shit, this this is insane. This is massive. This is unbelievable.
And I don't think we really did believe it until we sort of arrived near the tower and we could see the flames from the fourth floor to the 24th floor and then up to the roof and then burnt back down the outside of the building again at a funky angle.
It almost looked like a heartbeat on an ECG machine.
And we're like, that's not right. That's not a burn pattern for a fire.
You know, you expect to see a couple of windows with flames in them with a fire inside.
This was a fire on the outside of a tower block and it was spreading rapidly.
Now, up to that point, just interject for a second, because I know for me, if I was in a very large building and actually there was one 28 story hotel right next to my last fire station, you know, concrete construction, you assume it has all the fire precautions.
As you said, we would normally go, maybe there'll be fire blowing out of one if it wasn't just, you know, the contents and hadn't even breached the window.
But at worst, probably two, like it blew out the windows of the first one, lapped up to the second one, and that's about it.
So at that kind of facility where there's thousands of people in this building, shelter in place would have been a sensible suggestion, whilst the crews could access those particular areas, extinguish the fire and make it safe for the whole building.
So from your perspective prior to that, you know, had you had any high rise fires?
And if so, what would you have seen on a normal high rise fire up to that point?
We have an entire policy based around high rise fires, which we train on regularly.
We have high rise kit bags specifically designed for implementation at a high rise fire.
So there is a list of equipment you take, which is a standard list of equipment, which gives you everything you need to make your initial attack to the fire.
You have a set of specific non-negotiable procedures which you adhere to, like setting up entry control, a floor below the two floors below the fire, moving up one floor below the fire floor, plugging in, checking your branch, making sure you got water, then going up to the fire floor through the protected stairwell and dealing with fire.
So very, very straightforward, safe system of work.
It's a brilliant framework.
It's exactly the same thing that we do.
Yeah, right.
So any high rise fires I've ever been to before, it's clockwork.
That happens, that happens, that happens.
We go in, find the fire, put the fire out.
Everybody else, flat either side of the flat that's affected, safe.
Everyone on that floor is safe.
Everyone on the floors above and below, safe.
There are no issues.
So as we said a minute ago, you're expecting to see some flames, obviously, as a high rise fire. We know it's going to be a bad one because the amount of trucks on the way.
But you don't really know what to expect until you actually arrive at the scene.
Information you get, whether it's from control or members of the public, often isn't what you're actually confronted with when you turn up.
Sometimes because circumstances have changed, a fire has progressed or diminished or whatever.
But you never really know what you're going to get until you turn up and you have eyes on it yourself.
So when we turned up and we saw this 24 story tower block with a lick of flames up to the roof and halfway back down again and moving across the building laterally as well as vertically.
We're thinking, well, we couldn't, we, I don't know what we were thinking.
We couldn't work it out. We'd never seen it before.
And I know there are lots of critics out there that would say, well, it's a fire brigade's job to know about this.
It's a fire brigade's job to know what this is.
OK, well, who else's job is it?
Maybe the people that maybe the people that built the building.
Maybe it's their job to know what they've put on it.
Maybe it's their job to know how it's going to react in a fire situation.
We are reactive. We are a reactive last chance saloon job.
We go there if everything else has gone wrong.
That's when we turn up.
We're not there at the start of that process, nor should we be.
There are jobs, specific jobs out there for reasons, and people have their roles.
And they're there, in my opinion, have been and as the inquiry has actually already shown,
multiple failings across various different agencies and government networks that resulted in a loss of life at Granville.
Yeah, so just just to preface it, because I want to I watched the documentary that the BBC did, and it was an amazing documentary.
Anyone listening, if you want to learn about this tragedy and also want to see the incredible community
when a city comes together and how ridiculous some of the political stuff we're seeing in America at the moment is, you need to watch this documentary.
But several of the residents were talking about when they refurbished this building that was built in 74,
that there were like gaps in the cladding.
So they were literally getting drafts through their window.
They said they constantly would get electric faults where like lamps would blow and things like that.
So they were the residents were having multiple issues prior to this where they had warned,
I guess, that even written about putting the school in next to the building, saying that would prevent access for the fire department.
So it wasn't like out of nowhere, this just happened.
If you know what all of these testimonies from all of these these residents is to be believed, I don't see why not.
There were many warning signs from the construction and building management element that were precursors to this disaster.
Yeah, 100 percent. I mean, my understanding, obviously, I'm not privy to the details and ins and outs of the the inquiry,
certainly for the parts that haven't happened yet.
My understanding is that there were countless communications from residents of Grenfell Tower with the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.
And TMO, the the housing authority or the contractors for them.
Complaints about the standards inside the building, complaints about not having fire doors,
complaints about electrics and all sorts of different stuff.
And my understanding, so I've been told, is that most of those complaints were never got round to or were not deemed important or I don't know what it was, but they weren't dealt with.
And again, you know, it's not a political opinion, it's just a statement of fact.
If you have a building that has defects, that aren't rectified,
that building is not going to perform the way it should do in a fire situation, a flooding situation, a power outage, whatever it is, it's not going to perform properly if it's not built correctly.
Yeah, so from a pure fire load point of view, looking at it as a firefighter, obviously things that people have in the houses are definitely part of a fire load.
But it seems like, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like in this particular incident, there was a fire on the fourth floor.
They said was from a fridge, which blows me away how you find the point of origin in that inferno.
But then it was the cladding itself that was the fire load that allowed it to run from the fourth to the 24th story.
And then, like you said, and then back down again, defying all kind of thermodynamics.
Yeah, so what basically was happening, my understanding is if you imagine you've got polystyrene squares of insulating material with this ACM metal sheet cladding sort of bonded on top,
but the polystyrene squares are smaller than the ACM cladding.
So you effectively have small chimneys where the cladding panels meet running up and down the building, top to bottom and sideways,
which meant when the fire got to the outside of the building, some of this insulating material would obviously melt and would drop down and would set light to parts of the building below it,
which is how the fire managed to spread down as well, I believe.
And on top of that, you've got chimneys effectively where the panels meet running the full height of the building.
So all of these hot fire gases and hot embers are being just shoved up exactly like a chimney.
They're going straight up and coming out the top.
So just the fire spread in all directions because anywhere the hot gases can go, as you know, fire can spread.
Yeah. And if they were feeling drafts, that means that those hot gases are then going into each of the flats and igniting those and then creating that chain reaction all the way up the tower.
Yeah.
Horrendous. All right. So then back to your arrival, then tell me about the human element.
What were you seeing as far as people, you know, just like you said, the emotional toll on the ground level when you arrived?
When you turn up to an incident, particularly one of this magnitude, the professional side of you kicks into overdrive.
So, again, as you will relate to, I'm thinking, right, what do I need to do?
Where am I going to have to go? What equipment do I need?
Remember my training. Remember policies, procedures, all of the things that I need to do, because above and beyond anything else, today, I need to be good at my job.
Today, I need to have a good day at work, because if I don't, people will die.
So my mindset is immediately on making sure that I don't fuck up, because I need to make sure that I do the best job I can for those people.
In terms of the environment around me, it's what I would describe as organized chaos.
It was so busy. People everywhere. There were people coming out of the tower. There were people being carried.
There were people being given oxygen. There were people trying to take down information.
And as you can imagine, just the information exchange alone at an instant of this magnitude is insane.
And you can't comprehend how hard it is to collate that amount of data.
And it's not just from one control center, because although we're a small place in the UK comparatively to the states,
we've got a brigade control of one of the biggest fire brigades in the world in terms of its resources, in terms of the amount of trucks and stations we have.
And we have a control center, the very state of the art, very recent, very modern, built recently.
But there are like 11 or so, I think, or 12 members of control staff there.
Now, if you remember early on, I said there was 147 or whatever fire survival guidance calls in progress.
That leaves us 135 or whatever fire survival guidance call operators short.
So our calls from our control were being farmed out to Manchester control, to West Middleton, to wherever.
So control centers, fire and rescue service control centers that aren't even affiliated with the London Fire Brigade,
and we're taking information and relaying it back to us so that we could cope with the amount of information.
This all takes time and means that you're collating data not just from one central place, you're collating data from all over the place.
And when you've got that mixed with the responsibilities over the firefighters that are there,
you're trying to locate people, you're trying to send firefighters there, you're trying to monitor
which firefighters have been in already and which ones haven't because you want to have good crew rotation because of the intense conditions inside.
It was chaos, but organomist chaos. It was chaos with a purpose.
And you throw into that mix one very narrow staircase that's full of hoes, full of firefighters,
and full of people in need of rescue, being rescued or self-rescuing.
It was a busy old work site.
Now with the communication as well, because I want to get to the shelter in place in a second,
but another element that I heard another firefighter talking about, they were doing it anonymously,
it was on another interview, was the fact the radios didn't work.
And it's funny because in my career, we had the old, I can't remember the the hurts that they were,
the moment you get in some sort of building, just like you're describing, you lose it.
Even go to the grocery store, the supermarket, and one of you has to stand by the door to make sure that it's still working.
But then we got these new and improved ones.
And still you get in the lift, you get in many, many areas of these buildings and you lose radio communication.
So how did the, from the firefighter perspective, the rescuers in the building, how effective were your radios?
My radio, I was actually wearing the comset for the first time I went in with my colleague.
And I didn't have a problem with the communications equipment working.
What I had a problem with was deciphering any kind of useful information,
because there was so much radio traffic on that one channel.
You know, normally at an incident, you've got, I'll be on the radio,
there's someone outside doing the entry control board and I'm communicating with them.
And there's, you know, they don't speak if I'm speaking, I don't speak if they're speaking.
It's very straightforward.
But in this instance, you've got multiple crews committed into a building that are all trying to radio their gauge readings,
whether they found casualties, you know, they're changing for conditions,
lots of risk critical information is trying to be passed forwards and backwards.
And the radio didn't stop.
It was hard finding a gap in the radio messages to actually send a message yourself.
Every time you try and start talking, someone else would have jumped in first.
And there was so much radio traffic going on.
If I'm to concentrate on what I'm doing, bear in mind, we're working in intense heat, zero visibility.
And we're counting flights of stairs to try and make sure we get to the correct floor
because all of the floor numbers are covered up by lighting that's been retrospectively fitted.
I haven't got, I don't have the mental capacity to deal with all of that.
Think about my policies, procedures, what we're going to do, looking after my colleagues,
looking after me, and then try and decipher the useful information out of the abundance of radio traffic that was taking place.
So I pretty much shut my ears off to my radio.
So in all honesty, I couldn't tell you whether it ever stopped working or I lost signal at any point
because I just stopped listening to it.
Gotcha. Yeah, that's another element that a lot of people don't think about.
Well, then with the shelter in place, a regular fire, like I said, it would be a very good tactic.
That was seemingly what was initially advised.
Obviously, there was a shift in tactics.
And when that was shifted, it was criticized by some governing bodies.
Your perspective, being there, boots on the floor, when were they told to shelter in place and when did that shift?
I'm not sure what time it actually changed.
I know that it did change at some point throughout the incident.
I can't remember if it was around half two or three or something like that.
I can't really remember.
But to be honest with you, again, the state policy has been really harshly criticized.
I understand why the fire brigade will be criticized.
I understand why we will be, you know, why our procedures and our policies and what the actions on the night, why they're going to be looked into.
It's right that they should be because in any situation where there is a loss of life,
you have to look at if there is anything we could have done better.
That's how you improve as a service.
And again, it's a minimum requirement for a public that you serve for them to know that if things do go wrong,
we're willing to look at our procedures and we want to look at our procedures and and make changes if changes are needed.
But on that night, I defy anybody to have been able to make the inverted commas right decision.
Because people look at things really, really simplistically.
People look at things and go, OK, well, maybe you should have evacuated sooner and then less people would have died.
And you go, OK, so how do we evacuate a tower block of people?
How do you do that with the evacuating the evacuating button in the lobby area?
Because that's not there. So how do we evacuate all of those people?
Expect a person from control to tell someone we're not coming for you, so evacuate yourself and send that person out into a fiery.
Hell of a building, you can't do that.
So the only way we can actually get around to everyone and tell them we've decided now it's best if you get out is to get to your front door.
And if we can get to your front door, you won't need to get yourself out.
We'll just take you out. Yeah. So so that's back on you.
So you had your brothers and sisters repeatedly going into the building to not only try and lock the fire down,
but in that fricking towering inferno from the outside, trying to get to all these residents.
Now, this this thing had shifted.
Does it mean it just completely changed compared to any other high rise fire to physically lead them back out again?
Yeah, exactly that, exactly that.
And and as again, as you will know, and it may be difficult for members of the public to understand,
but our hierarchy of rescue doesn't start with the people that need to be rescued.
Our hierarchy of rescue in terms of the safety of an incident is I am the most important person at that fire.
My colleague is the second most important person at that fire.
My colleagues working around us are the third most important group of people.
The people that are outside the incident not involved yet are the fourth most important group of people because we don't want them to become
involved and then right at the end are the people that we're going to rescue.
That's not to say that those people aren't our priority in terms of rescue operations.
But if I get injured because I take unnecessary risks, those people don't get rescued.
If my colleague or colleagues working around us get injured or involved in a bad way,
those people don't get rescued because I have to go to my colleagues.
If people outside that aren't involved in the fire become involved because they're getting impatient or they're emotionally charged
and they want to get in there to try and get someone or whatever and they become involved,
now we've got more people to rescue.
So we have to negate all of the other risks before we even think about the person that's actually there that needs to be rescued.
So it's a real hard, it's a real bitter pill to swallow when you're being, as I feel, we were harshly criticised.
And it's important, I guess, as well to remember that firefighters weren't being criticised.
The actions of the individual firefighters on the night is not what's been criticised by anyone, to my knowledge.
What's been criticised is the command and control of the incident and the, as the media have called it,
failure to deviate from policy early enough in order to save life.
I don't know how someone who writes for the Times knows how many lives would have been saved by devising from the policy.
But they seem to know maybe we should invite them along to educate the fire brigade.
Yeah, exactly. Absolutely. Well, then from your perspective, I'm watching the video of probably when you were around by that point,
you've got fire from 4th to 24th, you've got cladding, raining down fire on everyone below.
It looks very reminiscent of the World Trade Centre. So as a firefighter, I'm sure collapse is probably in the back of your mind.
So tell me about your personal experience when you went in and what you did in those three repeated rescue attempts.
Well, I don't want to sort of over dramatise anything, but all I can do is give you an honest account of how it felt.
And whilst the scale of what was going on is very different to that of 9-11,
I'm not the only firefighter there that had a definite 9-11 feel about the incident.
I was when I was given my initial brief for my first where my first entry to the building,
I was basically told to go somewhere that without enough equipment to keep me safe, without enough air to get me there and back out.
Considering I was going to rescue somebody, I could get there and back just about without doing anything else.
But carrying all of this extra equipment in the conditions and the heat and the smoke and the need to rescue somebody
who's on the fire survival guidance call on one of the higher floors of the tower.
I was 100% sure when I went in that I was not going to come out.
And I don't say that lightly, I was 100% sure when I went in that I was not going to come out.
And all I thought was, if that is going to happen to me, if that's if that's today, that's what's happening now,
I'm going to make damn sure I put in a good account of myself in this fire because it's not going to be for nothing.
If this goes wrong for me and for my colleague, we need to make damn sure that somebody else lives.
And that was all that was in my mind.
And then as the as the incident played out, you know, we we well, I'll tell you about the journey up the tower,
as I said earlier, there was you had when I say zero visibility, you will understand what I mean for your listeners.
If you imagine standing in a sauna in ski wear, jogging up and down on the spot whilst trying to play a game of chess
and then turning all the lights off, that's when I say zero visibility and to try and put into perspective
the conditions that you're working in like that, but hotter.
And we're carrying a 20 kilo battery in the doors.
We're carrying a 20 kilo length of rolled hose.
We're carrying a branch of the nozzle for the hose and we're carrying all of our fire gear and our BASET,
which weighs around 45 kilos in itself.
And we're walking up flight after flight after flight after flight stairs in the aforementioned conditions is taxing.
And I was, as I said, I was 100 percent sure at the time that I wasn't going to be coming out.
We got onto the stairwells, the lights that had been retrospectively fitted in the hallways covered most of the numbers on the floors.
So if you lost count of what floor you were on, the only way you could find out what floor you were on is by coming off of the protected stairwell
with no firefighting media to go onto a landing engulfed in flames to fill with the back of your hand through thick leather gloves
for door numbers, braille fashion, to then try and work out what floor you're on according to what flat you can feel.
It was just insane.
And then you'd find your way back onto the corridor, right?
We think we're on the seventh floor.
Every two flights is another floor.
So try and keep count this time you go up and then, you know, your people are coming out past you.
Firefighters is busy.
Equipment gets knocked.
I think the middle of our hose at one point had sort of spilled out.
So we're now carrying a spiral of tangled hose sort of bundled up across my arms and my colleagues arms on the way up to the fire floor.
And all of this time, we're we're acutely aware of the fact that our procedures, as said earlier, are you go two floors below the fire floor,
you set your hose in one floor below the fire floor and then you.
Only enter the fire floor when you have water that is to protect yourself from the smoke,
which is effectively petrol, it's unburnt fuel.
So that smoke, those fire gases can catch fire.
They can explode if you're in a corridor full of that gas and a flame is introduced because a door fails from a compartment fire that's going on.
Those flames can spontaneously ignite and they can incinerate.
The only way you've got protecting yourself is to gas cool, which is with your hose and your charged hose with your water and you pulse the sealings and you cool all of those fire gases down.
So they're below their auto ignition temperature.
So that if a flame is introduced, those gases are too cool to catch fire.
We are going in and out of fire floors and in the middle of a building engulfed in flames with no protection whatsoever,
because we haven't got to a fire floor yet that we need to set in at.
And we don't even know if there's water available when we get there because of a dropping pressure could be a full T dry riser.
We just don't know. It's a game of chance.
And I was 100% convinced that I wouldn't be coming back out because of all of all of that combination of factors.
See, and what blows me away is this is illustrating the worst case scenario that I talk about.
You know, I've worked for departments where they've taken their training and physical fitness very seriously.
And I've worked for some where I know damn well you had a dumpster fire.
Some of them would shit themselves just trying to get their mask on.
And it's just me being blatantly honest.
And so when I would paint the picture of this 28 story building next to us that I would constantly do drills on myself and do a full high rise trip,
just like you said, about 100 pounds of gear hanging off your body.
And I'm not the biggest of men anyway.
People would be like, oh, that'll never happen.
We'll just take the elevator. And you're describing the worst case scenario.
And when they say there's people on the top floor, there were people on the top floor.
But I can absolutely envision the searing heat that is burning through not only from the outside in,
but from the inside out, the actual exertion of your human body.
But then trying to keep your breathing low enough so you don't spend that tank.
But 24 floors via the stairs.
Again, it's terrifying just wondering if you have enough air to get back down before you suck your mask to your face.
So I can see as a fellow firefighter exactly how fucking terrifying that must have been.
Yeah, and that's exactly it.
I think people say things like, oh, you're a hero or you're so brave or whatever.
And the reality is that I was shit in my pants.
You know, I was literally I was I was terrified that I wasn't going to make it out of the building.
And the only thing that prevents me from freezing at that moment is professionalism,
is training, is my desire to make sure that that I influence that that day in a positive way, in whatever way I can.
And that sounds really dramatic, and I hate saying it because it does sound really dramatic.
But I am one of many firefighters that genuinely is willing to give my life in a fire situation if it's going to save somebody else's.
Because that's that's the point of me doing what I do.
It's not me trying to be a hero or that's the point.
That's why I joined this job, because if someone has to die, I'd rather it be me than a complete stranger.
Because that person can't save themselves.
I have the skills, the equipment and the ability to save that person, preferably, obviously, both of us get in and get out.
And it's all great. But if it goes wrong, that's OK, as long as it's gone wrong for the right reasons, if that makes any sense.
Oh, it does completely. I mean, I totally know.
None of us wake up going, I think I'm going to die today.
But that's but that is always a possibility.
And that's why it's so mind blowing when some people don't understand the magnitude of our job and the importance of training, because you might.
But like you said earlier in the conversation, it's a phrase I use a lot.
How would you feel if your family died because a rescuer hadn't trained?
This job is not for anyone other than the most driven, passionate men and women, because when the shit hits the fan, you're going to crumble if you're not ready.
And you've had your whole career to prepare.
It might have been 25 years. It might have been two days.
You might be the rookie on the fire.
So to waste any of that time is lunacy.
And that's why when we see standards lowered and fitness tests lowered, all these things and then the budgetary cuts, like we said, the ripple effect is human beings die and then families lose their loved ones.
Lineages are completely snuffed out.
Yeah. And it's one of the most heartbreaking things about Grenfell.
When you look at the list of names of the victims of the people that died in that fire, it's an entire bloodline.
It's literally the same surname after the same surname after the same surname after the same surname after the same surname.
And it's heartbreaking when you realize that there were 18 children that died in that fire.
Some of those parents survived.
Can you imagine how that must fucking feel as a parent who have made it out that to have had both of your children die in that fire?
That's you can't you can't comprehend that you can't even begin to imagine how horrendous that must feel.
And it's one of the one of the main reasons I can completely understand the overwhelming sense of anger from the community,
because it's no secret that fire was avoidable.
If Cornersburg that fire was avoidable, all of those people, those 18 children, those 72 lives in total, 72 families immediately affected,
plus the ripple that comes out of shockwaves that come out from that afterwards.
Avoidable. Absolutely. Well, I want to get on to the community and that element in a second, but just to kind of tie up your experience with the three attempts.
Were you able to actually get to people? Were you able to get some people out?
So on the first attempt, it's really heartbreaking.
It's something I've wrestled with and has been the main sort of cause of my struggles with.
I knew you said OCD then. My struggles with PTSD and depression that I sort of have fought with since.
And it was about a decision that we had to make. And this wasn't a unique decision to me.
This was a decision that many firefighters had to make on the night.
And it was a sad, just a real heartbreaking situation where we're finally on our fire floor and we're outside the flat of the person that we're there to rescue.
And our emergency whistles are going off telling us that we should already be out of the building because we're low on air.
And we're up near the top of the building with a tangled length of hose, no water and seemingly no hope.
And we managed to get my colleague found the dry riser connected up.
I then had to blind, kneeling down in the corridor that was 550 degrees Celsius.
Had to find the end of the hose and then feed it back through itself to undo the two or three knots that were in the hose.
Because as you know, if you charge hose when it's tangled, you can't use it. It's unmanageable.
So I had to untangle the hose before we even knew if we were going to have any water, before we could even think about putting this door in and rescuing this guy.
And constantly in my ear is that high pitched whistle telling me that my time is running out.
Now that's some serious pressure. And I managed to get the hose untangled.
My colleague managed to get set into the dry riser. We got the branch connected.
We turned the water on. Holy shit, we've got water. I couldn't believe it.
I really didn't think we were going to have any. And we had some.
I did a quick temperature check with the pulse spray up to the ceiling.
Water came back down, which means that it's not actually that hot.
It's, don't get me wrong, 550 degrees is hot. But as you know, ceiling temperature at fire can be in excess of a thousand.
At Grenfell, I'm sure we'll be probably approaching 1500, 2000 degrees in places because of the radiated heat from all areas.
So I was then in a position where I was confident and comfortable with the fact that we've got protection
and the flammable gases in the corridor landing area that we were in weren't about to burst into flames.
So then we have a decision to make. We've probably not got enough air to get ourselves out.
We definitely haven't got enough air to put that door in, get that guy and get all three of us out.
So we had a decision to make, which is leave the guy or try and rescue him, possibly all die, try and rescue him.
Maybe he dies on the way out anyway, because let's face it, it's a lot of flaws of searing heat, toxic smoke and flames.
He has zero protection. We can't take our mask off and put it on him.
We haven't even got air for ourselves. So we had to make a decision that we were going to leave the guy.
And that's what we did. We literally sat outside the door of a man that needed to be saved and chose not to save him.
And we left.
And that's a decision that you have to wrestle with.
And it's hard, but it was the right decision for us because I have no doubts that.
Well, I found out afterwards, thanks to a handy local newspaper printing the story without any permission, that that guy did die.
I'd actively avoided finding out because I didn't want the guilt. I didn't want to know.
But I believe that if we had tried to rescue him, there's a good chance at that point that he was probably dead anyway, in that kind of heat.
But if he wasn't, I don't see any way that we could have got him out realistically alive.
And as I said, there was a real belief that if we'd have taken him, it would have cost us our lives.
And as proved to be the case, I was alive so I could go back in another two times and help rescue other people.
Whereas if I was involved in that firefight, I died, lost consciousness, whatever, not made it out.
Every firefighter in that building at that time, their next job is come and find me and my colleague and get us out.
Everyone else in that building that needs rescue and gets abandoned for us.
So it's a real fucked up situation, but you have to choose which life you're going to value more, which life you're going to protect, which life you're going to save.
It's playing God and it's not something any human should have to do.
I can see it now, say you did breach the door, say you had a little bit more air than you actually did and you managed to make it in.
With one of the highest floors being supercharged with superheated gases,
even if there'd been some sort of magical barrier where his flat door seemed to keep the heat out,
the moment you opened it up, especially if you took him into the hallway or the stairwell, which is basically another chimney,
it would be two breaths and his lungs would be done anyway.
You beat yourself up, but you're right.
We cannot bring an unprotected human being through a raging fire and out the other side.
The only way they can survive in that situation is if you guys were actually able to knock down the fire to make it tannable to then remove the patient.
Or some magical rope rescue from the outside had there not been an inferno.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And it's a weird thing because I know that we made the right decision.
It's just really harsh that the right decision is so horrendous.
Yeah, I mean, and I think that's the thing is what I'm learning about now.
You've got PTSD, you've got the classic definition, classic symptoms, the flashbacks.
You know, they hear the loud noise and they're cowering under the table kind of thing.
But the moral injury, I think, is the other description of what we deal with.
And the huge, huge elements of those are guilt and oh, my God, that's the other one.
But anyway, so guilt is a huge one. It'll come to me in a second.
But the inability to save is what really plagues so many rescuers.
And I've been a paramedic or an EMT and a fireman for 14 years through my career.
I never saved a single cardiac arrest. I saved pre-codes.
But someone who went into arrest, I always had the person who had, you know,
emesis coming out, an unending flowing, you know, gastric contents.
Or I had the 28 year old with an aneurysm that dropped dead, you know, seemingly healthy.
Those are the ones I always had. So I can even though it wasn't in the same environment,
I had the pedestrians. I had the call after being nailed by a taxi on a road.
You know, that inability to save is just like you said,
you got the emotional element from seeing the loved ones having the heart broken in front of you.
And then you've got that. I did the training.
You said in the books that if I did this, this and this, I would save lives and I fucking didn't.
Yeah, exactly that. And an incident the size of Grenfell,
the thing I think I've struggled with the most is it isn't one life that we failed to save.
It's we failed 72 times. That's a shit ton of failure in one night.
And it's not to say that we're responsible for that or that it's our fault or that it's because of our lack of training or lack of effort or anything.
It's not. We know it's not. But nonetheless, we still failed 72 times in one night.
Yeah. Well, the other element I was talking about was shame. That was the thing.
So those guilt and shame, you know, they tie in together, you know, and we shouldn't be shamed,
but we feel it and it's a very toxic thing to have in the human body.
Yeah, it is. And I'll tell you what else it's effect.
It manifests itself in so many weird and wonderful ways.
And anytime I train now, like if I'm on a running machine or I'm out on the road doing a run and I want to stop running because my lungs hurt.
I think about that night and think.
If I had done more running before that night, if I had been fitter before that night,
not that I was unfit, but if I'd been fitter, been stronger, just been better, physically better,
could I have got that person out? Would I have had more air at the top of those stairs?
And that's where the guilt and the shame and stuff. And it's completely unwarranted.
Because, you know, if I was obese and never trained, fair enough.
But, you know, as we said earlier, I'm the best version of me and I strive to become better each day
from a physical perspective and from a mental health perspective now as well.
So everything I do now is in terms of training will revert back to moments like those,
not just Grenfell, but any other situation where I will question, did I do enough?
Could I have done more? And I think what makes if I am allowed to arrogantly say what makes me a good firefighter,
what makes me good at my job is because I will always question that. I will always question myself.
Enough is never enough. More is what's needed every single step of the way.
And that means that when you do face a perceived failure, as you said, it hurts so much more.
Yeah. And I think that's the other element.
You know, we train so hard because the good firefighters, good police officers can see I have to train hard because lives depend on me.
But I think the ones again that are faltering a little bit, find yourself in exactly the same position that you did.
But like you said, imagine you're the obese firefighter that only made up five floors and then just turn around and left again.
How would you feel? How would you be able to deal with the mental trauma knowing that those people died?
Where you didn't realize that when you got to the top floor, it was actually too hot anyway and the person wouldn't have made it.
But you didn't even have a chance to get up there because you didn't take your job seriously.
How is that going to haunt you? So that should be another motivating thing.
If you know you've done as much as you possibly can, then at least you can fall back and kind of refute some of that negative self-talk and say,
look, there is nothing more I could have done.
I did my best and it's awful, but I did my best.
But if you haven't got that as a buffer, then you're going to be even more emotionally torn.
Yeah. And I think that's been one of my saving graces really for me, knowing that I was the right person for the job.
And it was circumstances that meant I couldn't achieve my objective and save that person particularly.
It wasn't my...
What's the word? It wasn't my inadequacies. It wasn't my shortfalls, my shortcomings.
It wasn't anything about me. It was just a real, real shit situation.
Yeah, exactly. What I want to talk about is, because I'm sure this was simultaneous,
what I saw from the documentary was the incredible banding together of the community,
seemingly in support of you guys on the ground and also for each other.
So tell me about the diversity of men and women that lived in Grenfell and then what you saw as far as all those residents
and the neighbours banding together to help mitigate that situation.
Well, I'll tell you what I would urge your listeners to do is jump on YouTube and listen to Bridge Over Troubled Water for the Grenfell survivors.
It was a load of British artists, there might have been a few American singers in there as well.
And they basically re-recorded a version of a bridge over troubled water.
And it's an absolutely beautiful song. I mean, obviously, I'm a bit biased towards it because it's something that it's like,
as you will probably understand, one of my go-to miserable night songs when I want to wallow in self-pity a little bit when I'm struggling,
I would describe it as hauntingly beautiful. But what's really nice is halfway through the song, it sort of changes from melancholy to...
It shows real footage from the night of the firefighters and of the community.
And it highlights beautifully the diversity in Labbroke Grove and the way the community comes together.
You know, the streets were just... from as soon as the sun was up and people realized what was happening,
all of the side roads were chock-a-block with people that were bringing clothing down, that were bringing food down,
that were churches, mosques, synagogues, everything was opening up together, everyone is welcome.
There were no divisions through race or religion anymore. It was just a humanitarian rescue mission.
And it was absolutely stunning. It was emotional thinking about it. It was one of the most beautiful things to see.
When it's got this towering graveyard in the background still smoking and the community around it,
like... I don't know, I was going to say like worker ants, but it sounds really derogatory, but I don't mean it in that way.
I mean the way they work. Everyone swarmed together and everyone just did everything and anything they could.
You know, whether it's turn up with a Mars bar to give to someone or, you know, people were hugging each other in the streets,
strangers, and they were consoling each other and they were being there to support each other.
It's everything that you want from a community. And it's one of the biggest things I would say that is overlooked from the upper classes.
Upper classes, there seems to be this inherent belief of superiority.
There seems to be this inherent belief that they've got the system that works. It's bullshit.
You go to an estate in London and see the community there. When the chips are down,
a community like the one in Lagbrook Grove comes together like nothing you have ever seen before.
They are real people that have an ability to comfort each other in the most traumatic of situations.
And everything else goes out the window. As I said, the colour, the religion, you know, who lives where.
No one gives a shit. Everyone was there to support each other and help each other on their worst days of their lives.
Everybody that day was an emergency service worker. Everybody.
Yeah. And that's what I saw. And what's really sad is this was happening amidst an absence of leadership from the council itself.
So, yeah, the documentary kind of starts unraveling it. But at the moment, if the community hadn't banded together,
there basically would have been very few people there apart from the actual emergency responders that were trying to put the fire out.
So, the power, like you said, of the unity that I saw and the incredible pride I had in the British,
the same way as when you saw the London bombings. It's the same thing.
My England, my Britain, and I include Ireland in whatever label that we could call all four islands,
because let's face it, we're two rocks that live right next to each other. We all share all the same DNA.
But my home is diverse. Like I always tell people, look at the opening scene of Love Actually when they're in Heathrow Airport.
I remember sitting in Heathrow Airport going on holiday and being just enamored by all the different African dresses and the East Indian robes.
And that's my people. That's what England looks like.
And so to see, like you said, the Christians and the Muslims and the Jews and the Buddhists and the Hindus and everyone
that were just seeing each other as brothers and sisters and doing whatever they could, opening their doors
and mitigating the emotional turmoil these poor people were going through was so beautiful.
To see such beauty, like you said, in the shadows of such tragedy.
Yeah. And it's lovely that that has continued on as well. It wasn't just for that day or that week.
It's continued on. It is that community there now is a fiercely protective community.
If you go down to Labbert Grove Estates now with a camera and start filming anywhere around there,
you will be accosted by somebody and they will demand to know who you are, why you're there.
It's not a tourist destination. It is a symbol of a divisive and classist society.
And also subsequent to the fire, it's a symbol of hope and a demonstration of how people can come together
and do come together when they need to. Yeah. I mean, it was beautiful. Again, I urge people
to watch that documentary. It was such a human look at it. So just going to wrap it up, the
operational focus, I guess. How long did it take to finally put the fire out completely?
And then what tactics did you use? Or was it just basically protecting exposures and letting it burn itself out?
It was pretty much the latter, to be honest with you. Yeah. There was still fire in the building
when we finally left at midday of the following day. And we'd worked right through the night
and into the next shift. We eventually left. We went off duty about 4 p.m. that day. I don't
think the fire was out until the following afternoon. So it was like a good sort of 48
hours before it was finally declared all fire out. It was a weird one because we went off duty at 4 p.m.
and we were back on duty at 8 p.m. It's a really surreal sort of thing to do because, again,
people don't realize that. People think, oh, so what did you do after the fire? Like you went off
at 4 p.m. and you started at 8 p.m. the previous day. It's 20 hours of work straight through. Yeah,
yeah, yeah. What did you do then? I went back on duty four hours later. Could you not take the night
off? 200 firefighters cannot take the night off. It's a mad one. And the next night was just back
to a normal night at work. It's such a weird job, as you can attest to. It's such a strange job
when you've been to something as huge as that and then the next day is just a normal night. You might
have been a light or a kid with an arm stuck down the back of a radiator or something and you're
just sort of there still a bit dazed from the previous 20 hours of work thinking, the fuck's
going on? Yeah, well, exactly. I mean, you've got to process it. Just before we get to the kind of
the mental toll within your department, I just want to touch on one more thing with the community.
Obviously, the response was horrendous. They film. I mean, they show the lack of support from the
council, the complete exodus of the hierarchy and then naming new seemingly disjointed people to
step in their place. But one of the most beautiful things I saw, and I think they repeated it like
six months after, was what they call the silent walk. So in the face of all the horrendous
bullshit we're seeing here with the looting and the rioting, the men, women and children
in either from Grenfell or from the surrounding areas of people there in support, marched through
silently, didn't say a word. And I saw there was one thing where they were hugging the firefighters
and giving you guys love as they're walking by. But were you present? And if not, I'm sure you saw
on TV. How was that received in England? Because to me, in stark contrast to the mindless violence
we see with the protests here, that seemed like such a powerful statement of unity with the people
that were present. So the silent marches take place every month, the 14th of every month,
and have done every single month since the night of the fire. So they've been going on for three
years without fail. Obviously, during the COVID situation, over the last few months, they have
been remote now. So they'll do a memorial service on the 14th of each month that you can, that anyone
can sort of tune into on through Facebook or Zoom, it might be on Zoom as well, I'm not sure.
And you can listen in on the memorials. But I've been to not all of the silent marches,
but I've been to a hell of a lot of them. And they are jaw dropping, jaw dropping, jaw droppingly
emotional. They are, it's such a powerful thing. And it makes you realize when you're in a crowd
of about 1000, 2000 people, and you're doing like a two mile walk that takes an hour and a half in
utter silence. And you look around at all of the different faces from all the different walks of
life, again, different colors, religions, backgrounds, like everything. And you realize that
this isn't just about Grenfell, this is about an apathetic government sacrifice in humans that they
devalued a long time ago. And something like this, there is a huge amount of noise in silence,
when it is put together like that, a huge amount of noise in silence. And when you're them, just
slowly walking along, it gives you a real good opportunity to study people to look at their faces.
And you can see the pain in people's faces. And these aren't necessarily just people that have
lost people at Grenfell. These could be people, you know, people come to these marches from all
over the country, because they're there for their own reasons in support of a common cause, which is
we are not sacrificial lambs. We are not, we are not here to pay taxes, to be undervalued,
underrepresented, and just thrown to the wolves. And we aren't going to put up with it anymore.
And as a firefighter, to be able to go down there and to proudly wear my tunic, so everyone knows
that I'm a firefighter, because not because I want any sort of accolade or anything, you know,
you know, from the people that are down there. But because as firefighters, we want them to know that
we leave incidents, but incidents don't leave us. We do not pack up our shit at the end of a fire
and go home and never think about these people ever again. We're going back month after month
after month to demonstrate that we have not forgotten the people of Grenfell. We have not
forgotten the people of Ladbroke Grove. We have not forgotten the people full stop. We will be there
as firefighters in our own time to support a cause that everybody should be a part of.
Yeah, which goes back to what you said, that's why we do what we do, you know, and it's the value of
human life. And then I think you hit the nail on the head earlier too, something I talk about.
If a meteor hits planet Earth and people die, there's nothing we could have done about that.
But it's the preventable deaths that infuriate me, whether it's our own men and women dying from,
you know, causes of carcinogens from smoke or sleep deprivation or whatever it is,
or like you said, you know, whatever happened that allowed that crane to fall and kill that
poor lady, whatever happened to create an environment where Grenfell, you know,
turn into an inferno, whatever happened that allowed those terrorists to kill all the Londoners.
I mean, these are the things where you can put some things down to an accident, you know, a true,
you know, angry mother Earth kind of event, whether it's an earthquake or a hurricane or tornado,
or some of the storms that we see in the UK, there's some things that we can't prevent,
but there are so many that we can. And when people die in a preventable tragedy,
it is un fucking acceptable. Yeah, I agree. And to use your analogy, the,
you know, the meteor flying down towards Earth and it's going to kill millions of people,
there's nothing you can do about that. But if there are a load of people sitting in an office
going, Oh, look, that meteor is going to hit planet Earth. How much will it cost to blow it
up before it arrives? It's going to cost this much. Where's it going to land? We'll let that happen.
And that sadly is how I view the governments of the world. And that's what needs to change.
Yeah, I agree 100%. I think that if you look at, you know, racism and go back to slavery,
it's not about, you know, the skin color. It's about a few people made a shitload of money off
the backs of human beings. They could have been black, they could have been white, they could have
been, you know, whatever purple, but they didn't care about what color these people were. They care
that they would work their land for free, so they could reap the benefits. You know, like you said,
with the religion, the same thing, there are some people in the tops of some, you know, maybe
mid row, mid middle of the line religions, maybe fundamentalist extremist groups. It's not about
race. It's not about, you know, the doctrine of the holy book. Ultimately, it's that they get power
and they get money from their terror or whatever it is that, you know, they benefit from.
Yeah, I mean, I agree in part of what you're saying. I think that you're right in terms of
it's all about money and power and control. I think the way in which people are chosen to be
the vehicles for that is where the racism comes in. I think there was an inherent belief that is
systemic amongst white people. And for your listeners, I am white as I say this, just so
everyone knows. There is an inherent belief that, certainly historically, that white people are
better than black people, that Europeans were better than Africans by physicality, by cognitive
response in every sense of the word better. We believed they were beneath us. And so we saw them
as an easy body of people to control. We had weapons. They were more primitive with their
weapons. We could arrive with guns. They'd have bows and arrows for the American Indians to take
it to the state side. America wasn't discovered. It was already being lived in by millions of people.
And it's that attitude that causes the problems, I think. We shouldn't be talking about who
discovered America. No one discovered America. Yeah, who was the first white person to arrive
there? There's a valid question. But that person didn't discover a country that was already being
lived in any more than I'm not proud of the British Empire because the British Empire was born from
slavery, oppression, murder, pillage, rape, you know, all of the worst things that are out there.
So I'm proud to be me, but I'm not proud to be a part of an empire that is inherently oppressive.
So, but yeah, your point about the money and power and the reasons behind it are 100% correct.
Yeah, and just attack onto that. I agree. And then you go further back. Look at,
people refer to us as like, you know, the white race, Aryan, whatever. And they're like, well,
have you seen British history prior to when we were going around, you know, raping and murdering and
all the other things that we did to control two thirds of the world at one point? We were getting
raped and pillaged by the Romans, the Danes, the Vikings, the Gauls. So, you know, again,
it's still money empowered, still these people wanting to have all of the shit. I want to have
all of it. I want to farm for the entire country. I don't want small farmers to have their own
income. I want to make all the food for all the people so I can have all the money. You know,
I want to make all the drugs for all the sick people so I can have all the money. And that's it.
It's what we see over and over again. And what you and I do and so many people listening to the show
is the polar opposite. Ultimately, we all have our own little selfishness and personality defects.
But ultimately, we put other people's lives and happiness ahead of ours, not our families,
but ahead of ours. And that philosophy needs to be understood, I think, by a lot of other people.
And if we stand like the men and women and children of the Silent March and just unify and
tell these people, no, enough is enough. You're going to start putting, you know, the infrastructure
that we need to protect our communities in place. We will force change. But if we view
prime ministers, presidents, whatever, as the puppet masters of our country, we've got it
completely backwards. And I'm not some anti-figurehead, anti-government person,
but we have come to the point where they think we work for them. They are employees. If you pay tax,
that's your employee. So we need to kind of refocus that and realize that we are the nations of the
world and these people work for us. Yeah, indeed. And I think the Prime Minister of New Zealand,
I can't remember her name now, embarrassingly, but she is testament to everything you've just said.
She is an incredible figurehead. If anyone listening to the podcast doesn't know anything
about her, just jump on Google and have a look at how she has led New Zealand through this pandemic
and contrast that with President Trump or with Prime Minister Johnson over here.
And, you know, she's got, she's in her first time in charge, she's gone through a huge earthquake,
which killed loads of people, a terrorist attack at the mosque, which killed loads of people,
a pandemic. And I think New Zealand, and admittedly, you know, they are a big expancer
land and they've got a very small population, which I appreciate and understand does make it
easier to avoid the spread of a virus. But equally, I think they've had two deaths.
Now, if you just let that sink in two deaths, they shut the country down at the expense of the
economy to prevent loss of life. That is a leader. That is someone I want in charge of my country.
Someone who actually values human life. Because as soon as you put value, the correct value,
on human life, everything else sorts itself out.
Yeah. Well, the other thing as well is, I'm sure if you look at the health of a lot of New Zealanders,
I mean, I've been there, it's a beautiful place and they seem to value nutrition, you know,
farming practices, all those things. I'm sure it's a very resilient group of men and women as well,
you know, and that's the element of this COVID thing that people don't like to talk about.
If you have a sick nation, a malnourished, overfed nation that we have here in the US,
you are going to have a lot more deaths. So this COVID is also a reflection of how well you've
taken care of your people. Yeah, indeed. 100%. 100%.
Her name is Jacinda Ardern. I just Googled it. Yeah. Thank you. Brilliant. Yes. All right.
Any list? Yes, absolutely. Okay. Well then, so the fire is out. Obviously the community is reeling.
I know there's the awful tragedies where, you know, literally it's, as you said, a giant graveyard
now. They're having to sift through the debris to find, you know, body parts to identify. I know the
Islamic men and women in their faith, I think they, when someone passes, they bury them immediately.
So they're not able to do that. So there's all this turmoil there in the community, but within
the London Fire Brigade, all your men and women that were fighting, and then your own journey,
tell me about, you know, the ripple effect mentally of that event. And then not just that event,
of your career and leading up to that event from there onwards.
So to go back to the analogy I used earlier with the jug under the running tap,
Grenfell was the equivalent of that jug being chopped in half and the tap being turned on full.
I just, it just broke me, just absolutely broke me in half. And I didn't even realize it. The
scary thing looking back on it now, I get emotional thinking about it because
I have very vivid memories of how I felt at the time. Not so much memories of what was going on.
That's one thing, but when I remember what was going on, I revisit those actual feelings.
And because I'm in a much better place now, the fear that watches over me of ever feeling
how I did back then is horrendous. I'm petrified to ever ask myself,
how did I ever go back to that place? Because much like many people that have suffered with PTSD or
depression, or both as they quite often, I believe, go hand in hand, I became at one point,
I embarrassed to say I became suicidal. Thankfully I had enough support and enough love around me
that I never actually tried to commit suicide. But without one and the same reason,
I didn't want to try to commit suicide, but without wanting to sort of undermine my point too much.
That doesn't mean that it wasn't a real thought. It doesn't mean that it wasn't a genuine
moment where I was sitting on the floor in my front room. I was at home alone. It was the daytime.
I was drunk and I was sitting on the floor in my front room. I don't even, I can't even tell you
much. I think I must've got up to go and walk into the garden or to get a drink of water or whatever.
And I just stopped and I sat down on the floor and I burst into tears and I sat there and cried for
about four hours. I just couldn't stop. And that's the first time when I thought, if this is how the
rest of my life is going to feel, then I cannot live the rest of my life. I cannot feel this sad.
I was sad to my core. It's like my blood had been drained out and had been replaced with sadness.
And I know sad is quite a juvenile sort of word to use, but if anyone's ever, well, everyone's felt
sadness at times, I'm sure. And if you imagine that sadness isn't fleeting, that sadness is there
when you smile, when you speak to your three year old son, when you tell your girlfriend you love
her, when you go to the shops, when it's sunny outside, when it's raining outside, it doesn't
change. You go to sleep feeling sad. You wake up in a night feeling sad. Sometimes I wake up in a
night and I'd go for a wee and I would cry on my way to the toilet. It was fucking horrendous.
It was just horrendous. And in that moment on the floor, I just thought, do you know what?
I'm done. I can't live like this. I can't continue to feel this way. And then I thought
about killing myself. And immediately, and thank God, immediately this wash of what the fuck are
you doing, Rick? What are you even thinking about? This panic sort of dragged me immediately away
from that place. And that was the moment when I think my mind just went, no, this, you need help.
Something isn't right. You are broken and you need to be fixed. And the mind is no different to
anything else. It's no different. If you broke your leg, no one would say, walk it off, get yourself
down the gym. That'll make your leg feel better. It's exactly the same with your mind. If your mind
breaks, it needs to be fixed and it doesn't fix itself. It doesn't just repair after six weeks,
like a bone. You need to do the right things, take the right steps, make the right changes and
adjustments in your life. And you need to give yourself a bit of a fucking break. You need to
stop beating yourself up. The world is there to kick you down. You don't need to kick yourself
down as well. And as I said, I was very lucky to have people around me that I could phone up
and get support from. I mean, in the months after Grenfell, I, Nion became an alcoholic. I was using
drugs a lot, taking cocaine. At one point, things were bad enough that I would have an open can of
beer in my car on my way to a night shift. And I would turn up to work having drunk a can of beer
on the way there. And although those moments were fleeting, again, that's, they're moments when you
think everything that I've, I'm such a hypocrite, everything that I've said about being the best
version of me, about being ready for any eventuality, about owing it to Londoners to be good at my job,
because they pay me to be good at my fucking job. And I'm turning up to work, you know, with having
having neck to can of beer on the way in because I'm feeling a bit, you know, because I'm being
pathetic. I'm broken. And I'm being pathetic. And I need to have a fix myself or I need to take some
fucking time off so that I can fix myself. And thankfully for me, the fire brigade in London
have an incredible counseling and well-being service. And I had an, just an amazing lifesaver
of a counselor that I could go to sometimes during work hours, if that was the only time I could get
an appointment. And I'd go and I'd unload. And he helped give me a few minutes to go to the
doctor. He gave me a new perspective on things. He helped me make changes to my life. And also I went
to my GP and I did something I never thought I'd do and I didn't ever want to do. And that was take
a prescription for antidepressants. And I've always had, my mom suffered with depression a whole life
and I've had a really negative perspective of medicating depression, PTSD and things like that,
because I don't see it as a fix. I don't see it as a solution for the problem. I see it as a mask
and a cover for the problem. And as soon as you stop taking those tablets, all those problems,
that broken mind that was there before is still there now. But all you've done is numb the pain.
And you've dealt with it. But the analogy that I used and have used speaking to anyone since has
been that I felt like in my mindset, I felt like I was in a room with no doors and no windows.
And it was a dark room of miserable depression. And there was a skylight in the ceiling that was
open, but it was out of reach. No matter how high I jump and no matter how hard I push off the floor,
walls, whatever, it doesn't matter. I cannot reach that hatch to climb out of that room of depression.
And taking antidepressants was the equivalent of someone lowering a stool into that room for me.
So I could climb up onto that stool. And that was the extra height I needed for me to get my
fingertips on the sill of that skylight. And although I knew it was still going to be fucking
hard work to pull myself up out of that room, at least I could see the light and at least I had my
hands on that sill. At least I knew there was a way I could get out of that room. And thankfully,
the combination of counselling, antidepressants, which I took for about, I think I came off them
myself after about three months. And the support of friends, family members, girlfriend,
and all of those things meant that I'm still recovering now. I think I will always be recovering
to a point without wanting to sound defeatist, but I am able now to have these conversations without
bawling my eyes out. I will be able to have this conversation with you today without immediately
needing to go to the fridge and drink six cans of beer and drown my sorrows. And that's progress.
And that's all you can expect, progress. I'm able to go to work without being drunk. I'm able to
not take cocaine to enjoy myself or to release myself from a depressive state. I'm able to enjoy
my life, enjoy the company of my son without anything else going on. And I'm able to,
that jug under that tap is fixed again. And I've got it on a nice tilt and I'm able to cope with
that. And I'm able to stem the flow of the water from the tap. And I'm able to tilt my jug a bit
more every now and then if I need to. I'm in control and the healing process will be long,
but the healing process is happening. Well, I mean, firstly, that's such a courageous,
lead through what you went through. And you started with, I'm embarrassed to say, the suicide.
I heard this over and over again. I mean, there's no better way of describing it. The brain is broken
at that point. And I've had people that literally have had the gun in their mouth. One of them,
it didn't go off for whatever miraculous reason. Other ones, people stopped him right before they
were about to get in a boat and go drown themselves. But it was the consistent thing over and over and
over again. People are like, oh, it's the cowardly way out. No, in that moment in time, these people
believe that they were a burden to their family because they were always sad. Because whatever
it was that the family would be better off without them. And the reality is obviously the polar
opposite. You leave the trauma with the family, you amplify it. But that's how skewed the mind is at
that point. And the analogy I use with that is when we stand on a tall building and we get near the
edge, there's that invisible hand pushing you back going, oh, easy, easy. But when you get to that
point where your brain is broken, that hand is almost behind you now pushing you the opposite way.
So, I'm so glad that you had that realization within your brain. Your brain's
survival mechanism did kick in. And then it's great to hear that you use medication as
a stepping stool into then getting counseling. Because earlier we talked about demonizing some
drugs. I believe that completely. I think that psychiatric meds are completely over prescribed,
but they do have value in some circumstances. And if it gives you the ability to get down some of
those walls so you can then really be honest in your counseling, then they're a great tool as long
as you can come off them. Yeah, exactly.
And that's the thing I didn't understand. And funnily enough to my counselor, the first
session I had back with my counselor after I'd started taking the antidepressants, I was really
sheepish about telling him because he's a counselor, not a doctor. And I assumed he would be very
anti meds. But I was quite surprised. He smiled and he said, good. He said, I'm glad you're
doing it. He said, there is a lot to be said about a combination of treatments when your mind is
broken. And he said, obviously, I couldn't in his position, he wasn't able to tell me speak to your
GP, go and get some tablets, because he's not a doctor. And that's out of his remit. You know,
he's not allowed to sit there and say that. But I could see that he was pleased and I would say
relieved that I'd arrived at that decision myself. And he was very, very happy about it.
And he was even happier to hear my analogy about the step stool and stuff. And he said, yeah,
he said, that's exactly what it should be. It shouldn't be a solution to the problem. It should
be a way of finding the solution. Yeah, absolutely. And then the other thing with the addiction,
like I said, I had an analogy for that. My very short story, very long story short, the analogy
is say you have a bucket and you need it full to feel well. So, you know, your three year old son
finds joy in playing and, you know, sleeps well, his bucket is full. Well, you take childhood
trauma and you start plugging holes into the bucket. Then you have Grenfell, you stick a giant
hole in the bucket. So now that feeling of loss in the bucket, you start throwing whatever can be
in. So it could be cocaine or opiates or alcohol or gambling or infidelity, you know. So it's the
same kind of thing, but in reverse with addiction. And I think that us leaning on substances,
especially alcohol in the first responder community is one of the elephants in the room.
And I think it's important to hear people like you be so blatantly and courageously honest about
that because there will be so many people listening going, I see that in myself. I do come home and
then crack open, you know, a bunch of beers or, you know, take my pain meds more often than I'm
supposed to, whatever it is. And that should be a giant red flag for any of us to say, I need to
find positive coping mechanisms. I need to talk to people. I need to get outside. I need to spend
time with my family. All these things that I learned from other people are the right way of
dealing with it because the more I bury it down, the more it's going to grow into a catastrophe.
It's going to explode at some point. Yeah, definitely. And on the alcohol front as well,
I think it's because it is a prevalent problem. Alcohol abuse is prevalent in the emergency
responders arena 100%. And I think part of it, and I know I've certainly been guilty of this,
so it's worth bringing up because we work shifts. We don't really have, you know, when you're at
school, if you remember back, like you had that buzz on a Friday afternoon because it's the weekend
and then on Sunday afternoon, you'd have that slight sort of depression would creep in because,
you know, you're going back to school on Monday and you had these definitive sort of set
timeframes that would sort of like govern your emotions a little bit. But when you become a
shift worker, that goes. I don't have a Friday night anymore. I don't have a Monday morning.
I don't have a Sunday afternoon. I just have a work day or not a work day. And what that means
is it makes it really easy for me to come off a night shift on a Wednesday, go home, be in by 10
a.m. and decide I'm going to crack open a bottle of vodka and get drunk. Because it's my Friday
night. Technically, I'm off shift. I finished for four days. So it doesn't matter. This is my Friday
night and you can justify it to yourself. But the reality is, if you leave work and have an inherent
need to go home and drink alcohol, I'm not saying that you can't enjoy alcohol, but if you have an
inherent need to do that, that, as you said, that is a red flag. That is a problem that you need to
work out. You need to at the very least, you need to understand it. So you're making that decision
for the right reasons and not lying to yourself about the reasons you're doing it. Friday nights
aren't there because that's our time for getting drunk. That's just what we have become accustomed
to over years of working Monday to Friday, nine to five jobs. So when that changes,
you know, if you were at work at 4 p.m. and going, I just can't wait to get home and open a bottle of
vodka, someone would probably say, really? Like, fair enough, have a cup of drinks in the evening
or whatever. But are you at work and you're like, you're desperate to get home to open a bottle of
vodka? That's probably a problem. It shouldn't be any different for us. Just Wednesday mornings
are not the ones for vodka. No, no. And I had a less extreme experience, but what I did when I was
on shift, I was on shift. I'd never got to the point where I felt like I needed a drink during
the daytime and definitely not before a shift. However, when I came off that next day, especially
by the evening time, well, I need to unwind. It's an easy unwind. I need to sleep tonight.
So you drink. Now, actually, that destroys your sleep. It's a polar opposite. You know,
then I retired a couple of years ago. Now, every day is a day off. I mean, it's not. I'm doing this
and there's always other things. But from the fire service, I'm not putting the uniform on. I'm not
having to go to a station and live there for 24 hours. So I found myself drinking every day. And
again, it wasn't ever to get drunk. It wasn't. But it was the frequency. So that's another thing
that I had to really look in the mirror myself. It's like when I add up these two or three every
night over a week, that's a shitload of alcohol. And that's night after night after night of not
sleeping. So it can be in many different forms. We have to identify, you know, if we're a binge
drinker, if we're, like I said, a frequent drinker, like I was, I'll say was because I've managed to
taper it back a lot now. Or like you said, near crisis when you're actually drinking on the way
to work, that's when you need to reach out and not have that guilt and shame. Understand there are
underlying reasons that this job sets us up for failure in some areas. So, and also know that
you're not alone. All those people you look around in the station that you think they're all doing
fine. I promise you they're not. So reach out for help. Yeah. And in that respect, again, I'm very,
very lucky because I'm quite an open person. My sort of tagline when I explain to people is that
there is strength in vulnerability as far as I'm concerned. So I'm going to open myself up and I'm
going to spill my heart out. And in the right time, I'm not going to do it during movie night
or anything, but at the right times when the conversations are there, I'm not going to keep
all of my shit locked away and put walls up and stuff. I'm going to give you everything that you
need to shoot me down if that's what you want to do. And what that actually does is give me a huge
amount of strength because I'm presenting myself in my most vulnerable state and offering you an
opportunity to be kind. And if you choose not to, I can take great satisfaction in knowing immediately
you're not someone that's going to contribute something positive to my life. I don't need you
in it. And it's a very quick, simple way of cutting out negativity and people that aren't
going to be around you. And my watch know me like that. And not solely as a result of me, obviously,
but there were a few of us like that. And what it's meant is as a watch, as a whole at my station,
we all are very open about things. We'll all come in and we'll say, I've had a bit of a rough day,
what's been going on? I mean, granddad this or whatever it is, and we'll talk. And there won't be,
it's like an unspoken rule that, as you know, the piss taking and the banter and the mocking
and all that stuff, the cussing at fire stations is there as far as I'm aware, world over. It doesn't
really change that much. But the one thing that we have at my watch and at my station, certainly,
is if someone opens up to you, that's the time when you shut the fuck up and you listen and you
support them. You don't mock that you have to have an environment in which you know you can open up
and it's a safe environment. And you're not going to be judged for it. You're not going to be mocked
for it. You're going to be supported. And my watch are amazing at that. And I know that I am very,
very lucky to have that. I have the same support from my family as well. Brilliant. Well, the other
thing of the vulnerability, and I agree 100%. I think that that's when we talk about brotherhood
and sisterhood. That's what it's about. Of course, you should be dropping buckets of water on each
other in the back of the engine bay and all that stuff. That's what firehouse humor is. But yeah,
when you see someone's hurt and we're all guilty before we kind of became really aware of the
mental health thing, I think we all look back and go, oh shit, when I was messing with person X,
they were probably actually hurting. And I feel like a bit of a dick doing that now.
But when you're vulnerable, you open the door then. It's an invitation to other people to say,
I'm hurting too. And I've heard this from so many people. When they've come on the show and they've
told their story, then people come out of the woodwork in their department like, dude, I heard
you talk about what happened. Can I have a word? I'm going through this. So that's the other thing
is you become a beacon for other people and not in an egotistical way. You just do. You just
do. You've put yourself out there with the courage of being vulnerable, which now has opened the door
for other people to reach out and say, I'm hurting too. Yeah, exactly. And I did, I know we touched
on it briefly earlier, but with the poetry thing that I found the same with that as well. When
after I wrote this, the poem about how I felt about Grenfell, the brigade contacted me and asked
to publish it in their sort of London Fire Brigade magazine. That's then I know at that point then
that is going to go on the, on the intranet and every single firefighter at every fire station in
London is going to know that I write poems. And as a quite a masculine sort of bald headed boxing,
football playing firefighter, that's a bit of a risk. You're opening yourself up to a lot of banter.
And I was overwhelmed with the support that I got from firefighters all over London, sending
messages saying, you know, that each person would relate to a different part of the poem
in a different way and would pick parts out and say, oh, I really relate to this bit. Thanks so
much. I couldn't find the words to explain how I felt about this. And this sums it up perfectly.
Thank you. And, you know, and again, not in a narcissistic way, but I was really proud that,
and I remain really proud that something that I've written, there is nothing but
my emotions and my emotional state at the time. And it just a true account of how I was feeling.
It's not clever. It's not, you know, anything I've gone to university for. It's not boastful.
It's just raw and, and full of feeling and to know that that has helped people across the services.
I know it's for police officers and paramedics have related to it as well.
It's something I'm really proud of to have, as you said, to positively affect people and help
other people come forwards and discuss things that maybe they were afraid to discuss before.
Absolutely. And like you said, vulnerability is strength. There's no question. So people want to
view themselves, you know, I think that's what's so crazy as well. I look at us like Yin and Yang,
you know, you are this, this tough physical firefighter, police officer, whatever.
But the reason you joined is your soft side, your empath side. So, you know, you have to have both.
So that has to apply in the station as well. You know, we can, we can haze the shit out of
each other and it's hilarious. But when, when the time is right, we also have to pull that,
you know, that compassionate side that we show complete strangers and use it to each other as
well. If someone's just, you know, got a child that's terminally ill, that's just found out
their wife's cheating or husband's cheating or whatever it is. And I've been through the second
example. You know, you've got to realize that it's time to shift gears from, you know, station clown
to friend. That's it. Exactly. And it's really important to know when that shift needs to take
place. And if you can, you can hit that magic combination of, of a bit of clown and a bit of
emotional support in the same conversation, then, you know, that, that for me is the holy grail.
If someone can, can empathize, sympathize with me and make me laugh at the same time, then,
you know, that's a win. Absolutely. Well, hey, it's been over two and a half hours. I said it was
going to be an hour and a half, but you know, I think this, no, no, no, it's no, don't apologize
at all. I think it's, it's the beautiful thing about this, as long as both people have time,
you know, this needs to go as long as it takes to tell the story. And I think that, you know,
we honor the people that responded to the fire. We honor people that were lost in the fire and
the families of, you know, everyone else involved to tell the story properly. And, you know, your
story is so powerful. I'm so glad I got to hear it. So if people want to reach out to you, what's
the best way to find you online or, you know, any other medium? So my pseudonym for online purposes
is Rocky McChopChop, which is a weird family thing. So if anyone wants to find me, I'm on Facebook,
Rocky McChopChop, and I'm on Instagram, same name. And if you want to look, take a look at the
three minute short film based on the poem I wrote following the fire at Grenfell, if you go on
Google and type in Grenfell Voices, the firefighter, that should bring it up there. Brilliant. Well,
I want to thank you, you know, so much. I mean, it takes a lot of courage to tell a story like
this, especially, you know, detailing what it was like trying to facilitate rescues and, you know,
the feeling, the crushing feeling of the inability to save and then your journey out of that. And,
you know, there's so much value that I know is going to resonate with so many people that listen
to this. And, you know, I just I'm always in awe of the courage of people that tell the story and,
you know, you're no different. So thank you so much for taking time away from your family to
tell your story and I hope it's going to have a ripple effect around the world.
Yeah, and thank you as well for providing a platform for it to happen because, you know,
I can imagine this is a very time consuming thing and without the platform, you know,
it's hard to make your voice heard sometimes. So, yes, thank you. It's been a pleasure to talk to you.