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This episode is sponsored by 511, a company I've used personally for well over a decade and continue to use to this day.

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And 511 wants to reach out to you, the audience, and offer you a discount, which I will get to in a moment.

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As with each episode, I want to highlight one of their products.

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And I think an area that really needs to be discussed is uniforms.

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So most of us listening to this podcast are in some sort of uniform profession.

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And 511 were founded on clothing, the tactical athletes.

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what do they need to function at the highest level when it comes to their clothing?

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So their uniforms are reverse engineered from the user back to the manufacturer.

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Another observation I've made in several departments I've worked at is that we end up with lockers full of worn, faded uniforms.

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And what I found with the 511 uniform that I wore in California was that wasn't the case.

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They lasted several years and some of the job shirts and jackets lasted way longer than that.

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So longevity and cost efficiency is also another element to this as well.

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Yet another layer to this is the female tactical athlete.

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So they realized that men and women, surprise, surprise, are not shaped the same way.

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So they started designing uniforms accordingly to fit the female tactical athlete and allow her to be able to move efficiently.

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the AMP pack or missions backpack, and then their civilian clothes as well.

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Their shorts, their jeans, so, so comfortable, so user friendly as well.

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That's 511tactical.com.

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And to hear even more about 511, their mission, their products and their genesis,

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listen to my interview with their CEO and co-founder, Francisco Morales on episode 338 of this podcast.

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Welcome to episode 349 of Behind the Shield podcast.

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As always, my name is James Gearing.

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And this week, I'm extremely excited to welcome on the show Danny Cotton.

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And Danny is the former commissioner of the London Fire Brigade, having spent over three decades in this profession.

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And we discuss a host of topics from her journey into the fire service,

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from fostering diversity by using community outreach programs,

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the impact of budget cuts not only on the ability to serve,

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but also the mental and physical health of our profession.

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And then she tells a story from the Grenfell fire.

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Now, Danny was the commissioner during that time and speaks of the heroism that she saw from the responders on scene,

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the humanity she saw from the community members on scene.

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And then sadly, the demonization of the fire service when blame started being thrown around by political entities.

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So many powerful layers to this interview I urge you to listen to from beginning to end.

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Before we get to it, as I say every week, please just take a moment, go to whichever app you listen to this on,

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subscribe to the show, leave feedback and leave a rating.

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Every five star rating truly elevates this podcast and makes it more visible for people looking for a project like this.

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And then as I mentioned every single time, this is a free library for you, the audience, to use individually, to use within your organization.

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So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories so I can get them to the ear holes of every single person on planet Earth that needs to hear them.

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So with that being said, I introduce to you Danny Cotton. Enjoy.

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So Danny, I want to start by saying thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast.

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Hey, absolute pleasure. I'm really delighted to be here, James.

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Well, I'm very excited about this conversation. So where on planet Earth are we finding you today?

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So today I'm at home in Orpington in Kent.

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Brilliant. All right. So I love to take a chronological journey through each person's life.

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So where were you born? And then what was your family dynamic like? What did your parents do and how many siblings?

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So I was born in a place called Hawley in Surrey, which is very near Gatwick Airport.

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I was the second child. So I have a brother who's 16 months older than me, Alex, who lives in Holland now.

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My father worked for a computer company and for the vast majority of his working life worked for Philips.

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And my mother was an English teacher and taught English to foreign students.

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Did you have any firefighters or police officers in your family, extended family?

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My grandfather on my father's side was a police officer in East London, proper East London copper.

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Yeah, absolutely. And my grandmother on that side was she brought three children up, four children, sorry, during the Second World War in East London.

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So proper tough sort of side of the family. And then she became school secretary and member of the women's institute.

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So very kind of strong family. And on my mother's side, very tragically, her father died.

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He was a Canadian Royal Air Force pilot and he was a Halifax bomber and pilot flying over Holland and got shot down before she was born.

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So my grandmother brought my mother up on her own and very, very, very strong woman and is still going strong today and will be 98 in November.

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Amazing. I talk about this quite a bit. The World War Two generation was so incredible.

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The men obviously on the front lines fighting and obviously some women, especially the resistance.

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And then so many of the women then stepped up and took what we traditionally called male roles.

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And it just it saddens me that those lessons were so stark and so entrenched.

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Yet we seem to have regressed, which we're going to talk about like women in the fire service.

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We seem to regress back to the kind of sexist opinions and even the racial element too,

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that we were fighting side by side with Sikhs and Muslims and people from all colors and creeds.

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And then we found ourselves in England in the kind of Windrush era where racism was rife again.

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Yeah, I mean, it's I just can't believe, you know, so during the Second World War, so women stepped in and did amazing roles.

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They were firefighters that worked in munitions factories, you know, and they absolutely did a brilliant job of doing that.

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And then suddenly when the war was over and the men that made it came back, you know, and they got their jobs back and women were definitely relegated.

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And I think that's sad because there was a real opportunity to kind of work on what had been built on at that point,

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you know, about this absolute dynamic of anyone being able to do any job.

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But it definitely regressed for a bit. And it's taken a long time to kind of step back into that era where people believe that there shouldn't be gender bias around jobs.

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And, you know, it's quite startling when you look at what happened during the war.

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Yeah, exactly. I still haven't found someone that can really explain it because it's the same here.

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I'm sure it's the same in Australia. You know, we see that everywhere.

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All right, the war's over. Get back in the kitchen. I don't understand at all.

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But all right. Well, then what about athletics? Were you a sportswoman when you were in the school age?

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Yeah, absolutely. Very sporting. I made a huge mistake when I went to my secondary school.

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I took an entrance exam for a number of schools and the one I should have gone to was very sports orientated.

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But for some reason, I got spooked when I went to my test by some big girls shouting out the window, don't come to this school.

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It's horrible. And naive 11 year old, I believe them.

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But sadly, went to a very academic school where I was continuously being told off because all I ever did was in every single sports club.

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So I was part of the lacrosse team, the tennis team, the gymnastics team, the swimming team, every single sport and just not that brilliant academically.

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So, yeah, very, very sporting, very outdoors, always been all my life.

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You know, you'll find me in a pair of dungarees, not in a pink frilly dress.

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Brilliant. I think a lot of firefighters probably would say the same thing, female firefighters.

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All right, then what about career aspirations when you were in school? What were you dreaming about?

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Golly, so when I remember going, I vividly remember going to see this sort of careers advisor at my secondary school and asking about some jobs,

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because I wanted at that time to do something like forensic science or something like that.

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And she just kept tutting and looking at me and saying, no, no, you won't be able to do that.

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And then I wanted to be a vet. But you need to have a levels and all the sciences.

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And that probably was a step too far at that time for me. So I thought I'd be a police officer.

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I thought I'd follow in my grandfather's footsteps and be a police officer.

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And I kind of got put off at the age of 14 because there was a lot of problems going on where I lived in London.

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And people really hated the police. And I just knew in my heart of hearts, I didn't want to do a job where people hated you, which is really sad indictment.

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But at that point, after that, I was kind of floundering a bit as to what to do.

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Well, it's so pertinent at the moment, because we're seeing that I don't know if it's bled over into the UK at the moment, but my God, it's horrendous here.

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And I've worked alongside these men and women for a decade and a half.

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And, yeah, I've seen the occasional shit bag here and there.

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But these people leave their families and put their lives on the line for all colors and creeds.

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And the way they're being painted now because of the mistakes of the few, which, you know, some were malicious, some were gray area, but it's just awful to see.

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Yeah, it's shocking. And we're having a lot of that over here as well.

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That's been reflected in a lot of violence, a lot of sort of protests.

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And what I don't understand is, you know, that it's as you say, it's a very small proportion of people who are the ones who don't get it right for whatever reason.

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But actually, the vast majority of our police forces are decent, hardworking people who, as you say, come to work, put their lives on the line.

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And we've had a couple of police officers both killed and tragically seriously injured recently in the UK, just doing their jobs.

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And I think that people, you know, are very quick to be judgmental, but then they're very quick to want the police to come and sort them out when they've got a problem.

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And I think they are, you know, there are too many people who are attacking police officers and getting away with it.

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And there are a lot of campaigns in the UK at the moment to change the law, to actually protect emergency responders and to ensure that they are, you know, that if people do attack them, that they get appropriate sentences.

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Yeah. Well, just as a tangent, no, we're not on to this point in your career yet.

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But tell me about the violence on first responders, because I think one thing the fire service and EMS specifically have here is overall outside of maybe some of the very heavy gang areas, we're actually received very well.

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And I have strong memories of driving down one of our worst towns or worst streets in Orlando.

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And the people I know that were hiding from the police would wave at us because they knew we were the ones that would save them if something went wrong.

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So I find it kind of foreign now being British, but working over here, that there would be such violence against fire and EMS.

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Yeah. And I think that it is increasing, although having said that, you know, there have always been areas in pockets in London where anyone wearing uniform is sort of subject to being attacked.

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When I was station commander in Greenwich Borough, we had a particular state where, you know, the firefighters would get called out and then people throw fridges off balconies or they would lure them into dead end streets and then fire fireworks and missiles at them.

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And actually, we did a great piece of work with the local police there to identify the problems and to actually get people arrested and banned from the area because it was becoming too common.

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But I mean, on the whole, you know, you're right, the vast majority of people still view the fire service positively and still welcome us, which is great because it means that we do have access to vulnerable people in communities and that we can identify problems.

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But there is this increasing growing trend that, you know, during times of unrest and difficulty.

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So during the 2012 riots in London, firefighters were being routinely attacked, fire engines were being smashed up.

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And you just can't understand that mentality of these are the people who, when you're having your worst day, we're the ones who are going to come and save you.

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And yet when you're, you know, you've got the hump about something, you're turning around and attacking us.

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Now, what do you think is behind that?

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Because, again, like you said, it doesn't make any sense the same way.

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It doesn't make any sense to burn down your neighborhood when you're angry at something that happens somewhere else.

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You know, so there's a lot of insanity here.

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A lot of people obviously come in from outside purely to cause trouble.

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But where do you think some of this disconnect has happened between the people and some of the first responder agencies?

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I think that when people are really struggling because they're having, you know, for whatever reason, they're feeling that unhappy with their life and their community,

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I think that it just is a roll on from anyone in authority.

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And I think that, you know, even though they recognize the fact that the fire service will be the ones that will help them,

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when they're at that heightened state of emotion, anybody who represents authority or government or any kind of power or control or uniform just becomes a fair target.

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And it is the same lack of logic that, you know, encourages people to burn down their local, you know, pubs and shops and restaurants.

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And those people, you know, the people that run those are the people in the local community.

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I remember seeing a terrible story about a firefighter somewhere in America who had just spent his kind of life savings setting up a bar

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to be able to provide for his family, you know, he's off duty times and it was burnt down as part of the recent violence.

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And I just thought, you know, these are local community members, they're people who live there.

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And yet you're taking their livelihoods away as part of a protest against the police.

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And there is no sense to it, is there?

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No. Well, especially, I think for me, having traveled, having worked in different fire departments, lived in different countries,

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you get to see the common denominator, which is all these issues are coming from a much bigger problem that are more often than not stem from some sort of power, greed, drive from a few people.

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And I think one thing I talk about a lot is drug prohibition, for example, that was started here in the US that was actually kind of forced on the UK.

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But that came out of racism, really, from back in the 30s when alcohol prohibition showed what a complete nightmare and failure that was.

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And it has been the cause of millions and millions and millions of deaths.

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And so the violence we see right now and the same as you see on the streets of London is being caused by, in my opinion, the illegal drug trade is behind so much of it.

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So you've got people killing people, you've got people killing police officers, you've got police officers killing people.

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And the underlying issue is they're all players in the same game, which is prohibition.

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So when we take a step back and reverse engineer, where is the true root of this problem?

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You realize that all the first responders and the members of the community are actually side by side kind of victims of this this policy that's created so much death and destruction.

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Yeah, and actually, you know, that something needs to be done.

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It's just not, you know, people can't think around the edges anymore.

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And there is a massive issue around money and power and deprivation.

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And, you know, all you have to do is go into certain areas of London and, you know, it's the same anywhere you go and look to see the levels of disparity between those who have and those who haven't and those who are trying to make their best.

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And then those who will seek to make their money from crime and the fear and terror that brings local communities.

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You know, and you've got people who are literally terrified to leave their own front door to travel to the shops because of the level of violence.

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And it's frightening because these are, you know, lots of people in those areas are very hardworking.

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They want to do their best for their families, but they are just sucked into this vortex of, you know, downward spiral of bad areas and violence.

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And you can see how young people in those areas are influenced by money and that if they see, you know, there's money to be made by dealing or helping the drugs dealers and there's no money elsewhere.

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You can see how easily young people get attracted to that lifestyle.

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And if there is nothing else and if there is nowhere else to divert them to, then, you know, that's when we get problems.

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Yeah, exactly. All right. Well, then back to your career choices.

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When you were doing the test, just kind of reminded me, did you ever do the career test where they supposedly punched your data into a computer and it spat out the jobs that you should be doing?

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No, I wish I'd been able to. That'd been interesting to see what they thought I should have been.

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But no, I never really had that. And to be fair, looking back now, very little career guidance from, you know, schools or anything like that at all.

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And it was a real gap for me because I did genuinely struggle to think what I wanted to do.

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Yeah. Well, I had the test done and I can't remember exactly.

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I'm going to be a little sarcastic now, but it was so like set the bar low.

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It was like squirrel, squirrel grooming and, you know, stick collecting.

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I mean, this is it. This is what you think of me. So it was completely demoralizing.

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But I think it's funny you said about career. What I know is a lack of was motivation.

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And one of my favorite teachers, who I'm still friends with now on Facebook, was my PE teacher.

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He's one of the only people I remember that actually seemed like he believed and, you know, inspired and kind of bred that you can do anything element.

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Whereas I found in my kind of school time, it was like you were saying, being told a lot that you weren't good enough and you weren't going to amount to anything.

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Yeah. Yeah. And I think that and for me, you know, I think we need to do far more targeting of young people to help support them,

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to think, you know, to believe that they can be what they want to be, because so many people are stopped by themselves.

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There is nothing else that stops them. It's their own lack of belief and lack of ambition because nobody ever supports them.

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Absolutely. Well, speaking of that, so you obviously found an ambition for the fire service. How did that happen?

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So I left college with no idea what I wanted to do.

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Basically, I had to earn some money. So I went to do one of the most hideous,

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tempting jobs I've ever done, and I was on a switchboard.

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And the switchboard was for a company that did credit checks on people.

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This was long before the days where you could go online, do your own credit checks.

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So it was all every time you went for a loan or mortgage or whatever, the, you know,

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the bank, whoever ran a credit check on you. And then they just came back and said yes or no.

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And then you had to apply for your credit file to try and discover what it was that was stopping you getting credit.

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So the company the switchboard I was on was a company who was a credit check company.

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And basically all the people phoning up had been refused credit.

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So there was not one happy person phoning. They were all miserable.

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They all wanted their credit files. But actually, what they wanted was somebody to shout out because they hadn't got their mortgage loan card, whatever.

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And I vividly remember to this day, and the company doesn't exist anymore, I don't think, the company was called UAPT InfoLink.

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It scarred me at the age of 17. Good morning, UAPT InfoLink.

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All I could do was say, please, can you send a stamped self-addressed envelope and we'll send you your credit file.

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And literally there was no one else. It was just the switchboard.

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So what was worse was the fact that all these people, they didn't believe it.

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They wanted to be put through to someone. They wanted to abuse you because they haven't got credit.

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You know, all these people were just shouting and it's continuous.

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And there were two of us. And I just remember looking across at the other girls working with them.

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We just like roll our eyes as we got another load of verbal down the phone.

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And while I was doing that on my lunch break, I was reading the local newspaper, the Croydon Advertiser,

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and there was an advert in it that said London Fire Brigade are recruiting.

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And we particularly welcome applications from women and people from black minority ethnic backgrounds.

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And I thought, oh, that's interesting. London Fire Brigade cut the advert out, thought, well, OK, that might be something to look at.

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And went and showed a few people and the instant response pretty much from everyone was, no, no, you can't do that.

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That's not a job for girls. I know it says so on the advert.

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It actually says they want women. No, no, no, they don't really mean it.

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It's just a political thing. So and you can't do that. And no, no, it's very dangerous.

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And I'm the kind of person more people say to me, no, you can't.

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The more I think, well, maybe I can. And why can't I?

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So it kind of stemmed from there. And the more people reinforce the fact I shouldn't do it,

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the more I thought, well, I'm going to do it because it sounds like a job for me because it talked about teamwork.

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It talks about helping people. Talks about being outdoors and being practical.

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And I thought it ticks all my boxes.

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But it's amazing how many people step up to tell you that you can't do something.

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I mean, that's you're talking about the teacher element to inspiring people.

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I think people don't like success.

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Some people, you know, and it's easy for to tear them to tear someone else down and to to inspire someone.

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So, yeah, go for it. You know, go go chase that dream.

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Yeah. So, you know, and part of it, so some of it was people who were anxious because they thought it was a really dangerous job.

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And some of it was genuinely born out of the fact that not long before I applied,

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there was a woman firefighter who had been in London, who had been treated really badly and had made quite a big press story.

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But at the age of 18, I suppose I just never thought it would happen to me.

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I thought, no, no, I really am inspired by this.

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And then went on and applied. And I remember walking through the doors of training center and thinking, oh, my goodness, I'm actually here.

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What have I done?

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Well, lead us up to that. So I know it wasn't too long before you got hired that there weren't women in the fire service.

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So when did that change and why?

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So it's changed. So there was the labor led authority in London at the time.

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Were the ones who were very proactive in looking at all jobs and making sure that, you know,

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that people weren't being put off from joining different jobs by their, you know, by their race or their gender.

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So they were the ones who practically set out and basically told London Fire Brigade,

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no, you need to recruit more diversely from your community.

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And that was in 1985, the first woman joined London Fire Brigade.

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But when I joined in 88, I was one of 30 women out of 9000 firefighters in London.

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Wow. So tell me about obviously, there's a very significant incident that happened early on in your career.

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But before that, what was training and what were the first few months like being one of the first,

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you know, the pioneer women in the fire service in the UK?

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Yeah, training school. Training school was a blur of kind of hell, mainly of being, you know, lots and lots of physical work,

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lots of mental work, because the you know, I don't think people appreciate how much information you have to learn and store about equipment

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and about has the substances and all those, you know, really important things and just the physical demands of the job.

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I absolutely loved it. I'd say it was a mixture, equal mixture of kind of love and fear.

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One of the things that stood me in really good stead was when I joined, it was still quite militaristic.

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And there was a lot of marching and a lot of making things shiny.

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And I'd been an air cadet, so I could A, march very well and B, make things very shiny.

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A lot of time shining the shoes and things for various members of my squad, because I was really good at it.

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And I found it quite therapeutic so I could make things shiny.

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So that kind of I was, you know, I was always smartly turned out and that helped.

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But when I started off, there were three women on my course, but unfortunately, both of them dropped out.

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So I was left to being the only one. And it was a miserable time.

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So there were some definitely some guys in my training squad that didn't want women in the fire service and would seek to do everything not to help me.

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There were some who were friendly and who were great. And I'm still friends with now.

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But I found training school really difficult. My instructor was really unpleasant to me.

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When I challenged him some years later, because we are still friends, he said to me,

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Oh, I just did that to prepare you for what was going to happen when you went station.

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So it was a kind of warped protection of, you know, I'm going to be really unpleasant because that's what's going to happen.

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But it was it did make things really difficult.

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But the sense of pride and the love of being a firefighter just carried me through all of that.

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And turning out to my first fire station, I remember turning up there for the first visit.

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And I went there just before my training school.

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But before I was due to start work, they get you to go and drop all your gear off.

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And I remember being told to turn up on a night duty.

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And as I walked in, literally, the bells went down, they went out on a shout.

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And the governor just walked past me and barked, don't move.

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And they all turned out in the fire engines. I'm stood there leaning against the wall thinking,

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OK, what happens if they're out for hours? But I've just been told to stand here.

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So I did stand there and they came back after half an hour.

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And I sat and had dinner with them because they invited me to dinner.

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So I thought I should stay for dinner and probably had the worst meal I've ever eaten in the fire service.

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But I sat and ate my way through it while everyone was throwing loads of abuse at the mess manager guy who cooked it.

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But I literally ate my way through it. I remember them looking at me thinking, why is she eating that?

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Because luckily, my mother brought me up to eat everything that was put in front of me.

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So the fact I had rubbery pork strips that were kind of gray in color, I was persistent and I ate them.

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But yeah, it was there was a very mixed attitude when I first joined.

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So several of the guys on my watch absolutely did not want to work with the woman and put into transfer before I got there.

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Then there were other guys who wanted to do everything for me and treat me like a little girl.

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You know, I was only I was 19 when I passed out.

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So, you know, I was the age of their daughter and things.

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So they every time I went to do something, they went to pick it up and help me.

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And then the complete opposite of the guys who just wouldn't speak to me.

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And that made it really difficult.

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Now, a question for you, because this is an observation I've made over 14 years, excuse me,

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is the ones that bark the loudest about women in the fire service or even just other firefighters

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are usually the ones who are one of the shittiest firefighters themselves.

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So, again, it's it's a kind of way of disguising their inabilities.

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Is that something you saw as you progressed through your career?

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Yeah. And the other thing was and I kind of worked out, it didn't take me a little while,

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but I got there was the fact that one of the issues was the

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that firefighting was such a macho job and it was such a hero status job

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that a lot of the guys had this view that if a woman could do it and was allowed to do it,

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it took away from them being heroes and it took away from that very macho firefighter

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running into burning buildings, saving babies because a bloody woman could do it.

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And I met a lot of guys who had that attitude that they should never allow women.

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It's tarnished. It's ruined it.

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And the other ones who are quite entertaining, of course, the guys who had wives at home

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who did not want them to be working with a woman because they feared that we would

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steal their such gorgeous hunky men and run off with them because we were having to share

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facilities with them. So I shared a changing room. I shared a dormitory.

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You know, there was no separate sleeping accommodation, no changing accommodation,

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everything together. And they just had this fear that because of that, I was going to

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completely and utterly corrupt their husbands and run off with them.

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And that was quite funny because those guys were in fear a lot of the time

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because their wives had told them that they shouldn't work with me.

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That's so interesting here in different perspectives on that.

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Well, you were only a few months on when you had what most of us would define as a

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career incident. So tell me about the Clapham Junction rail crash and how much time you had

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on and what your journey was like on that day.

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Yeah, so I've gone out, I've been posted and started on Fire Station in the August

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and definitely been a sort of bumpy ride work. We hadn't had anything significant.

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And then in the December, we were literally just about to finish our four day shift,

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so two days, two nights. And we were half an hour away from coming off duty at nine

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o'clock on the Monday morning. We got called to go to standby at Battersea Fire Station.

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So we were going to provide fire cover because they were obviously out on the incident.

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We didn't know what it was. And as we were driving there, we heard all the messages on

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the radio about the fact there'd been a major train crash and it was a major incident.

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And as the messages progressed, they asked for additional resources.

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We were one of the fire engines that was called on as additional resource.

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So we literally then drove to the incident. And I just remember this heightened state of thinking,

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I'm actually going to something real. I'm really going to go and do a job.

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And it was really exciting and slightly scary, but just what you join the fire service for.

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And I remember driving, we drove over the bridge and I could just see fire engines

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everywhere, police ambulances. And I remember getting off and actually I remember getting off

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and dropping one of my gloves. And at the time we just had those rubbish, orangey brown plastic

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gardening gloves and I had a pair of those. And I remember dropping one of them and then nearly

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getting run over by my own fire engine because I dropped the glove and just bent down.

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And anyway, so we got given initially, we were given one task, but my governor got it changed.

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And we ended up going straight down to the train and helping to carry the casualties off.

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And you just got so involved in the moment of getting down there. And I just remember this

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really steep bank and we were taking these people off on stretchers and trying to walk up this bank.

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It was December, it was cold. It was a very cold, crisp day, but it was slippery. And I just

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remember person after person, we were taking up the ambulances and some of the ambulances were

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empty because the crews had gone down to try and help with the train crash. So you were taking

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these people, saying what am I supposed to do with them? And I vividly remember a guy who'd broken

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his ankle. It was really badly broken. And I was just so acutely conscious that every step we took

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was agony for him and did that for a couple of hours. And then as the kind of live casualty

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rescue point came to an end, I assisted in some guys that were trying to cut away and free some

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people who were trapped. And then I got tasked with another guy from my crew. We were told we

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were going to go underneath the train and to start putting bodies into body bags with a guy from the

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ambulance service and putting identity tags on them. And that was the moment of reality for me

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that really hit home that thought I'm going to see a dead body and I've never seen a dead body

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and I just don't know how I'm going to react. And I did have an absolute moment then of thinking,

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oh my God, what am I going to do now? And that was quite frightening.

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Yeah. So just to put it in perspective, it was a head-on crash, wasn't it? And there were

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484 people injured and 35 people killed. So this was one of the biggest disasters in the UK's history.

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Yeah. So two trains ended up on the same line head on. And then really tragically,

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people who were disembarking from the train following the crash then got hit by a third train

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that was running on the line beside it that had no idea that a crash had happened. So

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people had literally stepped off and then injured by the train coming from the other way. And it was

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a major significant incident. Obviously, thankfully, things like that don't happen very often.

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And it took a lot of London Fire Brigade resources, obviously lots of police, lots of

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ambulance there just dealing with the volume of casualties. And then the mass extrication piece of

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that amount of... And the equipment we had then was so poor. You look at what we've got now for

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cutting technology. And then it was so basic, the equipment we were trying to use against crash

355
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trains and all that damaged metal. Yeah. How long did the scene take before you finally recovered

356
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the last body? So we weren't there when the last ones were recovered. So we got relieved and gone

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by then. I think it was at least 24 hours before they got the last casualties out, some of the

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more seriously trapped ones. Because one of the trains or two or three of the carriages had turned

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on their side and there were people underneath. So they had to get very heavy lifting equipment in

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from the railways to actually lift them off. And then obviously the lines were damaged. So it was

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a very complicated incident. Yeah. And this was all... If I'm right, was it a signaling problem

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that caused this? Yes, it was faulty signal. Yeah. So that's obviously going to parallel what we'll

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talk about later as far as blame. So then from the mental health element, when you were going

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through your orientation, when you got hired, was there any discussion of mental health? I know this

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was obviously in the 80s. So we're in a different place now. And then if so or if not, what was that

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journey like for you and your crew after such a horrendous incident? Mental health. No, we didn't

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talk about that. I remember at training school being shown photographs of dead bodies in the hopes

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that it would, I suppose I thought it might desensitize us. Pretty strange thing to do,

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but being shown lots of photographs of lots of dead bodies here. This is this disaster, this

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dead person. And sitting there in the cold light of day in a classroom looking at dead bodies is a

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strange experience. But doing it for real and seeing a real dead body, you know, what was our,

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no, there was no mention. The only thing we were ordered to do was to have a shower before we went

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home because they recognize the fact we might be contaminated with bodily fluids. So everyone must

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shower before they leave the fire station. And in fact, all we did was so the and in some ways,

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the worst element was we were going home for four days at that point. So we weren't going to see

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00:33:42,960 --> 00:33:49,360
each other, but we did all go to the local pub and have a drink before we went home. And then we were

377
00:33:49,360 --> 00:33:54,960
off for four days and we came back in the next week. And people talked about it. We had to write

378
00:33:54,960 --> 00:33:59,680
statements. So, you know, I had to spend a bit of time talking about what you did, but no, there was

379
00:33:59,680 --> 00:34:05,040
no recollection, not to my recollection, there was no mention whatsoever of how it might have impacted

380
00:34:05,040 --> 00:34:09,680
anybody's mental health, whether everybody felt all right about it. There was nothing at all

381
00:34:09,680 --> 00:34:15,600
whatsoever. Yeah, I mean, we look back now and it's so crazy to think that we didn't acknowledge it

382
00:34:15,600 --> 00:34:20,960
back then. But, you know, we didn't. I mean, in the fire service, I can honestly say, I think it's

383
00:34:20,960 --> 00:34:24,240
literally only been about five years where we've really been talking about it the way we should be

384
00:34:24,240 --> 00:34:29,280
talking about it. When you look at the history of the fire service, that's pretty crazy. Yeah, I mean,

385
00:34:29,280 --> 00:34:33,440
it is mad. You know, you think about the people. I'm saying, you know, I was a 19 year old girl,

386
00:34:33,440 --> 00:34:40,320
three months in the job and saw absolutely horrific things, absolutely horrific things.

387
00:34:40,320 --> 00:34:46,240
And yet, there was never ever not one person ever said to me, was I okay, you know, apart from family

388
00:34:46,240 --> 00:34:49,840
and friends, but work? No, nothing. You just get on with it. That's your job. That's what you're

389
00:34:49,840 --> 00:34:58,880
there to do and crack on. Yeah. All right. Well, then I'm a huge proponent of talking about the

390
00:34:58,880 --> 00:35:04,480
chronic effects of what we do. So maybe so many people are listening now, we're never at a giant

391
00:35:04,480 --> 00:35:11,520
incident, a Grenfell or 9-11, you know, whatever it was. But there's that 10, 20, 30 year accumulation

392
00:35:11,520 --> 00:35:17,040
of trauma on top of the shift work and sleep deprivation. But during your career, were there

393
00:35:17,040 --> 00:35:25,520
any other large incidents that you specifically attended? So lots of large fires, but not large

394
00:35:25,520 --> 00:35:31,440
scale, you know, loss of life like that. I mean, that was, you know, and what people call that was

395
00:35:31,440 --> 00:35:35,120
what people call the once in a career, you know, moment, the Clapham train crash, obviously it

396
00:35:35,120 --> 00:35:43,440
wasn't, but you know, but I think that sometimes for me, and this is a personal reflection, the

397
00:35:43,440 --> 00:35:50,000
things that affected me more were things that I could link to something personally. So I remember

398
00:35:50,000 --> 00:35:56,160
very early on in my career, attending a road traffic collision, about one, two o'clock in the morning,

399
00:35:56,160 --> 00:36:03,520
fast fuel carriageway, and a car had veered off the carriageway and had driven straight into the

400
00:36:03,520 --> 00:36:09,040
back of a flatbed lorry that had concrete posts on it. And there were two people in the car, two

401
00:36:09,040 --> 00:36:14,240
young men and the passenger was dead. And the driver walked away completely uninjured. And it

402
00:36:14,240 --> 00:36:20,080
turned out these two guys had been working doing pizza delivery. And they'd finished work and they

403
00:36:20,080 --> 00:36:24,720
were driving home and they think the driver just fell asleep and veered off the road and his

404
00:36:24,720 --> 00:36:31,520
passenger was killed. But he was not a mark on the chap who died, he broke his neck. But he was a

405
00:36:31,520 --> 00:36:38,400
very similar age to my brother. And my brother was a reckless driver. And I couldn't sleep when I got

406
00:36:38,400 --> 00:36:43,200
back. And I just kept thinking that that could have been my brother and someone coming to knock

407
00:36:43,200 --> 00:36:47,440
on our door said my brother had been killed in a road traffic collision. So I think we've got a

408
00:36:47,440 --> 00:36:51,280
personal association or something that links you. I think they can affect people far more

409
00:36:51,280 --> 00:36:56,080
traumatically than people ever realize. Yeah, no, absolutely. Actually, I just finished writing

410
00:36:56,080 --> 00:37:00,960
a book and I talked about one call I had. And it was a little three year old girl that was killed

411
00:37:00,960 --> 00:37:06,240
in a car crash in the back and her car seat was the exact same make and the exact same position

412
00:37:06,240 --> 00:37:11,520
as my son's car seat. So when I got home off shift, I immediately moved it to the middle just to

413
00:37:11,520 --> 00:37:17,120
kind of maximize the chance of surviving a side impact. Yeah, yeah. And then there is those things.

414
00:37:17,120 --> 00:37:22,640
And people, those are the things that people don't know about and don't pick up on. And, you know,

415
00:37:22,640 --> 00:37:28,640
I think those things, the cumulative effect of instances that personally touch you, or where you

416
00:37:28,640 --> 00:37:33,600
feel some personal distress because of it, you know, we are all human beings, we all like to think

417
00:37:33,600 --> 00:37:38,400
we're rough to tough to heroes, but we all have feelings, emotions. And we have a story behind

418
00:37:38,400 --> 00:37:43,440
work. There's a lot of people don't ever know about. So, you know, I think that we don't

419
00:37:43,440 --> 00:37:48,240
recognize that. And even now, when we talk about mental health, we predominantly talk about it in

420
00:37:48,240 --> 00:37:54,240
relation to large scale incidents, to loss of life, to, you know, trigger incidents. But I don't think

421
00:37:54,240 --> 00:37:58,880
we do enough about mental well being in the meantime, you know, we do a lot about firefighters

422
00:37:58,880 --> 00:38:02,880
should eat well, they should keep fit, they should be, you know, cardiovascularly fit. But what we

423
00:38:02,880 --> 00:38:07,120
don't talk about is brain fit and talk about just doing the work behind the scenes. So you're not

424
00:38:07,120 --> 00:38:09,600
constantly doing first aid when things come up.

425
00:38:10,080 --> 00:38:14,240
Yeah, I think I think it was Ricky that brought this up. Another thing that people forget is,

426
00:38:14,960 --> 00:38:20,000
it's not so much the tragedy that we see, it's the effect of that tragedy on the family members.

427
00:38:20,000 --> 00:38:25,120
And I'll never forget, I had a gentleman have a brain bleed and just drop dead. And, you know,

428
00:38:25,120 --> 00:38:30,640
we responded the code actually went flawlessly. So had he had any chance of survival, he would have

429
00:38:30,640 --> 00:38:34,960
made it but it was a bleed. There was no coming back from that. But I where I sat and did my

430
00:38:34,960 --> 00:38:40,320
report in the hospital was six feet from the grieving room where they bring the family and

431
00:38:40,320 --> 00:38:44,800
tell them so I'm there tapping away and then watching these people's just lives destroyed.

432
00:38:44,800 --> 00:38:49,200
And that's a very, very important point to it's the ripple effect of these disasters, I think,

433
00:38:49,200 --> 00:38:50,480
the stay with us as well.

434
00:38:51,280 --> 00:38:55,440
Yeah, and I think that when people sort of, you know, and you know, firefighters by their nature,

435
00:38:55,440 --> 00:38:59,840
they took well, we went to a really good job today, it was a good working job. But the backstory

436
00:38:59,840 --> 00:39:03,760
to that is it's someone's life, it's someone's house, it's someone's business, you know, it's

437
00:39:03,760 --> 00:39:08,480
even someone's car is someone's personal possession that is devastation to them. And I remember going

438
00:39:08,480 --> 00:39:15,680
to a really significant house fire, and just going up and one of the rooms had a load of like

439
00:39:15,680 --> 00:39:20,000
children's toys and things in it that were completely destroyed. And you just think to

440
00:39:20,000 --> 00:39:24,240
yourself, you know, that's everything that that family has lost everything that means

441
00:39:24,240 --> 00:39:28,400
everything to them. And yes, okay, nobody did die. That's great. But they've still lost

442
00:39:28,400 --> 00:39:32,960
everything. And that's, you know, and I think that wasn't it's something that people don't

443
00:39:32,960 --> 00:39:38,960
realize the impact of significantly and it came home to me because several years later,

444
00:39:38,960 --> 00:39:43,600
my mum had a house fire and lost everything. And I was the one who kind of picked up the

445
00:39:43,600 --> 00:39:48,080
pieces afterwards. And I know the devastation from having a fire and losing everything and

446
00:39:48,080 --> 00:39:49,600
how much impact that has on people.

447
00:39:49,600 --> 00:39:54,560
Yeah, that's something I think about when I see some of the social media posts of a crew

448
00:39:54,560 --> 00:39:58,240
standing in front of a fire with you know, grin on the face leaning on the pipe poles, it's like,

449
00:39:58,240 --> 00:40:03,360
well, if the owner sees that, that's not going to reflect very well on, you know, their perception

450
00:40:03,360 --> 00:40:09,280
of your response. All right, well, then what about the physical fitness? So you started

451
00:40:09,280 --> 00:40:14,080
back in the late 80s. What was the emphasis on on fitness back then?

452
00:40:15,200 --> 00:40:20,640
So you know, the initial test I had to pick up a 12 stone person and carry them 100 yards in

453
00:40:20,640 --> 00:40:26,960
under a minute. Because you do that all the time. And then we had to do some really strange chest

454
00:40:26,960 --> 00:40:33,360
expansion tests. The when they traced the history back, it was to do with testing the lungs of coal

455
00:40:33,360 --> 00:40:38,000
miners to see if they had diseases or not, whether or not you could expand your chest by this much.

456
00:40:38,000 --> 00:40:44,000
But so the initial test wasn't, you know, it was odd, it wasn't tricky. The physical demands of

457
00:40:44,000 --> 00:40:49,760
training were massive. But I think once, you know, once we got station, you're pretty much kind of

458
00:40:49,760 --> 00:40:55,760
left your own devices, we had gyms on stations, and we were encouraged to use it, but there was no

459
00:40:55,760 --> 00:41:02,000
mandatory gym training. So the people who didn't want to didn't, you know, I've always been kind of

460
00:41:02,000 --> 00:41:07,040
sport inclined and minded. So I've always done stuff. My first watch we did, you know, once we

461
00:41:07,040 --> 00:41:11,040
sort of settled in, we did quite a lot of running and I did a lot of running training with them and

462
00:41:11,040 --> 00:41:17,360
things. So, you know, we did a fair bit of it, but there wasn't the the targeted emphasis that I

463
00:41:17,360 --> 00:41:22,880
think there needs to be combined with the lifestyle choices, because you know, you do still look

464
00:41:22,880 --> 00:41:29,680
around a lot of fire services and see firefighters who are not fit, who are overweight, and who are

465
00:41:29,680 --> 00:41:34,800
walking heart attack sort of victims. And, you know, that's not a good place to be.

466
00:41:34,800 --> 00:41:39,440
No, well, that's the thing I talk about over and over again with this project is, there's the

467
00:41:39,440 --> 00:41:44,320
ownership side, there's us watching what we eat, us going to the gym, us, you know, having good

468
00:41:44,320 --> 00:41:48,960
sleep hygiene, but there's also the environment that we put our men and women in. And, you know,

469
00:41:48,960 --> 00:41:54,080
the shifts over here, a lot of the US have 56 hour work weeks, which I know I've had so many

470
00:41:54,080 --> 00:41:59,440
sleep experts on here that have confirmed that that creates an absolute maelstrom in the body and

471
00:41:59,440 --> 00:42:04,320
sets these men and women up for disease, for obesity, for mental ill health. So, you know,

472
00:42:04,320 --> 00:42:07,920
it's such a, it's not a tricky thing, actually, it's a very easy thing. But when you're up against

473
00:42:07,920 --> 00:42:13,120
politicians and budget cuts and all this stuff, the same with with the police service, you know,

474
00:42:13,120 --> 00:42:17,280
if you want these men and women not to make poor decisions, then you need to give them great

475
00:42:17,280 --> 00:42:22,560
training, you need to give them rest and recovery. And so what I see is a lot of people in the fire

476
00:42:22,560 --> 00:42:28,160
service here in the US, at least, are fit despite the conditions they work in, not because of the

477
00:42:28,160 --> 00:42:29,200
conditions they work in.

478
00:42:30,240 --> 00:42:34,320
Yeah, and that's absolutely true. And I think, you know, a lot of firefighters have an absolute

479
00:42:34,320 --> 00:42:39,200
pride in their job and in their ability to do their job. And they know that in order to do that,

480
00:42:39,200 --> 00:42:44,080
they need to be as fit as they can be. But, you know, the sleep is an issue. And I think, you

481
00:42:44,080 --> 00:42:48,400
know, what isn't really recognised and what is kind of hidden thing that people don't talk about

482
00:42:48,400 --> 00:42:54,560
is that for a lot of firefighters, the firefighter pay is very low, and they have to get a second

483
00:42:54,560 --> 00:42:58,960
job. So, you know, if you're working your firefighter shift, and then you're coming off

484
00:42:58,960 --> 00:43:03,760
duty, and then you're going and doing whatever it is you might be doing, whether it is sitting in a

485
00:43:03,760 --> 00:43:08,000
taxi, or whether it's working on a building site, you're doing another job just to be able to look

486
00:43:08,000 --> 00:43:13,360
after your family. And you have that weight responsibility of, you know, being, you know,

487
00:43:13,360 --> 00:43:18,400
being someone who has to earn money and keep your family and the whole of the impact of that together,

488
00:43:18,400 --> 00:43:22,960
you know, and it's not, you know, people say it's not the fire brigade's fault that they've got a

489
00:43:22,960 --> 00:43:27,440
second job. Well, you know, the fact that, you know, the basic pay of firefighters is low, and

490
00:43:27,440 --> 00:43:31,840
it's not enough to live on in London, you can't get a mortgage on a firefighter salary, you know,

491
00:43:31,840 --> 00:43:35,680
that does mean that people have to go out and have additional work and that all impacts on them.

492
00:43:36,320 --> 00:43:40,800
Absolutely. And it's so backwards, you know, when you look at priorities, look at the hierarchy of,

493
00:43:40,800 --> 00:43:48,080
I'm blank on it now. Anyway, the hierarchy of needs, there we go. You know, the security element

494
00:43:48,080 --> 00:43:53,440
is the base. And that's what we provide, provide that feeling of security to people. So if you're

495
00:43:53,440 --> 00:44:00,000
going to ask someone to put their life on the line, and for example, in Grenfell, climb 20, 25 floors

496
00:44:00,000 --> 00:44:04,640
in horrendous conditions, that's not the person that you need to be paying a pittance to, that's

497
00:44:04,640 --> 00:44:09,680
the person you need to be equipping well, training well, and like you said, paying a salary that

498
00:44:09,680 --> 00:44:14,400
allows them to just focus on that one job and then go home and recover. If they want to buy a Range Rover,

499
00:44:14,400 --> 00:44:19,360
then get a second job, but they should be at least be able to support themselves. Absolutely.

500
00:44:20,240 --> 00:44:25,680
Right. Well, then I remember as a young boy, seeing the fire brigade on strike a lot, you know,

501
00:44:25,680 --> 00:44:28,560
there were there were the union issues. And obviously, what we just spoke about, I'm sure

502
00:44:28,560 --> 00:44:34,960
was behind it. So just give me an overview of the struggles the the British Fire Service has faced

503
00:44:34,960 --> 00:44:40,400
when it comes to funding and staffing and those kind of areas. Yeah, so I think that, you know,

504
00:44:41,440 --> 00:44:46,400
it's been recognised for a long time that the fire service has been a poor relation in the funding

505
00:44:46,400 --> 00:44:53,600
for public sector work. And I think, you know, for far too long people, and all the while things

506
00:44:53,600 --> 00:44:58,480
are going well, and all the while there isn't a disaster happening, then, you know, politicians

507
00:44:58,480 --> 00:45:03,920
see fits to make cuts to budgets for fire services, because, you know, we are an insurance policy,

508
00:45:03,920 --> 00:45:07,840
we're there when you need us, but the vast majority of insurance policy sits in a drawer,

509
00:45:07,840 --> 00:45:12,400
you never need to use it. That's great. However, when you do need it, you want to make sure you've

510
00:45:12,400 --> 00:45:16,560
got the right insurance policy that is going to pay out for your house. You know, you need to have

511
00:45:16,560 --> 00:45:21,440
the right service, fire service that's got the right equipment, the right people, right number

512
00:45:21,440 --> 00:45:27,680
on duty, they're trained properly. But that doesn't happen. And it's not till something terrible comes

513
00:45:27,680 --> 00:45:33,680
along, be that, you know, large scale significant fire, be that a terrorist incident, whatever it is,

514
00:45:33,680 --> 00:45:37,760
when people suddenly realize, oh, we're a bit under resourced in the fire service, and, oh,

515
00:45:37,760 --> 00:45:41,200
we haven't got enough firefighters, and then there's a big drive, and then something else

516
00:45:41,200 --> 00:45:46,800
takes priority. And so the focus goes away again, and once more significant cuts are made. So I

517
00:45:46,800 --> 00:45:51,200
think, you know, for years, the fire service has been on this roller coaster of make a load of

518
00:45:51,200 --> 00:45:55,360
cuts, it's all fine, nothing goes on. Yeah, firefighters are quite noisy when, you know,

519
00:45:55,360 --> 00:45:59,680
you close fire stations quite rightly, they make a lot of protests. But trying to engage

520
00:45:59,680 --> 00:46:03,680
communities to get involved with that is quite difficult. And I think that, you know, it's quite

521
00:46:03,680 --> 00:46:08,720
sad that a lot of people are just very complacent, because they think we'll always be there and will

522
00:46:08,720 --> 00:46:13,520
always turn up. And they don't realize the detrimental effect of reducing resources. And

523
00:46:13,520 --> 00:46:17,680
it means you might not get that fire engine when you need it. And then, you know, there have

524
00:46:17,680 --> 00:46:24,160
definitely been strikes over firefighter pay. And so quite rightly, because firefighter pay is not

525
00:46:24,160 --> 00:46:31,760
good, you know, and it's, it's a very low start, it's quite difficult to, you know, get an increase

526
00:46:31,760 --> 00:46:37,600
in your salary. And if you want to have people who want to be career firefighters, who you know,

527
00:46:37,600 --> 00:46:42,480
and it's really important that we have people who just stay as firefighters and are brilliant at it,

528
00:46:42,480 --> 00:46:47,280
and are the really knowledgeable, well trained, you know, the ones who impart knowledge and

529
00:46:47,280 --> 00:46:52,640
invent or young people, then we need to pay them the right amount of money. Because if we don't,

530
00:46:52,640 --> 00:46:57,120
you end up with people now who just leave the fire service and go and do other jobs, because,

531
00:46:57,120 --> 00:47:00,640
you know, I know a load of firefighters recently who've left to become train drivers,

532
00:47:00,640 --> 00:47:05,200
because it's so much better paid. Yeah, it's terrible. And like you said, with the mentorship,

533
00:47:05,760 --> 00:47:10,400
what I see in the US is kind of the same problem. So you get people flying up the career ladder,

534
00:47:10,400 --> 00:47:14,720
then. So you get people in lieutenants or chiefs positions that really don't have the experience,

535
00:47:14,720 --> 00:47:21,840
or even maybe just the, the mental capacity to be in those jobs. And you know, we're losing

536
00:47:21,840 --> 00:47:25,840
the veteran firefighter, the veteran engineer, and the people that are actually on the fire ground,

537
00:47:25,840 --> 00:47:31,680
making it happen. So now you've got rookies, you know, having to facilitate rescues, having to do

538
00:47:31,680 --> 00:47:38,320
the operational side. And do you know, do you want a 1520 year man or woman? Or do you want a 15 to

539
00:47:38,320 --> 00:47:43,440
20 month man or woman coming to rescue your child? Yeah, absolutely. And I think that, you know,

540
00:47:43,440 --> 00:47:48,320
people don't really see and understand that. And, you know, thank goodness due to a whole

541
00:47:48,320 --> 00:47:54,160
load of reasons, you know, our fires are reducing, you know, safer equipment, you know, so smoking's

542
00:47:54,160 --> 00:47:58,400
been reduced, fire retardant, you know, materials, all those things that really considerably helped

543
00:47:58,400 --> 00:48:03,120
and campaigning to reduce fires. But it means that you've got conversely get this thing where

544
00:48:03,120 --> 00:48:07,920
you get a lot less experience. So you do have a lot of people and I see it very much that we have

545
00:48:07,920 --> 00:48:13,680
a lot of junior officers and you know, middle managers who don't have that level of experience,

546
00:48:13,680 --> 00:48:19,680
and who definitely lost them, don't have the right level of people engagement and people experience,

547
00:48:19,680 --> 00:48:25,040
but want to get up the career ladder and want to promote. And then you end up with really difficult

548
00:48:25,040 --> 00:48:29,680
situations. And it's really important that you've got the right person leading when you're doing,

549
00:48:29,680 --> 00:48:34,080
you know, very high pressure operational incident. But equally when you're back in station,

550
00:48:34,080 --> 00:48:37,440
and you're trying to manage those people, you need the right people who are doing that as well,

551
00:48:37,440 --> 00:48:42,160
because that's where we spend a lot of our time, you know, out in the community doing training and

552
00:48:42,160 --> 00:48:45,280
all those things. And if you haven't got the right people leading and looking after people

553
00:48:45,280 --> 00:48:51,200
on fire stations, you've got a big problem brewing. Yeah, well, a parallel always uses if you imagine,

554
00:48:51,200 --> 00:48:57,120
you know, the Secret Service for the President or the, you know, the parallel organization for

555
00:48:57,120 --> 00:49:01,520
the Prime Minister, they're not turning to them and saying, look, if you're not having gunfights

556
00:49:01,520 --> 00:49:05,200
every day, then we're just going to have to cut staffing. You know, I mean, we don't they don't

557
00:49:05,200 --> 00:49:09,840
want to use them. They're there just in case but the goal is to never have to fire a shot. And

558
00:49:09,840 --> 00:49:16,000
that's how I see the fire service and the police and EMS and everyone else. When we're looked at

559
00:49:16,000 --> 00:49:21,120
as, oh, if you're not busy, then we need to cut you that is such a short sighted and backward way

560
00:49:21,120 --> 00:49:26,000
of looking at, as you said, your insurance policy. If we're not running calls, then the emphasis

561
00:49:26,000 --> 00:49:29,200
should be well, you need to be training. I'm totally for that. And then having rest and recovery

562
00:49:29,200 --> 00:49:35,280
built in as well. But I see it here in the in the fire service in America, where they call it busy

563
00:49:35,280 --> 00:49:40,880
work, or we'll go turn hydrants, we'll go install smoke alarms, we'll do all this, it's PR, but but

564
00:49:40,880 --> 00:49:45,040
okay, great. I'm the best world's best smoke alarm installer, but I can't freaking pull a hose line

565
00:49:45,040 --> 00:49:50,000
properly because I haven't trained. That's so backwards. So yeah, I think that's one thing

566
00:49:50,000 --> 00:49:56,800
that the public needs to be educated is you need us to be the best when you need us. So that does

567
00:49:56,800 --> 00:50:01,360
not involve us being out all the time or in a God forbid, like you said, closing a fire station.

568
00:50:01,360 --> 00:50:08,720
Yeah, yeah. And, and I think people, you know, in general, the public don't think about fire service,

569
00:50:08,720 --> 00:50:12,400
you know, people don't, if you ask someone, I've been, you know, involved in countless surveys,

570
00:50:12,400 --> 00:50:15,840
where we've tried to go out to the public and say, what do you want your fire service to look like?

571
00:50:15,840 --> 00:50:20,480
What do you want us to do? And they just want the shiny red thing to turn up and deal with their

572
00:50:20,480 --> 00:50:24,640
problem when they've got a problem. And they don't really fundamentally care beyond that. So they

573
00:50:24,640 --> 00:50:29,280
don't think about it. But you can rest assured that when they are in their dire circumstances,

574
00:50:29,280 --> 00:50:32,880
and they're in a vehicle collision, there's been some terrible chemical incident, you know,

575
00:50:32,880 --> 00:50:37,200
as a terrorist attack or a fire, they absolutely want the best trained people, the best equipment

576
00:50:37,200 --> 00:50:41,680
to be responding and looking after them. Yeah. Well, the NHS is a great parallel at the moment.

577
00:50:41,680 --> 00:50:47,440
You know, when I was watching from, you know, across the Atlantic, with the impact of COVID on

578
00:50:47,440 --> 00:50:53,760
London, it's, it spoke very clearly to me that this wasn't that this disease was just sweeping

579
00:50:53,760 --> 00:51:00,560
through Londoners and murdering everyone. It was, to me, a glaring sign that the NHS has been cut

580
00:51:00,560 --> 00:51:05,680
and cut and cut and cut by these politicians. And it was underfunded and understaffed. And again,

581
00:51:05,680 --> 00:51:11,120
when you need us, that's when you want to have that full workforce. They may not be busy every

582
00:51:11,120 --> 00:51:16,480
day, but that's a beautiful thing. Then you filter your money into prevention. But, you know, the

583
00:51:16,480 --> 00:51:22,560
COVID, you know, the, the Grenfell fire and all these things, they are litmus tests for if you are

584
00:51:22,560 --> 00:51:30,080
actually supporting these first responder medical organisations. Yeah. And, and the NHS, you know,

585
00:51:30,080 --> 00:51:36,160
I just felt so desperately sorry for them, you know, under resourced, understaffed and without

586
00:51:36,160 --> 00:51:41,600
proper protective equipment. And yet they knew they didn't have the equipment and they'd run

587
00:51:41,600 --> 00:51:45,760
exercises where they knew they didn't have sufficient stock and numbers of it. And nobody

588
00:51:45,760 --> 00:51:49,760
had done anything about it. Yeah. And what was nauseating, one of the, one of the, I think it

589
00:51:49,760 --> 00:51:56,240
was someone else on the podcast, I heard say this, but they're absolutely spot on, is people would

590
00:51:56,240 --> 00:52:00,320
refer to, you know, the first responders and the people in the hospitals and even, you know, the

591
00:52:00,320 --> 00:52:05,840
other frontline personnel as heroes. And it was kind of like a get out of jail free card. Oh, we,

592
00:52:05,840 --> 00:52:09,920
we called them heroes. So we're good. Carry on working, you know, but you're our heroes. We'll

593
00:52:09,920 --> 00:52:14,400
turn on the lights, you know, every night at a certain time. No, we needed people to come in and,

594
00:52:14,400 --> 00:52:19,600
and help and, and add staffing and bring equipment and all those kinds of things. So I think it was,

595
00:52:19,600 --> 00:52:26,000
it was a hugely disrespectful just to label them heroes and not support them in any way.

596
00:52:26,960 --> 00:52:31,440
Well, and I think that, you know, the labeling of heroes was very short-lived as well. So, you know,

597
00:52:31,440 --> 00:52:35,440
everyone stood in their doorstep on Thursday evenings and clapped and it was lovely, you know,

598
00:52:35,440 --> 00:52:39,920
great. And, and I do know from, you know, colleagues and friends of mine who work for health,

599
00:52:39,920 --> 00:52:45,120
that it did give people a boost to know people cared, but very short, you know, very short time

600
00:52:45,120 --> 00:52:51,040
after that, they're talking about not giving people in NHS pay rises. They're still talking

601
00:52:51,040 --> 00:52:57,520
about having massive budget cuts and holes in budgets. And, you know, the heroic status was

602
00:52:57,520 --> 00:53:03,200
terribly short-lived and actually not dissimilar to how I felt about how people responded to,

603
00:53:03,760 --> 00:53:07,760
you know, London fire brigade after Grenfell, because for a while we were absolutely everyone's

604
00:53:07,760 --> 00:53:12,400
heroes and everyone's darlings. And it wasn't till people wanted to start pointing fingers and

605
00:53:12,400 --> 00:53:19,520
blaming that suddenly the media in particular and several media outlets suddenly saw we can absolutely

606
00:53:19,520 --> 00:53:24,400
go from hero to zero and make these people into villains. Yeah. And I want to get into that. So

607
00:53:24,400 --> 00:53:28,720
let's just kind of take the journey then. So lead me through your promotional journey, because

608
00:53:28,720 --> 00:53:32,960
obviously you ended up at the pinnacle of the London fire service and then we'll transition to

609
00:53:32,960 --> 00:53:40,880
Grenfell. Yeah. So kind of interesting. So I had no career aspiration when I joined. I just wanted

610
00:53:40,880 --> 00:53:45,840
to be a good firefighter. And I thought people that served 10 years and were in charge of watches on

611
00:53:45,840 --> 00:53:52,960
fire stations were like superheroes. So it was never in my mind. But seven years in, they were

612
00:53:52,960 --> 00:53:59,200
running a new way of doing promotion to the first level of promotion. So what was called a leading

613
00:53:59,200 --> 00:54:03,920
firefighter and it involved an outward bound course, which was a bit of me. So I thought,

614
00:54:03,920 --> 00:54:07,600
oh, really fancy that. So I applied for the promotion thinking I can go on a great outward

615
00:54:07,600 --> 00:54:12,320
bound course. And it was a fabulous course. It was a new course they tried. It was brilliant.

616
00:54:13,600 --> 00:54:18,160
And my first level of promotion was it's a big step when you get off the back of the fire engine,

617
00:54:18,160 --> 00:54:24,080
sit on the front and the watch I was on were not terribly supportive of having a woman as one of

618
00:54:24,080 --> 00:54:29,760
their officers. And it was definitely one of my more trying times. But I stuck it out. And then

619
00:54:29,760 --> 00:54:34,640
I moved from there to watch that actually had two other women on. I worked with two other women,

620
00:54:34,640 --> 00:54:39,760
which was brilliant and made such a change on the watch the way it was just normal to come to work

621
00:54:39,760 --> 00:54:44,880
and there's be another woman and and they were really well balanced grown up watches. I'll put

622
00:54:44,880 --> 00:54:53,440
it. And I had a fabulous time there. I remember turning out to a very large fire and I had two

623
00:54:53,440 --> 00:54:57,840
the two women on the back as firefighters and we had a driver, we were short of a driver and we had

624
00:54:57,840 --> 00:55:02,160
a guy come in from the next station. In fact, we had tried to get a woman from another station to

625
00:55:02,160 --> 00:55:06,000
come in and drive so we could have an all women crew, but she wasn't available. So this guy came

626
00:55:06,000 --> 00:55:08,960
in, I knew him really well. And he got on the machine. He looked at me and said, oh, hi, how

627
00:55:08,960 --> 00:55:13,600
are you? I'm fine. And he looked over one shoulder and you could see him thinking, oh, there's another

628
00:55:13,600 --> 00:55:17,200
one. And then you could just see the pennies dropping and thinking if I look the other way,

629
00:55:17,200 --> 00:55:20,880
there's going to be a third one, isn't there? And he looked over and he was just like, oh,

630
00:55:21,520 --> 00:55:25,520
I said, you're all right. He said, yes. And I said, you're going to be in your best behavior

631
00:55:25,520 --> 00:55:29,520
tonight, aren't you? He was like, yes. And you could just see him thinking, I'm the only guy on

632
00:55:29,520 --> 00:55:35,840
a truck full of women. But we actually turned out to a very significant fire where very tragically

633
00:55:35,840 --> 00:55:42,320
a woman lost her life and an older woman. But so I went in and breathing apparatus with one of the

634
00:55:42,320 --> 00:55:47,200
firefighters and we located the casualty and the other woman firefighter was the one who'd supplied

635
00:55:47,200 --> 00:55:51,680
the water to the incident. And when the fire investigation guy came along and he said to me,

636
00:55:51,680 --> 00:55:56,080
I understand you were leading the crew that found the casualty. So I said, absolutely. And he said,

637
00:55:56,080 --> 00:56:00,400
oh, and where's the other firefighter? I said, oh, firefighter so and so is over there. And he said,

638
00:56:00,400 --> 00:56:06,320
oh, where is he? And I said, no, it's a she. He said, a she? Oh. And then he said to an officer

639
00:56:06,320 --> 00:56:10,480
from another area. And then I said something about the other firefighter taking the jet up from the

640
00:56:10,480 --> 00:56:15,440
scaffolding. And he's like, where's he? And I said, no, no, a she. And he said, three of you on one

641
00:56:15,440 --> 00:56:21,200
fire engine. Are you allowed to do that? Oh, God. And I just remember looking at him and saying,

642
00:56:21,200 --> 00:56:25,760
did you just say that? And he's, oh, and then he just walked off. And I thought, I cannot believe

643
00:56:25,760 --> 00:56:29,520
you just said that. But so, you know, you just think that was still a view then the three of

644
00:56:29,520 --> 00:56:33,120
you on one fire engine, it was just not acceptable, but we'd actually discovered the casualty and put

645
00:56:33,120 --> 00:56:39,200
the fire out. So, yeah, so then I carried on kind of stepping up through promotion through various

646
00:56:39,200 --> 00:56:45,680
different, different and those were on fire station promotions at the time. And then I decided to go

647
00:56:45,680 --> 00:56:51,200
sort of take the jump and become senior officer. I had some fantastic times, I've got to say,

648
00:56:51,200 --> 00:56:55,680
probably some of my best times were when I was running my own fire station with four watches on

649
00:56:55,680 --> 00:57:00,080
the station. That was a brilliant job. And I've worked with some really amazing people and that

650
00:57:00,080 --> 00:57:05,280
kind of feeling of you being in control of your own ship, as it were, and really good. But the

651
00:57:05,280 --> 00:57:08,720
promotion thing, it was never, I never kept thinking, I never thought I want to be a

652
00:57:08,720 --> 00:57:13,760
commissioner ever, ever, ever, ever. But I just kept progressing and seeing another job and

653
00:57:13,760 --> 00:57:18,560
thinking, I quite fancy that or if I don't do that, someone else will do that and I'll work for

654
00:57:18,560 --> 00:57:24,720
them and I don't like them. And it sort of ended up becoming a, obviously one of the senior management

655
00:57:24,720 --> 00:57:30,000
team and thinking to myself, I'm not going to go any higher because I really don't like politics

656
00:57:30,000 --> 00:57:37,920
and there's far too much politics at play here. But then, yes, unfortunately, well, fortunately,

657
00:57:37,920 --> 00:57:43,760
well, fortunately, unfortunately, the previous commissioner decided to leave. And so I'd made it

658
00:57:43,760 --> 00:57:48,080
really clear that it was not my intention to apply. I didn't want the job. I absolutely knew I didn't

659
00:57:48,080 --> 00:57:53,520
want the job. But then several people, well, I was put under massive pressure from a lot of people

660
00:57:55,040 --> 00:58:02,400
to apply for it. And actually, it was a good long chat with my father that sort of influenced me to

661
00:58:02,400 --> 00:58:06,480
finally put the application in. That's brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Well, so now you're a

662
00:58:06,480 --> 00:58:11,520
commissioner, so you're in charge of the whole London Fire Brigade. I want to transition to

663
00:58:11,520 --> 00:58:17,200
something you said about the women thing as well. So many, many conversations I've had with men and

664
00:58:17,200 --> 00:58:26,480
women on this podcast. Most good firefighters just see the idiocracy behind prejudice because

665
00:58:27,040 --> 00:58:31,360
if for nothing else, by the time we put our gear on, there's only one prejudice left.

666
00:58:31,360 --> 00:58:35,520
Either that's a shitty firefighter or a good firefighter just based on how they're performing

667
00:58:35,520 --> 00:58:42,800
on the fire ground. So what I have seen, for example, in the CrossFit space is it's really

668
00:58:42,800 --> 00:58:49,280
empowered the female tactical athlete to be the best version of themselves and therefore become

669
00:58:49,280 --> 00:58:54,800
a great police officer, firefighter, medic, corrections officer. What are some of the things

670
00:58:54,800 --> 00:59:00,480
that you found successful as far as reaching out to certain communities or areas to find great

671
00:59:00,480 --> 00:59:06,320
candidates? Because obviously the knee jerk for diversity is filling checking boxes and opening

672
00:59:06,960 --> 00:59:13,120
a free range just based on skin color. And that's a disgrace to everyone that's of that background

673
00:59:13,120 --> 00:59:19,360
that's already in the fire service. So how have you found an effective way of finding great

674
00:59:19,360 --> 00:59:25,440
firefighter candidates of all walks of life? So learning from mistakes. So we definitely

675
00:59:25,440 --> 00:59:31,440
made some massive mistakes early on where, you know, because in order to fill numbers very much,

676
00:59:31,440 --> 00:59:36,400
as you said, tick boxes, London Fire Brigade reached out to anyone and basically told them

677
00:59:36,400 --> 00:59:40,720
they could be a firefighter. And we employed some people who did not want to be firefighters and

678
00:59:40,720 --> 00:59:46,080
should not been firefighters from the wrong places. I remember doing recruitment. So I used to

679
00:59:46,080 --> 00:59:50,720
volunteer to go along to recruitment events to talk about being a firefighter. I remember once being

680
00:59:50,720 --> 00:59:56,000
at a fashion show in London. So can you imagine lots of young girls turning up to a fashion show,

681
00:59:56,000 --> 01:00:00,080
what they're thinking of being is a model. They want to be discovered. They don't want to be a

682
01:00:00,080 --> 01:00:04,080
firefighter. They don't want to get their fingernails dirty. They don't want to not wear makeup. They

683
01:00:04,080 --> 01:00:08,400
don't want their hair to be a mess. And we have this recruitment stand. And I do remember looking

684
01:00:08,400 --> 01:00:13,520
around thinking, why are we here? And then because people weren't stopping to talk to us, the

685
01:00:13,520 --> 01:00:18,640
organizers of the show decided that to highlight the fact London Fire Brigade were there, they

686
01:00:18,640 --> 01:00:26,160
would make us go up onto the catwalk and do a modeling parade wearing our fire kit. I can

687
01:00:26,160 --> 01:00:30,880
probably tell you I've never felt so humiliated in all my life because the idea of walking down

688
01:00:30,880 --> 01:00:34,640
the catwalk pretending to be a model is so far away from me. It was unbelievable.

689
01:00:36,080 --> 01:00:40,080
Just the look of amazement on all these young women's faces. It's so what are they doing up

690
01:00:40,080 --> 01:00:46,320
there? So yeah, we made mistakes. We learned from those. We then did pitch far more about

691
01:00:46,320 --> 01:00:51,920
the attributes of the firefighter and why women should be attracted to that. So we did a lot of

692
01:00:51,920 --> 01:00:58,480
work around sports teams, rugby teams, football teams, where women had the attributes of fitness,

693
01:00:58,480 --> 01:01:04,400
teamwork, communication skills. And that reached some really good rewards. And then now actually

694
01:01:04,400 --> 01:01:10,640
focusing on younger people. So the cadet element, so getting our fire cadets in and reaching out to

695
01:01:10,640 --> 01:01:16,720
those people, 12, 13, 14 year olds, when people start forming ideas about careers and actually

696
01:01:16,720 --> 01:01:21,920
getting them to be involved with the fire service and to understand and to feel part of that family.

697
01:01:21,920 --> 01:01:27,040
And that's been really useful because that has attracted a different group of young people who

698
01:01:27,040 --> 01:01:32,480
I think if we'd left it till they were 18 or 19 would not be thinking about the fire service as

699
01:01:32,480 --> 01:01:38,400
a career. But if you get in early and link in with them and make them feel part of that family.

700
01:01:38,400 --> 01:01:43,040
And you know, I'm so proud turning out to pass out parades for our cadets in the last three or

701
01:01:43,040 --> 01:01:49,760
four years and looking at groups of cadets of 15, 16 young people. And one of them I remember going

702
01:01:49,760 --> 01:01:54,880
to vividly and just standing there grinning because I think out of the 16 only two of them

703
01:01:54,880 --> 01:02:02,000
were young men. And out of the 16, I think only three of them were white kids. And all the rest

704
01:02:02,000 --> 01:02:06,480
of them were properly a mixture of people from that local community and girls who you would look

705
01:02:06,480 --> 01:02:10,160
at and not think in a million years would be interested in the fire service, you know, with

706
01:02:10,160 --> 01:02:15,200
beautiful hair and long nails were in their fire kit rolling up hose with a grin from ear to ear

707
01:02:15,200 --> 01:02:19,680
and feeling that part of community. It was amazing. Yeah. Well, that's what I've seen. I've got a

708
01:02:19,680 --> 01:02:25,120
friend, Chris Hickman, who's done an incredible mentor program here. And one of the only departments

709
01:02:25,120 --> 01:02:28,880
I've seen has actually managed to play well with the neighboring department. We get a lot of that

710
01:02:28,880 --> 01:02:35,760
kind of, you know, ego bashing going on. But yeah, reaching out and having a free program.

711
01:02:35,760 --> 01:02:43,040
So in these areas where for whatever reason, you know, the kids may not have the as many positive

712
01:02:43,040 --> 01:02:47,680
role models in other areas and having the opportunity to do a police cadet, a fire cadet,

713
01:02:47,680 --> 01:02:52,400
whatever it looks like, and be around mentors, see people that maybe were from their communities

714
01:02:52,400 --> 01:02:57,520
that already are firefighters now and inspire them. I don't have to go and do, you know, the

715
01:02:57,520 --> 01:03:03,120
less desirable jobs or even, you know, turn to crime because I can become a firefighter. But I

716
01:03:03,120 --> 01:03:09,360
think that's what's so great when you talked about the fashion, you know, the model event

717
01:03:09,920 --> 01:03:16,080
is creating mentorship programs within these areas that you want to reach out to, to give these young

718
01:03:16,080 --> 01:03:22,400
men and women the tools and find some incredible talent in that pool and then bring them into this

719
01:03:22,400 --> 01:03:28,320
career that we love. Yeah. And we have definitely seen, you know, young men and women who would

720
01:03:28,320 --> 01:03:33,200
never have been given the opportunity to think about applying to join London Fire Brigade through

721
01:03:33,200 --> 01:03:38,800
the cadet program, their confidence gaining, they had a skill they could put on their CV,

722
01:03:38,800 --> 01:03:44,000
and they had the ability to talk with passion about why they wanted to help their local

723
01:03:44,000 --> 01:03:47,920
communities that they would never have had without the opportunity of being in cadets.

724
01:03:47,920 --> 01:03:53,600
You know, kids that turned up with barely able to speak and make eye contact, they're so shy and so

725
01:03:53,600 --> 01:03:58,960
anxious, you know, at the end of it, standing there, you know, taking part in a drill in front

726
01:03:58,960 --> 01:04:04,240
of their loved ones, you know, and I've had so many, you know, parents and carers and people come

727
01:04:04,240 --> 01:04:08,720
say to me, you know, you've changed their life, they were going down the wrong path, they were

728
01:04:08,720 --> 01:04:12,880
involved with the wrong kind of people. And now all they talk about is cadets and how much they

729
01:04:12,880 --> 01:04:18,160
want to be a firefighter. And the other really positive effect it's had is that it's enabled us

730
01:04:18,160 --> 01:04:24,240
to make links in with communities where we were having tensions between firefighters and,

731
01:04:25,920 --> 01:04:30,000
you know, the local community. And then suddenly you've got champions. So these people who've been

732
01:04:30,000 --> 01:04:33,680
cadets and they've worked with us, when they've got their, you know, they're out in their groups

733
01:04:33,680 --> 01:04:37,920
of friends and someone says, Oh, let's put a, you know, Mickey fire call in, or let's set fire to

734
01:04:37,920 --> 01:04:41,440
this, you've actually got champions, these young kids saying, no, no, firefighters are our friends,

735
01:04:41,440 --> 01:04:45,520
don't do that. And that's been brilliant. Yeah, absolutely. I got a friend, Steve O.

736
01:04:45,520 --> 01:04:53,200
Michelle, who grew up in, I mean, an absolutely horrendous estate where I used to work. And he

737
01:04:53,200 --> 01:04:59,360
ended up through a mentor, high school football coach, getting into college, and then he came back,

738
01:04:59,360 --> 01:05:04,560
became a fireman, and now he serves the community he used to live in. So now these young boys and

739
01:05:04,560 --> 01:05:10,080
girls get to see him wearing the gear, walking the walk. And, you know, he does a lot of stuff,

740
01:05:10,080 --> 01:05:15,680
community outreach stuff too, but it shows them, I can do that. And you put, you know, a woman in fire

741
01:05:15,680 --> 01:05:21,040
gear or someone, you know, of a certain skin color from a certain area, it just empowers them. Like

742
01:05:21,040 --> 01:05:25,120
we talked about at the very beginning, you know, you have to have people that say, you can do it.

743
01:05:25,120 --> 01:05:29,280
And I believe, I believe you can do it. But also here are the tools to get there, because if they

744
01:05:29,280 --> 01:05:34,960
don't have the roadmap to becoming a firefighter, they're going to be lost. Yeah, very much so.

745
01:05:34,960 --> 01:05:39,200
And a lot of it for me is about, especially with young women, it's about confidence. And it's about

746
01:05:39,200 --> 01:05:44,960
not understanding, because quite often what happens is a young woman will turn up to do the firefighter

747
01:05:44,960 --> 01:05:50,720
selection test. And, you know, it is a lot of it is operationally focused, which is great. But because

748
01:05:50,720 --> 01:05:56,720
they've never, you know, had the opportunity to pick up a ladder, or to do various things, they

749
01:05:56,720 --> 01:06:01,840
their own mental barriers stop them. And they're physically capable, but they stop themselves,

750
01:06:01,840 --> 01:06:06,400
because they're unfamiliar with it. And they're anxious. And quite often, they're just there in a

751
01:06:06,400 --> 01:06:10,400
full of guys, and then they feel like they're the only one. Whereas if they've been through the

752
01:06:10,400 --> 01:06:15,440
cadet program, or they've been through some of our mentoring programs, then they've had those

753
01:06:15,440 --> 01:06:20,480
opportunities, and it's no longer something alien to them. So they can turn up and feel confident

754
01:06:20,480 --> 01:06:24,560
before they start. And that's made a huge difference. Yeah. So if they have big kids

755
01:06:24,560 --> 01:06:30,960
shouting, don't come here at shit, they actually know to ignore them this time. Indeed. If I had that, I could have gone to a sports school.

756
01:06:30,960 --> 01:06:40,400
All right, well, then let's lead into Grenfell then. So June 14 2017. What did that day look like through your eyes?

757
01:06:41,680 --> 01:06:48,000
So the obviously it was early as the morning. So the day before, I've been a perfectly normal day at work.

758
01:06:48,000 --> 01:06:54,480
I was the on call. So we used to share the on call between three principal offices. So one of us would

759
01:06:54,480 --> 01:07:02,080
always be on call. So it was my on call week. And I got a call from my staff officer in the early

760
01:07:02,080 --> 01:07:09,040
hours of the morning to say there is a significant fire, large scale building. It's a high rise building.

761
01:07:09,600 --> 01:07:17,440
There are people involved. And as she was on the phone to me, they asked for additional resources.

762
01:07:17,440 --> 01:07:23,440
So she said, we need to get going. So I said, right, I'll get my car. And at that point, you know,

763
01:07:23,440 --> 01:07:28,560
my car was outside. I drove myself to calls. So, you know, I didn't get a massive amount of

764
01:07:28,560 --> 01:07:32,480
information because I just wanted to get there. I understood the significance of what was going on.

765
01:07:33,280 --> 01:07:39,440
So I wrote down bare bits of information on my piece of paper, took it with me programmed into

766
01:07:39,440 --> 01:07:43,680
a sat nav. And it was quite a considerable distance from where I live across London.

767
01:07:43,680 --> 01:07:48,240
And I had my radio on all the way there listening to the messages between the fire ground and our

768
01:07:48,240 --> 01:07:54,560
control room and just focusing on getting there. And it was really difficult. It's quite, you know,

769
01:07:54,560 --> 01:07:58,800
London traffic is busy 24 seven is never a quiet point. So even the fact I was driving there

770
01:07:58,800 --> 01:08:04,640
in the middle of the night, you know, right through London was busy. And I remember getting to and I

771
01:08:04,640 --> 01:08:11,840
hadn't seen on the approach the way my route went in. I hadn't seen Grenfell at all. I was unfamiliar

772
01:08:11,840 --> 01:08:17,600
with the area. It wasn't an area of London I've worked in. And it wasn't till I went to stop that

773
01:08:17,600 --> 01:08:24,320
I saw the building at the time I was actually on the phone to one of my deputies who was on holiday.

774
01:08:26,160 --> 01:08:32,560
And he was abroad. And he had seen and he'd phoned me to speak to me. And I was actually talking to

775
01:08:32,560 --> 01:08:38,720
him as I pulled up and said lots of terrible things when I saw the building first off. And I

776
01:08:38,720 --> 01:08:43,120
just said, look, I've got to go and I parked up and it was it was very congested in the area and

777
01:08:43,120 --> 01:08:48,240
lots of roads were blocked. So I'd parked a little way away. So I just remember putting my fire get

778
01:08:48,240 --> 01:08:54,240
on. I actually took a photograph of the tower from where I stood just because I was so incredulous

779
01:08:54,240 --> 01:08:57,600
as what I could see in front of me and I couldn't believe it. So I thought I will just take this

780
01:08:57,600 --> 01:09:02,160
photograph so I can remember what it looked like when I turned up. And I remember running down

781
01:09:02,160 --> 01:09:08,720
these streets, getting to the instant ground and getting to the base of the tower and just looking

782
01:09:08,720 --> 01:09:13,840
up and thinking this cannot be happening. This cannot possibly be happening in a building in

783
01:09:13,840 --> 01:09:21,040
London in 2017. It's an impossibility that a building should be so significantly ablaze.

784
01:09:21,040 --> 01:09:26,000
And I knew how many people were in there because I had been listening to the information being

785
01:09:26,000 --> 01:09:30,080
relayed between our control room and the fire ground. So I'd heard all the fire survival

786
01:09:30,080 --> 01:09:34,640
guidance calls and I knew that there were still significant numbers of people in the building.

787
01:09:34,640 --> 01:09:40,480
And I just looked up and I felt a moment of absolute despair of thinking,

788
01:09:42,240 --> 01:09:48,400
right, it wasn't happening. And I just remember running to our command unit and meeting up with

789
01:09:49,920 --> 01:09:53,280
Andy Rowe, who was the guy who was in charge, who was the assistant commissioner.

790
01:09:54,480 --> 01:10:01,760
And from that moment on, we worked as a very good team. We clicked together. And I know very well

791
01:10:01,760 --> 01:10:06,480
and it was just a case of, right, what are we going to do to absolutely work our socks off here

792
01:10:06,480 --> 01:10:09,680
and do our best? And I remember he was doing a briefing and I said, right, I'm going to go into

793
01:10:09,680 --> 01:10:14,080
the tower. And he said, right, let's go and have a look. I said, I need to get better situational

794
01:10:14,080 --> 01:10:18,640
awareness to understand what's happening. So we walked into the base of the tower.

795
01:10:20,000 --> 01:10:27,120
And I do remember as I walked in and I looked up from the doorway, I was about to go in.

796
01:10:27,120 --> 01:10:32,240
And I genuinely remember thinking if I was a firefighter, I would be terrified going into

797
01:10:32,240 --> 01:10:37,520
this building now. I would be absolutely terrified because I'm going into an inferno. And I just

798
01:10:37,520 --> 01:10:43,920
remember thinking I have got to be as supportive and positive as I can to these firefighters

799
01:10:43,920 --> 01:10:47,280
because they are going to absolutely risk their lives and do a terrible thing.

800
01:10:48,080 --> 01:10:52,720
So I remember running in and there was this debris raining down the outside of the building.

801
01:10:52,720 --> 01:10:56,320
You know, never seen anything like it. Just these sheets of flaming material dropping

802
01:10:56,320 --> 01:11:00,880
down. And there was a guy standing in the doorway doing spotting and he was just shouting run

803
01:11:00,880 --> 01:11:04,800
at a moment where because he was trying to look up and see when it was fairly clear and we were

804
01:11:04,800 --> 01:11:13,040
just running in. And I just remember getting in there and just seeing what was a very calm

805
01:11:13,040 --> 01:11:18,880
situation in such a terrible, terrible situation. The calm and professionalism of those firefighters,

806
01:11:18,880 --> 01:11:25,440
the absolute determination and the steel in their eyes was something, you know, to behold.

807
01:11:25,440 --> 01:11:30,400
The fact that they were all waiting, they were lined up, they were ready to go. They knew what

808
01:11:30,400 --> 01:11:35,440
they were going into, but they were absolutely there to do a job and to 100% give everything

809
01:11:35,440 --> 01:11:40,320
they could. So I didn't stay in there long. I had a chat with a few people. I just remember

810
01:11:40,320 --> 01:11:44,720
saying to people stick together and look after each other. Make sure you look after each other.

811
01:11:44,720 --> 01:11:53,120
And I remember, and you know, this is a really kind of, I don't know, I suppose very difficult

812
01:11:53,120 --> 01:11:57,920
thing for me. I remember, so lots of these firefighters were from Northwest London. I didn't

813
01:11:57,920 --> 01:12:01,520
know Northwest London firefighters have never served there. So lots of firefighters I wasn't

814
01:12:01,520 --> 01:12:06,400
familiar with, you know, the 6,000 firefighters in London. I don't know all of them. And I remember

815
01:12:06,400 --> 01:12:10,400
touching this guy's arm and saying to him, you know, you'll be fine. You're brilliant. You're

816
01:12:10,400 --> 01:12:14,960
doing really well. Stick with your crew. Remember, go on, you know, give it your all type thing.

817
01:12:14,960 --> 01:12:20,160
And I remember thinking this guy might die, but at least if he does, I hope he remembers that someone

818
01:12:20,160 --> 01:12:24,160
was being really nice to him just before then. And that was actually what was in my head, which is a

819
01:12:24,960 --> 01:12:30,720
incredibly difficult thing to be thinking that you're sending somebody to their potential death

820
01:12:30,720 --> 01:12:36,080
to save other people. And I remember walking back and Andy and I had a conversation on the command

821
01:12:36,080 --> 01:12:43,200
unit where we talked about the right to life and the fact that we believe the people in the tower

822
01:12:43,200 --> 01:12:47,280
had a right to life and that we were prepared to risk the lives of our firefighters to save the

823
01:12:47,280 --> 01:12:53,040
people in the tower and that we made a documented decision that we would carry on even though

824
01:12:53,040 --> 01:12:56,240
everything about all of our policies and procedures said we shouldn't keep committing

825
01:12:56,240 --> 01:13:01,200
firefighters into that situation. We made an absolute decision that we would carry on

826
01:13:01,200 --> 01:13:08,240
committing them and carry on commissioning to save the people in there. And honestly, I, you know,

827
01:13:08,240 --> 01:13:15,040
I felt physically sick for a very long time with the anxiety of believing that I would be

828
01:13:15,040 --> 01:13:19,040
responsible for the deaths, multiple deaths of firefighters, because I was going to keep

829
01:13:19,040 --> 01:13:21,840
committing into that building to save lives no matter what.

830
01:13:23,040 --> 01:13:28,960
Well, one of the things I know that was, you know, highlighted and criticized was a shelter in place.

831
01:13:28,960 --> 01:13:34,320
Now, as again, a career fireman myself, having responded to nothing crazy, but, you know,

832
01:13:35,200 --> 01:13:41,680
single room hotel fires and things like that, there's an understanding that most high rises are

833
01:13:41,680 --> 01:13:46,560
structurally non-combustible with, you know, the room and contents are the things that are going to

834
01:13:46,560 --> 01:13:54,560
burn. So a shelter in place is a great tactic for, you know, a 25, 28-story building where

835
01:13:54,560 --> 01:14:00,320
initially one or two units might be on fire. So talk about the initial decision and then, you know,

836
01:14:00,320 --> 01:14:06,480
what you saw and then why the change was made then, because to me, that takes everything you've known

837
01:14:06,480 --> 01:14:10,800
about firefighting, you apply it to that building, but then something out of the ordinary happens

838
01:14:10,800 --> 01:14:12,560
that changes everything.

839
01:14:14,080 --> 01:14:20,400
So obviously, you know, the advice to people to stay in their, you know, individual compartments is

840
01:14:20,400 --> 01:14:25,440
the right advice when a building is built correctly and behaves in the manner it should, because you

841
01:14:25,440 --> 01:14:29,920
are safer. The, you know, places like Grenfell Tower are not designed for massive evacuation.

842
01:14:29,920 --> 01:14:35,920
They have a single, very narrow staircase. And to give people an idea of the concept, the staircase

843
01:14:35,920 --> 01:14:40,560
of Grenfell Tower was a single staircase. If two people stood side by side on the staircase,

844
01:14:40,560 --> 01:14:44,560
they blocked the staircase. So two people standing side by side is the width of the staircase.

845
01:14:44,560 --> 01:14:48,800
It is not designed for massive evacuation. It's not designed for massive evacuation under

846
01:14:48,800 --> 01:14:54,880
conditions of extreme heat, extreme smoke, and with members of the public who are vulnerable,

847
01:14:54,880 --> 01:14:59,280
who are elderly, who are frail, who have young children, who are naturally distressed and

848
01:14:59,280 --> 01:15:04,800
panicking. That's the context. So the idea is that stay put should work because the building

849
01:15:04,800 --> 01:15:10,480
should never behave like that. The decision to revoke stay put and to tell everyone to get out

850
01:15:10,480 --> 01:15:18,160
happened about 10, 15 minutes before I arrived. Andy made the decision to tell everyone just as

851
01:15:18,160 --> 01:15:25,040
best they could to get out. But my, you know, my absolute view is that whatever happened that night

852
01:15:25,040 --> 01:15:31,040
where the people, you know, my, you know, and we can't turn back time and we can never ever

853
01:15:31,600 --> 01:15:36,480
predict what would happen if you change things. But my true belief is that if people have been

854
01:15:36,480 --> 01:15:41,040
told to mass evacuate very early on, that there'd be a lot more people who would have died on the

855
01:15:41,040 --> 01:15:44,880
staircase because they would have panicked. And all we have to do is look at, you know,

856
01:15:44,880 --> 01:15:51,200
situations where people are told to evacuate and people do get crushed and get killed in the panic.

857
01:15:52,160 --> 01:15:56,400
You know, we can't ever predict what would have happened, but I know what the staircase looked

858
01:15:56,400 --> 01:16:01,200
like. I know how narrow it was. And I know how many people were in that building. And we can,

859
01:16:01,200 --> 01:16:07,200
you know, that from the moment that fire started and developed, you know, those people were put in

860
01:16:07,200 --> 01:16:13,840
an untenable situation. And I absolutely know the other thing is that London firefighters were going

861
01:16:13,840 --> 01:16:19,520
into that building time after time without firefighting equipment into the most horrific

862
01:16:19,520 --> 01:16:25,680
conditions of heat and smoke to do their very best time and time again to rescue people.

863
01:16:25,680 --> 01:16:30,640
And they rescued so many people. There were so many people who, you know, got brought out the

864
01:16:30,640 --> 01:16:36,480
building safely because of the heroic actions of London firefighters. And none of us can ever

865
01:16:36,480 --> 01:16:40,720
predict what would have happened if things were done at a different time. But, you know, what we

866
01:16:40,720 --> 01:16:46,560
do know is that no building should ever behave like that. You know, no building should ever either be

867
01:16:46,560 --> 01:16:51,760
allowed to be covered in flammable material or have so many faults in compartmentation that a fire

868
01:16:51,760 --> 01:16:55,680
can spread so readily through the building. Yeah. Well, I want to get to the construction in a

869
01:16:55,680 --> 01:17:00,400
moment, but you said about without equipment. Was that you literally didn't have any breathing

870
01:17:00,400 --> 01:17:05,040
apparatus left? So they just went in wearing their bunker gear just to facilitate rescues in areas

871
01:17:05,040 --> 01:17:10,080
that were tenable. So they had breathing apparatus, but, you know, you know how long breathing

872
01:17:10,080 --> 01:17:15,200
apparatus in the last and if you're under duress and stress and you're climbing up 24 stairs,

873
01:17:15,200 --> 01:17:19,920
you know, your breathing apparatus will not last that. So a lot of them were not going under air

874
01:17:19,920 --> 01:17:24,320
until they were in really smokey environments. They were going without firefighting equipment.

875
01:17:24,320 --> 01:17:30,080
So they had no hoses, no water because, you know, the facility that provides water, the dry rising

876
01:17:30,080 --> 01:17:36,080
main is only ever supposed to provide water for three or four main jets. We needed two on every

877
01:17:36,080 --> 01:17:40,640
floor that was on fire. So there wasn't a facility for them to have water to tackle the fire with.

878
01:17:40,640 --> 01:17:44,880
You know, that's one of our basic premises. When you go into a fire, you take water to put the

879
01:17:44,880 --> 01:17:48,480
fire out and protect yourself and protect people you're rescuing. They couldn't do that because

880
01:17:48,480 --> 01:17:52,160
there wasn't a facility to do that. And yet not one of them stood there and said, well, I'm not

881
01:17:52,160 --> 01:17:56,560
going because I haven't got the right equipment or I'm not putting my life on the line. We actually

882
01:17:56,560 --> 01:18:01,200
had to struggle more to stop people from keeping going in there. And we had firefighters who were

883
01:18:01,200 --> 01:18:06,560
coming out and collapsing because they're suffering heat exhaustion and because of the stress they put

884
01:18:06,560 --> 01:18:11,360
their body through. And yet they still wanted to go back in. Yeah. Well, there's that one iconic

885
01:18:11,360 --> 01:18:16,640
picture that I've shared a few times now of them all sitting kind of in like a parking area off to

886
01:18:16,640 --> 01:18:22,560
the side and just taking whatever version of rest they can get before they went back in again. But

887
01:18:22,560 --> 01:18:28,960
anyone who is honest with themselves, when we think about throwing gear on and climbing 24 stories

888
01:18:28,960 --> 01:18:34,400
with equipment on us, one time is exhausting. That's without the stress of thinking that you

889
01:18:34,400 --> 01:18:38,800
might die. That's without, you know, like poor Ricky and his partner having to make a decision

890
01:18:38,800 --> 01:18:43,360
not being able to save someone. You know, I mean, there's so many elements of this that just

891
01:18:43,360 --> 01:18:47,680
that everyone that responded that day has my admiration. That's why I found it so heartbreaking

892
01:18:47,680 --> 01:18:54,320
that some people were perceiving the actions as not enough because I think those men and women did

893
01:18:54,320 --> 01:19:00,320
more than most firefighters have ever been asked to do in their career. Absolutely. And 100%, you

894
01:19:00,320 --> 01:19:04,720
know, each and every one of them, whatever role they played that night, you know, there was not

895
01:19:04,720 --> 01:19:10,960
one person I saw on the fire ground who was not 100% fully committed and dedicated to saving as

896
01:19:10,960 --> 01:19:15,920
many lives. And, you know, I had officers coming up to me saying, please, please don't make us,

897
01:19:15,920 --> 01:19:20,400
don't stop us going in there. And I was never going to do that. You know, people genuinely

898
01:19:20,400 --> 01:19:25,840
worried that we would make a decision to, you know, protect our firefighters and to stop them

899
01:19:25,840 --> 01:19:30,880
committing in there. And we carried on doing that. So we had situations where we lost crews, we lost

900
01:19:30,880 --> 01:19:35,920
contact with them. We didn't know if they were alive or not, you know, but firefighters carried

901
01:19:35,920 --> 01:19:39,920
on going in. I mean, normally at that point, you know, the focus is absolutely on rescuing

902
01:19:39,920 --> 01:19:44,560
each other. But we just kept hoping that they'd come back out again. And because we didn't have

903
01:19:44,560 --> 01:19:50,400
the resources to commit to going look for everybody, you know, it was a terrible situation. But

904
01:19:50,400 --> 01:19:55,040
I know, you know, the absolute priority and each and every one of those firefighters was just to

905
01:19:55,040 --> 01:19:59,600
keep going in there and keep going in there. And even the points where, you know, they were going

906
01:19:59,600 --> 01:20:05,760
in through walls and walls of flames and, you know, absolutely into untenable circumstances,

907
01:20:05,760 --> 01:20:10,320
they weren't going to give up ever. Yeah. Well, and it reminds me a lot of 9-11, you know,

908
01:20:10,320 --> 01:20:15,600
those brave and it was all men in that one that we lost in the fire service. But, you know,

909
01:20:15,600 --> 01:20:20,080
the buildings collapsed. And even though they rescued thousands of people, not only the fire

910
01:20:20,080 --> 01:20:24,640
service, but other uniformed personnel, other incredibly brave civilians, some of whom then

911
01:20:24,640 --> 01:20:29,280
perished trying to make other rescues. But there was never a blame on the fire service when the

912
01:20:29,280 --> 01:20:35,040
buildings collapsed. That's what I find so strange with some of the, you know, the agencies, the

913
01:20:35,040 --> 01:20:42,800
politicians, the groups aiming at that. Because what I saw you guys do was nothing short of heroic.

914
01:20:42,800 --> 01:20:49,440
And yet the underlying issue was the construction. That's what caused the incredible death and injury

915
01:20:49,440 --> 01:20:55,120
on that day. So tell me about Grenfell's history as a building and then what you enlightened me

916
01:20:55,120 --> 01:21:01,360
the other day, why it was even clad that way in the first place. So, you know, Grenfell was

917
01:21:01,360 --> 01:21:07,360
not dissimilar to a large number of high-rise buildings in London that were built in order to

918
01:21:07,360 --> 01:21:12,960
facilitate, you know, large numbers of people living in them in quite often deprived areas.

919
01:21:12,960 --> 01:21:20,240
So they were not beautiful buildings, you know, they were concrete structures. They were drafty,

920
01:21:20,240 --> 01:21:25,040
they were, you know, deemed to be not safe. They were in areas that, you know, and I think the,

921
01:21:25,040 --> 01:21:29,680
you know, you can look anywhere across London and have seen a number of those types of buildings.

922
01:21:29,680 --> 01:21:39,280
The issue, of course, with Grenfell is that the Kensington area has the biggest disparity

923
01:21:39,280 --> 01:21:45,040
of the very, very richest and the very poorest of communities rubbing shoulders, living street by

924
01:21:45,040 --> 01:21:49,280
street, side by side. You know, you've got the people who are definitely in the wealthiest bracket

925
01:21:49,280 --> 01:21:54,400
of people in the UK living half a mile from people who haven't got two pennies to rub together and

926
01:21:54,400 --> 01:22:00,160
who are desperate. And, you know, I knew nothing about Grenfell before the fire. It wasn't an area

927
01:22:00,160 --> 01:22:05,440
I was familiar with, but obviously subsequently you, you know, you become very familiar with,

928
01:22:05,440 --> 01:22:10,800
you know, what happened and how the building got refurbished. And absolutely part of the refurbishment

929
01:22:11,760 --> 01:22:15,600
was to do with the fact that Grenfell Tower was fundamentally quite an ugly building.

930
01:22:15,600 --> 01:22:20,320
It was a concrete building. It wasn't beautiful. And part of the refurbishment was to make it

931
01:22:20,320 --> 01:22:25,360
look prettier in the area it was in in London so that, you know, when people looked out their

932
01:22:25,360 --> 01:22:30,240
windows, they saw a prettier building. The local community and the people of Grenfell wanted the

933
01:22:30,240 --> 01:22:35,920
money spent on improving the inside and the facilities of their building and the safety of

934
01:22:35,920 --> 01:22:39,120
their area. You know, they didn't want their building to look pretty. They wanted their

935
01:22:39,120 --> 01:22:44,640
building to be watertight and windproof and weatherproof and warm and secure and safe and have,

936
01:22:44,640 --> 01:22:50,000
you know, the right facilities inside. But that wasn't the major consideration for the people

937
01:22:50,000 --> 01:22:57,120
doing the refurbishment. And, you know, the tragedy is the people in Grenfell raised concern time and

938
01:22:57,120 --> 01:23:02,960
time again about the refurbishment. And, you know, you've got people act as though communities that

939
01:23:02,960 --> 01:23:08,960
live in those towers are, you know, fundamentally lesser or stupid people. There were some incredibly

940
01:23:08,960 --> 01:23:13,920
intelligent, articulate people there who could see what was happening, who voiced their concerns,

941
01:23:13,920 --> 01:23:18,720
and they just weren't listened to. And they were viewed as being difficult and rabble rousers and

942
01:23:18,720 --> 01:23:23,680
argumentative people. And, you know, some of the terrible stuff that's come out as part of phase two

943
01:23:23,680 --> 01:23:28,800
of what the people doing the refurbishment forced the local community. They were difficult. They

944
01:23:28,800 --> 01:23:34,720
were just being argumentative for the sake of it. Now, these were people who had a genuine and

945
01:23:34,720 --> 01:23:38,720
rightful concern about the building they lived in and what was happening to it. And they just

946
01:23:38,720 --> 01:23:44,560
weren't listened to. Yeah, well, just I watched, I think it was the Voices of Grenfell documentary.

947
01:23:44,560 --> 01:23:49,360
And, you know, they talked about the lift not working about the plugs shorting out, they would

948
01:23:49,360 --> 01:23:54,080
get, you know, sparks coming out of their outlets. So those seem like very fundamental things that,

949
01:23:54,080 --> 01:23:59,680
you know, in themselves need to be addressed, even not even if you're, you're going to draft

950
01:23:59,680 --> 01:24:06,160
proof or waterproof, but just just the fundamental safety element. Yeah, and those weren't being

951
01:24:06,160 --> 01:24:11,280
addressed because, you know, people, they weren't a high priority for the people who were dealing

952
01:24:11,280 --> 01:24:15,600
with it, you know, it wasn't and it didn't affect them, you know, all these people living in terrible

953
01:24:15,600 --> 01:24:19,920
circumstances, the people at the other end of the, you know, the budgets and things, it doesn't

954
01:24:19,920 --> 01:24:26,160
affect them. And it's not what they focus on. And that's the, you know, it's a tragedy that plays out

955
01:24:26,160 --> 01:24:31,360
across the country all of the time about how budgets are set and how buildings are refurbished. But,

956
01:24:31,360 --> 01:24:35,200
you know, in this circumstance, when you look at and you look now, and you understand how many

957
01:24:35,200 --> 01:24:41,600
buildings were refurbished with the same type of cladding and how very dangerous it was. And but

958
01:24:41,600 --> 01:24:46,400
even when you take the cladding aspect, a lot of the buildings that, you know, London Fire Brigade

959
01:24:46,400 --> 01:24:53,760
subsequently inspected the standard, the building underneath the cladding was so poor and so, you

960
01:24:53,760 --> 01:24:59,280
know, full of fire safety risks that the loss those buildings we found should have been condemned,

961
01:24:59,280 --> 01:25:05,680
even without the cladding. I mean, I very much remember on my colleagues in fire safety describing

962
01:25:06,240 --> 01:25:13,200
one of the buildings, a Swiss cheese clad with a petrol overcoat. The building had so many holes

963
01:25:13,200 --> 01:25:16,960
and so many points of failure where fire could spread and then they put a petrol overcoat or

964
01:25:16,960 --> 01:25:22,000
cladding on it, you know, that's the risk level. Yeah. So that's just to kind of paint the picture

965
01:25:22,000 --> 01:25:29,040
then. So when they clad Grenfell, you had vent spaces. So you had air and then you had a petroleum

966
01:25:29,040 --> 01:25:35,520
base cladding that was put in that turned what should have been a one flat fire, kitchen fire,

967
01:25:35,520 --> 01:25:41,520
into literally a towering inferno. Yeah. And that's, you know, and that should never happen. So

968
01:25:41,520 --> 01:25:46,160
no building should be able to, you know, and I know that during the inquiry, they raised all these

969
01:25:46,160 --> 01:25:50,400
other buildings where they had external facade fires. And yes, there have been other buildings

970
01:25:50,400 --> 01:25:54,640
that have had external facade fires, but they haven't entered the premises. They haven't gone

971
01:25:54,640 --> 01:25:59,760
into the individual compartments and then spread because that should never be allowed to happen.

972
01:25:59,760 --> 01:26:04,800
And you can't fire to fire and go into every building and assume the building is the worst

973
01:26:04,800 --> 01:26:08,720
case scenario, because then you just assume every building is going to fall down and you'd never go

974
01:26:08,720 --> 01:26:12,880
in there. So, you know, the unreasonable list of the inquiry in the cold light of day saying,

975
01:26:12,880 --> 01:26:16,960
you should have known this, you should have known that. Firefighters need to be able to depend on

976
01:26:16,960 --> 01:26:23,680
building regulations to actually build and, you know, refurbish buildings to a satisfactory

977
01:26:23,680 --> 01:26:28,160
standard. That means they aren't going to behave like that in the fire. Yeah. And we have an issue

978
01:26:28,160 --> 01:26:33,040
here with more and more with our smaller buildings, but with lightweight construction, you know,

979
01:26:33,040 --> 01:26:37,600
everything's made as cheaply as possible. And so building collapse is a big danger for us.

980
01:26:38,320 --> 01:26:43,120
Yeah, massive. And, you know, we've seen several fires since Gwenfell in other types of building

981
01:26:43,120 --> 01:26:48,240
where we've, you know, it's been uncovering more and more the poor quality of building construction

982
01:26:48,240 --> 01:26:54,640
and the poor regime of inspection and maintenance that has led to, you know, one of the real risk

983
01:26:54,640 --> 01:26:58,960
moments when we did inspections just immediately after Gwenfell, where there are a number of high

984
01:26:58,960 --> 01:27:05,680
rise buildings that, you know, could potentially have needed to be completely evacuated because

985
01:27:05,680 --> 01:27:10,560
they weren't safe to live in. But the risk was there was nowhere else to house these poor people

986
01:27:10,560 --> 01:27:15,520
because the rest of the housing stock available was of such poor quality that we were probably

987
01:27:15,520 --> 01:27:20,880
putting them at greater risk taking them out of their Swiss cheese, petrol overcoat building and

988
01:27:20,880 --> 01:27:25,280
putting them somewhere else. Yeah. Well, again, another thing that's discussed in the documentary,

989
01:27:25,280 --> 01:27:31,040
tell me about the community response, not the residents, but the government agencies that

990
01:27:31,040 --> 01:27:36,480
should have been there to help these men and women, you know, with housing, with food, with

991
01:27:36,480 --> 01:27:42,000
all that. What we would do is the Red Cross here in the US, but the people that are responsible

992
01:27:42,000 --> 01:27:48,000
for those residents, where were they the 24 hours after this happened? I think even, you know,

993
01:27:48,000 --> 01:27:53,360
even on the night during the night when we were asking for building plans and we were asking for

994
01:27:53,360 --> 01:27:58,480
support and we were asking, you know, to identify people who could help, it just wasn't there. The

995
01:27:58,480 --> 01:28:04,160
level of response was not there. You know, we had a few individuals from the local borough who came

996
01:28:04,160 --> 01:28:11,920
out who were, you know, completely bemused by the level and the scale and the response that, you know,

997
01:28:11,920 --> 01:28:16,640
I'm one of the things I found really shocking was I was walking around the incident ground and I

998
01:28:16,640 --> 01:28:22,640
came across a member of the public who had come out of Grenfell Tower and was walking around in

999
01:28:22,640 --> 01:28:28,480
complete daze and I stopped and spoke to them and I said, you're okay, what's the matter? And they

1000
01:28:28,480 --> 01:28:33,040
said, I don't even know what I'm supposed to be doing. So these are people who've come out of a

1001
01:28:33,040 --> 01:28:38,720
terrible situation and there's no focus and no one's looking after them and nobody is directing

1002
01:28:38,720 --> 01:28:44,880
them to a rest centre or to, you know, to actually even do take names and addresses down so we know

1003
01:28:44,880 --> 01:28:48,880
who's coming out of the building and that was a responsibility of the local authority and it just

1004
01:28:48,880 --> 01:28:52,800
wasn't happening and I just felt, you know, these people have come through this hellish trauma,

1005
01:28:52,800 --> 01:28:57,680
they've actually got out there on the lucky ones but then there's nobody taking care of them and,

1006
01:28:57,680 --> 01:29:05,040
you know, the level of response was really poor and, you know, it's been an ongoing battle for

1007
01:29:05,040 --> 01:29:11,200
people for this whole time to actually, you know, get looked after in a decent way.

1008
01:29:11,920 --> 01:29:16,400
Yeah, well the other thing that I discussed with Ricky that I saw from the documentary was the

1009
01:29:17,040 --> 01:29:23,360
other side of the coin. So while the people that were paid to respond seemingly didn't show up,

1010
01:29:23,360 --> 01:29:28,400
tell me about what you saw with that Grenfell community banding together those first couple of

1011
01:29:28,400 --> 01:29:37,360
days. Honestly, what I would say is that the local community were fantastic. They were an amazing

1012
01:29:37,360 --> 01:29:45,440
group of caring, proactive, you know, dedicated individuals who just pulled together, you know,

1013
01:29:45,440 --> 01:29:51,200
to support the local community but also to support the Blue Light family who were there. So, you know,

1014
01:29:51,200 --> 01:29:59,200
we had people, local people, cooking up big pots of food and bringing it to the fire ground to help

1015
01:29:59,200 --> 01:30:03,760
feed all the responders who were there for days and days to actually, they wanted to do something

1016
01:30:03,760 --> 01:30:08,480
and they didn't know what to do so they put their heart into cooking and love and coming out to take

1017
01:30:08,480 --> 01:30:13,760
care of people there and that extended, you know, not only to the people from the surrounding area

1018
01:30:13,760 --> 01:30:18,800
but to all the Blue Light family who were there and, you know, the absolute love and support they

1019
01:30:18,800 --> 01:30:23,840
showed and then just the people who just brought donations and goods because they wanted to do

1020
01:30:23,840 --> 01:30:28,160
something. These were people who have no money, who have nothing, but they were prepared to bring

1021
01:30:28,160 --> 01:30:33,360
whatever they could to try and help the people who'd lost everything and it was, you know, it's,

1022
01:30:34,240 --> 01:30:38,720
I think in situations like this you see the very worst of certain aspects but you see the very

1023
01:30:38,720 --> 01:30:44,080
best of people too. Yeah and I saw, you know, men and women of all walks of life, all religions,

1024
01:30:44,080 --> 01:30:49,520
opening mosques, temples, churches, you know, and all banding together just being humans and I wish

1025
01:30:49,520 --> 01:30:55,360
that we could encapsulate what I saw in that documentary and apply it to what we're seeing

1026
01:30:55,360 --> 01:31:00,240
now where instead of that division people see the commonalities not the differences.

1027
01:31:01,200 --> 01:31:07,360
Absolutely and the religious thing was very interesting. We had, you know, huge amounts of

1028
01:31:07,360 --> 01:31:12,080
different religious leaders of absolutely every faith come down to Grenfell Town, the instant

1029
01:31:12,080 --> 01:31:17,120
ground and they were just walking around supporting people and I know a lot of people are quite sort

1030
01:31:17,120 --> 01:31:23,840
of skeptical but I think their presence there was a real help and support to a lot of people

1031
01:31:24,720 --> 01:31:31,600
and even, you know, so we have, so the Salvation Army helped, they support Firefighters to the

1032
01:31:31,600 --> 01:31:35,840
instant ground, they have a van, a canteen van that comes out but actually, you know, from speaking

1033
01:31:35,840 --> 01:31:40,800
to a couple of our Salvation Army team who are brilliant, absolutely brilliant, you know, it

1034
01:31:40,800 --> 01:31:46,400
wasn't cups of tea that people wanted, it was they just wanted to talk to somebody about what

1035
01:31:46,400 --> 01:31:52,160
terrible things were happening and they were just there to provide a listening ear and, you know,

1036
01:31:52,160 --> 01:31:58,000
literally from every single background of every faith it was amazing. Beautiful. Well, you talked

1037
01:31:58,000 --> 01:32:02,320
about, you know, mental health and wanted to talk, that was one thing that I remember very, very

1038
01:32:02,320 --> 01:32:07,600
shortly after is that you took the bull by the horns when it came to the mental health, you know,

1039
01:32:07,600 --> 01:32:12,400
of everyone but, you know, including your responders so tell me what you saw with your men and women

1040
01:32:12,400 --> 01:32:17,040
and how you were able to steer that conversation towards the mental health after the tragedies

1041
01:32:17,040 --> 01:32:22,480
that they've seen. So the one of the interesting things and that people, you know, that get played

1042
01:32:22,480 --> 01:32:28,720
out to me as a bad point but, you know, so when you do a media briefing in the height of a

1043
01:32:28,720 --> 01:32:33,200
incident like that there's very clear instructions from the police that you don't discuss casualties

1044
01:32:33,200 --> 01:32:41,120
and numbers because you don't want to either unduly concern or give people hope so you have

1045
01:32:41,120 --> 01:32:46,080
to be very general about what you can talk about in lines of, you know, casualties and numbers very

1046
01:32:46,080 --> 01:32:50,560
early on in an incident because that's the absolute rules of how media briefings work. So the police

1047
01:32:50,560 --> 01:32:54,640
deal with that aspect of it, you know, as the lead for the fire service I'm responsible for talking

1048
01:32:54,640 --> 01:32:59,600
about the incident and the fire. So the first statement you give is always relatively bland and

1049
01:32:59,600 --> 01:33:04,080
just an information piece but the next time, you know, people want something else they want to know

1050
01:33:04,080 --> 01:33:07,840
and some of the things that struck me so I'd walked around the fire ground not long before I

1051
01:33:07,840 --> 01:33:14,320
gave the media briefing and I had seen firefighters, you know, big rough-to-tough-to-London

1052
01:33:14,320 --> 01:33:20,640
firefighter in tears and I had people that I ended up hugging who I didn't know, firefighters were

1053
01:33:20,640 --> 01:33:26,000
strangers to me, hugging them and they were destroyed and I've never seen that, you know,

1054
01:33:26,000 --> 01:33:31,440
in my at that point 30-year career I'd never ever seen that before. I've seen people fall

1055
01:33:31,440 --> 01:33:36,240
apart afterwards when they think that but never on the fire ground because we don't do that, you know,

1056
01:33:36,240 --> 01:33:41,680
we control our emotions and we're whatever and it just struck me that this was so different to

1057
01:33:41,680 --> 01:33:47,760
anything I'd ever experienced before and I knew from the feeling of responsibility that I had and

1058
01:33:47,760 --> 01:33:53,600
I had the biggest weight of responsibility in my head and in my heart from my firefighters

1059
01:33:53,600 --> 01:33:58,960
and I knew that this was so different and one of the things I was so concerned about was what was

1060
01:33:58,960 --> 01:34:04,160
going to be the short and long-term impact on firefighters for what they had seen that night

1061
01:34:04,160 --> 01:34:08,960
and what they had to do and it was one of the things I spoke about early on my briefings and

1062
01:34:08,960 --> 01:34:14,320
one of the things I did was call them my firefighters because I felt the absolute responsibility and

1063
01:34:14,320 --> 01:34:20,640
connection like I had never felt before and after some of the firefighters said to me no one's ever

1064
01:34:20,640 --> 01:34:27,440
sort of owned us before, no one's ever made us feel that loved and cared for and just by saying

1065
01:34:27,440 --> 01:34:33,120
that you showed us that that's how you feel but I did, I just felt the absolute connection so,

1066
01:34:33,120 --> 01:34:40,640
you know, I did talk very early on and I remember having conversation with, you know, people back

1067
01:34:40,640 --> 01:34:45,680
in City Hall about the fact that I would need additional resources very early on to be able to

1068
01:34:45,680 --> 01:34:51,360
support mental health and one of the things that we set up and I did before anyone left the fire

1069
01:34:51,360 --> 01:34:57,680
ground was to do a debrief and actually for each and every person to see a counsellor before they

1070
01:34:57,680 --> 01:35:01,440
went home that day and that was no mean feat because the numbers of staff on the fire ground

1071
01:35:01,440 --> 01:35:06,320
obviously but it was so important to me that we made that first connection and we got people to

1072
01:35:06,320 --> 01:35:10,880
understand that we were going to support them and that we understood that they were going to need a

1073
01:35:10,880 --> 01:35:16,480
lot of help. Yeah, I mean, like you said, the only time I think I've ever seen tears on a fire ground

1074
01:35:16,480 --> 01:35:21,680
is when we've lost a firefighter and from a leadership point of view just to kind of put

1075
01:35:21,680 --> 01:35:26,720
everything into perspective, what we saw the fact that you didn't lose a single firefighter and

1076
01:35:26,720 --> 01:35:31,360
obviously you made as many rescues as you possibly could but there were people that were just doomed

1077
01:35:31,360 --> 01:35:37,280
the moment that, you know, that took off but that speaks volumes too that you were able to keep your

1078
01:35:37,280 --> 01:35:42,960
men and women healthy and safe to the point where they were able to keep rescuing rather than have

1079
01:35:42,960 --> 01:35:48,800
to rescue one of their own. Yeah and you know that and as you know and I know Ricky made reference

1080
01:35:48,800 --> 01:35:54,480
to it but had we lost a firefighter then it would have changed the dynamic completely and

1081
01:35:55,600 --> 01:36:01,440
you know coincidentally and ironically at one point apparently and luckily I don't remember

1082
01:36:01,440 --> 01:36:07,440
this because I have some very big gaps in my memory, I nearly got struck by a large block of falling

1083
01:36:07,440 --> 01:36:13,440
debris and it was a very close event which I generally don't remember but was witnessed by

1084
01:36:13,440 --> 01:36:18,240
several of my firefighters and officers and one of the officers I spoke to afterwards said that

1085
01:36:18,240 --> 01:36:24,000
that completely and utterly it really played with his mind because he thought he was going to watch

1086
01:36:24,000 --> 01:36:30,480
me die and he said the impact that had on him just the thought that was going to happen, the fact it

1087
01:36:30,480 --> 01:36:34,240
didn't you know great but actually the worry then he said if that had happened it would have just

1088
01:36:34,240 --> 01:36:38,960
screwed everything up on the fire ground because how would they cope knowing that you know someone

1089
01:36:38,960 --> 01:36:44,800
had been killed and I'll say the fortunate thing is that I don't recollect it, I know it happened

1090
01:36:44,800 --> 01:36:49,680
but I don't have any knowledge of it happening as it were I'm in memory but you know it would have

1091
01:36:49,680 --> 01:36:55,200
completely and utterly changed the dynamic have we had a firefighter fatality or seriously injured

1092
01:36:55,200 --> 01:36:59,440
so you know the fact that we didn't and the fact that everyone just concentrated their efforts on

1093
01:36:59,440 --> 01:37:05,600
saving people in there it was so important. Yeah well the weight of the inability to save too

1094
01:37:05,600 --> 01:37:10,000
something I've talked about a lot I mean I've had in multiple occasions where we just haven't

1095
01:37:10,000 --> 01:37:14,960
everything's gone right and they've still died and when Ricky talks about his story about making

1096
01:37:14,960 --> 01:37:20,000
it all the way up there and then realizing that they only have enough air to get back down I mean

1097
01:37:20,000 --> 01:37:23,920
it's untenable the hallway would have killed the person anyway had they even been alive behind the

1098
01:37:23,920 --> 01:37:29,040
door they didn't even have the air to force the door that I mean it doesn't matter what you saw

1099
01:37:29,040 --> 01:37:34,800
if you saw some grotesque macabre images I think that is something that weighs so heavily I'm sure

1100
01:37:34,800 --> 01:37:40,560
that was probably behind what was crushing most of the people on scene. Yeah the what ifs and we

1101
01:37:40,560 --> 01:37:45,760
couldn't and I you know and I vividly remember having a conversation with one of my officers

1102
01:37:45,760 --> 01:37:49,280
and I was talking about how far up the building we were still able to progress

1103
01:37:50,000 --> 01:37:53,520
and he said he just kept looking me now and saying I've got to get to the 18th floor we've

1104
01:37:53,520 --> 01:37:58,080
got to get to the 18th floor and I didn't ask him what piece of information he had or what was

1105
01:37:58,080 --> 01:38:03,120
making that link but there was something there that was driving him to keep committing crews to

1106
01:38:03,120 --> 01:38:07,760
try and get to the 18th floor for a rescue and we couldn't get past the 15th at that point because

1107
01:38:07,760 --> 01:38:12,880
the level of fire and I know that's played on his mind ever since that he never got up to the 18th

1108
01:38:12,880 --> 01:38:17,840
floor and you know I'm not I remember standing outside the building at one point and I don't

1109
01:38:17,840 --> 01:38:23,280
know what time it was daylight and thinking are you ever going to go out looking at this fire

1110
01:38:23,280 --> 01:38:29,600
thinking are you ever going to give us a break because it was just so relentless and just so

1111
01:38:29,600 --> 01:38:35,360
awful and I just kept thinking hour after hour we can't we're never going to be able to carry on

1112
01:38:36,000 --> 01:38:41,520
and not have something terrible to happen to one of us because the risk was getting so much higher

1113
01:38:41,520 --> 01:38:46,400
and and I genuinely you know I've been far-fetched a very long time and I genuinely thought the

1114
01:38:46,400 --> 01:38:51,200
building would come down I could not understand how a building would burn with such ferocity for

1115
01:38:51,200 --> 01:38:57,120
so long and not have some form of collapse. Yeah well that's the irony is you know like we're

1116
01:38:57,120 --> 01:39:03,200
saying the structural members were not combustible so had it been you know refurbished the way it

1117
01:39:03,200 --> 01:39:07,120
should have been the same way as they attribute the collapse of the world trade to be lack of

1118
01:39:07,120 --> 01:39:11,280
fire protection on some of their structural members so you know that it's just awful and

1119
01:39:11,280 --> 01:39:16,640
when I was talking to Ricky as a fireman with very little high-rise fire experience you look at that

1120
01:39:16,640 --> 01:39:20,240
like there is no putting it out I remember watching it live and them criticizing oh why aren't the

1121
01:39:20,240 --> 01:39:26,160
ladders tall enough I'm like because ladders only go a certain far you know after that you're hanging

1122
01:39:26,160 --> 01:39:33,200
from helicopters or rappelling off roofs or or you know whatever but that it was an unwinnable fire

1123
01:39:33,200 --> 01:39:36,960
and as he said basically you had to protect exposures and wait till it burned itself out.

1124
01:39:37,600 --> 01:39:42,320
Yeah I mean it was there was no putting it out you know and it was and you know for anyone who

1125
01:39:42,320 --> 01:39:47,200
had seen you know 9-11 and seen the building on fire come down you know that was in a lot

1126
01:39:47,200 --> 01:39:51,760
of people's minds because you know buildings so that building should never behave in that way

1127
01:39:51,760 --> 01:39:56,240
Grenfell Tower should never have burnt in that way so how did we know that it wasn't then going

1128
01:39:56,240 --> 01:40:00,800
to stay structurally stable you know that was in people's minds but you know absolutely that was

1129
01:40:00,800 --> 01:40:04,720
in the minds of those firefighters that went in there but they still went in there knowing that

1130
01:40:04,720 --> 01:40:10,960
building might come down and kill them. Exactly well so you put the initial counseling in what

1131
01:40:10,960 --> 01:40:14,880
did mental health look like mental health counseling look like after that and was that

1132
01:40:14,880 --> 01:40:17,600
a change of what they were doing with the mental health element before?

1133
01:40:18,640 --> 01:40:25,120
Yeah unfortunately not I suppose a couple of years before that our counseling as it was counseling

1134
01:40:25,120 --> 01:40:30,320
well-being team had been cut by about half as part of budget savings so we had a reduced number of

1135
01:40:30,320 --> 01:40:37,200
counselors which was very difficult so immediately after that we I managed to put in place doubling

1136
01:40:37,200 --> 01:40:41,200
the amount of counselors we had but obviously you can't just go and buy them off a shelf.

1137
01:40:41,200 --> 01:40:45,120
Luckily some previous counselors that worked for London Fire Brigade volunteered to come back and

1138
01:40:45,120 --> 01:40:50,880
support us and we also had some phenomenal support from other agencies to use their counselors

1139
01:40:50,880 --> 01:40:57,040
because we needed for the initial we went back and did a 28-day intervention and we needed huge

1140
01:40:57,600 --> 01:41:03,360
vast quantities of counselors to do one-to-one interventions. Some of them weren't as good as

1141
01:41:03,360 --> 01:41:07,280
they could have been you know and that's an everlasting problem when you suddenly get that

1142
01:41:07,280 --> 01:41:13,280
number of people who need an intervention thrust on you but what we did was make the steps to let

1143
01:41:13,280 --> 01:41:20,880
everyone know that we were going to support them we understood and that you know that we were trying

1144
01:41:20,880 --> 01:41:27,840
to do our very best in terrible circumstances to highlight mental health and and past the reason

1145
01:41:27,840 --> 01:41:34,640
you know that I was so vocal about it was because you know it worried me so much of thinking and it

1146
01:41:34,640 --> 01:41:38,800
wasn't just thinking about the then and there it was looking forward and thinking some of these

1147
01:41:38,800 --> 01:41:43,680
people are going to struggle for life with what they've done and seen and it wasn't just our

1148
01:41:43,680 --> 01:41:48,960
firefighters on the scene it was our emergency call handlers that had a terrible time you know

1149
01:41:48,960 --> 01:41:53,520
dealing with some of those interventions and you just think to yourself I just wanted everyone to

1150
01:41:53,520 --> 01:41:59,120
know that I understood and I cared and that I'd been there and I got it and that we would keep

1151
01:41:59,120 --> 01:42:04,560
looking after them and keep doing everything we could to talk about mental health and for me it

1152
01:42:04,560 --> 01:42:10,000
was very much about me carrying on talking about it and carrying on making it a topic of conversation

1153
01:42:10,000 --> 01:42:14,880
continuously because the more normal it became to talk about it the more people were going to seek

1154
01:42:14,880 --> 01:42:20,640
help and one of my officers very probably two or three months later came in to see me and was in

1155
01:42:20,640 --> 01:42:27,520
a really bad place and he just said and I just looked at him I said you need help you absolutely

1156
01:42:27,520 --> 01:42:32,640
need help and he did go and get help and he said to me some months after that had you not kept

1157
01:42:32,640 --> 01:42:36,560
talking about it I would never have done it I'd have bottled it up and been really ill later but

1158
01:42:36,560 --> 01:42:40,800
because you as the leader of the organization kept talking about our mental health and my own

1159
01:42:40,800 --> 01:42:45,040
mental health and how much I was struggling then he said it just gave me the courage to do it.

1160
01:42:45,840 --> 01:42:50,480
Yeah and that's what needs to be done I've heard sadly stories of the polar opposite where

1161
01:42:50,480 --> 01:42:57,040
you know people in chief positions have given the speech of you know rub some dirt and that you

1162
01:42:57,040 --> 01:43:02,400
signed up for this you know all that kind of rubbish and that to me is a direct link to

1163
01:43:02,960 --> 01:43:09,520
alcoholism, depression, you know suicide that we see in our profession so we need our true leaders

1164
01:43:09,520 --> 01:43:14,960
not people that you know got voted to to some position that isn't a leader at all but our true

1165
01:43:14,960 --> 01:43:19,840
leaders in all these professions to stand up and be vulnerable and tell their story and

1166
01:43:19,840 --> 01:43:25,280
and tell the you know paint the picture that it's okay not only is it okay to talk about it but if

1167
01:43:25,280 --> 01:43:31,760
you overcome your post-traumatic stress you become a better firefighter you get post-traumatic growth

1168
01:43:31,760 --> 01:43:37,200
and you become more resilient and I think by telling that story it really then motivates

1169
01:43:37,200 --> 01:43:40,560
people to want to want to heal and want to be a better version of themselves.

1170
01:43:41,600 --> 01:43:45,440
Yeah absolutely and you know and I've been very open I've talked to people about the

1171
01:43:45,440 --> 01:43:51,600
you know the counseling I've had the interventions I've had and you know how much that you know I've

1172
01:43:51,600 --> 01:43:56,720
benefited from those but we'll carry on accessing them because you know it's not something that goes

1173
01:43:56,720 --> 01:44:01,840
away and it's not something you can fix overnight and it's something that's a very you know long term

1174
01:44:01,840 --> 01:44:06,000
but the more you keep talking about it and the more you're open and honest about it and the more

1175
01:44:06,000 --> 01:44:10,320
you can be honest about having bad days you know I have bad days I have days when things don't go

1176
01:44:10,320 --> 01:44:15,280
well I have days when I sit on my floor and sob because I just can't control my emotions

1177
01:44:15,280 --> 01:44:20,080
but by not hiding that and by telling people that you know it just lets other people know

1178
01:44:20,080 --> 01:44:26,720
that's normal it's okay and it's okay to have you know relapses and you know to need to go back and

1179
01:44:26,720 --> 01:44:31,760
get more support. Absolutely well one area I want to transition to and then we'll go to some closing

1180
01:44:31,760 --> 01:44:36,240
questions after that but is another kind of elephant in the room when it comes to mental health

1181
01:44:36,240 --> 01:44:42,640
and you know is also disgusting is the organizational stress piece and that can be as

1182
01:44:42,640 --> 01:44:47,840
you talked about some of your earlier times in the career in a station where people are being

1183
01:44:47,840 --> 01:44:50,960
unpleasant because you're a woman because you're black because you're gay because you know whatever

1184
01:44:50,960 --> 01:44:56,320
or just they just don't like you which has been attributed to the kind of bullying element that's

1185
01:44:56,320 --> 01:45:00,720
behind some of the suicides that we've seen as well but the other side is you know we don't talk

1186
01:45:00,720 --> 01:45:05,600
about so much is at the very top now one of my fire chiefs in my very first apartment chief Otto

1187
01:45:05,600 --> 01:45:13,120
Droads was also my fire chief in my third one so he actually retired from one and then came to be

1188
01:45:13,120 --> 01:45:18,800
the chief in Orange County was incredible was behind all these great initiatives you know changed

1189
01:45:18,800 --> 01:45:23,760
the academy where the standard was set high again they were churning out some great men and women

1190
01:45:24,320 --> 01:45:29,040
and then one day he literally went to work and they told him he was fired and again there's

1191
01:45:29,040 --> 01:45:32,560
no doubt in my mind there was ego behind it there was jealousy there was all these other elements

1192
01:45:32,560 --> 01:45:38,480
and the fact that he was empowering as many women and some people didn't like that and luckily he's

1193
01:45:38,480 --> 01:45:44,800
now not luckily but he is now a chief of very a county right next to where he used to work

1194
01:45:44,800 --> 01:45:50,720
and is thriving there but I see a parallel with your story so you left from the front you know

1195
01:45:50,720 --> 01:45:56,720
the firefighters made all those rescues none of the firefighters were killed you know you stood

1196
01:45:56,720 --> 01:46:04,080
up for the the mental health element so tell me about the following weeks and you know what the

1197
01:46:04,800 --> 01:46:08,560
the pushback was for the fire brigade and then ultimately for you specifically

1198
01:46:09,760 --> 01:46:13,600
so for quite a long time the hero status stayed you know without a shadow of a doubt it was

1199
01:46:13,600 --> 01:46:18,640
uh we couldn't you know we couldn't have been better you know people thought we were brilliant

1200
01:46:18,640 --> 01:46:24,240
and you know that for a long time you know in the media we were you know hailed as heroes and given

1201
01:46:24,240 --> 01:46:31,520
awards and all that kind of stuff and you know you just felt the tide term when you know the

1202
01:46:31,520 --> 01:46:36,720
the inquiry was set up and to most people's view back to front because they looked at the

1203
01:46:36,720 --> 01:46:40,560
events of the night and the fire service response first without looking at how the building came to

1204
01:46:40,560 --> 01:46:47,680
be in such a terrible state so you know the main focus initially was then on London Fire Brigade

1205
01:46:47,680 --> 01:46:52,960
and on you know public inquiry is there to do a job it's there to you know find out what happened

1206
01:46:52,960 --> 01:46:57,520
and to try and stop it happening again we all wish that but it wasn't that it was effectively

1207
01:46:57,520 --> 01:47:03,920
almost a witch hunt in a lot of ways and it gave the media some stories so if you look now the

1208
01:47:03,920 --> 01:47:08,400
stories that are coming out of the phase two of the inquiry about the terrible emissions in building

1209
01:47:08,400 --> 01:47:13,440
instruction about the backhanders and the corrupt thing that's not making headline news in the local

1210
01:47:13,440 --> 01:47:18,560
media it's not all over the national media London firefighters were we were all of us were up in the

1211
01:47:18,560 --> 01:47:24,080
dock we were on the front page of the media all the time about our supposed failings and actually

1212
01:47:24,080 --> 01:47:30,560
I think it suited people because it deflected away from the real cause and problems so then

1213
01:47:30,560 --> 01:47:37,520
suddenly you know and I did some work with a company a media company about preparing you know

1214
01:47:37,520 --> 01:47:43,120
about me giving media statements and stuff and the guy who was very high from the media he said to me

1215
01:47:43,120 --> 01:47:47,520
he was very very interesting and he said something that I'd never realized he said you need to

1216
01:47:47,520 --> 01:47:52,720
understand they are out to make a villain of you you've been the media darling first woman

1217
01:47:52,720 --> 01:47:56,800
commissioner of the London Fire Brigade you've achieved all this you've done this they said now

1218
01:47:56,800 --> 01:48:01,040
they want you to be a villain and they are going to turn you into a villain no matter what you do

1219
01:48:01,040 --> 01:48:05,360
so you need to have that in your head before you start and I was really shocked I was thinking what

1220
01:48:05,360 --> 01:48:09,920
why does everyone want to hate me why is that and it and it became a real obsession of the media you

1221
01:48:09,920 --> 01:48:16,720
know to as much as possible to smear my name and to blame me for things you know I had media camped

1222
01:48:16,720 --> 01:48:22,480
outside my door at home harassing my neighbors I couldn't go home for days on end you know because

1223
01:48:22,480 --> 01:48:30,400
they just wanted at any point to make a story where I was the villain and it was it was you know for

1224
01:48:30,400 --> 01:48:34,400
someone who started as a firefighter went through the ranks and only ever wanted to you know look

1225
01:48:34,400 --> 01:48:41,440
after London look after my firefighters to have that happen was truly shocking to me and then to

1226
01:48:41,440 --> 01:48:50,000
you know not be supported I was you know it was an amazing thing to happen in a bad way but and the

1227
01:48:50,000 --> 01:48:56,640
only the solace I took from it from a really bad set of events was that at the very end of my career

1228
01:48:57,360 --> 01:49:01,920
something happened that's never happened you know for another chief before and on the day one of my

1229
01:49:01,920 --> 01:49:06,240
last days in the office two and a half thousand people turned out and lined the streets outside

1230
01:49:06,240 --> 01:49:10,800
my headquarters to say goodbye to me and say thank you to me and these are firefighters from all around

1231
01:49:10,800 --> 01:49:14,880
the country and actually firefighters from all around the world because firefighters flew in

1232
01:49:15,440 --> 01:49:19,920
from everywhere retired firefighters you know all different people stood to line the streets and

1233
01:49:19,920 --> 01:49:24,480
clapped me and say thank you now that was the only praise I needed you know the fact that I didn't

1234
01:49:24,480 --> 01:49:29,280
get support elsewhere didn't matter at that point because I'd obviously done something okay because

1235
01:49:29,280 --> 01:49:33,360
you know that many firefighters wanted to turn out and show their appreciation and say how sorry I

1236
01:49:33,360 --> 01:49:40,880
was leaving which you know it was a truly humbling and amazing experience at the time I was so ill

1237
01:49:41,520 --> 01:49:46,400
from everything that had gone on I didn't really fully appreciate it and and even now eight nine

1238
01:49:46,400 --> 01:49:51,280
months on I still find it really hard to look at some of the stuff from that day and to read

1239
01:49:51,280 --> 01:49:56,720
people signed books me and stuff because it's so raw still the emotion of how that was for me

1240
01:49:56,720 --> 01:50:02,560
yeah let's expand on that and so you know you you gave your you know the best part of your life to

1241
01:50:02,560 --> 01:50:08,640
the London Fire Brigade you clearly were appreciated by the men and women that you served alongside

1242
01:50:08,640 --> 01:50:15,280
and you know and led but again that organizational piece you know there's that betrayal from the

1243
01:50:15,280 --> 01:50:20,640
people that you do it for I mean these are the people above us the politicians how was that

1244
01:50:20,640 --> 01:50:26,880
mental health wise for you because that must have been crushing oh traumatic crushing destroyed me

1245
01:50:26,880 --> 01:50:32,880
for quite a long time I couldn't understand how I'd gone in from them talking about me as a hero to

1246
01:50:32,880 --> 01:50:38,240
them undermining me in such a way but then you just take a step back and look and you understand

1247
01:50:38,240 --> 01:50:45,040
it's politics and it is all about them needing to demonstrate what they're doing and their power and

1248
01:50:45,040 --> 01:50:50,160
you know and it's all about the politics around that that they want to be able to go out to the

1249
01:50:50,160 --> 01:50:54,720
wider community and say you know London Fire Brigade was terrible we're changing it and you know

1250
01:50:54,720 --> 01:51:01,840
here's her head on a plate and and at the time you know very just terrible for me you know the

1251
01:51:01,840 --> 01:51:09,440
personal toll for me was huge because I didn't expect it and I didn't see it coming and I was

1252
01:51:09,440 --> 01:51:15,200
completely blindsided by it eight months on nine months on you know it'll take a very long time

1253
01:51:15,200 --> 01:51:20,960
for me to feel the same way about certain things but you know that my basic and fundamental premise

1254
01:51:20,960 --> 01:51:26,880
that I set out to you know do the best job I could and to change London Fire Brigade and make it more

1255
01:51:26,880 --> 01:51:32,320
people focus and to talk more about mental health and and you know I started that journey I hope it

1256
01:51:32,320 --> 01:51:36,640
continues because it was something that's so very dear to my heart and so important to me.

1257
01:51:36,640 --> 01:51:41,440
Yeah and again I think it just it parallels what we talked about at the beginning which is

1258
01:51:41,440 --> 01:51:47,600
that greed and corruption element that we see is destroying so many parts of our countries at the

1259
01:51:47,600 --> 01:51:52,720
moment you know and here you have these men and women on the ground that are serving that literally

1260
01:51:52,720 --> 01:51:58,080
risk their lives to save people and the people that were responsible which are you know the in

1261
01:51:58,080 --> 01:52:04,080
this particular case the politicians and and the the contractors that were used for that particular

1262
01:52:04,080 --> 01:52:08,880
job they're they're nowhere to be seen and that's what I see over and over again these are the people

1263
01:52:08,880 --> 01:52:13,120
that are cutting fire stations cutting budget deciding that the firefighters get you know a

1264
01:52:13,120 --> 01:52:18,400
shitty salary these are the people that put in drug policy these are people that you know throw

1265
01:52:18,400 --> 01:52:23,840
fuel on the fire of racism that choose to fill our prisons full of men and women rather than address

1266
01:52:23,840 --> 01:52:29,040
the way that we do prisons the way that we do you know addiction always other areas and it's always

1267
01:52:29,040 --> 01:52:34,400
the same thing you reverse engineer it the people who are risking their lives and the people that

1268
01:52:34,400 --> 01:52:40,000
they serve are are all at the end of those puppet strings and the hands turning and this isn't some

1269
01:52:40,000 --> 01:52:46,480
conspiracy theory this just is there's never any repercussions for those people and and you know

1270
01:52:46,480 --> 01:52:53,360
so many people lost their lives in Grenfell on that one particular incident and you dishonor

1271
01:52:53,360 --> 01:52:58,320
their memory if we don't get to the root cause and actually address what really happened that night.

1272
01:52:59,360 --> 01:53:04,960
Hugely and for me I you know I'm you know I watch the whole of the phase two which is unfolding in

1273
01:53:04,960 --> 01:53:09,520
front of us now and I think it's a travesty because the people are truly responsible you know we'll

1274
01:53:09,520 --> 01:53:14,000
wait and see what comes at the end of the inquiry I'll be interested to see what the conclusions are

1275
01:53:14,000 --> 01:53:18,480
but the main purpose of this is to stop it ever happening again and I don't see that at the

1276
01:53:18,480 --> 01:53:23,440
moment I don't see that you know the interventions are being put in place to prevent it happening

1277
01:53:23,440 --> 01:53:29,360
again and my worry is that another community will suffer the same terrible tragedy because nobody

1278
01:53:29,360 --> 01:53:34,000
cares enough because it isn't important enough and now it's off people's radars because obviously

1279
01:53:34,000 --> 01:53:39,360
we've had the horror of coronavirus but actually you know we need to focus back and keep remembering

1280
01:53:39,360 --> 01:53:44,880
what happened and why it happened to prevent it ever happening again. Yeah well again Corona is a

1281
01:53:44,880 --> 01:53:51,680
great example so I've talked about this for five months now. Corona is a mirror to a nation's health

1282
01:53:51,680 --> 01:53:58,400
and in the US here we have such a sick population you know so much obesity and diabetes, cancer,

1283
01:53:58,400 --> 01:54:03,840
as right for all these things and that my thing is yes Corona is real but we have to take this time

1284
01:54:03,840 --> 01:54:09,760
now we've got this captive audience to educate the masses on health to change the way that we farm,

1285
01:54:09,760 --> 01:54:15,920
to support PE and you know clean food in schools all these areas that we can improve the nation's

1286
01:54:15,920 --> 01:54:20,560
health and I don't know how it is in the UK but none of that has happened it's just been hand

1287
01:54:20,560 --> 01:54:27,920
sanitizer, masks and social distancing so it's the same with Grenfell. Oh we need to change the way

1288
01:54:27,920 --> 01:54:33,280
the fire department respond rather than we need to look at the way we're building these buildings

1289
01:54:33,280 --> 01:54:38,000
so these fires don't happen in the first place. Yeah absolutely and I'm in here you know it's very

1290
01:54:38,000 --> 01:54:43,280
similar there are some sort of light touch bits around public sort of health and dietary stuff

1291
01:54:43,280 --> 01:54:47,680
but nowhere near enough and you know we are going the same way you see a lot of people who are

1292
01:54:47,680 --> 01:54:53,120
extremely unhealthy who are definitely more vulnerable at risk and the highlight isn't

1293
01:54:53,120 --> 01:54:57,840
being put on that and it needs to be because people need some help and support. Yeah exactly

1294
01:54:57,840 --> 01:55:01,520
and even with that they want villains you're either all the way one way or all the other and

1295
01:55:01,520 --> 01:55:06,640
then those two villains start arguing with each other and then the middle ground which is most

1296
01:55:06,640 --> 01:55:10,800
of us are looking around going what the fuck is going on? Why are you not focusing on the main part?

1297
01:55:12,800 --> 01:55:17,200
Horrendous. All right well I want to transition to some closing questions we're already almost at two

1298
01:55:17,200 --> 01:55:23,920
hours now but yeah the story needed to be told the way it was told so thank you so much for

1299
01:55:23,920 --> 01:55:29,760
leading us through. The first question I love to ask is there a book that you love to recommend?

1300
01:55:29,760 --> 01:55:33,600
It can be attributed to what we've discussed today or something completely different?

1301
01:55:35,200 --> 01:55:40,960
Oh crikey I do love reading a good book but there's I'm not great one for reading

1302
01:55:42,880 --> 01:55:50,160
sort of theory type books I suppose I don't read a lot of not because I don't have found it

1303
01:55:50,160 --> 01:55:57,040
interesting just because I suppose I deal more with the practicalities of people and I prefer

1304
01:55:57,040 --> 01:56:03,280
to talk to a person and to learn that way so weirdly no not really off the top of my head.

1305
01:56:03,280 --> 01:56:06,400
I mean it could be a book can be about anything at all though so is there any

1306
01:56:06,400 --> 01:56:09,120
psychology books or fiction or anything that you love?

1307
01:56:11,280 --> 01:56:15,360
I spend most of my time reading recipe books. There we go who's your favorite

1308
01:56:15,360 --> 01:56:23,280
who's your favorite author? Oh crikey no it's more about genre Thai food yeah so I love reading

1309
01:56:23,280 --> 01:56:27,120
yeah I love reading recipes to get ideas because I absolutely adore cooking and it is one of my

1310
01:56:27,120 --> 01:56:32,560
mental health therapies so I very rarely cook a recipe for Zali. I read recipes to get ideas

1311
01:56:32,560 --> 01:56:39,360
and to understand what people put in food to then cook myself so I suppose probably Thai food but

1312
01:56:39,360 --> 01:56:45,680
seafood as well really fond of Rick Steins seafood and you can't beat Delia Smith. Go back to basics

1313
01:56:45,680 --> 01:56:50,400
for anything you want to make and Delia Smith's always there. Yeah she's a staple it's funny I

1314
01:56:50,400 --> 01:56:55,040
want to get Jamie Oliver on one day and you talk about but trying to buck the system what he tried

1315
01:56:55,040 --> 01:57:00,160
to do with school food I think was amazing and he did it over here and it lasted I think a few

1316
01:57:00,160 --> 01:57:05,360
weeks and then they just went back to the way it was before but he's fabulous. I've met him on a

1317
01:57:05,360 --> 01:57:09,920
couple of occasions and he is an amazing guy and very down-to-earth and real and yeah I have all

1318
01:57:09,920 --> 01:57:14,480
his books too they're fabulous reads but yeah if you can get hold of him he is a brilliant guy with

1319
01:57:14,480 --> 01:57:19,200
some real care and passion. Absolutely all right what about films any films that you love?

1320
01:57:19,200 --> 01:57:23,760
Oh I can't help it I love Notting Hill, I love Four Weddings and a Funeral,

1321
01:57:24,960 --> 01:57:29,360
Love Actually, yeah I do like good romance can't do horror films just get scared.

1322
01:57:30,480 --> 01:57:35,040
We have an annual well more than annual usually but Christmas Love Actually every year that's

1323
01:57:35,040 --> 01:57:40,880
one of the funniest films ever. Love it perfect film. All right what about a guest is there a

1324
01:57:40,880 --> 01:57:45,680
person you recommend to come on this podcast and speak to the first responders military and

1325
01:57:45,680 --> 01:57:52,880
medical professionals of the world? So if you could understand him I'd really recommend the

1326
01:57:52,880 --> 01:57:59,200
chief of Tyne and Wear who is a good friend of mine called Chris Lowther who is a proper

1327
01:57:59,200 --> 01:58:04,880
northerner so getting through that bit he has got a really interesting background and he's a very

1328
01:58:04,880 --> 01:58:11,680
real so he's a boxer as well and he very much understands his local community and he says it

1329
01:58:11,680 --> 01:58:15,760
as it is he's an absolutely amazing guy and a brilliant chief. Brilliant I'd love to make the

1330
01:58:15,760 --> 01:58:20,240
connection if you're able to help me. Yeah absolutely. Fantastic all right well then the

1331
01:58:20,240 --> 01:58:24,480
last question before we make sure everyone knows where to find you what do you do to decompress?

1332
01:58:25,920 --> 01:58:35,200
So I love outdoors, I love walking, I like just yeah I find I can so one of the issues after

1333
01:58:35,200 --> 01:58:40,160
Grenfell with my PTSD was I couldn't breathe properly I felt my the analogy I had was there

1334
01:58:40,160 --> 01:58:44,800
was an elephant on my chest and the only place I could go to properly breathe was either in the

1335
01:58:44,800 --> 01:58:50,320
countryside or standing by the sea I absolutely adore the sea it's my happy place I can sit on

1336
01:58:50,320 --> 01:58:55,120
the beach and listen to the waves breaking and that just completely and utterly puts me in a

1337
01:58:55,120 --> 01:59:01,040
safe zone and makes me feel completely chilled. Beautiful now are there any elements of counseling

1338
01:59:01,040 --> 01:59:09,440
that you've found have worked for you? Yeah so EMDR amazingly powerful very strange very curious

1339
01:59:09,440 --> 01:59:16,320
situation but definitely has helped me hugely I'm having still having ongoing counseling now but

1340
01:59:16,320 --> 01:59:24,000
I'm also combining it with acupuncture and reiki. Oh brilliant. Which I really enjoy and I find very

1341
01:59:24,000 --> 01:59:29,040
powerful. Yeah EMDR comes up over and over again canine therapy is obviously another one that's very

1342
01:59:29,760 --> 01:59:36,080
ah yes definitely always always always you cannot beat yes some canine therapy and that was one of

1343
01:59:36,080 --> 01:59:41,280
the one of my battles which is going to happen which sadly I never got to see out was we're

1344
01:59:41,280 --> 01:59:49,120
getting therapy dogs into London Fire Brigade. I love that I just had a navy seal who was a canine

1345
01:59:49,120 --> 01:59:54,880
with the seals and his canine was shot he ended up recovering and then they were both called back

1346
01:59:54,880 --> 02:00:01,840
to action to go to the Osama bin Laden raid so the dog was there but he ended up getting TBI from

1347
02:00:01,840 --> 02:00:06,640
from his whole career but there was one grenade specifically and his canine ended up becoming

1348
02:00:06,640 --> 02:00:11,360
his therapy and vice versa I mean the dog had PTSD too so so they were each other's therapy

1349
02:00:11,920 --> 02:00:16,960
you know dog slash person which was pretty cool. Yeah I've got to say dog therapy is an amazing

1350
02:00:16,960 --> 02:00:21,520
and terribly powerful thing and never to be underestimated. Absolutely all right well then

1351
02:00:21,520 --> 02:00:25,040
the last question that people want to reach out to you where can they find you online?

1352
02:00:26,320 --> 02:00:31,120
So Twitter is probably the best way to reach me so it's the only one that's kind of public

1353
02:00:31,120 --> 02:00:36,960
facing the rest of my media stuff is predominantly private because I've had so many problems and

1354
02:00:36,960 --> 02:00:44,640
I've had so many issues with bad people so Twitter obviously if people want to message me

1355
02:00:44,640 --> 02:00:49,600
on Twitter and then I can follow them back and they can DM me. Beautiful well Danny I just want

1356
02:00:49,600 --> 02:00:54,640
to say thank you so much I mean your your length of service for example you're being one of the

1357
02:00:54,640 --> 02:01:00,160
first women in the fire service responding to the the rail crash early in your career I mean there's

1358
02:01:00,160 --> 02:01:04,800
so many layers to this story but you know Grenfell was such a horrific night obviously for the

1359
02:01:04,800 --> 02:01:10,720
residents for the responders but then to see how the fire brigade and especially you were treated

1360
02:01:10,720 --> 02:01:16,240
at the end I think is is a story it needs to be underlined because it should have been medals not

1361
02:01:17,360 --> 02:01:22,800
you know being fired and I think that really really illustrates the corruption that's in so

1362
02:01:22,800 --> 02:01:29,360
many of these governmental agencies and you know something that needs to be addressed you know and

1363
02:01:29,360 --> 02:01:33,520
the people need to understand that these people at the streets that are serving are the ones that

1364
02:01:33,520 --> 02:01:38,560
are the backbone in this country and there are some leaders in in government that are great but

1365
02:01:38,560 --> 02:01:44,480
there are some horrendous ones and when that affects our profession and just individuals like

1366
02:01:44,480 --> 02:01:48,240
yourself I think that's disgusting and it's something that we need to rise up and change.

1367
02:01:49,280 --> 02:01:54,480
Yeah thank you and one of my everlastingly sad things is the fact that nobody has yet been

1368
02:01:54,480 --> 02:02:00,400
recognised for action at Grenfell and so many of my firefighters deserve so much recognition

1369
02:02:00,400 --> 02:02:05,280
for putting their lives on the line for strangers and I remember talking to one of my officers who

1370
02:02:05,280 --> 02:02:10,160
said to me that some months later when all this kicked off and when we were suddenly the baddies

1371
02:02:10,160 --> 02:02:15,280
he had a really big row with his wife who said you walked in there you were prepared to die and

1372
02:02:15,280 --> 02:02:20,000
make me a widow and make your children fatherless for complete strangers and this is how you're

1373
02:02:20,000 --> 02:02:25,680
getting treated I'm disgusted and it caused a big problem between them because he was prepared to

1374
02:02:25,680 --> 02:02:31,120
die that was the absolute commitment so people need reward they need recognition and you know

1375
02:02:31,120 --> 02:02:35,920
those heroes walk amongst us every day and they carry the scars of what we all saw that night

1376
02:02:35,920 --> 02:02:51,760
and they need to be supported for that forever.