I'm extremely excited to announce a brand new sponsor for the Behind the Shield podcast
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Now for many of you listening, you are probably working the same brutal shifts that I did
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Now I also want to underline because I think this is very important that each of the therapies
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the Shield podcast with their CEO, Francisco Morales.
Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast.
As always, my name is James Gearing and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome on
the show, Matt Harrison and Brian O'Connell.
Now as you know, I've been trying to layer the incredible stories from departments that
have gone from a 2448 to a 2472 shift schedule.
We've already heard from Boynton Beach, Pasco County and then Sarah Jenke discussing the
research and science behind the importance of moving to this shift.
Well this week we have Matt and Brian, both Gainesville firefighters.
Matt is also a SWAT medic and Brian is the vice president of their union.
And as I sit here recording this today, in two short months, Gainesville is moving to
a 2472.
So this is another powerful story and blueprint of how and why Gainesville made the change.
So we discuss a host of topics from the immense amount of overtime costs they were paying
to cover vacancies, the recruitment crisis, the mental and physical ill health they were
seeing in their fire department, the exciting research study they're going to be part of
as they make this transition and so much more.
Now before we get to this amazing conversation, as I say every week, please just take a moment.
Go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback and
leave a rating.
Every single five star rating truly does elevate this podcast, therefore making it easier for
others to find.
And this is a free library of well over 900 episodes now.
So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories so
I can get them to every single person on planet Earth who needs to hear them.
So with that being said, I introduce to you Matt Harrison and Brian O'Connell.
Enjoy.
Well Matt and Brian, I want to start by saying firstly thank you for driving the long way
from Gainesville down.
Luckily you avoided the big wreck that was going northbound at the moment.
But I want to welcome you both to my home and to the Behind the Shield podcast today.
Awesome.
Yeah, thank you for having us.
So what I want to do is do a quick backstory of each of you so people know kind of you
know where you came from and then obviously they understand the firefighter behind the
movement and then we'll get on to the amazing change that your department's about to make.
So Matt, let's start with you.
Tell me where you were born and tell me a little bit about your family dynamic, what
your parents did, how many siblings.
Yeah, so I was actually born in Gainesville, which is where I work now, Gainesville Fire
Rescue.
I'm one of the few locals that stayed in Gainesville.
So my mom, she was a nurse and she retired a few years ago and she did I think 42 years
as a nurse, which is amazing.
I have the utmost respect for people working in the hospitals because me being in the fire
service, you know, I try to avoid the hospital as much as possible.
But yeah, so I've been on with Gainesville Fire Rescue for 17 years now and I'm a driver
operator and paramedic.
Did your mom do shift work when she was a nurse or was she many days?
She was shift work during the day.
She did some night shifts back when we were younger, but she hated the night shifts.
She was ICU.
So yeah, she was she was hard working.
So they would do 12 hour shifts.
So we were very fortunate that my neighbor was actually they had kids similar age, so
they were able to babysit us.
So when we got home from school and my mom was still at the hospital working, you know,
she wouldn't get home till seven or eight at night.
They would watch us until my mom got home and then they would, you know, we'd come back
to the house.
So we were fortunate.
So mom was telling me one of my friends who was a firefighter, paramedic and a nurse,
Steph, about ICU, ICU psychosis a few years ago.
And obviously we're going to talk about sleep.
But what I'd never thought about is that you've got a patient in ICU and even, you know, other
wards of a hospital and there's all the lights and all the sounds, you know, they're checking
vitals like every 30 minutes, every hour, whatever it is, and they're staying awake.
And so they lose the kind of sense of day and night and they literally get psychotic.
And so even for the patients in the hospital, the medical profession is starting to understand
that if we can let them sleep and that's when we all heal.
So in the very thing we're having a conversation about, your mom probably saw firsthand all
those years ago.
Oh yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
It turns out sleep is way more important than people thought, you know, even 10 or 20 years
ago.
And it's good that we're having these conversations about it because it's a, it's a, it's a, has
a huge negative impact not being able to get that those full, full cycles of sleep.
Absolutely.
Oh, Brian, same to you.
So where were you born and tell me a little about your family dynamic, what your parents
did, how many siblings?
I was born in Fort Myers, Florida, down on the beach, which I miss dearly to this day.
Unfortunately, I got married and my wife decided we were sending Gainesville.
So I mean, unfortunately you got married when you cut that out.
Now you can go ahead and get that in there.
She'll smack me later.
It's fine.
I'm used to talking incorrectly.
I have one sister, she's actually an attorney out in Destin and my parents, my dad was a
principal, mom was an ESC teacher for almost a 31 or 32 years.
So it's like, just like Matt, all the credit to her, dealing with the emotional handicap
kids and stuff for that many years and loving it every single day.
I mean, it took a toll on her, but she absolutely loved going in there.
I used to go to class with her in the summertime and it was the most amazing thing I've ever
seen.
You know, to see how much those individuals were actually able to participate in life
and stuff is really kind of a cool experience.
I moved away at 18, moved to Tennessee for a year, wanted to get a little bit closer
to home.
I've been in Gainesville ever since.
As I said, I met my wife.
She really wanted to stay in Gainesville, did not want to move anywhere coastal.
She wins like she always does.
We have two daughters now.
Nice house.
So it worked out.
She's smarter than me.
So yeah, that's true.
Matt knows her really well.
Well speaking of education, have you had the conversation with one or both of your parents
about how it's changed through the years that they were teaching?
All the time, all the time.
My dad did a much better job.
He got to retirement and doesn't really think about it anymore because he was like, I'm
done when I'm done.
My mom still does tutoring and stuff on the side just for fun.
She lives out in Despo with my sister, but she's realistic about it, but disheartened.
She doesn't like losing the ability to actually educate people and try to like have honest
conversations with them and do, I guess, more of the old school.
We actually sit down and talk about things.
Actually have to have educated opinions and be able to figure it out as opposed to just
checklist teaching.
I have a guy called Pasi Saalberg on the show who lives in Australia now, but he's from
Finland originally.
He was an educator and he ended up touring the world teaching about the Finnish system.
The way they do it differently is they look at the whole child holistically.
Their system, they put more funding and support into the poorer areas and the areas who obviously
aren't performing as highly.
They have a lot more recess, a lot more play, shorter days, and they're usually number one
on the international success list when it comes to education.
The way that we do it rigidly in our standardized testing, again, insanity is doing the same
thing expecting different results, which we're going to get to in a second in the fire service.
In education, it seems like less is more is becoming more and more for principle.
I hear you're insinuating that maybe no child left behind might have left some children
behind.
They don't think any of them got on the bus in the first place.
Me and Matt, I think, are products of that system too.
Look at us, we're doing great.
That's a good segue then.
I'd love to walk through your journey into the fire service.
What's interesting is we're all sitting here, products of the trade schools, Pyramidic,
Fire, EMT.
Matt, first, from graduating high school, were you dreaming of becoming a firefighter
and if not, walk me through your journey into testing?
Yeah, I think I was one of the few that I knew what I wanted to be ever since I was
a kid.
I actually told this story in my interview at Gainesville Fire Rescue.
When I was seven or eight years old, I was at my house and I heard a bunch of sirens
and I heard they're getting louder and louder.
So naturally, being a kid, ran outside, jumped on my bike and started riding down the neighborhood.
And I pulled up to a house and the house was on fire.
And I remember just a whole bunch of fire engines just pulling up.
And I just sat there on my bike, just sat on the curb and watched them go to work, watched
them go in and pull hoses and put the fire out.
And luckily nobody was hurt.
I actually knew the residents.
They were all okay.
And after that, I told my mom, I want to do that.
She's like, okay, yeah, that's a good career.
I had no, my dad, nobody in my family, nobody was a firefighter.
So I wasn't connected to it in any way.
Had some people in military here and there.
But yeah, so right after high school, went to college, got my AS degree.
And then I said, that's enough with the degrees.
I'm ready to go to fire college.
So I actually got into EMT school first, went to Santa Fe, great program.
Got my EMT school, got into fire college, went down to Florida State Fire College.
And I was very fortunate that right out of fire college, I ended up getting hired on
with, with Gainesville Fire Rescue, that it just lined up with the timing was perfect.
And it's funny, we talk about this now.
I think when I applied, I think we hired maybe eight or nine positions and there was initially
600 that applied.
And you know, 600 didn't make it to the interviews, you have a lot of people that drop out along
the levels, you know, a lot of people weren't serious about it, but they heard, hey, that's
a good, good paying job, you know, I'll try that.
Nowadays it's, it's insane to think about if we had 600 people apply, you know, there's
just the workforce just doesn't seem to be there anymore.
But but yeah, so it's something I always wanted to do.
And being able to get on with my local department in the city that I grew up in, you know, is
pretty neat.
Yeah.
Amazing.
Yeah, we'll get to that because I tested against 1000 people in the written and this is I could
visually see them in a conference center in Anaheim, California.
And they were all I found out later, not just, you know, didn't have their bits of paper,
they were firefighters, EMTs or paramedics.
Most of them had experiences, ambulance operators, most of them came from the wildland community
at some point, a lot of them were explorers.
So I mean, we're talking a fat resume, 1000 of them and there was 30 spots.
Yeah, I was I was actually an explorer as well.
But I was explore with with the county fire department, Lauchee County Fire Rescue, where
our cities in and and I think that helped for sure.
But it's staying with you a sec.
We have an incredible mentorship program here in Ocala, which one of my friends, Chris Hickman,
started and my bonus boy, my stepson went through it.
And to me, when you have that diversity conversation, of course, there are some underserved populations
in most cities and counties that there are barriers to entry.
So I mean, my mom, even I was in my 20s, gave me the money for fire school, for example,
there's a lot of young people that just wasn't feasible, they weren't going to be able to
get that.
So there are barriers.
So what I've seen is that they put this, you know, this incredible mentorship program,
I think it's three or four times a week, it's in the central locations, all the kids have
to do is just get there.
And it's usually put, you know, closer to some of the poorer areas.
They give them the equipment, they give them the training, the fire academy, there are
scholarships for fire school.
And then obviously, locally, there's loads of people looking for people at the moment.
So what I saw from my stepson is he did it and he was like, I don't want to be a firefighter,
massive win, you know, now he hasn't gone all the way through all that money and then
realized.
But then you go into, you know, whatever group that you're not represented in your department
and you find the best candidates rather than the old school way of just go get me, I always
joke, go get me 50 English guys.
We don't have any in our department, of which some will be good and some will be shit.
So what was your experience with the Explorer program?
And then talk to me about your kind of lens on mentorship programs today.
Yeah, so the Explorer program was great.
I want to say the program I was in, I was actually the only one that ended up getting
hired on locally.
But I do know later on, we've got we've got some other people with us that that also came
from the Gainesville mentor mentorship program and they've been hired on and they're great.
And I think that is a that's actually a really good point you make of because I know of firefighters
that did the EMT, went to fire college, got hired on and a year down the road said, this
isn't for me.
And it's because they that's they didn't know anything about fire service until they got
hired on as a probationary, you know, candidate, you know, and went through probation.
And at the end, they just they said this, this isn't my thing, you know.
And so I think that's actually key because you're not just, you know, you have the upfront
cost of it, especially like you said, if you don't have the parents that can pay for you
having to, you know, pay for fire college is not cheap.
EMT school is not cheap.
And you know, EMT is required as the basic minimum anywhere around here, you know, and
so you're going to you're going to save money and you're going to save time of having to
hire and put people through orientation.
Orientation is very expensive because with our orientation, you know, it's six or seven
weeks and we're having to pay people overtime five days a week just to cover that.
And then that's less people that are able to work, you know, to get mandated overtime
because we're short staff, just like every other department, you know, just about in
the country.
So the mentorship programs have been successful.
We've had some great candidates that have come through, you know, in Gainesville that
are now on the road and they're they're doing great.
Beautiful.
That's so good to hear.
Well, Brian, I know you have a slightly different journey into the fire service yourself.
So walk me through what you were dreaming of becoming high school age to your your entrance
in the fire service.
So as I say before, I grew up in a beach community, so I actually can't really remember what exactly
my dream was.
I enjoyed fishing and being out on the boat and, you know, being on the Gulf of Mexico
all the time.
I actually worked on Sanibel Island for a lot of my youth, so when I was a kid, my grandmother
lived for Myers, obviously has grown a lot in the last 20 plus years.
It was much smaller when I was a kid, which was nice.
There was a fire station city for Myers right around the corner from her house.
And bless her heart.
She never told me, no, we always go over there.
Those guys probably hated seeing me, I'm sure.
But probably every time I mean, you see me right now when I go to work.
So I get it.
But no, so I was able to go over there a lot and just kind of fell in love with it, have
no family history at all, didn't really know much, went off to college, came back.
I was bartending, making pretty good money at the time.
And all I kept hearing was you can't get hired.
This is probably like 2007, 2008, like, hey, nobody's hiring, nobody's hiring.
So I was living in Gainesville and I was like, well, making good money, not really trying
very hard.
And then life once again, met a woman who realized that I needed benefits and like,
you know, some trajectory of my life, other than bartending till three o'clock in the
morning every single night, starting at five o'clock in the afternoon.
And I went to EMT school, had a buddy who was working for a private ambulance service
in Columbia County doing 911 calls.
I was like, perfect.
That sounds amazing.
I like the CMS stuff.
Let me do that.
It took about six months before I realized that maybe the private model wasn't exactly
what I preferred to do, the profit side of it, per se.
They put me through paramedic school, so that was a win because I kept hearing from everybody
like, I gotta be a paramedic.
You know, you gotta have a bachelor's degree if you want to get on any of these places.
You know, it's still probably like 2011, 2012.
Fortunately met a lot of wonderful guys at Lake City Fire Department at that time who
explained to me what fire school was, where you go to fire school, how you do all of that,
gave me bunker gear to get through fire school.
And I ended up working there for a while.
And like I said, I owe a lot of it to them by just walking me through and being like,
oh, this is a ladder truck and it has extrication equipment.
I didn't know those things at the time.
I tell Matt all the time jokingly like, I didn't know when I got to Gainesville that
Hazmat Tech was a specialty course.
I thought just anybody goes to building collapses.
I don't have any family history doing this.
And I didn't, by the way.
It's zero.
Yeah, I mean, I feel like an idiot now because I'm like, oh, there's so much that goes into
this.
I mean, it's tech rescue guys are amazing, but I didn't know it was a thing.
Nobody told me.
So eventually applied to Gainesville, got on not quite as competitive that nine year
ago, Mark, I think is my gone.
But there's still I think they said it was like 600 applied and then there was 100 that
actually interviewed for 10 spots.
But it was when this new cycle was going of, you know, weaning people out and not having
as many applicants.
But you know, Gainesville and that's once again, my wife wanted to live there.
We are there.
We are in the community now.
So so we're staying with you.
Talk to me.
What was the shift schedule that you were on?
Was that Kelly's?
No, Kelly's.
And then as the years progressed, did you notice the impact of the regular shifts of
any mandatories that were there from a family perspective?
So I started doing EMS.
I actually started on a I think they call it a Bahama schedule, which like the 12 hour
where you work Wednesday, Thursday, one week and then Friday, Saturday, Sunday and then
Monday, Tuesday.
It rotated and so you had every other weekend off.
That's pretty terrible.
It was going a lot longer than you would want to be there, obviously.
And so if you did any overtime, you didn't have weekends left.
And at that time, I think I was making like nine dollars an hour, maybe 10.
And we wanted to buy a house stuff.
So we were definitely working as much overtime as possible.
My wife is still in school.
I found out what a Kelly Day was once again from the guys in Lake City.
And once I got that, I was like, probably not going to apply anywhere that doesn't at
least have a six week Kelly Day, which is where we're at.
But I do notice the impact on family life that that extra day off is nice.
I mean, I don't know anybody who wouldn't say that, you know, having an extra day off
units every six weeks is amazing, you know, to be able to spend with kids, which is a
new perspective I've had in the last four years now of I actually need to be home for
them.
So but yeah, I really the 24 schedule was definitely more conducive.
And I think also at the time, I was only thinking of it from profit standpoint, where I was
like, I can work more because we're poor.
So now I'm thinking from it like, OK, well, now I might need to live a little longer so
I can raise my children.
So yeah, that's where it's evolved to perspective, right?
You get perspective.
Absolutely.
Well, Matt, same with you.
What was the the environment that the work that you entered and then kind of walk me
through any realizations of the impact of that on the family dynamic?
Yeah.
So I worked at Publix previously.
So I worked at Publix while I was in fire college.
And so that was just a normal, you know, four or five days a week.
You know, I stock shelves.
So it was it was, you know, nothing, nothing too crazy about that.
I guess that's kind of the normal, normal work week that most people do.
They go to work for eight or 10 hours a day.
You're home at night, you know, and you sleep in your own bed.
And so starting off in the fire service, you know, that was my first ever job was with
with Cainesville Fire.
And so we have a six week K-Day there.
Obviously, we're going to be going to 24 72.
So we'll be losing the K-Day, of course, but it'll be a net positive.
But yeah, like like Brian said, having that K-Day was was huge because it gave you time.
You know, after six weeks, you get that paid day off where you can you can you can use it
to recover, you know, and and take what a lot of people don't talk about nowadays is
mental health days.
Honestly, I mean, especially if you're at a busy station.
I started off I was on engine two on Archer Road, and that's that's always traditionally
been a busy unit.
You know, that was where I first got assigned.
And so but but, you know, I was I got hired.
I was 23 years old.
So I was young and dumb and just, you know, I was just ready to go and do whatever my
lieutenant told me to do and put my gear on as fast as I can and hop on the truck and
go on calls.
And and, you know, when you're starting off, that's kind of you're just you're drinking
from a fire hose.
You know, is what they say.
You're just trying to learn as much as you can, especially because that was my first
ever, you know, fire department job.
And in Gainesville, we've got a lot of really good professionals and a lot of good a lot
of experience.
You know, a lot of.
I ended up getting assigned with a lieutenant at the time that had 25 plus years in the
fire service and he had started out more rural.
And, you know, we talk about this in the fire service now, how we kind of get less and less
fires now because fire safety has improved.
And so all the new buildings that are being built, they're a lot safer, you know, commercial
buildings.
You know, if they're over a certain size, they have to have sprinklers.
So even if there's a fire, we go there and luckily a lot of the work's been been done
as far as putting the fire out.
So the so the hazards been mitigated from the residents.
But you know, you still have, you know, other stuff you have to deal with.
But but yes, this is like I said, this is my only fire department I've worked with.
So I consider myself very fortunate as far as that goes, because a lot of people generally
have to kind of start smaller departments like Brian did.
And you kind of try to work your way up to a more designation department.
No one thing I got out of that is low key or hazmat guy at heart is what you're saying.
Nope.
Welcome to the family.
So with your department specifically, I mean, if I think of Orange County, for example,
I would I could I mean, there's the name the list of names that have died is unending.
And I do a thing every year with them called the three, four, three hero challenge.
And I write the names of the fallen just that either work right where I work or where I
used to in California.
That's it.
And my back now it started six names the first year.
Now it's was I think it was 96 or 100 and I forget either side of 100.
So every department I've worked with in Marion where I live that protects my family now.
I mean, they just lost a guy who was Marion and then Dixie County.
And then we just a year ago, we lost two young men, very young men within 12 weeks of each
other to suicide.
And that's not even to mention the heart diseases and the cancers and everything else.
What were you seeing as far as ill health in your department?
So I think every department has it where it's interesting.
I was just talking to Brian about this when when I first got hired on.
I mean, we had a really we had a horrific incident and involved a child.
And I still remember to this day, the district chief was was very proactive and called us
up and said, hey, I'm going to come out.
We're going to do a stress debriefing.
I want to talk to the crew and everything.
And at that time, the lieutenant, you know, he was the he was the old school mentality
of suck it up, buttercup.
And he didn't he said, no, he said, we're good.
We're not going to sit around, talk about our feelings.
We're going to we're going to deal with this like men.
We're all going to deal with this on our own and we're going to move on.
And I still think about that.
And there's he wasn't trying to be hurtful.
That's just how he was taught.
And that's all he knew.
There was no research showing of of because 20 years ago, PTSD, when they first started
talking about this, however long ago, that it was just military.
That was it.
Now we're finally seeing, oh, police and fire.
We also are getting PTSD because, you know, we're living this and we get no break from
it.
It's day in, day out in the communities.
And where these accidents and these incidents are happening is on roads that we drive up
and down every time, you know, and you have a bad accident and it's on a road that you
drive and you leave the fire station and go home and you look at that tree and like, yes,
I remember a couple of kids died hitting that tree and that that affects you whether you
know it or not.
And I'll be honest, when I was in my 20s, I had the mentality of what's like, what's
wrong with these people?
I'm fine.
And then it catches up with you after a certain amount of time is going to be different for
everybody.
It will catch up with you.
And I still remember the day that caught up with me and I was just in a fog and I asked
my lieutenant about it and I said, hey, this normal, like, should I be feeling this way?
And he's like, he's like, oh, yeah, yeah, just, you know, sleep it off.
Get some rest.
It'd be fine.
And it's just that's that's the stigma that we have to change.
And luckily, there are, you know, people talking about this and you've had some great people
on the on the podcast talking about this, that the mental health side of it is just
as important as the physical side of the issues we're having with with increased cancer and
heart disease and increased risk of injury as well, you know, because it is a physical
job.
But but yeah, that's that's there's definitely been a been a big change.
And we our union did a great job years ago of setting up to where we can we can get counseling
as much as we want.
And it's paid for it's covered by the city.
And it's you know, if you're having issues, you can you can call up the counselor or,
you know, text her and say, hey, I want to come in and talk and schedule schedule an
hour session.
And a lot of people, everybody I've talked to that's done that has found it very beneficial.
Well, that's amazing, because one of the big barriers to entry we talk about stigma is
that a lot of times this conversation ends at stigma and even the PTSD.
Like, I love that for that description of moral injury.
Like what we've realized is that it's morphed to that.
Yeah, you got PTSD, like panic attacks, crying, crawling in a corner, you know, the car backfires
and you're pulling out your weapon, you know, the kind of classic and then you have more
injury, which is I couldn't save that child, you know, the guilt, the shame, which is I
think what most of us actually suffer from, you know, and then I think the the real conversation
now needs to happen is the post traumatic growth conversation, the hope that the other
side of whatever therapies work for you is a more resilient version of yourself.
But we're not there yet.
And I think that's where we need to go.
But the barrier is, I've heard so many EAP horror stories, the Russian roulette of counselors,
you know, where that's how we that's where we ended up with our counselor that we jumped
in.
So no, I mean, Matt pretty much hit it on the head.
I was going to say a couple of things in there was one thing we're looking at now, we have
a bunch of people jumping on this in the department, which is kind of revamping a bunch of our
mental health stuff.
We don't have a large budget, so that makes it difficult.
And I know you sitting here for the budget conversation a million times.
We were talking about right up here.
And I said, you know, the funniest thing is, why do we work out from eight to nine o'clock
in the morning, you know, like per contract hours, you know, it's so we can be our best
version of ourselves.
When we when that alarm goes off, we actually have a fire and somebody needs to be rescued,
like we are ready to go.
And that is very important.
When I've seen some of the mental health failure, and this is across the entire services, we're
attacking.
Oh, you're in crisis.
You've done nothing to prehab or train those people.
And that's kind of the hardest time to get a hold of people, I think, especially because
we all think we're Teflon.
But then we're trying to pull them back.
And, you know, I liken it to like doing a cardiac arrest.
You know, if you've already arrested, it's very hard to pull that person back.
If I can cardiovert you and get you back, like we have a much higher chance of bringing
you back.
If you have the tools going into this and you know it works for you, you are going to
get through that.
But if you are already to the point where you are unfortunately substance abuse, harming
yourself, like it's going to be very difficult to pull that person back without any of the
resources.
And now we're like trying to stop the train that's all the way down the track.
And I do believe that somewhere we're trying to get to.
Like he said, it's difficult, though.
There's a one of the strangest things I had to realize was like letting go of stigma.
Like if somebody asked me a question, I'm an open book.
Like it's cool.
Like I need to be a teacher also because somebody is going to be at my point in my career.
And I need to educate them as kids now and move along.
And I told him, strangely, like at the ALTS conference this year for IFF, like I went
to a resiliency training course and this happens to me all the time because I'm not that intelligent.
I didn't really know necessarily what was involved with it because like I did read the
like, you know, resiliency and building resiliency in your department.
So I was like, I wasn't necessarily thinking just strictly mental health, but it ended
up being a great class.
A lot of stuff in there people wouldn't find helpful.
But I also learned in that trip, like the more I show you, like I don't need everything
to be helpful.
I need you to figure out what works for you.
And then you're able to use that.
And it makes you better at your job, which is the part that like I sometimes feel like
I beat my head against the wall.
Like if you can communicate with people better, you're better at your job.
If you're better at your job, you're going to make better command decisions.
If you're making better command decisions, there's a good chance everyone's going to
go home safe.
Doesn't mean mistakes won't happen, but it's giving you that ability to actually interact
with life better.
Children better.
And it takes a lot of the stressors out.
So I think we're slowly moving in that direction, but I think it's like a little bit of a mind
shift.
You know, you got the shift change and all that coming up.
But it's also like we put a lot of effort into these things.
We also like might need to get effort into this.
And it's difficult because it's not a metric.
We know how many people kill themselves, unfortunately.
Like we know that that's a hard metric.
We don't know how many people didn't kill themselves because they have the right tools.
So it's almost like how do you even know how well this has worked?
Because I don't have any way to count that because there's not a lot of people who come
up and are like, I was going to kill myself.
I learned X, Y, Z from whatever.
Like I'm good now.
OK.
And it's a constant process, just like working out.
You got to add weight to the bar.
You got to keep doing it and keep catching yourself and keep working on it.
So what's interesting when you say about we know how many people killed themselves because
sadly we don't because it's probably already under the number because some people just
don't.
I mean, how many times have you seen died suddenly?
And we all know what that means.
I mean, even I don't know, for example, the Dixie gentleman, you know, did he just go
in the woods and then have an MI and he was going hiking or did he go in the woods and
do a lot of people do in the woods?
You know, and I don't make an assumption, but that's the problem.
The Canton firefighter we just lost, his family were very courageous and they put it out.
This is what happened.
That's what we need.
And then the other massive piece of the pie is our retirees.
Like I on paper retired from the fire service, even though I've carried on doing this.
If I dropped dead the day after I left, I ceased to be a statistic.
So you think about it.
When does disease and mental health really manifest when we transition out in our fifties?
So how, you know, what percentage are our stats actually of all the firefighters that
truly died from all these different ailments?
Yeah, unfortunately, I probably never know.
Right.
But we can keep working.
Yeah, exactly.
We got left.
So the proactive side, all we can do is we can fix knowing that it's probably going to
have a much, like you said, a much bigger impact than people would probably acknowledge.
Right.
Definitely agree with that.
But yeah, the stigma barrier, like you said, though, that definitely is something that
I do see that getting better.
I see people more willing to talk, but I'm also learning that some of that comes from
being able to facilitate, you know, and that's just taking people to actually be there and
be like, I don't have the answers.
I might not be able to help you, but hell, we'll go find somebody who does or we'll find
a way not.
It might not involve the city.
It may involve the city, your county, whatever your local organization is.
I think the key is lowering the barriers to entry, which is which is what we did by by
you know, making it so easy to talk to the counselor.
I don't have to go to my chief, then has to report to HR, then then and then it goes around.
I can reach out directly to that counselor, shoot a shoot, shoot a text and say, hey,
can I meet with you on Wednesday and says, yeah, what time works good for you?
And that's it.
And and we've been told that the that she only reports how many people have she's seen
from GFR and she does not report names back.
And honestly, I think that the that's been being anonymous.
It's been a huge part to help with that, because I know, especially in the military, I don't
know if it's changed, but I know I've heard a lot of people talk about it, that they're
scared of losing their clearances if they go speak to somebody and it can be used against
them in a negative way when it comes to, you know, seeing if they're of sound mind because
they reached out for help, which is which is insane.
Because if you if you say, hey, I'm having some issues, I need some help, that actually
shows you're mentally stronger to me, that you're you're willing to recognize your issues
and work on them.
And that's how we grow as a human, you know, 100 percent.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
And that's it.
I mean, that that barrier to entry that we have, you know, it's the EAP roulette, it's,
you know, the financial side, it's the waiting lists.
And over and over again, what you guys have put in Gainesville is what I think is a solution.
And if you're not a massive department, then work in with the neighboring departments and
hire someone between the collaborative.
But yeah, you should have an A to B thing.
This is where I think we've tripped on the stigma thing.
All right, we get it.
Mental health and the fire service.
But now what?
This guy is a family counselor and he cried when I told him what fucking bothers me at
night.
This lady, I've got to wait three months and that bloke says it's a five hundred dollar
a session.
It's just the problem.
Right.
Well, and to his point, you know, you have that one call or two calls, you know, adding
up over time.
But also another thing I don't think we necessarily do a good job of addressing is it's not always
just the bad calls either.
It's drunk people that you're picking up five times a night over and over and over again.
And that is part of our job.
That's what we do.
But we also don't ever address those things where it's like we look at this one event.
You're like, well, no, that's what I'm paid for.
I'm here.
And this is the way I look at it.
But I'm paid to be here for that.
That's an emergency.
Like I can't explain to you why I have to go home not sleeping all night because there's
just drunk people falling over all over the place.
There's no yes.
Apparently to pick them up.
I'm guessing in the 1920s, there was just bodies all over parking lots at some point
because people couldn't pick them up.
They weren't being picked up.
They just bystander cells that way.
They must have been a scary world back then.
But you know, in those little things, we're like, man, it's a lot to like reframe into
a positive light at some point.
So like this is not I didn't really visualize this when I was learning how to, you know,
put fire out or cut a car apart or any of that stuff.
You know, it's not that wasn't exactly what I foresaw happening.
Yeah.
Well, I've always said you've got the acute traumas, you know, the 9-11s, the Vegas shootings,
pulse.
And then you've got most of us, the other 99%, which is death by a thousand cuts.
You know, I mean, it's not, you know, people say, and I've never been asked this ironically,
but when people tell me they are asked, you know, what's the worst thing that you've seen?
My response to people be more specific.
We want you want a kid, you want a gang member, you want an elderly person, you want a car
crash, you want, you know, there's so many in our encyclopedia and this is a problem,
but none of them made the news or anything major.
It wasn't, you know, 50 people killed.
I just saw one person killed 50 times.
You know what I mean?
So this is the problem is that, you know, you've got that acute trauma, but then you've
just got this slow beat down, which I think what is really the underlying element of most,
you know, first responders challenges.
Yeah, I'd agree with that.
I think there's nothing is more of an empathy, empathy killer than your frequent fires that
you go to multiple times a shift in the middle of the night that, you know, if it, and there's
a difference between somebody who has a physical ailment that can't help themselves versus
somebody like what Brian was saying, just somebody who's got substance abuse problems
and they need to be picked up and put back in their bed because they're not taking care
of themselves.
And those are tough because that's not why any of us signed up.
You know, I think every firefighter in America will agree that we feel a lot better after
we say a real call, right?
You know, we go and we're working arrest or we have a fire extrication that goes well
and we feel like we're actually making a difference.
That's why we all got into it, right?
You know, what's the cliche?
Why do you want to be a firefighter?
Because I want to help people, you know, and you never say that in an interview, by the
way, but it's true.
That's the irony.
We were told never do an interview, but every good firefighter or police officer or dispatcher
corrections officer, it's ultimately that I want to, I want to be there when someone's
having their worst day and make it better.
Plus it'd be awkward if you do the alternative.
I want to see the world burn.
I don't know how many points you get on that.
I like chaos.
That's why I got into it.
And with the sleep too, you know, they're saying like when it happens all night long,
like it's not even that sometimes you even want to be mean to them, but like you're just
your barrier to being able to handle your emotions are going down at the same time.
Right.
And it's just over and over again.
There's a video just literally the last 24 hours of surface and it was in, um, Oh God,
it's somewhere in the Northeast.
I forget now I'm blanking, but, um, it's these two EMTs and this guy supposedly has a stroke
and they're, you know, just arms folded, just get on.
He's trying to crawl in and he falls on the back and stuck between the, but I didn't have
any comment on it because it could be one of two things.
It could be two really shitty EMS providers that probably should never have their license
again or it could be that guy that you've been on six times who's rude, who's entitled
and you're sick of his shit.
And you're like, climb your ass up into that thing.
You know, when you, we can't tell from this one clip, hopefully it wasn't because they
said it was a stroke victim.
I then had internal bleeding later.
So it could be, you know, a complete malpractice, but it's really hard for people to understand.
I'll give you a perfect example.
We had an old lady in my first due in Orange County and the daughter supposedly said that
she had a back injury and we go in this lady all the time and she would have fallen, genuinely
fallen just so weak.
She can't get up and the daughter would just be sitting there on the couch watching TV.
And one time this poor woman had fallen on her commode was leaning and piss was already
on her and it was kind of just on her body with pistol in the commode and she didn't
even move, move the commode off her own mother.
That's not the mother, but the daughter is the kind of person that maybe you're not going
to be super mother Teresa when you're dealing with her because you know, she's a piece of
shit.
You know, now as a professional you have to, but you take a good first responder and you
beat them down with sleep deprivation.
You expose them to go into that woman over and over again.
You just refuses to lift up her own fucking mother.
You know, it's a nuanced conversation.
This goes back to those dead bodies in the parking lots in the 1920s.
Yeah, no, and to me that all builds into also like what we talked about with that giving
people the tools or how we figure out to do it, to deal with it.
Cause I mean, I'm not immune to it.
I've caught myself before sitting there on the scene and being like, okay, I know that's
not the right flow of thoughts because I just, I have to complete this call and we have to
do in a professional manner, but like we're not having none of us are, none of us are
immune to sitting there and be like, what am I just threw your phone as far as possible?
They got out of the woods.
You're like, okay, that'd be bad.
We'd all get fired.
I'm like, that just wouldn't be the right thing to do for this person.
But then you actually did it.
That's part of that story.
Yeah.
I think that's the part of the sleep deprivation conversation that people got understand as
well.
And this extends to law enforcement.
You've got your complete, you know, horrendous shooting like that poor RAF, um, uh, airman
that was just killed when they went to the wrong address, complete, you know, lack of
communication, just a disaster tragedy.
And then you have the ones that are completely justified shoot.
And ironically, we just have one in, um, Ocala and a guy ran at the cop with a gun, uh, with
a knife, excuse me, and he had to shoot him.
Right.
I mean, you know, it's sad, but I think hopefully he survived that.
But then you have the gray areas, you know, the teenager reaches for the driving license,
but it looks like he's going for a gun and you've got to trigger happy cop who's sleep
deprived and one of his friends was shot three weeks before, you know, is how often was that
officer, you know, um, working?
Was he forced mandatory?
He or she, you know, were they trained to a higher level?
And so our ability to make the right decisions and be compassionate and bite our tongues
when we don't, you know, and then push the right meds and not have a microsleeping intersection
and blast through a minivan of five kids.
That performance side is also part of the sleep conversation.
I always, I always think it's, it's funny.
And when I talked to the public about that, um, me being a driver, I'm like, imagine you
being told, so you work a 24 hour shift and you get mandatory for another 24.
So you're being forced to be at work.
And let's say that first night you're up all night running calls.
And the next day you're now in charge of a, of a three quarters of a million dollar machine
that you have to blast through red lights, lights and sirens at five o'clock traffic
going down Newberry road in Gainesville.
And you have to try not to hit the kid walking down the, you know, riding his bike on the
sidewalk and try not to run into a car.
You're sleep deprived.
You're, you know, and you're just running on, on caffeine.
And it's, it's, there's a reason semi truck drivers can only work.
Can they can only drive for so many hours?
Well we, you know, we kind of have the subset that rules don't really apply to us.
Because out of necessity, honestly, because if, if, if after driving the fire engine for
12 hours, if we had to take a go to sleep for eight hours, it obviously wouldn't work.
You know, there's just, it's just not.
So it's well, that's a good segue because the only answer to this is to fully staff
a fire department.
So mandatory is only, you know, when there's a hurricane or God forbid, you know, another
COVID or something that, that sweeps through.
Well, hopefully that'll be handled a lot better.
But as he pointed out before too, like hurricanes, that's a great example.
We've never had a truck, like never had a problem up staffing our department with volunteers
because that's an emergency.
People are ready, right.
People are ready to go.
Like that's what we're here for.
It's you know, the other mandatory is racing.
They're like, Whoa, I was supposed to take my kids to Epcot.
Like they're not going to be very happy with me.
You know, exactly, exactly.
So, so let's talk about that.
So the answer then, I mean, cause I don't think the deviation from the 24 is the right
fit for the fire service.
We have buildings that have beds.
I don't know if you feel the same way, but if, you know, where I worked for the longest
time, you know, you get in, if you don't get banged out straight away, you know, you'd
be putting your gear on the rig, you check in your pack, you check in your tools and
you're doing your med med checks.
You know, you've got your workout, you're running calls in between all this.
You've got, you know, online training.
Hopefully you got operational training.
You know, now before you know it's eight o'clock at night.
I can't imagine then leaving and then doing the same thing.
You know, so, you know, I think the 24s are a great idea, but putting an extra 24 hours
off in between that kind of mitigates, as you said, the necessity for someone to be
awake for 24 hours or close to 24 hours, driving that machine, pushing those drugs, you know,
operating extrication equipment inches from someone's head.
So when did the conversation about the 24 72 arise in Gainesville and Mr. unpacking,
you know, firstly identifying, um, you know, the financial losses that you're experiencing
the way that you were operating and then, you know, how you, you sold it to not only
your own people, but ultimately the city.
We've jokingly been talking about it for, because I mean, everybody's known that Boca
had it for four years.
But I remember me and Matt were assigned together seven, eight years ago.
We would joke about it all the time.
Like this would never be a thing.
Um, fortunately we have a pretty forward looking department, our chief, our deputy chief, our
union president.
We all saw the writing on the wall, it was something we could pull off.
Um, and it was multifaceted cause I want to say it's all about health, which I think
it's, that's what it's going to actually get to, which is going to be great and help us
out.
But we also had to find a way to find people to work also like every other fire department
does and like, what do you do?
You got to stick out above your peers.
Um, we were able to be kind of uniquely situated cause the way the K days work and everything
in our departments about the right size where we had actually a lot of the employees already
there for four shift.
Um, once again, our deputy chief, uh, chief Hill house did a, he's a numbers guy, fortunately
and broke it all down.
And between him and Nick and all his union president, they really started getting the
legs on this.
Our, our DCs are actually up for contract bargaining first.
So they were able to get it across the finish line before we opened.
So we kind of knew the writing was on the wall that either we were going to have a different
DC every single day or we were going to end up on 24 72.
I don't know the, I'm not well educated on all of the financial aspects of it.
Cause also I don't know that we have that yet only because we know we're, we're going
to it and we hope that there is a savings to it and there is a retention to it.
We haven't started it yet though.
So I don't know that.
Well in before though, with, with, did you annotate cause I always talk about this, the,
the overtime fees covering the spots.
The this is one thing at Marion stuff is for horrendously.
They're a fricking revolving door.
The, the cost it is just to, for one employee that then leaves and goes to somewhere else,
the workman's comp costs, the medical retirements.
And then a big one that I think is not talked about is lawsuits.
When you guys hit a car, when you push a wrong man, whatever it is, that's usually going
to be hundreds of thousands, if not millions as well.
So were you able to identify areas that you could clearly attribute to exhaustion and
then tack that on?
So from what I remember, nothing from necessarily exhaustion sample by new overtime budget was
a huge part of this.
I don't like, I don't remember.
I think it was in the ballpark of like $5 million for our department size.
I think they said our lot are yearly allotted overtime budget.
If I remember correctly, we, we hit that amount within a first few months.
It was, it was how many, how many firefighters you have online, actual working in the stations?
I think we have right now, which we know is just 166 with a $5 million overtime budget
that you hit in a few months, just to reframe that.
Okay.
Yes.
At least several million.
Well, cause we also think about overtime.
We talk about mandatory every time we talk about that 24 hour on the truck, we don't
talk about football games, high school football games, concerts, art fairs, call outs, other
medical things we're involved with in the community.
So it's not like there's only like, we worry about the trucks that are getting assigned
every day.
We have all sorts of special events occurring throughout that city that have to be covered.
We're going into hurricane season right now.
We have members who are on task force task force eight, which gets deployed a lot, which
they're, I think they're with Marion County.
It's a whole, you know, that does cost people to actually like come in and get paid, but
you know, they are needed.
They do a great job when they go down these hurricane areas.
They're very well trained and very good at what they do.
Like that's a service that we provide.
We want to help people.
So all of that goes in, not just what you can see.
We're like, okay, this engine needs X amount of people.
And that's every day.
Like that doesn't account for Matt having to work some sort of concert of some music
that he probably doesn't understand.
Cause he is getting older as we talked about where people are just listening to it on headphones
walking around for five hours.
Garth Brooks or somebody I've heard of, but so, you know, and that, so we did unpack that
and what the hope is going forward is that that does start pulling that down a little
bit because people are better rested.
We have more people to take these spots and like, so that helps out with that.
So, but once again, that's a to be seen with everything else.
Cause we have to, we have to implement it first, which will be in August.
So we have to get through that little hurdle first.
We've heard from other departments that went to 72 is that when they went the amount of
vacation and sick time that the individuals were taken, they saw a marked decrease in
it because more people willing to do trade times.
Because it's a lot, the problem with, with, you know, mandatory or at the trade time.
So I'm on a shift.
And so if I work my regular a shift and then I work a 24 hour B shift, I have C shift off
and then right back on a shift.
So what I tell people is it's 72 out of 96 hours I'm at the firehouse and at the, and
that's almost the worst one is your next shift coming on.
Cause you're not well rested because you get to go home for a day.
Well, you're not just sitting around sleeping all day.
You know, we all have responsibilities.
You know, you have to take care of the kids or take care of the house or, you know, go,
you know, help your mom with, you know, help her with some yard work, whatever it is.
Cause you know, that next day you're right back there.
And so your alarm goes off at five or five 30 in the morning and now you're right back
at work and it absolutely has an impact on you.
You notice on that, at least for me personally, I noticed on that, that fourth day that my
next shift that I'm pretty much over it at that point.
And so having that extra day off of rest, you know, now if you do have to do a 48 hour
shift, which we know is not good for you, at least you have a whole nother day that
you're able to sleep in your own bed.
And that's another thing that, that people don't talk about.
You do not sleep as well at the firehouse.
Even if you get no calls, I think the research shows it's about a 50%.
You can't get into a deep sleep because that's parasympathetic.
If I always tell people, imagine someone has those symbols from an orchestra and they said,
I might smash these in your ears at some point tonight.
How well are you going to sleep?
Or a burglar goes, I might break into your house.
You're not, you know, that's how it is.
So yeah, I mean, you're, this is a thing.
It's still the one eye open sleep.
Or you get a call, fire alarm, 1130.
These are my favorite, put your gear on, walk around a dormitory.
That's 12 stories tall.
Well now you're sweating or high.
You come back and be like, I can't nap right after you're done working out.
So that's essentially like at night, like, Oh, we should be going to bed.
I'm just sitting there wide open wide awake.
And to piggyback off of that part of this also was we, as you found on this podcast,
I'm sure, you know, people don't understand our hours.
We saw some of that through, I don't necessarily think fault of their own, but the city didn't
really necessarily like some of this just involves overtime.
Like there are, so like having that two extra days off is much healthier for the employee.
If it runs into a situation where they are going to have to work overtime, which once
again, there's only so many people, so many things we can do.
There's all these special events, everything.
It is just a fact of life to an extent.
How much can we mitigate that though?
And I think that was them understanding once we were able to sell that vision a little
bit like this is what you're doing currently.
Just try not to run everybody off and kill everybody as quickly.
Yeah.
Well, I think this is when I look back now, eight years later and assess why was it so
hard to get people to understand this?
And even with Boca, if you hear a Boca's origin story, someone just educate me the other day,
they used to do 12th and the 24 was supposedly a big FU to the fire service back in, this
is like the seventies, I think they said.
Oh, really?
So technically it ended up being great for them, but that wasn't out of altruism and
for their health or anything either.
So you look at the way we were all brought into the fire service, it's an amazing, and
separating the calling from the way we worked is really important.
I just did a video today about that little angry video, but because we want to serve,
we want to be there on people having their worst day, whether it's just picking an elderly
lady up and putting her back into bed or whether it's dragging someone out of a fire.
This is why we train, this is why we go to school, this is why we educate ourselves.
But we've also told ourselves a lie from day one, which is it's a dream schedule.
I work one day on two days off, I work nine days a month and most of my career, a lot
of my career, I had 56, no Kelly, Anaheim and Orange County.
And so then when you actually take a step back, you're like, wait a second, 24 hours
is three, as you said, regular days, nine hours, you know, with a one hour lunch, eight
hour days crammed together.
So it's three days on one day off and the second day isn't a day off because you work
from midnight to eight, excuse me.
So that wasn't a day off.
So the only day off is you've got as a third one, that's the one where you wake up and
now you start thinking about packing your shit and going back to the station.
So then you expand that out for a month, it's actually 30 days a month.
Now you throw in a mandatory, now it's an 80 hour work week.
80, double what the person at Publix works.
But the person at Publix doesn't have to be up 24 hours.
So like Matt said, now you're awake four days that week.
So that's our lie that we've got to debunk.
But then, you know, you've got the person who, and this blows my mind, once did the
job and now all of a sudden it's like the fucking men in black, they forgot how to be
a firefighter and now they're working 40 hours and forget to advocate for their people, which
I just don't understand that at all.
But then you have Joe Publix, which includes city and county councils, who we've done such
a piss poor job of telling the public what we do, that they genuinely think that we sit
around the firehouse playing jokes and petting the dog and go to a fire once a week.
So this is why it's been a problem because from the new probationary firefighter through
to the politicians, there's been these myths that no one has debunked.
So what's happening now is I think people finally starting to go, wait a minute, you
know, and I, to be fair, I only got understood this a few years ago myself, but we have to
educate everyone at every single rung of the ladder to get them to finally have that aha
moment that not only, you know, is it going to be better for physical and mental health,
which is most importantly, but there's no question it's going to save money, your money
for your new rigs, for your training, for that new station you want to put in to put
the fourth person back on the rig is downstream.
You just got to put the money up front.
And what drives me crazy is people, some people refer to the fire service as a business.
And I've said this a thousand times, so I apologize for repeating myself, but it's like,
okay, well, I disagree.
We're a service, but let's say for a second, we are a business.
You're following the Indonesian sweatshop model.
You look at the progressive business people, they've gone to a four day work week for nine
hour days and they found that people to be as productive, if not more, more innovative.
I've got four days to get my work done and now they get three days off.
So obviously their family time and their mental health and physical health, they put gyms
in all, you know, in Google, I've been to the Google's headquarters, which again, Gainesville,
I've seen station one, beautiful gym.
So this is the point, no matter where you look at it, there is no downside from the
financial savings to our delivery of service to the health of our people.
So I think it's so great when a department like yours is finally stepping up because
Gainesville, I would argue in Florida is a well-respected department.
And when you go, it's really going to turn the heads of a lot of other places.
Yeah, and I completely agree with that.
If we can do it, everybody can get there at some point, you just have to be the process
is long.
You can't get frustrated.
Things will pop up they didn't think about because every department is unique.
So just because we did it one way, like one of the things that popped up with us, like
the 11th hour they came in with FLSA overtime and we're like, oh, we don't have to pay overtime
until you guys hit two weeks, 106 is 106 or 105.
I can't remember, but I think it's 106 hours.
I really like well, time and a half not kicking into that.
Like there's a short paycheck in this where they're only going to work 72 hours.
You want them to work 30 hours overtime before they got time and a half.
We were able to get that down, you know, so there's 10 hours straight time in there on
every 24 hour periods.
Once you get that 10 hours straight time, you have 12 hours a time and a half.
So you're still making more money.
But that was like one of those things where like we didn't even think of that.
They kind of hit us with that out of left field, but that doesn't apply to any other
correct.
Right.
So this is what's maddening.
Right.
The guy that's something they brought out for us, right?
Yeah.
He doesn't have to done 10 hours of straight time.
So this is, you know, this is, this is the disconnect.
Correct.
Right.
It's one of those things we had to ask ourselves.
Like is this, is this worth it in the long run?
And I think the argument at the end of the day was 100%.
Like I said, you're still going to make more money.
So that's good.
And you can negotiate it down.
Hopefully.
Yes.
In the future.
That's I'm sure that's the plan.
And not only, not only is it going to be beneficial in the long run, but we were almost in a spot
where it became a necessity because we've been seen because, you know, you've had plenty
of people on the show talking about there's, there's much less of a workforce out there
that are trying to become firefighters because they're going online and they're seeing all
the, you know, the issues with the, the cancer in the fire service and how the PFAS is in
all of our bunker gear.
And that's a whole nother issue that they're, you know, they're trying to fix.
At least we know it now, but I mean, we were getting cancer before even going into the
house fire, just putting our bunker gear on.
Um, but, but we, I think, um, I think it's been six or seven years.
We've not been fully staffed.
We've had that much problem of hiring enough people, you know, recruitment and retention
in this area, you're a destination department.
You're the kind of the Orlando of North Central Florida.
Yeah.
And we've got K days too.
You know, it's not like we, you know, we're, um, so we had, and we have no rescues either,
you know?
So, so if we're having problems, we know everybody else is, and we've talked to the chiefs all
around here, you know, we know everybody's having issues and that's, that's kind of where
with, with like Brian said, if we can do it, um, you know, anybody else can do and everybody's
going to have their own barriers that, and you know, it's going to cost, you know, bigger
departments, it's going to cost more money upfront, but you have to look at that long
term investment of, you know, the health and the wellbeing of those individuals, you know,
as well as the department, you know, it's, it's your recruitment, your retention, you're
going to have people working longer.
So you're not having to go out and pay because we know it costs a lot of money to put people
through EMT school and fire college, like we said earlier, um, cause it was mentorships,
a lot of, a lot of departments, I think most departments now have to have some type of
mentorship program and they didn't used to have to, cause there was enough competition.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, it's, it means like, you know, you put in a new road, you put in a new park and new
high school, there's an upfront cost, but downstream, there's going to be a huge benefit,
you know, you're going to have young people educated and hopefully work in your county
or people are going to be able to get from A to B across your town, you know, fast and
get to work and pay their taxes.
It's the same with this.
If we're bleeding money and or you can't get the people, I mean, you've got to go back
to that delivery of service and you guys and Orlando and you know, Miami Dade and some
of these people that are known to at least be paid better and you know, you know, well
trained and that kind of thing.
If they're struggling, you know, then there's a lot of people, I know Marion, I mean, they're
basically taking anyone that shows up 18 and a heartbeat, which again, you know, back to
the point that we made earlier, if you got 600 or 1000 candidates for a handful of spots,
you've got to ask yourself, what is that group?
That's going to be a top tier, you know, not put saying that we're amazing firepower, but
you're obviously ranked in a certain way, fitness, the way you test your interview,
your resume.
And so now you're taking everyone.
So who's in that pile now, the good ones and the bad ones?
Well, the bad ones one day are going to be behind the wheel of an engine or God forbid,
even commanding a scene and you're going to have an avalde situation.
That's how you get an avalde situation.
So you know, this is at a point now where it's, it's about delivery of service as well.
And if, you know, if we don't change this, we won't have a fire service anymore in America.
It's that simple.
Well, and as you pointed out earlier, you know, nobody heard about that shooting at
three o'clock in the morning.
Nobody heard about the cardiac arrest at four o'clock in the morning.
It's because we're going to take care of it.
So once there's nobody left to go take care of it, I don't really know what your alternative
is because you're going to hear it now.
Exactly.
Body in the streets.
Right.
And you know, it's just, it's one of those things where it's like, like you said, it's
an investment, but it's just looking at it and understanding like we have a presumptive
cancer law now.
If less people get cancer 20 years from now, that saves the city money.
If they don't have their hormones all jacked up because they were able to recover, you're
saving money, but you have to have the eye on that longterm.
And it is hard.
We don't do a good job always of selling ourselves, but it is also hard trying to tell people
who are only in office for four years with agendas of whatever they want to do right,
wrong or indifferent that like you got to look at this as 20, 30, 40, 60 years.
And most people are like, yeah, I don't, I'm not going to be involved with this at that
point.
I'm like, well, we are, you know, and we're still going to be on your health insurance
at the end of our service.
So that's something you're going to pay for.
So we prefer not to get the cancer.
We'd prefer not to have you pay for it because we didn't have it in the first place.
So, but it is a hard, it's bizarre.
It is hard to, you know, unfortunately I do think there is actually a price on human lives
because there's actuaries to actually come up with that.
And that's how you buy your health insurance, which is unfortunate, but I think we got to
look at it a little bit differently.
Maybe with the cancer conversation, we focus on the carcinogens and the PFAS now, you know,
with the mental health conversations, we talk about, oh, it was that call that you had.
And yet sleep deprivation is in both of those.
And I had Sarah Jenke on, you know, you, you see what sleep does.
It's the known carcinogen in the world health organization.
You know, the brain heals, it processes trauma when you're asleep, deep restorative sleep.
So it's in all of those.
So that's the resilience of the human being.
So absolutely our incidence of disease would reduce and therefore the cost of insurance
to your company, you know, your, your department, Workman's comp and your regular insurance
would drop as well because we would be healthier.
So you know, when you look at the financial element, there's so many areas that you would
save, which then you can put back into your department, put back into your city.
And like anything, it takes an upfront investment.
It just does.
I mean, that's the world we live in, right?
Like you have to, you have to invest in things in order to get it running correctly.
And I did a video today and it was just, you know, calling out the people that call themselves
leaders.
You know, if you're just doing it to look good in a budget year or to posture for your
next promotion, then you're not doing it for anyone else.
You're doing for yourself.
That's not leadership at all.
It's selfishness, a leader.
And I've always butchered this phrase, but plants the tree under which the shade he'll
never know.
So I don't think I said that kind of wrong, but you know, it's not good.
The delivery was confident, but you know, but it's true.
You know, it's, it's the kind of people that set the foundation that they may never get
the glory for, you know, but people will look back and go, man, in, you know, in this year,
it went to 24 72 game changing.
And then with the cancer conversation was the one kind of area of research that Sarah
has found in the fire service she's been doing.
And I think we can all attest to this is the impact of the our reproductive health, excuse
me, reproductive health on the children and the amount of fire fire children that have,
you know, issues, whether it can genital amputees, whether it's pediatric cancer, you know, I
mean, loads of things.
So again, that is so important because those children aren't exposed to carcinogens on
a fire, but that's the shift work that's destroying our hormones and actually causing abnormalities
that we're passing on to our children.
So for the fire service, I say, well, you know, you, you might be Billy bad-ass and
I'm going to die one day anyway.
Well would you want to wish that on your kid?
Because this is the conversation we're having.
Right.
Yeah.
Have you had a, if you talked to Dr. Allison Breger.
Yes.
Allison's on a while ago.
Yeah.
It's actually, I heard I got most of my sleep stuff from her from once again, the affiliate
leadership training summit this year, but that was the same thing.
Like such, I didn't realize the amount of things that I obviously knew sleep was important.
There's a reason my children are on a schedule, not to drive me crazy, but like, you know,
I know what happens when they get off of it and like, you know, just finding out like,
what do you do with somebody who's schizophrenic?
The first thing you do is try to normalize their schedule because they need to be in
a schedule and you're like, oh, okay.
So a lot of things we're seeing is because there's a not normalization of the schedule
and you know, she brought up all these other things too, like these like little things.
I think it was Indianapolis, but like red lights, like submarines do in the dorm rooms
after like five o'clock, it goes to red light just so it's not spiking melatonin.
If you get up suppose a fluorescent lights and I'm like, these aren't actually expensive
things.
Like these are just, it just requires doing and it's obviously outside of our normal day
to day operation, but it's things we got to start looking at.
So, but yeah, I got hers.
It sounds like it's a lot of similar stuff.
I couldn't believe it.
I was like, I didn't realize it was that important.
I mean, it was important, but I didn't realize like it was literally just killing all of
us by constantly not being asleep.
So yeah.
Yeah.
And then another two proactive solutions that when I was in Anaheim, they had the individual
tones by the bed.
So if you compartmentalize rigs, you get used to, you know, cause there'll be an led and
it would wake you up.
And I proposed that in my last place and the initial dispatch chief was all for it.
And then he got fired and then they got rid of it.
So now everyone wakes up for every call still, which is insanity.
And the other thing, which I love is that kind of EMED side, the, you can embed into
a 911 dispatch.
And if it's a kind of, you know, alpha omega call, you can say, look, we can send a rig
or we can do a virtual call with an ER physician, which would you prefer?
Oh, oh, a doctor.
I'll talk to them.
Yeah.
My kids throw up once I'm a new parent and I think they're going to die of dehydration.
Now you're going to be okay.
You know, take the clothes off, give them a Tylenol, you know, if there's any, any other
issues.
Oh, okay.
Now you just avoided a massive medical bill for that family.
The child wasn't taken up a bed in ER, which might be between a drunken and assault, you
know, it's assailant.
And then, you know, you didn't have to wake up and run a call, you know what I mean?
So there's another way of reducing the calls and getting the fire service back to true
emergencies again.
Yeah.
That's, that's a benefit for everybody.
But telemedicine, we were kind of slowly us in the counties implementing that where if
we're on scene and somebody doesn't necessarily need to go to the hospital, they just, for
instance, just need to have their prescription refilled.
Well, they can get on with the doc, teladoc, and they can actually go ahead and call that
prescription into their local pharmacy.
And that's, that's huge because it's reduced.
I mean, we all know this.
I mean, we see this all the time.
People like a lot of people don't want to go to the hospital because that's where people
go to die.
I mean, and it's there's some truth to that, but also you have a whole bunch of sick people
all in one big room.
So you're actually increasing your, especially during COVID, like nobody want to go to the
hospital because they're all scared of getting COVID.
So we saw when COVID first started, our call load decreased significantly, but the severity
of the calls increased drastically.
It was just about everybody we're going to work was almost on death's door because they
were waiting so long, so long.
And it was funny, the big takeaway I had from that was, it was, wow, way more people go
to the hospital than need to.
And we all know that fire service way more.
I mean, and so I think the telemedicine is a great way to do that and implementing it
with dispatch is very smart.
Yeah.
I've heard about that one.
Yeah.
We'll look into that.
Yeah.
I'm hoping I haven't found one yet, but I'd love to find like a big company that's doing
that and get them on as a sponsor so we can just shout from the rooftop because I love
the idea, but from what I've seen, a couple of companies I know, they're so small that
they don't have the capacity for more, which is great for them, but it's not helping the
whole fire service.
Right.
Well, I mean, even if it came from your local hospitals, it wouldn't be terrible if they
are able to do it.
Yeah.
That's good.
Absolutely.
All right.
Well, then we talked kind of about some of the things that you brought to the city.
What about the pushback from the membership?
There's a lot of kind of urban legends out there that there's pushback and there's clearly
a lack of communication because you're saying to someone, we want to give you an extra 24
hours off between shifts and people, some people like, I don't want that.
It's going to mess up my shift schedule or overtime or they're going to cut my pay, all
these kind of fallacies that I've heard a thousand times.
So talk to me about from the membership now.
So I would say 98 percent of our membership was all for it from the beginning.
We did run into that, but instantly we came out with the if this involves any form of
reduction in pay, that's a non-starter.
So we might as well not even sit down and have that conversation.
And once again, fortunately, the city was receptive to this idea, so that was never
even really discussed.
The only other thing people didn't understand, so they were thinking like three week Kelly
days and there's some other like weird shift schedules out there that some other people run.
And we were able to just come back to them like even on three week Kelly day.
Once again, I'm going from my memory of a year ago, so it's a little hazy, but I think
we were still like one hundred and forty hours additional per year off.
A big one was rate of accrual of vacation and sick time, because obviously that's going
to go down and people that seem to be one of the more contentious aspects.
As Matt pointed out, with that much more time, all four hundred more hours off per year or
four hundred fifty, whatever comes out to like the chances of you being off for what
you need to do have now greatly increased, which helps both sides.
I'm no longer just using my third day off, knowing that I'd be off.
That's the day all the kids appointments, everything have to now have two full days
to actually like get all of those things done.
So you probably need less if we just want to go to St. Augustine for a day.
That's achievable without everybody being dead tired.
So that was one of them.
And then right at the end.
And this goes into some retirement stuff.
So not to get too far in the week, there was.
Leave bank issues at the very end.
And what we were able to do was one, we grandfathered everybody in who already has their 52 hour
leave bank.
They will continue to keep that throughout their career.
New hires.
We just were able to come up with a mathematical formula that reduced it.
I want to say it was like 77 percent of what it is now.
And that's what it would come out to.
We're getting proportionally the same.
And it was kind of a bad argument from the city that they kind of just came in with at
the very end.
But they were like, well, if you pay somebody out the end of their career, they just got
a 23 percent increase on that leave bank.
But that would also be assuming that every single firefighter we had was going to retire
the day that we got 24 72.
So it doesn't really.
I would love to.
I have some years left that I'm going to have to be able to go before that occurs.
So I think that was about it.
But once again, education and getting out there and staying ahead of the rumor mill.
I mean, that's I think every fire department has that because people, like you said, there's
some wild things that come up there.
And that's one thing I was not ready for union leadership because the stories that people
come up with or the situations like it is wild.
So just staying out there and make sure they were aware of the whole situation as it was
going, what was actually being discussed and putting out those little spot fires really
took care of it.
And then at the end of the day, like I said, the amount of time differential off like.
Wasn't it was just so vast that they couldn't see like, yeah, clearly this is the best way
to do it.
And then I think the other thing that some people had an issue with, we reduced the vacation
spots guaranteed from five to four.
But once again, we are allowed to do trades that's encouraged, helps over time.
Now there's four shifts of people that can help with that.
So I mean, there is definitely a somewhat built in negative to that, but also, I mean,
there's four shifts of people roaming around out there and you can do.
One thing I told Matt in my personal situation, I don't like being gone.
We don't have to for 48 straight hours because like a hurricane went off in my house.
I'm going to have to clean, do dishes, figure out the yard work.
Just is what it is.
But now with four shifts, you know, I can trade with if he's on C shift, I can go a
shift, take a day off, make sure it was cool.
There was not trying to kill each other.
I'm now happy.
Come back work 24.
And that's what works for me.
Some people working that 48 will work for them.
But understanding that, you know, trade times will probably come a little bit more back
into the equation, which settles that and you'll still be getting your time off.
So I think I think when we talk about it a year or two years from now, after implementation,
I think a lot of these fears will be alleviated.
And then the last one was, I mean, there's just certain people who were like, why don't
we give everybody a twenty thousand dollar raise?
And I was like, that would be great.
If somebody came to us, it was like, here's a pot of ten million dollars.
You figure out how you're going to split it up.
That never happened, unfortunately.
So like we only had so many like, you know, errors that we could actually fire off.
So the ten million dollar package deal never materialized for me to divide across all people,
unfortunately.
So maybe one day, maybe one in the future.
So on that end, that still doesn't fix the problem.
That may help your recruitment, you know, because you're starting to hire.
But that's it.
That doesn't help with the sleep deprivation.
That doesn't help with the you know, it would help with some of the mandatory overtime.
But again, you're still on that same 52 or 56 hour work week.
And overtime is never going anywhere.
I would argue that there's more things happening in there.
We are responsible now for more things than we were a decade ago of covering different
arts festivals.
And there's more SWOC call outs now than ever.
But I given the union as a whole, the entire board, a shout out.
They did a great job of the initial package that they brought for the union to vote on
was very good.
And like Brian said, that was the number one thing that I know I heard out and around the
stations of if it's a reduction in pay, I'm voting no.
That's what I that was the hard stop.
And they were able to do it where it was not a reduction.
It was the same same base salary.
And I think what only nine or seven members voted no to it out of our entire body.
I don't even know.
I can't remember was that high.
Less than I think it was five or six.
But there's some intricacies in there were like day staff.
We have kind of the same contract with car routes differently.
So I mean, there are unfortunately some different issues whether you're on days or on the actual
shift.
But so and I don't so I don't know.
Obviously, it was a blind vote.
But I'm assuming that probably came in because they do have they had some legitimate concerns
that came out of that.
But overall, like I said, I do believe that once again, we as union representation, like
we are the union and the members of the union.
There's no like I in there.
So like we wouldn't take a reduction in pay either because I like to eat also.
So yeah, well, that's the thing.
That's the thing.
I think I think where people thought there'd be a reduction in pay is the number of hours
per week has gone down.
But I always tell people if you go to training, do they cut your pay?
No, your hourly weight shifts.
And you know, your salary stays the same.
And the good thing about making money is you want the overtime to go away.
You do it's healthy.
You're supposed to go home to your children.
That's your real currency.
But when you do work in overtime, now your overtime rate is actually higher.
So per hour, you're making more money, but you're saving the city money by not having
so much overtime.
And the other thing we touched on before we hit record is that extra day also, I think
forges entrepreneurial ship, you know, for another passion.
You could be a painter, you know, massage therapist like yourself, you know, a landscaper,
whatever.
But if you're doing that, firstly, you're going to be in your own bed every night.
And secondly, it's a very powerful transition tool.
You might hit eight years and go, I don't think I want to do the fire service anymore.
Or you might hit 25 with a retirement and now you've lost your tribe, but you've got
purpose because you're also coaching or you know, whatever your other thing is.
And to piggyback on that, that's a zero cost perk to the city.
Also I am now making more money.
I'm happy that didn't cost you any money in your budget.
And so it was a win win for everybody.
Exactly.
And then people say, well, I'm losing overtime, but what there are other ways of making money.
And I know that you have another passion outside of fire service.
And if you don't, that's super unhealthy.
Here's your sign as they say, but yeah, whatever it is that you love to do on the side, you're
a musician, whatever, you know, dive into that.
Now you've got enough time to rest and recover and create this other tribe so that you can
have a healthy transition or a plan B, you know, your pension goes to shit.
Now you've got some way of supporting yourself.
God forbid, you know, there's a explosion that wipes out your entire city.
So well, and as Matt pointed out, the reality is I'm with you on the health part of that,
but the overtime there is going to be some element of overtime there.
And it just, it might not always be the 24 hour shift.
It might be our community resource medicine program or something else, but like there's
a ton of opportunities and you used to do SWAT medic, for instance.
I mean, there's call outs if I'm not mistaken all the time.
A lot of training, a lot of call outs.
So there's opportunities for you to find your passion and get in there.
And like I said, it's just, it's a healthier way of doing that, you know, so hopefully
getting everybody there.
But like I said, that was our biggest things and it really wasn't communication goes a
long way.
It turns out that if you actually talk to people and you have honest conversations with
them, you can actually get somewhere most of the time.
So that's what worked out for us.
Yeah.
I mean, you have to create the narrative of how it's going to be because if you don't,
people are going to create their own narrative of, oh, what's going to happen.
And I, you know, a lot of people are saying, oh, now we're just going to be working 48,
48.
But that's, that's not what the studies have shown or the speaking to other departments
that went to it.
They've shown that the, cause, cause when you take vacation, you take sick leave, call
in the morning of that's what creates that mandatory overtime.
Well, if you are doing trades, you're not creating that mandatory overtime because it's
just a one for one.
Somebody's covering your spot.
So, so it should, should help alleviate that a good bit.
I was speaking of that because I've heard this from Dixon in Pasco.
I heard this from Hugh in Boynton beach.
Talk to me about the recruitment and retention.
I know Matt, there's some kind of nuances.
We talked the other day, but what have you seen?
You've got all these surrounding departments.
All of a sudden the word on the street is Gainesville is going to 24 72.
I would argue that there's probably people that were thinking of retiring that may be
going to stay a little bit longer.
And then, you know, I mean, there's a funnel right from the fire college here, right into
you as well.
So what are you seeing as far as a shift from, from the worst, the most dire to now?
So I don't know if we really necessarily know that yet, except for the recruitment side,
I can get that a little bit.
People staying longer.
This is kind of bizarre, but I still think people are kind of convinced it's not happening
even though it's happening in two months.
So once it occurs, I think we'll get a better lock on that over the years and see if that
is actually doing a better.
I mean, I would theorize that it's going to help people stay.
I will say from my standpoint, because I can only really speak for myself.
I have looked at it, but like, I really hope it is everything it's cracked up to be because
it's going to be a career extender for me.
But I am waiting like cautiously, optimistically.
Like, let me, let me see first before I like commit to like, I'm going to do 30 more years.
This is great.
You know, so we'll have to see that after the implementation.
And I also think we'll get into it later, but like the research study that we're going
to be a part of, I think it's going to go a long way towards also proving to people
like how much better this is for you.
And it's OK to stay around because you don't have to worry about some of those end of life
diseases occurring so quickly if we can be healthier recruitment.
Our last couple hiring classes were very low.
I don't remember the exact numbers.
I want to say they had like 200 or 300 applicants for this particular hiring class and then
for 22 spots.
I think we ended.
Was it somewhere around the neighborhood of 40 people interviewed for the 22 spots that
they went with?
The timeline was very quick and you're probably better able to talk about this because I don't
know as much about Pascoe County's, but I think there's like one or two years out before
they would implement 2026 ours.
We were kind of like, cool, done.
Let's go ahead and go for now.
We've even moved it up another month.
I do believe going forward is going to continue to be a massive like boom for us and be very
helpful.
I don't know.
Like it was just very it's a very shortened timeline to try to get that message out.
Unless we did it around November correctly.
Anyways, around the holiday sometimes.
We were also kind of fighting that a little bit.
That was kind of, it was a weird timing and we were like, okay, go like promotional exams
now go, go, go.
I do know.
I talked to a guy who he said he applied to GFR back when just the rumors of 24 72 started
last year because he said, oh, if this actually happens, I want to be ahead of because once
we go to it, the whole idea is, well, it's going to be even more competitive because
you're going to have people that are working 24 48 in the local communities around us and
be like, I want that schedule.
I, you know, that sounds, sounds awesome.
Cause it's the same job.
That's the point.
Yep.
Both people, the firefighters just one has worked in a different way.
Yeah.
Yep.
Yeah.
That's a good point.
Yeah.
So, so I, I, I know that has helped with that, but it's like, it's like Brian said, I mean,
it's we're implementing here in a few short months and that'll give us a lot better
idea.
Cause right now it's, it's, and I've talked to people personally and I'm in the same boat
of this could absolutely be a career extender for me, you know, cause before this of with
all the mandatory overtime, you know, I say to my wife, I'm like, I don't think I can
do longer in 20 years.
You know, I think I got a couple more years left in me because it just, you, you feel
it, you know, especially now that I'm in my forties, like I'm not, you know, when you're
20 years old, you can, you can be up all night and the next day, you know, you're, you're
good to go and go work out and go play golf or whatever it is you do go fishing and it's
good, but it catches up with you as you start getting higher, higher in age.
But I mean, I didn't even have a mustache.
That's how much has caught up with them.
That's all grown in the last three years.
I just gave up on shaving.
So here it is.
But yeah, I know I'm hopefully I'm very hopeful and I think this will be a thing that we're
going to be able to come back to you even in six months and explain a lot of that.
Because there was also this weird moment where it's like, cool, we got 24 72s and then you're
like, here's all the things that need to happen for 24 seven two.
You're like, well, shit, I didn't really completely think about like, you know, there's a lot
of things that, like I said, promotion, right?
So even who's going to be on these shift, you know, which we still know, right?
We're working on that.
I believe our chief officers have almost completed that.
So we should find out soon.
But so it's just hard.
It's weird.
Like I said, we got to implement it and we got to get to the implementation also because
I laugh, you know, somebody's going to end up getting their last K-Day on whatever the
day is before.
However, the pay cycle ends and then not have to work until the fourth day of is they're
going to get like four days off, five days off right off the ribbon.
Somebody else like in your whole shift to stay here tomorrow.
So but it's a positive law.
And I'm sure they're positive.
I'm sure they're trying to avoid that.
But beautiful.
All right.
Well, you mentioned a study.
Dr. Ben Abo just messaged me today and said, James, you're getting Brian O on the show.
He's going to talk about the study.
So I think one of the most beautiful things is when people say, oh, the research, I send
them these conversations.
This is as close to the actual research you're going to get departments that are actually
done it and the things that work, things that didn't, the challenges, you know, selling
the money, all this stuff, because we haven't got research in the fire service.
But what a beautiful place to start is now you've got guys working, guys and girls working,
you know, 24 48 and now we're going to get to see hopefully this beautiful uptick.
So talk to me about the study, who's behind it and you know, what is it that you're hypothesizing?
Well, starting at the beginning, I'm kind of jealous because I don't ever get Dr. Abo
just to text me.
So congratulations takes me four or five times call.
But we'll bury that school.
So I want to say about two months ago, FSU approached from their exercise science department
Institute of Health, something they approached our department and asked if we'd be willing
to study because they found out they were doing a study, I believe, in like Walton County
or something on sleep around their area.
And then they were like, oh, we've never been able to get 24 72,000.
Like, wait a minute, we have a department that isn't on it going to implement it and
also have a year's worth of data.
So this is one of those weird universes aligning things.
So years ago, I got my master's degree in exercise science and I didn't really have
any idea.
And this isn't my idea.
This is all FSU, not me.
But I was wanting to be able to leave something kind of behind where we could move the conversation
forward.
I didn't quite know what that was.
I'm not a research scientist in any way, shape or form.
They came and talked to us and what they laid out for us is going to be a very exciting
study, I do believe.
So what they're going to do, so it's Dr. Kyle Smith at FSU, Dr. Kelly O'Dare at Florida
A&M University.
And I believe she is one of the people for the second alarm project, if you're familiar
with that.
So they're for what I understand, talking to him, they're looking at kind of the same
metrics, but she's going to be more of the mental health side of it.
And then he's going to be more of the physical part of it.
Dr. Abo is also piggybacking on that and trying to help push that forward.
He said that he had a mentor named Daniel Patterson, Dr. Daniel Patterson at Pittsburgh
EMS, did a lot of EMS research studies while he was there and he thought this was a great
opportunity for him to also be able to give back and it kind of walked in.
So what we're going to do on an accelerated timeline now, we're going to start out, they're
going to have three layers to this.
There's going to be a questionnaire or multiple questionnaires, but they're going to do perceived
work stress and stress in general, sleep and burnout and the feelings of burnout, stuff
like that.
They're going to take that, I want to say five times over the next year.
So we should be starting this month and then five times over the next year, they're going
to get that and people can jump in on any part of this and do just one section.
So they're cool doing a questionnaire.
They'll get to do it.
Then they're going to take saliva sampling and that's for cortisol and inflammatory cytokines
testing and they're going to do that this month.
So we're going to get that done and then we will have a couple of months after implementation
and then after one year.
And the really exciting part is they partnered with who we're still not 100% sure how many
bands we're going to get, but they're going to track the people who are involved in that
part also are going to track one straight year of wearing that band every single day,
our sleep recovery on shift, off shift, and we're going to start pretty much immediately,
get some 24 or 48 data and then move forward.
And we have we're very uniquely situated because we have a lot of young fathers, young mothers,
older guys who are retired.
So we have a really good blend in our departments.
I think they're going to be able to get good cross sections of data everywhere.
So it's very exciting and it seems like it's going to be a pretty cool thing to actually
be able to move what you're saying.
I'm going to have hard data.
Fortunately that's going to come out of this.
I can be like, no, literally here's the same people, same people been here the whole time.
Here's our study forward talking to Dr. Smith.
What I was saying was, you know, as you talked about earlier, when we're doing the mental
health stuff or an organism, this all runs together somewhere.
And you know, what I said is looking long term, if I want people to work for 33 years,
it's just like the mental health stuff, the physical health stuff, the sleep.
Is there a way for me down the line once you start pulling some of the static and kind
of like, what's the optimal way for you to be training?
How are you recovering?
I'm a quarter soul now like you might be great at doing a crossfit workout when you're on
shift and be sleeping.
Fantastic.
Matt, a little older, not make fun of you for that, but just saying.
But you know, he might be more of traditional bodybuilding style or whatever his split comes
out to.
But we can actually like look at those metrics and, you know, kind of start maybe helping
prescribe stuff like that to where we're like, we can actually match it with where the people
are at and like improving their health, moving that forward.
So that's something we're looking forward to.
So that's going to be after this.
So the first part of the skin, the inflammatory markers and the sleep tracking and all that.
So we'll be doing that.
Like I said, we should be starting at the end of this month, which is I guess this week.
So we'll be starting soon.
Brilliant.
Yeah.
Now I'm going to have to reach out to them, I guess probably a few months into when there's
24 72 if they're starting to gather data so we can kind of get the either side.
But I know the whoop, some of those aren't super accurate when it comes to actual sleep.
Correct.
And some of those ones are are imperative, so you're going to get some incredible data
from that.
Yeah, I think it was one of those.
This is what we have and this is what we can get.
So this is what we're going with.
So and especially because, like I said, we came to us a month or two months ago, kind
of out of the woodwork.
So I mean, this is really like kudos to them for getting their IRB used to get the funding
together and get moving on.
But it's kind of it's happened.
I don't my understanding research is normally a slow drawn out process.
This is seemed to have moved pretty quickly based off of their desire to actually want
to do this and get it done.
So yeah, I love the cortisol testing to that's going to be huge because I mean, they're right.
You know, your HRV is is a poor variability.
You're in a high stress state.
That's not the time that you need to be doing mirth the next morning and gear.
Right.
You know, it's just not, you know, but you know, you've had now, let's say 24 72.
So you've had, you know, you're on day three, that might be absolutely a day to smash it
and get in the red zone and be uncomfortable.
And so that, you know, two shifts later, you're in that structure fire and you have been in
a horrible place and it gets you out safely or it gets you to that kid.
So there's, you know, it goes back to the it's just when should we be doing it?
Right.
That goes back to that cost saving.
Like you're saying, too, if you reduce soft tissue injuries and time with people on light
duty because we now know when the right time to do these things are.
We're actually I believe you referred to it as an industrial athlete before.
Oh, so we're tactical tactic, tactical.
Yeah.
So I've I've worked with a lot of high level athletes and like it's very it's very measured
everything they do from the amount of sleep to the amount of food to the amount of like
and obviously some of that's not realistic for us.
But if we can start moving in that direction, we then get people into a place where now
they get to retire and live healthy and can walk and enjoy their pensions and get everything
they should have been getting out of this the whole time.
That's what I hopefully will get to.
It'll be a process, but that's hopefully where we're heading.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
It's funny when you're talking about both of you receiving, extending your career.
I've always had this this realization that we can do one of two things.
We can do what you guys are about to do and have veteran firefighters on on force.
So when you arrive, you've got maybe one new guy, a guy with five years, a female firefighter
with 10 and a female LT with 20.
So you've got a massive combined experience.
But the problem is at the moment, the way it's going, you might have three or four people,
each of them only have four or five years on.
So who do you want arriving?
And the way that we work people at the moment is going to end up being the military.
I'm going to do four and I'm out.
So the way that we create real maturity and kind of what they call that term journeyman
in the fire service is you create an environment for people to stay and then ultimately have
a healthy retirement.
This is the other thing of the fitness bar being high in the fire services.
There's a lot of pushback on annual fitness standards, but that's performance and that's
longevity.
So I hope that down the road, you know, especially when people are more well rested, because
I get it, people are exhausted at the moment, we get them well rested.
Now we can look at that bar as well and be that look, the CPAT, you should be able to
do with your eyes closed.
I don't care how old you are.
I just smashed it at 48 years old, you know, a couple of years ago.
So if I can do it, my old ass, you know, injuries and everything, then you should be able to.
So that's a beautiful thing.
I think this will open up putting that bar back up where it needs to be, which I also
argue is the real secret of recruiting.
If people see that you actually take care of your people and you hold your standards
high, you attract people.
If it's 18 and a heartbeat, you know, I think you dissuade the good employees usually.
Yeah, it's establishing a healthy culture, you know, each and every firehouse and department
wide of, and I think that'll come back of as people aren't being, you know, beaten
to the ground with mandatory over times and whatnot, and they have more time off, they're
going to be happier, better rested, healthier when they come on shift.
And that's just that benefits everybody benefits the entire city or county, wherever you're
at, you know, the citizens that you're responding to these calls, you're going to be more awake
and more ready to go, go assist them in whatever, whatever elements they have.
So absolutely.
Well, I got one more area for you and then we'll wrap up.
Matt, your wife, Kat, is one of the most powerful voices in this area when it comes to the political
side.
Tell me about who she is and then some of the interesting things that I didn't know
about as far as what's happening behind closed doors to try and advocate for our health.
Yeah.
So Kat came mixed my wife and she's she represents Florida's third congressional district, which
is north central Florida.
So there's a lot of legislative issues that she's working on.
For instance, one of them was they just recently fully funded the cancer research.
So before it had to be reauthorized every year to get the money for it.
So the money wasn't permanently allocated to it.
So it could have if if if Congress decided to vote no to it, then it would drop off and
then we wouldn't be doing any tracking of cancer and fire service, which is pretty scary
to think about.
You know, but they but they are they're now fully funded on that.
And the big thing her that she's working on, she's super excited about is a prehab rehab
mental health block grant.
So as it as it works right now, most people in the fire service, you know, for the safer
grants or the AFG.
So the safer grants traditionally that's used by departments to try to help with staffing.
If they're having that, that generally helps to get a fourth person on the engine, for
instance.
So you have more more firefighters on the on the fire ground.
One of the big issues with that is you have to reapply to it.
I believe it's every two years, say for two years.
Yeah.
So you can get it for two years or even four years and then you could miss out on it for
the following two years.
So now you're stuck in a position of, oh, now we have to come up with more money to
pay for these people.
So it's not a perfect system, but it does help.
It's very beneficial.
And then the AFG grant, that's more for equipment.
Right.
So that's that's, you know, for replacing old air packs, replacing radios, you know,
thermal imagers, what have you.
It just helps to kind of replace that life safety equipment so it's at a higher standard
and it's and it's, you know, better.
So the block grant, it would be they would have to have a certain and they're still working
through it based on on FTEs, which is full time employees and how many that state has.
And so it goes to the state and then the state can differentiate or send out that money to
each department.
And that is that money will be specifically used for mental health and wellness.
So because right now what's happening with AFG is people will get grants and they'll
they'll they're trying to play catch up.
A lot of departments trying to play catch up of how do we fund the mental health park
is like we said, our union did a great job of establishing a counselor for us to go talk
to.
Well, not every department has that has that benefit.
So they have to pay for that out of their own out of their own pocket.
And that generally will take away.
Maybe that means their bunker gear, they have to wear it for two more years, you know, while
it's falling apart or it means their trucks can't get repaired as well.
So that's really exciting.
And that's going through that.
They're still working through all the formulas.
And as we know, nothing nothing happens quickly in government.
And I mean, that's how it's built.
Right.
So but that's currently in the write ups.
And so what they're going for there is is the training and treatment of resilience.
It's kind of the the broad picture and and finding a way because because we all know
we can all come up with ideas of how to fix things.
But unless you can fund it or come up with a way to fund it, doesn't really you know,
it's just an idea.
And one other issue that she had just mentioned to me and I hadn't even I haven't heard this
in the news.
I haven't heard it anywhere.
And I don't know if many departments know this is happening.
But OSHA actually just mandated that every firefighter in America now has to have a full
second set of bunker gear, which is great because as we know, if we go on a fire, we
wear the bunker gear, we get all the you know, the smoke and the toxins in it.
And we don't have a chance to wash that bunker gear until we get off shift.
What if we're working the following day on mandatory overtime or trade or what not?
Now every time every fire alarm you get every vehicle accident you get, you're putting back
on that bunker gear that's exposing you to carcinogens.
So a second get a gear second set of gear would allow us to have a clean set of gear
so we can launder our dirty one, of course.
This is obviously very well intended, seemingly well intended, and it will have a positive
impact.
The issue is the funding.
Again, it goes back to the funding.
So that's this is a brand new thing that OSHA just just came through.
So everybody's in kind of in discussion right now because there's plenty of departments
out there that they don't they're not going to have the money to buy because bunker gear
is very expensive.
I I know it used to be maybe $4,000 for said I believe a chief was telling me the other
day maybe up to even $6,000 a set.
I don't know how much the ones are that supposedly without PFAS but I would imagine that's probably
an added expense.
Yeah.
And I mean, you know, we have 165 ish, you know, frontline firefighters now.
So I mean, that's going to be upwards of close to a million dollars just for a second set
of gear.
And what's what's crazy is before we hit record.
Now this is this is the problem.
We're so reactive.
We're so far on the back foot.
If you imagine you work for a uranium company or a biohazard company, they're going to have
two sets of gear.
Yeah, they're going to you know what I mean?
So we're the only profession, I think, that deals with the kind of exposures that we have.
They're like, oh, just you'll be fine.
Just hose it down and you get back.
Yeah, yeah.
So when we look at it now, we're having to mitigate these problems because we really
dropped the ball several generations ago.
Yep.
And and the PFAS, it's it's you know, it's a it's unfortunate, but it's at least we're
finding it now that that's a you know, I think it's just got classified as a type type one
carcinogen, I believe.
And it's in all of our gear.
And every time we put on we begin to sweat.
It's soaking into us.
And so that's another there another bill that they're working on the next generation turnout
gear bill, and they're allocating twenty five million dollars to research to start helping
these companies find ways to create and to make our bunker gear that's not exposing us
to these carcinogens.
So it's it's we're kind of in the beginning, not even the beginning stages.
There's been plenty of companies that have been trying to figure it out.
But as we all know, it takes funding and it takes time, you know, to to to create the
materials and then to test them out in the field.
So so there's definitely a shift there.
And so, yeah, there's there's a lot of good things happening.
It's just just like anything else.
It just, you know, takes time.
But yeah.
Well, again, if we're talking about financial side, hopefully what's going to happen is
we're going to see a lot of savings through the health of our people that can be applied
to the areas that you just talked about.
I had a gentleman on Rob Bellot, who is the real lawyer in the film Dark Wars, which is
the kind of origin story of discovering PFAS and what it does.
But again, you know, that's that's become a kind of buzzword in the fire service and
absolutely needs to be addressed.
But what I realized is it's very easy for a fire department to point fingers away from
them if you just talk about PFAS.
But the resilience of the human being against carcinogens is the shift work.
So that's why we have to turn that finger back towards us.
Absolutely try and address the PFAS conversation, but not negate the shift work.
All right.
Well, Brian, one one more question that I meant to put in there.
Parental leave.
When I did a Google search on you, there was a conversation about that.
You hear this a lot about certain places in Europe, you know, where mothers or fathers
get quite a lot of time because, you know, those first few months with a child are extremely
important and they're very traumatic, you know, and people have, you know, postpartum
depression and all kinds of things around the birth of a child as well.
So talk to me about what Gainesville has done as far as supporting parents.
Yeah.
So I was one of the first ones to get it.
I want to say it was two contracts ago now.
So roughly like 60, well, rather as for so they've been about four and a half years ago,
somewhere in there.
They were very progressive in wanting us to be able to have that initial phase off with
the child, which turned out to be a godsend, just like you said.
I didn't do a whole lot, but also go into the grocery store, cleaning the house, making
sure everybody was OK and not freaking out was actually doing a lot, not having to be
on shift.
I also had a covid baby.
So not bringing that home constantly at that particular time.
You know, I mean, I know we have a different look of it now, but at the time you're like,
oh, God, I don't have to like have to scrub it out in the garage before I actually get
here, you know.
But yeah, so it's been it's been a godsend.
I know everybody really, really enjoys it because it's just great being home to be able
to support their spouse.
One thing that I didn't realize would be as positive about it, because I don't think we
think about this as much anymore, but a lot of us dads and moms at the fire service, but
dads, especially in the modern age, we are actually kind of like Mr. Mom when we're home
because all of our spouses are working in that bonding time did go a long way to helping
me be comfortable because I don't know anything about babies.
I mean, I'm kind of OK with it now, but like, you know, I'm good.
Like I can walk in a febrile seizure, be like, it's just a febrile seizure.
You're good.
I mean, then the world's ending and I'm like, we got to go like any kind of Dr.
Ava was a good person to ask.
I spoke with him quite often during that time period.
Yeah, one percent for a poor wife, poor everybody.
So I'm really strong until it comes to my kids and it's all over.
But so and I think that was very helpful.
Now, one of the things that did have to happen with 24 72 is that that reduced from three
months is what you got off before to now we're going to have six weeks.
But there is a little bit of positive in there, too, because originally the three
months you had to do from the birth date for three months, which is great.
Not looking to give tours in the mouth under any circumstances.
But, you know, wife goes back to work at the three month market, still go into daycare.
So having that three months piggybacked at the end of that would also be very helpful.
So now the six weeks you can actually use floating whenever so that that'll help out a lot.
But that bonding time, one of our district chiefs who was sent retired,
I don't remember why he called me because he never calls me.
And I remember him talking.
It was right after my oldest started walking and just randomly at the end of the conversation,
he asked me, he goes, do you ever feel like you didn't hold her enough?
And she's running around in the garage or in the yard.
And as you know, once they start walking, they don't really have as much to do with
you and it keeps building for that.
I was like, yeah, no, you're completely correct.
Yeah, I completely must.
Because I, you know, I didn't spend that bonding time as good the first time.
Second time, I definitely did better.
But those are actually those are moments you don't get back.
The job will still be there.
And as we've stated this entire time, I go to work for my family.
I want to be a good dad.
I have to take care of them a lot when my wife is working.
So I need to be able to be in there and focused and be the best version of myself I can be.
And this all kind of goes together.
But I will say the city of Gainesville, given that parental leave that was.
It's a game changer, and I wish I hope more people get it.
But it's definitely it's a very positive thing.
I would never I thought it was kind of weird when we got it.
So I'm like, I'm a guy.
I'm not going to be breastfeeding anytime soon, you know, until I did it.
And I was like, oh, me, even if it's one diaper at two o'clock in the morning, because the
baby was already fed like that, that made a huge difference to my wife and her ability
to recover and have somebody to bounce ideas off of when you're both sitting there.
Like, I don't know what to do with it.
It won't stop crying.
Like, you know, we all we all have our limits, you know, so just handed over to me and like
let it spin up on me.
We're good, you know.
So so it was awesome.
But it's a really awesome benefit that we we have.
I don't think I got any with with Anaheim.
If I did, it was a very short time.
So, yeah, I would be in there.
We were mandatory all the time.
We were 56.
No, Kelly.
So you come in 24, not sleeping.
And then the next night he was colicky a lot.
So you're up all that, you know what I mean?
So even just the fact that you get to sleep, you know, being a better parent, I screamed
at him.
I told him to shut the fuck up when he was about two weeks old.
And I didn't touch him or anything, but I was like, what is wrong with me?
But it was just sheer exhaustion.
Yeah.
Well, so you avoid that.
Yeah.
And to your point, that's the mental health stuff.
You know, I tell everybody a pivotal moment for me was my oldest daughter, who, you know,
she makes me a much better version of myself because I'm learning, I think, more from her
at this point than like, you know, I'm actually able to teach her because she's already smarter,
strangely enough, which Mac can vouch for.
She's smarter than you at two.
Yeah, that's fair.
But, you know, I remember coming home one day and I was like, I'm going to go to the
home one day and just not having the resources anymore to deal, you know, just being tired.
Like we all get I mean, we all get there.
It's nothing.
But I just remember like yelling at her and her just starting to quiver.
And I wasn't yelling at her because it was a life threatening emergency.
It was literally like, why can't you pick up your room or something stupid like that?
And like, understanding at that moment, I was like, OK, time out.
Like if this job isn't for me, this job isn't for me.
However, we're not going to do that.
Like, I'm going to have to interact with them better.
So whatever we have to figure out, we're going to have to figure out because it's not her
fault that we can't staff a truck or it's not her fault that we get five calls after
midnight.
So I have to figure out and interact with that better.
So parental leave helps with that.
The 24 72s are going to help with that.
You know, hopefully figuring out how to be the healthiest version of ourselves with the
research study is going to help with that.
And we're going to be able to also once again, move hopefully the entire service forward.
So we're uniquely situated to hopefully give back to the entire service by sheer luck of
where we were sitting in a seat when this happens.
One more area that I meant to put in earlier and then we'll close up one thing that Sarah
talked about and I've heard people touch on it before, but actually makes perfect sense
to me only if it's done after you've moved to a 24 72 or, you know, when you make the
move.
But the when shift change occurs because I've always lived like 75 minutes from most of
the fire stations I worked at.
So I'm up at five a.m. to get to work that day.
Anaheim was amazing.
They had it right.
They would just let you sleep.
We'd get take our partner's rig off gear off the rig.
You know, if there was anything needed to be done, we just write on the whiteboard the
night before, you know, and so they can sleep.
There was no tones waking everyone up.
The last place I worked at doesn't matter how shitty your night was.
The lights would come on.
Dispatch would scream at the bunk room at seven in the morning.
It was absolutely backward.
But I do love that conversation of a different shift change time.
Now, some people talk about p.m. to me, almost like a lunchtime early afternoon time sounds
like it would make the most sense because now you have the morning to get your kids
to school, have breakfast with your husband or wife and then go.
You're not in rush hour traffic.
And then, you know, and then the people going off, they get to do their journey and they're
home for dinner that day.
Have you had any conversations about the time of day of shift change?
To this point, we have not.
Once again, I think there's so much other stuff going on.
We got to get through that first.
We've we've had like off record discussions about Tallahassee does this or these people
do that.
But we haven't really ever had a serious conversation about.
But it's something good to look at, especially because, like I said, listening to Dr. Breger
talk those last two hours of sleep apparently are some of your most important two or three
hours because I'm guilty of this all time.
Like, hey, it's four o'clock in the morning.
All right.
The night's already been shit.
I'm just going to start drinking coffee because that makes me happy.
I'm just going to start typing reports, you know, and and I do that.
And they heard telling us they're like, no, those last two hours, like you still need
to try to get them if at all possible.
So even if it's five thirty in the morning, laying back down until six thirty is essential.
So to your point, that is something to look into.
And hopefully with all of this stuff we can.
But that's we haven't had a serious conversation about that yet.
But there's I mean, there's so many things going on.
It's just we're a little overloaded at the moment.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
But it's also a zero cost change.
Yeah.
Well, and the schedule that we have now was established because that's how we did it 100
years ago.
Right.
Like and it's the fire service is not what it was 100 years ago or even 50 years ago.
You know, we've got old log books even from the 60s from Station One.
And you look through there and you know, for those who aren't firefighters, you have a
log book of every day, the shift of who worked and then every single call that each unit
went on.
And you have three, four days in a row where they didn't run a call.
All they did was come in and, you know, mow the yard and check off their truck and work
out.
And it's not that anymore.
You know, it's it's 10, 20 calls at a station.
And it's so so this, you know, they used to be able to sleep through the night.
Now we can't.
And listen to Dr. Jenke that when she mentioned that it just kind of like was like a lie go
off.
Like, why do we not do that?
There's no reason not to do it.
And you can always come up with excuses why not.
But but you made a good point.
I think when she mentioned it of, well, now you're waking up in your own bed and setting
your alarm going to five a.m. because you have to drive, you know, seventy five, you
know, minutes away that you can actually get a good night's sleep coming into work.
So now you're actually well rested.
And then and then that following shift, if you had a bad night, you've got a couple extra
hours of, you know, Brian was saying at the very end tacked on, you can actually get some
good sleep before you go home, too.
You know, so just this is definitely interesting thing to look into.
Yeah, it definitely it has its caveats, but it's definitely interesting.
Like you said, it's no cost.
So it goes with all this.
But you know, the nice thing is about.
They said not knowing anything about the fire service coming into now we have podcasts,
all these different experts.
It sounds like even I'm hearing from the same people you're hearing from, we're getting
all this data put together like we're going to be able to start moving a lot of these
things forward.
And that might be one of them also, because we have always done everything for a hundred
years, not realizing that are.
I don't want to a lot of departments have it worse than us.
I mean, there's much busier departments.
I've met people from Baltimore City that explained to me how many calls they run a day.
And I have no complaints.
However, our slowest units are now becoming it's not abnormal for them to be up after
midnight.
And that's just the nature of the game or in a growing city.
And you're never going to have enough resources to be the way we should be staffed and everything
to work correctly.
So we have to start looking at those zero cost best practices and seeing how we push
that forward.
And it's interesting, hopefully all this pull together and find a way to piece that together
and see what the best practices of those are and maybe push the narrative forward.
Absolutely.
Well, I want to say thank you.
I mean, this this is such an important conversation, you know, and you're literally about to do
it in two or three months from now.
So and you've got the research that's going to be following you as well.
So this is one of four conversations now on this specifically.
And this is a roadmap for everyone else to, you know, to take it from fairy tale status,
you know, unicorn fart and rainbows that people think this is to putting it into reality and
seeing, especially as we touched on the currency is time with your family.
I mean, you know, if not for them, then then why are you doing the job?
I mean, they should be coming first.
So and then obviously your own health as well.
So I want to thank you so, so much for driving down here and having an absolutely incredible
conversation.
Thank you for having us.
We really do appreciate it.
I want to point out all of our phones are pretty much always on.
So any other department trying to get there, like I said, our union president does not
mind talking to people.
Obviously, I can talk.
Matt is OK talking most of the time, but we're willing to help.
And you talk enough for both of us.
That's fair.
You're the pretty face.
Fortunately, this wasn't recorded.
But yeah, so I guess for whatever we can do to help where we would like to do so.
Awesome.
Yeah, thank you for having us.
This is and we're excited to come back and give some updates once we very excited about
the research, you know, and I think it's going to show everything that we all know, you know,
being in the fire service.
It's it just it makes sense.
You know, it's just going to help build that narrative, like you said, of providing more
data.