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Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast.
As always, my name is James Gearing and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome on the show
veteran firefighter, USAR team leader and Fire Academy lead instructor, Chief Don Campbell.
Now, in this conversation, we discuss a host of topics from his own father's fire service career,
Don's journey into the fire department, firefighter fitness, leadership, some notable USAR deployments,
the attributes that Gen Z applicants are bringing to the first responder professions,
the hiring crisis, the pioneering shift change that Gainesville is making from 2448 to the 2472 shift schedule,
mental health, the smoke diver program and so much more.
Now, before he gets this incredible 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 950 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 Chief Don Campbell. Enjoy.
Well, Don, I want to start by saying thank you so much for driving down and coming on the Behind the Shield podcast today.
No problem, buddy. I'm glad to be here.
So we have known each other from afar for several years.
We've discussed doing this for a while and I'm really excited from a multiple range of perspectives of all the hats that you held.
Let's start at the very beginning, though.
So tell me where you were born and tell me a little bit about your family dynamic, what your parents did, how many siblings?
OK, well, I was born in Gainesville, grew up most of my life out in Cedar Key, about 60 miles west of Gainesville on the coast, where my dad's from.
My dad retired from City Gainesville Fire Department, so natural that I would end up there.
My mom is from New York, so a little different having someone from Cedar Key, Florida meet someone from Queens, New York.
But they met in Puerto Rico, got married.
My mom is a retired school teacher, currently actually running for school board in Levy County.
She taught for 45 plus years and I have one brother, Sean, who's also a district chief in Gainesville.
So I know your brother, he's I think the person that taught me almost every class I took at the college, the VMR, the ropes, confined space and just an amazing, amazing man.
Let's go back to the parents, though.
So firstly, I love asking when people have either themselves or family members that are in education.
What has been the discussions of the evolution or devolution of the way we teach children through your mother's eyes?
Has she discussed that with you at all?
I don't know if she's discussed that, but I know that she has staunchly advocated for children and not just having one model for one specific kid.
But sometimes you have to teach to the child and not make the child fit into the educational system as we may model it.
And everyone learns different. And she stayed in the classroom for all 45 plus years of her career,
never wanting really until now to move into any other position because she wanted to directly impact those kids.
And so I know that that she really believed in teaching to the student,
not necessarily just applying what some bureaucrat educational person said was the model for that kid, because everyone learns differently.
And when you can unlock that, people are capable of doing a lot of stuff.
But when you just try to apply a model to a person, you may not be getting their full potential.
Yeah, well, firstly, she needs to be on the school board.
Yeah, absolutely. I agree with you.
Commercial for her. Secondly, I mean, let's apply that concept.
What have you seen as far as all the candidates?
Because you work with firefighter recruits in the Florida Fire College.
What have you seen with that application when it comes to the spectrum of men and women that we get coming into our profession?
Yeah, I think that's one of the things that at Marion Technical College we've tried to do is we try to get really in tune with our students.
If they have different learning methods or ways they learn, rather, we try to accommodate those the best that we can,
because they may have a lot of potential that no one's unlocked and we can unlock it and give them the confidence to move forward.
Because I think what you see a lot is when you're trying to apply a system to a person and it doesn't fit them,
they kind of retract into themselves.
And when you can unlock them and find the way that they learn and build their confidence,
they open up and are capable of a lot of other things.
So we've really tried to apply that to how we teach.
And also along with that, I don't know that kids have changed.
I think society has changed how we raise those kids.
Kids are still the same.
It's just as the adults that are the problem.
But they come in with a lot less technical and mechanical skills.
So we're having to really focus on teaching those where maybe 20 years ago you didn't necessarily have to worry about some of those mechanical skills
because they were just inherent in almost everyone.
That's something that you hear a lot of kids these days.
It's like, well, Newsflash, it's our generation that raised them.
So it's our fault.
Absolutely.
You know what I mean?
And I think when I think about the good senior firefighters that I work with, the humility,
like Al Benjamin, like an FDNY Rescue One legend.
I mean, the humility of these men and women is exactly what's needed.
If someone comes in and they don't know how to start a saw or whatever it is,
then that should have obviously been taught in fire academy if it's outside of that,
then the answer is to show them, not just belittle them from your lazy boy.
So what are you seeing as far as the good qualities that society is forging in some of these young candidates?
And what are some of the challenges that we're getting?
I think what you get from today's new members is the level of just intelligence about their surroundings that they come with.
You know, a long time ago when I went to Gainesville, I just wanted to go ride on a fire truck and go to a fire, right?
That's all I really thought about.
I didn't think about retirements necessarily money.
At the time, I just, my dad worked there and so there, you know,
some of the guys that I knew there were larger than life to me.
And, you know, if I could ride on a fire truck with them and I can, you know, be on a nozzle or kick a door and go in a fire,
that was really, that was it for me.
You know, and nowadays I even had one of our former students who had applied in Gainesville and then he had applied some other places and he came and met with me.
And he had pros and cons of every department written out on a big sheet of paper and trying to make a decision on where he wanted to go to work.
And like you just didn't get that, you know, a long time ago, it was you were kind of a one shot deal.
And then you might move on from there to other departments as you grew.
But at least initially, maybe we just didn't have the information at our fingertips, you know,
and in today's new candidates with the evolution of the NTN and some of these other ways that we hire,
there's not as much skin in the game to apply multiple departments where when we applied, you had to show up there.
You had to do a test there, maybe a written test and a physical test, and they may not be on the same day.
So, you know, you had a lot of skin in the game to be able to apply.
So you couldn't apply at a whole bunch of different departments at one time.
You kind of had to take them one at a time and maybe you built from there.
And now they can send their, you know, their their resume or their results from the NTN test and the CPAT to 20 or 30 different departments.
And then they kind of pick. So a lot different over the past 20 years, you know, as people come in.
Some of the challenges I think we faced was, like I said, with some of the mechanical aspects.
And then, you know, also everyone wants instant gratification now.
So they want you to give them what they want right now.
And if not, you know, they want to know why where maybe more 20 years ago when you came in,
you just kind of did what you were told, kept your mouth shut and worked hard.
There's still a lot of that, but they also want some instant gratification.
And I want to do this right now and I want to get this certification right now and I want to be promoted right now instead of,
you know, kind of letting things play out and learn on the job.
You can take all the classes you want and go to Best Fire Academy in the whole world.
But until you get there and start working and understanding how your system works and you get experience,
it's difficult to to move past, you know, to the next step.
The list that you saw this young candidate have comparing different departments, do you remember any of the things that were on it?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was looking at, you know, at all of those departments at the time had similar schedules,
but he had salary retirements, promotional opportunities.
And he even knew a little bit about the contracts where some people had, you know,
step plans and other departments did not have a step plan.
And he knew that you could take a certain set of classes and get raises from this department and not others.
So he had done his research on on each of the departments and had it in the pros and cons is a pretty mature, mature thing to do.
I think that's one of the things that that I've done before is, you know, you might be feeling like you need to make a certain decision,
but you can't really decide.
And if you write those pros and cons out a lot of times, it helps you decide that.
And at a young age, he was already doing that. So it was a mature move for him.
Yeah, it's a powerful perspective.
And we'll get into the recruitment crisis and becoming a destination department in a little bit.
But I kind of want people to kind of think about that, like these young people get to choose now before we were scrambling for jobs.
Let's go back two generations, though.
What was your dad's recruitment story for Gainesville back then?
Well, my parents met in the Coast Guard.
And then when my dad got out of the Coast Guard, he was looking looking for a career.
And, you know, at the time, there were a lot of people from my area of the world over in Levy County, West Levy, that worked at the Gainesville Fire Department.
That was that was the thing a lot a lot of guys did.
And so, you know, he was looking looking for a job and knew some of those guys that he had grown up with that were older than him.
And so, you know, at the time, you didn't go to fire school and then get a job.
You went and got a job and they sent you to the fire college.
And so he went and applied and my mom even had to go with him to the interview.
You know, when he interviewed and you get the job, went to fire college and just kind of went from there.
What was the reason for bringing the spouse?
I don't know, but it was it was a requirement.
I guess they they wanted to, you know, if you had a spouse to know that you're signing on for this, too.
And, you know, your your significant other was going to be gone every third day and kind of what you were getting into.
So I think they were looking for stability, you know, and just to to see what you know, what the dynamic was like.
I love that idea. Yeah, I got to say, I mean, obviously, it may not work for every.
You know, there might be a really fired up candidate within a shitty marriage at that time.
Yeah, but to to invite the family, whether it's the interview or part of that process before you ever pin the badge on to say,
this is what you're getting into. This is what to expect.
This is the good. This is the bad. I mean, it's kind of crazy that that was 50 years ago.
And now that seems like a great new idea. So I did.
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
What about the mental and physical health impact of his career, what he was working?
And that's kind of difficult to say.
You know, my dad came from a generation where it was just all strength, right?
You never show weakness. And, you know, he was a superhuman kind of guy.
Big, fast, strong, you know, and and at that time at GFR, there were six six guys on an engine.
And so there was one nozzleman.
Well, that wasn't just because you got there early.
You were assigned that based on your abilities.
And so that's that's what everybody wanted to do.
And, you know, he at the time when he was a fireman, he was a nozzleman.
And so, you know, that was that was the premier spot.
But those guys, there was there was no weakness ever shown us.
You know, it's just toughness. So, you know, it was hard to read, if anything like that bothered him.
I know that there there were some things because my mom would tell us things every now and then.
And, you know, I know any you know, a couple of calls involving children that, you know, are rough for all of us.
And, you know, he would want to call and check on us to make sure, you know, that that we were OK.
And so, you know, those things are in there.
But really outwardly, you know, you couldn't really tell a whole lot.
Yeah, it's interesting. What about being the sons of a firefighter?
What do you remember as far as, you know, being in the home when a parent was was working the shift?
I mean, I guess because, you know, he started working there before I was born, you know, me or my brother.
So I don't really ever remember it being it was just normal for us.
You know, he just he went to work and and that was it.
And, you know, he I'm kind of the same way now, but he he didn't just take take off randomly.
You know, he only would take off work when, you know, it was something important to do with the family or,
you know, we were going out of town or whatever, but just never randomly took off work.
When it's time for him to go to work, he went to work and he missed things.
And, you know, that was just part of it.
And I don't I don't think it really affected us because we were so used to it.
It was just a normal thing.
And, you know, my mom, you know, was more than capable of dealing with stuff when he was gone.
So I don't I don't think for my brother and I, it really impacted us at all.
Yeah, because I think that's the the conversation for 14 years.
You know, Christmas fell on whatever day I came home Christmas Eve or, you know,
obviously try and get off of my birthday.
But I mean, as a newer firefighter, I mean, there was no way I was getting Christmas for another decade.
But that was OK. And I think this is the problem.
That is a separate conversation from the constant mandatory overtime that we're seeing a lot of these people being forced to do.
If this is, you know, if I may shift and know, you know, ten years from now, I know if I'm going to be home on this day or that day.
But I'm supposed to be home tomorrow.
And now, you know, seven, you tell me I can't go home to my child's birthday.
You know, that's a whole different conversation.
It is. That's tough. And we've we've dealt with that a lot.
And I think covid really impacted that a lot that, you know, most people don't.
I don't know if their perspective is that covid kind of really.
But that broke it out. And it's tough and it's tough to to see people go through that.
It's tough to go through it yourself.
But to also try to keep people motivated, say, hey, man, like, you know, we have a job to do when at the same time,
like, you know, you hurt for them because they they can't go home, you know, and then they're getting ordered in again and mandated again.
And, you know, they have plans with their family, their kids are young.
It's just tough, man. It really is.
And people have really held the line. But, you know, you only can take so much.
It breaks people down.
It was interesting watching as I was out the fire service by that point.
Thank God. And, you know, the whole time I was standing in the middle, like I tried to do in all conversations and just be like, look,
we're not talking about the health of the people.
We're not talking about the mental health of the people. Everything you're doing is making people more scared and vulnerable to a disease.
Absolutely. And then now it comes out that Fauci apparently was making up the mask mandates and the distances.
And none of that was actually based on on science.
Surprise, surprise. But then we come out the other end and there's still no discussion on health.
So then, you know, you look back at what was the impact and we know there was a massive mental health, you know, impact on just regular people.
But all those needless force shifts.
I mean, at the beginning, oh, you know, if you've been even exposed to someone that had covid, then you're going to be gone.
And I remember standing there like I'm not a leader at all.
I'm like, just understanding the math. That's going to last about four days and you're going to have no people left.
And so what do they do? Oh, well, actually, oh, well, well, if it was well, actually, then why are we doing it in the first place?
You got firefighters aren't out of sit in the station together.
The very coping mechanism that they need after these calls.
So from my lens, it was just maddening because there were certain groups of people that were very vulnerable that we should have fought to protect while the rest of us kept the world spinning.
What was your perspective as a leader of of not even so much the kind of the impact on the civilians,
but the impact of all the rules and regs and vaccine mandates or whatever you want to talk about on the men and women of Gainesville Fire Department?
I think the first thing our deputy chief did a very good job of being able to manage that out in the beginning.
There were a lot of rules that came out, the six feet, the mask.
And I think for the most part, you know, at our shift level, we were able to manage that out.
Like some things just don't make a lot of sense.
We're already going on calls with with people like us sitting next to each other is probably not going to be a problem.
And, you know, one of my big things is where did six feet come from?
How did we come up with that? And obviously now we know that it was made up.
But even then, it just didn't make a lot of sense, you know, why that number stuck.
So I think for the most part, what we try to do in the stations is, hey, man, we're here for a reason.
You know, sometimes our job is dangerous, but we have to go out and take care of people.
And we try to take care, you know, the best we could when we were around sick people.
But, you know, at the same time, people need us and that's what they depend on us for.
And, you know, I didn't know if I thought about it at the time,
but now looking back, like super proud of how everybody handled that because, you know, we didn't miss a call like anybody that needed us.
And we showed up and we took care of them.
And that that has nothing to do necessarily with the department.
I think that goes to the individual humans that work there and what they stood for.
And, you know, I think we rocked along pretty good.
And Chief Hillhouse, our deputy chief, managed a lot of those things that came out very well, you know, for us.
And, you know, of course, everybody that knows about Gainesville knows about the vaccine mandate that that tried to come down.
And, you know, again, super proud of the people that stood up for that.
That was probably tougher for us than actually going through covid.
It was dealing with the mandate that that divided some of our members against each other,
you know, people that had been very close before and had to take opposite sides, unfortunately.
And and sometimes you have to do that.
And I'm glad that how it turned out, you know, even even a lot of our guys that had been vaccinated still stood against a mandate.
Because you can't just allow things to be forced upon you or, you know, it'll never stop.
And so those guys were right there next to those of us who decided that we didn't want to do that fighting against that mandate.
And, you know, at the time, it just it seemed like a isolated small fight.
But I think it ended up turning into something a little bigger than that, because that was the first one, I think, in the state where, you know,
municipality was going to put that on their employees and a lot of other cities and municipalities were watching that.
And luckily, we were we were able able to defeat it and beat it down.
And hopefully that saves some other people from, you know, not in every other state, but at least in Florida, except for a handful of people,
I think saved a lot of people from having to deal with that.
So well, again, during this time, I went back to England, which cost me eight hundred dollars just on covid tests alone.
I had the vaccine because I was going to see my grandma, who was almost one hundred and five.
So, again, I'm like, you know, I've had other vaccines, me personally, you know, I'm not too worried about this,
but I'm not taking it because I have to. I'm taking it because I choose to absolutely for her selflessly.
But, you know, we you look at the way the fire service, you know, it started, no PPE, no vaccines.
Everyone was absolutely fine with them being out there.
And then this vaccine thing comes along.
And again, they're telling us trust the science.
And for me personally, being in medicine, you know, as long as I have an exercise physiology and all these things, I'm like, that isn't the science.
This literally isn't what they teach us in microbiology.
And so then, you know, then as you said, there's this division.
And at that time, again, that middle ground is like, all right, some of you want to have a vaccine, some of you don't.
There's one truth. The healthier the person, the healthier response is to a virus or a vaccine.
If you have a great immune system and you have a version of that virus, you're going to create an immune response that may or may not protect you against this thing.
It's a gamble because it's more like a flu shot than, you know, tetanus.
If you don't want the vaccine, then the healthier you are, the more resilient you are to this, because we know,
contrary to what everyone wanted wanted to hear that, you know, the sicker you were as a human being, the more chance there was you're going to die when you got this virus.
So the only truth, no matter which way, was let's make people healthier.
And so everyone was like, oh, it's about, you know, it's about health.
It's like, no, it was never about health.
And then to turn around and say you're going to terminate the very people that had no protection when you were hiding in your homes.
And now they're selfish and they're murderers and all this stuff.
And then fast forward and the efficacy is basically the fiv of a coin.
Fifty, fifty. And I had a guy, John Knox, who was just fired in November from L.A.
They rather than just say I was wrong, they just carried on and ruined the guy's career.
So this is the thing we need to make sure that we reflect on these and, you know,
make sure it never happens again, because the very heroes, the very frontline workers,
were the first one they threw under the bus.
Yeah. And it was it was weird how, you know, all of that came about.
And, you know, we live in the free state of Florida, thank goodness.
But one of the things with the vaccine, and that's what we talked about internally in Gainesville, is like it's free country.
And if you want to get it for whatever reason, then go get it.
Like, good for you. But if you don't want to, you shouldn't have to.
And, you know, when we were going kind of through that fight with the mandate,
you know, one of the things that kept getting pushed on us is you have to do this for the person next to you.
And so my question was, well, if it works that good and they have it, what does it matter if I get it?
Right. I'm the one that's taking the risk and I'll I'll take that risk, you know,
because of the decisions that I want to make or the research I've done, or it's just because how I feel.
And so that was the weird part is how we were, you know, you have to do it for this other person.
And like, well, we've all been doing a lot of stuff for other people because we've run every call for the last couple of years.
We've never missed one call. So I think we've done our part for our neighbors.
And that was the hard part to swallow that after we had done all of this,
now they wanted to come and just get rid of my 20 years of service because I wouldn't take a shot.
And that was that was that was it was a little hurtful, right,
because you put a lot into serving a community or serving an organization.
And then for them just immediately want to turn your back on you.
But, you know, after you look back on it, it wasn't necessarily the organization or the people.
There was just a handful of people that were involved in that decision.
And, you know, sometimes things happen.
But I think I think it also did some good stuff for us where, you know, it made it made some people closer.
You know, at least at least for me, it helped even solidify my faith even more because that that helped me work through that.
And, you know, I knew not not that I'm a super important person, pretty average in most areas,
but I had been around, you know, Gainesville a long time.
So I knew that whatever decision that I made as far as how to handle the mandate piece,
that other people were going to look at that, not that they would decide to follow me,
but they're going to look at what I did and that might swing them one way or the other.
And so, you know, I felt that, you know, if if if I and a few other people like how we decide is going to determine other people,
how they decide to. And that's it.
That's kind of a big thing because I had some personal reasons why I wasn't going to take it.
You know, so that that led me into asking God to to show me, right, show me what you want me to do.
And so one day when I was driving to work and I asked him that and I had been having a little anxiety about,
you know, what I was going to tell people.
And it was like all of a sudden, man, all that anxiety was gone.
And so that piece told me exactly what I needed to do.
And then after that, I was I mean, whatever whatever happens, what this happens and and I'll find my way.
And so luckily, it turned out it turned out good for us. And I hope that by us doing that,
it kept other people from even having to go through it.
So, yeah, I think then the other thing to reflect on is if you think about the messaging,
because again, a lot of that division came from anxiety.
And you understand it. I haven't met a person yet that didn't say when it first happened, we were like, oh, shit.
Yeah, absolutely. Everyone, you know.
But but then when you look, it was like, stay away from people, stay in your home,
we'll deliver fast food and alcohol to your house, binge watch the Tiger King, you know,
and we'll tell you when you can come out.
So you've taken autonomy, you've put in poor nutrition, you've taken away nature and daylight and community.
You couldn't have written a worse way of handling that.
That's the opposite. And for people that still think it was about health,
you had a captive audience for about two years, a possible,
you know, a beautiful opportunity to get the soda machines out of schools,
to put PE programs back where they should be, to bolster local farmers, to create healthy organic food, all the things.
And look, nothing. So, like I said, it was never about health.
No, absolutely. Whatever people stounce on the vaccine, I couldn't care less.
But it was never about the nation's health.
No, you're right. And you should have seen that immediately, like, hey, we need to be healthy.
And you know, you haven't seen that for a long time.
And that's not really how medicine is trending these days. They just want to kind of, you know,
give you something to ease your symptoms.
And, you know, we don't necessarily work to try to get rid of some of the things that are plaguing us.
Yeah, exactly. Well, I want to get to fitness in the fire service, but to precursor that.
Tell me about what sports and exercise you were doing school age.
So I grew up in Cedar Key, so no football, but basketball, baseball, track, cross-country,
you know, from the time I was a kid all through high school.
I dabbled a little bit with some basketball in college, which was an abysmal failure on my part.
But definitely some good lessons there, because I think that helped me develop some of my work ethic.
That, you know, if you want something, you've really got to put time in it.
It's not just going to be handed to you. But yeah, I played sports.
You know, there's not a whole lot to do in Cedar Key other than fish and hang out and play sports.
And so, you know, from the time I was a little kid, you know, that's what I did.
I always ask people that, you know, played a spectrum of sports.
What did you gain from the team sports and did that apply in the fire service?
And then what about the individual sports? Because those are two very different dynamic.
The opponent is an entire team sometimes.
And then obviously on the track, yes, other people are racing against you,
but really it's the voice in your head that you're fighting.
Sure. I think, you know, any kind of a team sport or some of what you get at is just how you're going to interact
with other people and how you are as a teammate. And, you know, as a young person,
you probably have a lot of failures. I know I did as a teammate, not being a great teammate,
being selfish, you know, not not focusing on other people, focus on yourself instead of team.
And that gives you an opportunity to work to work those things out because, you know,
when you come into the fire service, obviously it's a big team,
but everybody there is a good athlete, if you will, right, like a fire department athlete.
And so you have a lot of type A personalities.
And so how you become part of a team and operate inside of a team, I think, is important.
And you learn that, you know, when you're dealing with with team sports and, you know,
my daughter plays play softball and her team and Trenton just won the one a softball state title
and watching her and her teammates go through that, you know, you see you see it happening with with them
trying to figure out, you know, how do you be a good teammate?
How do you get along with others? And, you know, sometimes it's not always pretty and you have squabbles,
but learning how to work through that, I think, as a young person,
and you come into a job like the fire service, that's very important.
And then, you know, the individual the individual sports like, you know, tracking cross country,
I think all of that teaches you discipline.
But there's there's individual sports really have to force you to focus on discipline,
on your preparation, because, you know, if you're on a basketball court and you're having a bad day,
maybe you can just pass the ball to somebody else or, you know, you can play good defense.
But, you know, if you're just running or doing some kind of a track event,
there's nobody to hide what you're doing like it's right out there for everybody to see.
And so that discipline of preparing yourself properly.
And that also is very important.
You know, what we do if you you can, you know, not not to quote a movie,
but you can either do this job or you can do it right or whatever they say in backtrack.
But that's true. You know, you can show up and just kind of go through the motions, you know,
or you can try to do it right and be a difference maker.
And I think that's what the majority of us want to do.
So that takes teamwork. You have to be able to operate inside a team.
But also takes discipline for you to prepare yourself over your career to do that.
Both mentally and physically. And so I think you learn a lot of that.
You know, you can learn it in a lot of different places,
but I think sports definitely offer that for you.
What about career aspirations?
Were you thinking about the fire service when you were in high school?
Is there something else?
No, I had I mean, I wanted to I wanted to go into the military
and be like a Navy SEAL or something super cool like that.
I really had no career aspirations other than like I wanted to play in that sport,
you know, not not really thinking about what I was going to do in the future.
And then when I went to college, I realized I didn't necessarily enjoy college,
especially like the academic piece.
I just wasn't not that I wasn't challenged, but I didn't.
It just wasn't interesting to me that there were only a couple of things that I enjoyed.
And so like the thought of like getting a job and going to sit in an office,
well, maybe awesome for some people.
For me, like I just didn't I didn't view that as a man.
That's really that's really what I want to do.
And I studied business and some finance stuff.
And I was just like, man, there's no way I'm not interested in this.
And, you know, so my my dad being in the fire service, obviously,
I thought that was super cool, but I had never really considered it,
even though as a kid, I was always pretending to be a fireman.
As I grew a little older, it wasn't necessarily something I had viewed as something I wanted to do.
But then when I decided I want to leave where I was going to school and I came home,
you know, my parents were super worried that I was going to go off the wrong track
and not be a productive member of society.
And, you know, so one of the things my dad says, hey, man, like you go to fire college or something,
but you're not just going to not do anything like you're going to do something.
And and so I was like, all right, well, let's let's go to fire school.
And then I got there. I really enjoyed it.
I enjoyed the challenge.
And, you know, like when you had burn day, like I wanted to go in and do the burn.
You know, that was what I look forward to.
So it kind of grew on me once I got there.
And then, you know, that's that's what I wanted to do.
I've said this a lot on here.
I was a straight C student in school.
But, you know, that's been in a glass half full as well.
But when I got to fire school years later, because of the backstories, I was told I was
colorblind and so I could never be a firefighter in England.
And then you way later than I should have had a realization that I'm not colorblind.
I can just not see some colors as well.
So anyway, I was 26, I think, when I went to college.
But same thing.
I absolutely fell in love with it.
And I was an A student in that and in an EMT school and then paramedic school.
And this is back to the way that people learn what your mom was saying is that I can't sit
in a classroom and make flashcards from a book.
That's just not me.
But if you show me how to take apart a chainsaw, you show me and let me screw it up a few times.
I'll be like, oh, now I get it.
You know, and then the maths makes sense because I'm thinking about drug calculations and pumping
pressures and all these things.
So this is I think going back to that previous conversation, this is why I think again, with
scholarship programs, it's such a great way of showing a kid, is this for me or is this
not for me?
But if you have just been down an academic route, and all of a sudden you're thrown
into a fire academy, it is a very different way of learning.
Obviously, we've got classroom stuff to do.
But you know, that hands on trade school mentality is just such a beautiful fit, especially for
arguably most of us that are, you know, born to do this position.
Sure.
Yeah.
And I think some of the people that, you know, that I work with and the people I've trained
with, you know, from different places are some of the smartest people that I've run
into.
You know, people with photographic memories, they could have been surgeons, you know, if
they had chosen to do that.
But that just wasn't what, you know, their interests were.
You know, so it is super challenging.
And I was kind of similar.
I didn't make very good grades.
You know, I got by, I stayed eligible to play ball, but I just was never, I didn't have
that photographic memory, number one.
My brother actually possesses one of those.
I did not.
So I had to study, you know, if I wanted to make good grades, but I never really wanted
to study.
But when I went to fire school, you know, I was like, well, I probably need to try a
little harder doing this because this matters, right?
Like you could get hurt.
I could get somebody else hurt.
And so that motivated me.
And so I just studied more and I did good.
I did good in fire school, EMT and paramedic school, just because I thought it mattered
and I was interested and I wanted to do well.
I wanted to excel.
So then you just figure out what works for you and you just put as much effort as is
needed to make that happen.
Absolutely.
There's the thing, I wasn't born to do this job.
It was just like you said, it was that fire.
So I was working an office job in Orlando and going to the YMCA on my lunch break, you
know, getting to the Academy early, doing the sled and stairs and just putting in the
work, you know, but I wouldn't have done that for calculus.
Right.
Exactly.
Yeah.
You want, it's something that you feel like you want.
And I kind of wanted to do something that was just bigger than me.
I didn't really know what that was.
But I wanted to do something and not make a difference, like, you know, look at me making
a difference, but make a difference for somebody somehow.
I just didn't know really how.
And then kind of when I got led into it, then, you know, that ended up being how it was,
but you know, by becoming a fireman.
And I just didn't know that, I think, you know, for a while as I was trying to seek
it out.
Talk to me about your kind of entry into the fire service, because people will look at
all the positions that you hold now and, you know, oh, he must have just been snapped up
straight away and easy.
So what was the hiring environment back when you were looking and then walk me through
your journey of EMS prior to fire?
All right.
So when I got done with fire school, I just immediately thought that Gainesville would
hire me because I'm me, right?
You know, my dad worked there and that wasn't the case.
And so I tested a couple months after I got out of fire college and I didn't get hired.
So which was a good thing because I just assumed I would be and just made me realize that you're
not going to be given things like you have to go, you know, you earn them.
And you know, a little bit of humble pie life tends to do that to you from time to time
when you get too big for your britches, you know, it'll it'll beat you down.
And you know, sometimes we need that and including me, I've needed that, you know, quite a few
times.
And so when I didn't get hired, you know, Gainesville didn't hire every year at that
point.
It was three years from from that hiring process until my next one when I when I actually got
hired.
So I got a job working in EMS in Levy County where I live and ended up going to paramedic
school, which which was also a good experience because I was part time for for the majority
of that that paramedic year.
So I didn't get leave time.
I had to take time off without pay to go to paramedic school.
So you know, we didn't make a lot of money in those days.
So things were lean, but that's OK.
You know, no big deal.
You just have to like plan your meals a little a little better than maybe I do now.
And so became a paramedic, worked about a year in Levy County.
And then, you know, it was time, time for Gainesville to hire again.
And the first time I applied, they hired two paramedics and that paramedic wasn't really
something that was within my crosshairs at the time.
I was all right.
Well, if that's what I got to do, then I'll go do it.
And I was glad I did it, you know, learned a lot.
And it was a good experience.
And then the next time there were there were a few more openings.
But it was intimidating because, you know, I think like you said earlier before we got
on here, you had tested somewhere as a thousand people tested.
And I don't think there were quite that many, but there were several hundred people in the
auditorium, you know, when I showed up to take the written test for Gainesville and
seven of us ended up getting hired and only two of us still working games.
Everyone else has has left.
So, you know, it was good.
That couple of years difference, you know, led me to paramedic school and and I matured
a little bit.
And so I think it definitely helped prepare me a little bit more, you know, to go to Gainesville.
Gainesville is a very different place.
The department was at that time compared to now.
There just weren't a lot of new people.
You know, they had a couple of classes over the years, but they were a lot smaller.
Some of the majority of people you work with were 25, 30 years or even more.
You know, one of the crews that I worked with, the lieutenant and the driver had had more
time than my dad in the fire department.
They had, you know, almost 35 years apiece.
And so, you know, it was it was so different interacting with them than, you know, the
way it is now just because the dynamic of the department has changed.
Those guys fought so many fires in their younger years, you know, that as they got older, they
were so good at it.
Training wasn't necessarily what it is now, but it was because those guys had repped it
so much real time.
They were good, man.
But I didn't get to rep it, you know, so like after the first handful of years I was there,
you know, you realize you're you're probably short and your knowledge and your skills in
some areas.
And so, you know, it kind of the department started to change, you know, after a couple
of years and a lot of those super talented, super experienced guys started to retire.
We lost a lot of that experience.
You know, it started to change and there was like a younger group that kind of took over
and I think led us to, you know, to where we are now.
I want to go back to ask you this before.
How did a six man engine end up becoming a four or three, whatever you ride now?
Yeah, I think just over time that, you know, the city grew.
So there are more stations now, but I think just over time it just cut down on cost, you
know, the number of employees, but also how the fire service operates.
You know, when it was a six man engine company, you might send, you know, if you had a mobile
home fire somewhere, you might just send one engine and with a tanker, they had a tanker
because Gainesville now used to cover a large area that's covered by, you know, Lots of
County Fire Department, even Newberry Fire Department.
So you would have a lot of rural area that the city covered and you might just send one
engine and a tanker.
And so as those dynamics started to change and turn more into strictly, you know, an
urban city response and, you know, it costs more to operate a fire department, those things
kind of started to get cut away where, you know, now we're at that three man engine companies,
but we still staff our ladders with four and we have four ladder trucks.
So, you know, we're adequately staffed there, but you know, over time those things kind
of just shrunk down.
Yeah.
What would be your ideal staffing thing for a day?
Well, I mean, an engine that you need a minimum of four and probably a ladder truck, you need
five.
But I don't know that I'll ever see that, but a minimum of four, you know, on an engine
company to really maximize their efficiency.
And you know, in Gainesville, I don't know that people say that we're aggressive or progressive.
I don't know what those words actually mean in terms of if we just do the job, man, like
you're supposed to do it.
But it definitely would increase your efficiency having that extra person, you know, on the
truck to, you know, stretch.
And even like, you know, when you're trying to stretch, you go in the front door and,
you know, you have a, the guy on the nozzle, the lieutenant having somebody that can stretch
from the door and feed you hose and make sure everything's played out right.
That's, that's an unbelievable amount of efficiency that, you know, we work through it, like as
all departments do, because a lot of places don't have that kind of staffing, but it does
definitely make you more efficient and things go a little bit easier.
I had a fire in Orange County and they were three man engines and it was kind of around
one of the lake homes.
So it was a long kind of dirt track into it.
It's still, still, you know, suburban, but, and there's a train that runs down the Orange
Avenue.
And when, when there's a massive half mile long freight train, it stops and cuts everyone
off.
So my engineer was all the way at the top of this driveway at the panel.
My LT was, you know, walking down the size up.
So I was the one pulling two and a half, the bundles, you know, force entry tools, everything.
And then the initial fire attack.
Now there was no life safety.
It was a conventional construction house too.
It was hilarious watching them trying to vent, but, you know, there was no life safety hazards
so good, but had there been a trapment as well, it's, it's me, you know what I mean?
So this is what people don't understand is that, yeah, when, you know, when you go to
the rolled ankle that the school, you know, track, yeah, it might seem excessive that
four people show up, but when your kids trapped in that back bedroom and you've only got a
two or three man rig and for whatever reason, staffing, traffic, whatever the other rigs
aren't around, you know, that's when you kind of have to ask the question, is this how many
people should be on a fire engine?
Yeah, absolutely.
And that's, you know, I think we're, you know, the, the bureaucrats who determine how we're
going to be staffed.
Those are the things that they fight against, but a lot of times, you know, hopefully individually
you've never had to experience us in action, right?
Because hopefully your house hasn't been on fire, but it gives you a different perspective
if you've ever been one of those people that needs us to be there, not just because your
stuff is on fire, but because you need us to rescue somebody that, that changes a lot
of stuff.
Absolutely.
Well, you mentioned about being a medic first.
One of the things that really turns my stomach is that kind of anti EMS rhetoric, especially
from our generation forward, because, you know, we all had to do EMS before fire.
You know, that was, that was part of the job.
And I always tell people that I can do the most heroic rescue, you know, climb through
a second story, you know, window and do a search and pull out a kid.
But now what?
If I've got no EMS skills, all I did was retrieve a corpse, you know?
So to me, it's so important.
Now, obviously you guys, you know, get to enjoy not transporting, which I think, you
know, that's an experience in itself, but you know, what do you say to these young candidates
that are kind of beating their chest like the Kurt Russell, you know, in a profession
where ultimately we do the most life saving actually in the back of a rescue?
Yeah.
Well, one of the things that I try to start with is, you know, the hero stuff, um, I don't
consider myself a hero or any, any of us, right, we're just normal people, but for the
lay people, the hero stuff, if you're rescuing somebody, that stuff is rare, right?
And in, even in EMS, where you're going to interact with people that are going to need
you to perform some kind of intervention for them a lot more than maybe somebody needs
you to rescue them out of a home.
Some of the biggest stuff you do has nothing to do with any of that.
But you know, if you go to, you know, an elderly couple that's been married for 60 years and
one of them is having chest pain and the other one's scared to death and you just go in and
with a good bedside manner, take good care of their loved one and hold their hand and
tell them it's going to be okay, man, you just made a difference.
And you know, so that's, that's really the stuff that matters.
That other stuff is cool.
And that's what we train for because you have to, because it's so rare and it's so high
risk and, and it takes a lot to do it.
But, but those are the interactions really to me that, that matter.
You know, if you go to somebody's child that's sick and you can, you know, not necessarily
diagnose them, but you can give them an idea of what's going on or you can give them a
breathing treatment and their kid gets better and you just made somebody's day.
And so those are the things that, that are really what it's all about.
And I think in Gainesville, our culture does a really good job with that.
That you know, we, we mixed what we do really well and, and our guys are excellent at EMS.
You know, we, we provide a really, really high level of service and, and you know, as
good as I thought I was as a medic and a fireman, you know, when I was a lot, a lot younger,
I could not hold a candle to some of these, the guys that we have now and the knowledge
they have and, and how they can perform their skills are really good.
And so, you know, I think that just making a difference just with how you interact, you
know, with those people is really what it's all about.
And that's, that's what we try to push.
I know, you know, my shift, we try to push that is that, you know, we're going to go
out and just try to interact really well with people and whatever they need from us.
You know, we're going to give it to them.
And you know, one of the books that impacted me, especially, you know, when I made Lieutenant,
I'm like, Oh man, I'm, I'm going to make decisions that affect other people.
Like who thought this was going to be a good idea to let me do that?
But one of the books I read was called the mission, the men and me by Pete Blaber, who
was a Delta Force officer.
And I really enjoyed the way that he built in the book, what his leadership philosophy
was.
He was the first and then his troops and then himself.
And I think that if you apply that leadership style to, to, especially what we do, where
we're trying to serve other people that you really can't go wrong.
And the mission for us are the citizens, you know, that, that we're supposed to take care
of and protect.
And for me, that's not cliche, right?
Like that's really why you're supposed to show up.
And so that's what we try to put out, you know, to our guys and our shift is let's take
care of the people that need us no matter what.
And then, you know, take care of the people that are working with you and then yourself,
you know, and if you can, if you can do it like that, especially if someone's in a leadership
position, you'll usually be making the right decision.
And that's why I tell the lieutenants that I work with is I don't want you to mother
may I mean, I want you to go be a leader, make decisions.
You're capable.
If you need help, of course you call me and you know, we'll, we'll figure it out.
And even if we don't make the right decision, we'll work through it because as long as we're
following the mission and then your people and then yourself, you're probably going to
be really close to what the right decision was.
Maybe we just need to adjust, you know, how we applied it or a tactic or something.
And so that's what we really try to focus on is let's go out and just take really good
care of people.
So we don't really have, I don't see us having that whole anti EMS, you know, behavior.
You'll have people that joke about it now and then, but some of those people are people
that have the best bedside manner.
They take the best care of people, you know, when they go to them.
And that's really to me what, what it's about is how we interact people when we're not doing
something that's a super high level.
It's just some, some basic care and we're, we're just treating them really good with
how we interact with them.
One of my friends is a green beret fricking incredible story.
I mean, all kinds of battle wounds and then infections and all kinds of things.
And he's just amazing, but he's testing for the fire service.
And he called me, he's like, Hey, I've got this interview, you know, just was looking
for some guidance.
I told him, well, firstly, when they look at your resume, they're going to realize,
okay, he fits a lot of the boxes.
But I told him, but it's also got a heart of gold.
I said, that's a story you got to tell.
I said, because, you know, some of the most powerful things we'll do is pick up an eight
year old woman who's 85 year old husband who used to be a naval officer or whatever.
And now is so weak, he can't pick his love of his life off the floor and you clean her
up and you change your clothes and you put it back to bed.
I'm like, that's, that's what this job's really about, you know, not rubbing so on your face
and waiting for the paper to show up so you can lean on your pipe hole in front of someone's
burnt out house.
It's the moments of kindness and compassion, the homeless, the sex workers, all the most
desperate people that everyone else treats like shit and you're the only beacon of light
for them.
You know, so yeah, I absolutely love that.
Yeah.
And you know, those, those interactions are, are what matter because you, the chance you
get to do some of that other stuff is so rare.
Um, you know, you're not going to get your name in the newspaper, but that's not really
what you know, what this is all about.
You know, if you go through your whole career and people don't really know who you are,
that's awesome.
Um, because it isn't about that.
It's about the, you know, those things, like you said, that maybe at two in the morning,
no, nobody's going to know that you came in and you were super nice to, to Mrs. Smith.
Um, but you were, and you made her feel good and that, that, that's really what matters.
And you know, it's funny because, you know, if you know me really well, people, I don't
have the friendliest demeanor.
I'm a little, a little shy, maybe a little too intense, but, um, I've had people tell
me before, dude, where'd you get that bedside manner from?
That's completely, you know, alternate from how, you know, we view you, but, but that's
really, you know, what, what counts is that, you know, you can go in and give that positive
impact on somebody that needs it.
My medic partner in Orange County, Ryan was a Navy corpsman in Afghanistan and he had
a lot of shit he hadn't dealt with.
And we'll be on the way to the call and he'd be like punching the dashboard, mother fucker,
mother fucker.
The moment he stepped off, hello mom, my name's Ryan.
Completely different person.
So behind the scenes he was an absolute shit show, but every single call, no matter how
infuriating, he had that thing.
And that's what makes you a professional.
Absolutely.
Well, you mentioned the mission, um, to be completely blunt.
There's many people wearing multiple bugles and their biography would be called me, me
and me.
Um, and you know, I think this is what's missing with the term mission.
I look back on the departments I work for.
Some were phenomenal, some the other side of the spectrum.
And over 14 years, I never really saw any mission as far as here's where we are and
here's where we want to be in five years, 10 years.
And it could be, you know, reducing fires.
It could be school safety, whatever, but there was never a thing.
There wasn't a mission.
You just kind of, and I've heard a lot of the veterans say this, you just, you know,
show up, put your gear on the rig.
If you take your job seriously, you train, you work out, you do all the things, but you're
not moving an actual needle.
And I feel like that's a conversation that's missing in the fire service.
So what's your kind of philosophy on that?
Well, I think it's easy to fall into that where you're not going anywhere.
Um, you know, if you back up, I don't know, 15 or a little more so years as our department
dynamic, you know, just, um, started to change with a lot of retirements, um, there, there
was an opportunity there to change, you know, how we viewed some things.
We lost a lot of the experience that there's, there's older employees had.
So like training became more important, um, for us, um, you know, and, and currently we're
going through some growing pains with, you know, how we view, um, and the equipment we
carry on our ladder trucks.
And you know, we, we keep, we keep getting more, uh, equipment and better equipment and
more efficient equipment, um, better, uh, extrication equipment.
Um, but with that comes the responsibility of understanding how to use it in the train.
And so one of the things we're trying to work out now is, you know, who possesses those
skills or how do we, how do we determine, um, who has those skills or who has the best
skills and, you know, so we're, we're going through some stuff where we're trying to do
some, um, checkoff skill assessment, if you will, people don't like to use, um, certain
terms.
Um, but I think it's, it's important that, that we, um, continue to make sure that our
skills and, um, our abilities are where we want them to be.
And we don't just sit and rest on our laurels of, well, I was good at this 10 years ago,
so I'll be good at it now because, you know, some of the stuff we do is so technical, you
won't be good at it anymore.
And you have to continue to work and train.
Um, you know, and so, like I said, when you back up, you know, 20, 15, 20 years ago, um,
our fitness level started to take off.
Um, training became a lot more important because we couldn't rest on the laurels of, of the,
the people that came before us because we didn't have the skillsets that they had and
we had to rebuild those.
And so training became very important.
Um, our ladder trucks got a lot of focus.
Um, you know, we, we put four guys on our ladder and we try to get there and we're going
to search, right?
Like that's, that's part of the mission is that we need to get there and we need to search
if there's somebody in there, we're going to get them.
And that's kind of the way we view it.
And then, you know, the engine is driving the nozzle to the seat of the fire that, you
know, I tell, yeah, it's just like a ship, right?
You're trying to drive that ship right into the seat of the fire because if you don't
do that, the guys that are searching can't do anything.
Right.
So, so we really started to put a lot of emphasis on ladder trucks and search and enforceable
entry and you know, we have some guys now they're just phenomenal at, at, at building
our skill level, um, in a lot of those, those areas, but you can't just, you can't just
sit by and say, well, you know, 10 years ago we were, we were good at something.
You've got to continue to grow.
And I think that's one of the things that, that we're trying to look at now is, is redesigning
some of that or making sure that, that we stay at that level where we're performing
our skills at a level that will, that will allow us to be successful.
And you know, when you, a lot of people in today's society, we're very risk averse, right?
And we talk about safety a lot.
Um, and those things are very important, but to me, the way you stay safe is that when
you're, you're really well trained, you're in good shape and you're well motivated to
do your job and the fire goes out, man, everybody's safe.
You know, all of these safety measures, two in and two out and, um, street on your, your
feet on the street, vest on your chest and all these safety measures, those are cool.
But that at the end of the day, that's not really, really keeps you safe.
It's that, that everybody is working together and can do their job and do it really efficiently
to mitigate whatever problem we have.
And as soon as we mitigate whatever's going on, everybody becomes safe.
And so, you know, still driving towards trying to make sure that we're doing that, I think
is where that, that mission needs to go.
Um, and at the end of the day, it goes back to the people that we're supposed to serve.
Like they want us to be a professional fire department.
Then we owe it to them to be professionals when we show up and, and be really good.
Like professional means like a professional athlete, right?
Like you wouldn't want your professional football team to be terrible.
You want them to show up and be good.
And that's kind of the way people, I think view us as they want us to show up and be
really good and, and intercede for them when they can't.
And we owe them that.
When it comes to, like you said, putting the fire out, I think one of the biggest kind
of misnomers or myths that I witnessed.
So I started trained in Orlando, worked in Hialeah, then went over to California, Anaheim
for a few years.
And, you know, Florida state trained, you know, lay the ladder down, pick it up, walk
it to the wall, you know, and then you realize no.
Wall ever looks like that in the real world.
For sure.
And if I stand by the side of the ladder, it's going to fall over.
But, um, and then you go to a California department and you realize that you are so behind the
eight ball because all these guys were trained to spike ladders and, you know, roof ops and
all that stuff.
And I'm having to learn on the fly.
And then you see this vertical ventilation as an, as an engine, you know, engine guy
or as a roof guy and you're like, Oh my God, this actually works like really well.
If you put a hole in the ceiling, all the hot stuff comes out and then you can literally
walk up to the fire and put it out.
And then I come back to Florida because, uh, you know, I have a little boy and my ex wanted
to move back home.
And then you hear, Oh, we don't put anyone's, you know, California, you know, it's different
over here.
It's all lightweight construction.
I'm like, I've just been there.
The whole building is lightweight construction over there, you know, but well, they spend,
you know, years and years and years learning about building construction and different
types of cuts and when to vent and when not to vent.
So back to that principle.
So you're telling me that you won't put the fire out by taking all the superheated gases
out, but you'll put a bunch of people under that roof.
I don't understand what you're talking about.
So what has been Gainesville's kind of philosophy on vertical ventilation?
So I don't know.
I would say we're probably not that aggressive with it.
I think the way that we try to apply it is when we need it, we use it.
But it's not something that we say when we show up, we're going to do, you know, every
house is going to get a hole.
So it's more of if the lieutenant or the district chief and then try to rely mostly on the
lieutenants, if they feel like that's needed early, then we call for it and we do it.
And then it's no big deal.
Our guys do a really good job with it.
But with our staffing model, we don't necessarily say you're going to be assigned vertical vent
on every house.
We know who's going to do that when we call for it, but we call for it.
So and there are some departments in Florida that they'll vent the majority of roofs that
they go to.
And that's fine.
My personal philosophy on it is I'm in favor of it.
However, what I see a lot of times is people struggle to get the vent in the right spot
and that delays them.
And I don't want that to delay us being inside rescuing somebody or getting that nozzle to
the fire.
But as you said, if you can do it right, it makes things a lot easier for you.
A lot of times I think we and I say we, we as a fire service as a whole, not there are
individual places that do great with it.
We miss on where we're going to put it and get it in a timely manner.
And so then we're delaying other things.
And that does drive up the anxiety factor a little bit because like you said, being
under the roof is just as dangerous or more as being on it.
But when you're up there and you can't see really what's going on below you because you're
not, you're searching and you're not getting the job done.
You're looking, where am I going to put the vent?
I'm trying to coordinate with everybody.
And then you can't do it efficiently, then that does become a problem.
But I think our overall philosophy is when we need it, we call for it, then we just do
it and it works out well.
Yeah.
I mean, just the level of training that they had out west was the difference.
I mean, we never missed a hole.
Now bearing in mind, I had an extremely salty 30 year old captain telling me we made a cut.
It's not me.
I was just told the cut.
But you're constantly studying bowstrings and panelized and conventional and lightweight
and these different cuts and louvering and you're doing it at the fire academy all the
time.
You're up on all these props over and over and over again, tool time.
So it was an orchestrated thing.
But like you said, and so was the engine work.
Lay one, lay two, lay the bundles.
These were literal two words that meant an entire sequence of events that you just had
to shout over to the back and we made it happen.
But that takes a high level of training.
And like you said, the right staffing.
And I think that's what's missing is that we've just stripped the fire service to a
mere skeleton so that we are literally not able to do the things that actually make our
job safer because of staffing and training.
Absolutely.
So what about the senior man and or experienced engineer, lieutenant, et cetera?
You mentioned your dad's era.
You had people that stayed at that rank for a long time.
I, earlier in my career, I was going to do 10, 10, 10, the firefighter, you know, captain
in Anaheim and then BC and 14 years in, I was still a firefighter.
I didn't want to give up kicking indoors.
That's the most fun spot.
Yeah, exactly.
When you dream about, you don't dream about, you know, driving the rig or holding a radio.
So what have you seen as far as that shift?
Because through my perspective, I've seen a lot of very young people and it's like,
you know, you see those Asian competitions, but the firefighters are flying on the ladder.
That's, you know, career wise, that's what I feel people do.
And you've got a terrifying like three year on, you know, engineer riding up as an LT
with three years on, you know, commanding two rookies in the back and maybe a two year
guy next to them.
That just to me is terrifying.
So how do we temper that a bit and put pride back in staying in a position and getting
really good at that job?
Well, not to get into retention yet, because I know you're probably going to want to talk
about that.
But I think one of the big things is that we just, we're not keeping people the way
we were, you know, 25 years ago.
When I went to work in Gainesville, for me, there was really, there was no other option.
I wasn't, I wasn't going to leave and go anywhere else.
I didn't want to really move anywhere else in the state, you know, stay where my family
was.
But I think nowadays, what you see is you see a lot of portability from a lot of our
younger employees.
And so if you lose a lot of those, it's very difficult to find that senior firefighter
that wants to stay a firefighter or when they make driver, they want to, you know, want
to stay a driver for a long time.
And we have some of those, not, there's a few firefighters that have been firefighters
for a long time that do a really good job, but they're rare because they either get promoted
at a necessity or want to, or people leave.
And a lot of our good, we've lost a lot of the employees we've lost were good, high performing,
you know, employees, and they're obviously going to be sought after when they apply to
their places.
And so I think that's been the change is you just, you don't have as many people that are
going portal to portal in their career.
You know, we have a few drivers right now and some lieutenants that are, that are more
senior that are, that are outstanding.
You know, one of our, our ladder drivers, he's about to make lieutenant, but I mean,
he's as good as it gets, you know, being a driver and he helps, you know, so many people
learn a lot of things about, about going to fires, about the tools that we use.
He's a great teacher.
So you have a few of those, but at least in my experience in Gainesville, like you just,
you don't see as many of those anymore because of the portability of people and they're just
leaving.
You know, our turnover is, is more than it's ever been.
And so it's hard to nurture people in those positions so that they can, you know, train
the people that come in under them.
It's fall, a lot of it falls to the drivers as, as they move up and then to the, to the
officers to, to handle all of that, because you don't, you just don't have a lot of senior,
senior firefighters that, and which is probably one of the more important areas to have a
senior person because they, that's direct experience talking to the new person that's
coming in, right?
Like I can go teach somebody my experience, which, you know, if I have a little bit of
it, but coming from me not being a firefighter anymore, it's a little bit different.
Well back when I was a firefighter, you know, this versus you're in that position and you've
done it for 10, 15 years and you're teaching the new guy, that's a whole different ball
game of being able to relay information and just behaviors and an example of, you know,
how you're supposed to act.
And that's, you just don't see as much of it.
You made a really interesting comment before we hit record and I want to get it on tape.
We see a lot of people that there's a massive disconnect when they're in an administrative
position, when they're wearing the, you know, the gold badge and people say the same thing,
like they forgot where they came from.
Talk to me about the fact that some of these, you know, people that have been on a while
now that are in these leadership positions, you're talking about identifying as when they
first got hired.
I thought it was an interesting lens.
Yeah.
So it seems, you know, after I've been around a little bit now and you watch, and I don't
mean just senior people, but more of those who are fire chief level or deputy chief level,
and it's not all of them, but it is a large majority of them are stuck in whatever timeframe
that they were hired in, which is 25 to 30 years ago.
You know, how they view your uniform should look, you know, what, what they, how they
expect a behavior of a young person, what they think young people are looking for in
your department, right?
Or what they want to get out of the fire service.
So you know, if you were hired in 1990, right?
And you know, it's 2015, things have changed a lot.
And if your views are still what, well, when I got hired, this is what I wanted to get
out of the job.
You're probably out of tune with what today's young person wants to get out of the job or
what they view as important.
And so I think I'd mentioned to you, I might've mentioned on here already, but, but a young
person that came to me with pros and cons of my department versus another department.
And then when you try to relay that to your administration, like, no, they don't care
about any of that stuff.
And I'm like, no, I'm telling you like this, this kid just told me these things.
But then when I realized is that these people are stuck in 30 years ago.
And so sometimes their perspective is a little bit different than we get frustrated with,
you know, administrators when they're not seeing the things that that maybe we see.
And you see it with people who leave and go to fire chief somewhere else.
And so I'm always kind of in favor of, you know, fire chiefs coming from within is very
important because they understand the culture and your organization.
Now there are some, some negatives to that.
Like I said, you might be stuck in 25 or 30 years ago, but a lot of times you'll see those
some people as they move up, they'll move somewhere else to be the fire chief.
And instead of going into that new job and understanding the culture of that department,
getting buying from people by showing them, you know, that, that you care about them and
all these things, instead of just try to come in and change it to your way, they're going
to be resistant to that.
But as you build a relationship with them and identify issues, get them to give you
the solutions to those issues, right, so that they have buying and then you're not like
an outsider.
And you just can't get some of those fire chief type.
And I'm not saying that negatively against any fire chiefs, but it's hard to get them
to understand that.
And so I think it's important for us that have been around for a long time, that you've
got to make sure that you're trying to understand from the point of view of the younger people
or the people that are coming in, what they expect from your department or what they need.
And then also it's important to try to get them to understand what we need from them,
you know, that kind of goes both ways.
But definitely you can see that, you know, as, as you age, you kind of get stuck in how
things were a long time ago.
You know, in Gainesville for a long time, we were super strict on, on a certain uniform
types and what socks you could wear.
And those things just don't really matter.
Professionalism matters, right?
We want to look professional and present ourselves that way.
But I don't think my sock color matters, right?
But if I get on the, off the truck, I need to look like I can perform the job.
I don't need to be grotesquely overweight or not look like I can perform physically.
I need to look professional.
But again, sock color doesn't matter.
And we focused a lot more on that.
And then we did my ability to throw a ladder or stretch a line or force a door.
And those are the things that really matter.
Like if I go to someone's home, they don't care if I have white socks on, they want me
to be able to do my job really well for them.
So, but at certain times in history, those things were very important because.
Everything was a little more military, like a peacetime military, right?
Where it only matters what I look like.
Well, when you go to, those guys go to war and no one wants to go to war with America,
by the way, in case anybody wonders.
But when they go to war, like it doesn't matter.
It just matters that they can fight, right?
That's what, and so it says the same thing is yes, we want to look professional, but
are those things super important or our ability to do the job the most important?
And I made the mistake one time.
I don't know if this chief will hear this podcast or not, but they asked me one of the
things that if I could change what I would change.
And I was like the uniform policy, I think it's stupid.
We focus on, well, he was really into uniforms and kind of had wrote that policy.
So it was not a good way to answer that interview question that luckily it was the truth.
He didn't hold it against me too bad, but those are the things I think we get stuck
as we get older in the ways of when we came in and we have to be still be open to that.
There are other ways to do things.
Well, this is what I'm seeing.
So you tested against hundreds of people, you know, I tested against thousands of Anaheim
and then hundreds prior to that.
And it was funny, I was in Orlando going to Miami and I was told by many people in the
fire academy, you'll never get hired unless you're Hispanic or you speak Spanish, let
say, and you're a paramedic.
And I got hired in about four months at Hialeah because they were scooping up all the scraps
because no one wanted to work for them because they got paid like shit.
But amazing, amazing group of people though.
But then I look back now 20 years later and, you know, it couldn't be further from the
environment that we were in.
And, you know, so I'm analyzing like why?
Well, it's exactly what's so beautiful with that story with the guy with the list.
This illustrates perfectly what I'm talking about.
A young person now has access to everything because our generation began unpacking the
bad side as well.
We came in, you know, ladder 49 and backdraft, you know, rah rah rah, and rightly so because
I freaking love this job otherwise I wouldn't be advocating for it six years after taking
the uniform off.
But when you actually lay it out on the table and go, you have these calls, you have this
purpose, you have this tribe, you have firehouse jokes, you have all the things.
But then the other side, you have divorce, you have addiction, you have suicide, you
have cancer.
And then you look at, oh, and by the way, now, you know, at 7.30 you get a phone call
saying you can't go home for another 24 hours.
Not COVID like anytime, because that's how they're staffing it now.
This is why we have a recruitment crisis.
It's a recruitment crisis is simply because people don't want to do your job anymore.
And that's because they've learned about the good and the bad.
So talk to me about, you know, your, the journey to 2472 in your eyes, because to me, this
is the answer.
People say, oh, well, we can't even hire now.
Exactly.
You have to fix the things that are broken.
And it's like you said, growing pains, it's gonna, we're gonna be fumble fucking a little
bit because we're undoing decades of mistakes basically.
So what were you seeing through your perspective of, you know, what needed to change and then
walk me through, through your eyes, you know, the, the resistance and how you were able
to move the needle on getting that very progressive shift pattern to your department.
Well, I think we saw what you're talking about is, you know, we were having trouble retaining
people were, were smoking people on overtime.
And a 24 48 model, I think is, is outdated, you know, by probably a couple of decades,
just because of the call volume and with the amount of EMS that, that we run now just adds
to that, that volume and, and, and the specific calls will, you know, weigh on you over time.
And so this job is kind of like, you know, breathing concrete dust.
If you only breathe a little bit and then you don't breathe anymore, you're going to
be fine.
But if you keep breathing it for, you know, over time, it, it, it has an effect on you.
And, and this job is the same way.
And I don't think anybody that starts it ends the same way.
Like it affects everybody.
Hopefully we're, we're doing better or we're going to start doing better at how it affects
people we're being able to work on how it affects you.
Right.
Like I think before we just didn't.
So I think we started to see that and we saw the, all the strains of the overtime and,
and being really busy and COVID and you know, this idea of 24 72 because we couldn't, you
know, we weren't getting the raises maybe that we wanted our retirement, you know, we
wish could improve.
But so we started thinking about this 24 72 thing and there were a lot of, you know, like
anything new, like, oh, we'll never get that.
That's stupid.
We don't need to do that.
But you know, the more we talked about it and, you know, people inside our department
that had influenced that started to talk about it, it kind of gained some traction, you know,
and then it, you know, the union kind of caught onto it and, and our deputy chief.
And so he, he's a numbers guy.
And so they started looking at numbers and realize it's not that big of a stretch monetarily
for us because you know, we had a K-day.
So our staffing factor was at a 1.3, you know, per per position.
So when you eliminate the K-days, which is one of the things that, you know, that we
got rid of to get this, it gets you real close to having that other shift.
So I don't, I don't think there was a lot of resistance with, with how fire department
things go, because usually you get anything new gets a lot of resistance, right?
We don't like the way things are and we don't like change either.
And so I think you see that a lot, but there wasn't, I don't think there was a ton of resistance,
you know, even in our negotiations with the city, which, you know, the way that that worked
out is it ended up kind of like weaving itself into the district chief contract.
So like when the district chiefs were negotiating their next three year contract 2472 just kind
of had, you know, the safer staffing model, I think is what we're calling it, but it kind
of just exploded at the same time and they kind of got tied together.
And so, you know, our union is having to negotiate for our contract and the safer staffing at
the same time.
So we kind of all got on board with that.
And even with the city, which can give us, you know, a lot of resistance, I don't think
there was a huge amount of resistance because I think they saw the benefit of it, of to
try to solve some of the retention and the recruitment.
And I think I said off the air, I don't know that the recruitment has shown up the way
that we hoped it would by, you know, hundreds of people applying, but also think that it's
probably going to take a little bit of time for us to be able to get it instituted and
people to see the benefit of it.
And it will start, it'll start to work, but it isn't an end all be all.
It's a step, a really good step in the right direction.
There are other things that, you know, municipalities and departments are going to have to continue
to do and that's pay their people, you know, take care of them and, you know, one of the
things that separate from this that we do in Gainesville, I think that is, is probably
the best thing that we do is that we don't just have the employee assistance program
is that the department pays, has a counselor service on retainer.
And so you can access that counselor and the department doesn't know you go there.
All the department knows is how many people accessed that service during a quarter, the
quarter or then, or through the year, but they don't know individuals.
So you can go there individually to meet with them and, and nobody knows.
And they're, they're a fantastic company.
I don't know if we, we picked them because we knew they were good or that, you know,
it just worked out.
That was a little before, you know, I was involved with, with that piece of it, but
the service they picked is, is excellent.
They have excellent therapists that are trained military and first responders specifically.
So they kind of understand some of the stuff that we go through.
And when you start peeling back the onion of us, you know, there's a lot of stuff in
there that people don't even realize.
And that's where all of the things that you talked about with the addiction and suicide
and family problems can all manifest out of those.
And we don't even know it's like, you don't even know why these things are happening.
So and I say that to say that I hope what we get out of 24 72 is longevity of us, right?
Where you're going to get extra rest, you're going to get extra time with your family.
And with that rest and time away from work will hopefully allow your brain to process
some of the traumas that, that we see every day.
And when I say traumas, I don't mean some catastrophic event, but just repetitive call,
call, call.
And you are seeing things that, that the rest of the public is not interacting with and
it affects you no matter what you think.
Right.
But I hope the hope is, is that more than it will just retain people or get recruitment
is that the people that are here will make us healthier longterm.
And so that as you get to retirement, you retire healthier, happier, families intact,
the best we can not addicted, not, you know, committing suicide or even trying to go down
that road.
And you know, you don't, you don't need a lot of life to push you into a bad place.
And then when you put some of the stresses that we have at work on top of that, you know,
people can get, get downhill quick.
And so we've got to try to, to fix that problem.
And so, you know, what, what we've done with having that, that counseling service on retainer,
I think has paid dividends for us.
And I don't even want to mention why I think that I just, I think it does when you look
at the overall health of our department and I've had people reach out and be like, Hey
man, I need the number and you give it to them and then you just get a text back and
be like, that was a, that was great.
And so that, that lets you know that you're going in the right direction there.
And I think 24 72 is another step in that direction that we can't even make it tangible
yet.
Like, you know what I mean?
You can't say, Hey, we're going to get this result from going to the safer staffing model
with this extra day off.
But I think that's what we're going to end up seeing in the future.
And I, and I hope that's where other people will grab onto that too, not just for the,
the numbers, right?
But the human element element of it is let's take care of the people that are going out
there and doing this stuff and make them healthier in their mind and their body as, as they move
through their career.
Yeah.
And I couldn't agree more.
I'm talking before, you know, that is my motivator, you know, the, the, the suffering and the
deaths is the nucleus of this product, this podcast.
However, when you're trying to tell the story and, you know, almost like a legal case, like
put your, you know, uh, show the evidence as it were, then, you know, the financial
savings and all these other things, they come into it and their recruitment and retention,
but ultimately is about that.
If you're going to ask people and think about what they do with the military, it may not
be perfect, but you ask someone to serve, then there's a thing called the VA that will
take care of you the rest of your life.
You don't have to think about, you know, medical care and everything.
And the fire service, the door closes on your last day and it's like, all right, bye Cobra
for a year.
You know, so this is the thing is that if you, I think we've been so skewed and this
is what's beautiful about these dominoes that are starting to fall.
And I think when the word gets out, you guys are probably going to start to be inundated.
I might just posted Matt and Brian's episode today and that's, you're going to, there's
August 17th, 19th.
Yeah.
So, you know, I've got a funny feeling that it's going to be, you know, a cascade, but
this is, this is the solution.
And for the ones that don't have the Kelly, you know, I remember when I worked for orange
county, we accrued more vacation days than people that had Kelly's.
So the time is still there.
You're still kind of the Manning is there.
You're still paying.
So you would negotiate some of those away in lieu of the 24 72, you know what I mean?
But when you look downstream at all the money that's being wasted, that's your budget.
You just have to proactively put it at the front, you know, the overtime, the Matt, the
workman's comp claims and all the things that you're bleeding money.
And you probably be able to put that fourth person on an engine with the money that you
save.
So this is what excites me and I think when word gets out that you guys are doing it,
firstly, you're going to see I think a massive increase in in applicants.
But secondly, I hope it drives Ocala and Marion these other ones to pull their finger out
their rear end and follow because we've got a pipeline in this, the very Academy that
you teach at Florida fire college.
And these young men and women are coming out bright eyed and bushy tail going right now
would I want to work and then they pull out their little comparison sheet and they're
like, well, Gainesville, great training, Marion County, great training, Gainesville 2472 Marion
County 2448 with mandatories all the time.
All right, Gainesville it is, you know, it's just it's simple economics.
So what really excites me is your kind of, you know, like you said, you're pushing the
first domino in this area and people can either join or they can be the one responsible for
the collapse of their fire department.
And it's it's harsh, but it's the truth.
Yeah, I think one of the things I think you saw with us with the COVID mandate in with
with the safer staff in the 2472 is that the leadership in our department and I don't mean
necessarily from the top, although we did get a lot of support from from our administration.
So you got to give them their flowers when they're due is that but the leaders inside
the department really started to push for some of these things.
And you know, the local departments Marion County, OK, they have great leaders inside
their department.
So I think I think it'll just be a matter of time with some things before you see those
guys start to push for it.
And they'll figure out a way you know, everybody will figure out a way and maybe not that we
have everything figured out.
We just happen to be the first people to jump into the deep end.
But maybe us being able to figure it out will give people a way somewhere to look to say,
hey, look, you know, it was done over here.
So we definitely can do it and I've heard some people say that inside some departments
that the culture is where we would rather get better raises if they're you know, if
they're in a a temperature with their municipality where they're they're getting good raises.
And that is important.
You know, money is important.
But I think down the road, what you'll see is this is going to be equally as important
because you want to get to retire and be able to spend the money that you make.
Right.
And you want to be broken and sick and you know, all of us are going to have to face
some of that, you know, at some point life is tough enough, you know, just just normally.
So we want to make sure that we can capitalize on on what we're going to get when we retire.
And what I what I mean by that is what experience are we going to have when we retire, not just
we have a lot of money, but that we're we're healthy and we're happy and you know, we're
intact and we can go out and enjoy the retirement that you've earned after working a whole career.
So I hope to see that.
I think it's going to be a good thing.
And you know, not everybody may agree, but I hope that we will we will show that it can
be done and that it'll be it'll be a benefit and you know that we're going to increase
retention, we're going to increase recruitment, but also we're going to most importantly,
increase the health and the mental capacity of our of our people.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, it's something I've talked about a lot is, you know, we've always viewed currency
as money.
You know, you chase the 50 50 cent pay raise, but your currency is a time with your family.
That's why you did this initially is to be a part of the solution in your community.
And so if you think about what you guys are going to every shift cycle, your home another
24 hours, that's more softball games with your daughter.
That's more birthdays and Christmases and all those things.
And then again, when you have a destination department, you fill all the holes.
There's no mandatory overtime or hardly any.
And it comes when there's a hurricane.
It comes when there's something where we're supposed to be all hands and no one will complain
about that.
But I think the other side is because there's nothing worth it.
I hear this all the time with with some, you know, chiefs and it's so arrogant and they'll
say, well, if we give them more time off, they'll just work more overtime.
And it's like, well, firstly, who the hell made you king of their entire life?
And secondly, if there's no overtime in your department, they can't work more overtime.
See how that works.
It's basic economics.
So you fill those gaps and then that then encourages the men and women that want to
earn a little bit more money than their basic firefire salary to go do something else.
So now, you know, you're in construction or you're a landscaper or you're a singer or
whatever it is.
Now you create another entrepreneurial project of your own, which firstly gives you another
new tribe where you're not talking about beheaded babies and all the horrible things that you
saw with your crew.
And secondly, if you get hurt, if you get fired or if you simply retire, you've got
something to transition into now versus, as you said, you know, you're on the 24 48 with
mandatory now, you know, your marriage is falling apart.
You're in an apartment on your own.
You retire and now it's you in a bottle of Jack Daniels.
Instead, you build a business as a computer programmer on the side and now you transition
to that.
So if we need more money, it doesn't have to be from the fire service.
I would argue it's healthier to be not from the fire service.
And as long as you're in your bed every night, so don't go sign up for overnight ER shifts,
you know, but do something intelligent that solves the money issue.
And you know, newsflash, a lot of people earn a lot more money than us.
So it's it would be easy to actually make as much money doing something different on
the side if that's what you need to do.
Yeah.
And I think, you know, one of the things that I hope will come out of our new schedule is,
you know, if there's going to be overtime, at least for a little while for us until we
kind of get everything worked out.
But with that extra day off, if everyone kind of joins in and plans it, like maybe you could
never have to work two shifts in a row, right?
You don't have to work a double.
You could say, I'll pick up half a shift or whatever on my middle day off.
And then you may still work more, but you're still home more at the same time, right?
You're not gone for that 48 hours.
And you know, we see a lot of we have a lot of younger members that have younger children.
And that's the thing I hear the most is that that's rough for them.
Because again, as the generations have changed, all of their significant others have important
jobs to, you know, where maybe in another generation, your wife might have stayed home
with the kids for a certain amount of time or whatever.
And so that too has changed.
So that just is added pressure on them.
So I hope at least in lieu of, you know, it would be where you only have to work, you
know, every every fourth day, that we will at least plan a little bit better and take
care of each other better.
And not just say, well, I don't want to work, I'm going to make this younger person work
all of all of the overtime.
But we'll all kind of join in and then maybe we can make it where it's less impactful,
right?
And the other thing that I hope will come back is, you know, we're allowed to trade
times with people in our own rank.
And that has kind of gone away a little bit.
A lot of a lot of the reason is because we work so much overtime, like it's just another
day you have to work.
But if you think about you could you could trade with someone on the go shift, right?
Because with four shifts, there's going to be somebody that you don't see.
And so if you just do three trade times, if you and I do three trade times a year, and
we you pay me back, that's three weeks out of the year that I don't even show up to work.
But I never even worked 48 hours in a row.
So inside, you know, outside of being able to do, you know, go and start entrepreneurial
projects, or have different careers, we can even make it better inside of what we're doing,
where it impacts us less, even if we're still having to do some of those things.
So I think again, those are benefits of this this model that you can't make tangible until
we start to do it.
And then I think you'll see that that's going to pay dividends down the road.
Absolutely.
Well, I want to get to the kind of the fitness side.
Let's start with fitness standards in the fire service.
I mean, you're sitting across from me still in incredible shape.
You know, I know, you know, smoke diver and all the other things as well.
I talked to so many people, SAS, Navy SEALs, you know, and ocean lifeguards, and they're
all blown away that fire and police have no fitness standard EMS as well.
I mean, they do have to move very heavy things and sometimes, you know, running from gunfire.
What is your perspective?
I'll just leave it at that, at that concept of setting a standard of operational fitness
within our profession throughout our career, not just at the fire academy.
Yeah, I think it's it's 100 percent vital that that we have that.
I'm lucky in Gainesville, you know, before I even got hired.
So going back 30, 35 years, there's a mandatory fitness hour.
So you're required to exercise, you know, while you're on duty.
And I think that over time, and it wasn't always the way it is now, like you had people
that were just studs, but now I think our per capita of that is a lot more.
And our department is super fit.
But it isn't just coming.
It isn't just the new people like you have to stay fit through your whole career.
I just think it's no matter what your position is, it's unbelievably vital for you to do
that.
And even me, I don't put my bunker gear on on every call and go in.
But there are times like the way that we deploy our chiefs is one of the chiefs on a significant
fire has to put their gear on and go and do things.
So and it's not just about being able to perform a skill, but it's also how healthy you're
going to be after you have to do that and how healthy you're going to be at the end
of your career.
And so it it matters right now, but it also matters as you age.
And then when you retire out that you stay in that kind of shape.
My dad was in phenomenal shape even now for his age.
He's got some bad shoulders.
But when he left, like he was still more than capable of doing the job because he kept kept
himself so fit.
And so, you know, I wish that the standard was a little more.
I don't know what the word I want to use is, but I wish it was a little more rigid because
we don't have a like fit for duty and people freak out.
You know, whenever you say fit for duty, but at the end of the day, like that, that's what
it is.
And I think we're lucky in Gainesville, our culture kind of drives that.
So like we don't you don't see people get off our fire trucks.
They're like, who is that?
You know, they're they can't do that.
You just don't see that.
And even you know, we do life scan now every other year.
And we actually hired one of their techs.
He ended up applying with us because he's like, man, you guys are unbelievable.
And he's like, he's been around all over the state.
And he says, you know, a couple other departments that are are this in shape.
But overall, you guys are in very, very good shape.
And he wanted to be a part of that.
And he's doing really good.
A new guy is doing really well.
But I think that that that culture is super important.
You know, I think sometimes people want to lean against it because they they slack off
a little bit and then they don't want to be exposed and nobody wants to look back in front
of their peers.
But I think we have to look past that.
And you know, like if you fall off a little bit and your peers make you not look as good,
right, because because you haven't kept up, that's OK.
That's OK that you look bad.
You just have to be able to identify it and fix it.
You know, we're not always going to be you know, like when you go to a training evolution,
you're not always going to perform 100 percent, right?
You're going to make mistakes.
You're going to have a bad run.
You're not going to have performed this skill enough because you've been focused on something
else.
You've got the opportunity to say, OK, well, this didn't go that well.
I have to get that fixed.
And it's the same way with our fitness.
Like you're you're never going to stay peaked out, right?
But you want to stay where your lows aren't that low.
And then it's easier for you to get back to a peak.
I can tell you, though, like as we know, as you get older, that gets tougher.
I had my knee cleaned up in December.
And so trying to get back to where I felt I was before is exponentially harder than
it was, you know, 15 or 20 years ago.
And trying to compete or work out with our younger folks is a pipe dream.
Right.
But I still want I still feel like I should be able to do that.
And it becomes harder and harder and less and less of a competition for them.
Every year we get older.
But I think the strive to stay in that top tier fitness level is super important.
And it can't just be the new people.
It has to be all the way up.
That culture has to be there.
It's so weird.
I see talking to somebody, they had an allergy kind of popped in my head.
The way that we've viewed standards hiring and then fitness standards would be the same
as going to that ocean lifeguard and saying I want a job.
And they're like, you know, are you a really good swimmer?
No.
Well, can you doggy paddle?
Yeah.
OK, that'll do.
You know, like I did a fundraiser for a trucker, Jukes, a little boy, son of a Maui firefighter
and put together a little kind of evolution.
And it was next to the station at Reedy Creek I worked at, it was a 28 story tower.
So just put a high rise strip on.
So full gear and pack and then, you know, a section of hose, two air bottles slung on
the back because obviously you're climbing all that way and then working on a tool.
That was 100 pounds on my skinny ass.
And then you climb 28 stories and then you go to work.
And I created some evolutions and a search and a dummy drag and an intubate and all these
things.
So the point being, you can't say, well, you know, you don't need to be fit for this job
when you've got to put 100 pounds on your back and climb 28 stories and then go to work.
You know, and I actually was when I started this podcast and I transitioned out, there
was a point where I'm like, oh, shit, I might have to go to the fire service again because
I don't have any money.
Thank God, 511 stepped in as a sponsor right last minute.
But so I went and did the CPAT here.
I'm like, all right, well, let me get ready again.
You know, this will be number five.
And I forget what it was, but they told me it was like the record that I did seven something
seven low.
And it's not about wow, Jane, that's amazing.
It's about 40, whatever that was then 47 years old, 46 that I wasn't barely able to pass
CPAT, but I could still smash the CPAT, which I don't think is the best test in the world,
but it does mimic what we're supposed to do.
And that is the point I'm not going to be able to outlift the strong guy in the station,
not going to be able to outrun the triathlete.
You know, everyone's going to beat me in their area of way.
But when we're on a fire ground, I can still throw that 24 on my own.
I can still advance that line.
I can still drag the heaviest person in my department out with their gear on.
That's what it's about.
But as you said, that's a cultural thing.
You and I obviously are sitting across from each other, still healthy, still able to because
we understand that.
But when you create an environment that allows people to slip, and again, I'm always very
fair on here.
I do many, many episodes on why this environment causes us to gain weight, to have heart problems,
to get hurt, all the things.
But by having no fitness standards, we've done a massive disservice.
And I always tell people there's that phrase, you know, would you want you rescuing you?
I say, forget that because that's about you.
How would you feel if your family died because the firefighter hadn't trained?
Let that sink in.
Yeah, it's unfathomable.
Yeah, I don't know.
I think the majority of people that push back against fitness standard are people that have
let themselves slip.
And so they need to hang on to something because they don't want to be exposed for that.
But again, I say that's okay.
Like you let yourself slip, let's figure it out and let's get you fixed so you can get
back because at the end of the day, you still have to do the job.
Whether you're 25 or 55, if you're riding on a truck and you have to stretch a line
and throw a ladder, it still has to be done.
There's not a sliding scale when you go to a call.
And you're right, you're not going to keep up with a 25-year-old stud athlete.
I'm not going to be able to run as fast.
I can't lift as much.
But it's not about how fast I can do a workout.
Can I do my job?
And that fitness level is super important to keep you there.
And I think it's just something that we try to instill that in our candidates at the fire
college at MTC is we PT them not every day, but it's almost every day.
And one of the reasons is because we want to build that in them so that they take it
with them, that fitness is super important.
And whether you're in the fire service or not, fitness is important.
One of the things that you're supposed to be able to do is physically protect your family
if you're a man.
And you can't do that if you're physically incapable of ever doing anything.
And so just as a human, you need to maximize what you have.
God gave us all this body and what we have in it, and he wants us to maximize it to the
best use.
And for us that are in the fire service, that means we really have to try to maximize it
because when you put on all your gear and it's in Florida, it's 100 degrees, man, that's
a physically demanding activity.
And you're asking for something bad to happen to yourself if you haven't prepared.
And so keeping yourself in shape, it's almost a no brainer and a mandatory thing.
I don't know why we can't figure out what that standard needs to be and then apply it
to people.
But when we don't do a good job of officially doing it, I think it's more of an unofficial
culture in a lot of places.
What I've seen is some people will then take the bull by the horns and go, okay, we're
going to make a test.
And then they're doing vertical jumps and max deadlifts.
And this is when people go, oh, but it's not fair.
I agree.
That only fits a certain kind of person.
But the answer is the tools on the fire ground.
Move this ladder, pull this hoe, drag this dummy and make it a dummy.
It's actually a real American please, not a freaking 60 pounder.
And go through those sequence.
And it doesn't matter if you're male, female, black, white, gay, straight, whatever, you
either can or you can't.
And that is the bar.
And the SEALs don't have a master's version of their things.
You know what I mean?
It's like you can or you can't.
So this again, it serves you in so many ways.
Obviously, like you said, when you go home, you're a protector as well.
And I agree 100%.
Like I don't work for a fire department anymore.
But yesterday, someone tried to kick in my wife's door.
So there's still those real threats out there.
But then you have a longevity piece.
There's no downside to being healthy through your career.
And I think just to go back to the 2472, that's going to create an environment that's going
to absolutely pull more people into owning their weight.
They're not going to be as hormonally destroyed.
They are going to be more motivated.
They're going to be less sleep deprived.
And you're going to have a lot more people that are going to go, I actually feel like
working out now.
Let's have a healthy dinner today.
But you know, I understand like in Marion where they're doing 56 No Kelly and getting
mandatory eight-hour weeks, you're probably not feeling about having a salad and going
to CrossFit.
You know, so we have to change that environment too.
Yeah, it's tough.
And you're right.
And I think, you know, one of the things that is, you know, I think you talk about it a
lot, but it's not well known is how this sleep deprivation and the constant strain affects
your hormonal balance.
It affects your sleep cycle and how important sleep is to staying healthy and physically
fit and mentally fit.
And those are things that we as a service and maybe even as a society have just scratched
the surface of and don't fully understand that.
And actually, and I don't know if Brian and Matthew mentioned it, but we're doing a study
with Florida State University where they're going to, I don't know, 25 or so of our guys,
and they're going to give questionnaires and measure vital signs and try to do that through
this transition into the new schedule and then see what kind of difference there is.
And so hopefully as that starts to happen, there can become some real data on, hey, this
is why it's also a benefit because now we have tangible data.
Our sleep patterns are better.
More hormonally normal.
We're behaving better.
We're healthier.
And so hopefully we'll be able to gather some of that.
But I think we've just scratched the surface of what a lot of that stuff means.
What would be amazing, because you mentioned LifeScan.
I think they're a great organization.
I had them a few times and excellent in a medical.
If they could look at the blood work pre and post as well, if some of those 25 would say,
yeah, okay, here's my testosterone, here's my cortisol, here's my cholesterol and all
the things, because you are.
And this is the thing.
I had Sarah Jenke on the show and it was to talk about the research and lots of research
in some areas.
But when it came to sleep deprivation, there was basically nothing.
So it was a great episode because I could show everyone that said, oh, I need studies.
Like there are none.
And I always say, I've got a thousand of a tiny house with opening this door and closing
flow patterns and everything.
But the thing that's actually put in our firefighters and coffins, there's nothing.
So really we don't need to study to show that 42 hours a week is going to be healthier than
56.
However, what a beautiful opportunity now to follow that and actually see the things
that did change.
And then that, like you said, would be another layer in this case to finally make our environment
healthy again.
Yeah.
And sleep is important.
I was always somebody that was like, oh, I'll sleep when I'm dead or I'll sleep some other
time.
And I've kind of grown out of that.
And even more recently, I've really tried to, I still don't sleep great a lot of times,
but try to maximize the time that I do have to sleep.
And for years, my eyes would pop open, five, 36 o'clock in the morning, whether I was on
duty or not.
Boom, I got to be up.
I couldn't be still.
And so I've really worked on trying to get that extra time when it's available because
I think it's super important to just be able to process things in your brain.
And so I think as we get more information or if we can get any information about how
important that sleep is, that'll reinforce the schedule.
And then also giving people the tools they need to be able to maximize, to understand
why they need to sleep.
And then how do we get people to do it?
And you mentioned blood work and you see a lot of our guys that have low testosterone
or have had, including me, mine was pretty low.
Luckily, I was able to bring mine up naturally just through fasting and got it back going.
But a lot of people that you wouldn't think, that are the most fit humans that you could
think of and their testosterone is low.
And I think you see that a lot in some of the military, especially in some of the more
specialized units where these guys are like robots, but they suffer from low testosterone.
And I think a lot of that is coming out as because of how interrupted and how wrecked
our sleep patterns are and your body just can't recover.
Yeah.
I just had a good friend of mine come yesterday and he got into steroids in a previous department
and back then it was pro-science locker room steroids and it's ruined him.
He's on TRT now the rest of his life, hair loss, fertility issues, all kinds of things.
And so this is what scares me is you've got these firefighters that are totally disrupted
and they're young.
I know several people that are in their early 30s that are on TRT.
And there's one company that I absolutely adore called Transcend and they have peptides.
So there are things you can take to just boost your own testosterone a little bit.
The TRT, once you start, that's it.
You're on it forever.
That's absolute application for some people, especially TBIs and some other areas where
you're physically not able to make it anymore.
But what scares me is all these men's clinics are popping up everywhere.
A young firefighter goes in like, oh, your T is low.
We'll just give you this.
And they're not telling them about the fact that it's going to be expensive and it's going
to be forever.
And if you're planning on having kids or keeping your hair or whatever it is, there's a detriment
to that.
So there are other nuanced things, but like you said, the first step is sleep.
And so this again, the shift schedule is absolutely going to improve the hormonal side.
And then the less compounding of the overall stress is going to have another effect.
And then now you're more likely to exercise.
Now you're doing strength training and now you have testosterone is growing up more.
Now you're eating better and now you're loving better and all these things kind of come together
and you fixed your own hormones and it didn't cost you a penny.
But the opposite sadly is there are people preying on our, not even middle-aged young
people now getting them on this shit without with little or no testing and no coaching
and they're finding out when it's too late that they're stuck with that forever now.
Yeah.
And that's unfortunate.
I mean, I'm not a big medicine taker or don't like to take medicine as much as I don't have
to, but there's definitely got to be a better way than just having to get to TRT and other
stuff sooner.
At some point for some people, like you said, it's completely applicable, but we need to
make sure we get to that point not just because we can't sleep or our sleep is broken when
we've got to figure out a way to maximize that.
And so hopefully we're going to be moving in the right direction, being optimistic about
things that it's coming to light.
People are talking about it.
You're talking about it that it'll come out and we'll start to prioritize the sleep now
with more time off or make it where it is culturally acceptable to sleep.
Instead of that, we don't ever need to sleep and stuff like that.
So hopefully we'll be moving in the right direction.
If anyone heard a strange noise, that was my dog, by the way, not Don's bum.
So I want to hit two more things and then we'll wrap up.
Firstly, Smoke Diver.
I heard you again on the Can Man podcast.
You have a unique kind of perspective because you're kind of spearheading the second version
of it, but your dad was in the generation of the first one.
And obviously there was a tragic reason for that kind of hitting pause.
So talk to me about what you've heard as far as the beginning of it, what it was intended
to, what was the tragedy and then let's move back to reinventing it and where you are now.
So the reason it was invented was when Airpac started to become more popular or prevalent
and to teach people to be experts, if you will, with their Airpac.
And that's kind of how the program was born.
And that's really what it's surrounded by is becoming an expert with that piece of equipment
and being able to test its limits, maximize its capabilities.
And it kind of went from there.
And I wasn't around when there was a death in the program, but I know some of the instructors
that were.
And I think the program takes a big beating for that, but that person was excelling in
that program and possibly had some kind of a defect that they didn't know about.
But from what I heard, I don't want to put that on the program caused it because it wasn't
like that person was suffering and not doing good in the class.
They were one of the stronger people and were just wrecking it.
And so I think there was that and there was a lot of other reasons that the program kind
of slid to an end.
And then there was a large gap, just couldn't seem to get momentum back.
And probably around 2010 or so, I think some momentum came back and you've had Chad Belger
on your show and he probably deserves the majority of the credit for getting that back
going.
He put a lot of effort and resources into research and how the program was reborn and
what we needed to keep from the old program, what would work for today's time and put a
lot of effort into it and got a lot of support from Shane Alexander when he was doing my
job at the fire college and from everybody.
And he got the ball rolling and it's kind of taken off over the last 11 years.
And now you got Willisiz Mejia and George Vazulis who were kind of running with that
program and they're all doing a great job of trying to make it current for now.
I think what you get out of that is a lot of people like, well, why do you need to do
that?
Does it give you money or this or that?
And for at least at my department, it does not.
But for me, it was an internal thing.
I wanted to know where my limits were, what my capabilities were and Chad put together
a great program and it was again, where life will humble you a little bit.
I kind of thought I would walk in there and be like, well, I'm going to wreck everything
here and that wasn't really the way that it turned out.
But that's good.
It was good to be humbled in that way because it gave you some ideas of where you were strong
and where you were weak and what you need to work on.
But I think the thing that it does most is it shows you what you've got inside.
It isn't about the physical piece.
And I know a lot of people really focus on that and that's a big component of it, but
what's really important is what's in your mind and in your heart and it teaches you
what you can do when you're tired.
And so people are like, well, I don't understand why it's this hard.
And to me, it isn't this hard.
All of the evolutions we're doing, except for maybe a couple, are all standards level
evolutions.
We're just putting you in a situation where you have been physically and mentally depleted
and can you still perform at the same level mentally, make the same high level decisions
and be able to work through when your body is tired?
Because that is what can make you a force multiplier on a call and that's really kind
of what it's all about.
What I tell people is like, if you attempt it, even if you say, hey, I'm going to go
and you train for it and you for whatever reason you don't get to go, you're still
better than you were when you started.
And so it's not about that you run around with a patch or a helmet stick or whatever.
It's the journey that you go on to get you there because that's where you're finding
out a lot about yourself.
And so whether you're successful or not, to me, doesn't necessarily matter.
It'll matter to you because we all want to be successful at anything, but it doesn't
matter to me.
I see people take the journey to push themselves to see what they have and what they're capable
of and that's really is what it's all about.
And I think the guys do a great job.
I don't want to call it a gentleman's course, maybe in the military, but that's kind of
what it is, is that nobody's yelling and screaming at you.
Everybody that comes here is a high performer.
We just give you the program and it's for you, it's your program.
And then hopefully you learn to navigate through it.
And the people that have been successful, I think that's what they draw out of it is
some of the best firefighters I know in the whole world are not smoke divers.
It doesn't automatically give you this awesomeness now, but what it does give you is it gives
you that mental understanding of what your body and your mind can do when you get into
a depleted state.
If we brought anybody that shows up for that and says, hey, do this evolution fresh out
of the in the morning, you're going to crush it, right?
Because everybody's already a stud at their department, they're a very high performer.
But what this does is it breaks away some of those layers, peels away some of the layers
of the onion and gets down to what is underneath.
And then can you still perform at that level?
And so I think the guys have done a great job of holding on to the tradition of smoke
diver and the Florida Fire Service and then meshing it with what we need now, because
it's a different need than it was 40 or 50 years ago.
So I think they've done a great job of meshing that together.
And we have a ton of interest, so much so that the guys have had to start doing a selection
process in September for the class because there's so many people that want to attend.
And I think that's just awesome because there's that much interest.
Also not so awesome because I wish we could keep everybody that signs up for selection
because all of those people are really, really, really good.
They've made themselves better, they made their departments better even if they don't
get into the program or if they're not successful.
I think that's really the goal of it is I know that some people try to look at it from
different and it's a kick them and kill them thing and that's really not what it's all
about at all.
It's not a PT contest.
There is a lot of physical activity involved, but it's like some of the military units where
you can say, hey man, who's going to get through smoke diver?
You can't point to a person and say that guy will get through.
We've had bigger muscular guys, little tiny guys, skinny guys, older guys, younger guys,
people with a lot of experience, people with no experience.
And so I don't think you can point to somebody and say that is the person.
I think that's why you have to peel away that onion and find out what's underneath or they
need to peel it away and find out what's underneath for them.
So it's evolved from just being like an SCBA class and the limits of it to now where we're
trying to get people that are very disciplined and hold themselves to a standard that will
hopefully make them a force multiplier on a call.
That's kind of what we're looking for.
I had quite a few people on here that went through it.
Obviously Chad was on here, Basil, Julian Serrano, who I actually got to watch him.
I went and visited.
I was talking to, I was there to see now, but he happened to be one of the candidates
that was, and he was struggling at the time and he made it through.
Good for him.
But I think the most interesting one, I had Nicole Coppo and it was, I think just a few
weeks and Tony Ortiz was like, Hey James, just so you know, Nicole just passed smoke
drivers on my, and we'd already trained together for the hero challenge.
So she'd be my teammate.
So just sitting down with her.
But what are you seeing as far as how to successfully prepare for it?
In the big, I'll say this over and over again, my Achilles heel was the heat in the gear.
I never got tired.
I don't remember ever being too tired to work, but sometimes I feel like my frigging organs
were cooking when I was in there.
So what is the kind of common denominator is of some of the things that you're seeing
that makes people successful.
And then I know you spend a lot of time in gear.
How will people mitigate in that, in the heat?
Well, I think the first thing you have to do is you have to start off with a very good
base of fitness, right?
Like if you're not fit, like we talked about earlier, how important that is in the fire
service.
But if you don't have a high level of fitness already, it's going to be very difficult for
you to prepare your body for that week, right?
There's a lot of repetition during that week.
And then I think, I think what people tend to do is over train.
They go crazy a year ahead of time and they get hurt or burn themselves out.
And it's very easy to do that.
Like we probably all have been guilty of that at some point, especially if you're trying
to prepare for a class like that.
And so I think you have to try to mitigate your enthusiasm, right?
And build a plan and not just go crazy from the beginning, but build a plan similar to
the way someone would prepare for a marathon where you build into that.
And then you have to incorporate time in your gear.
You just can't simulate that just by exercising.
So one of the things that I did, and it was a little different because I went to the original
program so that the time compression was a little bit more.
We didn't have as much lead time.
Also, some of the evolutions have changed.
So we'll call it a wash, right?
A lot of the guys now, because it's six days, say, well, my class is way harder.
And that's fair.
They're way better than I am.
But I think you have to work into volume.
And I heard my brother say this when he trained.
And I never thought about it like that, but it makes a lot of sense is that a lot of people
will train really hard, but most people can't push themselves over the limit, right?
Or over the crest of the hill, if you will, is that they'll train pretty hard right up
till it gets really hard and they kind of drop down.
And you've got to learn to push yourself a little further than that, right?
And I don't mean like you go until you get into the hospital or you die or you pass out.
That's not what I'm talking about.
But say you've developed a 30 minute gear or circuit workout, just for an example, you've
got to be able to push yourself past that comfort zone of what you feel like you can,
wherever your fitness level is.
If you're really fit, you can operate at a high level and do a lot of stuff.
You've got to push yourself past that because that's where the class is going to end up
taking you.
And if you've never done that, your body and your mind are not going to respond to that.
One of the things that I did, because I went through with Willisie's Mejia, is that we
did a lot of two a day stuff where we would do just straight exercising maybe in the morning
and gear at night or vice versa.
And he would come up a lot when I was on shift and force me into doing things.
And so that's what we did.
But we did a lot of work in our gear and the guys now are really doing a lot.
I think that's one of those things you have to be careful with.
You can overdo it and you can cause your body some problems.
So you have to be very intelligent about how you're applying that, your hydration, your
food.
It's got to be like a full court press on yourself.
It can't just be, hey, follow this training regimen.
Personally, I used a sealfit.com.
Mark Devine runs that.
I used his-
I had him on years ago.
Yeah.
And a lot of guys did, used his operator program to try to build up that fitness and the way
that I figured, because the operator program is supposed to prepare people for one of the
special forces or special operations pipelines.
And so I was like, well, if he's preparing people for that level of conditioning, that'll
definitely work for what we're trying to do.
And so some of us use that and then our gear on top of that or alternate, not on top of
it, but alternate of those workouts.
And I think that that prepared people really well.
But again, it's hard, man.
Like I've seen people training.
I'm like, man, this person is a physical specimen.
And then they're unsuccessful for whatever reason and not a knock on them by any stretch.
And then you'll see a guy show up and you're like, this dude's not going to make it.
And then they do fine.
So it's very difficult to put your finger on that.
I know the Navy had a study done a bunch of years ago to try to increase the number of
guys that got through BUDs.
And so they had a former team guy who was a fitness guru try to figure out like, hey,
who can we recruit?
And after he did, he's like, you can't really figure it out.
Like there isn't.
He said there were two types of athletes that may have a little better possibility.
And those were wrestlers and soccer players just because of their level of cardio fitness.
But he's like, that doesn't mean that those people are going to get through, but that
level of physical training can help.
And it's the same way with just being fit in the fire service or smoke diver.
It's very difficult to draw down one training regiment or this person is going to make it.
Other than somebody like Basil or Chad, Matt McGee, those guys are on another level of
humanity.
They were obviously going to make it.
But for the rest of us mortals, I don't know that you can pick that out.
I think you have to find something that works for you, but it's an internal thing where
you really have to be able to push yourself past where you feel comfortable.
And that's what will get you there.
And the heat, man, I don't know.
It's hard.
But I think you have to spend time in your gear and you have to be out in the heat of
the day when you're doing it.
It's important to train, obviously, leading up during the summers because it's so hot.
And I think that is important just for the regular fire service.
When we train, do training evolutions in the summertime, you see people have a diminished
capacity to perform because they haven't spent a lot of time in their gear and it's hot.
It's hot as Hades out.
And so as soon as they start exerting themselves, their ability to perform goes way down from
what they would normally consider their capacity or what they're able to perform.
But we have fires in the summer.
We have real calls and you're still expected to perform at the same level.
So those things are super important.
I know some people nowadays with possible chemicals in our gear, they don't really want
us to even train in our gear, much less we're dirty gear.
And so we have to be sensitive to those things too.
But if you want to push yourself to that next level, you've got to put in the effort to
condition your body for that.
There's one guy that I know that he's in great shape now and he did really good in smoke
diver on his second try.
First try, he had not been very physically fit.
A capable guy, but not super physically fit, wanted to change his whole lifestyle.
Went paleo, lost 40 pounds over the course of a year, got in great shape, was doing really
well.
Shut up the smoke diver and body shut down on day two.
Came back the next year and he has really good firefighting skills.
Did really well.
And I'm not a scientist, but I've also seen scientists that aren't very good at science.
So I'm going to throw this out there.
Especially after 2020.
Yeah, absolutely.
But I think that his body after that first year of him transforming it into being very
physically fit, changing his diet, losing all that weight, his body needed to adjust
to that.
Right?
And so the second year, his body had adjusted to what he had done to it.
And so now his base level was way above where his top level was the year before and his
body was able to accept the challenge of smoke diver and being able to get through it and
the load that goes on your body.
And he did well.
Did real well.
So I think that's important for people to understand is that you got to take inventory
of where you are physically and what your fitness looks like.
And if you're not, don't feel like you're in a great place, it may take you a little
more time.
So don't let that set you back.
Just understand it may take you a while before your body to adjust to some of those things.
But you really have to be able to push yourself over the top of that hill if you want to get
conditioned enough to be successful.
I made the decision to try for smoke diver basically at the end of my career.
So again, I was mid forties by that point.
And I'd love what you said about even if you don't make it, it was still worth it because
what happened for me, I was out and I was at the creek, but I was out in the back middle
of the day, full gear doing sleds and sandbags and you know, so about, you know, either side
of an hour.
So not, you know, this is the beginning of the journey.
But then I ended up tearing my meniscus.
I then, you know, rehab it back to full duty, made the decision then to transition out to
do this full time.
And then my why was just not there anymore.
You know, just it wasn't, you've got to be 100% to go through that.
But when I look back, I love what you said, because it made me be in gear.
I mean, I always train, but it made me do a lot more, you know, in gear in the middle
of the day, you know, and it held the bar up high.
When you talk about fires in the summer, the same department, I forget what it was 100
degrees or something.
You couldn't train.
It's not safe.
And I just remember thinking, like you said, firstly, outside in the summer is 100 and
whatever.
Inside the fire is way hotter than that, you know, and you're telling us that we can't
train.
I know guys literally would be checking it.
Oh, we can't train.
It just, it just went up to 100.
I'm like, you just, what the fuck is this?
And you know, it's such a disservice because, you know, now you're creating this apathy
when it comes to training.
And you know, they say about, you know, bleed in the, in the, the drill grounds, you don't
fuck that up completely.
They say sweat on the drill grounds.
You don't bleed on the battleground.
It's the same kind of thing.
So that, oh, we can't train because it's raining.
We can't train because it's too hot.
I mean, yes, you have to rest and hydrate properly and get in the shade and use cooling
fans or whatever, but to tell firefighters that they can't train because it's a hundred
degrees outside, that's just stupid.
Now if you have some insane never happened before 140 degree heat wave, then okay, I
get that.
But if you're, you know, your, where you live in the summer is this or in the winter is
that and you're not training in those environments, then that just does a disservice to everything.
You have to learn how to train and get good at the recovery.
So between bottles, how do I cool my firefighters down?
You know, with, I mean, Hialeah did a great job of that.
Wet, you know, icy towels on the head and, you know, cooling chairs and fans.
So it's not don't train.
It's like, how do I train in an intelligent way, but still keep training in this environment
that I live in?
Yeah.
You know, one of the things for me, one of the motivating factors I've had is I've never
wanted to be the guy to fire that, you know, if it was a bigger one where we're having
to do multiple bottles or, you know, it's going to take a while to be like, Hey man,
I can't go right now.
I need more time.
I've never wanted to do that.
So that's always motivated me to try to, you know, stay away from too much complacency
and make sure that I'm capable.
You're right, like it's kind of confusing or hard to understand why we would say, Oh,
we can't train now.
Like, well, what do you mean?
We might train a little smarter.
We might do a little less or we maybe do some shorter work to rest cycles.
We may hydrate more.
We may do it in the morning where it's only 99 degrees and not 106, but we still have
to expose ourselves to that because when we go to, when you go to a real call, like you
have to perform until the job's done.
You can't be like, Oh, I'll do 20 minutes and then go sit down for a little while.
Like most of us don't have enough personnel.
Like we can do rehab, but at the end of the day we have to work, you know, and then you're
setting yourself up for failure if you're not prepared for that.
And that's how people get in, get into trouble, you know, with, with heat injuries and other
things.
And so you have to prepare yourself in that we can train smart when the weather's really
bad, but just saying we're not going to train just doesn't make a lot of sense.
I mean, I think we need to maximize the time to be able to do that because that's going
to, like you said, it's going to make us, it's going to make the job easier and us more
successful when we have to do it for real.
And if we're doing it for training, like that's way easier than when we do it for real.
So that's kind of a foreign thing.
And you know, luckily in Gainesville, like we have a, we have heat SOGs, but we also
train, we train smart where it doesn't just shut us down and just say, Hey, we just need
to do these other things and make sure that we hydrate.
And even this year, which I think is great for our orientation that just started this
week, you know, they've got the recovery chairs and they've got, you know, ice and water available
all the time so we can keep rehabbing people.
And then, I mean, cause humans are a consumable resource, right?
We are, but we want to keep you, so we keep filling them up and we keep rehabbing them
and we can continue to use them and, and they can operate more.
And you know, we're trying to do that at the fire college too, when we do burn days with
the rehab chairs and making sure that we're trying to cool, cool the students down so
that they can recover and go again.
And you know, so that they, one can be successful, but two, they learn how to care for themselves
in a hot environment because we can't just stop work because it's hot out in Florida.
We would never work like nine months out of the year.
We wouldn't be able to do anything.
So we've got to figure out, you know, smart ways to still be able to do those things and
not just say, Oh, we can't do things.
I think that's a cop out that, you know, an excuse make that we need to go away.
Absolutely.
There's one more area I just want to kind of pull a story from, and because I want to
be mindful of your time, we've been talking for two hours now.
You're also deeply involved now in the world of USAR.
So talk to me about, you know, any stories from any deployments that really, you know,
you do look back and think of as a career call.
Well, one, Gainesville is part of Florida Task Force 8, which I can't say enough about,
you know, Marion County is the lead agency for that.
So Rob Graff, you know, has managed that for a while and does a great job.
Chris Whitler is the task force leader currently, and they have done a fantastic job of managing
the program.
And then Ocala and Gainesville also are a part of it.
But you know, we've worked with a bunch of task force and there are some great, great
USAR guys in Florida, but man, I'll take Task Force 8 with anybody.
The guys do a do a fantastic job.
There's been a lot of deployments that Task Force 8 has been involved with.
I think that were that were really interesting.
For me, the most interesting one was during Hurricane Hermine.
They run together for me.
Maybe not her mean Irma Hurricane Irma, where it came up, you know, through the keys.
And some of the initial reports were that people weren't going to leave and they were
like, I mean, like, it's going to completely devastate the keys and there's, you know,
there could be a lot of deaths.
And so, you know, the governor and state leadership's like, hey, we want people down there now.
And so, you know, they called Task Force 8 and said, hey, we want to we want to fly you
guys into the keys.
You know, will you go and, you know, Task Force 8's answer is we'll always go.
So yes, we'll go.
And at the time, I think there were going to be two two task force that flew, flew down
to the keys and they were going to send us in Marine Corps Ospreys and fly us out either
to a ship or out around the storm and come in underneath it.
Unfortunately, the Ospreys never showed up due to some technical, you know, military
thing.
We we fight wars good, but you know, over here at peacetime, we couldn't even get a
couple of helicopters over to us.
So we ended up driving through some of the storm back to Orlando and and Scott Chappell,
who I don't know.
Do you know Scott?
Scott was on the water.
Okay, so Scott, Scott's awesome.
Well, Scott worked at the 49 desk in the OC in Tallahassee or he may have been in Orlando.
But anyway, they got us a ride on a Coast Guard C 130.
And so we flew into Key West.
And so the mission was is we want you get down there.
And basically, we don't know what else to tell you like we don't we don't know who really
you're going to link up with.
We don't know what happened down there.
But we want you guys to figure it out.
We don't know if we'll be able to talk to you on your sat phone.
And if you get hurt, we don't know if we can get you out.
And so we're like, cool, sounds like a great time.
And so that was super interesting.
It's way outside of the way that you know, you saw normally operates or the fire department's
operate but you know, something that we felt like, you know, we were equipped to do.
So we took a couple of side by sides and a trailer and the gear we could carry on our
back and we flew into Key West.
And you know, we we immediately linked up with a couple of DEA agents that were supposed
going to be down there for security.
We had lost our security detail through all of this.
So we took them with us.
And then right at the airport, we met up with a couple of sheriff's deputies from the keys
and told them what we were doing.
And like, yeah, man, we can take you to some places right now.
And so they knew the area took us to a bunch of places that had, you know, most of the
devastation.
Luckily, almost everybody had left the keys.
And so, you know, we there were a few people that stayed and we tried to get them hooked
up with with resources.
But we searched all the way up to Big Pine.
Over a couple of days, we linked up with Task Force Two, who are awesome, have great leadership
and they took us in treat us well, fed us, you know, in a couple of days later, we flew
out on Chinooks and flew back home.
And so nothing, nothing super spectacular that happened other than just that, you know,
experience where we took 10 guys and we flew down and we had done something that we hadn't
hadn't done before.
And, you know, the system, the system worked.
And since then, there have been a handful of air missions with the Florida National Guard,
you know, flying some of our USAR people on different deployments.
And so the the idea that Florida has and the way that the system works, you know, it is
awesome.
We're self sustained.
We don't depend on FEMA.
You know, there may come times where we have to use FEMA teams, but our teams are more
than capable.
You know, with the Guard, we can we can fly places if we need to.
And so that was kind of the, you know, proof of concept that that that would work.
And it worked great.
We did a lot of walking and it was super hot.
So another reason you got to be in super good shape because there was nowhere to fall out
down there.
You'd just been laying around with one of the iguanas or something.
But nobody was coming to get you.
And anyway, so it was it was a great experience to exercise that part of the USAR system that
was a little outside of what we would normally do and it being successful.
And we did a lot of search and search a lot of neighborhoods, gave a lot of data back
to the state.
So that was that was probably one of the cooler experiences that was a little outside the
norm of what we do.
I've heard so many incredible stories.
This is the problem.
Ian Hat came, for example, you know, the way it was sold on the TV seemed to be like, it
wasn't that bad.
And I've got, you know, one of the friends I was talking about, he's on that side of
the coast and where he worked was devastated.
But then you hear some of the USAR guys that have come on, you know, and, you know, the
ones that were there right after Ian hit and they were there for a day and a half on their
own just searching high rises.
You know, again, you talk about fitness, you know, stair chairing people down.
And then you hear about Surfside, you know, and that just I mean, so many different stories.
Like one of my friends was having to counsel the construction workers that were working
the diggers because they'd never seen anything like that.
You know, so the human stories that you hear from some of these, you know, Haiti and, you
know, all these other areas, it's incredible, you know, what you guys do when you're deployed.
It really is amazing.
Well, I think, you know, the takeaway from it is, and I know some of the guys that were
in Haiti and, you know, some of our guys were Task Force 8, not me, but Task Force 8 was
at Surfside is that the unbelievable humans that are willing to go out and do whatever
for people that they've never met, that's hard to quantify.
And I think a lot of society takes that for granted.
You know, who those people are, they're, none of us are anything special.
We're just normal people.
But those guys that go out and do that are just phenomenal.
And when you talk to the guys that went to Haiti, these are the most quality humans,
you know, that can be around and the things that they experienced are tough, right?
They still have to process through that.
But just great people, man, that would go down and do something for somebody, not even
in our country, that they've never met and just do whatever they could to try to assist
them.
And it's the same thing that was happening at Surfside.
I remember when I called to try to put that team together, everybody wanted to go.
Like, there was nobody that said, no, you know, I don't want to go do that.
You know, and even outside of USAR a few years ago when I don't even remember what hurricane
now was, it came through the Bahamas.
But Gainesville wanted to go down and help.
And so we put a team together and found a private plane to fly them over.
And they just showed up and started working and did a lot of work.
And, you know, there were people beating down the door that wanted to go on that mission.
And we couldn't send everybody, so we just sent a handful.
But like, who does that, right?
Like, just the quality of humans is outstanding.
And that gives you, you know, with all of the negative stuff that goes on in society,
that kind of gives you hope that, you know, there's good people everywhere and not everything
that you see.
You're inundated with negativity, but it doesn't mean that everything's negative.
There's a lot of positive that's going on all around us.
That just doesn't, it doesn't get a lot of press, right?
You know, the negative stuff gets more press.
But, you know, all the guys that you've spoke of and the people that go out and do this
are just unbelievably quality human beings.
Yeah.
And this underlines the whole point of this conversation again.
You know, this is my mission is I see the incredible humans.
And I always say, like, I'm not impressed by the fire service because I did it and I'm
nothing special.
You know, I did certain things, obviously, but I adore who they are and they do need
to be protected.
And so this is why it's so important.
And it was the one thing I've been talking recently is operationally, we're so courageous,
but there's a lot of cowardice in the application for the things that will actually help our
mental and physical health and solidify our families.
So that's where I feel this, you know, to look in the mirror and go, you're worth it
and then take that same courage that you have with a halogen in your hand and put it into
creating an environment that actually allows you to thrive.
It's that simple.
Yeah, it is.
And I think we're, you know, what you're doing and with the safer staffing model and the
counseling services and the mental health, more mental health awareness, it's allowing
people to get the resources they need to process through a lot of the things, you know, because
as good as people as they are, like you're still human and you're susceptible to all
of these traumas that are, you know, adding up in your brain and in your heart.
And you have to have some way to process those out.
You have to have some way to shed the stress.
And if you don't, then it consumes you and you can have bad results.
And so everybody's got to find, you know, what works for them, you know, whether it's
counseling, increased sleep, your faith, which is what works for me, or a combination of
those is what works for me.
Right.
And, you know, understand you were put here by a higher power for a higher purpose.
But that doesn't mean that you get off scot-free.
There are things that come with that and you have to learn how to manage through them.
We have to learn how to manage each other and encourage each other through that.
And then not always just have to be tough.
Right.
Like you have to be tough, but there's, there's times where you can be vulnerable to us, to
each other.
And we need to create more of an environment, you know, of that.
And that's, you know, for very years or for a lot of years was very foreign to me.
Like nobody's vulnerable.
We're not vulnerable around here.
Right.
We're just, we're just tough and we ram our head through doors.
But, you know, as you get older and you kind of learn more is that, you know, it's okay
to be vulnerable to each other because if someone knows they can be vulnerable to me
because they've seen me be vulnerable, maybe that's the phone call they make, you know,
to me or to somebody else that helps them get through a rough patch.
And we all have them, you know, like nobody is, is immune to that.
And so finding out, you know, what do you need to be able to get through that?
You know, and, you know, I've had guys call me and I, you know, I have talked to people
and, you know, just talk about a Bible verse I read or a song that I heard and he's like,
dude, I heard that song too.
And I'm like, you did?
And like, this guy's like the toughest guy that I know.
Right.
But, you know, we're talking about, you know, Bible verses and, and songs and what, you
know, he was upset about this or I was upset about that.
And more of a culture of that, I think bring, it peels back that, that onion, a different
onion, right.
Of what goes on with us, you know, inside the job and the things that are going to be
able to make our longevity better and make us healthier, you know, as we get older, instead
of getting unhealthier and all of these devastating things that, you know, have happened to, you
know, people that we know or people around us is that we can, we can try to avoid those
or stop them from happening.
I think what people understand is vulnerability is courage.
You know, that's what a, that's what a real man does.
They don't bottle it up.
You know, they, they, again, we're not, you know, weeping constantly and writing poetry
24 hours a day.
But, you know, I always say it's supposed to be a yin yang, you know, when you're on
scene and it's a horrible extrication, you've got your game face on.
It is what it is.
But you've also got to remember that it was kindness and compassion and empathy that sent
you into uniform.
But somehow we end up becoming a white circle like RoboCop and forgetting that we have to
show that, continue to show that to the people that we talked about earlier, but also show
it to ourselves.
And to me, you know, again, that vulnerability is, it's, it's a superpower.
If you, you know, physically, the person that you are, sit down at the kitchen table and
say, let me tell you about a time, you know, one of my lows, that opens the doors to everyone
else.
It was like, well, Don's never going to talk about it.
So I'm not going to talk about it.
And now all of a sudden you are, and it's the beautiful thing about the show, the SAS
guys, the Navy SEALs, the SWAT operators in tears or whatever it is at that moment, being
vulnerable.
You can't tell me that that's not a man.
It's one of the most dangerous human beings on the planet and they are being vulnerable.
So I think this is a, what's so great about this conversation now is reframing that to
strength.
Vulnerability is strength.
And even with the mental health conversation, addressing the things that are bothering you
makes you a better firefighter because it clears your mind.
You've got more chance of being in a pseudo flow state when your mind is not busy.
So by pushing it down and saying, I'm not going to talk about my feelings.
You're actually saying I'm choosing to be a worse firefighter as well.
So when you frame it that way, I think it helps some of the naysayers realize like,
oh, so for every reason there is, I'm going to be better off doing this.
Yeah.
And I think for me, I spent such a long time not wanting, you know, you can't show any
weakness because that's bad, right?
You need to just project strength.
And then as you become more experienced or you move up in a leadership position, then
you for sure have to be, you can't do that.
And you have to be perfect and you can never make mistakes and that nobody's perfect, right?
And everybody makes mistakes.
And so, you know, and I started going to our therapist, you know, several months ago.
And so I brought it up one day at work.
And so there was one of the guys there who's a super tough guy.
Hey man, I'm glad you said that.
Like, and I know he had been to therapy too.
And he's like, you know, people need to hear us say that because there are probably people
that say, man, I might need to go, you know, talk to somebody about something, but they
feel like it's like taboo to do that because other people don't.
And so, you know, being able to put that out there and saying, Hey, that's a good thing,
man.
It doesn't mean something's wrong with you.
That means that you're trying to keep things from being wrong with you.
And the perspective that that can provide is fantastic because there may be things going
on with you and you don't know what they are or why.
But when you start talking to somebody that understands that they can help you give you
perspective on some things, which can give you a little bit of peace.
And then you can start working on, all right, well, how do I, can I fix those things and
what can I do about them?
And you can't just do it on your own.
Like nobody has that capability, you know?
And you know, for me, it gave me a lot of perspective and it helped me or is helping
me understand some more things about myself, where you came from over here, how the job
is affected you, you know, why you do things.
And there aren't always like clear answers and be like, oh, okay, this equals this and
this is why this happened.
But it does start to give you some perspective.
And you know, so I think it's important that we talk about that.
I think because not everything, not every model works for everybody, right?
So if you go to therapy, we need to talk about that and counseling and why, how that can
help you, why it's important.
And if you use faith as your outlet, you need to talk about that.
Now, again, won't work for everybody and that's okay.
But when people hear people talk about it, like, okay, well, I kind of feel that same
way too.
It's okay for me to say that out loud and let that out and maybe I can go talk to that
guy about it and get some understanding.
And I think the more we do that, the better off we'll be long term about becoming healthier,
you know, as we age and get into retirement and we can live longer, right?
Like maybe some of our buddies who, if we had this before, would still be with us or
we'll keep people from, you know, going having that same path, you know, in the future.
I couldn't agree more.
All right, I'm going to throw some very quick closing questions at you and then we'll wrap
up.
You mentioned The Mission, The Man and Me.
Are there any other books that you love to recommend?
The Bible.
Yep.
And then another really good book is About Face by David Hackworth.
I don't know if you've heard of it.
So if you're a military historian like I am, like I like to read about history of,
you know, wars and conflict, that book is huge.
It's like four inches thick.
It's really big.
But his career spans some really important historical times and there are great leadership
points in there.
It's not a leadership book, but he was a fantastic leader and so there's a lot of takeaway out
of there that can be used.
If you are a leader, if you're an emerging leader, you know, if you're an experienced
leader, there are still a lot of things that you can take away out of the book and help
you.
So it's a fantastic book.
Beautiful.
What about films and documentaries?
Any of those you love?
Well, I mean, Backdraft is awesome, right?
Because those are all the one liners you have to use on the new guys.
I always ask you, did you ever see Backdraft 2?
I did not.
Oh my God.
No, I only saw the first one.
It is like I'm, my book now I'm writing.
I'm going to get made into a TV show because I want this message to be on the screen.
I want what we actually do to finally be told.
And then there's a multi-generational trauma element too.
However, you know, there's that whole thing.
Well, yeah, but I'm, I'll never do that.
I'm just a firefighter.
But then you watch Backdraft 2 that obviously had a budget of millions and you're like,
okay, anyone can make a film because that was absolute dog shit.
Yeah, that was terrible.
It was so bad.
I don't understand how, how it got made, but yeah, for it, if you haven't, it almost kind
of intriguing because now you want to watch it.
But then after you watched it, you would realize you lost 90 minutes.
No doubt.
Yeah.
I don't, I don't have a lot of films or documentaries.
Um, you know, mostly watch sports and you know, the news and a couple of shows, but,
um, or the books.
Brilliant.
All right.
Well then the next question, is there a person that you'd recommend to come on this podcast
as a guest to speak to the first responders, military and associated professions of the
world?
Um, yeah.
I knew you were going to ask me that and I had, I had some pretty good ideas.
Um, but you've already talked to some of the guys that, that I thought about.
Um, I'll tell you who would be a really good one.
When we start talking about like the history of smoke diver, I mean, leadership in the
fire services, retired chief Rick Talbert, um, who's a, a fantastic leader and as a mentor
to a lot of us, um, a huge help in the smoke diver program.
Um, he's well, well known in the state, very well respected.
Um, but he's also was a fire chief for a long time, but he's a fireman's fireman as well.
And so his words, um, they're heavy, um, because of who he is and the respect that people care
for him.
So I think he would be a great interview.
Brilliant.
Let's just try and make it happen.
Absolutely.
Thank you.
All right.
Well then the last question before we make sure everyone knows where to find you, what
you do to decompress?
Um, well, I've mentioned faith a few times, so, um, you know, I've, I've, I've, I've
I go to church, um, try to read the Bible, which I've really, um, started to try to do
more, um, daily, you know, a couple of times a day.
Um, and then, um, exercise, obviously, um, uh, we talked about fitness, but, um, exercise
is a huge way to decompress your stress, whether it's a long run, which I don't do as many
long runs as I used to, or you're lifting or just doing a workout, you know, whatever
it is that can help you decompress stress.
And then, you know, um, trying to, trying to detach from work, um, and spend time with
your family.
And I don't know if you've ever heard, um, the line like be where your feet are, um,
but just be present in the moment.
Um, which is always something that I've struggled with.
Like I would be having fun one second, but I'm always worried about, all right, well
in two days, I got to go back home and go back to work and no more fun.
Well, why are you worried about two days from now?
Like be present right the second and just enjoy that time because, you know, nothing
is guaranteed.
And your time here is not guaranteed.
Your people you're with, you know, are not guaranteed.
Um, so just really try to enjoy that time with your family or whoever it is that you
spend time with and just forget about all of the other stuff, you know, that goes on
around you.
And that can help you kind of, you know, decompress, you know, from work, because if not, like
you can just take it with you everywhere.
And sometimes you just got to turn that off.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
And this again, going back to 24 72, that's another day.
Absolutely.
All right.
Well, for people listening, if they wanted to learn more about you or reach out online,
where are the best places?
Um, well, um, most people that need to get in touch with me can you can, um, I guess
you could send me a Facebook message.
I don't really like to give out any other contact information, but, um, yeah, if you,
you messaged me on Facebook, if you look legitimate, I'll respond.
If you're like a bot or some kind of a Russian spy, then I probably won't.
Yeah, if you need something, um, you can hit me up there or, um, probably somebody, you
know, can, can get in touch with me.
So like my, my numbers out there, you know, just from the fire college and my emails of
being able to, you know, contact me that way.
But yeah, Facebook probably the easiest.
Okay.
So don't mention the originally from Moscow or anything.
No, no, no.
Don't send me any weird stuff or anything like that, or I won't respond to it.
Well, Don, I want to say thank you.
I mean, we've been all over the place in this conversation and really have, but again, some,
you know, when someone is known for certain positions and has a certain stature in the
community, their perspective on mental health and fitness and, you know, progression in
the fire service, I think is invaluable.
And you know, the things that we've covered, I think are hopefully really going to reframe
some things that people listening.
So I want to thank you so much for being so generous with your time and coming on behind
the shield podcast.
I appreciate it.
It's been my pleasure.
And I don't, I don't know if a lot of people will want to hear what we had to say, but
I hope that maybe somebody out there will hear something that, you know, will help them
or steer them in a good direction.