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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 back onto the show Fire Chief Otto Droest.
Now, I interviewed Otto in September 2019 on episode 236.
He was my chief in my very first department, Hialeah, and also when I worked for Orange County.
And I can say he was by far one of the best leaders I've ever known in the fire service.
So in this conversation, we discuss a host of topics from reflecting on the pandemic,
the national recruitment crisis, the 2472, cowardice in leadership,
wildland firefighting, cancer, lithium ion fires, and so much more.
Now, before we get to 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 1,000 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.
And just as a side note, my new book, Kinda, is now available on audiobook as well.
So you can find that on Amazon on the ebook and paper,
and then also now on Audible and iTunes for the audiobook.
So with that being said, I welcome back onto the show Otto Drost. Enjoy.
Well, also I want to say firstly, thank you so much for coming back onto the Behind the Shield podcast.
We sat down together in your home in September 2019, episode 236 last time.
So a lot has happened in the world since pre 2020.
So I want to firstly just welcome you back onto the show.
No, thank you. Yeah, I didn't realize it was 2019. You're absolutely right. So much has happened, it seems like, in such a compressed time period.
Absolutely. Well, I think as an icebreaker, I mean, you know, in this position that you have now,
we're obviously going to be talking about as you just kind of educate me prior to hit and record the global lens that you have on the fire service.
But with that kind of experience that you have in disaster management in general, talk to me about your experience through COVID.
Because where I think we've done a massive disservice, regardless of whatever was thinking at the time in that kind of panic state,
the real tragedy is if we don't look back and go, okay, what was done well, and what was done poorly, and how can we fix it for the next time?
So what was your perspective of that kind of year, year and a half?
Well, it's interesting, because that's during COVID is when I started with Seminole County.
So they couldn't even have interviews, I had to meet at a remote location, because it was at the time that everything was shutting down.
So there was no public spaces that were open and things like that. So it was a much different process than any you might imagine, right, for a fire chief's position.
But as we got into COVID, we did some very good things. You know, some of the dispatch protocols, asking people to come outside of their homes and, you know, got better.
And then, of course, you went through a litany of other transitions when it came to the masks, what type of masks, when to wear the masks, all those kind of things.
And of course, there was kind of a top down approach on some of it, because it came from the federal government in some cases, and were mandated by different levels of government.
So a lot of times as a leader, you're put in a position to do things that are mandated.
And to me, I just took the position as any other rule that is dictated to the fire department.
But this is the rule, it's, you know, for masks in particular. It's not going to kill you. It's like wearing any other piece of equipment.
They're asking us to do it, and that's the expectation. So, and as you can imagine, there was all kinds of views on that.
And certainly the vaccine was a huge kind of issue within the fire service with some organizations mandating it and the resistance to it.
And, you know, so I still think a lot of that is not resolved to this day, because there's still feelings on both sides of it.
So I think, you know, when they say the science, we could have done that a whole lot better, because, you know, they say follow the science, but the science was always changing, right?
In many ways. So, and now some of the things that they thought weren't relevant, they find, yeah, those could have been okay, you know?
And, you know, even to the point of things that we know to be true, right? Like herd immunity, right?
We know that in every other case, herd immunity is something that will happen at some point, right?
In this case, they were telling you that they were throwing it out the window.
You know, they were throwing a natural occurrence that has sustained the human population for thousands of years for a man-made option in some cases.
So it was just, you know, it was a very interesting time.
I think what was hard for especially the firefighters and EMT paramedics is firstly, for example, the mask.
I mean, I've said this when this has come up in conversation, we had our annual fit test.
You know, we put the mask on, we have the little hood spraying the better stuff, and we're talking about the rainbow, you know, and grimacing and moving our head back and forth.
And that's a, you know, a one-time mask. So I think, you know, for our population that literally wears masks for a living, it was really hard to tell a firefighter, just don't question it, you know, just do it.
And you've got these, you know, 3M masks or whatever, the kind of subpar ones.
And then trust the science, a lot of us, you know, studied medicine, whether it was purely just in the paramedic route or whether it was like myself, you know, university and other areas.
And you're saying trust the science, but we're all saying, but this is literally the opposite of the science that we all learned in school about diseases, about microorganisms, about immunity.
So I think that was where a lot of people push back as the ones that were already educated to a point.
It's like what you're telling us doesn't even compute to what we know is true in our profession.
Yeah. And I agree. It was a very polarizing time. And, you know, there was certainly what when you talk about science, there seemed to be influences on both sides of the issue.
Yeah, absolutely. And what about from the vaccine mandate standpoint, just before we progress through, there are still first responders now, especially in California that are to this date still being in the process of terminated for not taking the vaccine.
Now, a lot of people were screaming 100% efficacy at the beginning, 100% safety.
You know, I see how the pendulum swings and some of the, you know, the claims that, you know, I just saw one just came across my radar of someone saying if you even sleep.
I'm sorry.
No, it's fine. If you even sleep with someone that had the vaccine that you were going to drop dead and your head's going to fall off, you know, and so there's obviously the middle ground.
But as we progress through, the reality seems to be that it was kind of a 50-50, whether that vaccine was going to work for an individual or not.
So certainly not statistics to justify a termination of a first responder who was out there, unvaccinated with no PPE at the beginning of the pandemic.
So from an advocate for our people standpoint, what would you do differently if you were king for a day the second time, so we weren't demonizing the very men and women that put their lives on the line at the beginning of this crisis?
Yeah. And so that really, you know, if you look from organization to organization, it was sometimes vastly different.
You know, within the organization that I happen to be with, Seminole County, I thought that they took a pretty reasonable approach to it.
They encouraged the vaccine, but they didn't mandate the vaccine.
So I think that approach is really one to where the individual can make a choice based on their own understanding of their health risks.
Because for some, you know, we saw firefighters die of COVID as well, that in some cases, the vaccine may have been the saving grace for them.
But in other cases, people went through COVID and were able to overcome COVID without the vaccine.
So, you know, to me, that's where I thought the approach that we took in Seminole County was a fairly good approach to where it wasn't mandated, but it was encouraged.
You know, and it gave people a choice to either do it or not, depending on their own situation.
Well, the other thing that was held as heresy was to suggest that the health of the individual had an impact on the outcome if they were exposed to the virus.
And so if you talked about nutrition and exercise and sleep and time in nature and, you know, community, you were heralded as, you know, a witch during that time.
What worried me is knowing, you know, the background that I have in the kind of wellness space, that the men and women that were out there in uniform were overworked, were exhausted,
did have a broken down immune system because of the shifts.
So therefore they were more, you know, vulnerable.
And I think this is when we get to the recruitment crisis and the work week.
This is one thing we got to look at.
You want the people that are out there holding the line to be well rested and extremely healthy.
But that's not what we're doing with our first responders at the moment.
No, that's absolutely true.
I mean, and we'll get into some of the health implications of sleep and some of those, but which, you know, we're finding out are at the center of most of the things that are ailing our firefighters today.
But you're absolutely right.
You know, what we're putting firefighters in a position, although healthier in general than the general population, certainly exposed to a much higher level of risk.
And certainly we have a responsibility to provide for them.
And I think one of the things that COVID did do was kind of give us a different perspective on the service, the risks that are inherent in the service.
And that people have choices and we're starting to see people exercise those choices in the form of the recruitment crisis in some cases.
So I want to take you all the way back to the beginning of your career.
I know we kind of walk through in the first conversation, but you are my chief in Hialeah.
We joked I've left you twice now.
I left you when I was in Hialeah and I left you when I was in Orange County as well.
And it was a personal.
But, you know, when I joined Hialeah, obviously people were very excited about it.
But, you know, when I joined Hialeah, obviously by that point, which was 2004, you know, they were very underpaid.
They were running their rear end off.
But they they were an incredible department.
I was so well trained there.
They think they were the Klingon champions.
They were winning hazmat competitions.
So with that department specifically first, walk me through your journey in what were the leadership elements that forced, you know, this excellence within the department and what have been some of the challenges that you've seen that has actually been detrimental to the people there?
Because I adore the Hialeah firefighters because I think they do so much arguably for very, very little.
Yeah, so it's really interesting because, of course, when I came in in 1986 with Hialeah and at the time the department was the highest paid department in the state of Florida, they had become one of the first ISO class one departments in the nation.
In fact, they were number six in the nation at the time.
So we came into an organization that really focused on excellence in many ways.
In fact, when I came in, when we talk about firefighter health and wellness, they there was mandatory physical training time.
There was annually valuations.
They they did a lot of the things that are found in some of our physical assessments today were being done back when I got hired.
So it was every year it was a rite of passage, right?
You would go through the physical test and and they made it almost competitive.
So I think that kind of underpinning is what you found when you came to Hialeah and there was still a sense of, OK, while we may not be the highest paid in the state, we may have an inordinate workload.
There was pride that was instilled within the organization that exists to this day.
In fact, I speak to people that they do the right time in Hialeah and they remark that it's different there.
There's a certain level of camaraderie.
There's a family atmosphere that exists to this day that that's kind of inherent within that organization that sustains them through good times and bad.
Absolutely. So what as far as the support of the city, what was that decline?
Where did you start seeing the kind of framework that allowed excellence start to being picked apart?
Well, I think you can.
You know, there's there's many theories on what happened.
But one of the things that did happen there, as you know, we had a mayor there for twenty seven years.
Right. And he was a Democrat mayor within a Republican city because that's what Hialeah was and still is in many ways to this day.
So. But he always worked in his early years.
He worked really well with the department and they ascend it to to levels of excellence, you know, under under his time there.
And then there was, you know, he got there.
There was some legal issues that he went through and the union went away from him and supported his rival.
Well, he was out for a time dealing with his legal issues, but then came back.
And then that's when you saw kind of the picking away of a lot of the things because and I worked for him when when I was fire chief and he treated me well.
And we were able to start building again under my tenure there.
But for a long time, his position was, you know, I'm not going to I'm going to pay the firefighters three percent annually.
And if they want to negotiate for more, that's fine.
But I'm not paying retroactive pay so they can take as long as they want was his attitude.
And that's what he did.
And as a strong mayor within that city, that's what happened.
So by the time that you got to Hialeah, if you look at over the course of my career, there's contracts are generally three years each.
Right. If you look at three year contracts over a course of 15 or 20 years, if you lose a year each each time now, three percent times five contracts, that's 15 percent.
Now that takes you from a very high level to a very low level.
And that's some of the things that happen there.
And they've been playing catch up ever since.
I know when I was there, you lost so many of my classmates to Miami Dade because they literally were making double what we were making.
I remember one of them coming in and showing us his paycheck and we're like, oh dear.
So so yeah, but it's you know, it's a shame because we were all there to be firefighters.
And I would argue it was Lieutenant Mancinelli, Lieutenant Desbrow, Chief Godfrey.
I mean, they were all just instrumental in putting, I would argue, the most incredible Academy I've ever been through in my whole fire service career.
And it set the bar so, so high.
So you have these people that were driven to do this job.
But the other side of the coin is they still have families to feed, family mortgages to pay.
And so when you're working arguably harder, I would say in a lot of areas of Hialeah than most of the other areas, and you're seeing that, of course, it's going to affect retention as well.
Well, and so from a leadership perspective, you know, you still have to lead in good times and bad.
So one of the things that we really focused on is, okay, where is your sphere of influence?
What are those things that you control?
And what we tried to instill was, okay, we're going to control the things that we can control.
We're going to, you know, we're going to, for those things that we can't control, we're going to try and influence because of the way that we go about our business.
So we really looked at, okay, making the department as professional as we could, making sure that the training was top notch, that the equipment was always ready to go, and that we serve the community well.
With the understanding that, yes, there's going to be some deficits comparatively with some of the other departments, and we were going to suffer losses.
But if you look at what happened in that era, and then we started to kind of turn the corner probably around, I would say 2008, 2009, or maybe earlier than that, around 2007, we had a new mayor come in.
At the time, it was the best contract that they had had in quite some time.
So the losses actually spurred some of the gains in some cases.
And we lost a lot of good people along the way, and we had continued to lose those folks, but always keeping that core and that fundamental drive for excellence within the organization.
How do people create better relationships, especially if members of their government, and in this case, obviously, there was a less than ethical element to the mayor who then came back, backpaid himself, even get backpaid to the firefighters, but he backpaid himself and members served him correctly.
And now he's got a vendetta against the very department that he supported before. That's a tragic story, because that's an ego of one individual that affects an entire department and the civilians that they serve.
So how do we kind of improve the environment so that there is a better kind of person in that office in the first place, and we're able to forge better relationship with these city and county officials?
Well, it's interesting because Hylia is not different than a lot of organizations. What you find now within the fire service is where you have influence to change your elected officials is when you're active within the community.
And so the departments that are the most active within their communities are those departments where the firefighters live in that community.
And so what you see in many cases is people serve a community, but they don't spend any time there outside of work. They live in other places.
So they have very little influence on the elected officials, although they try not living there and not speaking to the neighbors, not having the neighbors understand the plight in some cases is detrimental.
And I'll give you the juxtaposition. When I was in El Paso, Texas, 90% of the firefighters lived within the city. So totally different dynamic to the point that they had a provision within the city charter or within their contract.
I don't remember exactly which that stated that for a contract dispute, the union could take it to the voters directly.
Right. And, you know, I had a very wise union president and he goes, he would always, you know, because they would always bring it up, you know, but that's not not one of those things that you want to use on a regular basis.
You only use it when it's really needed. So he always said, you know, we don't want to go out and lose because the police had gone out and lost. Right.
And if we're going to use this provision, then we need everybody to, you know, kind of make the effort to make the change within the community.
So after I left this a little while after I left, they actually went out for a community vote. But what happened?
They had the support of their neighbors. They would walk their neighborhoods with their kids that went to school with the kids of their neighbors. Right.
So it was a totally different dynamic that actually allowed them to win that public vote and make the change that they needed to be successful.
So I think that's where when we look at some of the dynamics within current organizations and they wonder why they're not as successful politically, it's because a lot of their members don't live within the communities that they serve.
There are a lot of departments, though, where the firefighters can't even afford to live in the cities that they serve. So how would they navigate that?
Oh, no doubt. And there's some that that are successful, even when that's not the case. So you can navigate it.
But it takes a lot of work and a lot of commitment, because even if they don't live in the city, a lot of them will take time to do things and provide services within the city in many cases, even on their off time through volunteer efforts and really being community advocates and working with many of the electeds within the city.
So there's ways to do it. And in fact, when when we went when I spoke about in Hialeah getting that that really good contract, it came on the back of several hurricanes that that we had had.
And it really showed the department coming forward and going the extra mile for the community and being there in their time of need. And I think that was recognized and appreciated through a contract that was much better than anything we had had previously.
When people ask me, how do we fix the things that are broken? Well, who do we blame? Really, is this the question I say everyone, like every single tier from the civilian through to the the administrators and everyone in between.
We've all either told a lie or never looked into it deeply enough to really learn about it. So from the the civilians point of view, even though technically this is this is us that's to blame the fire service, we've all told a lie.
We've all either told a lie or never looked into it deeply enough to really learn about it. So from the the civilians point of view, even though technically this is this is us that's to blame the fire service.
What have we done wrong that hasn't really told the story of what our first responders do the kind of branding element? Because if you listen to a lot of comments, why are there fire engines at my medical call?
What are we buying you for dinner today in the store? All these kind of ignorant questions. And I'm not trying to be judgmental.
It's just that clearly we haven't done a very good job of educating them what we do, the hours we actually work, you know, the right now, the mandatory overtime crisis.
So as you progress through the last few decades, what have we done wrong that hasn't brought the public view up to the level that it should be and understanding what we truly do for 24 hours?
You know, that's a that's a great question. And, you know, one of the things that I think we've done poorly within the fire service is marketing ourselves.
I don't think that the public has a great understanding of what the fire service is, the services it provides.
And really, that's a responsibility of the leadership within the fire service and everybody that serves. And I think in the most effective cases, it's where everybody comes together and says, no, we're going to educate the public, where we're going to be more proactive and really showing everybody what we're doing.
For instance, when when I got to Orange County, having a great public outreach was something that was not looked upon with favor by the organization.
So but but I really it really didn't deter me. We built a very comprehensive public information office. We started really having a really good social media presence and really kind of highlighting all the goodness that the fire service brings to the community.
Because I believe each and every day, firefighters are doing way more good than any of the negative stuff that comes out.
We do. They just don't see it. So I'll give you a good example. When I got there, there was a news station within the Orlando area that was always the negative news station, right?
Always doing the investigative reports and and all these things, right? And they had a pretty good social media following. So what we did is we opened up social media so that our firefighters could participate.
We kind of consolidated all of the social media platforms into official platforms and we gave them a voice within those platforms. And we got a really big following. So, you know, we had when those we had really a stream of great news stories.
Firefighters were sending us in things of, OK, you know, we took a lady to the hospital, her husband or her husband had fallen outside while cutting the grass. We finished mowing the lawn.
We took pictures, posted it on social media, saving the ducks from the drain. Social media going, going to a fire, you know, all these things. Well, the bad stories are going to happen.
No doubt within every organization they're going to happen. But an interesting thing happened when that news station came on and they started bashing the department on social media.
We had such a positive following that they drowned them out very quickly and they never posted on social media against the department again. They continued to do their investigative reports.
But again, that's another that's another case to where it takes, you know, somewhere with all to really explain what's happening. For instance, overtime.
I remember them coming to me one time and they go, oh, it's that time of year. They're looking at the highest paid firefighters in the county. And, you know, some are making more than you, chief.
And I'm like, OK, that's, you know, that's OK. And they go and the news wants to speak to you and they go, we advise against doing the news story. And I go, no, I want them to come in.
And really, that's an opportunity to educate. Right. And when we say when we talk about our recruitment crisis, we talk about we had an opportunity to talk about mandatory overtime and people being in the news.
And people being away from their families for inordinate amount of time, working on weekends, on holidays.
And, you know, so when they asked me, well, is it right that somebody is making this amount of money?
I go, it's absolutely right. If they're working the hours they're putting in the sacrifice, I don't begrudge them any amount of money that they're making within the system.
Absolutely. I mean, that's one thing that used to anger me. They would show this is the this is what this person made today. Well, this year, excuse me.
But they're not saying how many hours that was. And we'll get into it, obviously. But just look at the, you know, the Orange counties of the country, 56, No Kelly, your average person, even the cops are comparing it to, you know, we got similar as a cop.
Yeah, but the cops work 16 hours less than you and you got the same. So this is what's so maddening is then these poor men and women that are being told and this happened all the time in Orange County is how I ended up going to read a Greek because I was a single dad and I just kept getting mandatory.
You know, they're not telling the story of like, oh, they didn't have a choice. Did we tell you that? Like they did not have a choice to be forced to work this many hours. How many hours do you work for?
Well, this is basically almost double what you're doing holding a microphone. So I think that's that's such great advice is like, all right, come on in. You really want to know? Then let's talk about it because people need to understand it's not just a number.
That's right. Yeah. And we're starting to see, you know, kind of the shift and a greater understanding of the number of hours.
And, you know, there's efforts on the 24 72 that are really going around not only Florida, but the country as well and alternating work schedules that, you know, when you look at.
Comparing the firefighters schedule and the work and rest patterns compared to a normal 40 hour work week. Yeah, we work an inordinate amount of hours.
It's interesting because with some of the people that I interact with globally in the European Union, they have a mandatory kind of maximum schedule of 42 hours.
So they're actually a lot of the departments in Europe are on the 24 72, which you're seeing in the States migrate. And, you know, I speak to some some fire chiefs and they go, well, that's going to 24 72.
Well, you know, it'll be bad for us because we don't, you know, we're going to need to hire so many more people. And yes, you'll you'll need to hire some more people.
But the benefit to the workforce and, you know, there's there's offsets to having a 56 hour employee versus a 42 or 40 hour employee.
And I think a lot of organizations are starting to see the benefit of it. And that's why you're starting to see the shift.
I think we talked about it even in our first conversation. I think we, you know, I put it on the table because I've been talking about this for eight years now and it's amazing to see the domino start in the fall.
I think why it's getting traction is we truly are in a crisis now as a profession. There's no no question. So, again, with this multi decade lens that you have before we dive into it and before I put my two cents in what are the contributing factors from a profession that was so, so sore after where thousands of us would line up for the hope of a handful of spots to where we are today in 2024.
Well, that's interesting, right? Because there's a lot of things that that I believe play into it.
When when when you look at what has happened within our industry, we've gotten very good at identifying some of the ills of our industry.
When we talk about mental health, when we talk about cancer within the fire service, those types of things. So we've gotten very good at looking at the negatives, right? Or identifying those challenges within the service, right?
And then I think another precipitating factor was COVID itself, right? When when COVID hit, what you saw was a lot of corporations going to remote workforces, right?
And so and this is a true story. I had a firefighter who their son was offered a job within the fire service and turned it down. And that never used to happen, right?
You have your your premier departments and they don't get turned down. In fact, there's 20 people waiting to take their place, as you said.
But what happened was now it's really a work life balance choice. And they saw the remote work opportunities.
And so now on the one side of the ledger, they were looking at OK, cancer in the fire service, mental health impacts, high rates of divorce, high rates of alcoholism, drug abuse, all these things, right?
Longer work weeks. And on the other side of the ledger, they were saying, well, I can be paid just about the same and I can work remotely.
And they were choosing to work remotely. In this one case, the firefighter's son chose to work remotely and was going to live three months with his girlfriend in an Airbnb in in different cities over the course of the next year.
Three months in one city, three months in another. And and so now when you're really balancing that, it makes it you know, so it makes us have to be a little bit more introspective as a fire service in seeing, OK, what are the true benefits of the job?
And are they outweighed by some of the challenges that we face within the fire service?
Well, this is what's interesting is people will say, oh, it's what you signed up for. And I always say, well, I disagree.
Like when I was in the tower at Station 7, you know, getting getting my ass handed to me and day in, day out, you know, we were we were training for the job.
That was the fire. That was extrications. That was the medical. And Hialeah was so far ahead, even on the medical side.
I remember using the MAD device in 2004 way, way before they used it in Orange County. But that's not the job.
I'm sorry. That's the job itself. The working environment is separate from the job. It's a part of it.
But you can do the same exact job for 42 hours a week and arguably have a pretty healthy environment around you.
Or you can say do the same job for 80 hours a week, 56 plus a mandatory and be the complete opposite.
And what I'm seeing, I'd be interested to get your point. A lot of people, you know, I would say the ignorant ones are talking about Gen Z as well.
They just don't want to work. That's why we have a crisis. And I disagree wholeheartedly. A lot of, you know, people that I respect immensely have said the same thing.
What's actually happening is these young people value their mental health. They value their physical health. They value their relationships and their time at home.
And so therefore, as you said, when you put it on paper now, when I tested for Hialeah, it was all backdraft and saving babies.
I wasn't thinking about seed deprivation and suicide and divorce. Now when they're Googling it, you see all the good stuff and you see all the bad stuff.
And so they're making this balanced decision and go my family time is more important to me than, you know, this kind of hero element that I want to go in and serve.
Maybe I'll find a different way to serve. So the beautiful thing is that we're at a place now where we can use that to turn the corner.
Because all we've got to do is make a progressive work week that arguably is the same as the cops, as the civilians, as everyone else, 42 hours a week.
And now we'll attract these young people because we'll be showing them we actually care about you.
We want to make sure that you do go home after every single shift and you spend time with your wife or your husband and your kids.
And therefore, when you come back, you're a happier, healthier, better firefighter, EMT or paramedic.
Yeah. And so, you know, I believe in, you know, really looking at the work schedule and adapting it right to to be more reasonable.
However, I don't think that's a silver bullet, right?
Because if you if you said right now, every fire service organization within the United States is going to go to 24 72.
Some are still going to have recruitment and retention issues and some are still going to be the winners and some will still be the losers.
Right. In that battle. So I think that's one element.
And I think it's an important element, especially when we look at what are some of the root causes of a lot of the behavioral health and mental health issues.
I think that that's an important subject. But also, I don't think and it goes back to the marketing.
I don't think that we actually focus on the goodness of the fire department as much as we should.
You know, we've had people come into recruit recruit class in the first two weeks.
The first week is on cancer in the fire service. The second week is on mental health. They leave.
Right. So, yes, that that needs to be done.
But also for some of them, you talked about the generations.
We need to really show them some of the goodness, some of the.
The team atmosphere and how they're going to be contributing to the greater good, much more so than they could in any other profession.
So I think when we look at it holistically from work schedule to work life balance to the atmosphere within our organizations and making our organizations more welcoming.
To the diverse workforce that we have. And when I speak about diverse workforce, I really mean we have different generations that are coming in.
Not to talk about. We'll get to, you know, the the diversity of ethnicity and race and things.
But just in the workforce, we have maybe four or five different generations.
And, you know, it makes me smile when people say, well, this generation.
Well, when I got on, that's what they were saying about us.
So I think, you know, every generation brings some some good, some bad.
It's just as leaders within the fire service.
How do we understand the new generations that are coming in and capitalize on those attributes that we have?
And then on those areas of deficit, that's where we train them.
And it may be a different training than you and I had because we may have to train them in a different way to really use their good attributes and or their highly developed attributes and, you know, minimize the deficits that they come in with just because of society.
But I think, you know, the fire service has lasted for a long time and it's had many generations come through and each one of the generations that are in the leadership roles.
A lot of times we'll say these new generations are just not the same.
Yeah, they're not the same. But it's our responsibility to find out what those differences are and really reshape the fire service.
And I'm not saying a total, you know, change to the fire service, but incorporating them in a way that's going to capitalize on their their their best attributes.
I think what's interesting about, you know, if everyone went to 24 72 immediately, yes, we would still be kind of where we are now.
But obviously, it's going to be I mean, I would pull punches, not to pull punches. I mean, it's an act of courage.
Like the most courageous are going to go first and they're going to be the ones that get the absolute cream of the crop of the recruits.
And then the slower an adapter you are, the further behind the curve you're going to be.
But it was a very short time ago. I mean, a lot of people had on here 10 years ago.
Still extremely competitive because we were coming out of a of the crash.
So it wasn't that long ago that you had firefighters waiting years to get a job.
So we were there for most of our history. It's only recently that we've gone down this way.
So, like I said, the early adopters are going to get the cream of the crop.
But once people start seeing that this is a profession shift, especially if it becomes a national shift, now these young people are going to start flooding the fire academies again.
And what I love, I think that's something that we can do as a profession to really push the needle back, which I would argue addresses a diversity issue, too, is we have an amazing mentorship program in Ocala that my friend Chris Hickman started.
And they do, I think it's three times a week, they do training at kind of like the centrally located fire station.
So all these young people have to do is physically get there. That's it. They get free training. They get the gear.
There are scholarships for the fire academy, which is in our county here.
And then obviously there are numerous departments waiting to scoop them up on the other end.
So now you're going into underserved populations, whether it's gender, race, whatever it is, challenging them to reach that bar, giving them the tools to be successful in an academy and beyond.
And then also allowing young people that realize they don't want to be a firefighter through this process. Beautiful.
Take it off your list and then move on as well.
So I think that we if we want to affect this recruitment crisis, we fix the things that are broken, but also then we proactively go into our communities and start lighting the fire again under these young people.
So they want to come back into this profession.
Yeah. And to me, you know, we bring them in, we show them the profession and certainly the 24 72 or modified work schedules, because we could talk about, you know, some of the movements on making the fire service more friendly to our female firefighters as well.
And 24 72 may not be the answer there. It may be something different again in some cases.
But, you know, to me, it's really you're going to I truly believe if we look at a lot of the studies that are out there and a lot of the ills that are within the fire service, like cancer, cardiovascular disease, depression, anxiety, PTSD, repeated exposures,
it all surrounds our sleep and how we sleep.
And with our current shift schedules, it's just exacerbating our, you know, our sleep deprivation and it's manifesting itself in all of these ways.
So it will be very interesting to see the effect. And once we start getting a hold of, you know, the benefits of the 24 72 on the behavioral and mental health issues, because now they're able to get into normal sleep patterns because they have the appropriate amount of rest.
I think we're going to see a sea change within the fire service or a potential sea change.
No, I think we are completely and if you look at, you know, the the elephant in the room in the cancer conversation, it's sleep deprivation. It's a known carcinogen. If you look at the elephant in the room in the mental health conversation, it's sleep deprivation.
It's directly related to all things mental ill health. So you have, you know, you're going to make a huge dent. And like you said, it's not a magic bullet. There are other areas, other things that we've got to address as well.
But I think, you know, what we're seeing now with Boynton Beach and Gainesville and some of these departments that are that are starting to do it, just they're reporting that they feel better. They're reporting that they love this, you know, this extra time with their family.
And again, you know, there's there's a lag. You know, if you're going to go from 24 48 to 24 72, there has to be a few years where you're hiring. And then the bigger challenge actually seems to be the promotions within the department.
And because we're in this crisis, a lot of these departments are extremely young, I think, but not mistaken, Orange Marion, some of those of 50% under five years. So now you're having to figure out, OK, how do I get these people to engineer to Lieutenant to BC, whatever the rank is.
But, you know, the what I'm seeing observationally is exactly that. And I think that one of the one of the things that kind of parallels, like you said, you walk through the front door and it's mental health and it's cancer and you know, you doom and glooming the fire service.
Well, the other side of that coin is also how many of us walk in and go, yeah, you know, you wait 10 years, you'll have your third divorce and an alcohol problem. That shouldn't be normal. That shouldn't be funny. Like I pointed out, if you went to Publix and that's the speech they gave you, then you're probably not going to work for Publix. You're going to go somewhere else, you know, so by affecting, you know, this element, I think it's going to positively affect all the things that we've normalized and therefore maybe even the
10 years from now it won't have to be the first conversation you get in a new department is cancer and suicide.
Right. And I think what you're starting to see is a more holistic approach to health and wellness, where we're really focusing on, you know, the the mind, you know, the, you know, the body and the soul, right.
The mind, body and soul of the individual through a lot of these programs. And you're absolutely right. When you look at the divorce rates, sleep has much to do with that as well because alcoholism, you know, they take alcohol in order to go to sleep and it actually detracts from the type of sleep that you need to have or the best type of sleep. Right. In order to to to get the best sleep.
Right. In order to to to rid your body of those those those toxic elements, right, that that really don't allow you to to operate at peak performance. And we're starting to see that. In fact, there's a good book that was recommended by Dr. Sarah Jenke, which is, gosh, what's it called?
It's Why We Sleep by, yeah, Matthew Walker. And that goes through a lot of the recuperative elements of sleep. And I think that 24 72 really has the opportunity to do that. Of course, we need to balance that against, you know, the diversity within the workforce.
When we talk about women, one of the things that they're looking at in Europe and and I was at a women and fire conference recently last year and I met some some of the lieutenants and some of the firefighters from Orange County there.
And I sat with them and we were talking about the schedule and they love the 24 the 24 and 48 off, of course. And when I was talking to them, I was explaining that, well, in Europe, you know, they're looking at it from the perspective of women are about 50 percent of the population.
And within the U.S. Fire Service and across the world, it's a very small percentage in the U.S., maybe 10 percent or 15 percent. Well, whatever the case is of women within the fire service nationally, we've gotten a little bit better.
But why is it so low when 50 percent of the workforce is, you know, or 50 percent of the available workforce are female. Right. And so one of the things that they're looking at is, you know, you can divide a 24 hour shift.
But you can have eight hour shifts, 12 hour shifts, 24 hour shifts. Right. And so to me, what a lot of departments are looking for, and I think it's a good idea, is really flexibility and how you fulfill that shift.
Right. So at different times within, you know, our lives, we're raising kids. Right. And the kids need their moms. Right. So maybe at a certain point, a 12 hour shift would be beneficial or an eight hour shift would be beneficial with the option of going back to 24 when they're ready.
Right. And, you know, when I explained it that way, a lot of them were like, I could remember a time when I could have used a different shift schedule for, you know, maybe six, eight months of my life or when I was trying to have kids and nurture kids and things like that.
So I think what we're talking about when we look at shift schedules, when we look at really providing for how we mitigate cancer within the fire service, how we mitigate mental and behavioral health issues, it's really taking a holistic approach to health and wellness within the service and the way that we view the workforce and provide for them.
I really like that idea. And it reminds me of this places in Europe where, you know, maternal and paternal, you know, time off is quite substantial.
They get to just be with their children for the first few weeks of their life, not having to take all kinds of vacation. And, you know, this is inbuilt into the culture.
But when I think when we talk about the shifts, people get scared and they think, oh, we're going to go back to 12s. And I've underlined this and I've asked all the sleep experts. If you look at the professions that work, the alternating 12s, you know, the, you know, whether it's rotating or whatever it is, you don't get to maintain your culture.
And so it is very, very disruptive is worse than the 24, even though you're working more on a 24. And if you look at, you know, corrections and law enforcement and ER, you know, staff, they are not exactly always the pillar of health. If it was a great schedule, they would.
But to have the flexibility to have a usually 24, but some ability to bring people down when they need to be at home at certain times. I think that would be the next step. I think it's phenomenal.
That's right. Because right now what happens is, okay, you need an eight hour schedule. What happens is they take you away from the thing that you love.
Which is serving the public. Right. So, so they take you off of the units and they put you on a desk job because that is your traditional eight, 10 or 12 hour schedule. Right. But, but really, if you look at, you know, saying, okay, there's in a department of a thousand people, are there three people that want to do eight hours for the next six months?
Well, those they can, they can share it. They can share one shift, right? They can share one shift. So you can divide it. We can be a little bit more flexible. And I think if we look at it from that holistic perspective, I think it's really going to go a long way towards making the fire service a place to where it's like it used to be, to where they're lining up.
And we're turning more away than, than more processing in many cases.
Speaking of Sarah Jenke, we had a conversation a while ago and I think this, this is somewhat new. You know, I think it's, it's so simple. It's completely free and it's another game changer.
I had Dr. Joel Billings on who's the one who did the study on the 4896. And I've told this story a lot because it's important people understand the background of that study. So Joel was a volunteer firefighter.
He said he'd never actually even worked an overnight in a fire station. And so he ends up choosing the research route and studies a nearby department. And it was the 2448 versus the 4896. So they've gone to this, this 4896.
And he, you know, comes away as like, oh, this is a little bit healthier. There's some improvements here and here. Well, a lot of the fire service ran with that data. What they didn't understand, it wasn't like Joel was hiding this at all.
The department he studied ran, and this is his words, less than one call a night. So it doesn't really mirror most fire departments that I know. And the only real benefit from this was that second day, because they didn't have to get up at 5am.
Like I used to drive 70 miles to the station, you know, and then start your day's work. They were in. So even if they had a couple of calls, they kind of slept in, or in that case, they didn't have any calls, excuse me. Then they sleep all the way till, you know, eight, nine.
Well, of course they're going to get benefit. The one takeaway that I think is valuable from that study is why do we start at seven or eight in the morning anyway?
We've got so many firefighters that have to get up so early and drive so far. But for what reason? So another conversation that is starting to be had now is why not start at 11am or 12 noon?
So now you get to wake up with your wife, your husband, your children, you have breakfast, they go to school and work. Then you get in your car and he drives to the station.
Meanwhile, the person you're relieving got hammered, station 50 in Orange County, but now they got to sleep a little bit more. Dispatch didn't wake them up at seven in the morning.
And now they actually drive home, you know, the rush hour has come and gone. And now they go home. So that's another conversation that I think would be a completely free element to improve firefighter health is just simply shifting that start time to kind of around lunchtime.
So that you're away from both rush hours and you've allowed, you know, another morning with your family that we normally get snatched from us.
Yeah, in fact, that was the schedule that we had when I was in El Paso, Texas. They still have it to this day and they love it. And, you know, when whenever we would talk about the start time, that was like the Holy Grail, right?
They they were like, we'll do anything, but don't change our start time because they love the 12 noon start time. And there's gives and takes with it as well.
Because if you're, you know, if you're home, you know, if you're at the station one morning, then you miss a morning, right? But you're there in the morning on the other days, which is the benefit of it.
And then, you know, organizationally, it takes a little bit more work because you don't get a full day training, right? So the training day and the coordination with departments surrounding you may be a little bit more difficult, not insurmountable, just more difficult.
Well, I want to get to courage and leadership and how we kind of light the fire under all of us, including our leaders to start actually moving the needle in these progressive directions. But just before we do, because you have, you know, a national and a global lens now, talk to me about the the magnitude of this recruitment and retention crisis that we're in at the moment that you see, you know, around the country.
I think it's it's not only around the country, it's across the globe. When we look at our European partners that have large volunteer sectors, the recruitment is difficult. And of course, within the United States, still the volunteer fire service plays a huge role in improving the quality of the fire.
But in the United States, still the volunteer fire service plays a huge role in providing for communities. So, yeah, the recruitment and retention is an issue globally, not only just in the United States and not only for the career fire service.
So the work schedules are one of the things that we're seeing. We're seeing, you know, how do we treat each other when when we come into the fire station or how are we acclimating it and making sure that everybody, you know, feels wanted and respected within the fire service?
That's another one. And then how do we provide that balance in Europe? Some of the laws are different to where, you know, in some places, they allow a volunteer firefighter whenever something happens in South America and in Europe.
Some of them, if you're a volunteer firefighter and you're at work, they're required to let you go to the fire. So there are some some different kind of rules and mandates there.
But we are seeing an impact. In fact, for the first time, we have our U.S. Fire Administrator, Dr. Lori Moore Merrill, who has done a phenomenal job with the U.S. Fire Administration.
For the first time last year in April, there was something that's called the World Fire Congress, and it brought together 50, over 50 countries from across the world fire services within 50 countries to really look at what are those most pressing issues within the fire service?
And certainly recruitment and retention and firefighter health and safety were one of the main topics of discussion that it's happening in the Middle East.
It's happening in the Far East and in Europe and the United States, Canada, everywhere. So this is something that as a fire service, we have to reconcile ourselves to the fact that it is an issue and really meet the challenge and really put those things in place that are going to help us overcome some of them.
One of the most amazing things that's come out of this podcast is learning about solutions that are everywhere.
So, for example, the way Norway does prisons, the way Finland does education, Portugal addiction, the UK, when fully funded and supported health care.
And so having the humility to say, oh, country over there, can you show us how you did what you did? It may not be completely apples to apples, but you can take the philosophy and you can apply it to your own nation.
When you look at the world's fire service, it may not be the entire department, but what are some of the things that you've seen overseas that you think could also be brought here to improve the way we do it in America?
Well, it's interesting because you do see, you know, where some things are, you know, further ahead in the United States than in other places.
But I'll give you an example of one of the things that we studied this past year.
Every year we have something that's called the Urban Fire Forum, where I have the privilege of inviting about 25 of the fire chiefs from the largest fire service organizations in the world to gather and really confront those most pressing issues.
And one of the things that we looked at this year was lithium ion battery exposure to PPE. Right. And so when we started looking at the issue, it really arose out of Orange County, California.
And my friend, Brian Fennacy, the chief out there, he had contacted me and he goes, Otto, who can you put me in contact with? We have these 40 sets of gear that are contaminated by lithium ion products of combustion, right, from a best fire.
So I put him in contact with somebody and they started doing studies on the gear. And so what they found was that when you wash PPE through the normal process, the extractors, the water, the detergent, those kind of things, it's only cleaning the gear at a rate of about 50 percent with the extractors that we have today.
And so these 40 sets of gear were not getting clean at all. And then so we started looking at different levels of cleaning. And one of the things that we found that they were doing in Europe in many places already was liquid CO2 cleaning.
And so liquid CO2 cleaning is an advanced type of cleaning on the gear that is cleaning the gear at upwards of 85 percent. So the contaminants just that you get on a regular basis, about 50 percent.
Of course, there's things you could do to mitigate on scene, but then once you put them in the extractors, only about 50 percent. The liquid CO2, this is a good example. Europe's been doing this for a little while now.
And so when you look at the, you know, and PFAS is another whole other issue and the new NFPA standard that really is removing PFAS from the gear.
One of the things that we're finding is that the thing that degrades the gear the most is the washing cycle and liquid CO2 does not degrade the gear and you don't have to separate the gear in order to wash it with the liquid CO2.
So better, less degradation of the gear gets it cleaner. That was something that they were doing and they've been doing in Europe and many countries. And now we believe that it will take hold in the US as well.
I had Diane Cotter on the show who really kind of blew the lid off the PFAS in our gear specifically after her husband got cancer. An amazing woman. You talk about courage. She dipped her knuckles in broken glass and didn't stop until people were paying attention.
But obviously now people are paying attention. One of the sad things I think, and I said this Diane too, is a lot of departments just started going, oh, it's PFAS. That's why we have cancer and not looking at themselves and again, how they work in their people, see deprivation, you know, decon, all these other things that we need to own.
But that being said, now that we understand that these forever chemicals are, you know, just another carcinogen in the cocktail that we're already exposed to, this is 100% a conversation that we need to have.
So from an NFPA standard lens now, because you're obviously with that organization, what are the proactive changes that are happening and what can we expect in our gear in the future?
So when you look at the NFPA process, right, the technical committee process, the standards are developed not by NFPA, they're developed by subject matter experts.
So, and it's a balanced committee approach. So the NFPA standard is really developed by you have firefighters, you have fire officers, you have gear manufacturers, you have scientists, you have all different types on that.
Now with the new gear, it's the standard cause for PFAS free gear, right? And that is something that that's going to happen and is happening within our industry.
But it also says that there's a list of chemicals that cannot be used within gear as well.
So now really what we're looking at is we believe that the gear is going to meet all the minimum standards and we believe the manufacturers can produce those gear, the gear, the PFAS free gear.
But what we're looking at with some of the researchers now is, okay, what's the impact of that? Because if you think about what happened within our fire service, right, the gear was developed by the manufacturer.
The gear was developed in order to meet the challenges of our new built environment that was, had different materials, was burning faster.
The time temperature curve to flash over was going from seven minutes to four minutes.
So the gear was developed in order to stay longer and deeper within buildings, right? And the gear was providing for that.
Now, so it had a certain, we were expanding, if you will, the upper exposure limit of the gear.
Now with the new PFAS free gear, it'll meet the minimum, but we don't really know what the upper exposure limit of the gear is.
So how deep can we go in? How long can we stay?
You know, because of some of the repellent qualities of PFAS gear, now that's not in the new gear as much.
So it's going to take greater washing cycles.
So, you know, what we're advocating is, okay, let's treat the new gear like any other piece of equipment and let's make sure that we just don't give it to our firefighters and say, go out and conquer.
But we put them in a training environment so that they understand the breathability of the new gear versus the old gear, the protective heat qualities of the gear, the absorption qualities of the gear,
so that we put them in the best position to be successful.
And we understand what that upper limit is rather than just giving it to them and having them go in as deep and as far as they went previously without understanding the gear and potentially being put in a compromising position.
So really, you know, PFAS free gear, it's great that we're taking it out of the gear, but now we have to understand what the ramifications of the new gear are for our firefighters as well.
I'm going to open a can of worms.
And I know this is heresy in the fire service, but, you know, to me, the American helmet, especially the leather helmet, is the best sacrificial lamb for the resistance to change.
What really turns my stomach is then when I see people ridiculing the Europeans for what is just technologically a much better helmet.
And for me, I've never been a firefighter so I can take pictures of myself.
I want to wear whatever gear will get me to that person as quick as possible and facilitate a rescue.
It's not a fashion or modeling contest to me.
So with that being said, you have this international lens. What is your perspective of our resistance to evolving when it comes to our headwear so that we can do what's best for the person that we're trying to protect versus what you're seeing in other parts of the world?
That's a you threw the landmine. I'll give you an example.
I was provided. In fact, when I was in Hylia, I was provided a European style helmet.
And, you know, I had it sitting on my desk when one of the union officials came into my office. And, you know, during the course of our conversation, they kept on glancing over at the helmet.
Right. And I looked at it and I was like, I go, oh, yeah, this is one of the helmets that they want us to test out. And they go, chief, please tell us that we're not going to go to that helmet.
And, you know, it was like it was one of those things that that I believe, you know, tradition is important in some cases. But so is technology. And I think what we're seeing is that the American style traditional helmets are getting better in some of their technology.
But certainly the European helmets in many ways has some some very good qualities to it as well. But, you know, tradition plays large. And just as long as the offset isn't so great that it isn't going to endanger our firefighters, I think there's room.
There's always room within the service for tradition. Well, you see, this is what I get a lot. But to me, tradition in the fire service is courage and camaraderie and service. That's tradition.
Because if we were hanging on to tradition, then we'd still have giant beards that we breathe through, three quarter length boots, and we'd be driving horses on the way to the fire. So at what point do we crest that?
And the perfect example is you don't see Navy SEALs wearing tin helmets. They're more worried about being able to facilitate what they need to as their profession than looking good in whatever World War Two helmet that they were hanging on to.
So I would argue that that's literally PPE. It's not tradition. It's history. It's a beautiful part of history. And I've still got my helmet in my garage. But, you know, the resistance to this change, we have to take a step back and go, why?
And arguably, it's because we want to look like Kurt Russell from Backdraft. And if you have to take your... Please jump in.
I don't know if that's necessarily the case. But what I would say is, and this is where I left it, I would say that, you know, if tradition doesn't impact firefighter safety, and the tradeoffs aren't endangering our firefighters, then there's a place for it.
To me, I haven't studied the differences between those two types of helmets enough to speak intelligently on the subject.
Yeah, well, from just what I've seen, and you know, I've obviously tried them on, you know, having the comms in the head, having a full head helmet, so it's protecting, you know, your jaw and your ears and, you know, all the other areas, it's actually staying on your head.
I mean, how many of us go on any sort of accident at all? And I used to, the first thing I do is put my helmet on the roof, because I can't get in that car with this giant leather sombrero on my head.
You know, anyone who's doing extrication teams of high angle rescue, they're changing to the smaller helmet. So I would argue that yes, it is a much better helmet. There's a flashlight built in this, and like I said, the way the mask goes in is different.
So there appears to be many, many, many areas where it is better. But, you know, it goes back to then, you know, are we really, is this what's really best for them, as we say, the people that we serve, or are we hanging on to this as a last stitch to 10?
And then are we the same way as are we hanging on to the, you know, the shift? We don't want to let it go because we've always done it that way.
To me, those things are kind of very kind of aligned. Like one day you just have to let go because it is better. It's that simple.
Sure. And what I would say is, you know, after the 2472, maybe this is the next frontier, right?
Yeah.
All right. Well, then I want to talk about, we talked about tradition in the fire service. I said courage, I think is a big part of that.
When we saw what happened in COVID, we really got to see who the real leaders were and who the bosses were, the people that had got the pieces of paper, climbed the ladder, and then did not know how to actually leave when they were there.
When it comes to this conversation that we're having now, you know, departments very close to me where I live, have buried, like this one particular four firefighters to suicide in as many years as we've had.
And there's a complete resistance to addressing the work week or anything else.
Other areas, you know, like we said, Palm Beach County just went to 2472. We've got Boynton, we've got Destin, we've got Gainesville.
We've got, you know, I mean, there's more and more and more. That's where I'm seeing courage. Unions, firefighters, leadership, you know, cities and counties together, realizing it's going to save them money.
You know, it's going to improve physical mental health. It's going to improve the delivery of service.
So I was, you know, extremely disappointed that there wasn't this courage when it came to making these proactive choices and fighting for their people in these departments.
What are you seeing or even just to be more, you know, solution oriented?
If you're talking to the leaders of the American Fire Service, how can we inspire them to actually take up this fight and really advocate for change, especially as some of them are staring at the precipice of the spiraling fire department at the moment?
Well, so, you know, I guess I'm kind of insulated because, you know, within the Metropolitan Fire Chiefs Association, we have a lot of different departments.
You know, within the Metropolitan Fire Chiefs Association, which that's my charge now, within the Metro, you have the leaders of the largest fire service organizations within the United States.
In Canada, predominantly, but we have members across the globe.
So what I really see is those leaders that are part of our organization and involved in our organization are those courageous leaders that are making those changes within their organizations.
And the way I like to speak about what we're doing within the Metro is that in many ways, the Metro is a bellwether of the fire service.
What we like to say is where the Metro goes, so goes the fire service and in many ways for these changes that are happening within our service, the Metro's have, if a problem is going to happen, the Metro's are probably going to experience it first and in greater numbers.
So the change that is going to be precipitated by the challenge will happen within the Metro departments first. And I see our Metro leaders taking on those challenges year after year and making those change and implementing programs that spread to the organizations surrounding them.
Because if you look at some of the largest organizations and you can look at any area and see that in many of the largest organizations, they have the largest training centers or they provide regional training.
They provide regional special ops, regional hazardous materials response and many of these other services. So I actually see the leaders within these organizations really taking on these challenges and making those changes that are going to make the overall fire service better.
In fact, one of the things that we do is we put out position statements every year on those most challenging issues and we mentioned two of them today. One was the non-PFAS based PPE and the in-service training considerations.
That's one of the position papers we released. We released one on the PPE cleaning, one on the safe and ethical use of artificial intelligence. And that's just this year.
So over the last several years, we've released over 30 position papers on those most pressing challenges, everything from active shooter to PFAS.
So I actually see leaders within the metros actually exercising those things and bringing along the rest of the fire service because of their efforts in many cases.
When it comes to moving to the 2472, one of the biggest resistance apart from recruiting, which we've obviously underlined, you created a department that has a work environment that's attractive, you will get people flocking.
And every department I know that's announced they're going to 2472 has been bombarded with applications. I know that for a fact.
But the other resistance is we don't have the money. Well, you've got a very unique lens. Obviously, our Passover is certainly orange and seminal.
Talk to me about the money that is spent, the taxpayers' money that is spent on overtime filling these spots, because again, we're understaffed and we can't get the people and mandatory overtime.
The loss of money when we train a new recruit and they leave two, three, five years later. And then if you want to even expand into workman's comp claims and accident payouts, lawsuit payouts that were probably resulted to sleep deprivation as well.
But because I mean, from what I'm seeing, there's so much money already being spent. It's just a case of reallocating it into the people themselves.
No, I agree. And so, you know, for each organization, it's going to be a little bit different. But you have to do the analysis.
And I haven't looked in because I'm not in the fire chief's role. Currently, I haven't really looked into the intricacies of 2472.
But on the surface, right? What you're saying is, you know, if you just look at it from kind of a very black and white perspective, right?
You're saying, OK, if I'm adding an extra day off, that means I have to add an extra shift.
So your maximum exposure is going to be another shift. Right now, what's the cost of another shift?
It's huge, right? So you're saying, OK, you're increasing your cost by a third or a fourth or whatever the case may be.
But now what are those things that mitigate that cost? And you mentioned some of them.
So now for the workforce that you have, because they're working 2472, a lot of times when you look at Kelly days, you look at sick time allocations, all those all those are shrunk because of their based on the number of hours you work in a week.
So now that goes to the leisure of OK, from a full shift. Now it's going to reduce itself. Right. Because now you're taking that that off.
Now you look at OK, because of sleep deprivation. And these are some of the unknowns, right? Because of sleep deprivation and some of the other things that are exacerbating firefighter injury.
Firefighter sick time and time off. That's another thing that's going to be surely reduced by the 2472. To what rate? We don't know, but that's going to be reduced. Right.
So that's another portion that you say, OK, now it's not a full shift. Right. When you look at it from the recruitment and retention lens, what would you say is the cost of the shift?
When you look at it from the recruitment and retention lens, which you talked about when I got to Orange County, we had a terrible attrition rate or people leaving.
Not something that that I was unaccustomed to. But we started to attack that that issue. And and so I did an analysis, which I can speak about it freely now, but it never saw the light of day when I did it.
What we did is we said, OK, we're going to take and we're going to the test case or group was 30 firefighters. Right.
We're going to recruit 30 firefighters. And the expectation is that 30 firefighters will go to the end of a 30 year career, let's say.
Right. And what we're finding is from that original class of 30, only seven of them were making it to the end of a 30 year career.
So for every 30, only seven. So that meant that now for that original 30. Right.
Now I had to not only hire the class that I was going to hire, but another 21. Right. And then now I have 14 of that class will make it to the end. Right.
Theoretically, and now I have to hire another seven another. So what we did is we showed that if you look at a non certified recruitment class, right, where you you pay for the recruitment, you pay for the recruitment.
You pay for all the things that go along with recruitment, all the training, all the gear.
A class was costing me, I think, somewhere around three and a half million dollars. Right. Three and a half million dollars for the for the training time.
Well, now, if you say I have to, I'm only getting seven each time. Now that class, what I was able to show over the course of 30 years to fill every one of those spots was costing me 30 million dollars.
So that's the type of analysis that you have to do with 24 72 because now if you can increase your original recruitment and say, OK, now instead of seven making it to the end because of 24 72, I'm keeping 20 out of 30 because you're always going to lose some.
But I'm keeping 20 out of 30. Now the savings may be 15 million. And so 15 million can also reduce your exposure on on what the cost would be. And then, you know, when you look at the cost of the job, you know, you're going to have to have a lot of people who are going to be paying for the job.
But I'm keeping 20 out of 30. Now the savings may be 15 million. And so 15 million can also reduce your exposure on on what the cost would be. And then, you know, when you look at the the effects of sleep on the utilization of health care on workman's comp on
vehicle accidents, when we talk about micro sleep, right, because you're sleep deprived and we have vehicle accidents, I've had them to where I have it on camera where people are nodding off and they get into a motor vehicle accident.
So if you're reducing those, how much is the value of one vehicle accident to where you're getting sued or one workman's comp claim that costs 750,000. Right. So that all goes on the side of, you know, reducing the cost. And then there's some of the
the ancillary benefits of, okay, are they going to be nicer to the public? Are they going to treat them better? And are they going to be more acute in their treatments because now they're more alert and they're not, we're not reconciling ourselves to a lower level of alertness because if you're sleep deprived, you get used to five hour sleep.
But your level of alertness is that of somebody that has five hours of sleep, not somebody that has eight hours of sleep. So now if we're able to, you know, reconcile some of those things, I think you start to see the balance of the cost versus the benefits start shifting.
Absolutely. Well, thank you. That was that was amazing because this is the perspective that I think a lot of people need to hear like understanding the overall thing. There's a term I use a lot. And even with Tulsi Gabba, we're talking about it nationally when I had her on the show. It's a false economy.
You know, it may look good, you may make you look good for a budget year, but what's best for the department and the city or the county over 10 years, 20 years, and I would argue this this fixes so many, you know, contributes to fixing so many areas, not completely, but there's so many downstream financial deficits from the way that we do business at the moment.
And just like you said, I don't even want to be like, let's keep firefighter alive. I want to get let's get to firefighter human performance, like how fit and strong and you know, acute and well trained can we actually be? Because working at Orange County when you were there, and this isn't your fault because this is I think, yeah, I left shortly after you got there.
But you know, at that point, we were just getting mandatory constantly. So and I was a single father, I even put myself through medical school, medical school, while I was at Orange County, they screaming for medics, they didn't, you know, give me a penny in financial, educational reimbursement or anything.
So I did it all off my own back, I rode with Marion County up here. But I mean, you talk about exhaustion, I don't even know how I did it. I don't know how I made it home, you know, after those 70 miles each way, but to then flip it completely into human performance, imagine how good we could be a paramedicine of firefighting that rope rescue at all the things.
If we were, you know, fully rested, our body was fully rested, we weren't getting injured all the time. And mine wasn't busy because you know, our kids don't like us anymore and our marriages are falling apart.
Whatever the things are, you would just create such a better fire service from a performance perspective too.
Yeah, in fact, it was it was interesting. I was listening to some sports physiologists, and they were they were looking at the difference right between, you know, somebody that's at peak performance like an Olympic athlete, right. And they said, Okay, just one alcoholic drink may not do it.
But if you drink more than two, now, you're two tenths of a second off of the world record that you were at training for weeks, right. You've lost three weeks of training, just by one night out doing doing these things.
Now, if you look at it from performance at the firefighter level, how much less performance are we getting out of our firefighters because they're so far from their peak performance because of sleep deprivation and the ills that go along with sleep deprivation that you know that list every time I see a presentation that list is growing and the things that are attributed to sleep deprivation and lack of sleep.
Absolutely. Well, while I was obviously at Hialeah, you know, and I got to see that culture that was ingrained despite some of the framework being torn down. And then in Orange County, I got to be there for I think, probably four to five years before you were there three and three and a half maybe so I got to see you come in, kind of buck the system a little bit get behind the dive program, you know, do the, the challenges to other fire departments, it was the push up challenge and there was like the lip sync challenge.
But really, you know, make us very visible make Orange County something people would be proud to be a part of because I remember when I was there. If it went right, they called us Orlando if it went wrong, they called us Orange County.
Excuse me, Orange County. So the reporting was so bad. But even with Orange, you know, there was a point where you know, you ended up stepping away because of, you know, an environment that wasn't allowing you to do what you really wanted to do. And this is the thing I think that we see is a challenge.
How, how do we inspire leaders to have those difficult decisions to push against the grain where maybe the old guard or the city or county that they work beneath are resisting because I handle my heart, I'm not stroking your ego, you are probably the most courageous leader I've
I've known in the fire service, you know, because obviously I've experienced it twice now. Conversely, I see a lot of cowardice when it comes to being called as a leader and that could be a firefighter, union leader, a chief, whatever it is, when it comes to having those difficult decisions and putting your own neck on the line for your people.
So what would you tell that, that person in whatever role it is that's kind of nervous about making that bold step and doing just simply the right thing for their people?
So it's, you know, it's interesting. And one of the things, one of the ways that, that I like to explain it is that you do the right thing for the right reason, right? Always. And, and so now what are the consequences of that? Right?
The consequences of that is that you may piss off some people, right? Or you may, you know, ruffle some feathers or that kind of thing. But the way that it was explained to me and the way I like to explain it is as a leader, when you're given the reigns of leadership, right?
When you're given that leadership position, you're also given a certain amount of equity within the organization, right? To lead. If not, they wouldn't have given you the position, right?
So now as you go through your career, that equity is like a bank account, right? But you don't know what the balance is. But as you go through and you do good things, the balance grows.
As you do courageous things, the balance may, may, may be subtracted by those people that, that have authority over the organization, right? But you can't worry about it.
You have to do those things that are right for the organization, right for the community, ultimately right for the elected and right for the firefighters.
But there are things that you continue to do. You do the right things. And as they say, that bank account will grow and it'll get smaller.
But as a leader, a lot of times you may have to push all your chips to the center of the table in order to make your point.
And your bank account may go to zero and that will be the end of your tenure within that organization. But that's okay. Because the lasting effect that your courage had on the organization will last long beyond your tenure there and will live within the people that are within that organization.
And that is the true mark of legacy.
I know that happened. I know that you did push your chips. I think that's what we sat down. I think that you'd been shut down by the bank or whatever they call it by that point.
But this is the point. There's a phrase and I always butcher it, but it goes something like, plant the seeds of a tree under which the shade you'll never know. I think that's courageous leadership.
You may not enjoy the benefits of what you're doing, but you know that it's best for the people. I would argue the 2472 is one of those things.
People will look back 20 years after this does become a national revolution and they'll not even realize how we used to do it. They won't even realize how bad it was before.
And the people that made that happen in each of these departments that had the courage, they'll be long gone. They'll be retired or even gone.
But this to me is it. Ultimately, why did you even put the uniform on in the first place? To help people.
Well, that doesn't change when you're at a chief level. Your service, your servant's heart, excuse me, should still be for the people that are in the uniform and the people that we serve.
Having watched you walk the walk and knowing that your legacy is still there, the peer fitness program and the dive rescue and obviously some of the other cultural things that you left in Orange County, which is what I experienced, and the higher layer even when I was there.
When you've seen leadership done right, it's what makes me so angry when it's done poorly or done without any courage. So I think it's important that we hear your perspective. So thank you.
Oh, thanks. Yeah. And to me, the 2472 is such an interesting thing because one conversation I had with the chief officer, he goes, well, the cost.
And he started identifying all the reasons why not. Right. And to me, I'm like, well, firefighting is one of the most dangerous professions in the world. Right.
He's like, yes, I go. We have cancer in the fire service, mental health impacts in the fire service. But we're asking our firefighters to work more hours in a week than almost any other profession.
Where's the equity in that?
Yeah, I've had a kind of concept recently because people always say, well, can you show the data? And I say no, because sadly, no one has ever thought it was important to study our shifts, sleep deprivation, you know, and then, you know, because the Northeast has been working 2472 for a long time, a lot of them.
So we have, you know, other departments to compare it to, but it just wasn't done. But what I tell people is if you're designing a statistical study, there's the hypothesis. And then there's a null hypothesis, which I think basically is the equal and opposite is true.
So if you work firefighters 56 hours a week, and that then is devolves and creates mandatory overtime. And now they're working 80 plus hours a week, and you have cancer and suicide and relationship problems and testosterone in the toilet and all the things that we're seeing.
Well, then there's your data. It's like drug prohibition. We've learned how to do it wrong. Now we've got gangs and homelessness and sex workers and, you know, our streets are full of them.
So the equal and opposite is true. If you give the firefighters the work week that a lot of civilians enjoy, and they're home more in their own bed and they're getting more sleep and maybe they start at 12 o'clock, you know, noon as well, then everything that was bad is going to get better.
That is your data because you've studied the wrong way for 50 plus years now. Same as you know, the drug prohibition. We've studied what happens when you make addiction illegal.
And you send people to prison for it. It doesn't work. So the equal and opposite is obviously true. So this is what I tell people is like, you know, think about that. Don't. There's a phrase. Don't wait for science to prove what you already know is true.
We know that extra time off will benefit our fire service. We just do. So stop, as you said, looking for excuses why not to and ask these departments that have made it happen. How did you?
Right. And you know, one of the things I said to one of the chief officers, I go, so, yes, it's going to cost more money. I go. However, we've been we've been giving away that money to other initiatives within the city or within the county.
They've been using the money on the backs of the firefighters to work the longer hours to fund some other priority. What higher priority is then the citizens that we serve. So to me, it's it's really where our money is.
And certainly, you know, if you're looking at the 56 versus the 72, yes, it's going to take some shifting of priorities, but put the money where the priority should be and certainly public safety.
Firefighters should not be any less than anybody else. In fact, I always view them as more than everybody else because they're there and and there's there's no other way to do it. So I think that's the key.
And certainly public safety. Firefighters should not be any less than anybody else. In fact, I always view them as more than everybody else because they're there and and there's there's no other organization that still makes the type of house calls at the time.
And with the timeliness and with the caring of the fire service and no matter the generation, we still have that that place within our communities. And we're still fulfilling that mission.
And when we talk about traditions, that is one tradition that is is something that's sustainable within our organizations and really at the root of our service is the level of service that we provide in the most desperate times for our communities.
Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. Well, I want to hit one more kind of revisit one more topic before I go.
With the lithium ion fires, obviously, I've been out uniform now for six years, so I didn't really even have the the electric vehicle issue.
I never had an extrication of one of those in my career. But now these fires that we're seeing from these batteries as well. Again, back to this international lens.
Are there any innovations out there that are starting to bring solutions to these these e-bike and these large battery fires that are just you talked about the evolution of the intensity of fire in our generation versus the kind of wool, wood, paper fires that our ancestors had.
I feel like now that's just gone up another level with these. So what are you seeing as far as the technology to combat these fires?
Well, it's really interesting because that is evolving at such a rapid pace. Right. So when we had the the original kind of EVs and the introduction of EVs, you know, there was all types of training on the components, where to, you know, cut wires to separate the power from, you know, from the vehicle and things like that.
But with the lithium ion batteries and the thermal runaway and the intensity and the rapidity of of how they're progressing. When we talk about the time temperature curve for some of these.
Mobile mobility devices like the scooters, the hoverboards, things like that. We talked about the time temperature curve being seven minutes, right? When we started our career. And then because of product, we started to see the
modern products maybe reducing the four minutes now with lithium ion. You're really talking a minute and a half in some cases.
So I was sitting in a room with a bunch of fire chiefs at the Urban Fire Forum, and we made the analogy to when electricity was introduced into into structures. Right.
And at the time, we had an environment not built for purpose. Today, we have an environment not built for purpose. And so with some of the EVs, some of the innovations in Europe that they saw is because it takes inordinate amounts of water to put out some of these lithium ion battery fires.
So what what you're seeing in Europe is sometimes they'll bring a tanker to to the scene. And in the Netherlands, they have a crane that will put the car in this pool in this tanker.
So they will submerge the battery. And that's how they approach it there. There's some departments that have kind of if you've ever been on a wildland fire, the pop up tanks, they'll do something like that and, you know, kind of submerge the car.
So so that's one methodology. We're still trying to find out how to penetrate the battery pack or the housing of the battery pack.
But one of the things that is doing is there's a high pressure water lance that's being used in Europe. And now it's being used in I believe it's Tempe, Arizona.
But what this does, it's highly interesting. It's high pressure water. So what it does is it will cut through wood instantly through steel plate within a matter of seconds.
And so it's like a pressure washer, but a very powerful pressure washer. So it will put a hole a hole within steel about this size, and then it inundates the battery with water and they're having very good success.
You're going from using thousands of gallons to maybe 300 gallons to extinguish lithium ion battery fire, but it has to be done in the right methodology.
It has to be done in conjunction with a thermal imager so that you see the right type of the right place to actually make the hole within the battery.
So that's one of the innovations. But ultimately, I believe the innovation that is going to get us where we need to be is in battery technology and making sure that the way that the battery is being manufactured
and that separator that is really the problem within the lithium ion batteries is robust enough to not sustain the damage or cause the thermal runaway.
And, you know, I'm starting to see some movement in that way. So I believe ultimately the technology problem is going to be solved by a technology solution.
But right now within firefighting, I believe that that water lance, I think in the commercial name is I think the Cobra water lance is very effective.
When we look at some of the other things, they're looking at, you know, AI is going to be amazing in some of the things well within the fire service and really identifying these types of fires early on
and giving us the ability to do that. But it is a challenge that that's growing. We haven't surmounted it yet. But I'm confident just like everything in the fire service, we will get there.
In fact, I was in Singapore and I was talking to the commissioner in Singapore and Singapore is a very densely populated community, very modern.
And right now there's no codes for, you know, in the United States for multi level underground car parks, they call them.
But there's a demand for it. So they're having to manage multi story underground car parks.
So they're developing methodologies to do those in the safest manner possible. But if you can imagine some of these thermal runaway electric vehicles in an underground car park,
you know, in Taiwan, there was a car park that went up that was, you know, disastrous. And, you know, so these are challenges that we're confronting now worldwide and certainly within the United States as well.
I was talking to Pete Wakefield, who's the host of the Firefighters podcast, the British podcast, and he was talking about even acknowledging the terrorist threat.
You know, if you think about the first World Trade Center bombing that I had Peter Witwinski on, he was a present for both.
He actually got one of his paraplegic friends out from the 69th floor just before the towers fell the second time.
But the first time they had that van full of explosives. And this is what Pete was saying is that, you know, God forbid they park three or four cars and they initiate that kind of, you know, explosion or combustion.
Like how detrimental that could be to a building that the car park is beneath.
Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I believe we're getting there. And, you know, the nice thing is that when you look at this is something new and we are having incidents.
But when you look at, I believe the rate of incidents for electric vehicles versus their hydrocarbon counterparts is much less per 100,000.
But it's something new that we have to train on. We have to have the right technologies to, you know, to confront it.
And then one of the real challenges that we're facing is, you know, this almost becomes a hazardous material scene, you know, once the fire is out.
And one of the things we're looking at is how do we dispose of the products of that lithium ion battery fire?
How do we, you know, make sure that all the batteries are de-energized, that they're taken, that they're over-packed correctly with, you know, the cell block and the things that really need to be done.
And certainly, FDNY, I was at a symposium on the rock there.
And because of the number of incidents that they're having, they're getting, you know, they're really refining their protocols and their response matrices for lithium ion battery fires,
because they're having them, not only the EVs, but a lot of the mobile mobility devices.
Because if you look at it from the perspective of, you know, immigration and new entrants into society, one of the cheapest forms of transportation, one of the most readily available forms of transportation,
but it is causing a great many issues within the built environment.
You just kind of reminded me, I want to hit one more topic as we talk before we hit record about some areas that you are passionate about.
The EV obviously is pure technology. On the other side of the equation is mother nature.
So talk to me about your lens on the increasing amount of very large wildland fires that we're having and any proactive solutions that are on the horizon there.
So that's one that I'm involved with at many different levels.
So we put out a position paper and when we talk about the, we talk about it from the lens of the impacts of climate change, because if you, and we really look at it from a non attributional type of perspective.
We're not getting into the whys because that becomes very political.
We're just saying that we're having extreme weather. We know that.
So that's something that we're having to confront as a fire service.
And how do we do that? Because if you look at just in the United States over the last few years, you look at Lahaina, right?
One of the most destructive wildfires that we've had with the largest amount of life loss.
So we're having these wildfires, not only in the places that traditionally had them, but in places that are non traditional are having them across the globe.
When I was in Slovenia, they had one on the border of Slovenia that was happening.
We're having them in Spain. We had one in London, which the London Fire Brigade had to deal with a wildfire, which was the first time in many, many years, right?
That they've had to deal with that. So they're happening across the globe.
So we have to get better, certainly in our community outreach and our protective measures and really how we're treating the built environment and the urban interface as well.
And so we have a lot of good mitigation strategies.
One of the things I'm involved in is I went to COP 28 in Dubai, not this past year, but the year before with some fire chiefs.
And we signed on to the World Fire Emissions Alliance, which is really to reduce fire emissions worldwide by a certain percentage over a certain amount of years.
So one of the first initiatives is the billion person outreach initiative on how to do this.
So when it comes to wildfires, it's really what are those mitigating things that we can do on the front end to help the fire service, right?
Because citizens have a role in this and we have to do that.
And community outreach and the marketing of these types of programs has a role in it.
And then at the national level, one of the things we're looking at is a lot of the first responders to a lot of these urban interface where the federal government really puts their money through the Department of Agriculture into the wildfire space.
Who are the first ones that are responding? It's city and county structural firefighters.
And so there's really a misalignment with the resources, with those that are responding in some cases.
So there has to be a better balancing of that.
When we look at hurricanes, hurricanes are becoming more intense and it's almost if I were to draw kind of the interconnectedness of these things.
So you have heat, extreme heat, right?
That dries out everything that causes the wildfires, that burns the vegetation, that whole
the dirt in place and then the rains come and the mudslides come in behind that.
And then you have the hurricanes, greater intensity, greater storm surge.
You know, and it seems like at a much quicker pace.
I mean, when we look at this year, Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton, some of the things that are happening in the wildfires,
Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton, some of the areas that were greatest hit were not the coastal areas that were prepared for them,
but the interior areas that experience a lot of the rains and the flooding and some of the disruptive mechanisms of climate change could have had an impact there as well.
So we're looking at all of that holistically and what's the impact on the fire service and our ability to respond.
So that's kind of the lens on that topic.
I never thought of this until you just kind of touched on how many of us from the municipal side are the first to respond.
Is there a misalignment of money to create resources in the wildland community?
Because there's so many, like Anaheim, for example, they had all kinds of strike teams and different type vehicles.
But I know that the wildland fire service are woefully understaffed at the moment.
Is there, if there was a shift of funding from some municipalities back into the wildland fire service, would that be a progressive move?
Well, so I'm not sure that the shift would be from the municipalities into the urban interface areas.
And we like to call it wildfire, not wildland, because wildland could be somewhere where nobody lives.
And really where we're impacted is that interface where people live.
And that's why we're being called. And that's where the most impact is happening now.
Where we believe a lot of the misalignment is at the federal level in some cases.
If you look at, for instance, some of the ESF models, firefighting, which is ESF-4 when you look at the emergency management perspective.
But the lead agency for ESF-4 at the federal level, I believe, is the Department of Agriculture.
Because that's where a lot of the wildland firefighters and fire service is located.
But we're not really looking at ESF-4, the firefighting community, as those structure elements, which we have a lot of resources that can be brought to bear very quickly.
So there's a little bit of misalignment there, of course.
And there's misalignment with the funding because a lot of the municipal departments and county departments are having to spend their resources on things that probably need to be funded through federal resources.
Brilliant. I appreciate your perspective on that as well.
Before I let you go, is there anything else you want to impart?
We talked about a lot of issues within the fire service.
And I would just like to leave it with this.
With all those things, the fire service is still one of the best services in the world.
And it's really due to the men and women that serve on a daily basis and really put themselves between harm's way and the citizens that we protect.
And that's why I remain passionate about the fire service to this day.
And it's really because of the people that serve.
For people listening, if they want to reach out to you, where are the best places aligned to do so?
Sure. I mean, they can reach me at my email, which is odrozed at nfpa.org.
And I receive email and I answer that.
So that's probably the best place.
But I'm also on Twitter.
For the Metro, we have a YouTube channel now and we do have a Twitter as well.
So they can DM me there.
And I'm happy to expand on anything that we spoke about.