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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 Smokejumper and innovator, Jason Ramos.
Now Jason first came on the show on episode 219 and I highly recommend that you listen
to his story, the creation of his book and so much more on that episode.
This time we sat down on the wake of the California fires and not only were deadly but devastated
neighborhoods and people lost everything.
So I wanted to get a respected voice from the wildland community to discuss the fires
and talk about preventative elements that we can apply and hopefully avoid the next
tragedy.
So we discuss a host of topics from some of the incredible technological innovation that's
available, some of the ancient methods that they're finding working very well, the issue
with the water supply, sheltering in place, climate change 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 over 1000 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 as one side note I was sick as a dog when I did this interview so you will hear a massive
difference in my voice and I apologize for any sniffing or coughing that I wasn't able
to delete.
So with that being said, I welcome back onto the show Jason Ramos.
Enjoy.
Well Jason, I want to start by saying welcome back to the show.
You are my guest on episode 219 and since we're up past a thousand now that would suggest
that was probably about six years ago.
So it's been a long time coming that we had the second conversation so welcome back.
Yeah, it's an honor.
It's always good to hear you, see you.
It's awesome.
So we're going to jump into several topics.
Obviously the world of wildland firefighting has become front and center since the tragedies
in California.
Before we do though, can you lead me through, you know, we left off where you were about
six years ago.
What have the last five or six years been like for you as far as career and just kind
of personal journey?
Well, that's crazy, right?
I'm still in a roller coaster.
Since the book came out 2015, it's been a ride.
It still is.
And what's cool, I'm still able to do something, right?
I'm not the old firefighter, put him in the barn and shoot him, at least not yet.
So I'm in the, I do search and rescue stuff.
I'm still consulting on bigger levels.
I was honored to consult for the president's PCAST team, an outgoing president.
The list just goes on, just keeps stacking, which is a huge honor, right, as my dad taught
me.
And if you knock on the door and you kick on the door, someone will answer, right?
So I stick to that recipe and it's been crazy.
I do a lot of drone stuff now.
So I'm on the FAA safety team.
Everything to do with flying unmanned aircraft, which I did as a hobby.
Now I'm doing it, I'm getting paid for it, which is quite hard work.
And some of it's volunteer.
So I still do a lot of stuff as a volunteer as firefighters, right?
We do a lot of stuff that you don't get paid for.
That's how it goes.
So if you don't like it, hey, go somewhere else.
So a lot of interesting things and every day is something different.
It keeps me moving.
Well, we are straddling presidencies as we have this conversation.
What were the good things that you were able to help put in place under the last administration?
And then what are you hoping that we can transition to with this one?
It's the trillion dollar question and answer there.
The outgoing, it was a huge honor to be part of the, it's a wild land report for the president
right at that time.
It's by the PCAST team for the president.
It's all their PhDs and folks very smarter than me, a lot smarter than me.
And to see the report was cool, but still not listening to some of the pieces.
And what's hard about that, when they do in a report like that, they got to understand
that a lot of people they need to speak to, they can't talk to you because the government
won't let them talk.
That's the sad part.
In what way?
What's preventing the conversation?
So you have the ethics right under the, whether it's the Fed firefighters, I'll say at the
Forest Service, I don't work for him anymore.
It was an order to work for him, but the Forest Service had a lot of red tape.
We're not talking red tape, we're talking red barricades of things you can say, what
you can't say.
And I got very proficient at what I could say.
They tried to determine my position for writing a book.
I was able to win that and not get terminated for writing a book because I didn't do anything
wrong.
So there's firefighters out that just act like if you were an employee, you were out
there speaking and you hit national news, you might not have a job tomorrow if you went
viral because that chief, that chain of command, the chief as it goes up, it gets to DC.
You're probably, if you don't have the permission, you're not going to be able to talk.
And what's interesting about the, when I was with the Forest Service, they always would
put a PIO, public information officer, attached to you.
And there was times I was very lucky, I was trusted to say the right things, which is
a huge honor.
They trusted me.
But I've watched other employees, they're like, no, we're going to attach a PIO to
you and then that person can't speak freely.
The PIO is speaking for you.
It's like, well, that's not right.
So that's, when that report came out, it was, there was a lot of tech in there, which
is great, but as true boots on the ground firefighters, that kind of tech doesn't put
out fires.
Fires as a chemical reaction is fuel, heat, and oxygen.
That is it.
Still little green men visit us from another planet and change our physics and our rules.
That's something different, but right now it's fuel, heat, and oxygen.
If you give me satellites and all this, I call it fluff, that doesn't put the fire out.
I need to suffocate it, take the fuel away, or cool it down.
Just like a human being or chemical reaction.
If I take food away from you, I make you cold, I suffocate you, you die.
Period.
So that's what I was trying to get to that PCAST team.
And the meeting was over 90 minutes.
I was doing something right.
It wasn't 90 seconds.
Usually when you get a meeting with a mayor or a governor or something, it's like, 90
seconds, go.
Right?
I can't even go to the bathroom in 90 seconds nowadays.
So long story short, I was proud to be in the report, but it's like, no, that's not
what I want.
And it's not just me.
But it's like, why are they not listening?
And that's been my biggest challenge since I was in the agency, the Forest Service, until
now I'm out of it and I can speak more freely.
How do you get the right folks to listen?
Because you have a lot of fire chiefs, a lot of high brass.
Those are the folks that get consulted.
And I've come up with some simple terms.
I say, look at their resume, those folks making the decisions.
If they're making wildland fire decisions and they've never been on a hand crew, heli-tech
crew, wildland engine type six crew or type one, smoke jumper, hot shot, how are they
going to lead their folks for those kind of decisions?
And that's what we've seen.
I've done my own research.
I'm a research company and you pick and you look under here, you look under there.
It's like, well, that's the wrong person for that dual, for that job.
So that is the biggest thing I've seen in the last few years.
We have folks in the wrong position making the wrong decisions and not getting the support.
That reminds me when I worked for Anaheim and we were kind of a wildland interface,
the actual city, and then we had crews that went off and deployed.
But I was a tiller man on a truck, so I was ultimately staying in the city.
Just spending that time that I did in the trainings that we had, the progressive hose
lines, cutting line, which was a very, very short portion of it because we're not probably
going to be cutting line.
You just see how it's a completely different skill set, understanding the weather and topography.
That's a whole other job description.
So I can't imagine being from the municipal side and being in charge of the wildland side,
just as a basal firefighter, you can see immediately the room for errors if you haven't actually
been in those positions yourself.
Correct.
And it's one of the reasons I wanted to become a smokejumper.
I started at the bottom as a volunteer, which was amazing.
I still consider myself a rookie and a volunteer.
Got to ride tailboard for basically a little over a year, almost two years, and move your
way up.
Now you can get to be the cab man.
Had to get the engineer not lost or the captain not lost to the fire.
And then I moved on to rescue squad operator.
And then I went to the feds and you see those ranks and it's like, whoa, those guys know
how to fight fire.
It's not just a shovel digging dirt.
There's a science to that.
You don't get that till years and years later.
I'm still learning, but I've spent a lot of time from ground zero, from piling sticks
for fire prevention to control burns.
So I've been stationed at all those little pieces.
And again, you have high brass out there that we know they don't know what that means.
They've never done it.
So how do you give that to your battalion chiefs and your division chiefs and your captains,
your engineers, your lieutenants?
It's not going to work.
And that's what's exactly happened.
That's what's supposed to happen.
It's not working.
Yeah.
And I'm trying to change that.
And I remember one of the comments, I won't say who was, but they said, Mr. Ramos, we
can't fire people.
And I laughed a little bit.
I said, I didn't say fire people.
I said, re-educate them or remove them from their position and put them somewhere else.
Put them where they're good at.
It's like taking, again, Willy Wonka and say, Willy Wonka, we're going to come over.
You're making pizza.
He doesn't make pizza.
Makes candy.
So it's very interesting to still see this today, even the past of Santa Ana event that
we had.
I just, I pull my hair.
I pull my, that's why I got short-cut hair, right?
I'm not losing my hair.
I just pull it out.
And it's such a bummer that being honored to be a smokejumper for those many years in
Hell Attack and able to jump out of aircrafts on very extreme fires and be able to put them
out with our recipe, it works.
And to do prescribed fires in areas with fire goats, that was probably one of my funnest
times that was in my off season.
I got to work multiple months working with fire goats.
Fire goats, exactly how it sounds.
You put them in an area for a couple of weeks and they will eat everything in sight.
They'll eat everything in sight.
If you stand there long enough, you're going to be in your underwear.
They're amazing and I got to do hard work with, there were some days we had 200 head,
400 head.
It's insane of what part of the tool.
It's not the answer to everything.
But if you stick fire goats in a Santa Ana corridor, which I call it right, an area that
you know the Santa Ana's are going to be back and you got Chaparral, all these different
types of one hour, 10 hour fuels, you start breaking those little pieces.
No fuel, no fire.
I'm not saying erase everything, but less fuel, less fire.
It's a simple, Mother Nature has given us the tools.
We're not using them.
It's amazing how when we have these modern day technological problems, more often than
not the answer is already there in history.
For example, look at us now, we're realizing, oh, if you put chemicals and hormones and
antibiotics in your food, it causes cancer.
But if you don't do that and you grow it holistically and you move and you get sunshine and you ground,
then you're a healthier person.
I remember seeing fire goats for the first time.
I think it was Portugal was using them.
So do you know the kind of origin story from the US of when that idea was brought here?
Because to me, it just seems like a full circle to probably what they've done for millennia
in human history.
I first experienced fire goats and grazing sheep, that kind of stuff.
I was a teenager still because I know it.
I can actually tell you where I was standing, Harvest Way in Riverside County, looking at
them running the fields.
That came to fire in 1989, so we're talking 86, 87.
And his little trailer caught on fire.
And right, caught on fire.
And guess what?
It didn't go anywhere because the sheep and the goats ate everything around it.
And years later in my book, you see that fire that was the same area the goats and the sheep
didn't get to.
It's just a small piece of the solution.
But if everyone tends to their backyard and does what they need to do, you will have some
fire prone areas.
It's so simple.
And I told that to the presence team.
I said, we could start right now, two minutes from now.
Is it going to be the full solution?
No.
Do you have to come up with more money and do this?
Not really.
It's already in place.
We have fire prevention officers.
We have all these things.
So that was my first experience being a teenager on a skateboard going, whoa, what are they
doing?
And then years later, almost 15, whatever, years later, or 10 years later, came home
and see the area that we lived in, they hired this shepherd, this person that shepherded
these goats to eat all the fuels.
And I was a firefighter.
I'm like, whoa.
So I went and talked to him, met the owner, found out it was a smoke chumper.
He says, hey, you want to work?
I said, yeah.
It was free.
I said, you feed me, I'll work for you.
And he fed me well.
So I spent weeks tending to some preemies a little bit, sick goats, giving them the
shots.
I mean, hard work.
Some of the hardest work I've ever done.
There is no breaks.
There's no vacation.
There's no I'm sick.
There's no.
Right?
He said, Jason, I'd like to give you a couple head of goats you can run on yourself.
You got your van already?
You're like plug and play.
You're like, oh, you know, back at that time, I was chasing waves, spearfishing.
And that was my thing.
It's like, I don't think I want to say can I take the goats to Mexico with me?
He's like, no, got to stay here.
So that was my first experience.
But that is part of a solution in some areas that are low impact.
And the reward and the outcome in a couple of weeks.
There's nothing left.
It's so clever and it's so simple.
Let's you touched on the fire.
So like I said, I worked Anaheim for a few years.
The east side there was really our kind of interface and certainly a very dangerous place.
You know, if you look at the potential and I mean, the whole place was just brown, you
know, months and months and months and months.
Let's kind of unpack what you've seen as far as the events leading up to these fires.
And then we can talk about the end the way they were fought and then the takeaways.
But what have you analyzed so far as the contributing factors to it being such a deadly and destructive
fire this time?
Should I break it down?
This is there's only one gentleman recently I've heard in the years he just did an interview
on what is it called California insider.
He's the past, I think, LA County sheriff.
He knew his stuff.
He stays in his lane.
He's right.
So what I'm what I'll get into is I like to bring down the analogies because most people
just don't get it.
So if you don't cut your lawn forever, it gets big.
You don't weed your backyard.
It gets big.
If you don't weed your garden, it gets overgrown.
If you plant your tree when you're in elementary right now you're in college, it's gigantic.
Right?
Right.
You're hanging from it.
It's the same thing with our fuel.
So meaning our brush, our homes fuel can also mean homes.
If we pile up a bunch of homes close to each other, that is a fuel issue.
So if we don't mitigate and trim our lawns, cut our lawns, weed our gardens, trim your
beard, get your hair cut, you're going to look like Bigfoot, right?
Don't cut your hair for 20 years.
You're going to be stepping on your hair.
It's the same thing with our brush.
We have these, I call them Santa Ana corridors.
I was telling you not too long ago, I can pull up a map.
It's a program that we use for search and rescue and emergency responders use across
the nation.
It's called Cal Topo.
I can go pick an area, let's just say the Malibu area, and go back to the early 1900s.
It'll give me all the archival fires from the 1900s in colors.
And I can show this to a kid in a science class in a STEM program and he'll probably
say, Jason, looks like this area is a problem area.
We need to fix that area.
This is going to happen again.
Just imagine if you knew there was going to be a tsunami at some point at this same location,
but you had warnings.
You had three or five days warnings from the weather forecast, high pressure in the Great
Basin, low pressure setting up, and we're probably going to possibly have 60 to 80 mile
an hour winds days ahead of the time, but this could happen every three, five, 10 years
or every year, right?
And we still do nothing.
We do very little.
I'm not saying nothing.
Some departments do, but at the scale that we know, right?
I've been, I started fighting fire in 1989 in Southern California.
I watch fires get bigger and bigger in Santa Ana corridors.
And as the brush grows, right, it gets bigger, trees get bigger, and we're still not maintaining
it.
So I just think in another five years or 10 years, some of these areas that have not had
fire in a while, you're going to have another extreme incident.
And the thing is we know in the fire service, depends on where you're at, right?
In the government, we did, every day we did a briefing.
You had your daily weather, your outlook three days, five days, seven days, you kind of pick,
right?
And then you had a meteorologist telling you what's going on.
This is every day in the fire service.
I could go to a different county, sit in as a guest, and it's clockwork.
It's the same thing.
And if you go back on January 6th and look in Google, just go Google January 6th, you'll
see some of the headings in Google, catastrophic winds, hurricane winds, and then you click
on it, and some of them have disappeared, right?
Maybe due to lawsuits or whatnot.
But like we're getting warned.
Why are we not acting?
So that's the most interesting part that we can fix now.
But it's sad to know that, you know, a lot of people say, well, we didn't know what was
going to happen.
I say, yes, you did.
You probably knew about five days.
Even the homeowners, this is not just the firefighters, right?
We got to put accountability on if you live in a Santa Ana quarter, which you want to
live near the beach or live in this beautiful area, you need to trim your grass or trim
your beard as well.
You need to help the firefighters.
And we got, right?
I say we, still think I'm a firefighter, but I'm still a first responder.
But if you have hundreds of homes burning, sorry, immediately we don't have hundreds
of fire engines.
It's going to take a few days to get those resources, those type one resources.
Type one, always think type one, the biggest and baddest type one helicopter, type one
hand crew, that's the biggest and baddest.
So it's something we can fix.
And I always hate to say this, by Easter, we'll be off to the next big thing until Santa
Ana's roll around next year.
Nothing might not happen next year and then the next year.
And then maybe in five years from now, you'll get, maybe it'll be San Diego.
It might be parts of Orange County.
It might be parts of north of LA, right?
And we're still, it's like, what are we doing?
So hope that answer your question, but it drives me nuts.
It reminds me of COVID.
We have this virus come through and the middle of the road truth is that in almost all the
cases, anomalies aside, it was really taking out people who already had preexisting medical
conditions.
So the takeaway should have been, let's make Americans healthier.
Let's bolster local farms to grow organic food.
Let's put real food in schools.
Let's put PE programs back where they should have been.
Let's do all these things to make our nation healthier.
So when, as you said, when it's a fire or a virus, when the next one happens, the amount
of people affected is greatly reduced, but nothing happened after COVID.
They just swept it under the rug and they were like, all right, well, let's move on.
And I think it's such a disservice because there are lessons in this.
If you analyze what happened in California, and like you said, there's all these levels.
What do we miss at the forestry level?
What do we miss at the enforcing that homeowners are abating brush and trees on their perimeter?
Are there any areas to address in the fire service response?
What about the water supply?
But if we, it just seems to be from the outside that, like you said, it's insanity doing the
same thing again, expecting different results.
Yes, and you nailed it, right?
It's like, this is going to happen again.
And it's interesting, people that are close to me that can go back in time, I have a business
now, right?
We keep notes.
They can say, Jason, you called that one two years ago in that area.
I said, yeah, I know, because it's a corridor.
It will happen.
I can't tell you when exactly, but when you have the winds, the low relative humidities,
it's going to happen.
And again, it's interesting to watch all these folks, some great, I would say, I would say
leaders, right?
They're doing something.
They're in the arena, right?
They're getting punched.
They're out there trying to make a difference.
One of my biggest pet peeves when I want to contact some of these guys, gentlemen and
ladies, they make it so hard.
You can't contact them.
They make it double 07.
And it drives me absolutely nuts that I can't get a hold of someone.
I got to get a hold of an agent.
The agent doesn't answer his phone.
You do an email.
We don't live long enough.
If we lived 200 years, I'd be like, okay, I'll get him 50 years from now.
So it's interesting when I, and that's how my book came out.
People ask, Jason, how do you get a hold of these CEOs and become friends with them?
And you design this and you design a better helmet and all these.
I said, I blow up the phone and I find them.
I hunt them down at an expo and I stare at them.
And I crush their hand, give them a good firm handshake.
And that's how I get stuff done.
And when I can't contact someone, it drives me crazy because they're on the same page.
And if you have a team of folks, you can do more damage.
Damage meaning good, right?
Good damage.
So that's what really bugged me in the president's report and all this stuff.
It's like, give me the tools.
And I said, prove me wrong.
I said, you give me this power right now, I will go out.
We'll pick a section.
We have multiple sections in Washington state.
We did these clearings.
They're called Firewise.
You drop timber, you bring in some goats, you do a little bit of hard work.
You have chippers come in.
They have volunteers that come in or they get paid.
There's a solution to it all.
But again, if you're not a connoisseur of that, you don't know the resources and it
doesn't happen.
So it's a bummer.
It's a true, true bummer that we have this learning experience.
And I still haven't seen anything come out.
The best thing I've seen come out for your, again, your listeners is go to the California
Insider and look at one of the recent interviews there with the past sheriff.
It was amazing.
It's about unified command.
Not many people know what unified command is.
And that's when I know someone knows what they're talking about.
That means I'll go to Mission to Walmart with you.
If you don't know what unified command is, I'm not going to Mission to Walmart or any
else with you because you just, I don't want to be stuck with you somewhere because then
I'm not about to be saving your butt.
And unified command is exactly how it sounds, unified.
So everything from the dog catchers, the water districts, the utilities, the fire, the police,
Willy Wonka, Walmart, I don't care whoever's in that area, unified command.
Well, you need pizza.
That's why Willy's there.
Yes.
Right.
So, and that's when it works.
I mean, I watched an old video at Riverside County.
They were doing a demo on unified command.
People, listeners can Google this just, and you can see how well it works when you know
Fred and Diana from the water district and you're like, hey, what's that reservoir look
like?
What do we got?
And they're like, you're good.
You're awesome.
I know Diana.
I've known her for years.
Right.
And then you, a certain amount of helicopters and you see Fred over there from Cal Fire
or the Forest Service.
And he's like, I got you covered, man.
We got three type ones.
We got a type one team if you need.
Awesome.
Okay.
We've got a bunch of animals running the streets.
Where's Tanya?
I'm on it.
We got animal control.
But the other way, everyone's scrambling.
Oh, we got animals.
Oh, we got people looting.
We got...
It's like, guys, it's all there already.
It's like, didn't you take your leadership courses, your L courses and your task force
courses and your division courses?
It's like, how did you get that brass on your collars that you're aligning every day to
go to work?
How did you get that?
Because you're supposed to know that.
So that's where I get a little bit, I can still be your friend and give you hugs, but
I have no...
My mercy gets thin when you're wearing collar brass and you're not doing your job.
I've literally been calling that out even just from the health of the fire service in
the moment and the recruitment crisis.
I mean, if you're not stepping up and advocating for the health of your people, but you're
collecting a chief salary, there's something wrong with that.
Correct.
And that was one thing I loved at being a hell attack and being a jumper and even sorry
is you got to PT.
You got to...
I don't care if you got to bust out 20 pushups in the bathroom, some chair pushups, do some
squats on the toilet seat.
I don't care.
Do something.
Do some paces, do a couple lunges.
It's like, you got to be in shape when we're all going to get old at some point.
There's guys still in their 80s that can do some pushups.
I've seen it.
I've had that experience, it's like, wow, that guy is in better shape than me right
now.
So, right, it's that trillion dollar, million dollar question.
It's like, how do we motivate people when things bad go happen and we have the answers
to fix it?
But most people don't want to fix it.
But it affects the people that want to.
Yeah.
I hate it when people say we don't have the answers.
I heard that recently.
And it's like, but I know the answers and I'm by far not an SME.
I've never rose above the rank of firefighter.
So I've always flipped it around.
Well, if I can find the answers as a dumb ass firefighter, why the fuck haven't you
already?
Whether it's a union or chiefs or whatever.
When we've talked in the past and then Ben Strahan and Rex and some of these other Wildland
brothers that I've had on the show, there seems to be a reoccurring theme.
The resistance to prescribe burns from communities also seems to hamper the suppression of some
of these fires.
Is this still an issue now?
It is.
So, right, it's all about the education.
This is the first time we had a good talk on that PCAST meeting.
You got folks, right, whether they're, they got some lung issues or smoke, right, irritants.
I get it.
But we have companies like now called burn bot.
They got a burn chamber for one hour fuels.
They can come in and burn all year round in places that have one hour fuels.
One hour fuels is a quarter inch and under, right, light fuels, twigs, grass, the latter
fuels that start the big fires, right, get into the bigger 10 hour fuels, which are brush
and so on.
And then timber, hundred hour fuels and so on.
The burn bot comes in, they have mastication tools, they got robotics.
They can come in a small crew.
They don't need hot shot crews.
They don't need hand crews.
They come in themselves and they can do a lot of, how would you say, fuel mitigation
in a very short amount of time.
I've been following them for years.
I have briefed everyone on.
They work like they're operational.
People can Google them.
Listeners go look at burn bot, watch the, one of the PhDs.
I believe his name is Phil.
I should know his by heart.
I'm embarrassed.
I should know his first name.
But he talks about the burn chamber.
Phil, I'm sorry if your name's not Phil, sorry.
It is now.
So it's amazing to see them grow from their prototype.
We had a fire summit here in San Bernardino a couple years ago and in less than a year
they were operational.
And I remember I picked, I hand selected some of the best fire folks in the Southern California
area.
Actually one guy that trained me when I was 17.
He didn't recognize me, but I told him it's your fault.
Why are you here?
And a lot of my buddies were coming over and asking me, Jason, is this real?
This looks like a red wider wagon with a fan and is this another concept crazy idea?
I said, nope.
And then less than a year they did a video on YouTube with, they had a contract with
the Forest Service for multiple large acres.
And they're like, they're operational.
I said, yeah, of course they are.
You think I'm going to bite someone that's just complete concept?
So there's that tool.
That's just part of the solution.
So you have a place that's very sensitive on smoke.
The burn bot would come in if it meets the parameters of that light fuels.
Let's say it doesn't.
Let's say, hey, we can't, the fuels are too big for the burn bot.
Okay, we'll bring in some of the masticators.
The masticators will come in and chew up all that 10 hour fuels, whatnot, and leave it
looks like a dozer.
I remember I had a picture, my buddy was out doing some of the work and I said, did you
have a doe?
You had a cat.
He's like, no, no.
It was the little masticator down to dirt.
So there is solutions right now and what they're trying to do, I know in the past they were
trying to treat a million acres a year, which is a huge number.
I know the owners, the PhDs, the folks there, they do not say something.
They have not done the homework and I've watched them succeed and execute.
And that's what's good about them.
They execute, they're doing it, they're kicking butt, but they're just one small piece.
If I had my Willy Wonka machine and made, let's just say I made a thousand of them,
you wouldn't have Santa Ana issues anymore because all those corridors would be treated
for the brush side.
We couldn't fix the home side until we get sprinkler kits and mitigate the homes.
But the fuel side of the brush would be mitigated with that type of work, mastication, fire
goats, hand power.
Well, what seems to be weird as well as if you think about it, a little discomfort.
And again, I lived in California for a few years.
Burbank was burning several times when I lived there and that wasn't a prescribed burn.
But a few days of inconvenience is nothing compared to your entire neighborhood being
raised to the ground after just before the insurance companies have pulled the plug on
any coverage for you.
So even, I mean, like you're talking about the goats and the masticators and the burn
bots sound amazing, but even just putting your foot down as a, whether it's the forest
service, whichever just jurisdiction that is and saying, look, a little discomfort versus
losing your home, that there's no conversation here.
Like we have to do this.
Otherwise it will be so dangerous.
We might lose the city of paradise, for example.
So that's where I feel like, you know, again, you're talking about earning your, your position.
You just have to be courageous and say, look, I get it.
Ideally, you'd have clear air every single day, but this is the price of doing business.
You chose to live in this part of the state.
We have to mitigate this fuel or you may lose your home.
Correct.
And as my old command officer, he should say a little bit of smoke now or a lot later.
There might be some French in there, a little bit of F in smoke now or a lot later.
And it's absolutely right.
So let's just take, let's say take LA County, right?
That's a Santa Ana corridor, orange counties, Santa Ana corridor.
Some of that's not fed land, but you can collaborate, right?
Bring the professionals in, but now you don't even need to do that.
You can contact folks like burn bot.
You can contact some of these fire coach.
You can contact some of the CCC that come in and ship and fire wise.
You don't even need to contact the fire service.
That's the most interesting part, which no one's tapping into.
Like the chief of LA, right?
I'll say it.
The chief of LA County.
I don't know her.
I'd love to see her background.
She should be more prepared.
You live in that area.
I don't care if you're right, LA City, whether you want to be a structure firefighter, right?
You better have some wildland boots.
You better have be trained in cutting line for hours.
Not that you're going to do it because you're assigned to maybe a truck, but if you live
in that area, those citizens are relying on you to protect them out those high standards
and not saying those firefighters don't.
I have friends there.
I've trained some.
They work in that department, but the bummer part at the high brass, why are they not doing
more?
That is the question.
There's stuff I can't see, but if I was, let's just say me and you, right?
You're the chief.
I'm your division.
I'm your assistant chief.
I'm going to say, James, here's our corridor.
We have acres of high threat one hour fuels into 10 hour fuels in 100 hour fuels.
We've already mapped it out for you.
We can start treating some of these near the road because most of these fires start from
human beings by accident or by purpose, right?
You have cigarettes.
You have barbecues, weed eaters, someone trying to use a warming fire, arsonists.
Treat that first, right?
It's doable.
I could do that and then I'd give you my plan and you'd say, go for it.
Don't go for it.
Do you know who I am?
I'm the chief.
How dare you talk to me like that?
Right?
Exactly.
That's what could also happen in a fragile ego environment.
Not saying that's LA County, but I know personally, there are people that if you're not their
rank or above, they don't want to hear what you have to say.
Correct.
It has to, let me back up a little bit.
You'd have to be a pro chief.
You'd be saying, you'd say to me, Ramos, I want you to go out and do this for me and
come back with me and we're going to make this happen.
If I went out and did it my own and briefed you, I'm probably going to get some reprimand
some way somehow, right?
Because you're not going to like it.
And we've learned that in the fire service, right?
Chain of command, all these things.
And it's like, wait a second.
We took an oath, life and property, period.
There's nothing else.
But we only kind of do that?
It doesn't make sense to me.
And again, no one can take that away from me.
I got over 33 years.
I did 20 years active jumping out of helicopters and planes.
Can't take that away from me.
You can't take my quals away from me.
You don't have to like me.
You can't take that away from me.
And I've designed, I've done some pretty cool things.
Can't take it away from me.
So I have something to say about that, right?
So when I'm on a mission, it's like, hey, let's do this.
And I've been lucky to be chaperoned
and put under the wing of some of the best out there,
even in the jump program, to learn how to,
when I jump a lightning fire, that that fire's
out when I leave it.
It's 110% out.
And if it isn't, I'm going to lose, probably lose my job.
Because I failed.
And now I just started the huge forest fire
that burned homes, could possibly kill someone.
I take that very important.
Imagine now if I was a chief.
I wish I can give that shot of, how do you say,
of responsibility to fire chiefs around the nation.
Because some are great and some are lacking.
And the good part is you can fix yourself.
Go in the bathroom, throw some water in your face,
run in the door a couple of times,
kick yourself in the nuts.
I don't care what you do.
Like, you can change it.
That's the good part about it.
Like, you could go out there and say, you know,
I'm the chief, things are going to change.
And yes, some people can get pissed off.
I don't care.
I got these things on my brass here.
Come try to take them off of me.
You want to duke it out a little bit?
That's OK.
Let's get some Nerf bats.
Let's beat each other.
We'll take the Nerf bats.
We'll go in the back room and beat yourself together.
Or we'll play the old boxing game.
We'll do the thumbs or whatnot.
So yes, it's very interesting.
And I've had my run-ins with chiefs and captains.
And I respect them.
I apologize when I have to.
I will be saying, I'm sorry, sir, for being in line.
But this is life and property.
And this is why I did that.
This is why I disobeyed a direct order when
you told me to cancel your response and drive back.
But when I'm driving by my firefighter
and he's screaming for help, why I got on the radio
and told dispatch, squad 68, available on scene,
get out, help my firefighter, because he's
screaming for help, and then go back to the station
and the captain wants to write me up.
Write me up all day long, sir, I'm sorry,
for helping my firefighter that was screaming for help.
I am sorry.
How many push-ups do I have to do?
I will clean the bathrooms.
I am sorry.
I didn't get written up.
So those are the kind of things.
And it's such a fixable thing.
Absolutely.
Sorry for the rant.
No, no, no.
You're in a similar company.
Well, you touched on reservoirs.
So let's hit that.
Obviously, there's one side of the conversation
that's glaring, which if enough houses are burning
and enough engines on scene, a water supply
is going to be extremely challenged.
That can happen in a city setting as well.
I remember going on one massive fire that was like,
I think it was an entire block, if I remember rightly,
in Fullerton years ago.
And I know the supply was a challenge
for that particular fire.
What have you heard as far as, again, Monday morning
quarterbacking?
What needs to change so that we can increase
the likelihood of the firefighters having
water when they need it?
So I've heard a lot, right?
And I own a research company.
Again, you'll hear me.
You won't hear me say I think a lot.
I use the word I think when I'm with you.
I say, hey, man, James, I think I have room for more pizza.
I can eat that last piece of cake.
I think I can do that.
Because you've got to remember, when I say think,
everyone's at 50%.
I think that'll work.
I think we'll be OK.
So I've heard a lot of thinks.
If you're, again, I'm going to go back to this.
If you are a chief or the commander in charge, commander
in chief of a department in a Santa Ana corridor,
all your pre-plans, you better have water.
I want every battalion, every station.
I remember checking fire stations
when I was 17 years old because they would stick toys in them.
That's one of the jobs we did is, hey,
we had to go check this fire hydrant to see
if they stuck toys in there.
In your pre-plans, you're supposed
to be doing all these things.
If I was a chief in an area that I, in a Santa Ana corridor,
and had a dry reservoir, something's wrong.
And if you want to fix it, don't fix it during Santa Ana months.
Let's fix it when the Santanas are gone, maybe from May, April,
April to May, June.
That's a time to work on that thing.
Not during a Santa Ana.
Santanas come, as a kid, riding a skateboard
and flying power kites.
We knew every year, September, January, somewhere in there,
sometimes a little bit in February,
was the best kite flying to see Wizard of Oz stuff,
trees falling over, and storms and sand storms.
As a kid, you were like, yeah, storm, right?
Not fires, but sand storms and stuff.
So why were those?
That's my question, right?
If I was on a president's team, I would say, that can't happen.
And why did that happen?
Tell me why.
If you go back in time, and they had a type 1 team that
came in there to support them for this possible win event,
somewhere in that team operations, most likely,
they're going to be looking at the area.
One of those ops guys are going to say, or she,
how many reservoirs you got, and what's your water supply?
Days out before.
This is not rocket science.
This is standard ops.
So that puzzles me, right?
We have some people on YouTube flying days before.
They backlogged some stuff and showed the reservoir is dry.
I said, well, that's definitely not good.
If it was full, would they have been
able to stop the whole thing?
No, but they would have been able to probably do more.
If you don't have water, what are you going to use?
So there are some serious problems there.
Not only that, in these corridors,
you can have dip sites.
Dip sites are what I did as a helotack.
You could have areas with 2,500 gallon dip tanks, or even more,
pre-positioned out in areas.
We call it typical terrain, right?
I would say forest, but some of it might be county land.
They're sitting out there ready.
So helicopters can come and grab.
Engines can come and take.
They're all sensory located.
That is a huge problem.
Another big problem is there are egress and ingress, right?
Pre-plans.
When I was 17, being in a fire department,
that our battalion knew all the citizens that we protected,
when it had a storm, you couldn't go down that road.
You'd get stuck.
We made sure they knew.
That was part of the fire department
to tell people, hey, if there's a fire here, floods,
this is how you get out.
People would come to the fire station.
The bays would be open.
They would ask us questions.
We'd educate them.
So back to the water there, that just blows my mind.
I can't even, I'm not going to sit there and quarterback,
sit here from a seat and say, you know this, this, and this.
But if you live in a corridor, you should be ready.
So all those people listening right now,
if you're in a corridor, Orange County, San Diego,
Malibu area, Laguna, remember, fuel, heat, and auction
is the fire triangle.
If you don't have something to break that triangle,
that's what's supposed to happen.
It's going to burn until it can't burn anymore.
Were there sprinkler systems?
Because obviously, there was quite a lot of money
in some of these neighborhoods that were raised.
Were there sprinkler systems set up there
that didn't have the capacity to turn on again because
of the water shortage?
So I know for a fact, there was some,
there were companies I know had some of the clients,
their homes.
Again, this is hard to say, right?
Oh, my home was saved.
And then I see pictures like, no, it
could have been saved without the sprinklers on.
So it depends.
If again, imagine the amount of fires.
You hear this on the news, right?
If we all turn on our hose at one time,
you're going to have drops coming out of it.
So these areas, like right now, the counties
that didn't get burned that live in Santa Ana quarters,
they should be going out doing mock scenarios.
I want every battalion to turn on a hydrant at this time
for so many minutes.
Like right now, they can be doing something.
I want all the homeowners to turn on their sprinklers
at this time, right?
I'm sure there's going to be some environmental.
Oh, no, we can't do that.
We can't.
How are you going to fix the problem if you can't see what
the issues is?
So there was some homes.
We did have, there was an interview
of an older gentleman that did save his home estate.
And around his homes were burned and his were saved.
You've got to remember, some of these homes,
depending on the direct flame impingement and the wind
and the relative humidities of that area,
some can be really saved and some cannot.
If we have Forty-Maur winds and the flames are horizontal,
blowing against a home, at some point,
that's going to catch fire.
But the gentleman was interesting with his old hose.
He dragged it around and was putting out little spot fires.
And there was a reporter that kind of went viral.
It's the one where all the embers,
he's out there in the battle and he's
getting all these praise.
If I knew him, he would definitely
would not get a Christmas present from me
because he's filming one little fire.
It's a spot fire.
He says, I can't do anything.
I can't do anything.
And he runs somewhere else.
I can put that out with my foot.
And that area was going to start that house possibly on fire.
It's like you can pee on that.
So it's this education.
But if every homeowner in those areas
were educated on basic sprinkler kits or wedding agents
that they can apply with a spray paint gun,
whether they rent one or own one already,
or an ace sprayer that stays on the home,
it's non-caustic, non-hazardous, that works too.
It works.
There's been testing.
It's proven solution.
CAL FIRE has tested that.
You can watch on YouTube of homes treated
with fire resistant or wedding agents and ones without.
What about shelter in place?
I think it was Rex Strickland that talked about this.
If you look at what happened in Paradise Fire,
I had Beth Bowersox, who was a dispatcher from that fire.
So really heartbreaking, unique perspective that she had.
And her home was destroyed in that whole thing.
But she was a Paradise resident.
So all her neighbors were dying on the end of the phone.
And it was actually a building that
was on a concrete pad that saved a lot of people
that were being led by one of the police officers.
And they all survived.
There was a school bus full of kids and teachers
that were in there.
And so Rex's concept was actually
communities having a specific shelter in place.
Like in Florida here with hurricanes,
a lot of the high schools become the shelter for people.
What's your perspective on that?
We know how narrow these lanes are.
And we saw how they got jammed up immediately.
In high rise fires, for example, we
use that as long as it's obviously not a 9-11 or Grenfell
situation.
So talk to me about that concept.
Correct.
And I love it.
And I'm always an advocate for these small communities that
have their own fire departments, their own police departments,
their own, right?
If you have able of fighting age, I call it,
you could have a block that could be your task force.
Those folks can shelter in place and take care of everything.
They've got the right fire hose, garden hose
that's professionally used.
They can have wetting agents.
If there's no water, they can still treat without water.
They can take care of the elderly, the ones that can't.
It can be done.
It's been done.
Have the egress to know when to leave.
Say, hey, folks, here's our pre-plans.
Like, I have it up where I live.
If we can't go here, we go there.
Communities can do that because the fire departments
and the police departments, when they're that task saturated
on that large of an event, there's
only so much they can do.
So that shelter in place and holding your own ground,
if you're trained and have the tools, you can do it.
And then you have that fallback.
It's OK, guys.
We did what we did.
Now we have to leave.
But we know which way to go.
We have some simple stuff, apps on your phone, cameras,
wetting agents.
And it's not that difficult. I've
done this multiple times with friends, their communities,
their neighborhoods, their quarter sacks, their areas.
They do it.
And then when fires happen or emergencies,
they're rocking and rolling.
Like, it works.
The hard part is who to teach them, right?
You go on some of these government sites.
It's not there.
So I concur with that, how do you say, that mode of tactics.
I know many communities that know me,
become friends with me.
They do that.
They know where their ins and outs.
They have mitigated the fuel.
They know their neighbors' medications.
They know what vehicles they have.
They're like, hey, I got a spinner fan.
I could fit eight people.
And they're like, hey, yeah, I got my swimming pool.
And I also have two 55-gallon drums of water
in the back for earthquake.
So everyone's like, oh, yeah, and I got a bunch of cans
of peaches and asparagus in cans.
I mean, it can be done.
It is being done in some communities.
Some of Colorado, I did some stuff.
My book came out.
They were some of the most progressive fire prep emergency
because they were near dams.
They had wildfire issues.
And the whole community, everyone
was like their own fire department, police department.
Now, again, not going and grabbing robbers.
But if they seen something bad, they helped out.
I hope that answered that question.
Yeah, no, and I think it really alludes to something
that we need to refine in this country, which is community.
I think it's all within us.
Don't get me wrong.
But with the division that we've seen,
certainly over the last four plus years,
with COVID and beyond, that's an enemy
to responding to these disasters,
whether it's the poor people in North Carolina,
whether it's the fire-affected towns and areas in California.
If you've pre-planned and you're communicating
with your community, you're watching over each other.
And now with this technology today,
you've got apps that you said to see, OK, Mrs. Jones has just
hit the emergency button on the app.
Let's go get her.
Now you've just amplified the response.
It's like the Green Berets.
The Green Berets don't go and kick indoors, even when they
can.
They go train a militia.
And then the militia go kick indoors,
maybe with one of the Green Berets can oversee in it.
And it's the same thing with this.
I think whatever our target hazards are,
whether you're in the tornado corridors or the hurricanes
here, having that communication with the community
and having that preparedness so that when it happens,
you're not all just running around
like with your heads cut off.
And now you're screaming for first responders
after maybe you voted against them getting pay
raises and more staffing.
And it's too late then.
Whereas if you do it before, maybe then
that would help integrate in the first responder community
and people would learn a lot more about what we do,
how prepared we are, and what we need to be even more prepared.
So I think it's a great idea to really kind of spearhead
that community response element so that now if it happens,
they've already got a plan as well.
They're working alongside us.
Correct.
And here's the most interesting part of that too.
So every fire station has a prevention, right?
Whether it's a small department back somewhere
that he's the chief, the captain, the engineer,
the prevention, the mayor, right?
Or you have a department that has that.
So all the listeners, they can go to their fire station
right now and say, can you come to our neighborhood
and show us, teach us, right?
And if that prevention's not doing it, give me a call.
Give me a call.
I'll make a call, and we'll make it happen.
So we have communities that we love our country,
or we love our neighborhoods, we love our brothers,
we love our sisters.
It's like, OK, take that to the next level, right?
I mean, arm yourself.
Not arm yourself physically, right,
with the education, the power.
If you have fires in your areas, be on the lookout.
Warn your next door neighbor to say, hey, today's
probably not the best day to cook those hamburgers,
because the RH is at 2, and if you fart,
you might make a fire, Tom, right?
It's like, why are we not doing that?
You can come up with cool shirts.
You could be your own little fire brigade.
It's totally doable.
Like, there's no losses you cannot do.
I'm not telling people to go out and do all this crazy stuff.
We're saying basic, right?
We watch our kids come home.
We protect them.
We watch our dogs do the same thing with your home.
Protect your home.
You can't do that.
Like, a lot of people say, I'll just let it burn.
The insurance will take care of it.
It's like.
Not anymore, it won't.
They'll pull in the plug.
Yeah, that's not the answer.
Take care of your property.
You do everything else.
You're out there trimming your roses,
and your lawn's perfect, and your backyard's perfect.
Or let's say it's not perfect.
It can be perfect, right?
You can go up there and learn these things.
So there's no excuse to not know how
to do that in your neighborhood.
There's no excuse.
And I wish the Santa Ana corridors,
I wish it was almost, you can't make it mandatory,
but I wish it was where, if you wanted to live
in these areas, you had your task force neighborhood
number five, right?
You could have your whole little captain chief there,
and you can have little fire engines, little sirens,
or whatever.
Take care.
But be ready when the fire comes, and you can help out.
We have media guys going there, getting their likes.
They're in there, and they're battling,
they're filming, which is great.
It's like, how about you guys maybe help out a little bit?
Still get the footage.
It can be awesome.
It could be better footage.
If you put that fire out, you'd have more likes.
But instead, you said, I can't do anything.
So it's, yeah, don't get me started on that.
But anyways, it can be done.
And I've been trying to do that since my book came out.
And we've had some committees doing it.
They got some people buy their own, an old fire engine,
an old slip-on, called a slip-on.
They put it on their trucks.
Got 100 gallons, 150 gallons.
They have wedding agents.
They have pumps that they put in the creek
that all the neighbors can come and use the fire kit
if they need to.
How cool is that?
And then when the foresters comes in,
it's like, oh, man, that whole section up there, they're good.
They can move on to the next section
because they're taking care of their own land.
What you said about the journalists reminds me,
and it was funny, I was in Anaheim
when I saw this in station six in the kitchen.
Geraldo, I'll never forget this, middle of Katrina,
he's there under this overpass.
And he's like, man, I was here three days ago
and the same families are here.
And I just remember looking at him going,
well, then why the fuck didn't you take him with you?
Right?
You know what I mean?
This is exactly what you were just saying.
You went there, filmed these people,
and then you fucking left.
And then you have the audacity to come back
and say, why haven't these people been rescued?
That is the fucking problem right there.
Yeah, it is.
You know, my dad's gone now,
but he would have some comment to like,
he would say, son, pull your head out of your ass.
Right?
It's like, I just couldn't believe it
when I see stuff like that.
And you're like, make a difference.
Like, I don't care if you're a journalist.
I don't care if you're this.
Do something.
You see an elderly person on the floor hurt?
When do you wanna pass up an opportunity
to be Superman or Batman or Spider-Man?
Again, some people are not able to, but you can help.
You can help.
Not everyone's tuned that way,
but everyone growing up in the kid, right?
Think back when everyone was your kid, right?
Everyone's a superhero, right?
I don't remember that many kids saying,
I don't wanna be a superhero.
So all of us, at least all people around my circle,
it's like, oh yeah, man, like this guy, it was this guy.
We all started that within us.
Why are we not doing it?
It doesn't matter how old you get.
Make a difference.
So it's sad to see the fire, to see the mayor speak,
to see the chief across the table, right?
When you have your core people, you're the mayor,
you have your high brass next to you
within touching distance.
You help me with the question, I help you.
I have my team with me.
My team is not sitting over there across the table,
looking down at their knees or looking at the ground.
I can tell right now you guys are screwed up.
I don't wanna go to a mission with you.
But the good thing again, you can fix it.
Course it's gonna cause some waves.
Course you're gonna be hit.
When you wear those collar brass,
I'm sorry, you're getting paid to get hit.
You're getting paid to get kicked.
You're getting paid to all these things.
And if you don't like it, as my old supervisor says,
McDonald's would love to have you.
McDonald's is always looking for some,
the best of the best, right?
I've met some great McDonald's folks that worked there
and now they're doing great things.
They took pride in to give you the best fries, right?
Not the healthiest, right?
Or to make your milkshake or your McNuggets,
whatever it may be, right?
It's just, it's this, we've lost this peace.
And again, the answer that it can be fixed,
but we've lost some mentors, right?
I mean, it's like bring back Superman, bring back Spider-Man,
bring back the Fonz, right?
Things that were mentors that had good values
and they did something.
And we're getting some of those, the Sean Ryan Show,
the work that you do, right?
It's amazing.
It's like, where are these folks?
Stand up, right?
Shine that sword.
Shine your tennis shoes.
I mean, be any superhero that you want, right?
Seattle used to have a superhero,
I can't remember his name, it'll come to me.
He used to walk the streets of Seattle and look for crime.
I talked to him, right?
More than once.
And the guy was a little bit right,
but he was out there protecting people.
And he wore a mask.
It's like, awesome, man.
So.
Yeah, we can go on for hours about that.
Well, I wanna hit one more area, then we'll wrap up.
Sure.
When, I think it was literally this morning or last night,
it's funny, because we were just about
to have this conversation.
I saw an article and then I Googled it
and this was actually a real thing,
that from the Trump administration,
there was a directive that any mention of climate change
had to be removed from, I think it was the USDA
and the Forest Service.
Every single person, and correct me if I'm wrong,
you included, that I know there's actually boots
on the ground, wildland firefighters said,
climate change has made a difference.
These fires are getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
Now, my perspective on this,
having lived in California, for example,
is we can see how polluted our airs, our oceans are anyway.
So it's not even a question.
We are damaging the planet with the way that we do business
with the pollution and all that stuff.
Perfect example, when COVID happened,
look at the change.
So there's a clear difference between business as usual
and when we actually take our emissions seriously.
So with that all being said, obviously that's my perspective,
but this directive was handed down.
What is your perception of climate change and these fires?
Because if the wildland community seems to think
this is an issue, that's another reason
why we should be looking for alternative ways
of reducing all the contributing factors
so that we can mitigate all these kind of symptoms
that we're seeing, including obviously making it far more
dangerous for our firefighters.
Correct.
So in my book, a good chapter, let's see here,
I should know this by heart, chapter 17, 18,
possibly 16 or even before,
we talk about a lot of things, right?
The planet Earth is a dynamic thing, right?
We've had ice ages, we've had this, we've had that.
Have we added some horrible things to it?
Yes.
Does that change?
Yes.
You can't argue that part.
And I've learned as I've done briefings at state capitals
and all these things and governors and president's team,
everyone has their own definition of something.
I like to be calibrated to mean red is red, it's not blue.
Black is black, white is white, pink is pink.
Where some folks will say red is, no, it's kind of yellow.
No, it's red.
And I understand what some of these folks say,
hey, we're freaking people out about climate change
and that course is changing.
Have we added horrible smog and all these things, right?
From our plastics and all these,
yeah, we've made a difference.
Some of it's not good.
We know that.
Two plus two is four, right?
I had a PhD say, well, Jason,
not if we're talking quantum physics.
And I said, okay, you're beyond me now.
You're missing the point.
Let's just stick on Spock.
Two plus two is four, no matter what galaxy you're at.
So yes, there's an issue there.
The issue on the fire stuff, and I had this with my book.
I was teeth to teeth fighting with my author
and all my team.
And it's like, the problem still is our fuel.
The climate change could make my one hour fuels
with the rain and the seeds that came in grow faster.
I grow too.
I'm a farmer, I can grow.
People say you can't transplant carrots.
I can transplant carrots and I've done it.
I do microgreens.
So I know how things grow.
I know the effects of RHs, water.
When you starve something, how it reacts,
how it becomes more flammable and fuel moistures.
I have all the gear I've designed with Kestrel.
I have a weather meter, right?
All these things, it's like, no,
there is a difference there.
So climate change depends on who you're talking to,
but yes, there's something happening.
It's always happening, but is it happening worse?
We're adding some things that are not good
and we won't know, but why keep adding some bad stuff
that's gonna make it worse, right?
And the sad part is when there's,
you do some of the research,
folks that live near certain parts of the country,
the waters, right?
And the melt off and all these things, it's happening.
Do we know if it's exactly this or that?
Some of them might come out and say, hey, no,
it was actually the Willy Wonka movie
because everyone made gobstoppers or jawbreakers
and that sugar actually caused this
and that's why you had all the fires.
I mean, I'm choking, but right?
You have all these PhDs and you listen to all these
very smart people and you can't argue.
So I'm out of the forest service now,
so I would kind of argue some of that
because things are changing, right?
I lived in Southern California
and the amount of smog back then to some of the stuff now,
that's from us, right?
That's not bears farting and coyotes farting
and deer farting.
We're putting that air, you're trying to tell me
that doesn't do something?
It does something to my lungs
because my lung capacity is not the same anymore, right?
And I was a kid, I had problems, I had to take, you know.
So I hope that didn't confuse the listeners
or answer the question, but to say something's not changing,
if you wanna call it a different word,
let's call it a different word, but something's happening.
Yeah, I think this is the thing is you wanna identify
all of the contributing factors
and if you just kind of brush one under the carpet,
like I said, the obesity epidemic brushed under the carpet
during COVID, still a massive problem.
Is it the only reason with COVID?
No, but is it a massive thing that needs to be addressed?
Yeah, sleep deprivation and firefighters, massive,
no one wants to talk about it.
Everyone's, oh, we can't do that,
we don't have the money, all this shit
and our firefighters are dying
and we have a national recruitment crisis.
So by suppressing one of these elements,
you're basically saying,
I actually don't wanna fix the problem.
Now, like you said, is that everything?
No, but if we can figure out,
like, I mean, just public transport,
some of these other things that it's not about,
every car being electric.
It's like why, I saw a great video a while ago
and they had dramatized what a street would look like
without the car.
So you had people and they were walking
and stopping in front of red lights
and then walking to the, you know what I mean?
And you realize how much space a single car takes.
You know, you look at the fricking vehicles
people drive these days for them and their one child
or whatever it is, and it looks like a fucking school bus.
So there are ways of still having the same quality of life,
but much better public transport or the hybrid vehicles,
whatever it is, we can make a better impact on this.
And I get it as well, India, China,
there are other countries that have to buy into this too.
But by suppressing the conversation, we fix nothing.
So-
Correct, and yeah, it sucks, man.
And like I said, if you wanna change a name,
but there is, I watch so many documentaries,
I love education every night before I go to bed,
I watch an educational piece.
I watch some funny stuff.
Every single night I fall asleep to something,
whether it's a PhD, a professor at a university,
some I fall asleep and don't wanna listen to again,
some I'm like, wow, this person is, I mean,
some of the folks Sean Ryan's been interviewing
are crazy, I mean, crazy good.
And the stuff you're interviewing is like, wow, right?
How cool to have a phone book of all those people
I can call or you could call.
Instead of I gotta go to an agent
or I gotta get ahold of this CAA guy
to talk to Fred, to Diana, to give him a call,
to text him so I can call him or her.
It's like, come on, share your mojo, share it all.
Share it all.
I gotta agree with you on the climate change.
It's a crazy, again, it's always changing,
but again, we're not adding,
we're not making the problem better.
Put it that way.
We're not making it better.
If people wanna argue about that,
it's like, hey, forget climate change, all that.
We're not making it better.
See all that brown stuff over there
that's supposed to look, supposed to be clear
and it looks nasty, that's from us, right?
Let's fix it.
So yeah, that's a crazy topic.
And I've been, especially working for the Forest Service
and hearing all these things
and seeing on it and being an employee.
Right?
It's like, huh, no, something's happening.
It's not funny.
I'm laughing as a, not laughing at it,
laughing that it's real.
Absolutely.
All right, well then you mentioned the book.
Your book is Smokejumper.
Where can people find that?
And then also, where can they reach out to you
or learn more about some of the innovative projects
that you're a part of?
So Amazon's a good place.
Audible's great.
The voice who played me, it's date, how old I am,
was Ned Vaughn.
He was in the movie for The Red October.
So he was one of the sound techs
listening for Sean Connery's submarine.
So it was pretty cool to have him.
I got to pick him.
I liked his voice and he was an ex-wind surfer kind of thing.
So Amazon or smokejumperbook.com,
you can just Google it and you'll find it.
I am easy to get a hold of, right?
You get on there, you'll find my number.
If you crank call me, I'll crank call you back.
I love it when people call me and say,
Mr. Ramos, your taxes, you're gonna get arrested.
You gotta pay us money now.
I said, really?
Tell you what, come on over.
I'll give you a check right now.
So again, that's my comedy.
Some days I pick up these calls and the spam calls.
It's bummer now because there are more robots now.
I liked it when they were real people, the spam calls.
So again, my number's out there.
You can read my book.
I work with a lot of companies out there.
I'm still, I've designed some better
fire gear for firefighters.
That's a passion of mine.
No, I don't get a lot of money for this stuff, right?
I'm not a millionaire.
I still work, I'm retired, but I'm not retired from work.
I still work my butt off.
Some of the stuff I get pennies for.
Some of the stuff I don't get money for.
Some of the stuff I've designed, I never had a contract.
I never had anything.
And they're still on the shelf and I say, ugh.
And my advisors or lawyers say,
Jason, you can't do that anymore.
I say, well, I'm the owner.
I can do what I want.
They're like, well, yeah, but.
So yeah, smokejumpbook.com, Amazon.
And I tell folks, just hear me out.
You don't have to believe everything I say,
but I hope you enjoy the book.
It's for all first responders.
It's not just about smoke jumping.
I started off as a volunteer.
My heart is still as a volunteer firefighter.
So it's for everyone, for the wives.
And it's pretty cool in the years past
to have husbands and wives come over and say,
thank you, Jason.
Now I know what my husband does
because he doesn't talk about it, right?
And some do talk about it.
So that was pretty cool.
The guys whispered in my ear, Jason, good book,
because they don't want to hear someone else, right,
hearing that he's giving me a thumbs up.
And you find out who your friends are
when I wrote the book.
My commanding officer stood by my side.
And just a few more.
Everyone else, they're not my bros, right?
That's one thing I don't, I hate, you know,
oh, you're my bro.
I was like, yeah.
I don't do high fives, I do low fives.
So yeah, and I hope people read the book
and please share it.
And you can make a difference.
You can design something if you have an idea.
I've designed multiple things
with some of the biggest companies on planet Earth.
I've helped do it.
You don't need a degree in engineering or a PhD.
I got three degrees, but they're just in passion.
So it's a little riddle if anyone could figure that out.
But I got three degrees.
So I got to do a TEDx talk, right, live in New York,
which I've quite a bit off on that one,
but hard to do verbatim with no teleprompter
in front of a live audience.
And if you screw up, you don't get to be on YouTube.
So it's like a little bit of pressure, right?
A little bit.
Well, I wanna thank you so much.
If people were listening,
if you haven't listened to episode 219,
you know, we lead you through your career.
So another great, great conversation.
But this was just so pertinent.
I'm gonna push this out almost straight away
because I think now as these fires are dying down,
as the media is packing up
and getting ready to cover some other disaster,
you know, this is the perfect time
to address some of these issues
and to address the first responder health.
These firefighters that were hailed as heroes,
let's actually get them a working environment that's healthy.
So I wanna thank you so much
for being so generous with your time again
and coming back onto the Behind the Shield podcast.
Thank you so much, James.
It's been great to have you, you know, in my circle.
You're a friend, you've always answered the phone with me.
You're great to talk to you.
You have compassion, you listen.
And it's just, right, if I can just clone folks like you,
all the people who would be,
not even clone that, we can make folks, right?
Get mentors.
All the listeners out there, that's how I started.
You'll hear it in the first episode.
I call people, I meet people and become my mentors.
They're friends of mine to today.
Some of the biggest CEOs now are my mentors.
And they're friends.
It's like, how cool is that?
So thank you, it's an honor.
Thank you, you're the best.