This episode is sponsored by Transcend, a veteran
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And if you want to hear more about Transcend
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founder, Ernie Colling. or go to transcendcompany
.com. Welcome to the Pioneer Shield Podcast.
As always, my name is James Gearing, and this
week it is my absolute honor to welcome on the
show Assistant Chief of West Metro Fire Rescue
and Researcher, Mike Binney. Now, as many of
you would have heard me talk about, there is
very little research when it comes to sleep deprivation
and shift work in the fire service specifically.
And Mike has made it his mission to be one of
those voices within our profession. So we discuss
a host of topics from his journey into the fire
service, the chronic and acute impact of sleep
deprivation, shift start times, why there is
a lack of research in this area. studying the
progressive 2472 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 ,100 episodes now. So all I ask in
return is that you help share these incredible
men and women's stories so I can get them to
every single person on planet Earth who needs
to hear them. So that being said, I introduce
to you Mike Binney. Enjoy. Well, Mike, I want
to start by saying thank you so, so much for
taking the time and coming on the Behind the
Shield podcast today. Absolutely. I'm happy to
be here. So where on planet Earth are you finding
you this afternoon? So I am in Littleton, Colorado,
just south of Denver, on the southwest side of
Denver. Yeah, that's where I'm at. Let's start
at the very beginning of your story then. So
tell me where you were born and tell me a little
bit about your family dynamic, what your parents
did, how many siblings. So I was born in Portland,
Oregon. We moved to the Denver metro area when
I was six months old. We have been here ever
since. My dad moved here for grad school from
New Zealand. We've been a couple of generations
deep on the North Island. of New Zealand. Everybody
else on my dad's side still lives down in Tauranga
and Auckland and a couple people up in Wanaka,
which is very cool. someday uh get the family
back down there my mom on the other side of the
world is from new jersey two very different places
to be from um and so my mom was from a little
town on the south end of the jersey shore called
cape may um and i grew up going there pretty
much every summer we'd go there and uh my red
hair would get burned um and i'd spend a lot
of time in the shade after about the first week
um i've got a little brother but he's uh bigger
than me He is a super smart data nerd and works
in the defense sector doing computer stuff. And
he just refers to people as the client. So that's
about all we get to know about his job. But he's
very smart and very cool. He's four years younger
than me. So it was nice to beat up on him while
I could. But now that's definitely not the case.
I absolutely love New Zealand. When I was traveling
around the world, I spent... I think it was two
weeks started in Auckland and just worked our
way south. And the change in topography and geography
in those two small islands is mind -blowing.
We didn't go to the beach, but it was beach weather
and we were on North Island and then we finished
snowboarding in Queenstown. So absolutely stunning
place to go. Yeah, we would do Christmas down
there every couple of years. And one of my earliest
memories is sleeping in one of those like BMW
conversion vans while everybody was out windsurfing
in the Mount Maunganui area. And like, I will
always remember the smell. And like when you
wake up, like the face, your face sticking to
like a fake plastic seat. I think that's one
of the things I remember most about going there
when I was little. But yeah, it's beautiful country,
super cool people. And yeah, like I said, it
would be fun to get my kids down there to check
it all out once they can tolerate more than a
four hour airplane ride. Yeah, it's a bit of
a hike. That's for sure. All right. Well, then
when you were at the school age, what were you
doing and playing as far as sports and exercise?
Where I grew up, it was pretty much all three
season athletes. You don't really see that as
much anymore. So we would do, you know, baseball
in the spring. We'd always have something going
on in basketball in the fall. Football, played
that all through middle school and was really
not good at it. I was just awful. It was like,
all right, let's put this guy in a place where
he's not going to do any good or any harm. So
in high school, I played golf pretty good at
that. Ran cross country, did basketball until
everybody else got way better than me, but always
ran track and tried to stay active. And that
was, you know, that was the high school world.
It was funny. We were our school was new and
we were the first group to go through from freshman.
to seniors. So they immediately put us in the
most competitive conference, which in the Denver
Metro area was 5A. And I remember, man, we're
a bunch of guys who are 140 pounds out there
playing football or basketball events against
grown men. So we had, you know, everybody lettered
for everything, but you were really not good.
So that was definitely one of the more humbling
phases in my life when we were, you know, playing
some of the big teams. Did you carry on playing
sport and exercising after high school? Did that
carry on after that exposure to sport? Well,
if you count club dodgeball in college, very
much then, yes. We played Twilight Golf. In in
college as well. And then, you know, all the
organized kind of flag football and stuff that
was associated with some of those more carefree
times in life. So did that. And then afterwards,
again, once I joined the fire department, it
was all all, you know, fitness and sports. And
me and one of my buddies just kind of did an
off the couch marathon. in las vegas uh and that
was again another humbling event i think i'm
starting to see a trend in some of this stuff
but then i was kind of hooked i've run boston
um i ran berlin a couple years ago and it was
just great it's so much fun it's nice to do you
know destination races and things like that because
you can prioritize them in your life and um you
know it's it's just really cool to get to be
part of a running community but uh and to kind
of do those things so yeah Yep, still stayed
very involved. Now pickleball is the hotness
in the station, so we do a lot of pickleball.
I probably shouldn't say that. No, I think it's
great. I've literally seen pickleball as tennis
for everyone else. And what I mean by that, if
you're really good at tennis, it's a fun sport.
But for everyone else, it's serve, okay, go get
the ball. Serve, go get the ball. Serve, return,
go get the ball. And then it inevitably turns
into... it inevitably turns into home run derby
and then everybody goes home exactly exactly
so but what i asked about that is is a lot of
people that didn't excel in a particular sport
never got that burnout and it's very apparent
now the more conversations i've had you know
physically and mentally some of these kids that
were really really you know squeezed as far as
um uh performance in their sport in school and
college a lot of time there were injuries and
burnout and then there was a big drop off but
whether it's a country where sport was kept as
play or whether it was just crap kids like i
was that never got to that high level i think
that you avoided that and that therefore carried
on to maintaining your love of sport Well, and
I think also like if you're not very good at
something, your only thing that you have is continued
grit. And I think when you look at endurance
sport, like really all you have to do is not
stop. You don't have to be great. You don't have
to do anything. You just have to not give up.
So I feel like that's maybe why I was better
at those things than, you know, than any of the
high contact sports. So what about career aspirations
as you're going through the high school age?
Was it already the fire service or was there
something else? No, I had no idea. I mean, it's
I left for college here in the Denver metro area.
It seems like, you know, half the kids went up
to Boulder. The other half went up to Fort Collins
to CSU. Bless their hearts. They'll never be
as cool as the kids who went to Boulder. And
then the really smart kids went to the School
of Mines and then everybody ends up working for
those guys. So it was I had no idea what I wanted
to do. And it was kind of like the natural progression
was up. You're going to go to college and then
you'll figure it out on the fly there. So I went
up to Boulder and did my undergrad there. I was
so good at going to college. and not going to
school that I got to do my first year twice.
I almost was not invited back. And then near
the end, I kind of realized that I was going
down the road of being on the Van Wilder plan.
So I said, man, I got to get out of here. So
I went into my advisor's office and said, what
am I the closest to graduating? One of the things
that I thought was so cool about college was
getting to take classes that you would have otherwise
never, you know, even now as a grownup. wouldn't
pay for some of those classes. But I got to take
humanities classes and classics classes and the
different economics classes. I really dabbled
and celebrated the entire liberal arts catalog.
And I think not only does that make you good
at bar trivia, but I think it also makes you
a more well -rounded kind of thinker and critical
thinker once you hit the real world. So, yeah,
I did that. I was one of the first like kind
of the OG groups to go through the new neuroscience
program up in Boulder under Dr. Jerry Rudy before
it was like even a real thing. It was kind of
just a couple of classes that you could take
under the molecular bio or the psych umbrella.
And that was, you know, fascinating talking about
how. neurodevelopment and plasticity and all
these kind of early on theories, this was kind
of the first time that those were made available
to undergrads, you know, so that was really cool.
But yeah, that was kind of my original thing.
And then even near the end of college, I had
no idea what I wanted to do. I mean, it was kind
of like, it was like 2007. So there was like
just about going into the financial crisis. There
were no, you know, most of my friends who were
graduating just kept going to school. They went
back in, kept, you know, kind of accumulating
more student debt. I had no idea what I wanted
to do, but there weren't a lot of other jobs
out there. uh my girlfriend at the time now she's
my wife for Oh, I'm on the hot seat here. I think
we're 13 years now. But we dated for a long time,
bought a house first and all that. But her dad
was an engineer at the Denver Fire Department.
And like I said, I was getting close to the end
of college and I was like, I have no idea what
the hell I want to be when I grow up. So I did
a ride along with them and I was hooked, man.
That was so much fun driving through town in
a fire truck. And it felt like kind of that going
back to that team mentality. you know you had
everybody talking crap to each other having a
great time cooking in the kitchen but we had
that you know i saw that camaraderie and that
was the first time that i had seen that since
you know high school sports or you know again
club dodgeball um things like that so i was like
man this is a sweet job i think i'd really like
to do this and that's kind of how it all started
Going back to what you said about trying different
classes, there's a story about Steve Jobs who
went to college but didn't actually take a major.
He just started taking some classes and one of
them was calligraphy. And then years later, Apple
becomes the first manufacturer that creates fonts
on a computer. So you never know how those are
going to apply. I took a speech class. Never
had any idea that one day I'd be doing a podcast.
So, you know, sometimes when you're interested
in something, it is worth taking those classes.
Well, I think it's just such a great time in
your life where you have a little bit of flexibility
to explore and learn different things and try
different stuff that you, you know, if you were
in a regimented cohort group or something like
that, you wouldn't have those opportunities to
kind of dabble. I completely agree with you.
So what was your on -ramp experience, even though
you had that? You said it was an uncle that was
in Denver? Is that what you said? Well, now father
-in -law. Okay, that's right. I'm sorry. You
didn't have that, obviously, exposure growing
up then. So what was your kind of front door
on -ramp experience as far as entering the profession?
Well, I just Googled and ended up taking kind
of a consortium. uh test at the same time as
applying specifically to west metro in the denver
metro area we had a consortium test denver had
its own test and then a bunch of departments
went through and had one big process together
and then west metro itself had its own process
so i went to emt school and drove uh that sorry
that first summer after college and drove a wheelchair
car and just crushed it drove it all over town
you know listening to music with the windows
down driving old people to their different appointments
um you know that was kind of you you go into
emt school and you're like all right i'm gonna
do something super cool and then you're like
in wheelchair van um so i did that for a while
while i was testing which is great because it
gave me time to you know think about things read
books understand look things up on the original
browser on the Motorola Razr, trying to look
at how to do that stuff. So that was kind of
the first round of becoming enthusiastic. And
it's so hard when you're trying to get on. That's
something that I keep reminding myself of. Once
you're blessed with the opportunity to do this
job, I think it's incumbent upon you to try and
help others achieve their goals. And I just remember,
you know, some of the people that helped me during
the testing process, specifically, you know,
like Ben Schultz, who works down in in Palm Beach
City now. And Brian Brush, who's, you know, this
world famous guy, like they were both guys who
took time out of their lives to help me articulate
my thoughts and get ready kind of for the oral
board process. So I was lucky enough to get hired
with West Metro on the first round. that I tried
with them. And then it was kind of pedal to the
metal after that. What was the environment like
as far as competition to get hired in that period
that you were coming in? Well, and this is kind
of like my overall thought about the cyclical
nature of the public sector. hiring and specifically
like like our jobs like it was going into the
financial crisis we had i think over like a thousand
people applied and our academy had 13 we ended
with 12. so it really was you know the it was
highly competitive and i remember you know during
the physical ability test ours wasn't like cpat
where it was just pass fail it was balls out
and you know, there were people puking at the
end, like they had an ambulance stage there.
It was, if you were going to get a hundred points
on that test as part of your, you know, your
overall score, you were putting the work in and
you were going to need some time laying in the
parking lot before you felt safe to drive home.
So yeah, it was very competitive. Every step
you're like, Oh, I just want to get that email.
Just want to get that email. And even I always
remember this is a funny one is I remember on
the written test, we took it in a big high school
and they had multiple waves of people taking
the test. You go in and you sit at, you know,
these round lunch tables from the high school
and you get your Scantron and then you go stand
in line with everybody. And they have like the
Scantron of shame and people are putting it in
and it's going. And they don't get the, you know,
the golden ticket to the next round. And you're
like, oh, please just let the Scantron be quiet.
But those are things, you know, so many places
do like online testing now. You know, you don't
get the joy of, you know, the peaks and valleys
of going through it as a process, as a group
of people and the Scantron. I don't think anybody
ever forgets that Scantron noise. I did the written
test for Anaheim and this was the actual written
one. It was in the Anaheim Convention Center
and there were a thousand of us. sitting at a
desk and i can't remember if it was in waves
or not but um and obviously i just know the time
that i showed up but yeah i mean just a sea of
recruits and i've said this many times this is
at the written so they've already been vetted
they filter out all the ones they didn't want
um and then you know as i found out later excuse
me You know, a lot of these guys were already
certified. Well, they had to be certified fire
EMT and or medic, but they were, you know, green
jeans, you know, like CDF. They were ambulance
operators. They were explorers. You know, I was
a lateral, even though I only had a year on prior.
So there was just a huge amount of experience.
So it wasn't just 18 and a heartbeat. You're
talking about people that have spent years padding
their resume to even get that golden ticket to
sit at a written, to even try and get a job.
Yeah, I think about the guys that I went through
Academy with, and I'm like, man, these are some
of the best humans I could have ever been associated
with. And that's definitely a point of pride,
for sure. Yeah, I think that's just an important
point when you hear people, and we're really
talking 10, 15, 20 years, so not that long ago,
for people to understand how the fire service
was. Because as we start getting into what we're
going to talk about later, One of the questions
is, well, we can't even hire enough people now.
And my thing is like, yeah, but we used to. Very,
very recently, thousands of people would line
up for a handful of spots. So A, how the hell
do we get here? And then B, what do we got to
do to turn it around so that we are choosing
the top five, 10 % of every list, not 85%. Absolutely.
Yeah. Yep. So you kind of got through the front
doors now. Talk to me about probation and then
what was some of the units that you were assigned
to as far as, you know, trucks, engines, etc.
Yeah, I don't know if it was a good or bad thing,
but right out of Academy, I got put on as the
fourth on our heavy rescue. And it was, oh my
God, it was overwhelming. There are so many acronyms,
so many new things. I, you know, the lieutenant
at the time. He pulled me aside and said, your
real job is to just know where everything is
and hand it to somebody who knows what to do
with it. And you'll get caught up along the way.
And so, you know, it was kind of the tail end
of like all the fun firehouse pranks, I guess,
mostly at my expense. But it was, you know, building
some of that camaraderie. I remember, you know,
the idea of people messing with you is almost
worse than what actually happens. One of the
stations had the doors were all cut on the bottom
about an inch higher than they normally would
be. So you could throw a cookie sheet of firecrackers
under the under the door in the middle of the
night. Or I remember, you know, they were in
my head so bad. Like one night I just slept in
the recliner with my back against the wall because
I was sure, you know, somebody was going to do
something. But, you know, I learned through a
lot of feedback how to make the perfect scrambled
egg. You know, there are all these things that
you pick up along the way. And so I was on that
heavy rescue and learned a ton from, you know,
arguably the more senior and experienced people
that took the time to, you know, make me feel
welcome, make me feel part of the team, remind
me of where I was in the pecking order, which
was so, you know, important. really important
when you talk about you know managing large scenes
and things like that um and then i left there
and i went to our busiest ambulance so we do
a rotation where you do either a truck or the
rescue uh you do the ambulance or the engine
and then you rotate around the district so you
kind of get to see everything you're getting
more broad experience once you're out of academy
so i went to our busiest ambulance medic one
which Everybody seems to be reinvigorated by
South Park right now. Our medic one or our station
one is right across the street from Casa Bonita.
So from the episode where Cartman has his birthday
party at Casa Bonita. So it's our most socio
and economically diverse part of our entire district.
So you are running and gunning. You're running.
I know at one point we had, you know, over a
4896. We'd be in the mid 40s on calls sometimes.
It was brutal. And I hate to say it was a rite
of passage, but it gave me the perspective now
that I'm in a position where I can kind of step
back from being in the meat grinder and think
about, man, like, you know, that's not great.
Like driving home and not remembering driving
home was not awesome. Living on nothing but like,
you know, Monster Energy drinks and Uncrustables,
not great. But, you know, when you're 20, you
don't know any better. You're just excited to
be doing it. You want to run calls. You want
to see awesome stuff. You want to break things
and, you know, generally be awesome. But I think
you have a shelf life for that. And it depends
on, in my mind, how long you squeeze that, you
know, is. It is reflective and incumbent upon
the district or the department to say, man, we
got to make sure we're doing right by these people.
So I did that and was there as a teaching paramedic
for a while. And that was great. I got to see
a lot of really cool people come through. Our
district is partners with our local community
college. So we and it's the Arapahoe Community
College Paramedic School is kind of a magnet
school. So we have people. come from all over
the country. So we've had people who would ride
from Anchorage Fire, would come down and go to
paramedic school in the Denver metro area, and
then they'd ride on our busy ambulances as third
riders. We'd have people come down from the mountains
like Steamboat. And then, like I said, pretty
much around the country come to this paramedic
school. ride with us. So it was cool because
we got to show our model to a lot of different
people. We got to learn a bunch. We had the medical
contract for the Red Rocks Amphitheater. So we
do medical up there and man, we'd get to see
some of the coolest concerts and work medical
for those. So we'd bring our third riders up
there. And I just remember we were at a Soundtribe
Sector 9. and Deadmau5 concert up there, the
full EDM experience. And he was this guy from
Anchorage and he was like, what is going on here?
So it was just a great place to be new at this
job. I learned a lot. And like I said, I think
it's definitely given me the perspective of why
we do what we do. I can imagine that a DJ's head
must have looked strange to a guy from Anchorage,
Alaska. Giant mouse head. Yeah. And I remember
we worked, you know, the Marilyn Manson concert
and, you know, we're doing IVs on some of the
people from the, you know, they'd come to the
first aid room and they'd be like, you know,
even just at a mile high is a lot when you're
probably singing and dancing like a lot of those
people do. But, you know, it just gave us a different
perspective on how medicine works. And it was.
You know, we have a little first aid room up
there, but for the most part, it's you and your
partner and the security people trying to help
where you can. And you're, you know, battling
10 ,000 of the drunkest, highest people on the
face of the earth, you know, with your little
head flashlight and, you know, pocket full of
gloves. So I think it gives you, you know, a
different perspective of medicine and, you know,
how to be. How to, you know, balance what we
needed to do in that task and also trying to
be a human and make sure people were being taken
care of and safe and well cared for and figure
out what to do with them. The altitude is no
joke. I've never had altitude sickness or struggled
until I went to Denver and I skied. I kind of
remember that Matt Chan told me about it, but
it was one of your smaller resorts. And firstly.
We we land in Colorado and the guy in the car
hire place is like, we've got this freeze coming.
You know, you probably need to upgrade to a four
by four. And it was like at least double what
we're going to pay even more. And then I was
like, oh, I've heard this before. So we have
a two wheel drive car and I'm driving up the
mountains. And that's when you guys a few years
ago had the coldest winter that you've had in
whatever it is. Because, of course, because we
arrived and they knew the most terrifying drives
I've ever done in my entire life in a two wheel
drive car. down the colorado mountain but but
um but i did snowboarding and i did kind of like
a lesson like intermediate lesson with a you
know pseudo teacher slash guide but me and the
other guy that were in the class we just you
know we were smoking i think he was from north
carolina and it was just it was crazy you don't
realize at that type of altitude because i've
skied in in austria many times and i don't remember
getting tired when i was young but Yeah, I can
only imagine adding that layer that most of us
just aren't exposed to to the EMS world. It must
be challenging. Well, and most of the people
who are coming to concerts up at that altitude
are not experienced drinkers or imbibers at that
altitude as well. So I think people, you know.
to carry the metaphor, get a bit out far or get
ahead of their skis over the tips a little bit
when they, uh, when they get up there. So no,
but it's, uh, yeah, it's great, but you never
want to be the ding dong on the side of I -70
and a Honda Civic in a snowstorm. Yeah. Not a
great place to be. No, no. Luckily it was so
congested. The traffic was moving slow enough
that it was barely able to, I was white knuckling
it and it was like a, or should have been a 90
minute drive was like four and a half hours,
you know? So anyway, well, it's funny cause you
made the comment about, you know, being in the
meat grinder or medic one, you know, early in
your career. And I think this is one of the things
that's really created some of the issues is.
When you are young, you can handle some of these
insane shifts. But if we take a step back, when
we're young, we can also go out drinking, get
home at four in the morning and then be up at
seven to go to a job. Doesn't mean that that's
what you're supposed to do. So I think this is
one of the kind of distorted lenses is that some
of our younger people, they are able to power
through it. But at what cost down the road? Exactly.
Yeah. So what about career calls then? What was
some of the things you progressed through that
first decade or so that you remember? Good, bad,
moments of compassion, whatever the ones that
really stuck with you. I think the opportunities
to see people who had grown up in different circumstances
than myself. We got to see a lot of people who
the system had failed. And I think about one
individual in particular who got blasted on his
bike. And his bike was his only mode of transportation.
It was the only way he could get to his job,
move about town, get around. And this guy's...
basically whole life was attached to his wheels.
And he ended up being fine. But we took that
opportunity to put all our money together, not
all our money, but go up to the Walmart and get
him a new set of wheels. And to see kind of the
thanks in that person's eye, not because it was
good for us to do it, but it meant the world
to him because I think he had seen the system
fail him so many times that... somebody taking
the time to go out of their way to help this
person regain their mobility and their transportation.
Man, I take it for granted. I have an old pickup
truck with car seats in it and it turns on every
time I need it to. And I load up my family and
I take them around the suburbs to everywhere
they need to go. And I've been very blessed with
that. And this job has given me that. But there
are people in this world who don't have those
same opportunities. While it was frustrating
at times, while I was so tired at times, while
I was wanting to say all the mean things in the
world, for the 20th time we've seen this drunk
guy on a call, the opportunity to have that perspective
and have that moment of reflection was super
important for me as I grew up in this career.
One interesting thing that I think kind of put...
my generation of younger people who got hired
in the late two thousands, apart from some of
the others or the more recent people we've hired
is that we were kind of, we had like feet in
two different generations, right? Like we had
the older guys who would do unlicensed electrical
work and roofing on their days off. And, you
know, they. on their days off with, you know,
two packs a day or whatever. And then, you know,
we were the youngest myself and one other guy
who got hired in the academy right after me.
We were the youngest people that worked at our
fire department for like six or seven years.
We're the only people who were still in our 20s.
So that gave us, I think, a different perspective
because we saw. We grew up in some of the older
ways, but we were definitely younger in the sense
of when we started hiring more people that were
our age, they were people who had completely
different life experiences than us. You know,
I spent my early 20s driving around on Colfax
in an ambulance and there were other people who
had different jobs. And then we have since time
kind of coalesced into a single profession with
two different upbringings. I have no idea if
I said that. correctly or if it made sense but
that's something that you know i i think about
when in my role as a battalion chief like i'm
the youngest battalion chief that we have and
i have people who are the same age as me uh who
are new firefighters and that's just a different
a different perspective um and definitely something
you know kind of worth unpacking down the road
as as we all grow together it's Interesting.
So when I reflect back, that older generation
were the ones that I learned to retain the kindness,
compassion, community that had brought me into
uniform in the first place. And so whether it
was an entire station rotating to renovate a
firefighter's house that was hit during a traffic
accident, he was working and got nailed by a
car. Hialeah, I saw that. Anaheim, I saw that.
Anaheim, you know, they would put money together,
buy a bunch of toys and we would go to some of
the, you know, the places we've been on calls
or we noticed that there was definitely, you
know, family that was struggling with money.
And then, you know, you progress forward now
and I'm not just picking on the fire service,
you know, look at just the kind of overall conversation
that we get from. you know, whether it's politics
or whatever it is, and you're hearing conversations
of like, oh, this bum, you know, Narcan's wasted
on these addicts, et cetera, et cetera. Through
your perspective, where has that shift happened
that we've got away? In some areas, because I
mean, there are some people that have held on
tightly to this, but we as a culture seem to
have got away from the very kindness, compassion,
empathy that is the root of this job. And some
of them are just, you know, I call them out all
the time. You bought yourself a leather helmet,
you grew a mustache and you're all about fire
and fuck EMS and rah, rah, rah, you know, and
you're a fucking idiot. And then you've got the
kind of compassion fatigue type two that are
just the burnout medic firefighter. How have
we lost that? And how do we go back to the very
core of the fire service of EMS, which is to
help people, pure and simple? Well, I think not
doing it 40 times, 40 times a set probably helps
too. You know, I think from a... fatigue management
or a load management perspective. Now that I'm
like a grownup, I'm like, oh man, they call that,
you know, they have risk mitigation strategies
and, you know, fatigue management systems and
all these fancy things. I think it's, you know,
a couple of different angles on it. I think we
need to not, you know, I think from the story
of Sisyphus, we need to not push the rock up
the hill so many times, because I think that
that can lead to burnout. And then that starts
you off on the wrong path when you're needing
to do it. as often as we're doing it. I also
think, you know, I think about like social media
and how easy it is to say something mean, how
it's easy to just chip at somebody. Whereas before
you had to, you know, look in the, look them
in the eye or write them a letter when you were
mad at them. And now you don't get to do that.
You can, you know, you can say 30 mean things
in a minute, whereas it was more difficult to
be mean in the past. So I do think, you know,
it is, I think there are a lot of reasons for
it. I don't think we are as humans inherently
wanting to be that way. But I think the societal
pressure of, you know, paying, you know, the
exorbitant amount of money for housing in any
kind of metropolitan area, there adds these other
micro stresses that eventually pile up into one
big deal that, you know, make it difficult. to
be kind in the world in which we live. I mean,
from the top level of what we're doing here in
this human experience, we've got people who have
made a lot of money and gained a lot of power
saying mean things to other people. So I think
when you have kind of those role models, it makes
it easy to give yourself the excuse to not be
kind. Yeah. And that bums me out. Well, it'd
be really good if people created a religion where
the prophet was like a really kind person. Maybe
that would help. Yeah, just be cool, man. It
could guide us to not be a dick. But anyway.
There's got to be something out there. Maybe
a book or two about it. I don't know. All right.
Well, then let's kind of circle back. So you
have this basis in neuroscience. You're progressing
now through the fire service. You've definitely
been exposed to these high up -tempo stations
and rigs. When did you start seeing... the workload
the work week issues as far as detrimental in
your own personal career and then how did that
send you to the research side yeah um shoot well
i think it's like kind of the frog in the pot
situation you don't really know it until either
your system or the promotional process or uh
you know some sort of operational thing takes
you out of that pot and for me i took the lieutenant's
test in like 2016 or something and like i left
station one and i went into our ems training
division which was a new position at the time
and looking back on it i was like holy crap man
i was i was burned out and i never realized it
because it was this you know i was reference
uh the rapper tech nine. And I said, you know,
his album misery loves company was literally
what it was like living up there. You know, you,
you're listening to music at 11, you're driving
around with the windows down and all night, you
know, just having fun. being awesome. Like I
said, breaking stuff, going on all the cool calls.
And then once you're out of it, you're like,
wow, that was a great time in my life that I
never want to have to do again. And so you move
and you change situations. I was in a role where
I was able to sleep at night. I was able to really
focus my creativity and my energy on trying to
build a EMS learning platform and making sure,
you know, at that time we're rolling out a whole
bunch of new stuff. And I felt like reinvigorated
intellectually in that spot and having the bandwidth
to do that allowed me to kind of flourish in
that spot. And, you know, we need people who
are. wanting to run calls, wanting to be busy,
wanting to do all the cool stuff. But we also
need the people who have that distance to help
people in those roles maybe realize a little
bit earlier in their careers when it's time to
hit pause for a second, rotate out, find something
else that's stimulating. And I think that's,
I always say again about our profession, you
can have one career, but have 20 different jobs
inside of it. You know, whether it be every day,
you know, any different role you can have, you
can go to the bureau, you can go to risk reduction,
you can go to investigations or you can go to
the FI route. You can get into training of all
these different things that you can do without
ever having to leave the seniority or the accumulated
leaves or the, you know, the salary that we get
and find that joy again, just doing something
different still on the same team. I don't know
if I answered your question. You did, but let
me dovetail again. So you're out now, you're
enjoying this, as you said, this kind of nine
to five work week now, you're realizing that
obviously there's a difference between not sleeping
for 48 hours and what you're working now. How
did that then kind of make you start taking a
step back and looking at the way? your department
was being worked, whether it was the actual number
of calls, the hours that you work, and then what
made you kind of want to start kind of finding
solutions to that issue? Yeah, I think, you know,
once I was in those roles, I moved or I moved
from our training division into our safety and
medical officer. And then from there to our one
of our truck and hazmat houses. And I saw that
the camaraderie could still exist without just
having to be busy for busyness's sake. And that
was, you know, finding that joy of learning.
I'm not going to say joy of going back to hazmat
school because that was that would be a lie.
But, you know, the camaraderie of being in a.
uh you know uh dual company house having seven
people in the station you know it was at the
beginning of covid and you know then uh that
was a completely different world um but you know
having that that small group of people that we
kind of circled up on and found passion about
our job and i worked with uh one of my best friends
who's just an amazing uh fire officer you know
seeing his passion for what we did and by being
at a station where you could focus on the craft
focus on our job focus on you know getting better
every set instead of just surviving every set
uh was was amazing um it was great and to be
around people who loved what they did they were
super passionate about it that made me better
at my job as a you know as a relatively new lieutenant
um so you know to to answer your question being
in the on the day's assignment was was great
for a lot of reasons but it's man there's just
nothing as cool as riding around on a fire truck
so to find a way to make that system great and
tolerable from a you know a workload management
perspective became like kind of my passion, understanding
the physiology behind what we do for two days
at a time and the skills that we need. And in
my opinion, we lack to recover on those days
off then became kind of, you know, for in truth,
kind of the mission of what I found my next job
in the fire department would be, um, was doing
that. So, yeah. So how did that kind of unfold
then? So you had this kind of aha moment, you
know, what was the first area that you started
looking into? And what was some of the issues
that identified that were, you know, preventable
that were changeable? That's it, man, that's
a tough question. Because again, like so many
of these things just happen incrementally over
career, so many different, you know, this isn't
like, you know, we always seem to say, Oh, we
wait for some tragic event to happen before we
do anything. And You know, we have had, you know,
some issues at our fire department with people
who had sleep issues and things like that. But
I don't know that I'm informed enough to make
a call on, you know, this is what caused that.
We've obviously had quite a few job related cancers.
And unfortunately, we've had a couple people
pass away because of job related cancers. But
we see all these things. And it's like, I didn't
really realize how much I wanted to. make a difference
in this stuff or even just understand this stuff
until i had kids like that was the biggest change
in my life because before you have kids you can
be busy at work come home and turn on netflix
and not move for four days you know what i mean
like there is no one who needs anything from
you and then as soon as you have kids it's a
whole new world and you're you know you're working
you're working to just get through the day with
little kids. And you're just like, you know,
you go from being sleep deprived at work to being
sleep deprived at home. There's no reprieve.
And then I'm like, wow, in this season of my
life, I am very tired. And so I think that's,
you know, when my first daughter was born in
2018, like that's when it was like, man, I am
beat and we should do something about it or at
least understand it better. So, yeah, I don't
know if that's a segue to talking about kids,
but that's like kind of my. My reason is that
I want to be a present and good dad when I can
be home. That's a great segue. I know we were
hitting this before we hit record, but this is
what I've said. I was in for 14 years and then
another seven after I... stop getting paid to
help the fire service. But all that time, the
negotiations were always a dollar raise, 50 cent
raise, whatever it was. And I realized that we've
been chasing the wrong currency for so long.
The currency that is actually valuable to us
is time with our family, full stop. And as we've
regressed this last 10 years. that has been stolen
from us more and more and more, whether it's
just not advancing the work week, which we'll
get to, or the recruitment crisis creating mandatory
or volunteer overtime, because that's a skewed
perspective as well. A lot of us sign up for
overtime because we don't want our friend to
get hit. So it's still technically mandatory
overtime. So you have children. How did that
change the way you view the number of hours that
you weren't present at home? It was hard. And
it's, you know, I think my wife, bless her heart,
she has to run the show while I'm gone. And it
is not an easy or graceful show. I don't know
how many times we've had to FaceTime with somebody
with an ear infection and we're trying to juggle
sick time. And, you know, it is brutal. Having
kids is the hardest, but also the most rewarding
thing I've ever done with my life. To see what
they do, the crap that they come up with, the
things that they know. I mean, we're real heavy
into Wild Kratts right now. I don't know if you
guys have enjoyed the Wild Kratts on PBS Kids
app. But my daughter, the one who starts first
grade tomorrow. stuff that she comes up with
i'm like where the hell did you learn these facts
man and she's like so dialed in and like you
know it's just it's hard to miss some of those
moments and i when we were talking before you
know i mentioned it like i missed uh while i
was at work uh the first time reese ever lost
a tooth when i wasn't home happened while i was
at work and i was like oh my gosh this just doesn't
seem you know it's not fair to have to you know
put that thing back in your mouth till i get
home So you miss things like that. And you wonder
how the system can be kinder to people and young
parents. And so those are the things that you
miss. And for a while, we'll be able to say that
Santa comes on the 23rd because kids are dumb
and they don't know what day of the week it is
anyway. But that only works for so long. And
so I think we're very lucky that we can trade
shifts. The use vacation where you can or self
-care leave or, you know, the different leaves
that you've banked to try and target, you know,
important dates. But but it's hard. And being
gone as long as we are, like I was saying before,
like I went from when I was on a. day's assignment,
I went from being like a co -parent to now I
show up and I'm like, oh, we've got new rules
in the last two days. Turns out we're doing this
now. And so, you know, it's hard because I'm
also, you know, the assistant regional manager
of parenting four days a week. And then I leave
and then, you know, I'm missing a lot of the
important things. So that's, you know, a trade
-off of what we do. I think there's still, you
know, the good outweighs the bad, but the question
is, you know, could we do better? Yeah. No, absolutely.
I remember the tooth fairy myth was debunked
after I missed one morning. And then the number
of times my son woke up and the elf on the shelf
was still in the same place. I'm like, oh, that's
weird. Let me have a word with him. And then
while he goes take a shower, I'm freaking, you
know, moving the elf around. So, you know, but
it is it is a real thing. You know, it really
is. So firstly, how long have you guys been on
a 4896? We went in 2006. So a couple of years
before I got hired, they were on the old one
-on, one -off, one -on, one -off, four -off prior
to me, but we've been doing it for a while. Okay.
So what were some of the first solutions that
you started looking to or the research as far
as collecting data as to this? Because I mean,
as we hit, you know, before we hit record again.
And I've said this many, many times. There is
a fine line between needing studies and just
fucking common sense. And, you know, 56, 80 hours
a week for the people that you ask to mitigate
your very worst day in your entire life. When
everyone else works 40, it's common sense. But
we also work for an industry, I would argue,
sometimes to put a barrier up that say, oh, but
I need to see the data. So kind of when did those
lines kind of start to intersect? Well, it was
kind of so I had. Gotten into another grad program
and we needed to come with an idea. We needed
to come with a project. And this started out
just kind of on a Chipotle napkin of like one
of the chief Azeltine. His daughter is a very
competitive bike racer. And so they had started
to use biometrics when they were doing their
load management work, when they were doing their
training. He and I had kind of talked about the
idea of like, oh, wouldn't this be cool to actually
create from a public health lens, kind of this
larger group study to understand the shift experience,
not just while you're at work, but. in totality
of when you were you know your entire experience
because you know like we've talked about before
like there are people with other jobs there are
people with other passions there are guys who
are going to go out and do the you know baja
1000 on their day off and you know rev it up
pretty good to the point that you know that they're
not recovered to come back to work so we had
all these ideas and um we were lucky we were
in a really good grant window for funding um
we reached out to the the colorado e -health
innovation fund and um kind of talked about our
project we're like oh this would be really cool
we have all these existing data systems we don't
really know how they all interact um and so we
we reached out to them and then the colorado
department of fire prevention and control also
had a safety and wellness grant that we were
kind of able to squish together and get the cash
necessary to to kind of put this thing to to
create the academic backbone that would be needed
to justify um the the project itself so that's
kind of the in infancy we looked at you know
these strategies that high performance cycling
teams were using and saying you know we ask a
lot of the same things of our people we should
be looking at this we should understand physiologically
what people are going through doing this job.
And like I said, it started on Chipotle napkin.
And now here we are a couple of years later and
we know more than we wanted to know. So let's
start unpacking that. What was the initial hypothesis?
And then what were the magnitude of the data
that you started collecting? Yeah. So maybe how
about we, let's roll back and let me talk about
kind of the educational runway that got us to
where we were. So I had done a graduate degree
at the University of Colorado in public administration
for public policy and hazard and disaster management.
Super cool. Learned a lot about policy framework,
intergovernmental work and networked a lot. And
the Denver metro area met a lot of really cool
people who seem to have connections that, you
know, this, that or the other place. From there.
i wanted to understand kind of what we were doing
again at a public health perspective so i applied
to and was i have no idea how it happened but
i was accepted into the yale school of public
health's um informatics track so it was very
nerdy lots of computer stuff i had to figure
out i had to like teach myself a lot of this
coding stuff along the way But like I said, we
needed to come with a project. And from the get
-go, my sell to the district was that I wanted
to create a health and wellness project for the
fire service. And I wanted to use kind of the
academic horsepower of the Yale system to kind
of get that done. And it went far and beyond
whatever I thought it could have been when I
first came up with this dumb idea. year two of
the program was the capstone program. And I had
already had all the grant funding stuff figured
out ahead of time because I knew I was coming
with this project, had already done a fair bit
of work, talked to Sarah and Joel, and they were
kind of my mentors during the whole spool up
phase. But then also to talk to eHealth Innovation,
like at the end of the day, like trying to get
this stuff rolling, it takes a whole bunch of
different partnerships. And that's probably what
I've learned most is like the, the the partnerships
and the you know coming to people with different
ideas and collaborating across specialties like
that's really how these projects get off the
ground so we were able to secure funding we went
through we looked at a bunch of different types
of biometrics one of the things that i wanted
to do as we were going through the process and
the uh independent review board process as when
they were studying you know looking at our and
evaluating our protocol we needed to have a way
to disassociate the user from the data so they
didn't use the data to inform their decision
making process during during the the measurement
window but You couldn't do that unless you had
the right biometric that would allow you to blind
people and then also turn it into a wellness
device on the other end. So we looked at a bunch,
we talked to a bunch of people. We ended up just,
we went with Whoop for that reason. Whoops, you
know, they've been fantastic to work with. They
let us blind people. So for the first four weeks
of the, no. 40 day, 38 days of the project, everyone
was blinded. So they couldn't use the app to
inform their decision -making. So they were blinded,
the whoops calibrated to their baseline. And
then, you know, we measured everything we needed
to, and then we just let it rip. So part of it
was also finding a tool that could also be used
as a, as a wellness device along the way. Yeah.
And that, that was good because, you know, there's
a lot. The measurements that we were taking,
because I think the PPGs and the different sensors
that they have are usually somewhere between
60 % and 70 % accurate at actually understanding
what actual sleep cycle you were in. It's 60
% or 70 % accurate. But when you zoom out and
you look at creating a biometric program at a
population level, you're able to make these kind
of population inferences that wouldn't be as
easy at the individual level. Sorry, that got
way in the weeds. No, no, it's good. But yeah,
Professor Russell Foster was saying that. He's
like, you know, these wearables absolutely have
application. And obviously everything from sheer
movement to HRV, there's some great metrics in
there. But he was saying even an EEG is kind
of like junk science. And that's when you've
got electrodes stuck to your head. So a watch
or a ring saying that they told you that you
were in deep sleep for this amount of time, they're
like, no, that's not the case. But like you said,
if you can look at the other metrics on a broader
scale and not zoom into that, which is one of
the downside of wearables is guys freak out because
their watch told them they didn't sleep properly.
Then I can see like from a larger scale how that
data would be able to help a lot. Well, and I
also think like when you think about actual sleep
versus sleep opportunity then you can start looking
at um you know sleep consistency information
do you have systems that are in place that are
hindering uh the opportunity for sleep and that
goes into like this whole larger fire department
ecosystem of what are you doing to not run lift
assist what are you doing to proactively reach
out to nursing homes what are you doing to stop
the calls before they even happen? You know,
what is your community risk reduction strategy?
Because the call that never happens allows people
to have more consistent sleep. You know, so there's
all these different interdisciplinary things
that we can do, you know, specifically to the
biometrics. I also think we need to look at trends
over time. When you have an intervention, can
you measure a pre and post? And then are you
able to demonstrate value? Can you create not
just correlation, but actual draw causation?
to what you're doing. And luckily, when you require
somebody to show up to work for two days a week
and then go home for four days a week, you have
a very static system that you can look at and
actually see what you do, the impact that it
has. So what was the difference between the data
of the tactical athletes in the fire department
and say, for example, the data of the cycling
athlete that was also being monitored? I have
no idea, honestly. Like the cycling team, they
just used it as their platform for decision making
on when they were going to do hard workouts and
spool up and things like that. And I think they
also use it a lot for tapering, you know, to
make sure that you've got that you're primed.
when it's game time for us i think we were trying
to look for it from a perspective of having a
built -in fitness tracker something with wellness
information already built into it a way to monitor
and aggregate the data remotely at scale and
then also use this as a validated bet you know
data set for down the road if we change anything
like how do we compare it to our pre and post
so that we can demonstrate value and and ultimately
how can we educate our people in the broader
fire service of what we learned. Our little one
-off study, it's cool, but it's even cooler to
see people take our framework and scale it at
the national level, which has been really awesome.
Were you able to compare and contrast, though,
to a population that was athletic and slept every
night? Kind of. So when we were doing our pilot
study, so when we were deciding whether or not
it would be ethically responsible to or financially
prudent to scale our study, we did a pilot with
12 people. So we compared half of our people
were administrative employees who were on the
40 -hour week, and then half of them were people
who were in the firehouses. And that doesn't,
you know, equally, they're not. the same people
because our average age of people who were in
administrative roles were older so it's not really
an apples to apples but when we looked at it
every domain we measured from a sleep perspective
from a caloric output from you know their algorithmic
recovery calculation they were all statistically
different these were two completely different
populations we were looking at so we felt valid
in scaling our study to look at the entire fire
department or as many people as we could um get
these biometrics for so we were very very sure
that these were two different populations the
the lay population of people who were once athletes
and still semi -athletes but also look at spreadsheets
and write emails um and then you know our people
uh on the engines two different people two different
groups of people so we felt good about scaling
so what about the metrics that were showing that
it was detrimental working the workload and the
work week that they were working. Yeah. So we,
um, what was cool is our, our system architecture
took our staffing platform. So we use, um, vector
staffing on the other end. We also used our,
um, like our HR data set. So we could see who
was on what apparatus at any given point. Um,
again, at the, the aggregate level so it would
be really hard to drill in you know the way we
set up our our system privacy was such that um
you know you couldn't just like pull up and be
like oh i wonder what this guy's doing today
it was more at an aggregate level of like what
is the experience of a firefighter on medics
you know medic 7 today um or not even today but
across the study period. So we were able to get
so granular because we were able to have all
these different systems talk to each other. So
we brought in the call, the RMS side, the staffing
side. We brought in the biometrics. And then
we also brought in, we used Joel's emergency
services sleep diary to start to add a layer
of qualitative data to understand what are people's
perception of fatigue? What is their... perception
of how hard they worked the day before what's
their perception of stress and anxiety? And then
how does it tie into their biometrics? What is
their heart rate variability doing the day after?
And then also what was their call experience?
And then we also had longitudinal data across
their shift to see, man, these guys are really
busy at night. How did that impact their perception
of stress the next morning versus these people
were evenly spread out throughout the night,
maybe ran the same number of calls, but just
spread out over longer. What is their perception?
So we added in that qualitative layer that I
think also makes our data set translatable across
some of the other research that's happening.
But we were able also to slice and dice our set
based on the apparatus you were assigned to.
We know people on the ambulances are just getting
their asses punched every single night. People
on the engine, a little bit better. People on
our truck companies, some of them were sleeping
as good at home as they do. at at work but also
when they're awake at night they're awake for
a lot longer and their skill set is you know
it needs to be excellent every time they're doing
what they specialize in um and one other interesting
thing is we also looked at tenure so how long
you've been doing the job as well as your age
and what kind of was interesting in our data
set we actually learned that some of the slower
stations who have more senior people experience
um issues with their sleep as well and is that
you know that's just ask more questions is it
a problem with the station design is it the way
that their stations laid out is it because they've
had 20 years of having shitty sleep because of
what they did when they were assigned to busy
stations but that was one thing that really surprised
us when we actually started looking at our information
is how there's across the board we have people
with sleep issues it just depends on how long
you've been doing the job and where you started
to accumulate or snowball those issues you're
not spared by going to a slow station if you've
done it for a long time yeah absolutely so what
about But just the conversation of solutions,
you know, you've got, and you alluded to, we
haven't discussed the impact of your department
specifically, but assuming you mirror pretty
much everyone else in the US, and now you've
got, you know, less recruitment, more openings,
overtimes, etc. You know, what was the data showing?
And then what have been some of the proposed
solutions to turn this thing around? Well, one
thing that was... Super interesting was when
we looked at across time or across a six day
cycle. So the two days before or the days before
you go to work and then the days you're at work.
Our system, we do a shift change at 7 a .m. Our
system is artificially taking sleep from people.
The two worst days of sleep are the day we wake
you up early to come to work and the day we wake
you up early to wash the fire truck to go home.
We are taking about an hour a day. an hour of
sleep away from everybody on those two days.
And specifically, we know that late morning sleep
is some of the most important sleep from memory
consolidation, from cognitive decision -making.
Those REM cycles that you get in the late morning
are the most important ones for a lot of the
things that we need to be really good at. doing
your job. I mean, I don't know how many times
we got that call at like 4 .45 on the second
morning and you roll out to get on the ambulance
and you have no idea what the hell you're supposed
to be doing. And you're like, I am fried. You
know, that's the window when you need the most
sleep. So we found that, you know, potentially
moving back the shift start time to align more
with people's biological wake up time. You know,
I can't throw it. a graph up here but i have
a really cool chart that i uh from when we processed
everybody's data people in our group wanted their
bodies wanted them to be asleep right around
10 between 10 and 10 45 every night it didn't
matter whether at work or whether you're at home
most people went to sleep between 10 30 and 10
45 every night people woke up naturally on their
days off around 6 45. was people's biological
wake -up time. When those two days that I talked
about, we're waking people up at 5 .30 in the
morning to come to work, and we're waking people
up at about 5 .45 is when people wake up the
morning before they go home. So if we were able
to move our start time to one that aligned more
biologically with what our population needed,
I see us giving a fair bit of sleep back to people
in that regard as well. Yeah. That's what I got
for that one. Yeah, I mean, this is obviously
one part, the number of hours we'll definitely
get to. But with the shift change conversation,
I don't know why, but every department I know
of that has changed the start time has literally
taken the AM off the number and put the PM on.
And there's another 23 hours in the day that
you can choose from. So where... When I reflect
to all the places I worked, and I would assume
that your area is yet another one where not everyone
can afford to live 10 minutes from a station.
So when I think of my commute, if I was still
in now, the 11 a .m., 12 noon time, to me, I
think is the perfect one. Because on the 2448,
I only spent one out of three mornings with my
family, pretty much my whole career. If you extrapolate
out. So by simply moving that to 11 or 12, exactly
like you said, off going shift, got their asses
handed to them. And now, you know, they sleep
in till whenever 10 and then they start, you
know, washing the rig, making coffee, all that
stuff. Now they've caught up on two, three hours
that they wouldn't have had. Conversely, the
person who's ongoing gets up, has breakfast with
their family, takes the kids to school, kisses
their wife or husband goodbye. Then they head
to work. And it's the same exact thing. You get
in, you check out, but instead of breakfast,
now it's lunch. So to me, that is such a fantastic
solution for $0. So that's the first part. But
obviously the other part is why, as I've said
many, many times, is the person who wakes up
from a dead sleep at 3 in the morning, slides
down a two -story pole, gets in the back of a
tiller, navigates to a structure fire, throws
a ladder, makes entry through a second -story
window, pulls out a child, doffs their gear and
starts working a pediatric cardiac algorithm
is okay working 56 hours a week, but the guy
at Starbucks who makes a delicious latte taps
out at 40. So this is, you know, the number one
conversation, even though the start time I think
can go hand in hand, is why the hell for so many
years have we been working our firefighters these
kind of hours? Because people say, oh, we used
to do fire. Yeah, but that was decades ago. When
I was young, we were getting murdered. And that
was 2004 when I started. Murdered every single
shift. So this has been going on for a long time.
So what is the conversation about getting away
from the worst shift, i .e. the 48 -96, and then
getting down to a 42 -hour work week? I guess
that's why you've got a show. One thing that
I at least wanted to say before we go down. this
part was with the later start time, one thing
that I think, you know, as the person who has
to do callbacks now, we were previously calling
people back at between 5 .30 and 6 in the morning.
It will ruin your day if you set your alarm to
see if you got overtime and then not get it.
If we were able to start later, so like you said,
you could get kids out the door, you could get
people off to work, then you could decide if
you can work that overtime or that extra day
or work that trade. It is so much easier from
a staffing perspective if people can get their
families handled before they have to make that
decision of whether or not they've got the bandwidth
to work an extra bit for the day. So that just
is another feather in the cap of what you were
talking about. As far as the total work hour
thing, totally. I think the research is going
there. I think we are working in that direction.
We have to, in my mind, we have to make the roadmap
to get there. There are so many different things
into me. Like if I could just flip a switch and
we do it, luckily no one asks me. I can say all
the stuff I want, but it doesn't matter. I think
that there are things, there are both speed bumps
and opportunities along the way that have to
line up timing wise. And I think specifically,
can I just go down? I wrote some notes down because
I think this is where we go. This is where we
go. I think from an... And I think about each
one of these from a domain perspective of how
we're going to get there. It's not an if, it's
when. We just need these things to line up. From
an administrative perspective, we need the contract
set correctly. We need to have a fire chief in
place that sees the value of these things, can
advocate for the value of these things to either
a city, to a town, or to a board of directors.
That needs to happen at the same time that we
have kind of the available bandwidth to handle
a transition like this. It's not hard. It's just
a reprioritization of what the fire department
is going to focus on. And that's absolutely,
in my opinion, that should be the top of the
pile, is figuring out how to make this job sustainable.
Not now, like now, yes, but also five years from
now when the new people who haven't been messed
up. are now doing this job and even 10 years
from now when the people who haven't even considered
doing this job are wanting to get into this profession
my goal is 10 years from now people look back
and say oh my god i can't believe those idiots
did that you know what i mean like i think that's
again so from an administrative perspective we
need the correct time to make it happen that
is not that's That's an opportunity. That's not
a speed bump. It's just how do we line it up
from a legislative perspective? I think we also
need to see we need to see the broader public
invest in public safety. And specific to that,
the Denver metro area has been bonkers with the
cost of living, with the increase in housing
prices, so much so that fire departments have
been flush around here. We haven't had. a problem
with making sure that our firefighters stay on
pace with the increase in cost of living. Till
now, we had our governor called a special session,
which then readjusted all the property taxes.
We had no control. We had no say in it. And now
all of a sudden, we're facing down the barrel
of a pretty significant funding challenge. You
know, so much so that our state had funded a
firefighter wellness trust where you could get,
I think it was like five grand of services a
year. paid for by the state now after three years
they're pulling funding for it so now we have
all these systems set up and now it's gone you
know we have a behavioral therapist that emily
who we hired who's amazing and she is just squeezing
these onions like crazy to make sure we have
these strategies so you know and then we look
at like medicare and medicaid uh reimbursement
all of these als transport fire departments are
looking, you know, at a 7 % reduction in reimbursement
for some of this stuff. Again, none of this is
unattainable. It's just a question of how do
we roadmap a transition to doing this? I think
that the biggest power that we have collectively
is the collective bargaining process. And I think,
you know, our internal conversations of like,
how can we do this? Like, we have to put the
power in the people. We need to believe in the
people. We need to believe in the contract process,
at least in our contract process, you get to
pick three things to bring to negotiations. And
like you were saying before, for years, it's
been healthcare, salaries, and vacation. And
that's all people have room for. So we need to
then transition into a cultural education campaign
of like moving people from I need money, healthcare,
and time off, which arguably are the most important
things that we go to jobs for. And how do we
say we want to create a system that's kinder
to families, you get to be home more, and we're
going to prioritize this versus that. I'm all
for it. We just have the biggest lift in my world
is, or in my perspective, is the cultural change.
Especially, man, we've increased our vacation
the last couple contracts. and we've also lockstep
increased how much you can get paid back for
so on one side i can't have people being like
oh i'm so tired i'm tired too but i'm the first
idiot that's going to try and sell back as much
vacation as i can because we got stuff to pay
for here so i think like there are There are
things that we have to overcome as a culture
that will allow us to get to where we need to
be. And I also think like, man, the Denver Metro
market, and I know this isn't the experience
everywhere, but you can't go to a Starbucks around
here with some ding dong who's making a quarter
million dollars a year in a Patagonia vest who
works at tech or finance or this, that, or the
other thing that are squeezing blue collar firefighters
out of. housing market. Like we've got our newer
guys, you know, we have somebody who moved back
in with their parents. They're making six figures
a year and they move back in with their parents
because they're like, I'm never going to buy
a house. Or we've got, you know, a group of people
who came out of the academy and they bought a
house that's an hour away from where we work.
And they all live there together because they
can't afford a house in our own district. So
like, that's the balance of like, I looked it
up earlier. It's like. A family of four in the
Denver metro area needs to make $276 ,000 a year
to live comfortably. And we just like as a profession
and with the tech sector and the finance sector
in the Denver metro area, it's so hard. To keep
up with that. And then you add in the cultural
part, the financial literacy part of new people
who get this job. Like when I, I think when I
left the private ambulance, I was making like
$6 and 70 cents an hour. And I got this job and
I'm like, oh my God, I'm rich. I don't have to
drink Keystone Light anymore. You know what I
mean? So I think like, we also have to be the
idea of like, we need to stay up with the job
market. We need to remain competitive. We need
to find system fixes to get to that. end goal.
Again, none of it's impossible. It's a question
of educating and having people prioritize these
strategies over the other things that we're asking
people to do every day. And the other things
that they run into every day, like healthcare
is double digit increases across the board. you
worry about high deductible plans and these HSA
plans and things like that, that are the ways
that school districts, fire departments, police
departments help shed some of the budgetary constraints
is by cost -shifting healthcare more on the employee.
Well, turns out when you're tired and you're
sick and you have metabolic disorder because
of the shifts that you work, you're going to
use healthcare a lot more. So, I don't know.
And I also think from a regional balance, as
we make this transition, it needs to be a region.
It needs to be a metroplex. When I look at what
you guys are doing down in Florida with the legislative
prioritization of the 42 -hour week, it would
be awesome to have every state come in and drop
the hammer and say, this is our goal. This is
what we want to do. You figure out how to make
it happen. In the regional job market in the
Denver metro area, we have... We need somebody.
We can't have somebody just make the first move.
We need to do it all together because we have
regional academies. We have regional special
team responses. Again, these are all opportunities.
These aren't roadblocks. These are things that
we need to get people in the same rooms together.
We need labor leaders. We need executive teams.
We need everybody to come together and say, look,
we know what we're doing to people. We know that
this is not ideal. How can we all work together
to get our entire metro area across the finish
line? And that, you know, that involves egos.
It involves different motives. It involves political
things. Like, you know, you take a proposition
like this to the firehouse, half the people are
like, yes, this is the best thing ever. I'll
do this job for the rest of my life. It's a wedge
issue because people aren't educated. And that
I think is, you know, this is what you're doing
through your podcast. It's what I'm trying to
do with my research and what we're doing at the
broader level between, you know, what Sarah's
doing and what Joel's doing and what the guys
down at Palm Beach County are doing. Like all
of these things are trying to push the conversation,
to push the narrative to a culture change and
not something that we're just going to say, oh,
that would be cool, but then never do anything
about. So that's where I see like, that's where
I see the roadmap going to. This kind of this
end goal. I have no idea what I was just talking
about. Did any of that make sense? No, it did.
Just record that whole section. No, it's funny,
though, because, you know, people look at the
legislature that just went through and that was
amazing. Danny Alvarez is on here. Obviously,
Governor DeSantis just signed it. But that didn't
come first. By that point, 11 fire departments
had already said we're going to make this happen.
And I think this is an important thing that people
have got to understand. Like I was lateral to,
I mean, it wasn't technically lateral, but they
took my Florida cert when I was an Anaheim firefighter.
And then after the 08 crash, I'd actually moved
back to Florida. They changed it and you weren't
allowed to have an out of state cert anymore.
And so these departments can literally do whatever
they want to do. So anyone who's waiting for
a big organization to fix their things. you're
going to be waiting a long time and i've said
this before and i'll stand by it perfect example
we have the iff leadership that live you know
that are out of boston and they enjoy a 24 72
schedule and yet i have not seen one thing coming
out saying this needs to be a national And it
might be in the rumblings now, but I'm talking
about for the last nine years. And again, it
was Fairfax before that. When it was Fairfax,
Fairfax still works 56 hours a week. I'm pretty
sure the work week is supposed to be one of the
top things when you are in a union. So waiting,
for example, for the organization that I paid
dues for for 14 years and certainly didn't experience
any incredible pay increases. So I was waiting
at least, okay, what are the benefits? This is
what I see. So it really is down to the organization
to say enough is enough. That's what happened
in Pasco County. That's what happened in Gainesville.
That's what happened in Boynton Beach. And they
end up becoming the thought leaders that then
gave more courage to the first followers, as
they say. Totally. Where the real selling point
is, and again, educate me if you guys are just
nowhere near this, but I wish it was. Our people
are being worked into the ground. We're losing
people to cancer. We're losing people to suicide.
Divorces are through the roof. We've got estranged
children, et cetera, et cetera. But that's not
the case. Because if it was, we wouldn't even
have this conversation. I wouldn't have a podcast
because all firefighters would be healthy. We
did it. We fixed it. So where you have to go
is the money, sadly. And what these departments
in Florida were able to show is like, we 10,
15, 20 years ago had all these recruits. Now
we only have this amount of people testing. That
has created all these holes in our staffing that
is now being filled by forcing our 56 hour a
week employees to work an 80 hour week. So, you
know, lo and behold, it's not working. And then
it's costing you time and a half to fill what
should be a straight time position. Now you've
also got people that were spending millions to
train collectively. Who are then walking out
the back door in two, three, four years to go
work for someone else after we trained them.
Another massive loss. And you've got women's
comp claims through the roof. Because as you
alluded to, overworked workforce gets sick and
gets hurt far higher. That creates medical disabilities,
line of duty death payments, lawsuits from mistakes
that tired firefighters make. By this point,
in a city of your size, we're talking about tens,
if not hundreds of millions of dollars that are
downstream. Taxpayers' money. that has already
been wasted and has created a deficit in the
ability to serve your community so i think it's
that storytelling and everyone's different and
everyone's got their own numbers but if you can
show that by fully staffing a four platoon system
a the overtime will go away it will pasco i just
had dixon phillips on they have no overtime at
the moment And I know the overtime whores are
screaming out and wringing their hands. How could
you do this to us? There are other ways of making
money. And it's healthier to do it in a daytime
job where you're an entrepreneur and you're a
landscaper, personal trainer, mechanic, whatever
it is that you do on the side. That is something
to be encouraged. But doing more shifts, more
nights without sleep, more exposure to trauma
and organizational stress, that is the worst
model. When you hear these Florida departments
and the successes that they're having, it does
make sense. So unless you are a department that
has no overtime, is fully staffed, as you alluded
to, runs maybe one call a shift, which again,
that's what Joel's study was demonstrating. The
department he studied ran one a shift, less than
one at night. So you can say, oh, the 4896 is
slightly healthier, but that's not the real fire
service. And also those firefighters are still
kept from their families for 56 hours at a time.
So it doesn't solve that problem. But for the
other 99 .9 % of the American fire service, to
use Desmond Tutu's quote, we spend so much time
pulling bodies out of the river, we forget to
go upstream to find out why they're falling in
in the first place. We have done nothing but
watch wasted money drift past us rather than
going. stop. We're going to invest in another
shift. We're going to fix this problem, which
in turn is going to save the taxpayers a lot
of money, which in turn will then be the very
raises that we've been told we can't have. And
maybe we'll put us up to where we can afford
to live in this area. Yes. I guess that was easy.
Yes. It's a principle. The doing isn't easy,
but understanding that you can do it, that's
the first step. Well, and one thing that we've
done, I don't, it's not creatively, it's just
good business is that we carry, we're authorized
by our board to hire 130 % of what our shift
costs are. So we have, I mean, man, I can, I
have not yet this year had to mando anybody back
as a shift staffer. Not that it hasn't happened.
It's just, our system is set up that we carry.
extra weight to account for those things. And
part of it is because we're the USAR sponsor.
Part of it is because we have people on our wildland
teams that are out all summer. So we run heavy
for exactly that reason. Again, that doesn't
fix any of the operational stuff that you were
just talking about. We just don't seem to shift
that burden on anybody who isn't wanting to do
it. the the extra work the the concern like you
alluded to is like man this is not the healthiest
extra work you can be doing with your time off
and then how do we get back into that that education
or changing the culture of you know i i hate
to say it but a lot of times man we are our own
worst enemies when it comes to this stuff like
whether it's selling back every second of vacation
we can or it's you know the guys who end up making
us lose our discount at the barbecue place because
they're wearing their class b's and they're on
their days off and stuff like that if there's
a way to take advantage of a system you know
we are the guys who will find it so i i hear
i completely agree with what you're saying i
think there uh there are steps like i'm saying
by like carrying extra overage within what your
board or your city allows you to do increasing
those to the point that then that shift to that
fourth platoon like we're already staffed for
it you know what i mean now it's a question of
the contract part of having the union come through
and say all right this is what we're going to
make our priority 100 i'm i'm trying to think
how do we make these steps that eventually get
us to the point that the switch to doing something
else is already taken care of and you're i mean
you're saying the exact same thing um and you
have tremendous examples of people who are doing
it already and i think that's the coolest part
is that you know you get a collective of these
departments that can do it it shifts the job
market it makes those departments more desirable
than all of the reasons that you talked about
now we're able to get the um overtime down so
now we're able to increase base wages and now
your payouts are better Your muster out payments
are better. And I know when we talked about it
before, we were also talking about how pension
systems work and how the pension part of the
experience, how we need to be bringing people
into this job to be able to. carry the overhead
of pension distributions and how important this
is as we move into our five and 10 year plans.
How are we creating the pipeline of people who
are going to be doing this job to support the
pensions of the people who are headed out? And
I think that's another super valuable argument
when we talk about exactly what you do every
week when you do your show. Yeah, well, I think
just to dovetail on the pension conversation
as well, I mean, we've got a profession at the
moment that does 25 years of 56 hours a week,
80 hours of overtime. And then you have the drop
program. So right when they get there, now they're
like, I'm going to stay a few more years so I
can double dip. And there's not an understanding
that on average, we die five, six years after
retirement. So you, you know, working yourself
into the ground and working against all the proactive
wellness initiatives for, you know, in lieu of
more money, more overtime, and then you die.
That's a really shit plan. I hate to tell you.
Well, and with the pension, then your family
doesn't get anything. No, exactly. Because you're
gone. The city, the biggest present they could
ever have. And it's the same with buying out,
you know, vacation. I'm all for, you know, paid
leave needing to be used. Because no one wins
when you cash it out. Usually you don't get actually
what it's worth. And what you really need is
that day off. I don't care if you watch Tiger
King for eight hours. It doesn't matter. Just
stay at home and get some sleep. So I think this
is a beautiful thing on the other side of this
conversation is that dark side, that abuse, that
focusing on just benefits and money and pay raises
and all this kind of stuff. that isn't, to go
back to the beginning of our conversation, the
kindness, compassion, empathy that's supposed
to be at the core of what we do is starting to
dismantle some of that. So I'm not having great
benefits and pensions and everything, but for
example, if something's working against our wellness
and longevity, that needs to be addressed. And
I'll give you the perfect example. If we fight
for a work week that allows us to really perform
at a high level, the next conversation is a punitive
fitness standard. Because if you want to make
sure that your firefighters die earlier, oppose
fitness standards. It's that simple. No one's
asking you to be a world champion decathlon.
But the things that you had to do in the academy,
we want you to just be able to do them while
you're wearing the uniform. It's a pretty small
ask, in my opinion. But the moment we lower standards
and we allow people to start gaining weight,
we are literally saying... Yeah, go get heart
disease. Go have a stroke. Yeah, that's awesome.
We support what you're doing rather than saying
not on our watch because as long as we forge
performance, the beautiful side effect is you're
going to have a much healthier lifespan. When
I think I've got a perfect example of that is
we have some of the most fantastic and dedicated.
Guys who go out and teach at FDIC, they are amazing
performers. They're the guys that if I were trapped
in my house, I would want them to come get me.
And they demand a lot of their people. And those
are the guys, as an incident commander, those
are the people that I want doing the high -risk
operations. Those are the people where I'm going
to say, yep, you're the ones who I want doing
this. You're getting the assignment. To that
point, we had... These guys had a save a couple
years ago where they were masked up, ready to
go. Airbrake hit. They were inside. They went
through terrible conditions. And these guys are
the best in the business for being in shape and
being amazing at their job. They went in and
they got a little girl out of the room. We got
the Cyano kit started. The girl lived and she
is the perfect example why having high standards
of ourselves and the department having high standards
of our people is critical to us doing the job.
And this ties back into what I'm talking about
is, you know, if we're able to cycle load management,
if we're able to make it so people come to work
and they are the best that they can be when they're
given those opportunities. You know, when you
look at the people are so motivated for performance
and training and being excellent. at our jobs
and investing in the craft and the tradesmanship
of this job, you want those people to be dialed
in, to be rested, to be ready to rock when it's
time to hit the green light. So this goes, I
mean, that goes exactly to your point. And you
see this through every layer of the fire department.
You want the people making every decision that
you need that could be life or death, or it could
be on a spreadsheet. You want those people ready
to rock. And so I completely agree with what
you're saying. And it makes me sad if there are
places that aren't like that. Yeah. Yeah. Well,
I mean, this is this two interesting things.
Firstly, with the lowering of the recruitment
bar or even pool, if you like. I had a police
officer not too long ago who now works in background
checks. He's got a company and he was at a conference
and someone asked or he asked the question, I
think, to the speaker. Is there a dollar amount
attached to getting rid of the wrong employee?
poor employee that got hired that shouldn't have.
And he said, on average, it's about half a million
dollars. So right there, as we are getting away
from that thousand people for 13 spots, that
increases. So there's a dollar amount there.
That little narcissistic, leather helmet, mustachioed,
chest beating firefighter that I was referring
to earlier, the one that's always on social media
talking about firefighter and anti -EMS. If you
actually want to perform at the highest level,
you need the rest and recovery. And I guarantee
you, if you did get to see the metrics of that
cycling team, sleep would be a huge part of their
performance. Very much so. Every time I hear
someone talking about, well, I remember my last
part -time job or any kind of wanky sleep when
I'm dead rhetoric, it makes me want to punch
him in the face because what you're actually
saying is. I actually don't want to be a very
good firefighter, so don't give me the rest and
recovery. Therefore, I have an excuse of being
shit. Rather than saying, well, I take my fitness
seriously, I go to the conferences, I do the
extra training, and I also focus on my rest and
recovery. And if you are opposing, in my rank
now, if you're a firefighter in the station and
you're opposing a healthier work week, Not only
are you saying, I don't want to spend as much
time with my family, which I really question
your ethics and mental health at that point,
but also you're saying, I choose to be a worse
firefighter. Because as you said, if you make
entry into that room and it's 2 a .m. and you
have a busy, exhausted mind, you are not going
to be able to find that child. It's just that
simple. It's neuroscience. I agree. And I also
think we should do more naps. I think every station
should be required to turn on Step Brothers and
everybody goes and racks out in the recliner
for an hour and a half every day. I think that,
I mean, totally to your point, like we want our
people the best that they can be when it's time
to do the grownup stuff. And it's awesome. And
it's fun to see the people who do prioritize
that be amazing at what we do and to try and
support that passion. Yes, 100%. Another easy
one. Yeah, 100%. So the three things that I think
are real game changers is the 24 -72, the midday
-ish start time. And then the third one, I had
a couple of guests from GMR, which is a parent
company of AMR. They have a thing called nurse
navigation. So it integrates in your 911 system.
You get a call. The classic example is, you know,
new parents. 15 month old child threw up once
and they think he's going to die of dehydration
there. And then who hasn't been there though?
Exactly. Those first couple of weeks are crazy.
Exactly. It's a legitimate thing. You know what
I mean? As a parent and as a responder, we've
seen it, you know, umpteen times. So now the
dispatcher goes through their algorithm, you
know, determines it's not a, you know, Charlie
Delta echo and then said, well, look, we've got
two options. We can send you some paramedics
or I can connect you right now with a ER nurse.
Which one would you like? And they're usually
like, well, yeah, I'll talk to the nurse. They
just want help. They want guidance. So then they
have this tele -call, tele -conference with this
nurse. They do everything from treat at home.
Okay, are they warm? Take a temperature. Okay,
let's remove the clothes and leave a diaper on.
Have you got Tylenol, et cetera, et cetera. Through
to they can schedule urgent care clinics. They
can schedule Ubers and Lyfts to that appointment.
If they need a telehealth and they go to a physician,
they obviously then can get prescriptions refilled,
et cetera, et cetera. And even from the mental
health side, non -emergent, there's a lot of
those as well. So when you were talking about
the workload, the third prong, I think, of really
making a difference in the fire service is whatever
version of that model integrate in, because this
is what I love the way they framed it. They said
EMS should be three tier. We told everyone to
call 911. So we can't blame them for that. Well,
we teach them in preschool even. Yeah, exactly.
And even your dentist, your optician, whatever.
If this is an emergency, we're closed, call 911.
But the third test, you've got ALS, you've got
BLS, where we still go, and then you've got non
-emergent. And I love that because that probably
is going to be a solid 20 % or 30 % of calls
that the patient pays a fraction of the amount
that they would if they broke the threshold in
the ER. An ER bed stays open for a true emergency.
And that crew never even got woken up for that
call. Yes, we we've looked at that. We have a
county level EMS or county level dispatch. So
that's still we previewed it. We looked at it
like Aurora fire on the other side of the city
have used it. And I think they saw like a 20
something percent reduction. in low acuity 911
calls that made it to the station. Imagine that,
like that's huge. That's the stuff that never
happens. You know, I also think about like San
Antonio Fire that has the app, like they'll send
you a link and they have a paramedic who works
in dispatch and that helps them also right size
the response as well. You know exactly what you're
talking about. You're like, oh, thanks for calling
911. Here's a link. It opens up the FaceTime.
There's a paramedic there who can say, oh, this
is a real one. Let's get people rolling. From
a risk mitigation standpoint, you're also not
having people buzz across the city, lights and
sirens, on something that they're just ill -informed
as to what the nature of the call is. So there's
a lot of really cool stuff that's happening in
the world from a risk reduction perspective at
the community level. mobile integrated healthcare
at West Metro, where we have nurse practitioners
and a PA that work for the fire department that
scalp those exact calls that you're talking about
from a humanist perspective of we connect people
with exactly what they need instead of the emergency
room. And then also from a care navigation standpoint.
which has been huge. Our internal numbers are
showing once our nurse practitioner makes contact
with a frequent 911 caller, their calls back
reduce 78 % over the next 60 days. So again,
talk about those things as the call that never
happens is the success. Our nurse practitioner
will call somebody that we have ongoing, not
issues, but have complex needs. They'll call
them and say, hey, what's up? Do you get your
pills refilled? So we can be proactive in that
point instead of reactive, which is the traditional
911 model. And that, again, comes from a care
navigation standpoint of we have people who just
lack the faculties to get signed up for Medicaid.
And they lack the ability to navigate a very
complex health care system. So if we can do that
beforehand, again, to your exact point, the other
thing that we have done. that works really well
is one of my buddies our ems captain has started
to work with the nursing homes with their their
supervisors and providing them their data back
on how many times we go there what the nature
of the call is and whether or not this person
gets uh admitted or how can we fix their problem
at home, you know, in the nursing homes. One
thing that we've seen in the Denver metro area
is private equity has come in and bought a bunch
of the nursing homes and stripped them of their
ability to provide in -home care where they're
saying, oh, you previously had mid -levels that
did rounds. Now we're not going to do that. Like
one prime example is one of the senior living
places around the corner from the in -home or
available care to now a call button that goes
to a call center that then triages the person.
And surprise, when someone triages the person
over the phone, they're going to send the fire
department every time. So we look at policy level
and system level fixes for those exact things
that you're talking about. And they're so cool
to see so many different entities trying to fix
the problems before they happen. And I think,
again, as far as the three different prongs you
talked about, that's what's so cool about the
opportunity to do this job is that we have not
just the responsibility to our people, but the
responsibility to the people who call 911 to
do better. One other really cool thing that our
city is doing is we actually have remotely placed
drones that the cops run, and they will self
-dispatch on fire calls before. We even get toned
out and they'll have eyes in the sky of whatever
the incident is. And we can spool up or, you
know, or slow down our response based on the
information that we're getting from the drone.
The cool example of it was we had they were able
to geo layer in the addresses and they could
actually we were going on a fire and. Before
our first engine even arrived, the drone was
piping in notes into the CAD or the drone operator
that said, hey, this is an electrical, you know,
a line down in the backyard. It got the fence
on fire. Now the fence is getting into the roof.
And we were able to know exactly where the hazard
was. We knew that there were lines on the ground
that hadn't tripped the, you know. tripped out
the system. So we had live wires in the back
of the house, and we were able to see that people
were evacuating before our first engine even
showed up. And that is just so cool. So like
I said, I'm so excited about so many different
things that are happening in our profession.
And, you know, just to, you know, have an extreme
tangent from what our, you know, main idea was
today. But, you know, I'm just very excited for
the future about what we're doing. I mean, that's
a perfect example. I'll give you a parallel one.
I had a gentleman on whose name just fell out
of my head. I don't know why. Anyway, if you've
ever seen the footage of the guys, he's got almost
like an Iron Man suit, but the jets are on his
arms and he flies. And he started off, you know,
looking at kind of the, you know, military and
even first responder space. And then really ended
up being more like a sport thing, ultimately.
Richard Browning, that's his name. But what caught
my eye is they did one for mountain rescue in
the UK. And the medic basically flew up with
a backpack to the patient, drops down, you know,
the bottom of the cliff, wherever they ended
up falling, packages the patient. And then I
was telling him, you know, can they fly him down?
Can they harness him? He's like, well, no, the
FAA won't allow that. But what you can do, I
don't know why this is different, but he said
you can then attach the stretcher to a drone.
I guess a person can't pilot another person,
but a drone can. And then the drone flies it
down to the ambulance and then they receive it
and then off they go. And obviously the medic
will follow down. So I agree 100%. The innovation
is there for technology. What we need to do,
though, is apply that same innovation to the
person inside the uniform. And that's, I think,
what this conversation is. We look at technology.
We look at drones in wildfire in the example
that you've given. in a mountain rescue we look
at you know whole blood and all these incredible
things that are starting to take flight now so
the conversation is but we still have to apply
the same thing to our humans and i want to get
us from oh let's try and get us to stop dying
to forging performance in the human being. And
that involves fitness standards, you know, rest
and recovery, mental health practicing, you know,
practices, you know, breath work, all these things
that create these men and women that physically
and mentally perform at an extremely high level.
Because as I say, so many times lives depend
on us. And being proactive rather than reactive.
I think that could also be. One of the underlying
themes of our whole time today is trying to get
ahead of it. We are reactive. And that's the
thing. If we're going to give any grace at all,
the nature of our very profession is reactive.
Well, it's our whole job. Yeah, exactly. So understanding
that we have to go into the proactive side to
fix the things that are killing us too. Yeah.
When the red light turns on in the sky, you go
and do stuff and you fix other people's problems.
Exactly. Well, I want to go to some closing questions,
but one more area you just touched on, but I
know we want to take a slightly deeper dive.
Talk to me about the financial literacy that
you're doing in the academy and then that layer
as well of our overall well -being as far as
the finance side. Well, I think this goes back
into if you can have somebody who's financially
astute and making good choices and learning from
the get -go like i said man i i won the lottery
when i got this job i was so excited it was the
most money i'd ever made in my entire life like
i did i volunteered in the psych department doing
their experiments when i was in college for beer
money i worked at a chili's i had you know the
job at uh driving the wheelchair car like this
job was it for me i was like i've never made
this much money in my life i can do whatever
i want and you know granted in the scale of things
it's not amazing when you're brand new but it
was the most i'd ever made and you are in a prime
opportunity to make some really bad financial
decisions when you first get hired um you know
so what we do in our academy is we actually have
part of it is that it is is financial literacy
it's a financial wellness it's taught by two
guys who actually started a podcast called the
fiscal firehouse they are brilliant dudes um
louie and baity louie used to run the state budget
for colorado department of transportation and
john baity both of those guys are on our eboard
and they and he went back and got his masters
in personal finance and his sole mission is to
get people to not have thousand dollar truck
payments as soon as they graduate from academy
so they talk about you know investing early and
how do you build personal budgets how do you
make good choices How do you start electing to
defer some of your money into a 457 or a 401
or whatever you got? So they have taken it over
the top. And it's like these dudes mission to
make sure that we're getting people out of this
job in a place where they're not staying because
they have to. They're staying because they want
to. And so, you know, they've got they talk about
like pension deferrals and like how you can decide
when is the best time to take your pension. And
so they try and target, you know, people throughout
the spectrum of their. uh their career and they
have different episodes that are tied to you
know this financial literacy from the beginning
to while you're making midlife decisions to when
you have kids what the hell do you do financially
when you have kids and you're being cut to pieces
by 35 copays for ear infections and then you
know then when you're later in your career how
are you saving for college and then when you're
on your way out like like i said how are you
doing it so you get to leave on your own terms
and i think that ties back into our our broader
conversation of people's financial wellness.
Like if they're working overtimes because they're
house poor, or they're overextended on a car
payment, or they've got this, that, or the other
thing, and this is the most efficient way for
their family to make enough money to live comfortably,
then how are we educating people from the get
-go so they're not putting themselves into that
situation where they're having to compromise
their health to do things that we know are bad
for them to pay those bills? overall wellness,
I think financial literacy, financial wellness
is as important as your health, because if you're
not healthy enough to work, or like you said
earlier, you're not healthy enough to live five
years after you finish this job. Why the hell
are we even doing it? So I wanted to at least
make sure like that I put that plug in there
because I think like for all my nerd stuff and
all this information that all this research that
I'm doing at the end of the day, like this is
as important as anything else we talk about.
is the financial health of the people that do
this job. I saw that when I went to Anaheim.
Hialeah, I don't remember if it was just because
I wasn't there that long, but I bought a car
when I came to the States. It was, I think, $2
,700 I paid for a Nissan Sentra, 97. Stick shift.
And, you know, that's what I had. I got to Anaheim
and, you know, the California money was a lot
better than I just left. So same as you. When
I got there, I was like, oh, my God, you know,
I'm a millionaire. Yeah. You know, I was still,
you know, I literally landed in California. So,
you know, under the flight path of Burbank Airport
and the little efficiency in the back of a house,
a real, you know, Hollywood story, if you like.
So all my money was going into kind of getting
established, saving, you know, paying all the
bills. But yeah, my friends had not only expensive
trucks, but they had jet skis and dirt bikes
and Winnebago fifth wheels. And they were, you
know, and then it was when they were doing on
a jet ski. But yeah, and then it was the more
the whatever they called it, the interest only
mortgage, you know, that everyone got in trouble
with. But luckily, because I come from Florida,
these California prices, I was just like, there's
no way I'm not going to spend, you know. $700
,000 on an 800 square foot house, you lost your
mind. So because it was so jarring at that time,
it stopped me. It wasn't like I had great financial
sense. It was just, it was so jarring that I
didn't. And years later, and sadly, a lot of
those guys had lost all those things, had lost
those homes. And I traded my Nissan Sentra in
that was still working for 309 ,000 miles on
the clock. um and it was still going and it was
kind of that moment that i realized that it just
gets you from a to b and we are so sold especially
as men if you want to be a man and you need a
ram and all this stuff like hell yeah you don't
so even you know you've got obviously the boom
and the refinancing all the things but then you've
got television just telling you over and over
again you don't have enough you don't you aren't
enough but if you will be if you have this watch
and this truck Blah, blah, blah. And so, you
know, people just being aware of that, aware
of the propaganda that's just keeping you in
debt. If you can take a step back and realize
the game and realize that your, you know, small
car can actually tow a small trailer, for example,
it does. They do in Europe all the time and that
you don't need something that could tow a semi
trailer just to take your boat or whatever the
thing is. So debunking the, you know, the capitalistic
myths. I think it's another arm of this whole
financial literacy that you can do with so much
less than the television tells you you can. Well,
and I think this also goes into a lot of the
wellness strategies that we talk about. My wife
and I have a rule. We don't make any big financial
decisions the first day after shift because we
know that your mind is not prepared to handle
the complexity of the long -term decision or
the long -term consequences. of an issue like
you're not buying a house you're not buying a
car you're not making a big call uh when you're
in in a cognitively vulnerable state and i think
when you think about how often we put ourselves
because in my the the way that my dumb mind thinks
about what we do it's like you're perpetually
jet lagged and you're perpetually when you get
off work you're on a different time zone and
when you think about it that way you're like
well i'd never buy a car Or I'd never make these
big decisions in those cognitively vulnerable
states. And I think that's also just part of
the campaign is helping people realize and be
in tune with their own bodies to the point when
they know like, this is not the best time to
buy a brand new truck, or this is not the best
time to be considering a giant purchase. So yes,
absolutely. I've done a lot of just agreeing
with you. I'm sorry. you want to pick something
we don't agree on and then we talk about that
no no i think this is the thing i think it's
common sense but yeah i mean when you're talking
about making financial decisions maybe it's not
the right time to be driving a million dollar
ladder truck or pushing medications on a child
either you know what i mean so it goes back Yeah,
or if you change shift at a time where we could
be potentially releasing a bunch of young guys
in their 20s and young guys and gals in their
20s with more money than sense, releasing them
on society in the evening after being awake for
two days is probably not the best time for people
to be going out to the bars and things like that.
Yeah, yeah. All right. Well, the first of the
closing questions, is there a book or are there
books that you love to recommend? It can be related
to our conversation today or completely unrelated.
Yeah, I'm a weirdo for books. My wife's an English
teacher, so I get to celebrate all the classics
that I never read when I was in high school and
I just spark notes them or did the cliff notes.
So I've been asked to get reinvigorated with
some of the classics. I think if you haven't
read. because you didn't in high school either.
If you haven't read any Vonnegut, I would say
some of his perspective on the world, especially
our world, is fascinating. And specifically,
Slaughterhouse -Five is a phenomenal book to
go back into. Vonnegut was a POW in World War
II. He was a prisoner of war in Dresden when
it was firebombed. And his perspective and outlook
on the world is fascinating. His mantra throughout
that book is, so it goes. And you're not reactive
to your situation. You just understand, or he
understands, that the world moves on. And you
get to decide how you're going to engage with
it. And so it goes. And I think that is from
a first responders perspective. When I read it
through the lens of what we do every day, I think
that that is a tremendously empowering thought.
It's a tremendously empowering book. I think
the calamity and the sadness that we see all
the time, you have to find ways to process those
things. There are good ways and there are bad
ways. But at the end of the day, we have to experience
those things. So I think some of the old Vonnegut
is fantastic, applicable. It's funny. It hits
a lot of the things that we do. I would say Vonnegut
is a good one. I also found in my dabbling around
the world with things is a lot of the old Stoic
work. So Seneca. He was a Stoic back in the day.
The way that he approaches ethics and the treatment
of others is fascinating. There's a version of
the book that you can get that has it in Greek
on one side and then like those Shakespeare made
easy books from high school. And then also has
the English translation. And I find a lot of
it, especially in like you're in my perspective
of like, how can we help people? um being really
awesome like the way that he approaches from
a stoics perspective interaction with the world
interaction with people who are in different
circumstances and just an outlook on humanity
at whole um is a really interesting thing so
we can go back to those but i also think um There's
one that we had to read about an astronaut. I
wrote this one down. It was super cool. An astronaut's
guide to life on Earth. And it was Colonel Chris
Hadfield. And he was a Canadian test pilot who
all he wanted to do was be an astronaut. And
he talked about the trials and tribulations of
getting to that point, the things you have to
do, the questions of how do you put your family
first in a system that does not want families
to be first from a professional perspective.
was great. I really enjoyed that book. And then
lastly, the second half of Jacinda Ardern's book,
A Different Kind of Power, is phenomenal. It
talks about being in positions where you need
to create policy and think about how to empathetically
lead people and how she was... You know, she
was the prime minister in New Zealand during
COVID. And she was the prime minister during
the terror shooting in Christchurch at the Muslim
mosque. Like she had to lead people through some
pretty shitty situations. And she always showed
up being kind and humble and a humanist first.
So I think like that's a different way to perceive.
what our role as leaders in the fire service
is, is to lead a different way, to not bark,
but to lead with kindness and humanity first.
So those are all like really cool books that
I think are from all over the world, like all
over the zone. Sorry, there was not a consistent
theme. There doesn't need to be. No, I mean,
they're all great suggestions. I know the Slaughterhouse
-Five has been suggested, I think only once before.
So I've got to read that. Chris, is it Caulfield,
the astronaut? Mm hmm. Hadfield. Hadfield. That's
right. Yeah. Caulfield's a coach. Yeah, that's
someone I want to get on the show. But yeah,
the prime minister of New Zealand, what surprised
me is that it looked like she was going to hold
that kind of stance for the longest time. And
at the end, she enforced all these mandates.
And so I don't know. I'd be curious to climb
into her mind. Like, why? Why did she kind of
lose that fitting at the end when actually a
lot of the other nations were coming out of the
COVID? pandemic and that stance. Really late
in the game, she did a complete 180 and shut
the country down. And I'm curious as to what
the backstory was with that. I would love to
have dinner with her and just listen and learn
and see how she thinks about her internet. And
the crazy part about her, she just was like a
regular person. She was somebody who grew up
kind of in the rural part of New Zealand and
just through a passion and understanding of people.
was able to move into a pretty influential spot.
So I just, I really enjoyed her biography for
that reason is because it shows in a, in a democracy,
how people with just cool ideas and interesting
perspectives can, can get a lot of people behind
them. In a real democracy where you don't pay
to play. All right. Before we go down that rabbit
hole, what about films and documentaries that
you love? Oh, my God. Dude, I've got a six -year
-old and a four -year -old. I haven't seen a
real movie in years. We went to go see Bad Guys
2 in the movie theater yesterday. There were
some ups and downs. Great plot. I think we've
celebrated. We got Disney Plus at the beginning
of COVID, and I think we have celebrated nearly
every film in there. So I don't know that I'm
the best guy to talk about because seeing as
like I referenced Wild Kratts earlier in our
conversation, if you haven't watched Wild Kratts
out there and you've got little kids, I think
that's a good use of time. And enjoy Sesame Street
as long as it still exists. I think those are
two things that we should hope for. No, I don't
think we've watched a grown -up movie and I can't
even remember the last time. We did watch Superbad
as a crew once, and I was very uncomfortable.
When you're 20 and you watch Superbad for the
first time, you're like, this is great. But then
when everybody's looking at you as the battalion
chief, you're like, I need to find my way out
of this room real quick. I do think, though,
that's another part that I think is like the
cultural competency of the movies, the firehouse
films. And I know when you had the Super Trooper
guys, like you think about how important those
films were to young firefighters growing up in
the late 2000s and the early 2010s. Like that
was the bottom of our pyramid. And you think
about, you know, you make you rattle off some
of those quotes in the firehouse nowadays. And
there are people who have never seen those movies.
And there's a generation gap and a translation
gap on a lot of the movies that, you know, you
almost need to before you can start in a firehouse,
you need to watch some of those films so that
you're up to speed before you come in and somebody
rips one on you and you're like, whoa, where
did that come from? But yeah. Also, some of these
younger kids grew up with the very woke movement
in Hollywood, too, where everything was suddenly
offensive. And I remember Robert Downey Jr. was
on Joe Rogan's show, and they were talking about
how they couldn't make Tropic Thunder these days.
And I just remember that. I think it's coming
out of that now, too. But what a ridiculous statement
that you can't parody the racism of Hollywood
in a film because it will offend people that
think it's racist. I mean, that says it all,
you know? Yeah, you have one person rattle off
a couple Rush Hour 2 quotes and you've got yourself
a real big problem. Exactly. Also a great film.
Celebrate the entire collection. You can't even
open your mouth. Of course, Tucker's early work.
Yeah. South Park, which again, I'd love to get
those guys on the show one day. First, everyone
else got canceled, but you didn't. That's a superpower
in itself. Exactly. All right. Well, the next
question, is there a person you'd recommend to
come on this podcast as a guest to speak to the
first responders, military and associated professions
of the world? Well, I think my financial, our
financial guys are awesome. Like the work that
they do is so funny. They could keep it so lighthearted.
They're like the most serious, unserious people
that you could put. I think those guys are great.
I also think like a really fascinating person
to talk to would be Kate Capallo. She was with
DC Fire and EMS for a while. And her PhD is in
human factors, which even though she said it
a bunch of times, I still could not be sure of
what that actually means. I think what it is,
is system designs that take into account human
decision making. And every time I've heard her
talk, I'm just blown away with how smart she
is and the things that she's experienced in her
career, good and bad, and also how she has integrated
into the fire service as a researcher outside
of our world. I think she'd be fascinating to
talk to. Okay. Yeah, that's something that's
come up recently. When I've realized the danger
of putting out a study that is supposed to be
looking at firefighter health but is not culturally
competent, how detrimental that can be. And it's
not, again, criticizing our researchers because
they're researchers. But, you know, when there's
that disconnect, and Joel's study is a perfect
example, and then the country runs with, oh,
4896 is better. wasn't joe's fault joel just
did a study on a quiet department but when you
know a little knowledge is a dangerous thing
it can be super detrimental so getting researchers
that have been in our position or you know like
sarah obviously she was she was raised in a firefighter
family but even then like she admitted in a recent
podcast when i talked about sleep deprivation
with her a few years ago she was like that's
stupid he doesn't know what he's talking about
and then all of a sudden she takes a deep dive
and like oh my god this is everything that we've
been talking about So, yeah, so that's an interesting
topic that's really surfaced recently is if you
are going to research, in this case, the fire
service, you really need to be doing the ride
alongs and all this kind of thing, just like
our clinicians are, the mental health side, because
otherwise you just don't understand what you're
researching. And then therefore you can create
data that actually sends us in the wrong direction.
Well, but the great thing about both of them
is that they both have. They are so involved
in the community now and, you know, they have
been for a long time that they are becoming the
experts. They're becoming us, you know, and I
think that's what's what's fantastic about, you
know, the research that NDRI is doing moving
forward is that they have. SMEs built into the
process that can put the stepbrothers filter
on things. Because the translation, and we saw
it during COVID, we saw it where we are now,
is that we have these great academic resources.
We need someone who exists in the middle to translate
this information in both directions. We need
some dickhead who knows all the super trooper
quotes to filter them. going up and then also
translate the science coming down and offer that
perspective of how do you operationalize some
of this stuff and that's i think where we create
the cultural education campaign to move the needle
with exactly what you're talking about yeah well
i think also what to study in the first place
because if you think about a grant that's like
oh is 24 48 you know healthier than a 48 96 that
doesn't even need to be looked at what needs
to be looked at is The entire Northeast is working
24 -72. So let's compare that to the 56 -hour
workweek. Now you have a mind -blowing study
that would have revealed all the things that
we talked about several years ago. So that's
my thing is all that grant money and all that
time, they could have done exactly the same thing
with two very, very different shift schedules
and had some incredible data. So guiding these
researchers into what the real issue is and where
we can send you know, send them. So their minds
will be blown then when they get the data between
those two. When I also think funding federal
level research, as well as FEMA, safer grants,
AFG grants, those are the things that also are
the bedrock of funding fire service. Like when
you talk about writing safer grants for four
spots on engines or writing safer grants to be
able to up staff ambulances, when you divide
a finite amount of calls by more people, you
also reduce the workload there. So I think all
of these avenues are critical for exactly what
you're talking about. But if we lose our big
funding sources at the federal level, the downstream
impact will be terrible. Yeah. Because it's going
to put all that pressure. on those line crews
on the ambulances absolutely in a profession
we can't end like that no no we're not gonna
we're not gonna okay good so the last question
before we make sure we know where to find you
and then if people are able to see you know your
studies what do you do to decompress oh we got
a peloton during uh during uh covid and that
thing we have put some work on that bad boy I
also think that, like I said, giving back where
you can. I fill my cup volunteering in a kindergarten,
which again presents new boogers and new viruses
every week. And then I make, I volunteer for
our, well, when you have a kid on swim team,
you don't get volunteer, you voluntold. But I
try and work the pancake station every time that
I can. I think those are, it's so cool to see.
little kids grow and come into a sport and see
their friends and their little packs of snot
nose, little weenies that things that they come
up with is so cool. It is so cool to see kids
develop their own little social packs and things
like that. That just makes me so happy. I also
really like talking about this stuff. And by
the length of our conversation today, I'm sorry,
but I love this stuff. I like, you know, I presented
at Science to the Station when this thing was
just starting up, when our research was starting
out at the NFA. I've talked about it. One thing
I really love is I've got what I call a research
assistant. One of the friends from work, his
daughter is in a STEM program and she's working
as my data science research assistant for part
of her senior year. And we're actually building
Google Map API models to forecast drive times
for everybody who works at the fire department
based on different start times. So that's her
project. So mentoring. I love trying to create
a passion for this job in my own weird way. And
it's not in the traditional way, but I see and
I hope that it adds value to what we do to help,
like I said, help weird people and goofy people
find their place in this job. And that's what
I love to do. Beautiful. Well, for people listening,
where are the best places to find you online
or social media? Social media. I'm a creeper
on Instagram. I don't post anything on there.
I don't think I've used Facebook since it wasn't
cool anymore. That's a long time ago. Yeah. I
have a LinkedIn. Our director of public health
for the county said I need to have a LinkedIn.
So I have a LinkedIn, which is kind of fun. But
I think you can, you know, you can get me at
my department email. Like I said, I'll talk you
in circles about this stuff all day if you catch
me. So my department email. mbinney at westmetrofire
.org. Like I said, I love talking about this
stuff. And if there's anything that I can do
with biometric implementation or starting these
processes, I also think data privacy. A lot of
my training has also been in making sure if we're
collecting this information, how are we keeping
it safe so that it can't be used against people,
but also be used with the noblest of intentions.
So that's something that I've kind of specialized
in over the last couple of years. So again, like
if you're thinking about starting a biometric
program, reach out because I've screwed a lot
of things up along the way. And if I can save
some people some lost sleep, I guess that. That
helps in a couple of different ways. Amazing.
Well, I want to thank you so much, Mike. It's
been such an interesting conversation. I mean,
your journey in the fire service, the kind of
unique path that you took when it came to the
wellness approach, especially with the tech.
So I want to thank you so, so much for being
so generous with your time and coming on the
Behind the Shield podcast today. Thank you very
much. I appreciate it.