Disclaimer. We'd like to know before the start of this interview that the opinions
about to be expressed by the guest of tonight's Getting Salty Experience podcast are that
of the guest and do not directly or necessarily reflect the views of the host
of the Getting Salty Experience podcast. You're listening to the Getting Salty Experience Podcast.
Hello, a word, we go, Welcome back, Hank. See
what I got on? Just fulfilter and I don't put it on. I
got my look, I got my hasback jump shoot on baby has back jumpsuit,
baby out of a mother and he I don't know how he has had
the right color. I don't know, dude, it's what I got to
do. Minute, bro, I don't know. I think it's gotta be
like navy blue. No, I think they were brown. Look at the
pictures. Hold on a minute, and washed so many times well from all
the chemical changes they went through, and he ended brown. Look, there's
Philly Mack in a brown jumpsuit. Baby. Yeah, okay, yep,
welcome back to it. Against all these pans podcasts, this is the only
one that brings the kitchen table to the firehouse, kitchen table to you we
got senior dude, Hank Bolet because Roofie is on assignment right now out in
Idaho doing kill him whatever. I don't know. He's on assignment. He
might check in with us though he gets home in time. He's gotta fly
and then he's got to uh he says he will. I was on the
phone with him earlier. He's he was heading to the airport when we were
speaking. Oh, he ain't got no jumpsuit though, I can tell you
that. I bet your Philly is happy that I got the jumpsuit on.
And I tried to get uh to the fabric store to get some like nice
uh Drakes with the window shades to match lowis but working. No, no,
no, he's in. He's in the Oval office. You gotta have
an Italian wife to make those bro an Italian mother in law to make one
of us. Is this roughy now testing with me? Uh? Nope,
I don't know. I don't know any who. We got a good show
tonight because we got a guy who dude not only to respect this guy really,
truly, I could say this with the bottom of my heart. I
love working with Philly. Max guy was the pinnacle of his of his game.
It was has Mac guy. You think about Hasbat, you think about
Philly Max right, thank he was listen. He was the one of one
of the right guys to have in that firehouse making the transition when we became
a squad there. You know, he was one of the voices of reason.
Well, you had to keep the kindergarten kids in line, and he
had to deal with you know, and and him and I used to I
have to, you know, sit down once in a while and have a
Powow's right of smooth things over. Yes, yeah, I always, guys
do man. I always enjoy having filled in the flyhouse. Dude, Well,
you know what, Mikey, we got to pay the bills. So
why do you roll that commercial? Quick? I don't know how. Keith
just jumpsuit on because which one or which one do you want? Tonight?
Armor Tough? We got Alma Tough on Monday night. Baby, come on,
all right, I forgot about that yet. It's been a while since
I've been in the seat. So here we go to work from our friends
over at Armourtuff. Armor Tough firehouse flooring was recently installed in Station number seven,
the newest of the DACAB County Fire stations in Decatur, Georgia. Meeting
Deputy Chief Smith of Support Services, Vince explained that Armor Tough interlocking flooring is
the only floor that is tough enough to withstand the abuse of fire apparatus along
with fire personnel at a very busy station. Chief Smith explained, the flooring
in all of our stations over the years gave us multiple problems. We need
floor that can last as long as the walls and the roof. That's why
we chose Armor Tough. The installation team came from New Jersey and in three
days they had completed their work without any disruption to our daily operations. We
were very impressed with not only the product, but with the workmanship as well.
I highly recommend Armour Tough for your station's floor. Call Vince today for
a no obligation quote at nine oh eight nine one seven seven six nine to
seven. Wonderful. Always nice to hear from Vince's good dude, play the
on one really quick. May seventeenth, was it seventeenth? Eighteen nineteen?
Me and Louis be down in Harrisburg Expo Hole booth before thirty. Come down
and see us. It's a hoot. You haven't good time down the man.
I think as a matter of fact, Gave Fox is taking us out
to dinner one night. There he's a no yet. I mean, we're
going out to dinner. I'm going to hit him with the bill. So
what else? Beautiful? Yeah, I want to see if he's as funny
in person as he is in the chat. Well, that's yet to be
determined. We'll see if he can. You know, you can hold his
own, bro. Report this is big boy Leak. You't playing with He's
not swimming with the little fish, Hank. You know what I mean,
He's with the big fish. How you going down to Florida? Yeah?
How's it going down to Florida? There? Hot? Yeah, it's it's
Florida. You know. People say, oh, how do you take the
heat? I'm like, well, listen, I can't complain about cold and
move to the warm and then complain about the warm. So to me,
it's beautiful out here. Well, almost eighty in the sixties. You're working
it's eight, you know, eighty five now this time of year, and
I'll take it right. That's when I get the resorts, and that's when
they have beach resorts, you know, beach resorts. I know what he's
saying about. All right, might get it out of your system. Even
nobody cares about hockey. Go ahead to do it well. The New York
Rangers is Rob Procaccini was putting in the chat. How sweep it is a
four game sweep over the Washington Capitals. I was very happy. Great Sunday
for me. By the way, the Yankees win fifteen to five, Demolister
Brewers. Nicks get a huge road win on the three, one on the
sixth k not over yet, not over yet. They still got to win
Game five tomorrow. And the Rangers they didn't play with their food. A
little tight third period there, they weren't looking too good to score two goals.
Put a bad boy away. Now they can chill out. Let Carolina
and the Islanders duke it out and on to round two. They themselves up
for a couple hope that goes back right after getting knocked out in round one
last year, which was very bitter, especially after being in the Conference finals
the previous year. They're back in round two. So once they have the
Presidents Cup and be out in the first round. Bro, No, you
don't, yep, Yeah, it's happened. All right, let's bring him
in here. You want to bring him in heck, senior dude, the
senior do okay, Well, it is my great pleasure to announce to a
leatherhead Nation firefighter Phil mccarl there he is. Hey, guys, I are
you there? Didn't have enough of me for like fifteen years, bro,
Like you know what, I never got tired of you. But before we
go anywhere, Mike, you know what we gotta do. How do you
like? The cover rolls by the way, just for you. Actually did
a wrong color. They are ship and the jump the jumpsuits actually when Navy
flight suits they were black, they were or dark Navy blow. They will
thank you, thank you, singing dude, got it right again? Cool
listen they were military spec Yeah they was. My heart was in the right
place, don'll Phil? You know? Yeah? All right, Mike,
let's get patriotic, do it all right? Here we go. I pleasure
allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for
which it stands, One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for
all. Where did you go? I take this thing off of sweat my
nuts off? Here? I don't know degrees that what are you doing?
Oh, welcome to the show, Philly. Long overdue man. We've had
Hazmat guys now, but we haven't had Hank Right, the the Hazmac guy.
He's here. He's here. When we came and we went from edge
of two eight eight to squad to he walked in like who is this guy?
And then like Philly mac daddy bro, he's the mac daddy has Matt
right. He was had all the answers. He was the guy training I
gotta set for all the ship that we did. He was very calm and
cool man. He never you know, because at any time he could have
really choked the life of a helpie or any of those other guys. But
he didn't. He was calm and cool, which I gotta give him the
best to cool. That's correct, thank you. He said a good example
that he did probably well. I liked you guys. I liked you guys,
so I can't say that about all the hasback guys. They didn't like
us, but you know, but you know what, you guys had a
job to do. We had a job to do, and uh and that
was important, you know, And and staying together. You know what,
we never stayed together more than we did on nine to eleven. Right,
we did house, came together. We were good firehouse. I actually went
back there last week and I think I knew about maybe two guys and has
met. There was a guy that looked like Cassidy, but he's the skinny
Cassidy Now he lost all sorts of weight of Like, who was that looks
like Cassidy but he's skinny. We had we had a brunch recently and the
first John Cassidy was there when everybody's dying, who's that guy? I said,
that's John Cassidys. Yeah, no, I said, that's the real
John Cassidy. Yeah yeah. And who was the other guy? Kevin Chambers?
But he probably wasn't there when you were there. Yeah, Kevin was
Oh no, he wasn't there when I was there yet, right, probably,
I don't think anybody but Cassidy was there when you were there. Uh,
Cassidy was the only one, that's right, that's right? Ye,
time time goes by, Phil, Yeah, yeah, I goes there.
Ain't nobody he worked? Uh no, you met you worked with Dane Martin,
didn't you. Uh? Johnny McCoy Johnny John McCoy man. Now,
when I was there, I seen John McCoy. I'm trying to remember if
I think I was gone when Dane got there. Dany came out after nine
eleven, all right, so then a couple of months because they put me
out and uh thousand and two after the World Trade Center met, they took
you out the pasture. That's correctly done. But I'm still here, so
I'm wanting a lucky I didn't shoot you make glue out of here, which
is a good it's a good sign. But we're not here to talk about
us. We're here to talk about Philly mac daddy's career. So Philly,
let's go back to way back when it was a Philly Macarusu. Where'd you
grow up? What the area where you're from, and what made you want
to become a fireman? Well, to be perfectly honest, I grew up
in the trogs Necks section of the Bronx, right near the trogs Neck Bridge,
a place called Edgewater Park. And what was interesting about Edgewater Park It
was one of the areas that had one of the volunteer fire departments that still
existed in the city of New York there was ten of them. There was
two in the Bronx, there were three in Queens, three in Brooklyn,
and two in Staten Island. And I actually grew up and I was one
of the volunteer firemen in Edgewater Park for a while. I was, I
was the chief there and the health and safety officer there, and uh,
that's where I got That's where I got my love for the fire department.
Oh. We did a show on that Philly, on on the ones that's
still that are still operational today. We did a show. Yeah, and
uh, I actually lived right behind the firehouse, and uh, that's you
know. I I I was an operating engineer I had. I had a
very very good job, but I really really wanted to be a fireman more
than anything. And my love for the fire service actually started there in a
volunteer department. And not like not unlike a lot of guys on Long Island
who started their careers in volunteer fire departments on Long Island or upstate. They
there was a lot of them who started there. I'll bet you ask guys
in the city now, they probably had no idea that even still volley houses
in the city. But I a few of them have closed, but Edgewater
is still lest It's still there today. Well, we still have the Two
and Queens that are open. I think, yes, one of the Bronx,
one of the Bronx. Yeah, yeah, there's Breezy Point broad Channel,
Richmond. Yeah, yeah, there was. There was a few of
them, you know, and some of them got along good with the city
and some of them, you know, used to fight tooth and nail.
You know. It was it was like a mix of things and stuff like
that. What year we're talking here, Philly, What year we're talking here?
Seventies, late seventies. H. I was the chief there in nineteen
seventy seven, so you must have been a five and in early seventies then
right at mid seventies. Yeah, and then uh, I think I took
well, I took the seventy seven tests to get on the job, right,
and I was hired. And I was hired in eighty two, so
yeah, it was some time around then. Yeah. Nice. Uh.
You come from a big family. I have. I have two brothers and
a sister. My my twin brother was was our arch enemy and fight department.
The people in the fire department who were in special operations, you know,
stock companies and stuff like that. Our our our adversaries were the guys
in police Emergency service. And I had a brother who was a lieutenant and
police Emergency Service. So we used to do battle all the time about who's
better and stuff like that. You guys know we were better than but you
know, it was hard to convince them of that. You know, we
tried, Yes, we tried. Was was he like the other guys?
Did he have a dislike for the fight apartment? Your brother? He was
like kind of didn't care. Well, yeah, you know what I didn't.
I didn't have a dislike for the cops. But one of the things
that I used to tell people all the time was, you know, when
I was a union delegate and I was a union delegate for has Matt and
I was a union delegate for the USA teams, you know, we used
to deal with fire police issues all the time. So I was always dealing
with issues that involve cops and firemen, you know, and you know,
there was there was no convincing either side that the other side that they were
wrong. You know, they were always right. It was the other side
that was always wrong. So you know, you know, the kind of
things that you had to deal with when you have a situation like that where
nobody's admitting to anything that they did wrong. It's me and my wife.
Sometimes it's almost like that, very very very similar to marriage. Yeah,
yeah, no doubt. Yes, all right, so you get it.
You go in and uh in eighty two you get appointed, right, yes,
sixty all male personnel. The girls came to classes after you graduate eight
five of eighty two and the class valedictorian look at us, Hang, yeah,
yeah, Well you know, the only good thing about that was that
I actually had a choice of where I wanted to go, and I selected
fifty eight truck in the Bronx. And and part of the reason I went
there was because some of the guys in that firehouse were I played football with.
So I wanted to go to the same house that I played football with
the guys I played football with. So I ended up going to that house
and I met a lot of great guys in that firehouse. It was It
was absolutely a fabulous place. Who they with? Phil, Uh, fifty
eight was in with forty five nguls. Oh okay, that was their company.
Phil. When you got when your class of sixty that was a small
class for FDN. Why like the same I was on the same list,
Like when I got on with the Chief Steve, they were putting one hundred
and fifty in at a time, right, was yours like one of the
first classes after like the lawsuit got settled. Is that why it was a
small Well, it's interesting you say that, Hank, because the only reason
my class got in was because of the lawsuit. The fire department had complained
to Judge Stifton. There was the judge at the time that they were so
short of manpower that they needed to get like people in right away just to
reduce the overtime course and stuff. So he allowed them to put sixty in
and then I think the class after me was one hundred and twenty or one
hundred and fifty, and then the women came in the class after that.
But yeah, it was a very small class. It was a court mandated
class. So and at the time, you know, it's interesting when me
and you were getting in, Hank, the classes were six weeks long,
six weeks and then you went to the field. Now today they're doing twenty
three weeks. Twenty three holy, twenty three weeks because now now they're doing
the cfr D, so you're doing that, they're doing peace officer training piece
of training. Well, and we did that too. It was thirteen weeks,
yes, you know, like you said, we did six weeks.
I'm going to tell you. You know, when they gave you the blessing
and you got to the firehouse, while by fire you got they needed guys.
You know, we were the influx of young bloods. You know.
The guys that were in the firehouses were all the guys. I mean,
they were great and they had experienced like nobody, but they were getting tired.
They were happy to see us. You know, we were like an
injection of of fun into the firehouse again because they got to be you know,
to have probi's again, and they enjoyed our antics. But then when
it came time to be serious, you know. So it was and part
of the reason, part of the reason keV that it went from six weeks
to twenty three weeks is over in the eighties, early eighties and into the
early nineties, you had a lot of federally mandated training and what that was
not only being pushed on municipal fire departments, but it was also being pushed
on volunteer fire departments where you had to do a certain amount of training.
There was no there was no way around it. So that's why a lot
of the training that you see occurred because of the eighties and nineties and federally
mandated training. I mean, but I came on the mid nineties and it
was thirteen weeks, So what could they add to get to twenty three weeks?
Well, whatever the fuck they're doing. Well, they added a tremendous
amount of stuff. And and let me tell you something, the only reason
that departments were adding training was because they were required to do it. So,
I mean, nobody's going to give you a federal funding that was That
was one of the complaints of a lot of fire departments, Hank, was
that it was all unmandated. I mean, all unfunded mandated training. Is
what what was happening? You know? I mean, uh, you you
take any any area and and has hazardous material was a perfect example. Hazardous
materials was a huge, huge, financial course on departments back in the early
eighties because everything that they asked you to do had a training component to it.
So the more you asked your guys to do, the more training they
were required to do. And it just it just ate up fire department budgets.
Was heating up fire department budgets. Yeah, you know, it crashs
me up. Now, how much money did they actually get? Because if
I go in there one more time and I had to hear Cassidy tell me
about his new rig after we just got into rig two years before that,
and we were sitting I was waiting to get our new rig ten years I
was waiting to get a new rig. I'm going to tell you where there
was a huge influx of money. There was a huge influx of money right
after nine to eleven with all of terrorism related stuff. You've seen the astronomical
amount of fire trucks that we got in the New York City Fire Department.
You look at our Marine division, how much it grew after nine to eleven.
I mean, you know, we went from having boats that were from
the nineteen fifties and and and having engines in them that had had swastikas stamped
on him from Nazi Germany. That's and that's the absolute truth, and to
the state of the art boats that we have today. I mean, it
was just absolutely amazing how much of a change that's been in a like a
odd department because of terrorists money. I don't go too far past because let's
go back to fifty eight trucks. So you get the fifty eight truck.
That's a busy house. That had to be a new house too, right,
because they were they were yeah, yeah, they were they It was
actually a new building that was attached to right next to forty five engine.
They had they shared a house watch, but they had separate kitchens, right,
and uh, in fifty eight truck was in the newer building along with
the eighteenth battalion. Right, battalion was in the same building. And how
long are there before you catch your first job, Philly? Uh? Actually
I pulled up to the front door and the bell rang and a guy was
hanging himself on the fire escape right in front of the house watch. That
was That was a job I had and has meant was a guy hanging I
mean in uh, fifty eight truck, the first guy was hanging himself.
Right. What about the first fire? Though first fire probably was the next
night. It was the next night. We we actually had a fire right
down the street on Treemont and Viz. It was it was an h type
top floor fire. I'm going to say it went to a ten seventy five.
It didn't get bigger than that. Uh. We had some very good
companies in the area. We had eighty eight and thirty eight that was just
a little bit north of US, and to the south of US we had
uh eighty eighty two and thirty one. So uh, you know it was
it was good area in terms of it was Dennis Smith when you were up
there in eighty two. Dennis Dennis at that time had transferred to seventy Engine
and uh City Island, right he he he was still there, but it
was like, you know, the last few months or something and then he
was on his way over to City Island. Who was so of your bosses
there in fifty eight when you were there, Uh, the first boss that
I had was Captain Terry Roach. Uh. He was a real good guy.
He ended up getting promoted. A lot of guys got promoted out of
that house. Uh, but Terry Roach ended up becoming a deputy chief.
He was the deputy chief who actually had the Father's Day fire. Really,
he was one of the chiefs at the far Father's Day Fire. Yeah.
So so Terry was a deputy, he made deputy and then Citro was my
other captain there before I left and went to Hasmat two good guys. I
also worked with tough Timmy Alaga and Engine eighty eight because I was detailed over
to eighty eight engine during my probationary period. That was one of the things
back when I got in the job. Anyone who was assigned to a truck
had to first go, well not first go, but during their probationary period
they had to do thirty days in each engine in their battalion. So eighty
eight was in my battalion, forty five was in my battalion. So truck
guys actually did sixty days and in engine companies when they had no Because the
class that your brother and I got on in seventy nine, and I think
the couple of classes prior, everybody went to engines. Nobody went to trucks,
right, Yeah, everyone went to any you went to to eighty first.
I forgot right, right, I think, I think I think we
all had in our first year show, we did a thirty day detail to
the truck. Like I just went across the floor, I went thirty two,
right, So I was kind of the opposite and then after a year
you could put a transfer paper in if I were openings, and back then
there were, uh, there was a decent amount of openings because guys were
retiring, you know, with the influx new guys. They felt like,
all right, you know, we passed the torch for a year to you
guys. You know, I'm retiring now. So it was easy to get
to the truck. We had a thirty day detail and it was just to
a truck in the Italian So they were hurt. They were hurting for guys
in in trucks. H when I was in probably school because the women were
holding up so many classes that the fire department was severely shorthanded, really shorthanded.
So who was your senior A lot of my class went to engine companies,
but the guys didn't go to trucks. They were all ordered to go
spend thirty days in every engine in their jurisdiction. Who was your senior?
Man? There Philly in fifty eight we had that was a very senior house
camp. One of the things that when I first started, I gotta tell
you, I felt incredibly safe because I actually sat down and figured it out
and there was one tour when I was working. There was one hundred and
twenty one years of experience on the truck with me going out the door.
So you had guys who had a lot a lot of time. There was
a few guys who were on promotion lists, so they were studying. They
were hard workers, they did good fire duty, so I really felt safe
in that firehouse. Yeah, those guys there, if you were at a
fire and you were in a jam, those are the guys you wanted to
be with because there was they had so much experience, so much fire.
I would say the same thing in the squad, but I don't want to
really blow up his head, you know, So I don't know. I'm
not going to see it. What was tough Timmy like Phil, that guy's
name comes up all the time on the showf tough to me. When I
first went over to be detailed into that firehouse, my first day over there,
I ran into him and he said, look, he says, you're
in my group for the next thirty days. He said, you can't make
any mutuals. He said, you have to work with me every tour.
He says, there's no other way for me to evaluate you. If you're
making mutuals. I can't evaluate. You've got to be with me every day.
And I'm going to tell you he's a great fire officer. He would
get into the thick of everything. And you know, he was an older
guy he at the time, and he could keep up with any twenty year
old. He was playing hockey with UH with UH some of the fire department
hockey teams and stuff like that. And he was a good fire officer,
smart, sharp, UH, tough, you knew stuff exactly, hence the
name tough. You don't get to I seen him. I seen him once,
No kidding, I seen him once. We were going into a job
and they were trying event windows. I don't know for whatever reason he did,
but he took his glove off for some reason, and he was punching
the windows out with his hand. When I was over, his hand looked
like U a piece of raw meat, and h the chief said to him,
Timmy, you gotta go sick. And he said, he says,
I'm not going sick. Tell these guys to put a band aid on it.
I'm going back to the firehouse. Put his hand looked like a piece
of Why did he take off his glove. Why don't you leave? You
guys have no idea. You gotta punch the window. I have no idea
why he did. I I think get the radio or something like that.
And then he sees he needed to get the window. And because he's tough,
that's why. Maybe he thought the glove had too much cushioning and it
wouldn't break the glass. Yeah, you know, yeah he was. He
was an amazing guy. Wow. All right, So let's talk about how
they decided to come up because Rescue four he used to do hasback for the
job, right, Yes, so you're getting how it was people were doing
has back first before. Here's what happened. There was an incident that happened
on the George Washington Bridge. There was a propane truck that was going northbound
on the George Washington Bridge. It was an M seat three point thirty propane
tank. It was carrying nine thousand gallons of liquified propane. And what happened
was the relief device on the container. It's normally designed to open and vent
to the air, okay, and when when the pressure goes down, the
springloaded pressure relief device reseats closes and then on its way, it keeps going.
Here's what happened. The springloaded pressure relief device goes to vent, it's
venting for a sufficient amount of time and it freezes in the open position.
So now they have leaking propane coming out of a thing on a continuous basis.
Big problem. So they stopped traffic on the George Washington Bridge going south
as far as Trenton, New Jersey, and it's backed up that that's going
north, and then on the southbound side, it's backed up from Bridgeport,
Connecticut all the way to the George Washington Bridge. So now what happens.
It takes almost a full eight hours for them to figure out what to do.
Okay, so they fixed the leak. After that, the federal government
says to the fire department, look, you can't allow this to continue.
You have to get a haz mat team. You have to get a has
met team. So you know how the fire department is. It's two hundred
years a tradition, unimpeded by progress, and because of that, they don't
really want to get a has met team. So they decide that you know,
Rescue two, Rescue one is doing diving operations. Rescue three is going
to do collapse, and we're going to assign Rescue four to do has met
Okay, So Rescue four is doing asthma. They're doing it for two years.
They decide to make it a two vehicle operation. They add additional people
to rescue for staffing so that they can staff the company. Now it becomes
a two vehicle response. And what ends up happening is they're spending so much
time out of the borough of Queens. Okay that Donaldmannus, who's the and
says enough of this. He goes to the city and says, look,
he says, my rescue company that's supposed to be in my borrow is spending
way too much time out of the borough. They're on colls fortween and four
hours out of the borough. And we have a fire in Queens. We
have no rescue company in Queens. You got to do something else. So
the fire department decides and they come up with a plan. Well, we're
going to make a separate rescue company, a separate HASMAG company. So Ray
Brown at the time he was uh, he was the captain of Rescue one
for a while. You remember that Hank ray Brown was his name. There
be for you but anyway, Brown he said he was Gray Brown was was
captain of what did you say? He was captain of rescue one at one,
and then they made him the chief of Rescue services. So what ends
up happening is this, they decided to make a separate hazmat unit and they're
going to put them in Queen's and Maspeth, and they're going to put them
right on the l I E. So they can they can run the they
can run the l I E, they can run the b QUA, they
can go in a lot of different directions. So it's the strategic decision was
to put them in the quarters of two eighty eight. Anyway, Yes,
they had an open bay. And what was going to be unique about this
company was that it wasn't going to be staffed for twenty five firefighters. It
was going to be staffed for thirty five firefighters. Because the company staffing was
not going to be five firefighters in an officer. It was going to be
seven firefighters in an officer. And uh, the company was going to have
three lieutenants who uh were field lieutenants, one captain, and they were going
to have one administrative officer to manage all of this, so they had a
lieutenant as administrative officer, three lieutenants for field work along with the captains.
So let me let me stop you one minute. So when Rescue four was
responding on HASBAT runs because as we know has that, you know you have
two entry guys, two backup guys, a resource guy, de contact,
right, what was how are they set up then? Because they only had
what five guys? No? No, no, the Rescue four actually tiet
more guys to staff the company because here remember we were just talking about federal
requirements and and why they why they uh? Why the uh stare uh?
The amount of training was changing. Well, the federal requirements were saying that
if you have a hazardous materials response team, you have to have a two
man entry team, a two man backup team, you have to have a
two man decon team. And what a lot of departments were doing was they
wanted a resource person who could look up information about the chemicals, take that
information, report it to headquarters. And so before rod with seven guys at
the time, then yes, yes, they were riding with they were riding
with seven. Now what what what ended up happening is you know John Dillon,
the Duke. Most people know who I'm talking about. If you know
anything about rescue for, you know about to do well. The Duke and
a number of the rescue four guys had had actually designed a new second piece
for them, okay, and that second piece was going to carry all of
their hazmat equipment, all of their regular rescue equipment was going to be on
their first piece. But what ended up happening is when they decided to make
the new hazmat unit. Now they made they made Hazmat Rescue five and a
five nine battalion, all on the same day, All on the same day,
those three units were created, okay. And what they did was this,
John Dillon and those guys were worked really hard designing that second piece.
The day that it was supposed to be delivered to them, it was taken
away from them and given to the guys and has Mat You're with me as
their new first piece. They were pissed. You get where I'm coming from,
right, because your original second piece was an engine right, Yes,
yes, our original first piece was actually designed as rescue for as secies You
with me? Oh so that make good relations with you and rescue for Yes,
Well, you know what but you see, but I'm going to tell
you what the problem was. There. There were some guys in rescue for
who didn't want to do has Matt, and there were other guys in rescue
for who did want to do has Matt. So you had a divided company
who was who was kind of upset at the way they were being treated,
And quite honestly, they weren't really being treated fairly. I mean, you
know, they went to all of that work and research and development, and
you know, politics, politics was the deciding fact. Right. They had
to go away to school, they had to go to the EPA schools,
they had to go to National Fire Academy schools, and those kind of things
turned some of the guys in the company off, you know, other guys
other guys. That's it. That's the piece right there. Right. So
what what ended up happening is over time, some of those wounds healed a
little bit, you know, like uh, John Dillon and me would talk
all the time. Uh. He was still a lot of those guys,
like Mike Milner, all of them, Uh, they still took Hasmack classes.
They went and and and they they were all skilled Hasmac guys. You
know, It wasn't like they were uh they were not. Now some of
the guys from Rescue for left there and came over to Hazmat So that's how
that's how the initial transition happened. Right when let's go back to how did
they put that on an order? Guys who want to go to has matt
and you saw it? What they did. What they did was this they
they they put out on an order. They said, look, we're going
to start a new unit. It's gonna be Hazardous Materials Company one. This
is what you're gonna do. Yeah, anyone who's interested call this number.
So they had one hundred and twenty six people called who were interested. Every
one of those people were interviewed. Now, at the time, they were
only going to take they were only going to take first grade fireman to come
to the unit, okay, And what happened was every one of the one
hundred and twenty five were interviewed. Joe Gallagher, who was going to be
the captain, he did some of the interviews. Joe Buell, who came
from Rescue three, he did some of the interviews. Al Jordan he did
some of the interviews, and the captain did some of the interviews, and
what they did was they whittled the list down to thirty five people. Okay,
those thirty five ended up going to the Division of Training, and they
went there for six weeks of training. Now they were being taught by guys
rescue for and from those company officers Jack Calderone, Al Jordan and Joe Buell,
Joe Gallagher, and they were taught for six weeks about what these guys
had learned at the National Fire Academy. Then six weeks later, everybody goes
to the firehouse and we walk into the firehouse and it was like, remember
when you guys came and kind of like took over things. Yeah, the
situation when has Matt got there and two eighty eight was there, they didn't
want any part of this, and all of a sudden, now they're being
invaded by thirty five guys. Thirty five new guys in the firehouse. They
had taken over the firehouse. So it was the same. It was the
same kind of deal. So let me ask you a quick questions. You
were a first grade how'd you get over there? What you weren't first grade?
How did you get over there? No? No, The reason they
took me. Is because I was an operating engineer before I came into the
New York City Fire Department. I was able to run power plants and heavy
equipment and knew how it worked and operated and stuff like that. I could
go into a steam generating plant or an electrical power plant and know what had
to be on and what had to beyond. So were you Were you the
junior guy then? One? I was a junior guy, That's right.
I was. I was. I was only a third grade fire and when
they took me, that's right. If I may ask a question, I
was, I was? I was the tidy bowl planer. What's the question,
Mikey, I canna say those early days eighty four, eighty five,
eighty six, there's a lot that we didn't know back then about HASMAT,
and a lot of it also was rooted in everyday use of certain chemicals,
like, for example, our frigerators retained retain certain chemicals that are normal in
certain dosages. So for you, this is a two part question. One
the growing pains both personally and as a company, and two what were the
early missions and goals of the unit? Okay, first things first, the
federal laws and regulations that regulated has MAT and HASMAT training did not become effective
until nineteen eighty six. The Super Fund Amendments and Reauthorization Act was actually in
nineteen eighty six that mandated training, and the training that was mandated greatly expanded
what we had to do in terms of training. But here's the problem.
We're coming from a department that's one hundred and twenty five years of tradition,
unimpeded by progress. It is heavily, heavily entrenched in tradition. So we're
going to start this new company in the fire department that totally goes against everything
that we've ever been taught. The guys in the fire department are taught an
aggressive interior attack, that's the way we fight fires. The guys in has
matter being told WHOA, Yes, we're not going to go in there and
go ape shit crazy until we see what we got to deal with. So
the written protocols and procedures for firefighting were one hundred and eighty degree difference from
what the protocols and procedures were being taught for hazmat personnel. And that's at
the federal, state, and local level. So now we're having a company
that's being taught contrary to what the department believes. Okay, you're with me,
Mike. So in terms of growing pains, every time that we had
a problem or an issue, we're dealing with chief officers or people high up
in the ranks who don't see things from the same point of view as we
do. And not only don't they see things from the same point of view
as we do, but they're also not trained or educate to understand the federal
regulations and the federal requirements that say this is what you have to do.
And just let me give you one simple example. When we first started,
we were in the four six battalion. We were in the four six battalion
man power pot. So anytime that we didn't have enough staffing, they would
want to send us a person from the four six battalion pool. But when
they sent us a guy, if they sent us an untrained guy, we
would send him right back to the battalion and the battalion would go crazy and
say, you can't send him back, And we're saying to the battalion,
you can't send them here because the federal law requires that the people who fill
these positions have to be trained to certain levels. You with me, yes,
So it became one of the toughest jobs in the fire department. Was
the delegate for Hazmat won Do you know why? Why was that? It
was he had to fight an issue every day. And when I say this,
every day, if you were to delegate in an engine company or in
a truck company, you had literally one hundred people who've seen things from your
perspective. Okay, when you were in a rescue company, you had at
least five delegates who've seen things from your perspective. When you were in Hasmat,
you were the only person who's seen things from your perspective. The chiefs
didn't understand. Sometimes the company offices didn't understand, and push came to shove
on many occasions when you talk in terms of growing pains. So I hope
that kind of answers your question. It does, and it prompts a follow
up. Naturally, over the course of a company's evolution and growth, there
is not amongst you guys, but amongst outside observers the oh that's why they're
here moments, you know. So, where did you start to feel that
that respect factor was coming in and chiefs or any other officers for that matter,
started to say it these scenes collectively, Okay, that's why we need
them. Time. And when I say a long time, I'm going to
say it took I'm going to be legitimately recognized in the job. Probably took
over ten years. And I'm not saying that there were some people who recognized
right away, but it took a long time. It took a long time
for people to understand it. Hey wait a second, this is a completely
different perspective. But you know what You've got to remember too, we were
the new kids on the block, and the new kids on the block.
It's like, I'm sure that Rescue five, which was created on the same
day as us, how to go through a lot of growing pains out in
Staten Island because companies out there were dealing with fires and stuff long before Rescue
five was even established out there. You know what I'm saying, how would
you like to be an engine company operate as a rescue company? Right right?
Well, one thing I would like to say, you know, to
back up what Phil said is that it did probably take, in most people's
eyes that were in the fire department a while for them to be accepted or
get the the you know, realize what they did. And listen, I
was one of them, I know when when they when I saw that come
about the Hasmat, I wanted nothing to do with that. I was having
a great time doing those aggressive interior attacks fighting fires, and then you know,
later on doing all the other stuff that the that the rescues did.
I think where I got at least a much greater respect for what the guys
in Hasma did was when when we became a squad and we had to do
all that training and all the different level suits and and the dexterity you know
what. I'm glad you brought that up, Pat, I mean I want
to yet, well again, listen, it's still it wasn't my favorite thing
to have to do, but at that point I knew that was one of
my tasks if I was asked to do it, So I was, like
anything else, I was going to train and become good at it. But
it was definitely, uh, you know when you had to get those lets
you know, lel level as it was, I mean it was daunting,
uh with the you know, the hand out, yeah, you know,
and and and you know, making sure something's not ripped I mean, it
was just so many things to think about and to try to do in these
spacesuits that you had no dexterity. It was, you know, it was
definitely challenging. You know, you bring up such a great point, and
and I just would like to if you guys are okay with this, I'd
like to just expand on what what Hank mentioned for a second. You know,
that was probably the turning point, Hank, when when all his terrorism
stuff started and we started to train all of the rescue companies and the CPC
trucks and the decontructs. What we did was we created what was called the
tiered response, where we trained people to different levels, but we brought all
of the companies out to the Rocky. We taught them about the capabilities and
limitations of wearing chemical protective clothing. We taught them about decontamination. We made
everybody get in the suit. And when I say we made everybody, every
chief in Soccer had to get in a suit. Every chief in the safety
Operating Battalion, any chief who was ever going to operate in the safety operating
battalion how to get into chemical protective suits. And they had to go through
a task oriented obstacle course where they had to climb over things, they had
to open barrels, they had to do with a one person drag or two
person drag, a four person carry, and you had to do all of
that and complete all of that on one bottle of air. And if you
ran out of air, you failed the course. Well, I'm going to
tell you something. We had one chief he went through the thing. He
failed the course and he said, he said, you know, I know
I failed. He says, I'm not asking hear pass me. He says,
I'm going to tell you one thing though. He says, that was
the toughest course I ever had in my career. And he says, I'll
tell you what he says. When I'm a safety chief. Now, if
I get an incident and the incident commander thinks that he has enough guys to
wear chemical protective suits to the job, I'm going to tell them, no,
you need more guys. Get more guys. Because one of the reasons
that we created this tiered response was when the chief officers were going through chief
officer training, one of their programs that they had to take was the Hazardon
Materials program. And what we said to them was this, Look, we're
going to give you a situation, and we want to know. We don't
want you to say out loud, I want you to write down what you
would do, okay, And this is the situation we gave them. There's
an incident at Grand Central Terminal. There's people down in Grand Central Terminal.
First responding units get to the scene and all of the first responding units go
down. What are you gonna do? What are you gonna do? Now?
The first thing that you have to think in your mind, Well,
civilians go down and not protected. All right. Firefighters are coming in in
bunker gear and they're going down. So what is that telling you about their
protective clothing? It's not adequate for the task in hand. Okay, So
who are we gonna call? Well, at the time there was only one
has met. How many people are getting in suits? Well, according to
protocol, you have a two man entry, two man backup, and you
have two decons. So you're gonna have two guys go in for literally one
hundred people down, a full first alarm assignment down. How long is it
gonna take them to get people out? Quite a bit long time? Understand
the concept? Yeah, Now, now the job is in panic mode because
they see the incident that happened in Tokyo and they're saying to themselves, we
can't expect Hasmat to do this, and we're we're certainly not going to add
more victims to the situation if we have if we have guys. So the
solution is we got to train everybody in special operations to wear chemical protective clothing.
Now, when we train guys, we have a lot of great people
in in sock. And I'm not knocking anyone, but I am saying this,
guys developed a more healthy respect for Hazmat because some of the guys were
a bit closer FORWICK and they didn't like suits. No way, no how.
But now I gotta go in a suit. I have to go in
an unfamiliar environment. I have to go in and I have to physically work
hard. I am going to be huffing and puffing because I got to hump
people out of this scene. Then they understand how difficult it is to wear
chemical protectives. And I know every guy that's listening right now, I can
tell every guy that's listening, if you've never been in the level A suit,
you have no clue what it's like man, And if it's like an
eighty degree or eighty five degree day. Yeah, and you know what.
The other thing that that made me realize this was the real deal. You
remember the training that was part of the training was where we had to give
ourselves different shots like in the thought. Yeah, I'm like, you know,
with those injectable things. I said, well, if they're teaching us
this, you know we're gonna be getting you know, we might be getting
too some bad ship at some time, you know, Yes, what's out
for sludge them? When I went to the Army Chemical Warfair School and I
was working with Saren the uh, I'm working with it in a in a
room that's not contaminated, but there's a medical team standing right outside the room
in case something goes wrong. And they have a needle that's about this big,
all right, that they're gonna inject into my heart if I go down.
And before I even went the room, I had a sign a disclaimer
holding the Army harmless if anything I was killed or died. So, Phil,
let me answer your question from the time that has thatt one was developed,
when did the thought process start to begin about building this tiered system because
I mean the squads and the engines came later, right, So so a
lot of this stuff, a lot of this stuff started when say Ern von
Essen were the commissioners. Uh, the Tokyo Saren incident was like a wake
up call to everybody because they looked at that, that incident and you know,
fourteen people died in that incident, But they also looked at that and
said, you know, if that happened in New York City here, what
do we What are we gonna do? What are we gonna do if we
have a ton of people go down. We can't say, as the New
York City Fire Department that we can't get them. We're never gonna say we
can't get them. We're always going to say we're going to get them,
and and and how do we make that happen? How do we make that
happen? And you know, like part of the chief development course was that
we wanted guys to understand that that we have to change the way we think.
You know, we don't have to tell chiefs, We don't have to
tell people how to fight fires in New York City. Our guys are great
at that, great all right. Second to none, But we get those
situations and they're not They don't happen often. We get those situations where we're
out of our element. Okay, and has met used to be is no
longer, but used to be one of those situations where we were out of
our element. Today because of the way we've trained Sock and the companies in
SOCK, I don't think. I don't think that that we can't meet the
challenge. I think that everybody in SoC today can meet just virtually any challenge
that's placed upon us, whether it be diving, whether it be collapse operations,
whether it be fires, whether it be medical incidents, whether we can
meet all of that stuff because we've trained our people to the point where they
are so good at their job and they're so intelligent at their job. And
not only that, but they have the they have the skills. They do
not only have the knowledge, but they have the skills to perform all of
those functions and goog the job and do it safely and not get hurt.
Right. So I think the best part was to fill The greatest thing was
having the chief go through those courses because even heck, even when we used
to show up or something they were like, Dad, no idea, what
the ropes well with the systems, with the idea of our capabilities. Oh
that robe, I'm not putting it up keV. You know one of the
reasons. One of the reasons that I I said that, you know,
like when when von Essen came to me and he said, he said,
look, he says, you're going to make the chiefs do this stuff.
He says, some of these chiefs in fifty years. I says, look,
how can they how can they supervise guys if they don't know what the
guys are going through. I said, you know, it's very easy to
say, just have the guys keep working in there. No, no,
no, I want you to go through the physical stress that they have to
go through so you can understand. You know, you get to the scene
of an emergency, Hey we need more resources here, what are you talking
about? We need more resources? We got a full first lam assignment.
This is not enough for the task at hand. You know what I'm saying,
Well that they didn't even know what our capability these were quite honestly,
that's right, that's right. But you know what the safety chief the safety
chiefs and all the sock chiefs who went through this training. Those guys were
smart guys. They knew right away. They they recognized what the problem was
when when we had a mess incident where we have a lot of people down
and we have firefighters going down and bunker gear. These guys know exactly what
to do, right. That was the same problem that any of the what
became Sock companies had before Sock, which was kind of what thirteen David came
in because right as things became more specialized, whether it was asthmat, diving,
high rope, confined space, a lot of the chiefs had never experienced
any of that stuff right and and I think a lot of times they were
they would take a step back because if they didn't understand the capabilities, they
didn't want want to put guys in harm's away when they didn't understand it.
So, you know, all had to go through and at least see some
of these things. I think it helped tremendously for the whole you know,
the whole aspect of Sock in the fire department. I'm going to tell you
something, Hank, and you bring up another great point. There was a
Captain John. His last name began with an m I forget it, but
he was in thirteen David. He came from rescue one. Oh remember when
the kid fell down the shaft. Remember when the kid fell down the shaft
and the water tunnel in the Bronx. Yes, yes, the nine year
old kid he was playing in he was playing in the water tunnel in the
Bronx, fell down the shaft. We had to go down to the manifold
in the Bronx, take a seven and a half ton cap off the manifold
and we had to repel down one hundred and seventy five feet and then walk
a few miles to get the body. That's what we had to do.
Huge operation, right if it wasn't for thirteen David there we went had to
fire him. A fatality at that job. Because I'll tell you what was
happening. They were hooking up on ropes to repel down to get him,
and Billy Quick was one of the guys who was going to repel down.
Now Billy is straddling the chef that he's going to go down, repell down
one hundred and seventy five feet, and just as he's getting ready to put
over his foot, the Captain Neill stop stop, stop stop. Billy wasn't
tied off. The only person and there must have been fifty guys standing around
watching what's going on. The only person who's seen that was the captain from
thirteen David, whose job it was to make sure they were doing everything safely.
Nobody else seen that, right, right, somebody put up John Moran,
But I don't think it was John Moran. I know it was entirely.
He was a He was a lieutenant and rescue one and then he became
a captain thirteen days and then he became the captain. But actually thirteen thirteen
David was made up of captains, and then what they did was they made
a Rescue Services Battalion, and then they made a Hazarmount Operations Battalion, and
then it all became chief offices. Right, So in the beginning, that's
what it was, thirteen David. Let me let me ask you something,
Phil because going back to you know, like how things started, I was
always and you were in the inner circle there with the hazmat stuff. So
maybe you can either either confirm or deny. I was always under the assumption
that the ninety three bombing planted the seeds for like the squads and further further
moneies for terrorism because of that ninety three bombing, because it actually we had
terrorism on our shores there and it hit us in New York and that kind
of was the impetus to it kind of started making it kind of started.
It kind of started the ball rolling. And one of the things that a
lot of people you know, no, but don't really know, is that,
you know, we have something that's rather unique in New York City when
you compare it to the rest of the country. And let me tell you
what that is. We have foreign governments that are enemies of ours, that
have embassies and consulates in New York City that go to the UN. So
we have people from Cuba and the Cuban mission here, we have people from
the Arab countries that are here, and because of that, we have over
five hundred protected visits every year. In other words, people from foreign countries
coming here that people want to kill, okay, And because we have so
much of that and so much un dignitary protection here, it makes us a
huge, huge target. And the ninety three bombing is just a perfect example
of what you're talking about, Hank. You you look at the number of
resources that were tied up for the ninety three bombing, and you know,
it gave people an idea of what to do. You know, we top
of one of these buildings here, what's it going to be like for these
people to get back in business? And that's that's what it's about. That's
what it's about. It's about getting back in And the name that we were
the name we were searching for is John Serato. That's it. That's the
time. Serrato saved Billy Quick's life. He saved his life. He saved
his life. Getting back what you were just saying, Hank, You know,
like we one of the things with all of this stuff was that if
we didn't do some of the things that we were doing to prepare ahead of
time, we really would have been in trouble. You know. Ninety the
ninety three bombing was like a wake up call. It was basically saying,
you know what, you guys have to do more. And we realized that
we have to do more. And one of the things that came out of
the ninety three bombing that a lot of people don't realize was the USAR teams,
the urban Search and Rescue teams from FEMA. They were created around that
same time, and it was this was the reason they were created. When
you look at the Oklahoma City bombing, Okay, and we went to the
Oklahoma City bombing. Our task was, but you have a community it is
so devastated by the event. Now, how do they function? How does
their fire department function, how does their police, their ems function? Well,
what the female USAR teams was created to do. That was part of
what was called the National Response Plan ESF nine Emergency Support Function nine, which
was USA. The USA teams were created to go into a jurisdiction and now
help the community, the local community deal with that event so that their local
police and local fire could back get back to the business and taken care of
the normal every data fires, the normal everyday crime, the normal everyday ams.
Our job was going to be to go in control, manage, and
recoup from that event. And that's basically why do U SAW teams were created.
A lot of it had to do with nine to eleven And basically you
mean the ninety three bombing, Yes, the ninety three bombs, So a
lot of that, Yeah, there was a lot of There was a lot
of stuff on the table between ninety three and two thousand and one in terms
of that, Yes, and each time as challengers came up, we met
those challenges. You know, the ninety three bombing happened, the Tokyo incident
happened. We looked at that. We looked at that seriously and said,
what if that happens in New York, what are we going to do?
And and and how are we going to respond to them? And didn't the
military? Yes, I remember the Seabirth team coming to the Rock one time.
Yes, when and when we observed them, and I mean like young
kids, but they were you know, Marines or whatever. What they were
like boom boom boom they you know, they were what they What they did,
Hank, was the Sea Birth was a unit out of the Marine Corps.
And basically what they were coming in to do was do very similar to
what we did with our tear response, create a group of guys who could
go in and drag people out and then decont them and and un lessen the
impact of the event on those people, you know what I'm saying. So
so yeah, between what the federal government was doing and we were doing,
we were kind of on the same page, we were on the same page
with that. If I may, I was going to say, even without
terrorism incidents, there's an opportunity with each incident to kind of look at operations
and essentially rewrite the playbook. You had an MCI in nineteen ninety one with
the Uton Square derailment, and operations were going on with tools that dispersed chemicals
that made first responders on the scene sick. To your point earlier about guys
going down that are entering to rescue those who were initially injured. Nineteen ninety
four, Edward Leary lets off the fire bomb on the fore train. Now
that wasn't as big an ins as ninety one, but another collective opportunity to
look at the manual and rewrite things. So even without terrorism being on the
forefront of your mind, just with general MCIs where there is a hazmat risk
like ninety one and ninety four, how did you guys look at that and
how much tinkering, if anything, was done to the collective playbook at the
time. Well, well, I think that when you look at all of
this stuff, it wasn't really time to catch your breath, because, uh,
when you look all of these incidents. You know how long it takes
to change a policy or procedure, Okay, and that usually takes a long
time. So what ends up happening in a situation like this, We're having
one problem occur right on top of another problem before we have time to write
a new procedure, test a new procedure, and implement the new procedure.
Does that make sense? Yes, you know, so there's there was a
lot of times where like, uh, I'm not going to say we were
flying by the seat of our pants, because we were. We were we
were following doctrine, we were we were following all the protocols that we knew,
and we were anticipating what was coming next, you know what I'm saying.
And as a result of doing all of that, like I mean,
you know, we didn't wait for a Tokyo Sarah incident to occur in the
United States. That incident happened, and then we were already on the drawing
board looking at how we're gonna how we're gonna deal with that kind of situation
if it happened to you, But you want to that's that's happening today right
now with Again, now I'm not talking Sarah or Anthrax. But you look
at it, but it is has Matt fire related the lithium ion batteries,
the same thing. There's no playbook on that. We're writing the playbook as
we go along, right right, right, you know, Yeah, that's
Mass doing a lot of work now, Philly Max doing a lot of running
warriors. Yeah, it's there, that's true. You know, it's like
that is the next big thing in the fire service because you know it's going
to be how to extinguish and contain these type of fires. Right, you
got guys like Paulie Rodgers from York has Matt one that's out there and like
the head of the spear kind of stuff. But you know, but it's
the same scenario brought up about things getting thrown at you. We're actually involved
in these things and there is no playbook and we're kind of you know,
right. And and the other thing is too that that we've developed so well
in Sock And I'll give you a perfect example. We have a we have
a collapse or a confined space event. The main key players in those types
of events for us is Rescue one and Rescue three. They go in there
to do what has to be done, stabilize the area, get victims and
stuff like that. Who supports that hazmat comes in, They do air monitoring,
make sure that there's no gas leaks, make sure it's safe for them
to work. And the way that even even like on the USA teams,
when the hazmat goes like to an Oklahoma City bombing, what is the hazardmat
specialist on the scene for. He's there for force protection. Force protection means
you make sure it's safe so that everybody else can do their job. Make
sure there's no contaminants there that are going to hurt people. Make sure there's
no contaminants there that are going to get people sick. Make sure there's something's
not going to explode or kill somebody. So when when Hasman is operating,
people support us. When other people are operating, we support them, and
and and we have such a good system in New York City now, but
it took it took time to develop that system, and and and you know
what, it gets better every every day because you have guys who who like
I'll just use diving as an operation as a perfect example. You have guys
in the New York City Fire Department who are skilled divers. Okay, those
skilled divers are always going to be there because these guys love diving, They
know their shit. They do it on a regular basis. Not just only
are working, but when they're diving. Okay, now, who supports them?
Every body else? Everybody else supports them. And that's just the way
the system is right now. But the system is built very well. But
another reason, in my opinion, why FDNY has gotten so good at all
these specialty things is because we used to do some of this stuff with no
funding. Right, we go into our own pockets to buy a regulator or
you know, like we always say, it always takes a tragedy, right,
get somewhere, And it took after nine eleven the floodgates opened up with
funding. So when you have the funding to do training and get all the
right equipment, it makes you job that much better and your skills that much
better. Yeah, and you know what, the federal government now realizes that
New York City is a number one target for every terrorist organization. Why because
we have so much infrastructure here. We have to stop market here, We
have the u N here, we have we have more religious institutions here than
anywhere else in the world. So all the stuff is here. All the
stuff is here. If New York has a problem and the emergency responds,
people in New York can't handle it. We're in deep trouble. And don't
just get the bridges, the tunnels, the subway. It's like that infrastructure.
Just just just look and and and and I hate to deviate from the
subject, but let's let's just look at the Port of Baltimore right now.
It's a perfect example. You don't think the terrorists look at that bridge situation
and and say to themselves that's the perfect thing that we could do and and
cause a major problem. But absolutely, hijack a ship, run it right
into a bridge that's vulnerable, not shut down. They shut that bridge down
right right, that's right middle the middle of the middle of Russia hour or
something. People people were killed, luckily it was it was you know,
it was late at night, but they could I mean that caused death.
It caused a great financial you know issue, you know, great issues.
So yeah, it has all of all the variables that they're looking for.
Yeah, if you'll get back to when they started the squads, Like when
did that idea the concept first start, Like was it. Oh. I.
I think part of the reason they wanted the squads was because we needed
to add to that tid response and that component, you know, and and
and and part of part of uh getting the squads, from von Essen's perspective,
I think was too Uh. If the right we only had five rescues,
and you know, you know, with with with fires in the city
and all other jobs, they could easily be tied up up at other jobs
if we had some type of major event and didn't have enough units to respond.
You're with me, yeah. In other words, Rescue one could be
at an auto accident on the side highway or something like that, Rescue four
could be doing some kind of BS and queens, and and Rescue three could
be at something. What happens if all of the rescue companies are tied up.
We needed to have something as a backup for the rescue companies. And
and you know, here's the other thing, keV too. When you make
these special units. If you make special units and you don't have work for
them to do, how do you how are you going to return personnel?
You have to keep them interested. You have to give them jobs and opportunities
where they're going to enjoy going to work. If you go to work and
you sit around all day and do absolutely nothing, I mean, number one,
you're not productive. But number two, guys who were really into the
job and stuff motivated, And it's hard for a boss to keep his guys
motivated, right right, I mean, you know, there's only so much
training you can do. You actually have to you have to. You have
to write a response policy that includes these units and make sure they go to
events. So like, as a perfect example, when Hazmat started, you
know, what are we gonna send Hazmat to. Well, we're gonna sign
him to all airpot boxes. Why are we going to sign them to the
airport boxes. Well, if we have a crash, there's gonna be fuel
lare. If there's gonna be fuel layre, there needs to be a haz
Matt unit there because of fuel. You get where I'm coming from. You
when we create the squads, what kind of work are we going to give?
Well, if the rescue companies are tied up on a job or if
they have a ten to seventy five, let's make sure that they get involved
in that. If we have an incident in Grand Central Terminal where we have
a lot of firefighters go down and bunker gear. We need those units to
respond in from everywhere to assist as CPC companies and and and get in there
and help out. You know what I'm saying, because I think originally what
they said was that they were just going to make them has that units,
right, and then they're like, well, we're not going to get guys
to go there. So that's when they said, well, that's right,
that's right, that's right. It doesn't make sense because you know what,
we're there for the waffs all the time. You know, it's it's easy
to go to fires all the time. It's much much harder to go to
jobs that only occur once in a blue moon. Yep, you know it
really is. We got a hanky. Well, yes, that is correct.
In order to recruit guys to the new squads, they had to make
it appealing you. You had to have a good sales pitch, right myself
included when when I was asked from Dennis to come over, it's like,
well, we're gonna be doing You're gonna have you're doing has Matt, And
I was like, you know, like if you know, I said,
I'm not you know that's not everybody's cup of tin, correct, But but
you're gonna do everything that a resting company is doing, except you're trading to
dive in for the has mat. So to me it was like, okay,
so I'm gonna learn another skill and like Phil said, you're not doing
it all the time, but when it happens, you got you got.
You have to be on top of your game. You know you're not gonna
sit there, you come up your ass because you don't know what you're doing.
You got to do the training. But to keep my interest, I'm
still gonna go to fires and I'm gonna go to collapses and I'm gonna go
to the high angle rope. So so it was for me it was like
a win win right right. I think said you're gonna work with Kobland too,
So I mean, here's the other thing they had. You know,
it's not like you know, when a guy has time on the job,
you might want to slow down a little bit. And but you know,
and I go to get a specialty skill like a has mat, or you're
going to go out to a to a slower compan andy that's still getting some
work, but they're not doing all the running and stuff, but like a
squad where they were gonna be bringing in all you knuckleheads that had three years
on the job and you're all young guys and all, you know, chopping
at the bit, you know, in the starting gate. So you know,
they were able to say, well, we can recruit these guys in.
We're gonna we're gonna give them all the stuff they want to do because
they're still gonna go to fires and we're gonna get some longevity out of them
because they're young, right, So you know, and if that was the
thought process, it worked, because yeah, because the squads, they they
they happened. Yeah, and there's always some growing pains, you know,
just like the has Matt and everything else. You know, But now that
it's you know what twenty five, twenty six years and they've all established themselves
and what they can do and and uh and and the city has the the
has Matt personnel with all the training beyond the squads now with with the has
Matt engines and that, you know, so the city has what they need
in the event there is a big has Man incident, you know, or
you know, golf. But I mean, you look how far it's come
and just a short amount of time just from the house five rescues to what
you know, the whole sock has not battalion, socc battalion, all the
squads, all the rescues, all the CPCs. It's tremendous and credit to
the city, you know, I mean, this was this was not an
easy thing to put all of this together. I mean it really really really
took a lot, a lot. Yes, it is a credit to the
city, yes, but I'm not giving them that much. It's it's a
necessity for the city, like you said, number one target for terrorism,
and shame on the City of New York if they don't have the find and
make the training available to those emergency service personnel that needed because the civilians that
count on them, you know, if they don't, if they don't have
the training, what you call them ghostbusters. Not so those you know,
F D, P D, E, M S. They all need to
have the proper training for when that incident and you know, I hate to
say it, but not for if it occurs when it occurs. Right right
now, I was gonna ask you, what do you see? What do
you see coming next? Phil? What what would you say in your in
your experience. I think I think that it's not us up to us,
Kevin, it's up to it's up to like the guys, like the terrorists,
because they look at they look at how cities prepare for what they're doing.
They have very good planners. Terrorists are very good planners. They they
they they understand military applications, they stand strategy, they understand tactics, and
they look at what people are doing and they look for weaknesses in the system
and see how to exploit those, and and and and what what we do
in New York is we look at what happens around the world. We do
we look at what happens around the world, and if we see something significant,
somebody in New York City, whether it be in the police department,
whether it be in Office of Emergency Management, whether it be in a fire
department, somebody looks at that and says, what do we have to do
to be prepared for that? And we do it. We do it,
we do it. We figure out a way to do it and make it
work. And like Hank said, one of the biggest problems was funding to
do all of these things. But today, under the current situation, I
think when we can show that we actually have a vulnerability that's worth going after
or being prepared for, somehow they find the money, order resources to give
us the tools and equipment and knowledge we need to do that job. So
do you think that they had any clue as to terrorist hijacking three fucking jets
and taking down two buildings? Do you think that was even on their radar?
Or I don't know if that was on their radar. But you know
what, after the ninety three bombing, they should have said to themselves,
look, we see what they're trying to do here. They're trying to take
down a building and make it, make it a major catastrophe. Now where
did they try and take down the building by taking that? Not in Chicago,
not in another place. They tried to do it in New York.
They tried to do it at the Foundation, They tried to do it in
the Wall Street area. So you have to say to yourself, this is
what they're shooting for. In twenty ninety three, in two thousand and one,
they were successful in going for something that they're drying. He listen,
just a sidebar, and I've talked about this before. You know, I
worked with Ronnie book Or and Rescue one. And Ronnie, you know,
was in Delta Force and then when he went to the reserves, he was
in the Army Intelligence. And after the ninety three bombing, I remember him
coming to quarters. He didn't work that day, but he came to quarters
that night because at that point he was a fire marshal because remember he had
fallen five stories off the fire escaping to his back and stuff, so he
really couldn't do the firefighting anymore, but he didn't want to leave the job,
and he sat in quarters and he told us, he said, he
said, there's this group called al Qaeda, and you know the we're trying
to get the powers to be to listen to us. And he said,
this group, if they go after a target and they didn't accomplish what they
wanted to do, which in ninety three was knock that building over, he
said, they will come back and attack that same target at their convenience.
And eight years later they did, and Ronnie was one of the only fire
marshal that went up in the building and got killed. So they know it
was known. It was just that it was falling upon deaf ears at that
time. Austin EDGs in the sand, and they didn't want to hear it,
or they didn't want to hear it from certain people because how do they
know? You know, But it wasn't it wasn't like it was, you
know, because people didn't know about it. Well to your point about that,
Hank, there there's a story and this was verified. So two years
later Ramsey usaid who orchestrated that bombing, gets caught in Pakistan. They bring
him back the night he's brought back by FBI escort in a helicopter. They
had a blindfold over him. They take off the blindfold. This is nineteen
ninety five, and they point to the towers and say, see they're still
standing sarcastically to Ramsey. Ramsey has a six smile on his face and looks
them and says, all I needed was a little bit more money and a
little bit more time and I would have brought him both down. Sure enough.
Six years after that conversation, what happened? Mm hmm, Yeah,
Hey, Phil, did you when you went all part of where the squads
were located? Was that the did you? I didn't have any saying that.
No, So why did they picked two eighty two eight with Hasmad in
it. Uh, you got many Uh you know what I think they were
trying to do with the time cap. They were trying to make it easy
with keeping special units together, okay, or close to each other. So
two eighty eight actually was a perfect location for a squad because you already had
one sock company in the firehouse. It made it easier for the command and
stuff to do that now and rescue one's case and rescue fourth case. They're
single firehouses, you're not putting anybody in with them, you know what I'm
saying. And you're not going to displace people who were already in some of
these single fire you know, double firehouse for North Queens you had it was
it was a pretty good spot. You had rescue for a little north right,
but it also gave so you had two companies responding. Plus it was
a real quick as we know, keV really quick and to bet which we
did get called to yes, yes, And that was that's another thing that
was the reason the Hasmont was selected for that firehouse. Easy access to all
the highways, right, yeah, I just take that maybe three sixteen would
have been a be a spot over the Hank you know single engine, then
I would have then I would have never seen you. That's right, very
good point, Phil, You know what things happened for a reason. Maybe
let me ask you a question, how did you How did you prepare the
guys, because I know some guys in Hasbat weren't down for it. You
know, these guys coming in, you know, for for a squad coming
in there with a bunch of young guys, and you know, you know
what what goes around comes around. We did it to two eighty eight when
they were there, you were doing it to us. It's not a big
deal, you know, I mean, it is what it is. You
know. It was probably more of a big deal for the guys in two
eighty eight. We didn't want to be in a squad. Yeah, they
had. I'll tell you a funny story when when when and when the captain
of two eighty eight found out that we were coming, he transferred really his
name his name was Morgan O'Brien. O'Brien he found out as soon as as
soon as he heard Hasman was coming. Somebody asked earlier, Phil, what
was Hasbat's first run? Uh, it's a good one, jeesus, that's
a good question. Oh stop, I don't even know if I was working
for their first run. I'm not really sure. Really, look at that
picture, that picture that you have up there on the board that came from
Penhouse. I will tell you this. I'm probably the only firefighter in the
history of the f d n Y who went who appeared as a centerfold in
Penthouse. Let's go through some of the other pictures, Mikey, Yeah,
let's pull them up that This is my favorite picture of all. Uh.
Me and Larry Singletary were We were selected to take this picture for one of
the magazines, and it was taken out at the rock and the guys who
weren't in the picture, they were doing the fire behind us, and they
were making the fire so hot that the hair on the back of mine and
Larry's next was actually singed, and we actually had it. We actually had
to throw away the suits because they were no longer serviceable after this because they
have melted so much. You know, two badass dudes right there. This
is uh This is me down at the National Fire Academy. Uh. This
was one of the classes I tore down there, Hazardous Material, tactical considerations.
We had people from all over the country who would come there, and
we teach them how to wear chemical protective suits. We teach you how to
handle certain you know, hasmat tools and stuff like that. This class was
actually discontinued at the hazard at the National Fire Academy because they got away from
hands on training down there. This was one of the last classes that did
hands on training down at the Fire Academy. I heard one of the requirements
for that class was they had to bring you a patch, so it looks
like you have a lot of friends there. Actually everybody grow up patches.
I know, I can see them behind you. I went to I went
to Russia with with Tom Harring and Chief Mayas, and we were there to
evaluate the Russian Fire Service. And when we were there, uh, we
were staying in Saint Petersburg, and one of the knights that we were there,
there was a fire in uh a warehouse that was on the other side
of the river, across from our hotel, and me and Harry Mayas actually
ran across the street and got people out of the apartment house that was adjacent
to the warehouse. And uh, this is one of the officers from the
Russian Fire Service actually thanking us for getting them out of the out of the
fire. These were like the many different UH types of chemical protective clothing that
has Met had. Obviously, we had the Level B suits, we had
the Level A suit in the middle, we had the proximity flare suits and
my famous jumpsuit so much. Yeah, the dark navy blue one was in
the lot line gimble Rick. Yeah and Jacquie Lie too. Yeah. Yeah,
yeah. So when I when I was the Health and Safety officer for
the u f A, Uh, this is me talking at the annual UH
nine to eleven memorial. That'spatakis sitting there at the thing. So given my
two cents, give four. Uh. This was one of the most spectacular
fires that we went to. Actually, uh has Matt was actually working in
Queens and when we got the call for this job, we were coming over
the Throgs Neck Bridge. Now this fire is in Hunts Point, so if
you know the distance between Hunts Point and the Throgs Neck Bridge, we could
see this fire from the Throgs Neck Bridge. We were on the Trugs Neck
Bridge. It was pretty pretty spectacular. Guy ripped the valveof right, the
kind of guy yeah yeah, yeah, And what he did was he he
he ignited the whole street. I mean, the we had to go there
because the the substation, the Connate substation was right next to it was on
fire and they had these huge battery rooms that was producing a lot of hydrogen
gas. So we actually had to go in there and and try and resolve
the issue with the hydrogen gas in these things. It was a mess.
It was a pin but with something like this because i mean, after your
fire department life, you had a conned life, so you know the operations
of both. But like that was a high pressure gas Maine. I mean,
FDNY, we can do just so much. You still need to have
somebody in Kanye that knows, like where the remote shut off and stuff off.
Yeah. You know that's a good point because this fire, this fire
went on for hours because it took them a tremendously long time to shut the
gas off, and it was it's not just shutting the gas off, it's
all the residual stuff that's in the line. It still has to burn off.
I mean, you're not putting this fire out, You're just letting it
burn, that's all. We had one fatality at this fire, the backo.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Uh, this is every year the city
has a thing, it's called the one hundred Year Association, and they give
out awards to city employees who who they feel make a difference. So,
uh, in ninety five I got the Outstanding City Employees. So this was
stuff awards Man van Essenaire and Juliani basically a few awards. So and you
had to buy the first round afterwards. Yes, this young fellow. Oh
yeah, that's graduating Provay School with my family. Uh. That's my wife
on the end, my mother, my aunt in the background, my two
brothers in the back, the girl up front that's my sister in law,
she's an FBI agent, and my father and me in the middle. Oh
FBI agent. Huh, little g woman. It will be entry a picture.
We had those kind of operations all the time. So, Phil is
a level A suit like having a pipe at a job. Like if you
go to a level A suit, you make entry. It's not fun being
in the entry suit. One of the things that you obviously sweat a lot.
It's very claustrophobic. If you're claustrophobic, it's not the area for you.
You have to know how to get yourself out of the suit. One
of the things that I told people all the time was that, as a
matter of fact, I had actually run a special program down at the New
National Fire Academy training people you can suffocate and die in a chemical protective suit
if if you get if you get separated from people and people can't get you
out of the suit, and you don't know how to get out yourself,
you can suffocate and die in that suit. And so it's very very important
to not put you It's like diving. When you dive, you need to
be able to take your gear or off underwater and put it on underwater to
make sure that you know what to do with you get snagged on something.
Well, being in a chemical protective suit, you got to do exactly the
same thing. You got to know you got to know how to get the
suit off yourself. If you have a problem is visibility is a nightmare and
aways always a problem? Am I do I remember? Correctly? Didn't they
tell us like if you had to have a pocket knife or something in there,
like just like you said at the I always told people this that if
you're in a chemical protective suit and you can't open the zipper for some reason,
either the suit is designed where it's behind you and you can't get to
it. You have to have a means to get yourself out of the suit
because if you can't get out of the suit and people, like in non
line of sight operations where people can't see you, if you get stuck and
you run out of air, you have a very very short window of opportunity
to open that suit. Otherwise, this is what's going to happen. You
run out of air inside of the suit, the first thing you're going to
do is you're going to take off your mask. You got to take your
hands inside the suit. Take off your mask. Now you're going to be
breathing the air inside of the suit. At some point that air is going
to become oxygen deficient. You're going to start to hyperventilate. At some point,
you'll hyperventilate and pass out. Once you pass out, if somebody hasn't
gotten to you in four to six minutes, you're going to suffocate and die.
So it's important to have a plan. You're in the suit, you
move to an area that's not suspected of being contaminated, and then do your
best to get out of the suit and get out of the situation. Right,
Yeah, that was a good point. Like you say, to try
to get out of the contaminated area. I mean, worst case, if
you can't, well, if you're breathing, and then they can get you
out, then you'll you know, maybe there's something that they can give you
to counteract whatever contaminant. It was, right, and in some cases I'd
rather be exposed than that, right, right, exactly right. Yes,
somebody's asking quick, Phil about were you're working on on eleven. I actually
met you that. I don't know if you remember this. I yes,
I actually was working on nine to eleven. As a matter of fact,
there was a few guys from Hasman who actually survived nine to eleven. I
had gotten off that morning and I was actually going to meet Chief Fanning at
the Division of Training because we were gonna we were discussing training issues for the
company. And while I was on my way to the Division Training, the
first the first plane hit the towers. Jack had left and went down to
the trade center, but he left Jeff Borkowski at the at Hasmont Operations and
told him as soon as Phil gets here, I get you and Phil take
a suburban and come down to me. So I got to the division training
went down to see Jeff. I mean went down with Jeff and we pulled
up on West Street just as the South Tower had come down and our vehicle
had got showered with the debris. So we got out of the vehicle.
We started to walk in and I found Dave Hanshew. He was in one
of those pictures that I had sent you, and he he was lying in
the middle of the street. He had a compound fracture of his leg and
me and Jeff had found him and I said, I said, we have
to move you. And he was in tremendous pain. We didn't have anything
to splint his leg with or anything like that. So we picked him up
and we physically carried him, and we carried him like a block away farther
west on towards the Hudson River, and we put him inside a Delhi And
when we after we put him into deli, we told him that somebody would
be back for him, and we went back and we were starting to go
into the North Tower when the North Tower collapsed. So me and Jeff and
a guy named Charlie Wells from MEMS who was a deputy chief, and in
the ms. We actually ran and there was a lot of people who were
running the same time as us, and we ran and we tried to get
close to the columns because we felt that there'd be some strength in some of
the columns. So everything came down around us. It took eight or nine
seconds to come down. Then it was like eerily quiet, and then me
and Jeff and Charlie Wells actually worked our way out, but like the thirty
or forty people who were around us, they were all dead and in it
reminded you that was kind of it. It reminded me of like after it
snows, how quiet it is, you know, and everything was white,
and it's just like eerily quiet, right Phil, Like it was. It
was weird. Yeah, then you would hear pass along going out a different
you know, I'm going to tell you it's a very interesting story. And
it just goes to show, like you know, you always have to put
things in perspective. After nine to eleven happened, and you know, we
were taking care of the families in the firehouse and stuff like that, and
you know that like we had we had had to go and do some public
relations stuff after nine eleven and what I mean by that is we were getting
a lot of money. And one of the things that I want to mention
here today is, you know, our firehouse was the only fire house,
the only firehouse who gave money to all three hundred and forty three families.
We everything that came into our firehouse we brought up to the bank and we
asked them to divide it three evenly amongst three hundred and forty three families,
and we were the only we were the only firehouse to do that. So
I just wanted to make that point. But anyway, one of the things
that we had to do as part of public relations after nine to eleven is
we had to thank some of the people who were contributing to us and stuff
like that. So I was asked to bring a few of the wives of
the widows over to England and we were going to I was going to give
a talk at the US Embassy in London. So I give to talk about
what it was like in uh to be at nine to eleven and stuff like
that. And in the end, somebody asked me a question, and this
is the question that they posted me. They said, what was it like
being there on nine to eleven and you have to know your audience. And
one of the things that I said is book it was a lot like the
Blitz during World War Two. I said, you what you people went through
for months. We only had one two hours of during our time down there,
you know. And it was interesting because after the talk, you know,
they had a small reception and one of the people who was in the
audience came up to me and said, he says, you know, that
was a very interesting observation of yours. He said, I was kind of
surprised you made it. But now I'm going to tell you a little piece
of information. He said, do you know that if you were in the
London Fire Brigade in World War Two and you wanted to join the British Army,
you were considered a coward because statistically it was safer to be in the
British Army than it was to be in the London Fire Brigade. They had.
When you look at all of the military units in World War two and
combat losses, none of them compare to the combat losses of the London Fire
Brigade in World War Two. They had a three hundred percent loss in World
War two, three they lost the entire fire department three times. So you
know, you look at that kind of stuff and that kind of gives you
a perspective. You know what you think you've seen, there are people in
the world who've seen far worse. You know. They meant to that.
Brother. Yeah, you remember when I ran into you down there film probably
remember I ran into you down there and you said, we lost everybody here.
You know at that time that did that thought didn't even cross my mind.
Yeah, it was everybody here. Yeah, it was like, no
way, what do you mean we lost everybody here? Like, yeah,
we lost everybody here. Yeah you're guessing you were like, we lost over
three three hundred people somewhere, like yeah, in no way. Yeah that
was huge. Yeah, it was huge. Yeah, there was. There
was at least there was at least eighty people that I knew personally, you
know, from from the SOCC companies where I knew them. I knew the
wives' names, and I knew that names. It was it was, uh,
it was, it was. It was stunning. I don't know,
it was incomprehensible, you know what I mean. I mean, you know
me and I'm sure Hank, you know, we were in firehouses where we
lost guys over the years, right, Frank, uh Hank, And and
you know, losing one person is devastating, losing losing the amount of people
we lost was like incomprehensible. You know, nobody, nobody ever expected someone
just from a firehouse nineteen. But again, you know that that that technically
it was an act of war. It wasn't just yeah the fire with a
class that was war. And uh, unfortunately the people who set out to
do, you know, they pretty much accomplished what they wanted to do there.
Yep, yeah, yeah, you know like that you couldn't I mean,
you know, all the debris in the air, I mean, everything
was so micro pulverized. You couldn't see a thing, you know, and
you couldn't see the sky. And I could hear planes flying overhead, you
know, and I knew they were jets. They weren't like commercial airliners because
you could hear how fast they would flying. So the pitch is completely different.
And one of the things is like a few, like a year or
two after nine eleven, I actually had to go down to testify in Washington
as to the health effects the nine to eleven you know, because I was
the help and safe few officers for the union and stuff, and I was
staying at one of the hotels, and the hotel I was staying at the
Chief of Naval Operations was actually in the hotel at the bar when I was
in there having a drink, and I went over to him. And I
didn't know he was the Chief Naval Operations at the time. I mean,
I just seen a guy in the navy uniform. I had no idea who
he was. And he wasn't the Chief of Naval Operations at at on nine
to eleven, but he was in charge of a carrier task force off the
Carolina coast and we were talking about nine to eleven and I said, you
know, I said, I was extremely nervous when when I couldn't see the
sky and I heard planes flying overhead. But I said, I kind of
knew they were all planes because of the pitch. It sounded completely different than
a commercial aircraft carrier. He says, that was fighters from my aircraft carrier
flying over in New York being told to shoot down anything that they seen flying
over New York. Wow, right, they And they didn't. They weren't
there just that day because I remember the second night when they finally made us
leave the site and I went back to Fantasy Island, you know, in
the you know, under the fifty nine street bridge, and it was still
it was still eerily quiet, although you know, every once in a while
you'd hear a siren going down the drive there. But and every once in
a while there would be a fighter plane. That was the only thing that
wasn't that weird? Like see if fighter plane fly over the upen Yeah,
it was really eerie, you know, yeah thing yeah, yeah. They
told you to go back and get some rest, they ordered us, but
you couldn't rest. You were just two wounds now, like you would remember,
we would we were all like up against the edge of the railing looking
at the water going by, and just you know, like you know,
like and you know that that brings up another memory too, that like you
know, nine to eleven happened, and uh, a lot of people don't
remember this, but you know how we do nine in fifteen, right,
we do nine and fifteen, nine to eleven happens. They decide we're going
to do twenty four hours twenty four and we're going to keep running that schedule.
Well here's what happens, and a lot of people don't realize this.
The department goes back to a regular work schedule sometime in November. Suck doesn't
go back to a regular work schedule till the end of December. Correct,
you know when has what went back to a regular work schedule? When May?
Eight months later? So we worked twenty four on twenty four off,
just like the squad did. And what were we guys doing on our twenty
four off? We were going to funeral funerals, family funeral or our guys,
our guys. The guys who were most impacted by the event were the
guys who got the least amount of relief. Ye'll think, right, you
know, we we and you know I used to say to people, and
people didn't believe me. I used to say, look, don't ever tell
me anything about the sock guys. They are tough baskets. They can they
can they can handle just about anything. They lose a lot of people,
They keep grinding away, they keep working. My kids were my twins were
born in December. I didn't see them for six seven months, eight months.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we we We basically just threw the meat
grinder and there was no stopping us, you know, I mean we were
we incredible. I have an incredible amount of respect for the for the sock
guys and and what they did on nine to eleven and afterwards they did,
They did more than their fair share, one hundred times more than their fair
share. Most people would have cracked and and and uh and uh and falling
apart. Our guys stuck with it, stuck through with the entire time.
And we had to rebuild too. We had to rebuild the companies. Yeah,
train them all again. Right, tremendous problem. That's that's all because
of I mean, obviously there's a certain makeup of the people that become firefighters,
but a lot of the credit goes to the our senior guys that broke
us into the job the right way, right, you know what's important and
what's not important? Right, Our guys, our guys were over and above,
over and above. Yep, agreed exactly all right, one fifty three.
I think it might be that time, PHILM. Do you have your
little tip ready? Can we get uh, well, you know, but
hey, let me present you first. You just can't. We have a
whole thing here, bro hold on a second, stand by you ready,
Mike, Yes, it's time for the old school tip tip of the day
of the day. The tip of the day is to know your adversary.
And I'm going to talk about it from a hazmat perspective and from a hazmat
perspective, and it even applies to fire when you think about it. Knowing
your adversary. You need to know the product that you're dealing with. Okay,
you need to know its physical and chemical properties, what makes it dangerous?
You need to know the type of container it's in. What is it
a pressurized container? Non pressurized container, doesn't have safety devices to all those
safety devices working properly, and so on and so forth. And not only
that, you need to know the product, the container, and the container's
environment because all of those things are factors on whether you're going to be able
to safely deal with this type of internet. That environment can be it's exposures,
uh, it's it's environment. Is it on land? Is it in
the water? Is it in the atmosphere? And knowing that the product physical
and chemical properties tell you you about what type of protective clothing you have to
wear. How do you monitor for it? How do you know where it
is okay. So those are the issues that you need to think about product,
container and container's environment, and those are the three issues that will keep
you safe at most hazardous material incidents, but they also apply to fire situations.
To excellent, Phil, absolutely, I want to thank you for a
great show. And actually i'd like I'd like to thank you for making me
a better fine and film for be the young guy. And you know,
I mean, well you said that many times, but Phil, thank you
one of the guys that has man. I always said, you know what,
whatever this guy tells me, I'm gonna put it in here. Bro
of a better five. And I enjoyed being on your show. You guys
did a good job, you know, and you just do. You just
do a good job with all of the shows that you're doing. I'm glad
to say that. You know, guys who have retired from the job are
still promoting the job. That's that's that's exceptional. Very well. Yeah,
I mean in your blood, you know that you just said that hanky you
said it. Yeah, like I said, I still miss it. So
I'm glad you like this because it makes you still feel like you pought of
something. You know. I think on Thursday. We have a guy that's
older than you, Hank. We get a guy who was in one oh
three second section back in the day. We have Anthony von Bommel, a
nice German guy. Okay, and bombl on Thursday Night Show, Phil Again,
I was engaged the whole time. Man, you're talking. It's like,
you know, one of those guys are talking. You're like waiting on
every word. Whoever was watching tonight was very lucky because they got to hear
the guru of haz Matt. This man knows it, you know. And
I'm sure the point is you gave tonight even for a chiefs officer with a
little tidbits and stuff there, it's all important stuff. I learned stuff tonight
listening to you. Right, nuggets, I like to call them nuggets,
Hanks nuggets, a little nuggets, little nuggets. And don't forget the fortieth
anniversary for haz MAT's coming up right, yes, yes, coming out November,
oh September, September to having a party. I'm to throw it out
on the chat for the guys. Yeah, maybe I'll bring Hank. All
right, I'll bring Hank is my date? What do you think I want
to come with me. Okay, Mike, it was nice meeting you for
the first time. Likewise your dude and Kobs. I hope to see you
guys again. That was very good. I don't sign off yet because we're
gonna be in the back room. Have to be done. Henky, I'll
see you soon. Brother. You know, we gota be safe. Yeah,
Louis, I hope you killed something or whatever you did tonight. I
know you're home safe. He said he landed safe. Give all right,
So we got to get on that story's thing. So I'll call you tomorrow.
I just thought about that now. So I mean, Henk's gonna tell
some five stories and he's got plenty. I'll make him up. Don't worry,
no, no lies. All right, I'll see you guys, say
Thursday. Until then, stay long ago, I'm gonna say, we have
to say, stay low and go. Indeed, thanks to everyone for supporting
us. This is our two hundredth episode, by the way, so we
would not get here. Wow, Phil, you got number two hundred.
We didn't mention that earlier. We'll mention it briefly now. It's been quite
the ride and it's great to be a part of it. So without you
guys, the audience. We would never have gotten to this point. So
much love to all of you, and on behalf of Phil MCGARTERO, Hank,
Phil mcgardo, rather excuse me, Hank Malay and Kevin Coopler and Mike
Colonne. We'll see you next time. It's always be advised the tones are dropping.