You're listening to the Getting Salty Experience Podcast. Yes, you are listening until
the Getting Salty Experience Podcast. X producer Pete former producer Pete. Thank you.
He did do a great job in that opening though, But that's a
great uh opening st Yeah, we can never get rid of that. Nah,
Nope, that thinks stuff. Yea, what's going on, fellas?
Welcome back to The Getting Salty Experience, the only podcast that plays the kitchen
table to you. We got to Canada. I'm about we getting more smoke
from I mean, what are they doing up there? I don't know,
they don't notify fires. Where's the kid in the chat? What's his name?
I mean, what are they doing? Uh? Send them a lot
of smoke? Always what they're doing? I guess I don't know, you
know what they're doing. They're doing this, I don't know. I think
that's what they're doing. Let mean, come on, it's enough now.
Yeah. I can't even see out my windows over here? Is it really
that bad? Little smoky? Yeah? Come on, somebody was telling it's
fromalde Hyde, So I'm like, cursy guy. Yeah, it looks so
young. Maybe, yeah, I'm actually dead? You are? You just
don't know. You don't. Ah, you're talking to my guy all wrong.
Well we gotta do that just for just for the ships and giggles.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, he loves that. Hey, you're talking to
my guy all wrong. It's wrong, tonge wrong again, it's a wrong
tone in the chat. Look at that. I have to get I was
looking Darren Phillips. Do something up there? Where'd you for got? Sex?
Put the thing out? Get a two and a half something, bros.
Yeah, I think sure is full. Oh well, we got to
tell you we're doing what commercials were doing tonight. We gotta do uh yes,
that's later on. We'll do that all Just want to get out of
the way now, whichever one we'll do all da, and we'll do that
one that way. We can keep going and then do it. Here we
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Apparel dot com. Wow, good code and we can hear the guy who
actually made that one for us. Yes, let's good. Need advice on
how to start your podcast? Frustrated with the editing process, can't find a
voiceover? Guy? Hi, I'm Mike Cologne and I'm here to help.
I'm the owner and founder of MC Media Editing Services, your premier consulting company
for all things media, where I can offer you consulting advice on how to
get started and once you get started editing, as well as voiceover work all
for a very reasonable price. If you want to reach me, you can
contact me at nine one seven seven eight one six one eight nine or the
email that you see listed here. I'm always available and I'm always willing to
help again. Nine one seven seven eight one six one eight nine. Why
go to some job and consulting from It's going to charge you in arm in
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stress free, the way to go is to call mc mc Media Editing Services,
your premier consulting company. When I hear that, when I hear that
area code nine one and seven, I can't help but think about bag.
What is it from? How it's turned? Uh the nine one seven now
totally skipped my mind. Fifty seven bag or something like that. Damn I
headed in my mind as I was listening to it. No mind, all
right now. I can't look at that guy when he's in the range of
jersey. I can't look at the cheese. It's the mood. Just show
me that picture of that laughed my ass off. It's so funny. It's
got them googly eyes working. I don't know what the hell he's doing in
that picture. He wore that just for you, Luke, because he knows,
all right, what else you got do? The First respond To for
Excellence that when we get all up commercials out of the way, out of
the way, here we go. The First Responders Center for Excellence is it
not for profit organization dedicated to protecting the lives and livelihoods of first responders.
Their education or research initiatives aim to bring great your awareness and understanding the challenges
to help safety and well being a firefighters, EMS, personnel, and other
first responders too. They are an affiliate of the National Falling Firefighter Foundation.
Sweet and Tonight's I'm gonna do my own tip tonight, throw do me a
favor, bro. If you're a guy who's going on a detail in the
FDY or a volley goes back and forth to the job, don't put your
buck to get in your car without putting it in some kind of bag,
preferably something that keeps the contaminants out. Because you put your kids in the
car, you know you put them in the in the cort seat where you
had some contaminated geah, no boyanel bro clean it up, tightening and if
it's a plastic bag, tired in a knot correct a balloon knot? Yeah
you go, oh yeah, whoa whoa show? Yeah yeah. I also
want to I want to thank the guys last week man and the guys after
the show who contributed to Cat Blue. Guys, what an immense turn out.
You guys should be proud of yourself. I know we are fabulous,
fabulous that we could help that young lady out unbelieving and you could keep if
you keep doing what did that call, Ganza? I don't even know.
It's super, Thanks the super because there's still we just got another like six
hundred or seven hundred dollars. You know, guys were watching the show afterwards,
so I taught us every month we're just gonna add it up whatever we
have there, if it keeps going or just keeps on there in a check
once a month for whatever it is that month that we call the gift that
keeps on giving. Sent to three thousand dollars this morning. Actually, oh
sweet, excellent, and I'm blasting if you were on the show in the
past year, I see fat Dowdy, right, do you mean a favor?
We're planning the boat cruise again around the Statue of Liberty on the fire
Boat the John Jay Harvey, Uh, send me your email. I don't
have everybody's email, or we just I have it probably somewhere. Would make
a hell of a lot easy if he just sent it to me so I
could finish up the E byte. Which which email do you want to send
it to get sold? Experience Coops podcast at gmail dot com or text me
if you have my number? Either or either or we got the Bobby Gallio
one who missed last year is a yes this year. I think Killed Duff
is coming, your friend edut Tight. I think Freddie laff Amine is coming,
Chief laf Amina and uh and the two guests tonight here getting an invite
too, like the apples. Yeah, yes, that's it. That's it.
Anything else, that's it just uh, just a reminder about the super
chaff for tonight. Any questions related to stampipes or something like that, please
you can ask him. There's a way to do it if you just want
to support us, like he did on Monday in previous shows. We greatly
appreciate old support. You're getting smooth at this problem. He's like, what
the heck cut is it? It's about a week oldbout a week old.
I'm very jealous. He's buff from my shirt too. Did you see that
especially? Yeah? Wow, So our one guest doesn't really need an introduction,
Chief Norman. The guy is just like he's the guy. He's here,
it is here, it is, let's bring him in here. He
is no, no, no, wait, sucked up up. I'm just
giving you his credentials. I said, you don't even gotta give it.
That's one guy. I gotta tell you, before he even knew who I
was, Bro, I would no matter where I was going, I would
see that guy at an airport. I'm like, I think, Chief Norman
again, I swear to guy every time I went to the airport. There
he was one of those guys. Now the other guy we got coming in.
Oh, the other guy. You might know him as you might know
him of the bro of h two. Oh, maybe the Sultan of the
Stampipe, maybe the hero of the of the host Line. I don't know.
He's been said to walk around with a smooth boar in his pants.
I can tell you that much. He's the superman with the two and a
half in his hand. Bro. When the Chief calls for more of us,
he may respond in the clipt Torus, right, yes, he'll call
the proby. He'll call the proby of Vagina if he's caught using a fog
doll on his lineup. Because the straight stream is where it's at. And
don't forget that brother here, he is here, they are, both of
them. Bring me, brothers, all right? Here we go there,
where's your one of them? We go? There's your falls nuns. You
want to help me? I don't know. Guys for joining us again,
I appreciate it. We're breaking. You had to go to the cletus,
right, I fumbled on that one, brod. We want to go back
and do it again. When the chief calls for more of us, he
may respond in the Clattorus, look at the chiefs face. That's why the
chiefs in the sauna. He needs to be massage and got to sweat this
one out a long night. No matter where I was going to the country.
In the airport, I go, I think that's Chief Nomen over there
walking around. Yeah, yeah, it never did offer to carrying my bags.
Oh, chief, you probably wouldn't know who I was back then.
Hey, Chief doughby By, who are you? I'm sorry? What who
the hell are you get away from? All right, let's get the patriotic
guns before we go any the very patriotic show. Yeah, come on,
man, let's get patriotic. Here we go. All right, here we
go. I pledge 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. All right, you know what, You're
gonna have to take the lead here, because I was busy sitting in the
back coming up with these idiotic things. So I don't really know where you
want to start. Well, we gotta figured we would start the chief.
You wanted to go over some stuff. Obviously we're going to talk about standpipes,
But did you want to talk about what they mean, what you guys
were talking about when we talked at the show? What was that? Well,
yeah, basically, the premise was just that, you know, we've
all seen problems with standpipe operations, and you know it's a It's not an
everyday operation from most fired companies, even in you know, high rise areas.
They don't stretch a line every single day unless you're forty two engine and
you go into the training tower there. But most of the time it goes
well, but every now and then it doesn't and it usually falls back und
you know, people doing things that they know they shouldn't have done. The
problem is that guys don't understand the standpipe system itself. You know, it's
not just a pipe that carries water. That's a simplistic view. But it's
built to a standard, the NPA fourteen standard that determines how the system is
going to perform. And just because your departments sop says, well, we
do it this way, doesn't mean that that system is designed to work that
way. So I give you a little bit of background. I spent about
eight years seven years as a fire protection engineer designing sprinkler and standpipe systems and
high rise buildings, all kinds of buildings before I got on the fire apartment
and standpipes are pretty simple. There's a code that tells you how far apart
the outlets have to be. There's another code that tells you what the pressure
is going to be at each outlet. And too often fire departments think that,
well, okay, this is a simple thing. It's just like pulling
pre connect and it's not. It's a different, different environment that you're working
in, just the fact that it's in a bigger building. You know,
if it's a high rise, you go and you know ten stories, say
twelve stories. That means all your logistics has to come with you, so
it takes time to get water on the seat of the fire. If you
need extra air cylinders, I mean they're back down in the street. Everything
that you didn't bring with you was down on the street, which means we
got to go up there loaded for bear, which puts a lot of work
on the guys who are houlding that stuff up, especially if the elevators are
out of service that we see all the time and you're now humping or your
gear up. You know, multiple flights of stairs, but you have to
be prepared for when you get there, and shortcuts get us in trouble.
Timmy and I were talking and we've all seen it. You all have seen
it where the best laid plans of mice and men get messed up because somebody
does something that they shouldn't do. So guns, could we start with.
They think it's slide thirteen. It's just an illustration of a standpipe riser.
And as I say, it's a simple thing. You can have a couple
of different sources of water supply, but the code requires that for a single
riser system, all that system has to flow is five hundred gallons a minute
from the two most remote outlets, usually the top floor outlets. So that's
all you can expect. If you don't put that fire out with those two
lines, well you're in big trouble. If we go to a multi riser
system Slide fourteen. There, guns you're gonna get an additional two hundred fIF
gallons a minute one two and a half inch line, basically for every riser
in the building. Now it used to be in real big buildings. They
might have four, five, six seven rises going up in that building,
but you're only going to get two hundred and fifty gallons a minute off of
each additional riser up to a maximum of about twelve hundred fifty gallons a minute.
That's a lot of water, but it might not be everything you need,
particularly if we're looking at something like a high rise commercial building. So
that's how we get into the discussion here. If it's within the capacity of
your host line, that's fine. The problem some of the problems that i've
seen. I spent you know a few years in Engine two ninety we did
a lot of high rise work down in Starrett City or in the projects around
us, and we had multi instances where there were problems. One issue that
we see. The code says, well, every floor, every part of
the floor should be within reach of one hundred and fifty feet of hoes,
but we know, like Louis, you know, in two ninety we used
to take seven lengths of hopes because the federal projects had buildings that they reached.
They cheated, if you will. The outlets were not in the stairways.
They put outlets out in the hallway and met the code distance requirements with
being no more than one hundred and fifty feet away. But if you had
to hook up on the floor below and then stretch up a flight of stairs
and then down the hall because you didn't want to hook up to that outlet
in the fire hallway, that took us seven lengths of hose. So each
guy who carry everybody had to take two lengths, and a nozzleman carried one
and the standpipe bag. So everybody just burdened down plus the old gear,
their masks and everything else. And now again, if you're hoofing it because
the elevators are out, you'll beat up before you get to the firefloor.
I don't know if it was Starrett, but it was. I don't know
if that's me. It might be you, Lou. I'm not sure one
of them. I forget which building it was. I was just telling the
chief, like he was saying, we went to so many stampipe buildings.
It's like being out of the job now is like it's like I don't remember
anything, but I remember each guy carried a roll up, and the control
man carried two roll ups, and the officer carried the bag, right,
So I remember looking in that bag and it was heavy, and I was
telling the chief the guys used to break balls all the time every once in
a while. If you ever said, hey man, this bag is freaking
heavy, you know, next time you went in, there be like two
extra you know, ten pound weights in there, you know what I mean.
So it was just pretty funny. But I remember looking in that bag
a lot, obviously going through every scenario, and there were so many things
in there, like the Chief was saying, because somewhere along the line over
the years, that was the problem and that fixed for that particular problem for
that particular building was in that bag. So you had to know each scenario,
you know, because each stampipe was totally different, each outlet was totally
different. All this stuff was, you know different, So you know,
we really took a lot of pride in that. But you know, if
a detail came and he had control and we had to you know, go
to a stampipe, a lot of times the doorman would take the extra length.
Obviously you don't want your detail carrying two lengths, but that extra length
was to get to the last apartment, to get to the last room,
right, So it was never going to be that we were dependent on the
second two engine, right. I mean we could use their lengths, like
the chief was saying, if you know, go for seven lengths or something
like that, but we were going to have five lengths just to make sure
that we're covering, you know, the last apartment to the last room,
which is important. I mean, bring three lengths of hose and it's a
four length stretch. We're good eye you know. Again, that's the logistics
that we're talking about. You've got to have everything that you a gonna possibility
need when you get to the firefloor. So carried all that stuff, you
might be spent before you even start operating the life. That's so one of
the things we talked about, and there was discussions about when we rewrote the
engine manual, was you know I liked I liked the fact that the officer
carried the bag. I mean, it was never going to be able to
be written that way. But when the officer carries the bag, he'd just
by dropping the bag, he decides what outlet he wants you to hook up
to, you know, and it's like a nonverbal command. I don't need
my radio or anything else. I dropped the bag by this outlet. That's
it. This is where I want you to hook up. And another thing
about that one fifty one fifty gets you to the door of the apartment,
you know, and so you know it doesn't that's that's the misnomer about that
one fifty. It gets you to the door of the apartment. And what
we used to do we had the polo grounds and we would take rope,
the search rope as the longest rope we had, and we would go and
we we discovered that the e line of apartments that in the polo grounds would
need an extra it was fifteen feet, we would come up fifteen feet short,
so that immediately went out to the sids that the E line required four
links because you know, you look at standpipe stuff and not the um take
over. But you know you look at engine stuff. You know, when
you look at engine work, it's the hardest thing an engine has to do,
you know. I mean, if you think of everything it needs to
go right to get a line in operation at a standpipe building as opposed to
pulling a preconnect off off an apparatus. You know, we've got to be
able to carry all that stuff to the drop point, connect to the outlet,
supply the outlet, find a hydrant that we can bring water to that
outlet. All these things need to go right. And I tend with me
in the chief talk last night, and I'm a big guy about doing it
by the numbers, you know, and have that checklist. If you do
it by the numbers, you get this right. You get this right,
You get this right, you get this right. Can it go wrong,
sure, but you've kind of you know, you're playing a home game now
and you've limited the amount of things that can go wrong if you simply just
do it by the numbers. And I'll tell you this, most engine officers
don't understand NFPA fourteen. They they think it's just a pipe that that gives
me water. They don't understand that there are limits to it. There,
there are this to it. Um if you're an engine officer, it's a
document that I wouldn't suggest reading everything, but the information about stand pipes within
that document is very very good used to it. If if you're an engine
officer, if that's what your your goal is to be a good engine officer,
you know there's things in there that are rule pert into what we do
every day. Yeah, they set the parameters. I mean these rules were
designed and developed. And you have to understand that the NPA fourteen standard was
first written in nineteen twelve, that was first publication. Why was that Well
because the e before they killed one hundred and forty six people down at the
ash building and the triangle shirtwaist fire. So that got a lot of attention,
got rules created. But what was fire attack like in nineteen twelve?
You know, two affanche hoes and an enginet, a solid tip nozzle.
That's it. It wasn't a black nozzles. So the NPA standard was created
and for eighty years until nineteen ninety three. You got that slide seven I
do. Oh yeah. February of ninety one, Philadelphia had a fire in
one Meridian Plaza. The standpipe system there created havoc for the fire department.
They could not get an effective fire stream in what was when they arrived a
one office fire, relatively small fire that could have been controlled if they could
have gotten a working hose line in operation, but they couldn't. The standpipe
system was improperly installed and their hose line required way too much pressure that just
wasn't going to be available. Uh So, gons, if you go to
slide twenty two, twenty three, twenty two to twenty two, here was
the problem right there in Philadelphia. It was a pressure reducing valve that is
a complex mechanical valve, and they failed. They failed in Los Angeles City
after the Philadelphia tragedy, Los Angeles City tested every single valve in the city
and three quarters of them failed to deliver an effective fire street. So that
was a severe problem. But the fire department aspect is also part of it,
all right, So if you're taking inchant three quarter hose and the fog
nozzle that if you put If you put two hundred feet of inchant three quarter
with a fog nozzle directly off your engine, you're pumping at it about two
hundred psi. The standpipe system is designed so that at the top floor outlet
you get no more than sixty five psi. Back in before nine, Yeah,
sixty five psi. That's it at the top floor outlet. Now at
the bottom floor you might have one hundred one hundred and fifty, but you're
not getting two hundred. Ever, so the nozzle and the hose that you
used to fight that fire have to match the system designed. After ninety three,
the standard was revised and they gave us a little more pressure. You
can have one hundred psi. You should have one hundred psi at the top
floor outlet, But what's one hundred psi when you got one hundred psi nozzle?
You need one hundred just for the nozzle. We get the frictional loss
through the hose and everything. So we're still not at the pressure that people
think that they're getting. Too. Often they think, well, okay,
I can get more pressure. I'll just maybe pump into the fire department connection
and I should be able to build that up maybe and maybe not. The
firepump may have a relief valve that's built in that it's going to dump the
excess pressure that you put in. So there are all kinds of variables in
the system that your best intentions in the world and your srps are just not
going to overcome. So we have to be prepared for that. Bottom line,
Okay, this is the most I'm gonna get, And most of the
time the answer is still going back to nineteen twelve, especially in older buildings.
If you've got a building was built before ninety three, it's going to
be the sixty five psi at the top floor, which means again three four
lengths to two and a half and then into a solid tip nozzle, and
that's all that system is going to work with anything. You try to do
anything else and you're dropping your gallonage and or your pressure at the nozzle.
So well, that's that's that's a real key point because a lot of people
don't understand n A PA fourteen and that's sixty five, Like you know what
every says, hyy sixty five? Why the pre ninety one, why was
it sixty five? And that was built around the attack package. If you
do the math of the three links of two and a half with an inch
and an h tip, it's sixty five p si. So so that that
system is designed around the attack package. The attack package is not designed around
the system. The system is designed to supply. That's why it was sixty
five originally. Now the one hundred, it's one hundred now since uh,
you know the one medium plaza fier And you know, I've asked a lot
of people, you know, why the hundred and you know, the best
I could get it to compromise from the companies that are using the fog nozzles
and the people that are still using the the smooth born nozzles. And to
me, that just doesn't work. I mean, if you're gonna if you're
gonna increase it for a reason, you know, have a reason why.
Because especially with standpipes, you know, you got to ask the why.
You know, like we went to the two inch leagally and I don't want
to get ahead of ourselves. And my question when we did that was the
why why did we do that? You know, when the system is built
around the attack package of three links of two and a half and a smooth
bore nozzle with an inch and eighth tip. So why did we go to
a line that's going to sacrifice forty five gallons of water a minute? Um?
You know, And and that was my question. So you know,
to reiterate what the chief says about the the pre ninety one standard to sixty
five if you understand where that comes from. That sixty five is built for
the attack package of three links and the inch and an eighth tip. Just
system. Huh, you have to understand the system. Un Yeah. Now,
you know, some of those new pressure reducing valves, a lot of
people don't realize their their factory preset. So you'll see on some of them,
you'll see they'll have an imboss number twenty three, and you'll be on
the tenth floor of a building and I'll have a twenty three on it,
and that was actually meant for the twenty third floor of building. The plumbers
don't give a shit where they put them. But a lot of those things,
yeah, with math or factory not. The device is not a pie.
I could be on the on the on the third floor, but it's
set and the yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it happens a lot.
That's crazy. Another thing a friend of mine I just talked to and
not to get off, but they just came out with the fire Service just
won a big victory because had these other valves. There's some it's called an
automatic breach uh for the last word, but it's a it's a valve that
if if the system senses an exorbitant flow, it shuts the system down.
But the valve couldn't um decide whether it was flow off an outlet or flow
off a break, so they most play. And he said there's some installed
in New York City. Said it's a automatic breach control and if it's all
if the pipe breaks, it shuts it down. It doesn't flood the building,
but it couldn't distinguish whether you're falling off. How many times get it
down? Though? We beat that and they can't use them anymore. That's
very many times as a broken pipe, you know, in a stampipe system
flooded a building. You know. No, maybe crazy vandalism opening valves.
We used to get that a lot, you know, the kids opening valves
on the upper floors of a high rise. But when we need it.
We need the water. Most times you break a pipe and it's gonna be
a it'll be a dry system because you'll get rot with the dry system.
If you have water in that system, you'll get some rot, but it
won't it just can't really do it. You'll get you'll get the air will
rot them out. So like in parking Garager, we pop them all the
time because they're there. You know, they''ll always be a dry system because
we don't want to freeze those systems. And the dry systems break a lot
more than the wet winds do. Is there breaks. The other pot that
breaks is this line from the Siamese connection which is dry up to the visor
and we've had you know, Siamese is bloody hyping from the Siamese connection blow
out of the building. That's why it's so important. Like if you're an
engine officer, wherever you were, whether it's New York City, whether it's
Myrtle Beach, whether it's Charleston, you should understand the buildings within your district
because you know they're very they're a lot more complex than people. There's isolation
valves, so if you have a break, you can isolate the break and
still get water to the fire area. You know, I had a fire
up in the BRONX. I showed up and Francis X was the chief,
and I walked up and he said to me, goes, thank god your
hair, you're the wizard. No, but he said, listen, we're
having real trouble at water. Can you figure out what's going on? So
what I did was I told two guys listen, start a line and we'll
supply to floor outlet. And then I realized underneath there was their cabinets,
and you'll see on alten floors, underneath the cabinet there'll be another openable cabinet
with a valve and Ali's and y valve in there, and those are section
valves and we can isolate certain sections. So I knew if I had a
problem, I could isolate it. So I go into basement and they were
there the day before testing the system. So there's a test plug that they
unscrewed. The plug screwed into pressure grades and then they pressurize the system,
you know, to test to pressure test it. But they never put the
plug back in, so it was spitting out the whole. There was a
foot and a half of water in the basement. So we were able to
figure out what's going on and luckily they put the fire out. It didn't
have to supply and't have to do anything else. But if you understand a
system and when you when you're troubleshooting, if you're not getting water, you
got to start at the source. You don't know people will start from the
outlet down wrong, throw up slide fifty four exactly what Timmy's talking about.
Oh the valve on the bottom. That yeah, that's it, that's bottom.
It's required to be below the first floor hose outlet. Now this is
a nice simple one where it is right below the hose outlet, but it
could also be at the first at the sellers ceiling. So if you're having
that problem again again, I've had two fires where the Siamese connection blew out
of the wall and closing that valve and pumping into the first floor now put
you back in business. Yes, you can isolate. Yes, I think
in the Big six Louis we had we had those valves outside the buildings because
you could you could shut them building. They might have been post indicators,
that's what they were, posted post indicators. If if you had a roof
tank that served multiple buildings, or if you had one line and come in
that branched off, you'd have post indicators valves outside the building, right,
Yeah, we always check those. That was one thing we always looked at
to make sure they were open. They were all open. Right. How
often does do the buildings have to test, you know, the standpipes.
I'm not sure. Under FPA fourteen, it's got to be annually. I
would think, yeah, well, i'm here it's annually. They have to
do it annually. Down here. Part of the problem is not every bit
of the system gets tested. Again, that check valve at the riser all
the way back to the Siamese connection usually doesn't get tested, and that's one
of the weakest points. So yeah, it could be annually. Well,
if they get tested, it gets tested to NFPA standards and not firepartment standards,
right, you know, so you know we might be putting a little
more stress on a system than the NFPA standard does. Yeah. Yeah,
So these are, like I said, Dick, complex systems that you have
to understand and then you have to do the right thing. All the time.
We saw guys taking shortcuts again just because the building is designed that they
have that outlet out in the public hallway to meet the distance requirements. Doesn't
mean you should use that. Think about that as a smoke. You go
out into the public hall if the door to the fire apartment is open,
what is that telling you? You're in the fire area, trying to make
your connections under stress now and yeah it's banking down nothing and God forbid you
get you know, like happened down Vandalia Avenue where the wind blows in.
Now you're out in the hallway with the fire and you're done. You know,
the problem is that it works of the time, you know, And
I don't like those odds, you know, especially when it you know,
like we said earlier, you know, you know, when you ask the
why why don't we do that? Well, if the fire answers that question
for you, you're in frigging trouble, you know what I mean. There's
really always a reason. The reason why we don't do it that way is
because people have died, right, Yeah, it only takes one time.
If I if I have to explain the why, you know, I tell
them if the fire is going to explain the why to you, you know,
we're gonna get screwed up here, like do it by the numbers,
go to flore Hey, listen, does it seem it's gonna be harder?
Might be, but it's safer and it's more efficient. And at the end
of the day, you know you're gonna get your line in place. And
you know, like two nine, you did a ton of project like we
did up in harm and we we tried hooking up. We used took up
in the polar grounds, uh, in the cabinets, in the hallways,
and you know, we got caught one day and from that point forward,
you know what seemed easy, and you know easy isn't always the best,
especially when it comes to stampoint just not happened. It happened once. I
was the control man and it was a nursing home, and we can beat
the first two engine in ninety nine point nine percent of the time, and
we spanked him. We got in first, and I didn't have enough.
I did not have enough line to go because I was hooking. You know,
it was I would have to drop two floors below, and I was
calling for them to bring their line to help because we wouldn't have made distract
and I don't know if they were pissed off that we beat him in.
So I chose to hook up on the fire floor and Dennis Murphy's the only
time he fucking yelled at me in a way. I was like, I
have never don that again, man, you know. But they I didn't
think I had a choice. You know, we got in first, and
they don't lose the job. I didn't want to lose the job. And
then snowballs we were going to reach and I'm calling them on the radio to
bring their lines and they just they didn't. But it's just it's just one
of those roles that and we've all listened. We've all cut corners. I
mean, I'm not saying you didn't. You you we've all done that.
But it's just, you know, you when you look at that animal of
a standpipe fire, you know you can get away with it atenement, a
Brownstone, But you know when when when a when a standpipe building fights back,
it's bad, you know. And that's the problem with not doing it
by the numbers, because when it goes bad, it goes bad in a
hurry, you know, and there's really nowhere to go. Like in an
atenement, you you can go somewhere in a project, you know, and
it's very hard to get out of that. And as unfortunately as as our
job has proved, you know, when it goes bad, it's very hard
to turn around and fix that. Yep. Well, that's why you need
your avenue over retreat. You know, in the fireproof building, what's the
only safe area. You got a staircase behind a closed door. Staircase,
So that's where you need to be starting from. I mean, go back
to that Vandalia Avenue fire again. You know two ninety tried three times to
get out into the public hall before the third time. Yeah, that's the
back of the building and the windows with the smoke. It was the fire
apartment. This is the front of the building, these smoke stained windows.
That's one hundred about sixty feet down the hall and on the opposite side of
the fire across the hall from it. That fire was venting down that hallway
and that company tried to get out of that door. I think I got
a picture of what is it, HRMDS twenty two the staircase. Yeah,
they tried to get out of that door three times. They had to get
two eighty three and two nineties line opened them and then opened the door before
they could get out into the hallway. It was that bad going down that
staircase. They backed down a staircase twice because it was that bad. Fire
blown into the staircase around them and drove them back down the stairs. That's
bad. Another company tried to hook up on that outlet right there on the
tenth floor and was unable to connect because the door was open, and never
did get their line charged. So these things happen. And like Timmy said,
ninety nine percent at a time, you're gonna be fine. Can do
that one percent, then I can do the O of the front of the
fire building all black. It's you know, what's what I'm talking about.
It's got fire stains. Now it go back. It's not that one.
Here we go there. It is so so you look at that picture and
then you think back to the the Vandalia Avenue picture that he showed where the
stains weren't even nearly that bad. So what's the difference in those two fires.
So this fire they put out from the inside with no problem at all,
none whatsoever. And so people would look at that and say, well,
that was the worst fire but Van Daily Avenue, the smoke stains weren't
even You look at that build and say, how bad that fire could it
be? That's because you know it was a win impact and fire and all
that stuff. You see any outside of that building right there was being pushed
back into the building. And that's why you know, you know these builds,
that's why these fires are so deceiving because you look at that picture and
you say, wow, that's a really good job. And it went out
pretty quickly with the single two and a half where Van Daily Avenue took the
lights of three firefighters and it didn't even look that bad at all. And
that's because the wind played a role on that and shit had gone wrong.
And that's like, like we said, how bad they can go When it
doesn't look bad for me outside, you know, it can go bad in
a hurry. And that's like I said, I go back to that.
If I can do the one percent that go bad, I can do the
ninety nine that go right easily. So I'm gonna jump in there. I'm
gonna jump in there early. I'm just gonna jump in there early. I
don't when you get a chance. So maybe I don't know for the audience
as far as what you guys would carry in your bag, because I know
we have a bag down here, we'll kind of just I don't want to
totally change the momentum of the show, but if at some point maybe you
could just touch on a case somebody wants to know what's in the bags.
There's a lot of stuff that we mandate in the engine manual that you're supposed
to bring, but a lot of companies that have made bastard tools to do
stuff. We we gotta bring a Stillson wrench, pipe wrench. You're supposed
to bring the pressure gauge, but most companies are attaching that to the controlling
already. I don't know what two ninety did, but most companies attached that
there. Um, you're supposed to bring an extra wheel, you're supposed to
bring adapters. Um, you're supposed to bring another nozzle, and then a
lot of companies will carry extra caps. A lot of companies will carry hire
brushes. Some companies will make a two for a stuck wheel. But you
can do the same thing with the Stilson wrench by opening up and putting the
wheel and open it that way. So there's stuff that's mandated our job that
we bring. But like a lot of times you know you'll have in that
bag um that are building specific stuff. Also, like a lot of places
now bring a one way gate with them so they can control the outlet a
little better. And I never really agreed with it because it adds a little
bit extra weight, but now they're making them a little lightweight and they can
control the opening and closing of that you're putting it basically, you're putting a
gate on a gate. Yeah, that's what's gonna say. That's exactly what
we do. Is we not again just a little two cents, was that
we actually pump the entire system and then we control the PSI at the at
the at the the fire department gate and not the valvet's not and we have
the pressures and that's how we control the entire way. And then you use
the fire department gate to control and you find it it's more easy to control
the pressure that way. Getting more we have actually we haven't set and it's
we carry two hundred feet to hose a two inch actually is what we're running
now. Where we have the gauge, we have the valve and that's part
of our system. They set everything up. They want if we have one
hundred fifty fee to hose out, it's one hundred psi. If we want
two hundred feet to hose out, they pump it up and running up two
hundred and ten psi, So we get two sixty five with the tip.
Yeah, a lot of a lot of places say they carry that game.
No, not totally against it. Um. A lot of people say if
if you open that valve and it gets stuck open and you can't now you
can't get it back close, And a lot of them are that way.
At least you have that fire department gate where you can control the pressure is
there because you are basically a pump operator. That's what that's actually the engine
and operated gate though that key a screw operated gate. Yes, yeah,
we're not using a ball valve case sexual true gate valve. Yes, yeah,
you're not using a ball valve. A ball valve is not. You
don't use a ball valve there. Chief. I remember in Starrett they used
to the guys used to if I have this right again, it's been a
long time. It's uh, we didn't open up the valve all the way
because the guys were afraid of a hammer, like they would get like,
I guess if the pump would turn on or something would happen. Right,
we used to get this hammer, uh, and you would feel it on
the nozzle would sometimes knock get out of your hand or something. I don't
I don't remember what was. Yes, Start City had their own pumps and
it was a good you know, you've got plenty of pressure there, so
when that pump kicked in, you could you could get a you know,
pretty good. That's why I think they never the guys would say they wouldn't
open the valve all the way because if they you know that, guess they
operated like that, and then it would it was better to keep it cranked
down a little bit. I don't remember all that stuff. I was just
going to the fire They handled all that shit. But that's that's just knowing
your district building specific stuff Like Hey Starn had its own pump. We knew
that we couldn't open it all the way because we didn't want the hammer,
and we risked, you know, pop in a sweat and blowing a valve
off somewhere. So and you know, that's that's a great example of Hey
listen, these are the buildings we respond to. I want to know my
systems. I don't like I said, I don't need I don't need to
know how to stretch at a tenement. I need to know how my systems
are in my neighborhood. So that's that's a perfect example of that. Yeah,
Tim, what about the Chauffe's that you guys have a chauffe stampipe kit
too? Maybe you want to go what was in that we did? It's
it's the Chauffez stamp pipe kit is kind of minimized a little bit now because
they've made a um a appliance that it's a it's a single appliance to supply
the first flower outlet. So if you get a bad Siamese or a lot
of places have the storage connections to supply the riser. If it's bad and
you have to supply the first flower outlet. Um A lot of places made
a Chauffe's kit that had all the and I try to figure it out.
I think it's a a three and a half to two and a half reducer
and then a two and a half dubber female you'd have to bring to make
that connection before they came out with the double fe male swivel twin half,
so it's a single you know, transgender fitting. Okay, ye see where
l l g p qt lt yeah rst lpq Yeah, that's that's a transigent
transgender fitting. So um. But the one thing we added to that it
wasn't in the the engine manual was that if you're supplying that first flower outlet,
and a lot of people don't realize this is because because you know that
Chauffur's gonna be running back and forth. So a lot of guys would go
and make the connection to the first flower outlet, open the outlet, and
then run back to the rig and charge that rig to supply the outlet.
But the problem with that is is once you open rimer's an outlet, so
you're gonna you're on the first floor, you're gonna rob if if they're flowing
water and they don't have adequate water, but they got enough to survive until
the rig, So if you open that outlet, you're gonna rob them of
their water. So the important thing, especially with that sofa's kit, whatever
you bring, is you've got to bring water to the out the first and
then open it. That way you won't have an interruption of water on the
fire floor. Good point. Hopefully, Yeah, that's in a new engine.
Man we pick the hopefully gets just second due engine show for to get
out of his cab and help put down the donut buddy. Now, most
most engines, when you go to a standpipe building, that second doue chauffeur
is making a bee line to help out that first due chauffeur, you know,
because they know they're they're hands stretching the three you know, to supply
that Siamese. Even as a squad. When I came in, that's the
first thing. I mean, I had a little leeway to where I was
going. You touched hose, no stop, you might hurt my feelings.
If I had I would feeling. I would Oh, I said, if
I had something, I would always check on the first two chauffe It didn't
even have to be a yeah, even if it was a step was make
sure he had water because but that's a professional chauffeur. That's what a professional
chauffer does. Stay make sure the first new chauffeur is taken care of.
You know, at any fire, you know that you show up a second
tountion. You know it isn't you know picking up girls time, it's go
up and make sure that's first. And that's what a professional show. If
you see him going around the rig a few times as you pull themselves into
the ground like hey you okay, guy, he's a guy throwing time,
Like right, it's and it could be the simplest thing, but you just
get blinded because you're on the right. It doesn't listen. We've all been
there at some point. You have to try and stay calm. But when
you got guys getting burnt or whatever and you're trying to do something quick,
sometimes yeah, the worst thing you can hear is a chauffer is where's my
water? Yeah, you're looking, you're looking at your line coming off the
rig looks good, and then you're you're tapping the gauge. I don't or
you see the thing out to zero. So we have a problem. Everything
did in the squad. But I loved, you know, being first due
chauffeur like that first seven eight minutes a few years so is all on you
man. You know, once you get water to those guys, you're like,
yeah, time's at by three at a stampipe pilling. Yeah, well
it is all on you. Yeah, you know without over there. I'll
bet your off yep. Yeah, he's not on his game. Man,
how many times dude, that left rack we get. We used to get
to left rack pretty fast, and oh my goodness, gracious man, I've
seen some bad You know, you've never been to the Polo grounds, I
take Yeah, it's just tough, like the Chief of saying before, man,
those jobs. If you get a little delay or you know, you're
not in sync with everything on the sixteenth floor, you know, and it's
a good fire and it's you know, maybe it's snow out or whatever,
and everythingbody's a little delayed, it just gets it could go ugly quick.
Man. You know the Polo Grounds, the hallways were in a te so
it was out in the hallway. It wasn't like a straight hallway. You
had you had you had a couple of times find out where it was.
Yeah, it was no fun up there. The Polar Grounds what street with
those on one, five, five, and eighth Avenue, and then we
had the Wrangle houses north of there. We actually did more work up in
the wranglehouses, but they were smaller. They were only about twelve stories where
the polar grounds were thirty and there were four of them, all shaped in
a tea. You could hear the howling and the road. Yeah, they
were terrible. First job I worked up there too. First job I went
to was the high rise. Job was a project job. Uh sans stand
Street down in Brooklyn. I had a funny story about a project job on
We were at UM twenty four seventy five Southern Boulevard and it's it's like a
thirty story building. Read at the end of Southern. It hits for them
road and uh again, and we got a good fire somewhere. We're trying
to find it. And so the guy in truck says to me, he
goes, hey, listen, fires in this room. So I said,
I always wanted as the engine officer, I always want to control the door.
I never you know, once they found a fire, if the door
is closed, As the engine I want to control of the fire room or
the fire ear itself. And uh. So I says, give me,
give me, give me the door and you finish your search. So there's
two doors side by side and they open both like this. So I reached
up and I grabbed the wrong knob so my nozzle man shows up and I
tell him this, since you're ready, you got the room. It's right
here. I opened the door. So we opened the door. He opens
the line and he just douches the shit out of this room. I said,
shut it down. I get in the room. I'm looking around like,
that's funny. It's not a thing burned in this room. I'm looking
around like right next door, ripping right here. I go out of that
room. I go to I opened the door, and it's fucking rolling.
But I had already told the chief chief I got the fire, I got
waterfire, got the fire knockdown. I already told him that. So I
opened the next room and it's fucking run. I'm like, holy shit,
I go, Mike, bring the line over here. So we knock it
down. But the funny part I tell the chief. I says, you
know, eight eight to one eight, and I think it was SOFTID goes
go ahead. I go yeah, I says, we got the fire knocked
down, and we got one room really clean. Who who was the engine
boss? Was it David David Davidson? Who was the guy who passed away
f d n Y. I don't know if it was Davidson. I can't
remember names anymore. He got killed. He was in the engine boss,
I think, Uh, Martin mart what yeah, Martin Martinson, Martinson.
No, no, Martinson from eighty engine. He was the fireman in eighty
engine Martinson out, yes, Martinson. But he was in an attic,
wasn't he No, No, No, that's a different name. Was a
project and al you're right, chief, So just uh it just because I
went to to probi school at him and when I was in two ninety at
the time, the chief knows right, John Martinson, John Martin Martinson,
I said, david'son Martinson. Um, so just make a quick story because
it's kind of to your point. You know. I took a lot of
pride. You know. We would turn out fast. The truck would have
to close to close the doors right, so we would have a head start.
And I don't remember where the heck it was, but it was a
project job. It was on the tenth floor. At the time. I
could run up the stairs. Literally, I was going to so many freaking
projects I was. It was incredible. I get to the top of the
stairs, I opened up the door right square. I tell the guys right
here, you know, I close the door, go in, I'm by
myself. I'm four doors down. I find the apartment instead of saying I
got the apartment. Next thing I know, I'm in the apartment. I'm
doing a search, right, trying to get the fire. Now. I'm
like, yeah, it's four doors down on the right, you know,
bring the line where all you do? Then the trucks here, and then
I'm fighting to on the radio to get him to bring the line to where
I am, you know what I mean. So, and then I kind
of felt like that's what happened to him, if I remember the story right,
Like he was kind of buy himself initially. So I was kind of
like, you know what, I got to like pump the brakes a little
bit because I'm not in the truck, right, I have to make sure
that the line is getting here, right. I'm kind of doing this for
me, right somewhat. You know, I'm trying to get in there,
just make a grab whatever people, right, But I'm I'm I'm being a
little bit. I should be. Really, that's not my job at that
point, you know, so the priority to make it get light line.
So I kind of I have the same exact story it's it's hysterical, the
same story exactly. I kind of pumped the brakes a little bit because I
had to go back, get the guys right, bring him back. I
mean, the fire went out, everything was great. I mean, but
Lou, were you a boss at the time. I was, Yeah.
So when I got promoted, a guy said to me, my case,
remember my case, chief, right, He said, don't expect guys at
places you go to operate the way you did. And you know, like,
I'm not saying eighty it was bad. I'm not saying that at all,
because they were great. They were a great engine company. But we
had My first job was a project fire. And we go in and I
get up and there's three stairways. First time I'm ever in the building.
I'm in the company a month so they started hooking up in the a stairway.
I go down, I make a turn on the hallway. I'm like,
oh, it's the Shining hallway. Remember the movie you Shining just kept
getting longer and longer and longer. I'm like, holy, two scary kids
at the end. So I get on a radio and I tell them,
I go listen, you're gonna have to use forty eight links. It doesn't
even phase me that I'm beyond the one fifty. And I knew I knew
stampips. But you get into that mode, you know. So I figured
they're gonna show up at the line. I just tell them use forty eighth
linked. I get the apartment doing the same thing. I'm making my search.
I find the fire, the doors burned through. So the truck shows
up and I tell him, listen, I gotta go find a line.
I don't know where it is. It's not here yet. And I tell
a guy in a truck, I said, I get another door and put
it over the bedroom. Right. You ever do that tonight? I'm sure
they did that one out of three. So the guy in a truck comes
back with a mattress. I go, you kidding me? Got to burn
the place down. But I had to go all the way back. They
were waiting to the fire door, and we came up five feet short,
five feet forty five. Engine walked right by me and put my fire on.
I was never so embarrassed in my life. Now. First day woke
up to a different different stair Yeah, two doors down from the fire apartment.
Different Yeah, And it just you know, like I said, knowing
your buildings, you know, keeping that perspective wide. I'm walking down a
holey and it didn't even phase me. Mother, There's gotta be another stairway
here, it gotta be. It just didn't even phase me. I said,
you know, use forty eights. And that's the perfect example of knowing
the building in your district. Man, Timmy, why we'll talk about going
to the floor below. We'll get there were districting out talking about going to
the floor below, find an apartment ten ja yeah, yeah, you know,
and see the staircase there in the clear air. Yeah, and then
pick the right attacks there. Well, you got to learn something from every
fire, yo doing. I mean, that's one of the things I learned.
I mean, like I just you got focused on getting there and and
I you know, it was one of those things. And I'm the first
one admit that, you know, I kind of screwed up that day.
Luckily nobody got hurt. You know, the fire went out and the chiefs
didn't even know what happened. Really, yeah, I changed that, you
know, just I could find an apartment, closed the door, but I
wasn't, you know, four rooms deep on my engine was, you know,
back here calling for me. And then there's now there's chat on the
radio. Like you said, the truck's coming down. Everybody's banging it to
each other. You know, it's just mayhem. Yeah, that's not my
position, you know what I mean? So it is, it is,
It is. Sorry. This guy he's waiting for he's got his finger waiting
for you to do it. Right there. When you came to booth,
you were talking about some kind of controversial theories going back and form with the
line. What what was that? Do we coming up the stairs or going
down the stairs or something to flick out again? Difference of opinion. Uh,
you know when your short staff, the temptation is you flick the line
up the fire floor stair and back down again, and you'll get away with
it ninety nine times out of a hundred. Again. Uh, it's easier
on the guys because once that line is filled with war, gravity helps pull
it down the stairs as they advance. I'm in that one percent category again.
When that fire comes out into that staircase and burns through the hose line,
you're in deep ship. To me, it's work, But I have
a place to retreat to and I'm not going to lose my hostline when things
go bad. And again I've seen it go bad, and you don't want
to do that. So guys will. Guys will go ahead and take it
up the stairs and back down. Everything has to work perfectly for that to
go. As long as somebody is controlling the staircase door, you're good.
But what happens when we start advancing out of that hallway The door's blocked open,
It's blocked wide open most of the time, and now it gets bad
in that hall where's it venting? It's venting up the staircase right past your
hose line. Makes sense. That's just my two cents. Wasn't that in
the bookstot Chief? Well, they they did put that. That is in
the books, Yes it is. It is in the new Engine Manual,
part of that new Some of some of it. I agreed with, some
of it. I didn't. Um. I'm not totally against flaking up the
stairs, but I think when you do that, I think the engine officers
got to really become that engine officer, uh, maintaining control of the door.
Now, if the truck is out in that public haway and if they're
doing their jobs, they should be um. You know, you've got to
You've got to have the discipline to you know, if if that line's not
charged yet and they're out in that public hahway, you've got to you've got
to kind of maintain the integrity the integrity that door, because you do risk
you know, that fire venting out or very very just a heat coming out.
But you know, once you get water and you have the ability to
flow some water, I think a lot of that, a lot of that
danger of burning the burn through decreases. But I think that you know,
it does help in that an initial push around the corner. But I think
that we've got to be able to determine, Okay, what's the extent of
that push. If it's a it's a thirty or forty foot push down that
hallway, do you know what I mean? Maybe I want a slower approach
to that. If the fire's out in that public hallway and it's that bad,
that's a key thing, you know, if they think that the engine
officer really has got to take control of that situation and decide, hey,
listen, you know what, it's too bad in the public hallway. We
ain't flaking out upstairs, we're gonna do it down. It might slow us
down, but you know what, right now, I want him more slow
and methodical approach, simply because the condition of the always such. If I
open it and it's bad in the hallway but not horrible, I might tell
him, hey, get that up there real quick. I'll make sure.
And especially if a guy goes up there to do that, you've got to
keep that door closed because fuck the line, you're gonna burn the guy.
Yeah, you know, so if the guy's up there flaking out that line,
I don't agree would turn in the corner if it's if it's a return
stare, I don't agree with that. I don't know if I like that
either. You know, put it up and you know, use the landing,
but you know, make sure that there's no there's no friction point up
there. So once you do go, that's gonna run right down those stairs.
But the bottom line goes to me, you gotta be the engine officer.
You gotta be a smart engine officer who looks out into that public call.
We don't do this as a matter of policy. This is this is
the way we do this every time. No, there're gonna be time when
you open that door to that public call and it's charged to the floor,
you might want to think twice about going up that stair well. There's a
there's a big difference between pride and practical. I mean, listen, every
engine company, you know that the goal of a good engine company is how
we stretch os, will put out fires. That's it. You know,
if they say they're a good engine, it's not because there's a much of
good guys. It's because they're good in the fire floor. But sometimes,
you know, you got to look at practical, you know, as that
engine and you know that's when you earn your money as the boss. You
know, like those times I'm along for the frigging ride, do you know
what I mean? The guys know what they do and I'm just along for
the ride. But I get one of those standpipe fires that you know,
it's in the public hallway. It's decision time now and you have to be
the boss. And you know it might be unpopular. Hey listen, I
don't want I'm not flaking out. It might be a little bit more work,
but that's why they give us an extra guy, do you know what
I mean? To do that? But I don't. I'm not comfortable with
flaking out above. I'm not against doing it, but if I'm not comfortable
with it, I'll tell him not to do it. If I'm comfortable with
it, go ahead, knock yourself out, bro, you know. Any
you know the other thing, the big thing. A lot of people realize
about the um and Lou you'd said something that was that's extremely important, and
you said it's so casually like, and you know, four doors down,
fires four doors down. And I always counted doorways if the if the hallway
was back, and it's it's a tidbit that most people don't take away from
standpipes. It's like, you know, you're not doing it in a tenement,
you're not doing in the private house, but you get into a like,
you know, a standpipe building. I always counted doorways. And one
of the big reasons is, especially if I was in the truck, was
the stairway door opened the same direction as an apartment door inward. So if
I didn't know how far that door away, you know, if I was
four doors away from the stairway door, I might think it's an apartment door
and just go out right, you know, And and The other thing is
about when it's in the public hallway, is you know, what are you
looking for? I tell guys, when you go out in that public hallway,
what are you looking for? Everybody says, well, I'm looking for
the hot door. I go, no, every door is gonna be hot.
Bro, You're looking for the open door. You know, there's only
gonna be one door open, and it's gonna be where the fire is,
you know. And then I always say, so you go down in the
hall and you find an outward opening door, what do you do with that?
I tell you, Well, the fire services you got two in the
last ten years, Cincinnati, Ohio and Chicago, Illinois, where guys went
down shafts they thought it was an apartment, you know. So you know,
there's a lot of dynamics to to the standpipe buildings removed from the standpipe
itself when you talk about fire operations. We were just we just went to
uh last week to ninety one O three had a like a get together,
you know, and Uh I never heard of him. Yeah, So across
all the stories are rolling right and coves. It's mondaying, all right,
and he comes up to me and we're talking about something. You know,
I've had so many jobs with him, and he's like, hey, Rough,
you remember that job. I remember. It was so clear. As
soon as he said it to me. I get to the top of the
stairs at start. I opened the door. It's black, right, And
I looked down to my ride a little bit and I see the fire out,
you know, into the hall. So I'm like, it's right here,
we got we got there, you know, I can't see what it
is. Right. It turns out they knock it down. We get in,
they knock it down. We start going in and it was like the
uh the trash. Shoot. Yeah, but it was like, you know
what the room. Their rooms are pretty big, you know what I mean,
but they had stuff like three mattresses in there, so it was like
just straight black. Yeah, right, it was black and black. But
Monday always does this. He's like, he's like, Rough, I was
like a mind. He was like like running into the walls, you know
what I mean, because it was only like what the But it was just
so funny. Do you guys want to chat a little bit about charge stairwells
and some of the complications with that. You weren't with any of that kind
of stuff. Some somebody evacuating leaves the doorway open and charged the stairwell you're
in. I mean, I know it's complicated. I mean we've had it.
That was the attacks stare. I mean compared to when I first got
on to when I got out right the attack stare and uh, the evacuation
stead that really became like there was no screwing around with that really. You
know, at a job, I remember guys getting pointed out if they if
they were in the evacuation stare, you know what I mean. Well,
I'm pretty I'm pretty sure you don't quote me on it, but um,
it used to be where the truck officer decided which was the attack, and
that's since been changed and now the engine officer decides the attack stairway after he
talks to the truck officer, right, it used to be that was one
of the changes in the in the new engine man or that the engine officer
now decides the attack stairway. We used to chief, you remember when I
first got on, we were having the paint fires in the stairs all right,
and um, you know those things were I don't know if you had
one at you know, but we had one up by By seventy six engine,
and there was a guy ten floors above the fire, dead in the
stairway, still small like this. Cigarettes that's how fast it came on him,
right, wow, yeah, yeah, crazy crazy. And that's when
when you see that, you think, Okay, now I realized why they
want that, you know, evacuation stairway. You know, at the very
least. I mean, you've got to have one way for not just the
people to get down, how about us getting up above to get this somebody.
You've got to have one that you know was gonna stay unaffected. You
know, a lot of people a confused because they guy asked me one time,
he goes, how do you control all the doorways into the evacuation stairway?
I go, I only got to control one, right, just one.
He goes, what do you mean? I go, I'm just worried
about the firefloor. Everything else I don't care about. Just keep the one
door closed. And then he goes, well, why hasn't anybody ever told
me that? I go, I don't know why they haven't. Just one
door. That's why I gotta worry about. In Chicago, they had a
fatal fire. Civilians up above the fire and somebody opened the door to the
attacks there to get the line in there, even though there were people coming
down and they died in that staircase. You know, when we open that
door, we're not doing good things for that staircase. So you gotta make
sure you keep keep it closed until you get that clearers civilians. Anyway,
we look at the Twain Parts, how many they find the stair way there?
Yeah, yeah, most of them wearing stairways. I was just gonna
bring that up. Yep. Yeah, we stayed in their apartments. They're
better off all the time. But you know, they don't understand fire behavior.
They get out into that staircase, want to get down and if we
don't keep the door closed. But I believe in that case the door was
already blocked open prior to fire department arrival on the fire Twin Parts. Yeah,
yeah, So what are some of the other what are some of the
other dangers in these fires? I know, like, uh, you know,
all the cable wires and everything in the ceilings come down, and so
what are some of the other ones that we can share with these guys.
Well, so from an engine standpoint, like you know, um, I
never relied on a truck to chuck any door for me, you know,
I you know, people to say the truck will get it. I never
relied on that. But you know, if we're gonna be able to stretch
out in the public hallway drop and you know, one of the new procedures
is bringing a roll up in the folded position into the public hall into the
public hallway if if it's tenable, and I personally I don't agree with it.
I think that if if we went back, I mean again I asked
the question why. But one of the things is if if that door is
in chart leading from the stairway to the public hallway and it closes on a
dry line that's subsequently charged, you know, there is it's almost impossible to
free that doorway and and everything. What's so bad about that? What's bad
about that is everybody on the other side of that door is trapped on the
fire side of the doorway, whether it's in the hallway or not, is
in water. They're on the fireside with no water and no way to get
water because it because if it's charged, it's pressure locked from the outlet to
the doorway, and there's no way to bleed that off. There's no bleeder
valve at the gate. The only way to do it is to bleed it
the rig. That means you're going to beleeve the system, it's almost impossible.
And not shutting down the buildings, gravity tank or firepump, it's almost
impossible. So chock if you're in the engine and you're stretching, and that's
any fire, but even especially these, you know, because there's a couple
of doorways the floor below doorway in the stairway and the and the floor you're
operating on, you know, if either of those doors close, you might
be in trouble. So you know, don't ever rely on anybody else.
And that's why you know eighty eight had three or four chocks in the standpipe
bag also just for that reason, to make sure that those doors were chocked
open. And you know, there's no reason that if you're going to use
that if that's the fires attack stairway, that door can be chopped over.
Don't let him me tell you. Once that line goes through there, that
door can't be chocked open. It can be chocked open, and it should
be. You know, that's a big, big time hazard for as as
looking at the engine standpoint pump. What about as far as the truck chief
you have, oh for the truck, I mean just being out in the
hole is the danger, you know, ahead of the hose line. Again,
you've got to make a real conscious judgment. Am I going to be
able to get to that apartment door and get it closed before the fire gets
out? In that hallway? So you're part of that fire area, then
yeah, I think that boss needs to talk to the ov too and find
out what the wind's doing in the floor above. Make sure nobody's taking windows,
nobody's venting the bulkhead behind you, because if they vent that attack,
stay in bulkhead. Now you just created that chimney there. Again, the
fire doesn't know about not breaking the windows. You know why it doesn't deal
that wants to do so. Basically, that hallway because part of the fire
floor. It's the fire same as the fire area of the fire apartment.
Yeah, if it's in the hallway, we charge in the stairway, I
mean, because you can consider it part of the fire area. Right,
But if you turn into the fire area like that, even if it's not
when you're first get in the hole, Yeah, and it's you know,
the Park Avenue fire. I mean, all these wind driven fires they go
like that. The Park Avenue fire, it's almost like the guy you were
talking about in the stairwell tim Park Avenue where Mickey Conboy went over the edge.
He yeah, you guys were there. Sixty nine was part of that.
But the guy in the fire apartment was in a wheelchair and he went
out into the public hall. His door. Because he's in a wheelchair,
he disabled the self closing device, which we see that a lot in old
age homes and stuff like that. They don't want that door hitting him in
the ass as they're trying to get out with their walker or or whatever,
so those self closing devices are disabled. Now he's out there in the hall
banging on doors. Fire, fire, fire. He bangs on the door
of an apartment and that's one hundred feet down the hall on the opposite side
of the hall. The woman opens the door to see what's going on.
Her windows were already open, and the fire blew that hundred feet down the
hallway and killed both of them. Yeah, her body falls in front of
the door and blocks the door open. Now, and it was another one
of those horrible wind driven fires that we just it changed like that unable.
Yeah, so Gonzo, we had I sent you those pictures of the flaking
out if you want to talk about that now. Yeah, so you have
another one. You have that one showed the other one where the line doesn't
go past that one. Okay, So I always look at the two like
when when I'm flaking out my line. Um. I always used to tell
the guy in the Guys in eighty eight, Like you know, I was
never against when we when we could get into the public hallway we had control
of the fire apartment door. Or I didn't like when they stretched go back
to the other one when they stretched beyond the apartment. Now the other one,
that one when they stretched beyond the apartment like that and came back.
Because I was always in the belief that if if it got real bad in
that apartment, and we were going to follow that line, when we left
the apartment, we were heading away from our exit, and then we would
have to cross in front of that open door again. And I always tell
guys, I'm not against putting a big loop in to make that initial push
into that apartment to get to the break point of the apartment, but anything
more than a length down the hallway past the apartment. Again, you're rolling
the dice. If something goes wrong when you leave the apartment, follow that
line, you're gonna be heading away from from the fire, from your exit
itself. So if we can, we try to flake out our XS hose
when we can get into that public hallway on our exit side of that doorway,
if we can, with the exception of that ten ft fifteen foot loop
to get make that initial push into the apartment. And I think that's important
when when you talk about our operations of flat line out and getting to knee
apart, I would say that's how I've seen it most of the time,
exactly that right there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't like that.
And you know eighty eight didn't do that. We never really would beyond
the fire apartment itself. Um only because if we if we got chased out,
being proactive in my thinking, you know, we're gonna make the turn
and head directly for my exit and not go away from it. You know,
to think it was the at least by us, is just to have
that hose right in front of the doorways to adsmidiable pinch points, you can
advance a little bit easier, you know. Yeah, I'm not against making
a big, big loop, you know, like a ten foot loop to
like I said, make that initial bush. But if you went farther down
that hall, which a lot of companies do, and which if if we
do it the under the new system of bringing the roll up there, you're
forced to almost flake away from your exit. I just don't think it's a
safe practice. You can take that down if you want to copy that,
you know, it's you know, and again we had said, you know,
doing it by the numbers, and when it comes to standpipes, I
was that I I you know, like, because so much can go wrong,
and they go bad in a hurry, and it's very hard to turn
that corner and go back. So, you know, the little things mattered,
you know, at every fire, but those in you know, the
little things matter because it's never one big thing that causes a problem. It's
a it's a multitude of a bunch of little things very wrong. Yeah,
you know, And then screw you. If you're not going to react to
these problems, I'm going to punch in the face. And then we're you
know, we're standing in attention, all right, talking to my guy all
wrong. I know what movie that you know, a movie that is one
of my favorite movies. Joe is that's Joe Yeah man talking to a brandy
Brandy from Joe Dirt Brandy. Yeah, the wrong, wrong in the face
for the sturing pictures. And we could talk about actually I do. I
didn't want to touch on something if you didn't mind, was the your thoughts
because I know we have some conversations on not relying on the FTC or even
the riser, what's the how's ftny? Or some other areas. Are you
into portable stampipes? Do you guys do any of those kind of things.
It's a little bit of a conversation point. I do have another picture I
wanted to ask about too. What is that? I don't even know what
that means? Can you know, my chief? You don't mind if I
because after the Deutsche Bank fire, you know, I was perplexed and I'm
like, you know, what took them so long? I know the stampipe
was out there, but what took them so long to get water to the
seventeenth floor? I mean like, so I said, you know what,
we had a building on a seven thirty five garden. Chief, you know
where I'm talking about. They've had a couple of real good fires here.
It's just it's like an eighteen nineteen story building. I said, you know
what, let me go to that building. I'll go to the roof and
see if I can build a portable standpipe. Because to me, it was
like, this is easy. How could you not be able to do this?
So, you know, I figured out the firehouse and there's no way
we're gonna drop a rope and raise it because it's just too high to pull.
So we brought all our rollups, made the connections, and we were
lowered it down off the roof. I'm like, I'm like, this is
like a bunt. I got about halfway down and the wind took control of
my line and I didn't I didn't plan on that, and I broke like
four windows and a fully occupied watch. I'm streaming at the guy drop dropped
the roll ups. So we throw three rollops off a seventeen story building.
So I go back to the firehouse. I'm like, holy shit, I
can't believe we failed at this. So I worked it out. We went
back on the next mud and we took the search rope, tied it to
the first coupling, throw the search through through the search rope over the roof.
The chauffeur was able to grab it and he was able to guide that
first coupling the first butt down. Oh, I understand what you're saying,
now, okay, And then he had already stretched the line with the Siamese
so we could augment. So it's going like clockwork. So then we were
going to tie it off. We tied it off in two places, at
the top and at the midpoint, so we secured both of them before charged
to the roof to the anchor points. Once we charged it, it relaxed
at the midpoint and kinked and we couldn't pull it out, so I failed
my second attempt. We finally got it right. What we did was we
tied the top one, secured the middle, but we didn't tied it off.
When the kink formed, we lowered the kink out of it and then
tied it off, and then we finally got water. But there's no there's
really it's in the new Engine manual how to do it, but there's no
real written thing on how to do it. Back in the thirties they used
to drill on supplying the Empire State Building. And the plan was you'd take
a length every three or four floors and drop it to a guy at the
window below you. Three floors below you, they'd take their coupling and inside.
The idea was the coupling would always be inside the building, behind a
wall or a window mullion, so that the weight was off of the couplings.
And they went up the entire height of the building. Holy shit,
Yeah, because why because shit happened, Something's gonna happen. We're gonna need
to do it. I'm understand that you go in the one window, come
out another, go in one wind, don't come out another. Yeah,
just dropped down and it was like a z up and fast. Time I
ever heard that. Yeah, I remember seeing that. We would want to
be the guy only at the top reaching out to grab that thing. He
probably got that job. We did that. And what was the thing that
just went by the window? What the hell was that? We dropped the
line? I think we're on the ninth floor. We dropped a line.
It had plexiglass, heavy plexiglass, I remember, and they ended up cutting
with the saw and we dropped the line and tied tried the host to it
and we pulled it up and they hooked it to the stampipe somewhere, and
it turned out that there was a valve that was shot somewhere. They were
working on the system or something. Somebody forgot to open the valve and there
was It wasn't much fire. I do remember that I was. I was
a fireman in one seventeen, so that's way back. It was on Roosevelt
Island. It was I have a video of that, do you really?
I do? Yeah, I didn't send it to you. I wish I
had known. Yeah, but they actually I think they lowered their their lengths
down and the chauffeur had stretched over to how many floors was it? Do
you remember? I believe it's on the ninth or tenth floor. I think
because the aerial reached Wow. You know, like that's funny because you talk
about again, like I said, doing it by the numbers. I had.
I had a run over on Clinton Avenue twenty seventy Clinton, Um and
it was it was an elderly housing place that was about fifteen stories and it
was a food and a turnout be a food in a stove, you know,
and but eighty eight was very good at going out and going doing it
by the numbers. Whether it was food, whether it was an older gas.
We always went up. We always led the system. We're always ready
to hook up. And so you know, I got up. I said,
hey, guys, it's food, don't worry about it. And they
said, oh, we're just gonna check the system. You know, we're
just gonna go through it because we had a probe, so the proby wanted
to go through it. And so they go to hook up and we don't
get a drop of water out of this system, not a drop. And
I'm like, what he goes at there's no water. I go, okay,
drop down to the floor below. Maybe that valve's broken, and see
if you get water. No water on the floor below. So I said,
okay, let's go to the first floor and we'll try to hook up
on the first floor in that stoy. No water there. So we go
into basement and sure enough there's an o US and Y valve closed and the
risers shut down, and you know, everybody says, wow, that was
great. But if that had been a you know, if we hadn't done
that, if we hadn't gone by the numbers. And you know, if
it was you know, done what you'd done if it was a real fire,
like checking the outlet, hooking up, bleeding it off. Just because
it was a food, we never wouldn't know own that, you know what
I mean. And I said that a kid, I go, you know
what, Kudos to you because you you went through and you did it.
Even though I said it was food, you still went through it and try
to bleed that line off. Good for you. And we we were in
the right of summons and they got it fixed. And and but if we
had a fire in that building, you know, you would have been reading
on a nightly news. So do it by the numbers every time, whether
it's a food and a stove, whether it's a gas leak, whether whatever
it is, you know, do it by the number. It's a great
way to check those systems. Those all create training opportunities. Every time you're
out at a firehouse. It's an opportunity to train on something that you are
going to deal with at some point in the future. Yeah, like subsellers,
so that in common that, Yeah, we're having a little trouble down,
you know, three floors down, Yeah, sub subseller, don't check
it out for me. All right, all right, you ever read about
the Times tower fire. No, yeah, it's another it's a w n
y. Jeff Jonas have a newsletter on that. Oh man, I think
he might have. Yes, I do believe he does. But you know,
uh they had. It was three subsellers down and two firefighters that were
killed were killed up on the nineteenth or twentieth floor. Somebody told me about
this job. Yeah yeah, right. Was it CEO or something that killed
those guys? Oh yeah, yeah, you know up upper floors. You're
just talking about that. I don't somehow, I just remember that somebody talking
about that story. I don't remember that. I mean it's a classic case
study, you know three I mean maybe talking about a hand stretch. I
mean it was like eight lengths below grade. Holy should through a paint paint
fire. You know, a paint room is tough, tough fire. Oh
oh lord, I love So what did you think of a two inch lead
length? Uh? I actually we didn't have that. I wasn't I was
in the squatter any yore ye Again, like I said, I my question
was why we did that? Well, nobody, you know, it was
always because it was easier that's all. You know. Well again, I
hate to, you know, keep going back to the one fire, but
you know Van Tellia Avenue two ninety three quarter stretched one incient three quarter length
as a lead length. We went back a week afterwards, and I have
a picture of the flow testing, uh nineteen a nineteen eighty Let me find
that one for you. Nineteen. We went back a week afterwards at five
o'clock in the morning the same day of the week to reenact the fire.
And that you know, when you put an inchantree quarter line on the end
an inchantree quarter nozzle on the end of a two and a half inch nozzle,
what do you got? You got an inchantre quarters right life. You
know that the two and a half the two eighty three stretched, we duplicated
it also flowed them both the same exact time. The two and a half
had two hundred and ninety gallons a minute out of the two and a half.
That's how much pressure of the year they were pumping it at and the
inchantree quarter was about one hundred and fifty, so you got almost double the
water out of that two and a half. And yeah, it's work,
I get it. But man, water. So I don't know if I
said it earlier. We're sacrificing, you know, with the two with the
two inch lead length with the one inch tip or flowing about two twenty And
with the with the two and a half with the inch and an eighth tip,
we were two sixty five. That's the target flow. We're probably flowing
more than that, but that's the package. That was the mobility and the
guys there was the thing we're saying. But we over pumped the two and
a half anyway. We always did for some reason. The seventy eighty numbers
were always too much. The friction losses were too much. You know,
if you if you pumped it right and went back to the two fifty,
you get a little more mobility with the two and a half, and really
you're looking to get to the break point. That's what you're looking to get
to. And so we sacrificed forty five gallons permitted to flow for an eleven
eleven pounds of Nazzo reaction difference. So you're talking a gallon a half the
weight of a gallon a half of water difference of Nazzo reaction. We're sacrificing
forty five gallons a minute, and I just didn't you know, my question
was the why, you know, why are we why are we sacrificed?
Because we remember, like we started this this you know, the original NFPA
fourteen sixty five. Uh, you know, the system was built for the
host of what we can put out. You know when they design us,
when that first came out. You know what's the attack package. You're going
to build a system to supply that package. And for some reason we want
to change that package. Now, well you can change the package, you've
got to be prepared to change the pressures. Yeah, and we don't always
have control over that. No, that's part of the issue, you know.
Ninety Again, we're back to the same question, Tim ninety nine percent
at a time, you're gonna get away with it in a residential fire,
you know, one or two bedrooms, Yeah, that inch and three quarter
or it's going to get it with them. You know, it's listen.
Here's the bottom line is when wind is playing a role on the fire is
when you want the two guns. It's as simple as that. I can
have half the flat burning in a in a project building in the two and
a half way if the windows hold. I'm putting that fire out of the
time, you know. But if I have a window that fails and the
wind starts playing playing games with me, you know, I'm not I don't
want to sacrifice forty five gallons a minute the flow. I just don't want
to chief. What's your experience with the curtain? I love the curtain curtain?
What's that? No attention to the man behind the curtain. Uh?
You know we've had guys saved by it. I mean when we first did
the testing with it, we bought a hundred engine companies from all over the
city to the rock, put a wind driven fire in that hallway and said,
okay, who wants to go down that hall And now I wanted them
wanted to go down that hallway. Okay, watch this home, And I
said, okay, watch this and drop the curtain. And it's like somebody
turns to switch you off to the fire. Really, that's how fast it
is, Timmy, were you at the Governor's Island tests. I tried to
get out there, but there was a very close shop. Okay, okay,
yeah, I would have gone. I didn't want to get paid.
I just wanted to go out there. And watch. Yeah, us guys
able to get it into position to quick chief. How's how is that work?
It can be done? Now, that's the Chao curtains. So every
truck has that. It's a you know, a one window blanket. The
squads and the rescues carried the bigger version, the Love and Bye ten by
twelve version. The divisions carried them. You gotta have people dedicated to that
mission. I mean, it's not the first two engine is going to do
that. You know, that's the third or the fourth new engine or the
rescue or the squad. And when I was in sock, you know,
guys, I laid the policy out. If you go to a high rise,
MD, you bring it to the command post and guys, well,
I don't want to use it. I get me out onto the firefloor.
I'll put it out. No, that's the most crucial thing you can do.
If you got fire out in that hall, you dropped that blanket,
and it's like turning the fire off. So it's back to a routine apartment.
What's that the fireman's turn that shit off? Fireman turned it off.
Absolutely. How about the college stick, I mean the floor blown college stick?
Yeah, is it something that we use it every fire. No,
no, is it something that you've been beating your brains out. I mean
back to these fires. I mean the Lionel Hampton apartment fire. We put
you know, send thirty guys to the burn center and the fire burnt itself
out. Nobody put that fire out. Same thing, Park Avenue parself out.
Yeah. So we have tried the initial attack. You've tried it and
it ain't working. Okay, here's a plan B, here's a plan C.
You know. So, I'm one of those guys that you gotta have
options. You gotta know what the fires do. When you got to know
the building around you. You gotta know what you can have and pick the
right option. So pat you they always with the towel ladder. Yeah yeah,
but they only go so high, bro with a hip inch tip.
Wait a minute, edged half, I thought I can go back to let
me let me get you a second. Let's go here this eight tip that
rig over. That's what you'll do, and you'll tip that rig over.
Funny options. That's all it's about is options. Yeah. Well, like
I said, you know, that's that's that's the tip of the iceberg.
As far as as as an engine as far as what we do. I
mean, you know you want to be a good engine. You know you
you master those fires. Uh, Like I said, as an officer,
I'm along for the ride for and and Lou Lou. You'll know that too.
We're going in two ninety one h three. You know that that engine
officers along for the ride ninety percent of the time. But at a stampipe,
you've got you've got a lot of decisions, critical decisions to make.
You know, you know where you're gonna hook up and why you're hooking up
there. Like you know, we used to have now by L gardens.
We'd have the cabinets in the hallway and then you'd have a core construction with
scissor stairs behind them, behind the elevator shafts, and you'd have to actually
if you hooked up on a floor below, you'd stretch the opposite direction of
the fire because it was easier to go this way and then come up the
stairway and heading me. So you know, those are the decisions, that's
true. I remember we used to do that. So you have to go
around the door. You'd have to go around and you come up and you'd
come out of the stairway and a lot of guys, I mean that little
decision there. If you think about the hose you eat up coming around and
they're having to come all the way around like this, you're never going to
reach the fire department. So you know, as an engine officer, you've
got to be on your a game, know your buildings and be able to
make those decisions, whether they're unpopular or not, you know, and say,
no, this is what we're doing. This is where we're looking up,
and we're stretching this way and this and we're not going to stretch up
the stairway because I'm not comfortable with the hallway. You know, it's game
daytime. And as an engine officer, for those fires off a standpipe,
you that's where you really have to for me at least, you know,
you've you've got to be at the top of your game, keep your perspective
wide about what's happening, and like the chief said, nothing wrong with going
to the floor below and really determining, hey, if they're staying in the
gun deal every time, Yeah, you have to do that every time.
Man, Just see where the apartment is. If you don't know, you
know, most of the time, you would know because you're if you were
in those buildings all the time, you would probably have a pretty good idea
where it was. But always take a quick peek. Did you ever tell
a guy I always go to the floor below, and they're answered always was
that takes too much time? I'm like, really, let's let's time.
Let's go to a real fire. I'll go to the floor below, find
out where the fire is, run upstairs and know exactly where it is,
and you go look for it so you gets there first. Yeah, you
know what I mean. You know that whole thing about time go go screw
yourself, Like I'm gonna get on a floor below, I'm gonna find out
exactly where that E line, F line, G line, whatever it is,
and I'm I get the four down. You want to know something.
This was the truth too. Again, Like I told you before, most
of the time I was running those stairs, if it was on eight or
set, whatever it was, I was not waiting around. I didn't know
who was in the elevator it was I was up the stairs. I would
get to the floor below. It was a chance for me to catch my
breath because if I ran all the way up to the top floor or to
the fire floor, you know, open a door or whatever, start to
put my mask on, then go in. After I just ran up the
stairs, I would be like in my face piece, I'll be like,
you know, stopping for a second just to get an idea what was going
on and where the apartment was. Gave me a chance now to walk up
the stairs right and I would control my breathing a little bit better and then
I would able to put the mask on and then go. You know,
so I did the same thing, except that I only walked to the second
floor. Adam Broc guy good ship back then roof. Oh my god,
Hey guys, want to know, maybe you should use your blankets bahagia instead
of the fire got we got we got these fire curtains here. It didn't
work for the curtains for hide and fat chicks. Uh. What was I
gonna say? You want to talk about that? Uh your outlet there,
Tim and you want to talk about that the uh the I show them that,
Yeah, because that's a building specific thing. Yeah, so you know
this isn't a standard thing up in uh in the FDNY. But um uh
you know, if you have certain buildings in your district. We had what
they called, I believe, Sandwich style where it was a twenty seven story
building and it had nine elevator stops, and each elevator stop would serve three
floors, one above, one below, and the fire and that floor itself.
And so if you need it, if if you needed a second line,
realistically, the stairway would only come out on those floors also, and
you'd have to go three floors below to get the second line. So um,
and it's written in the books that six floors yeah, the first yeah,
yeah, yeah. So you know, we modified this one a little
bit because we actually, with the pressure gauges on it, the gates didn't
open all the way. So all we did was take the set screw and
move the gates a little bit so you can control the opening and closing without
flipping the face of the pressure gauge around underneath, if that makes any sense.
And the other thing, if you're gonna use something like this, and
I'm not against it, and you will be able to supply the two hand
lines, that the riser will be able to do that, because we've already
said at the most remote outlet under NFPA fourteen it's got to have the ability
to supply five hundred gpms. So if I'm on the third floor, I'm
gonna get five hundred gpms out of this. You know. If it's a
twenty seven story building and I'm on the twenty seventh floor, NFBA code says,
I've got to be able to get five hundred gpms out of this,
so we'll supply that. But I don't know if you look at the handles,
if you're gonna use something like this, at least mark those handles.
I don't know if you see the tape on them. So if I say,
hey, shut down eightound, yeah right, you know, hey shut
down the red or shut down the white. So red was always for us,
was our line. We you know, the red was the first line.
You know, the fire was you know the guys that came in after
that. So but it's something you can do. And if you're afraid you're
not going to be able to supply it, NFPA code says that you can,
you know, and what should you do? Huh, take it out
and test it. Take it out and test it, you know, and
it's a building specific appliance. You know, you may have to there may
be some um, there may be some friction loss differences because of the gated
y, but nothing that's going to be catastrophic and put the line out of
service. You know, if you if you get twenty pounds difference for appliance,
and I believe the FDNY uses twenty pounds per appliance, uh for the
for the Siamese any outlet itself. So but building specific, and you can
do this so so you know, if you want to get two line off
the floor below, you can do that. It's not out of the question,
right. So yeah, and that we had two thousand Valentine three sixty
five Forward Street, another building on one eight three Street. There was a
bunch of them within the nineteenth Battalion and all those engines that responded to those
buildings had one of those, and it was the responsibility of every engine to
bring that with them to those buildings. That goes back to knowing your buildings,
you know, knowing the systems. So I was going to ask you
just standard two and a half to two and a half obviously to your siames
here standard right now, I don't know you have this one in here.
I don't know if you have a specific reason why you want to talk about
it. I just you know, I put up there. You know it
says automatic sprinkler, but it's just a starts fitting. A lot of new
places are putting these things in. I don't we don't see him in New
York City, but a lot of places outside the city are using that Stuart's
quick connect for the supply the biggest line you have. I don't know why
people think that, you know, you know, not a good idea.
Tim what's that supply it with the five inch line? Well, well,
we don't have a five inch line, but those departments that do, they
better make sure they using it as a tack hose. Very often the supply
hose is limited to two hundred psi. If you need more than two hundred
psi for an upper floor like you go to twenty seven stories. Yeah,
but five supply line ain't. But I believe most hoses that have the storts
because um, the storch is ready to do to supply those and seas talk
about the hose. The hose has a pressure hose got two hundred and fifty
is pressures fifty. We have someone that's four hundred. Forget the wei a
lot of municipalities that have the stortch connections that supply the standpipes. Most of
those have the the ability of that larger diameter to supply that with the starts
fittings. Don't think the damage got to be you know, rated for it.
So much of it is. It's posted right on and painted all over
it. You know, it's supply line hoes to PSI max. So make
sure you know what you you know the whole system, just like us trying
to supply high pressure pumper. That's why we have that high pressure three inchoes.
It's got to be capable of meeting the entire system pressure. Remember studding,
what color coupling? I was just white? White kids, don't got
it cool on the only thing I knew about that high pressure you captain right,
and it used to shake shitryout anything else. Boys, Oh great job,
they say, it's just a it's not your everyday operations, so you
gotta get out and do it. Yeah. You know what amazes me about
these two guys. You save out a while and the amount of information that
they still retained is amazing. I don't know that I think you could have
been We just don't have minds. That's what he'd been looking at, hieroglyphics
the way they were talking about. Oh yeah, an't it with the with
the coupling the stoughts like this what it's like Peedy with the seventeen with the
fourteen slide. But listen, like like, here's the thing is, if
you're a truck guy, you walk up to a door and you're go,
oh, yeah, this is this, this is that, this is a
mortist this is and I'm like, what do you just say? You know
what I mean? Like, you're just you're you're an expert at what you
know. That's all we get though, man my son's and boy scouts.
He said that you just show me how to time. It's not like I'm
like through the hole around the track, you know, not information, come
and pull it the hope not tie and hope and holes you got any shout
out rough No, but the chief of Sammy, we've had a couple of
uh guys passed with twenty guy for twenty one truck just passed away off duty
and our guy from ninety one engine just passed away. Yeah yeah, Jimmy,
not Jimmy. What Jack marriage is? I don't know if you knew
that Jack Mirror forty one years twenty six just retired, right, just retired
the other night. I was gonna try to get up for that. Uh
forty six and twenty seven. From what I understand, game a great send
off, well deserved. Jack Mirror is is the best of the best.
Then he really did you know Jack maryor Chief? I can't he was.
He was lieutenant forty six engine for twenty seven years. Yet a phone number,
Huh you got a phone number on the show? I don't know,
for the New York Saints of the hockey team for you. Yeah, like
what what? What? What? Yeah? I gotta give I gotta give
my sons a shout out. Though they're both working tonight. You know Dan
and Connor in Baltimore. You know Dan's in fourteen engine. I always did
the best of the best of the West and honors working in thirty three engine,
the Beast and the East. Baby. Yeah, I hope they're watching
tonight. I hope they are still surrounded down there. I'm surrounded. My
poor kid got a car stolen in front of the fire house the other night.
I don't believe it. Shocking Multible Well, Kia the Kia boys,
guy, I guess on his birthday. No, less ya doesn't have that
same doesn't really you know shit. I got one shout out coming from uh
missus Procaccini's husband. It says, yoe, Bro, can you give my
buddy Lieutenant Ricky. He's a guinea. I don't even gonna say it,
Mangamilia man JAMIAI a shout out. His retirement from the City of Bridgeport Fire
Department after thirty six years of service, with over twenty years of that as
a lieutenant on rescue five. Thanks well. Enjoy the retirement, bro,
enjoy the retirement. Amaz We talked about and pipes for an hour and forty
eight minutes. Oh my god, shoot me, saturan eye in my eyeball
be all wrong? Man, Come on, you're talking to my guy all
wrong. It's wrong Tom again. Face All right. For you guys that
don't know, we will be taking a break. We will be only doing
one show week. That'll be Thursdays for the month of July. We need
a little break. And August and August I know I'm leaving for so Louis
will probably be going solo. I'll be in the Philippines. I'll be off
in the Far East. Bro eat a lot of rice hanging out of the
Asian race. Yeah, and all that stuff. So, I don't know.
We have a Thursday month sandwiches. We have something on Thursday. I
think thay. No, this Thursday so far is open. We have every
other weekend to take the care of it. We got some heavy hitters coming
up. We got the guy who's ninety something is old. You said right
from seventeen truck. Uh job laughy in twenty two truck. I think it
was a laughy in twenty two truck. It could be. Yeah. We
got Tim Kelly, retired FDNY Rescue Rescue one, Rescue four. He was
out bous in the squab. I mean Louis got there. Yeah, Timmy
Kelly is coming, Craig's coming on rescue. A lot of good Thursdays coming
up. We're gonna be taking Mondays off. Yes, it is correct,
and that's all I got. I want to thank these two gentlemen with their
heads full of knowledge, bringing it and sharing it with you guys. I
hope a lot of young guys rewatched this and uh take all this information and
hopefully learn a thing of two. Learn a thing two but he got me.
Thank you, huns h. No, I just thankful for the super
chat and all the support from our Monday night show. That was uh,
that was great. We got a great support system out there. We appreciate
you guys, all right, and don't forget if you were on the show
in the past eight months. It's last August or ten months now, I'm
sorry. Send me your email please for the boat trip. Boat trip is
coming up. I sent you my time about you already on the evite list,
so it was the Chief already punched it in wet on the boat to
Chief, so like a last year so he knows last year too, right,
No, I did great, nor so you make this. Yeah,
it'll be a big the red carpet, rose petals and shit like yeah,
yeah yeah, I'll pull up in the clip tour just so you can.
Yeah. Yeah. We have the new outro too, by the way,
version play it brother, Here we go. We'd like to thank you once
again for tuning into the Getting Salty experience as always. If you think we're
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sure you never miss a video of ours. Rather be a spotlight on,
rather be a cock Lofts and Cocktails, or a brand new episode with a
heavy hitter from the fire Service. Be sure to do so. We thank
you once again for tuning into the Getting Salty Experience. That's good, does
good work. He does that. Mike's all right. I don't know where
he's Uh, he's actually at City Field. He's uh, he's watching a
ball game. Is the game I can't watch? I want to throw up
every time I watch? Now, can't wait? Is it is? It?
Is it football season? No? No, you can throw up that
too. I'm a Jet fan. Baby. When the Super Bowls you have
heavy, we're going, Oh the way, you gotta get it. He's
alone to come on that guy. Yeah, somebody knew him. I know
Eddie very well. I went to his wedding. Well, why don't you
call up the number, Brot. Eddie's a great dude. If you remember
Eddie, so send, I'll send it to I'll send it. I'll send
it to you. I don't know if he'll come on, but a smooth
talker, he gets. Eddie's entertaining. I mean, it'll be a good
show. He's a great dude. He's he's a great dude. Al Right,
guys, we'll see you not Monday, we'll see you Thursday. Thanks
guys. All right, jents, good seeing y'all. Thank you, sir.
I'll see you somewhere until then, stay low and go. Everybody will
see it, the big one everyone, good night, Stay safe.