Speaker 1: Disclaimer.
Speaker 2: We'd like to know before the start of this interview
Speaker 2: that the opinions about to be expressed by the guest
Speaker 2: of tonight's Getting Salty Experience Podcast are that of the
Speaker 2: guest and do not directly or necessarily reflect the views
Speaker 2: of the host of the Getting Salty Experience Podcast.
Speaker 3: We're listening to the Getting Salty Experience podcast.
Speaker 4: Hello, Hello, Chiefly Experience. Welcome back to Experience podcast. That's
Speaker 4: the only one that brings chief Leave and the fire
Speaker 4: house kitchen table to you. We got Mike sitting into.
Speaker 1: Here.
Speaker 4: What's missing?
Speaker 5: Hmmm, very very quiet.
Speaker 4: I'm hunting, that's what's missing. Roofie roofer. I don't Ohio
Speaker 4: off the grid somewhere probably, I don't know.
Speaker 6: I'm gonna hit us up on another seven, ten, twelve,
Speaker 6: fifteen point. I don't know.
Speaker 4: I don't know what he's got. I mean, how much
Speaker 4: how much does he have to kill? He's already got
Speaker 4: to like fifteen points or something, right.
Speaker 6: He's got some big ones. Last two. I think we're
Speaker 6: pretty decent from what he's selling us.
Speaker 4: And he's back.
Speaker 7: That's why I had an opening on the Hollywood Squares
Speaker 7: here right, Otherwise that's.
Speaker 6: Right, circle gets a square?
Speaker 4: Who do you want to be?
Speaker 6: Square?
Speaker 1: Gets a circle?
Speaker 6: Whatever?
Speaker 8: That show?
Speaker 4: Portland? On that show? Yeah, I'll go back and gat myself.
Speaker 4: Lynn god man, look at that.
Speaker 6: You definitely went back old.
Speaker 4: I think he's older than me, though. Are you older
Speaker 4: than me?
Speaker 8: I'm fifty five? How old are you?
Speaker 4: I'm older than him? Are you lying?
Speaker 1: You had me beat fifty six?
Speaker 4: I got you by one man.
Speaker 6: Fifty one, soon to be fifty two at the end
Speaker 6: of the month.
Speaker 4: What's my twenty what twenty four? I'll be twenty five
Speaker 4: year Oh my god?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 8: Whatever?
Speaker 4: Yeah, all right, all shut your pile. You just start
Speaker 4: that a fire career too, Chief, Can you imagine to go?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 8: What you what you know?
Speaker 9: Now?
Speaker 8: Right?
Speaker 7: Just thought over man, what you have ahead of you,
Speaker 7: the potential? Don't squander it? My friend.
Speaker 6: You know it's funny to say that cheap go ahead. Yeah,
Speaker 6: I was gonna tell you, Chief. I just uh give
Speaker 6: a little shout out to my new guys. They're getting
Speaker 6: ready to go to the road. I've got nine new
Speaker 6: guys going to the road. They get a little trial
Speaker 6: run next weekend. In the following weekend they get released
Speaker 6: to their shift. So I gave them that a good
Speaker 6: old speech. You know, the love they have for the job. Now,
Speaker 6: don't let it go away. Always remember that, reflect to
Speaker 6: why you sign up all that good stuff. Hopefully they
Speaker 6: listening and carrying on, so they're gonna learn a little
Speaker 6: bit of something from the show watching tonight.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 6: I gave him a shout out. I said that we're
Speaker 6: gonna watch, we'll go.
Speaker 7: I'll give a shout out to good luck in your careers. Uh,
Speaker 7: to the new firefighters wherever you are, and hopefully you're
Speaker 7: you're learning right these these podcasts such as this where
Speaker 7: we're gonna talk about two important fires tonight h A
Speaker 7: critical and keeping you healthy, safe and making sure that
Speaker 7: you have a long and fulfilling career.
Speaker 4: Absolutely meant to that. You gotta drill it into him gons.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so I hope we did. You know, we do
Speaker 6: the best we can. We got a ten week program,
Speaker 6: so it's pretty rigorous program.
Speaker 4: Make this required watching. I hope to all you guys,
Speaker 4: I mean, you're the chief over there, right of training.
Speaker 6: I try to throw it out there, you know, I.
Speaker 4: Don't try to throw it out watching.
Speaker 6: You know you want to throw out there. You gotta
Speaker 6: be careful, you know, remember.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna tell you what you should this right here?
Speaker 4: Where did I get this? Is this back in stock Hell? Christmas?
Speaker 6: Perfect?
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's and it's It's been number one, number one
Speaker 7: best on Amazon in multiple categories as well, so in Amazon.
Speaker 4: Look, we have a number one best selling author with
Speaker 4: us here tonight. What to the Team is written extremely well.
Speaker 4: I gotta tell you though, man, that chapter seventeen.
Speaker 8: Yeah, one of the one of these shows will get
Speaker 8: to that.
Speaker 1: But yeah, but do you forget me?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 6: As I say, we have two authors tonight.
Speaker 4: We have an author. I have his right here.
Speaker 7: And I will tonight we'll do chapter twenty two and
Speaker 7: chapter Yeah, we're.
Speaker 4: Gonna have Mike fall City. Wow, we're just we're just
Speaker 4: burst it all over the place.
Speaker 6: But right before the holidays, Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 8: And you don't even you don't even have your pipe tonight.
Speaker 4: I have it over here. I could. I'm keeping that
Speaker 4: the pipe and this over there. You stay over there.
Speaker 4: There's no room for you here tonight. This yeah, should
Speaker 4: be required no shit, this should be required reading by
Speaker 4: all the academies around the country.
Speaker 6: Man.
Speaker 7: Yeah, we've heard some that some departments that are having
Speaker 7: it required reading. We've and we've heard from a couple
Speaker 7: that as we come out with these different podcasts featuring
Speaker 7: the chapters, that they are encouraging and some requiring.
Speaker 8: Their members to listen to that too. So that's it's
Speaker 8: pretty cool.
Speaker 7: It's just all these different methods, whether it's the book,
Speaker 7: the website, these podcasts, to really enhance the learning experience
Speaker 7: for these for these thirty fives.
Speaker 4: Yep. Is the website up and running.
Speaker 8: It is.
Speaker 7: Yeah, the the links are not on it from the
Speaker 7: other podcast yet, but we'll be getting those on in
Speaker 7: the next week.
Speaker 8: We've done ready.
Speaker 4: Now we'll play it on every single podcast, not only
Speaker 4: this one that we do, but every guest that we
Speaker 4: have on because it's that important. Have you guys started
Speaker 4: writing the next facts you're talking about or at least.
Speaker 7: No, we have not. We've only talked. We've we've talked
Speaker 7: briefly about it only because we've been we've been inundated.
Speaker 7: I guess is a good word to use with for
Speaker 7: people who would like to write about a fire that
Speaker 7: they had and honor their their brother or sister that was.
Speaker 8: Killed in the line of duty.
Speaker 7: So at some point right now, the bigger, the bigger
Speaker 7: challenges we're trying to get the podcast for each of
Speaker 7: the thirty fires, which I.
Speaker 8: Don't know, I'll tell you what for.
Speaker 7: For you guys that do the podcast on a weekly
Speaker 7: basis and and twice a week basis, it's a lot
Speaker 7: just be you know, So kudos to you guys for
Speaker 7: what you do in the quality of show that you
Speaker 7: that you.
Speaker 8: Put out there.
Speaker 7: And as you know, there's there's several really good quality
Speaker 7: fire department style podcasts out there, and it's amazing the
Speaker 7: effort that you guys all put into it.
Speaker 8: So uh, I know, I appreciate it.
Speaker 7: I know that the fire service in Lodge appreciates it,
Speaker 7: and we're all better because of it.
Speaker 8: So thank you.
Speaker 4: And we're only asking for a couple of things alike
Speaker 4: air and subscribe. Is that a lot?
Speaker 9: No?
Speaker 1: I don't think so.
Speaker 4: I don't very reason too.
Speaker 10: And I know we can get into with the guys tonight.
Speaker 10: But you write a lot. You've seen a lot in
Speaker 10: your career, a lot of it good, some of it
Speaker 10: not good. Because the fire service it's a hard job.
Speaker 10: You're going to see some tough things going through these events.
Speaker 10: I mean, even if you didn't know the person directly
Speaker 10: before their death. It does feel like you know them
Speaker 10: in reading their story. What's the emotional toll like, do
Speaker 10: you ever find yourself having to stop and compose yourself?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 7: And you know what, and I've said it, uh before,
Speaker 7: I think so I take I take what we do
Speaker 7: very seriously, and I take our training, our education, are
Speaker 7: remembering on our history very seriously. I love the fire
Speaker 7: service and I love the people that that serve in
Speaker 7: the fire service. We are ultimately all cut from the
Speaker 7: same cloth, and we're all trying to pull in the
Speaker 7: same direction. And I think when we learn from incidents
Speaker 7: and we we do this and we're able to get
Speaker 7: we're able to be better.
Speaker 8: You know, we're all pulling on We're all pulling in
Speaker 8: the same direction. But let's all get on the same rope.
Speaker 8: Let's make sure that you're learning all the things that
Speaker 8: we need to do.
Speaker 7: And that comes through training and education and even you know,
Speaker 7: we talk about safety on the fire ground. Safety is
Speaker 7: a by product of your training, you know. And I
Speaker 7: had this conversation with.
Speaker 8: So many people.
Speaker 7: I didn't go to a fire and say, oh I
Speaker 7: got to be safe here. My training is what dictated
Speaker 7: how I operated at that fire ground and because I
Speaker 7: was well trained, because the people I worked with were
Speaker 7: well trained, that they were able to operate more safely
Speaker 7: just because of that. So training wasn't top of mind.
Speaker 7: A safety wasn't top of mind. What was was training
Speaker 7: and education and doing the job at hand, saving the
Speaker 7: savorable people and.
Speaker 8: Knowing, yeah, there comes a risk of that.
Speaker 7: Because we don't always know that a basement of a
Speaker 7: hardware store and Queen's going to have illegally stored combustibles
Speaker 7: is going to explode. We can't count for that, but
Speaker 7: we could account for ourselves through our training, and that's
Speaker 7: what gives us the safety on the fire ground. And
Speaker 7: unless you're an insitting commander, a safety offer of safety chief,
Speaker 7: those people have to directly look at the scene through
Speaker 7: the lens of safety as well, because they are the
Speaker 7: they are the safety net for the rest of us
Speaker 7: on scene, making sure that resources are coming, that people
Speaker 7: have deployed. Lines of stress was a force where they
Speaker 7: need to happen, making sure that it's a well choreographed incident,
Speaker 7: that that we're doing what was supposed to do. But
Speaker 7: firefighters aren't going on scene thinking about safety. They're thinking
Speaker 7: about what they're going to do and that safety is
Speaker 7: a byproduct of our training. The more you train, the better,
Speaker 7: The more sets in reps you have, the safe you
Speaker 7: are on the fire ground because the more you know,
Speaker 7: ask a civilian to go in and make a rescue,
Speaker 7: they're not going to be a safe because they don't
Speaker 7: know what they're doing as opposed to a new firefighter
Speaker 7: or a twenty year firefighter.
Speaker 8: Anyway, enough of EVR.
Speaker 6: Es a good point because the I don't know if
Speaker 6: you guys caught it, I'm sorry for you. You mentioned
Speaker 6: safety earlier. Did you guys catch that piece of debris
Speaker 6: that fell off and then took the firefighter out? That
Speaker 6: was on Instagram? It wasn't paying attention. There's a lot
Speaker 6: of people on scene, and I think the facade fell
Speaker 6: down from a two story home if it was took
Speaker 6: out a couple of guys. So you're talking about the
Speaker 6: safety element, just paying attention, taking a step back being
Speaker 6: the safety guys. It's just training. I'm just just touching
Speaker 6: on your safety element.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and that's why they have to look at the
Speaker 7: fire through the lens of safety.
Speaker 8: When I was in safety chief, I was the same.
Speaker 8: That was my job.
Speaker 7: That was so you have to know your job, do
Speaker 7: your job and be trained in your job. But I
Speaker 7: don't want my five. I want my five brice to
Speaker 7: be well trained and do their job, which makes them
Speaker 7: safe for on a fire round because they understand BIA dynamics,
Speaker 7: five behavior, they understand building destruction, and they understand all
Speaker 7: of that by virtue of their training.
Speaker 4: Okay, so if you buy this book, let's say happen
Speaker 4: to buy this book, you could also talk about it
Speaker 4: with guys in the fire house. Maybe they're not going
Speaker 4: to buy the book, but if you sit here and
Speaker 4: talk about some of the stories in there, or if
Speaker 4: you buy one for the firehouse for everybody to read,
Speaker 4: you can't go wrong, man, Because when a guy goes
Speaker 4: through a fire and maybe he reads one of these
Speaker 4: stories and a triggers something that his brand and goes,
Speaker 4: oh I read this somewre, you know it sets out
Speaker 4: right in motion.
Speaker 6: Man.
Speaker 7: So go to the website, right the website www dots
Speaker 7: thirty fives dot.
Speaker 8: You don't even have to sign into it, so you.
Speaker 7: Know, if even if you know what, you can't afford
Speaker 7: to buy a book, you don't want to buy it, whatever.
Speaker 8: It is, go on website.
Speaker 7: Learn something today that'll save you that may save yourself
Speaker 7: five minutes ago.
Speaker 1: I look.
Speaker 4: You ready, you know what I'm gonna take. I'm gonna
Speaker 4: let Chief leave because that's what Louis usually does.
Speaker 6: And yeah, that's why I kind of told him it
Speaker 6: was going to be his show, not I was.
Speaker 4: Yes, so GOODHD, Chief introduce our guests for you for
Speaker 4: us in a minute.
Speaker 7: So we're bringing in Assistant Chief Kevin McGee, son of.
Speaker 8: Which the department.
Speaker 10: Again, Chief, you were kind of drowned out by the applause,
Speaker 10: which department.
Speaker 8: Prince William County, Virginia.
Speaker 7: And Chief McGee is going to talk about chapter eleven
Speaker 7: in the book, a fire that occurred on April sixteenth
Speaker 7: of two thousand and seven that took the life of
Speaker 7: five fighter Kyle Wilson. And we're so appreciative to have
Speaker 7: you here cheap. But before we get into that, we're
Speaker 7: gonna bring in we're gonna bring in the other chief
Speaker 7: who's in the back. But also you gotta He explained
Speaker 7: how what his name, his last name means backstage, so
Speaker 7: explain it to the to the listeners what your last
Speaker 7: name means?
Speaker 9: Well in Gaelic, when you have somebody last name starts
Speaker 9: with mc min that designates son O and then the
Speaker 9: g e E he is in Gaelic fire. So my
Speaker 9: name is son of Fire in Gaelic.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I meant to be a chief all son of fire.
Speaker 8: That was very nice.
Speaker 4: I like it, but I can't do it.
Speaker 11: What we're gonna say, Well, you're gonna hit me, put
Speaker 11: me up on the private all right, you're ready to
Speaker 11: bring it the next guy, Yes, he's basically waiting. He's
Speaker 11: basically waiting in the back.
Speaker 6: I could see him. Was like, now he's smiling, Chief
Speaker 6: Leaves dealing with his wife.
Speaker 8: Yeah, all right.
Speaker 7: So we're bringing in John Bostonson, who is going to
Speaker 7: talk to us about chapter twenty two and the two
Speaker 7: firefighters that lost their life in the training fire, so
Speaker 7: on July thirtieth of two thousand and two.
Speaker 8: So both of you, gentlemen, thank you so much for
Speaker 8: being here.
Speaker 7: Rather than flip a coin, we decided that we would
Speaker 7: we would go with chapter eleven since it is.
Speaker 8: Earlier in the book. But hey, before we start, I
Speaker 8: just want to do a quick shout.
Speaker 7: Out to the Saint Petersburg Fire Department. So I was
Speaker 7: almost late tonight because somebody were ended my vehicle. I'm
Speaker 7: down to Florida speaking at an event tomorrow, and just
Speaker 7: a shout out to the brothers and sisters who responded.
Speaker 8: It's a really good care of me and my family.
Speaker 8: So thank you for to those folks.
Speaker 4: So the same all over the world.
Speaker 7: Chief, They truly are, they truly are so yeah, so
Speaker 7: thank you to them.
Speaker 8: And all right, so let's turn it over to Chief McGee.
Speaker 6: Did we hit the pledge real quick?
Speaker 4: It's actually pledge, Yes, that's we gotta get patriotic stand
Speaker 4: by on that guttle.
Speaker 6: Here we go.
Speaker 3: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States
Speaker 3: of America and to the Republic, for which it stands,
Speaker 3: One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.
Speaker 4: All right, Chief McGee, the stage is your sir, thought
Speaker 4: us off.
Speaker 9: Okay, Well, thank you chiefly and your team for inviting
Speaker 9: me to participate tonight, and thank you for the opportunity
Speaker 9: to tell our story in the thirty Fires that you
Speaker 9: should all know. It's an obligation that we took in
Speaker 9: Prince Willan County Department of Fire and Rescue and our
Speaker 9: fire and Rescue system to share the lessons learned from
Speaker 9: a tragedy that occurred to us on April sixteen, two
Speaker 9: thousand and seven, with the first and only firefighter fatality
Speaker 9: in the Career department. Unfortunately, several years later, we had
Speaker 9: a fatality of a volunteer recruit at our training center,
Speaker 9: and for both those incidents, we did a very thorough
Speaker 9: line of duty death investigative investigation and produce the report
Speaker 9: identified numbers a number of recommendations that we pledged to
Speaker 9: implement in order to avoid those kind of tragedies from
Speaker 9: ever occurring again. And one of the pledges that I
Speaker 9: made to my department and to Kyle Wilson's family was
Speaker 9: that we were going to do everything that we possibly
Speaker 9: could to prevent a similar tragedy from occurring again. This
Speaker 9: is an investigative report that produce just short of three
Speaker 9: hundred recommendations, and we implemented a vast majority of them.
Speaker 9: And there's a number of those that impacted the National
Speaker 9: Fire Service, and we can touch on those as we
Speaker 9: go through the discussion. But every firefighter in our country
Speaker 9: and many firefighters around the world, have been in a
Speaker 9: safer position as firefighters because of what we learned from
Speaker 9: this incident and the actions that have been taken. And
Speaker 9: I'll explain those as we go through the presentation, and
Speaker 9: the other obligation and commitment that we made is that
Speaker 9: we would never forget. And so one of the things
Speaker 9: that we felt was extremely important was to share what occurred,
Speaker 9: what our lessons were anywhere. So the Line of Duty
Speaker 9: Death Investigative Team did presentations to departments all over the
Speaker 9: country from as far as Florida to Alaska, and the
Speaker 9: only thing that we asked was that the sponsoring department
Speaker 9: would pay for the travel m And we've gotten a
Speaker 9: lot of very important feedback from what we've done, to
Speaker 9: include some chiefs that have shared with me that they
Speaker 9: feel that what was learned resulted in a firefighter's life
Speaker 9: being saved. So it just reinforces in my mind the
Speaker 9: importance that when there is a tragedy such as what
Speaker 9: we experience or even a near miss, that we don't
Speaker 9: keep what occurred to ourselves, that we share broadly and
Speaker 9: not only go through the the steps that can peel
Speaker 9: away the layers of the onion to get to the core,
Speaker 9: but also to do the implementation that's necessary to do
Speaker 9: the follow up for and one of the things that
Speaker 9: I did in my role is fire chief and I
Speaker 9: asked our Board of County Supervisors in one of my
Speaker 9: budget presentations to add a chief officer to my staff
Speaker 9: whose sole responsibility was to follow through recommendations from our
Speaker 9: LEDD reports near miss reports, so that we just didn't
Speaker 9: do reports that would end up collecting dust on the shelf.
Speaker 9: So with that, we we have a PowerPoint presentation and
Speaker 9: if we can.
Speaker 6: Go to that absolutely to want to address a newcomer
Speaker 6: to the Okay, you want to start with our first slide.
Speaker 9: So Technician one Kyle Wilson was really what we considered
Speaker 9: as a star. He excelled in his recruit school. He
Speaker 9: was in his probationary year assigned to a busy engine
Speaker 9: company and during his probationary year was involved in the
Speaker 9: incident of marsh Overlok Drive on April sixteenth that took
Speaker 9: his life. And as you can see from what we
Speaker 9: have in the bottom, we will never forget and we're
Speaker 9: going to continue to do everything we can to prevent
Speaker 9: a tragedy like this from ever occurring again. We also
Speaker 9: have our line of duty death report investigative report online.
Speaker 9: It's available to you. I also have the link that's
Speaker 9: in our chapter in the book that will take you
Speaker 9: to the investigative report that will spell out every finding
Speaker 9: in every recommendation that was compiled. Prince William County is
Speaker 9: located in the National Capital Region. It's rapidly growing urban,
Speaker 9: suburban and rural community covering three hundred and forty eight
Speaker 9: square miles. At the time, the population was right around
Speaker 9: four hundred and twenty three thousand. It's got to be
Speaker 9: at least five hundred thousand currently. The Prince William County
Speaker 9: Fire Rescue system consists of the six hundred plus personnel
Speaker 9: that's career end volunteer. The career staff covers twelve stations
Speaker 9: twelve hours during the daytime, and we also had some
Speaker 9: twenty four hour units. Volunteers were responsible for taking the
Speaker 9: nighttime and weekend shifts for those twelve hour scheduled days.
Speaker 9: Since then, our system has evolved where all the career
Speaker 9: staff are on the twenty four hour schedule and we
Speaker 9: also have volunteers mostly in the night, weekends and holidays,
Speaker 9: but by staff units twenty four hours a day. So
Speaker 9: we are a combination system with independent volunteers fire departments
Speaker 9: that's organized into a single fire and rescue system. The time,
Speaker 9: we had twenty one stations, and there's been several that
Speaker 9: have been added since then. We run at the time
Speaker 9: about thirty five thousand incidents per year. I'll also add
Speaker 9: that because of this incident, as well as the growth
Speaker 9: and the evolution of our system during the eleven years
Speaker 9: that I was chief, we went from about three hundred
Speaker 9: and fifty career staff to let's see, it's seven hundred
Speaker 9: and fifty career staff. Next line, our line of duty
Speaker 9: death Investigation team was compiled. At the time I was
Speaker 9: this incident, I was the Fire Marshal, married about MICUs
Speaker 9: was the fire chief and formed a cross functional team
Speaker 9: with let's see, two five Department of Fire and Rescue
Speaker 9: members and two members from neighboring jurisdictions, Chief Richie Bauers
Speaker 9: from Montgomery County and Chief Danny Gray from Fairfax County,
Speaker 9: and they spent the better part of nine months doing
Speaker 9: the investigation and compiling your report. The team was also
Speaker 9: assisted by and this is very important when you're doing
Speaker 9: these kind of reports to have the support from within
Speaker 9: your local government or whatever the agencies are that you
Speaker 9: use for legal services, Harrisk Management Office, Office of Public
Speaker 9: Safety Communications, and the Fire Marshal's Office Next, the review
Speaker 9: consisted of the incident scene items, going out to the
Speaker 9: incident scene, conducting interviews of all the members who were involved,
Speaker 9: including some witnesses, and this was supported by the Fire
Speaker 9: Marshall's office. We examined policies and procedures. All the person
Speaker 9: protective gear for Technician Wilson and his lieutenant were taken
Speaker 9: by the investigative team, so they examined the person protective
Speaker 9: gear and the self contained breathing apparatus compared to what
Speaker 9: we did against ministry standards and regulations, and also included
Speaker 9: fire modeling from the University of Maryland Fire Engineering here
Speaker 9: Fire Engineering School.
Speaker 1: Next, wait to skip aside. There you go.
Speaker 9: So on the morning of April sixteenth, there was a
Speaker 9: nor'easter or storm storm that was ripping up the East
Speaker 9: coast and we were caught in the middle of that.
Speaker 9: This location was right off Thetomic wherever we had sustained
Speaker 9: winds of twenty five miles an hour with many gusts
Speaker 9: that were forty eight miles per hour, and it actually
Speaker 9: it felt more than that. Temperature was forty five degrees.
Speaker 9: It was right around six o'clock in the morning. There
Speaker 9: were nineteen nine one one calls received and these were
Speaker 9: mostly passerbys. The occupants never did call nine one one,
Speaker 9: so the telecommunication nine one one telecommunic operators had no
Speaker 9: additional information regarding occupant status.
Speaker 6: Next copy of those So I was asking us a
Speaker 6: question if we can, if you want to address it
Speaker 6: now so we don't get too far ahead. He was asking,
Speaker 6: can you have the chief explain a reason or the
Speaker 6: reason for a chief from Montgomery and Fairfax Counties on
Speaker 6: the committee?
Speaker 9: Was there a reason for Yes, we thought that was
Speaker 9: very important to have a cross functional team that was
Speaker 9: not only familiar with how we do things in Princellian County,
Speaker 9: but we wanted to be able to extend beyond our borders.
Speaker 9: What were some best practices outside of our jurisdiction, and
Speaker 9: to make sure that and we didn't have a concern
Speaker 9: for this, but we wanted to make sure that we
Speaker 9: eliminated any thought that would be biased from dimin having
Speaker 9: an internal team. So the chiefs of those two departments
Speaker 9: were gracious enough to loan those two fire officers to
Speaker 9: us for that entire nine month period.
Speaker 6: Okay, all right, perfect, thank you.
Speaker 9: So the first alarm assignment was three engines. The wagon
Speaker 9: is basically another engine the tower medic unit. I don't
Speaker 9: think the ambulance responded in a battalion chief. We had
Speaker 9: a heavy rescue that responded that was self initiated as
Speaker 9: well as a safety officer, and that was acceptable practice
Speaker 9: at the time.
Speaker 6: I'm assuming that was obviously prior to the job the
Speaker 6: incident or at the dispatch of incident.
Speaker 9: That was an initial dispatch. So the first enngine company
Speaker 9: arrived retortat fire on size b C. This was at
Speaker 9: six eight five twelve arrived right behind wagon five twelve,
Speaker 9: which they were the first year company. The size up
Speaker 9: was performed. It was early morning. There were carved in
Speaker 9: the driveway on the street in front of the residents.
Speaker 9: There weren't any lights on in the house, so it
Speaker 9: was still dark. They felt that the house was still
Speaker 9: occupied and as a result, they immediately called for a
Speaker 9: second alarm. The second alarm assignment, because of the geographic
Speaker 9: distribution of our stations, was going to be a rather
Speaker 9: long response count to get all those units on the scene.
Speaker 9: The initial incident action plan was for the engine five
Speaker 9: to twelve crew to advanced two and a half inchlined
Speaker 9: to the interior fire attack tower. Five twelve crew to
Speaker 9: perform a primary search. There was four members on the crew.
Speaker 9: There was the two members of the officer and the
Speaker 9: firefighter did the primary search, and the other two members
Speaker 9: of Tower five twelve for the outside crew. Both crews
Speaker 9: planned to proceed to the second floor. This is an
Speaker 9: aerial view of the structure. You could see there really
Speaker 9: was no major exposures.
Speaker 6: Yeah, pretty big homes there.
Speaker 9: It was a six thousand square foot house. This was
Speaker 9: a layout of the basement area. So it's two stories
Speaker 9: with the basement and so we can go to the
Speaker 9: next five.
Speaker 4: Let's see the third s op taking two and a
Speaker 4: half into a private dwelling like that seems like a
Speaker 4: rather large hose line.
Speaker 9: Now it was not, but they were looking at the
Speaker 9: extent of the fire, so it.
Speaker 4: Was amount of the fire load there and they decided
Speaker 4: to stretch two and a half.
Speaker 6: Yes, okay, big fire, big water.
Speaker 9: And at the time the fire was on the side
Speaker 9: c It was an exterior fire that was working its
Speaker 9: way up the side of the house. So going back
Speaker 9: to the first floor, I just wanted to point out
Speaker 9: one thing. You can see that morning room. The occupants
Speaker 9: evacuated out of the house. US out of that back
Speaker 9: door and left that that back door opened, which a
Speaker 9: significant impact on the incident.
Speaker 6: That's what the flow pass. Okay, so second floor.
Speaker 9: Here, second floor, you can see the layouts, and so
Speaker 9: the crew, the tower crew were focused on evacuating since
Speaker 9: their size of indicates to them that people would still
Speaker 9: be sleeping. So let's uh, let's search the bedrooms. So
Speaker 9: then the Italian chief arise at six eleven Tower. Five
Speaker 9: twelve crew entered process as second floor conditions changed. The
Speaker 9: thick when they went to the first second floor, it
Speaker 9: was like a light gride, but it quickly changed to
Speaker 9: a thick black smoke created vierau visibility and high heat conditions.
Speaker 9: The crew staid and verbal communications.
Speaker 8: There.
Speaker 9: At some point there was a smoke explosion. The officer
Speaker 9: was in the hallway, the firefighter was close behind him
Speaker 9: as far as we can detect, and the officer got
Speaker 9: caught up in a hallway table and was because of
Speaker 9: the smoke explosion, was thrown into the stairwell mm hmm.
Speaker 9: And then the the firefighter lowless contact with with his officer.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry yeah, And so.
Speaker 9: Mike and five twelve's officer reacted to change conditions and
Speaker 9: noise believed to be UH. The stairs burned out. At
Speaker 9: this point, there's a lot of fire that's working its
Speaker 9: way through the house. The wind is coming from side
Speaker 9: sea through the house. It's into the attic space. Part
Speaker 9: of the smoke explosion was the oxygen getting into that
Speaker 9: thick black superheated gas in the attic space and that
Speaker 9: second floor causing the explosion. We can go to the
Speaker 9: next slight this show is the stairwell. At the point
Speaker 9: that the engine company crew sees a white helmet, they
Speaker 9: made a quick grab and pulled the firefighter out. That
Speaker 9: was a lieutenant. He resisted because his firefighter was still upstairs,
Speaker 9: but the IFEW company crew took him to evacuated him
Speaker 9: from the house.
Speaker 5: UH.
Speaker 9: Several other crews engaged, including the Repid Intervention team, and
Speaker 9: at this point it was like a bloke torch coming
Speaker 9: through that stairwell and crews climbing over each other. A
Speaker 9: crew would try to advance up the stairwell get pushed back.
Speaker 9: The backup engine company crew would crawl over them, only
Speaker 9: to get pushed back. Having rescue crew would climb over
Speaker 9: them to try to reach the firefighter, and at that
Speaker 9: time technician Wilson is making the mayday call giving his
Speaker 9: location mm hmm, and his his may day was textbook.
Speaker 6: Oh okay, I was going to ask about.
Speaker 5: That, so.
Speaker 8: Observed.
Speaker 9: Okay. We talked about the cruise seeing the white helmet,
Speaker 9: evacuating the the fire.
Speaker 12: Off the truck company officer. The may day was at
Speaker 12: six fifteen. The past alarm was sounding, but because of
Speaker 12: the ambient noise on the incident scene, nobody heard it.
Speaker 9: Really cruise re entered the structure.
Speaker 4: That was a short amount of time that that happened
Speaker 4: really quickly. Man, that went the ship fast.
Speaker 9: Oh. It was incredible when you think about six six
Speaker 9: thousand square foot lightweight construction.
Speaker 5: Homes with.
Speaker 9: Highly flammable contents synthetic materials. The BTU production was incredibly high.
Speaker 4: Did they have a hose line in place in the
Speaker 4: beginning when when the smoke explosion.
Speaker 1: Yes, and it's okay.
Speaker 9: It wasn't. It still wasn't enough with I mean it
Speaker 9: was like a blow towards coming out of side A
Speaker 9: and the structure.
Speaker 6: Well, yeah, I was just going back to a twenty
Speaker 6: five mile winds, a gust of forty eight miles an hour.
Speaker 6: That and that back door. You said was left open, correct, okay.
Speaker 9: And so you already had a breach in the attic space.
Speaker 9: You know when you have these outside in fires. It's
Speaker 9: working up the side of the house, up the vinyl
Speaker 9: siding and into the openings and the soffits and right
Speaker 9: into the attic space, which again is lightweight construction, so
Speaker 9: the structural integrity is very questionable. So there was a
Speaker 9: safety officer on the scene. He noticed that there was
Speaker 9: the uh partial collapse of the roof and called for
Speaker 9: evacuation of the structure and the cruise went to a
Speaker 9: defensive operations mode. Once the barrow was brought under control,
Speaker 9: cruise re entered and made did an extensive search to
Speaker 9: locate technician wism. This just shows the apparatus placement. And
Speaker 9: I will tell you that the working conditions on the
Speaker 9: side A of the structure where wagon five twelve, the
Speaker 9: engine five to ten, command posts the firefighters working on
Speaker 9: side ay, the conditions were extremely poor with smoke that
Speaker 9: was banking down, so that that contributed to the difficulty
Speaker 9: of the operation as well.
Speaker 1: So next, well we don't have nothing, okay, we.
Speaker 9: Go, so we'll show you where specifically where technician Wilson
Speaker 9: was located at a determination of the cause of death.
Speaker 9: It was thermal and in the lation injuries his pat
Speaker 9: The The only thing that was different or not in
Speaker 9: place when Kyle was found was his helmet that was
Speaker 9: approximately six ft away. His SCBA was worn properly, his
Speaker 9: face mask was still on, and his bottle was empty.
Speaker 9: The face piece was destroyed and the ozon, the self
Speaker 9: contained breathing apparatus was melted.
Speaker 6: Okay, hope, sorry, you get that.
Speaker 9: And the tower company officer had partial thickness burns on
Speaker 9: both ears and one finger. So this is the master
Speaker 9: bedroom layout. And there was a sofa that was in
Speaker 9: front of the window, and Barbara Wilson was found on
Speaker 9: the sofa. We believe that if that sofa wasn't there,
Speaker 9: he most likely would have made it to the window.
Speaker 9: But that obstruction just made it much more difficult and
Speaker 9: confusing in zero visibility conditions.
Speaker 6: Just kind of holds true to where people say where
Speaker 6: they find victims, how close they ought to exit ways
Speaker 6: if you will, Yeah, just kind of ties into those
Speaker 6: those things. All right, there you go, nice picture of
Speaker 6: the house.
Speaker 9: So I will give a tremendous amount of credit for
Speaker 9: the extremely difficult decision that safety officer and the incident
Speaker 9: commander to call the evacuation because the firefighters who were
Speaker 9: attempting the rescue of Firefighter Wilson would have certainly given
Speaker 9: their life to find him, and because of that call,
Speaker 9: they followed their orders and those lives were spared. So,
Speaker 9: as I mentioned earlier, the line of duty death investigative
Speaker 9: report had I think about two hundred and eighty some recommendations.
Speaker 9: The majority of the recommendations were involved staffing levels, training procedures,
Speaker 9: communications and public education, and prevention efforts and technologies. One
Speaker 9: of the things that the investigative team did was break
Speaker 9: the the recommendations into actions that the department needed, our
Speaker 9: fire and rescue system needed to take, recommendations that could
Speaker 9: needed to be done at the regional state level, and
Speaker 9: another set of recommendations that.
Speaker 8: Needed to be.
Speaker 9: Done at the national level. And I think that I
Speaker 9: want to give a great deal of credit to the
Speaker 9: International Association of Fire Chiefs and the Safety, Health and
Speaker 9: Survival section of the i f C, because they, when
Speaker 9: I approached them with I needed your help to address
Speaker 9: these national level recommendations, they stepped up and as a result,
Speaker 9: nationally recognized n f standards were changed. The self contained
Speaker 9: breathing apparatus standards now have base pieces that are much
Speaker 9: more hardened to hide temperatures. The hose lines stand up
Speaker 9: to much higher heat. There's a universal pass alarm sound
Speaker 9: that has been implemented because, as I mentioned earlier, the
Speaker 9: firefighters didn't recognize that there was a pass alarm sounding,
Speaker 9: and then really at that time there was no national
Speaker 9: standard for what the sound was. So research was conducted
Speaker 9: and found an alarm sound that firefighters would hear even
Speaker 9: with the ambient noise of an incident scene around them.
Speaker 9: The portable radios that we use. I was in my
Speaker 9: office one day and I looked out the window and
Speaker 9: I see a couple of engine companies and some members
Speaker 9: of the Mine of Duty Death Investigative Team using hose
Speaker 9: lines in the back of the government facilities molding and
Speaker 9: what they were trying to do. After listening to the
Speaker 9: radio traffic and how it was distorted, they found that
Speaker 9: the water pellets hitting the portable microphone would get distorted
Speaker 9: because of those water droplets. So whether it was rain
Speaker 9: hitting the microphone or water droplets from a hose line,
Speaker 9: it was distorted. When we went to Motorola, they researched
Speaker 9: the solution that cancels out that noise. So now we
Speaker 9: have portable radios that are much clearer. And they also
Speaker 9: when we told them that the radio wiring disintegrated because
Speaker 9: of the high heat temperatures in the incident, they created
Speaker 9: a new wiring that is much more will hold up
Speaker 9: my fire temperatures.
Speaker 6: It was just the higher temperatures.
Speaker 9: Yeah, So major factors that we identified was the initial
Speaker 9: arriving fire fighting force was inadequate, the size of.
Speaker 6: The fact that we can go back to that I
Speaker 6: don't know what the heck happened here, stand by, sorry,
Speaker 6: there we go.
Speaker 9: The size of the fire development and spread was, as
Speaker 9: you had already mentioned, was incredibly quick and something that
Speaker 9: we need to address. The high wind impact on fire
Speaker 9: development and spread. The size of this structure, as well
Speaker 9: as the construction components and materials rappid the intervention and
Speaker 9: firefighter rescue efforts, as well as incident control and management.
Speaker 9: So one of the things that I do want to
Speaker 9: point out here is and that I was very proud
Speaker 9: of from the investigation team, is they were looking at
Speaker 9: the system issues. They weren't looking at the individual actions
Speaker 9: pointing fingers or finding fault and we were able to
Speaker 9: identify things that was inherent to the system that we
Speaker 9: needed to address.
Speaker 1: So much.
Speaker 4: Did they determine the cause of the fire chief.
Speaker 9: It was officially it was undetermined, but we identified the
Speaker 9: origin as the mulch along the back of the house.
Speaker 9: This would be consistent with carelessly discarded smoking material. And
Speaker 9: you know, even with at the time we had just
Speaker 9: in Virginia gotten legislation for the self extinguishing cigarettes which
Speaker 9: initially were called firesafe cigarettes, but twenty percent of the
Speaker 9: time it doesn't work. So even though there was not
Speaker 9: an official cause, this is a potential likely scenario and
Speaker 9: with the high winds in a in a ignition source
Speaker 9: in a material, it uh that was a feasible cause.
Speaker 9: So we're creating performance measures that we tracked very closely
Speaker 9: now for our effective firefighting force initial arriving fire suppression force.
Speaker 9: The operational guidelines identified required tasks that need to be done.
Speaker 9: The initial dispatch compliment we have gone over that the
Speaker 9: engines had staffing of three, the truck had minium staffing
Speaker 9: of four. One machine that with two personnel and one
Speaker 9: battalion chief. The incident command was completely overwhelmed with one
Speaker 9: person that one battalion chief at the command post. We
Speaker 9: did a comparison of seventeen ten to to our effective
Speaker 9: firefighting force. We were operating under the seventeen ten standards
Speaker 9: because of the configuration of our jurisdiction. NFPA identifies seventeen
Speaker 9: firefighters for then that's based on a two thousand square
Speaker 9: foot single family home, two stories without a basement, and
Speaker 9: as you recall, we had six thousand square foot two
Speaker 9: stories with a basement, and so the seventeen would not
Speaker 9: be adequate for the situation that we were addressing. Next,
Speaker 9: this was a very useful slide that I showed our
Speaker 9: elected officials when we were making a proposal for additional
Speaker 9: staffing of what the recognized national standards are for a
Speaker 9: response to this kind of incident where we're responding to
Speaker 9: much larger structures and we didn't even meet the NFPA
Speaker 9: seventeen ten for two thousand square courthouse, and we identified
Speaker 9: the need for the situation we had to be thirty
Speaker 9: one excellent. So these were kind of structures that when
Speaker 9: I first came on in nineteen eighty, in the early
Speaker 9: eighties into nineteen ninety, which would be one in two
Speaker 9: story structures about uh two thousand square feet or less,
Speaker 9: very well compartmentized and not necessarily lightly construction. So the
Speaker 9: building materials that in the building products had evolved quite
Speaker 9: drastically during my career.
Speaker 6: Two.
Speaker 9: And we'll show the next slide this, These are the
Speaker 9: kind of structures that are being built not only in
Speaker 9: Princeleiam County, but around the country.
Speaker 6: This he's a massive yeah.
Speaker 1: Wow. So also.
Speaker 9: The time temperature curve and were we were at each point.
Speaker 5: Hey, Kevin, can I ask you real quick, can you
Speaker 5: go back to the last slide? And thanks for having
Speaker 5: me on late.
Speaker 13: I had some fire department business to take care.
Speaker 5: This is so symbolic because these houses are going all
Speaker 5: over the country, growing all over the country, and areas
Speaker 5: that were rural all volunteer and they just keep popping up.
Speaker 5: And when we look at that, we see how the
Speaker 5: community has changed. But how is the fire department changed services?
Speaker 13: Yep, exactly.
Speaker 5: And I know you, Kevin and your and the chief
Speaker 5: there before you had been pushing this. I know we
Speaker 5: were doing the same thing changing and there was a
Speaker 5: lot of resistance and it took this poor kid losing
Speaker 5: his life, which I guess is a positive because so
Speaker 5: many line of duty deaths do not necessarily leave to change,
Speaker 5: lead to change, and this one has led not just
Speaker 5: locally but nationally. But when I see pictures like this,
Speaker 5: if you take the house out of the way, that's
Speaker 5: what was there.
Speaker 13: It was farmland, it was rurally.
Speaker 5: But they're building all these areas up. But the fire
Speaker 5: Department's got it. As one of the one of our
Speaker 5: hosts said, it's got to change, it's got to keep
Speaker 5: up with the growth.
Speaker 13: And it took Kyle Wilson getting killed, quite frankly, to
Speaker 13: be that wake up call.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 5: And who knows what you'd be dealing with today if
Speaker 5: it weren't for that. So to see that I know
Speaker 5: his family and you and others, his loss mattered, is
Speaker 5: I guess what I want to say.
Speaker 9: And I would just add that I think it's incumbent
Speaker 9: upon the leadership of fire departments to inform they're elected officials,
Speaker 9: who are the policymakers, on what our capacity is to
Speaker 9: address these kinds of emergencies and what the implications are
Speaker 9: if we don't have the proper resources. And this is
Speaker 9: coming all across the country. I mean, we're we're seeing
Speaker 9: all kinds of new housing product that's coming out zero
Speaker 9: lot lying homes that you can reach your arms out
Speaker 9: and touch both boat homes that they're that close. And
Speaker 9: then you're combining it with the kinds of weather conditions
Speaker 9: like what we had on April on April sixteenth, where
Speaker 9: you have these high wind events. I was interim fire
Speaker 9: chief in Waco, Texas for eight months and we had
Speaker 9: three wind driven structure pirates. So the elected officials don't
Speaker 9: know these kinds of things unless you bring it to
Speaker 9: the attention, and then they have a choice to make.
Speaker 9: What kind of risk are we going to place on
Speaker 9: our fire fighters to respond to these kind of emergencies.
Speaker 9: And I think it's also incumbent on us as leaders
Speaker 9: of our departments to look at our tactics and strategies too.
Speaker 9: If we have to respond to these kinds of emergencies,
Speaker 9: how do we make the best use of the resources
Speaker 9: that we have. And you've already mentioned the importance of
Speaker 9: training the kinds of proper equipment. I was in a
Speaker 9: department at a department just a few months ago that
Speaker 9: are practicing with a very portable piercing nozzle that they're using,
Speaker 9: and so to not only to train, but to research
Speaker 9: and develop and find the kinds of things that are
Speaker 9: going to allow us to operate in as safe of
Speaker 9: condition as we possibly can considering the circumstances.
Speaker 13: You know, the challenge we have too is the human factor.
Speaker 5: If you tell the sanitation department you're staffing is cut,
Speaker 5: there will be more garbage on the street. If you
Speaker 5: tell Parks and Recreation, we're not going to mow the
Speaker 5: lawns as much, the lawns are going to be higher
Speaker 5: on the ball field. You put two people on an
Speaker 5: engine or five people on an engine, their desire to
Speaker 5: do what they can to help people. It's such a
Speaker 5: huge issue for us, more than any other profession. And
Speaker 5: that's when it comes down to what you're talking about. Okay,
Speaker 5: so we only have this, then what's the most we
Speaker 5: can do with what we have, whether it's having an
Speaker 5: alarm assignment or whatever.
Speaker 9: So I'll share a tip with you, a fire chief tip,
Speaker 9: and I hope that most chiefs are doing this already.
Speaker 9: But whenever there was a new elected official that came
Speaker 9: onto our boad of county supervisors, I would do an
Speaker 9: orientation to them, have them come to my office, or
Speaker 9: I would go to their office and go through what
Speaker 9: we do, the range of services that we provide, but
Speaker 9: also identifying the risks that we have, the challenges that
Speaker 9: we have, and the need for support from the elected officials,
Speaker 9: and what my availability is to them for any questions
Speaker 9: that they may have. Because you know, elected officials are
Speaker 9: a mile wide in an inch deep. They have so
Speaker 9: many things on their plate that you have to be
Speaker 9: the subject matter expert to be able to educate them
Speaker 9: and to point them to the priorities that they need
Speaker 9: to focus on to be able to provide the services
Speaker 9: and to keep your staffs safe.
Speaker 4: And you got to be this. You got to be
Speaker 4: the squeaky wheel. Sometimes you have to be persistent because sometimes,
Speaker 4: like you said, they have so much on their plate
Speaker 4: that the keep that fresh in their mind.
Speaker 9: Yes, and I was told by my boss, was county executive,
Speaker 9: that the elected officials want me to dial it back
Speaker 9: just a little bit. So I found new and better
Speaker 9: ways to communicate with them.
Speaker 4: That's not the finement, the more scale.
Speaker 7: That's a big point, right, they don't know if if
Speaker 7: they don't know what's going on. You know, we're the
Speaker 7: ones that have to advocate for our staffing and for
Speaker 7: equipment and everything and has been mentioned these bigger houses
Speaker 7: with smalllines. Is that this this is a problem everywhere.
Speaker 7: It doesn't matter where you are, from New York City
Speaker 7: to rural communities. These are these big mc mansions with
Speaker 7: no lot lines are coming everywhere and those huge ceilings inside. Uh,
Speaker 7: you know, an exterior fire quickly gets into the attic
Speaker 7: and uh there's there's a lot of challenges. And this
Speaker 7: is as as Billy mentioned and Chief McGee mentioned as well,
Speaker 7: about the this is a seminal fire. It has led
Speaker 7: to national change. This is remember when this fire was
Speaker 7: in two thousand and seven. We we have a lot
Speaker 7: of research that has gone on since then, a lot
Speaker 7: of knowledge gathering.
Speaker 8: About all of these topics.
Speaker 7: So to hear the changes that have made, to hear
Speaker 7: that that h that this young firefighter's death, uh, you know,
Speaker 7: led to significant change is important. I know this is
Speaker 7: a heavily studied fire and every firefighter should absolutely positively
Speaker 7: no fire.
Speaker 9: There's there's one additional important factor that I just want
Speaker 9: to touch on here that's not the presentation, if I
Speaker 9: have a minute, is how we take care of our
Speaker 9: people after a tragedy like.
Speaker 1: This fits right in that.
Speaker 9: Your department is at risk when these situations occur with
Speaker 9: posts incident, stress disorder, other psychological issues, a pulling back
Speaker 9: on the risk tolerance that your staff has. We couldn't
Speaker 9: get staff to take promotional exams because they realized, if
Speaker 9: I take this new responsibility and I'm on one of
Speaker 9: these incidents, I don't want to be responsible for an
Speaker 9: incident where somebody loses their life.
Speaker 6: And so.
Speaker 9: We had to address how we allow people to step
Speaker 9: out of their comfort zone into a growth zone. So
Speaker 9: it was like, we're not going to We're going to
Speaker 9: train you and develop you to be an officer before
Speaker 9: you're an officer, rather than put you in an officer position,
Speaker 9: than develop you and to have critical incidence, stress management
Speaker 9: programs and say behavioral health support for for our personnel
Speaker 9: as well. So it impacts. It's a huge more than
Speaker 9: a ripple, it's a wave that goes across the organization
Speaker 9: that that the leadership of an organization needs to understand
Speaker 9: be able to address.
Speaker 7: M I appreciate you bringing that up, and I think
Speaker 7: you know there's a reason for the saying the heaviest
Speaker 7: tool on the fire ground is the flashlight, and you
Speaker 7: know for the for the officer and the recognition of
Speaker 7: making sure that we train our officers to be officers
Speaker 7: before their officers is such an important point and something
Speaker 7: that is missed so often where it's you know, we
Speaker 7: we have to we have to change that and not
Speaker 7: you know, we got to be brilliant at the basics,
Speaker 7: but we have to start making sure that we are
Speaker 7: training leaders to make leadership decisions and realizing the importance
Speaker 7: of of of that.
Speaker 8: So I appreciate you bringing bringing that additional points up.
Speaker 4: I just wanted to make one point about the psychological effect.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 4: I don't remember where it was. I was at a
Speaker 4: job one time and a little girl died in the
Speaker 4: attic and the guys from the truck company couldn't get
Speaker 4: to her. It was just blowing out the windows. And
Speaker 4: I remember guys coming down rowan as the toughest guys
Speaker 4: you've ever seen, crying in the streets saying, I couldn't
Speaker 4: get to it. I just couldn't get through. I just
Speaker 4: couldn't get to it. And I can imagine what these
Speaker 4: guys felt like when you couldn't get to your own guys,
Speaker 4: you know, guys at the guy trying to crawl over
Speaker 4: the top takes a huge psychological toll on guys, you know,
Speaker 4: And that's a very good point that you bring up, Chief, Like,
Speaker 4: you know, it's supposed to be the toughest, baddest guys
Speaker 4: on the earth, right, but that takes a heavy toll
Speaker 4: when you can't get your job done, especially when you
Speaker 4: lose one of your own tough And.
Speaker 9: I couldn't not have been prouder of every firefighter and
Speaker 9: every fire officer on that incident scene, as well as
Speaker 9: the dispatchers that are public take the communication.
Speaker 5: Ce Kevin, let me ask you a question.
Speaker 13: We have a part of the clip of the may.
Speaker 5: Day that we're going to attach so beavers can click
Speaker 5: on it. Okay, would it also be appropriate to play
Speaker 5: a little bit of that now as you wrap this up?
Speaker 8: Or would you rather not?
Speaker 9: Sure? Sure?
Speaker 1: Sure? Please do have aunt.
Speaker 6: Yes, that's the time stamp you sent me.
Speaker 4: Correct, Yes, that's what I got from Billy.
Speaker 6: Yes, all right, give me one second here can said here.
Speaker 5: Mm hmm o, my.
Speaker 2: Farewell, ye.
Speaker 9: Conquer I don't know where I am.
Speaker 3: Calling.
Speaker 5: That gives a great example of what they were going through.
Speaker 5: And thanks for keing that up, Fellas. We will link
Speaker 5: that to the story we'll have it of course on
Speaker 5: the thirty fires website, but I think the guys from
Speaker 5: getting Salty you can add that to this link as well.
Speaker 5: There shouldn't be a firefighter in this country that does
Speaker 5: not start that power point video from the beginning to
Speaker 5: end and watch that. We all, we do at all
Speaker 5: have high horises. We'd all have ship fires, but we
Speaker 5: all go to single family dwelling fires.
Speaker 13: And that's it right there. Thank you for being with us, Kevin.
Speaker 9: Thank you honor to be with you in the sheriff.
Speaker 4: That could you know, come get me, kills me?
Speaker 6: Yeah, so I got the website.
Speaker 8: Mm okay, thanks for putting that in the chief. Thanks
Speaker 8: again for joining us today.
Speaker 4: We superitiated and we.
Speaker 7: Honor our fallen by by remembering the lessons and reinforcing
Speaker 7: the lessons that they provide.
Speaker 8: And you've certainly done that tonight for us, and we
Speaker 8: are grateful for that.
Speaker 9: Thank you.
Speaker 8: Kevin.
Speaker 13: You're gonna stick with us as we break and then
Speaker 13: go to Bart's program.
Speaker 7: Yes, yes, sir, all right, so we did. We did
Speaker 7: a brief into introduction of Bart. But Billy, you want
Speaker 7: to as we transition into chapter twenty two and say
Speaker 7: a few things about our next guest.
Speaker 5: Well, first of all, Bart is one of the original
Speaker 5: Fools when they started the Fools group years and years
Speaker 5: and years ago, and that could be a whole nother
Speaker 5: Getting Salty program.
Speaker 13: Because he's got a it's a great story.
Speaker 5: But Bart I met through teaching, through FDIC, through other stuff,
Speaker 5: and then one day he led a training fire and
Speaker 5: he was that's what he's going to talk to us
Speaker 5: tonight is about how a training fire full well intentioned,
Speaker 5: purest intentions. Definitely, let's train. I mean, it's hard enough
Speaker 5: to get some officers to train, right, let's go do
Speaker 5: something here. Here Bart is going above and beyond and
Speaker 5: things went horribly wrong, and I'll let.
Speaker 13: Him pick it up from there and tell his story.
Speaker 13: If that's yep.
Speaker 8: Cool.
Speaker 12: Thank you, Chief Leaving, Chief Goldfitter for having me on
Speaker 12: here and the Getting Salty podcasts too, So it really
Speaker 12: means a lot. And like Chief Leeb said that we
Speaker 12: try to honor our phone brothers and remember them the
Speaker 12: best that we can. This is my way of doing
Speaker 12: it by being able to be a part of the
Speaker 12: book and being on a podcast. And sometimes I get
Speaker 12: to talk around the state of Florida because of our
Speaker 12: fourteen oh three law that we have and I'm asked
Speaker 12: to speak about that, but again, thank you guys, And
Speaker 12: this is an honor at John in Dallas. I worked
Speaker 12: for John for a short period of time prior I
Speaker 12: did a short step there and then went to another
Speaker 12: department and came back and was the training officer at
Speaker 12: the time of this incident. So it's kind of something
Speaker 12: that I like to put out there that we know
Speaker 12: now these days we have all the mis studies and
Speaker 12: everything else and all these other programs to talk about
Speaker 12: fire behavior and all that, and we've got to remember
Speaker 12: this was July thirtieth, two thousand and two, and fourteen
Speaker 12: oh three was excuses, but it was very thin and
Speaker 12: very very wide open. Since then, a lot of things
Speaker 12: and this fires helped make change, like Chief mcgeese fire
Speaker 12: make change in the training world and everything else. So
Speaker 12: we just kind of keep that in the back of
Speaker 12: our mind, and so a little of the history. At
Speaker 12: that time, Ossiola County was a combination department with about
Speaker 12: one hundred and twenty or one hundred and twenty five
Speaker 12: career people in about fifty volunteers. It started dwindling the
Speaker 12: volunteer after nine to eleven, so and then we're over
Speaker 12: about four hundred and four hundred and fifty career people.
Speaker 12: Now there is no longer volunteers in the system. So
Speaker 12: a little bit of history going back on this property
Speaker 12: that we were allowed to use for training. That's the
Speaker 12: picture of the house that the incident heard in, and
Speaker 12: there was four other houses almost identical to that on
Speaker 12: the south side property. And then on the north side
Speaker 12: was an old hotel which were the dorms, and this
Speaker 12: happened to be previously owned by the Florida Bible College
Speaker 12: and they used to have hold studies there. The the
Speaker 12: old hotel was the dorm for the for the students,
Speaker 12: and then the residences were for the for the staff.
Speaker 12: We had been doing WRIT training in the hotel portion
Speaker 12: used some u saw our training. We did live burns
Speaker 12: prior to this incident happening in this hotel. With the
Speaker 12: only injury we had prior to this incident was during
Speaker 12: WRIT training, Lieutenant ended up with a slight neck injury
Speaker 12: mistaken to the hospital for precaution. But again we did
Speaker 12: this training previously with the city of Kassimi, which is
Speaker 12: one of the cities that's in the county of Osceola
Speaker 12: and then the Orlando Fire Department. At that time, we
Speaker 12: were pretty engaged with OFD and a lot of training
Speaker 12: that they do and we did. We worked even though
Speaker 12: we didn't have joint response area, we worked pretty good
Speaker 12: together and did a lot of things together along with
Speaker 12: the Cassimi Fire Department. So on this day of July thirtieth,
Speaker 12: it was a typical Floorda morning. It was about eighty
Speaker 12: four degrees, pretty good humidity, no real breeze, and the
Speaker 12: weather conditions really didn't play a part into the incident
Speaker 12: at all.
Speaker 9: So we had and.
Speaker 12: We walked everybody around the structure at that time, showed
Speaker 12: them where the exits were, where the windows were. They
Speaker 12: knew where the fire was going to be. The scenario
Speaker 12: was given to them that it was going to be
Speaker 12: a search and rescue and fire attack.
Speaker 9: Program.
Speaker 12: So and then also for our setup we had in
Speaker 12: that area, we had municipal water, We had a five
Speaker 12: inch line supply line laid to the attack engine. Two
Speaker 12: inch and three quarter lines were pulled off of that,
Speaker 12: and we had a eighteen hundred gallon tanker that was
Speaker 12: our wrint line, and we had the line off of
Speaker 12: that tanker for the rent team.
Speaker 9: It was charged.
Speaker 12: Also Lieutenant Nickel and Firefighter Beg were part of the
Speaker 12: search crew. And then we had a crew and a
Speaker 12: backup crew on top of the WRIT team and the
Speaker 12: RIT team consisted of two people. The attack team was
Speaker 12: it was two and then we had the backup line
Speaker 12: was also two. We had three safety officers inside the
Speaker 12: building at the time of ignition. So kind of if
Speaker 12: again pull up the picture of the house, if you
Speaker 12: would go onto so that's that side a at the building.
Speaker 12: If you look over to the right, what appears to
Speaker 12: be where most of the fire or that is the
Speaker 12: fireroom there to the right that was formerly a garage
Speaker 12: and many years prior that garage turned into a bedroom.
Speaker 12: So in that room is where the fire was set.
Speaker 12: There was a closet area into the bathroom.
Speaker 9: The fuel load.
Speaker 12: Consisted of hay pallets. There was a mattress placed in there.
Speaker 12: There was other fuel load that in that room which
Speaker 12: to turn or play a factor into the into the
Speaker 12: fire later which happened to be. There was wooden closet
Speaker 12: doors there, the carpeting was still on the floor, wood.
Speaker 9: Molding in the room. Things like that.
Speaker 12: Rooms, all the rooms were intact at the time the
Speaker 12: windows were intact in the building.
Speaker 9: Again, a walkthrough was done.
Speaker 12: If you look over to the left, just to the
Speaker 12: right of that left window, that's the main entrance into
Speaker 12: the into the house. So that's where all the crews
Speaker 12: made their made their entrance into the building. So as
Speaker 12: we said that, we had the three safety officers in there,
Speaker 12: and safety officers were part of the ignition team as well.
Speaker 12: Once the fire was lit, and you can see there's
Speaker 12: the layout of the house the diagram when you go
Speaker 12: through the front door, a large living room straight ahead
Speaker 12: was the kitchen, and two bedrooms to your left, with
Speaker 12: a bathroom there was to the right, and the living
Speaker 12: room was another bathroom, and there was a hallway that
Speaker 12: led into the fireroom. So you can see where the
Speaker 12: fire was lit up in the top right corner the fireroom.
Speaker 9: To the right.
Speaker 12: There was again the hv AC closet and then another
Speaker 12: closet was there. So the kind of leave that up
Speaker 12: for a couple of minutes when the fire was ignited.
Speaker 12: After everybody was briefed they were in prior to the ignition. Again,
Speaker 12: the emergency evacuation signal, which was the ten blasts on
Speaker 12: the airhorn was given to everybody. They knew what the
Speaker 12: evacuation signal was going to be on top of radio communications.
Speaker 12: So once once everybody was in place ready to go
Speaker 12: geared up. Everybody had full full bunker gear, hoods, A C, B,
Speaker 12: a UH portable radios. Again, we had two inch and
Speaker 12: three quarter pre connects for the attack line and then
Speaker 12: an inch of three quarter line for the writ team.
Speaker 12: So once fire was ignited and me being the incident commander,
Speaker 12: I received word from the cruise that that it was
Speaker 12: it was ready for the crews to begin. So the
Speaker 12: first crew that started in was Lieutenant Michkel and firefighter Bag.
Speaker 12: They began a right hand search into the living room
Speaker 12: and then encountered that hallway.
Speaker 9: In the In that hallway was prior to the.
Speaker 12: Fire room is where the safety officers were staged, and
Speaker 12: they kind of made contact with the safety officers as
Speaker 12: they were entering the hallway and entering the fire room.
Speaker 12: Shortly after the search crew was sent into the building,
Speaker 12: the attack Team one was sent in to go and
Speaker 12: back them up and protect them.
Speaker 4: I asked you a question, did the safety officers have
Speaker 4: thermal imaging cameras or the way?
Speaker 12: Now at that time, our department did not have thermal
Speaker 12: imagine cameras and that actually the strange thing was that
Speaker 12: we got some vendors that were supposed to bring us
Speaker 12: some and they were running late. We were supposed to
Speaker 12: have two cameras at that time and we didn't have it.
Speaker 12: So so again the attack team followed the search crew
Speaker 12: in the search crew went into the fire room. We
Speaker 12: also had an outside vent person, so as the scenario
Speaker 12: was going along, and I gave enough time for the
Speaker 12: hose lines to get in there, at least the first
Speaker 12: initial attack line to get in. Then radioed to them
Speaker 12: and it was receiving reports from the guys inside, and
Speaker 12: we advised that I believe they said they had water
Speaker 12: on the fire, or was in that area and preparing
Speaker 12: to put water on the fire. Either had water on
Speaker 12: the fire. Once they got that report, I advised them
Speaker 12: that the outside vent person was going to take the
Speaker 12: window inside a there close to where victim I was found. Meanwhile,
Speaker 12: the safety officers were in the hallway again trying to
Speaker 12: coordinate that it kind of got congested the way the
Speaker 12: hallway was laid out, so when when they started to
Speaker 12: knock down what they thought they were knocking down the fire.
Speaker 12: For some reason, they decided instead of opening the nozzle
Speaker 12: up and doing a constant flow, they were given short
Speaker 12: bursts onto the fire. So as the outside vent person,
Speaker 12: after he was ordered to take out the window, took
Speaker 12: out the window, conditions changed rapidly, had high heat coming
Speaker 12: out of that window. It's again the window to the
Speaker 12: right there, and then eventually, you know, the smoke turned
Speaker 12: into fire and that's in the room flashed over. Meanwhile,
Speaker 12: the safety officers and some of the the attack line
Speaker 12: was at the doorway there operating into the fireroom. That's
Speaker 12: where the confusion kind of got started. When they started
Speaker 12: looking for the search team, and I wasn't getting the
Speaker 12: reports that you know that I wanted from people, and
Speaker 12: I started asking for reports. I tried calling the search
Speaker 12: team on the radio, didn't get an answer. The attack
Speaker 12: team again answered and said that they were putting water
Speaker 12: on the fire. So the second attack line was sent
Speaker 12: into the building to back up the first line. Again,
Speaker 12: a lot of confusion in the hallway. As we know
Speaker 12: now that John and Dallas never made it out of
Speaker 12: the fireroom. That there was some confusion of some people
Speaker 12: thought that they made it out of the fireroom, but
Speaker 12: they never did. And again, the way that hallway was
Speaker 12: laid out going towards the fireroom, it was a it
Speaker 12: was kind of a windy area and a whole lot
Speaker 12: of people there, so some people.
Speaker 4: Started hallways at dead end going down towards the front
Speaker 4: of the building too. Yes, it's only it's one way
Speaker 4: in and all the way down. It's very confusing at
Speaker 4: the top between the bathroom and the living room into
Speaker 4: that hallway.
Speaker 9: Yes, yes, it was one point.
Speaker 4: Did you did you suspect something was like really wrong,
Speaker 4: chiefly like when.
Speaker 12: When I wasn't getting reports from the search crew and
Speaker 12: when I saw the condition to change rapidly. And then
Speaker 12: one of the safety officers got hot and he came
Speaker 12: out and I asked him, I said, do you know
Speaker 12: where the search crew is? He said no, So again
Speaker 12: we tried getting him on the radio, and then we
Speaker 12: started telling the other people inside the building, you know,
Speaker 12: look for the search crew.
Speaker 9: As that was going on.
Speaker 12: Again, there was a lot of confusion there in that
Speaker 12: little little hallway congestion. Shortly after that, the rent team
Speaker 12: was sent in took their hose line in, so they
Speaker 12: thought they had the fire knocked down, but still nobody
Speaker 12: had seen the search crew and one of the members
Speaker 12: of the rent team broke off and went to the
Speaker 12: left side, to the Bravo side started searching the bedrooms there. Again,
Speaker 12: everybody started looking for them, and until they got into
Speaker 12: that room they knocked down the fire and conditions kind
Speaker 12: of changed. From what I was watching outside, it looked
Speaker 12: like they had a good knockdown. And in the meanwhile
Speaker 12: of the heavy fire conditions coming out, the outside vent
Speaker 12: person walked by that window and he found a white
Speaker 12: helmet right inside the window, and he pulled it out,
Speaker 12: and I saw him looking at it, and he walked
Speaker 12: over to me and guys, I found a white helmet. Well,
Speaker 12: nobody there was no chiefs on the fire ground. Nobody
Speaker 12: had a white helmet, which kind of started a little
Speaker 12: confusion of how did we get a white helmet in there?
Speaker 12: When did somebody throw one in there or what? And
Speaker 12: then we realized that from the fire conditions it actually
Speaker 12: turned it was a yellow helmet, its firefighter begs helmet.
Speaker 9: Turned it white.
Speaker 12: Yeah, after they got in there and got knocked the
Speaker 12: fire knocked down, if I remember correctly, the one of
Speaker 12: the members from the search team or the writ team,
Speaker 12: and one of the guys on the initial attack line
Speaker 12: were in that room. They found Lieutenant mikel He was
Speaker 12: closest to the fire. Again, its severe burns, thermal thermal
Speaker 12: challenge to his s c b A all that. He
Speaker 12: was rapidly removed from there. And I received that report
Speaker 12: and kind of go back a little bit. You know,
Speaker 12: we asked for a par a couple of times and
Speaker 12: we still didn't get get reports from the search crew.
Speaker 12: So again it's all it seems like seconds or hours,
Speaker 12: but it was only seconds that all this was going.
Speaker 6: On was his air pack and stuff that intact as well.
Speaker 6: I don't know if you mentioned that.
Speaker 8: Yes, every space and everything was on.
Speaker 12: Yeah, that's what I was told. I've never got to
Speaker 12: see his face, beast, but I have seen his gear,
Speaker 12: but you know it is gear or gear and s
Speaker 12: c b A strapped and the bottle received a lot
Speaker 12: of thermal challenge to it, I want to call that.
Speaker 12: Shortly after that, one of the safety officers who had
Speaker 12: come back out went in that window where the outside
Speaker 12: vent person had taken out.
Speaker 9: Again.
Speaker 12: There was like steam coming off the floor, was smoking
Speaker 12: things like that, and that's when he found firefighter bag
Speaker 12: and he was rapidly removed from the from the fireroom
Speaker 12: and outside of the outside the building. So and you know,
Speaker 12: as things are going along, you know, I requested we
Speaker 12: call her ambulances, rescues, requested to rescues and helicopter on
Speaker 12: the way, just kind of seeing the condition that they
Speaker 12: were brought out. And then so als was administered to
Speaker 12: both of them unseen, rather rapidly, and but they were
Speaker 12: the helicopter was canceled. They were both transported to the
Speaker 12: local facility where they had passed away.
Speaker 4: Wow, what was the total time?
Speaker 9: You know, like I said, it.
Speaker 12: Seems like hours, but I think about fifteen or sixteen minutes.
Speaker 4: Wow, you know, so it happened fast.
Speaker 12: Yeah, And as we were talking earlier, we were I
Speaker 12: got to go to NISS to see them do one
Speaker 12: of the studies they did or one of the tests.
Speaker 12: So they actually did a mock up of the room.
Speaker 12: Because every everything, everybody had their idea of, you know,
Speaker 12: what caused it to fuel load, you know, the carpeting,
Speaker 12: the mattress. The mattress seemed to be a big, a
Speaker 12: big thing that everybody was kind of honing in on.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 12: It helped me understand what all went in that on
Speaker 12: in that room, by going tons to see the reenactments
Speaker 12: that they did, learning a little more insight into the
Speaker 12: into the science and and everything like that.
Speaker 4: So you being there and going tons, what what is
Speaker 4: your general feeling of what took place there?
Speaker 12: I think it was a combination of the fuel load
Speaker 12: it was originally set, the that that window was a
Speaker 12: hurricane or a commercial grade glass. I think that might
Speaker 12: have had something to do with it. And again the
Speaker 12: fuel loading of the room itself, like the louver doors
Speaker 12: for the air conditioner or the closet again, the carpeting.
Speaker 9: And all that. I think a combination of everything.
Speaker 4: The room just flash and that was it.
Speaker 9: Yes, yeah, so see I could see that.
Speaker 6: So we have to take everything, have to come out
Speaker 6: of a structure. Now we can't burn we burn down
Speaker 6: here now thanks to NFPA fourteen oh three, Well that's
Speaker 6: has to be ripped out. You can't burn anything. You
Speaker 6: have to take everything out of the house. So a chuir,
Speaker 6: structures are not as fun as they sound.
Speaker 5: You can't really and that really this fire was the
Speaker 5: impetus for a lot of that change and a lot
Speaker 5: of the law. And you know you mentioned in Florida
Speaker 5: in many states, they can say fourteen oh three, it's
Speaker 5: actually law in Florida to conducted training, and it was
Speaker 5: because there was a bill passed in their honor, Was
Speaker 5: that not right, part.
Speaker 9: Yes, yes, one of our.
Speaker 12: One of the people from the community kind of got
Speaker 12: a hold of the legislatures and pushed for it real
Speaker 12: strict and again it was in honor of John in Dallas,
Speaker 12: and so we wouldn't have this tragedy. Again know, not
Speaker 12: only in the state of Florida, but other other people
Speaker 12: across the country have also taken that law and made
Speaker 12: it law in their state too, you know. And again
Speaker 12: fourteen oh three was updated a couple of times since then.
Speaker 12: Just like Gonzam said, it's it's it's very strict and
Speaker 12: and everything else.
Speaker 6: And yeah, it's a it's definitely very stringent. Even with
Speaker 6: that last incident, and not to get off topic, but
Speaker 6: the last incident that just happened to Mimmy Dade during
Speaker 6: another training incident where we lost a couple of guys, it's,
Speaker 6: you know, there's some more change that you know. Now
Speaker 6: they're holding people more accountable, you know. So it's just
Speaker 6: another element to that fourteen oh three where it's probably
Speaker 6: some more change will come from their incident.
Speaker 4: Right, And that that picture of that house, it's very deceiving.
Speaker 4: It doesn't look that big for the outside. It's like
Speaker 4: a bungalow.
Speaker 6: Yeah, just taken several days after the after the incident.
Speaker 12: That's when the Fire Marshal's office. That's one of their
Speaker 12: pictures when they started the investigation. Okay, well, I would
Speaker 12: say that it's later on that day or whatever they
Speaker 12: had it started boarding it up and then and then
Speaker 12: open it back up to get some more pictures.
Speaker 8: So my apologies my my video.
Speaker 7: My internet is a little on stable, so I have
Speaker 7: my camera off, but I can see what's going on
Speaker 7: in here. So this, yes, when you think, when you
Speaker 7: think about fourteen oh three, right, So it's one of
Speaker 7: the more controversial standards in the fire service today. You know,
Speaker 7: you hear a lot of bemoaning about it, but I
Speaker 7: think it's good to hear the In fact, I know
Speaker 7: it's good to hear about the fire that that that
Speaker 7: changed to where we have a standard like this, And
Speaker 7: I'm so appreciative of you saying it and talking about it.
Speaker 7: Training training, training, line of duty deaths happened, and one
Speaker 7: of the other fires in the books. Is in the
Speaker 7: book is from Pennsylvania, and we know, as Gonzo talked
Speaker 7: about the one in Miami, and I think about when
Speaker 7: I was the chief of the FDNY Fire Academy, we
Speaker 7: had a young prog who died as well.
Speaker 8: So you know, we know that these things happen.
Speaker 7: And they're difficult, but we are super appreciative of you
Speaker 7: being able to come on and spread the word.
Speaker 9: Thank you.
Speaker 12: Yeah, it's kind of been my goal to honor John
Speaker 12: in Dallas the way, the best way that I can
Speaker 12: and is that to talk about the incident and you know,
Speaker 12: share with everybody in the fire service, because there are
Speaker 12: still people I know that I hear stories that, well,
Speaker 12: we got a house to burn, and y'all all come,
Speaker 12: and you know, it's hard to believe in twenty twenty
Speaker 12: four that that still happens, but it does. You know,
Speaker 12: you ask them what fourteen oh three is, and they're like,
Speaker 12: we never even heard of it, you know, and this
Speaker 12: house to the ground after sending guys in and everything else,
Speaker 12: and you know, it's just.
Speaker 5: Hey, Bart, it's almost there's almost an understanding that something
Speaker 5: bad out a house fire, as Kevin spoke about earlier,
Speaker 5: this is a training.
Speaker 13: Event, and I guess.
Speaker 5: Let's talk, if you don't mind, for just a minute
Speaker 5: about the behavioral health aspect. This took down a lot
Speaker 5: of people, more than just the two guys that lost
Speaker 5: their lives. Can you share a little bit about that,
Speaker 5: what the department did then, what you think they would
Speaker 5: do today, anything like that.
Speaker 12: Yeah, after the fire, we were all taken to one
Speaker 12: of the firehouses, and cism and all that was not
Speaker 12: It was just getting started in the Central Florida area,
Speaker 12: and they had some people that I think thought they
Speaker 12: knew more than what they did, and this was kind
Speaker 12: of their first big incident.
Speaker 9: So I know that.
Speaker 12: It didn't go well. They they gave it the old
Speaker 12: school try, but I can tell you that I got
Speaker 12: up and walked out several other members.
Speaker 9: And it did not go well.
Speaker 12: Since then, the department has a very very good CI
Speaker 12: s M team, And again that's all around Central Florida
Speaker 12: and across the state of Florida, you know. So and
Speaker 12: we have the health and safety collaborative that's through the
Speaker 12: fire chiefs and everything else. And Goneza, your past chief
Speaker 12: was a big initiator initiator of that. So you know,
Speaker 12: going back to then things weren't good. And I can
Speaker 12: tell you when when I was referred to go talk
Speaker 12: to somebody from the EAP program, I was ready to
Speaker 12: kill him.
Speaker 9: When I left. He did not understand, did not and
Speaker 9: he was not good for me.
Speaker 12: And I think, yeah, I got a little bit of
Speaker 12: help after that, But the biggest help I got from
Speaker 12: my brothers and sisters across the United States that kind
Speaker 12: of knew me and knew when things weren't right, and
Speaker 12: and just talking about it really helped. And and even
Speaker 12: today it still helps to talk about it because there's
Speaker 12: there's days that you know, I still think about that fire.
Speaker 12: I think about John and Dallas. John was a pretty
Speaker 12: good friend and we spent some time together. So you know,
Speaker 12: I have we have a memorial golf tournament every year
Speaker 12: in honor of John and Dallas, and we also have
Speaker 12: a symposium that we do uh in honor of them.
Speaker 12: This year it's going to be in August in Celebration, Florida.
Speaker 12: But you know that that's the way of I think
Speaker 12: that helps me honor them and helps me through everything.
Speaker 12: And things were things were rough, and there's still people
Speaker 12: out there, and I'll come out and say it that
Speaker 12: there's members of my old department that called me a
Speaker 12: murder and they called me a murderer to this day.
Speaker 12: And you know, but they're they're kind of the ones
Speaker 12: that don't want to go and really find out what happened.
Speaker 12: And so, you know, they might have been friends with
Speaker 12: those two firefighters and they had their own theories of
Speaker 12: what went on.
Speaker 9: But you know, it's still still a little sore for
Speaker 9: some people.
Speaker 12: And again, you know, go out and get educated and
Speaker 12: for for those involved in line of duty bests or
Speaker 12: any fire fatality. We've changed our a way of thinking
Speaker 12: in the fire service that you know, yeah, I asked them,
Speaker 12: is an important thing. Get out and talk to people
Speaker 12: and get somebody. You know, there's people that will listen
Speaker 12: to you, you know, whether it's your peers or we
Speaker 12: now have professionals that know what our job is and
Speaker 12: understand it and they go with fire departments. I think
Speaker 12: Coral Springs has some doctors that go there every once
Speaker 12: in a while. Again three or the collaborative in Florida
Speaker 12: that they understand our job. It's not like me going
Speaker 12: to the goofball from EAP that has no idea what
Speaker 12: a fireman is or what it does and you know
Speaker 12: that stuff too.
Speaker 5: Or you know you you you you touched on something there.
Speaker 5: First of all, this was there for the grace of
Speaker 5: God to go.
Speaker 13: We no question about it.
Speaker 5: This fire training was run a thousand other times that
Speaker 5: year and a thousand other places, and unfortunately yours is
Speaker 5: the one that went wrong. That's exactly how the training
Speaker 5: was done by every It was we didn't know, we
Speaker 5: didn't know, right, Okay, And again it's just the same
Speaker 5: with Kevin's situation. As horrible as it is, the loss
Speaker 5: has mattered. There are firefighters, no question, alive because of
Speaker 5: what happened in Prince William County. There are firefighters today
Speaker 5: that are alive because of your program that you've traveled
Speaker 5: the country with teaching what happened there and the laws
Speaker 5: that changed in Florida. So it is I mean, because
Speaker 5: without saying how horrible these.
Speaker 13: Losses are, but what do we do with it?
Speaker 5: Then helps many of those who are living on to
Speaker 5: know that we are making a difference, and you certainly are.
Speaker 5: And to those who you know, it's like it's like
Speaker 5: talking to somebody about high rise.
Speaker 13: If I want to hear about higher as you talk.
Speaker 5: To him and he'd done if you want, because he's
Speaker 5: been there, done that, okay, and he tea which is
Speaker 5: that you want to talk about single family dwelling fires
Speaker 5: with things that are terribly wrong, you talk to Chief
Speaker 5: McGee because he was there. He's been there, done that,
Speaker 5: and it's the same thing with you. So and I
Speaker 5: know this is an emotional.
Speaker 6: Beyond.
Speaker 5: I know I speak for all the guys and getting
Speaker 5: told he was so glad you hit and I taught
Speaker 5: about this.
Speaker 13: But the troops have got to understand this is in
Speaker 13: the game.
Speaker 5: This is not bullshit. And God help anyone who said
Speaker 5: to you what they said to you, because they've never
Speaker 5: walked the bent an inch in your shoes. And you're
Speaker 5: still around, You're still teaching, You're still making a big difference.
Speaker 13: That's a big deal, brother.
Speaker 1: For sure.
Speaker 4: And you know, through the hurt comes learning and hopefully healing.
Speaker 4: For you, guys, we appreciate you sharing these stories so
Speaker 4: guys can learn from it, you know, and you know,
Speaker 4: like Billy said, it's for something, you know, it's to
Speaker 4: pass along these tips. And I thank you, know Billy
Speaker 4: and Chief Lee for coming up with this idea of
Speaker 4: putting all these stories together. Great idea who was it was.
Speaker 4: It was you had to be you billy right. Yeah,
Speaker 4: well had to be you billy right. They came up
Speaker 4: with the idea Lee was just Brian you cottails.
Speaker 13: He was actually being driven around the city with a chauffeur.
Speaker 4: Is he still I can't see him?
Speaker 9: I don't know.
Speaker 8: I'm still here.
Speaker 6: He's still here, he's writing.
Speaker 5: Said.
Speaker 9: One more point of the mental health side. Having the
Speaker 9: services in place for when you have a traumatic incident
Speaker 9: is critically important, But just as important is how you
Speaker 9: prepare your people from the beginning and doing the psychological
Speaker 9: first aid because our emergency response personnel are exposed to
Speaker 9: constance dressers, the little ones and the big ones, one
Speaker 9: after another after and to prepare them to have resilience
Speaker 9: is extremely important.
Speaker 8: That brother, Yeah, amen to that. And I'm going to
Speaker 8: add on to that.
Speaker 7: The First Respondent Center for Excellence has some no course
Speaker 7: training in that regard on our learning management platform and
Speaker 7: you can go to First Respondent first Respondercenter dot org
Speaker 7: and log onto the learning management system.
Speaker 8: There's a stress first aid. There's a couple of new
Speaker 8: ones coming out, so.
Speaker 7: You're right, we have to go upstream and make sure
Speaker 7: that we're taking care of our brothers and sisters long
Speaker 7: before they need.
Speaker 6: It, and that's what we're trying to do.
Speaker 7: So thank you for bringing that up, because it's okay
Speaker 7: to not be okay, but it's even more important that
Speaker 7: we make sure that we are building resiliency into our
Speaker 7: firefighters and we do that from day one when they
Speaker 7: join our beloved profession.
Speaker 8: So thank you again for.
Speaker 7: Being out there and talking about this and and really
Speaker 7: both of you guys to taking a lead to make
Speaker 7: sure these stories are not forgotten and these firefighters are
Speaker 7: not forgotten.
Speaker 12: Just to throw something else in there, you know, we
Speaker 12: talk about you know, I've kind of been in the
Speaker 12: fire service. I'm trying to catch up the billy, but
Speaker 12: I don't know if I'll ever do that. But things
Speaker 12: are things. People are different now, you know. And you know,
Speaker 12: for us older guys that have been around for a while,
Speaker 12: the things that we have seen that you know, and
Speaker 12: I guess over the years that it's you've seen it.
Speaker 12: It kind of in the way we were brought up.
Speaker 12: Maybe it didn't affect us is as bad as it
Speaker 12: does with the younger kids. And I'm not trying to
Speaker 12: cut down the younger generations, but they were brought up
Speaker 12: or brought up a whole lot different then we were
Speaker 12: when we were kids. And I'm coming through. You know,
Speaker 12: we use the analogy of, you know, I asked the
Speaker 12: kid for a screwdriver, he goes, what do you want
Speaker 12: to want to go straight across?
Speaker 6: Or the one that's like a cross plus minus? Yeah,
Speaker 6: plus a minus.
Speaker 12: I've heard so just so you know, yeah, yeah, And
Speaker 12: but we have to take that into consideration again. You know,
Speaker 12: it seems like the world is more violent and we're
Speaker 12: going to more you know, more incidents that were exposing
Speaker 12: these younger guys too, and we have to you know,
Speaker 12: like Chief Gee said and Chief Leep said that, you know,
Speaker 12: we have to take that into consideration these days, the
Speaker 12: way the younger generation is because you know, at first,
Speaker 12: I started laughing because I had somebody on the job
Speaker 12: for five years because I have PTSD. I'm like, what,
Speaker 12: you know, I've been thirty five or forty years and
Speaker 12: yes I have PTSD, but I'm not you know, but
Speaker 12: I'm not throwing it at the card out right away
Speaker 12: and all that. And it took me a while to
Speaker 12: understand that that, yes, yeah, he probably does have PTSD
Speaker 12: because he wasn't brought up the way we were in
Speaker 12: the fire service.
Speaker 4: Well, then I'm going to add one to chief leads
Speaker 4: and actually to Chief Gee. When they said you have
Speaker 4: to start when they come in the job building resilient resiliency,
Speaker 4: I say, you start on your own kids at home,
Speaker 4: Stop building resiliency. Start teaching them so they're not you
Speaker 4: know this way when they get to that point. You know,
Speaker 4: it has to start before they get on the job. Yes,
Speaker 4: I'm trying to work with Gonzo the best I can,
Speaker 4: but I think he's a lost course. I don't know.
Speaker 13: A great point.
Speaker 6: Bart.
Speaker 5: You bring up the generation, and it's really important for
Speaker 5: the company officer to understand it doesn't matter if.
Speaker 13: You like or don't like this new generation.
Speaker 5: This is what you got and you need to if
Speaker 5: they weren't molded as Cube said, if they weren't molded
Speaker 5: right at home, you got work to do it the
Speaker 5: plous But we have to understand that stress is real.
Speaker 5: And I do the same squints like you said. Somebody
Speaker 5: says PTSD, come on, will you Kidney, But you know what,
Speaker 5: it's their PTSD and his bosses.
Speaker 13: We got to make sure we take care of that right.
Speaker 4: The man behind the curtain. Anything else for you to say, sir, yeah,
Speaker 4: pay no attention to that man the black screen.
Speaker 9: I do want to say one other thing, if I may, Billie,
Speaker 9: I want to thank you and recognizing for what you
Speaker 9: did to support my department in the National Fire Service
Speaker 9: when if you recall when I came to you, you
Speaker 9: were in the leadership position in the Safety, Health and
Speaker 9: Survival section, and I approached you because you were somebody
Speaker 9: I knew since you were chief in the neighborhood department,
Speaker 9: and uh, when I shared with you, we have some
Speaker 9: work to do at the national level to make it
Speaker 9: safer for firefighters. And I have these recommendations from a
Speaker 9: line of duty death investigation team. They've examined the incident
Speaker 9: very thoroughly. I support these findings and the recommendations. And
Speaker 9: you stood right up to step in to get the
Speaker 9: National Fire Service to move on these things. So I
Speaker 9: don't know if this, uh the some of these things
Speaker 9: would have been accomplished without you. So thank you, and
Speaker 9: I'm indebted to you.
Speaker 6: Not at all.
Speaker 4: He's a good guy, got a great mustache too.
Speaker 5: You know, I think there's a cartoon out there something.
Speaker 6: I'm not going to do it. If we have to
Speaker 6: queue it up, but dude, you believe you do it,
Speaker 6: so good tonight. Trampone man just going to call them trampone.
Speaker 4: All right, So we're going to continue with this, right, gentlemen.
Speaker 13: Yes, yes, so you asked earlier.
Speaker 5: Of course, Frank and I and thank you Kevin very kind.
Speaker 5: There was no options to help push this and make
Speaker 5: some change. Frank and I started this when we basically
Speaker 5: just as friends talking on the phone. Hey, how come
Speaker 5: you know, why don't the firefighters know about this?
Speaker 13: Don't know about that?
Speaker 5: I looked at one of my crews, Oh, there you are, Hey,
Speaker 5: he's there, and uh, you know. One of the key
Speaker 5: ones was I said to a crew of firefighters, well
Speaker 5: this is just like what happened in Hacketsack. And they
Speaker 5: looked at me like I had three heads that the
Speaker 5: name Hackensack didn't click. And that was the idea of
Speaker 5: Frank and I spoke and I gotta tell you and
Speaker 5: this is a nonprofit venture with all of our proceeds
Speaker 5: and being donated. But what's important is it's it's really
Speaker 5: taking off. And I know your show has certainly helped that.
Speaker 6: But yeah, we got Amazon.
Speaker 5: We got to think from Amazon it's a best seller.
Speaker 5: That's a big deal in the Amazon world. So and
Speaker 5: look it was Frank and I came up with the idea.
Speaker 5: But just like in a fire, here's a couple of chiefs,
Speaker 5: but the job gets done by the people on the
Speaker 5: fire ground.
Speaker 13: Well, this job got done by the thirty one.
Speaker 5: Authors who participated in this book to share their stories,
Speaker 5: like Bart and like Kevin.
Speaker 4: Chapter seventeen's exquisite. I'm just going to say that one
Speaker 4: more time.
Speaker 8: That's the one we hear more.
Speaker 4: Oh there you are.
Speaker 6: I don't know if you wanted to really so we
Speaker 6: have okay goods. I couldn't.
Speaker 8: I could not do that more than he's more than
Speaker 8: a glorious Mustang.
Speaker 5: Somebody scanning through the internet and they said it must
Speaker 5: be getting salty.
Speaker 6: Sorry, sorry, I just had to do that.
Speaker 4: I want to thank you all for coming on again tonight.
Speaker 13: As always, and yes we have war planned.
Speaker 4: Adding to that amount of times he's been on the show,
Speaker 4: he's the most prolific guest and now co host of
Speaker 4: the Get Insulted Experience podcast Whenever louis out and Billy
Speaker 4: and Bart and Chief Beginni. Thanks for coming on than
Speaker 4: what are we gonna do this again next month.
Speaker 5: We gotta get a date, yeah, Frankel coordinator.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I'm the I'm the coordinator of that. So you know, coops,
Speaker 8: you know you'll you'll send me some dates.
Speaker 4: Right, I know how it works.
Speaker 13: You just started the fire school, Mike.
Speaker 1: No, not yet.
Speaker 10: Early next year.
Speaker 13: We're thinking either January or February.
Speaker 4: They haven't give me a date yet, young face. We're
Speaker 4: just staying Billy. What would be like to be in
Speaker 4: his shoes right now, just stepping into the fire service
Speaker 4: right now, like twenty four years old. Oh, I'm jealous.
Speaker 6: I love you have the job for right now before
Speaker 6: you even.
Speaker 13: Here, it already does. Yeah, yeah, yeah, well, hell of
Speaker 13: a firefighter for thank you, Chief.
Speaker 6: I appreciate it.
Speaker 4: Stole away from the love of cops.
Speaker 6: Man he wanted to be. He was die hard still.
Speaker 10: By cops just could never do their job. I don't
Speaker 10: know how they do a shoutout to them as well.
Speaker 4: All right, so we will see you guys probably next week,
Speaker 4: I think. Right. Oh, we got to do the shoutout Johns. Please.
Speaker 4: We had a gentleman pass away. Wasn't allowed to do
Speaker 4: aty death, but it was a sudden death. He was
Speaker 4: a big fan of the show, loved the fire service.
Speaker 4: Go ahead away, buddy.
Speaker 6: It was City of William's Sport by Michael Bashan. If
Speaker 6: I am pronouncing his last name correctly, he died. He's
Speaker 6: had nine news on the job. I'm gonna pull up
Speaker 6: his picture now or share it with you.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 6: He is a Mike who's lieutenant on the sequeltomb a
Speaker 6: wealth of knowledge, so he's gonna be one of the
Speaker 6: smartest and best firefighters they had.
Speaker 4: So rest in Pea's brother.
Speaker 1: Yes, so that's him.
Speaker 6: And obviously in honor of our guests tonight, I have
Speaker 6: a little, uh, couple of little pictures. I don't have
Speaker 6: those two gentlemen.
Speaker 4: And then we have that kid looks so young man,
Speaker 4: So rest in peace. Any last thoughts before we head out,
Speaker 4: Chief sleep Billy.
Speaker 5: Anybody Merry Christmas and happy and safe New Year, and
Speaker 5: take care.
Speaker 4: I got all I want for Christmas. This is all
Speaker 4: I wanted and I got it. That's it on Amazon.
Speaker 4: Get a lot of Amazon. Keep on learning, keep on learning.
Speaker 6: It is speaking of Christmas time. This Christmas time, you
Speaker 6: guys need to get out and get your till.
Speaker 4: Go to www. Dot getting. Don't go into the guys,
Speaker 4: we're talking back. I'll get your address so we can
Speaker 4: tell you that they're free. Fine and love free stuff,
Speaker 4: my chief, fine, love stuff. All right, until next time.
Speaker 4: You know what I say, Stay low and go.
Speaker 6: Thank you, guys. Have a good night. I'm gonna say
Speaker 6: see you in the top floor tonight, Mikey take us
Speaker 6: home baby.
Speaker 10: All right, I'll be with everyone. Be safe, have a
Speaker 10: good night, and ladies and gentlemen, beat byes and toys
Speaker 10: are dropping. Transmit the signal seventy three what
Speaker 6: Good henyone