Speaker 1: Disclaimer. We'd like to know before the start of this
Speaker 1: interview that the opinions about to be expressed by the
Speaker 1: guest of tonight's Getting Salty Experience podcast are that of
Speaker 1: the guest and do not directly or necessarily reflect the
Speaker 1: views of the host of the Getting Salty Experience podcast.
Speaker 2: You're listening to the Getting Salty Experience podcast.
Speaker 3: Hello oh hello is right, and we you know somebody
Speaker 3: came to the booth that did that the other day.
Speaker 3: You remember that he was like, hello, I'm like, wow.
Speaker 4: Check this out.
Speaker 5: From Harrisburg. Met a lot of cool people. Consoles back,
Speaker 5: but he's leaving again. He's like the man about town.
Speaker 5: He's the cruise king. Yeah, you know, cruise King of Chicago.
Speaker 6: I told you I'm starting that work life balance a
Speaker 6: little early. I don't retire for a little while.
Speaker 3: Cruises yeahing Chicago. Right, he went back five times fast whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 3: welcome back to it.
Speaker 5: Against all the experienced podcasts, you know what it is,
Speaker 5: it's not the ladies, it's ours. It's the only one
Speaker 5: that brings the firehouse kitchen table right to you wherever
Speaker 5: you are. I don't know if you're in the firehouse,
Speaker 5: if you're home, if you're driving, whatever you're doing, we're
Speaker 5: bringing it to you rough live. How is your golf out?
Speaker 5: He's had a lot of farming. You corralled a lot
Speaker 5: of guests for the show. A lot of old timers
Speaker 5: down there. His liver is like, why I'm pickled, he's
Speaker 5: actually dead.
Speaker 3: He's in bolved.
Speaker 4: I met so many guys.
Speaker 3: A lot of guys know the show.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah. A lot of people recognized me, said that
Speaker 4: they enjoyed the show.
Speaker 3: I got a couple of guys, did a couple of times.
Speaker 4: I did seventeen.
Speaker 3: The girl was who was cracking me up and bending
Speaker 3: my ship. Her husband's in thirty eight truck.
Speaker 4: Mm hmmm.
Speaker 3: He is following the show, said that's the spot the
Speaker 3: spit Shi fire house, right that fire house? You know that?
Speaker 3: I go, I know it all, bro, come on, do
Speaker 3: a show about it.
Speaker 6: Ship. That's good. I had my first recognition.
Speaker 3: The other day too, did well.
Speaker 6: Well. Yeah, I was in my hospital. Some guy come
Speaker 6: up like, hey, I recognize you. I'm like, I don't.
Speaker 6: I didn't recognize him. I felt bad, But yeah, he
Speaker 6: listens all the time. He doesn't do the live shows.
Speaker 6: But I'm a little shout out. I'm like, look at that.
Speaker 6: I appreciate that.
Speaker 3: Man. Get his name.
Speaker 6: I'll get his name.
Speaker 4: It was just weird.
Speaker 3: I didn't write that down.
Speaker 6: No, I didn't.
Speaker 5: I at least you weren't your dady Yankee Stadium. Some
Speaker 5: guy's looking over at you. You know it couldn't be that.
Speaker 6: Yess what he's doing is speaking of so Jerry Murph.
Speaker 3: Oh, how's burf doing?
Speaker 4: He's doing great, doing great, I said, w I saw.
Speaker 4: I saw a lot of guys. Yeah, a lot of laughs. Man,
Speaker 4: I saw Pickford, I saw Ryan HoTT smithwick As, no
Speaker 4: lefts none.
Speaker 3: Of you down what North Carolina.
Speaker 4: That was Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
Speaker 3: Three days, a lot and a whole but of a
Speaker 3: sausage fest down in Myrtle Beach.
Speaker 4: It wasn't too I tell you, it wasn't too bad.
Speaker 4: They had everything. It was three different golf courses. And
Speaker 4: then you came back to uh, it looks like a firehouse,
Speaker 4: but it's a bar but it's big. They had. They
Speaker 4: had the guys cooking in the back. Like the barbecue
Speaker 4: wasn't too overcrowded. It wasn't like we're used to like.
Speaker 4: It was just like yeah, it was good. It was.
Speaker 4: It was a lot of fun.
Speaker 5: Good, good for you, good for good, for good. I
Speaker 5: was on commercials plates do go through the pictures. I
Speaker 5: was a little bit scared. I don't think we've ever
Speaker 5: had a guess that has that many scary fire pictures.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of them in there.
Speaker 4: Bro, he's not a.
Speaker 6: Yeah he's not.
Speaker 4: Mister judge, how much you pay for the new guy? Oh?
Speaker 4: Too much?
Speaker 6: Too much money?
Speaker 3: Alright, let's go.
Speaker 5: Let me go commercials my little money and money too much.
Speaker 5: Then took us out to dinner one night. We had
Speaker 5: a very nice night with him at a good time.
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Speaker 6: All right, armor tough, it's a tough attack whatever the floor,
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Speaker 4: Yeah exactly, I'm I'm only the top reping in Northeast.
Speaker 3: Yes, I'm attack whatever tough.
Speaker 6: Well, let's hear from Albert tik tough tough.
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Speaker 4: I don't think of with this history. Man ready guns, Yeah,
Speaker 4: coming to the stage. FDNY Battalion, Chief Danny Sheridan.
Speaker 6: Mans the legends, guys.
Speaker 5: Yes, but before we dive into your history, we got
Speaker 5: to dive into patriotism, right guns.
Speaker 6: Yes, sir, Yes we do. And here we go. Stand by.
Speaker 2: I pleasure allegiance to the flag of the United States
Speaker 2: of America and to the Republic, for which it stands,
Speaker 2: one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.
Speaker 5: If we're not gonna have a word of the day,
Speaker 5: but Coobs's knee is humming. So anytime you feel like saying, cubs,
Speaker 5: take a sip, bro, There's only there's only one fix
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Speaker 6: Boys.
Speaker 3: All right, welcome to the show. Thanks for coming on.
Speaker 5: We've crossed paths in the in the in the past,
Speaker 5: meet you and Roofie. Not in a day, but we
Speaker 5: want to get into the early days. We're going to
Speaker 5: go back to the early days of a Chief Sheridan
Speaker 5: where he came from a little bit of family life.
Speaker 5: Of what brought you to the fire service.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I grew up on Woodside in Queen's right by,
Speaker 8: but down in Saints Is, down by by the White
Speaker 8: Castle there forty third Street.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we never were there in white.
Speaker 6: I don't even know what it.
Speaker 4: Is after the movies. What was the movie theater that
Speaker 4: Coop It was right across the street.
Speaker 8: Yeah. So I grew up on Woodside and we had
Speaker 8: a little breakup in the family when I was three
Speaker 8: and my mom got remarried when I was about nine,
Speaker 8: and he was a fireman. Wow that and he was
Speaker 8: he worked in Queens. But I just remember talking about
Speaker 8: interchanging into Brooklyn all the time. This is like the
Speaker 8: early seventies, like seventy one, two three, So I guess
Speaker 8: they were like the second section. I want to wait.
Speaker 8: And my mom also had some relatives that were one
Speaker 8: was in Harlem, my cousin Jimmy and Peter, so I
Speaker 8: kind of was growing up around it. I never really
Speaker 8: thought I was going to set out to be a firefighter.
Speaker 8: But I'll tell you an interesting sorry about fire though,
Speaker 8: and this might have been the push for how the
Speaker 8: family broke up, unfortunately. But when I was three, I
Speaker 8: remember actually in nineteen sixty four, we lived in the
Speaker 8: apartment house called the Mets and we had a fire
Speaker 8: in our apartment. And the funny thing about that funny
Speaker 8: but not funny funny. But my grandmother be in the
Speaker 8: superstitious Irish whatever. It was Halloween night and my mom
Speaker 8: and my dad were going to a party inside the
Speaker 8: building like there was four buildings, you know, and my
Speaker 8: mom had contracted with my best friend Dave assisted a babysit,
Speaker 8: and my mother and my grandmother got into a big
Speaker 8: argument about my grandmother insisting about us being with her
Speaker 8: that night. So when it was all said and done,
Speaker 8: Grandma one, we're in the third floor and that night
Speaker 8: we had a fire, well front rear, wow fire, and
Speaker 8: my dad was hanging out the window and UH had
Speaker 8: to be rescued from the from the aerial. But you know,
Speaker 8: we were supposed to be in that apartment like if
Speaker 8: so that was like And the funny thing about that
Speaker 8: is that I remember when I got on the job
Speaker 8: and the first fire I went to, I remembered the
Speaker 8: smell because I remember as a kid, I was like
Speaker 8: three years old. I remember I remember going up to
Speaker 8: the apartment and the thing was burnt out, and I
Speaker 8: remember that smell and it never left me. And I
Speaker 8: remember the first time I went to a job, I
Speaker 8: was like.
Speaker 3: Wow, yeah, yeah, yeah, bring your back.
Speaker 8: So growing up in the city. I mean where I lived,
Speaker 8: it was no far Grandma's always no grandma. I'll tell
Speaker 8: you she she had some kind.
Speaker 4: Of siss you know. But anyway, I want to hear
Speaker 4: about your old man hanging out the window, Like what happened?
Speaker 4: Happened with that? Like, like what was he doing?
Speaker 8: Was he was only twenty one at the time, with
Speaker 8: twenty two he was, he was a roof. He was
Speaker 8: very agile, and I think he was literally hanging up the.
Speaker 4: Hang out the window.
Speaker 8: Oh my god, blowing out the window and he's hanging
Speaker 8: And I spoke to this guy, uh he lives in
Speaker 8: North Carolina, and we're talking about it, and he was
Speaker 8: telling me like he was only about ten at the time.
Speaker 8: He says, I remember that fire. I remember you falled
Speaker 8: hanging out the window.
Speaker 4: So that's crazy, man.
Speaker 8: But that was like my first extent. I had a
Speaker 8: little fire truck. I remember a little fire truck got
Speaker 8: burnt up. And I still have my stuff that from
Speaker 8: I was a kid. It still has smoke stains on it.
Speaker 8: Like I look in the closet, it's still pretty black.
Speaker 8: So you know, that's why I remember, like over the years,
Speaker 8: going to people's apartments and fires and I always took
Speaker 8: it very like, this is this is their own like
Speaker 8: nine to eleven, that was nine to eleven, but this
Speaker 8: is their own tragedy, you know what I mean, This is.
Speaker 3: The whole life is up in whole world. What a
Speaker 3: damage or whatever.
Speaker 8: It is, smoked damage, fired damage. So I always kind
Speaker 8: of took it more personal than maybe most guys would,
Speaker 8: you know. So anyway, I I started becoming interested in it.
Speaker 8: I went to college. I went to Saint Francis College.
Speaker 8: I was in school with a lot of guys from
Speaker 8: the job, Timmy Stockpole, Jimmy Leonard, Brian Boyle, Whitey. I mean,
Speaker 8: there was a bunch of guys that were in Saint
Speaker 8: Francis at the time, and I just became more and
Speaker 8: more attracted to the job, you know. And they gave
Speaker 8: a test in seventy seven, and I was too young,
Speaker 8: so the next test wasn't until eighty two. And then
Speaker 8: I started training for that test and I took the
Speaker 8: written and I got a ninety nine. I still remember
Speaker 8: the question I got wrong, Shit, I got wrong, who's
Speaker 8: the wrong guy standing in the back in the truck up?
Speaker 8: And then I took the physical at the arm ring.
Speaker 8: I remember it was one hundred degrees. It was the
Speaker 8: middle of August or September, and I was so pumped up.
Speaker 8: I was going up to the Laddie's supposed to throw
Speaker 8: the ladder up. He climb up and I missed two
Speaker 8: of the steps because I took him too at a time.
Speaker 8: I come down and the guy taps you on the
Speaker 8: shoulder says, you missed the steps, so I had to
Speaker 8: go back.
Speaker 4: Oh shit.
Speaker 8: So then I did one hundred. I got a ninety five,
Speaker 8: so it delayed me two years. I got on the
Speaker 8: job in eighty six.
Speaker 9: So that would be a you dick, that's.
Speaker 6: What you wanted to say, right, you got it anyway.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's tough to get on if you get in
Speaker 4: ninety five too, right, I mean maybe not.
Speaker 8: I was fifteen hundred. I think it was like thirteen
Speaker 8: hundred on the list. The funny thing is, though, had
Speaker 8: I got on in eighty four, I never would have
Speaker 8: met my wife. I met her in eighty six because
Speaker 8: I was supposed to go in and watch of eighty six,
Speaker 8: and then that got delayed because of politics, and then
Speaker 8: I went in August, and then I met my wife
Speaker 8: on the day I was supposting in probably school and
Speaker 8: we've been together forty.
Speaker 4: Years or whatever.
Speaker 5: Things happened for a reason. Yeah right, you went to
Speaker 5: Grandma's that night, saved it and you missed and you
Speaker 5: missed a step.
Speaker 4: So yeah, sh.
Speaker 8: You're looking at and I'm down to half power and
Speaker 8: I'm texting her like, please bring the power cord up?
Speaker 8: What's she doing?
Speaker 3: I never know what she's doing?
Speaker 4: Now, what's.
Speaker 6: Come on?
Speaker 4: Don't play? Don't play it?
Speaker 6: Okay, I still be all right, what are you doing?
Speaker 3: How do we were? You're working too?
Speaker 8: So I went to Saint Francis and I was working
Speaker 8: in Merrill Lynch and I have to tell you I
Speaker 8: love that job. I mean it was a great job, man.
Speaker 8: I just all I did was go to school and work.
Speaker 8: And but I think in hindsight, I probably I was
Speaker 8: a little too open about my desires about being a
Speaker 8: firement because what do I have to say? Firefighter?
Speaker 4: Whatever you want.
Speaker 8: And they all knew I wanted to get on the job,
Speaker 8: and uh they offered me a job in the trading
Speaker 8: floor too, and I was just like, no, I'm going
Speaker 8: I'm going on to fight apart, you know. And so
Speaker 8: but I don't regret it. You know this, This was
Speaker 8: a life beyond you all know. I mean, we all
Speaker 8: been there. This is like the greatest job that you
Speaker 8: could even possibly imagine.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 8: I recruited, like kept the guys in my neighborhood to
Speaker 8: come on a fight a part.
Speaker 4: That's a right. I was like the recruiter for what
Speaker 4: side I give. I tell people all the time. I
Speaker 4: got the guy who rid in my one of my apartments.
Speaker 4: I got him the job too, for God's sakes.
Speaker 3: Best job in the world.
Speaker 8: We used to go down to Pudge waltsh was down
Speaker 8: in Nazareth. Every like Bob Checko. He picked I beat.
Speaker 8: I'd be on the corner doing pull ups on the
Speaker 8: lighteboarb and he come with all the guys from the story.
Speaker 8: I jump in the car and we go to Nazareth
Speaker 8: and then we go to Pudgies for the night and
Speaker 8: then come back. And that's all I did. I worked
Speaker 8: out for like a year and a half, like I
Speaker 8: was praying for the for like a boxer.
Speaker 3: The only thing he didn't do is teach you to
Speaker 3: hit every rung on the ladder.
Speaker 6: Well.
Speaker 8: He never told us you got I want my money pack.
Speaker 5: Get called in August of eighty six. You had a
Speaker 5: pretty start studed uh proby class there, right, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: it was some names in the proby class that you had.
Speaker 8: Oh well, some have passed and God rest their souls.
Speaker 8: I mean god Brian's fa hald to make out.
Speaker 6: But yeah, you can take a look at.
Speaker 8: Brian Faye, crys O. Sullivan's up nine to eleven, John Ginley,
Speaker 8: Frank Simpson, charge of Marine Division these days, Bobby Bohack,
Speaker 8: John buck Guy, Bod Guy.
Speaker 6: John Bookeye full spool injury true to Locke.
Speaker 8: John Buck Guy. My man, I'll get some stories about
Speaker 8: John Buck Guy. I can still remember, like most guys
Speaker 8: in my proby class. It's crazy. I can't see right now,
Speaker 8: but I can remember them.
Speaker 9: I wish I could see him, but I do remember
Speaker 9: really quick.
Speaker 3: Hold on, somebody does Mike Thomas a chief, great job
Speaker 3: with the FD I see keynote dress in twenty twenty
Speaker 3: three and outstanding tribute to Bobby Holton.
Speaker 4: Best to you, Thank you, thank you, Mike.
Speaker 3: That's you, your PROB class yup and who do you know?
Speaker 3: What call do you make society? Jesus, where the fuck
Speaker 3: do you want to go?
Speaker 6: Now?
Speaker 3: I love you? No, that's great, Daddy.
Speaker 8: Bob Checko and uh, you know it's very I have
Speaker 8: to tell you, it's intimidating, you know, like you know,
Speaker 8: walking into the doors in seventeen truck I got there
Speaker 8: with with Frank Simpson and Matt Hanson and to get
Speaker 8: that that.
Speaker 3: Did you want to go to seventeen or somebody said this?
Speaker 8: I had a list I had to give him, and
Speaker 8: you know it was like to hold the sixth division,
Speaker 8: you know.
Speaker 3: Right, So seventeen was fourth on the list? Who was first?
Speaker 8: I just I just wrote down what they told me.
Speaker 3: I had no idea.
Speaker 8: I just handed the guy.
Speaker 4: You know, I just.
Speaker 8: Hadn't want to go to you know why I wanted
Speaker 8: to go to the Bronks. Let's be honest here. You
Speaker 8: know why I went to the because when I was
Speaker 8: in high school I read the report from Engine eighty two. Yeah,
Speaker 8: and I said, I read that book and I was like, man,
Speaker 8: I'm going to the South Bronx.
Speaker 3: I read that book about five times already.
Speaker 8: Oh I love that book.
Speaker 3: You know we had him on the show, right, Yeah.
Speaker 8: I worked with some of those guys like Danny Guiney
Speaker 8: and well.
Speaker 3: He doesn't he changes the name in the book.
Speaker 8: Yeah, but you know who they are, Like, I know
Speaker 8: you know who they are, right. I worked with those guys.
Speaker 8: I remember getting detailed up to eighty two engine and
Speaker 8: you know, thirty one truck and working there, and you
Speaker 8: know it's like.
Speaker 3: So you read the book and now you live in
Speaker 3: that book.
Speaker 8: Bro, that I got to go to the South Bronx.
Speaker 8: He's like, no, well, there's nowhere else to go but
Speaker 8: the South Bronx. You know, you.
Speaker 3: Go to seventeen. Who else won't we to seventeen?
Speaker 8: So Frank Simpson, chief of the Marine Division, and Matt Hanson,
Speaker 8: So Matt all went to the truck. We all went
Speaker 8: to the truck.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Wow, that's a heavy hitting class. Damn.
Speaker 8: Bro Let me tell you something. It's like I felt
Speaker 8: like a like a rookie coming up from the minor
Speaker 8: leagues going into like the twenty seven Yankees or like
Speaker 8: the seventy seven Yankees. It was intimidating beyond belief.
Speaker 3: Sure it is.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that's yes. Like the Green Berets. Man love those guys,
Speaker 8: the Sult of the Earth. I love that firehouse.
Speaker 3: Got the money we had on who Yeah, John Roy
Speaker 3: he was from sixty right.
Speaker 8: Un Roy yeah, I can tell you john Oh.
Speaker 4: We had a lot of guys from seventeen on. We
Speaker 4: had Johnson on, we had uh.
Speaker 8: Oh, Daddy, yeah, Billy Lawson.
Speaker 4: Really lost, we had on.
Speaker 6: House.
Speaker 8: It's just, you know, it's it's just intimidating. Just it
Speaker 8: was just intimidating being this kid from the city, you know,
Speaker 8: just turned twenty five years old, and you know, you're
Speaker 8: walking into this iconic firehouse, you know, and it's like
Speaker 8: you feel like there's like everyone's just watching you, you know,
Speaker 8: and you gotta you gotta, you gotta prove yourself like
Speaker 8: you know they are they are ye yeah, yeah, Just
Speaker 8: who was.
Speaker 3: Who was that when you went? Who was some of
Speaker 3: the senior guys that were there.
Speaker 8: Mike Weldon, Jack Ryan, Tom McDowell. You know it's funny
Speaker 8: about senior men, right, they were all through the Warriors,
Speaker 8: these guys Patty Mac, Tommy mahoney and the engine you said, Johnson,
Speaker 8: Jimmy Lafferty, and you know there's like then there's this
Speaker 8: group of guys that were like in the middle. They
Speaker 8: were like from ten to like twenty, you know, and
Speaker 8: they had so they got on the seventies and they
Speaker 8: were just catching the World War.
Speaker 4: That's why I thought you were talking about the tenth
Speaker 4: to twenty. That's how crazy it is, cools. How the
Speaker 4: guys he's mentioned are all over twenty all right.
Speaker 8: The officers, all the offices, world enough to be my father.
Speaker 8: I remember if Maxwell was the Captain, Bill Kelly, Billy
Speaker 8: Geice and Dennis Callapy and then the chiefs were all
Speaker 8: old enough to be your grandfather.
Speaker 4: You know, they were just stay. Yeah, they just stayed forever, right.
Speaker 8: And the senior men, you know, thirty thirty years, thirty plus.
Speaker 8: You know, Patty Mack was in World War Two, guys
Speaker 8: w in the Korean War.
Speaker 4: Those are guys. Those are the best guys.
Speaker 6: Though.
Speaker 4: Every time we.
Speaker 3: Guys, bro, what's gonna timidate?
Speaker 4: You're gonna grab your by the ear and say, all right,
Speaker 4: can't come on away.
Speaker 8: You know, some of these guys were in Vietnam, like
Speaker 8: Frank Trump and you know, just like Ray Weldon, and
Speaker 8: it's just crazy, man, these guys just.
Speaker 3: You know, he was the Vietnam guy, right, he was
Speaker 3: Vietnam guy.
Speaker 8: Yeah, Vietnam guy. Absolutely, electrician yeah, yep. So you know
Speaker 8: it's intimidating, very intimidating.
Speaker 3: So how long are you there before you catch your
Speaker 3: first job.
Speaker 8: All right, So the first job. Okay, so I remember
Speaker 8: the first job. I don't remember anything that, but I
Speaker 8: remember the first job at the first job, right. It
Speaker 8: was one four nine between Marris Caland and Morris. It
Speaker 8: was on the north side of the block, and I
Speaker 8: remember pulling up. I remember who was working. Bobby Norman
Speaker 8: rest his soul and Frankie Kills Vietnam Vet had the
Speaker 8: irons and the cap. Then it was a covering guy.
Speaker 8: It just Ryan was Ryan's I can't remember his name. Great,
Speaker 8: I mean, I could all this work with this guy.
Speaker 8: And I remember like I had the can, you know,
Speaker 8: and I'm going up the stairs my boots, you know,
Speaker 8: I got the heavy boots and the coat and everything's
Speaker 8: wobbling and the people are pouring down screaming. I'm like,
Speaker 8: and it hit me at that moment, I'm like, what
Speaker 8: God's name and.
Speaker 3: Might doing want to hit myself into what? You know what?
Speaker 8: I was like, wait, wait, I'm like they weren't joking
Speaker 8: in probably school, like I thought that this was all like, yeah,
Speaker 8: you might do this once in your career, you know,
Speaker 8: like maybe you know this was the real deal.
Speaker 4: If it's really bad. You don't go in, don't worry
Speaker 4: about it.
Speaker 10: Yeah right, Well I remember is I just hung on
Speaker 10: to the captain and I was like, I thought I
Speaker 10: was in Yankee Stadium.
Speaker 6: Man.
Speaker 8: I thought like my god, I'm like, Hail Mary, full
Speaker 8: of grace, please, you know what am I doing? And
Speaker 8: I just hung onto the Captain's coat. I have no
Speaker 8: idea what I did. I know the engine was already there,
Speaker 8: forty one engine was there.
Speaker 3: And what type of building was it?
Speaker 8: It was an H and not an H. It was
Speaker 8: a five story tenement, right, and yeah, I mean it
Speaker 8: was one room, one or two rooms.
Speaker 4: It was no big deal.
Speaker 8: But you know, the funny thing is I came back
Speaker 8: twenty years later, same box, same apartment, same everything, and
Speaker 8: I'm a captain and I'm like i get to the
Speaker 8: door and I'm looking in and I'm like there's one
Speaker 8: room or whatever. I'm like, this is this was it?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 6: Well?
Speaker 3: I mean my brother said to me, I hope your
Speaker 3: first job is just like a one or two room.
Speaker 3: You always said that, like you didn't get that job.
Speaker 4: That was like, just gare the hell out of you? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, the hell out of you? Where you know it
Speaker 3: takes you a long time to adjust.
Speaker 8: So but you know it was crazy because it just
Speaker 8: hit the fan. After that, I got to the program.
Speaker 8: I got to the house in September, I guess sometime
Speaker 8: in September, and you know I had the can forever.
Speaker 8: And uh, you know, I work with guys like Billy Lawson,
Speaker 8: I mean lost in like I'm always working with Billy
Speaker 8: probably saved my life probably four or five times, and
Speaker 8: I mean just amazing stuff. But I can't like one
Speaker 8: night I we we had the first job was around
Speaker 8: change of tours. It was a towelded job, no big
Speaker 8: deals on one full nine over by Bergen or Willis
Speaker 8: Willis maybe Willis somewhere over sat Hands or something tenement
Speaker 8: fully involved.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 8: So were up in a bucket and so someone went sick,
Speaker 8: and so now me and Frank Simpson, you know Frank,
Speaker 8: Frank actually got he was at the store, so it
Speaker 8: was no big deal. It's just a vacant. So then
Speaker 8: we come back and everything was wrong with I forgot
Speaker 8: to pull my boots up, you know. So I remember
Speaker 8: this guy, Billy Welsh, he had the same size as me,
Speaker 8: and he just bought a brand new pair of boots,
Speaker 8: so like in the back of my mind it's like, oh,
Speaker 8: I'll wear Billy's boots, you know. So we get another
Speaker 8: box and it's on Alexander and one four one. It's
Speaker 8: a Brownstone and fires in the basement, and the Tony
Speaker 8: Alba is just stay for six hours. He's the captain.
Speaker 8: He's the captain nineteen truck. He was a lieutenant twenty nine.
Speaker 8: I mean, this guy like Callipie was in the engine.
Speaker 8: These guys were like just like like fire guys. I mean,
Speaker 8: they were just like I just revealed these guys, you know.
Speaker 8: So so me and Frank are on the inside. I
Speaker 8: don't know if I had the can of the irons,
Speaker 8: and then Alva and then Kalipi went in before us,
Speaker 8: and I don't know what happened. But next thing I know,
Speaker 8: Alvis grabbing the two of us and he says get out,
Speaker 8: and I'm like what he says? He grabs his get
Speaker 8: out and he throws us down the hallway and the
Speaker 8: fire blows over a head and I'm like, what was that?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 8: And I don't want to get into the whole fire,
Speaker 8: but you know, it flashed on us, you know, and uh,
Speaker 8: I just remember i was wearing Billy's boots and I've
Speaker 8: got to pull them up and they were and I'm like, whoopsie, No,
Speaker 8: I got explained to this guy, really that I just
Speaker 8: trans brand new blue chief.
Speaker 4: I was just gonna ask, out of three is who
Speaker 4: was the I who took the pressure off everybody? Now
Speaker 4: I kind of maybe know who was.
Speaker 8: Yeah, definitely looking it's just funny. Like like I began,
Speaker 8: I began to think this was normal, like all these
Speaker 8: near death experiences, you know, Like and then we had
Speaker 8: another job, like on Christmas Eve, the three probabies are
Speaker 8: working and we got caught in a flash over again
Speaker 8: in a two story you know, private dwelling, I mean, Frank,
Speaker 8: we had to bail out the window and uh, and
Speaker 8: then the collapses. I mean it seems like buildings will collapsing,
Speaker 8: like not full collapses, but floors collapsing. I mean, this
Speaker 8: was just it was just part I just thought it
Speaker 8: was normal. After a while, I was like, Okay, well
Speaker 8: this is normal.
Speaker 3: You know, well maybe that's what gave you, you know,
Speaker 3: down the road when you when you were you lieutenant
Speaker 3: or a captain and he went to the same job
Speaker 3: and you were like, man, this is nothing. So I
Speaker 3: mean that those kind of experiences that make you cool.
Speaker 4: I was at in South the South Carolina a couple
Speaker 4: of days these last few days, and I ran it too.
Speaker 4: Like I told you, there was about three or four
Speaker 4: companies that had twenty guys each fifty five and sixty
Speaker 4: and seventeen had I don't know how many guys I
Speaker 4: had there. And every guy that I talked to, they said,
Speaker 4: it just stuck out to me what the chief just
Speaker 4: said that that's and these are guys that are seventy
Speaker 4: years old. They kept saying the same thing over and
Speaker 4: over again. They're like, I don't I worked with the
Speaker 4: best guys like I mean the best offices. I mean,
Speaker 4: these guys knew fire like they just like these A
Speaker 4: seventy year guy and this is probably the guys that
Speaker 4: the chiefs talking about talking about his guys. I mean,
Speaker 4: that's how it just kept moving down the line, is
Speaker 4: that they just kept passing on all this knowledge to
Speaker 4: the guys that he was.
Speaker 3: At consistent work all the time.
Speaker 4: But it stuck out to me how he's like, bro,
Speaker 4: I work with the best guys that you could ever
Speaker 4: work with on the job, Like that's.
Speaker 8: What he comes guys were amazing. There was a guy
Speaker 8: Billy Stell's and like they actually, you know, they almost
Speaker 8: like rewrote the books. I mean because they were doing
Speaker 8: it so much, like you know, like guy Billy told me,
Speaker 8: he says, yeah, we replaced the acts with the Halligan
Speaker 8: for the ov or. Like they were just kind of
Speaker 8: fine tuning it as they were going, you know what
Speaker 8: I mean. They were so good at what they were.
Speaker 3: Forward thinking, thinking out of the box.
Speaker 4: Man, what do you think that chief? Do you think?
Speaker 4: Like what was it like in seventy five over there?
Speaker 4: Like it had to be absolutely insanity If you think
Speaker 4: it was insanity? What what did those guys think that was?
Speaker 4: At that point?
Speaker 8: They used to kid me because they knew that I
Speaker 8: was a little into the job, let's say, for lack
Speaker 8: of a better word, you know, they would wipe me up.
Speaker 8: They'd be like, you know, you missed a kid. You
Speaker 8: should have been here ten years ago. And I'm like, fuck,
Speaker 8: you know, you.
Speaker 4: Know, I mean, while he's going to job, have the job.
Speaker 3: Where did you get the name Spoky from?
Speaker 8: So? Probably school?
Speaker 3: Oh? I thought loss and said he gave you that name?
Speaker 8: Well yeah, he he perpetuated it all right, So what
Speaker 8: happened was thirteen truck was relocated up to uh to us,
Speaker 8: you know, and because there were a towel add and
Speaker 8: Tommy Madden was in my proby class, and so anyway
Speaker 8: he sees me and he goes smoky, and everybody in
Speaker 8: seventeen truck was standing in and all everyone just went
Speaker 8: like this, like like.
Speaker 3: What does spoky mean?
Speaker 6: What do you think the pyro? He likes to like fire.
Speaker 8: He told you about being a pyro. One day I'm
Speaker 8: at the house watch, right, and it was a guy
Speaker 8: I don't I don't. He had a nickname. I don't
Speaker 8: know if I should say his name. And he's dead now,
Speaker 8: God rest his soul. He used to drive the the
Speaker 8: Red Cross third, the Long Coffee truck or whatever up
Speaker 8: in the eighteen battalion, I guess. And he had a nickname,
Speaker 8: and uh, I didn't believe it. I'm like anyway, but
Speaker 8: it was unusual, you know, it was weird that he
Speaker 8: was always at these fires though, you know. And so
Speaker 8: one day I'm on the watch. It's like two in
Speaker 8: the morning, and I got the doors open, I'm just
Speaker 8: hanging out and he comes by and he's like, hey, kid,
Speaker 8: he said you're gonna be going to work. I'm like, what,
Speaker 8: he goes, Yeah, you're gonna be going to work and whatever? Right, no,
Speaker 8: sooner he said that.
Speaker 4: Dude will take it in. I always got a little
Speaker 4: flun with that.
Speaker 8: It's like, you know, yeah, anyway, sure enough we pull
Speaker 8: up and it's top the bottom man, just really merrily.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 8: I don't know, but it was.
Speaker 3: A different story, bro. I'm gonna play you what he
Speaker 3: showed me. You ready, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let me speak to.
Speaker 4: Sparky Sparky Sparky de Klan.
Speaker 3: How you doing, fruitcake man? Alright, this is Frank Frank
Speaker 3: Frank riseol. Listen, I need you for a gig. Okay,
Speaker 3: what do you do? Backflips? You jump up there in
Speaker 3: a silly suit? What do you do?
Speaker 6: All right?
Speaker 8: Okay her account for there.
Speaker 3: Well, it's gonna be like a little uh got a
Speaker 3: little scene going over here, a few people laying around
Speaker 3: the house and ship. It's gonna be like a little
Speaker 3: funny thing. You can get involved that.
Speaker 8: You want, but we want you to do some juggling,
Speaker 8: you know, trust, some fucking fire bombs up and all
Speaker 8: that shit.
Speaker 4: I don't know, I.
Speaker 3: K it did happen like that loss and swize that's
Speaker 3: how what happened?
Speaker 8: Bros.
Speaker 4: Classic Colma. Oh my god. Every time I hear that,
Speaker 4: I can't stop kills.
Speaker 3: Meseph picks us some seventeen.
Speaker 6: Bro.
Speaker 3: Let's go, let's talk about some five.
Speaker 6: So we have one that he mentioned his first job.
Speaker 8: But I know he that was a bucket job. You
Speaker 8: know what's funny about this job. I have to tell
Speaker 8: you a story about this job. So we're at this fire.
Speaker 8: It's on one hundred and fifteenth in Whales, right, and
Speaker 8: I guess it must have been the same year that
Speaker 8: the Giants played the forty nine is in the Super Bowl, right,
Speaker 8: So anyway, I guess twenty nine truck had a bet
Speaker 8: with twenty nine truck in San Francisco. So anyway, the
Speaker 8: shirts never show the shirts never showed up. So we're
Speaker 8: walking around like everybody in the block is wearing San
Speaker 8: Francisco Fire Department twenty nine truck shirts. So they stole
Speaker 8: the shirts and him. They were all wearing them in
Speaker 8: the able.
Speaker 4: At least they weren't gold bars, rightly.
Speaker 8: Remember twenty nine was a towel added. You know that's
Speaker 8: awesome jogging all them. I don't know who took it.
Speaker 8: But someone actually commented they saw me in the bucket
Speaker 8: and they're like, he's not wearing an air pack. If
Speaker 8: you were an airpack in that bucket in seventeen truck
Speaker 8: you have locked. It would be out in the street
Speaker 8: somewhere else. It was a policy. I mean, I hate
Speaker 8: to admit that, but that's how it was, you know.
Speaker 8: But we were just pulling. It was all these steel shutters.
Speaker 8: I was in. I was in a bucket with doctor
Speaker 8: Doom Eddie Cruz and we were taking the steel shutters off.
Speaker 8: It wasn't a towel lighter job, believe it or not.
Speaker 8: We were just actually venting the top floor. Yeah, with
Speaker 8: the bucket.
Speaker 6: Oh sorry, here we go. This is a good one.
Speaker 8: So that was actually I was in forty one for
Speaker 8: this one. It was a it was an RS box
Speaker 8: I think, and we came in. We put out three
Speaker 8: floors of fire. We got a unicitation. Uh, Chris Levy
Speaker 8: had the nozzle for everyone had the nozzle. Buck guy
Speaker 8: wound up putting out the last two rooms. And it
Speaker 8: wasn't a towel looted job. It was an occupied building.
Speaker 8: Tisa was the captain and I remember he said to me.
Speaker 8: I guess that I was like the last guy in
Speaker 8: the line. He says. He tells me, he goes go
Speaker 8: out and get me water because we were having water
Speaker 8: problems or whatever. Everyone was having water problems. So yeah,
Speaker 8: so I got out to al Gonzalez, I said, we
Speaker 8: need water.
Speaker 3: Tom.
Speaker 8: That's Tom Tom. I worked with Tom. He always had
Speaker 8: the OV I always had the can and every time
Speaker 8: he worked, he made me drive the bucket and he
Speaker 8: tell me, get that as close as you can to
Speaker 8: the window, and he would just I mean then it's like,
Speaker 8: I'm surprised. We almost didn't go into the room. I mean,
Speaker 8: that's how how close we used to get to the
Speaker 8: And he was just he was just.
Speaker 4: A phenomenal farman.
Speaker 8: Tom.
Speaker 6: For sure.
Speaker 8: That was Rogers and Dawson, me and Gilligan in the bucket.
Speaker 8: I remember that job. I don't know why. I don't
Speaker 8: know why I remember that job. I guess because in
Speaker 8: the third time and I was, you know, right here
Speaker 8: in my fire house.
Speaker 4: It looks like hell's burning.
Speaker 8: We melted the rig a few times. I remember one
Speaker 8: time down down at the down on the market we
Speaker 8: had I don't know, it was like a paper factory.
Speaker 8: It was like a thousand by one hundred and.
Speaker 4: We had to buy one hundred.
Speaker 8: It was under the drag bridge. Yeah, right, the longest
Speaker 8: building you could imagine, you know. And we're underneath the bucket.
Speaker 8: We're under the bridge. Christ I'm in the bucket with uh,
Speaker 8: I forget I was in the bucket with but Joe Kelly,
Speaker 8: the officer ever won the bucket. And then these pigeons
Speaker 8: came out and all that tail feathers weren't firing. Kelly says, oh, look,
Speaker 8: flaming pigeons. They were worried about the bridge buckling because
Speaker 8: there was so much fire. And then yeah, so they
Speaker 8: had this stretch of line stixy, I forget who stretch line?
Speaker 8: And they had the holes down the rig while we
Speaker 8: were in the bucket trying to protect the bridge.
Speaker 6: Nice all right. I think this is the last seventeen
Speaker 6: truck picture we have, so this is interesting.
Speaker 8: The soul was opening the roof the Soul was out
Speaker 8: of service, so I had my axe. I just I
Speaker 8: just opened the roof of the axe.
Speaker 5: I think I think he's got more pictures of him marking,
Speaker 5: Like you always say to me, you're so assy, always
Speaker 5: so lucky.
Speaker 3: People taking a picture.
Speaker 4: I mean, who's taking a picture of a guy with
Speaker 4: an axe?
Speaker 3: I'le pictures than me.
Speaker 6: So there you go. Actually I got him older here, Sorry,
Speaker 6: go back up a little bit. We got a little
Speaker 6: oldie one here. Just throw this.
Speaker 8: They're random that that was like normal, I mean.
Speaker 6: Normal, ten blows of fire whatever, It was no big deal.
Speaker 8: The funny thing is like, really the chiefs were just amazing,
Speaker 8: like guys like Visconti and Kilker and then the battalions
Speaker 8: in the sixteenth Kennedy and these guys. Uh, they were
Speaker 8: just like Hoover. I remember one time we had a
Speaker 8: job Timmy Kletk. We were talking about this the other day.
Speaker 8: Timmy was working.
Speaker 4: I saw him down there.
Speaker 8: I saw him down and Timmy was in sixty nine.
Speaker 8: I was in forty one. It was about five line stretch,
Speaker 8: and Hoover was the chief and he's just like, okay, guys,
Speaker 8: you know how you doing all right? Making good progress?
Speaker 8: I got burned. Timmy got burnt. I mean like it
Speaker 8: was just normal, like no one throwing anything different about it. It
Speaker 8: was on one hundred and forty third, he corrected me.
Speaker 8: It was on one hundred and forty third In convent.
Speaker 8: I think it was right down the block from sixty
Speaker 8: nine quarters the five. I think three companies got unicitations
Speaker 8: at that fire.
Speaker 4: Wow, crazy nice coobs. I saw yesterday, was it not
Speaker 4: yesterday like last week?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 4: I saw him down there with his wife. Yeah, he's great.
Speaker 4: But I saw a picture on Facebook, and it's in
Speaker 4: nineteen I don't know, let's say seventy eight, I don't remember,
Speaker 4: but it was in the seventies I think. And then
Speaker 4: they have a picture of it today in that same
Speaker 4: spot and you're there in like let's say seventy eight eighty,
Speaker 4: and all you see in the back it's like rubble, rubble, rubber,
Speaker 4: rubble for block after that looks like a mile two
Speaker 4: miles rubble. And then you see like the end of
Speaker 4: the earth, an H and H standing there but vacant, right.
Speaker 4: And then they take the picture today and all you
Speaker 4: see is like little like one story houses, like little
Speaker 4: like little houses, like like you can't even believe how
Speaker 4: what that looked like. Then those people have no idea
Speaker 4: what it looked like, you know what I mean, they're
Speaker 4: living in this house, you know more when they'll post
Speaker 4: a stamp and everything, and they have no idea what
Speaker 4: was going on over it was war.
Speaker 8: Yeah, two places I worked in seventeen. If you one
Speaker 8: hundred and thirty eighth Street between Willison Brook, if you
Speaker 8: looked up to one four nine, exactly what you said,
Speaker 8: and today it's old houses. And then on one hundred
Speaker 8: and sixteenth up to one hundred and twenty fifth between
Speaker 8: Madison and Park it was the same thing. Just really
Speaker 8: building building, you know, just burned out. It was rubble.
Speaker 5: You look, if you go back to look at the
Speaker 5: old pictures, like you'll see burnt out houses and burnt
Speaker 5: out cause and the kids it's like a playground. They're
Speaker 5: playing in the burnt out call, jumping out the windows
Speaker 5: on the field.
Speaker 4: And I remember when Seat Town burnt by us. I remember,
Speaker 4: I don't know if you would have. I remember being
Speaker 4: in the Seat Town like like the chief said about
Speaker 4: that smell. I remember smelling that in the Seat Town,
Speaker 4: like we were walking around in there. The water was there,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my father worked that job.
Speaker 8: That the old time is said that on one hundred
Speaker 8: and foy third Street, that the rigs would be lined
Speaker 8: up down the block. It would be five or six
Speaker 8: rigs just lined up waiting and they were just if
Speaker 8: you stood on the roof of the firehouse, all you
Speaker 8: saw was if you look south or if you looked
Speaker 8: east or north, what you saw was the smoke coming
Speaker 8: off the tops of the buildings. Like that's what this
Speaker 8: was every day.
Speaker 3: The busiest night that you can recall.
Speaker 8: All right, the busiest night was actually when I was
Speaker 8: in forty one. We had seven jobs one night and
Speaker 8: we went back to the same buildings twice.
Speaker 4: Allegedly.
Speaker 6: No re kindles in the service. Yeah, restarted, I like that.
Speaker 3: So you went from eighty six to ninety one and seventeen,
Speaker 3: and then you went to well it was it was
Speaker 3: it a squad. Then it was just forty.
Speaker 8: One just had turned in May of eighty eight. It
Speaker 8: closed as an engine company and it was a big
Speaker 8: you know, it was.
Speaker 3: A bush back in the community.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and then they compromised and they made it the
Speaker 8: enhanced engine. And I do remember the borough command to
Speaker 8: come into our court is one time I forget the
Speaker 8: guy's name and satus down. He says, listen, we're going
Speaker 8: to put a rescue six in the south Bronx.
Speaker 4: And then it.
Speaker 8: Disappeared because then they closed forty one. They opened the
Speaker 8: firehouse up on Melrose and they were going to put
Speaker 8: forty in forty one in with fifty five, but then
Speaker 8: seventy one came. They closed the fireouse up on Park.
Speaker 4: And won five to nine.
Speaker 8: They opened up one, five, six and Melrose and then
Speaker 8: we're going to close forty one. All it all hit
Speaker 8: the fan. Then they I on this enhanced engine. So
Speaker 8: I was the second wave. There was the first wave.
Speaker 8: Hand pick guys. They all went right. There was another wave,
Speaker 8: and I was in that group with guys like Joe Gandiello,
Speaker 8: John Ciderella, uh, Pete McLaughlin, John Buck Guy, uh wow,
Speaker 8: so many.
Speaker 4: Originally you know, it was.
Speaker 8: Sorry, soon someone came a few months later. He came
Speaker 8: from fifty five fifty eight. Some of the guys were
Speaker 8: trickling in, showing Genevieve's Kevin Murphy. You know, the guys
Speaker 8: started trickling in and then it was like a hardcore
Speaker 8: original guys like Bobby Hamilton.
Speaker 3: Guy, I loved him. That was my he was my neighbor, my.
Speaker 8: Brother, God bless him. He was the Sultan too, right,
Speaker 8: big barrel chest, yeah yeah, yeah. He didn't grow since
Speaker 8: fourth grade, Like he was the same size.
Speaker 3: When did you start thinking of out going to forty
Speaker 3: one when they when they became.
Speaker 8: A kind of I think a lot of guys were
Speaker 8: interested in going, but it was already done. The deal
Speaker 8: was done, so none of us really knew about it.
Speaker 4: And then.
Speaker 8: I remember speaking to the captain. It was a night
Speaker 8: that Billy lost and saved my life. We were we
Speaker 8: had a job on Courtland and one four six, and
Speaker 8: that was the night that trainer went down and we
Speaker 8: got him out and uh, Billy grabs me. He says,
Speaker 8: Fucky just don't feel right. He grabs me, and like
Speaker 8: the whole thing just collapsed. But I tooke to the captain,
Speaker 8: wasn't Keenan at the time, and I said, you know,
Speaker 8: I'm kind of interested in forty one and he says, yeah,
Speaker 8: it was November of not ninety because it was right
Speaker 8: before my daughter was born. So yeah. And then and
Speaker 8: then I wound up going there on a detail in
Speaker 8: ninety one and like August just it was supposed to
Speaker 8: be like a six week detail and I wound up
Speaker 8: staying there.
Speaker 3: What was deal with them? What was the at that
Speaker 3: time when they go into they had first two, Bob.
Speaker 8: And then they were going to first first, second and third, boxes,
Speaker 8: the whole thing, and then anything like old Hands in
Speaker 8: the twelfth, the sixteenth, the seventeenth, the third, the two
Speaker 8: six you know up to like the Cross Bronx. We
Speaker 8: were a squad.
Speaker 3: So they were going to a ton of work. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it was busy. Yeah, was Clee House there.
Speaker 8: He had just left.
Speaker 3: Jack he just left.
Speaker 8: Yeahs Teaso was the captain, Steve Garrity, John Carroll, Dennis Maranshack. Yeah,
Speaker 8: so that picks. That's Ny Reagan. He went to rescue
Speaker 8: three poly som and you know Salty, Ralph Teazo myself.
Speaker 5: So you guys just had an engine. Did you have
Speaker 5: anything else? You had truck tools? I guess that's it.
Speaker 8: We had everything. We destroyed that rig. Teaso somehow he
Speaker 8: squared of that rig because we got it from eighty
Speaker 8: nine engine. We swapped with them, and he wanted that
Speaker 8: engine for some reason. And we had had loaded up
Speaker 8: with boxes everywhere. We had boxes on the roof or whatever.
Speaker 7: And I would say, it looks like it has some
Speaker 7: good storage space, would be my initial thought on what
Speaker 7: he's like.
Speaker 6: The pus is a mac man. You can't go wrong
Speaker 6: with those things.
Speaker 8: Tommy has used to drive Tommy used to drive that
Speaker 8: like a like a race car.
Speaker 3: He's scared to say. Those reads were fast.
Speaker 6: Man.
Speaker 8: Yeah, the police owned the pilot. Man. He used to ride.
Speaker 8: He used to drive that thing like it was a captain.
Speaker 8: One time, Jeane down.
Speaker 6: Like he stole it.
Speaker 8: He got out of the rig one time. He says,
Speaker 8: I've been a captain a long time. He says, that's
Speaker 8: the that's the Harrius ride I've had in my life.
Speaker 6: Exactly.
Speaker 4: Well, I always say this, it's scary but in control,
Speaker 4: and then they're scary and out of control, you know.
Speaker 8: You know, drove like that one time in two eighty eight.
Speaker 8: I would say, We're on the Grand Central going out
Speaker 8: to Corona, and I was just like Brian.
Speaker 4: Out of controls one thing, driving fast and he that's
Speaker 4: a good thing. Yeah, he was a good show. He
Speaker 4: was actually a good show.
Speaker 6: I love that.
Speaker 8: We had my house one time and oh my god,
Speaker 8: he's just.
Speaker 4: Crazy.
Speaker 8: I love the guy.
Speaker 4: Quickie, on the other hand, might have been God rest
Speaker 4: is soul.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, dude.
Speaker 4: He was getting there. We lost you know, Hose was
Speaker 4: fucking laying in the Allegian.
Speaker 3: We ran into the back of Rescue four's rigged one time.
Speaker 4: I just told the I told the story to uh uh,
Speaker 4: I forget who the hell I was telling. He was
Speaker 4: a boss of ninety two. I said, were you at
Speaker 4: the job where Quickie made the left turn? I was
Speaker 4: on the rig where I saw the fire coming out
Speaker 4: the back of the window, and all we had to
Speaker 4: do is make a right and a right. We were
Speaker 4: going to be that first two and Quickie made.
Speaker 6: A left and we're like.
Speaker 4: You go on the wrong way. We get up the rig.
Speaker 4: We're backing up. Two ninety two comes makes a left
Speaker 4: and the right, and all I hear on the radio
Speaker 4: is seventy five. Yeah, ship right on my birthday cake.
Speaker 5: We will go to sunny side, sundy side, right by you.
Speaker 5: And then Rescue four's rig and quick striving and he's
Speaker 5: fucking flying you. All of a sudden, I see the
Speaker 5: four on the back of the Rescue falls rig. This
Speaker 5: swall and then it's getting close and holy shit, Rescue Force.
Speaker 4: Allegedly that actually didn't happen. You had a dream about that.
Speaker 6: This is all allegedly. Fella.
Speaker 3: You go and study you're forty one for a while.
Speaker 3: I must catch a hell of a lot of work there, man.
Speaker 8: You know that in that company what twenty single end
Speaker 8: single company. Nine guys got promoted off that list.
Speaker 3: Wow, but you guys did a lot of first do
Speaker 3: work there too.
Speaker 8: Absolutely, we didn't do a lot of first to work.
Speaker 4: I have such a small area there, right, we had we.
Speaker 8: Had a post stand. Yeah, yeah, it's a small area.
Speaker 8: That was the squad job that was on Watson and Ward,
Speaker 8: and there was a ton of fire. It was a
Speaker 8: taxpayer flat, fixed place. Whatever. We weren't exposure and we
Speaker 8: actually worked as an engine at this job and we
Speaker 8: actually kept the fire out of the building.
Speaker 5: Hey, Rough, I'm beginning to think that I know where
Speaker 5: you got the name Sparky from because every picture that
Speaker 5: plays that's watching.
Speaker 3: And yeah, we had a line.
Speaker 5: I think it was about seventeen hundred hours on a
Speaker 5: sunny day in May.
Speaker 4: And remember everything.
Speaker 8: Who's five in the morning, but who's I'll.
Speaker 4: Tell you what thing That area is still the af
Speaker 4: pit of the earth over there by forty one in
Speaker 4: a freaking bed still.
Speaker 8: I covered their UFO in UH ninety six engine for
Speaker 8: a year. I loved that firehouse.
Speaker 4: I mean it was just I worked there a few times.
Speaker 8: It was a great guys.
Speaker 4: Great problem is they do a lot of ems. Now
Speaker 4: you got take with the bed. Yeah, I got it.
Speaker 3: I got So you're there to what ninety five?
Speaker 5: So you put forty uh ninety one to ninety five,
Speaker 5: you're in forty one.
Speaker 8: Right, Yeah, just four years I got. I got promote.
Speaker 8: We all got promoted.
Speaker 5: Who does something like that? Silly stuff like that? So
Speaker 5: you get promoted, you come back to Sock as a lieutenant.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I spelled down.
Speaker 3: To your bout. Yeah, those spots opened or what was.
Speaker 8: They made the squads And then I don't want to
Speaker 8: get into the whole story. I just was, you know what,
Speaker 8: I didn't want to repeat of you know, I just
Speaker 8: I was getting frustrated with things, and I just said,
Speaker 8: I just want to normalize my life. I had little kids.
Speaker 8: Now I had you know, my daughters were being born,
Speaker 8: and so I just.
Speaker 3: That's a big commitment, man. You know you have to comment. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you have to go to the training all over the country.
Speaker 5: You got to constantly get trained on has matt and
Speaker 5: high angle and big commitment.
Speaker 3: People don't realize it, man.
Speaker 8: Yeah, So so I wound up. I wound up going
Speaker 8: to fifty eight engine and yeah that let me tell you,
Speaker 8: as engine companies go, I've never seen much better than
Speaker 8: Engine fifty eight. Some of the guys there were just
Speaker 8: off the charts, you know, they were just you know,
Speaker 8: this is different about like I was in a truck
Speaker 8: and then I was in the squad, but you know,
Speaker 8: I didn't really know about the engine until I became
Speaker 8: a lieutenant. And there's a whole different vibe being in
Speaker 8: an engine like as as especially as a boss, you
Speaker 8: feel like like it's like a thread there that you're connected,
Speaker 8: you know, like you do anything for these guys like
Speaker 8: you do with your kids, you know, like you would
Speaker 8: go through fire for these guys, you know, and they
Speaker 8: do the same for you, you know. And I've seen
Speaker 8: these guys. I mean I've seen the fires these guys
Speaker 8: put out, and I just like wow, That's all I
Speaker 8: could say. It's just wow, you know, because the tenacity
Speaker 8: was unbelievable.
Speaker 4: In that place. I came with Bobby Keneally. Bobby was
Speaker 4: yet Yeah, he's still doing it, he's still teaching it.
Speaker 4: The ride. I think he's still an engine. How that
Speaker 4: got on the job now he got on a ninety three.
Speaker 8: Bobby's in that picture that I sent to fifty eight
Speaker 8: Bobby's in that one picture. That job we had one
Speaker 8: hundred and ten.
Speaker 4: Thirty thirty two years.
Speaker 8: It's amazing. Yeah, Bobby, his dad South Canally working this one.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so this is what that man.
Speaker 8: Wow. Yeah, So here's a good story about this fire.
Speaker 8: So Greg is my show for Greg Park, Scottie Pascal Witz,
Speaker 8: Chris McLaughlin and Chris Engel. Drum, God rest his soul.
Speaker 8: He got killed in Afghanistan.
Speaker 4: So he's just kneeling right angle drum.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I take him not to go back to Afghanistan.
Speaker 8: But anyway, we get a box for one hundred and
Speaker 8: sixteenth in Lennox about two three o'clock in the morning,
Speaker 8: and it's you know, it's always the same E R
Speaker 8: S no contact right, So you know typical what I
Speaker 8: like to do is I'm I'm always listening to the radio,
Speaker 8: and I hear as soon as I hear, you know,
Speaker 8: Manhattan Box one way, as soon as I hear the
Speaker 8: one the three, I'm like, oh ship, you know, that's
Speaker 8: that's our area, you know. And then they getting on
Speaker 8: the radio all right, Manhattan Battalion one one. We'll get
Speaker 8: numerous calls, uh, And I said, oh shoot, you know
Speaker 8: we're going this that's a job, you know. And anyways, uh,
Speaker 8: we got to about one hundred and twelve Street and
Speaker 8: I looked at Greg, I said, Greg, turned the rig around.
Speaker 8: I got on the radio Angine five eight Manhattan. I said,
Speaker 8: we're available for the for that box is you know,
Speaker 8: I take it into your first two box. What's what's what?
Speaker 8: What's the one hundred Lenox in one hundred sixteen ten
Speaker 8: nine two?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 8: I turn around on Lenox. We're going south to get
Speaker 8: one hundred and tenth street. The park is there, and
Speaker 8: make a right and we get up to about seventh
Speaker 8: Avenue and I look and the fire escape is jam packed,
Speaker 8: you know. And so Greg stops and Greg, what are
Speaker 8: you doing? He goes, where's the where are we going?
Speaker 8: I said, Greg, the building with all the people on.
Speaker 3: The fire over there, the one that's on fire.
Speaker 8: No, the file isn't showing. But so I guess from
Speaker 8: his spot, he couldn't see the fire escape, you know,
Speaker 8: because the trees were in away. So anyway, I grabbed
Speaker 8: the hydrant, I jumped off the rig, and I get
Speaker 8: into the lobby in this wi wall of fire. I mean,
Speaker 8: it was just like I thought it was an outside
Speaker 8: fire that had come into the you know, into the
Speaker 8: into the lobby, you know. So I was about to
Speaker 8: get on the radio and I was like, all right,
Speaker 8: started two and a half and I and it's Chris
Speaker 8: McGlaughlin with the inch in three cord. A big Chris.
Speaker 8: He's about six or five, about two hundred and fifty pounds.
Speaker 8: It looked like a little garden hose in his hands.
Speaker 6: Green light water.
Speaker 4: That's the guy I want to get behind.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you bro.
Speaker 8: They just crushed it. It turned out it was an
Speaker 8: apartment with the door left open. The fire had gone
Speaker 8: up bolt stair was unfortunately had some fatalities, and the
Speaker 8: guys did an amazing job. There was a kid from
Speaker 8: twenty six truck. He was like less than a year
Speaker 8: and a job. He had the roof. I mean, they
Speaker 8: just did an amazing job. Cassano showed up and he
Speaker 8: didn't really know me at the time. He just looked
Speaker 8: at me and says he was just a dumbfounded. He
Speaker 8: said wow. He's like wow, I mean that that amount
Speaker 8: of fire that they put out with that one inch
Speaker 8: in three quarter and we pushed it back into the
Speaker 8: apartment and that was it. And the funny thing is
Speaker 8: right the next day, so I don't know how it
Speaker 8: turned out. My daughter Christine, so this is two thousand,
Speaker 8: she was probably about six maybe, and uh so I'm
Speaker 8: thinking like, oh, when we show what daddy does. So anyway,
Speaker 8: so we stop off and said Christy, and I want
Speaker 8: to show you. You know, this is what daddy does
Speaker 8: for a living. You know, she still has nightmares today. Still, Daddy,
Speaker 8: why did you bring me into that building? I still
Speaker 8: have nightmares over that.
Speaker 3: That's a great house man. That's uh, it was one
Speaker 3: hundred and ten hundred and fifth is that one.
Speaker 8: Hundred twelve hundred and fifteenth right in the middle of
Speaker 8: the projects fifth Avenue. We covered river to river. So yeah,
Speaker 8: just great guys, great great firemen. I mean just phenomenal guys.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you got the pictures from their.
Speaker 6: Guns to pull some up.
Speaker 8: That was the only one that we have from fifty
Speaker 8: that's the only one for fifty eight engine.
Speaker 6: So yeah, so but we have I have this one
Speaker 6: as well. So that's that's seventeen.
Speaker 8: You see this lieutenant here, Frankogrady, right, he was in
Speaker 8: forty two truck. He was there during the warriors. So
Speaker 8: that speakman and oak right, So we had a job.
Speaker 8: I guess it was a top flow of fire as
Speaker 8: usual or whatever. And then so we're a towel ladder.
Speaker 8: Twenty nine is a tower ladder. So I got the
Speaker 8: roof and now I'm trying to get to the roof
Speaker 8: and it's like, you know, it's like the slow boat
Speaker 8: to China.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 8: So I'm trying to get up to the roof. And
Speaker 8: now I could see the the waters out the windows,
Speaker 8: and you know, they got the fire knocked down, and
Speaker 8: I'm still trying to get to the roof, you know,
Speaker 8: to do my job. So anyway, because it was like
Speaker 8: kind of an isolated building like Exposure four had an
Speaker 8: alley and two had an alley, so really the only
Speaker 8: way was the bucket. Right. So anyway, after the fire,
Speaker 8: you know, we're talking about it and Frank says, he goes,
Speaker 8: you know, I used to live in this building when
Speaker 8: I was a kid. I said, oh yeah, he goes, Yeah,
Speaker 8: when we were kids, we used to jump the roofs,
Speaker 8: you know, and I grew up in a city. I
Speaker 8: used to play on the roofs.
Speaker 4: I mean, as.
Speaker 8: We we did, you know, we walked the parapets. I
Speaker 8: mean climbed on the bulkheads. I mean that's what we did.
Speaker 8: So anyway, so sure enough, the next set of tours,
Speaker 8: we're back to the same building, same thing, top floor fire.
Speaker 8: So I'm like, hmm, so you know when you had
Speaker 8: the roof, you didn't wear the rubber boots. You wear
Speaker 8: the you know, black boots and the coat and to
Speaker 8: see helmet. So anyway, so I'm in the I said,
Speaker 8: I'll just jump it, you know. So I get into
Speaker 8: I go into exposure for and I'm in a building
Speaker 8: and this woman she's like, yo, mister fireman, you're in
Speaker 8: the wrong building. I said, I know, I want to
Speaker 8: see something really cool.
Speaker 4: Come here, watch this.
Speaker 8: I get to the roof. It's like like a six
Speaker 8: foot whatever. So I take my hell again, I toss
Speaker 8: it and I just jumped and I just you know,
Speaker 8: I landed on the roof. I popped the bulkhead or whatever.
Speaker 8: And then after after woods, you know, like fire is
Speaker 8: all knocked down and we're in the street. No Grady
Speaker 8: looks at me. He goes, he goes, damn, how'd you
Speaker 8: get to the roof? And I said, I did what
Speaker 8: you told me. He said, you do what? I jumped
Speaker 8: the roof.
Speaker 3: He's like, what.
Speaker 4: He did?
Speaker 3: What? What do you wind up studying again?
Speaker 6: Yeah, you go to show that Jimmy.
Speaker 8: I think it was like Jimmy McNamara. I can't tell.
Speaker 8: It looks like Jimmy. Jimmy's from my neighborhood. He's a
Speaker 8: woodside guy. He's like to see you. I kind of
Speaker 8: recruited him for twenty six Sucks. He's a great basketball player,
Speaker 8: phenomenal basketball player.
Speaker 5: You know what, I forgot to ask you, how did
Speaker 5: you get Rice over the seventeen? He said that you
Speaker 5: were responsible for getting him over the seventeen.
Speaker 8: I talked to somebody I forget we got him over?
Speaker 6: I forget.
Speaker 3: Rhymes with von Essen. I think he said, I don't know.
Speaker 4: You could sneeze it if you want.
Speaker 8: Yeah, he's the coolest cat, you know, like he's just
Speaker 8: like nothing bothers that guy.
Speaker 5: Nah, he's like a surfer dude or something like. Hey,
Speaker 5: you know, I see him all over the I see
Speaker 5: him in the gym and we went.
Speaker 8: You know, he used to call him Chief when we
Speaker 8: were kids because he looked like one flow over cookies
Speaker 8: and who like Chief.
Speaker 6: Chief.
Speaker 5: No, that's awesome, that's great, all right, so you go
Speaker 5: with study now and you get promoted to captain.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Roffy, he winds up in another busy place.
Speaker 4: I don't know how. I know he keeps landing on
Speaker 4: his feet. I don't know what's going on, you.
Speaker 3: Know what I mean. He's very rocky as my you know,
Speaker 3: my wife would say, very rocky.
Speaker 4: Oh you walk out, you walk out.
Speaker 5: He's a rocky to two thousand and three to two
Speaker 5: thousand and eight, You captain of forty six.
Speaker 8: Engine, Yeah, I was. I was there. I was a
Speaker 8: year in ninety six, and then the captain came back,
Speaker 8: so then I went right to forty six and that
Speaker 8: I loved that fire house.
Speaker 4: I mean.
Speaker 8: That that was just the greatest bunch of guys I see,
Speaker 8: you know, you just the bond is unbelievable with the engine.
Speaker 8: You know, it was kind of cool because I literally
Speaker 8: had the best offices that the captain could have. I
Speaker 8: had Jack Mehra, I had John McGann, and I had
Speaker 8: what's his name, Rudy Rudy Goop. And I'd come to
Speaker 8: work and just sitting the recliner and came back and
Speaker 8: I look over the truck side and I won't mention
Speaker 8: any names but it's like the man scientist, you know,
Speaker 8: you know, and it's like the engine was just like
Speaker 8: you know, like Jay Reener and Danny Richter and Wojoe
Speaker 8: and these guys. He's just like it was just so chill.
Speaker 3: I mean it was just like, yeah, a good set
Speaker 3: of senior man, the good set of offices.
Speaker 8: Just a great mix you know in the engine and
Speaker 8: like just really solid. And Jack, I mean, what can
Speaker 8: you say about Jack Mayra. I mean the guy was
Speaker 8: just like like father Jack, you know, and guys listened
Speaker 8: to him. It's just like you didn't have to you
Speaker 8: just had to show up. It was like the kind
Speaker 8: of place you just showed up, you know.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 5: It just ran it at the place right off of
Speaker 5: the Cross Cross Bronx, right you see the Cross Bronx.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Yeah, so we had we one of you know, one
Speaker 8: of the most I guess, you know, I don't want
Speaker 8: to tell a million five stories, but it was a
Speaker 8: good job. You got a picture of it, the one
Speaker 8: ad on and Wash, the one staying to me to
Speaker 8: me eighty eight. No, that's a different job.
Speaker 6: That's what different.
Speaker 3: I'm more fin I don't worry about that. We'll get that.
Speaker 6: Uh ship refreshment.
Speaker 8: Five vacant buildings.
Speaker 4: Okay, we have it's a really big fire guns, scary.
Speaker 6: One, but we have them. We have this one.
Speaker 8: No, that's that's back.
Speaker 6: This was your all hands fire? Is it?
Speaker 8: This one?
Speaker 4: God?
Speaker 6: Damn it?
Speaker 3: Hell god, I could have fallen.
Speaker 6: I labeled it.
Speaker 3: But maybe you get it together, Pete washing.
Speaker 6: Because you have we did the we went. No, I
Speaker 6: don't think we have.
Speaker 3: Uh no, actually do it? Not gonna do it?
Speaker 6: No, not another one. Yeah, I thought you had your heart.
Speaker 3: More scary fires and you can chase.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm trying to. That's why we have so many
Speaker 6: to pick from now.
Speaker 3: The pressure is on them.
Speaker 6: It's not part of your remote tactical right.
Speaker 4: No, No, it.
Speaker 6: Was like five.
Speaker 3: Do it.
Speaker 6: No, these are all the harder ones that we have.
Speaker 8: You showed it to me before, but it's whatever they
Speaker 8: don't about it, Pete.
Speaker 6: I showed every damn good job. We haven't.
Speaker 3: It's gonna come up. You gotta find it.
Speaker 7: That's what happened. I should I showed every one of them.
Speaker 7: That's all we have. I mean, I'll go through one
Speaker 7: more time to make sure you got the vacant. We
Speaker 7: have the exterior job wasn't it. We have the one
Speaker 7: you you didn't want to mention we delivered deleted if
Speaker 7: you remember, that might have been.
Speaker 4: So that's that was the one that was the one deleted.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's that important, you know.
Speaker 6: So we got chief shows some ship up here and
Speaker 6: then I'll storry about good.
Speaker 3: Don't worry about it right there.
Speaker 6: Oh the clip on.
Speaker 4: You made the one with the four or five buildings
Speaker 4: that we said.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, okay, So I put myself together.
Speaker 6: Baby.
Speaker 8: So timmy's working, he's working an eighty eight engine. I'm working.
Speaker 8: So the first time we come there, I think it
Speaker 8: was the white building, the one in the middle, and
Speaker 8: it was maybe one or two floors going, you know,
Speaker 8: and it's one of those boxes that if you pull
Speaker 8: one side of the street, it's their first two and
Speaker 8: if you pull the other side, we're first to him.
Speaker 8: So we pull up and we're like nose to nose
Speaker 8: and I'm like, Timmy, you take it. She was, you know,
Speaker 8: your first to want a ticket, and uh so we
Speaker 8: have to the fire, you know. We looked at each
Speaker 8: other and we said we're going to be back, you know.
Speaker 8: So sure enough, the next I think it was the
Speaker 8: next set of tours. So we get relocated at like
Speaker 8: four o'clock in the afternoon to a battalion where the
Speaker 8: chief sometimes gets a little bit over zealous and maybe
Speaker 8: exaggerates a little bit.
Speaker 3: And he's not a screamer, is he.
Speaker 8: Now, he's not a screamer, but he just tends to
Speaker 8: embellish things a little bit. So, you know, we go
Speaker 8: up to this other company and we're relocated there. I'm
Speaker 8: not happy about it. So anyway, they come back, it
Speaker 8: was nothing as usual whatever. And then again I told
Speaker 8: my show for Jay Reen. I said, Jay, do me
Speaker 8: a favor. Let's take Webster down. So we took Webster down.
Speaker 8: I never do that. I normally jump on a Bronx
Speaker 8: river or whatever. So I said, let's take Webster down.
Speaker 8: So we take Webster down and then I get it
Speaker 8: gets about Bedford Park Boulevard and I hear the dispatcher.
Speaker 8: I think it was the beef. He's like, uh, bronched
Speaker 8: the battalion one nine. We're getting numerous calls. Uh, you're
Speaker 8: going to work and uh so Timmy's an eighty eight engine, right,
Speaker 8: and it's like a second on arrival. I think it
Speaker 8: was like almost with urlam. Immediately so I get on
Speaker 8: the radio. I'm like, uh yeah, engine four six were available,
Speaker 8: and he says were are.
Speaker 4: I am like, yeah, we're closed. Where do you think
Speaker 4: we are? Of course we're around the block.
Speaker 3: Taking it in.
Speaker 8: So anyway, we get there and the chiefs in front
Speaker 8: of the building goes, Danny goes, pick a building in
Speaker 8: any building, you know. So I'm like, so I I
Speaker 8: picked the maybe exposure to a whatever it was, you know.
Speaker 6: And uh.
Speaker 8: I get in there, and I mean, it was just
Speaker 8: amazing amount of fire. And I have to tell you,
Speaker 8: this is almost like a teaching point, and I'll I'll
Speaker 8: admit the mistakes that I made. So I told my
Speaker 8: guys is you just wait here with the line. I
Speaker 8: just want to see what's going on. So I went
Speaker 8: up and I'm this is the mistake I made. I
Speaker 8: was with other people, guys from rescue from another truck company,
Speaker 8: and I looked out the So I'm in this blue
Speaker 8: building right here, this blue front, and I looked to
Speaker 8: the right and all I see is orange and the
Speaker 8: bathroom is got a little fire in it. So I'm like, ah,
Speaker 8: it's fine, So I ignore it. I go up to
Speaker 8: the third floor. I get to the top floor, and
Speaker 8: I'm like right down on my belly, like you know,
Speaker 8: I just like it was so it was. It's like
Speaker 8: it was just like it was ready to it was
Speaker 8: ready to light up. And sure enough it lit up.
Speaker 8: And I don't know how I got down to the
Speaker 8: first floor, but by the time I got to the
Speaker 8: first floor, I was I was like shaken, like like
Speaker 8: you can't believe. I don't it either flashed, exploded or
Speaker 8: whatever it was. But let me tell you something. If
Speaker 8: you're ever in that position and you see fire, and
Speaker 8: I've done this more than once, you go back down,
Speaker 8: you turn around, you get the line, and you go
Speaker 8: back the line with yeah, take it with you. You
Speaker 8: don't pass fire. Never passed fire. I've done that in
Speaker 8: my career four times, and every time it was the
Speaker 8: same story. You know you think you would learn yep, So.
Speaker 3: Like almost like pulling your boots up.
Speaker 4: What kind of buildings are those? I don't think I've
Speaker 4: ever seen it.
Speaker 8: Frames. I think they were like frames.
Speaker 4: I think the one it looked like old buildings like all.
Speaker 8: Around for a long time. One, two, three, four, there
Speaker 8: was five of them. They were all gone. They put
Speaker 8: up A thirty one was in the back, Timmy, Timmy
Speaker 8: did an amazing job. He set up to Stany in
Speaker 8: the front and uh they he just he knocked down
Speaker 8: as much fire as he could. I mean, I mean
Speaker 8: it was just his hands were tied.
Speaker 4: That's forty six right in the front, and that other
Speaker 4: picture in the front.
Speaker 8: We're probably up a little bit further further, but that
Speaker 8: thing is I think that's eighty eight.
Speaker 4: Are those buildings still there? Did they make the we
Speaker 4: didn't do so good there?
Speaker 6: Wait?
Speaker 3: Involved the cross street.
Speaker 8: In the wide Washington, and he was.
Speaker 3: Right double a street did a good job and knocking
Speaker 3: it down.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, my favorite line, we didn't do so good there?
Speaker 3: Before we go to chief. You got the other pictures
Speaker 3: guys that you may or may not find from forty.
Speaker 6: Those were the only two that we got. Everything else,
Speaker 6: So we're good, but we'll.
Speaker 4: Have to go back.
Speaker 6: At least I know where they are.
Speaker 5: So he does it again. He starts studying rough and
Speaker 5: he gets made battalion chief.
Speaker 4: It's a fought smeller.
Speaker 3: He was one of those fought smells. Bro smart fellas,
Speaker 3: is that was that the plan?
Speaker 5: All?
Speaker 3: All? You wanted to go to chief or not so much?
Speaker 8: You know? My father in law was a battalion chief,
Speaker 8: and you know, I had some big shoes to fill, right.
Speaker 8: It's funny how I modeled his career exactly, like he
Speaker 8: was a captain of forty one engine And that was
Speaker 8: interesting detailed over there because they all knew my my
Speaker 8: father in law. A funny, funny story. There was a
Speaker 8: guy Tony Lamagne in forty one. He was he was
Speaker 8: he was interesting guy Tony, great fireman, but he was.
Speaker 4: Just a great picture. Right there where is.
Speaker 8: That expayn I think Mike Dick took that picture. It
Speaker 8: was on Third Avenue. You think seventy threes in there,
Speaker 8: and that's Nicholson is the lieutenant I think, and seventy
Speaker 8: one engines in there. But so anyway that they're fighting
Speaker 8: in the kitchen. Now he's the captain, and uh, there
Speaker 8: was a tough fire house, tough tough house even when
Speaker 8: I I mean, I remember the old time. Is that
Speaker 8: Whitey Watson and these guys just notorious guys, tough tough guys,
Speaker 8: you know. And one day they're arguing and they're arguing
Speaker 8: over the commissary, you know, and he says, hey, guys,
Speaker 8: you know, and they turn around and look at him
Speaker 8: and goes you stay out of it. Yeah, but I'm
Speaker 8: Bob in a kitchen, you know, meaning that in the kitchen,
Speaker 8: he's Bob, So hence the name Bob in the kitchen,
Speaker 8: Bob in the kitchen.
Speaker 4: How did they come up with this stuff? Like it's
Speaker 4: a classic? They would never forget it either.
Speaker 6: Just sticks.
Speaker 3: Oh he saw how they came up with spucky you
Speaker 3: know what I play?
Speaker 8: Yeah? So yeah, so I guess you know. I thought
Speaker 8: I was going to be a deputy, but I wound
Speaker 8: up being a battalion chief. And I love being a
Speaker 8: battalion chief. I spent the most time, I think sixteen
Speaker 8: seventeen years as a battalion chief, and I really grew
Speaker 8: into that role. I just loved being a battalion chief.
Speaker 8: I really felt comfortable in the South in this you know,
Speaker 8: like the sixth Division. I felt like all the buildings,
Speaker 8: I knew them. I knew, you know, one thing.
Speaker 3: Special about the back of the division.
Speaker 8: I started out in the first I spent like a
Speaker 8: year or two that it was a bedfit.
Speaker 3: And it's amazing he got back to the rough. This
Speaker 3: guy keeps landing on his feet. He did.
Speaker 8: I don't think they liked me to I don't know.
Speaker 4: It wasn't you went down after two years of that,
Speaker 4: you know, you could you could pretty much go where
Speaker 4: you want.
Speaker 8: It was interesting. I I did have a high rise
Speaker 8: fire too, but uh, I just I liked being in
Speaker 8: the sixth I know, I know the buildings, you know,
Speaker 8: like Trish.
Speaker 3: Know somebody who loves him to do I know somebody
Speaker 3: who hates does.
Speaker 6: I was saying he loved them.
Speaker 8: But the thing, the thing about the sixth Division is
Speaker 8: that see I saw it when it was vacant. I
Speaker 8: saw it was occupied, then it was vacant, then it
Speaker 8: became you know, reoccupied. You know, they wearhouse performance and
Speaker 8: then they rehab them. But you know, the thing about
Speaker 8: the tenements and the h types in like the sixteenth
Speaker 8: Battalion of fourteenth to two, sixth, one, seven, the third,
Speaker 8: even the eighteenth and the nineteenth, is that the rehab
Speaker 8: buildings are very unique. I mean, I'm sure Brooklyn has them.
Speaker 8: I don't think I've seen them much in Queens as
Speaker 8: much as as in the parts of Brooklyn and the
Speaker 8: Haarlem and Bronx in the Lower east Side. But the voids,
Speaker 8: I mean, you have to know what you're doing in
Speaker 8: those buildings. Because they could get away with you like
Speaker 8: like that, you know, like they.
Speaker 4: Just like.
Speaker 3: Really fast over there.
Speaker 6: Man.
Speaker 8: So I used to like the new new offices would
Speaker 8: come in. I bring them up to your office and like, guys, listen,
Speaker 8: I don't know if you ever worked in a sixth division,
Speaker 8: but you know, you get a building and it says
Speaker 8: rehab on the sids. You gotta go slop, you know
Speaker 8: what I mean? Like, just take your time and don't
Speaker 8: be so quick, you know.
Speaker 3: So, God, you got some pictures of battalion chief or
Speaker 3: you want you want a couple of minutes and sort
Speaker 3: them out.
Speaker 8: Wow, he made me give that back. I had to
Speaker 8: turn it in. What so I had to get a
Speaker 8: new one.
Speaker 4: You have to take.
Speaker 3: We have uh scary fire guys.
Speaker 7: We can go back to the fires because as you're saw,
Speaker 7: I gave you a quick glimpse of some of the look.
Speaker 5: At him again as you were looking for the other one.
Speaker 5: So let's do a repeat.
Speaker 6: All here we go. This was a good one. He
Speaker 6: had a good story with this one.
Speaker 3: I don't think I've seen that before.
Speaker 8: This was an interesting fight. Seventy three engine Richie Bonacaus
Speaker 8: maybe the best chaufer i've ever seen on the FtM
Speaker 8: why and that's spanning old years. I mean there was
Speaker 8: a lot of great chauffeurs, I mean amazing, Like I
Speaker 8: remember I can remember being like new and watching some
Speaker 8: of those like American La Frances or those Max pumping
Speaker 8: and they would they would be rocking like they would
Speaker 8: be they'd be pumping so hard. They'd be supplying a towel,
Speaker 8: ladder and a line or two and they would literally
Speaker 8: be rocking in this.
Speaker 4: Scary sounds right, yeah, too loud.
Speaker 8: So Richie. Unfortunately, Richie, I think drove him. You know,
Speaker 8: every great farm and something drives them, you know. And
Speaker 8: what drove Richie was that he was at the fire
Speaker 8: in eighty five where the captain died across the street
Speaker 8: from forty two truck, and I think he made it
Speaker 8: his mission just to be a great chauffeur, and he
Speaker 8: he just was. He just knocked it out of the park.
Speaker 8: And so every time I looked on the right and
Speaker 8: and I saw Richie working, I was like, wow, you know, like,
Speaker 8: you know a lot of my problems are gone and
Speaker 8: this was what So this was a funny. So what
Speaker 8: I had a thing I did in the in Hunts
Speaker 8: Point when the box would come in, if it was
Speaker 8: like a one in one for like a car fire
Speaker 8: or a truck fire. I always had the radio on anyway,
Speaker 8: but I would pay attention because most of the times
Speaker 8: a truck fire and hunts Point usually means it's parked
Speaker 8: at the dock or the bay and it's attached to
Speaker 8: a building. So this one came in as a one
Speaker 8: and one for a truck fire, and I'm like, I'm
Speaker 8: paying attention to it. I'm like this something's My gut
Speaker 8: was telling me something's off here, you know. And anyway,
Speaker 8: right after that, like thirty seconds, like the old days
Speaker 8: when they have any airs box and then they would
Speaker 8: fill it out when they got a second sauce. This
Speaker 8: one they filled out. And I'll never forget this, right,
Speaker 8: So I come out onto the apron. I look left
Speaker 8: and it was like like normally I could see the
Speaker 8: whole skyline of Manhattan, it was nothing but black. It
Speaker 8: was this black, black cloud.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 8: So anyway, so now we're going towards the box was
Speaker 8: over by Garrison somewhere, you know, and ten seventy five whatever,
Speaker 8: and uh, the roofman young guy Richie rivera young kid
Speaker 8: from forty eight truck amazing. I mean, guy was only
Speaker 8: a pro. He gave me the best report. He's like, Chief,
Speaker 8: we got seven. He must have counted him. We have
Speaker 8: seventeen trucks on fire. So this truck fire was a
Speaker 8: repair lot and there was exposures on three sides with
Speaker 8: windows in the in the you know, in the courtyard
Speaker 8: there you know, where the trucks were, and I mean
Speaker 8: the amount of fire was just it was also the
Speaker 8: guy we saw him on video was forty gallons of
Speaker 8: diesel and he.
Speaker 4: Built if you know, I was thinking when he said
Speaker 4: the windows were right next to the building, right there.
Speaker 3: Nice, nice, nice nice.
Speaker 4: Chief's thinking, oh shit, I'm going nice.
Speaker 3: So now shit, he smoked too, man.
Speaker 8: So now the propane tanks are going ninety four of No.
Speaker 8: Ducci was working, knocked it out of the park. He
Speaker 8: just crushed it. Doucci Doccici. Yeah, I love that guy.
Speaker 3: Provaty school, not Ducci. The only guy short guys John
Speaker 3: walters In, not Ducci, shorter than me.
Speaker 8: He's the best. Yeah. So anyway, so I made I
Speaker 8: just made sure I left the front open for a
Speaker 8: towel ladder, you know, And the tower ladder shows up
Speaker 8: and I'm like, hey, you know, get the towel ladder
Speaker 8: set up, and Richie's got the water all sort of
Speaker 8: before you know, we had five lines stretched on both
Speaker 8: exposures and we already were getting the real sorted, you know,
Speaker 8: and Rob set up the deck gun the stang and
Speaker 8: instead of you know, they're ready to supply a towel ladder.
Speaker 8: The captain he's like, but Chief, I'm the fast truck.
Speaker 8: I said, I don't give up. You know what, man,
Speaker 8: get that towel ladder up. I got a radio, I
Speaker 8: got another towel adder. I set them fifty four up
Speaker 8: in the back. We had like two towel ladders going
Speaker 8: in five lines within like ten minutes, and we had
Speaker 8: water everywhere and no problems. And the Deputy's like, hey, Danny,
Speaker 8: I think we should give a second Alum.
Speaker 4: I'm like all right.
Speaker 8: And they kept the fire out of all those buildings.
Speaker 8: I mean, they just every engine I mean got them.
Speaker 8: They just one better job than the next. You know,
Speaker 8: that aligns on the roofs that had them in the buildings.
Speaker 3: Got to make you proud.
Speaker 8: Oh, I mean, it's just a pleasure. I mean, it's
Speaker 8: just like working with these guys it's amazing.
Speaker 3: God give us another one.
Speaker 4: Did you did you mold yourself? Like, did you find
Speaker 4: yourself doing?
Speaker 6: Yes?
Speaker 4: Actually things like guys that you liked.
Speaker 8: And I had absolutely. One of my mentors was Tommy Martin.
Speaker 8: I love this guy because you know, everyone loved him,
Speaker 8: but yet he was a great chief, you know. And
Speaker 8: he said to me, I'll never forget I walked into
Speaker 8: the firehouse, I had like ten minutes on the job.
Speaker 8: He pushes me up against the board in seventies. Is kid,
Speaker 8: it's easy to leave your wife than it is to
Speaker 8: leave the fight apartment years old. And I'm like, what
Speaker 8: just talking about? And I know what he meant, because
Speaker 8: thirty nine years later here I am like, you know still, yeah, man,
Speaker 8: I had only the day behind me. You see that
Speaker 8: coach behind me, the chiefs code. I was hanging up
Speaker 8: and I had I had a moment.
Speaker 4: It was like, wow, you.
Speaker 3: I had to Yeah, it happens to the best of us.
Speaker 8: It was very it was emotional. I couldn't believe I
Speaker 8: got so emotional.
Speaker 3: You know, Well, it becomes who you are, that's the problem.
Speaker 8: Nik Wisconsin was another guy.
Speaker 3: What a nice man, so niceol.
Speaker 8: He worked with my father in law in the second
Speaker 8: section of fifty you always had that connection, you know,
Speaker 8: Kilker Kennedy. I mean, there's so many chiefs there were
Speaker 8: just these guys were just so cool man, you know
Speaker 8: what I mean, Like they just not didn't rattle these guys.
Speaker 4: You know what, what do you think is the thing
Speaker 4: that is to get to get them met to do
Speaker 4: what you want, but at the same time that they
Speaker 4: like you. Isn't that at such a tough thing to do, right,
Speaker 4: like without being too friendly? Right? Oh, I don't know
Speaker 4: if not too friendly, but you know what I'm saying, Like.
Speaker 8: I think, you know, I'll tell you what I did
Speaker 8: being the chief, because you get as you get older,
Speaker 8: you get more comfortable, you know. And you know, I
Speaker 8: had three daughters, and I used to tell my brother
Speaker 8: in law and we used to talk about raising kids,
Speaker 8: and I said, listen, my kids have a lot of friends.
Speaker 8: They only have one father that's me, you know. And
Speaker 8: I never, you know, I never got involved with group
Speaker 8: chats and stuff on the board and stuff like that,
Speaker 8: you know, like it's just not my my thing. It's
Speaker 8: not like I'm the chief. I mean, you gotta be.
Speaker 8: You got someone's got to be the chief, you know
Speaker 8: what I mean. So it's great if they like you.
Speaker 8: I mean I found that, you know, I loved praising
Speaker 8: guys in public. Like we had this kid. He was
Speaker 8: a rotator. I can't remember his name. He came from
Speaker 8: a place in Queen's and the kid did an amazing job.
Speaker 8: And I just made sure that everybody in the battalion
Speaker 8: that this kid did this great job. We had a
Speaker 8: we had a phone on like three in the morning
Speaker 8: for I guess for an odor of smoke, and it
Speaker 8: was on Watson Big H type building. And uh, I'm
Speaker 8: in the street and someone says, all right, you know,
Speaker 8: truck company to battalion or whatever. It's an oil burner,
Speaker 8: and just something about it. It didn't feel right, like
Speaker 8: I just I don't know how to describe it. But
Speaker 8: it's just something the spider sense was just tingling, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like from his grandma. The spider sense got
Speaker 3: it from grandma.
Speaker 8: From grandma, I just kind of held off, you know.
Speaker 8: Then this kid was a rotator. God, I wish I
Speaker 8: remember his name. He was a great kids some company
Speaker 8: in Queens and and you know, he just went to
Speaker 8: his position. You know, his job was the roof and
Speaker 8: he went to the roof and next thing, I get
Speaker 8: a report ladder four eight roof to Battalian chief. We
Speaker 8: got a rubbish fire on the roof. It wasn't a
Speaker 8: rubbish fire. It had burned through the cock loft and
Speaker 8: it was just a small isolated fire. And uh yeah,
Speaker 8: we stretched the line, we pulled the ceilings, put the
Speaker 8: fire out, and we could have lost that hole. It
Speaker 8: was a tremendous age type But you know, like the
Speaker 8: kid did a great job, you know, and I made
Speaker 8: sure everyone knew about it, right, you know, And I think.
Speaker 4: It was a public right praise the public when.
Speaker 8: Guys do a good job. You know, I always tell
Speaker 8: him over the radio after the job it guys, I
Speaker 8: mean this like, you know, thank you, great job. And
Speaker 8: if you know things don't go right, you know, you
Speaker 8: you come into the office and you know we could
Speaker 8: talk about it, you know. But as far as I'm
Speaker 8: liking you, I don't know. I mean, I wish I
Speaker 8: had that magic. I mean, Tommy Martin had a lot
Speaker 8: of guys had it, But I don't know.
Speaker 3: I know, guys, I know a chief didn't. Do You
Speaker 3: want to tell your chief Steve's story now?
Speaker 8: Okay, it's not a bad story.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 8: So I'm working in has Man, I'm working has Mat
Speaker 8: and we get something out Rockaway and Phil mccaddal to
Speaker 8: me is like Phil mccaudell.
Speaker 4: Im, did he have a jumpsuit on? A black jumpsuit?
Speaker 8: He is just like he has that guy. He just
Speaker 8: is the guy, you know. So he had some kind
Speaker 8: of has Met thing and we get there and I
Speaker 8: reported to the chief chief, how you doing. I think
Speaker 8: he might have been Battalian chief at the time. So
Speaker 8: I'm like he's telling me, hey, I got this thing whatever,
Speaker 8: and I'm like, okay. So I go has Matt to
Speaker 8: you know, I don't know what Phil's position was, and
Speaker 8: he looks at me. He goes, what are you doing.
Speaker 8: I said, I'm checking with my experts about what's going on.
Speaker 8: He goes, Yo, the lieutenant, you should know. I'm like,
Speaker 8: I'm here for the night, nothing about has Matt whatever.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 8: I covered I could, and he got pissed off him.
Speaker 8: He's like, why are you asking him? I'm like, because
Speaker 8: the guy wrote the book has.
Speaker 3: Met, So stick to you chiefs, do you.
Speaker 8: So?
Speaker 4: Anyway?
Speaker 8: That was my only That's.
Speaker 4: Only start A pledge pin uniform.
Speaker 3: White socks as gosh, thats god more five pictures come on.
Speaker 8: This is a funny story. So this I knew this
Speaker 8: building intimately because it's a rehab right And I was
Speaker 8: at another box with my aid. Uh it was funny
Speaker 8: and uh I looked at him. I said, that sounds
Speaker 8: like a job. I said, let's start driving down the Bruckner,
Speaker 8: you know. So we start driving down the Bruckner and
Speaker 8: uh ten seventy five. I'm the old hands chief. I
Speaker 8: reported to the chief and he said, I, Danny, go
Speaker 8: to the top floor. Go to the top floor. Sixty
Speaker 8: eighty three, seventy three, they're roll up there. They were
Speaker 8: leaving each other. Uh, Brooksy from sixty engine is on fire.
Speaker 8: I'm like, Brooksy, you're on fire because a chief, I know,
Speaker 8: you're run fire. Yeah, his coat was on fire. Like Brooks,
Speaker 8: you're on trying, you're on you're on fire man. So anyway,
Speaker 8: they're knocking down all this fire. And I'm like a
Speaker 8: battalion three to command. I said, with making great progress.
Speaker 8: We're knocking down fire, you know. Whatever. Next thing, you know,
Speaker 8: Roger sackle which comes up onto the top floor and
Speaker 8: Roger and I said, what are you doing here? I said,
Speaker 8: you know, he's the he's the old he's the city.
Speaker 8: Why told command? He said, Dan? He said third along.
Speaker 8: I said really, so yeah, obviously the inside didn't match
Speaker 8: the outside.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, I got it, Yeah, I got you. I
Speaker 7: gotta let me just I'm looking for the I wanted.
Speaker 7: This one was the one looking.
Speaker 8: Oh my god, this is a Richie Bond Cossa classic
Speaker 8: fire And he and I were just so dialed in
Speaker 8: on the same page. Soe o'clock in the afternoon is
Speaker 8: overrun Prospect and one hundred right down the block from
Speaker 8: the fire house, one five six whatever, And the whole
Speaker 8: thing the kids had lit up the garbage and it
Speaker 8: took the whole side of the building. So Richie shows up,
Speaker 8: so seventy three, hits it with the deck gun and
Speaker 8: stretches the line. McCutchen was the boss, and they stretch
Speaker 8: a line to cover the whole building. They knock down
Speaker 8: all the fire on the outside. The only thing that
Speaker 8: we had was window frames on the on all floors,
Speaker 8: and it was done like in twenty minutes, And that
Speaker 8: could have been easily who knows what that could have been.
Speaker 3: Exposed and you wouldn't even known it.
Speaker 8: Richie had the wherewithal to like like the deck gun,
Speaker 8: like I would that, that's my dream, Like, yeah, I
Speaker 8: wish all engine companies if they have fires like this, Yeah,
Speaker 8: pull up the deck gun and just get yeah, wucket man.
Speaker 8: You know they got a unit secuation for that.
Speaker 6: By the way, nice, nice, sorry we go here we go.
Speaker 8: So that was that was a that was an interesting job, right.
Speaker 8: So I call this like Archie uncle like land. You know,
Speaker 8: like in Queens you guys are too young for it,
Speaker 8: but like all in the family used to open up
Speaker 8: with a big aerial shot of Queens, right, and the
Speaker 8: world these two half story private dwellings and now you
Speaker 8: now you start having these like mc mansions, right, Like
Speaker 8: they take these three story monstrosities and they put them
Speaker 8: inside all these like two and a half story right.
Speaker 8: So I came on the like the second alarm now, right,
Speaker 8: and I go to the command post and like I
Speaker 8: first question I asked, is like what do you call it?
Speaker 8: I said, I said a chief, I said, is this lightweight?
Speaker 8: And he goes, I don't know, is it? So I
Speaker 8: get on the radio, like all right, TI in three
Speaker 8: light of four seven, So Timmy gipples work. I said, Timmy,
Speaker 8: what's going on? We got lightweight hold on chief. Yeah,
Speaker 8: we got lightweight, so you know what could happen with
Speaker 8: these The fire blew out the windows in the cellar,
Speaker 8: and the it could get up into that truck us
Speaker 8: like if the fire was lapping up the side of
Speaker 8: the building. Sixty four engine crushed it. I mean they
Speaker 8: put out all the fire in the alleyway, they put
Speaker 8: out the exposure, and then they made it down the
Speaker 8: basement and they put it put out the basement. I
Speaker 8: wanted to put him in for a unit. Not everybody
Speaker 8: agreed with me, but they deserve the unit for that one.
Speaker 6: Nice. Nice, Sorry, I got one more for you. Sorry.
Speaker 6: I was answering your boy fish.
Speaker 4: Franky the motto.
Speaker 8: This is just an old that that was from.
Speaker 4: It looks like the rock holy ship waiting to see
Speaker 4: the guy come down with the.
Speaker 6: UK to the guy that one little right. Yeah.
Speaker 8: I was actually working in sixty engine that night. I
Speaker 8: was detailed to the engine and we put out I
Speaker 8: don't how many floors of fire, but they pulled out
Speaker 8: I think Timmy, I think Timmy Klekt took pictures at
Speaker 8: that job. I'm not sure because he was these are
Speaker 8: I think these are his photos. He's got pictures of it.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: Another parking lot in the proxy.
Speaker 8: So Tom did a great job at that fire, and
Speaker 8: I don't know it was it. Frankie Trummer was a
Speaker 8: mcdell of both of them. But normally when we used
Speaker 8: to respond to this box, we'd go down one four
Speaker 8: one against traffic and then that was our normal way
Speaker 8: to respond to Beakman and Oak. But this one day,
Speaker 8: I don't know what possessed them. They went the right
Speaker 8: way with traffic down one hundred and forty fourth the
Speaker 8: stands and it turns out that seventeen was positioned on
Speaker 8: the I guess it's Oak Terrace and there were people
Speaker 8: hanging out the windows and Tom probably grabbed about six
Speaker 8: people in a bucket off the top floor. So just
Speaker 8: by you know, just by lucky, they seventeen. Like, we
Speaker 8: would never respond that way, you know, but we happened
Speaker 8: to respond that way. Spider sense again again, that spider sense, man.
Speaker 3: You know what we're putting this together, bro The spider
Speaker 3: sense a huge buff because a lot of times he's
Speaker 3: turning out listening to the radio. I don't know what's
Speaker 3: going on. There, plus the spider sense. We got to
Speaker 3: be doing a rescue multiple bump bull sounds like a job,
Speaker 3: not like a.
Speaker 8: Job that's old audio, because that was. Yeah.
Speaker 6: I saved some of the old ones. You know, gonna
Speaker 6: bring those back.
Speaker 8: Those were amazing. Though I can't remember, Oh man, pull up,
Speaker 8: you're going to work.
Speaker 4: You're still say fire Man's on this podcast.
Speaker 6: All the pictures, I don't know. We have this burnt
Speaker 6: out show and whoa.
Speaker 8: Look at seventy three engine job. Danny Sombrado was the captain.
Speaker 8: I I owe him a unit citation on this one,
Speaker 8: and we didn't get one. There was a little lesson
Speaker 8: learned on this one.
Speaker 3: We had.
Speaker 8: We had a fatality, and I don't know if I
Speaker 8: could say I dropped the ball. I mean the guy
Speaker 8: was dead anyway, so I mean there was no savment.
Speaker 8: We pulled up. It was Frontier. I remember pulling up
Speaker 8: and Richie again was driving. He knew that he knew
Speaker 8: that the hydrant was at a service in front, so
Speaker 8: he already addressed that they pushed that fire from the
Speaker 8: front to the rear. No problem. I pulled up and
Speaker 8: I looked in the back. I took a peek down
Speaker 8: the alleyway and I see the fire in the windows
Speaker 8: in the building back. I see every window, fire out,
Speaker 8: every single window, and they crushed it.
Speaker 4: And uh.
Speaker 8: Someone had said to me, see, when you get an ABC, right,
Speaker 8: you gotta even though no, so I was first too.
Speaker 8: It was I first too. Somehow I had an ABC,
Speaker 8: and uh, and then the deputy came. So I got
Speaker 8: kind of lost in the weeds. But the people were
Speaker 8: telling me, hey, you know Jose or whatever, you know,
Speaker 8: he's there, and then other people like, nah, he jumped
Speaker 8: out the window. So anyway, in the interim, you know,
Speaker 8: total burnout. Right, I didn't show you the picture of
Speaker 8: the interior, but all you saw was laughing, you know.
Speaker 8: And then the next day I'm in the firehouse and
Speaker 8: the phone rings and it's like, uh, Chief is Field
Speaker 8: Battalian three. It's the Marshalls Chief. I helpe you sitting down.
Speaker 8: I'm like, oh, sh Jose didn't jump out the window.
Speaker 8: They found a bone. One bone found so really one bone,
Speaker 8: that's all it was. It was a bone the size
Speaker 8: of a like a that's it.
Speaker 4: That's all.
Speaker 8: It was a total burnout. But I mean, so I
Speaker 8: know if that was the reason why I couldn't put
Speaker 8: them in for the unit. But I mean the amount
Speaker 8: they kept the fire from going above I mean it
Speaker 8: was just an amazing right amount of fire that they
Speaker 8: put out.
Speaker 3: So he's not available for overtime.
Speaker 4: Have to go somewhere else and hire.
Speaker 6: Yeah, all right. The last job pick I have is.
Speaker 4: This, Oh, that looks like a good one.
Speaker 8: It was a vacant. It was a vacant on one
Speaker 8: hundred and forty ninth in Timpson. So we had a job.
Speaker 3: Let me ask you one question before you get that.
Speaker 5: Do you have all these written down or all these
Speaker 5: coming out of your mind totally?
Speaker 6: Should? We were going through I'm like, shit, I can't
Speaker 6: type that quickly.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 8: So we had a job on Elton, like in one
Speaker 8: hundred and fifty fourth and sleven was a chief at
Speaker 8: the time. He was acting deputy chief, right, So it
Speaker 8: was Tommy Mahoney's last night and sixty engine. So it
Speaker 8: was like a three story vacant, you know, and it
Speaker 8: was Tommy's last night. The guy had been through the warriors.
Speaker 8: It was like thirty years on a job and he
Speaker 8: was gonna have the nozzle right anyway.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 8: We uh, we take the front of the building fifty
Speaker 8: five at the time was still in the old fire out.
Speaker 8: So we had the front of the building and Slevin
Speaker 8: was like, we're ready to go in. He's like, nope,
Speaker 8: no one's going in. We're like, come on, chief, it's
Speaker 8: move man's last night. Like, let's let him have the
Speaker 8: nozzle and you're not going in. Set up the towel
Speaker 8: ladder and boom, all right. So we set up the
Speaker 8: towel and now I'm in a bucket with this guy Bobby, right,
Speaker 8: and we're knocking down all the fire and now I'm
Speaker 8: pulling the corner. Says, you know, well the corners, I'm
Speaker 8: pulling whatever. And I look at Bobby. I'm like, Bobby,
Speaker 8: why did you move the rig? Like and he says,
Speaker 8: you idiot. He says, the building just fell down. He said, what.
Speaker 6: Collapsed?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 8: That always like stuck in my mind. So I looked
Speaker 8: at the kids on this on this ticket, I'm like,
Speaker 8: vacant building, you know, numerous voids, this and that and
Speaker 8: the other thing.
Speaker 4: So the sure stick the thirty guy on his last
Speaker 4: tour in here, yeah, retiring, the guy dying his last tour.
Speaker 8: First check, that's exactly. So anyway, I I just went
Speaker 8: the from the apparatus on the apparatus floor. I'm just like, listen,
Speaker 8: nobody in the building, and you know whatever, So wind
Speaker 8: up putting out with the towel ladder and whatever.
Speaker 4: It look like a good one to go in there.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 8: The buildings falling down.
Speaker 3: You almost make it to forty What makes you want
Speaker 3: to pack it.
Speaker 8: In age on you? Yeah, feel out of bed.
Speaker 3: You're like, oh, that don't feel so good.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it just it was time, you know, I mean,
Speaker 8: I I was. I got some stuff that I just
Speaker 8: it's just it was time.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 8: They told me that you would know when it was time,
Speaker 8: and it broke my heart, you know.
Speaker 3: I mean, we just had this conversation right rough THEILD.
Speaker 5: You'll know, my uncle, who had forty years on the job, said,
Speaker 5: you'll know when it's time like this, when you're coming
Speaker 5: back from vacation and you're not putting full of pisson
Speaker 5: vinegar and you can't wait to get back and you
Speaker 5: don't feel that way anymore.
Speaker 3: It's time.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 8: I was six, I'll be sixty four next week. And
Speaker 8: it's like, you know, my wife's retiring, we got a grandchild.
Speaker 8: You know, it's just enough.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you've done your ship.
Speaker 8: I'm trying not to think about it, you know, like
Speaker 8: I try that to dwell on it. I'm like, it sucks,
Speaker 8: It really sucks. I mean, he really does. I mean
Speaker 8: it's said, I mean, I mean, but you have to
Speaker 8: move on. I mean, I guess she's everyone's got to
Speaker 8: go through it, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah when you're asking, yeah, for you to do it?
Speaker 3: So have you had have you had the dream yet?
Speaker 4: He's not officially retired, right, you.
Speaker 3: Haven't been in the fire house in a while, Right when?
Speaker 8: When when the dreams? But being fires and stuff?
Speaker 5: Now about not about having getting a run and not
Speaker 5: being able to fund your gear. I'm not that is
Speaker 5: that happened with every retired guy.
Speaker 6: Let us know.
Speaker 3: I want you to call.
Speaker 4: It's gonna be on your mind now.
Speaker 6: Yeah, now we just plane.
Speaker 8: You're messed up my head. But I've I've been having
Speaker 8: dreams about, like you know, being back and working and fires,
Speaker 8: and I always keep having this recurring dream. So I
Speaker 8: grew up in the woodside in the Mets, and it
Speaker 8: was kind of a lower income type of place that
Speaker 8: I think if it had been in another borrow, it
Speaker 8: probably just would have burnt down. And I always have
Speaker 8: these dreams about this mets. You probably because you were
Speaker 8: in twenty eight. I mean you had been third duo
Speaker 8: with him. Maybe maybe, I'm not sure. Forty ninth, forty sixth,
Speaker 8: you know, forty seventh and what fiftieth Avenue?
Speaker 3: Worst squad there?
Speaker 8: Yeah, I know it's close though. You got twenty five
Speaker 8: to ninety two. Yeah, you would be a squad. Yeah,
Speaker 8: But I always have these dreams about it being like
Speaker 8: a vacant like in the Bronx, you know, and like
Speaker 8: all the time, like it's always are you know.
Speaker 5: But well it might have been if it wasn't your
Speaker 5: grandmother well Graham Man, Oh, very good for man. She
Speaker 5: had you followed. No, he passed ye fighters right, yeah, man?
Speaker 3: How many years did he do like me?
Speaker 8: Like thirty seven, eighth, thirty eight? He got on fifty
Speaker 8: seven and got out of ninety five, So do him
Speaker 8: with thirty eight. Maybe we had the same track. He
Speaker 8: started out in thirty three engine. It was lieutenant twenty
Speaker 8: five years.
Speaker 4: That's not bad. I'll take you.
Speaker 8: He was in fifty dash two he was, then he
Speaker 8: was in Brooklyn a little bit, and then he was
Speaker 8: a captain of forty one engine and then he was
Speaker 8: achieved in the three one but ten Wow the same track, Wow,
Speaker 8: same track.
Speaker 3: But who do we have on from seventeen too?
Speaker 6: Oh it was a while ago too.
Speaker 8: Richie Richie. Guy's name is Richie maybe what's his name?
Speaker 3: He was a captain.
Speaker 4: Oh was it a kirk kerk No, not kirk Lester,
Speaker 4: kirk is in No, no, not kirk Lester. It's his
Speaker 4: last name was Kerr or something, Kerstetter something.
Speaker 8: H Richie Kirsten. Yeah, a Kershner Richie, yep.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 8: He used to come around the fireous a lot. Well,
Speaker 8: it's a funny story. One time we're in the kitchen
Speaker 8: in seventeen truck. We had this guy in the big
Speaker 8: room and his father was on a job and his
Speaker 8: grandfather was on a job, right, So this old timer
Speaker 8: comes into the kitchen. His name was Murphy. He was
Speaker 8: in Rescue three because Rescue three was in seventeen trucks
Speaker 8: quarters and this guy the ruin his father was in
Speaker 8: twenty nine truck, right. So anyway, he comes in and
Speaker 8: he looks at this guy in the room. He goes,
Speaker 8: you old fuck, you're still on the job. We knew
Speaker 8: exactly what he meant.
Speaker 5: He thought he was his father, right, that's awesome ruin
Speaker 5: good guys, Not that we haven't got a lot of
Speaker 5: uh whiters.
Speaker 3: But I think it's that time.
Speaker 6: Bro, Is it that time? What time is that? Let
Speaker 6: me let me get this so cute up you guys.
Speaker 6: I was going to show two more pictures, but we
Speaker 6: will do this, yeah, said no, no, there's why I'm
Speaker 6: looking at too.
Speaker 3: He wanted to chief found.
Speaker 6: No, no, this is a Katrina story. Did you want
Speaker 6: to touch on control?
Speaker 8: Oh that's a great story. I love that.
Speaker 6: That was I want to make sure we get to it.
Speaker 8: That was a great story.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 8: So anyways, I got a few minutes, I'll tell the
Speaker 8: whole story. So I'm up in New Hampshire with these
Speaker 8: guys from Ecuador. I did a lot of work in
Speaker 8: South America, helping train guys down there whatever, you know.
Speaker 8: So anyway, I'm watching the news and like, yeah, so
Speaker 8: Katrina is coming to slam it to New Orleans, and
Speaker 8: I think, like what this got nothing to do with me?
Speaker 8: So anyway, I go to work, I guess that night
Speaker 8: and a fact comes over. They're looking for volunteers to
Speaker 8: go down to New Orleans. So I'm like, oh shit,
Speaker 8: does anyone want to go to Orleans? So I volunteered,
Speaker 8: we all volunteered. We send So now we get picked
Speaker 8: to go. So we go show up at JFK like
Speaker 8: four in the morning. We get on this plane. We
Speaker 8: get down there. It's like one hundred degrees like the
Speaker 8: place is like in shambles. It's burning, you know. And
Speaker 8: we go to some nursing home or some Catholic nursing
Speaker 8: home on the other side. I forget the name of
Speaker 8: it now, and we were like, I don't know, it's
Speaker 8: just like we were on our own. We're trying to
Speaker 8: like this guy Ritchie from one twenty four truck is
Speaker 8: like opening them cans of like Campbell's, and we got
Speaker 8: generators going, and like we're like, oh, we're you know
Speaker 8: this is they don't want to see it really. So
Speaker 8: then anyway, the next morning, about five in the morning,
Speaker 8: it was like it was like being on an aircraft carrier.
Speaker 8: This chief comes be goes, I need seventy five guys
Speaker 8: right now. So everyone's jumping on rigs and more and
Speaker 8: we're all flying and you know, in daylight now the
Speaker 8: city's burning again, you know. And they had no water,
Speaker 8: no water at all, so now they're drafting out of
Speaker 8: the streams in the street and the lines are just
Speaker 8: listen that. So anyway, so that night I heard that
Speaker 8: there was seven trucks that were milk trucks converted to
Speaker 8: water trucks and they were using in front of the
Speaker 8: Verizon building to keep it cool, right, because they didn't
Speaker 8: want to lose their communications. And I had this idea,
Speaker 8: I said, I said to Mainz, I used the chief
Speaker 8: at the time. I said, you know, Chief, I said,
Speaker 8: do you think we could try to draft out of
Speaker 8: some of these trucks and maybe we could use them
Speaker 8: for water?
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 8: So I put together team and Frank Lee was my
Speaker 8: main guy. He was at the time lieutenant in three
Speaker 8: twenty four. I had Wayne Melton, Billy Butler. These guys
Speaker 8: had all that kind of rural experience, you know. So
Speaker 8: so Maine said to me him and Ceiling, I think
Speaker 8: was another chief. He says, go ahead, knock yourself out.
Speaker 8: So we went out and we tried drafting out of
Speaker 8: a milk truck and it worked. So I go back
Speaker 8: and I'm like Chief, I said, we were able to
Speaker 8: do it. He goes, forget about the milk trucks. I
Speaker 8: got you eighty water tenders from the wildland. So I'm like,
Speaker 8: all right. So he says, I want you to take
Speaker 8: them and make tesk forces. Right, So my pencil out,
Speaker 8: I did twenty thousand how many gallons a minute? Blah
Speaker 8: blah blah. I came up, I need five. You know Frank,
Speaker 8: you know he knew the mechanics of the satellite, Wayne
Speaker 8: Melton and Billy Butler knew how to do the drafting stuff,
Speaker 8: and then we put together three test force right. Okay,
Speaker 8: so now we got the test forces right. So one
Speaker 8: day I'm out on my rounds. I got this guy,
Speaker 8: he's the wildland guy. And I come up on these
Speaker 8: guys and on the side of the rig, it says
Speaker 8: rain dancers, right, And I said, what's the rain dancers.
Speaker 8: He goes, oh, that's my company. I says, we work
Speaker 8: in wildland fires. I said, oh cool, I said, so
Speaker 8: from now on near the rain dancers. I was just
Speaker 8: joking around, man. So next I saw the next group.
Speaker 8: They were down on Decatur Street, and I said, hey,
Speaker 8: you guys don't have a name. He goes, what do
Speaker 8: you mean, Well, the other guy's the rain dancers. He goes,
Speaker 8: hold on, we're the water wizards. Now they're the water wizards, right.
Speaker 8: So now I see the next group and I'm like,
Speaker 8: you know, we got two groups here, rain dancers in
Speaker 8: the water. You don't even have a name. He goes, oh, yeah,
Speaker 8: we give me a minute. And they're the water dogs right.
Speaker 8: So then, anyway, it became a thing now because we
Speaker 8: were dispatching them out of like the heck, like we
Speaker 8: had a big tent. It was communications saying we were dispatching.
Speaker 8: You know, they call you get a roll or whatever.
Speaker 4: Water dogs stick that in. I just remember.
Speaker 8: Walk out falling. Thought it was the greatest thing. Was like,
Speaker 8: because now they weren't calling them task Force one A.
Speaker 8: It was like, all right, water dogs taking this and nice.
Speaker 6: It was w w.
Speaker 8: Yeah, some deputy chief in.
Speaker 3: The first come on. The guy loves telling stories. Another
Speaker 3: guy can't get the.
Speaker 4: I seen him down there, coops.
Speaker 3: Did you what did you hit him up?
Speaker 8: No?
Speaker 4: I was talking with the other guys.
Speaker 3: Oh bang them again today tomorrow.
Speaker 8: But anyway, they used that water system for about two years.
Speaker 8: I ran to a guy because I became on the
Speaker 8: I M T. And then I met this guy. He says, yeah,
Speaker 8: they used that system for two years. But they got
Speaker 8: a big kick out of the names, you know, because
Speaker 8: it was like, you.
Speaker 5: Know, the water dogs, the water dog, the rain days,
Speaker 5: the double the w d's.
Speaker 4: Brows of H two o's.
Speaker 3: Bultons, of the standpipes.
Speaker 6: What once?
Speaker 8: Once those those water resource groups went in the fires,
Speaker 8: they had water. Now they had twenty thousand gallons of water.
Speaker 3: Who is this Frank talking about?
Speaker 8: Bring this guy out, Frank is this guy used to
Speaker 8: be a lieutenant and him in the seventy six. He's
Speaker 8: the reason why I ran my first marathon. Ah, I
Speaker 8: was covering one day in the eleven botanions like because
Speaker 8: I'm running the marathon. I said, you know what, I
Speaker 8: always wanted to run a marathon.
Speaker 4: And then I won up running the marathon.
Speaker 3: So that was into what I thought about running the
Speaker 3: marathon one day and then I ate a cookie instead.
Speaker 3: Any other pictures gone Before we get to the.
Speaker 6: Old noo, I mean, there's a couple of effort.
Speaker 7: We're good, all right, all right, it's time for here
Speaker 7: you go, chief, oh the old stoopid kit.
Speaker 6: Away.
Speaker 8: Well, I tell you as a five fighter, I mean,
Speaker 8: if I could, if I could go back and do
Speaker 8: things differently, probably would have just put the cotton in
Speaker 8: my mouth, took it out of my ears and put
Speaker 8: it in my mouth and listened. Then just doesn't matter
Speaker 8: what they tell you, just like Yep, that's a good idea.
Speaker 8: That sounds like a good idea.
Speaker 6: Yep.
Speaker 8: Don't never use the words.
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 8: It's tough though, because you know, like you're new and
Speaker 8: you don't want to seem like you're dope, you know,
Speaker 8: so like, but it's really the reverse is true. Like
Speaker 8: when you're probably you really should just be like yeah,
Speaker 8: even if you heard it ten times, yep, that's that's
Speaker 8: great advice. Man, you know, thank you, so you know,
Speaker 8: I mean, we all know, get to work early. You know. No,
Speaker 8: I would tell you another thing as a firefighter, know
Speaker 8: your tools. No if you if you're on an engine,
Speaker 8: no way, everything on that rig is man, know how
Speaker 8: they work everything. I don't care, it's im mess whatever
Speaker 8: phone you know, I can tell your phone story about
Speaker 8: you know, knowing foam.
Speaker 4: But we don't have time.
Speaker 8: But know your tools. If you're in the truck company,
Speaker 8: take them out and drill with them, put ladders, put
Speaker 8: them up, wash them, just get your hands on the tools.
Speaker 8: That's I think this is why we watched the tools
Speaker 8: just so it makes young firefighters, Uh, touch them and
Speaker 8: work with them.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 8: As a lieutenant a captain, I would say, trust your guys,
Speaker 8: trust your firefighters, just you know, give them a lot
Speaker 8: of give them a lot of space, man, you know,
Speaker 8: and uh I had a few times I would tell guys,
Speaker 8: you know, if you're having trouble at home with the
Speaker 8: wife or whatever, you know, when you come in that door,
Speaker 8: just leave those troubles in the car, man. And if
Speaker 8: you if you need, then take time go call the
Speaker 8: counseling unit whatever. But don't ever ever bring your troubles
Speaker 8: into the firehouse because it's gonna it could get you
Speaker 8: killed or could get somebody else to killed.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 8: So but you know, as an officer, just really just
Speaker 8: just lean on the guys, you know. You know, as
Speaker 8: a chief, you know it's a silly tip, but you know,
Speaker 8: use all your senses. I used to leave the windows
Speaker 8: open if it was zero degrees or it was one
Speaker 8: hundred degrees, the windows are open because you know, you
Speaker 8: never know what you're going to be exposed to. I
Speaker 8: mean I gave it ten seventy five one time, just
Speaker 8: because I had the window open, and I smelled something
Speaker 8: and turned out to be a top flur of fires.
Speaker 8: So just keep the winders, be patient and trust the guys.
Speaker 8: And as a chief, if you like I used to
Speaker 8: love like if I get a tap on the shoulder,
Speaker 8: like Teazo was great at that, he'd tap on the
Speaker 8: chief shoulder in the fifth division, or you know, hey, Chief,
Speaker 8: what about this? You know and Ralph, that's a good idea.
Speaker 8: Want you check that out? Be open to like because
Speaker 8: you can only see so much. You know, you're chief.
Speaker 8: You don't have X ray vision. You gotta you gotta
Speaker 8: get as much information as you can. And if someone
Speaker 8: has a good idea, go with it. That's my basically my.
Speaker 3: You're listening to your career. Great career, great five stories,
Speaker 3: tremendous detail. I don't know how you remember all boss.
Speaker 8: And they call it a spark. I have a they
Speaker 8: call it a spark. They call it spot.
Speaker 6: Wicked smart, they're.
Speaker 8: Wicked, well, they're wicked smart.
Speaker 4: My daughter is wicked smart.
Speaker 8: She lives in Boston. You know, I always put on
Speaker 8: a boss and accident she gets pistol because Dad, you're
Speaker 8: not from Boston.
Speaker 4: But you live in you know.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I started doing at your car. You know, I
Speaker 8: read directed my first two battalion chief with fire engineering,
Speaker 8: and I have Eric Petaway from Boston.
Speaker 4: He's my my.
Speaker 8: My counterpart now and he's got like twenty two years
Speaker 8: in Boston. He's just an amazing guy. And uh, we
Speaker 8: started like a YouTube channel and it's just gonna be
Speaker 8: all teaching stuff. We're calling it Imperium, which means command.
Speaker 8: So it's like we've only done two episodes. We're hoping
Speaker 8: that and I think it's on a podcast too. He's
Speaker 8: got it set up with a podcast. We're gonna go
Speaker 8: over sized up. We're gonna go right to cold as wealth.
Speaker 8: We're gonna go right into tactics and strategies.
Speaker 4: And what's the name of it.
Speaker 8: Imperi imperium, the Latin word command. His name is Eric Petaway.
Speaker 8: He's got his own channels and stuff, and he's got
Speaker 8: some great stuff on his channels too. And then we
Speaker 8: got the first two battalion chief of fire engineering. And
Speaker 8: I guess I'm gonna be still a little finger to
Speaker 8: in the fire department for the rest of my life,
Speaker 8: right why not? I just you know what I'm afraid of,
Speaker 8: what I'm afraid of, and I think hopefully now I'll
Speaker 8: know when it's time. Like I don't everyone want to
Speaker 8: become not relevant. I want I don't want to be
Speaker 8: that guy over there in the corner, like, yeah, he
Speaker 8: hasn't been in the firehouse in about ten years, so
Speaker 8: we're not going to you know, I you know, I
Speaker 8: call you scrimpsky, you know what call. And those guys
Speaker 8: were great in their days. But you know what, at
Speaker 8: some time it's time to pass.
Speaker 3: And I want to hold them and I want to
Speaker 3: fold them.
Speaker 8: Time to pass the tork. So I think I have
Speaker 8: a few years left. I still have, you know, still
Speaker 8: the memories are still a little fresh, so I think
Speaker 8: it fresh.
Speaker 3: I remember what box he went to, you know, thirty
Speaker 3: years via crazy roughy. What do you have for breakfast?
Speaker 8: This point, I can't tell you what I put my
Speaker 8: I can't even tell you.
Speaker 4: But there's a guy and I had a super chat before.
Speaker 7: Yeah, he was asking about the hip boots. He was
Speaker 7: asking his question is Alex because because uh, he's asking
Speaker 7: about the switch from three quarter to hip boo to
Speaker 7: long coats to the bunker gear. He guess he wants
Speaker 7: to know what your thoughts are when you guys made
Speaker 7: the transition from boots to bunker pants.
Speaker 8: So that was nineteen ninety three, and I could tell you.
Speaker 8: I could tell you it was a very tough transition
Speaker 8: because I was in forty one and it was a
Speaker 8: summer day. It was July, and it was a Sunday.
Speaker 8: I was I was thinking, I was doing a rosta
Speaker 8: and I'm thinking, like Sunday afternoon, it's gonna be nice
Speaker 8: and chill, even though it was one hundred degrees out
Speaker 8: and I was drinking coffee in the kitchen and that
Speaker 8: never would be a problem. But you had to remember
Speaker 8: to forty one's rig. We had like the engine it
Speaker 8: was just metal like it was like it was like
Speaker 8: one hundred and fifty degrees and at rig.
Speaker 6: So we go to a job hot as fuck.
Speaker 8: We go to a job on Walton Avenue, and I
Speaker 8: remember carrying a saw up to the roof and working
Speaker 8: or whatever, and then we get back down and then
Speaker 8: we get another job in Washington Heights and I didn't
Speaker 8: even take my coat off, and I'm still in my
Speaker 8: coat and I put the saw back and then we're
Speaker 8: responding up to one hundred and seventy fourth and whatever.
Speaker 8: And I remember going up to the front fire escape,
Speaker 8: and I just I don't remember anything else. I passed out. Really,
Speaker 8: I collapsed on the fire skate and I was just
Speaker 8: overheated because I had no water. I was drinking coffee
Speaker 8: all morning, and I wasn't used to the bunker gear,
Speaker 8: you know. So that was a rude awakening.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 8: I was very embarrassed by that because that never had happened, because,
Speaker 8: you know, when I was in seventeen, as I got
Speaker 8: a little older, I you know, I was doing the
Speaker 8: roof and stuff. I didn't even wear the hippoots anymore,
Speaker 8: you know. And now I'm wearing the snowsuit in the
Speaker 8: middle of one hundred degree summer day, carrying a saw
Speaker 8: and a mask on my back in a rig that's
Speaker 8: one hundred and fifty degrees, so I think. But what
Speaker 8: I saw with the bunker gear is that the burn
Speaker 8: injuries went down tremendously. Like I remember I got burnt
Speaker 8: that job I was telling you about with Timmy on
Speaker 8: a hundred and four their street, Like we all got
Speaker 8: burnt at that fire. But that was normal. I mean,
Speaker 8: the embers and everything goes down in the water. It
Speaker 8: was down your boots even in the towel line. I mean,
Speaker 8: how water everything's going down your boots now, the bunker gear,
Speaker 8: no one, No one was getting burned anymore.
Speaker 4: I mean it really eliminated the knee burns. I mean tremendously.
Speaker 8: I mean guys, once in a while we're getting burns,
Speaker 8: I mean some crazy jobs or whatever, but not like
Speaker 8: we were in the beginning. I mean every job you
Speaker 8: go to, guys were getting burned at every job. It
Speaker 8: was just a normal it was, you know, doing business.
Speaker 8: And we had no hoods back then, so you know,
Speaker 8: your coat was open, you had no you maybe put
Speaker 8: your flaps down if you're lucky.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 8: Sometimes guys didn't even wear gloves. I mean it was
Speaker 8: like they're wearing the Red Bulls and the wild West.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'll tell you.
Speaker 8: I know we're running out of time, so I don't
Speaker 8: want to a lot. But you know, it's things are
Speaker 8: different the fires today, with the plastics and everything. I
Speaker 8: don't think you'd get away with it today with the
Speaker 8: stuff that we did back in the eighties.
Speaker 6: You know, it's different.
Speaker 8: It's a different animal today, you know.
Speaker 4: Yep, you have no doubt about that.
Speaker 6: Coops, you have a health and safety tip. I do okay.
Speaker 1: The First Responder Center for Excellence is a not for
Speaker 1: profit organization dedicated to protecting their lives and livelihoods of
Speaker 1: first responders. Their education and research initiatives aim to bring
Speaker 1: greater awareness and understanding the challenges to the health, safety,
Speaker 1: and well being of firefighters, EMS, personnel, and other first
Speaker 1: responders too. They are an affiliate of the National Fallen
Speaker 1: Firefighter Foundation.
Speaker 3: All right, so today's health and safety tip it comes
Speaker 3: from today. When I started my first day of PT
Speaker 3: for my knee replacement. I went in. There's like five
Speaker 3: friggin five and sitting in the bro so and I
Speaker 3: said to the one that I'm like, listen, man, if
Speaker 3: the job doesn't kill you, it will beat the living
Speaker 3: shit out of you over the cost of twenty years.
Speaker 3: So I know it's hard. Everybody doesn't have to be
Speaker 3: a fanatic when it comes to working out, but try
Speaker 3: to keep the you know, a decent body weight, stretch,
Speaker 3: do some exercise caudio. Just later on in your years.
Speaker 5: You want to be able to enjoy the your your
Speaker 5: retirement like my buddy Rouffy, you know, fly all over
Speaker 5: the country, shoot and ship and hit.
Speaker 4: So that's what you want to do.
Speaker 5: It's a nice little bit something to stay active at
Speaker 5: the you know, stay at a decent body weight and uh,
Speaker 5: enjoy your time.
Speaker 6: Maintain, man, what's gonna do is maintain.
Speaker 8: I gotta text some Nancy as I'm talking, she's talking
Speaker 8: about her ride again, looking for guys to come on
Speaker 8: the Ride's gonna put them up right.
Speaker 6: Now, Okay, I have well I'll pull up the whole thing,
Speaker 6: but I have this.
Speaker 7: This is the first part of it, and let me
Speaker 7: share my email that where you guys can read the
Speaker 7: entire thing here.
Speaker 8: They do a nice job, the Friends of fire Fighters.
Speaker 3: I mean so.
Speaker 7: Uh it's through Friends of Firefighters, right. They can find
Speaker 7: the information on through Firefighters Friends of Firefighters right down
Speaker 7: on the website.
Speaker 3: Right, So put up, I sent your big text, right Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm gonna just share my email. That's a link
Speaker 6: the email.
Speaker 8: But I think I think she's opening up now to
Speaker 8: even the whole country.
Speaker 5: I mean, that's good. We got to keep sending stuff
Speaker 5: over there, guys. I know we had a show on it,
Speaker 5: but just because we had one show doesn't mean that
Speaker 5: we stopped sending.
Speaker 7: It's a little harder, guys to see, but it's the
Speaker 7: riders from Stotsbury or September third to the thirteenth of
Speaker 7: this year. It's an unforgettable ride Ireland to raise awareness
Speaker 7: for our first respond with mental health and it supports
Speaker 7: Friends of Firefighters.
Speaker 8: You've done that ride, right, Chief, Yeah, last year I
Speaker 8: did it, but I don't know.
Speaker 3: So it's over in Island and it's a good cause.
Speaker 8: It's a great cause, the mental health. I think you're
Speaker 8: looking to do this up in Boston now, and uh huh.
Speaker 8: If anyone from the whole country wants to join in
Speaker 8: on their ride, I would get in touch with Nancy and.
Speaker 5: You can reach her at www dot Friendsoffirefighters dot org
Speaker 5: or if you.
Speaker 6: Want to there we sorry.
Speaker 3: So if you want to contribute, it's very It's a
Speaker 3: mental awareness man. And we had that show on and
Speaker 3: I can't tell you how many guys came up to
Speaker 3: the booth ruff and said, thank God, thank thank you
Speaker 3: for having that show on.
Speaker 4: It's every time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So please give what you can, even if it's
Speaker 3: five dollars, ten dollars, whatever it is, send it over there,
Speaker 3: send it, send it, send it. And we have a
Speaker 3: couple of lines of duties, right Johns.
Speaker 7: Yes, let me bring up their pictures, so because they
Speaker 7: have their names on them, there's Baltimore City, Uh, Lieutenant
Speaker 7: Mark Drevis. I believe this was a gentleman that fell
Speaker 7: from the truck or fell down the ladder, and I
Speaker 7: believe he succumbed to his injuries. It was within if
Speaker 7: I'm not mistaken, it was within a week that they
Speaker 7: have both of these gentlemen.
Speaker 4: Away in a beating the last week.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and this, I believe this was a gentleman who
Speaker 7: had a cardiac event over a medical event during training.
Speaker 7: So those guys that are out there training anything obviously
Speaker 7: be safe. And well, I guess Kob's going to ring
Speaker 7: the bells for him.
Speaker 3: Yeah. We also had two guys in the UK I
Speaker 3: think died in a warehouse fire. So let's do the
Speaker 3: five bells for the line of duty. Yeah, rest in peace, brothers,
Speaker 3: that's for sure, all right? Rook? What do we have
Speaker 3: next week?
Speaker 6: Man?
Speaker 3: We have a guest next week?
Speaker 6: You do?
Speaker 4: I have my operation next week. I'm not going to
Speaker 4: be here.
Speaker 3: How dare you?
Speaker 6: And I have mine a week after?
Speaker 3: Do?
Speaker 6: We're all getting fixed up around the dog?
Speaker 3: Did I tell you got to stay in shape? Showing
Speaker 3: his fingers.
Speaker 6: Oh you got that, little guy.
Speaker 3: It's the crawl next week.
Speaker 5: He's every fire shots into the golf swing though perfect.
Speaker 6: Right, perfect, Oklahoma might screw up, I might screw up.
Speaker 3: You might be shaking a ball night that happened.
Speaker 6: I know.
Speaker 3: I love the Craws Chief. Thank you so much for
Speaker 3: coming on, your love for the job.
Speaker 6: Just losing grew man.
Speaker 3: You know you didn't get the name Spocky for out
Speaker 3: to sparking you and you know what you want walk.
Speaker 5: You've been in all busy places your whole career following
Speaker 5: the fire around.
Speaker 3: Good for you. I had the privilege of working for you,
Speaker 3: even though it was a couple of tours, but knowing
Speaker 3: you as well, appreciate it. Thank you all right, boys,
Speaker 3: ladies and gentlemen, thanks for coming in. We will see
Speaker 3: you well, at least roof you might not. We'll see
Speaker 3: some press for Roofie that night. And the bed fingers
Speaker 3: crossed baking to cross you may. I called the lady
Speaker 3: and get them on too.
Speaker 6: I was gonna say, we're gonna go to the bullpen.
Speaker 3: We gotta go to the bullpen. All right, guys, We'll
Speaker 3: see you next week. Until then, stay low.
Speaker 4: And go and everybody will see it, the big one.
Speaker 4: Thanks again, Chief.
Speaker 6: All Right, guys, have a great night. Remember we're rolling
Speaker 6: heavy down here in South. Take care, guys, a good night.
Speaker 6: Hold on thinking