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, Hello, Doc qcy Beast, Darren p qucy Beast, Rob Pocaccini.
Speaker 4: Welcome all back to the Get.
Speaker 5: Salty Experienced Podcast, the only one you know what brings
Speaker 5: the fire house kitchen table to you, to you Hello,
Speaker 5: whateverthing else?
Speaker 6: Bro?
Speaker 7: Right?
Speaker 6: No, no, no, I'm disappointing park right now. But no,
Speaker 6: not yet. No, No, I'm gonna all to you out
Speaker 6: of place right now. You see that I'm not kidding. Wow,
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 4: Continuing in our segments of.
Speaker 6: The authors, Oh yeah.
Speaker 4: Thirty five is you must know?
Speaker 6: Yeah yeah, yeah yeah, number one best seller right now
Speaker 6: on Amazon. Guys, better get it, you baby to it.
Speaker 4: Oh sorry, we have we have best selling authors on
Speaker 4: this show. What else can we do on this show?
Speaker 8: Bro?
Speaker 5: We get the legends, we get best selling authors, we
Speaker 5: get guys from all world.
Speaker 9: Still they're still for sale?
Speaker 6: Or what's the story.
Speaker 4: Back on Amazon's second rock.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yep, yeah, hot right now, Hot.
Speaker 5: Hot, the hot item for Christmas. That and Cornerstones of Leadership.
Speaker 5: You gotta get that in there, little plug in the
Speaker 5: form you know what I mean? Wait a minute, I
Speaker 5: mean this one right here?
Speaker 6: Okay, the stameless plug. Sorry, the chief he doesn't even
Speaker 6: realize it.
Speaker 5: The guy who knew right rough work with him that
Speaker 5: this guy is going to be best selling.
Speaker 6: All what the you mean?
Speaker 9: We kind of knew the job.
Speaker 6: We knew it wasn't going to be Yes, you.
Speaker 5: Don't know when you're an idiot. I'm an idiot, so
Speaker 5: I'll never never are you anyway?
Speaker 10: Rough?
Speaker 4: You're out in Iowa?
Speaker 10: Wow?
Speaker 4: Is it lonely day? By yourself?
Speaker 6: Right now? By myself?
Speaker 11: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Who you have to hunting with?
Speaker 5: Wordy myself? Enjoy at Eastern quiet yourself?
Speaker 6: Yeah, my friends right up the road.
Speaker 4: Are your friends there already?
Speaker 6: They go cow tipping?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: So you got one right sticking in your Grandma, you
Speaker 5: got one already.
Speaker 4: You can come home now. I'm coming home Sunday, Sunday.
Speaker 12: What do you get?
Speaker 6: Yeah, you know, get one one or two. I'm still
Speaker 6: waiting for the picture. He's supposed to me the other day.
Speaker 4: What's the big one look like? How many points?
Speaker 6: Fifteen?
Speaker 4: Fifteen pointer? No room in the dead room.
Speaker 5: Where are you gonna put it in the headroom?
Speaker 4: The death room?
Speaker 6: Yeah, oh man, that's right. That's where the key truck is.
Speaker 6: The truck is out here, the old truck.
Speaker 4: You uh you hit it with the boat.
Speaker 6: Bone arrow?
Speaker 13: Yeah, boone hour.
Speaker 4: I told Roofie.
Speaker 5: The next thing I wanted to do is run out
Speaker 5: there with a bulle knife and his teeth and jump
Speaker 5: on his back and just d it.
Speaker 6: You know, I see that?
Speaker 12: Did he did he hear?
Speaker 5: What his last word was before you put an hour
Speaker 5: through his heart? Did he say anything?
Speaker 6: He didn't say nothing?
Speaker 4: Nothing? He said he served them a little have a
Speaker 4: little tears.
Speaker 6: Did the Sebastian man of scalcoal? He realized the mind
Speaker 6: fuck with this thing sticking out of his chest?
Speaker 9: I served him as papers coops, you did, yeah, but.
Speaker 6: You got you gotta bring that up.
Speaker 5: That was a good one. Oh uh, I got today.
Speaker 6: I gotta served papers today.
Speaker 4: And then my wife.
Speaker 6: Didn't even come out of my finished coming out of
Speaker 6: my mouth before he was like what I'm like? Coops
Speaker 6: still got it.
Speaker 4: Man, he's pretty quick.
Speaker 6: Man. Yeah, Man, so that old.
Speaker 4: Guy I practiced on the little l Asian kids. Bro,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: All right, but let's get all the shenanigans and chicanery
Speaker 5: out of the way, because we got some serious topics.
Speaker 5: I want all your young guys out there to get
Speaker 5: a pad, paper pad, paper paned pencil and jop down
Speaker 5: notes because there's nuggets in every one of these stories.
Speaker 5: We got two stories today's different fires of the thirty
Speaker 5: fives that you missed. Know my best selling alph Billy
Speaker 5: Goldfetter and chief Lead. He's gonna get frequent flyer miles
Speaker 5: from getting salty now he's been on the shelf cent.
Speaker 6: He's definitely we can see this point counter is up to.
Speaker 5: He's gotta be up there twice flying all over the world.
Speaker 5: He's got to get insalty credit card.
Speaker 9: We got to send them a microphone or something for
Speaker 9: God to FMB man.
Speaker 4: Or LM money. We gotta turn this sound down.
Speaker 6: Figure me in, figure me in, baby.
Speaker 5: Let's go, oh God, let's get to two commercials really
Speaker 5: quick and then we'll bring them in.
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Speaker 6: All right next to what is here?
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Speaker 6: You asked me watching frishing coefficient. Well here it is.
Speaker 5: Hoppy clocking the coefficient. We left that in there for
Speaker 5: Lee because see, that's how you're a best selling office.
Speaker 5: Sounds she would find puticit, He writes.
Speaker 6: His he's I don't know. His reaction is not really
Speaker 6: he didn't find it funny.
Speaker 4: That's fine, all right, all right, I think that's it.
Speaker 4: I think we're gonna jump right in.
Speaker 6: And bring you want to do the shout out now
Speaker 6: to your friend really quick?
Speaker 4: Oh no, you have to get Chief leaping because he's walking.
Speaker 6: Okay, Yeah, let's bring in Cheap.
Speaker 5: Leap and Billy Goldfetter. Worldcome round. I'm going up the
Speaker 5: world round Office of thirty five. As you must know here.
Speaker 4: You are, you're back again. You must like us, really.
Speaker 12: Like us, like you guys, mush.
Speaker 5: I went to a fantastic I was I was honored
Speaker 5: to be asked to go to Chief leave for time
Speaker 5: with five Joe, wiz Me and Chief Steve went all
Speaker 5: the way out there. We had a hell of a time,
Speaker 5: a lot of great guys. I'm gonna be there with
Speaker 5: the Chief lead. Thanks for the invite, fellow, Thank you brother.
Speaker 4: But do you have that picture of a boy Mikey
Speaker 4: who was out there?
Speaker 8: I do?
Speaker 6: I do? You ready?
Speaker 4: All right?
Speaker 6: So we have two of them. So I'm going to
Speaker 6: show you this one boy, the little Michael little shout
Speaker 6: out there.
Speaker 14: He is there, he is. So that's that's Mike with
Speaker 14: his parents. Who his parents? So he had he had
Speaker 14: been the Elmhurst buff all of the years that I
Speaker 14: worked in the four six Battalion. They moved down on
Speaker 14: to North Carolina and when Mike found out about the party,
Speaker 14: he told his parents, we gotta go, and he drove.
Speaker 11: They drove him up there and they attended the party.
Speaker 11: So it was pretty cool.
Speaker 14: So thank you to not only Mike but his parents.
Speaker 14: And I think he got another cool picture.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think. So let me see this one might
Speaker 6: be a good one. Let's see.
Speaker 4: Oh it's a great shot. Who's that old man? Oh
Speaker 4: that's me.
Speaker 6: I was gonna say, how can you.
Speaker 4: Tell everybody it was a Hawaiian party?
Speaker 11: Oh?
Speaker 4: You and uh five fight at Joe Hawaiian shirts on?
Speaker 11: Yeah it was because it wasn't five Fight at Joe Wizz.
Speaker 11: So what do you want to wear? I said?
Speaker 14: I said, let's wear a collar shirt that says f
Speaker 14: dn Y or something. He's like, how about Hawaiian shirt?
Speaker 14: I said, why are you asking me?
Speaker 15: Then?
Speaker 14: I said, you want to wear Hawaiian shirts? Who wear
Speaker 14: Hawaiian shirts? So that's what we did. We wore Hawaiian shirts.
Speaker 10: All right.
Speaker 4: It was a great time. Food was good too.
Speaker 11: Man. Yeah, Michael was in the chat.
Speaker 6: I see, Uh, he's available on the air, available, available for.
Speaker 4: Nice nice job, Mikey.
Speaker 5: All right, we're gonna give Chief Leave and Billy the
Speaker 5: privilege of bringing in these next two ones. The chief,
Speaker 5: right one's still a fire fighter, I believe.
Speaker 6: Man, Yeah, introduce him.
Speaker 12: Yeah.
Speaker 10: So uh, I'm gonna start with our first guest, Mike Tiger,
Speaker 10: who's the deputy chief and the chief fire marsh from
Speaker 10: Loud County, Virginia. And he's gonna talk to us this
Speaker 10: evening about about as close a call as you can have.
Speaker 10: All Right, ready, family dwelling, bring them both upright.
Speaker 6: Here we go, Yes, and then ready for the next one.
Speaker 10: Good Frank.
Speaker 14: And the other person we're going to bring in is
Speaker 14: Brandon Corey, and he's going to talk about a fire
Speaker 14: that that he responded to.
Speaker 11: In the up the Upper Peninsula.
Speaker 5: You stole out from me, I say that.
Speaker 6: Well, here he is baseball.
Speaker 5: Applause, he's in the other day where it snows three
Speaker 5: hundred and sixty two days out of the year.
Speaker 6: I went six to eight feet and welcome to the show.
Speaker 5: Welcome to the show, gentlemen, Thanks for joining us, Thanks
Speaker 5: for being part of the thirty Fires.
Speaker 4: You can know it's an amazing book.
Speaker 5: I think this is going to go down with the
Speaker 5: Report from Engine coup in the eighty two is one
Speaker 5: of the iconic books in the fire's service.
Speaker 4: That's how good I like, that's how.
Speaker 5: Much I love it.
Speaker 4: Wherever you want to jump in first the pledge.
Speaker 10: So just real quick, I just just and again, as
Speaker 10: we said on the last show, there's there's no bragging
Speaker 10: here because Frank and I coordinated it, but the people
Speaker 10: who were there are telling the stories. And then all
Speaker 10: the money being made from this book is being donated
Speaker 10: to four charities, Chief for a Downy Firefighter, can't support Network,
Speaker 10: Tunnel to Towers, and the First Responder Center of Excellence,
Speaker 10: so there's no money, but we are really excited. Yesterday
Speaker 10: we found out that it's an Amazon bestseller, so it's
Speaker 10: pretty cool.
Speaker 12: We're pretty excited.
Speaker 4: And they thought I was pulling that Leke Amazon bestseller Baby.
Speaker 10: Yeah, we're real proud of that, and again not only
Speaker 10: for the learning but for the money we're raising. But
Speaker 10: people like Micah and Brandon, who after we went through
Speaker 10: the whole process, said yeah, we like to tell our story.
Speaker 10: So I'm going to start my conversation with Mike. And
Speaker 10: this is a little close to me. I was the
Speaker 10: chief of department there in Loudon County in the for
Speaker 10: about almost ten years, in the very very early stages
Speaker 10: when it was mostly volunteer, and now it's about fifty
Speaker 10: to fifty right, half career, half volunteer, and careers staffing
Speaker 10: around the clock pretty much. So it's one of the
Speaker 10: its America's dastest growing county. And in May of twenty
Speaker 10: eight they had that fire, that fire that not only
Speaker 10: changed some of the guys involved, but it changed the
Speaker 10: direction of the organization in my opinion, And Michaeh will
Speaker 10: get into that. But they went to a dwelling fire
Speaker 10: on a street named Meadowood that they'll never forget. They
Speaker 10: arrived on the scene and they had heavy fire coming
Speaker 10: from this two story, single family modern construction right lightweight
Speaker 10: wood trusts. This thing was rocking when they went in
Speaker 10: the house and they were doing a search. Things got very,
Speaker 10: very very ugly, and instead of telling the story, I'm
Speaker 10: going to yield to micaeh who now serves as a
Speaker 10: four star chief in Loud County. He's the chief of
Speaker 10: the Far Marshall Bureau. And Michael, welcome to Getting Salty.
Speaker 10: It's a pleasure to have you. And I think, as
Speaker 10: the guy said when they opened the show, whether it
Speaker 10: was Cubes or whoever, grab your pencils because there's a
Speaker 10: lot to learn. Yeah, these guys have got some stories. Michael, welcome, aboard, welcome, if.
Speaker 11: I thank you, it's it's an honor to be with
Speaker 11: the group. And either Gonza wants to hit the pledge,
Speaker 11: I believe.
Speaker 4: Oh he's a mind reader too.
Speaker 6: Look at him. Look at that ship. I mean, okay,
Speaker 6: and we just get that the way before we get going.
Speaker 6: Thank you, guys, can we go?
Speaker 2: I pledge 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: Excellent, Thank you everyone, thankesure the reminder chief patriotics. Great
Speaker 5: to be an American today.
Speaker 6: Yes, sir, all right, chief, whenever you're ready, jump right in.
Speaker 11: So if you're ready, I guess we'll get into it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, man, let's do it.
Speaker 11: So May fifth, two thousand and eight. Let's talk about
Speaker 11: it man four three two three eight Metalwood Court, Leesburg, Virginia.
Speaker 11: As our third or fourth box call for the day.
Speaker 11: I would love to tell everybody that you know we
Speaker 11: burn stuff every day in Loudon County, that is not
Speaker 11: the case at all. We do run fires. As you
Speaker 11: see there in that picture. That's a Type five construction
Speaker 11: lightweight which was very common for our county. Was built
Speaker 11: in two thousand and six. Brick facade on it two
Speaker 11: stories in the front, three in the rear, has a
Speaker 11: walk out basement on side. Charlie which is actually below
Speaker 11: grade to the rear of the home. Arrived on the
Speaker 11: scene found two story single family dwelling had smoke and
Speaker 11: fire looked like it was either in the attic or
Speaker 11: run inside. Charlie got out of the truck out of
Speaker 11: the engine, started side alpha side delta, stopped at the
Speaker 11: Charlie Delta corner of the house. This fire looked so
Speaker 11: much like all of the other similar types of fires
Speaker 11: where started on the back melted off the vinyl siding,
Speaker 11: off the back end of a V up into the
Speaker 11: ventedsaphat up into the attic space, and off to the races.
Speaker 11: So I would be remiss if I didn't tell you
Speaker 11: that my decision for us to go inside that house
Speaker 11: was made way before that picture was taken right there,
Speaker 11: And that's where transparent accountability, however you want to chalk
Speaker 11: it up on the is my decision that we were
Speaker 11: going to go inside that house was before I ever
Speaker 11: saw four three two three eight meta wood Court. I
Speaker 11: account a lot of that either to fire service confidence,
Speaker 11: which in other terms could probably be labeled as complacency.
Speaker 11: I've been to fires like this before. I thought this
Speaker 11: one was no different. That picture right there was taken
Speaker 11: exactly four minutes before a may day occurred, and I
Speaker 11: didn't think me or my crew were going home. Two stories,
Speaker 11: single family. You can see very very light smoke at
Speaker 11: the front door right there. Made entry on the first floor.
Speaker 11: After I got in, sighed light whitish grayish colored smoke.
Speaker 11: I could see about a foot out ahead of me.
Speaker 11: You know the rules. If you can't see, your feet
Speaker 11: need to be on your knees or down on the floor.
Speaker 11: I was able to kind of bend oversee the floor,
Speaker 11: so I was about ten or fifteen feet behind my firefighter,
Speaker 11: which her name is Brandy. This was her second ever
Speaker 11: working structure fire working in the county, so I knew
Speaker 11: that this one. What I saw on the backside of
Speaker 11: the house, as I said, was the fire haad ran
Speaker 11: the outside and up into the attic, but it was
Speaker 11: also vented out the second floor window in the center
Speaker 11: of the house on the rear, which brings into question
Speaker 11: what do we actually call houses, you know, how do
Speaker 11: you label floor, so on and so forth. So my
Speaker 11: return that I gave on the radio was confirming we
Speaker 11: had a two story single family dwelling of fire second floor,
Speaker 11: and it brought into question whether I was talking second
Speaker 11: floor from street side or second floor from the rear
Speaker 11: of the house. So to be very clear on that
Speaker 11: is now, if iire arrived on the scene, I would
Speaker 11: describe that as a two story single family dwelling have
Speaker 11: fire on the number two floor. Then I would also
Speaker 11: confirm that we are labeling the floor's basement floor number one,
Speaker 11: floor number two. That way, when I say that I've
Speaker 11: got a working structure fire number two floor. There is
Speaker 11: no question where I'm talking about inside that house, so visibility,
Speaker 11: As I said, it was about a foot whitish grays
Speaker 11: colored smoke on the first floor, ticking. I guess what
Speaker 11: I saw on my thermal imager before we went up
Speaker 11: the stairs. Ay, they have a guess. I can give
Speaker 11: that answer because I was there obviously. But the answer
Speaker 11: was nothing. I saw nothing on my thermal imager because
Speaker 11: it was left outside, outside the structure. It was not
Speaker 11: in my hands. So that's a learning point. That is
Speaker 11: a tool. Even jumping in the time machine back to
Speaker 11: two thousand and eight, we had technologies such as a
Speaker 11: thermal imager, and it only works if you have it
Speaker 11: with you. So I did what I was taught in training.
Speaker 11: You will hear me talk about training over and over,
Speaker 11: probably as we're talking here. I am a huge advocate
Speaker 11: for training. At some point point in my training. It's
Speaker 11: as simple as if you can't see, how do you
Speaker 11: know that you're getting closer to the fire. What's the
Speaker 11: simple answer? Simple answer is it's getting hotter. So I
Speaker 11: learned very early on in my career that if I
Speaker 11: turn my head, I can actually tell the difference between
Speaker 11: heat on my face and heat on my ears. So
Speaker 11: with that is, it's what I call the microwave test.
Speaker 11: Is I take things out of the microwave, I hold
Speaker 11: it up and I turn my head and you can
Speaker 11: use that as a as a teaching point to folks.
Speaker 11: So with that is, I turned my head at the
Speaker 11: bottom of the stairs. Didn't notice any heat whatsoever. So
Speaker 11: where's the fire? Fires upstairs? So we start upstairs, make
Speaker 11: the second floor. Trust in your gut and paying attention
Speaker 11: to all the different senses that we have. It's not
Speaker 11: just vision, it's not hearing, you know. Is we went
Speaker 11: up those stairs right there, right there at that banister
Speaker 11: on the right hand side.
Speaker 8: When you say you went upstairs, did you have a line.
Speaker 11: Yes, sir. We deployed a two hundred no on the engine.
Speaker 11: We stretched a two hundred foot inch and three quarter
Speaker 11: attack line with a fog nozzle on it. Made the
Speaker 11: second floor. The firefighter did not open the nozzle until
Speaker 11: we got into the fire room, which was in the
Speaker 11: center of the house. Second floor. Conditions in there were
Speaker 11: as you would expect, you know, fire, active fire in
Speaker 11: that room. Excuse me, And you know, visibility was a
Speaker 11: little bit different. Airbody knows that after you opened the nozzle,
Speaker 11: what happens your visibility changes, but started hitting active fire
Speaker 11: inside that room. And something to make a note of
Speaker 11: is where I was talking about, you know, paying attention
Speaker 11: to where the heat's coming from inside that room. The
Speaker 11: heat was coming from the left hand side. After we
Speaker 11: were in there for a couple of minutes, I left
Speaker 11: the line. Immediately after we got up there. The firefighter
Speaker 11: was still spraying water. I came off the line and
Speaker 11: I've entered a window on side Charlie of the house
Speaker 11: was double hung window. I raked it out. I pulled
Speaker 11: the sash into the room. Uh. And you know there's
Speaker 11: a question I just said, you know, I left the line,
Speaker 11: I left my I left my firefighter. Can you do that?
Speaker 11: Answer is yes. If you talked to Osha, what's osh
Speaker 11: you're going to say about it? Well, I've got an
Speaker 11: answer for that. Also is Osha says that if you're
Speaker 11: in an id LH, what do you need to do?
Speaker 11: You need to operate as a crew, and that crew
Speaker 11: is two or more personnel maintaining contact and in a
Speaker 11: position to be able to render assistance. So with that
Speaker 11: is I maintained voice contact with my firefighter. So I
Speaker 11: was comfortable with that.
Speaker 10: Oh.
Speaker 11: After I got back on the line, the tower crew
Speaker 11: Lieutenant early in firefighter Singleton, Uh. They came up to
Speaker 11: the house, second floor. They started a primary search and
Speaker 11: a bedroom towards side Alpha that was at the at
Speaker 11: the corner of Alpha and Delta. To be honest with you,
Speaker 11: when we made the top of the stairs, I would
Speaker 11: I would say what how I would describe it is?
Speaker 11: The crime wasn't you know? The punishment wasn't fitting the
Speaker 11: crime is. I didn't encounter the volume of fire that
Speaker 11: I thought that should be there, which meant that it
Speaker 11: was definitely above us in the attic. So with that
Speaker 11: in mind, started knocking down the fire in that bedroom
Speaker 11: and I came off the line a second time. I
Speaker 11: came off the line a second time. I started doing
Speaker 11: a primary search inside the master bedroom and I started
Speaker 11: noticing some changes. That directional heat that seemed to be
Speaker 11: coming from the left hand side initially now felt like
Speaker 11: it was all around us and kind of felt like
Speaker 11: it was trying to push us down into the floor.
Speaker 11: It went from being warm to being hot to being uncomfortable.
Speaker 11: Of everybody probably on this call has been on a
Speaker 11: fire at some point. Where you try to get that
Speaker 11: air gap in your gear where you kind of move
Speaker 11: around a little bit to get a little space in there.
Speaker 11: And that wasn't clear in it at all. I had
Speaker 11: called out on the radio to ask the exterior the
Speaker 11: chief that was on the scene, Yes, sir.
Speaker 9: How many people are on How many guys are at
Speaker 9: the scene at this point? Is it just you and
Speaker 9: three guys?
Speaker 11: How many guys? So our staffing minimum staffing on an
Speaker 11: engine is three, and at that point minimum staffing on
Speaker 11: special service to include tower, straight truck rescue squad was three.
Speaker 11: Three was bare bones minimum. That day we had three
Speaker 11: on the truck or on the tower, and there was
Speaker 11: actually supposed to be four. That was the staffing thing
Speaker 11: that we had going on in the county where they
Speaker 11: would deploy the fourth person off of the Special Service
Speaker 11: and deploy them into a minimum staff position elsewhere to
Speaker 11: keep units in service. So we were used to running
Speaker 11: with four. That day we were actually running with three,
Speaker 11: which actually kind of plays into uh when we when
Speaker 11: we see a picture of the timeline here in a
Speaker 11: couple of minutes of how the how the incident went
Speaker 11: down time wise with it that I speak of it
Speaker 11: in four four and four. We were on the scene
Speaker 11: for four minutes. May day occurred, took accountability was was
Speaker 11: was declared on the scene. Now, if you listen to
Speaker 11: so you only.
Speaker 9: Have six people, you have six people on You got
Speaker 9: six people there, that's what you're saying.
Speaker 5: Well, the show is outside, right, the driver engineers outside.
Speaker 11: So yeah, so we have fewer folks inside and two outside,
Speaker 11: so you only have one line, one.
Speaker 5: Line with you and and a nozzleman or not the
Speaker 5: woman at the time, right, Yes, sis.
Speaker 6: How it goes with that minimum staffing when you have
Speaker 6: those minimum staffing levels like South Florida for some of
Speaker 6: us are accustomed to, it's you gotta juggle a lot
Speaker 6: of things until the crews get there.
Speaker 14: And this is the majority of the country, right, so
Speaker 14: we are we are spoiled.
Speaker 15: When we think figure out.
Speaker 14: So we have NFP compliance staffing in New York City
Speaker 14: and only very few other cities and areas have that.
Speaker 14: So that's that's an important consideration when you think about
Speaker 14: this and you think about the staffing. Uh, you know,
Speaker 14: for anybody who's watching and listening to this about you know,
Speaker 14: you got to make do with what you have on scene.
Speaker 14: And that's exactly what he's doing and walking us through.
Speaker 14: You know, I'm sure, Chief, you would have loved to
Speaker 14: have thirty fire fighters on scene at that fire, but
Speaker 14: the reality is that at that point in the fire,
Speaker 14: he's gonna have six, and like you said, some of
Speaker 14: them are outside. He's trying to, you know, comply with
Speaker 14: OSHA to the degree that we that we can.
Speaker 11: While so there's a lot of competing concerns here.
Speaker 6: Nothing that can happen. Well, guys are gonna wear many
Speaker 6: that something. They're going to push the limits until they
Speaker 6: can get the personnel there that they really need, the
Speaker 6: proper personnel there that need to get and fight that fire.
Speaker 6: So did you, Chief, you want to pull up the
Speaker 6: timeline now?
Speaker 11: Sure I can. I can speak on that here for
Speaker 11: a second. I think where I left off was I
Speaker 11: called out to the chief that was on the scene
Speaker 11: and I asked him if we were if we were making
Speaker 11: any progress, and he came back and he said, you're
Speaker 11: starting to make a hit on it, but you still
Speaker 11: have heavy fire in the attic ridge. Vent I liken
Speaker 11: that to the fact of kind of making a push
Speaker 11: on an entire second floor of a house being on
Speaker 11: fire as you're making progress and you get kind of
Speaker 11: the point of what I call the point of conversion
Speaker 11: is you kind of get teeter in there on the
Speaker 11: edge of whether the fire is going to go out
Speaker 11: or whether you're going to make a decision to have
Speaker 11: to back out. That's where I was in my brain.
Speaker 11: So along with it went from being warm to being
Speaker 11: hot to being uncomfortable. When he gave me the return
Speaker 11: and said you were starting to make a hit on it,
Speaker 11: I thought that we were at that point of conversion,
Speaker 11: you know, to be honest with you, was like, man,
Speaker 11: we're right there, We're it's going to start getting better.
Speaker 11: And with that was I called out on the radio
Speaker 11: and I said, visibility is zero. And the folks that
Speaker 11: are on here know that, you know know now through
Speaker 11: Project may Day that is one of the things that's
Speaker 11: a trigger, that is something if you hear it on
Speaker 11: the radio, you need to pay attention to it. So
Speaker 11: with that is the tower crew that was out towards
Speaker 11: the front of the house, they started noticing all the
Speaker 11: exact same changes that we did, and they came and
Speaker 11: as soon as they got to the doorway of the
Speaker 11: master bedroom, we now had fire blowing over us from
Speaker 11: the first floor. So the origin and cause on this
Speaker 11: fire was improperly disposed of smoking materials on the back deck.
Speaker 11: The back deck was located off of the first floor
Speaker 11: on side Charlie, so it burned into the house horizontally
Speaker 11: as well external on the house going up the vinyl
Speaker 11: siding on the outside, so it came into the first
Speaker 11: floor while we were on the second floor, got into overstuffed.
Speaker 12: Yes, sir, yeah, let me just.
Speaker 10: I'm still on the I want to pause from a
Speaker 10: staffing issue, because what was missed is that your first
Speaker 10: alarm that would have generally been on this assignment was
Speaker 10: tied up in the neighboring town on another run. So
Speaker 10: that plays into the response challenge. But you know, when
Speaker 10: we talk about mutual aid, Louden County is probably as
Speaker 10: aggressive with automatic mutual aid as anybody in the country.
Speaker 10: There are parts of Loudon County where the first alarm
Speaker 10: is coming from Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia, three states.
Speaker 10: And they were doing that when I was there in
Speaker 10: the eighties. So it's not about it's not about they
Speaker 10: don't want to staff well or they can't stand well.
Speaker 10: And people listening to our show tonight, if you're staffing sucks,
Speaker 10: then you need to look beyond what you can do
Speaker 10: about it. They're not going to hire you fifty people tomorrow,
Speaker 10: So what are you doing with your neighbors? What are
Speaker 10: you doing with you with automatic mutual aid? In my area,
Speaker 10: all over, departments are doing everybody's fires. I'm getting thirty
Speaker 10: guys in about eight to ten minutes, depending, but that's
Speaker 10: not from one fire department. So I just want the
Speaker 10: listeners to as the guys from Salty pointed out, they're
Speaker 10: only staffing for one line right now, and that's not
Speaker 10: due to any attitudes of not wanting mutual aid. Companies
Speaker 10: were not in the right position at the time that
Speaker 10: shit happens. That's going to happen. So if I want
Speaker 10: to just kind of paint that picture and also remind
Speaker 10: people if you're staffing sucks, there are some solutions to that.
Speaker 9: And I also wanted to touch on something because I
Speaker 9: was kind of trying to listen to what you were saying.
Speaker 6: So you said it was early on.
Speaker 9: You had mentioned something like it got from the siding
Speaker 9: into the attic and you thought it was above you,
Speaker 9: and then the second floor had a room that was
Speaker 9: on fire. But now you're saying that the fire is
Speaker 9: actually on the first floor.
Speaker 6: Is that what you're saying? Yep?
Speaker 11: Chief, So uh, yes, sir, that's exactly what I'm saying.
Speaker 9: So this fire basically throughout, but you guys were on
Speaker 9: the second floor and the fire was actually originated on
Speaker 9: the first floor.
Speaker 10: Tell where the fire started, Chief.
Speaker 11: So yeah, the fire started on the xterior on the
Speaker 11: deck which was off of the first floor. So it
Speaker 11: was starting to break through apparently at the same time
Speaker 11: that we went.
Speaker 6: To the second guard.
Speaker 11: So it wasn't showing they got into the family It
Speaker 11: was not shown on the first floor right got in there, Yes, sir. Oh,
Speaker 11: so fire had gotten into the family room or living
Speaker 11: room directly below us and got into over stuffed furniture
Speaker 11: which sent it to flash over rapidly after it got
Speaker 11: in that room and started taking possession of it. So
Speaker 11: there would be the view from the Charlie Delta corner.
Speaker 11: I saw in the chat there was a three sixty
Speaker 11: completed before entry, And the answer is absolutely it was not.
Speaker 11: And that is a huge takeaway on this, whether it
Speaker 11: would have changed my decision making at all on this.
Speaker 11: I already I already gave you all the farm, so
Speaker 11: to speak, because I told you my decision to go
Speaker 11: inside that house was before I ever saw four three
Speaker 11: two three eight metalwood court. We cannot be that way,
Speaker 11: We just we can't. Oh, and that's where my size
Speaker 11: up stopped. I went from side alpha side delta, Charlie delta.
Speaker 11: That's where it stopped. I had seen this fire before
Speaker 11: I had been on fires. I addressed him the exact
Speaker 11: same way, and I articulate that point because if it
Speaker 11: sounds like I'm confident when I tell you that, it's
Speaker 11: because I'm confidently complacent with exactly the way that we
Speaker 11: handle this fire. Oh so I'll hit rewind here for
Speaker 11: a second.
Speaker 6: Go ahead, sir, I'm just gonna mention just a little
Speaker 6: FYI on my part, was that's a good teaching moment,
Speaker 6: at least a three sixty done. Great question. It's from
Speaker 6: the chat because if you look at some of the
Speaker 6: ritz and may days and stuff like that and see
Speaker 6: what some of the elements of contributing factors, that's one
Speaker 6: of the factors that gets lined up in there. So
Speaker 6: for those that will want a learning point, it's take
Speaker 6: that extra second. If you can get the Billity's not
Speaker 6: too big and you can do that three sixty. It's
Speaker 6: imperative that you make that three sixty.
Speaker 12: You know.
Speaker 10: In the chat also somebody absolutely and.
Speaker 12: Somebody in the chat wrote.
Speaker 10: What if you're alone. I'm gonna be real respectful. You're
Speaker 10: not a fire department if you're alone. If you're sending
Speaker 10: one person on a piece of apparatus and the community
Speaker 10: feels that's a department, then you're just kidding yourselves. It's
Speaker 10: just such a sentiment. It spot to me because we
Speaker 10: see if people want to cut budgets and want to
Speaker 10: do this, at some point, you got to decide. Laven County,
Speaker 10: the first alarm assignment with this would have been three
Speaker 10: or four engines, two or three trucks, a couple of
Speaker 10: They have good responses. But there are places in this country,
Speaker 10: certainly Frank and I have seen it, maybe even Brandon
Speaker 10: and Micah that are running one person on duty, and
Speaker 10: you know what, that's a salesman. It's not a fire
Speaker 10: fire department. And so I saw the comment, what if
Speaker 10: you were alone, you're going to hit it with a
Speaker 10: deck gun.
Speaker 6: I meant something going in, I'll make an entry.
Speaker 10: At some point, we can't do the job, that's right, Yeah,
Speaker 10: that's true too.
Speaker 4: Chief.
Speaker 5: If you had done the three sixty and you saw,
Speaker 5: you know, you think you would have saw, I know,
Speaker 5: hindsight being twenty twenty, what would what would you have
Speaker 5: done differently?
Speaker 11: So it's not a fair question to say what would
Speaker 11: have done different on this fire because I had handled
Speaker 11: fires like this the exact same way before, and this
Speaker 11: is the one that burned me and my crew literally.
Speaker 11: So I don't say that to be a smart ass
Speaker 11: at all. I say that as a point that when
Speaker 11: you cut corners you do exactly that is, you just
Speaker 11: get in the way, which isn't.
Speaker 6: The right way.
Speaker 12: Oh.
Speaker 11: I would love to tell you that had I made
Speaker 11: a three sixty on that house, that would have completely
Speaker 11: changed everything that I did. The answer is no. Sixteen
Speaker 11: years later, if I went on that same fire today,
Speaker 11: or as a command officer, you know, as a deputy
Speaker 11: chief in a department, you know, or as a shift
Speaker 11: commander or whatever, would I have somebody's ass for not
Speaker 11: doing a three sixty or hitting it with a large
Speaker 11: line on the exterior that knock down the fire before
Speaker 11: a cruise ever went in there. The answer is absolutely yes.
Speaker 11: Is that's where the learning, you know, has has occurred
Speaker 11: that I cannot be more transparent that the things that
Speaker 11: I see now if folks have completely changed, and it's
Speaker 11: not because we jumped in a time machine and things changed.
Speaker 11: It's because our folks have continued to change. And as
Speaker 11: Chief Goldfeaer said earlier, is it's a cultural thing in
Speaker 11: the fire department. And unfortunately May twenty fifth, two thousand
Speaker 11: and eight, was a day that started to change the
Speaker 11: culture for our department and for our county.
Speaker 14: And we are so we are so great think that's
Speaker 14: on here and telling us the honest story, and most
Speaker 14: importantly is how you've evolved to be better today than
Speaker 14: you were more than a decade ago. Right, So that
Speaker 14: is such a huge a huge takeaway here is that
Speaker 14: we're trying to be better and learn and evolve, and
Speaker 14: that's exactly what we did.
Speaker 11: So we're super appreciative of of you being on here.
Speaker 14: And I would advise you don't read the chat because
Speaker 14: you'll lose track of your of your thoughts.
Speaker 11: The chat can the chat can blow up and have
Speaker 11: a thousand.
Speaker 4: Black Oh the chat, don't go down the black hole.
Speaker 6: Say from the rabbit hole, rabbit.
Speaker 11: Switch, I switch over the private chat.
Speaker 6: It'll just be it's just something that's important, guys. I'll
Speaker 6: bring it up just so you know.
Speaker 9: But so I'm just I'm just thinking about like that.
Speaker 9: The picture of that house. My house is very similar,
Speaker 9: two story, has the deck and then has a walk
Speaker 9: out for the basement in the back. There's basically in
Speaker 9: my mind, I mean, unless there's no way I could
Speaker 9: go in there with two people with one line with
Speaker 9: fire that's on the first floor, it got into the
Speaker 9: second floor, into the attic.
Speaker 6: There's basically there's nothing. What are you going to do there?
Speaker 9: Like, you can't you can't hit that with with thirty guys.
Speaker 9: It's going to take two or three lines and immediately
Speaker 9: being stretched to make any impact. So it's not it's
Speaker 9: not saying anything about what you guys did. I'm not
Speaker 9: I'm not saying that. I'm just saying in general, I
Speaker 9: can't imagine stretching a line into my house and thinking
Speaker 9: that I I could do something there. Like it's just
Speaker 9: not gonna happen, you.
Speaker 6: Know what I mean?
Speaker 11: Gonzo, can you get back to that first picture.
Speaker 6: From the just one exposure?
Speaker 11: Uh, there should be the one, the one with our
Speaker 11: crew there.
Speaker 6: So.
Speaker 11: I can tell you it's a twenty eight year old captain.
Speaker 11: I wait for you in the county. That fire, that
Speaker 11: fire there was go all day long to me. And
Speaker 11: I don't say that, you know, trying to trying to
Speaker 11: be in a measuring contest at all. It was. It
Speaker 11: was just the facts of what it was. Oh and
Speaker 11: again was the confidence or complacency, whatever you want to
Speaker 11: assign to it is We've I've been to this fire before.
Speaker 11: Oh so that picture there is we are still trying
Speaker 11: to figure out how to get out that joint after
Speaker 11: we called him ay Day. So I'll use that as
Speaker 11: I'll use that picture as a good indicator of the
Speaker 11: may it was called. I think that you've got a
Speaker 11: snippet there of the actual may Day from video on
Speaker 11: the scene. I'll give a little background then if we
Speaker 11: could go into that, that would be good. Uh So
Speaker 11: with that is I left off with, I had just
Speaker 11: called out on the radio, told him visibility was zero.
Speaker 11: I thought that we were at that point where we
Speaker 11: were just starting to maybe get a hit on it
Speaker 11: to get ahead, which wasn't the case. Uh And it
Speaker 11: went from being warm to being hot to being we
Speaker 11: need to get the hell out of here. The tower
Speaker 11: crew had came and made the doorway of the second floor.
Speaker 11: So if you want to let it play there for
Speaker 11: a second, then I'll take it.
Speaker 6: Okay, we'll play about thirty seconds of it. So here
Speaker 6: we go.
Speaker 13: Okay, safety tick.
Speaker 5: That one.
Speaker 15: Day in the second floor, you're in there for reactivating
Speaker 15: the one to create evacuate chunky class evacuate.
Speaker 6: That smoke is just.
Speaker 9: You can't put that out with two towel added.
Speaker 12: Yeah, down to cheap eleven.
Speaker 15: Did you copy everything? Radio craft crane all out?
Speaker 6: Okay?
Speaker 4: So chief, now what are you seeing when this is going?
Speaker 11: So just prior total black, absolute total black.
Speaker 9: Uh.
Speaker 11: And it was literally four years after this, excuse me,
Speaker 11: six years after this when we went in a flashover
Speaker 11: can for the third time that I've ever been in
Speaker 11: a flashover can for training. Is I had a thermal
Speaker 11: imager with me that third time that I went in,
Speaker 11: and I was able to but connect what I was
Speaker 11: seeing or not seen at Metalwood Court to what I
Speaker 11: saw in that flashover can. And that is what's called blackfire.
Speaker 11: And that was the fingers coming through the smoke that
Speaker 11: was burning in the room that we were in. So
Speaker 11: with that being said, is it went in my brain.
Speaker 11: When that m word may day popped into my head.
Speaker 11: There was no waiting to call may day. It was
Speaker 11: I know that we've got fire below us were stuck.
Speaker 11: Tried to call mayde and I couldn't. I couldn't because
Speaker 11: I carried my radio on the outside of my gear.
Speaker 11: The interface on where the lapel mic connected into the
Speaker 11: side of the radio had melted, burned clear away. And
Speaker 11: the reason why I couldn't transmit a may Day is
Speaker 11: because my fingers melted into my lapel mic.
Speaker 4: Oh my god.
Speaker 11: So I don't say that to dramatize things. I say
Speaker 11: that because hey, my radio wasn't working. Well, my radio
Speaker 11: would have worked if I would have reached down and
Speaker 11: actually squeezed the button on the side of the radio.
Speaker 11: Is that's another training point. Wherever you push the push
Speaker 11: to talk on your radio, whether you got to lapel
Speaker 11: my cooked up to it or not, is where that
Speaker 11: thing opens up. If I would have keyed it up
Speaker 11: actually on the box itself, guess what it would have happened.
Speaker 11: It would have worked. I would have been able to
Speaker 11: transmit a may Day. But what happens training wise with that, Well,
Speaker 11: I couldn't do it. So what did I do. I
Speaker 11: told Jack to call may Day and guess what he did.
Speaker 11: It wasn't by policy, it wasn't perfect, but you know
Speaker 11: what he transmitted it It was acknowledged and they started
Speaker 11: deploying resources. So that is a win in my brain
Speaker 11: on exactly how to address that situation.
Speaker 12: So at that.
Speaker 11: Point, we made it to Brandy and I stretched to
Speaker 11: the top of the stairs. It took me two weeks
Speaker 11: after the fact to remember what I saw or what
Speaker 11: I felt at the top of those stairs. Well, what
Speaker 11: I felt was burning, but what I saw was orange.
Speaker 11: That was it. It was like our head was in
Speaker 11: a jet engine with fire blowing past us, coming up
Speaker 11: these stairs. So Brandy tells me, well, actually, before I
Speaker 11: get ahead of myself, do you know what we've heard.
Speaker 11: We've heard nothing, nothing at all, no federal cues. I
Speaker 11: could barely hear myself talk. Well, if I can barely
Speaker 11: hear myself talk, it's not just the normal, you know,
Speaker 11: muffled face piece. You all saw the picture there of
Speaker 11: how thick that smoke was coming out of that house,
Speaker 11: How black, how dark? You know, how thick that stuff is.
Speaker 11: That's an indicator on the inside of a fire. If
Speaker 11: you can't hear your partner, right. Besides, you smoke burns, right,
Speaker 11: that's a concern. We need to be aware of that.
Speaker 11: So Brandy tells me I don't have any water, and
Speaker 11: I'm thinking to myself, pan is the way that you play?
Speaker 11: That's just that is what it is. And I went
Speaker 11: into survival officer mood. She told me she didn't have
Speaker 11: a water. What am I thinking? I'm thinking that because
Speaker 11: of how stressful this situation is. Something as simple as
Speaker 11: pull to open and close that wasn't a thing. So
Speaker 11: you know what, I took the line from her. I
Speaker 11: opened it up, It goes limp. I close it, it
Speaker 11: goes semi rigid, well ten feet back from the nozzle.
Speaker 11: Our hose almost burned completely in half in that amount
Speaker 11: of time. So that's where you talk about training is
Speaker 11: day one bengeon company operations? What do they tell you?
Speaker 11: Once you're on that line, you don't put it down.
Speaker 11: So we had to abandon the line because we're burning
Speaker 11: above the fire and it's doing nothing for us. So
Speaker 11: that umbilical cord that's connected to moms sitting out on
Speaker 11: the street, you know, with that hose met up with
Speaker 11: Jack didn't have any contact at all with Bones. Bones
Speaker 11: is Lieutenant Early, which was the tower officer.
Speaker 10: So one second, you would Brandy together, who's Jack?
Speaker 11: So Jack was the firefighter on the tower. He was
Speaker 11: the backstep firefighter on the tower. Normally when I tell
Speaker 11: this story, I give all the names at the at
Speaker 11: the beginning, I apologize. I need to have like a
Speaker 11: spreadsheet here to go off through all this stuff.
Speaker 6: So, oh my god, wow.
Speaker 10: So where are you right now?
Speaker 4: Lose them?
Speaker 10: His signal has been cutting in and out.
Speaker 12: Micah, So can you guys hear me.
Speaker 4: On and off?
Speaker 6: Yeah, signal keep coming in and out, all right, check
Speaker 6: check out me. It was okay, I think as you're
Speaker 6: in it, it's a little gammed up. Excuse you with
Speaker 6: the AOL.
Speaker 11: Can you hear me?
Speaker 12: Now?
Speaker 6: Got you out?
Speaker 11: All right? So try to transmit a may day. Get
Speaker 11: to the top of the stairs. Don't have any water.
Speaker 11: Throw our hose line down. We make it back. Brady
Speaker 11: and I make it back to outside the master bedroom. Jack,
Speaker 11: the firefighter from the tower, is outside. We're making contact
Speaker 11: with him literally verbally. Can't see anything whatsoever. No contact
Speaker 11: with Lieutendant Early, which was the tower officer. So what's
Speaker 11: going through our mind. Why why is bones noting answering? Well,
Speaker 11: he's not answering because he's dead. That's exactly what went
Speaker 11: went through our heads is you know the reason he's
Speaker 11: not answering is because he's dead. He is overrun by fire,
Speaker 11: just like we are. But I will tell everybody that's
Speaker 11: on this podcast that I believe in training, because if
Speaker 11: you train the right way, it will not fail you.
Speaker 11: I it just won't. Oh, I switched into survival mode.
Speaker 11: The first thing that I recognized other I told Brandy
Speaker 11: to get a hold of me and not let go.
Speaker 11: She got a hold of my waist strap on my SCBA,
Speaker 11: and I wanted tactile contact with her. It's just I
Speaker 11: knew the experienced level Jack was used to operating on
Speaker 11: a truck, you know, without a line, with unassisted searches.
Speaker 11: You know, he was used to that. So I'm good
Speaker 11: maintaining contact with him verbally or yelling at him and
Speaker 11: you can barely hear it. But the first thing that
Speaker 11: I noticed was how fast I was breathing. And this
Speaker 11: is where I can The first thing that I corrected
Speaker 11: was my breathing is I knew that I needed as
Speaker 11: much air as what I had in my cylinder. Well,
Speaker 11: secondary to that, I wondered how many more times I
Speaker 11: was going to be able to breathe that air out
Speaker 11: of my cylinder because it was hot air that was
Speaker 11: coming into my face piece. Then third to that, I
Speaker 11: don't say this to dramatize this, this is the reality
Speaker 11: of it. I was already making preparations of what I
Speaker 11: was going to do with my face piece melted off.
Speaker 11: So it didn't I think that I was going to die. Yep,
Speaker 11: sure did. But a good motivator is having people with
Speaker 11: you that's screaming, and that's just the fact of what
Speaker 11: it is. And it was my job to get him out.
Speaker 11: So that's what we did. So it went from the
Speaker 11: center of the house toward side. Bravo. First door that
Speaker 11: I came to was an inward swinging door. Couldn't see anything.
Speaker 11: We're burning, and my hands slide across the floor. I
Speaker 11: recognized that I was either on linoleum or I transitioned
Speaker 11: from carpet onto a slick, slick surface inward swinging door.
Speaker 11: Where do inward swinging doors go in your house? Generally
Speaker 11: somewhere where they can be occupied, right, So my hands
Speaker 11: slid across the floor as tywer linoleum. Where am I?
Speaker 11: I'm in the bathroom. I'm in a bathroom off of
Speaker 11: a hallway. How big are bathrooms off of hallways? Generally
Speaker 11: not very big. I was in that bathroom long enough
Speaker 11: for me to recognize that and turn around and come
Speaker 11: right back out. I couldn't explain it to you that day,
Speaker 11: but in training you pick up on these things. So
Speaker 11: kept going towards side. Bravo. We make it inside a
Speaker 11: secondary bedroom, towards side, bravo. No windows on the front
Speaker 11: side or the side of this, you know, of this bedroom.
Speaker 11: When Jack came through the door, it was me the brandy,
Speaker 11: then Jack. When Jack made it through the door, Jack
Speaker 11: closed the door. This was two thousand and eight, mind you,
Speaker 11: this is when we were still punching out windows, you know,
Speaker 11: on structure fires, because that's what we did because the
Speaker 11: change to survive the building profile for anybody that was
Speaker 11: stuck inside that house. Right right. So with that being said,
Speaker 11: is we didn't talk about flow pass. We didn't really
Speaker 11: do reco vs. We didn't do any of that shit.
Speaker 11: We didn't recognize it. You know, we didn't have all
Speaker 11: the science that we have now. But what did Jack
Speaker 11: do when he came through that door, he closed the door.
Speaker 11: So what did that do? That compartmentalized where we were.
Speaker 11: Stuff that was on fire stayed on fire, but it
Speaker 11: kept additional heat and fire from coming in on top
Speaker 11: of us. So inside that bedroom we end up, you know,
Speaker 11: I'm scraping the wall trying to find windows, ended up
Speaker 11: hearing glass window was taken out onside Charlie. That ladder
Speaker 11: was thrown by my engine driver. He threw the ladder
Speaker 11: long enough for it to punch the window. Then he
Speaker 11: went back to help the tower driver throw more ladders.
Speaker 11: So with that is we go out through the window,
Speaker 11: make it down, make it outside. I'm trying to cut
Speaker 11: down some of the story here. I apologize, but make
Speaker 11: it aroundside Alpha and I look back at this house
Speaker 11: and it's one hundred percent involved, you know, at this point,
Speaker 11: and I'm like, what the hell did I miss? You know,
Speaker 11: is it's not like we were in there for twenty
Speaker 11: minutes fighting fire, you know, or a half hour. It
Speaker 11: just wasn't. And somebody came past and I said, bones
Speaker 11: are still in there, which is Lieutenant earlier. I said
Speaker 11: bones are still in there. They said, no, bones is
Speaker 11: over there. So let's talk about bones for a second.
Speaker 11: Right towards the end to win that video was stopped.
Speaker 11: Is you hear the chief on the radio, he says, Evacuate,
Speaker 11: structural collapse in the rear. Evacuate. He says that over
Speaker 11: the radio, we hadn't made a trust system. Ends up
Speaker 11: coming down inside this master bedroom, which actually separated Lieutenant
Speaker 11: Early from myself, Brandy and Jack. So Buns ends up
Speaker 11: going into a master bathroom, closes the door. He's taking
Speaker 11: baseball swings with his four foot d handle Boston Rate
Speaker 11: trying to bust out these four by four windows that
Speaker 11: are around a garden tub. Well, these windows don't open.
Speaker 11: They don't open up and down. They're not casement, they
Speaker 11: don't open side to side, none of that. Well, you
Speaker 11: come to find out these these windows were made out
Speaker 11: of what's called hurricue light glass. It is a laminated
Speaker 11: type glass. Is the safety glass. It's similar to what
Speaker 11: they put in cockpits of aircraft. Why the hell would
Speaker 11: anybody put this in their house? Well, safety, they're not
Speaker 11: thinking about firefighters. If I'm getting in the garden tub
Speaker 11: and I've had a couple of chardonnay and I slip
Speaker 11: and I put my arm over end of the glass.
Speaker 11: My arm's not going through it. So it's a thing.
Speaker 11: It's a safety thing, right, It's a safety thing that
Speaker 11: we know about now that I didn't know about. Then
Speaker 11: he displaced that thing two or three inches clear out
Speaker 11: of the frame and couldn't fracture it, couldn't get out.
Speaker 11: He dropped to the floor to die until he thought
Speaker 11: about his family. He would tell you the same thing
Speaker 11: if he was sitting right here beside me right now.
Speaker 11: That was his motivation to get up off the floor
Speaker 11: and give it one last shot. He opened up the door,
Speaker 11: he used his get this thermal imager, looked for the
Speaker 11: coolest spot in the room, which he figured was a window.
Speaker 11: And you know what he was right. He goes head
Speaker 11: first running through this window, head first, goes out three
Speaker 11: stories down to the ground into the woods out back
Speaker 11: in front of Engine eighteen's crew that had just stretched
Speaker 11: to the line aroundside. Charlie hadn't gotten water yet, lands
Speaker 11: right in front of them on fire, so they're putting
Speaker 11: him out with hing point here is remember that window
Speaker 11: that I talked about at the beginning, that I took
Speaker 11: the time to rake all the glass out and take
Speaker 11: the sash and everything out. If you ever wonder why
Speaker 11: that's the window that he ended up going out unobstructed.
Speaker 11: He didn't have to stop messing around with the window.
Speaker 11: He went headfirst out that window. So they dragged him
Speaker 11: around inside Charlie sid Delta side Alpha, and they told me,
Speaker 11: they said, hey, bones is over there, and I had
Speaker 11: to see it for myself, and I heard him before
Speaker 11: I ever saw him. But that meant to things, meant
Speaker 11: that he had an airway and he was alive. Those
Speaker 11: were a whole lot better in my brain than being dead.
Speaker 11: So insert three months later, most of us were back
Speaker 11: to work, well half of us were back enter after
Speaker 11: multiple grafting surgeries. And you know what, he got retired
Speaker 11: because of his injuries from Metalwood Court. You know what
Speaker 11: we have to show for that today? You know what
Speaker 11: they did with the house after they investigated, They knocked
Speaker 11: the damn thing down. Then they rebuilt it back on
Speaker 11: the exact same foundation. Wow, we had nothing to show
Speaker 11: for almost killing four of us inside that house because
Speaker 11: the decision was made before I ever got to that house.
Speaker 11: So I can't speak enough on this subject. And with
Speaker 11: Chief Goldfeder calling, you know this morning to see if
Speaker 11: I was interested. You all often hopefully see my passion.
Speaker 11: And you know, I'm not telling you we did everything
Speaker 11: right on this call, but I'm telling you that there's
Speaker 11: a lot to learn from here. That this book it's
Speaker 11: fun to save somebody's life. And that's I can't articulate
Speaker 11: it any further than that.
Speaker 5: Chief, What was the time frame from the time that
Speaker 5: shit went sideways till the time that you guys came
Speaker 5: out that window?
Speaker 11: So it was four minutes. Uh, it's there's a few
Speaker 11: seconds here here or there with it, but it was
Speaker 11: about four minutes after the May Day is when we
Speaker 11: finally made it out.
Speaker 4: That's a long time, man, is Yeah, it seemed.
Speaker 11: A lot longer than that, I can assure you.
Speaker 9: Yeah, So what what were to take what we what
Speaker 9: were the takeaways?
Speaker 12: Like, what did you feel?
Speaker 4: What it all over the place?
Speaker 6: I know it was it was several. There's several takeaways, yep.
Speaker 11: So some of the takeaways. Uh, yeah, there's there's a
Speaker 11: whole bunch from it. But I'll start with accountability. Is
Speaker 11: that's one of the pieces that I talked about. Listening
Speaker 11: to the radio traffic with it, You'll be like, I
Speaker 11: don't know what he's talking about with this four four
Speaker 11: and four. Well, because the times don't match up with
Speaker 11: where my brain was, with what I remember as stuff.
Speaker 11: I remember looking at the safety officer at a specific time.
Speaker 11: Then I remember him talking on the radio, so I
Speaker 11: know because I was there, that we were all out
Speaker 11: at that point. Well, it was after that when they
Speaker 11: got on the radio and said, you've got firefighters jumping outside, Charlie,
Speaker 11: you know, out to the rear, all these different things,
Speaker 11: and we were already out at that point. And with
Speaker 11: that is they went for the longest time thinking that
Speaker 11: we had a firefighter that was missing. And this is
Speaker 11: one of the biggest points to make out of all
Speaker 11: this is would I make a decision to put a
Speaker 11: brother or sister in house? The answer is, you damn right,
Speaker 11: I will, because I am That's exactly what I would
Speaker 11: want to do if I was in that situation. So
Speaker 11: with that being said, is accountability matters all the time.
Speaker 11: It really really matters in these types of situations. Because
Speaker 11: we thought that a fourth person or excuse me, the
Speaker 11: fourth on the tower was missing, when in fact they weren't.
Speaker 11: We only had three and they were starting to deploy
Speaker 11: additional rit teams and stuff inside to look for a
Speaker 11: firefighter that that just wasn't there. Uh So they actually
Speaker 11: were able to figure it out once they got off
Speaker 11: our passport accountability uh tags to the command posts and
Speaker 11: they started checking people off and determined that, oh man,
Speaker 11: they're they're at minimum staffing today, so we're good and
Speaker 11: and they got full accountability of all of us. So
Speaker 11: that's one of the big ones.
Speaker 6: Uh well, three.
Speaker 11: Sixty I can't hit enough on that is whether it
Speaker 11: would have changed my decision or not. Go ahead. I'm
Speaker 11: sorry saying something.
Speaker 9: The accountability part that's kind of that's that's after things
Speaker 9: have gone bad.
Speaker 6: I was trying to to key in on, like if you.
Speaker 9: Want to try and have guys in the future who
Speaker 9: are fighting something similar to this, you know what, what
Speaker 9: would you say, like from the from the get go
Speaker 9: that what were the takeaways like after they looked at
Speaker 9: the fire like what what things that they said you
Speaker 9: could have done, should have done, didn't do? You know
Speaker 9: those types of things that you know those guys will
Speaker 9: know for the future.
Speaker 6: You know what I mean.
Speaker 11: Sure is to kind of summarize very quickly, is three
Speaker 11: sixty whether you want to do it or not, we
Speaker 11: now have a policy that you shall it is whether
Speaker 11: you can agree with policy not agree with policy. That
Speaker 11: was a cultural change that we made. You have to
Speaker 11: view all sides before you go into the structure that is.
Speaker 11: That is a rule unless you're in a known rescue situation.
Speaker 11: When you get there, you better hear it on the
Speaker 11: radio for folks to hit and agreed, disagree with whatever.
Speaker 11: But you know what, our folks know that that is
Speaker 11: a checkbox that they have to hit before they can
Speaker 11: go inside. I think the you know, the big T word,
Speaker 11: the transitional fire attack, even though transitional is not really
Speaker 11: a mode, is will our folks pull up on a
Speaker 11: structural fire like this, whether they're fully staffed or not,
Speaker 11: and take a big line around side Charles and knock
Speaker 11: it down for thirty sixty seconds and eliminate your problem,
Speaker 11: you know, and make it safer, you know, to reset
Speaker 11: the fire? Is that a thing now? Absolutely?
Speaker 6: It is.
Speaker 11: You know, if if we would have started on the
Speaker 11: back of that house, you know, hitting it from the outside,
Speaker 11: you all wouldn't listen to me tonight verbally flagelate.
Speaker 4: You know, that's pretty good on your show.
Speaker 11: So because it would have been enoughing fired to be
Speaker 11: honest with you, and that's that is just the fact
Speaker 11: of it is just the fact of what it is. Oh,
Speaker 11: you know, as many as many takeaways as there are
Speaker 11: from this and against I know the book I think
Speaker 11: articulates it very well, the points in it. But the
Speaker 11: facts are that for every one thing that went wrong
Speaker 11: on this incident, two things went right. And I think
Speaker 11: that you can you have to focus on the things
Speaker 11: that you can learn. Because after this incident, the first
Speaker 11: time that I ever gave a presentation on it was
Speaker 11: in Fairfax, kunt Virginia to an officer development school. They said, hey,
Speaker 11: can you put some you know, can you tell us
Speaker 11: about your fire. I started off with literally, you know,
Speaker 11: four power point slides, you know, in a bulleted list
Speaker 11: that I had jotted down, like on a napkin or
Speaker 11: something to talk to these folks about. But it's morphed
Speaker 11: into a four hour presentation now because of the things
Speaker 11: to learn. And I dedicated myself on the front end
Speaker 11: of all this thing that I would do my best
Speaker 11: to try to pass this information on as much as
Speaker 11: I could as long as the information was still relevant.
Speaker 11: And you know what, I haven't worked myself out of
Speaker 11: a job yet because there's always there. It's the same
Speaker 11: stuff that you see all the time. And you know,
Speaker 11: I hate to be blunt with that, but that's just
Speaker 11: the fact of what it is.
Speaker 6: Is.
Speaker 11: I wish that I didn't have to teach about this
Speaker 11: fire anymore because we were perfect. But we are some
Speaker 11: hard headed bastards in the fire department, and you know
Speaker 11: what is sometimes it just takes hearing it from the
Speaker 11: right person to man that sounds like me, and I
Speaker 11: hope that folks take that to heart. So that's that's
Speaker 11: some of the big ones for.
Speaker 10: Me, you know, Michael. One of the things we tried
Speaker 10: to do when and I think we shared this the
Speaker 10: last time we were on with the guys Who'm getting
Speaker 10: salty is to identify fires that most firefighters are going
Speaker 10: to go to. And I would argue that other than
Speaker 10: maybe in some cornfields or something, every firefighter in America
Speaker 10: has these houses. If there's a new construction in your
Speaker 10: area in the last thirty years, you have these three
Speaker 10: four thousand square foot lightweight would trust basically pieces of shit.
Speaker 10: They're dangerous before they catch fire.
Speaker 5: So everybody, you know what you said too, Chief, Like
Speaker 5: you said for everything you did wrong, you did four
Speaker 5: things right. And I'm sure there was a time that
Speaker 5: you might have beat yourself up for doing some things.
Speaker 5: But as I'm listening to your story, I'm still listen.
Speaker 5: I'm listening to your training come through, like, because you
Speaker 5: should be proud of that, Like the fact that you
Speaker 5: knew has to float on your breathing, you knew that
Speaker 5: she should grab onto the fact there's things that came
Speaker 5: through from your training that probably saved your lives. So
Speaker 5: you should be proud of that.
Speaker 10: You know, he won't say it, but he received the
Speaker 10: Silver Medal of Valor for saving that cruise life.
Speaker 4: Yep, and he should have.
Speaker 5: Like I said, it comes through, the training comes through, man,
Speaker 5: And I kudos for you, man, you did a great job.
Speaker 11: Yeah.
Speaker 14: So I have so many I have so many points
Speaker 14: I want to talk to talk about on this fire.
Speaker 12: Is full?
Speaker 14: But can you where where is everybody today with their injuries?
Speaker 14: You know, with more than a decade past that? So
Speaker 14: tell us a little bit about that and explain this
Speaker 14: picture to us as well.
Speaker 6: Sure.
Speaker 11: So a point that uh that I'll hit here that
Speaker 11: I find interesting is that you never want to become
Speaker 11: a statistic, right, But I can also validate that some
Speaker 11: of the things on Project may Day are very valid.
Speaker 11: You know, from a front row seat is where I
Speaker 11: hit earlier on you know, we're above the fire or
Speaker 11: visibility is zero. You know these triggers. Those two gentlemen
Speaker 11: that you see stand on the left hand side of
Speaker 11: that picture, we're both drivers for my station, but both
Speaker 11: of them were assigned to the opposite shift because what
Speaker 11: is one thing that happens with may Day's you don't
Speaker 11: have the usual crew working interestingly enough, that was us
Speaker 11: that day, or you don't have your normal staffing that
Speaker 11: was us that day. So technician the oder standing there
Speaker 11: on the left, Technician Dave Allen in the blue shirt,
Speaker 11: second in from the left. Both of those guys still
Speaker 11: work with the Fire depart Dave Allen, you know the
Speaker 11: guy in the blue shirt there on the left, he's
Speaker 11: actually assigned in our Internet or information technology system of
Speaker 11: section within our fire department.
Speaker 15: Now.
Speaker 11: Jack Shingleton, the one in the sunglasses there in the center,
Speaker 11: he was the backstep firefighter on the tower that day.
Speaker 11: You know he's he's a technician now, which is a
Speaker 11: heavy apparatus driver as well of you know Lieutenant John
Speaker 11: bones Early, he's the one that's standing there with the
Speaker 11: wraps on him. Is he sometimes when you say that
Speaker 11: people go through things, is I think that, as terrible
Speaker 11: as this sounds, is out of all of us standing
Speaker 11: in that picture, that is the one that dude is
Speaker 11: a fireman's fireman through and through. Oh, he spent three
Speaker 11: months in the Burn Center. That's actually the picture of
Speaker 11: the day that we picked him up to bring him home.
Speaker 11: Three months in the Burn Center, multiple grafting surgeries, and
Speaker 11: now he got medically retired because of his injuries at
Speaker 11: Metalwood Court. But you know what, that dudes alive because
Speaker 11: his training worked.
Speaker 7: Oh.
Speaker 11: Then of course the good looking dude over on the
Speaker 11: right hand side, this short guy that's me Then, Uh,
Speaker 11: that's a Brandy Eisman. Was Brandy Laypole in this pick? Sure? Uh?
Speaker 11: You know three three kids since then, she's actually a
Speaker 11: lieutenant in our department. That chick is she's solid. She
Speaker 11: is assigned to one of the busiest engines in the county.
Speaker 11: And you know at Metalwood Court that is that is
Speaker 11: a tough chick that will have your back.
Speaker 13: Man.
Speaker 11: Oh, I can't speak enough for you know, the folks
Speaker 11: that I went through that experience with. I wouldn't say
Speaker 11: that I would hand pick him. But you know what
Speaker 11: is that is the best hand that I could have
Speaker 11: had that day to make it through that damn experience.
Speaker 11: But you know, to say that these folks made lemonade
Speaker 11: out of lemons, that that's probably a good way to
Speaker 11: put it. Is everyone has made positive rides since that day.
Speaker 11: Everybody has their their own way that they tell the story.
Speaker 10: Uh.
Speaker 11: And interestingly enough is I went through a part of
Speaker 11: one of my law enforcement classes for the fire marshal stuff,
Speaker 11: uh crisis intervention team training, and we were talking about
Speaker 11: this and a guy looked at me and said, well,
Speaker 11: you know, I don't see you know, a whole lot
Speaker 11: of scars you know, from your from from this incident.
Speaker 11: And I said, brother, I said, my scars are on
Speaker 11: the inside. And that is something that I know that
Speaker 11: a lot of folks in the fire service, whether it's
Speaker 11: behavioral health or whether it's actual you know, just remembering things,
Speaker 11: or whether it's actual outward injuries, all of us have
Speaker 11: at some point, uh that you know is a big
Speaker 11: takeaway from this incident as well. Yeah, I'll tell you
Speaker 11: I'm gonna a couple of a couple of points.
Speaker 14: I want to quickly highlight uh that you mentioned we
Speaker 14: had nothing to show and lost almost four members a
Speaker 14: couple of months later when we knocked it down and
Speaker 14: built a new structure right on its place. The impact
Speaker 14: of the direction of the door where it leads to
Speaker 14: how important that is for us to know.
Speaker 11: You're worrying about your face piece melting.
Speaker 14: And I think about the Pennsylvania Fire Academy, which is
Speaker 14: one of the fires that's in the book, and we've
Speaker 14: now seen that the change in that if you have
Speaker 14: it's very different if you have an impact failure of
Speaker 14: your s CBA face piece or if you have a
Speaker 14: face piece melting. We used to just say cover the area,
Speaker 14: and we've learned now that if you cover the if
Speaker 14: you cover the area or put your hand over it,
Speaker 14: you're basically gonna wipe away the polycarbonate and visit, you're
Speaker 14: gonna make.
Speaker 11: Yourself breathing worse. So you're gonna make it worse.
Speaker 14: I think about you mentioned understanding black fire volume, velocity, density,
Speaker 14: color of fire, the importance of that, and understanding that
Speaker 14: we are close to a flashover, we are close to
Speaker 14: order a ignition. You know, all of these different things
Speaker 14: that it's just missing the right mixture, and that black
Speaker 14: fire isn't a you won't see the flame, but once it.
Speaker 11: Gets the right mixture of oxygen, it's gonna light off.
Speaker 14: Understanding that you mentioned the lady on the outside and
Speaker 14: the radio, we know that the radio straps, the those
Speaker 14: electronics are some of the weakest link in ours in
Speaker 14: our equipment, So having them protected by a bunking gear,
Speaker 14: how important that is. The thermoaning camera. Back in two
Speaker 14: thousand and eight, we didn't always take it off for
Speaker 14: the rig. Today you're negligent if you don't take it
Speaker 14: off the rig in a structural fire, and there's so
Speaker 14: many and knowing that, how we train with that. You
Speaker 14: barely mentioned even the ceiling height as another factor. We
Speaker 14: saw a fire at the front door in an area
Speaker 14: that had a very fall ceiling there in one of
Speaker 14: the pitches. We saw on the side of the siding
Speaker 14: what looked like smoke that would have been from the
Speaker 14: area of the trust lock for the first and second floor.
Speaker 14: I think about, you know the importance of the three sixties.
Speaker 14: Somebody put this in the chat about what else are
Speaker 14: we going to gain from that?
Speaker 12: From that?
Speaker 14: Seeing that other side and we're gonna first off, we're
Speaker 14: gonna we may see where the actual fire started, the
Speaker 14: fire location, an alternate an alternate access point. We may
Speaker 14: see victims locate a victim location. We may see the
Speaker 14: height difference. It could be two stories in the front
Speaker 14: and three stories in the back. We're to walk out,
Speaker 14: and how important that is. We could see if the
Speaker 14: fire started below us. Sometimes we can't see that from
Speaker 14: the from the side. I said, my my sheet of
Speaker 14: paper is full of information, of notes that I took tonight,
Speaker 14: and I had already known so much about this fire
Speaker 14: from interacting with your story and from this book. So
Speaker 14: I really I can't thank you enough for coming on
Speaker 14: here and being honest and thank god it was a
Speaker 14: close call and not aligned to do to death, because
Speaker 14: that is boy the Swiss Cheese was close to lineing
Speaker 14: up and the training and it was mentioned right, don't
Speaker 14: let anybody short change your training. It's so important that
Speaker 14: we stay current and everybody's got these structures in their area.
Speaker 11: So again, thank you for being on here tonight.
Speaker 10: Think you know what of the guys said thank you to.
Speaker 10: One of the guys said that the organization changed because
Speaker 10: we see so many incidents like this where they go
Speaker 10: back to business the same way. And credit to Chief
Speaker 10: Keith Brower at the time, who was leading it, and
Speaker 10: literally it changed the department and that's a good thing,
Speaker 10: thank god it did. Thanks for being with us tonight, Micah.
Speaker 11: Yes, thank you, thank you all.
Speaker 4: I can mute myself. Thank you, Chief, appreciate you.
Speaker 15: Coming on.
Speaker 4: All right, Brandon, you've been on deck circle.
Speaker 6: You ready? I think he was itching.
Speaker 12: See he's ready so long if you want to stood up, yeah,
Speaker 12: I'll set him up.
Speaker 14: So chapter seven was was written by Brandon Corey and
Speaker 14: I met him a couple of years ago at a
Speaker 14: fire conference and he had presented his story. I missed it,
Speaker 14: but a couple of people came up to me and said,
Speaker 14: he's a guy you gotta meet. You got to hear
Speaker 14: his story. So I basically got a one on one
Speaker 14: of course about that fire and about his friend Ben.
Speaker 11: Uh.
Speaker 14: And since since I met Brandon, I have I have
Speaker 14: met his dad, who's in the fire department.
Speaker 11: I have also met Ben, his friend. I've met his
Speaker 11: dad and his and his mom.
Speaker 14: I've Ron is Ben's father, uh And I also met
Speaker 14: his mother recently at the at the fire at the
Speaker 14: they were there at the Memorial Weekend, and it's important
Speaker 14: to point out that this fire was in twenty twenty
Speaker 14: and after their twenty three year old son, who was
Speaker 14: a captain in their fire department, was killed in.
Speaker 11: The line of duty.
Speaker 14: Their son was honored at the National form fire by
Speaker 14: the Memorial Weekend, and when I met them, they were
Speaker 14: there to help out new families that are coming on
Speaker 14: being part of Memorial Weekend, and it's just it's just
Speaker 14: remarkable the generational impact. And at the time, his sister, Tory,
Speaker 14: was in the volunteer department and Ben's mom is Caller Caller,
Speaker 14: I've got the name for a minute there, And because
Speaker 14: meeting them was pretty emotional for me in what they've
Speaker 14: gone through and what they continue to do.
Speaker 11: I couldn't even imagine losing.
Speaker 14: Your child at twenty three years old at a fire
Speaker 14: that you're at, So Brandon, thank.
Speaker 11: You for sharing the story and for Ben's parents.
Speaker 14: Know that we will always make sure that people know
Speaker 14: your son's story and that other firefighters will understand, and
Speaker 14: we'll have these watch outs for people to to make
Speaker 14: sure that we can potentially have different outcomes. As Mike
Speaker 14: I said earlier, this is how we save five lives. So, Brandon,
Speaker 14: thank you for being on the show.
Speaker 6: Yeah, for sure, Thanks.
Speaker 8: Brandon, Yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 13: I want to give a quick.
Speaker 8: Shout out to Ron and Carla also, you know, they've
Speaker 8: obviously losing their son helping out with all the stuff,
Speaker 8: and they're a really big help with me too. You know,
Speaker 8: a lot of the stuff that I go down and
Speaker 8: talk about Ben do all the teaching, you know, they
Speaker 8: they allow me to do it.
Speaker 13: You know, when I.
Speaker 8: First started doing this, I went and talked to them first,
Speaker 8: just to make sure, you know, I had their blessing
Speaker 8: to be able to go and share their son's story
Speaker 8: and everything. And they obviously gave me the go ahead
Speaker 8: because they know the impact that hopefully this story will
Speaker 8: continue to have on the fire service and hopefully be
Speaker 8: able to save other firefighters' lives in the future. So
Speaker 8: I just want to give them a quick shout out
Speaker 8: and everything for all the stuff they continue to do
Speaker 8: to help make the fire service better.
Speaker 13: Also, so we'll.
Speaker 8: Jump into our fire like Chief Leap said, it's chapter
Speaker 8: seven on a duplex. It's on an old Air Force
Speaker 8: base up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, just a
Speaker 8: little south of Lake superior, So there's a picture sometime
Speaker 8: after the fire. Unfortunately, now, just like the last story
Speaker 8: we heard, it is tore down and everything. But it
Speaker 8: is a duplex kind of split level. So on the
Speaker 8: front half where you're looking at, the actual doors to
Speaker 8: enter the structure are on the side of the house,
Speaker 8: so the B and D corners the fire around this
Speaker 8: one will be on the A B side of the
Speaker 8: house or the duplex. The kitchen and living room are
Speaker 8: what you're looking at right as you go in the door.
Speaker 8: We'll see a picture later. A little bit inside you
Speaker 8: have the stairs going upstairs where all the bedrooms were
Speaker 8: in one bathroom, and then the stairs right next to
Speaker 8: it go down to the basement.
Speaker 13: The A side of the structure.
Speaker 8: Also was on a concrete slab, so the basement was
Speaker 8: underneath the bedrooms and everything. So here's the side of
Speaker 8: the structure that the fire was actually on. So we
Speaker 8: got called that night, right around between nine thirty and
Speaker 8: ten o'clock that night for a structure fire. Everyone out
Speaker 8: of the building. This was in Ben Lauren's jurisdiction in
Speaker 8: their township, Forsyth Township. The department I was on for
Speaker 8: that was our county rescue team through the Sheriff's department,
Speaker 8: so we were part ten deputies with them, most of
Speaker 8: us firefighters EMS I was a paramedic at the time.
Speaker 8: We got dispatched for as the WRIT team, so in
Speaker 8: a lot of area in our county we would get
Speaker 8: dispatched too structure fighters as the WRIT team. They also
Speaker 8: had two other departments called there for mutual aid for
Speaker 8: tankers and manpower. Up in the up we are pretty
Speaker 8: rural and everything even there. First station where they're all
Speaker 8: coming from was a little ways away, so from time
Speaker 8: of dispatch to time on scene was about twenty minutes,
Speaker 8: but in reality that's pretty normal for most of our
Speaker 8: area up here in the rural area. From where we're
Speaker 8: coming from, we're kind of scattered all over the county.
Speaker 8: Our truck that we responded from and everything got on
Speaker 8: scene about thirty five to forty minutes from page out,
Speaker 8: so they were already on scene before we got there.
Speaker 8: Their first officer arriving on scene gave a first time
Speaker 8: the report that fire through the roof fully involved, so
Speaker 8: it is kind of one first teaching point that kind
Speaker 8: of hit us. Obviously we heard that, we kind of
Speaker 8: started talking, getting our game plan as the rit team, well,
Speaker 8: if fire is already through the rough, fully involved, we don't.
Speaker 13: Think that anyone's going to be in there, you know from.
Speaker 8: The fire department, you know, me and my partner that
Speaker 8: we're in the back. You know, our idea of fully
Speaker 8: involved is flames everywhere that we can't occupy that space.
Speaker 8: So we're not thinking, you know, anyone's going to be
Speaker 8: in that structure at that now after that doesn't matter
Speaker 8: what kind of first in report we're getting, I'm always
Speaker 8: thinking that there's going to be victims or people in
Speaker 8: that you know, fire until we get on.
Speaker 13: Scene improve otherwise.
Speaker 8: So our mindset kind of a little bit, uh was
Speaker 8: a little relaxed, just because we didn't think anyone was
Speaker 8: going to be in there. So we pull on scene.
Speaker 8: We were back about half a block because it's kind
Speaker 8: of in the middle of the block that they were on,
Speaker 8: and we could see, you know, an orange glow in
Speaker 8: the night sky. When we get there, we can kind
Speaker 8: of see fire through that side roof and then I
Speaker 8: look down and I can see hose lines going into
Speaker 8: the structure, And obviously that changed my mindset and my
Speaker 8: partner's mindset a little bit.
Speaker 13: At that because now we know that the people are
Speaker 13: in there. So me and my partner and my dad,
Speaker 13: who was.
Speaker 8: Our officer for that night, we go meet up with
Speaker 8: their assistant chief to start kind of getting.
Speaker 13: The game plan and finding out where people were.
Speaker 8: I didn't know until after talking getting more stuff after
Speaker 8: the incident, their first arriving truck that Ben was on again,
Speaker 8: they had.
Speaker 13: Fire through that seaside roof.
Speaker 8: They set a crew inside kind of at the bottom
Speaker 8: of the stairs, going upstairs to spray water, and then
Speaker 8: Ben and his partner went down in the basement to
Speaker 8: check for extension everything. They did have some fire down there,
Speaker 8: not a whole lot. They were able to put all
Speaker 8: that out, kind of did some search down there. At
Speaker 8: that point, his partner started get a little low on air,
Speaker 8: so they came out of the structure to switch out bottles.
Speaker 8: So when we got unseen, the first crew that went
Speaker 8: in was still in there at the bottom of the
Speaker 8: stairs spraying water. They had a crew on the sea
Speaker 8: side spraying water onto the roof and through that.
Speaker 13: Hole, and then they're pulling another line.
Speaker 8: At that point, when we made it to the b
Speaker 8: side where the door was and started talking to their
Speaker 8: assistant chief, that crew that was inside made their way out,
Speaker 8: kind of talked to them, kind of see what was
Speaker 8: going on. They said that hole second story where the
Speaker 8: bedrooms were. It was pretty much fully.
Speaker 13: Involved, not really getting a great.
Speaker 8: Knocked on it, but they had to switch out bottles.
Speaker 8: At that point, I noticed some fire coming out of
Speaker 8: a b side window to go grab a hand line,
Speaker 8: just to kind of again try to phrase some of that,
Speaker 8: but they got another crew to start doing that. So
Speaker 8: I continue talking with the assistant chief trying to get
Speaker 8: some more information. My partner that was in the back
Speaker 8: of the truck and another one of our members that
Speaker 8: showed up. They started doing a three sixty, got some
Speaker 8: more information At that point, I was about to start
Speaker 8: my three sixty.
Speaker 13: At this point Ben came up.
Speaker 8: Talked to him a little bit because we go way
Speaker 8: back a little bit. Both of our dads in the
Speaker 8: area were volunteer firefighters, so kind of knew Ben growing
Speaker 8: up and everything. At first, I was always the young
Speaker 8: kid going around to all of our county trainings, and
Speaker 8: I always had to be, you know, the victim for
Speaker 8: our dads and you know, the extrication.
Speaker 13: Stuff for different things.
Speaker 8: And then Ben finally got old enough and started coming around,
Speaker 8: and it was like, sweet, I'm not that young guy anymore.
Speaker 8: I can start watching a little bit more and Ben
Speaker 8: can take over for that. So I got to talk
Speaker 8: to him a little bit at that time to my
Speaker 8: wife and his girlfriend worked at the hospitals nurses together,
Speaker 8: so we made a little joke about them. His partner
Speaker 8: came up and they went back into the fire to
Speaker 8: try to.
Speaker 13: Stop the spread.
Speaker 12: How long at that point I didn't realize that was.
Speaker 7: At this point probably close to fifty minutes, because the
Speaker 7: other thing with it too, that.
Speaker 8: We found out after that, the person that was renting
Speaker 8: it waited about twenty to thirty minutes to call nine
Speaker 8: to one one after the fire started, not really sure
Speaker 8: why anything left.
Speaker 6: You know, I'll say, fifty minutes. It's a nut.
Speaker 12: Wow, yeah, go ahead, thank you.
Speaker 8: So mm hmm.
Speaker 13: So yeah, I didn't know.
Speaker 8: That was going to be, uh, you know, the last.
Speaker 13: Time I got to ever talk to Ben really.
Speaker 8: So watched him go in. Him and his partner. He
Speaker 8: was the first on the hose line. They're at the
Speaker 8: bottom of the steps just spraying water. Kind of looked,
Speaker 8: you know.
Speaker 13: I always got the.
Speaker 8: Question, I was like, well, did you feel comfortable with
Speaker 8: them going in. Yeah, because where they were at that point,
Speaker 8: they were on a concrete slab, nothing burning over on,
Speaker 8: spraying water, protecting themselves.
Speaker 13: Totally fine.
Speaker 8: At that point, I looked at my dad told him
Speaker 8: now I was going to start doing, you know, my
Speaker 8: three sixty as the rit team to get more eyes
Speaker 8: on it. As I was about to turn around look
Speaker 8: back one more time, noticed that Ben and.
Speaker 13: His partner, you know, weren't.
Speaker 8: At the bottom of the stairs anymore.
Speaker 13: I could see. Didn't know how far they were up
Speaker 13: the stairs, but they're.
Speaker 8: On the stairs kind of back in my mind there's
Speaker 8: a picture going up to the stairs. In my mind
Speaker 8: noted that do that.
Speaker 13: It had to be.
Speaker 8: Somewhat good because there was a crew just up there.
Speaker 8: It was just about to turn.
Speaker 13: The corner around that little.
Speaker 8: Garage that was on the front, and all of a
Speaker 8: sudden heard his assistant chief kind of say Ben, you
Speaker 8: know over the radio, Ben, you try to say something,
Speaker 8: and you know that for some reason, the hairs on
Speaker 8: the back of my neck stood up, like that's just
Speaker 8: not normal. And then all of a sudden his partner
Speaker 8: came running out of that side door, screaming for help.
Speaker 8: You know, I didn't even think twice, dropped my knee,
Speaker 8: started to get my mask on, gloved up everything. My
Speaker 8: partner right there too, everything, and we were probably masked
Speaker 8: up into the building to Ben after his partner came
Speaker 8: and within sixty seconds. So that's a picture of the
Speaker 8: basement after the fire, so you can see that there
Speaker 8: was some fire down there. Some of the fire did
Speaker 8: reach to the floor, trust trustes and everything. They did
Speaker 8: char him up a little bit, but nothing not bad
Speaker 8: enough that it caused true structural damage. But so, like
Speaker 8: I said, me and my partner got to Ben. If
Speaker 8: you could go back to that one picture with the stairs,
Speaker 8: so these are the stairs going up. Ben was right
Speaker 8: at the top of the stairs, kind of facing us,
Speaker 8: but also more towards the railing a little bit, so
Speaker 8: he wasn't looking directly down the stairs. He was at
Speaker 8: kind of an angle. So I was the first one
Speaker 8: to him up those stairs, grabbed onto him right away.
Speaker 8: He was still trying to push up a little bit,
Speaker 8: try to get unstuck. Let him know, you know, hey,
Speaker 8: it was me.
Speaker 13: We're here, We're gonna, you know, get you out.
Speaker 8: So I grabbed because his bottle was still above the floor, also,
Speaker 8: so I grabbed the back of his bottle and his
Speaker 8: right shoulder strap. My partner grabbed his left, and we tried,
Speaker 8: you know, pulling them up, because training before all the time,
Speaker 8: you know, someone falls through a hole, you just grab
Speaker 8: them and you pull them up.
Speaker 13: You know, no big deal. So we're like, all right,
Speaker 13: you know.
Speaker 8: We're gonna have this. We went and pulled them and
Speaker 8: Ben maybe moved an inch and all that. It was
Speaker 8: like a wine bottle cork stuck in a bottle when
Speaker 8: you're trying to pull it out, and there's there's kind
Speaker 8: of the picture of the hole. The one kind of
Speaker 8: little deceiving of this picture, because that hole looks pretty
Speaker 8: big that someone should be able to, you know, either
Speaker 8: fall all the way through or.
Speaker 13: Get out be pulled out pretty easy.
Speaker 8: But if you look kind of halfway back on that hole,
Speaker 8: you see that little triangle piece that's sticking out. If
Speaker 8: you draw a line from that triangle piece all the
Speaker 8: way over to the other side and fill in everything
Speaker 8: behind it, that's the size of the hole. Because everything
Speaker 8: behind that little triangle piece was not burned through when
Speaker 8: we were there. That burned through after.
Speaker 13: We got bent out.
Speaker 8: I went back, uh about a year later and got
Speaker 8: measurements and it was about a thirteen inch all the
Speaker 8: way around size hole and everything right in between the trusses.
Speaker 8: So he was, you know, stuck in there pretty good.
Speaker 8: How far after we tried to pull him his it
Speaker 8: was about belly button ish that.
Speaker 13: Was you know, kind of to the floor right hard
Speaker 13: to really tell.
Speaker 8: So the fire conditions were, you know, it was still
Speaker 8: pretty well involved up there, I say all the time.
Speaker 8: Thankfully they did have that vent hole that was created
Speaker 8: by the fire in the roof already, just because a
Speaker 8: lot of stuff was still venting out there. But everything
Speaker 8: around us and behind us was still rolling pretty good,
Speaker 8: and everything because obviously you saw that one picture with
Speaker 8: the stairs. You know, two firefighters and gears on stairs
Speaker 8: doesn't give us a whole lot of room, especially when
Speaker 8: we're trying to reach.
Speaker 13: Over and grab one of our own to pull up.
Speaker 8: So you can see in this picture kind of the
Speaker 8: drywall is knocked down or even where the studs are exposed.
Speaker 8: That driver was there, but me and my partner were
Speaker 8: just trying to knock more stuff around to try to
Speaker 8: gain more access. So what are you looking at where
Speaker 8: you see the exposed studs that's actually the of origin.
Speaker 8: I was trying to knock some of that stuff down
Speaker 8: and actually get into that room and around him more,
Speaker 8: but I really only lasted seconds in there just because
Speaker 8: it was getting so hot. So kind of going back
Speaker 8: again after we tried to pull them the first time.
Speaker 13: Again, knowing training.
Speaker 8: Before pulling the floor usually means that more of the
Speaker 8: floor is weakend, So I started hitting around him to
Speaker 8: try to break more of that floor up and everything.
Speaker 13: That floor was solid, rock solid all the way around him.
Speaker 8: Even the year after when I went back, you could
Speaker 8: walk that whole floor.
Speaker 15: You know.
Speaker 8: It was no structural damage to the floor. It was
Speaker 8: just that that thirteen by thirteen by thirteen hole that
Speaker 8: burned right there. So we tried gaining more access. Like
Speaker 8: I talked about, we tried to pull him up again,
Speaker 8: barely moved again, and us just at that point, remember.
Speaker 13: Nope, no fire underneath him.
Speaker 8: Because at this point a third member of our team
Speaker 8: came in and we sent him to the basement to
Speaker 8: one again check conditions, but see if he could kind
Speaker 8: of see everything. He said there was no fire anything
Speaker 8: down there causing any issues. And thankfully he's like six
Speaker 8: six sixty seven. That we sent down there because Ben
Speaker 8: was actually able to stand on his shoulders and kind
Speaker 8: of you know, push up a little bit. So he
Speaker 8: tried again, and my partner that was down there, he
Speaker 8: was actually able.
Speaker 13: To reach up and.
Speaker 8: Undo his waist belt because his waist belt was underneath
Speaker 8: the floor. And when we did that, I kind of felt.
Speaker 13: Some you know, relief in him.
Speaker 8: So we went to pull him one more time. Still
Speaker 8: didn't move at that point because I had my arm,
Speaker 8: my right arm wrapped around him, I could feel him
Speaker 8: go lim in my arm, so kind of talk to him,
Speaker 8: got no response, couldn't tell if he was breathing or
Speaker 8: just not breathing enough to engage our MMR.
Speaker 13: So I hit the purge valve.
Speaker 8: Again, trying to figure out something to do because he's
Speaker 8: not coming this way. My partner decided that we're gonna,
Speaker 8: you know, set him down to the basement. You know,
Speaker 8: he's not coming up. Let's try to get him down.
Speaker 8: And even that was kind of tough again just to
Speaker 8: size the whole Almer gear. So as we're pushing him through,
Speaker 8: we're taking off his air pack, his mask.
Speaker 13: He had to take his jacket off.
Speaker 6: There is that what happened. I don't even I wouldn't know.
Speaker 13: His face he.
Speaker 8: Went, Yep, he had his face peace on bottle was
Speaker 8: pretty much full because by the time from the time
Speaker 8: that he went in the second time too, when uh,
Speaker 8: his partner came yelling out, was maybe five minutes of
Speaker 8: him in the structure. So he never ran out of air,
Speaker 8: even with the purge valve open. So once we lowered
Speaker 8: him to the basement, we had one of our guys there,
Speaker 8: his partners down there, they started, you know, bringing off
Speaker 8: the stairs. I went and met them at those stairs.
Speaker 8: We finished getting them up and then got them out
Speaker 8: to a backboard that was waiting, got him onto the stretcher.
Speaker 13: Their fire department had.
Speaker 8: A limited advanced life support ambulance on scene with three
Speaker 8: e mts.
Speaker 13: So they were getting them loaded.
Speaker 8: Knew that an ALS ambulance from our area was coming,
Speaker 8: but was still a little ways out. So I'm coming out,
Speaker 8: you know, kind of tired and everything.
Speaker 14: Uh.
Speaker 8: But in my mind, you know, the job wasn't done
Speaker 8: nothing against you know, foresighted e MS. But I knew
Speaker 8: I was the only medic on that scene, so I
Speaker 8: started ditching my fire gear.
Speaker 10: You know.
Speaker 8: At this point, my Dad's right on me. Asking me
Speaker 8: if I'm okay. I'm kind of pushing them away.
Speaker 13: Like hey, get out of my way.
Speaker 8: I you know, I still want to do my job,
Speaker 8: so I'm I'm ditching my fire gear, knowing I have
Speaker 8: to hop on this ambulance and you know, start doing
Speaker 8: what I can until we can get to the ALUs care,
Speaker 8: get him under the rig.
Speaker 12: What what caused?
Speaker 10: What was his injuries he fell into.
Speaker 8: So yep, so quick examine everything. I couldn't see any injuries.
Speaker 8: He didn't have, you know, any cuts. He did have
Speaker 8: an abrasion on his side, but I think that happened
Speaker 8: when we lowered him, you know, through the floor, kind
Speaker 8: of the jacket coming up, but no no obvious injuries
Speaker 8: and a quick trauma.
Speaker 13: Yeah, he was unconscious and wasn't breathing.
Speaker 8: He was starting to turn you know, cyanaudic the lips
Speaker 8: and everything at this point. So when we were when
Speaker 8: we were pulling him out, you know, just trying to
Speaker 8: get him out, he was put based on the backboard.
Speaker 13: It is what it is.
Speaker 8: When we got him into the ambulance, you know, I
Speaker 8: wanted to obviously roll them. I just kind of point
Speaker 8: to everyone that was, you know, standing at the back
Speaker 8: of the open door, say hey, you come up here,
Speaker 8: help me roll them and grab the one side of him.
Speaker 8: As I roll him, I look up and I didn't
Speaker 8: notice that I had pointed to his dad to come
Speaker 8: up and help me roll him and everything. So that
Speaker 8: was kind of a shock. Yeah, So I looked at him.
Speaker 8: I said, hey, Ron, I know what's going on, but
Speaker 8: I need you to, you know, get out of the
Speaker 8: ambulance right now so I can continue my job. And
Speaker 8: he understood. He yep, got right out and everything. So
Speaker 8: got that, got the monitor hooked up to him. They
Speaker 8: are also the only ones that our county that have
Speaker 8: a Lucas device, so we got that hooked up to him.
Speaker 13: I got started and we all.
Speaker 8: Right, yeah, yep, yeah, mm hmm, and then we left.
Speaker 8: We left scene right away, met up with uh Als,
Speaker 8: the medic working that night. Was one of my mentors
Speaker 8: coming up through the medical side and everything's been doing
Speaker 8: it for you know.
Speaker 13: Twenty years and everything.
Speaker 8: So I was really happy, you know, at that point
Speaker 8: to see him pop through my ambulance doores, because I knew,
Speaker 8: you know, again, we had the A team going, so
Speaker 8: we got all our meds going and everything.
Speaker 13: I already had an io started all that.
Speaker 8: I had him in debate because again thinking traumatic, you know,
Speaker 8: probably arrest. So I wanted to get that definitive.
Speaker 13: Airway and you know, we ran everything we could think.
Speaker 8: Of for you know, that code. You know, through multiple
Speaker 8: rounds of Eppie.
Speaker 6: We threw.
Speaker 8: D fifty at him because we figured, hey, he was
Speaker 8: working maybe a little bit of a glucose issue.
Speaker 13: We got on the phone with our er doc who.
Speaker 8: Used to actually be a medic in the Detroit area,
Speaker 8: so bouncing stuff off him. We did crush injury, you know,
Speaker 8: anything that we could think of. You know, we threw that.
Speaker 8: Ben got to about, you know, the forty forty five
Speaker 8: minute mark of running this code and kind of had
Speaker 8: to have that you know, decision and everything. And I'll
Speaker 8: never forget it. You know, it was something was mentioned.
Speaker 13: And I kind of looked up at the medic.
Speaker 8: That came and because he was begging after he innovated,
Speaker 8: and he kind of had that look on his face
Speaker 8: that hey, it's it was mentioned. It's probably time to
Speaker 8: think about, you know, talking to the doctors and the
Speaker 8: family about calling it. But I will sit here with
Speaker 8: you until.
Speaker 13: You know you're ready and all that, and you know,
Speaker 13: I didn't.
Speaker 8: He just had that look on him and I'll never
Speaker 8: forget it. And I just kind of look at him
Speaker 8: and I said, is it.
Speaker 13: And he said yeah, I think so.
Speaker 8: I said, well, you know, I'll stay in here, continue stuff.
Speaker 8: But his dad and sister were, you know, on seeing
Speaker 8: because we stopped at the side of the road when
Speaker 8: we met up with als, I said, you go talk
Speaker 8: to them and if they say they're good, you know,
Speaker 8: I'm good. But I'm going to run this, you know,
Speaker 8: until we run out of stuff, for you know, someone
Speaker 8: pulls me away. So he went and talked to Ron
Speaker 8: and his sister and they said it was okay, and
Speaker 8: you know, we stopped like safety measures at that point.
Speaker 4: How far What was it that killed him, Brandon? Did
Speaker 4: they know?
Speaker 8: Traumatic asphyxiation, So autopsy was done. He had no underlying
Speaker 8: medical issue that he didn't know about and everything, but
Speaker 8: just with the size of the hole and where he
Speaker 8: was at just kind of with or squeezing him from
Speaker 8: the inside out.
Speaker 5: So he probably couldn't expand his ripcage to breathe either, right,
Speaker 5: I mean that's what I would think if he.
Speaker 4: Was correcting this.
Speaker 13: Yeah.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I got a couple of quick quick questions for you.
Speaker 10: You mentioned the sheriff Rescue. Is that a heavy rescue
Speaker 10: that's funded by the sheriff but staff by firefighters?
Speaker 6: Yep.
Speaker 8: Yeah, so it's uh funded through the Sheriff's department through
Speaker 8: their Special Ops division. I'm not on that unit now
Speaker 8: that I'm in a different department full time, but uh,
Speaker 8: the staff it's like a paid on call department, so
Speaker 8: but staffed with uh a firefighter e mts, paramedics. They
Speaker 8: do have two full time staff deputy that are also
Speaker 8: firefighter EMTs that run it too, but everyone else is
Speaker 8: like a volunteer.
Speaker 10: It's just a regional rest.
Speaker 8: They cervictly spawned up. Yeah, tech rescue. It started as
Speaker 8: an execation unit for the whole county, but as more
Speaker 8: departments started getting execation tools, you know, expanded and then
Speaker 8: for pretty much the central and west and some south
Speaker 8: of our county that they're writ and then the parts
Speaker 8: that not are covered by my department that I work
Speaker 8: at now full time.
Speaker 10: Okay, you mentioned about switching out bottles. It's just so
Speaker 10: important for our suburban and urban folks listening that in
Speaker 10: this rural scenario there may be nobody else coming for
Speaker 10: a half hour. So you go in, you come out,
Speaker 10: you put on your bottles. Many many, many years ago,
Speaker 10: we had a fire and it was in a relatively
Speaker 10: rural area. I went through five bottles. I mean today
Speaker 10: that's not even thought of. You have replacement, you have
Speaker 10: people on deck. But it really clicked when you said
Speaker 10: that nobody else coming, right, And then the last thing
Speaker 10: is just a comment. This is a classic rural operation
Speaker 10: where it's a family affair and that's good and then
Speaker 10: also is negative. You've got family members responding together, but
Speaker 10: if the families don't join, who else is joining?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 10: So thank you for your for sharing this. I'm sure
Speaker 10: Frank's got the points he wants to make, and maybe
Speaker 10: Micah too.
Speaker 14: So yeah, I just wanted to thank you for being
Speaker 14: thank you to Ben's family. As I mentioned, I know
Speaker 14: you're now an advocate for the n Triple F as well,
Speaker 14: which I think is amazing as well, and the evolution
Speaker 14: and what happens. I know you run the area's fire conference.
Speaker 14: In fact, for you guys, I'm wearing my great Legs
Speaker 14: Hot T shirt tonight and I just think that the
Speaker 14: evolution of what you continue to do, and I'm glad
Speaker 14: you mentioned the size of the all. I know, when
Speaker 14: you go and teach this, you have a piece of
Speaker 14: plywood that has that demonstrates the size of it, which
Speaker 14: really drives it home. And I know from the from
Speaker 14: the writ from your entrance to having him out trying
Speaker 14: all of the different things that you tried to do
Speaker 14: was nine minutes, which it may like a lot, but
Speaker 14: you guys try to plan a B, C and D
Speaker 14: in that time frame under extremely difficult circumstances.
Speaker 11: So again, thank you, Bred.
Speaker 5: Takeaways from you? What's your teaching point?
Speaker 8: So some of them kind of like every time I
Speaker 8: go talk about this, you know, I opened the book
Speaker 8: on myself and some of the things. Biggest one or
Speaker 8: some of the biggest ones obviously radio communication. I mean
Speaker 8: if you look at the Niash five, that's always there.
Speaker 8: But I've always you know, trained as written everything. The
Speaker 8: one thing I did not do what I got to
Speaker 8: them was give a radio report of the conditions that
Speaker 8: we had or you know, the conditions of ben I
Speaker 8: just didn't even think about it. So getting you know,
Speaker 8: really comfortable with using those radios, train on the you know,
Speaker 8: give those reports. It doesn't have to be anything major,
Speaker 8: just something quick to give those people on the outside
Speaker 8: what's going on and everything, because the people at our
Speaker 8: dispatch actually thought that it was.
Speaker 13: Me that has the may Day because.
Speaker 8: People on the outside were trying to reach me over
Speaker 8: the eight hundred and I wasn't responding, so a lot
Speaker 8: of people thought, you know, I was the one.
Speaker 13: Down and everything.
Speaker 8: So that that's a big one. You know, I've done
Speaker 8: a lot of research and talking with people about the incident. Overall,
Speaker 8: I don't think anything instant wise could have been, you know,
Speaker 8: really done different that would have came the outcome. It's
Speaker 8: it's a new, weird incident that happened. But my kind
Speaker 8: of biggest thing just overall is, you know, obviously training
Speaker 8: huge thing. You know, have that mindset of whatever you're
Speaker 8: going to you know, be ready for it, trained for it,
Speaker 8: prepare for it. But not only just at the skills,
Speaker 8: but you know the science behind you know, fires reading,
Speaker 8: smoke reading, fire conditions and all that. We need to
Speaker 8: be those critical thinking firefighters. Also if we don't, if
Speaker 8: we're good at our skills but don't have that critical
Speaker 8: thinking or that knowledge behind it, you know, you're still
Speaker 8: going to get yourself in trouble. We got to be
Speaker 8: you know, capable, competent, and confident firefighters. In my eyes,
Speaker 8: if we can have those three things as firefighters, you know,
Speaker 8: we're in reality going to make that fare ground safer.
Speaker 13: If we have a fire ground full, no matter.
Speaker 8: Of how many of the numbers are, if we're all capable, confident,
Speaker 8: and confident firefighters, it is going to make that fire
Speaker 8: ground safer.
Speaker 5: So one thing that really stands out to me chiefly
Speaker 5: will definitely back down this is that when things go
Speaker 5: soldils in the both of you, I mean, your training
Speaker 5: just kicked in like that, man, like you seem so
Speaker 5: young to me too, like to think out of the box,
Speaker 5: like you're thinking, trying multiple things.
Speaker 4: It's it's really amazing.
Speaker 5: He says a lot about you about how you know,
Speaker 5: how much wiser you are, you know, according to your age.
Speaker 5: I mean you just you took over and you tried
Speaker 5: many things and you you're training kicked in and Bothy
Speaker 5: is actually you know and Chief Leap says it all
Speaker 5: the time. Man, he's the training guy, he's the guy
Speaker 5: who built the rock.
Speaker 4: He's right.
Speaker 5: So just my hat's off, you know, it's a sad thing,
Speaker 5: especially being your friend. Man, I'm sitting here broken hot
Speaker 5: for you, but if you can help out somebody else
Speaker 5: in this book.
Speaker 9: And did you guys, did you guys start like uh,
Speaker 9: like after we had certain fires we you know which
Speaker 9: is go Fanny, similar to to what you said where
Speaker 9: he didn't you know, guys went down to get him
Speaker 9: and they it was like.
Speaker 6: He was nail to the floor.
Speaker 9: And so they came up with a mock scenario and
Speaker 9: they had guys run through that scenario and find the
Speaker 9: best way to.
Speaker 8: Again if that happened tomorrow, you know what they would do?
Speaker 13: You know what I mean?
Speaker 4: Do you do?
Speaker 6: You do you guys like.
Speaker 9: Drill on that drill on a scenario where let's say
Speaker 9: it's it's if the same thing happened tomorrow, what.
Speaker 4: Would you do?
Speaker 13: You know what I mean?
Speaker 9: Like, have you guys when you saws all or.
Speaker 6: You know, I'm just saying I'm just shooting.
Speaker 14: Yeah.
Speaker 8: No, We've done it a couple of times. I'm working
Speaker 8: with a couple of people actually designed a prop for
Speaker 8: it and everything. The hardest part is, you know, getting
Speaker 8: the size of the hole for that and the mannequin.
Speaker 13: And and kind of doing that. So but in other.
Speaker 8: Trainings I've done, I've you know, somewhat simulated it with
Speaker 8: you know, like Keith Leap says, I'll put sheets of plywood,
Speaker 8: you know, to make it the narrow hallway, to try
Speaker 8: to do some of that stuff. But I am working
Speaker 8: with a couple other people that design a prop and
Speaker 8: test a couple of different things and all that.
Speaker 13: I guess it's going to be a good thing and
Speaker 13: all that.
Speaker 16: You got to do that, and I mean that's the thing,
Speaker 16: and we have been in different things. I'm sure you
Speaker 16: guys have done it for the drill everybody yep.
Speaker 8: Mm hmmm. So hopefully here soon we'll have some of
Speaker 8: that that that we can put out that We've tested
Speaker 8: a couple of things, but the hardest thing to kind
Speaker 8: of put up against it is that time frame, you know,
Speaker 8: with within nine minutes. So, but we're testing a couple
Speaker 8: of different things to you know, give out to people
Speaker 8: that hey, you know, you get maybe.
Speaker 13: It comes across this.
Speaker 8: You know, you normally don't grab say the sALS all
Speaker 8: or a battery power saw. You know, if you have
Speaker 8: someone stuck in the floor, you might want to grab
Speaker 8: that right away, so you have it with you and everything,
Speaker 8: just because if you do that situation, you know, yep.
Speaker 11: But again you can I jump down real quick on something. Yeah, broh,
Speaker 11: a couple of things that I wrote down here h
Speaker 11: uh mad respect for you brother, That is everybody had
Speaker 11: to take a bite out of that one man. It's
Speaker 11: the key point that I kind of connect on a
Speaker 11: couple of things here between my incident and your incident
Speaker 11: literally for the group I speak about it when I
Speaker 11: do my presentation is if you've never ran the scenario
Speaker 11: in your head of the next victim or person that
Speaker 11: you work on, maybe the person that you rode on
Speaker 11: the apparatus with to that incident, you need to run
Speaker 11: that scenario in your head. And I don't say that
Speaker 11: to be morbid, but it's one of those things that
Speaker 11: you just have to kind of have the wiring connected
Speaker 11: in on your head with it. But secondary to that
Speaker 11: is the fact of being prepared. With being being prepared,
Speaker 11: is you expect fire, you expect victims. And number three
Speaker 11: is I say that you expect may Day's because if
Speaker 11: you have that in your head already, you've already you've
Speaker 11: alreadyaed because you've already thought that worst case scenarios. So again,
Speaker 11: is man, keep telling the story, brother, because folks need
Speaker 11: to hear it, and mad respect to you.
Speaker 4: No respect to the both of you guys.
Speaker 8: We appreciate it, thanks too.
Speaker 11: Chief Lee.
Speaker 5: But Billy, did you ever think I mean, I can't
Speaker 5: even grasp it sometimes, the impact that this is going
Speaker 5: to have on the fire service. I know you guys
Speaker 5: are planning on even more stories after this, right, but
Speaker 5: I mean it just visit into these two stories.
Speaker 14: I just texted Billy g I just said another incredible jo.
Speaker 11: It's just Rob said it in the chat. I couldn't
Speaker 11: say it any better.
Speaker 14: There's two types of people in ourline of work, people
Speaker 14: on the job and people into the job. And these
Speaker 14: gentlemen totally into the job. I totally agree. And that's
Speaker 14: what we see with all of the people that wrote
Speaker 14: these chapters. These are people that care about the job.
Speaker 14: They care about the people they work with. You could
Speaker 14: see it, right, You can hear it in their voices,
Speaker 14: how passionate they are about it. And it's really it's incredible.
Speaker 14: It's and it's about training. But uh so Brandon mentioned
Speaker 14: the Niosh five.
Speaker 11: So so nobody has to look it up. I'm gonna
Speaker 11: I'm gonna read the Niosh five.
Speaker 14: So Nia has identified the top five causal factors in
Speaker 14: injuries and line and do these desks, Improper risk assessment,
Speaker 14: lack of incident command, lack of accountability, inadequate communications, and
Speaker 14: lack of sp A failure to followers. So since he
Speaker 14: mentioned it, I just wanted to point those out since
Speaker 14: hopefully people will continue to use these as another resource
Speaker 14: along with the book when they go on to the website,
Speaker 14: the companion website.
Speaker 6: For this to be.
Speaker 14: Able to be the Companion website, yes that is thirty
Speaker 14: fires dot com www dot.
Speaker 17: Right, Yes, I don't people, We're gonna load up up
Speaker 17: these podcasts and some other ones to the appropriate section
Speaker 17: so they'll actually be able to read the book, look
Speaker 17: at the reports, and now go to the podcast and
Speaker 17: listen to the people.
Speaker 5: So there's only one problem with that, Billy, there is
Speaker 5: no other podcast except that's.
Speaker 12: What I meant.
Speaker 6: I don't know if you know what what?
Speaker 10: And jeez, Frank and I could sit and talk about
Speaker 10: the NIASH five all night long. But one of the
Speaker 10: most important things is when when Frank menzi the lack
Speaker 10: of incident command so critical, and I think I mentioned
Speaker 10: this in the last show. If you're a boss and
Speaker 10: your companies are training get out there and train with them.
Speaker 10: You can't sit in the office. And I'm not saying
Speaker 10: that a battalion chief pulls hose. I'm saying, if you've
Speaker 10: got a multi company drill, the battalion chief does what
Speaker 10: the battalion chief does at the fire and what you
Speaker 10: would do on the job. It's such a big deal.
Speaker 10: And and again we see this conflict all the time.
Speaker 10: I'm a good guy. I want to get along my people.
Speaker 10: You know what, you gotta be tough sometimes. And here's
Speaker 10: two examples of why you gotta be tough. You got
Speaker 10: to run a tight ship. And again we could talk
Speaker 10: about all night. But when Frank mentions that, it's one
Speaker 10: of my favorite subjects because it's so critical. You literally
Speaker 10: can go from being that decent guy in the firehouse
Speaker 10: having a good time when the bell goes off.
Speaker 12: It's no bult.
Speaker 4: Well, I wouldn't mind get a chief pull some.
Speaker 10: I knew somebody was gonna say that.
Speaker 9: If you're watching this and you don't know what to
Speaker 9: drill on, make a mock up and stick a guy
Speaker 9: up to his waist or up to his m pits
Speaker 9: and practice that, because if you don't and it happens again,
Speaker 9: then you didn't shame on you, right like then then
Speaker 9: you didn't learn anything. And unfortunately the guy that you
Speaker 9: know that passed away, it's going to happen again, you
Speaker 9: know what I mean. So all these little things you
Speaker 9: have to learn from it.
Speaker 6: I mean, that's the bottom line.
Speaker 9: You have to drill on it.
Speaker 11: It's the Bible, Denver drill, It's the John Mance drill.
Speaker 14: There's so many. I mean, look this up if you
Speaker 14: don't know the story of John Nance. The article the
Speaker 14: Murder of John Nance. It's an article I used to
Speaker 14: give to New Prob's certainly the Denver drill mentioned in
Speaker 14: the in the chat as well by Steve uh just yeah,
Speaker 14: these are these are things, These are companions to be
Speaker 14: drilling with on this topic so we could be so
Speaker 14: we could continue to progress forward.
Speaker 4: We got one more company we got to talk about tonight, right.
Speaker 6: Guys, Oh, which one is that? Oor Houston?
Speaker 5: I think I might let him pick the health and
Speaker 5: safety tip of the night.
Speaker 4: What do you think I would write?
Speaker 11: Let's see what?
Speaker 12: All right?
Speaker 6: He got twenty you got twenty three seconds of figure
Speaker 6: it out.
Speaker 14: I'm I'm gonna let you so you know what I
Speaker 14: would say from both of these, from both of our
Speaker 14: guests tonight, it's okay to not be okay and to
Speaker 14: identify that and make sure that you're taking care of
Speaker 14: your people on and off the fire ground. That your
Speaker 14: responsibility doesn't end when we pack up the homes and
Speaker 14: we go back into the station, and we have to
Speaker 14: make sure that we are looking out for them. And
Speaker 14: Mike hah said that several times extremely well so did Brandon,
Speaker 14: and I think that we couldn't end on a more
Speaker 14: poignant health and wellness tip than that.
Speaker 5: Yes, well we're gona play the commercial anyways, seeing that you
Speaker 5: jumped the gun on that one, but yeah, standard.
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 Volume
Speaker 1: Firefighter Foundation.
Speaker 5: And if we want to hear the tip of then
Speaker 5: I just rewind about twenty three seconds, and you know
Speaker 5: he chiefly to give the tip of the night. I
Speaker 5: like what you said. It's okay not to be okay,
Speaker 5: And we have to look out for each other. Man,
Speaker 5: and you talk about two fires like this man, they
Speaker 5: leave last d marks on you your entire life. So
Speaker 5: you need to get out. And it's good that you
Speaker 5: guys getting out and talking about it and talk about
Speaker 5: it with the guys in any fire. You go to,
Speaker 5: any emergency, you go to any Yeah, that's friend.
Speaker 11: You got.
Speaker 4: You gotta get it out, you gotta talk.
Speaker 6: Yeah, bottle it up, bottle it up.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: One more thing, ghance. We have a line of duty tonight.
Speaker 5: We have to Unfortunately, yes we do.
Speaker 6: Marcelo Garcia forty two years old, three alarmed warehouse fire,
Speaker 6: ten year veteran on the job or station twenty three.
Speaker 6: So I'll bring up his picture. Are you ready?
Speaker 4: I will play the bells.
Speaker 6: Here it is there is rest in peace, brother, Yeah,
Speaker 6: rest in peace brother. If I fail, if I failed
Speaker 6: to mention he's a Houston firefighter. When was that guns
Speaker 6: that was just I think yesterday's yeah.
Speaker 10: Less than twenty four hours ago.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and our prayers go out to the firefighter. And
Speaker 4: was the Chicago that fell through the chef too?
Speaker 10: Right?
Speaker 4: Amen? All right?
Speaker 5: So we got you booked, I think on a calendar,
Speaker 5: so start getting some other guys in here.
Speaker 4: Fella, I think I think we I have.
Speaker 11: You in the December, I do, right, Yeah, I can't
Speaker 11: keep tracking. Yeah right, I'll keep on top of you. Leave.
Speaker 4: Don't worry here.
Speaker 10: All right?
Speaker 6: What the heck got it? All right?
Speaker 4: Alright?
Speaker 5: Listen, it's the last thing. We're having Chief Done on again.
Speaker 5: If I have to break a few arms. Yes, you
Speaker 5: guys don't want to ask the vidy done any questions?
Speaker 5: Send him in Coops Podcast at gmail dot com if
Speaker 5: you want to do it. We're doing a Q and
Speaker 5: A with the Chief VIDI done. It's a good friend
Speaker 5: of the Chief Leaps, a good friend of ours. He's
Speaker 5: a legend. So send you questions into the Coops Podcast
Speaker 5: dogmail dot com.
Speaker 6: The show's on on the bookshere right.
Speaker 4: No, I'm waiting to gather enough questions when these nip them.
Speaker 6: In because we have Captain Tim Grant on the eighteent
Speaker 6: because we don't have a show next week.
Speaker 4: Yes, I will be away for the week. I'm taking vacation.
Speaker 4: So how do you like them apples?
Speaker 6: Yeah, me too, I'm right there with you, bro.
Speaker 4: Like apples like apples. Billy, about those Mica and Brandon.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for coming on. Like I said,
Speaker 5: this book, generations, brother, generations for sure. Rough God kills
Speaker 5: something else while you're up there and enjoy yourself.
Speaker 6: Thank you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, maybe you could talk to Brandon because he likes
Speaker 5: to kill stuff too. Up there in the north, up
Speaker 5: some what it is and that's all I got.
Speaker 6: I can't see. Let me get up here. I gotta
Speaker 6: get damn. Camera's in a bad spot. Rookie numbers, God, rooie,
Speaker 6: you gotta get those numbers are two three times a day.
Speaker 5: I don't know where you will be next, Chiefly, but
Speaker 5: be safe in your travels.
Speaker 4: You're all over the world.
Speaker 11: Good for you.
Speaker 6: Billy joined us with Chiefly. I'm sorry he's gonna join
Speaker 6: us with the Vinnie Chiefly. He's gonna join us with Vinnie.
Speaker 4: Done.
Speaker 6: All right, Billy, keep the most you know, Vinny, you know,
Speaker 6: like like Ed.
Speaker 11: Come on, I'll ask I'll ask the Chief. Done a
Speaker 11: couple of questions.
Speaker 5: Yeah, all right, Yeah, you know you don't have the
Speaker 5: show enough. We gotta get you on a little bit.
Speaker 5: I spread it, share it, like it, you know how
Speaker 5: to do it. We'll see you in two weeks until then,
Speaker 5: stay long ago, all right.
Speaker 9: Everybody will see it, the big one.
Speaker 6: See the big one, all right, yeah, all right, just
Speaker 6: have a good night everyone. Take care, yeah,