Speaker 1: Disclaimer.
Speaker 2: We'd like to know before the start of this interview
Speaker 2: that the opinions about to be expressed by the guest
Speaker 2: of Tonight's Getting Salty Experience Podcast are that of the
Speaker 2: guest and do not directly or necessarily reflect the views
Speaker 2: of the host of the Getting Salty Experience Podcast.
Speaker 3: We're listening to the Getting Salty Experience Podcast.
Speaker 4: Hello below, Roofy, Welcome back, while the only one that
Speaker 4: brings the fire house kitchen table to you guys, with
Speaker 4: all our loyal fans in the chat.
Speaker 5: We got Mike Radcavid, we got twenty truck, We've got
Speaker 5: the Red Paul my Ber, we got Rob Procaccini, Missus
Speaker 5: procaccini husband, Missus Procaccini's husband is don't forget the mister
Speaker 5: Jose Jose Gabe and the lovely Polo. Right, oh, miss whatever.
Speaker 1: What happened to from?
Speaker 6: So this is the last show before Christmas?
Speaker 7: Fellas, No, we have one Monday.
Speaker 6: Oh this is not the last show. We got one?
Speaker 1: What's Monday? What are we doing Monday?
Speaker 8: Oh?
Speaker 6: Chief Rice on from seventeen.
Speaker 1: Oh right right, right, all right, yeah, you're right you.
Speaker 6: We got a hot charge of tonight.
Speaker 1: Bro.
Speaker 5: He's never really seen any fun doesn't seen.
Speaker 6: You'll get it.
Speaker 1: Oh ship, don't you're going down its holy ship. He's
Speaker 1: like a China.
Speaker 6: I got it.
Speaker 7: You didn't even have to be that.
Speaker 6: We have any who.
Speaker 5: We got a hot jodge around tonight Brooklyn. Guys started
Speaker 5: in Manhattan, then he went to Brooklyn.
Speaker 6: You know, well worked. Did you guys run in with
Speaker 6: guys hunt Tree?
Speaker 1: I never heard they.
Speaker 6: Run in with one.
Speaker 7: I was still figure out what the company is.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I used to see him all the time.
Speaker 6: Ah, so he was hipty as ship. He knew all
Speaker 6: about you.
Speaker 7: Yeah, you know, so they got like this.
Speaker 1: Even back then with all the hate, we were like that.
Speaker 7: Yes, that's Louis on top.
Speaker 6: Mm hmm, there we go. What do you who?
Speaker 5: Before we get to commercials, I gotta tell you I
Speaker 5: watch all the time on YouTube. One of my biggest things.
Speaker 5: I love guys who are doing personations. They see those
Speaker 5: guys on TikTok, I love it. I had no idea
Speaker 5: that Rob Procaccini does fucking impersonations. So I gotta actually
Speaker 5: a picture. I have a video of him doing the
Speaker 5: personation of of a fire siren. So John's pulling up.
Speaker 5: Here's Rob Procaccini.
Speaker 8: Atl siren, A supercoring no siren.
Speaker 1: Where did you find that thing?
Speaker 6: Brockie Katy said it to me, And there he is.
Speaker 6: Bro He's like this some person that you see to
Speaker 6: spin fall out of his mouth.
Speaker 1: He was excited.
Speaker 7: It's almost if we should do it again. It's almost
Speaker 7: like it's almost like we should do.
Speaker 6: It again, tornado siren, do one more time.
Speaker 1: I got to help that guy out with his dental plan.
Speaker 1: I don't know what's on.
Speaker 6: Let me just make sure that's Brockie Jay very volley about.
Speaker 7: Oh what the hell? Oh no, oh no, hold on,
Speaker 7: hold on, here we go.
Speaker 2: Okay, guys, let's do a tornado siren, a supercorin o siren.
Speaker 1: Oh nice, I like it bad.
Speaker 7: He's pretty spot on. I'm not gonna lie. That's I
Speaker 7: think that's what close.
Speaker 8: Siren.
Speaker 6: If I have a solid bro.
Speaker 7: Somebody in the chat that's from that area, verify that
Speaker 7: for us.
Speaker 9: Let us know that's Frankie, Frankie boy, it's frank Nice job,
Speaker 9: nice job, frank.
Speaker 7: He is artistic. But you know that's all good. Give
Speaker 7: a little giving him, giving him some nice fame, right now,
Speaker 7: that's what we do.
Speaker 6: Give him up.
Speaker 5: We get him on the show. I can get him
Speaker 5: on the show to do the super Tornado siren.
Speaker 7: He would, he would be honest. I'm sure.
Speaker 5: All right, let's get to the commercials quick. It's the
Speaker 5: captain's waiting around. We can't like that sitting in the back.
Speaker 7: We're gonna do New Jersey Fire first.
Speaker 6: Here we go, okay.
Speaker 3: Established in nineteen thirty and under the current ownership since
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty seven, the New Jersey Fire Equipment Company handles
Speaker 3: a complete line of fire to hartment equipment and supplies.
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Speaker 1: The importance of their work.
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Speaker 6: Hi, what are you going with now? Capital?
Speaker 7: Uh? Yeah, let's knock out Capital. We'll do Uh, we'll
Speaker 7: do homok tough for the end?
Speaker 1: All right, we go here we go.
Speaker 2: Founded in twenty ten, Capital City Industry specializes in serving
Speaker 2: the fire service through custom helmet work, helmet sales and repairs,
Speaker 2: gear tools, and apparel. They are a firefighter family owned
Speaker 2: and operated company, with the majority of the crews serving
Speaker 2: in the City of Hertford Fire Department in Hartford, Connecticut.
Speaker 2: CCI's core business is with fire helmets, where they specialize
Speaker 2: in keeping that golden era, old school leather helmet fit
Speaker 2: and appearance alive and well in today's fire service using
Speaker 2: their own CCI liner brass band conversion, retro brass holders,
Speaker 2: and other various parts. They take either a modern leather
Speaker 2: or plastic helmet of any age and transform it into
Speaker 2: a functional lid that is fitted to your head and
Speaker 2: looking like it came out of nineteen eighty five. While
Speaker 2: fire helmets remain their own core business, CCI has also
Speaker 2: expanded to other areas of the fire service industry with
Speaker 2: their own line of CCI gear. The company brings to
Speaker 2: the market the fast adjusting CCI radio strap built for
Speaker 2: comfort and function, along with the quick disconnect anti sway
Speaker 2: shrap and CCI's own helmet tin straps and retro military
Speaker 2: green nomes not seen since the nineties. CCI also has
Speaker 2: proudly re engineered and brought back the Hartford plaster hook,
Speaker 2: an in house machine shop designed from the Hartford Fire
Speaker 2: Department phased out of service in the nineteen nineties. To
Speaker 2: Hartford hook has been reproduced using modern technology and materials
Speaker 2: and both a traditional wood handle and an all metal handle.
Speaker 2: The tool predates almost all other hooks on the market today,
Speaker 2: dating back as early as the nineteen twenties. CCI has
Speaker 2: its own apparel line, including T shirts, hoodies, and ball
Speaker 2: caps with designs originating from artists such as JP Sukolowski,
Speaker 2: ten three Graphics and black Swine Design. With most of
Speaker 2: the shop crew serving as firefighters, Cci understands the needs
Speaker 2: of today's fire service. So if you want functional gear,
Speaker 2: a retro plaster hook, or your helmet serviced by a
Speaker 2: company that is tried and true, choose Capital City Industries,
Speaker 2: by Fireman for firemen.
Speaker 6: There you go.
Speaker 5: And you know, Audits a Shapiro family, bro, it's a
Speaker 5: family run business. We love those guys. And me and
Speaker 5: Louis were next to him in the booth and watching
Speaker 5: them do the helmet thing. It's frecking amazing, Bro. They
Speaker 5: will take any helmet and retro fitted for your dome.
Speaker 5: I didn't know your cousin. Is that a relative of
Speaker 5: your as the artist Sukolotski? I mean you pick that up,
Speaker 5: didn't you?
Speaker 7: Uh?
Speaker 1: Yeah? You see god, this trace? He didn't pick that
Speaker 1: up right away?
Speaker 6: A well known artist Slatsky Wow Gonzo.
Speaker 1: And his brother Hal how'd you like a kick?
Speaker 5: All right, enough of the again, let's get into captain
Speaker 5: you already.
Speaker 9: Let's go all right, coming to the state, our good friend,
Speaker 9: Captain Larry Tompkins.
Speaker 7: Give the old baseball one.
Speaker 1: What's up kids?
Speaker 5: Captain going, guys, you're still here after you saw that
Speaker 5: siren bit.
Speaker 8: That's pretty good. I like to have his head on
Speaker 8: the front of a rig the way.
Speaker 5: I have a bunch of his stuff, so I'll send
Speaker 5: some more to you.
Speaker 6: You gotta have him on the show, Frankie.
Speaker 5: All right, but let's get patriarch before we dive into
Speaker 5: uh the captain's career.
Speaker 7: Yes, sir, here we go.
Speaker 3: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States
Speaker 3: of America and to the Republic, for which it stands,
Speaker 3: One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.
Speaker 5: Yes, Hi, Cindy Drake, see you in the chat.
Speaker 6: All right, cap welcome to the show.
Speaker 8: To Merry Christmas, guys.
Speaker 5: Merry Christmas to you as well. The cheese I told
Speaker 5: you the cheese Man would be in there. He's called
Speaker 5: what does the shove mean?
Speaker 8: And if I didn't have a good comeback, I'd push it.
Speaker 6: There you go.
Speaker 5: You can't shove the cheese to farnt move when he
Speaker 5: was Yeah, he's the immobile, is a brassler box up,
Speaker 5: but yet he's still a beautician.
Speaker 6: He cuts hair.
Speaker 1: Remember he's not a barber.
Speaker 5: No, no, no, no, Captain. Let's dive into the early
Speaker 5: years of Captain Tompkins. Where'd you grow up? Tell us
Speaker 5: a little about the family life. Hey, you got involved
Speaker 5: in the fight Apartment?
Speaker 8: Well, I had no I had no family on the
Speaker 8: fight Apartment was. It was something that I have no
Speaker 8: idea why, but I always wanted to do. I always
Speaker 8: talked about I read Dennis Smith's book. My brother had it,
Speaker 8: and I read that book as a young kid. It
Speaker 8: was just something I talked about doing. But I was
Speaker 8: a knucklehead when I was young. I was just want
Speaker 8: the fine knucklehead.
Speaker 5: I'll let you know if you were bigger knucklehead than me,
Speaker 5: I haven't been arrested all.
Speaker 8: Luckily I was. I was. I was a smart knucklehead.
Speaker 8: I was able to evade the authorities.
Speaker 1: Nice right.
Speaker 6: Where'd you grow up?
Speaker 8: I grew up in merrick Long Island and then uh
Speaker 8: and then when I was thirteen, we moved up state
Speaker 8: New York.
Speaker 6: Oh by Louis.
Speaker 8: No, but by Albany, up by Albany.
Speaker 6: All.
Speaker 8: Yeah. My father was in the FBI and he retired.
Speaker 8: He had to retire because of age at that time,
Speaker 8: and so he transferred out of New York before he
Speaker 8: retired up there because they paid for you to move
Speaker 8: if you did it. But what he do in the FBI,
Speaker 8: he was an agent for thirty years.
Speaker 6: Come on, he was a g man.
Speaker 8: As a matter of fact, he worked with Patty Brown's father.
Speaker 8: He was friends with And I met Patty Brown before
Speaker 8: I before I got on the job. I was on
Speaker 8: the list to get on and this girl we both
Speaker 8: knew introduced me to him and he took me to
Speaker 8: my first fire house. But I didn't know until years
Speaker 8: later that uh we friends.
Speaker 5: Yeah, really, you didn't know that Patty Brown was a
Speaker 5: superhero at the time.
Speaker 8: I didn't know. I mean I got to know, you know, obviously,
Speaker 8: I got to see after.
Speaker 9: Wow, how come did you did you feel like you
Speaker 9: wanted to go to the FBI when.
Speaker 1: You were a kid?
Speaker 8: No, no, I don't know why. I mean, I think
Speaker 8: that Dennis Smith book, and even before that, it was
Speaker 8: like little kids talk about it. And I tell you what,
Speaker 8: I shouldn't say this on the internet, but I, uh,
Speaker 8: I remember having a dream of carrying this girl out
Speaker 8: of a burning built building one time, this girl I liked, and.
Speaker 6: Oh, my hero.
Speaker 8: Boo boo.
Speaker 1: I want to be a fireman.
Speaker 8: I want to do but yeah. And then actually a
Speaker 8: friend of mine whose brother was on the job. I
Speaker 8: was bouncing around doing crazy shit and I was wound
Speaker 8: up driving a truck out in California. And uh, a
Speaker 8: friend of mine in New York, one of my best friends, said, listen,
Speaker 8: I signed you up for the test. You gotta come back.
Speaker 1: Come on.
Speaker 8: I didn't always the way ruffy his brother. His brother
Speaker 8: was on his brother was a great fireman out of
Speaker 8: one thirteen Mark Connaway. But signed me up for.
Speaker 1: The Dude, that's pretty crazy. I never heard that before.
Speaker 6: Signed you up.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I signed up for the test. You got to
Speaker 8: come back.
Speaker 7: And he wasn't dreaming of picking any chicks up in
Speaker 7: a truck.
Speaker 8: On what kind of truck it was.
Speaker 7: I don't know that true. Okay, I take that.
Speaker 6: The guy signed you up.
Speaker 5: You're in California, Yeah, yeah, and you fly back just
Speaker 5: to take the test.
Speaker 8: I did it so the only Yeah, I came back
Speaker 8: to take the test, and uh, they got drunk the
Speaker 8: whole weekend and passed the test, and then and then
Speaker 8: the physical and then there was a delay with the physical.
Speaker 8: You remember Louis right. A couple of guys died.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the one guy died doing the physical and they
Speaker 1: delayed it.
Speaker 8: Yeah, so there was a big delay. And then did
Speaker 8: you fly back to California? No, I stayed. I came
Speaker 8: and I boughtended in New York. I got, I got
Speaker 8: an apartment and bartended in New York.
Speaker 6: You live in the Vita Loca bartender in New York.
Speaker 6: You live pla macha an Irish ball.
Speaker 8: What a shot right around the block for my for
Speaker 8: my first fire house still by seven? Yeah, get that though.
Speaker 5: All right, so you take the test and you get
Speaker 5: called in let's see ninety.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I came back in eighties right after I took
Speaker 8: the test, and I came back and then I bartended, And.
Speaker 6: Uh, how long did you wait before you got called
Speaker 6: when you took the test?
Speaker 8: Three years? But I was in the second class off
Speaker 8: the list. But it took three years because of the delays.
Speaker 5: Right, but living the life, you know, doing whatever you're doing,
Speaker 5: you know what I'm saying, as a bartender living in Manhattan.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 6: And the job calls you, who's in your proby class?
Speaker 6: Anybody that we might know?
Speaker 8: Yeah, well, it was the second class there the front
Speaker 8: they did one hundred, and then in our class they
Speaker 8: did three hundred, but it was split into like an
Speaker 8: A and B.
Speaker 6: Right, we had that too.
Speaker 8: Brillian Lately. It was a William Flaherty, Jimmy Ellison, Billy.
Speaker 5: Robert Fiery Ellison, Liam Liam.
Speaker 1: Class bro was Pickford in that class too.
Speaker 8: Pick No, Pickford came a year or so, a year after,
Speaker 8: I think a year after.
Speaker 6: So you had Flowery Ellis.
Speaker 8: Charlie, a guy that came in that class.
Speaker 1: Who's that Arngia to ninety Johnny Argia?
Speaker 8: It could have been man. I think he was in ninety.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think he was in ninety.
Speaker 8: But uh yeah, it was good. It was you know,
Speaker 8: it was a good class. I knew nothing.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 8: That's Mike Sullivan. He went to one seventy.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I remember him. He was there forever,
Speaker 1: that guy too.
Speaker 8: Right, Yeah, he was. He retired out of there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was there forever. I remember his face.
Speaker 8: Yeah. He I remember in probably school, like going through
Speaker 8: the mass confidence and I'd never done anything. I wasn't
Speaker 8: a volley and nothing, and he like watching watching some
Speaker 8: guys go through, I'm like, shit, how do they know
Speaker 8: how to do this man and some of whom had
Speaker 8: been you know, they never mentioned it obviously.
Speaker 9: It was all where's that other picture us?
Speaker 7: Who is it? Steve Elliott?
Speaker 8: Oh there's another guy Russey, you know, Rusty from two
Speaker 8: fifty seven Louis Probably he was a senior guy in
Speaker 8: the engine.
Speaker 9: Oh yes, I do know, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember
Speaker 9: him too. Who is this young this young fella? And
Speaker 9: I don't mean you.
Speaker 8: It's my nephew is now in his mid thirties.
Speaker 1: Nice on a job.
Speaker 8: No, no, you know, I I at one point he's
Speaker 8: upstate New York. He's working for the state up there
Speaker 8: in albody. But he uh, I almost got him, and
Speaker 8: he's and my sister in law put a knick to it,
Speaker 8: tish on it.
Speaker 9: Yeah, Larry, how old were you when you got on?
Speaker 5: Uh, nineteen ninety. I was twenty eight, twenty eight, that's
Speaker 5: like me. I got it later too, I was older.
Speaker 8: A lot of guys was, some guys you know, like, uh,
Speaker 8: they were very young. They were like twenty one or something.
Speaker 6: Yeah, my brother just turned twenty one the month before.
Speaker 8: Like, oh, I wish I wish I'd done an early attest.
Speaker 5: So you get into Proby School and then you get assigned,
Speaker 5: you got to go to Proby School.
Speaker 6: Stories before he moved out to Provy School.
Speaker 8: No, no, nothing, nothing really spent. Well, there was one guy, yeah,
Speaker 8: one guy there. One of the instructors, Don Glennon, was
Speaker 8: a one twenty guy, and he was the most to me.
Speaker 8: He was the most like influential instructor I had there.
Speaker 8: And I always remember that's the first I started to
Speaker 8: hear about that company. And then, like there were other
Speaker 8: times in my career that I and I wound up
Speaker 8: getting there eventually, but that's the first I was impressed
Speaker 8: with him. He was a like squared away guy and just.
Speaker 5: So that planted the seed of one twenty ag.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and then then there were other seeds planted. But
Speaker 8: when I got to seven Truck I was very lucky.
Speaker 8: That was a great firehouse, seven sixteen and the day
Speaker 8: the day went with my cake. When you get the assignment,
Speaker 8: I go there and they get a run and you know,
Speaker 8: they say hop on the rig and it's a job.
Speaker 8: And it's at twenty third Street and Broadway, which is
Speaker 8: where they had the twenty third Street fire. Oh shit,
Speaker 8: the twelve FIM. There was a job it's no longer
Speaker 8: the same building. It's a new building. But there was
Speaker 8: a job. It was weird. There was a job in
Speaker 8: that building that day. And then after did you.
Speaker 6: Know at the time or they told you afterwards?
Speaker 8: You know, they came out, they showed me a play afterwards,
Speaker 8: they showed me to.
Speaker 1: Show you a plaque.
Speaker 8: N right, So but I went there. Who else James Hurley,
Speaker 8: a guy who did like thirty three years there went
Speaker 8: He just retired last year. And Steve Marsso is a
Speaker 8: chief now who also went with me at the same time.
Speaker 8: But I'll firehouse.
Speaker 6: How long it take you to catch your first job
Speaker 6: when you got there?
Speaker 8: I don't remember how long. I remember my one of
Speaker 8: my first jobs that was really like a job job.
Speaker 6: And what was it?
Speaker 8: And I remember it was there were a lot of
Speaker 8: s ros at the time in that area. And uh,
Speaker 8: the Manhattan was different. It wasn't the way you know,
Speaker 8: it wasn't the realest, It wasn't May yet in the
Speaker 8: real estate.
Speaker 1: Wasn't Disney World.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and then uh, there a lot of s ros
Speaker 8: and we used to get the regular amount of work
Speaker 8: was usually a s ros kent the ken Moore elt
Speaker 8: in these and My first job was in one of them,
Speaker 8: and I remember going down the hall and it was
Speaker 8: like a wall of smoke, and we stopped to put
Speaker 8: on masks on, and I thought, what the fuck am
Speaker 8: I doing here?
Speaker 9: It is that at one time you do it, the
Speaker 9: first time you do that, it is that what the
Speaker 9: hell is going on?
Speaker 1: This is for real? Like this is really for real, right, yeah?
Speaker 8: And I said to I said, well, if I get
Speaker 8: out of here, that means this whole thing's over. So
Speaker 8: I guess I gotta go. And then I went, and
Speaker 8: then it's you know, I did what I had to do,
Speaker 8: and then I was all juiced up and I was excited.
Speaker 6: And you know, you get the first just one under
Speaker 6: the belt.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I remember.
Speaker 9: I remember in ninety three I got on. I was
Speaker 9: the first class in ninety three, and we were probably
Speaker 9: our numbers were probably too far apart, but they were
Speaker 9: only making one hundred a year or whatever the heck
Speaker 9: they were doing at the time, two hundred a year.
Speaker 9: But I remember them talking about the new technology that
Speaker 9: was coming out, which was the thermal pain windows. Right,
Speaker 9: you might start seeing more thermal pain windows. Do you
Speaker 9: remember when you worked at like early on in the
Speaker 9: nineties that you had regular windows a lot of times.
Speaker 8: Do you remember there were definitely some tenements it was
Speaker 8: You know that that area around seven Truck has a
Speaker 8: real mix of occupancies. They have everything from the high
Speaker 8: rise in one section, high rise, residential, commercial tenements, brownstones,
Speaker 8: just regular occupancies, commercial occupancies. Yeah, there were in some
Speaker 8: of those older buildings that was pretty good though, right
Speaker 8: they would break. I mean.
Speaker 9: I remember guys talking about it, like most of the
Speaker 9: when I got to I was at once eventeen. When
Speaker 9: I got there, I would say probably like half the
Speaker 9: three corners already had those the thermal panes, right, So,
Speaker 9: but every time I would take one of those other windows,
Speaker 9: I would hit it so hard that I would almost
Speaker 9: lose the tool or the can because you were trying
Speaker 9: to hit it so hard, and meanwhile there was nothing there,
Speaker 9: you know what I mean.
Speaker 6: You already lost the can when Patty threw it down
Speaker 6: the hallways.
Speaker 1: Live up your toolry, don't give up your tools.
Speaker 7: Yeah, right away, bro, my can's here somewhere exactly.
Speaker 6: So you had any fires that stand out in your
Speaker 6: mind that you went to.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean, like I'm not the best, and there
Speaker 8: were a lot there were the first three years or
Speaker 8: so before things started changing a little quickly in Manhattan.
Speaker 8: There was there were some good fires because you know
Speaker 8: what happened you mentioned Disney World. Literally that was the
Speaker 8: time when all those buildings there were numerous multiples over
Speaker 8: by forty second Street because there were I don't know
Speaker 8: who was burning, you know, all of a sudden, all
Speaker 8: these places were burning down right before the world came in.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Uh, but so there were a bunch of multiples over there,
Speaker 8: and I and I had Yeah, there was some good
Speaker 8: you know, sub basement fires and something.
Speaker 5: Whoa, whoa, whoa wait, whoa those sub sellers look for Louie.
Speaker 8: They were good. They were good fighting in that fire house,
Speaker 8: very good. You know. They weren't like Buffy types, and
Speaker 8: they were they you know, when there's something was happening,
Speaker 8: they were good.
Speaker 6: A lot of senior guys did when you went there.
Speaker 8: Were like this guy Eddie McCaffrey was a tough guy.
Speaker 8: He wound up. He did twenty something years there and
Speaker 8: then he went to uh forty nine Truckers of Lieutenant.
Speaker 8: He stayed there almost another twenty years. But a tough Vietnam.
Speaker 8: That guy Don Carcone and the engine. H a lot
Speaker 8: of a lot of mid level guys that were about
Speaker 8: my age or maybe a little bit older, but they
Speaker 8: got on younger. Mike d is that guy that's still
Speaker 8: on great fly Himan, he's up in the Bronx had cotton. Uh,
Speaker 8: Like I said, James Hurley with me, Joe Deserto, the
Speaker 8: guys in the engine, Tommy Gernon, John Pass already great fireman.
Speaker 8: A tremendous respect for these guys. And if I was, ah,
Speaker 8: if those guys were working, I'd say, like I put
Speaker 8: them up against you know, any any of it took
Speaker 8: It took a longer time to get because there was
Speaker 8: so many different occupant seas and you didn't any amount
Speaker 8: of fire. It's like a ghetto. So it took a
Speaker 8: long time too, you know, to learn that get And
Speaker 8: I'll just say one one fire that that my first
Speaker 8: year that stands out was we had a for your
Speaker 8: first year and seven they didn't let you uh you know,
Speaker 8: you had to stay on the inside team and uh.
Speaker 8: But then this one night, six months seven and I
Speaker 8: was reading back then, they you know, reading howel that
Speaker 8: is that as three and all that stuff, and but
Speaker 8: now we're six months into it. I'm sorry, team, I
Speaker 8: kind of drifted a little bit from doing the reading.
Speaker 8: And then all of a sudden, one night we got
Speaker 8: two details and the chauffeur is a young chaulfur two
Speaker 8: three years on the job. Very rare.
Speaker 1: Murphy's showing up here. I could see.
Speaker 8: We get it. And then three o'clock in the morning, boom,
Speaker 8: we get a job. And it's on thirty sixth Street
Speaker 8: between Second and Third Avenue, and it was two three
Speaker 8: story buildings like tenements, and they would connect, but they
Speaker 8: looked like and with the doors on the left side
Speaker 8: of each one. But there was a common wall balcony
Speaker 8: metal that looked like a fire escape between them. So
Speaker 8: it looks night when you come up. It looks like
Speaker 8: one one occupancy, and there's a tree right in front
Speaker 8: of the building, and the first floor it's actually blown out.
Speaker 8: The I didn't realize. It was the front door and
Speaker 8: two windows on the left side, which was a separate building.
Speaker 8: But and then this other door looks like it's in
Speaker 8: the center of the building, but it's actually on the
Speaker 8: left side of the exposure building. So I'm in the
Speaker 8: there's no area there, so I got to take the
Speaker 8: bucket to the roof. I get up to the roof
Speaker 8: and I go, I'm stepping over a small parapet like
Speaker 8: a foot tall, and uh, and I got it's a
Speaker 8: very old building. And I go and it's a scuttle.
Speaker 8: So I opened the scuttle. But I opened the scuttle
Speaker 8: of the adjoining building. And then I searched the perimeter.
Speaker 8: And then I get back and there's no fire escapes
Speaker 8: going to the roof because it's just common balconies. And
Speaker 8: so then I finally realized, I open up the other thing.
Speaker 8: But it's still my clicking. This is two buildings. I
Speaker 8: opened up the other skull because it was smoke in
Speaker 8: both buildings, right, And then I come around. Finally I
Speaker 8: gotta go down back. Then they used to do the
Speaker 8: roofman would go down searching. So I came down to
Speaker 8: the top floor and the trees on fire. It's still craziness,
Speaker 8: and I into the with the bucket. I smashed into
Speaker 8: the balcony and for a year you could see the
Speaker 8: balcony was like. But I still made you know, I'm
Speaker 8: not proud of this because I had like six or
Speaker 8: seven months on. I still made a mistake. I went
Speaker 8: in the other building, which was smoke. I went in
Speaker 8: that window first, and then I came out and I
Speaker 8: think it's finally hitting me, and I go in to
Speaker 8: the other I take an air condition around. I go
Speaker 8: on the other side and it's bank down up there,
Speaker 8: and then rescue gives a ten forty five in that.
Speaker 8: I know, I know, it's like I was like in
Speaker 8: the next room over. But but I what I learned
Speaker 8: from that, you know, stuck with me for the rest
Speaker 8: of my career, which was like, you know, I that
Speaker 8: it hit me that how come I didn't fucking notice
Speaker 8: all this stuff right in front of my eyes. I
Speaker 8: was stepping over a small parapet. I opened two scuttles,
Speaker 8: you know, I realized there was no ladder between the
Speaker 8: the It was a and balcony. It wasn't a fire escape,
Speaker 8: even though it looks like.
Speaker 1: A fire Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 8: But it stuck with me like about that. And I
Speaker 8: remember one of these senior guys, ed, the senior guy,
Speaker 8: Eddie McCaffrey, said to me, he said, Larry, you know
Speaker 8: how he become an experienced fireman.
Speaker 9: By going to Yeah, exactly with six months on the job.
Speaker 9: Seven months on the job, I mean as long as
Speaker 9: you learned from it, right, I mean, like.
Speaker 1: You said, kept the whole goddamn career.
Speaker 8: Yeah, she survived. It turned out her husband came walking
Speaker 8: back in the middle of fire with a little kid
Speaker 8: that I think he lit the place. It was like
Speaker 8: a stairwell, a stairwell fire. But yeah, that one sticks out,
Speaker 8: and then there were just and then just you know,
Speaker 8: there was other stuff. I'm sure I forgot, but there
Speaker 8: was one that stuck out two weeks before the First
Speaker 8: Trade Center. It was on Super Bowl Sunday, and we
Speaker 8: never got jobs you know, class class ease in Manhattan,
Speaker 8: you know what they are, the you know, the automatical,
Speaker 8: And we didn't get him too big because we were
Speaker 8: a little bit out of it. We get them one
Speaker 8: every three months, we get it. But that Super Bowl Sunday,
Speaker 8: as soon as the game ended, boom, we get alarm
Speaker 8: and we go in. We're second do to two truck
Speaker 8: on forty eighth in Park and it was a high
Speaker 8: rise and the first fifteen stories of the high rise
Speaker 8: was one building and then it's separated into two towers,
Speaker 8: you know, like forty stories, fifty stories something crazy. But
Speaker 8: we get there and it's blowing out four high rise
Speaker 8: windows out of a commercial thing on the seventh floor. Yeah,
Speaker 8: and two truck. Captain Ill who died in the trade
Speaker 8: center was a tough, tough fireman. They were in a
Speaker 8: fire tower coming at it, and they couldn't get into
Speaker 8: the hallway at all, because as soon as they opened
Speaker 8: the door, the fire just came right at them. They
Speaker 8: couldn't get in. And we went up and we got
Speaker 8: on the seventh floor from the other end, and eventually
Speaker 8: it just kept getting worse and worse there, and we
Speaker 8: got we had sixty five engine with us, and we
Speaker 8: got to uh, we got to this door to like
Speaker 8: the lobby, and as soon as they opened the door,
Speaker 8: it was now bank down to the floor everywhere, and
Speaker 8: it was hot as ship. And as soon as they
Speaker 8: opened the door, it's almost like right in front of
Speaker 8: us was the officer from sixty five who was a
Speaker 8: one to twenty guy, Captain Savage. He gets it's almost
Speaker 8: like somebody kicked him in the head. He like lifted
Speaker 8: off his feet from the heat and got knocked down. Wow,
Speaker 8: And and they couldn't It was getting guys are getting
Speaker 8: The two guys on the line were getting burned without
Speaker 8: even seeing any fire. It was so fucking hot. And
Speaker 8: then then they just they called us down there. Luckily
Speaker 8: he was on the seventh floor they were able to get.
Speaker 8: I think it wound up going out like twenty two
Speaker 8: windows and.
Speaker 1: We did do we didn't do we didn't do so
Speaker 1: good there.
Speaker 8: No. I think somebody from rescue, say, uh, grabbed the
Speaker 8: guy from twenty four truck that got turned around in
Speaker 8: the lobby on the floor above.
Speaker 1: Hank is saying that he was at the job. Coobs,
Speaker 1: you're you're muted.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, yeah, he was in rescue one at the time.
Speaker 8: Brew Snowberry, I think, yeah, it was a bit it was.
Speaker 8: And also it was one of those ones where the
Speaker 8: you know, they had the h that whole thing when
Speaker 8: you read when you're studying about the HVAC shutting on
Speaker 8: the fans and uh, and they they did that in
Speaker 8: the in the stairwell. When we first went in, it
Speaker 8: sounded like an airplane in the stairwell going up. It
Speaker 8: was pressurized. They pressurized it and then they shut it down.
Speaker 8: So when we got back out, we're all ran out
Speaker 8: of air and we're coming back down and you had
Speaker 8: to go down like four flights just to get out
Speaker 8: of the smoke, and the two guys five engine, the
Speaker 8: two guys on the line jumped in. They ran out
Speaker 8: of it. They jumped in a closet. Had to go
Speaker 8: back up and get them.
Speaker 6: But I had the wind up putting the fire.
Speaker 8: Up the the UH seven truck, and I think another
Speaker 8: towel out of got it from the outside because it
Speaker 8: was on the seventh floor.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 8: But then two weeks later the first trade sent happens.
Speaker 8: So that was ninety three Super Bowl Sunday ninety three,
Speaker 8: and I think it's about two weeks later the first
Speaker 8: trade cent it happened working just you know, that just
Speaker 8: went in too. Well, were you working for the first
Speaker 8: trade I was. I wasn't working. No seven truck went down.
Speaker 8: They walked all the way up to the roof and
Speaker 8: took down some kids from the roof a class, some
Speaker 8: kindergarten class or something. But now I wasn't working that day.
Speaker 6: I know it could have been picked for he can't
Speaker 6: walk that high, bro.
Speaker 8: He might it might have been he might have been working.
Speaker 6: Yeah, gotta throw the bus whatever.
Speaker 8: Pickford was a good man. He was into it from
Speaker 8: the Yeah.
Speaker 6: I drove him all the time. Pickford funny motherfucker.
Speaker 9: Tongue on the job. I think one of them he's quick. Yeah,
Speaker 9: he will cut you. You don't even know your cut
Speaker 9: and bleeding.
Speaker 8: How was that kitchen table that was a tough That
Speaker 8: was a tough kitchen He'll tell you that was a
Speaker 8: tough kitchen table. There were guys they were like, they
Speaker 8: were like Muhammad Ali with the mouth there. I I
Speaker 8: flew under the radar. I was old enough to like,
Speaker 8: you know, just and I would take I take some hits,
Speaker 8: and I take them good. You got to make the
Speaker 8: hits and then then it's okay if you react badly
Speaker 8: to the hits.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like a gazelle and.
Speaker 6: Don't plow on the rabbit. You're done.
Speaker 9: It's like ten lions looking at the gazelle and has
Speaker 9: a little blood coming out off his body.
Speaker 8: And they took the first captain there, the guy's captain, O'Shaughnessy.
Speaker 8: The guy was like, he's always talking about how good
Speaker 8: his gas mileage was on his car coming into work.
Speaker 8: So the guys they would and they were adding gas
Speaker 8: to his car. And then they started to do the opposite.
Speaker 9: Oh my god, I freaking love it.
Speaker 6: Brothers.
Speaker 1: That's freak. That's great. That's no.
Speaker 8: It was a great fire. It was a great fight.
Speaker 8: Still has a great firehouse there.
Speaker 5: For eight years, right, you spent Yeah, and then and
Speaker 5: then we had I had great offices.
Speaker 8: Vinnie Fowler was there, uh, Kazlowski, George Vallabona, and then
Speaker 8: we got eventually we got Jim Manahan one twenty guy
Speaker 8: and al Hey, both one twenty guys. Al Hey took
Speaker 8: who they both became staff chiefs. They that al Hay
Speaker 8: had the engine and Manahan had the truck. And when
Speaker 8: they came it really they were good buddies. It really.
Speaker 8: It was good for the house. It's good for the house.
Speaker 5: A lot of Yeah, you had Vallabona. There was he
Speaker 5: the guy from rescue too.
Speaker 8: No, no, no, he was Uh he was an eighteen
Speaker 8: truck guy, a big guy, good, very good officer. They're
Speaker 8: all good there. They're all good and good, a good house.
Speaker 8: And you know they still that that first week I
Speaker 8: went there, like and every October they still celebrated. They
Speaker 8: didn't celebrate, but they had a memorial mass for the
Speaker 8: twenty third Street fire. One of the guy's sons worked there,
Speaker 8: Joe Finley worked there. His father was a lieutenant in seven.
Speaker 8: Uh that day, I mean that was a that was
Speaker 8: that was a terrible fire. You know, twelve guys lost. Yeah,
Speaker 8: but uh no, that was a great place. And then
Speaker 8: I was looking to maybe go to it started to
Speaker 8: the Manhattan was changing and it was getting slower, and
Speaker 8: I was becoming more senior, and I admittedly I got
Speaker 8: a little you know, the younger guys are doing this stuff,
Speaker 8: and I got a little lazier. I could feel myself
Speaker 8: getting lazy, and I thought about going to a truck
Speaker 8: in Brooklyn, and I started to learn more about the job.
Speaker 8: I'm a slow learner, so it took me. But uh
Speaker 8: that was almost impossible back then. It seemed to get
Speaker 8: to a busy truck over there. Then the squad thing
Speaker 8: came up, and so I decided to go for that.
Speaker 9: So what you just didn't that on your own? Did
Speaker 9: you talk to any of the captains prior or how
Speaker 9: did that work?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 8: I did. My Mike off Checked, who wound up being
Speaker 8: a fifty five truck guy and then he was in
Speaker 8: the Union, really good guy. He was on the football team.
Speaker 6: He was always school with Mikey's off check.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, he he was. He had been in two
Speaker 8: fifty two and he told me, you know, you should
Speaker 8: try to go over there, and he decided not to
Speaker 8: do it. He went back, he went to fifty five truck.
Speaker 8: But uh so, yeah, I did talk to the captain
Speaker 8: and I went over there, and I was it was
Speaker 8: a great It was a great you know, that was
Speaker 8: a great time. You guys did it too. I mean,
Speaker 8: you know, you trained with every buddy and a lot
Speaker 8: of you know, I was only there for less than
Speaker 8: four years, and it seemed like a lot of stuff
Speaker 8: happened in that time. As soon as we got there.
Speaker 8: You guys know, I didn't work that night, but Atlantic,
Speaker 8: the Atlantic City, I mean Atlantic Avenue.
Speaker 9: Atlantic Avenue fire Right. We were talking in the pre
Speaker 9: show with Too eighty eight. You guys went as an engine,
Speaker 9: but I think you guys operated as a squad, right
Speaker 9: or did you operate a squad?
Speaker 8: They were pulling out, they were pulling out guys.
Speaker 9: Yeah, And we got relocated to three thirty two that night,
Speaker 9: so we we were listening to everything the whole time.
Speaker 1: I mean, we ended up staying there the whole time.
Speaker 8: But yeah, yeah, no, that was that was then. There
Speaker 8: was there was other starret City a year later and
Speaker 8: I was at that one and uh, and somebody was
Speaker 8: just saying, it's the anniversary had just passed.
Speaker 1: The Yeah, it just passed. Yeah, yes, exactly.
Speaker 8: Yeah. There was a lot of a lot of stuff
Speaker 8: I learned over there. There were a lot of row frames,
Speaker 8: which were you guys dealt with some of that too,
Speaker 8: right in two eighty eight, which I which is a
Speaker 8: different kind of fire and and uh.
Speaker 9: Some of my best row frames was when I was
Speaker 9: at two eighty eight and you guys were first two
Speaker 9: over there, and we came over there, you know, I
Speaker 9: came there with quickly. A few times it would, you know,
Speaker 9: be three or four of them going. It was like
Speaker 9: it was great every time.
Speaker 8: Good. The companies were very good at that over there,
Speaker 8: you know, I mean getting ahead of it and fighting them.
Speaker 8: But how was it?
Speaker 6: How was it over there? Because by us, like I mean,
Speaker 6: you guys in two fifty two, you're engine two fifty two.
Speaker 5: Now you squad two fifty two, but you're running with
Speaker 5: companies like one eleven, you know, I.
Speaker 8: Mean, yeah, there was a little oh yeah, yeah, there was.
Speaker 8: There was a little like they're looking at I'm sure
Speaker 8: they're looking at us, but what was good. Is so
Speaker 8: many guys stayed in that company and they knew the guys,
Speaker 8: you know, and there was some you know, Tommy Kvecas,
Speaker 8: who had been a one seventy five fiveman for twenty
Speaker 8: years was there and he was a great, a great,
Speaker 8: great fireman. And there was guys that had respect there.
Speaker 8: So uh and we when we were an engine, we
Speaker 8: were an engine. They were very Richie Sweeney, the senior
Speaker 8: guys were very much like, you know, we do what
Speaker 8: we're supposed to do. You know, we're not playing games here.
Speaker 8: And also when we went as a squad, I mean,
Speaker 8: you develop, you know, it's a learning curve. But when
Speaker 8: you went, you didn't. You know, if guys have pulled,
Speaker 8: you don't squeeze yourself into a room when guys are
Speaker 8: taking care of business. It's just gets stupid if you
Speaker 8: do that, right, We didn't. We didn't. We try not
Speaker 8: to do. I'm sure there's there were some bumps along
Speaker 8: the way, but but it went pretty well. It went
Speaker 8: pretty well. And then there was when there's a fire.
Speaker 8: You guys know, when there's a fire big enough, you know,
Speaker 8: they welcome to help.
Speaker 6: Me for everybody.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but I think there's a period where we had
Speaker 5: to find where we belonged. You know what I mean,
Speaker 5: Like when you first show up as a squad, number one,
Speaker 5: they don't know what to do with you, and number two,
Speaker 5: you're so new that you don't really know what to do,
Speaker 5: you know. So it was a long period before we
Speaker 5: found where we were supposed to be.
Speaker 8: I think, yeah, exactly, That's that's what it was like
Speaker 8: for us over there. And then there was some you know,
Speaker 8: I had never been in an engine, so I got
Speaker 8: I got lucky enough. I got a bunch of nonzo
Speaker 8: jobs over there, which was exciting. And I'll tell you,
Speaker 8: I also gave me a respect for the engine because
Speaker 8: I realized, I it's not just so I just assumed
Speaker 8: like you didn't have to learn anything. You just had
Speaker 8: to tump on the rocky, I know.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's pretty close to that though. I'm
Speaker 1: just saying I'm gonna say.
Speaker 7: I'll just say it.
Speaker 8: So you see that there's guys that are better at it.
Speaker 8: There's like techniques and stuff they do, you know, to
Speaker 8: keep that line moving. So yeah, that was a lot.
Speaker 8: That was a lot of fun. And then.
Speaker 5: Little hidden gem over there two fifty two too, because
Speaker 5: you know, on paper there was the engine, but they
Speaker 5: do they do first do work over there, man.
Speaker 8: Yeah, they had a very small first do area. That's
Speaker 8: because Brooklyn had so many engines. Yeah, in that way,
Speaker 8: but there was a good area for fire so yep.
Speaker 5: I mean we really didn't see much first do work.
Speaker 5: Caught a little bit of here and there, but not
Speaker 5: like I mean, you guys were in a perfect place
Speaker 5: to seventy was in a perfect place first do work.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I'd say that's where more of the competition was.
Speaker 8: Was like you had you learn in that Brooklyn thing.
Speaker 8: You had to get out the door and move quick man.
Speaker 8: You had to get respond quickly to make sure because
Speaker 8: there was another engine close by.
Speaker 9: Yeah, who did you who did you get close to? Like, uh, well,
Speaker 9: when you when you first got there, who was somebody?
Speaker 8: Uh well, the whole you know what I got along.
Speaker 8: I really liked that it was different because you got
Speaker 8: to know everybody quicker because it wasn't a double house,
Speaker 8: you know, right. Uh But I became really good friends
Speaker 8: with Tommy Covecas and uh but but almost all of them,
Speaker 8: John d Filippo, John Fihn, Kevin. I loved there was
Speaker 8: nobody I I really didn't have problems with anybody in
Speaker 8: that house. I really loved and had Pete Martin as
Speaker 8: a lieutenant. Legendary guy over there.
Speaker 6: Man, yeahs was good too, maybe.
Speaker 8: Was the best, Yes, him along with U. I've had
Speaker 8: great captains him Calamari. I mean I think of those guys.
Speaker 8: Different styles, but great captains, great captains.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Calmar, take you eighteen minutes to tell you, like
Speaker 6: three things.
Speaker 1: How was Norton?
Speaker 10: And the chief one was my It was my mutual partners.
Speaker 10: So I didn't work with him that well, oh ship,
Speaker 10: I could be bed Yeah, No, I love Norton. He
Speaker 10: was great. He was great.
Speaker 8: Man. He was another one too. And Richie Meyers came
Speaker 8: over from two fourteen. That was another thing. They're both
Speaker 8: from one eleven, two fourteen.
Speaker 6: That happened.
Speaker 1: What about the fatness?
Speaker 8: Who's the fatness?
Speaker 1: Fish?
Speaker 6: The fish fish from there till later even I had
Speaker 6: to say who's the fatness?
Speaker 8: He didn't come down till later on.
Speaker 1: That's my partner.
Speaker 7: I love that.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I loved him. But he came there like the
Speaker 8: year I was leaving. The year I left, he came in. Well, no,
Speaker 8: when I got burned when I was there and I
Speaker 8: was out for a bit. He came during that time.
Speaker 8: But uh yeah, Richie Sweeney, Michael Rosea just was there, right,
Speaker 8: was there?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 8: He was great. I worked with John a lot, he was.
Speaker 8: We worked together at Joe Harris who became a big chief.
Speaker 8: We worked together at uh the Star City fire, and
Speaker 8: that was that was something that was like a wait,
Speaker 8: that was my first fire where fatal fire. I wasn't
Speaker 8: at the Atlantic Avenue fire. So but uh, I just
Speaker 8: come out of rescue school. We just had the you
Speaker 8: know the stuff where you do all the May days
Speaker 8: and stuff in rescue school. And then I mean I
Speaker 8: was out maybe a week and we're we're there on
Speaker 8: the ninth floor that you know the building louis right.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 6: We talked about the Vendealia Avenue.
Speaker 8: Yes, yes, and we were and we h I had
Speaker 8: Paul the covering Captain Paul Hagund, who was a Rescue
Speaker 8: four guy.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Yeah, very good guy he you know he uh we
Speaker 8: got in and we we hiked it up. The elevator
Speaker 8: wasn't working and we got to the ninth floor. We
Speaker 8: went to the command post and I think your your buddy,
Speaker 8: that Chief Coward was the chief yeah, nine, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 8: and uh, we get to the command post, and just
Speaker 8: as we got to the command post that you heard
Speaker 8: Bop give a may day, and you could tell, I mean,
Speaker 8: I never heard anything like that, Like it was, you know,
Speaker 8: like he was suffering given the may day. And that
Speaker 8: stairway was all jammed up already. I you know, I
Speaker 8: wasn't on that end, so I didn't see up there.
Speaker 8: But they couldn't even. They went from being able to
Speaker 8: get in the hallway, get that lady out of the hallway,
Speaker 8: to open the door, and getting I think Danny Libretti
Speaker 8: had a stripe burn on his face from just opening
Speaker 8: the door to the hallway.
Speaker 1: And so I went in with two lines after after
Speaker 1: a certain period of time, after.
Speaker 8: A certain period of time, because it's I think they
Speaker 8: couldn't even. And then what happened is we Haglin said
Speaker 8: let's go the other stairs, which was like two hundred
Speaker 8: feet down, and we went up. And when we went up,
Speaker 8: one of the guys from one seventy, another guy I
Speaker 8: think had not the inside team, came out, you know,
Speaker 8: came stumbling out of there, and it was like a
Speaker 8: freight train in that hallway, and the doors were open
Speaker 8: in between and the elevator lobby, so it was just
Speaker 8: wide open. And and we went down and uh, Captain
Speaker 8: Hagelin took us down. At one point he told us
Speaker 8: to uh force the door for force the door for
Speaker 8: in case, you know, we had to get into it,
Speaker 8: you know, get out of the hallway or something. And
Speaker 8: I started forcing the door with a rabbit tool and uh,
Speaker 8: and then he found Bob, so he called us to
Speaker 8: help him take both out. Wow. And I just left
Speaker 8: the rabbit tool there in the door and it was like,
Speaker 8: you know, half pumped, so it was cracked open, but
Speaker 8: I just left it there to go. And uh, because
Speaker 8: after the fire, people were saying, oh they almost got out.
Speaker 9: They were you know, they thought the rabbits, Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 9: but that was you all right, right?
Speaker 8: But then uh and we got him, me and John
Speaker 8: Fie and I think worked him on the floor below.
Speaker 8: But unfortunately, and I think he that was Bop and
Speaker 8: he was the furthest away from the flu. You know,
Speaker 8: it was a fire the back of the building. It
Speaker 8: was on the back of the building and they I
Speaker 8: think they opened up a door across the hallway got
Speaker 8: opened up and it created a flu and they were
Speaker 8: right in that flu and Bob probably would have been
Speaker 8: the only one to have a shot, but he didn't.
Speaker 8: Unfortunately he didn't make it. But they didn't get burned.
Speaker 8: I think they got also overheated that there air tanks
Speaker 8: and stuff. So yeah, that was a tough one.
Speaker 9: I was, I was, I was working, I was working
Speaker 9: that night, and I remember hearing hearing the job and
Speaker 9: then we were listening to it like in the kitchen
Speaker 9: when it was going on, I remember, but and then.
Speaker 8: Yeah, but but yeah, there was a lot of stuff
Speaker 8: that happened after that. They they they tried one of
Speaker 8: those deep briefings at the rock like two or three
Speaker 8: days later, which was a big mistake. It almost wound
Speaker 8: up being a brawl. But sure, but it was not
Speaker 8: a good it was not It was not a smart
Speaker 8: thing to do, I don't think. But uh, but yeah,
Speaker 8: those were a lot of shit happened in that time
Speaker 8: in those years there two fifty two and then I
Speaker 8: got like a year later, I got burned at a job.
Speaker 8: There was an awesomest who was lighting up Bushwick all
Speaker 8: over Bushwick guy right, yeah, and he uh and he
Speaker 8: was There were tons of fires in like January and February,
Speaker 8: and then a couple he killed a couple of like
Speaker 8: a kid and a woman. At one of these he
Speaker 8: was lighting stairwell fires. And then apparently we found out
Speaker 8: later he went into a mental institution and the day
Speaker 8: he came out in June, he started the same thing.
Speaker 8: And we had one of these nights. It was crazy,
Speaker 8: going from multiple to multiple. And then at one of
Speaker 8: them we would way down in Bushwick. It wasn't our
Speaker 8: first new area, but we were coming from another job
Speaker 8: and somebody comes up on a bicycle and it turned
Speaker 8: out it was the awesomeest and he says, oh, there's
Speaker 8: another one around the corner. So we go around the
Speaker 8: corner and the rain and uh, same thing going, you know,
Speaker 8: up the stairwell and uh, Danny Murphy was working on one.
Speaker 8: He was in one seventy six at the time, and uh,
Speaker 8: and we had a shaulf for that, like uh that
Speaker 8: wasn't regularly always always. Uh, he wasn't that regular chauffeur.
Speaker 8: And I think he gave us way too much pressure.
Speaker 8: But we had and we had a detail from Staten
Speaker 8: Island who was who was put his backup, who probably
Speaker 8: shouldn't have been put his backup because he didn't you know,
Speaker 8: usually put somebody from the company. But so we got
Speaker 8: uh basically had Danny Murphy behind me, and then we
Speaker 8: went up the stairs, got the first four knockdown one
Speaker 8: up the stairs of the second floor, made the turn
Speaker 8: towards the front of the building, and Danny in one
Speaker 8: seventy six went into the apartment in the back there
Speaker 8: and and I started making the turn, and I don't
Speaker 8: think the backup guy never came around the banister, so
Speaker 8: I couldn't move the line that was stuck around the thing.
Speaker 8: He had no back no, and then it just there
Speaker 8: was a gasoline fire. Just I got my legs got
Speaker 8: burnt until the cheese man came blowing past that other
Speaker 8: guy and came up and cheese. Yeah. So yeah, so
Speaker 8: I got uh, I got burned pretty good at that
Speaker 8: and did like three weeks in the burn center. But
Speaker 8: it was uh yeah, that was some That was some
Speaker 8: some three years over there, three four years and then
Speaker 8: I left right I got promoted right before the Father's
Speaker 8: Day fire. You guys, you guys were involved with that.
Speaker 6: I worked that one.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, so I mean that was crazy, like there
Speaker 8: was a lot of multiple death fire deaths those years.
Speaker 8: But so I got promoted. Uh yeah, I love the company.
Speaker 8: I love the guys there. They'll be friends for the
Speaker 8: rest of my life. And uh, how they caught that
Speaker 8: that kid though, right, they caught him that night round. Yeah,
Speaker 8: but there were there were.
Speaker 6: Oh my god, he was lighting up Bushwick for a
Speaker 6: long time, man.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and that night he finished with like there were
Speaker 8: like two or three second alarms, a third alarm. It
Speaker 8: was just one right after the other. M uh bastard. Yeah,
Speaker 8: and then you.
Speaker 1: Always use a few of those guys, I said it loud.
Speaker 1: That's ship. Don't get all larry. You can't remember which
Speaker 1: one is which.
Speaker 8: But let's see from that. So that when I came back,
Speaker 8: I came back my last store. I was lucky enough
Speaker 8: to get an ancole job. Yeah.
Speaker 6: Look at his job when he comes back and he
Speaker 6: gets promoted.
Speaker 8: Yeah. I got promoted with John D. Filippo and I'm
Speaker 8: not sure may or June of May of u two
Speaker 8: thousand and one. And then I got assigned to the
Speaker 8: fifteenth and I always remember the fifteenth we went to
Speaker 8: see the deputy.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 8: And the overtime then was the average overtime was fifteen hours.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that much. I remember, it was always under one hundred.
Speaker 1: It was always under one hundred.
Speaker 8: And then they and then they said, you know, if
Speaker 8: you want to get a spot in the truck or
Speaker 8: you know, it takes you four or five years like
Speaker 8: what like. So, but I always Tommy Kvecus, who I
Speaker 8: was very good friends with, always told me, you know,
Speaker 8: if I was you, I'd try to get to one
Speaker 8: twenty because he said, he you know that just that
Speaker 8: the firehouse itself, the company walking Street was just squared
Speaker 8: away at a fire then squared away inside the firehouse,
Speaker 8: which was you know, and so that was another besides that,
Speaker 8: and the two captains I'd had Captain hay And who
Speaker 8: became a deputy or a staff chief, and Manahan and
Speaker 8: seven truck, seven truck. They'd always talked about it. So
Speaker 8: by that time I had a number of things point
Speaker 8: in that direction. But it wasn't it wasn't going to
Speaker 8: be easy to do that obviously, But uh, the trade center,
Speaker 8: you know, unfortunately unfortunately, you know, it just changed everything,
Speaker 8: but it opened up things.
Speaker 6: Playing field many Yeah, I sure did.
Speaker 8: But uh yeah, so the trade center actually on the
Speaker 8: trades of the day of the Trade Center, I wound
Speaker 8: up Raschweiler put me back in two fifty two. I
Speaker 8: wound up going down there with guys from two fifty
Speaker 8: two because I stopped by the fire house. I think
Speaker 8: I told you before that morning, just as they were
Speaker 8: going out the door. And so we went down with
Speaker 8: a couple, uh, John Fienn, uh Chiusano, Rob McDermott. We
Speaker 8: went down.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 8: One of the guys had a volley rig and we
Speaker 8: went down and we got there right before, you know,
Speaker 8: a few minutes before the second collapse. But uh so
Speaker 8: then I wound up staying with them and uh for
Speaker 8: about six weeks. They went in there as a lieutenant.
Speaker 8: But uh, and I got a little trouble my first time,
Speaker 8: geting a little trouble.
Speaker 7: You poke somebody.
Speaker 8: What kind of trouble could that be? No, you know,
Speaker 8: I think you just you're talking earlier about they had.
Speaker 8: At the time they had, you might have had the
Speaker 8: same stuff in two of the eight they had. California
Speaker 8: Los Angeles fireman and Phoenix firemen were coming too at
Speaker 8: a time to the house, and they were doing the
Speaker 8: right they were professional firemen. They were doing the right thing.
Speaker 8: They were cleaning the house while we were going down
Speaker 8: to the site, cooking meals, driving guys home or doing
Speaker 8: you know, doing whatever. And then one day out of
Speaker 8: the week they'd stayed for a week, they take them
Speaker 8: down to the site. They didn't have him doing anything dangerous,
Speaker 8: but Uh, I walked into somebody asked me to do
Speaker 8: a quick mutual. I showed up to do it.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 8: One of the guys left his Phoenix t shirt on,
Speaker 8: and by the end of the day I was out
Speaker 8: of sock.
Speaker 1: I never liked yous Phoenix.
Speaker 8: But the trade center lost a whole crew. Guy's seven
Speaker 8: truck that I worked with, Vinnie Princiata, Richie Muldoonney great
Speaker 8: fireman Freeport Fireman, Vinnie Princiata, George Kane Burne, Richards great
Speaker 8: lieutenant from seventeen truck that was fireman seventeen truck, Chuck Mendez,
Speaker 8: and I'm sure Bob Fody, all good five and all
Speaker 8: great guys who lost all those guys. And then I
Speaker 8: knew a ton of guys from Manhattan, and then we
Speaker 8: knew it then you like everybody, we knew a ton
Speaker 8: of guys from SOCC. So it was like just unbelievable. Yeah,
Speaker 8: and that year is kind of like a blur to me.
Speaker 8: But I got out of two fifty two, and you
Speaker 8: know what, in a way, I think it was a
Speaker 8: blessing because I think it's hard to go back to
Speaker 8: a company that you were. You went many years later,
Speaker 8: louis back to a company where you were.
Speaker 9: You know, it's funny say that, because I got I
Speaker 9: got promoted in junevo too. So we finished up pretty
Speaker 9: much at nine to eleven. Right, We finished up at
Speaker 9: the ground zero for the most part. And then I
Speaker 9: got around may I. You know, I heard that they
Speaker 9: were promoting you know, the guys, and uh, I say
Speaker 9: this all time because I told this to other guys too.
Speaker 9: Kat Murphy came to me and said, hey, Lou, you
Speaker 9: know you probably could stay in Sock if you want, right,
Speaker 9: but go out, go out in the field.
Speaker 1: If you can get to Brooklyn, go to Brooklyn.
Speaker 9: He was always a Brooklyn guy, and he said, become
Speaker 9: a boss, like become a lieutenant first, because like you said,
Speaker 9: it's how are you going to come back?
Speaker 1: And you know, these are your guys that you work with, right,
Speaker 1: they're your friends.
Speaker 9: And now you're going to be in You're gonna have
Speaker 9: to make tough decisions and it just can get sticky initially,
Speaker 9: you know what I mean, like so fresh.
Speaker 1: So I did that.
Speaker 9: I I as soon as I got promoted, I went
Speaker 9: to Brooklyn and I stayed there for almost eight years.
Speaker 8: I think, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah. At first I
Speaker 8: was upset, you know, I mean, because I just lost
Speaker 8: all those guys, and I'm like not you know, but
Speaker 8: a couple of days later, it was almost like a
Speaker 8: little bit of a relief.
Speaker 1: No, I wanted to get out of there. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I wanted to get out of the yeah, yeah. And uh.
Speaker 8: And then I actually wound up going down to the
Speaker 8: trade center in December for they had like month long
Speaker 8: details from the different divisions that were going down, and
Speaker 8: you'd watch the grapplers and you know, looking out for right,
Speaker 8: right right, and I had something actually happened down there.
Speaker 8: At like four o'clock in the morning, all the grapplers
Speaker 8: were taking a break and this is in December, and
Speaker 8: I see I see something. It looks like just a
Speaker 8: little spindle. There's nobody in the pit at all, nobody
Speaker 8: And I see this something look like a little spindle,
Speaker 8: and I start to dust it off, and I'm like,
Speaker 8: this looks like and I see it like a No.
Speaker 8: It was four truck four stories down, buried underneath. And
Speaker 8: I saw the aerial ladder, the spindle of the area ladder.
Speaker 8: Oh shit, it was four trucks rig yeah. Yeah, And
Speaker 8: and I hesitated about a half an hour before I
Speaker 8: said anything. I finally got the chief down and sure enough,
Speaker 8: that's what it was. It took him about a day
Speaker 8: to uh, to dig it out. But there were they
Speaker 8: fell through the mall there, and and they fell through
Speaker 8: a jeans store, so there were jeans on top of this.
Speaker 8: And you might have heard this story. There was some
Speaker 8: idiot reporter who made it sound like these guys were
Speaker 8: stealing jeans.
Speaker 1: And first of all, I never heard that. Yeah.
Speaker 8: Yeah, this guy William Languish, I remember his name in
Speaker 8: the Atlantic magazine and he made he then jose, Oh no,
Speaker 8: people told me. I didn't say it was true. I
Speaker 8: said people told me, but it was. But these guys
Speaker 8: all die. I know, the guys from Fort Truck died
Speaker 8: trying to rescue people from an elevator in the South Tower.
Speaker 8: But uh, but just unbelievable that they'd say like like
Speaker 8: yeah in the middle of like.
Speaker 5: Ye, yeah, they're gonna stop and steal jeans. That's what
Speaker 5: we're doing. Yeah, God give me you, Dick.
Speaker 7: Oh, I was al wasn't ready for that, but I
Speaker 7: got you coming.
Speaker 6: I got you coming, beauty, Dick.
Speaker 8: So I'll keep moving from there. I went back. I
Speaker 8: went back to the fifteenth and I bounced around and
Speaker 8: it was great and like you said, but I needed to.
Speaker 8: It took me every rank. Took me time to get
Speaker 8: used to that rank and become better at it, definitely,
Speaker 8: And I wound up getting into one twenty, which was
Speaker 8: a blessing.
Speaker 6: How did that happen? Well, take Closs over that one
Speaker 6: there we got.
Speaker 8: Yeah, well I was friends, good friends with Dennis going
Speaker 8: that helped.
Speaker 1: Oh that doesn't hurt.
Speaker 8: Yeah, so it was good friends with Dennis. And then
Speaker 8: also uh Rob McDermott from two fifty two helped me out.
Speaker 8: He had a relative that helped me out.
Speaker 7: You, they helped you out.
Speaker 1: Looked it looked like you. It looks like you were
Speaker 1: boxing Tyson in this one. I don't know what the help.
Speaker 8: Do we have to pay that for that image? Getty
Speaker 8: just I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't want to.
Speaker 8: I didn't pay for it.
Speaker 7: They shouldn't know.
Speaker 8: But yeah, so I got you know what it was too.
Speaker 8: There was unbelievably you know, Louis, there was just like
Speaker 8: not the amount of and then suddenly the overtime took
Speaker 8: off the same thing. There was not then competition, and
Speaker 8: some people were afraid of one twenty because of the
Speaker 8: elevators and there's a lot of running.
Speaker 1: Listen, you runner. Not everybody wants to do all that either,
Speaker 1: you know, like you take a certain person to do that.
Speaker 8: Ship I covered in one seventy five, which is a
Speaker 8: great nice yeah, but I'll tell you the truth. They
Speaker 8: didn't run that much, which no, they don't run the run.
Speaker 6: The work ratio was awesome.
Speaker 9: Yeah, Glary, they had I remember that there the box
Speaker 9: that they had the the elevated tools in had dust
Speaker 9: on it.
Speaker 1: I'm like you right, one O three or two old
Speaker 1: and what.
Speaker 9: Twenty we were going like this to elevate its like
Speaker 9: all night right, like the one to notice and uh,
Speaker 9: you know one O three we were in the start
Speaker 9: every goddamn day, man, all the shit and working and
Speaker 9: all those goddamn projects over there.
Speaker 8: But but you know what, it was better for me
Speaker 8: because I was still I was like eleven twelve years
Speaker 8: on the job. I was a young lieutenant. I need
Speaker 8: that was no good for me to just do three
Speaker 8: runs a day, you know what I mean, even if
Speaker 8: it was you know, you had good ratio fires as
Speaker 8: you get older. That's a good firehouse for an office.
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, but for young office I needed and uh
Speaker 8: And I'll be honest to you. After losing, you know,
Speaker 8: after so many guys, a part of me didn't wasn't
Speaker 8: sure about becoming a part of any house. I was
Speaker 8: bouncing around. But it was the best thing that happened
Speaker 8: to me coming into that house, a very tight house.
Speaker 8: And and I always back in seven Truck. I always
Speaker 8: played sports, basketball, softball, and these guys did all that.
Speaker 8: They did everything they did Engine Truck, basketball, softball, bowling, volleyball.
Speaker 9: Oh my dude, that that place. I talk about that place.
Speaker 9: It's like forty four truck. It's like one of the
Speaker 9: pinnacle firehouses, right that The alumni is incredible, Right, the
Speaker 9: firehouse is incredible as it is, but the alumni is incredible.
Speaker 9: You know, they do snuff together all the time. It's
Speaker 9: just it's a perfect it's perfect place.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 8: Yeah, It's like the place. The place is bigger than
Speaker 8: any personality, any one personality. And then the first captain
Speaker 8: was there was Harry Werner, and Dennis Gordon was an
Speaker 8: officer and Tomas squadro.
Speaker 1: And he was there forever Dennis, right, he was ridiculous.
Speaker 8: Amount of tteen seventeen years, Yeah, exactly, and uh, but
Speaker 8: then very senior. It was very senior, John John Narva,
Speaker 8: John Coelely, Kevin Cannon, a lot of senior guys in
Speaker 8: the truck when I got there, and they treated me
Speaker 8: like I'm sure you probably had the you know, they
Speaker 8: treated me if I was a young younger than all
Speaker 8: of them. They treated me like with respect right away
Speaker 8: that I didn't even deserve.
Speaker 1: And uh makes the job easy, right.
Speaker 8: Yeah, very easy. And they talked and they had roll calls.
Speaker 8: They always talked about fires. They were always looking, you know,
Speaker 8: they've admitted mistakes. They were always looking to get better.
Speaker 8: And I love that atmosphere. And then seventeen guys got
Speaker 8: promoted out of the truck during the time I was there.
Speaker 6: Wow, that's a lot, I know.
Speaker 8: So they it's always been a big study house too,
Speaker 8: so they a lot of young guys came in and
Speaker 8: the young guys were great, and that that might have been.
Speaker 9: Like the place fresh. Yeah, that's the best time, right,
Speaker 9: you're just fresh. Everybody's learning. You're bedrilling all the time.
Speaker 9: You're going to fires, talking about.
Speaker 8: Fires exactly as a lieutenant. It's very good because it
Speaker 8: gives you something to And they were so enthusiastic, these
Speaker 8: guys one.
Speaker 1: Two oh to the four to four K.
Speaker 9: We got a ghast sleeking apartment for David. I'll get
Speaker 9: your name in a second. They're making an eighteen for
Speaker 9: a ten to forty goat too.
Speaker 7: Him.
Speaker 1: I love it guy.
Speaker 8: And then when he came, when he comes, and then
Speaker 8: Bobby Higgins.
Speaker 1: Had been Higgins loved that guy too.
Speaker 8: Man, the two of them, it was the same thing
Speaker 8: like going back to my first fire house, Like when
Speaker 8: you got two captains in a house like that that
Speaker 8: were so great. And they were great captains, I mean great.
Speaker 8: And Calamari always stand like you know, he could he
Speaker 8: like anybody. He could have a favorite or you could
Speaker 8: get along better with certain guys. But he was fair
Speaker 8: across the board. He was squared away this. You don't
Speaker 8: screw this up, you don't screw that up. And he
Speaker 8: was a lot of fun and he was just uh,
Speaker 8: he was great for that firehouse.
Speaker 9: I used to I used to work in the engine
Speaker 9: things too, I used to say to the captain, and
Speaker 9: he played hockey. I played hockey. I used to see
Speaker 9: Captain Higgins all the time. And his son played in
Speaker 9: the NHL.
Speaker 8: Right, oh yeah, yeah, so.
Speaker 1: So I remember I used to I remember saying to
Speaker 1: him like, how are you still doing this cap? Like
Speaker 1: for years? Like how much time did he have? He
Speaker 1: was running around like he was in phenomenal shape.
Speaker 9: I know, but it was just like you think to yourself, like,
Speaker 9: holy mackerel, Like at so point you might go to
Speaker 9: like three thirteen in or somewhere.
Speaker 1: You know, like not that guy, you know that, not
Speaker 1: that guy?
Speaker 8: Well, no, and he was he was too like he
Speaker 8: with the people in the neighborhood that he was like
Speaker 8: a saint. He was like a saint. He was such
Speaker 8: a good Yeah, he was such a good uh a
Speaker 8: good guy man. He was just such a good him
Speaker 8: on the show.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I got I gotta work on we gotta work
Speaker 1: on him.
Speaker 8: Yeah, he's a real class act. Him and him.
Speaker 9: I'll get callam married to work on that. The squid,
Speaker 9: We'll get the squid to work on that.
Speaker 8: And then a lot of a lot of the young guys,
Speaker 8: and now they're all stars today. You know what I mean?
Speaker 8: Will Hickey, I don't know, you know, Will Hickey.
Speaker 9: That's myself's cousin, Will Hickey. Oh brother, Yeah, his cousin
Speaker 9: or his brother either one.
Speaker 6: Oh Will Hickey. Yeah, he used to live next to
Speaker 6: my sister.
Speaker 8: And yeah, yeah, yeah, great guy. He uh. Rob Petroca,
Speaker 8: I have all that, all these names down there, you
Speaker 8: of the young guys. I don't want to forget him.
Speaker 8: I wrote down the name of just about everybody I
Speaker 8: work with.
Speaker 6: We don't care.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean in the engine Mike Prolophone with phenomenal Chauffa,
Speaker 8: Al Garracio, backstep guy for twenty five years, Mike laughing.
Speaker 8: Now the great great guys there in the in the
Speaker 8: in the truck. Rob Brown went there after Dennis Gordon left,
Speaker 8: that's right, and John Philly, John Dooley, Larry Schneckenberger, Mike Kelly,
Speaker 8: John Narbert, Don Michelley, Danny Wetzel.
Speaker 1: We might know, yeah, I know he.
Speaker 8: I always joke about him. He would like they have
Speaker 8: the roll calls every day and they'd be like a
Speaker 8: half an hour, guy's talking about flyers or whatever. And
Speaker 8: then and Danny was always talking, always talking, and then
Speaker 8: the day they'd always let the guy, you know, if
Speaker 8: you're getting promoted, you know, okay, you're the officer for
Speaker 8: the day. I'm going to ride the backstep. But he's
Speaker 8: got to run the roll call. And then he gets
Speaker 8: to run the roll call the day He's like, I, no,
Speaker 8: I can't say.
Speaker 1: So I came out with him. I came up with Danny.
Speaker 6: You came on with wil Yeah.
Speaker 1: So we were pretty close.
Speaker 9: And then you know, the seat when I got to
Speaker 9: two ninety and we would run into you know, we're
Speaker 9: first and second two uh for quite a few boxes
Speaker 9: over there, and uh, you know, they would break my ball,
Speaker 9: you know, especially like you said when I first got there.
Speaker 1: But for me to be in the engine when I
Speaker 1: first got there.
Speaker 9: And Larry was in the truck and Dennis was in
Speaker 9: the truck, and there was a little you know, it
Speaker 9: was a little bit here like this.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 9: I remember one of the first runs, we would come
Speaker 9: down the block, uh the right way, and then one
Speaker 9: twenty would come down. I forget what the building was.
Speaker 9: You probably know what's what I'm talking about. Yeah, they
Speaker 9: would come in. They were first two on that side
Speaker 9: because the block was down there, and we would meet
Speaker 9: like this, and I remember we didn't have a hydrant.
Speaker 9: You know, I would say, you know, we get on
Speaker 9: the radio and say one twenty we don't have a hydrants.
Speaker 9: You know, we were getting off the rig or whatever
Speaker 9: to you know, And yeah, then I would hear on
Speaker 9: the radio, A ninety you can't get water from a
Speaker 9: parked car or some shit like that. You know, they
Speaker 9: were always everybody was always chirping all the time. But
Speaker 9: you know, then i'd go back, you know, back up
Speaker 9: and go get engine options, you know, facts over the.
Speaker 1: Uh you know, the ups operations or whatever. But I
Speaker 1: was get along Wallet.
Speaker 8: Levy, Yeah I did too. I mean, uh with you guys.
Speaker 8: And I remember after we had a fire in the
Speaker 8: firehouse at one time you guys were over giving us
Speaker 8: kitchen stuff. There was competition there, but I think especially
Speaker 8: between the trucks with the engines. Different story. But the
Speaker 8: guys always banging. But I wasn't in the engine, so
Speaker 8: but uh, but with one O three I not, you know,
Speaker 8: I mean there's times we banged heads, but.
Speaker 1: Uh, you're like this story I had.
Speaker 9: We had unfortunately in two thousand and five when Uh,
Speaker 9: we lost Richie Sklofani and uh again same thing. Like
Speaker 9: you said, all the firehouses were great, right, cooking meals
Speaker 9: and doing stuff for us and everything. And we made
Speaker 9: plaques up for everybody, right, for all the firehouses for
Speaker 9: doing the right thing.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 9: So we were going to one to your place, and uh,
Speaker 9: I think it was Rob Brown was working and we
Speaker 9: were just like a block away, and sure shit, a
Speaker 9: fucking box comes in for a fire right down the block.
Speaker 9: I don't know if it was like just past Pickin
Speaker 9: or some one of those blocks. I mean a couple
Speaker 9: of blocks. I mean we are right there, we're second due.
Speaker 9: We turn, you know, we're a couple of blocks from
Speaker 9: your fire, from from the block you guys are on,
Speaker 9: and all of a sudden we come.
Speaker 1: I got the plaque in my hand.
Speaker 9: I put the plaque on the on the dash, and
Speaker 9: as we're coming up to your I'm like I told
Speaker 9: Freddy was Freddie Gallag, I'm like, Freddy, just heads up
Speaker 9: in case they're coming out obviously, you know what I mean,
Speaker 9: be frying out here for a fire, right, And you
Speaker 9: guys are just pulling out and I see Rob as I'm.
Speaker 1: Driving by, I look down the block and he makes
Speaker 1: eye contact with me and I could see his face.
Speaker 1: He's like, ah shit, you know what I mean, we're
Speaker 1: just like sicknings.
Speaker 9: And we get up to the block and now I
Speaker 9: could look in the mirror and I can see they
Speaker 9: turned onto the onto the onto a picking or whatever
Speaker 9: we were on.
Speaker 1: And I stayed up. Freddy. I'm like, stay, you know,
Speaker 1: stay right here. Let them in. I'm like, one twenty.
Speaker 1: You guys are first. And it was almost like he
Speaker 1: was like what yeah, yeah, he was in shock.
Speaker 9: And then he went in and then I we we
Speaker 9: we came in second, dude, and uh. I remember going
Speaker 9: up to him and he was like, it turned out
Speaker 9: to be like a little bullshit job anyways, but thank god.
Speaker 8: But because you know what you could have done with
Speaker 8: that plot didn't do that.
Speaker 1: He said to me. He said something to me, He's like, Louis,
Speaker 1: thanks a lot, man, I appreciate it. You know, we'll
Speaker 1: forget it. I'm like, don't fucking forget their ship. I'll
Speaker 1: tell you right now.
Speaker 6: The guys the backstep say to.
Speaker 9: You, bro, nah, they were cool, man. They did yeah,
Speaker 9: they were right there, they were pulling out, they were
Speaker 9: right there.
Speaker 8: But maybe I love that time. I love that part
Speaker 8: of Brooklyn. I love I love the competition. I loved
Speaker 8: I loved all that ship.
Speaker 1: The competition is good. It makes everybody better.
Speaker 6: Yeah, bros, what happened when the spots came right? We
Speaker 6: made everybody better around us?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 6: What did?
Speaker 8: What did?
Speaker 1: Happy used to say? It's called aggressiveness. Get used to it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, to us, it's called aggressiveness. Get used to it.
Speaker 8: I will, I won't. I won't go into Uh. I
Speaker 8: broke my arm. We had a little accident, and I
Speaker 8: won't go into that too much. But I broke my
Speaker 8: arm and and my plan was just to stay in
Speaker 8: one twenty the rest of my career. But because I
Speaker 8: broke my arm and I got in a little trouble again.
Speaker 6: But you and louis what you guys are actually parallel.
Speaker 8: I was mentioned and yeah, one other five before that,
Speaker 8: I got in trouble. Uh well on hins Hillsdale and
Speaker 8: you guys Hinsdale, you guys weren't there, I think, uh Hensdale.
Speaker 8: It was shortly after Richie Scoffani, like a couple of
Speaker 8: months after that. Richie Scoffani passed Black Sunday there and uh,
Speaker 8: it was a free standing frame and Calamari was working
Speaker 8: in uh either three point thirty two one seventy five
Speaker 8: that day on overtime, and uh, and I'm working, I'm
Speaker 8: working in the truck and he he called me on
Speaker 8: the radio coming in and said, Larry set up the
Speaker 8: towel ladder because it was the top two stories of
Speaker 8: the frame going. We thought it was front rhea and
Speaker 8: it was a free standing frame. So he said, you're
Speaker 8: gonna We're gonna use the towel ladder, and uh. The
Speaker 8: dispatcher sent one to seventy six as an extra truck
Speaker 8: on calls. So now we get there and then we
Speaker 8: figured they just as we pull up, they figure out, oh,
Speaker 8: the whole top to the back of the building isn't going,
Speaker 8: so we're going to make a push. But it was
Speaker 8: a Klia's mansion. It was a crazy building. But now
Speaker 8: everybody's there at once, squad rescue, three trucks and a
Speaker 8: fast truck and all these and it's a Kalia's mansion.
Speaker 8: So now everybody goes in the building at once, which
Speaker 8: shows you, you know that the coming in at different
Speaker 8: you know.
Speaker 1: Uh times, Yeah, yeah, right, hymes better, it's much better.
Speaker 8: It paces out better, but so it was crazy. And
Speaker 8: then so we go to we got to go to
Speaker 8: the top floor with second duwe truck and it's crawling
Speaker 8: over bags and and uh, we get up to the
Speaker 8: top floor and one seventy six who didn't have a.
Speaker 11: Assignment that's time that they just followed us in and
Speaker 11: they oh yeah, And it's the only room that's not
Speaker 11: on fire on the top floor is is kitchen in
Speaker 11: the back, and and we don't have a line though.
Speaker 8: They can't even get a line. It's so crazy. They
Speaker 8: can't get a second line past the first line. It's
Speaker 8: just craziness. So we're up there and we're bumping into
Speaker 8: each other in that kitchen. It's ridiculous. Two inside teams.
Speaker 8: And then they start calling for everybody out of the building,
Speaker 8: and uh, there was a little bit and somebody from
Speaker 8: some company somewhere made a comment over the radio about
Speaker 8: fighting fires from the inside and Brooklyn or something like that,
Speaker 8: and uh and which was not good and the chief,
Speaker 8: so the chief got pissed. But then we were delayed.
Speaker 8: It was my spot, so I was all delayed and
Speaker 8: and uh I waited for everybody and you couldn't get
Speaker 8: out quick because it was Kylie's it's bags of clothes
Speaker 8: on the stairs and shit. So it was a long
Speaker 8: delay getting out. So I got in trouble for that one.
Speaker 8: I got a month essay. All the truck officers got
Speaker 8: in trouble one seventy six, one seventy five because we
Speaker 8: did none of it. We didn't come out of the
Speaker 8: building quick enough.
Speaker 1: I didn't poke nobody. Believe that coup.
Speaker 6: Oh you didn't poke nobody.
Speaker 8: But but then I got in trouble one more time there.
Speaker 6: But the the uh wow, trouble follows shit.
Speaker 1: But because and I had two or.
Speaker 8: Three months essay after I broke my arm, I had
Speaker 8: a couple of months essay. So I studied because I
Speaker 8: was essay and they would give me a lot of overtime.
Speaker 8: There was a lot of overtime at the time, so
Speaker 8: I was able to study. That's the only reason I
Speaker 8: became a captain is because of that, because I wouldn't to.
Speaker 6: I didn't ruined it. So you get your study and
Speaker 6: you get promoted captain.
Speaker 8: In seven o seven.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and you aside to the first division. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 6: And uh, did you work in the first division?
Speaker 8: I did. I worked. I worked in the first division
Speaker 8: and I was at the Starrets. I worked in three
Speaker 8: truck to day of the Starret City fire. But uh,
Speaker 8: we we got down were they sent us like on
Speaker 8: the third alarm which was delayed delayed arm, and we
Speaker 8: didn't the guys actually do it was right around change
Speaker 8: it to was. I was listening to the initial calls
Speaker 8: that sounded bad. Then there was nothing on the radio
Speaker 8: for about twenty minutes, and then all of a sudden
Speaker 8: the third alarm. The guys thought it was like for relief,
Speaker 8: and then we stole we go down. We're going down
Speaker 8: Broadway and you started to hear you started, I could
Speaker 8: hear over the radio. You know something's going on. Good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's not good.
Speaker 8: So when we got it was crazy too. The trade
Speaker 8: center site was all construction site still and you had
Speaker 8: to break through these walls even to get close to
Speaker 8: the building. And uh we got in and actually chief
Speaker 8: who's now a staff chief, ol hey, uh Pitt got
Speaker 8: three truck and we went up the staff like it
Speaker 8: was weird all the stairs because I think it was
Speaker 8: the first building they ever did a demolition and a uh,
Speaker 8: you're talking about Deutsch the Deutsche Bank building.
Speaker 1: Oh, I didn't know you were talking about the Deutsche Bank.
Speaker 1: I took something else.
Speaker 8: But it was the worst of it. The worst of
Speaker 8: it was all but when we got there, I mean
Speaker 8: it was still going on, but the worst of it.
Speaker 8: I think they'd gotten the guys onto the elevator but
Speaker 8: uh yeah, And the stairways were sealed at each floor. Yep.
Speaker 8: It was a really strange thing.
Speaker 6: That was a mess. Man, that was a mess waiting
Speaker 6: to happen. And the sprinklers won't I mean, the staf
Speaker 6: piso were working.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was great.
Speaker 8: It was That was a real mess. But I don't
Speaker 8: think they'd ever done a demolition and a it's best
Speaker 8: this removal at the same time like that. It was
Speaker 8: crazy what they were doing. And they had they had
Speaker 8: fans in there that were like that were still working.
Speaker 8: They were like a vacuum. They almost looked like they
Speaker 8: were like ten or fifteen like well, it looked like
Speaker 8: washing machine sized fans that were like pressurizing the area.
Speaker 8: And I think that's what's made everything screwed up, you know.
Speaker 8: I mean they were just like plastic sheeting and and
Speaker 8: it just screwed everything up.
Speaker 9: But I can't imagine we had a few people on
Speaker 9: that talked about it, but I can't imagine, Like you
Speaker 9: get out into the hallway finally, right, you think you're
Speaker 9: you're free.
Speaker 1: And then you go down and then there's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it just like a sheet apply with across.
Speaker 9: You can't even force your way out of the thing,
Speaker 9: and you're only have a certain amount of air and
Speaker 9: nothing is where it's supposed to be or or I
Speaker 9: mean that's gotta be. Yeah, it is a nightmare. You
Speaker 9: can't even get out out to the scaffold. Some of
Speaker 9: the guys did get out on the scaffold. I remember
Speaker 9: the conversations.
Speaker 8: But yeah, there's one guy, I forget his name. He's
Speaker 8: one of the most senior guys on the job. He
Speaker 8: was in I think sixteen truck.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 8: He saved a bunch of guys, got him out into
Speaker 8: this Kenny Rwayne, Kenny Ruwayne.
Speaker 1: Yes, I've been trying to get him on the show.
Speaker 8: Yeah, he wasn't give me his double.
Speaker 1: I worked with him.
Speaker 6: He's a great guy.
Speaker 8: Yeah, Byzeldo was that guy. Do you know Kenny fail
Speaker 8: into in your neighborhood? Oh yeah, yeah, did name the
Speaker 8: street aft him that?
Speaker 9: Yeah?
Speaker 8: He died in the trades and he was a seven
Speaker 8: truck guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was in two That's how I know that name.
Speaker 8: Yeah, he retired, he I mean, he passed away. He
Speaker 8: was in two seventeen, but he was working. He was
Speaker 8: paying back a tour and uh downtown Brooklyn. Yeah, but uh, anyway,
Speaker 8: that that was and then I just that year I
Speaker 8: did Ah, I was going I thought I needed college credit,
Speaker 8: so I was going to school. Uh and I uh
Speaker 8: and I wound up working at headquarters under Chief Hey
Speaker 8: there in safety command. But that was interesting because I
Speaker 8: got involved. I was editing just like the uh you know,
Speaker 8: doing the grammar ship for the couple of fatal fire reports.
Speaker 8: So I got interested in that stuff and looking at
Speaker 8: all the fatal fire reports over over the years and
Speaker 8: ship and it was interesting just to see, you know,
Speaker 8: like they were like patterns about how shit gets sucked up.
Speaker 8: And then uh, and then the shock thing came along.
Speaker 8: So but then I had to do a year at
Speaker 8: the rest of you school just as you yeah, just
Speaker 8: the ring did a tag.
Speaker 1: I was getting out.
Speaker 6: He was there at the same time for a month.
Speaker 9: We were at first. Yeah, we were there for a
Speaker 9: short time. I think I was leaving and he was
Speaker 9: coming in. He was you were leaving Rex, right?
Speaker 8: Yes, yeah, I.
Speaker 9: Worked with Rex and Keysling, I think for sure, you know,
Speaker 9: however it worked out on their times, I think.
Speaker 8: Yeah. So I had Rocky and that's how I wound
Speaker 8: up like meeting Rocky.
Speaker 5: You got a picture of Rocky day guns, Yes we do,
Speaker 5: Sorry about that.
Speaker 8: And I said, I said, right, if I ever get
Speaker 8: a spot, you know, I'd go for Rocky. Right, because
Speaker 8: Rocky kind of like flew in underneath a lot of
Speaker 8: these guys didn't know who he was. He had a
Speaker 8: ton of experience.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, does he have experience? This guy. You
Speaker 1: would never even believe it. Like I used to say
Speaker 1: all the time, cous.
Speaker 8: Cous, and he remembers and he remembers fires like he
Speaker 8: remembers details. He's got a good memory.
Speaker 6: Yeah that's crazy.
Speaker 8: But uh so, Yeah, the rest of the school was
Speaker 8: good for me too, though, because I didn't I didn't
Speaker 8: you know, I've been out of sock all those years,
Speaker 8: and uh, I didn't remember the the special operations stuff
Speaker 8: so much, did you.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 9: I was just saying with you, like, you know, doing
Speaker 9: the trench stuff and you know all the other ship
Speaker 9: you know, even the ropes, like doing all that stuff.
Speaker 9: When I came back, we did the uh Firefighter removal class. Right,
Speaker 9: you did all those the new classes that they had
Speaker 9: that they came out with.
Speaker 1: You know, that was brutal and that was and it was.
Speaker 8: A lot more advanced than than when we first did
Speaker 8: that stuff.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the collapse stuff was all different.
Speaker 6: Right, I want you to go back to soccer.
Speaker 1: What's that? Because I moved upstate?
Speaker 8: Oh? Is that what it is?
Speaker 1: He kept calling me. He's like, dude, you got to
Speaker 1: get out of you got to get out of it.
Speaker 1: You got to come back to SoC you got to
Speaker 1: come back to SoC.
Speaker 6: So he would he would tell me too, it's like
Speaker 6: a kindergarten class.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I got a fucking constantly guys fucking coming in the office.
Speaker 9: And it was three hours, like three hours to get home.
Speaker 9: Like you said, the work even started to slow down
Speaker 9: a little bit. It wasn't as you know, after Richie
Speaker 9: passed away, it was a little different, you know, like
Speaker 9: had changed a little bit. And uh I said, you
Speaker 9: know what, maybe I need to I need a change
Speaker 9: or something, you know, and uh I called chief off
Speaker 9: of me, you know, similar to probably what you did,
Speaker 9: and Uh, and that's how it worked out.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it was good for me. It was good for me.
Speaker 8: And I was impressed too by it, Like these guys
Speaker 8: that the extent that these guys, uh you know, the
Speaker 8: guys that teach the classes and ship that how much
Speaker 8: they knew and the and the effort the guys put
Speaker 8: into the collapse simulated.
Speaker 1: It is crazy.
Speaker 8: That is true. That's unbelievable. I mean, I'm not. I don't.
Speaker 8: I wouldn't even compare myself on any level to those
Speaker 8: guys that.
Speaker 6: I mean, have you been down there lately at all
Speaker 6: to see what's going on down there?
Speaker 7: Now?
Speaker 8: The last time I was there, I think there was
Speaker 8: something the plane for.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's amazing.
Speaker 8: But uh, yeah, no, I'm very impressed with the level
Speaker 8: of all that ship with those guys. But uh, and
Speaker 8: then then I was out there bouncing around, which I loved.
Speaker 8: I loved bouncing around soccer.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 8: You go, you know, you meet everybody, everybody treats you well,
Speaker 8: and you go into good companies, got a shot at
Speaker 8: you know. When I was bouncing around, I worked everywhere,
Speaker 8: and then I caught the most fires in rescue five
Speaker 8: bouncing around. Really yeah, I had a really good string
Speaker 8: over there. I had crazy ship and I also had
Speaker 8: you know what they get over there, the using the
Speaker 8: Hirst tool jobs over there, they get a ton of
Speaker 8: that riving with their arms out there.
Speaker 7: Up doing the lean.
Speaker 8: I was saying that a roll call with one of
Speaker 8: the guys. I was saying, I can't believe how many
Speaker 8: you know hers two jobs I'm going to here. It's
Speaker 8: like every tour, I'm going to two jobs and we're working,
Speaker 8: we're doing something, and as I'm talking to the guys
Speaker 8: in front of the firehouse, you hear a car flip.
Speaker 8: Here we go. But had good why there. I was
Speaker 8: there for a couple months, but and then you know,
Speaker 8: Rescue one was opening at the same time, and as
Speaker 8: forty one, and Captain Murphy was really unfortunately he got
Speaker 8: ill and he was he had to retire us. But
Speaker 8: he was really the person that was going to get
Speaker 8: forty one, but so he had to retire, and then
Speaker 8: all these guys were going for that big shiny Rescue
Speaker 8: one spot, and forty one was a better fit for me. Anyway,
Speaker 8: I'm not as much the emergency guy, like I just admitted,
Speaker 8: I'm not. That's not my I prefer the fires regular
Speaker 8: fire house stuff, and and forty one was open. It
Speaker 8: was like a clear path a lot of fund. I
Speaker 8: loved that place years ago when we were in the squads.
Speaker 8: I'd done details there and I always loved it. It's
Speaker 8: like a regular fire house in there, you know what
Speaker 8: I mean.
Speaker 1: I mean that place is that area is a shithole.
Speaker 9: I mean it's like not it just around that is incredible,
Speaker 9: Like it's incredible, Like what's going on around there, And.
Speaker 6: The fact that they shoot over the bridge to Manhattan
Speaker 6: too is like, oh, no, brain bro.
Speaker 8: And and you know what's good there? You know what's
Speaker 8: good there, which I didn't do a lot of ever before.
Speaker 8: It was good because totally new borrow for me. And
Speaker 8: it's a different world up there. You had to get
Speaker 8: used to it. But uh, but the the age types,
Speaker 8: there's always a lot of places for the squads to go.
Speaker 8: There's always places for companies to go there because there's
Speaker 8: so much you know, routinely, you know, you get a second, third, fourth,
Speaker 8: to fourth fire and h type. The top floor is
Speaker 8: heavily exposed and nobody's assigned there, I mean not the
Speaker 8: second dude trucks going the floor above. And so there
Speaker 8: was always places to go. So that that was and
Speaker 8: the house, the guys were great, a phenomenal fire.
Speaker 1: House, are you lieutenants there?
Speaker 8: Oh? I had well originally Mickey, Sean Genoviez and Timmy Grant,
Speaker 8: which were they were all great. And then rock when
Speaker 8: Timmy left shortly after he got promoted, Rocky came in
Speaker 8: to me. That's like it's like the New York Mickey, Yeah,
Speaker 8: there he is. Mickey was what what you know? I
Speaker 8: learned a lot just watching the way he operates. And
Speaker 8: then I got Then he went to rescue three, so
Speaker 8: I got to go to fires with him. But uh,
Speaker 8: just so squared away and and uh, you know.
Speaker 9: He is pretty I mean he's one of the top
Speaker 9: uh fineman on the job, always has been. And on
Speaker 9: top of that, he's he's such a great instructor. Like
Speaker 9: I remember, like like you said, like sitting in on
Speaker 9: stuff that he was teaching at. You know, he was
Speaker 9: always out there teaching doing stuff.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 1: He enjoys that and he did a great job with that.
Speaker 8: He retire, he's oh he's still working. He's like sixty three.
Speaker 8: And he got in good shape again, he got in
Speaker 8: good shape. But he he was just always squared away,
Speaker 8: like you looked at his gear was always set up
Speaker 8: exactly right. I mean he was and just he was
Speaker 8: always in the right place. And he didn't have a
Speaker 8: big ego. I mean he always wanted to be in
Speaker 8: the action, there's no doubt. But he you know, I
Speaker 8: saw he gave up grabs to the first two companies
Speaker 8: and stuff I seen him do. But uh, just a
Speaker 8: great guy. Sean Jenneviet's the same thing. Man.
Speaker 1: Great he was there forever Sean right, Yeah.
Speaker 8: He was there as a fireman and then uh, then
Speaker 8: he went to sixty one when the initial squads, and
Speaker 8: then he came back over after nine to eleven and
Speaker 8: he was there a long time, great great fireman. And
Speaker 8: then Rocky too. Rocky fit right in.
Speaker 1: So and it took me.
Speaker 8: I'd say, it's a different rank, you know. I mean
Speaker 8: at fires it's the same when your captain as a lieutenant,
Speaker 8: it's the same deal at a fire. But in the
Speaker 8: firehouse it took me. You know, I had to get
Speaker 8: used to the rank. And I think that's what's you know,
Speaker 8: I had to retire early for medical stuff, but I
Speaker 8: I felt like I was just kind of getting used
Speaker 8: to that rank. Because when you're bouncing around, it doesn't
Speaker 8: mean anything because you know, a captain, you just found
Speaker 8: your groove. Yeah, so, but which it's which? Each rank
Speaker 8: was like that for me. But I love, I was
Speaker 8: very everywhere I went. I was. I just had like
Speaker 8: a blessed career. I got lucky to get places. I
Speaker 8: got lucky the people I worked with, such quality people.
Speaker 8: And and really, I mean I didn't You could talk
Speaker 8: about this stuff forever. But the guys, the stuff in
Speaker 8: the firehouse, just the way guys. You know, I was
Speaker 8: a bit of a knucklehead when I was young, and
Speaker 8: just watching the way guys do the right thing in
Speaker 8: the firehouse. How they take care of families, how they
Speaker 8: you know, they take care of people. Stuff in the neighborhood.
Speaker 8: Forty one always did that with the local church there,
Speaker 8: and uh, guys like Tommy Covecis in in two point
Speaker 8: fifty two. They would he set it up with the
Speaker 8: local church. They get the poorest family in the neighborhood
Speaker 8: and you know, we give them a Christmas. We get
Speaker 8: the priest to tell us who the poorest family was
Speaker 8: around there. We'd give him a Christmas, you know, bring
Speaker 8: a tree and gifts all that kind of shit. And
Speaker 8: Don Glennon, who's from one twenty years ago. They they
Speaker 8: they'd got like a baby Jane Doe that nobody you know,
Speaker 8: at a fire that nobody ever claimed whatever, and they
Speaker 8: Walking Street did a big funeral for just ship like that,
Speaker 8: and Captain Higgins, these guys just with such quality people,
Speaker 8: and uh, you know, I mean to be a part,
Speaker 8: to be able to be a part of that in
Speaker 8: your life, even though it's over now, it's hard, I agree.
Speaker 9: I learned so much from guys doing the right thing,
Speaker 9: like in every in every facet of everything, you know
Speaker 9: what I mean, no matter what it was, and everybody
Speaker 9: was accountable, right, you know what I mean? Like it
Speaker 9: initially it forces you to do it, and then after
Speaker 9: that you just do it, like you don't even think
Speaker 9: about showing up the stuff, and you know, doing the
Speaker 9: right thing, like you said, you know, sure.
Speaker 6: What do you think you caught the most fire duty
Speaker 6: cap you know?
Speaker 8: I don't, I don't, I don't know, because it's it's all.
Speaker 8: I caught good fires everywhere I was. I'll just talk
Speaker 8: about a couple of fires at forty one that were interesting.
Speaker 8: One of the last fires I was at was row
Speaker 8: frames in the bronze help but the upper level of
Speaker 8: where we would forty one response area. And I thought
Speaker 8: we saw Brooklyn were very good with frames because they
Speaker 8: had so many of them. But up there it was
Speaker 8: it was on a hill, which they didn't have. They
Speaker 8: don't have no hills in Brooklyn now. And the fires
Speaker 8: the first frame on the corner and went up, you know,
Speaker 8: a steep hill. So it moved so fast, you know,
Speaker 8: up to the frame. It went through fourth frames and
Speaker 8: into two private dwellings.
Speaker 7: Wow.
Speaker 8: And that was that was some fire. And then uh,
Speaker 8: then I had and we got in quick on that
Speaker 8: and and like within you know, so quickly it was
Speaker 8: in the fourth frame already and moving so quick there
Speaker 8: weren't enough lines to go anywhere, but uh.
Speaker 1: We didn't there.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it was a tough one the hill. But then
Speaker 8: then I had a one in Harlem that was a
Speaker 8: weird one too. It was a fire on the first floor,
Speaker 8: like underneath the stairwell in a tenement in the back
Speaker 8: apartment on the first floor. As soon as you walked
Speaker 8: in and we came and thinks, oh, it's like nothing.
Speaker 8: It seems to be like knocked down. And then the
Speaker 8: chief says, you want to check the upper floors. And
Speaker 8: we go upstairs and the stairwell is like burnt. It's
Speaker 8: like there's little flames like it had lit up. There's
Speaker 8: little flames around the window frames and door frames and
Speaker 8: but it was not it wasn't on fire still. But
Speaker 8: we get up to the fourth foe and there's a
Speaker 8: door open and the whole the whole apartment.
Speaker 6: Was yeha, remind me the live chief, I don't know, that's.
Speaker 8: What I said. The chief did like almost didn't believe me,
Speaker 8: and I said, yeah, we got an apartment going on
Speaker 8: the fourth bloys at the fourth floor and uh and
Speaker 8: then unfortunately, uh, Danny Pritzker found on the fifth floor,
Speaker 8: he found a girl had stepped out and throw. What
Speaker 8: had happened is the hallway lit up. Uh fro came
Speaker 8: out and lit I'm not sure what caused it to
Speaker 8: do that, and uh, it lit up. And then it
Speaker 8: just was like craziness because there was trouble getting lines
Speaker 8: or whatever. It was like six o'clock on a Friday night.
Speaker 8: It was insane companies coming in and the auto exposed
Speaker 8: to the fifth floor. Then the sixth floor became one
Speaker 8: of those crazy ones. But but uh, the guys always
Speaker 8: did forty one. The guys always did a great job
Speaker 8: there and always would like non stop, you know, do
Speaker 8: whatever it was until you until you had to leave.
Speaker 8: I mean the non stock great, great guys and a
Speaker 8: lot of fun in the firehouse.
Speaker 6: Does Rescue three go across to HALLM.
Speaker 8: Too, Yeah, they do, but we what we would. But
Speaker 8: what was good is we were a lot low. We
Speaker 8: beat them into you go right over that bridge day
Speaker 8: right ato halem right, yeah, And so we we could
Speaker 8: beat them and we get in pretty quick. And the
Speaker 8: same thing for like lower HALLM. Like for Rescue one,
Speaker 8: had a long way to come up, so we we
Speaker 8: get in there quick. I mean it was a great
Speaker 8: great How far.
Speaker 6: Did you go down?
Speaker 8: Like what street was like like approximately eightieth on the
Speaker 8: east side and ninetieth on Wow.
Speaker 1: That's pretty far down.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I know.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that either.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it was good. If you look at Squad eighteen
Speaker 8: for them to get you know what traffic's like in
Speaker 8: Manhattan for.
Speaker 6: Them to get all the way from downtown up to HALLM.
Speaker 8: Yeah. No, it's in the middle of the day and night.
Speaker 8: It's one thing, but in the middle of the day it's.
Speaker 6: Wow, that's a huge area.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 8: You guys said, no, it was, it was. I just
Speaker 8: want to take a look to see if I'm forgetting.
Speaker 8: I'm sure I forgot multiple things. I mean, the guys
Speaker 8: in forty one, uh, Brad, Brad Daily, John Barret, Jimmy Deschuelo,
Speaker 8: Jerry Connelly, Jimmy Smith, Smitty Chris Brown, Steve Poris, Danny Pritzker,
Speaker 8: Scott Hickey, Mike Lindy, who went to three Timmy, Timmy
Speaker 8: o'tours my chauffeur.
Speaker 6: Is he still on the job, Timmy?
Speaker 8: Yeah, he's on it. He's getting close to getting out.
Speaker 8: He's got about thirty five years.
Speaker 7: He was.
Speaker 8: He was great. He would he was my chauffer most
Speaker 8: of the time. He'd start telling me a story writer.
Speaker 8: As we're back in the rig into the quarters, he'd
Speaker 8: start a long story, Jess. As we're back into twice,
Speaker 8: why do you tell me? Like we just drove five Yeah,
Speaker 8: I'm a really good guy on man. Great. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 8: very talented guys that very u I had. I had
Speaker 8: a lot of fun there. The first one of the
Speaker 8: first nights I get there, We're coming back from something
Speaker 8: three o'clock in the morning, we pull in front of quarters,
Speaker 8: there's like ten women out in the street, a pregnant woman,
Speaker 8: a midget and these other women and they're having a
Speaker 8: rumble in the street, and I mean like a real
Speaker 8: rumble in the street. So we get out and it
Speaker 8: was like playing and for some reason, I the midget,
Speaker 8: I had to block the music from going. So it
Speaker 8: was a lot of fun there.
Speaker 6: I've got the Midget.
Speaker 7: Place.
Speaker 1: That place is crazy around that place, Yeah, freaking crazy there.
Speaker 9: I talked to Mike and he tells me all the time,
Speaker 9: what's going on ore, it's Mayhem over there.
Speaker 8: Oh it's crazy. They got the there are I supposedly
Speaker 8: they said that K two was coming back, you know that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, nice, Yeah, that's good.
Speaker 8: That makes people. Zombies are for me and you good good,
Speaker 8: good find. But the guys are a lot of fun too.
Speaker 8: There's a lot of joking around, Like Scotty Altman, I
Speaker 8: remember we had on one four ninth Street. You had
Speaker 8: a like some e MS run and uh, the the guys.
Speaker 8: The guys are working on the guy in the street
Speaker 8: and I'm trying to write the paperwork and this guy
Speaker 8: keeps on tapping me on the shoulder behind me and
Speaker 8: he's got like a he's trying to sell cell phones
Speaker 8: or something. I'm like, you know, like all right, I
Speaker 8: leave me alone. I'm doing something and he keeps tapping me.
Speaker 8: And it turns out Scotty Altmans tell him. Tell the
Speaker 8: Captain wants to buy a phone. Get him.
Speaker 5: So if you go back to any point in your career,
Speaker 5: where would you go, what time would you go?
Speaker 7: Let me see?
Speaker 8: It's stuff to say. I mean nine to eleven screwed
Speaker 8: everything up right? Yeah, I hate to say, but you
Speaker 8: know what, like I said, like after nine eleven, then
Speaker 8: the best medicine for me was getting a spot in
Speaker 8: a firehouse like blocking street, because I thought, I didn't,
Speaker 8: you know, to my two companies I've been in lost
Speaker 8: everybody and you guys know you you lose all that,
Speaker 8: and I was just like I wanted to know all
Speaker 8: these people again and uh being a company like that again.
Speaker 8: And the best medicine was doing it and uh and
Speaker 8: getting back in the game and going to fires and
Speaker 8: hanging with the guys I love. I truly loved everywhere
Speaker 8: I went, and it was for each place was right
Speaker 8: for its time, and like I said, all these you
Speaker 8: know to be around I didn't mention half the names,
Speaker 8: but like legendary Fireman, and I always thought that when
Speaker 8: I first came to Brooklyn, like that when I'd see
Speaker 8: some guys uh and and know that, you know, see
Speaker 8: what they doing at fires and I'm like, how does
Speaker 8: like the this is before Fireman got all this attention.
Speaker 8: I'm like, these guys are freaking unbelievable, Like how does
Speaker 8: nobody know about this? Shit's going on in the world,
Speaker 8: you know, like what the But then I think afterwards,
Speaker 8: maybe not getting all that attention is a good thing,
Speaker 8: because sometimes the attention is that yeah, I agree with
Speaker 8: that too, but but yeah, I'm just impressed, like, well,
Speaker 8: how lucky I am to have had that, even though
Speaker 8: it's all it's hard to accept that. But I couldn't
Speaker 8: do it.
Speaker 6: Oh you got that in seventeen Yeah.
Speaker 8: While seven years so we did.
Speaker 9: We did the same amount, he is too, twenty seven
Speaker 9: years Yeah right, you did twenty seven.
Speaker 6: I did, like this, you guys man.
Speaker 8: But but it's one of those things you think, I think,
Speaker 8: you know, unless I did everything to the Rocky rode
Speaker 8: it out to the last minute, I always feel like
Speaker 8: I should have done but it could you know, it
Speaker 8: is what it is.
Speaker 6: You have to you know, sometimes you gotta go when
Speaker 6: it's not Yeah, you.
Speaker 8: Know, happens the way it's supposed to happen. And lucky,
Speaker 8: you know, we're lucky. We get to spend time with
Speaker 8: our families. A lot of guys, a lot of guys
Speaker 8: are gone that you know, we all knew.
Speaker 1: And it's but uh, I tell my wife that all
Speaker 1: the time.
Speaker 9: This is all all these twenty years, these twenty three
Speaker 9: years or whatever the heck it is twenty four years now,
Speaker 9: it's all gravy. Yeah, right, if you think about that that, like,
Speaker 9: how how easy it it could have been?
Speaker 1: Just luck of the draw. Right, it's all gravy, man,
Speaker 1: Everything we're doing is all gravy.
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, I think you were talking about black Boy.
Speaker 8: I think that he used to have that thing on
Speaker 8: the T shirt. Don't sweat the small stuff, and remember
Speaker 8: it's all small stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, no doubt it could be worse.
Speaker 6: So tell us about your family liaison.
Speaker 1: It could have been my liaison, that could have been
Speaker 1: my wife.
Speaker 6: I mean, I'm not saying that, but ageah, what are
Speaker 6: you gonna say?
Speaker 1: Hey, Larry?
Speaker 9: What tell us what we were talking in the pre show.
Speaker 9: You were saying, even going over to uh to France.
Speaker 9: Now you got some stuff going on over there. Tell
Speaker 9: us what you don't read.
Speaker 8: Yeah, well, my my wife's she's Italian actually, but from France.
Speaker 8: We uh so, yeah, she inherited a house over there.
Speaker 8: I've been visiting over there like I used to do it,
Speaker 8: like every other year, go and visit. Then we're retired.
Speaker 8: We uh, I happened to be over there when COVID happened,
Speaker 8: so we stayed for a long time, and then uh,
Speaker 8: she inherited this house. So we fix them up the
Speaker 8: house and been spending half the year over there.
Speaker 6: That's all on the Mediterranean.
Speaker 1: How's how's your French?
Speaker 8: It's not I'm taking that's not so good. After thirty
Speaker 8: something years, it's not.
Speaker 1: But you're getting there. You can understand what's going.
Speaker 8: On generally, Yeah, I could, but I had trouble initiating
Speaker 8: conversations sometimes. But I can pretty much understand.
Speaker 6: Most understand when they say Medican.
Speaker 8: By me that they're not the like Parisians, they're.
Speaker 6: Not the study snoody French.
Speaker 8: No, it's like the Southern. It's like Southern.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 8: It's it's a different world down there. All right, but
Speaker 8: uh yeah, no good, a very good, very You know.
Speaker 8: Her town is like the a place where people her
Speaker 8: mother who died at ninety nine years old, wow, still
Speaker 8: new people that she went to kindergarten with in that town.
Speaker 8: I mean people, you know, it's that kind of place.
Speaker 1: They don't move. Yeah, they don't move.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 1: They all stay there.
Speaker 8: And good and just and from the get go like
Speaker 8: they they treated me like family over there.
Speaker 6: You spend any time at the French firehouse over there.
Speaker 8: I did. I had done some couple of things. Yeah,
Speaker 8: I went to a place up above. I think I
Speaker 8: told you. I went to like World War One battlefields
Speaker 8: up there, up in above, like the poorest part of
Speaker 8: the coal mining part of France. And they and the
Speaker 8: patron saved for firemen, and Saint Bob has the same
Speaker 8: saint for coal miners. So they had me. They have
Speaker 8: like an annual thing. And I got invited up to
Speaker 8: that and that and and the guy, uh, one of
Speaker 8: the guys, one of the firemen from up there that invited.
Speaker 8: It was a great week and everything I went by myself.
Speaker 8: And then he came to New York next year when
Speaker 8: I was in one twenty and the night he came.
Speaker 8: We caught like three jobs.
Speaker 1: So it was like, wow, no, not no, he came
Speaker 1: to he came to Oh.
Speaker 6: He came to you.
Speaker 8: Oh well, that's good for him to tell me. It's
Speaker 8: like that every night.
Speaker 6: The Roofie used to tell me one three, it's like
Speaker 6: this every night.
Speaker 1: Kid.
Speaker 8: But let me just say, I just see if there's anything.
Speaker 1: I yeah, check it out. Check do we have? Was
Speaker 1: there any other pictures that we had to go over gon?
Speaker 7: So that was it we had. Actually we have the
Speaker 7: Billy or Sully rather.
Speaker 8: Yeah, we had Bryan Sulvan, a great, great addition to
Speaker 8: the company, a great guy from the get go. He
Speaker 8: he came over from two fifty two and uh phenomenal guy.
Speaker 8: Fit in like uh fit in like the day.
Speaker 7: Nobody cares.
Speaker 1: We don't just whispering that.
Speaker 7: And then we have a little story behind this one.
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, that's the guy on the left. There is
Speaker 8: Vinnie in Siata from that was seven truck. We used
Speaker 8: to do the high rise high rise unit things that
Speaker 8: was in the books. That was never put to use eva,
Speaker 8: but it was you know, like if there's a high
Speaker 8: rise fire, they would drop the NYPD would meet us
Speaker 8: at the rock and you'd get in there with you know,
Speaker 8: certain it's in the books. I don't even know if
Speaker 8: it's still They have certain tools and they drop you
Speaker 8: off on the roof and so once a year it
Speaker 8: was a drill. They just give us a helicopter. You know,
Speaker 8: we'd do it, run through the motions and get on
Speaker 8: a helicopter and ride around. That's Frank Gribin who became
Speaker 8: Press Commissioner there with his back to us. Lieutenant Kezlowski
Speaker 8: on the right, and that's Vinnie Princiata. But I had
Speaker 8: another picture. I think I gave it to his family
Speaker 8: at the time, but that had him looking at the
Speaker 8: camera and behind him was we were like the eightieth
Speaker 8: floor of the Trade Center, flying around the Trade Center.
Speaker 1: So that's pretty wild.
Speaker 6: Yeh go, this is Kevin Brown check it in the
Speaker 6: high rise roof.
Speaker 8: Team h r RT. Yeah. I don't know even know
Speaker 8: if they still do that. They never used it. So
Speaker 8: Brad Daily, Scottie Oatman, Scooter, I'll tell you a quick
Speaker 8: Scooter story. He was always like he was like the
Speaker 8: social worker, like if somebody if we went on an
Speaker 8: EMS run, he was always like sympathetic to the people.
Speaker 8: So we go on an EMS run. There's an older woman,
Speaker 8: Hispanic woman. She doesn't speak English. She fell out of
Speaker 8: bed and she probably broke in the middle of the night.
Speaker 8: She broke a leg. And her daughter's there, who's like
Speaker 8: in her fifties or something. And and we come in
Speaker 8: and now we're waiting. Ladies, got a broken leg. She's
Speaker 8: sitting on the bed and we just got to wait
Speaker 8: for EMS and the projects. And Scotty's there and he's
Speaker 8: talking to the daughter, who's in her fifties, and he says,
Speaker 8: and we find out everything about the mother and but
Speaker 8: then he says, but how are you doing? Within two seconds,
Speaker 8: the woman there's a whole life story. She burst into tears.
Speaker 8: He's like, and it's happened that all these runs. I'm like,
Speaker 8: what's this guy doing here?
Speaker 7: Scooter all right now right, guns, Yeah, it's just fucking
Speaker 7: signus thing. But and then we get three pictures, so
Speaker 7: we have two of this particular incident training thing here.
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, that's just uh they were doing uh confined
Speaker 8: space at the top of the one of the towers
Speaker 8: on the Brooklyn Bridge, and uh they wanted us to
Speaker 8: do you know that in case they're they were doing
Speaker 8: some special because inside the towers there there's rooms, and
Speaker 8: so they sent they sent me and Liam and Timmy
Speaker 8: Grant up there. So we got to walk up the walk,
Speaker 8: up the cables and go, uh, go to the top
Speaker 8: of the bridge there me.
Speaker 6: He did that on a fifteen ice street bridge. I'm
Speaker 6: not a fan of it.
Speaker 7: You don't like heights to you, No, that's.
Speaker 6: Why you got to first, because if you sit there
Speaker 6: waiting to get it, you.
Speaker 7: Let him build up the anxiety and the last but
Speaker 7: not least.
Speaker 8: That's a recent a couple of months ago, two fifty
Speaker 8: two old man dinner at Zoom stompish nice.
Speaker 6: Did you have to stay ta ta No?
Speaker 8: I don't even know. You know, you never that's the
Speaker 8: problem with these things. You never get to really eat.
Speaker 8: Everybody's talking.
Speaker 6: And how about the labor casing or the South Broughton.
Speaker 8: I think I had the sal Brown.
Speaker 7: You just say to me, I don't like it. I'm
Speaker 7: gonna take his offensive.
Speaker 6: You said to me, you go get some hot tea something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, ship chief talk.
Speaker 8: But with Louis I had a very similar path to you, right,
Speaker 8: I mean you were in a regular company, which was great.
Speaker 8: I'm sure you loved one seventeen, right, I did, and
Speaker 8: then went to the squads and then to Brooklyn and
Speaker 8: to get then back to.
Speaker 6: Socc back to sick.
Speaker 1: We retired, uh, pretty much almost the same time. I
Speaker 1: think I got out in night. So it was just.
Speaker 8: It's good when stuff keeps me from being totally uh.
Speaker 8: You know, hearing the other guy's talk. You know a
Speaker 8: lot of the guys and hear him talk about stuff.
Speaker 8: It keeps it alive.
Speaker 6: That's why we like doing it keeps us in the game.
Speaker 1: Glad he did it.
Speaker 6: M hm, great story, great career. So you know before
Speaker 6: we let him go, wisdom.
Speaker 8: You take it away, brother, I guess for me, like
Speaker 8: going back to that first fire, I talked about where
Speaker 8: I didn't notice ship, you know, like where I let
Speaker 8: a lot of stuff like I just blew. You know,
Speaker 8: my head was on fire, My head was going going
Speaker 8: full speed and I just blew past it. A lot
Speaker 8: of stuff I should have noticed that, you know, my
Speaker 8: whole career, I always tried to slow down enough to
Speaker 8: catch stuff like that. And there was one other thing
Speaker 8: I just want to because it's similar to that I
Speaker 8: had early on in seven truck. I remember I had
Speaker 8: a covering officer from the Bronze who'd seen a ton
Speaker 8: of fire, one of those guys from the Warriors, and
Speaker 8: we had a fire in a commercial building in the
Speaker 8: utility room, and I brought in the dry cam and
Speaker 8: we go in this utility room and we knocked down
Speaker 8: the fire and there's not a ton of fire. And
Speaker 8: then with the dry cam and the smoke, you can't
Speaker 8: see what's going on. And the guy said to me
Speaker 8: the ceiling was glowing. And the guy said, Larry, why
Speaker 8: don't you just pull that? And I thought for a second, well,
Speaker 8: you know, we're in a utility room, but you know,
Speaker 8: he must know what he's talking about. So I reach
Speaker 8: up with a wooden hook, thank god, and it arcd
Speaker 8: on the on the metal part of the hook and
Speaker 8: it melted the hook like butter over the top of
Speaker 8: the Wow. I didn't feel anything. I didn't feel because
Speaker 8: it was dry. There was no water there. We used
Speaker 8: dry cam, there was no you know, there was a
Speaker 8: dry wooden hook, but the hook was in the flyhouse.
Speaker 8: After that was like there's like a piece of butter
Speaker 8: melted over the end of it. But it was that
Speaker 8: thing of basically, you know, noticing shit or speaking up.
Speaker 8: I always told guy flyingman underneath me. If there's something
Speaker 8: you see that you don't think I see, just speak
Speaker 8: up and tell me, because like because afterwards I told
Speaker 8: the guy, oh, yeah, I thought that, and he said, well,
Speaker 8: you tell me if you see if you you know,
Speaker 8: he says, I had a brain thought and you know
Speaker 8: you you think of that, tell me don't just don't
Speaker 8: just go along with it. And uh, but that thing
Speaker 8: with the fire and not noticing stuff, I think, like
Speaker 8: in a truck in particular, they used to Uh. I
Speaker 8: don't know where it came from. Uh Will I think
Speaker 8: Will Hickey told it to me. He got it from
Speaker 8: somebody else. But if you're going around to uh, if
Speaker 8: you're the room for the OV and if you know,
Speaker 8: we're always flying off the rig as fast as you
Speaker 8: can and get in there. But he said, the guy
Speaker 8: would always go to the corner of the rig and
Speaker 8: touch the same spot and look look at the building
Speaker 8: real quick, just to take in what's there, you know,
Speaker 8: really literally taking two or three seconds to just slow
Speaker 8: down enough to focus on what's going on in front
Speaker 8: of you. And then you may be less likely to
Speaker 8: miss stuff like you might because I talk to guys sometimes,
Speaker 8: you know, somebody had to get to the rear. And
Speaker 8: on one side is a driveway wide open going to
Speaker 8: the rear. As another side is a fence where they
Speaker 8: got to break a lock and they got you know,
Speaker 8: they missed the driveway and they go right for the fence.
Speaker 8: So it's that thing just to take an extra couple
Speaker 8: of seconds to size something up. And also with that,
Speaker 8: just for me, it was always I always love like
Speaker 8: looking at buildings in our district, in your district, because
Speaker 8: if you know buildings, it makes a huge difference in
Speaker 8: the way you can fight if you're being ready to
Speaker 8: fight a fire and you're comfortable to fight the fire
Speaker 8: and uh, and to know where to go and what
Speaker 8: to do and UH, I always think of and one
Speaker 8: in h one twenty one time they had a uh
Speaker 8: they were vacating a building. And we've been by like
Speaker 8: ten times to this building during the vacate And on
Speaker 8: the first floor there were vaking apartments. Above the first
Speaker 8: floor was a commercial like Delhi or something, and they
Speaker 8: had holes in the floor and everything, and and next
Speaker 8: and on the second floor and and out the window
Speaker 8: windows along the side of the building and outside the
Speaker 8: windows was the roof of a one story commercial. So
Speaker 8: sure enough that the next day I'm in Boom, we
Speaker 8: get a ripping.
Speaker 1: Job in there and that's crazy.
Speaker 8: Yeah, we go up and we know exactly that where
Speaker 8: the holes are, and we can go along the side
Speaker 8: of the building to the back. If it's bad, we
Speaker 8: can hop out this window, fall on this roof next door.
Speaker 8: Just because we looked at it, you know. And it's
Speaker 8: not like we were you know. It's just because we'd
Speaker 8: seen it that we're able to do it. But so
Speaker 8: that sting. Just know your buildings and uh and take
Speaker 8: takes take a few seconds to size something up, soil
Speaker 8: you catch it.
Speaker 6: Next great job.
Speaker 5: Before we get to the shoutouts and thank you, let's
Speaker 5: play the last two commercials.
Speaker 7: Cons really quick, yes sir, all right, here we go.
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Speaker 7: Excellent, excellent, Thank you, last not lease, Here we go.
Speaker 2: The First Responder Center for Excellence is a not for
Speaker 2: profit organization dedicated to protecting the lives and livelihoods.
Speaker 1: Of first responders.
Speaker 2: Their education and research initiatives aim to bring greater awareness
Speaker 2: and understanding the challenges to the health, safety, and well
Speaker 2: being of firefighters, EMS personnel, and other first responders too.
Speaker 2: They are an affiliate of the National Fallen Firefighter Foundation.
Speaker 5: All Right, the old school health and safety tip tonight
Speaker 5: is ready for this. Start a program, whether it's exercise.
Speaker 8: Or a diet.
Speaker 5: Don't start too harsh, don't set the goal high. Start
Speaker 5: little increments. Start with your diet. Cut one thing out
Speaker 5: of your diet. If you start exercising, train once a week,
Speaker 5: twice a week. If you set the goal too high,
Speaker 5: you're gonna make yourself miserable and you're gonna feel like
Speaker 5: you failed when you can't complete what you've set. So
Speaker 5: set it low and then always build up.
Speaker 6: There you go.
Speaker 1: I like that one, Koby, thank you.
Speaker 8: All right.
Speaker 6: We got a couple of shout outs.
Speaker 5: The first one I have is actually for Captain Graham's nephew,
Speaker 5: the little boy, Coop Cooper. Uh, he had cancer and
Speaker 5: we've got a message from Captain Graham that he is
Speaker 5: doing fine now, thank God. So all the prayers and
Speaker 5: this is a Christmas miracle because he had a very
Speaker 5: aggressive form of cancer.
Speaker 6: And like I said, to all the prayers and uh
Speaker 6: he is right now, he's doing well. And the more
Speaker 6: we see he is in remission. So thank God and
Speaker 6: good dudes, thank you, good news.
Speaker 5: It's a Christmas miracle. And unfortunately we have a line
Speaker 5: of duty death. We have standby. Uh, mister kobl Oh,
Speaker 5: that's my dad. The Chattanooga, Tennessee Fire Department was his
Speaker 5: most senior member, Captain George Early over the weekend and
Speaker 5: a line of duty death. He died of a heart
Speaker 5: attack while on shift working.
Speaker 6: Out at his station. Uh so we're gonna give the
Speaker 6: five bells to Captain Turtley. He was the most senior
Speaker 6: man in Chattanooga. Stand by.
Speaker 5: Rest in peace, brother, Captain Tompkins. Great show, I was awesome, career,
Speaker 5: great stories.
Speaker 6: Thank you for coming on. Appreciate it.
Speaker 8: Yeah, thank you, guys man. It's good to h it's
Speaker 8: good to talk about that stuff.
Speaker 6: Yeah, come on, we'll have you back on again. We'll
Speaker 6: have like a training episode.
Speaker 1: Make sure you're around in August.
Speaker 6: We have a boat around the Manhattan. We have the
Speaker 6: John J. Harvey we got out of fire boat.
Speaker 1: Awesome.
Speaker 5: Every guest from the past year is invited on. So
Speaker 5: we'll see the first or second week of August.
Speaker 1: I don't know what it is.
Speaker 5: First week in AUGUSTA, yes, anyway, you gotta shout outs rough, No,
Speaker 5: we got a.
Speaker 1: Show on Monday, correct morning, Christmas.
Speaker 5: Chief Rice, last one before Christmas, yep, seventeen truck Guy
Speaker 5: and then Coobs is off out of the country, going
Speaker 5: to Spain, Europe doing it. I'll be doing a show
Speaker 5: from Spain to film a show in the Spanish chef
Speaker 5: Fight department.
Speaker 8: I thank you, guys, was too. It's the anniversary of
Speaker 8: the Start City. Are you going to say something about that?
Speaker 8: Or yes?
Speaker 6: God that you had it right Vandalia Avenue.
Speaker 7: I have a picture of it. Yes, I figured you
Speaker 7: can just uh, excuse me. I'll share the image if
Speaker 7: you want to. Just read off the names for me.
Speaker 7: I had the other image on there, but I had
Speaker 7: to remove it. So is twenty six year aniverse was
Speaker 7: actually yesterday?
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness gracious.
Speaker 6: Yep, that's Bowhead Bob what cavaliery?
Speaker 7: Yes, yeah, I had them up earlier, but I had
Speaker 7: to chase to change the image out.
Speaker 1: All right, I can't even believe that that's long.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's crazy how fast time?
Speaker 5: That means you're old in Franto, not me, No, not you,
Speaker 5: no forever young. All right, guys, cats, stay stay tight,
Speaker 5: we'll in the in the post show. Guys, be safe.
Speaker 5: We'll see you Monday night before Christmas. Yes, we love
Speaker 5: you too, Cydy Drake and all you guys in the chat.
Speaker 5: Until then, you know what I say, stay low.
Speaker 8: And go Merry Christmas.
Speaker 1: Thanks again, Larry, Merry Christmas.
Speaker 7: To you.
Speaker 1: We'll see it, the big one. Everybody all right, guys,
Speaker 1: have a great weekend.
Speaker 7: Good Night,