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: You're listening to the Getting Salty Experience podcast.
Speaker 1: Hello in a world.
Speaker 4: We go, Welcome back to the Insalty Experience podcast. This
Speaker 4: is the only one that brings the fire house, kitchen
Speaker 4: table and everything that comes with the fire service to you.
Speaker 4: All right, we're including ems because that's an important job.
Speaker 5: Earn money, sleeping.
Speaker 1: That's the way it goes. Old school ms, old screen money,
Speaker 1: not you know, like rubber gloves. Not the rubber gloves, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, wear your mask type of ms. We're talking
Speaker 1: old school.
Speaker 4: We're talking about down and there. Maybe when they were
Speaker 4: even given mouth to mouth. I don't know what.
Speaker 6: Mouth blind fingers, sweet blind.
Speaker 1: That's old school. I think that's old school.
Speaker 4: I don't know the blood what his old lady did
Speaker 4: to him last night? Blind fingers sweep out of nowhere? Bro,
Speaker 4: what's that sweet?
Speaker 1: Was helping it?
Speaker 5: You forget?
Speaker 1: I'm not that it's not that quick. He had that
Speaker 1: written down.
Speaker 4: You know you're a paramedic. Yes, really, you can.
Speaker 7: Push hard, push fast, pressure up.
Speaker 5: Yeah right.
Speaker 4: What was that guy's name, Jim Bondello Love Dub Love Dub, Yeah, Jim.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Let's see. Somebody's lighting me up right where we got
Speaker 6: somebody's like yeah, no, no, no, okay.
Speaker 4: Well listen, I'm gonna swallow my pride now and tay.
Speaker 4: Congratulations to the Yankees, all right, making it to the
Speaker 4: World Series. Yes, yes, I want to be the bigger man,
Speaker 4: even in my mets. That is a great season make.
Speaker 4: But sorry, I just had to try to humble.
Speaker 6: He appreciate it, man, I appreciate I love you. I
Speaker 6: love you.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Let's play some commercials quick, let's play, you know, play first,
Speaker 4: Let's play our new Salty White commercial. I'm gonna beat
Speaker 4: you over the head with that.
Speaker 5: Here we go.
Speaker 4: I'm neither amuse you or.
Speaker 9: Something with clown.
Speaker 10: I'm running the fun out of.
Speaker 4: A burning building. Just your apartment is underneath.
Speaker 2: I'm in the two minute Morning ordered a couple of
Speaker 2: firemen into a flat above a fire.
Speaker 4: I smell the smoke, catchy music, Get over there. Nine
Speaker 4: to ninety five a month. W w W dot salty
Speaker 4: wire dot com. We just did a you know, we're
Speaker 4: gonna give you a little teasing next week because we're
Speaker 4: not having a show on Halloween. We're gonna play one.
Speaker 4: A hash hagg history with hashegging episodes about uh doctor
Speaker 4: Archie started in the eighteen nineties, sixty years on the
Speaker 4: FDNY six oh not sixteen six oh. You watch that
Speaker 4: on Thursday night and you tell me if it's not
Speaker 4: worth nine ninety five months because you get to the
Speaker 4: uh the the app too, You get the Firey app
Speaker 4: and you get our content for nine ninety five. You
Speaker 4: blow that way up probly in a seven to eleven. Man,
Speaker 4: get the coffee scotch. You know I don't Yeah, old fashioned, Yeah,
Speaker 4: get over there and do it. Www dot sulti wire
Speaker 4: dot com. Play the next one so we can get Frank.
Speaker 1: And here we go.
Speaker 4: Frank.
Speaker 3: The established in nineteen thirty and under the current ownership
Speaker 3: since nineteen eighty seven, the New Jersey Fire Equipment Company
Speaker 3: handles a complete line of fire department equipment and supplies.
Speaker 3: Headquartered in green Brook, the company operates full three m
Speaker 3: Scott service facilities in Ridgefield Park and Tom's staff by
Speaker 3: ten fully authorized Scott's certified technicians with a fleet of
Speaker 3: six fully equipped service fans. All New Jersey Fire technicians
Speaker 3: and sales representatives are active or retired firefighters, officers or
Speaker 3: chief officers, career and volunteer. They understand the business and.
Speaker 1: The importance of their work.
Speaker 3: New Jersey Fire has represented Scott since Earl Scott entered
Speaker 3: the SCBA business at the end of.
Speaker 1: World War II.
Speaker 3: Among other leading manufacturers represented by New Jersey Fire are
Speaker 3: Globe and Fireedex turnout gear, Mercedes Hose, task Force Tips
Speaker 3: and Akron Brass, Hygenol, fire hooks, Arcticompressors, MSA, Carn's Helmets, Kemguard,
Speaker 3: Foam Alkolite and duo safety ladders, BEA Face shield Protectors,
Speaker 3: Truckman's Choice saws, Groves, gear racks and washer driers, Supervac Fans,
Speaker 3: RPI Streamlight, and many others. A New Jersey incorporated and
Speaker 3: based company. Sales and service are limited to the state
Speaker 3: of New Jersey. Find us now at www dot nj
Speaker 3: f E dot com. That's www dot n j f
Speaker 3: E dot com.
Speaker 4: All right, so we got an old school e F
Speaker 4: S g I, Tonight bro so we're gonna talk about
Speaker 4: the merger when it happened. He worked before Birds to
Speaker 4: the Ft and y and we're gonna share.
Speaker 1: I might find the patch the current patch too.
Speaker 4: You might have something.
Speaker 6: I think I have a movie quote from him too.
Speaker 6: I think if you guys may have heard of his movie.
Speaker 8: Quote ten grand, there's a horse called Longest Day, the
Speaker 8: number two horse running.
Speaker 10: In the second race.
Speaker 3: Put the ten grand on the.
Speaker 8: Number two horse to win into second race. That actually
Speaker 8: be coo complicated you.
Speaker 1: Where is that from?
Speaker 6: You don't know that movie?
Speaker 4: What is that from?
Speaker 6: Wise guys with Danny DeVito and Frankie that whole in there?
Speaker 1: So that's all right, don't if I remember that one?
Speaker 1: Netflix it or something?
Speaker 4: All right? You bring your buddy in. This is the
Speaker 4: buddy of lose back from the old neighborhood. You know
Speaker 4: what I'm saying, By the old neighborhood green, what your
Speaker 4: grandmother's on? Withers? What was he on with us?
Speaker 1: He was just a couple of a couple of houses
Speaker 1: up on the opposite side of the street.
Speaker 4: Look at that. You had to walk a far a
Speaker 4: long way to see him, huh. I bring it, frank
Speaker 4: your fixer bro old school MS.
Speaker 1: Guy, I love it coming to the stage. You ready, Gods,
Speaker 1: I am coming to the stage. F D N y
Speaker 1: E M S. Captain Frank Domatto, whoa, it looks good.
Speaker 1: That always had the baby face man always he looks.
Speaker 4: I think he's like Benjamin Buttons. I don't know what.
Speaker 1: You got the best laugh in forever.
Speaker 4: Before we leap off, we gotta get patriotic. Yes, yes,
Speaker 4: we are that type of show.
Speaker 5: There we go.
Speaker 3: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States
Speaker 3: of America and to the Republic, for which it stands,
Speaker 3: one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.
Speaker 4: Excellent. Before we jump off, I did want to say
Speaker 4: something because we had on that Salty Wire commercial, we
Speaker 4: had Chief Vincent Dunn and he said that he's in
Speaker 4: the two minute warning right. So anyway, I booked him
Speaker 4: for another show he wants to do. He's looking forward
Speaker 4: to doing Q and A. So if you have questions
Speaker 4: for the Legend Vincent Dunn, send him over the Coops
Speaker 4: Podcast at gmail dot com. All right, thank you the fixer.
Speaker 4: Let's go back. Let's go back to the old neighborhood
Speaker 4: you know all started where you and Louis became bombas
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 8: Oh, thanks for having me, guys. It's a it's an
Speaker 8: honor to be which is so when did it all start?
Speaker 8: Wingers Burg, Brooklyn? Uh with the street Louis. Uh grandmother
Speaker 8: was across the streets from me, and uh him and
Speaker 8: his cousin Louis grew up together and uh a lot
Speaker 8: of good.
Speaker 6: Times, a lot of gob of goal over there, a
Speaker 6: lot of.
Speaker 4: Ball.
Speaker 8: Everything everything on roller skates. We played hockey, hockey, football, football,
Speaker 8: Everything was on roller skates back in the day.
Speaker 4: Not too many smiles though from the other little right.
Speaker 4: He didn't smile that often back then day smiling guy.
Speaker 1: Like if he liked he liked Frankie. He liked Frankie.
Speaker 1: He would smile with frank.
Speaker 4: We got to get him on the show and he
Speaker 4: would tells, I'm going to get a smile out of
Speaker 4: him if I got him.
Speaker 7: There was there was like there was like six of
Speaker 7: those guys. There was uh uh Missoulo. You had Svadi, Yeah, Matone.
Speaker 10: There was like Anthony Anthony Matone.
Speaker 4: I didn't know that. We went to college with him.
Speaker 1: Right rough, Yeah, we went to with Frankie too. Frankie,
Speaker 1: you went to Barok didn't you for a little bit.
Speaker 8: About three weeks?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think everybody left. It was like hilarious. Everybody.
Speaker 7: I think what's his name was the dom was the
Speaker 7: only one who finished, right, I.
Speaker 8: Think finish right Frans Easy?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yes, right, so everybody, no Irish guys, old Italian
Speaker 4: guys over there, no Irish old time.
Speaker 8: High school.
Speaker 4: He went to a knife Catholic school right LaSalle Academy.
Speaker 4: All the guys the east side.
Speaker 8: Uh yeah it was. It was a great experience old
Speaker 8: boy high school. But uh it was tough. You know,
Speaker 8: a lot of little groups from different parts of Brooklyn.
Speaker 8: But uh, it was nice. It was a good experience.
Speaker 6: How is that going to old boys school? Jones in
Speaker 6: high school? It's like I have to get something, you
Speaker 6: know what?
Speaker 4: They always had sister schools, right, Like they had a
Speaker 4: sister school that they would have dances with and ship right.
Speaker 8: I don't know, you know, we were on the lower
Speaker 8: east Side. You had what Xavier High School was another
Speaker 8: old boys school not too far on fourteenth Street or something. Yeah,
Speaker 8: we didn't we didn't do any dances or nothing like that.
Speaker 4: Because like Malloy had what like the mint marriage, so
Speaker 4: I'll say whatever it is. Yeah, they always had a
Speaker 4: sister school that they would have dances at.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 4: No, so you had dances with sisters with brothers. I'm
Speaker 4: not judging here, frank you know.
Speaker 8: You sister brothers.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So you graduated eighty six. You go from the
Speaker 4: root with us for about three weeks and then, uh,
Speaker 4: what happened? You took the test? Ye had that happen?
Speaker 8: So I came out. I wanted to do some computer
Speaker 8: sign says, go to BARUK and they're telling me I
Speaker 8: can't take any computer classes for three years. And I'm like,
Speaker 8: forget about it. I'm out of here. So I'm out
Speaker 8: of school, don't know what to do. So I get
Speaker 8: a job down at the Fulton Fish Market. That's where
Speaker 8: Frankie the Fish was born.
Speaker 4: Was born fish scaling.
Speaker 8: We were unloading trucks from ten o'clock at night to
Speaker 8: six in the morning, right and the shoulders, you know,
Speaker 8: rubber galoshes pulling. We we don't load about twenty tractor
Speaker 8: trailers a night. I didn't know so much fish existed
Speaker 8: in the world.
Speaker 1: That's I worked out there.
Speaker 8: I mean trucks of trucks of everything. It's just unbelievable,
Speaker 8: and uh, I was down there and then Juliani wound
Speaker 8: up throwing a lot of people out down there, you
Speaker 8: know what I mean. And uh so my father at
Speaker 8: the time at the time past now, but uh my
Speaker 8: father was always into the volunteer ambulance cause. And he
Speaker 8: actually started the first e m T class instruct the
Speaker 8: class in New York State and he was giving EMT
Speaker 8: courses at the time. I think it was green Point
Speaker 8: Hospital that's not around anymore, and he was like, oh,
Speaker 8: take the EMT class, take the MT class, see what happens.
Speaker 8: So I started taking an EMT class with him. And
Speaker 8: at the time EMS started a big hiring to get
Speaker 8: onto EMS. In the old days, you already had to
Speaker 8: be an EMT to apply for EMS. I was not
Speaker 8: an EMT. EMS was looking for a big hiring, so
Speaker 8: they started a cadet program. And what the cadet program was.
Speaker 8: You came in off the street. EMS taught taught you
Speaker 8: how to become an e m T. I don't know
Speaker 8: if it was like eight week or a twelve week program.
Speaker 8: So you got your e m T. Once you passed
Speaker 8: your em T, then you started the EMS academy. So
Speaker 8: it was like a little segue. And I remember my
Speaker 8: father said, oh, they're starting this now. You could be
Speaker 8: in the first class, Cadet one and it was like
Speaker 8: a three to eleven shift. I said, I don't want
Speaker 8: to go up to Queen's three to eleven. I said, oh,
Speaker 8: wait for the day shift the next one. So Cadet
Speaker 8: two started and you know, I got into the class,
Speaker 8: and you know, it was an eye opener, you know,
Speaker 8: going through the em T program. We're really good instructors.
Speaker 8: Always had good instructors up at four time and up
Speaker 8: the bayside and did the EMT session and everything worked out.
Speaker 1: And you were like eighteen when this was going on,
Speaker 1: Frank right, I mean.
Speaker 8: Eighteen just turning nineteen. Yeah, so yeah, I got it,
Speaker 8: got into a young you know, and my father was like,
Speaker 8: I try for a few years, see what happens. You know,
Speaker 8: what happens with that, right, twenty three years later, that's
Speaker 8: the story.
Speaker 1: It's funny how that happened.
Speaker 7: You get pushed into something, you know, just mention and
Speaker 7: now you know it's yeah life, you know, like right, that.
Speaker 4: Was before the merger, so they were run by what
Speaker 4: Health and Hospital, right.
Speaker 8: We were healthing Hospitals Corporation.
Speaker 4: It was it a mullet.
Speaker 7: Bounce a while while bro it definitely was eighty five.
Speaker 8: Yeah you're looking at it. Oh yeah, so yeah that's
Speaker 8: uh that's a Woodhole hospital. That's we guess enough the
Speaker 8: truck there. But uh yeah. So we graduate and we
Speaker 8: get our assignments and they tell me you go in
Speaker 8: to Cumberland Station thirty six. I was like thirty six
Speaker 8: and everybody's looking at me like I did something wrong.
Speaker 8: Thirty six Cumberland. That was like the place where like
Speaker 8: I don't know, they made it like old. All the
Speaker 8: bad guys went over there, and I was like, oh jeez,
Speaker 8: where am I going. I was all upset. I want
Speaker 8: to go there. I want to go to I wanted
Speaker 8: to go to Woodholls, right down great Avenue for me
Speaker 8: living in Williamsburg. And I tell you I got there
Speaker 8: and I fell in love with the people. You know,
Speaker 8: great partners. Uh you know, I'll just throw a few
Speaker 8: names out there, Eddie Petrie, Eddie Rissotto, Kevin Saclair and
Speaker 8: Gary Ridderlrii Roche Todd Fullman, Pete Angelo, just just people
Speaker 8: that you know, you never forget. Ivan Resto, We had
Speaker 8: a captain, Christine Calucci and o'neils Neils and I got
Speaker 8: a bus right away assigned to me thirty six either
Speaker 8: Tour two. We worked nine to five and uh, you
Speaker 8: know a normal day was, you know, we get out
Speaker 8: on the road. The first thing we would do was
Speaker 8: go to our dispatch area where we were signed. My
Speaker 8: area was down on Court Street in third Place, so
Speaker 8: we'd stopped at the seventh seven seven six precinct over there,
Speaker 8: and we'd always sign out a police portable. So we
Speaker 8: were listening to EMS radio and we're also listening to
Speaker 8: the police portable because you know, we want you know,
Speaker 8: we we we would do ten twelve jobs in an
Speaker 8: eight hour shift. I mean we were running from warning
Speaker 8: from the beginning of shift to the end of the shift.
Speaker 8: You know, we'd come out of the emergency room you
Speaker 8: have to drop them off, the patient and the dispatcher
Speaker 8: would just be holding calls and holding calls. I mean
Speaker 8: you couldn't get a break, and you know, it was
Speaker 8: just crazy stuff. And you know, nobody wanted to do
Speaker 8: the elderly, you know, difficulty breathing calls. Everybody wanted the
Speaker 8: trauma stuff right and back then there was no GPS
Speaker 8: in the ambulance. You nobody knew where you are. You know,
Speaker 8: everybody was not the honest love it, I love it,
Speaker 8: you know. So you know, you know, you get a call,
Speaker 8: you listen it to the police radio and the shooting
Speaker 8: comes over and cop shot, cop shot, you know whatever, stabbing,
Speaker 8: you know this and that, and you know you always
Speaker 8: jumped under on the radio, no matter where you were,
Speaker 8: no matter where you were, You're always no. I got
Speaker 8: a two minute BTA, too minute. Everybody had a too
Speaker 8: minute BTA.
Speaker 1: And then you know it was the same as and.
Speaker 8: The dispatcher's trying to cancel units, and you know who's
Speaker 8: keeing the radio episode he can't get through, and uh,
Speaker 8: I tell a funny story one time. I don't know
Speaker 8: where it was, what hospital was coming out of, but
Speaker 8: it came over the radio. A cop was shot on
Speaker 8: Atlantic Avenue in Buffalo. And I don't know if we
Speaker 8: had just came out of the mens shelter on uh
Speaker 8: DECALB wherever it was. Anyway, I said, oh, we got
Speaker 8: to go to an accident thirty six sided were two
Speaker 8: minutes out and they had already assigned unit and I
Speaker 8: was driving, and you know barreling down Atlantic Avenue and
Speaker 8: we pull up to the corner. Copp A shot inside
Speaker 8: the car. He went to move his gun belt and
Speaker 8: he shot himself into Like. So we pull up. An
Speaker 8: ambulance is already there. The back doors are open, the
Speaker 8: stretchers out, so it's an empty ambulance and I'm like,
Speaker 8: I said, I said I should get over to my pond.
Speaker 8: I said, you can get over there. I said, we're
Speaker 8: taking this patient. And he looks at me. How are
Speaker 8: we taking this patient? I saidn't worry about it. I
Speaker 8: got it. I pulled the ambulance up alongside the other,
Speaker 8: the other ambulance that had the open door. They had
Speaker 8: their stretcher out at the pop car ready, So I
Speaker 8: take my stretcher out. I put it in the back
Speaker 8: of their ambulance. Now they come running out with a
Speaker 8: stretcher over and the door was shut and here's my
Speaker 8: door wide open with no stretcher. And I said, come on,
Speaker 8: let's go right in, right in, right in, and we
Speaker 8: steal patients from each other. And uh, you know, cop shot,
Speaker 8: you know that was always the best because uh uh
Speaker 8: you know, we get escorts h Trauma Center. Right, So
Speaker 8: we're going from Brooklyn to UH to Bellevue, Lower Manhattan
Speaker 8: for trauma center. You know, us Brooklyn guys, we always
Speaker 8: want to get into Manhattan on the way back. We
Speaker 8: could always stop in Chinatown for Chinese food, right, that
Speaker 8: was always the big thing. But yeah, Cumberland was really really.
Speaker 4: Like, yeah, it's like stealing a nozzle, bro stealing a patient.
Speaker 7: But you think that's like that, I mean, I don't know, ems.
Speaker 7: I mean you think it's like that where guys would
Speaker 7: do that. You think guys get on the job now
Speaker 7: and they're they're kind of like like that.
Speaker 1: When you first thought, yeah, you know, I don't you know.
Speaker 8: I don't know, you know, because now with the GPS,
Speaker 8: you know, you really can't uh.
Speaker 10: You know, freelance freelance and they don't forget back.
Speaker 8: Then you know, we had one lieutenant on duty and
Speaker 8: they stood in the the ambulance station, so there was
Speaker 8: no supervisors out. When we were out on patrol. UH
Speaker 8: we had a flat tire or something, they would have
Speaker 8: to close close the station down and that and that
Speaker 8: station bulls would come out and bring you to spare
Speaker 8: tire and a jack and everything. If we had to
Speaker 8: wait for roadside to come you know, we'd be out
Speaker 8: of service all day. So you know, when the supervisor
Speaker 8: would leave the station, that's when everybody would go out
Speaker 8: of service. Essentially, I got to go back to the
Speaker 8: station when I need a long board, I got no
Speaker 8: long buds, and everybody standing at the lock station because
Speaker 8: they can't take any jobs.
Speaker 7: So that was I know that Frank when he's telling
Speaker 7: these stories like this because when I was a kid,
Speaker 7: he knows what he's already laughing. He used to bring
Speaker 7: like on Sunday, Saturday Sunday when get my cousin and
Speaker 7: I and you know, everybody was getting together. He would
Speaker 7: he had a book that you know again, now you
Speaker 7: have your phone, you could take a picture, you could
Speaker 7: do all this stuff. But Frank, you know he'd be
Speaker 7: on the trains. He'd be doing all this stuff.
Speaker 1: You had the pictures.
Speaker 7: I mean, they want to show an you that stuff tonight.
Speaker 7: But he had a picture you know, like the head
Speaker 7: going around or whatever. But that was like that was
Speaker 7: like the real Uh. But you guys would loving like
Speaker 7: guys would loving to go to that stuff, right.
Speaker 8: Well, yeah, the tromber was where it was at. You know,
Speaker 8: it was just the gunshots, you know, you go wing
Speaker 8: into projects. You know, you got you got five hundred
Speaker 8: people outside, and you know, you look at it. This guy,
Speaker 8: he's definitely deceased. But you know you can't pronounce him
Speaker 8: dead on the scene because they'll kill you. So you know,
Speaker 8: you throwing him on the stretch of throwing the back
Speaker 8: of the bus.
Speaker 6: Call those we call those show codes.
Speaker 8: Show comes right right, just what you gotta do to
Speaker 8: get out of it.
Speaker 1: Alive.
Speaker 6: Very different for you, but how it was.
Speaker 8: Right, you know. So, but yeah, it was a great
Speaker 8: bunch of great bunch of people there, and so that's
Speaker 8: where I started getting my love for radio. On a
Speaker 8: hand radio operator. K B two m x V is
Speaker 8: my call sign. Yeah, so I went to get my
Speaker 8: hand radio license because I was playing with the radios
Speaker 8: and computers. And I got my hand radio license. And
Speaker 8: you know, back then, you know, internet really wasn't wasn't
Speaker 8: a thing yet, and uh like nowadays, if you talk
Speaker 8: to somebody, you know, another state or another country, now
Speaker 8: everything's in a log book. And uh, you know, so
Speaker 8: I log that I talked to this amateur radio station,
Speaker 8: and hilllog on his end that he talked to that
Speaker 8: amateur radio station. And then we uploaded to a service
Speaker 8: and a servant matches us up and it goes, oh,
Speaker 8: that's a confirmed QSL. Well, back in the day, we
Speaker 8: had these little post calls that we would send to people.
Speaker 8: Uh you know, we would get their address. They had
Speaker 8: compact discs at the time that had you know, like
Speaker 8: it was like a big phone book. So as soon
Speaker 8: as I got my license, the first person I ever
Speaker 8: spoke to it was a hand radio operator, uh November two,
Speaker 8: Michael ex Michael Eddie Ida And to MBI, his name
Speaker 8: was Kevin Kane. And normally, when you talk to somebody
Speaker 8: you know, again you don't know them, so you give
Speaker 8: your name where you're from. And I said, oh, Frank,
Speaker 8: I'm from Brooklyn, New York. And he said, oh yeah,
Speaker 8: he goes, I worked down in Brooklyn. I'm a firefighter
Speaker 8: down there. I said, I said where we're in Brooklyn
Speaker 8: and he said a lot of one ten down on
Speaker 8: and I said wow, I said, I worked for EMS
Speaker 8: right down the block. And he was like, oh, stop
Speaker 8: by the firehouse, say hello, you know when you're when
Speaker 8: you're in the area, and uh, you know, so right
Speaker 8: away I filled down my little postcard addressed to him.
Speaker 8: I got his address and I and I sent that
Speaker 8: out to him. A week or two later, I got
Speaker 8: the postcard from him, and uh went down to the firehouse.
Speaker 8: I met him. Nice guy. Just remember him being a
Speaker 8: nice tall fella.
Speaker 1: Is that the card right there, Frank, that's.
Speaker 8: The card right there. Yeah, so that that's him. Send
Speaker 8: me the thing. And you know, we would exchange our
Speaker 8: names where we were from. We would say what radio
Speaker 8: we were using. So he had I think a YAYSU
Speaker 8: radio I think he wrote down there, and you just
Speaker 8: you know, exchange.
Speaker 1: What you say, interrupt it, say, Frank, glad to be
Speaker 1: your first, to be your first.
Speaker 8: Glad to be your first New York contact enjoying radio
Speaker 8: radio here, I have a yeah, Sue seventh seven forty seven?
Speaker 8: Uh tenor is a ten met to dipole God bless
Speaker 8: seventy three? Seventy three meets? You know, a good day
Speaker 8: Kevin Wow and crazy Man and Kevin three months died
Speaker 8: in the line of duty fire. Uh, you know, and
Speaker 8: that was probably my first time ever in the firehouse.
Speaker 8: You know, I was never a fire buff you know, uh,
Speaker 8: you know fire you know the fire guys, you know,
Speaker 8: we've seen it some jobs, but we didn't do too
Speaker 8: much mingling. You know, we worked side by side with
Speaker 8: the police. You know, they came on probably about seventy
Speaker 8: five percent of our jobs, you know, because they always
Speaker 8: had to notify the next of kin. You know, hey,
Speaker 8: you know your mother fella. They took it a Long
Speaker 8: Island College hospital. Uh, you know, so we dealt with
Speaker 8: the police a lot.
Speaker 4: And uh.
Speaker 8: After three years, like you know, older running, I was
Speaker 8: getting tired. I was getting married for the first time
Speaker 8: back then, and uh and I said, you know what,
Speaker 8: I said, I'm loving this radio, loving talking on the radio.
Speaker 8: I was a big computer buff. I said, you know,
Speaker 8: why don't I go become a dispatcher down in EMS,
Speaker 8: down a massfit. So I put it for a transfer
Speaker 8: and I got transferred to to MASBIT fifty five days,
Speaker 8: thirty fifty eighth Street. I'm sure a lot of old
Speaker 8: timers never forget that address. And that was actually EMS headquarters.
Speaker 8: So on the first floor we had the dispatch center
Speaker 8: with the nine one one call takers. We had Office
Speaker 8: of Public Information on the first floor some of the chiefs,
Speaker 8: and on the second floor was all like administration like operations,
Speaker 8: the deputy director chief like like like the chief of
Speaker 8: VMS Operations, Chief of Field Services. Well, you know, all
Speaker 8: the big wigs were up on the second floor there.
Speaker 8: And when I got to communications, everybody had a start
Speaker 8: as a call taker, take answering nine one one calls,
Speaker 8: and I hated that. I wanted to be a dispatcher
Speaker 8: so bad. So as soon as the first dispatch.
Speaker 1: Yeah two minutes out, negative remain in service.
Speaker 8: So here was the best. So now I become a dispatcher.
Speaker 8: And now I'm dispatching Brooklyn North. So Brooklyn North covers
Speaker 8: green Point Williamsburg back down downtown Brooklyn. So I grew
Speaker 8: up in the K seven. I worked the K six.
Speaker 8: I worked the K five, so I knew it at
Speaker 8: the back of my hand. So when I asked the unit,
Speaker 8: you know, what's your location? You know they give me
Speaker 8: a location, I would know that YT before they would
Speaker 8: say it, or I know if they were bullshitting me,
Speaker 8: you know what their ETA was because I knew it
Speaker 8: like the back of my hand. And I had a partner, well,
Speaker 8: I had two good partners. One was Al Garris, we
Speaker 8: called the jelly Roll funny funny guy, and then we
Speaker 8: had Acidic Drew Moisture Schwartz with a thick accent. But
Speaker 8: he was such a good dispatcher. He just knew the
Speaker 8: area so well and had a love hate relationship with him.
Speaker 8: But again, just just somebody that stuck in my mind,
Speaker 8: you know, all these years. So I was doing dispatching
Speaker 8: for a little while, and then the position opened up
Speaker 8: on the Chief of Communityation's staff and I applied for
Speaker 8: that and I got taken in because I was pretty.
Speaker 1: Good with the computers. How much time do you have now, Frank,
Speaker 1: this is only about.
Speaker 8: Five years now. This is about ninety three, ninety three.
Speaker 8: So I started working for John Mazarro. He was a
Speaker 8: chief of VMS Communications and the deputy chief at the
Speaker 8: time was Chief Thomas Ryan, who I adored. I kind
Speaker 8: of modeled myself after him.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 8: He was a fun guy, very fair, but he could
Speaker 8: be a bulldog when he needed to be a bulldog.
Speaker 8: But just a great guy. And he passed many years ago,
Speaker 8: but just a great guy. But so anyway, so now
Speaker 8: I'm working on staff and you know, we're doing little projects.
Speaker 8: And one of the things I started doing was programming pages.
Speaker 8: So we would give out pages to all the chiefs
Speaker 8: after numeric pages, right, and we'd have these terminals where
Speaker 8: uh inside the communications the city wide talk commanders for EMS.
Speaker 8: When you know it was a fire or an EMS job,
Speaker 8: or a bus action or a train job. You know,
Speaker 8: they'd send these pages out and everybody would get the
Speaker 8: pages and uh so on staff. You know, we had
Speaker 8: really good uh, really good people. Uh I met uh
Speaker 8: you know some longtime friends, Ross Caronova, Lewis Copp, Pete Josey,
Speaker 8: George san Martino, uh Jev Gumbo, Dave Billy, Robert Land
Speaker 8: and these guys worked in public information and we had
Speaker 8: such a good time, you know, playing, just just doing
Speaker 8: crazy things with them. Gus Pappus. It was just crazy.
Speaker 8: So anyway, getting back to these pages, because the pager
Speaker 8: rolls into into the fire fireside, uh so we're programming
Speaker 8: pages and so so the main thing was we would
Speaker 8: we would clone these cap codes, so when the fire
Speaker 8: went out or we set the page out, every mighty
Speaker 8: got the page at the same time. It wasn't like
Speaker 8: it went down the big list, you know, because that
Speaker 8: list would be long. You know, it may go to
Speaker 8: forty people, and the time he gets to the first
Speaker 8: person to the last person, you know, it could take
Speaker 8: ten minutes. Because everything's on dial up. Right, we didn't
Speaker 8: have like high speeded to that, so it's dialing up.
Speaker 6: Oh that's on a different page.
Speaker 1: Keep going. You could have had.
Speaker 8: Them so anyway. So now with Roman it's.
Speaker 2: There.
Speaker 8: You go right, every time you said the phage and
Speaker 8: you send that out, the modem noises. So about ninety
Speaker 8: five they start talking about merger.
Speaker 4: You know, Merger was just going to ask Frank, were
Speaker 4: they talking about it before that at all? Or yeah?
Speaker 8: So, you know, being being on staff, you know, we
Speaker 8: heard little whispers about H eight C and the city
Speaker 8: wasn't happy with the way Health and Hospitals was running
Speaker 8: a MS. There was some rumors that we may go
Speaker 8: to n y p D because we work so closely
Speaker 8: with them, and uh, you know, we were basically formatted
Speaker 8: the same way. Our responses areas overlapped the precincts. And
Speaker 8: and then it went to they talked about fire and
Speaker 8: at the time they were I think it was they
Speaker 8: started they started closing some firehouses. I guess fires were down.
Speaker 8: They were they were trying to close some firehouses, and
Speaker 8: what they decided to do was bring ems into fire
Speaker 8: and get the fire guys trained for first responders because
Speaker 8: at the time EMS, our response times weren't good. You know,
Speaker 8: we'd have a nine twelve minute.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean we were.
Speaker 8: It was just the amount of calls you know, we
Speaker 8: were doing, you know, anywhere from three thousand to four
Speaker 8: thousand calls a day for nine one one, and then
Speaker 8: the summer months, you know, when schools were out, you know,
Speaker 8: we'd be about fifty five hundred and six thousand calls
Speaker 8: for nine on one day. It's just we we just
Speaker 8: couldn't handle it. So, you know, the merger talk with
Speaker 8: the merger, you.
Speaker 1: Know, having was the commissioner was von Was he there
Speaker 1: at this time of v I.
Speaker 8: Think Vonson was there, right, Yeah, he was there for
Speaker 8: the merger, Yeah, absolutely, And when the merger happened, if
Speaker 8: I'm not mistaken, I think Chief Nigro became the chief
Speaker 8: of v M s UH and he took on the
Speaker 8: you know, the E M S H ran the E
Speaker 8: M S. So. Anyway, so what happened was so here
Speaker 8: in Masspit, once we merged with fire, the whole top
Speaker 8: floor of maspit moved the fire headquarters, which at that
Speaker 8: time was down on Livingston Street, and uh Fire Communications, Uh,
Speaker 8: the staff the commissioners. They moved over to masspit there
Speaker 8: in mess Communications was so that's where I met, uh
Speaker 8: Commissioner Gregory, Steve Gregory, and uh we hit it off
Speaker 8: right away. Uh talk, he's you know, talk to me. Hey,
Speaker 8: where you're from. Where'd you go to school? I said,
Speaker 8: I went to the Little Salle Academy. He goes, oh,
Speaker 8: I went to the Sale Academy. Oh wow, that's great.
Speaker 8: He was my son went to the sal academy. I said,
Speaker 8: who's your son? He goes, Mark Gregory and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 8: I graduated with Mark. You know, so I went to
Speaker 8: school with his son. He was a little salad guy.
Speaker 8: So he kind of took a liking to me. So
Speaker 8: he took me under his wing and he said, uh,
Speaker 8: you know what, you're gonna work directly for me. And
Speaker 8: uh so he was Bamonte guy. You know, we go
Speaker 8: to Bamontynty and I'm walking down the block.
Speaker 1: Now, you know, you know what Coobs.
Speaker 7: Now it's all making sense how some of these people
Speaker 7: in that Frankie would call, you know, miraculously we get
Speaker 7: to some of these companies that they put in for
Speaker 7: you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: They had to sit down at Bamon.
Speaker 1: You think you can take care of my guy?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I get to be a lampshop, you.
Speaker 4: Know what I mean. Did we uh go to high
Speaker 4: school with the girl?
Speaker 7: Yes, we did, Laura Lisa, Yeah, yeah so so now
Speaker 7: so now we got a new cast of characters coming
Speaker 7: up to that I'm meeting from the fireside.
Speaker 8: Now I got I'll throw some names out there. Joe Higgins,
Speaker 8: oh my god, John Piselli, Mike Fox, Paddle Leasy, Jerry Neville,
Speaker 8: Ivan Goldberg and uh, you know, it was just a different,
Speaker 8: different environment than I was used to, you know, the
Speaker 8: funny guys, you know, and everybody got along. So I
Speaker 8: gotta tell you. You know, e MS we were far ahead
Speaker 8: of fire computer wise, you know, on the e MS side.
Speaker 8: You know, we had the EMS logos on all let
Speaker 8: ahead and everything fire sight team in uh you know,
Speaker 8: nobody had a fire logo for any lead ahead. You know,
Speaker 8: everything that was coming out from the fireside looked like
Speaker 8: it was typed on a typewriter with call me and
Speaker 8: copy of paper behind it. It was like crazy crying
Speaker 8: out loud.
Speaker 4: Were getting it runs off a little brown.
Speaker 1: Box we would send out through the bag. Like most
Speaker 1: of our stuff would go through the bag.
Speaker 8: Right, So so so I go, I said, we need
Speaker 8: to find apartment logo. So nobody had a logo. So
Speaker 8: at the time, you know, before photoshop, I used to
Speaker 8: use a program called Correll Draw. So I know, was
Speaker 8: looking at a picture of the fire logo and I'm
Speaker 8: making my own version. You know, to the naked eye,
Speaker 8: you probably couldn't tell the difference, but it was my
Speaker 8: little version. And you know, so you can see on
Speaker 8: the left it was the original and on the right
Speaker 8: is my version. You could see my flame. I couldn't
Speaker 8: get the flames skinny. I had to start with a circle.
Speaker 8: So if you notice my flames like rounder, you know,
Speaker 8: and then the building on the far right, mine is
Speaker 8: more more skinnier. With the original fire logo was like domed,
Speaker 8: and far left you could see like they had like
Speaker 8: an extra section on that bottom left building. So I
Speaker 8: made this logo and I had it on my computer,
Speaker 8: and I'm putting it on on all these documents and everything,
Speaker 8: and you know, the logo gets passed around, you know,
Speaker 8: not too much longer than that. In ninety eight, they
Speaker 8: opened up nine Metro Tech Center, and at that time
Speaker 8: all of us from administration for EMS for fire we
Speaker 8: all moved up to Metro Tech. So now I'm in
Speaker 8: Metro Tech and I'm working on the seventh floor with
Speaker 8: five Communications, and this is where I'm getting my first exposures.
Speaker 8: Now right where I sat, right next to me was
Speaker 8: where the city wide Tork Commander's bunk room was up
Speaker 8: on the seventh floor. So now now you know meeting
Speaker 8: you know, Chief ncro Cassano, Don Burns, you know all
Speaker 8: these you know, you know, and if I only knew, I.
Speaker 4: Think they got the name Frankie. I think.
Speaker 8: They found out I was working at the fish market
Speaker 8: and that was that was it.
Speaker 4: So to ask you a question, So when they went online,
Speaker 4: actually I think they did it by what by borrow? Right?
Speaker 4: Brooklyn was Brooklyn line?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 8: When what do you mean online?
Speaker 6: One?
Speaker 4: When they went on cfr D, did you start doing
Speaker 4: cf D?
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think Brooklyn was first, and uh yeah,
Speaker 8: I don't know where it went second. But but the
Speaker 8: goal was to send send you guys to the e
Speaker 8: m S the higher priorities. EMS had eight different priority
Speaker 8: levels and the goal was to send you guys on
Speaker 8: the Priority one, twos and threes. Cardiac arrest difficulty breathing, shooting, stabbings, uh,
Speaker 8: that kind of that kind of stuff. But it came
Speaker 8: with a caveat. You know, you guys, we could you
Speaker 8: guys could only go if there was the availability around
Speaker 8: you was there. You know, if maybe the second dude
Speaker 8: to your to what your boxes was out on a run,
Speaker 8: you didn't go. So it wasn't like every Priority one,
Speaker 8: two or three called that you guys went on and
Speaker 8: this is all done in the background. The computer would
Speaker 8: know the availability. But so so that was it and
Speaker 8: it was good, you know, and I remember, you know,
Speaker 8: in the beginning, there was a lot of calling you
Speaker 8: guys helping us assist with carrying patients. You know, you know,
Speaker 8: we have an ambulance crew with two people, right and
Speaker 8: we're carrying you know, oxygen, we're carrying our tech bag,
Speaker 8: we're carrying a stair chair, we're carrying a defibrillator, and
Speaker 8: we get up you know, four or five flights and
Speaker 8: now we got to carry somebody down. You know, there's
Speaker 8: only two of us. So a lot of times we
Speaker 8: were calling for backup and we get engine companies coming over.
Speaker 8: You know, sometimes they were happy, sometimes they weren't, but
Speaker 8: you know, it's part of the job, you know, anything
Speaker 8: not to close the.
Speaker 7: Firehouse, you know, Frank, you know it's funny to say
Speaker 7: that because I remember guys were pissed, right, But you
Speaker 7: know what guys felt good is if and you could
Speaker 7: tell the good ems guys is if they said, hey, listen,
Speaker 7: i'll carry the patient down.
Speaker 1: You just take take my bags down or.
Speaker 7: Whatever it was initially right Initially, if you did that,
Speaker 7: then the guys would do anything for you, you know
Speaker 7: what I mean, if they felt like you weren't bamboos
Speaker 7: on them. I think that was really the key, Like
Speaker 7: you just said, like if you know, you guys had
Speaker 7: a lot of shit there to take down. But you know,
Speaker 7: sometimes you would get there and there was two girls
Speaker 7: there and they couldn't you know, lift the bag right,
Speaker 7: So it was kind of like the guys would do it,
Speaker 7: but you know then they would you know, muddle under
Speaker 7: their breath a little bit. But I think you knew
Speaker 7: the guys who were doing the job and just needed
Speaker 7: a hand, and then the guys didn't care about that.
Speaker 7: And that's the truth. But guys, you know, like anything,
Speaker 7: fireman bitch all the time, and you know it is.
Speaker 4: Too just to just to complete and continue with the
Speaker 4: CPR while you guys were getting them on the monitor,
Speaker 4: maybe getting some meds. I mean, I think that helped
Speaker 4: out a lot with saving patients because we would come
Speaker 4: in and leave your EMS and you guys would be
Speaker 4: out of the CPR, and you guys would be able
Speaker 4: to do something else, you know, to try to get just.
Speaker 8: Just getting you guys to these cardiac or rest patients.
Speaker 8: You know, before we could we get there. You know,
Speaker 8: you guys are starting the CPR, you know, high concentration
Speaker 8: of oxygen, uh, you know, rescue breathing. You know, it
Speaker 8: was a it was a big thing.
Speaker 7: When I worked in in East New York. It was
Speaker 7: never I never felt like I just felt like an
Speaker 7: ambulance ride most of the time.
Speaker 1: Not always, But when I worked in two eighty eight,
Speaker 1: it was an old population.
Speaker 7: There, right, it was German, and you know over there,
Speaker 7: we we really were making a difference.
Speaker 1: The quicker we got there.
Speaker 7: We really didn't make a difference like so, I guess
Speaker 7: it would depend on area, too, right, I didn't. I
Speaker 7: never felt like that in Brooklyn, but in Queens, I
Speaker 7: felt like I was like we were getting that quicker,
Speaker 7: and there were times you know whatever, you know, you gelt,
Speaker 7: you know, every couple of months they would put the
Speaker 7: thing in and you got the little metal or whatever
Speaker 7: you got there.
Speaker 1: I forget what the heck?
Speaker 4: Yeah, but my first, my very first EMS run. Of
Speaker 4: course they make the prob do it. So we get off,
Speaker 4: we go to the project. The guys says a difficulty
Speaker 4: breathing heart attack, so they go probably go you know,
Speaker 4: go up ring the bell and then it's in the project.
Speaker 4: So I go to open the door. I can't get in.
Speaker 4: There's a guy sitting there smoking a cigarette on the steps, Like,
Speaker 4: I get can you can you get me in here?
Speaker 4: He goes, no, no, that's for me. I got a
Speaker 4: little tightness, a little shortness of breath to I'm like, well,
Speaker 4: I'm smoking, Like maybe you want to put the cigarette out.
Speaker 8: I don't know, you know, that's funny stuff. But uh yeah,
Speaker 8: so get getting back to headquarters.
Speaker 1: So I'm talking about the patch. Yeah, we're talking about
Speaker 1: the right.
Speaker 8: So so I made this logo. So like we get
Speaker 8: the headquarters and now, uh, you know, everybody's like, oh
Speaker 8: wait the logo come from? Where's the logo come from?
Speaker 8: I I made it. I'll send your copy I'll send
Speaker 8: your copy. So now you know, everybody and the mother
Speaker 8: has this logo and they're putting it on. Let ahead
Speaker 8: this and that and but that, but and I'll let
Speaker 8: that go for now, and I'll get back to that
Speaker 8: a little bit. But Commissioner Gregory putting me in charge
Speaker 8: of the technical unit and thenical unit. We were we
Speaker 8: were in charge of giving out all the cellular phones
Speaker 8: programming pages. And I talked about that a little bit
Speaker 8: and I got two quick stories with the pages. So,
Speaker 8: like I told you when e MS, we were cloning
Speaker 8: cap codes. So when we sent one page out it
Speaker 8: went to like forty people at once. When we got
Speaker 8: to the to Metro Tech, the fire Fire Operations sent
Speaker 8: the FOC they called it at the time, Uh not FDOC.
Speaker 8: Yet they had they had somebody there doing the pages,
Speaker 8: and they had a system where it went alphabetically right.
Speaker 8: So they were sending you know, a page out it
Speaker 8: would go to individually seventy different people, seventy different people.
Speaker 8: And I remember Commissioner Gregory coming down to me one
Speaker 8: time after a meeting and he said, von Essen's hot.
Speaker 8: I said, what happened? He said, there's a there's a
Speaker 8: big fire and he's the last one to get notified,
Speaker 8: right because his last thing starts with a V. He's
Speaker 8: at the bottom of the list. Everybody's ages going over
Speaker 8: the room. What's going on?
Speaker 9: What's going on? The last one another? And me and
Speaker 9: I told, I told, Greg said, they won't let me
Speaker 9: change the pages. They won't let me change the page
Speaker 9: of software.
Speaker 8: Well Gregreen went in and said, this guy's in charge
Speaker 8: of the pages, let him program the pages. So now
Speaker 8: I clone everybody's pager. So now we said out one page.
Speaker 8: You know, two hundred people get the page at once.
Speaker 8: And you know that was it?
Speaker 1: Happy?
Speaker 7: Happy that that was that was that was the thing, right,
Speaker 7: He's like, take that guy to mamadis, let's go.
Speaker 8: And you know, you know when we were talking, you know,
Speaker 8: I talked about the computers stuff, and you know, I
Speaker 8: was like the first kid on the block with a computer.
Speaker 1: And you said, what did I say, hold on before
Speaker 1: you say anything fake? What did What did I say?
Speaker 7: When I talked to my cousin too, we were talking
Speaker 7: about this and I had mentioned this to Frank when
Speaker 7: I spoke to him the first time.
Speaker 1: When we when we were decided we were going to
Speaker 1: have him.
Speaker 7: On he's always been not not one step ahead, he's
Speaker 7: been like four st ups ahead and any you know,
Speaker 7: and when it comes.
Speaker 1: To this type of stuff, he's always been way ahead.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 7: Now he's doing you know, three D printing. He's got
Speaker 7: the drone. You know, he was doing drones when they
Speaker 7: didn't even know what the hell of drone was. You
Speaker 7: know what I mean, he's always been.
Speaker 4: Back in the day, you had the Commodore sixty four, No, I.
Speaker 8: Had a t R S eighty color computer. I was
Speaker 8: a tandy guy.
Speaker 1: Oh guy, how excited he got.
Speaker 6: You see it.
Speaker 10: Look at his family and he's just like handy guy and.
Speaker 8: So so so. Now so now I got the flight
Speaker 8: apartment paging system going right, and everything's going good. And
Speaker 8: you know, and at that time, you know, we didn't
Speaker 8: have Facebook. We get bulletin boards. You guys, remember bulletin
Speaker 8: boards right right, everybody's posting stuff. So so I'm thinking,
Speaker 8: I'm going, okay, So you know what, so whenever whatever,
Speaker 8: it's a big fire, you know, second along, you know,
Speaker 8: here and there it's coming over the pages, right, everybody's
Speaker 8: getting in on the pages. Everybody who's anybody's getting that information.
Speaker 8: So I'm going, how can I get this out to
Speaker 8: the public, How can I get this information out to
Speaker 8: the public. So I, Jimmy Jermy rigged the computer up
Speaker 8: that when they sent that page out, it also I
Speaker 8: put in an email address, so that page went to
Speaker 8: an email address. And I had a computer set up
Speaker 8: at headquarters that all it did was listen, looked at
Speaker 8: this email address. When an email came in, it converted
Speaker 8: that email, and it posted it to one of the
Speaker 8: bulletin board. It's like a fire bulletin board I was
Speaker 8: on or whatever. And this was a Friday, so all
Speaker 8: the flyers that went out over the weekend again and
Speaker 8: posted to this bulletin board, and there was nothing confidential.
Speaker 8: Second on fire box, you know Manhattan Box, this, you know,
Speaker 8: fifteen story, just the basic stuff. And I came into
Speaker 8: work Monday morning and they knew it was me right away,
Speaker 8: right because everything's showing up as my name, and they
Speaker 8: called me in and I got like, called onto the carpet.
Speaker 8: What do you think you're doing? You can't give this
Speaker 8: information out? And I mean I really was was struck
Speaker 8: by it, you know, like they were really passed, like
Speaker 8: like you know, they want to over there. I unplugged.
Speaker 8: I unplugged that up right, you know. And then let's
Speaker 8: fast forward about ten years, right, ten years you know Facebook,
Speaker 8: Twitter is starting now the person who's sending out those
Speaker 8: pages every day on Twitter and Facebook, Champ. They wanted
Speaker 8: to burn me.
Speaker 1: Now a FireWire guy, he does the same thing.
Speaker 4: I say that, we know a guy, Fireway guy do
Speaker 4: the same thing, right.
Speaker 8: So you know it was crazy. So you know, so
Speaker 8: again being up on the seventh floor, you know, I'm running.
Speaker 1: You know I'm going to give a gazillionaire Frank Yeah, right.
Speaker 8: So I'm running. You know, Rubert Shoulders, Peter Gancy, just Framemost,
Speaker 8: Pete Hayden. I met Yakimovich up there, funny guy man
Speaker 8: classic and on the EMS saw I so now I'm
Speaker 8: starting to work with EMS operations. And uh I met
Speaker 8: Eric frick Ado John Fred Oh yeah frek right, I think, well,
Speaker 8: I think you hunted with his brother with him and
Speaker 8: his brother, right he had a brother that.
Speaker 4: Was like a cop.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, but Eric, I knew Eric really well.
Speaker 8: He was at another Queen's guy, right, and uh yeah,
Speaker 8: Joe Sanders, Kelly Wells, Jace Went is just a lot
Speaker 8: of a lot of good guys. So, uh, I got promoted.
Speaker 11: To captain in August of two thousand and one. So
Speaker 11: two thousand and one we have the captain promotions and
Speaker 11: uh that was nice. And then a month later, you know,
Speaker 11: nine eleven happens, and you know, we all know the
Speaker 11: story with nine to eleven.
Speaker 8: But uh uh you know that morning, uh you know
Speaker 8: when that first plane hit, the whole seventh floor emptied out.
Speaker 8: You know, we're all the elevated together. Steve Gregory, Sam Harris,
Speaker 8: Jace Pinkas we went down to Steve Gregory's car, we
Speaker 8: went the Liberty in West Street. Me and Steve went
Speaker 8: right over to the fire command post and man, I
Speaker 8: was there for about ten minutes and I see that
Speaker 8: there's a big ambulances of staging on on West Street
Speaker 8: and South End Avenue by Liberty Street. So I told
Speaker 8: Commissioner Gregory said, hey, I'm going to go over and.
Speaker 1: Help the I didn't even know that.
Speaker 8: Yeah, helped the E m S guys out with stage.
Speaker 8: So I went west, I don't know, maybe about five
Speaker 8: hundred feet and you know that first hour came down
Speaker 8: and you know it was it was just just crazy.
Speaker 8: You know, we know that a lot of people from
Speaker 8: that command post didn't make it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's crazy man.
Speaker 8: Yeah, so you know, very very lucky. And at the time,
Speaker 8: you know, being the cellular phone guy at a fire department, uh,
Speaker 8: we had we had a bunch of cell phones you
Speaker 8: know out the chiefs at the time, but we that
Speaker 8: we just started using Next telephones also, and when the
Speaker 8: towners came down, we had no self service down there.
Speaker 8: But Next Heell was downtown doing doing some sort of
Speaker 8: demo and they had these portable cell towers there. So
Speaker 8: people with Next telephones had landline communications. And boy, I
Speaker 8: think there must have been about twenty of us, and
Speaker 8: I was one of the guys that had a Next telephone.
Speaker 8: Everybody was scrabbing the phone, you know, calling home, making
Speaker 8: making the notifications. Hey I'm okay, Hey, I'm okay.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 8: You know, a little while later, the second tower comes
Speaker 8: down and I wind up at the the South street,
Speaker 8: the seaport, at the ferry terminal. We had an EMS
Speaker 8: staging uh site there, uh, you know for patients to
Speaker 8: come in for triage, and there was nobody, you know,
Speaker 8: we never got any patients, only people coming in with
Speaker 8: some firefighters with with I irritations, but there were no patients.
Speaker 8: You know, you either made it or you didn't.
Speaker 4: You know that that's not that one.
Speaker 8: Uh So, you know, and I remember the days after that,
Speaker 8: after nine to eleven, uh, you know, being back at headquarters.
Speaker 8: You know, every morning we had the a list of
Speaker 8: firefighters that they were trying to they were trying to
Speaker 8: confirm that you know, or missing missing, you know, missing firefighters.
Speaker 8: And I remember the first few days knew your name
Speaker 8: was on the list.
Speaker 4: Me and him were both on the list that yeah.
Speaker 8: And I remember calling your cousin, trying to get your cousin.
Speaker 8: And I got your cousin. I said, you talk to
Speaker 8: your cousin, Louis. Is he all right? I said, he's
Speaker 8: on this list here? And uh, you know, so you
Speaker 8: know you see names on the list, you know, I
Speaker 8: we knew a few fire guys at that time, like
Speaker 8: from the neighborhood, and you know you see names and
Speaker 8: you're like, oh my god, please please, you know, and
Speaker 8: you know, so that's how you know that went there,
Speaker 8: and you know that's when things things changed.
Speaker 7: That'll be like a tough time for you guys, because
Speaker 7: if you were the communications, that was a whole big thing,
Speaker 7: right with motorowler and the handy talking and the repeat
Speaker 7: is and you know, all that stuff was like a
Speaker 7: big that was fall front then right like that was
Speaker 7: what they said.
Speaker 1: Guys weren't getting the messages to get out.
Speaker 8: Right, So so I'm trying to remember, I think right
Speaker 8: before that, so right, so they went acc P twenty five.
Speaker 8: They tried going digital for a while, and I think
Speaker 8: that you guys on you know, when you went on
Speaker 8: a fire ground with the old analog way, if somebody
Speaker 8: was transmitting and then somebody else transmitted on top of them,
Speaker 8: you would hear them.
Speaker 1: With the digital, you weren't hear them off right, they were.
Speaker 8: Getting cut off. And I think you guys weren't on
Speaker 8: digital too long before they moved you back to analog.
Speaker 8: And I remember the fire department had to get a
Speaker 8: release or something from the FCC because it was mandated
Speaker 8: to move everybody to this narrow banding they called it. Uh,
Speaker 8: there were radios. Normally you work on a twenty five
Speaker 8: killer hert space of transmission. They were they were trying
Speaker 8: to do narrow banded where you worked on a twelve
Speaker 8: twelve point two five slider, you know, because they wanted
Speaker 8: to get more people on the same channel. But yeah,
Speaker 8: that never took off.
Speaker 4: We were picking up on the digital. We were picking
Speaker 4: up transmissions from Manhattan, like we would hear the fire
Speaker 4: ground in Manhattan on our radios and queens.
Speaker 8: Yeah, well well that was what happened, was they tried
Speaker 8: separating a lot of stuff. And I know on the
Speaker 8: e MS side, like see back in the day, like
Speaker 8: say Brooklyn North frequency, but we had we had a
Speaker 8: tag channel. All the tax channel was was the same frequency,
Speaker 8: but you weren't You weren't talking to the dispatching. You
Speaker 8: were just going out on a simplex channel. It was
Speaker 8: almost like a mixer, well not really a mixer off message,
Speaker 8: but it was the same. It was the same frequency.
Speaker 8: What they wind up doing was reversing frequencies. So you know,
Speaker 8: you may have been on if you were in Brooklyn,
Speaker 8: your tactical channel could have been like the reverse of
Speaker 8: the BRONX frequency channel. But if you were close enough
Speaker 8: to them, you could hear some of that one side
Speaker 8: of transmissions play it all that away.
Speaker 7: I used to hear pilots sometimes, Frank, like we'd hear
Speaker 7: like LaGuardia or something like you hit a pilot talking
Speaker 7: or something.
Speaker 1: Once in a while.
Speaker 8: You know, you guys were on You guys were on
Speaker 8: VHF uh for a long time before you went to UHF.
Speaker 8: The EMS and NYPD, we were always UHF frequencies. We
Speaker 8: were a little higher upper HF. So we were in
Speaker 8: the four hundred megahertz for eighties for seventies, where you
Speaker 8: guys were in the one fifty mega hurts. Uh. You know,
Speaker 8: when you guys are pushing a lot of power. You know,
Speaker 8: you've seen the big antenna towers, uh, you know at
Speaker 8: all the fire dispatch facilities in each borough. So yeah,
Speaker 8: you guys are pushing a lot of power. I mean,
Speaker 8: I'm here in Pennsylvania now, and I remember, you know,
Speaker 8: when I met some people up here, I told him
Speaker 8: I worked for the fire department. You know, on good days,
Speaker 8: they would they were hear the New York City Fire
Speaker 8: Department transmissions up here right through the Delaware Water Gap
Speaker 8: and you know, right through the mountains, and they'd be
Speaker 8: listening to up here. But now that you're on u
Speaker 8: h F, you know that that's if I.
Speaker 4: Think I might have found the smartest guy in green Point.
Speaker 10: We got we.
Speaker 7: Didn't talk about this before, but when we were kids
Speaker 7: and again I had forgot about this. There was I,
Speaker 7: my cousin and I were probably getting We were probably twenty, right.
Speaker 7: He had been in the EMS for a couple of years, right,
Speaker 7: He was doing the communications stuff. He was listening to
Speaker 7: the scanners. And he took us one day. We were
Speaker 7: getting on the FDNY and he says, I think it
Speaker 7: was fourth of July, right, Frank, Yeah, And he says, listen,
Speaker 7: come on, we're gonna drive around just we're going to
Speaker 7: buff jobs. And he had it the scanner. And this
Speaker 7: is when fourth of July was fourth of July, right.
Speaker 7: It was like mayhem, you had to keep the windows
Speaker 7: up right, you know. He was like, it was a
Speaker 7: free for all. And we drove around Brooklyn and we
Speaker 7: were listening to the scanner and we were going to
Speaker 7: like jobs like the different fires, like buffing.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 7: And that was the first time I ever realized even
Speaker 7: thought about what a scanner was.
Speaker 1: But it was him. He was way ahead again, you
Speaker 1: know what.
Speaker 4: I mean, right, I write the Magestrium over there.
Speaker 8: So So once I became the captain, I was again
Speaker 8: on on administrative staff, but I would help out in
Speaker 8: the emsation center. They were short staff there. I did
Speaker 8: some tours as an em S Citi Turk Commander, which
Speaker 8: was the captain inside the EMS communications people who worked
Speaker 8: in administrative positions. To keep our certifications current, we had
Speaker 8: to go out and do so many field tours a month.
Speaker 8: So I was doing a duty captain duty in Manhattan,
Speaker 8: DC one and you know, back then we had one
Speaker 8: captain per barb on patrol. So you know, they turned
Speaker 8: out of peck Slip down downtown, Yeah, and I would
Speaker 8: have to respond up to the tip of Manhattan, you know,
Speaker 8: up one hundred and forty hundred and fiftieth. So I'd
Speaker 8: always you know, park in Times Square, you know, stayed
Speaker 8: in midtown. This way I can go east or west,
Speaker 8: north and south, yeah, Norman South, and so that that
Speaker 8: was a good time also. But I did a lot
Speaker 8: of special projects, planning special events for the marathon. For
Speaker 8: the marathon New York City Marathon, I did a lot
Speaker 8: of database stuff. I'd have the New York City road
Speaker 8: Runners Club. They would give me all their data of
Speaker 8: all their runners. So we had a mobile command center
Speaker 8: set up at the finish line of the marathon. When
Speaker 8: units in the field had a radio win that they
Speaker 8: had a patient. All we needed was a BIB number,
Speaker 8: and once I had the big number, I was able
Speaker 8: to pull up all the patients information. I had the
Speaker 8: name next to kin and we were given reports to
Speaker 8: the New York City road Runners Club. So I did
Speaker 8: a lot of stuff like that. I created the EMS
Speaker 8: scheduling program that I know they used for a good
Speaker 8: fifteen years. I don't know what they're doing that a schedule,
Speaker 8: but I created this schedule link program that produced the uh,
Speaker 8: the rundowns for the month they were putting people on vacation.
Speaker 8: You know, you had your your whole, your whole rundown.
Speaker 8: And we worked the five two five three schedule in
Speaker 8: the field, so our days rotated like you know, like
Speaker 8: you guys, uh, what do you guys do nine and.
Speaker 1: Sixteen, fifteen? Yeah right, but you're doubling up, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you do twenty four? Yeah right.
Speaker 8: And one of my other big projects was the biopod.
Speaker 1: You guys wonder they still do that.
Speaker 8: I think they do, they really. Yeah. So I so
Speaker 8: I got tasked with making this database that tracked uh
Speaker 8: and we stood see and uh that tracked what units
Speaker 8: we were getting uh, you know, we were sending the
Speaker 8: doctors out in the nurses to the stations. They were
Speaker 8: giving you the flu shots, and and you know they
Speaker 8: wanted stacks. Everything was stacked, so I was able to
Speaker 8: give them on the moment. You know, how many engine
Speaker 8: companies we did, how many a lot of companies we did,
Speaker 8: how many in the engine company accepted the shot, how
Speaker 8: many did it? You know, and like the numbers were
Speaker 8: just just crazy. But once I had it, built it
Speaker 8: and we did that for years. You know, that was
Speaker 8: a twenty four hour event, I think, right, we normally
Speaker 8: did that.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, yeah, a couple of days.
Speaker 8: I think actually it was in November, right at the
Speaker 8: beginning of November. I think that it was a twenty
Speaker 8: four hour event. I can't remember how you know what
Speaker 8: it was.
Speaker 7: But so so I was doing all that kind take
Speaker 7: you out of service, like if we have to go
Speaker 7: down to Howard Beach or something.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we'd have to go like wherever the doctor was right.
Speaker 8: Right right, and they were mobile, so they would be
Speaker 8: and they might be and have a beach, uh, you know,
Speaker 8: for for a few hours and then they would go
Speaker 8: somewhere else. Oh but you know, let me just back up.
Speaker 8: I gotta tell you one funny story. Right after the
Speaker 8: merger happened, uh in Masspit. That's where all the ambulances
Speaker 8: came to get preventive maintenance, you know, the oil change
Speaker 8: and everything. So after the merger h when the ambulances
Speaker 8: came in, you know, we had white buses with an
Speaker 8: orange stripe. Some buses had an orange and boots stripe.
Speaker 8: So for the first six months, I want to say,
Speaker 8: after the merger, before the mechanics would release the ambulances
Speaker 8: back to this ambulance garages. They had a bunch of
Speaker 8: us doing overtime. And all we did was take ambulances
Speaker 8: from Massfit, took them over all the way to rock Away.
Speaker 8: We were dropping them off at this uh this body
Speaker 8: shop and they were painting over the orange with right
Speaker 8: and they were taking the n y C E MS
Speaker 8: off and put in fd N Y. I had sent
Speaker 8: you guys a few pictures of the different versions of
Speaker 8: you know, of the ambulance and how they looked. But
Speaker 8: we did that for about six months. Every day.
Speaker 1: Everybody needs a gig coops, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: everybody needs.
Speaker 4: You know what building he's talking about roof?
Speaker 7: Yes, I do they have all the rock? Yeah, the
Speaker 7: graveyard is over there now.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, yeah, So that that that was
Speaker 8: a good gig. That that went off like six months.
Speaker 8: We were just getting old the ambulances painted, just running
Speaker 8: up and down Cross Bay Boule a lot all day,
Speaker 8: all night. So that that was that.
Speaker 4: We got those pictures guns and we didn't love them in.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and just there was a few different versions of
Speaker 8: the the ambulance colors. How they progressed over time to
Speaker 8: what what what you know what we have now? Uh?
Speaker 4: Yeah, sure, muted guns.
Speaker 6: I'm sorry, No we didn't. Uh thanks, I was making
Speaker 6: noise back.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I didn't want to put here. That was a clue.
Speaker 6: But no, we didn't load those pictures. But I was
Speaker 6: just trying to find a couple. I found this guy here.
Speaker 8: Right, So that was the version where so that red
Speaker 8: line going across the middle that was orange. So all
Speaker 8: they did was we painted. They painted that red. They
Speaker 8: took the n Y C E and messed off the
Speaker 8: sides and they put the fd N Y and right
Speaker 8: back into service. So after about six months, everything in
Speaker 8: the city said n Y and that was the end
Speaker 8: of the New York City e MS.
Speaker 4: What is a new ring like that? Like the new
Speaker 4: ones in New York fire trucks.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, I got.
Speaker 4: How much does it costs that you know those rings.
Speaker 6: Those averyonces, they're not that much. The well, the one
Speaker 6: I'm going to show you here is not my knowledge,
Speaker 6: is probably under one hundred grand for this thing.
Speaker 8: That's pretty cheap.
Speaker 6: You know, don't want you outfit it with your equipment
Speaker 6: and stuff like that.
Speaker 4: But that's an older one too yet to see.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well then you got the the paramedic units were
Speaker 6: almost looked like a mini rescue.
Speaker 1: Right they got the hash tech one.
Speaker 12: Yeah, yeah, they thank Uh well, you know what E
Speaker 12: m s had a hash tacked prior to the merger,
Speaker 12: and they were they were hashtag trained.
Speaker 8: They were city wide ambulances.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 8: They were like uh zeros so ten like one Old David,
Speaker 8: one Old Charlie one O zebra. Uh you know all
Speaker 8: the one units were in Manhattan. All the two units
Speaker 8: were in the Bronx, you know two O this two
Speaker 8: O that Brooklyn was three, Queen's was four, and Stanton
Speaker 8: Island was five. And you know that was another thing too.
Speaker 8: That was a big culture shock, you know, like like
Speaker 8: with ems when you said, you know, uh, thirteen Adams
Speaker 8: right away you knew it was a Manhattan unit. You
Speaker 8: knew it was a BLS unit. You knew it was
Speaker 8: kind of south in Manhattan because the way Manhattan was
Speaker 8: broken up was broken up into nine different areas. And
Speaker 8: just take the picture of Manhattan. It sliced it nine
Speaker 8: equal ways across, so you know nothing the M nine
Speaker 8: they called it was up nor so you'd have like,
Speaker 8: you know, nineteen at of nineteen bully nineteen Charlie. So
Speaker 8: it was real quick, you know, when we came into
Speaker 8: the fire department and I was I think I was
Speaker 8: telling Louis, you know, I we'd have these staff meetings
Speaker 8: and communications and uh, and we get letters from captains
Speaker 8: from fire companies. They were complaining about that they should
Speaker 8: be first due to this box because they're always the
Speaker 8: first do that this company is, you know, his first
Speaker 8: do we should be first due. And I remember, and
Speaker 8: I'm just going to throw some some companies out there.
Speaker 8: So let's say, uh, you know, lad of one thirty
Speaker 8: two is complaining that they should be first due to
Speaker 8: this box, and then the room.
Speaker 1: That's always my cousin.
Speaker 8: That's why, yeah, right, so and then throwing and then
Speaker 8: throwing numbers out and so I'm saying, okay, so lad
Speaker 8: of one ladder one thirty two. So I'm going, well,
Speaker 8: where's lad of one thirty one? Where's a lot of
Speaker 8: one thirty three? An shot? They be right right next
Speaker 8: to them. No, and every in the Bronx there at
Speaker 8: this and I'm saying, you know, I saying they shouldn't
Speaker 8: be renumbered. I think, don't you think we should renumber it?
Speaker 8: But I don't know that history, you know.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, yeah, history renumber them.
Speaker 8: You know what. Everybody's looking at me like, I like,
Speaker 8: like I got three heads, I screen number.
Speaker 4: Of Frank you to fix it? Did you ever have
Speaker 4: any favorite fire houses? That will you guys buying into
Speaker 4: the meal? I guess when you were running on the bus.
Speaker 8: No, No, we never don't with any fire houses. You know,
Speaker 8: back in the in the late eighties, early nineties, it
Speaker 8: wasn't like that. Yeah, no, we never spent any time
Speaker 8: with fire Really. The cops that you know, they're talking
Speaker 8: about the merger, I think when when they merged, I
Speaker 8: want to say, there was a house in Rockaway.
Speaker 1: That actually twenty one Yeah.
Speaker 8: Did they put ems in that house?
Speaker 1: They're still in there? Yeah?
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, And I think that was the first one,
Speaker 8: and I know they had a lot of problems at first.
Speaker 1: I think it's kind of worked out.
Speaker 8: I think, yeah, now now it's it's it's a totally
Speaker 8: different time. But yeah, you know I could understand. You know, Uh,
Speaker 8: it's like outside is moving in, you know, like we're
Speaker 8: squatting in the place.
Speaker 6: But you know, you know, but you.
Speaker 8: Know, we were always running. You know, we were always running.
Speaker 8: We were always out. You know, we weren't we weren't
Speaker 8: hanging around.
Speaker 1: So did you always have that, you guys?
Speaker 7: We didn't talk about it, but did you guys always
Speaker 7: have like the blood thing going like back in the day,
Speaker 7: like if you had more blood on you, like under
Speaker 7: the train or like extrication the guys do that or
Speaker 7: that was kind of out when you got there.
Speaker 11: Uh no, you know, and you know what when we
Speaker 11: got there, you know, when I started, you know, all
Speaker 11: the e mts and all the paramedics.
Speaker 8: You know, we wore green pants and we wore white shirts. Right,
Speaker 8: so think of this, you know, here we are dealing,
Speaker 8: we're blood and guts and we got white shirts. So
Speaker 8: you know, you started your tour at six in the morning.
Speaker 8: You know, by six thirty, you were a mess a ready,
Speaker 8: you know, you.
Speaker 13: Know when you're on the floor, you know, yeah, you
Speaker 13: just like a dirty slap, you know, all day long
Speaker 13: you couldn't couldn't be clean, you know, white white shirts,
Speaker 13: you know, and then you're trying to eat, trying to
Speaker 13: eat inside an ambulance, you know, go into a cold things.
Speaker 8: That's crazy, you know. It was just just nuts.
Speaker 6: Depending how much blood you had on it, that was
Speaker 6: your your soot for the fire. In comparison, kind of.
Speaker 4: Salty guy, how much blood can you get on you?
Speaker 6: That's how we compare.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, So so where where does my story go
Speaker 8: from here? So in two thousand and five, again, this
Speaker 8: is a Brooklyn thing. Our lady in Mount Carmel. Uh,
Speaker 8: That's where I went to school. That was my parish.
Speaker 8: We have a big jilli o feast.
Speaker 1: And over one hundred years old.
Speaker 8: Over one hundred years old. And yeah, from when I
Speaker 8: was so young, I remember there was a turk. The
Speaker 8: turk rides on top of his boat that carry him around.
Speaker 8: He dresses up in this big gob and I always
Speaker 8: was awed by it and I always wat, oh, I
Speaker 8: want to be the Turk. I wanted to be the
Speaker 8: Turk and Uh. In two thousand and five, I was
Speaker 8: heavily involved with the church. I was doing the website
Speaker 8: for the feast. I got the I got the feast came,
Speaker 8: I had the life camera, life cameras you know, right.
Speaker 1: I remember watching it.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, so I was doing live streaming before live
Speaker 8: streaming it was even a thing. And it was two five.
Speaker 8: Father fond he selected me to be the Turk, and uh, you.
Speaker 1: Got those pics right, guns, Yeah, I just wait.
Speaker 8: I was just well, so the Turk has a beard, right,
Speaker 8: so now I want to grow a beard. So I
Speaker 8: had to get a letter from from Mike Priests and
Speaker 8: I had to take it to the fight at partment.
Speaker 8: I had to get a religious observance for three months
Speaker 8: so I could grow this big beard. You know. You know,
Speaker 8: we can't have been facially, so he did that, let.
Speaker 4: You have it.
Speaker 7: I was like, it was like, so that that platform, right,
Speaker 7: that's the boat that he's talking about. But that platform
Speaker 7: underneath that, there's like two hundred guys that lift that
Speaker 7: and dance.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But I'm just saying most people don't know that
Speaker 1: that's what that is, right.
Speaker 8: Yeah, there might be some of the pictures that you
Speaker 8: can kind of see the crowd and.
Speaker 4: Send me the pictures of a young Uh that's the crowd.
Speaker 4: You have to sing or say anything as being the term.
Speaker 10: I just I just jumped the road, just gotta get
Speaker 10: silly brass band.
Speaker 8: Up in the boat with me, and they have a
Speaker 8: big procession in the morning, they come pick you up
Speaker 8: like uh you know, I was telling Lewis said, they're
Speaker 8: carrying carrying me around there like like it brought home
Speaker 8: the Stanley Cup to the city.
Speaker 1: Let's it. Let's see the young pictures there.
Speaker 4: Oh, look at TV uh pe. We said the same thing.
Speaker 4: I said, two living in something and somebody flew turk
Speaker 4: one eighty two. That's movie.
Speaker 6: So we have that young picture.
Speaker 10: First, pipes on.
Speaker 4: Look at the pipes on him, bro.
Speaker 6: Before we get to the other good one.
Speaker 4: Here that we have pink lemonade, Louise fresh cut cups.
Speaker 7: We used to sell stuff at the feast since I
Speaker 7: was probably sixteen years old.
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 8: Watermelon Italian ice is right slain.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I got it.
Speaker 4: The pretzels a little bit. Look at him, bro, he
Speaker 4: knows how to do it.
Speaker 6: He was out.
Speaker 1: After I started. That's where it started.
Speaker 4: It started.
Speaker 1: We would make a lot of money for fourteen days
Speaker 1: or whatever. It was twelve days.
Speaker 4: Fourteen days, and all the chicks you can get.
Speaker 5: Ahold of the lane hurt either a little bit.
Speaker 7: Yeah, you have the other one, I said you, Yeah,
Speaker 7: I say yes.
Speaker 1: Of course, louis.
Speaker 4: There it is?
Speaker 5: Wow?
Speaker 6: Sure, yeah, eighty It looks like nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 8: Eighty four, that's what it looks like. We were, what
Speaker 8: were sixteen years old?
Speaker 4: Yeah, wow, it looks like eighty four. Frankie up on
Speaker 4: your shoulders.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's my cousin, Frank And who's the tenant left
Speaker 7: of my cousin?
Speaker 1: What's his name? I forget that? Tommy Tarabino, Tommy right
Speaker 1: another time?
Speaker 4: Looking rough with the quaff little quaff ahead he's got
Speaker 4: going on there, Bro.
Speaker 6: Look at this guy, somebody. We'll leave us up for
Speaker 6: another couple of seconds.
Speaker 4: Here, just look at it all right, you can take
Speaker 4: that down.
Speaker 6: I'm uncomfortable now.
Speaker 8: Yeah. So so now you know, I'm just uh doing
Speaker 8: more and more special projects. Uh, you know, ems communication. Uh,
Speaker 8: the staffs we had, you know, we had a few
Speaker 8: chiefs come in and out. Uh. But you know, Abno,
Speaker 8: Jace Pinkis, Mike Fitton, Blancadelgado Sam Harris people I worked
Speaker 8: at Marie La Flores just just just good people that
Speaker 8: you know, stay you know, staying in my heart, you know,
Speaker 8: always thinking about them. You know, I still get birthday
Speaker 8: messages from from summon them and a few of them
Speaker 8: reached out to me today that to say, hey, good
Speaker 8: luck tonight. And it was nice, just good people. And
Speaker 8: then in two thousand and eight, they we started planning
Speaker 8: for Pea SAC which is the Public Safety Answering the center. Uh,
Speaker 8: you know fire dispatch from uh every borough, every borough
Speaker 8: fire had their own dispatches ems. We all dispatched out
Speaker 8: of mass bit uh. But then that building actually started
Speaker 8: to collapse at one point and and they put us
Speaker 8: in trailers right right right outside the collapsing building.
Speaker 1: I remember that.
Speaker 8: And then they wind us moving us to one metro Tech. No, yeah,
Speaker 8: one metro Tech. It was in the bear Stearns building,
Speaker 8: so we weren't there for a while. An NYPD they
Speaker 8: dispatched at a one police plaza. So this peace Act
Speaker 8: that was being planned for Metro Tech, this was going
Speaker 8: to bring all the police dispatches in, all the police
Speaker 8: call takers in. We were going to bring in all
Speaker 8: the five fireburrows and all the vms. And that was
Speaker 8: a long project. You know, we were looking at this
Speaker 8: different dispatch systems, phone systems, you know, we all had
Speaker 8: different computer systems. So we were trying to figure out
Speaker 8: how we're going to make all this work on the
Speaker 8: one roof and played a role in that for a
Speaker 8: few years. And then that that dispatch center finally opened
Speaker 8: in twenty ten. And and now they have a second
Speaker 8: dispatch center up, a Peace Act two up in the Bronx.
Speaker 8: So I think, I don't know, is it Brooklyn and Manhattan.
Speaker 8: Brooklyn and Manhattan.
Speaker 1: We're all together now, Frank, are they?
Speaker 8: Well? Well, well, police fire, any mess dispatches altogether, but
Speaker 8: the city dispatches is separated. So we got a Brooklyn
Speaker 8: and a Bronx. One half the city is dispatched from Brooklyn.
Speaker 8: Half the city dispatch for the Bronx. For redundancy, you know,
Speaker 8: scoff a bit. We got attacked again. Any one of
Speaker 8: those buildings could you know, could take over the full
Speaker 8: city if they need to. And then in uh and
Speaker 8: then in twenty eleven, I packed it in. You know,
Speaker 8: I got married again in two thousand, So from two
Speaker 8: thousand to twenty eleven, I commuted back and forth to Pennsylvania.
Speaker 8: You know, I stood in I drove into Brooklyn. I
Speaker 8: stood in Brooklyn for four days. I had a good
Speaker 8: schedule at headquarters, so I worked four days and I
Speaker 8: was off off three days every week. And so for
Speaker 8: eleven years, I was going back and forth and I
Speaker 8: just just had enough of it. I just packed it in.
Speaker 8: And it it was hard to say goodbye, I tell you,
Speaker 8: you know, you know, you know, you get I got
Speaker 8: very emotional. You know. We had a little little going
Speaker 8: away party, little retirement thing up at headquarters, and uh,
Speaker 8: you know, you think you're coming to this job eighteen
Speaker 8: years old, you know, you know when I left, Uh
Speaker 8: you know, I don't know, it was like forty three,
Speaker 8: forty four. But uh, you know, you don't realize you grow,
Speaker 8: you grow up there and and and you know for
Speaker 8: all those years, day in and day out. You know,
Speaker 8: it's it's it's Uh, it was tough leaving. You know.
Speaker 8: I left a lot of good people behind. But still,
Speaker 8: Frank I do. I do have some friends that I
Speaker 8: keep in touch with. Uh, you know, some of them
Speaker 8: went on to some of them left well while we
Speaker 8: were still working. One of my buddies. George San Martino.
Speaker 8: He went. He became a Fairfax, UH firefighter in Fairfax County. UH.
Speaker 8: If you guys number from nine to eleven. That the
Speaker 8: picture of the Pentagon where they drank the the American
Speaker 8: flag down, that was his. Actually his fire company from
Speaker 8: Fairfax County that did that. Yeah. So so now retirement
Speaker 8: has been good. I retired. My wife was a stay
Speaker 8: at home mother. I retired, she went back to work.
Speaker 4: I don't know nice.
Speaker 8: I'm still with the radios, still flying drones, you know,
Speaker 8: I love it. Spotted some three D printing.
Speaker 4: Let's talk about this.
Speaker 6: Before you do a quick question. Did you have the
Speaker 6: nightmare when you wake up and you couldn't find you defibrillator?
Speaker 6: You know, I wake up, they can't find the gear.
Speaker 6: But in your case, was it.
Speaker 8: I used to have my dream that I had constantly
Speaker 8: and I don't I don't really don't know what it means.
Speaker 8: But I always had a dream that I he detailed
Speaker 8: me out to another station somewhere I parked my car.
Speaker 8: I didn't really didn't know where it was parked. My
Speaker 8: car didn't my tour. But when I came out at
Speaker 8: the end of the shift, I can never find my car,
Speaker 8: and I just remember like running around the city like
Speaker 8: I was lost.
Speaker 4: I've had that's.
Speaker 1: A similarity with the job.
Speaker 4: I don't know, but well it's either that or there's
Speaker 4: one way. Guys who are at the firehouse and the
Speaker 4: run and the tonels go off and they can't find
Speaker 4: their gear.
Speaker 10: They can't pretty similar dream you guys have on like hundreds.
Speaker 4: Of firemen had that same dream.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's hey, hey, Frank, you know what I wanted
Speaker 7: to answer before we talk about the the website.
Speaker 1: What did your dad ever buff out with you at all?
Speaker 7: Did you ever like come on the you know, check
Speaker 7: out the ambulet or anything like that.
Speaker 1: Did he talk about it?
Speaker 8: No? You know, my father was it was a bus
Speaker 8: driver for the city. But you know he the time
Speaker 8: I got mems, time I got onto ems. He was
Speaker 8: kind of finishing up with the EMT training. But he
Speaker 8: wasn't a He was big with the volunteers. I mean
Speaker 8: I remember like the early seventies. I remember like nineteen
Speaker 8: seventy six, you know the Bison tenn Bison tenneal the year.
Speaker 8: You know, at that time, the volunteers were big. We
Speaker 8: had Greek Point Volunteer Williamsburg volunteer on Green Avenue. I
Speaker 8: remember being in these ems, the volunteers all the time,
Speaker 8: you know, when I was younger. But yeah, no, I
Speaker 8: never he was never a buff.
Speaker 7: He he was just doing the right thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, bus driver roof. You know what they say, right,
Speaker 4: the working class man is the suckers.
Speaker 1: The part is the tough guy.
Speaker 4: You see, you know what you know, it's funny.
Speaker 8: When I was younger, I remember my mother walking me
Speaker 8: up to Green Avenue. My father was driving the Green
Speaker 8: Avenue line. My mother would walk me up to Gray Avenue.
Speaker 8: My father would come. I get on the bus with him,
Speaker 8: and I'd sit on the bus with him and I
Speaker 8: go up and down Brand Avenue.
Speaker 7: Oh ship, he did the same exact thing.
Speaker 8: And I remember, you know, if you guys remember like
Speaker 8: we used to give you paper transfers.
Speaker 1: Right, yes, yes, And I.
Speaker 8: Would love my father would bring me home stacks and
Speaker 8: his book of transfers, and I'd be ripping the transfers off,
Speaker 8: like I got like it was a big ship, you know,
Speaker 8: ripping the transfers off. And you know it's a little
Speaker 8: things like that, you know, you know, that's what we did,
Speaker 8: you know, just just just like the Bronx tale. You
Speaker 8: know you're riding the bus. You know, he rode the
Speaker 8: bus on on on Meeker Revenue, that went over to
Speaker 8: Costiasco Bridge into Queens and turned around came.
Speaker 1: Back over Webster.
Speaker 7: Yeah you had a sister too, right, Frank, your younger
Speaker 7: sister if I remember right.
Speaker 8: So my sister was two years Joanne. Uh she's in
Speaker 8: she's in the middle village, middle village, and my brother
Speaker 8: Ralph is in uh Marlborough, New Jersey. Okay, boy, yeah.
Speaker 7: Let's get into the what's that I was gonna say,
Speaker 7: my sister head, this is uh fdny fish there it is?
Speaker 6: This is it right there? Show it up, Bring a
Speaker 6: couple of those things.
Speaker 4: Close close is like where's mine?
Speaker 8: Uh so you know what, lou you know? Oh yeah yeah,
Speaker 8: showing that. Yeah. So so I'm making some some three
Speaker 8: D things. And I tell you the truth. The way
Speaker 8: it started was on Facebook. We have a few groups.
Speaker 8: We have a Green and White Foundation and the New
Speaker 8: York City E m S Memories group where a lot
Speaker 8: of the old time it's you know, New York City
Speaker 8: e m S personnel there. So you know, it's one
Speaker 8: of the first things I did when I got the
Speaker 8: three D printer was I turned the old D M
Speaker 8: S logo into a three.
Speaker 4: D little model, you know.
Speaker 8: So I did the E M S logo, I did
Speaker 8: the the E M S paramedic logo, and then uh,
Speaker 8: you know, then I did the fire versions of it.
Speaker 8: I got the uh, the fire paramedic logo, the depatch
Speaker 8: with the on it and uh and then of course
Speaker 8: my Frankie the fishes after fishes. So yeah, so we
Speaker 8: never got back to the logo.
Speaker 1: You got to do that.
Speaker 8: Over time, my logo started appearing on all kinds of
Speaker 8: flight apartment documents, and now that's the logo that they
Speaker 8: put on all the vehicles. So when you now, when
Speaker 8: you guys look at vehicles, when.
Speaker 10: You see that.
Speaker 7: Money logo, Guys, let me say I sent you two
Speaker 7: pictures with the truck, like the actual I think it
Speaker 7: was nine truck.
Speaker 1: I don't know, we have both.
Speaker 6: You have nine and forty three.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's right, that's that's Frankie's uh flame, right, that.
Speaker 4: Would make a stink paid.
Speaker 14: Yeah, Now you're gonna stop looking at logos and you're
Speaker 14: gonna see the round flame.
Speaker 8: You go, that's that's frank right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, bro.
Speaker 8: Yeah, So you know, so I be so. I was
Speaker 8: doing some E M s uh stuff.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 8: Uh, I got some friends n y p D. I
Speaker 8: did the n y p D logo E s U logo.
Speaker 4: Oh where is my.
Speaker 6: I don't have that with him?
Speaker 5: He's like, if you go to.
Speaker 8: Uh f d N my fish dot com, Uh, that'll
Speaker 8: push you over to Etsy where I have a little
Speaker 8: store where anybody's looking for anything. If somebody wants something
Speaker 8: custom made, I can do company company stuff. Just shoot
Speaker 8: me an email at f d N my fish at
Speaker 8: gmail dot com. Uh use a coupon cold Code of
Speaker 8: Salty for fifteen, very generous man.
Speaker 1: Christmas is coming.
Speaker 5: That's right.
Speaker 4: A little bit.
Speaker 7: Yeah, you post it up tomorrow on the Instagram too.
Speaker 7: I'll post it up to the effect rank.
Speaker 8: Yeah so and uh so so. Yeah, that's it. And
Speaker 8: I got one more story for you. Uh. I got
Speaker 8: the best license plate in Pennsylvania. Uh. And a lot
Speaker 8: of people when they see this license plate, they can't
Speaker 8: understand that how I got this plate? Uh? You know,
Speaker 8: this was like an illegal plate. You couldn't have anything
Speaker 8: like this in New York. They blocked out a lot
Speaker 8: of this stuff.
Speaker 6: Let's see here you go. I was waiting for the
Speaker 6: delivery for you.
Speaker 8: Well, yeah, F the N Y and you never give
Speaker 8: that one up. I would never give it up. And
Speaker 8: let me tell you something. I've gotten pulled over a
Speaker 8: few times by some state troopers here and some local cops,
Speaker 8: and they go, they pull working and they go, what,
Speaker 8: what's what kind of who are your register? Who's this registered?
Speaker 5: That?
Speaker 8: I said, it's mine, my personal vehicle. For some reason,
Speaker 8: when they type in f D and Y in some
Speaker 8: of the police computer systems, f D and Y by
Speaker 8: itself doesn't come up. And and they telling me that
Speaker 8: when they put in f D and Y they're getting
Speaker 8: like all kinds of other FD and Y stuff. You know,
Speaker 8: maybe somebody has you know, f D and Y two
Speaker 8: eighty eight fd and Y one FDN Y nine to
Speaker 8: one one. But for some reason, like my plate doesn't
Speaker 8: come up.
Speaker 1: You're under the radar, baby.
Speaker 5: Right, yeah?
Speaker 8: And and yeah we were. We were on our way
Speaker 8: home from New York one one time, because we're always
Speaker 8: back and forth to New York and me and my
Speaker 8: wife and the kids, and the cop pulled me over
Speaker 8: and he's like, you know, I had to play over
Speaker 8: because your plate didn't come up. I guess it caught
Speaker 8: me on a plate reader and I don't know what
Speaker 8: it said that. They thought it was like fake plates something.
Speaker 8: I said, No, that's my plate.
Speaker 4: Fish yeah, fish, yeah.
Speaker 1: I told you about the old school tip.
Speaker 4: Right, yeah, I have it right here, old school tip.
Speaker 8: What could on?
Speaker 1: Hold on?
Speaker 4: Hold on?
Speaker 1: We got to set you up, Frank, you just wanted
Speaker 1: to make sure that he had it. I don't remember
Speaker 1: if I told him or that.
Speaker 6: I may have missed that, but anyway, I have it.
Speaker 6: Is it is it about that time, It is that time,
Speaker 6: It is time for here we go.
Speaker 4: They you away.
Speaker 1: All right, fancy taken away?
Speaker 8: All right? My tip is never let the door close
Speaker 8: behind you. Prop it open with the stat chair. Always
Speaker 8: have a way out. And uh Steve Gregory's fame famous quote,
Speaker 8: no good deed goes unpunished. It's true.
Speaker 4: Looks like you lived it.
Speaker 1: You live.
Speaker 7: You guys are making millions of dollars. The FD should
Speaker 7: know your patch. I mean, what the hell is going
Speaker 7: on here?
Speaker 4: Have a part like Louis, they would never get away
Speaker 4: with that ship.
Speaker 1: Bro right on him.
Speaker 7: I get right on him, like dude, lou check this
Speaker 7: guy out. He's trying to sell our shirt. Like you know,
Speaker 7: our logo or something like this. Two minutes later, I
Speaker 7: got the guy's email.
Speaker 1: I'm calling him. I got his number. You need a bulldog.
Speaker 4: I have a You have a shadow of you before
Speaker 4: I get to this one, because we have a line
Speaker 4: of dud.
Speaker 1: Go ahead, I think I have one, but go ahead.
Speaker 4: Okay, I have Connecticut firefighter dies. The guy sent me
Speaker 4: ray nine four nine one three blows. The article of
Speaker 4: the death of five firefighter's death would be nice if
Speaker 4: you lose you for five bells?
Speaker 1: All right?
Speaker 4: Weathersfield five fighter die while battling of brush fire in
Speaker 4: Lamentation Mountain on Tuesday after his ut U TV. They
Speaker 4: were operating on a steep rocky incline rollover official set.
Speaker 4: So it's five fighter who died was ident fight as
Speaker 4: by Meriton police late Tuesday night at sixty six year
Speaker 4: old Robert Sharkovich, who's also retired Hartford firefighter. So dying
Speaker 4: in the lane of duty. We're gonna give my man
Speaker 4: here the five bells rest in peace. I'm gonna reach over,
Speaker 4: all right, ruf epontamus, what do you got?
Speaker 6: So?
Speaker 7: Also, FDNY Engine forty two up in the Bronx is
Speaker 7: having the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary is actually coming
Speaker 7: up November eighth, and they have a website. They're trying
Speaker 7: to raise some money for their centennial. There one hundred
Speaker 7: and fifty anniversary and the website is engine forty two
Speaker 7: No truck dot com. Check it out Engine forty two.
Speaker 7: They're celebrating their one hundred and fiftieth anniversary. It's on
Speaker 7: November eighth. They're just selling some merchandise. They wanted to
Speaker 7: see if you guys, if we would share it for
Speaker 7: them to make a couple of bucks for their nice
Speaker 7: not a centennial, I guess whatever it's.
Speaker 4: Called, right, So, like I said, next week, we are
Speaker 4: going to play a tape show. We're gonna be doing
Speaker 4: the history with hash Hagen on Doctor Archer. So check
Speaker 4: that out. It's a little sample. I guarantee you watch that.
Speaker 4: You want to go over to the salty wire dot com.
Speaker 4: Oh gons, we got to play the quick commercial. I'm sorry, buddy.
Speaker 6: Oh you're glad you said something that was all right?
Speaker 4: We have to have two short please even before we
Speaker 4: get to the fishing coefficient. Cut it off.
Speaker 5: Okay, here we go.
Speaker 15: Need a new floor for your fire station. Choose an
Speaker 15: Armor Tough interlocking flooring system to cover your aging, stained
Speaker 15: crack concrete or a POxy floor. Armor Tough has been
Speaker 15: around for nearly twenty years and has proven to be
Speaker 15: the best choice and renovating your station's floors, covering nearly
Speaker 15: six hundred floors across the country. Proudly made in America,
Speaker 15: Armor Touff comes with a lifetime warranty and are usually
Speaker 15: installed in one or two days, depending on the size
Speaker 15: of your station, with virtually no disruption in your station's operation.
Speaker 15: Our system is guaranteed from chipping, cracking, peeling, breaking, or staining.
Speaker 15: The tiles are stayed resistant and impervious to chemicals or
Speaker 15: volatiers that are used in the fire service damage one.
Speaker 6: All Are you ready? You got a health and safety tip?
Speaker 4: Yes? I do have one off the top of my dome.
Speaker 6: Okay, here we go.
Speaker 15: The First Responder Center for Excellence is a not for
Speaker 15: profit organization dedicated to protecting their lives and live glihoods
Speaker 15: of first responders. Their education and research initiatives aim to
Speaker 15: bring greater awareness and understanding the challenges to the health, safety,
Speaker 15: and well being of firefighters, EMS personnel, and other first
Speaker 15: responders too. They are an affiliate of the National Fallen
Speaker 15: Firefighter Foundations.
Speaker 4: Okay, so the old school tip. Tonight I went for
Speaker 4: my medical and one thing I talked to the doctor, uh,
Speaker 4: is that she said that nine out of ten guys
Speaker 4: come in there and they're dehydrated. You're not drinking enough water,
Speaker 4: especially if you're an active guy. But even if you're not,
Speaker 4: you should be drinking enough water because dehydration can lead
Speaker 4: to many of the wobbles. Absolutely, mister Dematto, it.
Speaker 8: Comes another birthday present for you, Frankie, to fix some man.
Speaker 6: Do you know what that movie is? Frank Please tell
Speaker 6: me you know what movie that is? You never heard
Speaker 6: of Wise Guys with Danny DeVito, Joe.
Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever seen Joey.
Speaker 6: Uh, I'm familiar, but and it was Frankie the fixer
Speaker 6: was in the movie Big Fat Guy.
Speaker 1: Now he's gonna have to watch it. I'm gonna have to.
Speaker 6: Hell, I'm sorry, I keep playing them and somebody will
Speaker 6: recognize it?
Speaker 1: Is it funny?
Speaker 6: Oh God?
Speaker 4: Watch it now?
Speaker 1: Coming on? Man, it was a pleasure website.
Speaker 4: Order some Christmas gifts. It comes here quick. What's the
Speaker 4: turnaround time, frank that these guys have well it depends,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 8: Uh, normally I got a one day turnaround time. See
Speaker 8: what happens after the show if I get too many orders, Uh,
Speaker 8: just a few days, you know.
Speaker 4: All right.
Speaker 7: The custom thing is I think us time, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's gonna take a little bit of time.
Speaker 4: So basically you can do anybody's patch if they send
Speaker 4: it to you, right.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, yeah, if they If if somebody wants to
Speaker 8: the custom, let them email me first, because you know,
Speaker 8: the three D printing, I can't do like real fine
Speaker 8: little details, you know, that's something simple. Uh, you know,
Speaker 8: I could probably, I could probably do most of the stuff.
Speaker 8: But yeah, just shoot me an email with the logo
Speaker 8: and I'll let you know right away.
Speaker 4: Make sure you're up charge a little bit. We got
Speaker 4: to make all those logos you never got paid for.
Speaker 1: The f d N y Fish f d n y
Speaker 1: Fish at gmail dot com.
Speaker 4: All right, that's my email, right, Okay, very good, guys,
Speaker 4: enjoy next week. The following week, I think we have
Speaker 4: leave right in the thirty fires or something, yes, correct, correct,
Speaker 4: I don't know where we're going, somewhere in the country,
Speaker 4: all right, poppy Halloween, guys, have a great day, have
Speaker 4: a good weekend. Be safe like always Day low Ago.
Speaker 1: All right, boys, we'll see it. The big one. Frank
Speaker 1: was a pleasure. Brother again.
Speaker 8: Thank you, Thank you guys.
Speaker 6: Good night everyone.
Speaker 5: Take care,