Speaker 1: Disclaimer. We'd like to know before the start of this
Speaker 1: interview that the opinions about to be expressed by the
Speaker 1: guest of tonight's Getting Salty Experience Podcast are that of
Speaker 1: the guest and do not directly or necessarily reflect the
Speaker 1: views of the host of the Getting Salty Experience Podcast.
Speaker 2: You're listening to the Getting Salty Experience podcast.
Speaker 3: Hella, Hella, my pal Rufie and Rosie their anniversary today, anniversary.
Speaker 3: I think it's twenty six years. Twenty six you see
Speaker 3: two carriedy eight. Yeah, twenty six years, Bro, amazing. Hope
Speaker 3: you're having a good time tonight. We got a good filling.
Speaker 3: We got the guy, the guy, the guy you might
Speaker 3: know him as a hold on, I beat you to
Speaker 3: that one.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you did, you did. At least it's working now.
Speaker 4: That's all the master it is.
Speaker 3: We got a Florida guy tonight. So Gons thinks that
Speaker 3: he's you know, the Cats Pajamas down in Florida, But
Speaker 3: we found a bigger than him. Bro, my friends in
Speaker 3: the Leatherhead Nation. Good to be here. There he is.
Speaker 3: He felt he couldn't get he couldn't get hello, couldn't
Speaker 3: make to get here fast enough. He fell and he
Speaker 3: bunked his head on the corner of the Yeah.
Speaker 4: Right, he was plugging in the the A O. L. Cord.
Speaker 3: You know, they said, uh, freak grub, free grub that
Speaker 3: at the card shock, you know for the bun the clubhouse,
Speaker 3: the clubhouse, free grubb.
Speaker 5: He couldn't the assisted living. I slipped in the tub.
Speaker 5: When the nurses would give me the spongeban, I.
Speaker 3: Hit it on.
Speaker 4: Do you have six with your bathers? Just she's in
Speaker 4: the background. I'm sorry, dear.
Speaker 3: We had a hell of a show last week. Man, good,
Speaker 3: good feedback. Right, did you get to see the whole show?
Speaker 5: Hike, I did not yet know the hell listen. That
Speaker 5: was your job to remind me that Tom van Essen
Speaker 5: was going to be on. Oh, speaking of I got mom,
Speaker 5: wake up, wake Up, she always puts on the show.
Speaker 5: She pulled away. Wake up, Ellie, wake up.
Speaker 3: She's I started watching your show, and before I knew it,
Speaker 3: it was morning time.
Speaker 2: We want it now.
Speaker 5: I was supposed to am I doing the public service
Speaker 5: announcement about why I got the bandage on.
Speaker 3: That's later on in the show.
Speaker 4: Fella, Okay, we'll tell you, we'll tell you, We'll see
Speaker 4: what we got, you.
Speaker 3: Know, we gotta talk about we gotta talk about get
Speaker 3: we gotta get over to the Salty Wall already for
Speaker 3: nine to ninety five a month. Give me a little
Speaker 3: sample what they're gonna get at the Salty Way.
Speaker 4: Okay, here we go.
Speaker 6: And then he starts climbing up the ladder and he's
Speaker 6: waving to people as he's going. Now that picture is
Speaker 6: I think of the earlier test, or an artist version
Speaker 6: of an earlier test. But that's what that ladder looked like,
Speaker 6: assembled and up, and then you would start putting the
Speaker 6: guys up. So there's eight men in all, pretty much
Speaker 6: like that, stagged along the line of this ladder. And
Speaker 6: for a couple of minutes, everything's fine. Nash is up
Speaker 6: in the top wave and the other guys are looking
Speaker 6: and then the ladder just starts to cant and tilt
Speaker 6: a little bit.
Speaker 4: Oops, whoopsie, And that's it a little tastious enough. We're
Speaker 4: gonna leave it.
Speaker 3: Look I want to hang on it. Look I'm hanglining.
Speaker 3: I'm dead. That's what happened to that guy. Brother. That's
Speaker 3: the first time that the city was putting on a
Speaker 3: little performance for the first aerial ladder. That they had
Speaker 3: received with an aerial ladder, and don't you know, they
Speaker 3: went up on that aerial and I'm not gonna say
Speaker 3: what happened, but it wasn't a good thing. So you
Speaker 3: get over there, and we have historical pieces like that,
Speaker 3: we have the rescue documentaries, We got the how at
Speaker 3: nine ninety five month, you're.
Speaker 5: Telling that they're telling the listeners out there to getting
Speaker 5: the backyards, dig up the coffee cans with the communion
Speaker 5: money and a bum mis for money, and.
Speaker 7: Let's go for yes, yes, exact yes, nine month right,
Speaker 7: the cans are rushed in the ground in the backyard,
Speaker 7: dig up the money and lening out loud.
Speaker 3: Nine ninety five months to get all this stuff. You
Speaker 3: get this FireWire app, you get the SALTI content, look
Speaker 3: the bills. Okay, we gotta get double D in here.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: Established in nineteen thirty and under the current ownership since
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty seven, the New Jersey Fire Equipment Company handles
Speaker 2: a complete line of fire department equipment and supplies. Headquartered
Speaker 2: in green Brook, the company operates full three M Scott
Speaker 2: Service facilities in Richfield Park and Tom's River staff by
Speaker 2: ten fully authorized Scott's certified technicians with a fleet of
Speaker 2: six fully equipped service fans. All New Jersey Fire technicians
Speaker 2: and sales representatives are active or retired firefighters, officers or
Speaker 2: chief officers, career and volunteer. They understand the business and
Speaker 2: the importance of their work. New Jersey Fire has represented
Speaker 2: Scott since Earl Scott entered the SCBA business at the
Speaker 2: end of World War II. Among other leading manufacturers represented
Speaker 2: by New Jersey Fire, Art Globe and fire Deex turnout gear,
Speaker 2: Mercedes Hose, task Force Tips and Akron Brass, Hygenol, fire hooks,
Speaker 2: Arctic Impressors, MSA, Carn's Helmets, Keemguard, Foam Alkoholite and duo
Speaker 2: safety ladders, BEA Face, shield Protectors, Truckman's Choice saws, Groves,
Speaker 2: gear racks and washer driders, Supervac Fans, RPI Streamlight, and
Speaker 2: many others. A New Jersey incorporated and based company, Sale,
Speaker 2: Health and Service are limited to the state of New Jersey.
Speaker 2: Find us now at www dot nj FE dot com.
Speaker 2: That's www. Dot nj FE dot com.
Speaker 3: Fat Daddy Ray the chat coming in guns a blazing
Speaker 3: bro you gotta love it, Yeah, Cling about her fire
Speaker 3: with rich like White on Rice.
Speaker 4: You can play around all right. Let's hear from uh
Speaker 4: lose golf buddy. This past couple they.
Speaker 3: Want golf together. Now those two like a circle, yea circle,
Speaker 3: we go.
Speaker 8: Armor Tough firehouse flooring was recently installed in Station number seven,
Speaker 8: the newest of the Dacab County fire stations in Decatur, Georgia.
Speaker 8: Meeting Deputy Chief Smith of Support Services, Vince explained that
Speaker 8: Armor Tough interlocking flooring is the only floor that is
Speaker 8: tough enough to withstand the abuse of fire apparatus along
Speaker 8: with fire personnel at a very busy station. Chief Smith explained,
Speaker 8: the flooring in all of our stations over the years
Speaker 8: gave us multiple problems. We need a floor that can
Speaker 8: last as long as the walls and the roof.
Speaker 4: That's why we.
Speaker 8: Chose Armor Tough. The installation team came from New Jersey
Speaker 8: and in three days they had completed their work without
Speaker 8: any disruption to our daily operations. We were very impressed
Speaker 8: with not only the product, but with the workmanship as well.
Speaker 8: I highly recommend Armour Tough for your station's floor. Call
Speaker 8: Vince today for a no obligation quote at nine oh
Speaker 8: eight nine one seven seven six nine seven.
Speaker 3: And we do have another commercial coming up for we're
Speaker 3: in the midst of I have to voice over the
Speaker 3: waiting on me. It's my bad. Yeah, so we'll get
Speaker 3: it out there, all right, So let's do Oh you
Speaker 3: know what you are, right, bro? It's not Paula Agnes
Speaker 3: and I'm like, hey, when you're right. All right, let's
Speaker 3: go up Bermuda Bahama.
Speaker 4: You could tell that this guy's retired for sure.
Speaker 3: You can tell you from Florida. Hold on.
Speaker 4: Ship, I'll be ready.
Speaker 3: Here's the outfit coordinator for the Miami Dade fight upontent.
Speaker 4: He loves that, laughing his asshole. All right, Well, welcome
Speaker 4: to the stage everyone, I mean Dave's own retired fire chief,
Speaker 4: Chief double D Dave down.
Speaker 3: Double D in the house. Hello, Hello, welcome to the
Speaker 3: show there, Chief double D from Florida. Thanks for having
Speaker 3: met Florida style. You got the fire trucks down there,
Speaker 3: you got the palm trees. Nice, got it all in
Speaker 3: a little Mohito ah, little Jamison and ginger Ah. Before
Speaker 3: we get off on a silly little way, we gotta
Speaker 3: get patriotic, Yes, sir, here we go.
Speaker 2: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States
Speaker 2: of America and to the Republic, for which it stands,
Speaker 2: One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.
Speaker 4: Darren p loves the shirt. Look at that shirt when
Speaker 4: you you're working your way all the way through the ranks.
Speaker 4: And the Mammy Date, Mommy Dade Fight Apartment. You get that,
Speaker 4: You get a mug. You got.
Speaker 3: It's a share of mug. Thanks for making it all
Speaker 3: the way through the chief an apartment for trying out loud. Right,
Speaker 3: that's it all right, before we get the Chief department,
Speaker 3: we had to wind it back a little fella. Tell
Speaker 3: us about where you're from originally or raised in South Florida.
Speaker 3: Grew up in little city called Laughter Hill in Broward County,
Speaker 3: so just north of Dade County. So was there like
Speaker 3: about three houses down there when you what was down there?
Speaker 3: It was a lot more rural than it is today,
Speaker 3: for sure.
Speaker 9: A lot of orange groves, a lot of cow pastures,
Speaker 9: and you know, it's really really grown over the years.
Speaker 9: But yeah, absolutely, I've seen a lot of change.
Speaker 3: Really.
Speaker 9: So where were your parents from Florida to a weddy
Speaker 9: so interesting? My mom is from Canada. In fact, she
Speaker 9: never became a US citizen. She was a Canadian citizen
Speaker 9: throughout came down here in fifty eight, I believe met
Speaker 9: my dad. My dad was grew up in Louisiana but
Speaker 9: lived in Florida probably since his twenties.
Speaker 3: And so that's was a real I knew this would
Speaker 3: be a hit. I love it's like a lightning rod,
Speaker 3: this beauty.
Speaker 4: He's from Canada too, So you know, you guys got.
Speaker 3: There, you go, there, you go Canada. Yeah. Uh so
Speaker 3: was your data finding or what would you know? Nothing?
Speaker 3: I had no firefighting in my family. Uh never even
Speaker 3: thought about it. Uh never. I didn't really know what
Speaker 3: I was gonna do. And uh I was in high school.
Speaker 9: Uh I guess Yeah, buddy of mine saw something in
Speaker 9: the paper or whatever about this fire explorer program in
Speaker 9: the town we lived in, later Hill, and uh, let's
Speaker 9: check it out. And uh literally, like the first day,
Speaker 9: I mean, I was just hooked.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 9: I was always in sports growing up, and it just
Speaker 9: seemed like it was just like sports. You know, there's
Speaker 9: a locker room, the guys are all breaking each other's balls,
Speaker 9: You're depending on each other. And I was like, this
Speaker 9: is what I gotta do, Like this is for me
Speaker 9: right here that's good. My decision had been made and
Speaker 9: it just grew from there.
Speaker 3: So what year we talking here?
Speaker 9: When with the Explorers? Probably the late seventies, seventy eight
Speaker 9: or so, seventy seven seventy eight.
Speaker 3: The pre shows Hank and Chief Double D told him like, hey,
Speaker 3: you know back of the eighties, Hank was putting the
Speaker 3: rut of the table book on in seventy nine. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: falling out their pockets. Did you have any So did
Speaker 3: you and your buddy do it? Did he wind up
Speaker 3: being a fireman? Dude? So he never became a fire nah?
Speaker 9: I mean he he he went for a little while,
Speaker 9: but no, he never he never became a fireman. And
Speaker 9: I was hooked, and uh, you know, fast forwarding, yeah,
Speaker 9: but not fast forwarding. But I remember when I was
Speaker 9: promoted a captain. Somebody asked my dad if he was proud,
Speaker 9: And Dad's proud. I'm relieved that this firefighters thing worked
Speaker 9: out because you had we'll plan B.
Speaker 4: You know some people have that they have no plan
Speaker 4: A B C.
Speaker 3: Chief that I teach my kids plan A plan B execute.
Speaker 3: That's that if you would ask them some up, your dad,
Speaker 3: I'd be plan A plan B execute. I tell him
Speaker 3: that until I'm nauseous. There you go. So far it
Speaker 3: hasn't worked. He's doing. Think about it though, how many
Speaker 3: I told you it's to get in the fucking show?
Speaker 3: Who's fucking into that it's gonna go down? Yeah? What's
Speaker 3: that is funny? Is it? Is it down now? Or
Speaker 3: go go get it in quick?
Speaker 5: How many guys have had the same story as the
Speaker 5: Chief where they really didn't have a plan and someone
Speaker 5: said just take this test or or or it was.
Speaker 3: An explorer program.
Speaker 5: The thing with the Fire Service is if you give
Speaker 5: it a shot, of the people give it a shot,
Speaker 5: love it and and and end up excelling at you
Speaker 5: know what, at the profession they've chosen.
Speaker 3: And that's the same with the Chief.
Speaker 5: And like a lot of guys have been and they've
Speaker 5: hit the chief shrank and they've had great careers, and
Speaker 5: back when they were eighteen nineteen, they didn't know what
Speaker 5: they were going to do.
Speaker 3: And we had a lot of the old timers come
Speaker 3: on and say we asked them that question, you know,
Speaker 3: how did you do a job? Oh? You know, I
Speaker 3: was sitting on a stupid day and my neighbor from
Speaker 3: a Coross street came over and just end this application
Speaker 3: to take this test. I can't tell you how many
Speaker 3: times people do that.
Speaker 4: They say that on the shot countless times on the show.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, out, all right, So what's the next step?
Speaker 3: Is it a volley? Is it paid down there? Yeah?
Speaker 9: So, you know, I when I got out of high school,
Speaker 9: you know, down here, you've got to be a good
Speaker 9: fire school before you get hired by a fire department,
Speaker 9: a lot of fire departments. So I went to fire school.
Speaker 9: I mean back then it was only six weeks and
Speaker 9: I've been an explorer at Latter Hill, but I moved
Speaker 9: over to Sunrise, which was a neighboring community, and uh,
Speaker 9: because they had a training program and a lot of
Speaker 9: stuff going on. So once I became a certified firefighter,
Speaker 9: I applied for a couple of fire departments in the area,
Speaker 9: and uh, Sunrise picked me up.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 9: And back then they needed two firefighters and they tested
Speaker 9: two of us. You know, now they need two firefighters.
Speaker 9: They test five thousand. But so I got on right away.
Speaker 3: Wow, so they needed to they tested to you, bet, bro,
Speaker 3: only you two guys in that tick. Yep, that's it.
Speaker 3: That's it. So who are these guys that you had
Speaker 3: mentioned three guys, Marc Celetti, Dave Casey, and Chris.
Speaker 9: Yeah, so you know those were the you know, everybody
Speaker 9: has those those mentors right away, right. So Mark Ciletti
Speaker 9: was kind of the advisor to the Explorers in Later
Speaker 9: Hill who went on to become the chief of Department
Speaker 9: in Latter Hill. Uh, Dave Casey and Chris Nebling were
Speaker 9: at Sunrise and have become lifelong friends and uh, and
Speaker 9: they were the advisors. They were the ones that really
Speaker 9: set the tone.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 9: They're the ones that you know, taught me how to
Speaker 9: embrace the fire service and love the tradition and and uh,
Speaker 9: you know everything about it, you know, and I tried
Speaker 9: to carry that with me the whole time.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 9: Yeah, so, uh, you know you've got in the on
Speaker 9: my left hand side is Dave Casey, on my right
Speaker 9: is Mark Siletti, and on the outside is Chris Neve.
Speaker 9: So these are really the guys that set my course,
Speaker 9: uh and helped me, you know established you know, I
Speaker 9: look back now and things even I did its chief
Speaker 9: of the Department, and a lot of it came from
Speaker 9: just stuff I picked up from these guys.
Speaker 3: And so there's always that one guy right, it was influential. Yeah,
Speaker 3: carea you know what I'm saying. Yeah, well, when I
Speaker 3: was that one guy you gravitate too and he sets
Speaker 3: you off in a certain direction. I don't want to
Speaker 3: mention any names here, but you know, in my career
Speaker 3: there were many more.
Speaker 9: Right when I made chief Department, I had twenty five
Speaker 9: coins made, challenge coins numbered, and I made it a
Speaker 9: point to give them out to those people that you know,
Speaker 9: were the reason why I was where I was was today.
Speaker 9: You know that that I didn't do anything by myself.
Speaker 9: And did I tell you that I collect challenge coins?
Speaker 3: I don't. Yeah, well I might have something for you,
Speaker 3: maybe maybe when I come down in your free house
Speaker 3: that you offered to me. There you go, buddy, you
Speaker 3: can leave a challenge point on the bed. But I
Speaker 3: like a chocolate you know, yeah pillow. My wife would
Speaker 3: be like, what the fuck is that? When I give
Speaker 3: it to you.
Speaker 9: You got to look at real closely though, because before
Speaker 9: I retired, I had four hundred coins made. And uh,
Speaker 9: I mean it's like a week before my retirement and
Speaker 9: I sent a picture to a buddy shows it to
Speaker 9: his wife and she goes, they spelled rescue wrong. R
Speaker 9: E s q U E in the challenge on this way.
Speaker 3: I'm like, that's cana.
Speaker 9: So I've got I've got a whole box of those
Speaker 9: that I give to you know, the foreign visitors.
Speaker 3: And then I said something, bro, yeah it would be
Speaker 3: like design like one of those coins that have to
Speaker 3: get printeds q A. Yeah. How big was the what
Speaker 3: your sunrise? How big was Sunrise fight apartment? You got there?
Speaker 9: You know back then it was it was a small department,
Speaker 9: three stations, probably about seventy guys total. You know, everything
Speaker 9: most everything down here, like we're gonzo is this fire rescue?
Speaker 9: So it's both fire you know, firefighters and paramedics you
Speaker 9: do every all the jobs together.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 9: So it wasn't a huge department, and you know it
Speaker 9: was great. It was a lot of young people. I
Speaker 9: mean you hung out on your days off together and
Speaker 9: and you know we're all kind of around the same age.
Speaker 9: And uh you know it was mostly uh mostly a
Speaker 9: retirement community. Uh and and kind of a residential community,
Speaker 9: so a lot of em oh yeah, a lot of ms,
Speaker 9: A lot of retirees you know that come down from
Speaker 9: your neck out of woods and so but you know,
Speaker 9: just working with different individuals. You know, it was a
Speaker 9: good it was a good learning experience.
Speaker 3: You know, we look back.
Speaker 9: I was actually just talking to Dave Casey and there's
Speaker 9: ten fire chiefs that came out of Sunrise, that little department.
Speaker 9: Ten fire chiefs have really included myself across the state.
Speaker 9: So I don't know what they did, but it was
Speaker 9: a pretty cool place.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, so you had seventy guys. How many firehouses
Speaker 3: in Sunrise? There were three three stations, right, and so
Speaker 3: you had you know, you had an engine each station,
Speaker 3: a rescue for us, a rescue is an EMS unit
Speaker 3: and one truck and they ran three on an engine.
Speaker 3: So I rode the tailboard backstep. You know, there was
Speaker 3: no jump seats or anything, so you rode the backstep
Speaker 3: by yourself. And the rescues had two people, you know,
Speaker 3: two firefighters that were paramedics, and I think the truck,
Speaker 3: I think the truck only had two people, two guys.
Speaker 3: A lot with less high rolling like so when you
Speaker 3: got a hang, you were riding the tailboard in two
Speaker 3: eighty right for a short time. Yeah, at least you
Speaker 3: had somebody to talk to about there. This guy's my
Speaker 3: himself back there. Yeah, I remember got ja. I don't
Speaker 3: know if he smoke up there, we might have something.
Speaker 9: I remember one of the one station. The station was
Speaker 9: a drive through, and so the engine pulled out the back.
Speaker 9: The truck was there, and the rescue was there, and
Speaker 9: uh so we were we were uh the station was
Speaker 9: open for voting. It was a voting day, right, so
Speaker 9: the truck stalls are open, the voting is taking place.
Speaker 9: We get a call, fire call. So I go out
Speaker 9: to the back of the engine. I'm putting my pants
Speaker 9: on and put my coat on. You I purposely want
Speaker 9: to get everything on before I jump on the truck.
Speaker 9: Truck starts up and all of a sudden it just
Speaker 9: pulls away and I'm standing there. So now I'm running
Speaker 9: through the truck stall, you know, with my gear by
Speaker 9: all these voters trying to catch the truck as it
Speaker 9: comes around the front of around here.
Speaker 3: You forgot me.
Speaker 4: Sounds like a scene in the back drafty.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, he was doing it. Dave was doing it.
Speaker 3: Doing it.
Speaker 9: So what did you catch any work there? At least
Speaker 9: when you now, you know, a couple couple of apartment fires.
Speaker 9: I can remember nothing of any significance. You know, the
Speaker 9: construction here all you know, concrete block and cements of
Speaker 9: apartmental lives, terra cotta roofs. Yeah, some residential Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 9: that's it.
Speaker 3: And you know a lot of fire alarms things like that,
Speaker 3: but a lot of ems, A lot, yeah, a lot
Speaker 3: of ms. And you remember what you were making back
Speaker 3: in eighty two. I do. I do. When I was
Speaker 3: going through my files, my first year, I made nine
Speaker 3: four hundred. Don't spend that all one place. Yeah? What
Speaker 3: about you, Hank? Do you remember you made your first
Speaker 3: year in seventy nine? Look, you know I did.
Speaker 5: It was on my when you get the print out
Speaker 5: from you know, Social Security. Uh huh, I want to say,
Speaker 5: it was like, I don't know, fourteen to fifteen grand.
Speaker 3: Right, I just thought, well his, his, Uh what did
Speaker 3: you say? It was seven thousand or nine thousand, nine thousand.
Speaker 3: Well that went a lot further down of Florida than
Speaker 3: it does up in New York, that's for sure. Right.
Speaker 9: I remember we had lost a lot of guys to
Speaker 9: some other departments because we were so underpaid, and the
Speaker 9: city actually brought in some auditing firm and they actually
Speaker 9: said you got to pay your firefighters for and so
Speaker 9: the city came forward with a three year contract of
Speaker 9: ten percent raised per year ten. So you know, it's
Speaker 9: amazing how you're life.
Speaker 3: Here's the apartment that wasn't Miami at that point, right, No, no, no,
Speaker 3: Sunrise was just a department, right, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: I would think the bigger city, you know, I don't
Speaker 3: know what.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they might have been making more than that to start.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, not that it was any big number, believe me. No, no, no,
Speaker 5: I took a pay cut when I left pan Am
Speaker 5: to become flireman. But you know, no regrets. But yeah,
Speaker 5: it was you know, civil service. Listen, we all did
Speaker 5: it because we learned to love it later. But at
Speaker 5: the time it was a pension and health benefits.
Speaker 3: Yeah you know.
Speaker 9: But yeah, when they offered the ten, ten and ten,
Speaker 9: I'll never forget being at a union meeting. And it's
Speaker 9: amazing how your life changes over the years.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 9: I'm the young guy a bunch of young guys, and
Speaker 9: I remember this older guy on the department saying, look, man,
Speaker 9: instead of taking the full ten, why don't we put
Speaker 9: more towards our retirement our insurance, because we're paying into
Speaker 9: the retirement young guys, you know, And of course when
Speaker 9: we got when we got the raised and I went
Speaker 9: out and bottom Mustang GT and you.
Speaker 4: Know, alastic rookie mistake. Yeah.
Speaker 9: And then and then you know, it's funny because my
Speaker 9: last time as fire chief at Miami Dade, you know,
Speaker 9: negotiating the last contract I was working on, we were
Speaker 9: trying to work through some things, and I said, why
Speaker 9: don't we put some towards insurance retirement?
Speaker 3: Like that's bullshit?
Speaker 9: And I'm like, you know, my life has come full circle.
Speaker 9: I think a little different now on the back end.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you had the young guys say, hey, Jeef,
Speaker 3: shut the funk up, man. Yeah, that's for sure.
Speaker 5: We're going We're still going through that with that d
Speaker 5: n Y right now. Right there's still you know, there's
Speaker 5: a big court case going on. Yeah yeah, medical insurance
Speaker 5: trying to change it. So yeah, it's a big deal.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I heard the negotiating on the internet to give
Speaker 3: the retired guys some good internet. You know, man, I
Speaker 3: got you.
Speaker 10: Then, you know what, right, maybe maybe you'll send me
Speaker 10: an envelope with a few shekels so I can upgrade
Speaker 10: my WiFi.
Speaker 3: I've been saying that for three years.
Speaker 4: I'm still waiting.
Speaker 3: What's tomorrow. She's not She's not it tomorrow Tuesday. I'm
Speaker 3: sending an envelope out to you, bro, you're getting there.
Speaker 3: You can't use that just for the fact that I
Speaker 3: take that one away from you. Man. H So you
Speaker 3: go from eighty eight there ninety when you get promoted, Uh,
Speaker 3: hold on it, yeah, eleven in Cattle City now Miami Gardens.
Speaker 3: Well yeah, backup. So I was at Sunrise. I left
Speaker 3: there and oh I did cut that. You go to
Speaker 3: Metro Date now Miami Date. Yep, Now, how does that work?
Speaker 3: You just go there and take your application, go over
Speaker 3: there and try to get Holli there. Now.
Speaker 9: So they there was a point of time that they
Speaker 9: needed firefighter paramedics, and so they off they gave preference
Speaker 9: to firefighter paramedics, which was unheard of for Miami Dade
Speaker 9: because usually they just open it up and it's you know,
Speaker 9: thousands of people apply. And so there was a couple
Speaker 9: of guys at Sunrise that were familiar. I didn't really
Speaker 9: know anything about Miami Dade. I knew it was a
Speaker 9: bigger city, and I knew I was kind of bored
Speaker 9: at Sunrise. I wanted more action. I wanted to you
Speaker 9: know have more, so uh you know, I said, okay, well,
Speaker 9: well you know, I'll give it a try and put
Speaker 9: my application in and uh. The funny thing is the
Speaker 9: same time that they were did the test, the same
Speaker 9: time they were doing the physical ability was the week
Speaker 9: of my wedding. So I always told my wife I
Speaker 9: lost a year seniority because I had to go into
Speaker 9: the next class. Yeah, and I did for you, honey, Yeah,
Speaker 9: I lost the whole year seniority.
Speaker 3: Oh wait, we missed the pot. Wait a minute, we
Speaker 3: can't go back. We got to go back. That's where
Speaker 3: you met your wife, right, yeah, five in two she was,
Speaker 3: she was she had a year seniority on me. So
Speaker 3: she was saying, I hope she told you to get
Speaker 3: your ass in that stake, you John Bop. And then
Speaker 3: she said that she still says that today, get your
Speaker 3: ass in that sack. That's right, you met her. She
Speaker 3: was in the same fireounce as you. We were partners. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah. But what's the signal that you put an
Speaker 3: upside down pineapple on the.
Speaker 4: Ring, that's only for the boat, that's only.
Speaker 3: You put a halligan on the other side of the ring,
Speaker 3: that that's the signal.
Speaker 9: No, I mean, like I told you, a lot of
Speaker 9: us used to hang out on our days off. And
Speaker 9: it's funny because we'd go to bars and I'd be
Speaker 9: picking out guys for her and she'd be picking out
Speaker 9: gals for me, and you know, it just this went
Speaker 9: on for a while and then I don't know, we
Speaker 9: were the last two left, so we said, let's get married. No,
Speaker 9: we just we started dating. So which was you know,
Speaker 9: that was pretty challenging because it was a small place, right, yes,
Speaker 9: same bunk. You know, we actually had bunk.
Speaker 3: Beds there, but.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it was a communal bunk with a.
Speaker 3: Big open door. Yeah, no, no, it wasn't.
Speaker 9: But yeah, so but you know, we were scared to
Speaker 9: death right because we didn't know what the city was
Speaker 9: going to do. They'd never had that before.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 9: It was funny because my wife was the first female,
Speaker 9: so they didn't know what to do with a woman.
Speaker 3: When she came.
Speaker 9: We had to put doors in the bathroom and.
Speaker 3: You know what to do with it, right.
Speaker 9: Yeah, So then we were going to get married, we
Speaker 9: had to go see the mayor again because they never
Speaker 9: had two firefighters married and.
Speaker 3: Actually Chuck and Lowry. But then yeah, so that's where
Speaker 3: I too hot betting. Joel says, Hey, Joel, so she
Speaker 3: fell for you like a ton of breaks. That's what
Speaker 3: we're gonna say. We're gonna go Yeah, that's that must
Speaker 3: be it, right, So you're do anything. And she's like,
Speaker 3: you gotta have it, man, don't let him fool you.
Speaker 4: She she being a very big wig down here too.
Speaker 11: Man.
Speaker 3: She really thank you for that. She ended. She just
Speaker 3: retired as a fire chief in the family.
Speaker 4: The double pension forget that.
Speaker 3: Yeah everywhere, that's what double pension. Man, get my wife
Speaker 3: in the fire service. That's that's my famous Freddie laf
Speaker 3: Amina story that I was. I was a chief.
Speaker 9: I don't think I was chief of the apartment yet.
Speaker 3: And uh she was a chief.
Speaker 9: Neither one was chief of the apartment where she was at.
Speaker 9: And Freddie would come down here during the wintertime and
Speaker 9: and uh, we're at the dinner house. Yeah, not my house.
Speaker 9: So we're out to dinner one night, and uh, he goes, bro,
Speaker 9: I don't want to hurt your ego or anything, but
Speaker 9: you know, I was at the beach today. I saw
Speaker 9: a couple of brothers and I said, hey, you know,
Speaker 9: chief downy, And they said Yeah, she's awesome. I didn't
Speaker 9: even know who you were, so I said, yeah, she's
Speaker 9: the real chief Downy. So that that happened like today,
Speaker 9: that's what we say. She's the real chief Downy. She's
Speaker 9: the real chief.
Speaker 3: Did did the guys in the fire house know you
Speaker 3: guys are dating? Not for a while, not for a while.
Speaker 9: Did you have to listen to them at all? You
Speaker 9: have to listen to Well, I got another funny story
Speaker 9: how we got discovered. Uh, oh, we were living together
Speaker 9: and nobody knew. So down in Key West, they have
Speaker 9: the same fantasy fest right right around Halloween. It's a
Speaker 9: craziness crazy. So we decided to get We decided to
Speaker 9: go down there. And this is whatever, early mid eighties, right,
Speaker 9: And we decided to go down there, and uh, you know,
Speaker 9: you're partying all night and it was like a toe
Speaker 9: a party. We'd taken the bed sheets off from the
Speaker 9: hotel and put leaves in our head and all that,
Speaker 9: and uh, and we're out all night. In fact, that
Speaker 9: Sloppy Joe's were hanging out there. We're right out front
Speaker 9: and I'm like, man, that sounds like Jimmy Buffett. And
Speaker 9: we walk in and it's Jimmy Buffett, he's like playing
Speaker 9: in it. You know he used to live down there. Okay,
Speaker 9: uh yeah, but he he Uh So, I guess in
Speaker 9: the middle of the night, CNN's there doing the story
Speaker 9: and stuff, right, and back in the day in the
Speaker 9: fire you know, when you got up in the fire station,
Speaker 9: you flipped on CNN and uh so.
Speaker 3: They interviewed us, and here we are sucking Dave and Julie,
Speaker 3: like are they two together? Let's go what cat's out
Speaker 3: of the bag? Out out of the bag?
Speaker 5: Bro.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I don't know if I told this story, it's it's
Speaker 3: kind of similar, but not. I don't know. So I
Speaker 3: met my wife in the fire house. So she was
Speaker 3: selling double Imagy cameras and meat is to sock. She
Speaker 3: worked for a company's work say, and then she worked
Speaker 3: for Honeywell. She worked for a whole bunch of companies.
Speaker 3: So I literally ran into her and the fight. I
Speaker 3: was coming up, coming down for a run and she
Speaker 3: was visiting Hasmat and I knocked the rover right. So
Speaker 3: we become friends. We start dating, right, but we don't say.
Speaker 3: She don't want me to say anything because she don't
Speaker 3: want to think that she's getting any special treatment or whatever.
Speaker 3: I can't tell you when she comes to the firehouse.
Speaker 3: How I have to listen to these assholes, all the
Speaker 3: meeting girls coming, I'm gonna take the meet and go
Speaker 3: in the back room out.
Speaker 5: I can't.
Speaker 3: After like six months, I'm like, I can't. Well, can
Speaker 3: I please tell guys I didn't thank you? I have
Speaker 3: to listen to these assholes. I think Hank was nom kidding,
Speaker 3: getting kidding, all right, So good thing I didn't missed
Speaker 3: that spot right over there. So let's go back to
Speaker 3: Miami Day now. Yeah.
Speaker 9: So I went there and started in January of eighty eight.
Speaker 9: So my class was all firefighter paramedics. We all came
Speaker 9: from other fire departments and uh, you know great glass
Speaker 9: and and you know, did our moving around our first
Speaker 9: probation year. And then right out of probation, I got
Speaker 9: a signed to Station eleven in Carroll City. It's called
Speaker 9: Miami Gardens now, it's where Dolphin Stadium is in the
Speaker 9: Dolphin training camp. Real busy area.
Speaker 3: Ten thousand runs a year. Yeah, yeah, so its bus
Speaker 3: How many units in that state?
Speaker 9: That's a rescue again, that's an EMS unit, a rescue,
Speaker 9: an aeriel and a chief.
Speaker 3: I missed it. How many a rescue, an aerial and
Speaker 3: a chief, So three trucks, So you were on the
Speaker 3: aerial or the rescue rescue? I was. I was on
Speaker 3: the rescue, yep, and spent my whole time. Ten thousand
Speaker 3: runs was between all the companies correct correct?
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, yeah, the rescue did about sixty five hundred
Speaker 9: of them. It stayed busy, Yeah, which was a shock
Speaker 9: to me because I left Sunrise and they were running
Speaker 9: about three thousand calls a year the whole city.
Speaker 3: The whole city.
Speaker 9: Yeah, my tructure running twice that. At what point we're like, hmm,
Speaker 9: maybe this wasn't a great idea. As soon as I
Speaker 9: got there, I loved it.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 9: The only thing that hit me hard was there was
Speaker 9: it was definitely older firefighters. So it wasn't that young.
Speaker 9: Everybody's the same age, and so that was kind of
Speaker 9: a weird feeling, but it was it was I definitely
Speaker 9: said I made the right choice.
Speaker 3: Somebody that wants to know, was Miami burning back then,
Speaker 3: like in the eighties, like it was up here.
Speaker 9: Just turn the riots, but you know, we would have
Speaker 9: our we would have fires. But I don't think it's
Speaker 9: the volume that you guys, and we didn't have that
Speaker 9: period that you had in the seventies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Chief, let me ask you a question.
Speaker 5: It could be a ten part question, but maybe somebody
Speaker 5: go go in your chief department. But you said you
Speaker 5: got hired as a member of another department.
Speaker 3: YEP.
Speaker 5: Did the majority of the hiring back then into into
Speaker 5: Miami or the Dade County was the guys from other
Speaker 5: departments putting applications in.
Speaker 3: They have their own hiring process like a civil service
Speaker 3: exam that they made a list or was it both,
Speaker 3: So they make a list, they hire both.
Speaker 9: I even to this day they hire both. So they'll
Speaker 9: hire certified firefighters and then they'll also hire classes they
Speaker 9: call non certified that have nothing just a driver's license,
Speaker 9: and then they put them through all the training. So
Speaker 9: I know, like when I was chief of department, even
Speaker 9: when I was chief of training, we would probably do
Speaker 9: about two classes of certified and one class of non certified,
Speaker 9: just because it takes so long to make a non
Speaker 9: certified get them out on the floor. For the certified
Speaker 9: firefighters it's twelve weeks. For the non certified it's nine months.
Speaker 9: So it's a lot easier to get them out on
Speaker 9: the floor.
Speaker 3: How big was Miami Dade now compared how you go?
Speaker 5: A lot?
Speaker 9: So yeah, So when I left, we had seventy one stations,
Speaker 9: twenty two hundred firefighters, about three thousand employees I had,
Speaker 9: and twenty nine So it's a county department. So it
Speaker 9: covers twenty nine cities in the county and then the
Speaker 9: unincorporated areas. So there's five cities that have their own department.
Speaker 9: City of Miami, Miami Beach, High leocorral Gables, and Kiva
Speaker 9: Skiing and the rest of the cities are covered by
Speaker 9: Miami Dae County. We cover all the airports, so Miami International,
Speaker 9: OPA LACA which is on the north, and Miami Executive
Speaker 9: on the south, the Port of Miami, the seaport, so
Speaker 9: pretty much everything from the Everglades to the ocean.
Speaker 4: Chief. Do you remember the square mileage because I can't
Speaker 4: remember what the square mileage is.
Speaker 9: Yeah, so it's just about two thousand square miles. So
Speaker 9: two thousand square miles. Yeah, it's a big it's a
Speaker 9: big place. It's it's a big place.
Speaker 3: So here's Hank's question. Did you guys have a rescue? Well,
Speaker 3: all rescues did you have a heavy rescue, you did,
Speaker 3: so we did.
Speaker 9: We had we called it a squad, but we had
Speaker 9: a one heavy rank you and we had three what
Speaker 9: you would call a squad. We would have three what
Speaker 9: we would call suppression unit, that's tech rescue. So we
Speaker 9: had three of those and then the heavy squad, and
Speaker 9: then we had a HASMAT one has MATT unit, and
Speaker 9: then five support units. You know a lot of the
Speaker 9: hasmack calls you can take care with speedy dry and
Speaker 9: a couple and some putty in a meter, right, so
Speaker 9: we would be able to put the units across the county.
Speaker 3: How long was there has mat in service? Fall? Like,
Speaker 3: when did they talk? Is?
Speaker 9: Has hasmat for us started before before the heavy rescues.
Speaker 9: Has MATT was in about the mid eighties, is when
Speaker 9: hazmat started happening here.
Speaker 3: And that happened with fdo Y too, Hank, right, what
Speaker 3: it was at eighty what? Oh? Look at that. That's
Speaker 3: the that's the squad. That's the heavy rescue. That's the squad.
Speaker 3: Thank you. That's a mighty big rig. Hey, that's a
Speaker 3: long rig, right, yeah, I mean that's what that's what
Speaker 3: the five rescue in New York City. Yeah, I think
Speaker 3: it's a similar chats. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it.
Speaker 4: Looks much longer.
Speaker 3: It does look longer to me. I don't know why.
Speaker 3: It reminds me of that ones that they had right
Speaker 3: when we became a squad with that whistling terrible that
Speaker 3: you couldn't even sit in the four sea stay it
Speaker 3: was so loud, have that rate. I never wrote in
Speaker 3: that one. I was I was out at them, but yeah,
Speaker 3: I know they weren't that well liked. No, but that's
Speaker 3: what it looks like. I mean, they have one of those,
Speaker 3: and they have what other smaller squads.
Speaker 9: So then we and then we have three uh engine
Speaker 9: companies that are like the squads rescue, So they're they're
Speaker 9: equipped with for the tech rescue and they have four
Speaker 9: technicians on there each of their units.
Speaker 3: And what do they roll on all working fires? How
Speaker 3: do they how does it work for them?
Speaker 9: They have their they have their response area that they're
Speaker 9: responsible for, and then they then they have a geographic
Speaker 9: area that they'd run on any of the tech rescues.
Speaker 3: We don't.
Speaker 9: We don't send them like you do on a on
Speaker 9: a working fire as much we're we're structured a little
Speaker 9: different like we don't have. I always said we have
Speaker 9: multiple personalities. You know, we have twenty four trucks, but
Speaker 9: they don't work like your trucks. In other words, a
Speaker 9: lot of our trucks are in stations by themselves, and
Speaker 9: it kind of depends on when you arrive in the
Speaker 9: assignment what your job is, if that makes sense, if
Speaker 9: if you know, like where I worked for a long
Speaker 9: time at Station seven, I wrote an engine, but the
Speaker 9: neighboring unit was an aerial. So the fire was in
Speaker 9: my territory, I'd be doing the engine work, and he'd
Speaker 9: support me with either the second engine or truck work.
Speaker 9: If the fire was in his territory, he'd act as
Speaker 9: an engine, you know, so because all of our areas
Speaker 9: had pumps, hose, everything else.
Speaker 3: So so he could act as an engine or a truck. Correct. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we don't, Yeah, we don't have.
Speaker 9: We have, we have we have responsibilities on the fire,
Speaker 9: but not assigned to the company, if that makes sense,
Speaker 9: and our rescues, we also use to do a lot
Speaker 9: of the truck work. In other words, they carry saw
Speaker 9: as hooks, and.
Speaker 3: So guys on the ambulance, well what they're doing then.
Speaker 9: They're all they're all firefighters. One of them is an officers.
Speaker 9: They have an officer and two firefighters. They have all
Speaker 9: their gear, s c b as and equipment. So they
Speaker 9: do they do primarily the search, the forcevill entry outside
Speaker 9: vent stuff like that.
Speaker 3: What is it? What is the manning now in Miami
Speaker 3: Dade for an engine?
Speaker 9: So every every engine, every truck has four personnel, so
Speaker 9: that'd be an officer and three firefighters, and every rescue
Speaker 9: has three personnel, an officer and two firefighters.
Speaker 3: And what about the squads? The squads have an officer
Speaker 3: and three firefighters.
Speaker 4: And what does this carry?
Speaker 3: That ahead?
Speaker 9: That that is that is an example of the most clanned,
Speaker 9: destined thing I ever did as a fire chief. That vehicle, Uh,
Speaker 9: nobody knew what we were buying. So the history behind it.
Speaker 9: You know, in Miami Dade, we're not smart enough to
Speaker 9: call a wrecker if we need it for a rescue.
Speaker 9: We have to wait for a police department police officer
Speaker 9: to come and say, yep, you got a car pinned
Speaker 9: underneath that truck, and we'll get.
Speaker 3: You a wrecker.
Speaker 9: And then we don't know what kind of wrecker's coming.
Speaker 9: And it was always a source of frustration, especially for
Speaker 9: our special ops guys, and I could remember in the
Speaker 9: nineties I worked half the time on the on our
Speaker 9: helicopter and I remember landing on the expressway. It was
Speaker 9: a young girl that had plowed underneath a semi. We
Speaker 9: had to, you know, somehow lift up the semi. Didn't
Speaker 9: have the equipment that was there, and uh, you know,
Speaker 9: watched or die before our eyes. And in the early
Speaker 9: two thousands, I was out in Los Angeles, La County.
Speaker 9: You guys had Larry Collins on here. They had gotten
Speaker 9: me a wrecker and I'm like, oh man, we got
Speaker 9: to get one of those things. And that was like
Speaker 9: back in O two and it just never happened. And
Speaker 9: when I became the chief of the department and we
Speaker 9: were starting we finally got out of some budget stress.
Speaker 9: We started hiring building out apparatus. And my chief of logistics,
Speaker 9: who was a phenomenal guy, you know, a true operator,
Speaker 9: knew what you did. He started specing this truck out
Speaker 9: with Jared Ann and I remember my budget director coming
Speaker 9: to me and going, he's going through the trucks, this
Speaker 9: is an engine, this is an area. What is this
Speaker 9: heavy rescue and recovery. I said, don't worry about it.
Speaker 3: Scott.
Speaker 9: He goes, we already have a heavy resk.
Speaker 3: I said, so how much is it?
Speaker 6: What?
Speaker 3: So they roll it out.
Speaker 9: At a conference here in Florida, our fire conference in
Speaker 9: January here in Florida, and of course it blows up
Speaker 9: all over the internet, right and he calls me and
Speaker 9: he goes, it's a fucking wreckor I go, no, it's
Speaker 9: not our wrecker, and I said, it's a it's a
Speaker 9: rescue vehicle, Scott. But we did as a sidebar, we
Speaker 9: had some issues and Larry had warned me, make sure
Speaker 9: you get with your your toe industry, your record companies,
Speaker 9: and let them know you're not going into their business.
Speaker 9: And uh, and we made it a point. When that
Speaker 9: thing came to Miami Dade, we met with our companies
Speaker 9: and our great partners and said, hey, look, we want
Speaker 9: you guys to know we're going to We're gonna still
Speaker 9: call you, but this thing is going to come out too,
Speaker 9: and whoever gets there first, we're going to pick the
Speaker 9: thing up. We're going to move the vehicle out. But
Speaker 9: I you know, we had already bought it.
Speaker 3: And I remember who brings that bonds the squad.
Speaker 9: The squad, so we had a guide to the squad.
Speaker 9: We trained everybody on the squad. I told him we're
Speaker 9: sending them to every school. They're going to go to
Speaker 9: Jaredan who built the truck. Uh, They're going to go
Speaker 9: to crane school. I mean, and these guys were it
Speaker 9: was unbelievable, right, I mean they were in their class,
Speaker 9: are picking up fire trucks, They're doing all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 9: I said, look, if that thing ever flips over, we're screwed.
Speaker 9: And I said, I want you guys to know everything
Speaker 9: about operating because it's it's a rotating crane, it's a
Speaker 9: sixty five ton crane, and it's it's overkill. I'll minute
Speaker 9: it's it's but you know what, mind me, daid money, bro,
Speaker 9: we got a we got a great price, and.
Speaker 3: Uh, I got such a volume for you, such a deal.
Speaker 3: I got that a million dollars, you know. And what's that?
Speaker 3: I got a share under a million dollars. No, no,
Speaker 3: sure do. And I got this shirt.
Speaker 9: I'll tell you what. I had this commissioner. You know,
Speaker 9: they called me out to the commission meeting and said,
Speaker 9: you know, it was ripping me. You know what, I
Speaker 9: can't believe. Uh, you know you I'm not going to
Speaker 9: approve this. I'm not going to author I mean, he
Speaker 9: was screaming at me the whole time. I'm sitting there, going,
Speaker 9: we already bought it, so I don't know what you're
Speaker 9: going to do because it's already paid for and uh so,
Speaker 9: so uh you know, we just we just uh we
Speaker 9: just let it go. But fast forward. The first response
Speaker 9: I ever had. We'll probably talk about it later. We
Speaker 9: had a pedestrian bridge collapse on a bunch of cars,
Speaker 9: and when I got there, that was the first day
Speaker 9: that truck was in service. And when I got there
Speaker 9: that things out with the boom up and the cable
Speaker 9: down there. Yeah, there it is, and I'm walking around
Speaker 9: and the guy that's running it, the guy that is
Speaker 9: handing my handle on my training, j Rod. He comes
Speaker 9: up to me and he goes, Chief, it's not doing anything,
Speaker 9: but I know you'd want it here, you know, because
Speaker 9: it was nine hundred tons of concrete. It wasn't picking
Speaker 9: anything up. He goes, but I knew all the cameras
Speaker 9: will be here and you want it right in front.
Speaker 3: That's the guy you want on your side, bro, little secret.
Speaker 4: If I'm not mistaking j Rod, did he not work
Speaker 4: for us.
Speaker 3: I think he did. Yeah, I'm not sure I know. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Also question from the chat, can you ask Chief if
Speaker 3: he knows training Lieutenant Alameda at his department? I would hope.
Speaker 9: So, Uh, it looks familiar. I don't recognize the spelling,
Speaker 9: but maybe maybe spelled. I had a lot of guys, you.
Speaker 3: Know, we figured that out.
Speaker 4: It's like John like to drink, like to.
Speaker 3: Drink, only not spelled. You leave the light on it night, Doc.
Speaker 3: But I told that commissioner and we proved it. Right.
Speaker 9: I said, in one year, we're going to save more
Speaker 9: lives or this truck than any of our ladder trucks
Speaker 9: because our ladders don't do what your ladders do, right,
Speaker 9: our setbacks of our buildings and Hank, you've seen it
Speaker 9: down there. You can't get a ladder up more than
Speaker 9: a couple of floors.
Speaker 3: Uh. That truck has done so much work. It's amazing.
Speaker 3: It depends off it's success. Well, absolutely, it's a success.
Speaker 3: All right. So you visicated, so you do this, well
Speaker 3: you know what I mean.
Speaker 9: Actually, that commissioner where that bridge collapse was that commissioner.
Speaker 9: That was his jurisdiction. So that night he walks up
Speaker 9: to me and goes now, I see chief, good job.
Speaker 3: Anything. I think it was a great purchase. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: it you know, like I said, other departments don't have challenge.
Speaker 3: It was worth the money. Oh yeah, yeah, was worth
Speaker 3: the squeeze to the other. Your other statement, like I
Speaker 3: do know down there and I have to tell.
Speaker 4: You it comes back. He'll tell you.
Speaker 3: Tell me when I'm married. You're back. I have to
Speaker 3: tell you that early shut down. Tell us quick quick
Speaker 3: if you got sign off, and I'll email this stuff
Speaker 3: to him. Hurry up.
Speaker 5: I still find it hard that large city departments don't
Speaker 5: use uh, you know, a lot of companies the way
Speaker 5: we did it.
Speaker 3: And I'm not saying it's wrong or right.
Speaker 5: It's just very hard when you've done something for so
Speaker 5: many years and you've kind of written the playbook on
Speaker 5: it and it's been so successful that other departments don't
Speaker 5: do it.
Speaker 3: And I realized there's a manning issue and all of that.
Speaker 5: But it's just, you know, and I get it because
Speaker 5: they got a lot of friends all over the state
Speaker 5: and in other states with that kind of manning. Some
Speaker 5: of them do try to use use the aerial a
Speaker 5: little a little more to their advantage and ladders and.
Speaker 3: I love I'm sure it's good stuff. I gotta tell
Speaker 3: you all right, look again, it just got forget yeah,
Speaker 3: just got get your point in quickly.
Speaker 5: It's hard, you know, it's hard to believe that the
Speaker 5: ladder companies aren't used more for.
Speaker 9: La now I and if Hank can hear me, I
Speaker 9: can't agree with them one hundred percent, I think. And
Speaker 9: what happens is things get missed, right. And the other
Speaker 9: thing is it puts a lot more stress on those
Speaker 9: company officers to make sure all those duties get taken
Speaker 9: care of. Where when you have, you know, people with
Speaker 9: dedicated assignments, you know that it's going to get done.
Speaker 9: And that was always a challenge, you know, for me,
Speaker 9: is trying to, you know, take some of the stress
Speaker 9: out of the company officer of having to tell the
Speaker 9: next unit all the things to do.
Speaker 3: They should know what they have to do when they
Speaker 3: get there.
Speaker 9: And that's part of the challenge when you don't have
Speaker 9: those dedicated units and dedicated positions.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, I think we got to turn you into like
Speaker 3: an auceaneer, Hank, we gotta and we gotta te so
Speaker 3: go ahead about a lot of company, lot of companies.
Speaker 4: Subtitles.
Speaker 3: It's not all I can do. I paid for the
Speaker 3: high speed into that I'm on. Why it's just don't
Speaker 3: worry that Bundy's coming on Tuesday. Right, All right, let's
Speaker 3: fast Forwardally, you're promoted to lieutenant ye and you stay
Speaker 3: at Station eleven where you were yep, across the floor.
Speaker 3: I right, I go on the area. Yep. You're one
Speaker 3: of the original members of the Florida Task Force one. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and you saw a task force that was so tell
Speaker 3: us you went to a couple of deployments, the hurricanes,
Speaker 3: Turkey earthquake, and America Airlines crash in Columbia. Yeah.
Speaker 9: So, I mean just like you know, New York Task
Speaker 9: Force one part of the FEMOAS system and Florida one
Speaker 9: is is the same thing, you know, but and ours
Speaker 9: is contained within within Miami Dade. Yeah, that's from so
Speaker 9: in the mid nineties, American Airlines came to us said, hey,
Speaker 9: we're taking over all these routes to Central and South America,
Speaker 9: and we want to kind of put together a rescue
Speaker 9: team if there's a colla crash. You know, we're thinking
Speaker 9: what are we going to do?
Speaker 5: You know?
Speaker 9: And but you know, we said we're interested and flew
Speaker 9: out to Dallas and met with them and talked to them,
Speaker 9: and lo and behold. Two years later, they end up
Speaker 9: flying a DC ten into a mountain in Colombia and
Speaker 9: they call us to to help with the recovery, and
Speaker 9: we sat a I was part of a ten person
Speaker 9: team that went down there and learned a lot.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 9: That's uh to climb this mountain every day and and uh,
Speaker 9: you know we had to be off the mountain at
Speaker 9: night because they they.
Speaker 3: Didn't know how the locals hotels.
Speaker 9: Yes, the cartels, Yeah, yeah, they tell us, they tell
Speaker 9: us trying not to look American. I'm like, you know, yeah,
Speaker 9: American is uniform would be yeah. So yeah, but it
Speaker 9: was it was quite an experience and uh, you know,
Speaker 9: we we assisted there. That was the that was the
Speaker 9: only deployment we ever did with them.
Speaker 3: But that wasn't the plane that had the ya Yo
Speaker 3: on it right where the hotels were looking for it. Nope, No,
Speaker 3: that was one that gond was on. I think, right, God,
Speaker 3: you you're on the Phoma team, then you know the
Speaker 3: test team we're there.
Speaker 4: Well, I don't want to say competitor, but not a
Speaker 4: competitive All of them now he's t F one and
Speaker 4: TF two, So we we're neighboring.
Speaker 3: Thats got to be to everybody can't be one content.
Speaker 3: You know, there's twenty eight teams, so they're all over
Speaker 3: happens We're like right here. Yeah. Yeah, it's like Los
Speaker 3: Angeles CAL one and CAL two, Los Angeles County, Los
Speaker 3: Angeles City got you.
Speaker 4: We actually had anything in this area. Normally nine time
Speaker 4: out of ten were going together.
Speaker 3: So yeah, yeah, and worked well together, I believe. So
Speaker 3: you were at Station eleven during a hurricane Andrew, that's
Speaker 3: the one we guys got your ass kicked down there, right,
Speaker 3: We got destroyed. Yep, yep, I mean it it leveled us. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it was.
Speaker 9: That was one of the most powerful storms that ever
Speaker 9: hit the United States, and you know, it really impacted us.
Speaker 9: We had about two over two hundred of our guys
Speaker 9: that lost their homes, lost everything, and so one of
Speaker 9: the unique things about it was we had all these
Speaker 9: guys coming to help, all these firefighters from all over
Speaker 9: the country. And so what we started doing was pulling
Speaker 9: guys off our trucks and we'd keep one or two
Speaker 9: guys on our truck and put these firefighters from another
Speaker 9: area on the truck and allow our guys time to
Speaker 9: take care of their homes or insurance or whatever they needed.
Speaker 9: It was unbelievable to help that. And then we set
Speaker 9: up a firefighter relief center down south because we're getting
Speaker 9: all these building supplies and everything. So when you were
Speaker 9: off duty, if you were if your home wasn't damage,
Speaker 9: you went there. Okay, here's the list. This guy needs
Speaker 9: to dry and his roof, this guy needs this. And
Speaker 9: we spent you know, every day helping those guys out.
Speaker 9: But it was, you know, it was probably closest to it.
Speaker 9: It was a short period of time, but uh, you
Speaker 9: know your coroverbial War years, you know, during Andrew, I mean,
Speaker 9: we were just running from fire to fire to it was.
Speaker 9: It was crazy craziness.
Speaker 3: Hurricane by you recently with it was flooded out, yeah yeah,
Speaker 3: north of him, Yeah yeah, arm wasn't. Yeah you got hit.
Speaker 3: Arma was a few years ago. But MS my cleaning lady, Homestead,
Speaker 3: that's right. With Andrew, Homestead pretty much got level level level.
Speaker 3: It wasn't.
Speaker 5: And that was really the hurricane where Florida, I guess
Speaker 5: decided they have to help game and with all the
Speaker 5: hurricane codes, with the building there.
Speaker 9: You go, yep, wow, yep. I mean it's as they've
Speaker 9: moved my unit down, you know. And it was interesting,
Speaker 9: right because when the storm, you know, we don't have
Speaker 9: the prediction we have now. I was on duty the
Speaker 9: night of the storm, so they're briefing all of us,
Speaker 9: and we dupped our staffing, we brought other crews in,
Speaker 9: and we thought it was coming into North Date. I mean,
Speaker 9: that's where they were showing it the whole time. And
Speaker 9: I remember the chiefs telling us, hey, look, we get
Speaker 9: a serious fire. We're not laying lines, we're not putting
Speaker 9: aerials up. Just do what you can and pull out.
Speaker 9: So about ten o'clock at night, I get dispatched all
Speaker 9: the way to the east side of the county for
Speaker 9: this gigantic restaurant on fire. I mean, this thing is
Speaker 9: fully involved. And when we get there, I mean there
Speaker 9: are lines everywhere, aerials up in the air. I'm like,
Speaker 9: did they get the same message I got? And you know,
Speaker 9: the whole time, we're thinking this storm's coming, and so
Speaker 9: we're doing our thing, and about two in the morning,
Speaker 9: they said, all right, everybody's got to take up. We
Speaker 9: got to get out of here. I mean you've got
Speaker 9: the blue flickering happen and everywhere, power going out everywhere.
Speaker 9: So we're working our way back to the quarters, and
Speaker 9: the whole time we're thinking we're in the bullseye. And
Speaker 9: it wasn't until we got back to quarters and guys
Speaker 9: were saying, oh man, we're talking to guys down in
Speaker 9: South Day. They've lost the doors of the station. The
Speaker 9: roof's gone on the station. You know, we had trucks,
Speaker 9: they lost their windshields. The guys are in the trucks
Speaker 9: with their goggles, you know, like motorcycle riders driving the hall.
Speaker 3: It was crazy.
Speaker 9: I mean it was Our guys did such a good job,
Speaker 9: you know, you think about you lost all communications, all dispatch, everything,
Speaker 9: and the guys just basically had to take care of
Speaker 9: business in their area and did an unbelievable job.
Speaker 3: And I don't remember what to take to get back
Speaker 3: to some sense of normalcy after that. God, I mean it.
Speaker 9: I know we were on long shifts. We were doing
Speaker 9: you know, forty eight on and twenty four off for weeks.
Speaker 9: I mean it slowly started, I mean rebuilding and everything.
Speaker 9: You know, it took years, but I can remember probably.
Speaker 3: Ten months into it.
Speaker 9: You still saw debris piles just three stories high where
Speaker 9: they'd moved the debris. It took a long time, and
Speaker 9: but you know, it was it was craziness.
Speaker 3: And you know, I remember I, you know, and I
Speaker 3: was a paramedic, you know. So we ran this one call.
Speaker 9: This line worker FB and L worker had been electrocuted
Speaker 9: and we got there first on the engine or the
Speaker 9: aerial and we're working on the guy and the rescue
Speaker 9: shows up and he's burned up pretty bad. And and
Speaker 9: you know, I was I've always been a pretty good
Speaker 9: paramedic and know all I'm doing is wearing a T shirt.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: So the guys from I forget where they're from. I
Speaker 3: think one of them was from Naples. Actually I didn't
Speaker 3: know who I was.
Speaker 9: And so anyhow, I ended up putting the airway in
Speaker 9: the guy and I started the IV and we handed
Speaker 9: him off to the rescue. And afterwards, the two guys went, man,
Speaker 9: I didn't even know you were a paramedic. And I said,
Speaker 9: I'm not. I said, what I go, I've been watching
Speaker 9: these guys for years. And this guy went back, He's like,
Speaker 9: holy shit, you should see what these guys do.
Speaker 3: Man, they're not even paramedics. But uh, it was it
Speaker 3: was craziness.
Speaker 9: Uh you know, I mean, but all the support that
Speaker 9: came in was great, and uh but uh it was
Speaker 9: it was some crazy times.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you're at a level. But you get a
Speaker 3: sign to seven, you got to sign there. You wanted
Speaker 3: to go there. So I wanted to go there. We
Speaker 3: have a for us, we have a bid system. So
Speaker 3: I've heard of that before. Yeah.
Speaker 9: Yeah, so you basically use seniority. You know, it's not
Speaker 9: you know, you don't meet anybody. You don't meet the
Speaker 9: captain or anything. It's just based on seniority. If you
Speaker 9: have the qualifications and the seniority, you can go to
Speaker 9: the company. So I always wanted to go to the
Speaker 9: fifth battalion. It's the busy battalion and and uh so
Speaker 9: seven was a good opportunity. Are you in that picture
Speaker 9: that's me on the far left. Yeah, you got the
Speaker 9: party in the in the back and business in the front.
Speaker 3: No, No, there's no bullet there. There was a mullet
Speaker 3: going on. Maybe it's the light.
Speaker 9: I'll like what Let's see what I got here. One
Speaker 9: other funny story though, right, So, yeah, that's me next
Speaker 9: to the guy. That's my good friend Yawn from Germany
Speaker 9: came over and visited. Uh he actually went up on
Speaker 9: the road we rescue two back in the early nineties.
Speaker 9: Came over visiting as a kind of an official visit,
Speaker 9: and we've been friends ever since. But in that other
Speaker 9: picture you see, you know, I was wearing the radio
Speaker 9: strap like you guys do up at New York. But
Speaker 9: another interesting story, right, so we never had those radio straps,
Speaker 9: and I was still a firefighter, and we and only
Speaker 9: the officer had a handheld, and we were out, believe
Speaker 9: it or not, out jogging. We'd hand off the handheld
Speaker 9: and we got finished, and we're at the back of
Speaker 9: the unit and cooling off and everything, and loaded up
Speaker 9: and rode back to the station. Lieutenant goes, hey, where's
Speaker 9: the radio. I'm like, oh shit, I left it on
Speaker 9: the tailboard, and of course it's called so I guess
Speaker 9: a couple others have been broken. And the division chief
Speaker 9: lost his mind and they said, you're gonna have to
Speaker 9: pay for it. And now you cannot just stick a
Speaker 9: radio in your pocket. You got to have a strap.
Speaker 3: So first they made you wear a belt clip and
Speaker 3: and our original straps were actually horse leads from the
Speaker 3: feed supply. There were nylon horse leads, and uh, we've
Speaker 3: seen what New York had, and we're like, hey, they
Speaker 3: make these leather straps, you know, and that's that's how
Speaker 3: that they had money down in Miami d We didn't
Speaker 3: know anything. Now they do money.
Speaker 4: Of ridiculous.
Speaker 3: I had the money's all up in Naples, bro joke.
Speaker 9: So yeah, so I went to seven great, great company,
Speaker 9: great firefighters, you know, really enjoyed it there and and uh.
Speaker 3: All right, so uh you developed a flash of a
Speaker 3: training program in Palm Beach and then Cols Cols Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: oh well I know that place. That's something that's a
Speaker 3: real rundown scum shop, gonzo right, no money, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: they were we were doing some training and Palm each
Speaker 3: was really leading everybody.
Speaker 9: They were really doing all the tech rescue training. A
Speaker 9: lot of your guys came down given the training back
Speaker 9: in the nineties when we were training all our USR
Speaker 9: members and all that, and they they built this flashover
Speaker 9: and I ended up running the program, and uh, you know,
Speaker 9: good training, you know, just really I sold it to
Speaker 9: him as a fire behavior simulator, you know, and and
Speaker 9: it was good training for for just learning, you know,
Speaker 9: be able to sit there and watch fire behavior.
Speaker 4: That's really what it is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's really what it is. Yeah, what's that the
Speaker 3: fire behavior?
Speaker 4: You know, don't really flash it because you just kind
Speaker 4: of watch it, you know.
Speaker 3: Talking about his his sales skills because I heard he
Speaker 3: went on to buy a wrecord later on in his career.
Speaker 3: That's what we've done as good sales skills, you know. Yeah, no,
Speaker 3: my my ability to hide things. Ah. So we started
Speaker 3: teaching a technical rescue too. So you had learned that,
Speaker 3: you said, the guys up north from coming down and
Speaker 3: teaching you guys, and you'll pass it on.
Speaker 9: Yeah, the brothers down there, and we were also doing
Speaker 9: the training, you know, all the US our teams were
Speaker 9: kind of training in the beginning. I remember that was
Speaker 9: the first time I had met Ray Downey was it
Speaker 9: was a captain. Then it was in Montgomery County and
Speaker 9: we were doing some training there with some New York
Speaker 9: guys and other folks. And yeah, so that that all
Speaker 9: kind of developed all through the nineties. That's when our
Speaker 9: that's really when our squads and our tech rescue, you
Speaker 9: our our heavy rescue doesn't again doesn't run like you all.
Speaker 9: They primarily do the tech rescue stuff.
Speaker 3: I asked him about the pool story at the training
Speaker 3: center from Mark Hunley the pool.
Speaker 4: Yeah, can you tell the story?
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, I mean when I was you know, we
Speaker 9: uh in the late nineties, we passed a bond to
Speaker 9: build more station, headquarters and a training center. We never
Speaker 9: had our own trainings. We closed our training center in
Speaker 9: nineteen eighty and so we were using the community college
Speaker 9: and other places, and.
Speaker 4: So we.
Speaker 3: Got to be close to my age then. So so.
Speaker 9: Anyhow, we unfortunately had a recruit killed in some live
Speaker 9: fire training in two thousand and three, and so we'd
Speaker 9: already used the bond money for the stations and the headquarters,
Speaker 9: but they had never done anything with a training center.
Speaker 3: And so fast forward.
Speaker 9: I'm chief of training and they finally decide, hey, we
Speaker 9: got to move forward on this training center. So we
Speaker 9: start doing the design and everything. But you know, we
Speaker 9: have a huge dive rescue program and so we part
Speaker 9: of it was always going to be a pool and
Speaker 9: so for training, and so when they're doing the design
Speaker 9: and everything, they come to me and they said, hey,
Speaker 9: you know, you want to pool that's twelve feet deep,
Speaker 9: but the water table because of the water table is
Speaker 9: so high in Florida, it's got to be nine feet
Speaker 9: above the ground. I'm like nine feet above the ground.
Speaker 9: That's going to be ridiculous. How About we build a
Speaker 9: pool deck on the second floor and then just build
Speaker 9: it on the ground. And that's what we ended up doing.
Speaker 9: So the first thing on the entire lot that was
Speaker 9: built was the pool. But the other funny part of
Speaker 9: it was we wanted an observation window in it, right,
Speaker 9: so we designed this window. It was eight by four
Speaker 9: observation window for you know, when you're doing training. And
Speaker 9: so this thing had been designed by the engineers and everything,
Speaker 9: and they're actually framing out the pool and my facilities
Speaker 9: guy and the contractor comes in my office. Chief, we've
Speaker 9: got a problem, I said, what is it? Hecause we're
Speaker 9: framing everything out and they're saying we can't do the
Speaker 9: window because of the pressure of the water and the
Speaker 9: concrete and all this.
Speaker 3: It can't be done. I go, what are you talking about,
Speaker 3: Like engineers designed this. I go, no, no, you have to.
Speaker 9: We can't do anything. Maybe we could do like a
Speaker 9: porthole or something. This is bullshit, guys, I said, I'll
Speaker 9: tell you what. Let's go for a ride and they go,
Speaker 9: what do you where are we going? I said, We're
Speaker 9: going to go over to the Miami Seaquarium and one
Speaker 9: YouTube idiots are gonna tell me why shamou can be
Speaker 9: in a tank. It's a whole blast wall and I
Speaker 9: can't get a four by eight window. And they said, okay,
Speaker 9: you get your window. So yeah, the surgery window. And
Speaker 9: everybody's watching them do the surgery down there, right that. Yeah,
Speaker 9: until ninety nine, November nine ninety you have promoted. Now
Speaker 9: when you have promoted to captain, I guess these are
Speaker 9: tests you're taking.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah? So we take a written test. Yeah, oh
Speaker 3: and here you go bank he gets his first foray
Speaker 3: here in special operations.
Speaker 9: Yep, okay, so I'm working in special ops and uh,
Speaker 9: and ultimately took over the task force as we call it,
Speaker 9: a bureau officer in charge.
Speaker 5: So are all of your tests the promotion tests? Are
Speaker 5: they strictly competitive written? Whether you have to pass the written.
Speaker 3: And then you got to go for like an evaluation
Speaker 3: or anything like that.
Speaker 9: Nope, you just you just read a bunch of books,
Speaker 9: you know, the lieutenants. I think there were eighteen books
Speaker 9: and uh and uh, you take a written test and
Speaker 9: however you rank that's back from as at seven. Okay,
Speaker 9: there no bullet there, uh.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 9: And then you know they rank you just based on
Speaker 9: your score.
Speaker 3: That's it. I think a lot of small departments are
Speaker 3: surrounding you.
Speaker 12: They have to go through like a oh yeah, most
Speaker 12: everybody evaluation, uh, which I mean could be subjective, you know.
Speaker 12: It's kind of kind of leaves itself open to a
Speaker 12: little bit of criticism, I guess.
Speaker 4: But my agency, it's a it's a written in a
Speaker 4: practical exam, right.
Speaker 3: They shoot scenarios at you, and you gotta you.
Speaker 4: Have to per the union contract to actually do what
Speaker 4: they call a live scenario. So I have to take
Speaker 4: them out and perform live elements that they would obviously
Speaker 4: it's a scenario, but I have to put them through
Speaker 4: the motions, and I have to bring in outside evaluator
Speaker 4: so they try to eliminate the bias so there's no
Speaker 4: favoritism kind of things.
Speaker 3: Favorite, could you stop making it like you really important?
Speaker 4: He ruined it for me, He really ruined.
Speaker 3: It for me. I'm like, this is the guy talking
Speaker 3: about movies. What line he does it? Now? All of
Speaker 3: a sudden, I got to look at him and somebody
Speaker 3: who's important. You know, I can't do it.
Speaker 4: I'm on a small scale, man, I'm just a training guy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is the guy who's sitting in my living
Speaker 3: room scratching his nuts last week, you know, and now
Speaker 3: I gotta look at him like he's somebody important. You
Speaker 3: know where the outside evaluators come from? Is there is
Speaker 3: there a business that provides them, or are they guys
Speaker 3: or what?
Speaker 4: I don't know. I don't remember how many days does it,
Speaker 4: but it's as far as in Browwood. We'll ask neighboring,
Speaker 4: neighboring guys that usually worked at the day shift to
Speaker 4: come out and volunteer. We do it kind of in exchange.
Speaker 4: And if you help me, then I help you.
Speaker 3: And I thought you went down to the home depot
Speaker 3: and you got a couple of guys sitting there waiting
Speaker 3: to do something. You want to work to evaluate, you
Speaker 3: want to evaluate, you.
Speaker 4: Want to evaluate. But yeah, if not, then I have
Speaker 4: to hire people. And then you know, it's but definitely
Speaker 4: outside people. We try to get people that they don't
Speaker 4: know within their ranks, within the ranked test.
Speaker 3: Mm hm, than Gonzo is really up on it too, man, right, right, Hank?
Speaker 5: I mean, man, when you when you you know, when
Speaker 5: you're used to a certain way and you start talking
Speaker 5: to guys from all around the country.
Speaker 3: There's so many different ways of testing and and.
Speaker 4: It's different for the administrator level too. The administrator level,
Speaker 4: they could just do an interview and you're the guy,
Speaker 4: and then they could they could pick if they really
Speaker 4: want to. I mean, but they put put you through
Speaker 4: the show.
Speaker 3: So it doesn't that lead to a little of this
Speaker 3: still like hey, maybe I'll pick you if you move
Speaker 3: something like you know what.
Speaker 4: The chief.
Speaker 3: I think it's more of who you know rather than
Speaker 3: you know and some of that that that the.
Speaker 9: Scuttle has never hurt though, Hank, you know what I mean.
Speaker 9: Our higher ranks are definitely different than yours. Are not tested,
Speaker 9: you know, like by department, Battalion chiefs the last tested position,
Speaker 9: so divisions, assistance, deputy political are appointees New York is on.
Speaker 3: There's one more test, is it, deputy chief.
Speaker 5: But then all the staff chiefs are all our appointments
Speaker 5: because you have to take the test the deputy to
Speaker 5: get there, gotcha, okay, and.
Speaker 3: Then it's all you know what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: So during this point when you're a captain is uh,
Speaker 3: you get deployed to WTC posted September eleventh, walk us
Speaker 3: to a little bit of that.
Speaker 9: So you know, like everybody, you know, you remember where
Speaker 9: you were. So we were actually in the Special Ops office, uh,
Speaker 9: me and the chief and we got a call, uh
Speaker 9: and he's like, hey, man, turn on the TV.
Speaker 3: You know this plane.
Speaker 9: So of course, you know, we're watching it, and we
Speaker 9: see the second plane and we literally, I mean as
Speaker 9: soon as we saw it, we're like, we're under attack.
Speaker 9: And you know, back then you got you know, pagers
Speaker 9: and the phone rings and it's FEMA had activated all
Speaker 9: the teams. Uh, literally within minutes after that, and so
Speaker 9: like all the other teams, you know, started assembling. We
Speaker 9: didn't really know about the Pentagon at that point, but
Speaker 9: just started assembling the team, mobilizing and uh and got
Speaker 9: our orders. You know, we drove up there. It was
Speaker 9: pretty amazing. You know, somebody had orchestrated. You know, we've
Speaker 9: got fourteen vehicles in our caravan. Somebody had orchestrated. Every
Speaker 9: state had a troop. Troopers would pick us up and
Speaker 9: they'd block all the on ramps and we just keep
Speaker 9: on going. We wouldn't have to slow down for anything. No,
Speaker 9: no checkpoints were at the states. It was unbelievable.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 9: You know, I remember we we had some guys in
Speaker 9: the overhead team at the Pentagons. On our way up,
Speaker 9: we stopped at the Pentagon to uh to see what
Speaker 9: they were doing, because we were we were going to
Speaker 9: be brought into uh what there's a military base in
Speaker 9: New Jersey. That's where they held us. Uh Fort Dicks
Speaker 9: for Dicks, So our orders were to report there were
Speaker 9: to be held because they had a way of teams
Speaker 9: already moving in from Massachusetts Pennsylvania. So we were coming
Speaker 9: in behind them, and uh we held at Fort Dix.
Speaker 9: And then when they pushed us into the city, they
Speaker 9: had us all housed at the Javit Center. It's where
Speaker 9: they had all the FEMA teams. And uh they would
Speaker 9: transport us down to the you know, we've worked one
Speaker 9: you know, a day shift, night shift, and you know, uh,
Speaker 9: there we are there. Uh, they transport us down, We
Speaker 9: do our we do our work at the at the site,
Speaker 9: and then head back to the Javit Center.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 9: It was interesting because where we were all we were
Speaker 9: sleeping in the second floor of the Javit Center and
Speaker 9: the whole thing is glass, and so it's like sleeping
Speaker 9: in an aquarium, you know.
Speaker 3: And yeah, uh but uh, you know, it was uh,
Speaker 3: it was definitely. Yeah.
Speaker 9: I think we were talking about it in the pre show,
Speaker 9: you know, it was. It was definitely a tough one
Speaker 9: for a lot of us, myself included. You know, this
Speaker 9: was like you guys, this was very personal. We knew
Speaker 9: a lot of these guys, and I remember when we
Speaker 9: first heard that Ray was one of the ones missing,
Speaker 9: you know, just like that's not possible. You know, We've
Speaker 9: been trying to get in touch with him. He's got
Speaker 9: to be running everything, and uh so it it was.
Speaker 9: It was, uh, you know, a tough one for for
Speaker 9: everybody I know. But uh, you know, like everything we've
Speaker 9: been on. Our our mission is of course rescue, but
Speaker 9: if if we can do anything to recovery and bring closure,
Speaker 9: that was a that was a goal, you know. I remember,
Speaker 9: like everybody, you know, you have you have your memories,
Speaker 9: and I remember the day that, uh, we've they finally
Speaker 9: kind of locate I think it was Rescue three. A
Speaker 9: lot of the guys were in an elevator or in
Speaker 9: an area and elevator of the Marriott and I remember
Speaker 9: that day so vividly. You know, when they were bringing
Speaker 9: those guys out, you know, it was amazing to me
Speaker 9: the level of respect, you know, and you guys were there.
Speaker 9: You know the size of that work site and they
Speaker 9: were bringing a firefighter out. I mean everything stopped. You
Speaker 9: could hear a pin drop and uh. And I I
Speaker 9: remember that Sunday. It was a long day seeing recover
Speaker 9: those guys. And I don't remember the guy from I
Speaker 9: think he was a rescue three guy. Huge dude, that's
Speaker 9: all I remember. He'd had to be six seven, look
Speaker 9: like a linebacker.
Speaker 4: Meisenheimen was from Well, that's.
Speaker 3: The name that came to my head. He was a
Speaker 3: big He wasn't tall, but he was big. Was a
Speaker 3: tall guy.
Speaker 9: But uh, you know, there was some like everything, there's
Speaker 9: stuff going on, right, I mean, we had some issues
Speaker 9: with the steel guys and even with fellow firefighters.
Speaker 3: You know, what are you doing here?
Speaker 9: And you know, trying to just be able to help
Speaker 9: help each other out. But I know that there was
Speaker 9: some side stories about I think it was the Texas
Speaker 9: team that had made some comments in the media that
Speaker 9: really offended a lot of a lot of the New
Speaker 9: York firefighters about hey, the cavalry is coming or something,
Speaker 9: and kind of pissed guys off. And again I didn't
Speaker 9: know any of this stuff till afterwards, but I remember
Speaker 9: this guy coming to me coming down from the pile
Speaker 9: and some of the first U SAR guy he sees,
Speaker 9: and he goes, the fuck are those guys from Texas? Like, hey, bro,
Speaker 9: I got a pod, you know, and am I think
Speaker 9: they're on the other side.
Speaker 3: There, you know. But I was just glad to see anybody.
Speaker 3: It was so much work there to do. Oh my god. Yah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was gonna say, Chief if you when you
Speaker 4: and I spoke briefly down here, you told me a
Speaker 4: little bit about the tunneling story to J Jones.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you know the weird the weird stories.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 9: So the area that we were working, we were we
Speaker 9: were working down into the path train and trying up.
Speaker 9: I guess it's building one, right, is that?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 4: And uh?
Speaker 9: I remember because I was kind of a sign working
Speaker 9: with whatever the FD and Y Chief was in that area.
Speaker 9: And my guys called me on the radio and they said, hey,
Speaker 9: we we found this stairwell and there's some gear in
Speaker 9: here and stuff. Nobody in here and uh, I think
Speaker 9: it's the B stairwells. I tell the chief and he
Speaker 9: kind of just chuckles. He goes, he goes, yeah, he goes.
Speaker 9: You know, the day the towers came down, we had
Speaker 9: some guys trapped in there and they didn't realize the
Speaker 9: whole building had come down. And so they're on the
Speaker 9: radio saying, we're in the B stairwell. Go through the
Speaker 9: glass doors of the tower. Make a right turn. It's
Speaker 9: the second stairwell on your left, the B. He goes,
Speaker 9: it took you guys ten days to find it, And
Speaker 9: I said, yeah, you know, And of course I heard
Speaker 9: the story afterwards, but I didn't know it then.
Speaker 3: How long were you therefore? I think we were there
Speaker 3: a little over two weeks and then they.
Speaker 9: Rolled us out. I remember, I know, Hank, you said
Speaker 9: you were with Rescue one. I remember we went and
Speaker 9: visited Rescue one. Obviously they were close by, so they
Speaker 9: they had rolled us off, and we had like a
Speaker 9: day and a half, I guess to Demo, and so
Speaker 9: we made it a point because we had known a
Speaker 9: lot of the guys from Rescue one, and so we
Speaker 9: took a few of us and we walked over to
Speaker 9: the quarters, right, I wasn't.
Speaker 3: At that point. I was out of rescue one and
Speaker 3: I was in charge of the Kevin Coole was in.
Speaker 3: We were fraid. I was and squad the way the
Speaker 3: eight Cata Murphy.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so I wasn't you know, when when the tow
Speaker 5: has happened, I was already out of rescue one.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, So I saw Joel just post Yeah, so
Speaker 3: you know, I remember that, Joel, and you know, so
Speaker 3: it was and I was we didn't know where any
Speaker 3: other fire stations were. We knew we're rescued, Joel. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's all I got to talk about Engine three. Yeah.
Speaker 9: I didn't want to rush you, but I was just
Speaker 9: trying to show you. Yeah, good man, good Man yep.
Speaker 9: Uh so yeah, so that was that was kind of ours.
Speaker 3: I mean, it was. It was quite an experience and
Speaker 3: I'm glad I was part of it. Has got it.
Speaker 3: We could help in our little way that we could help.
Speaker 3: And how many how many teams responded, Yeah, all of
Speaker 3: the team. There's twenty eight teams in the country, and
Speaker 3: all but two were deployed.
Speaker 4: Uh Now, I think they sent the team to the
Speaker 4: Pentagon too. For four of the.
Speaker 3: Teams went to the Pentagon.
Speaker 9: The rest of them came to New York City and
Speaker 9: kind of in waves, and I know the teams coming
Speaker 9: in behind us, they actually had them also doing something
Speaker 9: as first responders, you know, because you obviously your special
Speaker 9: ops were decimated and trying to support whatever you guys
Speaker 9: needed on the special ops side.
Speaker 3: I don't know how that worked or anything.
Speaker 9: We weren't part of that, but I know they were
Speaker 9: talking about that with the waves that were coming in
Speaker 9: behind us, So it.
Speaker 3: Was definitely an experience. Now, were you still on the
Speaker 3: job when the surfside collapse happened?
Speaker 9: So the surfside interesting. I was retired, But when I retired,
Speaker 9: I went to work for the state because one of
Speaker 9: the jobs I've served in the state of Florida for
Speaker 9: a long time, we have a state wide emergency response
Speaker 9: plan where we coordinate like for hurricanes and stuff in
Speaker 9: your area, coordinate the fire resources and rescue. And I
Speaker 9: was one of the guys that helped build our USAR
Speaker 9: system here in Florida. So that morning the collapse, I
Speaker 9: got the phone call that hey, we need you down
Speaker 9: there on behalf of the state Fire Marshal to coordinate.
Speaker 9: So yes, I spent nineteen days down there.
Speaker 5: So that I mean, because I was leading into my question,
Speaker 5: do you feel that the experience you had at the
Speaker 5: trade set? You know, I mean it was obviously a
Speaker 5: much smaller scale, but still a building collapse with numerous
Speaker 5: people trapped or killed. Oh, you feel that that experience
Speaker 5: helped you coordinate and run the surfside collapse?
Speaker 9: Oh, one hundred percent. All all of the responses i'd
Speaker 9: been to. I remember when I when I first got there,
Speaker 9: I was talking to one of the chiefs and and
Speaker 9: you know, again they were kind of in that shock
Speaker 9: of disaster, right, and they said, listen, we've run the
Speaker 9: dogs and we're not getting any hits. You know, I
Speaker 9: think we're going to wrap things up in about an hour.
Speaker 9: I said, that's what you think. I said, you're going
Speaker 9: to be here for a month until we hit dirt.
Speaker 3: And I was wrong.
Speaker 9: We were only there twenty eight days. But again I
Speaker 9: had a different perspective, right, I had. I had seen
Speaker 9: their disasters like this and realized, first of all, if
Speaker 9: not you, then who, and and you know what we
Speaker 9: had to do. And you know, I'm incredible. You know
Speaker 9: it's my department, you know, I know all the people,
Speaker 9: uh and I'm incredibly proud of what they did, especially
Speaker 9: the first responders. You know, I don't think they got
Speaker 9: the credit that they deserved. You know, the USAR teams
Speaker 9: did a great job and bringing closure, but you know,
Speaker 9: those first responders that aren't tech rescue, that aren't engineers,
Speaker 9: that aren't anything, and pushed themselves into that building, into
Speaker 9: that pile, uh, not knowing whether what's holding up that
Speaker 9: other building. I mean that was my first thought when
Speaker 9: I got there, why is that thing still standing? And
Speaker 9: they saved lives, They brought out thirty four people, and
Speaker 9: you know, incredibly proud.
Speaker 3: Of what they did. Stuff. Man, Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I
Speaker 3: have a little show I do in the morning called
Speaker 3: a Cup of Joe and Fuego and I played somebody
Speaker 3: sent me the audio to the serf side. Man, those
Speaker 3: guys were calm and cool because they weren't going on
Speaker 3: They were going on a box for something else.
Speaker 4: Got so yeah, forget how it came in. It was
Speaker 4: very non came in and the.
Speaker 3: Way they responded very cool. Hey listen, we got a
Speaker 3: major collapse, hett out. I forget what you guys call it,
Speaker 3: you know, the technical rescue whatever, it is very cool.
Speaker 3: No panic, no nothing.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 3: I was like, wow, I was impressed. So funny story
Speaker 3: with that, right. So yes, originally it was dispatched as
Speaker 3: a fire alarm, right, so it just it just went
Speaker 3: one engine and uh.
Speaker 9: I talked to the captain and his driver's driver was
Speaker 9: one of my rookies, and they had said, look, we
Speaker 9: get alarms there all the time. It's middle of the night.
Speaker 9: Servici is not a big city. And as they're turning
Speaker 9: down the last road they see this cloud. At first
Speaker 9: they're thinking, holy shit, we got a fire, and then
Speaker 9: they dispatched a parking garage collapse. So they're literally sitting
Speaker 9: there while the dispatch is going out, so you could
Speaker 9: imagine there's all these exploitives flying around in the cap
Speaker 9: holy shit, what you know? And the driver's doing what
Speaker 9: great drivers do, cap taking breath. This is what you
Speaker 9: have to say, think about this. So we, of course
Speaker 9: we affectually nick named him Count Chocula because he said
Speaker 9: there's one, two, three, I don't know a lot of
Speaker 9: floors and uh.
Speaker 3: And they bill hild them. But but the other funny
Speaker 3: part is he gets his whole size up.
Speaker 9: And because it was just a single company response, the
Speaker 9: dispatcher said you've got to switch to the tactical frequency.
Speaker 9: So he had to do it all over again. But
Speaker 9: he did a phenomenal job. I mean he said a
Speaker 9: few things that put in the motion you know how
Speaker 9: that goes right? That that made things easier for the
Speaker 9: next days and weeks to come. Uh he didn't they
Speaker 9: all did they did?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 9: Because that collapse had sheared off the stairs and the elevator,
Speaker 9: so all those people, mostly elderly, had to be taken
Speaker 9: out over ladders.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 9: And fortunately for that building, the building was right up
Speaker 9: on the road so they could use the aerial ladders.
Speaker 9: But uh, yeah, it was it was quite an event.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 5: Who and this is probably I don't want to say
Speaker 5: a cynical question, but not towards Miami Day. But you
Speaker 5: said the guys went in the remaining standing part of
Speaker 5: the building to make searches and they rescue thirty four people.
Speaker 5: Did they do that as before a command chief had
Speaker 5: command of that scene or did the chief let them
Speaker 5: go in and do what they had to do.
Speaker 9: No, the chief for that area was coordinating it before
Speaker 9: the other senior chiefs arrived. So yes, that was a
Speaker 9: coordinated effort. But there were people in there calling nine
Speaker 9: to one one. There were people on their balcony screaming
Speaker 9: for help, and so they realized we got to get
Speaker 9: in there. And there was also you know, you're hearing
Speaker 9: voices from the rubble up underneath there was a two
Speaker 9: level parking garage. So you know, they realized they made
Speaker 9: that whole risk benefit decision that hey, we got to
Speaker 9: get in there and get these people right, right.
Speaker 5: I mean I applaud the decision. I think it was yeah,
Speaker 5: we we remember when we raised our right hand. Yeah,
Speaker 5: we knew it was a hazardous job.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 5: And I think, now, don't you know this is not
Speaker 5: I'm not painting with a broad brush, but I think
Speaker 5: nowadays some guys are a little gun shy and like,
Speaker 5: we'll wait until we get built the building engineers here
Speaker 5: to see whether the building is stable enough to send
Speaker 5: you guys in or ye. And I mean sometimes you
Speaker 5: just you know, there's people's lives in the balance, and
Speaker 5: if the fire department's not getting them, who's coming to
Speaker 5: get them?
Speaker 9: And Hank, You's spot on, you know. And when I
Speaker 9: talk about this, I was just talking about it the
Speaker 9: other day. I was teaching in a leadership class and
Speaker 9: that's exactly what I said. I said, we all raise
Speaker 9: our right hand. And it's that small percentage where you say,
Speaker 9: I don't know if I'll ever have to really put
Speaker 9: my life on the line, but that's what I signed
Speaker 9: up for, and that's what they did, and they did
Speaker 9: a great job, right.
Speaker 3: And you know that's what I said, I have And
Speaker 3: thirty four lives was saved absolutely that job.
Speaker 5: And like I say, sometimes, you know, even as even
Speaker 5: as a guy in charge, you know, you got to remember, yes,
Speaker 5: you know, you don't want to lose any of your members,
Speaker 5: but you know, I don't want to be explained to somebody,
Speaker 5: you know.
Speaker 3: Why if you know why they saw there. You know,
Speaker 3: they were on the phone with somebody.
Speaker 5: And look the building collapsed, and you got to explain
Speaker 5: to them why he didn't have anybody trying to rescue them.
Speaker 9: I mean, actually, actually one of the apartments they forced
Speaker 9: in because they checked every apartment, you know, they go
Speaker 9: into a bedroom and here's a seventy two year old guy,
Speaker 9: sound asleep, slept through the whole damn thing. They took
Speaker 9: him out in a tidy whities over the area. How
Speaker 9: many people did they lose?
Speaker 3: Chief? Holy shit? So That's the other thing.
Speaker 9: I'm really proud of is that you know, they accounted
Speaker 9: for every one of the people. I mean literally the
Speaker 9: last day is when they found the last remain of
Speaker 9: one of the one of the victims. And that's that's
Speaker 9: pretty amazing too, right, I mean, is trying to bring
Speaker 9: closure to these families. Yeah, and uh so incredibly proud.
Speaker 4: To be proud, because that's how we operate when it
Speaker 4: comes to the test force deployment. If we have a
Speaker 4: list of names, whatever that may be, we're not leaving
Speaker 4: until we complete that task at least account for some way,
Speaker 4: some way to check that box or that name that
Speaker 4: might be missing.
Speaker 5: Well, Chief, you said it right when you told that,
Speaker 5: when you responded when you told that, Chief, but he said,
Speaker 5: we'll be out here in a couple of hours.
Speaker 3: You're not out of there until you yep, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: you're round in.
Speaker 5: Then you're be going to be going subterranean. But until
Speaker 5: every bit of his buildings lifted off, you sit through
Speaker 5: all of that stuff, you know, especially if there's still
Speaker 5: one or two bodies on accounted for.
Speaker 3: That's what you're doing. Let's shoot forward to two thousand
Speaker 3: and two. You may of two thousand, you're promoted to
Speaker 3: battalion chief.
Speaker 9: Yep, yeah, that's that's just you know for us, every
Speaker 9: time you get promoted, did we tell you? We tell everybody.
Speaker 9: You get the city, the city bid, Carroll City, Florida City,
Speaker 9: you move all over the county and so just a
Speaker 9: relief battalion moving around filling vacancies.
Speaker 3: So that was that. So August two thousand and three
Speaker 3: appointed Division Chief now North Operations, responsible for four battalions
Speaker 3: in the northeast part of the county, primary high rise
Speaker 3: primary high rise districts as well as residential. Yeah.
Speaker 9: Actually that's where Surf Side is, right, so all of
Speaker 9: our cities along the coast there.
Speaker 3: But yeah, so we're organized. We have fourteen battalions.
Speaker 9: And then at back when I was there, when I
Speaker 9: was a division, we had four divisions, so we had
Speaker 9: a north of Central, the South, and the West. So
Speaker 9: I had four of the battalions under my division in
Speaker 9: the northeast. So you know, that was a challenge because
Speaker 9: some of the very senior chiefs, many of them I
Speaker 9: had worked for when I was a younger officer and
Speaker 9: now I'm their boss. But real good officers, and you know,
Speaker 9: I enjoyed working up in that area.
Speaker 3: Right, So how many how many spare miles is that
Speaker 3: if you have four battalions, is that a large area covered? Now?
Speaker 3: How much would that?
Speaker 9: You know, we're the way we're set up, that area
Speaker 9: is much more compact than other parts of the county,
Speaker 9: so our stations are much closer, our battalions are a
Speaker 9: little smaller in that area. If you get west, you
Speaker 9: get south, that's when things start getting farther apart. So
Speaker 9: let's see, each battalion had about four stations, but it
Speaker 9: is a tight geography.
Speaker 3: Had about sixteen to twenty stations. Yeah. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 3: lot of guys. Yeah, yeah, Yeah. August two thousand and four,
Speaker 3: you get assigned as chief of EMS, so now you're
Speaker 3: in charge of all all squads or all EMS then yep.
Speaker 9: Yeah, so that's where ours all the training, all the
Speaker 9: certification for both the paramedics and the E M t s.
Speaker 9: And uh, you know, at the time, the chief was
Speaker 9: kind of moving people around to different places.
Speaker 3: Uh, And so I got that.
Speaker 9: I didn't mind it, but you know, I had kind
Speaker 9: of come up on the EMS side, but I really
Speaker 9: kind of had run my course with that. So I'm
Speaker 9: fortunate you know, if you ever asked me what I
Speaker 9: wanted to do ultimately in the fire department, it was
Speaker 9: not to be chief of the department.
Speaker 3: I wanted to be chief of training. You know, Well
Speaker 3: there it is, you says five beside, the chief of
Speaker 3: training my dream job, that's it. Yeah.
Speaker 9: When I interviewed first for division, they go, where do
Speaker 9: you want to be? And I said, I'd like to
Speaker 9: be chief of training? And they put me in operations.
Speaker 9: And the next chief where do you want to be?
Speaker 9: I said, I like to be training, and they put
Speaker 9: me in the MS. So finally they put me in
Speaker 9: training third time. Yeah, you're in College of All Training,
Speaker 9: all fire training, all and not the EMS side, so
Speaker 9: we and not the special ops. Special Ops does their
Speaker 9: own training. So all we do is the basic firefighter certification,
Speaker 9: the continuing education, the driver's certification and uh those things.
Speaker 3: Now do you have like a fire academy too? Is
Speaker 3: that that training center that you built?
Speaker 9: We we didn't, I mean we were, we were building it,
Speaker 9: but uh that's that's the artist rendering. Uh it's it's
Speaker 9: a great facility. You know, I wish we had more space.
Speaker 9: We got ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag.
Speaker 4: But always this is a story of all lives. When
Speaker 4: it comes to training, you want most space.
Speaker 9: But but you know, and that the color of the building,
Speaker 9: you know, I learned was the architects wanted to put
Speaker 9: the different colors of flames. So that's why you have
Speaker 9: the orange and yellow the right. So that's when I
Speaker 9: learned what an architect is, and that's that they're not
Speaker 9: as they're not smart enough to be an engineer and
Speaker 9: not feminine enough to be an interior designer.
Speaker 3: So I like that get built or was that still
Speaker 3: just nope, that's fully built. Yeah, so it is fully built.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 9: Yeah, we actually broke around in uh two thousand and
Speaker 9: nine and in one year than higher facility was built.
Speaker 3: Wow that's pretty big. Yeah yeah, well we grabbed that
Speaker 3: guy again.
Speaker 4: That's one thing in South Florida. I will tell you
Speaker 4: that they don't mess around when it comes to building ship.
Speaker 4: It can built in no time.
Speaker 9: And one of my goals was, you know a lot
Speaker 9: of training centers I see you know, they'll have a
Speaker 9: box and they'll say, okay, let's make pretend this is
Speaker 9: a house. Well, if you look past the colored building,
Speaker 9: that that building on the just past that the two story.
Speaker 9: That's a twenty five hundred square foot house. So it
Speaker 9: has bedrooms, it has a kitchen, it has a garage.
Speaker 9: Across from that as a tower. And what we did
Speaker 9: was we have a high rise side and then we
Speaker 9: have a low rise. And what I wanted to do
Speaker 9: was I wanted to have hallways as you actually train
Speaker 9: on stretching lines down hallways as opposed to pretending in
Speaker 9: a square.
Speaker 3: That you have a hallway.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: And we have a lot of guarden apartments we call
Speaker 3: them with terraces. So that's that side.
Speaker 9: The other side of that building is flat like an
Speaker 9: off This building kind of to the left of that
Speaker 9: is a is a mercantile. We've got a mansard roof.
Speaker 9: We have three stores.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 3: And then we have in the back right corner there
Speaker 3: is a training prop for our extrication. Uh.
Speaker 9: And next to that is a ship, a three deck
Speaker 9: ship because we do shipboard training. And then a technical
Speaker 9: rescue area.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And on the back back right is the swimming
Speaker 3: pool there you see. So at the back right area
Speaker 3: is the swimming pool with the glass window thank you.
Speaker 9: Yeah, with the window window was present.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 9: So yeah, that's the that's the that's the facility. Where's
Speaker 9: that locking right behind our headquarters. So it's in an
Speaker 9: area called duru Uh. It's kind of west Ade Central West,
Speaker 9: right across from Trump's Durau Country Club. A.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a beautiful training center. It is beautiful. Absolutely
Speaker 3: love it.
Speaker 11: It's the best training center ever. But as guys said,
Speaker 11: you don't have a sub seller. We don't have not
Speaker 11: too many sellers here in Florida.
Speaker 3: If you have a sub cellar, you're in the water.
Speaker 3: I've ate or sight. Oh look, if I had read
Speaker 3: to probably I would have saw that already. Yeah.
Speaker 9: Yeah, so but I put in there right. I was
Speaker 9: part of the team. And again, like designing trucks, I
Speaker 9: brought in guys to help me design this thing. You know,
Speaker 9: I wasn't going to do it all by myself. There's
Speaker 9: things I wanted to see. But yeah, but I never
Speaker 9: got to sit one day in the office. Wait wait,
Speaker 9: you never got You never got to sit one day
Speaker 9: in the office.
Speaker 4: Are you sure about that? Are you sure about that?
Speaker 3: Wait a minute, That's what I was chief. That was
Speaker 3: what don't give away let the truth get away of
Speaker 3: a good story about them.
Speaker 9: I think better without my shoes on. I sent so
Speaker 9: many pictures. I didn't know what I sent. He probably
Speaker 9: hasd some of my baby pictures too. I don't know,
Speaker 9: so some of your kids.
Speaker 3: March tenth, you're pointed to assistant chief. I know you
Speaker 3: had your dream job. I did. I screwed up.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I screwed I got brow beat into taking the
Speaker 9: interview for it, and lo and behold they give it
Speaker 9: to me.
Speaker 3: So uh uh, you know, I I enjoyed it.
Speaker 9: It was areas I wasn't familiar with overseeing fire prevention
Speaker 9: and logistics. You know, those aren't areas. I was familiar
Speaker 9: with communications. I mean I told everybody to me. Mega
Speaker 9: Hurts is a big rent a car I don't know
Speaker 9: anything about. But I had a lot of smart guys
Speaker 9: that that helped out a lot.
Speaker 4: So you got Jim can't pronounce his last name, le dude. Yeah,
Speaker 4: everybody has the biggest fans.
Speaker 3: Everybody's got the big ass. Yeah. Yeah, those things are great.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they move the man. We need them in Florida.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. I missed the deployment. He deployed Towle.
Speaker 3: You go to a lot of uh yeah, you went
Speaker 3: to New Orleans and then you went to Haiti. Yep. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I went to the earthquake in Haiti. Uh. Yeah, that's
Speaker 3: the team in Haiti.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 9: You know when that earthquake hit. You know, there's two
Speaker 9: of the twenty eight teams that also work with the
Speaker 9: State Department, Los Angeles and uh, Virginia.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 9: But when they Haiti earthquake, because it's so close to us,
Speaker 9: you know, we I directed the USAR chief at the time,
Speaker 9: I told him, you know, let's roster a team. We
Speaker 9: don't know what's going to happen here, and lo and
Speaker 9: behold they send us.
Speaker 3: Uh. Actually New York was down there too.
Speaker 9: It was it was uh, you know, it was it
Speaker 9: was a It was a great deployment in the sense
Speaker 9: that and you guys know this, right, how long you train.
Speaker 3: Over and over and over again.
Speaker 9: And every deployment we've ever been to going back to
Speaker 9: Oklahoma City, you know, you're doing body recovery, and it
Speaker 9: was Haiti where we were at actually bringing out survivors.
Speaker 9: You know, we rescued eleven people one kid, two year
Speaker 9: old kid eight days buried, and we rescued.
Speaker 4: Several of those stories.
Speaker 3: Yeah, unbelievable.
Speaker 4: There was other teams, not that I don't know the
Speaker 4: teams off the top of that, would not refuse to
Speaker 4: go into certain buildings where t F one and TF
Speaker 4: two decided to go in and actually found another additional
Speaker 4: I want to say seven individuals that were in the
Speaker 4: in the market if you remember correctly marketplace, were they?
Speaker 3: Oh, were you down there two guns?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 3: I wasn't.
Speaker 4: That was before my time.
Speaker 3: You're on two are you? Yes? They were there, Yeah,
Speaker 3: they were there. If you're not first, you last, Ricky Bobby.
Speaker 4: I know you're copying that guy's fucking statement in the chat.
Speaker 3: Shut it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, somebody said in the chat you not first, you'll last,
Speaker 4: thank you.
Speaker 9: But yeah, but you know, I had I had a
Speaker 9: good moment down there because it was actually the morning
Speaker 9: after New York had rescued. I think, like this nine
Speaker 9: year old boy, and uh it was, you know, suns
Speaker 9: starting to come up up and I was over there
Speaker 9: were you know, we met every morning, and uh I
Speaker 9: saw Joe. Joe Downey was their team leader. I was
Speaker 9: our team leader, and so we had a moment where
Speaker 9: Joe and I kind of were standing there and I go,
Speaker 9: you know, I think your dad would be proud man.
Speaker 9: You know, all this stuff came together, you know, because
Speaker 9: he really built he built the US our system, right,
Speaker 9: I mean, it was it was it was Ray that really,
Speaker 9: you know, I didn't get for nothing. Yeah yeah, I
Speaker 9: mean I know he's looked at one way in your organization,
Speaker 9: you know, but from my standpoint, you know, we couldn't
Speaker 9: have done it without him. And uh so it was
Speaker 9: really kind of cool that everything came together, right, and
Speaker 9: so you know, if I was going to have my
Speaker 9: final deployment, I'm glad it was that one.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Bro, Uh and then you do it again. Here
Speaker 3: we go. This guy can't help get promoted.
Speaker 4: You wait, yeah, I'm working on him.
Speaker 3: So that was at eleven appointed Chief of Operations, seventy stations, sport,
Speaker 3: three airports, EMS and special operations. Now the circle is widening. Yeah,
Speaker 3: well what happened and was our chief somewhat abruptly, uh retired.
Speaker 9: There was some change in leadership in the in the
Speaker 9: in the county and the chief said, up, I think
Speaker 9: it's time to pull the plug, and uh kind of
Speaker 9: retired and kind of left us hanging there.
Speaker 3: And not left us hanging.
Speaker 9: But so the the guy that took over, because we're
Speaker 9: a strong mayor former government, the guy that became mayor
Speaker 9: was a former City of Miami fire chief uh and
Speaker 9: and so he brought in a good friend of his
Speaker 9: that was a former Miami fire chief, Shorty Bryson, who
Speaker 9: turned out to be one of the best things that
Speaker 9: ever happened to us.
Speaker 3: You know, he was the right guy at the right time.
Speaker 9: You know, sometimes you don't want these outsiders, and the
Speaker 9: guy before him was an outsider and you know, who
Speaker 9: did a lot of good for us as well. But
Speaker 9: Shorty was the right guy at the right time. It
Speaker 9: was definitely the right guy for me. I was starting
Speaker 9: to be in the dumps, like I didn't feel like
Speaker 9: I was in sync with anybody else, and so he
Speaker 9: moved me to operations and we were kind of joined
Speaker 9: at the hip. So great, great guy, and you know
Speaker 9: I kind of knew not many people knew that he
Speaker 9: was really only you know, he had retired after a
Speaker 9: long career, and he was retired when the mayor brought
Speaker 9: him back, and he wasn't going to be there long.
Speaker 9: So you know the funny story, right, you talk about
Speaker 9: how people test an interview for chief and all, well,
Speaker 9: mine is different than anybody's, right, So he tells me, hey,
Speaker 9: you need to be the chief, and I said, look,
Speaker 9: I don't want to be the fire chief. And I said,
Speaker 9: I like what I'm doing. And he said, well, I'm
Speaker 9: not staying. And he goes, if you don't take it,
Speaker 9: they're going to bring somebody from the outside. And I'm like, shit,
Speaker 9: I didn't have them bring somebody from the outside. And
Speaker 9: we went back and forth for months, and I said, look, man,
Speaker 9: I gave up six years at Sunrise that I didn't
Speaker 9: get credit for in my retirement. I said, I've got
Speaker 9: another year before I or six more months before I
Speaker 9: hit my retirement.
Speaker 3: Here. Somebody told me a long time ago, never take
Speaker 3: a chief.
Speaker 9: Job unless you could leave. And I said, I am
Speaker 9: not sacrificing anything for this six months. He goes, six months, okay,
Speaker 9: I can wait just like that. So I really we
Speaker 9: never talked anymore, and I'll never forget.
Speaker 3: It was January.
Speaker 9: I was in Philadelphia at a FEMA meeting. I was
Speaker 9: a national representative. We talked every day. I called him
Speaker 9: and I I said, hey, you know what today is?
Speaker 3: He goes what?
Speaker 9: And I said, I said, from here on out, I
Speaker 9: can tell you to.
Speaker 3: Go fuck yourself. And he goes, oh, he said, uh,
Speaker 3: that's right, that's right. He goes, when do you come back?
Speaker 9: And I said Wednesday. He goes, Okay, you're going to
Speaker 9: meet with the mayor on Thursday. There's a press conference tuesday,
Speaker 9: and I leave February first, so go fuck yourself and.
Speaker 3: You and he wouldn't.
Speaker 9: He wouldn't take my call and texting them, Hey, I
Speaker 9: call my wife and I go, I'm not sure what
Speaker 9: just happened. And I get back and they dragged me
Speaker 9: down to the Mayor's office.
Speaker 3: And like that on the fire chief. Wow, you know
Speaker 3: what I think. I think that was probably a great
Speaker 3: move for your department. I never understand what these departments
Speaker 3: that bring chiefs in from the outside.
Speaker 10: To me, that's that's a slap to the chiefs that
Speaker 10: are working hard to get up there. And even the
Speaker 10: guy that's a firefighter who was aspiring to be a
Speaker 10: chief of department. It's like, why should I bother when
Speaker 10: they can bring some guy in from East Podum to
Speaker 10: be chief of the fire apartment.
Speaker 9: Yeah, well, I mean that's that's kind of what I
Speaker 9: was thinking about, right. I didn't know what that was
Speaker 9: going to mean. And you know, I loved my department,
Speaker 9: and and you know, sometimes you make sacrifices right for
Speaker 9: you know, even when I studied for officer right, the
Speaker 9: old word back in the day was you either work
Speaker 9: for an asshole or you be an asshole. So I said,
Speaker 9: all right, well I'll be the asshole.
Speaker 3: And that's always great though, hell you fucking everybody. People
Speaker 3: call me all the time, Hey can you help me?
Speaker 3: How did your interview go? And I you don't want
Speaker 3: to know how my interview?
Speaker 5: Now?
Speaker 4: They know, now they know, right.
Speaker 3: So when you got on of the your first GTOG,
Speaker 3: let's see what was that when you went to Miami, Dad,
Speaker 3: eighty eight eighty eight. Did you ever think you'd be
Speaker 3: chief and apartment? Never in a million years, never, never,
Speaker 3: never wanted to be a chief. Never. No, I mean I,
Speaker 3: like I said, I I was. I was already involved
Speaker 3: in teaching, even early on in my career. I love teaching.
Speaker 3: I felt like I could impact more people in training
Speaker 3: than anybody else.
Speaker 9: I still believe that. Uh and and so that's all
Speaker 9: I wanted I wanted to be. You know, I took
Speaker 9: I dabbled in training coming up. I was a recruit
Speaker 9: instructor for a couple of classes. You know, I just
Speaker 9: loved it.
Speaker 3: And so no, I never I never ever thought about
Speaker 3: me in the margin. Did any of the other coworkers say,
Speaker 3: this guy is going to be something some days?
Speaker 9: Well, so it's it's funny. I was a rookie. I
Speaker 9: was only on maybe four months, and and I'm riding
Speaker 9: Engine nine, and I had a great captain and just
Speaker 9: a great guy. And I've been on four months. I've
Speaker 9: been with him maybe a month. And a new chief
Speaker 9: comes by, a guy named Dave Brooks, who ends up
Speaker 9: becoming a very good friend of mine. But he was
Speaker 9: a brand new chief and he's he's bouncing. The regular
Speaker 9: chief wasn't there that day. So we're all sitting at
Speaker 9: the table and he looks over and he goes, hey, downey,
Speaker 9: he said. Captain King said you're you're going to be
Speaker 9: the next fire chief?
Speaker 3: Really? And I said, hey, look you joy, Chief. I
Speaker 3: I just want to get through probation. You know, I'm
Speaker 3: not looking at anything else.
Speaker 4: It was timing in here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, hey rock, yeah, very bell. Yeah.
Speaker 9: But so I never was able to track down Chief
Speaker 9: King or a Captain King. But yeah, and Chief Brooks
Speaker 9: ended up becoming my battalion when I went to Station seven.
Speaker 9: But you know, one of our great chiefs, and I
Speaker 9: learned a lot from him.
Speaker 3: And but yeah, so.
Speaker 9: Somebody saw something. I absolutely didn't see anything.
Speaker 3: So let's let's branch off a little to the other side.
Speaker 3: Where did your wife wind up? She wound up being
Speaker 3: a chief.
Speaker 9: So in Davy, So this town I live in, So
Speaker 9: we live in. So she she was a lieutenant at
Speaker 9: Sunrise and she had she had twenty four almost twenty
Speaker 9: five years at Sunrise and Davy, where we're at, was
Speaker 9: really exploding, the departments growing, and you know, to your Pointank,
Speaker 9: they had problems that nobody was eligible to move up.
Speaker 9: Nobody wanted to move into chiefs positions in the department,
Speaker 9: and so they had to recruit people from outside and
Speaker 9: talk at smaller departments, smaller department, smaller departments. Yeah, so
Speaker 9: she got recruited and they brought her over as a
Speaker 9: division chief of EMS. She's big EMS and emergency management.
Speaker 9: And that's how she started. And then she moved up
Speaker 9: to assistant chief. And and when the fire chief who
Speaker 9: tragically died of a heart attack, young guy, great shape,
Speaker 9: dropped out of a heart attack, they were looking for
Speaker 9: a chief. And I still remember this that their city
Speaker 9: manager went and talked to the union president. The chief
Speaker 9: officers in the apartment. He told me, he goes, I
Speaker 9: talked to thirty five people in this department, and you
Speaker 9: know how many people said I should pick your your wife?
Speaker 3: And I said how many? He said thirty five. He said.
Speaker 9: They said that the chief that treats the men most
Speaker 9: like a men, most like men, is a woman, and
Speaker 9: they wanted her and he made her chief and she did.
Speaker 3: Chief of the department. Yeah, so that was it. I
Speaker 3: gave up right. I was ahead of her as chief.
Speaker 3: And you know she had she always had said that
Speaker 3: she was she chief first. No, I was chief first
Speaker 3: to be chief. Yeah, she's in Orlando. She probably is,
Speaker 3: she is, She's still honest. She retired. She retired in February.
Speaker 3: So she did forty three years.
Speaker 4: Forty three years, very very instrumental in the area.
Speaker 3: Chief. Just so, yeah, here's the real chief down. Can
Speaker 3: you kiss some more asks?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 3: Chief?
Speaker 5: You know what to my point, Chief, is that even
Speaker 5: you know that that's kind of the same area, like
Speaker 5: you said, they recruited. You're in Davy, you're in Coral Gables,
Speaker 5: you're in Lauderdale by the Sea.
Speaker 3: You know, it's kind of like you're in that area.
Speaker 3: You met everybody knows each other.
Speaker 5: It's not like they went to say, Wichita, Kansas, right right,
Speaker 5: you know, And I was like they went to the
Speaker 5: ghetto of Coral Springs and pulled somebody.
Speaker 3: Out of the exactly what the fuck?
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, I will say that that's not to say
Speaker 5: that the chief from which Wichita couldn't do a good job.
Speaker 3: It's just that I undertand what you're saying. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: mean I want to you know that was a big thing. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 3: Why did you interview for chief of Davy guns when
Speaker 3: you know it was internal?
Speaker 4: But I will tell you that that some agencies they
Speaker 4: have to create or make it very attractive to do
Speaker 4: those jobs. The culture has changed. Whether you guys realize
Speaker 4: it or not, the culture is changing the fire service
Speaker 4: that affecting jobs like that. You know, people don't want
Speaker 4: to go that higher. They're very happy being the show
Speaker 4: for or the engineer or a captain retiring. That's it.
Speaker 4: They don't want to go any higher.
Speaker 3: Look at me, bro, you would have to put a
Speaker 3: stick of dynamite under my ass to blow me out
Speaker 3: of that seat.
Speaker 4: But it's it's getting it's I don't say more of
Speaker 4: a problem, but it's it's it's a very serious thing.
Speaker 4: You guys don't want to go much higher, very.
Speaker 3: Chief of the female chief of the provin Yet.
Speaker 5: You know, you know what they don't want down there,
Speaker 5: cap They don't want anybody from New York doing any
Speaker 5: training down there.
Speaker 3: I found that. Really.
Speaker 13: You think if you had a friend down there, somebody
Speaker 13: would hook you up. A guy who was a rescue
Speaker 13: wan ghetto and I think he would help a brother out,
Speaker 13: you know what I mean?
Speaker 4: Yeah, ok, bud.
Speaker 9: She was, Yeah, but she was the first female, first
Speaker 9: female Brower County. And the other funny story or interesting
Speaker 9: story when she was trying to get on the fire
Speaker 9: department back in nineteen eighty, she interviewed with Davy and
Speaker 9: at the time that chief said, we will never hire
Speaker 9: a female. Ah you well, and you know and you
Speaker 9: know how the world is round, right they circle. There's
Speaker 9: a Chamber of Commerce award named after him because.
Speaker 3: He passed away. Guess who got it? The world is round? Wow?
Speaker 4: Wow, that is great.
Speaker 3: Could you help out a brother who's really good at training?
Speaker 3: Maybe you could hook him up with a couple of games.
Speaker 3: I'll up got another friend that you know doesn't want
Speaker 3: to you know, extend a hand. Yeah, I'm sorry, I
Speaker 3: can definitely do that. I don't know, at least I
Speaker 3: know I got some friends on the East coast.
Speaker 4: Know Hank for my defense. I didn't know Hank was
Speaker 4: still interested in wanting to come out and have an
Speaker 4: hour and a half drive.
Speaker 3: Want to make it a couple of questions. Are you
Speaker 3: a chief? Who you?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, you achieved of training? You know what? You guys
Speaker 3: don't have to talk to a guy who put it
Speaker 3: thirty years on the f d Y and special lots
Speaker 3: and get a they've seen it a fight, don't worry
Speaker 3: about They're.
Speaker 4: Good, roomy, contact fires, working them work.
Speaker 3: Beat him up too much? That's enough. A couple of lefts,
Speaker 3: a couple of rights, that's good? Is that good? Hey?
Speaker 3: Uh god? Do we have time to do the engine three?
Speaker 4: Or yeah? Yeah, I was gonna make sure we got it.
Speaker 4: Don't worry. We aren't going to go without that because
Speaker 4: I know I'll let no, that's let's do it. So yeah,
Speaker 4: I'll let me go ahead and pull u up. And
Speaker 4: all the chiefs on talking about it, Well, we'll pull up.
Speaker 9: You have the older one that's got the galleon and
Speaker 9: stuff in it.
Speaker 3: I have that one. There you go. Oh Bobby, baby,
Speaker 3: you recognize those guys, Yes, I do. So is in
Speaker 3: the middle.
Speaker 5: Right, Bobby Gallion and I'm not sure what the other
Speaker 5: fellows must be a young chap.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 9: So, you know, like all departments, uh, you know, we
Speaker 9: wanted to find some way after September eleventh to honor
Speaker 9: the brothers that made the supreme sacrifice. And as you know,
Speaker 9: we we we're the land of Green fire trucks. And
Speaker 9: so the decision at the time by the Chief of
Speaker 9: the department was to paint one of our trucks. Read
Speaker 9: who is the chief by the time, Dave Paulis and
Speaker 9: who ended up becoming the theme administrator. And so actually
Speaker 9: an O two we dedicated this truck engine three. It's
Speaker 9: an in service engine. You see the logo when the
Speaker 9: guys came down to help us with the dedication ceremony.
Speaker 9: So that was our first iteration of as we refer
Speaker 9: to it, big Red.
Speaker 3: And it's still in service.
Speaker 9: Well so the unit a unit is in service, but
Speaker 9: over time, you know, you're replacing the engine. So when
Speaker 9: I became fire chief, we were embarking on some new units.
Speaker 9: And so there's the new and actually there's one that's
Speaker 9: replaced that sense, but that's the new big red which
Speaker 9: one's this one right here.
Speaker 3: So it looks like a squadron.
Speaker 9: That's Engine three and some things. Just to note, you know,
Speaker 9: we wanted to continue to honor. So you see that
Speaker 9: black stripe. So the black stripe has all three hundred
Speaker 9: and forty three names and oh and then when you
Speaker 9: hit it with a light, it looks like the memorial.
Speaker 9: In other words, the names become black and the black
Speaker 9: becomes white.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 9: And uh there's all these little touches. And you see
Speaker 9: that mural on the side there in the back. That's
Speaker 9: a picture from a guy, you know, Danny Alfonso.
Speaker 3: Right, you get a little bit of picture that we
Speaker 3: should have got in the back of that picture.
Speaker 4: I think the other I'm working on it, leave me alone.
Speaker 3: Beat up. You see him. Hey, he's all beat up.
Speaker 9: But uh, but when we put that engine in service,
Speaker 9: and and I did it on September eleventh. Uh that's
Speaker 9: when Joe Joel came and a couple other retired uh
Speaker 9: FT and y guys had come down. Joel said, you know,
Speaker 9: he wanted to be there, and uh so we did
Speaker 9: a whole ceremony and everything and I was telling him that, Yeah,
Speaker 9: it did a tour around the country.
Speaker 3: In fact, the chief of fd and Y there you go,
Speaker 3: there you go, that's a shop looking rig man.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and so that was by your fd and Y
Speaker 9: Danny Alfonso, right.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 9: Who I learned from Joel was Dennis boheka is the
Speaker 9: illegitimate child. Uh that he would always come ride rescue
Speaker 9: one with Dennis.
Speaker 3: Really, I've got I say that about Gonzo. But uh,
Speaker 3: send me those pictures for a cup of joe. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: so I actually sent that to you a while back
Speaker 3: for a cup of joe. But it never made it,
Speaker 3: that's it. Uh. But uh yeah, but when it when
Speaker 3: it was.
Speaker 9: Doing its tour, because they debuted this at fd C
Speaker 9: and then it went on kind of a tour and
Speaker 9: it went to New York and I remember I don't
Speaker 9: remember who the chief of department wash but but he
Speaker 9: had called me and he has said, hey, I love
Speaker 9: the rig, you know, he goes, I think you could
Speaker 9: work out a trade.
Speaker 3: And I said, well, I've got thirty one green ones.
Speaker 3: You can have any one of those Miami.
Speaker 9: Is that the only red one? Now, that's the only
Speaker 9: red one. The really and what we ended up doing
Speaker 9: was making the rescue out of that quarters. Again the
Speaker 9: medicuteit is also red. It's called Little Red and it
Speaker 9: is painted up as a salute to the veterans. So,
Speaker 9: uh so the guy that the station's unbelievable. If you're
Speaker 9: ever in Day County sending me some stuff, I do,
Speaker 9: beautiful station. But you know that that engine, just like
Speaker 9: the heavy rescue, is an example of I had the
Speaker 9: easiest job in the fire department. I just said yes,
Speaker 9: and the guys made it happen like I didn't. All
Speaker 9: I said was we got to replace engine three.
Speaker 3: That was it. Turn the guys loose. They did it. Unbelievable.
Speaker 3: They came up with all of that on their own.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 9: I saw it for the first time like everybody else
Speaker 9: did at FD. I see and uh and the wrecker
Speaker 9: the same thing.
Speaker 3: I knew what I do.
Speaker 9: You know, I had a concept of what I wanted,
Speaker 9: but I had guys a lot smarter than me that
Speaker 9: could figure it out. And uh, oh, there you go.
Speaker 9: There's a little red yep. So uh yeah, so we're
Speaker 9: proud of that. You know, we're going to maintain that then,
Speaker 9: but it says down the firehouse, Yeah, well, yeah, the
Speaker 9: heroes of September eleventh. Uh and then the uh also
Speaker 9: off to the left in the front of the station,
Speaker 9: they actually have a piece of the trade center steel
Speaker 9: that they built their own. And these guys did this
Speaker 9: all themselves, you know. But the station itself they've done
Speaker 9: all themselves. And just a station with tremendous bride and
Speaker 9: and uh, you know, good great guys. Wow, what lad
Speaker 9: of company is that? I don't know, it's just one
Speaker 9: of our put back up again. It was probably an event.
Speaker 3: There, souse no, no, no, I was gonna say, get
Speaker 3: what the program mean?
Speaker 9: Yeah, it would not I know, I know, listen, if
Speaker 9: I start, if I started a fire department, I would
Speaker 9: never have picked green. But that's what we're known for, right.
Speaker 9: We've had it for forty years and uh. And the
Speaker 9: only thing I added to it was the gray roofs.
Speaker 9: And the reason I did that is chief is because
Speaker 9: we always when I get up, when I got on,
Speaker 9: we wore gray uniforms. We were always known as the
Speaker 9: guys with the gray uniforms and the green trucks. So
Speaker 9: I like traditions, So I said, I want to pay
Speaker 9: the roots gray instead of white, just to bring back
Speaker 9: some of our history.
Speaker 3: Very nice. Somebody asked, why is the engine's to be
Speaker 3: then eleven league?
Speaker 9: You know, I think I don't know how that where
Speaker 9: that started. It might have been something as simple as
Speaker 9: in the very beginning that that was the unit being replaced.
Speaker 9: But they couldn't have picked a better house. I mean,
Speaker 9: that's one of our traditional houses. You know, when I
Speaker 9: got on, it literally was a home, right, I mean
Speaker 9: it had the jalousy doors, and you know, it was
Speaker 9: one of our original fire stations. And but they couldn't
Speaker 9: have picked a better place.
Speaker 3: What area in Miami is that in?
Speaker 9: It's called Tropical Park, so it's Bird Road and uh
Speaker 9: and basically the Palmetto Expressway. I mean just basically just
Speaker 9: a little west in south of Miami International Airport.
Speaker 3: So you go back and visit the brothers now that
Speaker 3: you were telling, absolutely, yeah, absolutely, you know I try,
Speaker 3: because I tell everybody, you know, I miss the clowns.
Speaker 9: I just don't miss the circus, right and uh so
Speaker 9: you know, but I missed the guys. You know, I
Speaker 9: loved the department and uh, you know, as much as
Speaker 9: I can see him, I I I tried to. It's
Speaker 9: it's interesting though, and you know. It was Freddie Alfamina
Speaker 9: that told me, he goes, when you retire, man, it's
Speaker 9: just the longer you retired, the more they forget, you know,
Speaker 9: or you you know, you walk in the station, you
Speaker 9: don't recognize anybody, and and uh, you know, it gets
Speaker 9: it gets harder and harder. But I said, shit, that
Speaker 9: happened to me.
Speaker 3: I was chief. You know, I stopped at a station
Speaker 3: one day. I was famous.
Speaker 9: The guys called him drive bys. I just show up
Speaker 9: at a station. I love talking to firefighters. I didn't
Speaker 9: bring an entourage. I didn't call the chief. I just
Speaker 9: showed up. And I stopped at a station one day
Speaker 9: and there was a guy there, a firefighter. He came
Speaker 9: on with me and we're sitting around. He goes, where
Speaker 9: are you at these days? And I go, I'm still
Speaker 9: at headquarters. And I said, hey, you idiots the fire chief.
Speaker 9: I said, you know what, I don't take it personal. Man.
Speaker 9: Even the President has to put his picture up in
Speaker 9: every federal building.
Speaker 3: Ah, that's right. I got to the squad the other day.
Speaker 3: Was it tuesday? I knew two guys dead, and nobody
Speaker 3: has one guy I knew and has been That's it.
Speaker 3: Eric It's amazing right, how fast it is. That's where
Speaker 3: I'm getting the challenge going. Oh, he's slipping it right
Speaker 3: in the hand. Brother, there you go. Oh that's one
Speaker 3: that I don't want.
Speaker 4: Kidding.
Speaker 9: I also got a handwritten note from Donald Trump, but
Speaker 9: before presidential stuff, when he bought Doral, I had to
Speaker 9: have a meeting with him.
Speaker 3: Issues. I don't want to let out my political views.
Speaker 4: We have another gentleman that he Uh, I'll just share
Speaker 4: this picture.
Speaker 3: With Oh, great guy, I love him. What a shame
Speaker 3: right after the earth Man. He had a great free
Speaker 3: and I knew Bobby for so many years.
Speaker 9: And and uh, we we've got a guy, Bill gust
Speaker 9: and he's are firefighters firefighters.
Speaker 3: Oh that's the guy.
Speaker 4: That's another guy we're trying to get. We're going to
Speaker 4: get he.
Speaker 9: Oh my god, he'd be great. Uh, he would probably
Speaker 9: be more than one show. But anyhow, we do our
Speaker 9: annual Metal Day, nothing like yours, but but an award ceremony.
Speaker 9: And we created a new ward, the Student of the
Speaker 9: Fire Service, and we named it after Gustin. And so
Speaker 9: him and Bobby Halton were very close to each other,
Speaker 9: and so we invited Bobby down and you can you
Speaker 9: know this is when Bobby was in the midst of
Speaker 9: battling cancer. He could barely walk, and you know, he
Speaker 9: came down and of course did an unbelievable speech and
Speaker 9: it's just a great time.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 9: We spent a couple of days together and uh, you
Speaker 9: know when they recognized Bill for lifetime achieving at FD
Speaker 9: I see, you know, Bobby asked me to be there,
Speaker 9: and you know, Bill and I have always been good friends,
Speaker 9: and and uh, you know he calls me chief, which
Speaker 9: makes me so uncomfortable because he's one of my mentors.
Speaker 5: Know.
Speaker 3: But yeah, so that was that was a great guy.
Speaker 3: Did you see the show with him? I did? I did.
Speaker 3: Yeahial skateboarder. Yeah I didn't know that either, with the
Speaker 3: long hand like yeah, yeah, you going after I see
Speaker 3: this year? Yeah, I actually just got notified there in election.
Speaker 3: You know what that means. I was a no one.
Speaker 3: I was a nobody.
Speaker 9: But I actually stopped by your booth one time, and
Speaker 9: you guys are busy. There was a lot of people there.
Speaker 9: I just remember Lou going, hey, big Dave, that's all
Speaker 9: you said.
Speaker 3: I bought a hat from you guys, But you doing
Speaker 3: you know what now you get to come on the
Speaker 3: boat cruise. Bro.
Speaker 9: Yeah, well I'll tell you my New York boat stories.
Speaker 9: So I'm up ride. I went up to visit.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 9: I wanted to visit the training center, your training center
Speaker 9: when I was you know, we were designing ours. And
Speaker 9: so I went up to ride, and I was going
Speaker 9: to ride along with Joe Downey with sock. So it
Speaker 9: took me to training center, me to chief and stuff,
Speaker 9: and then he had to go buy the safety chief
Speaker 9: somewhere in Brooklyn. I guess that's where one of the
Speaker 9: fireboats are housed.
Speaker 3: And uh.
Speaker 9: And so the guys are like, hey, man, we're gonna
Speaker 9: take a ride out.
Speaker 3: Go around.
Speaker 9: It's like, may it's beautiful to go around the Statue
Speaker 9: of Liberty. It wasn't the big fireboat. And you want
Speaker 9: to come And I'm like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sure, that's cool. And Joe's like, yeah, go ahead, man,
Speaker 3: I'll wait here for you. If I get something, I'll
Speaker 3: come back and get you. So we go out.
Speaker 9: It's beautiful, man, took us around stat Just a beautiful day.
Speaker 9: I see the guys talking on the radio and everything,
Speaker 9: and I'm like, what's going on? And they go Marine
Speaker 9: One's coming out here to pick you up. There's a
Speaker 9: collapse in Manhattan. The Chief Downy's going to They want
Speaker 9: you to go to Manhattan and Marine one. I'm like
Speaker 9: the odds of this man. They're picking me up in
Speaker 9: a fireboat and I'm a building collapse.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well you know who chief, the chief down? You
Speaker 3: put yourself down, you out. You're not Downy, Downy, I'm
Speaker 3: looking for Downy. Yeah.
Speaker 9: Well a few a few years, my daughters and I
Speaker 9: did the Father's Day run the family puts on, you know,
Speaker 9: so we always got a lot of mileage out of that,
Speaker 9: you know, because the signs always said D C. Downey, right,
Speaker 9: and my initials are d C.
Speaker 3: Downy.
Speaker 5: But yeah, I have excellent But now that you're out,
Speaker 5: are you doing any training or anything to keep your
Speaker 5: hand in it?
Speaker 3: Yeah? There we go. There, we're at the right. Yeah,
Speaker 3: the kids needless to say, they run a lot better
Speaker 3: than me. But but everybody needs to caboose.
Speaker 4: It's okay.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 9: I do a lot of uh, you know, I wanted
Speaker 9: to get back to the fire service. I know we
Speaker 9: have a young fire service and and so I do
Speaker 9: a lot of leadership training.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 9: I was just in North or Central Florida, the last
Speaker 9: two days. I do like a depends what they want.
Speaker 9: I did an eight hour leadership class and just I
Speaker 9: told him, Look, I'm no expert, but I've made so
Speaker 9: many mistakes.
Speaker 3: I want to help people learn from those. So I
Speaker 3: do a lot of that.
Speaker 9: And and the company I work for, we do a
Speaker 9: lot of uh leadership coaching and working with officers. I
Speaker 9: work with Gonzo, you know, I work with people all
Speaker 9: over the country. You know, I feel like a therapist.
Speaker 9: Sometimes I don't tell them anything they don't.
Speaker 3: Know, you know, I just reaffirm it. Right, if you
Speaker 3: weren't doing that, you'd be climbing the walls.
Speaker 9: Oh yeah, I I had, you know, I had. The
Speaker 9: Fire Service is literally my whole life. I have nothing else.
Speaker 9: I mean, I I love scuba diving. I do underwater photography.
Speaker 9: That's my piece.
Speaker 3: Uh yeah. But besides that, you know, I don't play golf,
Speaker 3: I don't have a wood shop.
Speaker 9: I mean, I have to do something. And I love
Speaker 9: the fire Service and I still love talking to firefighters.
Speaker 9: I love visiting fire stations.
Speaker 5: And yeah, like you said, you know, your dream job
Speaker 5: was chief of Training, And I mean, I'm out of
Speaker 5: it for so long, but I to me, it still
Speaker 5: gives me some self worth when I go out and
Speaker 5: I talk to these young guys and they love it
Speaker 5: because I mean, they there's no shortage of questions, and
Speaker 5: it can be anything from fire house life, how they hire,
Speaker 5: how did they transfer, or what would what would the
Speaker 5: tactics or procedures for this and to me, if there's
Speaker 5: if there were young people that want to, you know,
Speaker 5: that are interested in learning that that's our job as
Speaker 5: guys would experience to pass that on absolutely.
Speaker 3: When you go by. God's all right some of them,
Speaker 3: but you know you're right. I mean one of the things,
Speaker 3: you know, when I.
Speaker 9: Had to deal with six suicides in eighteen months of
Speaker 9: some of our members, and a few of them were retirees,
Speaker 9: and you know, we were really trying to figure out
Speaker 9: what can we do to try to keep guys connected,
Speaker 9: and we actually created what we call the Reserve program.
Speaker 9: And in Florida, you know, if I keep your name
Speaker 9: on the books, it maintains your fire certificate. You'll never
Speaker 9: use it again. But Jesus, you know I've had it
Speaker 9: for forty years. I don't want to give it up.
Speaker 9: And so basically, if you leave in good standing and
Speaker 9: you want to be a reserve.
Speaker 3: You can. We give you a polo shirt. I'm a reserve.
Speaker 9: And if you want to come in and teach a
Speaker 9: class you want to, you know, you can't ride the truck.
Speaker 9: But like I'll encourage a lot of the senior members. Hey,
Speaker 9: stop by the station, give them the history of Station three,
Speaker 9: give them the history of this battalion. You know, let
Speaker 9: these guys know where you came from. And we also,
Speaker 9: you know, we do all these recruit awards, you know,
Speaker 9: Outstanding Recruit and athletic and all this. We added a
Speaker 9: retirees present the Camaraderie Award. The recruits themselves pick who's
Speaker 9: that guy that you can count on, and it's given
Speaker 9: out by the retirees, And just trying to keep them
Speaker 9: connected with the organization and keep them connected with the
Speaker 9: department because you know, it's it's critically important to you know,
Speaker 9: if you move away to Montana, there's nothing we can do, right,
Speaker 9: but if you stay local and so now you know,
Speaker 9: if they check out, you know, because you you know,
Speaker 9: the firefighters got everything figured out to the penny right there,
Speaker 9: their finances, the retirement, but they don't have a clue
Speaker 9: what they're doing. The first week they're retired, and so
Speaker 9: we'll have a group that meets with them and it's
Speaker 9: called the Brotherhood and hers and Pink. So we don't
Speaker 9: offend anybody. And uh, you go through you know, you
Speaker 9: talk to the Brotherhood, you go, oh, you're moving up
Speaker 9: to Central Florida. Or there's a group of guys that
Speaker 9: meet on Tuesday for lunch. You know, here's the guy's number.
Speaker 9: Hook up with him. We do an annual retiree thing.
Speaker 9: And it's amazing. Right, the guys that spent their whole
Speaker 9: career hating each other are like best friends now, you know,
Speaker 9: because we're all the same once you retired, right right.
Speaker 5: I said, it's like, you know, now that I'm retiring,
Speaker 5: I even missed the guys.
Speaker 3: I didn't like. Absolutely, anybody wants a guy with a
Speaker 3: welcome knowledge, a living legend. Call on Senior Dude Coobs
Speaker 3: podcast at gmail dot com. If you want to train
Speaker 3: at your fire house. Absolutely, that's what I'm saying. Put
Speaker 3: put my email up, ask a question. That's it. Put
Speaker 3: my banner up. Come on before I do it. They
Speaker 3: let me teach my Jose. Was that you went and
Speaker 3: taught by Jose? Didn't you?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 5: At the Orange County they have right, Yeah, they do
Speaker 5: some uh training every year in memory of one.
Speaker 3: Again he's a good guy, Jose, he really is. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I got that to the guys in Orlando.
Speaker 4: Actually what was his what's his fiance's name?
Speaker 3: Uh, you got to get you know what time? The
Speaker 3: times that time, the old old old tip of the day.
Speaker 9: All right, Well, you know I don't I watch a
Speaker 9: lot of your shows, but I don't see all of them.
Speaker 9: Hopefully this isn't being repeated, but I wanted to do
Speaker 9: something for the new people and something.
Speaker 3: For for leadership.
Speaker 9: So for for those new firefighters out there, those firing ones.
Speaker 9: You know what I what I when I got on
Speaker 9: the job. You know, when you go through training, you're
Speaker 9: familiar with your ups, right, push ups and pull ups
Speaker 9: and sit ups. But when you get on the floor,
Speaker 9: you know, remember four other ups. Shut up and listen up,
Speaker 9: and take the time to listen to those senior members
Speaker 9: and learn from those senior members, and spend less time talking.
Speaker 9: The other two ups is step up, get involved, Get
Speaker 9: involved with your company, Get involved with your department, go
Speaker 9: to events and the last one's clean up. Look sharp,
Speaker 9: keep your apparatus squared away, your tools squared away. So
Speaker 9: that's for the new people and for those leaders out there.
Speaker 9: You know, it's simple. You know, I tell leaders all
Speaker 9: the time if if your goal is to be liked
Speaker 9: and then respected, you're going to get neither. So your
Speaker 9: job as a leader is to make people better, not people,
Speaker 9: not make people happy.
Speaker 3: So that's what I got. I like it, like it.
Speaker 3: I like to push up.
Speaker 4: A shirt.
Speaker 9: We have so many, we'd have so many recruit graduations. Again,
Speaker 9: my finance guy used to laugh about it because I
Speaker 9: always you I would throw the ups in and the
Speaker 9: other one would be the bacon and egg breakfast.
Speaker 3: Right, you've heard that one. Tell everybody.
Speaker 9: Look, if you're familiar with the bacon and egg breakfast, right,
Speaker 9: I want to know which one?
Speaker 3: Are you? Right? The egg made a contribution, but the
Speaker 3: pig made a commitment. That's another problem. And then the
Speaker 3: last one, I tell it the promotion. Right.
Speaker 9: Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, not
Speaker 9: a vegetable, and wisdom is knowing not to put a
Speaker 9: tomato in a fruit salad.
Speaker 3: That's it. I'm done, all right, great job. We got
Speaker 3: one more thing to do. We need to explain why
Speaker 3: Hank's got a bad date on his farm.
Speaker 4: Oh yes, we give me twenty twenty four seconds.
Speaker 3: Here we got twenty five.
Speaker 1: The First Responders Center for Excellence is it not for
Speaker 1: profit organization dedicated to protecting the lives and livelihoods of
Speaker 1: first responders. Their education and research initiatives aim to bring
Speaker 1: greater awareness and understanding the challenges to the health, safety,
Speaker 1: and well being of firefighters, EMS personnel, and other first
Speaker 1: responders too. They are an affiliate of the National Fallen
Speaker 1: Firefighter Foundation.
Speaker 3: So Tody Tonight's old school health and safety tip is
Speaker 3: brought to you by he well Light.
Speaker 5: Okay, well, we know that they're always preaching, and it's
Speaker 5: good preaching. We need to take care of ourselves. Nobody
Speaker 5: else is going to do that. Get checked out for
Speaker 5: a lot of things. You know, we go for our
Speaker 5: World Trade Center medicals. You should be going for your
Speaker 5: annual physicals. And as firefighters, we know that we have
Speaker 5: a higher incidence of many things, cancers and different illnesses
Speaker 5: because of the things that we're exposed to. So this
Speaker 5: was do you know it doesn't sound glamorous, but twice
Speaker 5: a year I go and get checked for skin cancer
Speaker 5: and I had a spot up there that you know,
Speaker 5: for a while, they would freeze and free you just
Speaker 5: kept coming back. Finally got biop seed and it was cancerous.
Speaker 5: So I had to get it cut out and I
Speaker 5: got some stitches up there. And skin cancer is one
Speaker 5: of those I think it's one of It might be
Speaker 5: the highest rate of cancers that are diagnosed every year
Speaker 5: in the population.
Speaker 3: And it doesn't just happen to Floridians. I know, well,
Speaker 3: you're in Florida. I just read a study where I think,
Speaker 3: if you look at it, this is where the face
Speaker 3: you know, when you're wearing your face piece, where the
Speaker 3: seal is, well.
Speaker 5: That's up against your skin and there's carcynergy of sweating
Speaker 5: and you know, the whatever is in that atmosphere, you know,
Speaker 5: the burn, the combustible products or up against your skin.
Speaker 5: So you know, who knows it could have been from
Speaker 5: having a mask on for thirty years, you know. But
Speaker 5: the thing is, if you don't get tested, you don't
Speaker 5: know about it. And skin cancer can definitely kill you.
Speaker 5: So that's just one of the many things that you
Speaker 5: need to get checked out.
Speaker 3: Fairly. Detection seen, you, dude, that is correct early detection.
Speaker 3: Great job, great job by you tonight. Chief double date.
Speaker 4: Double they're not double date, you know, trying to be respectful.
Speaker 3: Yes, we have nine to eleven fastly approaching. Jose's coming
Speaker 3: up with Agnes. I don't know if Gondo's coming up.
Speaker 3: He's on the fence right now now. But as you know,
Speaker 3: everybody's welcome to the squad to eighty eight. Uh, come
Speaker 3: in and pay respects with us, and then we go
Speaker 3: back to the watering hole afterwards. Squad's watering hole. So, uh,
Speaker 3: you're all welcome, Yes, all right, and that's all I got.
Speaker 3: What do we got? We have a show on Thursday night.
Speaker 3: We have somebody but.
Speaker 4: Don't forget we have the fire Marshal. I want to say,
Speaker 4: was it the George?
Speaker 3: Oh, I'm sorry, we have a line of duty death.
Speaker 3: You're right, Gons, thank you.
Speaker 4: I'm in the process of loading his photo right now.
Speaker 3: So okay, good job. Say look, you redeem yourself tonight.
Speaker 3: I will break your balls.
Speaker 4: Any be'st bullshit, you know, minutes at least for the
Speaker 4: last part of the show. So all right, mister George Nider,
Speaker 4: here you go. Unfortunately I don't have the details as
Speaker 4: far as it's passing. But after twenty two years of service.
Speaker 3: Twenty two years service. I think he was a fire marshal.
Speaker 4: He was the fire Marshal supervising marshall.
Speaker 3: Bring him the five bells.
Speaker 4: God rest in peace, my brother.
Speaker 3: Yes, Chief, double date. I'll see you on the boat.
Speaker 3: Cruise Brother, I'll see you in the first Yeah, I'll
Speaker 3: be there. Oh we got you now, man. We're taking
Speaker 3: out for dinner. Numble louis giving you the Hey. How
Speaker 3: you doing?
Speaker 1: You know what I mean?
Speaker 4: How you doing that?
Speaker 3: Big day? Oh, Chiefs, double day. Let's go there we go,
Speaker 3: senior dude. A great time, guys, Thanks so much, pleasure
Speaker 3: meeting your chief. You had a great career. Thank you
Speaker 3: all my buddies out there and leave the head nation.
Speaker 3: Glad to be with you tonight. Stay safe, excellent, good gods.
Speaker 4: Hey, and I remind me date. I want you guys
Speaker 4: to roll heavy, you know.
Speaker 3: You know what.
Speaker 4: I stay low and go bro let it blow baby,
Speaker 4: all right, good night, guys, We'll see you night.