Copper State Firemen Podcast
Copper State Firemen
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Podcast for Firemen burning the ships of Complacency, Laziness, and Excuses. We are promoting love and passion for the job, encouraging eagerness, and mastering the craft of the Fire Service!
The information, opinions, values, recommendations, and ideas are of the host and individuals on this podcast, and are not affiliated or endorsed by the fire department, organization, or companies the individuals works for. This podcast is for general information only! Indorced by Copper State Fools and Solid Fondation team LLC.
Copper State Firemen Podcast
Hazmat and Firefighter Specialty Roles
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Discover the hidden heroes of the fire service with Steve Wills, a veteran fire service professional who has made a remarkable impact across multiple states. In our conversation, Steve sheds light on the crucial yet often underappreciated role of hazardous materials (hazmat) in emergency response. His passion for hazmat is evident as he compares its significance to that of EMS, emphasizing the importance of proper training and readiness for large-scale incidents. Steve's insights challenge the perception of hazmat as a less thrilling aspect of firefighting and inspire a newfound respect for this essential specialty.
Join us as we explore the diverse and dynamic roles within an all-hazards fire department, from wildland teams to rescue swimmers and the SWAT medic program. We highlight the adrenaline-pumping experiences of technical rescue teams while candidly acknowledging the less glamorous but equally vital hazmat operations. The podcast delves into fire service culture, emphasizing camaraderie, mentorship, and the impact of community initiatives like the Peoria Fire Department's annual Christmas toy drive. Steve's reflections offer a thought-provoking look at the importance of selecting the right individuals for specialized roles and the potential drawbacks of forced assignments.
Throughout the episode, the theme of continual learning and adaptation in the fire service resonates strongly. We explore the challenges of managing new technologies, such as electric vehicle battery fires, and stress the need for innovative practices to keep pace with evolving threats. The podcast underscores the value of collaboration, shared knowledge, and proactive approaches to training, especially within the valley-wide hazmat consortium. Engaging and informative, this episode offers valuable insights for anyone interested in the complexities and collaborative spirit of modern firefighting.
I always preach because it was preached to me. So just getting done being an RTO. I always tell the recruits don't disregard the stories at the table, because some of that will be the best training of your life.
Speaker 2:Welcome everybody. Copper State Fireman Podcast. This podcast is for firemen burning the ships of complacency, laziness and excuses. We're promoting love and passion for the job, encouraging eagerness and mastering the craft of the fire service. Remember the information, opinion, values, recommendation and ideas are the host and the individuals of this podcast and are not affiliated or endorsed by the fire departments podcasts and are not affiliated or endorsed by the fire departments, organization or companies the individuals work for. This podcast is for general information use only. Brought to you by the Copper State Fools and sponsored by Solid Foundation Team LLC. Let's go, all right. Welcome back everybody. Thanks for joining us Again. This is Copper State. Let's go. Tech instructor talks medic. This guy's just got the whole list down right.
Speaker 2:A couple of career highlights for Steve here. He's been promoting teaching. He's been on some of the biggest fires in Arizona, colorado, california, montana. Job titles in and out of the fire service. So he was a Sunrise Mountain High School instructor for the fire service program. He is the Peoria Firefighter Charity Holiday Coordinator.
Speaker 2:Father, husband just finished a stand at the RTO and that's not what we're here to talk about today, but we'll definitely touch on that. A couple of big ticket items that Steve's proud of is what the toy drive has become in the department that he works for, proud to be picked to train those booters after that academy, that's a honor for sure. He's proud of his family, his kids, his reputation, all the the most important things in life and then, more importantly, the guys that he's worked underneath and has worked underneath him, just seeing what kind of fireman they become. So Steve Wills is a great guy. We're going to sit down today and we're going to talk about hazmat and just kind of the nuances of the um specialty and we'll dive as deep as Steve wants to dive. Is there anything I missed on the intro? My brother.
Speaker 1:No, no, uh, that was that was very awesome. Thank you, I appreciate that.
Speaker 2:All right, well, again, thank you for coming out here. Um again is sponsored by Copper State Fools, and so this is just Fireman Talk. We are here just to hopefully learn something. Everyone listening just kind of find out a different way to do something, and everything's said and done. If you take one little thing away or that brings it back to the kitchen table for a discussion, then that's the reason why we exist right now. So thanks for listening and thanks for the support.
Speaker 2:So, without any further ado, steve, let's uh dude, hazmat is a is a large topic to just say, hey, let's talk about hazmat, right, but I really want you to kind of break into, uh, your passion and hazmat.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of dudes out there, especially in the um, the spec, the spec ops world, right, and they do hazmat, but it's almost like a side uh job for them, right, they'd rather do the window pickoff guys, every all the quote-unquote fun hero stuff or whatever. But it's, it's funny because back in the day, uh my last department, we had all the modalities and special out with specialties of course, but we were always told and it's funny like no one liked to do hazmat, but we were always told like, hey, bro, it's basically the ems of fire, like it pays the bills for the spec ops. So, um, I know you think differently of it, so just break it. Break it down to listeners right now. Just let's start talking about hazmat, your, your mindset and and we'll just kind of see where the conversation goes from there, brother uh, well, yeah, so I agree, I don't.
Speaker 1:I'm not, I'm not disagreeing with them at all. I agree with them in fact, even when, um, let's say lately, in the past five, six years, we've had a giant influx of people into our department, uh, and another volleyball department, other neighborhood volleyball department. One of the things that I always, always take a little shit for is they ask like, what about specialties? So my current department is the all hazards department, meaning we have wildland teams, we have a rescue swimmer team, pasmat teams, trt teams, we have a SWAT medic program and we have like a terrorist liaison program, which is that Tlo thing that you referred to before. Um, we have a lot.
Speaker 1:But I always tell the new guys I'm like, look, here's the deal. If you go to trt that's like the cool man thing right, you get to use, you get, you get to learn a lot of knowledge. That's life, applicable, right, when you're you could use at any point in your time you can use the rope and not right, they're always applicable. Those, those are skills that are very perishable, but you can always use them. You can go, you know, you can go out and go rock climbing, you can learn to belay, you can learn to do all these different things Cool guy things, hanging from a helicopter, short haul, all those different things. Those are fun, especially since they're going on during hazmat school at the same time. But we usually walk out of hazmat school and see you guys jumping off the building, rappelling it down a building while we're learning chemistry. It just makes it that much worse. But then you have the rescue swimmer program. So it's another thing we do.
Speaker 1:Who would not like to go out and work on a boat as their fire truck? Like? That's just an awesome thing. It's always. It's always changing. It's such a huge environment, such a huge I don't know. It's very unpredictable and it's very cool to go out and be able to make a rescue or help, you know, push a boat off. That's you know gonna, so you can save other property from a boat dock, like. There's just so many different things you can do up there and it's such a dynamic environment.
Speaker 2:So that's now is that boat I know that's not what we're really here to talk about today, but for the listeners, that boat that you guys have in your current department, um, is that for what is that for? Is that for, like, drownings water rescues, or is there a pump on there? Is it for both fires? Does it do everything?
Speaker 1:see all of the above. Okay, all of the above. So we have a team, it's a 20, it's a, just a normal man. So 48, 96 is what we run. So they're up to 48 hours, like three different shifts, just like a typical fire station, right. But they go up there and they have a type 3 fire truck, which is, uh, when we like you kind of mentioned the wildland thing before just because it's at Lake, at because at the Lake they have to have a bigger clearance and they have to have a different kind of style fire trucks, so they use that up there and then when they actually have any kind of rescue on the water or they need to use the boat to get to the other side of the Lake, um, anything like that. So they've, they've run the gamut with that thing. It's very impressive.
Speaker 2:So it's one crew that runs both pieces of equipment. Correct, like co-staffing, correct? Okay, is there a guy that is strictly the dude that drives the boat, or is everyone have to learn how to drive that thing?
Speaker 1:So I don't want to speak incorrectly, but I believe so. Just like an engineer drives a fire truck and other people are able to drive the fire truck and qualify to do so, I believe it's the same thing up there copy. So, uh, they have one guy drive, but everybody needs to be qualified to drive it and I think that makes sense, fairly positive, that's how they run it. But the uh. Going back to the hazmat thing, there's tons of cool calls. You can save someone from a drowning, you can pick someone off of a mountain, you could get dropped down a shore haul on a helicopter. Those are cool things, those are fireman things to do.
Speaker 1:There are no cool hazmat calls. They're just not. And I'm a firm believer in that. And everybody kind of looks back and says well, you, of all people, why do you think that I'm like? Well, I'm a nerd. I love hazmat, I love the chemistry, I love the biology behind it, but they're not cool. They're just not. Like no one wants to go in and from the most mundane fall injury call. Like no wants to go in and reset a carbon monoxide meter. Just no one wants to do that. No one wants to reset a co2 thing. Uh, co2 tank from a beverage or from a circle k, you know, no one wants to do that, those aren't fun.
Speaker 2:But at the same time I want to be on the boat for 48 hours, like you talked about.
Speaker 1:That's a gig I'm signing up for yeah right but on top of that, even if, even if we get like what would be known as like the big call, right, let's say, we had your department and my department I think it was two years ago we had that big water treatment plant leak, correct? We were on that forever, right? These are campaign-long calls. So you have these giant calls where, even if you get a big call, let's say, and you're on these, you know giant leagues, so you're saving someone, or like you're a spill or whatever, you're still not as fun because you're not doing anything for really anybody else. You're more along the lines of helping, prevent and or protect, like the people around the area. And we're not even, we're just, we're just doing the very best we can. So it's not like a tangible thing.
Speaker 1:You can see, I jump into the water, I grab said guy and I pull said guy out. We just save that guy. I get off the mountain, we roll the guy down the mountain, put him in the big wheel. He's good to go. We take this guy and we short haul down, we pick him off the mountain, we go in the trench, we build our cribbing, build everything we need to do, we lift the car up. All those things are tangible. There's nothing really tangible in the hazmat world that you can see and elicit that immediate response like I did this. No, we just we stop the leak and that's about it. That's about all you can do, whether it be a gas leak or an auto refrigeration thing, something that you can do right away.
Speaker 1:But at the same time, even if you take all that away from it, the tangibility to it, it's just the danger behind it. And I think that's the other thing that prevents us really wanting to dive into it. Because really, in TRT and I don't want to speak any ill will against it, because I think there are phenomenal trades and phenomenal disciplines and modalities and they should be but really other than bad equipment or water being incredibly dangerous and dynamic, where is there? And you, being like a TRT guy, where would there be the inherent danger from that? You have safety systems built into safety systems, built into safety systems and really other than equipment.
Speaker 1:This was a battalion chief we had. He kind of told me the same thing. I stole this from him but he said they're really just, they're there like they're. Safety is built upon safety, which is how it should be. But in the hazmat world, even if we go, and I look at every fog guide. I look at every chemistry guide. I look at every fog guide. I look at every chemistry guide. I look at everything, every resource I have. I call the people in other countries that built this stuff and I come back and I get my answers.
Speaker 2:We still don't know if that's the right answer 10 years from now. You're absolutely right, and that's the crazy thing about it and the increased danger of these hazmat calls right and really what Steve's kind of breaking down and I hope guys are picking up on it like it's. You're right, it's not that sexy fireman job but, man, it's very important and super necessary, like it's a means we have to provide that service to be that all hazards that we always say we are. And I'm curious so, before we get really deep into hazmat, right? So you just told the entire listeners on how not sexy hazmat it. So why did you decide, hey, I want to do hazmat tech, right?
Speaker 1:uh, funny, uh. So the department that I work for, the station that we have our hazmat team at, um, it was the guys. It was the guys all the way, and we've we've joked about this from day one, like no one wanted to go to hazmat school. To go to hazmat school, we went for the guy.
Speaker 2:It went for the boys, right yeah?
Speaker 1:that was it. And and when? When I got off probation, we had just became a hazmat department. Okay, I just got a hazmat team and they offered up the guys that were already at that station. They said hey, you can either go to hazmat school and stay, or if you don't want to go to hazmat school, no harm, no foul, but you can't stay here.
Speaker 2:Pick a different house right.
Speaker 1:Pick a different house. And so, uh, there's a bunch of guys that were like no sure, yep, that this seems fair and accurate, let's just stay and keep this thing going. And they did. And then they ran with it and we just have a culture built into that station not to say that other stations don't, but, very biasly speaking, the culture that's built into that station was built by our predecessors and by those guys, and those guys have stayed for the duration and they just keep kicking ass. And so now everybody that gets to go through there like all the booters that are just doing a typical probationary rotation there they'll go through there and be like man I had such a fucking great time with these guys. And then they go back to hazmat again, not going to hazmat, but because that's the only way they get to stay at that station.
Speaker 1:So that was it. It was. It had nothing to do like I'm a. I was a biochem major at U of A, so I'm a nerd about it, but even that, like that, that was a very small portion of keeping me to go to hazmat school. It was mainly just to get to that station so I could get those three.
Speaker 2:I got you. That's funny. So you said biochemist engineer at AAC. Is that correct?
Speaker 1:No, I was a biochem major, biology chemistry major, uh, but at u of a the real school, oh all right.
Speaker 2:so for all your arizonians out there, right, we won't start that argument, uh, right now. But, uh, but that that's funny. So you already had the background, so it seemed like a natural progression, but that's it, and it's funny. And that's why, dude, I love you so much, because you're you're a true fireman, right. And it's like, even though that's why, dude, I love you so much because you're you're a true fireman, right, and it's like, even though you had the background, and naturally a lot of people are like, well, hey, I went to school, for it's a passion of mine, I went into it. You're like, no, bro, I went for the boys Right. Like this is, I wanted to be at the coolest station with the greatest guys Right and and have the most ass. Like I love that, like that's a great reason, and go ahead, that's it right there.
Speaker 1:Right, like. That's like, if you think about it and I tell this, I tell this to the um, some of the students I teach, if you really break down what we do and you break it down as as who we are right, if you think about it in the very basic level, when is this a good decision? Right, if you take the average fire station has, roughly, we'll just say, six to 12 dudes, correct, depending on how many apparatus you have in your truck. So we'll just take a station in your department, right, six to 12 dudes, you have enough drugs to kill a small army, correct, yeah, correct. In your drug box.
Speaker 1:You have several million dollar vehicles and a million plus dollar house Right, and then on top of that you have most guys. Especially with the way that the Valley works right now and the Valley, like the hiring process that we're going through and the you know just the attrition we're going through almost half of the typical department in the Valley has guys that have less than five years and most of those guys that have less than five years are roughly in their early to mid twenties, correct?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, absolutely, and that's like I'm glad you mentioned that before you go on, like that is something that's happening across the entire United States. You know it's the, the, the, the. The stat that I read last was 50% of all the fire departments. Obviously, it's a, it's an average right, or five years and less, which is crazy. You know, like that's a first for the American fire service by you know, as as a whole right now. So I think that the issues that you guys are having and we're having I think that's that's pretty common across the U?
Speaker 1:S right now. Yeah, and, and I didn't I didn't even know it was that big of a deal across the US. I knew in the Valley, but not across the US. But if you take that and you say, hey, I'm going to take these six to 12 dudes that are in their early to mid 20s and I'm going to give them enough drugs to kill a small army, I'm going to give them multiple million dollar vehicles, a million dollar house to live in. Oh, by the way, here's very little supervision. Go ahead and make sure. Right decision Ready, go and I'll see you in two days.
Speaker 1:That's just not a good decision process. That's just not smart. I wouldn't do that with my own kids. But if you think about it, because of the onus that's been placed on us by the society and by the people that we serve and the communities we serve, the people that you're picking is what it comes down to. So, really, if you're not picking the right dudes, then we don't need you there. We have to pick the right dudes, we have to pick the right roommates and without getting into a giant other topic, that's the onus and that falls on us, right that responsibility.
Speaker 1:So when it comes to the hazmat world, in order for me to get buy-in from some guy that's going to want to go do the non-sexy hazmat thing, I have to pick the right dude to do it. More than likely he's not going to want to. I have no chips. I can't push any chips in on the table to sell him on not going to one of the other specialties of mortality. It's just not as sexy, it's not as fun. Lie to him and tell him hey, just by the way, make sure if you do these things you don't have a higher chance of getting some horrible disease or cancer later in life. No, I'm just putting him right more into the phrase. So I know that the average guy has 30 to 50 higher chance of getting cancer just being part of the fire service. Well, let's, let's ante up, let's double down on that and send you to hazmat school right, let's.
Speaker 2:Let's expose you to the heavy metals on top of that, too, and all the other methyl ethyl, death you know.
Speaker 1:So cool, right, yeah then you gotta, you gotta. So you just gotta find the right dudes and go. Hey man, about the bind culture, it's about learning a craft, it's about doing something for the greater goods. That way, whatever you do for this, you're helping dudes 10, 20 years from now, Like the guys that you'll help you don't know yet and you probably will never meet. And that's okay and that's just how we have to kind of go about it. So I think the right mentality and we were lucky that culture got built just as I got there with that station it had already been done. But with the hazmat world they just took it and ran with it.
Speaker 2:And that's amazing. And it's funny because so the guys listen to this right, everyone on the job understands what the public expects from us, what they believe we're trained in right, and it's the easiest answer in the world, it's everything right, they expect us no matter what. We get the phone call after everyone else says we have no idea. Right, and it's crazy because outside of us, the military is probably, excuse me, the only other agency, right, government agency. We're all government employees basically, but the only other agency out there that says, hey, we understand, you are 24, 25 years old, right, who cares? But like military, for example, it's like at that point, if you joined right out of high school at 18, you're probably a supervisor, a captain, lieutenant, equivalent right In the military, compared to the fire service. But instead of being in charge of like four or five, six, seven guys or whatever they're like, here's a platoon of a hundred dudes. Right, and that's why, like I believe honestly, between the callings right, because the guys that pick this profession that are good, they do it for a call and same with the military, they do for a call and right, they, they, they have a call in to serve the country. But it's one of those things where and like you, hit the nail on the head we ask a lot of our members, especially our young members, and I kind of wanted to get into that.
Speaker 2:This is a segue into it Do you believe, especially in the hazmat world? And again, your comes to you and he's literally three weeks off probation. But this guy has been dialed in from day one. He's a super go-getter. There's an opportunity with your department, say, to go to has School. Are you going to tell that kid, hey, listen, wait a little bit or grow Absolutely Like how do you look at his years of experience prior to getting that tech?
Speaker 1:you know tech side is that important to you in your opinion, or is that merely interesting? I think it's, I. I would say merely interesting. Okay, if I would be more towards my pendulum would swing more towards that way, with the only, I mean every. There's. Every situation is different.
Speaker 1:We know this, like I can't say globally or blanketly oh yeah absolutely like, hey, this dude's good to go, because some dudes that may just be good to go. You look at and go. You're not going to fit in, you're not. You need to go this way.
Speaker 2:If you want to be successful, you have to go this way yeah, and that's doing them a favor by being honest and transparent with them right.
Speaker 1:But at the same time, like you look, you look at them and in my mind, if no one else is raising their hand and no one else wants to go, then send them. But I I'm a big believer in seniority too. But if you and I have the same thing, uh, and we want to go, do the same thing, and we have the same credentials and we have the same want, and I have on more time than you okay, then then the guy with more time on goes right. But if we have no one signing up for it be it medic school or hazmat or trt and we have like, well, we're just not going to send anybody. Or, on the flip side, well, we're just going to force someone to go, why are we putting people in places that they don't want to be? Like that's never going to. That's usually a very poor. She's a very poor outcome. I mean you may have got to just start doing it to do it because they didn't want to. She was a very poor outcome. I mean you may have guys that just are doing it to do it because they didn't want to like.
Speaker 1:Like myself, I was one of the guys that myself and a buddy, we were on probation. We didn't want to go to medical school and they forced us to go to medical school at the time. We wanted to be medics eventually, but I didn't want to do it month 10. Right, so I didn't. You have someone that has three weeks off probation and one of his rotations was at that HACM station or at that TRT station. He's like dude. I fell in love with the dudes. I fell in love with the guys. I fell in love with the people there, the culture there. I really want to go back. Or even I fell in love with the little itty bit that I learned in my rotation there. But I think there needs to be stipulations. Just like your department, my department, like you, have to honor that to the city and to the taxpayer by being there for X amount of years or whatever that may look like.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I mean fiscally responsible and everything else that kind of all goes into that. You know, obviously it costs everyone money, taxpayers, the department and everything else. Time, you know, backfill the whole nine right to send guys to school. And so I wholeheartedly agree that. You know, trying to vet those guys ahead of time, obviously with the lack of options we have too.
Speaker 2:And we have the same issue in the department I work for right now and I'm curious on how you guys do your recruitment process, just for the hazmat side, because what we came down to is we'll do an interview and basically open it up to you know, if you're off probation, right, you're eligible. We hold it to firefighter and engineer only because believe that we should not pick up a suppression officer that's not a technician, send them to school and then say, hey, now you're in charge of a tech truck which they're brand new tech. That's not fair to the crew, the officer, anybody. So we sit down, we just interview the guys and basically it's exactly what you're saying Like, hey, is this dude going to fit in, right? What's his work? Ethic like stuff like that.
Speaker 2:You know, years of service are kind of merely interesting. How do you guys do your selection. I know you talked about, obviously, a two guy sign up. One's got 10 years on the job, one guy's five years on the job, the 10-year guy has it. But prior to using that seniority system, do you guys interview them, or what does that look like for you all?
Speaker 1:So we've ran the gamut. We've handpicked, we've done written tests, we've done a written test and interview. We've done written tests score-based. You scored higher than me, then you go. We've done written tests score-based you scored higher than me, then you go. We've kind of done a bunch of different ways. We're still trying to figure out how to do that so we can include the most amount of people that we want to. We get the biggest pool of participants.
Speaker 1:And quality participants obviously too. That's almost kind of vetted because it's just within our department. So it's not the same. It's the same process, but not the same mindset that you would have in, like trying to have a hiring process just to get hires. I don't want to lower the score to 70 just so I could have, you know, a bigger pool of people to pull from. Well, now you're lowering the standard, right there, possibly right, but here these guys are already hired, we already know them, so that standard look like Well, they should already have met a standard. They've gotten off probation, they've gone through rotations, they've roved for a little bit or been on a truck for a little bit. They should have already done their due diligence, essentially, and looking at it and going, hey, I'm really interested in the Hazmat program and they're reaching out to people that are in the Hazmat program.
Speaker 1:So it's funny um, one of the things you do for like a SWAT medic, one of the ways that our pd and fire work together to hire their SWAT medic that one of the questions on the test used to be in the interview process per pd like pd would ask well, what have you done to prepare right, which is the same question that everybody knows in the fire service. Anybody's trying to get hired should have that answer, right, correct, yeah. But one of the things that they're looking for is have you talked to our guys? So they almost want you to name drop, like, hey, I went and had coffee with so-and-so, I had a couple of beers with this guy. I went and talked to her about this. I saw what they're looking for. Did you speak? Did you go on your own time and seek the answers, or seek what this job is really like? Because even for someone that like maybe in there, like as a police officer, and now you're trying to go for SWAT, you may have a very small window of that. And the same thing goes for this If you're a guy that's on a TRT truck or you're a guy that's on another truck and you have an idea of what hazmat looks like, probably a very small window, right. So you, matt looks like probably very small window, right? So you, I mean, like I can tell you I mean, unless I looked at the numbers, really like I can tell you how many trt calls our guys ran, right, so I did so.
Speaker 1:I would, in retrospect, I would expect them not to really probably have any idea of how many weeks really run and you're interviewing them and knowing like, hey, what do you guys think about um or sini, what do you think about him? Dude, he reached out to so-and-so. He came down and talked to this guy. He went and had coffee with her. He wants it, dude, he wants it. So I think that's kind of how we tend to approach. It. Now is of the group that once you pass the written, who do we want? So kind of like your group kind of spoke for your interview, if you will.
Speaker 2:And then the nice thing about that too. I really like that you guys do that, because at that point it's it's the same thing that I know a lot of us do, especially for like the new hires and when I say new hires I should say guys that want to be on the job. It's like right off the bat, you ask them, like these the why questions and things like that. But it's it's always that old saying like hey, you have to want it more than we want you kind of deal, you know. And then I like that because you're basically saying that, hey, these guys have gone out of their way because this is how much they want it. Right, they talk to these guys, they want to learn about it, they want to know more about the crew dynamics or the calls or the training or just the time commitment, right.
Speaker 2:And it just goes back to hey, we've already selected a good dude as a fireman to start with, right, because we like him. That's why we hired him. And then he was successful through his probationary year and everything else. But then, on top of that, while we really like this dude, now he's above and beyond, because he's showing us that not only is he interested, but he really wants to learn it. He wants to be a better all hazards fireman, which is a big key for me personally, in my opinion and I'll kind of get into that in a second but a Joey's a good dude and be like oh yeah, I agree with you, joey's a good dude, but like I don't know if Joey's lazy you know, I don't know all these other things about it because he hasn't put the work in to go out and talk to guys and, compared to you, know little, those go-getters that you know that after they get out of that tech school they're going to be, they're the ones that are going to be um, tearing into the truck every single day, every single minute, trying to learn all the pieces of equipment.
Speaker 2:Because we know, like you and I, both in the technical rescue world, you with all the modalities it's so hard to be proficient in everything. And some guys will say it's impossible, and I disagree with that statement. It's hard. You can be proficient in everything. You might not be a master, but you should be able to be able to use every piece of equipment for those scenarios in the proper way. Agreed.
Speaker 1:And I think too, even if it comes down to the fact like, let's say, that same guy, let's say Orsini, comes in, hey, he sought attention, he sought this, he sought the answers and in his mind he realizes maybe this isn't for me, that still tells you how good of a duty he is Like. So what, he doesn't want to come, that's okay. That least he understands the process of trying to be a career long learner, right, like that's. That's what you're doing. That's all we're really doing here is trying to find guys that want to do things, that want to continue to learn and want to progress, no matter what it is. It's that same cliche statement that everybody's always used you leave the department better than you found it if you and our chief that we have currently. He told me this we were actually on a wildland fire, uh, on the border of new mexico and arizona um, a long time ago, and he actually told me. He said, if you ever get bored, it's your fault dude, I love that.
Speaker 2:So if you ever get bored, it's your fault. Right, it's your fault. So explain that.
Speaker 1:I know what you mean, but I love that I've stolen it and I've plagiarized the hell out of it ever since, but it's. There are so many different avenues to take in the fire service, right, just like we don't have a very high, like the way I look at it, we don't have a promotional tree. Right, it's very small shrub, the promotional shrub. You don't go very high in the fire department compared to military or PD that have maybe nine to 11 or 12 different promotions. Right, we have firemen to engineer, engineer to captain, captain to battalion, and then you go up from there, depending on which department you work for, you might have two, maybe three more promotions to make, right, so it's a handful, roughly, of promotions.
Speaker 1:But the things you can do are astronomical, right, we talked about some of them already Hazmat, trt, rescue swimmer. You can go work for prevention. You can become a wildland fireman. You can go work for PD. You can go work like one of the other things I do, like the TLO thing, right, so you can work with an FBI terrorism task force and you can go do that stuff. You can go work on car seats. There's a million things you can do.
Speaker 1:And if you don't know or if you have something that you want to do, then all you really have to do is raise your hand all the time. But who's a great friend of mine? If you just raise your hand and ask, we'll probably figure out a way to get you that program and maybe even get that program funded Right. So you just have to raise your hand. You have to come up with an idea, because someone else came up with the idea beforehand and now we have a program for it. So if you just come up with an idea and you raise your hand and there you go, and whether it's a charity event or a union event or a, and you raise your hand and there you go, and whether it's a charity event or a union event or a special ops event or just a regular fire, department function, event or program like that.
Speaker 2:All you have to do is raise your hand, and that's huge too, and this is what a lot of guys in the american fire excuse me, american fire service do not understand. So you'll get the guy granted and and no dissing on this this individual right, but you'll get a guy that has a great idea right, it could be game-changing for the fire service. So then he is met with adversity right from the get-go because he comes up to whoever his initial boss or maybe the step above that, wherever it's going to die, with this really good idea and they say, okay, how right or no, because we've never done it like that before, no one else does it like that around us. Insert any sort of excuse that, um, an upper management or supervisor is going to give you right.
Speaker 2:What steve's saying is that same dude comes in right and correct me if I'm wrong, ste, but he comes in not only with the idea like hey, this is going to be game changing, I believe Right. And on top of that, this is how I can implement it by X, y, z, right, you're a lot more supported when it comes down to that. And then it sounds like with Steve's department with their union backing them so deeply, that's nice words, I believe. If you present the information in that, order them so deeply, that's nice where it's, I believe if you present the information in that order, um, that's when they're gonna, they're gonna fight for you to get funding to really get that program going. Am I kind of understanding what you're saying?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah, for the most part. And if you think about it like like, let's say, and it doesn't even matter, right, let's say I like hydraulic trt equipment. Again, I'm not a trt guy, so I'm just throwing this out there. I like hydraulic equipment. Well, I like battery ones. Can we try the battery ones? You'd have a third, historically speaking, in the fire service. Go absolutely fucking not well, why? Because I didn't learn that way and that's not how we do things. So there, yeah, right, and then you have a third of them go, um, no, it's funding and it dies. It dies right there, whatever it is because it costs money yeah because of whatever right.
Speaker 1:No, we don't like it, or it's not part of the coalition, or it's not part of the funding, or we'd have to go fema or grant or whatever. Blah, blah, blah, blah. And then you have a third go, let's try it. And of that third that says, let's try it, half we're gonna go, half ass it and half we're gonna go come, guys, let's just give this a fair shot. So I think and this has always been a big like a huge stickler for me is when people fight shit for no reason.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Like who am I to vote on a TRT piece of equipment when I'm not fucking TRT?
Speaker 2:I don't get to vote. Yeah, you shouldn't, you shouldn't. You have no skin in the game at all.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what do you guys want? And like being like a labor rep or anything like that. The great thing about the way that works is they go. I don't give a shit. What do you guys want? We want battery stuff.
Speaker 1:Okay, have you done your Partly? Okay, but why just partly? I don't know how to get a hold of these people. I don't know where to get these resources. All right, let's put our heads together, figure this shit out, and then we send you on your way. And then, if you do the research and you come back and go look, man, the boys and I want to try this thing. It looks like it's a pretty cool idea. I have no idea if it's going to work. To tell you the truth, department B and department C have done it and they've got mixed results. But department D, e and F, they loved it. So what do you say? All right, sure, let's get a couple, let's try the shit out, or let's see if we can go to our neighbors and see hey guys, we're going to get this item, you guys want to go play with it with us? And then we all use it and go.
Speaker 1:That was fucking a waste of time. We'll never get those, you know, we'll never get that time back, or I think they had some good ideas there, or they just love it, like that's the one thing that I love. That's probably one of the biggest things that I love about the way our Valley system works is how we all train together. I've stolen shit from you, steve. I've stolen shit from other guys you've had on this podcast. I've stolen shit from everybody. That's how it should be, like I should steal your guys's shit, bring it back to the station, go hey, look what steve just did over on this call. And they go oh, why didn't we ever think of that? I don't know. I don't know we're, we're an idiot. I don't know why I didn't think of that. But let's go, let's try it. Or hey, steve has always done this, but when he worked for his last department, they wouldn't do it because of x, y and and Z.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, we don't have those issues. Yeah, but keep your head on the swivel, just in case. All right, well, that makes sense. So then you can just run with it. The fact that we have this ungodly six department, several, I mean what like 7,000 of us maybe within the valley, right, yeah, there's a shit ton. And you put everybody's heads together together, you're going to come up with some good ideas and none of them are ever going to be yours, for the most part and you just steal it and you modify it and you learn how to bake your own cake with it, just like you did as a medic, because people go, oh well, that's so-and-so's idea, who cares? Was it a good idea? Yeah, that's all fucking matters. Did you get your home safe to your family? Were you able to go back to the station? Can you have a better chance of enjoying enjoying retirement?
Speaker 2:We in the American fire service right, we tend to eat our own when it comes down to stuff like that we're like well, we're not exactly what you said, like well, we've never done it like that, so we're not going to do it. But like, the mentality you're talking about is the whole reason why copper state fools exist and the whole reason why this podcast exists, because, again, it's a thing where it doesn't matter what it says on the side of your truck, what fucking color it is, list whatever you want to list, right. Whatever it says on the back of your t-shirt, uh, what style helmet we wear, none of that shit matters, right. What matters is is we can all learn from each other. But more importantly right and I like the, the, the good dudes right now, and this is what we're trying to trend the fire service in this direction and keep them pushing is that there should be no SMEs, the subject matter experts. Obviously there are, because you need guys to teach and everything else, but what I mean by there should be none is those guys with that information. Their number one priority and I know you're one of those guys and I am too is as soon as I learned something from somebody else or something I read or whatever the case might be, and I was able to implement it and I'm like holy cow, this works for us.
Speaker 2:Right is to start sharing that information as soon as possible, because if I'm the only one that has that info right which is what we used to do those would kind of hold on to that because they wanted to be the guy right.
Speaker 2:It's like it's merely interesting, because as much as and I know you feel the same way as I do on this because we love the fire service, but I want to be on every big call that's in the freaking state, you know, I don't even care it could be three hours away.
Speaker 2:I feel like, for some reason in my brain, I should be on it Right, and every good fireman should feel like that, because they should feel like, hey, I'm the highest trained, most qualified, most aggressive insert whatever your freaking fireman pronouns are right and say I want to be there and so if I can't be there, right, I want to talk to those guys to find out what was the call, what they do. You know what didn't work, what did work, right, because the whole idea is to learn from that and then bring it back to you know, our guys and I say our guys like your guys, my guys, whatever the case might be right and then teach them. So I love that. You said that too, and you're absolutely right. Our system is different than most in the United States, if not all, when it comes down to how well we collaborate together across multiple different departments.
Speaker 1:Everybody has their thing right and I think that's for us, that's ours in the valley, in our areas, how we operate as one collective. We can take 26 cities and we can operate as one collective fire department. There are no boundaries. It's the closest truck to you, within three feet. We all stage accordingly, we act accordingly, we train accordingly, we work accordingly. Again, like Bruno Sini had an idea and it turned out to be a phenomenal idea and he ran with it. But again, even that incident management system that he had, he perfected that system from what California had doing in wildland.
Speaker 1:It's not that you can't take someone else's, it's not. I think so many people think about it like, well, that's so and so's idea, well, it doesn't matter. Like how many of the guys listening to the podcast right now, right, where's? The majority of them are probably career or volunteer firemen. How many of them have taken a recipe that they got from a guy when they were first on the job and changed it a little bit, and now it's their recipe? It's this shit. Like, what am I going to do? Take, like I'm going to go. Hey, these are Orsini's chimichangas. No one gives a fuck. They taste good. Hell yeah, they taste good, I don't give a shit, you take credit for it. But then what do you do? Go okay, and then everybody goes. Neat, I don't give a shit, get the fuck out of the way, right. So I think what it comes to is like something that you and I've talked to before, like it, uh, where it gets annoying is when we get the pushback, like that.
Speaker 1:I think it's just, that's a, it's a globalization of the valley fire departments, um, and it's that onus falls on us again. It's the reluctance of progression. Correct, every department wants to be progressive, but a lot of fire departments and it's nothing against their upper management, because a lot of times it's the boots on the ground or it's the guys that are in the middle management areas, which I think is like the most important, biasly speaking, like I think the captain is the most important guy on the truck, um, or, excuse me, guy in the department, like that's the most important position, because you're directly influencing the guys below you to build that culture, to help make it better. So you just got to experience what was before you and your culture and if it, if it was a thriving one, then that's probably why you're a captain, it's probably why you're in charge of being in charge of people, right, and if it wasn't a thriving one again, it's probably why you're a captain, because you want to change that, you want to make it better for the next guy. So I think it's the reluctance of progression.
Speaker 1:And if you look at in the hazmat world, um, like we look at it so much, like, well it's, this is not what we do in the valley. Who cares? Right, is the east coast coming to the west coast or west coast ideas? Going back to the east coast, like what do they do? That's different, right? Why does fdny have a hazmat program? What do they do with this? Well, how is that going to parlay into what I do, into a suburban area of phoenix, or phoenix, you know, arizona, totally different climates, right.
Speaker 1:And people forget. Like we're always talking to the gas ranger guy uh, recently that works for the industry and he's like how do you calibrate your machines? And we were talking about it. I'm like I can't get this to work. I go, I'm talking to the dude on the East Coast and he's talking to me and I can't get this idea to work and I'm like why can't this machine work? And now I'm getting frustrated and I'm getting pissed and I realized I'm like a hard hat wearing guy to school or to work. You went to a shit ton of school. Would elevation play a change in this? And he thought for a second. He goes, yes, why are you at elevation? I go, I'm pretty high up.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And he's like really in Phoenix and I go, I know it's not, it doesn't seem like that, but I mean, if you look at it like the Diamondbacks have the second highest elevation in MLB.
Speaker 2:There you go.
Speaker 1:The the Cardinals have the second highest elevation in the NFL. These little little things come to play and we forget that we're talking to people that might be in a different area or environment and now that they can teach us something they all they had to do is open up. You had a guy that wore a hard hat to work and you have a guy that has like suburban versus the big city, right, well, that's not how we do it Suburban areas versus or rural areas versus the city. Can you make that idea work in yours? Like we should be excited about learning new techniques from other areas. We should not be afraid to ever admit to others that, like, we have great ideas or sweet techniques. But we should also be, like we should be proud of the ideas that we bring to the table. Like what's to say that vent inner search can't work in a Phoenix environment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, it absolutely can work.
Speaker 1:Explain to me why it can't. You can't explain to me. You can explain to me why it might be difficult, or you can explain to me why it might not be the number one go-to, but you can't explain to me why it can't work right. The same thing goes with other techniques that we do, but why can't we fight brush fires the same way on a type one engine that we do a type six? I can tell you that answer all day. But what I can't tell you is how you cannot be successful at it. Because you can. You can still be successful on a type one truck, fighting these. You know, uh, urban interface, environment, environment, like. There are ways to do it. You have to learn those ways from other people. You have to constantly exchange techniques and information. That's what I love about this podcast. You can listen to it. You spend 45 minutes listening to a dude that probably checked some college.
Speaker 1:Granted some of the guys in this podcast have years and years and years of education and all kinds of different letters and alphabet after their names, right, and it's phenomenal. But then you can have that dude working with another guy that checked some college and we're making the same thing and we're doing the same thing and we're working together. Like I don't understand where you can find a better melting pot of guys and and ideas than what we have here. And then you put them all in the same training. You go hey, east side, what do you do? West side, what do you do? Well, what do you do in the big city, what do you do here? We can go back and forth like that's. That's one of the things that bugs me the most when we don't do that, but I'm so proud of when we do do that yeah, and absolutely, and it's just an opportunity thing.
Speaker 2:But, dude, like you're, the way you view training, working together, right, just, uh, just, the modalities of the fire services is. I wish the majority of the guys would view it that way. But I mean, and that's the goal, the goal is to hey, keep reminding guys that we learn from each other. Right, it's cool to share information, it's cool to try new things. And then, more importantly and you said it, which is great, and we've talked about this on previous episodes, so you'll probably hear this every freaking couple of weeks when we drop an episode, but it's like you know, you don't know what you don't know. But, more importantly, when it comes down to it, it's like we can. There is no, we said it multiple times already, we operate in a gray is no, we said it multiple times already, we operate in a gray. We all know that.
Speaker 2:Right, there is no one tool, tactics, tactic, excuse me, or whatever it is, to insert into this house fire today that we did up on a whiteboard, right, and guarantee that's going to happen on the next job we run, because we all know every job is different.
Speaker 2:Right, when it comes down to hazmat world, the freaking structure fire, world house fires, fires, you name it, what all the things that we respond to, even on medicals. But it's shame on us for not allowing or, more importantly, um, promoting and supporting the guys that do want to learn something else. Because, yeah, that tactic might only work 10 of the time, but guess what, when we need that 10, I want to know how to do it right and I want my crew to know how to do it, and vice versa. So it's all about just those slideshows or whatever, whatever terminology you use, to be able to pick from your brain right and say, okay, I've never been on this call before, but I have a general idea what I can do to mitigate this emergency. Let's fucking go, let's try to, let's try our hardest.
Speaker 1:If not, we'll pivot right, and we're good at pivoting 100 and like, if you look at the has been world in general, that's how we've become.
Speaker 1:Like when we got on, we had certain meters that did certain things for certain chemicals, right, and now we have a meter that does all these things for all these chemicals all the time, but only in certain environments. And then you, you start realizing that your meters kind of dictate your technology. But really we always say, like technology drives us right, like uh, and we want that, we want the technology to drive us some of the time, right. The other part of time is we need to be figuring out what the fuck we want technology and then get with the guys that can do that. Like figure that out, like all right, why am I not just like we're in, I mean, we can go on, and I'm one of the guys, one of the few guys that teaches this, passionate about it. This is an entirely different episode. Like lithium ion batteries and EVs and solar and the whole battery storage systems, right, like all those energy storage systems, that is a technology that is so far in front of us that they don't even know what they're doing.
Speaker 2:Correct.
Speaker 1:And it's not to be mean about it, it's not to say that, it's not to get political and say, well, you drive Prius, you idiot. No, it's. And it's not to say like, well, you know, ev is the way of the world and you're extinct. It's not to be any of that, not to be political at all. It political at all. It's say that who am I to? I better if I'm going to send my guys, like we just had this recently. We had a change in the valley and it was. I was super, super proud of it and super stoked about it. We were taking guys and putting them on these campaign fires. It was a car, it was a car fire, right, and we had put the car fire out. And now it changed. It goes into battery, thermal runaway, and now it's into a battery fire. Well, you have two separate fires in the same car. You have the car fire. We all know what that looks like Black, shitty smoke, right, everybody gets. After that it goes out in seconds, real quick. Then you have the battery fire and it doesn't go out. And the analogy that I always use is imagine, you're trying, imagine that battery is a that fires a shoe in a shoe box in your closet. That's essentially what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to put water on a shoe single shoe and a shoe box in a closet. It's incredibly difficult to do right, so those take forever. And now we just recently got to like, after seeing people get hurt and after seeing people get injured or a waste of resources or widow, whatever it took, unfortunately. But now we had to put the right guys in the right spots and those guys ran with it, and now we can sit there and say, hey, the real way to deal with this is to let it burn itself up, let it consume everything bad about it and let it do its thing. Protect all the exposures, protect the environment and people around it, and let it do its thing. But if we keep, keep putting this thing out, it's going to just keep running from us and as it does it and it keeps this process going, we're just we're just allowing ourselves to be affected more and more by these chemicals and heavy metals.
Speaker 1:I think it was the lakeside california had the same thing, or lake view, maybe they had a prius like haul ass doing 100 and ordered itself into this garage. Well, after a little bit, it puts fire out right, initially really quick. Then after a little bit it catches and they put it out again. But then they do what we all do they doff their gear, they go get cleaned off, you know kind of deconned up, doff their turnouts and as they doff the turnouts, the scene catches again. The poor bastards put all their shit back on and go after it again, put this motherfucker. Then they do the same process Free decon, free doc. And then the flatbed gets there. This car gets up on the flatbed and it catches on fire on the flatbed. So thank God them and flatbed coach truck driver had a great idea let's just drop the ass to the flatbed, that way we can make access to it. And then they finally put it out is a flatbed, that way we can make access to it. And then they finally put it out.
Speaker 1:But it took hours from the initial onset to when they got done, hours to do this, all that explosion. I think they even sent a few of their. I know they sent a few of their guys to the hospital. Um, they were all fine, what sounds like. But again you have these incidents everywhere. I mean, we had plenty of them in our valley alone last year and you have to start it. We try to stay ahead of the technology at times and at times we try to let the technology drive us, but if we can't be safe and understand the principles behind it and we're not humble enough to understand that we don't fucking know, we don't know like you talked about, and then we're never going to get it right. We're just never going to get it right. I love it.
Speaker 2:Well, it's funny and I agree with you EV is for a whole nother podcast, right? But it's funny. You mentioned it now and it was something I was going to get to later with you because I really wanted to talk to you about it. But since you segued, for me it's perfect, right? So I understand exactly what you're saying with these ev calls.
Speaker 2:So please tell the listeners, right, that don't know or maybe just aren't quite up to speed yet, right? So when you say we're letting it burn, we're letting it burn because that way it exhausts every single cell in that vehicle, right. And then it's now deemed safe because it's no longer able to catch on fire. Because, from what we've learned, right, is, the only way to stop thermal runaway, right, is to cool it down or let it completely consume itself. So you just said we're really bad about cooling it down because of the location, right? So expand a little bit more on that so people understand you know what you mean. And then why it's so beneficial to let these things burn if possible, right? Because obviously we can't let them burn every single time, depending on exposures and things along those lines. But, yeah, explain to people why that's a preferred method right now.
Speaker 1:So essentially the bare nuts about it right, Without getting too much more in depth or too boring with the chemistry portion.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we'll just get the surface on it, right.
Speaker 1:And that electrolyte solution wraps in and around every single cell of this battery right. Depending on how the battery is built right, there are like pretty much three different types of ways that it's built for the most part, but there's an electrolyte solution that goes in and around there. As soon as that solution dissipates in some way, shape or form, either they didn't put enough in, or now there's been trauma and salt into the vehicle or to the battery pack itself and that solution is now leaked out. Whatever the case may be, there's now nothing protecting that battery, and that battery can just overheat. As it overheats, it will catch fire. The lithium inside of it will catch fire. As it does that it then propagates to every other cell with them.
Speaker 1:So it just becomes, uh, just like um bottle rockets we used to have as kids right, or the snaps that used to have as kids like.
Speaker 1:If you, if you took a roll of like a snap gun, like an old cap gun, like that old blue carbon, you know sulfur roll, and you would light the end of it, it would go bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, as the more it hit, the more it would set off.
Speaker 1:So same kind of principle here you have these one catches one on fire, and then now two catch four on fire, and now four catch eight on fire, then eight hits 32 on fire, kind of how the whole property works, because it just runs from it, so the hotter it gets, it keeps going. The problem with that is is it's eliciting what we would call a chemical cocktail, and the reason why we call it that is because there are um, there's not enough data out there from all the entities that we've talked about. There's not enough data out there to show exactly what are in, what are, what is in this little cocktail of chemicals that we have. Uh, when these things catch on fire, what's in the smoke, what's in the battery, what's in this, what's in that? Like there's just no way to tell. Or there's ways to tell, there's just no way to get all that data yeah, there's no.
Speaker 2:There's no guarantee on that one because you know, hydrogen chloride, hydrogen fluoride are the two that are known as a byproduct, obviously, from those burning lithium ion batteries. But again, like you just said, what else that we haven't been told or taught about, right?
Speaker 1:right. So I mean, like that's what we have too, right? So you have this whole chemical cocktail. Well, now that chemical cocktail is just being exposed to everything, which is why we get called. We get called to put the fire out.
Speaker 1:So we put the car fire out or the battery fire, but in order to put that out, you would have to completely put it out, and that means months sometimes, like we had an incident in the valley that I'm it's a very famous or infamous one. I should say, um, uh, well, we had some of our guys get hurt in a really bad way. Right, that battery blew up. That was thermal runaway battery blows up does its thing again, just being very superficial, surface level. With all this, correct, those same batteries were taken back to the East Coast and months later reignited. So there is no typical way to do this. Bury it in the ground, All right. Now you have the EPA up your ass, right. Fill it with sand. Who's going to store it? Right, let's put it. Let's just dunk it in water and let's leave it in this water basin until it's completely gone. Which fire department wants to put that thing at their station where?
Speaker 2:do they want to?
Speaker 1:put that support. Who's going to fucking do that? Right? That's ridiculous. None of that makes sense. It's because it's not financially responsible for the city. And then you want to take the city and you want to allow it to be a city thing. Right, and it's getting a little bit deeper, but you want to put it in the city or county thing. Whatever you want to do city, county, state, whoever you want to run it like they have to have the proper resources to do that.
Speaker 1:And if, if they don't, then what the hell is going to happen? It's the same thing that happened in canada, same thing that happened for us and surprised, same thing that happened in other cities. Like these things happen a lot and it's not to get political, it's just to be protective. We have to understand what. What's going on. So if you are a first responder now and you get there as the first in truck, non-tech truck shows up, he puts said car fire out, he calls for a hazmat response, hey, balance this up. Hazmat bros show up, they get there and they go. All right, let's meter, let's monitor.
Speaker 1:So that way, at least the very bare minimum, I can make sure that. Or, sini, if you show up first, now that you can dock your gear in an area that's not in an environment that's hazardous, you can take your shit off and be cool with that. Not only that, I can now set up for success. So I can tell the BCs, tell our battalion chiefs, tell your responding chiefs or your incident commander twos, tell all those guys hey, this is what we're doing, this is why we're doing it, this is the reasoning behind it. And then now, more so we can get that out to like our public information officers. And I think that's the big piece of the puzzle that we lacked for so long, as we kept it very fire related, very, uh, operations related, and we didn't think logistics in the beginning. So now we can get it to our pio. A public information officer can blast the shit out of social media and go hey, everybody stay away from this area because there's a car burning and, as you guys know, batteries don't taste good or whatever. Right?
Speaker 1:yeah, but at least they're not educating the public and then it's not so bad for the chief in turn, because if we didn't do that, like how we did it before, you would drive by this. Some person would be like, why are those firemen standing around doing nothing exactly? They would call their city people. Now the council or the mayor or manager would get a hold of this information. He would be pissed. He's now calling your chief, your chief's like what the fuck? And then he calls your BC and now it's all coming back downhill to you.
Speaker 1:So the more educated we can make everybody on this, without deriving a political belief or allowing people to understand that there's a difference between education and politics. I think you just have to be aware of that and that can get into anything. I mean, can we talk gun law? Sure, are some of them good? Yeah, absolutely Some of them bad. Maybe they can be worked on. There's an educational portion of this that you can fix. I think the more people know, the more transparent they are. Then they realize it. Like if the fire department comes out and says, hey, priuses are horrible to drive, they're an awful car to drive, that's not true. But if you say, hey, if in an accident and your battery starts to go on thermal runaway. These batteries are horrible to be around. You should get the fuck out of there. A different way to drive that conversation.
Speaker 2:Dude, you hit the nail on the head and I'm so happy you said it because, if not, I was going to make sure I mentioned it for the listeners, especially the guys in, say, maybe smaller departments or in more rural areas that aren't seeing as many evs as we see um out here. But it's that pio spot is so thoroughly important. Because the problem is is the public has no clue on how dangerous these vehicles are once that battery is compromised. Right, like I teach the same class that you're talking about too, and like I tell this is how I refer to firemen, right, especially non-techs. I'm like, hey, imagine being in a vehicle. Right, there's an explosion that happens in front of you, flammable liquids running underneath you and all the byproducts of that explosion are coming out behind you, right, doesn't that sound terrifying? And then I'm like that's a fucking natural combustion, that's your normal car, right? So that's how engines work. So you break it down that way. You're like, oh my God, it sounds like a nightmare. Right, it's like, no, that's just internal combustion engine, that's just how they work. Right? I just made it sound super scary.
Speaker 2:The problem is there's such little information you said it before the technology has exceeded our capabilities currently. So we're playing catch up. Right now, across the nation, everyone's trying to figure out, hey, what's the answer? And we're realizing quickly there is no answer yet. We're just trying our hardest to mitigate it in the safest, most fiscally responsible thing ever.
Speaker 2:But, like you said, with that PIO insert, your department doesn't matter where you work, right, there is a major third way, like this is what Steve's saying going to a vacation destination, the firemen are doing a good thing. A EV catches on fire. They deny entry. There is no exposures, they're letting it burn. Right, that PIO pitching. Hey, these are dangerous vehicles. A fire department is now eliminating exposures. They're protecting the public, right, they're letting it burn. So that way, in two to three hours the road can be reopened and you can continue to travel. Or if they chose to put water on it, right, this is now going to be an eight to 10 hour call where the roads close. It's all about you're right that information, especially for the public when it comes down to these kind of incidents. Just because it's a new thing and we're going to come across this a lot in the future as technology continues to evolve and unfortunately we're playing catch up. At this point we're way behind the eight ball, and that's throughout the entire United States, as you know.
Speaker 1:I mean 100% right, and it's not to say that these companies are out to get us and are out to just make a buck. We know that companies are out to be successful. Sometimes that success comes in truth and honesty and having people be loyal to your brand, and sometimes that success just comes in overall money, and it can be both right. We all understand these concepts and these principles. So, without getting into that, there's a phone company recently, within the last decade, had an issue with their batteries. They were imploding on that. They were imploding on people all over. Then they redid it because they realized that electrolyte solution was too. There wasn't enough solution between the two contacts they redid it does that make them evil?
Speaker 2:no, absolutely not. They learned from their mistake.
Speaker 1:It was just a yeah, that's it like do you think the very first musket went well? Fuck, no, it didn't go well. Right, who wants to be the guy to try the very first bolt-proof vest? Not, me.
Speaker 1:I mean, if you think about it, like just the iPhone that you're holding, right, or most phones, most smartphones and I only say iPhone, just because I have one, but most smartphones have roughly 30 plus chemical elements Roughly Just the average smartphone, right? So everything from aluminum and lithium like we talked about silver copper, all the way to, uh, like scandium, lanthanides idiom, right. So there's a shit ton of stuff that's even at the bottom of the periodic table. So these things have more chemical elements in them, just to make them bright, loud and fun.
Speaker 1:And emoji field, like because they want you to experience something, not just use your phone. It's not cool anymore, it's an experience with the tool. That's what they want. So, um, they're really not doing anything different than what a fire like when you take your very first fire and you put water from a hose, from a nozzle, on a fire. You have that experience forever. And now some company comes in and says, hey, what happens if I teach you about smooth force? What happens if I teach you about fog suppression? What happens if I teach you about semi-fogs but I used a fixed gallonage? Or what about adjustable, like they can come in and they can modify that. Make an experience. The tool becomes better in certain ways, but the experience is different. The same thing. So these phones, these ipads, these car batteries, these rides are now becoming experiences, and that's what this whole last generation, the next generations, are built off of. That's the principle, right? They want things to be an experience like did I, did you ever used to give a shit about my family's vacation?
Speaker 1:No, you didn't, you just didn't. Hey, willis, how was your vacation? It was awesome. We went here, we backpacked here, we camped here. That sounds amazing. I'd take out pictures and show you and you go. That's fucking cool way to go, man. Then it ends. But now you can get on social media and you can update everybody every hour of every second of every day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I pooped today. It felt good, you know.
Speaker 1:It was an experience.
Speaker 2:It was an experience.
Speaker 1:But now that's what they're doing. So everything has to be so immersive that they have to create an experience, and the only way to do that is to throw more chemicals and components from the elements, from the periodic table, to throw more of them in there to enjoy that experience. So the more shit we put into our cars, the more shit we put into our phones and our ipads and our homes, it's only going to get worse. Like you said, we're not. I highly, at least in your, my career. We're never going to catch up. No, I can't see that happening. I shouldn't say never, but I cannot see that happening ever in our career where we catch up to it.
Speaker 2:We'll catch up to what we're currently trying to battle. But because technology is continuously evolving, I wholeheartedly agree we're never going to stay on top of it. We can just try.
Speaker 1:I don't even know if we have immediate. I don't even know. You take a multi-ray or ray technology in general and they are phenomenal amazing companies, right, that's a. They're bad asses. I don't even know if they even have on the books yet a meter that could possibly they could give out to the fire department to help us with that.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Like I could take all of those. I don't even know if they have a sensor on there or a meter of some kind that I could put enough sensors in to pick up 70 of what that car gets off like. I just don't know if those exist yet. So I mean we're, I just don't know if we're going to get there, but at least we can try to do what we can to protect those behind us, right, right, and then they can do the same thing and same thing, and that's just really that's where we get. That's how we get to these.
Speaker 1:Everything from this little podcast now to how we do our turnouts and decon all of those things change because people gave a shit and they wanted the next generation behind them to be better. So even if we can teach you like, go to medic school, 70 of what I learned doing a medic rotation was what not to do. Yeah, I picked different things out and I made my own little recipe from what this medic did and that medic did and I liked what he did and I'll never fucking do that. I'll never treat them that way. I'll always treat someone that way. Holy shit, what a cool move Did he just do that left-handed. Amazing. Right, you make a little birthday cake with all that recipe. It's the same thing. But because they gave a shit, you can now do that going forward. So I mean, that's really where it's at like, we may be wrong. We may find out in 10 years that what you and I are teaching is just wrong.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's okay absolutely, and I've, I know the classes I've taught I. I always conclude in the same way I said listen, this is the best information I have to offer you today. I cannot guarantee you tomorrow, next year and actually I always say I can almost guarantee you, within five years I'm gonna be back here teaching you something probably completely different, and then making fun of what I taught you before saying that, man, we were way off, right.
Speaker 1:But and that's I do the same thing. I go hey, there's a story like, I've taught this class for years now and I've never taught it the same way because the information's changed. I mean, yeah shit, chicago alone, right, they're doing the whole battery thing with scooters just because they have such a high demographic of those things new york city is the same same boat, right now too right, like where, what am I gonna?
Speaker 1:I don't, we don't build shit up high here, like that's just not, it's not air conditioned, conducive, right, so we're not going to do it. So they build it out there and you start to realize, like what they're going through, we can easily go through that here, just in a different way. So it's just one of those things like, well, chicago fire did this. Oh, fuck, chicago fire. No, learn, what did they do? Why did they do that? Why is this such a problem for them? Oh, okay, well, fuck. Well, we do have a little area like that over here, or we have a giant, that is a giant problem over here. Damn it, right, like that. It's just.
Speaker 2:It's annoying when people don't and I'm glad that people do but at the same time, what they learned two years ago from their study is now vastly different from what they learned six years ago when that study started yeah, 100, absolutely so again we going to I don't want to deep dive in EVs, because again that's that'll be a different podcast, but on that same topic right now, before we transition off, right, just because we're talking about the batteries and we're talking about hazmat, right, start telling guys, in your opinion, again, the, the dangers of all this stored energy.
Speaker 2:And when I say stored energy, I'm not talking about the big stored energy for, like the instance that your department had, where you're talking, a vault that's owned by APS, something like that, or a large electric company, I'm talking about your DeWalt tool batteries. I'm talking about, like, the guys that have their little vape batteries, that kind of stuff. What kind of considerations, in your opinion, do we need to take as a hazmat team, right, just as an American fire service, when it comes down to say all that stuff's in the garage? Right, I'm pretty sure there's almost nobody out there now that doesn't have at least one battery operated tool of some sort in their garage. Do you, do you find any sort of consideration when we have fire impingement on a space that contains those things in the hazmat world? What are? What are we doing? How are we concerning ourselves with that? Is that is that a concern in your brain? Um, or how are we going to mitigate that?
Speaker 1:I think it it used to be a minor concern and I think now it's becoming way more prevalent. It's something that needs to be addressed right, like if you were going down a medic algorithm or hazmat algorithm or whatever fire suppression algorithm. You're kind of going down those things that those would be like small boxes on the bottom right hand corner that say, for your consideration, that's where that used to be. Now that's something we have to check, right, like you look at those batteries and for at least for where we live in the fucking hot ass desert where it's over 100 degrees for eight months out of the year I mean, my birthday is the first week of november and the last few years alone it's still been 100 degrees from my birthday or right around there.
Speaker 1:And I think the biggest thing is people forget, like when you live in a really hot place like this where it never drops below a hundred, so even in the summer, like, the days we understand are way above a hundred, the one, 15th, one, 18th, one, 20th right, the fact that it just never gets below a hundred, right? So all of your batteries are super heated. Even at two in the morning or midnight or four in the morning, it's still 101 degrees here, 102 degrees, right. You get out of your truck, you're on like your fourth call after midnight and you're like man, I just can't cool down.
Speaker 2:That's what they call that environmental impact that we now are learning about when it comes down to batteries, like we have a prime example. And then they say the guys back east, in very, very cold environments or let's even say extreme, like Alaska or something Like, they're not seeing temperatures above 50 degrees, you know right, those batteries are built at altitude.
Speaker 1:Usually they're built at altitude for or excuse me, uh, not at altitude at atmosphere, right? So usually right around sea level, and they're built for ambient temperatures, and it's not a bad thing. They've been doing this for years, for for a long fucking decades and decades and decades of building these batteries. They're very good at doing it, but that doesn't mean that there's an inherent risk and the fact that they're what. Is it more beneficial financially for me to build the batteries this way so that way I can affect 75 percent of the population and 25 percent of it's going to have an issue with it, or do I worry about trying to get that 85 percent but maybe now it's a shittier battery, right? That doesn't make sense to them. So and I'm not saying that's how they think, I'm just thinking from a guy that checks some college, right, that's my way of looking at it is going well if they can do it really well for 75%, and that may just be the issue. But when we come to those issues and we're in the part of that 25% and these are these are fish, fish. You know species numbers. I'm making this up for the example, but there's not many places like Phoenix, arizona, that stay as hot as it does for as long as it does, right. There are not many places like Alaska where it stays as light as it does, or as dark as it does for as long as it does, or as cold right as the fucking North Dakotas and Green Bays and all those places right, or it's consistently wet. It's somewhere on the coast right where it's just. They have humidity involved all the time. My body does not do well in humidity. I hate it if it gets to like double digit humidity, like I'm done. You put me in 120, I'll work all damn day. You put me in like 40 humidity and I'm done. So.
Speaker 1:Batteries are the same way. If they've reconditioned a battery and this battery is just working and it's used to doing it, right, they used to have like batteries where they would create like their own memory. Yeah, like in our rig batteries. Right, like you take it off, you put it on. What would our tick batteries doing the same thing? Right, you take it off, you put it on, take it off, use it on a call, you put it back on, instead of letting that battery go through its cycle and then now it's getting reconditioned more, and now it's got to do this, this and this, and then the batteries go bad quicker. Well, you have environmental impact. You have impact of use right and how we're using it, and now these batteries become a lot more effective. So, unless you're like working in your garage all weekend long and you're throwing a DeWalt drill in or you know a battery in, or you know you got to throw this to your Keith Nikita.
Speaker 1:You got to throw that and this to that, whatever it is, or you're you know, brand new, and you have like a new craftsman drill and you want to use it all the time and then you forget how to take care of it because you've never really known how to use this tool before. And then the batteries just sit there and they fake, and they fake. The same thing happens, but instead of now having a traumatic issue, impact that battery or open up the battery and having insult to it, now it's more of a long-term injury and now it's become really weakened. So when you do get that garage fire, you have all of these things piping off. You have that same exact scenario, just in a different form, right? So the more wear and tear or the more impact of the environment you have on these things, you seem to be coming way. They're starting to go out way, way more. They're starting to have way more issues with them. Scooters in the garage, right, that's another one, like people just leave them charged and then they overcharge because it's so hot. Or the same thing with the like you talked about earlier, the walt drill or makita drill or you know whatever. They're all built the same way for the most part and have the same pseudo ingredients, similarly right.
Speaker 1:And when you have that, and now we're having those more of issues, we're having our ladder guys go in or another engine company that's a non-tech crew go in and they don't know that this has become more of an issue. Then we're now our ladder guys go in or another engine company the non-tech crew go in and they don't know that this has become more of an issue. Then we're now fucking up our brother's district by not getting them that information right. It's no different than that same car fire example that we used before. Hey, you go put car fire out and then back up.
Speaker 1:You need to let us know that this is a EV, or you need to let us know that you saw a solar wall, like we have panels on the roof. What happens if they have like a test the wall? Or they have a battery storage system inside right, and then even more so. And again, we can get into this way later. But the one of the bigger ones too that we're starting to see is that and because of people and citizens are smart and they know about this and they'll start to learn like well, I don't want that same environmental impact where it's just beating down on on the heat, right beating down on this. Now they're putting them inside of a closet in their house yeah, that's a great idea.
Speaker 2:Huh yeah, hence the sarcasm in my voice right now yeah, like hey, that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Well, if the environmental impact is really big, then maybe I removed the environmental impact and I put inside the air conditioning. Sure, but we didn't finish the research and we didn't realize that. Well, now we just created a horrific chemical bomb inside of our house, like that's. So again, part of what we do, again being a catch-all for the community, is the fire service. It's our job to go out and teach, educate. The goal is not to run 15 to 20 calls a day. I don't want to do that.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:If I can run 15 to 20 and then I can educate someone, and then they can come back and they can help someone or whatever. Now we're only getting called when we're needed to get called and no one cares about that. Correct Right? Yep, no one cares about doing it. It's the same thing. You can't take a highly trained soldier and then put him through training and train him again and again and again and again and again, just to have him never get deployed like you're not. It's just, it's a morale killer. That's just going to beat it down right. So we love to be used in our training, we love to perform. That's what we love to do. That's why we took the job. That's what we want to do.
Speaker 1:But if we're doing the same thing and we're not helping the people that we're that we need to help, they can't help us like we can't. We can't get you. There's enough bad shit. That happens every day, like you said earlier. But the way I look at it, bad shit happens every day, unfortunately, but fortunately. And the fact that it happens every day, hopefully I can make a difference. Right, I can help out in some way, shape or form, and I think that you share that same sentiment that I do, so I think. Do we want it to happen? No, but is it going to? Yes, can I? And if it does, I'd like to be there to help. That's the way we look at those things, so I think. If part of what we do, though, is just educating people, so that way, they're not doing something just because they didn't know, and now one of their family members gets hurt, right yeah, and now one of their family members gets hurt, right, that's a whole.
Speaker 1:Nother fall tricks.
Speaker 2:Exactly. And so just to add on for the listeners too from what Steve's saying, is, if you're not a tech or you don't have a hazmat team in the department you work for, or whatever the scenario is, understand that our house fires are now turning into hazmat calls because of the stored energy, because of what people have in their garage, everything along those lines. But really, what's important for the guys listening, especially the gym pop firemen, right, that are just like hey, bro, um, backstep for life. Right, I don't have any specialties and there is nothing wrong with that. But, with that said, just at least understand the information that you put out that house on one, two, three main street, right, the information that you put out that house on 123 Main Street, right, there is a chance that if you do not remove the stored energy from that residence, right, you could have a secondary fire. Hence I did not say rekindle because you did a good job in overhaul, right, because over time, as Steve had said before, it could be tomorrow, it could be a week from now, it could be three months and the house is still boarded up. It could light back off because of the fact that we missed and I say we as american fire service, right, we missed those stored energies, right, that could cause secondary fires to remove. So that's, you know. That's. It's a huge takeaway for everybody, even if you're not a hazmat guy, right to understand the potential risk that your additional risk, I should should say that you're now becoming involved in and you might not even be aware of it till today. Listen to this Like I didn't even think about Milwaukee.
Speaker 2:Tool batteries are an issue and you know, typically the guys that run into the most issues with these batteries aren't always the Milwaukees, the DeWalt's, the McKee insert any brand name into it. It's what we all do, especially as public members, but firemen, specifically, we're cheap, right. So if I go to Home Depot and I can buy a Milwaukee battery for 85 bucks, but then I looked on Amazon or whatever, timu or something like that, right, and they have the Milkwalkie battery, right, spelled a little bit differently but still red and black, and that's 25 bucks, I'm going to buy the $25 battery, right, but you don't know. Or those reconditioned batteries, like Steve said, right, were they refurbished? Was there a manufacturing issue? How much do you trust that?
Speaker 2:So, just again, way off on tangent, but just be mindful. But more importantly, especially when it relates to our job, way off on tangent, but just be mindful. But more importantly, especially when it relates to our job, right, understand that that is something that you will come across, probably on the next job you run, and something that you should be addressing. If you're not, or at least bring it to the kitchen table and talk to the boys and be like hey, have we thought about this being an issue for us in our region, in our department?
Speaker 1:Right, and that's, and that, and that's the bigger thing, right, it all comes back to. I think everybody innately has a selfish streak to them and I think they do that because it's a mammalian response to being protective. Right? How can I benefit myself in some way, shape or form? So that same thing goes back If you don't bring these things back to the table and don't tell any guys you're not having a conversation with your BC or with your ladder guys or whatever. Let's say, ladder goes into overhaul this building. They overhaul because they know how to overhaul buildings, right, so they salvage what they need to salvage and they overhaul what they need to overhaul. Well, did they even think to look through the debris on the ground as they were pulling ceiling to get all the little batteries that had been thrown out of these drill hat, out of these bigger battery packs?
Speaker 1:right no, probably not, because they didn't know what they didn't know and so because they didn't do that. Now, like you said, now it starts into a secondary fire because you have all these little pieces that have just gone as a thermal runaway and now they've created other fires and others. And I know that chicago is having a big issue we talked about, like the back east guys. You know they go vertical more than horizontal like we do. It's the same thing. They're having these issues everywhere. They're having issues overhauling.
Speaker 1:The fire department has been around since the 1800s in some of these places, 1700s in these places. Right, are now having an issue overhauling something that they've been doing for hundreds of years. Yeah Right, and now they're struggling. And they're struggling because the new shit we built. So it's the same thing that happens here with us. We're just. We're an ever of ever-changing, ever-evolving, just community like we. We are always. That's what, again, as much of it is the negative, it's also positive. I imagine that you and I and some of the listeners you had on your show probably sat in the same interview and said maybe somewhat similar or, you know, close to this paraphrasing it's not a desk job. Yep, you got it. I have this. You don't have the same day every day, right, that's why we're in it. But again, plus bro the con, though the negative would be, you're right and act accordingly. So if you're not having it, that means you better always be able to learn, you better be willing to learn, because you're not going to have the same day every day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're not doing TPS reports on Saturday.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're not doing the same TPS report again on the Saturday. So you better fucking have an idea that your job as a fireman is vastly different and I guarantee you that whoever's on your truck that the dude that has the 20 plus years when he got on I bet you the department looks way different. Like I have guys in my truck that are not my truck currently, but that I've worked for and I go. I always ask him. I'm always so curious and I think the greatest service we can do and the greatest training we do is at the fire. Is at the table right? Oh yeah, we can do, and the greatest training we do is at the fire. Is that the table right? Oh yeah, that's that to me. That's where it's at um, and even if I remember as a booter and I that I've gone through and being an rto and training these recruits, I've told them several times I'm like don't disregard the stories at the table, because some of that will be the greatest training you will ever have in your life.
Speaker 1:And I say that one more time for listeners.
Speaker 1:That was so good I always preach because it was preached to me, so just getting done being an rto. I always tell the recruits don't disregard the stories at the table, because some of that will be the best training of your life and we all have them on our department. Guys that sit there and just tell stories. I'm one of them. This world, world's shortest fable teller, right. Whatever I learned from some of the guys that were generations ahead of me or that when I was a booter and they had 20 plus years on like they, I was working with guys that had single digit badge numbers crazy that built this fire department from the very ground up and I learned from them and what they did and I would listen to stories and some of it never involved a single fucking fire, anything, it was just life.
Speaker 1:And I learned how to work 14 or I learned how to work, what it meant to sacrifice or you know what. Maybe when we go do that fill the boot on Saturday, it's not that big of an inconvenience because I just learned that he gave up years of of paychecks and back pay and vacations so that way I could get a job. They took a hiring freeze or they hired, but only because everybody else gave time away because they wanted to get more guys hired. Right, you start hearing these stories and the tribulations and trials that they went through, whether it has anything to do with fire, any discipline thereof and you start taking those things and you start bringing those back and realize that, hey, someone, someone may have gave you know, someone gave a lot for you to get here and it may not be specifically to you, but they sacrificed the shit done. So you're in the spot that you're at, so be appreciative and then learn and then again, like I said, uh, again at the table, one of the things I love about my station. We have always done shift change at the table and, again, very biasedly speaking, there's plenty of other stations that do the same thing, other crews that do the same thing. But the thing I've loved about my station for over 10, 12, whatever, however long we've been there, but it's always done at the kitchen table.
Speaker 1:You have a coffee with you, you drink with you, you're sitting there and you're like, hey, man, we tried this load the other day. It was a bucket of fuck. Don't do that, gotcha. You know, the front bumper line isn't long enough, or that basin that they put in it's not deep enough. We can't fucking do the scorpion load, can't do this. Though. Hey, we worked with glendale and we saw glendale. They used a smooth bore, but they used it on our line, which is a high pressure line, and it worked like shit. Their line great, though, like you know, it's those things, this little tidbit. You're like okay, okay, so that worked great, that didn't work, fuck. Well, why, why not?
Speaker 1:I just kept thinking, all right, well, maybe we need to learn how to do a little hose line management a little bit different, right? Or maybe maybe is it our nozzle that's fucked up. Right, is there a hose that's fucked up? Because how is my chief supposed to help me if I don't give him a solution, like if I come to him and say, hey, this is the third fire. Now can we try low pressure hose with this nozzle? Uh, yeah, yeah, you can. Okay, cool, there you go. You know you can support him in supporting you. So I think I, I think, if you, if you do that, like that's, that's where you learn, that's the things you learn, you know. So I always tell people, like the stories that you hear at the station, whether the fire department, or just funny stories, or oh, back in my day, like don't disregard those, that's the training, that's the training right there, it's life training, how we teach people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's also part of the culture and, again, we talk about culture a lot In probably every episode. Culture comes up at one point, right, and it's funny, the kitchen table comes up every single episode at some point in the podcast, if it's an answer to one of the fireman questions or if it just comes across a natural conversation, like it just did with us. But it's those traditions too, and those traditions are there for a reason. It's not because it's a sorority or a fraternity house or whatever. They're there because they're valuable, right, and that's one of those traditions, like that kitchen table, that pass on, right, the um, they, hey, like the lessons learned the day before, and, like you said, every, every time you come in, I'm, I'm almost upset when I get a pass on, that's like, eh, it was, it was pretty uneventful, right. So it's like all right, well, I'm already starting today, you know, on on the downside, because I didn't learn anything from the previous crew, you know. So, all right, what are we going to get into so we can learn today or get better on, or or something like that. So, dude, I love that you guys do that. Um, that is, you know, um, I don't believe that's a very common thing when it comes down to shift change and and I think it's amazing, it's super beneficial and I hope you know some guys start doing that. Um, so it's. It's great because it locks everybody in and you can really figure out what happened the day before and or the or for you guys.
Speaker 2:You, you said you worked 48. So like, hey, the last two, the last two days, right, so what was the tour like for you guys? And? And again, like I said, lessons learned, or good calls, or shitty calls, or whatever the case might be. So before we're already deep dived into has been. I know we can talk forever, but I want to make sure we at least touch on this before we kind of wrap up the hazmat.
Speaker 2:I'll give you a chance to interject anything else that you really want to talk about. So, for you personally, what is your hazmat training culture? And when I say that I mean I'm asking a couple different folds. So I'm asking about you and the team that you're assigned to, like how did the guys? What's your training regiment look like? What's the attitude within the team when it comes down to training? And then I also am curious on the non-techs that you work with in your department. Do you get any pushback from those guys because you're training or if you're out of service? If that's the case, can you just kind of break down how you guys train, how you prepare yourself and then any negatives that you receive from either management or other dudes on the job?
Speaker 1:That's a great question. Overall, all of them, right? Like you said, there's multiple layers and folds to that. So the overall training is the same for the Valley, right? This Valleywide Consortium we have it's amazing thing, amazing asset, because every uh department that's in this valley-wide response right. So we have 26 different hazmat trucks. Essentially I think it's 26, now 26, 28. We essentially, if I, if I want 26 fire, if I want 26 hazmat teams, I'll have to just push a button and I get however many I fucking want. That's the beauty. But they all have to be trained a certain way. So the fact that we all meet on Monday, every single Monday, like depending on your shift, but you just go every Monday, it's hazmat Monday. We just know that. Tuesday, tuesday, right, you just know these things, these, these are commonalities in the fire service which I find to be great.
Speaker 2:So and that's something across the region for your area, correct?
Speaker 1:the region, so 26 different fire departments every single monday they're all getting together basically every single monday we get together and, whether it's and the great thing about it, we're constantly together. So I know how to run a call five cities away from me. I know how to run a call a city away from me. I know how to run a call five cities away from me. I know how to run a call a city away from me. I know how to run that call with the city away from me. Well, I know what that truck has. That's that I'm waiting on is 20 minutes away, right? So we're all right there. So we know the equipment that everybody has, we know the training and we know, more importantly, the standard Right.
Speaker 1:Like I don't really care how you go about training, I care that you win the game. Standard right. Like I don't really care how you go about training, I care that you win the game right. So they would. That's how coaches are made in sports, in the nfl. Like no one cares how you go about doing it, they care that you win. And so I think that's the same thing here. Like I don't care how you go about training, but I care that you win the game, winning the game for us being successful on that call going home to our families. We all know that it has us even more, so we'll say the simple fact that they just tend to be longer, right? So the ultimate success is like hey, boys, let's wrap this up with all that being said, I think, uh, culture and attitude has everything to do with it, right? I always tell everybody attitude and effort are the only two things you can control in life I love.
Speaker 2:That's one of my favorite sayings too love, love it.
Speaker 1:Right. So you can't, you don't have any other thing to do and us, being a fire service, being very reactor, you know we're a we're react, a reactory based department or service in general Right, we don't know where we're going to get, we just have to react to it and go. So everything for us is a fucking audible, audible, right. Everything for us is just reaction. Uh, we're constantly playing batter. The pitcher knows the pitch that he's throwing. We're reacting to it. Same thing goes for for us, and that's that's how it is so for us to be trained on.
Speaker 1:I have to understand what's that pitcher's go-to move like. Does he have a curveball? Is it three seat? You know, split finger to the four seat? What's he like to do in this situation when he gets into a jam and there's bases loaded, or I got a couple guys scoring position. Does he only go back to two pitches? Right, so we're very much trained the same way.
Speaker 1:And the fact that, hey, if, if I'm going in this kind of scenario, what are my go to meters, what do I need to do for that? And I think the fact that we can all train together, we all have an idea. Or I go, hey, I'm not good against this guy. I need another piece of equipment, special call so-and-so for them to bring out their drone or their robot. They're this, they're that, they're a piece of equipment that maybe I don't have, so we can share those things. So, as far as resources go, I think it's impeccable. I think again, very biasedly speaking I think it should be the blueprint where everybody stands together. Obviously that's facetious, because it's just logistically, sometimes financially, sometimes operationally, sometimes that just cannot happen. But I love it, I love that and I will always embrace that. What about?
Speaker 2:push? Do you ever get any pushback from your department? So you just said that you just told the listeners right, every single Monday. Obviously it's scheduled every Monday but depending on when your shift is right, if your shift falls on Monday you're going to go out of service. You're training with all these other departments right On whatever the hazmat topic is of that period. You get any pushback from, say, your non-tech trucks because you guys are not available to run those medicals or fires or whatever the case might be a hundred percent and it's always going to happen, and I love it because it means that they care.
Speaker 1:As you know, in the fire service we are very good at making fun of each other and giving kids to each other, and if you're not getting made fun of, you're probably not well liked, right? So we? So we know that. We know that to be true. So when my companies go, I always tell them like I let everybody know, and granted, it's built in the system so they already know. But I just let them know, hey, I'm going to go back into service quicker, or this topic today is going to be a little bit longer. I'll pick you up on the flip side.
Speaker 1:So if I have a truck that's coming into my first due, maybe I go run, maybe I take one of their calls or I hear them get kicked out and I'll take their lift assist, I'll take their DB or their diabetic emergency, whatever it is Right and go.
Speaker 1:Hey, thanks for earlier. Thanks for letting us stay and play, you know, because we needed to drive home a point or we needed just a little bit more time. So, yes, we're always going to get shit. Every time, 100 of the time, we're going to take shit and push back, but it's loving pushback, it's not malicious, it's not because they understand, like they understand too, that if, if we they get that car wreck and it turns out to be an ev, or they walk into um the circle k and they're not feeling very good, or they went on a gas leak that they just ho-hummed and they're like you get that typical uh on scene, uh, meters not spinning and uh, it smells like gas on scene of it, yeah, on scene of a gas right, or on scene of a single story house right, with nothing showing no shit.
Speaker 1:You're going to a gas leak, bro you know, or they go, hey, I don't have, I don't smell gas. Well, no shit, you don't smell gas, but you should fucking be on air right now, right, yes. But then they say that and you're like, well, okay, and then you're calling me so I can come there to make sure that you're not being a dumbass, like what happens when I get there and go hey, man, there's a giant gas leak, or hey, there's this leak, or there's this leak on air. That's a teachable moment, right. So they understand. They understand, like, the necessity for these teams. But, yes, every single monday, every single time we go to service, every single time, 100 of the time we will get pushed back, but again, it's loving. So I think, I think that's good. Plus, they know that the fact that the regional thing, that this is just the way it's built.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, just the way it is well, I love it and and I was really curious on how you look at it. I love how you look at it because some guys will do the opposite. They're like, you know, they'll argue with those. Those guys are, you know, basically giving them shit, saying that you know like, oh, it's a had run all your calls, while you guys are, you know, training to suck more, or whatever the case might be. You know, insert fireman that doesn't care about his job Right, or whatever the case might be. You know, insert a fireman that doesn't care about his job Right.
Speaker 2:But you know, with those guys, I always answer and tell them and I'm curious on your outlook on this. You know I signed up to be an all hazards fireman. So for me personally again, my personal opinion it pisses me off if I show up to a call and I cannot mitigate the emergency because I don't have that certificate. You know that's me, so that's what drove me to be as versatile as possible. But I always like to tell them too, and this is why I'm really curious on how you handle these situations or these conversations that have happened.
Speaker 2:What guys forget to understand is hazmat, trt, water rescue, swift water, you name it. All the modalities outside the regular fire service that are encompassed nine times out of 10, they're for the general population, firemen, right? We're actually there, you know, primarily to keep the firemen safe first, right, because they're there. Evacuate the building, make sure you know. Deny entry, make sure the public's safe. Right Now we're backing up and we're coming in for them, you know, and that's what. Um, so I'm curious on how you feel about that. And then, more importantly, have you, have you had to have those conversations? What do you say like kind of along those lines does that make sense, steve?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah, and and that um, and multiple different uh prisons, if you will. So, yes, we're there for the firemen for the most part, right. We're there to ultimately mitigate the issue or remedy the hazard, whatever, right, that's what. We're there for the first responders, the non-tech guys. Those guys are going to get there and set the scene up to make sure it's safe for us. So you look at it and then, on top of it, my job is not only to mitigate or remedy the issue, but my job is to set us up collectively as a whole.
Speaker 1:So when I go to that battalion chief and he's running hazard sector, he's running whatever sector we'll say he's just running command. Go to him and you go, hey, man, I'm there to give him this perfect little president with a badass little bow, it's all fluffy and really on top and go, hey, here's all your worries and concerns wrapped up nightlessly in this box. You're good to go here. You go make haste, right? So, uh, you got to make him feel good too. So part of it is not only being is, like I said, mitigating or remedying the issue, part of it also educating that chief, so that way next time we run into this, he at least understands one of two things understands the problem better or understands the solution better oh I love that the solution half the time is me, right the solution and not to be that's, not to be braggadocious the solution is me being the hazmat team or the trT team or the rescue swimmer team.
Speaker 1:So if our chief is a non-tech, our battalion chief or responding chief is a non-tech, or this city's responding chief or that city's responding chief, right? So you guys used to have you know what's deputy and you guys would be an all hazards guy, so you would have the TRT and the hazmat dude on the same truck together, responding as a chief level officer, and that was kick-ass, right. Some of our chiefs in my city are tech level or our techs. Former techs worked on tech trucks forever and now they're chiefs, so they have that same understanding. But the ones that don't, that's where you have to come in and you have to go.
Speaker 1:Hey, here's our problem and this is why this is a problem. This is why I can't let you do what you're doing right now, or this is why I need these guys to do X, y and Z, or understanding the solution. Hey, here's my role and I need you to help me, facilitate and support me in my role to get this done, because I'm going to have to call APS, or I'm going to have to call Southwest Gas or I'm going to call stone. So we're setting up the scene for this. We're gonna have to evacuate people here and do this here, or something as simple as going hey, this fucking vending machine goes off all the air vending machines and the thought machine goes off all the time. This is like the ninth time in the last two weeks. So you help me get like an inspector out here. We figure this out. Get really annoying. Drive 13 miles all the way north, right to go up there and fucking take care of this shit yeah for a non-emerging call or whatever.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, and I mean everyone understands that right yeah, how many times is the co2 leak going to go off in the same building? Yeah, get your shit fixed right. We've told you about the plumbing here for years now, so so that's what I mean like part of it is from a chief level is giving them either the understanding, the better understanding of the problem and that's why I'm here or the solution, and this is what we need to do, like where's your role compared to mine? And how do we, how do we intersect, how do we meet accordingly? And I think that's those are the two big things.
Speaker 1:I think, if you can, you can paint those pictures right, like in an on-scene report. People, I think, when they're trying to be new captains or or lieutenants, whatever it may be, whomever it may be, and the listeners, you know, self-respect the fire departments, but if it's a company officer role and that guy's first learning how to be a company officer, you can always find that they tend to do an on-scene report almost for them, right, right, and then you got to teach them hey, this is not for you. You can see what the hell's going on. This is for everybody coming in behind you. Paint that picture, line that up for everybody coming in behind you. So is this an open garage car fire or is this a closed door garage fire? Right, that's going to change my tactics a little bit, change where I set up. If I'm going to beat you or you're going to beat me, right, it's just hey, we're in a cul-de-sac, hey, we're in right. So that's kind of that upper level of learning, that progression of learning.
Speaker 1:I think it's the same thing goes. Just on a typical hazmat call, whether it's the fall injury of the hazmat world or hey, this is shit and good, this is big time there's going to be a's very few things they want to do. That's less than running command on a call in which we would like our typical end of the year drill, what we would have to run a full meal deal, decon and everything right. All of the you know seven sectors. Get all those going. They don't want to do that. No one wants to do that. So if we can teach them the solution or the problem a little bit better, then they'll have a better understanding. At least they're still not going to want to do it, but they'll at least understand a little bit better why.
Speaker 2:I love it. So, basically, what Steve's saying is like, even again, as a tech, it's another opportunity to educate, right. And now he's talking about educating you know his boss, right. Or another city's boss that's coming in, that's running command for that incident, right? So it's thoroughly important because, again, like Steve had pointed out right, you might educate that individual the first time on, whatever the scenario is that the hazmat team is responding to, and then you happen to run with them again and and even if it's a different call, but the report that you build with him from that first call, right, it's all of a sudden it's you know, instead of saying hey skip, or hey cap, or whatever, then all of a sudden he remembers your name.
Speaker 2:Oh, steve, what's up? Man, all right, what do you think, bro? You know, like relationship is, I believe, the most important thing in the fire service, because if we're not talking to each other and understanding each other, right, and if we're not building those relationships so we trust each other, everything else goes out the window. I could be the most highly trained individual in the hazmat world, but if no one trusts me, they're not going to listen to me, I'm not going to be able to execute my plan. The public suffers, the call suffers, I mean, everything goes to shit that's 100, perfectly well said all right.
Speaker 2:Well, listen, we have been yapping about hazmat forever. We'll have to get you back on to even yap about more, right? So we're? We're teetering on almost the uh, we're over an hour and a half right now, so I want to get to the questions. Um, for season one, but before I do, is there anything that we haven't talked about that you're like, I really, I really want to talk about a certain subject or a modality when it comes down to hazmat.
Speaker 1:There's, there's, there are a few, but like EB we talked about a little bit, would be one that was kind of near and dear lately, but there's just there's, there's a few, but again, I think those those would probably be for separate, separate conversations, separate times, cause you can almost make those like it's an. We could do an entire podcast on just that specific thing.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, and absolutely, and we'll revisit for everyone. Listen, there's um, there's a schedule out there. Evs will be a topic, stored energy will be a topic. This is all part of the second season, right? So, um, if, if you take anything away from uh, today's podcast with Steve, right? Um, I hope you listened to it right. He's a super passionate guy. Um, he knows what he's talking about. So if you take one thing away from him today, then super successful. Or even if it's something that interests you and you can bring it back to the kitchen table, please do, um and oh, you can always feel free to reach out to us. As a podcast, I can get you in contact with steve if you have more questions. When it comes down to something, he says so. But with that said, we'll kind of wrap up our hazmat conversation for today. We'll put it on pause. We'll definitely do a a respin with you on a later episode. But, um, question number one you ready, my brother?
Speaker 2:I'm ready all right, so the right. So we ask this question for everything. We ask the brand new guys that want to be firemen, right? Hey, why do you want to get on the job? We ask guys when they want to promote. Why do you want to promote? You know, we even ask guys when they're trying to get to a different position or a specialty, like you know what. This is what I want to do with my life.
Speaker 1:Mine was not pivotal moment. Mine was a pivotal progression.
Speaker 2:Okay, I love it.
Speaker 1:Talk to me Family, was it's all PD and military oh okay, perfect. I think now that there are a total of 18 people in my family that are cops right, you went to wrong side military right. Yeah, so a bit different. I was 17. I got hired with the fire department to go out to a wild land.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:That's kind of like to be honest with you, kind of a bet. Uh, these two are the people I worked with at the time. We're working at a water park in the Valley and they bet that they thought that it would be. I said it would be harder than they thought and they made a bet. Eventually I went to try out with them and I ended up making it sort of day.
Speaker 1:But I won the bet. I became a wildland fireman. I did four seasons there and then, as I was doing that, in high school, we had this like med start program that a buddy of mine and I went through and the other guys that we played football with in high school. They had gotten hired and they were all fire. They were like gung ho about fire and their dads were fire and I didn't really know a whole lot about like the structure side of fire. So I started hanging out with them more, started to go to the stations once they got hired, which was super quick. They all got super fast hired. Uh, get to the station, start hanging out, did a couple ride-alongs and then realized that this is something I want to do. Fortunately enough uh, I was super fortunate I got hired on my first one by two different fire departments and I came down and dropped out of uva, left there and got hired and that was that. Was that I love it.
Speaker 2:So you went from a bet to a career in the fire service.
Speaker 1:That's, that's insane yeah, essentially that's how it started. Yeah, I think the wildland thing is really what set it. For me, it was the uh, it was the the difference in understanding my, like my family, being police officers, like their squads but they weren't with their guys all the time, right, whereas the wildland group that I was with, like that team, I was with them for months at a time in the same buggy, in the same this, in the same dirt shovel, in the same dirt, same campsite, with that big group for a long time. I loved it. I've grown up playing sports my whole life. I love that team atmosphere. I thrive in it. I love that. Then I'm like I just didn't know that was something I wanted to do for 20 years, you know.
Speaker 2:So so was it the, so the, the aspect, and it's so the aspect of the team. Is that what solidified it? For? Because some guys will say, like bro, why didn't you just stay wildland, right, so why go?
Speaker 1:interior structure, firefighting that that's what flamed it. That team atmosphere, like knowing that as a kid growing up playing sports my entire life, right, doing all that stuff that I did with them right, and then seeing, uh, getting hired as a wildland guy and then having that team atmosphere in a setting such as that, like a thriving setting, and setting that was very dynamic, always changing Right, and it was fun. Ultimately it was fun. And then I understand that I can use that as a career. I'm like, well, that would be a blast. And then doing like a few ride alongsongs I did and understanding like now, instead of being with 12 to 15 to 20 dudes, now I'm with, like these four guys or these 10 guys, like total, like this is, this is fucking kick-ass. So, um, I loved it and I love the fact that you could, like we talked about earlier that promotional bush right instead of the tree, like you could venture out and do so many different things. I love the fact that you could do so many different disciplines.
Speaker 1:That was, that was, that was the big, that was a big sell. So that was uh, that was why I did, that was why I went that way. It was just it was. It was that it was like all right, well, I can do really whatever I want with whatever I want, and it's easy. That's pretty much what I'm doing now. Yeah, I'm going to do this for life.
Speaker 2:Well, I love it. So all right. So great answer, dude. So you're on the fire service, right You've been. You have 21 years total in the American fire service, correct? If I remember correctly? Yeah, All right, no-transcript.
Speaker 1:Um well, if it doesn't have to be non-fire, it would be. Uh, I would say my mom, dad, wife and kids, right, and I know that's kind of cliche.
Speaker 2:but so family, we'll just put family group it together.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they get you through the hard times. They get you. Sometimes they're the only reason why you're still studying for that promotional test. They're the only reason why you're like, yes, I'll go back down or yes, I'm going to go work overtime at 93, or you know they're that. That's it really. Sometimes it just comes down to just them.
Speaker 1:But I think if you just take um because none of us would be there without them, like I wouldn't be there without them, I wouldn't have the success I've had or the career I've had without my wife and kids or without, like, the initial push before I met my wife from you know that public safety, upbringing and demeanor and attitude and those lessons I learned from my parents to get me to that first part, right, so I think it goes hand in hand. But I think if you, if you I was you asked me that before and I was thinking about a career wise, and I have a handful, and they're all for different reasons, right, right. So, just to break it down, really was like, uh, like zentech and wiseman, those were the dudes that taught me hazmat, that taught me how to want to teach hazmat, that taught me how to want to learn um, and you're always the person being educated and you're never truly the educator. Like those were those two guys. They, they instilled that you're never going to know and your job is to always teach, and teach to the level that you're comfortable with, leaving them the information to a life-altering decision. I was like holy shit, darrell, that's heavy. And they're like no, seriously, that's what you're doing. When they leave this class, whether it's a 200 class or whether it's a CE or a Monday Hazmat, they're leaving with knowledge that you're giving to them to get them back to their family. So you better be fucking comfortable with doing it and you better be good at doing it. And I was like, okay, so, um, there's those two.
Speaker 1:And then, like in my own department, uh, my initial captain, you know, piazza, he I been on his truck majority of my career before I promoted. He was it. He was what a fireman should be in my mind. He was what a company officer should be. He taught me everything I didn't want to know and everything that I absolutely needed to know and everything in between. That was him. Another one, he was also my RTO, one of my RTOs. The other guy that was an RTO was a guy, danny Camilla. He taught me the other side of the fire service. So I was with him a lot during my career, you know, as a young guy.
Speaker 1:But um, but he taught me like the charity work. He taught me the outside, the outside, the lines, right Outside the station how to hold yourself, what to be comfortable doing, how to be a charity station, how to hold yourself, what to be comfortable doing, how to be a charity, how to be involved, how to make this department yours like he was my inspiration for that, so I took. He used to run a toy drive, that department had um, and I took that over for him. And then in the very beginning we talked about how I teach it. At a local high school he started a fire science program 20 years ago to get these kids dual enrollment, start teaching the one and two, right and um, all those different things. And he did that 20 years ago and I have now since taken that over for him. So he has been like the inspiration, we'll say, outside of the gates, right outside of the station.
Speaker 2:I love it, yeah, but very thoroughly important right, and it's something that we we we tend to neglect.
Speaker 2:You know that 100 community service aspect to it and it's just because I get it right, it's just because of the volume, like when, when we are at work, we we're getting abused, right, we're seeing the public a lot more than we wish we would, you know, um, but it's one of those things that, yeah, it's, it's thoroughly important and it's something that's instilled within the American Fire Service and I love the fact that that's, that's a passion of yours and that's something that you, you want to see going. And now you've taken over the program. That's huge.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he, he taught me, In fact, I used to write it on my hat he made. He told us all to write it on our hat for for the academy. It was uh, it was a quote I still have to say, still used all the time. Motivation breeds company. All right, explain that.
Speaker 1:So if, if you are motivated and you go out and you do something because you're motivated to do it, people will see you do it and they will just do it just because you're there. So, um, like he used to just go out and pull the weeds at the station and then we would go out and follow him. A not only was he our company officer right, that's part of it for some of the guys but the other part of it, I don't want him to be out there doing it alone. Even if we do the two-in-two out roll, like I don't let you go to the bathroom alone as a recruit you start realizing that if you just go do something, people will follow you just to help you, just whether they believe in it or not, just the fact that you're out there doing it, they'll be motivated.
Speaker 1:Just like a gym workout, like you're a giant fucking human, orsini, right. So how many workouts have you done where you go in and do it and someone's going to go I don't want to fucking do it. And then they see you do it and they go fuck it and they do it. And then they see you do it and they go fuck it, and they do it for no other reason than just fuck it, right? So motivation breeds company and I think that's just a much politer way of saying fuck it, I'll do it. Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 2:And that's that. We've talked about it previously, like on on other podcasts, and I'm sure we'll talk about it on like that. That is something that comes down in training too. It's it's exactly what steve was saying like, even if you don't have the support from the boys at your house or your administration or whatever the case might be, if you just go out in the bay by yourself, right, and start working and get better in yourself, eventually you get the. Exactly what steve was saying fuck it, I'll join the kid right, see what he's doing, even if they're coming out there just to go.
Speaker 1:What the fuck are you? You doing, right, I'm out here, I'm going over the meter, I'm going over this monitor, I'm going over whatever the fuck it may be. I'm doing a captain's test. I'm doing on scene reports. They're going to go. Oh, they're going to stand there with their fucking chew or their Zen, and they're going to stand there with their fucking ninth Red Bull or whatever, and they red bull right or whatever, and they're going to just sit there and they probably if they're a younger dude, they probably have their pit vipers on short shorts right, flip-flopping around the station. They're going to go. Oh yeah, can I help?
Speaker 1:and they're just saying they're not going to have any other fucking idea of what to say, and they're going to do it. And then you're going to go, yeah, and then you're going to help them. And now they just learned what it was like to become a real senior fireman or a real this or real that, and they're gonna learn just as much as the motherfucker that was standing there in the beginning was. If nothing else, he's pulling weeds too, and now he doesn't look like a piece of shit because, more importantly, we thrive on the fact to go hey, so the seven of us were pulling weeds today and you go, oh, and we go. Why are you a piece of shit? Yeah, and I was napping, you're like I know, and we just look at it. Now it just gives us the upper hand to look at you in disdain for the rest of the day. Yeah, to have that, you know so Eating our own.
Speaker 2:It's like what we're saying.
Speaker 1:The last couple are super, super important. The last couple are super, super important my buddy Jesse, jesse Anderson and Doug Corey. Both are captains on our department, but Jesse has just been an insane mentor. An insane, insane mentor for me and sounding board. He's what I think people should be.
Speaker 1:Same thing goes for Chief Brian Leathers. He has been just an insane sounding board for life in general. He got hired with us, we went through the academy together but he was a little bit older than us and he kind of like all. So he took us all under his wing and just kind of taught us this is how you'd be successful in life. He's just he's the, uh, most interesting man in the world. Essentially doug cory the same way. He way he's been at 93 forever. He's always been a guy that I could go to for anything I needed, whether station-wise or promotional-wise. He's just been an insane founding board on the Wildland Arena, in the Hazmat Arena, just in the respected arena. I think he's one of the most respected individuals, not only in our department but I think in neighboring departments too. I think if, if they go hey, doug was on the call, it just tends to end there like okay, that makes okay, okay, we're good then yeah yeah, we're good.
Speaker 1:And then, um, I'd say the last one, right, like you have, chief bernard, like I alluded to earlier. Uh, same, same kind of principal, just a great, great dude that taught me very early on was still a captain. I was on his truck. Uh, amazing, um. And then hunter claire.
Speaker 1:I think he's done this for the valley, probably without knowing it. I'm sure he knows it because he's a highly intelligent motherfucker. But, um, he is what I think the epitome, he's the best hazmat tech I think we have. I think the epitome, he's the best hazmat tech. I think we have Agreed and I it's probably very biased, but I'm more than happy to argue with anybody for just nothing more than a frivolous argument over over that. But I think he is what I think every company officer, hazmat tech, should aspire to be when we're in this arena. And I think, I think, I think he's that, I think that's where, that's where he's at, and the fact of how he's been there and how he's gone about doing that and the things he's done to make that progression throughout his career, I think is what we all should strive to be. So I think those, those I know it was a handful, but I think that's the. Those are the guys that have been influential for whatever different avenues or reasons, but yeah, Well, I love it.
Speaker 2:Like I said, I mean you went above and beyond on the answer, for sure. But just to kind of loop back real quick when to point something out, I mean the initial answer was basically family, and I love what you said because and this is fucking true for everyone Listen to it, right, it doesn't matter how much of a stud you are at work. If your family life is in shambles, right, you don't have the support. If it's on your fault or not, right. But if you don't have that support system at home, it's hard to be super successful. So I love the fact that, like right off the bat, steve's like hey family, because if it wasn't for them, all those other people that have been huge influences in his career and mentors like he listed, they wouldn't have had nearly the same effect on him because he had that support from home, you know. So that's, that's, it's amazing, so, anyway. So one of my favorite questions, right, favorite fire department tradition, what is it? Mine's?
Speaker 1:biased mine's um.
Speaker 1:It's uh biased to peoria but our toy drive toy drive kind of uh alluded to it earlier, captain camilla started this thing, or not started it. He was part of the start. 20 plus years ago, 30 years ago, right, peoria fire department charities took over and they just had a couple people start donating toys to the community. That grew to. When he gave it to me, I think we had 13 to 15 businesses that partnered with our department and then, um, like a hundred families that would go through and they would just, they would these businesses and the fire department itself, the membership of the fire department would just gather a bunch of toys and bring it down to the community center and then, once they got to the community center, they would give these toys out and then they started to just deliver them to families in need.
Speaker 1:Every christmas eve morning started to oh, 600, we'd get on the fire truck and we started delivering to families it's predetermined, families that we had uh, found right. So, essentially, whether teachers or um, family members or whatever, said hey, my so-and-so's in need, my so-and-so needs help. Do you think you can? And then I started doing it and now it's grown exponentially big. It's huge. Last year we had 72 businesses. We did just over 400 kids.
Speaker 2:Wow, so you made 400 different kids. You basically made their Christmas.
Speaker 1:That's amazing, you made 400 different kids. You basically made their Christmas. That's amazing. And in five hours, 400 kids get presents. That's just one day. That's just the one thing. And we did 26 events in 24 days, which is insane, but uh and how many years now have you guys been doing that?
Speaker 2:You said who started it, but uh, what year did they start? Do you remember? Uh?
Speaker 1:Danny, have you guys been doing that? You said who started it? But uh, what year did they start? Do you remember? I, danny, did it for 20 ish and this is going to be my ninth year running it. But I've been with danny since I got hired 18 years ago. He just kind of said do this, and then when he retired he goes. I want you to take care of this, but think that you believe in it. I think it's in your heart. I want you to run with it. I said I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing. He goes just follow this and do this. Here's flash drive. I went okay and it's been a huge, huge help with that ever since. But it's it's become a family tradition for all of the families of purifier.
Speaker 2:So that's that's okay, you know, and, like I said, just giving back to that community. That's what it's all about, and we had alluded to it earlier.
Speaker 1:It's something that falls by the wayside sometimes.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, you know, all right. So last question, complete opposite. Right has nothing to do with tradition, solely of the fire service, all right. So if you could snap your finger right and through FM you know, we all know that fucking magic this disappears. What would one thing that you would get rid of in the American fire service right now If you could?
Speaker 1:I would have two weird right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Shocker more than one. He doesn't follow directions very well. Right as long as I get a Y for both, that's all I care about.
Speaker 1:One we already went over, right, the reluctance and progression for whatever the reason may be. Okay, we already touched on that. So I think the fact that, like going everything we talked about earlier right, like constantly exchanging those techniques, the information, constantly learning, like whether it's a hose load from those nozzle forward guys in Colorado to the automatic aid system here or to how to run a high-rise deployment back east right, like just constantly exchanging information, I think we need to continue with that progression and not be so reluctant to go. Well, that's not how we do it. That that fucking phrase. And I think anytime that you, it should be the scene from tropic thunder, when he looks tom cruise, looks, the guy says who's the green grip? He gripped you all right, hit that dude in the face. I think you have that same thing. When people use a phrase similar to that, I love it. Well, that's not how we do it. I don't give a shit. Yep, let's figure out why can it be better and if so, let's make it.
Speaker 2:If not, then good on us, fuck yeah yeah, that means hey shit, we've been doing it right Cool, let's continue.
Speaker 1:Right Two without coming across negatively. I can't stand. I cannot stand. I can't fathom it. I can't stand when traditions in the past are forgotten. Okay, you have guys that have retired from your department and they come back into the department in whatever way, whether it's come by to have coffee or just come in and check in, and the booter has no idea who that guy is like. It's not the booter's fault, it's our fault. That's that to me. Fucking. We hate that. So a buddy of mine and I, we started a plaque system.
Speaker 1:So essentially, just like the major league you know, baseball, football, basketball um, when you retire, your jersey gets retired okay so, whatever station you want it to be hung out of, so that way everybody that comes to that station now now has to look at this plaque of you and go well, who is that guy? And now they can start understanding these stories that we talked about at the table and they can relate a face to a name or face to a person and go oh, that was the guy, the guy that did this. And you go yeah, look at you, you're learning.
Speaker 2:Do those plaques have pictures or they're just? Hey, this is Fireman Smoe. From this year to this year X amount of years of service.
Speaker 1:No, it's a individual plaque and they get to pick where it gets hung. So, on their retirement date 0800 hits in the morning, we hang their plaque at whichever station they want it at. Oh, 800 hits in the morning, we hang their plaque at whichever station they want it at. But it's a plaque. It's got their picture. It's got their name and badge number on it. It's got their years of service on it. It has a PAR tag on it. It has a cool picture of them doing whatever they were doing like whatever they wanted to do.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. It's a cool fireman picture, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just whatever. Like one of the guys just had the picture of the very first ladder we had, because that was his very first fire truck. Oh, he always remembered guys, you know. So, um, but I think the fact that we uh, I can't stand when newer generations don't know the past in the history of the department that they work for, like if you had a guy come in as a booter, he doesn't understand why he got hired with glendale or pure or phoenix, can't be surprised, right, like if you don't know that, then what are you doing? Yeah, right, like you should know the history, you should know the rivalries. You should know that, like if you went and you got picked up and you were drafted by the dallas cowboys, you should understand who your rivals are and why those games are so important yeah, you better, and I and I believe those guys do, they know that.
Speaker 2:But, and again, I wonder where our disconnect is when it comes down to things like that.
Speaker 1:I guess it's on us. It's on us Like we dropped the ball because we didn't teach that right. We're the bridge and I think our like my generation with you, like our generation together I'm probably four or five years ahead of us like that group, we used to work with guys that ran single digit bad or had single digit badge numbers and guys that used to run fire and learn how to fight fire and do these things by doing it right, doing it real life. Right now we have these new guys come into the department and they're learning how to fight fire and do things simulated correct. Right, we? We're going to do this. We Correct Right, we were going to do this, we're going to do that. We are going to do this in this situation. But they may never get to see this in that situation just because of technology and sprinklers and all the other things, that fun things that we have going on with their home Right, and they just don't burn as much, right. And then we're that gap. They got to work with them on those dudes that rode tailboard right, and now we're teaching the new guys. So we're the. It's the onus on us to bridge that gap, not only in the learning field of like because we learned from them, because they did it. So they went hey, you use this hammer on this nail and this 16 penny nails is through for this and this is how this works. Neat, sounds good, all right. And then you do it, because they showed you how to do it. And then you did it and you realized, yes, this is how I do it. But the new guys don't see that because they may never see that situation Right. So not only is it our onus to bridge the gap in the training level from I learned from guys that really did it and now I'm teaching you. So you have to trust me that I know what I'm doing because I've done this right. Not only is it that, but it's also the same on building that history, building the buy-in that, that buy-in of your department. How do I get a new guy to buy in on a department that he knows nothing about? Very difficult, right? But again, we use it community wise.
Speaker 1:Or, if you just look socially, people have jobs for very few years because they're sitting there and they're doing this internship and they go through college. They boil away and boil away and work their ass off and they get through college. Now they get the paper that's their position at the bank and then they go be an intern somewhere right. And simon's the next said this very well. He said you get these interns that come in and they realize like after two or three years they go, I'm done. Yeah, I'm not making the difference that I want to make. Of course you're not, because you fucking have two years on. You just got here like you're not going to make the difference. It's like they see the mountain, like the tip of the mountain, but they can't see the mountain in front of them. They don't see the trails to get up to the tip, they just see a fucking mountain. So I think the same thing goes to you guys.
Speaker 1:If you don't get buy-in from them and teach them why it's important, why we do these things, why we decon the way we do, why we do this, why we go to union events, why we do these events. Here's the two reasons why we have to go to the charity event. Yes, you have to go. I'm sorry it's during dinner. Who gives a shit? Right, like fuck off. Here's the reason why we need to do it. And you start to get that buy-in because you've taught them the history and why they have a department to get hired to and then they go oh, I don't want to work the box today, I'm on the rescue again. Yeah, you know why? Because that's why you have a job, because we got rescues. And in five years from now, when we get something else, that's really cool and now you're on that and the guy's bitching about this You're going to be in the same spot and you're going to have to tell him the reason why he needs to buy in.
Speaker 1:So I think that same generation, or the same generational gap falls to us when we're teaching the buy-in to the department. There you go. If you ask me right now, hey, why would you come to my department? I can give you at least at least double digit reasons why I would come to your department. Yeah, what makes your department so great? Now, I wouldn't leave mine because I love mine. Same for you. But if I'm running with you, I I should know more about your department than the booter does I should. I didn't you guys work in the same jersey on? Why do I know more about this than you do? So I think that's where it comes down to. Is we just have to take more of a responsibility, be proud of where we're at, be proud of where we came from, you know, and then be excited about seeing that get better.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love it, and that's that's all comes down to. And you said it like, and it covers everything we're talking about in the fire service, or should. What should I say is what we're. We're covering the fire service that we want to either increase or change or affect in a positive matter, and it all goes down to that. Why and you were just talking about the retirees and their traditions and the, the guys that came before us and taught us and everything else, but was always a thing that like the why. Like once we explain the why, then we get the buy-in from the new guys, right, and then their traditions continue, right, or we're able to elevate our game, because now everyone understands it's not because, hey, you know, uh, captain willis, right, told me I have to. Uh, you know why? Why do I bring a New York hook to a garage fire? Well, captain Willis told me that it's a pretty cool hook, right? You know that's not the answer we're looking for, right? It's? Hey, I'm bringing this tool for this situation because of this.
Speaker 2:And the same thing when it comes down to like traditions or whatever, or it's like things that we don't like. What's the why behind it, right? Why did it even exist in the first place? But, more importantly, why is it important to either exit out of our history not our history, I should say, but exit that behavior out or, more importantly, why is it so important to keep that behavior or tradition included in the fire service?
Speaker 2:And that's one of the biggest thing, and the only reason why this podcast even exists right now is to remind guys, right, that it is cool to learn new shit, it is cool to be a fireman, and then, more importantly, like, if you love this job and want to get better, kudos to you, right, those are the guys that make this job better, right, and are what the public believes all of us are. So be that guy right. Elevate your game, elevate your department, right, um, bring something up to your boss, teach something to the guys below you. I mean, um, what else do you have for us to kind of walk us out of this episode, steve?
Speaker 1:not, I think, nothing but appreciation, man, just like what you guys are doing and giving, providing a platform and an avenue for people to come together, uh, that want to learn and want to get better, right like I. I just think I think it's a very cool thing and, like you said, sometimes it's just. You should be proud just to be. It's cool to be a fireman, right, you know, and sometimes it's, but it's. It's cool to be a fireman because of what we're allotted to do and what we're allowed to do. What we're able to do, right like the general public will never pay us for what we do. They're not. They're going to pay us for what we're willing to do, right like the general public will never pay us for what we do. They're not. They're going to pay us for what we're willing to do, and that's that's all the things that no one else does, and that's that's a big catch-all that we've become. But you can't. You have to have that moderated expectation too, that I can't just say, hey, go and perform, otherwise we would only have laterals right, there would be no, there'd be no higher.
Speaker 1:So, with that being said, I think it's just a matter of of giving kudos to our cooters to do. Like what you guys are doing is great. The fact that, like I'm super appreciative the fact that I got to be on this thing today, um, I'm excited to listen to other ones and learn more. I'm excited to to see what comes of this and watch this little thing grow. Like I think it's gonna be a big deal, man. You know our State 48 here. It's got a lot going for it. But at the same time, what you guys are doing and allowing this making our department it's so spread out, so big, or our culture or service I should say so spread out, bringing that closer together I think is a phenomenal thing that you guys are doing. So keep it up.
Speaker 2:But again, steve dude, thank you so much for your time. I mean it's. I really appreciate you taking time out of your day sitting down talking, just spitting the fat with me. So thank you so much again. I know we have so much more to cover. We'll do that on a later episode. But guys stay tuned and we will catch you in two more weeks. Thank you all, have a good night. Thanks for joining us. Always remember the most important grab you'll make in your fire service career is saving a complacent firefighter from themselves. Catch you next episode.
