Copper State Firemen Podcast
Copper State Firemen
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Fireman Steve O
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
Hose Line Management, and Career Reflections
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This episode tackles the critical importance of effective hose line deployment and rapid response in firefighting, featuring insights from Captain Sean Sine. The discussion highlights the need for efficient communication on the fireground, the vital role of training and experience, and the dangers of complacency within the fire service.
• Discusses the importance of rapid hose line deployment
• Explores the Zero Impact Period and its implications for firefighting
• Highlights the necessity of clear communication on the fireground
• Covers hose management techniques and equipment choices
• Stresses the importance of continual learning and accountability in the fire service
• Advocates for a culture that challenges complacency and promotes excellence
It's one of those things where if we're overly aggressive from the get-go, we're probably going to be successful. I mean, do you kind of feel the same when it?
Speaker 2:comes down to that. I think the importance can't be overstated. This is the difference between offensive and defensive and the difference between saving lives or a body recovery. The difference, the time we have that we can control right, like you're saying, is the difference between we get in there fast, aggressively, start cooling it, keep it survivable, make the spaces, check the tenable spaces in there for victims, versus we take an extra couple minutes outside, we open the door, it flashes, we go defensive, we find a body later. So it really is life and death difference between how proficient and quickly you can get in there and do your job.
Speaker 1: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. 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, 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, everybody, welcome back.
Speaker 1:I'm sitting here with Captain Sean Sign. He's the Captain of the American Fire Service. He's a hazmat and TRT technician. He's been a cadet mentor, probationary firefighter mentor. He's worked for the Fire 1 and 2 Academy, for the college here locally. He's taught high school fire and sirens programs, worked for the private technical rescue company. He is a zero impact period instructor, department training cadre member, fools eboard member that would be the Copper State Fools and proud husband and father. So we're sitting down here with Sean today. We are going to talk about, hopefully, right hose line deployment, water application and zip period. Sound good, sean. Did I miss anything Sounds good, man, that's it, brother. Well, let's just tear right into it, man. So let's just start with hose line deployment. So everyone talks about in the academy, everybody your department right, and what you're teaching outside on just that hose line management section, to start with.
Speaker 2:So hey, man, you touched on the story of my career for the most part Right. So many years spent untangling hose lines in front yards, bunch of fires, as the backup guy, plug guy, where you're working your ass off just to try and get water to the end of the nozzle. You know they're screaming more, more pressure, more pressure, engineers cranking it up, but it's got 20 kinks in between it and you know just really saw the problem so many times on so many fires and then eventually you know got taught by the right people on hey that it doesn't have to be this way. You know cause, for a long time coming out of the academy, here's like this is how it is, this is, this must be the best we can do.
Speaker 1:How many, how many times before we get off on this tangent, because I know this is a good one how many times have you been that guy on a knob thinking that man, I did my job. What the fuck's that guy doing behind me? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, 100%. You do the swim stab, grab on the flat load. You get to the front door. You're like I did good and the backup guy's like fixing your mess that you don't even know is going on, because now you're in the building with smoke, you don't see really all the work that's going on behind you. That you could have helped. Or just as a crew and department, and setting up your hose loads right could have made that. You know, cut that zero impact period down, which we can get into that later, but just speed up the whole process and make everybody's lives easier, give you more energy to do different things on the fire ground.
Speaker 1:That's that more efficient, more effective fireman right that we're now really harping on. And I sat down with Captain Noah Katz and he had talked about his crew and just his expectations and he said I expect my crew depending on whatever the makeup is, it doesn't matter but their deal is air brake to their masked up hose lines deployed and they're entering the front door 60 seconds right, yeah, that's amazing and that guy's awesome.
Speaker 2:I learned a lot from him in the class we took. And yeah, dude, that's money that is not remotely close to your average fire company, right yeah?
Speaker 1:Let's talk about it. So you kind of already mentioned what actually happens on the fire ground and I know everyone listening has been there a hundred percent or has seen it, or has motherfucked somebody because of it or whatever the case might be. So, with all that said, we know it's an issue. So what are you guys doing right now to resolve that?
Speaker 2:when it comes down to hose line management, you have your hose load that you're going to choose to load on your trucks, so you have some options there. But regardless of your hose load, sometimes it's out of our control right, departments are different, some have more freedom, some have less freedom to decide what's on their trucks. So really it is just whatever tool you have to be most efficient with. You've got to be dialed in with what you have. But once that hose is deployed, just the simplicity of setting it up right, flaking it out right, doing the attack over supply. So what we mean by that is, starting from the nozzle that hose needs to be on top of the hose that's closer to the truck, and ideally we make a figure eight which people that are interested can look up.
Speaker 2:There's a bunch of YouTube videos on attack oversupply and it reduces the friction of the hose on the ground and it also prevents the hose from getting looped, knotted up, caught underneath other hose. Just helps you out and that's the basis, right? That's just basic setting it up and then where it's set up in regards to the door. So we get into reading hinges right when we talk forcible entry, reading hinges, finding out which way to set your hose up, so you're not immediately creating a 90 degree pinch point.
Speaker 1:All right, so real quick. I know you're going to keep talking, so just explain to the audience that they haven't been through this class. They don't know what you're talking about. Explain what the importance of the hinge or what you mean by hinge side of them, how you approach it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, depending on the building right, and you obviously walk up and identify whether it's an inward or outward swinging door, right back to forcible entry kind of basics. So whether you have to force that door or not and for your hose line it's important for both then typically when our doors are inward swinging, most front doors to residences or apartments, behind that door is going to be usually a wall or a closet or something, but it's usually not the opening to the room. So that's the hidden side right that's going to open up closest to the wall. So we probably know we're going to go in and go the opposite direction. So if the hinges are on the right, we're probably going to go in and go to the left and start searching that living space or living room or it's a hallway.
Speaker 2:that goes straight. Great, then you're not making an immediate turn. But either way, we want to set that hose up so that it's towards the hinges best we can so that we're not creating, you know, a 180 around the outer wall of the building or apartment or whatever it may be Especially important on apartment landings. Right, if you have to go one way extreme or the other way extreme, you want to make sure you pick the right one. So you're not now you're going to lose a guy for the whole fire at that front door making that 180 degree turn, just feeding hose in the whole fire until you have enough hose to search the whole building.
Speaker 1:So no, and it's funny too because you explain it. It makes sense. But it's so simple and it's crazy that we've never prior to probably what five years ago? Maybe a little bit more, maybe a little bit less. That's when I started learning. Yeah, okay, it's. It was never even a conversation. I've never outside of the zip class. And then the exposure here I had never heard of that prior to. The only hinge things I've ever heard of was, maybe locations of bedrooms right, yeah, going down to search tactics, but it's like, and as soon as someone taught me, I'm like, why didn't I not think of that myself? You know which? Again, the wealth of knowledge that you're going to spit today, which is good. A lot of guys are going to realize I'm not nearly as good as I think I am, or I don't know as much about being a nozzleman as maybe I should.
Speaker 2:Yeah and that's, and we'll just go on a quick tangent. That's kind of the way my career went right. So the Academy has gotten a lot more advanced in teaching this stuff, but I think the majority of most departments have some time on and they didn't teach any of this stuff in the Academies back then. So coming to that realization, right, I spent basically my whole career in the backseat of an engine. I'm a new captain, so about 10 years I was in the backseat of an engine, whether I was on the plug or the nozzle either way. So that was kind of where I was coming from. It was, hey, I think I have some pretty good experience. I think I know what I'm doing, and then you learn what you don't know, and you don't know what you don't know. As soon as someone teaches you, like you said, you're like I can't believe. I've never thought of that before.
Speaker 1:And I've seen this problem a hundred times and just accepted it. As you know, this is the way it is. Yeah, well, there's so many issues we've run into over, you know, the last couple decades, just as the American Fire Service, that we just come to the understanding that brute force and strength and aggression is going to fix that issue because we weren't trained any other way. Like, hey, what happens if you have a bunch of kinks or it's a shitty deployment or whatever it's a we'll be super aggressive and flake that out and, you know, move those kinks and yeah there's a guard and they'll throw it out of the way.
Speaker 2:You know like.
Speaker 1:Whatever the case, might be, but being able to tactically deploy that hose line and take. How much longer do you think it takes to deploy hose like you're talking, compared to just that brand new booter that gets out and just swim, stab, grabs or if it's a mini man, whatever the case might be deploys it and thinks he does a good job and just brings it right to the front door with no hose to pull behind him. Not that first couple, not 50 feet, not anything. Probably 10 feet at the most.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, I mean I've seen the worst case scenario on actual fires. I've seen minutes spent fixing kinks and tangles and it's it's a complete mess and we're talking minutes on the fire ground like we can get into that. That's a humongous difference of what that fire is going to do when you can finally put water on it. So you know a lot of guys might look at this as unnecessary and again, you don't know what you don't know but the, the difference in time. If it takes firsthand, like it's going to take getting someone who's resistant to change to the the difference in time. If it takes firsthand, like it's going to take getting someone who's resistant to change to see the difference. Like, hey, grab that flat load crosslay, pull it 10 feet how you normally do to this fire and let's just time see when you're actually flowing uninterrupted. You know full psi out of that nozzle. And now let's try it. Teach them some stuff. I'll try that same thing, but with these new techniques and here's the time difference and just black and white themselves doing it.
Speaker 2:That's what it's going to take really, as cultures and wherever your department is and whatever level of training, to kind of change. You know, steer this battleship a different direction. But you know how we are as a fire service. I understand it's, you know you learned one way. It's your way and I'm not telling anybody to do anything without training and practicing and going out and learning, taking classes and practicing and training with your crews first, because whatever you're most comfortable with, you know when it's game time is not the time to try something new, it's it's to make it your, your norm before you get the fire.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's uh and we've talked about that in previous episodes too it's, there's such a wealth of knowledge out there for this generation of firemen and we're we're involved in that now too but it's uh, they're going to fact check you, you know. So if you teach someone something, they're going to do the research to see if it works Right, and then they might be doing that research on their own, and then, unfortunately, some of the guys with the best intentions in the world will bring it back to their department, right, try it, and then they didn't get a chance to practice it or anything else. Or, like you said, they try it on a job and it fails miserably because they haven't practiced. And then, all of a sudden, that tactic is garbage, right, right, which we all know it's not. I just want to point something out there that you said.
Speaker 1:So we get questions on social media all the time about hey, steve, just listen to this episode, I love what you guys are talking about, or this tactic, and hopefully you get some feedback from this one too. But it's always the same question how do I introduce this? I'm a younger member, I'm a junior member or I'm just a backstep guy? Whatever the case might be how do I introduce it to the senior guys or my department, or large department, small, it really doesn't matter. So what you said and I'd like to kind of reiterate that too it is hey, learn something, practice it right, and then show the guy, be like, hey, I learned something new, let's do it our way right. And then now let's do it the new way and then, like you said, make them decide. So do you feel, in your personal experience and kind of how you look on the thing, how successful is that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've seen people change their mind 100% like going into a training, like right there on the spot.
Speaker 2:Right there on the spot. Right there on the spot. After they see it Like they, they might talk crap the whole way to the training. How big of a waste of a time. This is going to be Right. They see the difference, do it themselves firsthand. It works better. They can't deny it, they know it Right and they'll sometimes they'll apologize and be like man. I thought this was nonsense until I tried it myself and it works good and that's what it's going to take. And we're not talking culture specifically, but it really boils down to culture. You have to have a training culture that's open to getting better right, that's competitive to a certain extent right.
Speaker 2:It takes that senior guy not wanting to get shown up by the new guy fresh out of the academy If we can do something faster than you, a lot faster than you, that's you know. That should create that motivation, and especially guys that are resistant to change to be like, well, I can't, I can't get shown up. I gotta, I gotta figure this out. Teach me that new stuff.
Speaker 1:All right. So what else? Um? So you see, you kind of touched on it and I know it's way too much, without going through the class to talk about it all, but what else is? What else do you feel is important about the hose line deployment or the management section of it? Uh, for the class that you teach.
Speaker 2:So a big part is communication. So, like I came up, just yell more hose and the next guy is going to do his best to get you more hoes. He might grab a loop if you're lucky. Yeah, that was the extent of our communication. Right, that was. You know, that's all I knew until taking this class where the nozzleman regardless if he's a day one on probation firefighter and you guys laid in.
Speaker 2:So now your captain is your, your heel person or backup person, whatever terminology you want to use that nozzleman, that brand new firefighter, is command right Of the hose line movement. He's going to say what he needs, he's going to communicate where he's going. So, 10 feet right turn, yelling loud communication through the fire ground at your captain. Right, so it takes. So it takes knowing that that's necessary. You can't be timid or shy when it's game time and you're in the fire. You've got to be loud and proud and know what you're doing and that's key. So communication is a huge one. Right, left turns, right turns, 90 degrees, whatever you want to do, communicating what's going on at the front of the hose line, because from the back, especially even if the captain has a tick camera, if he's working and moving hose. He doesn't see either. And then if you talk to your plug person, you gotta you gotta be their eyes by being loud and proud. So that's a big one. That's something I learned that I hadn't ever done before, right, All right.
Speaker 1:So so now you've um, you've effectively taught the fireman right to uh do an effective pull right. He does the um attack over supply. Now he's entering the structure right. So we you just talked about communication a little bit, so let's talk about uh loading the rooms and things along those lines. So what do you teach them next?
Speaker 2:so so, yeah, so, as far as the backup person right, we have a lot of different ways. We can set up hose on the front end, right, your attack oversupply is going to be pretty much your quick attack fast, it's fast to set up, it's aggressive, it's quick. And then going forward as a backup person, you can choose to set yourself up in a good position. I like to set my pack in a corner. If we're going making a hallway, the far corner kind of do it like a wall, sit almost against that corner and let that hose ride across top of my thighs and just guide it and pull and guide it. And that's to initially make a corner right. And then, if we're going down longer hallways, then loading these hallways with this S-Bend, this spring-looking pattern, right, and then if we're going down longer hallways, then loading these hallways with this S-Bend, this spring-looking pattern, right, and this is what we're talking, and this is important to note this isn't your low-level basic fire, not a lot of heat, not a lot of smoke, right, and that's something I think gets lost in translation a lot when we're teaching this. This is for the fire, right, this is for the good job. A heavy fire load, high heat, low visibility, possible victims. Right, this is get it on time. This isn't.
Speaker 2:Hey, there's some little extension to the cabinets above the stove. Obviously you're going to walk in. That one. You're not going to be crawling, you're not going to be hands and knees. This is, there's two. Totally that one. You're not going to be crawling, you're not going to be hands and knees. There's two totally different scenarios. We're not telling you to crawl through every single fire. If it's an attic fire, I think it's obvious, but it bears saying, just for note right, so all this stuff pertains to the fire. Right, game time, getting it on. So, that being said, right, so you're fighting your way down a hallway, cooling it as you go, right, applying water to the ceilings walls, making that space tenable and more survivable for you and any victims. As you advance, so it's a slower advance.
Speaker 1:So that's that pre-cooling that we talk about, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, pre-cooling, cooling the spaces we own, capturing more space as we move through the building, right, protecting our egress and just protecting the what's behind us from the fire that's in front of us. And as we're doing that, as the nozzle person's using whatever they're comfortable with, and we can get into different types of holds and stuff like that as they're advancing in whichever way is comfortable to them, their preferred method and the backup person needs to be working. They always have been and always will be doing the most work on the fire ground. Just as, the way it is, the plug person is or the captain initially, is going to be doing the most of the work on these. They got to make that S bend, right, so you're going, just imagine a big continuous S down that hallway. Right, so you're going, just imagine a big continuous S down that hallway. So now you have a lot of excess hose in that hallway that wants to spring forward and push your nozzleman forward. When they advance, they should feel pretty much no resistance. They shouldn't be dragging hose using much energy at all. That's the goal of the backup person, right, you're making your nozzleman's life really easy.
Speaker 2:And then, preloading rooms you can do coils. Right, you can flip that hose up, roll it into the room in coils to preload, like the first room, if you know you're going deep, and then start S-ing hallways as you get to hallways, or just making coils and leaning up against the wall and that's all. Preference, right, you could argue one way or the other. Entanglements, whatever it does get a little sketchy if you have coils on the wall that are falling and stuff like that, but it's whatever. That crew trains on likes the best is going to get the job done.
Speaker 1:And what that house provides you too right If? That's a hoarder situation you might not have to. You might be having to use the walls oh yeah, yeah, yeah, perfect example.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you got cardboard boxes lying in the hallway and you got two feet to walk in, while you're pretty much out of options, you're gonna have to make coals, coils and roll them in to that space to give the nozzle guy enough hose to get down the hallway. So, exactly, good point, man. So, whatever the building gives you, whatever the fire gives you, whatever your goals and comfortability level are with your tactics, All right.
Speaker 1:So so we, we talked about a little bit of the hose line deployment and you started mentioning it, so I want to, I want to talk about it now. So you're talking about uh, capturing capturing the rooms, capturing the box, like uh depends on what you talk about. Like I always teach hey, a house is a box and then it's got small boxes inside of it. Our goal is to win each box, one by one, right, until we capture the whole game. So, but with that said, obviously, and I believe honestly, throughout the nation, collectively, as a fire service, we've learned that it is now okay to cool smoke, right, smoking and burn fuel Smoke is dangerous, right, we treat it just like fire. So what do you teach guys when they're uh, talk about that prequel and and and what you're what, what, what you're really trying to get them to accomplish, to take away into the field?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that's another thing, man, early in my career. Right, we didn't, we didn't really flow water on, not fire. Right, we would just grin and bear it through the heat and smoke until we got to where we saw red stuff and that's where the wet stuff went Meanwhile. Right, we're walking through an oven, we're cooking ourselves, cooking our gear and understanding failure points of gear. Right, our mask is the least heat-resistant part of our deal.
Speaker 2:The lens itself is going to start failing if it's exposed to too hot a temperature for too long. And then, like I teach a littleIC class that I put together right, our particular model of TIC cameras doesn't show color until 500 degrees. Right, that's really hot. If you're going to be in there for minutes at a time, that's face melting. Right, so you take the hallway hey, it's still black and gray, we're good, but it could be, you know, 498 degrees and it's just not yellow yet. And then you're sitting there for a couple minutes. You're going to start to have problems.
Speaker 2:So, really recognizing and again I'm not saying flow water if it's not hot and smoky, but knowing from experience hey, if I'm feeling some heat, I need to cool this environment as we move, cool down. And again. We're getting into experience level right, so you're going to get more experience. There's a line between protecting property, right, and when we're in a life-saving mode right, we're risking a lot to save a lot. We're looking for savable lives. I'm sorry that we knocked all your pictures off the wall with our hose stream, but right now we're saving lives because this is, you know, this fire is advanced. So that experience level of knowing when to start cooling the atmosphere the day, one firefighter might not have that. They might need a little coaching on that from the captain to say hey, start flowing.
Speaker 2:Hey, man, open that job right now, yeah, don't shut it down.
Speaker 1:And another thing too, like that is a side effect of us doing that now is that we are cooling those pre-flashover conditions that we're unaware of at the time because of the zero visibility, because it's supercharged black smoke, right, and we're trying to find a seat of the fire or there's a reported victim. So we're making a super fucking heavy push or things like that. So, without even realizing it, by just cooling the space and trying to take it back to those boxes, we're actually making that building a lot safer for us in a very rapid sense. And it's funny I've said this Tom blew in the face. I say it to every young guy running to old guy, it doesn't freaking matter. I say it to every young guy running to old guy it doesn't freaking matter, but it's.
Speaker 1:It's one of those things where, like, if we are aggressive in the in the beginning of the call, right, we're already behind the eight ball Fire has been burning for X amount of minutes it takes us four to six minutes on average to get to whatever the thing is and say we're fucking studs, and we do stretch ready to make entry in Noah Katz's engine company in less than 60 seconds. Right that fire has grown exponentially. So if we are aggressive in the beginning, we deem right aggressive, you could also say risky or whatever. In the beginning we deem that building safe rapidly compared to and I think this is why people get misconstrued when it comes down to being aggressive firemen. If we are now in that building for 10, 15 minutes struggling to find a seat of fire or we're sucking carpet because of the heat, that's not the time to be aggressive.
Speaker 1:We missed our window of opportunity. Now it's time to start going. Shit. We might need to pivot right and maybe approach from a different angle. God forbid, we might have to pull out. But it's one of those things where if we're overly aggressive from the get-go, we're probably going to be successful. I mean, do you kind of?
Speaker 2:feel the same. When it comes down to that, I think the importance can't be overstated. This is the difference between offensive and defensive and the difference between saving lives or a body recovery. The difference, the time we have that we can control right, like you're saying, is the difference between we get in there fast, aggressively, start cooling it, keep it survivable, make the spaces, check the tenable spaces in there for victims, versus we take an extra couple minutes outside, we open the door, it flashes, we go defensive, we find a body later.
Speaker 2:So it really is life and death difference between how proficient and quickly you can get in there and do your job. So that's where I'm coming from, and I know it's not everybody's opinion that there's a lot of culture changes that I think can happen nationwide as far as how seriously we take our job. I've heard a lot throughout my career about people that want to disregard training. We already know this. I'm good at that. All that stuff, all our skills, are perishable. At the end of the day, it is a difference of saving lives or pulling out a body.
Speaker 1:And so the crazy thing is too, you could take the best fire department in the country I don't know who they are Right With the best crew in the fucking country, and I guarantee you, on a bread and butter house fire, that's still a good job. There's mistakes made, oh yeah, on every single fire, every fire Right. So it's one of those things where if we don't learn from every single fire, then shame on us for saying well, it worked last time the fire went out. And I know you're the same thing. I've never gone to a fire that didn't go out Well yeah.
Speaker 1:It burned into the foundation, blah, blah, blah or whatever. That's not our fucking job, though. Save lives and then save their house, if we can 100% man From there. So what is the ZIP period? So, for the guys that don't know, what does ZIP even stand for?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the Zero Impact Period is what we talk about and it's an old idea. It might have a new name or new to me at least, but I mean it's legit, as old as the fire service. We're going to get there as fast as we can and do everything in our control fast, right? That's the whole idea. That's why we have stopwatches in the academy, that's why we practice putting our gear on fast. That's the basis of everything is being fast. So it's just putting a name on what's in our control in that period before we have a positive effect on that fire. So, like you said earlier, there's a lot that's out of our control, right? How long does it take someone to notice there's a fire, call 911, go through the dispatch, get us toned out Now. Once we're toned out, now we have things in our control. So turnout times in our control, right. Routing in our control Traffic's not, but routing is right Finding where we're going to get, how we're going to best access that fire quickly, and then again, after that air break, like you said.
Speaker 2:Noah Katz said that's definitely within our control, right. How fast can we get our hose line set up in the door? Forcible entry comes into this, right, that's part of our class is forcible entry. Get in and make a positive impact. So that's our basically, like you're saying, I consider it toned out to water on the fire. That's my personal zero impact difference, right? So yeah, that's what the basis of the class. So it's not all encompassing, right, we don't do turnout drills. That's something everyone should do and can do in and of their own and don't need a lot of extra training on. But important, how often do people turn out for time, right, especially when you get later in your career? How often do you refresh that perishable skill?
Speaker 1:Because I guarantee we all get it. Can you mask up with gloves on?
Speaker 2:Can you mask up with your gloves on right? Can you flow water from outside while you mask up? That's something we do teach right. There's ways to hold the hose with your feet and legs in a clamp position, with the other foot propping up the nozzle, where, if you got a blowing window or doorway as you show up, you can start flowing before you even get your mask on. Save time there, mask up now you can go in. You've already cooled and put out some of that fire advance in there.
Speaker 1:What do you say to a naysayer? And and I just, it just came to my brain right now um, what do you say the naysayer, uh, or the old salty dog that says, hey, sean, you're, you're up the thermal balance by spraying water into smoke, actively cooling rooms and boxes as you progress? How do you, what is your ammo? Back on a guy like that?
Speaker 2:So you know what man there's. There's pros and cons to everything, right, but to that I would say every fire is different. Is there a time and a place and a fire dynamic where the fire is, where the smoke is, where potential victims are? Is there a possibility where you could do some damage by flowing water in a certain way? Sure, there is a scenario where that is the case. But if you have a superheated atmosphere and superheated gases in a large space in that room, you're going to do nothing but make it better. Especially if you're going in that way, you're going to do nothing but make it better for you and better for victims by cooling that down. And then, when it comes to the thermal layering, right, we talk about that.
Speaker 2:I'm a big proponent of smoothbore nozzles for this type of firefight that we're talking about. There's a place for fog nozzles, there's a use for fog nozzles, for sure, but I'm a huge fan of the smoothbore for that reason. Right, you got less air entrainment. That means, as that water moves through the air, it's pulling less air with it because it's a solid stream, smooth bore. So that aspect in and of itself, right, not? And then that's that's where we get into more art than science, okay, so there's. There's actions that the nozzle person can take on the end of the nozzle. If I whip a smooth bore as fast as I possibly can in a circle, I'm going to entrain a lot of air with it. If I slowly, progressively cool the ceiling and the walls without aggressive, fast movement of that nozzle, I'm going to entrain less air. So that's where you get into the more artistic aspect of how are you applying your water and are you doing it the right way for what you want to do?
Speaker 2:If you're trying to move smoke and you whip it around fast and that's your goal and purpose, then yeah, you're doing the right thing. If you're trying not to add air to the fire, then slow, deliberate movements is the right choice there. So that comes with knowledge, training, experience and identifying what that fire is doing. It goes into smoke reading. You know, flow, pass, all that stuff. So this is all encompassing and it all blows down to how good of a firefighter do you want to be right? Hopefully the best, hopefully the best. If they're listening to this show, probably they want to be the best. But we'd be lying if we said every guy on every department wants to be the best firefighter.
Speaker 1:Every, every department has a percentage of mutts, a hundred percent. And the bigger the departments, and more mutts they have so obviously the people listening.
Speaker 2:I encourage go learn as much as you can about all these aspects smoke reading, flow pass, nozzle work, find out, either do it yourself, watch YouTube, youtube if that's what you have access to or take classes where you're flowing water actively. And when you get on shift, ask your crew if you guys can go train and actually flow water actively in a, whether it's a training tower or just out in the street. If that's all you got, do what you can get used to it, get comfortable with it. Make it something that's muscle memory for you.
Speaker 1:Now, when it comes down to I just want to, since you were talking about the fog nozzle and the smooth bore, you probably made smooth bore mafia guys freaking, they got hard-ons right now they're like yeah, like preach it, but I agree with you too, but it's funny. So the department you work for you have combination. You have fog nozzles. I guess you would call it right a combination nozzle that you can actually spin the tip off and then, it becomes a smooth bore yeah, I call it a smooth bore with a fog attachment.
Speaker 2:Okay, I don't know if that's accurate, that's what I like to call it.
Speaker 1:I like that because it's. It's. Yeah, I just don't know what to call them. I always just call them hey, grab the one with the orange. You know the orange, the orange tip it's.
Speaker 1:But so, um, I was an RTO for the last class here in the department that we both work for and, uh, it was the first time one of the kids had taken, uh, that nozzle into a burn building without the fog tip on there and then was asked or told to hydraulically ventilate and literally was never taught what to do. Right, and in his own brain this is a brand new guy, he's probably week six, you know. So, almost halfway through the academy it was just like, oh crap, I don't know what to do. And what he decides to do is he starts closing the bail, right, and then realizes, as he's closing the bail a little bit, the pattern right Became disrupted and started moving a shit ton of air. Yep, Right.
Speaker 1:And then he just held it there and I'm like, and then he comes out and tells me hey, cap, right, like I know what to do and I did this and it worked. I'm like, did I just invent something? And I'm like, well, good, dude, we hadn't had a chance to train you on that yet. But I'm like that's exactly what you do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, you could do that. Or open it full bore and, like I said, whip it in a tight circle out the window as fast as you can. Both of those will entrain air. And again to me and this is personal, you know opinion right To me, hydraulically ventilating is kind of low down my priority list. I'm not going to fight the whole fire with a fog nozzle on in case I need to hydraulically ventilate at some point.
Speaker 1:No, correct. Because, again, we hydraulically ventilate when either we've been able to compartmentalize that fire or we have fire control and now we're trying to evacuate that smoke, to complete that secondary, you know, or assist the crews with the primary, because we're able to get a quick knock on the job and then whip it out. Yeah, so we're not hydraulically ventilating, that's not a high priority. I agree with you on that one. And it's it's funny too, because I didn't know this till just a couple of months ago and I was reading an article and they were talking about fog nozzles and I used to be a huge fan. I mean, it's just because I grew up with fog nozzles back East and then we eventually transitioned, but initially that's all I knew. So that's what I preferred, obviously, like all of us do.
Speaker 1:And I found out the history of a fog nozzle and I had no idea. But it was actually meant for shipboard firefighting. I don't know if you knew that. Yeah, I heard that it's because the idea behind it was obviously ships are watertight, right, so you can close every single door and they could open a hatch and literally convert that entire space, but nobody's in there, right? It was never meant for interior firefighting.
Speaker 1:But we just adopted it because, like everything else, a pick headed ax was a Marine tool at first too, and then the. You know, back in the day when the fire service started, we just got hand-me-downs of everything and said, here, there you go, make it work. And then it became a tradition. Then we made it work and we figured out other things. You know, the Halligan bar was invented by a thief and then a fireman altered it.
Speaker 1:And you know, like it's crazy, but like you never know, and like you start telling these guys these things, like that A smoothbore nozzle was meant for interior firefighting, right, you know, but 90% of fire departments use something that's meant for shipboard firefighting. It's crazy, yeah. I mean, like for the guys that don't know that, just think about that, right. And then the advantages of being able to maybe get a nozzle like Sean has access to, or maybe just being able to experiment or try out smooth bore and with your department and kind of go from there because bigger water droplets, right, a rapid cooling, you don't disturb that thermal layer as much. I mean there's a ton of benefits, obviously there are benefits for both cooling, you don't disturb that thermal layer as much.
Speaker 2:I mean there's a ton of benefits. Obviously there are benefits for both. But yeah, and we can talk about other lines right. So our interior inch and three quarter bread and butter right, everybody's comfortable with that. A big part of zero impact in the class is getting people comfortable with the two and a half right.
Speaker 2:When I came on, that two and a half had a fog nozzle on it. It was just a souped up version of the inch and three quarter. I never met anybody who liked it. I don't think I ever saw anybody pull it the way it was set up for actual fire attack outside of the training. Yeah, we would just pull more inch and three quarters, even if it justified it. Just pull more inch until it was the last line on the truck. Then maybe it got pulled Right and they're not happy about it.
Speaker 2:So we've changed a lot since I've been here and we've had a smooth bore on the two and a half for a long time. Right that, that tool in the toolbox. Right, that's. That's bigger ammunition, that's a bigger caliber weapon, if you want to call it that, that we have access to. Guys aren't comfortable pulling it generally. Right, it takes more work, effort maybe, especially without proper technique. And there's new, new to me, new to the fire service, if we're talking the last 10 years techniques skills, all involving using the two and a half and getting comfortable with it. And when we teach that class, I think a lot of people come in of that old school mentality background of not using it, not pulling it, not liking it. And we will take the smallest person in that class, weight wise, and they will manhandle that line and pull it, advance it by themselves and flow minutes and minutes and minutes at a time with zero energy and put lots of water on fire, right. So it's all about comfortability. Once you do it, once you're comfortable with it now that tool's in your toolbox, and when to use it, right, when does your fire load justify it?
Speaker 2:I use that quick National Fire Academy fire flow formula, right, but I just do a dirty kind of streets version of it, right? So it's your fire involved space, length, times, width, right? So square footage. So just guess on the square footage how much is a fire involved. And it's that, divided by three, is your GPM that you need for that amount of fire. Or I just multiply each hose load by three, right? So, like our two and a half, is 300 GPM, so it can handle 900 square feet of fire. So if we have roughly 900 square feet or less, then that's the line we're going to.
Speaker 2:And you know the our inch and three quarters, roughly 480, I round up to 500 square feet right of fire. So if it's a bedroom or two inch and three quarters, great, that'll handle it. But if it's an entire like strip mall occupancy or an entire apartment is fully involved. Extending to the next apartment that inch and three quarters is going to do something but it's not going to handle it. You're going to need another one or another two and a half to back you up to finally put that fire out.
Speaker 2:So I'm a believer in pulling the right line as far as you're comfortable with to accomplish the task. So the two and a half for me is it's an easy decision. If we pull up and we have enough fire to justify it. That's what we're going with, and better to have too too much than not enough, right? Same with cooking I have more food than not enough food. So I'm going to bring that and hopefully I'm with guys that are comfortable with it. I'm a roving captain, so comfortability levels vary greatly. So any opportunity we can have to train or just get this knowledge out there and training out there to more people to make it more comfortable, we're going to have more success on more fires throughout the shifts, throughout the cities, you know it's my philosophy on it.
Speaker 1:So for the guys listening that have slightly less progressive fire departments right now when it comes down to different types of hose, loads and nozzles and things like that, outside of the technique because it's hard to talk about technique without seeing it right and in all reality, the zero impact period class or if you find a class anywhere close to you, you need to go. It is, it is valuable a hundred percent and the only way you can really learn these tactics that cap science talk about right now is to actually physically do them. So outside of the technique of the deuce in half, is there equipment that guys need to think about replacing to be able to do that single man flow? Is it a hose, is it the knob or is it the deployment I mean?
Speaker 2:You know there's ideal. Obviously ideal would be a modern smoothbore nozzle with correct hose. Right, I try. And we need to think about. I've had a hose rep talk to us and he made it, made perfect sense, right, you can't just switch your nozzle without switching your hose. Right, my organization no fault to them, it's a they didn't know what they were doing at the time made that mistake, right, it's like putting the wrong caliber barrel on a rifle, right, it's not going to work, right, so it worked. I mean, shoot, we did it for a very long time and fires went out, like you said. But kinking is going to be. If you have a high-pressure hose and a low-pressure nozzle, kinking is going to be a huge problem. It's going to want to kink way more often than when you had a high-pressure nozzle. So it's a package deal you get the correct hose for the correct nozzle, which for me would be a low-pressure hose and a low-pressure, smooth-bore nozzle, and then it comes down to hose load. I think is most effective there and I'm a big fan of the Minuteman.
Speaker 2:Again, opinion right, but shoulder loads in general. Big fan because I've been on countless fires where it's not a straight, open roadway like it was for us in the academy, or a burn tower, with no nothing out front, wide open concrete. You go into the rooms. There might be like one or two couches, not a lot of obstacles, right? So when we're getting into these yards that have pony walls, trees, fences, shrubs around the front door, or we're going around cars on the street, double park cars, or we're going around the back of the house for a patio fire, it's in the back of the house and the side yard is just scraps of metal and broken down, lawnmowers and bicycles taken apart, and there are other vehicles parked back there Dragging a flat load, swim, stab, grab through.
Speaker 2:There is a nightmare, it gets caught on things. You're dragging a bunch of loops a nightmare, it gets caught on things. You're dragging a bunch of loops, having the load on your shoulder, flaking off and landing or on whatever it lands on and then charging it afterwards. You get to the end. It's so much faster. It's it's night and day difference for real world, real scenarios. So for me it's. It's an obvious best hose load I open to. If anyone has a better one they want to show me and it works better in those scenarios I'm open. But so far, comparing it to all the things I've seen. It's the go-to.
Speaker 1:And that's your. You guys have the Deuce and a Half as a Minuteman then, correct, Okay, yeah, so what do you feel like? This is again my personal opinion and I feel like you probably resonate on it too, but I want you to kind of elaborate on how you feel about it.
Speaker 1:A lot of guys in a lot of departments not here, but well, here too, but everywhere across the country they're like hey, we all work for nine stations, okay, super busy city, you guys run a ton of fire, and the idea behind it is every truck is set up identical, right. So that way, you just said you're a roving captain. If you rove from a north station to a south station, in theory that engine is going to be set up identical to the one up north and in theory that engine is going to be set up identical to the one up north. I personally don't believe that that should be the case, because not only should you have hose loads per the city or county or district, whatever you work for, but then also your first do, because whatever works in. So the city that you work in, the south section of your city, is ghetto. Well, we won't even sugarcoat it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, lower socioeconomic. Hey, dude, I love the wordsmithing on that one.
Speaker 1:That was way more politically correct than me. And then the north section of the city is your blue to white collar, typically right your upper, echelon your three to four to five to $600,000 houses with yards, more property, everything like that.
Speaker 1:So, obviously, a hose load that you were talking about, where you can drag up north, where you have a lot of property, might work, compared to down south, where you have those double park cars, you have the lawnmowers, the homeowner has, like you said, all the other stuff, excessive storage, Excessive storage, excessive storage. You'd need to be a PIO. I'll tell you what. No, no, no, not a chance. And so I'm a firm believer that every truck should be set up for their due, but the kickback to that right is well, then, when guys rove, well, how are they going to know how are they going to pull? Or, even better, in a system that you work in, you run with other cities, correct, and now other cities are coming into your first due to assist you on your fire, and the kickback is well, how are they going to know how to pull your line? So what's your outlook? But, more importantly, what is your opinion, how to solve that problem?
Speaker 2:So, I agree with you Perfect world, right. We would cater our trucks to their response area in a perfect world. And also in that perfect world your same crew would be working with you every day. Every fire you get would be with the people you train with in the last 25 years. And that is not the world we live in. So I get it from an administrative perspective and the reality of being a roving captain in a roving department where I don't think I've had the same people on a crew in months, right, so that's always changing.
Speaker 2:So how do you accomplish that? You train the entire department on all the hose loads proficiency. The captains and battalion chiefs hold people accountable to training. Often. That's how you make sure everyone's proficient with all different hose loads. Then in a perfect world, right, the three captains. Right, we have three shifts, we have four shifts.
Speaker 2:Four captains agree on what they want on their truck and they can choose from all the hose loads that the entire department's trained on and customize their truck to what they need. Where are they seeing the most fires? What types of fires are they fighting the most? What's going to be the best hose lines they have pre-connected versus dead loads? Do they make long stretches often do. Do they need longer attack lines? Do they have a lot of shorter stretches where extra hose is more of a hindrance than a benefit on some of their loads? So that would be, yeah, perfect world scenario. That's what I would say. How you solve that. Train everyone on everything to a proficiency level. Give the captains the freedom to customize their truck to the first do in agreeance with everyone else who works on that truck, and that would be the goal.
Speaker 2:When it comes to the outside city thing, that's out of, I think, everybody's control. And what I say to that when I hear that argument is they've never asked us when they change their hose loads. I've pulled up to many other cities' trucks and I've never seen their type of hose load before and they didn't care. You know I made it work, but you figured it out and that's just the reality of the situation. Your truck is your truck. You're the first in company you want it set up to where you can make the biggest impact. The second, third, fourth in company they're not going to be making as big of an impact if they have some struggles with your hose load, but it saved you time on that zero impact period. To me that's worth it.
Speaker 1:Copy. You know, the funny thing is too, there's a lot of departments across the country, especially back east, where there are combination departments, so there are career and volunteer, all running together in the same county or city or whatever the case might be, and a lot of those trucks in my opinion. I wish we would go this direction also. They will have at least one line off the rear, that's an inch and three-quarter, that's 300 to 400 feet long. And the idea behind that is no matter where they park, right, if they get an assignment, hey, pull a second line, or back up the interior crew or do a targeted search around the rear, whatever it is, if they're pulling an attack line, they're pulling theirs. And because it's 300 to 400 feet, you know most of them are doing three, 50, four hundreds. Right, they can get wherever they need to get. But if they don't need all that, they can, you know, dc, pull another line, whatever the case might be. Um, what do you think about?
Speaker 2:I'm just curious what do you think? I haven't actually heard of that before. That's interesting. Um, tactics wise, obviously it would depend on like assignment, right? If you get told to pull a line off their truck, then you should probably do that.
Speaker 1:But yeah yeah, I mean that's, that's that's neat, I mean just just. I mean just to kind of throw that out there and I. There's a couple of reasons why departments do that. Most of the time it's a old school uh competition thing, oh yeah. Where it's like hey, I'm going to stretch my line because my line is going to beat your line, but I'm not even going to lie, I don't hate on that at all. I actually love that because the competitiveness, as long as it doesn't impede our professionalism on scene, I'm in a thousand percent. But yeah, I don't know. I was just kind of thinking that that might be an option we could entertain one day. You know, like go on long lines instead of you know what's your longest line on your truck right now?
Speaker 2:Well, that.
Speaker 1:Without the standard? Which truck? Yeah, we're in transition.
Speaker 2:So some trucks have a dead loaded Glendale load right, which is basically a pre-made horizontal standpipe. Not a fan of that one. By the way, what's your longest engine?
Speaker 1:through quarter. Oh, it's 200 pre-connect. Oh, it's like 200 pre-connect. You can always go long off of that. Yeah, again, just a benefit of maybe having a line that's already pre-connected.
Speaker 2:Yes, double that length and you brought up a good point I haven't talked about yet.
Speaker 2:So going long right and we'll get back to that two and a half. So we got a lot of big apartment complexes and the dudes I've worked in mostly and our as a set crew when I was a backseat guy, we had a set game plan for if we're on the interior side, right, that big courtyard area of a three, four-story apartment complex and we do have blowing fire or just a good header, we're going to pull that two and a half first, because that gives us the option to hit it from the courtyard and make an effect and end that zero impact period, while the other guy with what we call high rise packs, which are just shoulder load bundles of inch and three quarter, can go up the stairs, get to the floor that the fire is on, drop the hose down. Meanwhile flat water's flowing on the fire already, so that zero impact period is taken care of. Now, when we get a good knockdown and then the nozzle guy is set up with his high-rise packs, we advance that two and a half forward. We spin the tip off.
Speaker 2:The threads are the same for the tip as they are for the inch and three quarter and just attach the high-rise pack, charge it, the handle, you know the bail becomes a gate at that point, charge it and back them up, go interior. So that was our game plan for any fires that justified going in a long stretch, right.
Speaker 1:And the other nice thing about like you were talking if, if you chose to, you know, pull that deuce in half for that apartment complex from the get-go, you could even attach that gated y to the yeah, you could if you like.
Speaker 2:And then this again opinion. I'm not a big gated y guy. Uh, it always bothered me when I was doing engineer stuff, acting engineer stuff and doing hydraulics on paper it sounds great in real life. When you have two lines shutting down and opening up at different times and doing your friction loss right, the pressure is going to vary between those two discharge yeah yeah.
Speaker 2:So the pressure is going to vary for those guys. You're never going to give them a perfect pump pressure for that line. So I was never a huge gated y fan. And then you have a single point of failure for two hand lines interior of a fire right, if I go long off, two lines right, like you said. Now I have two discharges. So let's say one of the lines busts, which has happened to me before, and that hose line blows a coupling off and now it's dead. Now you don't have two crews interior that are in trouble. The other line can protect the other crew while they get out, because now they have a dead hose line, right. So for me it's also a safety thing.
Speaker 2:I'm not a big fan of the gated Y, unless it's a high-rise and you've got a standpipe right and it's a perfect place. We keep it on our high rise packs for that reason. So high rise, mid-rise fires where you have stand pipes, great option. Not against it entirely. But on a hose line that gets pulled into a apartment complex or something, not not my preferred all right, what do you?
Speaker 1:um, before we get to um, wrapping up this episode. We've been, we've been scrapping now for almost an hour. Before we get to the questions for season one, just a question for you, right? So what? What hose deployment do you personally struggle with the most Struggle with, yeah, or feel the least comfortable with?
Speaker 2:Oh, I would say it's got to be that dead-loaded, pre-made horizontal standpipe. It just doesn't ever go as smoothly and quickly as I think it was designed to, which is because it doesn't get trained on as much. But yeah, I mean, with what we carry, that one's the worst. But I would say it gets pulled, so not often that's not a big problem. I'd say the flat-loaded inch and three-quarter cross lace with the swim stab grab are just to me because and that's because I have so much experience with better hose loads right, it drives me nuts, like I've seen it and just get messed up.
Speaker 2:So many times it's been a it's been the source of fires not going. Well, you know and, and to the untrained eye, that fire probably went as good as it could have. But then once you know kind of and I hate to say it this way but once you know better, you're like you're blaming the hose load. If we didn't have that load, this fire would have gone a lot better. If the people pulling it were trained and efficient. On a better hose load, this fire could have gone differently. And that's what kind of eats me on those ones. So I have a that's my least favorite and that's what kind of eats me on those ones. So I have a that's my least favorite and it's unfortunately it's what we run as a standard for the place I work, which is what it is, and you got to train with what you're given, I just hope, with knowledge increasing and training, and we can kind of slowly and it's a slow progression to train and just to touch on the, the minute man that I like a lot.
Speaker 2:There's so many ways to deploy it and once you learn those ways whether it's the accordion forward V-split coils, and then you can work some of those from the shoulder. Once you get comfortable doing it off the shoulder, you can start doing it from the shoulder to where it's so fast and efficient and it basically sets up your attack oversupply for you. It takes like one second to throw the hose over the other hose to make it perfect and that's obviously through a lot of terms out there. That's for hands-on learning. You're not going to get that from a podcast, but once you get all that down and all that's trained on. Now your versatility with the same hose load, you have so many options. You don't really have any options with the flat load.
Speaker 1:So with that and it's funny because I'm writing questions and notes as we're talking, right and then one of the questions and you had answered it twice already, unfortunately you know what's your favorite, what's your preferred hose load, and then why. I just want to tell you a quick story. So you know the Academy here. I just want to tell you a quick story. So you know the Academy here. And these kids pull that dead load, that flat load, thousands of times while they're here. I mean so many freaking times where I'm sure they're pulling in their sleep. I mean, we went through the same Academy. It's just nonstop hose pulling over and over and over and over again. The crazy thing is so how long is that class that you guys teach?
Speaker 2:So it's three days of working all day.
Speaker 1:Okay, so three solid days of not just pulling hose, though, but that's flowing water. Oh yeah, all that hose line. I mean everything that we've talked about and a lot more that you would actually have to go to the class of it physically see and experience and everything else. So in the academy, here, they go through that class, they go through those three days, but that doesn't count for the 13 weeks of pole flat, right? So now, with that said, at the very end of the academy they get to do functionals with real live fire and they get to do it in front of their families, right, and they get to come down at night and it's towards the very end.
Speaker 1:Guess, we had a truck pull in, right, one of our trucks, and it has Minutemans on cross loads, right, the kids have been taught right from you about the Minuteman, how to deploy and everything else, but did it for three days out of a 16-week academy. Guess which way they wanted to pull it? Shoulder load? Yep, the mini man. And then guess how efficient they were? Very Yep, and that was three days of pulling one hose on, compared to 16 weeks of the other.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like that's just to me. That just proves that even the lowest trained fireman realizes that's a more effective line. It's easy that even the lowest trained fireman realizes that's a more effective line.
Speaker 2:It's easy, it's not complicated. You can there are complicated ways to learn some advanced skills with it, but for a basic, just to pull it, it's as easy as it could be.
Speaker 1:Put it on your shoulder and go and go right, clear the bed, yeah, and if not, your, your engineer hopefully does it for you, yeah. If you forget that much, right. If you forget that much, god forbid, all right. So, before we get to the questions, anything you want to add? I know this is a huge topic too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, really, and I kind of touched on it earlier, but really it's just it all boils down to like personal motivation. That's what it really is. If you're on an engine often and you want to be the best firefighter you can be, you got to go learn new things. It's on you to go out and find classes and learn from people from other you know all around the country and learn what the real latest and greatest it is, cause it takes so long for established city fire departments to adopt the latest and greatest stuff. It's much faster if we go out. And also, who's going to teach it.
Speaker 2:If you've got a core group of people that have gone out on their own to learn this stuff and they train and practice with their crews they're your instructors, like now it makes it that much easier and speeds up the process of change so much faster than if one chief finally hears about something and now he's got to figure out how to send enough people to go learn it. They got to get comfortable with it. If you already have people who are eager and willing to learn and that's kind of the seat that I was put in is just following the footsteps of people that came before me to go learn new stuff and get better on my own, by my own dollar, my own time off, my own motivation to go get better at this job Because to me it was important enough and hopefully everyone listening. It's important enough to do that and I know life gets in the way, but you know, a couple of times a year if you can find a local class to take, that costs you know, maybe a couple hundred bucks tops.
Speaker 2:I don't know. That's worth it, man. It's worth the investment. It's worth the difference that you're going to make on the fire ground. And I just want to say one quick thing.
Speaker 2:One of my favorite quotes and I said it last time we talked Chief Mike Walker in an FDIC speech he did he said the minimum standard is one small step above inadequate. And that rang really loud for me because my whole career the minimum standard was like the standard Okay, right, if you can make the basic hose pulls, you can make the basic turnout time, you're good. Yeah, go sit in the recliner. You made it Right.
Speaker 2:And then when you find out like hey, that's one barely baby step above not being able to do your job at all, and you think about where you're at and that's where you're at as a minimum standard, it's a little wake up call. It was for me Like I got to get, I got to get better at all this and no one's going to set a minimum standard high enough for me. Like a department's never going to say hey, you need to know this, this, this, this would be at this speed, super fast, right times. I'm going to set that standard higher and I hope everyone listening is going to set that standard higher for themselves and their department ever will make their own minimum standard and just keep raising that bar, keep training, keep learning, keep getting better.
Speaker 1:Dude, I love it. And just to echo what Captain Sign said over here, if you want to be the best, or even just get better, right, you have to go outside your fire department. Period the end. I don't care if you work for a New York City fire. I guarantee if you go to Podunk, wherever, you can learn something on a residential fire that you did not know, and vice versa, right. So, no matter what you do, go outside your department, right, and learn something new. Then bring it back to the guys, right, 100 percent. Train them up, teach them up, and if it doesn't work for your system, it doesn't work for your system. No big deal. But guess what? You have a new slideshow in your brain for that. Once in a blue moon call you're like oh shit, I know what to do, right, yeah, where everyone else is like fuck, I haven't come across this. And you just happen to be the guy that day. You know. Then now you're now.
Speaker 1:You're a fucking stud. So that's we all want to be. We're not.
Speaker 1:We're not going to fucking lie we all want to be the fucking stud in the fire ground. At least I do, that's right. No, well, listen, I freaking really appreciate your time sitting down. I do want to do a little shameless plug. So, just to go off of, since we just talked about it, right, go outside your fire department.
Speaker 1:Listen, I understand, if you're new on the job, you don't get paid shit right. Me and Sean have been on the job long enough where we're finally starting to make a living, right, and we've promoted enough where we're making a living. But trust me, we understand that it takes a long time to get, especially in this profession, to start making a decent amount of money where you can start taking vacations or go and see these outside training facilities. If you don't have those opportunities, this show exists because of Copper State Fools. So if you're here in the state of Arizona, right, reach out to us. We're all over social media, state fools. So if you're here in the state of Arizona, right, reach out to us. We have, we're all over social media. You can reach out to myself on the podcast, instagram or Copper State Fools on Instagram and Facebook. We're more than happy to train you up. We meet quarterly If you don't live around here. I guarantee you there's a fools chapter in your state somewhere, if not multiple fools chapters. Hit up those guys. They're like-minded individuals, They'll get you up to speed and there might even be an opportunity that they know about in that area that can get you to some of these classes. So, please, please, please, reach outside your department. Join one of these Infinity groups. Right, become a badass fireman. Right, just honor the guys that came before us but, more importantly, make it better for the guys that are coming just on the job right now. Right, so they're super aggressive, proficient, effective firemen. All right.
Speaker 1:So, with me getting off my soapbox here, let's get into the questions for season one, brother, all right. So why? The why, right? We ask this for everything. We ask this for new guys trying to get on the job. We the why, right? We ask this for everything. We ask this for new guys trying to get on the job. We ask this for guys on the job trying to do another job. Right, but the why? Why did Sean Sine join the fire service?
Speaker 2:Yeah, man, that one's easy for me. So my dad was a firefighter for the department I work for. He was a backseat BLS ladder firefighter Right.
Speaker 1:We're getting more. Shout out Max Seif, the coolest guy, the best fireman I've ever met in my entire life. I'm sorry, continue.
Speaker 2:He's the best by far, but anyway. So yeah, I'm just growing up, always looked up to him. Then someday, you know, when you get out of high school, try and figure out what the heck you're going to do and bounce around with ideas. I knew his job was awesome, but I thought I, uh, I thought I wasn't, you know, manly enough to do it. I'll just say it man Like he's the epitome of a man. If you just picture one in your head, that's what he looks like a lot shorter, smaller stature. You know All, true, yeah, so I assumed, you know you gotta be like him to do that job. But uh, you know, then I started taking classes and realizing, you know, there's a diverse job there's, you know, we need big guys, we need small guys, we need women, we need men, the whole thing.
Speaker 2:So started doing it, loved it immediately, like taking classes and actually interested in school for like the first time in my life. Right, I was bored to death. I was awake. I was like this is cool, so it was. After that, it was a board to death. I was like awake. I was like this is cool, so it was. After that, it was a done deal. Man, I loved it from day one.
Speaker 1:I've loved it every day since how old were you when you were?
Speaker 2:like shit, I could do this job I was like 20. Yeah, it took me a couple years after high school to really kind of settle in. And what you do before that just odd jobs, work and serve in, you know, restaurants, retail, all the the normal stuff, man to wash dishes, gotcha, all that stuff.
Speaker 1:Cool. So, and then you never looked back, did you no? Look at you now fucking, over 10 years on a job captain, you know doing great, great, great things. All right, so we did the why, so let's now do the who. So who's been? It doesn't have to be a fireman, it can be right who's been the most influential person so far in your fire service career?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that one, that one's gotta be my wife. Um, it's close between my dad and my wife, obviously.
Speaker 1:Oh, you already gave props to your dad. Let's, let's hit on the old lady.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my wife. She's also a firefighter. Um, we met um doing some technical rescue training. That's where I met her at and since then, man, it's been amazing. She's inspired me. Her attitude is exactly what we're talking about. She was always trying to go out to outside trainings the first things I think we went to. We went to the Wildland Academy. Originally I didn't have a lot of knowledge or interest in wildland. Started taking classes there with her. We don't even have a lot of knowledge or interest in wildland. Started taking classes there with her. We don't even have a wildland program anymore and I still kept taking wildland classes because, like you said earlier, you know, you learn something, you learn good stuff, you might be able to apply some, but hey, more knowledge is always good. But yeah, she pushed me and then it's awesome to be able to do that together. We have a interesting perspective man being.
Speaker 2:We're both you know spouses of someone in the fire service and in it ourselves. There's a lot of dynamics there with the family, but it's been amazing. She's pushed me. You know, if it wasn't for her I doubt I'd be a captain now. You know what I mean. It's kind of the this is a mentality and the amount of training and extra stuff we did together and how much we nerd out and talk about stuff like this. You know, just in the house you know that just keeps that fire going in me and I'm always raising the bar. She's always raising the bar for her and me. She's the best Got to shout out to her. That's awesome.
Speaker 1:So it's basically your best friend, who happens to be your wife, and she's on the freaking job. So triple, triple threat right there. That's dude, that's awesome. Not a lot of guys can say that. All right, so what about tradition? Wise, so what is? You said something earlier, so I'm curious if it's going to be the same, what's your favorite fire department tradition?
Speaker 2:Yeah, man. First of all, I just want to say the fact that this career has tradition is amazing. It's got to be. Just that aspect is my favorite, one of my favorite things about this job. Yeah, fighting fire is amazing. It's fun, everything's cool, but just the tradition of carrying on like a legacy of guys that came before you over you know long periods of time and things that have survived and continue.
Speaker 2:It's just so cool, man, and I think that the whole my favorite thing is like the probation thing, and it's not just you know, because hey, there's a probationary period with the city. It's where you learn everything. It's where you learn traits and skills, whether it's, you know, you might be just cleaning bathrooms, but it's the aspect of being responsible and expected to do a list of duties and that you can prove that hey, I can be trusted by the guys and girls. I can be accounted on to get stuff done.
Speaker 2:When it comes to the big stuff right, whether it's just checking off equipment every day over the course of your career, if you're successful on probation and you learn what you're supposed to on probation and you're accepted by the department you with and you become one of the guys right, whether you're male or female, when you're one of the guys after probation, that's like that's the best feeling, like personally going through it and I've carried those lessons with me throughout my career it doesn't really end that the mentality you build in probation. The official label ends, right, being the low man on the truck ends, but the mentality of, hey, this stuff's important. Why is it important? Trust, accountability, you know, work ethic, all those things. Just it builds. It builds the right person for the job.
Speaker 1:Dude, I love it. So you're only the second guy to say that answer. First one was actually a season one with Kevin, or episode one, excuse me, with Kevin Weiss. I love that guy. Yeah, he's freaking solid fireman and he uh, president of copper street fools.
Speaker 2:By the way, he was one of our uh probation guys my favorite wait before, hey, before we go on.
Speaker 1:How was he on probation?
Speaker 2:he was amazing should I do a funny story? Yeah, I would love it. Am I getting trouble for this? Let's go for it uh, so I've lied to him. Right, we have this grease trap. At the station we were at right, the the flat top grill goes in a grease trap. And I lied to him. I said, hey, man, just so you know, it's kind of a probation tradition. The booter's got to drink some of the grease from the grease Before I could even finish.
Speaker 2:Yeah, before I could even finish, he dips his finger in there and eats the grease from the grease trap. And I was immediately like I was kidding dude. I was going to tell you I was kidding, fucking great fireman right there.
Speaker 1:I'll tell you what.
Speaker 2:Right then, that's when I knew he was. He was a great hire man. We're lucky to have him. Yes, we are.
Speaker 1:That's, that's. I've never heard that story.
Speaker 2:That's the best.
Speaker 1:I've known Kevin since he's been hired freaking amazing. All right, so the last question, my favorite question of the season. So if you could snap your fingers right, with no freaking sweat equity solved right now, right, something changes in the fire service, so something goes away, something gets better. It doesn't matter. If you could snap your finger that one wish, what would you change? Do, implement, whatever the case might be for the fire service.
Speaker 2:Yeah, man, since we're talking, you know, hypothetical, it would be complacency. I think that's where we all struggle with that daily. Every day, every shift's a battle with complacency. Right, it's like, and it's sneaky, right, it's something you forget to check. It's a memoryency. Right, it's like, and it's sneaky, right, it's something you forget to check. It's a, it's a memory thing, right, I forgot to check that.
Speaker 2:Often that's the day you get the call where that thing matters, whatever it may be, and you know you're going to, it's going to eat you up inside. But also it's how we get hurt or injured or have issues down the line, or and then you can expand that to training, right, complacent, not training. And then the fire comes along where you really could have made a difference, or you know, even where something happens that you or your crew and the fact that you haven't trained and haven't been active and you've been kind of complacent through your career, that's, that's what's really biting us in the ass over time and that's what's causing issues. I think you could magically fix that, which would be amazing, and we'd be, we'd be set, yeah, and I mean that's uh, that's obviously across the country and it's.
Speaker 1:It's funny because you look on social media, on fire department stuff, but even I see it even more in, say like gym memes and workout memes and stuff like that. It was always like, uh, the big push now is, uh, comfort kills, right. And basically they say comfort is 100%, man, the gateway to complacency. Because it's easy to say, you know, like man, I, I don't. I was doing a lot around the house yesterday. You know, I'm not dude, we're not going to train today. Hey, I'm here just to run calls, you know. And then of course, like you're saying that's probably the day you know, or like, hey, man, I'm, I forgot, I forgot to check my air pack, I'm sure it's fine. Yeah, and that's a big one, man, you're the captain, right, and your pack is Bluetooth to your radio and all of a sudden now you can't communicate on the radio.
Speaker 2:Now you got to have your fireman do it for you. Now you got someone else's radio. Now, every time you key up, you're hearing him breathe.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, little stuff, man, little stuff. But you said it man, comfort kills. We all have those people in our departments, wherever you work, that are punching a clock. It's a job to them, right, it's just hey, I go there, I make the money, but what I really want to do is outside, and you're never going to get rid of those people. But you can make them the minority and you can make them uncomfortable enough where they have to raise their standard a little bit to hang with the rest and it's really a cultural battle.
Speaker 2:right Like, you got the top 10% and the bottom 10% and everyone in the middle is up for grabs. We're trying to capture as many people as we can and bring them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all those middle guys right, that's the key to success, for sure. Cool, all right. Well, listen, thanks, brother. This is a great way to end this episode and do it again. I appreciate your time and if you guys want to know any more about Zero Impact Period, just a Google search will find a class near you, right, give a shout out to the gentleman, the chief, that runs it out here.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, so Chief Slayer, chief Chris Slayer from Mesa Fire, he was kind of developed this class out here, pulling knowledge from Aaron Fields from Seattle who kind of made the first nozzle forward classes, and compiling, combining things. Captain Colson teaches forcible entry, all that stuff, and you know the class might have a different name. Just look into what the classes are. There's tactical hose line management, there's there's a lot of names to call it. If you can take nozzle forward from Aaron Fields or any of his affiliates, do it. All that stuff, man, that's good stuff. Just get out there, look up classes, look up all these influential people that are pushing good things.
Speaker 1:Cool, All right, Sean. Well, listen, I appreciate your time. I appreciate you being a member of the Copper State Fools and dude. Your future is bright and I would love to get you on this episode again when you decide to make battalion. Oh no, yeah, he said he also was always going to be a backstop fireman too, so we'll see All right. Well, anyway, thank you guys. Sean, thank you again for your time. Thank you, brother, and we'll catch you guys in two more weeks. Have a good one. 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.
