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NFPA 1750: The New Fire Service Standard Every Chief Should Understand · Fire Service Data & Tech Talk

• Nat Kapustin: Fire Service Data and Tech Talk. This episode is sponsored by Esri, helping fire departments turn data into action to build safer communities. Please click on our ad to learn more. Hey folks, it's Eddie Pew Canada with the Fire Service Data and Tech Talk Podcast on Fire Engineering. Thanks to our sponsors at ESRI, we really appreciate their support. And this month, ⁓ we're kind of looking at engine operations. And one of the things that I thought of from a data perspective, ⁓ there there's been some changes. You I don't know if you've been following NFPA over the last ⁓ year or two, but like I used to serve on the 14s, ⁓ and ⁓ right as I retired, they began the process of combining all the 14 documents into one, into 1400. So like 1403, 1407, all those different ones got parked into one standard document. Well, the same thing happened over on the 17s, ⁓ where a lot of the operational ⁓ standards live, like 1710, for example. Most of the career departments are very familiar with that and ⁓ use it on a regular basis. And the volunteer depart departments tend to focus on 1720. So they were combined into what is now called 1750. And I was doing a little research and I noticed ⁓ There there's some changes in there. Some things that if if if like in my history of the fourteens, we would make changes and ⁓ things would be published and then it'd be a year or two later for somebody actually, hey, well, what what? You know, what happened? What changed? So I thought I'd get I'd get ⁓ a friend of mine on the show today that can we can figure this out, like talk about what the changes are. And I'm very thrilled to have ⁓ as my guest today, Chief ⁓ Dave Downey. Dave's a retired ⁓ chief of Miami Dade Fire Rescue down in Florida. Dave, welcome to the show. Appreciate you being here, Chief. Well, thank you very much. ⁓ I appreciate you having me today and ⁓ providing an opportunity to to speak ⁓ on behalf of ⁓ the new NFPA 1750. And you know, always any of us that have served on the committees, you know, this is us talking. This isn't we're not representing NFPA, we're not representing technical committees. we're just talking about what is going on, what is in that standard. And ⁓ what fire departments should know. So I think it's always an important ⁓ piece of it. So let's start up at the t give us your background. Tell me about ⁓ your history. I know you were very involved in a lot of different areas of the fire service at a very high level. So give us the walk us around the block. So ⁓ I ⁓ I retired in twenty nineteen after thirty eight years with Miami Dade Fire Rescue. ⁓ the last six and a half I served as the chief of the department. ⁓ I did a few more years work with our state fire marshal's office. I'm very involved in our disaster response plan here in the state of Florida. ⁓ so all told, about forty-two years ⁓ I did in the fire service. ⁓ I still, as you said, ⁓ try to remain engaged. ⁓ I sit on NFPA 3000, which is the active shooter ⁓ standard. ⁓ it's part of the ⁓ inaugural group that ⁓ developed that standard. I also chair the International Association of Fire Chiefs Urban Search and Rescue ⁓ Committee. So I stay involved on that. And then specifically here, ⁓ I came on as I've been part of NFPA 1710, I guess for about 20 years. And ⁓ in two thousand ⁓ in twenty twenty-one I was appointed as the chair of NFPA seventeen ten, ⁓ to which I serve now, ⁓ in in that capacity. So ⁓ that's kind of I've been involved in this standard for for quite some time and and and ⁓ so hopefully I can answer any questions that you have. The ⁓ first off, thank you for all you've done for the fire service. I mean you've been a very integral part of some very high profile things, you know, as far as figuring out urban search and rescue and ⁓ now in the active shooter ⁓ deal. ⁓ you know, that's a lot of you've been out there on the edge of the sword for a long time. So we really kinda appreciate I wanna say thank you, in case nobody ever did it, ⁓ to say thank you for All that you've done th thus far. Appreciate it. W when we start talking about consolidating these standards, like ⁓ we we put a bunch together in this one, right? Like like twelve ⁓ one, seventeen, ten, seventeen, twenty, seventeen, thirty. Correct, correct. Yeah. What are the what why why do that? Like what's the what's the purpose of of such an initiative? So ⁓ back in April of twenty nineteen, the NFPA Standards Council ⁓ elected to consolidate several standards like standards. I know they did some in the eighteen hundreds. You spoke to the fourteen hundreds, ⁓ and they looked at the same thing in the seventeen hundreds. Are there some commonalities ⁓ that would allow us to kind of consolidate everything into one standard? ⁓ but I can tell you, because I I'm part of 1750, ⁓ we still maintain our own identity. So while there's a consolidation of what we're calling the legacy standards twelve ⁓ one, seventeen ten, seventeen twenty, seventeen thirty. ⁓ each entity kind of maintained their own identity. ⁓ and that's that's kind of how it was was set up. So this happened in twenty nineteen. We had already published ⁓ our seventeen ten ⁓ version in twenty twenty. And so ⁓ it was up for for a ⁓ new edition ⁓ in in in twenty twenty six and s or twenty twenty five, twenty twenty six six. We went through the process ⁓ of developing what's now known as seventeen fifty. in this process task groups were formed to kind of look at where we can consolidate things. We looked at ⁓ the different chapters. We worked very closely with seventeen twenty ⁓ that speaks to the volunteer and the combination departments and ⁓ worked hard to kind of consolidate the definitions, maybe clear them up a little bit. ⁓ as the structure goes, ⁓ my committee, 1710, kind of has the final approval on the definition chapter. But we worked very closely with our partners on 1720. ⁓ As far as 30 and 1201, they kind of, you know, kind of maintain their own identities within the within the document. So specific for us, specific to career departments, ⁓ my committee is responsible for specifically chapters four through six and then the annexes A, B, C, and D of seventeen fifty. ⁓ I'm sure that's clear as mud, but ⁓ that kind of kind of speaks to how this all came to pick to ⁓ came together. Well, I mean if you think about it, I guess the the chapters are kind of the where the standards are kind of parked together, right? Like so those chapters in a row is kind of Where seventeen ten got got kind of poked in there. You know, it it makes sense when you look at the entire document, I think. Yeah, it seems to it it doesn't create any any ⁓ ambiguity. It cleans up a few things. We we worked hard to kind of clarify the definitions, especially of a combination and a volunteer ⁓ service. So ⁓ I think I think it end ended up working out pretty well. We didn't lose You know, from the career side, we didn't lose any of our identity. We didn't lose anything that was really important to us in this standard. So ⁓ I think it was a it was a win in in how it came out. I always noticed the definitions were one of the more challenging things to work out, you know, because you've got you're crossing the whole universe of the NFPA, ⁓ in a lot of cases. And what w what were the what would you say the biggest changes? Like what were the kind of landmark tweaks you made in the definition chapter. Well, I I think most previous editions and se ⁓ people struggled, departments struggled with whether they're career volunteer combination, how they fit in. So we kind of we we kind of made it somewhat clearer in that in that definition where a career department is fifty percent or greater, you know, of the effective response force. And a combination is less than fifty percent of that effective response force. And then we looked at, okay, well, how do we then pull out the volunteer side and we push that up to eighty-five percent of the effective response force. So it in my eyes, it kind of cleared things up as far as where you fit in, which standard ⁓ or in this case, which chapter you should be following ⁓ in the standard. And you and it's interesting, and you you know, you mentioned effective response force is the way the definition is framed. And I know for a lot of fire departments Particularly the combination and the volunteer ones, they can have a lot of lot of people that are in the organization, not necessarily part of the effective response force. Right. So I think that that really helped sharpen the pencil a little bit. It did. And I and I know the the seventeen twenty component worked hard also of just kind of clearing that up too, making sure that the people that are being designated are the ones that are part of your effective response force. They're not just members of your organization, but they're actually responding firefighters. Auxiliary and associates and all sorts of things, yeah. I noticed a sh a a migration ⁓ f it it used to be response times, you know, we we were basically putting people it was like a race. We were putting X amount of people on the scene as fast as we could, right? And I've been on this ⁓ kind of tangent for almost a decade now about ⁓ you know data beyond the airbreak. Like we'd We race to get everything there and then we stop, you know. ⁓ so this is chang it seems like it's changing from being a just a a race against time. Now we're looking at things, the the effective response force definitions, you know, what's required, what the capabilities need to be are based on a risk assessment more so than just the st ⁓ standard ⁓ timestamp. What so t tal tell me about that. Give me some methodology of what what you're doing there. Yeah, you're you're a hundred percent correct. I mean, when we were working with this addition, ⁓ one of the things we were looking at is, you know, pointing to the authority having jurisdictions to, you know, encourage them to do these formal risk assessments. I cannot tell you what your community needs. I can give you a framework, I can tell you that based on our research, ⁓ the these are the f the ⁓ essential functions that need to take place on the fire ground. But you need to look at your community, you need to do a formal risk assessment. And you need to make those determinations as to what is low, medium, and high hazard. We can give you some examples. And if it's deemed one of those categories, this is what the the standard recommends you have for your effective r response force. So we we kind of tried to pull that out. One of the other things that has kind of always just hung there ⁓ is unit reliability. ⁓ and while the standard has always kind of captured unit reliability, this new standard now requires unit reliability to actually be measured as part of your annual metrics. And so that again is is something that we've been looking at that it's not just about how many calls you run, but how available are your units in their first due territory? How many times are they having to cross territory? How un unavailable are they in their first due based on call volume, based on other other issues? And so looking at some of the ⁓ other parts of the total response ⁓ is is kind of where we were we were focusing our our attention in this standard. I love it. I hey I I love it. I think this is the part, we're kind of getting into the part where the some of the fire departments might go, wait, what? You know what wait, this is different than what we've been doing, right? Like they're used to a particular ⁓ methodology of, you know, they write their annual report every year and they come up with the standard metrics. This is going to be different. ⁓ So like d I want to make sure people understand ⁓ unit reliability. So we're we're talking about how often say a call occurs while the first new engine is already on another call. Not that you have geographic areas and you have a truck and an engine or whatever within that area, but how available are they within that area? How often are you having to feed in, especially those first arriving companies from other areas? Or how often are your companies leaving that initial response area? So how reliable are your units? Not just getting them there, not just again, like you said, stopping when they when the air brake's set, but looking at that, you know, reliability. And we don't have a number yet. You know, that's the that's the next part of this puzzle is saying, okay, what is a what is an acceptable unit reliability number? I don't know, 50%, 20%, 30%. We're not sure. That's one of the things that at least we wanted to tell departments. need to start capturing this stuff. Take a look at this stuff, not just your call volume, not just your type of calls, but the reliability factor. ⁓ 'cause downrange we're gonna want to look at that and say, okay, this is w a threshold where you need to be looking at additional service or re reconfiguring a geographic area or whatever it is. Yeah, I don't I wonder if Naris would give us some insight as we get more data under our belt, you know, get a a year or two. Absolutely, a hundred percent. That's you know, that's where we That's where we need to go and and I think you're you're spot on that, you know, we we need to look f past pulling up to the front door. You know, so many times we're measuring fire departments on the stuff they have and how fast they get there, and we have no idea how effective they are. so, you know, that's part of the other piece of the puzzle that we want to look at moving forward downrange. So ⁓ let's talk about ⁓ when we talk about the risk assessment and understanding how the the metrics attached to that. Like I I I pulled just some quick notes out of there. Like a for example, a low hazard risk would be something that is less than two thousand square feet, ⁓ without a basement, you know, with with no immediate exposures. Is that a fair kind of assessment? Yeah. Well what we try to do is is still give an example. We we this this version we took out the ⁓ specific occupancy types. We took out the strip shopping center. We took out single family dwelling. And we just tried to be a little bit more generalized in in what we're looking at, but still giving some sideboards as to square footage and height and and things like that. So yeah, it it's still there, but again, it's really up to the authority having jurisdiction to deem that, you know, based on their risk assessment, low, medium, and high. And and up and even up to medium hazard ⁓ Which is basically the neighborhood I live in, right? Like I've been a very suburban area where most of the homes are, you know, between two thousand and three thousand square feet and exposures are all over the place. You know, we if we burn one, we'll probably burn the block, you know, kind of deal. ⁓ so that that makes a lot of sense that that would be, you a higher risk assessment than ⁓ a you know, a two thousand square foot rancher all by itself out in the woods. You know, that's two different, two different risks. But where the where it gets interesting, where I think fire departments may not be paying attention is the ERFs have evolved. Right. So ⁓ when we when we look at like what is we're supposed to respond to, let's say we'll start with a low hazard ⁓ you know, you're looking at at going ⁓ I mean, do you want to explain that or right. So the previous standard for a low hazard ⁓ was sixteen, if you're operating an aerial seventeen personnel is your effective response force. This standard is increased it to twenty, twenty-one if you have if you're operating in aerial. What was added ⁓ was four positions, a chief's aide, ⁓ so somebody there supporting that incident commander, a actual incident safety officer, that function being done, ⁓ and then an EMS unit dedicated to the to the response ⁓ with two personnel. So that's where the four came from. ⁓ you know, c it's been clear that a lot of these after action reports and things like that, we know that the instant commanders are quickly overwhelmed, whether it's with technology today, whether it's with radio traffic, whatever it is, and being able to have that aid there. ⁓ you know, we can point back to the early two thousand tragedy in Phoenix, ⁓ where they had a a writ operation. And and one of the things they learned is that the instant commander was overwhelmed. And so We've always had the the aid position ⁓ in the high hazard, but we we moved it into the into the low hazard as well. Equally important, I think, is that incident safety officer, that function being done. somebody who's dedicated to looking at the overall safety of the incident. We know everybody's a safety officer, but you know, if you have somebody that's actually responsible for a a a ⁓ function on the on the on the fire attack. They're not focusing on the overall fire attack. So ⁓ you know, it it it was determined that ⁓ we need to have that. And then I think most career fire departments are having an EMS response to their fires. We just wanted to be able to capture that. ⁓ you know, this standard has kind of evolved from just firefighting to special operations to EMS. And so we wanted to capture that position, ⁓ those those positions as well. So that those are are where the increases are. ⁓ again th this is you know this is not something that you know we just kinda shoot from the hip. You know, ⁓ we've looked at managing risk, we've looked at the research that NIST has done, that UL has done. ⁓ we've identified those essential functions. ⁓ and so we're just you know trying to make sure that the standard captures that. You know, I mean overall the the foundation of this is is you know, what is the minimum requirements to be able to confine extinguish. save lives and maintain firefighter safety. You know that that that's so important. You know, and I I know, you know, departments struggle with staffing, struggle with with ⁓ these these numbers, but the reality is, my fires where I'm at, the fires where you're at, they're they're essentially the same. The same things have to be done. And when we don't have the right numbers and we don't have them there at the right time, things are getting missed. And ⁓ that's that's kind of what we're trying to to alleviate. My compliments to the committee, 'cause you addressed two of my biggest pet peeves in the whole tactical environment down there was number one, ⁓ a com all commands should be a team, right? This single command thing is absurd. You know, it's just too much to to try to from a bandwidth perspective, it's just more than a human can do. So ⁓ having that that two person ⁓ command team or the Chiefs aid or whatever you wanna call it, what are they called? fit so field incident technicians, I've heard different terms, you know. that that's ⁓ one of the most important things I think going right now in the staffing fight. And ⁓ and then the also thing, ⁓ the other thing is the safety officer because one of my other I mean I'm old enough, right, that ⁓ I like to watch the building burn, you know? So I like to have eyes on it. And but I'm also struggling with the idea of of having a stationary command post where I'm, you know, isolated from distractions and all that kind of stuff. I understand both of those things. So ⁓ having a safety officer makes me feel a little bit better. You know, if I've got somebody that I know that if I'm looking down at a piece of glass, I know that that that safety officer's looking at the burning building. That that's what that those are really key ⁓ features. I'm really happy. ⁓ thank you. Well it wasn't me, but it was a It was it was a team effort, but ⁓ yeah, I mean it it's listen, y you know, we we just looked at the twenty fifth anniversary of September eleventh, and you can go no farther than that first video with Joe Pfeiffer and watching what he was able to do, and he was able to do what he was able to do because he had a guy driving for them, driving for him and paying attention to these other things. And nowadays the technology is overwhelming. ⁓ that the incident commanders is being fed, whether it's building plans, whether it's target hazards, whether it's drone footage, you name it, there's just no way to process that. I mean, I even think back and when I was a chief battalion chief, you know, it was just in the very beginning, but just the computer beeping and booping and bopping on the way of the call would, you know, be a total distraction. And so being able to focus on that ⁓ I think is is critically important. Trying to read CAD notes, all that mess. Yeah. It's ⁓ Yeah, yeah. There's just too much And and things are gonna get missed. And one thing I noticed, I c I can hear, you know, as people start to go, wait, how many people? You know, because because it goes up. We we start at twenty and then when we go to medium hazard, we go to twenty-eight ⁓ and twenty-nine with an aerial. And when we go to high hazard, we go to forty-two with forty-three and an aerial. Those are big numbers. I mean, I I ⁓ I can hear some fire departments going, Well, forty-three, that's my whole shift. You know, that's like dumping the the whole place. But one thing I noticed in there that I thought, you know. I I would encourage people not to miss is the ⁓ mutual aid is fair game. Yep. Right? ⁓ mutual aid, automatic aid. Yeah. So it's more more than one way to to skin the cat, as they say, that you know, maybe you can do some regionalization to try to meet some of these numbers. And ⁓ of note to those topics. One is the mutual aid, the automatic aid agreements in this standard ⁓ need to be formalized. It can't just be a, you know, the proverbial gentleman's agreement handshake has to be formalized. Also, they have to be able to to support the same staffing that you're requiring. And lastly, back to data collection, if you have ⁓ automatic or mutual aid that are routinely part of your effective response force, that that that component needs to be measured in your annual reporting. When you're looking at how effective your department is, that has to be included. So it's not just stovepiped anymore. It's okay, we have these formal agreements, we're constantly running with this entity or these entities. And we need to be able to consolidate that data. So we're looking at the right thing, you know, that we're not piecemealing it and they have their own and we have our own. And and we felt ⁓ it was important to be able to consolidate that information and have it in in one place. Yeah, absolutely. I kind of, you know, what I mentioned to somebody the other day, ⁓ I I said the phrase operationalizing community risk reduction. That that was, you know, like how do we operationali I like the concept, I get what we're trying to do, but we hadn't figured out quite yet how to operationalize it. And it seems to me this is a good effort, ⁓ to to bring that at le at least to the table, right? At least we're talking risk assessments and ⁓ you know, there'll be fire departments that will have to go out and figure out what that is. You know, like how how are we gonna measure risk ⁓ in our community, which is a great start down the community risk reduction path. And along that, you know, one other little thing that probably could get overlooked because it's literally two lines in ⁓ chapter four. ⁓ but we also included that when you're doing your level of service and your risk, you need to look at the impacts of urban planning. You know, we have seen post-COVID, you know, restructuring of of downtown areas where you've eliminated lanes of traffic, you've created roundabouts, you have dead end streets now. ⁓ When you're looking at your ⁓ your risk, when you're looking at your ⁓ service evaluation, ⁓ we encourage through the standard to look at those things as well ⁓ because they all have an impact as well. You know, oftentimes the fire department isn't even included when in the urban planning of a of a city ⁓ they decide we're gonna, you know, create dead end streets now, and that creates significant access issues for the fire department. lane, we're gonna push a restaurant, you know, halfway out into a street now. those type or bike lanes, you know, we're seeing this in Florida where the bike lane now is almost the size of a car lane. And so how does that impact ⁓ the traveling of the apparatus? So again, encouraging departments to to look at the whole thing, look at the big picture, not just number you know, the response numbers and number of trucks. You know, the it's funny that what I guess if you if it's not in your awareness, you'll think about it, but Like talking to some of our elected officials here in my region, they were big into traffic calming. They you know, they wanted to make the roads more narrow and and slow things down with speed humps and do all sorts of things and ⁓ gave no consideration to getting a big fire truck down the street. You know, so that's certainly a table you want to be be at in the planning process to make sure that they're thinking through the whole thing, not just part of the thing. Now I'm curious D do you have any sense or have any discussions or where this you know, this is a screaming accreditation model, right? You know, this this has gonna have a big impact on on on that as as we go. And I know they're into a new edition. ⁓ what is that? Have you had any conversations? Do you see that on the radar? What what's going on there? I have not had any direct conversations. ⁓ you know, the standard was just released in January, so it's relatively new and And the you know, like you said, sometimes we're two years into it when people figure out things have changed. ⁓ but ⁓ I have not had any direct conversations, but I know that that they're updating the modeling, they're looking at those things and and and hopefully they they embrace embrace these changes that we, you know, have have recommended. Well, I would say certainly if you're an accredited department you have a tremendous head start. Yep. Because you we're not telling you anything you probably already don't know. ⁓ you might might move some numbers around, but the process is already in place. ⁓ if you're not an accredited department and you're and you're wondering what you're going to do, sounds like a great, great process, you know, maybe maybe go consider that. It might help you down that pathway. And and you know, ⁓ to to that point, and in in my recent life, I've been doing some work with some different companies. And one of the things I'm finding out is fire departments That aren't accredited or haven't gone through that process, and I'm not here to sell it or anything. I I loved it for our department because I told our folks we impress the heck out of ourselves, but I want somebody else to tell us what we're doing right and wrong. But one of the things I I see is that fire departments don't know what good looks like for them. And so when they're arguing for funding, when they're arguing for resources, when they're arguing for things. What are they benchmarking against? Okay, yeah, we say these are the response times, we say these are the effective response forces, all of that stuff. But what does what does good look like to you? And and and so ⁓ I think it is important. Whether you go through the accreditation process, whether you go through some sort of formalized risk assessment process, each fire department should be able to figure out, okay, this is the standard, this is where we're not on it, this is where we're short. ⁓ this is where we can show improvement. And then it gives you an opportunity to to reach that goal, right? And and so ⁓ I think it's it's really important. And I'm seeing that in recent history, you know, meeting with some different fire departments have nothing to do with 1750, but some other work that I'm doing. And I would ask them, well, what is your response time? They don't they're they don't even have that information. What is your unit utilization hours? What is your unit reliability? They don't have that information. They don't know how many calls they ran. Sometimes they don't even know what kind of calls they ran. And and so being able to to do that, I I think is is that's where we need to move. I mean, that was you know, that was the impetus behind NERUS and and for NERS, the you know, the the big push to you know, that this standard. You know, a lot of what we were doing was in its infancy before UL and NIST started doing the live trainings and and figure out what these numbers need to be. You I look back on my career, you know, ⁓ Miami Beach, you know, down here, they ran seven guys on an engine when I first started on the fire department. You know, Miami had five and six and two engines in every fire station. Is that right? We don't know. You know, everybody always pointed to the New Yorks and the Chicago's and the Boston. They have too many, some people may say. But we didn't we have no idea what good looks like. And and until we know that, it's very difficult to to Make adjustments. Well, you know, it's been interesting to watch the evolution. I remember with Dr. Lloyd Morrill, she ⁓ when she was at the IFF, you know, they first started working on that kind of staffing study. We kinda had like little drawings with little stick people and figuring out, you know, what the tactics might be. And that's kind of where that sixteen, I guess, sort of evolved from. Absolutely. And then now we're now we're at twenty at the low hazard, you know. So It makes absolute tactical sense. You know, it's it's a very very sound plan. I wonder, ⁓ what advice do you have? I mean, we kinda I guess we kinda touched on it, but I was gonna ask what what advice do you have for Chiefs that how do I leverage this document ⁓ in the boardroom? You know, that because ⁓ most of us aren't gonna meet this right out of the gate. You know, we're gonna have to work on it. What what's your advice on ⁓ do a Do I make a plan? How do I go about this? Well, I I I think first off you gotta eat the elephant in little bites, right? And and figure out first where are you at? What is your I keep using this, what is your good? What is what is your where are you at? Where do you need to be? There's a standard that exists. We're talking about it, seventeen fifty that tells you the benchmark numbers with people, with apparatus, with times. ⁓ so you you know what you should strive for. ⁓ but what is the risk in your community? What To those elected officials, what is the acceptable risk that you want to take? ⁓ are we going to risk firefighters' lives because we don't have enough people on the scene? Are we going to risk civilians' lives? Are we going to risk property damage? So being able to look at it and and figure out where you want to focus ⁓ your attention ⁓ and and do it incrementally. You know, even coming from ⁓ as a fire chief of a large metropolitan fire department, I certainly didn't get everything I wanted. And when we were trying to add service, ⁓ you know, we had to look very closely at where will that service give us the greatest impact. And that's where we focus on unit utilization and unit reliability, not just the numbers. You look at the numbers, ⁓ yeah, that place is really busy. Yeah, but it's a very dense urban area and they can cover their own thing. ⁓ and and so being able to to look at it and and and looking for the long game. You're not gonna get four person staffing immediately. ⁓ but you know that that's the right thing to do. Yeah, as as a minimum. You know, we we've proven that time and time again through, you know, actual scenarios and everything else. ⁓ so being able to to work towards that, you know, here here I'm sure it's happening across the country, but here in Florida, to me it's interesting that there's a big push for departments to hire more firefighters now to create a fourth platoon to reduce the work week. ⁓ as a seventeen ten guy, it bothers me the fact that Why wasn't there that big push when this standard came out? Increase the firefighters, because this is pointed at firefighters' health and safety. Yeah. You know, we we know, you know, ⁓ I you know, the local departments down here, you know, I taught at the call ⁓ community college for a long time. And I would tell some of these smaller departments that didn't have the staffing that I enjoyed. I don't know how you do it. But I know your fires are the same as my fires, and I know that, you know. We feel stretched sometimes. And so being able to have those resources. So to the fire chiefs out there, first of all, don't throw up your hands and go, Jesus, it went from sixteen to twenty. This is unachievable. You know, I I hear that all the time. This is unachievable. It's not unachievable. You know, ⁓ my organization has enjoyed the staffing for long before I was a part of the organization. And it was identified as, hey, this is the minimum. This is where we need to be. And you just have to kind of work at it. And and and it's it's tough, you know. It's tough in the commun you know, in the environment we're in now where people aren't looking to pay any more for anything else. And you know, the fire service is tough, right? ⁓ the majority of the people never use us. You know, I I always use this I know I never I heard it somewhere, but you know, I I looked at my own department and you know, when I was fire chief I served a population of 2.6 million and we ran about 260,000 calls. So if you do the math, we only only touch 10% of the people. All right. And you take any community, and I guarantee you, you're not touching more than 15, maybe 20. So what about the other ones? You know, those people, they'll double their taxes. They'll they'll they'll do anything because you've saved their lives, you've protected their property. What about the other ones? How how do we how do we get to them? You know, all they see is us blocking the roads on car accidents and us shopping and and those types of things and and how do we how do we get to those folks? Because you know, the fire service is here for what we may need to do. Not what we're doing every day, but what we may need to do. And when we need to do it, we need to do it with an effective force and and the and the capability to do that. So, you know, it's it's a sell. I mean I I went through it. You know, I I went through when I first became fire chief, I I went through some incredibly tough budget times in the mid two thousands and and And, you know, we were looking at having to lay off firefighters and and ⁓ you know I know what some of the elected officials wanted. They wanted me to reduce staffing on the trucks and I I wouldn't do it. So to get to the number they wanted, I I came up with a plan to shut down trucks. And I was very tactical, you know, because I I targeted the elected, you know, because I don't think there's any fire department out there that says, you know, we really don't need this truck. We don't need this station. So we targeted, you know, where the chair of the commission lived and where the budget director lived. And you can tell your community that that engine's being closed. ⁓ thank God we never had to do it. ⁓ but ⁓ I I knew if I reduced staffing I'd never see it again. And it was important to me to maintain that. and but it was it was tough. I I was v not very popular, as you can imagine. ⁓ but ⁓ we got, believe it or not, ⁓ You know, a safer grant. I mean, you know, ⁓ I never thought that the department my size would be dependent on a grant like that, but we were desperate. You know, we were out of money. And and so ⁓ the bottom line is, you know, you you you've gotta work at it. Beauty is there is a standard here. You know, there is something. You're not just pulling it out of your hat that I need four firefighters, I need another ladder truck, I need this. I mean it it's there. ⁓ but first kind of figure out what you have. You know the big change, I think you mentioned ⁓ NIST the new L and the research. ⁓ it before that, it was hard for us to even articulate our tactics. Right. We were just doing what we did. We didn't really know how to say what we did. You know, now we have science and we have demonstrated, you know, effect you know ⁓ evidence-based tactics ⁓ that now have now have evolved into evidence-based metrics and I mean we're in a much better position to argue than we ever were in the in the old days, you know. I you're you're a hundred percent correct. I mean, we you know, you and I have been around a while and if you really asked me why back when I started, I couldn't tell you why. Because that's what the other guy did. That's what we did. You know, I I I don't know. It just worked out. And you know, we see we we've seen that with different tactics, we've seen that with different appliances, we've seen that throughout our our career. And yes, I I applaud our fire service now, I applaud the work that UL does and NIST and others to say, look, prove it. You know, if if this is so good, prove it. And and ⁓ I I think we're on the right track. Let's let's touch on the twenty real quick too. I don't wanna I don't wanna leave that out. ⁓ I mean it might not be your your particular wheelhouse, but ⁓ I didn't notice a whole lot of changes really. ⁓ pretty pretty much that same chart, right? Yeah, d to be honest with you, ⁓ it it isn't in my wheelhouse. I I outside of us consolidating a group to do the definitions, I I had no visibility, even though we kind of met at the same time, the in person meetings, we didn't we didn't really do a lot of crosswalking. ⁓ and I you know, so I I can't I couldn't even speak to the standard. I mean, I I quite frankly I'm consumed with this, you know, the chapters that I had to be concerned with. It is ⁓ I would encourage people to go look, I I It is a little more complicated because it requires some math to calculate where you fit into the into the response goals there, but ⁓ definitely worth the effort. Not only encourage people, but encourage people to be part of the process, right? I mean, the NFPA process is comprehensive and and you know very much dependent on public input and being able and and we we spend as a committee a lot of time just going through the public input and You know, this is where a lot of things are are picked up. You know, we could take credit for the good things, but the reality is the majority of the time it's coming from public input. And so I encourage people ⁓ to get in get involved, look at it. You know, when there's solicitation for public input input, and most of the times every entity, whether it's the volunteer foundation, the IAFF, the IAFC, they'll let you know, hey, it's open for for public input. But that's how these standards are are built. This is a consensus standard. This isn't just a couple knuckleheads in a room figuring out what they think is best. You know, we work very hard in in this process and and it's it's frustrating sometimes for me how little firefighters are involved in this, you know, and equally as as important as as you know being involved in your community and the politics of your community. ⁓ but this is even more important because these are the things that we have to ⁓ work towards, you know, the majority of them aren't adopted as law, but they are the standard. And unfortunately they're never really brought out in public until something goes wrong. And so knowing it up front and and being able to to contribute, ⁓ I I encourage everybody. You definitely want to go give it a read. I th that is for sure. Absolutely. The little NFPA secret, if you don't know it, if you type in NFPA.org backslash and then the standard number, it'd take you right there. Yep. So NFPA.org backslash seventeen fifty. And there it is. There's a free reader. You could you don't even have to, you know, you can just get right in there and look at it. No charge. So no excuse not to go read it. I agree. But Chief, I really appreciate you taking the time to ⁓ come on and talk about this. I think I mean d to me it should be like a big Boom in the fire service. You know, we should all be going out and looking at this thing and ⁓ and paying close attention to it, talking about how we're gonna do our next accredit, you know, we have to go through the reaccreditation process or maybe look at doing that. ⁓ particularly as next budget season comes around. And if you're a fire chief or a fire department that hasn't looked at the document, you might be in a in a political environment where maybe your elected officials did. So you might you might want to go pay attention ⁓ there as well. So I man, this is really informative. I've I enjoy reading the document. It was ⁓ I like I said, I'm thrilled about a couple, you know, some of those things. The command team, having the extra ⁓ incident field technician, whatever you want to call it, having an extra person in a command buggy ⁓ makes all the difference in the world. And then a dedicated safety officer. Bravo. Thank you. Thank you. Like I said, th my best to the committee for that one. Thank you very much. All right, thank you. Keep up the great work. Hope to see you. I appreciate the opportunity. ⁓ And ⁓ you know, the the whole deal is to get to get the word out. So I appreciate what you're doing. and ⁓ let me know if there's anything else I can do to help. ⁓ do appreciate it. Thank you, sir. All right. That's a wrap for this episode of the Fire Surface Data and Tech Talk Podcast on fire engineering. Thanks again to Ezries for sponsoring the show. And be sure to come back. Go, you know, go through all the social media outlets. That's where you can find this episode. And then the next one's coming ⁓ soon. So hope you had a great ⁓ enjoy the fall, have a great day, and be safe.