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Current Events & Staffing · B Shifter

• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the B Shifter podcast.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: That was quite the.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: I felt like Kramer for a second.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: All right, welcome everyone.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Welcome Terry.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: Welcome everyone, welcome Terry.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Welcome Nick.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Thanks for bringing the energy.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: What's new, oh man, since last time?
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, all kinds of things.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: We are into 2025.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: That's new.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's going pretty.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, two weeks, yeah, two weeks in and look where we're at pretty, yeah, yeah, two weeks, yeah, two weeks in and look where we're at.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Man, crazy, and really, specifically, like one of the things and I don't know, terry, how much you know you want to talk about wildland firefighting, but I was preparing for this podcast and going through my phone and you know people are criticizing California for all kinds of stuff, and one of the things that Mike Rowe and all kinds of other people are weighing in on is the maintenance checks that vehicles have to have before they fight fire from out of state, which I always understood.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: That process is not only limiting the risk for the firefighters to make sure that you know these flatland rigs are going to be able to take the terrain and have brakes that work and all of that kind of stuff but also the limit, the liability that the host fire department was going to have to have.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: But do you know anything about that?
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: I don't know a lot about that but it makes I mean I don't know why somebody would be upset.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: When somebody wants to check their vehicle to make sure it's safe to operate on a fire ground, if you see the way those fires are moving and you know that terrain out there, you want to have a vehicle that you can get in and, more importantly, get out of trouble with.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: So I wouldn't be offended if I was a fire chief somewhere and I sent some apparatus and some people there, some firefighters, and they said, well, we need to check your apparatus real quick.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: I don't know if it's maybe a laborious process that he's upset with or just the process itself, but it makes sense to do that.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: They said.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: A lot of it happened actually while either firefighters were sleeping or checking in and they have mechanics who just like get on a crawler, they go under the vehicle Perfect.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: Do a quick kind of DOT check and then move on.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: So the lie that was made up and put out I mean, social media is a freaking cesspool of bad information, but what was being put out there was that California was requiring out-of-state fire apparatus to have an emissions sticker in order to go to the fires, which was a complete lie.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: Everyone said over and over again.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: They're going to lie.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: It's just crap that's made up right.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: You can't believe anything you hear and apparently now you can't believe anything.
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: You see, right, with the AI and everything else going on, you just can't believe.
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: You just got to what's that old trust?
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: But verify, yeah, yeah, that's what you got to do.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: You spend doing so much time verifying because you read something that's like is that really true?
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: Then you're down a one-hour rabbit hole trying to figure out whether it's true or not.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: Then an hour later, it's like oh no, it was a lie.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: So now I just wasted an hour, right, yeah, one of the other things that is going on out there and maybe we can speak a little more about this is you know, I think it's interesting that the LA City Fire Chief is at odds with the mayor, for specifically, what we've been talking about for the last couple of years is what the fire chief's duties actually are.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: I love her.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: I've never met her, but it sounds like she's right.
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: She's straight up, she's in the mayor and it didn't sound like she did anything aggressive.
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: She just stated the fact that they need more resources and she put in documentation.
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: Whenever you do that which I was able to do in Glendale one time it really offends the people that are trying to fight that when you actually show facts and put in documentation and say this is the predictable surprise that's going to occur and here that's what they have.
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: So I think what she's doing.
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: You know, nick and I talked about it before we go to her because I think that's so wonderful but I was there as the Oceanside Fire Chief in 2007.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: We had the firestorm 2007 that went through 2008.
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: And those Oceanside firefighters and all those firefighters.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: I came from Phoenix and you know we have trees here but we planted every tree we have here and I went out on the fire line and left my house one day and didn't return for three days because I was just out checking on people and sleeping in fire stations and trying to support the people.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: I was buying the burgers, doing whatever I could to support them as their fire chief, but I rode along with a couple of companies and they were felling trees and things that I'd never seen and I was scared to death for them.
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: And I, you guys, are we okay here and there?
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: No, that's what we do.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: Chief in a wildland fire.
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: Um, it is a dangerous, dangerous operation and at the time I had relieved the interim chief, um, in oceanside.
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: He, he came from san diego and some of the listeners may remember him.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: We talked a little bit about him.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: Jeff bowman, if you're looking for a good wine, go to screaming chief, and jeff bowman makes his own wine.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: But he got the reputation as a screaming chief because he was a fire chief in san diego before that.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: he was a fire chief uh, the disneyland area fire anaheim and he used to call it disney dollars, because they had a lot of money coming in and they had a lot of resources and he and they had a lot of resources and he went to try to help them out in San Diego and he was their fire chief there for a while and he got really sideways with all the politicians because he stood up and said at every chance he got which I think a fire chief should do every chance they get.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: When you stand up in front of somebody, you need to tell them what it's going to take for firefighters to do their job effectively and safely.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: And he did that.
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: And apparently at one meeting somebody screamed at him so he screamed back and I love that.
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: So he got a reputation for that.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: So he got a reputation for that.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: But I think when fire chiefs stand up and ask for resources, that's their job.
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: And why anybody would be offended about that.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: They'd jump in.
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: Well, the NFPA has written standards and I mean, they've been screwing around with this for 15, 20 years now Well, longer than that with like minimum staffing for fire departments and it's really expensive to run a fire department.
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: I mean it just is.
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: And in fact, if you go back and look at it, it was years ago.
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: Benjamin Franklin created the American Fire Service to respond to emergencies across the entire community, because prior to that it was all paid brigades that worked for insurance companies and he was touring America.
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: This is in the first leadership, the intro module, and so he's touring America.
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: I want to say he was in Boston or somewhere like that.
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: He was in another city that had professional brigades and he saw the difference in outcomes where, like, an entire building was damaged but they could fix it, when, if the same thing happened in Philadelphia, where he was from, they would lose three city blocks.
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: So he said, no, this is a much better approach and this is what we need to do.
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: And you know, because the founding fathers, they're building the country.
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: And so in 1736, he started the first fire service and it was based on protecting the entire community.
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: That's what it was is keeping the city from burning down, period, you know, because, like, goods were very expensive and it took a long time to get them, because they all had to cross the ocean, typically, and everything else.
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: So he begins this and then, since then, the country has built fire, the ability to protect itself from fire.
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: So that's kind of where it started and it has just evolved to where it is today.
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: Well, the NFPA, over the last 30 years, has started screwing around with what that should look like.
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: You know, some of the stuff coming out of LA.
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: It's like well, you were out of water.
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: Well, yeah, we were out of water because we drained the system and the reservoirs and we used tankers and this and that.
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: And see when they're talking to tacticians, the battalion chiefs that you're seeing on TV now answering questions.
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: The internet experts can't deal with them because they're knowledgeable experts in this and these other people are just basically idiots.
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: That's all they are is.
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: They react to everything and they post it up.
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: This is what they do.
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: I'm an influencer.
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: No, you're a moron.
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: I have not.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: I'm off, I don't hook up to any of it, you're better off.
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: It is a.
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: The news was next.
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: I thought no, I'm done with all of you, you're all just vapid.
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: This BC goes on and says OK, 1,000 gallons of better water, put that house fire out.
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: It's 25,000 houses burning.
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: We don't have 25,000 fire engines and they just.
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: Well, you don't have your resources.
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: The wind's blowing 100 miles an hour, you can't do anything to it.
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: Well, you should be using aircraft.
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: The wind's blowing 100 miles an hour, you can't use aircraft.
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: It doesn't work.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: You know and I haven't seen exactly what the fire chief in LA, what her document was, when she was requesting resources, and I would assume that she wanted resources for day-to-day activities.
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: Right, yeah, we talked about that, nick.
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: But this is the predictable surprise that is going to occur when you get to Santa Ana winds and dry conditions, it happens all the time.
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: It's frightening.
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: Those houses are building on the canyons and all the fire products down in the canyon.
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: That's a predictable surprise.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: Once again, I keep saying that.
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: But I think for her she wanted the resources for her day-to-day activities, for firefighters to go actually do their job every day and response times and all that, and that's what a fire chief's supposed to do.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: They're supposed to say here's what they're the CEO for that organization and in any other organization when a CEO asks for resources, they're not condemned because they want those resources.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: But for some reason in the fire service, when a fire chief asks for a new fire engine, just something simple a new fire engine or a new fire station I know it's not simple, but it's easy to identify what you need because the data is all there.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: When you ask for that, the politicians look at you and the city managers not all of them, but most of them will look at you and say no, we can't afford that.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: You can't afford not to do that.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: You need, we need this resources.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: We said that we were going to like Benjamin Franklin.
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: Benjamin Franklin, we said we're going to like Benjamin Franklin.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: Benjamin Franklin we said we're going to protect the entire community.
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: That's what the government is for.
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: That's why the people made the government is for protection and to make their lives better.
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: Just the streets operate.
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: You can send your kids to school, stuff like that.
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: That's how you make the community.
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: The fire service is a foundational element of every community, no matter how much it pisses off the mayor or the budget director or anybody else.
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: When they rebuild in Los Angeles which they'll do they'll put in fire hydrants and all the rest and fire stations, the community.
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: We did this last podcast where you know oh, you guys don't work for the community, you work for the mayor.
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: Well, no, it's the community, it's the voter that we serve.
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: The voter calls 911 and says I have an emergency and we show up and do service for them.
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: Well, one of the things I've heard in the last couple of days is now the people in Los Angeles, the professionals, the strategic members of the Los Angeles Fire Department, are saying no, this has been going on forever.
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: We're understaffed.
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: We have been, you know, and it takes a catastrophe like this to get anybody's attention.
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: One of the cities they're using to demonstrate it is Phoenix, arizona, right here where we're at, and they said Phoenix was the model for a fire department with a deployment system that was based on emergency response Over the last 15 years, they said the city of Phoenix is facing the same problems that we're facing in Los Angeles today with the fire department.
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: Problems that we're facing in Los Angeles today with the fire department is the fire department response has steadily climbed over the last 10, 12, 15 years to where it's unacceptable.
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: I saw a video clip the other day of a council meeting where a city council person within the last I don't know six to nine months is talking to the fire department and asking why are the fire department response times in my district a minute and a half higher than they are in every other district?
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: And you think, pal, you're on the city council.
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: Well, the fire chief needs to represent that and say this is what we need to do.
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: Four to six minute response time is what we were talking about.
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: That's the goal and that's based on EMS response as well as fire response.
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: I guess we can just all categorize it as emergency response.
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: Like you said, terry, the day-to-day stuff you do.
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: They do not staff any fire department to deal with the entire city on fire all at once or big chunks of it.
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: That's not the way public safety works.
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: That would be like thinking, okay, the police department is going to protect us from, like, three major countries invading us, and you think, no, that's what the army does.
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: The police are different.
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: Well, you don't know.
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: Well, when you're an elected official in a community, you are there because they elected you.
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: That doesn't mean you have any kind of talent, expertise or ability.
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: You just happen to be a politician who got elected.
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: Well, then, to say, well, no, I don't agree with you needing another fire station, and you're like well, why?
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: It's almost like there's a standard.
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: We talked about deployment deployment and figuring out a number for how many firefighters you need, based on population.
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: Well, it's a measured response.
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: You know, I need 18 firefighters to the scene in 10 minutes when I have this kind of thing.
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: That's what NFPA 1710 says.
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: Before that it was like they did it per capita you need one and a half firefighters for every thousand people.
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: It was one firefighter per thousand.
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: Whatever?
• 15:48
  Speaker 4: it is, whatever that number is.
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: I think it was Vance told me he says that really pisses off city managers and budget people and they say if you use that, then you can no longer be in charge of anything.
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: We have to get rid of you and see.
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: It's like anything else.
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: There's never a bill for them, it doesn't come due, they wear the wheels off of it.
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: The fire department's understaffed.
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: The things you're reading in the news now with Los Angeles were like 1962, they had as many stations and more staffing and you just don't believe it.
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: You think this is come on.
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: Somebody needs to look into this.
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: I mean, this is insane.
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: So there's certain things that are required to run a fire department to deliver emergency services.
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: Now I'm going to say that all of the strategic people that we have been listening to out of Southern California, they have spent 20, 25, 30 years gaining the expertise and knowledge to make those declarative statements.
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: That's what their life has been.
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: Two years from now, let's say, they elect a 32-year-old mayor who was a software designer, they don't know the first thing about the fire service.
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: That is the fire chief's job.
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: They're the boss of the fire department.
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: They're not the mayor's assistant, and I think that's the problem is, it wasn't my department, because I could see the when one fire chief retired, the next succession of fire chiefs work for the mayor, not the fire department, and they were proud of it.
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: They boasted about it, as I'm part of the management team for the city.
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: Well, no, who's running the fire department?
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: No, I run the city, you think?
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: No, no, no, no, no, no.
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: Well, the response times went from I don't know six, seven minutes, and now they're up to nine, 10 minutes.
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: Well, that's what you got, based on not having a fire chief represent the fire department anymore.
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think once again she represented it on a day when they didn't have this configuration that's taken place.
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: She represented that the fire department needed more resources.
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: The fire department is a decentralized workforce that responds from wherever location they're at, and they need to do that in a timely manner because the brain dies and houses roar at a certain amount of time.
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: We know what that is and we can collect all that data and it's so easy to get the data.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: It's a shame and when you get this big fire, exactly what's supposed to happen is happening.
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: The fire is large, the winds caught, the fire it's tearing through communities, resources are coming from Mexico and Arizona and Maine and everywhere.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: That's supposed to happen.
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: We should not be surprised by that when you get a fire this large.
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: But it's too bad that the press or somebody didn't ride with a fire company several months ago and go to typical EMS calls and typical fire calls and watch how long it takes to get to Mrs Smith's house when she's having a heart attack, or how long it takes to get to Mrs Smith's house when she's having a heart attack, or how long it takes to get to her house when she's having her kitchen fire, or how long it takes to get to her apartment complex or her nursing home, when you need that effective response force, because that's when the fire chief really needed the help and somebody to support her.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: You know everybody's supporting the fire chief now oh yeah, she's great, she's always been great.
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: They weren't listening to her.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: You know everybody's supporting the fire chief now oh yeah, she's great.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: She's always been great.
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: They weren't listening to her.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: They needed to listen to her on the front end.
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: Well, and then, in today's social media-driven culture is, the first thing out is negative, because this happened and they've got to blame somebody, so it's going to be her fault and, for whatever reason you know, throw it against the wall.
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: It's political in nature.
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: Today I don't agree with your politics and this is why this happened.
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: You did this.
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: Well, now you step back a little bit, you do like the research on it and you think, oh, no, no, no, no.
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: This has been going on forever.
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: Well, where we're sitting right now is you used to have about a five-minute response time.
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: Over the last 30 years, the density in the neighborhood that we're in this very minute has probably tripled, possibly, and they have not tripled.
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: They haven't done anything to the resources.
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: It's still the same.
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: Station Nine's up the street.
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: Station four is down the road.
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: They didn't add anything new, but they put in all these six story apartments that are a mile long, and so that's going to affect your response times.
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: Well, when the fire chief goes to the mayor and says, no, we need to build another fire station because we can't put a fourth engine in station nine, so we need a bigger, and they look and think that's going to cost millions of dollars and you think, well, yeah, which is a small price when you look at the 10 six-story apartment complex you have surrounded us with.
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: Even in my residential neighborhood we have a six-story apartment complex that was built last year.
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: They add volume, right, you add people and volume and they didn't support it with any more fire response.
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: But here's the funny part.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: So I actually have said a lot of positive things about the mayor in Houston, how, when I got there, we had a budget crisis and she saw the problem.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: I think the day I arrived they told me Chief, we're over in our overtime budget by $40 million.
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: So we went through a little exercise.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: We were able to get down to about half of that by sending people back to the field, reducing programs.
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: We're not going to do this, we're going to do that.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: And then eventually I was able to convince her and it didn't take long.
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: But we needed more firefighters.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: So we hired 300 firefighters as fast as we could to help the overtime problem.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: We were helping the overtime problem.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: She was motivated by the overtime problem.
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: So if you watch what's going on there now and what has happened over the last couple of years, they're back to a response problem.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: You know they still got the overtime problem because people are leaving Houston and they're good firefighters that are staying there and they're good firefighters that are leaving, but people are leaving Houston, the firefighters going to other departments, but they still haven't fixed the response problem.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: And that's where it's hard to get.
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: I mean, I could have a conversation with an elected official or a finance director, city manager, about overtime and they get really frustrated with me on that and it's like no, why do we?
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: Why do we have overtime, city manager?
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, why do you To staff the trucks?
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: It pisses them off.
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: You mean you've got to staff them 24-7?
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you've got to staff them 24-7 with the same staffing so you have that effective response force.
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: It's incredibly frustrating, but fire chiefs should just wake up every day and say okay, today I'm going to go argue about resource and staffing and don't take it personal when you get the no, but don't stop asking.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: And that's what happens is.
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: Well, you know I don't want to offend my boss and I never wanted to offend any of my bosses, whether it's a city manager or a mayor or whoever.
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: I wanted them to kind of like me and think that I was a good fire chief and a good employee.
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: But every time that I had a chance, I could ask them for resource or tell them we need resource or inform them about some negative aspects to our resources.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: I felt like I had to do that and I know I got on their nerves after a while.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: But that's what fire chiefs need to do.
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: They need to quit trying to get along I don't know who is and who isn't, but if you're out there and you're just trying to get along, to go along, that's not the role of the fire chief.
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: The role of the fire chief is to speak up, like the LA fire chief did, like chief Bowman did, and say, hey, we need resources because if we don't, people are going to die.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: I think at this moment too, and I became a fire chief in January 2002.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: What just occurred?
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: And I don't want to make light of any tragedy or feel like we're taking advantage of a terrific what happened, but now is the time like we're taking advantage of a terrific what happened, but now is the time.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: If you're a fire chief, now is the time to make your case because you've got national attention and just today, looking at the news, there was a massive fire in New York with 12 people severely injured.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: A couple of firefighters got injured, very similar in Chicago.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: I mean, there's tragedy every day, right, and if you get the spotlight shined on you, that's the time to really get on stage and speak up and say this is exactly where we're at.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, you're probably going to get those questions if you're a fire chief right now, if you haven't for years, because of that spotlight, and it doesn't matter whether you're in LA or East Overshoe, nebraska People are going to ask those questions right now.
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: If you're a fire chief right now and you don't have an answer for your urban interface, if you have an urban interface, you get ready because you're going to be asked and you should be asked and you should have an answer about what your response is going to look like.
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: But while they're asking that, don't forget to answer the question that they're not asking, which is the everyday response.
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: That's the question that we need to keep bringing up, because it's interesting that the fire service, the service we deliver, most people think they're not going to need the fire department.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: You don't wake up today and say, oh, I think I'm going to need the fire department today.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: So most people think, oh, I know they're not going to need the fire department.
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: You don't wake up today and say, oh, I think I'm going to need the fire department today.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: So most people think, oh, I know they're there, but I won't need them.
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: There's a group of politicians that say, I know they're there and I know I'm not going to need them, and you can't motivate them.
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: So I think that what you said is important is that we need to use other people's, other departments' or other cities' tragedies to try to help us, and we do that every day If you're not reading the NIOSH reports or line-of-duty deaths and you're not looking at the factors that cause firefighter deaths and then using that to try to make your organization stronger.
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: That's what we always say.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: It's like we shouldn't have to have a tragedy in our organization.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: Let's see what we always say.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: It's like we shouldn't have to have a tragedy in our organization.
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: Let's see what happened over here.
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: Let's watch what's happening over here.
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: And that's what a fire chief needs to do too, in my opinion.
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: Either he or she or somebody on their staff is stay connected to what's happening.
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: Hey, three guys get burned here.
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: What caused that?
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: We need to find out, because we have the same kind of structures.
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: Fires burn the same way here.
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: What caused that?
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: We need to find out, because we have the same kind of structures.
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: Fires burn the same way here.
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: What can we learn there we can bring home?
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: So I don't think we're capitalizing so much on a disaster, but we're using that and we're learning from that, and it's usually when it comes to these big fires.
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: It could be about resources.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: When it comes to these big fires, it could be about resources.
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: When it comes to those house fires, it's about incident command, it's about communication, all the things that they're teaching in Blue Card.
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: But yeah, I think there's something to learn from all this.
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: Well, there's not two fire departments.
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: There's not a day-to-day fire department and then a conflagration fire department.
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: There's one fire department.
• 27:16
  Speaker 4: So it's the day-to-day fire department responds to a conflagration fire department.
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: There's one fire department so it's the day-to-day fire department response to the conflagration.
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: That's just the way it is.
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: And so if you have something that the system's already in place, if you have something that outlasts what the day-to-day fire department can do, like what's going on in Southern California now, that becomes a NIMS.
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: In California it was a NIMS type 3 incident for about 35 seconds and then it was a type 1 disaster right after that with the wind and everything else that was going on.
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: So now you have a NIMS type 1 incident operation.
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: So now you're going to get the deployment from all over the country because you don't have enough resources in California to manage it.
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: The same thing happened, like Vance said, 9-11.
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: What happened?
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: As soon as they saw what was going on with 9-11 across the country with firefighters, you got more.
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: Some of them just stole the apparatus and started going to New York City.
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: I mean there was trains of going to New York City.
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: The thing they had to manage first in New York City was all the outside help and thinking, no, you're killing us here.
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: So they couldn't organize what they were doing.
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: I mean, having too much is probably good because you kind of push them back, and then you figure out OK, this is where we need people, and off you go.
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: But FEMA is kind of designed to do that.
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: That's what FEMA is for.
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: So that's the federal government.
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: So you got the three layers of government.
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: You got the feds, the state and the local.
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: Well, the problem is, the fire service is local, it's local government and so it's all.
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: And if it doesn't exist, if you don't have the deployment system, when you have your heart attack, they're going to take you to the funeral home.
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: That's what they did before EMS, right, in fact, the funeral director showed up and if you were still alive they would take you to the hospital, and just for free.
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: It's like okay, remember us when you don't live.
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: So we replace that with, like paramedic response, ems and ALS and all the rest.
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: Well, for that to be effective, you got to get there in four to six minutes.
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: So that's the number you got to have to six minutes.
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: So that's the number you got to have.
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: Well, if it's longer than that, then that's.
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: The fire chief needs to hook up with city leadership and say we got to figure out some way to do this.
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: Now you got to pay for it somehow I think we've talked about this before.
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: A million years ago, when we were working for the fire department, the fire chief put two PAs in and said we're going to start making house calls and we're going to hook up with the hospitals and they'll send them home early and then we'll just go and we'll have like four or five patients we visit a day and then we'll grow it and we'll get money back in.
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: And now imagine if you could do house calls and you had the staff to do that.
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: Could do house calls and you had the staff to do that.
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: We did a thing on the last leadership module where we talked about the ambulances in this community.
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: Made over $80 million last year.
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: Made that much.
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: Put it back into the city budget.
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: That's just emergency transport.
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: If you did house calls, I mean, who knows what that would look like.
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: It would become its own industry.
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: Well, I think maybe that's the future for enterprising public safety.
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: People is saying no, we need to figure out how we're going to pay for this outside the local political system Is there's got to be something we charge the city.
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: I hate to say it, but it's almost a private model, which would even be worse because then they're going to really cut it.
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: And it just becomes about profit.
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you can look at AMR, that it's OK.
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: This is that now.
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: We don't want to go that way either.
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: So I mean it becomes.
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: It ain't easy being a fire chief in the fire service.
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: Is that because you have to represent for the fire department to a group of essentially your bosses who do not, who want to take from you.
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: They don't want to give you more.
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: So back to the boss and the fire chief.
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: Here's a very difficult thing for fire chiefs to do, but they need to attempt to do it.
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: I'm not telling them what to do, but here's what you need People with.
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: I'm not telling you what to do, but here's what you need People within, I'm not telling you what to do, but do this.
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, if you're a fire chief, it's almost like we're married now.
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: I know, I just feel like when she gave this message back to her, however many months ago.
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: However, that happened.
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: What was her message to the organization?
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: And, as the leader of the organization, how many people within that organization knew what she was saying to the politicians?
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: That's always been my deal.
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: It's like you know, when I'm in Houston, I got 4,200 firefighters and I know the resources were needed.
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: How do I create that conversation internally also, that we're all on the same page, right, without it being we're victims and we're not getting anything, because it could turn on you like that.
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: But you need to have an educated workforce and I think that's what impressed me lately about with some of the spokespersons from the fire department, battalion chiefs and stuff, because a battalion chief is probably a few levels beneath her as a fire chief, but they're giving a consistent message with her.
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: So how did that message get transmitted prior to this and how did it get?
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: How does that flow through the communication, through the organization and to the firefighter on the nozzle?
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: You know who's getting their butt kicked every day and going on calls and knowing, hey, and firefighters think like this man, if we could have been here three minutes earlier, maybe that baby would be alive, or maybe that grandma would be alive, but because of the resources, if we could have been here earlier with an effective fire force.
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: But we could have put water and maybe knocked this thing down before it hit the neighbor's house or whatever.
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: But fire chiefs got.
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: They have to figure out some sort of communication plan within the organization to share that, as they're sharing it with the mayor, as they're sharing it with the elected official, and that's pretty challenging for a fire chief.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: It's very challenging.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: Everyone has a role in that, particularly like the labor group and them advancing the cause, but you don't want it to become such a distraction to the organization that that's just consumes you, because it's very easy to go down that path.
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: So how do you not go down the path of a consuming and turning into saber rattling and turning into?
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: You know everyone's going to die, because that's kind of where it goes to sometimes.
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: And that becomes a drone when they keep saying well, if you change this, you're just going to cost lives.
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: They're talking about changing the uniform patch pal.
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: So do you want to be and this is, I know it's a slippery slope Do you want to be the fire chief who gets people a little bit fired up and then you have to manage that saber rattling?
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: Or be the fire chief who goes into a council meeting and sits on his thumbs and doesn't say anything about it and just says, oh, that's okay, we're going to be okay, so there's a way to manage that.
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: I mean, think about what happened when firefighters had to get a COVID vaccination and how that created organizational strife, because individual members took that different and everybody had their own opinion about that and they brought it from their home or their church or wherever they brought their social media feeds.
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, whatever my facebook group says, I don't have to do this.
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: So I think what?
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: I think firefighters if they're they're kind of interesting people.
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: So if you identify the problem, you tell them what you think the solution might be.
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: You share that information with them and then you share it with the politicians and you continue not beating a drum, but beating a drum in an organized kind of way.
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: I think they see that hey, maybe we're going to move forward.
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: But there's nothing worse than a fire department that just feels like and look at the guy at the top or the girl we're not going to get, they're not going to fight for us, they don't give a shit, they're just going to go over there, they're going to be on the team of that political group or whoever, and then you sit in fire station.
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: That's exhausting for firefighters and I think firefighters nowadays will leave and go to other organizations based on that performance of a fire chief.
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: Well, and just because the fire chief goes in and says, ok, we need X, y and Z, doesn't mean they're going to get it.
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: I mean it may not be there whatever it is, but at least they made it, said no, this is the issue and we need to work towards this and we're tracking.
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: We always track our response times.
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: That's like a major metric within the fire department that you kind of use to manage and maintain your deployment system.
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, the key is like any leadership position.
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: So the key is consistency, right?
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: So when you got a boss and you show up every day and they're pretty consistent, that's a great, that's a good boss, even if they're an asshole.
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: If they're an asshole every day, they're an asshole every day.
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: The most difficult bosses to work for are those ones that have these personality ups and downs.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: They take their meds today.
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, or did you take too much?
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: So the fire chiefs they get fired up and then they go under and then they get fired up and go.
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: If you're consistent with it and you say, hey, here's what we're going to continue asking guys, I understand there's a problem.
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: We're going to keep going.
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: We're going to keep going, we're going to try to move forward.
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: I think I don't think you'll see it.
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: And then I think the message also is saber rattling doesn't work from the firefighter's level anyway, so don't do it.
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: It's just, it's, you know, wasted energy.
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: Let me get up here and tell the story and try to fight for you every day.
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: An associate of mine is a fire chief, volunteer fire department up in the northern part of the country and they have a fire station, they have all the equipment they need in it and they're staffed with like six people a day.
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: That's their staffing for their community.
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: And the next town over, staffed with four and then one on the other side's got eight and you know they all socialize and fish together and do their stuff.
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: So they provide everything EMS, fire, technical rescue, whole deal.
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: This small little fire department.
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: They're going on more and more ALS calls.
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: He says we go on an ALS call, we lose coverage for 90 to 120 minutes.
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: You can't If you call 911, we're not coming.
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: It's the next city over and it's going to be 15, 20 minutes at least.
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: So he gets the cue and this is not rural, it's suburban, it's light suburban that goes into rural and they're all pretty well off.
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: They can afford to have two or three cars and snowmobiles and all the other stuff.
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: So he starts a campaign for the levy and he says we need to raise the levy because we have to hire two more paramedics to be on duty all the time.
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: So we'll always have four paramedics and then we can do two ALS patients at the same time, without disruption, and you know that would be really good for our community.
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: And so he starts up like six months in advance and they say okay, do this, do this, you have these barbecues, do this over here, this political thing, meet your representative, all that.
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: And so he goes about this and he sets it up and then they have the levy vote and he's just convinced it's going to pass because everybody said they're going to vote for it.
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: Well, it fails by like 70-30.
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: They're like no, we're not going to, we don't want to pay another $15 a month or whatever it was.
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: Whatever the amount was, they weren't going to pay it and it wasn't much.
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: I mean, it was, it wasn't dinner, it was a Starbucks yeah, a month.
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: And so he how are you doing?
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: He says you know, he was kind of a pragmatic kind of guy.
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: He said I'm okay, you know it's their city and that's what they wanted and that's what they're going to get.
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: Three months later he's gone.
• 39:37
  Speaker 3: He moved, he said no, I'm done with them.
• 39:40
  Speaker 4: It's they're uh-uh.
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: He says they say one thing, they do another.
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: It's let them yeah, I think back to your point about when we have a message and we need those things for the firefighters to understand it, because they're going to be the ones at the grocery store and on calls and community events to get the questions and they need to engage in the community.
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: How do we get that information to them and, I guess, coach them on what to say, how to say it, how to present it?
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: You know, just the facts, I mean, I guess.
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: But how do you convey that?
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: Well, you got, you know, the organizational.
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: The org chart is also the organizational communication flow chart.
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: So you just process it through the organization the best you can and there's going to be aberrancies in it and there's going to be outliners and people are going to be outside the boundaries.
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: You don't want people going up to Mrs Smith and looking down, like happened to me in one city.
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: It's like you know, if that new fire chief wasn't here, you'd be in an ambulance right now.
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: Well, that wasn't the truth.
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: The truth was, if that new fire chief wasn't here, I wouldn't be on this ladder in an EMS call, because we didn't go on EMS calls.
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: You wouldn't have anybody here.
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: But what you had is you had a ladder company that were EMT trained that could spend time with that patient until an ambulance came from someplace else.
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: So you don't want it's very, it's difficult, but you got to have a plan for it.
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: You got to make it one of your priorities.
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: Like you know, when we talk about organizational priorities and we talk about communication as one of the organizational priorities, then you have to do your marketing right.
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: You have to do your internal marketing and your external marketing, where this is going to be one of the issues that's important for us over the next.
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: You know, I think a long term plan now is about two years right.
• 41:35
  Speaker 4: Three years.
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: Remember when they used to be 15?
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you can't do that anymore.
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: We had a 15-year plan but say here's what we're going to discuss over the next couple of years.
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: Here's our talking points and priorities.
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: You know, it's just like internally it's be safe, be nice, be accountable, or Bruno's, it's all the same.
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: Whatever that is, apply that type of message platform to how you want your employees to communicate if they're asking a question from the outside.
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: We're fast, we're well-trained and we're nice.
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: That's it that was the three things.
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: I was a battalion chief and we had a mountain rescue at like nine o'clock at night.
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: People had taken all train vehicles up a mountain on the west side of town.
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: It was, I don't know, two cities over.
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: And so we get there and there's like six different fire departments and so you figure out what you need.
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: There's a helicopter up in the air doing what it's doing and so you're managing the thing and so we get done with it.
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: They get the patient down, transported, whole deal, and everybody's leaving and we're on the way out and the media is at the end of the road.
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: I mean, because you had to like almost off-road to get to where we were at.
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: It was through the desert, and so they've got like a studio, set up lights and the whole thing.
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: You see the big moths flying around and there's firefighters there talking and the media.
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: There's like two or three reporters.
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: We're having a press conference and we were like that's not our PIO.
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: Well, it was rural metro and they had showed up to the scene for whatever reason.
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: They were not involved in any way whatsoever in the operation and what they did is they narrated what we were doing up there and took credit for it, right, I remember the next day I get called in the morning and they said, hey, you know, blah, blah, blah, this calling.
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, this is what we were doing.
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: And they said, well, where was the PIO?
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: And I said nobody called the PIO.
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: It's like four cities over, so that wouldn't be the Phoenix PIO going out, it would be whoever else, right.
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: And they said, well, yeah, we understand that, but our PIO should have been over there.
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: And you're like, well, why?
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: And so I never saw it on the news.
• 43:40
  Speaker 3: So they said, you know, I show up and they play the clip and I go, oh, wow, man, that's bold.
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: I said that's pretty ballsy.
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: I kind of admired them for it.
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: I thought, you know, I took credit for what we did.
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: But you know, okay, well, man, everybody was in the room, the union was in the room, the whole group of them, and they were pissed and they said it's over, we're going to war now.
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: Okay, what's this going to look like?
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: This could be fun, but that's what they did.
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: And they did a full court press for years and I don't know if that was the trigger point that started it, because there was a lot of trauma that went on well before that.
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: But I want to say, five years later, they no longer protected the city to the east.
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: They were gone For a variety of reasons that we didn't necessarily have anything to do with, but that was part of it, and I remember they started to get more persnickety about if the pio isn't there.
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: Somebody got to talk to the media because this is us advertising for us and mean like, so when you had the union and the fire chief both saying no, this is a high priority thing.
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: Well, it's almost like when you watch the NFL now and like the coaches are going in for halftime and they ask them why do you suck so much, you know, and you're like, oh, that's a tough question and you'd like you know the person just wants to kill them.
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: Yes, but most of those individuals have too much testosterone and they do not take well to that.
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: Being questioned at all, but they've been coached on how to do that.
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: Now and you know what happened is the owner and the NFL said no, you're going to stop and you're going to do a commercial for the NFL about leadership and what you're going to do to get your team around, and that's all it turns into.
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: I mean, that's why they have the jets flying over and they take military images and oh look, we're wearing well, the playoffs here in Phoenix between the Rams because LA's on fire.
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: What were all the coaches wearing?
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: on the sidelines.
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: LAFT Right across the front man All of them.
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: So when there's a tragedy, everybody identifies with us and you know and I agree that's a time that you kind of make these things known I think LA will probably pick up resources from this.
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: I mean just because it's first of all because they need them to begin with just to deliver the basic emergency services to the community.
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: Well, that's the role of the fire department.
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: So maybe there should be a little more patience.
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: When somebody comes and says no, this is the way we protect everybody.
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: Your family is being protected, my family, all of us, we have to have the ability to respond to this and we understand it costs money and we can help and be part of the solution and not just scream all the time.
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: If you don't give us everything we want, you're all going to die, because that just pisses more people, that pisses us off and you think, no, that's not, you're uh-uh, that's not.
• 46:38
  Speaker 3: You're not answering the question and the data is so easily available.
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: It's all right, it is.
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: It's simple numbers.
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: It's like no, it's 10 minutes is too long.
• 46:47
  Speaker 3: When you call 911 and they say we're going to put you on hold, you can't.
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: No, that's against the rules, you can't do that anymore.
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: People are having real emergencies.
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: If it's not an emergency, hang up on them.
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: You don't have a true emergency.
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: Goodbye, this is for emergencies.
• 47:02
  Speaker 3: I called once a Porsche pirate.
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: They told me no, this is the wrong, I'm sorry.
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: Goodbye, that was yeah, I didn't know who else to call.
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: Is that a 3-1-1 call for a porch pirate or what?
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: I don't know who you call.
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: I guess there's a seven-digit number you can use to call the police.
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and they don't care.
• 47:21
  Speaker 3: And you're like, well, really, who gives a shit?
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: I mean, I've had major things stolen and they didn't come out.
• 47:26
  Speaker 3: So yeah, well.
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: Well, I really believe this is the opportunity, not only LA, but going back to my statement, if you have a good service level objective, you can get your council to buy into it and then educate the public, the firefighters and everyone else.
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: This is the time to do it.
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: I think we're in another kind of 9-11.
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: The light's going to shine on all of us for a while.
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: Even if you have nothing to do with urban wildland interface, interface, it's the day-to-day fire department that we need to talk about and educate everyone on yeah, and that's just the way we are, we're, we're as a society.
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: It's the shiny object of the tragedy.
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: You know, I was watching, uh, I don't know what.
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: I saw it on the news and the guy came up and at the fire and um, and they were interviewing and he goes yeah, you know, leave your keys in your car and I'll move your car for you.
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: And they went through that whole process and at the end of the interview this just happened the other day.
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: And what is your name, sir Steve Guttenberg?
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: I love that.
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: And everybody now.
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: Steve Guttenberg is one of the most you know, Google-ized guys on the planet, now, now, and he's just a regular guy.
• 48:31
  Speaker 4: I wonder if I could just make here on Palisades Drive, if anybody has a car and they leave their car, leave the keys in the car so that we can move your car, so that these fire trucks can get up Palisades Drive.
• 48:44
  Speaker 4: What's happening is people take their keys with them as if they're in a parking lot.
• 48:48
  Speaker 4: This is not a parking lot.
• 48:50
  Speaker 4: We really need people to move their cars.
• 48:52
  Speaker 4: So if you leave your car in Palisades Drive, leave the key in there so a guy like me can move your car and get them up there so that these fire trucks can get up there.
• 49:02
  Speaker 4: It's really, really important.
• 49:03
  Speaker 4: Thank you for talking to us.
• 49:05
  Speaker 4: Live, sir, what's your name?
• 49:06
  Speaker 4: My name is Steve Guttenberg.
• 49:07
  Speaker 4: Steve, do you live in this area?
• 49:09
  Speaker 4: I live in the area.
• 49:10
  Speaker 4: I live right up the hill and, thank goodness, everybody.
• 49:12
  Speaker 4: But I have friends up there right now and they can't evacuate because it's stuck on Palisades Drive.
• 49:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and you're an actor.
• 49:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm an actor.
• 49:20
  Speaker 4: Okay, now you look familiar.
• 49:21
  Speaker 4: You look familiar to me now.
• 49:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 49:23
  Speaker 4: So, sir, do you have family up there?
• 49:24
  Speaker 4: I was just talking to that gentleman.
• 49:25
  Speaker 4: He has a mom who's stuck up in the hills.
• 49:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah, there are people stuck up there, so we're trying to clear Palisade Drive and I'm walking up there as far as I can, moving cars, but people don't take their keys with them, as if it's a parking lot.
• 49:39
  Speaker 4: There are families up there, there are pets up there, there are people who really need help.
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: He got spotlighted right for doing the right thing and I, um we got to take.
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: It's unfortunate that we have to take uh advantage of an opportunity like this.
• 49:55
  Speaker 3: We're but well, and it's bigger than us even.
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: I mean, if you look at like historically, like it was, hurricanes hurricanes would come in, it would destroy a stretch of property and then fema would show up and then they would rebuild all these houses and then five years later, hurricane comes and destroys it again.
• 50:14
  Speaker 3: At some point it's like you need to figure out how to build something that that hurricane can't destroy, or maybe not build houses here.
• 50:21
  Speaker 3: I don't know what it is, but there's a lot of that that exists because of the Santa Ana winds in Southern California.
• 50:28
  Speaker 3: So you're going to have to change the urban wildland interface to be a little more if you want to live there, to protect your house from, because it's going to happen again.
• 50:41
  Speaker 3: Everywhere the wind blows like that, if there's a fire it's going to burn everything down in its path.
• 50:46
  Speaker 3: The fire service cannot stop 80 mile an hour winds with huge buildings on fire, sending brands miles away, setting more fires.
• 50:56
  Speaker 3: It's just during the Second World War, the bombing.
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: They firebombed Tokyo and Dresden, killed 100,000 people in each city over a period of about 24 hours.
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: And it wasn't the bombs, that was the fire and the weather it started.
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: That conflagrations.
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: That was the fire and the weather it started that conflagrations that burnt the city to the ground.
• 51:20
  Speaker 3: When I was getting ready to become a firefighter, I took fire protection, fire suppression classes.
• 51:23
  Speaker 3: I remember they showed us a video that the NFPA made in like the late 60s or early 70s and it was about Chelsea and Boston, massachusetts, and it was like during the 1800s, 17, 18, into the hundreds, that era and it was driven by commerce and regulation and tax and it was the rag trade.
• 51:46
  Speaker 3: And so, like Chelsea took the rag trade from Boston by reducing regulation and not taxing or something.
• 51:53
  Speaker 3: And so what happened is they moved all the rag traders to Chelsea.
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: One day there was a fire, the wind blows and it burnt Chelsea to the ground.
• 52:01
  Speaker 3: Boston jumped on it and took it back, so they moved into Boston.
• 52:06
  Speaker 3: In the meantime they rebuild Chelsea and start making regulations because they're like no man, we've been living down by the river for the last year, we can't burn it down again.
• 52:15
  Speaker 3: So they took turns burning one another's communities down with rags until they said no more rags, it's just not worth it.
• 52:24
  Speaker 3: I mean you can't.
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, mr Ragman does pretty good, but the rest of us really kind of suck with the rag business.
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: So we're just going to stop it.
• 52:33
  Speaker 3: So I mean, prevention and protection is a huge part, but once the genie's out of the bottle, it's response.
• 52:42
  Speaker 3: I mean that's kind of what you know firefighters live to respond.
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: That's what we like to do.
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: We like jumping out of airplanes and things.
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: Another piece I saw here and it speaks to this also, and I guess it's a movie on Netflix now about hot shots and this guy embedded with hot shots, and in the federal system they call them forest technicians because they can pay them one-third of what you would have to pay a firefighter.
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: Nice.
• 53:12
  Speaker 3: And they don't have to pay them overtime.
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: And so now they're leaving.
• 53:15
  Speaker 3: It's like no, I'm not going to do this anymore.
• 53:17
  Speaker 3: I'm making $50,000 so I can be gone nine months out of the year and jump out of an airplane into a burning forest.
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: And then evidently this is quite the documentary, because the filmmaker was like no, this has got to stop.
• 53:32
  Speaker 3: And so he shows like the evil federal system and these firefighters that are just trying to make the world a better place.
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: And so it's all.
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: Great things have a villain and a hero.
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: And if not, we'll make one Exactly.
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and if that doesn't happen, we'll turn to social media for it.
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: Hey want to do a timelesseless Tactical Truth before we go All right, we're here.
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: It don't cost nothing.
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: I will not charge you.
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: Timeless Tactical Truth from Alan Brunicini.
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: This is the Four of Diamonds and it says the system requires the IC to be an order giver and the workers to be order followers.
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: Got a lot of speaking of people on social media.
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: Man, you know it's like don't tell me to level one stage and you know all this other.
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: As Josh says, when we start having conversations about this, particularly with new fire departments, they're coming into blue card is.
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: You know if there's an imminent rescue or water that needs to be put on something?
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: That level one, your, your wheels are never really stopping.
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: You're getting an order and you're continuing onto the scene and, uh, people make it seem like people are sitting blocks away for hours at a time, never getting an order.
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: So that's one of the reasons I think this is appropriate.
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: But any other thoughts on that one?
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: It seems so simple.
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: Right, it makes perfect sense.
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: So you get an order, you follow the order, unless there's a reason you can't follow the order, then you get that information back and you get a different order.
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: But if you've got some information that the IC doesn't have and he's asking if he's directing you he or she is directing you to do something that you think is unsafe or it's something you can't accomplish then you need to get that information back.
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: Isn't that part of the process, nick?
• 55:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the only way you can have a single incident action plan is if one person develops a thing and then assigns everybody to it, right, so that's why you do that.
• 55:41
  Speaker 3: But the other part of it, and let's go to regular house fire.
• 55:45
  Speaker 3: It's not a conflagration, it's a straight-ass room and contents fire.
• 55:51
  Speaker 3: You get there and, okay, I don't have to stage because I'm Cowboy Bob and I can do everything better than everybody else, and we'll get up on that roof and cut 27 square feet of roof off of it and then I'll get on my truck and the recruit can love me more.
• 56:05
  Speaker 3: What I learned pretty quick is if you were the first one there and they staged is a lot of times, and this really sold it to other companies.
• 56:15
  Speaker 3: When we were teaching tactics, I said what are they going to do if they're staged and you can put the fire out without their help?
• 56:20
  Speaker 3: Well, I'd leave them staged.
• 56:22
  Speaker 3: And then what do you do?
• 56:24
  Speaker 3: I put the fire out and what do they do?
• 56:26
  Speaker 3: They watch.
• 56:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's more orderly, right?
• 56:31
  Speaker 3: The fire goes out pretty quick.
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: If you need them, you can say, hey, come on in, take a second line off our truck, because how long is that going to take 23 seconds, maybe from the time you key the mic to the time that they're stepping on your back.
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's pretty fast.
• 56:47
  Speaker 3: They're staged, like you said right there, and what you do is you just put in the number of resources you actually need.
• 56:59
  Speaker 3: So if, like for half of all structure, fires go out with the first line and 300 gallons of water I mean, that is an ongoing statistic that just doesn't stop the effectiveness of the initial operation Well, if you only need one or two companies, then leave everybody else staged.
• 57:10
  Speaker 3: And what's the benefit to that?
• 57:11
  Speaker 3: Well, I'm not using them because I don't need them.
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: And they're there if I do in a hurry.
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: And if they don't get used, they don't have to be decon, they don't have to be rehab, they don't have to, they're ready to go right back to work.
• 57:24
  Speaker 3: In fact, if I was a later arriving unit and we were waiting and it was like no, this thing's out, I would put a radio on channel one and I think I will self dispatch off this as quickly as I can, cause I ain't overhauling your fire, pal.
• 57:41
  Speaker 3: So, and you wouldn't need to, I mean, you wouldn't even use it for that why would you get them into?
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: Okay, overhaul my.
• 57:47
  Speaker 3: No, no, no, no, no.
• 57:48
  Speaker 3: You take a break and overhaul it yourself and we're only going to clean one crew instead of two.
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: Let me just jump in.
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: So working fire, even if it's that house fire or it's continuing to move through an apartment complex or a commercial structure.
• 58:04
  Speaker 3: You've got to assign more people.
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: When was the last time you were using what you know with Blue Card and how we grew up in the system?
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: When was the last time you were surprised by an order that was given using what you know with Blue Card and how we grew up in the system.
• 58:19
  Speaker 4: When was the last time you were?
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: surprised by an order that was given Usually, you know, yeah, you know, we all work in the same system.
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: We used to train people, so that person doesn't know right.
• 58:26
  Speaker 3: We would train people right during SIM drills.
• 58:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah and okay, they assign the first one and we're off in the training room with all the companies and we.
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: What's going to be the next order?
• 58:36
  Speaker 3: 95% of the time they give it to you word for word.
• 58:40
  Speaker 3: He's going to send the ladder to do this.
• 58:41
  Speaker 3: You guys are cheating he's going to do engine two to do this, because it's the same tactics over and over.
• 58:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I hit the fire, I get around the edges of it, get above it, boom.
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: That's why that you should read it one more time, because it's pretty simple and most people I wouldn't imagine it happening very often where somebody is surprised to the point of an order that they're pissed off about it or something.
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: I think departments that train and have a plan and that's the key to success is having that plan before you go I don't think they're at all surprised.
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: But I think you'd also be surprised how many departments don't have a plan.
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: So that's out there too.
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: But again, the timeless tactical truth is the system requires the IC to be an order giver and the workers to be order followers.
• 59:33
  Speaker 3: There you go.
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: Well, that's what they want to be.
• 59:35
  Speaker 3: I want an order to go attack the fire.
• 59:37
  Speaker 3: I'm going to follow that order.
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: In fact, that's one of the few orders I will always follow.
• 59:42
  Speaker 3: Most of the others I will question and I'll lawyer up, or whatever you got to do, I'm not shining those boots.
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, All right guys.
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: Well, good one.
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: Thanks for talking about the current events and everything else.
• 59:56
  Speaker 3: No, it's too depressing, Vance.
• 59:57
  Speaker 3: We've got to do something better next time We'll have more fun.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: All right guys.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: Thank you, it's been a great one.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: Appreciate you being here.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: Blackout you, JB.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the B Shifter Podcast.