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Transcript

Why Size-Up Matters · B Shifter

• 0:48
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the B-Shifter podcast.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: We've got John Vance here, your usual host, along with Steve Lester.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: We've got Greg Tyminski and Eric Phillips and we are coming to you from Daytona Beach, Florida, where we are doing a blue card train the trainer with the Volusia County Fire Department.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: And you know we don't get too inside on the B Shifter podcast.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: We like to stay focused on the outside and issues that matter to folks, but I get questions about this a lot.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: So we go on the road and we are out doing train the trainers and there's about 15 of us that work for Blue Card, that are Blue Card lead instructors.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: So we go to these towns and when we're out and about we bring the stuff with us and we do podcasts.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: Of course, when we're in Phoenix, we do the podcast.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: So we happen to be today in a beautiful environment on the ocean.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: If you hear splashing and birds and kids and glasses clanking down at the bar, it's because it's after five o'clock.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: In fact, it's almost six o'clock our time.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: We taught all day and now we're poolside with our microphones and we are going to record a little bit of a podcast today, so that that that's what we are doing right now and, uh, we like to have a lot of fun doing it.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's it's a great environment to get our podcast recorded.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: So how are you guys doing how's, how's the trip?
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: treating you so far.
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: So far, so good.
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: By Thursday they'll be running.
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: So you know and I think that's really one of the great parts of this job is being able to see somebody evolve as these trainers go on throughout the week.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: And that's really what it's all about with our trainers, because we do crawl, walk, run, that's.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: That's.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: That's part of the, the training methodology that we use.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: So we we love to see people and their skills really explode while we're doing this.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: How are you doing, eric?
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: I'm doing great.
• 3:11
  Speaker 4: All right, I don't think I can complain with this view.
• 3:13
  Speaker 4: Doing a podcast, yeah, life is good.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: Well, the topic today, just so everyone knows and we'll get into it in a second is talking about size up and how it matters from different angles.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: So we'll get to that in a minute.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: I do want to mention we're going to be at the 2025 Blue Card Hazard Zone Conference, Sharonville, ohio, september 29th through October 3rd.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: You can go to bshiftercom and get all the information for that.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: A lot of the pre-workshops, pre-conference workshops are filling up.
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: We've got the certification lab.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: That is almost full.
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: We've got the EOC to Engine 1, or Engine 1 to the EOC, talking about how you expand command from Engine 1 to a full-blown EOC.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: That's about half full right now.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: We also have a Mayday Management Workshop that we'll be doing.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: Are you doing a strategic decision-making workshop?
• 4:06
  Speaker 4: We are Chris Stude and I are going to be doing it, talking about size up and some critical thinking of really what is size up, why does it matter?
• 4:13
  Speaker 4: And then we exercise it in some sets and reps and some easy tools to take back to your department to have those critical thinking conversations.
• 4:20
  Speaker 4: I think it's real easy to talk about.
• 4:22
  Speaker 4: Hey, you know, someone needs to make a better decision on the fire ground.
• 4:28
  Speaker 4: Well, we do a real poor job in the fire service really explaining what's a model we can use and why do we do it to make those better decisions.
• 4:32
  Speaker 4: So if you come to the class, we'll talk about it for a couple of days and then give you some tools that you're able to take back to your department to exercise that critical thinking, the strategic decision making model, but, more importantly, really to change behavior and thinking on the fire ground to be able to make those better decisions.
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: So, Steve, what are you teaching at the conferences?
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: So I'll be helping out with the May Day Management Workshop First couple of days.
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: It's a pre-conference.
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: I love teaching that workshop.
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: It's probably my favorite workshop to teach, because to me that's what Blue Card is all about, right, and I just don't think we do enough of that.
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: You know, and I've actually began to institute mayday management training in my department, uh as well.
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: So I brought that class back to my department and we teach that on a regular basis.
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: So I'm really excited about helping out with that.
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: Uh, I did that same class last year.
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: We had over 100 people in the class last year, worked out really well, and so looking forward to it again this year.
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: And then my breakout session during the actual conference is titled Life Made Simple with Support Officers.
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: It's all about utilizing that support officer role on the scene in the command post, utilizing them in division operations as well as just everyday administrative duties that you as a chief whether you're a battalion chief or a shift commander or whatever that looks like in your organization utilizing those people to your advantage.
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: So hopefully it'll be a good discussion and we're looking forward to it.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: And you've got during that you're going to talk about.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: You don't necessarily need to have a support officer assigned to you, necessarily need to have a support officer assigned to you.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: You can bring in support officers in various ways, because we realize that most departments don't have that funding level.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: I mean, look at the Los Angeles City Fire Department's trying to cut their support officers right now.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: It's always the first to go, but there's other ways to achieve that support if you don't have the good fortune of having someone assigned to you.
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know I've been really fortunate throughout my career as both the battalion chief and now the chief of training We've been.
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: Our department has a strong support towards support officers, or provide.
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: We call them field techs in my department.
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: But we've had that in place for many years and that's a priority.
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: Our command staff, our senior staff, has really put a priority on that.
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: So we're really happy that we're able to provide that to our people.
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: We'll even take an engine out of service before we take the support officer away from our battalion chief.
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: That's how important what emphasis we put on that position.
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: But yeah, we do understand that not every department can provide that.
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: I'll give you a great example is that Hamilton County area in Ohio where they have such great automatic aid agreements with their neighboring agencies.
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: They're able to have a chief If the first due chief responds to the fire.
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: It may be a chief two or three districts over that arrives on scene and can immediately step into that support officer role and assist that first new chief in the command post.
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: And to me that's just.
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: When you have that kind of interoperability, that's just excellent.
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: And we have this robust chief response in my area and we plug chiefs in that way too.
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: So it's not unusual for us to get seven chiefs on a structure fire and we're just going to put them into the roles, whether it's division boss, embedded safety officer, support officer or even, in some cases, senior chiefs, like a senior advisor role.
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: So there's different ways to get there.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: So don't be scared of the title of the class just because you don't have the funding.
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: I know in my area we were the second suburb in the entire Twin Cities to staff a battalion chief job.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: So and other suburbs are starting to do it.
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: I know the suburbs south of me.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: I just got an email today from the chief that said as of today, we're 24 hour battalion chief.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: So there's some areas kind of behind the curve.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: But this gives us something to shoot for too, and I think so often we start talking about best practice with people and they say, well, we can't do that, we don't have the funding for that or we're not staffed that way.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: And you may not be right now, but it's something that you shoot for at the end of the road to get to.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: You begin with the end in mind and you can start with those justifications and I think in Cobb County you guys have justified it very well and you need to tell the elected officials you know just how important those command support roles are to the health, safety of firefighters and the community because they help us so much more effectively not only manage the non-emergency scene but also the emergency scene and there's a lot of stuff and you're going to even talk about that that that support officer does when not on emergency response.
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, and I can tell you this.
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: I know I haven't been doing it as long as you guys, but I go to these trainers and it seems like every time we introduce support officers which is typically on Wednesday of the trainers, we hear man, what a difference that makes.
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: You know, because typically that agency hasn't used them or utilized them before, and when we introduce them in the train, the trainer, it's like a light bulb goes off and, you know, hopefully they'll adopt something like that in the future.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: And Tomansky is going to be along with me where they're supporting you guys that are teaching the classes.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: So we're looking forward to that.
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: And oh, and there's one more pre-conference workshop, the safety workshop that John Edachico and his crew will be doing and they're going to be showing you the tactics that go along with blue card command.
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: And then with that prop, there's a burn prop that is not included for the price.
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: It's a very low price, but you can buy the prop, take it back and it's a train the trainer how to get the fire behavior out of it and then how to show people with thermal imaging cameras and the fire behavior they get out of the prop.
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: Different pivot points for making decisions on the fire ground.
• 10:11
  Speaker 3: You know a lot of departments don't realize just what a cost savings that safety prop is as well, because we were spending without counting the overtime for the guys to build the wooden dollhouses.
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: We were spending around $500 a dollhouse for a wooden OSB dollhouse and the safety trainer.
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: Within 10 or 12 burns you've paid for the safety trainer and you can get literally hundreds and hundreds of burns out of that prop.
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: So it really is a cost savings.
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: In the long run that's a nice thing to have.
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: Well, shifting gears to our topic.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: Today we're going to talk about why size up matters and let's talk about the initial arriving officer, and that's.
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: You know, eric's in that role a lot the rest of us are occasionally but how to effectively understand what that initial size-up does, the elements of it, and then we'll grow from there.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: So, eric, do you want to talk about?
• 11:09
  Speaker 4: that, yeah.
• 11:09
  Speaker 4: So I think the question is why does size-up matter?
• 11:11
  Speaker 4: Why do we do initial radar?
• 11:13
  Speaker 4: Well, I think the common answer is well, we want to paint that picture for everybody of what's going on there.
• 11:22
  Speaker 4: I think if you're first and officers understand what the expectation is laid out from the department, then we're more apt to do that on the scene and understand what is that picture that we're painting for everybody else.
• 11:28
  Speaker 4: But really, why does it matter to us?
• 11:30
  Speaker 4: So let's break that down for just a second.
• 11:32
  Speaker 4: So why do we do it?
• 11:33
  Speaker 4: We do it to paint that picture.
• 11:35
  Speaker 4: What are we communicating?
• 11:37
  Speaker 4: Obviously, I think everybody listening to this podcast is familiar with the initial radar report.
• 11:41
  Speaker 4: But we're really doing it so people can start tracking position and function of everybody on the fire ground.
• 11:48
  Speaker 4: What are you doing when you're showing up?
• 11:50
  Speaker 4: We often talk about fires and every fire is not a working fire.
• 11:53
  Speaker 4: Right, there's some systems that are just going to come in and everyone's going to go to work, but I'm going to say a large majority of fires aren't like that.
• 11:59
  Speaker 4: So, having a system in place that you're able to communicate that size up, so everybody understands that, you know, sometimes we're just going to stage until we're given that assignment.
• 12:07
  Speaker 4: That's kind of what we're looking for on the scene.
• 12:11
  Speaker 4: And then when I have critical factors that I'm going to address or tactical priorities that I'm going to address, I have units available and I can put them in the right position.
• 12:20
  Speaker 4: I think when you do a proper size up your fires go out faster with less people because you're actually looking at the critical factors of the building and putting people in position to handle those critical factors quicker and more efficient than just showing up and everybody going to work doing something.
• 12:36
  Speaker 4: Everybody's going to read critical factors a little bit different on the size up and they're going to do things a little bit different based on what their training education experience is.
• 12:44
  Speaker 4: So by having a size up done and following initial rate report and having command it kind of lines everybody out on that same incident action plan.
• 12:54
  Speaker 4: I think that one of the best things that a department can do when we talk about size up is really set that expectation for that first in arriving officer, and what I mean by that is when you're doing your training, we should lay out the expectation of that first in company officer going to show up, do a standard initial radar report, you're going to get out of the rig, do a 360, communicate that fault report.
• 13:16
  Speaker 4: They'd be expected to assign two to three units that are coming into the scene and do a standard transfer of command.
• 13:24
  Speaker 4: We often hear teaching these trainers that, well, how's that person officer going to communicate on the radio, do a 360 and talk into more units?
• 13:30
  Speaker 4: Right, it's too much for them to do.
• 13:32
  Speaker 4: Well, I'll challenge and say that what you simply haven't done in your organization is set that expectation of what we want you to do and then train everybody on that expectation.
• 13:40
  Speaker 4: And you're starting out in a classroom understanding a system.
• 13:43
  Speaker 4: Then you're going to do some simulations sitting in a controlled environment.
• 13:47
  Speaker 4: Then you take it to the drill ground and exercise that.
• 13:49
  Speaker 4: Then you're going to do that on the fire ground when you're actually getting real incidents.
• 13:53
  Speaker 4: But I think that's the key factor is really setting that expectation of what you expect from me as that first-in-officer.
• 14:00
  Speaker 4: Does it happen overnight?
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: No, I don't think it really does.
• 14:04
  Speaker 4: But with training and understanding the why behind it, I think you'll have success within your organization of that standard size-up and really what you want from that first-in-company officer.
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: We talk in Blue Card about size up plus three and it's the expectation of the first arriving officer not only to size up what they have and start to make that incident action plan after giving the description and the problem and everything else, but also think of the first three things that need to happen so they're no longer just in their own company Like this is all we have to do Now.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: They're thinking about what's the next few things that are going to mitigate this situation, make it better, make it safer.
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: So let's address that, what that size up plus three does for the company officers so they start to think differently and more globally and then how that helps ic number two, because it might give ic number two some critical fire ground factors that need to be addressed yeah.
• 15:07
  Speaker 4: so when we talk about the size up plus three, that's the incident commander showing up and then assigning the next three apparatus that show up on the scene, and when we lay out that expectation of the incident commander is going to show up, do initial rate report, get out and do that 360 and communicate a fault report.
• 15:22
  Speaker 4: He has more information than anybody else on the scene of what those critical factors are and where I want to position those people.
• 15:29
  Speaker 4: So by getting out doing a 360, completing it, I'm making decisions based on 100% of that building, looking at all of those critical factors and then deciding what is my top priorities and it can be, depending on the fire, it can be a multitude of different things.
• 15:44
  Speaker 4: But if you don't get out and do that 360, then you really don't know what your next couple assignments are based on the critical factors Some departments deploy in a standard SOP system hey, if that works for you, great.
• 15:55
  Speaker 4: But there's some problems with that because we're not evaluating what those factors are that I need to address right now.
• 16:01
  Speaker 4: That can either hurt us or kill us and or that we can make a difference in this fire.
• 16:05
  Speaker 4: Show up from the cab of the engine, getting out doing a 360, understanding those critical factors of walking around the structure, talking to the RP.
• 16:20
  Speaker 4: If there's people there, or family members Now, they can make the most critical, factor-based decisions because they have the most information.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: And I think to add to that, the 360 is super important, speaking from where I come from in Idaho is we have a lot of daylight basements and so from the front of the house you have a single story house or a two story house.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: You walk around the back you might have one or two more stories that are underground, might be open.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: Most of the time they're open, they're daylight basements.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: What does that mean?
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: I've never heard that term.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: Daylight basement, daylight basement is you just walk out?
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: Oh, okay, it's a walkout basement I guess is another term for it, but we have a lot of those.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: And when you're doing that 360 and you got smoke showing from the Alpha and Charlie side and then you walk around to the Charlie side, you find you got a basement fire.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: That changes everything.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: Your critical factors change at that point of what is the most important place to put water on that fire immediately.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: So for us, and where I come from, it is very important that 360 can give you a lot more critical factors than your basic single story, single family dwelling in the middle of town.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: And it makes a big difference on the call.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: I mean you got swimming pools, you got you got wing walls that you could drop off eight feet.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: You need to communicate all of those things to the, to the incoming people that are that are coming in.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: I mean, the 360 was probably the biggest game changer in our organization when we started doing the system.
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and I'll just tack on to what both of these guys said.
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: You know, I mean we could probably print out you know two inches high worth of NIOSH reports that all relate back to not doing a proper 360.
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: You know a lot of those are just what Greg was saying.
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: You know it's an active basement fire working over an active basement fire, so you know we could print out NIOSH reports for that all day long.
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: You know, it's all about just like Eric said.
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: It's all about the critical factors.
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: We have to evaluate those critical factors.
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: We have to plug them into that strategic decision-making model using our risk management plan that Chief Bruno gave us way back when and that spits out our strategy, which we know there's only two strategies.
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: We're either going to be offensive or defensive.
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: From that strategy we're going to develop our incident action plan and then we use whatever your organization's SOPs or your tactics are, to enact that incident action plan and then we revise and evaluate that plan.
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: You know Eric briefly mentioned SOP-related command systems.
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: They don't utilize critical factors.
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: You know it's like first, do pulls up, always does this.
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: Second, do pulls up, always does this.
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: Well, pulls up, always does this.
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: Well.
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: We know in our business?
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: Just in the emergency service business.
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: Take firefighting out of it Just emergency service business.
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: There's no such thing.
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: As always, everything is dynamic.
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: In everything that we do, everything has to be surveyed, analyzed and acted upon.
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: We can't just go out and start divvying out assignments because that's what it says in a book.
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: Right and you know, back to NIOSH reports.
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: We know a lot of those NIOSH reports.
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: They were command failures because oftentimes there wasn't either command training, there wasn't communication training and there was a lack of ongoing size up because there was a lack of situational awareness.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: That occurs from not training your people to continue to size up.
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: So when we talk about tactical size up, what does that mean and how do we continue tactically to size this up?
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: And then we'll talk about strategic out in the car in a little bit.
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: But let's talk tactical size up and what officers should be looking for as they continue to reevaluate the structure once tasks are taking place.
• 20:22
  Speaker 4: I think when you think of the critical factors, we know that there's eight major categories when we talk about critical factors and there's about 64 or so subcategories.
• 20:31
  Speaker 4: And, as my friend Chris Stewart would say, when everything is critical, nothing becomes critical.
• 20:36
  Speaker 4: So as an incident commander and I mean IC1 or IC2, we have to be able to look at the critical factors and determine what are my top three priorities that I'm going to start to address.
• 20:46
  Speaker 4: So fire, because we're going to a fire and we're talking about ideal agent fires, fire is always going to be a critical factor and we look at the size, extent and location of the fire.
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: That becomes very important to all the tactical decisions that are going to happen there after you do your initial radar report.
• 21:02
  Speaker 4: So when you think about that first in-company officer specifically and I'll just talk about them is I'm given my best estimate from the front seat of the cab, right.
• 21:10
  Speaker 4: Sometimes it's through my engineer's big fat head, maybe it's on my side, but I'm given my best guess.
• 21:14
  Speaker 4: We get out, we do that 360, we get more information.
• 21:17
  Speaker 4: Sometimes we're right from the cab of the engine, sometimes we're wrong.
• 21:21
  Speaker 4: As incident commanders we got to have the ability to say hey, you know, we look at the structure, we size it up, I get out, I do my 360.
• 21:29
  Speaker 4: You know what I say.
• 21:29
  Speaker 4: The size, extent and location might be wrong or might be a little different than how I read this fire.
• 21:33
  Speaker 4: And now we got to tactically do something different.
• 21:36
  Speaker 4: Greg brought up basements.
• 21:37
  Speaker 4: From the front of it it looked like we had smoke from the Charlie side, maybe the first or second floor and we get around back and we identify that it's actually a basement fire.
• 21:44
  Speaker 4: Tactically, now that we have that new critical factor, we have to do something different.
• 21:49
  Speaker 4: And when you have a system in place that allows you to exercise it and make, adapt and make changes because of the critical factors that you now identify, you're going to be more successful on the scene a putting the fire out faster, searching and finding victims quicker, having fire control done quicker, because I can adjust my plan or my AAP my IAP based off of those critical factors when I identify them.
• 22:14
  Speaker 4: So I think, tactically speaking, we got to understand the critical factors.
• 22:19
  Speaker 4: But, more important, we got to understand when we identify something that's different, how do we communicate that to an incident command, using the tickets to get on the radio with, say, priority traffic, or in the follow-up report we're going to change our incident action plan.
• 22:30
  Speaker 4: Can we identify that there's a basement fire?
• 22:32
  Speaker 4: Well, we got to have the confidence that in the system it allows us to do it and we feel confident that we can communicate that over the radio.
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, If I could just take that a step further.
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: You know we talk about when IC2 arrives, the BC first do BC, right, he arrives on the scene, gets prepared to do a command transfer.
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: Well, he's also doing the same thing.
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: You know, he's evaluating the building.
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: He or she's evaluating the building from the exterior.
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: They're looking at critical factors from the chief's buggy.
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: They're looking first off is the actions matching the conditions for the right outcome?
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: Right, that's one of the first slides in the day one PowerPoint, right?
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: So we want to make sure that what we're doing is being effective on what we have to do, correct?
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: If not, we need to make some changes and make them in a hurry, right?
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: So that's the first thing that the strategic BC or the strategic IC needs to evaluate.
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: Then we've got to track all our resources, all that good stuff, give the command transfer or give the position and function to IC1, and then make sure we get a CAN report from them and reevaluate that before we do that proper command transfer.
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: So it carries one step further, even into that strategic IC2 role.
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: Now let's visit for a second.
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: If you don't do that, what happens?
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: We talked about automatic assignments and how that works until it doesn't and we see when it doesn't.
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: But what if you're not training your people to assess critical fire ground factors and effectively size up?
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: What's the inverse of that?
• 24:06
  Speaker 4: Well, we call that accidental success and unfortunately in the fire service we see accidental success a large majority of the time.
• 24:12
  Speaker 4: And then what I noticed is that we see when we get one of those fires that that happens on it's accidental success or the fire doesn't go well.
• 24:21
  Speaker 4: What do we typically hear?
• 24:22
  Speaker 4: Oh, this fire just really got us.
• 24:24
  Speaker 4: This fire was just a little bit different than the last ones.
• 24:26
  Speaker 4: No, it was a fire in a building that we didn't properly size up.
• 24:29
  Speaker 4: We didn't use the critical factors, because the last 10 fires we did the same exact thing and this fire was a little bit different.
• 24:34
  Speaker 4: We didn't overcome it.
• 24:35
  Speaker 4: It's just like in a sports team running the same play, getting success, and then they switch up the play but the defense doesn't react.
• 24:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah, no, you guys saw, but you didn't react to those critical factors of the players moving on the field and adjusting same thing.
• 24:48
  Speaker 4: In the fire service we did as incident commanders.
• 24:50
  Speaker 4: We didn't adjust to that new play.
• 24:51
  Speaker 4: We thought we would just run that same play that we ran yesterday on a little room and contents fire.
• 24:56
  Speaker 4: We thought we'd do that same thing in a big box and we just got our ass kicked by it.
• 24:59
  Speaker 4: And then we're surprised why that is.
• 25:01
  Speaker 4: Well, that's because standard orders we're not assessing with a model, using the critical factors, sizing it up, making assignments based off of those critical factors that I see on this incident, not the one that we seen 10 incidents ago, the one that we see right now, and so that's to me, I think one of the big things that just drives me nuts is the accidental success.
• 25:23
  Speaker 4: And then, when something doesn't go right, we hear a lot of things like oh, this fire was just a little bit different, they're all different.
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: You know we're a data-driven American fire service, right, and we see in the data, especially like Project Mayday and NIOSH reports and things like that, the countless numbers of line of duty deaths that we've had over the last 30, 40 years that have all been due to utilizing residential tactics in commercial buildings and a lot of times even operating in the wrong strategy.
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: And I think a lot of that is exactly what Eric's talking about.
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: It's because we're not evaluating those critical factors, we're not taking into account that, hey, this building is not a one to two family dwelling.
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: This is a much larger building that's constructed a lot differently, that has a much different fire load and all those kinds of things that with an SOP system, you just do not take into account.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: This all really dovetails into our strategy and our risk management plan and I know we're going to talk to Chris about the risk management plan coming up on a podcast.
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: But I want to check in with you guys on this because there was a social media firefighter that posted about you know, maybe the risk management plan is outdated, what does it really mean?
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: Now I watch that and I say, well, you know, maybe the risk management plan is outdated, what does it really mean?
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: Now I watch that and I say, well, you obviously have not been trained on what the risk management plan is and how you manage that.
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: Risking a lot to save a lot.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: That should be very apparent because it's part of the critical fire ground factors.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: And painting blue card as a non-rescue system is absolute hogwash.
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, because we are.
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: I mean, we put life safety first when it's necessary to put life safety first, but we also put a.
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: There was a survey just done in minnesota that the state fire marshal's office put out out of 67 000 fires, there were 363 rescues less than 1%.
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: So yes, that matters to those 363 people, it matters that they get rescued, but it also matters that we're addressing the fire problem.
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: So A it doesn't become bigger and we're providing for the safety of the workers that we're putting inside of that hazard zone.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: So you guys talk about risk management a little bit and how these critical fire ground factors and size-up really works along with that.
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: Well, I'll say this I don't think anybody has more of an aggressive search culture than my organization, and we have the audio and the helmet cam footage to prove it.
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: Yes, you do.
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: We are a very aggressive department when it comes to search, but we're very big on searching searchable space.
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: We don't use survivable, we use searchable space.
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: Right, that's a new term for us, but I will say this we have to be able to maintain this.
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: We have to keep the searchable space searchable and the only way we can do that is to address the fire.
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: And you know, we have the luxury in my organization to where we can put units on the scene very quickly, to where we can address both of those critical factors simultaneously.
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: We can address the search and fire control at the same time, or very near or close to each other, right?
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: So typically, as that engine crew is going in the front door of that house to begin fire control, we've got a truck company that's going through the bedroom window to VEIS and we've proven to be very successful with that.
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: But there again, if you don't have fire control and you're not maintaining that searchable space, then bad things are going to happen.
• 28:53
  Speaker 4: You hear a lot of this on social media and some people bringing it up.
• 28:56
  Speaker 4: My question is everyone wants to use this word aggressive.
• 28:59
  Speaker 4: Can anyone tell me a fire department that says we're not aggressive?
• 29:03
  Speaker 4: So we can say a lot of things and type a lot of things out there that really mean nothing and have no context.
• 29:09
  Speaker 4: So I challenge those people that you know say we don't do that in the blue card system, search spaces that can be searched, have a risk management plan that aren't aggressive, this and that.
• 29:17
  Speaker 4: Who exactly are they talking about?
• 29:19
  Speaker 4: I challenge them Tell me, same as Steve in our system, we're going to do the system.
• 29:23
  Speaker 4: We're going to first pull a line fire control, primary search.
• 29:27
  Speaker 4: As we get more units on scene, we're going to split that up, start doing searches in different areas, all while addressing the fire, as that goes.
• 29:34
  Speaker 4: So I think it's real easy to hide behind that word aggressive.
• 29:38
  Speaker 4: And what does that really mean?
• 29:40
  Speaker 4: And who exactly are you talking about when you say who's not doing that?
• 29:44
  Speaker 4: I don't know any fire departments that show up to a fire and be like you know what.
• 29:47
  Speaker 4: I don't think we're going to search that building.
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: I haven't met one yet.
• 29:50
  Speaker 4: I don't know if you guys have or know who Not the fire departments we work with.
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: I don't know if you guys have or know who Not the fire departments we work with None that I've worked with.
• 29:55
  Speaker 4: So I think a lot of it's kind of a PR stunt to get some social media likes because it sounds cool, but I think most of it's honestly.
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: BS and a lot of it's noise.
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: We shouldn't pay attention to it, but you know we see it.
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: I'll ask you know, just like I asked our class, how many do we have 16 in the class 16.
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: No one's ever heard of some of the noise that's out there when I bring it up, so it's like I don't even know why.
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: I think to us it matters because sometimes it influences some of our younger firefighters.
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: I've had younger firefighters go to class and when I say younger firefighters, inexperienced firefighters or you know newer firefighters, and they go to these classes and I had one that went to a class where a lot of the techniques I'm I'm a hundred percent on board on, exactly.
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: But then, the.
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: The one of the instructors was bad mouth and blue card and call it the wussification of the American fire service and all of this stuff.
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: Because I think folks, those folks want to self-actualize when they get to the scene.
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: They they don't want to be told what to do.
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: They want, they want to be able to do it for themselves.
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: And if you're that strong of a leader that that you know your companies can do auto deployment and they're that good.
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: Um, how, how do you replicate that?
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: How do you make sure that jimmy over on ladder four is as good as the guy on rescue one?
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: Well, they're probably not, I mean.
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: And how do you train that and everything else?
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: So that's why we have a system with blue card that's trainable, movable, uh is always evolving because we're in the revision, uh, command function seven all the time.
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: But I I think it's a lot of noise and we probably shouldn't give it as much credence as we do.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: I mean, our organization is small.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: Compared to the two organizations of the guys I'm sitting with here.
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: I'm super small.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: We got three stations.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: We have a lot of automatic aid and mutual aid agreements and so on and so forth, but you know, our three units cover 165 square miles.
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: It's not all populated, but some of our response times are 20, 30 minutes.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: In some places we get to do the same things that that that these two organizations, that that these guys are working for, have so many units on scene at one time.
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: We're getting there one at a time, a few minutes apart.
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: We're doing the best that we can.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: We're gonna, we're gonna put water on the fire from the exterior.
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: You can call it wussy eyes in the fire service or whatever, but my folks are just trying to keep themselves safe and make the house, or whatever it is that's on fire, better for the people that may or may not be inside Keeping the searchable space searchable.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: Keeping the searchable space searchable and we're going to search.
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: We're going to go in there and we're going to search after or at the same time, we're doing fire control, just with three engines on scene.
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: And that's most of the American fire service.
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: Greg, yeah, it really is.
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think most, most fire departments are five stations, I mean on the average.
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: So that's, that's really more like what the fire service looks like.
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: But but we're all trying to do the same thing and get the same thing done.
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: I remember one more thing, john.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: I remember several years ago sitting at a table with Nick and Big Al and we were talking about our fire department and the size of it and what we respond with and how we respond.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: And he said Big Al sat back in his chair and he says, basically, you're doing the right thing because you don't have any other personnel to do the wrong thing.
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: That's a good point.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: And you know, I thought about it for a minute.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: I was like what's he talking about?
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: But applying water from the exterior, sometimes we have to do that.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: But applying water from the exterior, sometimes we have to do that.
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: That's the only way that it keeps it safe for our people to go in and to help the searchable space be safe.
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: And that always stuck with me.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: It's one of those things I'll never forget.
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: Well, we're going to take a little bit of a break because we have a storm coming in right behind us and we are outside, if you're watching this on video.
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: So we're going to come back for part two of this conversation, but you'll notice a change in video, I'm sure, as we will not be sitting here in just a few minutes.
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: Stand by, we're back.
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: We're actually back and we're inside because it's storming outside.
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: I I just saw a flash of lightning, so we looked at the risk of sitting out in a thunderstorm with a lot of electrical activity and we figured it would be best to come inside.
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: We evaluated that critical factor and we applied the risk management model.
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: That's right and we risked nothing to save nothing.
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: We were in the red yeah we were in the red, so here we are back in, at least the yellow for right now.
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: So we're going to get back to sizing up and that conversation that we started earlier.
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: You had a point to be made about rescue Eric and how that number one is a critical fire ground factor and how that really relates to the rest of the plan on the scene.
• 35:18
  Speaker 4: So I think when we're talking about search and rescue, that's one assignment on the fire ground when you look at the grand scheme of the incident.
• 35:25
  Speaker 4: So I think one of the coolest things that we identified in the last couple of weeks is we had a fire department doing an after action and they identified that they ended up making a rescue on this incident and it was great.
• 35:36
  Speaker 4: They ended up finding a victim, pulling them out, transport them to hospital and I believe that they had a good outcome from it.
• 35:42
  Speaker 4: But in the after action it was determined that the unit that did that showed up on scene, never announced they were on scene and there was no tracking of that of that company.
• 35:50
  Speaker 4: And the person doing the after action identified that, hey, great job at finding the victim, rescuing him, but we had no idea that you were there.
• 35:59
  Speaker 4: And he said in his after action great job, Don't ever do that again.
• 36:03
  Speaker 4: And what he meant by that is that just that one action.
• 36:06
  Speaker 4: He went on to explain the why behind is that if there was a mayday of that crew, he had no idea what that crew was doing.
• 36:12
  Speaker 4: So you can't just show up and go to work, because you're one part of a bigger incident and I think Grant Light says it best is that our fire department's dirty little secret is it's all about them until it's about us.
• 36:25
  Speaker 4: And when you really think about that, in that instance of that after action, if they would have had a mayday in, that fire possibly would have not turned out good because nobody even knew that that crew showed up on scene.
• 36:34
  Speaker 4: Great job making the rescue.
• 36:35
  Speaker 4: We're going to continue to do that.
• 36:37
  Speaker 4: Just let's go about it a little bit different way.
• 36:39
  Speaker 4: So I can track you when you show up on scene by announcing that you're on scene, level one staging.
• 36:44
  Speaker 4: Then I'm going to give you assignments so we can track position and function.
• 36:46
  Speaker 4: Heaven forbid, you have that mayday event.
• 36:49
  Speaker 4: So I think we often try to segment like it's all about search or it's all about this or it's all about that, when really it's just one component of a big incident and that incident commander has to put that pieces of the puzzles together to have a good outcome size up.
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: We talked about the company officer responsibilities.
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: Let's talk about size up for ic number two and the can reports that they're getting in, and and how do we continue to size up from that IC number two position.
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: So you've got to utilize your resources, jv, you've got to utilize your resources getting those CAN reports.
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: So you know we teach in the blue card command system that the IC is driving the communication process right.
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: So if his buggy's parked out on the alpha side and he or she's got a full view of the structure, they see some type of change in conditions.
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: Typically it's further bad right or things just aren't getting better.
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: You know, we've got multiple lines deployed, we've got multiple crews assigned and things just aren't getting better.
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: It's that IC number two's responsibility to start asking those can reports and getting that information from those interior crews.
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 38:00
  Speaker 3: So if I'm sitting in the buggy, I'm a strategic IC, I look at the building.
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: Things just aren't getting better.
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: I'm going to say Command Engine One hey, I'm not seeing a change in conditions here.
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: You guys have been working for about 10 minutes.
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: Can you give me a can report?
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: You know, and that's vital information, because more than likely if you're not seeing a change in conditions, that means they're not getting the work done in there for whatever reason.
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: So you're probably the feedback's probably going to be engine one to command.
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, be advised, we're unable to make the seat of the fire, we've got high heat conditions.
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: Things just aren't working out in here.
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: We need to be reinforced, and those are those clues that that I see should start looking into, as that, as we talk about in Mayday management, the Swiss cheese lining up, you know those are.
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: Those are times that I see really has to evaluate is what we're doing here based on our risk management model?
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: Is what, how we're operating here, what's best for the overall outcome?
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: And that's where most likely a strategic shift needs to happen.
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: That's where most likely a strategic shift needs to happen.
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, just like today, we're going through residential and we're getting a CAN report from Ladder 1 that's on the second floor, and they're cutting.
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: You know, they knocked a hole in the ceiling and they got nothing.
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: They see nothing.
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: They searched the rooms up there, they got nothing.
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: They opened up the ceiling, they got nothing, and then all the ceiling, they got nothing.
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: And then, all of a sudden, the IC has got no way.
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: We have to change the strategy.
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: They got void space that the latter one knows nothing about, and they have to change that strategy and shift to a defensive fire in that building, to a defensive fire in that building?
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: And how do you connect to that as a company officer, to knowing, now that you're trained in Blue Card, your lead instructor, but you're a company officer trained in Blue Card, knowing the perspective of IC number two and how all of that needs to match up?
• 39:52
  Speaker 4: I think it's critical.
• 39:53
  Speaker 4: I know that my CAN reports have become better because of the training and actually fulfilling that IC number two role in the sim lab.
• 40:00
  Speaker 4: But I think what really drove home at home this week for us is we had a battalion chief that says that they get out of the vehicle because the CAN reports aren't good from their company officer.
• 40:11
  Speaker 4: So to compensate for that they want to be up there, see it, smell it and be out of the vehicle when in reality it's the only reason it was identified is because those CAN reports weren't good.
• 40:19
  Speaker 4: So that's going to be worse off.
• 40:23
  Speaker 4: For us that are going on the inside is that number one IC.
• 40:25
  Speaker 4: So when we look at that and we hear that, I think we should all do a little self-reflection and ask ourselves really, from a company officer perspective, how are our CAN reports doing?
• 40:35
  Speaker 4: I may think I'm doing a really good job, but if I'm not conveying the correct and pertinent information to the person on the outside, it's going to do a couple things.
• 40:42
  Speaker 4: One, tactical decisions aren't going to be made correctly because I'm not giving them the key information that they need.
• 40:48
  Speaker 4: Two, it's going to create more radio traffic because now it's that back and forth chatter because you're trying to get some key information from me.
• 40:54
  Speaker 4: So what do we do about it?
• 40:56
  Speaker 4: One, we got to identify that we can do better and we can train on it.
• 41:00
  Speaker 4: But really the IC number one and IC number two need to have a conversation, identify what will help you out on the outside for my reports on the inside, these type of buildings, these are the critical factors that from the interior I can't see.
• 41:13
  Speaker 4: So I need you to identify these type of critical factors when you look at the system and you look at that one slide that says can reports, just under C there's like 11 things that you can identify that you need to report on Now as an incident, as a company officer inside.
• 41:29
  Speaker 4: I'm not going to talk about all 11 categories, but I got to be able to choose this type of building, this type of fire.
• 41:35
  Speaker 4: These are the key critical factors that he's probably going to want to hear on the outside.
• 41:39
  Speaker 4: So let me convey those in the form of a CAN report to give that information.
• 41:43
  Speaker 4: So we often talk about it's 50% on IC number one, which is that company officer giving good information, good initial rate reports, good size up, assigning task, location, objective and giving good CAN reports and it's 50% on that IC number two to have a good incident.
• 42:00
  Speaker 4: So CAN reporting, challenge yourself, see how it is, talk to each other and see if you can get better.
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: All right, gentlemen, do you have anything else that we want to add?
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: to size up before we close this topic out, now that we're inside and out of the rain, you know Andy Fredericks, one of his big quotes was so goes the first dew, so goes the fire.
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: And you know we talk about all of Andy's stuff and you know, I know they put out the book of Andy and it's actually published now.
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: I actually had to gather my copy from years and years of printing off articles from fire engineering but now it's published into one big book, which I think is great and I think we could take a lot from that.
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: So goes the first do, so goes the fire.
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: We have to do that proper size up.
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: We have to address the fire, we have to address all the critical factors and we have to keep searchable space searchable.
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: So yeah, I think that's important and we can't get upset about it.
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: You know we can't get all flustered.
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: We have to maintain our control.
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: You guys know I'm the three C's guy.
• 43:03
  Speaker 3: You know Confidence, confidence and control.
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: We have to maintain self-control.
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: Another great thing that Andy said is the garbage man doesn't round the corner and see a mound of garbage and get upset about it.
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, he's expecting a mound of garbage when he rounds the corner into your neighborhood.
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: So when we round the corner and we see a working fire, we should be expecting that and we should have self-control and be able to handle that situation.
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: I had a neighboring fire chief absolutely refuse to do blue card.
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: They had their reasons for it.
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: They were not very good reasons, but that person would hyperventilate and scream and yell on the radio and like there was one time.
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: I'm sitting at my desk listening to their fire and I could feel my blood pressure and heart rate go up, and I'm in an office 15 miles away.
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: So imagine what those firefighters on the scene are feeling when, when they're getting screamed at on the radio by an ic who's supposed to have control.
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: Hey, before we go, you guys want to do.
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: A timeless tactical truth sounds good, all right.
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: Timeless tactical truth from alan brunasini and this one is from the soon to be released timeless tactical truths.
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: I want to let everyone know as we speak, the Timeless Tactical Truth book Is being reprinted and will be available at bshiftercom Probably within the next month or so.
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: So look for Timeless Tactical Truths.
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: We'll have it at the Hazard Zone Conference this year too.
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: And we thought it was lost.
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: But you're bringing it back.
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: Right, we're bringing it back.
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: That's awesome.
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: So the first volume is coming back and then there'll be a new volume too, because I have a treasure trove of Timeless Tactical Truths that he's written that have not been published yet.
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: And this is an unpublished one, and it says the measurement should give the participants self-control.
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: So measurement should give participants self-control.
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: So measurement should give participants self-control.
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: Eric mr aar, who's developed a measurement system, let's talk about self-control.
• 45:02
  Speaker 4: And you know, bruno talked a lot about human behavior stuff and and you know, and I think this is not only being measurable but it also lets people know there's some checks and balances on things I think anytime that you know that you're being measured based off of the expectation and the training of your fire department, it seems to help everybody's game and it seems to keep everybody on that track that is already laid.
• 45:25
  Speaker 4: So I think that I think the best quote still still lies is you can't manage something you can't measure.
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I would just tack on to that.
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: You know, I mean there's a lot of things when we talk about self-control, there's a lot of self techniques that you can do to overcome that.
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: You know there's there's box breathing uh there's just taking slow, deep breaths and uh, you know, just slowing down that heart rate, decreasing that catecholamine response in order, in order to get self-control.
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: Uh, I cover a lot of that in my three C's of command presence class.
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: But yeah, I mean that's important and we talk about in that class as well.
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: It's two-dimensional, you know you have to get control over yourself, but also your people have to see that you have self-control as an IC.
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: You know both IC1 and IC2.
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: I think that's important.
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: And there needs to be a degree of accountability for being under control too.
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: If you had somebody who was out of control as a company officer, what would you do?
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: And I'm talking about on scene, out of control.
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: Well, we'd have to address that.
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: We'd have to address that with number one.
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: You know, we've got to make them self-aware.
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: Of course, that's probably the problem to start with is that they're not aware of it.
• 46:37
  Speaker 3: So we would need to make them aware and then do everything we can to help them through through training, through educating them about those self techniques.
• 46:44
  Speaker 3: You know, a lot of it just comes with experience.
• 46:47
  Speaker 3: You know and I've talked about this before you know that's why we don't allow three year firefighters to test for battalion chief, allow three-year firefighters to test for battalion chief.
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: You know you have to get those sets and reps under your belt in the real world in order to be able to function and have that self-control and be competent and confident as well.
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: It has to be something that you've practiced and that you've been in situations before.
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: And I think the measurement never ends.
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: So once you measure one segment of whatever it is in the fire service that we're doing, you got to measure the next segment and you got to keep on moving the bar forward, keep measuring.
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: Well, gents, thanks for hanging out with us today on the B Shifter podcast here in Daytona Beach.
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: We are lucky to be in such a great location.
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: Next week we're going to be at FRI at the I Chiefs Conference, so I'll be there with Josh and Chris and we'll be back with another On the Road podcast there In the meantime.
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: Thanks so much for listening to B Shifter.
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: We'll talk to you next time, thank you.