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Training Scars · B Shifter

• 0:39
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• 0:53
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• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the B-Shifter podcast.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: We've got John Vance here today, along with Josh Bloom, and we will have a panel of esteemed fire service professionals checking in with us today because our topic is training scars.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: Checking in with us today because our topic is training scars, which really are a lot of times a symptom of organizational scars, things that are left over from past generations of leaders and trainers, or just something that you do within your organization because that's the way you've always done it.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: So we'll get more into that today.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: It's really an insightful topic and we'd like you to share what you believe your training scars are, or training scars that you've witnessed in the fire service since you've been in.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: So we'll make this interactive today.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: We'd love to hear from you, and I think this is an ongoing topic because it really helps us identify ways to improve training and ways to improve our organizations.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: So, before we get started on that, how are you doing today, josh?
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: It's May, 1st May Day.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the first day of May.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: I'm doing really good.
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: It's happy to be on here today.
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: Weather finally broke here in Cincinnati so got a lot of Blue Card's, got a lot of stuff going on, been connecting a lot with the ARF folks that are looking to connect with the ARF certification program, and then the conference only being five months away, is you know, that's right, it's coming right up on us now so that registration's really been picking up.
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: And then, um, trying to find room in our schedule to, you know, accommodate some of the classes that people are looking for.
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: So, um, it's good, I mean we're, we're, uh, we're not booked up through the end of the year, but we have limited availability, I would say, between now and the end of the year for any classes.
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: There's only one big box class really with any seats in it.
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: Left've got a couple that are full, but the Windsor Colorado big box class the first part of July has some seats open in it and then that's it until 2026 for the big box classes.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: And then for the conference we have a hotel block available that has either 160 rooms or less, depending on if they're getting booked up right now.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: So we really want to encourage people, along with getting the early bird price for the Blue Cart Hazard Zone Conference, coming to the Cincinnati area in September.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: October End of September really is our workshops.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: We have various workshops there and then the general conference October 2nd and 3rd.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: We have two hotels we're affiliated with.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: The one is our preferred hotel and how many rooms are left, and these are really deep discounts that people are going to be able to get if they follow the link, either on the B-Shifter site or if they get into the show notes.
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so the Hyatt connected to the convention center.
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: I think they might have like 40 rooms maybe left.
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: Um, and their rate again, they kept us at the same rate we've had for the last two years that we've been there.
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: So I think the most expensive room is one 49 and but they have a room down to one 29.
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: And then, uh, that Delta hotel by Marriott that's across the street, you know, still right there, super close, their room rates $129 a night, so that's about $100 off the price of any of the other hotels.
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, take advantage of getting your rooms booked in that hotel room block, uh, before those rooms are sold out.
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: And we've had quite an uptick this weekend in registration for the conference.
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: So, um, I think it, I think it, we a little over a hundred and some seats went out this week I think when I'd looked there was like 350 seats left, maybe total, for the conference.
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: So, um, and then obviously with that, the workshops are starting to fill up.
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: So that Mayday workshop, you know we had a hundred people last year and it's it's filling up very quickly.
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: Now Also it's over halfway full.
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: And then, uh, we got that critical thinking, strategic decision-making model, you know, workshop that's filling up, uh, the, the expanded command workshop that has seats left in it, the safety train the trainer.
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: So, on that we've the safety train the trainer.
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: The two day classroom you leave with the curriculum package it does not include the prop, obviously is three 45.
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: So you get the two full days of classroom and the entire curriculum package and then the prop would be made available to you at a much discounted rate compared to us sending instructors on site, you know, to your organization to do to do that train the trainer.
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: And then we still got the certification lab post.
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: So we've had quite a bit of interest in it.
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: We're just waiting to see how that goes.
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah, a lot of stuff going on.
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: Um, you know it always comes up in his ass because, uh, through through cities and HR and all those people that take care of, uh, uh, the booking and so on, uh, lunches provided both days, snacks and beverages uh, actually not both days, every day.
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: So if you're in a workshop, lunch is provided too.
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: And then, um, that thursday night we're going to do that meet and greet again at the third eye brewing, which is always good.
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: Last year it was really nice outside and it was packed everywhere inside, outside upstairs.
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: You know it was.
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: That was good.
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: It's always a good good to network and connect with everybody and meet with all the b shifters out there from you know Massachusetts to California and Washington to Florida, and then you know our, our Canadian friends, and you know people, really people, from all around the world.
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: So, uh, yeah, we're looking forward to it.
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: And just five months away, so, uh, yeah, take advantage of the, of the early bird pricing and getting your hotel room blocked.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: Bshiftercom.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: Go there to get all the information and also to sign up.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: So we'd love to see you in Sharonville at the end of September, beginning of October, for the 2025 Blue Card Hazard Zone Conference.
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: John, something that always comes up from that and that people.
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: People read past it, I guess.
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: But if your fire department is putting anybody online, you know you're going to pay $385 for an online account.
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: So if you register somebody at $485, we give you a free online account.
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: So it's really, if you were going to put one person online at your fire department, it's costing you $100 to come to the two-day conference.
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: You know as far as the conference price.
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, it's a good deal, you can take advantage of it.
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: And if you sign up five people, then you get five, you know, online accounts transferable to anybody in your own organization within the year.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: And to get the lodging for the prices that we have it too.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: It's just you can't find that you and I are attending some conferences this year and we are paying, I think, quadruple wherever we're going for any rooms.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: So we have a great value with the rooms, yeah for sure.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: All right, see you in Cincinnati, it'll be a good one.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: So today, the topic training scars, organizational scars.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: We had a really busy week last week at the AVBCTC while we were doing a train the trainer class.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: There was a number of things going on in town, including some NFPA meetings visited by Dan Madrakowski, keith Stakes, some other people stopped by during the week, so it was really cool to be able to sit down and talk to people.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: And one of these topics that came up in the lunchroom while we're eating pizza one day was training scars and what training scars are, how they manifest themselves in your organization out in the field, while we're actually delivering service.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: So I think it would be good to go to Dan Madrakowski first to set this up, because he has a good explanation and a good example of some training scars.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: Then we'll come back and talk about what Dan has to say, and then we're also joined today by Chris Stewart, pat Dale, keith Stakes, nick Bernasini and Terry Garrison.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: Then Josh has some examples that we'll do on the back end too.
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: So really chock full episode today.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: We're glad you're here.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: Let's go over to Dan Madrakowski talking about training scars, the flow walk right.
• 9:52
  Speaker 5: Many times the firefighter goes into their big day in suppression in the Class A burn building and they're told don't put the fire out.
• 10:01
  Speaker 5: And that is a muscle memory that they take with them to the field such that when we're doing acquired structure burns and doing research and we want them to flow water, we've got gauges on the hose line so we want to measure how much water it takes to put that fire out.
• 10:17
  Speaker 5: And they're effectively doing soda pop firefighting and not letting it flow.
• 10:23
  Speaker 5: So again, some people are teaching penciling and some of the flashover simulators.
• 10:27
  Speaker 5: What we want the message to be out there is you should be flowing and moving.
• 10:31
  Speaker 5: If you have a vent, limited fire condition, heavy black smoke coming out of a door or over your head, you should be flowing from that point and just flow and move and keep going and that'll be effective for you to keep it from flashing over.
• 10:44
  Speaker 5: Keep it from flashing over behind you and if there's victims in front of you, it'll start cooling it off for them as well.
• 10:51
  Speaker 5: It's really hard to burn things that are wet.
• 10:54
  Speaker 5: Another training scar unrelated to suppression is the emergency activation button.
• 11:00
  Speaker 5: We've been involved in a number of near misses emergency activation button.
• 11:06
  Speaker 5: We've been involved in a number of near misses and one of the things that come up in the review of the incidents are how come the firefighters never push their EAB?
• 11:13
  Speaker 5: And that is a training scar from the academy where, if you have all your radios in there on your CAD system, what do you tell the cadet?
• 11:20
  Speaker 5: Do not push that.
• 11:22
  Speaker 5: Never push that right.
• 11:24
  Speaker 5: So really you need to get some radios that are not part of the CAD system that you can use for training so they get it in their muscle memory to push that button and see what happens.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: So that's Dan Madrykowski from FSRI talking about training scars.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: A couple of them.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: First of all, let's talk about that penciling, moving and flowing water, and we see it happen all the time.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: I've seen it in the field.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: I've been seeing it for 20 years plus, since we've been using the flashover chamber, because you take brand new firefighters, we bring them into these flashover containers it's the first time that they're in any kind of heat and smoke and then we're telling them pencil it, pencil it, so they're not putting the fire out and we're getting the desired fire behavior.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: While we want to create that fire behavior, that's a good thing.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: We're also reinforcing some muscle memory there, as Dan points out, of not flowing water and actually putting the fire out.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: Your thoughts on that, josh?
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean we've seen that for about my entire career.
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: You know you're in the burn building and you want to be able to get the fire going again.
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: So you don't want water everywhere because, like Dan said, anything that's wet it's really hard to burn.
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: So we, we, we default to trying to fix the problem by not having them put as much water on the fire and that that becomes a problem.
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: I mean, I've read some near miss reports in the last couple of years where you know, companies got caught and the person on the nozzle quit flowing water and it's like it doesn't hurt to flow water.
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: Keep, keep flowing water, right.
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: So I mean I really don't have much else to say, but what Dan said there, right, I mean, he, he knows and he sees it.
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: And then when they're doing, you know, field exercises, I know that they have to communicate to those people.
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: Hey, we want you to put this fire all the way out and we want you to flow water until the fire is completely out.
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: And whether we put 50 gallons in a room or put 300, 400, 500 gallons in a room, you know it's don't matter, there's water in the room or in that space now anyway.
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: So yeah, that's a.
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: That's a.
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's a simple one, but it's one that makes a big difference for sure.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: EAB button that Dan brings up, because this is kind of a cultural, a controversial issue in a way, because there's a lot of us, including the departments I've been with, where we don't even activate the EAB button because of past false trips.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: Now today we posted on B shiftercom or yesterday a NIOSH report out of North Carolina just released this week.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: We will include that NIOSH report in the show notes.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: A firefighter who was killed in the line of duty during an apartment fire During the May Day.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: The EAB button was pushed.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: They were having some trouble with the radio system.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: There were bonks, it points out in the NIOSH report.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: The EAB button was pushed.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: So I think that's a tie-in and we'll include that report.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: But what's your thoughts on?
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: The EAB button was pushed.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: So I think that's a tie-in and we'll include that report.
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: But what's your thoughts on the EAB button, as we continue to talk about this topic?
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: So the EAB button to me is like it's like any other piece of technology, right?
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: I mean, there's people out there who still, no way possible, don't ever use it, don't push it.
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: This is what it does.
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: Well, the bigger problem is we have a, we have a portable radio.
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: That's thousands of dollars, that has technology in it that we, the fire service, use 10% of and maybe we use more than that.
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: But you know, in all honesty, you know there's a thousand channels in that radio.
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: I can talk to everybody in the state of Ohio, kentucky, indiana.
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: It can be tracked via GPS.
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: They can turn it on at the dispatch center.
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: They can turn it off at the dispatch center.
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: They can patch it, they can make my radio switch channels.
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: I mean they could do all of that from the dispatch center.
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: So the biggest issue with the EAB thing to me is we didn't know how it worked, we don't know what it does, we didn't know that it is programmable like it is.
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: We took the approach of oh, that's for the police department, so that they can push the button so it doesn't look like they're talking on the radio or they're fighting somebody, they can push the button when in reality is, if you set it up properly, it will do exactly what you want it to do.
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: It's like any other programmable button that's on any electronic device out there.
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: And you know, niosh actually released a bulletin, probably within the last two years, about the EAB button and using the EAB button and we had quite a discussion with Murray and some of the folks that worked on that bulletin about the EAB and it's like, well, when you put that out, you need to make sure that people need to use it, but before they use it they do need to make sure that it does what they want it to do.
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: And you know an example just here in this greater Cincinnati Ohio area if you were in a different county and it was going through a different dispatch center, the EAB button was going to do something else and it was sending them somewhere else.
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: But through our communications working group and everybody getting on the same page with all of their radios being programmed with the same template by the same people, the EAB button actually does exactly what we want it to do now.
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: So, same people, the EAB button actually does exactly what we want it to do now.
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: So when they push the EAB button they stay on the channel that they're on, and that's exactly what we do want to happen.
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: And there's been plenty of events where the EAB button is valuable, right, because it does take priority over the rest of the communications and it can be set up that way and then the only other people that can really talk over it is the dispatch center.
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: But it can be programmed also so that the dispatch center can, if it is enabled that the dispatch center could disable it so that you know it could open the radio system back up.
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: So yeah, the, the, the using it was because, quite frankly, some of some of our industry's ignorance on how it really worked and what it does and what it doesn't do.
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: And a Motorola radio is different than a Kenwood radio, different than all those other radios, but really our radios are it's like the cell phone, the capability of it.
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: The limitation is in the user, probably not in the device.
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: So that's my two cents on the EAB button.
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: And I mean I do think for a long time I was against it, john.
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: I mean you and I had had some conversations about that, and it's like when we went out and educated ourself and found out how it really works and how we can engage with the dispatch center and what they can do with it and what we can do with it and how it's programmed.
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: It does definitely have.
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: It has a huge value.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: So Our next member of the panel today that we're going to hear from is Chris Stewart.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: Chris Stewart is a lead instructor with blue card, spent a number of years with the Phoenix fire department as a battalion chief and on down the ranks and a deputy chief in a small department in Arizona, and Chris here is going to share what he has witnessed as far as training and operational scars.
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: You know, if you think about, like organizational training, scars or mistakes that we've made in our careers or organizations have made in their careers, I think one that comes to mind first and foremost is when you're introducing new things into an organization.
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: And so, granted, my experience is in the Phoenix Fire Department.
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: So introducing new or cutting edge things for a good portion of my career at least the first half or two-thirds of my career was kind of expected.
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: We all recognized it.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: It became no big deal, but later on it became more of a big deal when you tried to make change.
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: And so I'm thinking back to when we first started talking about new fire behavior research that was coming out and starting to change the way we were going to do business really.
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: And there's a small minority, you know whatever 10, 20 percent that is that truly become the naysayers or the rock throwers or the folks that are not.
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: It doesn't matter, they're the contrarians, they're going to argue against it, no matter what, or no matter how good it is for them or anything like that, because they don't want to make that change.
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: And allowing the organization then to focus their training and focus the message on the naysayers, and it actually takes away from the growth and development of the folks who are actually interested and really really want to start doing it.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: So we focus on the people and the problems that they're posing rather than talking to the majority of folks who are interested and really actually starting to think about oh OK, how can we implement this?
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: And you really kind of stunt your overall development in the organization because you're fixated on these things when you're like, no, don't even, we shouldn't even be talking to that 20 percent directly.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: At least they should be hearing it.
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: But let's talk to the people who, the fast adopters and the folks who are really interested in making these things happen and willing to change.
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: And when you allow the negative voices to get the dominant attention, I guess in the training system, is you really slow everything down?
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: It grinds everything else to halt.
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: All the other members are thinking can we just get past this?
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: Like no, there's things here we want to do, we want to actually be better, and the majority is frustrated with the minority in that.
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: So one of the greatest scars I can see and should I can see it in my career is the fact that we ended up paying too much attention to the naysayers and the contrarians and didn't actually match the pace and the speed and the development of the folks who are really, really interested.
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: So I know for me is a focus now is I'm paying attention to the people who are paying attention and who want to push forward and I'm pacing with them.
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: I'm not pacing with the, as John Hinton would say, the idiots and the unloved.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: Good one there from Chris Stewart from Blue Card and tons of years of experience in the fire service.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: So often, josh, we focus on the lowest common denominator and oftentimes we design our training programs around that.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: And the industry experts I mean when I say industry leadership experts tell us to focus on the people in the middle and the high performers and not to focus on the lowest common denominator.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: But unfortunately, in our business, it's oftentimes the lowest common denominator that are the ones causing the problems in up and up to getting us hurt and killed.
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it seems like we spend 90 percent of our time dealing with 10% of the people that, yeah, that that you're trying to get to come around and, just as Chris said, that, that that holds up everybody else and it actually holds up your whole organization from from moving forward and at some point that grinds enough on those people that they're like I'm I'm done with it too, like we're not doing what we need to do.
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: And I kind of compare that to something I say to you every day, John Vance the I have, I only see forward.
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: I ain't got, I have no time to look in my rear view mirror and I have no time for the bullshit.
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: Like, there's people out there who want to do stuff and that's what we're going to do.
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: But if you look at it kind of like the uh, we're planting seeds and we're we're growing trees and yet at some point we're going to have fruit, well, that tree that's back there, that's dead already.
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: I could give a shit it's dead.
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: There's nothing I can do with it.
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: Like, and and what I mean by that is uh, I'm not going to give attention to something that that I'm not going to change, right, they're they always are going to have something to say, always something to complain about, um and uh.
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: You, you have to focus on the majority and you have to keep your organization, you know, in the headlights and moving forward, you know full steam ahead.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: So the next member of the panel is Pat Dale.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: Pat Dale is also a blue card instructor, longtime fire chief from the West Coast areas both in Washington and Oregon, and he's going to talk about really the way that chief officers and other leaders within the organization treat people and how that ends up becoming culturally learned behavior throughout the organization.
• 24:07
  Speaker 6: Exactly what it is learned behavior that I witnessed and I remember thinking about this and as I watched a deputy chief and an assistant chief as they interacted with our membership.
• 24:17
  Speaker 6: They were treating people poorly, they were condescending, they were dismissive, they would cut them out and to the point where they were telling them look, this is a paramilitaristic organization.
• 24:28
  Speaker 6: You're in here to be seen, not heard, when the crews were just asking them questions and trying to get clarity on a policy or what the hell, what do you want us to do?
• 24:38
  Speaker 6: That was the response.
• 24:39
  Speaker 6: And so I thought they've been here for 25 and 30 years through these fire chiefs that I was aware of that were that were more command and control.
• 24:51
  Speaker 6: Autocratic leaders do, as I say, and that's what they came up through.
• 24:55
  Speaker 6: And then I think, when they got to those leadership positions, they felt like that's what the way they had to be and the way that they had to lead the organization was.
• 25:05
  Speaker 6: What they had been They'd never seen.
• 25:08
  Speaker 6: They didn't know what leadership in a different way, like with empathy and kindness and caring and being nice they didn't know what that looked like.
• 25:16
  Speaker 6: They may have gone to a conference down here at the Biltmore and heard people talk about being nice here at the Biltmore and heard people talk about being nice, but to go back and then they slip right back into what their learned behavior was was what had been modeled by these command and control chiefs.
• 25:31
  Speaker 6: So I think that's what comes to mind for me at the training.
• 25:35
  Speaker 7: SCAR.
• 25:35
  Speaker 7: You think another driving issue for that would be maybe they just didn't have an answer for them to and it was just easier to demean them than to actually have a cognizant answer to their question, absolutely.
• 25:50
  Speaker 6: Much easier to take that firm position and shut up and in the back of their mind they didn't have an answer.
• 25:57
  Speaker 7: So, it just kind of became their default knee-jerk reaction to any kind of they took it as confrontation.
• 26:05
  Speaker 6: It was truly just a question.
• 26:06
  Speaker 6: They took it as you're questioning me, Challenging my authority.
• 26:13
  Speaker 6: The people that I saw come on the strongest in that way were also people that were really unsure of themselves.
• 26:19
  Speaker 6: They didn't know what they were doing.
• 26:21
  Speaker 6: They were over their head.
• 26:22
  Speaker 6: They had been promoted up beyond where they should have been.
• 26:24
  Speaker 6: They would come on really strong with control.
• 26:27
  Speaker 6: I can think of you know the names are in my head the two people I saw over my time and they would come on so strong and I knew it was because they didn't know what they were doing.
• 26:36
  Speaker 7: Frankly, I think a trait of individuals like that is they're not interested in learning the details of their job because they're too busy pursuing their next promotion, and so they think the answer is just to promote to the point.
• 26:51
  Speaker 7: I don't have to give you an answer.
• 26:53
  Speaker 7: Yeah, just because I'm.
• 26:55
  Speaker 7: You've seen it.
• 26:56
  Speaker 7: Yeah, I'm so much more ranky than you are.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: That's Pat Dale and Nick Brunicini there as well and I think so oftentimes people within organizations get promoted to the training chief or training officer role and their role model is Louis Gossett Jr from an officer and a gentleman where they want the lineups and you know what's your name, Mr Mayonnaise and then in that environment people aren't allowed to ask questions, they aren't allowed to drill down why we're actually doing what we're doing, Because a lot of times, like Nick and Pat said there, they don't know, they really don't know.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: So they're covering it with a lot of other ego and BS, right, oh yeah.
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: Everybody else, everybody else out in the fire world has has, uh, hijacked chief Lester's three C's, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna go ahead and use it on here too.
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: Uh, when, when those people who act out like that act the way they do, they are not competent, which leads to they have no confidence, which leads them to only one other C left, that they feel like I'm just in control and I have more bugles than you, so I'm in charge, and it's like it doesn't work.
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: What does work is when you, you know, are competent and you are confident, and you have confidence in your people and you're trying to build the right thing, and then the control thing kind of just comes naturally, because people get on board.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: I want to talk about being nice here, because Pat mentioned it and we had a conversation around coffee then, after we recorded this and a lot of and I wish we would have captured this A lot of being nice Isn't just being kind and soft-hearted.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: Being nice means we're not going to let our people die and get injured because we're not looking out for them or they don't know their job.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: Being nice means that we're training them effectively so that they are confident and competent and have control, and that they're not just wondering why we're doing the things that we do.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: So oftentimes I think people don't really understand what Chief Bruno meant by be nice.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: But being nice means that we're going to take care of our people, and sometimes that means being tough.
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: Sometimes that means holding them accountable and having a standard.
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, John, thank you for saying accountable, because that's a huge one for me, right.
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: Like, yeah, the be nice thing is, uh, helping that person be successful, Right, I mean that that's a, that's a piece of that for me and part of that is the accountability piece.
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: And that comes back to what you know.
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: Pat said if they ask questions, you you owe them an answer, Like I mean, there's a line there, I guess in a way, but like, if they're, if they, if they have a legit question, then we owe them an answer, and that's part of that being nice.
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: And then, once they know, then you can hold them accountable, Right, so I mean, there's a whole circle there.
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: But being exposed to some of the, some of that environment in my past, of the of the control you're going to do what I told you to do, it don't work and people don't stay and keep working in that environment.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: I had an officer once with their collar brass and he would say it's pick and choose and I get to pick and choose what we're going to do today, without actually explaining to us why we're doing what we're doing, and it just led to a lot of ineffective behaviors.
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and when you look at those organizations that operate that way, if they're not standing over your shoulder, those people ain't doing shit, right.
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's like you're yeah, there's no ownership.
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: You're, you will be much more successful together.
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: Well, we're bringing it back to the task level here a little bit with Keith Stakes.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: Keith Stakes is from FSRI as well and he stopped by the AVBCTC last week and was part of this conversation and he's talking about actually the way that we train.
• 31:08
  Speaker 4: Well, specifically in regards to suppression, we don't have adequate facilities to be able to teach folks suppression in the residential environment.
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: You know 80 to 90 percent of the fires we're going to are in the residential environment.
• 31:21
  Speaker 4: It doesn't matter whether that's an 800 square foot Cape Cod or apartment on the 40th floor of a high rise.
• 31:27
  Speaker 4: The suppression tactics focus on surface cooling and understanding where and how to use air to your advantage and where to get water onto those surfaces to have the quickest impact.
• 31:38
  Speaker 4: And yet we're training in buildings that are masonry, which when you have live fire within those, are going to create training scars in folks that they're worried about steam generation on the fire ground when we know that water application to hot gypsum or plaster and lath it's not going to respond the same as it would.
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: Masonry along the same lines, metal shipping containers.
• 31:59
  Speaker 4: And you take that a step further and you look at all the shipping container training facilities.
• 32:04
  Speaker 4: There's not a flat surface anywhere to be seen and we rely on our residential suppression tactics, utilizing those flat surfaces to get better coverage.
• 32:14
  Speaker 4: That's one example and the other again being the fact that we're dealing with 1403 compliant packages, that is, a wood-based fuel package in a fixed spot within the building itself.
• 32:25
  Speaker 4: It's not involved, it's not spreading throughout the structure, and so people have a point and shoot mentality whenever they see orange flame on the fire ground.
• 32:34
  Speaker 4: When, again, the orange flame is the symptom, we have to treat the source, and so we see water going towards wherever the orange flame is, instead of thinking where is my surface.
• 32:43
  Speaker 4: That is the problem.
• 32:44
  Speaker 4: That's generating fuel to come burn where there's air, and so, in the suppression world at least, those are two examples of how we set our folks up for failure before they ever even leave the academy.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: All right, that's Keith Stakes from FSRI.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: Josh, your thoughts on that.
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so I mean, yeah, he's the, he's definitely the SME on the, you know service cooling and using air to your advantage and all those things he talked about.
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: But you know, just talking generally about buildings, and you know these people go into the same exact building over and over and over again.
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: The layout's exactly the same, limited or no furniture, limited or no turns in the building, and that's where they train at, over and over and over again, and then they have an event at.
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: You know that residential setting, that, uh, 70 percent of the space in the residential setting is not open space because there's furniture and other clutter and whatever.
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: Uh, and people get lost, turned around, you know whatever.
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: So, um, you know all the way down to the search training and in a class a building, you know when people say, oh, we're gonna do that, we're doing search training in this class a building, it's like that's a joke, like you're kidding me, right, like there's nothing in this thing, like you're using fake smoke, which cool, but the layout and arrangement and all that isn't what it is.
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: So that training in context is a real thing and obviously with the 1403 standard it makes it challenging to create a real fire environment, but all we can do is go back to the basics and be really, really good at that.
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: So really, the, the, our crawl, walk, run, so we need to spend more time at that crawl and walk and hope and and then, when we're to the run part you know trying to get people to you know go back to the crawl and walk part to make sure that we're really doing what we need to do inside those buildings.
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: Cause we cannot create, uh in the training environment.
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: Research environment, you can create it, but in the training environment you can't create that environment because of the, the, because of the standards that we're up against, that are, that are there for good reason, because we, because of the standards that we're up against that are there for good reason, because we, through our careers, have done so many dumb things that we shouldn't have done.
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: And it's like, well, if that's good, this must be better, and why don't you throw a couch on it or whatever?
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: But you've got to make training a little bit more realistic to line up with what our job is.
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: And that doesn't necessarily mean the you know the fire and you know making it blazing hot, but like even, uh, even interior arrangement and layout when you're advancing hose lines and doing searches and operating inside the building.
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: Um, that that it has to be.
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: It has to be realistic.
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: And I it's been the first time on here i've've jumped to it, john, but I'm going to.
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: That's the sports thing, right?
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: So our own team's defense, practice defense is going to play against our real offense.
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: Well, that our makeup defense is going to try to emulate the best they possibly can the team that we're about to play, so that we know how we're going to operate there.
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: Well, and the fire service.
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: That's what we need to do as well.
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: Another task thing, super simple thing doing forceful entry in the middle of a parking lot with your uniform on and not wearing anything and full visibility is as fake as it gets.
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: I mean, that's the crawl part, right, like teaching very basic skills and then maybe getting to the walk, but at some point that needs to be done.
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: You know, full scale.
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: And I think that the training mentality, as you're planning that as a training officer or company officer, you need to acknowledge that crawl, walk, run.
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: We're going to start here on the crawl in the parking lot, on the prop, and then there's going to be it in the road where we have an acquired structure or a training building, where we're doing that under actual conditions.
• 36:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, when we're stretching hand lines, you know there's probably, maybe there's probably 20 parts to that, like if you were training a recruit, like what does that look like, just getting the line stretched ready to go at the front door?
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: Well, when you get to the run part, they should be starting sitting in the back of the truck with their gear on, with their seatbelt on, with their headset on the whole nine yards right, like they're pulling up to an incident, and then you can run that exercise.
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: And that's why we see the fire departments that you know stretch a line and it's like man, they're really good.
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: Well, they're really good because they practice that way right, practice that way right.
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: The team who wins is the one who put in the most time and practice to beat what they know that they're coming up against.
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: And and you know we, we should do better with that but far too often in training is the shortest shortcut that we can make to just get through it, and in some cases it's the hey, john, why don't you just show us this and then we'll move on?
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: But we're getting sidetracked.
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: We should move on.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: Well, our next comment comes from one of our other experts, our head silverback, Nick Brunicini, talking about training and organizational scars.
• 37:47
  Speaker 7: You're training individuals, like the after-action review that's for like individual performance.
• 37:53
  Speaker 7: There's a small element for it, that for your task level piece, but most of it is really to look at the entire scope of the incident operation.
• 38:03
  Speaker 7: So, using an example, in 1983, we had a fire sprinkler controlled fire in a carpet warehouse.
• 38:10
  Speaker 7: So the fire is under control, but the products of combustion are not.
• 38:15
  Speaker 7: So it's full of cold smoke laden with carbon monoxide, right Highest CO level, because the fire is being controlled by sprinkler heads, but it's smoldering in racks of carpet.
• 38:28
  Speaker 7: Crew gets there, they advance their attack line through the bayside offices and it's really not an attack.
• 38:36
  Speaker 7: What they're doing is they're going in to find where the sprinkler heads are going off.
• 38:39
  Speaker 7: That's what they're doing because the fire's already under control, and then they're going to do final extinguishment maybe.
• 38:48
  Speaker 7: Well, one of them they run out of air, the two, the captain and the firefighter inside the building.
• 38:58
  Speaker 7: So we, in fact Frank Cheatham was the captain on Engine 23.
• 39:00
  Speaker 7: He was it was before Mayday existed as a term and he said we're in trouble on the inside.
• 39:04
  Speaker 7: I don't know where I am.
• 39:05
  Speaker 7: You could hear his, his thing's almost out of air, it's all it's about done ringing and he says come and get me.
• 39:12
  Speaker 7: Well, they end up getting Frank.
• 39:15
  Speaker 7: They pull him out.
• 39:16
  Speaker 7: And when about done ringing?
• 39:16
  Speaker 7: And he says, come and get me.
• 39:17
  Speaker 7: Well, they end up getting Frank, they pull him out.
• 39:20
  Speaker 7: And when they get him out, he is in respiratory arrest.
• 39:21
  Speaker 7: John Valenzuela intubates him, they throw him in the back of an AMR ambulance and he's heading to the hospital.
• 39:24
  Speaker 7: So Frank's dead right, clinically dead.
• 39:26
  Speaker 7: He's still got pulses.
• 39:28
  Speaker 7: He wakes up halfway to the hospital, exubates himself, says goodbye to his dead grandmother and then about a week later we added another engine to a report of a working fire to be the rapid firefighter rescue crew.
• 39:46
  Speaker 7: So when you said working fire, you got.
• 39:49
  Speaker 7: Usually we would send two engines, ladder, battalion chief to structure fires, house fires, and then you'd send four and two to commercial.
• 39:57
  Speaker 7: So you send a two and one, you get a third engine.
• 40:01
  Speaker 7: When you say working fire and they were just going to stand by, well, eventually that became Rick and that's happening across the whole fire service.
• 40:09
  Speaker 7: Like you, talk to the guys in New York and they said in the 70s we had fast teams.
• 40:13
  Speaker 7: We put in for the same reason Philadelphia was doing stuff.
• 40:16
  Speaker 7: Big, busy fire departments had had issues with the attack and firefighters having maydays and they had to have a response to that.
• 40:24
  Speaker 7: So in the early 80s this became rapid intervention was born and we were one of the departments that did.
• 40:32
  Speaker 7: I mean, there was a group of them, just by need.
• 40:36
  Speaker 7: So that system goes on.
• 40:40
  Speaker 7: Well, in 2001, we had the Southwest Supermarkets fire and we have used this system now for damn near 20 years of wrecks and all of the itinerations and revisions.
• 40:52
  Speaker 7: And then on that breezy March day is that whole system cooked and it cooked the command system too.
• 41:01
  Speaker 7: So we used that after action review and it took us a couple years to figure out exactly how to fix those problems and part of it became the rapid intervention was not rapid, you know, and we did those drills and those studies and part of it became the rapid intervention was not rapid, you know, and we did those drills and those studies and so it took 20 minutes for basically two and a half RIC teams to get a firefighter down out of the building and 20% of the RIC team rescuers had their own mayday.
• 41:30
  Speaker 7: So we thought this system is this is not as effective as we thought it was.
• 41:35
  Speaker 7: And then the other element to it was tactical supervision was not in place by most.
• 41:41
  Speaker 7: Most of the fire service wasn't using it.
• 41:43
  Speaker 7: You know who used it the most is FDNY.
• 41:46
  Speaker 7: They use tactical supervision the best of any fire department.
• 41:49
  Speaker 7: Phoenix was using the command.
• 41:52
  Speaker 7: Any fire department.
• 41:55
  Speaker 7: Phoenix was using the command, the strategic piece, kind of at the top level.
• 41:57
  Speaker 7: And then FDNY they made up for their strategic not using strategic, with tactical bosses running the tactics of the thing.
• 42:04
  Speaker 7: So we came out of that and said no, if you have an attack position that's active and you've got three companies there, you need a chief officer to manage that area.
• 42:13
  Speaker 7: Well, a captain could do it.
• 42:19
  Speaker 7: That's what all the captains said we're as good.
• 42:21
  Speaker 7: You're like this has nothing to do with that.
• 42:24
  Speaker 7: You're task zone supervisors.
• 42:27
  Speaker 7: You can't do entry control, which is a requirement of any tactical level supervision.
• 42:34
  Speaker 7: Is you got to control who goes in and out of your attack position?
• 42:37
  Speaker 7: Well, we could do it.
• 42:38
  Speaker 7: You're inside the building, you don't do entry control.
• 42:42
  Speaker 7: So that kind of became the fix.
• 42:46
  Speaker 7: And then really you looked at it as that was the only structural firefighting fatality during my career.
• 42:53
  Speaker 7: And you look at other fire departments and what happens after a line of duty death, and it's ripe with disagreement and tension.
• 43:03
  Speaker 7: So if you don't have a strong process for kind of getting through all that, you're going to have a lot of upside-down social situations within the organization.
• 43:13
  Speaker 7: So because we stuck to the work and then everybody was familiar with it as you processed it around the work is that became the difference in the thing.
• 43:24
  Speaker 7: And then I think to speak to that even more with, like training rash is what ended up happening is the operations division ended up taking over training and safety.
• 43:36
  Speaker 7: So we made the chiefs' aid safety officers to eliminate a safety division that was not helping the operations division at all.
• 43:44
  Speaker 7: They had their own mission and it had nothing to do with managing the work we did.
• 43:48
  Speaker 7: So once we did that, the true executive level of the fire department loved it because they got like half a dozen positions back.
• 43:57
  Speaker 7: And then we took over training strategically and tactically, and if the fire chief had stayed another five years, we would have taken over the training academy.
• 44:12
  Speaker 7: That's what was going to happen next, because we were already visiting the shift commanders, were dealing with the training staff at the academy and saying, uh-uh, you got to change some stuff.
• 44:23
  Speaker 7: This deal that you work them till they're out of air and then they have to work more.
• 44:27
  Speaker 7: Uh-uh.
• 44:29
  Speaker 7: We're done with the rights of manhood that you're these fake benchmarks that you have to be a superior firefighter or they're out of whack.
• 44:42
  Speaker 7: You need to balance them and make them more realistic.
• 44:45
  Speaker 7: You can't if you're out of air, you're out of air and you need to leave before you're out.
• 44:49
  Speaker 7: So and that was a big thing that came out of all of that after the recovery effort and the academy never caught up to it, because you have a unique set of officers and they're good people and they're fiercely competent in many cases, but they have a different view of what the tactical and strategic levels look like.
• 45:12
  Speaker 7: That is not, it doesn't connect to reality and what their view of the world is.
• 45:17
  Speaker 7: So there's some of those company officers that you just need to say no, we're the bosses and this is the way this is going to happen.
• 45:24
  Speaker 7: As an example of that, as the fire chief came out and said, we are not going to operate on top of lightweight residential new tile roofs.
• 45:34
  Speaker 7: So it's done.
• 45:35
  Speaker 7: If you're a ladder company, if you work for the Phoenix Fire Department and there's a brand new house on fire and it's got a clay tile roof, you cannot get on the roof period.
• 45:44
  Speaker 7: Well, there was three dozen people that said, no, the deal about paying toll into Manhattan.
• 45:52
  Speaker 7: Oh, if you do that, children will die.
• 45:53
  Speaker 7: And you're like no, the children will not die and you will not die.
• 45:57
  Speaker 7: So the problem is we know a lot more about this than you do and we're your boss and you're just not going to do it.
• 46:04
  Speaker 7: Well, what if I do?
• 46:05
  Speaker 7: You're going to have a different boss.
• 46:08
  Speaker 7: Well, where are you going to go?
• 46:09
  Speaker 7: I'm not going anywhere, you are.
• 46:11
  Speaker 7: Yeah, I can tell you what that's going to look like.
• 46:13
  Speaker 7: Bucko, I ain't missing a check.
• 46:15
  Speaker 7: There was an old chief who fixed the personnel problem and they said how did you know we've been screwing with that guy for 10 years?
• 46:21
  Speaker 7: How'd you fix it?
• 46:22
  Speaker 7: He says you guys been talking to his head.
• 46:24
  Speaker 7: I talked to his wallet and he says his banker told him what was wrong with his behavior.
• 46:30
  Speaker 7: Yeah, he ain't making his house payment next month.
• 46:33
  Speaker 7: What was wrong with his behavior?
• 46:35
  Speaker 7: Yeah, he ain't making his house payment next month.
• 46:38
  Speaker 7: Oh, wow, that's a boss.
• 46:38
  Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, that's a tough way to do it and I think that's kind of it is.
• 46:41
  Speaker 7: The organization has to take control of basic task-level functions.
• 46:46
  Speaker 7: That's the job of the leadership of the department.
• 46:49
  Speaker 7: So that would be my look at it more that way and see, when you look at it in that terms, we're like the first thing you're looking at is do I need to correct something with the system?
• 46:59
  Speaker 7: Then I think we all buy into it more because it's like, well, yeah, it's all of us in the one system that we all connect to.
• 47:06
  Speaker 7: And then we look at it personally of how we did and perform and usually, like most of the people I worked with wanted to hear that they wanted to have an after-action review after a fire.
• 47:15
  Speaker 7: How'd we do?
• 47:16
  Speaker 7: Well, we did great.
• 47:17
  Speaker 7: We talked about it for three minutes and then we'll go eat lunch, but you're the most fantastic people I've ever known, the most capable, and you did lovely work here.
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: So that's Nick Brunicini talking about some of the really genesis of the rapid intervention team, and I think a lot of times to start off with Josh we do things in the fire service that were started to solve a problem and in this case, firefighters being lost, trapped inside of structures, so we came up with a team that was going to take care of it, but no one ever actually measured the effectiveness of that until the Southwest supermarket, and then we learned a lot from that.
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: But to this day we're still talking to people who are using a theoretical solution to problems that they themselves have not tested or actually measured no-transcript and I'll just compare that to the EMS industry.
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: If there's a new thing comes out when the LifePack 500 comes out, we're going to be trying to buy it Right and and and learn what it does and how it monitors and and you know all of that stuff and the fireside of it.
• 48:47
  Speaker 3: It's that tradition thing.
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: We, we latch onto it and we hold onto it and really we don't even know why it's just what we do and until organizations understand why they don't change.
• 49:02
  Speaker 3: So with how fast everything's moving nowadays, stuff's going to change.
• 49:10
  Speaker 3: It kind of lines back up to the whole conversation of the change with fire environment and all of that.
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: I mean that's really not, that's not new.
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: I mean people say, oh, this is all new and it's like it's not new anymore, like if that was an EMS thing we'd have been on to 10 other things by now.
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: But because the fire department piece, we like latch on to that and it's like, oh, it's new, we still don't quite believe in that yet.
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: And it's like, well, there's plenty of science out there and there's plenty of organizations that go to plenty of fires that are, you know, practicing.
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the new, the new way, if you will right that, we, and basically it just comes down to we should continue to evolve and, as we say all the time, we should always be in a state of fixing ourselves.
• 50:01
  Speaker 3: This worked today, but we're looking for the next solution already.
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: Nick mentions it here and we talk about it a lot, and I think if you took the blue card team and we were going to draw an org chart for the perfect organization, training would work for operations.
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: But oftentimes we see organizations that are flat, that they have a lot of assistant chiefs and the equal rank is operations and training and those two and there's some wonderful training officers out there.
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: I'm not trying to degrade what the training chiefs do, but unless it's aligned with what is actually happening in the field, you end up with a department of fire theory a lot of times and not practical application in the field.
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: And I think that's what Nick's getting at when he talks about the training division really not being aligned with what was going on in operations.
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: And we see that every day in our jobs.
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: Right, because we deal with hundreds, if not thousands of fire departments out there that have separate training divisions that aren't connected to operations.
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, operations division and the organization decides you know really what they're going to do and and and really partially, how they're going to do it.
• 51:21
  Speaker 3: And then the training division is the teach them how and tell them why piece and but it is all together, right, and it, and it does fall under the fire department operations component, right, that training just doesn't go out and decide that we're going to train on something that the fire department doesn't do or train out of context.
• 51:43
  Speaker 3: We're going to train on something that doesn't align with what we do.
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: I mean, when we really look at that, there's, uh, personalities.
• 51:55
  Speaker 3: You know, one person's opinion in the training division doesn't align with the person in operations or they think they should be in that position.
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: You're going to end up in two totally different places and really what you end up with is a department divided nick also brought up the rights of manhood.
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: And we continue to see in modern fire academies smoke appreciation day, where you let your SCBA run out of air and then you have to stand up and breathe smoke until you can't take it anymore.
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: Then we go out in the field and tell everybody never, ever breathe smoke.
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: You know, we're trying to teach best practice here.
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: Now we've got to teach survival skills Right.
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: We're trying to teach best practice here.
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: Now we've got to teach survival skills right.
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: And your SEBA, if you're stuck somewhere, will go on bells.
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: So how do you survive that?
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: But how do we?
• 52:50
  Speaker 3: reconcile this rights of manhood, as Nick puts it, with what the reality is that we should be doing in the field.
• 52:53
  Speaker 3: To me, that's that history thing right.
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: We're just not letting go of the way we always did it and that we have to evolve with that.
• 53:00
  Speaker 3: We have to, we have to do, we have to start looking at and doing things differently.
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: And, uh, you know, our job is to make sure that our employees can do their job and provide the best service they can to the customers that we said that we're going to provide the service to, regardless of what that is and you know, by putting them in a position that is causing them harm that we know for sure causes them harm when they end up.
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: How long, how much of a feed can you take of this smoke?
• 53:32
  Speaker 3: We're not doing our due diligence and our job with that.
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: Right, I mean, that's a.
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: I get there to be nice on that one.
• 53:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you're, you're jamming that that person up, their family and everybody else.
• 53:48
  Speaker 3: Right, for for what?
• 53:50
  Speaker 3: Like what?
• 53:51
  Speaker 3: What are you really?
• 53:51
  Speaker 3: What are you really proven?
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: Our next member of the panel, terry Garrison.
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: Terry Garrison, of course, an instructor with us, fire chief from Houston and also spent a bulk of his career as the Phoenix Fire Department as shift commander and then on down the ranks.
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: And here's Terry talking about some of the scars that he witnessed as fire chief.
• 54:15
  Speaker 8: Training scars.
• 54:16
  Speaker 8: I can think of three separate things I want to kind of share.
• 54:19
  Speaker 8: One of them is when we created the command training center, we made a commitment to the organization, to each other, nick and myself and John Hinton that you know that's where people should make mistakes, that you know that's where people should make mistakes right in the training.
• 54:36
  Speaker 8: When we started to go through our incident command process and guys would make mistakes, we wouldn't beat them up, we would correct them and then kind of move forward with it.
• 54:45
  Speaker 8: So that's the first piece.
• 54:47
  Speaker 8: And the second piece about that specifically is that when somebody makes a mistake in training it shouldn't be a career-ending mistake.
• 54:55
  Speaker 8: We talked about that in a podcast before is that you know, don't call them Mr Whatever for the rest of their career because they missed something.
• 55:06
  Speaker 8: But we do that.
• 55:07
  Speaker 8: You know, as firefighters we don't let people go, but we want people to make mistakes in training so they can learn from that.
• 55:14
  Speaker 8: The other thing I want to say about training you asked specifically what I've seen that kind of has rubbed me the wrong way is I was a new fire chief and I went to a department and I think if you're a fire chief coming in or you're a current fire chief and you haven't been to the training academy and watch what's going on.
• 55:34
  Speaker 8: You need to go because those are the people taking care of your, teaching your newest members how to do things, and that first the way they learn at first is going to last very long.
• 55:47
  Speaker 8: So you may, and you're responsible for it as a fire chief, so you better watch what's happening.
• 55:52
  Speaker 8: And I remember going to a training academy and and one of the guys really good people, but they were way off base and they knew it by the by the time I left there and one of the things they did is they go, chief, you want to do an inspection with us on the on the um recruits had six recruits and I said, sure, what does that mean?
• 56:11
  Speaker 8: So I walk up and they would get in front of the recruit and they would look them up and down and they would ask them.
• 56:17
  Speaker 8: They asked them a question like who are the council members?
• 56:20
  Speaker 8: Who are four, five council members, and the guy knew who that was and I thought training value the time is so valuable that you spend in training.
• 56:33
  Speaker 8: Make sure you're training on what is important.
• 56:35
  Speaker 8: That is not important If that's important to you as a training chief that that new recruit knows who the council members are.
• 56:42
  Speaker 8: You've got a problem within that organization.
• 56:45
  Speaker 8: Your chairs are not facing, like Nick would say, the work.
• 56:49
  Speaker 8: So that time is so valuable, make sure you're doing it correctly.
• 56:54
  Speaker 8: And then I remember showing up for their graduation.
• 56:58
  Speaker 8: They were standing in front of the council.
• 57:00
  Speaker 8: I got there a little bit late and they're all facing the council.
• 57:03
  Speaker 8: There were six of them, the same six guys, and they shook hands and being congratulated by the council and then they all spun around at the same time and every one of them had a quarter-sized burn in their forehead and I looked over at my my chief, who was.
• 57:21
  Speaker 8: I had tremendous amount of respect for and still do to this day, but this is the way they did things.
• 57:27
  Speaker 8: You did not get your official fire helmet till you went through training.
• 57:33
  Speaker 8: You earned that.
• 57:34
  Speaker 8: So you used a plastic helmet on the front end and each one of these guys had a burn from that helmet.
• 57:40
  Speaker 8: So potential is scarring somebody for life.
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: Literally.
• 57:44
  Speaker 8: So when you do so, you're asking.
• 57:47
  Speaker 7: Oh, it's a badge of honor.
• 57:48
  Speaker 8: Yeah, you're saying things that, and I think he was as surprised as I was.
• 57:52
  Speaker 8: But give him the equipment, teach them to do things the right way.
• 57:58
  Speaker 8: Help them do those things the right way and then allow them to do it and to correct the behavior it's just that simple.
• 58:06
  Speaker 8: You don't got to be mean, you don't got to demean them, you don't got to kick them.
• 58:13
  Speaker 8: Like you know, I was in the Army in 1974.
• 58:16
  Speaker 8: I know what it feels like to turn right when he said left face Because I was Gomer Pyle and so it's just not necessary.
• 58:26
  Speaker 8: It doesn't make you help remember right anymore.
• 58:28
  Speaker 7: Were they nice to you when you did that?
• 58:30
  Speaker 8: Yeah, not very nice so anyway, those are kind of the three things that I would say is so you know, training time valuable, spend it on things that matter, which is the work, and focusing on the service we deliver, um, and then just giving the right equipment, do what they they need, just support them in the training.
• 58:54
  Speaker 8: Training.
• 58:54
  Speaker 8: We should change that to the support division.
• 58:57
  Speaker 8: That should be the name of training.
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: So Terry Garrison there talking about what he's seen as far as training scars and organizational scars.
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: And while he was talking about that, I think about something that we stopped at a department I was at because we had a completely different set of SCBAs that we were training with, because they were training SCBAs and what we were going to beat up versus what we actually had on the apparatus, and I'm talking a whole different brand.
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: So it was nothing even like the SCBAs.
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: So when you put a recruit firefighter in the academy and you're giving them the opportunity to literally have hundreds of touches on that SCBA, then it's going to go sit on the truck and, depending on how busy you are and what your training regimen is, they're never going to get as many touches as they got in the academy.
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: But yet they're going to build habits with an SCBA we don't even use.
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: So that's just another example that he's using there that I think you know.
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: Give them the right equipment just another example that he's using there that I think you know.
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: Give them the right equipment.
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: And then the training time.
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: I mean, when we looked at a lot of times what we drift into beyond our normal mission of providing fire and rescue services to the community by, you know, trying to memorize who the council members are, and I've seen a lot of other goofy stuff like that really has no place in the Academy, when, when you have such a limited amount of time to train these people, right, right.
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 3: There's some other, there's some, there's some task level things that we've seen happen before.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 3: I jumped a few command level.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 3: I think training scar things and process things.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 3: But you know, a lot of organizations now are hiring like lateral transfers and we're going to run our shorter class and these people worked over there for 10 years and they have experience.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 3: Well, I've seen this and heard about it now several times where one of them being the SCBA lateral transfer person they come in we're going to put you through this super rapid program, uh, and they they at their previous job or Scott air packs and never more an MSA air pack, and then, oh, they, they're good.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 3: Well, that that's going to turn out to be a problem for them, like how does that work differently?
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 3: And they can figure it out, but it's going to turn out to be a problem for them, like how does that work differently?
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 3: And they can figure it out, but it's going to be a performance problem.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 3: You're setting them up for failure, right, and that comes back to, I think, another staffing shortage problem everywhere and people are trying to do lateral transfers and run shorter academies and all of that.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 3: But in some ways, who we're shortchanging is, you know, the end user customer, ultimately, because the person doesn't necessarily have the knowledge, skill or ability that they need with the specific equipment that's available.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 3: Right, you know, people, all the hose loads, a hose load, they can figure it out.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 3: And it's like, well, time matters, right, the SCBA is no, it's not, it's not, it's not the same.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 3: The radio, right, that's a totally different, a totally different piece.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 3: So, um, yeah, taking the time to train people, uh, and doing, um, deliberate and consistent training, I think is important.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 3: So, talking about the task level, I think that's all good.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 3: I just wanted to hit on a few, you know, command training component pieces.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 3: So, when we run a cert lab, you know we're doing that crawl walk piece and then at some point point you have to get to the, to really the drill part, right, taking it to the street, taking it to the drill ground, running full-scale operations.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 3: So, um, one thing that I'll put out there you know we, people use the back of that communications board sometimes, um, when they're, when we're in, when we're doing classes, right, so our standard communications board that we hand out during class and then we tell them hey, when you're in class, on the first couple of simulations, you can use this.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 3: And then people we tell them this is not to be used in the field, right, which is why in our class, now we've transitioned to, we actually have them use an actual worksheet, you know after, you know the second day, so that they're actually using something that they would actually, that they would use in the field.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 3: So if you don't practice on a command worksheet during training, it's not going to work when you get to the car.
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 3: So you know.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 3: To take that a step further, you know we're sitting around the table doing, you know, simulation exercises and really we're we're learning a process, right, and I'll just go ahead and throw this in there because everybody, everybody out there, wants to talk shit about blue cards, a communications program.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 3: Well, you're ignorant, because that's one of the eight functions of command.
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 3: It's actually a.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 3: You're ignorant because that's one of the eight functions of command.
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 3: It's actually a command program, not a communications program.
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 3: I'd love for anybody who says that just to go through the program and find out what it actually is for themselves.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 3: But connecting all the dots.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 3: So example you're the first arriving, I see.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 3: Well, practicing at some point, giving that size up through the windshield from your apparatus with your headset on, is much different than sitting, you know, in a classroom at a table, uh, talking on a two-way, you know Motorola, you know camping radio basically, is different than talking.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 3: You know, on your radio, with or without a microphone out in the field.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 3: So you know.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 3: So, practicing that with your mask on right, so that's something we all get so frustrated with.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 3: Like, when was the last time you practiced talking on the radio with your mask on and then making sure that you were holding your microphone in the proper place, all of those pieces?
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 3: Or you have Bluetooth technology in your Motorola radio.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 3: Now have you actually practiced with that?
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 3: So you're given priority traffic but nobody can hear what you're saying because it, because it's all garbled.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 3: So that comes back to that training and context thing.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 3: So the crawl and walk is like training, part, piece by piece.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 3: It's kind of compared to sports Monday we're going to do some walkthroughs.
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 3: Tuesday, helmets and pads.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 3: Wednesday, helmet and pad Thursday, we're full scale, everything we're playing on Saturday.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 3: So you have to get to that point where you're putting it all of the pieces together and then you know from the strategic command piece, the, you know the SCAR piece, if you will, if we're, if we're not exercising as a strategic IC, sitting in a car, using the MDC that we have available to us, wearing our headset in the car with our command worksheet you know the way that we're going to use it.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 3: Or if you're using some other you know tracking component or tracking device actually exercising that, then we shouldn't expect, you know, a good outcome with that.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 3: So we have to.
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 3: However, we train and exercise has to line up with what we expect, what our expectation is at the end and what we, what we would expect to see in the field.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 3: And then I think a big piece and multiple people throughout this have hit it is uh, you know, nobody's getting fired over over these things, right, and they shouldn't have to live with, with, uh, during a training environment.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 3: They shouldn't have to live with a nickname or something necessarily for the rest of their life.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 3: But it comes back to something I've talked quite a bit about on a lot of our podcasts is that operant conditioning thing, and it lines up with our after action reporting stuff.
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 3: So the when people do good, we need to support that and reinforce that behavior, right, so that that that they know that they did the right thing, but that everybody else there knows.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 3: And then when they are doing something that we don't want, we shouldn't just let it slide right, and far too often there's some scars with that.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 3: It's just like we just got to check the box and get through this and I don't want to deal with them, so we're just going to move on.
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 3: It's's like no, like.
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 3: If you allow that to happen, then you can't expect, then don't expect the performance to be good in the end in the field.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 3: If you're, if you're not holding people accountable to some sort of a standard during training, then in the end in the field, don't expect that they're going to perform and do what you necessarily want them to do.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 3: So yeah, john, this is a topic that we could probably we could go on forever about this.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: Well, it's a great topic.
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's something that's given me a lot.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: You know, the panel hit on it.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: You kind of hit on it.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: Training should not be hazing.
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: We shouldn't haze people during it, and we talk about it when we're doing our blue card classes a lot that if you're in an emergency management exercise, it always seems like the better you do, the more crap they throw at you.
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: So you've got to allow people to have successes too, instead of just like, well, now he's doing good, let's throw another curve ball at him.
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: And I think you know people, people just get conditioned to that because they get brought up like that.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: One thing I wanted to ask you, josh, before we wrap it up for today, because this is just a great topic what's the difference between training and drilling?
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: Those are two different things, right.
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so the training part is where we're.
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 3: We're really talking about the why, we're showing people how and we're doing where it's.
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 3: It's who, what, why, uh, how, I mean that's, that's a training piece.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 3: Um, and then the drill is like really more full scale exercise.
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 3: So, uh, I'll, I'll give a simple task, level one that everybody could could connect to um hose advancement.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 3: I'll give a simple task level one that everybody could could connect to How's advancement?
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 3: So you know, you, you you're stretching off the cross layer, you're stretching off the back, whatever it is.
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 3: Well, you know, we're going to teach people to get to the end, to get aligned to the door, like masked up, ready to go.
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 3: So you know, there's probably 60 things, 60 bullet points to get through and a drill to get to that point.
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 3: So, uh, throughout it, you know people being in the truck and their air pack on in the truck before that, even getting dressed, getting on the truck, getting your air pack on, getting your seatbelt on, wearing your headset, like what does that process look like?
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 3: Okay, well, you got there and they pulled the brake.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 3: We're going to stretch, we're going to stretch, we're going to stretch the green line off the back of the truck.
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 3: So you know.
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 3: So now, what does that look like, putting that piece together?
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 3: So, hey, when we stretch this line, what does that look like?
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 3: We're going to deploy this thing a hundred times, you know, without those other pieces, just to go over that particular component, okay, well.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 3: Well, now we've stretched it and we're at the front door.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 3: We're going to charge it.
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 3: We need to make sure we bleed it off, make sure it's all laid out right in line.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 3: You know all of those things.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 3: And then it's the okay, now we.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 3: Now we're at the door getting masked up.
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 3: So you know that, hopefully, no more than no more, under no more than 30 seconds at the front door, hopefully closer to like 20 seconds at the front door.
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 3: You know your mask gloves, everything on at ready to go.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 3: So, um, the training part is each one of those pieces and then the drill is.
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 3: Okay, we're going to, we're going to do hose deployment drills.
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 3: Well, you're, you're, you get dressed, you're on the truck, you know you're, you go.
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 3: They pull the brake, we're stretching the green line, you get off the truck, you stretch the line, you know you go through that whole process.
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 3: So the training part is you know, each one of those pieces.
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 3: And then the drill is like actually the exercise of the full scale, of the full scale piece.
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 3: So I mean it's, it could be hose advancement, it can be, it could be the command piece that we were talking about, right?
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 3: So in command training we might be in a classroom and you're, you know, looking at a simulation, you know slide, and you're tracking on a worksheet sheet, sitting in a room, you know talking on you know, a portable radio.
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 3: Well then the full scale drill is I got, you know, four engines, a ladder and an ambulance and I'm at the drill tower and I'm the strategic IC and I'm in my car and I'm going to run this full-scale drill based off of whatever conditions that we created to actually exercise our entire system.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 3: So we can't just jump to the drill thing and expect some sort of standard performance if we're not training on the front end.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 3: So the training really lays out like you know.
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 3: Here's the expectation, this is how we do it, this is what we want to happen An opportunity to get people to improve, you know, performance.
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 3: And then the drill part is like that, again that full scale exercise to evaluate how how's each individual component go, but also as as the entire response or how the entire organization you know works together.
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 3: So that's that's kind of the difference between the two.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: Great topic today.
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much, josh.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: Like you said, we could go on forever about this.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: If anybody would like to share their thoughts with us on your training scars.
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: John Vance at B shiftercom.
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: Josh at B shiftercom.
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: All that information is in the show notes.
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: We want to thank everybody for being here today and for listening.
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: If you enjoyed this episode, share it with a friend and make sure you subscribe until next time.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much for listening to B sh shifted.
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: Talk to you later, josh.
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: See you, john.
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: Thank you.