Latest / Firefighter Nation Podcast / The Weight of the White Shirt: Chief Clyde Gordon on 40 Years in the Fire Service

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The Weight of the White Shirt: Chief Clyde Gordon on 40 Years in the Fire Service · Firefighter Nation Podcast

• Nat Kapustin: NGO 1 from car one. Car one's on screen, assuming command, give me a camera port. What is going on, everybody? This is Mike Goldstein, stickers of the can report, Nozzle Tob, everyone. I'm excited for this episode. I have I'm I'm gonna fanboy out because I already told the chief this. I got Chief Clyde Gordon in the house, coming from the Houston area. I've been a huge follower of you, and everything that you've done in the fire service. I've always been appreciative of. And I'm finally have you here on the show. And I'm really, really excited. So, everyone, we have Clyde Gordon in the house, H Town. Thank you, Chief, for being on the show. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. It is my pleasure, Chief. again, this is an extreme honor. I've been a huge fan of yours and I can't wait to just really just kind of dive into everything, what you've done in your life, in the fire service, what you're bringing to the table, and for just people to learn about who you are. Okay. Yeah. Sounds great. Yeah, it's it's been a lifetime of fire service. you know, it started real early for me and Been a great ride for sure, and I still love it. Still love it. So beautiful. All right. We're gonna get right into your bio real here real quick. Chief Clyde Gordon, with forty years as a proven leader in the fire service and over three decades within the Houston Fire Department. Clyde Gordon offers a unique blend of leadership, vision, and knowledge. He has a reputation for a strong work ethic, exceptional fire ground operations and management, and building uncompromising integrity and responsibility in a crew. Clyde believes in continuous improvement of fire ground skills and operations through regular and consistent training. His many years as a fire officer and district tree district chief at some of the busiest stations in the city of Houston has offered him numerous unique fire ground experiences. He is known for his teaching through honest and personal first hand experience. Awesome. Well, that's an easy one, Chief, except I can't talk today because probably because I'm so excited. That's all right. You know, when you get your You get a your wife to write your bio for you, man. You sound pretty good. You know what I mean? It's kinda like your resume. No one's as smart as their resume says they are. So No, you're absolutely right. it looks good on paper for sure. You just keep buffing that thing up and shine as much as you can. That's that's right. So, Chief, we're gonna just dive into it. So please, for those who don't know who you are, can you kind of give a brief description of of pretty much where you came from and where you're at? Sure, sure. Yeah, so I grew up in a little small town here outside of Houston, about an hour outside of Houston. had no real direction necessarily. Was going to college, didn't do great there. wasn't really interested in continuing going to school. It just wasn't my forte. But during high school I went to Pizza Hut with my best friend at sixteen years old and he got a fifty percent discount on pizza at Pizza Hut. So and it was because he was a volunteer fireman. So sadly enough, that's where my career started. I decided that maybe I wanted to be a volunteer too to because I really like pizza and half price pizzas even better. So I think it was God's way of getting a fat kid into the fire service at the time, you know, and dangled a piece of pizza in front of me. And so that was in nineteen eighty six, way before a lot of you. I joined the Tombaugh Volunteer Fire Department. still was trying to go to school and and do those things. And I was just really being drawn towards the fire service. So in 1990, I joined the Houston Fire Department and spent 35 years there and promoted all the way to district chief or battalion chief for most places. it's just what I was built to do, I think. it is just It's fit me like a glove. I've always loved every minute of it and to this day I still volunteer here in my hometown of Bellville, Texas. I was recently elected their fire chief. So I'm still still doing it. Congratulations on that, sir. Well, yeah, I I don't know how you get nominated and elected and you're not even in the state, but apparently they can figure out a way to do that. I'm not sure it was my plan, but I've really enjoyed it. So That's awesome. you obviously your your career is prestigious. You've done so many things. You've you've obviously been a great leader for many people. and just gonna jump into it. So we'll talk about leadership real quick. not real quick. I think we're gonna dive deep into it. you talk about leadership very well in your presentations. And that was one of the the presentations I first I think I first got to see it in it's either County Fire Tactics or it was at the Wells main. presentation you did up for the New England Fools. but it really got me was with Danny's story. that really that really got me because you took ownership of something that happened, it was a tragic event. But really got me was you were made it very clear that this wasn't his fault entirely. This was this was really ownership of you kind of passing the buck. And you really took that. You you take that to heart and you're very honest about that. Can you if you'd like to, can you kind of elaborate what I'm talking about? Sure, sure. So you know, it's you gotta have to go back a little bit. when I was brought up as a firefighter in the city of Houston, it it was really about me more than it was anything else. I was really mostly interested in being the toughest dude around and going to another fire and there's nothing wrong with that. You know what I mean? My son's a Marine and, they eat glass and talking about breaking stuff and killing people, and y you want that in a Marine, but you also have to realize that there's a human factor to it. So I was raised up to to not be afraid and and do my fireman thing, which I think a lot of us do well, but I had missed the point that it was really more about people than it was about me disliking and going to another fire. until I became an officer and I still had that attitude. I still was just there to make another run, try to beat everybody into their territory, make another fire. I had great firemen with me that did an outstanding job. They made my job look simple. I was a boss, but I wasn't a leader. I didn't I didn't really understand what it meant to be a leader. over the years I've now learned by my mistakes and working for a lot of piss poor leaders, to be perfectly honest with you. There's a lot of them in the fire service. It's a lot of bosses out there. It's a lot of self centered, egotistical, arrogant people that are in a leadership position. And I was probably one of those guys too for a long time. but several things happened in my life that started to sway and change me into a different direction. Grady Burke and I worked together for years and he was a great fireman here in the city of Houston and he was killed on what I would consider one of our bread and butter fires. that was a one of the first wake up calls for me is if Grady could get killed, then anybody could get killed kind of a thing. Why is that? especially at a fire like he was at, you know. It was Why is it why is it for Grady? What what what made that? I think because I felt like Grady and I were firefighters together for six or seven years. I had fought a ton of fires with him. He was one of the one of the guys that, you know, he was the top two percent of the guys, just really solid at what he did. had a better head on his shoulders than I did. thought well through everything, was aggressive, but he just took care of business and he went to a fire that we had made a million times together and and he was gone. Just that. quickly. And for me I was like 'cause it kinda felt like I was ten foot tall and bulletproof for a long time. And you do get that way. As a firefighter and all that, you know, you really kinda worry about yourself. You know, maybe that guy next to me is not as good as I am and I can do anything and and I think a lot of times we're more lucky than we are good. And I had lived several years, probably ten plus years of my career doing that. And then when I made engine boss, I had great guys behind me. We made fires almost daily there in that territory, very successful. And then you know, I got Danny and Danny was a paramedic, a career paramedic. he had in Houston you don't rotate onto the engine as a paramedic, so he'd really never been on the engine for twenty years. and He was there to be retrained as a medic, but long story short, they decided he wasn't going to be a paramedic for the city anymore. And so they put him on our engine. And I didn't know how to deal with that. problem employee. Not that Nanny was a problem. He just his skills were very poor. but he had 22 years in. His dad was in the fire department. Like, what am I gonna do? Treat this guy like a rookie? You know, I was a a rookie officer, and so Back in the day, the firefighters taught you how to be firefighters. The captain never really had anything to do with that in the city. So I just did that. I gave it to the guys and said, Hey, get this guy on on the right page. And it had always worked in the past because most of the guys showed up were pretty solid. they didn't want to work there because it was so busy. So they didn't have a lot if they came, they they wanted to be there. Yeah. And so Danny wasn't really cutting the mustard over a few months. He just wasn't getting it all together. He wasn't doing well. Well, there's a hundred fire stations and four shifts in the city of Houston, right? Basically. So I had three hundred and ninety-nine more options for Danny to work somewhere else. And I had decided, my guys had decided that I needed to approach this problem. I didn't know how to deal with it. I didn't know what to say to him. 'Cause Danny was when you describe it, you that Danny was just happy go lucky dude. He just didn't he just he was just there. He was a s yeah, right. So so I I always told him, you know, he's the nice guy, right? And and I think most firemen know what that means, right? When you say, Man, that guy Danny, that's the nicest guy in the world. You know what I mean? He'll do anything for you. And he was. He was a sweetheart of a guy. But do you want to go to a fire with the nice guy? Most of us play, I'd probably pick another one. You know what I mean? Yeah. his skills were just not there where they needed to be. And he didn't have the drive that, I I would want him to have. And and but I didn't have the skills either to teach him. to me it was like, hey, you either catch up or you move on. Because that's the way it's always been from where I worked. If you didn't if you didn't hold, you know, cut your part of the deal, they just sent you somewhere else. And So that's all I knew. And so Danny came in office and said, Hey, I know what you're gonna say. I don't like it here. We we're too busy. We make too many fires. I wanna go somewhere else. And that was great news to me. He had given me a hall pass, man. I didn't have to deal with a problem. So I helped him pack his stuff and I put it in his car and watched him drive out of the driveway. And six months later he was dead. So he had gone to a fire. He probably hadn't gone to a fire and I don't know. He made a couple with us and never quite got through the front door and it was easier for me to just leave him out there where in the front yard and go in with the other guys. he made that fire and he died. He died in a fire that he should have never died in. And I look at some of the things that I believe killed him and I probably could have spent fifteen minutes or twenty minutes with him and and stopped or potentially stopped that. I didn't go over how to call him a day. I didn't go over, hey, you know, you gotta get down before you take your regulator out. I didn't go, don't lose your crew, how do you work the radio? That's nothing. I just assumed and and expected him to know those things. And the biggest reason I talk about the story is because it changed me so much because I don't think there's a fire station in this country that doesn't have a dandy. They're either they've given up and they never have been good. Maybe they're just not trained well. I think there's so many of out there and we just take for granted that, you know, just kinda deal with it or kick him down I'd say kick the can down the road, give to someone else. Danny worked for other captains too. I wasn't the only one, but to me I took a lot of responsibility for it because I c I could just see what he was, what I could have done and what I didn't do. And And it was had nothing to do with him. It had everything to do with me being uncomfortable with the situation. And once they promote you, and even if they don't promote you, at the lower levels you have the same responsibility, man. It's not about you. You know what I mean? And I'll be honest with you, there's a lot of guys in the Houston Fire Bart hate my guts. And I'm okay with it. yeah, I was never the cool guy. I was never in the clique. I was never the nice boss. You know what I mean? I wasn't A jerk, but if you suck, I'm gonna say something to you, you know, and especially after Danny because I didn't want that to ever happen to me again just because I I didn't do what I was supposed to do. And it wasn't gonna be, well, I didn't wanna hurt his feelings and we were just all trying to get along and I'm the nice guy and I just didn't do anything. It's not gonna happen anymore. And that ownership, as you said, that's It weighs heavy. I imagine it it's gonna still weigh heavy 'cause the way you talk about it, you definitely have a lot of I could tell it's still it's still there, which is amazing that after all this time. And you 'cause you speak it so well and and when you give your lectures. But that ownership is also just not you. It's also everyone. Anyone who's riding that truck with them, anyone who's a senior guy. I think that's where it gets you know, that buck sometimes gets passed is that, you know, it well, it's the officers' fault. Well, I mean, we all have a responsibility with our crew that we've gotta take that time And I know like we you said, like we have the s l the slogan, no good dudes. I don't know sure you've heard that. You know, Noah Katz does a great job with explaining the no good dude kind of mentality, but we can't give up on the no good dudes either. Because if they're still with us, ultimately it's our responsibility to make sure that they're gonna be safe and they're gonna be safe for us. Cause now if we have to risk our lives to pull them out, now we got double fatalities, you know, and we gotta make sure that We're protecting our own, ourselves, so we can go home, but also that Danny can go home to his wife and children as well. Right. you can only control what you can control. So if you're the firefighter riding with this other guy, you control yourself and to some extent this guy riding with you. So you have responsibility. I think we like to pass the buck and it's not my job or it's not my responsibility, but it is. You know what I mean? And and it's easier when all of us have accountability for something like that. now there's different levels of that, right? If you can't handle it, then I need to step in and those type of things. But we have to hold each other accountable and to a certain expectation. That that's the biggest thing that ticked people off, I think, that I worked around was that it's held to a very high expectation. You know what I mean? And there's so at least from my experience, there's so many leaders that just don't. they just work for the Hope Fire Department, I hope nothing happens. I hope we get through the day, you know, and I don't get it, you know, and and it it changed after Danny. Like that shifted it really hard for me. Like I'm not I would love for us to be buddies, but that's not a prerequisite of you working here, right? My my job is to make sure you're prepared for everything that could come about. And not everybody shows up that way and I don't expect it overnight, but we're gonna come up with a program to get you there. Right. And if you aren't getting there, then we're gonna figure out why. Do you just not care? You know, you're trying to we're doing this battle, this is this hard head against hard head to see where you are or you just don't understand or what? 'cause it's my responsibility and I had a responsibility to all the people I worked with and all the people I took care of in that downtown area. And those were my concerns because I take this stuff on. I take it serious, right? So if something bad happens to you and I'm the boss, I have part I'm owner owning some of that, right? Yeah. And I don't ever want to think, man, I could have done something else and I just didn't. Because it happened to me once and I swore it would never happen to me again. Did with that event that happened with Danny, did that change any department policy? Did the was there more of a paper trail for training and if someone doesn't cut it, then maybe it's to let them loose? You know. Yes. So they started a reacclamation program. And basically if you were off I don't hold me till I think it's six months, it could have been longer than that. off of an engine company or suppression unit for six months or more, then they would send you to the academy for re reacclimation. that was a great step in the right direction. Now I would like to see the list of the guys who failed reacclamation. Cause I bet there isn't one. Right? Don't worry about it, buddy. We're gonna get you through this. Wink, wink, right? Yeah. Maybe I'm wrong. You guys out there that are gonna see it, go bull crap. okay, send me the half a dozen guys that it was. But I don't know how many went through a lot, and I never heard of anybody not passing. So again, like what are we doing? I don't want to take your job either, but I just saw so many times that guys were just not For whatever reason, they were not going to make even the basic standard. And we let it pass. And that's a failure in leadership. I I didn't make a lot of friends because I'm pretty outspoken about those type of things. And I watched it happen. I mean, we had a kid, God bless him, you know, he he didn't want to be a fireman. He never wanted to be a fireman. His dad, who was a police officer, wanted him to be a fireman. And the kid had panic attacks on his way to s to work. He had panic attacks on the tip of the ladder. I mean, I'm talking a 24 foot to the second floor window ladder. it got through the training officer, through the training academy, all the way up to me. I did it everything. We worked for weeks and weeks and weeks on this young man trying to get him where he needed to be. We weren't trying to get rid of him. There's a place in this fire service for almost everybody. And he finally just said, Chief, I don't want to be here. I don't want to do this. And I was like, Well, there's only one option then. You got to go do something else. Mm-hmm. And we were heading downtown and the powers that be at the time called and said, You know what, Chief Gordon, and that district over there does train too hard. Don't you worry about it. We're going to transfer you this afternoon. They sent him out, and as far as I know, he's still there. Wow. So but he didn't leave. Right. He's gonna hire somebody. Because that's not gonna be on me. That's gonna be on you. And there was apparently there's no quit for him. Like it's a simple solution. I don't want to do this job, like you said, go find something else. Yeah, but he wanted to quit. Like he had his stuff packed up. We were taking him there to quit. And they just convinced him that it was my fault. And But it doesn't have to be that everywhere. And it doesn't have to be that, out of a hundred fire stations, you can find one to hide in. Yeah. And that no one will hold you accountable and no one expects anything out of you. But I told him at the time, if this kid gets somebody hurt or he gets himself hurt, who's that gonna be on? Don't don't don't think you're gonna pin it on me because I've told you that this young man doesn't want to be here and he's got problems. It wasn't a training issue, he just It'd be like me, if I decided I wanted to be an accountant tomorrow, it ain't gonna work out for me. I can't hardly do math, right? So it's not for everybody. It doesn't make sense to me. So, but they needed numbers. We were seven hundred and something short, and this was one more. So you know, that's that's what bothers me most about most upper management of most places that I'm aware of. that at least in my experience, they're just they're so disconnected from what actually needs to happen. And it's very frustrating. It frustrates everybody that's below You see these things happen and they sub they don't support you, but they support something like that. And it's very frustrating. So as a chief, you know, being frustrated at that level, that must have been must have been such a hard time. What a difficult process it is when you're seeing the deficiencies, when you're seeing you you're you're you're living it and knowing that there's these problems. And you're bringing it up, but it's like again, you said, No, no, no. It's it's well, it's you, it's not us. Right. That's gotta be incredibly deflating. How do you deal with that? Yeah, so it was. I mean, I'll be honest with you. I worked through probably some of the hardest, eight is eight years that the Houston Fire Department had had. And I was at that battalion chief or district chief level. I was directly across the street from headquarters. I was there every every few weeks at least. never was disciplined, just always brought in and fussed at. I embarrassed them. I made them mad. I'd say something well you said this at a conference or you put this on Facebook or during our chiefs meeting you were very outspoken about yeah, taking half of the fire apparatus away on a working fire or a potential working fire. Yeah, I'm be outspoken about those things. A lot of people didn't want to say anything, it's roll with the flow. But again, I had to back up and think, what are my priorities here? Right? They don't like me. I don't like them. I'm gonna fight for what's right and I'm gonna do the right thing, right? That's people say, What's the key to being an officer? I say, Don't do anything stupid. If your stomach says, Man, that's just stupid, stop and go do something else and then let's do the right thing. I don't care what it is, just do the right thing. I don't care what the rule book says, do the right thing. So I would fight for my people. I would be a big umbrella. It wouldn't get past me unless it had to. and then I would also have to come in almost daily and say, hey, I know we got problems here, but I'm telling you, we're here for each other and we're here for the people. That there's a grandmother or there's little Johnny, seven years old, he's asleep in his Spider Man pajamas down the road. It's not his fault, right? So District Eight Bravo is gonna be the best shift that I can make it or that we can make it. Yeah. Right. 'cause they'd come in, man. I ain't mowing the grass, I ain't washing a pumper, we're not training, I'm not doing anything. This place stinks. We hadn't had a pay raise in eight years, ten years, whatever. And I'm like, You're right. I get it. But it don't matter. And I'd grab a blower and start blowing out the engine bay, and they'd be like, God dang it. We can't let him do it. You know what I mean? but I'd stand out there and hold the garden holes or whatever as they washed and we got we got them moving that morning. maybe they made five or six runs before breakfast. You know, they come back many a time, and me and my driver, Tambo, or one of us, we'd be out there cooking them breakfast. You know what I mean? Like they realized that. I was the boss, but I was I was one of them. And when it was time for me to just be one of the guys, I was one of the guys. When it's time for me to be a boss, I had to be a boss. They never questioned it. So it is difficult to deal with those things and everybody does deal with I think it's the same circuits, different clowns, right? But control what you can control. If you got an engine company and you're the boss, you're the best engine company that you can make it. And you demand that from your people. Realize that it's not about you. It's about other people. And you just go to work knowing that. And, you know, fight for it. Fight for they they can't eat you and they can't take your birthday. That's what Mo Davis tells me. So and he's right. I mean, they threatened me with everything under the sun and never came up because I never broke any guideline. I just pissed them off. And I made the public and the firemen know what they were doing was wrong. So they're just trying to like it's most and it's a lot of things in the in in the fire service right now that we're still struggling with that we're just trying to put asses in the seats. You know, we're we're in a deficiency for medics, we're a deficiency for even firefighters. It it's dropped tremendously. So that's the struggle is that we were trying to find people that give a shit about the fire service. And I think that's why you see so much stuff on social media where where you see it's in our face constantly, you know. Be better, do better. We get to do this. there's the there's the t shirts, there's the stickers, all these logos and all these things, and I do it too, because I give a shit and I want people to give a shit like I do. And that's gonna be incredibly frustrating when you're getting you're not getting that caliber. You're getting the people who just think, Well, maybe I'll try it out. I don't know. If I don't like it, I'll just go do something online. And I think that's the like for you, fighting for that. It's like, no, we need we need people, but we need good people. We don't need just the good dudes. Yeah. and I'll be honest with you, I wouldn't want to be a a fire chief at a paid department. you you've got to balance so much and it's you know, you you basically have two bosses. You have these guys out in the street, then you have these people that are signing the checks. it takes a a a unique individual to be able to do that. I think the ones that are good at it don't forget where they came from and those guys in the street. I think that's where the failure is when you kind of sell your soul to these other folks. You might get fired, right? You might not be the fire chief forever. It'll be all right. You'll you'll make it. but I agree. There they're they hire a lot of bad people. it's a different world now. but I think what we do is a blue collar hard job, and it always will be. the guys are smarter than I ever was, but it it takes heart and it takes drive. I learned i I have worked with girls that were four foot seven. Right. I think four foot five or something is an official little person or whatever, right? all the way up to the biggest, dumbest guy in the world. And there's a place for all of and we just have to I hold to an expectation and train up to where you want them to be. I know guys are riding short. I know they don't have enough people. You know, most of our hands on not most, all of our hands on is based on a three man crew at the max. Yes, right. you you don't have the luxury that I had to have just tons and tons of people there. but what that requires from you is you have to guys in a small town in a small three station department, right? Three shifts, whatever, you have to be so much better tactically than most big urban cities, right? You don't get the luxury of going to fires every day and you don't have the manpower to cover up the screw ups. Right. That I watched it a million times. Poor tactics covered up by this sheer manpower. Right. you have to be better. Now, I always pushed and pushed and pushed because I wanted us to be the best. And I wanted every firefighter or officer to be at a skill level to where they could work independently if they needed to. Right. And I think that's where we need to be. with this short staff crew is man, if you're just kind of sort of getting by and we all work together and we make it work, it's not always going to be the case. All right. There's going to be a day where all three of us have to go to work and we're not going to be holding hands when we do it. And so if you can build to that skill level to where when your chief pulls up and asks the driver, hey, where's everybody at? Hey, hey, one's in the back window, Charlie side, one's in the Bravo window. We got reported kids trapped in both. He doesn't go into full panic mode because you have blown this two in two out and staying together thing out of the water, right? He's just glad that someone knows where you are and y'all've worked on it so much you know that you're gonna he's y'all are gonna make that search of that little bedroom, peek in the hallway and then bail back out so we can regroup because he's there now and another engine got there and we can make this all work. But those that takes skill. If you think you're gonna wake up after doing nothing for six months and pull that kind of stuff off, it ain't happening. It takes daily work and confidence because it's scary. Sometimes you bail off in there. You've been there two years. You're like, my God, what is this guy doing to me? But if you've built a skill and we all have a plan, you know, we can make it work, but it just takes a lot of work. And the guys that are short on manpower, this got to work harder and harder and harder. And most of them do, to be honest with you. There's a lot of guys from the middle of nowhere that I would take over some of the guys I work with a bunch. Yeah. you absolutely hit it, Chief. it is so it is so impair imp important that we are harnessing all of those skills. Like for a three man crew, we can't really have any weaknesses. We really have to be strong in all aspects of it. You can't just hand the irons to the outside vent guy, go, here, these are yours. You gotta do it. Like, no, I'm the driver. I'm gonna have to do I'm gonna have to stretch the line as well. And do a plethora of other things while two other guys, my officer and tailboarder, are well the officer's now doing a 360. So the tailboard is having to stretch that line, get masked up and ready to rock. And while that officer comes back, now has to go inside with that guy and make sure that everything is going on great inside that building with them. And that's difficult. And you get a lot of audibles being played in that. Like you said, that's where that training, that constant training, like Mickey Farrell really does a great job with hitting it and says it's like a symphony. You know, whether have a big crew, you have a big department or small. If you train together, they're gonna make beautiful music together. And it just it it's all in sync and it's I love watching. I always get goosebumps when I see guys, whether it's a three man crew or a four man crew, how they can get off the truck, they peel off, and they know exactly what they need to do. It's beautiful to see that. Yeah, you can watch, social media and you can see it so obviously, right? I see guys hustling and man, it's just bing bang boom and it's done, and then I watch other videos and it's like, how's it take you four minutes to pull up and get through the front door? I I can't fathom it. And what I can't fathom the most is how is that acceptable? Right. I know things happen, don't I get it. But if that's your consistent, that's an issue. You know what I mean? And and Mickey's right. I love Mickey to death and he's one of the smartest guys I know and and he's right. And I'll be honest with you, and it it had nothing to do with me. But one of the reasons I could walk away from HFD was I was making fires with my crew and and I've described it and I didn't know Mickey described it that way, but I would tell people it was like I was the conductor, but they didn't need me. I just stood there and I'd be, hey, no, they did that. Hey, you know, and I looked around and I took more pictures and patted them on the back more than I did anything else. And I thought, man, They don't they don't need me. You know what I mean? They're gonna be fine no matter what happens. But it we all had worked a long time to get to that point. they were really good to begin with and we just home skills and home skills and because I wanted to have that comfort level with them and I wanted them to know that they could do anything and I wanted to be able to use them for anything. I always told they were like tools in my tool bag, and I always kept as sharp and as clean as I could. But every once in a while I needed to use a screwdriver like a chisel and beat it with a hammer and I just abused the pee out of it. Right. every once in a while they were gonna get abused, man. They just had but they had to be tough as that old screwdriver and be able to handle it and and they did. They always came through with this shining colors, you know what I mean? They just did a f fabulous job. Well, just gonna hit on that. So As you're as you leading them and they've obviously being dialed in and doing these things for you in the hard work, because you're explaining to them, hey, you're I'm gonna have to use you in a different way than you're used to. But I think that also comes down to that the people are ready to do that for their officer is because of praise. And you mentioned that you're gonna give them a pat on the back or take a picture. I think that's incredibly important that you praise your men and women when they're doing a good job, not just because they showed up to work, but when that job is difficult and they did a good knockdown. Do you believe in that? absolutely. some of the things like I I I consciously changed was one, I I needed relationships with the crews. you know, downtown's different, especially in a big department like this, you know, got the downtown clowns, you got the Southwest Rangers, you got the they they called the North Side guys long wallets because, you they were all rednecks, carried them big long w leather wallets back in the day. You know what I mean? And I was one of those guys for a long time. But downtown the Chiefs I always say that, you know, they kind of flew in on angel's wings and, you know, they made their plate and, you know, and they would eat and then they would fly off into their little hidey hole for the next four or five hours. And, you know, and as long as the chief was out there, the the guys were top notch. As soon as he left, you know, they were just wild as Indians, you know. So I called myself a a kitchen table chief. I I started this well, I'd get to work, I'd I'd bring my computer to the kitchen table, I'd drag the phone over there and I'd drink coffee and I just never left. And they hated it. They thought I was there to check their socks or to see if their collarbass was right or whatever and I didn't give a crap about any of that stuff. I I wanted a relationship. I wanted to know who these guys were. And That was a huge, huge step in the right direction. People say you can't be their friend and their boss. That's not true at all. You work with grown people, you treat them with respect, they're going to treat you with respect. there were times, yeah, I'd get wet, you know, during the water fight and they'd laugh, think it really funny. And but when fire came in, then I was the boss and there was never a question. But I had relationships with them and it changed how they saw me and it made me approachable to them. And they knew if I they had a problem or whatever, they could come straight to me. That wasn't our culture in Houston, you know. You had to go through every single rank and senior man to get to me. it was ridiculous. You know what I mean? If if you want Tuesday off, go talk to my driver and he'll get you Tuesday off. You know what I mean? But if you got a problem at home and your kids are sick or you're worried about an employee or something, come straight to me. And and that trickled over to the fire ground, right? So we had relationships. We we did a a postmortem after every single fire. If attackos hit the ground, I didn't care how bad it was, we got together, took our badges off, basically, and and it started with me. Hey fellas, I sent you that Charlie side, boy, sure sounded like a good idea when it came out of my mouth. How'd that work out? At first it didn't say nothing, right? But then man, that didn't work out worth a damn, you know what I mean? And okay. Hey, next time you gotta say something to me, you know what I mean? And and it it started opening up the conversation of where these guys who were all type A's couldn't make a mistake, right? They they got to where they felt comfortable with saying, Man, you know, we got hung up over here, delayed this, and you know, I said, it's all right, brother. You know, I got you. Hey, we're gonna work on that though for me, right? And 'cause we are buds, you know, I'd ask like an engineer operator, why'd you why'd you place the apparatus here? Why'd you park the engine here? Man. I don't know. I seen sevens come around the corner, they were gonna beat me in, so bang, I hit the brake 'cause I it's mine now, right? they were putting too much pressure on me where he's gonna get beat in. Well, his positioning sucked. So Stretch sucked and then the stretch sucks, the fire attack sucks, and then now the search sucks because those guys are getting run out of the second floor because they can't get water on the fire. it all works together. Yeah. So I would say, look, man, look if you had just placed it here ten more feet at further, right? Completely different scenario. I'd tell them other guys, hey, if say it's engine twenty five ladder so they're on the street, it's their fire. It's their fire. You come around a corner, you see there, they're rolling in. they beat you, even by ten seconds. That's their fire. You stage where you're supposed to stage. Now all of a sudden I took some pressure off of Hey, I can place it. We can make the stretch. They're not gonna be crawling up my wazoo. Some of y'all don't have that problem because they're seven or eight minutes away, but we're thirty seconds apart, right? The guys that got beat in, they know next time It'll be their turn. I'm gonna hold them off, right? That's their fire. We're not in there clanking bottles. We're not in there beating each other up, trying to get to the kitchen fire. Let the guys go to work. And that helped a lot. just giving them standing up for telling that guy, you know, and I'd have sneak up, you know how they they stage and then they get out, then they walk, and then all of a sudden they end up close to the front door. And I'd make an example of I'd let them get there. Then I as soon as they thought they were going to get in the game, I'd say, hey, go sit back in your pump. They just sat there the rest of the fire. That hurt their feelings, right? So they did it before. but they we all started to work together. those postmortems, we covered everything. We were honest. I started it so we could go through problems. I didn't want them to feel like I was pointing out all their problems. and then we just built, hey. On Monday when we made the fire, we were as best as we thought we could be. If we found out Monday night we weren't quite as good as we needed to be, Tuesday we started to work on it, right? Because we weren't gonna be where we were Monday on Tuesday if we could avoid it. We had to do some work. And that's just every day it went that way and it got better and better. And as I started walking around looking for something to point out, I couldn't find anything after some time. there's always something. But there was a few fires. I was Man, I don't have nothing to say. Y'all got anything? They like, nope. You know. called each other by first names a lot of time. You know what I mean? They could they knew they could say, Hey Chief. they knew when I was in trouble or I thought they were in trouble, I called them by their first name. If I told them Jason, get out. Chris, come cut the roof off of it. They knew I was in trouble. You know, ladder seven, come in, ventilate the roof. That's standard operating procedures. Chris, who's the ladder boss, Chris come in and cut the roof off of this thing, he knew I was in trouble. I I needed him bad, right? So that really that that right there, Chief, that really is is a great actually point right there is that when you do a first name basis, it's more of a sense of an urgency. You're you're making that one person really perk up their ears and pay attention. As opposed to like saying the engine company or lieutenant or captain, when you're when you use that first name. That's a really good key because you that that that person I'm going to pick up on that. If someone says, Mike, I need you to do this. I know they're speaking one right away. That's that's me they're talking to and that that is my responsibility. And if it falls flat, it's my problem. I did it or I didn't do it. But that means me know like you see something and I'm not seeing you need me to pay attention right away. I like that. So that started when I was an engine boss. Ricky Rigsby drove me for years and years and years. And Ricky was one of the best. And but I you know, he's my eyes on the outside. I was in one of the territories. If we were gonna be alone for a little while, which was a couple minutes, it was gonna be there. And he was my eyeballs, right? So our ambulance probably laid more four inch and five inch back in those days than anybody in the nation. You know what I'm saying? We didn't lay lines in, they just Skull drag is a ploke 200 feet away. Ricky charged the line. We went interior. Ricky made sure he had water supply, his pump was good, and then he put his eyes on me. And he had a standing order. If he said Clyde, get out. We didn't care what it was, where we were going, we didn't ask. We got out the nearest place, and then I met him in the front yard, like, what happened? And he, you know, he tell man, it looked bad on on the Charlie side, whatever, you know, and And because there's no Clydes, you know what I mean? And engine sixty seven may get kinda washed in with everything else, but Clyde's real easy and the whole fire department would be like, Man, Clyde about to burn up or something, and and it just kinda laid over into me being a chief. you know, I'd get there and we'd have people trapped and they're making the push and I just need Yeah. And those guys knew, man, if I called them by first name and gave an order, it was what they needed to do times a hundred, And it was different. It worked for us. It doesn't work for everybody, you know. And you know, it it kind of was funny. I got so used to it. I had a guy show up one day and long story short, it they told me the fire was on division two of some garden apartments. I couldn't get in there where I could see it yet. And Ended up the fire was on division one. I didn't know that. told the truck go cut a hole in the roof. And he's cutting the hole. And then finally someone said, Hey, you know, this is a division one fire. And I was like, Nope. And after it was all over, I said, Brother, why'd you cut the hole? And hey, I said, Did you know the fire was on the first floor? And he said, Yeah. I said, Why'd you cut the hole? He said, You told me to. And I'm like, Yeah, okay. I get it. So the guy he worked for was that, in my opinion, a micromanager. What I say is golden and you can't question it. And I'm not saying that you should question it, but if he'd have just keyed to Mike and said, you know, Lab Seven, this is a division one fire, you want me to cut the hole? I would have said no. You know what I mean? If I'd have told him, Yeah, cut it. Yeah, no problem, cut it. You know what I mean? So I think relationships are the key. You gotta know everybody has a strength and weakness. If you're sitting in your office half of the day or three quarters of the day watching soap operas or whatever you do, you have no idea what people's capability are. I went out and trained with them. Sometimes I just hid in a corner because I knew I would make it worse. They don't want me there. But I needed to see skill levels and I needed to understand that that engine, man, I can ask them to do anything. That engine, I might need to. Back them up with somebody else, right? officers the same way, you know. I ran fires from the front yard. I didn't park in my car, I didn't sit down the street. I don't understand any of that. I ran fires from the front yard. They need to walk past. We have a relationship. Chris needs to look over at me, and I'll just maybe I'll point to the roof, maybe I'll just glance back at him. But I can see his face, he can see mine, and we can communicate a ton of stuff through there. sometimes a kid, I call him a kid, young officers, man, they're nervous, right? they look at me like they're nervous. Like, I'm not sure I can do what you want me to do. Maybe I just walk over there, put my arm around him for a second and say, Hey, brother, I lost this side. I need you to do this for me. And if he gives me that look, like, yeah, I'm a go, but I don't know. I'm say, Don't you worry about it, I'm gonna back you up with so and so. Somebody that I know he's gonna trust, right? But I he gets some reassurance. I have confidence in him. So he's gonna think, Man, I can do anything. That's the way I was. I I can remember my officers telling me to do things. I thought, man, I can't do that. But he thinks I can, so mo I must be able to, right? And but we had relationships. And and again it goes back to how everything changed for me. I lost a daughter. I watched my wife and my family go through that, how it changed us. And I didn't want that to happen. but I also understood that every fire I went to and every fire I sent you into, I potentially was there, I was gonna kill you. I mean, we have to understand that that is a a potential, right? So I took that very, very seriously. and I always stood out front because If I was sending you into a fire, you were gonna walk past me. I'm your boss, not these other guys. I'm the one that me and you break bread together, we have dinner together, we drink coffee together, we smoke saw cigars together, you'll walk past me. Right? Cause I'm gonna look at you, I will look at you. I may not talk to you, but I am gonna make eye contact with you. And then if something were to happen, I can at least sit out there and and talk to your family and talk to your wife and and tell them what happened. It wasn't I was down in a car. Little bit down the road, you know what I mean? That kind of stuff. just that didn't work for me. Yeah, that's that's a different that's that's I'm sure that's a I'm sure that's a that's a good debate for another episode for sure. But that's cause that's you know, there's some people that believe being in the buggy that way there's there's no one to bother them. You know, they they they're they're encased, they can hear radio traffic, they can concentrate on the scene, that way nobody's all these random people are coming up to them and bothering them. But I do love that mentality of I want to see you do this and I'm gonna be right there. And I can picture you, I can literally picture you on the fire ground patting somebody on the back as they go do it. Yeah, God, thank you for doing that. Go go do that. Yeah, yeah. so I agree there are problems with that, but what I would tell you is it's called command presence. it was very clear to those guys that you don't talk to me, right? Now I had the luxury of having a driver. You can talk to Tambo or Ryan until you're blue in the face. but you didn't talk to me. I had the the circle of ten feet around me. I was very focused on what I was paying attention to. And they knew if you if I was watching Engine and Ladder Seven today that tomorrow I might be watching engine twenty five and engine eight tomorrow. And they they just didn't mess with that. And it worked very well for us. Now, there are times where it got so complicated that I did retreat to the vehicle, but the vehicle was parked out front. because of, you know, high rise operations, multiple alarms, things like that, it's gonna get too busy. I d I gotta get where I need to be. but your my bread and butter, one and two stories, those type of things, then I was out front. Well speaking of of mid rises and and those kind of situations, you have you do training on that and you do a couple of classes on that. And you taught at last year's FDIC. so you have some various classes. Can you hit on those? Yeah, so we do do a mid-rise class that's based on a three man engine crew, right? Basically. And you know, because so much of the country now is getting these mega apartments, they're the three, four, five over two, you know, residential living, over parking garage. townhomes, three story, non-sprinklered, modern townhomes, mega apartments. My district was inundated with those things. And you know, we fought fire the way we have for two hundred years in Houston. You know, we pull up the alphaside, we pull the first cross late, we walk through the front door, put fire out, go out the back door, you know, high five, two pictures, and we go home. Vertical meant you worked downtown and you were in a high-rise building. So we carried hose to the 42nd floor. This in the middle didn't exist for a long, long, long time. So the few fires that we made initially, in my opinion, didn't go well because an extended stretch, fire covering the alpha side of a townhome or fire on the fourth floor, or just overwhelming amounts of fire. in a a five over two like the bloggett street fire, those things had to change tactically. And so we started working on things. Phillip Baird, several guys here in Houston started to work on those things and make it more conducive to just an engine crew across America. and really the biggest point I think is is rapid water I won't delay water ever, ever, ever, ever again. I did for a long time. It was a cultural thing here. You don't put water from the outside. If you do, you're the biggest coward in Houston in America. And I'm not a flowerbed fireman. I don't want you squirting from the outside. But if the only way you get water there quick enough is to squirt, squirt away, right? You know, I actually I'm gonna put I'm glad you actually talked about that because I wanted to ask you about that. There's a big debate about transitional attack, exterior attack, whatever you want to call it. Right. I like it because I think it is important. Like you said, you don't want delay water. You know, like Kyle Romaga says, right? Like you got a solution. You have it in your hand. Yeah. It's about the victims. Right. It's about the people inside. Why not use it? So I believe in that. And like if someone's trying to force a door and there's fire blowing out the window, am I gonna not use it? Right. So I mean, I get it. And and I will tell you, the world I came from, no, we wouldn't use it. We would burn the whole other side of the door to the ground, to the slab, trying to get through the front door before we applied water. and it took my personal experiences, it took the UL or FSRI, right? people like Kyle Romagus to to say, look at this, Clyde, like like let's look at it logically. And I will tell people and I do all over this country, if you can get through the front door, get to the seat of the fire and open the nozzle, you better be doing that. That's what we're there to do. That's number one. That is the best way to do it, right? Without a doubt. Yes, sir. Now, do you have you been to a hoarder house? Have you been to a door you couldn't force? Have you been to a fire on the fourth floor and there's three of you? Those are different options. So do we allow it to burn and burn and burn and burn just because of your ego? That's where I have a problem, right? So my guys knew bread and butter fire, they're gonna pull up, they're gonna be within the front door a minute. I would be looking at them crazy, probably 30 seconds or so, right? That was standard operating procedure. If they got to the front door and I heard that truck womping and a thumping. And I had fire showing from a window, I'd be like, all right, your timer has started. Right. And if it didn't open right away, they knew, man, just walk over the window, knock it back, and we're gonna come through this front door again. Cause he's gonna chew us out. Because I'm looking at it from Johnny. Again, Johnny's seven years old. His mom put him to bed. She went to the convenience store. She's got some sort of problem. I don't know. I'm not here to judge her, but Johnny's in there by himself at seven. You ask Johnny when you get him out if he gives a flip where that water came from. He does not care, right? He just knows it's really bad. wait, it's better. Okay. The FSR has proven to us, Keith and those guys have proven that water on the fire makes it better. Okay. You can't argue with that anymore. Now, from my experience back in the early 90s, so we had the guys that came in in the 60s and 70s, right? We w in the eighties, nineties, we went from no air pack, crawling in there, those guys did, I never did, right? To gear and then more gear, more gear. We we wore double liners, double hoods, double gloves, like everything. We had an air pack, we stood up, we walked down nine jillion degree hallways until our head turned orange, and we opened a power cone and a fog nozzle at a hundred and eighty psi. For about six seconds, we blew fire to the neighbor's house. Right. it worked great. We thought we were the best in the America and we were aggressive as heck. But what were we doing? We didn't know anything else, but it worked fine for us. Right. Where we got the negative impact from water from the exterior was that guy that came in in his 70s and it was hoarder conditions and it took us longer to get to that back bedroom than he thought it should. He walked around to the window with the red line. Stuck it in there on full fog. What did he do to us? Well, he roasted us, right? So we were like, who's the SOB that put water from the outside was Bob? Well, I knew Bob was a big old sissy anyway. Now, Bob's a sissy, water from the exterior is the devil. All it does is burn people and kill them. Done incorrectly, they have proven that is exactly 100% true. You put a fog pattern through a window, highly heated environment, you're killing people. But there is a way, right? So there's a time and place. You know, you don't use foam at every fire you go to either. There's a time and a place. It's a tactic. If I need water on the fire and I can't get it there the way I want to, then I gotta apply it a different way. Yes, sir. And the mid-rise thing is the same way. I mean, don't really care who you are. If you don't believe me, go get your stopwatch. Find you a four-story building. Pull up to it. Start your stop watch. Tell me when you got water on the fourth floor. Flowing, ready to go. got water in there. I bet it's close to two minutes of floor. So four floors, that's an eight minute stretch if you're going to the stamp pot. Okay. I don't know. How long you want your kid to lay there? Eight minutes? It's too dang long for me. Yeah. So for us, we do the initial knockdown, with with a ram or blitz fire, whatever, and Or the deck gun, right? Gotta get water in there. I get water in there in thirty seconds. While I'm doing fifteen seconds worth of tank water, I put sixty gallons in the window. It bought me some time. Yeah. The guys are stretching off of the engine or dropping a coupling or hoisting hose or whatever they're doing. They basically the engine supplies the water to the hose line. They're up there in minute, maybe ninety seconds, and they got water on the same floor. It was gonna take you eight minutes to do. high-rise operation, the building demands demands that we use the stand pipe. I get it. It's twenty-four stories or forty-two or eighty-five or whatever. The reason it takes so long is you have to get there for one, and two, you have to build the system. How many of us don't carry crosslays or pre-connected lines? We carried it all rolled up or in a bundle. And then when we get to your house fire, we start building a system in the front yard. None of us. Because it's stupid and it takes too long, right? Right. Well you have to do it when it's twenty stories above your head. But if it's that in between, we just gotta get water on the fire. Let's do what we always do. You just do it a little differently. So that's what we've worked on. That's what we worked on in district eight. and that became very successful for us. the gated wire went away, our extended line became a two and a half with a nozzle on the end of it with the option to bring the ram or blitz fire. then we extended off of it. We needed to drop couplings or marry crews together to get them interior. I had that luxury. We'd make a six man crew because these switch back stairs, twenty five feet up, back across the living room twenty five feet up. That's a horrible stretch. And two or three guys aren't gonna be able to do it. So we had to come up with tactics that change things. Man, it's great. I love I l I haven't taken those classes yet. So those those are the ones I'm I'm hoping to take. and I think that is great. Are you going to be teaching anywhere soon or are you still are you gonna are you doing anything right now? You know, this it's been really, really busy and we're already well into next year getting classes already are are being what am I trying to say scheduled? Thank you. I do have one in Des Moines, Iowa that we'll be at I think in a month. Me and Steve Robertson are gonna be there. some of it's lecture, some of it's lecturing hands on. I can't remember what Des Moines is, but you know, it it's been all over the country and I think it's it's just because people need it. And you know, i if you look at I think it's called Houston apartment fire or something. It's the it's a five over two. It's one of the first times that we ever use this tactic. I did anyway. use the deck gun on tank water, exterior hit, and all of that. It was what really sold me. And Philip Baird was the guy driving, and he's just so smart. And he'd been telling me these things, but I didn't, you know, I'm not gonna believe him, right? Until I saw it. He made all the difference in the world. He saved people's lives. We had people hanging from bed sheets out of the third floor window. these people were dying in there, and Philip, he did it all by himself, and that and that's where these three man crews gotta understand, man, there's three of you. One of you is driving, right? So how do I make a real knock on these fires with that kind of crew in the next three maybe seven minutes out? Well that driver has to be involved. And the only way a driver can put two hundred sixty five to five hundred gallons on the fire floor, four or five stories above your head is to either use a ram or a deck gun, right? Yeah. You look at the city of Chicago, okay? Big department. I don't think there are a bunch of sissies up there. I know a bunch of them. They're pretty tough dudes. Yeah. And their first tactic for an upper floor fire is the deck gun. All right. It's not because they're cowards. It's because it's the right thing to do. and we just have to to look at it from that little Johnny's point of view. And what would you do it if your house was on fire? You know what I mean? You gonna wait? You gonna hold water? it's not an ego thing. It's just the right thing to do. And guys get caught in it like, Chief Gordon wants us to all squirt from the outside. What are you talking about? You know what I mean? Quit living in a box. If you need to put water from the outside, put it from the outside. If if you get in there and make the push, by golly, you better be doing that. Right. It's not apples or oranges. There is some gray area. You can make a decision and do the right thing. You just gotta do the right thing. Yeah. No, you're absolutely right, Chief. And then it's a it's funny, it's still such a big topic and a big debate that because like you said, you got ULFSRI that does a great job with not only explaining it, but they have all these interactive graphs and charts and live fire training that they've showed the the actual numbers and temperature drops and everything that you could possibly think of for questions. It's there. And like you said, it's a tactic. It's not the only tactic, but if the dick the conditions dictate, then why not use it? No one's saying you have to sit there and and water the flowers for five minutes, but knock it down a little bit and then get in there and kill it. We're not, you know, and that's I think we're that's that misconception. People are thinking that we're just standing outside spraying water. But no, we're we're literally just trying to make our jobs not only j you're like you said, it's Johnny. Like like Kyle says, it's Johnny that's wearing a Spider-Man PJs. Like Kyle said, right? Like we're wearing a space suit. We're protected. They're not. So why not go ahead? And put water there first and then get inside and knock the rest of it out. It's it just makes sense if conditions warrant that. Right. And you know, here's the thing. So if your neighbor's house, heaven forbid, caught on fire tomorrow at four in the morning and they came and got you and there's fire showing from the bedroom window, are you just gonna stand there? I bet you don't. I bet you get the green line and you go over there and put water in the window. Why? Well, you're gonna kill people with water through the window. No, you're not. if I can get some of this fire knocked down, it's gonna slow it down and make it better. We just won't do it with our own hand line. I don't understand it. And probably one of the biggest aha moments for like this midrise class is when we show them that deck gun hit or we show them that hit with a ram, and I shut it off in like 10 seconds, and they're like, Because what? Those are defensive tools typically. You see the ramp come out or a deck gun, you're like, we're gonna be here eight hours. Somebody buy pizza. We're eating dinner here. You know what I mean? No, I just need to knock this thing back. And I'm looking at ten seconds from tank water, right? It flows under five gallons a second. So I put fifty gallons through the window. You still got some of y'all are carrying a thousand gallons showing up. You still got seven or Nine hundred and fifty gallons left to do with what you want. I tell guys it's like if I decided to get lit up and drunk, go to the bar and find the biggest dude there, old Mike Tyson Jr. and start a fight with him, he's gonna kill me. But if I can hit him in the forehead with a baseball bat so hard that he goes, my god. It gives me a second to do something else, right? Rally my friends or run away or something. And that's what the fires that they have an overwhelming energy release. that's what we're combating. The only thing we have to do that with is water and GPM. We have to overwhelm that energy release, set it back on its heels a little bit to buy us some time to make the rescue. That's what it's about. It has nothing to do with you being a sissy. I just have to buy people time to survive long enough to get them out, right? Our job is to get them out. That's it. That's it. Just get them out. they have that two to six minute window to survive, 70% chance of survival. If I can get some water on the fire and add another minute or so to that, I'm doing even better. And especially like in the mid-rise scenario, right? Guys don't understand. Okay, they're on the third floor. It's not that big a deal. But if it's two to six minutes, how long's it take you to get to the third floor, get down the hallway. Force the apartment door, get interior, make the search, find Where are you gonna do with You're not sending to the window. You're on the fourth floor, fifth floor, whatever. You gotta get out. Yeah. And you can't just take to the front door. They gotta go all the way down the stairwell, out the hallway to the medics in the parking lot. You're gonna eat up two to six minutes a long time ago. So if I can stop that fire progression or at least set it on its heels where it's gotta rebuild itself. I bought myself some more time for survivability. So I love that, Chief. great it's a great conversation. I'm so glad we actually got to have that. And I think about like too when we're opening up, we you know, it's not a quick open like you said with with a deck gun or a blitz. It it's lady if you think about it, that that that ten seconds, if you do your slow count, one one thousand, two, one thousand, three, one thousand that's a long time if you think about it. It is a long time. I tell guys all the time. Take your stuff home, go flow your deck gun for 60 seconds. And you're gonna be like, Good gosh, when will this be over? Right? it takes a long time. So a 10 second hit is nothing. And and I always made my guys when we trained, we counted because you know, 10 seconds, five seconds, 50 seconds, it all feels the same when you're nervous. You know what I mean? So do that count and It's just a drop in the bucket. We carried 500 gallons and we did it all the time. And we still had plenty of water, the reason we went to that hand line with the nozzle is because if that kid stretches 200 feet down into this little narrow alleyway with all these townhomes, typically they started in the garage, the entire alpha side is covered. There really is no Bravo and Delta because it's zero property line. The back, you can't hardly get to the back either. Kid's gonna knock the fire down. He's down there by himself. Worst fire he's seen in his six months of firefighting. let him open the nozzle for 10 seconds. He knocks it back. About that time, someone's there with a bundle. They make the stretch interior. He did great, right? If it wasn't what I wanted him to do, we'll talk to him later. Hey, what were you thinking? This is why you did it. This is why I don't want you to do it. Whatever. You know what I mean? A gated wide does you know good. You're just gonna. Tell the news media how many times those people bounce when they jump out of the second floor window because you can't find no fire with it. You're just there to look at them. Yeah. so we gave him options. That's why I wanted to make sure he had an option. And you can dial those options in. If it wasn't exactly where you wanted, well, this you train him for today's Monday. T Tuesday, he'll be better than he was on Monday. I love it, Chief. That's that's great. I l I I hope I get to take one of those classes soon. so Before we end up too, I I wanted to hit on to that you you you said you you mentioned your son being a Marine. There's a great story behind that. And can you tell me, can you tell us a bit about that? Yeah. So well, it started quite a few years ago. So big urban departments, right? Inner cities, fire stations, where I always worked. I love the feel like the people needed us there. I worked in a rich neighborhood for six months and it just wasn't for me. the people are getting the house rebuilt before I've even rolled my hose up. And I wanted to be someplace one, if there's lots of barbed wire and closed caption cameras around the station, then you're gonna be busy, so you're gonna go to fire. So that was the biggest drive. But then I realized those people there needed us, you know. every second that what they were losing. But it was just lost. They weren't gonna get it back. They don't have family and insurance or anything. But anyway, in those neighborhoods there's lots of kids too. And you know, they come up to the fire truck and at two in the morning there's kids riding bicycles underneath the street lights and it's a different world. And but I always just chit chatted with and see what they had to say and show the fire truck or whatever. And same kids come to the fire station. And hey mister, you buy me a coke, hey mister, you put some air in my bicycle tire, hey mister, my brother got hit on the head, whatever. And so I was used to that. When I became the chief, I went to my stations, introduced myself and that type of thing, met the crews and went to Sevens, one of the busiest houses in America, the dynasty, you know, and there's twelve guys standing there and there was this one young man standing in front of about ten, eleven years old. It's like noon on a Tuesday. And I was like, well, that's kind of weird. And he walks up to me and hey Chief, I said, Hey, he said, what's in this truck right here? He wanted to know what was in the compartments on the ladder truck. And my brain said, Who's this smart aleck kid who's quizzing a chief on what's in the compartments, you know? But I said, Well last time I was on it, it was the saws. That's what we kept in that compartment. And he was like, because I was right. And all the guys start laughing and I was like, What the what what are we doing here? And they were like, Man, that's Rodney. He hangs out here a lot. I was like, Hmm. All right. Well, don't let him get hurt, right? But I thought it was weird that he was there in the middle of the day. And what I didn't know at the time were a lot of these kids, they they're survivors for one. they need a place to be sometimes. Their home life's aren't great. And so from Rodney's point of view, he I think he thought, you know, firefighters get me in the station. the captain gets me upstairs and maybe I can eat some ice cream. but the chief, man, that chief wearing that white shirt, he runs the world around here. And so it wasn't too much longer after that that Rodney started showing up station eight. And I was like, what are you doing here? He's man, I'm here to visit some of my friends. And what are you doing, Chief? and so we started to kind of become acquaintances, right? when he was turning eleven, he came in and said, Chief, y'all work Wednesday. I said, I I know we work Wednesday. And he was like, you know, my birthday's on Wednesday. And So I was like, okay. I I hear what you're laying down, right? He Man, I sure would like some boxing gloves and this and that and whatever. And so I said, tell you what, you come in on Wednesday, go to school, that'd be new. You ought to try it. And bring me some homework or something so I know you went to school and we'll have a little party for you here at the fire station on Wednesday. so he did. Came in on Wednesday and well, I had called my wife and asked her to bring a cake on Wednesday. And 'cause we couldn't make cakes worth of flip. And I told her, See, you oughta you oughta meet Rodney. He's a kid from the neighborhood, you oughta just meet him. And so she did. And when he had left after his little party, she got us all together and she's like, What do y'all know about Rodney? And like, Nothing. Kid from a neighborhood like a million of And she said, You know, he's almost homeless. No. You know, his family are felons, no. you take him to his aunt's house over here and I'm like, Yeah, he blows the siren through the neighborhood, I'll take him in the chief's car, and I said, they beat him if they catch him in there and just a lot of bad, bad things. And I was like, No, I I mean I didn't know and she said, well, I talked to him and that's what he's telling me. I want you to buy him a cell phone and we had an argument about that 'cause I wasn't about to buy this kid a cell phone, but I ended up buying him a cell phone that next morning and Ever since then she talked to him every single day. So he ended up growing up. he attached to my wife very quickly. What I didn't know is that his mother never really claimed him. He was born in jail. he was raised by an aunt who did the best she could. he needed a mama really bad. My wife kind of took that position and So he became more and more and more attached to her, which made him more and more attached to me. we tried to help him. He started going to school. and then you know, all of his people had either gone to prison or been killed in the streets there. And he they they robbed him by gunpoint one week and were threatening to kill him and he moved out to the country with us and it was a strange and different situation for all of us. I had a nineteen year old daughter here. He was eighteen. He moved into our home. We live out where there's nothing but cattle and he was used to being awake all night long and hanging out in the projects and it was a big change for all of us. But my wife, she pulled us through all of that and he he really adapted well here. He's he did very well in school. First time he had gone to school in I don't know how long on a consistent basis. Graduated here and he was living with us a chief. I don't think I'll make it through college. And I was I think no doubt in my mind you'll make it through won't make it through college 'cause he had never gone to school ever. And he said, I think I want to go to the military and he was soft as butter and I was worried about what he would do and I thought maybe he'd make it in the Salvation Army or Girl or Girl Scouts or something and he said, No, sir, I want to go to the Marine Corps and I I never never thought that he'd be able to do that. I put him on a bus going to San Diego, expecting fully in the next two weeks go pick him back up and he's been there three years now and promoted twice. He's gone to school. He's finished his bachelor's degree in two and a half years and pre law with a four point grade point average. He's waiting to finish off his his tour of duty here in the the Marine Corps and go to go to law school after that. He wants to be the first black governor of the state of Texas and very conservative guy and I I'm pretty certain he'll be able to do it. So we're super proud of him. we adopted him officially about a year ago. He He wanted to be part of the family. still calls me Chief for C G three most of the time. Every once in a while I'll put with dad in there. But mom's been mom for a long time. So it's just a funny thing, you know. I tell people the story because firemen don't realize the impact that they have on people. And you don't have to adopt a kid from the neighborhood. If if you want to, call me, I'll tell you the ups and downs of it. But Just someone like in his case, someone like me who cared about him, he couldn't understand that. He had been told most of his life that someone like me hates it. And it's just not true. And you find people as firemen, people trust you and you're in a position to make a huge impact. And sometimes just being good to a kid or talking to him or spending five minutes with him, showing them the fire truck. You just don't know how that impacts their lives down the road. And I don't want guys to forget that. You know, that's why we do what we do. You know, people don't like cops, and I get it. I'm sorry for that, because there's some good guys who are cops, but they show up when everything's bad and you know, they take your daddy away or whatever. But firemen are there to just help. And we we forget that sometimes and we we take an opportunity or we don't. We don't seize an opportunity sometimes to make a difference. And you just gotta remember, man, people are looking up to you and you don't you'll never know the impact you have. Just just do the right thing. Just be good to people and and it'll change their worlds, I tell ya. Well, that's a great story. thank you. Thank you so much for talking about that. And I do I do believe it. I definitely can see him becoming the next governor. Like I said, we said before we started. I felt like we I think a lot of us who follow you feel like we've watched we've watched Rodney grow from a child to such an amazing man. and the story that you tell about the whole progress of it is just is amazing. And it shows the caliber of p people that you, your wife, your your daughter, e in the the guys you work with in that in that station as well. Of taking him in and just literally just showing him kindness. And that's really the that's the that's why that story always hits me. It's just that that one that random act of kindness. Somebody somebody came in, a youth came in and just saw what you guys did. And it just basically just being yourselves and not kicking him out like a lost cat. And it it it was hard sometimes, right? You know, the guys get frustrated with him and he wouldn't he's a teenager and he For the last couple of years they didn't they didn't know it. The bosses didn't know it, but he basically lived at the fire station. He was basically homeless and and it's a big department. I could hide it a little better. And sometimes the guys get frustrated and they'd be like, God dang it, They'd be like, that's Chief Gordon's guy, leave him alone and then I'd have to fuzz at him, clean up after yourself, don't be a lazy bum. he's a sixteen-year-old kid. And so it wasn't always easy, but those guys They knew it was the right thing to do, even though sometimes it was a pain in the neck. And and I I applaud them for just pushing through it and and they made a huge difference. It wasn't just me. Rodney knew so many guys before me. I was just I tell people like he was on the three yard line and we were able to carry it into the end zone. But he started way back on the other end of the field and so many firemen and police officers and stuff had a teachers, had a season with him trying to help him go step by step by step because they would move all around Houston and Rodney knew someone at almost every fire station. So he'd get on a metro bus and go visit forty sixes, thirty five, fifty five, sixteen, all of And he's nine years old, you know. And the guys would help him with his math homework or help him with a project or whatever. And the fire station just was always a refuge for him and he felt safe there. And the guys took care of him because Rodney's a good kid at heart. He's got a great personality. And it was just they just dealt with him. And there were so many, hundreds of guys that touched him. I love that, Chief. man, thank you so much. so we'll be winding down here. but I gotta ask you, you're you got the one slogan I'm wearing the shirt. Yeah, and I love what you have is you can't be a warrior if you act like a bitch. And why is that? Why do you have that? you know, I don't know. I think I was on a rant one time at a conference and and you know, some guys, god dang, you know, they just bitch and moan and complain about everything and nothing's good enough and none of us wanna work with that. And you know, I believe that when I started this, I think God dr got me into this business, right? And I and and I tell people, I think God, you're a you're you're a warrior and you're a servant to people, right? What we do is we go to battle. These fires, if a cop was gonna go to the same fi house that you have a fire in, right, say they're gonna raid it. It's a crack house. They're gonna spend a week looking at this thing and looking at the floor plan and looking at, whatever. We got thirty seconds, fifteen seconds to make a decision, right? So that's a battle. That's a war that we go to. This thing's trying to kill us and everybody in it. So I think you are a warrior. I think you need to look at it as if you're a warrior. My son in the Marine Corps, all they do I said, What do you you know, he's been deployed for two weeks. He's about to be deployed for sixteen months. Like, what do you do? He said, We go out and shoot machine guns. You know what I mean? we we attack beaches, then we reload and attack another beach. they're preparing to go to war, and that's what we should be doing. And the last thing you want in a marine or in a firefighter is a bitch, you know, just some whiny crybaby. Nothing's good enough. He does all he wants to do is come in and watch TV, wins dinner, you know, he gets there, shift change at six thirty, gets there at six twenty nine. Right? By six thirty four, he's in the recliner clicking through the channels, wanting to know what's for breakfast. Get your ass up, man. We got stuff to do. I need arrested fireman's a ready fireman. I'm okay. You showed up at the stage at two o'clock, Clyde's probably asleep somewhere, but man, we got stuff to do. I need you to do fireman shit. I need you to be a badass once in a while. Yeah. And I I would tell him a lot, man. I ain't got room for a bitch. Move on. There's stuff there's someone here who wants to do this work. So I love it. That is great, Chief. Thank you so much. I love the explanation. I think that resonates with a lot of people, a lot of people who are really very into the job and very very passionate about what we do as public servants. So thank you so much for for that. Thank you so much for everything. It was a great conversation. I think I think you're so far you hold the record for for the longest podcast I've done so far. Because I didn't want to cut it off I don't I don't want to cut it off. I didn't want to stop, so I wanted to keep going. But I thank you so much, Chief. Now, if anybody needs to get a hold of you, how can they get a hold of you? Yeah, so the easiest way is htownfiretraining at gmail.com. So htownfire training gmail.com. Or Facebook. I'm on Facebook, but I miss those messages once in a while. But the email will get me. Beautiful. Well, Chief, thank you so much for everything. I love the conversation. And so with that. Y'all be safe, be well, and here it comes, Chief. Ready? Nozzle Tov. Nozzle Tov.