Latest / B Shifter / Trash Talk (Fires in Trash and Recycling Facilities)

Transcript

Trash Talk (Fires in Trash and Recycling Facilities) · B Shifter

• 0:48
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the B Shifter podcast, john Vance, with you, along with Josh Bloom and Chris Stewart, and today we're talking trash.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: It's trash, talk specifically trash that's on fire, and we'll go a little deeper with that as far as recycling facilities and some of the proliferation that we're seeing right now with a lot of these fires, and there's probably some specific reasons they're happening.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: So that's what we're talking about today.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: First of all, welcome gentlemen, good to see you.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: Thank you, happy to be here.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: Good to see you, john.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: This is July 29th that this podcast is rolling out and we currently have just one seat left in the certification lab at the Hazard Zone Conference that's going to be in Sharonville slash, cincinnati, september 30th through October 4th.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: The general conference is October 3rd and 4th.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: You can go to and we'll pop the address up here for those of you who are watching, but you can go to the Hazard Zone Conference website and get registered at hazardzonebccom and for all of the details.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: Josh, it's looking like, if people don't get on this quick, that the whole thing could sell out.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: How many more seats do we have left?
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: We're down to about 150-ish seats and every day we're picking up some more tickets are being sold, more people are signing up.
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: And then the Mayday workshop.
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: We've expanded that like three times now and this is the final time and I think there's maybe a dozen seats left in it.
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: So, uh, you know, as we've been talking about, it'll be the largest single room of of discussion of Mayday management, mayday prevention, umday prevention that we're aware of.
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: That has happened.
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: We've got folks in there from Maine to California and Washington to Florida, so, and you know, our customers from Canada, quite a few in that.
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: So there's just a few seats left with that.
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, we're looking forward to it.
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: We brought the conference back last year.
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: It went, you know, very well over, overwhelmingly well, I think.
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: And then we didn't know exactly what we were going to do, you know, leading up to the conference last year, as far as repeating it.
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: But it went very well.
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: So we expanded it this year 21 different presenters.
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: We're doing the pre-conference workshop stuff with a Mayday workshop, a CERT lab and then a whole lot of really good topics, I think from, like I said, 21 different presenters, and we're going to have the hangout on Thursday night at Third Eye Brewing.
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: So that's always good to catch up and hang out and just talk fire with all of the people who are B-Shifters out there.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: And this is really the spot where you're going to find out what's going on with Blue Car, too.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: I mean, we bring people up to date every week with the B-Shifter, buck Slip and with a podcast, but we have some very exciting things that we'll be rolling out and talking more about at the conference, including the after action review module that's going to be available for blue card users.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: What else do we have going on and what else would you like folks to know about?
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so we'll be rolling the ARF module out.
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: So we've been talking about that for a long, long time and it was just all over the place.
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: I would have thought that international airports or airports with commercial aviation were much more alike than they are.
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: So as we build it and people started reviewing it early on they were like, well, we don't do that, we don't do that, we don't do that, I don't have those resources.
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: So we took it back to much more of the bigger picture overview, the eight functions of command for ARF response, rather than I think we were getting into the weeds a little bit too far on some of the ARF response.
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: So that's coming out.
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: Nick and Terry, with the Silverback leadership, they'll have a first one or two modules of that coming out.
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: So they'll be at the conference also to talk about that and what that looks like.
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: The Chris Stewart on here today and Grant Light We've been we've been working on the eight functions of command for technical rescue events, so that eight functions of command for TRT is going to roll out and then every quarter following that we're going to release a TRT module and our intention is that it'll be you know, incident command decision-making the front end piece, don't get yourself into trouble and kind of like our Hazmat program, is it's incident command.
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: For Hazmat this is going to be incident command and decision-making on the front end and for the strategic, I see, for TRT event, and then at both of those events, hazmat and TRT you rely on that special resource if you actually have something going on.
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: So it's nice to have grant light, a long time rescue Lieutenant, task force guy, you know, working on that as far as the do's and don'ts, and Chris from his perspective at the Phoenix Fire Department of big picture, also some task force deployment mindset.
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: So understanding all the ins and outs of all of the rescue things, the command part, decision making, risk management and so on.
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: And then we got a couple other things that will likely be rolling out there at the conference on top of you know, all those other classes that we have, those 21 presenters presenting.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: Is it possible that the most interesting IC in the world could be there?
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: He will be there.
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: He's going to be there.
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: I'm sure it'll be interesting.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: I can't wait.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I can't either.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: So make sure to join us in October in Sharonville, ohio, cincinnati.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: You fly into the Cincinnati airport.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: There's still hotel blocks left, so the lodging is very reasonable.
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: We provide lunch, we have drinks and snacks and, as Josh said, the Thursday night get together with everyone where we get to network, and maybe the most interesting I see in the world will be there too.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: I just look for him to pop up at different places during this.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: He is a lucid yes.
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: Yes, hey, john, I just want to mention too, in two weeks, the three of us.
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: Stop by and see the three of us.
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: If you're going to be at the in Dallas at FRI, you know we'll be at the booth.
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: I have our booth set up there, so stop by and see us.
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: If you want to talk, talk incident command, talk at Command, talk Blue Card, or just want to BS, stop by, we'll be there the whole time that the show's over.
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: We'll be there on the front end and back end.
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: So if you wanted to talk, catch up, have anything meeting while we're there, reach out to us, we'd be happy to meet with you.
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: We're right outside the tech zone is where our booth's going to be at, and I think these opportunities for us to visit with people and if you've got somebody from your organization whether it's your fire chief, an ops chief, somebody who's a next door neighbor and they've got questions about Blue Card because oftentimes people misunderstand what Blue Card is and usually it really comes down to what it isn't this is really a wonderful opportunity for people to stop by and talk to us and get the answers directly from us, because we've all been immersed in the system for so long and we're able to maybe either dispel some myths or also give you the real facts on what it takes to do blue cards.
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: So we really welcome those conversations and look for people to stop by and see us at FRI in Dallas this year.
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: So today it is all about trash.
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: So let's start on the inside and maybe we'll get on to some facilities on the outside.
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: But I know here locally, in the Minneapolis Metro and the Cincinnati Metro and the Phoenix Metro, we are having more of these incidents and I don't know exactly why and maybe, josh and Chris, you have the answer why we're going to more of these, but they end up becoming big deal incidents.
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: I don't know if they need to be big deal incidents, but there's certainly some risks and some approaches that we can take to them.
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: So what are you seeing, josh, and then we'll bounce it over to Chris as far as the way these incidents are starting out maybe some proximal causes why we're seeing more, and the way we need to approach fires in both trash sorting facilities, because there's more of an interest now, rather than just putting this trash into a landfill and letting it decompose for the next several centuries.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: They're trying to split up recyclable materials, things that are actually compostable, or what they're calling organics now, and stuff that is just trash.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: So what are you seeing out there and what's your experience been, josh, at some of these incidents?
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so around us we've had a giant facility here in the Cincinnati region that until not too long ago, pretty much all the operation was outside, so it was just a giant pile, and I remember, since the very beginning of my career, there's been fires there, and I'm not convinced that there's not a fire burning there still.
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: I don't know if it ever went out.
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: Right, I mean, it's, it's, it's all decomposing and there's some kind of a reason why that these large outside facilities are taking advantage of, you know, the methane production that can come off of it.
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: And then there, you know, have these gas facilities.
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: So I don't know that, I don't know that there's more fires, I just think that now sometimes they're putting them inside the building.
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: I think that's a factor and I think some of the things that are happening inside the building and, chris, you're connected to this very well too the I know people are tired of hearing it this lithium ion battery thing is, I think, a deal.
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: And then, uh, people putting stuff in the garbage that shouldn't be in the garbage, whether it's, you know, paint cans, batteries, you, you name it Um, and then it all ends up in a pile, and then then you got a giant, you know loader with a blade on it that's pushing the garbage around, putting them onto a tilt floor or pushing it off of an edge into a truck that's hauling it, you know, somewhere else, or it's pushing it onto a conveyor system and you got all those moving pieces.
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: So I'm not going to claim to know why we're having more fires, but I think it all adds up to some of those things I just said, along with these internal facilities that are that are doing sorting and picking and all of that you know anytime you got moving parts, conveyors, bearings, you know all of that.
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: You know you're going to have things are going to heat up Right, and then what was a little fire that caught some cardboard on fire because of a you know conveyor or whatever that malfunctioned, or there was just you know cardboard dust that lit off that conveyor system running and then the fire's getting carried all throughout.
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: You know that facility.
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: So if it's built to code which is interesting the whole, you know fire code piece on this.
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: And what are your code compliance people doing to make sure that these places are being built properly and protected?
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: Obviously, the owners of these places have a vested interest in that because you know they collect the garbage, they collect recycling, they're doing something with that, but they don't want to lose their facility either.
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: It's much like a big box facility.
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: When we talk about some of those things.
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: Right, the stuff in there is replaceable.
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: But what they don't want is a million dollar piece of equipment that's pushing garbage around to burn up, or one of their trucks that's dropping off in one of these facilities to burn up, or the conveyor system to burn.
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: That's kind of my two cents on.
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: You know more fires, or?
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: Or we just having fires inside the building and before we didn't realize we were having you know as many fires, uh, just here locally, though I know we all all of our, all of the companies around us that pick up trash now have inside facilities of some sort.
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: And then we have uh, I'll just go ahead and say it a giant recycling facility that has, I don't know, probably a thousand feet of conveyor in it alone, and if you're watching it, we'll take a look at a few of those pictures.
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: But it's pretty amazing what they're doing with all of this, and I get it.
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: We're going to keep producing trash forever and it's got to go somewhere.
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: So what can we reuse.
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: So that's kind of my two cents on getting started.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: Chris, what has your experience been?
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: Well, I can say that you know, we have had a constant stream of fires in these types of facilities, whether it's, you know, like true trash type facilities, or then now these recycling centers that you know, over the past couple of decades have been transitioning from recycling newspapers to recycling metal and steel, and now they're including, you know, all these plastics and all these other things that you know the world's consuming and then spitting out the other end and it's got to go somewhere because it doesn't decompose, right.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: So it's become big industry in the management of that.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: And for us in our area is most of these places or the locations where they started doing this way back when, when Phoenix was a much smaller city, was truly on the outskirts, right, and it was in areas that they weren't around anybody else.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: Well, as Phoenix and the Valley has grown, we've grown around all of these places, and so now you've got interesting additional critical factors with these incidents, because some of them have residential in and around them, some of them have other commercial, some of them have critical infrastructure like railways and freeways.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: Now, you know, either below or next to that we've had issues with.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: So it's this added challenge then our mindset in how we're showing up to manage these.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: Oftentimes we're showing up with a borderline residential mindset and an overly aggressive, maybe commercial mindset in that, and it makes us make silly decisions sometimes at these, and in the Phoenix Fire Department we had personal experience with tragedy at these, at a fire just like this, so with a line of duty death, and so we can talk about that a little bit more.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: So there's there's a lot of added things that that are are seem to be escalating and increasing the the critical factors and maybe, like a lot of things, the fire service is slow to adapt and adjust to that.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: So I think it's important that us and our command system we're talking about that and that's why these podcasts and these types of things I think become really important in the overall planning for being effective at these.
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: Josh, you were talking about one of the facilities in your area where they, like Chris is alluding to they were sending a very aggressive response, like it's a commercial fire and finally the chief or the IC or whoever said you know what, I'm just going to keep a ladder truck and an engine here and everybody else go home.
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: Are you seeing more of that like paring down the response?
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: Because really, as you said, the objective here is to save the building, save the equipment, if we can do that, and it's just basically garbage burning up at some point, there's other ways to address that.
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: So I mean it comes down to the decision-making piece.
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: So if you're sending a giant response to one of these, we're still only going to use the resources that we're going to use.
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: But sometimes, when you have that resource readily available, we start doing things that just might not make sense, but we do it because the people just happen to be there.
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: So we start doing something right.
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: Not that they're self-deploying whatever companies are level one staging and they're getting assigned to do work but you've got all these companies stacked up and then we end up doing things investigate further, check this out, look over there, and you know it's if it's necessary and the factors, the critical factors, line up to do that, then it makes sense.
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: But if we have a known facility and we know what goes on at that facility, based off of pre-plans and we're following you know NFPA 1620 and getting good pre-plans and understanding the water layout and work with the company and they're understanding their emergency response plan for what they do, you know, oftentimes we don't need all of that resource.
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: You know one of the facilities that we go to in our region.
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: It's a recycling facility and where the recycling gets dumped initially, well, first of all, it's 100% fully protected building, the conveyor systems inside the conveyor systems inside the chutes, all of that fully protected sprinkler.
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: But even from the very get-go, when a recycling truck backs in and dumps its load and then the heavy equipment starts pushing it around, that entire area is protected by very large monitors that can flow thousands of gallons a minute.
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: And you know, interesting, interesting enough to us to to look further into it and change kind of how, how, how we deploy and what happens with these things.
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: They're they're actually guided by IR technology so when it sees energy they'll flow automatically.
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: So that's powerful, right, it's that early deployment.
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: So there's sprinkler heads in this place, in that general area to protect the building.
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: But even bigger than that, when something gets hot or they do have a bit of a fire.
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: These monitors are remote and they're guided towards the energy, much like we see in, like up-to-date current ARF equipment and I think even sometimes now people have them on their tower ladders.
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: There's an IR, you know, guided electronic monitor on the end of a tower ladder.
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: That you know.
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: It seeks what's you know hot and goes to that location.
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: So that's taken the place of us in some ways, far as having to be in there and it limits our exposure right.
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: So the fire companies then can just make sure that it's not getting into the building, make sure it's not spreading, you know, outside the area controlling the conveyor system, and that comes back to the pre-plans and the emergency response plan and no one having a relationship with those people who operate this facility.
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: So, uh, a couple of fires and you have some after action and discussion about it, and everybody gets on the same page and has the same game plan.
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: You know, then you can really have a plan.
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: Until then it was, you know, fire department's gonna do what the fire department does and the local company does what the local company does.
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: And you know that's everywhere.
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: We have five different facilities that we've had fires in in the last six months and it's kind of crazy what happens there.
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: So you can see on the left there in that picture there's a, there's a pretty large monitor between the guy and the yellow helmet and the guy in the black helmet there.
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: So this was actually after, after the event and it was just really a kind of a learning training thing of this is what really happens.
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: This is what it looks like and then, john, if you can pull up maybe the other picture.
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: That's where the monitor's flowing from the other side.
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: We could talk, you know, briefly about that.
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: So this is you know, we're putting our own monitor under there, right?
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: So we see the sprinkler heads going off overhead and this is a different facility that doesn't have those monitors, you know, as far as a fixed piece.
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: But why would we go in there and crawl around and dig through all of that and have hand lines on it?
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: So in this case, the the division boss said we're going to leave the sprinkler heads flow and we're going to run this ladder into this location through one of the sides of the building.
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: That's wide open, it's only closed on three sides, and they let that ladder pipe, you know, eat and floated away, basically, and and limited the exposure to all of our people.
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: Cause everything that's in there, even if it is recycling stuff, everything that's in there at that point is going to the garbage, it's going to the dump, it's not going to be recycled.
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: So, uh, it's all about that limiting exposure piece using all the tools that you have available.
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: It's not a house fire, apartment building on fire, a high rise fire, a big box.
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: It's nothing like anything else that we do.
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: Like most of the fires we go to, every one of them has its own set of critical factors that requires us to evaluate and think, and then we'll figure out exactly what we're going to do, which lines up with, you know, the program that Eric and Chris do such a fantastic job with, of the critical thinking and decision making.
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: Like what's going on here?
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: What's the problem, what's stopping us from putting the fire out, what's in the way of all of that?
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: And then what are we going to do to solve the problem?
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: And what the business really wants is don't burn my building down.
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: I want to be back in production as soon as possible.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: So there's a couple interesting parts to this, I think, is us as early arrivers IC1 or IC2, and maybe I'll focus a little bit more on IC2, but getting there and evaluating, okay, what is going on, what is the extent of the issue here and what are the true exposures right, and what am I willing to lose and what am I willing to write off and what do I really feel like I can protect.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: I know that the building owners and the occupants, they very much are interested in us protecting their buildings and they're very much interested in us protecting their equipment and their infrastructure in there.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: And that's all within the footprint of the facility itself.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: But when we also show up, we've got to look at, all right, what are our exposures and what are our concerns outside of the footprint, because I've been on fires where we truly are worried about the fire leaving the facility and getting into the commercial, the residential exposures in and around these facilities.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: So it's this, you know, a large, a truly strategic level view of what's going on here.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: Where is this thing going next?
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: Going on here, where is this thing going next and are we going to deal with this in the footprint of the facility and or in the building or location of its origin?
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: Or are we going to have to start dealing with this actually leaving the grounds of the facility?
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: And that's where code enforcement and operational folks working with code enforcement people really, really matter, because they need to be able to enforce the things in the facility that are designed or are expected to separate and minimize the fire extension in these places.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: So that's why these piles are only supposed to be so big.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: That's why there's supposed to be gaps in between the piles inside the facility to minimize that fire extension.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: So there's a lot of things going on here that the ICs need to do ahead of time.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of things going on here that the ICs need to be able to do in the moment as we're managing these things.
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: I think one of the things that Josh brought up too was the systems that occur inside these buildings conveyor belts, pushers.
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: That's a pretty big risk for firefighters.
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: You know specifically that the stuff that's moving around in there.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: We've got a front end loaders.
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: We've got automated systems.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: Do we do lockout, tag out to shut the stuff down?
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: How do we secure the facility?
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: Well, I think, I think that comes back to you have to have a relationship with these people before you have an event there, I think.
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: So, um, and a lot of cases we're going to end up using some of that equipment, um, but when it comes to the conveyors and opening up all of that, yeah, I mean that has to be a lockout, tagout thing, right.
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: And you know, oftentimes if it's, you know, current on code and it's got like a smoke tube in the conveyor system, just like we would see in a big box distribution, like type center, uh, you know it's going to shut the conveyor down to keep it from you know hauling whatever's burning all over the place.
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: But, um, as far as like big equipment and all of that, that comes down to the relationship thing, right, getting your getting a hold of the boss of what's actually, you know going on.
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: So you pulled this one up.
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: John, I want to talk about it briefly and if you're, if you're not watching but just listening.
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: So there's a, there's a little sign at this, at this window that's kind of looking from inside the building out to where this tipping floor is, to where they would dump the recycling stuff.
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: So they everything outside and it's on this tipping floor that literally actually tips up and then it dumps all the stuff on a conveyor and then it starts automatically sorting these things out.
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: So in this case crews were inside the building, basically where the building in that outside area met, trying to keep any energy off of the building, keep it from actually getting inside the building.
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: But actually below them is where the conveyor system you know was running.
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: So in this picture they're like four stories up above looking down into that area where what we were looking at before, where that giant pile was and we see here the company officer is using a thermal imager.
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: Let's talk about you, know you?
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: You talked about the ir technology that's internal to a lot of these places, but how do we use thermal imagers to to help us out in this facility?
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so one.
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: I mean when we train and understand, you know, thermal imagers and how they really work and we use them in a real fire environment, not you know in the station looking at the stove or looking at the drive of your truck or whatever, but actually how cameras really work.
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: It's a great piece of technology that helps us define where's the most energy coming from.
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: So in that picture before the company officer is kind of guiding you know the person on the nozzle where's the most energy at.
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: Still, where are we going to try to put water?
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: So they're using a hand line there away from limiting their exposure really to the pile.
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: And inside of that space are two of those monitors are flowing in there that are just part of the infrastructure of the building and the fire protection system.
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: So it's a great tool.
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: So that other slide that you had on there, john, we can clearly see that the sprinkler pipe is much darker, you know, because there's water running through it, so it's colder.
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: So in the image there it appears, you know, to be the darkest thing and it's a pipe running through there.
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: And then if we look, you know, down to the pile, we can see like even where there's some other streams going.
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: We can kind of see to the left that there's like it's kind of blocked out a little bit because of the sprinkler head is actually going off over there.
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: So it blocks the image a bit and we don't actually see that physical energy coming off of whatever the product is.
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: But again it comes back to knowing, knowing the tool.
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: What are you really looking at?
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: Just like looking straight across there.
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: That's just another window on the other side of it, right.
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: So it looks like there's energy there, but really all it is is a reflection because it's glass on the other side.
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: So you have to know and understand your tool and it's not a tech class but we could throw it out here.
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: I can tell you that the spot temperature that we're seeing right there 42 degrees, it could be accurate for you know maybe what they're seeing right there on the pipe.
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: But we shouldn't be looking at spot temperature and just trusting that right.
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: We really look at that gray scale and the color scale to define energy.
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: So you have to understand and know the tool that you've got in your hand and if you do that then there's great value to it, just like the technology that's in that camera is the same or similar technology that's in the facility to guide those monitors to where the most energy is coming out, and they're remote, they kind of go there themselves.
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: It's no different than the technology, like I said earlier, that we see on an ARF truck, because the operator can't really maybe see much, it's really smoky, but they have that FLIR technology to guide the water to where the most energy is coming from.
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: Because of the critical factor of these being such a huge building, big facility, it tends to be a little chaotic.
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: Chris, let's talk about the tragic line of duty death that happened in Phoenix at one of these facilities because of some of the movement that was going around.
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: What exactly happened there?
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so at that instant, large outside recycling it had a bunch of different components, recycling, storage, a lot of other things going on kind of in that generalized industrial area.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: They have a significant fire there.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: Crews are responding.
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: It's actually declared defensive from the very beginning and as companies are positioning and and I see number two is starting to to get folks into place, um, uh, we, we, we suffered, um, a lapse in judgment in what we normally should, shouldn't be doing with the movement of apparatus.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: And so, uh, the first due to this, uh, this location, was an engine company in an, in a firefighter staffed ambulance.
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: They had arrived there first the ambulances know they're going to park out of the way and they typically their crew gets assigned that first due ambulance get the crew gets assigned with one of the companies, typically their own engine company if they're there.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: And so they happen to have gotten that assignment to go work with their engine and support what they had going on.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: And as they're standing outside of their apparatus throwing their bottle and getting ready, another engine company very, very close to them starts backing up so they can reposition their apparatus and ultimately end up pinning, uh, firefighter Bradley Harper, between uh, ambulance 21 and an engine 24.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: And, uh and uh, his partner is there there, sees it, ends up calling the mayday and then ultimately, he has to be extricated from between the two pieces of equipment and he does not survive.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: Right, they were not acting and they were not responding as if they were, you know, at a house fire or at something that was, you know that had a life safety component, or you know we had to make a huge fire attack here, otherwise it was going to burn the rest of the city down.
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: That wasn't the case, but it was small lapses in judgment in there that led to that, right, and that has everything to do with risk management and knowing and understanding what's going on around here.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: Why are we doing what we're doing right now?
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: And when there is nothing, when we should be taking as minimal risk as we possibly can, we can't eliminate the risk that we should be doing, uh, everything, uh, according to standard, according to training, um, and according to best practice, right?
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: And so, in this instance, they chose to back fire apparatus up next to another fire apparatus, without spotters, without doing the things that they needed to, because they wanted to get to work and do the things that they showed up to work that day to do.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: And so now that company officer, that engineer, those firefighters, that ambulance partner, they're walking around with that essentially boat anchor around their neck for the rest of their career right Of that loss happening there.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: And so we need to be really, really smart as ICs that when we show up on this, we're very clear about communicating what it is and, as a component to our assignments, our position in the risk management plan has to be clearly articulated with regards to those assignments.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: Listen, this is an outside fire.
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: We are not at risk of burning anything else down.
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: I need everybody slowing down and let's be really smart about this and then getting companies in positions to do the work.
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: It's not, it's not like we're not going to do the things we need to show up, but that's the IC's job is.
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: You know?
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: Well, let me back up, firefighters job is, when they show up, their job is to put themselves between the bad stuff and, whatever the exposures are right, the people, the buildings, whatever it is.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: Well, when we show up as ICs, our job is to put ourselves between that bad stuff and the firefighters.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: So we need to start acting like that with regards to our incident command process, our, our, our strategic decision making components, where we are in the risk management plan and what is it the work that we need to get done right now?
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: Josh, you mentioned and thanks for sharing that about Phoenix, because I've been on a couple of these where it just felt very chaotic because of so much going on members of the crew of the facility trying to either push the fire with front-end loaders or, you know, using some of their machinery to their best advantage to help us out.
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: So we have to coordinate with those, as Josh mentioned.
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: You know having the relationship, but then Josh mentioned the CNG hazard there.
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: What's the CNG hazard?
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: Can you expand on that?
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: What's the CNG hazard?
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: Can you expand on that?
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: So one of the facilities in our area has quite the methane gas production operation going.
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: So, without going into detail and I don't know all the ins and outs of it, but as the garbage decomposes, methane gas is produced.
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: It goes to the bottom of a pocket They've got pipes that run out of there and it's much more complicated than this and then they're you know it's producing methane gas and then they're actually putting it back into the energy system, they're selling it back to the energy company.
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: So, with that said, you know we're seeing the equipment that's operated at these facilities that's powered by CNG.
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: And then we're seeing the trucks that are running up and down the road every day powered by CNG, because I don't want to say it's free, but they're producing it themselves, right.
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: So they're not buying it off the market, you know, somewhere else.
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: I mean they're I'm not sure business, what that exactly looks like, but they're making it right.
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: They're making the fuel that powers this equipment.
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: So it's another piece that we have to understand and be cognizant of, not only that whole operation, of what's going on with that production and how does that go and where are those pipes and what's the risk involved and all of that, but all the equipment that's operating there.
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: You know, on that site and, chris, if you would wouldn't mind talking just briefly about you know, the risk involved with the CNG powered equipment trucks.
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: You know, you name it right, it's.
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: You know it's a giant hazard for us and we have to be cognizant of what's going on with it.
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: And I mean really we could talk about, you know, making sure that people understand what's going on out there on the road with vehicles that are going up and down the road every single day that are CNG.
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: So, besides the facility, I mean it's another critical factor to think about and consider when we go to these facilities that the equipment might be powered by, along with the production of.
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: What does that really look like?
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: So I guess some pre-incident knowledge is going to be important.
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: So we have the ability to pre-plan and know and understand OK, what's in these facilities, both from a fixed production site, like if they're actually producing CNG there, from the products that are put off by these piles, and then how are they using it in their machinery and equipment.
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: So we can look very recently in the fire service right of firefighters being seriously injured and firefighters being killed by compressed natural gas driven equipment and then not expecting it or not recognizing it and it blowing up on us right and it getting us right.
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: So it's us working in close proximity to that and whether we're aware and we don't understand the threat or we're unaware, that's a little bit more of a difficult challenge.
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: But when we're unaware of the threat, and so us being smart about that is, if you have impingement, fire, impingement on any types of the equipment, we need to start treating it like it's a hazmat, call right and time, distance shielding and looking at those types of things.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: If we can't mitigate the threat to the CNG and those types of things, then we need to expand our hazard zone and work from positions in which we are reasonably safe from that.
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: Use some of the tools, whether it's the fixed facility equipment that you know Josh is showing in some of these photographs, or it's us having to set up portable monitors where we can put a lot of distance between where the water's coming out and where we're operating that monitor from with lines and truly building a defensive incident action plan by identifying what's lost, writing it off, clearly, identify it to everybody and then figure out, okay, where are the exposures that we can actually protect from reasonable positions where the bad stuff going on in the hazard zone ain't going to blow out and come get us so that CNG compressed natural gas tanks and that when they start to get hot they start to off gas.
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: You may hear the ventilation Heck, you may see what's off, gassing is burning.
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: Then we need to be considering the potential for that blevy and the potential for that explosive event to happen, that that really, really is detrimental to us.
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: I mean, you can go back to 1974 in Kingman, arizona, and look at that to.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: You know today the, the, the injuries and deaths that have happened in the last few months at incidents like that.
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: So, then, the IC needs to also recognize that that is hazardous materials and that I probably need hazardous materials, technicians, companies, experts from the facility itself there to help me know and understand what it is I should be doing or what I can and I can't do about that stuff in there.
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: So utilizing your resources the best you can to make better decisions about what's going on in there.
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: When I'm thinking about risk management and how it applies to our strategy and also our incident action plan, just as an IC coming into something like this, I feel like I'm between yellow and red.
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: It's kind of an orange area that we're in, right Not to overcomplicate our risk management model anymore, but really our risk.
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: We should minimize our risk as much as possible because this isn't a situation unless we're in the green and we're evacuating workers or getting workers out and giving them some cover with our streams, there isn't much that we're going to be able to do that is worth any amount of risk.
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: Are you guys with me on that?
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like that's the beauty of our risk management plan and three positions.
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: The first one has everything to do with life safety and savable lives.
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: The second part has to do with savable property and the last one is when there's nothing to save.
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: Here's what our position and the level of risk we should tolerate at this incident.
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: So if we're in an instance where we're truly trying to protect exposure, then we literally are in the yellow man.
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: We're trying to do something about this problem because I want to protect these exposures.
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: But if I'm in an isolated place where I don't have any true exposures that I'm really worried about this extending to, then very clearly we can be, or we should be, operating in the red of our risk management.
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to risk anything at all for what's already lost and treat it that way and communicate.
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: And then our our incident action plan and our assignments then should be reflective of that.
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: Our strategy should be reflective of that, and and then that that keeps us from from doing dumb stuff or being confused about where we are in risk management at that incident.
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: It's a part of that risk management too, and some of the incidents that I've been involved in because these are long-term incidents and after several work cycles you start to see SEBAs get shed, get shed.
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: You know the long-term risk that we have from these facilities and we've seen it before at dump fires and just a generation later we've got a whole load of people who are getting cancer because at some point the lackadaisical nature sat in and we're taking our SCBAs off and I think at no point do we want to get into that area right.
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the dump was nasty before it was on fire and now it's on fire and it's even nastier, right, and it's like nobody knows what's in there.
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: Who knows what's in the back of a garbage truck or in any dump, because everybody just throws anything and everything that they can throw in there and you know there's nobody counting and sorting and going through all of that.
• 45:00
  Speaker 3: I mean the recycling facility.
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: They end up going through some of those things.
• 45:04
  Speaker 3: But, yeah, the air is free, right, and I mean we can limit our exposure by not having all the people you know exposed and around, right, I mean they can, they can do a little recon, figure out exactly what's going on.
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: What exactly do we need to do?
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: Is the sprinkler system working?
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: Is it not working?
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: But we don't need 20 people standing in the smoke.
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: We need the people that we need, you know, to do the work there, based off of those critical factors, and to to work through that incident action plan that the strategic IC has, you know, rolled out to everybody.
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: So you know, we should have a very limited exposure at these places.
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: And looking at the choices sometimes that we have too, between fire and the runoff that we have you know, the products of combustion and what the fire is producing versus the runoff, also needs to be something that we consult with the hazmat teams and the Environmental Protection Agency, because I know that those folks start showing up because they're concerned with water runoff.
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: What do we do about that and what have you?
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: seen in the past.
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: So a bunch of the facilities around us are large enough that everything that's going on there is staying there.
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: So you know the truck.
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: The truck goes to the picks up your garbage at your house, goes to the dump.
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: It dumps it.
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: Looks like it's been mudding all day.
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: When it comes out of there it goes through a truck wash and then all that water gets, uh, goes through some sort of filtration system, right.
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: So uh, it, in a lot of those cases like that, you know it's staying there.
• 46:50
  Speaker 3: And you know, in phoenix, chris, I'm sure you know some of that stuff that you see, you know from the highway around the airport and all of that, I mean it's next to the dump, is next to you know 50 houses.
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: That's next to a restaurant, that's next to shit, close enough to a stadium, right, and yeah, it's going to run off and get into the street and whatever.
• 47:09
  Speaker 3: So I mean that's just, it's a critical factor, it's that consideration.
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: So I think that comes back to understanding, like the, what are you really dealing with?
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: Am I, am I at a fixed facility that has these things in place, or am I at a, at a dump that used to be a hundred homes that now they've made a dump.
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and the, and we're again the, the, the work that happens, I'll say before, in between these incidents with like, for instance, in the city of Phoenix with the wastewater department, is talking to them about these facilities.
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: If we have a fire here, this is what we likely are going to end up doing.
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: That water can come out of the facility, it can go into the wastewater system for the city of Phoenix.
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: What do you guys want us to do?
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: How can we minimize this?
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: Go into the wastewater system for the city of Phoenix?
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: What do you guys want us to do?
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: How, how can we minimize this?
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: I can't, I can't dam the whole thing up and, and you know, hold all that water.
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: It's typically not a reasonable operation to be able to do that.
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: But uh, and and and and.
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: I haven't had too many incidents, um, except for in very specific areas where they're like, yeah, we can manage this in the wastewater system and they'll meter and pH and all the runoff and all that other stuff to know what's going in.
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: But, like when it's going into waterways, when it's going into rivers and things like that, they do get way more concerned about that stuff.
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: So they want us to try and minimize that.
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: And then there's also the exposure to the community and that stuff.
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: So they want us to try and to minimize that.
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: And then there's also the exposure to the community and around it.
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: So an interesting part of our risk management plan is there ain't there's no political risk looped into that risk management plan.
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: So when the politicians or the community or whatever is showing up like, hey man, you got to make this go away.
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: Um, well, uh, that's not.
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: We can't snap our fingers and make this stuff stop.
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: We're going to have to be smart about it.
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: We have to manage the risk and exposure for us.
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: We have to manage the risk and exposure for the community.
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: Sometimes there's a balancing act in being able to do that and, like JV said, whether it's whether it's letting it burn, whether it's putting a ton of water on it and trying to manage it that way, you've got to manage it for what it is right.
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: Then and there, what the critical factors are in and around that facility that are going to guide you in doing that.
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: Because the community shows up oftentimes and says I don't care what you have to do, but you better make this go away.
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I'm down for that, but I'm not getting firefighters hurt.
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: For that I'm not going to do dumb stuff that has higher consequences or equal consequences in other places, specifically for firefighters.
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: So that's the joy of being a strategic level IC or senior advisor in our systems that being ready to be able to manage that type of risk management pressure that you might get.
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: That really has nothing to do with the things that we should be doing on the fire ground.
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: So we had an incident in Phoenix I'm going to say eight to 10 years ago now where we had a recycling facility.
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: They mostly did plastics and metals and we've been there quite a few times right.
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: So they have one of their larger areas that we've got a fire going there.
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: It was caused by, you know, they were putting whole cars through their shredding machine and it created a fire.
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: So we've got this pile of metal and plastics that are burning.
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: So we're working to isolate that pile from the rest of the facility.
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: So we've got some portable monitors on the ground and we have a couple aerial master screens up in the air and then we're trying to coordinate couple aerial master streams up in the air and then we're trying to coordinate.
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: We actually assign a command officer, a division boss or a sector boss to work with the folks that are operating the machinery in there to try and cut this stuff off and make this pile smaller.
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: Well, so there's a couple of big pickers working at this particular incident and grabbing stuff and getting it out of the way.
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: Well, one of those large pickers swings and actually hits one of our aerial platforms while they're in the air.
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: We've got two firefighters up in the bucket and has no idea that he hit it and damn near knocked them out.
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: And the officer in the bucket calls a mayday, mayday, mayday, mayday, mayday.
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: Hey, tell that guy to quit swinging this way, cause he's going to knock us out of this bucket.
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: And uh, so that really got everybody's attention, obviously at that incident, no more than those two cats in the bucket, and and so it really caused us to have to rethink.
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: All right, how are we going to work in conjunction with the folks at the facility?
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: Manage that, because the work they were doing was helping us right, there's no doubt about it, but when they start running into us, that creates a pretty big problem.
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: So you've got to have a strategic level position in which you're being very clear about that and putting the sector division bosses in place to be able to effectively manage that and really consider whether we should be operating in the same areas as the heavy equipment for the facility at that same time.
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: So I think that's an important consideration.
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: It can be very helpful but it can be very detrimental if we're not careful All right.
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: it's time for a Timeless Tactical Truth.
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: If we're not careful, All right.
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: It's time for a Timeless Tactical Truth.
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: In today's Timeless Tactical Truth from Alan Brunesee, there's a reason they don't put the products of combustion in breakfast cereal.
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: We talk about protecting our workers, particularly when there's little or no advantage to anything that we're doing, and I think this is an appropriate tactical truth for this discussion today.
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: How else might we limit our risk and manage our risk in order to protect our folks from the products of combustion?
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: I think it has a lot to do with what we've been talking about.
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: If you minimize the number of people there, you're reducing overall exposure and you limit it to the number of people that it actually takes to do the work and you probably need some on-deck companies to keep that recycling going.
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: But really think about minimizing that.
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: And then time time is a big part of that exposure.
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: So the rotation of companies, the ability to continue that rotation of companies I know when we first started kind of considering a lot of the cancer stuff here in Phoenix before I left, there was this idea of first in, first out, right.
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: So oftentimes at other fires we show up, the company that showed up first is often the last company to leave and they're taking the brunt necessarily of that exposure or inappropriately, I think, of that exposure.
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: So if we start thinking about first in, first out and managing that overall exposure to these, I think is a good thing, and then actually people paying attention with boots on the ground, making sure that we have our appropriate PPE on, we're breathing air when we should be breathing air, and that when the incident's over we've got the ability to do that gross decon on scene, which is pretty seamless now, I think, for at least in my, my world, it's become seamless, um, I hope it's the same in the rest of the country.
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: Um, and then, uh, and then the other things when you go back, shower within the hour and all the other stuff you're supposed to do to take care of yourself.
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: Man, that's a, it's a holistic system.
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: I uh, yeah, I don't, I don't think we should treat well, yeah, we shouldn't treat these any differently.
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: Um, and we probably should be a little bit more careful, given the the the dangerous nature of some of the stuff in in these piles.
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: All right, gentlemen.
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for being on the podcast today.
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: Great insight, as always, and next week we're going to be talking about some hot wash stuff with Grant Light and Steve Lester, so I'm looking forward to that conversation.
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: We'll talk to you again very soon.
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: Thanks so much for listening to the Be Shifter podcast.