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Transcript

Shane Ray · B Shifter

• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the B Shifter Podcast.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: John Vance here.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: Today we're going to be talking for just about half hour with Shane Ray.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: Shane, let me let me tell you a little bit about Shane because Shane doesn't toot his honehorn.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: And recently somebody was like, Who is Shane?
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: What's he all about?
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: Well, he began his career in the fire service in 1984, rising through the ranks of both career and volunteer departments in Tennessee, including 13 years as fire chief of the Pleasant View Fire Department and a lieutenant for the city of Brentwood.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: He served six years as the mayor of Pleasant View, Tennessee.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: State leadership, he was appointed a superintendent of the South Carolina Fire Academy and later served South Carolina Fire Marshal under Nikki Haley, who was the governor then.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: And he also serves on the board of directors for the Congressional Fire Service Institute.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: He's a graduate of Eastern Kentucky University.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: We'll talk to him a little bit about being an intern for Alan Brunicini at the Phoenix Fire Department.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: He's a graduate of Harvard's John F.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: Kennedy School of Government, a graduate of University of Maryland's Leadership Program, and an EFO graduate.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: He currently serves as president of the National Fire Sprinkler Association.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: So he's got a lot of credentials.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: He's not simply just a president of a trade organization, but somebody who's lived and breathed the fire service his entire life.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: So we're going to get an update from him, what's going on, some of the emerging issues with fires and big box buildings that are sprinkler controlled.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: And we're going to talk a little bit about data centers and more.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: Here we go, the conversation with our good friend Shane Ray.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: We're in Phoenix doing big box class.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think this is the last one of the year, isn't it?
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: We've been doing a lot of them.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: We have more to come in 2027, right?
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we got one more.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think we got one more in Ann Arbor.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's right.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: My old stopping grounds.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: That that's a that's a great area.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna enjoy that.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: I enjoy going to Michigan naturally, but I love being out here though.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, being an intern here a long, long time ago and all the memories of that and what it meant for Bruno and what it meant to me and my career.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: So for those that don't know, tell us about your internship at Phoenix.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, Chief Brenda Sini always took a college kid from Oklahoma State, University of Maryland, or Eastern Kentucky University, because that's the three places you could go back in those days to get a bachelor's degree, and then he picked one other kid.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: So for as long as I could know, he had four students, fire protection students, out here.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: We lived in a fire station.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: I lived at Station 18 back in the day, you know, back still probably one of the busiest engines in the country.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: And then worked at admin during the week, during the day.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so I got so many fun projects.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: Talking to some of these Phoenix folks today was like a walk back in time to the 1990s, right?
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so many of the captains and things back in those days went on to be fire chiefs all over the country.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a good times and it really helped me throughout my career.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: What kind of duties did you have as an intern at Phoenix Fire Department?
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: So we worked for Kevin Roach back in the days, right?
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: Phoenix was one of the first places to ever have a fire protection engineer and to do research and development.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so we were doing everything from, oh, can you really put the jaws of life on a reel that's coming off of fire truck?
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: And what about pass devices?
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: I joke and say when they were integrating pass devices, I don't think uh I don't think I ever had to buy lunch.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: So somebody was buying us lunch every day.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: But we was looking at tire dump fires.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: We'd fly around.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: I got to fly around in the helicopter with the police and take pictures of tire dumps back then when you used to really have to take a picture and go get it, you know, printed.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: It was like so there were so many fun projects to do back in those days.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: SCBA testing, mask fitting was all new.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: So writ training, writ drills were new, writ harnesses and stuff were not not even hardly thought of.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: So there were so many things back in those days.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: How did that influence the rest of your career spending that time at Phoenix?
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, entire.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: As soon as I went back home as a fire chief, right?
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: The how we built the apparatus, what we did with it to make it safer and more economical, and everything out of sprinkers, residential sprinkers, right?
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: Bruno was dig into that with the people that was back then from Scottsdale and San Clemente and Prince George's County, Maryland.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: So all that still influenced my career today, because I still watch all those places.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I gotta tell you, I I'm jealous because the yeah, well, I I I knew that that program existed.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: I was a little uh past that at the time and and really couldn't get into anything like that.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: And the the college program I was in was at Southern Illinois University, which really didn't have that same engineering affiliation like he likes.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: So, but that that really sounds like a cool program, and I'm sure it it really paid off to do that too, because it just got you thinking outside of the box, not like a uh like if if you just would have stayed home and never gotten that experience, where would you be?
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: No, and that's where Bruno helped me so much.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I got to go ride in most every major city in this country at some point during my young career because of connections with Bruno and the others that he knew in his circle, and to get to hang out with him with baggers for all those years, it's like still makes a difference this day.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: And every time I fly to Phoenix, you know, it's just one of those things.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's we miss him every time.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's good to be back here at CTC.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm glad you're here.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so you know, Shane goes on the road and does the big box workshop, always brings new information.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: Every class I go to, there's something new.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not the same class over and over again.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's you're adding on to it with your what you're seeing, what you're I say investigating, but you you go out and and look at what's going on at different incidents that were either sprinkler controlled or you know that had some kind of fire protection system in it.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: So you're bringing that information back in real time to the class.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: A couple of things that you brought up in the last day or so that that got me thinking is and we talk about all the time, the personnel in the in the control room and keeping people in there.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: When do we when do we assign personnel to be in the fire control room?
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: When do we have them at the valve?
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: How long do we keep them in there?
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: What what does that really look like?
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: Because we people are hearing your message loud and clear, let it run, but how long do we really let it run for?
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so, as I like to say, as our lawyers always tell me about anything we do, it depends.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: So, and it depends just like everything.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's why we try to create the thinking firefighters.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's like this fire and this occupancy is not the same as this fire and this occupancy, right?
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: And what's burning in this occupancy, if it's in 40 feet of rack storage, it's not the same as a delivery van burning in there.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess that's still just a car fire.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: It happens to have to help with some sprinklers.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: So just put the car fire out and turn it all off.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but when it's in 40 foot of rack storage or higher, it's like that's a much different scenario.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: You can't see above it, you can't see in it.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you're just kind of blind.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's where we want to be careful.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: But that's the whole quest here and why we do these programs.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: Why at the National Fire Sprinkler Association does our members invest in having all these side-by-side burn trailers across the country?
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Why are we putting more of these valve trailers on the road out here?
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because we can't possibly train every firefighter in America, and we don't want to, other than we want to be the technical experts and the subject matter experts that says, use NFPA 13E.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's where that comes from, that says the first or second new pumper should promptly pump the fire department connection.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why, as you know, I say in most of the cities that we go to that have combination and career fire departments, it's like they're going to get a few engines on the scene relatively quick.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: So 90% of the places I say the policy is first due goes to the fire, see what's going on, second due goes and pumps the system.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: And that's our whole pull up, hook up, pump up, right?
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: If you get there, pull up, hook up, they confirm the first engine confirms there is a fire in the building, in these big giant buildings in situations we know are familiar with, every one of them, somebody's been met outside and said, it's in here, right?
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so with that, it's like the second do pump the system, get it supplied, get your water supply.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then the officer, that's a change from my career as a fire officer on an engine till today is we encourage that fire officer, that fire officer and his firefighter should go to where that riser is.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's what it says in 13E.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: Go to the control valve.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: When do I turn that off?
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we like to say we want to turn valves off closer.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: Thus, the control valves in the hotel scenario that we do, go turn it off in the floors.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's why we put control valves in the floor stairwells, is turn it off there.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: In a hotel, as you've heard me say in every class, I want you in my hotel or my house to turn the sprinkers off as soon as you get a line in place and as soon as you can get your eyes on the fire, shut the system down.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's compartmentalized, it's small, you're there, you got a hose.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: There's not a ton of combustibles.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: This big box, don't turn it off till you can see to walk around.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: And then in these big megawarehouses, it's like, I'm not, I say, call us, tell the facility manager to get the sprinkler contractor responsible for the facility and get the fire alarm contractor on the way.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because while they you need their expertise to help you with what's going on with some of those complex systems, right?
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: Because we don't deal with it in the fire department side of things every day.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: But again, my whole quest is bring the fire protection community back together like it was when I started.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: We were responsible for fire protection in the community, not just response.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: We were responsible for the front end and the back end, and we're still seeing that today.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: So that's where the quest is.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: We want you using NFPA 13E.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: We want you using 1700 to write your policies and write your response guide.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's what 1700 is.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: It is the guide to structural firefighting.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: 13E is how you operate in these sprinklered buildings.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: You put those together, you can build a great response policy.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: And our goal, we don't want any firefighters hurt or killed, and we want to salvage as much property as we can.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: You brought it up earlier today in class, and I didn't talk to you about this before the podcast, so I'm kind of putting you on the spot.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: But data centers.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that that's huge controversy right now in many communities.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: Not to get into a value judgment of a build it or not, but if you're a fire chief in a community and you're getting a data center, what should they be considering?
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: Because you said something today about, hey, that's a low life hazard building, really.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: There's just a few people working in it.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're a fire chief in a community where they're they're thinking about putting one of these, what should you be thinking about to make sure you have the safest, most appropriate not only protection system, but you're making plans for that building?
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I would just encourage the local authorities and the state authorities who are going to be involved in this is to work with their fire protection professionals, work with their fire sprinkler contractors, their fire alarm contractors, because the people that are doing these projects, they're the people that are good at that.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what they do.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: So for us, it's like, as I say, I I think we've got the fire protection scheme of data centers figured out.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: So as I say, knock on wood, we hadn't seen any of them on the news lately.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: And if we have, the fire's been contained and controlled.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: So not a lot of fire problem for us at the present time.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: So that doesn't bother me.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: But the reason why we're here talking and the reason why I have so much new content is we've had seven of these major megawarehouses burn in this country year, this year already, according to my account.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I hope we can go out of the year with only seven, but we see what happens in the news every day, and it's like this has been from cold storage to mattress uh production facilities and those kind of facilities.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's been a a much bigger challenge for us.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: But that's where, again, the fire service and the fire protection community need to come back together.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: But some of those things I don't fear.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: We have protection schemes for them, and we have people that's good at doing that.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: What is going on with with some of these fires?
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: Because and there's a fire every day in a sprinkler building that's that's successfully extinguished, but we're we're seeing some big lost fires, and that's what really you're talking about.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I that's what I love about this whole thing, John, is the fact that we celebrate the successes every day because every day somebody's sending me sprinkler saves from houses to apartment complex to mega warehouses, right?
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: I shared the one that we had with one of the electric battery uh facilities that was one of the facet successes.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: The place hadn't been open a week, right?
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: One of our fire pump members and one of our uh contractors protected that building and it was successful, right?
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: We see those all the time.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: But what's happening with these other ones?
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, that's top of our list.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: We want to know that as fast as we can because we want to make changes.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: The NFSA is one to help work with NFPA and all our partners in the fire service to go make positive changes, just like we shared about the Fall River.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: We went and recreated that fire as quick as we could working with the Fall River Fire Department, and boom, what do we do?
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: We make changes.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: They're already changing the law on NFPA 25 in the state of Massachusetts, and then we're gonna change it in the national standard, and that'll go all across the country.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's the fastest change that I've seen made.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: So in partnership, we can do a lot of things together, and that's what's so exciting to me about this role is let's go see.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, there are more sprinklered buildings than ever before.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: There's more unregulated product than ever before, the e-commerce market, all these things driving all of these changes to go fast and quick and get it done, and we need to supply the consumer, but there's also risk, and we get to watch those from old buildings to new buildings to ones where it's like, what happened?
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, don't know, but the arsenous piece is certainly on the rise, unfortunately.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: And and you've said it before, the systems aren't intended for 13 separately lit fires throughout a building, right?
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: They're not designed for building for fires outside the building, and they're not designed for multiple fires in the building.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: But naturally, we don't want to tell the mean people that.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: So that's where we shh don't don't mention that at all.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: It it is uh something that is on top of mind for a lot of people, especially with these buildings in their community.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, you you follow best practice, you follow all the NFPA standards, you come to a class like this.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: What else can we do to prepare getting into a big box that is going to be on fire before it happens?
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's where I use that slide that says we need the training division, the suppressing division, and the prevention division.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: We need them to operate as one before the fire, right?
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: And then during the fire, guess what?
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: We still need prevention.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: You heard Phoenix's policy.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: They got somebody on duty all the time.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: We're seeing Plainfield and Indiana change.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's like put a fire inspector, get them to respond.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's like that's good.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: We still got to assign those companies that we learn with that.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: So making those changes, we're making it.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: Implement the policy, but the key is everybody's got to work together.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: We got to get to tactical pre-incident planning for our target hazards.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: What is that building in the community that keeps you up at night?
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want it burning.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's got 300 jobs in it.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's like it's important to us.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: How do we keep that?
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that takes us all to prevent.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: Prevention needs to do it on the in education and enforcement side.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: Training needs to train on it from the tactical pre-incident planning side, right?
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: And then the men and women on the trucks.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's like we got to know what that is, do the training and go get in those facilities.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: You hear me say all the time, as a lieutenant, as a fire officer on an engine, as a chief officer, it's like I wanted to be in our community every day.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: Because why?
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's what was going on.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to see it while it was going on.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: And while it's being built with the fire marshal, we could go take a look.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: And we don't want to be intrusive.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: Don't ever be intrusive and very authoritative.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's just like go on an education mission, right?
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: And we looked at it from a tactical perspective.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's the key, right?
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to hear from the fire marshal how far a travel distance was, why this hose connection was at every door going into the facility, all these other things.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to know the why to that, but I also was thinking, can I get a hose from here?
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: How far can I get in?
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: Is the travel means going to change?
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: These buildings are changing every month, right?
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's like what was happening today, they're improving on it all the time.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: They're getting better conveyors, they're getting better distribution.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: So all those things are not going to stop in our lifetimes.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: So we have a responsibility to bring everybody together and say, we want to do what's best for our community, we want to do what's best for the consumer, but when it's on fire, it's dumped in our lap.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: And then, as I say, the public, the owners of the building, the insurance industry, everybody expects the fact that the fire department's the expert on everything here.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: They're the ones that made us do all this.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: So when you say firefighting or firefighters supplement the system in a well-working, well-designed sprinkler system, what does that mean?
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: So there's supplemental water.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's why we have the conversation.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: You want to pull up, hook up, pump up.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what if I'm pumping and it's more than 150 pounds?
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, yeah, I'm just hitting the check valve.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: But when that operates enough systems for that to need your water, don't you want to be ready to deliver it?
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because you don't want delays.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: But the standards say that the fire department, the FDC, is there for us to supplement the system, not supply it.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: So if you got a 2,500-gallon demand, we can't do that through that single FDC, right?
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: But 95% of our buildings, we can do that in enough.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: And two, if it's got standpipes, we're our primary water for that in most of these buildings that don't have a fire pump, right?
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: So all those things come into play that everybody needs to understand.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why we with our valve trailers, with our team of people at NFSA across the country trying to work with training academies, we'd like to just train them to do it.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: We'd like to have their facilities outfitted with the things they need to just do the basics with sprinklers to know how when you get to those facilities, here's what's the right thing to do, here's what's the wrong thing to do.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: At what point, and you mentioned fire pumps, at what point as the fire department should we be turning off a fire pump?
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I'm like, I'm not, I don't, as I said today, I never in my career turned off a fire pump without the facility people.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's like, as I say, if you get on one of these big mega warehouses, I want the people responsible for their fire pumps there with you.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: NFP 820 says somebody's got it at the facilities gotta know, but I want them to get their fire sprinkler and fire alarm folks there so they can help me out making decisions on that.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not turning it off in one of these big, gigantic mega warehouses until the responsible party from the owner is there.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't mean, you know, Shane Ray working on night shift that's just responsible for that.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: And no disrespect.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: I did that at one point, right?
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because we had to do firewatch and all the other things you had to do when you had any type of outage, but that was much different.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: That was in the Department of Energy days back in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so life was much different with that because you did all of those things by the book.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that's one of the things that we're not seeing.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's like you go to a fire, whether it's in a basic strip mall or you go to a fire in one of these big megawarehouses, plastic facilities, or whatever.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: Fire watches should be the same.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: And how you handle an outage of a system should be very important and critical to the community and to the building and everything else.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: So, my new caution as a result of learning from all these fires, I don't want to turn the building back over to you till you got those folks there that's gonna remedy this problem as fast as they can.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because I don't want to leave this business in a strip mall that's got three units or it's got 30 units.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to leave it out of service and say, just call your sprinkler company.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if they're not there quick enough, how many days are you gonna go?
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: When do you know?
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: Does your fire department truly follow the standard of how to report an outage?
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: And how do you know the outage is corrected?
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: And what reports do you get?
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: And right, and I know there's a lot of departments out there that do do it correctly, but there's a lot that just say put it on firewatch and you've turned it back over to the owner.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: And taking the approach that that's no longer my problem is probably not going to serve us well.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: You you talk about firewatch, we see it in in code, we see it in policy, but what does a proper firewatch look like?
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, uh it's a lot.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: It comes with training, it comes with somebody responsible, it comes with a lot of awareness, and so again.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm certainly not the firewatch expert, but I know what it's not, and it's not just leaving the system off for a few days and saying I'll walk around the building.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: And we're we're in such a hurry sometimes to clear.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I know Chief Williams from the Cincinnati area, we were talking about this last month that he has just got his folks now in the mindset like when we go on one of these things, it's not gonna be we're back in bed in an hour.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna be here for a few hours.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: That they they had they've had a number of fires, and he's had some of them that that would have been that way had it been five years ago.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: But knowing what they know now, they say this is gonna, this is gonna be a longer duration event.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: How do we reframe our minds and the fire service to accept that and make it part of our regular operating procedures?
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's you know, I show that picture of the food on the stove fire, and it's like uh John Nisha, our data specialist at NFSA now.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: 42% of all sprinkler saves we track in the fire protection world is is uh from apartment complexes, right?
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so multifamily dwellings.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then when you go up, 56% of all sprinkler saves are in residential.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: These fires in these big mega warehouses with a lot of combustibles is not the same fire.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: And that's my whole quest to get rid of the definition of cold smoke.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: If you can't see through it, it's not cold.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: It might be colder than normal if it didn't have sprinklers, but it's still burning somewhere.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's where we got to treat it as it is gonna be a longer duration incident.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a lot of things to do still.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just something boring, it's not something that somebody ruined something for us.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, no, we're there to keep that building intact, to keep the stuff in it safe, the people that gotta work there back to work the next day.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we're that's what success is for us, right?
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: When you're looking at the crystal ball, what what what's our emerging issues?
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: What are the things that you're seeing right now that you're gonna be tackling over the next year?
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: The biggest thing is delivering this message, getting it out there, right, increasing that awareness, getting people hungry for keep the sprinkler zone.com, right?
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: Go take that FM training, get your people aware, assign that in your LMSs, use our sprinkler valve trailers, let us help you enhance your training program.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: So those are the things as we watch what's going on.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: Again, the fire sprinkler industry is an amazing industry.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: It it invests tons of money in research and development with its quest to try.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: None of them they want our 96% record to hold.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: They don't want it going down in megawarehouses and being 80% and being 99 in residential.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's like we want to keep it 99 and bring it all to 99, right?
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it takes us all to do that, though.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's my quest is fire sprinklers and firefighters, that's the partners in protection.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: Our modern day buildings, from homes to high rises and everything in between, requires us all to keep the citizens safe, to keep our firefighters going home every day, and to keep our commerce in our cities and counties and communities intact.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: So that's my quest.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: All right, Shane, before we go, let's do a timeless tactical truth.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: Timeless tactical truth from Alan Brunacini.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: If you let the fire live, it may not return the favor.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: How priceless.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: Only from the man.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's so good having you here, man.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate you.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: You're really putting a lot of energy behind us understanding how fire protection systems work, particularly in large buildings, but you're hitting all of them in these classes.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: Something is learned every time.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: I I I've got to tell you, I was talking to one of the folks who went to the last class, and he said, you know, when I saw it was going to be one whole day of fire protection systems.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, man.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: But Shane makes it interesting because he's one of us.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: He understands how to talk to us, he knows what's important to us.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: You're we're not doing uh friction loss calculations or anything like that.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: You're giving us the plane scoop on how this operates, what we should be worried about, even as incident commanders and thinking fire officers.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I really appreciate the job that you're doing and keep the getting the word out.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Shane.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: Taking it from the firefighters all the way to the incident commander, fire marshals, training officers, and beyond.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's our goal.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: Bring us all together.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: And that wraps up this B Shifter podcast.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks to Shane Ray for spending some time with us today.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: If you can, please subscribe, share it with your friends.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: And as always, thanks so much for listening to B Shifter.