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NFPA 1700 and OSHA · B Shifter

• 0:47
  Speaker 2: This is the B Shifter podcast.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: You've got John Vance, nick Bernasini and Chris Stewart here with you today.
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: Good to see you, gentlemen.
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: Back at you, JB.
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: Very nice to be here.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the podcast studio.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: Today we are going to talk some about standards and then mandates that are given to us by the law, the federal government, the state government and other entities that require us to do certain things, with Chris giving us an update on the NFPA 1700 activity.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: You've been on that committee, you've been submitting ideas and comment and there is a comment period actually open right now.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: So talk about the standard, what it means to the fire service, and about the comment period and why folks should comment on this folks should comment on this.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so in early 2024, the NFPA initiated the revision process for NFPA 1700.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: So 1700 was a new standard in 2021, first time it had ever been published.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: They'd worked on it for a couple of years before that.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: So 1700 is the structural firefighting guide, if you will.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: It was essentially done based best practices, based on what FSRI, nist and the other research folks had kind of figured out, and then start to apply it to some standard practice of the way things are done around the country.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: And then it's also there's a fire behavior portion of it.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: So it applied a lot of definitions to what we need to know in the fire service as well as fire, you know, just pure fire science.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: Information about that's relative to extinguishment, relative to ventilation.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: And now we have information that wasn't available for the first draft or for the first edition on life safety, right, search and rescue.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: So FSRI completed the size up and search study and there were some conclusions from that.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: So in this revision process, really looking, taking 1700, breaking it down, looking at what areas can we change, improve and add new data and information to it we went through that and then they also added a chapter, so a life safety, search and rescue chapter.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: So that's a chapter that didn't exist in the first edition.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: So in early 2024, we met, virtually worked over a couple of weeks to kind of put together specific chapters that you know us as individual committee members were working on, and in late summer then they produced the first draft revision of 1700.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: So that is now open and available for review and then for public comment.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: So my recommendation is that folks should be engaged in this.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: Folks should be paying attention, know what was in there previously now, know what changes have been made and provide some public comment.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: Right, and I'll say that I feel pretty strongly about the work that's been done and I think it's legitimate progress and making us better at our jobs and giving us more of a standard to follow a firefighting standard, because it really is kind of the only firefighting standard that the NFPA has.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: It doesn't have to do with equipment or staffing or anything else.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: It's just purely about the work, the tactics yeah, exactly, and the tactics to do it.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, I would encourage people to review, go in, provide some comments and kind of get engaged in it.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: It's pretty easy to want to beat NFPA up or any of the standards that we have and then not do anything about it.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: So if you've got an opinion about it, get in and read it and put something in, be productive and then hopefully we build a better document because of it.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: We'll include a link to the comments and what's been changed in the show notes, so look there.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: Why is this something that is needed now, versus what changed from two years ago when the standard originally came out, that they needed to make some addendums to that?
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: Well, I think, as with any of the other NFPA standards, there's a standard revision cycle for these, right, and so we're at the three-year cycle for this.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: The first draft really was the first draft of trying to collect all this fire behavior, fire research data, put it together and what does it actually mean?
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: Fsri started with their tactical considerations that they built into their research reports and then so kind of taking that, melding it with some incident command stuff, because there's a chapter nine is all about strategy, right, and how we get to defining the strategy on the fire ground, and that's, you know, firmly in Blue Card's wheelhouse, right, in that, you know, we are the only certification that has to do with any of that stuff.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: So that's a focus of ours and to be able to say, all right, fire service here is best practice, because there really isn't any other standard that defines a tactics manual, I guess, if you will, for the nation, right, it's everybody's opinion, it's local thoughts, local best practices, and there's never been a national standard that connects it.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: So it doesn't tell you how to put out a house fire, it doesn't tell you how to put out a warehouse fire, but it tells you all the things that you need to consider in being able to do that and know and understand, to be able to be effective at that, and then connect it with 1710, which talks about staffing and resources and all those other elements that give you the ability to respond to these fires reasonably effectively, and so it's a pretty interesting connection, I think.
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: One of the places they keep wanting to standardize.
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: A lot of times throughout my career was high-rise operations and about I don't know.
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: A couple times a year somebody will come in and say, hey, you need some high-rise modules.
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: You're like, well, as soon as they agree on what a high-rise looks like, we'll start to do that.
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: But they have a high-rise conference.
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: They used to at least every year in Chicago and people would go and that was going to be.
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: The thing is they were going to output like a high-rise SOP and all the high-rise fire tacticians getting together.
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: I don't think I never saw it where they were going to produce anything except argue about one thing or another standpipes and nozzles and the rest of it.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: I think they ran out of whiskey.
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: That may be the other part of it too, exactly, which is that's crazy, but yes.
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: So whenever anybody gets together to create a standard and say here's some best practices, it's just going to naturally draw the flies and the rest of the stuff around it.
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: No, you can't make us, and it's just good.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: Best practices is all it is, so so we've had a couple meetings with blue card departments just because they've asked and and their input, yeah, and, and it was interesting how, uh, some of them and these are, these are urban departments that go to a lot of fires, that are they're, they're certainly experienced and they also have, you know, uh, walked around the block with tragedy too and uh, so they're like, hey, you know what if, if this becomes a more solid um standard that reflects the way we do business and the way we manage incidents and our tactics, that we would start using this in our promotional processes, tied with all the other things we need, and I'm like, well, that's kind of a pretty strong statement that if we can build, if they see the potential in building a strong enough standard that they're actually using their promotional process, then we're probably going in the right direction.
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, it's like anything else.
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: If you're certified in it, that means you understand it well enough to do it.
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: So, like you're a certified paramedic, well, that means something is, I can take a certified paramedic from any system and they can operate together so I can move somebody from Los Angeles to New York and in a very short period of time they're providing ALS treatment.
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: It's a whole different thing to try to do that on the structural firefighting side of it, because it's so idiosyncratic, which is silly, because it's really a lot like EMS is fire bad, water good, and I mean that's kind of the same for all of us.
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: So it's almost like we're in violent agreement about most of this and really what people are hustling and bustling over are just the little nuances that occur a few seconds between each other.
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: And no, you have to move this to the front.
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: You're like, no, that's not the way this and I think that's the good thing about the standard is it tells you no, this is what this is, why you do it the way you do it, and you get a bunch of experts together that understand that and I think in our service a lot of times they think, well, I'm the expert, they didn't ask me.
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: And you hear that all the time from you know, national speakers, I'm the expert.
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: They didn't ask me and you're like, well, no, they had a committee together.
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: You could have requested to be on it and got on it.
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: Well, no, they needed to ask me.
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: I'm like, no, they're not going to ask you because you're in.
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: No one wants you around is really what it is, and so you have to include yourself.
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: And so if you're not willing to do that much work, then maybe just be quiet and talk about the old days.
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: So Well, standards matter.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: I mean, either you're an authority having jurisdiction in a fire department that pays attention to standards and try to follow the standards, and even though everything that I would reference in my old job was there's nothing enforcing us to follow the standard.
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: However, if there is a problem here, they're going to reference the standard.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: They're going to go back and look at it and they're going to ask you why you didn't choose to follow it right.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: Exactly If you go to Pierce and you try to buy a fire truck and you don't want NFPA standards on it, you have to sign off and accept the responsibility as the city at that point, Like yeah, we don't want an NFPA compliant pumper and I'm going to sign off on it, which I wouldn't do, you know that's affording you some protection, right.
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: Well, laws and standards are the foundation for us to do our jobs.
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: I mean, if you didn't have certain laws that allowed you to enter property without a warrant, we wouldn't be the fire department.
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: And they're like well, why do you enter the property without a warrant?
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: Well, because it's on fire, and if we don't, it's going to burn down the next four or five houses.
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: Well, you need to go in and put those out.
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: Thank, you the Fourth Amendment.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: Am I right on that?
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: You just wrote about it.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: That's the Fourth Amendment.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, illegal search and seizures yeah, what is it?
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: Expediency, Something like that.
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: That's the law that keeps getting tested.
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: And they said no, you can do this.
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: And when you look at the legal cases, not only can you go in and do that is you can investigate now the cause of that fire and there's certain things that you have to abide by in the investigation because it's a private property.
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: But that gives us the government the right to enter somebody's private domain, which is you have to have constitutional approval.
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: That's where that law kind of finds its source from.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: So that's and that's how the cops get in trouble so regularly.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, violating that pesky constitution.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: Well, when?
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: you violate people's civil rights.
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: Those are the biggest payouts.
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: And the police do it.
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: We do it to citizens through law enforcement.
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: But inside the organization we do it to our employees with employment practices.
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: We shouldn't be doing Like doing the wrong thing at the scene of a hazard zone, taking the wrong action.
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: Well, if you're not following standards, the employer becomes complicit in that and has some legal liability for it.
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: The people that do after action investigations and the BNR and investigators they have certain risk managements.
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: Well, we use a different scale for delivering public emergency services to people and you know kind of.
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: You know we'll take a big risk to save Savable and you know that algorithm.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: And the fire services really, probably over the decades, made a sport of, you know, disregarding or shit-talking standards and those types of things and yet not doing anything about it right, so creating chaos.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: And then there's departments that are, well, we're too big to do that, and there's departments that say we're too little to do that, and everybody's got an excuse.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: Well, I kind of feel like the system needs to be getting engaged in it.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: Make the system or make the standards right, and they can make our service delivery and they can make the safety and the outcomes for the firefighters a little bit better.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: So it doesn't make any sense to me to just shit talk them.
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: Well, and here's a good segue into why standards are important because they end up becoming law.
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: Is this fire brigade standard that OSHA is talking about, or fire brigade?
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: They call it a standard or a law.
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: I don't even know what's the number in front of it.
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: It's got a number in front of it CFR 191020.
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: I mean 29 CFR 1910.20.
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: Amen, yeah for 1910.20.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: Amen, but yeah, so they're looking at 21 new standards from NFPA that will be part of that new OSHA and then also parts of 14 other standards will be in there.
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: So you're talking about a wide swath of work that's been done in the fire service in the last 50 years that will now go into this document, if indeed it gets approved.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: And you know there's been all kinds of consternation about it because you know we're going to lose firefighters or we're going to have to close our doors or it's going to cost too much money.
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: So let's talk about the OSHA standard and why that really matters with the NFPA and how things line up.
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: And you know, one of the things we talked about and it was one of our most listened to podcasts was when we weighed in on two and two out, because that that really got the talk going right.
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: People were like, well, what, what do you mean?
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: They're going to mandate two out all the time, even if there's an imminent rescue.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: So what do you know about the OSHA standard?
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: And let's, let's talk about what good there is in that, because there is some good, there's a lot of good for the fire service and the safety of our people well, if you start with, 1500 is the standard.
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: When that came down the pipe uh, that was.
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: That wasn't just a deal where they said, okay, we're going to—.
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: The NFPA got together, wrote a firefighter safety standard and then the fire service embraced it.
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: It was more voracious than what's going on right now.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: It's because that was the first time they were like death threats, right.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the folks participating in that committee, yeah.
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: The chairman of the committee got death threats sitting at his desk and it was from firefighters maybe fire chiefs and by the fact, as a group, the fire chiefs were opposed to it.
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: They said no, you're not going to tell us how we take care of our firefighters in my city.
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: And I'm like, well, no, this is just occupational hygiene and law.
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: You can't keep sending firefighters into burning buildings without SCBAs, without respiratory protection.
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: That's negligence.
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: You can't.
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: Well, no, we can't wear SCBAs.
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: Well, I heard that in my own fire department.
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: Oh, we have to wear these damn bottles.
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: And you're like, well, if I didn't wear that bottle, I'd probably be dead.
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: Now, as I do a set of things that I craze the face piece in it, and that's death if it's not on your face.
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: Oh, no, it isn't.
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: You thought you're a scientist.
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: Now, okay, this is great.
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: So 1500 passed, but that took a Herculean effort.
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: After that passed, the head of the IFF, the president, was a guy named Al Whitehead, and he got together with the guy who was the chairman of the 1500 standard, alan Brudicini, and he says Alan, we need a staffing standard for the American Fire Service and the 1700 standard was born.
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: So they took that off their success of getting 1500 passed.
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: Now they take 1700, and that didn't pass.
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: It was a political impossibility because the volunteers opposed it over political reasons.
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: That really had very little to do with the standard.
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: It was road rash between two organizations and it's like a feud.
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: I'm going to get you, I owe you, back and forth.
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: So 1700 ended up getting split into two standards.
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: So you got 1710 and 1700, 1700 being the deployment, and then the tactics on the other side.
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: Well, really, you could almost.
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: The deployment standard said this is the staffing you should have.
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: Well, because they got, they voted it down.
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: Now the union's like well, this isn't good, we need a staffing standard.
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: Well, at the time the president was a guy named Clinton that the union helped get elected.
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: So they go to Clinton and he's like hey, man, I don't do anything with standards, that's the private organization, the NFPA, you guys know that.
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: And he says all I got as president is OSHA.
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: And he says I can do something in OSHA.
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: And that's when 2-in and 2-out was born.
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: So when we implemented 2-in and 2-out in my fire department, that was the very first time in the history of the PFD that the union co-taught the curriculum with the chiefs and you had a union vice president with the battalion chief teaching the troops.
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: This is what two-in two-out looks like and really for our fire department it was kind of invisible because we were in 98% of the city.
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: We were always two-in two-out all the time.
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: It was rare when you had less than six to eight people on the scene in the first minute or two.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: We overcomplicated it for a minute and then everybody kind of settled down and then we got into all right.
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: So, and that's where it came.
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: So, like within our own organization.
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: Well, two in, two out, it's just ridiculous.
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: It doesn't really affect us and it's nothing we have to worry about it.
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: And, like any other thing in the fire department, we announced that the two out is set and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: Well, that was an effort of staffing, because two plus two equals four.
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: Well, then it became a tactics thing and that's what everybody's arguing.
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: Well, if I have to make a rescue, why do I need the two out?
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: And it's really kind of a silly thing we're arguing about because four people do not make a fire attack.
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: When you look at 1710 is you need to put, within the first 10 minutes, about 20 people on the scene to do a fire in a 2,000 square foot two-story house.
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: So I think if we use that as the metric and say that's what it is and we all kind of agree on that, then the tactics we can like the people that want to search ahead of the fire.
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: We're not going to do that ever because it just doesn't make sense.
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: It makes it less safe and less effective and you cause more problems.
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: It's stupid.
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: It's like okay, I'm going to build a house, but I'm not going to use the saw, I just want to use an ax.
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: Well, yeah, okay, bye, that's good.
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: So we can argue about tactics all day long and you're going to adjust the tactics based on your deployment capability.
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: So in my over 40 years I've been doing this, nothing has outperformed putting water on the fire.
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: It's going to save more people.
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: It's going to save more property than any other.
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: All the other activities the fire service does on the incident scene do not do as much as putting water on the fire.
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: Combined Total Period.
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: We should quit arguing about that.
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: That's just the way it is.
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: Sorry, that's water good, fire bad.
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: That's science.
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: So the rest of it how we search should support just safe, effective practices.
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: So I mean, that's kind of it.
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: I think we mostly agree on that.
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: So if you work on a squad somewhere, you're going to still do search and rescue, but there's going to be a fire attack going on.
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: It doesn't make any more sense to operate in a burning building.
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: Well, look at the cops.
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: How do they do inside a burning building?
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: Not, well, half of them end up retiring because they get stuck in a flashover.
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: In fact, we tell the cops don't go in here, stay out.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: In their polyester.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, don't go in.
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: Well, and then you think, well, yeah, so now we can go in and do all those things we told them not to do because we're wearing turnouts.
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: Now when you eat the flashover man, you're going to be having some issues there.
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: So just say fire attack, what that looks like.
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: And the safer we make it, the quicker we can make it safe, the better it is for everybody.
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: So I think that and that's really kind of the spirit of the standards is you get a bunch of people together with these different opinions and they all kind of massage it into the best practices and really I think most of the standards have that Now.
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: For a while we talked about following NFPA standards.
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: Like I'm going to follow the hose standard, the pump standard, the tool standard.
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: Well, if you do NFPA hose testing as it's laid out, that's all you're going to do all year long.
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: It's.
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: I have to test this hose and flow water through this nozzle and do this and this and this.
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: So those kind of things you just have to make sense of and kind of, how are we going to get this work done and make sure that our hoses don't burst and the rest of it?
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: But as far as operational stuff, most of those standards are designed to keep firefighters from taking risks that aren't timed, that don't sequence with that phase of the incident operation.
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: So a lot of times we'll take those risks and it makes things worse, it doesn't improve it.
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: So like we're going to go search ahead of an attack.
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: Well, now I'm spreading the fire in places, I'm exposing more people to hostile conditions.
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: So that's the reason they craft this stuff is say no.
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: If you do X, y and Z, you can put that fire out in seven and a half minutes versus doing it in 15 minutes and hurting three people and you use less resources doing it.
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: Is it just as a smarter way to do the labor here?
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: So I and I think you go out and you practice and train with that stuff and that's the beauty of the fire service is we talk about it, we train on it and then training's over at noon and at 2 o'clock in the afternoon you're responding to a house fire.
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: When we were doing on-deck for the first time, we explained to the command training center what it was, the concept.
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: It took about five minutes because we're all tactically connected together.
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: So okay, we get it.
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: That makes sense.
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: That night we had a house fire, engine 26, I want you to go on deck in the front yard.
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: 26 copy going on deck, front yard.
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: And they added we're going to stop by your rig and get the rig back.
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: Oh, my God, yeah, I'm going to swoon.
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: And you know what happened.
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: About 15 minutes later, engine 26 put the rick bag back.
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: We broke the lines down and we started decommitting all the companies.
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: We put the fire out, did everything, hugging and kissing.
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: That's it 30 minutes.
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: There's a wet spot in the road.
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: The satisfied customer oh, my house is on fire.
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: We hooked on whoever they needed, but we all went back and everybody stayed at work.
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: They took showers, they went on more calls, it was just.
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: You know what it was like it was professional.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: Well, and so I got about 50 things that my, our old, crazy old fire chief, you know, beat into our heads of.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: The first one is is if we don't manage it, somebody will yeah, right, so we might be getting to this, somebody will.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: So if the fire service isn't going to be adult enough to say, all right, we've got to connect effective actions, best practice actions on the fire ground, with some form of safety and some form of actual standard for us.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: Hold ourselves accountable for that, because when we don't do that, we can't actually take care of the customer that's coming.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: And, like you've said previously, at some point, if we don't get a hold of this, the fire service could be run very similarly to the aviation industry, with the FAA and all those other things that are rigidly regulated and standard and trained, and you will not deviate.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: And if you do deviate, these are the consequences.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: And if you do deviate, these are the consequences.
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: And so if the fire service isn't smart enough to do that ourselves, internally, utilizing the NFPA and hopefully using those NFPA standards in this OSHA standard, then it's going them and all these other things that you know, the evangelical approach to these beliefs, or we can say, okay, these are the things that we know we need to do, that both are going to be good for taking care of the customer and it's we're going to keep firefighters alive.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: Because there is not, there's, no, there's no lack of work for NIOSH in doing line of duty deaths.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: There's no lack of data and information that's being delivered to us all the time about maydays, about firefighter injuries.
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of people keeping track of those things or had kept track of them historically and then, like the injury stuff, we know that now those numbers aren't going down, so we're not doing a great job at managing that now.
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: So we better start taking it a little bit more seriously, otherwise it's going to be draconian for us when we first started doing this we were up north, north of the border, there in Canada, and we're doing blue card for this fire, good-sized fire department, I don't know, over 20 stations, and so we go through the thing and they were going through some operational changes there.
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: So there are changes like the organization for the fire department and training and a bunch of other stuff.
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: And so they're saying you know, we got to get to the point where we can train and it took them a year, after the trainers were done, to get to the point where they could actually even start training people.
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: So it took a bit, so it took a few years to get it implemented within this fire department.
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: And then they're going along, going along, and Blue Card makes it better in bits.
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: You take bytes out and so, okay, I'm going to fix this and this.
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: And that's kind of the way it goes, is people focus on fixing the problems that they were looking to solve when they came across Blue Card, say, okay, I need to fix this and this and this, and then, when that's done, I can fix the other stuff on this end.
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: So they're doing the typical thing they're going through and they're restructuring and doing their stuff Three or four years into it they drop out and they call and they said we're having some issues with the labor side and they're trying to stop some of this stuff.
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: And you thought, okay, well, in Canada there is liability exposure to the chief officers where if something goes wrong at a call and they find that you weren't doing everything you were supposed to is they have put fire chiefs in jail in Canada for that.
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: So that's kind of the system they have up there.
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: So anyway, this particular person that kind of stopped it ended up promoting a few years later.
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: And then the way they do promotions there is kind of different than I was used to.
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: And so this company officer ends up promoting to chief and then, like six months later is the ops chief running the whole operations division.
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: You're like this will be interesting.
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: So this was the person who got the program pulled when he became the ops chief.
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: You know what his first order was?
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: That he wrote Is every officer that works in the field for our fire department will be blue card certified?
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: Because he now had the exposure to the liability and knew, and so you're smart about it and thought no, no, no, no, I can do this when I'm over here, but when I'm up here, that's.
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: And they're doing it today.
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: They haven't stopped since then and I think he's retired and gone on, so it's now.
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: I'm not suggesting that we start throwing people in prison, because that's not going to happen anyway, well yet.
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: But I mean, if you start killing firefighters over defensive property, that's going to the dump and you've made that decision that this, I'm writing this building off and I'm letting them get up on it and that's going to the dump, and you've made that decision that this, I'm writing this building off and I'm letting them get up on it and it's going to kill them, then you're going to have to wear that at some point.
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: That is strategic negligence, right there.
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: I mean, that's why we have a strategy, isn't it?
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: And so when you say no, it's past time, there's fire coming through 75% of what was the roof, it's going to the dump.
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: Well, that collapse zones, tape, the whole thing, and then you know the building's going to.
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: It becomes a standard outcome for what that set of conditions is yeah, we can't act.
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: Surprised that it happened that way, yeah well, but we still injure and kill firefighters at numbers that are unacceptable at those kind of incidents, and then we sugarcoat it with hey, this is what it is.
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: If you're not up for dying and that kind of thing, you're oh no, no, no, buddy, you don't need to be here anymore.
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: This is where the thing's got to switch and say uh-uh, you are negligent, you're causing the issues, pal Vance.
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: I think that's why they're doing this is they're just done, and I mean there's enough examples of that just annually that you can't make sense of it.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: So there's another, there's other forces or perspectives or whatever that wish NIOSH would go farther in their evaluations, Because NIOSH my understanding in speaking with them is NIOSH is.
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: It's not about the blame, it's about identifying some causal things that, hey, we need to do these things differently in order to keep this stuff from happening again.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: Well, it's the same five NIOSH reports.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: Every one of them do these things differently in order to keep this stuff from happening again, right?
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: Well, it's the same.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: Five NIOSH reports every one of them.
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: It's cut and paste for tactical death on the fire ground.
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: It's the same thing over and over and over.
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: There's no new ways that we knock ourselves off.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: So then there's a perspective of, well, we need to maybe apply some more blame, using NIOSH or the accountability, or start saying, well, no, this decision, this human factor, is what caused this.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: And, number one, there's not a mechanism for doing that, because I don't.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: As I understand it, that isn't what the law says.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: Niosh is supposed to do with creating these reports, and so, if these changes happen in the OSHA standard, we may be getting closer to that, to where there is.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's an evaluative process that NIOSH does over here, but somebody else now is going to start starting to have a looking for blame rather than looking for what do we need to do better?
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: Just within our service.
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: The concept of search and rescue and how that takes place is about what 4,000 people die a year in structure fires, and that's too many, I mean.
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: And so we design buildings, there's fire protection systems, there's early warning, smoke alarms, all those kind of things to stop that.
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: And they put those in because the products of combustion are so lethal.
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: So you hear people saying, no, we have to get in and search every building that's on fire and we have to search the whole thing.
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: And you're like, well, no, that's not really what a fire attack looks like, is you're going to do search and rescue?
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: But that's going to be part of achieving fire control.
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: If you can't quickly control the fire in that building, it will possess all of the building and there will be nothing left to search, and then that's where your mayday start going crazy.
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: So if we devote the initial operation to controlling the fire, keeping it in its place, protecting all the interior spaces of that structure to keep them survivable, and then, once we get control, figuring out OK, how, now that we protect it in place, which is the tactic we've used for the last 60 years at least, so that kind of becomes part of that effort.
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: So that kind of becomes part of that effort, and I think that's where you get together and have these tactical discussions that people will think, well, there's really not that much difference between what we're talking about here.
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, in fact, the busiest search and rescue crews in the world are probably in New York City as rescues in high vertical buildings, and when you look at kind of one of their first critical pieces of information that they have to process before they actually put a plan together, it's who is putting water on the fire, it's who is addressing the fire right now, that is first and foremost.
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: When I go in, I got to make sure the attack's taking place, because if it isn't, we can't do our job.
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: The attack has to be present for us to come in.
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: So if they can't support us in that way, then so what do they take the line that off, whatever, I don't know, but at that point, that's where you're going to have to talk about your tactics, see, and this is all stuff that you figure out before the fire, which is really the best way to do it, which is, I think, what, at the end of the line, nfpa and OSHA wants is just have some kind of plan when you get there right.
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: That was reasonable or that wasn't reasonable instead of all 75,000 different opinions about what is acceptable and what is not.
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: Well, you ran EMS for a while right In EMS during my career.
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: I do not remember us losing a lawsuit over treatment protocols.
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: Now we paid out some money due to some customer service stuff.
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: The lack of treatment, yeah, but when we followed our treatment protocols, that's what they did.
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: What it was supposed to do I mean, that's why they taught them to us is this is what you do when you go into an EMS call.
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: So there was a training program that was connected to an ongoing keeping your skills up, the continuing education piece.
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: So that's part of it.
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: One of the issues we have in the fire service is the only standard that we use that looks like that historically was firefighter one and two and there's no certification to it.
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: Once you got done and checked off, that was it.
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: You were good.
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: If you left the fire service the day after you got checked off and then you came back 20 years later, your firefighter one and two slip, still good.
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: I know I'm still firefighter one and two here you go right there.
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: When's the last time you took a plug?
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: In 1985.
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: But I'm still good to go.
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: That's what this says.
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: Well, no, you're not.
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: That was a political solution that was given to us.
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: Some of the problem is in states like Pennsylvania, where it's the authority having jurisdiction that decides whether or not you're trained as a firefighter.
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: So you can go to places that four hours of training here's your turnout gear, here's the SEBA go on the call.
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: You got other states that say 260 hours.
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: So there's a wide delta of what is a minimum standard for a firefighter and what's acceptable in different states, and it's vastly different depending on where you go.
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, california, you got to go to college and get your slip, and then the fire department hires you and trains you again.
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: I mean, like you say, it's so different everywhere else, so we just don't have that standard throughout the United States, and it's interesting when you start to look into those states that have those types of standards compared to other things, and the lack of standardization and how they do that is way different than maybe in other states where there is maybe a better standard.
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: And I would challenge people.
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: Since 1997, niosh has been investigating these and you can look at those states because I have.
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: When I go to certain places I look at what the state has done traditionally, how it compares the states with those standards and it's like, well, you know, and sometimes I'm pleasantly surprised.
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: I mean, I've gone places where they, you know they're aggressive, but in the state of Georgia four firefighters since 1997 have died in the line of duty inside structure fires, versus we go to states without those standards and you're in the high 20s, low 30s, so it's even the line of duty inside structure fires, versus we go to states without those standards and you're in the high 20s, low 30s, so it's even the line of duty deaths.
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: And I don't know anything about the injuries, but I'm sure those are a vast difference as well.
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: Well, you know the fire service people are drawn to it.
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: They want to take a risk.
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: That's part of the thing is, I want to jump out of an airplane and parachute that.
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: That's kind of why I signed up here.
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: That's their high yeah, and that's all good, and well, that's, that's our workforce, that's what a B shifter is.
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: Well, the problem is is you can go and take a risk, but when you get caught up in it and you get injured or the fire grabs you is you're not helping anybody.
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: In fact, now you're putting all the other firefighters at risk because they got to come save your ass.
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: So that becomes the other part of it is is there's a lot of ego idealization about what we do and how we do it and why we do it, and you think, well, no, we have managed I mean just during my career and then doing this a lot of different tactical situations, and really the best ones.
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: You.
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: You solve them quickly without a bunch of fuss and muss.
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: There's not a lot of chest pounding.
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: First companies get there, they put an attack on the fire, everybody comes in behind that and supports it.
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: Offensive fires are over.
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: They don't last 15, 20 minutes typically.
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: If it goes beyond that, it's probably going to end up being defensive, because the fire's in places that you can't get to it.
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: It's going to grow, it's going to do a set of things where we just can't put it out and everything is trashed in the meantime.
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: That's why we call it defensive.
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: There's nothing left to save here and sometimes we'll search that whole building.
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: Sometimes we pull up as defensive from the onset.
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: I pull up at an old commercial building that's had three fires in it and there's fire through the roof.
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: Oh, we have to search it.
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: There could be people in there.
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: No, there's not.
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: There's no one in there.
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: It's a vacant building that's fully involved in fire.
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: If they were in there, they ain't there no more and they're in whatever dimensions next, because it's not survivable inside.
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: Well, you would have our own people say well, are you God?
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: What are you talking about?
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: Am I God?
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: Well, you don't know that they're not.
• 40:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I do know they're dead.
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: You don't have to be God to know that.
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: See, this isn't a religious thing, it's just science.
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: It's science.
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's 1,000 degrees at the floor.
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: They're dead.
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: We have a deal where we the fire chief in our fire department passes a law you can't ventilate lightweight red tile roofs.
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: New construction can't do it.
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: Ladder, old ladder guys come in.
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: The oldest ladder guy from c-shift and his frankenstein monster come in with like props and samples and PowerPoints, and so he goes through the whole thing and says we have to get back on the roofs.
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: I said why?
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: And he says well, because now our companies are pulling up to the scene of these fires and they're facing backdraft conditions.
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: I said, really?
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: And he says yeah, he says, and I mean, he's being kind of smug.
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: You guys, you've been chiefs a while, you know what a backdraft is.
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: Well, isn't that?
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: Where the temperature is like a thousand at the ceiling and at the floor, there's no oxygen inside and the fire won't burn.
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: He's very good.
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: Oh, thank you, teach us more.
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe Frankenstein can do a hand puppet next or have a heart attack on a roof.
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's going to happen later.
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so he goes on and on and on and he does this thing.
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: And he says that's why we have to do this.
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: And I said okay, you, you made your case.
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: And he's like yeah, I did, didn't I?
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: And I says back draft conditions, search and rescue.
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: You explain that to me.
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: What's that look like?
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: Well, you go in and you do a right-hand wall search.
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: It's 1,000 degrees at the floor.
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: Come on, freddy, you go in Just a minute.
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: Him and Frankenstein go out in the lobby.
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: Fifteen minutes later, hinton goes out to find them.
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: They've left.
• 41:52
  Speaker 3: They left their computer, they left their roof sample.
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: They just left.
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: I thought I guess he figured it out.
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: You want to do something that doesn't need to be done?
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: Why?
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: So we can do search and rescue.
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: Nobody's going to do search and rescue.
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: It's 1,000 degrees at the floor.
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: They're all dead.
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: It's not, and you know what fixes that.
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: Water, yeah, only 100 times out of 100.
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, which you don't carry on your truck, yeah.
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: Well, there's two sides to the OSHA standard that I've heard lately about the new one, the fire brigade Number one.
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: I I've had chiefs coming to me.
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: It's like you know I've used this to justify our manpower.
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: The two in, two out, yeah.
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: So I get that.
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: I get that being a concern.
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: I guess the elephant in the room is come out pretty heavily against it, I think, and they're saying they're going to cease to exist as a fire department if they have to follow these standards.
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: And that's really the elephant in the room, because now they're threatening you know that you're not going to have a fire department any longer if we are forced to follow these standards.
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: Wasn't that a similar argument to we have to put all the firefighters inside of an apparatus and we'd like them to wear a seatbelt too?
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: That was going to slow us down and that was going to start killing people SCBAs no, we can't wear that.
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: Wearing SCBAs wearing bunker pants we're going to get in too deep.
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: And so I think we always, as a fire service, we're always coming up with excuses why we can't or shouldn't be better, or excuses why we can't or shouldn't be safer.
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: Right, and they're not mutually exclusive.
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: They've got to live with each other, they've got to reside in the same house.
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: So I don't know why we keep saying this yeah, is it hard?
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: Has the political body taken advantage of the fire service?
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: We're not treating the fire service, the city I came from.
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: They're not treating the fire service, giving it the resources it needs to actually do the job they expect them to do.
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: Right, because now we've got new areas with huge distances between fire companies and but they're jam packing all these brand new homes and mid rises and all those things in there and creating a bigger threat and so we don't have.
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: We're always looking for that excuse why we can't, rather than figuring out all right, what is this stuff we need to do?
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: What is the absolute fundamentals of the things that we need to do to be effective, and then do that and then quit spending our time on half the silly bullshit that we spend time on that we give credence to when we don't need to.
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: Well, the problem for those people saying we can't do this and it's going to put us, it's going to break us, and the rest is, there's departments that are doing it, that are just like you, and they've said no, we're going to be a professional organization.
• 44:52
  Speaker 3: The customer deserves a professional response.
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: That's what we're doing.
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: We're delivering customer service to people.
• 44:58
  Speaker 3: A lot of these folks are saying no, this is the way I validate what I do day in and day out and who I am is I have to get up here and cut a hole that looks like this on every one of these, or it didn't happen and you're like.
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: That ain't the way this works.
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: As we go out and we deliver whatever service needs to be delivered.
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: That's what the fire service does.
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: We do it with everything else.
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: We used to have to jump into the trench to save the workers.
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: Somebody figured out half the people that die in a trench are those rescuers who show up to save dead workers that are buried.
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: One out of a million buried workers lives.
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: That means you got a million to one chance that somebody's going to be alive down there.
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: They're all dead.
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: That's not.
• 45:41
  Speaker 3: You have to be a realist, especially when you manage things strategically.
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: Strategically is that's where strategic man management provides safety for the entire incident operation.
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: That's how it's.
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: It's we embed it as we do it.
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: That's the only way it'll ever work.
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: If we're waiting for the safety officer to show up with his green helmet, his 27 safety monitors and meters, it's uh-uh.
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: It don't get safer when that person shows up on the scene.
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: It is when we do it ourselves.
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: The first in companies get there and they do it properly.
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: That saves the day.
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: That's called professionalism.
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: That's really what it is.
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: And professionalism doesn't mean that you're full-time, part-time, volunteer.
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: Professionalism is how you approach your job Exactly.
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: It has nothing to do with pay, yeah.
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: So I keep going back to your dad's thing is if we don't manage it ourselves, somebody's going to do it for us.
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: I feel like they're trying to do it for us right now, and then, simultaneous to that is a fire service.
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: Is we've got to quit cherry picking the data yeah, the data we like and ignoring the data we don't like the data we like and ignoring the data we don't like?
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: And and use all of it to inform our picture and inform what decisions and policies and standards and practices we're actually going to use and be consistent about it.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: Right Is you can't, you can't use some data to argue against, for instance, the two in and two out standard.
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: Argue against, for instance, the two-in and two-out standard, right?
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: And then ignore that same data that refutes some of the fire ground tactics that we want to implement?
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: Right, because it's self-actualizing and it's the only way.
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: I can get hard these days, so I don't quite understand it.
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: We need to quit playing that game.
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: If we're going to be actual professionals, use it all.
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: Look at it for what it is.
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: Well, you said it earlier, it's like a fire department has a certain response time, right?
• 47:42
  Speaker 3: So since we've retired the response times for our fire department, every fire department in this country have gotten longer.
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because there's fewer firefighters and there's more people in more concentrated areas.
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: So if I'm the fire chief, the best thing I can do for search and rescue for buildings is advocate for enough resources that I can have a six-minute response time all the time and not a nine-minute With companies that have water to put the fire out.
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: That could take effective action that not only helps the people in the building but 30 minutes later keeps all the people in the other buildings the exposure safe.
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: So that becomes the deal is getting enough to keep the deployment system where you can keep doing emergency services?
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: Because at some point, if the response goes from eight and a half minutes to 12 and a half to 15, you're not a fire department anymore.
• 48:42
  Speaker 3: And then somebody is going to start looking at those numbers for EMS to begin with, because there's not a body politic for fire yet.
• 48:50
  Speaker 3: We police that ourselves.
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: The EMS people police EMS.
• 48:59
  Speaker 3: So they're going to say no, no, no, no, no.
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: And they'll put a number to it.
• 49:02
  Speaker 3: They'll say in the last six months, we think 150 people died because of your response times are double what they should be and you're not intervening at a time.
• 49:08
  Speaker 3: Well, when you look at service delivery as an emergency service agency, as a strategic level, where do you save most people?
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: This isn't to minimize any service.
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: It's all very important, but it's on the EMS side Because we go on 10 times more of those calls A hundred yeah.
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: And at least 10%, 10 of them.
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: We actually make a difference.
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: They did well, I mean 10 of the time.
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: That's pretty good.
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: That's one, a shift at least.
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so I mean actually yeah, science has made it go up, because when we show up, we're doing different things than we did way back when, yeah, and we're actually more successful in reviving people.
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's crazy shit the same thing with fire, I mean.
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: So that becomes the deal is you're not turning it into a game, but it's like how can I be as effective as possible in the quickest times?
• 50:00
  Speaker 3: That was our goal.
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: Turn it around, be done.
• 50:04
  Speaker 3: We're boom Next.
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: We're ready for the next one.
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: In 1991, I never went to a full arrest with a save, and now it seems like I go to them on a regular basis.
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: And then we get new things introduced to us, like double sequential defibrillation, treating with the sustained V-fib by sending them over to a special unit, and we identify that in the field no one wrings their hands and gets upset about this because regular defibrillation used to work.
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: No, it's like okay, we're going with the doc right, and we're operating under that doctor's license too.
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: And we don't call the doc and go.
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: Hey, I just read some shit on the Internet that says what you're telling me to do is all bullshit.
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: So we're going to give you what this is like.
• 50:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we got a Firefly light hooked up to a 100-megawatt battery.
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: We just stuff it right up the patient's head.
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: That seems to work.
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: It disinfects them, uh-huh.
• 50:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, anything else on OSHA.
• 51:02
  Speaker 3: Well, if you do it yourself, then you're in charge of your own existence.
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: Right, which is good.
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: Take it serious, that's what you want.
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: In fact, when they come to town and they've come, they came into our fire department and they find us once a little bit and we said, well, you know, we're doing this and this and this, and they kind of went away after that.
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, in fact I still have the certificate, a copy of the certificate and the one I was involved in, and it's not a pleasant thing that they give you because it says willful disregard of your standard or the standard yeah, and please pay us.
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: And like they say it really clearly.
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: They don't say it nicely, it's not in a massaging way, so you feel good afterwards.
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: No, this is exactly what it was.
• 51:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's.
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: It's an enema.
• 51:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and the only way you're going to be able to defend yourself from any of that from outside regulators and influencers coming in is if you have your own system you're using and people oh, you're just selling blue card.
• 52:09
  Speaker 3: Make your own system you're using and people, oh, you're just selling blue card.
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: Make your own system.
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: Other fire departments have done it.
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: No, this is what we do.
• 52:13
  Speaker 3: Now, clearly it's not as good as what we do, but yeah, but that's kind of it.
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: Their books are 40% off right now.
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: Exactly, yeah, exactly.
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: End of the year savings, yeah, come one, come all.
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: But that's really kind of it is fire departments that are in charge of their day-to-day activities tend to do a lot better in those kind of things.
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: Especially that can uh explain why they do things the way they do it.
• 52:39
  Speaker 3: If it's just well, we get there and it's instinctual, you think, okay, yeah, you're right about the stink piece, but yeah, I was born with the knowledge yeah, fdny is the, the, all the little Gs want to be right and and and and in a lot of ways, but they have no.
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: People who, who want to emulate, have no idea what the, what, the response is, what the deployment looks like, what the training looks like, and we brought it up on this podcast before that if you're going to make Lieutenant, you're you go to school for six six weeks, You're off the line.
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: If you make captain another six weeks, you make chief, it's another six weeks.
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: I mean, they train you for the job that you're going into.
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: It's not through osmosis or magic and you do the work plenty right, you can't fake the work in that system to get to those places.
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: Well, you guys want to do a timeless tactical truth.
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Before we go, Timeless tactical truth from Alan Brunicini, available at the B Shifter store.
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: Speaking of things being available for gifts, you still have time to shop for Christmas.
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: Okay, this is the seven of clubs and it says the IC assigns task-level companies to tactical-level bosses to maintain an effective span of control.
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: Again, the IC assigns task-level companies to tactical-level bosses to maintain an effective span of control.
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: An effective span of control, yeah, Supervision in the hazard zone.
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: Because a lot of times we'll go into a department that says we want to use our captains for this.
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: We want to use our company officers to manage the division to reduce the span of control.
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: That's not what Bruno's talking about here, is it?
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: No, that's not what Bruno's talking about here, is it?
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: No, until you assign those task-level resources to a tactical-level supervisor that is providing entry control for the attack position, you have not balanced your span of control.
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: So if you assign that to a working company officer who is on the interior of the building, that doesn't do anything.
• 54:52
  Speaker 3: Colin, engine one alpha does not do anything for your span of control.
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: You may think it does.
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: It makes you feel better, but it didn't improve the work Doesn't do anything.
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: In fact, it confuses it and causes more radio communications later.
• 55:07
  Speaker 3: So that's what we're talking about.
• 55:09
  Speaker 3: And it's odd because you go to those departments and say, no, our company officers can do this and you think they may have the skill set to do it, but they do not operate in a position they can do it.
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: So no, they can't do it like that, it doesn't work.
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: And they say, well, yeah, it works.
• 55:24
  Speaker 3: All the time we haven't had an issue.
• 55:26
  Speaker 3: Well, yeah, you haven't had an issue yet because you haven't had to maintain entry control.
• 55:31
  Speaker 3: As soon as you have to and it becomes urgent, then it goes to shit and what that will happen is it will be followed.
• 55:38
  Speaker 3: If you can't resolve the reason that you needed entry control within two or three minutes, then you will have a fleet of maydays and you're done strategically.
• 55:47
  Speaker 3: You will lose control strategically and you will not get it back again until you establish tactical level officers.
• 55:55
  Speaker 3: And then these departments that think you can do it with working company officers, I ask them do those same working company officers grade?
• 56:03
  Speaker 3: Do the evaluations for the other company officers in your department?
• 56:07
  Speaker 3: Do they approve vacation leave for the other company officers in your department?
• 56:11
  Speaker 3: Do the other company officers report to those company officers?
• 56:16
  Speaker 3: Well, no, well then why would you have them do that on the fire ground?
• 56:21
  Speaker 3: You should have a supervisor boss there.
• 56:25
  Speaker 3: That's what this is calling for, because you couldn't put it out initially, and as you're going to escalate and put more people in, you need to put the supervision and management pieces so you can maintain your strategic control over the thing, the position and function of all task level resources.
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it hasn't.
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: They've been successful at it because of accidental success and they have not gotten to a position where the words mayday, mayday, mayday has been uttered on the fire ground Because there is not a company officer level person playing the role of a tactical level boss working in the hazard zone that has the capability and capacity to manage a mayday at the tactical level, with all the resources and all of the other things that need to go along with it effectively.
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: So nothing bad has happened yet and nothing has happened yet to prove to them it's not effective.
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: But you don't have to touch the stove yourself to learn that the stove is hot.
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: Other people have learned that it's hot.
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: So it probably would make sense to pay attention to what other people have going on in the fire service, because we've learned that lesson.
• 57:40
  Speaker 3: They call that operating on borrowed time.
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, oh shit.
• 57:44
  Speaker 3: See, and then when it breaks, it breaks, you're screwed In fact in our deal.
• 57:49
  Speaker 3: The experience we have is what I took away with.
• 57:52
  Speaker 3: It is there should have been 16 coffins.
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 57:56
  Speaker 3: Because you had a 25,000 square foot roof structure burned for an hour.
• 58:02
  Speaker 3: That did not collapse on 16 firefighters trying to pull a dead guy out of a building.
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: You know I hadn't listened to that audio in a long time.
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: Like 10 years ago and I just went back and listened to it because I was teaching a class about that incident, and what you're saying couldn't be more true.
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: There is zero reason.
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: It wasn't mass casualty.
• 58:27
  Speaker 3: And you know who you didn't hear from in the aftermath of that for years are the people that are pissed off about OSHA and the NFPA and everybody else.
• 58:35
  Speaker 3: The cheap noise is all that is.
• 58:38
  Speaker 3: They ain't paid a bill yet on it.
• 58:40
  Speaker 3: You talk to anybody that's dealt with that kind of a tragedy.
• 58:43
  Speaker 3: It changes you, man, if it doesn't.
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: There's something wrong with you, Chief McAmee from Worcester.
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: If he hadn't plugged the hole at the cold storage fire and stopped the other crews from going, he knew six were already gone.
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: The four that had gone went into rescue too, and the fire was just overrunning every position.
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: So he stopped another dozen from going in, and if he hadn't have been there to do that, you know it would have been.
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: No, we didn't.
• 59:11
  Speaker 3: No they finally were able to organize it, but they an hour under Pure luck.
• 59:17
  Speaker 3: Pure luck, oh it was.
• 59:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, it's, it's, yeah.
• 59:24
  Speaker 3: It still curls your toes.
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: It's nasty, uh-uh, it's nasty.
• 59:29
  Speaker 3: That's where it all came from.
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: We use company officers.
• 59:32
  Speaker 3: That's the day we stopped.
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: This doesn't work.
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: Just so you know we didn't stop.
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: That's one thing.
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: That's still going on and that's not understood.
• 59:46
  Speaker 3: We stopped for a little while.
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, for a minute we took a breath and then the world changed.
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Thanks guys.
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: This has been a little while.
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, for a minute we took a breath and then the world changed.
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Thanks guys, this has been a good talk.
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: We'll include the OSHA information and everything else we talked about.
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll put the 1,700 links in too.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll put all that there and you can look it up for yourself and get involved.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: All right, Well, thanks, guys.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: Excellent.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to B Shifter.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: We'll talk to you next time.