Hazmat and Firefighter Specialty Roles

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
I always preach because it was preached to me so just getting
done being an RTO I always tell the recruits don't disregard the
stories at the table cause some of that will be the best
training of your life. Welcome everybody, Copper State
Fireman Podcast. It's podcasters for firemen

(00:21):
burning the ships of complacency, laziness and
excuses. We're promoting love and passion
for the job, encouraging eagerness, and mastering the
craft of the fire service. Remember, the information,
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individuals of this podcast and are not affiliated or endorsed

(00:43):
by the fire departments, organization or companies the
individuals work for. This podcast is for general
information use only, brought toyou by the Copper State Fools
and sponsored by Solid Foundation Team LLC Let's go.
All right, welcome back everybody.
Thanks for joining us again, this is Copper State Fireman

(01:06):
podcast. I have the privilege to sit down
with Steve well as he has 21 years total in the American fire
service, 18 with this current department.
He is a captain Wildland engine boss, trainee, TLO, hazmat tech
instructor, tox medic. This guy's just got the the
whole list down right. Couple career highlights for

(01:27):
Steve here. He's been promoting teaching.
He's been on some of the biggestfires in Arizona, Colorado,
California, Montana. Job titles, in and out of the
fire service. So he was a Sunrise Mountain
High School instructor for the fire service program.
He is the Peoria firefighter, charity holiday coordinator,

(01:48):
Father, husband just finished the standard RTO and that's not
what we're here to talk about today, but we'll definitely
touch on that. Couple big ticket items that
Steve's proud of is what the toydrive has become in the
department that he works for. Proud to be picked to train
those booters after that Academy.
That's a honor for sure. He's proud of his family, his
kids, his reputation, all the the most important things in

(02:11):
life, and then more importantly,the guys that he's worked
underneath and has worked underneath him, just seeing what
kind of fireman they become. So Steve Willis is a great guy.
We're going to sit down today and we're going to talk about
hazmat and just kind of the nuances of the specialty and
we'll dive as deep as Steve wants to dive.

(02:31):
Is there anything I missed on the intro my brother?
No, no, that was, that was very awesome.
Thank you. I appreciate that.
All right. Well, again, thank you for
coming out here. Again, this is sponsored by
Copper State fools. And so this is just fireman
talk. We are here just to hopefully
learn something. Everyone listening just kind of
find out a different way to do something and everything's said

(02:54):
and done. If you take 1 little thing away
or that brings it back to the kitchen table for a discussion,
then that's the that's the reason why we exist right now.
So thanks for listening and thanks for the support.
So without any further ado, Steve, let's dude, Hazmat is a
is a large topic to just say, Hey, let's talk about hazmat,
right? But I really want you to kind of
break into your passion in hazmat.

(03:16):
The there's a lot of dudes out there, especially in the the
spec, the spec OPS world, right?And they do Hazmat, but it's
almost like a side job for them,right?
They'd rather do the window pickoff guys every, all the quote,
UN quote, fun hero stuff or whatever.
But it's, it's funny because back in the day, my last

(03:38):
department, we had all the modalities and special
specialties, of course, but we were always told, and it's funny
like no one liked to do hazmat. But we were always told like,
Hey, bro, it's basically the EMSof fire.
Like it pays the bills for the spec OPS.
So I know you think differently of it.
So just break it, break it down to listeners right now.

(03:58):
Just let's start talking about Hazmat your your mindset and and
we'll just kind of see where theconversation goes from there,
brother. Well, yeah, so I agree.
I, I, I'm not, I'm not disagreeing with them at all.
I agree with them. In fact, even when, let's say
lately, in the past 5-6 years, we've had a giant influx of
people into our department and you know, other valley

(04:21):
departments, other neighboring valley department.
One of the things that I always take a little shit for is they
ask like, what about specialties?
Well, so my current department is the all hazards department,
meaning we have we have wildlandteams, we have a rescue swimmer
team, hazmat teams, TRT teams, we have a SWAT medic program and

(04:41):
we have like a terrorist liaisonprogram, which is that TLO thing
that you referred to before. We have a lot, but I always tell
the new guys, I'm like, look, here's the deal.
If you go to TRT, that's like the cool man thing, right?
You get to use you get you get to learn a lot of knowledge
that's life applicable, right When you're you, you could use

(05:04):
at any point in your time, you could use the rope, a knot,
right? They're always applicable.
Those those are skills that are very perishable, but you can
always use them and you can go bullet, you know, you can go out
and go rock climbing. You can learn to ballet, you can
learn to do all these different things, cool guy things hanging
from a helicopter, short haul, all those different things.
Those are fun, especially since they're going on during hazmat

(05:26):
school at the same time. We usually walk out of hazmat
school and see you guys jumping off the building and repelling
it down a building while we're learning chemistry.
It just makes it that much worse.
But then you have the rescue swimmer program.
So it's another thing we do. Who would not like to go out and
work on a boat as their fire truck?
Like that's just an awesome thing.

(05:46):
It's always, it's always changing.
It's such a huge environment, such a huge hello.
It's very unpredictable and it'svery cool to go out and be able
to make a rescue or help, you know, push a boat off it's, you
know, going to, so you can save other property from a boat dock.
Like there's just so many different things you can do up
there and it's such a dynamic environment.

(06:08):
So that's. Now it's that boat.
I know that's not what we're really here to talk about today,
but for the listeners, that boatthat you guys have in your
current department, is that for what is that for?
Is that for like drownings, water rescues or is there a pump
on there? Is it for both fires?
Does it do everything? C All of the above, all of the
above. So we have a, it's a 20.

(06:29):
It's a just a normal man. So 4896 is what we'd run.
So they're up to 48 hours, like 3 different shifts, just like a
typical fire station, right? But they go up there and they
have a type 3 fire truck, which is when we like you kind of
mentioned the wildland thing before, just because it's at
lake at, because it's at the lake, they have to have a bigger

(06:49):
clearance and they have to have a different kind of style fire
trucks. They use that up there.
And then when they actually haveany kind of rescue on the water
or they need to use the boat to get to the other side of the
lake, anything like that. So they've they've run the gamut
with that thing. It's very impressive.
So it's one crew that runs both pieces of of equipment, correct,
Like Co staffing correct. OK, is there a guy that is

(07:11):
strictly the dude that drives the boat or is everyone have to
learn how to drive that thing? So I don't want to speak
incorrectly, but I believe so just like an engineer drives a
fire truck and other people are able to drive the fire truck and
qualify to do so. I believe it's the same thing up
there. So they have one guy drive, but

(07:33):
everybody needs to be qualified to drive it.
And I I think that. Makes sense?
Fairly positive that's how they run it.
But the going back to the the hazmat thing, right, there's no
like, so there's tons of cool calls.
You can save someone from a drowning.
You can pick someone off of a mountain.
You could, you know, get droppeddown in a short haul on a on a

(07:53):
helicopter. Like those are cool things.
Those are just fireman things todo.
There are no cool hazmat calls. They're just not.
And and I'm a firm believer in that.
And everybody kind of looks backand says view of all people.
Why do you think that? Like, well, I'm a nerd.
I love hazmat, I love the chemistry behind it.
I love the biology behind it, but they're not cool.

(08:14):
They're just not like no one wants to go in and from the most
mundane fall injury call, like no one wants to go in and reset
a carbon monoxide meter. Just no one wants to do that.
No one wants to reset CO2 thing,CO2 tank from a beverage or from
a Circle K. You know, no one wants to do
that. Those aren't fun.

(08:34):
But at the same time. I want to be on the boat for 48
hours like you talked about. That's the gig I'm solving up
for. Yeah, right.
But on top of that, even if evenif we get like what would be
known as like the big call, right?
Let's say like we had like your department and my department, I
think it was two years ago we had that big water treatment
plant leak. We're on that forever, right?

(08:55):
And these are campaign long calls.
So you have these giant calls where they're, even if you get a
big call, let's say, and you're on these, you know, giant
leagues, so you're saving someone or like you're a spill
or whatever, you're still not asfun because you're not doing
anything for really anybody else.
You're more along the lines of helping prevent and, or protect

(09:18):
like the people around the area.And we're not even, we're just,
we're just doing the very best we can.
So it's not like a tangible thing.
You can see I jump into the water, I grabs that guy and I
pull that guy out. We just stay at that guy.
I get off the mountain, we roll the guy down the mountain, put
him in the big wheel. He's good to go.
We take this guy and we short haul down, we pick him off the

(09:40):
mountain, we go in the trench, we build our build, our cribbing
build everything we need to do. We lift the car up.
All those things are tangible. There's nothing really tangible
in the in the hazmat world that you can see and enlisted that
immediate response like I did this.
No, we just, we stopped the leakand that's about it.
That's about all you can do, whether it be a gas leak or an

(10:02):
auto refrigeration thing, something that you can do right
away. But at the same time, even if
you take, if you take all that away from it, the tangibility to
it, it's just the, the danger behind it.
And I think that's the other thing that that prevents us from
really, really wanting to dive into it.
Because really other than TRT, and I don't want to speak any
ill will against it because I think they're phenomenal trades

(10:24):
and phenomenal disciplines and modalities and they should be.
But really, other than bad equipment or water being
incredibly dangerous and dynamic, where is there?
And you being like a TRT guy, where would there be?
Where would there be the inherent danger from that,
right? You have safety systems built
into safety systems built into safety systems.

(10:47):
And really other than equipment,This was a Battalion Chief we
had. He kind of told me the same
thing. I stole this from him.
But he said they're really just,they're there like they're
safety's built upon safety, which is how it should be.
But in the hazmat world, even ifwe go and I look at every fog
guide, I look at every chemistryguide, I look at every
everything, every resource I have, I call the people and

(11:08):
other countries that built this stuff and I come back and I get
my answers, we still don't know if that's the right answer 10
years from now. You're, you're absolutely right
and that's the crazy thing aboutit and the, the increased danger
of these hazmat calls, right? And really what Steve's kind of
breaking down and I hope guys are picking up on it like it's

(11:29):
you're right. It's not that sexy fireman job,
but man, it's very important andsuper necessary.
Like it's a it's a means. So you we we have to provide
that service to be that all hazards that we always say we
are. And I'm I'm curious.
So before we get really deep into hazmat, right.
So you just told the entire listeners on how not sexy hazmat

(11:50):
it. So why did you decide Hey I want
to do a hazmat tech right? Funny.
So this, the department that I work for, the station that we
have our hazmat team at, it was the guys.
It was the guys all the way. And we've we've joked about this
from day one, like no one wantedto go to hazmat school to go to

(12:11):
hazmat school. We went for the guys.
Went for the boys, right? Yeah.
That was it. And and when when I got off
probation, we had just became a hazmat department.
We just got a hazmat team and they offered up the guys that
were already at that station. They said, hey, you can either
go to hazmat school and stay or if you don't want to go to
hazmat school, no harm no foul, but you can't stay here.

(12:32):
Pick a different house, right? Pick a different house.
And so there's a bunch of guys that were like, no, sure, yeah,
that this seems fair and accurate.
Let's just stay and keep this thing going.
And they did, and then they ran with it.
And we just have a culture builtinto that station.
Not to say that other stations don't, but very biasedly
speaking, the cult that's built into that station was built by

(12:53):
our predecessors and by those guys.
And those guys have stayed for the duration and they just keep
kicking ass. And so now everybody that gets
to go through their like all thebooters that are just doing a
typical probationary rotation there, they'll go through there
and be like, man, I had such a fucking great time with these
guys. And then they go back to hazmat
again, not going to hazmat, but because that's the only way they

(13:14):
get to stay at that station. So that that was it.
It was it had nothing to do. Like I'm AI was a biochem major
at U Bay, so I'm a nerd about it.
But even that like that, that was a very small portion of
keeping me to go to hazmat school.
It was mainly just to get to that station so I can get those
free. I got you.
That's funny. So you said biochemist, engineer

(13:37):
at AAC. Is that correct?
No, I was so biochem major, biology, chemistry measure but
at U of A, the real school. Right.
So for all your Arizonians out there, right, we won't start
that argument right now, but butthat, that's funny.
So you already had the background.
So it seemed like a natural progression, but that's it.

(14:00):
And it's funny. And that's why I dude, I love
you so much because you're, you're a a true fireman, right?
And it's like, even though you had the background and naturally
a lot of people like, well, hey,I went to school for it.
It's a passion of mine. I went into it.
You're like, no, bro, I went forthe boys, right?
Like this is, I wanted to be at the coolest station with the
greatest guys, right? And, and have the most fun and
kick literally the most ass. Like I, I love that.

(14:22):
Like that's a great reason and. That's it right there, right?
Like that's like if you think about it, and I tell this, I
tell this to the, to some of thestudents I teach.
If you really break down what wedo and you break it down as, as
who we are, right? If you think about it in the
very basic level, when is this agood decision, right?
If you take the average fire station has roughly, we'll just

(14:43):
say 6 to 12 dudes, correct, Depending on how many apparatus
you have in your truck. So we'll just take one at a
station in your, we'll just takea station in your, your
department, right? 6 to 12 dudes, you have enough
drugs to kill a small army correct in your drug box,
several $1,000,000 vehicles and it's and a million plus dollar

(15:04):
house, right. And then on top of that, you
have most guys, especially with the way that the Valley works
right now and the Valley, like the hiring process that we're
going through and that, you know, just the attrition we're
going through. Almost half of the typical
department in the Valley has guys that have less than five
years. And most of those guys that have
less than five years are roughlyin their early to mid 20s,

(15:26):
correct? Oh, yeah, absolutely.
And that's like, I'm glad you mentioned that before you go on.
Like that is something that's happening across the entire
United States. You know, it's the, the, the,
the, the stat that I read last was 50% of all the fire
departments. Obviously it's a it's an average
right? Or five years and less, which is
crazy, you know, like that's a first for the American fire

(15:48):
service by, you know, as as a whole right now.
So I think that the issues that you guys are having and we're
having, I think that's that's pretty common across the US
right now. Yeah, and, and I didn't even
know it was that big of a deal across the US and you in the
Valley, but not across the US. But if you take that and you
say, hey, I'm going to take these 6 to 12 dudes that are in

(16:08):
their early to mid 20s and I'm going to give them enough drugs
to kill a small army. I'm going to give them multiple
$1,000,000 vehicles, $1,000,000 house to live in.
Oh, by the way, here's very little supervision.
Go ahead and make sure that you be responsible and make the
right decision ready go and I'llsee you in 2 days.
Like that's just not a good decision process, right?
That's just not that's not smart.
I wouldn't do that with my own kids.

(16:29):
So, but if you think about it, because of the onus that's been
placed on us by the society and by the people that we serve and
the communities we serve, like the people that you're picking
is what it comes down to. So really, if you're not picking
the right dudes, then we don't need you there.
We have to pick the right dudes.We have to pick the right
roommates. And without getting into a giant
other topic like that's the onusand that falls on us, right?
That responsibility. So when it comes to the hazmat

(16:51):
world, in order for me to get buy in from some guy that's
going to want to go do the non sexy hazmat thing, I have to
pick the right dude to do it. More than likely he's not going
to want. I have no chips.
I can't push any chips in on thetable to sell him on not going
to one of the other specialties of mortality because it's just

(17:11):
not as sexy, it's not as fun. Lie to him and tell him, hey,
just by the way, make sure if you do these things like you're,
you don't have a higher chance of getting some horrible disease
or cancer later in life. No, I'm just putting him right
more into the fray. So I know that the average guy
has 30% to 50% higher chance of getting cancer just being part
of the fire service. Well, let's, let's Andy up.
Let's double down on that and send you to hazmat school.

(17:33):
Right. Let's let's expose you to the
heavy metals on top of that too,and all the other methyl ethyl
death, you know, so cool, right?Yeah, then you got to, you got
to. So you just got to find the
right dudes and go, hey, man, about the bind.
It's about the culture, it's about learning a craft.
It's about doing something for the greater goods.
That way, whatever you do for this, you're helping dudes 1020
years from now. Like the guys that you'll help,
you don't know yet and you probably will never meet.

(17:54):
And that's OK. And that's just how we have to
kind of go about it. So I think just kind of have to
pick the right guys that have the right the right mentality.
And we were lucky that culture got built just as I got there
with that station that had already been done, but with the
hazmat world, they just took it and ran with it.
And that, and that's amazing. And it it's funny because so the
guys listen to this, right? Everyone on the job understands

(18:17):
what the public expects from us,what they believe we're trained
in, right? And it, it and it's, it's
easiest answer in the world. It's everything, right?
They expect us no matter what. We get the phone call after
everyone else says we have no idea, right?
And it's crazy because outside of us, the military's probably,
excuse me, the only other agency, right, government

(18:38):
agency, we're all government employees basically.
But the only other agency out there that says, hey, we
understand you are 2425 years old, right?
Who cares? But like military, for example,
it's like at that point, if you joined right out of high school
at 18, you're probably a supervisor, a captain,
Lieutenant equivalent, right in the military compared to the

(19:00):
fire service. But instead of being in charge
of like 4567 guys or whatever, they're like, here's a platoon
of 100 dudes, right? And that's why like, I believe
honestly, between the callings, right?
Because the guys that pick this profession that are good, they
do it for a calling. Same with the military.
They do it for a calling, right?They, they, they have a calling

(19:21):
to serve the country. But it's one of those things
where and like you hit the nail on the head.
We ask a lot of our members, especially our young members,
and I kind of wanted to get intothat.
This is a segue into it. Do you believe, especially in
the hazmat world? And again, your opinion, you
said it's about the dude, right?So with that statement, do you
care if say Firefighter Smith comes to you and he's literally

(19:45):
3 weeks off probation? But this guy has been dialed in
from day one. He's a super go getter.
There's an opportunity with yourdepartment, say to go to has
school. Are you going to tell that kid,
hey, listen, wait a little bit or bro, absolutely.
Like how do you look at his years of experience prior to
getting that tech? You know that tech side.

(20:05):
Is that important to you in youropinion, or is that merely
interesting? I think it's I I would say
merely interesting if I would more towards my pendulum would
swing more towards that way withthe only I mean every there's
every situation is different. We know this like I can't say
globally or blanketly. And same thing.
Like, hey, this dude's good to go because some dudes that may

(20:27):
just be good to go, you look at and go, you're not going to fit
in. You're not.
You need to go this way. If you want to be successful,
you have to go this way. Yeah, and that's doing them a
favor by being honest and transparent with them.
Right. But at the same time, like you
look, you look at them and in mymind, if no one else is raising
their hand and no one else wantsto go, then send them.
But I, I'm a big believer in seniority too.

(20:48):
But if you and I have the same thing and we want to go do the
same thing and we have the same credentials and we have the same
want and I have more time than you, OK, then then the guy with
more time on goes right. But if we have no one signing up
for it, be it medic school or hazmat or TRT, and we have these
guys who are like, well, we're just not going to send anybody

(21:08):
or on the flip side, but we're just going to force someone to
go. Why are we putting people in
places that they don't want to be like that's never going to.
That's that's usually a very poor choose a very poor outcome.
I mean, you may have got to justthey're doing it to do it
because they didn't want to likelike myself, I was one of the
guys that myself and a buddy, wewere on probation.

(21:29):
We didn't want to go to medical school and they forced us to go
to medical school at the time. We wanted to be medics
eventually, but I didn't want todo it month 10, right?
So I didn't want to do that. But I did it and I'm really glad
looking back, I did it now. But I think if you have someone
that has, you know, three weeks off probation and one of his
rotations was at that hospital station or at that PRT station,

(21:49):
he's like, dude, I fell in love with the dudes.
I fell in love with the guys. I fell in love with the the
people there, the culture there.I really want to go back or even
I fell in love with the little itty bit that I learned my
rotation there. But I think there needs to be
stipulations just like your department, my department, like
you have to honor that to the city into the taxpayer by being

(22:09):
there for X amount of years or whatever that may look like.
Yeah, and I mean fiscally responsible and everything else
that kind of all goes into that.You know, obviously it it cost
everyone money, taxpayers department, everything else
time, you know, backfill the thewhole 9 right to send guys to
school. And so I wholeheartedly agree
that, you know, trying to vet those guys ahead of time,
obviously with the lack of options we have too.

(22:31):
And, and we have the same issue in the department I work for
right now. But, and I'm curious on how you
guys do your recruitment processjust for the hazmat side,
because what we came down to is we'll do an interview and
basically open it up to, you know, if you're off probation,
right, you're, you're eligible. We hold it to firefighter and
engineer only because believe that we should not pick up a

(22:52):
suppression officer that's not atechnician, send them to school
and then say, hey, now you're incharge of a tech truck, which
they're brand new tech. That's not fair to the crew, the
officer or anybody. So we sit down, we just
interview the guys and basicallyexactly what you're saying like,
hey, is this dude going to fit in right?
What's his work ethic like? Stuff like that, You know, years

(23:13):
of service, they're kind of merely interesting.
How do you guys do your selection?
I know you talked about obviously A2 guys sign up.
One's got 10 years on the job, one got five years on the job.
The 10 year guy has it, but prior to using that seniority
system, do you guys interview them or or what does that look
like for you all? So we've, we've ran the gamut.
We've we've hand picked, we've done written tests, we've done a

(23:36):
written test in an interview. We've done written tests score
based, you scored higher than me, then you go, we've kind of
done a bunch of different ways. We're still trying to figure out
how to do that. So we can include the most
amount of people that we want toright.
We get the biggest pool of participants.
Right. And quality participants

(23:57):
obviously too. Well, and cause 'cause that's,
that's almost kind of vetted, right?
Because it's just within our department.
So it's not the same, it's the same process, but not the same
mindset that you would have in like trying to have a hiring
process just to get hired. So I don't want to lower the
score to 70 just so I could have, you know, a bigger pool,
the people, the pool from. Well, now you're, you're
lowering the standard right there possibly, right.

(24:19):
But here these guys are already hired.
We already know them. So what's that standard look
like? Well, they should already have
met a standard. They've gotten off probation,
they've gone through rotations, they've rode for a little bit or
been on a truck for a little bit.
Like they should have already done the their due diligence
essentially and looking at it and going, hey, I'm really
interested in the hazmat programand they're reaching out to

(24:41):
people that are in the hazmat program.
So it's funny, one of the thingsyou do for like a SWAT medic,
one of the ways that our PD and fire work together to hire their
SWAT medic, that one of the questions on the test used to be
in the interview process per PD.Like PD would ask, well, what
have you done to prepare, right?Which is the same question that
everybody knows in the fire service.

(25:02):
Anybody's trying to get hired should have that answer, right?
But one of the things that they're looking for is have you
talked to our guys? So they almost want you to name
drop like, hey, I went and had coffee with so and so I had a
couple beers with this guy. I went and talked to her about
this. I saw what they're looking for.
Did you seek, did you go on yourown time and seek the answers or

(25:24):
seek what this job is really like, 'cause even for someone
that like you're maybe in there like as a police officer and now
you're trying to go for SWAT, you may have a very small window
of that. And the same thing goes for
this. If you're a guy that's on ATRT
truck or your guy that's on another truck and you have an
idea of what Hazmat looks like, probably a very small window,
right. So you, I mean like I can tell

(25:45):
you unless, I mean, unless I looked at the numbers really
like I can tell you how many TRTcalls our guys ran idea.
So I would in retrospect, I would expect them not to really
probably have any idea of how many weeks really run and you're
interviewing them and and knowing like, Hey, what do you
guys think about Orsini? What do you think about him?
Dude, he reached out to so and so he came down and talked to
this guy. He went and had coffee with her.

(26:08):
He's he wants it, dude, he wantsit.
So I think that's kind of how wewe tend to approach it now is of
the group that once you pass thewritten who do we want it kind
of like your group kind of spokefor your interview, if you will.
And then the nice thing about that too, I really like that you
guys do that because at at that point it's, it's the same thing
that I know a lot of us do, especially for like the new

(26:29):
hires. And I, when I say new hires, I
should say guys that want to be on the job, it's like right off
the bat, you ask them like these, the why questions and
things like that. But it's, it's always that old
saying like, Hey, you have to want it more than we want you
kind of deal, you know, And thenI, I like that because you're
basically saying that, Hey, these guys would have gone out

(26:49):
of their way because this is howmuch they want it, right?
They, they talk to these guys, they want to learn about it.
They want to know more about thecrew dynamics or the calls or
the training or the, just the time commitment, right?
And it, it just goes back to, Hey, we've already selected a
good dude as a fireman to start with, right?
Because we, we like them. That's why we hired them.
And then he was successful through his probationary year

(27:10):
and everything else. But then on top of that, why we
really like this dude now, you know, he's above and beyond
because he's showing that, you know, not only is he interested,
but he really wants to learn it.He wants to be a better all
hazards fireman, which is a big key for me personally, in my
opinion. And I'll kind of get into that
in a second. But hey, Joey's a good dude and
be like, oh, yeah, I agree with you.
Joey's a good dude. But like, I don't know if Joey's

(27:31):
lazy, you know, I, I don't know all these other things about it
because he hasn't put the work in to go out and talk to guys.
And compared to, you know, little Johnny that comes around
and all of a sudden he grabbed every single officer off every
single tech truck and was just like, Hey, tell me about TRT or
like, what do I need to prepare?Like, you know, those are those
go getters that you know that after they get out of that tech
school, they're going to be, they're the ones that are going

(27:53):
to be tearing into the truck every single day, every single
minute, trying to learn all the pieces of equipment.
Because we know like you and I both in the technical rescue
world, you know, with all the modalities, it's so hard to be
proficient in everything. And some guys will say it's
impossible. And I, I disagree with that
statement. It's hard.

(28:13):
You can be proficient in everything.
You might not be a master, but you should be able to be able to
use every piece of equipment forthose scenarios in the proper
way. You know I.
Agree. And I think too, even if it
comes down to the fact like, let's say that same guy, let's
say Orsini comes in, Hey, he sought attention, thought this,
he stopped the answers. And in his mind he realizes
maybe this isn't for me. That still tells how good of a

(28:35):
duty is. Like, So what?
He doesn't want to come, That's OK, that's OK, But at least he's
at least he understands the process of trying to be a career
long learner, right? Like that's that's what you're
doing. That's all we're really doing
here is trying to get find guys that want to do things and want
to continue to learn and want toprogress.
No matter what it is. It's a fame cliche statement

(28:56):
that everybody's always used. You leave the department better
than you found it. If you and our chief that we
have currently, he told me this,we were actually on a wildland
fire on the border of New Mexicoand Arizona a long time ago.
And he actually told me, he saidif you ever get bored, it's your
fault. Dude, I love that.
So if you ever get bored, it's your fault, right?

(29:19):
It's your fault. So explain that.
I know what you mean by I love that.
I've stolen it and I've plagiarized the hell out of it
ever since. But it's there are so many
different avenues to take in thefire service, right?
Just like we don't have a very high, like the way I look at it,
we don't have a promotional tree, right?
It's very small shrub. We have a promotional shrub.
If you don't go very high in thefire department compared to

(29:41):
military or PD that have maybe 9:00 to 11:00 or 12 different
promotions, right, right. We have, you know, firemen to
engineer, engineer to captain, tapped into battalion.
And then you go up from there. Depending on which department
you work for, you might have two, maybe three more promotions

(30:02):
to make, right? So it's a handful roughly of of
promotions, but the things you can do are astronomical, right?
We talked about some of them already.
Hazmat TRT rescue swimmer. You can go work for prevention.
You can do become a wild environment.
You could go work for PD. You can go work like one of the
other things I do like the TLO thing, right?

(30:23):
So you can work with an FBI terrorism task force and you can
go do that stuff. You can go work on car seats.
There's a million things you cando.
And if you don't know or if you have something that you want to
do, then all you really have to do is raise your hand.
And our union president says this all the time, but who's a
great friend of mine, if you just raise your hand and ask,

(30:45):
we'll probably figure out a way to get to that program and maybe
even get that program funded, right.
So you just have to raise your hand.
You have to come up with an ideabecause someone else came up
with the idea beforehand and nowwe have a program for it.
So if you just come up with an idea and you raise your hand and
there you go. And there it's a charity event
or a union event or a special OPS event or just a regular fire

(31:08):
department function event or program like that.
All you have to do is raise yourhand.
And that's huge too. And this is what a lot of guys
in the American fire, excuse me,American fire service do not
understand. So you'll get the guy granted
and and no dissing on this, thisindividual, right?
But you'll get a guy that has a great idea, right?
It could be game changing for the fire service.

(31:30):
So then he is met with adversityright from the get go because he
comes up to whoever his initial boss or maybe the step above
that wherever it's going to die with this really good idea and
they say OK, how right or no, because we've never done it like
that before. No one else does it like that
around us. Insert any sort of excuse that

(31:55):
an upper management or supervisor is going to give you,
right? What Steve saying is that same
dude comes in, right? And correct me if I'm wrong,
Steve, but he comes in not only with the idea like hey, this is
going to be game changing I believe right?
And on top of that, this is how I can implement it by XYZ,
right? You're a lot more supported when

(32:15):
it comes down to that. And then it sounds like with
Steve's department with their union backing them so deeply.
That's nice words. I believe if you present the
information in that order, that's when they're going to,
they're going to fight for you to get funding to get really get
that program going. Am I kind of understanding what
you're saying? Yeah, yeah, for the most part.
And if you think about it like, like let's say, and it doesn't

(32:36):
even matter, right? Let's say I like hydraulic TRT
equipment. Again, I'm not a TRT guy, so I'm
just throwing this out there. I like hydraulic TRT equipment.
Well, I like battery ones. Can we try the battery ones?
You'd have 1/3, historically speaking, in the fire service go
absolutely fucking not. Well, why?
Because I didn't learn that way.And that's not how we do things.
So there, right? And then you have a third of

(32:59):
them go, no, it's funding and itdies.
It dies right there, whatever the extent.
Because it costs money, yeah. Because of whatever, right, No,
we don't like it or it's not part of the coalition or it's
not part of the funding or we'd have to go to FEMA or grant or
whatever, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And then you have the third go, let's try it.

(33:19):
And of that third that says let's try it, half are going to
go half ass it and half are going to go, come on, guys,
let's just give this a fair shot.
So I think, and this is like this has always been a big, like
a huge stickler for me is when people fight shit for no reason.
Yes. Like who am I to vote on a TRT

(33:41):
piece of equipment when I'm not fucking TRTI don't get a vote.
Yeah, you shouldn't. You shouldn't.
You have, no, you have no skin in the game at all.
Yeah. You, what do you guys want?
And like being like a labor Rep or anything like that?
The great thing about the way that works is they go, I don't
give a shit. What do you guys want?
We want battery stuff. OK.
Have you done your research? Partly.
OK, but why just partly? I don't know how to get a hold

(34:03):
of these people. I don't know where to get these
resources. All right, let's put our heads
together, figure this shit out, and then we send you on your
way. And then if you do the research
and you come back and go look, man, the boys and I want to try
this thing. It looks like it's a pretty cool
idea. I have no idea if it's going to
work, to tell you the truth, butDepartment A and Department B
and Department C have done it and they've got mixed results.

(34:24):
But Department DE and F, they loved it.
So what do you say? All right, sure, let's get a
couple. Let's try the shit out, or let's
see if we can go to our neighbors and see.
Hey guys, we're going to get this item.
You guys want to go play with itwith us and then we all use it
and go. That was fucking a waste of
time. We'll never get those, you know,
we'll never get that time back. Or I think they had some good

(34:44):
ideas there or they just love it.
Like that's the one thing that Ilove.
That's probably one of the biggest things that I love about
the way our Valley system works is how we all train together.
I've stolen shit from you, Steve.
I've stolen shit from other guysyou've had on this podcast.
I've stolen shit from everybody.That's how it should be like I
should steal your guys shit, bring it back to the station and

(35:05):
go, hey, look what Steve just did over on this call.
And they go, oh shit, why didn'twe ever think of that?
I don't know. I don't know.
We're we're an idiot. I don't know why I didn't think
of that, but let's go, let's tryit.
Or hey, Steve has always done this, but when he worked for his
last apartment, they wouldn't doit because of XY and Z.
OK, well, we don't have those issues over here, but keep your

(35:25):
head on the swivel because just in case.
All right, Well, that makes sense.
So then you can just run with it.
Like the fact that we have this ungodly 6th department several,
I mean, what, like 7000 of us maybe within within the valley,
right? There's a shit ton.
And you put everybody's heads together, you're going to come
up with some good ideas and noneof them are ever going to be

(35:45):
yours for the most part. And you just feel it and you
modify it and you learn how to bake your own cake with it, just
like you did as a medic. Because people go, oh, well,
that's so and so's idea. Who cares?
Was it a good idea? Yeah, that's all that fucking
mattered. Did you get to your home safe to
your family? Were you able to go back to the
station? Can you have a better chance of
enjoying enjoying retirement? We in the American Fire Service,
right, tend to eat our own. When it comes down to stuff like

(36:09):
that, we're like, well, we're not exactly what you said, like,
well, we've never done it like that, so we're not going to do
it. But like the mentality you're
talking about is the whole reason why copper state fools
exist and the whole reason why this podcast exist.
Because again, it's a thing where it doesn't matter what it
says on the side of your truck, what fucking color it is, list
whatever you want to list, right?
Whatever it says on the back of your T-shirt, what style helmet

(36:32):
we wear. None of that shit matters,
right? What matters is is we can all
learn from each other. But more importantly, right And
I like the, the, the good dudes right now and this is what we're
trying to trend the fire servicein this direction and keep them
pushing is that there should be no right SMEs, the subject
matter experts, obviously there are because you need guys to

(36:54):
teach and everything else. But what I mean by there should
be none is those guys with that information, their number one
priority. And I know you're one of those
guys and I am too is as soon as I learn something from somebody
else or something I read or whatever the case might be and I
was able to implement it. And I'm like, holy cow, this
works for us, right? Is to start sharing that

(37:14):
information as soon as possible.Because if I'm the only one that
has that info, right, which is what we used to do, those SMEs
would kind of hold on to that because they wanted to be the
guy, right? It's like it's merely
interesting because as much as and I know you feel the same way
as I do on this because we love the fire service, but I want to
be on every big call that's in the freaking state.

(37:36):
You know, I don't even care. It could be 3 hours away.
I feel like for some reason in my brain I should be on it,
right? And every good fireman should
feel like that because they should feel like, hey, I'm the
highest trained, most qualified,most aggressive, insert whatever
your freaking fireman pronouns are, right and say I want to be
there. And so if I can't be there,

(37:58):
right, I want to talk to those guys to find out what was the
call, what they do, you know, what didn't work, what did work,
right? Because the whole idea is to
learn from that and then bring it back to, you know, our guys.
And I say our guys like your guys, my guys, whatever the case
might be, right? And then teach them.
So I love that you said that too.
And, and you're absolutely right.
Our system is different than most in the United States, if

(38:20):
not all, when it comes down to how well we collaborate together
across multiple different departments.
You know, every, everybody has their thing, right.
And I think that's for us, that's that's ours in the valley
and in in our area is how we howwe operate as one collective.

(38:40):
We can take 26 cities and we canoperate as one collective fire
department. There are no boundaries.
The closest truck to you within 3 feet.
We all stage accordingly. We act accordingly, we train
accordingly, we work accordingly.
Again, like Bruna senior had an idea and it turned out to be a
phenomenal idea and he ran with it.
But again, even even that incident management system that
he had, he perfected that systemfrom what California had doing

(39:03):
in wild land. It's not that.
It's not that you can't take someone else's.
It's not. I think so many people think
about it like, well, that's so and so's ideal.
Well, it doesn't matter. Like how many of the guys
listening to the podcast right now, right?
Where's the majority of them areprobably career or volunteer
firemen. How many of them have taken a
recipe that they got from a guy when they were first on the job
and changed it a little bit and now it's their recipe.

(39:24):
It's the same shit. Like, what am I going to do?
Take like, I'm going to go, hey,these are Orsumi chimichangas.
No one gives a fuck. They taste good.
Oh, yeah, they taste good. Don't give a shit.
You take the credit for it. But then what do you do?
You go, well, I got it from a guy that, you know, I worked
four years ago, OK. And then everybody goes neat.
I don't give a shit. Get the fuck out of the way.
Right. So I think what it comes to is

(39:45):
those like something that you and I have talked to before,
like it's or it gets annoying iswhen we get the pushback like
that. I think it's just that's a,
that's a globalization of, of the Valley fire departments and
it's that onus falls on us. Again, it's a reluctance of
progression. Every department wants to be
progressive, but a lot of fire departments and it's nothing

(40:08):
against their upper management because a lot of times it's the
boots on the ground. Or it's the guys that are in the
middle management areas, which Ithink is like the most
important, biasedly speaking. Like I think the captain is the
most important guy on the truck or excuse me, guy in the
department. Like that's the most important
position because you're directlyinfluencing the guys below you
to build that culture to help make it better.

(40:29):
So you just got to experience what was before you and your
culture. And if it, if it was a thriving
one, that's probably why you're a captain.
It's probably why you're in charge of being in charge of
people and it wasn't a thriving 1.
Again, it's probably why you're a captain because you want to
change that. You want to make it better for
the next guy. So I think it's the reluctance

(40:50):
of progression. And if you look at it in the
hazmat world, like we look at itso much like, well, it's this is
not what we do in the valley. Who cares, right?
Is the East Coast coming to the West Coast or West Coast ideas
going back to the East Coast? Like what do they do that's
different, right? Why does FD and Y have a hazmat
program? What do they do with this?
Well, how is that going to parlay into what I do into a

(41:12):
suburban area of Phoenix or Phoenix, you know, Arizona to
totally different climates, right?
And people forget, like we're also talking to a gas Ranger guy
recently that works for the industry.
And he's like, where how do you calibrate your your machine?
And we were talking about it. I'm like, I can't get this to
work. I go, I'm talking to the dude on
the East Coast and he's talking to me and I can't get this idea

(41:34):
to work. And I'm like, why can't this
machine work? And I'm getting frustrated and
I'm getting pissed and I realized I'm like, hey, I'm just
a hard hat wearing guy. To school or to work.
You went to a shit ton of school.
Would elevation play a change inthis?
And he thought for a second, he goes, yes, why are you at
elevation? I go, I'm pretty high up and
he's like really in Phoenix. And I go, I know it's not

(41:55):
doesn't seem like that. But I mean, if you look at it
like the Diamondbacks have the second highest elevation in MLB.
There. You go the Cardinals have the
second highest elevation in the NFL.
These little, little things cometo play and we forget that we're
talking to people that might be in a different area or
environment. And now that they can teach us
something, they all they had to do was open up.

(42:16):
You had a guy that wore a hard hat to work and you have a guy
that has like a master's degree in chemistry and we're talking
on the phone and just we can pick up from each other.
And that was perfect. Again, like suburban versus the
big city, right? Well, that's not how we do it.
Suburban areas versus or rural areas versus the city.
Can you make that idea work in yours?
We should be excited about learning new techniques from
other areas. We should we should not be

(42:37):
afraid to ever admit to others. But like we have great ideas or
sweet techniques, but we should also be like we should be proud
of the ideas that we bring to the table.
Like what's to say that vent, enter, search can't work in a
Phoenix environment? Yeah, absolutely.
It absolutely can work. Explain to me why I can't, but
you can't explain to me. You can explain to me why it
might be difficult or you can explain to me why it might not

(42:58):
be the number one go to, but youcan't explain to me why it can't
work right. The same thing goes with other
techniques that we do. But why can't we fight brush
fires the same way on a type 1 engine that we do a type 6?
I can tell you that answer all day.
But what I can't tell you is howyou cannot be successful at it
because you can. You can still be successful on a
type 1 truck fighting these, youknow, urban interface,

(43:22):
environment, environment. Like there are ways to do it is
you should have to learn those ways from other people.
Like you have to constantly exchange techniques and
information. That's what I love about this
podcast is that you can listen to it.
You spend 45 minutes listening to a dude that probably checked
some college, right? And granted, like some of the

(43:42):
guys in this podcast have years and years and years of education
and all kinds of different letters in alphabet after their
name and it's phenomenal. But then you can have that dude
working with another guy that checked some college and we're
making the same thing and we're doing the same thing and we're
working together. Like, I don't understand where
you can find a better melting pot of guys and, and ideas than

(44:05):
what we have here. And then you put them all in the
same training and go, hey, east side, what do you do?
West side, what do you do? Well, what do you do in the big
city? What do you do here?
We can go back and forth like that's that's one of the things
that bugs me the most when we don't do that, But I'm so proud
of when we do do that. Yeah, and absolutely.
And it's just an opportunity thing.
But dude, like you're the way you view training working

(44:28):
together, right? Just just the modalities of the
fire services is I wish the majority of the guys would view
it that way. But I mean, and and that's the
goal. The goal is to hey, keep
reminding guys that we learn from each other, right?
It's cool to share information. It's cool to try new things.
And then more importantly, and you, you said it, which is great
and we've talked about this on previous episodes, so you'll

(44:49):
probably hear this every freaking couple weeks when we
drop an episode. But it's like, you know, you
don't know what you don't know. But more importantly, when it
comes down to it, it's like we can there is no we said it
multiple times already. We operate in the Gray.
We all know that right. There is no one tool tactics
tactic, excuse me or whatever itis to insert into this house

(45:12):
fire today that we did up on a whiteboard, right and guarantee
that's going to happen on the next job we run because we all
know every job is different, right.
When it comes down to hazmat world, the freaking structure
fire world house fires, you nameit.
What all the things that we respond to even on medicals, but
it's shame on us for not allowing or more importantly,

(45:34):
promoting and supporting the guys that do want to learn
something else. Because yeah, that tactic might
only work 10% of the time. But guess what?
When we need that 10%, I want toknow how to do it right, and I
want my crew to know how to do it and vice versa.
So it's all about just those slideshows or whatever, whatever
terminology you use to be able to pick from your brain, right,
and say, OK, I've never been on this call before, but I have a

(45:57):
general idea what I can do to mitigate this emergency.
Let's fucking go. Let's try to, let's try our
hardest. If not, we'll pivot, right?
And we're good at pivoting a. 100% And like if you look at the
hazmat world in general, that's how we've become like when we
got on, we had certain meters that did certain things for
certain chemicals, right? And now we have a meter that
does all these things for all these chemicals all the time,

(46:19):
but only in certain environments.
And then you, you start realizing that your meters kind
of dictate your technology. But really we always say, like
technology drives us, right? Like, and we want that.
We want the technology to drive us some of the time.
The other part of time is we need to be figuring out what the
fuck we want technology and thenget with the guys that can do
that, like figure that out, like, all right, why am I not

(46:43):
just like right now we're in, I mean, we can go on.
And I, I, I'm one of the guys, one of the few guys that teaches
this passionate about it. This is entirely different
episode like lithium ion batteries and EVs and solar and
the whole battery storage systems, right?
Like all those energy storage systems.
That is a technology that is so far in front of us that they

(47:06):
don't even know what they're doing.
And it's not what you mean aboutit.
It's not to say that it's not toget political and say, well, you
drive a Prius, you're an idiot. No, it's and it's not to say
like, well, you know, E VS the way of the world and you're
extinct. It's not to be any of that, not
to be political at all. It's say that who am I to I
better if I'm going to send my guys like we just had this
recently. We had a change in the valley

(47:27):
and it was I was super, super proud of it and super stoked
about it. We're taking guys and putting
them on these campaign fires. It was a car was a car fire,
right? And we had put the car fire out
and now it's changed and it goesin the battery thermal runaway
and now it's into a battery fire.
We have two separate fires in the same car.
You have the car fire. We all know what that looks like
Black City smoke, right? Everybody gets after that goes

(47:50):
out in seconds real quick. Then you have the battery fire
and it doesn't go out. And the analogy that I always
use is imagine you're trying, imagine that battery is a the
fire is a shoe and a shoe box inyour closet.
That's essentially what I'm trying to do.
I'm trying to put water on a shoe, single shoe and a shoe box
in a closet. It's incredibly difficult to do

(48:11):
right. So those take forever.
And now we just recently got to like after seeing people get
hurt and after seeing people getinjured or a waste of resources
or widow, whatever it took, unfortunately.
But now we had to. We put the right guys in the
right spots and those guys ran with it.
And now we can sit there and say, hey, the real way to deal
with this is to let it burn itself up.

(48:32):
Let it consume everything bad about it and let it do its
thing. Protect all the exposures,
protect the environment and people around it and let it do
its thing. But if we keep putting this
thing out, it's going to just keep running from us.
And as it does it and it keeps this process going, we're just,
we're just allowing ourselves tobe affected more and more by
these chemicals and heavy metals.

(48:53):
It was the lakeside CA had the same thing or Lakeview maybe
they had a Prius like haul ass doing 100 and Otter itself into
this garage. Well, after a little bit, it put
the fire out right initially really quick.
Then after a little bit it catches and they put it out
again. So then they do what we all do.
They dock their gear. They go get cleaned off, you

(49:14):
know, kind of deconned up dock their turnouts and as they dock
the turnouts, the thing catches again.
The poor bastards put all their shit back on and go after it
again, put this motherfucker out.
Then they do the same process, read D con read off and then the
flatbed gets there. This car gets up on the flatbed
and it catches on fire on the flatbed.
So thank God them and flatbed tow truck driver had a had a

(49:37):
great idea. Let's just drop the ass to the
flatbed. That way we can make access to
it. And then they finally put it
out. But it took hours from the
initial onset to when they got done hours to do this.
All that explosion. I think they even sent a few of
their, I know they sent a few oftheir guys to the hospital.
They were all fine. What it sounds like.

(49:57):
But again, you have these incidents everywhere.
I mean, we had plenty of them inour valley alone last year.
And you have to start it. We try to stay ahead of the
technology at times, and at times we try to let the
technology drive us. But if we can't be safe and
understand the principles behindit, and we're not humble enough

(50:18):
to understand that, we don't fucking know.
We don't know, like you talked about, and then we're never
going to get it right. We're just never going to.
Get it right, It's funny, like you're like and I agree with
you, EV is for a whole nother podcast, right, But it's funny
you mention it now and it was something I was going to get to
later with you because I really wanted to talk to you about it,
but since you segwayed for me, it's perfect right.

(50:40):
So those I understand exactly what you're saying with these EV
calls. So please tell the listeners
right, that don't know or maybe just aren't quite up to speed
yet, right. So when you say we're letting it
burn, we're letting it burn because that way it exhaust
every single cell in that vehicle, right?
And then it's now deemed safe because it's no longer able to
catch on fire. Because from what we've learned,

(51:02):
right, is the only way to stop thermal runaway, right, is to
cool it down or let it completely consume itself.
So we, you just said we're really bad about cooling it down
because of the location, right? So expand a little bit more on
that so people understand, you know what you mean?
And then why? Why it's so beneficial to let

(51:22):
these things burn if possible, right?
Because obviously we can't let them burn every single time
depending on exposures and things along those lines.
But yeah, explain to people why that's that's a preferred method
right now. So essentially the bare nuts
about it right? Without getting too much more in
depth or boring with the chemistry portion.
Yeah, we'll just keep the surface on it, right?
And that electrolyte solution wraps in and around the every

(51:46):
single cell of this battery, right?
Depending on how the battery's built, right?
There were like pretty much three different types of the way
that was built for the most part.
But there's an electrolyte solution that goes in and around
there. As soon as that solution
dissipates in some way, shape orform, either they didn't put
enough in or now there's been trauma insulted to the vehicle
or to the battery pack itself. And that solution is now leaked
out. Whatever the case may be,

(52:06):
there's now nothing protecting that battery and the battery can
just overheat. As it overheats, it will catch
fire. The lithium inside of it will
catch fire as it does that, it then propagates to every other
cell with them. So it just becomes just like
bottle rockets used to have as kids, right?
Or the snaps that used to have as kids.

(52:26):
Like if you if you took a roll of like a snap gun, like an old
cap gun, like that old blue carbon, you know, sulfur roll
and you would like the end of it, it would go bop, bop, bop as
the as the more it hit, the moreit would set off.
So same kind of principle here you have these one catches one
on fire and then now 2 catch 4 on fire and now 4 catch 8 on

(52:48):
fire, then 8 catch 32 on fire iskind of how the whole property
works because it just runs from it.
So the hotter it gets, it keeps going.
The problem with that is, is it's eliciting what we would
call a chemical cocktail. And the reason why we call it
that is because there are, there's not enough data out
there from all the entities thatwe've talked about.
There's not enough data out there to show exactly what are

(53:10):
in what are, what is in this little cocktail of chemicals
that we have when these things catch on fire, what's in the
smoke, what's in the battery, what's in this, what's in that?
Like there's just no way to tellor there's ways to tell.
There's just no way to get all that data.
There, Yeah, there's no, there'sno guarantee on that one because
you know, hydrogen chloride, hydrogen fluoride are the two

(53:32):
that are known as a byproduct obviously from those burning
lithium ion batteries. But again, like you just said,
what else that we haven't been told or taught about, right?
Right. So I mean, like, that's what we
have too, right? So you have this whole chemical
cocktail. Well, now that chemical cocktail
is just just being exposed to everything, which is why we get
called, we get called to put thefire out.

(53:53):
So we put the car fire out or the batteries fire.
But in order to put that out, you would have to completely put
it out. And that means months sometimes.
Like we had an incident in the Valley that I'm it's a it's a
very famous or infamous one, I should say, when we had some of
our guys get hurt in a really bad way, right?
That battery blew up. That was thermal runaway.

(54:14):
Battery blows up, does its thingagain, just being very
superficial surface level with all this, those same batteries
were taken back to the East Coast and months later
reignited. So there are is no typical way
to do this. Bury it in the ground.
All right, now you have the EPA up your ass, right?
A little sand. Who's going to store it?

(54:36):
Right? Let's put it, let's just dunk it
in water and let's leave it in this water base until it's
completely gone. Which fire department wants to
put that thing at their station?We're going to put that in
support. Who's going to fucking do that,
right? That's ridiculous.
None of that makes sense. It's because it's not
financially responsible for the city.
And then you want to take the city and you want to allow it to
be a city thing, right? And it's getting a little bit

(54:58):
deeper, but you want to put it in the city or county thing,
whatever you want to do, city, county, state, whoever you want
to run it like they have to havethe proper resources to do that.
And if if they don't, then what the hell is going to happen?
It's the same thing that happened in Chandler.
It's the same thing that happened for us in surprise.
Same thing that happened in other cities.
Like these things happen a lot. And it's not to get political.

(55:20):
It's just to be protective. We have to understand what's
going on. So if you if you are a first
responder now and you get there as the first in truck, non tech
truck shows up, he puts said carfire out.
He calls for hazmat response a balance this up.
Hazmat Bros show up, they get there and they go, all right,
let's meet her, let's monitor. So that way, at least the very

(55:40):
bare minimum, I can make sure that Orsini, if you show up
first, now that you're you can dock your gear in an area that's
not in an environment that's hazardous and you can take your
shit off and be, you know, cool with that.
Not only that, I can now set up for success so I can tell the BC
tell our battalion chiefs, tell your responding chiefs or your
incident commander to tell all those guys, hey, this is what

(56:02):
we're doing. This is why we're doing it.
This is the reasoning behind it.And then now more so we can get
that out to like our public information officers.
And I think that's the big pieceof the puzzle that we lacked for
so long as we kept it very fire related and very operations
related. And we didn't think logistics in
the beginning. So now we can get it to our PIO.

(56:23):
A public information officer canblast the shit out on social
media and go, hey, everybody, stay away from this area because
there's a car burning and as youguys know, batteries don't taste
good or whatever, right? Yeah.
But at least they're not educating the public.
And then it now it's not so bad for the chief in turn.
Because if we didn't do that like how we did it before, you
would drive by this. Some person would be like

(56:44):
wireless fireman standing arounddoing nothing or doing fuck all.
They would call their city people.
Now the council or the mayor or manager will get a hold of this
information. He would be pissed.
He's now calling your chief. Your chief's like what the fuck?
And then he calls your BC and now it's all coming back
downhill to you. So the more educated we can make

(57:07):
everybody on this without bidding, without driving a
political belief or allowing people to understand that
there's a difference between education and politics.
I think you just have to be aware of that.
Like or and that can get into anything.
I mean, can we talk gun law? Sure.
Are some of them good? Yeah, absolutely.
Some of them bad. Maybe they can be worked on.
Like there's a there's an educational portion of this that

(57:30):
you can fix. I think the more people know,
the more transparent they are. Then they realize it.
Like if the fire department comes out and says, hey, Priuses
are horrible to drive, they're awful cars to drive.
That's not true. But if you say hey, if in an
accident and your battery startsto go on thermal runaway, these
batteries are horrible to be around, you should get the fuck

(57:50):
out of there. A different way to drive that
conversation. Dude, you hit the nail on the
head and I'm so happy you said it because if not I was going to
make sure I mention it for the listeners, especially the guys
in say maybe smaller departmentsor more rural areas that aren't
seen as many EVs as we see out here.
But it's that PIO spot is so thoroughly important because a

(58:13):
problem is, is the public has noclue on how dangerous these
vehicles are once that battery is compromised, right?
Like I teach the same class thatyou're talking about too.
And like, and like I tell this is how I refer to it to firemen,
right? Especially non tax.
I'm like, Hey, imagine being in a vehicle, right?
There's an explosion that happens in front of you,

(58:35):
flammable liquids running underneath you and all the
byproducts of that exposure or explosion are coming out behind
you, right? Doesn't that sound terrifying?
And then I'm like, that's a fucking natural combustion.
That's, that's your normal car, right?
So that's, that's how engines work.
So you break it down that way, you're like, Oh my God, it
sounds like a nightmare, right? It's like, no, that's just

(58:56):
internal combustion engine. That's just how they work,
right? I just made it sound super
scary. The problem is there's such
little information. You, you said it before, the
technology has exceeded our capabilities currently.
So we're, we're playing catch upright now and across the nation,
everyone's trying to figure out,Hey, what's the answer?
And we're, we're realizing quickly there is no, there is no
answer yet. We're just trying our hardest to

(59:16):
mitigate it in the the safest, most fiscally responsible thing
ever. But like you said with that PIO
insert, your department doesn't matter where you work, right
There is a major third way like this is what Steve's saying.
Going to a vacation destination.The firemen are doing a good
thing. AEV catches on fire, they deny
entry. There is no exposures.

(59:37):
They're letting it burn, right? That PIO pitching, hey, these
are dangerous vehicles. The fire department is now
eliminate exposures. They're protecting the public,
right? They're landed burns.
So that way in two to three hours, the road can be reopened
and you can continue to travel or if they chose to put border
on it, right, This is now going to be an 8 to 10 hour call where

(59:58):
the roads close like it's all about, you're right, that
information especially for the public when it comes down to
these kind of incidents just because it's a it's a new thing
and we're going to come across this a lot in the future.
As technology continues to evolve and unfortunately we're
we're playing catch up at this point, we're we're way behind
the 8 ball and that's throughoutthe entire United States, as you
know. I mean 100% right.

(01:00:20):
And it's not to say that these companies are out to get us and
out to just make buck. We know that companies are out
to be successful. Sometimes that that comes in
truth and honesty and having people be loyal to your brand.
And sometimes that success just comes in overall money and it
can be both, right? We all understand these concepts
and these principles. So without getting into that
like right, there's a phone company recently within the last

(01:00:41):
decade had an issue with their batteries.
They were imploding on them. They were imploding on people
all over. Then they redid it because they
realized that electrolyte solution was too.
There wasn't enough solution between the two contact, they
redid it. Does that make them evil?
No, absolutely not. They learned from their mistake.
It was just a yeah, that's it. Like, do you think the very
first musket went well? Fuck no, it didn't go well,

(01:01:03):
right? Who wants to be the guy to try
the very first bulletproof vest?Not me.
I mean, if you think about it like just the iPhone that you're
holding, right, or most phones, most smartphones, and I only say
iPhones just because I have one,but most smartphones have
roughly 30 plus chemical elements, roughly the average

(01:01:23):
smartphone, right? So everything from aluminum and
lithium, like we talked about silver, copper all the way to
like scandium lanthanides idiom,right?
So there's a shit ton of stuff that's even at the bottom of the
periodic table. So these things have more
chemical elements in them just to make them bright, loud and

(01:01:43):
fun. And emoji field, like if they
want you to experience something, not just use your
phone, it's not cool anymore. It's an experience with the
tool. That's what they want.
So they're really not doing anything different than what a
fire like when you would take your very first fire and you put
water from a hose from a nozzle on a fire.

(01:02:05):
You have that experience forever.
And now some company comes in and says, hey, what happens if I
teach you about smooth force? What happens if I teach you
about fog suppression? What happens if I teach you
about semi frogs, but I used a fixed salonage?
Or what about adjustable get like they can come in and they
can modify that make an experience.
The tool becomes better in certain ways, but the experience

(01:02:25):
is different. The same thing.
So these phones, these iPads, these car batteries, these rides
are now becoming experiences. And that's what this whole last
generation, the next generationsare built off of.
That's the principle, right? They want things to be an
experience. Like, did I?
Did you ever used to give a shitabout my family's vacation?

(01:02:47):
No, you didn't. It just said, hey, Willis, how
was your vacation? It was awesome.
We went here. We backpacked here.
We camped here. That sounds amazing.
I'd take out pictures and show you, and you go.
That's fucking cool. Way to go, man.
Then it ends. But now you can get on social
media and you can update everybody every hour of every
second of every day. Yeah.
I pooped today. Yeah.
It felt good, you know? Yeah.

(01:03:07):
You should say it was an experience it.
Was a social experience. But now that's what you're doing
is just so everything has to be so immersive, but they have to
create an experience. And the only way to do that is
to throw more chemicals and components from the elements
from the periodic tables to throw more of them in there to
enjoy that experience. So the more shit we put into our
cars, the more shit we put into our phones and our iPads and our

(01:03:31):
homes, It's only going to get worse.
Like you said, we're not I highly, at least in your, my
career, we're never going to catch up.
I can't see that happening. I shouldn't say never, but I
cannot see that happening ever in our career where we catch up
to it. Can we, we'll catch up to what
we're currently trying to battle, but it it's because
technology is continuously evolving.

(01:03:51):
I, I wholeheartedly agree. We're, we're never going to stay
on top of it. We can just try.
I don't even know if we have a meteor like I don't even know
like right, you take a you take a multi ray or ray technologies
in general and they are phenomenal, amazing companies,
right. That's a they're bad asses.
I don't even know if they even have on the books yet a meter
that could possibly they can give out to the fire department

(01:04:14):
to help us with that, right? Like they could take all of
those. I don't even know if they have a
sensor on there or a meter of some kind that I could put
enough sensors in to pick up 70%of what that car gets off.
Like, I just don't know if thoseexist yet.
So I mean, we're, I just don't know if we're going to get
there, but at least we can try to do what we can to protect
those behind us, right, right. And then they can do the same

(01:04:37):
thing and same thing. And that's just really, that's
where we get, that's how we get to these everything from this
little podcast now to how we do our turnouts in D con.
All of those things change because people gave a shit and
they wanted the next generation behind them to be better.
So even if we can teach you likego to medic school, 70% of what
I learned during a medic rotation was what not to do.

(01:05:00):
And I picked different things out and I made my own little
recipe from what this medic did and that medic did.
And I liked what he did. And I'll never fucking do that.
I'll never treat them that way. I'll always treat someone that
way. Holy shit, what a cool move.
Did he just do that left-handed?Amazing, right?
You make a little birthday cake with all that recipe, it's the
same thing. But because they gave a shit,

(01:05:20):
you can now do that going forward.
So I mean, that's really where where it's at.
Like we may be wrong. We may find out in 10 years that
what you and I are teaching is just wrong, and that's OK.
Absolutely. And I've, I know the classes
I've taught, I, I always conclude in the same way I said,
listen, this is the best information I have to offer you
today. I cannot guarantee you tomorrow,

(01:05:43):
next year. And actually, I always say, I
can almost guarantee you within five years I'm going to be back
here teaching you something probably completely different
and then making fun of what I taught you before saying that,
man, we were way off, right? You know, so but and that I do
the same thing. I go, hey, there's a start.
Like, I've taught this class foryears now and I've never taught
it the same way because the information's changed.

(01:06:05):
I mean, shit, Chicago alone, right?
They're doing the whole battery thing with scooters just because
they have such a high demographic of those things.
New York City's the same same boat right now, too.
Right, like where what am I going to?
I don't we don't build shit up high here.
Like that's just not it's not air conditioned conducive,
right. So we're not going to do it.
So they build it out there and you start to realize like what

(01:06:28):
they're going through, we can easily go through that here,
just in a different way. So it's just one of those things
like, well, Chicago Fire did this.
I don't fuck Chicago Fire. No learn.
What did they do? Why did they do that?
Why is this such a problem for them?
Oh, OK. Well, fuck.
Well, we do have a little area like that over here or we have a
giant that is a giant problem over here.
Damn it. Right like that.

(01:06:50):
It's just it's annoying when people don't.
And I'm glad that people do. But at the same time, what they
learned two years ago from theirstudy is now vastly different
from what they learned six yearsago when that study started.
Yeah, 100%, absolutely. So again, we're not going to, I
don't want to deep dive into EVsbecause again, that's, that'll
be a different podcast. But on that same topic right now

(01:07:11):
before we transition off, right,just because we're talking about
the batteries and we're talking about hazmat, right?
Start telling guys in your opinion again the the dangers of
all this stored energy. And when I say stored energy,
I'm not talking about the big stored energy for like the
instance that your department had where you're talking a vault
that's a owned by APS, somethinglike that or a large electric

(01:07:34):
company. I'm talking about your DeWalt
tool batteries. I'm talking about like the the
guys that have their little vapebatteries, that kind of stuff.
What kind of considerations in your opinion, do we need to take
as a hazmat team right at just as an American fire service when
it comes down to say all that stuff's in the garage, right?

(01:07:56):
I'm, I'm pretty sure there's almost nobody out there now that
doesn't have at least one battery operated tool of some
sort in their garage, right. Do you, do you find any sort of
consideration when we have fire impingement on a space that
contains those things in the hazmat world?
What are, what are we doing? How are we concern ourselves
with that? Is that is that a concern in
your brain or how are we going to mitigate that?

(01:08:19):
I it, it, it, it used to be a minor concern and I think now
it's becoming way more prevalent.
It's something that needs to be addressed, right?
Like if you were going down a medic algorithm or hazmat
algorithm or whatever fire suppression algorithm, you're
kind of going down those things that those would be like in the
small boxes on the bottom right hand corner that say for your
consideration, that's where thatused to be.

(01:08:41):
Now that's something we have to check, right?
Like if you look at those batteries and for at least for
where we live in the fucking hotass desert where it's over 100°
for eight months out of the year, my birthday is the first
week of November. And the last few years alone
it's still been 100° for my birthday or right around there.
And I think the biggest thing ispeople forget like when you live

(01:09:03):
in a really hot place like this where it never drops below 100.
So even in the summer, like the days we understand are way above
100, the one fifteens, 1 eighteens, 1 twentys, right?
The fact that it just never getsbelow 100, right?
So all of your batteries are super heated even at 2:00 in the
morning or midnight or four in the morning, it's still 100 and
1° here 102° right. You get out of your truck,

(01:09:23):
you're on like your 4th call after midnight and you, you're
like, man, I just can't cool down because.
That's what they call that environmental impact that we now
are learning about when it comesdown to batteries.
Like we have a prime example andthen they say the guys back east
in very, very cold environments,or let's even say is extreme
like Alaska or something, like you're not seeing temperatures
above 50°, you know? Right.

(01:09:45):
Those batteries are built at altitude usually they're built
at altitude for or excuse me, not at altitude at atmosphere,
right. So usually throughout around sea
level and they're built for ambient temperatures.
And it's not a bad thing. They've been doing this for
years for for a long fucking decades and decades and decades
of building these batteries. They're very good at doing it,

(01:10:05):
but that doesn't mean that there's an inherent risk.
And the fact that they're what is it more beneficial
financially for me to build the battery this way?
So that way I can affect 75% of the population and 25% of it's
going to have an issue with it. Or do I worry about trying to
get that 85%? But maybe now it's a shittier
battery, right? That doesn't make sense to them.

(01:10:27):
So, and I'm not saying that's how they think.
I'm just thinking from a guy that checks some college, right?
That's my way of looking at it is going well, if they can do it
really well for 75. And that may just be the issue.
But when we come to those issuesand we're in part of that 25%
and these are these are, you know, species numbers, I'm
making this up for the example, but there's not many places like

(01:10:49):
Phoenix, AZ that stay as hot as it does for as long as it does,
right? There are not many places like
Alaska where it stays as light as it does or as dark as it does
for as long as it does or as cold right as the fucking N
Dakotas and Green Bays and all those places right.
Or it's consistently wet as somewhere on the coast right
where it's just they have humidity involved all the time.

(01:11:11):
My body does not do well in humidity.
I hate it. If it gets to like double digit
humidity, like I'm done. You put me in 120, I'll work all
damn day. You put me in like 40% humidity
and I'm done. So batteries are the same way.
If they've reconditioned the battery and this battery is just
working and it's used to doing it right.
They used to have like batterieswhere they would create like

(01:11:31):
their own memory, like in our rigged batteries, right?
Like you take it off, you put iton.
What would our tick batteries doing the same thing, right?
You take it off, you put it on, take it off, you use it on a
call, you put it back on insteadof letting that battery go
through its cycle. And then now it's getting
reconditioned more and now it's got to do this, this and this
and then the batteries go bad quicker.
Well, you have environmental impact, you have impact of use,

(01:11:54):
right? And how we're using it.
And now these batteries become alot more affected.
So unless you're like working inyour garage all weekend long and
you're throwing a DeWalt drill in or you know, a battery in or
you know, you got to throw this to your feet, Makita, you got to
throw that in this or that, whatever it is.
Or you're, you know, brand new and you have like a new

(01:12:14):
Craftsman drill and you want to use it all the time.
And then you forget how to take care of it because you've never
really known how to use this tool before.
And then the batteries just sit there and they bake and they
bake. The same thing happened, but
instead of now having a traumatic issue impact that
battery or open up the battery and having insult to it, now
it's more of a long term injury and now it's become really

(01:12:36):
weakened. So when you do get that garage
fire, you have all of these things piping off.
You have that same exact scenario, just in a different
form. The more wear and tear or the
more impact of the environment have on these things, it seems
to be coming way. They're starting to go out way,
way more. They're starting to have way
more issues with them scooters in the garage, right?

(01:12:59):
That's another one. Like people just even charge and
then they overcharge because it's so fucking hot.
Or the same thing with the like you talked about earlier, DeWalt
drill or Makita drill or you know, whatever.
They're all built the same way for the most part and have the
same pseudo ingredients similarly, right?
And when you have that, and now we're having those more of
issues, we're having our ladder guys go in or another engine

(01:13:21):
companies, the non tech crew go in and they don't know that this
has become more of an issue. Then we're now fucking up our
brothers and sisters by not getting them that information,
right. It's no different than that same
car fire example that we used before.
Hey, you go put car fire out andthen back up.
You need to let us know that this is AEV or you need to let
us know that you saw a solar wall.

(01:13:42):
Like we have panels on the roof.What happens if they have like a
Tesla wall or they have a battery storage system inside,
right? And then even more so.
And again, we can get into this way later, but one of the bigger
ones too that we're starting to see is that and because of
people and citizens are smart and they know about this and
they'll start to learn like, well, I don't want that same
environmental impact where it's beating down on on the heat,

(01:14:05):
beating down on this. Now they're putting them inside
of a closet in their house. Yeah, that's a great idea, huh?
Yeah, it's hence the sarcasm in my voice right now.
Yeah. Like, hey, that makes sense.
Well, if, if the environmental impact is really big, then maybe
I'd remove the environmental impact that I put inside the air
conditioning. Sure, but we didn't finish the
research and we didn't realize that well, now we're just

(01:14:26):
created a horrific chemical bombinside of our house.
Like that's. So again, part of what we do,
again, being a catch all for thecommunity is the fire service.
It's our job to go out and teachand educate.
The goal is not to run 15 to 20 calls a day.
I don't want to do that. If I can run 15 to 20 and then I
can educate someone and then they can come back and they can

(01:14:48):
help someone or whatever. Now we're only getting called
when we're needed to get called.And no one cares about that,
right? No one cares about doing it.
It's the same thing. You can't take a highly trained
soldier and then put him throughtraining and train him again and
again and again and again and again just to have him never get
deployed. Like you're not.

(01:15:10):
It's just, it's a morale killer.It's just going to beat it down,
right? So we love to be used in our
training. We love to perform.
That's what we love to do. That's why we took the job.
That's what we want to do. But if we're doing the same
thing and we're not helping the people that we're that we need
to help, they can't help us likewe can't.
We can't get. There's enough bad shit that
happens every day, like you saidearlier, but the way I look at

(01:15:31):
it, bad shit happens every day, unfortunately, but fortunately
in the fact that it happens every day, hopefully I can make
a difference, right? I can help out in some way,
shape or form. And I think that you share that
same sentiment that I do. So I think do we want it to
happen? No, but is it going to?
Yes. Can I?
And if it does, I'd like to be there to help.
That's that's the way we look atthose things.

(01:15:52):
So I think if part of what we do, though, is just educating
people so that way they're not doing something just because
they didn't know and now one of their family members gets hurt,
right? I think that's a whole nother
fall tricks. Exactly.
And so just to just to add on for the listeners too, from what
Steve's saying is if you're not a tech or you don't have a
hazmat team in the department you work for or whatever the

(01:16:15):
scenario is, understand that ourhouse fires are now turning into
hazmat calls because of this stored energy, because of what
people have in their garage. Everything along those lines.
But really what's important for the guys listen, especially the
Jim Pop fireman, right? That are just like, hey, bro,
back step for life, right? I don't have any specialties and

(01:16:35):
there is nothing wrong with that.
But with that said, just at least understand the information
that you put out the house on 123 Main Street, right?
There is a chance that if you donot remove stored energy from
that residence, right, you couldhave a secondary fire.
Hence, I did not say rekindle because you did a good job in
overhaul, right? Because over time, as Steve had

(01:16:58):
said before, it could be tomorrow, it could be a week
from now, it could be 3 months and house is still boarded up,
It could light back off because of the fact that we missed, and
I say we as an American fire service, right, we missed those
stored energies, right? That could cause secondary fires
to remove. So that's, you know, that's,
it's a huge take away for everybody, even if you're not a
hazmat guy, right, to understandthe potential risk that you're

(01:17:21):
additional risk, I should say, that you're now becoming
involved in and you might not even be aware of it till today.
Listen to this. Like I'd even think about
Milwaukee tool batteries are an issue.
And you know, typically the guysthat run into the most issues
with these batteries aren't always the Milwaukee's, the
Dewalt's, the insert any brand name into it.

(01:17:44):
It's what we all do, especially as public members.
But firemen specifically were cheap, right?
So if I go to Home Depot and I can buy a Milwaukee battery for
85 bucks, but then I looked on Amazon or whatever, Timu or
something like that, right? And they have the milk walkie
battery, right? Spelled a little bit
differently, but still red and black.

(01:18:05):
And that's 25 bucks, I'm going to buy the $25 battery, right?
But you don't know or those reconditioned batteries like
Steve said, right? Where they refurbished, was
there a manufacturing issue? How much do you trust that?
So just again, way off on tangent, but just be mindful.
But more importantly, especiallywhen it relates to our job,
right, understand that that is something that you will come

(01:18:27):
across probably on the next job you run and something that you
should be addressing if you're not.
Or at least bring it to the kitchen table and talk to the
boys and be like, hey, have we thought about this being an
issue for us in our region, in our department?
Right. And that's, and that's, that's
the bigger thing, right? It all comes back to everybody
innately has a selfish streak tothem.

(01:18:49):
And I think they do that becauseit's a mammalian response to
being protective, right? What how can I benefit myself
and in some way, shape or form? So that same thing goes back if
you bring, if you don't bring these things back to the table
and you don't tell any guys, you're not having a conversation
with your BC or with your ladderguys or whatever.
Like, but let's say ladder goes into overhaul this building.

(01:19:09):
They overhaul because they know how to overhaul building.
So they salvage what they need to salvage and they overhaul
what they need to overhaul. Well, did they even think to
look through the debris on the ground as they were pulling
ceiling like to get all the little batteries that had been
thrown out of these drill hat out of these bigger battery
packs? No, probably not because they
didn't know what they didn't know.
And so because they didn't do that, now like you said, now it

(01:19:31):
starts into a secondary fire because you have all these
little pieces that have just gone to the thermal runaway and
now they've created other fires and others.
And I know that Chicago is having a big issue and we talked
about like the back East guys, you know, that go vertical more
than horizontal like we do. It's the same thing.
Like they're having these issueseverywhere, like they're having
issues overhauling. The fire department's been
around since the 18 fucking hundreds in some of these

(01:19:53):
places, 1700s in these places, right, are now having issue
overhauling something that they've been doing for hundreds
of years. Yeah, right.
And now they're struggling and they're struggling because the
new shit we built. So it's the same thing that
happens here with us. We're just we're an ever of ever
changing, ever evolving community like we we are always.

(01:20:17):
That's what again, as much of itas the negative, it's also
positive. I imagine that you and I and
some of the listeners that you had on your show probably sat in
the same interview and said maybe somewhat similar or, you
know, close to this paraphrasing.
It's not a desk job. Yep, you got.
It you don't have the same day every day, right, That's why
we're in it. But again, plus pro the con

(01:20:40):
though, the negative would be you're right and act
accordingly. So if you're not having it, that
means that you better always be able to learn.
You better be willing to learn because you're not going to have
the same day every day. Yeah, we're not doing.
We're not doing TPS reports on Saturday.
I don't think so. Report again on the Saturday.
So you better fucking have an idea that your job as a

(01:21:02):
fireman's vastly different. And I guarantee you that
whoever's on your truck that thedude that has the 20 plus years
when he got on, I bet you the department looks way different.
Like I have guys in my truck that they're not my truck
currently, but that I've worked for.
And I go, I always ask him, I'm always so curious that I think
the, the greatest service we cando and the greatest training we
do is at the fire is at the table, right?

(01:21:23):
That's that to me, that's where it's at.
And even if I remember as a booter and I that I've gone
through and being an RTO and training these recruits, I, I've
told them several times, I'm like, don't disregard the
stories at the table because some of that will be the
greatest training you will ever have in your life.
And I. Say that one more time for
listeners. That was so good.

(01:21:44):
I always preach because it was preached to me.
So just getting done being an RTO, I always tell the recruits
don't disregard the stories at the table.
Some of that will be the best training of your life and we all
have them on our department. Guys that sit there and just
tell stories. I'm one of them, the world
world's shortest fable teller, right?
Whatever I learned from some of the guys that were generations

(01:22:06):
ahead of me or that when I was abooter and they had 20 plus
years on, like they, I was working with guys that had
single digit badge numbers that built this fire department from
the very ground up. And I learned from them and what
they did. And I would listen to stories
and some of it never involved a single fucking fire anything.
It was just life. And I learned how to work for

(01:22:29):
team or I learned how to work what it meant to sacrifice.
Or you know what? Maybe when we go do that, fill
the boot on Saturday, it's not that big of an inconvenience
because I just learned that he gave up fucking years of
paycheck and back pay and vacation so that way I could get
a job. They took a hiring freeze for
they hired, but only because everybody else gave time away

(01:22:53):
because they wanted to get more guys hired, right?
You start hearing these stories and the tribulations and trials
that they went through, whether has anything to do with fire or
any discipline thereof. And you start taking those
things and you start bringing those back and realize that hey,
someone, someone may have gave, you know, someone gave a lot for
you to get here. And it may not be specifically

(01:23:14):
to you that they sacrifice the shit done.
So you're in the spot that you're at.
So be appreciative and then learn.
And then again, like it's that again at the table that one of
the things I love about my station, we have always done
shift change at the table. And again, very biasedly
speaking, I'm sure there's plenty of other stations that do
the same thing. Other crews do the same thing.

(01:23:35):
But the thing I've loved about my station for for over 1012,
whatever, however long it's, we've been there, but it's
always done at the kitchen table.
You have a coffee with you, you drink with you, You're sitting
there and you're like, hey, man,we tried this load the other
day. It was a bucket of fuck, don't
do that. You know, the front bumper line
isn't long enough or that basin that they put in, it's not deep

(01:23:57):
enough. Well, we can fucking do the
scorpion load. Can't do this load.
Hey, we worked with Glendale andwe saw Glendale.
They used a smooth bore, but they used it on our line, which
is a high pressure line and it worked like shit.
Their line great though, like, you know, it's those things,
those little tidbits. You're like, OK, OK, so that
worked great. That didn't work.
Fuck. Well, why?
Why not? I just kept thinking, all right,

(01:24:18):
well maybe we need to learn how to do a little hose line
management a little bit different, right?
Or maybe maybe is it our nozzle that's fucked up, right?
Is there a hose that's fucked up?
Because how is my chief supposedto help me if I don't give him a
solution? Like if I come to him and say,
hey, this is the third fire now can we try low pressure hose
with this nozzle? Yeah, yeah, you can.

(01:24:38):
OK, cool. There you go.
You know, you can support him insupporting you.
So I think, I think if you if you do that, like that's that's
where you learn, That's the things you learn.
You know, So I always tell people like the stories that you
hear at the station, whether thefire department or just funny
stories or well, back in my day,I don't disregard those.
That's that's the training. That's the training right there.

(01:24:59):
It's life training how we teach people.
Yeah, it's also part of the it's, it's part of the culture.
And again, we talk about culturea lot.
Is it in probably every episode?Culture comes up at one point,
right. And it's funny, the kitchen
table comes up every single episode at some point in the
podcast, if it's an answer to one of the firemen questions or

(01:25:20):
if it just comes across a natural conversation like it
just did with us. But it's, it's those traditions
too. And those traditions are there
for a reason. It's not because it's a sorority
or a fraternity house or whatever.
They're there because they're valuable, right?
And that's one of those traditions like that kitchen
table that pass on, right? The they, hey, like the lessons

(01:25:41):
learned of the day before. And like you said, every, every
time you come in, I'm, I'm, I'm almost upset when I get a pass
on. That's like, it was, it was
pretty uneventful, right? So it's like, all right, well,
I'm already starting today, you know, on, on the downside,
because I didn't learn anything from the previous crew, you
know, so, all right, what we gotto get into so we can learn
today or get better on or, or something like that.

(01:26:03):
So dude, I, I love that you guysdo that.
That is, you know, I, I, I don'tbelieve that's a very common
thing when it comes down to shift change and, and I, I, I
think it's amazing, it's super beneficial and I hope, you know,
some guys start doing that. So it's, it's great because it,
it locks everybody in and you can really figure out what
happened the day before and, or the, or for you guys, you, you

(01:26:25):
said you work 48. So like, hey, the, the last two,
the last two days, right. So what was the tour like for
you guys? And, and again, like I said,
lessons learned or good calls orshitty calls or whatever the
case might be. So before we're already deep
dived into hazmat. I know we can talk forever, but
I want to make sure we at least touch on on this before we kind

(01:26:47):
of wrap up the hazmat. I'll give you a chance to
interject anything else that youreally want to talk about.
But so for you personally, right, what is your hazmat
training culture? And when I, when I say that, I
mean I'm, I'm asking a couple different fold.
So I'm asking about you and the team that you're assigned to.
Like how did the guys, what's your training regiment look

(01:27:08):
like? What's the attitude within the
team when it comes down to training?
And then I also am curious on the non techs that you work with
in your department, do you get any pushback from those guys
because you're training or if you're out of service?
If if that's the case, you just kind of breakdown how you guys
train, how you prepare yourself,and then any negatives that you

(01:27:30):
receive from either management or other other dudes on the job.
That's a great question over allof them, right.
Like you said, there's, there's multiple layers and fold to
that. So the overall training is the
same for the valley, right? This valley wide consortium we
have it's amazing thing, amazingasset because every department
that's in this valley wide response, right?

(01:27:52):
So we have 26 different hazmat trucks essentially.
I think it's 26 now, 2628. We essentially, if I, if I want
26 buyer, if I want 26 hazmat teams, all I have to do is push
a button and I get however many I fucking want.
That's the beauty. But they all have to be trained
a certain way. So the fact that we all meet on
Monday, every single Monday, like depending on your shift
that you just go every Monday, it has that Monday.

(01:28:15):
We just know that Tuesday's TRT Tuesday, right?
You just know these things. These things are commonalities
in the fire service which I findto be great so.
And that's something across the region for your area, correct?
So 26 different fire departments.
Every single Monday, they're allgetting together.
Basically every single Monday weget together and whether it's

(01:28:36):
and the, the great thing about it, we're constantly together.
So I know how to run a call 5 cities away from me.
I know how to run a call a city away from me.
I know how to run that call withthe city away from me.
Well, I know what that truck has.
That's that I'm, I'm waiting on is 20 minutes away, right.
So we're all right there. So we know the equipment that

(01:28:56):
everybody has, we know the training and we know more
importantly, the standard, right?
Like, I don't really care how you go about training.
I care that you win the game, right?
So they would, that's how coaches are made in sports in
the NFL. Like no one cares how you go
about doing it. They care that you win.
And so I think that's the same thing here.
Like I don't care how you go about training, but I care that

(01:29:17):
you win the game. Winning the game for us, being
successful on that call, going home to our families, we all
know that it hazardously even more so we'll say the simple
fact that they just tend to be longer, right?
So the ultimate success is like,hey boys, let's wrap this up.
With all that being said, I think culture and attitude has
everything to do with it, right?I always tell everybody attitude
and effort are going to control our life.

(01:29:39):
That's one of my favorite savings too.
Love it. Right.
So you can't, you don't have anyother thing to do.
And us being a fire service, being very reactor, you know,
we're a, we're reactory based department or service in
general, right? We don't know where we're going
to get. We just have to react to it and
go. So everything for us is a
fucking audible, right? Everything for us is just

(01:30:01):
reaction. We're constantly playing batter.
The pitcher knows the pitch thathe's throwing.
We're reacting to it. Same thing goes for for us.
And that's, that's how it is. So for us to be trained on, I
have to understand what's that pitcher's go to move like?
Does he have a curveball? Is it a three seat, you know,
split finger to the four seat? What's he like to do in this
situation when he gets into a jam and there's bases loaded or

(01:30:23):
I got a couple guys in scoring position?
Does he only go back to two pitches?
Right. So we're very much trained the
same way. And the fact that, hey, if if
I'm going in this kind of scenario, what are my go to
meters? What do I need to do for that?
And I think the fact that we canall train together.
We all have an idea or I go, hey, I'm not good against this
guy. I need another piece of

(01:30:43):
equipment special call so and sofor them to bring out their
drone or their they're robots. They're this they're that right.
They're a piece of equipment that maybe I don't have so we
can share those things. So as far as like resources go,
I think it's impeccable. I think very again, very
biasedly speaking, I think it should be the blueprint for

(01:31:05):
everybody things together. Obviously that's facetious
because it's just logistically, sometimes financially, sometimes
operationally, sometimes that just cannot happen.
But I love it. I love that, and I will always
embrace that. What?
About push, you ever get any pushback from your department?
So you just said that you just told the listeners, right, every

(01:31:26):
single Monday. Obviously it's scheduled every
Monday, but depending on when your shift is, right, if your
shift falls on Monday, you're going to go out of service, your
training with all these other departments, right, on whatever
the hazmat topic is of that period.
You get any pushback from say your non tech trucks because you
guys are not available to run those medicals or fires or
whatever the case might be? 100% and it's always going to

(01:31:49):
happen and I love it because it means that they care.
As you know, in the fire service, we are very good at
making fun of each other and giving shit to each other.
And if you're not getting made fun of, you're probably not well
like right. So we know that we know that to
be true. So when my companies go, I
always tell them like I let everybody know and grant it

(01:32:10):
built in the system. So they already know, but I just
let them know, Hey, I'm going togo back into service quicker or
I'm going to this, this topic today is going to be a little
bit longer. I'll pick you up on the flip
side. So if I have a truck that's
coming into my first do, maybe Igo run.
Maybe I take one of their calls or they get I, I hear them get
kicked out and I'll, I'll take their lift assist, I'll take

(01:32:30):
their DB or their diabetic emergency, whatever it is right
and go, Hey, thanks for earlier.Thanks for letting us stay and
play, you know, because we needed to drive home a point or
we needed just a little bit moretime.
So yes, we're always going to get kit every time, 100% of the
time we're going to take kit andpush back.
But it's loving push back. It's not malicious.
It's not because they understand, like they understand

(01:32:53):
too, that if if we they get thatcar wreck and it turns out to be
an EV or they walk into the Circle K and they're not feeling
very good or they went on a gas leak that they just whole hummed
and they're like, get that typical on scene meters not
spinning and it smells like gas.On scene of a yeah, on scene of
a gas right? Or on scene of a single story

(01:33:15):
house right with nothing showing.
No shit you're going to a gas leak bro.
Right. Or they go, hey, I don't have, I
don't smell gas. Well, no shit you don't smell
gas because you should fucking be on air right now, right?
Yes. But then they say that and
you're like, well, OK, And then you're calling me so I can come
there to make sure that you're not being a dumbass.
Like what happens when I get there and go, hey, man, there's

(01:33:36):
giant gas leak or hey, there's this leak or there's this leak.
Why the fuck were you not on air?
That's a teachable moment, right?
So they understand, they understand like the necessity
for these teams. But yes, every single Monday,
every single time we go to service, every single time, 100%
of the time we will get pushed back.
But again, it's loving. So I think I think that's good.
Plus they know that the fact that the regional thing that

(01:33:57):
this is just the way it's built,so.
Yeah, just the way it is. So I love it and and I was
really curious on how you look at it.
I love how you look at it because some guys will do the
opposite. They're like, you know, they'll
argue with those. Those guys are, you know,
basically giving them shit, saying that, you know, like, oh,
so you had to run all your callswhile you guys are, you know,

(01:34:18):
training to suck more or whatever the case might be, you
know, insert fireman that doesn't care about his job,
right. But you know what?
Those guys always answer and tell them.
And I'm curious on your outlook on this.
You know, I signed up to be an all hazards fireman.
So for me personally, again, my personal opinion, it pisses me

(01:34:39):
off if I show up to a call and Icannot mitigate the emergency
because I don't have that certificate.
You know, that's me. So that's what drove me to be as
versatile as possible. But I always like to tell them
too. And This is why I'm really
curious on, on how you handle these situations or these these
conversations have happened. What guys forget to understand

(01:35:00):
is hazmat, TRT, water rescue, swift water, you name it, all
the modalities outside the regular fire service that are
encompassed 9 times out of 10, they're for the general
population firemen, right? We're actually there, you know,
primarily to keep the firemen safe first, right, because
they're there. Evacuate the building, make sure

(01:35:21):
you don't deny entry, make sure the public's safe.
Right now we're backing up and we're coming in for them, you
know, and that's what. So I'm curious on how you feel
about that. And then more importantly, have
you have you had to have those conversations?
What do you say like kind of along those lines?
Does that make sense, Steve? In multiple different prisons,

(01:35:41):
if you will. So yes, we're there for the
firemen for the most part, right?
We're there to ultimately mitigate the issue or remedy the
hazard, whatever, right? That's what we're there for the,
the first responders, the non tech guys, those guys are going
to get there and set the scene up to make sure it's safe for
us. So you look at it and then on
top of it, my job has not only to mitigate or remedy the issue,

(01:36:04):
but my job is that to set us up collectively as a whole.
So when I go to that Battalion Chief and he's running, you
know, hazard sector, he's running whatever sector, we'll
say, well, like he's just running command and go to him.
And you go, hey, man, like I'm there to give him this perfect
little president with a badass little bow.
It's all fluffy and Brilly on top and go, hey, here's all your

(01:36:26):
worries and concerns wrapped up nightly in this box.
You're good to go. Here you go.
Make haste, right? So you got to make him feel good
too. So part of it is not only being,
is I guess that mitigating or remedying the issue, part of it
also educating that chief. So that way, next time we run

(01:36:47):
into this, he at least understands one of two things,
understands the problem better, or understands the solution
better. So.
The solution half the time is me, right the solution and not
to be. That's not to be braggadocious.
The solution is me being the hazmat team or the TRT team or
the rescue swimmer team. So if our chief is a non tech or

(01:37:08):
Battalion Chief or responding chief is a non tech or this
city's responding chief or that city's responding chief, right?
You guys used to have, you know,plus deputy and you guys would
be an all hazard guy. So you would have the CRT and
the hazmat dude on the same truck together responding as the
chief level officer. And that was kick ass, right?
Some of our chiefs in my city are tech level or are techs.

(01:37:32):
Former techs worked on trucks, tech trucks forever and now they
see. So they have that same
understanding. But the ones that don't, that's
where you have to come in and you have to go, hey, here's our
problem. And This is why this is the
problem. This is why I can't let you do
what you're doing right now. Or This is why I need these guys
to do XY and Z or understanding the solution.
Hey, here's my role and I need you to help me facilitate and

(01:37:54):
support me and my role to get this done because I'm going to
have to call APS or I'm going tohave to call Southwest Gas or
I'm going to have to call so andso we're setting up the scene
for this. We're going to have to evacuate
people here and do this here or something as simple as going,
hey, this fucking vending machine goes off all the our
vending machines and the thoughtmachine goes off all the time.
This is like the ninth time in the last two weeks.

(01:38:15):
So can you help me get like an inspector out here?
Can we figure this out? This is getting really annoying
and driving 13 miles all the waynorth to go up there and fucking
take care of this shit. Yeah, for a, for a non emerging
call or whatever. Yeah, right.
And I mean, everyone understandsthat, right?
Yeah, how many times is the CO2 link going to go off in the same
building? Yeah, get your fixed right.
We've we've told you about the plumbing here for for years now.

(01:38:37):
So but so that's what I mean like part of it is from a chief
levels giving them either the understanding, the better
understanding of the problem andthat's why I'm here or the
solution. And this is what we need to do.
Like where is your role comparedto mine And how do we how do we
intersect? How do we meet accordingly?
And I think that's, those are the two big things.
I think if you can, you can paint those pictures, right?

(01:38:59):
Like in an on scene report, People, I think when are they're
trying to be new captains or or lieutenants, whatever it may be,
whomever it may be, and the listeners, you know, self
respect the fire departments. But if it's a company officer
role and that guy's first learning how to be a company
officer, you can always find that they, they tend to do an on
scene report almost for them, right, Right.

(01:39:20):
And then you got to teach them, hey, this is not for you.
You can see what the Hell's going on.
This is for everybody coming in behind you.
Paint that picture, line that upfor everybody coming in behind
you. So is this an open garage car
fire or is this a closed door garage fire, right.
That's going to change my tactics a little bit.
Change where I set up with your if I'm going to beat you or
you're going to beat me, right is this hey, we're in a

(01:39:43):
culdesac. Hey, we're in right.
So that's that's kind of that upper level of learning that
progression of learning. I think it's the same thing goes
just on a typical hazmat call, whether it's the fall under the
hazmat world Gastly or hey, thisis this is shit and get this is
big time. This is there's going to be a
lot of moving parts here, right?No.
So absolutely someone. Wants to be.

(01:40:05):
There's very few things they want to do.
That's less than running commandon a call in which we would like
our typical end of the year drill.
Well, we would have to run a full meal deal decon and
everything, right? All of the, you know, 7 sectors
get all those going. They don't want to do that.
No one wants to do that. So if we can teach them the

(01:40:26):
solution or the problem a littlebit better, then they'll have a
better understanding at least. They're still not going to want
to do it, but they'll at least understand a little bit better.
Why? My love is so basically what
Steve's saying is like, even again, as as a tech, it's
another opportunity to educate, right?
And now he's talking about educating, you know, his boss,
right, or another city's boss that's coming in, that's running

(01:40:48):
command for, for that incident, right?
So it's thoroughly important because again, like Steve had
pointed out, right, you might educate that individual the
first time on whatever the scenario is that the hazmat team
is responding to. And then you happen to run with
them again. And and even if it's a different
call, but the report that you build with them from that first

(01:41:09):
call, right? It's all of a sudden it's, you
know, instead of saying Hey, Skip or Hey, Cap or whatever,
then all of a sudden he remembers your name.
Oh, Steve, what's up, man? All right, what do you think,
bro? You know, like you start
building those relationships andof course, outside of
communication, like relationshipis, I believe, the most
important thing in the fire service because if we're not
talking to each other and understanding each other, right,
and if we're not building those relationships so we trust each

(01:41:30):
other, everything else goes out the window.
I could be the most highly trained individual in the hazmat
world, but if no one trusts me, they're not going to listen to
me. I'm not going to be able to
actually keep my plan. The public suffers, the call
suffers. I mean, everything goes to shit
my. Perfectly well said.
All right, well, listen, we havebeen yapping about hazmat
forever. We'll have to get you back on to
even yap about more right. So we're we're teetering on

(01:41:52):
almost the we're over an hour and a half right now.
So I want to get to the questions for Season 1, but
before I do, is there anything that we haven't talked about
that you're like, I really, I really want to talk about a
certain subject or a modality when it comes down to hazmat?
There's there's, there are a few, but like EB we talked about
a little bit would be one because that one's kind of near

(01:42:13):
and dear lately. But there's just there's,
there's a few. But again, I think those those
are probably for separate, separate conversations, separate
times, because you can almost make those like it's, it's we
could do an entire podcast on just that specific thing.
Oh, yeah, And absolutely. And we'll revisit for everyone.
Listen, there's there's a schedule out there.

(01:42:35):
EVs will be a topic, Stored energy will be a topic.
This is all part of the second season, right?
So if if you take anything away from today's podcast with Steve,
right, I hope you listen to it, right?
He's a super passionate guy. He knows what he's talking
about. So if you take one thing away
from him today, then super successful or even if it's

(01:42:57):
something that interests you andyou can bring it back to the
kitchen table, please do. And you can always feel free to
reach out to us as a podcast. I can get you in contact with
Steve if you have more questionswhen it comes down to something
he says so. But with that said, we'll kind
of wrap up our hazmat conversation for today.
We'll put it on pause. We'll definitely do a a re spin
with you on a later episode. But question number one, you

(01:43:20):
ready my brother? I'm ready.
All right, so the why, right? So we asked this question for
everything. We ask the brand new guys that
want to be firemen, right? Hey, why do you want to get on
the job? We ask guys when they want to
promote. Why do you want to promote?
You know, we got, we even ask guys when they're trying to get
to a different position or a specialty, like you were saying,
like the why. So this is the same thing.
But why did Steve Willis join the American Fire Service?

(01:43:43):
What was the pivotal moment whenyou said, you know what, this is
what I want to do with my life? Mine was not pivotal moment,
mine was a pivotal progression. OK, I love it, Huckabee.
Family was it's all PD and military.
I think they're perfect. I think now that there are a
total of 18 people in my family that are cops, right?

(01:44:04):
The other you went the wrong side.
Military, right? Yeah.
So a bit different. I was 17.
I got hired with the fire department to go out to wildland
that I, that's kind of like, to be honest with you, kind of a
bet. These two other people I worked
with at the time, we were working at a water park in the
valley and they bet that they thought that it would be.

(01:44:25):
I said it would be harder than they thought and they made a
bet. Eventually I went to try out
with them and I'm making it. So did they, but I won the bet.
I became a wildland fireman. I did Four Seasons there and
then as I was doing that in highschool, we had this like Med
start program that a buddy of mine and I went through and the
other guys that we played football with in high school,

(01:44:49):
they had gotten hired and they were all fired.
They were like gung ho about fire and they're jazzer fire and
I didn't really know a whole lotabout like the structure side of
fire. So I started hanging out with
them more, starting to get, you know, go to the stations.
Once they got hired, which was super quick, they all got super
fast hired, get to the station, start hanging out, did a couple
ride alongs and then I realized that this is something I want to

(01:45:11):
do. Fortunately enough, I was super
fortunate. I got hired on my first one by a
few different fire departments and I came down and dropped out
of U of A left there and got hired and that was that was
that. You went from a bet to a career
in the fire service. That's that's insane.

(01:45:32):
Yeah, essentially that's how it started.
Yeah. I think the wild land thing is
really what set it for me. It was the IT was the, the
difference in understanding my like my family being police
officers, like their squads, butthey weren't with their guys all
the time, right. Whereas the wildland group that
I was with, like that team, I was with them for months at a

(01:45:53):
time in the same buggy, in the same this in the same dirt
shovel in the same dirt, same campsite with that big group for
a long time. And I loved it.
I've grown up things for my whole life.
I love that team atmosphere. I thrive in it.
I love that. Then I'm like, I just didn't
know that was something I wantedto do for 20 years, you know,
so. So was it the so the the aspect

(01:46:16):
and it's so the aspect of the team, is that what solidified it
for Because some guys will say like, bro, why didn't you just
stay wildland, right? So why go interior structure
firefighting? The, the, that's what Flame did,
that team atmosphere like knowing that as a kid growing
up, playing sports my entire life, right?
Doing all that stuff that I did with them and then seeing

(01:46:37):
getting hired as a wild night guy and then having that team
atmosphere in a setting such as that, like a thriving setting, a
setting that was very dynamic, always changing right and was
fun. Ultimately it was fun.
And then I understand that I canuse that as a career.
I'm like, well, shit, that wouldbe a black and then meet these

(01:46:59):
guys like that and then doing like the a few ride alongs I did
and understanding like now instead of being with 12 to 15
to 20 dudes, now I'm with like these four guys or these ten
guys like total like this is this is fucking kick ass.
So I loved it and I love the fact that you could like we
talked about earlier, that promotional Bush, right, instead

(01:47:21):
of the tree, like you could venture out and do so many
different things. I love the fact that you could
do so many different disciplines.
I that was that was that was thebig that was a big sell.
So that was, that was why I did,that was why I went that way.
It was just, it was, it was thatit was like, all right, well, I
can do really whatever I want with whatever I want.

(01:47:42):
And it's easy. That's, that's pretty much what
I'm doing now. I'm yeah, I'm going to do this
for life. Nice.
I love it. So.
All right, so great answer, dude.
So you're on the fire service, right?
You've been, you have 21 years total in the American fire
service, correct, If I remember correctly.
Yeah. All right.
So out of those 2021 years all the way up to today, excuse me,

(01:48:06):
does not have to be a fire department person, but who has
been the most influential personin your fire service career as
of today? Well, if it doesn't have to be
non fire, it would be, I would say my mom, dad, wife and kids,
right. And I know that's kind of

(01:48:26):
cliche, but. So family, we'll just put family
group it together. Yeah, they get you through the
hard times. They get you sometimes.
They're the only reason why you're still studying for that
promotional test. They're the only reason why
you're like, yes, I'll go back down or yes, I'm going to go
work overtime at at 93 or, you know, they're that that's it.
And really sometimes it just comes down to just them.
But I think if you just take, none of us would be there

(01:48:49):
without them. Like I wouldn't be there without
them. I wouldn't have success I've had
or the career I've had without my wife and kids or without like
the initial push before I met mywife from, you know, that public
safety upbringing and demeanor and attitude and those lessons I
learned from my parents to get me to that first part, right?
So I think it goes hand in hand.But I think if you, if you, I

(01:49:12):
was, you asked me that before and I was thinking about it
career wise and I have a handfuland they're all for different
reasons, right? So just to break it down, really
it was like like Zentech and Wiseman, Those were the dudes
that taught me hazmat, that taught me how to want to teach
Hazmat, that taught me how to want to learn.
And that you're always the person being educated and you're

(01:49:33):
never truly the educator. Like those were those two guys.
They they instilled that you're never going to know and your job
is to always teach and teach to the level that you're
comfortable with leaving them the information to like a life
off, a life altering decision. And I was like, holy shit, holy
shit, Darryl, that's heavy. And they're like, no, seriously,

(01:49:53):
that's what you're doing when they leave this class with it's
200 class or whether it's ACE ora Monday hazmat, they're leaving
with knowledge that you're giving to them to get them back
to their families. So you better be fucking
comfortable with doing it and you better be good at doing it.
And I was like, OK, so there's those two.
And then like in my own department, my initial captain,

(01:50:15):
Dino Piazza, he, I've been on his truck the majority of my
career before I promoted. He, he was, he was, he was it.
He was what a fireman should be.In my mind.
He was what a company officer should be.
He taught me everything I didn'twant to know and everything that
I absolutely needed to know and everything green.
That was him. Another one, he was also my RTO,

(01:50:37):
one of my RT OS. The other guy that was an RTO
was this guy Danny Camilla. He taught me the other side of
the fire service. So I was with him a lot during
my career, you know, as a young guy, but, but he taught me like
the charity work. He taught me the outside, the
outside, the line right outside the station, how to hold

(01:50:58):
yourself. I wouldn't be comfortable doing,
how to be a charity, how to be involved, how to make this
department yours. Like he was my inspiration for
that. So I took, he used to run a toy
drive that the department had and I took that over for him.
And then in the very beginning, we talked about how I teach at
at a local high school. He started a fire science
program 20 years ago to get these kids dual enrollment,

(01:51:21):
start teaching the 1:00 and 2:00and all those different things.
And he did that 20 years ago. And I have now since taken that
over for him. So he has been like the
inspiration, we'll say, outside of the gates, right outside of
the station. Yeah, but very thoroughly
important, right? And it's something that we, we,

(01:51:42):
we tend to neglect, you know? That.
Community service aspect to it be and it's just because I get
it right. It's just because of the volume
like when when we are at work, we we're, we're getting abused,
right. We're seeing the public a lot
more than we wish we would, you know, but it's one of those
things that yeah, it's, it's thoroughly important and it's
something that's instilled within the American fire service

(01:52:03):
And I I love the fact that that's that's a passion of yours
and that's something that you you want to see going and now
you've taken over the program. That's huge.
Yeah, he, he, he taught me. He in fact, I used to write it
on my hat and he made, he told us all to write it on her hat.
For for the Academy. It was it was a quote.
I still have it to this day. I still use it all the time.
Motivation breeds company, right?

(01:52:24):
So explain. That.
So if if you are motivated and you go out and you do something
because you're motivated to do it, people will see you do it
and they will just do it just because you're there.
So like he used to just go out and pull the weeds at the
station and then we would go outand follow him.
A not only was he our company officer, right?
That's part of it for some of the guys, but the other part of

(01:52:46):
it, I don't want him to be out there doing it alone.
Even if we do the two in, two out roll, like I don't let you
go to the bathroom alone as a, you know, as a recruit, you
start realizing that if you're just, if you just go do
something, people will follow you just to help you.
Just whether they believe in it or not, just the fact that
you're out there doing it, they'll be motivated.

(01:53:06):
Just like a gym workout. Like, you're a giant fucking
human, Corsini. Right.
So how many workouts have you done where you go in and do it?
And someone's going to go, I don't want to fucking do it.
And then they see you do it and they go fuck it.
Yeah. And they do it for no other
reason than just fuck it. Right.
So motivation breeds company. And I think that's just a much
lighter way of saying fuck it, I'll do it.

(01:53:27):
Yeah, I love it and that's that.We've talked about it
previously, like on on other podcasts, and I'm sure we'll
talk about it on very probably every future podcast like that.
That is something that comes down to training too.
It's it's exactly what Steve wassaying.
Like even if you don't have the support from the boys at your
house or your administration or whatever the case might be, if
you just go out in the Bay by yourself, right, and start
working and get better in yourself, eventually you get the

(01:53:50):
exactly what Steve was saying. Fuck it, I'll join the kid
right? See what he's.
Doing even if they're coming outthere just to go what the fuck
are you doing? And tell them I'm out here, I'm
going over the meter, I'm going over this monitor, I'm going
over whatever the fuck it may be.
I'm doing a captain's test, I'm doing on scene reports.
They're going to go, oh, they'regoing to stand there with their

(01:54:12):
fucking shoe or their Zen and they're going to stand there
with their fucking 9th Red Bull,right, or whatever.
And they're going to just sit there.
And they probably, if they're a younger dude, they probably have
their pit Vipers on shorts, shorts, right, Flip flopping
around the station. They're going to go, Oh yeah,
can I help? And they're going to say it.
They're not going to have any other fucking idea of what to

(01:54:32):
say. And they're going to do it.
And then you're going to go, yeah.
And then you're going to help them.
And now they just learned what it was like to become a real
senior fireman or a real this ora real that.
And they're going to learn just as much as the motherfucker that
was standing there in the beginning was.
If nothing else, he's pulling weeds too.
And now he doesn't look like a piece of shit.
Because more importantly, we thrive on the fact to go, hey,

(01:54:54):
so the seven of us were pulling weeds today.
And you go, oh, And we go, yeah,why are you a piece of shit?
And I was napping and you're like, I know.
And we just look at it now. It just gives us the upper hand
to look at you in disdain for the rest of the day and to have
know that you know so. Even our own.
That's like what you were saying.

(01:55:15):
The last couple are super, superimportant.
My buddy Jesse, Jesse Anderson and Doug Corey, both are
captains on our department, But Jesse just been an insane
mentor, an insane, insane mentorfor me and sounding board.
He's what I think people should be.
The same thing goes for like Chief Bryan Leathers.

(01:55:37):
He, he has been just an insane sounding board for life in
general. He got hired with us, but we
went through the Academy together.
But he was a little bit older than us and he kind of like all,
he took us all under his wing and just kind of taught us this
is how you be successful in life.
And he's just, he's the most interesting man in the world,
essentially. Doug Corey the same way.

(01:55:59):
He's just, he's been at 93 forever.
He's always been a guy that I could go to for anything I
needed, whether station wise or,you know, promotional wise.
He's just been an insane sounding board on the wildland
arena and and the hazmat arena, just in the respected arena.
I think he's one of the most respected individuals not only

(01:56:19):
in our department, but I think in our neighboring departments
too. I think if if they go, hey, Doug
was on the call, it just tends to end there.
Like OK, that makes. OK, OK.
We're good then, yeah. Yeah, we're good.
And then I'd say the last one, right?
Like you, I have Chief Bernard, like I alluded to earlier, same,
same kind of principle. Just a great, great dude that

(01:56:39):
taught me very early on when he was still a captain and I was on
his truck, amazing. And then a Hunter Claire.
And I think he's done this for the Valley probably without
knowing it. I'm sure he knows it because
he's a highly intelligent motherfucker.
But he is what I think the epitome.
He's the best hazmat tech I think we have.
Agreed. And I, I probably very biased,

(01:57:04):
but I'm more than happy to arguewith anybody for just nothing
more than a frivolous argument over over that.
But I think he is what I think every company officer, hazmat
tech should aspire to be when we're in this arena.
And I think, I think, I think he's at, I think that's where
that's where he's at. And the fact of how he's been
there and how he's gone about doing that and the the things

(01:57:27):
he's done to make that progression throughout his
career, I think it's what we allshould strive to be.
So I think those, those, I know it's a handful, but I think
that's the those are the guys that have been influential for
whatever different avenues or reasons.
But yeah. Well, I love it.
Like I said, the I mean, you went above and beyond on the
answer for sure, but just to kind of loop back real quick
when to point something out. I mean, the initial answer was

(01:57:49):
basically family. And I love what you said because
and and this is fucking true foreveryone listened to, right, it
doesn't matter how much of A stud you are at work, if your
family life is in shambles, right?
You don't have the support if it's on your fault or not,
right? But if you don't have that
support system at home, it's hard to be super successful.
So I love the fact that like right off the bat, Steve's like,

(01:58:11):
Hey, family, because if it wasn't for them, all those other
people that been huge influencesin his career and mentors, like
he listed, they wouldn't have had nearly the same effect on
him because he had that support from home, you know, So that's
it's it's amazing. So anyway, so one of my favorite
questions, right? Favorite fire department
tradition? What is?

(01:58:32):
It mine's biased. Mine's it's biased to Peoria,
but our toy drive, toy drive alluded to it earlier.
Captain Camelo started this thing or not started it.
He was part of the start 20 plusyears ago, 30 years ago, right,
Peoria Fire Department charitiestook over and they just had a
couple people start donating toys to the community.

(01:58:53):
That grew to when he gave it to me.
I think we had 13 to 15 businesses that partnered with
our department and then like 100families that would go through
and they would just, they would these businesses and the fire
department itself, the membership of the fire
department would just gather a bunch of toys and bring it down

(01:59:14):
to the Community Center. And then once they got to the
Community Center, they would just give these toys out.
And then they started to just deliver them to families in
need. Every Christmas Eve morning
started to O 600, we'd get on the fire truck and we'd start
delivering for family predetermined families that we
had found, right. So essentially, whether teachers

(01:59:35):
or family members or whatever said, hey, my so and so's in
need, my so and so needs help. Do you think you can?
And then I started doing it and now it's, it's grown
exponentially big. It's huge.
Last year we had 72 businesses. We did just over 400 kids.
Wow, so you made 400 different kids.

(01:59:57):
You basically made their Christmas.
That's amazing. In in five hours, 400 kids get
presents. That's just one day.
That's just the one thing. And we did 26 events in 24 days,
which is insane but. And how many years now have you
guys been doing that? You said who started it, but

(02:00:19):
what year did they start? Do you remember?
Danny did it for 20 ish and thisis going to be my 9th year
running it. But I've been with Danny since I
got hired 18 years ago. He just kind of said do this and
then when he retired he goes I want you to take care of this.
I think that you believe in it. I think it's in your heart and I
want you to run with it. I said I have no idea what the

(02:00:40):
fuck I'm doing. He goes just follow this and do
this. Here's flash drive.
I went OK then it's been a huge,huge help with that ever since.
But it's it's become a family tradition for all of the
families of Peoria Fire. So that's that's probably
biasedly mine. Yes, but that's OK, you know,
and like I said, just give them back to that community.
That's what it's all about. And we had alluded to it

(02:01:02):
earlier, it's something that falls by the wayside sometimes.
Oh well, you know, all right, solast question, complete
opposite, right, has nothing to do with tradition solely of the
fire service. All right, so if you could snap
your finger right and through FM, you know, we all know that
fucking magic, this disappears. What would one thing that you

(02:01:23):
would get rid of in the AmericanFire Service right now if you
could? I would have two.
Weird, right? Yeah, the shocker.
More than one. He doesn't follow directions
very well. Right.
As long as I get AY for both, that's all I care about.
One, we already went over right there, the reluctance and
progression for whatever the reason may be OK, we already

(02:01:44):
touched on that. So I think I think the fact that
like going everything we talked about earlier, right, the
constantly exchanging those techniques, the information
constantly learning, like whether it's a hose load from
those nozzle forward guys to Colorado to the automatic aid
system here or to how to run a high rise deployment back East,
right? Like just constantly exchanging

(02:02:05):
information. I think we need to continue with
that progression and not be so reluctant to go well, that's not
how we do it. That that fucking phrase.
And I think any time that you there should be the scene from
Tropic Thunder when he looks TomCruise looks at the guy, says
who's the grip? He grip you All right, Hit that
dude in the face. I think we should have that same
thing when people use a phrase similar to that.

(02:02:26):
I love it. Well, that's not how we do it.
I don't give a shit. Let's figure out why.
Can it be better? And if so, let's make it.
If not, then good on us. Fuck yeah.
Yeah, that means that hey shit, we've been doing it right.
Cool, let's continue. Right two without coming across
negatively, I can't stand, I cannot stand, I can't fathom it.

(02:02:48):
I can't stand when traditions inthe past are forgotten.
If you have guys that have retired from your department and
they come back into the department in whatever way, like
they whether to come by to have coffee or just come in and check
in and the booter has no idea who that guy is like it's not
the booter's fault it's our fault.
That's that to me. Fucking.

(02:03:09):
We hate that. So a buddy of mine and I, we
started a plaque system. So essentially just like the
Major League, you know, baseball, football, basketball,
when you retire, your jersey gets retired.
So whatever station you wanted to be hung out of.
So that way everybody that comesto that station now has now has
to look at this plaque of you and go, well, who is that guy?

(02:03:30):
And now they can start understanding these stories that
we talked about at the table andthey can relate a face to a name
or a face to a person and go, oh, that was the guy that did
this. And you go, yeah, look at you.
You're learning. Do those plaques have pictures
or they're just hey this is Fireman's MO from this year to
this year X amount of years of service.
No, it's a, it's a individual plaque and they get to get, they

(02:03:52):
get to pick where it gets hung. So on their retirement date,
0800 hits in the morning, we hang their plaque at whichever
station they want it at. But it's a the plaque.
It's got their picture, it's gottheir name and badge number on
it. It's got their years of service
on it has a bar tag on it. It has like, you know, a cool
picture of them doing whatever they were doing, like whatever

(02:04:13):
they wanted to do. That's awesome.
That's a cool fireman picture, right?
You know. Yeah, just whatever.
Like one of the guys just had the picture of the very first
ladder we had because that was his very first fire truck.
You always remember guys, you know so.
But I think the fact that we, I can't stand when newer
generations don't know the past and the history of the

(02:04:33):
department that they work for. Like if you had a guy come in as
a booter and he doesn't understand why he got hired with
Glendale or Peoria or Phoenix, Tempe.
Surprised. Right.
Like, if you don't know that, then what are you doing?
Yeah, right. Like, you should know the
history. You should know the rivalries.
You should know that. Like if you went and you got
picked up and you were drafted by the Dallas Cowboys, you
should understand who your rivals are and why those games

(02:04:56):
are so important. Yeah, you better.
And I believe those guys, do they, they know that.
But, and again, I wonder where our disconnect is when it comes
down to things like that. I guess it's on us.
It's on us like we, we dropped the ball because we didn't teach
that right. We, we're the, we're the bridge.
I think our like my generation with you, like our generation
together and probably four or five years ahead of us, like

(02:05:20):
that group. We used to work with guys that
ran single digit badge or had single digit badge numbers and
guys that used to run fire and learn how to fight fire and do
these things by doing it, doing it real life.
Right now we have these new guyscome into the department and
they're learning how to fight fire and do things simulated
right. We were going to do this, we're

(02:05:43):
going to do that, we are going to do this in this situation,
but they may never get to see this in that situation because
of technology and sprinklers andall the other things that fun
things that we have going on with their home, right?
And they just don't burn as much.
And then we're that gap. They got to work with them on
those dudes that rode tail board, right?

(02:06:03):
And now we're teaching the new guys.
So we're the it's the onus on usto bridge that gap, not only in
the learning field of like, because we learned from them
because they did it. So they went, Hey, you use this
hammer on this nail and this 16 penny nail goes through for this
and this is how this works. Neat, sounds good.
All right. And then you do it because they
showed you how to do it and thenyou did it and you realized,
yes, this is how I do it. But the new guys don't see that

(02:06:25):
because they may never see that situation, right?
So not only is it our onus to bridge the gap in the training
level from I learned from guys that really did it and now I'm
teaching you. So you have to trust me that I
know what I'm doing because I'vedone this.
Right. Not only is it that, but it's
also the same on building that history, building the buy in

(02:06:47):
that that buy in of your department.
How do I get a new guy to buy inon a department that he knows
nothing about? Very difficult, right?
But again, we use it community wise.
Or if you just look socially, people have jobs for very few
years because they're sitting there and they're doing this
internship and they go through college.
They boil away and boil away andwork their ass up and they get

(02:07:07):
through college now they get thepaper because they're proficient
at this thing and then they go be an intern somewhere, right?
And Simon Spenex said this very well.
He said they get these interns that come in and they realize
that after two or three years, they go, I'm done.
I'm not making the difference that I want to make.
Of course you're not because youfucking have two years on.
You just got here like you're not going to make the
difference. It's like they see the mountain,

(02:07:28):
like the tip of the mountain, but they can't see the the
mountain in front of them. They don't see the trails to get
up to the tip. They just see a fucking
mountain. So I think the same thing goes
to you guys. If you don't get buy in from
them and teach them why it's important, why we do these
things, why we decon the way we do, why we do this, why we go to
union events, why we do these events.
Here's the two reason why we have to go to the charity event.

(02:07:49):
Yes, you have to go. I'm sorry, it's during dinner.
Who gives a shit, right? Like fuck off.
Here's here's the reason why we need to do it.
And you start to get that buy inbecause you've taught them the
history and why they have a department to get hired too.
And then they go, oh, I don't want to work the box today.
I'm on the rescue again. Yeah, you know why?
Because that's why you have a job.

(02:08:11):
It's because we got rescues and in five years from now when we
get something else that's reallycool and now you're on that and
the guy's bitching about this, they're going to be in the same
spot and you're going to have totell him the reason why he needs
to buy in. So I think that same generation
or the same generational gap using falls to us when we're
teaching to buy in the department.

(02:08:33):
There you. Go if you, if you ask me right
now, hey, why would you come to my department?
I can give you at least at leastdouble digit reasons why I would
come to your department. Yeah.
What makes your department so great now I wouldn't leave mine
because I love mine. Same for you but if I'm running
with you, I I should know more about your department than the

(02:08:54):
booter does. I should.
I didn't you guys work in Saint Jersey on.
Why do I know more about this than you do right.
So I think that's where it comesdown to is we just have to take
more of a responsibility. Be proud of where we are at, be
proud of where we came from, youknow, and then be excited about
seeing that get better. Yeah, I love it.

(02:09:15):
And that's, that's all comes down to, and you said it like,
and it, it, it covers everythingwe're talking about in the fire
service. Or should, what should I say is
what we're we're covering the fire service that we want to
either increase or change effectin a positive matter.
And it all goes down to that why.
And you were just talking about the retirees and their

(02:09:36):
traditions and the the guys thatcame before us and taught us and
everything else. But it was always a thing that
like the why, Like once we explain the why, then we get to
buy in from the new guys, right?And then their traditions
continue, right? Or we're able to elevate our
game because now everyone understands it's not because,
hey, you know, Captain Willis, right, Told me I have to, you

(02:09:58):
know, why, Why do I bring a New York hook to garage fire?
Well, Captain Willis told me that it's a pretty cool hook,
right? You know, that's not the answer
we're looking for, right? It's, hey, I'm bringing this
tool for this situation because of this.
And the same thing. It's when it comes down to like
traditions or whatever, it's like things that we don't like.
What's the why behind it, right?Why?
Why did it even exist in the first place?

(02:10:18):
But more importantly, why is it important to either exit out of
our history, not our history, I should say, but ex that behavior
out or more importantly, why is it so important to keep that
behavior or tradition included in the fire service?
And that's one of the biggest thing and the only reason why
this podcast even exists right now is to remind guys, right,
that it is cool to learn new shit.

(02:10:40):
It is cool to be a fireman. And then more importantly, like,
if you love this job and want toget better, kudos to you, right?
Those are the guys that make this job better, right?
And are what the public believesall of us are.
So be that guy, right? Elevate your game, elevate your
department, right? Bring something up to your boss.
Teach something to the guys below you.

(02:11:00):
I mean, what else do you have for us to kind of walk us out of
this episode, Steve? Not that I think nothing but
appreciation, man, just like what what you guys are doing and
giving, providing a platform andan Ave. for people to come
together that want to learn and want to get better, right?
Like I, I, I just think it's, I think it's a very cool thing.

(02:11:21):
And like you said, sometimes it's just, you should be proud
just to be, it's cool to be a fireman, right?
You know, and sometimes it's, but it's, it's cool to be a
fireman because of what we're allotted to do and what we're
allowed to do, what we're able to do, right?
Like the general public will never pay us for what we do.
They're not they're going to payus for what we're willing to do.

(02:11:43):
And that's, that's all the things that no one else does.
And that's, that's a big catch all that we've become.
But you can't, you have to have that moderated expectation
through that. I can't just say, hey, go and
perform. Otherwise we would only have
laterals, right? It would be no, it would be no
higher. So with that being said, I think

(02:12:04):
it's just a matter of, of givingkudos to where kudos to do like
what you guys are doing is great.
The fact that like I'm super appreciative, the fact that I
got to be on this thing today, I'm excited to listen to other
ones and learn more. I'm excited to to see what comes
to this and watch this little thing grow.
Like I think it's going to be. I think it's going to be a big

(02:12:24):
deal, man. You know, our say 48 here.
It's got a lot going for it. But but at the same time, but
you guys are doing and allowing this making our department.
It's so spread out, so big or our culture or service, I should
say. So spread out, bringing that
closer together, I think is is aphenomenal thing that you guys
are doing. So keep it up.

(02:12:45):
But again, Steve, dude, thank you so much for your time.
I mean, it's I, I really appreciate you taking time out
of your day, sitting down talking, just spin the fat with
me. So thank you so much.
Again, I know we have so much more to cover.
We'll do that on a a later episode.
But guys, stay tuned and we willcatch you in two more weeks.
Thank you all, have a good night.

(02:13:10):
Thanks for joining us. Always remember, the most
important grab you'll make in your fire service career is
saving a complacent firefighter from themselves.
Catch you next episode.