Hose Line Management, and ZIP

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
It's one of those things where if we're overly aggressive from
the get go, we're probably goingto be successful.
I mean, do you kind of feel the same comes down to that?
I think the the importance can'tbe overstated.
This is the difference between offensive and defensive and the
difference between saving lives or a body recovery.
The difference, the time we havethat we can control, right, like

(00:20):
you're saying, is the differencebetween we get in there fast,
aggressively start cooling it, keep it survivable, make the
spaces, check the tenable spacesin there for victims versus we
take an extra couple minutes outside, we open the door, it
flashes, we go defensive, we find a body later.
So it really is life and death difference between how

(00:42):
proficient and quickly you can get in there and do your job.
Welcome everybody. Copper State Fireman Podcast.
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complacency, laziness and excuses.
We're promoting love and passionfor the job, encouraging
eagerness, and mastering the craft of the fire service.

(01:05):
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This podcast is for general information use only, brought to

(01:25):
you by the Copper state fools and sponsored by Solid
Foundation Team LLC Let's go. All right, everybody, welcome
back. I'm sitting here with Captain
Sean sign. He's a captain of American fire
service. He's hazmat and TRT technician.
He's been a cadet mentor, probationary firefighter mentor.
He's worked for the fire one andtwo Academy for the college here

(01:48):
locally. He's taught high school fire and
science programs, worked for theprivate technical rescue
company. He is a 0 impact period
instructor, department training cadre member, Fools E board
member. That would be the Copper State
Fools and proud husband and father.
So we're sitting down here with Sean today.
We are going to talk about hopefully right hose on

(02:09):
deployment, water application and zip period sound good.
Sean, did I miss anything? That sounds good, man.
That's it. Brother, well, let's just let's
just tear right into it, man. So let's just start with hose
line deployment. So everyone talks about in the
Academy, everybody learns this right and every probationary guy
comes out there thinking they'reawesome and then what happens?
They get their first job, they make it to the front door.

(02:31):
They got their blinders on, theypulled probably 20 feet and
everything's a clusterfuck rightbehind them.
And that guy's chugging and working that heel, guys chugging
along. So just talk about what you guys
now are doing in your department, right?
And what you're teaching outsideon just a hose line management
section to start? With SO, hey man, you touched on

(02:52):
the story of my career for the most part, right?
So many years spent untangling hose lines in front yards, bunch
of fires as the back of guy plugguy where you're working your
ass off just to try and get water to the end of the nozzle.
You know, they're screaming more, more pressure, more
pressure engineers cranking it up.

(03:13):
But it's got 20 kinks in betweenit.
And you know, just really saw the problem so many times on so
many fires. And then eventually, you know,
got taught by the right people on hey, that it doesn't have to
be this way, you know, cuz for along time coming out of the
Academy, here's like, this is how it is.
This is this must be the best wecan do.

(03:34):
How many, how many times before we get off on this tangent,
because I know this is a good one, How many times have you
been that guy on the knob thinking that man, I did my job.
What the fuck's that guy doing behind me?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, 100%.
You do the swim stab grab on theflat look, you get to the front
door, you're like, I did good. And the backup guy's like fixing

(03:55):
your mess that you don't even know what's going on because now
you're in the building with smoke.
You don't see really all the work that's going on behind you
that you could have helped or just as a crew and department
and setting up your hose loads, right, could have made that, you
know, cut that zip pack 0 impactperiod down, which we can get
into that later. But just speed up the whole
process and make everybody's lives easier, give you more

(04:17):
energy to do different things onthe fire ground, so.
That, that, that's, that more efficient, more effective
fireman, right? That we're now really harping
on. And I, I sat down with Captain
Noah Katz and he had talked about his crew and just his
expectations. And he said, I expect my crew
depending on whatever the makeupis, doesn't matter.

(04:38):
But their deal is air brake to their massed up hose lines
deployed and they're entering the front door 60 seconds right.
That's that's amazing. And that guy's awesome.
I learned a lot from him in the class we took.
And yeah, dude, that's, that's money.
That is not remotely close to your average fire company,

(04:58):
right? Yeah, so let's top.
Tier. Let's talk about it.
So we you kind of already mentioned like what actually
happens on the fire ground and Iknow everyone listening has been
there 100% or has seen it or hasmother fucked somebody because
of it or whatever the case mightbe.
So with all that said, we know it's an issue.
So what are you guys doing rightnow to resolve that when it
comes down to just the hose linemanagement?

(05:20):
So, yeah, so when it comes down to hose line management, you
have your hose load that you're going to choose to load on your
trucks. So you have some options there.
But regardless of your hose load, sometimes it's out of our
control, right? Departments are different.
Some have more freedom, some have less freedom to decide
what's on their trucks. So really it is just whatever

(05:43):
tool you have to be most efficient with, you got to be
dialed in with what you have. But once that hose is deployed,
just the simplicity of setting it up right, flaking it out
right, doing the attack oversupply.
So what we mean by that is starting from the nozzle, that
hose needs to be on top of the hose that's closer to the truck.

(06:05):
And ideally we make a Figure 8 which people that are interested
can look up. There's a bunch of YouTube
videos on attack oversupply. And it reduces the friction of
the hose on the ground. And it also prevents the hose
from getting looped, knotted up,caught underneath other hose,
just helps you out. And that's the basis, right?
That's just basic setting it up and then where it's set up in

(06:28):
regards to the door. So we get into reading hinges
right when we talk forcible entry.
Reading hinges? Finding out which way to set
your hose up so you're not immediately creating a 90° pinch
point Real. Quick, I know you're going to
keep talking, so just explain tothe audience that they haven't
been through this class, they don't know what you're talking
about. Explain what the the importance

(06:50):
of the hinge or what you mean byinside of them, how you approach
it. Yeah.
So depending on the building, right, obviously walk up and
identify whether it's an inward or outward swinging door, right
back to forcible entry kind of basics.
So whether you have to force that door or not, and for your
hose lines, important for both. Then typically when our doors
are inward swinging, most front doors to residences or

(07:12):
apartments, behind that door is going to be usually a wall or
closet or something, but it's usually not the opening to the
room. So that's the hidden side,
right? That's going to open up closest
to the wall. So we probably know we're going
to go in and go the opposite direction.
So if the hinges are on the right, we're probably going to
go in and go to the left and start searching that living

(07:32):
space or living room or it's a hallway that goes straight.
Great. Then you're not making an
immediate turn. But either way, we want to set
that hose up so that it's towards the hinges best we can
so that we're not creating, you know, a 180 around the the outer
wall of the building or apartment or whatever.
It may be especially important on apartment landings, right?
If you have to go one way extreme or the other way

(07:54):
extreme, you want to make sure you pick the right one.
So you're not now you're going to lose a guy for the whole fire
at that front door making that 180° turn, just feeding hose in
the whole fire until you have enough hose to search the whole
building. So.
No. And it's funny too, because you
explain it, it makes sense, but it's so simple and it's crazy

(08:14):
that we've never prior to probably what, five years ago?
Maybe a little bit more, maybe alittle bit less.
That's when I started learning it, yeah.
OK, it's it was never even a conversation.
Not I I've never outside of the zip class and then the exposure
here, I'd never heard of that prior to the only hinge things
I've ever heard of was maybe locations of bedrooms, right,

(08:34):
yeah, going down to search tactics.
But it's like, and as soon as someone taught me, I'm like, why
didn't I not think of that myself?
You know, which is, again, the wealth and knowledge that you're
going to spit today, which is good.
A lot of guys are going to realize I'm not nearly as good
as I think I am, or I don't knowas much about being a nozzleman
as I maybe I should. Yeah.

(08:55):
And that's, and we'll go on a quick tangent.
That's kind of the the way my career went, right.
So the academy's gotten a lot more advanced in teaching this
stuff, but I think the majority of most departments are have
some time on and they didn't teach any of this stuff in the
academies back then. So coming to that realization,

(09:15):
right, I spent basically my whole career in the backseat of
an engine. I'm a new captain, so about 10
years I was in the backseat of an engine, whether I was on the
plug or the nozzle, either way. So that was kind of that's where
I was coming from. It is, hey, I think I have some
pretty good experience. I think I know what I'm doing.
Then you learn what you don't know and you don't know what you
don't know. As soon as someone teaches you

(09:35):
like you said, you're like, I can't believe I've never thought
of that before and I've seen this problem 100 times and just
accepted it. As you know, this is the way it
is. Yeah, Well, there's there's so
many issues we've run into over,you know, the last couple of
decades just as an American fireservice that we just come to the
understanding that brute force and strength and aggression is

(09:58):
going to fix that issue because we weren't trained any other
way. Hey, what happens if you have a
bunch of kinks or it's a shitty deployment or whatever?
It's like we'll be super aggressive and flake that out
and, you know, move those kinks and there's a garden gnome throw
it out the way, you know, like whatever the case might be.
But being able to tactically deploy that hose line and take
how much longer do you think it takes to deploy hose like you're

(10:19):
talking compared to just that brand new booter that gets out
and just swim stab grabs or if it's mini man, whatever the case
might be, deploys him think he thinks he does a good job and
just brings it right to the front door with with no no hose
to pull behind him. Not that first couple.
Not 50 feet, Not not anything. Probably 10 feet at the most.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I've seen the worst,
worst case scenario on actual fires.
I've seen minutes spent fixing kinks and tangles and it's it's

(10:44):
a complete mess. And we're talking minutes on the
fire ground. Like we can get into that.
That's a humongous difference ofwhat that fire is going to do
when you can finally put water on it.
So you know, a lot of guys mightlook at this as unnecessary.
And again, you don't know what you don't know.
But the the difference in time, if it takes first hand, like

(11:04):
it's going to take getting someone who's resistant to
change to see the difference. Like, hey, grab that flat load,
cross leg, pull it 10 feet how you normally do to this fire.
And let's just time see when you're actually flowing
uninterrupted, you know, full PSI out of that nozzle.
And now let's try and teach themsome stuff.

(11:25):
I'll try that same thing, but with these new techniques.
And here's the time difference and just black and white
themselves doing it. That's what it's going to take
really as cultures and wherever your department is and whatever
level of training to kind of change, you know, steer this
battleship a different direction.
But you know how we are as a fire service.

(11:46):
I understand it's, you know, youlearned one way.
It's your way. And I'm not at telling anybody
to do anything without training and practicing and going out and
learning, taking classes and practicing and training with
your crews first. Because whatever you're most
comfortable with, you know when when it's game time is not the
time to try something new. It's it's to make it your your

(12:08):
norm before you get the fire. And that's, and we've talked
about that in previous episodes too.
It's there's such a wealth of knowledge out there for this
generation of firemen. And we're, we're involved in
that now too. But it's, they're going to Fact
Check you, you know, so if you teach someone something, they're
going to do the research to see if it works, right?
And then they might be doing that research on their own.

(12:29):
And then unfortunately, some of the guys with the best
intentions in the world will bring back to their department,
right, try it. And then they didn't get a
chance to practice it anything else.
Or like you said, they try it ona job and it fails miserably
because they haven't practiced. And then also that tactic is
garbage, right? Right.
Which which which we all know it's not.
I just want to point something out there that you said.
So we get questions on social media all the time about Hey,

(12:53):
Steve, just listen to this episode.
I love the, I love what you guysare talking about or this tactic
and hopefully get some feedback from this one too.
But it's always the same question.
How do I introduce this? I'm a younger member, I'm a
junior member or I'm just a backstep guy, whatever the case
might be, How do I introduce it to the senior guys or my
department or large department, small, it really doesn't matter.

(13:16):
So what you said, and I'd like to kind of reiterate that too,
it is, hey, learn something, practice it right?
And then show the guy be like, hey, I learned something new.
Let's do it our way, right? And then now let's do it the new
way. And then like you said, make
them decide, right. So do you feel in your personal
experience and your how, how kind of how you look on the
thing? How successful is that?

(13:37):
Yeah, that I've seen people change their mind 100% like
going into like. Right there on the spot.
Right there on the spot after they see it.
Like they they might talk crap the whole way to the training.
How big of a waste of the time this is going to be, right?
They see the difference, do it themselves first hand, it works
better. They can't deny it.

(13:58):
They know it, right? And they'll sometimes they'll
apologize and be like, man, I, Ithought this was nonsense until
I tried it myself and it works good.
And that that's what it's going to take.
And we're not talking culture specifically, but it, it really
boils down to culture. You have to have a, a training
culture that's open to getting better, right?
That's competitive to a certain extent, right?

(14:21):
It takes that senior guy not wanting to get shown up by the
new guy fresh out of the Academy.
If we can do something faster than you, a lot faster than you,
that's you know, that should create that motivation and
especially guys that are resistant to change to be like,
well, I can't I can't get shown up.
I got to I got to figure this out.
Teach me that new stuff all. Right, So what?

(14:42):
What else? You see, you kind of touched on
it and I know it's way too much without going through the class
to talk about it all, but what else is what else do you feel is
important about the hose line deployment or the management
section of it for the class thatyou teach?
So a big part is communication. So like I came up, just yell

(15:03):
more hosts and the next guy's going to do his best to get you
more hosts. He might grab a loop if you're
lucky. That was the extent of our
communication, right? That was, you know, that's all I
knew until taking this class where the nozzleman, regardless
if he's a day one on probation firefighter and you guys laid
in. So now your captain is your your

(15:24):
heel person or backup person, whatever terminology you want to
use. That nozzleman, that brand new
firefighter is command right of the hose line movement.
He's going to say what he needs.He's going to communicate where
he's going. So 10 feet right turn yelling
loud communication through the fire ground at your captain,
right. So it takes, it takes knowing

(15:44):
that that's necessary. You can't be timid or shy when
it's game time and you're in thefire.
You got to be loud and proud andknow what you're doing.
And that's, that's key. So communication is a huge one.
Right, left turns, right turns 90°, whatever you want to do,
communicating what's going on atthe front of the hose line
because from the back, especially even if the captain

(16:06):
has a tick camera, if he's working and moving hose, he
doesn't see either. And then if you talk to your
plug person, you got to you got to be their eyes by being loud
and proud. So that's a big one.
That's something I learned that I hadn't ever done before,
right? All right, so, so now you've
you've effectively talked to fireman, right, to do an

(16:27):
effective pull, right? He does the attack oversupply.
Now he's entering the structure,right.
So we, you just talked about communication a little bit.
So let's talk about loading the rooms and things along those
lines. So what do you teach them next?
So yeah, so as far as the the backup person, right, we have a
lot of different ways we can setup hose on the front end, right.

(16:49):
Your attack oversupply is going to be pretty much your quick
attack fast. It's fast to set up.
It's it's aggressive, it's quick.
And then going forward as a backup person, you can choose to
set yourself up in a good position.
I like to set my pack in a corner.
If we're going making a hallway,the far corner kind of do it
like a wall, sit almost against that corner and let that hose

(17:13):
right across top of my thighs and just guide it and pull and
guide it. And that's to initially make a
corner, right? And then if we're going down
longer hallways, then loading these hallways with this S band
this spring looking pattern, right while that, and this is
we're talking, and this is important to note, this isn't
your low level basic fire, not alot of heat, not a lot of smoke,

(17:38):
right? And that's something I think
it's lost in translation a lot when we're teaching this.
This is for the fire, right? This is for.
The good job. A heavy fire load, high heat,
low visibility, possible victims, right?
This is get it on time. This isn't hey, there's some a
little extension to the cabinetsabove the stove.

(17:59):
Obviously you're going to walk in that one.
You're not going to be crawling.You're not going to be hands and
knees. This is there's two totally
different scenarios. We're not telling you to crawl
through every single fire. If it's an attic fire, I think
it's obvious, but it bears saying just for note, right?
So all the stuff pertains to thefire, right?
Game time getting it on so that being said, right, so you're

(18:23):
fighting your way down a hallway, cooling it as you go
right, applying water to the ceilings, walls, making that
space tenable and more survivable for you and any
victims as you advance so it's aslower advance so.
That's the that's that pre cooling that we talked about.
Pre cooling, cooling the spaces we own, capturing more space as
we move through the building, right, protecting our egress and

(18:46):
just protecting the what's behind us from the fire that's
in front of us. And as we're doing that as the
nozzle persons using whatever they're comfortable with and we
can get into different types of holds and stuff like that.
As they're advancing in whichever ways comfortable to
them, their preferred method andthe backup person needs to be
working. They are, always have been and

(19:08):
always will be doing the most work on the fireground just is
the way it is. The plug person is or the
captain initially is going to bedoing the most of the work on
these. They got to make that S bend,
right? So you're going just imagine a
big continuous S down that hallway.
So now you have a lot of excess hose in that hallway that wants

(19:29):
to spring forward and push your nozzleman forward.
When they advance, they should feel pretty much no resistance.
They shouldn't be dragging hose using much energy at all.
That's the goal of the backup person, right?
You're making your nozzleman's life really easy and then
preloading rooms. You can do coils, right?
You can flip that hose up rolling into the room and coils

(19:49):
to preload like the first room if you know you're going deep,
and then start s s in hallways as you get to hallways or just
making coils and leaning up against the wall.
And that's all preference, right?
You could argue one way or the other, entanglements, whatever.
It does get a little sketchy if you have coils on the wall that
are falling and stuff like that,but it's whatever that crew

(20:11):
trains on likes the best. Is going to get the job done.
And what what that house provides you too, right.
And that's a Porter situation you might not have.
You might be having to use the walls.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Perfect example.
Yeah. If you got cardboard boxes lined
in the hallway and you got 2 feet to walk in while you're
pretty much out of options, you have to make coils and roll them
in to that space to give the nozzle guy enough hose to get

(20:34):
down the hallway. So exactly.
Good point, man. So whatever the building gives
you, whatever the fire gives you, whatever your goals and
comfortability level are with your tactics.
Right, so we, we talked about a little bit of the hose line
deployment and you started mentioning it.
So I want to, I want to talk about it now.
So you're talking about capturing, capturing the rooms,

(20:55):
capturing the box like depends on what you talk about.
Like I always teach, hey, a house is a box and then it's got
small boxes inside of it. Our our goal is to win each box
1 by 1 right until we capture the whole game.
So, but with with that said, obviously, and I believe
honestly, throughout the nation collectively as a fire service,
we've learned that it is now OK to cool smoke, right?

(21:17):
Smoke and burn fuel. Smoke is dangerous, right?
We treated just like fire. So what do you teach guys when
they're talk about that prequel and and, and what you're what
what what you're really trying to get them to accomplish to
take away into the field? Yeah, so that's another thing,
man. Early in my career, right, we
didn't, we didn't really flow water on not fire, right?

(21:38):
We would just grin and bear it through the heat and smoke until
we got to where we saw red stuffand that's where the wet stuff
went. Meanwhile, right we're walking
through an oven, we're cooking ourselves, cooking our gear and
understanding failure points of gear right.
Our mask is the least heat resistant part of our deal.
The, the lens itself is going tostart failing if it's if it's

(22:02):
exposed to too hot a temperaturefor too long.
And then like I teach in a little tick class that I put
together, right, our particular model of tick cameras doesn't
show color until 500°. That's really hot.
If you're going to be in there for minutes at a time, that's,
you know, melting, right. So you tick the hallway and it's
still black and Gray. We're good.

(22:23):
But it could be, you know, 498° and it's just not yellow yet.
And then you're sitting there for a couple minutes, you're
going to start to have problems.So really recognizing, and
again, I'm not saying flow waterif it's not hot and smoky, but
knowing from experience, hey, ifI'm feeling some heat, I need to
cool this environment as we movecool down and, and again, we're

(22:45):
getting into experience level, right?
So you're going to get more experience.
There's a line between protecting property, right?
And when we're in a life saving mode, right?
We're risking a lot to save a lot.
We're looking for savable lives.I'm sorry that we knocked all
your pictures off the wall with our hose hose stream.

(23:05):
But right now we're saving livesbecause this is, you know, this
fire is advanced. So that experience level of
knowing when to start cooling the atmosphere, the day, one
firefighter might not have that,they might need a little a
little coaching on that from thecaptain to say, hey, start
flowing. Hey man, open open that job
right now. Don't shut it down.
And another thing you like that is a side effect of us doing

(23:29):
that now is that we are cooling those pre flashover conditions,
right? That we're unaware of at the
time because of the 0 visibilitybecause it's supercharged black
smoke, right? And we're trying to find and see
the fire or there's a reported victims that we're making a
super fucking heavy push or things like that.
So without even realizing it, byjust cooling the space and

(23:50):
trying to take a bath, those boxes, we're actually making
that building a lot safer for usin a very rapid sense.
And it's funny, I've I've said this Tom Blue in the face.
I say to every young guy run into old guy doesn't freaking
matter. But it's, it's one of those
things where like if we are aggressive in the in the

(24:10):
beginning of the call, right, we're already behind the 8 ball.
Fire's been running for X amountof minutes.
It takes us 4 to 6 minutes on average to get everything is and
say we're fucking studs. And we do stretch ready to make
entry in Noah Katz's engine company in less than 60 seconds,
right? We that fire has grown
exponentially. So if we are aggressive in the

(24:33):
beginning, we deem right aggressive.
You could also say risky or whatever in the beginning.
We deem that building safe rapidly compared to and I think
This is why people get misconstrued when it comes down
to be an aggressive fireman. If we are now in that building
for 1015 minutes struggling to find the seat of fire or we're

(24:53):
sucking carpet because of the heat, that's not the time to be
aggressive. We missed our window of
opportunity. Now it's time to start going
shit. We might need to pivot right and
and maybe approach from a different angle.
God forbid we might have to pullout.
But it's one of those things where if we're overly aggressive
from the get go, we're probably going to be successful.
I mean, do you kind of feel the same?

(25:14):
It comes down to that. I think the the importance can't
be overstated. This is the difference between
offensive and defensive and the difference between saving lives
or a body recovery. The difference, the time we have
that we can control right, like you're saying, is the difference
between we get in there fast, aggressively start cooling it,

(25:35):
keep it survivable, make the spaces, check the tenable spaces
in there for victims versus we take an extra couple minutes
outside, we open the door, it flashes, we go defensive, we
find a body later. So it really is life and death
difference between how proficient and quickly you can
get in there and do your job. So I, I, that's where I'm coming

(25:57):
from. And I know it's not everybody's
opinion that there's a lot of culture changes that I think can
happen nationwide as far as how seriously we take our job.
I've heard a lot throughout my career about people that, you
know, want to disregard training.

(26:17):
We already know this. I'm good at that.
All that stuff, all our skills are perishable at the end of the
day. It is the difference of saving
lives or pulling out a body and so.
And the crazy thing is too, you could take the best fire
department in the country. I don't know who they are right
with the best crew in the fucking country.

(26:38):
And I guarantee you on that bread and butter house fire,
that's still a good job. There's mistakes made on every
single. Fire.
So every fire. Right.
So it's, it's one of those things where if, if we don't
learn from every single fire, then shame on us for saying,
well, it it worked last time thefire went out.
And I know if you're the same thing, I've never, I've never
gone to a fire that didn't go out.
Well, yeah, you know, it's it burned until the foundation,

(27:00):
blah, blah, blah, or whatever. That's not our fucking job,
though. The job is to save lives and
then save their house if we can.100% from there.
So what is what is the what is the zip period?
So the guys that don't know, what does zip even stand for?
Yeah. So the 0 impact period is what
we talked about and that's a, it's an old idea, might have a
new name or new to me at least. But I mean it's legit as old as

(27:22):
the fire service. We're going to get there as fast
as we can and do everything in our control fast, right?
That's the whole idea. That's why we have stopwatches
in the Academy. That's why we practice putting
our gear on fast. That's the basis of everything
is being fast. So it's just putting a name on
what's in our control in that period before we have a positive

(27:43):
effect on that fire. So like you said earlier,
there's a lot that's out of our control, right?
How long does it take someone tonotice there's a fire?
Call 911, go through the dispatch, get us toned out.
Now, once we're toned out, now we have things in our control.
So turn out times in our control, right?
Routing in our control, traffic's not, but routing is,

(28:05):
right? Finding where we're going to
get, how we're going to best access that fire quickly.
And then again, after that air break, like you said, know what
Cat said, that's definitely within our control, right?
How fast can we get our hose line set up in the door?
Forcible entry comes into this, right?
That's part of our classes. Forcible entry get in and make a
positive impact. So that's our basically like

(28:27):
you're saying, I consider it toned out to water on the fire.
That's my personal 0 impact difference, right?
So yeah, that's what the basis of the class.
So it's not all-encompassing, right?
We don't do turn out drills. That's something everyone should
do and can do in and of their own and don't need a lot of
extra training on. But important, how often do

(28:49):
people turn out for time, right?And how, especially when you get
later in your career, how often do you refresh that perishable
skill 'cause I guarantee you, weask.
To put gloves on. Can you mask up with your gloves
on? Right?
Can you flow water from outside while you mask up?
That's something we do teach, right?
There's ways to hold the hose with your feet and legs in a

(29:09):
clamp position with the other foot propping up the nozzle,
where if you got a blowing window or doorway as you show up
you can start flowing before youeven get your mask on.
Save time there. Mask up.
Now you can go in, you've already cooled and put out some
of that fire and advance in there.
What do you say to a naysayer? And I just, it just came to my
brain right now. What do you say the naysayer or

(29:32):
the old salty dog that says, heySean, you're you're fucking up
the thermal balance by spraying water into smoke, actively
cooling rooms and boxes as you progress?
How do you what is your ammo back on a guy like that?
So you know what, man, there's, there's pros and cons to
everything, right? But to that I would say every

(29:53):
fire is different. Is there a time and a place in a
fire dynamic where the fire is, where the smoke is, where
potential victims are? Is there a possibility where you
could do some damage by flowing water in a certain way?
Sure, there is a scenario where that is the case.
But if you have a super heated atmosphere and super heated

(30:14):
gases in a large space in that room, you're going to do nothing
but make it better, especially if you're going in that way.
You're going to do nothing but make it better for you and
better for victims by cooling that down.
And then when it comes to the the thermal layering, right, we
talked about that. I'm a big proponent of smooth
bore nozzles for this type of firefight that we're talking

(30:35):
about. There's a place for fog nozzles.
There's a use for fog nozzles for sure.
But I'm a huge fan of the smoothbore for that reason, right?
You got less air entrainment. That means as that water moves
through the air, it's pulling less air with it because it's a
solid stream, smooth bore. So that aspect in and of itself,

(30:56):
right not. And then that's that's where we
get into more art than science. OK.
So there's there's actions that the nozzle person can take on
the end of the nozzle. If I whip a smooth bore as fast
as I possibly can in a circle, I'm going to entrain a lot of
air with it. If I slowly progressively cool
the ceiling and the walls without aggressive fast movement

(31:19):
of that nozzle, I'm going to entrain less air.
So that's where you get into themore artistic aspect of how are
how are you applying your water and are you doing it the right
way for what you want to do. If you're trying to move smoke
and you whip it around fast and that's your goal and purpose
that you're doing the right thing.
If you're trying not to add air to the fire, then slow,

(31:40):
deliberate movements is the right choice there.
So that comes with knowledge, training, experience and
identifying what that fire is doing goes into smoke reading,
you know, flow pass, all that stuff.
So this is all-encompassing, andit all blows down to how how
good of a firefighter do you want to be, right?

(32:00):
Hopefully the best. Hopefully the best.
If they're listening to this show, probably they want to be
the best, but we'd be lying if we said every guy on every
department wants to be the best firefighter.
Every every department has a percentage of months, 100%, and
the bigger the departments the more months they have.
So obviously the people listening, I encourage go learn
as much as you can about all these aspects.
Smoke reading, flow pass, nozzlework.

(32:24):
Find out. Either do it yourself, watch
YouTube if that if that's what you have access to, or take
classes where you're flowing water actively and when you get
on shift, ask your crew if you guys can go train and actually
flow water actively. And whether it's a training
tower or just out in the street,if that's all you got, do what
you can. Get used to it, get comfortable
with it, make it something that's muscle memory for you.

(32:47):
Now, when it comes down to I just want to since you were
talking about the fog nozzle andsmooth bore, you probably made
smooth bore. Mafia guys freaking they got
hard ONS right now they're like yeah, like preach it.
But I agree with you too. But it's funny.
So the department you work for, you have combination, you, you
have fog nozzles I guess you would call it, right, a

(33:09):
combination nozzle that you can actually spin the tip off and
then becomes a smooth bore. Yeah, I call it a smooth bore
with a fog attachment. I don't know if that's accurate.
That's what I like to call. It I like that because it's it's
yeah, I just don't know what to call them.
I always just call them, hey, grab the one with the orange,
you know, the orange tip. It's but so I was an RTO for the

(33:30):
last class here in the department that we both work for
and it was the first time one ofthe kids to taking that nozzle
into a burn building without thefog tip on there and then was
asked or told to hydraulically ventilate and literally was
never taught what to do right. And in his own brain, this is a

(33:52):
brand new guy. He's probably week 6, you know,
so almost halfway through the Academy, it was just like, oh
crap, I don't know what to do. And what he decides to do is he
starts closing the bail, right? And then realizes as he's
closing the bail a little bit, the pattern, right, he became
disrupted and started moving a shit ton of air.
Yep, right. And then he just held it there

(34:12):
and I'm like, and then he comes out and tells me, Hey, cap,
right, Like I didn't know what to do and I did this and it
worked. I mean.
He's like, did I just invent something?
And I'm like, well, good, dude. We hadn't had a chance to train
you on that yet, but I'm like, that's exactly what you.
Yeah. Exactly, you could do that or
open it full bore and like I said, whip it in a tight circle
out the window as fast as you can.
Both of those will entrain air. And again, to me, and this is

(34:35):
personal, you know, opinion, right?
To me, hydraulically ventilatingis kind of low down my priority
list. I'm not going to fight the whole
fire with a fog nozzle on in case I need to hydraulically
ventilate at some point. No, correct.
Because again, we hydraulically ventilate when either we've been
able to compartmentalize that fire or we have fire control.
And now we're trying to evacuatethat smoke to complete that

(34:57):
secondary, you know, surgery or,or assist the cruise with the
primary because we're able to get a quick knock on the on the
job, but they whip it out. Yeah.
So we're not hydraulically vent.That's not a high priority.
I agree with you on that one. And it's, it's funny too,
because I didn't know this till just a couple months ago.
And I was reading an article andthey were talking about fog
nozzles. And I used to be a huge fan.

(35:19):
I mean, it's just because I grewup with fog nozzles back east
and then we eventually transitioned.
But initially that's all I knew.So that's what I preferred
obviously, like all of us do. And I found out the history of a
fog nozzle and I had no idea. But it was actually meant for
shipboard firefighting. I don't know if I don't know if
you if you knew that you heard that, great.
It's because the idea behind it was, is obviously ships are

(35:40):
watertight, right? So you can close every single
door and they could open a hatchand literally convert that
entire space, but nobody's in there, right?
It was never meant for interior firefighting, but we just
adopted it because like everything else, a pigheaded axe
was a marine tool at first too. And then the, you know, back in
the day when the fire service started, we just got hand me
downs of everything and said here, there you go, make it

(36:02):
work. And then it became a tradition.
Then we made it work and we figured out other things.
You know, the halogen bar was invented by a thief and then a
fireman altered it. And you know, like it's crazy,
but like you like, you never know.
And like, you start telling these guys these things like
that a smooth board nozzle was meant for interior firefighting,
you know, but 90% of fire departments use something that's

(36:22):
meant for shit board firefighting.
It's crazy. Yeah.
I mean, like, for the guys that don't know that, just think
about that, right. And then the advantages of being
able to maybe get a, a nozzle like Sean has access to or maybe
just being able to experiment ortry out smooth boring and with
your department and kind of go from there because bigger water
droplets, right, a rapid cooling, you don't disturb that

(36:44):
thermal layer as much. I mean, there's, there's a ton
of benefits. Obviously there are benefits for
both, but. Yeah.
And and we can talk about other,other lines, right.
So our interior entrance recorder, bread and butter,
right? Everybody's comfortable with
that. A big part of 0 impact in the
class is getting people comfortable with the 2 1/2,

(37:04):
right? When I came on that, that 2 1/2
had a fog nozzle on it. It was just a souped up version
of the Engine three quarter. I never met anybody who liked
it. I don't think I ever saw anybody
pull it the way it was set up for actual fire attack.
Outside of the training. Yeah, we would just pull more
into 3/4 even if it justified itjust pull more into the toe is

(37:26):
the last line on the truck then maybe it got pulled right and
they're not happy about it. So we've changed a lot since
I've been here and we've had a smooth bore on the 2 1/2 for a
long time, right? That, that tool in the toolbox,
right? That's, that's bigger
ammunition, that's a bigger caliber weapon, if you want to

(37:46):
call it that, that we have access to.
Guys aren't comfortable pulling it generally, right?
It's takes more work, effort, maybe especially without proper
technique. And there's new, new to me, new
to the fire service, if we're talking the last 10 years,
techniques, skills, all involving using the 2 1/2 and
getting comfortable with it. And when we teach that class, I

(38:09):
think a lot of people come in ofthat old school mentality
background of not using it, not pulling it, not liking it.
And we will take the smallest person in that class weight
wise, and they will manhandle that line and pull it, advance
it by themselves and flow minutes and minutes and minutes
at a time with zero energy and put lots of water on fire,

(38:31):
right? So it's all about
comfortability. Once you do it once, you're
comfortable with it. Now that tool's in your toolbox
and when to use it, right? When does your fire load justify
it? I use that quick National Fire
Academy fire flow formula, right?
But I just do a dirty kind of streets version of it, right?
So it's your fire involved spacelength times width, right?

(38:54):
So square footage. So just guess on the square
footage, how much is a fire involved?
And it's that divided by three is your GPM that you need for
that amount of fire or I just multiply each house load by
three, right? So like our two and a half 300
GPM. So it can handle 900 square feet
of fire. So if we have roughly 900 square

(39:16):
feet or less than that's the line we're going to.
And you know, the orange and 3/4roughly 480I round up to 500
square feet right of fire. So if it's a bedroom or two
engine 3/4 great, that'll handleit.
But if it's an entire like stripmall occupancy or an entire
apartment is fully involved, extending to the next apartment,

(39:38):
that engine 3/4 going to do something, but not it's not
going to handle it. You're going to need another one
or another 2 1/2 to back you up to finally put that fire out.
So I'm a believer in pulling theright line as far as you're
comfortable with to, to accomplish the task.
So the two and a half for me is it's an easy decision.
If we pull up and we have enoughfire to justify it, that's what

(40:00):
we're going with. And better to have too, too much
than not enough, right? Same with cooking.
I have more food than not enoughfood.
So I'm going to bring that. And hopefully I'm with guys that
are comfortable with it. I'm a roving captain, so.
Comfortability levels vary greatly, so any opportunity we
can have to train or just get this knowledge out there and
training out there to more people to make it more

(40:22):
comfortable, we're going to havemore success on more fires
throughout the shifts throughoutthe cities.
You know, it's my philosophy on it.
So for the for the guys listening to have slightly less
progressive fire departments right now, when it comes down to
different types of hose loads and nozzles and and things like
that. Outside of the technique,
because we it's hard to talk about technique about seeing it

(40:44):
right. And in in all reality, the 0
impact period class or if you find a class anywhere close to
you, you need to go. It is it is valuable 100%.
And the only way you can really learn these tactics that cab
science talk about right now is to actually physically do them.
So outside of the technique of the deuce in half, is there

(41:04):
equipment that guys need to think about replacing to be able
to do that single man flow? I would.
Is it a? Hose, is it a knob?
Is it or is it? Is it the deployment I mean?
You know there's ideal obviouslyideal would be a modern
smoothbore nozzle with correct hose, right?
I try and we need to think aboutI've had a hose Rep talk to us

(41:26):
and he made it made perfect sense, right?
You can't just switch your nozzle without switching your
hose, right? My organization, no fault to
them. It's they didn't know what
they're doing at the time made that mistake, right.
It's like putting the wrong caliber barrel on a rifle,
right? It's not going to work, right.
So it worked. I mean, shoot, we've been we did
it for a very long time and fires went out like you said.

(41:48):
But kinking is going to be if you have high pressure hose and
a low pressure nozzle, kinking is going to be a huge your
problem. It's going to want to kink way
more often than when you had high pressure nozzles.
So it's a package deal. Get the correct hose for the
correct nozzle, which for me would be a low pressure hose and
a low pressure smoothbore nozzle.
And then it comes down to hose load, I think is the most

(42:10):
effective there. And I'm a big fan of the
Minuteman. Again, opinion, right?
But shoulder loads in general, big fan because I've been on
countless fires where it's not astraight open roadway like it
was for us in the Academy or a burn tower with no nothing out
front, wide open concrete. You go into the rooms, there

(42:31):
might be like one or two couches, not a lot of obstacles,
right? So when we're getting into these
yards that have pony walls, trees, fences, shrubs around the
front door or we're going double.
Parked cars in the street. Double parked cars or we're
going around the back of the house right for a patio fire.
It's in the back of the house and the side yard is just scraps

(42:53):
of metal and broken down lawn mowers and bicycles taking apart
and there are other vehicles parked back there.
Dragging a flat load, swim, stab, grab through there is a
nightmare. It gets caught on things.
You're dragging a bunch of loops, having the load on your
shoulder, flaking off and landing on whatever it lands on
and then charging it afterwards.You get to the end.

(43:15):
It's so much faster. It's it's night and day
difference for real world real scenarios.
So for me it's it's an obvious best hose load I'm open to.
If anyone has a better one they want to show me that works
better in those scenarios I'm open.
But so far comparing it to all the things I've seen, it's it's
it's a go to. And that's your, your, you guys

(43:38):
have the deuce and 1/2 as a minuteman then.
Yeah, Correct. OK, yeah.
So what do you feel like? This is, again, my personal
opinion and I, I feel like you probably resonate on it too, but
I want you to kind of elaborate on on how you feel about it.
A lot of guys in a lot of departments, not here but well
here too, but everywhere across the country, they're like, hey,

(44:00):
we all want the same hose load, for example.
So say you have OK department, you work for 9 stations.
OK, super busy city. You guys run a ton of fire.
And the idea behind it is every truck is set up identical,
right? So that way you just said you're
roving Captain, if you Rove froma north station to a South

(44:22):
station, in theory that engine is going to set be set up
identical to the one up north. I personally don't believe that
that should be the case because not only should you have hose
loads per the city or county or district, whatever you work for,
but then also your first do because what whatever works in.
So the city that you work in theSouth section of your city is

(44:46):
ghetto. That's what we won't even
sugarcoat it. Lower socioeconomic.
Hey, dude, I love the wordsmith.And on that one, that was way
more politically correct than me.
And then the up or the north section of the city is your blue
to white collar typically, right?
Your your upper echelon, your 3 to 4:00 to 5:00 to $600,000
houses with yards more property,everything like that.

(45:10):
So obviously a hose load that you were talking about where you
can drag up north where you havea lot of property might work
compared to down South where youhave those double parked cars,
you have the lawn mowers, the homeowner, the homeowner has,
like you said, the, you know, all the other stuff, right?
Storage, excessive storage. You'd need to be a PIO.

(45:30):
I'll tell you what. No, no, not a chance.
And so I'm, I'm a firm believer that every truck should be set
up for their due. But the kickback to that right
is, well, then how do when, whenguys Rove well, how they going
to know how they got to pull more?
Even better in a system that youwork in, you're, you run with
other cities and now other cities are coming into your

(45:53):
first do to assist you on your fire.
And the kickback is, well, how are they going to know how to
pull your line? So what's, what's your outlook?
But more importantly, what is your?
What's your? What's this?
What is your opinion? How to solve that problem?
So I agree with you, perfect world right?
We would cater our trucks to their response area in a perfect

(46:17):
world. And also in that perfect world,
your same crew would be working with you every day.
Every fire you get would be withthe people you train with in for
the last. 25 years. Yeah.
And that is not the world we live in.
So I get it from an administrative perspective and
the reality of being a roving captain and a roving department
where I don't think I've had thesame people on a crew in months,

(46:40):
right? So that's always changing.
So how do you accomplish that? You train the entire department
on all the hose loads proficiency.
The captains and battalion chiefs hold people accountable
to training often. That's how you make sure
everyone's proficient with all different hose loads.
Then in a perfect world, right, The three captains, right, We

(47:03):
have 3 shifts. We have 4 shifts, 4 captains
agree on what they want on theirtruck and they can choose from
all the hose loads that the entire department's trained on
and customize their truck to what they need.
Where are they seeing the most fires?
What types of fires are they fighting the most?
What's going to be the best hoselines that have preconnected
versus dead loads? Do they make long stretches

(47:26):
often? Do they need longer attack
lines? Do they have a lot of shorter
stretches where extra hose is more of a hindrance than than a
benefit on some of their loads? So that would be, yeah, perfect
world scenario. That's what I would say.
How you solve that? Train everyone on everything to
a proficiency level, give the captains of freedom to customize
their truck to the first do in agreeance with everyone else who
works on that truck. And that would be the goal when

(47:48):
it comes to the outside city thing that's out of I think
everybody's control. And what I say to that when I
hear that argument is they've never asked us when they change
their hose loads. I've pulled up to many other
cities trucks and I've never seen their type of hose load
before and that they didn't care.
Do you know, I made it work, I did my best, figured it out.
And that's just the reality of the situation.

(48:10):
Your truck is your truck. You're the 1st in company.
You want it set up to where you can make the biggest impact, the
2nd, 3rd, 4th in company. They're not going to be making
as big of an impact if they havesome struggles with your hose
load. But it saved you time on that
zero impact period. To me, that's worth it.
Copy. You know, The funny thing is
too, there's a lot of departments across the country,

(48:30):
especially back east where theircombination department, so their
career and volunteer all runningtogether in the same county or
city or whatever the case might be.
And a lot of those trucks and myopinion, I wish we would go this
direction also, they will have at least one line off the rear
that's an inch and three quarters, that's three to 400

(48:51):
feet long. And the idea behind that is, is
no matter where they park, right, if they get an
assignment, hey, pull second line or back up the interior
crew or do targeted search around the rear, whatever it is,
if they're pulling an attack line, they're pulling theirs.
And because it's 3 to 400 feet, you know, most of them are doing
354 hundreds, right? They can get wherever they need
to get. But if they don't need all that,
they can, you know, DC pull another line, whatever the case

(49:13):
might be. What do you think about?
I'm just curious, what do you? Think I haven't actually heard
of that before. That's interesting.
Tactics wise, obviously it woulddepend on like assignment,
right? If you get told to pull a line
off their truck, then you shouldprobably do that.
But yeah, I mean, that's that's that's neat.
I mean, just just, I mean, just to kind of throw that out there
and, and I there's a couple reasons why departments do that.

(49:36):
Most of the time it's a old school, the competition thing
where it's like, hey, I'm going to stretch my line because my
line is going to beat your line.But I'm not even going to lie, I
don't hate on that at all actually.
I actually love that because thecompetitiveness, as long as it
doesn't impede our professionalism on scene, I'm in
1000%. But yeah, I don't know.

(49:59):
I was just kind of thinking thatthat might be an option.
We could, we could entertain oneday, you know, like go go on
long lines instead of, you know,our long.
What's your longest line on yourtruck right now?
Well, which truck? Yeah, we're in transition.
So some trucks have a dead loaded Glendale load, right,

(50:20):
Which is basically a pre made horizontal standpipe.
Not a fan of that 1/4. What's your longest inch through
quarter? 200 Preconnect. 200 preconnect,
you can always go long off of that, you know, again, just a
benefit of maybe having a line that's already preconnected,
yes, double that length. And you, you brought up a good
point I haven't talked about yet.
So going long right and we'll get back to that 2 1/2.

(50:40):
So we got a lot of big apartmentcomplexes and the dudes I've
worked in mostly and our as a set crew when I was a backseat
guy, we had a set game plan for if we're on the interior side,
right, that big courtyard area of a three four story apartment
complex and we do have blowing fire or just a good header.
We're going to pull that 2 1/2 first because that gives us the

(51:03):
option to hit it from the courtyard and make an effect and
end that zero impact period. While the other guy with what we
call high rise packs, which are just shoulder load bundles of
inch and three quarter can go upthe stairs, get to the floor
that the fire's on, drop the hose down.
Meanwhile, water's flowing on the fire already.
So that zero impact period's taken care of.

(51:25):
Now when we get a good knock down and then the nozzle guys
set up with his high rise packs,we advance that 2 1/2 forward.
We spin the tip off the threads are the same for the tip as they
are for the engine three quarterand just attach the high rise
pack, charge it with a handle. You know the bail becomes a gate
at that point. Charge it and back them up go
interior. So that that was our game plan

(51:47):
for any fires that justified going in a long stretch, right?
And the other nice thing about like you were talking, if, if
you chose to, you know, pull that deuce in half for that
apartment complex from the gecko, you could even attach
that gated Y to the Yeah. You could if you like and then
this again opinion. I'm not a big gated Y guy but it
always bothered me when I was doing engineer stuff, acting

(52:10):
engineer stuff and doing hydraulics.
On paper, it sounds great. In real life, when you have two
lines shutting down and opening up at different times and doing
your friction loss right, the pressure is going to vary
between those. 2. Yeah.
So the pressure is going to varyfor those guys.
You're never going to give them a perfect pump pressure for that
line. So I was never a huge gated Y

(52:33):
fan. And then you have a single point
of failure for two hand lines interior of a fire, right?
If I go long off 2 lines, right?Like you said, I have two
discharges. So let's say one of the lines
bust, which has happened to me before, and that hose line blows
a coupling off and now it's dead.
Now you don't have two crews interior that are in trouble.
The other line can protect the other crew while they get out

(52:56):
'cause now they have a dead hoseline, right?
So for me it's also a safety thing.
Not a big fan of the gated Y unless it's a high and you got a
standpipe right into a hook. In 2 inch and three quarters
that's a perfect place. We keep it on our high rise
packs for that reason. So high rise mid rise fires
where we have sandpipes. Great option.
Not against it entirely, but on a hose line that gets pulled

(53:19):
into a apartment complex or something.
Not not my preferred. Right, what do you before we get
to wrapping up this episode, we've been and scrapping now for
almost an hour before we get to the questions for Season 1.
Just a question for you, right? So what?

(53:41):
What hose deployment do you personally struggle with the
most? Struggle with yeah.
Or feel the least comfortable with.
Oh, I would say it's got to be that dead load, that dead loaded
preconnect, dead loaded pre madehorizontal standpipe is just

(54:02):
doesn't ever go as smoothly and quickly as I think it was
designed to, which is because itdoesn't get trained on as much.
But yeah, I mean, with with whatwe carry, that one's the worst.
But I would say it gets pulled so, so not often.
That's not a big problem. I'd say the flat loaded engine
three quarter cross lace with the swim stab grab are just to

(54:27):
me because and that's because I have so much experience with
better hose loads. It drives me nuts.
Like I've seen it and just get messed up so many times.
It's been it's been the source of fires not going well, you
know, and and to the untrained eye, that fire probably went as
good as it could have. But then once you know, kind of,

(54:49):
I hate to say it this way, but once you know better, you're
like, you're blaming the hose load.
If we didn't have that load, this fire would have got a lot
better. If, if the people pulling it
were trained and efficient on a better hose load, this fire
could have gone differently. And that's what kind of eats me
on those ones. So I have AI, that's my least
favorite and that's it. Unfortunately, it's what we run

(55:11):
as a standard for the place I work, which is what it is.
And you got to train with what you've given.
I just hope with knowledge increasing and training and we
can kind of slowly and it's a slow progression to train.
I just a touch on the the Minuteman that I like a lot.
There's so many ways to deploy it.
And once you learn those ways, whether it's the accordion

(55:32):
forward V split coils, and then you can work some of those from
the shoulder. Once you get comfortable doing
it off the shoulder, you can start doing it from the shoulder
to where it's so fast and efficient and it basically sets
up your attack oversupply for you.
Takes like one second to throw the hose over the other hose to
make it perfect. And that's obviously through a

(55:54):
lot of terms out there. That's for hands on learning.
You're not going to get that from a podcast.
But once you get all that down and all that's trained on now
your versatility with the same hose load, you have so many
options. You don't really have any
options with the flat load. So, so with that, and it's funny
because I'm, I'm writing questions and notes as we're

(56:15):
talking, right? And then one of the questions,
and he had answered it twice already, unfortunately, you
know, your, what's your favorite, what's your preferred
hose load? And then why?
I just want to tell you a quick story.
So you know, the Academy here and these kids pull that dead
load, that flat load thousands of times while they're here.

(56:35):
I mean, so many freaking times where I'm sure they're pulling
in their sleep. I mean, we went to the same
Academy. It's just non-stop hose pulling
over and over and over and over again.
The crazy thing is. So how long is that class that
you you guys teach? So that's three days of working
all day. OK, SO3 solid days of not just

(56:56):
pulling the hose though, but that's flowing water, all that
hose lime, I mean everything that we've talked about and a
lot more that you would actuallyhave to go to the class of it
physically see and experience and everything else.
So in the Academy here, they go through that class.
So they go through those three days, but that doesn't count for
the 13 weeks of pole flat, right?

(57:18):
So now with that said, at the very end of the Academy, they
get to do functionals with real live fire and they get to do it
in front of their families, right?
And they get to come down at night and it's, it's towards the
very end. Guess we had a truck pull in,
right, one of one of our trucks and it has minutemans on the
cross loads, right? The kids have been taught right

(57:40):
from you about the minuteman, how to deploy and everything
else. But did it for three days out of
a 16 week Academy. Guess which way they wanted to
pull it shoulder load the minuteman and then guess how
efficient they were very and that was three days of pulling
one hose lodge compared to 16 weeks of the other.
Like they just. To me that just proves that even

(58:03):
the lowest trained fireman realizes that's a more
effective. Line.
It's easy. It's not complicated.
You can. There are complicated ways to
learn some advanced skills with it, but for a basic just to pull
it, it's as easy as it could be.Put it on your shoulder and go.
And go right, clear the bed and if not your, your engineer
hopefully does it for you if youforget that much.

(58:24):
Got it. All right, so we're before we
get to the questions, anything you want to add?
I know this. Yeah, I really, and I kind of
touched on it earlier, but really it's just it all boils
down to like personal motivation.
That's what it really is. If you're on an engine often and

(58:44):
you want to be the best firefighter you can be, you got
to go learn new things. It's it's on you to me.
I spent some years waiting for the department to teach me the
latest and greatest and then found from other mentors and
examples to go out and find classes and learn from people

(59:04):
from other, you know, all aroundthe country and learn what the
real latest and greatest it is. Because it takes so long for
established city fire departments to adopt the latest
and greatest stuff. It's much faster if we go out
and and also who's going to teach it?
If you got a core group of people that have gone out on
their own to learn this stuff and they train and practice with

(59:27):
their crews, they're your instructors, like now, it makes
it that much easier and speeds up the process of change so much
faster than if one chief finallyhears about something and now
he's got to figure out how to send enough people to go learn
it. They got to get comfortable with
it. If you already have people who
are eager and willing to learn. And that's kind of the seat that

(59:48):
I was put in is just following the footsteps of people that
came before me to go learn new stuff and get better on my own
by my own dollar, my own time off, my own motivation to go get
better at this job. Because to me it was important
enough. And hopefully everyone
listening, it's important enoughto do that.
And I know life gets in the way,but you know, a couple times a

(01:00:10):
year, if you can find a local class to take that costs, you
know, maybe a couple 100 bucks tops, I don't know that's worth
it, man. It's worth the investment.
It's worth the difference that you're going to make on the fire
ground. And I just want to say one quick
thing, one of my favorite quotesand I said it last time we
talked, Chief Mike Walker in theFDIC speech he did, he said the

(01:00:35):
minimum standard is one small step above inadequate.
And that rang really loud for mebecause my whole career the
minimum standard was like the standard, right?
If you can make the basic hose pulls, you can make the basic
turn out time. You're good.

(01:00:57):
Go sit in the recliner. You made it right?
And then when you find out like,hey, that's one barely baby step
above not being able to do your job at all.
And you think about where you'reat and that's where you're at as
a minimum standard. It's a little wake up call.
It was for me like I got to get I got to get better at all this
and no one's going to set a minimum standard high enough for

(01:01:21):
me. Like a department's never going
to say, hey, you need to know this, this, this, this would be
at this speed super fast right times.
I'm going to set that standard higher and I hope everyone
listens, going to set that standard higher for themselves
and their department ever will make their own minimum standard
and just keep raising that bar, keep training, keep learning,

(01:01:41):
keep getting better. Dude, I, I love it.
And just to echo what Captain Science said over here, if you
want to be the best or even justget better, right, you have to
go outside your fire department,period.
The end. I don't care if you work for New
York City fire, I guarantee if you go to Podunk, wherever, you
can learn something on a residential fire that you did

(01:02:04):
not know and vice versa, right? So no matter what you do, go
outside your department, right, and learn something new, then
bring it back to the guys, right?
Train them up, teach them up. And if it doesn't work for your
system, it doesn't work for yoursystem.
No big deal. But guess what?
You you have a new slideshow in your brain for that once in a
blue moon call. You're like, oh shit, I know

(01:02:24):
what to do, right where everyoneelse is like, fuck, I haven't
come across this. And you just happened to be the
guy that day. You know, then now you're now
you're fucking stud. So that's we all want to be.
We're not, we're not going to fucking lie.
We all want to be the fucking stud and fireground.
At least I do. That's right.
Alright, brother, well, listen, I I freaking really appreciate
your time sitting down. I do want to do a little

(01:02:46):
shameless plug. So just to go off of since we
just talked about it, right, Go outside your fire department.
If listen, I understand if you're new on the job, you don't
get paid shit, right? We've, me and Sean have been on
the job long enough where we're finally starting to make a
living, right, and promoted enough where we're making a
living. But trust me, we understand that
it takes a long time to get, especially in this profession to

(01:03:08):
start making a decent amount of money where you can start taking
vacations or, or going to see these outside training
facilities. If you don't have those
opportunities. This show exists because of
Copper State Fools. So if you're here in the state
of Arizona, right, reach out to us.
We have we're all over social media.
You can reach out to myself on the podcast Instagram or Copper

(01:03:30):
State Fools on Instagram and Facebook.
We're more than happy to train you up.
We meet quarterly. If you don't live around here, I
guarantee you there's a fool's chapter in your state somewhere.
If not multiple fools chapters. Hit up those guys.
They're like minded individuals.They'll get you up to speed and
there might even be an opportunity that they know about
in that area that can get you tosome of these classes.

(01:03:52):
So please, please, please reach outside your department, join
one of these Infinity groups, right?
Become a become a badass fireman, right?
Just honor the guys that came before us.
But more importantly, make it better for the guys that are
coming just on the job right now, right?
So they're super aggressive, proficient, effective fireman.
All right, so with me getting off my soapbox here, let's get

(01:04:15):
into the questions for Season 1,brother.
All right, all right, so why thewhy, right?
We asked this for everything. We asked this for new guys
trying to get on the job. We asked this for guys on the
job trying to do another job, right?
But the why? Why did Sean sign join the fire
service? Yeah, man, that one's easy for
me. So my dad was a firefighter for
the department I work for. He was a backseat be a less

(01:04:38):
ladder firefighter, right? We're getting much shout out.
Max I the the the coolest guy, the best fireman I've ever met
in my entire life. I'm sorry, continued.
Going, he's the best by far. But anyway, so yeah, yeah, I'm
just growing up. Always looked up to him.
Then someday, you know, when you, you know, get out of high
school, try and figure out what the heck you're going to do and

(01:04:59):
bounce around with ideas. You know, I knew his job was
awesome, but I thought, I thought I wasn't, you know,
manly enough to do it. I'll just say it, man.
Like, he's the epitome of a man.If you just picture one in your
head, that's what he looks like.A lot shorter, smaller stature,
you know. All all true.
So, yeah, so I assumed, you know, you got to be like him to

(01:05:20):
do that job. But you know, then I started
taking classes and realizing, you know, there's a diverse job.
There's, you know, we need big guys, we need small guys, we
need women, we need men, whole thing.
So started doing it, loved it immediately like taking classes
and actually interested in school for like the first time
in my life, right? I wasn't bored to death.

(01:05:41):
I was awake. I was like this is cool.
So it was after that it was a done deal.
Man, I loved it from day one. I've loved it every day since.
How old were you when you were like, shit, I could do this?
Job, I was like 20, yeah, it took me a couple years after
high school to really kind of settle in and.
What'd you do before that? Just odd jobs lurking, serving,

(01:06:01):
you know, restaurants, retail, all the the normal stuff and
wash dishes got you all that stuff.
Cool. So and then you never looked
back, did you? Look at you now fucking over 10
years on the job, Captain, You know that you doing doing great,
great, great things. All right, so we did the Y, so
let's now do The Who. So who's been It doesn't have to

(01:06:22):
be a fireman. It can be, right?
Who's been the most influential person so far in your fire
service career? Yeah, that one, that one's got
to be my wife. It's close between my dad and my
wife. Obviously you already gave props
to your dad. Let's let's hit an old lady.
Yeah, my wife, she's also a firefighter.
We met doing some technical rescue training.
That's where I met her at. And since then and it's been,

(01:06:44):
it's been amazing. She's she's inspired me to her
attitude is exactly what we're talking about.
She was always trying to go out to outside trainings.
Like we the first things I thinkwe went to, we went to the
wildland Academy, right? Originally I didn't have a lot
of knowledge or interest in wildland.
Sorry, taking classes there withher.

(01:07:05):
We don't even have a wildland program anymore.
And I still kept taking wildlandclasses because, like you said
earlier, you know, you learn something, you learn good stuff.
You might be able to apply some.But hey, more knowledge is
always good. But yeah, she pushed me.
And then it's awesome to be ableto do that together.
We have a interesting perspective, man, being we're

(01:07:25):
both, you know, spouses of someone in the fire service and
in it ourselves. There's a lot of dynamics there
with the family. But it's been amazing.
She's pushed me. You know, if it wasn't for her,
I doubt I'd be a captain now, you know what I mean?
It's kind of the this, the mentality and the amount of
training and extra stuff we did together and how much we nerd

(01:07:45):
out and talk about stuff like this, you know, just in the
house, you know, that just that just keeps that fire going.
And me and I'm always raising the bar.
She's always raising the bar forher and me.
It's she's, she's the best. Got a shout out to her.
That's awesome. So it's basically your best
friend who happens to be your wife and she's on the freaking
job. So triple, triple threat right

(01:08:07):
there. That's dude, that's awesome.
Not a lot of guys can say that. All right, So what about
tradition wise? So what is you?
You said something earlier, so I'm curious if it's going to be
the same. What's your favorite fire
department tradition? Yeah, man, I first of all, I
just want to say I the fact thatthis this career has tradition
is amazing. It's it's got to be just that

(01:08:29):
aspect is my favorite, one of myfavorite things about this job.
Yeah, fighting fire is amazing. It's fun, everything's cool.
But just the tradition of carrying on like a legacy of
guys that came before you over, you know, long periods of time
and things that have survived and continue.
It's just so cool, man. And I think that the whole my

(01:08:49):
favorite thing is like the probation thing.
And it's not just, you know, because a, there's a
probationary period with the city.
It's where you learn everything.It's where you learn traits and
skills, whether it's, you know, you might be just cleaning
bathrooms, but it's the aspect of being responsible and
expected to do a list of duties and that you can prove that,

(01:09:14):
hey, I can be trusted by the guys and girls.
I can be accounted on to get stuff done when it comes to the
big stuff, right? You know, whether it's just
checking off equipment every dayover the course of your career,
if you're successful on probation and you learn what
you're supposed to on probation and you're accepted by the
department you with and you become one of the guys, right?

(01:09:37):
Whether you're male or female, when you're one of the guys
after probation, that's like, it's the best feeling.
Like personally going through itand I've carried those lessons
with me throughout my career. It doesn't really end that the
mentality you build in probation, the official label
ends, right? Being the low man on the truck

(01:09:58):
ends, but the mentality of hey, this stuff's important.
Why is it important? Trust, accountability, you know,
work ethic, all those things. Just it builds.
It builds the right person for the job.
Dude, I love it. So you're only the second guy to
say that answer. First one was actually season
one with Kevin or episode 1. Excuse me, with Kevin Weiss.

(01:10:20):
I love that guy. Yeah, he's a freaking solid
fireman. And he president of Copper State
Fools, by the way, he. Was one of our probation guy.
He's just my. Favorite.
Yeah. Wait, wait.
Before, before we go on, how washe on probation?
He was amazing. Should I do a funny story?
Yeah, I would love it. How am I get in trouble for
this? Let's go for it.
So I've lied, right? We have this grease trap at the

(01:10:43):
station we were at, right? The flat top girl goes in a
grease trap. And I lied to him.
I said, hey, man, just so you know, it's, it's kind of a
probation tradition. The booters got to got to drink
some of the grease from the grease before I could even
finish. Yeah, before I could even
finish, he dips his finger in there and and eats the grease
from the grease trap. And I was immediately like, I

(01:11:05):
was kidding, dude. I was going to tell you I was
kidding. Fucking great Firebird right
there. I'll tell you what.
At right then, that's what I knew he was.
He was a great hire man. We're lucky to have him.
Yes, we are. That's that's I've never heard
that story. That's and I've known Kevin
since he's been hired. That's freaking amazing.
All right, so the the last question, my favorite question

(01:11:27):
of the season. So if you could snap your
fingers, right with no freaking sweat equity solved right now,
right? Something changes in the fire
service. So something goes away.
Something gets better. It doesn't.
It doesn't matter if you could snap your finger that one wish,
what would you do? Change.
Do implement whatever the case might be for the fire service?

(01:11:49):
Yeah, man, since we're talking, you know, hypothetical, it would
be complacency. I think that's where we all
struggle with that daily, everyday, every shifts battle
with complacency, right? It's like, and it's sneaky,
right? It's something you forget to
check. It's a it's a memory thing,
right? I forgot to check that often.

(01:12:10):
That's the day you get the call or that thing matters, whatever
it may be. And you know you're you're going
to it's going to eat you up inside, But also it's how we get
hurt or injured or have issues down the line or and then you
can expand that to training, right?
Complacent, not training and then the fire comes along where
you really could have made a difference.
Or, you know, even where something happens at you or your

(01:12:32):
crew and the fact that you haven't trained and haven't been
active and you've been kind of complacent through your career.
That's, that's what's really biting us in the ass over time
and that's what's causing issues.
I think you could magically fix that, which would be amazing.
And we'd be. We'd be set.
Yeah. And I mean, that's that's
obviously across the country. And it's it's funny because you

(01:12:53):
look on social media on fire department stuff, but even I see
it even more in say like gym memes and workout memes and
stuff like that. It was always like the big push
now is comfort kills, right? And basically they say comfort
is. 100% man. The gateway to complacency.
Because it's easy to say, you know, like, man, I I don't, I

(01:13:16):
was doing a lot around the houseyesterday, you know, I'm not
dude, we're not going to train today.
We're just, hey, I'm here just to run calls, you know?
And then of course, like you're saying, that's probably the day,
you know, or like, hey, man, I'm, I forgot, I forgot to check
my air pack. I'm sure it's fine.
Yeah, right. And that's a big one, man, I
guess. What?
You're the captain, right? And your pack is Bluetooth to
your radio and all of a sudden now you can't communicate on the
radio. Now you got to have your fireman

(01:13:37):
do it for you. You're like fuck me.
Or the radio's got switched. Now you got someone else's
radio. Now every time you key up,
you're hearing. You're hearing the breed.
Yeah, exactly. Little stuff, man, Little stuff.
But you, you said it, man. Comfort kills.
We all have those people in our departments, wherever you work
that are punching a clock. It's a job to them, right?

(01:13:58):
It's just, hey, I go there, I make the money, but what I
really want to do is outside. And you're never going to get
rid of those people, but you canmake them the minority and you
can make them uncomfortable enough where they have to raise
their standard a little bit to hang with the rest.
And it's really a cultural battle, right?
Like you got the top 10% in the bottom 10% and everyone in the

(01:14:20):
middle's up for grabs. We're trying to capture as many
people as we can and bring them.Yeah, all those, all those
middle guys, right? That's the key to success for
sure. Cool.
All right, well, listen. Thanks, brother.
This is a great way to end this episode, dude.
Again, I appreciate your time. And if you guys want to know any
more about 0 impact period, justa Google search will find a

(01:14:43):
class near you, right? Give a shout out to the
gentleman, the chief that runs it out here.
Oh, OK. So Chief Slayer, Chief Chris
Slayer from Mesa Fire, he was kind of developed this class out
here pulling knowledge from Aaron Fields from Seattle, who
kind of made the first Nozzle Forward classes and compiling,

(01:15:04):
combining things. Captain Coulson teaches forcible
entry, all that stuff. And you know, the class might
have a different name. Just look into what the classes
are. There's tactical hose line
management, there's there's a lot of names to call it.
If you can take Nozzle forward from Aaron Fields or any of his
affiliates and do it, all that stuff, man, that's good stuff.
Just get out there, look up classes, look up all these

(01:15:26):
influential people that are pushing good things.
Cool. All right, Melissa and I
appreciate your time. I appreciate you being a member
of the Copper State fools. And dude, your future's bright
and I would love to get you on this episode again when you
decide to make Battalion. Oh no.
Yeah, he said. He also was always gonna be a
back step fireman too, so we'll see.
All right. Well, anyway, thank you guys.

(01:15:48):
Sean, thank you again for your time.
Thank you brother. And we'll catch you guys in two
more weeks. Have a good one.
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.