Episode 345: The Best of The Bravest: Division Chief Jay Swithers (Volume 64)

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
You're listening to the Bike Did You Even podcast hosted
by media personality and consultant Mike Glow, you were listening

(01:02):
to the best of the bravest interviews with the fdny's
a week time we've done back to back a fd
Andy shows. Now, of course Fridays was an fd Andy show.
Tonight's an FT and Y show. What I like about
this one is there's many different components of the fire
department that you could showcase, especially a fire department as

(01:23):
large as New York City's where for example, last episode
if you haven't checked that one out, and that was
episode three forty four, we had Joe Kanaski, and Joe
Kanaski was a longtime member of Rescue one in Manhattan.
What's nice about tonight is yet we get to showcase
the EMS side of the FD and Y, which is
his own division, but paramedics and EMTs on FT and
YEMS are a critical part of their operation, especially since

(01:45):
the merger in nineteen ninety six, and tonight's guest was
heavily involved in that really going back to when it
was his own separate agency and independent agency under the
Health and Hospital Corps at the time. So that's what
we like about tonight's episode. For sure. We've had before
when Chief Zach Golfar and of course Chief Steve Kerr
were on, and we have to shed a spotlight on that.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
Tonight.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
We'll do that with our guests tooll introduce in the moment.
As I mentioned, the previous episode was volume sixty three
of this same mini series which ol Kanaski formerly of
Rescue one and he was in Rescue one in Manhattan
nineteen ninety eight until two thoy and fourteen. Hello to
everyone tuning in. As always, if you have some comments
or questions that you would like me to highlight during
the course of the interview, throw them in there. And

(02:26):
just a brief sports thought. I was talking about this
with a producer Vic off the air. Those you know,
I root for the New York Yankees and I'm pretty
disgusted without there being run these days. Bon Soto, who
helped the Yankees get to their first World Series in
fifteen years. Of course, you saw the news voltage for
the New York Mets, same city, staying in the city,
doesn't have to move fifteen years, seven hundred and sixty

(02:47):
five million. And I say this and some people are
saying good riddance. I say good for him. You're a
generational player, you have quite a future ahead of You've
already accomplished so much and you're not even twenty six yet.
If you can get a contracy like that as an athlete,
hey get it. And he did broke the record for
the richest professional contract in the history of sports, any sport,

(03:08):
and that'll be the standard for quite some time. And
you know what, New York Yankees, as I've said before
in columns and a little bit on this program, are
not very serious about winning. They're not serious about putting
together a competent collective team as they were in the
years past. They've lost their way as an organization. And
if you think Brian Cashman, who has not been able
to put together a successful championship winning roster since two

(03:29):
thousand and nine, is going to use the seven hundred
and sixty million dollars he has to spend now wisely,
I have a bridge and Brooklyn to sell you. So
that's my thoughts on that. Well, now run some ads
and we'll transition from the meaningless world of sports the
more meaningful world first responders. First things first, MC Media
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(05:18):
Newhaven podcast. All righty, my next guest is a dedicated
and accomplished veteran of emergency medical services. It's a realm
ME he's been involved in for about four decades now.
He volunteered for a long time with Bravo Ambulance as
a teenager, and that would segue to New York City
ems like I said, back when it was his own
agency pre merger with the Ft and Y in nineteen
ninety six, and along the way, of course, you'd take

(05:39):
part in that merger when it came to be in
the spring of nineteen ninety six under the direction of
then Commissioner Howard Safer, and responded to many different incidents,
including both attacks in the World Trade Center in nineteen
ninety three and two thousand and one, in which he'll
discuss that with me tonight. He retired in twenty twenty
two as a division chief, although he's still very active
in the private sector now work has not stopped for him,

(06:00):
and that for this volume sixty four the best of
the Bravest interviews with the Ft and Elite FT and
y EMS Division Chief Jace Withers Chief, welcome, How are
you great to have you?

Speaker 2 (06:08):
Hey, Mike, how you doing. It's good to be here.

Speaker 1 (06:12):
Good to see you, and hello to everybody. Of course
in the chat, like I said, if you have a
question for the chief fired away, so you know, take
me through your earliers, your bay Ridge Brooklyn kid originally
out of there. Take me through your earliers growing up there.
And if early on you knew you wanted to be
involved in the world the first responders somehow.

Speaker 2 (06:29):
All right, Mike well, when I was a kid in
Bay Ridge, there wasn't a Bravo volunteer ambulance yet. It
was just the city ambulances and Lutheran Medical Center ran
an ambulance. And I remember we were playing ball one
day and the kid ran out into the street and
we heard pole screeching, brakes and pole, and the guy

(06:50):
went up. Kid went up, the up in the air
and crashed down on the ground and he was bleeding
from the head. He was gurgling. The at least came.
They actually chalked his body before the ambulance actually got there,
and I said, wow, you know, like as a kid,
that was traumatizing. You know, we all went home and

(07:12):
prayed for him. And the next day, you know, we
were talking to the mother and the father, and it
was an experience of like saying, how could you wait
so long for an ambulance, Like it seemed like it
was an hour. And the guys that just came, they
just kind of lifted him up and threw him on
a stretcher and drew him in the back of what
we called a bread truck ambulance. They looked like they

(07:35):
were the same thing as a bread truck. They weren't empts.
They were just ambulance drivers. Maybe they had some training,
but I was a kid, I didn't know much. And
the fascination continued as I was in grammar school and
Bravo Volunteer Ambulance just started in nineteen seventy five, I
was probably twelve years old, seventh grade teacher. I thought

(07:59):
the world of him. His name is Michael Deey. He
was such a cool guy who's did garate, did a
lot of things involved with the students said he allowed
us told him Michael, and that was really cool because
that didn't happen back in the back in the seventies.
One day he comes in with his books and he says,
I'm really tired today, so we're gonna have to take
it easy. And we're like, why is he tired? What's

(08:22):
going on? And he said, I volunteered at Bravo last night.
And uh we looked up and said Bravo. What he said?
Bay Ridge Ambulance Volunteer Organization. They're saving bay Ridge And
we're like, what what is that? And he goes, I'm
an MT. Like he's also an EMT. How cool is that?
And he proceeded to tell us stories about a car

(08:45):
accident and somebody else, and he was He was a
really great storytellerself. I think the influences mostly comes from
Michael Dealey, who would tell his stories and I said,
how can I getting involved? He says, you're only twelve
years old. In order to get into the U Squad,
you have to be fourteen. Now, my birthday is September eleventh,

(09:07):
nineteen sixty one, so you know, I had a couple
more years to go. But I knew that my application
was going to be on my birthday, and it was
on my fourteenth birthday and I did get into the
U Squad. Another influence, but everybody in the MS world
would say the same thing. They watched Emergency on television
and yeah, I get it, and it's actually I think

(09:29):
it's actually on TV right now. People should be watching
this though. The episodes of John and Roy, the amazing
things they did as the first paramedics in the country.
They were so cool, and everybody who's in the MS
who's my age would tell you that was a good

(09:50):
major influence. But I think Michael Dilly's stories were more
more incredible.

Speaker 1 (09:57):
Especially because he was living, you know, in real time
along with wearing so many other hats, being a teacher,
practicing martial arts, and going out there and working in
the community. And you see that in different places, not
just in the big city like New York, but different
places across the country. Volunteer ambulance course which are essential
now because you know, listen, it's especially with the wait
times being what they are, if you can get an

(10:17):
ambulance out there quicker, it's imperative. Not every city or
town has the budget that paid staff, so that's where
the volunteerism is really imperative, and we're thankful that people
take the time to do such an important community service.

Speaker 2 (10:28):
Yeah, when I was in the U squad, I was
a little bit disappointed because it was like a lot
of bake sales and kick sales and car washers fundraisers.
We did some training, not a whole lot for me.
I was a nerdy kid and it was ninety percent girls,
so it was I was in, but nobody paid attention

(10:49):
to me. Uh. You know, we go to dances and
the boys sit on the side and the girls be
out there dancing. It's the time of disco and Bay Ridge.
You know. John Travolta was hot, right, you know, it
was it was, it was. It was a fun time.
But I remember taking the first aid course and just
like learning direct pressure for bleeding. And it always would
be that in my life, something that would happen as

(11:11):
a result of taking the first aid court. And I
was standing on a corner waiting for a school a
bus to go to school, and uh, it was crazy.
It was a barber shop and the barber had a
fight with a customer and he slashed his neck and
the karotic artery is burst and blood pulsating, and I

(11:32):
ran over with like a towel that another guy came
over and I held it against the guy's neck and
somebody did call Bravo that night that morning, and uh,
you know the Bravo antulance people early in the morning
going to school, you know, they're they're probably looking forward
to shift ending. Uh. They casually walk over and to
to what's going on here, and I said, guy's bleeding

(11:53):
from his neck. I think it's the kartic artery. And
he says, well, let me take a look. I said, no, no, no, no,
don't look. Don't take it off. Showing up, the guy
pulls the towel off and it's blood shooting, you know,
directly on the uniforms of the Bravo people. Somebody then
came over to me and they said, you probably saved
that guy's life. And I said, I don't think so,

(12:15):
you know, I well, maybe I did say I probably did,
you know, maybe to get a little bit of attention.
But it was an experience that one of my first
experiences of actually doing something after learning a little bit
about first date.

Speaker 1 (12:30):
Right, you know, And as you're telling that story, I'm
thinking back to there was a horrific he lived, thankfully
similar situation in hockey. You may recall goalie Clinton Malarchuck
had something similar where his skate came up cut his
neck and the trainer, I believe he's on the Buffalo
Savers at the time, happened to be a World War
two combat medic, so he'd seen some things. Same thing
pinched the artery. That's the only reason Clinton Malarchuk's is

(12:51):
still with us today. He pinched the artery, so that's important.
It's usually something like that could very well be fatal.
You're talking about an artery being severed. Any artery that
promoted that arterial, that's going to kill you. Nine times
out of ten, what can save you and that's the
reason why it's nine times out of ten. On the
tenth time is quick action, which happened there thankfully.

Speaker 2 (13:11):
Yeah, I was in the U Squad all those years
and did whatever, not a whole lot of training, but
it was good. They let us on the ambulance here
and there, and I really wanted to get into this
as a senior squad person. So later on after the

(13:33):
U Squad, I joined the Senior Squad and that was
I guess nineteen eighty because my shield number is eight
zero zero zero three, which means I was the third
person who came on board in nineteen eighty. And it
was then that I decided to take an EMT class.
I did a little bit of college in and out.

(13:54):
I was delivering pizzas and I wound up working for
a printing company and every shift that I could possibly
work would I would go to Bravo and work a shift.
The Unfortunately, volunteer ambulances aren't as popular anymore. It's hard
to get people to volunteer. You know, the building is

(14:15):
closed frequently, but it was open all the time twenty
four and seven doing the midnight shifts. On weekends. We
were two ambulances doing hundreds of calls every month, hundreds
and hundreds of calls. And the reason why the people
from Bay Ridge would call bravo because if they knew
they called nine one one, they were waiting thirty forty

(14:36):
minutes for an ambulance. And it's one thing that I
keep on saying over and over again, there is nothing
greater than the heart of a volunteer, Nothing bigger than
the heart of a volunteer. I always felt as if
like when you put on that uniform, the people would
would would be thank you for coming, thank you for coming.

(14:56):
We marched in parades and day Ridge and the people
would be yelling Bravo, bravo and clapping as we walk
and they still do that. But the organization, it's a
great organization, but we need volunteers to fill our seats.
And I always thought that I have to give back
because so many great people have taught me great things.

(15:19):
I know in the organization as a woman. Her name
is Aileen Okroff, and she was one of my instructors
years ago and she's still in the organization. A lot
of great people in the organization. Tim Draine, who was
a retired police officer died of cancer. Taught me to
drive the ambulance. So many great connections and it's great

(15:42):
for the young people to network. A lot of people
they want to become nurses, but they don't have going
into nursing school, they don't have any hands on opportunity
to say they did patient care, actually did blood pressures
on patients, bandaged them, gave them oxygen, and the presentations

(16:02):
at the hospital. I love going out now and having
that opportunity to mentor you know, these these new folks.
Sometimes I would actually say, we're four people on the
ambulance and your three ages together don't meet already equivalent
to mine. It's been a great experience and I really

(16:27):
wanted to go into it more, and I decided in
nineteen eighty four that I was going to put him
in my application to work under HC NYC EMS and
my best friends Jimmie Nelan, Billy Killps and myself we
joined the academy together on four nine eighty four, and

(16:49):
we went through the academy I think it was six
or eight weeks at the time, and we thought we
had a hook. We thought we had a hook that
we were going to go to Bellevue or Coney Island,
and the three of us got sent to Hallam. I

(17:09):
thought they were kidding when they said Halem. I said,
what happened to a hook? But I'm going to tell
you that Hallum was hard back then. It was the eighties,
nineteen eighty four, opiates of methadone, cracka, oh god, it was.
There were zombies walking the streets. And these streets that

(17:32):
you look at now that they're multimillion dollar houses, brownstones,
they were empty, vacant, and there were people living, homeless,
people living in these crack dens. And it was trauma shootings.
It had to be a shooting every half hour. The
whole time was at Bravo. I never saw a shooting

(17:54):
my first week in all of them. I think I
saw five people shot. The heroine was crazy back then,
and the only people that actually had knarcan were paramedics.
It's not like it was now now. Uh. You know,
you go to a call for an overdose and the
police show up, the fire shows up, and the MS

(18:16):
shows up, and everybody's drawing up there there knocking, uh
to see who who who could give it first? Uh?
And and be the the the person who's you know,
who saved the person's life because many of us know,
you know, the person looks like they're dead, barely breathing
or not breathing, and we give knarckan and within minutes

(18:39):
most of them.

Speaker 1 (18:40):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (18:40):
The the the the reception that holds the person to
go unconscious and stop breathing. Knarck can blocks that action
and the person's up and talking. It's almost like a miracle. Uh.
I've seen it in movies like bringing Out You're Dead,
where you know, the guy gives the knarck can and

(19:01):
the people are praying, and the next thing they know,
the guy's up and talking. I don't know if you
saw that move, Mike, but.

Speaker 1 (19:09):
No, I can't say that I have. I'm just it's
always funny, not that you're happy these people are or
not that it's funny, rather that these people are in
this type of situation. When they revive, they're upset because
you ruin their eye.

Speaker 2 (19:21):
Yeah, they're allergic to it. Nobody's allergic to it.

Speaker 1 (19:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (19:25):
Yeah. I like to tell you one of my stories
of hallm When I was working there as an e MT.
I was working with a new guy and Uh. Once again,
he's the guy. He's never been to Hall them from
Long Island. He's in culture shock. But I was there
maybe three months and I knew what was going on,

(19:46):
but we had to do a call. And actually, I'm
going to correct myself, this call actually happened when I
was transferred back. I was transferred to Bellevue. But every
night I was working atical patrol unit UH, and that
unit would go to Halem, so I never got to
leave hallm even when I got to leave. It's just

(20:07):
that because Halem was the place, or the South Bronx,
the coal volume was very high. So we did take
these tactical patrol units that they could put anywhere and
just keep them in Halem or in the South Bronx
all the time. So we were up there, and the
folks up in Halem didn't appreciate there being outsiders, like
a different unit from Bellevue is in our area. So

(20:30):
we didn't always get along, although we did get along
very well. It was just a matter of who's doing
the coals and what type of calls are doing. But
we were doing a call on a corner where we
had this guy who had opened ulcerations of his legs
because of his heroin addiction, homeless doesn't want to go
to the hospital, and I was wrapping up his legs

(20:52):
with bandages, and suddenly in the nighttime, we hear pow
pow pal, which was not uncommond here shootings like every
hour something sirens. So I see a crowd of people
running out of one of the streets and this is
like across of Lennox and one hundred and forty sixth Street,

(21:17):
and it's on the side street. And I tell my partner,
I'm going to grab my bag. I'm going to run
to the patient. You bring the ambulance around. So I
grabbed my bag. And at the time, we had wood
cardboard boxes with the city gave us that were covered
with like morning and you had to go out and

(21:37):
get something cooler. So I had a camera bag, That's
what I bought, and I had all my bandaging stuff
in my bag, valve mask and my ro aways and
everything was in there. And I ran with my oxygen
and my bag, and as I was running down the block,
the people were running the opposite direction. I got to
a brownstone that had a little area on the first

(21:59):
floor cemented and a gate, and I saw a guy
lay in there and he was barely breathing, and I
went in there and I pulled out my bag valve mask.
The bag valve mask back then, they were not disposable.
You had to wash them, and actually we weren't given those. Really.
We used to have to go into the hospital and

(22:22):
kind of like just take one and then you would
wash it after every call. The mask sort of actually
started to smell like vomit because of the amount of
vomit in the plastic, but we would wash it and
take care. So I'd take out this BVM bag valve
masking or otherwise sometimes called the amble bag back in
the seventies, and I start ventilating this guy and I

(22:45):
hear somebody else stop and I look up and as
a guy holding a gun and he's waving it back
and forth, pointing it at me, pointing it at him,
and he said to me, is he going to live
or is he going to die? And I said, ah,
he's gonna die. And he took the gun and he
pointed it at his forehead and he shot and it

(23:07):
was almost like for me, it was like slow motion,
as if I could watching the bullet going through himself
at himself, the victim of no, no, not himself, the victim.
He's got it at the victim who was already shot
once or twice. And uh, now the bullet goes right
into his forehead. It's like I almost see the splash
of blood and I I look down and then he

(23:30):
shoots the dagfil mask like a couple of different times,
pow pow pow. So with that, he hears the sirens
and he runs and I'm all by myself, you know,
like I'm the only white guy there. It's question. I
start to squeeze the bag and the air is going

(23:52):
out all different directions. I'm trying, and I'm scared. I'm like,
oh my god, I can't believe I just saw this.
The ambulance that pulls up isn't my ambulance. My partner
is lost. It's another Hallom ambulance. And these two girls
that are like heavy set black girls, as if they
do this every half hour, get out of the ambulance

(24:15):
with the scoop. They pushed the guy onto the scoop.
They hip checked me out of the way. They carry
a scoop to the ambulance. They put him in the
ambulance and they closed the door on me, and then
my ambulance is coming up right behind him, and they
take off and I jump into the ambulance. I said,
follow that ambulance. They've gone to hallm Hospital, and uh,

(24:38):
we follow the ambulance. We get to the hospital and
I remember they had the guy intubated in the hospital
on a ventilator, and he still has the hole in
his head unbandaged. It's just gripping. His eyes are fixed
and dilated, pupils have fixed and dilated. And I have
to say. I'm like, oh my god, I can't believe
I've been through this. Is this the time of day

(25:00):
that you say, maybe I should quit? This too dangerous.
But as I was walking out, uh, the the e
MT was on the phone with the dispatcher making fun
of me, and she was on the payphone with her
back towards me, and I'm waiting to talk to her
because I got my BVM. Uh, and I you know,
I wanted to talk to her, but she was on

(25:21):
the phone and she goes that unit from Bellevue they
got blank as equipment. I was squeezing that BVM and
air was shooting all over the place. She had no
clue that the BVM, the bag of bass was shot.
That was like an adventure. That was an adventure. But
I have to say there were a lot of them,
a lot of them that are still is still happening,

(25:44):
that BVM. I brought it home, I washed it, I
put it home, and it was a kid that lived
in the apartment building next to my apartment. He was
a buff and I showed it to him and he says,
I could put back bicycle patch, uh fire patches on
that BBM, And he did. And I used it for

(26:04):
another bunch of years and look at it and said,
are these bicycle patches? I said, yeah, they are. I
said it was shot.

Speaker 1 (26:11):
Yeah, I mean early on. Talk about trial by fire,
But that's what life was like for you guys back then,
because you know, as I've talked about before, and those
of you that lived through it, rather if you weren't
FD back then, like Garrett Linger in the chat, or
Pete like Kenny Bowen in the chat, you know, New
York City EMS was doing a lot with less. The
call volume was through the roof, and you guys had

(26:32):
no resources, you know, And I think a lot of
people kind of got down the agency during that time
period because of the wait times things like that. You
may remember the Public Enemy song nine one one is
a joke that wasn't the fault of the guys and
galls on the street that were working hard. It's just
they were so depleted resource wise. Hats off to you guys.
I don't know how you did it, especially in neighborhoods
like that that were so dangerous.

Speaker 2 (26:52):
Yeah, you know, I look back and said, I don't
know how I did it. I'm sixty three eight years
now and I'm working at NYU Broke and full time
as a paramedic, and I have to say, I don't
have this strength that I used to. But the things
we used to do by ourselves, now you could call
for help and within minutes somebody is gonna come, you know.

(27:15):
And I'm blessed because I'm a retired chief. And if
the engine company is there, uh, these firefighters they don't
let me lift. And I said, you're spoiling You're spoiling me.
I'm not going to have you tomorrow. But I'd like
to tell you another story of my halem uh experiences.
We get to call for a labor and I have

(27:38):
to say, people back then, they waited the last minute.
And in Halem you delivered babies one after the want
to say one after the other. But you could deliver
a baby one a month easily in hallm uh it was.
And they're easy to deliver, you know. We gave us
crap his equipment. They have plastic bag with a scalpel,

(28:04):
you know, clamps, a little you know thing bolt sorrange
to clean the clean the airway. And that was it.
And we go up to this house apartment building and
half of the apartment building is empty, or let's say
there are people squatting in it, but they don't belong there.

(28:26):
And we go into this apartment and it's snowing outside
and they have plastic on the windows, and the window
with plastic is just shaking left and right, and there's
a makeshift light and my partner's there and the lady says,
I think I'm going to have the baby now. And
we're like, okay, we're on the third floor. It's just
the two of us. And I take a look and

(28:49):
the baby's crowning, and I said, it looks like we're
getting deliver a baby. But the baby comes breached, but
it's it's the buttocks, it's it's out, and I'm able
to manipulate the baby. And I never did this before.
Every baby that was there to deliver, it pretty much
delivered itself, and then we just hope that it would breathe.

(29:11):
And this baby, the head on the jaw was stuck,
stuck in the vagina, and I was like, this is bad.
And I'm trying to use my training, you know, trying
to use two fingers to create in their way in
case the baby starts to breathe. And my partner's visiting, like,
you know, what do you want me to do? What

(29:32):
do you want me to do? And the woman's you know,
screaming on the ground. Her friend is yelling push, push, push,
and two cops show up. And the two cops say,
is there anything that we could do to help? I said,
we're gonna have to move. We can't put her in
a chair, we can't walk her. We're going to have
to get her on a scoop. And he says, what

(29:53):
do you need me to do? I said, we need
you to go downstairs and get the scoop. There's a
componment in the back of the ambulance open up the doors.
Its song, long silver things with three straps on it.
Bring that up. So he goes down and I'm still
in the same position, and eventually this yelly lady yelling
push push push, tells her to push so much that

(30:14):
the head burst out and all the amue fluid goes
in my face. It's in my eyes. I'm like, is
it okay? Is everything okay? And the baby starts screaming,
and everybody's happy, and we're getting ready to cut the cord.
Things are looking good, and like ten minutes goes by,
uh since the police officer left, and he comes back

(30:38):
and he's actually smoking his cigarette and he's holding the keys,
you know, and back then the keys had a big
block on it, you know. Yeah. And he looks at
me and he says, I couldn't find that thing that
you wanted. Well thanks, yeah, So well now we're not
gonna need it. We'll be able to put her in

(30:59):
a chair.

Speaker 1 (30:59):
Now, situation work itself out. I don't my yeah, man, so,
and you know what, and you're not even a lieutenant
yet by this point. You became a medic in eighty six,
you make lieutenant in ninety and tell me, I mean Listen,
by that point, you've been battle test, working in Harlem,
working at Bellevue. Now you'd end up when you got
promoted in a nineteen ninety working and do or die

(31:19):
ben Sti, which we'll talk about a little bit. But
just tell me about the desire to even want to
be an officer in the first place, because I mean, listen,
you could be a senior guy and a crew enough
experience and knowledge that way, but there are some that
want to recruit that experience knowledge while also moving up
in the ranks. So how soon did you start studying?

Speaker 2 (31:36):
I you know, I took I take studying that real serious.
Like I have a hard time learning things like when
I have to do with the REMAC recertification every three years,
which we didn't. I didn't have to do it this year.
I did it online. I studied for months and months
and months, you know, like I'd be in Great Adventure
with my kids online. And I've had my phone going

(31:57):
through the REMAC questions that you know, and going over
and over and over every every moment. And I remember
having that operating guide out, big gigantic book. It wasn't
it wasn't a tablet, it was a book and just
going over everything and I scored. Okay, I didn't score
the greatest. I wasn't the first group out of my

(32:20):
I think I was at like one hundred and eleven
on the list of you know, three hundred. But one
hundred and eleven is pretty damn deep for a person
who actually studied. My best friend when we were in
medic school, he Jimmy Neelan, he unbelievably smart. When we

(32:41):
were in paramedic school, I would be studying all the time,
and I had my apartment and I'd be up and
I have to go get him, and his mother would
be at the door saying, Jimmy's sleeping. He's sleeping like
a log. I'm like, no, he has school, he has school.
And I eventually get him to wake up and he says,
I'm so hungover, you said, I just left the bar.

(33:02):
I said, jim we have a test today, and I
remember what I'd be doing the tests and I'd be
thinking about Jimmy Neil and I said, poor Jimmy, he's
going to be a mess. And I get the test
back and I just passed it, like with a eighty two,
and I say, poor jim and I go over to
Jim and I said, Jim, what'd you get? He goes
ninety seven?

Speaker 1 (33:24):
Of course, of course, and do as soon as you mentioned,
he was hungover that it was going to come out
with the time scoring. The law of averages. Always seemed that.

Speaker 2 (33:33):
The true challenge, challenge in my life was paramedic school
back in nineteen We started together in nineteen eighty five,
and you know, they started with over sixty maybe seventy people,
and we ended with sixteen. And those other people they
were thrown out. You failed three quizzes, you were out.

(33:55):
And I was always studying my asshole for that. It
was like I found it very I found it really hard,
and it was such a rewarding time. In September of
nineteen eighty six when we were promoted to paramedic and
I was once again sent to Halem that I was
only there for four months and I worked and I

(34:15):
got a lot of good experience there as a paramedic
that I wouldn't have gotten at Bellevue. But I made
it back to Bellevue and I had gotten a unit
thirteen X ray Midtown Manhattan. We sat at the Empire
State Building. I can't tell you how many bodies we've
taken off the ledges, off the you know that people

(34:36):
have jumped on from top of the World Trade Center,
very rarely, not the Trade Center, the Empire State Building,
you know, very rarely they would ever make it down
to the street level because it's building tiers down, you know,
and they would be blown back into the building sometimes
because of the high winds. But they would call it
in as a trauma, but it was going to be

(34:57):
a d way, you know. I I did that call
too many times. Men under trains, you know, people that
either jumped in front of the trains or got pushed
in front of trains. And I can remember those years
that actually we climbed down onto the tracks. We were trained,
you know, what not to touch, and we were collecting
body parts from underneath the trains. And also, you know,

(35:21):
sometimes I've had patients that survived being hit by a train.
The trauma I've seen a lot. I do remember working
at Bellevue one night and we went over to the
West Side for a call for trauma and it was
a prostitute that really pissed off a client and he
took his car and he rammed her up against the

(35:43):
wall and her lower extremities were smashed to pieces, and
we pulled the car back and we got her up
on a board and got her to Bellevue. And I
remember she was really pretty, and it was really weird
because she actually had a very good blood pressure because
her extremities were smashed that you know, it wasn't that

(36:04):
she was bleeding out, but she was going to lose
both of her legs. And there was a blanket over
her legs. And the doctor walked over and said, like,
so what do we have here, like almost like flirting
with the girl. And then he lifted up the blanket
and looked and he goes, oh my god, I can't
believe that, like what happened to her? I had to

(36:26):
explain to the doctor. But it was something these things
that you remember over and over again, you know, these calls, and.

Speaker 1 (36:34):
It kind of would serve you well who it will
come later as an instructor, not only just being an officer,
but also an instructor too.

Speaker 2 (36:40):
Yeah, now, Mike, you would ask a question. I often
get sidetracked. So you talked about studying for the Lieutenants exam.
I studied hard to get that score that only left
me one hundred and eleven. But as they were getting
closer and closer with the classes to my number. I
really loved being a paramedic and I was a happening paramedic.
I was a Bellevy paramedic. I ran the Bellevue parties.

(37:03):
We did two parties, benefit parties, and the last one
that I ran was a Halloween party. There were seven
hundred people there. We didn't even know what the benefits
were going to be because we had this plan them
ahead of time and I was in charge of that.
And because of that, I knew every cop, every police officer,
every nurse. But you know, funny, back in the eighties,

(37:26):
we very rarely saw fire. You know, if we only
went to a fire and saw fire, you know, they
we didn't know the engines. I didn't know the difference
between a truck or an engine. Uh. You know. It
wasn't until after it emerged that, you know that we
actually started to see them through the CFRD program. And
I was involved with the CFRD program, and it was

(37:49):
that they were bringing these salty dogs into a classroom
with one hundred people, and they had to have fire
marshals standing by because in the first day they would.
They would tell the firefighters, these are the rules. You
will come back for lunch, you will take you will
take tests, you will learn this medical stuff. And there

(38:10):
was always that salty dog that first day that would
get up and say I'm not doing it, and they
would have to escort the guy out of the room
and whatever wherever he would go. You know, I don't know,
but they took the CFRD program really serious. And I
had to look back and say, the times that we

(38:31):
train people. We would train one hundred and fifty people
on an apron of a of a firehouse, and you know,
on a rock. One hundred and fifty people would be
in that room. And then that was the Monday group
and they would come every Monday. And then we have
a Tuesday group, one hundred and fifty people and they
would come every Tuesday, and so on and so on.

(38:54):
We trained a lot of firefighters and CFRD and it
was a lot of fun. A lot of the new
guys now they don't know better. But the old guys
they were they they didn't, they didn't they didn't like it.
It was they were coming up with some of the
things were hysterical, like we would say, yo, so what

(39:15):
oxygen device are you going to put on the patient?
And the person that firefighter would say the older guy
who say a nasal canoli. No. But that was a
really good experience. But when I was a paramedic, I
was boy. I was having a ball and we were
saving lives and we had the opportunity to save I

(39:39):
can't repeat their names with celebrities lives. One time we
saved the life at the Red Blazer two restaurant on
forty sixth Street no longer. They are really great a music,
you know, like New Orleans music, you know, jazz, jazz,

(40:00):
And we saved this guy's life. And I remember as
we were taking him, putting him into the ambulance, his
hand came up and he was grabbing the tube. And
then I said, when that happens, that's really good. And
I remember the wife saying, how could that be good?
I said, because most of the people don't wake up.
They don't don't they don't go to grab the tube.
And we took him to Saint Clair's Hospital and that

(40:24):
was on that's the closed hospitals on the in Manhattan,
and uh, we didn't see him. We had to go
back in service do another coal do another call. A
year later, Rob Rosenwall and I are back of the
Red Blazer two and the manager comes over. We're there
for drunk now And the manager comes over, aren't you

(40:45):
the guys that save mister Debris? And I said who who?
And he says, shorts you guys. And he's here every
Friday night. He has his own table that we put
him on. He's a diplomatic from hot and he's here
every Friday night. And he said, I would like you

(41:05):
and Rob to be our guests with your girlfriends or
wives or other and I'm going to surprise him. We're
going to surprise him, and he did. And after that,
him and his wife Leon Tilly became really good friends.

(41:27):
They were at my wedding, they were at christenings. Uh
they They've had us at parties and he was an
interesting guy. He has since passed, and so as Tilly.
But he would invite me to parties with diplomats from
them all over the world and he would say this
man is my doctor. And I would and then kind
of walk away. And then they say, so, where'd you

(41:48):
go to medical school? I said, I didn't go to
medical school. I'm not a doctor. But you know, it
was a great time. The experiences of saving lives, we've
had a lot of fun. The people at Bellevue we
were really great, tight and you know, we were kind
of by ourselves back then. If you called for help,

(42:10):
you you didn't get a fire engine, you got two
EMTs or eventually two police officers that would come. And
the police officers were often just wanting to get off
the scene. You know, they would say, it's a MS matter,
only fifty five and we're standing on the fourth floor
with the fat lady on the chair and five pieces

(42:33):
of equipment in trying to figure out the sorcery of
how to get the person down. Then when you watch
emergency and EMS shows, they show the people I haven't
scene and then they go into commercial and the next
scene back is there now in the ambulance or at
the hospital. They don't show the struggling of how to
take a person down the stairs. How we wanted New

(42:55):
Year's Eve on a stroke of midnight. We had the
person on the stoke structure, which is a flat strutcher
that you just cocoon the person. We don't have them anymore,
and sliding this lady down the stairs because we were
not able to lift her, and I remember on the
radio the dispatcher saying Happy New Year, Units, Happy New Year,

(43:17):
and other units coming back and saying Happy New Year.
We're on a staircase with that patient. I don't know
what year that was, it's probably nineteen eighty seven something, and.

Speaker 1 (43:27):
Those lifted, sister, no joke e there it's where those stairschairs.
Especially now, I really are a godsend. I did want
to ask you about this. So late eighties, early nineties,
we're talking with Division Chief Jase withers Of formerly of
FDNYEMS is volume sixty four, The best of the Bravest.
You know, Bob Becker had a big impact. Chief Goldfarb
and Chief Career had big impacts as well, I should say,
and really modernizing New York City EMS and kind of

(43:49):
bringing it into the twentieth century. Nobody knew if a
merge was around the corner. That was still pretty far away.
But just in terms of establishing operations, establishing the Special
Operations Division, all out of which exists now as hashtag
on the ft and Y side post merger, it was
positively impacting the agency. It was starting to really bring
the agency out of the dark ages, and you bore

(44:10):
the brunt of that in a good way, especially being
an officer at that time, being a lieutenant. When you
saw that shift, how hopeful did it make you feel
about the future, not only the agency, but just EMS
in general in the city like New York.

Speaker 2 (44:22):
Yeah. Well, I'm going to tell you back when the
merge was happening, everybody on the MS side was calling
it a hostile takeover. Nobody on the EMDs and paramedics
were not excited about it. I was, in fact excited
about it because I felt as if that this is
the opportunity to get better funding, better equipment, engage in

(44:46):
the networking with firefighters. You know, they already they were
already launching what was going to be the CFRD program,
and the engines were coming on our calls. Our EMS.
Folks felt that if you're going to spend all that
money for fire why don't you just hire more MS
people and give us raises so we don't move on.

(45:07):
You know, I started in nineteen eighty four making seventeen
four hundred dollars a year, and that hurts. Although I'm
going to say a police officer was only making maybe
twenty one twenty two thousand, But that's a large percentage
between the two. I remember having a police officer girlfriend

(45:28):
and she repeated all the time, you know the difference
between our salaries all the time. It was you know,
back then, we wore white shirts and green pants, and
we had to go get that stuff, you know, we
had to buy it. We got a uniform allowance, but
everybody was wearing different grades of shades of green. The

(45:51):
white shirts. Some people were polished and pressed and others
they were yellow and wrinkled. The patches looked like they
were done over too much with clarks. It was ms.
We had ambulances that were crappy. I remember ambulances that
had like the light in the back was being held

(46:13):
the light that you know that we used in the
back where two wires would tape electrical tape on it
and the light bulb just swung back and forth. Our
suction units were these things that we would stomp on.
They were like, you know, you stepped on it and
it recoiled and recoiled, and that was how we did suction.
We had a traction splint, which is for femur fractures

(46:39):
that we put onto the leg that have cranks. Now
we just had the wire pot and we had to
use all cravats to figure out how to use it.
And we didn't have defibrillators. We didn't have mass pants
which come and gone. The paramedics carried Life Pack five,

(47:01):
which is like did nothing other than you know, monitored
the rhythm. It did it did cardiac pacing, but it
didn't do a whole lot. It was really light though.
That was really good. When we merged with Fire, I
was enthusiastic that this is going to be great, and

(47:22):
it was great. But unfortunately for me, I was now
an officer and I love being a paramedic. When I
became an officer, I was it was almost like somebody
just took half my life away from me. And I
went to lieutenant school and there was only eight of
us in the class. Chief McCracken, Robert McCracken was the

(47:46):
chief of MS back then, and I thought the world
of Chief McCracken. You know a chief You mentioned Chief
Carer and Chief Goldfob. I think the world of them too.
The Chief goal Fob is still making great contributions to
the MS community through his writing and his publications. And
I talked to him and we sort of adore each

(48:11):
other as professionals because I've done different things and he
did different things. But chief of Kracking, I think when
the merge happened, they took him away from being chief
of VMS and they made Dan Igro the chief of VMS.
And people were a little bit sour about that because
of the fact that what do you know about MS?
But Chief Nigro after a year said, you guys know

(48:35):
how to do this better than I do. And they
gave back the title the chief of VMS to Robert McCracken,
and that was a good thing. And the vehicles got better,
the equipment got better. It seemed like there was more
we were in uniforms that we went to a uniform store,
we looked the same. It was hard time and exciting time.

(49:01):
Now I'm going to tell you one of the biggest
challenges of my career was the fire department had issues
of diversity and they were being ensued and one of
their solutions were to create a cadet program. And a
cadet program would be designed to bring the people into

(49:21):
EMS and have them had the option of taking a
test and becoming firefighters. Now the whole point was to
bring in as many minorities and females at the same time.
So this program they sent how many black firefighters that
they actually existed, there weren't that many, but they founded

(49:44):
them and they brought them out to city colleges and
they recruited people, and they recruited people, and they made
this program. They said to the EMS Academy, can you
train one hundred and fifty cadets to become EMTs? And
we were really busy at the time I was working

(50:05):
at the academy. We had no place for anything, no
room short of instructors. And John Clappan, who's in charge
of the academy, said we can we can't do it properly.
And he's being honest because he was a quality instructor,
quality educator, and he said, you can't do that. So

(50:27):
what they did was they they reached out to John
Jay College. They had a connection there. One of my
mentors whose passed, Jimmy Boyle, was working there. He was
the president of the UFA twice in the past.

Speaker 1 (50:42):
He had a son on the job that got killed
on I eleven.

Speaker 2 (50:45):
Yeah, his son killed on nine to eleven, and recently
another son just died a month ago, which is a
little bit sad, But they asked me to be the
person in between and our people. The MS people hated
the program because they said it was a stepping stone
for people to become firefighters. On the other hand, the

(51:06):
firefighters hated it because they said, you're backdoring people. I
didn't get an option to take a separate test. You
know that I could have just got it. I had
to get a hundred on my physical. To even be
a hundred and one hundred on both the written and
the physical would be the only way to you become

(51:27):
a firefighter. So they had them, and they told me
that I was going to be the lays on.

Speaker 1 (51:41):
Ohky, the chief rose up on us. All right, well,
we'll put chiefs Withers in the background there while we
sort that out. Apologies for that. He was in the
middle of a good story too. We're talking with Chief
Division Chief Jase Withers. Is the volume sixty four, the
best of the bravest interviews with the ft to Wives Elite.
One thing I do want to get into a chiefs Withers.
At some point, as he did respond to the World

(52:02):
Trade Center in nineteen ninety three, now that was especially
when the merch happened in the spring of nineteen ninety six,
which we were talking about before that technological mishap that
was really imperative from the standpoint that naturally, in any
terrorist incident or a mass casualty incident, a huge part
of the response is going to be ems. And I

(52:23):
wonder how much of nineteen ninety three in that response
ended up becoming a blueprint for what would happen later on.
And of course you know how he would respond in
two thousand and one as a part of FBOYMS for
the World Trade Center Part two. So we'll talk about
that when he would get him back on in the meantime,
and we shout out to some people here in the chat,
Joe Sarietto. Sorry, Joe, you asked me some questions or
you had some questions in the last episode in the

(52:44):
chat that I didn't get to so I feel bad
about that. Thanks for tuning in. As always, Joe, good
to see a Doginsalas is here. Joe Maligue is here.
He answered your question earlier about delivering the babies. He
covered that before we could even get to it. Peewee's here.
Steve Virado. Carlos Rojas via LinkedIn is watching tonight, George
Sickler feel better, buddy. I saw the comment earlier about
your knee. Hopefully you will cover well. Sergeant Bowen. Of course,

(53:06):
now he's swift, Billy Ryan and Garret Linger, and I
mentioned you once. I probably already did, but I'll mention
you again. Kevin Hennessy's here as well. We have Chiefs
Withers back. We're waiting for him to come back. And
Chief we left off, assuming you know, get to have
you back talking about are you frozen again? Looks like
he's frozen again. We'll sort that out with Chiefs Withers

(53:29):
in the moment we left off talking about, of course,
the response to different emergencies and how the merger impacted
operations as well, and why he looked forward to that
merger in the spring of nineteen ninety six. We apologize
for the technological difficulties, but we'll work on getting Chiefs

(53:50):
Withers back up and running soon. Chief, if you can
hear us, you might want to click off and just
sign on again. Joe, the second book is going well.
I see your comment there in the channel. Is the
second book going transcribing stories actively as I go in
the meantime while we wait for Chiefs Withers to come back. Well,
let's I don't mean to put you on the spot there,
Producer Victory will bring you on the stage. We have

(54:12):
the audience needs to see you as well. How's everything
going with you, my friend?

Speaker 2 (54:18):
Pretty good?

Speaker 1 (54:18):
Guys, pretty good?

Speaker 2 (54:20):
All right?

Speaker 1 (54:21):
Well, of course I want to highlight Producer Victor despite
the fact that we wish we weren't having technological difficulties,
because this is a great reason as to why the
show runs as smoothly as it does. Producer Victor on
the ones and two is taking a big load off me,
and really, after many many years of me having to
do everything at once, it's nice to have someone like
him making sure that the production aspect is handled so

(54:41):
I could just focus in the conversation. So we got
the chief back. Yeah, I'll go back to my corner.
All right, thank you very much, and we'll continue with
Chiefs Withers right now, Chief welcome back to the program.
Hopefully our technological difficulties are solved. Looks like your internet
is giving you some fits. Can you hear me?

Speaker 2 (55:02):
I could hear you?

Speaker 1 (55:03):
All right? Now we got you back. You were talking
about how much you loved the merger and you were
excited for even though you were an officer at the time,
because it was going to be great going forward for EMS.
McCracken comes back as chief after Nigro had it from
ninety six to ninety seven, and I'll let you take
it from there.

Speaker 2 (55:18):
Yeah, But I was just talking about the cadet program,
and the cadet program was a major challenge. It was
not liked by both the MS people because it was
a stepping stone and the fire people felt that they
shouldn't be a back door easy way to get into
the fire and that you know, having it easier could

(55:38):
be jeopardizing people's lives. And I worked that program and
it was a challenge. But the dear thing, the dear
person that I got me through that was Jimmy Boyle.
Jimmy Boyle was my mentor. He was he told me,
He taught me how to help people. He was the
president of the UFA twice two different occasions. He did

(56:03):
a lot of things for Fire and in my career
I never met a man like him, and he was
the guy that got me through there. Like I would
go to John Jay an hour early to go to work,
and he would go to church every morning, and I
would go to church with him whenever I could. And
we had those students and it was rough when I

(56:25):
when they graduated from John Jay, I brought him over
to the academy. They were instructors that were like angry,
you know, because they were starting. There was a day
group and a night group, and you know, I forgot
to tell him not to say that you want to
become a firefighter. The first day of the class, they
got the first person up and say why are you here?
And the person said, I really want to become a firefighter.

(56:50):
The second person said, I want to use this as
a stepping stone to become a firefighter, you know. The
third person said the same thing. And by the tenth person,
one of the instructors got up and said, you're not
using my job as a as a stepping stone. And
it was to me, I was very saddened by the
fact that my work it wasn't appreciated by We're.

Speaker 1 (57:20):
Having more second difficulties. I think we are lost Chiefs Withers. Again.
It's unfortunate because he's a lot of great stories. We
weren't having these problems during the first fifty minutes or
so of the program, but we adjust on the fly.
Sometimes it's the nature of the guests internet. Sometimes it's us.
I don't think it's us. My internet's fine, producer, Victor's
Internet's fine. But it appears the chiefs Withers is having
problems with that. Now he could probably just log in

(57:43):
via his phone and maybe that would solve the problem
so we could keep hearing the stories. I definitely want
to get into the trade center responses with him, so
we'll wait until we sort that out. But again, thank
you to everybody for tuning in, and we apologize for
these difficulties that we're having right now with our guests.
We'll wait for him to come back momentarily. A quick
editor's note as far as what's coming up next to

(58:05):
the Dinu Even podcast, it will be John Fleming. He
was a detective in New York City's Office of Special Narcotics,
so we're going to give a good spotlight. It'll be
a bit of a different show on a law enforcement
agency that not many in the city know about. So
that'll be John Fleming. He'll be here this Friday at
six pm Eastern Standard time, so we have the lookout
for that show. We have the Chief back again. Hopefully

(58:26):
this is the last of our technological problems, because we
don't want to be robbed in the stories and Chief
perceiving what you were saying.

Speaker 2 (58:34):
Well, the great part about that program is that my
relationship with Jimmy Boyle became really great. He became my mentor.
He did more favors for people, and as for more
favors when he died, what's his name, King, Senator.

Speaker 1 (58:52):
King, Peter Peter Peter.

Speaker 2 (58:56):
King, Peter King. He was at the funeral next to Juliani,
and I was with the family, and Peter King actually
got up and said, I never had a man asked
me for so many favors, but none of them or
for him. And I still stay in contact with his family.
I'm a mentor to his granddaughter. She is a paramedic

(59:18):
in Philadelphia, Amanda Lynch, a really good friend of mine
now and I love his family and I feel bad
and I condone system for their brother and uncle Peter,
who just died recently.

Speaker 1 (59:39):
I did want to ask you about this because this
was pre murder, but it would set the ground work
for what would come later and responding later on ninety
three first attack on the trade center that day. Of course,
EMS was their assisting along with pd FD and my PD.
I don't just mean the NYPD, the poor authority police
as well with evacuations, because you essentially had two smoke
chimney at that time when that bomb went off. And

(01:00:02):
it's not just the six people who were killed in
this attack, it's the thousands who were injured, primarily because
of smoking elation. So that day, I know you were involved.
What was the exact nature of your involvement with the
world trades? That are part one?

Speaker 2 (01:00:14):
Okay, Mike, that day, I wasn't there that day. I
was in operations, and in operations, my primary role was
to try to keep people at work so we could
roll them out, you know, whatever tool we're going to use,
don't let them go home tour changes. And I didn't
have the opportunity to go through the trade center on

(01:00:36):
that day. But during that time, that was the first
year that they created the Urban Search and Rescue Team,
and we were in training and for the weeks after,
I would be there with one of the paramedic in
an ambulance, and every time they had found a patient
in a parking garage, which was like you know, levels,

(01:01:00):
one of us would have to go down and find
one of those seven people. I actually went down a
couple different times, but I still didn't have the opportunity
to go down and pronounce any of the bodies. Shout
out to Steve Canarian, who was the person who actually
the paramedical lieutenant retired great man. I was working with

(01:01:21):
him and he pronounced the last person at the World
Trade Center weeks later.

Speaker 1 (01:01:27):
Yeah, that was we fed on Metcata, who was found
under piles of debris. He was a worker down there.
I think he was making a drop off when that
bomb exploded. We'll go back to the merger. In nineteen
ninety six we covered that. Of course, that was a
directive of Commissioner Safer right before he left to go
be the NYPD commissioner, and then of course von Essen
came in right after that. Nineteen ninety seven into nineteen

(01:01:48):
ninety eight. We talked about the growing pains in terms
of getting used to the ft Andy and their way
of doing things. There was also a lot of training
for what would come in the futures. It pertains terrorism
in the midst of that, there's another personal milestone for
you and where two thousand you end up getting promoted
to captain. So this is sixteen years involved in New

(01:02:08):
York City ems, slash the FD and Y and I
imagine that having been a lieutenant for as long as
you had been, the transition to captain wasn't that hard,
or was it?

Speaker 2 (01:02:17):
It wasn't that hard. I had a unique circumstance. I
got moved into an administrative role that should have been
a captain or a chiefs position that was offered to
me as as an administrator earlier, and I didn't take
it because there was no raise and I knew that job.
I was having to do it with the Bureau of

(01:02:37):
Health Services, workers' compensation, the line of duty injury stuff,
and it was just growing at that time. And they
approached me and they said, what do you want to
come in here? And I said nothing. I'll come in
there as a lieutenant coming from the academy, and I
will make something of it. And in a short period
of time I got promoted to the captain role. So

(01:02:59):
I didn't have the op opportunity other than you know,
just being promoted, but only promoted to the role that
the rank that that role was supposed to have that
I was already doing and in my career, which is
very much different than most careers, I had the opportunity
to work on making authorizations for treatment for MS people

(01:03:21):
who were injured line of duty. Better I did, worked
with the annual medicals, and as things came up, like
the trade Center, you know, working with the benefits, because
the benefits were being created by the federal government and
we had to make interpret what the rules were and

(01:03:43):
then you know, roll it out. Then people were not
getting three quarters. We only got three quarters I think
nineteen ninety seven excuse me, Yeah, the line three quote
of disability benefits EMUs did not have that, uh, and

(01:04:04):
we had to roll that out. And that rollout was
very difficult because of the fact that we were dealing
with another agency, Nicers New York City Retirement System, and
they were denying our MS people for reasons of which
that the incident was not exactly an accident and it

(01:04:25):
had to be an accident, and we had to look
back at the legislation that role that that that that
came from that and I was the guy that was
doing all that work. I took something that was not
real and made it into something that had worked for

(01:04:46):
our MS folks. And in that position, I took on
more roles. I was still part of the urban Search
and Rescue team, and then I became part of the
incident management team in the Finance area where as a
comp claims unit leader, and I was promoted to deputy
chief and then years later, I think nine years later,

(01:05:07):
I forget how many years it was I was. I
was promoted to division chief and then I actually had
on call duties at that point. But my career a
lot of it. Even though I have a passion for
the EMS operations, I work in the field as a paramedic,
I feel the pains of like what the people people's

(01:05:30):
complaints are because you know when they're being told log on,
log on, go go to your area, go to your area,
go to the hospital, get out of the hospital, get
out of hospital, go available, go available. You know, a
lot of these are it's easy to forget those rules,
but when you're actually working as a paramedic, you you
understand the pains of the people and you when you're

(01:05:54):
you're actually in the field, you know people would say
there's a lot of injuries. Too many injuries, too many injuries.
But when you're at paramedic ERR and EMT and you're
lifting people that are twice or three times your weight,
driving ambulances through red lights, stop signs, it's a rough
job and people get hurt. And I wanted to make

(01:06:17):
sure and I wanted to make a difference and help
these people. And I did a really great job of
doing that. I'm proud of myself.

Speaker 1 (01:06:25):
Oh you should be. You should be, especially considering the
fact that again and I love that you mentioned is
you've been there. You know what it's like. So people
who are out in the field appreciate that, because sometimes
to further remove, the boss can be from the field
they forget what being in the field is like. But
you never forgot that, which is imperative. Especially if there's
ills that they complain about. You know what they're talking about,

(01:06:47):
and you can act quicker to make the situation tenable,
make the situation better, and that not only not only
helps in the short term morale, but in the long
term as well in terms of networking and trust. The
key in any agency, especially the agency as pivotals as
you'll or is trust. If the guys in gowns that
are working the street. Don't trust those who's above them.
You're not gonna get anything done.

Speaker 2 (01:07:06):
Yeah. Well, you know a lot of the benefits that
EMS got through legislation, Uh, it was kind of like
thrown at us, and a lot of people would turn
around and say, well, the MS is not entitled to that,
or that title is not entitled to that. And I
kind of feel like the most important people are the

(01:07:27):
line people that our soldiers that are on the road
and treating patients. They're the front line there. They're number one.
You know, their pay needs to be raised, respect, they
need to be more better, respect, better benefits. I'm proud
of where we've gotten, but there's so much more, you know.

(01:07:51):
I always said there's nothing greater than that, the the
heart of volunteer. But in the municipa line up, I
would say the hardest working people that get the least
respect is probably the our f and YAMS folks.

Speaker 1 (01:08:11):
It's been that way for a long time now, and
EMTs across the board really, but especially in New York City,
I'm like, man, they are getting it paid peanuts that
I mean, it's amazing the merger happened and this was
before the merger. The merger happened in nineteen ninety six.
That merger will turn thirty years old and a couple
of years cheap, and we're still having the same problem still.
And you know, and you were. It's not that long

(01:08:33):
ago that you've that you retired. It's you've only been
retired almost three years now, you left in twenty twenty two.
From your vantage point, how does that exactly get fixed?
I mean it's easy to say, well, union contract negotiation,
but sometimes it goes way beyond that.

Speaker 2 (01:08:47):
Yeah, well, you know, the unions, they're the backbone. They're
the ones that have to get out there. And there's
advocates that are out there that are very strong. Garry Smiley,
who was a retired paramedics, he's done so much. He
chases these politicians and you know, and he was there.

(01:09:09):
He was a rescue medic. He and he's done a lot.
We have to latch onto things people. I know, when
the merge happened. I'm going to tell you a little
story that when emerge happened, Jimmy Boyle told me that
he approached the union leaders for twenty five h seven
and said, I know how to help you. I can

(01:09:31):
help you. And he said, no, no, we got it.
It's all we're good. We're good, and kind of like
that was a man that had ideas and he had
connections you can't brush off. You know, it's a little
bit unfortunate that the union leadership is great, but they

(01:09:55):
come from being an AMT and a paramedic to a leader,
and you know, every time they voted in a new person,
it's like a new start ground.

Speaker 1 (01:10:08):
You know, it's starting from ground level all over again.

Speaker 2 (01:10:10):
Essentially, it's it's it's a little bit rough. Where when
I was working, when I was hanging out with Jimmy
Boyle and Michael Boyle who died at the Trade center,
UH came up to work light duty with me. And
he was a great guy, Michael Uh. You know, I
was watching him and he was campaigning for UH for

(01:10:35):
for leaders, you know, for president, for mayors Salbanese. He
was campaigning for Salbanies at the time. And I said, Mike,
you know what's going on with you. Your father was
one of the greatest UH Union leaders of all time.
He said, well, he didn't say it, somebody else said it.
His best friend said it. He's being groomed. He is

(01:10:58):
being groomed to that one of the greatest union leaders ever.
And I have to say on the fire side, they
plan ahead, way ahead. The leadership is groomed. Now things
have gotten better for MS you. We have better training.
Uh uh. We have forming school fire Officer management. Uh

(01:11:20):
the school for our officers that they could participate what
may have only been something that was given to the
firefighters or the fire chiefs. We attend that as well.
Now we you know, we have leadership that looks up.
Loura Kavanaugh, she she was great. She was always said

(01:11:41):
EMS is just as important as fire. But you got
to see it and pay. You got to see it
in respect, you've got to see it in benefits. We've
come a long way, but there's so much more to
do right.

Speaker 1 (01:11:53):
Right it's you know, it's it's again. It's a decades
long battle. It's not just happening in New York City,
but really across the board. If you look around the
country with AMR or different ambulance course, you could say
a lot and even just ambulance course within the five boroughs,
it's something that you could definitely say a lot about.
And now most of it pleasant unfortunately.

Speaker 2 (01:12:10):
And like I want to do a shout out to
all the voluntary ambulance people working at nine to eleven SISTED.
You know, nearly one third of the system is made
up with people that work for voluntary hospitals. And I
often get approached by people with a crisis and I said,
it should have worked for the fire department. Your pay
would not have been great. But the benefits that we

(01:12:32):
do have, you know, load eye, line of duty injury
up to eighteen months, the COVID pay if you got
sick of COVID you could get that, the three quarter
of disability benefits, and the Heart bill. These are great bills.
But I watch people get sick, injured and lose their
jobs working for a voluntary hospital. There is horrible disability pensions,

(01:12:58):
you know, things in place for them, and I would
like to see them get on board with get their
unions getting to improve their pay and what they get,
because I don't think unless you give MS people a
lot of money in another ten years. We are dependent
on these voluntary hospital people to work alongside us, and

(01:13:21):
we're brothers and sisters on the same mission. And you know,
shout out to them, and I hope that they get
better than much better ben events as well.

Speaker 1 (01:13:33):
Absolutely, I didn't want to highlight this comment from Chris
ev that he's been on the show before, and he says,
if we can highlight that producer Victor christ and of
course a former member of New York City EMS, he's
out in Pasady to Texas these days. I was on
a TPU I have thirty seven and Bettsdeye and definitely
was around the chief off and on throughout my time there,
including MCIs with the og hashtag bus all the best

(01:13:53):
to him and John Fleming who's popping up as LinkedIn
user checking. That's John who'll be on the show this Friday.
To your point about Boyle, he says, I met Jimmy
Boyle when he became the director of labor relations for
Joe Hines and the Brooklyn DA's office. I owe him
everything for helping me understand how to be a union president.
So yeah, Jimmy Boyle definitely a man who understands and

(01:14:14):
understood leadership during his time.

Speaker 2 (01:14:16):
You know, I just want to tell a little Jimmy
Boyle story. Jimmy Oyle was working at the DA's office
almost right across the street from headquarters and I was
born on September eleventh, nineteen sixty one. So my wife
planned a surprise party this Saturday before and she invited
Jimmy and Jimmy Jimmy did come to a lot of

(01:14:37):
my events, but for whatever reason, he didn't get around
to responding. And she mentioned it to me that, you know,
Jimmy Boyle didn't respond. And the next thing I know
is I'm at the trade Center in the afternoon and
I'm standing on West Street and Chambers and who shows up.
It's Jimmy. And the first thing that Jimmy actually says
to me is happy birthday, and I gotten it was

(01:15:00):
my birthday, and I said, thank you, jim And then
the next line out of his mouth was that they
can't find Michael. And I was looking at him with
my eyes, looking over his shoulders with the flames and
sparks and smoke, no with no trade center, and I
kind of like just said, we're going to find him.

(01:15:22):
But unfortunately, you know, Michael and his best friend ARSI, uh,
you know, they perished and they were they they were friends,
and uh, you know, it's it was a sad time,
you know, because you lost a friend and one of
your friends, your friend's father, your friend's son had died,

(01:15:45):
and it was a funeral. At the funeral, that's just overwhelming.
You know, it's a very sad time.

Speaker 1 (01:15:52):
I did want to ask. I guess now we can
we can touch on that day, you know again. E. M.
S was a big part of the response that day,
so much so that in the end of the three
hundred and forty three casualties in the FTOI side two
of the more paramedics, Ricardo Quinn and Carlos Slilo. Just
tell me about step by step year September eleventh, two

(01:16:12):
thousand and one. I'll give the Florida you Chief.

Speaker 2 (01:16:14):
Okay. Well, Ricardo Quinn was actually working like Lord Light
Duty and Queens and he self dispatched himself, so he
went there on his own from his assignment. But where
I was working, I was at headquarters. But I was
part of the at the time urban search and rescue

(01:16:36):
team with equipment and funker gear and whatnot. And it
was understood when I took that assignment that I could
run out of the building to go to any type
of disaster, and they agreed to that. I was putting
my gear together after the first plane hit thinking that
it was a much smaller incident, and then somebody came
to me and said the second building was just hit.
And at that point I said, wow, this is bigger

(01:17:00):
than what I thought. Everybody had already left the headquarters.
There was no more vehicles to go in because I
had to change my clothes and had to get my
gear together. So I ran down to the Brooklyn Bridge
with bunker gear and you know, over my shoulder, and
a police officer stopping and she said what are you doing.
I said, I'm going to the trade center. She goes, not,

(01:17:22):
what are you doing running to the trade center and
she flagged down a car police car unmarked the Crown
Vic's lights in front grill, and he stopped and he
let me in and then he took off and we
I thought I was going to die just from the
speed that he was going over to Brooklyn Bridge, you know.
And he asked me what are you and I said

(01:17:42):
I was a paramedic. And as we came down onto
Chambers Street, there were crowds of people that were going
running out away from Manhattan and they were in the
street and he was actually on the pa yelling get
out of the way. I have a paramedic on board,
and I'm like, like a little bit, like it's I'm
one paramedic, dude, don't don't make too much of Meylee's

(01:18:04):
but he dropped me off at the Millennium Hotel and
at that point I knew that I had to find
the sock guys. And these were the people I've gone
to the Dominican Republic with to a hurricane Hurricane George
back in nineteen eighty nine. And I know Chief Downey

(01:18:25):
and he's a tough guy. He was tough and uh yeah, yeah, oh,
I was afraid of him. I was like, so I
was like, I need to find Chief Downey. And the
EMS people were like who, I said, the sock guys.
I need the sock guys and they're like sock with

(01:18:45):
sock and I was like special Operations Command. And then
I looked over and they were struggling because lots of
patients were just coming across the street. They moved the
triage to right in front of the Millennium Hotel. There's
planters there and people were sitting on the planets and
they were doing hanging triage tags on people and people
were in distress. Callous Lula, who was actually there on

(01:19:07):
that corner. There's a picture of him with a patient
in a red dress sitting on a stair chair. She burned,
and he's like directing somebody to do something. And I
remember that scene and I didn't know where to sock
people were, but I said, this is going to be
a long operation. I could help trioge. So I went

(01:19:31):
over and there was a woman there. She was crying.
She's a heavy set black woman in a business outfit.
She was sitting on the planter and I walked over
and I said, are you okay? And we're doing trioge
and she said, I can't breathe. I have asthma. So
I said, okay, I'm going to make you a red tag,
but I'm also going to give you some oxygen. And

(01:19:53):
I grabbed went to grab the oxygen. And as I
grabbed the oxygen, the South tower started to crumble. My point,
looking up, I didn't see it crumpling down. I thought
it was like more blasting out because what was coming
down was just going down, caking, you know, caking steps
full by floor by paw. And I was like, I

(01:20:15):
don't know what to do with the lady and I
looked down at her and she was gone. She ran away.
So that was like, well, that's a relief. I don't
have a patient. But at that point I took cover on,
just laying on the ground, and the ground was just
the debris was just coming up around me and on
top of me, and I couldn't breathe. And I had

(01:20:36):
my helmet on my head and I had to advise
her and I was pulling it down, pulling it up,
my mouth full of dirt. I couldn't breathe. I said,
I'm going to die. And I remember thinking about my wife,
my family, and one moment I actually said I only
have one hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of life insurance.
I gotta survive this. My wife won't be able to

(01:20:57):
make it on that. And somehow in the minute and
I felt somebody grab my helmet and say, we got
a firefighter year He's going to get us out. And
I was thinking to myself, get you out? Who's going
to get me out? And I didn't know what to say.
The air cleared enough to blow out my mouth, and
I said, okay, we need to know how many people

(01:21:18):
we are. And I thought there was four, so I said,
let's count out loud. One person said one, another person
said two, another person said three. And I was about
to say four and give it make it a day.
Four people, but that counting kept going. There were like
nine people there and I said, God, like seven or
nine people were that were that counted. And I said,
I don't even know what to tell you. I can't

(01:21:40):
Everything was black, couldn't see, the air was thick. People
were injured, they were bleeding. And we managed to go
up the street to Broadway, and I remember people crawling
out from underneath cars. There was a lady in the subway.
I went down and she was in the fetal position, crying,
and I didn't know what to tell her. Then an

(01:22:02):
ambulance pulled up and the ambulance was clean, and two
EMTs I didn't recognize them, came out and everybody ran
towards the ambulance. It was like they're going like lots
of people. And there was an unconscious man in a
wheelbarrow and they wheeled them over and they threw him
onto the stretcher. They pulled a stretcher out. They threw
him on the stretcher, but the other people were climbing

(01:22:24):
in on in the ambulance wanted to get out, and
I was just kind of like standing there like amazed,
like how many people can you put in the back
of an ambulance? And I felt somebody tugging on my
pants and I looked down and it was a woman
in the business outfit, just covered with debris, the same
woman that ran away having the asthmatack. And I said, well,

(01:22:47):
for sure you're going to get in, and she, I said,
but I can't lift you. So I said, you can
have to kneel on the bump on that back bumper
that step, and then I said, okay, now get your
knee up to the platform. And she got her knee
up to the platform and the people, some of them
were actually saying, she's too she's too big, she's not
gonna fit. And I said, no, she's gonna fit. And

(01:23:09):
I was actually pushing her, like pushing her buttocks in
until she collapsed, and I heard somebody say, she's on
my arm. She's on my arm. And I was able
to grab a leg close one door and then grab
the other leg and push it in and close the
other door, and I gave the thing the thumbs up

(01:23:31):
to the driver go and it actually was a set
of keys on the back door. Still the other partner
never took his keys off the back door, and the
back on the back door was the keys to the ambulance,
said Flip flipping in the wind. I think that's the
closest I came to, uh, saving a life. The days
to come, the hours to come. Uh, I came back.

(01:23:54):
Somebody had told me we were. We were at the
at the ferry terminal at one point and doing triage
and nobody, no patients were coming out, No patients would
coming out. And a ferry came in from Stannum filled
with firefighters, and there were people applauding for the firefighters
that they were there. And the firefighters say, and I

(01:24:15):
talked to them and they they were writing their names
and their Social Security numbers on their arms. So should
anything should happen to them, that they would be able
to be identified, that's you know, we actually thought we
were going to die because we didn't know what was
going to happen. Next. You know, we've got the word
that the Pentagon got hit. Somebody said the Empire State

(01:24:37):
Building is going to get hit. There's going to be
enough that their their secondary devices. But we went back
and I had to. I remember going back to Chamber
Street at the MCC and our equipment was coming in
on trucks. The use our equipment. We were setting up tents,
setting up to do whatever we're going to do. And
I remember we're blocks away from building seven and Building

(01:25:01):
seven started to crumble and the debris started to fly
towards us, and I yelled, run run, and people started
to run up the ramp at at the Barrel Matton
Community College and it was obvious that the debris was
never wasn't going to get to us, so we stopped.
We turned around, and we retreated. And it was a

(01:25:21):
fire chief that turned around to me and said, I
give the order to run, And I said, I looked
at it, muttered underneath my breath, like after you've been
in two collapses a day, you know you you you
know when to run, you don't hang out. Yeah, it
would have been a much better scene. As I look
back in some of those videos of people running down

(01:25:42):
the street that if I would have ran down the
street rather than laying on the ground, I wouldn't have
been hit so hard, you know, with with debris and
my mouth wouldn't have been filled with with with with
with the dirt. There were days we would find That

(01:26:03):
first day, I remember we found a guy in what
appeared to be bunker gear and his abdomen was opened.
He was he was dead. And the firefighter was standing
on a platform of a vehicle and he was pulling
what he thought was a rope. And I looked up
at him and I said, it's small intestines and he
said what I said, you're pulling the small intestines. And

(01:26:27):
he said, how do you know? And I said, twenty
three feet twenty three feet small small intestines, And like
I was shocked. I even said that that first day
was you know, you'll find a head. One point four
five paramedics were together. Antony Dejaneio was one of them,

(01:26:49):
and a few others I just can't remember their names.
And we didn't have a plan, and we sat down
on a curb and we said, we're going to have
to find a group of people to work with because
there were a lot of people there. But initially it
was hard to figure out what the mission was going
to be. You know, it was hard to figure out
who was leading, who was doing what, what was happening,

(01:27:12):
and equipment was coming in, and I remember we were
talking and we said, okay, should we split up and
help different groups? Should we work together? We need to
fish figure out what our what our goal, what our
mission would be for today. And of course, you know,
an incident management team is always planning for the next
incident day, you know, for the next act, you know,

(01:27:33):
for the next operational period. We're already in that period
and we don't have a plan. And we were sitting
on that h on on the you know, on the
curb and kind of like a little bit of a circle,
and one of the female members of the team points
down on the ground and in the puddle is a

(01:27:53):
hand and the hand has a diamond ring on it.
And I rememberber being so touched because you say, that
person was loved, you know, and now that person is dead,
and not only is she dead, you know, it's just
the hand. There's no body there. You know. There were
people that were shredded, and those days were rough because

(01:28:17):
every day it became harder. The smell was horrible. We
weren't finding anybody but in that one in that one day,
and I have to say I didn't save a life.
But I was with called Traumatana and somebody said, we

(01:28:38):
have a live person, we have a live person, and
I this was the actually the last person that was
pulled out alive on September twelfth. It wasn't to port
authority offers, no.

Speaker 1 (01:28:53):
This this was a woman. Polls Solmon from Rescue Too
was among those that helped yeah out.

Speaker 2 (01:29:00):
They said, we need we need paramedics. And Cal and
I were jumping from one stable place to another to
get to this one place and they had ladders tied
together up to like part of the of a building
that wasn't completely down, and they said, she's up there.
And I looked at a call and I said, I

(01:29:20):
don't know if I could carry if I could climb
up those ladders with equipment, and they were kind of
like rope together. They're like, no, no, no, no, we're going
to lower her down on a stoke stretcher, but first
we're going to lower a dead guy down because we
have to free her or something. And they lowered the
they lowered the soak stretcher down and as it came

(01:29:43):
the Daisy Train the soak stretcher through to get her
to the American Express building to get whoever it was.
And as she passed me, she was naked, her head
was swollen. I noticed her lips a little bit wet,
and I said, that's the dead person. And within minutes,

(01:30:06):
when a soak stretcher made it to the American Express building,
one of our lieutenant's ems lieutenant's Cherry Santiago, came over
to radio and said, call, this one's alive. And she
was actually alive. And she was the last person pulled out,
and she was that close to being put into it

(01:30:26):
into a body bag because she looked like she was dead,
and unfortunately the other person actually was dead. So they
just sent down the person who was alive before they
sent down the dead person, because I guess they free
her up. But she was the last person to survive.
And in a way, I'm proud of Call and I

(01:30:49):
for being there, but we didn't we didn't get to
do anything for her.

Speaker 1 (01:30:55):
And this was twenty they said, twenty seven hours after
the back, so this was the next day. And then,
as you said, after that or was just recoverage from
that point forward, it was no longer a rescue mission.
Thanks for sharing that. There comes to transition to Chief
A little bit later out I believe in two thousand
and three in the finance section. So you got to
you had already been in logistics as it was given
the fact that you had an administrative position that continued

(01:31:17):
with your rise to captain.

Speaker 2 (01:31:18):
It continued even.

Speaker 1 (01:31:19):
More so your rise to chief. You saw a continued
evolution all the way up until twenty twenty two. So
as far as managing incidents both nationwide, and you're involved
with logistics, especially as you mentioned you saw earlier and
the New York City level post nine to eleven. Just
tell me about your chiefs years up until you called
it a day a couple of years ago on the
FD and Y side.

Speaker 2 (01:31:38):
Well, I was very much involved with the USAR team,
but when I got promoted to chief, they really don't
want chiefs to be in the weeds. They want them
to be leaders. That's where you're supposed to stand up
and let the other people do the work and kind
of kind of you make recommendations and and lead. So

(01:32:01):
the next step was the through the World Trade Center.
How the story of getting more organized was that we
had chiefs there, but this was a large scale incident
that was going to last months and the firefighters are great,
fire chiefs are great. But traditionally in New York, a

(01:32:25):
fire goes on the building, the firefighters go there, they
pull people out, they save lives, they put the fire out,
and then they go back to the house and go
to the next one. This was going to be an
event that was going to be very similar to how
they would have to fight a Wiline fire that would
go on for months and months and months or months

(01:32:46):
a longer time now multiple operational periods. So the federal
government sent in Wilind Incident Management Team. They were experts
and Wiline fires. And I was told that the fire
chiefs were like looking at these guys from out west,
their big belt buckle, their you know, their cowboy hats,

(01:33:09):
and saying, you've got to be kidding, and uh, they said,
we're here to help, and they offer their help. And
the fire chiefs at the time said, I think we
got it. I think we know what we're doing. And
within two days, uh, they realize, what do you guys
have for us? What what do what do you can
you help us with? And they taught them about working

(01:33:32):
for the next operational period. We have a planning pee
that we take the incident today, and we're going to
plan what the operational plan will be for tomorrow, what
are the resources that are going to need, what sections
are are we going to have, what ambulances are needed,
and you will do this every day, have it, you know,

(01:33:54):
a meeting every day where you're starting to plan for
the next operational period. So we got control over the
incident through the help of the Southwest Incident Management Team
in Arizona, and we actually became friends with them and
we insisted, uh that we needed to learn that what

(01:34:18):
they do. And these were these incident management teams. There's
different sizes one level one, level two, level two, three
one being like a sixty six person team. It's a
mirror of the next team. So the team could last
two weeks on a site and they get handed off
to the next team without having much of a transition

(01:34:39):
because everybody has the same position. They you know, your
your counterpart would meet up with you and you would
hand over to the incident. So this incident management team
concept was becoming big. We were sending people out to
wildland fires to be trained and you know, first you know, watching,
you know, and then doing and then doing it on

(01:35:02):
your own. And getting certified, and there was a position
on a team that was hard to fill. It's still
hard to fill. Within the finance section, you know the
different sections you have the Operations, Logistics, Planning, and Finance section.
There's a position called the comp Claims Unit Leader, and
the comp Claims Unit leader looked after the injured people

(01:35:24):
that were working on the incident and how to take
care of them. And that was exactly what I was
doing at the fire department. So they automatically made me
the Complaims Unit leader and through that I had the
opportunity in my career to go out to numerous wildline fires.
Sometimes I was sent out on my own to work

(01:35:45):
with other teams. Sometimes I was sent out with just
a few individuals, and sometimes, like an Idaho, our entire
team went to Idaho to fire to a Wilelinde fire,
and you know, people would say, what do these guys
know about wildfires? But you know, they learned a lot

(01:36:05):
and we learned a lot and that incident management team,
I became the finance section chief. Being a finance section chief,
you either become a person that people like a lot
or people don't like a lot, because you would say
that's too expensive. You know, the design of the concept

(01:36:28):
is to not allow the incident's course go spiraling out
of control. You know that you don't have resources that
you don't need, and you have the resources that you
do need, and you call up what recurs that you
need for next week, so you have them in place
for the next for the next operational period. In my career,
that was one of the greater opportunities to become the

(01:36:50):
finance section chief and work alongside really great fire chiefs
and work as a team. Uh you don't you can't spell? Uh? Team?
Would I right?

Speaker 1 (01:37:05):
No, that's true?

Speaker 2 (01:37:07):
What is it?

Speaker 3 (01:37:07):
No?

Speaker 2 (01:37:08):
You only you could spell? You know? Right? You got it.

Speaker 1 (01:37:12):
I'm sorry, listens, but no, the point was well taken
and the point was understood because that's true, especially now,
Asset management and the emergency community in the emergency response
field is everything. If you don't know how to manage assets,
you're you know, you're ready screwed from the start with
the operation. It's funny you mentioned wild land fires because
these days, you know, the brush fire unit in the
fdn WI is getting a lot of work. There's been
brush fires in Manhattan, of all places, in Brooklyn of

(01:37:32):
all places. There's when in Staten Island the other day
an unprecedented dry period to where places that you wouldn't
think would have experience with these type of things actually
gaining invaluable experience and multiple alarms worth of experience at that. Yeah,
it's a it's a it's an ongoing thing.

Speaker 2 (01:37:50):
You know. All everything in the in the f d
n Y is so exciting, you know, the initiatives. I
was working at Volunteer Ambulance IT one night a few
weeks ago, and it was an incident that unfortunately somebody
had hit a bicyclist. And I go to the hospital
with a patient and I see all the SUV's, the

(01:38:12):
big chiefs are all there and I said, oh, something happened.
And the person involved in the incident, the driver, the
EMS guy, was upset. And I go inside the er
and there's a dog with the firefighter and I said, oh,
it's an awesome dog. What is it doing here? He goes, No,
this dog works for a family assistance. This is like

(01:38:35):
a dog that coddles people that needs you know, there's
a firefighter that saw something horrible, or an EMS person.
We bring this dog out and it was amazing that
the dog walked up to the guy and the guy's
head was down and his head was up and he
was petting the dog, and you know, the dog handle

(01:38:55):
has said, he's doing his job. The initiatives when we
would do drills with the I MT and I BE drones,
we never saw drones and then we had them. They're amazing,
you know for a fire to be able to bring
eyes up above a fire without having to have a helicopter. Uh,

(01:39:19):
it's a great.

Speaker 1 (01:39:19):
Tool, absolutely, especially now with the drones being available, particularly
with building collapses. I remember there was a building collapse
a while ago where a drone was surveying specific spots
to know where to send men in members I should
say in, and where not to send them in. So
technology it's available now and across the board, not just
on the firefighting side of the MS side is amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:39:40):
And the training, Uh, it's unbelievable. You you you know
the active shooter training that they that they created and
they practice it. It's amazing how lives will be saved
that there was ever active shooter in New York because
they would get guys in there, uh and put tourniquets

(01:40:03):
on and then lay you know, trioge to patients and
then get another team to pull to pull the red
tag people out, you know, and a safe manner working
with E s U. And we trained at facilities upstate
where H E. S U would would would actually be
doing the you know, the the the the hero work

(01:40:23):
of trying to take down the shooter. But also the
next step is we need to get out people out,
you know, our citizens out and they would go in
as a train with the s U in the front
and the E M S people in the middle and
E s U people in the back and go through
the building and they would drill and do this over

(01:40:44):
and over and over again and everybody would would learn
it and how to you know, pulling the skids out.
The FD M Y is amazing training, uh, opportunities for
people to learn and through it, you know, people's saving
lives and contributing to our great city.

Speaker 1 (01:41:06):
It's a department that's constantly evolving, which you can appreciate.
I mean, it's always ten steps ahead you need to
because the city is always changing. It doesn't matter if
the directions going good or bad. It's imperative with the
emergency response agencies like the fd and Y like the
NYP year the POORTOIDA police stay ahead of the curve,
which they for the most part, you know, particularly with
the fire department, they've always done a good job, especially
in the post nine eleven world, of making sure they're ahead.

(01:41:28):
Got one more question for you before we get to
the rabbid fire segment to conclude, and that is twenty
twenty two stepping away. Now, you're not done done yet.
You're still going strong and you're still working. But the
FD and Y component and EMS component, at least in
that specific capacity, has since stopped. So in twenty twenty two.
By then, a division chief, you've risen pretty high in
those almost forty years between NYC EMS and the FD

(01:41:51):
and Y. What was it that made you say or
was it a series of things that made you say
it's time to go?

Speaker 2 (01:41:57):
Well, I did thirty eight years, and I think that's
amazing when they when we got the twenty five and out.
I always was saying on my twenty fifth year, I'm
going to leave, I'm gonna leave, going to leave, and
you know, it got to the point where I was
going to leave, and at one of those thresholds, people said,

(01:42:20):
what are we gonna do without him, and I said, well,
I'm not going any I am thrilled to have gotten
to the point where I was a deputy chief and
I kind of was told, well, it was actually Jimmy
Boyle that wrote a letter to the commissioner saying that

(01:42:40):
if you lose this man, you're losing a vital part
of to fight apartment. And the commissioner had to validate
that and uh he he had. Liz Cassio at the
time called me and she said that the commissioner got
a letter from Jimmy Boyle and is this it is true?

(01:43:01):
I said, I do a lot of things behind the
scenes to help out our members, and I'm leaving because
I'm there thirty three years. You know, it's time. And
she said, well, you know what if the city was
to promote you and I said, well, that ain't going
to happen. And she said, why do you think it's

(01:43:23):
not going to happen? And I said, I used to
think the world of Commissioner Rush. He was a finance
you know, he was the commissioner of finance for Fighter
pop It and he had mentioned it and he said
it wasn't going to happen. When another chief said you
should promote him at the end of a meeting, and
then she went back and she asked Commissioner Rush, and

(01:43:47):
Commissioner Rush said, why would I ever say that I
think the world of this guy. I want to promote him.
I do want to promote him. And then he called
me and he was angry, and he said, why did
you tell the commissioners, you know so uh that I
didn't want to promote because you said it. He goes, well,
it wasn't me. It was because somebody else. It did

(01:44:08):
come up earlier, but somebody else didn't want you to
be promoted. And unfortunately, you have friends and then you
have foes, and sometimes you learn who your friends are.
And you know, this was he said, They're they're very
serious about this. They're going to bring it to the office,
you know, O and B mayor the mayor of budget people.

(01:44:31):
And I got promoted and I had to promise that
I was going to pay there for you know, five years.
That was like kind of like, that's what I was
going to do. And I took on more responsibility. But
I kind of felt that the toll of having so
many widows that I've helped and it's always been I

(01:44:52):
had to go against the green for my whole career
to do what was right. The cadet program, and the
cadet program was actually was a success because there often
I stand online at funeral and a guy next to
me would would say to me, aren't you Lieutenant sw Withers.
I said, no, I'm chiefs Withers and I'm Chief Murphy.

(01:45:13):
I was like, oh, Chief Murphy, how are you nice
to meet you? He goes, I was in the cadet program,
you know, so to see the next leaders of that program,
you know, you know, looking forward and saying, you know,
if if I had failed in that program, that guy
may have not stayed in the fire department and he

(01:45:35):
would not be one of the high ranking chiefs. You know.
It was thrilled to see that. And even the one
said I didn't become officers, but saved so many lives
and became paramedics. I'm so thrilled. When they come up
to me in the field. I have a hard time
remembering people, but you know, they look older after, you know,
after some years, and they would come to me and say,

(01:45:57):
you were my instructor during the debt program. And I
know what you went through, and I know I respect
that that that was, but you know, getting back to
the part of like I was fighting with these agencies, nicers,
the New York City Law Department Workers' Compensation Division, trying
to get authorization for treatment, trying to get three quarter

(01:46:20):
disability benefits for people, trying to get the widows from
World Trade Center and widows from heart problems benefits, you know,
getting their their their death benefits. It was always difficult.
As a result, I have probably about twenty or thirty people,
some of them watching right now, Widows that are you know,

(01:46:45):
you know, I can't believe I get Christmas, you know,
text messages and birthday text messages, you know. And and
they they they are, they're they're still my friends. I've
done street namings and they they're sometimes in diversing because
they come up to me and they give me these big,

(01:47:06):
gigantic hugs in front of my kids. Who's that? But
if I was to stay, I don't know if I
would still be alive and probably have a heart attack.
But I'm still They're still calling me. There's folks EMTs
that are in distress, and I'm the guy that still

(01:47:26):
knows a lot of these procedures, the policies, the politics.
I know the people that run the show at Niser's
and I know the friends and the pose, and I
do it for free, and I love every moment of it.

Speaker 1 (01:47:42):
Well, thank you for all that you've done and you
continue to do. And this was a great inside look
at not only of course the EMS component and the
fd andy, but also the logistics managements and the administrative
management that has to go on behind the scenes to
keep the operation running smoothly. So I very much appreciate
your time. We have the rapid fire segment, and this
is where the tests to go quick. It's five hit
and run questions from me, five run, five hit and

(01:48:04):
run answers from them on the spot. I'm going to
change it up a bit because a lot of the
questions that I had here you've already done a great
job of answering. So the first one is most uplifting
a call you would say you've ever responded to, besides
of course, delivering babies. That's uplifting it up itself.

Speaker 2 (01:48:18):
Besides that, yeah, well you know I shared that call
that happened at the Red Blazer two where it wasn't
about just resuscitating a person, because in that time frame,
it was a big deal toss the resuscitate a person
because the save rate was probably two percent, so we

(01:48:39):
only saw maybe one or two out of one hundred
people to come back. And then sometimes you would bring
them back and they were already down four to six
minutes of greater and their brain dead and they have issues,
scratch ahead. It's hard to digest to say we brought

(01:49:02):
a person back to be on a ventilator for the
rest of their life. That's that. That's rough. But that
one particular call with Miss Debrees and then being able
to meet him later and see the things that he
did later, it's pretty great. It's pretty great. It's a

(01:49:23):
shame that we're not allowed to mention names of celebrities,
but it's pretty cool when a celebrity would come up
on a radio show and mentioned that he was resuscitated
by at the MS crew. You know, I like that
a lot. There was one incident that I don't know
if the outcome was for the best at all, but

(01:49:45):
I when I met my wife, I told her that
she needed to become an EMT, so she joined Bravo
Volunteer Ambulance and she took an EMT class and I said,
we ride together. We ride together. And it was neat
having her with me, and I was very proud of
her because she was able to do things. And her
best friend was actually a paramedic who uh introduced us.

(01:50:11):
And you know, she never got into it. But there
was a day I was working Bravo Volunteer Ambulance with
my wife and there was another guy, Adam Gottlig, who's
a big EMS person at the near hospital. Now we
were working and we hear over the p D radio
that a car went off the pier. Uh in Sunset Park,

(01:50:33):
there's peers to go out into the you know, into
the bay, and a van drove off the pier. The
story was that a man was teaching driving lessons to
a seventeen year old girl and she drove off the pier.
And we got there and a lot of people were

(01:50:53):
getting in boats and the water was really chopping, and
the helicopters were going up. And I said, uh, to
my little group there that pulled a stretcher out, was
staying right here. Put out the oxygen, put the BVM out.
We're all set. You know. The fibrillator is all set
to go, and they're like, yeah, that patient's not going

(01:51:15):
to come up here, but sure. It was amazing because
one of the guys in the frog out outfits comes
up with the girl, pretty pretty girl in cardiac arrests.
And I had the opportunity to look at Andre Fletcher,
who died the Trade Center. He's a paramedic at Na

(01:51:37):
mam AND's Hospital. A really good friend was on the
us OR team with me, and he was able to
lean over and hate that ladder and he got the
girl on the ladder and when he got to the
point where she was just about at the pier level,
you have to realize it was a major difference in height,
like maybe ten feet. He leaned over, grabbed her, and

(01:51:59):
he handed her to me, and I walked over and
I put her on a stretcher, and I looked at
my wife and I said, do CPR, and she did CPR,
and the unit that I work on, actually the paramedic
came over my partner, but I wasn't working with them.
He intubated her and by the time they got into

(01:52:19):
a hospital, they had ross. They had you know, she
had spontaneous respirations and she had a pulse. She's still alive,
She's not doing that well. But what a major thrill
was the fact that my wife went on to become
a CPR instructor. She didn't do much with EMS, and
when she did her CPR instructor, she said, what percentage

(01:52:41):
of time? What the percentage of saves do I have?
And she would tell the students one one time she
did CPR, it worked, it worked, and I was so
proud and thrilled, and you know, you know, to this day,
we tell that story. Even Adam Goatleg from New York Hospital, Uh,

(01:53:02):
he does the critical care. He's a friend. He still
tells a story. And he actually came across there. He's
in charge of the critical care ambulances. That patient actually
was one of his patients recently, and he was able
to call me up and say, you know what I
had as a patient? You know that that that that female.

Speaker 1 (01:53:21):
I Andrey Fletcher before he came onto the FTY. I
think he was a police officer, wasn't he He was a
He was a coffer a little bit.

Speaker 2 (01:53:27):
You know, I don't know that correctly. I met Andre
Fletcher on the You Saw team, and I believe we
went to the Dominican Republic together for Hurricane George. Yeah,
he was. He was a rescue guy and uh, he
was a friend. He was a good guy, and you know,

(01:53:48):
he was one of the people that I actually knew
very pretty well and one of the things I came
across in Kingsburg, New Jersey. Uh, the New Jersey Remsco
created a memorial for just EMS people from the World
Trade Center. But they didn't just do EMS people, meaning

(01:54:09):
the people who died that were EMS, either from the
voluntary hospitals or or two EMS folks in the FDNY.
If anybody was a MT who was on a plane
and they died one of the planes that crashed, or
at the Pentagon that died that they were AMT or
a paramedic, they actually entered their names onto this spectacular monument.

(01:54:36):
And it's just the EMS people. It's amazing to see
names of people that I know, like Andre Frett Fletcher,
he was a firefighter and that day he was a
firefighter because he was a paramedic, his name belonged on
that monument. And it's a beautiful monument. If people go
while to Keensburg, New Jersey, it's well worth looking at

(01:54:58):
and seeing we'll.

Speaker 1 (01:55:00):
Skip ahead and we'll shorten the rabbid fire to three.
Like I said, because you've answered most of the questions
I originally had very well already. So of the second
of the three, I'll ask you is you need to eat?
Of course when you're out on the street. So there's
different places to stop so across the year's favorite bars.
If you're not a bar guy, it's find favorite restaurants
to get a goodbye to eat on the streets in
New York.

Speaker 2 (01:55:20):
City, Ah, you know, every borough is a little bit different.
But when I was an a MT and we were
sent on the Tactical patrol unit to go up to Hallum,
we used to stop at one O, three and three
the hot hot bread and Spanish coffee. And that was
with my partner at the time, John Vitally. We used

(01:55:41):
to stop there all the time and it was cheap.
We didn't have any money, so it was like you
got a Spanish coffee and a hot bread and cheese
on butt brother on butt with butter coming from a
press and it was a dollar. It was a dollar.
It was great. I think in Brooklyn now I spent

(01:56:01):
a lot of time stopping at Dyker bagels. They make
really good sandwiches and people are really really nice and uh.
We used to go to a Greek place where we
were ten eighty nine at our corner and we were
able to sit down and they made up food in
the tray. So if we got a call, it was

(01:56:22):
just a matter of putting the cover on and running out.
But it was the fact that being able to sit
down in a restaurant was such a great thing. It
was you know, it was you know, sit down with
a fork and a real fork and knife and just
listen to the radio. And the staff knew that if
we got a call, we didn't have a lunch break

(01:56:43):
that that had those covers had to go on and
they would zip them clothes and we'd run out and
hit the button and they hand us the bag and
we'd be on on our way. There's another place something
Greek in Bay Ridge, another great great place to eat this.

Speaker 1 (01:57:07):
We could choose your spots, that's for sure. Across the
five Borrows. Your screen's frozen, but we can still hear you,
so if you could still assuming you could still hear us.
Last question there the Rabbit fire is what advice would
you give the next generation of f D N Y E,
M T S and paramedics if you can hear us,
and I don't believe the Chief can't hear us. Unfortunately,
we're going so good. We're going so good, we weren't

(01:57:28):
having any tech problems. And then of course in the
rapid Fire comes up. So we'll get we'll get the
chief back of asking that last question. Mark Peck. You
see my message here in the chat. I'm sorry I
never got back to you with an invitation day. I
didn't forget about you, just got the sidetracked with a
bunch of stuff. But send me, send me a timeline
of your career, and then let's let's schedule something for
early next year. Assuming I haven't gone off to the

(01:57:49):
fire Academy yet. So we'll wait for Chiefs Weathers to
get back. We'll wrap up the Rapid Fire. I'll advertise
the next episode and and that'll be the end of that.
But I want to thank you guys for tuning in again.
And Joe, the membership's just me, you know, support for
the channel. You don't got to pay anything, but I
appreciate you asking, and I appreciate you taking new membership.

(01:58:10):
And mal Feldman is here for another show for Fieldman,
rather is here for another show. You were here in
the Joe CANASKI episode. I appreciate that, so thank you
once again for watching tonight. This is volume sixty four
of the best, the Bravest interviews with the fdny's elite,
which were chronicling the career of retired FT and Yems
Division Chief Jase Withers. Ems recently got a new chief.

(01:58:34):
I forget the name of that chief, and I'd like
to get him. I say it Chief Fields Mark Peck.
Perhaps in the chat you can fill me in, but
will fill me in later. Actually, because we got chiefs
with us, that chief. Last question, that's fine, you were
saying your restaurants, and then we'll get to the last question,
rapid Fire, Greek Spot and bay Ridge, and then was
there something else you mentioned?

Speaker 2 (01:58:52):
I mentioned something Greek and bay Ridge is a favorite,
and uh Brooklyn Dayker Bagels on fourteenth w in eighty
sixth Street. Another favorite, Santiago is on Bay sixteenth Street
and Cropsy really good food. And early days we used

(01:59:13):
to go to a little bodega place they made hot
bread and cheese. And one hundred and third Street and
third Aveu on our way to Halim with John Vitally,
great partner, great.

Speaker 1 (01:59:24):
Man, very nice And the last question of rapid fire.
Advice you to give the new generation of FT and
y E, mts and paramics.

Speaker 2 (01:59:34):
Yeah, well, the new generation is a rough generation. You know.
I'm constantly telling people that you need to put into it.
It's more about what you could do for ems, for
the Fire Department, for the citizens of New York, but
what you're going to get out of it. I hope

(01:59:57):
that all our new emt ease find themselves of the
opportunity to go to paramedic school. It became a rule
years ago that you couldn't be a paramedic. It couldn't
be a lieutenant unless you were a paramedic, and they
were trying to change that. But as hard as it
is to go to the school, let the city make

(02:00:18):
you a paramedic and become a paramedic, and I'll give
you the opportunity to become a lieutenant in advance and
a captain. There's so many opportunities. Don't let anything pass you,
you know, you got to like sometimes grab it, you know,
if there's a posting for a position as a as
a lieutenant excuse me as a to go to the

(02:00:39):
academy and they're going to train you to do that.
Training is great, it's free. I mean I became an
instructor outside first, and I spent a lot of my
own money and my only a lot of my own
time to become an instructor. We have great mentors, you know.
I feel that anybody into this, even if they're going

(02:01:01):
into this as a stepping stone to become a police
officer or a firefighter, you're going to take this with
you and keep it. I believe in the future, and
I've said this over and over again that one day
there'll be a paramedic that gets upgraded or moved and
becomes a firefighter, that we're going to have that paramedic

(02:01:21):
carrying a life pack on the engine and provide more
care and better care, and we're going to have to
compensate them. But you know, right now, we have paramedics
that I just Saturday, I worked with a paramedic firefighter
female and she goes out as a CFRD person and

(02:01:41):
she doesn't have the equipment, and they don't support the
training for the paramedic to refresh. They support her to
be maintained as a CFRD person Certified first Responder. I
believe in the future they will paramedics that are riding
the engines and that would enhance their capability. And I'm

(02:02:05):
seeing the first line when I'm coming from Dyka Heights
and they're giving me a call and Coney Island on
West thirty fourth Street and Surf Avenue, which I know
I'm not going to get there for a half hour,
and there's an engine company standing there where only providing

(02:02:26):
oxygen or only providing CPR at a CFRD level, which
is great, But we should as an agency support getting
paramedics onto the firefighters, and our folks should try to
find whatever opportunities to learn and whatever training you know,

(02:02:50):
just go to It's. Our academy is so robust, our
instructors are so great, so knowledgeable. The best academy in
the world. Uh it hands down, it's one of the
greatest opportunities.

Speaker 1 (02:03:04):
Train Train, Train, Well said chief, Thank you very much
for your time. Stick around. We'll talk off here before
I say good back to the audience. Any shout outs
to anyone or anything that you would like to give.

Speaker 2 (02:03:16):
I did a whole bunch of shout outs, but if
my partner Franklin Felice and uh, you know Lauren Hannigan
and Sewan Barrow are out there listening to Chris. Uh.
Uh if if you're out there, you're you're you're my
partners and I appreciate you. And uh, you know, while

(02:03:38):
I was sick, you guys were there for me and
that was good. And I wish everybody the best, all
my friends in FDU Y, all the ranks, firefighters, H E,
M s, folks, chiefs, captains, lieutenants, uh and all our
partners through the voluntary hospitals and even even now police
officers that are out there you know, given an arcand

(02:04:01):
to uh to our patients before before we were able
to get to them and doing CPR and in many cases, Uh,
those are my shoutouts. My shout outs to my kids Robbie, James,
Megan and Stephanie and my wife Friend. Thank you for
the opportunity and helping me along my my long journey.

(02:04:24):
And I you know, I wish my son was here
when they when the pitchure went out a couple of
different times, but I know we had it, but I
figured it out each time, and and and very much
important Jimmy Boyle and his his family has Like I
went with them on in September eleventh, and uh, they

(02:04:47):
embraced me, and I embraced them. Uh it's really fabulous
to have them uh with me. And uh all the
sport from the widows that can you need to reach
out to me and you know, make me feel good
every day that they they reach out and they they
say Happy Christmas and you know all the holidays and

(02:05:11):
my birthdays and all that stuff. That's it's incredible. You know.
I love the MS, I love the city, and I
look forward to potentially uh you know, uh maybe perhaps
being the president of Bravo. I'm running for a president
next week and uh we'll see, We'll see how that goes.
But Mike h Tony Napley was it was a great

(02:05:34):
chief of communications for MS and he's the current president
and he's done a wonderful, fabulous job and I'm and
uh if he continues to be the president, I would
back him one hundred percent. And if I become president,
I hope he would backed me. With friends. My friend
Jimmy Nilan who came to EMS with me and he's

(02:05:55):
a PA now working in cardiology and making a lot
more money than I do. But uh, you know, that's
all fine, that's all great. Thank you very much for
the opportunity.

Speaker 1 (02:06:06):
Well, thank you for being here, Chief, appreciate you made
the time. I know we been trying for a little
bit too arrangements, so I'm glad that we were finally
able to link up. Like I said, stick around, we'll
talk off fair. A shout out as always to everybody
that tuned in the night, John Costello, A shout out
to you, my friend. I didn't acknowledge you earlyer Ichnology
now rather you were watching on YouTube, Facebook or LinkedIn.
Of course, it's always appreciated. Without the support of you,

(02:06:28):
the wonderful audience, this show would not be what it is.
Coming up next to the mic, the innvating podcast. As
I mentioned earlier when chiefs Withers was briefly out of
the picture, we have John Fleming, who was in the
chat earlier, tuning in via LinkedIn coming on. John was
a investigator for twenty nine years nineteen eighty eight until
twenty seventeen with the New York City's Office of Special Narcotics.

(02:06:48):
It's a law enforcement agency that not many in the
city know about, so this Friday, John's going to give
us an inside glimpse of what they do and what
his role was with that particular investigative agency for the
years and he was in it. So that's Friday at
six and next Monday, all things considered, barring anything unforeseen,
the interview that unfortunately was postponed with John Coglin will

(02:07:09):
take place. John, of course, former member of the New
York City Police New York City Transit Police is Emergency
Medical Rescue Unit and then later on upon their merger
with the NYPD, the NYPD's Emergency Service Unit. So that
should be volume fifty of the event inside the NYPD's
Emergency Service Unit next Monday, same time, six pm. In
the meantime, this has been volume sixty four of the

(02:07:29):
Best of the Bravest Interviews with the Ft and wise Alete.
For those of you listening on the audio side from
her breakthrough nineteen ninety five album Pieces of You, Tonight's
outro song is Jewel with who Will Save Your Soul?
And with that set on behalf of producer Victor and
retired fter and YEMS Division chief Jase Withers and Mike
Clone and we will see you next times everyone be
saying every.

Speaker 4 (02:07:49):
Day people in the last you, they say them.

Speaker 5 (02:07:58):
Bod of them you.

Speaker 2 (02:08:00):
He look great, he says.

Speaker 5 (02:08:03):
Home my calls from behind those cold begas says, come here, boy,
there ain't nothing for free. Another doctor's bill of ways bill,
another kid's cheap thrill. You know you love him if
you put him in your will.

Speaker 2 (02:08:17):
But who will say.

Speaker 5 (02:08:20):
Your souls when it comes to the flowers? Now save alsoults?

Speaker 4 (02:08:30):
If these lies it you sow boy, who.

Speaker 3 (02:08:34):
Will say your souls? If you won't sell old.

Speaker 1 (02:08:43):
Had I?

Speaker 4 (02:08:48):
We try to hustle him, try to bustle and try
to cuss them.

Speaker 1 (02:08:51):
The cops want some of the bust.

Speaker 3 (02:08:53):
Down on New Orleans Avenue. Another day, another dollar, another wall,
another town won't and up where the homes had their homes.
So we prayed with in a dif friend gods as
the all flowers the call religion of friends were so
worried about to say that our souls afraid that God

(02:09:14):
will take his home, and we forget to begin up.

Speaker 2 (02:09:19):
Who will sern your.

Speaker 3 (02:09:22):
Soul when it comes to the best, We'll save you
all souls, those gies.

Speaker 1 (02:09:31):
It's your top.

Speaker 3 (02:09:34):
Who will ser your souls?

Speaker 1 (02:09:38):
And he won't say the Lord.

Speaker 4 (02:09:44):
Had some walk and some talk and some stock and haircare,
got social security.

Speaker 1 (02:10:01):
If they just pay your bills, there.

Speaker 4 (02:10:03):
Are addictions to feed and now now it's to pay.

Speaker 1 (02:10:06):
So you bark and.

Speaker 3 (02:10:07):
With the devil Gaoka to d C. Then you learn
they'll take their money and wrong.

Speaker 2 (02:10:14):
So it's been swell, sweetheart.

Speaker 5 (02:10:16):
But it was a lot of stands, lot those things.

Speaker 4 (02:10:20):
Those things you've got some consol Get out.

Speaker 3 (02:10:23):
On the stags cos bust.

Speaker 2 (02:10:25):
The world cold.

Speaker 3 (02:10:42):
Hello, I'll save your young souls.

Speaker 1 (02:10:47):
Those lines you.

Speaker 2 (02:10:50):
Who else.

Speaker 4 (02:11:00):
A wrong? That's a time, that time.

Speaker 2 (02:11:16):
But said that, no doubt tay boish, but

Speaker 4 (02:11:22):
Yours sai

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Episode 345: The Best of The Bravest: Division Chief Jay Swithers (Volume 64)

Episode Transcript

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Episode 345: The Best of The Bravest: Division Chief Jay Swithers (Volume 64)

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