Finish the job by providing BLS care and do compressions on their chests and resuscitate them. Because locating and removing don't mean shit if you don't provide BLS care or advanced medical care and bring them back to life.
SPEAKER_00Firehouse Vigilance presents the weekly scrap, a podcast dedicated to the never-ending fight against complacency. Holy Moore, Firehouse Vigilance. It is weekly scrap, number three, five, zero. My guest tonight is returning for his seventh appearance on the scrap, Chief Kurt Isaacson. He is currently the Deputy Chief Bay County Fire Rescue. He is a second generation firefighter who spent decades mastering the craft on the fire ground. He's a nationally renowned public speaker, motivator, educator who's lit up stages, FDIC, firehouse expo, and conferences across the country. He is the driving force behind county fire tactics. He hosts world-class conferences and events down on the Emerald Coast and over the years has brought thousands of firefighters together for elite training in tactics, leadership, and mental toughness. You know what you are getting tonight. Straight talking, passionate, and never one to hold back. Scrappers, I hope you are ready. I hope you're buckled in and ready because Chief Kurt Isaacson, welcome back for episode number 350. Welcome, my brother.
SPEAKER_01Thanks for having me on, brother. I'm excited. Um, I think this will be a little different in the past. You know, historically, I've been a tactics person as I um got, you know, a decade of experience as a battalion chief. I started talking more about strategy and strategic thought processes. And I can tell you right now, my top thought process is coaching, leadership, um, you know, and just and doing the best I can to give uh the organization I'm excited to work for the best I got.
SPEAKER_00That's awesome. And I've every every evolution of Chief Ike has been amazing to witness and see what's what's unfolded. So I'll be excited to see what you lay out there tonight. Is there anything you want to add from the intro? Anything you want to add? Anything I left out? I mean, there's a lot to cover.
SPEAKER_01No, just you know what I mean. I'm just excited, proud. Um, I made sure I got plenty of shirts for FDIC that say Bay County Fire Rescue. Um, I'm just, you know, Bay County Fire Rescue is a little miniature, you know, Palm Beach County or Miami Dade with us, you know, having emergency management communications. We have firefighters that do surf rescue and they're part of the 3% multiplier, the FRS. Um, you know, and for those who know what that means, that's a big deal. We're the only fire department that's um has surf rescue people that are considered firefighters that are in the 3% high risk multiplier on the entire North Gulf Coast. So we're doing stuff nobody else is doing in the 850.
SPEAKER_00Very, very cool. Very cool. I can't wait to hear all about it. So I will get to the sponsors. We will knock those out of the park, and then we will get to scrapping. And here we go. If you're a firefighter, you already know the uniform industry is broken. It's one of the things I dislike the most when I had to go and order uniforms. F Simple is here to solve your uniform problems by creating a custom online store just for your department where you get your uniform items delivered in one week or less. Need logo design, embroidery, or custom merch, they handle that too. Reach out to their team at support at fsimple.com or call their team directly, 571-667-4675. With F Simple, it is fast and simple. Everything in the fire service gets tested. Training, instincts, equipment. That's why Snaptight delivers fire hose that performs no matter the challenge. Durability, packability, kink resistance, every line is tested before it leaves the factory. Because when you stretch a line, there's no room for guesswork. This April, they're bringing that same mindset to FDIC. Look for Team Snaptight on the show floor and around the city. They'll be there all week to talk hose, fire ground performance, and connecting with firefighters nationwide. Snaptight, it's American-made, firefighter trusted. If you like seeing how tough you are, check out Fire Cold Plunge. I've actually got one. It's in the garage. I use it every day. I used it this morning. They sell to a lot of fire stations for a reason. Their cold plunges are built solid, low maintenance, small footprint, and they stay at temperature. So they're always cold and ready with zero prep, ready when you are. After a workout, after a call, you can jump in, hop in, cool off firecoldplunge.com. And finally, fire stationfurniture.com. They provide a complete line of quality furniture for your firehouse. They are firefighter owned and operated, and they understand the strain firefighters put on furniture. They offer furniture that's built to last. Visit fire stationfurniture.com for more information. And with that done, the sponsors, the beautiful sponsors, I appreciate each and every one of them. We get to focus on Chief Ike. So if there's one word that describes you, I in my in my vocabulary, and I think a lot of people would agree, it is passion. Passion. And that's where I'm going to start tonight with what has got you fired up. What are you currently passionate about?
SPEAKER_01Um, I'm just, you know, I'm passionate about being a part of a new organization. Um, you know, I'll tell you, uh, for those who don't know it, I'm 25 days away from May 8th, uh, 2025. Um, if you aren't familiar with it, that would be um probably the worst day of my entire life. That was my meltdown day um at the Ronald Reagan Airport, thanks to to Chief Billy Goldfetter. You know, he got people there to rescue me. Um, I'll just be blunt with you, I had significant suicidal ideations that day. Um, I was headed to IFFCOE, which saved my life. There's no doubt about it. The IFFCOE um was just instrumental in me being where I am today here in Panama City uh beach. But, you know, that's 25 days until a year ago, and a lot's changed in a year. So um, you know, with that, I want to just like Dina's book, Hope Out of Darkness. You know what I mean? And um, what a phenomenal book. And, you know, like, you know, I have a lot of friends that are atheists, but I grew up in a church, and in my world, it doesn't make us better than anybody else. Um, God has a plan for me, and I'm getting to see what it is right now, and it's pretty awesome. Um, you know, historically, I've always been somebody that says I'm not a I'm not a leadership person. I don't teach leadership on tactics, strategy, you know, fire ground operations, but there's no doubt that um right now in the in the in the position I'm in, the job I'm in, my job is succession planning. My job is retention, retention, retention, retention. And I'm almost put off now when I hear about people talking about recruitment because um you want to ask what I am now? My push in the American Fire Service is gonna be stop talking about recruitment and start talking about retention. Now, obviously, I know there's you know people retiring, but um, don't don't blame the younger folks, don't blame you know all these other things. Just look at what you need to do to not be used, losing those folks that have two, three, four, five, six, seven years on a job to another department. And, you know, absolutely sometimes, you know, those those people that your your department's a stepping stone. And and I do respect, acknowledge, and value those organizations that know that hey, they're lucky to get a good person for two or three, four years, and there's nothing wrong with that. Our military survives off of one tour, you know, uh assignments, um, right, if you will. But, you know, and and it's just probably in a book somewhere because I tell people all the time, man, none of us created any of this stuff. Um, so I didn't come up with this, but and I didn't copy it out of a book, but I have the four C's that I'm going by, and I just literally just thought about them today, about being on um the scrap tonight, and it's caring, coaching, culture, creativity. Um, and and that's probably somewhere in a book that I read. I don't know, but um, I can tell you moving forward for me, I I care about the folks at Bay County Fire Rescue. Like, um, and I want them to focus on a windshield, not the rearview mirror. Um, you know, I don't want to get into numbers, but I know we've had a lot of turnover here uh in the past, and I can't fix that, I can't change it. I would hope some of those that left maybe, you know, apply to come back. Um, but I know that I care about each individual. And when I when I started February 23rd, you know, I had a goal in my brain that I want to make it six months without one person leaving, you know, and I didn't share that until a command staff meeting today, but I want to make it six months where nobody leaves your organization, like whatever it is. Um, and so I'm focused on people, not metrics. And um, you know, when I mean that, I obviously a command staff chief has to think about metrics, but I first and foremost want to think about people. Now, when whenever that person leaves, because somebody's gonna leave, I'm gonna want to talk to them, exit interview, whatever you talk about. And and I'm gonna have to get the metrics on it. Did they leave for a 2472 for $30,000 more a year? Well, those metrics tell me, okay, no problem. We did what we can do organizationally, but if they were leaving because we're not going to enough fires, I really can't do nothing about that because I don't want people's stuff burning down. Um, but if they're leaving because we're not eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner in a firehouse, that's something I can culturally maybe create within, you know, a little bit of training, you know, maybe less call load, you know. Um, so when I move forward, I'm thinking about people and metrics. You know, what can I control? People-wise, caring, coaching them, trying to uh strengthen the culture and then and creativity, man. Like as a leader, what's what can I bring to the organization that they didn't have? Because um they already figured it out. I mean business. I'm I I don't want them hiring officers and upper staff from the outside. Um, I you know, I don't know how long I'll be here, but I can tell you this, you know, I don't ever want them to hire a deputy chief from the outside again. You know, I want them to promote somebody to deputy chief. I don't want to be hiring assistant chiefs, battalion chiefs, captains uh from the outside. I want the lower uh individuals, regardless of their age, because they made a came on the job after a 20-year stint in the military, but I want the younger ranking folks to have hope and vision that they can promote up through the uh ranks. So um those are things where caring, coaching, and creativity uh come into place. So um, you know, for me, absolutely, I I've already been I've already worn bunker gear to numerous fires and incidents. So um, you know, my buddy JJ, I didn't even realize he could see the reflection in a mirror. I was just sending him a picture of some burglar bars behind glass at a building fire. He's like, I can see your white helmet and your bunker gear. And I didn't even realize you could see the reflection, but absolutely, um, as a deputy chief, if I go to a fire, I'm gonna put my gear on, I'm gonna have my air pack on. I'm probably not gonna breathe there. But if there's an explosion or building collapse, all hands on deck. You know what I mean? Depth on the bench matters. Um, and you know, I can physically still do the job. Um, I can, you know, hopefully, even if I physically can't do it, maybe just my presence, like Chief Hoff at the collapse in Chicago, you know, 16 years ago, just my presence and bunker gear make somebody work just a little bit harder. Everybody gives a little bit more energy um in digging for the brothers and sisters that may be trapped. But, you know, uh tonight, um, a little less strategy, a little less tactics. But, you know, those that are watching, you know, I just want you to think, man, there is hope out of darkness. Um, and I want you to think we we all have struggles. I I mean, I know Corley, you've had struggles. You and I talked about being a target. Um, you know, when when when you I hate the word nobody because everybody is somebody to someone.
SPEAKER_04No, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01Um, and then you read Dina's book, you know, people that commit suicide just felt like nobody would care. So I don't want to get deep into weeds on that. But when you do become somebody because in your occupation, there's a lot of spotlight on you. There's a microscope because you get a lot of likes or a lot of viewers on the scrap or whatever it is, you're absolutely now in the arena and there's everybody watching. I mean, why do people hate Tom Brady? Because he won seven Super Bowls. You know what I mean? Why does somebody, you know, like compete, have competition between who's better, you know, Ronaldo or Messi, because they're the two best, you know, footballers, soccer in our country around the globe. So um, you know, we're talking about that, like, you know, it's one of those things that I can tell you absolutely um part of um my you know bad, bad times, my depression was you know, my days of being a younger firefighter and just getting to be Ike, not chief Ike, not Lieutenant Ike, not Captain Ike, but just Ike, man, at the Pensacola Fire Department, man, or rescue 31 with Lieutenant Greg Redding going to fires, man, or back of engine four on the west side with Captain Matt Phillips. Like those were like just you know, some awesome times because I I was nobody, I was really the same person I am today. I just I wasn't speaking at FDIC, county fire tactics didn't exist, I didn't have rank, you know what I mean? I wasn't scrap, and um, those were so much, man, they were the great times. I mean, just getting to go to jobs, man, and going to fires and you know, afterwards coming back and staying up late cleaning the nozzles. Literally, I truly cleaned the nozzle, man, because when I got on the job in Pensacola, we washed the nozzle. I don't remember what it was. We washed the ladders on Saturday, but we literally took the nozzles off the hose lines, put them in a bucket and washed them. I don't know if people do that anymore, but um, you know, those are some awesome things. You know, my oldest son, Trevor, today I asked him to take one of my haligans and hooks to work because he's at a scambia for 96 hours, and I just wanted to kind of clean it up. And he sent me a picture while I was in a staff meeting today. Um, because the haligan was a little kind of like the corners like 45 off. And should he cut it off? I'm like, no, no, man, don't cut it off. Just I'll make it work for what I'm gonna use it for. Um, and I was jealous, like, dude, there's nothing better, man, than like just being at the vice, you know what I mean, or the or the wire wheel, um, and just cleaning the tools, especially this time of year. You know, nobody wants to do that in June, July, August, but in a winter time when you have your bunker pants on and the apparatus floor and it feels good, or this time of year when it's you know the mid-70s, humidity's 40 or 50, man, being on an apparatus floor cleaning tools is is critical. But um, you know, like in my position now, I I gotta think about, you know, not my past life of you know what I did or didn't do at a scamia or pensacola or midway or Mary Esther or or any of that. I gotta think about like what I'm gonna do now. Right. And and what I'm gonna do now is not gonna be what I did before. I'm not gonna try to, I don't, I don't want Bay County to be a Scambia County or Pensacola anywhere else. I want Bay County to be Bay County fire rescue. And so with that, that was that last C that creativity. So um I spend a lot of time. I try to, you know, I spend, you know, maybe half the day in the office. The other half the day, I want to be out and about. I don't want to be locked to the walls of our fire headquarters because I'm listening to the radio. I'm taking in the call load, who's busy, who's not. Um, I'm I'm taking in the thought process of what what's unique about Bay County. Well, one thing's unique is is that we have a massive influx. We had the Thunderbirds air show, kind of like the Blue Angels. We had the Thunderbird air show just last weekend. Um, we have Gulf Coast Jam that's going to be happening here uh in a few weeks. We have this huge, massive Jeep rally because the Panama City Beach is there is is huge. And Panama City Beach has three stations, but we surround it. And then we have Panama City Fire Department, we're around it. Um, so we have we have seven phenomenal fire departments all working together operationally. We come to a fire, so I really think it's it the creativity is going to be easy to to do something and us be proud of what we have in the Bay County area, not just us at Bay County Fire Rescue, but the entire fire departments um working together because you know, I I don't know this is a factual statement, but I've a lot I had a lot of people tell me that on a busy weekend, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, when all the condos are sold out, it's a million population, because you know, there's roughly a hundred high rises, and then everything seems to be like triple deckers up to six stories, and then obviously, you know, all the high rises. So that's some serious urban density um in the area. So uh, you know, I really think that not just us, but people that are watching, um, as you build your organization, you know, what kind of creativity are you putting into your operation? Definitely you want to go to FDIC, you want to go to these fire conferences, you want to be in the trade publications, you want to be on the internet seeing what people are doing. Take all the pros, all the cons of all that stuff, but then map it out how it's gonna work for your organization, your demographics, your response model, yeah, your staffing. Yes. Absolutely, man. I had a fire yesterday and I got there first. Uh, you know, and it was one of our more rural areas. Um, and it was awesome. I was at a rural station, I was at the kitchen table having a conversation with them. Only two people are on duty, tones bang out, and they're like, Hey, chief, that's us. I don't have a clue, man. I'm institutionally ignorant here. Like, I mean, I gotta listen to what everybody's telling me to do. And we have it's pretty cool in Bay County. We have these big TVs in every firehouse countywide. It's a status board with the weather apparatus checks. Um, I mean, it's pretty impressive information. It's on that board, and they could show me it literally showed our location, it showed where it was. So I was able to kind of get a head start. Um, still got lost. But um, I get there and it's just fully involved four-door sedans going. There's two propane tanks going. There's a big drum with gas. Well, you know, our Bay County Sheriff's Department, uh, phenomenal organization. He meets me right off the bat and he says, Hey, we can't get them to cooperate with us what we got burning. But I mean, I got the side of a single-wide mobile home house that's added on, you know, and and we we talk about trailers, mobile homes, manufacturing. They're a house. People live in that place, man. Three bedrooms, two baths. The vinyl side's falling off the side. I can see, you know, I mean, the OSB power meter box is burning, and then a garage in front of it, the whole front's melting off. I can see bars behind the glass. So I'm like, either there's high something high value in there, or there's people living in it. Right. Um, and so you know, every rig coming in is pretty much got two people in every rig.
SPEAKER_02But when I stop and the fires out, I look around, I'm like, we got people, man.
SPEAKER_01It's the force multiplier. The men and women came there, they got their rigs parked, did whatever they did. I don't even know. I couldn't even tell you what company, I couldn't tell you the company numbers, even on the deputy chief, they know what they're doing, they got it done. And like there's a decent number of firefighters all wearing bunker gear. They got air packs on, the fire's out, the fire's under control, and they got it done. You know, if you would have told if you gave me that fire scenario four months ago, told me the location, told me the staffing and the organization, I've been like, well, man, a mobile home's gonna be burned down, a garage is gonna be burned down, you're gonna have a 10-acre woods fire. It wasn't the case, man. The the the firefighters, they got the they they they're aggressive, man. Like they force multiplies individuals. And I think that's what's so great about the fire service, is absolutely I support and I believe in NFPA staffing, whether it's 14 or 15 on a residential, 28 on a on a multifamily dwelling. Um, so I do endorse property staffing, but man, there's something about the American Fire Service, the global worldwide fire service, is we get it done. I go back to my previous life. You know, I go back 24 years ago. Um, um, go back, you know, in 2004, my first year as a battalion chief. I was going to fires with with four other phenomenal individuals and myself. The five of us were were were doing some serious damage. I used to say, man, I hope the politicians don't know how good we are because we'll never get more no rig. Yeah. And I'm reliving this life all over again. And it's just, it's impressive, man. So, like, I don't know how people in the fire service can be so negative. Um, you know, absolutely, we we the standard should be four on a rig, five on a target hazard, or six on a target hazard. But dude, man, you give a firefighter and a fire truck that's that's motivated, man, get out of their way because they're gonna make it, they're gonna get it done. They're gonna they're gonna do it. It's just it's it's what people do, and they do it, they do it more so um when they're firefighters, they just yeah, they get it done.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely always impressed when I hear as I travel and hear different response models and different uh staffing levels, and I'm constantly blown away by what gets accomplished by different different staffing models in that regard. Are you ready for questions coming at you from the audience? Because they're stacking up already. Sounds great. All right, here we go. First one's coming at you from a guy we both know, Rob Fisher. He says, question, Chief, when you study some of the he says, when you study some of the best coaches in sports, you see consistency in how they build culture, develop people, and prepare teams for high stake moments. What parallels do you see between elite coaching and leading firefighters? And what should we be taking from that?
SPEAKER_01Well, I mean, one is, you know, um you got to buy into the organization, and you know, by no means, you know, I'm not, you know, obviously I read a lot of leadership books, um, but I've never tried to be a leadership speaker. Um, that's not been my thing. But um uh uh Abershaft, um uh Abercraft, uh the guy that wrote the book from the Yeah, yeah. I wrote that as I read that as soon as it came out. I actually read it and I listened. His his audio book, you know, twice. So I just do that to quantify that there's no doubt, man. I'm a John Maxwell fan, 21 area feet. I've read every John Maxwell book that exists down to the little ones. So I do study leadership, but I don't try, you know, I'm a Lou Holtz fan. But um to answer, you know, uh Fisher's question is I think about our current coach at the Florida Gators, man. Um, you know, a couple months ago, he was in a swamp and he did something they say nobody's ever done before. He brought a live alligator onto the football field in a swamp in Gainesville, the Florida Gators. That's creativity, man. That's unique. Uh, you know, Coach Summerall, um, you know what I mean? Like he's coming in after they fired Dan Mullins, $32 million a year, $26 million for for you know, uh Billy Napier leaving. So this guy's coming in, and you know, the fan base, if you want to, the alumni, whoever you want to call it, we're all paying the bills when we go to the football games. We're over $50 million to buy out two coaches. So now you're coming in as a coach. And so I'd say the parallel is, you know, Coach Gruden's amazing. You know what I mean? The you know what I mean, but he can't be a coach because he's got a lawsuit against the NFL. I know freaking a lot of people out there that know me all these years that I I'm into a little bit more into coaching than I used to be. But I, you know, I look I watch John Gruden. What does John Gruden have passion, dude? I mean, it got like they had him on a show the other day, and they're like, it was uh the Gators, and he was like, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.
SPEAKER_02And the only player he didn't name was the guy. He took his own life, it was in prison, and then they were questioning him because he didn't mention his name. Hern Hernandez, Corley.
SPEAKER_01And at the end of the day, he didn't say it because even John Gruden's gotta do what, man? He's gotta be politically correct.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Hernandez, you know what I'm talking about? Oh, yeah, he was a tight end of the New England Patriots, came out of Florida.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so I just want to make sure on the same thing with so they ripped John Gruden, Coach Gruden, on the on social media big thing because he didn't mention Aaron Hernandez as previous players at the Gators. And I'm not in no way questioning uh Coach John Gruden, but it's a political thing, man. So, you know, I'm answering Rob's question a roundabout way is is I had a few friends text me this afternoon, numerous friends. Remember, you're not a civil service battalion chief anymore. You know what I mean? You're a staff chief, meaning like tonight be a little more politically correct. And you know, I'm not sure I'm ever going to betray or fall to being a hundred percent politically correct. I think some of us with age can be a little bit smarter, and it's not because, you know what I mean, we want to fall to that, but if if I don't work here, I can't help those people. So if I really care about them and I want to coach them and I want to use my creativity, then I gotta have a have to have a longing lasting life as a deputy chief at Bay County. So I am answering Fisher's question by saying that I gotta be like a coach that's going in that doesn't want a $32 million buyout. I don't want a $26 million buyout. I don't want to buy out like a buyout like the guy that's chasing teenagers around that was from LSU or old miss and went to LSU. I'm not even gonna mention his name for satisfaction. Um, you know what I'm saying? Like, so you know, in the coaching world, some of these coaches, if they really don't care, they could do whatever and they're gonna get their buyout as long as they don't break their contract, right? Sure, sure. So um, but I think if you look at somebody like Coach Summerall, then I uh what I see so far is I want to be Coach Summerall. I want to go in with some creativity. I want to go in not looking for a buyout. The guy gave up doing his um uh uh he gave up his wife, his his anniversary. Like I don't know if he like so our coach at Florida was supposed to go on his like I don't know, 25th anniversary, something he didn't do it. He's staying in Gainesville because of his job, his responsibility. The guy gets paid a crazy amount of money. I didn't know what his contract is. So um, you know, like absolutely I wanna, I wanna, you know, we just lost Coach Lou Holtz here, I guess about a month ago. Um, you know, like so, yes, absolutely, you know, I follow coaches. I'm uh um, you know, Fisher's got me thinking about so much stuff. Tony Dungey, man. Like I read his book about his son that committed suicide. I am a huge, huge Tony Dungey fan. Um, and so absolutely the way I'm leading out is a lot like coaches. Um, you know, but um I I don't I don't want to be Nick Saban and maybe leave and then leave because I think the terms have changed, but maybe I still want to coach, you know what I mean? I think the world of Nick Saban. So I think there are, you know, I'll leave it at this because I I think the answer would would take me two hours because I think Fisher's question is very, very, a very good question. Um, is I think that being a coach, let's just say college football with NIL and now in the fire service with more and more fire departments doing 401ks instead of like an Oklahoma state pension.
SPEAKER_00State pension, right?
SPEAKER_01And we talked about the pension, like, and I've talked to some people recently about that on the FRS in Florida. I still have the ability to opt and go from my old traditional 3% multiplier pension and just take a lump sum. So I have thought about that for the first time ever. My current thing is is like, you know, retention, retention, retention. It truly is my priority here in Bay County. And knowing that I have people that I'm supposed to coach, make them the best. And that best might be that they're with us three to five years and then they move on, you know, to the FDNY. Because I don't expect everybody to stay here. I just want to know what what do we need to do if they do want to stay living in Northwest Florida, you know, because I have two sons that are on the FDNY list. Like Trevor loves, I'm gonna, he loves a scambia. Like, I mean, he loves going to work there. Like, if anything, I gotta tell him, son, you just can't live at the firehouse. But his ultimate goal is the FDNY, right? No matter what a Scambia does, no matter what assignment they do, no matter how much money they put, no matter what the metrics are, the metrics are irrelevant. There's nothing they could do. If FDNY calls and says, can you start tomorrow for 30,000 a year? He's gonna take a pay cut and go to the FDNY. And so I do think that that's what leaders need to realize is that sometimes leaders like they take things personal and it shouldn't be personal. And I'm doing what I heard somebody say a long time ago, and I've been friends with a lot of fire chiefs that have made some huge mistakes. Well, I didn't make this mistake, I'm gonna make mistakes. I didn't make this one. I wrote down a lot of stuff that I said, chief should never do, forget where you came from, yada, yada, yada, and it's in my desk drawer, so I gotta see it. And a lot of chiefs didn't do that, and so a year on the job, two years on the job, they started making excuses for not getting out of headquarters for driving by a firehouse and pulling in. They'll drop by a firehouse and stop at a Starbucks for 15 minutes. Why didn't you just pull on the firehouse? See, that distance is what creates divide. And if you're taking notes right now, write this shit down. Distance creates divide. And I didn't come up with that, that's been said for a long time. And one of my things on my notes as the deputy chief is I can't have distance because that's going to divide. And my job is to not divide everybody, it's to bring everybody together. And I'm gonna go back to my four C's from earlier is caring, coaching, culture, and creativity. And we do that, then we're doing what Coach John Gruden does, or Tony Dungey, or Lou Holtz, or whoever. And absolutely, as long as you're doing it from the bottom of your heart, you should make everybody feel special. That's that's not being fake. You can absolutely make everybody. I'm gonna tell you something, man. Um, and I promise this one getting emotional on this thing, but we just had the anniversary um on March 16th of when the great Captain Bill Guston took his life. I'm gonna tell you something, man. Anybody listening that ever had Bill Gustin make them feel special, it was genuine. Yeah, that guy truly wanted to make you feel special. It was nothing fake. That guy wasn't trying to get promoted, he wasn't trying to sell you anything. Like he was gonna retire as a captain of Aerial 2 out of Liberty City. So you can be caring, compassionate, and creative uh with your leadership, and it not be for a square root purpose. Um, and I just want society as a whole, regardless of the fire services. So many times when somebody does good for somebody or somebody's caring, it's like, what do they want?
SPEAKER_00Right. What's their ulterior motive?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, like they're a good person. And I'll just use an analogy, man. Uh Brent Brooks is in charge of IROC, International Uh High Rise Operations Conference. We had this November, be the biggest, best HROC we've ever had. And Brent Brooks, I don't think that guy's ever been looking for a handout or for anything. He came to every HROC. And it was like after whatever it was, seven or eight, I'm like, hey, dude, you come to all of these. He'd been a student registering, he just loves a job. And you know what? So, you know, I'm so excited at FDIC. I mean, I got over there, I'm getting I don't have a class A completely put together. I'm like having one put together because I absolutely want a picture with Brooksy on stage at FDIC because that's another Bill Gustin, man. That guy wants to make not he's from Canada, he wants to make everybody feel special. I mean, we did beat their team in the Olympics. I do have to tell him that and remind him, but um, I still like him, love him, and Brooksy. Brent Brooks is a guy, I think, like Bill Gustin that truly just loves the fire service, man. If people knew how much shit he didn't do for free, he does it and it's costing him money. He's paying money to go teach people, share, and love the job. And we still have so many people like that, man. It didn't die with Captain Gustin. Um, there's so many people that are doing a lot of phenomenal stuff in a fire service. So um, I don't know how long I went, but I hope I answered Fisher's question.
SPEAKER_00Oh, dude, you you you you hit it from some angles I never even thought of. I love your I'll I'll just borrow your fourth C, the creativity, because I think you hit angles that I wasn't even thinking about when he asked the question, and it wasn't your typical answer. So I think I think this new version, I don't want to say a new version, but this new direction of Chief Ike focusing on uh caring, coaching, culture, and creativity is gonna be an interesting journey to be a part of and to watch. So I absolutely love the answer. And uh from Gruden to the to the Florida references, you brought in a uh even even in the political, not not political, like left and right, but just the navigating the modern society with like the NIL and comparing it to the modern fire services retention issue of people leaving and going elsewhere. It was it was a I I think you took it uh as far. I'm I'm excited, but I got more questions coming. Garrett Crawdy says, Chief Ike, who are some of the best fire service leaders you know if you want to give names? He gave you it out, but more importantly, what are the tangible assets you see or have learned from them that makes them the best?
SPEAKER_01Um, you know, I I I think it's Bill Love to go to job, man. Like um, you know, Bill Gusson was. Yeah. If if you saw the picture I posted in my office, the first picture was in my office was Bill Gusson. Um, but you know, like a lot of people have impacted my life. Um, Mike Lombardo, you know, it's crazy, but there's a lot of people watching here that probably don't even know who Mike Lombardo is. But Mike Lombardo was just like he's the salt of the earth, man. Like he started in the 70s here at Tyndall Air Force Base, which is in my county, which is pretty cool to me. That is cool. I did not know he started there.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01No, I told everybody in Bay County, if you don't know who Mike Lombardo is, you got to read him, or I don't know, you might get a bad station assignment. Um, he was a part of the first Bay County rescue squad here in the 70s. So um that's just crazy for me how God's plan is. But you know, um, Mike Lombardo's a person, man, another guy that just like Bill Gustin, man, it was never about paying his bills or whatever, you know, him and his his phenomenal wife Sandy, you know, they they they live their life off of their job as a nurse and working for the Buffalo Fire Department. And there's still people like that, you know, um, today. Um, Chief Hoff, you know, retired from uh Chicago. Um, so um, you know, they're just like so many, you know, great people, you know. And if we talk about recent times, you know, my buddy, um, you know, anybody that follows me knows that Frank Lieb, he's the guy that got me into IFF COE. Um, he's uh, you know, the head honcho for First Responder Center for Excellence. So, like, you know, whether I'm talking about 30 years ago, you know, 25 years ago, or today, man, there's so many great leaders um that were continuing. They're continuing to exist um in the fire service. I don't want to drop names because like, you know, like I I would just the list would go on and on and on. What what I will tell you, um, you know, is like uh at the uh COBC, the the uh one of the speakers was helped with me and helped me with the first COBC chief Eddie Robinson, um, is about to retire from Cherokee County, you know, just another great phenomenal leader that's going out on top. And and I want people to that are listening, man. I right now think in my career, I'm seeing more people go out on a highlight in a positive light than a negative light. And I want to say that because a year ago, I think I had a diminuted vision because my own life was screwed up. Um, and I did have friends that got screwed over. Um, you know what I mean? Very good, close friends. But right now, man, I just a lot of Chief Scott Thompson, man, the colony Texan, it's the functional fire company. Uh, what a phenomenal, you know, leader, impact on a fire service. I reminded him of like 26 years ago or whatever, just because he's such a big man watching him on the second floor to Hampton Inn. And uh in him in Salcon them, they used to have the Get Out of Live program because I started going in the 90s, just like my 29th or 30th consecutive FDIC. And imagine in whatever it was, 1999, 2000, 2001. It was before 9-11. I just remember getting the opportunity to be on the second floor. I want to say like a Monday night after the first day of hands-on. I'd rode the bus back, and somehow I just got told, hey man, come to the second floor to Hampton and sit in a corner, keep your mouth shut, which they knew I was gonna keep my mouth shut. That's why I got invited. And Chief Sal could bought pizza for all of them, and Scott Thompson was one of the instructors. And now he's, you know, he's about to retire, man. And like he's passing the torch to somebody else. She Betty Robinson's passing the torch. And, you know, I could name some other people, but um, you know, I got a couple other friends that are fire chiefs that, you know, I mean, they've already got their their date that they're leaving on their terms. And, you know, that's that's something that I'm gonna do, you know. I hope I do at least, um, is like I think it's awesome when you close the door on your own, you go out on your own terms. And there is life after the fire service. And, you know, I don't know if you went back and and possibly and scrapped 100 or 150. I probably said I didn't know. Um, I can tell you that um I'm excited about Bay County. Um, and if I'm here a year or if I'm here 10 years, I'm gonna give them everything I got. But when I walk out the door, I want no regrets. I want to know that I made an impact. It was a positive impact, and I gave them all the creativity I can because we, if we're gonna if we're gonna have retention, not just in my department, you know, but in the fire service as a whole, we got to start marketing positivity. And that's gonna be the people leaving. We need people that are leaving. Excuse me, Corley, we need them going out with you. Like you're you had a retirement party. We know it's coming, you're excited, man. Um, my buddy Dave Dubowski, you know, one of the best fire photographers in the American fire service. Um, he was on the scrap. Uh he's got pictures on Firehouse magazine in the 80s. Follow him on Instagram, Dubowski uh on Instagram. But, you know, I got to go uh spend a week in St. Louis and go to his retirement party with him and his um awesome wife Peg and his four sons. Um, you know, just a few years ago, I was in Sonomish uh County in Washington by Seattle, uh, for my buddy Rob Fisher's retirement. And so, you know, those are things that I was forced to do is, and now I do them is I do more of like writing down the positive stuff. So I say it, I write it down, I look at it because I'm gonna make no bones about it. Man, I think I have a chemical imbalance that I will fight depression for the rest of my life. I just do. I don't take any antidepressants, um, you know, but it's part of it. My mom had it. Um, I don't need anybody to feel sorry for me. But what I have to do is get sunshine and I gotta write stuff down positive. I gotta listen to positive music. Um, for a few years, I would just ride around. I didn't listen to podcasts, I didn't listen to music, and my brain was like off in places it shouldn't have been. So now I just try to listen to positive music. Um, Jessica will send me, you know, like a Joel Olstein podcast. Um, I'm more so now than ever. I listen to those. Um, so you know, whether it's talking about the fire service, talking about your personal life, or it's talking about the future, the more you can subject yourself to positive stuff, the better off you are. And um, I did write this note down. I wrote a little page of notes for tonight. Beautiful. Is we all got a past life, right? We all got a past life that's in our rear view mirror. And that's nothing new, man. Like, just like our actor from Roadhouse, you know what I'm saying? Like, you know, he's the first guy ever heard say it as an actor. Um, but we got our past life. We got today's life, what we're doing today, you know what I mean? And then we got tomorrow's life. And so focus on more today where you are in that driver's seat and what you see through the windshield, and just check that rear view mirror when you're pulling up to a red light, man. Like that's the only time you need to look at a rear view mind. So every once in a while, just stop at a red light, make sure that pass is not haunting you, and then focus on the sunshine coming through the front windshield mirror and or the front, you know, windshield, and then what tomorrow's life's gonna be. Because um, you know, I'll go back to Dina's book, Hope Out of Darkness. It man, you got to find hope within your career, a promotion, hope within your relationship, and then just hoping and what you're doing or where you're going. Because in one part of Dina's book, it says that most people that commit suicide they feel pretty confident that's within a 10-minute decision, right? Oh, wow. So, yeah, yeah, you know what I mean. And I what I love about Dina's book is there's a lot of places where she tries to say, like a lot of times people want to just put a spin on it, but we don't have data, we don't have the matrix. Right, right.
SPEAKER_00We you can't ask them, right? No, when they're successful, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. Um, you know, do they have the people that jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge? They can interview them. Yes, those people, but there's such a fraction, and um, and I do want to give a shout out, a shout out to the search book. Um, you know, I hope Corley, you see that when you do that, man. I share it. Like I when I go out the country, I'll tell everybody massive support. And I'm not even authoring there, right? And I was invited by Corley, but Corley's got a job. He didn't meet the dun line, and I've told Corey I never once was upset. I don't need my article in there. There's so many other great articles, but there's one thing I do when I travel, man, is I talk about the 5,000 you know, grabs and and and they weren't all they didn't all survive, but the percentage is going up every day, man. Yes. When when my buddy, when my buddy, my buddy, my buddy, my buddy, man, and it's not because people know who he is, but Brian Brush is a phenomenal individual, even if people didn't know who he was, is when he called me like after his 90 days or so on his when he was doing his his project for his paper for his degree, and it was 9.8, and obviously, I said 10. And now when I see his stuff like 11.4 and 11.8 and 12.4, that with the with the great folks at firefighter rescue survey, and I say that I've said this probably in front of 5,000 students now, is when I was coming up in the fire service. If I read a chapter on search or an article on search, it was an individual's experience at one, two, or three or four grabs. My boys coming on a job can go to FDIC or anywhere and listen to a lecture. And if the instructor's smart enough, they're articulating information from five thousand locate, remove, resuscitate rescues, if you will, of truly where they were. Because if somebody only had three grabs in their whole career and it was three kids and they're all in toy boxes, what are they gonna teach the class? Go look for the toy box. Yeah. Um, you know, um Trevor went to a fire in Escambia County here recently, and in the end, the individual was found in the garage. I've had over 50 civilian fire fatality experiences in my career. Not one person was ever in a garage. But if somebody went to that and they had that fire and they had no other fire, and they had 15 years on a job and somebody told them to teach a class on search. Do you think looking searching the garage is gonna come up in their class? Oh, yeah. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because it's their personal experience.
SPEAKER_01So I, you know, I don't think people understand how awesome the fire service is right now, man. Like we're able to collaborate, not just here in the continental United States, but Hawaii, Alaska, the Caribbean, Canada, all over the world, we're able to. To put this information together, man. And now we got UL and FSRI. Um, it's just, it really is a phenomenal time in a fire service for us, whether we're an instructor or we're a company officer, to be able to articulate more factual information to the kitchen table or to the audience of 20 or 2,000 people. And that's just going to make a stronger fire service.
SPEAKER_00No, brother. That's no, and I love the the of course you said Brian Brush, of course, Brian Crush, as we affectionately call him. But every four hours, American Fire Service making a grab according to his 90 days. And I love that. I love that stat.
SPEAKER_01Uh well, I can tell you, my wife would say he's in my top five crushes. So, like, I just gotta go with what my wife says.
SPEAKER_00I get it, I get it. But he absolutely is Brian the man crush. Uh, no, great answer. And you absolutely nailed it when you say this is the I'm sure that every firefighter going back every generation said this is the best time to be a firefighter. But the amount of data that is here, that is at your fingertips is is unbelievable. Unbelievable.
SPEAKER_01Now, I'm not gonna say it's better than like when I look at my buddy Tim Clut's photos on Start Water on Instagram, right? I do one like wonder if I could like be get in a Michael J. Fox vehicle and just go back in time. Um, because I don't know, man, pull up boots on a fire escape in a South Bronx or Harlem, man, really wouldn't matter any borough, you know, the borough fire in New York City's uh Queens now, but that's okay. We'll we're gonna debate that another day. But like there's no doubt that was an awesome time. So, you know, I I do want to quantify this because this is more important to me than ever before. Because when you come into Bay County, the sign says Bay County, the most beautiful beaches in the world. Um and they're beautiful. And I think Penskola Beach is beautiful. I think Clearwater Beach is beautiful, I think Miami's beautiful, I think the Bahamas are beautiful. I went to San Diego, man, and and and watch them train the Navy, you know, SEALs train over there. Um, and so I've said this I think before on previous scraps, and somebody else has said it before too, but Eleanor Roosevelt comparison is a thief of joy. And the older I get, man, like I don't mean to be rude to people, but I don't like it when I hear people comparing stuff. Like, you know, when I go to St. Louis, I'm going to St. Louis for St. Louis. I like St. Louis, man, baseball. You know, when I go to Ohio, I think of working people in Ohio. You know what I mean? The people that did stuff to make this country great. And so uh so many times, man, when people travel, you're traveling there to see what they have, not compare it to what you've been to somewhere else. Um, you know, so like I, you know, I think we're in a great time in a fire service. Um, I don't want to say it's better than the other time, but I definitely don't like when people say it sucks and these young people don't know, sure, sure, whatever. It's it's a different time with more um more available information. And I think we're able to, you know, capture more of the data to where we're truly not given an opinion. We're given more of a close to a factually as close to factual as we've ever been.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I could, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So that was it. No, 100%. I love that. Next one's coming at you from True Techs in 409. He wants to know, and I know you're new at an organization, so you can be as uh as comfortable as you are answering this, but he says, Can you discuss the feeling of hiring into a new organization as a supervisor or chief officer and creating a culture of development from within? How do you find that while at the same time being the outside guy who came in? So, how is that transition? How's that feeling?
SPEAKER_01Um, it's uncomfortable. Um, and you know, like this is no secret to the to the phenomenal team that I get to work with. Um, I almost quit the twice the first two weeks. I get emotional about it because I'm glad I didn't. Um, I I was very stressed out. Like, um, I'm still stressed out. Like, um, you know, like I have insecurities. Everybody has insecurities, man. Everybody, you know, people want to talk about ah, so-and-so is arrogant. Well, they're probably not as arrogant as you think. They're trying to cover it up. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they're trying to cover it up. So um I, you know, we we have like a four-digit number system here, and when I go to a fire, I'm so stressed out because you know, I can rattle off my head every company in Escambia County to include Pensacola, Navy Fire, DOD, Santa Rosa County, um, even Oklaosa County. I was the contract training officer for South Walton, Oklaosa Island, you know, Fort Walton, Mary S or over. I could rattle off every company in three counties. And then I come over to this county and I know nothing. And um, all my textbook knowledge, all my experience is irrelevant if I can't articulate or communicate on a radio. So it's very nerve-wracking. Um, sure, sure. I don't understand the institutional history, so I don't want to try to ask them, tell them, request them to do something that's just not feasible. So I'm a learning curve. And I'll tell you, man, like, and they've heard me say this. I love when somebody says, Yeah, I'm gonna hit the ground running. Well, I'm right at about 60 days. I think I might be running next year after a year. You know what I mean? Right. Like I'm still walking right now. Like, literally, I take a different way to work sometimes. I can't always because I don't want it to take me 90 minutes to get work because of traffic, but I'm listening to the radio. I listen to the radio so much I get a headache from it. Um, you know, because you know, we run EMS and um I'm always thinking about our personnel that are living on an ambulance for so many hours, uh, because, you know, what it's my job to provide them, you know, um a safe place to work mentally, you know, physically. Yeah. So um, yeah, I guess my answer would be is um I'm very handicapped, and so I'm just trying to get rid of that handicap. And I'm not handicapped by two or three holes, man. I'm I'm handicapped by 18 holes times three, right? So I'm not hitting 100, I'm hitting about 120 or 130 on the golf course. Um and so, but but I'm I'm investing, I'm into it, um, and I'm gonna get there. But I would say to people, man, when you go into a new organization, like, you know, you can have all the experience in the world, but if it's not from the organization you're going to, man, just slow your roll. Don't be trying to jog, don't be trying to run. Um, you know, I think I've I've done a lot more listening than I probably ever have in my whole life because I don't want to fail. You know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_04I got one shot at this.
SPEAKER_01I got one shot to get this thing right, man. I'm not under contract. And and failing has nothing to do with, you know, getting fired or getting a pay raise. Failing is I I feel like I got a hope out of darkness. I feel like I got another chance in my career, another chance in life, another chance in the fire service. And right now, I take this goal of retention. I take this goal of job satisfaction for our people very, very seriously. Um, and you know, so I do a lot of a lot of thinking about it. And I think the only way that I'm gonna have the creativity is a lot of investment of just really just seeing what's going on. And what's going on is not just in a busy urban area, it's the rural areas. And people that have known me for 20, 30, or 40 years would probably be surprised if if they knew how much time I'm spending the rural areas here. Um, I'm not, you know, I love the beach, man. I got more flip-flops than anybody watching. I would bet $10,000 I own more pairs of flip-flops than any other individual watching the scrap tonight. I'm wearing flip-flops like right now. Um, but when I'm at work, you know, I mean, it's not flip-flops. Do I want to go by the beach stations? Yeah, but uh yesterday that fire came in and I was at one of our rural stations because that's what I gotta digest. Like I know Panama City Beach, man. I grew up coming down here some, you know what I mean? I know the area. I've come down here for different functions. Um, but I want to understand our response model, our time, distance travel, our staffing, um, so I can be creative to within our budget uh provide the best ideas, right? Because that's what it is. It's gonna be ideas. I still got to get input from those folks that have been here 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 uh years as we grow as an organization. Because um, for everybody that doesn't know, what we exist today is only 24 months old. The consolidation of EMS, like in 2013, it was under a hospital. Okay. Um county got it. So it's only 2024 that EMS, emergency management, communications, uh, the EOC, if you will, you know, hurricane type stuff for those aren't from Florida, surf rescue fire all came together under emergency services. So we're in the emphasis stage, man. We're still wearing diapers. Um, but those each departments are not wearing diapers. I mean, they have their institutional history, sure, that's still as relevant, it still matters. Um, so I think it's just putting all that together. And and I hope I answered the question.
SPEAKER_00No, no, there's a lot, lot, lot, a lot to digest there, and there's so many facets you could hit on. So I think you did a well. Uh, I love this one from Derby City Fire Conference. Derby City wants to know, chief, what are your top three things that an organization can do to improve morale? And he says, besides responding to fires, this he had to take that off the table. So, besides responding to fires, what can you do?
SPEAKER_01Caring, coaching, and creativity. Right, I mean, I just go like, you know, that's you know, I mean, like, and if somebody finds it, man, send me an email if that's in a book, because I'd be surprised if I just came up with that. But I've been digging deep lately because um you know, historically I've come from places where um you know what I mean, it was just different for me. Like, you know, um, so I I think that for morale, I I think everybody's gotta care. And I and I'll just tell you, I'll share it with you. I had uh um a few weeks ago, I had a Teams meeting with the whole department, all three shifts, and I asked them, you know, for 60 to 90 days. I said for 60 to 90 days, for 60 to 90 days, I want collectively, everybody, 100% of our organization, that's hundreds of people. I want 100% of our organization, I want our communications office, our EOC, our server, I want everybody to think positive for 60 to 90 days. If after 90 days you think it still sucks, you can hate me. But if we're gonna make this work, we need everybody together. We need that force power of energy. Everybody when you get up in the morning, you come to work, man, just be positive. Just like no negative, just try it for 60 to 90 days. And if everybody cares the coaches and is creative about how we think and what we do when we're at work, I think we can create a culture that's never existed in our organization. I didn't mean to make him cry, Sam's crying. I'm the only guy that can see Sam already.
SPEAKER_00Right, right. Well, Sam's emotional. Sam Sam gets Sam gets emotional when it when you start talking about organizational uh culture and morale.
SPEAKER_01Shout out to Sam for what he does behind the scenes.
SPEAKER_00Sam is amazing, absolutely, and the scrap wouldn't happen without him. So without a doubt. But no, chief, you absolutely crushed it in in the and now how do you think the buy-in was from that team's meeting? Like in because you know, you're gonna have people that roll their eyes and say, Oh, here comes another chief, you know, that kind of thing.
SPEAKER_01I've been I've been blown away, man. Awesome, like it's motivated me. Like, I can't quit on them now. I can't quit on them now. Like it and and and and I know you know what I mean. I don't know each and every person's story, you know what I'm saying? Um, what I do know is I have we have individuals that come to work, man, and they're not sitting in the lazy boy, they're not cooking a grilled cheese in a kitchen firehouse. You know what I mean? They're living on a fire truck, they're working, they're providing service to our taxpayers, our citizens, our visitors. And so, man, like I owe it to them. I I really do believe that the the synergy, the the the power of just people smiling, man. Like like it's it's motivating me. I know that uh it's putting a lot of weight on my shoulders. Um, you know what I mean? I don't want to disappoint them or let them down, but I will say, man, and I hate the word unpleasantly surprised. Like I'm just surprised, dude. I'm just I'm blown away. I'm excited. Um, and and I hope, you know what I mean? I hope they're like that because I hope they believe that I truly care. Like I go back to the first seat, man. I care, I do, I care. Um, you know, like I I think anybody that knows me knows I wasn't applying for jobs, I wasn't looking, I wasn't looking to move away. Um, you know what I mean? I I still like I'm I'm I'm standing, you know what I mean? I'm rental house here. But um right now, if I wanted to drive home, it'd take me an hour and 24 minutes to get to my house. Um, so for me, this is a godsend, man. It's a god blessing. Um, it's a place that's still on the 850. Um, it's on the Gulf Coast. Like I have friends down here, man. Like, you know what I mean? Obviously, Panama City Beach, Panama City. Um, you know, back in the 90s, sometimes I'd come down here to take fire officer, you know, tests and inspector tests. You could come down here because it was different back then. We didn't have clear clear vision or versing. I don't know. So we have these places you can go test now. But back then you had to drive down here to Gulf Coast Community College and to the Panama City, had a training site. And so in the 90s, I would come down here to take some of my state tests. So this place is within my region. My three kids played soccer in the normal high school schedule in Bay County against Arnold, Mosley. So all up in that, yeah. No. So, I mean, technically, in in a in a in the world of uh high school sports, this is my backyard. Right on the kids got on a school bus from my high school, my kids' high school, they rode a school bus down here on a weeknight, they played a sport, and he went back home. Um, you know, so um that that is uh that ownership, I guess, is pretty important to me.
SPEAKER_00I love this one coming at you from Josh Everett's. And he basically, I'll paraphrase his because he has a question in there, but he's basically saying, Chief, don't sell yourself short. BCBC's been going on and and he's been attending it. Plus, I got to take uh commanding from the sidelines. That was an earlier version, man. And brother, I'm telling you, you've been teaching leadership for a while. And he said it, he said, Don't discredit yourself, but I'm excited to see the future. And basically, his the germ of his question is hey, I'm gonna say this to the audience first of all, which is CF Tactics has had a huge impact on the American Fire Service. It's been a mainstay for the last 10, I mean, I don't know when the first one was, but for the last decade, it's been absolutely just making an impact on the American Fire Service. So I want to say that first of all. And so if CF Tactics has had an impact on you, if you've attended and it's changed the trajectory of your career, drop a one, two, three in the chat. Just type one, two, three and send it because I think that that it's had a huge impact. I know it has on me and then personal lies. But the question I have is everybody's kind of wondering about the future of CFT. And I know you may not even know what's going to happen with it and everything, but what what what do you know? Um, what can you talk about? Yeah, that I don't leave it to you on that.
SPEAKER_01I I'll just say there'll be a fire conference within walking distance of where I'm sitting right now. Okay. That's Front Beach Road, uh Panama City Beach. Um, so 2027, there will absolutely be CFT fire conferences on Panama City Beach. It'll be um, you know, obviously in the off season when you know the hotels would rather have firefighters there, like hopefully, so we can get like $99 a night for the firefighters. Um, you know, there's no need to do one here in the height of the summer, man. This place is complete gridlock. Um, the other night I was thinking about going to our fire station down on Thomas Drive, and my location was 10 miles away, like on a straight roadway. Hour and 14 minutes to get 10 miles on Strong Beach Road. Um, so like, you know what I mean? Like, we don't want to do it in the height. And you're not even in the height. Is April kind of getting it? Oh, no, no, we're like, oh yeah, we're like this was like the spring break, like this is near the end of spring break. Okay, okay. Oh, the summertime it'll be worse. Okay. Um, and I don't want to distract you maybe from coming here, but we don't want to do a fire conference in a hotel room. I don't know what it costs 400 bucks a night. But in the wintertime, um, definitely, so 2027, um, there'll definitely be CFT County Fire Tatics conferences on Panama City Beach, slash Bay County, slash Thomas Drive, slash near Club La Vila. And what's crazy is over 30 years ago in the early 90s, I used to come down here to Bay County to compete in a firematics competition on Thomas Drive in Bay County. There's actually, I don't know if midway through them out or not, but we had trophies where we had won first place numerous times uh down here. But yeah, but um, you know, anybody that's watching or whatever, will there still be conferences on Pensacola Beach? Yeah, we just might take a year off or so, um, or there'll be less. You know what I mean? Maybe there'll be one big conference on Pensacola Beach. But I think a lot of people have been coming for a long time. I I think a change of venues would be cool, man. Panama City Beach or Pier Park, which is right here in the Gulf. Beautiful hotels. There's a mall. You can almost throw a baseball from a mall. Like, I mean, it's got every store, Costa Rica or you know, uh Costa Sunglasses, um, Dillard's, like every store you could imagine that you would have like an outlet mall, and literally we're a couple hundred yards from the Gulf, um, massive movie theater. So there are things that we could do with the nightlife, if you will, or if somebody brought their spouse or their family that's within walking distance of the host hotel that we can't do on Pensacola Beach. Um, but I want to make it crystal clear. I will always love Pensacola Beach. I'm retiring in Hickory Shores, I'm retiring in Midway slash golf breeze. Uh, if I ever purchased, Jessica and I ever purchased, if I ever owned the condominium, it'd be on Pensacola Beach. Like I will always be in love with Pensacola Beach. But let's just call it business wise, let's call it customer service-wise. Um, I think Corley and Amanda would enjoy coming to a conference on Panama City Beach and just seeing a different place and being able to walk to the array of entertainment that is within that area just for something different. Don't misread me. I love FDIC. It's my 29th year. I I know exactly every business, every place in downtown Indy. If for some reason FDIC went to another city, I wouldn't be upset, right? Because it would just be a different city, um, a different place. Uh, I love when Firehouse went to um Columbus, Ohio. I thought their downtown was cool or awesome. So I just want to quantify that. That once again, I'm not comparison, it's just two different things, it's two different places, um, you know, as a whole. But you're to answer your question, there's no doubt, I'm excited. Um, you know what I mean? Sure. This is the organization I'm part of. And and I want my people that that that might want to come for one day, a half a day, two days of a five-day conference. They live here and they're gonna get in free. I want them to just be able to come for a day or two a night because on rush hour traffic to get to Pensacola Beach could be three hours from down here. Oh shit, there's a timer on.
SPEAKER_00That's Sam. Sam's just getting ready for stuff. He's stressing me out, dude. He's preparing.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_00Um Josh, Josh, I hope that kind of answered your question and hit on some of what you were asking. I think it did. And brother, there was a lot of one, two, threes that just spammed the channel, just so you know. I want you have to go back and look at it on YouTube later.
SPEAKER_01And just for anybody that's following on CFT 100, um, we were supposed to do a conference in May. We're still gonna have the same number for the CFT 100 for this year. We might offer one or two of them in the fall on Panama City Beach, but we will fulfill our obligation for the CFT 100. Um, but right now, man, I got one top priority career-wise, sure, and that's taking care of Bay County. So I had to push some things back, I had to cancel a bunch of contract speaking gigs. Um, and um, I would say in my career, if there's ever been a year where I was 100% fully in and committed, um, you know, it's it's Bay County here moving forward. You know, do I have to be off some? Do I have things I'm gonna do? Yeah. But I would say 2027 will be my lowest year of travel speaking gigs, conferences that I've done in my entire speaking career. Um, like I I almost have nothing booked for 2027. Um, and I've been deferring everything. I, you know, I think I'll probably do four total at the max um speaking engagements for 2027 because I'm a staff chief, man. I got to be at headquarters, I got to be out and about. Um, we got 14 million dollars in fire trucks that we're building. Um, you know, and if my boss needs me to go check on those rigs, um, I gotta be here, man. Like I want to leave no stone unturned to give 100% to the organization that I'm working with.
SPEAKER_00I love it. I love it. I'm trying to see which one I want to add. There's still a ton of questions. Um I like it. I like everything you're saying here, but I'm gonna go back to Rob Rob Fisher kicked us off, so I'll come back to him. He said, Chief Ike, if personal leadership sets the ceiling for everything else, how should firefighters be working on it day to day?
SPEAKER_01Um well, I mean, first and foremost, I would say, you know, to the younger firefighter, it is um, you know, you know, manage your filing cabinet, you know, like um, you know, you know, it's easier to look back as don't rush. Your career, you know. Um, you know, I I no, I don't hate to, I'm just going to. Like it is, like I'm proud to say, you know, I think about Bill Guston all the time. It's 42 years, Miami Dade, his time before that with um, you know, Wheaton and Chicago. Um, is just manage your career because it's going to be over, but don't let it define your whole life. You know what I'm saying? Like, um, just you know, it's easy to say have a balance, but you know, like, like, you know, be Rob Fisher. You know, Rob walked out on his terms. Um, he was able to, you know, go down there with his beautiful wife to Las Vegas and drink some wine, hang out the pool, hang out with the grandkids. Another job came about that, you know what I mean. He wasn't necessarily know about it, he didn't plan, and now he's you know doing some emergency management stuff in Las Vegas. Like, you know, people that are watching, man, don't think that your current organization is everything and defines you. Absolutely be invested in it. Um May 8th, man. We're 25 years. May 8th, man. I thought life was over. I thought, man, like a scambia was like I was a dead man if I didn't have a scambia. Um, and I still love a scambia. You know, shout out to everybody watching with Scambia County. Like, that's my family forever. You know what I mean? My oldest son works here full time, my youngest, you know, he'll be riding this summer. Um, scambia will always be a part of my family, but it, you know what I mean? I can tell you now, a year later, it doesn't define me.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_01I'm saying I've learned a lot. It does it, is it a found part of my foundation? Absolutely. Um, there's a lot of stuff I do in Bay County that I didn't do in Askambia County because I was wrong. You know what I mean? Like you'll learn from those mistakes. I used to wear diapers and shit in them. I don't do that anymore. I use toilet paper and I flush it down the toilet. Um, I don't have to have anybody help me. Um, you know, so you're supposed to laugh at that, Corley.
SPEAKER_00I would no, I it's one of my favorite iCisms. I steal it from you all the time. When people try to remind me of my past and hold you there, you know, I steal that one all the time. It's one of my favorites, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01You know, so um there's a lot of things, you know, uh as a whole, but you know, I would say like like life is not just your career, life is life, you know. Um, and I'm gonna go back to what I said earlier, where you have a past life, you have today's life, and we have tomorrow's life. Don't let your past life define today's life, and definitely don't let today's life define, you know, tomorrow's life. So, you know, to answer Rob's question is is you like we're we're all growing all the time. Um, I don't have an answer to his question of like, you know, obviously it's great, man. Like I went to three firehouses yesterday. They were out running calls, and I could see the whiteboard was fresh from that day where they were doing like a murph or something. You know what I mean? The squats, the runs. Now, these folks in Bay County are running their asses off. They're still trying to fit in some PT. Do I wish every firefighter fit in PT and dieted properly? And you know what I mean? Read fire engineering, firehouse magazine, and watched the scrap. Like, I don't even know if five people from Bay County even know the scrap exists. Right. And I don't care. They're still great employees, they love the job, they're providing service to our citizens. Um, you know what I mean? So the longer I get to do this job, the more um I realize there's so many people that provide so much of this occupation that aren't buffs like we are. Right. Um, you know, so you know, 20 years ago, if Rob asked that question, I would probably say, ah, you gotta go to FDIC, you gotta go to Firehouse Expo in Baltimore, you gotta go to Orlando fire conference, you gotta get, you know, seven magazines in the mail. And you know what I mean? I would have my whole answer would have been different. My answer today's man is just like have a balance, try to learn a little bit each day. I'll go, I'm gonna throw it back at Rob. 10 pounds of pressure 100% of the time is gonna win the race. Um I hate to throw my son into the bus. Um, but like uh Trevor, um what's today, Tuesday? Yes, I went home for I went home for the weekend. So Jessica, Trevor, and I uh went to Peg Legs on a boat Sunday, man. Like that was like that was uh a big thing. Um, you know what I mean? And then you know what I mean. My buddy Dan Bender, who's watching, which don't worry, Dan. We're closing out early, Dan, because he has to work at American Airlines tomorrow, and I gotta go to work. But um, Dan and Heather always give us like these gift cards from Peg Legs. Uh Peg Legs is probably my favorite place to go to by boat. But we got back and and and Trevor was asking about working overtime yesterday. Well, he's already working today and tomorrow, and Thursday and Friday, and then Saturday's gonna pack in the middle of the night, they're gonna leave. And uh him and uh Jake and uh Tim and some CFT guys are driving my truck up to FDIC. Nice. Well, when he asked me about working overtime Monday, what do you think? I told him since he was already working a 96, Corley. What would you tell your son? After a 96? No, right? Should he work? Should your son work Monday to make that 96 be a 120 to then pack your shit up in the car? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Okay, that's what I told Trevor. Now he's a grown ass man, right? Right, right. But if your son is respectful enough to ask you your opinion, even if he's 24, I'm like, son, no, no, no, no. He's like, you know, um, well, like, you know what I mean? Like, and I'm trying to come up with some bullshit of something I need him to do, right? Right. And this is exactly what Jess said. He don't have nothing for you to do, he just don't want you working, and that was the truth. No, like, like I'm leaving. I was getting up at 4:30 a.m. yesterday morning to drive down here to beat all the red lights, Eglin, or Herbert Air Force. And I'm like, I just wanted to come to work and know that my son's just chilling out of the house for a day, right? Because especially before a big road trip, and especially as busy as a scambia can be, man, without a doubt. And he just got off at 96 or something, and so I share that story with the viewers because so this isn't about Corley and his son or me and my son, this is about you, and I'm just telling you, man, like you like we all want to go to jobs, man. We all want to go to fires, but just let them happen when they're gonna happen. Like, and I'm gonna go back with Bill Guston, man. Like, when I first met Bill Guston 30 years ago, there's no doubt Bill Guston wanted to go to every fire, and I don't remember when it happened, but there was some time in my relationship with Bill Guston, it was probably 15 years ago, and it was just, you know, Bill and I, and um, you know, he probably had some coke with a little bit of additives. And he's like, Kurt man, I don't know. One day I just woke up and you know, if a fire's gonna happen, yeah, I would like to be at work, but I don't wish for fires. I don't want to go to a fire, I just want to be ready if a fire happens. And I don't want to say that's exactly how Captain Gustin said it, but I can tell you, man, I remember him telling us when he said shit, man, it was like the gospel to me. Right, right. Right. And but I didn't get it then. I didn't make sense, but I definitely get it now. And um, you know, uh, I'm still trying to answer Rob's question, is like, I want I want firefighters that want to go to fires because they're gonna be better at their job, they're gonna be they're gonna be more in tune to the research from UL and FSRI on when to go, when not to go, survivability, the firefighter rescue survey. They're gonna be smartly aggressive, but I will also want them to hear from me that they got to take care of themselves, man. You gotta you gotta get sleep, man. Like last night I slept 10 hours. I had a long day at headquarters yesterday, and and I and I told my boss when I came in this morning, I told her, I said, I feel a lot better today. I got 10 hours of sleep last night. You know, like I I high la yesterday I didn't drink any caffeine past 10 a.m. Truly didn't do that, man. I didn't. I didn't drink any caffeine after 10 a.m. yesterday. I drank a lot of water yesterday, a lot of water, a little bit of like Powerade and um Gatorade, and I slept great last night. Um, you know, tonight I'm hoping to go to bed by 10:30, but I gotta get up at 5:30. So tonight I'm only gonna get seven hours sleep, but I'm going to bed with no alcohol, real hydrated, and I I'm gonna I skipped today. Man, I was I had a four-hour staff meeting. So at two o'clock, I had a Dr. Pepper from Burger King as I was eating some double cheeseburgs, headed to warehouse. But um I'm trying to live what doctors and people have been saying for a long time. Um, so I'll leave it at that, man. I hope I answered, you know, I didn't really answer Rob's question, but uh, you know, I want to answer it because I do want to try to give our younger folks, you know, some advice on how to do things. And the really thing is this man, just don't rush it. Um, don't try to be something overnight, man. You want to be Jerry Rice, you know what I mean? Just train year-round, you know what I mean? Just don't go on vacation. And if you don't know who Jerry Rice is, then just get off the scrap right now. It's beautiful, beautiful. A lot of football references tonight, Chief. Like, I'm used to the well, I was a little more into it than I ever led on to. Like, my dad's from the south side of Chicago, South Shore. So, I mean, I grew up, man, like like the 85 Bears. Like, I was, you know what I mean? Like, I was a blue. If my dad had a football team, it was the Bears. So, you know, I mean, I know a lot of shit about the 85 Bears. I actually what the only football game I really ever betted on was my buddy Jason Lombardo was the Bears. He was a Miami Dolphins fan. Um, I watched a lot of Chicago Bulls uh basketball. Um, you know, but I got so into the fire service. But I will tell you, so I answer this question with Rob, and Rob already knows this, but um, you know, when Trevor started going to UF six years ago, um, I was like, man, I don't want to spend as much money for my kid to live in games, so I'm gonna get into it. So I don't miss a Florida Gators football game. Right now, I I watch a lot of basketball. Um, so sports, man, sports is is, you know, because I don't take any anti-depressive since I got back from the COE. Um, so sports is like my like break away from the fire service. But there's no doubt that the the the similarities, the analogies, the the comparisons um are there. But um, you know, I I wish I could just lie to everybody and say I have a hobby, but I still don't really have a hobby. But if I had one, it's watching gator sports.
SPEAKER_00Okay, okay. And you are passionate about gator sports. Anybody that was at the district tap, you know, in that game, well, I think it was Marshall, uh, Marshall Boyd. You had a yeah, yeah. Yeah, four big green ones for that one. Uh, but that was a lot of passion there. And I asked Trevor, I said, Hey, are you? I I thought you were a Florida fan. He goes, I am. He goes, I'm just not as I'm not as outwardly as my dad is. And I was like, Okay, that's fair. Well, because he didn't graduate high school at a 1.6 GPA.
SPEAKER_01I couldn't even get into a junior college. See, he graduated UF with a 4.0 in biomedical engineering. So when you've already achieved stuff like that, you just walk around humble and just chilled out and quiet. See, I'm living by carely kids.
SPEAKER_00That's fair, that's very fair. All right, Chief, you've been on here enough, but I I did I did promise you that I would get you to bed at a decent hour. So I'm gonna start transitioning to wrapping up, and I'm gonna ask you about book, and I know you're a passionate reader. We've talked about Maxwell, we've talked about Abrasoff, but I I want to ask you about books that you think firefighters should be reading, especially with your new focus. I don't want to say focus, but your new bend towards leadership and these soft skills that used to not be what you talked about.
SPEAKER_01Um, you know, I I'll say this like um in his book I've I've probably mentioned before, but I think the functional fire company, yeah, but I think it it's it's um I think it's more important to me now. And and you know, anybody that knows knows Chief Scott Thompson is a big part of the CFT team. Um, you know what I mean, just a remarkable individual. Um, is very happy. I drove back and forth like five hours a day driving in my car for COBC because I had to come to Bay County to work. And I was lucky enough to get to hang out a little bit with Chief Scott Thompson, but I would say the functional fire company is is so much higher on my list right now with what I'm doing in Bay County. Um, you know, I think, you know, I think that's a big deal. Um, I think, you know, this book, uh Dina's book is is like a big deal.
SPEAKER_00So I think I'm gonna say the name just so people who listen later can hope out of darkness by Dina Ali. I just want to say it out loud. Go ahead.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, um, you know, um, so I think that and and I'm just gonna go back to a book I said before, man. I still think it's one of the best books out there is John Maxwell, the 21 Air Feeble Laws of Leadership. And and I don't just say that lightly, I say it in the context of like, and I don't want to be negative, but fire a lot of firefighters are not deep readers. And so the way John Maxwell wrote it, and that book's 26, 27 years old now, um, is the way he breaks down the 21 things. I think it's easy for a firefighter that's not a collegiate student. Not that they didn't go to college, but they just aren't into academics. Absolutely. No, he he he makes it firefighter friendly. He no, he does. Yeah, and and if and if I did 20 scraps, I think I'm gonna probably continue to say the 21 air feudal laws of leadership. And for those in a scambia, um, Chief Jim Sanders, man, the one of the first battalion one for a scambia is the guy that gave me the book uh 26 years ago. Um, so you know, I would say when somebody hands you a book um and they're giving you a book and they hand it to you and they say, Read it, man. If you don't read, read that book. So it's easy for somebody to say, Hey, Corey, can I borrow that book from you? Or hey, Corey, what book should I read? It's easy to go to a bookstore and buy a book. It's easy to borrow. When somebody walks up to you, hands you a book, and says, Hey, I'd like you to have this book. They're not loading it to you, they're giving it to you. Well, that's what Chief Jim Sanders did. He gave me this book. I'll never forget, man. We're in this old strip mall. It's before we even had a fire headquarters. We're in a strip. Yeah, we might have been off a damn ninth avenue for those. If anybody's watching our first dollars building, but I was the training captain, first ever training captain for the newly formed Escambia County. And Chief Jim Sanders said, Hey, Ike, man, I I really think you'd like this book. I think I think you'd get something out of it. Thank God they handed me that book, man. For 26 years, I've been telling the best leadership book in the world. And I wasn't even a big reader back then. I mean, hell, I read Report from Engineer Company 84, 82, four times. You know, I mean 20,000 alarms, but I wasn't into reading leadership books. Um, no, yeah, absolutely. Um, so I think that that's a powerful thing. So that I'm gonna leave it right there, man.
SPEAKER_00No, it's beautiful because you've you've been very consistent with the 21 irrefutable laws, and I think it's Maxwell's gold standard. Like, I think uh unlocking the leadership potential in that one are probably my two favorite Maxwell books. Bar none, bar none, 21 irrefutable laws. Absolutely, and you've been very consistent on that because I think you've probably mentioned it on most of the scraps, and and rightfully so. Uh, so we have a thing we do, you've done it many times. It's a five questions for firefighters. I think you've done this version of the questions, but that doesn't matter because we'll see if any of your questions change, and they're allowed to, because you're allowed to change. So, with that being said, are you ready for the five questions for firefighters version 5.0? Something you've answered before, but you're gonna answer again. Yes, let's do it. Number one, you can do anything in the world except be a firefighter. What would you choose to be?
SPEAKER_01If I could pull it off a fire pilot, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Uh, I love that there's not, man.
SPEAKER_01The Thunderbirds, the Blue Angels, like, man, it it I don't know if I ever said this on scrap before. The only thing I ever wanted to be was a pilot. I mean, I get like the only thing I ever wanted to be as a kid, other than that, was fly planes. Man, my mom worked at Afsock, and it didn't matter back then it was a gunner ship out of Herlbert, or it was a fighter plane, man. And one of one of one of my best chiefs I ever worked for, um, very good friend. He wrote my first letter of recommendation for Bay County. Uh, Chief Kenny Perkins is now a pilot, he's a pilot instructor, he's a fire chief for Ascambia County, he's the longest standing fire chief in the history of Escambia County. He was the fire chief for, I don't know, eight years at Fort Walton Beach, and now he's a pilot instructor. He's a pilot, and I just get excited that he's doing what he wanted to do forever, you know. And and um, you know, he's in his upper 50s. He I hate to say that, but he is. Uh, I know how old he is because he's a few years older than me, and he's living his life, man. So I want to turn that into something. Chief Kenny Perkins, man, got hired in the Pensacola Fire Department in 1988. He roughly did about 11 years there in '99. He's the first deputy fire chief for the first newly formed Escambia County Fire Rescue, longest standing fire chief in Escambia County Fire Rescue. Went to Fort Wong Beach as a deputy chief, then it was a fire chief for a long time. And now the guy's in his upper 50s, getting his got his pilot's license, a pilot instructor, and he's gonna fly for the professional uh airlines. And I don't say that kissing his ass because he's not watching the show tonight, but he's a great example of man of like life's not over, man. Hope out of darkness. You can have a career after career after a career. You know, people in the military get in at 20, 21, 22, do 20 years, and at 42, 43, 44, they become a PA or a doctor or a realtor or whatever they you want to do. So anybody's listening, man, life's not over till you decide it's over in your own brain.
SPEAKER_00Right on, brother. I love it. Max points out the gate, fighter pilot plus amazing story. So one for one, max points. Number two, it's job town, it's time. You're in route and responding. You gotta think of the scene from backdraft where he slaps that tape into that cassette deck. What song are you playing while in route? You get and and these are all on the Spotify playlist, so yours are already on there. You may have the most on there out of everybody, but I'm not sure. But you can add a new one if you want, or you can go with one of your classics, so it's up to you.
SPEAKER_01Well, I'm gonna just give it a different one because uh I've been listening to more of his music than ever before, and it doesn't even go with go into a fire, so like it, you know, people won't even get it. My buddy Dan Bitter will, but um, my mom coming home from Ozzy Osborne. Um, you know, and and and and that's probably just a diminuted twist because like we'll go into a fire, and you know what, man, I'm gonna put this fire out, but I'm coming home. And for him, you know, it's coming back to his wife, yada, yada. But like, you know, I mean, I've actually not thought about the scrap, but I've just thought about the parallels of life and music. And, you know, a lot of people don't know, but I listened to a lot of rock and roll at too young of an age because my older brother, um, and I was a huge Ozzy Osbourne as a young little kid, man. Black Sabbath, Dio, you know, megadeth. But uh Ozzy Osbourne, man, mama. I'm coming home. I'm gonna put this fucking fire out. I'm gonna beat his ass, but I'm coming to the house when it's over.
SPEAKER_00I love it. Absolutely. Max points. The great thing about that playlist, uh, I was actually picked up from the airport and going to teach Adam Melchior, and there were songs playing, and I recognized every song that was coming on, but they were all pretty much hits, and they they it wasn't, but then something popped up, and I was like, I said, Is this the is this the scrap playlist? And he's like, Yeah, it is, because one of them popped up that just didn't quite fit with the others, but it was one of the scrap playlists. So, anyway, it'll be on there, and I think it fits great, brother. I absolutely love the answer. Max points two for two. Number three, I don't know if you've had this one before, but I possible. We'll see. Cold weekend at the station. That's what cold weekend. I don't know if you have those in the 850, but it's a cold weekend at the station. Uh, training is done, rig checks are done, you've done your PT, everything's done. You're not being lazy, but it's a lazy day, and you're clicking through the channels on the TV, and that movie's there. And no matter where it's at in the movie, what you're you're gonna finish watching it. What is that movie for you?
SPEAKER_03I don't need no mustard on biscuits. I don't need no mustard on biscuit.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Is that enough for you? That's pretty good, uh Billy Bob imitation. That really is. Man, it really was, man.
SPEAKER_01Um, Billy Bob Thornton lately and let like watching him with um, you know, us losing one of the greatest actors of all time. Uh, I that's just what comes to brand, my brain, man. And you know, he just he just he's you know, and I don't even watch his show Landman or whatever, right? All I've watched is the thing where he's talking about the fucking footprint of the the the turbines, we'll never pay the footprint and the diesel and all the solar power and all that. That's all over Instagram, but man, that guy is just re just remarkable, man.
SPEAKER_00So no, it was a great imitating business. I at first I was lost for a second, then I realized it was what it was, and it finally clicked it. It was Sling Blade, so it took me a minute, though. It really did. Not that, but it was yeah, I'm a little slow. I am a little slow. I'll I'll own that. So three for three. Number four, this one's on the clock, hence the reason for the clock. You get one minute to answer. You've had it before, you've put people on your Mount Rushmore, but you can put new people or you can go with what whatever you're feeling today. But you get to put four people on your Mount Rushmore of the fire service in one minute and go.
SPEAKER_01Steve Booth, John Van Meter, Brian Hicks, Jeff Tapner.
SPEAKER_00All right, you gotta give now that's that's 23 seconds or 33 23 seconds if I can do math. So phenomenal on the speed, but now you have to explain the four names because. They're not, I'm not, I'm not connecting the dots.
SPEAKER_01So um, I had less than 12 months on a job as the newly promoted battalion chief when I had engine 319 with um four people, and we were going all the fires that everybody in Scambia now goes to on all these fire companies was handled outside of the 45-hour work week at 74 Monday through Friday, nights and weekends was basically battalion two and engine 319. And I had a fire at uh V Street and Fisher, a block away from my granddaddy lived. Like, so like I like in Pensacola, I know the streets. Cervantes, North is strong, DeSoto, Gonzalez, Bernard, Lloyd, Lee, Blunt, Moreno, Mallory, Avery, Lakeber. And then the ones east and west are easy. They're A, B, C, D, they're alphabet streets. Right on, right on. Like I knew every street, man. I had them all memorized. And so um this fire goes dispatched, and I'm operating out of West Pensacola, and it's volunteer firehouse, so there's nobody there. So I pull up on this job in the middle of the night by myself. Um, wood frame shotgun house, just like my granddaddy's house. I mean, I could throw a baseball and hit where my granddaddy lived that I've been going to my whole life. And my parents actually own the entire city block, the next block up. And my dad was a uh, you know, I hate the word slumlord, but low-income rentals, my dad rented them. So sure. Um, so for me, this was personal, man. Like my aunts and uncles lived in all these neighborhoods, and so, like, you know, I I just started sharing this less than five years ago, but as scambium, man, all these neighborhoods, man, were my family. And so I took it very personal. And I pull up, and there's no cars outside, and the place is blacked out. There's not really a lot of smoke, and so engine 319 pulls up, and those four guys are on the rig. And um, you know, like a long story short, man. I've told this to tens of thousands of people over the last 20-some years, is that was a game changer in my career. And how I operated that night, and what I did, a lot of credit goes to Mike Lombardo and Chief Hoff and some old timers of like depth on the bench, your percentage of impact. So, a lot of my articles come from my mentors and what they taught me is I didn't just do windshield command, I didn't sit at the back of my vehicle, I got out and I put all my shit on and I was waiting for 319 to get there. And so, you know, I'm like standing out front and I could smell like you know, the rubber. And a lady says, Hey man, you know, her name wasn't Mrs. Smith, but I'm a Brunacini fan. You know, Mrs. Smith lives there, she's elderly, she's bedly, right in the front door, the second room back, she lives in a hospital bed. And so we got these reports of somebody's trapped, right? Well, you know, I've already had, I mean, so now I've already had a shitload of fire fatalities in my career. We're only about two years or so within when I had uh it was 21 civilian fire fatalities in like less than 18 months. Uh, we're doing 595 hero on the billboards. So my my brain is every fire I go to, somebody's trapped. And so we're under an old radio system, 154-430. We don't have 800 megahertz radios or anything. And so 319 pulls up right in front of the house, chain link fence. They stretch the line up to the front door. Still no fire visible. There's zero fire visible. They stretch the line up to the front door, and so these guys, I ate dinner with them at night because I go to their firehouse, I ate dinner, go back to my firehouse, and I sleep in a damn closet, basically. My office, I could touch my keyboard when I was laying in bed. That's how small the office was. And um, so I'll never forget, man, and he's still a very close personal friend of mine, uh, Steve Boothie's a battalion chief. Um, hella shit, he's working today. Um, but uh he um is at the front door and he was a corpsman in the Navy. And I gotta say that, man, because you're asking about leadership, man. You're asking about, you know, people need to know their people, where they're from, how they were raised, what their thought process is. And and I'm not saying the military is everything, but our military, our military, it's okay to be proud to be an American. Our military does a great job training young men and women that it's okay to take orders from other people, regardless of their color, their skin, whether they're male, female, regardless of their sexual orientation. Our our military, I think, just does a phenomenal job. And anytime I have a friend that tells me one of their kids is going to military, I get excited. Man, I was so excited when Dave Dubowski told me his son was going to the Air Force, my buddy Jake knows his son serving in the Navy, and I could just go on and on and on. I don't want to get on a tangent, but nobody's ever gonna go wrong serving our military. 18 years old out of high school or going in at 28. I don't care. But, anyways, we're at the front porch, and I walk up to Lieutenant Booth and I check my radio, man. I can remember it like it's yesterday. And back then we were like on we had our channel was called Rescue, and it was called Civil Defense. So we were on channel two civil defense, it was a sign thing. Now we have what's called a scambial fire, and we have tap channels, right? Right. Um, and that's a good thing. Everybody progresses, it doesn't make it bad back then, so it's good, and so he's there, and um Brian Hicks is on a nozzle, he's now the assistant pastor at First Baptist Church in Pensacola, um, and moved to Alaska, and then Jeff Tavner's the door guy, and then John Van Meter is the pump operator, one of the best pump operators, ended up being one of my lieutenants, one of my top lieutenants I ever was fortunate enough to work with. But I leave because there's nobody else coming, so I can't do like I can't do back of the rig command. I can't look to a windshield. What am I doing? Like, I can like I could like I'm not doing here. I could literally name those four people's kids, right? Right. One's got a son, one's got two daughters, you know what I mean? Another one's got two dogs. Like, I know they're kids, like, and you know, we talk about leadership. Let's go back to my four C's caring. I give a shit about these people going home to their kids, right? And so I checked the radio, and so now there's gonna be nobody outside, and Van Meter's got the rig because there's no ladder company coming, so he's blocking a house and the pump panel, the rig's blocking the house, so he can't see the house. And I didn't think about this until afterwards, hindsight. But I'm going down a D-delta side and I got my goofy ass four foot hook. I know Champo, I should have had a six-foot, but I had a four-foot hook, and I'm going down the D-delta side and I get about halfway, I call it the 50-yard line. I mean, it's halfway between the A alpha and the C Charlie side of the house. And out of corner of my eye, I see a little flicker of fire. Now the windows are intact, there's no smoke showing. You know what I mean? You can smell the smoke, and it's coming things. And so I walk, you know, I don't know what I walk five more feet, six more feet, and I see another flicker of fire. Well, in my brain, my Rolodeck is doing 100 miles an hour, probably thinking about Chief Vincent Dunn's 1988, 1989 smoke explosion, backdraft videos, rollover flash, whatever it was. All of a sudden, my brain goes, Holy shit! And and this, I wasn't thinking this this night, but this is what my brain was thinking, and I wasn't thinking it. The front doors open, and I do remember when the front door opened, this black smoke was to the floor. Now, this is 2004. This for UL and FSRI. Sure, sure. So the house, the fire was oxygen limited, right? Because it was eating all that plastic. It had a hospital bed and it's eating all that plastic. The smoke was to the floor pushing out. Well, as I'm going down the D outside of the house, that smoke is pressures like lowering what's following my boys in.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that air is coming.
SPEAKER_01That oxygen's coming.
SPEAKER_00That oxygen's coming.
SPEAKER_01I see that flicker of fire. Well, I have my radio hanging out, and I don't do this whole, you know, green card, red card, purple card operation, and go, uh V Street command, the division one uh coordinator, and then wait for him to reply. Uh, I need the operations section to do an organized retreat. No, I did exactly what the fuck we should do today, tomorrow, next week, and next year. I grabbed the radio and said, get out, get out, get out. I'm screaming. I'm I'm not trying to sound good for the buffs listening to the fire scanner that aren't listening. I'm screaming, get out, get out, get out. And I turn and I'm running down the D-Delta side of the house to the alpha delta corner. Thank God, Lieutenant Booth, who's Chief Booth now, wasn't about, you know, hey, he don't know what he's doing, he's squirreling out. He just took a command. That was a Navy corpsman. He tells an Osman, we got to go, we're going right now. And Osman, you know, probably thinks, and at one time, Brian Hicks is a personal friend of mine. He did admit, he's like, Chief, man, I was like, what the hell is the problem? Right? Because they don't have thermal assault yet. They can't feel the heat, right? They literally broke the threshold, they don't even know it's hot yet. And so thank God, man. I give all the credit to Chief Booth. And that night, he just got out and I come to the front, they're coming out the front door, the whole place flashes, almost self-extinguishes to this day. I've told this story to tens of thousands, literally, tens of thousands of firefighters. Is I don't ever remember us extinguishing a fire because I think it's almost like Stephen Solomon's fire off engine 16 in Atlanta, where the mattress, but there was more than a mattress in there. But I think it just it burned up the fire combustibles, the gases. I mean, obviously they probably had to go there with all the but this is the truth on my my life, my family's life. I don't remember after coming around and I just saw Ron Hicks, Steve Booth, Jeff Tavner, Van Meter's at the pump, everybody's okay. I'm like a young kid, 30 years old. I'm a newly promoted battalion chief, and I almost got some guys killed. And that's been with me my whole career. Knock on wood, right? Um, and so that night, man, was a game changer for me studying fire behavior. Chief Clark's book, um, you know, like why I'm so indulged and and and so saturated with the fire triangle, not just heat, not just fuel, not just oxygen. They all, man, are 33.333333 and the point zero zero zero one is just a luck factor. That's what it comes down to, man. Of like when they come, when they come together, you know, we'd all like to take, you know, Dave Dotson or Beckman's class a thousand times, but a lot of times it's a guessing game, man. But you know what? Guess on the side of safety, guess on the side of flowing water, firefighters are more likely to burn up than they are to drown inside of a burning building. So um, my route, Mount Rushmore is those four guys that night all coming together to avert tragedy that would have changed my projectory more than November 25th, 2000, because I can't handle another November 25th, 2000. That answered the question?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think I think so. I think so, Chief. And then Max points four for four, without a doubt. Final question has never changed. You've answered it six times. This will be your seventh time to hear it. Heavy fire and searchable space. Would you rather be assigned to the nozzle or first in on VES?
SPEAKER_01Nozzle all day long. Um, there's a there's plenty of people that want to go vent, enter, and search. Um, man, like you know what I mean. If if if I could do my career and go back to the 70s and 80s, I would want to be a little Tim Clett and be the best nozzle firefighter I could be. Um, man, like, you know, I just tell people, man, like, and trust me, like, like anybody that's known my career knows I've been on a shitload of roofs, man. I pretended to be Santa Claus for a long time. Um, and I've cut a shitload of roofs, man. I've been on some pretty awesome vent jobs. Um, and and I don't want to talk about I pulled out a lot of dead bodies, man. Um, I I I've I've had skin on my gloves, I've had skin on my body. Um, I've I've pulled a lot of people out, you know what I mean? But um I never pulled out anybody successfully, you know what I'm saying? Um, and that's why I'm so passionate about firefighter rescue survey. Um, it's why I'm so passionate about when smoke detectors fail, we cannot fail. And I'm passionate about smoke detectors, right? Um, so um, you know what? Let me have the nozzle. I'll go put out the fire. And then if I put out the fire, we'll break all the windows, lift the smoke, and you take care of getting them out. But here's all I'm gonna ask you if you're gonna vent inner search, finish the job by providing BLS care and do compressions on their chest and resuscitate them. Because locating and removing don't mean shit if you don't provide BLS care or advanced medical care and bring them back to life and get Rosk.
SPEAKER_00Right on. Boom. EMT, baby. After 30 some years, if I can go get it, your ass can get it. Oh, that's awesome. That is awesome, and that officially makes it five for five max points. Once again, as expected, I expect you to like if you don't get max points, I would be, I would be. Has anybody not got max points? Oh, yeah, there's been. I don't make a big deal out of it, I just don't announce max points. It's just we kind of just move on. And if you if you know, you know, that's that kind of thing. But I don't say like, well, you just well, sometimes I tell them they screwed the pooch, but it's very, very rare. But I will say this because I get my chops busted. I gotta say it's right. I get my chops busted quite a bit for always giving out max points. But the truth of the matter is this, and I say this high caliber people on the very high caliber people come on the scrap, and so I expect them to get to have good answers. So it's actually surprised me when they don't. So, anyway, uh, that's beautiful. You just put the bow on 350 episodes of the scrap chief. Uh, I can't tell you. I talked to you while we was in Pensacola and I told you it to your face how how personally uh you've impacted my life. No, 100%. I can't wait. Uh, so thank you so much for coming on the scrap and sharing your evening with us, even with your new duties and everything like that. And look, it is 9 46. We are wrapping up. We're gonna get you to work in the morning. So, with all that being said, housekeeping, go to patreon.com slash the vigilantees. The vigilantes are amazing. The discord is so I mean, it is like all the good parts of social media without all the spam and all the AI articles. It's amazing. It's just firefighters talking to firefighters. It's awesome. If you're not a part, you should be. Go sign up next week on Thursday night at Indianapolis. There is the Vigilante get together. It's the it's the fifth year in a row, I believe, the fourth year where it's gonna be at. And it's always the biggest get together of the vigilantes every year. We're gonna give out the awards, there's gonna be toast, there will be creed that is shouted, and it will be all the like-minded souls getting together. So Thursday night, remember that. Uh, it's gonna be the biggest one yet. Coming up now, and and listen, everybody listening, you do not have to be a vigilante to go to it. You can come and see what we're all about. Have fun, meet the like-minded souls because it's an amazing group of people. So, all that being said, coming up next week on the scrap, special night, Monday night because of FDIC. I'm traveling on Tuesday to get up there, so it the scrap next week will be on Monday night. I try not to ever move it, but next week it is Monday night because of FDIC. It's the editor-in-chief of Firefighter Nation, Stephanie White, coming on to talk about FDIC. And then two weeks from today, it's stickers himself, Mr. Nozzletoff, Michael Goldstein, the can report. He is coming on. I'm excited. And that is enough jabbering from me. Thank you, audience. Every week you show up, you make the scrap magical. Without you and your awesome questions, the scrap would not exist. So thank you. I love you all. Chief, I can't ever tell you thank you enough for spending your evening and coming on.
SPEAKER_01And I, you know what, I'd love to go till midnight, man. But I mean, I gotta get up at 5 30 and we're doing a hurricane drill through the Florida Emergency Operations Center at headquarters. So um, I gotta get eight hours sleep so I can be my best tomorrow at work.
SPEAKER_00Hey, we made a deal. We made a deal. You you yeah, absolutely. I thought I said I'm gonna get you out of here by 10, and we're doing it. We're doing it.
SPEAKER_01And I'll stay on pretty after thing. I've still got a little bit of time.
SPEAKER_00I was gonna tell, I told everybody you weren't invited. You were not inviting you because you have a job to do, but no, no, I'm good. I'll send you an invite. Okay, I'll see you in there. I'll I'll unwind at it. Okay, that's fair. Everybody, thank you. Remember, mutts don't scrap. I hope the tone stays silent. Unless it is burning, this job will never be safe. So stay smart out there. Thanks for listening to the weekly scrap. Please subscribe and please share. We'll see you at the next episode.