Another Mans Shoes
Interviews with fellow military veterans and adventurers about their experiences of war, the lows and times of hardship, joining them on their journey and how this has shaped their lives in the most extraordinary way. Comedy moments, dark humour and witty banter.
Another Mans Shoes
From Paratrooper to Firefighter: David O'Neill MBE on Leadership, Resilience, and Mental Health in the London Fire Brigade - S1E12
Ever wondered how a paratrooper transforms into a top leader in the London Fire Brigade? Join us as we embark on an extraordinary journey with David O'Neill MBE, exploring his incredible evolution from a military enthusiast to the Deputy Assistant Commissioner. We dive deep into David's formative years, his passion for the army cadets, and the pivotal moments that propelled him into the Parachute Regiment, even amid familial resistance. This episode sets the stage for understanding the resilience and dedication required in a career that bridges military discipline with emergency service valor.
David takes us behind the scenes of the intense emotional and psychological challenges faced by first responders. You'll hear gripping accounts from his early days on the job, highlighting the raw realities of dealing with tragic accident scenes and the methods emergency personnel use to cope. Discover how dark humor and informal debriefings play a crucial role in managing stress, and learn about the cultural shift within emergency services towards addressing emotions to prevent long-term psychological trauma. David's stories of near misses and miraculous survivals offer a riveting insight into the daily dangers and emotional complexities faced by those in the line of duty.
The conversation pivots to critical issues of mental health support and effective disaster response coordination, particularly in the aftermath of significant incidents like the Grenfell Tower fire. David discusses the unique challenges of providing mental health support for both responders and the public, and how systems like TRIM help prepare teams for mass fatality events. Hear firsthand accounts of the intense pressures and crucial leadership decisions during catastrophic events, and the ongoing efforts to improve the mental health and well-being of firefighters. This episode is a compelling exploration of the evolving culture within the fire service and the vital lessons learned from the frontline of disaster response.
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Welcome to this episode of Another Man's Shoes. We're delighted to be joined by David O'Neill MBE. David's currently the Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the London Fire Brigade and he's going to talk to us about his time as a young Tom in the Parachute Regiment through to leaving and joining the Fire Service. Since joining the service, he's been integral in many incidents in the UK. He's trained with the Americans following September 2001 and also been part of the UK's response to natural disasters with the International Rescue Team. He's talked to us about a number of these different events, as well as the Grenfell Tire Fire, which is obviously in many people's minds. It was a great interview. Really enjoyed it. I hope you enjoy it too.
Speaker 2:So Davidid over to you yeah, hi adam, thanks for talking to me no worries.
Speaker 1:Well, I appreciate you reaching out and obviously we know each other from from other stuff we do through the charity and sort of mutual friends and uh sort of speaking to you in the past and so what I hear from others.
Speaker 1:You've done a lot of stuff in your time and I think people that listen to this podcast be really interested, because it's not always the sort of military orientated podcast that we want to do.
Speaker 1:We like to hear about other people's journeys and the emergency services and you know, because there's we were talking to a chap the other day who's a fireman and it just makes you realize the trauma and the things that you guys see on a daily basis for years and years of your career, whereas in the military, you know we see some horrible things, but often it's for six months or a few months out in operations you may not do anything again. So it really opened my eyes on obviously the ptsd and obviously the. I suppose the journey that you guys go through is so different to what we have to. The way we usually run these shows is we'll talk to you, you'll'll give us a bit about your background and then we'll go through the other parts. So can you sort of take us through your upbringing and where you sort of started off life and what was your childhood like?
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, so I was born in Hong Kong. My father was in the Royal Navy. I was three years old when I came to the UK. The first place I landed in the UK was Bryson Orton, actually. So I ended up going back there a few years later. So we were living in Portsmouth, you know, and actually you know, life was good. Then, you know, we were growing up, me and myself and my brother. Then we had another brother come along and the old man sort of gave it all up, really. He got a job. He was an engineer, so he got a job working in a factory and then that company moved up towards London and that brought us up sort of to South London. So, you know, grew up in South Londonondon, um, and you know, normal upbringing, went to a decent school. Uh, my brothers were a bit more brainy than me, but uh, you know, we all benefited from a good education, uh, and that was it really so what part of london was that you, you brought up in?
Speaker 2:so well south london. Now it's down. You know it's Wallington, so you know the true Londoners will hate me for that. But then the people from Surrey will hate me as well for calling it Surrey. It was Surrey when we moved up here when I was a kid, but it's now become kind of South London really.
Speaker 1:So that was back in the 80s, I imagine. Is it Sort of the growing up?
Speaker 2:time, yeah, 1980, that was.
Speaker 1:You seen a big difference what the place is like today compared to back then.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just everything the traffic and everything. You know it was quite a quiet place really. I think they thought it was the countryside. When we first moved up here from Portsmouth it was a little bit concrete, you know, the Tricorne Centre and all of that stuff. And now, yeah, it stuff, uh, and and now, yeah, it's just, it's just become. You know, london's just grown and grown. So, uh, and I pretty much always worked in central london as well, so you know, I suppose we consider ourselves londoners really, but, uh, it's nice to be at escape just out slightly every, you know, every day yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:When you finished school, did you know what you wanted to do as your career? Do you sort of looked at your pathways?
Speaker 2:yeah, I was kind of army barmy really, or military barmy I suppose, uh, all the way through school. You know, I couldn't wait to leave school, I couldn't wait to uh to join the army. Um, our cross-country races at the end of, uh, my fifth year at school we were doing in in webbing. You know, me and my mates were in the army cadets. We we were doing it in in webbing with weight in boots and lightweights. You know, we were doing our school cross country in that to prepare ourselves.
Speaker 2:And I went down to the um army careers at norbury and me and my mate we signed up and uh, you know, we did pretty well in the exams. I wanted to join the parachute regiment and, uh, the careers officer down here had different ideas for us. Really, I think he was a signaller, so of course he was championing his own cap badge and I came away from there at mid-date to go to Sutton Coalfield and you know that's it. We were joining. The juniors Came away full of myself really, and then me old man had slightly different ideas, having been a junior himself and I think, having a bit of a tough time as a junior, uh, there was no way he was going to sign me my chip, really, uh, to get us in. So, um, he said, no, if you still want to do it when you're 17 and a half, uh, you know I can't stop you, he said, but I'm not letting you go in there as a 15-year-old I was 15 when I left school so he made me get a job.
Speaker 2:So I got a job and I had money in my pocket. You know, I was sort of living it up a bit really. My mates were all apprentices, I had a decent job and you know, I kind of turned my head a bit. I suppose I still had this yearning to be in the military. And when I turned 17 and a half, I joined 10 Para, which was a local unit to us to kind of, I suppose, get the best of both worlds at that point.
Speaker 2:Okay, reflecting back on it now. Do you have any regrets of not joining up or do you think that what your dad did by not signing you up to go in was quite a wise decision? Yeah, I really do have regrets. I, when I was, you know, obviously you know, I joined the fire brigade and I suppose about three years, two or three years into the fire brigade, I was enjoying it, but I still had this. So didn't backtrack, really, I was, um, I was on a course with one para and I was still, you know, determined this was this is what I want to be doing.
Speaker 2:And I was chatting to the lads from one para and morale was quite low in a battalion at that time and, um, they, uh, they didn't go to the first gulf war. You know, it was kind of northern ireland or nothing, there was nothing else on the. And they didn't go to the first Gulf War. You know it was kind of Northern Ireland or nothing, there was nothing else on the radar, you know. And I had that debate with a few of the lads and they were saying, look, if it was us, you know we'd already applied to join the fire brigade at that point. And they were saying, look, just do it. Join the fire brigade. You don't want to hang around here? This is shit, you know. Hang around here, this is shit, you know, there's nothing happening, it's normal island or nothing. You know, join a fire brigade, what a great job. And I suppose they they sort of talked me into it, really, um, and so that's that's obviously the way I went.
Speaker 2:And then, a couple of years, into the fire service, um, you know, I still had this sort of dilemma really and I've done the right thing, and I thought about joining the marines even, you know, um, and then you know, I still had this sort of this discerning really, and of course, then one para went on to be sfsg and and went blooming everywhere, you know. So, um, from going to nothing, they became, uh, the busiest battalion in the regiment, and so, of course, you know, I was looking at that and and people I stayed in touch with and I'm just thinking, oh, what have I done here, you know. But you know, so be it. I spoke to my old man about it and you know, I wish, I wish he'd let me go my way, I suppose. But I think he stands by his decision anyway, and you know, I've made the best of my job now, so I suppose I can't complain really.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, and you've done well. So did you join the fire brigade back in 93?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I joined in late 93. Yeah, september 93, I joined and at the time, you know, the London Fire Brigade was, you know, a training centre, was quite regimented. You had to march or run everywhere around the training centre. You had parades every morning, you know know. You were inspected in open order. Our um, our instructor, was a, was pretty strict, you know, and I thought this is it, this is everything you know. I thought I've cracked it here, really, because this is kind of what I'm after, you know, and then actually going into, you know, know, joining a fire station, it was everything really that I was looking for. I had the action, I had the sort of the discipline, the camaraderie, and we're kind of getting to go home every night as well. So I thought I'd landed on my feet really.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely. I suppose that's the big thing, isn't it? You finish your shift and you get to go home. You've had all the fun and excitement you could want for the day. But interestingly, my dad was a copper and my mum. Both of them thought 30 odd years. And when I left the military I thought, well, I'd like to join the fire brigade. But I think getting in the fire brigade is a particularly difficult process. It seems that they shift out a lot of people and only 10% or whatever seem to make the cut. So then I thought, well, I'll join the police. And my mam's just like do not join the police. Zero respect out on the streets. It's just not the job it used to be. They can't give people a clip around the ear and the criminals got more rights than we have. But then it sort of got me thinking. When you're sort of talking about the fire service and the camaraderie the members of the public towards the police, but with the fire brigade, do you get a positive response when you turn up, do you have many problems?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, not really. I've got to say you know we're kind of. You know we're the only emergency service that's not wearing stab vests. I mean that tells you something. I don't think we're a million miles away from it, but people thank us. Sometimes their house is destroyed. As disciplined and professional as firefighters are, we've kind of soaked everything and they're still thanking us for it.
Speaker 2:So, luckily for us, we have got a great reputation which kind of allows us to get into the community. You know we are trusted and it allows us to go in and people feel safe. With this. You know we're trying to make fire stations safe havens in the community. You know we always say to any members of the public if they're out and they feel threatened, you know, just go to the fire station. If they're out and they feel threatened, you know, just go to the fire station.
Speaker 2:You know you've got a load of people there that you know it's fully staffed any time day or night in London and you'll be safe, you know. So I think we've benefited from that compared to the police. And you know over the years I've worked really closely with police on a lot of the stuff I do and you know most of them aren't, you know, kind of uniformed coppers and you know most of them aren't you know kind of uniformed coppers. But yeah, I think we've been lucky really. We've got a good reputation and you know we've got that discipline, but we don't get a lot of the aggro that the police get?
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely. And I suppose one of the things that I suppose in the military you kind of get dropped in a situation and you don't get much training before you go to. I suppose when I was in it was like bosnia, kosovo, ireland, afghan iraq and I suppose towards the latter part there was more training put in place. You know, to deal with, I suppose, some of the uh, some of the situations you'd face and seeing the bombs and the damage and obviously the human toll. But in the fire brigade do they deal with that quite early on, Because on an almost daily basis you're going to see some horrendous things? Is there much sort of training and coping sort of support for that?
Speaker 2:Well, there wasn't, and it's actually got less over time. You know, and this is something I feel quite strongly about, I did my own preparation, you know, knowing what I was going into with my eyes wide open really. I actually I made some arrangements to go and see some postmortems, just as you know, for my own preparation, and this was kind of through a friend of a friend and you know he had a couple of postmortems lined up for me, pretty straightforward, you know, elderly people that died. And then he had the special one waiting for me.
Speaker 2:He had a drug dealer that had been dead for three weeks before they found him and this bloke had he was kind of topless but he had his sort of jeans on and his body was completely bloated and dark green. It was completely bloated and dark green and you know the maggots had got into his head and all of this stuff and they popped this bloke and the smell that came out of this bloke, you know it just. Oh, I was yacking straight away. You know they're all laughing at me saying, oh, you don't see this on London's Burning. They sort of cut his head open, you know, to get to his brain and it was full of maggots and stuff and I thought I'll throw myself in a deep end here.
Speaker 2:But it was. It was kind of my personal preparation really, because you know, for me own for me, own sanity really I knew what I was going into. You know, I hadn't been exposed to anything like that. So I thought, well I'm, I'm not going to get caught out. You know, I want to do what I can to prepare myself because I know, I know what's coming yeah, I think that's quite important, isn't it?
Speaker 1:I suppose that probably says quite a lot about yourself and your personal life in there, that you haven't just relied on others to give you the experience. You've gone out and sort out some sort of extracurricular activities, albeit with dead people in morgues. That's probably the power bit coming out of you still, but so your first experience, when you obviously your first shout, I think everyone remembers that first time, wherever it is in in their job, and what was yours?
Speaker 2:so I think the first, the first one that I think you know, that kind of stays with me really uh, and I suppose this was a bit of a, a signpost, uh, actually, to some of the stuff that you know I want to talk about we had about, we got called to a lorry had turned a corner, a hire lorry, a big hire lorry, and he, just he ran over an old lady crossing a road. Wheels were on the lady's head, you know. So she was obviously dead and we'd screened off the scene and we were lifting the lorry and you know, to recover the body. But they had a police van there with a sliding door open and just sitting in the police van was this lady's handbag, and it was a classic old lady's handbag with a clip top, you know a stiff kind of cream coloured handbag sort of thing you know all our nans might have, and it was splattered with blood, uh, and and just looking at that image, really I just thought that to me, that that that bothered me more than the mess that was underneath the wheels of this lorry, really, because you know, the mess didn't mean anything to me.
Speaker 2:But looking at that handbag, you're thinking now, oh, my nan's got one like that, you know, and all of a sudden it kind of it makes it a bit more real, you know, and it adds a bit of personality to the the job you're dealing with. And that stayed with me really because I just thought, you know, that was pretty powerful, that and uh, I sort of banked that one. You know, it didn't bother me, it was, it just stuck in my mind, you know, and and I just thought I'm gonna bank that because there's a reason for that and I think that was start of my journey really about, you know, dealing with dealing with stuff going forward, because obviously you know we're dealing with a lot of stuff. That's the first one that sticks out. And then, you know, after that we're dealing with with all sorts, you know, from from fire fatalities really through to a lot of suicides.
Speaker 2:You know people jumping in front of tube trains. You know people jumping in front of tube trains. You know explosions and stuff in London and the culture at the time really was pretty, you know, macho, laugh it off. You know real black humour stuff.
Speaker 2:So it was just get around a mess table afterwards, you know, and it was to an outsider, it was outrageous, I suppose you know, and it was a very private thing, but the way that we dealt with it at the time was to an outsider, it was outrageous, I suppose you know, and it was a very private thing, but the way that we dealt with it at the time was almost to kind of take the piss out of it and take the piss out of each other really. And you know, and that was just that was how it was dealt with at the time. And you know, and everyone got together straight after, you know, for a cup of tea or whatever, and discussed it.
Speaker 1:And that was the informal kind of, you know, critical debrief, I suppose yeah, I think that's the interesting part, isn't it that throughout history, if you get a group of people who've been through a traumatic experience, uh, often sitting there talking about it, having a cup of tea, but making sort of dark humor you know some comments about it is is how you cope with it, because you've got to go out and do this day in, day out. You can't spend your whole life in and out of rehab in that, in that job. It's just not compatible, uh. But have you seen that? I suppose that way of coping and that dark humor is is that still there or is that getting sort of weeded out? Is it kind of seen as non-PC these days?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it is getting weeded out. Really, you know a lot's happened and I know we're going to touch on it, but I think the culture's really changed. The demographic of the fire service has really changed. You can imagine now, you know there's a lot more diverse workforce now than it was when I joined and you know there was a lot of ex-military, very male dominated environment when I joined.
Speaker 2:Uh, roughy tufty, you know, and that's where you see people actually completely break because they're bottling stuff up and then something will happen down the line as a trigger and it'll just, it will just, um, send them into tilt.
Speaker 2:So all these things that were just boxed off and never really dealt with, you know, are bottled up. Until one thing, and it's the strangest things, you know, we had a bloke who he went to a particularly bad experience at a fire and there were multiple fatalities there and it obviously bothered him when he boxed it off and put it away and not really talked about it, you know. And, uh, he put it away for for years and then all of a sudden he had this complete meltdown while he was driving and, um, he had some counseling and actually they triggered it back to um on the radio at the time he had his meltdown was a dire straight record. Now that's enough to send anyone into tilt. But uh, it turned out that that was the number one song you know 10 years before when this incident happened. And so 10 years later this song came on the radio just out of the blue and he just had a complete and utter breakdown yes, quite common that signed and smell association yeah, you don't realize.
Speaker 1:something comes on, takes you straight back to a point in time. Yeah, it's quite interesting some of the PTSD stories we've been listening to recently about how other people have said that so obviously in London back in the 90s. Was that IRA territory back then? Or was that kind of weaning off on the bombs and what have you? Were they still getting?
Speaker 2:on with that tail end, tail end of the ra stuff. Really. Uh, you know it was kind of business as usual, you know the ra thing was, was there, but you know, didn't really feature in my career. Um, I was based at that time around sort of brixton, clapham and lambeth you know a proper network of tube trains, and come christmas we would always have, you know, a peek in in suic suicides and dealing with, you know, with those sort of people all the time.
Speaker 2:There was one story, you know we had an old lady actually she jumped in front of the, she stabbed herself in the neck with a kitchen knife a short kitchen knife like a peeling knife and then jumped in front of the tube and she got it so wrong really the tube was over the top of her. She'd gone into the suicide pit and we were walking up and down the platform looking for her and we found her. And you know we had one of the crews shouting out yeah, I found her, yeah, she's dead, she's definitely dead, she's dead. I found, yeah, she's dead, she's definitely dead, she's dead.
Speaker 2:And I think I had a bit of rank. At this point I'm going, you know, the hearing being the last sense that you lose. I'm like shut up, you know, and you had this little voice, so I'm not dead, you know, from under the tube. So we had to roll the tube back over her because she wasn't. She was down in the suicide pit and in order to do that you've got to put the power back on. We put breakers down to stop the power current running through the tracks and so you've got to recover, you've got to roll the tube back over, so you need the power back on. And the British Transport Police at that time they got an automatic commendation if they were under a train for a rollover.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And this was before body armour. I mean this great big BTP copper with his white shirt on, you know, insisting that he goes down there. And they handcuffed the people so they can't grab the rail when you roll over, you know, and take you with them sort of thing. So they handcuffed her Someone's on her feet, someone's on her hands. One of my blokes said could he go under for the experience? You're like, well, ok, yeah, we'll go with that. And then this great big BTP copper decides he wants to go down there and I'm saying there's no need, there's no need for you down there, we've got it covered, I'm going down, I'm going down, I'm going down. So he wedges himself down there, put his white T-shirt, white shirt on. We rolled a train back over. She comes up, mate. Bear in mind she'd stabbed herself in the neck and jumped in front of a tube. There was hardly a mark on her. It just was not her time. Wow.
Speaker 1:She's given it a good go as well.
Speaker 2:Mate she was at the BTP copper got up and I offered him a hand out to him. I said do you want a hand getting out, mate? He said no, no, you know I'm fine because I wouldn't let him go there initially. And as he's trying to climb out he fell back into the suicide pit on his back and he was wedged like a turtle on his back in his pit you know, which is filthy, just screaming for help. And we were walking off by that point, you know. So I think I don't know if he's still there.
Speaker 2:And the thing about you know you're dealing with death and stuff, but you deal with the most amazing near misses as well throughout your career. You're looking at things. You're just thinking how have you survived this? You know I remember going to a car crash. This car kind of you know. I remember going to a car crash. This car would kind of you know around. I don't know if you know, but around Tooting and Clapham they've got these sort of around the commons. They've got these concrete bollards with scaffold bars effectively as a railing, and this car was I don't know if she'd had a blackout. She was heading for the bus stop. They all died out of the way she avoided the bus stop and this tube sort of came through a bonnet, through a windscreen under her arm and out of her door.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:And you're just not Mark Conner. You know, and you're just thinking what's your lottery numbers?
Speaker 1:Yeah, not your time, mate.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:What's the suicide pit? You just sort of Is that something that the trains put in to stop people jumping in front of them?
Speaker 2:Yeah, on the London Underground, you'll notice there's basically in the middle of the tube tracks. There's a dip. You know there's a pit, so when you hit it throws you down into the pit, so it rolls over you.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Not everyone's that lucky, but that's the suicide pit.
Speaker 1:Got you and do you get many people jumping?
Speaker 2:off like the bridges in London. Is that quite a common thing? Yes, yeah, we do. You know, off the Thames, bridges over the Thames and you know the inland stuff's worse we have my kind of area of responsibility is.
Speaker 2:One of my references is technical rescue and I put together a card of officers technical rescue advisors and we work with a hostage and crisis negotiation unit of the Met Police and we had a bloke who was threatening to jump off a Westminster Bridge and he's hanging onto the lamppost and I'm sitting in this van with this chief superintendent, who's head of the hostage and crisis negotiation unit, and he's on the phone at one point because he's got a family who have been taken hostage by pirates out in the Caribbean somewhere on a yacht. So he's trying to deal with that negotiation and he's kind of looking at his own officers dealing with this bloke threatening to jump. And he said to me he said, oh, he's going to go, this one he's going to go, and I went. How do you know that? He said I can just tell by his body language. And what they try and do is not make these people too comfortable. You know they want them to get cold, they want them to come down. They don't want to give them coats and all that. All these people are well-meaning. And uh, he said he just needs a trigger. And we looked up at big ben and he said he's going to go at three o'clock, that'll be his trigger. And sure enough, you know, when three o'clock struck, he jumped, but there were that many boats under him.
Speaker 2:Uh, you know the rnli, us, the police, you know the harbour master, the portland of London. I'm surprised a bloke hit the water, to be honest, but we fished him out and again, you know, not Mark on him. If that was me, mate, there'd be a pylon or something underneath it. I'd get it, you know. But, yeah, a lot of jumpers, a lot of near misses and we're doing a lot of work, actually, you know, to try and work with partners, um, in health care. Really, to, you know, what do we do with these people? Yeah, I went out to a uh blake who hung himself and it was his third suicide attempt that weekend. You know, and I think we we've been at two of those and you're just thinking, well, yeah, what we're doing about it?
Speaker 1:we go, we stop him, we come away and then he just does it again somewhere else you know who do you hand them over to I think that's a wider problem, isn't it, especially at the moment with the pandemic, that people are struggling with personal circumstances and mental health's obviously taking a big hit. And I was talking to a friend about the other day who's? You know, he's got a personal member of his family who's struggling. You know he's a schizophrenic um and but they can't get help for him because I think everyone's just so stretched and so they need him to be committed. He's becoming violent, but they can't do anything. The next step may be that the guy tries to commit suicide, but it's very difficult. What? Where do you put these people who are struggling because his resources are limited, especially at the moment? Um?
Speaker 2:it's really difficult and you know, we've we've had this quite high suicide rate in a fire service actually, and you know, a member of my international search and rescue team, he, you know, he committed suicide and we were chatting to him, you know, literally two days before. There was just no indication whatsoever. You know, a married man, happily married with a family, you know, and we think it was an accumulation of kind of five or six problems, none of which seemed significant, you know, in isolation, but together it was just too much for him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, everyone deals with stress different ways. I think the big takeaway thing from that you know we've been doing these podcasts with Pilgrim Bandits and a friend of ours, matt Hellyer, and it's just the nhs, their five sort of steps, and I think the nhs really set it out well about, you know, sort of getting off social media and doing exercise, speaking to people, just these little things, small steps, learning new skills every day, doing something different just maybe puts you in a better place. Um, so you've obviously you mentioned then about the international rescue, and I'm trying to sort of say that with a straight face, because every time anyone ever says that you think about Thunderbirds.
Speaker 2:It is Thunderbirds, isn't it? So 9-11 happened and then, you know, it made us sit up, really it made England sit up and think are we next? And that was a threat at the time. You know we were going to be next and when 9-11 actually happened, I was on the QE2, mid-atlantic on my way to New York, right, and the plan was I was going to propose to my girlfriend, we were with her parents and we were going to sail into New York, we were going to go to Tiffany's get the engagement ring.
Speaker 2:9-11 happened and they diverted us to Boston and then, you know, whatever, we had to get the QE2 back. You know, we'd stuffed our faces for a week, you know, and you're a DJ every night and you know, looking forward to the flight back and of course we had to get the QE2 back and eat all that food again. But to the flight back, and of course we had to get the Kiwi tube back and eat all that food again. But that obviously changed the world. It changed our attitude, you know, and a load of funding became available more importantly for us, and we've been working on some collapse structure response stuff on a much sort of smaller scale, you know, for gas explosions and stuff like that, and obviously this escalated us, you know, way out of that.
Speaker 2:And the funding became available and they sent us all to texas to get trained in, uh, urban search and rescue, which is like the acronym usar. Uh, you know, and that was amazing, you had all all of these like firefighters on a plane, thinking this isn't real, this isn't gonna happen. I can't believe this is happening. I can't believe it. You know, pinching ourselves and when we had wheels up, we're thinking you know what this might happen. And we got out to texas and you know, there were big banners out there.
Speaker 2:I was on the first course and it was like you know, the state of texas welcomes a uk fire service. You know it was like unfair stuff I'm going to send. There were ice buckets full of beer on the tables. They said look in your, in your rooms. We put these two adjoining hotel rooms as a bit of a breakout area. The fridge is full of beer. We'll keep it stocked up. Everyone's nodding and just nicking all the beers you know putting them and they're like there's loads, there's loads more where that came from.
Speaker 2:Everyone's like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, just nicking everything. You don't have to nick it, it's yours. You know there's loads of and and that was just you know, the most amazing experience, you think, from anything we've done, and they're just you know what are the main risks here. We'll just be careful of the scorpions when you're sticking your hands in under rubble and stuff, like you know. But of course it was. It was all true and and we had a great time in in texas.
Speaker 2:You know that was a. That wasn't a london thing, that was a national thing and the uk was setting up so that we had a similar response and there were some wild plans going on at the time. You know we looked at canary wharf getting hit and what the evacuation plan might be. You know they they cobbled together a plan to try and um, sort of uh kazevac, everyone, I suppose, from the balcony of the top of Canary Wharf Can you imagine everyone trying to make their way up to that little sort of walkway that goes round with winches on each corner. Crazy stuff really. But of course we didn't know it was crazy.
Speaker 2:9-11 was crazy, but straight after that there was an explosion in Glasgow, a plastics factory, the Maryhill gas explosion and there were nine dead on it. And you know it was a new capability really, this urban search and rescue. They needed teams to go and, you know, search for any survivors and recover any of the bodies. So we kind of, you know, we got mobilised and we went to Benson and we got choppered up in a puma up to Glasgow, did a nice bit of low level stuff over the Lake District, doors open, and we landed up at Glasgow Airport and we were up there for the best part of a week doing the body recoveries up there and I suppose that was the kind of first time really we'd had a that experience of a mass fatality search job, you know and this was a new capability that the british fire service had got.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is a kind of the first run out really, uh, of that capability. Um, you know, and there was one example, you know, when you search an area they're sort of markings you spray paint on it and one of the senior officers from Glasgow was looking at spray paint and he thought we were tagging this site and he just went ballistic because, you know, you had Sky News and Eyes On everywhere from the flats around. He was like what the fuck are they doing? Get them off, get them off. And then someone had to explain to him no, no, no, this is what they're trained to do.
Speaker 2:You know, search an area, there's markings, you put on it and and you know we were kind of, we were new to it. You know we did some stuff we probably shouldn't have done. You know we were trying to search desperately for bodies and you know there's an office block there. So you can imagine, you know you have people who work in the office who put cardigans or shoes under their desk, cardigans on their chairs. You know all of that's in a big pile and you're finding a bit of clothing and tugging on it.
Speaker 2:You know, kind of hoping that there's a body at the end of it and and you know there isn't but yeah, you know there were nine, nine dead there. We went through that whole recovery process and again misses and some really unfortunate deaths there and that was a bit of a baptism, I suppose, of the USAR capability.
Speaker 1:A bit ironic, though, that your London Fire Brigade, historically during the Blitz, Second World War, day in, day out, I suppose back in was it 1939 and 1940, your whole, I suppose, ethos would have just been burning broken buildings, going in and rescuing people.
Speaker 2:Then there's been that skill fade over the subsequent 50 odd years, and then you're straight back in doing that again yeah, when we went out to Texas, the, the pamphlets have ever given us were were drawings, uh, from from wartime blitz pamphlets that the, the, you know the auxiliary fire service was using at the time and we were kind of going out there, like you say, we'd lost all of that. We'd lost. We didn't know how to shore up buildings, we didn't know how to, you know, know where the safe paths were, and we were buying back our own information really from the Americans. You know it's ironic really, the stuff still had, you know, war Office stamps on it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that'd be some sort of new lease back they're doing with the government 50 years would be paid off. Yeah, yeah, no doubt. So what sort of happened after that? Did you sort of take the sort of search and rescue to the next level?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so after that you know it was my one of my references was search and rescue and developing that capability and um. That's when we kind of joined the um, the uk government's international search and rescue team, so it's isar, and that had been going really on a bit of goodwill for quite a few years, for for a lot of other services, london were in it really in the early days back in the 80s. We kind of played with it a bit and then we came out because there was a an issue over pensions and it happens if you die overseas, who's going to pay your pension. So we kind of rejoined it and it was a lot more structured by then and the team had a lot of shouts. There was a bit of a dry spell and then they had kind of the New Zealand earthquake, they had the Japanese tsunami and they went out to Haiti as well and it was there, I think, haiti. The team had some experiences there really which was a real eye-opener for them. So because of the huge numbers of fatalities in Haiti, you know it was just decimated. Yeah, it was kind of.
Speaker 2:The agreement was when you find the dead, you know, you bring them to the roadside and pile up the dead and a dumper truck will come along and lift them and just lift them into the back, you know, and so people are, you know, these kind of rotting, smelly bodies. Uh, there was sort of no uh, dignity, you know, to it and I think some of the teams struggled with that really, and they, they were that. And uh, I think there's another experience where they were rescuing someone from a shopping center, a girl who survived, and this shopping centre had collapsed and they were holding her hand and trying to sort of dig her out and a bit of public disorder kicked off. I think the prison got damaged, all the prisoners escaped and there was a bank robbery right next to where the team were working. You know there was gunfire and everything going off. So they imposed a curfew and they were trying to rescue this girl, you know, and they had hands on but they had to leave her because of the curfew. When I went back in the morning, she, she died, and I think you know those sort of experiences really.
Speaker 2:You know it caused a lot of frustration with the team and it made us look at how we're preparing our team for this. We're going out to mass fatality events, what we're really doing, rather than just relying on sort of fire service experience. This is a whole new ball game. When you go out to earthquakes, there's thousands and thousands of dead and injured. So what we're doing to prepare our people? And when we look to the military, we look to um, actually the Royal Marines had developed or coined the frame TRIM, which is a trauma risk management, and there was a guy, Major Cameron March, who would kind of develop this thing and I think it's something that we all recognise, anyway, this sort of, you know, critical incident debrief, whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 2:But he kind of coined this process called TRIM and he developed it to a point where, you know, royal Marine units were coming back from their tours and, kind of just it changed the culture within the Royal Marines and they were just asking for it, young soldiers just saying like, come on, let's have a TRIM session. It kind of starts with a group discussion and then from there you weed out individuals who may need a bit more attention, should we say, and? And the difference being, when a military team comes back, they're still a unit. Um, so they stay together. They still got a chain of command. Any paperwork that was initiated in theater stays with them, with our team, because it's made up of different fire services. You all bomb burst back to your own fire service, you know. So it's kind of, how do we do that follow-up stuff? How do we adapt this uh to suit our needs? And I was responsible for adapting it and developing our own policy, um, for trim, you know, really off the back of the haiti deployment I think haiti, that was quite a big.
Speaker 1:There was quite a few dead there. I mean, how did that sit with? What was the? The tsunami? Was that like 2004 or 5?
Speaker 2:2004, wasn't it? Yeah, the big um, yeah, so you had, you had three, three in one go, didn't you had the tsunami which affected Thailand, japan that's it, thailand, yeah uh, you had you. You had the New Zealand earthquake.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then you had Haiti. You know kind of all on top of each other.
Speaker 1:It felt like we had a few years then.
Speaker 2:That team hadn't deployed for like eight years, and then all of a sudden they get three on the bounce.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so sort of after that. Then Nepal was that another one? There was a big earthquake there. That was quite a big one back then.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that was kind of our first run out, really so. Nepal in 2015, you know, 8.1 magnitude earthquake there was, you know, almost 9,000 dead, 22,000 injured. You know, a really really big, big earthquake close to Kathmandu and you know you can imagine there going out. So we deployed in a normal way. You know that went quite well actually. This end, you know, not too bad. We need ministerial approval to deploy and I think Parliament was in recess at that point. There was an election coming up, so it was a bit tricky to get hold of a minister to give us the nod. And eventually we got out anyway and we were flying over Kathmandu and the Yanks had filled up the runway, no surprise with their galaxies.
Speaker 2:They were offloading ospreys from galaxies. You know, on on the tarmac and we we charted a 747 or whatever it's quite a big plane and uh, we just couldn't get it down. So we had to. We were running out of fuel and we had to divert to india to land. So you imagine a frustrations building already now you know, we're in another country watching it on the news, watching a very biased kind of indian news network about how india is saving nepal yeah and we're screaming at the telly.
Speaker 2:You know we're staying in this nice hotel, just not wanting to be there. You know it's bizarre really. And the next day we managed to, we managed to get get in and, uh, you know real chaotic scenes. We turned up and we went straight to the British Embassy at Kathmandu and actually they put us at a base of operations within the embassy compound. So we had security and we had, you know it was kind of luxury really.
Speaker 2:You know we were in tents but we kind of had access to the ambassador's swimming pool and shower facility, changing room stuff. So we had, you know, proper showers and stuff. So we got bedded in pretty quickly. The Gurkhas were there serving up some sort of food for us and then they were using it as a rest center. So they were bringing in all the British people that had been on Everest and stuff and bringing them back into the embassy to get patched up before they went back. And that was it really. We were ready to hit the ground running and everything was centred around Kathmandu and that brought its own frustrations. So you can imagine, you know the Nepalese government wanted to get Kathmandu up and running obviously the capital and Everest back up and running.
Speaker 1:That's what brings the money in and that was the focus.
Speaker 2:And you know, we went out to um our first shout and they said, like you know, this place was um devastated. There's bodies everywhere. Someone's done a recce. Um, you know, coordination wasn't quite set up. Can you go? You'll be the first team there. And when we got there there was a couple of um ngos and non-government organizations that kind of just made their way there, you know not really linked into the coordination network, and we were kind of taking photos of each other at this place and it was smelling and there was sort of flesh everywhere and all the rest of it. Within kind of minutes of being there, we gripped the owner, the local copper and the local military commander and we had established that actually it was a butcher's market that collapsed in there. We gripped the um, the owner, the, the local copper and the local military commander and we had established actually it was a butcher's market that collapsed right all that flesh everywhere and the flies and all that was just animal the cow yeah
Speaker 2:so there wasn't. It was kind of I think there were three people dead in there. You know that we'd already identified and we just said we're out of here. You know you crack on, you take photos of each other, because there's no TV obviously now. So we got a crowd of around 2,000 people watching us do all this. So we just bugged out of there, went back and we were sort of screaming really for some more jobs and I suppose the frustration was building because we had been picking up from the military that out in the villages people had been really smashed to bits and it was a bit of a desperation to get out to the villages. And we got out eventually and we had a helicopter booked.
Speaker 2:Helicopters are really hard to come by. The press were grabbing helicopters because they had the big bucks, you know, to get the shots and we weren't standing a chance and we had a sort of fixer with us from the Department of International Development it was then and he secured us his helicopter, which was basically a sightseeing helicopter. So I did the manifest ready to go you know the helicopter's coming in 40 minutes sent off the manifest for the first five loads or whatever, and it got diverted by the prime minister allegedly, uh, to pick up a british family that were on everest, that kind of weren't injured. You know, it was kind of a good news story. That's how it was being told to us. Um, you know, on the run-up to the election so you got blokes spitting feathers now knowing there's this death and devastation out in the hills, in the villages, but your only mode of transport has been nicked for a good news story.
Speaker 1:Yeah, typical, isn't it, that clash with the politicians. They'll always see a good news story and it will trump everything else. But I mean, that's an amazing achievement though, isn't it for the blokes? I mean to come back from there to obviously you've proven the theory behind the international search and rescue, the coordination. You can always improve on different things, I'm sure, but generally you've gone out there, you've gone to do a job. You've achieved that, you've helped save lives. I mean, it's something to be very proud of.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we did some really good work out there. You know there was the main hospital in Kathmandu was compromised by a dangerous structure. They pulled the beds out into the car park park, you know. And our team managed to get and secure the clock tower on top that was kind of threatening the entrance, um, with some improvised systems, got, you know, got the hospital up and running, got four theaters up and running within the hospital mega achievement got a load of the villages, um, you know, and getting aid from um, medicine sans frontier, delivering food and water and shelter out to these villages, that we got to. So kind of some mega achievements.
Speaker 2:And you know I was I was chuffed to bits. I thought we'd really made a big impact. And we came home, you know, we were kind of full of it really, we were kind of sick of it, you know. But you know I thought we'd done a decent job. And then I got a team together to do the trim intervention. You know I thought we'd done a decent job and then I got the team together to do the trim intervention and and that was really when it kind of hit me, um, that actually people hadn't had the same experience as me. So, I thought, done a great job. Look, look at what we've achieved, you know. And then it was only going through that trim process and talking to the team individually, getting them to tell their story. Uh, some of them had had a real horrendous time out there and, you know, as a team leader, I was gutted that I hadn't picked up on some of this. And this is about people's perception of their experience.
Speaker 2:One example of that we were on these hillsides doing doing our needs assessments in the villages, and one of the villages we went to had a kind of massive landslide. It was about a mile wide and this mile, you know wide bit of hillside had just, you know, fallen down in one of the aftershocks and wiped out an entire village. So you've got hundreds of people buried, never, never, ever, ever to be found again down the bottom of a ravine. We got lifted from an adjacent village and we were in the air when there was another big aftershock and another part of my team were on the opposite hillside, across from the ravine, staring at this landslide when the aftershock hit and one of them, you know, kind of got in his head Shit. If this happens to us, if we lose, you know if they're part of that landslide. No one would ever ever find them Ever.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:They'd be buried under, you know, millions of tons of earth, you know. So, once that got in his head, that was a worm, that was in his head now. He was vulnerable now and he was just not.
Speaker 1:You know, he wasn't thinking straight from that moment after really, yeah, because he was worried about his own safety and he was just niggling in the back of his mind.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think he just felt vulnerable for the first time. We had another bloke who was about to retire and that was why I selected him for the team, because he was. You know it was his last chance, I suppose, and you know he had in his mind a bit of a money shot that he would be lifting the baby out of the rubble. You know, roll the press around that's what we do, because we didn't do much of that stuff. We were doing the needs assessment and actually saving hundreds of lives rather than just one. He never got it out of his system so he was battling with this this is as good as it gets my life's over because I'm retiring and he never got this thing out of his system. And talking to mates, we know when they go out on tour they've got the same sort of picture in their mind. They've got this thing that they want to achieve. They want to kill all the baddies, be the last man standing, and when they don't get out of their system they don't feel they've achieved anything.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so we had all that to deal with. When we got back and I started hearing these things and I was thinking, shit, I had no idea of this. I know these people were struggling out there and we're laughing and joking and I had no idea what was going on with them.
Speaker 1:So how did that sort of resolve itself through the trim sessions?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we had trim and, and you know some went on onto counseling and for me it was just a massive uh lesson learned, really. You know, one to take forward is don't assume everyone's, you know, seeing things the way you do, not everyone's got the same experience. And it was the triggers. Again, it was back to that handbag thing, it was the triggers that different things are different triggers for people, you know, that affect them and whilst you know we're oblivious to it, we had another guy working on the hospital job, you know, and he was detached from our team working with some other people. He's a really good climber and he said he felt really lonely and isolated, that we'd abandoned him and we'd all gone off to the villages, you know, and that was bothering him, that he felt, you know, he was with people he knew, but even he felt vulnerable and lonely. You know, just these weird things. I'm like why didn't you tell me this when we're out there?
Speaker 1:some people don't talk, but then you sort of came home um and obviously I think one of the biggest, certainly a controversial subject uh, in the last few years is is something most people have heard always the grenfell fire. I mean before, um, grenfell was you know, with the fire I doubt many people had heard of of this place, but now it's kind of probably etched on the the minds of everyone in this country yeah, uh, absolutely so.
Speaker 2:You know, I was on duty the night of the grenfell tower fire. Um, I was, I was mobilized to it when, uh, the incident commander over you know, I was on duty the night of the Grenfell Tower fire, I was, I was mobilized to it when the incident commander over there, you know, gave the message to make pumps 20. That's when he'd asked for 20 fire engines, you know, and that's mega, that's significant. You know, we ended up being 40. But you can imagine, to ask for 20 fire engines at something you know was is kind of unusual really and uh, you know, so normal routine, really.
Speaker 2:My pager went off, you know, normally my wife doesn't stir. Um, I put my radio on and I'm hearing all these messages from our control, quite calm, but about these kind of, you know, survivors, fire survival guidance, people trapped in their flats, and he, it just didn't add up because the numbers that they were saying were here, there and everywhere. And I thought, hang on, normally it's all centered around the fire, you know, but these numbers were kind of here, there and everywhere, and it was all very calm, but really unusual, you know. And my wife said, you know what's going on, she doesn't always stir and I said I don't know. I said, but it doesn't sound good.
Speaker 2:You know 20 pump fire, you know so quickly and and all of these fire survival guidance calls. So I went to it and uh, you know, as I approached, uh got my gear on and I was running towards our command unit and I can see this block of flats in front of me and it's a light on two sides. Time I got there, you know, uh, kind of I suppose the uh the east and the south side were completely alight how big is it?
Speaker 2:I mean sort of people that listening, they don't necessarily know 23 floors, uh, so you know, decent a big, a big, uh, a big tower block with difficult access to get vehicles that close to it a lot of people live in there quite a few flats in there loads of flats in there and at the time, you know, we're all thinking is this, is this like scaffold netting?
Speaker 2:because you get that quite a lot. You know, you get a building scaffolded and the netting catches fire. It looks, you know, kind of spectacular for want of a better word but actually just burns away to nothing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's what it looked like you know, you wouldn't have dreamt that this building would be on fire to that extent and I reported to the command unit and you know the bloke who was in charge at that time. He just said right day, with your kind of collapsed structure background, uh, I'm making you the senior safety officer, but for the incident Now, bear in mind, you know you've got firefighters absolutely risking their lives here, you know, doing some proper improvised shit that they shouldn't have been doing and I'm senior safety advisor for this and he's just saying tell me if this building's going to stay up. Everyone had these images of the Twin Towers. You know, with this kind of collapsing the twin towers, you know, with this kind of collapsing and and you know it was, it was a mega chaotic kind of effort really, and it was my main job, uh, was liaising with everyone that's in the building and outside the building and trying to convince the the ultimate incident commander, um andy rowe, who's now a commissioner, convincing him that actually it was safe to carry on.
Speaker 2:You know that we could carry on doing this. You've got burning debris falling down everywhere, you know, threatening everyone around the outside. You've got faces at windows. We're trying to pump people into this building. I've got, I'm getting structural engineers advice to say you know what? What's the fire protection for this building? How's it built? What impact is this is this furnace going to have on the, on the structure? And all of this is going on, you know, and we're having some serious conversations at night as a command team. You know it gets to the point where we're saying look, how many firefighters are we prepared to lose before we stop?
Speaker 1:that's a crazy conversation to be having proper.
Speaker 2:You know difficult conversations and, and you know, come the inquiry and we've all given evidence of inquiry. You know we kind of like do we mention that? And and you know andy rose, you know saying yeah, yeah, of course you mentioned that. Because that's that's the kind of reality when you're mentioned that, because that's the kind of reality when you're in that command position. That's the stuff you've got to think about. You've got to think about public expectation, the right to life as well, the Human Rights Act, and our people have got a right to life as much as the people in there. And it's that dilemma really, of the expectation for us to go and do our bit and risk our lives to save others, and we always will. We'll risk, uh, a lot to save life.
Speaker 2:Um, and we had, we had a crew up on a, on a walkway next to it, and there's a report of people jumping from the tower and that's public knowledge. And uh, I kind of went up and I'm keep pulling this crew back. They're getting too close to the kind of building, all this burning debris showering down on them. I kept pulling them back, pulling them back and they're kind of doing their best to keep this. There was someone waving a towel out the window and they were doing their best to keep this folk alive and that ultimately saved his life. You know, aiming these big sort of you know water jets as high as they could possibly get them, these big sort of you know water jets as high as they could possibly get them.
Speaker 2:And this one of the residents had jumped and, uh, I went forward to see, if you know, I didn't know if his family would follow, so you've had this person jump. The crews were working on him and I thought, well, I'll just go forward just that bit further just to see. You know, to try and I don't anyone else to jump it was. It was that dilemma of certain death if you you stay, you're dead. You take your chances of jumping.
Speaker 2:And I was hugging the building going round and as I stepped forward, this bit of burning debris almost took my nose off. You know I had my helmet on, but this kind of seven-foot bit of the building cladding just came down and crashed at my feet and I heard the crew just shouting out like this and I kind of hugged the building back round and popped my head out. I mean, that was close and they were like we thought you were dead. You know, and I've got senior safety written on my back here and I'm nearly getting wiped out myself at this building but I mean, this is an evolving situation though, isn't it?
Speaker 1:I mean nothing like you've ever been to it was just like that all night.
Speaker 2:You know it was. It was relentless the whole night. And you know I've got to say you know we've been really scrutinized for for what we did on the night. But you know, took the individuals themselves, you know I I swear they couldn't have done any more than they did. I had to go up and andy rowe was giving some kind of motivational you know speeches saying, grabbing everyone, saying that I'm expecting the world of you here, I'm expecting you to do things I'd never normally asked you.
Speaker 2:You've got crews going up, you know four, five, six floors above, where they've got water to protect themselves, into fire to do their best to save us. You know they've got armfuls of people to try and bring them out of this building, best to save us. You know they've got armfuls of people to try and bring them out of this building. And you know why that talk with the, with the junior officers up on this, this grassy bit, and just said like get all the junior officers in. I'm saying listen, everyone's been in there once. You know it's not going to be the same. We can ask them to go back in two, maybe three times, change their cylinders, get back in there, but it's going to be worse than they remember it.
Speaker 2:You know you normally go in somewhere once you know, and then so can you just brief them and just prepare them. But actually it's, you know, it's going to be even worse and they might not get to do the job they're given, because if you, you know a single staircase, they're handballing people down this staircase. You know, it's just that frustration of the crews, really, of wanting to do more. They've got arms full of people. They're trying to get out. They're feeling hands slip off their shoulders, you know, and that dilemma of I've got children in my arms, do I carry on going or do I go back?
Speaker 2:for the adult that's yeah slipped off my shoulder and it was just that was relentless, you know it was non-stop throughout the night that's extreme heat, that they're working in there.
Speaker 1:I mean, they've got their breathing apparatus on. They're having to climb up multiple stories. They haven't got the protection behind them. So I think every single bloke that was there on that night deserves a huge pat on the back and some of the scrutiny and the things you see in the press about it. I mean, it's very easy, you know, with hindsight, for people to sit there and say you could have done this, you could have done that, but yeah, I don't think you could have done any more on the night. I think, well, you went over and beyond, really, what you expected to do.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, I know they did. You know, and we are very proud of the actions of our firefighters on the night. You know, take away the politics and take away the procedures and kind of stuff. We broke every rule there was to break that night. You know, when you're a senior safety officer officer, you know it's not a place to be where everyone's breaking every rule. You know, you're trying to keep on top of things. It's uh, you know. So anyway, that went on and I left there at about 11 30 in the morning. So I've been there for about 10 hours.
Speaker 2:Um, you know, I came home completely smashed a bit, put the news on, you know, to see what. You know where we got to. Really, they got me head down for a bit and then I got, um, I got a phone call from my boss and, um, one of my colleagues in the police disaster victim identification teams and uh, they said, look, can you meet us there at seven o'clock the next morning because we're gonna, we want to start the process of the body recovery. They were kind of on top of the fire by then. So you know, I mean just that short time away. I was back in a kind of different role back in my sort of search and rescue role now to lead the body recovery for, for you know, those poor souls that were left, left in the building yeah, I mean that must have been crazy.
Speaker 1:I mean, is that? Is it anything like that in your whole career that you've ever been similar to that?
Speaker 2:No, nothing like that, not on those numbers, you know, and it was just, you know it was relentless. We were there for two weeks and you know we had some stability, structural issues with the building as well, and people were kind of whipping that up a bit. You know, and you can imagine you would have seen the. You know I'm not going to say anything, you know that's kind of not really in the public domain, but you would have seen the. You know, and they're seeing things that I don't recognise. They're going there's one, two, three, four, you know, and you're like what? Where, you know, just in piles of ashes and debris, and they're picking stuff out, and of course that's what they're trained to do.
Speaker 2:You know, we're kind of doing a rough count and then fires are breaking really hot time of year anyway, but imagine that furnace has just been burning. It was so hot in there, uh. And you know we had to then come up with a plan saying, okay, how's the building, is it going to stay up? You know, is it going to be fractured? Just the intensity of the heat? And you know there were some issues in there and, um, I think we were very lucky really and we were able to do that systematic body recovery and bring some dignity really to the families that suffered the worst fate.
Speaker 2:And I know my search team with us and we recalled one of the team and it was the watch that were actually on duty the night of the fire. So now I'm asking them to come back. Having had that traumatic experience of the fire, I'm asking them to come back. Having had that traumatic experience of the fire, I'm asking them to come back in now in the cold light of day, without the adrenaline flowing, with the lights on effectively, you know, with no smoke, and kind of see the devastation that had been caused that must have been horrendous and I think, obviously the aftermath for something like that.
Speaker 1:you touched on it earlier, but when we were talking about the culture within the fire brigade and talking about things and how actually maybe it's not as good as it once was or there's room for improvement you just had 40-odd fire engines there, god knows how many fire officers there. They've all just seen something pretty horrendous, much more than they would see on a usual sort of daily basis. So how did that, you know, was any policies put in place to help people talk?
Speaker 2:about it. Well, the commissioner we had at the time we had a female commissioner, Danny Cotton, and she really did a lot to change the culture and she did a lot to support firefighters after Grenfell and you think about the firefighters that responded to Grenfell they had a kind of snapshot of their time there, you know, I think with the recovery teams. You know they were going back there day after day after day. They were at least repeated. They had the much wider view of what was going on and so I thought it was important that we follow that kind of trim process again with them and and again that brought out all sorts of, you know, problems with the team and little things that given people those triggers that we spoke about earlier, and they related it to their own family or to something in their own life that made it real for them rather than just kind of a job. You know, and you know teams think well, we all had counseling at some point. But, uh, you know some of the teams, um, some of the individuals on my team, you know we haven't for a long, long time after that to, you know they were, they were waking up at night, they were, you know there's people at the foot of their bed, yeah, this sort of stuff that was breaking their, their kind of sleeping routine. Then that builds a new sleeping routine and then you're wondering why you're waking up at three o'clock every morning, you know, and they were struggling to come to terms with literally what they'd seen.
Speaker 2:And I kind of suppose my way of dealing with it and you know it worked for me I took time out really when I was lying in bed at night, but I took time out to kind of pick off each individual that I could remember and I vividly remember them still, you know but actually take the first one and just go through it in my mind, look at it, process it, think about it and then put it away and then move on to the next one and think about that.
Speaker 2:And you know it got difficult. We had entire families kind of huddled together. You know that they'd, you know, huddled together to die. It's a lot to take in, really, and that was my way of dealing with it is just picking off each individual one and just processing it. And I shared that with a team, you know, and it was helpful to some of them, but for others they'd just gone off on a tangent, and it was just the weirdest things that they were struggling with. You know, animals, animals in the stairwell, because everyone knows that animals get out quick. Well, you know they weren't, so it kind of shows how it was in there.
Speaker 1:It's ferocious. I think that's. One of the interesting sort of things is that we were talking earlier about, I suppose, as part of the training, giving you the resources and teaching you the coping mechanisms about some of the things that you you might end up seeing in in your career. So this is you know how you deal with it and having the upfront, but I suppose taking it a few steps further as part of the recruitment process, rather than all these sort of great advertising posts. You know, like in the military you get a picture.
Speaker 1:You know they're putting these films on about people skiing down a mountain and jumping out of planes. Perhaps they should sort of show some of the dark side of the job. In the same, with the fire brigade, it's not all, I suppose the cliche climbing the ladder and rescuing a cat out of a tree, it's, it's the, the horrible stuff. And people being run over, jumping in front of trains, the ladder and rescuing a cat out of a tree, it's, it's the, the horrible stuff, people being run over, jumping in front of trains, the fires and everything. So people, I suppose emotionally you're never gonna know you're ready until you actually face that challenge in reality. But you might get a number of people think, no, this isn't for me, or it deters sorry, mate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I. I think that's really important. I mean mean I do it now. I mean the position I'm in now. I had one this morning. I have to do the kind of welcome on day one of, you know, the new cohort of recruits that come in. So this morning I've got, you know, 10 brand new. You haven't even got their uniform yet.
Speaker 2:Day one in the fire service. You know, I'm the first person they see in a uniform and I try and bring it to life without scaring them off. You know, I'm absolutely adamant that we don't lose sight of that, because a lot of the focus is on community safety, you know, and it is on helping the community and that is a big part of our job. But we can't lose sight of, kind of the shitty end of the stick as well. You know that is the reality of our job. Well, you know that is the reality of our job. Something like Grenfell never happens again, but kind of you need to be prepared for that because that's what you're joining. You know, I hope you don't see it in your career when you're coming through. But you need to start thinking about actually, can you deal with that? Can you deal with the death, the suicide stuff. You know it's never going to be on any poster, but I don't think we should shy away from it either, and I think we have in the past.
Speaker 2:I think we haven't really mentioned it.
Speaker 2:You know, I think at times we even gave people the option to leave a lecture, you know, if there was some kind of gory photos in it and that causes, you know, a couple of problems. So I think we need to be upfront with people, we need to say this is your contract, this is what you're signing up for, and if you're up front from the start, you know people can be as prepared as they can be. You know, I don't think they should do what I did and go off to postmortems, you know particularly, but I did it and it stood me. It stood me in in good stead really and uh, yeah, I like to keep that bit alive and I did it, did it only this morning with a new cohort of recruits to say you, you're doing a great career. You know it's really tight, good, great teamwork. You're going to do a load of great stuff at the center of our community, helping I'm talking about the vaccination stuff we're doing at the moment, the COVID, all of that good stuff. And I'm saying but let's not lose sight.
Speaker 2:Actually, times get, you know, get tough, and you've got to talk about it and you've got to share those experiences and the culture I think has changed now. You know we sort of embrace this trim. I think danny cotton, a previous commissioner, was really responsible for changing that kind of roughly tough the image. You know she was hugging firefighters at grenfell and you know you've got grown men breaking down in front of her, um, and you know I think she did a lot actually to change the culture of our service and you know and say it is all right, you know it's okay not to be okay.
Speaker 2:It's a cliche thing, isn't it? But you know, and we're lucky that we've got the counselling and support networks that we've got in the service, but it's kind of those. It's that one that catches you out, I think and that's that's my message is, you know you box this up and then something down the line just catches you out, catches you off guard and brings it all out. You know, um, and I suppose really I've tried to share my experiences with my own team and use the tools. I've got to recognize that not everyone sees the same thing as you.
Speaker 2:So whilst, you might be comfortable with it. The person sitting next to you actually might be really struggling with it, and it's just encouraging people to open up and, you know, throw away that roughy-toughty image, you know, because it'll just come back and haunt you another time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it will. People got to talk. I think, that's always the first step, so sort of taking it away from the fire brigade, and then we start sort of closing down the podcast. Um, I suppose one of the the big takeaways for you for 2020 will be um, your award. So you got your mbe in the queens, but is it the birthday honors? Christmas honors?
Speaker 2:yeah, I got it in the birthday honors. Yeah, it was kind of off the back of um capacity building work we've been doing in in six different countries, going out training their rescue teams, um, you know, to be more prepared so they're first responders. We, we, you know this has been a bit of a blocker for us with no air you know air travel but, uh, done a lot of work in the last few years of going out and sharing our expertise overseas. And then when covid came, I thought we had, we had a certain skill set that, um, you know, we could lend to support our partners really.
Speaker 2:So we had, at a peak we had 400 people driving ambulances, assisting paramedics. We had um 100 firefighters, um, that were, were responsible for responding to deaths in the community and kind of, you know, in a dignified way, doing that body recovery stuff. And now we're embarking on the sort of vaccination thing and kind of that. I was responsible for that project. We called it Operation Braidwood and that kind of I suppose got picked up as well. So that was the icing on the cake, really, and that's what got us noticed, I suppose, for the award.
Speaker 2:Well, done yeah thanks, mate, I suppose, for the award. Well done. Yeah, thanks, mate. I mean it is cliche, isn't it, but it is one for the team it really is. You know there were 600 people involved in Operation Braidwood. I know, you know I was driving it and I asked for it, to be honest, at the start because I knew we were capable of doing it. And we've had a few more. A few more people from the team have been picked up with BEMs, actually in the New Year's honours.
Speaker 1:That's good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is good. It is good. We're notoriously shit at sending people up for awards actually in the fire service, so it's kind of nice and hopefully now we can kind of change that.
Speaker 1:I think you got picked up at the same time A friend of ours, mark Ormeroth he's a. Marine. He came off the same list. He's a Marine, he came off the same list. But are you going to go to the palace for that one?
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, yeah, I've never been confirmed yet, you know. I imagine they got a bit of a backlog now, but yeah, we're just waiting out. I think the missus is ready for a new hat. I don't know what time of year we're going, you know, but yeah, it's great I can get christened at some pools. I've never been christened because we were born in hong kong and we haven't actually had my son christened. So we're both. We're going to arrange our christening at some pools cathedral, so I never knew that.
Speaker 1:Is that a perk? Is it?
Speaker 2:that's a perk from it. Yeah, you got the. Uh, you got the empire chapel down um in the crypt of some pools. So, uh, yeah, we're gonna go now I can get married there. Up to my grandchildren can get married in St Paul's.
Speaker 1:That's brilliant. That's something to sort of shout about. A little bit of pub trivia, yeah, exactly. So on to the last things, one of the things we ask all the guests on the show. We sort of say you know, if you've got your grab bag by the front door, what three items would you have in that? So what's personal to yourself that you think, right, that is my go-to, that's got to be in my bag. If I'm going to get on a shout now, spring on you.
Speaker 2:Uh yeah, Cheers for that. Um mate, it's my mobile phone, isn't it? My mobile phone is my life, really. That's everything you need, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Your camera and everything. So my mobile phone, mate, a decent pair of headphones so you can lock yourself away and listen to some music, and a bag of Haribo you cannot put up your Haribos A bit of Morello to share amongst the team. When the chips are down, mate, you pull that bag out and, yeah, give it out to the team. Yeah, the rest you can make. Do I that bag out? And yeah, give it out to the team. Yeah, the rest you can make, do I think?
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely. Well, I think anyone that listens to this tonight whatever they listen to it time of the day, they're going to have a different journey, which is nice. You know we're going off on sort of slightly different tangents Now. I think what you've just said. It's been very sort of journey. I've really enjoyed hearing that and hope everyone else has too. Um, so, you know, just want to say good luck for the future and everything else that you do with the brigade and family and moving forward and thanks for coming on and sharing your story yeah, no, thanks, adam, it was uh good to talk to you and uh, yeah, I look forward to hearing more of your podcasts thank you, that's david o'neill, mbe, london fire brigade, and he's just taking us on his more of your podcasts.
Speaker 1:Thank you, that was David O'Neill, mbe, london Fire Brigade, and he's just taken us on his journey. And what a journey that was For everyone that's listening. Hope you enjoyed that. If you've got any messages, any feedback, please feel free to DM them to us on Facebook, on Instagram If you're listening to this through iTunes, on iPods and what have you, then you can like the show, leave a message and that helps get us up the ranks.
Speaker 1:If you could obviously share the love, tell your friends and everyone about the show. We want to push it out there. We've got some great new guests coming up, so the more people that hear it the better. So if you want to hear more journeys like David or we've got Dean Stock coming up and we've got a number of other SAS, sbs, fire Brigade, police some people with some true adventures, some explorers. They're all coming up in the next couple of weeks and months ahead. So if you don't like or share or don't follow us, then you won't get to hear the fun. But for now, that's another episode of Another Man's Shoes and thanks for listening.