Worcester Fire Chief Martin Dyer

We sit down with Worcester Fire Chief Martin Dyer to talk about what real officer accountability looks like and why the front seat cannot be a part-time leadership role. We break down how a disciplined incident command system, integrated training, and sustained culture change make firegrounds safer and service delivery sharper.
• Worcester’s history and how tragedy drives learning
• Department profile, staffing model, and command structure
• Ending “ride up” coverage in officer seats
• Accountability, supervision, and what the officer rank means
• Blue Card command training tied to civil service promotion
• Integrated drills that connect strategy, tactics, and tasks
• Lessons learned on implementing change and sustaining it
• Communication tools, early adopters, and credible internal trainers
• Triple deckers, balloon frame hazards, and resource planning
• Early alarm policies, command depth, and level one staging
• Advice for aspiring company officers and future chief officers
• Fire dynamics, FSRI, and professionalism as customer service

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This episode was recorded on March 19, 2026.

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Transcript

Responsibility And Worcester History

SPEAKER_00 0:42

We're all been in the situation too, right? Where we're um we had our first day as a officer, right? When we're the Swan officer. And we know that difference that how it feels in your gut that morning when you're truly responsible for these people. And it's not just for the day, right? You're responsible for their training. You're responsible for their ongoing safety, for what they're learning on the job, for for their growth and development. It changes. It makes such a difference, and it's so important to, I think, recognize that, appreciate it, and support it.

Department Profile And Staffing Model

SPEAKER_02 1:20

This is the E Shifter Podcast. John Vance with you today. Josh Bloom joining me in just a moment. Before we get into the conversation today, it's important to recognize the history of the department that we're talking about, the Wooster Fire Department. I know I'm going to be made fun of in a little while for the way I say that, but I have lived in the Midwest for 30 years. Over the past 30 years, Wooster has experienced tragically nine line of duty deaths. The most well-known occurred in 1999 during the Wooster Cold Storage Warehouse Fire, when six firefighters died while searching a vacant building believed to contain homeless occupants. That tragedy, often referred to as the WoosTA 6, became one of the most studied incidents in the modern fire service history and shaped a national conversation about risk management search operations and firefighter survival. Since then, the department has also tragically suffered the loss of firefighter John Davies in 2011 during a triple decker fire, firefighter Christopher Roy in 2018, and Lieutenant Jason Menard in 2019, who died after helping push members of his crew to safety as conditions inside a structure fire were rapidly deteriorating. These events are part of Wooster Fire's history, and they're also part of the department's ongoing commitment to learning leadership and protecting firefighters on the fire ground. Today we're joined by Wooster Fire Chief Martin Dyer to learn about leadership, their lessons learned, and the future of the fire service. Martin Dyer is the fire chief of the Wooster Fire Department in Wooster, Massachusetts. He was appointed fire chief in 2023. He's had nearly two decades of service there. Prior to becoming chief, he served as deputy chief for four years and held several other operational leadership roles within the department. As fire chief, he oversees the operations of one of New England's busiest and most historically significant fire departments, responsible for protecting a large city, the second largest in the state of Massachusetts. The department operates multiple stations, and he'll give us a department profile as we begin the conversation today. They provide fire suppression, emergency response, prevention, and community risk reduction services throughout the city. Since taking the role as fire chief, Chief Dyer's emphasized strengthening training programs, improving communication across the department, and continuing organizational improvements identified through strategic planning initiatives aimed at modernizing operations and enhancing firefighter safety. Chief Dyer leads with a focus on professionalism, leadership development, and honoring the department's legacy while also preparing the next generation of firefighters and officers. Let's get into the conversation now and learn more about the leadership and evolution of this storied fire department. Chief Martin Dyer, welcome to the V Shifter Podcast. We appreciate you taking time to hang out with us today. Chief Dyer is the fire chief of the second largest fire department in the in the state of Massachusetts. How do you say the name of your city? I'm not even gonna go there because I've already got made fun of in the uh the pre-interview. Worcester. Worcester. Worsta. Worsta. I Gary Fleischer would hammer me if I didn't say it correctly. So he he would. Yeah. Tell us a little bit about uh your your department. You know, what's what's the makeup? How many stations? You know, what what is what is the the fire department all about there?

SPEAKER_00 5:17

Sure, great. Well first of all, thanks for having me. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you both. And yeah, so the Worcester Fire Department is currently we're authorized for 454 members. We're still working our way up there. So right now with retirements and stuff, we're around 415. But we have 10 stations throughout the city. We have 13 engine companies, seven ladder companies, and a uh heavy rescue company. Respond to extremely uh diverse neighborhoods with you know we have interesting topography in Worcester with a lot of hills. We're known as the City of Seven Hills. We have robust winters, and we have uh both a little over 5,000 balloon frame three deckers that over the course of our uh the department's history has really been the bread and butter of our work.

SPEAKER_02 6:05

Yeah, we we want to get to those triple deckers in a little bit and and talk about some of the challenges they pose. How's the how's the command staff structured there? What what your command staff look like and and who's on the daily response for command officers?

SPEAKER_00 6:18

Yeah, I'm sure. So we have a minimum of daily staffing of 85 by policy that we put into place a couple of years ago. And so we staff uh well we start with it. We have a deputy chief that is a shift commander in uh four groups. We work 24 on, two off, 24 on, four off. And so though each group, each one of the four groups has uh a shift commander as a deputy chief. Then they have two district chiefs. Uh we split the city in half, north and south end. And then the company is obviously underneath that, split between the two groups, or to the two ends. We have four engine, four people assigned to an engine every day. It's always an officer and three firefighters. And that's another change that we made with our new staffing policy was that there is always a sworn officer or a temporarily or provisionally promoted through civil service officer in the front seat. And so we'll fill that in with overtime if we have to, but we do not write up anymore, and that's uh for every position. So the same thing with the district chief. There is always a district chief and the district chief's car.

SPEAKER_02 7:26

Chief, what what brought you to that policy? What what was the uh aha moment that your department had that made you guys go that direction?

SPEAKER_00 7:35

Yeah, so there's there's a lot to it. You know, I I don't want to say it was just one moment, but you know, I think you know, most people are well versed in the history of the Worcester Fire Department and some of the tragedies that we've been through. And I think we kind of recognize that we really need to pay a lot more attention to the supervision, right? And the responsibility and the accountability that comes to that. And respect the rank of officer. And, you know, when you're when you study for an off to be an officer, then you're trained by the department to be an officer. You have a stake in it. You have a responsibility inherently through raising your right hand and saying, I do, right? That you don't have when you're not a sworn officer. If I'm just filling in for a day. And the way our contract worked was whoever was the senior firefighter assigned to the company that was still there would ride up, right? And so there's no basis made of whether they're qualified, how much experience they have, what their supervision skills are like, right? And so that's really that's not respecting this the position, and it's not respecting the the responsibility that we're trying to get them to take, right? And so now when we have that sworn officer in that front seat, that comes with that accountability of knowing I am responsible for this crew, I am responsible for this truck, I am responsible for the actions that happen here. And also from a uh kind of like a deployment standpoint, in an efficiency and effectiveness standpoint, we only had to train now officers on how to be officers. The other way you're looking at it is we need to train every single person in our command system, have them constantly training on it for the one, two shifts, seven shifts, however many, they actually end up in that position during the course of a year. It's not an efficient or effective way to get the accountability out of the position that we're looking for. So, you know, years ago we brought the offices and we brought everyone in, but we separated the offices at one point and really explained to them just how important their jobs are and how integral they are to the success and the safety of our fire department.

SPEAKER_01 9:46

Yeah, Chief, that's super powerful because you know, we there there's plenty of incidents all across the nation where using your words, you know, that this person's riding up three, four, five, six, maybe eight times a year. And, you know, now on their the worst day an incident could happen, you know, they don't have maybe the training, education, experience, or maybe they even do have it, but they just don't get to exercise it as much. And you know, we always talk about if the uh if the captain's not on the airplane, the first officer doesn't get to just fly it by themselves and say, Oh, I'm just gonna have uh somebody from the back can be the first officer today, or uh the surgeon's sick today for your back surgery, and oh, this nurse has been here a hundred times, though, she's been to a hundred surgeries, she can do it or whatever it is, right? So it's it I mean, we could take that as far as we wanted to take it, but there's a real commitment there from your organization, which is super powerful, I think. Of no, there's there's a there's a list of duties and expectations within your organization of what that person's responsible for. And I think responsibility is a big thing that I I know we've had some conversations about. Like you're in this position and now you are responsible, and here's the expectation, we're gonna hold you accountable to that. And it becomes a whole lot more difficult to do that when when we have somebody who's riding up and it's you know, this is the second time they've rode up, you know, in a in 365 days. And it's like, well, should we really expect the same outcome as somebody who's you know trained and does that, you know, every every single day? So I I think that's a that's an important thing. And we we see that oftentimes that uh we can't fill this position, so we're gonna throw whoever into it because it's just what we have today. And I going back to the fire department part of it, I always say most fire departments really for as long as I can remember, you don't get to just drive in the front seat of the fire truck and drive because we hold that to a little bit, you know, higher standard. So why why would we or were we allowing that ever, you know, with the officers? And I think a lot of it just came down to you know the financial part of it, they didn't want to pay for it, or the staffing model just didn't align for them to be able to even, you know, fill those positions. But if we have that position, then we need to have the position filled daily with people who have the same knowledge, skills, and ability and understand that responsibility.

SPEAKER_00 12:04

So I I think you're absolutely right, Josh. And and I think uh, you know, yeah, I I feel bad sometimes because I think we have it really good here now that we we have the our operation running like this. And I understand how every fire department cannot do that. So I don't want to throw shade at at them, but this this came at a extreme financial cost, you know, and it every day I have to be on top of this to make sure that we can continue doing this and that it it still works and that the value is evident. But I think we as a fire service, I think culturally we've accepted that, you know, well, nope, we'll just step up. We've made excuses even in and tried to say that you have to. How else are people going to learn how to be officers if you don't give them this opportunity and stuff? And it I think at the fire service, we really need to take a look at this and respect that position a lot more. Make the cases to our town managers, city managers, and councils and and make sure they understand just how important these roles are and make the investment. I can tell you from my experience, it has been well worth it. And we have really upgraded the position of a company officer.

SPEAKER_01 13:18

I don't know if we could find anybody that would argue the the the value of having somebody in that position. And it's like, you know, on the flip of it, if we don't fill it all the time, then why do we need the position, right? And I'm not I'm not standing I'm not standing for that. I'm just saying, like, no, this is the job, and we can't we can't do the job if we don't have these, we can't do these jobs as we expect or should if we don't have these positions filled.

SPEAKER_00 13:43

So yeah. Hey, and we're all been in the situation too, right? We're we're we had our first day as an officer, right? When we're the Swan officer, and we know that difference, that how it feels in your gut that morning when you're truly responsible for these people. And it's not just for the day, right? You're responsible for their training, you're responsible for their ongoing safety, for what they're learning on the job, for for their growth and development. It changes, it makes such a difference, and it's so important to, I think, recognize that, appreciate it, and support it.

SPEAKER_01 14:18

Yeah, the first new company officer makes or breaks us. We know that. So we I mean we talk about it, it's maybe the most likely the most important position that we have when it comes to providing service in the field because they're the ones that have the first contact with anybody on their worst day.

SPEAKER_02 14:36

Absolutely. Chief, talking about training, what do you do to prepare those folks that are going to start uh promoting up and and riding the seat? And then how does that integrate with the rest of the training the department does?

Training Pipeline With Blue Card Command

SPEAKER_00 14:49

Sure. So we start with, you know, obviously started the whole process years ago with um bringing people onto the blue card training platform. But today how it works is we we're a civil service department, so lieutenant and captains take a written test through the civil service system. We get a list. Believe it or not, I have absolutely no say in who gets promoted. It's literally I have to go in order on the list. And lately with retirements and stuff, we've been promoting quite a bit. So what we've been doing is taking, as soon as that list is issued by civil service, we take everyone that's on the list and we assign them, create blue card accounts for them. They take the blue card online training, then we do the the in-person uh command center training with them all, and then we keep them for another week and we do an officer school for them that's you know specific to Worcester and their roles, the expectations on our job. And so that's right at the beginning when we first have a list. If we have provisionals, some of those guys will be promoted immediately and will be taking over the open positions, but others are now a pool of where when we have to promote temporarily, and we have to promote temporarily quite a bit, and we'll start to be in alignment with the civil service rules. So we use that pool. They've already been trained. So then that's how they start gaining the experience as an officer. And then eventually, you know, a good number of them, if not all of them, get promoted through the course of the two years that that list is active. But we really started on day one that we know you're going to be an officer, we start training you to be an officer. You know, and having the the online training is just, you know, now it's a little bit different because people are used to the system as firefighters, even. And so it's it's way easier for them to get up to speed. But it kind of sets a really good stage for us to go through that online training, start talking about the philosophy of command, which I think is so important and it was really missing in our organization, and I'd say probably most fire organizations, is to have that discussion. And so now when they come into the classroom, we're really able to elevate the discussion and the training to a kind of a different level.

SPEAKER_02 17:11

And and how does that fit in with the task level training and what the companies are doing? And what kind of role does your not only company officers but your district chiefs play in that?

SPEAKER_00 17:22

Yeah. So, you know, again, I think we're like a lot of other departments in the past, we were we had training division and we had the line, right? And I think your generally your line district chiefs looked at training as the training division's responsibility, not their responsibility. Everyone understood that company officers should be doing two drills a week, or each tour they should have been doing a drill. And it was kind of left like that. Every once in a while we'd come down and we'd do a full burn program, or if there was new equipment or something new, we might do a program on that. And then obviously our hazmat and first responded training. But now we really, really make sure that number one, during that officer's school, we make sure that the all the officers are aligned with what the expectations of the task. This is how we take a hydrant in Worcester, this is how we stretch line in Worcester. So that is actually part of the officer's school, just to make sure that we have consistent consistency throughout. But what we've really tried to do is change that culture and make sure that at two o'clock in the morning the training chief is not running the incident. It's the it's the shift district chief, right? And so we really, really worked on making sure that there is full ownership for their crews. And so, with the help of the deputy chiefs, they run multi-company drills quite often. And so we always do a burn program at least once a year for the last several years. One year we actually did over 400 burns. I think it was back in 2021. We did 400 burns to kind of get us up to where we wanted to be. And now we're in that maintenance mode of where we do the multi-company drills. We sometimes we do what we call a smudge pot, where we just smoke out the building, but it's not fires all throughout the burn building, just to get the sets and reps while the tasks are going on of using our incident command system, right? And so that's how we kind of integrate all three pieces of it. So we have a district chief that runs an incident for the training. We have officers running their tactical roles, and then we have the firefighters and the officers and the companies that are doing the tactical task level work actually out there doing those tasks in the burn building in a coordinated fashion. And so we're a lot used to now is doing coordinated training where no, we put the entire system together. Your company drills, yes. Continue doing those, keep working on the task, refine the tasks at the company level with the fi with the fire department expectations. Come together often at the tactical level where a district chief is actually running a fire, but also he's running that strategic level too. They hear the command system as they're training. And I I think it's been transformational for our fire department working like that. And then the once a year when we bring the burns in, we just make that scenario a little bit bigger. It's led by the training division, and it's just a good way to evaluate where we are.

SPEAKER_02 20:12

That sounds really like what we try to suggest to people because so often they take their command training like it's a module and they don't integrate it into the rest of what the department's doing. And I think integrating it definitely is more effective, and it sounds like you're effective with that.

SPEAKER_00 20:29

Yeah. And so, John, we we actually have a recruit academy in right now, and they'll they'll they haven't started their burns yet, but when they start their you know, stage one burn, it is all going to be held under the command system. So they will be hearing our system exactly the way it is on a fire ground, and they'll be integrated into that. And so that's how we ensure that we we kind of maintain that consistency from day one throughout your career.

SPEAKER_01 20:55

Yeah, that's so powerful because you know, we we just recently did that podcast on, you know, incident command training and recruits and them understanding the incident command system and and communications. And, you know, I always say kind of like the safety system, the safety safety is the capability or limitation, one or the other, of everybody that's on the fire ground. And I think the same thing goes with command, right? Like we we know that you can have the best incident commander in the world, but if the companies aren't aligning, then it doesn't matter. And vice versa, you could have the best companies in the world, but if the incident commander isn't isn't doing their job, right? So one can't outperform the other. So I think that is as you as you said, and and that we witness, you know, in organizations that practice just like you're describing, let's build this out so that at two o'clock in the morning we're not pulling up and having exercise this for, you know, however long. But at the drill tower, we can have strategic, tactical, and task level all working together, getting everybody on the same page, and then answer those questions too of like, you know, well, they said priority traffic, what does that mean? Or or you're gonna exercise strategic shifts or you know, whatever it is. So that that that just I think makes our ability to provide the quality of service to Mrs. Smith that much more because that that's what they expect, right? They expect when we pull up that it's gonna be professionals and that there's not really a question that that we have a system and we define the problem and what what's keeping us from solving the problem, and now let's solve the problem. So that's that's fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 22:22

Change is tough in the fire service, and and you know, your department's got a a rich history. It it's a legacy department, it's one that people look up to. When you overhauled the way the command was done and implemented Blue Card, what would you say was your lessons learned? And with that kind of change, what would you recommend to other chiefs that are in a similar position that are looking to? To either implement a new command system or a new program or whatever it is. What what did you learn out of that whole process and how how do you manage that for success?

SPEAKER_00 22:53

John, I don't know what you're talking about. I think change is pretty easy. You just move forward. Incredibly difficult. And especially in a rich culture of fire department, you have to really strengthen your stomach for what you're about to go through. And you know, what I recommend is that the chief of the department has to be the champion, has to really understand the reasons why the organization needs to move in this direction, needs to be able to articulate that, and then needs to make the decision that we're doing this and we're going all in. And I think when you show a little bit of, well, yeah, I get that, but we'll, you know, you know, we'll maybe maybe we won't have to do that, but we'll do this. You're setting yourself up for failure. You're showing that there's there's room for argument and stuff. And you know, one of the things I I don't recommend doing it the way that was served did it, to be perfectly honest with you, and just that we did it uh uh because it we had to, you know, we were for our hand was forced, I think, at the time in that we did it, that we had to make some major changes. It was right on the heels of you know, two successive line of duty deaths. So the department was already hurt. It was already, you know, a little bit of distrust or a lot of distrust really going on. And so it was difficult. And then you throw in COVID that came right in during that, which was, as you know, could be a divisive in this decisive, divisive in itself. So it was really, really hard. But we kept through it and we kept talking about the benefits, and we kept talking about the reasons why we need to do this. And you know, I Josh was out last year and we brought distribute together and did a little kind of refresher training. And one of the things we did is we played some audio of our old fires and incredibly impactful. And it really helped people understand just why we needed to do this. And I think that's part of it, is that once you start to struggle again, I think, you know, in the fire service, it's common, and I think in the you know, it's it's common everywhere, right? But I we look at some fire codes in the in the state of Massachusetts that people are kind of saying, Hey, why are we doing this? And they forget the reason why it was the code was implemented, right? Because it's been so successful at preventing fires and preventing death in the community. And so they're not experiencing that trauma. And the further away that our organization and other good organizations go from implementing systems like this, it's really easy to forget, hey, why are we doing this? Why do we have to say all these words when we show up? Why, why do we have to wait in level one and stuff? Well, when we can kind of demonstrate back to them and remind them is this is why. Remember? Remember how this actually went? They're able to kind of figure that out. And so you have to come into, I think, this this change with a long mind is like you have to be looking ahead and saying, this is the start of our process, this is how we're going to implement it, this is why we're going to implement it. Make sure that you're communicating it. But you also got to be thinking in your back, how does this look two, three, four years for sustainment? Because I think that's another problem in the fire service that we try so often to change something or do something, but we don't add the sustainment piece into it. And it's just so important. And so, like, we talk about earlier with our burns and our training, is that's what we really tried to make sure is that we integrated it into our system to to sustain it. And to to that, to that point, we were able to work with civil service to actually put our policies and procedures on the test. So there's a what's what's the specific specific test now? It's not the same test that everyone else takes on the test date. And our policies and procedures are on there. And the largest part of that is our command system. And so now to study for officer, you have to study this command system. You have to be into it. When we promote to district chief and deputy chief, there's a fire scenario that's going to be based off of our command system. You know, there's going to be situations where they have to be drawn out, where they have to be able to articulate our command system and what the benefits are and whatnot. And so really it's it's been a long road, but man, can it be transformational? And we're here's the thing is this isn't just making us feel better about the way it sounds on the radio or feeling a little bit better about an organized fire ground. This is customer service, right? This is having a huge impact on our customer and making sure that I always tell our guys, right, when the Worcester Fire Department shows up, things need to start getting better immediately. You press that maxi brake, things start getting better. And that's what what that's what's happening in Worcester. And we've had a lot of success with that.

SPEAKER_02 27:53

You know, going through any of these kind of programs, there it's a great deal of communication that needs to take place with the with the troops on why you're changing, how you're changing. And if you if you were to survey any fire chief out there, and probably the the folks in the station, communications is one of our biggest challenges in the fire service. So you know, just communicating the change. What tools in the toolbox have you discovered that helped you with that communication and anything else that you would suggest to folks out there looking at making changes within their organization as far as communications go?

SPEAKER_00 28:26

Sure. So I mean, early on, you have to get some you know, early adopters that are gonna dive in and they're gonna really appreciate what you what you're doing and that they're able to sell it. They have some street cred to it. One of our original ideas when we first started was uh in our first session that we did for the train the trainer was to bring all the well, actually, we what we tried to do is get all the district chiefs to be the trainers so that right from the group head that, you know, we're in charge of this, we're running this, and we're teaching you how to do that. That turned out to be a very difficult thing to do. And so we we dug deeper into the organization and identified some well-respected officers that were interested and had a little bit of an ability to teach. And they've done a phenomenal job training our fire department. But after that first week, I mean that first train the trainer, we found that that was so incredibly valuable that we didn't care if our district chiefs didn't want to be trainers, and we can't force people to do something that they they don't want to do, and you don't want someone that doesn't want to train training, right? But we did bring them in about a month later. We had every district chief go through that train the trainer session so that they could experience that same kind of epiphany of wow, there actually is something here. And that really helped solidify it for our department and said, yeah, we can move forward with this now because they now understand. And I think as you know, leaders of departments, we have to know our limitations of what we are able to articulate. I think Josh and I, we had probably 10 conversations before we really embarked on the whole process to really kind of discuss, you know, what my concerns, what the what I was concerned, the pushback would be and all that stuff, so that we could try to front load a little bit of, yeah, we understand how this is going to be a concern for you. Let's play through this and let's see if we can fix that for you, right? And we were able to do that. So I think that's just a really important part of that communication piece is involving as many of the the leadership of the fire department and others that are going to be ambassadors of the program for you. Having someone like Gary's white show, we mentioned Gary at the beginning of the show, that's that's key. And I think I I really do think that that's probably a huge part of our success was that he was picked this up very quickly and was very capable of articulating all the different aspects and the command functions, and then actually went out and did it in the in the field and showed people how it worked and how it was better. And just one other thing with that communication, too, is like some of the biggest you know, people that were most concerned about going to this, after they sat through that command center, they got it. And when they went out there and had that that street cred, and you know, unfortunately in the fire service, sometimes the it's the detractor that's gonna have the most uh uh street cred, right? When they went out there and said, you know what, there's something here, that started to make a big difference. But the other part of it is it's just that constant sustainment piece, like I talked about. So incorporating it into your testing, but in in our language. So when we have conversations with people, when we're talking about how fires went, we're talking about what were the critical fire ground factors, right? Recognizing how the order model helped the model model helped, or maybe a lack of the order model could have caused the problem, right? Is like we're always talking in in in in blue card speak, really. And I think that's important because it uh institutionalized it. I, you know, I have a uh meeting with the deputies every two weeks. The first order of a business is a can report on their group, you know, and again, it's just trying to institutionalize this and showing that this stuff works everywhere. It's not just on the fire ground that it makes us better. It's as an organization that it makes us better.

SPEAKER_02 32:34

Talking about the command environment, then that folks are putting that into practice. I mean, you guys well, if you could first of all describe for our listeners that may not know what a triple decker is, the age of that building, that if you talked about the density of them already, and then how many resources you're getting on the scene very, very quickly is is also a challenge. So let's talk about those two command challenges, starting with the triple deckers.

SPEAKER_00 33:01

Sure. So triple deckers that we we have, like I said, over 5,000 of them back in the about 1880s to the 1930s. They were very popular for, you know, we had a lot of factories and mills in the city of Worcester, and so it ended up being like employee housing. And so what you have is you have three floors, three families. That's historically what they were. Three floors, three families. They were balloon frame construction. So you had that void that started in the basement, went all the way up to the attic. Worcesterfire was very practiced on understanding that if you have a fire in the basement, you very well likely have a fire in the attic and anywhere throughout. And so think about it. You know, you're looking at, you know, 1200 square foot per floor, at least, possibly three floors of fire. You know, it's equivalent of three structure fires all in one fire. And so we have to bring a lot of resources to that. And obviously, we're trying to stop it as fast as we possibly can, right? So we've always had a very strong response with four engines, two ladders, a heavy rescue company. And then after the 2000, we had a Rick Company assigned as well, which is a third ladder assignment, and a district chief. One of the changes that we made a couple of years ago to that response was that we wanted to get, especially on side Charlie, usually, right? We wanted to get quicker eyes on the entire building at the command level. So we started dispatching both district chiefs. And now with the deputy chief back in play, we were able to get a uh three command level people on the fire scene really, really quickly. We also we had a culture of where we were a little bit afraid to strike alarms. We hesitated to strike them. And after 2018, when Chris Roy is uh line of duty death, we instituted a policy where if you're charging a line, you're calling a second alarm. And that wasn't because we needed it. It wasn't because you know it takes more workers in Worcester to put out a fire. It was to break the culture and to ensure that we have the appropriate amount of resources and that we have the right command level supervision on scene to have multiple eyes, multiple the basically cover the entire building. We also bring an incident safety officer to every incident as well. So in every successive alarm, so every time we strike an alarm, we get an additional two engines and a ladder company. And because we have a concentration of fire stations, especially towards the downtown area, you know, depending on where the fire is, you can have four engines arriving almost simultaneously. So it's a really, really robust response, which is excellent. And it's also something that we have to plan for and be careful of.

SPEAKER_01 35:52

Yeah, Chief. So, so you know, that that that adding that additional resource, you know, in our in the system. And we we talk about task math. So, you know, pulling up on you got three floors plus a basement plus an attic fire, and you're you're you could easily assign every every company on your first alarm assignment to do work. So that that's giving you that layering in the place, right? So that you can keep pace with it. And I think it's important for organizations to realize that you know they we meet the NFPA standard, we send 17 people or whatever, and it's like, well, in a lot of cases, you're one and done. Like that gives you your maybe your first wave, maybe enough people to do your first wave of work. But what do you do, you know, at that 12-minute mark when there's still work to be done, right? So thank you for thank you for bringing that up. And it's a it's a it's another factor, right? It's that command command component in decision making. And all of us want to go to fires and do as much work as we can possibly do. But in reality, when we get to the positions where we're making the decisions, it's like we need to make sure that we can keep pace with this. We did a really good job on the front end, but now we can't keep pace with the event because it's you know, it's it's out, it's outlasting us or outrunning us because we don't have the resource to handle it. So that's that's powerful.

SPEAKER_00 37:04

Yeah, and then Josh, I think we we really have to be comfortable with having resources either on deck or in staging that never get off deck and or never get out of staging. They served an incredibly important purpose on the fire ground. And you know, we can't forget that. And I know that's hard for the person and that's sitting in the truck uh watching other people fight a fire, but like that's that's the role we need you to serve right now, just in case we need you.

SPEAKER_01 37:29

Yeah, our oftentimes our success in all kinds of different ways, you know, not even just emergency scenes, but just all in all is how deep is your bench, right? So like we're really good on this front end, but the next layer is not gonna be so great. And it's like, or or delayed or not even there. So yeah, how deep is your bench? And that that that's another piece of that task math, I think, of how much work can we do with the people that we have.

unknown 37:52

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 37:53

So when when it comes to that deployment, and what kind of challenges do you guys have with so many arrivers at the same time, having four or five companies arriving at once? So how do how do you manage that?

SPEAKER_00 38:04

Yeah, so to our previous point, right? Like when when everybody converges on the scene at once, you have everybody that's looking to say, what's my piece of this incident, right? Again, this is a wonderful thing about Worcester is that we have workers and our firefighters, they're really good at their job and they really like to work. And so we now have to manage that. And so, you know, prior to implementing this command system, you know, we had some general rules, you know, the first engine was obviously for the fire attack, and the second engine was water supply. But what we found was that it didn't always happen. And, you know, now we're off to the third engine, or did someone else get water or whatnot? And it just leads to a disorganized fire ground. And multiple people arriving, very similar times. We're each kind of looking at okay, what do I think the critical fire ground factor is here? And what's my IEP going to be to address this situation? And so now where we bring it all under the control of a single IC, first unit on scene, assumes command. And level one staging, I can't say enough about level one staging, especially in a system like ours where everybody is arriving so quickly. You need to have the space to set up the incident, have the opportunity, take the few seconds that it takes to really evaluate what those fire ground factors are, do your 360, get your follow-up, and get people into the right positions. It's incredibly important. It's something that we I think we missed in the past, and I think we have it now. And it and I just want to kind of also say that, you know, I talk about the past. The past is how the Worcester Fire Department operated for decades. You know, that's not that's not placing blame or saying other people didn't do better things. That's the way it was. We didn't know any better. And it is kind of having our eyes opened up to this system of how how can you organize it? Because when you really think about it, when you have a developed system that's been working really well, it's hard to understand how to better organize that system until someone shows you. That's what BlueCyde did for us.

SPEAKER_01 40:16

Chief, I just wanted to before we move on. So that uh oftentimes we hear, you know, the challenge of the first due company officer and a lot's laying on them. And we know that, right? But I think when we train them and give them a system, they can do it. And your organization has has shared some audio with us of some working fires that actually I think a couple of them, one or two, or maybe three of them are you know on our podcast podcast platform. And I'm thinking back to one of them where the first due company officer, I'm pretty sure I think they assigned four or five additional companies before the chief got there, just because of you know, layout or another run or whatever it is. And you know, there was there was no question. And like as we as we listened to that audio that you had sent in and that we ended up, you know, doing live and putting out and doing a podcast on, it's like this guy gave an excellent initial radio report, painted a perfect picture, gave a 360. The fire ended up being in the basement. And I think he assigned, I think it was like four companies, and there was like no hesitation. So we we we call that you know size up plus three, but in this case, it's really like size up plus four because there was more units to be assigned. And on on our side of it, we think that was probably successful because there was an expectation and they'd been trained and exercised that. It wasn't like you had said before, I get there and every all five of those companies got their own incident action plan. It's like everybody's on the same page. And though they have a pretty good idea of what their assignment is gonna be or could be, I think everybody, it seems like everybody's understanding that no, we're gonna operate under one incident action plan, and the first person there probably has the most information to assign the units to solve the actual problem. So as we talk about that, like from five years ago till now, as an organization, how do you feel about like deployment, effectiveness, and efficiency on the fire ground?

SPEAKER_00 42:12

Yeah, so uh that's a really, really good point. And you know, we talk a lot about the the first end company officer needs to own command, right? They need to own that position. And it was really kind of a feature and focus of uh last burn scenario back in the fall is creating the scenario to make sure that the the the officer had to own command and had the opportunity to practice that. It's that's your that's your number one job, right? When you when the first unit arrives on scene, it drives me crazy when I hear people say that we don't have time to do this. It's like that's all you have time for. That part of this function has to be performed before anything else is performed, is to actually own the incident and be in charge. And think about it. When you when you we're taking an ideal A environment, and we're gonna say no one has to be in charge here because it's so dangerous and it's so uh the incident is escalating so fast. It doesn't make any sense. But I understand where it's coming from because it's so culturally ingrained. I mean, we put the SEBA in our in our in our trucks, right, so that we can have everything ready to go, so we can jump off that fire truck and run in there with hoses. So we've built this culture. We need to pull it a little back and say, is yes, we we need to be aggressive, but we also need to have control. And you need to support it as an organization. And so that's why we really went and went after our staffing policy and said, again, we're going to have an officer in that front seat. So it's always going to be an officer that is taking command. But he has to have three firefighters with him to do this job effectively. And that's why every engine company has three firefighters assigned every shift. And that that's it. You're held over if you don't, if your replacement doesn't come in, right? We're not going to keep uh apparatus in service without an officer and three firefighters. And that gives them the tools to actually be that incident commander, evaluate the critical fire ground factors, do the 360, give a follow-up report, assign whatever companies they feel they need immediately to start mitigating that incident. It it all works together. And I think that's part of it, Josh, a really important point is that we you can't just implement pieces, right? You really do have to look at all of your entire command system and and look at it holistically. Is uh do we are we sending the right trained people? Are we sending the right complement of them? In the right trucks, right? Like it's a you know, engine company, ladder company complement to whatever your system requires. You have to look at the entire system and make sure that you're supporting it all the way through. And so that's what we do, we do. And our officers, this was a hard one, right? Because our officers were not used to doing this. And that's why it's so important that we constantly create the scenarios and training of where they have that opportunity to do it. It's why we really do good hot watches after every incident where we bring the officers in together and kind of walk through how that initial command function worked, what the challenges were, and make sure they understand that no matter what else, that's their number one function when they arrive is to establish command. The other piece of this is when we talk about owning command. It's like when we talk about the task level, right? We we built in, as part of our new staff and policy, crew integrity or protections for crew integrity. You know, we we enjoy great benefits and a lot of time off. And when you're supposed to be on vacation, great, be on vacation. But when we can have some control over it, let's have some crew integrity. So we do only do station overtime. So like if someone at Burncoat is out, someone from Burncoat is getting called in. So you know the people, you know the officer, you know the truck, you know the response area, right? So all of right away, you're getting a little bit of an advantage of we kind of know the people we're working with, and we know the area, we know the equipment, we know the what the response area is like. Really, really important. Before we used to ship out all the time. We may even we before 2017, we were closing three companies uh per shift on some shifts. And then you'd ship everyone out across the city. You'd have people that they know people's names and they're working with them. You know, they'd have to ask how to get to the the fire station if they were new. That doesn't happen anymore. And what that allows our company officers to do is really develop their firefighters. And just a quick example of in this last burn, just a really impressive uh evolution that I saw was uh Lieutenant Darty, one of our drill school instructors. He his company was down here, and he tried to make a concerted effort to own command. And to the point where he actually felt like he was being slow. But I watched him, and it was unbelievable to watch how well he owned the the position. And what we do is we have like a um a door prop outside the door so that if we if we're gonna simulate the need for a forcible entry, you have to go to the door prop first. And so one of the the training uh uh staff told the lieutenant, the door is locked, you're gonna need it forced. He looked over at his probationary firefighter and said, force the door, and continued his 360. As casually as you can possibly imagine. And what that struck with me, right, is that he is so confident in the abilities of his crew member to do his task level job that he's now able to do his job of owning command and doing the proper 360 and setting up the companies to do what's needed. It was the by far the best evolution that we had down there. And he was disappointed in himself because he thought it took too long, but it actually made a much better instant. And I know that's just training, but they they would do exactly the same thing on the fire ground. And it just shows you, I think, again, the importance of that company officer. It's it's so important that they build that trust in their crew that we all know our roles and we can do them when needed.

SPEAKER_02 48:24

Speaking of company officer, what advice would you have for aspiring company officers? We have a younger firefighter who's looking to move up. How do they prepare themselves in your eyes?

SPEAKER_00 48:34

Yeah. So I think the the biggest thing always with company aspiring company officers is pay attention, right? Is you're not just in the backseat taking a ride. You're paying attention to what your officer is doing. You're paying attention to what they're saying. You're asking when they when they give that initial radio report, why did you think this was important? Why did you leave this out? Talking the whole process out, right? When you're going in on the first responder and you're on your way out with the ambulance crew is taking the patient, start talking to your officer. Hey, how would we approach this if we need to? It's got to be that constant communication between the current officer. We have a built-in trainer on every single truck to make sure that every crew member that wants to be an officer has a mentor before they ever take the test, right? But with the it's got to be engagement on both sides. So pay attention. That's, I think, is the biggest, biggest thing. Pay attention and ask questions.

SPEAKER_02 49:31

And then, transverse of that, what advice would you have for chief level officers or or folks who are company officers wanting to become a chief level officer?

SPEAKER_00 49:41

It's gonna be a little bit of the same, right? Is you've got to pay attention. We all know that making that transition from company officer to chief, you're doing a different job. It's a completely different function. You're going from having to go into the fire and put the fire out to managing the entire process. It's something that we, I don't think we as a fire service, we've always done a good job of recognizing that this requires an enormous amount of training. And so I think the company officers really need to pay attention. They need to ask questions, but they need to be a little bit more engaged at hot watches, whether it be from a training or or a fire, to try to get into the mind of the incident commander of what were you seeing? You know, I didn't experience this. Why did you find this important? Those type of questions I think is really important. And the other part I think is an officer is you need to try to gain opportunities to see the depart the um instance from a bigger lens, right? And so, like in our organization, when we created the safety officer position, it's a captain's position. My hope in doing that was that that would kind of be that feeding ground to our district chief level. Because now you're coming in as a safety officer, you have a completely different set of circumstances here. You're in charge of watching out for our safety, right? The firefighters take safety. Make sure the task that they're doing is not going to hurt them. Make sure that we're in the tactical and right strata and right strategy and working closely as part of that command team. So it kind of helps you broaden your perspective a little bit before you actually become that chief. And that has been very successful for us. A lot of our chiefs now went through that role of safety officer. But like I said, we do a lot of burn programs back there. We do a lot of um of uh multi-company drills in the backyard. So get involved in that. Take the command role, right? And practice that in a safe environment. The other thing that we do a little bit of too is we still pull the iPads and we'll go through the different scenarios, you know, whether it be a big box or uh uh multifamily or whatever, to just kind of continue to get sets and reps. And so that's always available to people. We just got to engage with it.

SPEAKER_02 51:56

Chief Dyer, did you have any uh final thoughts? We we do have a timeless tactical truth we'll get to before we we go. But did you have anything that you wanted to to cover today that we didn't get to?

SPEAKER_00 52:07

No, I I think I look, I I'd really just like to say that I think as fire service leaders, we owe it to the people that work on our departments to have a system to keep them safe. There's a lot of talk in the world today about aggressive firefighting and search culture and truff culture, which are all distractions. What we need to do is fight our fires as professionals and safety, right? And when any other industry, when you're approaching something that is difficult, that is dangerous, that is life-threatening, you have a pretty robust system to make sure that your people are safe. That's what we're providing our people now with our command system. And it's absolutely our number one responsibility as leaders it's hard, it's not easy, it might make you unpopular. That's your job. Your job is to protect your people, whether they know it or not. And so I can't emphasize that enough. And then just one last thing that I think that really ties in really good with a really strong command system is we have to be engaging with FSRI in fire dynamics study. That is an absolute necessity in the fire service today. The buildings are getting more dangerous, the contents are getting more dangerous. If we don't have a strong understanding of fire dynamics and then actually utilize that understanding, then we are doing not only doing our firefighters a disservice, we're not only putting them in danger situations, we're doing our community a disservice. It's poor customer service. We really have to take that seriously as an industry.

SPEAKER_02 53:42

Well, thank you for sharing all of this today and spending some time with us. It's it's been fascinating for us. You guys continue to do great work there. And when we when we see what you've done and how aggressively you've done it, I think it's a great example for a lot of departments out there to be able to have have the hope that they can have that kind of change within their organization.

SPEAKER_00 54:04

Yeah. And John, let me just I apologize so I can keep going, but I just want to, you know, I got to give the shout out to the department members. We went through a lot as a fire department, right? Their their concerns that maybe the pushback that we got at certain times, it's understandable. I get it. I get it completely. And so you have to have grace for that. And so if you look at our departments from five years ago and today, it really, it's a different operating fire department. And that's because they all got on board. That's because the members of our fire fire department engaged sometimes a little bit, you know, not as easily as I would have liked, but they did it. And they're seeing results and they're acting on the results. And so even sometimes when we may still get some pushback, they're doing the right things on the fire ground when it really, really matters. And they're learning from it and they're seeing the results. So, you know, you got to have some fortitude as leaded to implement stuff like this. Again, it's your job, do it.

SPEAKER_01 55:00

Yeah, I think it's so powerful that you uh you something you said earlier that the chiefs got to be behind it. And, you know, clearly that was the position that that you all took on this. That, like, no, that we're gonna do this. And then you did provide the why, and you did continue to answer questions and and engage everybody in the organization to get involved, not just this is what we're doing now. Figure it out. You guys are you guys have been down a five-year journey, and the journey continues. And you know, we're looking forward to spending you know several more weeks with you all coming up this year that we have some classes scheduled. So we're looking forward to that as well.

SPEAKER_02 55:40

So before we go, each week we like to read a Timeless Tactical Truth from Alan Brunicini from his Timeless Tactical Truths book. We picked one out for you, Chief Dyer here. So, this week's Timeless Tactical Truth that we'd like your take on, there is a big difference between making a quick decision and a decision that was made too quickly. Get a lot of pressure as fire chief, right? To to make those decisions sometimes. And then when you when you make those decisions, people aren't always happy about them. But expand on that if you if you'd like to for a moment.

SPEAKER_00 56:22

Yeah, I mean, you can look at that as at at each each level, right? Task tactical and strategic on a fire department. And when we rush ourselves into decisions without thinking about everything that's involved, what the consequences, we're running ourselves into a little bit of trouble. On the fire ground, right? If I'm just struck by is we're an aggressive fire department, I have to get this line moving without really understanding what those critical fire ground factors are and what it's doing. We've seen a lot of people get in trouble doing that, right? Whereas if we take a little bit of a second and make a right decision, right? It's really important. Same thing from a chief's perspective, running a fire department is when we're forced into acting quickly under pressure, we sometimes make that poor decision. And again, that's where you know strategic decision-making model comes in at every level, right? Is look at what's what what do I have in front of us? What are the risks? You know, come up with a strategy, come up with an action plan, implement it, and constantly look at the results, revise things getting better or things getting worse, right?

SPEAKER_02 57:31

Chief Martin Dyer, thanks so much for spending the time with us today and sharing with the V Shifter listeners. And we hope to have you on again real soon. I mean, this has been a great conversation. I think we could continue to have it.

SPEAKER_00 57:44

No, no, I so I I I really appreciate it, and I really appreciate what uh all of you have done for the Wits of the Fire Department and your continued commitment to our success and the safety of our five. I just really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02 57:56

And that wraps up this B Shifter podcast. Please remember to share with a friend. Like and subscribe if you can. That helps us out. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you next week on the B Shifter Podcast.