Episode 14 Ret. Chief Deputy Joseph Castro

WCO sits down with Ret. Chief Deputy Joseph Castro of the LAFD

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Everybody back to another episode of the Firemanship Podcast by West Coast Offense. I'm your host, Cameron Monaghan. With me as always, Colin Kelly, Mark Carcamo. Good morning. Good afternoon, I guess. It's afternoon now. Yeah. Uh super excited, uh, very honored to have our guest on today with us today. We have uh after retired after 38 and a half years on the job with the LA City Fire Department, Chief Deputy uh Joe Castro. He's uh commander of emergency operations as his last role. Chief, um, maybe introduce yourself a little bit more for our guest uh about who you are and what you did in LA City.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

Okay. Um, as he had mentioned, I I did spend 38 and a half years on the the LAFD. I was hired right out of high school, 18-year-old kid. Um actually met a uh met a girl whose father was a firefighter, and he uh asked me if uh if I thought I would be interested in be a firefighter, and I didn't know anything about it. And um, I went down and had lunch with him, using LA City firefighter, went and had lunch with him, and it sounded like a good thing to do. And it was in 1977, a radically different time as far as uh attempting to get on a fire department. And um, long story short, it's uh seven months later I was in a uniform in uh my first day at the academy, and uh I had uh what I considered a very privileged career. It uh I loved the job, I loved uh my first day as much as I loved my last day. And um, I kind of weaved my way through the ranks. I stayed a firefighter for about three years and I promoted the apparatus operator, which um uh I'll say unequivocally was the funnest job I ever had. Uh driving a truck. Yeah, and uh, you know, driving a truck and um spent a couple of years in a my first couple of years AO slow station, and then I transferred down to uh Task Force 33 in South Los Angeles, very active station, and um and it was just a fabulous time. I I promoted to captain with about nine years on the job, um, and then I stayed a captain for 17 years. I uh uh made captain one, which is our engine captain, stayed that for about three and a half years and got back on a truck. And uh I had some stints as an instructor at our training academy and uh various other projects with the LAFD, but essentially stayed in the station. Uh I kind of gravitated towards one station in the Hollywood area, East Hollywood area. I stayed there 12 years, and uh I probably would have stayed there forever, but to be honest, I got a little bored and I I like to call it a uh a moment of lack of clarity. I decided to take the battalion chief exam. And um, I was lucky enough to get a job, and I stayed a BC for about 10 years, and I was back in Hollywood, Battalion 5. Um, I had some stints in in our training. I kind of gravitated towards a uh a position that taught uh the incident command system in the wake of uh the attacks on the World Trade Center and the formulation of the Department of Homeland Security. I moved into a unit that was responsible to educate the LA region. That's LA City and the 32 cities that surround us in ICS, which is what the NIMS doctrine adopted for the rest of the country to learn to um to manage incidents. And um, I did that for a period of time and moved back to Battalion 5. Was in the field and I was kind of fat and happy, had about five years left on the job, and I got a call from the fire chief saying that uh you wanted to move me up to uh emergency operations. And it's kind of a leapfrog three spots to get there. But um, and that's essentially where I spent my last four years. And it was a big learning curve for me to move from kind of a field-based operational guy to a um a policy-making guy, even though I was still uh in charge of emergency ops, which you know was kind of running the day-to-day operations of the fire fire uh the fire department. Um, but nevertheless, making decisions that impacted all 3,500 LAFD members. And it was kind of a capstone of my career. I felt very privileged to do it. It was a lot of work. I was working 17-hour days, six days a week, and but I love doing it. And the best part was they still woke me up in the middle of the night to go to fires. So I I still got to go to a lot of fires and and watch kind of be the um almost the cheerleader and the and the the quality uh assurance officer for the LAFD to make sure we were doing everything right and we were doing everything efficient and safe. And uh it was a really great way to go out having that much impact. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_03 5:08

I got a question. Where did you go when you made AO?

SPEAKER_00 5:12

I went to Task, I went to Task Force 50, which uh is in on the other side of Dodgers Stadium, really slow, real slow truck company. I was driving a 1960 uh uh Sea Grave truck, and I was born in 1958, and uh so the the truck was uh two years older than or uh two years younger than I was. And um, but uh yeah, it was it was uh I I came from a busy station when I got promoted, and then I went to the station. All these old guys had been there for years. I mean, they were like they were like cartoon characters. To me, I I recollect uh the characters that worked there, and they were they're like the cast of uh one flew over the cuckoo's nest or something. But uh, but it was a learning curve, you know, try to motivate those guys and get off their asses and sand the ladders and get out there and train. And and I I spent my two years it back then. What's kind of funny is a lot of brand new AOs go to great stations, really busy stations now. But back then, you kind of had to suffer through AO purgatory. You you made AO, you they promoted young guys from great stations, 11s and 29s, and and then but they then they'd stick you out some slow station and make you pay your dues. You had to work your way back to those active stations. And but uh different time for sure.

SPEAKER_01 6:37

Um you have any big mentors that helped guide you through your career or that like pushed you to want to promote or anything like that?

SPEAKER_00 6:46

Yeah, I mean, we all did. And uh I uh I had a number of guys that I think were um responsible for uh at a really early influential time in my career, responsible for kind of molding uh the strategy and and tact that I eventually took, um, which was um, in my estimation, has always been operational effectiveness. It it, you know, we especially now I think we uh the job has become very technical, very complicated. Uh, but nevertheless, it's still it still has always in my mind been about one thing, and that's uh Mrs. Smith, who's in trouble, and she picks up the phone and calls for help. And we come out there to to get her out of her problem. And our ability to accomplish that is the reason for being. And um, you know, again, the the method that we deliver that has changed, and our calls for service have changed, but nevertheless, the you know, I always felt uh um and I I taught leadership for LAFD and and other fire departments all across the country. And I always maintain that that the cornerstone of your leadership had to be your operational effectiveness. And it's something that at the uh my last position on the job, I had roughly uh 60-something chief officers report into my office. And I used to tell them, I go, you guys, you can't you can't um minimize the impact you have if you're operationally efficient or you're operationally deficient. And I said, You you have to create this sense of trust that when you roll on scene, people are happy that you're rolling on scene, that you're going, that you're gonna be watching out for them. You're gonna be directing them, you're gonna be uh giving them the resources and the equipment they need to get the job done. Not the antithesis of that is when you roll on scene, they go, Oh shit, here comes Chief So-and-so, and he's gonna screw everything up. And and you know, so um to me, that was the the important part was uh you had to, whatever rank, you had to have uh an operational prowess to gain the respect and be uh the the type of leader you needed to be. And and that even goes through, like I used to tell them at uh when you do battalion inspection, when you're out there inspecting the rigs, it uh I go pull off one of those tools and start them right there in front of the guys. I mean you're inspected, it should be. But but if you can't even start the tool um, or the people have no confidence, then then there's always going to be a deficit in your leadership. And most of the people that I uh that mentored me, and even later in my career, I mean, there's there's a lot of people that I looked up to uh regardless of rank. I mean, we in the fire department we're very rank conscious, and you you tend to think of that, but um, and not to blow smoke up Mark's ass, but uh Carkamo was one of those guys that that I looked up to. In fact, his companies uh with his captain, who's also a good friend of mine, um, I remember thinking that if if my house was burning up and my kids were up there on that second floor, um, who would I want to come get them if I couldn't? And it it, you know, I would would draw a straight line to guys like uh Task Force 11 and and their ability to get the job done. And even when, and I tried not to, at my last assignment, tried not to shield myself from the impact um and the information that those guys provided me. I kind of called those guys my trusted influencers. And and when I was sequestering myself up in the my lanky corner office on the top floor of City Hall, and I would uh want to develop a new uh policy, a new procedure, uh, buy a new piece of equipment or something like that. Um, one of the last things I did before I made a decision was call those guys, uh the people that I respected that were out there in the field doing it to get their opinion, get their, and I call that the ground truth. Uh, but before I could make a bureaucratic decision, I really had to call those people. Even though I was just a few years removed from being in the field myself, I still needed to have the input from those trusted influencers. And that was very important to me. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 11:14

What was your favorite assignment, Chief? Mark said it was the 17th floor, but I said, nah.

SPEAKER_00 11:20

Well, it was actually it was actually the 18th floor. Mark was familiar with the 17th floor because that's that's that's where we handled all of our discipline cases. So uh, but I was on the 18th floor.

SPEAKER_03 11:33

Um I did have a dressing room there. I had my own dressing room there.

SPEAKER_00 11:36

So get get in my dress uniform. We reserved a parking place for him down there. But um it's it's hard to say. I would say my my time driving truck 33 was I never had more fun on the job. I mean, we we it was kind of a unique time. In fact, Mark was at a neighboring station, the you know, one of the second or third tier stations in the battalion, uh 66s, but um, but it was a unique time.

SPEAKER_03 12:05

Hey, remember twice as good.

SPEAKER_00 12:07

Twice as good. They uh they had uh uh they were building a freeway, and we had um a sheet from Caltrans, which was the area that or the administration that uh took care of the freeways, and we had hundreds of buildings that we could go cut on and train on uh that they were gonna demolish for this freeway. It was a very active fire time. I mean, it wasn't uncommon to have uh, and they were smaller simple fires, single family dwellings and whatnot, uh, big wreck shootings. I mean, it was just an exciting time to be a firefighter and driving a truck. So um, and I never forgot that. It was uh I was there just about three years, and um, I never had more fun. Um, my uh favorite assignment as a captain was Task Force 35. I stayed there 12 years, and by far the longest I ever stayed at one station. But um got to know the community. I had essentially the same crew for for uh about 10 of those years, and um we became very close, very proficient. We trained a lot together, and that was another great time.

SPEAKER_02 13:14

I was reminding these guys of the first time I heard your name and heard you speak was down at Firehouse San Diego, and uh at that point I had been to a lot of conferences, a lot of classes, and I had never heard a chief officer, especially one that's basically you know at that level say what you said. And one of the things you said was we absolutely risk, I would absolutely risk firefighters life safety for property, something to that effect. And the other thing you said was fight fire like a truckman. And I would just like I I was there and I heard what you said, and it was impactful on me, and I just want to take that opportunity because I don't know how many more of these opportunities we'll have with you, I'm in listening. What did you mean by that, Chief? And and and talk about those two statements if you can.

SPEAKER_00 14:08

Well, and the first one I I'm sorry, but I had I'm having a little trouble hearing you.

SPEAKER_02 14:12

What the first tone was the you know, that was at the height of the whole risk a lot, save a lot mantra. And you kind of broke the mold, not kinda, you did, um, with a statement that said, I absolutely risk firemen's lives for property. And uh you expounded upon it beautifully, but I just wanted to I wanted to replicate that moment.

SPEAKER_00 14:33

One of the things that that um you know when we start talking about uh risk policies, and you know, the the front runner of uh nationwide was uh Alan Brunacini and Phoenix Fire Department. They came up with that, um that that uh risk a lot to save a lot, risk a little, save a little, risk nothing to save nothing. And and most of the departments across the country adopted that quickly, as did we. But what we found out was that risk was a very relative thing, depending on your skill level and what would be risky for uh uh the guys at Task Force 11 where Mark worked, um, versus what would be risky at Task Force 69, the slow task is a is a completely different thing. So we needed to codify that. But I think what you're referring to was one of the things that um I was a big believer in in terms of uh being a BC and and trying to determine when uh enough was enough and to order people off the roof and and out of the building, was I had in my mind kind of a foundational theory that um especially in like the those times, we where we saw a big decrease in fires. And it was always my opinion that what happened, the more fires you went to, the more experiences you got of things you did right, of things you did wrong, of different conditions. What that did was was it um the ensuing skill set you took home was judgment. You had that judgment ability, and that's something you can't learn from a book. It's hard to replicate even in contrived training situations, um, those lessons learned which give you good judgment. So consequently, I had this feeling that if we were up on, I had members up on a roof and they were cutting, and and there was no longer any chance of saving any lives, and but there was some property that could be saved. Um, I probably, especially if I knew the players, I probably was uh a little bit more lenient in leaving them up there and allowing them to gain that experience, even though um probably a more conservative person would say you had them up there risking their lives when there was no chance to save anything other than a little bit of property. And my point was that there was value, and I and consequently, um, a lot of my trust had to be um kind of uh uh delegated to those captains that that and those AOs, those people that had control over that mission worker, and to make the better the better informed judgment call of when to get off um based on what they were seeing and feeling, rather than something I could deduce from a suburban that was two blocks away. So my thought was that there was value. And and again, I it's it's kind of a um a long-winded response, but um, I long time ago developed this thing that I called the Starbucks concept. And the thought was is that uh every firefighter across the country is sometime is in his uniform and they're in line and they're getting a Starbucks coffee. And the guy in front of him is in a business suit, he turns around and sees that firefighter, and he says to him, he goes, Hey, uh, I'm gonna pick up this guy's coffee. And he throws a credit card down, looks at the guy in uniform, says, Whatever you want, buddy. And my question when I teach this is I say, Why is he buying you that Starbucks? What's he doing it for? And he's he's doing it because you are gonna crawl through that window, you're gonna turn up the collar on your turnout coat, and you're gonna go in there and you're gonna get a kid, or you're gonna uh go up on that roof and cut the hole and you're gonna drag that line down the hallway to put out the fire to save the other four rooms of his of his building and and his belongings. And that that's a huge first of all, it's a great way to go through your career, people thanking you, but then therein lies the responsibility to live up to that expectation. And and while I'm saying that you're crawling down there to to save some property, is there an inherent risk that uh that those firefighters are taken? And absolutely is, but nevertheless, and and I I kind of some of these conclusions I came to wasn't the hair on the back of my neck. I did a lot of research, you know. I I studied uh firefighter deaths extensively, and I've I found that you know we lost about a hundred firefighters a year throughout the country, every single year. And there were there were uh exceptions to that, obviously, 9-11 and things, but generally 60 to 100 a year. Uh of those, about uh 45% died of heart attacks. So now I'm thinking, okay, so one of the things we can do to ensure the safety rather than order everybody out of every building that there's no occupants in, is make sure guys get off their ass and get in shape and lose weight and train and get fit. And so I did a lot of things to, in my mind, to attempt to reduce the risks of my people. But nevertheless, I took the responsibility of saving people's property as an inherent risk that I signed up for. And something, and again, I I I certainly as an officer, um the last thing I'd want to do is uh is go to somebody's funeral or visit people on a burn ward. And I've done both, but um but the bottom line is I took our responsibility and our our mission of the LAFD is is to protect lives and property, and I took that seriously. What was the five fire like a truckman, Chief? Well, that was kind of um I always maintain that uh uh in most instances, the way the the our LAFD truck operations uh took care of business on the roof was a solid kind of fire ground strategy in that we when we, you know, coming from the basics of uh throwing two ladders to give us another alternate escape route off the building, to go up there to read the smoke conditions, to uh read the time of day, to look at the the exterior of the building to find out what might be the either fire load or the occupancy load, to go up there before we step off to to sound with a sounding tool to make sure we weren't gonna go down and then to go and then identify the roof, you know, cut away the sheeting and identify the structural members, and then based on that situational awareness, begin to develop a strategy of how aggressive we were gonna get in attacking and cutting this up. And and and it was kind of my um, and it's it was really after going to a fire where one of our captains died, uh Joe DuPy, and kind of analyzing that incident and having been down there in that battalion, Mark and I both worked down there, and knowing what the engine companies used to do when um we got three engines on the scene at the same time on a single portal entry of a commercial building, and somebody's sawing that door, and they're all three engines. Well, what they used to do is they used to kind of elbow each other in the head to get in there first. And I would, I I was referring back then to I would have rather seen somebody act a little more professional and have one of the captives pull his. Crew back, go around, get a 360 of the building, much like truck uh uh firefighters do up on the roof. And it was just trying to um, rather than um, because my thought was a lot of engine companies that I witnessed um were in such a rush to get in that building. Uh, they missed a lot of signals that they probably should have picked up on. And then all of a sudden, they they find themselves 50 feet into a building with zero visibility and heat bank down on them and and looking for that orange glow almost blindly rather than having a more methodical, professional uh kind of approach to um to going in that front door.

SPEAKER_02 22:40

And oftentimes, as a truckman, you're gonna be by yourself, not have the help of a captain to help that personal size up and make the right call. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 22:49

Yeah, I I guess it kind of lends itself. I've never thought of that in that uh context of we get that line to the door and then we go fire attack, right? Where the truck uh uninvolved to involve whenever possible, two ladders on a thing. Where's the safety for the engine guys? They don't have that second safety, right? Yeah, the sounding, the inspection work that you do to undress that roof when you're on top of it. That's I I guess there's a lot more pieces that we use to achieve what we're gonna do, that which is a ventilation hole versus how they do it, and that is line to the door, supply line on board, line to the door, and then go for an attack.

SPEAKER_00 23:24

Yep. And then like even uh the dedicated safety member on the roof, this back there, hand on the radio, holding a light, watching the smoke conditions, watching if they cut indicator holes, all so that stuff didn't sneak up on us. And it's not quite as easy when you're dealing in a zero visibility environment. And I would say the number one thing that I would have liked to see more truck firefighters do that every engine person did is put their gloves on. But the uh it's just so funny. I I remember going to um to a uh uh a hospital visit in the middle of the night. They call me, say we burned a couple guys down in the south end, and uh they're at this hospital fires out, and I go down there and uh the uh here I have one of the truck firefighters with third degree burns on both hands, and I'm talking to the captain, and I go, What happened? And um, he said, Well, you know, he he had his gloves on, but the roof kind of came in and he grabbed the roof with both hands, and as he slid down, his gloves came off. And I looked at him and I knew the captain, we were old buddies. I said, You know what? You and I know that's both bullshit. And here's the problem is that as truck firefighters, um, you couldn't, and believe me, I was an AO in full disclosure, AO that rarely wore his gloves on the roof because I felt I had better feel with the chainsaw, I could uh, you know uh engage the radio, change the channels easier. And 99 and 9 tenths percent of the time, you get away with it on the roof. And why do engine firefighters always put their gloves on? Because you you don't get away with it ever. It's hot, you're gonna get cut, you're gonna get burned every single time. And and I it was like one of my quests to get guys to start putting on their gloves because I had visited way too many people. And you know, even after I left, we had the terrible accident at nines where Captain didn't have his gloves on, burned his hands off, basically. Poor guy. But it's um, you know, sit we can. I I I think what I'm trying to say is we can uh both, if you're a dedicated truck firefighter, engine firefighter, you probably learn a lot from both your counterparts there.

SPEAKER_02 25:36

I I heard that it was always because you guys were trying to toughen up your handball mitts.

SPEAKER_00 25:42

Well, I did play handball for for all uh 38 years. So uh maybe that's why I didn't, but um, but ironically, um we had at when I was at uh Task Force 35, we had a really bad accident on the roof where we had a rookie fall in. And that was one of those fires for whatever reason. Um I got up a little late, like the Captain Two always does after making the radio calls and set everything up. And that was one of them that from the um from the ground before I went up to the ladder, I put my face piece on and I put both my gloves on just because of the way that that situation looked. And as it turned out, I needed both of them when we were up there and uh before the the kid fell through the roof. But um, but I would say that would I probably had to add my face piece or gloves on on a roof in five years before that point.

SPEAKER_03 26:33

Can I can I ask you a little bit about that, Fire? Because and even a Dupe fire, because I was talking to Polson a little bit about it, right? Because we're Craig and I were going over his his thought process on Dupe. You know, you hear his last dying moment, but I have a little bit of a deeper relationship with the guy, right? Because he came to us after that fire. And my my question is, I asked him, do you remember operationally what the uh I guess the outstanding moments were we said we need to change something based on this incident, whatever one, either or both of them, uh Holly Ridge andor um, you know, the DP incident. And and I go, I I'm trying to, you know, it's been a long time, and I and as far as my memory goes, I I you know, I I remember the forcible entry thing because they were talking about the guy had some problems at the door with the dupe fire. So that was a big thing, you know, Lane and his group of people that that started focusing on that. But overall, I don't remember a gigantic change until you remember that change.

SPEAKER_00 27:34

Um, you know what? I there one of the things about the Dupe fire is we're never gonna know why Joe Dupe left the line, right? He'd he left the line, which um I think when Mark and I, you we both came through the tower, there was that sign up on the podium. There were two signs. One was uh cheating is immediate grounds for dis uh dismissal. And then second, below that was don't ever leave the line. And Joe DeP left the line. Now there's there is a supposition that uh there was a uh POL device that had dropped off, a personal alarm device that had dropped off. May have heard that to go get somebody. But um the outside of that, there were some subtle things that resulted in changes, but it wasn't like some of the uh fatality fires we have, where there were um there were several significant deviations from standard operating guidelines or stuff we learned at the academy. Um, you did have, and and I think what affected uh me the most about Joe DuP's death was he was a hell of a firefighter, and I knew that. Secondly, the building that he died in was a dog food factory at uh 2:30 in the morning, right? So there was no chance of anybody being in there. The other thing was that it was a nothing building. It every district in in the city of LA had buildings exactly like that. So it was my thought that that one of the things that we probably needed to do was to better categorize buildings that could get us into trouble and then act a little different. And I'm not saying act a little different. I'm not saying we don't go in because we definitely go in that building, but that is a building. Um there all the warning signs were there. So it was uh that that time at you know, 2:33 o'clock in the morning when the potential for it to have being burned undetected is immense, which we know affects the time temp curve and structural involvement. Uh, there was a delay in getting in. Anytime there's a delay in getting in, it again exacerbates that time temp curve issue. Um, you had three companies piled up at the door right off the bat. And then some of the command and control elements that I used to focus on where there was completely differing reports from the interior and the roof and what was visually presenting itself out there in the command and control elements in the street. Meaning inside they're saying we're having heavy heat, uh, very low visibility. We can't find the fire. The company on the roof, we're in the northeast corner. Uh, we've got uh a hole open, we have heavy heat and fire coming out of the hole. Well, there was never any, um, is always my belief that the BC out there, who doesn't have any tactical concerns of his own, needs to connect those dots. He needs to be able to say, hey, engine, I engine 57, I copy, you can't find the fire. We just got a report from the northeast corner of the roof. They got heavy heat and fire coming out of their hole. Where are you in related? You know, to be able to give them that guidance that you should, that clarity you should have from sitting out in a in a um in a suburban with no face piece on and and all of that. Um the bottom line is um it like all of them, uh, all those fires that start to deteriorate, most of the reports were, yeah, it wasn't that bad. Then all of a sudden it got really bad really quick, and now everybody's bailing out. And that's a common reframe we've all heard a hundred times. Um, and then once they got out, one guy was missing and it ended up being Joe. Um, why he left the line, we'll never know. But I think most of the the um the uh from my perspective, the lessons I developed for my own crew after that fire were to kind of be able to roll up in the morning at two o'clock in the morning and look at a building and categorize it and say, hey, this is one of those buildings that that we can die in. So what I'm saying is maybe we're still gonna go in, uh everything else being equal, but it's not a building I'm gonna go in and pull 150 feet of slack without seeing any fire and and pull maybe this is a building that I go in uh 25 feet, keep hold of both my firefighters and wait for that roof to pop open where I can get some clarity and then focus in direction. Or if it doesn't and it starts to flash and deteriorate, I know I'm only 25 feet from the door and I know exactly where it is. So sometimes being a little more cautious, still protecting that property that we talked about earlier, but operating a little bit uh differently than we would at like the Palomo Hotel fire where we had 25 people hanging out of the windows. Um so that's that's kind of my take on that one. Um, I don't know what Mark, did you want to let me go a little bit into the Holly Ridge fire?

SPEAKER_03 32:26

Yeah, and that's what I'm saying. I mean, I I don't remember like you're you're talking about those, and that's from a uh obviously a captain's perspective, right? When Joe Du P passed away at that fire. Um, but I I don't remember that lesson because I was a fireman at 11s and me and Marty Sornich were going to work that morning. We saw the glow east of Freeway and we're listening to radio and they're talking about that there was a line of duty death, right? And it's like, how bizarre. I knew the building because I worked in that district for nine years and had been to that building numerous times, right? Just so I I didn't know it was that building. However, at my level, I don't remember some drastic talk at the kitchen table about hey, this is what happened or this is what we should maybe put into place from this day forward. So I'd love to hear what that was from Holly Ridge. Um takeaways in your case, and then as you ascend rank and you have an incident, and and I I'm sure you had many that were like that, but when when you have an incident like that, and I think maybe Glenn Allen, you were still uh up in that in the position that you were in, and it's like how how do you take that information and and go, okay, what do we need to do here? How do we categorize or prioritize what we think should be happening versus what I see is happening?

SPEAKER_00 33:40

Yeah, you know, a couple things. One is that um there can quite possibly be a fire like DuP's fuck uh incident where there is no smoking gun. There was nothing that you could say, you guys absolutely screwed up. It was a it was a ass kicking fire, it was going good. Um, but I think we owe it to ourselves and even to the memory of uh the deceased person and his family, that saying, granted, do we need to maybe enforce a new policy? Uh is there, you know, based on the fact that we lost a guy and that it was not some total aberration. It wasn't um, you know, a three-ton air conditioner that suddenly fell through termite rotted uh rafters and fell on somebody's head and killed them. That we say, you know, in a million years that probably won't happen again. We don't need to do anything. This was something that we had one of our best people in an ordinary type building that died. And do we need to look at this objectively to find out if we need to maybe establish some type of training philosophy that in a similar instance would preclude the same thing from happening? And we have done that. You know, if you think about the um the firefighter survival training and this uh the uh uh flashover container, all that skill set, um, you know, it both of those, the firefighter survival and the and the flashover training that we've done. Um, when I attended both of those, I said, first of all, I wish I would have had this 25, 30 years ago. And secondly, this, and it may not be something as tangible that we can document, but it's absolutely gonna save somebody's life someday. Uh, and I firmly believe that. Holly Ridge was a was kind of a different animal altogether for you two guys. I don't know if you're familiar with that, but it was a fire where um we had at uh uh 620 in the morning, you know, right before relief, we get uh dispatched on a fire in the uh Hollywood Hills. Uh we weren't gonna be first in. Uh Task Force 27 was gonna be in, but they went the wrong way. And that the the road system, there's a nightmare you go the wrong way, and that's a 20-minute mistake because there's no turnaround. And so we ended up being first in, had a uh a descending hillside home, the type of home we're off the street and we're going in on the first floor, but there's three floors below us. Um, we had that that ugly uh confined smoke uh that that looked like it had been burning for a while. We had two cars in the driveway. We had the neighbor out there saying, you know, Mr. and Mrs. Smith live there, and they're they're not in the on the driveway waiting right now. So we had that um the urgency of uh people being stuck in there. Um uh and bottom line is when uh the roof team went up, I was the incident commander. And by the time the battalion chief got there, maybe five minutes had elapsed. And then I um came up to the roof. And like I said, based on what I was seeing from the the street, I thought, you know what, I'm gonna put my face piece and gloves on. It was one of those where the smoke is coming out and just laying right on top of the roof and that that foggy morning at type stuff. And and we went up there, and uh when I got up to the top of the roof, I looked and I could see the roof team working on the far side of a flat roof. And what happened next was um uh I saw one of the members wander off and he was sounding with his ax uh sound as he was moving around, and he the roof gave way and he went in kind of up to his armpits. And the AO, guy named Dave Rogers, who is kind of right next to him, turns around and sees him and and grabs him, and he goes in up to his waist so and fires all around these guys, you know, bursting out all around them. And that kind of keep that scenario in your mind. And I'm gonna backtrack a little bit in that when I first came to this uh assignment, Task Force 35, as a truck captain and an XAO, obviously roof operations were very important to me. And one of the things we did with every new rookie, every brand new rookie, the very first day, we took them out, we showed them how we ladder the buildings. Uh, two ladders gave them all that. Then we showed them how we assemble as a team and go up as a team. We showed them how to sound, we showed them how to identify the roof, we showed them how we uh determine our routes of travel, and then we go out, we show them how we cut the roof, and his job is pulling the boards, where to stand, how to do everything. And we did this with rookie, and this crew had been together for about a 10-year period, and we had done this with literally dozens and dozens of rookies. And at the conclusion of this first show, every single time I would say, okay, we're up here, just like we've talked about, everything's going great. And now all of a sudden, one of us falls in. What are we gonna do? One of us falls in the roof. And we right when I first got to that station, we had had an apparatus operator on the other platoon fall into a fully involved attic, guy named Leo Lopez. And Leo fell into a fully involved attic. They had an acting captain, too, up there, and they had two three other firefighters. Well, we didn't have the LAFD, didn't have a um a hailing term, or we did, and it was called um, oh, we didn't have a hailing term at all, like a May Day or whatever. And the acting captain keyed the mic and he said, I see from truck 35, we have a fireman through the roof. The IC radio's back, Roger fired through the roof. So, right, misinterpreted. Well, then the captain in that point, who's a captain one, not a truck officer, made a critical error. And he said he directed all the crew to go down the aerial ladder and go to the battalion sedan and then join the rescue effort, even though there was a penthouse 50, 50 feet away that they should have gone down that penthouse, find the unit, and went and pulled their guy out. Well, as they're walking up to the chief and they say, What's what's the deal with uh our fireman? And he goes, What are you talking about? Well, the guy walks up, the firefighter had self-rescued himself, all burned to shit. Turnouts burned, third degree burns on his hands, um, is is everything he's all messed up. And and so one of the issues was the guy that got burned is a good friend of mine. He's a San Pedro surfer like Mark. Um, and he he never really got over the fact that they didn't go get him. And I don't really blame him. You know, he never got over that. And at that point, I had determined that if one of our guys, and we've all seen videos, right, of of other companies up on a roof. I'm sure everyone, all three of you have, and a guy goes through the roof, and what do all the other guys do? They run for their own safety, right? They hit for it's it's a survival instinct. I'm not blaming them, but that's what happens. And my thought was hey, if we have somebody go through the roof, we're gonna be the ones that get them. We see them go in, we know, and whatever that looks like, whether it's run to the penthouse, go down, whether it's jump off the side of the building and one-store building, cut a hole in the wall to go in there and get, we're gonna be the ones that are gonna get them. And uh time and time again, rookie after rookie, the same crew went through the same drill and this same of me expounding on my my philosophy that we are gonna come get you. And I I remember telling this this kid that that that's the way it's gonna be. And don't you give up, you keep fighting, have all your PPEs on, and then you know, and we all train that way, and we all have that kitchen sink in the readiness, and it never happens. Well, this one happened right before my eyes, and what happened? Uh, we we were successful in pulling him out. And when we pulled him out, I tell people he was literally on fire. His turnouts were literally burning, and the firefighters were patting his turnouts, and um, but the funny part is, like all uh near misses, like this one was, and he ended up with third-degree burns over about 20% of his body. Um, he came back to full duty. In fact, he just got a medal of valor for rescuing a couple kids, I read. But the thing that that really drove home for me about this was that um when they were interviewing me, we had a significant investigation team come out and they're interviewing me. And the one the guy is Sammy, the chief goes, Hey, I heard you up there, Joe. I mean, um, saying that you need a rescue ambulance, but I never heard you call for any help. And really, what happened? And I told him, I said, you know, I got up there, I could see limited visibility, I could see that kid go in, I could see Dave go in. And I'm gonna be completely honest with you. I don't remember what happened after that. The next thing I remember, I'm hanging on to Dave Rogers, who's hanging on to the kid, and we're trying to pull him out, and it's it's not happening. And he's he's literally screaming, the kid. You can hear him. He's screaming in agony, he's getting the shit burned out of him. And suddenly another guy came from the other side, and we're able to pull him out. And but my point was is that the is something that I had thought about a thousand times. The repetition we've done over and over and over and over again. And when that bad thing happens to us, that um that lack, that blacking out for lack of a better term, happens to a lot of people. But what happened was I I don't remember what happened, but I did the right thing. I did what I had trained to do a thousand times in my mind. And that is what really kind of became the cornerstone for my um my strategy of preparedness and training was that that we do this, we do it right, we think about it. You think about it when you're driving to work, when you're coming home, when you're seeing buildings, training the rookie. And and my philosophy is that um you don't know whether you're gonna be one of those people that grab the kid and pull him out of the hole, or you're gonna run for the parapet and save your own life. But you actually Have control over that in the clear light of day by preparing yourself. And my thought is that when the really bad shit happens on the fire ground, you're not going to rise to the occasion. You're going to sink to the level of your pre preparation. And the good thing about that is the preparation is the only thing we have control over. We don't have control over for a lot of this other stuff that happens. And that's kind of my philosophy about that incident, which was really kind of a defining moment for me in my career.

SPEAKER_02 44:29

Chief, the it's a great, a great question that segues right into this kind of overarching, you know, topic that we wanted to talk to you about. And um we've we see it time and time again where you know fire departments generally speaking seem to be pretty dogmatic, pretty um how we've done businesses, how we're going to continue to do business in general, especially on the fire ground. And um your agency is and you as the as a bureau commander, I know you got that call quite a bit with near misses and or unfortunately line of duty deaths. Um and we've seen green sheets come out of there and and the blue sheets, and I don't know, I still I don't understand the difference between them, but I mean it's a it's an after action, so to speak, as to what went on. Um I have frustrations with my own organization um on this same topic when Mark and I were talking. And would you agree? We're not naive to the fact that a training division, one of their responsibilities is to protect the agency from lawsuits, litigation, whatever. Um, but would you agree that the overarching uh mission of a training division is to train the members to keep them efficient and safe?

SPEAKER_00 45:42

Absolutely. It um the I I not only think it's an obligation, it's an inescapable obligation. And I always viewed um when I was the the bureau commander, I viewed training as the the entity that was going to deliver um my direction philosophy to the mission worker. You know, they're the ones that that um and I would give them a wide range on on how to deliver what I wanted. I would give them broad stroke about here's what I'm concerned about, you know. And and one of the things I used to do, I used to um, I was always looking for any reason to blast out of City Hall to go to a fire. And a lot of times I think people were looking over their shoulder at me thinking, What's what's he doing here? It's not big enough for him to be here. Um, be and they thought maybe I was being the ICS cop or check, but all I was doing, I used to tell them is I'm I'm here for QA. I'm here to make sure you guys are doing what I taught you to do, and I'm here to make sure you guys are doing that same QA with your captains. Now, you know, when you go out and you work with these captains and you design these drills, there's a certain expectation of of that that they're going to do this. And how how are they gonna how are they ever gonna improve if you're not out there watching them and say, hey, we talked about this, and why did sometimes there may be a good reason. And um, Mark and I, there was a uh pretty illustrious captain that worked at uh 33s in South LA, and Dennis Willahan was his name, and he's the guy who really started codifying all of these processes and procedures and putting names on them. And and I remember the other shift at 33s, the one was I on. I had a couple old captains that they all thought that was bullshit. Why do you gotta? We've been doing it for years. Why do you gotta name that stuff, you know? But Willehan had a policy, and he and what would happen is we were all a bunch of wild ass kids, and we would we'd go out there and you know, we we had those uh chainsaw that that was a PVC thing with a chalk on the end of it. We'd be out there walking on the parking lot like we were cutting the roofs, and we would practice and practice and practice, and then we go to a fire and we wouldn't do hardly any of it. And then he would come up and rip our ass. He'd say, Hey, what are you guys doing? You know, where's your there's only one ladder and where's your inspection hole? I don't know, you know what? And then then he he'd really read us a riot act and uh ripping our ass didn't really write thing because he he was really a great instructor and he understood. He didn't teach by intimidation, he taught by he was an educator, and and he would go over it with us, and then the next time we went up, instead of doing 10 of what he taught us, we do 20. And the next time we did 40, and the next time we did 80, until we got to that point where we were doing it all the time. And that was kind of my oversight as a as a um the commander of emergency operations, just to go out there to make sure these guys were doing it. And and even to the point where um, you know, the only thing I I ever wanted them to micromanage about was was safety equipment, uh, PPEs. I wanted them to be on guys' ass because I told them, why don't why do I have to tell, why do I have to get out there and tell that guy to put his gloves on, that guy to put his helmet on. Um, but nevertheless, that that that um an administrative administration's responsibility to communicate with training and prepare them. I I I've often thought in my leadership lectures, I used to say um modern leaders, they see what's around the corner. They have that ability to see what's around the corner and what's coming. And there's a number of cases where people came up to me in my position as a bureau commander with a new policy that maybe I would have laughed at three years ago, but with the new technology and all these other things, they came up to me. They saw they were the leaders, they saw around the corner, and they, you know, we had sent guys all over the country to teach. They came back with new stuff. And the bottom line is we were the better for that because people at that point LAC was starting to change, and we weren't quite as arrogant as we used to be. And we were, we were looking at what other departments did and throwing out what we didn't want to use, but keeping those those changes that we needed to make.

SPEAKER_02 50:11

So was there a, and you mentioned it, um, you know, you're going to these incidents to see what your members are actually doing and how they're performing. And you see something that jumps out at you, uh, we might need to uh address this through training. Was there an open line between you and that chief of training? Hey, chief so-and-so, we gotta we gotta fill this gap here.

SPEAKER_00 50:31

Well, one of the things that that I did um was I implemented uh when I became the Bureau Commander a weekly meeting with the commander of training and all the captains. I didn't I didn't just want to talk to another gold badge, I wanted to talk to all the captains. So I would go out to the training headquarters and I would sit and we'd kind of line up the whole week. But during that meeting, there would also be um uh an agenda item for new trends or new training classes that people had gone so that we could discuss it and talk it. And it was funny because uh the my predecessor had never done that. And when I first started doing with training, I could tell there was a little bit of pushback for them because they were very prideful of the way they ran training. And and I said, Listen, I'm not I am I am here to find to to legislate what I want you guys to do, because all of your customers report to my office. But nevertheless, it's it's not something I'm as you'll see, it's not something I'm gonna make uh, you know, just off the top of my head. It's gonna be a two-way communication and so that we could talk. And but then the other thing about training was that I also wanted to interlace this in with the promotional process because I was starting to get very frustrated that uh that we had lost in our promotional process the um the ability to test their oper the operational effectiveness that I talked about earlier. And I thought, and mainly that judgment. So I I thought, you know, I'm I'm tired of seeing people promote that are good test takers, but down I know these people and I know they can't do the job. So I wanted to then sit with them and then and I kind of had the feeling like all of this stuff was was like part is kind of interconnected, like the like the ecosystem, that that in we needed somebody up there to connect the dots. And I was that guy. I was the guy that then said, okay, based on what you guys are seeing, um, you know, I think for this captain's exam, here's what I'd like. And previously, um, I don't think there was a lot of interaction between the commander merch operations and the personnel department to determine what needed to be tested. Versus I wanted a say in it. And and I did that all the way up to the assistant chief rank, where we designed um some operational element that would test their judgment that that they couldn't fake. They couldn't come in and fake that. And uh they would either have to know it or convince me. Um, and some of them did better than others, but they would have to convince me that they had some cognitive ability to figure their way out of this emergency uh based on experience and knowledge, rather than being able to recite a meaningless fact in a policy book.

SPEAKER_02 53:19

So you're saying just for the listeners, Chief, that all the way up to the assistant chief level, they still had to prove that they could manage, run, supervise, lead an incident.

SPEAKER_00 53:29

Absolutely. And it's funny because um the the assistant chief exams we used to do, and that's you know, our second highest rank. And and all these guys I knew they were all basically subordinates of mine. And sometimes I viewed the examination and the interview process almost as a teaching point for me to be able to, because I would I would still grade them accordingly, but also it was I had their undivided attention when we were in that room together. And and if they were embarking on a path that I thought was not the right path, then I had no problem clearly illustrating what I thought and what I wanted to see at an emergency, and it it became as much a test as it did a uh learning environment for them also.

SPEAKER_02 54:19

So love everything that picture you painted, it's phenomenal that that's how you viewed that and did that and took ownership of that. How come it doesn't happen throughout these organizations? How come it takes something really, really tragic um for reaction in the form of hey, you know, we're gonna abandon, we're no longer gonna pull that small diameter line on these. This is gonna be the requirement. Or, you know, uh, there's so many, um, hey, we're positioning wise, we're gonna, hey, we're gonna make sure we always lay in, and second do, at least at a at the latest, is gonna be responsible. Well, I mean, there's always this reaction, but we see time and time again through the near miss, and near misses varying levels of severity, of course, obviously, but um how come we have such a hard time with training divisions and administrative operations levels fixing these problems before, or at least putting out the information to fix these problems before the bad thing happens?

SPEAKER_00 55:26

You know, it's it's it's really a great question. And the uh, and I have, you know, I may at this, what, nine years removed from my career, um, sometimes offer a little more clarity than I had myself when I was in those same situations. Let me give you an example of that. Uh, we had a fire, I was a battalion chief, and we had a fire downtown, and it was an old uh produce market, uh um kind of a uh a monolithic concrete wall building, four floors, uh, middle of the day, got it just got going like a bomb. And and uh Is it commander gave me the Delta side of the building, and I got to the back, and the Delta side is where all the companies were going in because that's where the trucks, the loading docks were, and all the trucks, um, the uh the supply trucks that loaded stuff in, and consequently, all of the companies were going in on the delta side. So when he gave me the delta side, I was thinking, oh shit, it's gonna be nothing. Everybody was going in there. So I basically have the best vantage point because the ISA commander was on the alpha side and all he could see was smoke blowing it. Well, I sat there. I'm sorry. What was your rank at this time? I was a battalion chief. Okay. And so, and what happened was um this uh this fire just they just weren't getting it. You know, I saw it burn from the first floor to the second floor to the third floor. I actually saw it burn through the the ceiling joists up on the the third floor and out through the roof. And at some point, I I advised the incident commander, hey, I'm I'm thinking at this point it's a loser. And if I was making the call, I would make a call to go defensive right now. So and he wanted to hear that. Uh, you know, he I he was a little skitter type of guy, and and I was kind of holding him off on it, I think, inadvertently earlier. So he did. He pulled the trigger and and ordered everybody out. Well, uh, the captain from truck three, and is I I don't always like to name names, but since Mark is here and he knows this significant, the cap the truck captain at three's mark was Dennis Mendenhall. Dennis was a former uh naval aviation officer. He's a tough dude, he's a tough dude physically, mentally, uh great officer. Um and when he got out and saw me, he was so pissed he couldn't see straight. He goes, God damn it, Joe, we almost had it. We almost had it. And and he's in my face, and and you know, we're kind of going nose to nose. And finally, at that point, I had a lot of stuff to do. I had like 15 companies back there. Dennis, just get your ass out, get the ladder pipe up and go and put it out. So we we did. We surrounded and grounded. Well, later that night, I'm I'm down at battalion three down by USC. And I had to go up to the division office, which is the station he worked at, to drop off the mail to my boss. And so I drove up there and I'm thinking, and more and more I'm, you know, kind of bothered by our discussion out there. You know what? I'm gonna go in into the office and talk to Dennis. And so I I went in there and and uh I said, hey Dennis, uh, you got a second? And he's sitting there with his arms crossed, you know, and it's all pissed off. And yeah, and I go, well, let me let me tell you something. Let me tell you why I ordered you guys out of that building or why I suggested the IC. Now I sat there for 25 minutes and I watched that fire burn from the first floor to the second floor to the third floor through the roof. I didn't see one illustration that you guys were getting. I didn't see one nozzle coming out of the window, I didn't see one body. All I saw is you guys for 25 minutes not get it. So I go, so you know what? If you want to stay in there, you want to have fun, you want to fight fire, you want to kick ass, then show me something out in the street. But you didn't show me anything. And let me tell you something. Furthermore, let me tell you what goes through my mind when I think it's time to go out. And I started saying, you know, the fire had gotten significantly larger than when I first got there. The building was not really escapable at this point. You know, you guys were going up one narrow ass stairwell up to the top, and there were three other companies. Um, all of these factors, I just started lining up. And I go, at some point, I need you to respect my ability to get your ass out there when there was nothing less to do, because I don't want to have to explain to your wife, who I happen to know, of why I let you stay in there and you ended up dying. And as I'm I'm going through my my personal uh plan and strategy of how I evaluate a structure, and there were several steps involved in this. I he's softened, he's before my eyes, softening. You know, he's no longer red face, his arms aren't crossed. And at the very end of my discussion, there's about 15 minutes of talking to him. He says, Joe, I understand completely what you're saying. Would you mind going in there and telling exactly what you told me to my crew? Well, this is not a guy that would let somebody else talk to his crew, and it kind of stunned me that he would ask. And I said, Well, sure, I don't mind, Dennis, but why? And he goes, Because to be honest, I've been telling him for the last two hours that you turned into a big pussy. And that's it, yes, yeah, that's why you're out. But what you said makes sense. So I went in there and I talked to the guys, and and and then it kind of in my mind, I thought, you know, everything that I just told this captain is not in my battalion, not under my command, that I have on a PowerPoint presentation. I have never really I built that presentation for myself to be a better chief officer, but I have never sat and talked to everyone member of my command and told them the same thing that I just got done telling this strange captain. And and what it did was it it kind of led me to believe that I was holding a lot of information that I should be disseminating, that I should be not waiting for that bad outcome, like you just spoke about, that I need to be proactive and go out. Now, it took a long time. I mean, that was like a two-hour lecture times seven fire stations. So it took a couple days for me to do it. And so I I think my answer to why this keeps happening is it first of all, you have to have the technical knowledge to be able to go out and prepare and teach these companies, but you also have to have the time to do it. And sometimes for um, and it's not an excuse, it's just a reality, but for a lot of these uh these battalion chiefs that have that stack of paper on their desk, um, sometimes they don't want to push that aside and take it home on their four-day and due uh to go out and have these type of conversations with their subordinates to train them and prepare them, and more importantly, to get their feedback. Because I guarantee you there's some of these captains going to listen to that lecture and go, hey, that's all well and good, chief, but consider this and this and this. And the ultimate product that that comes from those discussions would be that battalion policy of how to operate. But it's um it takes a lot of time, a lot of effort. I think the companies are busier than they've ever been. There's EMS, the homeless stuff, but it still has to be a priority. Um, it's just it's so crucial to get out there and teach those people and prepare them.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:39

It seems a very logical pipeline of communication that the training division would welcome and want is to have, as you said, quarterly meet with the operations chief and battalions to say, hey, or divisions, what's what's going, what's not going right out there? That we can fix that with some videos or some, you know, they we use target solutions for everything under the sun to cover our ass as an organization from litigation, yet that same tool can be utilized for some meaningful video work or whatnot. And I've just we just thought we would, man, we would let's ask Chief Castro, let's ask him, because I know we know you were involved with that.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:19

So so do you see a void? Because what I'm gonna go and and sub questions I had on writing stuff down, and it's like uh I see on the bulletin that you sent out and you sent it to us, uh, you know, emergency operations, efficiency, and safety. And one of your um topics on there is standardizing operating guidelines department wide. And and I only know from my own experience, right? And it didn't mean shit now because I'm 10 years removed from it, but a lot of stuff that happens within uh my particular R agency is who taught you? Right? It is, it's it's a huge thing on what you take away if you decide that, hey, you know what, I think I'm ready for the next step. I'm gonna promote up, promote upward. And I'm having this hard issue because I watch these videos over and over again. And in my head, the first thing I can ask is, I know what the expectation was of my guy, and he had a very high standard and he held everybody to it. Friendships were always second with him, and that's number one is operational efficiency within the the actual company. But I I look at this stuff and go, is it too much to ask for whether it's the AC or the BC or it's down to the captain's level, or even uh a rated guy, that each person that sits above them would have a minimum set of standards and go, at a minimum, this is what I expect out of you for this particular incident. And it could get long-winded. However, I still think, you know, like you were talking about the engine versus the truck, where does a truck do? Maybe more checks before they go and attack the fire. And it's based on efficiency because we get very good at it by doing it over and over and over again. Touches equal success, especially in our industry. So I look at it and go, how come there's not that conversation going on? Where did the disconnect happen where these guys can go, hey, at a minimum, here's my expectation. Sometimes a bear gets you, I understand it, but at a minimum, this is a reasonable expectation. I would have you lay a line. I would have your fire attack line be there, should be two yellow lines as an engine company on the floor at that fire. Two yellow lines. Is that asking too much? Because I see it over and over again within their agency, and that is it's the white line on the ground. And I'm not talking to two and a half. And it's like, how did we go from spending all this time, money, and energy, and then learning from the fires that kicked our ass and produced victims, you know, Stratford Arms, Poney Hotel, all these things. And now we're backing away and going, well, you know, uh, and we'll default into the oh, we'll take an inch and a half because it's more maneuverable. And I always said, um, maybe there's a strength issue if if you Can't handle that line. Is there a strength issue? And I know that there are things where you could go, hey, you pull up, hey, I don't have a supply line. You decide to take the engine out because you know that guy's got a 200-foot handle. Okay, it makes sense, but it also makes sense to go, I can gate down that inch and three quarter line, but I can't make 200 GPMs come out of that white line. I just can't. Right. And and the same thing goes for roof ops. Zero inspection work, no tactical discipline, not understanding that a second due, you need to repeat what already happened, like your first air. Two hours should be what you'd be shooting for if you get assigned to do that. And even if you're second due and go, the only thing that reaches is the aerial, why isn't that a minimum standard? And and I don't know if it's getting lost in the wash. Uh, I know the experience level has changed, and a lot of it has to do with the way that the ambulance gets the you know living shit kicked out of them. But it's like, I don't think people are a lot of people aren't aren't promoting because they're ready, they're ready to get off the thing that's kicking their ass and they never get to rotate to a fire company. You know, so I mean, did does that sound like something I I I don't know if I'm really asking you a question other than do you think there needs to be more standardization of what we do?

SPEAKER_00 1:07:11

Well, it's it's actually a great question, Mark. And and that was out of a response for, I mean, when I wrote that about standard operating guidelines department wide. Um, when I was a young firefighter, I would have been appalled at some guy uh on the 18th floor dictating how my truck, our truck 33 should operate, because um back then we had so many great captains that it was okay to have deviations. It really was. And and really the first thing you used to do when you worked overtime at a new station was to go up and say, hey, Cap, how are we going to operate today on a uh panelized roof? Or what are we gonna do at a uh brush fire high rise? What do you, what, what's your what are your SOGs? But the problem happened was when I was there and I was seeing all these these errors and deviations, and I started to come to the conclusion, A, we didn't have the cadre of captains that could teach like we used to, and B, with companies getting closed and people getting detailed and brownouts and everything else, the the company unity that we used to have was now uh non-existent. So now it was, I thought it was more important for training through my direction to then compose department-wide SOGs. So at least somebody would have a default plan. Now I knew that there are my good my best people out there would would enhance those with changes and additions, and maybe even deletions, but there would also be a large percentage of the population that didn't have that ability to develop their own SOGs, then to use those. And it was my chance to give my blush about what I thought it should be ahead of time. The um, I mean, there's there's um uh it it one of the things that um in my last position, one of my biggest challenges was that I had to balance operations with politics. And and it it goes deeper than than just the word politics. But and I'll give you an example. Um, the fire uh that uh Vince Alvarado uh uh went down at in Grave Shirley and Berkeley, that uh another descending hillside home, and they got caught in a bad place and guy ran out of air. And and in fact, I was there. And in fact, he I think he's now the new emergency operations uh commander, uh Vince Alvarado. But I was there when they pulled him out and pulled that face piece off him, and he was uh not breathing, and then he started doing a couple guppy breaths and took up a big breath, and then we could welcome him back. But um, but one of the things that happened there was when I took over my position, um, one of the unfinished items of my predecessor was the report on that fire. And I remember looking at the report and thinking, um, it's unreadable. It's it's it'd be of no virtue to anybody. And and it was like the fire had happened a year and a half ago. And I remember looking at that report and said, I mean, there are so many the fire up in San Francisco where the two guys died, of people going in above uh unsecured fire below them and then having it turned bad. And I don't want this to continue happening. So I called one of the best young captains on the LAFD and I said, Listen, I want you to take this report and I want you to rather than have it be a uh 175-page after action analysis, I want you to make me a training bulletin. And one of the things I did every time someone composed a training bulletin for me was I said, I don't care initially how long it is initially, but I do want everything that is in that training bulletin to be contained on one page at the end of the document. Because I was convinced that that um that most captains would rip out that one page that had the bullet points of what you should do, and that's what they're gonna keep on the rig. And and I said, You want to elaborate in depth? Go ahead. Well, I had this this guy, he's was one of the sharpest young captains out there, and he worked his ass off on this. Well, he came to me uh about, I don't know, uh three weeks later with a fantastic document, about 28 pages long, that dealt with dealing with ascending and descending hillside uh structure fires. And I looked at it and I said to him, I go, you know what? Um, let me look at it. I'll call you back in three or four days. And I called him back in three or four days, and he came into my office and I had literally pages that I had lined stuff out that I that I needed him to eliminate. And I told him, I said, Listen, if everybody was like you, I would stamp this thing approved and I would send it out to the field exactly like you composed it. But the bottom line is you have seven pages of door control um on the interior fire attack, and you're gonna lose, you're gonna lose 75% of the readers right then. And what it's gonna do is dilute the big message that I want to get out, which is what you include on the last page. The guy, he was he's ready to throw me off the 18th floor. He was so mad. He put his heart and soul into this thing. And but I told him, and that's was dealing with politics. I was dealing with the reality of what the LAFD was, knowing that um uh that I would have loved that document as a as a you know a five-year kid on the job, but not everyone had my level of enthusiasm for reading and learning. And the bottom line is I would lose them on the the important, the super important items that I wanted them to lock and load on. And so I was constantly um balancing operations with politics. And it this guy, he just recently made BC and he and I saw him at a at a an event, and he came up and said, Yo, it took me about five years to finally figure out what the hell you were trying to tell me that day when you were uh throwing my report away. But but so balancing that politics and operations with reality, um, Mark, was uh an important thing, and especially with today. I mean, we know that um that uh uh in a perfect world, if everyone was like your crew at 11s, it would it would look completely different. But now it uh the the employees are different, their um their the work levels different, the demands on them are different. And sometimes I don't want to I hate using this term, but I'll use it that we have to dummy down our delivery to be satisfied with um with you know completed, not being the the the master of perfect, if you will. Um it's it's complex times. I don't envy the guys out there trying to do it. It uh um I have this little this little refrain that I used to talk about. Uh whenever we'd have people suspended from from uh uh for bad behavior or screw-ups or whatever, um, they would have to come to my office and we'd have a little chat before they went back. And my sole purpose of having that chat was to not have them come back again. And but after about doing that for about two or three months, I had to change my introduction because my introduction then was saying was the same. But then before I let them talk, I'd say, I just want to warn you, there's only one type of personality I can't take on this job, and that's somebody that's not happy to be here. So with that in mind, go ahead and give me your side of the story because it they were just it was a um kind of an employee behavior and philosophy that I wasn't familiar with. Um someone that that didn't what didn't feel privileged to have that job, and with that privilege comes that responsibility to be the best we can.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:55

Chief, you spoke about the politics, especially at the bureau commander level. I'm sure you had to balance the fire chief's desires and what's going on at that level. How do you how did you did you have did you ever recall without specifics being pressured to maybe eliminate a practice on the fire ground from the LA City Fire Department? Because of a duty death, because of a that that's a great question.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:22

Um, I absolutely had to subjugate some opinions and actions based on politics, but I drew the line when it came to safety of the citizens or the members. And I'll give you a classic example. Um we used to this recent fires that we had in the Pacific Palisades that, you know, burn what 6,500 homes. Well, that process of us going through to determine whether to pre-deploy or not was a um was a codified process. We would, you know, get the weather reports, we would, and then I had like a a 10-step decision-making tree that would ultimately allow me to come to the best informed decision about what whether to pre-deploy or not, how much to pre-deploy. And then I would take that decision to the fire chief. And the fire chief um never went against my decision. They um, because I had spent the whole day kind of going over this. And and but then the next day after we would pre-deploy, the next day I would have to then uh print up a spreadsheet, and the spreadsheet would talk about how many people we hired, how much it cost, and then I would go to our dispatch and get the analysis of the run mode that day. And I would say, okay, so we hired uh X amount of people, cost $189,000. And on the day we had no wildland fires, and in fact, our uh incident call load was down 10% from normal. And I would have to take that spreadsheet over to the deputy mayor of Homeland Security across the street that worked for the mayor. It was a woman, and she was she was a tough gal, a former federal prosecutor, and she would look at that stuff and she go, Joe, you are killing me. You're because I have to take this to the mayor and $189,000 that we don't have, and and um, and you had 10% less fire or runs than normal, you didn't have any wildlife fires, you're killing me. And I said, Listen, this is all base, I can go through this till the cats come home. But the bottom line is based on data and science, and the data and science suggests that a fire will start easier and burn faster in these conditions that are that are predicted. And and blah, blah, blah. So the bottom line is she ended up bringing the mayor over to my office, and we took him up in the uh the helicopter. And I told him, I said, listen, what I want you to to picture is all these hills black with white sheets covering the bodies, and and us having to do a press conference on Highland on Highland Avenue, and them looking at me and saying, Yeah, we saved $189,000, which is the siding on one garage up on those hills. And all these white. And I remember he looked at me, he said, Joe, Joe, don't don't say another word. Well, uh, you know, you do what you keep doing your thing. Well, then I had a uh uh my adjutant that worked for me. One day we're having this discussion, and the day that we're gonna pre-deploy, it was some holiday. I it might have been Thanksgiving, I don't know. And he we looked at it and I said, We got to pre-deploy. And he looked at me and he said, Hey, respectfully, I disagree. I said, Why? And he goes, Because um, because it's Thanksgiving, and the guys, we've already been working these guys to the bone. And and I said, Greg, I understand what you're saying, but the bottom line is if we don't pre-deploy and we have a fire and we have a bad outcome, they're gonna be looking at me and everybody's sighting. And when we developed this this policy of coded assigned hire, I purposely left the caveat that on the days the wind was blowing and the humidity was down, that I had to be able to staff adequately these companies to protect us and the citizens. And I boy, he I could not convince him it was the right thing to do. Well, after this Palisades fire that they didn't predeploy, he called me up and he says, Okay, I finally get it. Now, 12 years later, I get what you were saying. So the pressure, um, and I guarantee you, I I don't know if they follow the same policy I used to follow. I don't know if the EOPS commander had that um conversation with the fire chief or what the response was. All I know is that there wasn't somebody pounding their foot down saying, hey, I don't give a shit whether we have the money or not, or whether people are going to be happy. We have to have people on these rigs. And it's why LA County isn't getting attacked because they pre-deployed, they did everything they could. We didn't, and that's why we're getting attacked. But to answer the question is, um, yeah, I had to bend politically numerous times, namely on probably most uh prominently would be on promotions, but um, because I did have say on the promotions, final say was the chief, but I frequently gave my opinion, and and sometimes that was overridden for political uh purposes. But that discussion was had with me by my boss, and I appreciated that. And I understood the pressure that he was under uh going across the street, and uh and he had uh to make those decisions, but he never overrode a decision regarding um getting the guys the best equipment, uh, deploying, training, stuff like that. Every time I ever made that decision, he uh he he would stick with me.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:52

Pam, if I may, I got I got a self-serving question. I just love to hear his opinion on because you kind of touched on the chief when you were speaking about running that Delta division on that downtown supermarket fire. I'd love to hear your opinion of or your in your experience and your viewpoint regarding ICS. What is the lowest rank, in your opinion, that should be responsible for running a division on a regular basis?

SPEAKER_00 1:21:15

Well, uh that's actually a good question. There's there's always been this uh ICS standard of um Hispanic control, right? Uh how much you can have. And I used to say that that's an arbitrary number. I usually when I teach ICS, it'd say, what is it? Um four to six with five being optimum. I can't remember what it is now. But I would say, when, you know, we we make these rules up for ICS, but can you tell me what would allow you to think that I could have 10 span control be 10? Or when would you say one or two is enough? And one of my things, guys didn't have the ability to to uh rationalize and codify that. And my thought was always um, if you have elements at risk, you significantly lower the span of control. And my answer to your question would be the same thing. If I always wanted to have any of my either geographic divisions or functional groups, I I usually wanted them supervised by a division soup um or group supervisor uh by a gold badge if they were at risk because, and not because some of my captains weren't qualified, but to have a captain do it. He's captain's worried about the rookie, he's worried about the smoke color, he's worried about this and that. And he has he's got his hands, he's spinning multiple plates versus the chief officer. I used to say, listen, you have your a staff assistant with you that's documenting all this stuff. You're making the call, you have a command channel and a tactical frequency, you have the ability to step back, step outside the door, if you will, and have a little bit cleaner and clearer environment. And then you can actually be a better uh division recruit supervisor. Um, I the only problem I would have generally is like a good example would be if I had tasked Mark's sole crew at Task Force 11 up there, and I had his captain, uh Greg Millet, as the as the uh roof division supervisor. Um if I put a weak BC up there to replace some as the uh division soup, um it could be problematic. And I think you guys know what I'm talking about. So sometimes I would have to make some decisions based on personal. But um the bottom line is I thought that that the BC rank was better suited to be a division or group soup just because of the the administrative ability and the fact that they didn't have that tactical responsibility of of uh seeing the things accomplished that a captain does. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:54

I couldn't that that's the position that we've been struggling with. Cameron and I are both company officers, and there is definitely a uh become a proclivity of hey captains, you're gonna, I'm gonna make you this division while meaning, meanwhile, I have my company in that area, and that I still have to manage getting the line to the fire and or cutting that roof. And it's just it's uh yeah, it's been some there's been conflict because of that. And yeah, we wanted to get your opinion on the record for that. I appreciate your insight on that.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:24

Good question. Uh we've been going about an hour and a half now. Anybody have any other questions they wanted to get out for Chief?

SPEAKER_02 1:24:32

Did you ever get your uh uniform reimbursement money from Mark, Chief? Get my what uniform uniform reimbursement money.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:42

I just um I I'll have this recollection of till the cows come home of Mark, you know, working out in the morning at this station being the big stud. I don't think he ever tucked his shirt in and uh 30 something years of work, but but no, it was uh it was good good working around him. He he's a stud, stud and a half. He knows that.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:03

Hey, do you remember the phone call about me uh on the tack channel throwing out some F-bombs? Yes, I still think back when Greg goes, hey dude, uh you were on the TAC channel you did, and I go, those dipshits don't have a man ladder pipe, and this guy's telling me that I hit these guys with water. It's like I wanted to kill Fleague. I want to jump off there and punch him in the face. It's like just keep your fucking cool, dude. Whatever. Hey, hey, good times, huh? Good times.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:32

Yep, absolutely. The best job in the world. I appreciate you coming on, Chief. Seriously.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:37

Yeah, thank you so much. I I'm glad you did that. And uh, for us, I I really appreciate it. I hope your mom everything goes well with her, and uh appreciate that, guys.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:47

And I I enjoy talking with you anytime.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:50

Thank you, Chief. Anyway, thanks everyone for tuning in, and uh, we'll catch you on the next episode. We'll see you guys. Bye bye.