Episode #15 LAFD Capt. I Craig Poulson

Colin Kelley, Mark Carcamo and Cameron Monahan from the West Coast Offense meet up with LAFD Capt. I Craig Poulson.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Hey, welcome 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 Carkomo. Good morning. Hey, we have a guest on today, special guest from LA City Fire. 31 years of service on the job, 19 years as a firefighter, 12 years as a Captain One. With us today, Craig Paulson. Welcome, Craig. Yeah, welcome, guys.

SPEAKER_01 0:33

Good morning. Welcome.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Good morning. Hey, anything else that you want to add to the the viewers that might not be familiar with you, Craig, to introduce yourself?

SPEAKER_02 0:41

No, no, no. We'll kind of take you through the my career and then I'll kind of maybe fill in some of the gaps and and uh no no I'm just glad to be here. Just kind of kind of super honored, man, because I've been following your podcast from day one. And and uh I think they're they're they bring a lot of value to the fire service right now in a in a time where we need we need that. So thanks for doing what you guys are doing.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

Thank you, thank you. Um I think we just have a a few questions that we want to ask you and go through, and then we'll just uh go from there. Okay. Who's got the first question today?

SPEAKER_01 1:16

Paul So let's just get it out of the way. But it's something that when Mark and Cameron and I talked about it, you know, we've all seen your presentation. You've talked gosh, I don't know how many probably hours that you've gone back over and relived that uh terrible day at the Western Fire. Um, but we were we we wanted people to know from you if if you feel comfortable, you know what how did that shape your career, your life following that? So let the next, you know, I'm assuming 28 years. I think you had only a couple years on um when you're on that line with with Captain DuP. But following that, Craig, um, how did that shape your career?

SPEAKER_04 1:57

And and and before you start, Craig, can you give us just a that timeline, that year, that month of when this happened?

SPEAKER_02 2:05

Yeah, that was that was in March, and that was in um 98. March 8 to be exact. And at that time, I was at Fire Station 57, and we were the previous month, we had been to a lot of lot of fires. We were on a pretty good run. And as you know, young firefighter uh just recently out probation, and um, you know, we were busy, engine 57 was busy, and there was a time in that department, in our department where staffing was kind of an issue. So we had um a member that was assigned on our shift that was taken out of the fire prevention bureau. But luckily for us, that member had a lot of time on the job and a lot of experience. So he wasn't in he wasn't assigned to the fire prevention bureau for a long time and hadn't been in the field. He he just recently became an inspector and got detailed back out to the field. But his body of work prior to that was was really good assignments. So it was just an odd time, you know. We were going through staffing issues kind of like we are now today. And for Engine 57 in particular, the Battalion 13 down there, we were we were on a pretty good run of fires. So we we had had some some graders and majors recently in that last month, so we were we were pretty busy. So fire activity was up.

SPEAKER_01 3:30

How did that going you know, following that that incident, Greg, how did that shape your career, your outlook on the job, um, even even your personal even your life away? I mean, just whatever you're comfortable talking about.

SPEAKER_02 3:42

Well, I'll I'll tell you, you know, for those that know LA City Fire Department, Battalion 13 is a busy busy battalion.

SPEAKER_01 3:50

Can you can you let the viewers know where that's at and within the city?

SPEAKER_02 3:54

It's South Los Angeles. It's a southern southern part of Los Angeles, and it's a it's an extremely busy battalion. For the majority of my career, it's been the the the busiest battalion in the city. So going to structure fires isn't it's something that's new to them. You know, you've got you've got different battalions in the city that throughout the city they go to a lot of fires, but in particular battalion 13. So you get a lot of sets and reps. That that that battalion is designed to to teach you the fundamentals of firefighting. You get those sets and reps over and over and over. Coming into that fire, it was two o'clock in the morning, but we were busy that day, really busy that day, as every day was busy. But I remember specifically uh Joe going to bed, Captain P going to bed and goes, Hey Craig, you got the phones, it was eight o'clock because he was on a 72 and he had had a good working fire at 33 is the previous, the previous shift. So he goes, Hey, I'm kind of tapping out, I'm tired, I'm gonna go get some rest. And when we got that that that call at two in the morning, I figured I just made an assumption that we're going to a structure fire. And as we were coming in headed north on western, I could see a loom-up. And for the your viewers that don't know what a loom is, it's calling a smoke. Most people call it a header, we call it a loom-up. So as we get closer to that, we're here. We I hear Task Force 66 give the size up, and it's a one-story commercial, probably about 75, 55, 75 by 100. And um they gave it a size up that was uh moderate smoke showing. So we're coming up, so we knew we had a fire, and uh as we get on scene of that structure fire, I was ordered to back up engine 66. The thing about battalion 13 and and several battalions in the city is you can get companies on scene like right now. So you may be on scene for a second, but that that time clock of when other companies, the arrival, unlike most apartments, you're gonna have people on scene quick. So you get Task Force 66 on scene, you get engine 57 on scene, you're gonna get engine 46, you're gonna get engine 33, that arrival sequence is extremely fast. So why that's important, I'll tell you in a minute. But I remember giving the order to hey, back them up, grab an inch and a half. And um as I go through this and I explain it, I want to to kind of veer off a little bit. And as I go through, I want to talk about lessons learned because I think that's the most important thing. Because at the end of the day, on this particular fire, if we don't if we don't review what's been learned and that gets goes by the wayside, then it was all for not. Like my whole career, as I travel through this this incident, looking back 28 years later, I look at all the things that that I've tried to accomplish personally to become a better and safer firefighter. Um it's a lot. So as I go through this, I'm I'm gonna give you a quick kind of synopsis of that fire, and then I want to travel to through the rest of the you know, 28 years later. I'm gonna kind of try to fill those gaps in. But we get on scene of that fire, and um we were given back a fire attack. And I remember um hearing an engineer say that, you know, hey, we've been here before, it's a dogbone manufacturing company, and um there's large ovens in there, and typically the fire will start in these large ovens.

SPEAKER_03 7:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 7:25

So the reason why I bring that arrival time, why that's important, is because you have 66s on scene, you now have engine 57 on scene, you got 46s coming in out of the north, and you've got 33s coming in out of the east. So everybody's starting to arrive. And we've talked about this before, and you guys know kind of the gist of it. Forcible entry was delayed. We go inside, we can't find the seat of the fire. Um we end up getting to a point where and I and I'm I'm kind of shrink-wrapping the incident because I want to get into the lessons learned. I feel like that's more important, if that's good with you guys.

SPEAKER_04 8:05

Before you get into that, Craig, how many lines were going in that door, that man door, through that office area, and then to the back of the commercial area?

SPEAKER_02 8:13

You had you had four lines. You had engine 66, you had engine 57, you had engine 46, you had engine 33.

SPEAKER_04 8:22

And was that kind of simultaneous? As soon as the door got open, Craig, it kind of starburst into that. Yeah, everybody, how what was there any organization at that door where that somebody said, hey, 66 is the first here, we're gonna help them get that line in the back of this place, or at least moving.

SPEAKER_02 8:39

There was kind of like the order of arrival. You got you kind of just, hey, everybody had their hose lines going, and everybody had their hose lines established. And and the one thing that that I that I remember, well, I remember a lot, but the one thing that I remember specifically was as we're going when that man door finally got opened, and by the way, just on the uh on the back side on the Charlie side, on the Charlie, closer to the Charlie Delta corner, if you will, there was a roller, huge rolling steel door. Like had and ultimately that's where the majority of the fire was just just inside that that rolling steel door. So I know we tried to go uninvolved, involved when practical and most of the time, but that that proved to be critical. Because had somebody gone around, opened up that rolling steel door, bingo, there you would have seen it, right? The fire was 20 feet with inside that, maybe 25 feet. I'd have to go back and look at the report. It was close to that rolling steel door. So at the end of the day, you got all these companies going down this hallway, then it terminates into a warehouse. And then once you got into that warehouse, and the odd thing about there's specific things that I want to tell you about is when you when that door got opened in my mind, and I remember I only had three years in the job, so I had no real good working knowledge of reading smoke, no good working really knowledge of fire behavior. I've been to quite a few fires in a short amount of time on year, but that doesn't give you that level of experience, right? Your wisdom and your growth is is very methodical, right? So looking back now, 28 years later, man, every warning sign, every red flag that you could possibly have was there. When that front door, that man door got open, the smoke didn't come pushing out, it got sucked. And I remember crawling down that hallway with a hose line, and I had a piece, I had paper that was passing me. So that that fire was was sucking and drawing in. So looking back now, I understand what that was. But looking at the time, I just found it odd. That was one of those things that you'll never forget. It's like that's weird. You don't usually go into a search fire, taking a hose line down a hallway and have paper pass you, like getting drawn in it. And it was a deep-seated fire, and it was at the opposite end of the building. And ultimately, you have four companies in there, and there wasn't one company that got actual water on the fire.

SPEAKER_01 10:55

Craig, can I still about that?

SPEAKER_02 10:57

You sure can.

SPEAKER_01 10:58

I don't mean I'm not, I know you're trying to stay with your train of thought. No, no, no, no, no, no. Hey, hey, look, no, just ask, ask anything you want. No, I mark asking that question, and you and this is the first time I've heard, you know, four lines from four different engine companies. Uh I come from an organization when I came on the job, not so much anymore. And this is a good thing now, but back in the day it was extremely competitive. We were elbowing each other, stealing nozzles. There was a first line of the fire competitiveness with responding ninja companies. Did any of that, do you recall any of that kind of stuff, that mindset or that that that that energy happening at that narrow front door? Or was the pretty gentlemen going to our first, they're second.

SPEAKER_02 11:38

There's a little rival rival kind of sequence, but that was a mindset down there. If if if you went to a structure fire and you were the nozzle member and you didn't have that line between your legs, somebody'd still go and put the fire up. And it was a competitive rivalry. Yeah, and it's all good, but but yeah, that that at that fire, that that didn't happen, but that's in the back of your mind, right?

SPEAKER_01 12:02

So the only thing, you know, is is 33s and 57s and 66s coordinating with each other through that door. Hey, we're gonna go lever. You know, I mean, is there conversation happening, or is it just let's go?

SPEAKER_02 12:14

It's happening in my mind because being at a single engine, surrounded with 66s and 33s, man, I was petrified of those guys because they were really good firefighters. And the only thing in my mind was do not let this, don't give this nozzle up and go in and find the fire. You gotta smoke these guys. But I was petrified of those guys because they're really good. They had the reputations that had been borne out through years of experience. They, it's a proving ground, they prove themselves. So when I drilled the 33s, I was scared when I drilled the 60s because I didn't know anything. And I'm trying to learn from these guys, but the only thing that was going through my mind was do not do not let go of that nozzle and get in there and freaking find that fire and extinguish it. That's the only thing that I had in my mind, and I missed everything along the way because of that mindset. I gotta go from point A to point B and I've got to get water on that fire. And I miss so many things looking back, you know, after all these years, you know, we get in there ultimately. I'm gonna kind of shrink wrap that that incident into because I really want to spend some time, if you guys are good with it, of the lessons learned of all the things that that come from that. Um and uh we ended up the member, the building wasn't that deep. It was, I think maybe I think it's a 65, maybe 70 wide mark at the most, by maybe a hundred deep, it wasn't that deep. And we were in, I would say 50 feet, and uh it it it stood the heat. The first thing I did when I got into the warehouse is I took my hood off and and I kind of stood up to find where that thermal barrier was. I understood that, and and I didn't feel it. But as you started to travel through, and now I kind of understand the sequence of what's happening is once we opened up that front door and the roof, they're drawing, they're drawing 30-foot flame lights. And they had a head start on us because of the delay in forcible entry. And they had a head start on us, so that fire was ultimately getting fed, and when when that front door got open, that was the last thing it really kind of really needed. And when we got in there, it was amazing to me how fast the conditions changed. But I'll I'll say that with a caveat because if you study a lot of NIAS reports across the country, you hear that theme over and over. I think from going from start to finish, from the time I got through that front door till the time I actually came back out that hallway to that front door, it was a significant amount of time. In your mind, it feels like things are happening, but you're missing all the signs and symptoms. You're missing decreased visibility. So when we got in that warehouse, there was zero visibility. But the number one thing that was the telltale was the de was the increase in heat. And that started to happen at a at a pretty fairly rapid pace. But by the time we went from point A to point B and decided, hey, we're we can't find this thing, we're not gonna get it, that time temperature curve is already happening. But you're so focused in you're you're missing all that. I I it started getting hotter, but I wasn't really paying attention to that. I was so focused in on getting to the sea of that fire. And you gotta remember when that fire started ultimately, what the report said, and I agree with Chief Castro that there's no smoking gun of what happened to Joe. There's speculation that this happened, that there was a pass device, because at that time, those pass devices, you you affix them to your turnout code, you can take them on and off. That he he might have heard one from uh a proximity company that fell off somebody's turnout code and went to that. But there wasn't the last conversation I had with him, and I was the last person to speak with him, was hey cap, I can't find the seed of the fire. I think we should should we should regroup. Okay, good. And at that point it was starting to get really hot. So we had Mark II survivors, those were our SCBAs, and they were 30-minute bottles at best, and I was probably in the best shape of my life going there. And at best, you had 15, 16, 17 minutes of working time, maybe 20, if you weren't working that hard. But you're your time, that's that's stretching it, right? So as the heat, as it got hotter and as it got louder, and well, what I was gonna tell you was it's and here this is kind of pertinent to our our escape or our our travel back, is that that fire started in an oven. That these big ovens where they cooked dog bones and biscuits. And it what happened is that fire started up and it ran up through the ducting system. So when we got on scene, that fire was already into the structure. It was an arch truss roof, so it went from contents, if you want to call it that, into a structure for almost immediately, unbeknownst to us. So one of the lessons learned, uh, I'll share right off the bat because I don't want to forget this point, is when you get into a commercial building like that and you have a large ceiling, oftentimes things are happening up there that you're completely unaware of at ground level. Yeah, what was happening, the dynamics of the fire up top versus what was ground level, we were we just weren't getting the the byproducts of that just yet. It was starting to build towards that. So I remember as we decided to to kind of back out and hopefully get back to that hallway. It's about a 20-foot hallway that that led down. You had offices on either side, and then it terminated into a warehouse. Uh we were we're we were trying to get back to that. What what made that so difficult is as that fire was burning and as that fire was coming back down, you it it didn't resonate with me that that building had a I knew it had a mezzanine because we were able to figure that out on the inside, but I didn't realize what was happening was that fire was burning across the rooftop of those trusses and then it was burning down. So the closer we got to the exit, because I still had my hose line, I did not leave it, I had it, right? Then I had the nozzle because something at the time I didn't understand why I kept that nozzle, but I just felt like something was off. And I remember at the very basic level of uh fire fire behavior that right for life, right? I just for some reason that stuck with me. So I I chose not to drop the nozzle, and I had the nozzle. And as we got closer to that hallway, it got hotter, and I couldn't understand that because I knew we were going the right way. Ted was on the hose line, I was on the hose line, and at the time Joe was on the hose line, so I knew we were going the right way, but I couldn't understand why it was getting hotter the closer we got to that exit. Well, it turns out that everything on that on the messenger was lighting off, and I had run out of air shortly after we decided to to leave and retreat. It wasn't long thereafter because my low warn were like the low air warning bell was going off. So that was another reason in my mind. I was like, thank God, you know what? Because we're not we're not having any success in here. And I ended up having to disconnect at that time uh for Cam and Calling. We had the Mark II Survivor, so you had that second stage regulator that went into your regulator after face beats off. That that regulator was on your hip. They had that red riveted ring, right? So I remember playing this over in my mind. Prior to getting hired with LE City, I worked at Warner Brothers Studios. And Warner Brothers Studios was in Burbank and it had a single engine company, and it was a stepping stone for guys and gals to get on municipal fire departments, and we had Mark II survivor breathers there. So I remember I worked there for almost five years. Yeah, it was from 1990 until 95 when I got hired with LA City. I remember practicing that breather over and over. We had nothing but time. If we weren't doing movie standbys for fires and stuff, we just trained. And I remember LA City had those breathers, so I wanted to, especially the year out that I knew I was getting hired with LA City, I wanted to become as proficient as I could. Well, we had a build a building over there called the Mills, building 44. And this building was probably 25,000 square feet, and that's where they built all the props. It was it was huge. They had everything that was done for construction set stuff for the studios was built in this building. It had a basement in there. So we would do these basement drills where you would suck your face piece to your face, you run out of air and you practice your your um buddy breathing. So when all and going into the drill tower, um, I had that in my mind, I had an advantage because I was extremely familiar with that SCBA and I was able to throw fairly quick. So fast forward into the fire. So when I disconnected my face piece hose from my regulator, I had already had a system where I we have turnout on our turnouts, we have face piece pouches, right? That's where our face pieces are kept until we're we don't them and use them. I had already figured out in my mind that you disconnect it, put it in your pouch, and zip it up. That was my operation. If I suck my face piece to my face, that's what happened in that fire. So as we're leaving, the closer we got to the exit, which I knew was the exit, the hotter it got. And I didn't understand that. And that was kind of it was playing, it was playing mind games with you because it shouldn't be, you should be leaving the sea of the fire going towards uh uh an exit that's gonna provide you safety. And uh when we eventually got to that hallway, there was the one thing that that got us to that hallway was there was a uh we used to have these red hand lanterns that were lights, and there was the engineer had put one right by that doorway that led into the warehouse, and for some reason we were able to see that. Like to this day, it like if you did that a thousand other times, you probably would have never seen it. That one time, even The smoke, it was just call it divine intervention, call it what you want. I call it divine intervention, but that light was the single thing that led us to for sure know that we're going the right way. And what happened is that fire had burned down on that mezzanine. That was that when you walk through that doorway into the commercial building, that mezzanine went about halfway through the building. So everything on top of that mezzanine was lighting off. And obviously, the the flashover potential was starting to happen because that oxygen star fire was just fed fire. And ultimately that's what, yes.

SPEAKER_01 22:33

For the firefighters, I've I've I've popped quiz guys around the country. And can you describe what a mezzanine in LA, LA City would be typically what that is?

SPEAKER_02 22:42

Yeah, so a lot of commercials in Bataillon 13. I'd say a good majority of them have them. Well, Mark, almost every every commercial building in Bataillon 13 has a mezzanine. So you'll walk in, a mezzanine could be anywhere from seven, eight feet, and it's a it's a storage rack, but it's built in. So they'll build up a maybe it comes off the it comes off the wall, maybe six, seven, eight feet, and it's a storage rack that goes all the way around as far as they want it to go. It's just for storage. And they're fireman killers because if those things ever let loose and you're underneath one of them, and they've got a lot of weight on them, you're not coming out.

SPEAKER_01 23:17

So it's essentially kind of a half-assed second floor at the end.

SPEAKER_02 23:20

It's like kind of like a quasi-floor.

SPEAKER_04 23:22

You say second floor if you walk in on the alpha side. But but there is a law, right, that mezzanemes, if I'm not mistaken, can only be one one-third of the actual square footage of the storage area. Yeah. By law, right? By law. But that that I mean doesn't help, but the fact that there is something written that says that it can't cover that entire area by law shows you that they thought about some other things besides just, hey, they need storage.

SPEAKER_01 23:47

Copy that. Keep going, brother.

SPEAKER_04 23:52

Yeah, I got a question, Craig, before you get further. So you've ran out of air. And and at what point has Joe left you guys?

SPEAKER_02 24:02

The last conversation I had with him was, hey, I think we should regroup and I can't find the C far. He goes, Roger, let's go. And that was a lot. I I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 24:11

Okay, so I have a subtlety occurring, and you don't know that he has for whatever reason.

SPEAKER_02 24:17

Okay. I I I know that Ted's behind me, and I'm just I made an assumption that he was behind Ted. I had no idea. Got it. Okay. When we got to that, when we ultimately got to that, that from our our vantage point, we were probably halfway in that building. I'd say we were at least 50 feet. And when you went into that warehouse, it wasn't like you had a straight shot. It wasn't like you went this way and then you went this way. You had to navigate. There's 55-gallon drums, there was smaller drums, there's a lot of storage. So it wasn't like you had a clear path. It wasn't pack rat. It was just inventory of the building, right? Of their supplies. So it wasn't like it was clear cut. And I I remember um when we got into that hallway, it's kind of like a safe refuge. Um, I looked at uh our engineer and another engine captain, and I saw the other firefighter, but I didn't. I said, Where's Joe? Hasn't come out yet. What do you mean? And at that time, so right now looking back, that's Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. But at that time, we it was called Red Alert, and um we didn't practice that. I will I I got some of that in the drill tower and we talked about it, but it wasn't like regularly scheduled drills, it wasn't something that we just went over, honestly. So when I looked at the captain, it said red alert, you know, there was a delay in that. And and looking back now, if that incident was to happen tomorrow, if I was on duty, it'd be Mayday, May Day, May Day. This cat pulsing off of blah blah blah blah blah blah blah and my I'd give my hoo aware what's going on. But the the the red alert eventually got got called, and um it wasn't it wasn't two minutes, if that and I don't know, you know, two minutes now could be a minute and 30 seconds or a minute, but that whole building let off. I went out, got my bottle changed out, and I wasn't able. It was interesting, there's it's it's funny what you remember and the smells and the sights and the sounds, but the one thing that I remember, I I I took my SCBA off my back, got a new bottle, got it on, engineer put it on, and when I put my SCBA back on my on my back, I went back to turn on. I couldn't do it. I had to take it off to turn on. I have the strength, and I'm looking. And as soon as I got that bottle turned back on and was headed back in, that building lit off floor to ceiling. And uh they ended up ironically finding Joe on the back side on that Charlie side where that rolling steel door was, probably I don't remember, Mark, but the city report said probably 20 feet, 25 feet, opposite of where we were, opposite of the where we came in and the opposite end of the building. And um yeah, it's just so I guess the original question was what what did what did I do in my career and kind of how did that how did that affect you?

SPEAKER_04 27:23

How did that shape you as a fireman going forth? So before you go to that, let's talk about the three C's that you had mentioned earlier and and where you talked about continuity, right? There's one thing that was very obviously you had a guy come to your crew that had left the fire suppression part and went into the fire prevention part, right? Yeah, but but the complacency part of that, if you could just kind of speak to that, Craig, and and and I'm not, I know I'm putting you on spot, but uh I would say that everybody deserves to hear the things that didn't happen that you can't pinpoint, like Chief Castro said, we know what happened. That was it. But uh I always talk about when things start going shitty on the fire ground, it usually just starts as that little ball of snow going down a hill, and before you know it, it's an avalanche because these things always seem to interlock with each other, right? Let's talk about that. You guys went in, you saw fire, and you're saying, hey, they're saying pretty good column of smoke. You guys didn't stop and do what normal is what is that normal operation? The deviance of normalcy is what gets us in trouble. I think that's just my opinion.

SPEAKER_02 28:32

Yeah, well, well, starting from the yeah, starting from the beginning is like we didn't lay a line coming in. And it clearly saw smoke. We saw a LUM of them. And when we got on scene, we we came out of the out of the south. So looking at that building, I got to look at that Delta side, and I remember specifically there being five windows, and they're up high. So it wasn't something you're gonna climb out of if you got in trouble. But I remember seeing those windows, and I thought I saw a good amount of smoke in there as I as I we came in. And it's not like I was some seasoned guy that I was able to come in and look at this thing and and and start processing. I wasn't, I was young at three years on the job. I knew I was a nozzle member, and I had to freaking get that nozzle, get enough hose off to get in that building and go find the sea that farm and get a knockdown.

SPEAKER_04 29:24

Okay, so let's go. So you say didn't lay a line, which is a deviant from the normalcy, right? A deviant from normalcy. Okay, what's the next thing is the deviance in that line of of what happened to you guys? And I say that again, I can't, I wasn't there. I'm just trying to get this so guys understand that you can make two choices, and that's right or wrong when you guys go to fires, right? And if you're making the wrong choice, that may come back to bite you in the ass. So the second thing is what what line choice, Craig?

SPEAKER_02 29:55

At a minimum, it should have been a yellow line. It should have been an inch three-quarter. I can't ever see in a commercial building where an inch and a half is acceptable, ever. At a minimum, inch or three quarter. Now, did this did what was showing warrant two and a halves? I don't know. We gotta open it up and find out. But at a bare minimum, it should have been an inch three-quarter.

SPEAKER_04 30:14

Do you remember were the other lines on the floor inch and three-quarter by chance, Craig? I mean, do you can you can you recollect that?

SPEAKER_02 30:21

No, I I don't remember. I think there might have been one. Most of them was white hose. I I'd have to go back and not no, I don't remember. And so so so for I know there was at least one, but but there should have been a minimum of four.

SPEAKER_04 30:36

Right. And so so for for the viewers out there, the people listening, our inch and a half line is a 125 GPM uh spray nozzle, our inch and three quarter line is a 200 gpm spray nozzle, just to kind of give you some comparison there. The last thing I'll go into, and it's because we did our uh podcast and we received a um an email from a member that was also at that particular fire. And one of the things that sticks out of my head is him mentioning the fact that um he's talking about those drivers and and their role in the uh how these things work out. And call and I discussed it. And I think I've told Craig, I go, if you're at a single engine company and I don't care where you're at, you can be FDNY, you can be the middle of nowhere if your members aren't putting their stuff on and you don't have LA City, Houston, Philadelphia, or New York people responding to your incident. You, as that driver operator, are a lifeline for that crew that's operating inside. And God forbid something goes sideways on you. Uh, would you feel better just having to go throw a bottle on your back to make a difference versus take a brush jacket off and put a turnout coat on it and then put a bottle on your back? These are just things that and Guy points out a really good thing, and that is come prepared. Come prepared, right? To do the right thing. How many times you go to a fire and you get a chance to do the right thing, you get two choices, right or wrong, shortcut or the long road. That's so go ahead, Craig. I'm sorry to interrupt, but I just think they're good to bring up.

SPEAKER_02 32:11

Those are those are those are decisions that were made, and you know, yeah, looking back, it's it's that was no, that should have never white line shouldn't have come off of that far. No, no, it shouldn't have. And um we're talking about complacency or deviating from from normal SOGs.

SPEAKER_03 32:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:35

I I I think that we had time because of the delayed forcible entry, and that building wasn't that big. Absolutely, somebody should have gone to that backside and kind of seen, hey, what do we have? What do we have back there? They would have seen that huge rolling steel door. It's like bingo, we get a company working on that. That that changes everything because if that door would have been opened, they probably would have seen the sea the fire right there, right? And I I think the thing that bothers me more than anything, and kind of what drove my the rest of my career was I think Chief Capture Castle kind of touched on this. There's no smoking gun, but it was a dogbone manufacturing building. It's like who brought the victim to the fire? There wasn't most likely going to be a search and rescue outcome that you found somebody, right? It wasn't gonna happen there. It just was there wasn't a 704 placard with an A in the specific hazards that said artisan. So we got somebody living there. That's not that's not the case. The odds are they're not spending the night there. So search and rescue is probably not a high priority for that fire. It's it and they had previous fires, so I don't know if guard was down because hey, we've been here before. I got kind of got this thing. This is that one. It's it's almost like Regis Towers in Memphis, Tennessee. Those guys have been to that apartment house so many times, and that one uh automatic alarm or they weren't prepared or their their guard was down, or however that played out, is was like, there it is. This is the one that got them. And it's like you can't fire, fire doesn't discriminate. It doesn't see anything other than and how it plays out, right? So you always have to you always have to pay attention. You always have to treat it like any call that you go on that it's a working structure, fire onto UD. Otherwise. So when you go through that, you know, you there there is uh there is a a for lack of better term, there's a grieving period, there's a process because what I saw is a line of duty death will will tear an organization up because everybody wants to ask the one question, why? And they want answers to that. And sometimes there isn't an answer. And in this in this particular case, and and studying this for my whole career, there was there isn't, and I don't have an answer. I I I know that there's a lot of things that contributed to it, there's a lot of things that were missed, there's a lot of things that we would do differently, hopefully today in today's fire department, but there's not a single thing that you could point to and go, that was that was the leading cause. That that's what happened.

SPEAKER_01 35:23

And Greg, do you wish there was? Would it be would it be easier to deal with and process what went on if there was just like this, yeah, we didn't do that and that's happened, versus man, I don't know why he left the line. I mean, I and I'm not trying to impede No, no, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 35:38

I yeah, for closure purposes, I think I can only imagine what Joe's family has thought of all these years. And there's the closure piece for me, the only way to close that incident, because it's as much as your pot your bodies, your arms, and your legs, the only closure piece to me was what do I do with the rest of my career? And rather than carry that as a tragedy, it's how do we how do we learn from that and and try to eliminate it from happening again? And is it are we gonna have more line of duty? Yes, it is. But do we repeat the same mistakes? Could we kind of eliminate that out of the playbook and move forward and kind of learn from that in in in in hopes that we don't repeat the same thing? And and so that's kind of where I ventured off into my career. I realized, I realized a lot. I realized that I was inexperienced, I realized I didn't know firefighting, I didn't understand fire behavior, I had an okay understanding of building construction, but I wasn't able to put all the things together to become that complete firefighter. So I said for the next however long it takes, I need to surround myself with people that are way better than me. And that was everybody not battalion. That was a battalion 13 has always historically had really good firefighters and captains and officers because they go, they get the sets and reps, and and um, but I wanted to kind of just say, okay, I there's a lot I need to learn. How am I gonna accomplish that? And you know it's funny what what the immediate reaction is safety, safety, safety. After something like that. That's but what I've realized over the years is being an aggressive firefighter and safety, they don't the they're they're right in line, they're not opposites, they need to be parallels, and it took me a long time to figure that out because when you hear safety, it's now you become almost too cautious. You hear aggressive, I gotta get in there at all costs. Now you might become reckless. They go, they parallel, they don't oppose each other. And I think people often miss that.

SPEAKER_00 37:57

That's so critically stated.

SPEAKER_02 37:59

I think people often miss that. It's like, so what do you mean? You mean making decisive decisions. When you first get on scene, you make a decisive decision. Well, whatever that decision is, it's got to be decisive. You have to go in and aggressively try to find the seed of the fire to put that fire out. You have to initiate a primary search. A search has to take place. Effective ventilation is happening while all this is going on, and then you take calculated actions to mitigate that problem. And then you drive it into safety. So that's your aggressive piece, right? These are 20 years gone, 20 years of kind of just wrestling with this. Understanding risk before taking them. And I think that's where we lose it. You understand that calculated risk that you're gonna take. You're looking at that building, you're trying to say, what is it? Is it a pre-33? Is it a tilt up? Is it a lightweight? There's a there's a thousand things that are going through. As the first due officer, you come in, kind of give a windshield size up, you get out, you're putting your axe on, you go back to the compartment, you get your SCPA, and you're turnaround, and you're what did I miss? Has anything changed since I've gotten out of the rig? Do I need to update the companies coming in? Making and understanding that risk before you act on it. And I think we miss that. I think that people don't understand sometimes the the amount of risk that they're about to take. And is it is it, you know, that's where we kind of tie in that risk first game type thing, and maintaining crew continuity and integrity. So I'm kind of I'm kind of jumping around a little bit, but I'm I'm kind of going down through what I deem that was my aggressive, and now I'm kind of diving into my safety. Maintaining that crew integrity and continuity, I think that starts at the fire station in the morning. Because more in the last few years in my career have I worked with other people, people I don't know, people I've never seen, people from different battalions, different divisions, different bureaus, right? So that crew continuity starts in the morning. When you start kind of walking through some SOGs, hey, hey, glad to meet you. This is kind of what we do here. This is kind of what our SOG is. If we get a fire, we're gonna do A, B, C. You know, you could spend 14 hours going through every incident, but you have to have some type of continuity in the morning. So when you get that incident, everybody's kind of quasi on the same page, and you can kind of make sure that everybody is when you're when you're developing your operation, but that starts in the morning. Is it important on scene? 100%. You have to have that crew accountability and crew crew continuity. But I think that starts in the morning because we're with our staffing model the way it is, that creates challenges. That creates challenges because the your company continuity that you train with, that you deal with on a daily basis, is now broken. And I think that's a huge, huge problem. Now, that person that comes from another fire station could be a superstar. I don't know. But it may be a third house rookie, maybe a kid that's got four days on the job that got recalled to your fire station. So now you've got you've got to kind of tighten that up in the morning. I think following established SOGs is huge. I kind of think people kind of deviate from that. And I kind of see on some of the near misses like you have established SOGs for a reason. Every May Day, every SOG, every every accountability system via like, I don't know what you guys use calling at your department. We have name tags on the rig, and you'll have the different positions. You'll have that name tag and a name and rank next to it. So you got Maydays, you've got SOGs, you've got accountability systems, you've got communications. All of that has been put in place because somebody died. If you think about it, all the SOGs and all the things that we do, that somebody paid the ultimate price for that.

SPEAKER_01 41:58

I think what you just said right there is lost on the newer members. It's lost. They think these things are all there just because some chief dreamed it up. Yes, every morning, 99% of the stuff on the rig, and I mean, I think they uh I'm so happy you said that because that is lost on our newer members. They think it just happened out of poof, thin air. No, no, died.

SPEAKER_02 42:25

No, and and and and I think that going through that safety, understanding the risk before, maintaining that crew continuity and that integrity. And I think one thing that that is huge that I can go back to uh the Western Fire was monitoring monitoring changing conditions. That I think was the number one thing that that got us into trouble is that the conditions were changing, and and I don't understand today because if you look at the people that were on the fire, there is a ton of experience. A ton of experience.

SPEAKER_04 43:04

Can I say something about that, Craig? Yeah. Just and I I know you know that. However, don't people don't mistake time on a job for experience. Please don't do that. But and and and definitely don't mistake a member's assignment for experience too, because uh I just my personal experience, and I'm sure you guys have seen it too. Just because he's been somewhere busy does not mean that you have taken that experience level with you when you go somewhere else, or as you further into your career. Because it's uh I've seen guys all you hear this, oh, this guy's awesome, right? I I hear that all the time. Hey, yeah, he's awesome when we go to fires. Uh what the fuck does that mean? Uh what does that mean? He's not he's not passing on his experience level to these other guys, he's not partaking in the normal training of the op you know of the company. Uh so I I would just say that's a good thing to point out, but I would also say Uh know that just because somebody wears a number on their helmet does not make that person experienced at the level that they're at. Just keep that in mind.

SPEAKER_01 44:08

Well well, there was a saying uh you got a 20-year guy that's repeated his first year, 20 years.

SPEAKER_04 44:14

Right. And I and I I know that happens where you get a guy that just kind of augers in, right? And nobody will be the guy that walks up to him and goes, You don't provide anything for us. What why the fuck are you here? You you don't bring anything to the table other than, hey, when we go to fire, he does his job when it's like fuck. I mean, that's how what what percentage of that is is the fire service? Three, five, maybe ten if we're really stretching it? There's a lot more involved in it, right? And and I think that's something to point out, especially the younger guys. And I I know we're kind of we had said that somewhere in the conversation, but I think the other thing that really matters to me is when you're talking about complacency. And remember, when you're in that academy, what are you learning? You're learning the basic operations. So day one, when they set you into the field, you know that this particular agency brings water to the fire. And that the expectation is you don't get a choice of the three lines there. At a minimum, if it's a bling on fire, that yellow line will come off the rig. There are caveats. However, if you can remember those two things, we're gonna bring water the incident. And the second thing is you don't get to pick the fucking hose line. You don't get, you default to what they trained you on, right? You fall back to your level of training. And if that thing has been beaten in your head by that academy, and further on, as you start to develop by in-service training, walking in and going, show us the good things that happen at fires, but also let's not be afraid to pop up the bad things that happen at fires and let's address those because we need to address them so that we don't get another line of duty death or a person that's severely injured. And that I mean, I think that's missing the mark. We're talking about Castro last week. We're talking about this with you, Craig. And I'm just going, you know, the fact that guys deviate from policy, policy is for us. It is. It's an inch and three-quarter line. It's laying a line to a fire if you have smoke. How many times does that happen now? Fuck, they're deviating from it right off the bat. So now you're already behind the eight ball when you pull the brakes. Go ahead, dude. I'm sorry. I just no, no, you're right.

SPEAKER_02 46:20

And you know, one thing that there was a whole bunch of things, Colin, that that identified Cam after that fire was I I knew that I wanted to be better. I needed, there's a whole litany of things that I needed to learn. I'll tell you an interesting story that not many people know. And this I'm not so sure has ever happened before, but let's just call it four or five, six months after that, after that incident, the operations commander shows up to our fire station. I'm about ready to pee my pants because he wants to see me and I'm like, Man, he did uh you don't ever hear that, right? The operations commander didn't show up to the fire station, and uh he's since passed away, but he he sat me down in the front office and says, Hey, I think you need to leave here. And I'm like, why? Because I think it's time to leave. He goes through his explanation. Basically, what he was alluding to is, hey man, I think you should get out of this environment and go somewhere else. And he goes, I'm willing to transfer you to anywhere in the city to get you out of here. He said, Well, I appreciate that, sir, but with all due respect, I said I don't want to go somewhere and bump somebody out. So there's one place I have in mind that I would like to go. And he goes, Where is that? And I said, Fire station 11. And he about look, I thought he was gonna pass out when he said the user, are you out of your mind? I said, No, no, I said no. And and the reason I said that, there's a reason, and it wasn't because I had worked there, but prior to getting on the job, I'd studied LA City. I wanted to be an LA City fire, and that's it. Everything else was was secondary. So I'd studied and researched, and there's a lot of great fire stations on our uh in the city of Los Angeles, but that one stood out in particular, and they said, Someday uh I want to go there and work, and I had the opportunity. So he goes, Are you serious? I said, Yes, sir. So he calls secretary and goes, Hey, is there a vacancy? There happened to be a vacancy on 11C. Just so happened. I mean, it kind of worked out. I was like, You're kidding. He goes, Okay, you're effectively transferred, and that doesn't happen. And I think I had what, Mark, four or five shifts or four or five days before I was getting transferred. Or so as soon as I got off duty, I went to Fire Station and said, Hey, I got bad news. Here I am. This is I'm your your new guy. And I started trying to learn the inventory and kind of, but it it was an interesting story because that doesn't that never that never happens. They don't just office chief doesn't show up and say, Hey, where do you want to go and you get transferred? It just so happened there happened to be a vacancy there.

SPEAKER_01 48:46

So can I say, can I give whoever that that man was? That is so um, I don't know how you I don't know how you feel about it, Craig, but for the operations bureau commander to be plugged into his members, down to the level of I'm concerned about this young fireman having gone through that, getting him out of there, and I don't know his motivations, but they sound like they were genuine. No, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 49:17

No, it was it was probably based on a phone call, Colin. Probably, probably somebody had said, but there's another interesting thing that happened uh a few years after the fact is I went to a fire. I had I've been so I got let me back up. I got assigned to fire station 11, and the one thing that I appreciate, and particularly and and Mark, is that I wasn't coddled there. I showed up to that fire station. It was either my first or second shift, I think it was probably my first shift. The whole task force is in there and they said, Hey, tell us about the Western Fire, go through your go, just let's basically get it off your plate, let's let's go through this, talk about it. And that and it was like, it's go time. We're gonna teach you how to be a firefighter.

SPEAKER_01 50:04

So to be clear, people are listening, you went from 57s to Mark's task force.

SPEAKER_02 50:11

Yeah, specifically his shift. Didn't know him, but my first introduction to him was I got to the fire station, I think it was 5 15, and he was already there smoking a cigar and on the side of the handball court, which is outside building where fire escape balcony set up. He's smoking a cigar and he says, You're gonna throw here, here, here, and here. And I'm like, You've got to be kidding me, man. I should have listened to the I should have listened to the T. But that started my it was it was a beauty too, man, because we went on through ladders. But it was a beauty because they didn't coddle me. I didn't need coddling, I needed wisdom. I needed people to teach me. Here I am, send me, so now teach me, right? I need to know how to be a good engine man before I can ever become a good truckman. And I needed to know just the basic fundamentals, but I was doing it in a very complex district, and I knew that the challenges that we're gonna be faced there from ground ladders to aerial ladders to hose-lay development, was if you could do it there, you could probably do it anywhere in the city. And that was to me had been the biggest blessing in my life because going there to accrue people that I didn't know and to have them not coddle me, but to say, hey, look, we're gonna teach you. If you're willing to learn, you're gonna have to put the work in. We're not gonna hold your hand and bring you along. You have to put the work in, you have to take the time to want to develop yourself, but we're here to show you, and that's kind of how it played out for um teen years there, and then um in that process, I I got involved with um training and got to go down to the drill tower as a peer grouper. I took a year out of my my stay at 11s and got details at the drill tower, and then on the caveat that I'll I'll give you two or three classes or however that plays out, but I'd like to go back to my spot and they honored that, which is kind of cool. So I went down there as a peer grouper and got to to share some experience with the new recruits, which is extremely important because that's the first exposure to the fire department is your drill tower. And and I don't know that we take that as serious as serious as it needs to be taken because that that's where you shape and mold the minds and and and the and and and and kind of develop. Yeah, are they gonna come out? Well, experience no, but they're gonna come out with the fundamentals that are flawless. Like Mark said, they're not gonna deviate, they're gonna default back to what's right because you show what's right in that drill tower, right? And I know that the current drill master, I know those guys down there, they're doing some good work, and their hearts are in the right place, right? So hopefully they continue to to work hard and and uh developing our young staff that's coming out, but it's interesting how many things go through your mind of how many areas of expertise that you don't have that you want to become proficient in. You know, after after you kind of digest that fire and look at all the things that could could be different today if we if we ran that that fire again from forcible entry, from host selection to just everything, right? You kind of kind of take it all in. I devoted my life to just trying to be better at all assets. I I got off the island of LA City. I went out and I took classes, I started traveling kind of going around the country and just trying to get anything and everything I could. But really, at the end of the day, it's about Fire Station 11 really kind of changed everything for me because there was a lot of wisdom and a lot of experience. And that first two district requires your 100% undivided attention every second of every day. There's nothing that's easy there. I don't think I ever threw an easy 35 um ground ladder there ever. There was just no, there's no routine. Everything required thought and attention and seriousness. And we treated every incident as a structure fire. And I think part of the reason why we're struggling with ground ladder placement today is we've lost that task force going on automatic alarms. You come in hot, this is a structure fire until you deem it unnecessary that it isn't. You got 35s going up, you got aerial ladders going up, you got inch companies hope back. Everything's happening, right? That was a free time to practice your craft and develop it. And that's why we got good at ground ladders there. Well, not only do we train on it, but almost every call required you to throw one. For years, Colin, for years, my only goal at the end of this thing, whenever I decided, hey, I'm kind of um want to promote, I wanted to be an operator. I wanted to be an AO more than anything. And kind of screwed myself on that one. I didn't study hard for the written. I did really well in the practical. Oral didn't go as probably as smooth as it could have. Um, and that was that was me do undoing that. But at the same time, um they promoted off that list, and I wasn't one of the guys that there wasn't many people that got promoted. I probably should have done way better on that, but um I lacked the oral interview skills at that time. Let's just leave it at that. But I'd made the decision, and that was with 17 years on the job. So through these 17 years, you know, at one point I got picked up for the fire ground in 09. I got picked up to be part of, and it was just by happenstance that I was at in-service training for some we were doing some type of training. And hey, go over and check out this fire ground survival thing that LA County's kind of putting together, and that was kind of how I got into the fire ground survival cadre that is uh through the IFF that that was kind of born out of LA County. And that that program throughout the years, I really believe is is definitely helped me for sure, but it's it's a it's a program that's definitely saving lives. And um I got involved in that. I ended up, you know, one thing that Mark and I talked about at great lengths over the last I don't know, several months or even years is what came from the Western Fire specifically? What was born from that incident? What did we do as a fire department? Well, we we went from red alert, which that was basically essentially our main, we went to emergency traffic. We we ended up having we have a memorial center that's our smoke recognition training program, which is awesome. That's that was started, and I was a COD remember that for probably five, six, seven years, maybe even a little bit longer. Did a lot of burns. Um we we went from emergency traffic. Well, we transitioned from emergency traffic in 2014 to Maybe, but that was solely based on the fire ground survival program that we were teaching. But there were some things and there were some positive changes, I think, that that kind of stemmed from it. But um you look at you look at the department as a whole, and we're still making some of the same mistakes. And it was an interesting thing for me because when I didn't make AO, I was kind of crushed, man. Because that's kind of over all those years, I was really I I left of eventually left fire station 11 in 2005 and went down to fire station 33. And it was an incredible experience, man. It was kind of weird. I went from 57s, 11s back down to 33s, and it was it was uh kind of felt like um all the guys on our shift at Fire Station 11 had promoted out and it's kind of kind of different, and uh had a chance to go back down to Fire Station 33 and I ended up spending 10 years there, and it was an incredible experience, more learning, more growth, the great guys around us. Our crew was essentially together for 10 years down there, and that's hard to do and hard to keep. And I got to a point where I felt like I wanted to study for Captain, not because I knew it all, not because I went through a line of duty death, not because I felt like I'd arrived, but I understood the consequences when things go wrong. I understood that leadership matters, I understood that training matters, I understood that culture is important, and I didn't want to, I wanted to try to influence those and not leave it in the hopes that somebody else would. So I decided to study for captain. And I kind of made it, and it was I was like, wow. And um, but that was a long process because when you go through a line of duty death, once you get through the grieving stages, there's a grieving stage, and you know it turned into an alcohol stage. Well, that's not the smartest thing to do, treat depression with a depressor, right? So that didn't work. So once you navigate through all those things, and you you're kind of you you kind of isolate yourself, it's kind of a weird, it's hard to explain. And if you've never been through it, you and I think part of the problem on our job is thank God, not many people have experienced that, right? But our national average, and I think Chief Castro, I think he brought it up, was you know, you go back 20 years, it's 60 to 100 guys, 80 to 100 guys a year. We're still doing the same thing, minus 911, right? You take that because that was an obvious spike in the line of duty desk per year. If you take that out, we're still doing the same number. And then the question is, why? Why are we still doing that? And I I don't understand that, but we're we're trying to at least through the fire ground survival program, I really believe that it's made an impact because of May Day. Mayday's now at the forefront of a lot of people's mind. If before it was never at the forefront of my mind, now it's something that I'm prepared to call if I have to call it. It's something that we train to, and and those skills that you learn in that program are amazing. But I always default back to if we do the fundamentals, we don't, we, we don't. I think people, I think one of the problems on our job is people are promoting for the wrong reasons. There is, there is, when you when you promote the operator or you promote the captain, there's a burden. There's a there's a there's a there's something that goes with that that's bigger than you. You know, I look at I look to my left, my engineer, wife, two kids, the the two amazing guys that sit behind me, wife, two kids. So I essentially have six people that I'm kind of looking out for. I have the guy next to me, the two in the back, but they're families. Right? I don't ever want to go to them and go, I made a mistake. People don't understand the catastrophic outcomes of a bad decision. A bad decision on the fire ground doesn't just if I make a bad decision as an officer on the fire ground, it doesn't just affect me. There's a lot, the downstream effect of that is the whole fire ground. The used commander may have to change his or her playbook now because of a a poor decision that was made. Now we've got a company that's in trouble by a poor decision. The thought process, people don't understand the the burden that goes into being if you if you're gonna do it full heart wholeheartedly, right? If you're gonna go all in, there's a burden that comes with that. It's not a spot to rest because you're getting crushed on a fire company, you're getting crushed on an ambulance. Hey, I want to become that guy or gal that goes like this. Well, it doesn't work like that. You take on this responsibility as an operator, you take on this responsibility as a captain, that means it's bigger than you. It's it there's a lot more at stake. The decisions you make affect a whole lot more people than just yourself. And I don't think people understand that. I don't think they grasp that. And I look at training, you know, I was assigned in-service training throughout those years, too. And the way our in-service, and this is important, the way our in-service training division works is you have I I oversaw our leadership program. So now, now right now it's it's a it's an AC, a BC, uh, a captain two, and I think there's five or six captain ones. Each captain, so for your audience, captain ones are engine captains, captain twos are truck or ladder captains. So you have that captain two that's kind of overseeing the captain ones. And so I was in charge of our our leadership program. Then you have a DMV coordinator, then you have a smoke recognition coordinator, then you have a CICCS coordinator, brush, and all the quals that go along with that, then you have a target solution coordinator, and then you have somebody that's kind of quasi in there for funding. I think that's one of the positions now. And I think that all those people that are assigned there have those living, breathing things that they're doing every single day. And our in-service training division is in charge or charged with training our fire department. And the one thing that I tried to get done when I was kind of overseeing the leadership program, which I think would make a huge, a huge benefit for in-service training, is if in-service training was brought out from under the umbrella of training and support bureau and put under directly under EOPS emergency operations. I think that section would be much more beneficial to the membership because you directly report all your essential people that you're serving from in-service training under EOPS. And I think there's so many different people. If a document needs to come out or policy or procedure needs to be reviewed and redone, it just takes so much time to get it done. I think if they move that uh in service training under EOPS, it added five or six more people, and it could be subject matter experts, that could be firefighters, it could be AOs, it could be engineers, it doesn't have to be an officer. I think we'd be much more successful in our delivery of things that we want to get out because in service training, I know the guys that are down there, they're amazing. They're working hard, they're they're working a lot, but there's only so much they can do in a day. And there's so many things that we're tasked with that we kind of have to tighten up on our job. There's a lot of trends. The trends that I've seen for the last year or two is even a couple years is basement guys and gals falling into basements and getting in trouble. There's gaps that we need to tighten up on our job that it's almost literally impossible to task in service trainer to do it because they don't have the manpower. They don't have the people. They need more people. But I think by by bringing them under the banner of EOPS would significantly reduce the time frame of getting documents out and training.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:34

I think there's a draw pipeline to what's really going on on your fire grounds.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:38

Yeah, and and I think our new EOPS commander, Chief Alvarado, I think he knows it better than anybody because he was in a near miss that very easily could have turned into a fire fatality. That could have been a line of duty death. You're talking minutes, right? I think his heart's in the right spot. I think he gets it, right? So if in-service training went underneath that that flagship of EOPS, I think it would make a world of difference. And and and you know, I don't know that I'll ever see in my career, and they may laugh at me and think I'm a fool, but I think just based on my own experience of being there and being involved in that, um, it's not about it's not about the people. We have great people, great people try to gravitate to those certain spots and they want to make a difference. But typically when you get into training, people want to to do the right thing, right? Once in a while, somebody will sneak in there with uh trying to pad the recipe. But I for the most part, that's that hasn't been my experience. People have a passion, they want to make the fire service better. And um I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:36

Well, there's more people sitting here, and and I would say this just for you, Craig, and that's like you make a very keen observation, and I look at it as a as a even more focal point and go, what does in service mean? What does that mean? Does that mean driver's licenses? I don't think so. That's just Mark, right? Does it mean driver? I don't think so. It's in service training, it's in service. Of what we're doing, move that DMV shit somewhere else. Give it to and focus on the things that we do good, but more importantly, the things that we're not doing so well. Right? Because you can become a specialized fire department with all the target solutions and hazmat and all those things. And I don't I'm not discounting those things. I'm not. But they are very few and far between. And when we decide that the basics, we can just go, well, what we think they're going to do it okay, but film after film shows that we're not. What do you think that that the focal point of that particular era in service training should be? And that is, for me, is let's get the things that are going right and make sure people understand this was a good operation, but let's not be afraid to step out in the weeds and go, that was not so good. And we need to address that so that people understand that it's unacceptable. Back to your point of I'm the captain and I'm responsible for this guy and his entire family. Do that times four. And then do something shitty on the fire ground and go, now I'm affecting the other guys that are operating here. So make that on a grander scale. And I'd say the worst thing in the world for me would have to be a chief officer have to go and knock on somebody's door and tell them, hey, either your loved one is severely maimed or they just didn't make it, and go, how does that trickle down? You know, you took it as a totally different thing, right? In your head, it's like, this is what I'm doing. I got to make myself better. Not everybody reacts that way. Some people have checked out. I get it, because I've never been in that position. But when I'm looking at this and going, what are we doing? And why are we not putting an emphasis on these incidents that we're watching continually, day after day, every day we do it and we don't correct that course, we're that much closer to a line of duty severe injury or line of duty death. And for me, back to in-service means that's what they should be focusing on.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:59

You know, we, you know, as I look at the the department as it sits, you know, we've had a lot of near misses in the last few years. And the the next step is a line of duty death. If we're just being real and honest, there's only so many chances you're gonna get with the near misses. Your luck's gonna eventually run out, if that's what you want to call it. You're you're going, you're setting yourself up for another line of duty death. And and it's it's so simple. It it's really kind of easy because if you just go back, you know, kind of the basics, I hear that all the time, but uh look, fundamental firefighting. If you're the first new engine and you see smoke, there's two yellow lines coming off that fire engine. One from the rear that's going to a hydrant, and one that's coming off the transverse bed that's going into the to the uh the the fire. If you're the so you secure a water supply and and you secure the appropriate development of a hose lay that's going into that structure, whatever size diameter line is appropriate for that. Now, I get for some of your listeners across the country, securing a front water supply as a first two engine company may be difficult. That first two water supply may be three-quarters of a mile behind you. I get that. But eventually you're gonna have to secure a water supply. But for LA City Fire Department, that's not the case, right? That first two truck, that first two ladder that gets on scene has to, at minimum, if the building warrants it, which most do, an aerial ladder with two ground ladders coming off. It used to be when I was a when I was a young firefighter, you used to almost be able to walk around a building via a ground ladder. There's so many up there. And for some reason, it's kind of wave. You see a first-in truck company throw their aerial ladder, you might get a ground ladder. The second truck in should mimic that that operation, right? And there should be two more ladders. So hypothetically, within the first two truck companies, you should have a minimum of two area ladders and a minimum of four ground ladders. I I don't know. When practical, right? That that's not always the case. I get it. There's buildings where that can't happen, but more often than not, that can. And I get that that second truck has an assignment, whether it's a division, whether it's to go up on the roof and assist with them, however that plays out, but you still have an obligation to support that first in truck with ground ladders. You still have an obligation to support that that first end truck with an area ladder.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:23

It's called firemanship, though. That that's I mean, that's what this is all about. It's called firemanship, right? It's prevent things on the on the way in versus reacting to them and having to pull out. It is control what you can control, right, Mark? Yeah, it's I mean, you can do all those things, right? The only thing we can't control is a fire. Like the the the Western fire. Hey, what is it, two o'clock in the morning? Down the major boulevard, not in the neighborhood. So what's the likelihood of somebody discovering that, right? They're two and down the street, other than no, so I'm going home. It's two in the morning. So this thing gets to build a head of steam that was in the ductwork originally, and what happens? It's been gone for so long when you guys get called that it it breaks out of that ductwork. And then the Fraser thing is all the things that happen, right? The VC locks himself out of his vehicle. The fireman, whoever that was, takes longer than expected to get the door open. All these things were the thing that started off with a snowball and then it went downhill and turned into an avalanche. All these things contribute to that. And if you're not focused on basic operations, uh, especially in your catch-up mode, right? I I hated driving and go into an incident and get call instructors like I'm gonna pull over and put my coat on. I hated it, I hated doing it, but it's like fuck when I get there now. When I'm in a hurry for mark, I start skipping spots. And uh I I think that happens a lot. And I think it's uh being allowed to happen with these companies that respond on scene, not not just here, everywhere. You watch these films and it's like you can almost predict, right, what's gonna happen next and why it happened.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:02

Greg, your time at 11 Task Force 11 C with Mark and those guys, how did that, what was that experience like in terms of your growth, um, your your fire, ground IQ, firemanship, I mean, the rest of your career, the trajectory, how did that do for you?

SPEAKER_02 1:12:17

Uh I was just honestly clawed, I was stunned at how much I didn't know. And I knew I didn't know much, but that is a such a complex first-in district. And it's complex because you got buildings on hills, you have pre-33s, you have pre-43s, you have pre-60s, you have high-rise, you have hillside home, you have everything under the gamut, and everything is accompanied by wires, overhead obstruction. So learning how to throw an aerial ladder there is is is extremely difficult, right? Learning how to take up 35 off the the fire truck and get it up into some very precarious places sometimes is challenging. And just I think there's a whole bunch of things that I learned there, but spotting apparatus, how critically important that is. Spotting apparatus is so important, and I think we've kind of lost that too. You see some of the spots of some of these apparatus, you're like, brother, what are you thinking, man? It's like so it took my firefighter IQ, and it took me a long time. It there is this this process went on for years. This wasn't overnight, it wasn't like, hey, in six months I arrived. We're talking seven years later. I'm kind of seeing the seeing the fruits of my labor. And it was a long time, and it wasn't because I was an idiot and it took me forever to learn, there was just so much to process. And and and that's why I wasn't ever sure that I was ever gonna promote, but I definitely was in no hurry because I felt like there was so much I needed to learn. There's so much nice. I often see people that are in such a hurry to promote, and I get it, you're getting your teeth kicked in, but stop. You gotta understand if you're going to be in that position of leadership. Leadership is a senior firefighter, leadership is an operator, leadership is a is a is an officer. It's like, hey man, all those positions of leadership, some of the best leaders I've ever seen never wore bugles and they weren't a driver, they were the senior firefighter. The best, best, some of the best leadership are the in informal ones, if you will. But as you promote up, things don't get easier, they get harder. And I just was not in a hurry. I just said, hey, if I never promote, I'm I'm okay being a firefighter. This is the backbone, the backbone of the fire service is firefighters. We've lost that. You don't see senior firefighters. I'm blessed right now to have two of them sit behind me at my current assignment. My only regret is I didn't work with the guys that I work with now earlier on in my career. I caught them at the end of my career, the last four or five years. And I regret it because they're they're they're amazing. They're well-rounded, they're they're incredible guys. And they're both guys that aren't going to promote. And they're okay with it. Could they? Could they have been drivers and been outstanding? 100%. Would they have made great officers? 100%. They love what they do. And it's like they're the tailbone and the backbone of our fire department. They're the foundation that makes us successful. It's them. It isn't me with the red helmet, it's them. And I understand and I appreciate that every day how much I love these guys and what they go through and and how hard they work and what they're willing to do. And it's just, you know, 11s was was it was life-changing. And it was extremely difficult. There was there were days that were long days because you kept throwing ladders until you got it. It kept going up, it kept going up, and kept going up. And we'd walk roof after roof, after roof after roof after, and we'd take everything up like it was a fire. It wasn't, hey, we threw an area ladder, came back down. We took everything up like we're going to a fire, breaking the roof kid. Hey, we're going to do this, and this penthouse door. And everything was just over and over and over and over, and it never ended. And then that was just training. And every call that you go on, now it's it's the they get automatic alarms. We used to get a lot of a lot of automatic alarms. And that's where you really saw the fruits of your labor bear out because if now you you take all the training that you've done and you apply it on those incidents, whether it's smoke showing or whether there's nothing showing, you're still doing the same thing. Uh we happened to get we got some great fires. We had some great fires when I was there, and I remember one that stands out. It was classic. I don't know if you remember this one, Mark. I'm sure you do. It was Halloween night and it was on a wrapaho. It was a two-story craft.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:33

I've seen this video, by the way. I've seen this video.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:36

Yeah, you know. But you know what's funny about that, Colin? Is we took a beating on that. And we did a good job on that fire. Oh, you mean you took a beating from people, not the fire? No, we took a beating. The fire chief called down and goes, What the hell are those idiots doing on the roof? And and the classic thing is is truth be told, is I was scared to death, but I trusted Mark's wisdom and experience. That was one of the first roofs and might be the only roof to this day that I was on where it was vibrating because the pressure was so great. I've never been on a roof that was that was vibrating.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:12

Set the stage, Greg, set the stage.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:14

Well, it and it was interesting about that because I don't make you know give too many props to Mark's head's gonna blow up even bigger, but that was a hundred-foot throw. And if he was off by six inches, we don't make that roof line. So the fact that he made that throw, it was freaking awesome. But when and we took in the rain. In the rain, poor rain. Couldn't get the soft started. Hey, you wouldn't get the software. It was awesome. But the cool thing about that is one of the engineers that at my occurred in assignment, he's on a different ship. He was on engine 13 that day and he was a nozzle member. And he said the ventilation that we ended up providing for them was able, you know, they were able to get up there, and it was night and day. Once we got that roof lifted up off of them and got some of that smoke and heat. And it was interesting because I went from being scared to death, but trusting everything that he was doing because I knew that Mark had that wisdom and experience, to kind of, he goes, Hey, let's go, it's time to go. And it was the right time. It was just one of those things. And and I look back on that and I'm I go, that's the kind of level that I'm trying to achieve. Uh a very talented, very, very wise firefighter, and that only comes with experience. You can't expedite experience. But what you can do is put yourself around people that do have it, that can share it with you. And then when you get incidents like that, put it into play. And I and that that stands out for all the reasons that we said, but it was more of it was just uh some good work. That was one fire that I'll never forget because we're not only effective with our ventilation, but all the idiosyncrasies of that's where you I realized coming down after the fact that if you're not taking your operator job seriously, you don't make that throw. You miss it. It was every bit of a hundred feet. Am I right on that, Mark? You had what, maybe one rung there? It's every bit of a hundred feet, and it was setback, and that's where I learned another valuable lesson. Calling a cam is that the height of your building obviously will eat your error ladder up, but it's the setback that's very unsubt. That you won't, if you're not paying attention to the setback, that's where you lose that that uh extension. A lot of lessons learned. Every every day I went to work, I learned a thousand, you know. It was it was it was life-changing for me because when I went down to 33s, I felt like I was a more prepared firefighter and another amazing task force, an amazing group of guys. Um yeah, I just felt like I was better prepared to serve them. I I brought more to the table because now we're we're 10 years, 11 years past that incident. I felt like I was prepared. I wanted to go back down and engage and be part of something special. And I felt like 33s was was gonna be something special, and it was.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:02

And I just um I'm I'm very curious, Craig. You went from busy task force, 11s, 33s, going seeing a lot of work, challenging work. Um, what was it like kind of making that decision as you promoted? Or you know, however, you ended up going out to engine eight, correct? Is it engine eight?

SPEAKER_02 1:20:22

No, no, when I promoted, I went to engine seven, and it was interesting because engine seven was old 81s, right? We moved out of that fire station into a new station and they and they turned it into engine seven. That's a busy engine. Where's that? That's in uh Panorama City. Yeah, our Lita area.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:44

Or the light going from task force to single engine.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:48

It was weird. And I didn't really know much about uh I didn't know any of the guys. I'd never seen or heard of any of the guys, and boy, did they turn out to be an amazing group of guys, but I I didn't know anything really about the district, and I didn't know anything about the engine. Haven't spent much time over there. That's a busy engine. So much so they just added 207 about a year ago. They have two triples run out of there, and that was an incredibly it's a a very minus the Victorians and Craftsmen's and pre-33s. They it's a it's a it's a district that mimics 11s because they have a ton of modern-style apartment houses. It's uh it's very, very similar to that. And uh minus the hills, but it it kind of the call load, it reminds me a lot of Fire Station 11. And it was really, really busy. And we did some good work. We we not shortly thereafter I promoted in there, we got a uh a first house rookie. It's a rookie house. You get rookies there, and we did a lot of training, a lot of drilling, and and we went to the place goes a lot of fires. A lot of fires. It was amazing. And then from there, I got sucked out of there. I got that put down into in-service training and spent, you know, two and a half, three years down there at in-service training. That was uh but it was interesting. Being that task forces for the majority of my career, going back to a single engine was it was good though, because you you you didn't have anybody to rely on. You had to rely on yourself. You obviously have your engineer and the firefighters, and we had a paramedic ambulance, but I couldn't turn to another captain or or you're on your own and you're busy. So you you had to make good decisions and and your thought process had to be in line, but I felt like I was prepared, Call. I felt like I was prepared because I felt like I promoted for the right reasons. It wasn't because of power, it wasn't because of pride, it wasn't because of ego, it was because I understand the consequences when things go wrong. And I always laid my hat on that. That is the single reason I promoted. I understand those consequences. Leadership matters, SOGs matter, training matters, culture matters, those things matter. And to become someone that can kind of try to influence those things that matter versus hoping that everybody else is gonna do it, I just wanted to try to put my small piece of the pie together and try to make a difference. I just didn't want people to have to go through what that feels like to go through a line of duty. If we can avoid that, if we can stop that, so we don't continue that that cycle. And I and I'm scared for our department right now. We've had too many near misses, we've gotten lucky too many times, and I and I and I fear every day, Lord, please don't let somebody die on a heart apartment. I'm scared. I'm scared, and I'm not being dramatic, I'm just looking at the reality. The reality is we're headed down a path that isn't good, and I don't want to blame and throw this out, but I'm scared to death. I think about it every single day, and I watch these videos and it scares me. Because I can't contribute. I can't. Our company can. We can we can maintain our standards and do what we can, but I can't reach out and go, no, we gotta throw more ladders there. No, it's just it's scary. It scares me. It makes me really nervous calling a cam. It makes me scared to death because I don't want to go to another field, and we don't have to. And I think that's the frustrating part. And that's where I think having in-service training under EOPS with the current EOPS commander could do some amazing work. He says, Hey, I want to see ABC. Let's go, let's get it going, let's just pump it out. Whatever that looks like in his eyes. But I know his heart's in the right spot, so I know that he'll he'll do the right thing, hopefully. He'll do the right thing. I know his heart. And it's oftentimes in this in this craft, it's about where your motives are. It's your heart that drives it. And uh calling I'm scared, I see these videos, and and um I know our people aren't going out there making mistakes intentionally. So how do we how do we correct it, right? What do we do to fix that?

SPEAKER_01 1:24:50

You have demonstrated you demonstrated that you you you through your experience, what you what you experienced, and then your viewpoint of the job, your mindset is that you know you take it very seriously, it's pretty evident. Um Rumor Mill has it in your current assignment, somewhere there was a conversation where you said something to the effect of I work at the the most dangerous engine company in LA. I do. And I and I I when uh when Mark and talk when we talked about that, I said I I absolutely love that statement because of what that actually means. And I just want for the young fireman listening or the senior member that's maybe, you know what, it's time to chill. And it's you know, they went out to that quote unquote slower spot. Like, what did you mean by that, Cap?

SPEAKER_02 1:25:37

I I do mean that it has zero to do with the engineer and the guys behind me in the backseat. We don't get the sets of reps, we're not getting the sets of reps that battalion 12, battalion 14, battalion 11, battalion 1, battalion 13, the busier battalions in in the city, we're not getting the sets of reps. Colin, we work in the interface and intermix. We have brush all around us. I often say we're we're a brush company that responds to structure fires. And you know, we can pull out of quarters and I could have 50 homes threatened right now. Like right now, on one call. We can go down, we're not getting the sets of reps. So the way to thank God that everybody on our fire engine on our shift has at least they're all coming up on 25 and 26 years on the job. They have experience, and they all worked at places where they were respectable fire stations and they were respectable firefighters, respectable engineers. They all bring something different to the table on our engine company that we can blend our experiences and produce a really good outcome. But it was born in a lot of training and a lot of repetitive, you know, a lot of calls. Everybody brings a different experience, but they all bring experience to the table.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:52

But my fear was that we don't get the sets of reps. I'm constantly giving size ups in my head when we're driving around because I'm not giving size ups all the time. And I listen to the radio every single night. I listen to a fire they had last night up in 20s and 11s. They had one up on Benton Waymark. They had a fire going up there. They got in uh Zakarport that extended into a two-story craftsman. I'm listening to the radio all the time. Hey, that was an amazing size up. Yeah, that was I I got a clear picture. Or I'll listen, but I don't understand. I'm not following that that trail. So for me, it's a challenging assignment just because the lack of assets and reps. And it is the most dangerous, not because of the people, because you can get lulled into a sense of complacency. Because is it really that important that I check my breather today? Every single morning on our shift. It's like a Madonna concert. I hear ding ding, I hear all the bells. These guys' faith, we do it every single day. And you're like, oh yeah, they should be. Well, yeah, but there's a lot of places I work that I don't hear that. So, yeah, what should happen and what actually happens? No, it's not. That's not the case. Every single day, these guys do it. And they don't skip a beep. Housework's done. Trainings. Everything. And it's it's it's a nice way to end the career because I I have no doubt in my mind if we go to an incident and there's something that I miss, that these guys got it. They're gonna see it. It's it's it's yeah, I haven't arrived. I'm not the NLBL. I'm not that guy that took took a tragedy and tried to turn it into an experience to where we can learn from it and and not make that mistake again. I I haven't like, oh, I arrived. No, it's not that, man. I'll never arrive. But I have a confidence and faith in the in the members that are that are on that energy company that I serve that they that they'll get it. If I don't, if there's something missing there, hey Captain, hey, great. Blah, blah, blah. Yeah, perfect. Oh, that's awesome. I didn't see that. I I love it. I love it because just because we're at a slower assignment doesn't mean the good work isn't being done. That I can assure you.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:00

When I heard that you had said that, I think about the trend of very young firemen going out to places like that. How do you feel about a young, inexperienced member going to a spot like that?

SPEAKER_02 1:29:11

Oh, it's disastrous. Because the foundation, the foundation that you build as a firefighter, and as you take that promotional opportunity, whether that's to become a driver or an officer, is you have you only you only have a foundation to build from, right? You don't become a captain or an officer and suddenly uh I've arrived. It's all the hard work and the years of experience you put in of becoming an acting engineer, an acting truck AO, an acting captain. Those are you, those are those that takes time. You have to act, you have to get into those positions, you have to train for that, you have to educate yourself, you have to go out and practice over and over. You can't suddenly just take a test. We've we've we've created a culture of professional test takers. And oftentimes they get into that position where it's like they're in way over their head, and there's no going back. You you there's no going back. You suddenly, it's it's interesting because on a Friday I was a firefighter, and on a on a uh on a Monday I was a captain. Oh, I just look at you. K Ish, you got it. And it's like you're the end all be all. Is that really true? No, it's not, but that's kind of the expectation. Some of the companies, hey, we'll just divert the head. Whatever he says we'll do. Well, no, if you're at a good fire company, firefighters and the AOs and the engineers, they're you're kind of irrelevant as a captain. These guys all have figured out your job, right? You're kind of just, you know what I mean? Good companies operate like that, but some sometimes you may have a young crew, and there may be a lot more direction that needs to be given on scene. Thank God I don't have to worry about that. I've got guys that are gonna do the right thing, and I'm just kind of filling in the gap, man. I'm I'm I got you. I'm gonna pull some house for you, get on the radio now and then and give give some updates. And but um I think I feel like um young guys have no business being at a slow assignment because you're not gonna build your foundation. Your foundation that you build is what? It's built in sand, it's not in stone. So when that first storm comes in, it's gonna wash away, it's not gonna weather the storm because you have nothing to fall back on. You have to go out and get around talented people. The LA City Fire Department has a load of talented people throughout that department. Go get yourself surrounded by those good folks, run some calls, get some experience, get some good training, and save it to when you're in the drop, and you've got 30 years on, then maybe if you want to kind of slow down a little bit. And I wrestled, Colin. I my first year at eights, there was a vacancy for Injun Captain at 33s, and and I wrestled. I wrestled with that. Do I push enter and put in? I start thinking going, man. I can still get my SCPA on. I can still put man. It's like I I I struggled with that until I until I had built the current crew that we have, and and it was um because I still love the guy. I still have some friends down at 33s, and they're amazing guys. And um, I just felt like, you know what? I think I'm just gonna stay where I'm at. It's I've got a very short drive to work and it kind of just works out. But um for a long time there, I I kind of almost pushed enter and and I don't know, maybe I would have brought value down there, but it's rough on the body, you know. So I'm happy where I'm at because we have our own set of challenges. Um we we're in the interface of the intermix, man, and and brush is real, and we we we go to a lot of them, so or as many as the city gets. So it's a different set of challenges, just kind of different. Uh what do you got, Cam? You got anything? I haven't heard from you.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:47

Yeah, no, I don't. I'm I'm just listening. I'm enjoying listening. We've been going about an hour and a half now, guys. Um, anything else for Craig that you guys would want to touch on?

SPEAKER_01 1:32:57

I got a question. I just I feel like this show it would we'd be remiss if we didn't capture your thoughts on new engine captains, new in the position, any guidance, any tips. Um, in this day and age, Craig, of blue card, ICS, mother may I, radio, radio 360, uh divisions being given to engine captains. Like if you could give down and dirty what an engine officer needs to do, what he should be focused on, what's important, what isn't, shed the rest of the bullshit. Like in however long you need to say that. I mean, and I don't mean to put you on the spot. No, but I I just I would love for our listeners to glean that experience and those those tips from you before you get off this off this show.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:51

Well, I I I think the first thing that comes to mind is you have to when you promote to to captain or lieutenant, depending on your department, you have to come into that that fire station humble. And you have to be willing to be able to take feedback as much as you're gonna give it. And I think people miss that. Um I I think I think that humility um goes a long way. And I think that that initial filling out process, if because there's a high probability you're gonna promote them into a place that you probably don't know anybody, and you may not even be familiar with that district. You have to come in understanding the needs of that district and understanding the needs of the people, like the needs of the people in the sense that your crew. Obviously, the community is a community, we know their needs, they dial 911, we're gonna go help them. But the humility piece, I think, is huge, and realizing that you're not the end-all be-all, you have to observe and see where your talent levels are. You're kind of like a band director, especially at a task force. Yeah, hey, you got uh you got people that are really good that uh gravitate to the truck, put them on truck. You got you, you have at a triple, it's different because you got two positions. You got a Basel position or hydro position, you got a back seat, right? So you don't have that much flexibility there. And a lot of those places are rotational, so you go ambulance, engine, ambulance, right? And they rotate through. But realizing that there is a lot to learn, and you have to you have to understand that there is a a sense of that burden that we talked about. And that you now the decisions you make downstream don't just affect you. They there's consequences for bad decisions, there's consequences for for not training, there's consequences for not preparing your people. Oftentimes I really believe that people are promoting to that spot or a spot because they're tired, they're exhausted. And is it their fault? I I can't, you know, I can't blame them. It's like, how do you blame somebody that's been on an ambulance that's getting crushed? Right? How do you blame that? They've done nine, 10 years, they're like, man, I can't do it anymore. I'm exhausted. The only relief I'm gonna get is a promotion. Do I agree with it? No, I don't. But um I think you start off with humility. I think you start off by by seeing what the company needs are based on what the district needs are. I think you train to that, and then you kind of you kind of build up to what are I'm sorry, Mark, you have a question?

SPEAKER_04 1:36:27

No, I'm just I'm I'm thinking about this this burden of command thing still, because a wise man told me about that one time. And he he had a different reasoning though.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:37

What was his reasoning?

SPEAKER_04 1:36:39

That well, you you know him, but the burden of command is man, these captains never get a break.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:46

Oh, well, yeah, that's yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:36:52

No, he takes it to bed every night. Burton of command. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:57

Yeah, no, that's not that's not my version of it. But um it yeah, so so kind of just part of part of that when you when you become that captain, once you've established your company SOGs and everybody's on the same page, there's a development piece. How do you develop your people? How do you get them from point A to point B? That that's a huge piece that I think gets overmissed, that it gets overlooked, that that people don't look at is how do you put your people in a position for success? How do you develop them? How do you prepare them for maybe they they say, hey, hey Craig, I want I want to I'd like to promote something. Well, how what can I do to support that? How do we that may not even be at this as fire station? You want to promote to AO and you're in triple, you're at the wrong spot, right? Probably a bad analogy, but how do you support your people? I I oftentimes I feel like know the best thing you could do for your people is know your job. Because if the firefighter has to pick up the pieces for you, or if the engineer has to pick up the pieces for you, then you're in trouble. So going into that position, knowing your job to the best of your ability, and then you got to come in with that humility piece and understand that there may be people there that are better than you, probably is, and and learn from them. Don't think that you know it, don't think that you've arrived. Share your experiences and your knowledge, but utilize the people that you have in place. I think people often miss that. I think I think um I go back to what we were talking about earlier on being an aggressive firefighter, understanding that calculated risk that you're about to take. Do you really understand it? Do you really are you looking at that and really undressing that building and kind of putting that perspective into how you're gonna carry out your SOGs? I think I think we miss a lot of that. I don't know. Do you have you have some thoughts on that boat?

SPEAKER_01 1:38:47

That was I thought that was that was outstanding. So now that same inexperienced, wanted to get off the ambulance, took the cabin's test, now he's on engine 57, and he's pulling up to that structure fire. How does that what should how does that individual balance that role of safety officer, initial IC, so to speak, as well as making sure that line gets to the fire as people get out of that battle? Do you have any insight, Craig, for these listeners that are how how do you manage that balance between, you know, there's all this debate on, well, you're some guy say, Captain, you shouldn't touch the line. And then I I completely disagree with that myself personally, and you have to find that that mix between supervisor and worker, foreman, whatever. You got any tips on that for these guys? Like what where's that rub? How's that mix? What's that look like?

SPEAKER_02 1:39:44

Well, if I if I didn't touch a hose line as an inch captain, like I got a guy that's 250 feet behind us laying a line. So one of my firefighters isn't even on scene yet. I've got this uh engineer that's doing his operation, I've got the firefighter that's that's stretching the line. Who gets the rotary saw? Is am I gonna stand there and watch him do everything? No, I'm gonna jump off. I may either grab the hose under the rotary saw, and we're gonna work in tandem to get to that front door. And um, so that that new engine captain rolling into engine 57 with that scenario you just painted has has his or her handful. And are they prepared for that? Have they thought about this? You know, I think part of our testing process allows for people to navigate through a process that if you if you what I did not want to do is prepare for the test. I want to prepare for the position. There's a two, those are two different worlds because you could teach somebody how to get through a three-hole score interview, you could teach somebody how to get through the interview process and navigate through the emergency ops piece. You you can you can you can pass that with having zero experience on the fire ground. So then you transition that into the fire ground, you take that person that has zero experience and put them on engine 57 or engine 98 or engine 89 or engine 60 or engine 11 or engine 9 or engine 10, these companies that are going to fires that are that are on a regular basis, they're gonna be in over the head, they're gonna fail. They don't have that background and experience. You're setting yourself up for failure. If you're promoting for the wrong reasons and you're promoting to that position for whatever, whether it's money, whether it's prestige, whether it's pride, whether it's ego, however that plays out, you're doing yourself a disservice and the people around you a disservice. And firefighters aren't stupid, they'll sniff you out. And you've just created an environment where you have an uphill battle. You better humble yourself and come to the mercy of the court because these guys will eat you alive. They'll sniff you out. You can't fake it. They're gonna look at you and go, nah, nah, I wouldn't follow that person to say, I wouldn't fall into the kitchen with prime ribs sitting there. So you can't fake that. You just set yourself up for a really tough go. And in that, and I've seen it in that case, the only out clause they have is to humble themselves and put themselves at the mercy of that that company, that that company will help them to train them. And it's pretty, it's pretty sad, and it's it's pathetic where you have a company that would actually have to come in and train the captain. It it's just I didn't never wanted to be that guy. I never wanted to come in. Now, is there something that the firefighter sitting behind me to the to the left can teach me? Absolutely, because he's a USAR guy. Yeah, I'm not a USAR guy. The guy directly behind me was Helco. Yeah, absolutely. But are they coming in to teach me how to do my job? We're in deep trouble if that's the case. If they have to spend all their efforts and working down what I'm gonna do, we're we're in trouble. And and I see that often. And and I people that promote have to look at their downstream consequences. Consequences, there's consequences for wrong decisions, there's consequences for not understanding your job. And you have to take yourself out of the ego, you have to take yourself out of the pride, you have to take yourself out of the pension perks for being a captain or being a driver and look at hey, are my aggregate? And I don't think people care. You have to care. You have to this this the fire service will kill you. People don't understand. You can have a bad day like that. You can do everything right, and it's still there's still that risk associated with it. Everything can be going right, and that catastrophic one thing happens, right? You're not gonna get a free pass. Nobody gets a free pass. You put yourself in that position unprepared, you put an undue burden, undue stress on it on the company because now they have to train you. Where's your sense of ownership? You can't do that. You can't. You're putting everybody at risk, and I think we don't have a healthy appreciation for what could happen. Nobody thinks about it. It's not gonna happen to me, it's gonna happen to them. I never thought calling in my wildest dreams, I'd be fighting for my life. It never dawned on me at a structure fire, I'd be fighting for my life out of air inside of a commercial building. That's fantasyland. That happens somewhere else. I never thought it had happened. And it happens. You ask anybody that survived a near miss or a line of duty death. It is it is it's fascinating because I try to study as many of those NIAS reports as I can, can call them. And if you go across the country, let's just say Mark was to get online right now and pull up a NIASH report from 2013 out of Texas, and you take away the traffic accidents and the cardiac. And this is down missing or trap resulted in a line of duty death. If you take out Texas and put in LA, if you take out lieutenant and put in captain, if you take out 22 and put 32, you just change the the players, they all read the same. Communications, continuity, and complacency. The three C's are in all of them. Well, by and and I share that because by promoting ill-prepared, you've just brought yourself, you just it you've just upped the annie into that. And people don't think about that and say, Craig, you're being drama melodramatic. No, it's real, it's real. That's not drama, that's fact. That's fact. So, especially as an officer, especially as a captain, those decisions you make affect more than just you. And people don't take that seriously. I really believe that.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:38

I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:39

I don't know if that answered your question.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:40

Absolutely. Absolutely. I think a lot of you said you hit something that's near and dear. It's something I've I've observed in my own agency. A lot of individuals want to, man, they can't wait to get that next promotion. They want all the perks that come with it, they want the accolades, they want the for whatever their motivations, but they don't bring the resume to be able to do the job. None of us initially do when we're in that spot. There's a learning curve, but you've got to be competent. And that's not the motive, that's not what's happening. And uh I yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for how candid you were. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:15

Well, I I think, Colin, I think you're obligated to bring as much to that position as you can prior to accepting that position. Because I'll be honest with you, as much acting time as I got as an ninja captain, front office doing the paperwork, doing the time game up, the minute you hit day one, it's like, wow, it's just different. You're prepared to the ability you think you are. My first structure fire as an india captain was a two-story modern apartment with two units side by side, well involved. Not one unit, two. That was my first fire. Okay, it's it's not the amount of fire, but it was just like, okay, I'm getting thrown into it. All right, we're going right into it. It wasn't a one-story garage. It wasn't, it was a two-story modern apartment with two units well involved, with fire coming down, so you're eventually the two bottom units. So you potentially had four units going right out of the gate. So, but was I prepared for that? Yeah, I you know, I'd seen fire before, so it wasn't like I was overwhelmed. It was interesting. I was kind of laughing at going, okay, you're getting thrown right into the right into the the beach right out of the gate. But you try to prepare for that position, whatever that position may be, and bring something to it. Your learning curve is going to be tremendous. You're going to learn so much, but at least be quasi-prepared, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:47:27

But you you you said it right there, you summed it up. You arrived to that as an officer rank. Your operations, your competence, you're like, okay, I've been here before. Right? That's what's not happening. All the paperwork, front office crap, you know, planning the day and company training up, that's that's the learning curve. But the learning curve should not be how do I fix this fire problem in front of me?

SPEAKER_02 1:47:54

Yeah. Yeah, that should be your first episode. Yeah, and it was awesome because the guys got off the rig and they pulled the right light data. Everything was like, it was I was actually laughing inside, going, all right, whatever, here we go. It's first one. Okay, perfect. But as I was watching and pulling hoes with the guys, and they were just everything was it's just it was like awesome. And that's when I realized, man, early on, I'm like, oh, these guys are these are this is awesome. This is not only gonna be an incredible time, this is gonna be an amazing journey because we're gonna be able to go out and train and kind of just now, these guys are this is it was fantastic. It was like, I was like, wow, because I didn't know any of these guys. And I knew after a couple drills, I'm like, all right, these guys got a good skill set, but is it under fire? Let's and we got that. He was like, uh, yeah, these guys are knee deep in it. Cap carpet was on fire. We're going in. I mean, it was hot, it was amazing. But um, yeah, we did guys did some good work there, man. And that was uh interesting. I I don't know if that helps.

SPEAKER_04 1:48:52

Um I don't know if that's you know what it does, Craig, is it shows qualified versus certified. There's there's the right, that's a line of demarcation of you can go to everything and ace every single facet of every promotional test. Well, you just said it when your guys you've gone out and trained and hey, they're doing okay. But when you see it for yourself under fire conditions, the the equalizer for every single job in the fire service, it'll it'll show your weaknesses right now. It'll make them very apparent. And if you're the guy that just certified yourself to take the test and be that guy, uh doesn't mean that you're the guy that was qualified to do that, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:49:32

You know, no, no, you're right. Colin, you know what's interesting, Cam, is when you go to a slower assignment that isn't on the radar, you get labeled that assignment, right? It's it's funny because you could go there with with a lot of because all of our guys on our shift all have experience and work in really good places, and you're just looked upon differently. It's it's kind of funny, and I'm glad that none of us have the ego to be concerned about that, and it's we just go out and do our job. But it's funny because you look throughout the city, there's there's some really good guys that just aren't working at nines and tens and 11s, right? Because they don't want to. Freaking those guys are getting I every single day, man. I pray for those brothers down there because they're getting crushed. They're busy, they're doing it inside and out every single day. You we got we got battalion 12s busy, we got battalion 11, battalion one, battalion 13. Uh and there's busy, there's busy stations companies all throughout the city, but I think about those guys every day. I worry about them, man, because I I don't, they're doing it, and they're doing it tired, and they're getting their teeth kicked in, and those guys will have amazing attitudes, right? And I but I worry, I really worry about it, man, because these near misses that we've had scare me. And it's not only for LA City, it's it's nationwide, but in particular, because I'm still working for LA City. LA City scar it scares me to death. I don't want to see these guys get hurt, I don't want to see these guys get killed. Uh I just want it to change. And I really believe EOPs, so we mentioned that, I've mentioned that a couple times for a reason, because I really believe that that's that's the key getting in service training over to EOPS. And administration probably look at me as I'm nuts, but that's one thing that I tried to do with our leadership program because I felt like it'd be a direct streamline to the membership, to the guys, to the guys and gals that you're serving. It's a direct line, so I don't know. You know, that I don't know if this was informative, if this was uh standing. Thank you, man. I I uh I appreciate what you guys do, man. And you guys are making a difference. And I I know that because I get phone calls from from people that we have mutual friends that know all you guys. Um, it's funny how how small the fire service is. You can fly into Baltimore and go, hey, do you know so-and-so? And it's like, yeah, how do you know him? And he's on the opposite end of the coast, right? The opposite of the countries. It's kind of crazy. We're we're a small, a small fire service small, but this is very much needed. And I'm not talking about me, I'm talking about what you guys are doing. And I really enjoy, I look forward to it when these drop. Kim, you're doing a good job dropping them quick. So I kind of look forward to come up on my on my computer. I'm like, oh, sweet, I get to watch this episode. And and everything, everything you guys have been doing doing is uh I I enjoy it, man. I learned, I learned a ton, and it's that's why I'm watching because I want to learn. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:52:29

Hey, well, thanks for coming on and and sharing your unique experiences and uh all the lessons learned with us today. Really appreciate it. Appreciate your time.

SPEAKER_02 1:52:38

It's my honor, man. My pleasure. Keep up the good work, guys.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:42

Thank you, Craig, so much.

SPEAKER_00 1:52:43

Yeah, calling the problem, my brother. And thanks everyone else for tuning in today and uh listening to another episode, and we'll catch you guys on the next one. See you now. See you guys.