Scrap Solo

Scrap Solo Episode 4 - Jay Bonnifield: RECEO as a frameowrk

• Corley Moore

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đź‘Š Guest: Jay Bonnifield 
‼️ Topic: RECEO as a Framework

SCRAP SOLO
A brand-new podcast by Corley, produced by Firehouse Vigilance.
SCRAP SOLO creates a focused space for meaningful conversations:
➡️ One guest
➡️ One topic
➡️ One deep, intentional discussion

This platform allows Corley to sit down one-on-one with trusted professionals across all industries... Leaders, Thinkers, and Experts.
You’ll still hear from some of the most respected voices in the fire service.
You’ll also hear perspectives that challenge thinking, sharpen perspective, and drive growth no matter your profession or organization.

If you’ve grown with The Weekly Scrap…
If you want even more access to the best minds available…
If you’re looking for in-depth, valuable, and intentional conversations…
This podcast is for you.

Welcome to SCRAP SOLO

SPEAKER_01

Let's get ready to solo. Let's do this. Here we go. Scrap Solo, episode four. Jay Bonifield. My man, welcome to the solo.

SPEAKER_00

Thanks for having me on, Corley. Always a pleasure, man. I love this. Love this format. Yeah, love the idea behind this show. So I'm excited.

SPEAKER_01

So on every solo, we pick a topic that we're going to solo out. And I want to know what topic is Jay Bonifield going to solo out today?

SPEAKER_00

What's the topic in it? Today's topic we're going to talk about Reseo. We're going to dive into Reseo uses a framework.

SPEAKER_01

Melting it down to what the solo topic is, it is Reseo as a framework. Absolutely. Okay. Okay.

SPEAKER_00

Where do you want to start? One of the most important things is that you understand all of us are operating with a framework. It's whether or not that framework is actually intentionally cultivated or whether that framework is just kind of adopted by chance. You know, when you show up to a building that's on fire, there's a lot of stuff, right? There's a lot of noise, there's a lot of competing interests. And so your ability to be able to really quickly look at that building and have the intuition of what is and is not important, what kinds of things in that building, like what needs to be dealt with now versus what is noise that I can tuck to the side. So having that ability to be able to differentiate those things is is really important and it's got to be cultivated in practice so that you can do it with without a ton of intentional thought.

SPEAKER_01

Deliberate thought. So unconscious competence. So if I'm well, let's get into it because you already touched on a lot right there.

SPEAKER_00

Kind of the the first point to start with is the difference between a checklist and a framework. Recio, if and when used correctly, is a framework. And so what I mean by a framework is kind of your operating system that drives how your the lens that you look at fire through. What is and is not important? What is noise? What can I separate out? What is the most important thing here? What are the the things that I'm anticipating happening, like the direction of this thing going? Am I like optimistic? Am I pessimistic? And so your your framework is kind of like that baseline operating system that your your brain uses to be able to take what you're looking at and first off go, what is this? And then second off, go, what do I do about it?

SPEAKER_01

And I wanted I want to pluck on one thing you said, which is it's not a checklist, you know, because if you're you're describing framework, that makes much more sense because when I was first introduced to Rio, you know, way back in the way back, and they're like, you know, here's these checkboxes, more or less, is how it was introduced to me. Hey, check these things off. And it and and honestly, it was on like a tactical sheet, and there'd be a Rio, and then there's because RECO VS, RECO VSS, actions of opportunity outside the checkbox, and all of this. And that's the way I was introduced to it. And now you say it's not a checklist.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and I and I think that that gets to kind of the core of what is a checklist. You know, acronyms, and I think that when acronyms take heat from folks and they're like, oh, you know, there's there's too many of them. I agree. There's too many. There's too many that are not well thought out, and it gets to the heart of the question of like, what are they for? If we're gonna use them, what are they for? Sure. Right. And in order to define what they're for, you have to first like, what are they not? Well, they are not something that an engine officer is gonna show up and take a sheet and go R E C E O, right? They're not gonna sit there before their short report. Like, you don't have time for that. That's not how we operate, nor that is that how we should operate. Right. Um, and so yeah, like these acronyms is this linear progression that you're supposed to kind of rehearse before you make a decision. That's just a faulty misunderstanding of you know how we're supposed to operate on the fire ground and how our brains work. And so, you know, when you dive into like the neuroscience behind it and you get in the work of like Kahneman with thinking fast and thinking slow and Gary Klein, like in some of his work, he did a ton of work with fire ground decision making. And one of the things that he talked about was how less than 12% of the time is their actual conscious compare-contrast for what thinking behind the system.

SPEAKER_01

This is this, no, it's this first one that pops up that might work, go.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and when you put that in context of like very much so the case, I would argue, probably even less with a company level versus like a chief officer, right?

SPEAKER_01

Sure, sure.

SPEAKER_00

So that the the company, you're showing up, you've got the the most amount of uncertainty, uh, you've got the least amount of information, you've got the most like ambiguity, you've got conflicting information, you've got people, you know, take an apartment fire, right? Everybody in apartment fire say, Oh, I want to, it's over here, it's over there, right?

SPEAKER_01

And so you're in the the tightest window of making the biggest impact as far as compressed time. Right.

SPEAKER_00

It's compressed, right? Like all of the human elements, the human factors, the you know, the stuff when you read like war fighting, right? It talks about friction and uncertainty and fog of war, like that is impacting you the most as the first few companies. Zoom that back to like the battalion chief who's showing up to run the fire, they're more detached because they're not going into that building, they're not going into that environment. They're also arriving usually with a little bit more of a detached perspective of this thing. And so their effortful decisions are probably going to be a lot more. We talk about big picture, they are gonna compare and contrast. And like the relationship that I use, I had this company officer when I was a when I was a pipeman, my one of my favorite captains I work for. He's like, the the companies and especially the tailboarders, I want you to be like the dog on the end of the leash, it's pulling on the leash. And he said, My job is to pull you back every once in a while. He's like, I want you to pull on the leash because that's what's healthy for our crew, and that's what makes the things the things go, is when the crews are pulling on the leash and the chief is kind of like pulling them back every once in a while. Not like, you know, complacent or timid or anything, but like it's this check and balance system that keeps everything safe. And it's a healthy relationship. Like you're if you don't have a chief officer that is good at pulling back on the leash at the right time, that's a problem. If you have companies that aren't pulling and straining to go forward, that's a problem.

SPEAKER_01

And there's like the uh too far on either direction, like the will never give them leash and just keeps them completely in heel. And the opposite, with there is no leash, and it's just chaos and and the work, and that's that's the thing that gives both sides a bad name.

SPEAKER_00

For sure, right? And so you want that almost creates yeah, it's a it's a healthy tension, right? And we if we're gonna have a healthy fire ground culture, we want that tension to exist because it keeps both sides from kind of getting to their extremes where they're bad, right? So, you know, kind of tying that into decision making here, having a healthy understanding of what those first crews are faced with, the reality of it, you know, the fast pace, they're operating primarily off of that intuition or that fast thinking, like Kahneman talks about, where it's one versus system two, yeah. Exactly, right? It's it's more that they're not processing large amounts of information per se, like in like in an intentional method. You're not slowing everything down and giving effortful thought to each one of these factors. If you're doing it well, right, because at the end of the day, the the one of, if not probably the most important thing for the first in companies is speed. Like speed is just on especially on a residential fire. We'll talk about residential commercial, but mainly talking about residential right now. Speed is a massive force multiplier. Your ability to generate tempo directly has a positive effect on victims' property.

SPEAKER_01

I love the use of the word tempo because that that really does encapsulate it. And uh, of course, one of my favorites, Ben Schultz, time is the enemy, speed is the weapon. And I think that that is absolutely just a beautiful statement that you're talking about. And I've already loved this conversation because you brought up Conman, you've brought up Klein, you brought up we're fighting. So anyway, I've already I'm already like in heaven.

SPEAKER_00

And that's that's like the whole, there's all of these pieces, right? Like you're talking about, that basically end up building your framework. And Reseo can be a part of that framework. I'll reference this till the day that I die. You know, Scott Corgan and his hierarchies of line placement, right? And Reseo helps establish a hierarchy on the fire ground of like what is the most important. This gets into the conversation of we have to know what normal is in order to recognize abnormal. We have to have a hierarchy of what the most important thing is. That doesn't mean we're always able to do the best thing, right? Sometimes because of resources, whatever it is.

SPEAKER_01

It absolutely affects our decision making. That is a factor. It is like this is the most important factor that affects my decision making. This is the next most important factor.

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely. Absolutely, right?

SPEAKER_01

And to make a point earlier, like you said, when a company officer shows up, they're in that time compressed, all the stuff we talked about, the chaos of the of the fog of war, which is I think is a great term. We'll just use that. But there is no A-B testing at that point. They're not getting off the rig saying, okay, should I do A, B? You know, if there is, it's it's a dismissal and and a go based off the intuition that based off their framework, whether it's in, and I think this is a point you said earlier, whether it's intentional or whether it's accidental. Like right.

SPEAKER_00

Right. And so, like one an example of an accidental framework might be a overemphasis on line of duty deaths, right? I've seen it come to fruition enough times to to recognize a pattern where there's this well-intentioned we want to learn from line of duty deaths. We don't want one to go to waste, we want to learn those lessons, and that's a good thing.

SPEAKER_01

No, and it's a good way to honor those who've made the ultimate sacrifice, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00

For sure, for sure. And and to keep stuff from happening again, right? We would don't want to repeat things. We want to, and so there's there's so much value in that. But how we do it is really important, especially with newer members, because you know, at those critical junctures, you're new, you promote whatever it is. We're very careful in intentionally cultivating those frameworks and don't tell somebody how not to do something without telling them also what to do. Right. And we're really good at telling people what not to do, right? You know, here's the line of duty desk, study these, you know, that don't get don't be this guy, don't make these mistakes. And then we don't also follow it up with here's what to do. Yeah, keep the nozzle open.

SPEAKER_01

Keep the nozzle open, right?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah, that you know, high heat, zero visibility. We we don't want you like, don't don't go into high heat, zero visibility environments. And you're like, well, whoa, we do that, right? So what do you do when you're in there? What do you do when you do go in there? Because you will go in that, right? You are gonna be in high heat, zero visibility. Establishing a very passive, fearful uh framework can happen just by the emphasis that we put on certain areas unintentionally, and it can be totally rooted in good intentions, right? Like more often than not, it absolutely is. Like nobody shows up and raises their hand and says, I want to be the firefighter that is too timid to go when the when the chips are down, right? And I want to be the firefighter that prioritizes everything that I do and myself, and I'm just completely in this job, just completely for me and my ability to stay safe. Like nobody says that, right?

SPEAKER_01

And and and on a flip side, or not even a flip side, but just in the same vein, no company officer I know of ever is thinking, man, I can't wait to get one of my guys hurt. That's that same that same vein of thinking, you know, no one's there.

SPEAKER_00

No, but how does the frog boil to get there? Right? Like, how does how did how do we end up with chiefs, company officers who are like, you know, that that two degrees and then they blow off course and you're like, holy smokes, man. Like this holy smokes, people are saying they're in there.

SPEAKER_01

Why aren't we going inside? Right.

SPEAKER_00

Right, right, right. So, you know, or they're criticizing they they're see a video of guys doing, you know, pretty like whatever you want to call it.

SPEAKER_01

Vertical ventilation is a is a perfect one to pick on. Vertical ventilation is a great one, for sure, right?

SPEAKER_00

And you see guys, oh, it's not the building's not worth a life, and you know, making these like kind of uh all the the false equivalencies and you know the all the the logical fallacies, right? All of them, right? Like, ah, you know, the building's not worth a guy's life, and blah blah blah blah blah. We're like, how did that guy boil the frog to get to that point? Well, it's all of these points of emphasis along the way without this like intentionally cultivated framework that has hierarchy of you know decision making and actual like holistic view of the fire ground, they just kind of like freestyled a framework and took bits and pieces that didn't really have a ton of guidance along the way, and then they wound up being where they're at.

SPEAKER_01

And I want to I want to get this part in there because I think this is also part of the equation. There are people who just straight up don't educate themselves. Yeah. And their lack of education, they're gonna fall. And when you don't when you don't know what you're doing, and this I mean this, when you don't know what you're doing, you fall on the side of timid.

SPEAKER_00

There's science behind that, right? Like there's there's neuroscience behind that with uh negativity bias, it's called. Like the best way to describe it is dawn of man, you know, out hunting in the woods, right? You got threats all around, and it's better to miss a meal than it is to get killed.

SPEAKER_01

Right, not make it back to the village and and get torn apart by the saber tooth.

SPEAKER_00

Right, right. And so this like baseline survival mechanism that we all have, and that's just like it's inherent in all of us because we're we're human. And this is one of the beauties of the fire service as a whole. This is one of the things that I find beautiful about it personally, is you've got this diametrically opposed things. You've got your human nature and your hard wire for survival, and the things that we do that my citizens pay me to do directly contradicts my human nature.

SPEAKER_01

I I've never heard it articulated that way, but that's a beautiful way of statement.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so and like we have to recognize that it's it's healthy. We don't want to operate from fear, but we need to recognize that our baseline is to survive, and that's good because I I've got a wife and four kids. I want to go home to them, I want all my guys to go home to their families, it's important, but we also have a job to do, right? And like Dave LeBlanc, our job is not to be safe, it's to be effective and to do so as safely as possible. If I could tell somebody something on their first day, big picture, hey, this is what we're here to do, and we're here to be effective. Like at the end of the day, that's all that matters that we're effective, and you can't be effective if you're not also safe. Right, right.

SPEAKER_01

To stay soloed on Reseo, I'm gonna we've been talking about frameworks and checklists, but to swing back to the Reseo as a framework.

SPEAKER_00

Um, Reseo specifically as a framework. Like the first thing that I do when I get dispatched to a fire, bunk out fast, like that's one of the variables we can control is how fast we turn out, right? We're not gonna drive recklessly, but like how fast we turn out matters. That's one of the can controlling the controllables. We can control how fast we turn out. And when you do it really well, you'll start hearing that. Like, hey, were you guys already out and about? Like, how'd you get here so fast? You just smile, you're like, No, we're in quarters, and and it's just like the perfect, you know, sweetness of uh, you know, you got them, right? You're you're in their head. So I get in the cab, and first off, it's like, what are we going to? Are we going to a residential building or a commercial? And I think if you can train yourself and your people to differentiate the tactics, the tempos, the operating, everything from residential commercial right off the bat, you're going to find yourself 10xing your ability to stay safe on the fire ground.

SPEAKER_01

Just that first initial framework shift between residential and commercial starts getting you ahead of the curve on the emergency scene.

SPEAKER_00

It does. And so the way it works out in my framework is if I'm going to a residential fire, I'm going to be operating under a re-CO framework, meaning, you know, rescue, exposure, confine, extinguish, overhaul. My job on an engine company is not to solve all of the problems, it's to solve the fire problem. I'm not concerned with ventilation. I'm not concerned with all that kind of stuff, right? And so kind of just preempting with that. So Risio.

SPEAKER_01

I want to clarify on that statement because when you say you're not concerned with ventilation, that that doesn't mean it's not part of your framework. Does that mean it's not part of your framework at all? Or you're just not concerned with the task of getting it done?

SPEAKER_00

I'm not concerned with the task of getting it done. Like when I'm in when I'm inside, I'm concerned with it from the perspective of I want it, and there's ways that I can do it. Like I can, my engine company can uh hydraulically vent, we can open windows, we can do that kind of stuff. I can call for ventilation, but I'm not gonna be able to do that.

SPEAKER_01

I just want to be clear that you're not saying you're not throwing flow path out the window and saying I'm not concerned with it.

SPEAKER_00

For sure, for sure, right? And and we'll I'll break that down a little bit with um I go into reseal, but like no, that's important. And I'm glad you you brought that up because that's probably the wrong way of saying I'm not concerned with it. It's it's that my initial surge of decisions, I'm not factoring a, you know, the ventilation plan of the truck company into mind, right?

SPEAKER_01

In your hierarchy, that's not part of the decision-making process for your initial problem solving. I don't, I'm not even sure if that's the best way to say it yet, but we're getting there. So that's why we're soloing. Okay.

SPEAKER_00

So you've got your residential tactics and tempos, right? Your um, you know, speed and our high priority, like we're there to get a line on the fire and search for occupants. My my department we're going through right now, we've got our engine trucks committees and our operations committee like working on best practices documents. So we break them down by building type. So house, town, home, garden apartment, common hallway apartments, like not type one through five, but specific building types. And we have the leader's intent leads off every single one of those documents, right? And then the residential leader's intent, you're gonna have get a line on the fire and a search to locate trapped occupants and remove them in under six minutes. Like that's our leader's intent, commander's intent, whatever you want to call it for a residential fire. So it's you know, fast, decisive, you know, all that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_01

Your department, that is the that is the de facto philosophy of of residential fire attack. That's the the decision-making matrix or or whatever you want to call it. Heuristic, heuristic that's in place for that's awesome. Yep. I don't know how many departments can actually articulate that to their to their crews. I've that that's amazing. I think that I think if people just hear that that can be done and come down from the top, it would be, I think that's that's invaluable. But uh sorry, that's that's awesome. No, go ahead.

SPEAKER_00

And it's intentional, right? Because you can talk yourself into, you can boil that frog or whatever into a lot of different things that are not that are going to take away from that.

SPEAKER_01

And and and without that, without that intentionality, and without that, then every company officer is left to their own. Boiled whatever whatever point in the pot they're boiled to, they're left to their own. Yeah, that's what that's where the four stations, three shifts, twelve departments comes from. You can get too rigid to where you're backup line, writ, water supply, backup white.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah, right. And so this allows the flexibility, the creativity, the all of the good things that we want our company officers to be good at. And so they give you the adaptability, but you're adapting, you're adapting and you're making decisions that fall under the guise of like, hey, we're here to get a line on a fire and remove people in under six minutes. So however you do it on this fire, get it get that done. Like it can look a bunch of different ways, but that's what we're there for at our baseline. So it kind of keeps us like true north oriented.

SPEAKER_01

Sure. Uh, it's not to say that there's not best practices, you know, for the mundane, the non the normal typical. Yeah, normal. Thank you. Uh room and content, cell-vented fire, you know.

SPEAKER_00

Well, and we have that. So we have like take a house fire, right? Everything based on the house fire, and then we build out from there. We go into concrete tilt-ups and pre-war brick and mortar taxpayers. Like, we've got a butt, our area is super diverse, so we've got to cover a lot of different buildings. We just take them one building type at a time, but we specify the building type just enough to be able to have make it, make sure that somebody can show up and be like, that's a townhome fire, run the play, right? So you've got your leader's intent, you've got here's an example of what the building type is, here's what normally happens on these fires. The normal, like engine, first engine, second engine, third engine, first truck, but you know, blah, blah, blah. Here's what usually happens in a normal fire on this. Usually, when we call an audible, it in these buildings, it's because of this, this, and this, and here's the audible for it. Leader's intent, here's what's normal, here's what's not, and here's the plays we run on these buildings. Best practices are like a living document. And as our department refines and gets better, and that bet those best practices can tweak. But the the SOPs are the you know, here's how you behave, here's who is in charge, here's like the non-negotiables on the on the fire, right? You shall, and then the best practices are here's how we do it, right? Not you shall, but here's typically how we do it. So, like starting out separating residential from commercial, we've got our best practices for residential, you know, then that that leader's intent. The leader's intent for the commercial, and this is where I have Reseo versus LECO. So RCO is residential, LECO with an L is commercial, and the only thing that Changes about the acronym is the the letter instead of rescue, it's line of sight. Line of sight, access, like the kill shot to the seat of the fire. That is what the L stands for. My leader's intent on a commercial building based on our best practices is we want everything to slow down. The tempo, we want to slow down. We want to prioritize the quickest, cleanest line of sight shot to the seat of the fire with no less than a two and a half, if not more than that, bigger spaces, you know, like a whole different ballgame here. It's not that we don't search commercial fires, but there could be a target like, hey, if the building has an office, we might have you know the second truck go office, right? But the these are shifts that the battalion chief is going to potentially call. But those first units are primarily concerned with the truck and the engine locating the seat of the fire and utilizing the quickest kill shot to the heart of it possible because the further we go into these buildings, the more the biggest danger to our people is that we go too fast, too deep into one of these buildings, we get somebody lost and run out of air inside a big building.

SPEAKER_01

And now we're back to the Mayday taking all the focus off the problem.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and it drags more guys in the problem.

SPEAKER_01

And I'm just gonna encapsulate.

SPEAKER_00

Sorry.

SPEAKER_01

That is your initial, like pulling out of the bay, responding to an alarm. That is your initial fork in the road is Recio versus Lesio. And on Risio, it's speed tempo rescue focused. Yep. Lycio is slow down the tempo. Line of sight, and let's yeah, okay. No, I'm tracking, I'm tracking.

SPEAKER_00

One of the habits I try to really foster with myself as a company officer is verbal diarrhea in the headset on the way to the fire. And I just like I've got this computer in front of me with a bunch of information and all that kind of stuff. The guys are, I mean, I know what's like in the back on the headset. Like it helps us get in each other's thought loop, right? That kind of that hive mind mindset when I'm looking at the screen and I'm like, hey, we're going to this building. Like if I've got time, right? If it's not right around the corner, but I'll at least I'll just try to verbally diarrhea my thought process so that way they can kind of pick up where my brain's at. So when we show up and I make a call, it's not like you know a total surprise.

SPEAKER_01

You're more on the same page.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. And I'll remind them, like, hey, this is a commercial building, we're gonna slow everything down this. Remember, we're going two and a half. Hey, let's get a good drive around. If it's not clearly evident where we need to go from the jump, let's get a good drive around, get to a spot we know is gonna be a good anchor for us.

SPEAKER_01

Now, have you ever had any pushback on your verbal diarrhea? I'm just asking now. This is personal, yeah. Where they're like, hey, uh can you say less from up there while we're driving, you know, or anything like that?

SPEAKER_00

No. Uh and you know, part of it might be because we're so young, like maybe the guys, maybe it bugs them. Uh they're not gonna say nothing.

SPEAKER_01

I'm trying to remember back to when I was going, and you were just left to your own thoughts and back, you know, back in the late 90s, early 2000s, we had a headset, but you had to push to talk, and then the captain, you know, uh up front. But we didn't the MDTs were such infancy, and so really all you had was the radio traffic, and so everybody heard the same radio traffic, pretty much. And so anyway, I was just thinking about if I would have been annoyed or loved it, and I think you know, riding backwards, I would have loved to hear more information in route.

SPEAKER_00

I want discussion, and it it doesn't have to be just for me, the verbal diarrhea. Like, I want discussion on the way. I want us to talk about the fire. And the the secondary like effect of talking about what we're gonna do on the way to the fire is guys aren't just like building with this anticipation, right? They're like, right, you it's kind of a pressure relief valve for everybody. So you're kind of like you're in each other's thought patterns here, and okay, here's what the building is. Hey, remember, guys, like let's slow down, uh, you know, emphasize the high the high-rack storage stuff. Our our tempo on that that commercial fire is gonna be advanced drive if we can. We're going to try to use roll-up doors when we can. And so these are all kind of like those factors that we're gonna be considering in commercial buildings. Try as best as we can. I'll I'll use the tick and I'll be by the nozzle man, and we're gonna take this like very methodical advance. We try to use pillars and columns as our landmarks. So we're going to, when we get to the point where we can't see very well, we're gonna use pillars and columns, which I can find on the tick, and we're gonna cruise in there with the two and a half, and we're gonna stop. I'm gonna tick it, all that kind of stuff, okay, to the next one. Stop, tick it, make sure that we're good. And we when we get to the point we're gonna engage with the fire, and this is why we use large caliber streams. We want that reach and punch to be able to span those column distances so that we can have a you know a couple columns in between us and the fire. Or if there is a problem, we're kind of like one column distance away from that problem. Also with the high-rack storage, the high-rack storage stuff when it's collapsing, or if we end up in that, which I've been in those fires and they're one of the scariest things we'll ever do. We want to kind of have that reach and punch to be able to span though those distances, those column distances, to be able to keep us out of that. And then we prioritize crew integrity of everybody's on the line. Uh, you know, half we're we're exiting at half of our air versus residential, we can maybe push it further, but you know, that halfway point, half in, half out, all of those things come into play because we've shifted our framework, we're operating under commercial framework.

SPEAKER_01

Between the two, between the two. I love that. No, that's valuable. And where did Leseo come from? I've I've never heard Lycio.

SPEAKER_00

That that's just when I started really diving into Recio, like really try to differentiate the difference between residential and commercial, it was like this natural progression in my in my mind of like rescue is not that primary, you know, it's not that primary function.

SPEAKER_01

Right. It's a bonifield special, is what you're telling me.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. It's in the in the mind of Jay, right? So that RCO shift.

SPEAKER_01

Because I like I love it. Line of sight, I can't say it, but line of sight, the re the rest of it is the same, it's just the first shit, the first letter that changes.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and so we'll break down with Reseo, like the rest of it, how I how it kind of works out my brain. But yeah, then you go to the exposures and confinement, you know, extinguishment overhaul, all that kind of stuff. But line of sight, and that that I got bit there. I had a commercial fire early on where a first in engine was able to start gives like a loading dock fire, you know, that's extending into the building, big commercial, old building, old brick and mortar. Um, and so they the first in truck company ended up doing other functions that was not supporting necessarily that first in engine company's access to the seat of the fire. Right. And it really solidified, and the fire ended up, we ended up losing the building, and it didn't um we fought for a long time, it didn't work out well. And I've been breaking that down in my mind, like, okay, what caused that to not go well? That first truck ensuring that the first engine is has that line of sight access, there they needed saws, they needed forcible entry, they needed, and that's a truck thing. Our engines don't carry saws, our trucks are true trucks, and so the engine was having difficulty, and you know, there's a lot of nuance to the whole thing, but at the end of the day, like that I I want trucks on the roof, but I wanted to ensure first that those trucks are going to create that access point for the engine to get the kill shot on the seat of fire in the quickest route possible, right? And then support the ventilation and all that kind of stuff, right?

SPEAKER_01

Right. So we got the initial mine shift. You're picking one or the other. Now we're going the focusing back in on Reseo as a framework. So now we are on Reseo. We're responding to a residential fire, so let's take it from there.

SPEAKER_00

The first is gonna be the R for rescue, and this is where you know my take on it might be a little bit different than some of the ways that people usually think about it. So usually when you say Risio, they say rescue. Well, that they'll kind of lump it in as like an obvious rescue. People hanging off balconies, all that, and it can be that, like you can have an obvious rescue.

SPEAKER_01

To me, that speaks more to the checkbox thing. It's like, okay, rescue first. Is there anybody hanging from balconies? Is there anybody hanging out windows? Right, and that's the checkbox mentality. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_00

Which is normally how people think about it, and which is why I'm like my argument, my counter to that is like that's the wrong way to think about it. With rescue, the way I view that that rescue, these are the critical life space of the building. And so, one of the first most important jobs as a company officer showing up to a residential fire is to quickly be able to identify what are the critical life spaces in that building. And this can be the ways of the building, right? Like, what are the ways that people use to get in and out of that building? Stairways, walkways, breezeways, hallways, entryways. So, like on a house, on a house fire, you have front door to the junction, take a left down the hallway, right down the hallway, whatever, down to the bedrooms. Well, if you look at the firefighter rescue survey from those locations specifically inside of a house, you've got bedrooms or 45% of our victims and are in bedrooms. Family rooms, that first room that you enter into, 17%, hallways are 8%. Those are actually the three highest percentage areas. It totals over 70% of the victims are.

SPEAKER_01

I was doing gorilla math. I'm like, you're right at 70 right there.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So the vast majority of our victims are from the front door to the bedroom, right? So, like in a house, those would be the critical life space of that house. So when you show up to a fire, like we talked about earlier, you've got like what this whole building's on fire, people screaming, what's important or what's the most important, right? Like I remember taking this incident safety officer class one time, and there was these guys, you know, they show a picture of a house fire. It's just a room and contents bar dumping out of a bedroom, and there's like these 120-gallon propane tanks on the side of the house. You guys are like fascinated with these propane tanks that are nowhere near the fire. Like, that's noise. I couldn't care less about that. Pro talk to me about the propane tank when it's off-gassing and it's on fire, right? Like, we're not talking about that thing right now. That's not an exposure. So you have the critical lifeways of the building, and this becomes more important the bigger the building gets. Start talking about your larger multifamily occupancies. The common hallway is the most important critical lifeline in a center hallway building that my engine company can protect. And so the other thing about like fire behavior is that fire is going to extend when we start talking about exposures. Just by nature of like architecture, the fire is going to extend via those same pathways. Right, right. Same pathways.

SPEAKER_01

The same thing that makes it easy for the victims to use it is the same thing that makes it easy for the flow path to allow that extension.

SPEAKER_00

Exactly. Exactly, right?

SPEAKER_01

No, no, it makes sense when you put it that way.

SPEAKER_00

If the fire is impinging on those areas, those are the most, that's like priority one for my handline. And my handline, the mission of my first hand line is to do the greatest amount of good for the most amount of people, seen and unseen. And so I want maximum return on investment with that hand line. Rescue, like that just tells me right away I got to get a line on that, right? I gotta get a line to that hallway, knock it back down to the bedroom, begin that confinement process. So just kind of big picture, like the fire grounds, always this these intersecting circles, right? You've got like the victim safety and the fire dynamics and the blah blah blah. If you just look at fires from a fire dynamic perspective, you can talk yourself into a lot of different things working tactically. If you don't take into account that those circles overlap, you can end up with some questionable habits. The frog's starting to boil, right? Right? The frog's starting to boil, right? You always have to factor, like I'm placing the line in a residential building for the life. And you know, you've got the you can take the fire from the life or the life from the fire, right? And the primary thing that I can do as an engine company is to eliminate the threat because it helps both seen and unseen victims. So I want to be fundamentally sound, I want to be disciplined so that I can do the greatest amount of good for the most amount of people in that building. Guiding principles behind that, we use firefighter rescue survey and the stuff from UL really to kind of help aid because you're not processing all of this intentionally on the fire. This is all stuff that's like in the background that feeds into your intuition to be able to look at the unconscious uh competence. Yeah. So this is all the stuff that feeds into that, right? You've got your 75% or more of the building involved, 35% plus survival rate on those types of involvement. So, you know, keying in on like, here's the fire, where's the where's the searchable space? Right? And like, what can I do to affect it? To what is on fire, what is not. How can I place a line that's gonna have the best ability to affect that searchable space so that we can search it? And then can I gain searchable space back in the process? You know, can we be in there in our gear? If we can't, can we make that space behave? And if we can't, then it's a no-go. Just very quick. Bop bop bop. Victims with fire at their location have a 46% survival rate. And when you look at a lot of the UL stuff, so the the victims closest to the seat of the fire along the intake corridor, along the flow path, because they have an intake and exhaust, like the closer we get to the sea of the fire, the more victims are gonna be primarily like thermal exposure, right? And like less on the toxic because they have that intake exhaust relationship. So you've got your thermal victims closer to the sea of the fire, and then the other victims that are in like huge danger are gonna be our in attached spaces without intakes. You've got like your, you know, your floor above, right? There's not that intake exhaust exchange going on that reduces the toxic exposure rates. You've got like your dead end bedrooms where like they're they're not along the flow path, they're getting all of the exhaust with none of the air exchange, right? And so elevation and then those dead ends, those dead ends, and the higher those dead ends are in that switch. In the dead ends are gonna make a significant difference. So, as far as like how our search is, how that impacts our our engine, you know, engine truck function or relationship, you've got your engine going the seat of the fire, and you've got your truck or your search functions starting at those dead ends, and we work back towards each other, and kind of we call it lady in the trampet. So you kind of come back to you work back towards each other as opposed to everybody go to the seat of the fire and work back, right? Because we're actually missing the dead ends, right? The dead ends, which is like the highest likelihood areas of people having poor outcomes. We're getting to those last.

SPEAKER_01

So we're also overcome by what they're being overcome with without you know the thermal insult to maybe give them a little bit of a wake-up or anything. They're just they're just trapped there, uh, you know, getting into the weeds of it, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

No, and and that's why we want to be able to kind of like put a um we all of those quotes. I know you can't read them, but all of those quotes are direct key takeaways from UL, and they're put into a specific, like here's where that is talking about on this building right there, right? Here's what the dead end is.

SPEAKER_01

And so we're the UL is when you're talking about interior, exterior streams effect on firefighter and victim survivability, mainly that that one, or is it all it's all of them?

SPEAKER_00

So it's it's not all of the key takeaways, but it's all the ones that particularly that directly relate to victims.

SPEAKER_01

This framework?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so we've got like survival space that exists on arrival, areas connected to the fire and without an intake flow path had high toxic exposure, uh, toxic exposure rises until victim removal, suppression ventilation, improved conditions, but exposures keep rising until removal. Like we've got all of these things that we want for guys to just like intuitively know these truisms, and they're like with arrows pointed, like this is where that is true, right there, you know, and so it's like that thing in action. But with that picture, they're directly from UL, they're they're key takeaways that pertain directly to the victims, uh, and then it's these key UL truisms, and with arrows pointed, like here's where that phrase is going to be specifically pertinent, right? So you've got your occupants in an intake flow path near the fire, had lower toxic exposure, but it's temporary because oxygen feeds fire growth, right? These are the the areas where we're going to encounter the thermal victims as opposed to the toxic exposure victims. Right. Right. And like higher the elevation, the higher exposure to the trapped occupant, right? At the top window of that of that house there. We've got the top, it's a dead end, it's got no intake, it's getting it's connected because of the interior stairwell. Like that is a high priority area for us to access and remove somebody because they're taking a beating from toxic exposure up there. Their thermal exposure is low, but their toxic exposure is really high. And so time is time is the enemy on that. So that's where we locate and remove them in under six minutes. Yeah. So though those are all things with with the R that are like specifically with Recio, specifically formulate kind of your initial. You show up, the building's on fire. What is important? It's these areas specifically. My maximum greatest amount of good I can do with my first hand line is right there. Yeah. Um, and it helps you be able to quickly identify that through practice of looking at the building through that lens of like that's the most important thing.

SPEAKER_01

And it allows you to be decisive in that moment when decisiveness matters the most.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. And the at its apex, right? What it's allows you to do is just be able to like look, go, right? Like, we're not going down a checklist. It's just look, that's critical, go. Right. And the more you practice it, the faster, more intuitive that becomes. Then you move on to exposure. So exposures the interior and the exterior exposures, predominantly concerned with the interior exposures. Is this where you tell the story of the fire? What where is it and how did it get here and where does it want to go? This is those are the questions that I'm trying to answer. And again, I'm not like processing all of that. Mainly, I'm looking at this building. What are the critical life ways? Is it below us and where is it going? Right, which then feeds directly into the confinement. Okay, where I know where it's going, how do I cut it off? You're telling the story of the fire, where it's been, where it's at, where it's going. Your first concern is interior exposures, right? Because like interior exposures, we're gonna be optimistic that we're gonna be able to protect interior exposures. Like that's the apex of our optimism is protecting those interior exposures. Once we start like getting into buildings where we're, you know, talking about going defensive, which you know, for us, we define uh offensive is we're we're going in or we're going to make that building behave and then go in. Defensive is the building is come, we know the building's coming down in our operational time frame, and it's beyond our ability to fix it. Okay, and so that's like our working definition of offensive and defensive. It's important that you have a working definition because defensive to some people means a lot of fire.

SPEAKER_01

No, absolutely. And and the and and to tie back into what you said earlier with the Risio, it's a checkbox. Exposure to me, as I was taught, you know, was okay, what building is going to be threatened by this building that's on fire? That's just my mind, you know. I was I've never had it broken down into interior, exterior exposures, and because that's a totally different mindset. Like it really, really is.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and it gets back to that root of like optimism and pessimism, right?

SPEAKER_01

It ties right into the next the confinement. So it's a it's a it's a flow, and like you said, it's not a checkbox, it's not a okay, look at this, A, B, C, okay. It's not. It's a process of looking at it and processing the information unconsciously.

SPEAKER_00

Exactly. That's exactly it. That's exactly it. So you got your your interior exposures. Well, then you know, some of the things you can drill with that are like what are the critical interior exposures, right? You've got again your ways of the building, uh, then you can go into like voids, being able to quickly identify these voids so that we can place a high priority on getting access and water into those voids so that we can prevent that extension. You know, exposures, like you said, most people are taught the exposure is going to be like the building next door, right? Which it can be, but more often than not, I'm talking about interior exposures or I'm talking about the floor above. And so, like a wood frame apartment, there's a massive exterior spread problem with wood frame apartment. And if I don't address that really fast and then begin confinement, then I can end up negatively impacting a ton of people because I didn't address this exterior spread problem.

SPEAKER_01

I love the way you said that, which is if I'm confronted with just a wall of fire, you know. So, yeah, I am concerned about the, you know, and it's impinging on exterior exposures, but you just did it. I don't even know if you realize you did it, probably because you just do it so often, is you already went through your R and said, Okay, this is a wall of fire. Boom, it's already it unconsciously already out of your head. You're like on exposures, okay. Well, it's wall of fire, there's no interior issue. Already this without even thinking about it, you went to the exterior exposures. Just yeah. So, like it was like watching it in real real time as you did that. So it's kind of a cool thing to to observe.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and and like the the phrase that had the most impact on that, like quick transition for for me is like I remember hearing Ray McCormick say the interior fire needs interior water, exterior fire needs exterior water. There's a difference between interior fire just venting out a window versus uh which Like that's interior fire that needs to be addressed via the interior, right? Versus active exterior spread via multiple planes of that building. And like in a house fire, I'm not super concerned with that because my line goes in. I always want to fight fire low to high. When I look at the building from the outside and tell the story of the fire, and if there's not visible fire, I go to the smoke, right? I look at the trace of smoke to the lowest level, velocities where it is, densities where it's going, or look at the top of the building, where look at the above the roof line, wherever columns may be presenting themselves. That can be tells to exterior fire or also the seat of the fire location. So I can like have the building, or if it's deeper than wide or wider than deep, I can just cut the building in half. Be like, I can see this, you know, increased velocity, density in the column right there. Like we're gonna start working that way, right? We'll figure it out as we go. With that, on house, when I go in, the interior stairwell connects me, my line to multiple planes. Now, apartments, you start to work into. Now you have multiple, like houses stacked on houses. I shove a line into the bottom house, and they're not connected to the top. And so my reflex time to get above it becomes significantly longer, allowing for more spread potential, more impact negatively on people's lives above. And so that's where you start tipping more into the like, hey man, I want you to crush this thing with a two and a half, and we're gonna follow it up to the to the first floor with an inch and three-quarter line to can start to confine this exterior spread so that we can turn that exterior fire into an interior fire and then pin our ears back and go get it.

SPEAKER_01

But that's again, you're almost going into the LESEO with the with the L, correct?

SPEAKER_00

Totally. That's kind of how the ability for the company officer to develop the intuition to look at a fire and know where it is and where it's going, and know what's the greatest amount of good my first line can do, and how many lines are we potentially going to need on this thing. Sure. Right? And so, because that's your confinement process. And again, on a on a house, that's usually pretty, pretty darn easy. Uh, house fires are, you know, they they should be easy, right? The the we should be able to just pin our ears back and go get it and really working up to like you know, multifamilies, that's where you start to get those challenges and all the more of those challenges expand a little bit. And so your ability to simultaneously doing multiple things at once versus sequentially having to like pick and choose the thing that you're gonna have, you know, the most impact uh effect with. Yeah. If I can look at a fire and be like, this is where it's going, this is where my first line's going, and I need lines here and here, right? I can help set the stage for the rest of the companies behind me to limit their reflex time so that they can get there faster. Right? I can I can make that call of like, hey, we're crushing with a two and a half, we got three floors of fire on a garden style apartment, we're gonna crush it with a two and a half, and engine six is gonna be pulling a line to floor one. And then my next thing is declaring my needs. First, I give my order to my my tailboard. Like when we get there, I'll say, hey, pull that two and a half and crush those three floors of fire right now. And then I key up the mic and give my short report because I want like things to start happening before I start talking, right? Start talking, hey, we got you know, garden style apartment, three floors of fire, uh extend up in the attic. We're gonna be hitting it with the two and a half, we'll be set extending a H three quarter into floor one, right? So that way when you see a fire, that like a you know, whatever kind of multifamily fire, whatever it is, it's gonna require multiple lines, how many do I anticipate needing, and can my engine company do it? Like that's really the question that you're trying to get. Uh, is the stairwell I picked and my engine company equipped to handle this, or do I need people in other positions to be able to augment that? So my I have to remind myself of all the time is like my job as a first engine is not to always solve like every problem. My job is to run my role in the play well. And sometimes, like on a house fire, that means I solve all the problem as my engine company. But the bigger the fire, the more complex, the more I my job is to execute extremely well and set the tone for the play so that the rest of the players can execute extremely well on their part. And as a whole entire alarm, we end up tackling the problem.

SPEAKER_01

Crushing it.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Back to results. Confinement, extinguishment. I want to be able to call water on the fire. Hey, I'm getting water on the fire. That doesn't mean a tap fire, that's water on the fire. If you don't do this currently, I think it's a good thing to talk about. But it's important that you recognize that early. So when you have an engine company say we've got water on the fire, we're getting water on the fire, it gives the battalion chief the ability to be able to look at that and go, is that meshing with what I'm seeing? And if it's not, why? And then we can limit that reflex time to be able to solve why.

SPEAKER_01

No, and I'm a huge fan of benchmarks. I think benchmarks, a lot of what we're talking about is just really having shared expectations by everybody on the fire ground. Yeah. And intentionally setting those expectations. And that's that's a beautiful thing. And I love benchmarks for those reasons, especially when everybody's agreed on what that benchmark looks like. Because when you say it, and the BC outside is like, man, I'm not seeing any steam convert, I'm not seeing any victory smoke. Uh, this is getting nastier and more violent. Uh, let's go ahead and re-evaluate.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and it gives you that feedback, right? Because you're you're inside, you know what's you know what is in your immediate area, but your field of vision and stuff is like very limited on the inside, right? The closer you get and the deeper you get in the building, the more that narrows.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So, you know, if I hear like, hey, it is not effective out here, then I need to start figuring out like why. Right. And he needs to start figuring out, you know, the battalion chief needs to start figuring out why. And then, like, do I need to, you know, reinforce, redeploy? Do I need to whatever? Right.

SPEAKER_01

Um, definitely some re in there, re-evaluate, reinforce, redeploy. A lot of reads, a lot of reeds in there. Some rees. Yeah. One of the really cool things I'm seeing as you as you've broken this down for me and looking at this framework is as you go through it, it becomes almost this natural progression, almost like just like a snowball gathering momentum and and the extinguishment or uh confinement extinguishment overhaul just kind of fall in order.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I think that's the kind of the hallmark of a good framework, is that it does follow that progression, you know, how it how it's supposed to, because it like that's your into intuitive guide from start to finish, right? Here's how I finish out a fire. Um, and with that extinguishment, you know, um that's where Uncle Sven comes in, right? So you get into extinguish the fire. Well, I gotta you know, make the fire say uncle. Uh my, you know, I need to search the fire area, ventilate hydraulically, check for extension, notify command, right? That's kind of our that that gets beat into our heads from from rookie school all the way through. Um, and it's important that we have a progression for that so that we don't just end up going in the fire room, crushing it, and then just everybody be like, all right, now what? Right. Right. So still like really important things that have to get done, including checking for extension, like search. We've you know already kind of hit on search, like we're anticipating the thermal victims closer to the seat of the fire. We want to get to them fast, drag them out. You know, the other part of Uncle Sven, um, the extension, it's hard to train, right? Right. And you want it to be a reflex that you just kind of reflexively fall into. So we give them three target areas that as soon as you knock out a room, nozzle goes out the window and immediately chases water up into the soffits, uh, bird block, equal whatever is above us, or the floors above us. So that buys us time to start getting ahead of vertical extension. So we've got outside the window, we've got inside the fire room. And so inside the fire room, the nozzle's gonna, you know, the the seams where the the wall and the ceiling comes together, those are gonna be glowing usually. So we're gonna rip water around the seams, we're gonna poke a hole a lot of times, just taking the nozzle and smashing a hole in the ceiling with the nozzle, put water up in the attic space above us, and then the third area is the interior exposure, whatever the next space is that we came from or through hallway or whatever it is. We're gonna go out there and rinse and repeat the same thing like water around the seams, pop a hole in there, get water up there. We're not pulling all of the ceiling yet, like this is just the engine company's down and dirty extension check. Uh, if there's knee walls, we'll do the same thing with knee walls, you know. Okay. Um, like pop pop into the knee walls, make sure that, and so like if there's knee walls, we know we have a triangle void above us, we have horizontal voids on the sides. So those three spaces get checked with knee walls.

SPEAKER_01

You poke and flow on those?

SPEAKER_00

Poke and flow, yep. Yep. So, and we make sure that we keep the holes small. That way, if there is active extension into those spaces, we don't end up with like just all hell breaking loose because we, you know, uh unleashing the knee walls, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

The the nightmare of the knee wall extension.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah, and it goes quick. So you know we want to be like respectful of that. And you know, once the truck's up there, then we can really start getting after it open and pull and stuff. But um, so that's extinguishment, and then we go into overhaul.

SPEAKER_01

Hey, real quick, before you go to overhaul, before you go to at the end, at the end of Uncle Sven, touch on the end of notify command, and just that that is that final benchmark. Like, is this more than water on the fire? This is hey, we what is a notify on Uncle Sven?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, no, thanks for bringing back back to that because there's a couple critical pieces of information that need to get relayed. One is your like kind of hypothesis of the extension. Do you think you have extension? Because if you do, we need to let command know ASAP so they can get a line and a company up there to open up, right? Like, and then the next thing is what's the condition of your crew? Because they need to be able to anticipate replacing you if need be. And that doesn't happen like that, right? So sometimes the sim labs, you get used to this, like I say it, it happens like this, right? Boom, boom. There's no reflex time.

SPEAKER_01

No reflex time, no, no, yeah, to get the next crew in there to take over what was just, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

We'd like another crew, you know. I need another crew to help with extension, uh, right, to tear into all this stuff, and I probably need a replacement crew for my guy. So faster you're able to call for that stuff, uh, and that's where that notified command comes in of like, what do you need up there right now? And you need more than just your crew.

SPEAKER_01

And that's Uncle Sven in a nutshell, which is the the frame the framework for extinguishment, basically. Okay, so go ahead. We're a Risio and we're heading into the O.

SPEAKER_00

So now you get into the O overhaul best practices, and this is something that gets overlooked a lot, but I think that having your crews take pride in overhaul is extremely important. Um because like that is your finishing like chef's kiss kind of finishing touch on your fire, right? And we want to take pride in the fire all the way through with overhaul stuff, with all this dude. Trust your gut, man. Like if there is something that feels off about it, like man, your gut is your gut is your friend.

SPEAKER_01

Klein tried to quantify it with his writings and stuff, but it's your Rolodex tripping, even though you're you're maybe your system too isn't actually like actually analyzing it and saying, yeah, this is what it is. It's tripping.

SPEAKER_00

That's so like with overhaul, same thing. Don't let fatigue be the driving factor on overhaul. Let doing the right thing be your driving factor.

SPEAKER_01

I love that. Yeah. Dude, I love the framework. I love the framework. And I'm I'm uh with the first phone call we had on this, I was like, I don't know if we can have a solo about Recio. I absolutely have loved this conversation. So now I'm gonna ask you for your key takeaways for the listeners. Key takeaway number one that you want the listener to get from this from this breakdown. What is your first key takeaway?

SPEAKER_00

Takeaway number one. Key takeaway number one is the it's it's not a checklist, it's a frame, but it it is not a linear progression that you're gonna hold a sheet in front of you and go down a checklist.

SPEAKER_01

Okay, you're not checking boxes, you're not saying, okay, rescue, nope, no one's hanging out the windows. And a lot of acronyms are checklists. Totally. Yeah. Totally. And I never realized this until talking to you today. That's why so many acronyms have bad leave a bad taste in my mouth because they are just checklists instead of a framework.

SPEAKER_00

It's about this idea that you're gonna arrive to this fast-paced, like crazy, you know, ah, fires going and people yelling, all that kind of stuff, and you're gonna go down this linear progression. And I was like, that doesn't happen. I'm never gonna do that. What the idea that I'm throwing out is the idea that you should do that. Right. Can be useful is in your training beforehand to shape your framework in a linear progression that becomes your intuition.

SPEAKER_01

I don't think anybody ever meant it to be a show up on scene and go through check by check. It is get your unconscious competence to a point where all of these are happening uh simultaneously, not sequentially. But what I think I think what I would try to say here, and and correct me if I'm off base, but it's any acronym, if the only time you see it is if you have a three by five card on the dash of the engine and you pull it out when you get to scene and say, okay, what's first, right? Then it's worthless. But if it's if it's filed away in your head as a unconscious competence to set the expectation for what you're thinking about, and the more you can ingrain it. So I think that's the way I would I would classify it.

SPEAKER_00

I don't process it linear, it's just it's intuitive. Like I feel it, I'm like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. There we go. Right.

unknown

Right.

SPEAKER_01

You're not thinking R R. What's the R R rescue? Oh, yeah, rescue. Okay, right. If you're there, you're already behind the curve and you're falling behind the curve, and that's where acronyms become detrimental to effectively.

SPEAKER_00

They do, and they slow you down too much, right? Which is that can be a bad thing.

SPEAKER_01

You're saying whatever one you use, feel it. Don't don't be reading it. Yeah, yeah. I love it. Okay, so takeaway number two from this solo, solo number four.

SPEAKER_00

Takeaway number two. Yeah, so takeaway number two is to separate residential and commercial. You've got Recio and LESO. If that's how you want to do it, great. If you have a different way of doing that, it's just important that you separate the tactics, tempos, and focuses of the residential fireground and the commercial fireground, because you know, A, it's gonna allow you to be effective because they have different needs and they have the different realities, and B, it's gonna keep your people a lot more safe. Um, and so when we talk about safety being a byproduct of competence, that is one of those that is like that same put into action, separating the residents from the commercial fire ground, acting like it, viewing it that way. Um, so that's one of the most important things you can do just right off the jump.

SPEAKER_01

And and for you, that is your first, like I said, like I said earlier, that is your first fork in the road, and that's your your major point. And to that point, like when you study line of duty deaths, especially some of the bigger tragedies that are commercial tragedies, almost all of them talk about the application of residential strategy to a commercial occupancy. Uh in some, you know, that's I know that's a common thread. And so just having that as part of the initial thought jump on any fire call that comes in. Any emergency, yeah, I think I would I would say fire call. Yeah, just that initial separation.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and I mean, you know, if you're a battalion chief, or like how comforting is that to know that your things are operating in the correct space? We've got engine companies prioritizing medium and larger lines, we've got you know, line of sight access on the fire, we're supplying the building systems to augment it, like all of these things we are changing into commercial mode because we're on a commercial fire. And when you know your guys are operating like that, it's gonna give you a lot more comfort knowing that what they're doing is is gonna be safe and effective, uh, versus if you have a bunch of you know guys that are trying to treat like a house fire, and your primary concern is like, dude, I do not want you like Clark Lamping talks about, getting in the uh the aisleways between the high-rack storage. You know, you get guys just like, oh, you know, hey, we're treating this like a residential hallway. I'm going down there, and the you know, banding from the lawnmower up top gets you know hot and the lawnmower falls off and squishes me. Like, that's not a house fire. You don't have fallen lawnmowers in house fire.

SPEAKER_01

And to that point, Clark's your point, everything when you do have everybody on the same page from the get-go at the tactical level, the the first end engine level, the first end truck level, that frees up so much bandwidth for that first arriving chief officer to let them focus on other things and just sets it up for more success. Absolutely. Yeah. So the third takeaway, and I'm excited about this because you talked about it earlier, you alluded to it earlier, which is how do you go about and implement training on frameworks? So third takeaway from Jay Bonifield's solo.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so uh reinforcing all of these in training. Each one of these components, like you know, when we talk about the R with rescue, and that gives us a chance to be able to break down firefighter rescue surveys uh statistics, what are defining what are the critical areas, and then we go out, we build drills around crushing those uh critical life life areas and owning those critical life areas with our nozzle. So it makes you for you build a scenario when you go out and you train, you know, whether it's tower or train tower or whatever, we're gonna go out and we're going to have everybody like, hey, we're focusing on the R today. We're gonna build a drill that that emphasizes that you got fire running the breezeway of this uh training tower. We're gonna go out there, we're gonna make that the priority, drill, drill that breezeway down, follow it up, confine it, go in. So each one of these, you know, exposures, you can build drills with you know an exposure problem. You can build drills with like, hey, here's a scenario we're running in. How do we confine it? Right. So now we're gonna focus on just the confinement. So you isolate, you can isolate each one of these letters and build drills to emphasize it.

SPEAKER_01

And you cannot do that without having set up the framework beforehand, which again ties back to that beautiful word expectations, which I love because it ties back to that leader's intent, which allows you to build these frameworks so that you can actually build drills and drill down to the actual letter and focus on specifics. Man, brother, that is a that is a beautiful, beautiful framework. I I I need another word than framework. That is a beautiful uh battle plan. Let's put it there.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, no, I mean it it dude, it's it's paid off big time and it helps me, it helps me be able to kind of not rabbit trail, not shotgun stuff. Fields always uses the analogy of the Mona Lisa, how it's a dot painting, and I'm too uh redneck to have any experience with this, but Aaron is is uh he's uh definitely knowledgeable about the finer things in life, and he'll use this analogy about the Mona Lisa with the dots, and how like each one of those dots, if you got like right up to the Mona Lisa, you'd be like, What? This isn't beautiful, it's just a bunch of dots. But then when you step back and you see all the dots in context, like, oh, look how beautiful it is, right? And you know, these things in isolation, like if you're training scatter gun, today's this, today's this, and we're not putting context, then they're just loose ends.

SPEAKER_01

And and you can, as a company officer, I know I felt this, and I'm sure you have too. It's without that framework, without that battle plan, without that leader's intent, it's hard to come up with drills sometimes to say, well, what am I gonna drill on today? Well, we just did that last week. Or, but what with this, there's actually a purpose behind the drill, which is to reinforce that decision-making matrix.

SPEAKER_00

And then we back them up with uh tactical decision games. So we do TDGs a lot with TDGs, you know, and like Phil Jose is phenomenal with these. I highly recommend people go and participate in his TDG process. He's got so like when I do a TDG for our crew, then I'll take our mapping system. It's just Google Earth with it'll have a little bit of pre-fire stuff on, but it'll have like the hydrants and stuff like that. Um so it's the mapping system we use. And I just find that, find a picture or video of a of something that looks like a building we have on our area on fire, and then I'm talking about like a 10-second pre-arrival video, is all I need, or just a picture. It doesn't take a lot, not a lot, and then go and find in our mapping, find that building that I'm thinking it looks like, and do a screenshot of like that that building with the kind of the area around it. I'm a moderator, I'm not my job is not to like oversee and tell people how to do stuff. And so we have like a couple basic rules with the TDG. One is you can't pontificate, you need to make a decision. The whole point isn't about being right, it's just about make a decision fast, string decisions together. And so don't tell me about, well, if it's this, I might do that. Like, I don't want to hear what you might do. Just tell me what you're gonna do. You know, here's a fire, and then I I just use my iPad and I just do like just use the pen. I ask my driver, where's the engine? Where are we gonna spot the engine? He's not gonna respond with, well, I might know where are you gonna spot the engine. Okay, next tailboard, what size line? Where's it going? Boom, boom. Okay, and I just draw out like here's a little box with engine six, here's a little squealy blue line with inch and three quarter. And then I go, like, here's how many lines I think, and here's where I think this fire is going. Two firefighters on the egg car. They're always focused on get the line in place first and search. Like, search is kind of that we treat them like a little mini truck company, right? So Where are your guys' search priorities? Okay, and I circle that on the building. Like, where are you gonna go? Okay, we're gonna search here. Boom. Okay, medic unit. We got a medic unit with two firefighter paramedics on it. Okay, you guys are, you know, a lot of times they'll help out. One will help supply, one will start uh getting ladders up. And hey, what does that look like? Boom, where are you guys parking? We talk a lot about where the medic unit's gonna park because if and when we get a victim, they're able to peel off, deliver patient care and punch and get it. Right, we don't want them to have to climb over LDH to get out, and so we practice these TDGs, and the whole point is make a decision, make it fast, and then we do a hot wash right after, and then we can talk about the options and the audible and all that stuff.

SPEAKER_01

I like the word pontification.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, exactly, exactly. So you pontificate afterwards, right? But that's like when there's a clean break, all right, we're done, cool. And we do this every single morning for 15 minutes of the beginning shift.

SPEAKER_01

So oh wow, wow, that's awesome. That's awesome. And I'm sure, like, because I know that there's this anxiety anytime you're having to make decisions in front of your peers, you know, there's this level of anxiety, but to do it every shift at the beginning, I'm sure that just goes away and it becomes normal.

SPEAKER_00

I make I give myself something to make a decision also because I want to practice what I preach and I want the guys to know that I'm I'm gonna do this too, and I'm not always gonna get it right. And we can talk about it in the hot wash afterwards, and guys can shoot holes in what I what I you know, what I was doing. And awesome.

SPEAKER_01

Like I don't know, yeah. I love it because then you actually get better. They understand your thought making process, they can actually reinforce your decision-making process. They're more bought into your decisions, they understand why you make them when you make them. I mean, everything about it is is just beautiful, and especially the frequency of them. That's awesome. All right, man. I've I've absolutely loved this solo so far. I want to hear your parting shot on Jay Bonifield's solo on Recio as a framework. Here's the parting shot.

SPEAKER_00

Have some reflection. Take some time, reflect a little bit, and evaluate like what is your process? How you came up, how you were raised, the things that gave you a knock upside the head, the things that scared you, the things that you found success in, like all of these things are going to impact your framework and how you operate, how you make the decisions. And so I would just encourage people to take some time and just self-reflect on like what are those things that impacted you, how they impact you. Take what's good and build off of it, and take what is concerning and start to work on on weeding it out and fixing it, right? So you're never gonna be perfect, but I think if you're like kind of adopting that, you know, 1% better every day kind of mindset and staying continually self-reflective uh and challenging, like here's what I know to be true, challenge that repeatedly and test it over and over and over again. Like just continually refining yourself through that process of reflection. And then if you're a company officer, you've got to do the same thing with your crew, you know, chief officer, your battalion, whatever. Um, like what got us here? And what are our tendencies, what are our habits like self-scout? At the end of the day, it just comes down to I encourage people to self-scout. And if you don't have like a framework, then start building one. And I think that that's the most important thing that it gets intentionally cultivated, not just accident.

SPEAKER_01

Thanks for listening. New episode of the solo drop of the first of every month. What topic do you want to hear solo? Make sure and let me know. See you at the next solo.