S3 E39 Deving Craig 2023 Part 2

So Devin is a 20-plus year veteran of the fire service . He has been with the department north of Houston , texas since 2003 and an officer there since 2007 . He has spent seven years as a lead fire instructor at the largest fire academy in the nation . He is a proud member of the Georgia Smoke Diver Association .

He is also the co-owner of Trainer Die Fire Service Training .

The one of the posts that we did was about Don't Be an Asshole and that got like a million likes and a million hundreds of shares , like what ? And it was just a thought a guy had and we happened to document it , and there it goes .

Anybody that travels will tell you that every fire department has the same three or four dudes in it . They have the same three or four shifts , the same problems , just on different levels , and you can get that together and go oh well , this is the same thing . So you'll see that in the post .

We don't get in there and talk about hey , smoothborn nozzles versus fog nozzles . No , that's not , that's that's . The argument is to have one on one with people , and a lot of things you start to learn or are just just based on what your department runs . You may , you may mask up on the truck . That's what you do .

This is why you do it and you're not going to change it . Okay , cool , let's not worry about that . So we try to keep it to where . Hey look , this is just mental thoughts of a you're . You're feeling crappy today . How do you feel better ? How do you ? How do you get through the guys that are complaining ? How do you do those things ?

And most of the stuff is organically written in pretty close time to when it's posted . So we try not to . We're trying not to write . You know , warm peace with these things . We just want to have a good thought that people are like don't be an asshole .

I know what I'm talking about . So I kind of feel like I got a pretty good experience there to make comments , and it just I . But the one thing I can't wrap my head around is why a firefighter would not want to be the absolute best they can be .

That's what I did Because I think in your mind and the fire service is bad about this , so there's no , we have the firefighter combat challenge , but when a house burns down , there's nobody going to grade it and go , wow , y'all were terrible . No , they're going to go . Oh yeah , you did the best you could do , Did you ?

So from most guys , they're coasting and that's been working out great . So I'm fine . So a very good dude I know points them out to me there today . He was proofreading some stuff that had been written . He's proofreading some paperwork and he said people don't understand . You don't become a better writer just by getting older .

Yeah , Wow , that's , that's a good point . So the same thing with the fire service . You don't become a better fireman by being . You do make a runs and whatnot , but just existing in the fire station doesn't mean you really got any better experience and seniority or two different animals . Very much , very much .

You know that whole thing of are you doing 20 years , 20 years one year at a time , or did you do 20 years over and over again or whatnot ? So yeah , and for me it was . I mean , I grew up in a fire service , so when I got to Fire Academy , I'd have been running around fire service for 10 years . So when I got promoted and then what worked ?

I was probably a full-time fireman for seven or eight years and then I ended up 1000 miles away and was like , oh my God , I have no idea what I'm doing . This is not yeah and most people don't get that advantage that I had to get taken out of their bubble and woken up .

My question is do you do the same for other families , right ? My biggest gripe right now is I cannot stand and I get . I'm like I'm sure you do the same thing . Because you travel , because you have a presence online , people send you stuff , send you stories or whatever . Somebody will drive you nuts .

But I can't understand for the life of me why people will my train just left out of the station . I've got to apologize . The hell was I talking about ?

I'm getting old , devin , I'm getting old , but can't for the life of me , understand why people don't want to be better and realize that they're not there to hold down recliners , right , that they have a responsibility greater than we can imagine . And , like I said , I've been that guy where I just sit on the .

I'm like ah man , I got the city today , boy , 24 hours . I just did . I didn't turn a wheel , you know , but our job is complicated , it's dynamic and it's probably , in my opinion , the most important job there is . And to go to work and to leave work and not to be a better firefighter those 24 or 48 hours later , I just I can't understand it .

I just I don't have the capacity to process that . So I'm sure you run into that as well .

For me it's a two story house with dad outside screaming and mom's in the house with two kids , and it's three o'clock in the morning and half my staff is off on a swap and I get different guys and it's gonna be terrible and the chances of me making that are actually very , very slim .

Doesn't mean I won't make it two days from now when I go to work , but the chances of us making those things are slim and to have to operate at such a high level doesn't happen that often most of the time . So even my department you know 6% of our runs are EMS , even though 6% of those runs you know 55% are blood pressures and wait for the ambulance .

Well , same thing with fire calls . You know most fires . If you're not the first in or second or third in , you're probably not gonna be put to your extreme levels of things .

So for most people they can coast and then when the bad one happens they'll come up with oh it was dark , or my lieutenant was off , or it rained or whatever nonsense they wanna make up and they get through it .

You know , in the fire service we don't demote people very often , so nobody lets you go to a fire and comes back in grades , even goes well , you got a 42 , we're gonna go find somebody better . No , it doesn't happen . They go . Oh well , you know things happen and they get through it .

So , unless you're my biggest fear , especially because of where I live I live two minutes from one of our stations . That means that crew has to be the best there is because I'm gone . So and going as far away as I am , hey , in my house it's kind of a pain with some stuff , the way it's set up .

So we love to teach VES , but we'll go places and they'll be like you're gonna teach VES , we'll start with some other stuff first and see if we get to that .

And sometimes that means the hardest part of VES is getting your big ass in the window and you walk up and go ah , you know , you said you're gonna do everything for the little kid that's dying , but you won't push away from the kitchen table , you won't work out , you won't . You know these are the things , right .

And then everybody wants to be a badass when it's on fire , but when grandma calls at three o'clock in the morning because she's fell out of the bed . Oh God , I gotta get up and it's gonna smell bad . Come on , man . Grandma's been laying there for eight hours . Your job is to help her . Yeah , your job .

But I hear where people say God , I can't stand it when officers or battalions , she's or whatever say I do anything for my guys . I make sure they go home every shift . I'm like okay . First question do you make them work out ? Well , no , okay . Second question do you make them train ? Well , I mean they go through the map .

But third do you make them wear an SCBA during overhaul ? Well , I mean no . So don't give me that shit . Tell me this , be honest and say you know what . I will do almost anything to make sure they get home , as long as it doesn't complicate my life . That would be a more accurate saying .

So when people say stuff like that , it is just a waste of time to me . You and I have probably met those officers . We may have had those officers that truly did that stuff , and they're usually the ones that we get mad at because they make us do our job . They say , okay , this is what you're gonna do , but they're trying to keep us safe .

Get us home , man . It goes through me . When I hear these people that say I'll do anything for my guys , I'll make sure they get home , I'm like I don't think no , nothing , no .

I gotta go rent a dog and kick it or something . I'm in a bad mood now . Is people that count their saves . God , I can't stand that . Yeah , count their grabs . They sit there and they brag on their grabs . So I was recently up in Canada and a young firefighter he's really a great guy , great firefighter man he's just hungry and he goes .

He asks me well , how many saves you got ? I'm like no , I don't count those . He's like why ? I'm like if you count the saves , you gotta count the ones you didn't save , right ? So if you count this , most people are like well , I've had these saves . That means I interceded at the perfect time . I did my job perfectly in their life .

Today , what about all the other ones that you didn't save ? Oh no , they were already gone . They were gone for a left firehouse . I don't think to me it's an ego-driven thing . But I explained to him . I'm like , yeah , I just I don't think that's a , that's an ego-driven thing and we're not here for us , we're here for them .

We're not here for anybody in the firehouse inside that firehouse . We're not there for that 24 or 48 for anybody in there , we're there for everybody outside of that firehouse . So what do you think about that ? Am I just being picky and old and grumpy ?

When Grandma's trying to get across the road and they're in the pumper , they stop , help her get across the road .

They do these things so that when they , when they make runs , they learn that maybe when you go inside the terrible house that the guys a diabetic and has one leg and you go there all the time , maybe you take the piss bucket and you pour it in the toilet . Maybe you help that guy . Or you be a professional guy and I'm only here for this .

I don't need to deal with this crap or whatever if you instill in them Helpliness

. And our job is actually really easy . We do everything the cops do except the rest people . So we help everybody . Doesn't matter who . We don't . When now alone gets called , we don't look to see if it's these people on this street or those who on that street or what anything else the demographic about them .

We go we go Fair out the problem is and we help them the best we can so that that instills in them things like moving furniture to get the stretcher into the house and then putting the furniture back , and these kind of things , then we'll end up with this great thing over just spreading this fire service . We're helping people and we don't need any .

They see another . The fire department showed up and everything got better , good versus oh well , we , you know we can do this and we can break windows and we can cut holes and do all these fun things and then not care later .

I'm awful cutting holes , but we're gonna cover it up and we're done and make this better for the people and and I think if we keep promoting that and still that , even in our children and and the little kids and the young guys when we're growing up , I think we'll get a better overall as a fire service and as everything else too .

But the gist of it is ambulance car wreck , guys missing this flight , and they , like they reschedules flight for him through , and this before the internet took his luggage , took him to the airport . I mean they , they went that extra mile because you say fire service what's that second word ? It's service .

You know we're there to serve and we're not there for our egos . You know this isn't a house fire , so I'm not gonna do it , or you know I'll . I'll just take information . You know you do CPR , but it goes all through me . We just have a responsibility higher than we can imagine .

And everybody outside of the firehouse , they drive , they have their day in their night and they didn't think about fires or car wrecks because in their mind they know whatever goes wrong , we're gonna be there right . So we , we need to be at the level that they expect us to be , and I don't think we are .

And it falls back on training , and I know we share a lot of the same views on training . To me , our main job is training .

Okay , cool , well it's last time you did that and and hey , this kid's getting , he's pretty decent at his stuff . What are you doing for your stuff ? Are you getting better at the MDT ? Are you getting better at ? Hey , there's a new EMS protocol out there . Hey , there's these new things that are going on .

And just because you were here a decade doesn't mean you know Everything going on right now . Things have changed . Things are getting better . We use that . We had a guy that he complained the rookie didn't know where the Crescent Ranch was . He didn't know what a Crescent Ranch was . Okay , cool , you teach him . I did , I did .

All right , you just made a run . Did you use the Crescent Ranch ? No , yeah , but you use your MBT . You know how to use that . Ah , well , you know , I don't really mess with it . This is . There's two levels of this and you have to .

You have to keep growing and I think in the fire service we like to get to a steady space , or we think we have tenure and everything's fine and oh , it'll be fine . I just make it through the 48 hours or 24 hours and if something happens , you know . Whatever it was raining , right .

And that guy in Canada was one of those guys . We were up there teaching for a week and we were teaching , you know , firefighter , a self-rescue , rick , live fire stuff , all all these things , and you couldn't , you couldn't make something hard enough for him .

He's one of those guys you could say , shout out to Nate , by the way , hey , nate , go run through that mountain and he's not going to get all the way through it , but he'll get mostly the way through it before all his bones and organs are crushed . But he's that guy . There's no quit in it . They just didn't make any quit in him . So he's amazing guys .

I like seeing those guys . It balances out some of those idiots that we get to see in our travels or talk to us or respond to a post that is , you know , ridiculous .

And then these guys will pull out stuff and when we be like , oh , what is that ? Oh , it's this , because we have this . And when we get to learn something new from them or we go to do a firefighter drag and say this is how we've been teaching this . Have you seen something better ? We want to get better stuff .

And then you get that constant Chase for better , not best , because if we go with the best and that's it , we're done , we got it . No , somebody , somebody in Saginaw , michigan , might have some better way to do something that we didn't know about because they just thought it was a normal way . No , right .

And when , the one of the first times we did that , we asked the kid hey , what's in your pockets ? And he dumps his pockets and he had some rope and I remember asking him I was like , why do you have it ? And he gave a good reason . I said , oh , that's cool and he just looked at me . I go what he goes . I .

I thought you were gonna jack up me about it because it was kind of weird . No , no , that works for you . That's cool , man . That's . You taught me something . All right , this is great , and the ability to move around and see things has been really really nice for the training stuff of it and not Get stuck in a little bubble .

teach you , unless you're like hey , man , let's talk . What can I learn ? What can you ? What can you share with me ? Now ? What about ? So ? Training new guys , training old guys ? What we talk about ? Same exact thing , right ? I mean , it's exact information . You deliver it in the exact way . You get the exact response , am I right ?

what's the . So we're not gonna walk in a class and go , hey , we're gonna do Red , do the Denver drill , which we did Denver draw on a very rough way because it's one guy in the window , and that was taught to me by George smoke diver and I learned really hard on that the , the smoke ever program .

Because you have to be in such good shape You're girl , you're within reigns to do some awesome stuff that you usually can't do . It's . It's right that you're gonna get 20 guys that are in really , really good shape at a class . You're gonna get 510 and you're gonna get some other guys on the bottom side of that 510 to .

So trying to figure out , hey , look man , we're not gonna send you in the window , but what can you teach us and what's gonna be your job ? We taught a class at a very small department that had three guys on a fire and they were wanting to learn VES . Okay , cool , we can teach you how to do that . Been there , they were nervous of it .

They're like we don't have any people . Yeah , you got three . So we're gonna figure this out and that's , that's . Adapt to it and it's you still have to do it . So these things have to happen , whether you have what we have .

I mean , I don't even know how you could keep people on a box now it's probably a hundred feels like , but I don't buy 30 and trying to adapt to everybody has to do the same job .

And the cool thing about the firefighter rescue survey and firefighter close calls and all these things that we have started to come out is that People are being saved by firemen , and not only in New York City , in LA and Houston and whatnot , but they're being saved everywhere and they're dying everywhere .

So how do we find the small town in the middle of Kansas that's gonna make one fire this year and people are gonna be trapped in it ? And how do we get those guys to a level where they can ? They can save those people and try to fix that .

And I and a good and I have to do a keynote later this year , but I'm gonna talk about the fact that , even in an 30 minute keynote , how many people in the United States died while I was talking in houses on fire ? And houses on fire are only 10 to 20 percent of what the calls that we make , depending on where you work . So , what about the other ?

How many people died of cardiac arrest ? How many people died in motor vehicle accidents ? That that we have to be really , really good at , and they don't . I don't think we realize that sitting in the fire station no , that's rough .

There are no basics , right , I mean it's , it's our skill level , and Talk about VES and stuff . I mean that is now an accepted practice through NFPA 1700 . They don't call it VES , window initiated search . But I've had a lot of conversations in the past few years about how that is an advanced skill .

I'm like you're going in a window , closing door , grabbing a person , I that . I mean we're not sitting a rocket to the moon on this one , it's pretty simple . It's just you know . And then people always think that it's a second or third story trick . I'm like , no , you do that at any level .

And what I have noticed is typically the younger , the fireman . When I asked them what kind of training they want to do , it's always technical stuff . They want to do cool , flashy things , they want to do rope rescue or they want to excruciating training . But when you say , hey , let's do host stuff , oh , I already do that .

And they don't understand yet that just because they've done it once , twice , five , ten times most things , that's not a skill now you don't . You don't have that built into you , it's not , it's not repetitive enough and we need to build on those things . And then we started doing we've done one so far , we time to drill .

So we set it out that each , each of these four guys were gonna do this specific thing this guy's gonna stretch , this guy's gonna force the door , this guy's gonna do is 360 , this guy's gonna pump . And we set it up almost like like an Olympic deal where these are the parameters one with that different time .

Check that money for part two cruise and it was actually really , really great . It was one of our one of our firemen . One of our lieutenants was a college athlete , so he was able to say look , this is competition breeds excellence , let's do this .

And now we know we were able to go back to our battalion chief and say , hey , on average of our five companies , it takes about three minutes for this to happen . Now , he knows and it was well we . We made the door really , really hard and they had to get water on the fire .

So we learned something really hard and we and we were able to talk about that too , but it but think about this as a chief officer how long does those things take ? When you tell a company cut a hole , how long does that take ? Do you have any realm of what that would be ? How long does it take to cut a hole in a one-story house versus two-story house ?

Does each crew do it the same way ? Does do you have crews that you might never get that hole ? We tend to in the fire service don't really have times for things , even the NFBA 1410 drills . Take those drills and time them . Then you have one you know how long it takes , and two you know what time you need to beat .

So now we know how we can get better with data versus just , oh , we did it better than B-shifted or whatever .

I think everybody could approve upon that , but doing them timed , because it's one of those things where getting to the fire is the main goal , not the little increments that make that up Like good positioning , wearing your gear correctly , doing your 360 , pulling the line , also doing transitional hits from outside if that's an opportunity before you moved in .

So I think if you look at each separate little increment there , that's your layout of what you need to be doing . It's not just like go balls out to the fire . There's a way to get there super fast really If you're not passing , pulling your lines and moving charge lines around pinch points , especially so for my department .

We have basically three people on the engine company , so one of them is going to be pumping , so it's two people moving that line . So they really need to communication , obviously , and knowing just how to bus driver that , the hose and corners and stuff , Because the department I'm at right now very aggressive in a good way .

I know aggressive can be a bad word in the fire service , but they're great , but it's one of those things if you can just fine tune a couple of things with all of us , but I think that's what's on my brain right now is like , man , I really wish we could shave some time off of this . And , of course , I've had conversations .

I've taught places where they don't do any bunker drills unless you're in an academy , and I'm like , why is that ? Well , we're not in the academy , we practice getting on the truck all the time . Do you practice getting on really , really fast , or you just walk there . And I think it was Kurt Isaacson who said when seconds count , we count seconds .

That broke my brain when I first heard that . So I'm like , how many seconds can you save ? So I've had conversations with firefighters and I'm like I'll talk them through it and they'll say , yeah , but that's only going to save me about 10 seconds . Yes , but that's 10 seconds for them .

If you think about a time when somebody dies in a fire 10 seconds before they die , they're not dead . What if you could be there in those 10 seconds ? And if you learn that you'll build that out to 40 seconds or a minute , minute and a half .

If , again , going back to my little increment , my little stair step , if you work on each one of them and shave seconds off each one of them , dude . I mean you're giving the victim a lottery , a winning lottery ticket , and all it takes is training .

So if you're going to do the Venetian Relation drill , ok , for a good two or three days we're going to do ladders , ladders , ladders , ladders , ladders OK , cool , now we're going to do saw , saw , saws , and then we're going to put this all together in this one big thing .

And we also , when we did the officers , they had to give a size up and we used blue card and we gave them a picture . We literally had a fireman standing over the picture that they saw and he got to look at it for 10 seconds and we put it away and that was again building in the brain .

And we've noticed too now that if I say something , if I say a two-story house on fire , your imagination of that might be different than mine . So , trying to take a video and show it to a group of firemen , seeing you're an officer to a new guy and then ask each one of those guys what do you see ? What are you looking at ?

And you'll find various differences , from guys that have had reading smoke training , to guys that haven't , to guys that have a lot of experience , to guys that don't and you'll find out that , hey look , just because you see it this way , they don't see it as well and we can't assume that they know that .

So we get heavy when we start with blue card about 360s , and then we realize later that , oh no , we taught him to do a 360 , but that poor guy is running like NASCAR .

He doesn't think it's important and he doesn't realize that , hey look , I need to find a back door , versus he's like man , I want to get around the front so I can get back in the house . Exactly , ok , all right . So yeah , it's trying to adapt to that and trying to understand that everybody's different and they're going to learn different .

Then they're going to see things different

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And when the fire had come out the front window , it lit the leaves on fire in the yard . I picked up the radio and I'm running through my size up and my brain , when I saw the leaves , I said , oh , that's it . My brain said that's a small fire in the yard and I went and we have a small fire .

Oh shit , no , the house is on fire , it's going to blow up . So now when I teach it to people , I'm like look look at it and then look down and run through it , because if you're looking at things , your brain is understanding this and figuring this out and going on OK , ok , ok , we're getting more information in and you're not going to .

The amount of time it takes to get your size up out is too long . So if you're getting new information in , it's gonna , it's gonna throw you away the hell off . So , and I used to think I saw this somewhere that it was a fire truck , that on the radio mic it said what apparatus it was .

And I'm thinking how dumb can you be that you don't even know what truck you're on ? And then now we have a reserve pumper and that reserve pumper is a little bit different and we've had guys go oh shit , I'm on overtime or whatever , and he says the wrong number .

Well , hey , this is just a little reminder , just like pump panel charts and numbers and all those things , just little reminder . So when your brain's working too hard , oh yeah yeah , simple , that .

I told you don't get this old , right , I'm glad I'm this super handsome and funny , but I'm losing my brain . You lose something , you gain something , right , but I like it because the more I'm learning about how our brain works , that that's one of those things that can bring you out of that .

I don't want to say panic , but when you go from the prefrontal cortex to your amygdala and stuff , it helps you , it keeps you zoned in . I've got a battalion chief that During trainings and stuff He'll tell his crew we just did a bunch of live fire training and he would say when he debrief he's like alright , paint me a picture , I'm not there yet .

So on the radio , paint me a picture . I want to be able . When I pull up , I already I see exactly what you painted , not , holy shit . He said it was a one story , it's three story you know , walk out versus you know , so it's . I like that idea . I think it's . It's one of those things that that sets the tone right first .

First person there sets the tone for the entire when they park what they say and what they do , and then we all got to play catch up to that right .

So a house on fire first in , not first in , so on and so forth , carrex and whatnot , and then just that little bit of thing .

A year later Now we even know that , like when we drop a run , we drop a fire , that guy sitting behind the officer , he's bringing this tool every time and now we know that one , the tool gets the fire and two , there's no question about what am I gonna carry , what am I gonna do or whatnot .

And it helps a little bit of that brain thing working and then having to run this , you know , a thousand times to get it built in there .

Something I'm trying to get to be able to do is if I teach you something , if you don't know anything about it , and I teach you how to do it , and Then later I have to change it , how many times we have to teach it to you to change it ? But it gets your brain out of that . So it's the old dog , new trick thing .

How many times I got to remove the thing and I know this from when our radio is amazing . It's great . But my radio is the fourth Idealization I've had in 20 years . So I can still look at that day , the first 16 channels I had 20 years ago . And now I'm like , okay , hold on , I can do this again .

So again , little papers and little things Help a lot to get that brain working right .

First-class firefighter brother , you your name comes out of my mouth quite a bit around here . Good way in good ways , but before we go Tell , tell the listeners how they can get when , what website where they learn about your classes and they can buy some great swag , because you got some excellent swag .

Thanks for everything you do for us .