Hm disclaimer. We'd like to know before the start of this interview that the opinions about to be expressed by the guest of Tonight's Getting Salty Experience Podcast are that of the guest and do not directly or necessarily reflect the views of the host of the Getting Salty Experience Podcast.
You're listening to the Getting Salty Experience Podcast.
Hello, Hello, yes, hello, Darren P.
You got it right, Darren P.
Yep. A boy text me the other day while I was watching the Met game. That's not I want to throw up. While I was watching the Met game.
That was a fine.
Don't know that was a that.
Might have been another one.
Yeah, cracking himself up. You love.
Cracking me up.
Somebody pro you gotta keep I dout cares about the ranges one nothing we informed on the Met game.
Please Procaccini's playing tonight to sure?
Yeah, sure, sure, back to Get told the Experienced podcast, the only one that brings the fire house kitchen table to you with You know, we have a world famous author on tonight. I think he's the author of two books. Tonight, this guy, do.
You have your uh? I was waiting to see if you had your pipe.
I do have it somewhere here. Yeah, oh, we have a The author was to leave. It's a gold Feder on.
Gold Feeds. It sounds like I.
Found all right he does. Yeah, got a hell of a mustache. Too many?
What does he got? Gone? You muted?
I'm sorry you try.
I was talking to now are you telling you?
I'm juggling multitasking right now?
This might be the guy.
If you see this guy walking around, this could be chief golfend.
Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's going to be a short, little uh short little blip.
So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I.
Long the string man.
If you don't want to.
I mustache.
Yeah, I don't want to go too long with that. Agave us a Dingay.
We got this book that came out that mister Leeb, mister Lee, Chief Leave and gold Feder wrote. It's about thirty fires you must know. We're gonna find out why we must know these ones, what made them want to write this book, and why they chose the fires that they chose. And we're gonna talk about a couple of them tonight that happened in the fbo Wi. This this fire is all around the country that they cover here,
so it would be a good show. Put your listening, put your ears on, and you're gonna pick up some information here, some valuable information, and you can hear some good stories.
Man.
Unfortunately they don't wind up being happy stories. But you might want to look at fire number seventeen, the Father's Day Fire. Oh I happen to write that chapter. Oh you might want to check down en.
Did you have your piping in your mouth and your as I.
Wrote it, I had to pipe in the mouth. I was puffing along.
Did you Did you happen to see this right here?
Wow? Where did that come from? When am I getting that?
I got to send it to you? And this this is my boy Frankie.
The motto I'm gonna have him on the show, right, he was gonna have him on the show?
Made you get.
Our first EMS guy, our first paramedic coming on the shelves.
Old school, old school MS too.
For the merger, Before the merger, why don't we sell some of that stuff on the website. You know what I'm saying?
Well, if anybody wants to think he's doing uh, what's the website again? Fish at fdnyfish dot com. Check out putting coupon Cote Salty ten percent. You can actually get in touch with him. He could do your own custom deal, but you got to send him an email.
Oh all right, there you go. All right, look at the commercials down of the way, so we can get these esteemed gentlemen in here. He's gonna do himself again.
What sorry, I'm juggling in the background.
Here, and you're gonna do it like this, All right, A pair.
Of hands and some balls and some fingers, here we go.
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Wonderful. We'll pop out Vince's commercial quick and then I have a good one for the FRCEE later.
Yes, here we go.
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You asked me what the frishing coefficient? Well here it is coefficient. What a dick?
You guys a tool?
Can we cut that thing out? By now?
I mean controlling it over there? All right, let's do it roughy, let's do it me.
I don't know I was ready.
I'm ready. Who do you want first? This is gonna be a tough one, baby, working on.
The only one.
Guy you gotta bring the first. The guy's gonna strap a bib on and dive into homasagna. Tonight, bro a little cup of red dad, you know what I'm saying.
Coming to the stage as always one of our favorites, Deputy Chief j Jonas, Chief Francy sleep there.
And the calliage she Bill Goldfai.
The Jack goes, what the hell of a dick duster? Really quick? Come on, we gotta get we gotta dive in.
You roll there we go.
I pleasure allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.
Look, Billy's got his uh, Billy's got his people out there. Look at that. Excellent? All right, So let's dive into the book a little bit. But for us, we're going to see the chief leave. How you doing it? Aw's retired, live treating.
You doing good?
How you guys doing doing great? We're not writing books though, I mean not, We're not doing the stuff that you're doing.
You wrote a chapter of it, right, you wrote it. We're gonna couple yours on your chapter on a future show and we'll kidding decide. Your chapter is fantastic.
Well, thank you so much. I enjoyed writing it.
Oh my god, he's never mine. The head's not gonna fit in the the screening.
A few Its good for you.
It's a number.
Love you brother number love mister Goldfinder. How are you, mister Goldfer.
Well, thanks for having us on. This has been quite a project and we'll talk more when we get into it, but thanks for helping us with this projects. As Frank will tell you, and I'm going to remind everybody, of the proceeds of this book are going to four fire service charities.
Firefighter Can't Support Network, Tunnel.
To Towers, Hire, a First Responder Center of Excellence, and the Chief Ray Downy Scholarship. So neither Frank Leeber, myself or any of the thirty contributors I'm making a nickel on this. This is strictly a fundraiser and an opportunity to get firefighters to understand about their past.
Well, thank you all right, Nice to do that there too.
Right now he's taking in jobs. Well we'll yeah, he's at the anytime he could be could be flying down.
You guys are a lot better than us, Louis, we wouldn't be donating all the proceeds.
That's just.
Jonas. How are you?
How are we doing? Guys?
Fantastic Lasagna to my chief.
Yes, God blessed that woman.
God bless that Monday, right Garfield on mondaysign little red Wine.
We forget about it.
So who's initial whose initial idea was distant leave, go to Billy, Billy, go to Lee? What happened?
Frank and I we talked quite a bit about close calls and other incidents, and and I was at a firehouse.
One day and I was planning to the crew.
About something and I said, you know, it's just like what happened in Hack and Sack. They looked at me like I had three heads. That really struck me. They didn't understand the word happens, what that means to our business. So I started thinking, you know what, this should be the next book.
And you know, how do we do it? How do they not know about Hack and Sack? How does this one not know about that?
And you think today, with so many forms of communication, they would know, But you know what, it's almost like this, too many forms of communications today.
The young firefighters, the ones who want to learn that.
They're getting innundated, but with every house fire and everything, so it's hard for them to catch it.
So Frank and I were talking.
I said, listen, I've had this idea, and he says, I'm on board, let's do it, and because he's experienced the same thing. So we went through a process. We worked with a young lady named Amy Tippett, who's some of you not made John Tippet. Her husband works for the National for Firefighters Foundation's retired chief in Montgomery County, Maryland and Charleston, South Carolina. And Amy was a big help in this. But we put together an algorithm of
what house fires, what dwelling fires. We tried to pick the fires that most firefighters are going to go to, the single family dwelling, the row store, small commercial things like that, and I think we came up. Look, Frank, it can come at a minute. But we have enough to three or four more books. But we had to pick what would be most applicable, especially with the younger firefighters with the type of fires they're going to today,
and this is our opportunity. We found of those thirty you guys can lead that conversation later, which once, but we found people who were there or were close to someone who was there, and that's a big deal. So basically each chapter I introduced the chapter that someone who knows who's the subject matter expert, if you will, on that particular fire or related or something like that, and then Frank puts together a lesson plan after each one. So really this book can be learning.
I could drill almost I would.
I wouldn't call it an enjoyable reading, but it's interesting. It's a great gift, but it's also educational because there's a lesson plan after each after each chapter that Frank walks you through. We also have a website thirty Fires dot com, and in that you'll be able to and in the back of the book you can scan a QR code you'll be able to see videos of that chapter,
see reports of that chapter. So we think it's probably the most comprehensive book identifying specific incidents that anybody who's making runs today should know about.
Chief Were there any chief leave Were there any fires that you really didn't know too much about and were surprised when you heard the details of.
Yeah, so I'll tell you what. So a lot of the fires when we each made lists of fires we thought should be in the book, and we compared those and we had around twenty that were the same. And then we each had individual fires that we had maybe a little bit more knowledge about or and we came up with a couple of more from that from using that method, we asked people that we know around the fire service, and then we wanted to fill in and make sure that we got some stories that really rounded
it out. That we were covering career, volunteer, rural, city departments, a little bit of everything. And as Billy said, we have enough there's and now the amount of people that have contacted are insane. You have to cover this fire, you have to cover that fire. And it's really about how do we make these lessons transferable used the wildland firefighter.
They have the watchouts right, so for things that we have to be aware of on the fire down so we don't lose people that we don't lose our brothers and sisters to similar ways that we have in the past. Even even when I was putting together the training, I didn't want to have it would be it wouldn't be a really good educational book if every single one of
the drills were the same. But you know, there's certain things that theems to every one of them, whether it's communications or you know, whatever it is, right, but communications is you can make that as a takeaway for every fire. When when things go when things go south, but this, this project was truly a laborer love. I learned, I learned something I didn't know about every one of these fires.
And I think Billy will say the same. And as true students of our profession, when I learned something new, it's uh, you know, I enjoy that and it's really humbling.
And even getting to know some of the people involved, getting to know some of the parents of of people that have been killed, and I've and see how they go back to the National form fire Fighter Foundation's Memorial Weekend every year, help new families and if we could, if we could prevent some of these firefighters from losing their lives and make it where if we where then then not having to go to Memorial Weekend, because line of duty deaths have generational impacts on the on the families,
on the friends, on the coworkers, and you know, the more we could prevent that, the better off our profession, our beloved profession is. And you know, on the on the fire ground, fire that's are are lower than they've been in a long time. And that's because we pay attention to these to these details that we read these line of duty death reports. We have people like Jay Jonas, you know in the FDN Y that that studies so many different fires and puts information out.
Uh you know, and never heard of them.
Yeah, but you think about that, right, We've we're all better because of people like Jay Jonas and the books that Billy g Has put out prior to this and this this is another one of those books.
It's laid out each month, so we start with the Black Sunday Fire in January and we end with the Buffalo Propane explosion in late December, and it's it's laid out so each chapter, chapter one is a January fire, Chapter thirty is a December fire. And when you look at the the book The Last Alarm, the Elmhurst Eagles Engine twenty seven lat of one thirty six and Batinion four to six. Every day they read from that book, but that book is not in daily order. It's it's
so they have to put the pages. They have it all laid out, and they've enhanced that and so this book mimics some of some of the features that that book, The Last Alarm had and makes it on a country wide level. Every every tour in Elmhurst starts with reading from the Last alarm and when I was still active
on the job. One of the things that I would have liked to have done before I retired, I would have liked to have changed the regulations to where we read those that we read those stories and remember the remembrance bulletins.
Right, that was great, that.
That's a similar format, but we should read from the remembrance bulletins and thirty five as you must know at the start of every tour. And I wanted that. I wanted to put u and make that formalized in the FDN Y because that is start to day with a learning point is a really good way to start.
I wanted to hold on Coop.
I wanted to just say something quick like, uh, the thing that stuck out to me with this was that. And what's important to me on this show too is you know every we know all the fires, right, they all have the names, right, Everybody knows which fire they are just by the name, right.
And over the years just reading the.
After action report, right, and you know what the job put out and what we could have done better, and what happened here and all this stuff, right.
But on the show here we get a lot of.
People that come on the show, and we get a first hand account of a particular job that they were at right throughout the years, just you know, the most recent ones, but you know in the seventies and eighties, right some of these old timers, and you get a first hand account of what those guys saw, similar to what you're saying. And that's what I think is important,
is to get a first hand account. Grant that we all know the fire, and we all know most of the stuff that we're hopefully learning from those jobs, because like you said, it's not an easy book to read, and it's not an easy report. Those reports aren't easy to go through. It's not easy to listen to the
handy talkie transmissions. It's just disaster. But to have a first hand account of what actually happened kind of puts you there little bit and it connects you a little bit better, so that you do hold on to a lot of stuff I think, you know going forward, especially if you are active in your job now you know, you know, let.
Me just a real comment, and we didn't know. I mean, we had a pretty good feeling this was going to be a good success. The first printing sold out in thirty days and yeah, and that's from Fire Engineering telling us that that's who published the book. So I mean, as I mentioned, you know, there's no money to be made, so if we sold one or we sold a million, it doesn't matter. The fact is though, that we're able
to raise money for these foundations. But more importantly, this first for this information and it's short stories, but they're real stories told by people who were there, really excited about it.
Right.
Uh, Chief Lee, let me ask you when you were doing the you know, the drill pot at the end we're teaching lessons, did you ever you know, say yourself, you have to walk that fine line between Monday morning quarterbacking and teaching a lesson. There was that that I have a pop in ta head.
It was always it was always on my mind that we we have to be respectful as we honor our brothers and sisters. We have to honor them, their memories, their families, their co workers. But there's lessons that we can learn through the lens of twenty twenty hindsight, and we're very respectful with the way we present the fires.
Even in the editing process, when we gave the manuscript to Fire Engineering, we said, please you could edit with billion, and myself said all you want, but please don't edit what's in their own words of the people that have that intimate knowledge, because the changing of one or two words could could really be the difference. And even some fires, like if they're if they're too recent, it may not be time to, you know, to write a write about
right about those stories. But you know, we we best honor our brothers and sisters when we remember and learn from their sacrifices, anything that there is to learn from.
And one of the fires that will that we'll talk about tonight, I think you know, and that's the Vandalia Avenue and I one of the lines that that Chief Montagnet writes in the book was that these firefighters were doing their job with the knowledge that we you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna, I don't want to screw it up, so I'm gonna I'm gonna read exactly what it says,
Lieutenant Carol Carolori firefighter BOP and Firefight A Bohan. We're doing their jobs looking for the fire apartment and victims, something done successfully so many times before by countless firefighters. But this time something was different. What was different was the combination of the window failure coupled with the high wind and the availability of flow paths created by the
openings in the stair room and second floor apartment. Something was different and we learned the FDN Y learned from that fire. The whole Fire Service learned from that fire. And that is the the takeaway right from a fire like Vandalia Avenue, which is a seminal fire in the fire service. If you're in a fire service and you don't know the lessons of Vandalia Avenue, you're doing yourself
and your department of disservice. And it doesn't matter that, yeah, that that fire was on the tenth floor of a building, but it doesn't matter that fire could have been on the second floor, could have been on the first floor. The lessons are transferable. And again that's that is the genesis, the reasoning behind behind this book, especially when we have
people that can tell first hand stories of it. And yeah, but we've worked, we walked that fine line knowing that and even and even the lessons, some of them, if I focused on on a particular topic on one I tried to not repeat the same ones so they could be related to it, even if they're not even if
it's not a direct correlation to the fire. But when you read all of these thirty fires and you put it all together and you take all the different training points, there is a lot of information that you're going to drill on. And the other important point that there's a companion website to this as well where we're going to put different resources. A link to this podcast will be will be put on each of the chapters that we discussed as well, because we want there to be a
ton of drill material. You should never say I don't know what to drill on today. Right, There's so much information and this will give you more information than you can possibly so stay away from it.
What will I will vouch the chief leave because when I wrote my chapter, he called me up and he said, listen, we don't only do this, but we have to change something. The editor wants to change something in what you wrote. And it was a part of that. I wrote that when we pulled up to the supermarket on that Hasma run Rofi, I had the second piece which was like a bread.
Truck right right.
So Joe Joe Vacilla, who wound up getting hurt that fire didn't Die sees me driving because I worked at one sixteen and he says to me, here, Koobs, what have you got five loaves of bread in the back of that van? I said, Tom, no, Joe, I got your sister back here.
Goes.
Yeah, I think we got to.
Change that a little bit.
You wrote that in the in the what's the matter for you? What are you talking about?
Just being honest? That's what happened, you know. So, yeah, his credits you, bro.
We gotta do we gotta stick to the facts, right, We gotta know what. We don't want to do anything that's going to take away.
From well that's the thing, right, you don't want to disrespect anything. I mean in the end, you know, not every fire, but obviously when you look back at these fires, there was some mistakes that things could have been off a different but not everyone is like that. Some things, you know, like Kep says, all the time, you're right place, right time, and things go bad and that's just the way it is, right.
So, and sometimes we just have better information today, right, information that wasn't event We didn't know about wind driven fires right at Vandelia Avenue.
Bow string stuff right all those Yeah, so and sometimes we don't know a building has been renovated fifty times or the fire travel that it takes.
So it is, you know, but there are lessons that we could tease out of these to just make us a little bit better the next time we're out the door. And really that's what it's about, right, just to be a little bit better the next time, and to make sure that we are aware of all of these different watch outs, whatever they are, whether it's boasting, trust, construction
of Tazzo floor renovations, wind driven fire flow path. I mean, there's so many different there's so many different topics that we have to be aware of, and we hope that this plays some part in the learning process.
Of reads one of these, right, chief and he picks up something small that goes somewhere in his head, right, and he's at a job now, then all of a sudden, that little piece of information clicks that maybe just saved his life, you know, like, Oh.
That's all we're trying to do, That's exactly yeah, you pointed perfectly. It's all we're trying to do is just kind of fill that hard drive, soft drive, whatever you got. Oh yeah, should I remember what happened?
At that fire. Oh yeah, I remember this piece.
That's familiar. I remember this reading this somewhere.
You know.
We got to get that young fella in the bottom right there, get his take on what's going on.
Here, you know, just get right here.
That's going to.
A couple of things.
Go ahead, Jeev.
Today is the fifty eighth anniversary of the twenty third Street collapse where we lost twelve firemen and many lessons learned about this.
You know.
Yeah, the drug store had a tasso floor. Anybody who doesn't know what a tarazo floor is. It's like marble chips in concrete, and that's highly polished. You walked on to razzo floors all the time, but this was put on a wooden floor. And now we have a fire in the cellar. But one of the guys who responded to this a very interesting story about this talk about taking experience and passing it out to somebody else. There
was a guy named Royal Fox. Royal Fox was a fireman, you know, like Squad eight and that down in like the Lofe district of Lower Manhattan, Hells hundred acres, And in nineteen sixty he was a survivor of a fire on Broadway and he was stuck in a cellar along with four other fire and they were trapped. They were sell a fire. They're trapped, and the lieutenant who is down there in the cellar says, all right, we're gonna stay here. They're gonna come and get us. And this guy, Royal Fox, said.
No way, screw that.
So see that stairway, that's the way out, and he and a guy named Bob Barnacle. Bob Barnacle was in front of him, and they climbed the stairway and they got their heads got to the point where the about the floor level with the ceiling level of the cellar, and a tremendous amount of heat because the firefire has really taken off, and Bob Barnacle backs down and the Royal Fox puts his shoulder into his button, drives him up to the fire, and then Royal Fox followed him
and they both lived. They both got burned, but the three guys that remained in the cellar were killed. Fast forward six years sixty six, Royal Fox gets promoted to lieutenant. His first tour is a lieutenant in three truck and their first du at the twenty third Street collapse.
Wow.
And they're operating in the cellar three truck and five engine and he sees things starting to develop and he says, oh my god, it's happening again. And you know, he gathers everybody from five engine and three truck and he says, well, listen to me, guys, I've been through this before. That's the way out. And one by one the guys went up to sell us stairs until it was Royal Fox and one other guy and he had to do the
same thing he did to Bob Barnacle. The guy stopped at the ceiling level and Royal Fox put his shoulder into him and drove him up through the.
Fire and the Javoux all over again.
Man five engine and three truck lived. You know you talked to Vinny Dunn, was a ve in of that fire. He says, if it wasn't for Royal Fox, there would have been twelve more guys killed at that finow. And he got a medal for that. He got a medal for it. That's he's the only guy who got a medal for the twenty.
He's still alive.
Any kids, I did a fire. I did the nineteen six sixty fire where he was initially trapped in the cellar, and Vinnie to Stephano was I found out was his son in law. And Vinnie to Stephano was a captain of sixty seven engine and he's so he he ended up bringing his dad to UH to the division. I spent the whole afternoon with him, wow, talking and talking about fires and everything. And you know he almost got hooked up for the one in nineteen sixty and the
one in nineteen sixty six. He got a medal, you know, and uh, he passed away in twenty eighteen eighteen. That's about right.
Yeah, Uh, the Royal Fox and.
It was it was great, and it's got one of the all time great names, to the Royal Fox.
Yeah.
And but there you go. You know, you're trapped in a cell afire. That's the way out. Don't hunker down here. It's not going to get better, you know, get out of the cellon And so that's one of the old time great stories from the twenty third Street collapse that
we lost twelve guys. Another thing that was mimicked and I know what happened, and Pete Hagen did it at UH September eleventh at the World Trade Center when John o'hagen was actually at a conference or a meeting or something in Chicago, so he actually got there late, and uh he he's all the guys beating down there, trying to get to these guys, and he called everybody in at a park across the street and uh he said, look, I know we all died a little bit in there today.
Let's take our hats off, our helmets off, and say prayer. And there's a picture of that of all these guys with their helmets off over their hearts. And uh again that that was Pete Hayden did that at nine to eleven, you know, when they when they found uh Chief Gancy and Bill Fihan. You know, he had everybody stop and
pause and say prayer. And uh you know, talking to guys who are at that fire, guys who they were just going in off duty, and they would they would go to the twenty third Street collapse site and uh he said, we would have done anything for that man at that time, you know, he was who you know, he just really inspired us, you know, and uh so
there was a a good story coming from that. But I wrote about the Walton Avenue fire in the bronx and uh a fire that one story tax backfire with exposures and a fire that that we we pride ourselves on about being able to put it out in a timely fashion and walking away and everybody goes home. And conditions were just right at this fire for a disaster to what happened. First of all, it was in August day. It was pouring rain. You know, humidity like one hundred
percent was in the mid seventies. But it was just walking around was uncomfortable. And you know, forty two unch it was first to arrive. Lieutenant Steve Wall was a lieutenant, and they stretched it too and a half inch line and they started marching through there. Forty six engines showed up and backed them up, and the a second line was stretched and you know, you know, it looked like we were going to take care of business, even though there was a tremendous amount of fire in the back
of this ninety nine cent store. You think, oh, what could be in a ninety nine cent store, But it's all plastics, it's all things that are very fammable, and a tremendous amount of smoke coming from this and they kept calling for the guys on the roof to cut the hole of the roof. The roof was already cut. The smoke wasn't lifting due to the amidity and h so you know that they kept pushing it in it that they looked like they were gonna be okay. You know,
they were knocking the fire down. There was some fire in the rear and seventy five engines ended up stretching a second another line through a show window and they went into the They went into the Taxpayer and they were about fifteen feet in when suddenly, without warning, the floor gave way and ten guys went into the floor and they were trapped, you know, and heavy, heavy smoke condition and UH I had a lot of problems to overcome. And you know that the uh UH Scottie Maxwell was
a lieutenant Rescue three. Mickey Cowboy was a lieutenant Squad forty one, and they mounted Mike Chanley was the fast officer from twenty seven truck. UH he just passed away recently and they mounted a rescue off it to try to get these guys out and they were. It ended up being not not just to collapse with some debris, but the debris was so dense it was. It was like they were in a trench collapse in the street.
You know, they had to get these guys out and the uh, the debris that fell into there was was a lot of matre uh something that made it extremely slippery, and they tried to get into these guys and these guys were running out of air and trying to dig them out and trying to get them out. And one of the big things that from a command standpoint, that you always think about whenever you have a major incident is uh guys trying to jump in and do something.
You know, even though you know you got people directed to do that job, keep fighting the fire, but you have you know, you have guys who almost ignore you and just try to go in and do it. They Battalie Chief Frank Ritchie of the thirteenth Battime was the safety operating betime and he was used to keep guys out.
You know, we got guys taken care of it. More people will be a hindrance, stay out, you know, and you know they would rotate guys through because they had to have a hose line to protect the the rescue effort was fire was still coming up through the floor through the debris and John Russell was the lieutenant forty four truck. He was buried in debris up to his chest in his arms, he couldn't move his arms, and he was getting burned. He was getting burned in his feet.
And so it was one of these fires that jeez, I never never thought about that before, but it was. It was terrible. It took about forty minutes, I guess, to get them, and they brought an air cart, you know, so that they could try to bring some air in. And they finally found Lieutenant car Pluck and firef Riley and UH firefighter' Riley was actually underneath the Lieutenant car Plunk and may days were being transmitted and.
It was I I worked that day, chief. I was in UH. They called the second squad into UH and we went in through the bill Codors and car Plunk was talking to us. He was he was saying, Riley, the proby is below me. He's he's under me. He's under me, he's under me. And he was talking to us, and he got him out and then we got Carplunk out and then he passed soon after. But he was he was, you know, rational, and he was talking to us while we're trying to get him.
Out, which I remember listening to that. All I kept saying was that's all he kept talking about. He even wasn't even concerned about himself the whole time. All he kept saying was.
And you're right, it was such a humid day that did smoke, which it wouldn't lift. It was raining and so humid that the smoke just would lift.
And yeah, one point during the rescue operation they called to the command post, two guys, stop operating the hose lines. You know, we're getting drowned down here. Yea, there were no hose lines operating. This was from the rain. You know, it was raining so hard.
That's that, right.
I didn't know that, Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. And how a carpluck gave numerous matings. You know, he was in communication. Jim Dunlevy was the uh uh the deputy in the sixth Division and uh yeah, oh my god, these guys, you know, almost died trying trying to get these guys out, And you have things that you don't think about. The the uh shelving and everything like that. It was now twisted metal and if they had to work there, cut their way through that with soles trying to get to
these guys. There was just one obstacle after another.
It was like a giant mountain of ship that.
I was going to say this I took. I'm sure Chief Lee would say the same thing. Coops will say the same thing. We have taken an incredible amount of training, incredible over the years. And if you asked me, which training sticks out to me in my mind was the Firefighter Removal week that they had on Totten where they simulated that fire and they had the floor canted and they filled it up with I don't know how many water bottles. I mean, I don't know how many water
bottles they had. If there was one bottle, they had to be five thousand water bottles in there. And and like you said, all this stuff entangled. There was actually there were guys under the water bottle. Like you had to find where the guys were. But you would slide down into this huge v and I think it was it was all smoked out and you had to, you know, breach through sheet rock. It was really and they had the I think Richard Kafani's fire too, like they had.
That was the hardest training.
Other than that was the best week.
Fire Fighting was hot too, but that was the hardest training.
I can't even imagine doing that, doing that training. I can't imagine if it was for real, right, Like in my mind, you know, you're drilling, and it's it's you know, you have anxiety.
And you're going through the motion, but I know it's just drill, right.
I cannot imagine being in that scenario like where that's going on, Like how pumped up you would have to be, Like it would be so taxing on you to have to you know, it must have been incredible those first.
You know hour trying to figure that out.
At the fire Academy, it is currently a there's a prop in Building twelve that is a recreation of that, and that is one of the most intense drills. As you mentioned the firefighter that survival week is pretty intense, but this class, when they run it, it's absolutely incredible,
and it has the rescue paramedics. They're one of their final exams is to go through that and they have firefighters in their scream and as they're trying to get an aligned to the to a mannequin that's in there, they have to do aligne with in the smoke in debate, the in debate, the person. It's just it's one of the most intense drills. So they do that all the time. And you think about think of the names that the Chief Jonas was mentioned in right, Lieutenant Conboy working in
in and kind of Mexico. Right, these guys and the cruise that they had, and then we also had Rescue four came and he mentioned John John Das mentions Captain Bob Morris coming in right, So you think about the the amount of training that these people had that are coming in here against just insurmountable odds, you know, and you know aligned from from it. The debris acted like
soil in a collapse of a trench. As debris was removed, new debris fell into the area and someone someone likened it to a bullpit in the like if you were in the chat movie, right, you know, incredible.
Let me comment from outside the ft OI. So there's people listening to the show, Oh that's fting y or they have that academy bullshits. If you want to train for this, whether you reach out to your state fire academy, whether you do it in the in the upstairs of your firehouse, and here this these excuses so many times we had to stop. You have as much chance to get guys trapped in a commercial building in you know, Idaho, don't matter, or Hi anywhere as you do. New York
City just has a lot more of them. But if you have one of them, you have the potential. So for the newer officers who often find themselves you know, I'm not getting bullshit.
Do it in the firehouse.
This this is a this is an officer's room I'm sitting in. You could fill this room up with furniture and shut the lights out and put a smoke machine in here and put a firefighter in the corner. You can still get that done. And that that's one of the biggest things is the excuses. There's no excuses.
To illustrate how bad the smoke condition was. Fireman from Rescue through Bobby thanis like.
That.
If you were to if you were to rank him a scale of one to one hundred and one, you.
Know, yeah, that's what he does for a living.
He's just fantastic. He was on Mountain Mount Eden Avenue when the colopse occurred, and uh, by the time he hit the sidewalk, he couldn't see anything. He's outside the building, and he was crawling with one leg extended, crawling in and Kep kept going until his extended leg went down. It's okay, I found the hall, you know. And so his guy who was you know, he couldn't be more experienced than Bobby thanas and uh, and that's how he had to approach this fire. That's how bad it was.
And like I said, everybody, you know, no matter where you live, you live, Long Island, upstate, out west, everybody's got a store.
Like this, you know, you know they Dollar General, they're everywhere. For God's sake, by.
Me, probably the for me and you.
The fact that that caused his fire, that this building had a bad fire six years earlier, and uh, they think that the construction practices were substandard, and uh, you know we have some pictures of it. And yeah, they didn't put the same beams back into the into the sockets, you know. They you know, they used like make believe trusses. You know, they weren't even engineered.
Yeah, so I got to say, chief leave. I forgot to tell you this the offor this is a little bit off the story. But I had gone down to the rock the other day to do some research of the library. That place has you all over it.
Man.
I looked at him like he should be proud of this place. Man, the proby pavilion, everything there. Man, you should be extremely proud of it for what you did down there.
Oh, just do it all part right, the next generation will we'll pick that up and do it. But uh, it's marketing. The message at the Fire Academy from the minute you walk there. It should be all about learning, and that's what we wanted to do. The wolves, everything on the walls was there for a purpose. And you know it's it's all about this dude.
You've got you got the the the telephone fire don uh memorial done for uh.
Yeah, before.
You took that, you ran with a brother the uh.
He used to text me every once in a while. Man, he would that was like his like his star. He just loved that that was done, you know what I mean. I was so happy for him that it got done because he was sick for a long time, you know what I mean. He tried, He did that for a long time and it in a short period of time.
Right, Thank you guys for for the awareness of that and Billy g and myself on another podcast that had him on that had.
No other podcast what we were on, and spoke about that fire, you know, and they used clips of Danny speaking uh to do the chapter on him, and it was done really respectful, truly really good the respond to Resilience podcast and uh, you know uh and now.
His daughter we just you know, all the authors got mailed copies of the books. So his went to his his daughter, and his daughter loved, loved to love the chapter and it's yeah, she said she could hear her dad talking to her through the through.
The story about that.
Oh my god, I'm not crying, you're crying.
And as I've told you guys in the past, right was I've always I've known about the new pl Phone fire for a very long time, but I never knew that there was that the people that operated there had never received any recognition. And what we did at the Fire Academy was a direct result of you guys. Souh, just thank you for that.
That was all him, baby, if he, if he were if he would have went away.
An amazing advocate, amazing incredible.
I think somebody made a comment before where it became who he was, and whether he was teaching out in San Diego or when he moved back to New York, of the entire conversation, there would be a couple of minutes about cancer every single time.
That's that's it. Man, Sweety Wheel gets the grease band.
He just thought it, like yeah, he really did.
I mean when he told us what was happening, and we were like, but there was nothing about that. We were just like taken back and uh, you know, it was just so crazy. How that that job that we all know about for so long, like you said, Chief, like every I mean, that's one of the fires we learned about school, and you know, at least now it's uh, you know, it's done good for him.
I was happy for him to.
Stare for every firefighter to see. And what's really what was really nice to see is that on when he passed away, Uh, they put flowers by the memorial at the you know nice yeah, at the Fire Academy where that where that is for everybody to see. So the the FDN Y continues at the Fire Academy and elsewhere. So it's great to see that they did that.
What do you got, Chief, anything else? We wrapped that one up. We're gonna go to the next one.
The on the twenty thirds. I I'm sorry in the Telephone Company fire. I did a newsletter with him on the Telephone Company fire, and it kind of gave him like, uh new energy.
You know.
It was nobody was talking about it, and I think I think it was Bobby Athanasis says, you know, you should call this guy Danny Noonan. And I got hold of him, and oh he was. He was a ball of fire, you know. And he gave me a ton of information and we did some more research and uh, Lieutenant, we found out that Lieutenant Maloney from Rescue three was probably the first fatality from from the Telephone Company fire.
He uh, he was a former fireman a Rescue one and John T. Hagen sent them in to do some sort of rest, some sort of rescue or search, and his lungs were so you know, he came out, he was unconscious and everything, and uh, he he went he went to a a fire a month later and on a like a frame on Third Avenue in the Bronx
and he he collapsed and died. You know, the guys were working right next to him, and uh, the autopsy showed you know, layers of heavy tar in his in his and that was all from the from the Telephone company fire. So he was the first fatality from uh.
What year was that, So we had to be right after the telephone company.
So it was nineteen seventy five. It was telephone company.
Wow. Yeah, the lieutenant from Rescue three was only two weeks later.
Yeah, I'll uh, I'll send you a copy of the newsletter. Came out really good.
How many guys total?
Do we don't have any? Chief, No, it's well over, well over.
Yeah, guys who died, they didn't even track it back then, there was no right you know.
And Frank, you can probably do a plug for this.
But there's a National Firefighter Registry now that we encourage every firefighter career volunteering to register so we can start getting the handle on what the reality is about this.
Frank, that's probably some of the most dramatic pictures of any fire ever.
Oh, it's coming out of there, crazy God.
Yeah, I'm sorry.
Now, black on the building. There's a plaque on the building and a plaquet to Fire Academy. Yeah, for the six ninety nine firefighters that responded there that day and throughout the response over the next day, and we are certain that more than one hundred firefighters lost their life to occupational cancer due to their exposure at that fire. And that was the framework for how we tracked our
firefighters on September eleventh. So when you think about the impact of that fire, there was and that is the when you look back at the thirty fires, that that is the furthest back we went for any of these fires, because it was it was too important to not include that, because it was it was a precursor of what's what's to come in the fire service. Because that building and what that building had, every building today has what is burning, the plastics, PVCs, all of that is burning in every fire.
So we need to do as good a job as we can wearing a mask and cleaning up afterwards.
Arguably that's the fire that really, years later got us start thinking more about cancer.
It really was.
And not an accepted part of the job, but an exceptional part of the job that needed to be looked at.
Right.
One of the academy is especially important, and you can put the one out of twenty third at the phone company building, But which Proby's a going to see that but if they walk past it in the academy, they're going to see it.
Yeah, maybe he was really looking. He was looking just to have a plaque put on the building.
For God's saying, one of the one of the academy is even so much more nice. Proby's going to walk by for the next fifty hundred years, you know, and they'll they'll ask questions about it, they'll read about it, you know.
Which was the conversation we had because to me, it wasn't like it's nice to put it on the building, but it was needed to put it at the Fire Academy because we needed everybody that comes to you to the Fire Academy to know that story. And now they will. Generations of firefighters will be better because of because of Danny Noonan and his tenacious advocacy for firefighter health and wellness to live a long, healthy retirement, because that's what that's what that ultimately is about.
So people see now we're thinking, Okay, great, that's great rafting. Why ProBiS But about mine again?
Bullshit?
You can do this. You can ship take buy a bunch of copies of thirty fives. There it is, give it to you. Give that as a gift to your graduating class. Whatever it takes. But the information is there.
Put one and you can't put one down the training center. Make it mandatory reading. Whatever you gotta do with. Don't no bullshit excuses anymore.
I just got to get the instructors to raise attention to these incidents anywhere.
In the country. You do, we got that's what I do.
You we got purchase for all your guys.
Yet no, no, that's on the order. Actually, just so you know.
The touch on that is, we actually make our proby's research a line of duty death or significant event and they have to do a presentation to their fellow classmates.
Well, guess what, here's the cliff notes for it right here.
Bro.
So get all.
Trying to do my part to uh spread the away. We shall, I say, not meet, but we.
Frank did organized the ceremony for the Telephone Company fire at the fire Academy and he had veterans come in who were at the fire and guys who were retired and everything, and they showed up. They got a they got a pin for their uniforms and uh yeah, you can see them looking around at each other as we finally got recognized. You know, we finally got our due.
I think I remember that story that the guy's got the pins for their Uh.
Yeah, that guy leave. But remind me to say thank you, dam he's such a good guy man, that guy leave.
I never heard.
Well, it's about it's as Danny Noonan would say, it's about the six nine firefighters that responded there. And he always started any conversation he had it was on behalf of the six hundred and ninety nine firefighters. And he would also say the telephone workers and and everybody else. So I say the same thing, it's done on behalf of them. We've had several people reach out for their deceased loved one asking if they can get the telephone
pin for them. Wow, and they have given them to them members as well.
So great.
We did a show with Danny noon and so guys go back and research, look back the you know, search it. We did a great show with Danny noon and he was great. He was great.
So yeah, he gave one of the best, the best old school today.
You remember that.
Yeah, he had a hell of them.
One kid there's another kid, Yeah, oh that's right, there's one kid.
Search a little.
Sucked the floorboards and get in the next room.
He just said, keep going. If you find one, there's more, keep going.
Gods, we get the next guest to come in, or what are we doing here?
No, he had now he had a duplicate audio problem. Both the couldn't hear and he couldn't and I couldn't hear him but through the phone. So we told him we'd get back and we'll bring him on another day.
We got a bunch lined up. We'll just keep going. One. I think one is I think two might be too much. Maybe I don't know what. Three.
Yeah, we'll catch him and I'll tell you what. When you have when you have somebody as legendary as Chief Jonas, yeah, it's and to have to have had Chief montagne On, who was one of my first chief Montagona was one of my first chiefs in the Five Day Battalion. Uh, he's the chief. Montagonet is the first person that I ever saw take photos of like every fire and he
was one of the guys. So my whole part of part of my learning teaching style is about when a chief goes go visit your firehouses, visit them often that's the best information you're going to get but always lead with fire. Tell the brothers and sisters something that about a fire that you went to and experience that you had. And then if you have other stuff you got to you gotta up to me about wearing the right uniform
or overtime, do that, but first talk about fire. Lead with fire, Lead with the things that are going to injure or kill the brothers and sisters. Well, ken in five in five seconds from now, you show them your care for them when you do that. And I know that Chief Montagna always did that. I couldn't wait for him to come with a story about a fire like that. I know Chief Jonas always did that. And even with the newsletter, the newsletter never spoke about white socks. It spoke about fire.
Oh you stole my fuck. Cobla led with white socks.
All the time. It spoke.
So Chief Coobler would talk about the white socks. But he need to know he's lead with that. He led what he wanted you to be drilling. He wanted you to be taking care of the men and women that you're working with. So yeah, So that's and having Chief Jonas tonight on the show is fantastic. Chief Jonas, I have a question for you. You mentioned both those fires, right, so you mentioned the twenty third Street fire, You mentioned the ninety ninth Street the ninety nine cent stories. We're
talking about Walton Avenue, right. One of the both of them, a floor collapses. What are the similarities with that. You spoke about it in the pre show a little bit. You expand on that a little bit.
Well, the the similarities is it was a floor overload, you know, the the U twenty third Street collapse. The fire was in the cellar and initiated in the cellar. So you know those floor beams that were that were already stressed due to the toazo floor, they were weakening with this extra weight and eventually they will give way.
The ninety nine cents or the fire was in the occupacy, wasn't in the cellar, and uh, the it was inferior construction, you know from the fire that happened there six years earlier, and it got overloaded with water and firemen and boom just couldn't hand all the way and down they went. And uh it wasn't like you see this large catastrophic you know, collops your your rumble for for thirty seconds and there there it goes it's coming down. It was
pretty silent. It was like boom it down their coats, you know, and uh, you know it wasn't like the you know, the fire showed any difference. It was it was already taking off. It was already heavy smoking fire. And then but now you have a different fuel component. You know that the uh, the commodities that were in the store, and so you know, floor collapse. How do you how are you gonna how you going to attack it? How are you going to get to these guys? And
you're looking for voids. You're looking for a ways to uh uh to find these guys. You're looking for ways to uh see where they're see where they're trapped. You're looking for pass alarms, you're look looking for ready your feedback. You know, you're looking for anything thermal imaging cameras, stuff that they didn't have in nineteen sixty six, and I you know, those are things that you could use to try to find find your way away.
If I remember when we had Chief done on I remember him saying like there wasn't even nothing showing on the twenty third street, Like when those guys you wouldn't even have known that there was even a fire underneath you if I remember right.
It's just it's absolutely right.
All of those things are just like what I was saying earlier.
I think, you know, some of those things you could definitely, I mean, you could learn from every one of them. But some mistakes could make, you know, be made, and it just starts the ball rolling right, and then one mistake leads to another and another, and then you can't almost not get out of it. But then there's fires. There's nothing that there's nothing you could even have done there, you know what I mean, It's.
Just a big thing you got to remember too, is the longer buildings on fire. The building on fire is the building that's under demolition, whatever is resistant, what.
Ever is we just gravity, it's being attacked.
You know.
Uh, it's being attacked. And so you could have volume of fire or intensity of fire which would increase that. And Walden Avenue had had both had volume and intensity, you know, and uh, twenty third Street had tremendous fire and a heavy load. But you know the failure of the floor, you know, like you said, you know, twenty third Street lost twelve guys and unfortunately waldenaven we lost two.
You know, and uh avenue to it was the same thing, right, the guys were up there, they weren't even you know, they had a lot of fire, but they didn't even know.
Next thing, everybody, you know, you got to re construction.
The ten guys went into the hall, you know, so wow, a lot of the a lot of guys were removed heroically by these guys. You know, they were taking the shellac and uh trying to get these guys out and uh uh yeah, I'm sure you know they feel defeated that even though they got to these guys, that two of them didn't make it.
Yeah, yeah, what was the time frame chief both fire? It was like forty minutes forty minutes in yeah, what about forty minutes until they got them out.
I think it was like twenty three minutes before the fire at the floor collapsed.
So about twenty third Street. You doing how long that was?
Be Off the top of my head, I think that was a lot longer.
I was gonna say a little bit longer.
After they couldn't find the fire at first, I think they couldn't.
They couldn't find it, and the building went from twenty second Street to twenty third Street. It was round the start of the box the street. Yeah. Yeah, so you know they were, you know, working their way in and you know, self contained breathing apparatus was not readily available.
You know.
Wow, it's a lot of years ago. Is that sick? Is that going to be a couple of years? Almost seventy years?
Is holy?
Somebody in the chat said earlier about Chief Done being there at the job. Yeah, so I also believe that that was the motivation for him to start writing about building construction.
Yeah. Well, yeah, he's.
Speaking to him over the.
Years about some of the fires he was. He's like, to, where's Waldorf in New York City Fire Department historical fires and he pictures of it. Look closely, but he dones it.
He lives right around the corner from my nephew. My nephew just met him. He's like ecstatic. He sees him all the time.
Yeah, he you know, he was he was at oh, what's the name of the fire?
Well, he's been to so many of them.
Which one do you talk about, Chief, Off the top of my.
Head, I can't think about it. Uh, Worcester Street collapse. He was at the Worcester Street collapse. He was a probe and Nage fifty nine.
And uh I remember that story too.
Since they went there the next day to relieve them, and it's just there you go. He was at Worcester Street collapse, you know he was. He was at twenty third Street, he was at you know. He he did thorough investigations on wall boumbs. You know, he did a lot of stuff on war b They thing on row frame fires. He did incredible. He was in charge of running that, you know.
So I'm not sure who's been on more Chief, You or him or you leave. I don't know the three.
Leaves got I think hands down, hands.
Yeah, Chief, I don't know.
I know we've had probably like four or five times.
And it all depends if you count to Welcome to the Rock Series.
If you count, you got it. Hands down.
Man's got that stuff counting.
Chief is up there. We've had him on a few shows.
I don't know, Man, he's like a lamp in the office.
He's not doing another Salties award, bro, we got to do another Salties Awards.
Get the salty.
See the show we had the Salty Award?
Oh I got so funny.
My brother got one, he says.
He didn't know what to put it on his mantle on the toilet.
Yeah, he put on the toilet. I had to. I had them film themselves, excepting the salty award. And he says, I found a perfect spot for it. And he said, puts it by his uh like trying to closet or whatever. And he goes, no, this is a better spot, and he puts it on the toiletright toilet.
See.
So even though Frank Lee says that that Chief Steve doesn't have a sense of human, he does.
He does have a sense to him. You just don't see it.
Goodness is he's gonna have a sense of human We go out the Chief lead retirement party. Bro Joe Wizz Joe wis we got to bring presents? Is that presence?
No, just show up your.
You know, how about an envelope. I'm going to bring an envelope.
All that money fat envelope.
I mean you might need it. You're not You're not taking any money off this book, So maybe you need a little levelope. You know what I mean?
A fixed income now, you know is is.
Not a face income? Right now, Bro, anybody else want to do anything? We want to wrap up here. What do we got, Chief Lee?
No, just thinking about the Atlantic game and you fire and uh, just the similarities, right with a floor collapse and you know, sending five of our brothers. Ah, you think about that about that, right? So just because it was mentioned earlier about the Atlantic Avenue fire, and I'm just thinking some of the some of the people listening
may not be may not be familiar with that. With that fire and there was some beams that were taken out underneath that, uh, and the and the brothers were above that when it collapsed and and they went into the hole.
When you start thinking about all of those jobs, a lot of it is construction, like Black Sunday, you know construction, right, It's all of these you know named fires that we have.
It's this constant theme.
Gonzo I sent the pictures of the Atlantic Atlantic.
I thought it was the other one you talk about, Vidalia.
No, I sent those at Atlantic.
You did give me a second? We pull them up? Okay, yes you do. Let's see.
Jimmy Blackmore.
Well, you got the two gentlemen.
Called made it out right? He survived that, only get killed on nine to eleven.
Danny Witzel was working that day too, he's a lieutenant eight.
Now, yeah, what do you got guns?
You got pictures of that one?
Yeah, you have a couple here.
What do we have on rophy that was at that job?
Uh, we had Warren Fukes talked about that job.
Somebody else was on the A chief I think was on that.
Oh that was Uh, yes, he had he had the job, was it killed, had the jobs.
And I don't call him man, that's you.
You tight with him, Louis on the top, Louis on the top.
I called him duff. I don't call him ed. You call him one of the chiefs.
And it may have been him who had his gear on, went in and wound up on the I believe wound up on the hose line or followed the hose lineing and so it went down.
Oh we had another Yes, we had a few guys. We had a few guys about that, talk about that job.
So this is that's again.
That's what I like about that firsthand experience is you kind of get a little bit more insight. You can never get enough information on these things. And you know, if you get a little bit more information from something that's not in a report from the job or something, it just makes it better.
You know what, why don't we write a book about fires from guys from the first hand experience.
Already swinging it miss he struck them.
And it prevents a lot of that Monday night quarterback and you can actually learn some stuff.
So these pics from the Atlantic Cabinet.
Yes, and then this is the other what you have there as well.
So you guys, you guys know that we squat two eighty eight actually relocated that night to three point thirty two and we went into fire house when uh, when that happened.
We could hear it on the handy talking right down the block.
And I remember looking at his shoes.
Like where he got into his bunker gear, you know what I mean.
And they when they came back, and it was, you know, the chief you know, all the chiefs started coming from all, you know, from everywhere, and then we ended up leaving, but guys came back started talking about the job. And yeah, that's one thing I remember, because we weren't we were a squad, but we weren't online yet. We were still
an engine and we still could get relocated. And we got relocated at three thirty two, and I remember looking at his shoes, thinking about how many times we get in and out of our shoes, right, and uh, you know, come.
Back time he went in and out of his shoes.
Yeah, exactly.
Somebody's saying, QC beast, my boy, he's saying Chief Galvin was the other guy who was there?
Oh Galvin? Yep, it's old mishmash. Now we're up there, like twenty six. I can't remember who was where and what and how.
How many shows?
Six?
Holy Machael, So you take about twenty from leave with down to two hundred.
What do you mean twenty seven?
Come on, man, come on, man.
Well what other shows we have you booked for the next two months? Correct at least?
Yeah, I know you haven't at least the next.
Two months, maybe three months. So what fires are we gonna do next? Talk to us, give us a little taste, a little teaser.
I'm not sure. So we were covering.
So the idea was the first with you guys, to make sure we covered the fires that were New York City fires. And in the book there's five of them. Uh, so we covered one of them tonight.
Uh.
And then, as I mentioned earlier, Danny Moonan was covered already, so we still have to do Vandalia Avenue. We still to do Black Sunday.
So let's work on the Vandali one. Let work on the Chiefs.
We got to do that prior to coming on, like an hour before the show obviously.
Yeah, tag, especially for the the listeners who may be.
A bit younger, You're not gonna want.
To miss that show. You're not gonna want to miss any of these.
But Chief Montagna, his reputation is as well known as you'll hear from these guys. But he'll tell you the story of that fire like like you've never heard.
Really. I was looking forward to hearing him too, because I don't know too much about that.
I know a little bit Pollie uh.
In the chat he said Clancy was the same thing he went through the floor to correct.
When when Frank retired, If I'm not mistaken, he he was the most senior chief in the job at the time and cool, calm, collected, just just a gentleman that I had.
So I look forward to having him back on this. Yeah. And when when he right before he retired, he was at the Fire Academy and they sat him down and just interviewed him for like I want to say, they did it a couple of days in a row to just try and get some of the nuggets that that he had, and yeah, he's that's gonna that's gonna be a really good show that that fire. I had worked in that area of Brooklyn and we went to the Squads right before right before that, right before that fire.
That same year they formed the Squad the new Squad Companies, and I left that area because I went to work in Squad two seven.
I had to go on the calendar for November seventh, Buddy, Thursday, November seventh, we're gonna do more of thirty fires.
That one, let's the chief to do.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'd like to cover the New York City ones with you guys first, if we could get those done, and then uh, coops, obviously you're gonna be the Father's Day one, and then the Black Sunday we just got we had a couple of authors for that one, and uh well, if you're aware, we just yeah, so we'll get those as well.
Yeah, and then we'll go we gotta go to the rest of the country, guys want to I want to hear stories from the rest of the country. I know, I want to hear other ones. So yeah, so I think might be the one. You might be capturing the salty for the most guy. I mean, we got you booked probably now until May with all these stories, bro, so you might take the.
So your to your credit, when I told you that I was that we were going to do these fires on a couple of different podcasts, you said that that you'll do as many as uh as we need to to get all of them done. So I super appreciate that, and that's why we I think we booked three of them already right away to I.
Don't want you Yeah, no, no, I don't want you cheating on me. You do them all on this show, bro, you know what I mean.
There's no other no other podcast.
I mean, what are you gonna get? Throw another podcast? You'll get like six listeners. Come on, bro, all right, listen before we get we have to do. I know a guy who works at this place fr Ce. Yeah, he's a really smart guy. Bro's do we.
Want to have him give us a health safety tip tonight?
He can give a second one, but I have one. I want to give him.
The first responder senter for are excellent. I love it.
Well, you know what, I would love if you set me the new q A code. That would be even better, Bro. But I know you know busy guys, busy is it often?
Now you got to tighten the bolts. Cool, you got to tighten the.
Ball the bolts on yesterday?
Call it?
What do we got you ready for the show tomorrow?
I saw, I saw that whole.
All the guys.
I'm like the text change, texting was classic. I'm like, the only was right on it.
The only reason why this podcast is even on tonight is because Lou stepped in today to make sure that everything was squared away.
Really, that's what you're gonna go with.
I'm not saying that I'm not chump.
You had to today. Oh we got seven guys coming on the seven.
Guys guys, that's not even, that's not even how. I love how he makes this whole thing up as soon as it goes back on him right on. See how fast he was.
On me, Bro, I threw you right it basically fast you.
Were you were just talking about him, And now he's an that's talking to my guy all wrong.
That's wrong.
That's all he's got. He's got, that's all screaming and yelling that's.
Only about how it goes.
And you just played.
You just laid back and let you.
I don't even pay to I don't even care. I don't even know what he's doing anymore.
I don't know what he's doing.
I missed that pretty good. Oh my god, God, play the commercial.
So here we go. He's yelling, amoids, Here we go.
The First Responder Center for Excellence is not for profit organization dedicated to protecting the lives and livelihoods of first responders. Their education and research initiatives aim to bring greater awareness and understanding the challenges to the health, safety, and well being of firefighters, EMS, personnel, and other first responders too. They are an affiliate of the National Falling Firefighter Foundation.
All right, so my health and safety tip for tonight is this, bro. We always talk about getting to the doctor. You know, early detection important, no doubt, But there are things you can do before you get into that situation, and this is one of them.
Here.
But you got a book, right, great book. How about we put down the phones a little bit and we engage our brains to keep a shop as we get older, and we do this thing that they used to do back in the old days, roofy, It's called reading.
Is it reading?
A great thing? Bro? Guys are read, They're on here, they're doing this, doing this all the time. So let's do me favorite. Let's stimulate the brain. Let's get back to reading for our minds. Let's get back to working out and eating healthy. Also get to the doctor. But let's take these steps before we have something to go wrong, you know what I mean, before we lose our marbles. And I don't remember who Louis is or Donzo, you.
Know what I mean.
So there are things that you can do before shit happens. That's what I got to say. That's my health and safety tip. I'm sure Chief Leaves got one from go ahead, how long?
Chief, Well, I'm going to just expand on something in the commons. Somebody said that Frank Mindtagne. Chief Montagona wrote a lot of articles for w n y F. One of them, so if you know what the white ghost is. That was from an article about oil burner fires that he wrote many many years ago. When the oil burner doesn't ignite, but it keeps, it keeps injecting the fuel
and that can ignite. And that was for years when w nafs were testable in the FD and Y, everybody would talk about the white ghost, and that came from Chief Frank Montagna. But I think your your health and wellness tip of the day is spot on. It's all about making sure we take care of ourselves. Do it for do it for you, do it for your family. Think about Danny Noonan and his advocacy. Where your seba. It's about making sure that we don't take years off of our lives that are retirement years.
So again, you don't want to be like my old man bro he retired in eighty nine, dead in ninety three. Didn't collect. My brother retired in two thousand and one, dead in I don't know how many years, five, six, ten years, whatever it is. You want to collect for a long time, right ro If you want to play golf, you want to shoot innocent animals, You want to get out there and do shit yourself.
So you want to do I keep saying I got ship to do, man, I gotta keep thinking.
That you want to eat giant trays of lasagna, right Chief, want to enjoy life, So get out there and keep yourself healthy. Thanks Billy with that mustache. I love it. Thanks coming on. I'm sure I'm going to see you on November seventh. If you any final words, Billy.
Bone, gotta get past your stage.
You know he's talking.
That's a tough one right there.
I think if there's one comment, it's about the role of the company officer, especially to other departments. New York City has known forever the important of investing in your company officers. So many departments don't uh the success. What keeps the fire chief of at night is poor company officers. So focus on your company officers, company offices. Here's a book for you to read.
Start with that.
But firefighters, your.
Success is going to be based upon, obviously what you do yourself, but your boss.
Support your boss.
If they say it's drill time, get up off the bunk bed, put the phones down, like you said, get out there and do some training. The best the best companies are run by the best company officers.
Just my thoughts.
Thanks, thanks for having us, guys.
We're going to see you five more times. Who knows we get all thirty of them crying out loud.
Chief J.
Jones any final comments from you, my friend?
I was thinking the uh one of the things that I discovered when I was writing one of my newsletters on solo fires. Our track record with seller fires is abysmal. We lose a lot of guys and seller fires over the years. And Uh, there's four ways to fight a cellar fire. Conventional way by going down the cellar stairs and trying to put the fire out.
Uh.
Second way is an indirect way by putting a cellar pipe in. Third way is to get high X phone and foam it out. And then the last way it would be the flood. Yeah. But the uh, one thing I picked up on this, like I said, I put it in one of my newsletter was you gotta be proactive. You know thinks it takes time to put some of
this stuff into operations. The if you're starting your attack with the conventional hos like going down the cellar stairs, started signing a company to get ready to put the the cellar pipe in, start cutting the floor, get getting ready. That doesn't happen overnight. You know, you got to get the gate, you gotta you gotta get the distributor and the two inf inch hole. So if the first way fails, the second way is ready to go. You can't be reactive.
You've got to be proactive. And if you you're deploying the cellar pipe, you know, start getting special the high X phone.
You ever see the high X phone mark?
Oh, it's time for the high.
Have seen the celi.
Telepipe. I've seen that. I really know.
I had a fire white planes road once and I got on the radio says, all right, who's gotta cellfie? And I questionate it. Somebody better produce the cellar.
It's holding the it's holding the office door open. Cheap. What's that?
But like I said, our track record was selfies is not good, you know. So if you could find ways to uh be more efficient and put this fire out, at least with the cell pipe, you're gonna buy time. You're not gonna put the fire out, but you're gonna buy some time. You might be able to get that that horse lie down the stairway after you operate for a little bit.
So I appreciate you coming on a wonderful book. We're gonna dive into all these stories. We're gonna get through all thirty of them.
All.
That's a promise for me, Chief Leave and mister Gold. We're gonna get through all thirty of them. Love them by the book. Get out there. Let a couple of dollars out of your fire.
Engineering Books dot com or you get go on Amazon too, Right, it's on Amazon.
Is it on Amazons?
Okay, easy peasy, get out there and buy it. It's worth every single cent that you pay per letter here bro get it any shout out trophy.
No, we just got We're not sure for next week Thursday.
I got a couple of guys in the works, but uh, we might have boy on Frankie Demato.
Ah, let's get Frankie for Thursday. That'll be a fun show.
Frankie fd N y fish dot com. Check it out. He makes these things.
What am I gonna get that? Gonna mail it to me?
I'm gonna mail it.
I got didn't get a turnout cope, but he got a couple other things, Dan whitefish dot com.
Check them out.
All right, gentlemen, thank you for coming out again. We will continue this in the future. Until then, brothers, stay low and go.
All right, everybody will see it the big one. Thanks again, guys.
All right, guys, thanks for tuning. Have a great night. Goodnight everyone,