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, Doc qcy Beast, Darren p qucy Beast, Rob Pocaccini.
Welcome all back to the Get.
Salty Experienced Podcast, the only one you know what brings the fire house kitchen table to you, to you Hello, whateverthing else?
Bro?
Right?
No, no, no, I'm disappointing park right now. But no, not yet. No, No, I'm gonna all to you out of place right now. You see that I'm not kidding. Wow, I don't know.
Continuing in our segments of.
The authors, Oh yeah.
Thirty five is you must know?
Yeah yeah, yeah yeah, number one best seller right now on Amazon. Guys, better get it, you baby to it.
Oh sorry, we have we have best selling authors on this show. What else can we do on this show?
Bro?
We get the legends, we get best selling authors, we get guys from all world.
Still they're still for sale?
Or what's the story.
Back on Amazon's second rock.
Yeah, yep, yeah, hot right now, Hot.
Hot, the hot item for Christmas. That and Cornerstones of Leadership. You gotta get that in there, little plug in the form you know what I mean? Wait a minute, I mean this one right here?
Okay, the stameless plug. Sorry, the chief he doesn't even realize it.
The guy who knew right rough work with him that this guy is going to be best selling.
All what the you mean?
We kind of knew the job.
We knew it wasn't going to be Yes, you.
Don't know when you're an idiot. I'm an idiot, so I'll never never are you anyway?
Rough?
You're out in Iowa?
Wow?
Is it lonely day? By yourself?
Right now? By myself?
Yeah?
Who you have to hunting with?
Wordy myself? Enjoy at Eastern quiet yourself?
Yeah, my friends right up the road.
Are your friends there already?
They go cow tipping?
Yeah?
So you got one right sticking in your Grandma, you got one already.
You can come home now. I'm coming home Sunday, Sunday.
What do you get?
Yeah, you know, get one one or two. I'm still waiting for the picture. He's supposed to me the other day.
What's the big one look like? How many points?
Fifteen?
Fifteen pointer? No room in the dead room.
Where are you gonna put it in the headroom?
The death room?
Yeah, oh man, that's right. That's where the key truck is. The truck is out here, the old truck.
You uh you hit it with the boat.
Bone arrow?
Yeah, boone hour.
I told Roofie.
The next thing I wanted to do is run out there with a bulle knife and his teeth and jump on his back and just d it.
You know, I see that?
Did he did he hear?
What his last word was before you put an hour through his heart? Did he say anything?
He didn't say nothing?
Nothing? He said he served them a little have a little tears.
Did the Sebastian man of scalcoal? He realized the mind fuck with this thing sticking out of his chest?
I served him as papers coops, you did, yeah, but.
You got you gotta bring that up.
That was a good one. Oh uh, I got today.
I gotta served papers today.
And then my wife.
Didn't even come out of my finished coming out of my mouth before he was like what I'm like? Coops still got it.
Man, he's pretty quick.
Man. Yeah, Man, so that old.
Guy I practiced on the little l Asian kids. Bro, you know what I mean.
All right, but let's get all the shenanigans and chicanery out of the way, because we got some serious topics. I want all your young guys out there to get a pad, paper pad, paper paned pencil and jop down notes because there's nuggets in every one of these stories. We got two stories today's different fires of the thirty fives that you missed. Know my best selling alph Billy Goldfetter and chief Lead. He's gonna get frequent flyer miles from getting salty now he's been on the shelf cent.
He's definitely we can see this point counter is up to.
He's gotta be up there twice flying all over the world. He's got to get insalty credit card.
We got to send them a microphone or something for God to FMB man.
Or LM money. We gotta turn this sound down.
Figure me in, figure me in, baby.
Let's go, oh God, let's get to two commercials really quick and then we'll bring them in.
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You asked me watching frishing coefficient. Well here it is.
Hoppy clocking the coefficient. We left that in there for Lee because see, that's how you're a best selling office. Sounds she would find puticit, He writes.
His he's I don't know. His reaction is not really he didn't find it funny.
That's fine, all right, all right, I think that's it. I think we're gonna jump right in.
And bring you want to do the shout out now to your friend really quick?
Oh no, you have to get Chief leaping because he's walking.
Okay, Yeah, let's bring in Cheap.
Leap and Billy Goldfetter. Worldcome round. I'm going up the world round Office of thirty five. As you must know here.
You are, you're back again. You must like us, really.
Like us, like you guys, mush.
I went to a fantastic I was I was honored to be asked to go to Chief leave for time with five Joe, wiz Me and Chief Steve went all the way out there. We had a hell of a time, a lot of great guys. I'm gonna be there with the Chief lead. Thanks for the invite, fellow, Thank you brother.
But do you have that picture of a boy Mikey who was out there?
I do?
I do? You ready?
All right?
So we have two of them. So I'm going to show you this one boy, the little Michael little shout out there.
He is there, he is. So that's that's Mike with his parents. Who his parents? So he had he had been the Elmhurst buff all of the years that I worked in the four six Battalion. They moved down on to North Carolina and when Mike found out about the party, he told his parents, we gotta go, and he drove.
They drove him up there and they attended the party. So it was pretty cool.
So thank you to not only Mike but his parents. And I think he got another cool picture.
Yeah, I think. So let me see this one might be a good one. Let's see.
Oh it's a great shot. Who's that old man? Oh that's me.
I was gonna say, how can you.
Tell everybody it was a Hawaiian party?
Oh?
You and uh five fight at Joe Hawaiian shirts on?
Yeah it was because it wasn't five Fight at Joe Wizz. So what do you want to wear? I said?
I said, let's wear a collar shirt that says f dn Y or something. He's like, how about Hawaiian shirt? I said, why are you asking me?
Then?
I said, you want to wear Hawaiian shirts? Who wear Hawaiian shirts? So that's what we did. We wore Hawaiian shirts.
All right.
It was a great time. Food was good too.
Man. Yeah, Michael was in the chat.
I see, Uh, he's available on the air, available, available for.
Nice nice job, Mikey.
All right, we're gonna give Chief Leave and Billy the privilege of bringing in these next two ones. The chief, right one's still a fire fighter, I believe.
Man, Yeah, introduce him.
Yeah.
So uh, I'm gonna start with our first guest, Mike Tiger, who's the deputy chief and the chief fire marsh from Loud County, Virginia. And he's gonna talk to us this evening about about as close a call as you can have. All Right, ready, family dwelling, bring them both upright.
Here we go, Yes, and then ready for the next one.
Good Frank.
And the other person we're going to bring in is Brandon Corey, and he's going to talk about a fire that that he responded to.
In the up the Upper Peninsula.
You stole out from me, I say that.
Well, here he is baseball.
Applause, he's in the other day where it snows three hundred and sixty two days out of the year.
I went six to eight feet and welcome to the show.
Welcome to the show, gentlemen, Thanks for joining us, Thanks for being part of the thirty Fires.
You can know it's an amazing book.
I think this is going to go down with the Report from Engine coup in the eighty two is one of the iconic books in the fire's service.
That's how good I like, that's how.
Much I love it.
Wherever you want to jump in first the pledge.
So just real quick, I just just and again, as we said on the last show, there's there's no bragging here because Frank and I coordinated it, but the people who were there are telling the stories. And then all the money being made from this book is being donated to four charities, Chief for a Downy Firefighter, can't support Network, Tunnel to Towers, and the First Responder Center of Excellence,
so there's no money, but we are really excited. Yesterday we found out that it's an Amazon bestseller, so it's pretty cool.
We're pretty excited.
And they thought I was pulling that Leke Amazon bestseller Baby.
Yeah, we're real proud of that, and again not only for the learning but for the money we're raising. But people like Micah and Brandon, who after we went through the whole process, said yeah, we like to tell our story. So I'm going to start my conversation with Mike. And
this is a little close to me. I was the chief of department there in Loudon County in the for about almost ten years, in the very very early stages when it was mostly volunteer, and now it's about fifty to fifty right, half career, half volunteer, and careers staffing around the clock pretty much. So it's one of the
its America's dastest growing county. And in May of twenty eight they had that fire, that fire that not only changed some of the guys involved, but it changed the direction of the organization in my opinion, And Michaeh will get into that. But they went to a dwelling fire on a street named Meadowood that they'll never forget. They arrived on the scene and they had heavy fire coming from this two story, single family modern construction right lightweight
wood trusts. This thing was rocking when they went in the house and they were doing a search. Things got very, very very ugly, and instead of telling the story, I'm going to yield to micaeh who now serves as a four star chief in Loud County. He's the chief of the Far Marshall Bureau. And Michael, welcome to Getting Salty. It's a pleasure to have you. And I think, as the guy said when they opened the show, whether it was Cubes or whoever, grab your pencils because there's a
lot to learn. Yeah, these guys have got some stories. Michael, welcome, aboard, welcome, if.
I thank you, it's it's an honor to be with the group. And either Gonza wants to hit the pledge, I believe.
Oh he's a mind reader too.
Look at him. Look at that ship. I mean, okay, and we just get that the way before we get going. Thank you, guys, can we go?
I pledge 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.
Excellent, Thank you everyone, thankesure the reminder chief patriotics. Great to be an American today.
Yes, sir, all right, chief, whenever you're ready, jump right in.
So if you're ready, I guess we'll get into it.
Yeah, man, let's do it.
So May fifth, two thousand and eight. Let's talk about it man four three two three eight Metalwood Court, Leesburg, Virginia. As our third or fourth box call for the day. I would love to tell everybody that you know we burn stuff every day in Loudon County, that is not the case at all. We do run fires. As you see there in that picture. That's a Type five construction lightweight which was very common for our county. Was built
in two thousand and six. Brick facade on it two stories in the front, three in the rear, has a walk out basement on side. Charlie which is actually below grade to the rear of the home. Arrived on the scene found two story single family dwelling had smoke and fire looked like it was either in the attic or run inside. Charlie got out of the truck out of the engine, started side alpha side delta, stopped at the
Charlie Delta corner of the house. This fire looked so much like all of the other similar types of fires where started on the back melted off the vinyl siding, off the back end of a V up into the ventedsaphat up into the attic space, and off to the races.
So I would be remiss if I didn't tell you that my decision for us to go inside that house was made way before that picture was taken right there, And that's where transparent accountability, however you want to chalk it up on the is my decision that we were going to go inside that house was before I ever saw four three two three eight meta wood Court. I account a lot of that either to fire service confidence, which in other terms could probably be labeled as complacency.
I've been to fires like this before. I thought this one was no different. That picture right there was taken exactly four minutes before a may day occurred, and I didn't think me or my crew were going home. Two stories, single family. You can see very very light smoke at the front door right there. Made entry on the first floor. After I got in, sighed light whitish grayish colored smoke. I could see about a foot out ahead of me.
You know the rules. If you can't see, your feet need to be on your knees or down on the floor. I was able to kind of bend oversee the floor, so I was about ten or fifteen feet behind my firefighter, which her name is Brandy. This was her second ever working structure fire working in the county, so I knew
that this one. What I saw on the backside of the house, as I said, was the fire haad ran the outside and up into the attic, but it was also vented out the second floor window in the center of the house on the rear, which brings into question what do we actually call houses, you know, how do
you label floor, so on and so forth. So my return that I gave on the radio was confirming we had a two story single family dwelling of fire second floor, and it brought into question whether I was talking second floor from street side or second floor from the rear of the house. So to be very clear on that is now, if iire arrived on the scene, I would describe that as a two story single family dwelling have
fire on the number two floor. Then I would also confirm that we are labeling the floor's basement floor number one, floor number two. That way, when I say that I've got a working structure fire number two floor. There is no question where I'm talking about inside that house, so visibility, As I said, it was about a foot whitish grays colored smoke on the first floor, ticking. I guess what I saw on my thermal imager before we went up the stairs. Ay, they have a guess. I can give
that answer because I was there obviously. But the answer was nothing. I saw nothing on my thermal imager because it was left outside, outside the structure. It was not in my hands. So that's a learning point. That is a tool. Even jumping in the time machine back to two thousand and eight, we had technologies such as a thermal imager, and it only works if you have it with you. So I did what I was taught in training. You will hear me talk about training over and over,
probably as we're talking here. I am a huge advocate for training. At some point point in my training. It's as simple as if you can't see, how do you know that you're getting closer to the fire. What's the simple answer? Simple answer is it's getting hotter. So I learned very early on in my career that if I turn my head, I can actually tell the difference between heat on my face and heat on my ears. So with that is, it's what I call the microwave test.
Is I take things out of the microwave, I hold it up and I turn my head and you can use that as a as a teaching point to folks. So with that is, I turned my head at the bottom of the stairs. Didn't notice any heat whatsoever. So where's the fire? Fires upstairs? So we start upstairs, make the second floor. Trust in your gut and paying attention to all the different senses that we have. It's not
just vision, it's not hearing, you know. Is we went up those stairs right there, right there at that banister on the right hand side.
When you say you went upstairs, did you have a line.
Yes, sir. We deployed a two hundred no on the engine. We stretched a two hundred foot inch and three quarter attack line with a fog nozzle on it. Made the second floor. The firefighter did not open the nozzle until we got into the fire room, which was in the center of the house. Second floor. Conditions in there were as you would expect, you know, fire, active fire in that room. Excuse me, And you know, visibility was a
little bit different. Airbody knows that after you opened the nozzle, what happens your visibility changes, but started hitting active fire inside that room. And something to make a note of is where I was talking about, you know, paying attention to where the heat's coming from inside that room. The heat was coming from the left hand side. After we were in there for a couple of minutes, I left the line. Immediately after we got up there. The firefighter
was still spraying water. I came off the line and I've entered a window on side Charlie of the house was double hung window. I raked it out. I pulled the sash into the room. Uh. And you know there's a question I just said, you know, I left the line, I left my I left my firefighter. Can you do that? Answer is yes. If you talked to Osha, what's osh you're going to say about it? Well, I've got an answer for that. Also is Osha says that if you're in an id LH, what do you need to do?
You need to operate as a crew, and that crew is two or more personnel maintaining contact and in a position to be able to render assistance. So with that is I maintained voice contact with my firefighter. So I was comfortable with that.
Oh.
After I got back on the line, the tower crew Lieutenant early in firefighter Singleton, Uh. They came up to the house, second floor. They started a primary search and a bedroom towards side Alpha that was at the at the corner of Alpha and Delta. To be honest with you, when we made the top of the stairs, I would I would say what how I would describe it is? The crime wasn't you know? The punishment wasn't fitting the
crime is. I didn't encounter the volume of fire that I thought that should be there, which meant that it was definitely above us in the attic. So with that in mind, started knocking down the fire in that bedroom and I came off the line a second time. I came off the line a second time. I started doing a primary search inside the master bedroom and I started
noticing some changes. That directional heat that seemed to be coming from the left hand side initially now felt like it was all around us and kind of felt like it was trying to push us down into the floor. It went from being warm to being hot to being uncomfortable. Of everybody probably on this call has been on a fire at some point. Where you try to get that air gap in your gear where you kind of move around a little bit to get a little space in there.
And that wasn't clear in it at all. I had called out on the radio to ask the exterior the chief that was on the scene, Yes, sir.
How many people are on How many guys are at the scene at this point? Is it just you and three guys?
How many guys? So our staffing minimum staffing on an engine is three, and at that point minimum staffing on special service to include tower, straight truck rescue squad was three. Three was bare bones minimum. That day we had three on the truck or on the tower, and there was actually supposed to be four. That was the staffing thing that we had going on in the county where they would deploy the fourth person off of the Special Service and deploy them into a minimum staff position elsewhere to
keep units in service. So we were used to running with four. That day we were actually running with three, which actually kind of plays into uh when we when we see a picture of the timeline here in a couple of minutes of how the how the incident went down time wise with it that I speak of it in four four and four. We were on the scene for four minutes. May day occurred, took accountability was was was declared on the scene. Now, if you listen to so you only.
Have six people, you have six people on You got six people there, that's what you're saying.
Well, the show is outside, right, the driver engineers outside.
So yeah, so we have fewer folks inside and two outside, so you only have one line, one.
Line with you and and a nozzleman or not the woman at the time, right, Yes, sis.
How it goes with that minimum staffing when you have those minimum staffing levels like South Florida for some of us are accustomed to, it's you gotta juggle a lot of things until the crews get there.
And this is the majority of the country, right, so we are we are spoiled.
When we think figure out.
So we have NFP compliance staffing in New York City and only very few other cities and areas have that. So that's that's an important consideration when you think about this and you think about the staffing. Uh, you know, for anybody who's watching and listening to this about you know, you got to make do with what you have on scene. And that's exactly what he's doing and walking us through.
You know, I'm sure, Chief, you would have loved to have thirty fire fighters on scene at that fire, but the reality is that at that point in the fire, he's gonna have six, and like you said, some of them are outside. He's trying to, you know, comply with OSHA to the degree that we that we can.
While so there's a lot of competing concerns here.
Nothing that can happen. Well, guys are gonna wear many that something. They're going to push the limits until they can get the personnel there that they really need, the proper personnel there that need to get and fight that fire. So did you, Chief, you want to pull up the timeline now?
Sure I can. I can speak on that here for a second. I think where I left off was I called out to the chief that was on the scene and I asked him if we were if we were making any progress, and he came back and he said, you're starting to make a hit on it, but you still
have heavy fire in the attic ridge. Vent I liken that to the fact of kind of making a push on an entire second floor of a house being on fire as you're making progress and you get kind of the point of what I call the point of conversion is you kind of get teeter in there on the edge of whether the fire is going to go out or whether you're going to make a decision to have to back out. That's where I was in my brain. So along with it went from being warm to being
hot to being uncomfortable. When he gave me the return and said you were starting to make a hit on it, I thought that we were at that point of conversion, you know, to be honest with you, was like, man, we're right there, We're it's going to start getting better. And with that was I called out on the radio
and I said, visibility is zero. And the folks that are on here know that, you know know now through Project may Day that is one of the things that's a trigger, that is something if you hear it on the radio, you need to pay attention to it. So with that is the tower crew that was out towards the front of the house, they started noticing all the exact same changes that we did, and they came and as soon as they got to the doorway of the master bedroom, we now had fire blowing over us from
the first floor. So the origin and cause on this fire was improperly disposed of smoking materials on the back deck. The back deck was located off of the first floor on side Charlie, so it burned into the house horizontally as well external on the house going up the vinyl siding on the outside, so it came into the first floor while we were on the second floor, got into overstuffed.
Yes, sir, yeah, let me just.
I'm still on the I want to pause from a staffing issue, because what was missed is that your first alarm that would have generally been on this assignment was tied up in the neighboring town on another run. So that plays into the response challenge. But you know, when we talk about mutual aid, Louden County is probably as aggressive with automatic mutual aid as anybody in the country.
There are parts of Loudon County where the first alarm is coming from Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia, three states. And they were doing that when I was there in the eighties. So it's not about it's not about they don't want to staff well or they can't stand well. And people listening to our show tonight, if you're staffing sucks, then you need to look beyond what you can do about it. They're not going to hire you fifty people tomorrow, So what are you doing with your neighbors? What are
you doing with you with automatic mutual aid? In my area, all over, departments are doing everybody's fires. I'm getting thirty guys in about eight to ten minutes, depending, but that's not from one fire department. So I just want the listeners to as the guys from Salty pointed out, they're only staffing for one line right now, and that's not due to any attitudes of not wanting mutual aid. Companies were not in the right position at the time that
shit happens. That's going to happen. So if I want to just kind of paint that picture and also remind people if you're staffing sucks, there are some solutions to that.
And I also wanted to touch on something because I was kind of trying to listen to what you were saying.
So you said it was early on.
You had mentioned something like it got from the siding into the attic and you thought it was above you, and then the second floor had a room that was on fire. But now you're saying that the fire is actually on the first floor.
Is that what you're saying? Yep?
Chief, So uh, yes, sir, that's exactly what I'm saying.
So this fire basically throughout, but you guys were on the second floor and the fire was actually originated on the first floor.
Tell where the fire started, Chief.
So yeah, the fire started on the xterior on the deck which was off of the first floor. So it was starting to break through apparently at the same time that we went.
To the second guard.
So it wasn't showing they got into the family It was not shown on the first floor right got in there, Yes, sir. Oh, so fire had gotten into the family room or living room directly below us and got into over stuffed furniture which sent it to flash over rapidly after it got in that room and started taking possession of it. So there would be the view from the Charlie Delta corner. I saw in the chat there was a three sixty completed before entry, And the answer is absolutely it was not.
And that is a huge takeaway on this, whether it would have changed my decision making at all on this. I already I already gave you all the farm, so to speak, because I told you my decision to go inside that house was before I ever saw four three two three eight metalwood court. We cannot be that way, We just we can't. Oh, and that's where my size up stopped. I went from side alpha side delta, Charlie delta. That's where it stopped. I had seen this fire before
I had been on fires. I addressed him the exact same way, and I articulate that point because if it sounds like I'm confident when I tell you that, it's because I'm confidently complacent with exactly the way that we handle this fire. Oh so I'll hit rewind here for a second.
Go ahead, sir, I'm just gonna mention just a little FYI on my part, was that's a good teaching moment, at least a three sixty done. Great question. It's from the chat because if you look at some of the ritz and may days and stuff like that and see what some of the elements of contributing factors, that's one of the factors that gets lined up in there. So for those that will want a learning point, it's take that extra second. If you can get the Billity's not
too big and you can do that three sixty. It's imperative that you make that three sixty.
You know.
In the chat also somebody absolutely and.
Somebody in the chat wrote.
What if you're alone. I'm gonna be real respectful. You're not a fire department if you're alone. If you're sending one person on a piece of apparatus and the community feels that's a department, then you're just kidding yourselves. It's just such a sentiment. It spot to me because we see if people want to cut budgets and want to do this, at some point, you got to decide. Laven County, the first alarm assignment with this would have been three or four engines, two or three trucks, a couple of
They have good responses. But there are places in this country, certainly Frank and I have seen it, maybe even Brandon and Micah that are running one person on duty, and you know what, that's a salesman. It's not a fire fire department. And so I saw the comment, what if you were alone, you're going to hit it with a deck gun.
I meant something going in, I'll make an entry.
At some point, we can't do the job, that's right, Yeah, that's true too.
Chief.
If you had done the three sixty and you saw, you know, you think you would have saw, I know, hindsight being twenty twenty, what would what would you have done differently?
So it's not a fair question to say what would have done different on this fire because I had handled fires like this the exact same way before, and this is the one that burned me and my crew literally. So I don't say that to be a smart ass at all. I say that as a point that when you cut corners you do exactly that is, you just get in the way, which isn't.
The right way.
Oh.
I would love to tell you that had I made a three sixty on that house, that would have completely changed everything that I did. The answer is no. Sixteen years later, if I went on that same fire today, or as a command officer, you know, as a deputy chief in a department, you know, or as a shift commander or whatever, would I have somebody's ass for not doing a three sixty or hitting it with a large line on the exterior that knock down the fire before
a cruise ever went in there. The answer is absolutely yes. Is that's where the learning, you know, has has occurred that I cannot be more transparent that the things that I see now if folks have completely changed, and it's not because we jumped in a time machine and things changed. It's because our folks have continued to change. And as Chief Goldfeaer said earlier, is it's a cultural thing in
the fire department. And unfortunately May twenty fifth, two thousand and eight, was a day that started to change the culture for our department and for our county.
And we are so we are so great think that's on here and telling us the honest story, and most importantly is how you've evolved to be better today than you were more than a decade ago. Right, So that is such a huge a huge takeaway here is that we're trying to be better and learn and evolve, and that's exactly what we did.
So we're super appreciative of of you being on here.
And I would advise you don't read the chat because you'll lose track of your of your thoughts.
The chat can the chat can blow up and have a thousand.
Black Oh the chat, don't go down the black hole.
Say from the rabbit hole, rabbit.
Switch, I switch over the private chat.
It'll just be it's just something that's important, guys. I'll bring it up just so you know.
But so I'm just I'm just thinking about like that. The picture of that house. My house is very similar, two story, has the deck and then has a walk out for the basement in the back. There's basically in my mind, I mean, unless there's no way I could go in there with two people with one line with fire that's on the first floor, it got into the second floor, into the attic.
There's basically there's nothing. What are you going to do there?
Like, you can't you can't hit that with with thirty guys. It's going to take two or three lines and immediately being stretched to make any impact. So it's not it's not saying anything about what you guys did. I'm not I'm not saying that. I'm just saying in general, I can't imagine stretching a line into my house and thinking that I I could do something there. Like it's just not gonna happen, you.
Know what I mean?
Gonzo, can you get back to that first picture.
From the just one exposure?
Uh, there should be the one, the one with our crew there.
So.
I can tell you it's a twenty eight year old captain. I wait for you in the county. That fire, that fire there was go all day long to me. And I don't say that, you know, trying to trying to be in a measuring contest at all. It was. It was just the facts of what it was. Oh and again was the confidence or complacency, whatever you want to assign to it is We've I've been to this fire before. Oh so that picture there is we are still trying to figure out how to get out that joint after
we called him ay Day. So I'll use that as I'll use that picture as a good indicator of the may it was called. I think that you've got a snippet there of the actual may Day from video on the scene. I'll give a little background then if we could go into that, that would be good. Uh So with that is I left off with, I had just called out on the radio, told him visibility was zero. I thought that we were at that point where we were just starting to maybe get a hit on it
to get ahead, which wasn't the case. Uh And it went from being warm to being hot to being we need to get the hell out of here. The tower crew had came and made the doorway of the second floor. So if you want to let it play there for a second, then I'll take it.
Okay, we'll play about thirty seconds of it. So here we go.
Okay, safety tick.
That one.
Day in the second floor, you're in there for reactivating the one to create evacuate chunky class evacuate.
That smoke is just.
You can't put that out with two towel added.
Yeah, down to cheap eleven.
Did you copy everything? Radio craft crane all out?
Okay?
So chief, now what are you seeing when this is going?
So just prior total black, absolute total black.
Uh.
And it was literally four years after this, excuse me, six years after this when we went in a flashover can for the third time that I've ever been in a flashover can for training. Is I had a thermal imager with me that third time that I went in, and I was able to but connect what I was seeing or not seen at Metalwood Court to what I saw in that flashover can. And that is what's called blackfire. And that was the fingers coming through the smoke that
was burning in the room that we were in. So with that being said, is it went in my brain. When that m word may day popped into my head. There was no waiting to call may day. It was I know that we've got fire below us were stuck. Tried to call mayde and I couldn't. I couldn't because I carried my radio on the outside of my gear. The interface on where the lapel mic connected into the
side of the radio had melted, burned clear away. And the reason why I couldn't transmit a may Day is because my fingers melted into my lapel mic.
Oh my god.
So I don't say that to dramatize things. I say that because hey, my radio wasn't working. Well, my radio would have worked if I would have reached down and actually squeezed the button on the side of the radio. Is that's another training point. Wherever you push the push to talk on your radio, whether you got to lapel my cooked up to it or not, is where that thing opens up. If I would have keyed it up actually on the box itself, guess what it would have happened.
It would have worked. I would have been able to transmit a may Day. But what happens training wise with that, Well, I couldn't do it. So what did I do. I told Jack to call may Day and guess what he did. It wasn't by policy, it wasn't perfect, but you know what he transmitted it It was acknowledged and they started deploying resources. So that is a win in my brain on exactly how to address that situation.
So at that.
Point, we made it to Brandy and I stretched to the top of the stairs. It took me two weeks after the fact to remember what I saw or what I felt at the top of those stairs. Well, what I felt was burning, but what I saw was orange. That was it. It was like our head was in a jet engine with fire blowing past us, coming up these stairs. So Brandy tells me, well, actually, before I get ahead of myself, do you know what we've heard. We've heard nothing, nothing at all, no federal cues. I
could barely hear myself talk. Well, if I can barely hear myself talk, it's not just the normal, you know, muffled face piece. You all saw the picture there of how thick that smoke was coming out of that house, How black, how dark? You know, how thick that stuff is. That's an indicator on the inside of a fire. If you can't hear your partner, right. Besides, you smoke burns, right, that's a concern. We need to be aware of that.
So Brandy tells me I don't have any water, and I'm thinking to myself, pan is the way that you play? That's just that is what it is. And I went into survival officer mood. She told me she didn't have a water. What am I thinking? I'm thinking that because of how stressful this situation is. Something as simple as pull to open and close that wasn't a thing. So you know what, I took the line from her. I opened it up, It goes limp. I close it, it goes semi rigid, well ten feet back from the nozzle.
Our hose almost burned completely in half in that amount of time. So that's where you talk about training is day one bengeon company operations? What do they tell you? Once you're on that line, you don't put it down. So we had to abandon the line because we're burning above the fire and it's doing nothing for us. So that umbilical cord that's connected to moms sitting out on the street, you know, with that hose met up with
Jack didn't have any contact at all with Bones. Bones is Lieutenant Early, which was the tower officer.
So one second, you would Brandy together, who's Jack?
So Jack was the firefighter on the tower. He was the backstep firefighter on the tower. Normally when I tell this story, I give all the names at the at the beginning, I apologize. I need to have like a spreadsheet here to go off through all this stuff.
So, oh my god, wow.
So where are you right now?
Lose them?
His signal has been cutting in and out.
Micah, So can you guys hear me.
On and off?
Yeah, signal keep coming in and out, all right, check check out me. It was okay, I think as you're in it, it's a little gammed up. Excuse you with the AOL.
Can you hear me?
Now?
Got you out?
All right? So try to transmit a may day. Get to the top of the stairs. Don't have any water. Throw our hose line down. We make it back. Brady and I make it back to outside the master bedroom. Jack, the firefighter from the tower, is outside. We're making contact with him literally verbally. Can't see anything whatsoever. No contact with Lieutendant Early, which was the tower officer. So what's going through our mind. Why why is bones noting answering? Well,
he's not answering because he's dead. That's exactly what went went through our heads is you know the reason he's not answering is because he's dead. He is overrun by fire, just like we are. But I will tell everybody that's on this podcast that I believe in training, because if you train the right way, it will not fail you. I it just won't. Oh, I switched into survival mode. The first thing that I recognized other I told Brandy to get a hold of me and not let go.
She got a hold of my waist strap on my SCBA, and I wanted tactile contact with her. It's just I knew the experienced level Jack was used to operating on a truck, you know, without a line, with unassisted searches. You know, he was used to that. So I'm good maintaining contact with him verbally or yelling at him and you can barely hear it. But the first thing that
I noticed was how fast I was breathing. And this is where I can The first thing that I corrected was my breathing is I knew that I needed as much air as what I had in my cylinder. Well, secondary to that, I wondered how many more times I was going to be able to breathe that air out of my cylinder because it was hot air that was coming into my face piece. Then third to that, I don't say this to dramatize this, this is the reality
of it. I was already making preparations of what I was going to do with my face piece melted off. So it didn't I think that I was going to die. Yep, sure did. But a good motivator is having people with you that's screaming, and that's just the fact of what it is. And it was my job to get him out. So that's what we did. So it went from the center of the house toward side. Bravo. First door that I came to was an inward swinging door. Couldn't see anything.
We're burning, and my hands slide across the floor. I recognized that I was either on linoleum or I transitioned from carpet onto a slick, slick surface inward swinging door. Where do inward swinging doors go in your house? Generally somewhere where they can be occupied, right, So my hands slid across the floor as tywer linoleum. Where am I? I'm in the bathroom. I'm in a bathroom off of a hallway. How big are bathrooms off of hallways? Generally
not very big. I was in that bathroom long enough for me to recognize that and turn around and come right back out. I couldn't explain it to you that day, but in training you pick up on these things. So kept going towards side. Bravo. We make it inside a secondary bedroom, towards side, bravo. No windows on the front side or the side of this, you know, of this bedroom. When Jack came through the door, it was me the brandy, then Jack. When Jack made it through the door, Jack
closed the door. This was two thousand and eight, mind you, this is when we were still punching out windows, you know, on structure fires, because that's what we did because the change to survive the building profile for anybody that was stuck inside that house. Right right. So with that being said, is we didn't talk about flow pass. We didn't really do reco vs. We didn't do any of that shit. We didn't recognize it. You know, we didn't have all
the science that we have now. But what did Jack do when he came through that door, he closed the door. So what did that do? That compartmentalized where we were. Stuff that was on fire stayed on fire, but it kept additional heat and fire from coming in on top of us. So inside that bedroom we end up, you know, I'm scraping the wall trying to find windows, ended up hearing glass window was taken out onside Charlie. That ladder was thrown by my engine driver. He threw the ladder
long enough for it to punch the window. Then he went back to help the tower driver throw more ladders. So with that is we go out through the window, make it down, make it outside. I'm trying to cut down some of the story here. I apologize, but make it aroundside Alpha and I look back at this house and it's one hundred percent involved, you know, at this point, and I'm like, what the hell did I miss? You know, is it's not like we were in there for twenty
minutes fighting fire, you know, or a half hour. It just wasn't. And somebody came past and I said, bones are still in there, which is Lieutenant earlier. I said bones are still in there. They said, no, bones is over there. So let's talk about bones for a second. Right towards the end to win that video was stopped. Is you hear the chief on the radio, he says, Evacuate, structural collapse in the rear. Evacuate. He says that over
the radio, we hadn't made a trust system. Ends up coming down inside this master bedroom, which actually separated Lieutenant Early from myself, Brandy and Jack. So Buns ends up going into a master bathroom, closes the door. He's taking baseball swings with his four foot d handle Boston Rate trying to bust out these four by four windows that are around a garden tub. Well, these windows don't open. They don't open up and down. They're not casement, they
don't open side to side, none of that. Well, you come to find out these these windows were made out of what's called hurricue light glass. It is a laminated type glass. Is the safety glass. It's similar to what they put in cockpits of aircraft. Why the hell would anybody put this in their house? Well, safety, they're not thinking about firefighters. If I'm getting in the garden tub and I've had a couple of chardonnay and I slip and I put my arm over end of the glass.
My arm's not going through it. So it's a thing. It's a safety thing, right, It's a safety thing that we know about now that I didn't know about. Then he displaced that thing two or three inches clear out of the frame and couldn't fracture it, couldn't get out. He dropped to the floor to die until he thought about his family. He would tell you the same thing if he was sitting right here beside me right now. That was his motivation to get up off the floor
and give it one last shot. He opened up the door, he used his get this thermal imager, looked for the coolest spot in the room, which he figured was a window. And you know what he was right. He goes head first running through this window, head first, goes out three stories down to the ground into the woods out back in front of Engine eighteen's crew that had just stretched
to the line aroundside. Charlie hadn't gotten water yet, lands right in front of them on fire, so they're putting him out with hing point here is remember that window that I talked about at the beginning, that I took the time to rake all the glass out and take the sash and everything out. If you ever wonder why that's the window that he ended up going out unobstructed. He didn't have to stop messing around with the window.
He went headfirst out that window. So they dragged him around inside Charlie sid Delta side Alpha, and they told me, they said, hey, bones is over there, and I had to see it for myself, and I heard him before I ever saw him. But that meant to things, meant that he had an airway and he was alive. Those were a whole lot better in my brain than being dead. So insert three months later, most of us were back to work, well half of us were back enter after
multiple grafting surgeries. And you know what, he got retired because of his injuries from Metalwood Court. You know what we have to show for that today? You know what they did with the house after they investigated, They knocked the damn thing down. Then they rebuilt it back on the exact same foundation. Wow, we had nothing to show for almost killing four of us inside that house because the decision was made before I ever got to that house.
So I can't speak enough on this subject. And with Chief Goldfeder calling, you know this morning to see if I was interested. You all often hopefully see my passion. And you know, I'm not telling you we did everything right on this call, but I'm telling you that there's a lot to learn from here. That this book it's fun to save somebody's life. And that's I can't articulate it any further than that.
Chief, What was the time frame from the time that shit went sideways till the time that you guys came out that window?
So it was four minutes. Uh, it's there's a few seconds here here or there with it, but it was about four minutes after the May Day is when we finally made it out.
That's a long time, man, is Yeah, it seemed.
A lot longer than that, I can assure you.
Yeah, So what what were to take what we what were the takeaways?
Like, what did you feel?
What it all over the place?
I know it was it was several. There's several takeaways, yep.
So some of the takeaways. Uh, yeah, there's there's a whole bunch from it. But I'll start with accountability. Is that's one of the pieces that I talked about. Listening to the radio traffic with it, You'll be like, I don't know what he's talking about with this four four and four. Well, because the times don't match up with where my brain was, with what I remember as stuff. I remember looking at the safety officer at a specific time.
Then I remember him talking on the radio, so I know because I was there, that we were all out at that point. Well, it was after that when they got on the radio and said, you've got firefighters jumping outside, Charlie, you know, out to the rear, all these different things, and we were already out at that point. And with that is they went for the longest time thinking that
we had a firefighter that was missing. And this is one of the biggest points to make out of all this is would I make a decision to put a brother or sister in house? The answer is, you damn right, I will, because I am That's exactly what I would want to do if I was in that situation. So with that being said, is accountability matters all the time.
It really really matters in these types of situations. Because we thought that a fourth person or excuse me, the fourth on the tower was missing, when in fact they weren't. We only had three and they were starting to deploy additional rit teams and stuff inside to look for a
firefighter that that just wasn't there. Uh So they actually were able to figure it out once they got off our passport accountability uh tags to the command posts and they started checking people off and determined that, oh man, they're they're at minimum staffing today, so we're good and and they got full accountability of all of us. So that's one of the big ones.
Uh well, three.
Sixty I can't hit enough on that is whether it would have changed my decision or not. Go ahead. I'm sorry saying something.
The accountability part that's kind of that's that's after things have gone bad.
I was trying to to key in on, like if you.
Want to try and have guys in the future who are fighting something similar to this, you know what, what would you say, like from the from the get go that what were the takeaways like after they looked at the fire like what what things that they said you could have done, should have done, didn't do? You know those types of things that you know those guys will know for the future.
You know what I mean.
Sure is to kind of summarize very quickly, is three sixty whether you want to do it or not, we now have a policy that you shall it is whether you can agree with policy not agree with policy. That was a cultural change that we made. You have to view all sides before you go into the structure that is. That is a rule unless you're in a known rescue situation. When you get there, you better hear it on the radio for folks to hit and agreed, disagree with whatever.
But you know what, our folks know that that is a checkbox that they have to hit before they can go inside. I think the you know, the big T word, the transitional fire attack, even though transitional is not really a mode, is will our folks pull up on a structural fire like this, whether they're fully staffed or not, and take a big line around side Charles and knock it down for thirty sixty seconds and eliminate your problem, you know, and make it safer, you know, to reset
the fire? Is that a thing now? Absolutely?
It is.
You know, if if we would have started on the back of that house, you know, hitting it from the outside, you all wouldn't listen to me tonight verbally flagelate.
You know, that's pretty good on your show.
So because it would have been enoughing fired to be honest with you, and that's that is just the fact of it is just the fact of what it is. Oh, you know, as many as many takeaways as there are from this and against I know the book I think articulates it very well, the points in it. But the facts are that for every one thing that went wrong on this incident, two things went right. And I think that you can you have to focus on the things
that you can learn. Because after this incident, the first time that I ever gave a presentation on it was in Fairfax, kunt Virginia to an officer development school. They said, hey, can you put some you know, can you tell us about your fire. I started off with literally, you know, four power point slides, you know, in a bulleted list that I had jotted down, like on a napkin or something to talk to these folks about. But it's morphed into a four hour presentation now because of the things
to learn. And I dedicated myself on the front end of all this thing that I would do my best to try to pass this information on as much as I could as long as the information was still relevant. And you know what, I haven't worked myself out of a job yet because there's always there. It's the same stuff that you see all the time. And you know, I hate to be blunt with that, but that's just the fact of what it is.
Is.
I wish that I didn't have to teach about this fire anymore because we were perfect. But we are some hard headed bastards in the fire department, and you know what is sometimes it just takes hearing it from the right person to man that sounds like me, and I hope that folks take that to heart. So that's that's some of the big ones for.
Me, you know, Michael. One of the things we tried to do when and I think we shared this the last time we were on with the guys Who'm getting salty is to identify fires that most firefighters are going to go to. And I would argue that other than maybe in some cornfields or something, every firefighter in America has these houses. If there's a new construction in your area in the last thirty years, you have these three four thousand square foot lightweight would trust basically pieces of shit.
They're dangerous before they catch fire.
So everybody, you know what you said too, Chief, Like you said for everything you did wrong, you did four things right. And I'm sure there was a time that you might have beat yourself up for doing some things. But as I'm listening to your story, I'm still listen. I'm listening to your training come through, like, because you should be proud of that, Like the fact that you knew has to float on your breathing, you knew that she should grab onto the fact there's things that came
through from your training that probably saved your lives. So you should be proud of that.
You know, he won't say it, but he received the Silver Medal of Valor for saving that cruise life.
Yep, and he should have.
Like I said, it comes through, the training comes through, man, And I kudos for you, man, you did a great job.
Yeah.
So I have so many I have so many points I want to talk to talk about on this fire.
Is full?
But can you where where is everybody today with their injuries? You know, with more than a decade past that? So tell us a little bit about that and explain this picture to us as well.
Sure.
So a point that uh that I'll hit here that I find interesting is that you never want to become a statistic, right, But I can also validate that some of the things on Project may Day are very valid. You know, from a front row seat is where I hit earlier on you know, we're above the fire or
visibility is zero. You know these triggers. Those two gentlemen that you see stand on the left hand side of that picture, we're both drivers for my station, but both of them were assigned to the opposite shift because what is one thing that happens with may Day's you don't have the usual crew working interestingly enough, that was us that day, or you don't have your normal staffing that was us that day. So technician the oder standing there on the left, Technician Dave Allen in the blue shirt,
second in from the left. Both of those guys still work with the Fire depart Dave Allen, you know the guy in the blue shirt there on the left, he's actually assigned in our Internet or information technology system of section within our fire department.
Now.
Jack Shingleton, the one in the sunglasses there in the center, he was the backstep firefighter on the tower that day. You know he's he's a technician now, which is a heavy apparatus driver as well of you know Lieutenant John bones Early, he's the one that's standing there with the wraps on him. Is he sometimes when you say that people go through things, is I think that, as terrible as this sounds, is out of all of us standing in that picture, that is the one that dude is
a fireman's fireman through and through. Oh, he spent three months in the Burn Center. That's actually the picture of the day that we picked him up to bring him home. Three months in the Burn Center, multiple grafting surgeries, and now he got medically retired because of his injuries at Metalwood Court. But you know what, that dudes alive because his training worked.
Oh.
Then of course the good looking dude over on the right hand side, this short guy that's me Then, Uh, that's a Brandy Eisman. Was Brandy Laypole in this pick? Sure? Uh? You know three three kids since then, she's actually a lieutenant in our department. That chick is she's solid. She is assigned to one of the busiest engines in the county. And you know at Metalwood Court that is that is a tough chick that will have your back.
Man.
Oh, I can't speak enough for you know, the folks that I went through that experience with. I wouldn't say that I would hand pick him. But you know what is that is the best hand that I could have had that day to make it through that damn experience. But you know, to say that these folks made lemonade out of lemons, that that's probably a good way to put it. Is everyone has made positive rides since that day. Everybody has their their own way that they tell the story.
Uh.
And interestingly enough is I went through a part of one of my law enforcement classes for the fire marshal stuff, uh crisis intervention team training, and we were talking about this and a guy looked at me and said, well, you know, I don't see you know, a whole lot of scars you know, from your from from this incident. And I said, brother, I said, my scars are on
the inside. And that is something that I know that a lot of folks in the fire service, whether it's behavioral health or whether it's actual you know, just remembering things, or whether it's actual outward injuries, all of us have at some point, uh that you know is a big takeaway from this incident as well. Yeah, I'll tell you I'm gonna a couple of a couple of points.
I want to quickly highlight uh that you mentioned we had nothing to show and lost almost four members a couple of months later when we knocked it down and built a new structure right on its place. The impact of the direction of the door where it leads to how important that is for us to know.
You're worrying about your face piece melting.
And I think about the Pennsylvania Fire Academy, which is one of the fires that's in the book, and we've now seen that the change in that if you have it's very different if you have an impact failure of your s CBA face piece or if you have a face piece melting. We used to just say cover the area, and we've learned now that if you cover the if you cover the area or put your hand over it, you're basically gonna wipe away the polycarbonate and visit, you're gonna make.
Yourself breathing worse. So you're gonna make it worse.
I think about you mentioned understanding black fire volume, velocity, density, color of fire, the importance of that, and understanding that we are close to a flashover, we are close to order a ignition. You know, all of these different things that it's just missing the right mixture, and that black fire isn't a you won't see the flame, but once it.
Gets the right mixture of oxygen, it's gonna light off.
Understanding that you mentioned the lady on the outside and the radio, we know that the radio straps, the those electronics are some of the weakest link in ours in our equipment, So having them protected by a bunking gear, how important that is. The thermoaning camera. Back in two thousand and eight, we didn't always take it off for the rig. Today you're negligent if you don't take it off the rig in a structural fire, and there's so many and knowing that, how we train with that. You
barely mentioned even the ceiling height as another factor. We saw a fire at the front door in an area that had a very fall ceiling there in one of the pitches. We saw on the side of the siding what looked like smoke that would have been from the area of the trust lock for the first and second floor. I think about, you know the importance of the three sixties. Somebody put this in the chat about what else are we going to gain from that?
From that?
Seeing that other side and we're gonna first off, we're gonna we may see where the actual fire started, the fire location, an alternate an alternate access point. We may see victims locate a victim location. We may see the height difference. It could be two stories in the front and three stories in the back. We're to walk out, and how important that is. We could see if the fire started below us. Sometimes we can't see that from
the from the side. I said, my my sheet of paper is full of information, of notes that I took tonight, and I had already known so much about this fire from interacting with your story and from this book. So I really I can't thank you enough for coming on here and being honest and thank god it was a close call and not aligned to do to death, because that is boy the Swiss Cheese was close to lineing up and the training and it was mentioned right, don't
let anybody short change your training. It's so important that we stay current and everybody's got these structures in their area.
So again, thank you for being on here tonight.
Think you know what of the guys said thank you to. One of the guys said that the organization changed because we see so many incidents like this where they go back to business the same way. And credit to Chief Keith Brower at the time, who was leading it, and literally it changed the department and that's a good thing, thank god it did. Thanks for being with us tonight, Micah.
Yes, thank you, thank you all.
I can mute myself. Thank you, Chief, appreciate you.
Coming on.
All right, Brandon, you've been on deck circle.
You ready? I think he was itching.
See he's ready so long if you want to stood up, yeah, I'll set him up.
So chapter seven was was written by Brandon Corey and I met him a couple of years ago at a fire conference and he had presented his story. I missed it, but a couple of people came up to me and said, he's a guy you gotta meet. You got to hear his story. So I basically got a one on one of course about that fire and about his friend Ben.
Uh.
And since since I met Brandon, I have I have met his dad, who's in the fire department.
I have also met Ben, his friend. I've met his dad and his and his mom.
I've Ron is Ben's father, uh And I also met his mother recently at the at the fire at the they were there at the Memorial Weekend, and it's important to point out that this fire was in twenty twenty and after their twenty three year old son, who was a captain in their fire department, was killed in.
The line of duty.
Their son was honored at the National form fire by the Memorial Weekend, and when I met them, they were there to help out new families that are coming on being part of Memorial Weekend, and it's just it's just remarkable the generational impact. And at the time, his sister, Tory, was in the volunteer department and Ben's mom is Caller Caller, I've got the name for a minute there, And because meeting them was pretty emotional for me in what they've gone through and what they continue to do.
I couldn't even imagine losing.
Your child at twenty three years old at a fire that you're at, So Brandon, thank.
You for sharing the story and for Ben's parents.
Know that we will always make sure that people know your son's story and that other firefighters will understand, and we'll have these watch outs for people to to make sure that we can potentially have different outcomes. As Mike I said earlier, this is how we save five lives. So, Brandon, thank you for being on the show.
Yeah, for sure, Thanks.
Brandon, Yeah, thanks for having me.
I want to give a quick.
Shout out to Ron and Carla also, you know, they've obviously losing their son helping out with all the stuff, and they're a really big help with me too. You know, a lot of the stuff that I go down and talk about Ben do all the teaching, you know, they they allow me to do it.
You know, when I.
First started doing this, I went and talked to them first, just to make sure, you know, I had their blessing to be able to go and share their son's story and everything. And they obviously gave me the go ahead because they know the impact that hopefully this story will continue to have on the fire service and hopefully be
able to save other firefighters' lives in the future. So I just want to give them a quick shout out and everything for all the stuff they continue to do to help make the fire service better.
Also, so we'll.
Jump into our fire like Chief Leap said, it's chapter seven on a duplex. It's on an old Air Force base up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, just a little south of Lake superior, So there's a picture sometime after the fire. Unfortunately, now, just like the last story we heard, it is tore down and everything. But it
is a duplex kind of split level. So on the front half where you're looking at, the actual doors to enter the structure are on the side of the house, so the B and D corners the fire around this one will be on the A B side of the house or the duplex. The kitchen and living room are what you're looking at right as you go in the door.
We'll see a picture later. A little bit inside you have the stairs going upstairs where all the bedrooms were in one bathroom, and then the stairs right next to it go down to the basement.
The A side of the structure.
Also was on a concrete slab, so the basement was underneath the bedrooms and everything. So here's the side of the structure that the fire was actually on. So we got called that night, right around between nine thirty and ten o'clock that night for a structure fire. Everyone out of the building. This was in Ben Lauren's jurisdiction in
their township, Forsyth Township. The department I was on for that was our county rescue team through the Sheriff's department, so we were part ten deputies with them, most of us firefighters EMS I was a paramedic at the time. We got dispatched for as the WRIT team, so in a lot of area in our county we would get dispatched too structure fighters as the WRIT team. They also had two other departments called there for mutual aid for tankers and manpower. Up in the up we are pretty
rural and everything even there. First station where they're all coming from was a little ways away, so from time of dispatch to time on scene was about twenty minutes, but in reality that's pretty normal for most of our area up here in the rural area. From where we're coming from, we're kind of scattered all over the county. Our truck that we responded from and everything got on scene about thirty five to forty minutes from page out, so they were already on scene before we got there.
Their first officer arriving on scene gave a first time the report that fire through the roof fully involved, so it is kind of one first teaching point that kind of hit us. Obviously we heard that, we kind of started talking, getting our game plan as the rit team, well, if fire is already through the rough, fully involved, we don't.
Think that anyone's going to be in there, you know from.
The fire department, you know, me and my partner that we're in the back. You know, our idea of fully involved is flames everywhere that we can't occupy that space. So we're not thinking, you know, anyone's going to be in that structure at that now after that doesn't matter what kind of first in report we're getting, I'm always thinking that there's going to be victims or people in that you know, fire until we get on.
Scene improve otherwise.
So our mindset kind of a little bit, uh was a little relaxed, just because we didn't think anyone was going to be in there. So we pull on scene. We were back about half a block because it's kind of in the middle of the block that they were on, and we could see, you know, an orange glow in
the night sky. When we get there, we can kind of see fire through that side roof and then I look down and I can see hose lines going into the structure, And obviously that changed my mindset and my partner's mindset a little bit.
At that because now we know that the people are in there. So me and my partner and my dad, who was.
Our officer for that night, we go meet up with their assistant chief to start kind of getting.
The game plan and finding out where people were.
I didn't know until after talking getting more stuff after the incident, their first arriving truck that Ben was on again, they had.
Fire through that seaside roof.
They set a crew inside kind of at the bottom of the stairs, going upstairs to spray water, and then Ben and his partner went down in the basement to check for extension everything. They did have some fire down there, not a whole lot. They were able to put all that out, kind of did some search down there. At that point, his partner started get a little low on air, so they came out of the structure to switch out bottles.
So when we got unseen, the first crew that went in was still in there at the bottom of the stairs spraying water. They had a crew on the sea side spraying water onto the roof and through that.
Hole, and then they're pulling another line.
At that point, when we made it to the b side where the door was and started talking to their assistant chief, that crew that was inside made their way out, kind of talked to them, kind of see what was going on. They said that hole second story where the bedrooms were. It was pretty much fully.
Involved, not really getting a great.
Knocked on it, but they had to switch out bottles. At that point, I noticed some fire coming out of a b side window to go grab a hand line, just to kind of again try to phrase some of that, but they got another crew to start doing that. So I continue talking with the assistant chief trying to get some more information. My partner that was in the back of the truck and another one of our members that
showed up. They started doing a three sixty, got some more information At that point, I was about to start my three sixty.
At this point Ben came up.
Talked to him a little bit because we go way back a little bit. Both of our dads in the area were volunteer firefighters, so kind of knew Ben growing up and everything. At first, I was always the young kid going around to all of our county trainings, and I always had to be, you know, the victim for our dads and you know, the extrication.
Stuff for different things.
And then Ben finally got old enough and started coming around, and it was like, sweet, I'm not that young guy anymore. I can start watching a little bit more and Ben can take over for that. So I got to talk to him a little bit at that time to my wife and his girlfriend worked at the hospitals nurses together, so we made a little joke about them. His partner came up and they went back into the fire to try to.
Stop the spread.
How long at that point I didn't realize that was.
At this point probably close to fifty minutes, because the other thing with it too, that.
We found out after that, the person that was renting it waited about twenty to thirty minutes to call nine to one one after the fire started, not really sure why anything left.
You know, I'll say, fifty minutes. It's a nut.
Wow, yeah, go ahead, thank you.
So mm hmm.
So yeah, I didn't know.
That was going to be, uh, you know, the last.
Time I got to ever talk to Ben really.
So watched him go in. Him and his partner. He was the first on the hose line. They're at the bottom of the steps just spraying water. Kind of looked, you know.
I always got the.
Question, I was like, well, did you feel comfortable with them going in. Yeah, because where they were at that point, they were on a concrete slab, nothing burning over on, spraying water, protecting themselves.
Totally fine.
At that point, I looked at my dad told him now I was going to start doing, you know, my three sixty as the rit team to get more eyes on it. As I was about to turn around look back one more time, noticed that Ben and.
His partner, you know, weren't.
At the bottom of the stairs anymore.
I could see. Didn't know how far they were up the stairs, but they're.
On the stairs kind of back in my mind there's a picture going up to the stairs. In my mind noted that do that.
It had to be.
Somewhat good because there was a crew just up there. It was just about to turn.
The corner around that little.
Garage that was on the front, and all of a sudden heard his assistant chief kind of say Ben, you know over the radio, Ben, you try to say something, and you know that for some reason, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, like that's just not normal. And then all of a sudden his partner came running out of that side door, screaming for help. You know, I didn't even think twice, dropped my knee,
started to get my mask on, gloved up everything. My partner right there too, everything, and we were probably masked up into the building to Ben after his partner came and within sixty seconds. So that's a picture of the basement after the fire, so you can see that there was some fire down there. Some of the fire did reach to the floor, trust trustes and everything. They did char him up a little bit, but nothing not bad enough that it caused true structural damage. But so, like
I said, me and my partner got to Ben. If you could go back to that one picture with the stairs, so these are the stairs going up. Ben was right at the top of the stairs, kind of facing us, but also more towards the railing a little bit, so he wasn't looking directly down the stairs. He was at kind of an angle. So I was the first one to him up those stairs, grabbed onto him right away. He was still trying to push up a little bit, try to get unstuck. Let him know, you know, hey, it was me.
We're here, We're gonna, you know, get you out.
So I grabbed because his bottle was still above the floor, also, so I grabbed the back of his bottle and his right shoulder strap. My partner grabbed his left, and we tried, you know, pulling them up, because training before all the time, you know, someone falls through a hole, you just grab them and you pull them up.
You know, no big deal. So we're like, all right, you know.
We're gonna have this. We went and pulled them and Ben maybe moved an inch and all that. It was like a wine bottle cork stuck in a bottle when you're trying to pull it out, and there's there's kind of the picture of the hole. The one kind of little deceiving of this picture, because that hole looks pretty big that someone should be able to, you know, either fall all the way through or.
Get out be pulled out pretty easy.
But if you look kind of halfway back on that hole, you see that little triangle piece that's sticking out. If you draw a line from that triangle piece all the way over to the other side and fill in everything behind it, that's the size of the hole. Because everything behind that little triangle piece was not burned through when we were there. That burned through after.
We got bent out.
I went back, uh about a year later and got measurements and it was about a thirteen inch all the way around size hole and everything right in between the trusses. So he was, you know, stuck in there pretty good. How far after we tried to pull him his it was about belly button ish that.
Was you know, kind of to the floor right hard to really tell.
So the fire conditions were, you know, it was still pretty well involved up there, I say all the time. Thankfully they did have that vent hole that was created by the fire in the roof already, just because a lot of stuff was still venting out there. But everything around us and behind us was still rolling pretty good, and everything because obviously you saw that one picture with
the stairs. You know, two firefighters and gears on stairs doesn't give us a whole lot of room, especially when we're trying to reach.
Over and grab one of our own to pull up.
So you can see in this picture kind of the drywall is knocked down or even where the studs are exposed. That driver was there, but me and my partner were just trying to knock more stuff around to try to gain more access. So what are you looking at where you see the exposed studs that's actually the of origin. I was trying to knock some of that stuff down and actually get into that room and around him more, but I really only lasted seconds in there just because
it was getting so hot. So kind of going back again after we tried to pull them the first time.
Again, knowing training.
Before pulling the floor usually means that more of the floor is weakend, So I started hitting around him to try to break more of that floor up and everything.
That floor was solid, rock solid all the way around him.
Even the year after when I went back, you could walk that whole floor.
You know.
It was no structural damage to the floor. It was just that that thirteen by thirteen by thirteen hole that burned right there. So we tried gaining more access. Like I talked about, we tried to pull him up again, barely moved again, and us just at that point, remember.
Nope, no fire underneath him.
Because at this point a third member of our team came in and we sent him to the basement to one again check conditions, but see if he could kind of see everything. He said there was no fire anything down there causing any issues. And thankfully he's like six six sixty seven. That we sent down there because Ben was actually able to stand on his shoulders and kind of you know, push up a little bit. So he tried again, and my partner that was down there, he was actually able.
To reach up and.
Undo his waist belt because his waist belt was underneath the floor. And when we did that, I kind of felt.
Some you know, relief in him.
So we went to pull him one more time. Still didn't move at that point because I had my arm, my right arm wrapped around him, I could feel him go lim in my arm, so kind of talk to him, got no response, couldn't tell if he was breathing or just not breathing enough to engage our MMR.
So I hit the purge valve.
Again, trying to figure out something to do because he's not coming this way. My partner decided that we're gonna, you know, set him down to the basement. You know, he's not coming up. Let's try to get him down. And even that was kind of tough again just to size the whole Almer gear. So as we're pushing him through, we're taking off his air pack, his mask.
He had to take his jacket off.
There is that what happened. I don't even I wouldn't know.
His face he.
Went, Yep, he had his face peace on bottle was pretty much full because by the time from the time that he went in the second time too, when uh, his partner came yelling out, was maybe five minutes of him in the structure. So he never ran out of air, even with the purge valve open. So once we lowered him to the basement, we had one of our guys there, his partners down there, they started, you know, bringing off the stairs. I went and met them at those stairs.
We finished getting them up and then got them out to a backboard that was waiting, got him onto the stretcher.
Their fire department had.
A limited advanced life support ambulance on scene with three e mts.
So they were getting them loaded.
Knew that an ALS ambulance from our area was coming, but was still a little ways out. So I'm coming out, you know, kind of tired and everything.
Uh.
But in my mind, you know, the job wasn't done nothing against you know, foresighted e MS. But I knew I was the only medic on that scene, so I started ditching my fire gear.
You know.
At this point, my Dad's right on me. Asking me if I'm okay. I'm kind of pushing them away.
Like hey, get out of my way.
I you know, I still want to do my job, so I'm I'm ditching my fire gear, knowing I have to hop on this ambulance and you know, start doing what I can until we can get to the ALUs care, get him under the rig.
What what caused?
What was his injuries he fell into.
So yep, so quick examine everything. I couldn't see any injuries. He didn't have, you know, any cuts. He did have an abrasion on his side, but I think that happened when we lowered him, you know, through the floor, kind of the jacket coming up, but no no obvious injuries and a quick trauma.
Yeah, he was unconscious and wasn't breathing.
He was starting to turn you know, cyanaudic the lips and everything at this point. So when we were when we were pulling him out, you know, just trying to get him out, he was put based on the backboard.
It is what it is.
When we got him into the ambulance, you know, I wanted to obviously roll them. I just kind of point to everyone that was, you know, standing at the back of the open door, say hey, you come up here, help me roll them and grab the one side of him. As I roll him, I look up and I didn't notice that I had pointed to his dad to come up and help me roll him and everything. So that was kind of a shock. Yeah, So I looked at him.
I said, hey, Ron, I know what's going on, but I need you to, you know, get out of the ambulance right now so I can continue my job. And he understood. He yep, got right out and everything. So got that, got the monitor hooked up to him. They are also the only ones that our county that have a Lucas device, so we got that hooked up to him.
I got started and we all.
Right, yeah, yep, yeah, mm hmm, and then we left. We left scene right away, met up with uh Als, the medic working that night. Was one of my mentors coming up through the medical side and everything's been doing it for you know.
Twenty years and everything.
So I was really happy, you know, at that point to see him pop through my ambulance doores, because I knew, you know, again, we had the A team going, so we got all our meds going and everything.
I already had an io started all that.
I had him in debate because again thinking traumatic, you know, probably arrest. So I wanted to get that definitive.
Airway and you know, we ran everything we could think.
Of for you know, that code. You know, through multiple rounds of Eppie.
We threw.
D fifty at him because we figured, hey, he was working maybe a little bit of a glucose issue.
We got on the phone with our er doc who.
Used to actually be a medic in the Detroit area, so bouncing stuff off him. We did crush injury, you know, anything that we could think of. You know, we threw that. Ben got to about, you know, the forty forty five minute mark of running this code and kind of had to have that you know, decision and everything. And I'll never forget it. You know, it was something was mentioned.
And I kind of looked up at the medic.
That came and because he was begging after he innovated, and he kind of had that look on his face that hey, it's it was mentioned. It's probably time to think about, you know, talking to the doctors and the family about calling it. But I will sit here with you until.
You know you're ready and all that, and you know, I didn't.
He just had that look on him and I'll never forget it. And I just kind of look at him and I said, is it.
And he said yeah, I think so.
I said, well, you know, I'll stay in here, continue stuff. But his dad and sister were, you know, on seeing because we stopped at the side of the road when we met up with als, I said, you go talk to them and if they say they're good, you know, I'm good. But I'm going to run this, you know, until we run out of stuff, for you know, someone pulls me away. So he went and talked to Ron and his sister and they said it was okay, and you know, we stopped like safety measures at that point.
How far What was it that killed him, Brandon? Did they know?
Traumatic asphyxiation, So autopsy was done. He had no underlying medical issue that he didn't know about and everything, but just with the size of the hole and where he was at just kind of with or squeezing him from the inside out.
So he probably couldn't expand his ripcage to breathe either, right, I mean that's what I would think if he.
Was correcting this.
Yeah.
Yeah, I got a couple of quick quick questions for you. You mentioned the sheriff Rescue. Is that a heavy rescue that's funded by the sheriff but staff by firefighters?
Yep.
Yeah, so it's uh funded through the Sheriff's department through their Special Ops division. I'm not on that unit now that I'm in a different department full time, but uh, the staff it's like a paid on call department, so but staffed with uh a firefighter e mts, paramedics. They do have two full time staff deputy that are also firefighter EMTs that run it too, but everyone else is like a volunteer.
It's just a regional rest.
They cervictly spawned up. Yeah, tech rescue. It started as an execation unit for the whole county, but as more departments started getting execation tools, you know, expanded and then for pretty much the central and west and some south of our county that they're writ and then the parts that not are covered by my department that I work at now full time.
Okay, you mentioned about switching out bottles. It's just so important for our suburban and urban folks listening that in this rural scenario there may be nobody else coming for a half hour. So you go in, you come out, you put on your bottles. Many many, many years ago, we had a fire and it was in a relatively rural area. I went through five bottles. I mean today that's not even thought of. You have replacement, you have
people on deck. But it really clicked when you said that nobody else coming, right, And then the last thing is just a comment. This is a classic rural operation where it's a family affair and that's good and then also is negative. You've got family members responding together, but if the families don't join, who else is joining?
Right?
So thank you for your for sharing this. I'm sure Frank's got the points he wants to make, and maybe Micah too.
So yeah, I just wanted to thank you for being thank you to Ben's family. As I mentioned, I know you're now an advocate for the n Triple F as well, which I think is amazing as well, and the evolution and what happens. I know you run the area's fire conference. In fact, for you guys, I'm wearing my great Legs Hot T shirt tonight and I just think that the evolution of what you continue to do, and I'm glad
you mentioned the size of the all. I know, when you go and teach this, you have a piece of plywood that has that demonstrates the size of it, which really drives it home. And I know from the from the writ from your entrance to having him out trying all of the different things that you tried to do was nine minutes, which it may like a lot, but you guys try to plan a B, C and D in that time frame under extremely difficult circumstances.
So again, thank you, Bred.
Takeaways from you? What's your teaching point?
So some of them kind of like every time I go talk about this, you know, I opened the book on myself and some of the things. Biggest one or some of the biggest ones obviously radio communication. I mean if you look at the Niash five, that's always there. But I've always you know, trained as written everything. The one thing I did not do what I got to them was give a radio report of the conditions that we had or you know, the conditions of ben I
just didn't even think about it. So getting you know, really comfortable with using those radios, train on the you know, give those reports. It doesn't have to be anything major, just something quick to give those people on the outside what's going on and everything, because the people at our dispatch actually thought that it was.
Me that has the may Day because.
People on the outside were trying to reach me over the eight hundred and I wasn't responding, so a lot of people thought, you know, I was the one.
Down and everything.
So that that's a big one. You know, I've done a lot of research and talking with people about the incident. Overall, I don't think anything instant wise could have been, you know, really done different that would have came the outcome. It's it's a new, weird incident that happened. But my kind of biggest thing just overall is, you know, obviously training huge thing. You know, have that mindset of whatever you're going to you know, be ready for it, trained for it,
prepare for it. But not only just at the skills, but you know the science behind you know, fires reading, smoke reading, fire conditions and all that. We need to be those critical thinking firefighters. Also if we don't, if we're good at our skills but don't have that critical thinking or that knowledge behind it, you know, you're still going to get yourself in trouble. We got to be
you know, capable, competent, and confident firefighters. In my eyes, if we can have those three things as firefighters, you know, we're in reality going to make that fare ground safer.
If we have a fire ground full, no matter.
Of how many of the numbers are, if we're all capable, confident, and confident firefighters, it is going to make that fire ground safer.
So one thing that really stands out to me chiefly will definitely back down this is that when things go soldils in the both of you, I mean, your training just kicked in like that, man, like you seem so young to me too, like to think out of the box, like you're thinking, trying multiple things.
It's it's really amazing.
He says a lot about you about how you know, how much wiser you are, you know, according to your age. I mean you just you took over and you tried many things and you you're training kicked in and Bothy is actually you know and Chief Leap says it all the time. Man, he's the training guy, he's the guy who built the rock.
He's right.
So just my hat's off, you know, it's a sad thing, especially being your friend. Man, I'm sitting here broken hot for you, but if you can help out somebody else in this book.
And did you guys, did you guys start like uh, like after we had certain fires we you know which is go Fanny, similar to to what you said where he didn't you know, guys went down to get him and they it was like.
He was nail to the floor.
And so they came up with a mock scenario and they had guys run through that scenario and find the best way to.
Again if that happened tomorrow, you know what they would do?
You know what I mean?
Do you do?
You do you guys like.
Drill on that drill on a scenario where let's say it's it's if the same thing happened tomorrow, what.
Would you do?
You know what I mean?
Like, have you guys when you saws all or.
You know, I'm just saying I'm just shooting.
Yeah.
No, We've done it a couple of times. I'm working with a couple of people actually designed a prop for it and everything. The hardest part is, you know, getting the size of the hole for that and the mannequin.
And and kind of doing that. So but in other.
Trainings I've done, I've you know, somewhat simulated it with you know, like Keith Leap says, I'll put sheets of plywood, you know, to make it the narrow hallway, to try to do some of that stuff. But I am working with a couple other people that design a prop and test a couple of different things and all that.
I guess it's going to be a good thing and all that.
You got to do that, and I mean that's the thing, and we have been in different things. I'm sure you guys have done it for the drill everybody yep.
Mm hmmm. So hopefully here soon we'll have some of that that that we can put out that We've tested a couple of things, but the hardest thing to kind of put up against it is that time frame, you know, with within nine minutes. So, but we're testing a couple of different things to you know, give out to people that hey, you know, you get maybe.
It comes across this.
You know, you normally don't grab say the sALS all or a battery power saw. You know, if you have someone stuck in the floor, you might want to grab that right away, so you have it with you and everything, just because if you do that situation, you know, yep.
But again you can I jump down real quick on something. Yeah, broh, a couple of things that I wrote down here h uh mad respect for you brother, That is everybody had
to take a bite out of that one man. It's the key point that I kind of connect on a couple of things here between my incident and your incident literally for the group I speak about it when I do my presentation is if you've never ran the scenario in your head of the next victim or person that you work on, maybe the person that you rode on the apparatus with to that incident, you need to run
that scenario in your head. And I don't say that to be morbid, but it's one of those things that you just have to kind of have the wiring connected in on your head with it. But secondary to that is the fact of being prepared. With being being prepared, is you expect fire, you expect victims. And number three is I say that you expect may Day's because if you have that in your head already, you've already you've
alreadyaed because you've already thought that worst case scenarios. So again, is man, keep telling the story, brother, because folks need to hear it, and mad respect to you.
No respect to the both of you guys.
We appreciate it, thanks too.
Chief Lee.
But Billy, did you ever think I mean, I can't even grasp it sometimes, the impact that this is going to have on the fire service. I know you guys are planning on even more stories after this, right, but I mean it just visit into these two stories.
I just texted Billy g I just said another incredible jo.
It's just Rob said it in the chat. I couldn't say it any better.
There's two types of people in ourline of work, people on the job and people into the job. And these gentlemen totally into the job. I totally agree. And that's what we see with all of the people that wrote these chapters. These are people that care about the job. They care about the people they work with. You could see it, right, You can hear it in their voices, how passionate they are about it. And it's really it's incredible.
It's and it's about training. But uh so Brandon mentioned the Niosh five.
So so nobody has to look it up. I'm gonna I'm gonna read the Niosh five.
So Nia has identified the top five causal factors in injuries and line and do these desks, Improper risk assessment, lack of incident command, lack of accountability, inadequate communications, and lack of sp A failure to followers. So since he mentioned it, I just wanted to point those out since hopefully people will continue to use these as another resource along with the book when they go on to the website, the companion website.
For this to be.
Able to be the Companion website, yes that is thirty fires dot com www dot.
Right, Yes, I don't people, We're gonna load up up these podcasts and some other ones to the appropriate section so they'll actually be able to read the book, look at the reports, and now go to the podcast and listen to the people.
So there's only one problem with that, Billy, there is no other podcast except that's.
What I meant.
I don't know if you know what what?
And jeez, Frank and I could sit and talk about the NIASH five all night long. But one of the most important things is when when Frank menzi the lack of incident command so critical, and I think I mentioned this in the last show. If you're a boss and your companies are training get out there and train with them. You can't sit in the office. And I'm not saying
that a battalion chief pulls hose. I'm saying, if you've got a multi company drill, the battalion chief does what the battalion chief does at the fire and what you would do on the job. It's such a big deal. And and again we see this conflict all the time. I'm a good guy. I want to get along my people. You know what, you gotta be tough sometimes. And here's two examples of why you gotta be tough. You got to run a tight ship. And again we could talk
about all night. But when Frank mentions that, it's one of my favorite subjects because it's so critical. You literally can go from being that decent guy in the firehouse having a good time when the bell goes off.
It's no bult.
Well, I wouldn't mind get a chief pull some.
I knew somebody was gonna say that.
If you're watching this and you don't know what to drill on, make a mock up and stick a guy up to his waist or up to his m pits and practice that, because if you don't and it happens again, then you didn't shame on you, right like then then you didn't learn anything. And unfortunately the guy that you know that passed away, it's going to happen again, you know what I mean. So all these little things you have to learn from it.
I mean, that's the bottom line.
You have to drill on it.
It's the Bible, Denver drill, It's the John Mance drill.
There's so many. I mean, look this up if you don't know the story of John Nance. The article the Murder of John Nance. It's an article I used to give to New Prob's certainly the Denver drill mentioned in the in the chat as well by Steve uh just yeah, these are these are things, These are companions to be drilling with on this topic so we could be so we could continue to progress forward.
We got one more company we got to talk about tonight, right.
Guys, Oh, which one is that? Oor Houston?
I think I might let him pick the health and safety tip of the night.
What do you think I would write?
Let's see what?
All right?
He got twenty you got twenty three seconds of figure it out.
I'm I'm gonna let you so you know what I would say from both of these, from both of our guests tonight, it's okay to not be okay and to identify that and make sure that you're taking care of your people on and off the fire ground. That your responsibility doesn't end when we pack up the homes and we go back into the station, and we have to
make sure that we are looking out for them. And Mike hah said that several times extremely well so did Brandon, and I think that we couldn't end on a more poignant health and wellness tip than that.
Yes, well we're gona play the commercial anyways, seeing that you jumped the gun on that one, but yeah, standard.
The First Responder Center for Excellence is a not for profit organization dedicated to protecting their 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 Volume Firefighter Foundation.
And if we want to hear the tip of then I just rewind about twenty three seconds, and you know he chiefly to give the tip of the night. I like what you said. It's okay not to be okay, And we have to look out for each other. Man, and you talk about two fires like this man, they leave last d marks on you your entire life. So you need to get out. And it's good that you guys getting out and talking about it and talk about
it with the guys in any fire. You go to, any emergency, you go to any Yeah, that's friend.
You got.
You gotta get it out, you gotta talk.
Yeah, bottle it up, bottle it up.
Yeah.
One more thing, ghance. We have a line of duty tonight. We have to Unfortunately, yes we do.
Marcelo Garcia forty two years old, three alarmed warehouse fire, ten year veteran on the job or station twenty three. So I'll bring up his picture. Are you ready?
I will play the bells.
Here it is there is rest in peace, brother, Yeah, rest in peace brother. If I fail, if I failed to mention he's a Houston firefighter. When was that guns that was just I think yesterday's yeah.
Less than twenty four hours ago.
Yeah, and our prayers go out to the firefighter. And was the Chicago that fell through the chef too?
Right?
Amen? All right?
So we got you booked, I think on a calendar, so start getting some other guys in here.
Fella, I think I think we I have.
You in the December, I do, right, Yeah, I can't keep tracking. Yeah right, I'll keep on top of you. Leave.
Don't worry here.
All right?
What the heck got it? All right?
Alright?
Listen, it's the last thing. We're having Chief Done on again. If I have to break a few arms. Yes, you guys don't want to ask the vidy done any questions? Send him in Coops Podcast at gmail dot com if you want to do it. We're doing a Q and A with the Chief VIDI done. It's a good friend of the Chief Leaps, a good friend of ours. He's a legend. So send you questions into the Coops Podcast dogmail dot com.
The show's on on the bookshere right.
No, I'm waiting to gather enough questions when these nip them.
In because we have Captain Tim Grant on the eighteent because we don't have a show next week.
Yes, I will be away for the week. I'm taking vacation. So how do you like them apples?
Yeah, me too, I'm right there with you, bro.
Like apples like apples. Billy, about those Mica and Brandon.
Thank you so much for coming on. Like I said, this book, generations, brother, generations for sure. Rough God kills something else while you're up there and enjoy yourself.
Thank you.
Yeah, maybe you could talk to Brandon because he likes to kill stuff too. Up there in the north, up some what it is and that's all I got.
I can't see. Let me get up here. I gotta get damn. Camera's in a bad spot. Rookie numbers, God, rooie, you gotta get those numbers are two three times a day.
I don't know where you will be next, Chiefly, but be safe in your travels.
You're all over the world.
Good for you.
Billy joined us with Chiefly. I'm sorry he's gonna join us with the Vinnie Chiefly. He's gonna join us with Vinnie.
Done.
All right, Billy, keep the most you know, Vinny, you know, like like Ed.
Come on, I'll ask I'll ask the Chief. Done a couple of questions.
Yeah, all right, Yeah, you know you don't have the show enough. We gotta get you on a little bit. I spread it, share it, like it, you know how to do it. We'll see you in two weeks until then, stay long ago, all right.
Everybody will see it, the big one.
See the big one, all right, yeah, all right, just have a good night everyone. Take care, yeah,