Hey, humans. How's it going? Susan Ruth here. Thanks for listening to another episode of Hey Human podcast. This is episode 446, and my guest is Garrett Clancy. Garrett is the chief of the Bell Canyon volunteer wildfire fire department. In that capacity, he's a type one firefighter and EMT, and they're public information officer. He's also an army veteran, served in the national guard. He was a military police officer, and he's a filmmaker.
So but we concentrate on the firefighting part because we just had all those fires, and he was the head of his team to keep his area of LA, Bell Canyon, protected from the recent craziness of wildfires. And are they wildfires when one fire starts another fire? I don't I'm not sure, but it was wild. So I'm just gonna go with it. I have a bit of a head cold, so excuse my schnozzles, my schnozzie schnozz sounds.
And a lot of chaotic right now. I'm moving out of Santa Monica into a different part of LA, And, so there's just lots going on. I did see a funny movie. My friend George Gallo, who I interviewed on this podcast, and it's a great episode. Of course, if I were smart, I would know which episode number it is. And I do know it off the top of my head, but it's a really good one if you wanna go back and listen.
Anyway, his film, The Comeback Trail, that he wrote with a guy named Josh and he directed, and it stars Morgan Freeman and Tommy Lee Jones and Robert De Niro and Zach Braff, and, it is so funny. Oh my gosh. It's hilarious. I I had a great time. The whole audience cracked up, which is always fun because things are so stressful these days with just the world. It was good to laugh for an hour and a half. I think it's on Apple TV and Amazon Prime, although I'm trying not to do anything with
Amazon right now. I feel like it's somewhere else. Oh, it's gonna be in select theaters too. Anyway, he's a friend of mine. Don't get paid to say it, but it was a really fun movie. And if you're into funny I recommend it. George is the guy that, did Midnight Run, which if you've never seen Midnight Run, oh my gosh. That is a great movie. But I digress. Oh, he also did Bad Boys. That's a whole other thing. Anyway, yeah. So check out heyhumanpodcast.com for links and to learn more about my
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music. Rate, review, and subscribe to Hey Human podcast on Apple, iHeart, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. Be well. Thank you for listening. Take care of each other. Take care of yourself. And here we go. Derek Clancy, welcome to Hey Human. Thank you. Let's jump right in. Where did you grow up? Are you from California? No. I'm not from California, but I have lived here more than half my life now.
I'm from a little town North Of Boston called Georgetown, and so I mainly grew up in Massachusetts. But the thing about my town is they have the oldest continuously operating, private slash volunteer fire department in the country. My neighbors were the guys that were the volunteer fire fire department in the town and, you know, had whatever job they had, working at the local hardware store, getting a call, and and then becoming the becoming a fireman instantly.
So I saw that and I I thought that was pretty cool and, I wanted to do that. What's the big difference between the volunteer firefighting groups and the and and a regular firefighting team? Pay. I I mean, in terms of, knowledge or or requirements. I figured you probably were doing it for free. Yeah. Yeah. Somewhere between 7882% of of all departments in America are fully volunteer. Here in California, we have 450 volunteer fire departments, and across the country, 18,000.
So they make up the bulk of, you know, first responders. Now in some small cities where they have a volunteer fire department, they're always gonna have, you know, maybe a paid chief and, one or two, maybe a captain that that that's also paid in full time. But those folks are doing the same thing that, you know, the LA City Firefighters or the LA County Firefighters are doing. In the smaller towns, there's, you know, less of that and less frequency of structure fires or hazmat incidences.
But, you know, for the most part, the volunteer firefighters in in across the country are are are well trained, but just, you know, they're not doing it all the time. But in in even in the middle of nowhere, which is a lot of the country, rather than waiting an hour for the local city ambulance or fire department to come, folks have put together volunteer fire departments so they can get quicker help. I guess it's it's a pretty noble I always viewed it as that, as a
noble service, I guess, community service. It's definitely a noble service. I think running toward fire is not something the average person would do. I imagine, especially in California, that communities are more and more leaning toward having their own private forces that are separate. Is that also part of the the main firefighters, or is that part of the volunteer firefighters? Because I I think they're hired guns. Some insurance companies, big ones, like, they'll send in a truck, a small
what's it called? The type six truck, like a pickup truck that has a tank on the back and and water flowing capabilities. We have two of those in our department. But they'll come in, and they'll go to one or two houses that have the insurance carrier, the same insurance carrier, and they'll spray foam on the house, protect that house, but they're not there to fight the the general fire. What's happened since the pallet now the reform because of the Woolsey fire in in 02/2018,
a direct result of that. We lost 40 homes in my community in Bell Canyon. Since then, because of the Palisades fire and the Eaton fire, I think five communities have reached out to us saying that they wanna form brigades, you know, for the most part, or or volunteer fire pumps in their community, and could we advise them? So it's gonna be I believe it's gonna
be the new norm, especially in California. And the reason is, listen, during, you know, the the recent huge fires, bigger than we've ever had, seven states and three countries sent, resources, fire resources. So, I I mean, on on the simplest level, there's just not enough firefighters and resources to cover those type of incidents.
And if you got everybody on those big incidents, that was our fear at Bell Canyon, because there were so many resources dedicated to the Palisades fire and and so many more dedicated to the Eaton fire and even a couple of other small fires. We felt vulnerable like we're gonna be on our own here. And our mission by the way, my department mission is we don't leave Belle Canyon, we stay. And I I'll talk about why, afterwards. But
we did have a fire breakout. We had the, Kenneth fire breakout right on the edge of our our our community. And so we were you know, we had 24 members of our department up there, and we were the only department on this side of the fire. Had the fire come closer, I know that we would have gotten resources from LA City, Ventura County Fire, because we're in Ventura County. But in those moments, while we were watching the fire moving, we
were alone. And there were a couple of sheriff's deputies with us, but that's it. So we knew that, we were the front line. So the reason we, have a mission of not providing mutual aid, not that we wouldn't help, you know, somebody right outside our our our gate or whatever, is because we felt that the reason we lost homes in the Woolsey Fire is because the agencies left. They went somewhere else, which is which is what happened.
Now knowing what I know from the firefighter training I've been involved in over the past five years, they made the call that they felt they needed to make given the the weather behavior at the time, the fire weather behavior. They they couldn't know that the winds were gonna shift overnight and then come to the other side of Bell Canyon and take out those homes. And also we had a water main break and so there was no hydrant pressure for much of the canyon.
Now we've actually adapted a secondary firefighting plan with our department to address an issue like that if it were to happen again, and that's a pool fighting firefighting component. We have a lot of swimming pools in there, a a ton. And we have pumps that we have on the department. We've encouraged residents to buy their own pumps, and a lot of them have. And so we can, in essence, fill fire trucks all day long. We'll never run out of
water. You know, it's a little bit less convenient than hooking up to a hydrant. It takes a little bit more time, but we could fill fire trucks, and we can also fight fires from those pools. I feel like moving forward for those who don't know, and I'm sure most people who are listening do know, when the fires there were seven active fires happening at the same time, which along with these incredible gale force winds and I mean, I remember standing in my yard watching.
It was like being in the middle of some crazy movie set. I'm wondering if moving forward, it wouldn't be hoof all Californias and all people in areas where fires could happen. I mean, fire can happen anywhere. But if you have a pool, it seems like a no brainer. Have something that will pump it out. I I feel like moving forward, that's going to be the thing. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. It is. And it's funny because we've been pushing residents to do that for
a couple of years. And then during the the week of the fire, everybody suddenly finally decided that that's when they were gonna get one. So we were running around, you know, we were on full fire watch, but running around to folks, residents' homes and and helping them set up these pumps. We couldn't say no at that point. Right? Yeah. Are you geared up in this case when you are getting ready to face the line? Do you have the same safety? We have the same we do. Yeah.
So we're we're wildland we're we're called the the Bell Canyon Volunteer Wildland Fire Department. The reason we have the word wildland is to make the distinction between city structural firefighters and what wildland firefighters do, but we're not even really wildland firefighters because what we live in is something called the urban wildland interface. So it's the home, we have our homes and surrounding the homes is, the wilderness, right?
So we're not doing what traditional wildland firefighters do, which is to trek in with a bunch of gear, sometimes miles to fight a fire. You know, we don't we're here, right? And we're wearing the PPE, protective gear that wildland firefighters wear the same stuff and using the same tools, but we're not having to go anywhere to do that. It's just it's here. And the reason we don't didn't bother to do this the interior structure training,
It's very expensive. Just buying the, the SCBA masks would be prohibitively expensive for for our our department. We don't need to. We have it's very rare that we have an a fire in Bell Canyon in in a house, and we have 780 homes approximately, and we have LA City Fire to do that. They're gonna take ten minutes to fifteen minutes longer than the normal response time. But in that period of time, it's happened already twice. We get there. We can set things up. We can make sure people
are out of the house. We can make sure that the properties surrounding the house are protected. We can shut off utilities, and we can also give and the last time this happened, we were able to radio to LA City Fire as they were coming in where exactly the best entrance for this big house was because we had already assessed that. And I heard it go out over their radio, and they just took they they took our word. They took us out our word, which is which
yeah. We're a new department, and we're not a full department. We're supplement, and there have been some it's taken a while for them, the bigger firefighter, the fire departments that serve us to accept us, and I don't know if they'll they'll ever accept us. And I don't expect that they they would. We're never gonna be their peers, and we're not in competition with them. We don't
wanna be their peers. You know, now that they've seen on many, many occasions, because we've done 620 calls in four years, many occasions, they've they've worked with us, and there hasn't been an issue. There's never been an issue. They've never said, you know, you guys need to move or you need to you know, it's in fact, the the fire that we had on July 21 in here, the Brush Fire, we were on scene twelve minutes before the first outside agency came.
We we essentially saved the house and we were in that backyard fighting the fire that was coming up the hill. And when the first agencies came on, on the scene, they came and saw what we were doing, all wearing the right gear, the safety gear. Our trucks were hooked up to hoses. We were putting water on the fire, and they just said, great. Fantastic. We're gonna go work up here. You guys, you have this area. And
they just accepted us. And that was a big day for us because that was the first big fire that we had since we formed. Most of our calls are, just, you know, neighborhood type calls. We do a lot of rattlesnake removals, like a lot, 60 or 70 a year. We relocate the rattlesnakes, we we don't kill them. You don't make boots. We don't make boots. No. And we and we just do a lot of okay. So I'll give you an example. We got a call on our emergency line 05:30 in the
morning last week. A woman who lives up the street from me said, there's an animal in my pool. I can't see what it is, but it's splashing. It's big. So I called one of my captains who I knew would would would get up at that time in the morning. We went out there, and it happened to be a dog. A dog was drowning in the pool. And we saved the dog, and now he's he's up for adoption. But, so calls like that, you know. And we get a lot of calls like that in our community. You know, hey. My dog is
lost. Hey. My tortoise is lost. That's four times we've had those calls. Or someone has found a tortoise and we've had to find the owner. So stuff like that, and just minor stuff. Many times the city fire department will come in to a minor traffic accident or something like that. They'll see that we have it under control. They'll literally wave and say, You guys got it? And they'll turn right around and leave. It's complimentary, you know? Absolutely. Las Torres is also a great name
for a band, if anyone thinks Yeah. Yeah. There you go. For a band name. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What about emergency medical? Do you get called to that? Because I imagine you all have that kind of training. Yeah. All of us on the department have at least a standard Red Cross first aid, CPR AED training. We have seven EMTs. I'm one of those EMTs. So we can provide a higher level. What I've told the local agencies, because they've asked, because that's most calls that any fire department has.
Like 80% of calls are medical calls. And if you have a certified EMS component to your department, it's a complicated, you know, program or system, you know, you gotta be in touch with doctors at the local hospitals. There's a medical director. We don't have that because we don't need it. What we do is essentially we're good Samaritans with better training and
better equipment. And so we've responded to many medical calls, and we can stabilize a patient before, you know, LAFD rolls up with their paramedics or their BOS and it's worked out great. The more complicated calls where people have, you know, serious fractures, I'm more than happy to see them roll off with their better equipment
and experience and and to take over. But, yeah, in a in a, like, a cardiac arrest situation or a a bleeding situation that could lead to to death because it's a significant bleed, that ten to twelve to fifteen minutes that we're shaving, it could really mean literally be life or
death. Yeah. This is why also I think it's so important that every home should have the kind of emergency go bag that includes things like wound care, bleed stop, some basic things that can be used if help is going to be ten, fifteen minutes. Yeah. Right. Exactly. Exactly. We started out just as a way to fight the next fire, which we knew it would come, and it will. Right? But then we decided, you know what? We can do more. Folks are calling us for everything anyways.
We might as well just make that part of our our system. Like, you know, a resident called and said, hey. My kid's, locked in the car. Like, we went over there. We couldn't really do anything other than smash a window with one of our axes. We didn't because AAA came. But then we saw what AAA had, the lockout kit, and we just bought one. So now we have one. The stuff like that, you know, that we've done to to build into a a more multi service department.
I grew up in Washington state, and now I live in California. These are densely wilderness y brush, trees, life cycles of plants happening all the time. These things are fire magnets, I suppose. Do you think it would make sense that states like ours, instead of upon graduation or maybe it happens in high school that there'd be programs two years mandatory if you live in this state, you go and you clear brush and you go when I was a little girl, we had a cabin in the foothills of
the Cascades. And twice a year, it was mandatory if you were a member of this cabin peep you know, the cabin people that you would go and you would spend a weekend and clear brush and get rid of it and all that. And it it helped keep these sorts of things from happening. You know, I've never heard that idea before. I'm not aware there's, you know, the the conservation corps where where younger people,
do stuff like this. We actually helped train some recently, but that was like new training to them. It wasn't part of their program before. So it's a great idea. I mean, it's a great idea. I'll write my senators and my and my governor. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yes. And they're all definitely they want solutions to the wildfire. Yeah. So it does require some training, but it's training that that you could do if you were 16, 17, 18. I I I don't see why.
Yeah. I I think folks that and and pretty much every, at least, public high school has a community service component. They have to, you know, you have to do so many hours. Right? Yeah. I think that's a great idea because that's see, that's the key and we work on that as well. We assess properties and, help clear up brush. That's that's the front line. If that's done well, then, you know, your home is gonna be safer. I mean, I was eight and nine, seven. I would there are pictures of me
real little, and I loved it. The little ones, you know, we have our little work gloves, and we could pull the little underbrush, and it just felt good to be a part of something. And I think that something that this country specifically is really lacking these days is the community feeling and the the feeling like we are all in this together. And I'm a big believer in community service. I think a mandatory community service instead of, you know,
other countries do military. And I've talked about this on the show before, but a mandatory community service upon graduation would do wonders to change Oh, yeah. I for sure. This course. Yeah. I I wish we had that. I I wish we did. But I I think that, you know, as time goes on, the the need for the need for that will grow and grow. Oh, yeah. I mean,
Kentucky's underwater right now. So if they had a a huge group of people who have been trained to deal with that kind of thing, it could turn, no pun intended, the tides. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Even in a supplementary role. So rather than having workers that should be on the front line, trained workers in in floods or or fires, community service folks could be doing the stuff that takes them away from that, which is the logistical side, getting supplies to them and and whatnot.
I mean, that's a huge, you know I mean, that's kinda what we do for the big city fire departments in here on big calls is we supplement them. Two members of our department are actually full times LA City Firefighters, and they, you know, they they help us on their days off. And invariably, there are calls when their days when they had days off and they're there. But, you know, we don't have the training to ventilate a roof. Right? So we don't
need to. We just supplement, you know, so that the city firefighters can do that. Mhmm. Without having to move stuff out of the way, without having to ask people to move their cars because to park their ladder truck. We've already done that. Yeah. I mean, that was a big deal with the Palisades. Right? People just abandoned their cars, and then none of the trucks could get up the hill. There was a perfect storm. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Tell me about your assessment protocols.
So you you know a fire has has been a you've been alerted to a fire. What's next? How do you get everybody together? How do you decide what to do? Do you then start fires in front of the line of the fire to to stop it? What do you do? No. That controlled burn stuff is very tenuous. Several huge fires have have been the result of controlled burns that got out of control. So, no, we don't do any of that. It's not even done a lot, as much as it used to be done.
Depends on the situation. If we if we're on call and we're already several of us are already dressed and ready to go, like we were for the whole week and a half of the Palisades and Eaton fire, then we're ready to go. And we've already set up who's going to be on this crew, who's going to be on that crew. It's very organized and communication is very, disciplined. But if it's a call that we just get, there's a fire. On the way to the call, we we organize the call. We don't know who's gonna
show up. We don't know who's available, but we're on the radio and okay. You guys are in Brush 2, you know, and whatever the once we get to the scene and assess what the needs are and the size of it's called, then we figure out where to put people. So far, it's worked out well. I don't know. In a huge fire, I don't know how it's gonna work out, but we'll we'll we'll do our part.
Absolutely. Well, I mean, one would hope that, as you mentioned, the fact that you're there before the quote unquote regular groups can get there, that you may that's that may make all the difference. Yeah. Because we're more remote. I I don't know if you visited here, but we're we're more remote. Are you up by Mike? My cousin? Yeah. Yeah. He's in the I know. I still don't know where the Calabasas versus Bell versus I'm that all confuses me. Matthew Piepenburg (3one forty three): Bell Canyon is
Ventura County. It's like the easternmost part of Ventura County. There's only one way in and one way out of Bell Canyon, a long road that comes in, and it starts on the LA city line. So you can't you can't ever leave Bell Canyon without going through the city of LA. So that's where we are, but we're very, we're remote. Lots of land, lots of open space here, lots of wildlife. Again, a longer
response time. And the back of our canyon is literally, because I've been there, I've been up there waiting and timing how long it takes for the other agencies to arrive. It's like twenty, twenty one, twenty two minutes. That's a long time. Especially if it has a long road to get to you. Yeah. And these aren't like straight roads. They're, like, hilly, curvy, fire engines can only go so fast. We have challenging geography and topography.
So How do you convince your insurance company to insure you medically when you all are volunteer fire fighters? I mean, I know that they when I got my my assessment, they asked things like, do you wear your seat belt? Do you ever jump out of an airplane? Imagine if I said, oh, but I do run into fire. It might change things. It just it hasn't been an issue. You know, our fire department insurance policy is with the company that they that's what
they do. They insure volunteer fire departments. Sure. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. Do you have children? I do. Yeah. Have they gotten into the family business? No. No. No. My son's older and lives back east. My daughter's 12. She doesn't really like when I in the beginning, because she was so still has some PTSD from the Woolsey fire and having to evacuate and seeing her neighbor's home's burned. She gets wearied when
I go out on calls. Even when I we go to train, you know, she she gets she seems to get a little anxious. Normal. Yeah. Yeah. Listen, we wouldn't have formed this fire department had we not experienced a a traumatic wildfire. Had no homes burned, we wouldn't have had the incentive. We would have we would have felt safe, which is what Bell Canyon residents have said. You know, Bell Canyon was founded in '69
and there have been several big fires. And when I moved in in 2015, you know, residents that had been here said the same thing. Oh, yeah. We have big fires, but you know what? We've never lost a home. We've never lost a home. We're fine. We're fine. And then we lost 40. So and most of us stayed. I stayed for most of that fire. We couldn't do
anything. We couldn't really do anything worth, you know, that some homes were saved by by guys that ended up being on the fire department, but not to the level that we could have done with the equipment and the training and the, you know, what we have now. It's incredibly traumatic to experience that. Yeah. Yeah. To watch your neighborhood that you've loved and lived in and been a part of, that could watch the community burn. It's a lot. It's a lot, and and
it lasts for years. You know? So that fire was 02/2018, and I I think maybe 60% of the homes have been rebuilt since then. Only 60%. In a weird way, the our fire department benefited from one of those losses, in that the property owner, he was older, so he didn't wanna rebuild. He tried to sell his his lot, his burned out lot, but he had had a bridge from the street to his lot which also burned over pretty, I think it's an 85 foot crevice or whatever you want to call it.
And so he wasn't able to sell the lot for what he wanted to because there just aren't that many contractors out there willing and have the ability to build a bridge before they even begin building a house. So finally he said, You know what? I'm just going to I want to donate the property to you guys and you should sell it. Because whatever you get for it, that's going to be a great resource for you to continue operations.
And that's what we did. We sold it right away to a contractor who knows how to build a bridge and wanted to build a bridge. And he got a great tax write off because we're a five zero one(three) nonprofit. And by the way, we just, we survive on donations, resident donations. That's how we survive. This, this is, this is going to help us operate
for, in theory, for, for years. And we have gotten a couple of small grants from Cal Fire and one from Southern California Edison, but pretty small grants and helpful, but we still need to fundraise. Yeah, absolutely. I'm sure WatchDuty app got a lot of fundraising funds after this is a free app and everyone I mean, I I was on that thing like crazy trying to figure out where the fire was. I I had to evacuate a couple different places. It was just Yeah. That was insane.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a that's a really good app and a fairly new one. Speaking of apps, my department has been developing an app, specifically for our community. We already have an SMS messaging where we can send out a message to whoever subscribes, like evacuate now or whatever it is. But we have some folks in here who, have put together an app for us. That's
great. Tech people. Tech people that do this and who live here, and so we wouldn't really have been able to afford to do it were they not donating their their time. Absolutely. What can people from your experience, what could people do in their own homes if they are in fire area to protect that much more aside from getting together groups of volunteer helpers? Working hard on keeping your property, fire safe, you know, getting an assessment. We have several people that that that assess
properties in here. I am I have a certified DSA, defensive space assessor, through CAL FIRE. The thing is, when the onus is on the homeowner, we can go to properties, and very few homeowners actually ask for assessments, which is disappointing. They'll say, well, you know, maybe this tree's too close and, you know, you should probably think about getting rid of these these, dried up bushes that are against your your wall here.
But the onus is on the homeowner. If they don't sometimes they'll say something like, oh, gosh. My grandfather gave me that tree. It's been growing for fifty years. I don't really wanna cut it. Okay. You know? But that's that's the way you you save your home and protect your family is is to have this defensive space around your property that's, you know, fairly significant.
And, you know, clean gutters and and, vents that are one eighth inch vents rather than the traditional one quarter because embers can't really get into the one eighth inch vents. You know, double double paned glass, especially if you're very close to, brushy areas because the heat, just that the heat from without the flames even touching your house, that convective energy and that radiant heat can can
break through single pane glass. And then that's an egress I mean, an ingress for your fire your emperors. So that's that's kind of, you know, the main thing that they can do. And also just have a a to go bag if you have to evacuate. Right? Important papers, medications, stuff like that. And and a plan and a plan with your family. This is what we're gonna do, and this is where we're gonna go. And you can't say we're gonna go to the local Holiday Inn. It's probably
going to be booked up. If you're evacuating, other people are evacuating. Stuff like that. Pets, make sure you go in. I have a lot of pets. I have 14 rescue animals. And so how how do we get the pets out? You know? What do you have? Four dogs, three horses, five cats, two turtles. That's so the tortoise here, you've got the turtle situation. Yeah. They're they're inside. They're inside turtles, so they're smaller. But, but the horses, you know,
actually, they're spread out now. We have one in Moore Park and one in Malibu. But during the fire, the the Palisades fire, we were very nervous about, our horse over in Malibu. He was okay, ultimately. There was a lot of activity around making sure the horses in and around the city were okay, that I saw a lot of that. I mean it's, it's so sad, and then to see the wildlife coming in trying, just trying to find water. Find water. Yeah. And my wife,
up until recently ran our equestrian center. So she had been through two significant evacuations. And so she's you know, we had a plan in place and it worked out. It worked out. And that's what you hope. You hope that things are gonna you're gonna have enough time. It's nice to have enough time. Like the Woolsey fire, we we sort of had enough time to for at least a lot of folks to evacuate and get some of that stuff done. You don't always though. The poor people
in the Palisades, that just exploded. It just exploded. It came on so fast. I have friends who lost homes. I have other friends who their homes are still standing, but they won't be able to get back for a year because of the smoke damage. Everything in the house has to be gutted. That's one of my friends. He he's in his neighborhood that was completely devastated. His home survived. It's like There's no rhyme or reason to it. No. There's no there's nothing here.
There's no town left. And so he moved his family to, Orange County for at least a year. Yeah. So sad. How much weight do you, as volunteer firefighters, have with after assessing an experience that you've been through to go and say to the powers that be, look, there are a lot of holes in the system, or this went well. Do you have that kind of open door to be able to talk to the people that make those kinds
of plans? We're starting to develop relationships with our three battalion chiefs from Sugar County Battalion Chiefs because, you know, there there's a battalion chief for each shift. And we know a lot of the LA City guys. Again, two of our members are LA City Firefighters. Well, that's
never been an issue. I mean, we're we're talking about, we're very lucky that I mean, LA City Fire and Cherry County Fire, they're they're some of the best agencies in the world, you know, equipment wise, training wise, the personnel. So far be it for us to criticize anything. I mean, well, they're great. We've seen them in in in operation. I mean, they're they're they're fantastic. But, yeah, I mean, sure. If if we had an issue, there's folks that higher up that we can
reach out to. We just haven't had one. In your position, do you look at the world in a dystopian way, or are you optimistic? I mean, things are seem like they are more and more, rampant. Things are happening at a higher tick. How is that affecting your understanding of the world around you? I've grown more accepting. I guess I'm less shocked at things that happen, becoming desensitized. Well, I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing, but, yeah, just accepting, like, okay, these things are
gonna happen. People are gonna do these terrible things maybe. And and, you know, if you look through history, other other folks and generations have suffered some really traumatic events. Right? We've been more or less lucky growing up, but whatever happens, I'm just gonna accept it. But I gotta tell you something,
about our fire department. You know, we're we're all we've done tons of training and sort of so we have certifications and the right certifications and all that stuff and all the right equipment. We have over a mile of fire hose. That's a lot of hose. Right? What we also have and when we first formed this fire department, folks were in our our community were very, very happy about it, very happy about it. And thus, we were able to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to build
the department. But like any community, there's a small group that is going to be critical haters, right? When we have that group, they are pretty they seem obsessed with with, destroying our fire department. And when I tell people this, they can't they can't imagine there there could be folks like this, but in our community, there are. And unfortunately, some of them have some power in our community. So we've been I was just complaining about this this morning.
I'm like, I you know, had I known that I'd just be writing letters in our defense to the residents all the time, you know, why I shouldn't have bothered getting all the training, you know, that I want. And and so it's, it's been a battle. We, we've been battling just a small group in our community, but they are relentless in their attacks on us. And they just, you know, they say, oh, they're not trained. They haven't done AB. They tell a lot of they put out a lot of misinformation about us,
and it's all personal vendetta. There's a couple of folks on the department that this group really has had it out for for years. You know, they've been able to convince some folks in the canyon, we call it the canyon, that, you know, we shouldn't be here. Yeah. The vast majority of folks want us here. In fact, we had a meeting, the other night after we had been served with our second letter, lawyer's letter from from our HOA telling us to cease operations and, you know, we're we're
an independent five zero one c three. We're not attached to the HOA. So we're like, no. That's not happening. You know, we're not going anywhere. And a bunch of our supporters showed up at the meeting and and voiced their concern rather loudly. So we're still having to fight those battles. We're gonna win those battles because it just makes sense. Of course it makes sense. It seems ridiculous that anyone would be against y'all. Yep. Yep. That's nothing we could have ever anticipated.
Yeah. There's always gotta be the couple people that just have to try and ruin everything. Right. Every community has a couple of those. Right? Absolutely. All gotten together in one pack, you know. So it's really been fighting that. It's not been pleasant, but at the same time, we're still responding to calls where people are still calling us, using our services, and and, you know, telling us, you know, we're we're so glad you guys are here. You know, we
want you here. We always say at the end of the day, if everybody in this community decided they didn't want us, except for the 34 members of the fire department and our families, we'd still be operating and, you know, protecting our families. Absolutely. How if I am somewhere in This United States or anywhere in the world, I suppose, because these these issues are going to start cropping up in lots of places all around the world, how does one
begin this process to to start? If I wanted to start, do you have online resources for people to go to saying, hey, if you wanna start your own volunteer firefighters, do this stuff. How would I go about it? Do you mean do we or did we Do you have that kind of access for people that are looking to start their own in their communities? Most of the volunteer fire departments in America have been around for a long time. Mhmm.
Very few new ones. We're probably the newest one in the country, and we've been around for four and a half years. So going back to what I said at the beginning where I grew up in a town that had one, I already sort of had an idea of what that meant. Also, I had, family members in in the fire service in in cities in Massachusetts. So I mean, I had some idea. And then, you know, I was in the When I was in the army, I was, military
police. And so I had that first responder experience, and I was in the National Guard after that. So I had a lot of that experience to to draw from, and other guys that were in there at the beginning were former police officers, or current police officers. We had enough of that to kind of know what we needed to do.
So, I mean, if if you're someone who doesn't have any of that experience and doesn't have any, idea what fire departments do or how they operate except seeing the fire trucks rolling down the street and getting out of their way. Yeah. I I don't know how easy it would be. We did the the near impossible. And folks have told us that. They're like, how did you do that? How did you build what you had built in such a short period of time? There's a lot of
serendipity involved. We're very lucky because we're a a community that has a lot of professionals. You know. So on our department alone, we have two lawyers, four engineers, four pilots, a bunch of, contractors. We have folks with various skills that were able to get things done for us in various areas. Also as a film producer, and by the way, putting together a firebomb is kind of
like producing a film. Sure. Yeah. I mean, you're putting the right people into the right roles, right, to get the bigger project completed. And that's, so I drew from that experience also. It wasn't easy. We formed it during the COVID shutdown. So most of our guys were home and they hadn't been home. We just wouldn't have been able to do what we did. It was very, there's so much serendipity involved. So it's hard to say, oh, I just take step a, b, and c.
It's just not that easy. Right? Well, I think there's a big message in that regardless is whether or not they, communities form a fire brigade. They certainly it who's humanity and the community to form connection. Yeah. Because as a group, if some tragedy strikes, you can operate as a team. Yeah. And we're, we're a fully independent fire department. We're not attached to any agency, and we purposefully formed that way because of of an incident that happened during the Woolsey fire that we
didn't want to happen to us. But, you know, the fire brigades over in Malibu that have gotten so much press, they have an attachment to LA County Fire. So they've been able to get trained and, organized to at some degree by, you know, the LA County Fire Department. That's that's great. Right? That's a huge resource that they have, and they proved themselves during this fire. You know, they they did what they were supposed to do and saved a lot of homes and and stayed safe.
And, you know, I know the county supervisor, Lindsay Horvath, gave, an, you know, an award to a bunch of them. That's great. You know? And so that would be a piece of advice I would in fact, that's a piece of advice I gave to a local community, in Calabasas. They called to ask for our advice. So when you guys are LA County, so maybe if you just want a fire brigade, you should contact LA County Fire and see, how they can help you. Yeah. There are
resources. There has to be. There has to be if this is going to be the new norm in California, you know, it's going to be nearly impossible for folks to just do it on their own. They need help. Right? Yeah. And I do think that clearing the brush, getting some of the dead stuff out, getting will help. I mean, all of that helps. It's huge. It's, yeah. And there's a lot of a lot of resources in the state and and the and from the federal government directed towards towards that education.
Yeah. My experience, and and I've had these conversations with many folks doing the same thing, you know, the brush mitigation is that, you know, you educate people, maybe 20 people show up to your workshop, eight of those people call for an assessment, three of those people actually do anything on their properties. It's Yeah. But every little bit gets gets somewhere. You know, it's all it's all part of the big cog. How might people donate to you or or learn more about
your group? Oh, you can go to our website, bcvwfd.org. It's just ourinitials.org. There's a lot of information on there and a lot of, you know, pictures and our story, list of our members, and what their certifications are. It's been a interesting journey, something I never planned on doing. You know, I wanted to when I was a kid, but, of course, as as time went on and we're not a young department by any means. We're, our average age is just a bit bit older than
the local fire departments just by necessity. I mean, that that's you you get what you get when you have volunteer fire. Whoever in your community that that's that's what you get. In cases like this, I would feel like you would want people that have been around a while. Yeah. I mean, it just comes with another level of understanding and intellect and ability to move quickly in a tense situation. All that comes by a seasoned life. And human interactions. Right? We've all been through a lot, so
it's easier to deal with the public. The public is right? So, yes, all of that. All of that. And clearly, you've lived a life of service. I mean, you went down the list of everything you've done, and I I appreciate that you exist and that you're on the planet, and you're doing something outside of yourself to make the world better. And that's what you are doing, and I think that that inspires others as well. That's an example. Even if it's an unintended example,
you lead in that way. And I I feel like the more people like you that exist, the better we're all gonna be. Well, thanks. I I do appreciate that. I I had really been wanting to find a way to give back more before this happened, before the fire broke out. I was tutoring, and I I spent years as a as a college professor. I was tutoring homeless high school students a little bit, and and then this happened. And so there was my community service project for the next several years, just continuing.
Yeah. But lucky that, you know, I I've gotten this opportunity to, to feel less self absorbed. Well, I feel like you could have five Hey Human episodes, each one about the different lifetimes you've lived in this lifetime. Yeah. No doubt. No doubt. I really appreciate your time. Thank you for listening, everybody, and and thank you so much. Yeah. Well, thank you, Susan, for having us. I I us. I mean, me. I represent the department, of
course. But it's it's we you know, we wanna get the word out there that you can you can do stuff in your own hood to protect yourself. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. And thank you, cousin Mike, for introducing us. And, apparently, we're gonna break bread at some point. Well Oh, good. Yeah. Yeah. Mike's come on as one of our PR folks, and he's been very helpful. Yeah. That's good. Campaign versus the the detractors, you know. So Oh,
yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's he's got a lot of fighting in him, so I I could see him being really good at that, pushing back against the detractors. So, yeah, thank you so much. Have a great day. You too. Take care. Bye. Rate, review, and subscribe to Hey Human Podcast on Apple, iHeart, and Spotify podcast places wherever you get your podcast. Do it. Do it. Do it. Yay. Thanks. Bye.