Full Transcript for Bringing Big City Fireground Tactics to Smaller Departments

they came back. And how do they introduce that training and education to their fire department? And how did they make massage the organization and make it happen now they implemented those new roles. So we're gonna get to that in a second. First I'd like to introduce the panel members, Jimmy Davis. Jimmy Davis, how are you doing brother? I'm doing good guys. Welcome Rob and Phil, good to see you guys again. thirty-two years on CFD or going on 32 years Chicago fire And a shout out to my buddy, which mind boggles me. Forty years on Chicago Fire on Engine 35. A shout out to John Cunningham, man, for making it that long. And in one piece. But thanks for having me, guys. Look forward to the conversation today. Perfect. Is he is he retiring, Jimmy? Is that why we gave him a shout out? No, I said go for 10 more years, man. You got it in you, man. You know? Right. All right. Who else we got there? Brent Brooks. Brent Brooks, how are you, brother? Fantastic. Well just curious. What's the what's the mandatory retirement age in Chicago, Jimmy? security will remove you at sixty two years old. is that right, Yeah, at the stroke of midnight. so sixty two is the is the cutoff. yeah, interesting. Toronto Toronto sixty five. yeah, a little bit different. sorry. Thank you for having me. yeah, I like I like I I I like the topic talking about change. I know Rob and and Phil have certainly been a part of it throughout my career. you know, I like and we've been helping each other. It it can't be done solo. It has to be done as a team. So well done and setting this up. Perfect. And that's why that's why these two guests were specifically invited. And I know they took a lot of classes from you, Brent. It's I'm really excited about this topic. And then we're stuck with old Dan Shaw. Dan, how are we doing, brother? Thanks for the warm welcome, Clark. Always appreciate it. Dan Shaw, retired ops chief in Fairfax County, just did just shy of thirty years and one of the tech editors for fire engineering magazine. Perfect, perfect. And then good old Mike Dugan, how are brother? Good. Glad to be here. Good. All right. That's it. That's it. Retired, retired. Daryl Liggins, what you got for us, brother? Well, I retired at the minimum retirement age of fifty. Fifty. it's good. Yeah, three years. And since we all spoke last together, I got to hear our friends here, Brent Brooks and last episode, Mike Dugan. on Corley Moore's The Scrap and those were both fantastic. It was so fun listening guys. A lot of good stuff to to learn. Yep. Yeah. On that on that note, I wanted to mention that. Mike Dugan, what was the scrap number that you had? You don't know. All right, the last the last three seventy nine, because I was I think I was three seventy-eight, so you'd be three seventy-nine. Perfect. what really sp I highly recommend listening to that. And what really touched me, Mike, is when you said always leave it better than you found it. And when you told the story about going to the beach with your father, and it required all the kids to pick up garbage that wasn't even their garbage because you want to leave things better than you had Then yeah, that that really touched my soul there. Hats off to your father. And he raised a good man. He raised a great man. All right. All right. Now we're gonna move into our guests. We got a guy, Phil Montgomery. Phil, what you got for us, brother? Introduce yourself. Tell us where you work, tell us what you do. from Central York Fire Services, which is I'm gonna say a small to medium sized apartment, about thirty minutes north of Toronto, Ontario. been on twenty four years and I got newly promoted last January to captain. And Yeah, I'm happy to be invited, and this is really exciting. So thanks for having me. Perfect. Last but not least, we got Rob Wiggins, who's in Ukraine somewhere, dodging drones. How are you, Rob Wiggins? Good. Thank you for having me, guys. Appreciate it. Rob Wiggins here, Berry Fire, about an hour north of Toronto, and coming up on 20 years between a few different fire departments and I'm back seat. Perfect. That's the best seat. That's the best seat. So moving right in, Rob. Tell us kinda, kinda tell us how you how you got introduced to Brent Brooks and how the training went, and then how what Brent Brooks taught you from a major, major department. How did you decipher that information? Turn it into something you could use on a smaller department, and how how did that how did that conversation, how did that relationship start, please? well it started through mutual friend of ours that we do training with Mark Vanderfeist and Matt Worley. So they brought me out, I was involved in the high rise reboot of at my old department in Oakville. And they brought me out to the Canadian High Rise Conference and I got to room with Brent actually. That's the first time I met him was we were in the same hotel room and took the course, got to get some hands-on experience there, see what the systems were, and then Once I left there and I had a small rule helping out, it was the gaps were evident. And then it was a matter of how do we size it to like my department's only eight rigs, six stations, 150,000 people. We have 200 standpiped high-rise buildings though. But you know, from four to forty-two stories. So to size Brent's at the big end of Toronto. So we're at the opposite end of the highway, taking what they had done and what they were teaching at that conference and sizing it to us was was the big challenge. So yeah, Brent and I kept in touch and we basically went back and forth and then reached out to other experts in the industry. And then we kind of figured out, okay, well, we don't have a hundred people responding to a call. We only have three apparatus. A full tone out is going to be all eight. So we don't have a hundred people to fill these roles. But when I was talking to Brent, Our fire floor response looked the exact same. And he's the biggest fire department in

Canada. I'm small to medium, but our fire floor was identical. So once we found that common kind of language and what it actually looked like, that's where we started building our system. Great, great Rob. Now, your department's obviously pretty old. Toronto's obviously pretty old. How is it that it how are you the one? How are you and some of your your core group? How is it that you're the ones that went to Toronto and gra gather this information and you're the ones that that implemented this and presented that information? How how did that how did that happen? How did that play out? Was there any animosity like who are these guys? Sean, we're not Toronto, blah, brah, rah, we're not FDNY. Forget those guys, blah, blah, blah. I would say that's probably the biggest sentiment initially. So what happened was I had switched apartments right in this after starting this project with Brent. And then coming into my new department, I was on probation fifth class. Now I'm in my home city. So I restarted my career. And the last thing I wanted to do was go in there and make waves. And then The high rise program at my job now was exactly the same as my old job. So I walked in and I was like, okay, same problems. Here we are, but in my hometown. So then what happened was we were going to be going to help teach at the 2020 Canadian High Rise Conference. This was six years ago. And then w it all got shut down because of the pandemic. So my training division had the they had signed up for the high rise conference to what is the new Big bad thing because about 20 years ago, 25 years ago, Toronto had a firefighter who was leading the Canadian fire service in a high-rise response. And that's what almost every department built their system off. So now all of a sudden there's this new change at the end of the highway that was kind of filtering through Canada. So our train division was going, and a couple of our platoon chiefs and our high-rise shift training instructors. And like I said, it got canceled. So they had all the material, they had the instructor lists and everything of who they were gonna go teach from and or learn from. And they saw me on the bottom of the list as like junior instructor in a support role. So then they came and found me in the kitchen table and they said, Is this you? Like we just hired you. I'm like, Yeah, yeah, that's that's me. So they asked, you know, well, we're not going anymore. Like, what's what's wrong with our systems? And I basically started off and I'm like, Well, we gotta start from scratch here. We're running Fog nozzle, 75 PSI, gated Y, inch and a half hose. we had no way to hook up to a class two system on our initial strat because it was just something that we hadn't thought of with that 150 foot. So we ran a 50 foot two and a half to a gated Y to a hundred foot inch and a half. So without an adapter, we had no class two capabilities with a hundred and fifty foot stretch. So yeah, once we kind of highlighted every piece.

It's like, okay, well, can we just switch the nozzle? Well, well, no, we need a a gate and gauge to know what we're getting. Okay, well, what's the building pressure at? And once we went through line by line, we realized there was no other way except to start from scratch, throw everything out, and then try to find a system that worked. So back on the horn with Brent and all the all the other people who helped out. And then it was a matter of building it. At the hall finding the like-minded people. And then I had a platoon chief who was on the shift training instructor program with me. And he latched right onto it. And he typed up all the emails and got the meetings upstairs. And then I went upstairs, explained how everything went and how we needed to switch to the large diameter hose and the NFPA change and all these, all my data points. And then it came down to money. And then it came down to getting the floor. actually believing in the systems because these guys have been fighting fires with what we had successfully for all these years, but they hadn't been caught yet. And we haven't had the problem buildings or the problem systems. so then we had the training program set, we had the budget set, we had everything ready to go. And then tweak after tweak, talking to Jimmy in Pensacola when he we were going to do the Denver load. And we only have two stations where we run a lot of high rise response. So The Denver load being out in the outlying halls just wasn't working. Jimmy showed me the Chicago load. We had to modify it a bit. We call it the Barry load now. And so we implemented all these pieces, got it done. Then it came down to money, and then we had two large high-rise fires with catastrophic equipment failure and stamp pipe failure. And all of a sudden the systems got put in place and the rest is history. It was it was Getting all the people trained and we did the entire department for an initial rollout in four days. we work a four platoon system. So Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, you could catch all four platoons and the shift training team just w He gone. He gone. He gone. All right. He got hit by a drone or something. I don't know. Yeah. So Elon Musk shut down the Yeah. Yeah. So Phil, you're still good, right? Phil? You're still there? Phil, tell us who who would you say like the head head high rise I wouldn't I'm not gonna say a guru because I know no one would ever admit to that. Who's like kind of Running the high rise program in the Central York Fire Department. probably driving force would be me. Okay, perfect. That's what I thought. Now tell me, how did you get that position? How did you get that position? Is it was it magically granted to you, Phil? No. so my department's a a a bit unique in the sense that we're two communities that came to what become Central York. So there's two municipalities. So my story is a bit different than Rob's how I actually had to approach this, but we had a high rise committee. So there's like committees for all different application or all different disciplines. So there's like the Force Preventary Committee, there's the Fire TAC, or you know, Ice Water, Surface Water. There's all these hazmat committee, Auto X. So there's there was already a high rise committee. And kind of how I got interested in it was my dad reads the the Toronto Star newspaper. And there was an article in there years ago called Fire in the Sky. And it was actually about the 200 Wellesley Street fire I know that Brent can speak to way more than I ever can, but I'd say in Ontario, maybe even Canada, that this fire probably really changed the Ontario fire service and high-rise firefighting, at least in my opinion. And once I read this article, I kind of thought to myself, like, this could happen in my municipality. This happened to the biggest apartment and what I believe to be the best apartment in Canada. Then it could happen to me who lives 30 minutes north of Toronto. So that's really how I got involved in it. And I just kind of railroaded, I just pushed myself into the committee. I just kind of kept like peppering these guys with questions until they're just like, you already kind of know more than what we kind of knew just from my own research before I even really got involved in it. And they just said, come on, join us. So that's kind of how I got involved. But typically there is a system within our department that you have to apply for these positions. They interview you. to get on a committee, but I just kinda push my way in and now I'd say, Well I'm the chair of the committee now and I'm honestly the one that kinda is driving it forward and keeps it moving forward. Phil, how many years were you a student before you were ever an instructor? gosh. at least five or six years before I even got invited to help out. When was the Barry High Rise Conference? Was that twenty twenty twenty-two? Twenty twenty-three? I don't know. How old and I have dementia. I I that'd be the first time I had a small teaching role. And like since then I've just kind of like I'd say like a I've had more of a little bit of teaching roles at different, different different conferences and stuff like that. But that was the first time I even had the opportunity to to teach outside of my own department. Like I always just taught within house, and that was the first time I actually got to teach like firefighters from another department. So I as far as nerve wracking go, I was definitely nervous for it for sure. And I had a small role just like kind of talking about the Stamp Pipe bag or the gate and gauge bag. So that was kind of my role. Perfect. Perfect. Dan Shaw, Chief of Operations, Fairfax, Virginia. Where where did you get the majority? Where did the Fairfax Virginia Department get the majority of their tactics and strategies? Is this something you guys came up with? Or is it a combination of what's going on in the region, what's going on nationally? Could you speak on that for

us, please? Yeah. I mean, I think it's it's an example that many organizations should look at because trying to develop your own doctrine for something that maybe is brand new to you can be really daunting. So we took the FDMYs. I mean, essentially they had books for every single type of building occupancy type. You know, they're what 14,000, we're 2,000. So, you know, obviously much larger than us, but we're still getting 100 people. We still have the same number, much like these guys are talking about. You know, the reflex time might be greater because they have a hundred-story high rises and we're, you know, we're lower than that. but we're still getting the same number of people. We're still getting a number of rigs. So essentially we just took that framework and then we adapted to our environment. So we're not gonna do all the same things that they're gonna do. We're gonna have different hose loads, we're gonna have different types of build, some different types of buildings. But we don't need to reinvent the wheel. I I always use lobby control as a perfect example. lobby control is a really important function in high rise firefighting, even though it's not that sexy. But if if you don't know how to do it, you'll just have four to six people sitting in a machine room looking at it saying, Yeah, check. We did lobby control. But if they really understand how intricate it is and they're they're looking at the brains of the building, they can read the building and communicate a lot of things about the fire travel and the firefighting effort and the evacuation efforts, then it's really, really useful. So, we just took a model that we saw that already was existing, that was working, and how do we adopt it to our apartment? And I think a lot of places use it. I that's why we routinely always share our manuals across the country to people, is just use it. right, make sure you credit back to Northern Virginia, but use it. Yep. And I don't know of any department in the United States that does it better than the FDNY, Mike Dugan. You've got a manual for everything and it is tried and true. It has been worked out. I think you probably even have a manual for cleaning toilets and probably one for making lasagna as well. Is that true, Mike Dugan? absolutely. Right? Absolutely. Have a manual for how to read the manuals. Yeah, yeah, exactly. How to read the manuals. that's on the toilet. Yeah, on the toil Mike. How many were you implemental? How many of those manuals did you assist in writing? How again, did the did the FDNY ever seek out any other outside influence, or is it just the FDNY and your word is word? no, no, it's not just the FDNY and your word is word. listen, we did so much with Chicago, with the finding out about the wind driven fires. And with all of the other stuff and the high rise nozzle now and the curtain to stop the wind and we don't vent from the outside now without permission and you have to take the wind into account. All of this came from partnerships with other people, with UL, with Chicago, with burning buildings, and then we went to Governor's Island and we discovered discovered other stuff. So we're always willing to learn, we're always willing to listen. And there are things that are gonna change. The thing that we do is our manuals are based on our manpower, and our people are trained to respond and recognize the buildings. And your job, if you are in a truck company, the outside vent will depend on where the build what type of building you're responding to, where you're going. I mean, you might be elevator control in a high rise fire. In a tenement fire, you're in opposite the fire, venting and looking for victims. So you your people have to be trained to know what they're doing, what they're going, what they're responding to, knowing the building and knowing the lot the assignments, how your job is going to change. I talk to this a lot. I say it's the difference between like size up. Is sizing up the building, the fire conditions, but then there's situational awareness. And I think they're different in a lot of ways. Situational awareness going to a high-rise fire is what is your assigned position going to be? Are you going to be lobby control? Well, if that's your job, listen, it might not be the sexiest job on the fire ground, but it's one of the more important jobs on the fire ground. If you're going to be running the elevators, if you're going to be vent support, whatever it is. You have to know what that is in that situation, and you have to know that your people know how to do their job. That's perfect. One the one thing I took from that, Captain Dugan, the largest fire department in the United States of America still goes out and seeks out information from other fire departments to check. That is that's that's amazing. That is amazing. Yep. Because Clark, you can't get better. If you don't listen to somebody else. If you're the smartest guy in a room, you're in the wrong room. Exactly. I've never had that problem, Captain Dugan. Me either. Daryl Liggins. So, Daryl Liggins, I know you do a lot of instructing all over the United States. So you're from a large department or b a big department, right, and you get a lot of work. How do you adjust your teaching and training when you come across People like Rob Wiggins and Phil Montgomery from smaller departments. Do you take their personnel into account? Do you have specific hose loads and tactics that we teach for guys that are going to be showing up to a high rise fire with six people as opposed to one hundred like they do in Chicago? But that's a that's a great question, Clark. I guess I never really looked at myself as being an authority or someone that is really qualified to give people the answers for an organization I don't work in on rigs I don't work on, on staffing I don't know. when I think of teaching, it's just sharing information. I can share the world I had, the types of calls we went to, the

things that worked, the things that didn't work, what we did, what we changed, and As a student, I think we all did that. We're collecting as much information we can from as many minds as we can and taking some and leaving some. It's not all gonna work for us. But I don't think many of us would want someone to tell us how we need to do it if they don't really know you know, I'm th there are trusted advisors and and consultants out there, but I remember hearing Steve Jobs rant about consultants, that they come in, they make all these changes, and they leave, and they don't have to live with the repercussions if it's good or bad. So I think you know, we're probably in the best time that's ever existed in the in the fire service because we're doing podcasts like this and listening to to things and traveling and able to share information at a very fast speed. But one thing. On the topic of making changes, I've always given the advice to do all the legwork you can for ad administration. You need to come up with solutions. You have to let them know why something's a problem. You have to point out a problem, but not just point it out. Just like everybody goes to the union pointing out problems, it's like, are you part of the solution or part of the problem? But it doesn't always work. When I started the the job and I was met my friend Jay Camella, who he was traveling to New York with a battalion chief and they were going to a high rise conference and they came back and they got a committee of people together. They wrote an entire manual of how things could go and it's floating around some firehouses and it was never officially adopted. it was a great paper. And I think we all face that at some time that you may do the work, people may not adopt it. And that's something you'll have to change at your i in your structure before you start doing all this work to find out from your organization leaders if if we're gonna do this work, how can we get assured of what work is gonna actually be implemented? Because that that could be a very frustrating thing. But I think one thing you have to do is not adopt something someone else does just because that's what they do. You have to find out is that is that a problem you have? And if what you learned, is that a solution for you? Don't don't create solutions for problems you don't have. Exactly. And really quick, Daryl, give me your your resume, hose and nozzle committee for Oakland Fire Department. You headed that you headed that fight? Yeah, and that was we did adopt well we we we basically changed everything on the rig. That was in in ninety nine, the class prior to me, while they were in the academy, the department experienced a line of line of duty death. There was a internal report done called a Board of Inquiry report that cited the amount of water flow being as a direct contributing factor. So a very motivated battalion chief wanted to make some changes in the in in our water delivery system. And he was mostly concerned with our inch and a half gated wise and 100 PSI combination nozzles being used in high rise. So it wasn't a high rise fire, but He wanted us to work on our high-rise package as well as just our structural firefighting package. So so we put together a small committee of names you guys probably heard, Dennis Laguerre and me and Jay Camella. I happen to be the chair of that. And yeah, not everybody's happy with the changes for sure, but it it sure is satisfying if you know you're maintaining your integrity and doing the right things for the right reasons and improving those engine operations. Perfect. Thank you, Darrell. What I heard you say that really struck me was a lot of frustration. A lot of frustration. If you are trying to make change in your organization, you're gonna be faced with a lot of backlash, a lot of frustration. True or false, Jimmy Davis. Kirk mem yeah, remember that saying, firefighters want change, but hate change. All all in the same sentence. You know. And then we hear that a lot. We've always done it this way in the fire service. And you know, my response to that is that you gotta be open minded on this job, very open minded. I know when I teach in that, I I I try to, and I think we all do, we we will fe see a commonplace and best practices. I'm not teaching you what Chicago or F D NY does in that, but there are gonna be something in our models or our system which is transferable to any department. You're gonna be able to cherry pick things that are that are are gonna be a benefit in your department. A lot of departments can't do what we do. And I think that's probably that that bridge that we're trying to make right now is that hey, listen, listen to F D NY and in in Toronto and and Chicago and Darrell from Oakland, these bigger departments, because you will find some common ground. And again, there will be things in the operation that identified a best practice, man. We took the time through trial and error and a lot of errors to round out the edges, man, so that we can share this information among other departments, large or small, Clark. Yeah, that's great. And every every episode I try to quote our friend Bill Gustin. And Bill Gustin would say when you go to a training or you go to a seminar or you go to a conference, that's like going to a Chinese food buffet. Just because you pay for the Chinese food buffet doesn't mean you have to eat every single thing in the buffet. So like Rob Wiggins going to a conference and listening to Mike Dugan speak, you're gonna get some nuggets, but you're not gonna adopt the FDNY policy, are you, Rob Wiggins? No, it would be it'd be daunting. But yeah, taking exactly like you said, taking what works. And I've learned from so many instructors that at all these conferences that I took, and we really are a hybrid system, right? To to be successful, we had to make concessions and and changes to to really fit our department. And it went well. But it was all the team. Nobody

did it alone. And man, to to get the team on board and have them put their necks out with you, takes a lot of trust in the entire process and and each other. I would definitely like to have you guys back on eventually and I would like to hear specifically about your high rise operations plan with limited staffing, but we don't have time for this now. but yeah, it's it's really interesting and I'd like to hear from Brent Brooks. Brent Brooks, how many people how many people show up in Toronto on a working high rise and how, because you're kinda like the you're kinda like the father of Canadian high high rise firefighting, right? And how these two individuals Right. How how did you adjust Toronto firefighting and teach these gentlemen how to fight fire in in central York and in Barrie? It's funny you say that because you know people are like, you're a subject matter expert, you're a subject matter expert. So I said, No, I actually changed that. I'm a subject matter educator, right? So I'm not an expert, I'm an educator. And an educator needs everybody. Like that's why, you know, Phil and Rob from smaller departments, but they they We all have these different Rolodexes and we and different different experiences and and yeah, we need to we need to get that. And Toronto, yeah, we could clap our hands and get five hundred firefighters, you know, it's it's not a big deal, but it's that arrival sequence you know, at that high-rise fire, which is critical because Jimmy Davis and and I know Daryl, we you know, we talk about timing and regardless of the size of of of your fire department, we know exactly how fast fire spreads. We know exactly how fast smoke and toxicity kills someone. We ac know exactly you know the point of flash over. So in saying that, we need to get a line on the fire within a certain amount of you know, in a in a certain window. So regardless of of of how big your department is, how are you getting that first line on the fire and make all your problems go away? Because if you don't, you're gonna wish that you were a big department when it comes to high rise firefighting because it's a smoke event. When it comes to high-rise buildings, unless it gets to the exterior, but that's a topic for another day. But if you look at guys in in this entire panel, and I'm really talking about Phil and Rob, there's a there's a thing back in 1962, it's called the Law Diffusion and Innovation. I'm gonna nerd out here for a second. And those are 2.5% of your department. That's it. So we're definitely 2.5. Those two are 2.5. It's the law of diffusion and innovation. Look it up. And it'll save you some frustration. I'm trying to get my whole job to change. Nope, you don't. If you're the 2.5%er, you need to get to the early adopters, which is 13.5. Sorry for nerding out. And just focus on the people that want to listen. If not, you're going to beat yourself up, stress yourself out. You won't be able to make change. Focus on those other people, and they will

get the other people going to chain reaction. So my job wasn't to you know try and change Toronto Fire. My job was to try and change the fire service and it was fine by finding finding these early adopters. We're all from different departments, we're all from different countries here here on this episode, and that's what we're doing. We're the two point five percenters that are going out, grabbing that those early adopters and finding like-minded firefighters to make change as a group, as an army, versus trying to do it solo, because you will lose if you do it solo. Did I go off topic? Hey Brent You know what? Brent, that was profound. That was profound. There are people that there are people in all of our organizations that if we showed up and we had a cure for cancer, they wouldn't want to hear it just because it's coming from us. True or false? you could you could have a cure. I don't get lamping. I hate that guy. He's such a dumbass. There's no way that dumbass could have cured cancer. Right? And that's gonna happen. And that's gonna happen. And talking about the modifications we are talking about, Dan Shaw, what's your favorite saying? Who always gets a vote? Brian, the fire always gets a vote. The fire always gets a vote. The fire doesn't care if you're showing up with six people or one hundred people, do they? Care less. That fire doesn't care less. And do its thing. There's no friendlies in front of you when you get off a rig and the building's on fire. Yep, exactly. Exactly. Phil Montgomery, if you could identify, this is a tough question. you know what? First we gotta we gotta shout out to to Key Hose. All right. Thanks again to Key Hose. Super excited with that partnership. looking forward to education is key. Looking forward to where that goes and we are all happy, happy to be partners with Keyhose and do whatever we can to support the organization and do whatever we can to to educate the people with the support of Keyhoes. So once again, thank you very much, Kehos, for your sponsorship. Ready to take your training to the next level, FDIC International is where the fire service comes together to learn, connect, and prepare for the challenges of today and tomorrow. Join us April 12 through 17 in Indianapolis for a week of hands-on training, classroom sessions led by fire service experts, and access to the latest products and innovations in the exhibit hall. Whether you're looking to sharpen your skills, discover new solutions, or bring valuable insights back to your department, FDIC delivers an experience unlike any other. Register today at FDIC.com/slash podcast. Phil. If you could pick your one. Biggest win, your one biggest win within your department. Something that you're most proud of, that you went out and you grabbed something and you you brought it back and you faced some adversity and you faced the naysayers and it got implemented. Could you put your finger on one thing, Phil? for sure. It'd be this, it'd be high rise firefighting. Because when I actually so when I actually de went down to the high rise conference for the first time and really started to like get some real education on it into like Daryl's Point when you asked him, you can go to these conferences, but you, even though you're learning from all these guys from FDNY, Chicago, Toronto, all these larger departments, you can take all those little pieces back and you can adapt them to your department. When you actually sit down and digest all that material, it's really not that difficult, especially if you're working with like a committee or an other local departments. Everybody's working on the same kind of issues. So, like, definitely the high-rise. And for me, like the nacers. I'd say our department was really receptive when we actually started to implement our program. We did a like a two-week training program, morning and afternoon sessions, and we just rolled everybody through. We actually acquired a new high rise that was being built in our community, and we actually did training inside the building during construction. So it took two weeks, and I'd say the majority of people were really receptive to like the new equipment, the new nozzles, the different hose loads. But the biggest adversity that I came across, which was kind of unique. is I actually had to go to our council. So 'cause there's a capital budget. So we had to ask for money. So I had to go to our I had to develop a a PowerPoint program and deliver it to my council and ask for forty five thousand dollars to buy all the nozzles, all the hose, training props that we had to get built. So that was probably my biggest thing that I kinda came across was going to that. But also I had the support of our train division. So they they were there with me obviously to help answer questions and, you know questions on budget wise on how this would cost and during training. But that would be the biggest adversity that I came across. The actual suppression guys of the hundred and fifty guys that I work with were all I mean, they could say stuff behind my back, but I'd say majority of the guys were all really receptive to it and excited for the new equipment and the new training. And when we kind of told them the why and why we're changing and the standards, everybody was like, okay, well this makes sense. So it wasn't like we were just like Because this is the new cool thing. There's actually real reason behind it. So we had some good buy-in. Like it was good. And was it, Phil, was it a bonus or was it a detriment that you are using, hey, this is what Toronto does. This is what we should do. Where guys like, well, if the big boys do it, we should do it. Or was it, man, forget Toronto. We're tired of we're tired of big brother always looking down on us like that. No, no. And like guys would be like, Who who are you learning this from? Where'd you go? And I'd be like, I was down to this conference in Pensacola Beach. I learning from like Clark

Lamping, Brent Brooks, Ray McCormick, Jimmy Davis, like Marty Raffus, like all these guys. And they're well, we're well, they're in the States. They don't know. I'm like, yeah, but the guys in Toronto here. And we the way we rolled out our program was we did we sent out like our on our training, our monthly training the first month was just about 200 Wellesley Street. And we had the audio clips from the news articles. We sent the news article out and we kind of did a little presentation just on that. And then we had a rollout as our PowerPoint on so we had buy-in through all the different steps. So there was never just like this like thrown at you. We kind of did it over four months of a rollout. So it was we were well planned and well orchestrated that way. And I would say that was because of one training officer that I had buy-in from. Like I convinced her to help me. And she was logistically so good at organizing and developing like PowerPoints and presentations that she really helped helped on the back end of that. I had to do the hands-on stuff with another firefighter between the two of us. We delivered the actual hands-on. But yeah, the success of it, I'd say was a group for sure, a committee, but I also had the support from our train division, support from our chief, support from council once I actually got the approval from council to get the budget approved. So all those things were kind of were interesting how they had to fall into place. So it took Took over almost two years because of the budget. We had to do twenty five thousand one year and twenty the next year, but we ordered at the end of one year, so it rolled into the next year. So it kind of worked out really well as far as all those kind of things coming together. But yeah, no like no one really cared. We know the Toronto's doing it doing it well. They're fighting fires every day. You can watch the news locally and they have a high race fire like every every week. Like guys can't deny what they're doing. It's on T V. It's on like you see it. You see what they're doing. and they're putting fires out. They're they're making they're rescuing people. They're you know, they're doing good jobs. Like the chiefs on there are saying they're doing good work. So like you can't argue it. Like they're no different than we are, just bigger. That's all it is. So Phil, Brent was my roommate at F D I C. So we were roommates for about a week. Ask them all brothers, you too. Yeah. And I'm telling you, it was just about every morning. He was looking at his phone saying, the guys had this last night. And it was high rise fire after high rise fire. I was like, What is going on there in Toronto? But you're right. But I had a question for you, and I'm glad you had such a positive experience, or mostly a positive experience with people being accepting of of the changes. And I I didn't have that as as positive of of an experience, and I'm Sure, you had the the naysayers. And and if I could do this again, one and I didn't have a platform like this, we didn't have Zoom in 2004. But I would almost want to treat it how it is before we ratify a union contract. We we have question and answer sessions, informational sessions. I've learned that people really want to have a platform or be listened to, or the opportunity of Well, what what's your solution? And and we know it can't be a hundred percent democratic. At some point, somebody has to make decisions. And and I tried to approach it of n this isn't perfect, just like a contract. It's not perfect, but but maybe it's an improvement. How did you handle the the naysayers that you you did have? Like to Rob's point, like y you know, we're we're switching up this equipment. They're like, well, we've been h fighting high-rise fires with an inch and a half on the combination also and a gated Y for years and it's worked fine. And you know, to like I remember Brent when he came in our department, it's that career fire, it's that one time that you need those options or you need the bigger line. And so we had that why and we just stuck to our why constantly. Like we stuck to our our standards, the NFPA. The Ontario building code. We stuck to those standards and we just kept driving those home. This is why the change is happening. This is what we're doing. You know, it's actually a lighter hose. We tried to I'd always try to spin into like a positive like reply at the end, being like, This is actually a benefit for us. It's gonna be lighter, it's faster, we can deploy it quicker. It the hose doesn't kink, it will pass debris. So I would try to always keep on that positive side of it. But at the end of our phase, we had phase one, phase two. We had a frequently asked questions. So we had a comment card that we put out saying, is there anything that you would have liked to have seen improved upon through that training? what would you like to see next time going further in our high-rate training? What would you like to see? So even if they weren't overly extremely happy with the change or they're disappointed, we tried to well, the way I we we spun it was like, let's keep them a positive atmosphere and keep this positive role going and how we can move forward. So we got a lot of comments back saying. we have ventilation training. We we've never really had to learn how to move smoke in stairwells or hallways. So that was something that we started to work towards. So we always try to keep that c positive spin with those with our comments and moving forward. And like I said, we did have a frequently asked questions. Like we always kind of had the same question all the time. So we try to have like a blanket response. We did something similar to this. We did a recorded message that we sent out all the frequently asked questions. So it wasn't like you're applying to a hundred emails. So we try to stay very I'm gonna say like standard across the board, stick to our standards, stick to the why, and stay positive. But

again, there's always those guys that are gonna be behind my back or behind anybody's back and they can feel what they want to feel and I'm okay with if they don't like it, it's fine. I'm okay with it. But as long as they play by the rules and they use it, I'm okay with that too. Like And Phil, your your biggest win I'm curious if any of you guys had challenges with the people in power to implement things that you saw as a benefit, you know, administration or or training and how you handled that. I can speak to like I I had really good support from our training division. one training officer in particular, she's now a deputy chief in Sudbury, Ontario, which is just further even north of us here. But She really supported me and our heart our committee. And like I said, she was the kind of the the person logistically that could organize all the stuff behind the scenes, like all the training. She could deliver the PowerPoint really well. She was she would say, I'm not the person who's gonna teach you how to pull hose, but if you want me to deliver the PowerPoint and del make the PowerPoint and do all those sorts of logistics and organize things for sure. And yeah, without being said, like this would never have happened if I didn't have the support. From our deputy chief of operations. And at the time, he had just come to our department. the term department that he had came from, they had just switched over their program to essentially what we were gonna do. So when I talked to him about it, he goes, Phil, run with this. He's like, I physically I can't manage to run this program and get it up and running. He goes, if you have the drive to look after this, he's like, Go to town. I'll tell you what you need to do, where you need to be. And how to do it. And that's what I did. I just had I saw the goal and he just said, Okay, yep, you gotta present at council. I was like, Okay, well, what does that involve? And he would tell me, and I was like, Okay, well I'll develop that with some help and we'll go present that. So that's how I kind of we had it. We had great support all along. And I maybe I got a little lucky, but it was a lot of work. It took like two years, but it was a lot of work. And honestly, I ri I did I didn't mind the wait. It was it made it enjoyable because that's when I saw it like successful. I was like, Wow. That was like it was a lot of work, but now guys are using it. It's like, man, that worked so well, or this deployed really well. And it's like when I hear those successes, it's like a win for everybody. I'm like, it's just not a win for them. It's like the committee worked hard, we won. It is like we're doing good work. So to see those wins, I was I'm I'm happy and I'm keeping to move forward. Like I keep pushing forward. So you know what you know what your win was was you included the boots on the ground firefighters. You didn't just say here's a new policy and push it on top of them. You included them. They were part of, they they felt heard because firefighters, we keep saying, firefighters hate change. But if you give the why and the rationale behind it, firefighters will change. And and that's exactly what you did. So well done. Include the boots on the ground firefighters and it huge difference. They're the ones, they're the end users, they're going downrange. yeah, well done, Phil. I think that was a a a good, a good success story right there. Thank you. And real quick, Brooksy, one thing I really ad appreciate when when Brent Brooks teaches, just like Phil says, he starts with the frequently asked questions. Right. And he just wrote an article in this in this month's October's Fire Engineering magazine. He had an article and it includes the the biggest questions, right? We can bring up the bigger line later if we need it and several of those. and I really, really appreciate that information that you got out early, Brent. It it Because I'm having questions already. Before you even start the class, I've got questions and you answer my questions before I even put my hand up. So that's that's that's a real heads-up move. Real heads-up move. Jimmy Davis. What you got for us, brother? Thoughts, comments, concerns? No, it's reaffreshing how the the wheel turns and and the wheel keeps turning with with Phil and and listening to your story too. I mean these are successes and you can measure them in incremental pieces. How they start off small. and also what you're doing there, Rob, too, because what it is, it's a win for all of us. And just listening, it's a collaborative process. And I know with I teach with Brooksy and and Clark and Daryl a lot, a lot of what we're doing is manifesting in the other departments right now. So we are moving that that wheel somewhat forward. you know, I like to say the the answers are out there. We don't have to reinvent this wheel. man, through collaboration and working with other departments, as as how you described it, Phil, and what you're doing, man. that's the key. You know, like I said, we roughed out the edges. We have information to share with other departments, man. All you gotta do is just reach out. and if we don't have the answer, I know I can find it, Brooks. I just call it my buddy Brooks. You know, there's a high-rise question. It says, Between me and Brooksy, we might know all the the questions, all right. And when they ask me, he says, I don't know that one, but Brooksy knows that one as well. But what you're doing is is keep on going, and that's what the fire service needs. just keep the momentum. We don't want to lose the momentum in the fire service and the work we gotta capture it and and and move it on. And and Phil and Rob, you're doing a great job at doing by the way, Phil, the Canadian conference was 2024. I remembered my first visit to the Tim Hortons of Barrie. Yeah. We'll ever forget that visit. A site I'll never forget. But thank you. Yeah, I'll never have Tim Hortons again. Rob Wiggins. There's there's a

story behind that that we absolutely cannot tell on a fire engineering podcast. All right. Catch us at the bar on that one. Rob Wiggins. Some some firefighter from another department comes up to you and says, Hey, I I really want to ins implement some changes. Can you give me some ideas, Rob? Well, what should I do? How should I approach this? How should I approach this? What are your thoughts, Rob? Rob, unmute. sorry, there we go. yeah, but first thing I would say is that they have to identify what their needs are and what the end goal is. one thing is change for just the sake of making change I found has not worked, right? You have to, it has to be better for the civilians, the fire service, and the firefighters, or it's you're you're gonna have roadblocks ahead of you. So you have to just figure out what and what we did was re we just found out what that goalpost was and what what guys really didn't like about what they were currently using and carrying. So when we had the pizza boxes and the pizza bags, they hated the way it carried. We showed them the Chicago load over the bottle. Carries beautifully. So there's one check mark in the win box. And we started stacking all these little wins versus all the negatives of what we were using currently. And that would be my biggest piece of advice is start a pros con list on what you want and what you have and see where the where those changes can be. And it to do it all in one big bite, you can't you can't do it. You got it. We were three years, kind of similar exact story to what Phil went and you know, we were bouncing stuff off each other, right? And Colin Brooks on speed dial. but setting your plan up, finding the right people, and then yeah, knowing what the goal that you're trying to achieve is and not just change for the sake of change. It sounds like patience is the key. Everything, everybody on the panel today, patience is the key. Nothing happens quickly. especially in these organizations like the FDNY, Mike Dugan. How long does it take to make changes? It's like trying to turn an aircraft carrier with a toothbrush, isn't it? But again, the joke, the old joke, firefighters hate two things the way things are and change. So it's just we're always going to be like that. So change just comes. But the whole thing is from Phil to Rob to all of us on this, we have to do the same job on the fire ground. We have to get the water on the fire. And it just depends on how we go about doing it, what works for us with the manning we have, the people we have, the systems we have. So we learn from everybody, and not everything's gonna learn for everybody. But yes, change does take time and turning the ship I remember going to bunker gear and guys saying, my god, we're gonna kill firemen. We're gonna kill firemen from heart attacks. Didn't happen. And I remember a story a friend of mine, his father. You know, the the the job sucks. It they changed it, they made destroyed the job. You know what they did to destroy the job? They put a radio on the fire truck. So they had to call in when they were taking up for a run. Before that they had to go back to the firehouse and tap themselves in. Being able to be called on the radio was the worst thing that ever happened to this guy. Well, things change and we get through it. We make do. Firemen will adapt. They like to adapt. So they will find out the way things work. They will find what works and what doesn't work. So the whole idea is to recognize the jobs that you have to do and how you want to do it and go about getting it done. Thank you. That is a lot of years of wisdom right there. That is a lot of fires under his belt, a lot of years of wisdom. Chief Shaw. You know, and this topic, man, I mean, I was just while Mike was talking, I was looking to see, you know, change management is so important that, you know, both Harvard, MIT, Cornell all have degree programs in change management. Change management. And change management because it's so important because it's something we deal with. And I always go back to I talk about this lot in some classes. It's like a Roman stoic Marcus Rillis said, is any man afraid of change? What can take place without change? Because the universe is change. And if he's saying it back in the you know that day, it's still relevant today. And you know, I always ask guys like if you don't like change, how many of you walk to work? no, you drive a car. You drive a ninety thousand dollar F one fifty. That's change. How many use an abacus to do your bills? I doubt it. You probably use a computer to do your bills. Or how may you use a carrier pigeon to send a text to your friend? No, you use a computer in your pocket. life is full of change. the the the problem, a lot these guys were saying, change is important, but change comes from purpose. And especially when you get to a promoted to ranks, there's an inherent desire for a lot of people is that when I get promoted, It's a call to action for change. I have to change something. And you should always change to improve, not to prove that you're the boss. And you should have a reasoning and a why behind what it is and it's to make things better for us. Dan, you said something that stuck with me because a lot of changes we're used to are to improve our quality of life or make things in our life easier, like cars and phones and things like that. I think I'll say a a friend of of mine, Dave Stepp there in San Diego had a post on Facebook a couple days ago and he was talking about firefighters don't really care as much about change as they want to understand the change. And I think it's very true, but especially when that change isn't perceived as making your life easier, it's perceived to be making it more difficult. And using a larger hose or more nozzle reaction or trying to do that is often one of the sticking points because it's like you're trying to make what I've been doing harder. I've been using this inch and a half and that's

been really easy. Why do I have to do something that's now more difficult? And if it if you're doing something that's going to obviously make their life more more Easy is you're gonna make their life easier. I don't think they require as much explanation. We were testing out, you know, I was testing everything. We were testing two-inch hose, and some people right away were like, You're gonna have us using this instead of inch and three quarter, and and then other people said, Wait a minute, is this instead of the two and a half? Because if that's the case, I'm I'm down for that. And all it was is Which one are we replacing? One's gonna make my life harder, the other one's gonna make it easier, and that and that's a perception. We didn't go with two inch, but I always want to keep an eye on on all tools and see what's gonna work. And Clark, you know, I'd add one other thing, and and Daryl's made me think of this, like it it is really important. So when I was a captain, I had a really great operations chief and I was complaining about our firefighting nozzles and how we had just can inconsistency across all of our engines. So he he challenged me and empowered me and said, Hey, you y don't give don't come in here with me as an idea, man. You do solutions. So sure enough, I had a fantastic shift at engine eight. we worked diligently for many months and essentially we we came back with a proposal. We brought in yeah, every manufacturer we could. And so, they allowed me to go back to the senior staff and make a pitch, which was, just shy of four hundred inch and three quarter firefighting nozzles for every engine. about three hundred thousand dollars of a payment. And because they essentially let me come and do that, and I had to do everything from soup to nuts, right? You know, what what it cost, what the training was, the implementation, show what the testing was we did, they said yes. Like, you know, I made this pitch, I walked out of there, and the aide to the the exo to the ops chief called me an hour later and said, All right, man, you're approved, four hundred thousand dollars. Make sure they deliver it within six months. I'm like, What? But that resonated with me because when I became the ops chief. I learned very quickly is like if you empower people to own the organization and own the problem, then they own a piece of that. And they're gonna be much more passionate about it. And to Brent's point about getting the boots on the ground, not only do you have to involve them, let them do the process. You know, they have a lot of passion, having their new ideas. And and from that, like we had guys who redesigned all of our hose our hose loads. I mean, that's thirty eight thousand feet of hose. And Yeah, th th they were the f guys stretching the hose line are the ones who designed and came up with that change. So it really is important how you do it and how you structure it. But when someone does it to you, it really resonates and then if you progress to the ranks, you just keep pitching the forks. You've learned that. Perfect. Very well said. And I also like what you said, Chief Shaw. Change because something needs to be changed, not because you're the boss and you just have to put your stamp on something. Right? Brent Brooks, how about some closing thoughts, brother? Well, I'm going to whistleblow, if you want to call it that, and only because we're talking about change. And I'm telling you right now, the future is this. Right now, we run pot on the stoves on a regular basis, and we're really good at it. But I'm telling you, tomorrow or very shortly coming, lithium ion will be your next as common as a pot on the stove. I was just in New York for their high-rise symposium. they're delivering, I think it was 10,000 battery-powered oven ovens. they have battery powered packs that now go on your fridges in case your power goes out. all your vacuum cleaners, everything is becoming lithium ion. So our next pot on the stove is lithium ion. However, It is a pot on the stove that can't be extinguished and is highly, highly toxic. So if you're not if you don't if you can't get water on the fire, it's a problem. And you're gonna be fighting the fires even longer now. So you better start preparing now. That is my warning to you. that's what's coming. And hey, there's a really good article in this month's magazine about looking at ion battery and firefighting strategies. So give it read. Yep, yep. I just got chest pain hearing that. Jimmy Davis, closing thoughts, brother. No, change is coming, Brooksy. What you said too, not only are we changing in the fire service too, but emerging technologies too. I mean, you're gonna be at a point where you actually have to induce or a mandatory change just to keep up with what what things are going, Clark the Big Box, the data centers, Brooksy with the lithium ions. you're gonna be in a point where it you gotta keep up with the Joneses, man. So great topic today, guys. Ron, any final thoughts, brother? No, just thank you again for having me on. I truly appreciate it. I've learned from every one of you. been at conferences with more than half of you and you have been the direct influence that helped shape our department's response and change. So thank you to of you. I'm away from your hunt. yeah. Everybody here now being small instructing roles is really nice with you guys. But if I can give any advice to anybody out there who's trying to make change in their department, I would say enjoy the process. Enjoy it. It's you know, you got one crack of this career, make it the best one. And if you you know if you're passionate about that that craft, enjoy it. It's you know, I loved every minute about this high rise program and just keep learning more and keep the program growing. yeah, I've loved every minute of it. So it's it's like it's fantastic. So whatever it is that you're trying to change your department, just enjoy the process and and dive right in headfirst. Patience, don't get discouraged, talk to the right people. Phil, you and Rob, you and Rob are the future of the fire service. You guys are up and coming, you're the future. Everyone else is the past. Everyone else, all of us are the past, and I think we're in I think the very the fire service is in pretty good hands. With guys like you. All right. I'd like to thank everybody. Thank everybody for tuning in and listening and supporting us. Thank Kehhost for their constant support. We do appreciate you. and we are looking forward to next month's Hump Day Hangout. So that being said, stay safe out there. Look after each other.