Full Transcript for Remembering Nate Flynn: Fireground Lessons and Firefighter Survival

position you're in a position to be able to pull a pull the plug like that and do that. So I hope this is a good good thing for you and and will be exciting and we'll we'll catch up more about that later. Let's talk a little bit about Nate. So those of you who have been with Mayday Monday, you know we have featured this is the third show we're gonna do about talking about Nate Flynn and he had an impact on all those who really who knew him and in the fire service. Nate was born in Virginia Beach. Sounds like he was a military family growing up and and he married married his wife Celeste. They had five kids, Alex Gavin, Cheegan, Connor and Brecken. at the time of his passing he was a thirteen year veteran of the Howard County Department of Fire and Rescue Services, an instructor. And again, some of you may have met him on the you know, doing the FDIC stuff. He was out there, he was doing some some teaching with different companies. very big into special operations. so he lived up in Pennsylvania, is that where he lived? he spent some time in Pennsylvania. But I believe they were actually in Maryland. but yeah, he was a FDI and C instructor. He was a member of a special operations team during Woodscape. Yeah, but he was a volunteer up in Susquehanna, up in the Havid Grace area of Maryland. Okay, yeah. I thought Susquehanna was Pennsylvania, but that was actually Havertgrace. They're almost it's on the border of Pennsylvania, right? Yep, exactly. Involved in the Hartford County technical rescue team hobbies. He was a model railroader and into boating. and definitely into kids, right? 'Cause when you have that many you have to be you have to pretty be be pretty active in your activities and spend some time spend some time with that. If if you feel if you don't know, again, Celeste is now been active in the fire service since this and making some really real changes to benefit us firefighters in the service, right? In in in the the investigation of this fire revealed that corrugated stainless steel tubing that was providing the gas supply to the house actually developed a hole in it. And subsequently, right, other fires that we found, other incidents in Maryland and then other places that use this tubing have found that it is a not the best not the best material to to be used for this in this fashion. And Celeste and other fighter service widows have been fighting for this in Maryland and other l other places to get this changed, get the law changed so that this would be outlawed. Nate, did you I'm sure you got to see him on shift and stuff. Yeah, Nate actually and I were the same academy class in two thousand five. So That top, the upper left hand picture, if you look closely underneath of his lid, it says 9 30 five, because that's the day we graduated the academy together of class 20. So we were classmates. we were assigned to the same station for a little while. spent most of my career at company seven. And he was just there on a different shift for a little while before he moved on to special ops and he had other assignments too. yeah, and him and his wife Celeste is a phenomenal woman. Her and Sarah Laird and some others run the Phoenix Advocates, which have done more for the fire service than most people can shake a stick at. And what they're doing and the lessons they're putting out there and the training and the information is just phenomenal from line of duty deaths all the way to the CSST. She knows more than a lot of fire investigators out there. And she actually will go to fire investigation conferences to educate them. it's it's phenomenal work that she's doing. And yeah, they have five kids. She had two from a previous marriage and then they together they had three and the youngest of which were a set of twins. and just an amazing, amazing, resilient, beautiful family. Yeah, and you mentioned I know I have been speaking somewhere and she'll pop in, you know, and just just to say hey and connect and or, you know, if I'm basement fighter stuff, if I'm talking about that, you know, she she'll make an an appearance and It's always always great to see and connect and see what she is doing for the fighter service. Let's talk a little bit about Howard County. So at that time, right, you when you were employed there, it's an old, old county founded in eighteen thirty-eight, two hundred and fifty-three square miles. Does it touch Baltimore? Yeah, so yeah, we're there in the middle in the red and that northeast borders Baltimore County with that little square being Baltimore City. So some of our first due box alarms in our upper northwest corner where I used to be assigned on the boulevard the Elk Ridge area, we used to have Baltimore City engines on the first alarm. We run mutual aid with them when they have some bigger incidents. we'll sometimes get special called for transfers or, you know, covering fires, whatever the case may be. So we're pr we're pretty close. it's not a constant, super frequent thing, but it's not a surprise to us if they're coming down to help us or we're going up to help them. yeah, we're the second smallest county in the state, but we with the even though we are small in size, we have a little bit of everything. So Hopkins is one of our biggest employers. we have some of the most affluent zip codes in the entire nation, but we also have socioeconomically depressed areas with Route 1 in 70. So we have pretty crazy human trafficking cases and drug cases. We have major thoroughfares for drugs and human trafficking. And we have a little bit of every type of building construction you can think of, from garden apartments to the mansions to commercial. We literally have everything in our county. That's been on the news like it's just you know, pre Civil War era buildings, many of and just tremendous, tremendous history. So And it's still on on the rise with with all the building they have. So it's a it's a pretty wild place for as small as it is and as affluent as it

is. we s we we affectionately say from the ghettos to the meadows that we we have we have a little bit of everything in there. Yeah, and right so an urban urban fire department all the way to a rural tanker fire department, right? Yeah, absolutely. In fact, like I said, where I spent most of my career in company seven. We were smacked up in the heart of the county. So we had a great position to run box alarms a little bit everywhere. And just in my first do, we had rural water supply and we had high rises. as soon as we crossed this one highway, we were in rural, but in the core of the town, we're right next to the Columbia Mall and Merriweather Post Pavilion, which is a huge concert venue. So we have we have, yeah, a little bit everything. West side of the county is very rural. The east side of the county is a lot of commercial and then every type of residential thing you could think of. the we were one of the first planned communities in the nation. and so you just see where that started in the center of Columbia and it kind of ballooned up from there. So a lot of a lot of mixed interface. Yeah, it's funny you say that 'cause I guess again, growing up in Northern Virginia, right? That was Columbia was always that, yeah, almost like a like a developed like a they they made a neighborhood, right? It was all designed and and planned. Planned neighborhood. That was that's interesting. Yeah. So you can see a good that's a good indication also of population. The picture on the bottom right, that's those are that's the governing sections, right? Divided up into representatives and stuff like that. So you can tell, right, that big blue section, there's not a whole lot of people there in that that blue, but there's the same number of people in blue as there is in in yellow and green. So that that area definitely is a rural spread out area. The fire department's a combination system, right? Does it still still have a have a bunch of volunteers that that come out? So there is a volunteer presence. some houses are definitely more frequent and busier and well attended than others. But there is yeah there is a volunteer presence for sure. And there there are career only stations like the stations on the right there. We have fourteen total, and we have plans to have another two to three come online over the next five to ten years. And those six there on the left are the c original volunteer houses, and there is a career presence now in all of them. So there's at least four people on suppression and two on the ambulance for every firehouse at a minimum. Nice. So that's a minimum staffing is four. Four people on the fire truck? Yeah, four engine, four special, two on the AMBO. every station has at least one ALS provider on the medic unit. And then some stations also have some BLS ambulances. But yeah, it's four, four, and two as a minimum. Do you know how many career personnel there are in the Howard County now? Yeah, we are I think we're close to six hundred career personnel. I know the union is I think approaching five hundred, we may even broke that. So yeah, I think we're close to six, seven hundred career personnel. You know, we're not obviously an F D NY or anything crazy like that, but we are in the top ten percent of locals, like IFF local sizes. So how many were there when when you got when you got hired, how many career were there? man, I think two hundred and fifty high twos. Yeah, my class was one of the first with big hiring. That's cool to see the See that progress like that, right? yeah. And then all the stuff that you added, the ladder trucks and and special pieces and swift water and yeah, that that's that's cool to see that stuff go through there. Here is some of the capturing right the new fire trucks, modern fire trucks, set to a sp specification, definitely some some things that that you've gone through with with growing and and having a a developed system in the fire service. Alright, let's get into the incident here. So the the building, like you said, there's some affluent areas. This is obviously one of them, right? This is obviously an area that had nice houses, big big houses. the place was seventy three hundred square feet just above ground, with eleven hundred plus in the basement. Unfinished, there's an unfinished area in the basement and then there's a finished area in the basement there, but huge house. Now, do I heard of these people like they used to do a lot of events at their house? Yeah, they were politicians and doctors from the area. you know, they were I think at one point on the board of ed, like they were very active in the community. And this is pretty much in the center, kind of south central part of the county. interesting story. I actually grew up about a mile from here, but I joke that I did not grow up in a house like that. I grew up in a 1950s rancher with orange and brown shag carpet and wood panel on the walls. but I knew the area pretty well. And this is part of this one side street that just had these mansions and yeah, 7300 main level and top level. The finished part of the basement was eleven hundred square feet, but it was really odd above the basement. But below the main level, in the middle, in the core of the structure, was a 1,000 square foot crawl space. And it was used for storage. It was used for all the decorations. It was used for all the catering equipment when they would have political events and parties. So think like Costco sized dishes and all of the tables and chairs. They had old oil tanks from one was on oil heat down in there. It was basically hoarders' conditions. And in the five hundred square feet, it was about four to five feet tall. It's all underground. And there's one wall that separated the space five hundred square feet and five hundred square feet with one open door in the middle. but otherwise it was, yeah, pretty much orders conditions. It was it was very tight in there. And that was the origination point for the

fire. That yeah, that there's definitely some some hidden secrets, if you will, right? That that we didn't Necessarily we obviously we knew, but yeah, we didn't know there was a crawl space in there until days later. we had no idea that we were operating in a crawl space. And you can see from the picture here, Side Charlie is so massive. I think it was 150 feet long from end to end that there's the upper side of Side Charlie where the garages are, and then there's a gray change in the middle, and then there's the lower side of Side Charlie. So from the front you see levels one and two. From the back side, because you don't see bedroom windows from the roof line, but you see the basement entrance in the main level, people were also calling that two stories. So it was confusing to command in a lot of people that you're calling two from the front and two from the rear, but that you have basement access and there's still only two stories. So it was pretty confusing there for a while with the grade change. It's 2 a.m. and it's it was just an odd layout, obviously, with it being a mansion. custom home. You guys that were with us last month, you heard that. You heard some of those right those tactical gaps in there that that these guys that are on the ground that are with the building, they're they're looking at the building and they're trying to relay that back to command. Right and command has got a picture in his head and then you guys have a have not just a picture, but you have the actual entrances and then there was a lot of movement in here that we'll get into, but with this one, right, it was identified ahead of time about the water supply capability, the pool that was in the backyard and units that respond to this address knew there was a pool back there and that they should capitalize on the that pool to be able to use for for fire operations. Those guys even carried a pump, right? Yeah, it's a very odd street in our area. So this was Clarksville's area. I was one Or I guess we were third due to this fire. But on the main street out on Guilford Road, which was about a half a mile out, it's a hydrated road. But this street, Woodscape Drive, was not hydrated and you got long lays in. The battalion chief on his computer had the most recent update, so he could see that there was a pull in the backyard when all the frontline units didn't have the update and couldn't see that. So the chief called that out. Now They originally parked on side alpha. The chief had them repositioned to side Charlie on the back side of the garage there. And what they found was the pull in the backyard. But 51, their volunteer chief, a brilliant guy, he actually created and patented his own pump. And it's basically a large sum pump that you can get, I believe it's 200 feet away from the engine, maybe 150 feet, and it's hydraulically driven, and you can hook it up to your four inch LEDH. So they get the pump, they run it down to the pool, you drop it in, hook up your LDH,

and you press a button and it's hydraulically driven, and you can get five to six hundred GPM back to your engine. So it's a really cool piece of equipment. So that was their plan. So that's one plan for water supply. And then I like I said, I'm getting ahead, but I was third deal myself and the remaining units laid in from the hydrant out on the main road of Guildford Road. And created secondary water supply that way. Yeah, so this is this is the the the layout of the what was there was like there was a floor above also, right? A second f floor if you want. Yeah, that's just the the main level. yeah, but there are the bedrooms on the second floor. So this is the the ground level, would you call it this? we would say main level or floor one. Main level okay okay. So the main level and initially right when units arrive on the scene, again going there was This you were on the original dispatch, right? Because it was sent out as as alarm. Yeah. So this was dispatch is what we call in our f in our area a local box. Some people call it a street assignment. So it's two engines, one truck, an ambo, and a battalion chief. Because it was just dispatches smoke in the building. So backing up, there was a big storm came through. we had a lightning strike, and for the weather nerds out there This lightning strike generated 10 times more energy than any other lightning strike in the area as a storm came through. The lightning bolt hit a mature hardwood tree, ran down the tree, ran the root system, found an underground propane tank, went through the tank, ran through the CSST lines in the structure. Those CSST lines failed, arced, and basically created this finger of flame up against the dimensional lumber in the crawl space. And it burned unchecked for almost 40 minutes before the homeowner smelled smoke. And so I think the lightning strike happened at one ten or one twenty in the morning. And it was just a little bit before two AM. They found the smoke. So it's now burning unchecked for 40 plus minutes. And then the call was dispatched. Within a couple of minutes, yeah, there you go. One fifty one. I think it was right around one twenty was when the lightning strike occurred. And so they just dispatched as a local box. As the first two engines getting on scene, they can smell smoke. They're eight hundred yards away and they can already smell it, so they have a good idea something's happening. they get on scene and excuse me, I told you kind of about their initial water supply. But initially they they parked on the eight side. Did did they did they parked in the driveway there initially? Yeah, they parked in the front driveway, and that's when the battalion chief came back and said, Hey, fifty one, I want you to go around to the backside and do the submersible pump and and get on the backside there. Yeah. engine one zero one was a second due engine. They just handjacked a hunt they parked in the front and handjacked a hundred feet down to the end of the driveway. When Battalion Chief One got there, he saw that and thought, water supply's complete. But it hadn't. So they're searching for fire. first units go in, they have you know high heat, low visibility. They have three thermal imaging cameras among five people and they have indications that, hey, maybe we have fire underneath of us. We gotta find some basement access. But those messages never got over the radio because fifty one's is the initial command structure as the chief is still responding. But they they moved, right? They went in the front did they go in the front door and then go around back to the to that laundry room or did they not make the make the front door? No, they didn't initially go to the front door. What they ended up doing was You can see those first lines. They went in between the garage and the laundry room. They actually found a lot of really high heat coming up from behind the laundry appliances. And the tower ten officer, who's an amazing fire ground officer, said, Hey, something's not right. I think this is below us. We got to get out of here. No they couldn't see active fire, but they do have a lot of heat and low visibility. So they pull out, they pull an additional attack line and find entrances on Side Charlie. Once they get to Side Charlie, they force the door, they go in through the basement level, and it's basically cold smoke conditions. Not a lot of heat. You do have smoke. It's lazy. It's non-pressurized. And there don't have any really good indications that they have fire in the basement. While this is happening, engine 101, the second due engine officer, is coming around from the upper side of Side Charlie. Making their way down to the lower side of Side Charlie. Now, when all the doors are closed, you don't see any fire, just smoke pouring out of this building. When they open the basement door, it changes the flow path through the basement, up the crawl space, out through the main level. And when the basement door is opened, now you see fire blowing through the main level. The second duo officer sees this and says, Hey, I got fire showing on the main level. So all the firefighters drop what they're doing and run back up to the upper side of side Charlie where they initially entered. Tower 10's officer stays back there and says, you know, hey, I gotta control this. And every time he's trying to shut the door, the door keeps getting ripped open. Part of it, they think is from the fire searching for that oxygen. It's pulling that door back in because it's wanting to get air. Some of it's from damage to the door. Tower 10's officer stays back there though. And finally gets the door secured. Once it's secured, fire goes away again. You don't see it. It gets darkened down. The fire that 101 saw goes away. Yeah, as soon as that door gets closed, the fire gets darkened back down again, and they don't see it as much. So it kind of keeps going up, keeps going down. Now, while this was happening, keep in mind, we

just got picked up on the upgrade. So I'm the third due engine. I'm the first engine that's gonna be there from the upgrade. So we get there and selfishly, I'm still thinking that this is smoke from a lightning strike. I'm still thinking all these radio messages either are not getting out because of poor communication, or more likely it's I've just missed it because they're talking for five minutes before I even get alerted. So the whole second half of the box alarm doesn't really know what's going on. They just hear we're responding to a lightning strike. So I'm thinking burn up insulation, maybe some a pop. Breaker to I'm probably not even going to get off the wagon. That's my mindset. And as we get there, I start realizing that, hey, there's something going on. They can't find fire. There's a lot of communication back and forth about trying to find where the location is. I'm like, okay, maybe something's going on. Selfishly, I'm trying to get close to the fire scene. And I stage at this one hydrant out on the main road, and I asked the battalion chief, I have to pull him away from what he's doing and ask him, like, I don't see water supply. I have no idea what's going on. Do you want me to lay a line in? Or do you just want me to show up on scene the split lay? And he said, no, go ahead, lay it out from that hydrant, bring it all the way in. We carry a thousand feet of four inch and I run out of all my four inch, which is an engine lieutenant. That's a gut-wrenching feeling. And fortunately, my driver was amazing and engine one zero one, the second due engine, their engine operators pulled I think it was two or three hundred more feet of LDH, made the connections, had a positive water source from the hydrant, and we never lost water the entire incident. so they did a great job making that up quickly. Now keep in mind, by the time I get on scene, the fire has been burning unchecked for close to an hour, just shy of an hour, and no water has been flown in the structure yet. Can we stop for saying we stop? Yeah. Because I wanna I wanna talk about this slide here that that Was it was in what you sent me and this is so a lot of this stuff you didn't hear this stuff, right? Yeah, I think I got on scene yes, somewhere around that two ten mark, two five mark. So those first half of transmissions I don't hear any of. I have no idea. You guys have been been on May Day Mondays before, you know, we we did a red flag, we looked at red flags earlier this year with Alexandria Fire Chief or Battalion Chief Wells Wilson. We talked about his fire his his high rise fire that he had and some of the red flags that were showing up. Same thing. This is another indication that this fire is not going the way that it normally does. Again, Josh mentioned it too. like he was he's been the previous lightning strikes, right? So his bias, his bias is I'm not gonna get off the fighter truck. this is this is what you would expect. it's it's insulation in the hall space or in

the void, right? In in an area that that because again not I know, you know, I from looking at at what I've seen with Josh and heard and and people tell me about him that that he's a conscientious guy. But you heard you heard him talk about his bias, right? Is that is that bad? Yeah, right? Is it natural? Yes, right? These are things that are gonna happen to us. Good fighter f good fighter officer, bad fighter officer, you know, new guy, old guy. New guys don't have any biases because they haven't seen this kind of thing, right? They're going through everything with with an with an open mind. so so we have to be diligent. We have to be We have to be we we can't be complacent. We can't you know, I've I've been there before. Again, I'm not you know, so these are the things that creep into this is what creeps into our thinking for even the most conscientious fire officer. So red flag status, these are some of the things that we see, right? Heavy smoke in the basement. Haven't found the fire yet. Smoke in the basement. Moderate smoke coming from the ground level. Now we're getting okay, we now we have conflicting things here. We got basement smoke, now we have smoke coming from the from the ground level, smoke in the basement and then can't find the fighter. So all of these things should start to start to cause your hair to to to come up on the back of your neck. Incident commanders, you should be hey, hey, this isn't this is different. Something is different here. All right, back back to you, Josh. Yeah, no, I appreciate you saying that. one thing I'd like to touch on with the Tower Tens report where he says I got moderate smoke coming from the ground level, he's looking at the side alpha entrances and he's seeing smoke come from the bottom of them. Now, for me, that has always been an indicator that you pr that it's not a guarantee, but there's a good chance you have a lower level fire. And when that radio transmission is gets gets put out, I'm like, okay, something else is going on here. If I'm seeing smoke coming from the bottom of the door. Or if I'm seeing it come from the ground level, good chance, hey, maybe I should start at a lower level. When I get on scene as the third due engine on the upgrade, I notice that it's lazy smoke, it's not pressurized, but it is brown. So now I'm sitting there thinking, okay, it's it's structural components now. It's gonna be deep seated. there's more going on here. And talking about biases, my bias was I'm not getting off the engine. And now my bias flips, and I'm like, I need to get in there as fast as I can to catch fire. Right. And once we get to side alpha, so where I'm housed, I was the engine lieutenant at the time. It's engine. We have a ladder truck, ladder truck seven, and also our medic unit. So together we were there showing up essentially the same time. We both go to side alpha. Truck seven is a second due truck. So they Get assigned as writ right off the get-go. And we were originally told to go

inside. We were going to go force the front door. Actually, one of my firefighters already forced it. I take a look in, it's non-pressurized. I don't see any heat currents. Floor to ceiling smoke. It's not hot. gave me a false sense of security. All right. And I was getting ready to go right in over top of this. And right as we're our crews are making entry, the chief is like, Hey, you know what? Something's not right. Hold up right there. And just stay on deck on Inside Alpha. That was our lingo for just stay in a four position, you're in the hot zone, you're ready, but don't commit. so we stayed there. We were only on scene, company seven. we were only on scene for one minute and I believe forty five seconds from the time the Mayday went out. So things evolved quickly. This is a good overview of of the big scene that's going on again. You guys brought brought some water in from Guilford to to the woodscape street. you had to get up the hill to get to the house. So here Yeah, so that was the mayday that got put out by engine one zero one's officer. So what happened was we're on deck on side alpha. We were getting ready to go in. We were told to hold up. one zero one, Nate pulls another attack line after he ran up from the basement hearing, Hey, I have fire on the main level, he pulls another attack line, goes back through that entrance that they had gone into when they first started, and they went in to go search for fire. What the investigators found was that a hole was already present in the floor and Nate went into the hole. once Nate went into the hole, Cruise, I mean, immediately went into like recovery mode. So the engine one zero one got out her mayday. At the exact same time, Nate got out his mayday, and I believe I have that here as well. So that was Nate's Mayday. Unfortunately, he was on Bravo Two, and we had a feature turned on on our radio called Last Channel Power Up. And Alpha Two is our main ops channel for EMS and kind of the lower budget calls of fire alarms and minor wrecks. I can only assume, but he was probably on Alpha Two, because that was our main ops channel when he was responding to the fire. He probably switched over zones to the Bravo zone. But When the radio is off, you can play with every single button. And when you power the radio back on, this feature brought you to the last channel that you were on. We have since turned that feature off. And so, granted, I'm I can I'm only assuming here, but he probably was on Alpha Two and then during the fire had switched over zones, but not the channel selector over to the Bravo One. So his mayday was never heard until days later, once the communications channel picked it up and recorded it. So 101 gets out her mayday. And 101, 51, and Tower 10 are all inside, hands in the hole, trying to get to Nate. So they are, they are, they were over top of this hole. They're over top of the hole, just taking a beating. And their tanks are getting hot. They're taking a beating. Tower 10's

officer made the decision hey, we have two lines in here right now. Pull the line that Nate is not on out because I don't want to create any confusion for any rip teams that come in here. Trying to decipher multiple lines. So they pull that line out. And then Tower 10's officer also made the decision. We're taking a beating. This place is already degraded. We're not making headway. We're not going to rescue Nate from this position. We got to try from a different vantage point. So they pull out and kind of reconvene. While that was happening, as soon as we hear the May Day, I knew that the truck, you know, our truck company was already assigned writ. We were probably going to be assigned with them. And I was already going to make moves to just be in some type of position where we can affect change. It's such a big house. The truck officer, we have a quick meeting. the captain, Jimmy Love from Truck Seven, we look at each other. We've been working together for a couple of years now and said, Hey, you go around Bravo. I'm gonna go around Delta. We're gonna put the 360 picture together. So that way we save time. Let's meet on the backside. So We do our three sixties, we meet on the backside of the basement entrance. And my engine company, just phenomenal two guys. They had the charge 300 foot attack line there. My goal is to tell them, hey, this is the best place to bring the line. They followed me the whole time and had it flaked out, a charge line ready to go. there's this, I feel like there's this doctrine where sometimes it's better just to leave the line and pull a new one. We never train that way. We're gonna take our charge hose line with us everywhere we can unless there's an issue. And they did that and they had it done in seconds. They almost beat me to the back door. so they were ready and we were ready to go. We met on the backside. We were getting ready to make entry, and we still don't know exactly who said it. It's kind of the fog war thing, but we were given the order, you will not go in until we can confirm who it is and where. And so when you look at the timestamps, there is a seven minute difference. Because we were missing multiple firefighters. Some had gotten injured going in and out. And it wasn't until a couple minutes later that they actually found out that, all right, we did our par checks, everybody's out. So this video here is you know, I said early on that it's lazy brown smoke, right? When you look at this video, it's taken from the first end engine operator upper side of side Charlie, where they had an initially made entrance, and now you have. Angry black pressurized smoke. I don't want to say flashovers imminent, but if you don't affect any type of change, like it's it's common, right? And when you look at the timestamps, we had SCBA timestamps, radio transmission timestamps. when you look at this video, we were able to really cleanly see this was that video was taken two minutes and 16 seconds after we entered the basement and 10 minutes prior to actually. grabbing Flynn. And so I'm estimating it's probably just prior to us entering the crawl space. So anybody that can see the video, those are the conditions that we're going into this crawl space. And again, no real water has been flown. A couple little hit hot spots checking here and there, kind of trying to find fire, but no influential water has been flown in the structure yet. So now you're looking at over an hour of free burn time. thing's cranking, the floor's degraded, and we have a missing firefighter down what in what we think is the basement. So so you say again, nobody knew that there was a call space there. No. Right. And so what what was was it was it zero viz when you made entry? So when we first made entry, it's engine and truck seven. The picture on the left is the picture on the left here, that's the ground level, or that's the that's that's the basement. Okay. So that's the basement. And you see those doors on the right. That's probably the doors we entered in. They had a bunch of French doors in the lower level of the basement. So we go in, I'll go in with myself included, seven guys, engine and truck, and that set of steps you see in the corner is actually the steps that take you from the basement back to the main level in the core of the structure. That picture on the right. No, sorry, the picture on the left. That shows that little staircase in the corner. Yeah, okay. Yeah, with all the fire line tape across it. Yeah, I see it. Yeah, that took you from the basement to the main level. And some of the truck guys go up those set of steps. This they sweep their arm and like, my arm feels like it's going to melt off. We can't go this way. And I don't think Nate is in this direction. So they come back down the steps and we keep searching up. So keep in mind we have a 300-foot attack line that started on side alpha, went around. Half of the building and is now inside Charlie, and we're now going from Charlie back towards side alpha in the core of the building. So we're searching our way up and in the 1100 square foot finished section of the basement, there is a weight room, a movie theater, an open fireplace, living room, full kitchen, wet bar, closets, and all kinds of stuff. So we're searching our way up. It feels like cold smoke conditions. The tile's super slick from all the tar and soot that's dropped out of the smoke. And we basically make our way back all the way back to side alpha portion of the building and we find this half set of steps. And that's that top right picture that you have. That that top right picture is the half set of steps that we go up. We're like, we have nowhere else to go. It's kind of taking us back toward the core of the structure where we think the crews were operating in. Again, we had no idea it was a crawl space. I thought it was it was such a custom huge home. I thought it was maybe a sunken living room. so we go up the steps and as soon as we hit the top

of the steps, ton of fire, but I hear Nate's pass device. and that's when I talk to the truck officer. I was like, hey, I hear his past device, we're gonna go up and grab him. And that's when all kind of hell breaks loose. And that's where if I don't know if you wanted to show the video of the the pathway. Yeah, so this is drone footage that he took a couple days after the fire. And this shows our general location. So we're coming in the back side. We search through, make our way back to the front of the structure. the steps are off to the right. That's the fireplace off to the right. We're kind of going through the kitchen wet bar area. We make the turn towards the front of the structure. We see a storage room with that half set of steps. We go up the steps, and then you see the the 1,000 square foot sunken crawl space. Again, four to five feet tall, hoarders conditions. That load bearing stringer there in the middle, that's kind of the center point, and that's where Nate fell. And so Nate, when he fell, he searched down that wall and he stopped moving in the doorway that connected the two spaces. So as we go in, we hear the pass device. I say, hey, I remember thinking it was kind of a blessing and a curse because there's a hole in the floor, it took some of the heat off of us. so everything's kind of issuing through that hole. But we had we also had enough fire to see kind of what was going on. So we saw all the storage and I remember looking over to my lineman, Joey Alison Drini. Another phenomenal dude. He opens the line, he's starting to knock it down. First real water that's been flowing in the structure. again, well over an hour now of burn time. And I remember seeing he's kind of hunched over. And when that happens, I feel I remember feeling wires pull across my chest. And I remember thinking, I've been a fire ground survival instructor for, you know, a handful of years at this point. I can swim technique under this. I can get to Nate, but then I gotta bring him back through all this. That's gonna be a mess. So I remember clipping all the wires in front of me and trying to manage that like kind of that rat's nest of just wires and junk. And then I look over at Joey and he's hunched over. He's senior guy, phenomenal lineman, super calm, highly experienced. And I remember he's hunched over. And I remember thinking, like, Drini, I got we gotta go up and get Nate. We're taking a beating, and he's hunched over in this awkward position, which is atypical for him. And in probably one of the worst moments of his life, he goes, Bro, I'm stuck and the nozzle stuck. He was wrapped so tight in wires that he couldn't sit up and he couldn't even open the bale of the nozzle. However, it happened, whatever dropped on top of us, wrapped the nozzle so tight he couldn't even open the bale. 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. So I had my cutters out and I just keep cutting away. So I'm cutting him so he can get freed open. the nozzle gets freed. He starts knocking down more fire. And the truck captain who's with us, as the other writ team leader, is getting tangled in wires. From the light from the fire, I can actually see him as he's trying to get out of our way. He's kind of hog tying himself and he's just getting cinched down tighter. So I clip him free. He's able to skirt off to the side. And in that moment, I remember thinking, I look back at the truck guys who were there, and Mun Yuan was was with us. He said, he said, Hey, I got the rest of this, I'll keep clearing wires. You know, go on a up ahead because he was he was kind of behind us in the stack. I remember thinking, It's so nasty in here right now. I'm worried about collapse, I'm worried about flash over. I if something bad happens. I don't want to have to hit a wall of truck bodies if we all have to bail quickly. Because half of us are in the crawl space. The other are at the top of the excuse me. The other half are at the top of the steps. Single stack on the steps. So that way if we have to bail, we have at least have a place to bail if you're going to stay on the steps. He's like, dude, I got you. I got the wires. We're going to single stack. We're good. This entire time, my backup firefighter, Andy Hoffman, just another. I'm I was surrounded by phenomenal human beings that night with our writ team and our companies. he has no idea any of this has happened. He was kind of off to my right. He searched off to the right a little bit in the crawl space, misses the entire entanglement, has no idea that we had gotten caught up. And he was the first one to nate. When he gets to Nate, he finds him kind of face down in that doorway. Andy has his buddy breathing line out. He's ready to do an air exchange if need be. I had no idea Andy was even up there yet. So once the wires get cleared, I'm hitting the floor as hard as I can, like I'm in a home run derby, making sure the f the floor's still there. drop my Halgin bar, drop my cutters, and I search up towards the sound and I find Andy there with Nate. He sits them up, kind of repackages them really quick, just to kind of orient him. What are what are the conditions like right now? Just smoke, heavy smoke. So there's still fire. And Joey's doing a great job keeping it all in check, knocking it down as much as he can. He's he's not putting it all out though, because just of the volume of fire and the space we were in. And then with it being horror's conditions, with all the storage stuff they had in there, just a lot of pockets of fire from where he can't get from his vantage point. But again, not a ton of heat because of the hole. It's letting all the heat up, which was which helped us out big time. The whole thing going into kind of the venting. Yeah, everything's b able to vent, so we didn't take a massive beating with heat, which was nice. Okay, so he set he's setting them up. Yeah, so yeah, Andy s sets him up and Nate had his gear on great, his face pieces on, he's got air in his cylinder, all of his straps are on tight, all of his buckles are buckled, and and I see Andy doing a quick triage of him and it has his air out. I was like, he awesome. That's fantastic. He's got air in a cylinder. He's unconscious. Everything's falling down around us. Like, we just got to get the hell out of here. So if you can imagine, you know, just little trails coming in and out of this place. We each grab a shoulder strap. We try to pull and he doesn't budge. So I said, okay, we're going to do a three count. And imagine Andy and I are on all fours. We each have one hand on one shoulder strap. And I go, one, two, three, pull. And he budges. I'm like, okay, we're going to do that. So one, two, three, pull. One, two, three, pull. And we do that. And we're tripping over everything because we have one little tiny path, but we're trying to bring three dressed out bodies through all this mess. We're tripping over stuff. Stuff's falling down on top of us. I remember thinking that I was, I'm also, I've been a physical fitness trainer for 15 years. I've been doing CrossFit for almost 20. I know what it feels like to red line. And We had at a cr one of the most physically fit shifts out of anybody I've ever seen. super well rounded. And I remember thinking, I'm working within 95% of my overall capacity. I want to go to 100 right now, but if I do and I get throw one more curveball, I am so physically and mentally exhausted that I will not be able to do the most minor of skills to save our own butts right now. Yeah. So I remember having this conversation in my head. I'm saving five more percent. I'm at ninety-five percent. I'm gonna save it just in case I get thrown one more curveball. One thing I didn't mention while while all this is going on, the first two engine, engine fifty-one, their pump takes a crap on scene, has a computer issue, and goes out of service. So they lose that entire water supply and the engine is out. one of the mechanics actually lived in the area. They called him at, you know, two thirty in the morning and he runs the scene and within like thirty minutes, they get it back up and running. But another curveball. You know, you know, the first two engine now takes a crap while we're stuck in the crawl space. Yeah. We finally get back to the top of the steps with Nate. We're completely exhausted. We pass him off to the truck crew, and the truck crew starts to bring him down the steps and out. And

as a the engine officer and one of the office one of two officers on the writ team, you know, you should be managing your people and keeping a heads up. Within 60 seconds, all seven of our bells start ringing. And Now I'm thinking we've got a down firefighter. We are physically and emotionally absolutely crushed right now. And we still have to make it out of the structure. And we're down to our last third of error. So we get out of the structure. because we were underground, surrounded by block walls, we weren't able to get any radio transmissions out until we were out of the crawl space. So even if we had our own mayday, we wouldn't have been able to transmit that. but once the truck officer got out. Into the main level of the basement, then we got our radio comms back. so we get down to the basement, we get back out into the main finished area, and I remember the truckers tired, they got to take a quick second. And I remember seeing Nate on the floor. I'm like, I've done this a million times. I'm gonna pick Nate up, I'm gonna drag him out the rest of the way. And I was I I consider myself pretty fit. I've done that evolution a million times. I picked him up and he doesn't move an inch. incredibly humbling. And fortunately They had a secondary writ in place. They moved all the furniture. They had lights set up on the outside. It was like a beacon. We saw a straight shot that we needed to go. And the secondary writ team came in, grabbed him, and got him out. One of them was Rich Blankenship, who's no longer with us. He passed away from cancer, left behind five kids. two, three of the kids now work for the department. one of them was at with my firehouse as well, years later. but Rich was a phenomenal guy and got Nate out the rest of the way. And Nate got passed out to his own crew. So Nate was station 10, engine 10 special ops. Paramedic 10, one paramedic 105 was on the backside waiting for him. They took charge, dressed him down. But just think of that mind state of this is my guy. the paramedics phenomenal, took charge, said, I'm in charge. I got this. This is what I need. This is what I want. And they provided started doing resuscitation efforts. Something else that I think is pretty alarming is as we're coming out of the building, the secondary route team comes in. Part of that was Tower Ten. again, amazing, amazing human being, great officer. He goes at the top of the steps that we were in and he said it was a sea of fire. The the rest of the space had collapsed. So from his eyewitness testimony, and then ATF and NIST imported all the materials and r literally rebuilt the structure. Wow. Had all the same load and everything in it. And their timestamps confirmed it through their test burns that we had about 60 seconds, maybe 120 seconds max, before the rest of the space collapsed. And I don't use that stat to be like, look at what we did, or to fluff myself here. What I trying to the point I try to make with that stat is within 60 seconds, there could have been seven more dead or injured firefighters. And So many little things to generate operational tempo matter. So if we were not physically fit, if we didn't manage our air, if the backup guy didn't manage the hose line and the turns well, if our search techniques were poor, if we didn't manage the entanglement, you take any tiny little task and you just took five seconds longer for every single one of these, we would have been in that structure for minutes. And you see it in battalion trainings. One company can perform an evolution in three minutes and another company performs it in ten. That could have been a very different evolution, but I was so fortunate to be surrounded by rock stars that night. it wasn't the outcome, obviously, that we wanted because Nate passed. it could have been a lot worse though. And we overcame just an incredible amount of challenges getting Nate out, at least, with the conditions that we had. I this is this is so rare that we find a writ team that actually had to battle in, right? They had to fight their way in and then fight their way out. so many times maydays are resolved within seconds, right? Whether it's a fall from the whether it's a fall into the basement, but there's crews that are in the basement, whether it is you know, a guy gets lost but there's he's but there's a crew that's nearby and finds him. And It's just it's it's just a testament, right, that that that you guys were ready and I I I want people to to listen to that while we get while we get lulled into the maydays that are very s very very min minor maydays, right? They're the firefighter's not entangled, he's not heavily entrapped. we did we talked to Bill Rector, I know you I know you know Bill from from Southern Maryland. Yep. Southern Marlin, who was in command of the the rescue of Bryce in Southern Maryland years ago. who that that fighter fighter, they he was heavily entrapped. Yeah. Again, a different scenario, right? Because if you look at that fighter, they had like one guy, they sent one guy into that into that space. You're here we're sending a a team of people into this space because it took a team of fight fighting the fighter, of like you said, you had to cut your way in and then once you get him you had to had to also get him back out. I I want people to think, am I ready for that? Am I am I, you know, physically, mentally ready for that scenario? Because that's what being the Rit team is all about. Again, I know Josh. Josh, I know. I can see you right now on a fire where they gave you the writ assignment and you're like, I don't wanna sit outside. Right? Sure. You you've been there? A hundred percent. I've been there. We've all we've all been like like I wanna be w in in where I volunteered, it was the third arriving engine. Well we're gonna we're gonna slow down so we're fourth arriving 'cause I don't wanna be the writ. Yeah. Right? Well So now okay, so now you are the writ team. You're you get assigned the writ.

Are you ready? Are you in that are you in that condition that you can affect those skills to be able to give that guy the best chance? This didn't this didn't resolve the way that we all wanted it to, right? but you gave him the best chance. And it wasn't just because you woke up that morning and you thought, let's give him the best chance. It was it was years of of preparation. Years of preparation for one call. Absolutely. That ultimately, if you hadn't been working that day, would the same clue that was coming be able to give him the best be able to give him that same chance. No, it's okay. I appreciate you saying that. we were very fortunate and like you said, it was it was years of preparation, years of of of taking classes, years of becoming an instructor. Becoming a made a survival guru in my own little world, having people that were just as passionate and fired up to do it, to be physically fit, to have implicit trust with each other. So you can have the rock stars, but if you don't have the trust among each other, it still is for naught, right? and just so many amazing things came out of it. The very next morning, as we're going back to the firehouse, leaving the fire ground, we had just graduated a class of like 30 some people. You know, if that were 12 hours later, there would have been, you know, dozens of new people on their first call of their career. We were going through a pro testing promotional process during that time, and there were tons of people that dropped out because that call made it real that I'm not ready for this. And yeah, I'm just so fortunate that we had. I was surrounded by men and women that didn't mind doing hard things for years on end because we had people there on scene. One of the guys on our team would had six months in. And we had people there that were retiring just a couple of months later at the end of their careers. And the people that held up their end of their bargain throughout their whole careers made good things happen. So I th the you just said that. That was that's an amazing and like like self-awareness that people dropped out of the promotional process. Not not necessarily not even because not even because they might get assigned to a car like this, but just because they're responsible for people's lives. Yeah. Right? As a company officer, as a company officer, I send I send I don't have kids, but I have kids that they're not in the Fighter Service. But I I think about my wife who all the shit I put her through, every morning, right, she would wake up or or she would I would nudge her, I would Hey, I'm leaving, I'm going to work. And she would trust that I would do the right things to be able to bring myself home. Imagine, right, while I was while I was a dumb firefighter and she's got trust in we had a I worked for an officer named Braindead. Imagine having that, like, I'm trusting Braindead that to to bring my husband back home. And he did. I mean he you know, he was just that was a ho it came from a l years before. But again, just think about that, right? That that Yeah, are you ready for that assign for for being a company officer? Yeah, yeah. So we that could be a whole nother show, but I wanted to go over this one slide. This one slide you sent. You can walk me through this, right? Because this is the the Apple Watch slide. So yeah, I I always include this in my presentations and you can hit play. It takes a couple seconds to ramp up, but what you'll see here is this is Apple Watch data. This is SCBA data and radio communications data. So we were able to basically triangulate the ATF was all this data and have really accurate timestamps. So you look at his watch, you see it's clicking up. And basically we get to ride with Nate on his last call. So you see the time on his watches going. What we see here is the call is going to come out at 155. The time is sped up here, but once we hit 155, you know. The call gets dispatched, the box alarm gets dropped, and you see Nate actually wake up. There's his motion. He wakes up, he's running to the wagon. As he's going down the road responding to this fire, he's getting dressed. He actually you see him turn on his SCVA. so you you know he's getting ready. You know, his bottle's on before he even gets off the rig, right? You see some of the first air usage, probably when he's going into the upper level and then he stops, he's going back out. so he's managing his air, right? Once the mate happens, temperature alarm, both his watch and his SBA go over temperature. You actually watch the gauge, the air increases because of the heat and air expansion. Air increases and then no motion because he passes from hyperthermia. We have a really good timestamp. Here's motion because this is when we come in as the RIT team and actually get mate. It records the motion again. And then we pull him out, shut the bottle down once he's outside and brings him out. So just an interesting way to ride with Nate on his last call, but then also have really, really accurate timestamps and see the conditions of what we were encountering of his air expanded. He actually gained air according to his BA because it was so hot in there and air expansion. We see when he passed, but also when we were we came in to grab him. yeah, just a really interesting piece of data that you don't get from from a lot of calls. You found a lot of a lot of plays on on these guys. You definitely spoke highly of them. But they didn't just show up good. Right? They didn't show up to the firehouse. No. Like molded. I'm surrounded by rock stars. And there's actually this was from a fire you know a couple weeks later that we ran and these are not all the guys at Woodscape are in this picture and some of the guys that were not at Woodscape Are in this picture. And the thing that I like to echo on is that we had a rock star crew the night of Woodscape. And you could have taken any one of our people that were off on Kelly Day or detailed or on a

trade or had annual leave and you could have put them in. And I firmly believe the exact same outcome would have happened with what we had because they were all also rock stars in their own right. and again, that was curated over years of trust. Of training, of picking each other apart in healthy ways. Like, hey, something's not right, or I I've hit my upper limit with this. Who else has got a different idea? all right, every shift we're getting in the weight room. On our days off, we're gonna meet up and go to the gym. On every quarter we're gonna meet up and our families are gonna hang out. I know what your kids' names are. That is one of those touch points that's so invaluable that people don't realize. That to know that it's not just a detail guy that I'm working as I know his wife's name. We go on vacation together with our families. that brotherhood, I know we you toss that word around pretty loosely sometimes. but when you're in that environment and you see some of your best friends and you know what their kids' names are, it you operate differently. Well, I mean that that So I I'll go back to the to the flippant comment about I'm not gonna get off the fire truck. Right. This is gonna be a this is going to be a smoke a BS smoke run. Right. I I know I know I know where that's coming from, right? totally. So you have you have to be able to to flip it on though, right? I know I know that they when they woke up and got added to that call. they were thinking the worst. And then as you're going, you're getting these bits of information. So so I wanna I wanna make sure that that people don't think that we we discount we discount and we we take things we we you know again, we we don't take them all seriously, right? They're all they're all the the call of us the century until proven otherwise. Yeah, absolutely. Right. We go through we do all the things We do all these things that we prepare for. I saw a video yesterday of of a guy working he was working a door with with the Hallion bar. Eventually his he he wasn't getting it, so he turned around and kicked the door. Right? That everything that he everything that he all the time, all the effort that he put in years ago or li building up to that day, he just threw it out the window. Yeah. Right? Because y w this is the stuff that we train for, right? We train for these things. So now it's here. Why wouldn't we go why wouldn't we do the right stuff? Why wouldn't we go through and do those things? No, I I that's a great story. I'm I'm glad that we were able to connect this. we're gonna get into a skills drill here, but I'm really glad that that we made the connection and you got to tell this story. That's a whole different story than Chuck Ridgley told. Right. And Chuck was in a totally different different position. Yeah. Maybe even a totally different fire than than you were at, right? If you listen, he had a he had a d bunch of different things that he had to deal with where he was. And then your end was totally different too. Yeah, and I can't wait to t to listen to Chuck's Chuck yeah, Chuck's was my battalion chief. phenomenal. I keep I keep using that. I was surround I was so fortunate at that point in my career to be surrounded by amazing people. He was one of those chiefs that really cared about his employees, super thorough, loved the job and he took care of his people. And I know he made decisions that saved me and my crew that night. And I will always be thankful for that. and I know that thirty seconds in the fire ground can feel like five minutes. And it's sometimes especially for an incident commander. being in that car. And so even to this day, we'll talk to each other and be like, hey, I didn't know about this because just that fog of war and so many little nuanced bits of observation and everybody takes in that information a little differently. You know, still to this day sometimes we'll be like, man, I didn't realize that had happened. And you know, we'll still talk and and yeah, check in on each other. But he's great. We've talked to Chuck two times, right? We talked to him once the initial the initial May Day Monday that we did on Woodscape, right? Again, it was Chuck's view of it. You you weren't involved. Chuck was the only one there, right? He gave me his view. Yeah. Right. And then two years later we talked to Chuck again about it with a different with a different I was looking asking different questions, right? So it had a different focus. Mm-hmm. And then that so that there was different things there. And then listening to this. Yeah, it was totally different than what what Chuck was d was going through. And I hope that Ma Mayday Monday listeners put all these three shows together. And maybe there's another show with Josh later on going on. But but man, yeah, what a what a good what a bad story, what a what a great testimony, what what everything that you've learned that you've put together. we're gonna dig into it a little bit more into the S C B A thing. I wanna talk about that. Yeah, let's do it. This much Skillsville, we're gonna focus on SCBA, on SCBA work. Okay. some of the things that I I I learned Josh sent me over a program that he had done before and I took stuff out of that. One of the things that he highlighted in there was about SCBAs. And as you can tell from we talked about, he's all about like the physical fitness thing, how much how much your physical fitness can help you with your SCBA usage, but a typical, a typical routine usage of SCBA, this is what it looks like. Can you talk about what what this is showing? Yeah, so and I even sent you like the light version. I have a much deeper version where I go really deep in the weeds with with all kinds of stuff. But for this specifically, what I'm trying to illustrate here is physical wellness, but also your ability to manage And emotionally regulate and draw on your expertise. So we have three prongs here. A lot of times we throw out experience really

loosely, and I use this nuanced approach where I actually want expertise. Sometimes we say, I'm experienced. I have more experience than you. Well, you have more years on, but what have you done with those years? I want expertise. I want you to show me as close to mastery as you can. And what we have here is again, this is from Woodscape. Anytime you turn on your SCBA. Your BA records it and you can go to the tech and they can download the information. This is from Woodscape. This is from one of the most highly intelligent fire ground officers I will ever work with. I aspire to be this person. You know, I can hold my own in my own right, but this guy is somebody I aspire to be. he is tactically sound, he can emotionally regulate the stress from calls as good as anybody. He will tell you that he's not as physically fit as he should be, though. And What this BA graph shows if you talk to BA technicians from around the country is that this is a very typical SCBA usage chart from a from a from a fire in the American fire service. What you see here is that you have steeper than a forty-five degree drop using basic tactics on the fire ground. So this is forcing a door. This is just searching in. This is going now to searching in the basement. This is resecuring a door going back in. the break in the middle is when he swapped bottles and got a new SCBA cylinder. With the flat spots. The the the initial he turns his SCBA on, he uses it, has a pretty steep drop. A flat spot maybe disconnects and goes goes somewhere else in the house. Yeah, it goes to the basement, probably searches the basement, another drop comes back up to the main level, getting ready to go back in. That fourth drop is probably where he's hands in the hole. Trying to get to assist with Nate. And then the second graph is when he got assigned as a secondary red team and came back in as we're coming out with Nate. But the thing I like to draw on is that these flat spots are also when he's taking his MMR off and saving air. Some people just keep that thing in and just breathe their air down. So again, that comes with experience. Just anytime he can save air, he's saving air. One thing we're like saying is he never got into his his ELSTI or his his low air alarm. Right. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. No, he didn't get into his low air alarm. No. But he's this guy's doing work. He's doing hard work. He's managing his air well. He's managing the adrenaline well. But physically fit. Like he's there's still a decent amount of air demand doing very routine tactics, is what I'm trying to illustrate here. And then second the second cylinder, he worked he worked for once he turned it on, he went to work and then stopped. Yeah, and that was mostly searching After we came out, checking conditions, making sure everybody's out, doing par checks, just maintaining control of the area. So again, nothing super physically strenuous, but he's in the heat of it, making sure everybody's doing what they need to, providing that oversight as a secondary route team officer. And now, yeah, and now you go to us. Yeah. So this is this is your air SCBA usage, and then your firefighter on the engine, right? Yeah. So this is backup that's Andy Hoffman on the right. he together we're who brought Nate out. And you could have pulled any of our guys' graphs from that night and it would looked similar. And what I want to show here is like those first two drops for me is when I think we're going in the front door and then we got told to hold up. The second drop is when I we are gonna go in the basement to get Nate and we were told to hold up. And then the third big drop is nice clean 45 degree drop. This is the hardest thing physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually I've ever done in my entire life. And hardest call of your career moment, if you want to call it that, but we have a nice, clean, steady, 45 degree drop. We're operating for 20 minutes on air, and we still don't run out of air. And for what we have when you overlay the the how strenuous it was, all the curveballs we got thrown All the different tactics we had to use to get ourselves out of bad situations and doing one of the hardest things you can in superheat environment, hordous conditions, bringing out a downed firefighter. Nice, clean 45 degree drop. When you talk to SCBA technicians, they're like, you don't see this in the American Fire Service. It's just not common. So again, I'm not sitting here trying to you know, fluff myself here, but it's my kind of a call to action. I challenge people. I want the American Fire Service's SCBA graphs to look like this in bad situations. Don't run out of air. Be able to increase your work capacity to a level to where you can do a lot of work in a short amount of time under really tough conditions and and get the work in. Right. And this is not typical, but this is what I want for the fire service. But in order to do that, guys, you have to understand how your SCBA works, right? So so that's where The our our dr our previous drills where we walk on the treadmill is all leading up to this kind of thing, right? on the treadmill your graph is gonna be of a gradual a gradual decline, right? Because the demand that you have walking on the treadmill, those are skills that you do all the time. That's a that's a s that shouldn't be a real stressful drill. Right? That really shouldn't be that shouldn't cause you a lot of mental stress to walk on a treadmill in your turnout gear. But you should see a graph that that shows you turn it on and it goes down, you breathe it down, right? Because we're we're testing you to see how what kind of usage you get. Remember, this is based on your SCBA 45 minutes is based on 40 liters per minute. You're breathing at 40 liters per minute. Right now, Josh is probably breathing at 12 liters a minute. Maybe even less, 10 liters a minute. He's at home, comfortable, this isn't very stressful, but Again, you so so understand that. Ten liters

a minute, you can get a lot of time out of that SCBA cylinder. Right? Because it's got eighteen hundred it's got eighteen hundred liters of air in it. If you divide that by forty, it gets forty-five minutes. If you divide that by ten, you get a hundred and eighty minutes. So you understand that Josh Birchick, right in that SCB on the left, in that graph on the left, he's breathing at Probably I again I we could do the math. Sixty liters a minute? Why? Because he's conditioned himself to be able to do that. At the most stressful times of his life, he's still doing he's still breathing at a at a respectable rate. He's not breathing at you know, f five hundred liters a minute, where you're gonna you're gonna suck it down like that. And we'll talk about whether that that could possibly happen, right? Absolutely. Yeah. That could possibly happen. Yeah, and I think We'll talk about that on that next slide, yeah. You guys, this this graph comes from a a line of duty death report from Wilmington, North Wilmington, Delaware. The fire that killed the three firefighters there, Jerry, Ari and remember his last other name, but it killed the three firefighters. the lieutenant from Squad Four was wearing his this S C B A and you can see he had a cr he had his he fell through the basement. So he had he turned his S C B A on, he's he's not breathing from it. Then he when he is breathing from it, look at look at the the look at the graph. It's not forty five degrees. That's probably what, sixty degrees? Maybe even more? Yeah. And that's routine fire ground work. Right. So again, that's what we see in the American fire service. That's routine work. And then that middle drop off after eight minutes is when the floor collapse occurs and he's trying to s search his way out. And the way that I understood the call is that this gentleman, you know, he he falls in, he's searching his way out, he's taking a beating, but he finally does get it make his way out. But he the other fifty percent of his air now, he's used fifty percent, the remaining fifty percent. gets used in three minutes. So his entire time on air is now 11 minutes. And I use this in our training because it is very common in writ mayday scenarios. Your air increase, your air usage increases by 50%, which this graph shows really cleanly. His air got used up 50% faster. And that's because of that cortisol dump. When effineprin cortisol gets dumped into your body, your Your demand for air goes through the roof because you're so physiologically and emotionally strapped, your body is literally preparing for life or death, right? It's that sympathetic nervous response. So your body demands more oxygen. And for somebody who does not have high levels of aerobic capacity, if your VO2 max isn't great, if you can't manage the cardiac output, so maybe you don't have a good HRV, a heart rate variability. just metabolically speaking, are you hemodynamically stable? If this is not you, you're gonna air use your air at least 50% faster. And in a mate situation, that this one was used, I granted this is one data point, but in 11 minutes. But we were also able to show that even on our fire ground. I won't call people out. I won't you know just quickly touch on it. We had one person on scene who had Twenty-four instances of his past device going off because he was sitting still, but still had an incredible air demand because of the stress of the incident and because the person was physically unwell. So he had his SCBA on. He had his S C B A on alarm. Yeah. Twenty-four different times. Of those times, fifty percent, I think a third to a third to fifty percent of it was in full alarm. So you have to have the idle time to get the ramp up, then you have the ramp up of the pass device, and then you have full alarm. So half of those 24 times, it went into full alarm where he had to reset his pass device and still had a pretty incredible air demand. While he's wearing right. And so that's and I again it's just another data point of it's not just any one thing. You know, I have worked with people who are professional bodybuilders and they look incredible and they can move good weight. But when the stress of the scene gets them, there's I I've literally had to bench people. Like, you're no good for this fire, you're out. Go sit on that picnic table. Go sit by the taco truck out on route one. and then vice versa. Hey, you are so incredibly skilled, but you are physically unwell and you can't maintain it. So what I'm arguing for is to have both those worlds meet. Yes, I want you to be physically well. I want you to have an increased work capacity, and I also want you to have expertise in this job. And I want both those worlds to meet up and that's where we should live constantly. Yeah, it because it's for you to survival, right? It's not because it's it's I mean, is the only the only goal is to survive, right? Yeah, it's for us and them, right? I know we talk about I before me and is it us, is it them? It's for it's it's everything. It's it's for me to save my ass, it's for me to help my crew, it's to it's to increase work capacity to save the civilian. It all matters. We're all humans trying to make place better. And and I just mentioned, right, that most of our Maydays will happen in seconds. So we don't have to worry about that stuff. But that the one or the one may day that you're gonna have in your career that's gonna last for twenty minutes, do you wanna be able to help your crew? Or do you wanna have to hey, I have to go? Because when when when you turn the switch, when you turn the switch and you go from you know, when you increase your breathing capacity or demand fifty percent Because now we're in a stressful environment, are you gonna be able to help? Yeah, absolutely. You know, I talked to Jeff Weffelmeyer out of St. Louis squad and he's just an amazing guy and he was on the line of duty for Ben Poulson and he talks about how they just had a digging operation,

you know, working fire and they were just all forty five minutes and then once their bottle ran out they kept going until they got out. So yeah, sometimes these maydays are quick. And there are other times when you're going to do the hardest thing of your life for 45, 20 minutes, 45 minutes until it's over with. And I just want people to be able to function. Cause you can see, and this is a whole other conversation, but I'll just quickly say the people that knew they couldn't operate well or could not overcome that challenge had severe mental health issues after this call. They some people weren't even on the call, but they the the the thought of I know I could not have done that. Or I could not have gotten myself out of a bad situation, caused a ton of issues for people in our department. I've heard this from a lot of Maydays from other departments. They realized that they were not capable, and then that's what started a downward spiral. So just use that as motivation. Use that for your discipline to just keep getting better. Yeah, yeah. You're you're you're setting me up for lots of future Mayday and Monday shows though with Just with the thoughts, right? The different the different stuff. Some things we haven't we haven't touched on. One thing we have touched on in the past is that out of air emergency. The out of air emergency. Are you prepared? Some of the ways that you can combat the out of air emergency are to do the buddy breathing thing, right? If you if you have the capability. You know one thing that I didn't know until recently went through an SCBA upgrade in last department. is that it's an add-on. Buddy reading is a option to put on to your SCBA. It's not mandatory. I thought that it had that the standard had changed, but you want you want to make sure you add that, right? Because it's another tool it's another tool that you have. Are but are you are you proficient? Do you have expertise in that tool? can you do it you know, yeah we can all do it on the Apparatus floor But are you gonna be able to recall that in in the your worst your worst scenario? So be able to do that. That's an option. Another option that is you know, is is again old school thing, is the filter breed. Take off the regulator if you have to, and then you pull that hood up. This is something I used to practice, right? Every day when I would go to work, I would practice putting my face piece on as as quick as I could. to get with with gloves on, helmet, all that stuff, be able to to to get in service as fast as possible. And then when I'm done, be able to disconnect regularly, pull that face piece up, well pull that hood up so I could be ready for for that scenario. So get out practice these. Josh, you had another another idea on on on how to combat this. Yeah, so and there's two things with that. One, yeah, one thing that we would start to train on is Filter breathing is a great option. And unless you keep, depending on the conditions and depend on how low you were able to get, you are not able to chemically and thermally protect your airway. So we started training and doing is it depends on how you spec your BA. Some people have the electrode connection, like the coupler on your MMR line, but by your shoulder, where you can disconnect your low pressure line. If you can do that, unclip it, shove it into your jacket. And now you're both chemically and thermally protected. The downside of this is that it feels like you're breathing through a straw. It's really tough. Yeah, you're gonna have to stuff because you're gonna you're gonna get something through there, but yeah, you're gonna be you're gonna be straining to get that. It's tough. You can, and if you don't have that coupler, take your cutters, cut the line, shove it in your jacket again. Same thing. the nice side about you having the coupling attachment is that if a new BA comes to you or the writ pack, you already have the coupling. You can just go into your new pack and you're ready to rock and you can go again. But then you also need to train that skill of clipping into that. if you cut it and a new BA comes, you're going to need a new MMR, obviously. So that's something you have to consider. but it is an option. And the other thing I'd like to add on to that is one talk to your training bureau training department or maybe the SCBA techs. We had techs that they had damaged and so we would float one around the county so we could train and practice on that. it was like a dummy regulator that was cut. Yeah, I'm not telling you I'm not I'm not telling you to go out today and cut your cut your hook Yeah, you're gonna piss off a lot of people. Yeah, you find the right one. You're gonna be Mayday Monday told me to do this. No, I I didn't. I yeah, stack with your BA people with your match for them, see if they have something for you. but but that's something you keep in the back of your mind, like in the back of your mind, is one of my options. That would be that would be an option. Yeah, sorry. The last thing I'd like to add is these drills are phenomenal. I did them all the time. We revisited them all the time. You have to get your heart rate up doing it. And so when you are sitting there and doing blindfold gloves on air air transfer drills. Whether it's low pressure line into a RIT pack or buddy EBSS, buddy breathing into a breathing or transfillal line, university the URC, all those things matter. When you're in a controlled environment, you can hold your breath for a couple minutes. And I would have people put on gear. I'd have them do carry saws around the rigs a couple of times, do some sledge swings on a tire, and then get their heart rate and breathing rate up, maybe walk some steps in gear, and then they come back. And their time to complete the evolution dropped and they only had seconds to complete it because they try to hold their breath, do the quick air exchange. And then now that their heart rate breathing rate is up, they could hold

their breath for 45 seconds. Now they can hold it for six. And they have to have accuracy within six seconds. So I challenge you, that's where we saw people drop off and fail. But we kept working at it and finding solutions and tips and tricks until they could complete it under stress in under six seconds. And so that's again what I want for you to find eventually. there's there's some people out there but putting on their gear is enough stress to be able to to get their heart rate up. But hopefully, we're not talking about something like that. You're right, right. So this is this is dedicated this is dedicated in the in the memory of Nate Flynn. again, he didn't have an out of air emergency, but I know he would want you to train to train on those kinds of things. So this month's skill drill, again, do it do it for for yourself. Do it for your fellow your fellow firefighter. Do it for memory of of Nate. Do it for Josh for coming on here and giving me your time. And what what I like to do and I I don't know if I asked you this before, but before we leave, is there is a I of all the stuff that you've given us, are there two things Two or three things that you want people to remember about this incident, about your your career as in Howard County. A couple things, the again the the the final things from Josh to pass on to our listeners before we wrap up. Yeah. man, th that's that's a really good open ended question. You know, I could go for hours on that one, but the two things I'll leave you with is Every day show up and just try to be a little bit better with your your expertise in your physical fitness. and it doesn't matter if you're day one or year thirty, it all matters. And it proved itself on that call. And I remember when I was helping out with the training academies, something that I would often ask people is, What'd you do before you became a firefighter? And it would be I dug ditches. I worked as a golf pro, I was a teacher, I did this or that. One hundred percent of the time. I ask them, I say, do you want to go back to doing that? Or do you want to be on your worst day here in this job? Would you still rather be a firefighter? 100% of the time, they always tell me a firefighter. So on those tough days, you know, remind yourself of that. You know, we've we live other lives. We have lived other lives. and no matter what, 100% of the time the answer I always get is I'd still rather pick my worst day in the fire service because we have something so good. And when you don't have it anymore, you know, now I'm on the retired side of life. I know I'll get back into it. but you know, I I yeah, I miss running calls, I miss the kitchen table, I miss running fires. and just value what you have and be really damn good at it. And you know, you can rest easy at night knowing that you had a great career and you did some good stuff while you were doing it. You didn't rest on your principles. No rest. All right, that's a good good way to good way to wrap this up. Again, thank you, Josh. I I've I've been I don't know why we we haven't hoofed up before this, but that's a great it's great to to continue to to remember Nate and the impact she had on the fire service. not only not only his his legacy but now Celeste's legacy and what she's what she's doing for the fire service. thank you for coming on telling us your story. hopefully you know, we'll keep in touch. Hopefully you continue to to live a good life in Copenhagen. Yeah. that would be cool. So thank you again for coming on. that is the Octob no, November twenty twenty six, Mayday Monday. Remember that Fighter Engineering, thank you for for for putting this on. Thank you for for for the show. one other thing too, if you're interested, again I'm the president of the International Society of Fighter Service Instructors. If you're looking for the organization that will help elevate you, will help invest in you to to make you a better instructor, we are the ISFSI is where the instructors are. So please think about joining and getting involved. So with that, thank you. Thank you again, Josh. Thanks, Chief. we'll talk soon. And we'll see you next month.