Rethinking Fire Service Metrics: Measuring Saves, Not Just Losses

Nat Kapustin: From MSA helmets and streamlight flashlights to seek thermal imaging cameras and so much more, the firestore.com has everything you need to serve your community safely and effectively. Hey, welcome to Fire Grand Strategies for October. October. I I cannot believe it. ⁓ but we made it this far. And I do have some good news as far as October. ⁓ typically we lose about 2,400 civilians in in residential fires every year. that bounces out to around 200 fire deaths every month, maybe a little more than 200. But this year, ⁓ we're into October and the number is 1,375, which means we're gonna be about 20% less, maybe 25% less, than we have annually. It's still not good enough. We can do better, the civilians can do better, our fire inspectors can do better. ⁓ I'm not Criticizing anybody, but it's good to see that the numbers are dropping. In lieu of that, some of the people, firefighter rescue survey and firefighter May Day survey, they're doing a great job. And the numbers, ⁓ we're going to less fires, but we're saving more people. We're rescuing more people in fires. So that is something to be proud of. And and those are just the ones that are ⁓ are participating in the survey, you know. I I wonder what the percentages of departments that participate in that survey. I I I have to think 'cause it's new. It's only, you know, maybe maybe two years, maybe. I'm not even sure how long they've been doing it. I the May Day survey is is relatively new. And ⁓ I I I'm wondering if if it's even fifty percent of departments. So, you know, there may be a lot more that we don't know about. ⁓ so, you know, hopefully hopefully, ⁓ people will ⁓ 'Cause it's worth really worthwhile if you look at those things, the Mayday survey, the ⁓ the rescue survey, you know, and now ⁓ I believe ⁓ Murphy and Brent Brooks and those guys are ⁓ putting out the ⁓ the higher or the tall building survey. And ⁓ that that should be pretty cool too, right? Yes, sir. We have our get a guest showing up. Hello, Chief. Come out of nowhere. It's like the Wizard of Oz. Like the Wizard of Oz. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Good morning, sir. What's happening to you fellas? Everything. We're we're just kind of celebrating that the ⁓ number of fire dusts and residential fires is ⁓ is slowing down a bit. ⁓ we were just talking about on average over the last fifteen years or so, we've lost about twenty four hundred civilians. in residential fires. Right now we're up to thirteen hundred and twenty something. So it looks like gonna be about twenty percent lower at the end of this year if it if the trend continues. And that's pretty exciting. But we can still do better. We I was just talking to Anthony about that. ⁓ we can do better and obviously the civilians and the fire inspectors can do better. Yeah, because it's not just us, you know, it is There are so many other factors involved in in in the rescue survey and and and ⁓ obviously the ⁓ you know the fatality survey, you know, but ⁓ yeah, on both ends it's it's it's sort of a double sided coin, you know, that, you know, hopefully is ⁓ shining up a little better as we as we go along, you know, people get more informed. How how is it we never tracked our rescues before? I don't know. Yeah. ⁓ I I think technology might have had something to do with it, but ⁓ I and I was wondering, and maybe you know, Dave, ⁓ how many departments you know, do you you think it's more or less than fifty percent of departments that participate in the rescue survey? I don't think it's that many. I think it's more like twenty percent, if that. Yeah. They are they are scouring the news every day, you know, looking for the ⁓ for the news stories with keywords like person rescued and all, and then they'll contact those departments and try to get the information. But they don't use anything unless they get it confirmed, you know, by the department and get the forms filled out. So it's pretty, pretty amazing that ⁓ I guess our whole system was just set up on tracking loss, you know, with the in first system. It was how much damage was done, not how much was saved, how much how many people were lost, you know, the casualty report and all that. And ⁓ now with the ⁓ with the technology, you're able to search those keywords and who knows what the AI stuff will end up ⁓ helping us with as far as being able to to find those stories. But yeah, pretty crazy. I remember going to a a ⁓ hurricane drill back when I was doing the IMT stuff for Georgia and we were down in Savannah and the Coast Guard commander for that region that took up part of the Florida coast, all the way up to South Carolina was there. And as he opened up his briefing, he told us how many rescues the rescues the Coast Guard had made in the calendar year, how many vessels had been saved, how many ⁓ had been assisted, towed to shore, and all that. And as soon as I heard him say that, the first thing out of his mouth was, you know, in I forget what sector, Coast Guard sector, whatever, you know, we've saved ⁓ we've made twelve hundred and thirteen rescues and I was like, why didn't the fire department do that? And that was probably two thousand three, two thousand four, you know. And ⁓ it's good to see that they've incorporated the some not all, but some of the rescue survey into the new Narrus ⁓ forms. So you do put if you have a rescue or a or an assist out of a building. Whatever they have the classification. So that's gonna help us in the long run get better better data on that. But just with the limited data we have, we know we're we're rescuing, you know, a dozen or more a day. Yeah, that that's that's unbelievable. And but the the new the NERS, does the NERS have that in there or is it more again, you know, like it's on the loss end instead of the save end? It has it in there. It ha it has in there if you made a rescue to you know put it down, but it doesn't go Like the rescue survey is a complete form just on the rescue. It just basically asks a couple of questions, a couple of the basic questions to get you going. But it's but it does point to to a rescue being made. Wow. So that'll be good. I'd like to stop here for a second, just I know most of our listeners and the people who tune into these podcasts know who you are. But some may not. And ⁓ you've been involved enough Fire service almost 40 years now or is it over 40 years? ⁓ a little over 40, yep. 85, so 42. I'm gonna ask you a question before we move on. Would you have ever imagined that you'd be sitting as the education director for FDIC and Fire Engineering magazine forty years ago? No. I didn't even know what fire engineering was. I really got introduced to it in ninety Well, I got I I got introduced to fire engineering magazine pretty early. So that would have probably been late eighties, eighty-eight ish. And then didn't get involved until like nineteen ninety seven with the when we first started the hut in Indy. And ⁓ and then basically was on that side. I think I wrote my first article around. ninety nine or two thousand. It was on the big ⁓ mill fire with the crane rescue. Actually had two articles in one magazine. That that was unheard of, but I had one article on the fire itself in that historic mill in the mill town. And then I had a separate article specifically on the rescue of that crane operator. So that was kind of cool. That was my foray into ⁓ writing. Wow. You know what? That's kind of crazy because the first day I got on a job in eighty-four, the companies were out and they said, you know, sit at the table, they'll be back. And on the table was Fire Engineering magazine. And I had never heard of it. I had heard Firehouse. So ⁓ that was my first introduction in that. My first article again was ninety-nine, and it was in an ep an issue where I had two articles, one on the chart house fire. And one on the roof pack that we used to use to go to the roof with like one guy. So I you know, that's kinda interesting that ⁓ that they ha they allowed people to have two articles in the same issue. Manning must have been desperate for content back then. Yeah, they might they must have been, man. How how did you get involved in cause I met you through logistics? How'd you get involved in logistics? ⁓ through Scott Mills out. ⁓ who is who we were teaching hot with. We were doing all the rope and like special ops classes at at at FDIC. So we did high angle rope and then we did confined space and then we ended up with that Axioms of Leadership ⁓ class. So our our little training group had like three or four classes that we were doing. And I got super sick one year. And couldn't go. And then I I didn't even teach. That's I had ⁓ gotten put on a day shift in Atlanta, so I wasn't really teaching a whole lot. And Scott asked me to come teach the confined space. And I said, Man, I I don't feel comfortable like teaching up there. Like I haven't taught all year. And he goes, Well, why don't you come and help us with the equipment? So ⁓ I went up to Dalton and helped pack all the trailers. ⁓ you know, there wasn't no logistics back then. It was like you brought your own stuff for hot. Other than ⁓ I th I think ⁓ Bob Pressler had a list of lumber for John O'Connell's collapse class and and they gave out some login bars and flashlights. Other than that, you were on your own. And ⁓ they did give us a radio when we got there, you know, in case they needed to get in touch with us, but we were pretty much on our own. So I kind of managed the logistics for the three classes we were doing. Didn't really know that much about it other than I knew our equipment. And then ⁓ when they built the committee of it was Bill Sapp, ⁓ Rick Fritz, Rest of Soul, ⁓ Mike Nasta, John O'Connell, and ⁓ Brent Hollander. They put us together as the new hot coordinators after Pressor left. And they had me over logistics and Brent Hollander over safety. And then that's really how it started, which was probably 2003. And up until then we had been instructors. And ⁓ just kind of figured it out along the along the way. And then as I got into ⁓ the incident management teams and stuff and started going to all the ⁓ the ⁓ Fire Academy FEMA classes and all that, I was like, I was like, huh. This is the exact same way way I do it. I just built my own form and ⁓ didn't didn't know this existed. So then I incorporated all the FEMA stuff into it and we ran it, you know, like a like a type three team at first and then we ended up, you know, with about eighty people or so in logistics. So it grew and got bigger and ⁓ then we started doing everything. Turnkey, you know, pretty much all you had to show up with was your gear and ⁓ And a flashlight and that was about it. And we provided everything. But in the in the early days of hot, like for live fire, they did all the live fire like in Decatur Township. And Decatur Township Fire Department sort of handled their logistics for ⁓ You know, you were making phone calls as an instructor, hey, can we use this? You know, and they would get ⁓ houses and choired structures. But it it was ⁓ it was pretty non centralized for sure. Mm. I'm trying to remember like my first year was ninety nine and I was with Nasta and Alvarez and those guys and we did this hands-on search ⁓ with the man the mass confidence. And I'm trying to remember if people bought their own packs at that time and cause I I think I No, we did have we had ⁓ Interspiro packs that were donated and that was that was something that was was always there once once we started doing ⁓ having air and ⁓ and then Scott came in, gosh, probably 2004. Mm-hmm. Okay. And I remember that because ⁓ 2004, 2005, because ⁓ our buddy Jim Crawford was doing the writ combat drills. Yeah. Yeah, right next to us. And he had not put air packs on his logistics list. Wow. This is hilarious. I I love this story. He didn't put anything on his list. Well By this time, you know, we got like 25 high classes going and everything's on a spreadsheet and all this stuff. So at ⁓ seven o'clock in the morning he calls. Hey, Dave, where's our air packs? I'm not sure. Did you order any? Well, I mean, it's a Rick class. We always have air packs. And I'm like, ⁓ hang on. So I get on the computer and I look. No air packs listed on his list. I'm like, dude, you didn't put him on the list. Well, everybody knows we need air packs. And I said, Yeah, everybody knows, but like we're working off of a list. That's not the way it works, you know, anymore. And I turned around and looked at ⁓ it was an old guy that ran logistics for Indy Fire. I can't think of his name right now. He was a legendary battalion chief there in Indy. You know, had a little stubby cigar and just you know, had this mean persona to him, you know. And he goes, we just swapped out you know eight hundred air packs ⁓ last week, and there's a bunch of old ones over here in this building. And so we went we went over and literally assembled 80 Inner Spiro packs with bottles that look thank God they were still full and mask and had them to Crawford before his students got there at eight o'clock. Wow. And nobody ever knew the difference, you know. Wow. What a golden horseshoe. A golden horseshoe just like shoestring operations, man. You know. Pen and pen it was it was pen and paper back then. Gregory was his name. Chief Gregory, for those that might remember him. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I I remember the name. I and I you know, I I don't remember a lot of that, but ⁓ yeah, I remember it was a big warehouse, you know, and used to go in and you'd be sitting at the desk there, you know, and the pen and the paper, you know. Trying to keep track of everything. But yeah, it was and we had no accounts to buy anything. And so I had two or three local fire chiefs that would be sitting in there. And ⁓ you know, Bob Morris would call up and need some kind of special, you know, torqued hex screw for his forcible entry prop that was, you know, only this only certain screw would work. And I'd be like, Where the hell are we supposed to get that at? And this guy would be like, ⁓ there's this place over here other backs. He goes, we got an account there with Decatur Fire Department. So he'd call and they'd have it and he'd he'd put it on his department account. And you know, this was Bill Manning and Christine King back in those days. And I would be getting calls six to nine months after FDIC saying, Hey, should we reimburse Decatur Township for you know $328 for these screws? Yep. That's amazing. You know, it it's amazing how we got away with so many things. Like you just said, we didn't keep track of rescues. How did we do that for a hundred plus years? You know, how come we didn't learn from that? We just get used to doing it a certain way. And and if nobody's asking, then we're, you know, we're our own self-governance. And I guess nobody really felt the need for it. It was just we were doing good stuff, just keep it up. And tell us how many people died this year. Yeah, right. Yeah. How many firefighters were killed this year, how many people died. And yeah, you know, it yeah, and and and we didn't have the ability to do this mass sort of like, you know, throw out of the information across, you know, the internet waves back then. You know, it was like you call a guy up, Hey, hey, you you know, what do you got? What is this? You know, yeah, you know, it's it's amazing how how far we've come, man. There's a ⁓ I I I can't remember what year it was, but It was during the Clinton Gore administration. And I was I had to do every time the president came into town, I was on the detail to, you know, go to the hotel wherever they were. You had to, I don't know if you guys ever did that. You had to keep two air packs in a room in the hotel close to where the president was, and Secret Service was there. And you had to, if the fire alarm went off in the building, you had to tell the Secret Service what was going on, that kind of stuff. So those were those were cool details. So over the the eight years there, ⁓ I had a picture standing in front of Air Force One with Al Gore, and it was a horrible picture. Like, you know, the photographer, they just snap pictures and then they get your name and they send them to you like, you know, three months later. So I get the picture and like my eyes are all squinty and I'm shaking Al Gore's hand and I just got this like goofy look on my face, like and and then three or four years later, they're at another event. And I get another picture shaking his hand and it and it's pretty good. I got my eyes open and you know, it's kind of like, ⁓ you know, good to see you. And so I ⁓ about three or four years ago I found those and I posted them and I put ⁓ first picture me i giving Al Gore the idea to connect computers worldwide into a internet system. And then and then it said four years later, Al Gore telling me he invented the internet. ⁓ my god, that's a good fire Al Chiever there. That is that is good. What's amazing, we were talking about lives a little while ago, but information you always see in the newspaper, it was a two million dollar loss at this apartment building. And when we're looking to get our budgets and my department where I worked, they finally learned that. This is how much we saved this year. How many millions of dollars we saved for our businesses and our homes in our little city. And I think that helped with passing budgets, at least in our community. And I think using those numbers rather than we lost will help people when they have to get their budgets justified or they have to go before the city council or town council asking for more firefighters, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Statistics are so useful and today with the internet we can we can Google something and find out how many and how much and and it's but we need people who want to do that. You know, most firefighter wants to stretch a hose or go to the roof. The other thing is ⁓ that was one of the first projects I worked on f when I was the fire chief's aide in Atlanta was ⁓ how much money does our ISO rating equate to savings. you know, for it's and it's more so for the businesses than it is for anything else. But that's a difficult one to answer. ⁓ 'cause all of those formulas are proprietary. And ⁓ I had to do some crazy stuff to try to even get a good estimate. And what I would have to do is I would have to call different insurance companies and I would give them like a residential house and then I'd give them a commercial building. And I would say, you know, our our ISO rating is I think we were a three at the time, two or three. And I would say, you know, what's the insurance rate? And I would say, well, what would it be if it was a nine? And then they would struggle with giving me that answer because the the insurance rate had more to do with the zip code you were in than it did anything else. And so like there'd be you know 15 zip codes in the city of Atlanta. Well, the rates were based off the loss in that zip code. The the ISO rate was a piece of it, but it was hard to determine that. So after months of Going back and forth with ISO and with the insurance company, I actually came up with a figure, and this would have been ninety ⁓ three, I guess. Yeah, nineteen ninety-three. And the amount of savings was more than the fire department budget. And so the fire chief used that to the mayor to say, I think our budget was probably like sixty-five million back then or so, and he was like, you know. our savings based off of our rating is this. So if we didn't have a fire department or we had a class nine fire department, then those rates would go up and the citizens would be paying more than they are for the fire department, which is a good thing. Absolutely. But yeah, it's it's difficult to to calculate those. But absolutely it's a it's a statistic driven world now. And if you don't have if you don't have good data, ⁓ then you're just gonna get creamed because ⁓ cops figured that out a long time ago. Yeah, well, exactly. That's how they get the money. Yeah, well we'd go to budget meetings and it was I mean, it's just the fire mentality. It's like ⁓ I remember ⁓ we were getting ready to do ⁓ random drug testing in public safety. And so the fire department had, you know, what it was gonna cost and the police chief, I was actually in the meeting and ⁓ So they came in and and the mayor was like, All right, the fire department, what's what's this gonna cost? You know, and the fire chief was like, ⁓ you know, forty thousand dollars a year. And ⁓ basically it was like we cost of the test because we were gonna use our internal affairs to transport the people. We were gonna have them manage the program and all that. And then he turned to the police department and he said, How much is it gonna cost you? And he said, 1.2 million. And he goes, What? And he goes, Yeah, we need four thousand square feet of office space. I gotta hire three people to manage it. I'm gonna need six computers, ⁓ four cars. And like if they were adding anything on, they had a cost for everything. They weren't taking on something else and and adding another hat to somebody that's already doing a job. And I was like, Man, that's brilliant. And so there was no random drug testing for like the next five years because they weren't gonna pay. kind of money the police wanted and they weren't gonna do it for one as they were the other. But that's just you know the fire department mentality. We're like we'll take it all off. We won't say no to anything. Yeah, yeah, that that's amazing. Cats cats need vaccinations, we'll do it. Yeah. Bring your cat to the fire station for a free vaccination, you know? Yeah, yeah. Bring bring everything we yeah, we we have the Swiss army knife, man. Flood used to say it all the time, we had a Swiss army knife and we do it all and we do everything and we don't ask for anything for it, you know, and and that's why we are, you know, everything's everything's broken. Nothing. It finally I think it finally caught up to us though. You know, I think we got we got like overtasked, especially with the EMS and and all. And now, you know, you're looking at what was what was a busy station in our day with, you know, three thousand calls a year or whatever is now seven thousand calls a year. Yeah, that that's insane, right? Yeah, they're never in a firehouse. They're just going out back and forth. ⁓ did I did I tell you we don't we don't do any medical You don't do any? We don't do first responder either. There's there's only a three of those departments left. Yeah, when they when they first regionalized ⁓ the they they were all career EMS in the five towns and ⁓ it was under the police umbrella and they they just never changed it over. It was the same way in Atlanta in the seventies and ⁓ ⁓ of course there wasn't much of a system, but the the fire department had the bomb squad and the police department had EMS and we traded. And I was like, man, they got us again. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. So they got like a 12 member bomb squad now, you know, fifty years later. And the fire department's getting their butt handed to them. Yeah, you get ten thousand more runs a year. It's amazing, right? It's amazing. I mean, we ha certainly, you know, ⁓ n nobody very few people go from from fire to police, most go from police to fire. But if you really look at it, you know ⁓ if you really look at it, that you know, yeah, they they are well, yeah. We still have a better job. Absolutely. Absolutely. So David, before we got to this show. We wanted to ask you a question about nineteen ninety-nine or two thousand, the attendees at FBI C and what's different about the attendees now? Different types of firefighters, different types of people. Tell ⁓ your impression of it. Can you tell us what you see? So in ⁓ in ninety-nine, two thousand, we were probably somewhere in the neighborhood of ⁓ five to seven thousand attendees. And ⁓ now we're at thirty-eight thousand. So that's one huge, huge deal. ⁓ I would say the majority of those folks back in the early nineties were department sponsored. and it would only, you know, be like two from each department or what have you. And then You know, I think now there's a lot of people that pay their own way, ⁓ you know, to come. And it's it's interesting because really if you'd look at training in general from back then to now, ⁓ the only training that was available was your your local department, ⁓ your regional or state fire academy. And then you had the National Fire Academy, which was always you know, admin type stuff, no no drill yard or anything like that. So ⁓ and you had you had ⁓ firehouse expo that had some hands-on training going on after ⁓ that got going. You had FDIC and then you had FRI. Now there's a fire conference every day somewhere that's training and so the the concept that FDIC started with the hands-on training and being an outside of a established academy really has changed the entire training landscape of the whole country because now it's like everybody has a training company, everybody's doing sign up classes, you know, where these guys have their own training company. They go and partner with a department, they let ⁓ use their facility and then they charge students to come in, you know, open enrollment type type things. And that wasn't happening back in the the nineties. You know, there there other than your specialty ⁓ stuff, maybe some special ops type, like some ⁓ hazmat and and and that, ⁓ wasn't happening really ⁓ a whole lot. And ⁓ the the hot hands-on training that actually that term came from FDIC. And ⁓ remember it was hot Tuesday and and it was in the parking lot and then it became you know Monday and Tuesday. But that's a standard now. Like I mean just just Google fire training and there's something every day somewhere. And then some of them have gotten pretty big, you know, like ⁓ you know there there's areas that do three, four, five conferences a year. ⁓ your fools organization grew and and got bigger. They started doing training. The IEFF started doing sponsoring some some ⁓ training that was outside of the departments, but prior to that, everything was at your own department or or at a state academy. And ⁓ and I think what happened is the academies, especially the the department academies, they're so understaffed. And the requirements for research is so high. All their time is spent training recruits and making sure that you get all your resears in, you know. And so if people wanted advanced stuff, they had to go somewhere else. So they had to go outside the system. So that's to me been the biggest ⁓ change since those early days is that the availability of of training is like off the charts. Now and it's it's a lot of the same guys moving around the country doing classes, but then there's also some really good instructors that never leave their little, you know, area. ⁓ I saw a post yesterday, I think, about somebody doing a truck academy and they were making it a point to only use like local instructors from the three or four county area and and and it was open enrollment and and they would, you know. fill this thing up every year for the last three or four years. And that's awesome. You know, that's ⁓ our whole thing was to is our whole mission with FDIC was to train and make the fire service, you know, better and have more access. And that certainly has happened. ⁓ just think like like your your search class you did or the ⁓ writ classes, those were specialty classes. in in ninety seven, ninety-eight, ninety nine. That you you weren't getting those anywhere, saving our own or maiming our own, as we called it, ⁓ for a while. And and those became standard recruit school curriculum over a period of time. You know, to the point where we didn't even do ⁓ anymore at F F D I C because everybody was getting that on the on the front end. And some people were upset with that, but that really that's the goal. Right. I mean, how many people can you train at FDIC? It's like five thousand hot students. But how many firefighters are there out there? You know, and so if you're not doing that training locally in your recruit recruit classes, then you're not you're not ever gonna, you know, hit the mass numbers you need to make a make a change in the in the culture of the departments. So ⁓ so that was a good thing. Wasn't great for some of the instructors that their classes kind of went away, but ⁓ but they're still around in some capacity. You can get anything there, man. It you know, it's it's the Super Bowl. You know, it's ⁓ but there are so many great conferences out there, you know, and and you can't it's hard to even keep track of my I just was sent an email ⁓ about one of the conferences and I looked at it and ⁓ I missed the proposal I missed the request for proposals 'cause I've been so busy. I just poop just missed it. I just, ⁓ man. And the guy the guy texted me goes, You never put in. I go, Yeah, I did I didn't even see what the date was on there. You know, you know what happens is they do these AI things and there's so there's so much going on on the advertisement that you can't even tell where the thing is or when it is. You know, and then down at the bottom it's like, you know, request proposals ends on this date, you know, and I'm look I look I missed I completely missed the date, you know, but you know, but but it's all good stuff, you know. I mean, like it it's it's great, like that, you know, between the fools and ⁓ you know, and all these companies that are out there, which, you know, ⁓ because there's so much talent, you know. And that talent all sort of germinated in a lot of ways from where the FDIC started and then branched out and everything, you know, because you look at it, and a lot of these guys either ⁓ were instructors at the FDIC or they were taught by instructors at the FDIC, you know, or you know, how the generations moved and and ⁓ you know, ⁓ I you know, I I I I think it's it's just caught its own momentum and and you know, I it I don't see it ending, you know, but ⁓ you know, it's real good. It's a conversation like at a kitchen table. It everybody talks and everybody may listen. ⁓ my question is do you think the students who are tending become more the general firefighter where years ago is only the people who wanted to advance or who were really motivated into the job? I find it more Firefighters who used to just sit and wait for the alarm are going to these conferences you were just talking about. It's trickling down through the whole organization now, not just the the wannabes and the real motivated. Yeah, definitely back in the back in the late nineties, early two thousands, it was more training officers or instructors. I mean, it was it is the fire department instructor conference, and that was ⁓ who was going. They were going They were doing hot to see who was doing what and getting ideas and and taking them back and, you know, implementing them in their department. But definitely once now we're up at, you know, thirty-eight thousand. There's ⁓ tons of people who are just curious. they've heard they've heard stories and you know, they've they've heard about this guy, this guy's great. You need to go hear him and and You know, out of those thirty eight thousand, like I said, only about five thousand are doing hot ⁓ with the attendees and then the rest of ⁓ are doing ⁓ you know, classrooms and and lecture sessions. Some do some workshops, but I definitely I definitely think it's ⁓ more the entire fire department now than it was and it is just the instructors for sure. Definitely. Yeah, and I I think as time went on ⁓ you're seeing more chiefs involved, especially at the FDIC. You know, you you go out to these conferences and ⁓ in in a lot of places, and and two things I notice. One, the guys from the biggest departments don't always come because they're they're so insular, you know. And then the other thing is you don't always get a lot of chiefs, and the guys will sit there and say, Well, you need to tell that to our chief. I'm like, Well, you know, the ones who need to hear the sermon the most are never in the church. But ⁓ But I but I think that that I think that's changing a little bit. but probably fast enough. Yeah, we've ⁓ we've intentionally added curriculum that's like chief level stuff, and then we implemented the ⁓ Metro Officer Summit, which is a ⁓ we're we're pulling the second in command level chiefs. So like the the IAFC has the Metro Chiefs. which is ⁓ you know, departments over three fifty, four hundred members. And then we have the metro officers, which are those deputy chiefs, the operations, the logistics, you know, the maintenance chiefs, those ⁓ that can focus strictly on on the issues that they deal with. And so so we got a pretty good block or so. I think they're, you know, 100, 120 ⁓ chiefs that have been attending that for the last couple of years and it's growing. So and we're also ⁓ we hadn't ⁓ formally formally announced it yet, but we're working on ⁓ some stuff with the IAFC to where if you're in their company officer program, ⁓ you're gonna be able to get credit for the classes that you take at F D I C and apply ⁓ to that IAFC company officer program. So ⁓ that's gonna be good. Definitely trying to partner more ⁓ with the with the larger organizations to make sure that, you know, people are getting the the most out of everything they can do. And of course, you know, that's true with our ⁓ CAPSE approved classes. Like if there is mention of a a rescue, a victim removal technique or whatever, we've applied for CAPSE credit for EMS continuing ed. So you might be doing a search and rescue class. And you're gonna get EMS continuing education hours, you know, for it. And and we've got, you know, hundred or plus classes that give you that credit. ⁓ what's nice too is is now you have the you know, you have tall buildings, you have women in fire, like there's a lot of different like sort of offshoot specialty. We're doing a health and we're doing a health and ⁓ performance ⁓ symposium this year. We've got the industrial summit. And then we've got ⁓ we've got the the high rise tall buildings and several of those tracks where we've we've arranged them into four-hour blocks ⁓ Monday and Tuesday. So like for the wellness, ⁓ if you're only interested in like the mental health part of wellness. Well, there's four hours dedicated to that. And then there's four hours dedicated to the physical ⁓ you know, like like physical fitness. ⁓ so instead of having to dedicate the whole two days, if you're only interested in a certain aspect of tall buildings or wellness or whatever, you can pick those and and you know go to those. So Definitely expanding that. And then the ⁓ you know, the hybrid class format's been super popular where you do a little bit of classroom and then some some light hands-on or ⁓ or heavy demo type stuff. And that's that was we kind of created that. That is for those training officers, training chiefs. That's like, okay, I mean, you know, I I don't need to To go crawl around and search, you know, in smoke for four hours. I I've done that and we know how to do that. ⁓ I want to know what I should be teaching ⁓ on how to control the lithium-ion battery fire. Or even our search ⁓ class that we do is like you're not in smoke, you're not in for the hybrid version, you're not in smoke. You're like learn you know, it's a half wall fire it's a half wall house built out and it's it's a lot of communication and a lot of like placing people where they should should be and you can see it. Whereas back to Duffy, your point is like, you know, the two, three year fire guys coming in. He wants flash over chamber and the search class where they're you know, where they're doing oriented searches, VES and all that. So if you if you look at it, ⁓ when you when the actually the registration opened today, but when you look at it, you can see there's different levels of of education. And it, you know, it's it's it's to get everybody what what they want. Because the Chiefs told us, you know, we don't want to force doors. You know, we need we need to know how to spec apparatus and and do our budget. You know, so you'll find You'll find stuff specifically on on specin apparatus. That's cool. And it's, you know, it's still still primarily tactics, but there's we've just like the fire service has become the all hazard Swiss Army knife, FDIC's done the same thing over the years. It's not just instructors and it's not just tactics. It's everything. I wanted to ask you about smoke divers. When did that start? And I'm so glad it's still here. And so the Georgia Smoke Divers is like throughout the country. People know who you are and what that organization is. And if you could just describe that a little bit to some of our listeners and watchers. So the Georgia program actually started in nineteen seventy-eight and it was a spinoff from the Florida program. All of All of the stuff was brought over by a couple of guys that went over to ⁓ like ⁓ I can't remember exactly what country, but it's like in the Netherland area. And they have they still have it today as like a job requirement. But it was ⁓ it was in the time frame that breathing apparatus were first becoming ⁓ you know used. in the fire service. So it would have been the you know, the seventies. And ⁓ they were teaching survival techniques with this new technology that was bound to fail. You know, these breathing apparatus, ⁓ you're gonna get in there too far and it's gonna quit working and you're not gonna know how to get out. Cause before that it was like control the ventilation and stay low, you know, or either or are put the fire out from the windows, you know, and then go in. So just like every new piece of equipment we get, we are like, ⁓ these thermal imagers are great, but they're gonna get somebody killed. What if it goes out? You know, so you come up with an emergency procedure to to counter that. So that was sort of the initial start of it. And ⁓ Cortez Lawrence, who ⁓ was fire chief in LaGrange, Georgia, and he had been in a couple of departments, also ⁓ Vietnam vet. ⁓ he he was a Marine and an and an army guy. ⁓ he did his he did his requirement for the ⁓ Marines and wanted to re enlist and since he was full of shrapnel, they wouldn't take him. So he went over to the army. They they took him right away and made him a captain. So he became a ⁓ infantry captain. So he kinda already had that, you know. ⁓ war fighter type mentality. He went and took the Florida class, brought it back, sent a couple people down, and then they started with the first class in 78, had like nine people in it. And then it just grew and grew. And it was all survival techniques. ⁓ if you think about like a writ class and all that, it was way ahead of its time because it was firefighter rescue, it was self-rescue and all that, but primarily focused on the breathing apparatus. And then over the years, you know, other technology came along. And when I got involved ⁓ in eighty six, ⁓ and became an instructor and then ended up ⁓ as like a lead instructor a few years later and then ⁓ became over the program in ninety-five and then we shut down the program for about ten years and then brought it back. ⁓ due to some disagreements with the state fire academy. Imagine that. It had always been a performance-based class that like if it says you got to do A, B, C, D, and if you didn't do D, it was like, see you later. And then they tried to implement that it was a hundred percent graduation. You know, everybody that came got a trophy if you signed up. Then they said not only, not only does everybody get a trophy and a certificate, But there's a unlimited amount of students that can be in your class. And we just couldn't safely run the class with sixty, eighty students, you know. So we we pulled the plug and then came back after that administration was gone and ⁓ and re-implemented it. So now it's sort of morphed into it's still self-survival, it's search, but it's more decision making. and small unit leadership and you know personal limitations and overcoming adversity. so it's a super tough challenge for folks over six days. ⁓ but it takes you about six months to prepare if you're already in good shape to go through the program of prep. And ⁓ we were able to expand that. It was just Georgia for that particular version of the program. And then we expanded it into Indiana ⁓ ten years ago or so. And then we expanded into Oklahoma five or six years ago. So we've got three programs running. Georgia does two classes a year. Indy does one and Oklahoma does one for now. But they're they're working their way up and building building the network of instructors to ⁓ they'll probably end up expanding to a couple of classes a year each by then. But it takes It takes about a hundred instructors ⁓ to put on a class starting with about forty students and ending with anywhere between ten and twenty-five wow students. Still about a fifty, sixty percent dropout ⁓ rate. And now it's all private. Again, back to the training companies. They're not affiliated with with any academy. So there's none of those ⁓ mandatory. student acceptance and all that. It's like strictly you pay your own some some departments do pay their their way, but a lot of the guys just pay their own way. And ⁓ the beauty of it is with all three of the programs, no instructor takes a dime from the program. It's all strictly a give back. ⁓ all the money that is from the tuition pays for the logistics for the class. Other prerequisites? We've played with that off and on over the years. ⁓ the early prerequisites were were that you had to have two years ⁓ of experience. And ⁓ then we went to a to a basically ⁓ tryout model where you had to you had to actually ⁓ come and try out and and we did it off of scores. So like you're you had a written test score, you had a ⁓ physical agility score and then we would only take the top candidates. and that we thought was gonna really improve our graduation rate. And it really did it really didn't ⁓ improve it. ⁓ maybe a little bit, maybe a couple of percentage points. But ⁓ you know what we want what we were trying to accomplish is that we wanted to make sure that we knew at least you had a chance to to make it. So if you if you couldn't carry the hose up, you know, five flights of stairs and down in a certain amount of time, then we knew there was no way you could do the obstacle course. but now the there's more communication, there's more word word out. So people are actually showing up in way better condition than they were back in the day. When when I went, they didn't tell you anything. Right. It was like, hey, you need to go to this class. And you need to put your air pack on in 30 seconds and run a mile and a half in 13 minutes. And they're like, okay, I can do that. And you get there and then you're like, holy crap, what did I sign up for? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. They know what they're signing up for now. So it's either you got, yeah, so people, some are just afraid to to even do it. The big thing is the decision making though. It's like we put you in so many scenarios. It's like the first couple of days we're teaching you technique and and you know, giving you some tips and and ⁓ doing a lot of PT to kind of wear you down until that that Wednesday. When Wednesday comes along, you're doing these drills and you have to make decisions and take actions in these drills or you're not gonna be successful. And ⁓ even even in the old days they realized that ⁓ there was a student handbook that said we are giving these students four to five years worth of experience in five days. And and that was decision making. And now it's actually more than that. ⁓ so it kind of depends on where you come from. ⁓ you know, if if you're at a department that that does a lot of training and does a lot of runs, your decision making experience is still going to be there, but it may not it may not be to the level that the person who has training and not so many runs gets it, you know. So it it is, it's a condensed like five, six, seven years worth of experience in a week as far as ⁓ processing that brain. So still rolling strong. I actually stepped back. So ⁓ I I got I I still go, but ⁓ there's a whole whole another team running the running the course now. Got to where ⁓ I was seeing the pictures of myself, you know, talking to these twenty and twenty-five year olds and I I could s I could imagine the look on their faces like, when's the last time that old son bitch went in a fire? And I was like, you know what? It's time I gotta pass this on to to some new guys. And and and too, it's just, you know, generational, just the things, you know, nobody was getting my movie quotes anymore. They didn't know the songs I liked. So ⁓ boy. Yeah, that then it's time, man. Then it's time. Well, Mike Nasta always says you ride the wave until it crashes and then we'll just sit on the beach. Sit on the beach and watch the sunset. That's right, exactly. So yeah, it's kind of cool. I I still go and I'm since I'm not running the class, I can actually sort of be at the thirty thousand foot view and just sort of mill around and watch. And I report back to the guys that are running the class and I'm like I'm not like, hey, you're doing this wrong or whatever. I'm like, hey, did you know that this was happening? And and I'm like, not saying it's necessarily good or bad, but it's different from what what I remember. And so did you know this was going on? And sometimes they're like, ⁓ yeah, yeah, we changed that to this, dah, dah. And and other times it's like, huh? And then they scramble out and they look and they're like, ⁓ we missed this, you know, we got to fix this. So it it's it's kind of like overwatch. Senior advisor. Yeah, that's exactly it. They call me the spiritual advisor now. Yeah. And I go, I flip a hamburger every now and then over on the grill because we we do all the cooking on site. Keep everybody there. So I hope it's after they finish the evolution to feed ⁓ hamburgers. on on every day but the the first day. ⁓ the first day they actually get to eat before they ⁓ before they do anything. And ⁓ That's always been a running joke. It's like, all right, get out here and, you know, bust your butt and do do the best you can. Don't say that you came here and got a free cheeseburger and and you know, you left with a search the search classroom and a cheeseburger. But still we're we and Jim, we didn't have out of state candidates until ⁓ probably Two thousand seven, two thousand and eight, it was all Georgia only. And then we opened it up to out of state candidates. And then now it's just exploded. Half of our students are out of state now, sometimes even a little more. And ⁓ I think we've we've got graduates in every state. Great. And then some of them are working on building their own programs. ⁓ we get calls every now and then. It's like Hey, we want to start a smoke diver program. Can you send us your outlines? We're like, nope. There you go. Like you have to come and take the class first, then you have to come back and help teach for at least 10 classes to give you an idea. It's just too dangerous. I mean, we got doctors, we're tracking calories, and and some people can take it the wrong way to where it's just a, you know, a tough man contest. And it's like, see how much these folks can take. And that's not what our class is. It it's hard and it's very tough, but everything is designed for a purpose to get you to the next step. And some people is just like, you know, they got yelled at. So they want to go and they yell three times more than they got yelled at. And then that guy graduates or comes and then and he doesn't know the behind the scenes. So he yells six times more than the first guy. And then next thing you know, it's out of hand and people are getting hurt. And so it's very it's it's dangerous in the wrong hands. Yeah. ⁓ yeah. We we do it very well. Like I said, we we got a lot of oversight. We're we're checking hydration levels. I mean, the the level of medical oversight that goes on is insane. We're checking their urine every morning to see what their hydration levels are, we're tracking their calories. The medical team is out there just like you see the football. ⁓ team on the sidelines, you know, like assessing the players and stuff and they're like they're they're checking people, making sh making sure that they're ⁓ getting their calories and their hydration and stuff in. And our goal is for you to successfully complete the class. And we don't want anything to get in the way of that. If you choose to leave, then that's a decision you make. Or if you fail to meet the standard of the evolution, then You know, we dismiss you, so there's still that standard. No, listen, it's like it's athletic and weather. I've seen a lot of watered down versions of what you do. Just the opposite of you talking about about the hard asses. There are people who they're actually using your label and they're calling a smoke divers class. And basically it's just Yeah, search class or something. A proby S C B A drone. And they're calling it a smoke dive. You know, they go in, they drag a hose up to the second floor of the tower. And, you know, so I never thought of the extremes you were talking about, the people pushing people too hard. But what I've seen as I've traveled around is the opposite, you know, a lightweight version, a watered down, whatever you want to call it. ⁓ but I think that's a wonderful model to work after. And I love that you have the controls on it. So that people just can't teach it because I ⁓ I took a class on truck ops, so even though I don't have a truck, I'm gonna teach about trucks, you know. do it. And I think you have a wonderful strong grip on that program. Yeah, it's ⁓ it it took it took Indy six, seven years before they had their first class. Oklahoma was only about three. years, but they fast tracked. They were sending 10 people to every class we had and ⁓ and then coming back, you know. And that's the the the main part is they got to come back and see the behind the scenes so that they realize what's happening because your your version of what happened while you were a student is totally different than what's actually happened. And and that's on purpose. You know, you talk about the man behind the curtain. I mean there's a lot of that going on, you know, you're in a drill that you think there's no way out of and you don't realize there's 10 instructors five feet from you, you know, ⁓ kind of stuff. So ⁓ very important. Very important. But there are there's some there's some two and three day classes that are eight hours a day. And they're not bad classes, you know, but they're they they do. They're calling them they're calling it a smoke diver class. And it's ⁓ there's no copyright, you can't copyright the word smoke diver. We do have trademarked Georgia smoke diver and Indiana smoke diver and Oklahoma smoke diver. But outside of that, ⁓ you you just you can't do anything. You can call whatever you, you know, you can't you can't trademark it or copyright it. So and then there's some that are not affiliated with us that are awesome as well that are that are tough classes. But they're they're all a little different. Some are strictly Test drills, scenarios, pass fail. There's not a lot of training going on. It's kinda you you train yourself and then you come and put yourself to the test. Ours is a sort of a combo of both. Like w there is a lot of training in the beginning, a couple of days, and then and then there's the the test part scenario based type stuff at the end. Very good stuff, man. Very good stuff. So and how about them dogs? Them dogs as hell. They're looking good. ⁓ looking good. We got a big test ⁓ with Alabama coming up next week in Alabama. I hear the president will be there. So it's gonna be quite the spectacle. But ⁓ yeah, it's looking looking good. Good year. Are you going? No, I'm not going to that one. I'm actually headed to the ⁓ to your motherland. I'm headed to Italy next week. All right, very nice. Good for you. Yep, gonna do a little. Finally taking a vacation for a few days. Very nice. Yeah, going Naples, Naples all the way up to Tuscany. So ⁓ very nice, man. The wine and the olive oil, baby. Wine, olive oil, and ⁓ lemoncello. There you go. And you're gonna visit a firehouse at two, right? ⁓ actually I ⁓ have a contact in Rome that was at FDIC and ⁓ supposed to get a tour. There's a firehouse like right behind the Vatican somewhere, pretty close. And also supposedly an unreal museum in Rome. Fire museum. ⁓ wow. Very nice. So ⁓ yeah I'm hoping to meet up with ⁓ meet up with them and check out some of that stuff. That's nice, man. Yeah they got to put pumps on the pulp mobile man. A couple of ladders. That'd be good stuff. So I'll ask him where the retro reflective striping is on the back. Ooh, that's right. There you go. Very good. Well we've sucked up this hour like very quickly. Like that. And ⁓ David, I appreciate you coming. I know Anthony does too. ⁓ you know, I'm sure you do so many of these, but I'm I'm really glad got to some of the detail of some of your thoughts. Good. Glad you're healed up. ⁓ yeah, almost a hundred percent, about eighty, but I'm doing good. You know what? It's I was just talking to Anthony before the show started. A year ago I couldn't stand up. You know, and and yesterday I walked five miles. That's awesome. You know, so so I got ⁓ you know, I got nothing to complain about. And you definitely know when it's gonna rain now, right? I I do. But you know what? If I bitch about a limp and there are people I know who are struggling through cancer, shame on me. You know what? So I'm I'm pretty blessed. Anyway, you guys keep up the same stuff, Chief of Villo. Any closing remarks? Hey, listen, I I I thought great show, David. Thank you for coming. ⁓ we go back a long way. And ⁓ you know, I ⁓ use just ⁓ always always cherish the friendships that I've made at the FTIC and you know, way, way back till nineteen ninety n from you know, all the way back to the Billy Manning years and stuff. And ⁓ you know, all good stuff, man. And keep up the good work, brother. All right, see you guys. Hope see you soon. You stay safe. All right, see ya. Thank you again. To all listeners, stay safe till next month and we'll have more surprises for you. Thank you.