Our latest podcast episode pulls back the curtain on the crucial role of the senior advisor in incident command, focusing on their support to the Incident Commander (IC) and their ability to seamlessly liaise with external agencies and how the senior advisor ensure the IC's attention remains undivided on the crisis while they handle the intricacies of public information oversight and utility coordination, a balancing act that requires both expertise and finesse.
This episode features Nick Brunacini, Josh Blum and John Vance.
We want your helmet (for the AVB CTC)! Check this out to find out more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qg5_ZwoCZo0
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Please subscribe and share. Thank you for listening!
This episode was recorded at the Alan V. Brunacini Command Training Center in Phoenix, Arizona on February 16, 2024.
Our latest podcast episode pulls back the curtain on the crucial role of the senior advisor in incident command, focusing on their support to the Incident Commander (IC) and their ability to seamlessly liaise with external agencies and how the senior advisor ensure the IC's attention remains undivided on the crisis while they handle the intricacies of public information oversight and utility coordination, a balancing act that requires both expertise and finesse.
This episode features Nick Brunacini, Josh Blum and John Vance.
We want your helmet (for the AVB CTC)! Check this out to find out more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qg5_ZwoCZo0
Sign up for the B Shifter Buckslip, our free weekly newsletter here: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/fmgs92N/Buckslip
Shop B Shifter here: https://bshifter.myshopify.com
Register for the 2024 Hazard Zone Conference here: http://hazardzonebc.com/
All of our links here: https://linktr.ee/BShifter
Please subscribe and share. Thank you for listening!
This episode was recorded at the Alan V. Brunacini Command Training Center in Phoenix, Arizona on February 16, 2024.
Welcome to B shifter today Nick Brunassini, Josh Bloom, John Vance here. Glad to have you along for the ride. Our topic today is the senior advisor, so we'll get into that here in just a second. How are you guys doing today?
Speaker 3:Fantastic, all right, happy to be here. I'm awake and alive Well that's good too.
Speaker 1:I'm exuberant with it.
Speaker 2:I'm alive with testosterone and other supplements that I take all day long. We just started doing this functional medicine thing in my house, so I actually haven't started the functional part of it, yet I look forward to that.
Speaker 2:It's part of being retired, you know, you've got to take better care of yourself. So they say so. Today the topic is senior advisor and in the blue card system we have, of course, our incident commander, who's going to be primary, our IC number two, who's who's a command post? They are supported with a support officer and then, as the incident continues to grow, we bring in what we call a senior advisor and I think it would be really good, especially for those people who you know, even even blue card users. We talk about what a senior advisor does, but I think talking about some of the attributes and some of the ways that a senior advisor can enhance a scene and help us, overall, manage a better scene would be helpful for, again, folks who are blue card users but also thinking about blue card or you know, just not quite sure how the senior advisor thing works. So I know I've been a senior advisor on several incidents Nick has been, you have been Josh. So let's talk about what senior advisor does.
Speaker 3:Well, I think the kind of kick it off that you know, blue card certifies, you know IC one, ic two, and then we, we have really the objectives and checkoffs for you know, the division boss, and then we have a. We have a checkoff piece that we provide it's not a certification checkoff piece that we provide for, you know, the senior advisor so you could actually run a scenario and you know, walk through that, what does that really look like? And exercise it before you do it, because it's one of those things where and most systems it probably doesn't get exercised very often but either because of just not having the resource to do it or just not having the incidents where you really need that position. And I think this is going to be another one of those topics, like many that we have, that there's kind of what it looks like in the Metro, big city, and then it's kind of what it looks like in suburbia and like who fills that role and when would they get there and all those things.
Speaker 3:The job, the job's the same, but it's like how do you, how do you really do that and what's it look like? And the position doesn't mean you have to have a vehicle that they ride around in or command van that shows up. You know it can still be, you can, you can complete the objective of the position. You know, I think with without that. And you know, when I think about the senior advisor position I I think a lot about really command function six, seven and eight. That you know. Command function one, two, three, four is kind of like initial strategic IC. They're using them all together. We communicate through command function five. We use six, seven and eight in other places, but really the senior advisors, I think it's like almost like a checks and balances and then it becomes a big reinforcement and support pieces. The incident grows.
Speaker 2:We support an IC instead of coming in, and I think the old model and a lot of the United States was they kept passing command until the most senior person got on the scene.
Speaker 2:We don't do that with blue card. That's not part of fire command. What we do put in place is a system to support the IC, to help the IC manage the incident, and that's what the senior advisor does, and the other thing it does is allow them to focus on the incident, while the senior advisor takes so many things off that IC's plate that the IC would have to worry about. So, for instance, you know you have an incident where there's an environmental concern and the environmental protection agency shows up, or someone from the governor's office of emergency services show up, that senior advisor or the mayor even that senior advisor can can tell the IC don't worry about that, I've got this. You continue running the incident. So let's talk about who's ideal to help that person out and the kind of skill set that that person needs to have when you look at deployment, is we send a number of units based on what?
Speaker 1:what the reported incident is, right? So when you look at like the incident management world is, is the incident grows in scope and you need more, say fire control? Is you call engines and ladders and they they supply you fire control, task level fire control. Well, is you increase the amount of that you need is there's a corresponding increase of strategic level management you're going to need to manage all those new task level resources and Josh mentioned division bosses. That's probably the first delineation and subunit that we use. Is the first organizational unit made at every incident scene is that of the incident commander, right? So when you draw out an incident org, you know engine one can get there and they're going to do x, y and z on the task level. But from an incident organization standpoint, that incident commander is going to establish, command and operate as the mobile IC in the thing. And, like you said, vance, in the very beginning of that, let's use an incident where you're going to need a senior advisor sooner than later, something big. Well, if you, if you're engine one and you're pulling up and you think, oh my God, I'm going to need at least a four to five person strategic level contingent to manage the the tactical and task level requirements of this incident. That's a sign for that. I see that they really should be doing a resource determination right now, because if you, this is bigger you need to make sure I got enough task level units coming, because in about three to five minutes, at an urban setting, you're going to probably transfer command from mobile IC to strategic position IC. So now we've upgraded command, we've put it in the buggy inside the command post. If you're outside the command post, your IC number one, it doesn't matter. If you're a chief wearing no turnouts. If you're outside the command post, that's what you are. Inside the command post, we can start to support that person with a support officer. So the decision that that IC number two needs to make is do I need a support officer now or do I need a division boss somewhere? Because you're going to use your next arriving tactical level officer for that. When the senior advisor comes in in an urban setting, the senior advisor is typically the ranking on duty officer.
Speaker 1:So and the system that I grew up and graduated from is you had company officers, were captains, you had battalion chiefs and then shift commanders were deputy chiefs. That's the position I retired in when I left, so I'd been a shift commander for I don't know six, seven years, something like that. But really is you are the one that supervises the battalion chiefs at that point, so you're there to support them. And like you said, vance, this isn't a deal where we transfer command one time from mobile to inside the command post Once that IC has it. It's my experience that if you train that person, let's say in a program like Blue Card because that's what we did when we trained everybody in Blue Card there were all the battalion chiefs were competent to be inside the vehicle ICs, all of them. So it wasn't this deal that, oh, if Jimmy gets here first, make sure you're right on top because we're going to have to take command because Jimmy is going to screw it up. No, no, no, no, no. You need to train Jimmy to operate in that position. And my experience is all the jimmies that we train got it is they were all good then.
Speaker 1:So when the bell rings and now you're running the incident, jimmy stays there as IC number two inside the van and as the senior advisor you come in and you kind of figure out Jimmy's responsible for fire control and hazard mitigation. Hazard control, loss, stop. That's what I want you to focus on. Outside of that operational piece of that, all the function that comes in to support it. It's easier if the senior advisor is the person that starts to deal with that. What that gets you. I'll just skip to the end. We do incidents, set up the command van do the thing. When it's over, we de-escalate, we do a little review in the command van about how the command post operation went. We have never had to transfer command away from the IC, ever. And then what you hear from them all the time is oh, that was great. We were here about 45 minutes and we used about a whole two alarms maybe two and a half.
Speaker 1:You're like we've been here for five hours, we've gone through four alarms and the mayor was here for a little while and then Taylor and Travis showed up because they wanted a picture. And then and they're shocked, they're like you're kidding me. You think no, the system worked. As you guys were in the tunnel of fire control and hazard mitigation, you knew where all your divisions were and what they were doing and you were working to get fire control. You're all clears and your loss stopped. The system and organization behind that the senior advisor puts in. Now I make sure my rehab set up. I make sure I got my PIO over here. I make sure that I got my reps to deal with the utilities and this and that Big incident. This side of the block is burning. I need all the electricity shut off. From second street to third street, from Buchanan to Van Buren, right Power company rep comes all killed. Chief, we got her. You look over and you say why are the lights on in that building? And that building, oops, the IC shouldn't have to worry about that. The IC's worried about getting water to attack positions. They're talking to divisions. You got enough resources. All of that, this other stuff behind is you build that strategic level organization that you need to run, something where you got two, three, four alarms. There's a lot of back-end work to fill there. That is the role of the senior advisor in my mind period and then you supervise the critique when it's done. So you just kind of keep general social order is what it is.
Speaker 1:That senior advisor person in my system became responsible basically was the training chief too, as we had an assistant chief in charge of training, but the shift commanders that worked out of our command training center managed volume two in a way that the training division didn't. We were getting to the point where operations was doing all of its own operations training, and so that was just built into the. How the new fire department was operating at the time and it was a very it was a shift-based system is what we were going to, which is a difficult thing to pull off because most chiefs operate in an administrative 40-hour week role. So we were trying to redo the fire department. Now the chiefs the response chiefs were the same schedule as the workforce, were part of the workforce. This is what this looks like. So it really kind of made the, the strategic contingent, more occupational in the thing we didn't work.
Speaker 1:Example everybody's coming to command training because we're answering questions. You know, garrison talks about accountability. Well, no, accountability is. This is mine. I'm going to fix it. And this is what this looks like.
Speaker 1:In the middle of that, because it was such a it was having a monocom of success with training the general masses is, other people wanted to get in. So the administrative chief wants to do the next session, the first 30 minutes. They request what do you want it for? Well, we're making some changes to the grooming policy. You think well, how does that affect fire control or haircuts? Well, it doesn't. Well, okay, thank you very much, goodbye. Then the ops chief calls me. Hey, you know he called you about. So you want us to turn this into just training for everybody? No, I don't. Okay, good, then I'll tell him that you can hang up on him next. We don't do that here, we do army training, sir, that's, that's what we're soldiers, we're not. We're not going to do floral arrangements next week, just to use an example. So that's kind of where the senior advisor came.
Speaker 1:In fact, you kind of serve as a leadership role in operations. In fact, before I retired, I viewed myself as a union president of B-Shift Well, c-shift, before I left, but that's kind of the role I think I had as a chief then. It worked out pretty well. Thank you, carol Gooden-Welfare. Yeah, I mean the weight of their hearts is through their stomachs in other ways, but I understood that because I was one of them. So we spoke the same language. You could make deals with people that really were deals. You kept them. You kept your word. You did what you said you were going to do. It was a very it was a fun time to be alive during that era.
Speaker 2:I think for a system like and I think, a large urban system like Phoenix, that is the way you need to organize it and you have to organize it and systems similar to mine. Where I came from, I saw that I had a coffee with a battalion chief every day. I talked to the ops chief every day and then when shit broke loose, we were right behind them to support them, again not coming into, but we knew the plan. The normal everyday stuff was going on. We went to their trainings and everything else, but yet when they needed the support, we also had the staff that was going to be able and had the relationships and everything else, and we weren't there to because they had the competency level. All of our battalion chiefs are blue card instructors, so they knew exactly what they were going to do. When you train, together.
Speaker 1:That's what it builds. It's almost like a marriage, as you say. Okay, we're partners in this thing. I'll get back to the accountability piece. Everybody screams for accountability. Well, that's what training is.
Speaker 1:If I am the plug person on the engine company, I'm accountable for making the water connect in with the human valve to the hydrant, do a piece of four-inch hose that goes back up into a keystone valve. I have to understand that. That's my role as a strategic level boss, as the fire chief coming in. They need to understand. Well, vance is the senior advisor. The IC loves it because I don't have to screw with the PIO or all the other fire chiefs. They don't want anything to do with it. That's what the senior advisor is for.
Speaker 1:The first thing, though, as a senior advisor, is you've got to make sure the IC's got their shit together and that the plan is right, that the safety of the people in the hazard zone is being taken care of, so you've got to have a competence and understand the work. You have to know what better than the firefighters do Like. Okay, this is how a selectimatic 125-GPM nozzle works. Well, that was the equipment I use, so you're familiar with the capabilities of what the crews can do. And then sometimes as an IC, I get things hey, we're having trouble doing this. Well, you need to pull some ceiling and put some water in the attic right now. Well, no, I don't need another company. No, you need pull ceiling. And then we're going to have a review when we're done about your timing. But it's all in effort of just delivering high-quality customer service. That's where we prevent the harm. Be nice about it. And then the senior advisor's final piece of responsibility is everybody survives. So when you're leaving this, we're all going to leave the scene together. So that's kind of the routine.
Speaker 1:And you're right, fans, the way it gets, that the responsibility gets divided up, is different between a big urban and a smaller suburban department. But it's the same, exact. You're doing the same goddamn thing. You know what's not different? We talk OK, you kind of customize blue card to your department and everything else. The one thing that's the same for all of us is the fire burns the same and the fire goes out the same. So you don't get extra points because I'm disadvantaged, I don't have as many companies, it's going to go out a little quicker for me. No, until you put the right GPMs, it's going to burn, so we can differentiate between this and that, but at the end of the day, if you all get together, we're all doing the same work. It's got the same time, same constraints, it's got the same deployment requirements. All of that. The key is you got to figure this shit out before the incident and then be competent when you get to the incident. That's the key to the thing I'm done. Talking for the rest of the show, no.
Speaker 2:Well, you know what one of the so I like this graphic.
Speaker 1:I started lecturing. So I mean it turns into a church, goddamn it.
Speaker 2:We just can't have it like this all the time when we have this. You know, I always say Now you got graphics, you know the senior advisor ties the command team together.
Speaker 2:So let's talk about how that senior advisor hooks up to the support officer and IC2 and how they're also interfacing with logistics and the incident safety officer. How's that communication go? And how do we communicate that to the IC? Because a lot of times IC number two well, you know, when the senior advisor shows up, we'll still be in the mode. Oh, I've got to take care of all of this. So there's almost like a little bit of a transfer when the senior advisor gets into the command post to say, okay, jimmy, I've got this and this and this. You stay on the on the tack channel, you worry about the incident, I've got everything else. So how, how, how does that feel? How's that look? And? And looking at our graphic here, how does that tie everybody together?
Speaker 3:So a big piece of it is is, like Nick said, you have to train on this, discuss it and exercise it before you have the incident. Otherwise, you got five people in the vehicle and they're not all going to be on the same page. They're all going to be, you know, trying to do their own thing and not with the same really goal in mind, right so? One thing I just want to want to say is that that's like an image from, like command ban, right so. But you could do the same thing with, you know, two four door SUVs together and and maybe the senior advisor ends up having to stand outside between the two, or you know whatever that looks like.
Speaker 1:So the next time I was senior advisor I was outside. So, just like you said, two suburban, I was in the middle.
Speaker 3:So that senior advisor is, you know, coordinating with all of it. But the biggest support piece is coming to IC number two. And then they're hearing from the incident safety offer that's officer that's in there. If they are on a separate channel with that support officer that's in a division, they're hearing what's going on with that, which really becomes back to like a needs piece potentially. So the senior advisor is hearing all there's a need, maybe from the field, from a division, and then it can be connected back to logistics to get that resource coming in.
Speaker 3:And I think, like Nick said, that you know command didn't even know or doesn't know that there's four alarms or the companies you know here, because somebody else is doing that work right. So I think it's like any other, any other exercise we do. Every person there just has to do their job and we've been talking a lot recently about this whole task saturation thing and no one person, no two people are going to, are going to manage it when you have four alarms worth of resource there. And we don't want them doing that, because we want IC2 focused on the shit that's going on inside of the IDLH, not the PIO shit, not the water supply, not the EPA, not the bus service needs to open. Know when the road opens back up. None of that.
Speaker 1:Whatever the police, the current tactical priority is what they're, they're rocking and rolling around.
Speaker 1:See, the other thing that that does is when you look at incident organization and incident communications, or they're the same thing, they're married together. You organize so you can communicate and keep everybody in the same direction. So we talk about single channel hazard zone operations. Well, if I've got, let's say, a fourth alarm and I've got a building burning, I got some hazmat stuff going on over here, I got an evacuation over here, well, that's probably two to three radio channels right there, and then I got a logistics channel where I've got my staging and my firefighter rehab on. So when you go back to that model of the five person command van I see in the sport office or on the tech channel, the ISO or the basically the safety section is what they are is on the safety channel, and then you've got logistics and they're on a different channel too. So logistics is non-hazard zone and that's where we're going to have staging and firefighter rehab. So all the firefighters, all the task level personnel, before they get into the incident action plan, they're going to be on the logistics channel. This is for a greater alarm. We started this incident off on one single channel and we slowly escalated. When we have the personnel into three different channels because you're doing three major operations at the same time that the senior advisor is coordinating inside the command post. If it's a fast moving thing it's better to have them in the same command post. If you got one little deal over here, a different little deal over here, you can do it open air and it works pretty well. The defense of fires big like organic shit, burning poles, dumps things like that Inside the command post. Josh said it.
Speaker 1:Each person is responsible for their own thing. The safety section is responsible for the safety channel, logistics sections responsible for logistics channel. I see support officer tactical channel Seeing your advisor becomes the glue that keeps them connected. An example they're doing roll calls. Let's say you've got some offensive positions in this thing. You've got two divisions, the safety officers and Alpha and Delta are given roll calls to the safety section inside the command van, exactly where their personnel are within the division. At that point I've got engine five, engine seven inside with ladder four, and I've got engine six, engine eight and ladder nine on deck. So safety section writes it down, senior advisor comes over, takes that note, goes over to the support officer who's maintained in the tactical worksheet and says here is your roll call right now for Alpha. Oh, thank you, they can bring their worksheet up to date. Now it's not as critical that they know that because I have a division boss in Alpha who is responsible for those. What we're doing is we're just keeping track. Now we're doing inventory inside the command van Low impact inventory, because the real juice is going on in the division between the division boss and those companies that are assigned to them. That is the way we maintain our strategic spanner. Control is division bosses In Blue Card.
Speaker 1:People say well, we use our company officers working, company officers assigned to the units as division bosses because they're good and we get yeah, they're great. The problem is is when the shit hits the fan in Alpha, as they ain't talking to you anymore, they're done, they're task level operators and they're going to go get handsy tasky and you lose them. So what happens is the flywheel blows up and you own them, but there ain't no one to control them because that good company officer is doing company officer work, which is what they showed up to the scene to do in the first place. We have just gotten away with it for the last hundred years because we've been putting the fire out by the time that happens. If it's opposite and the fires jacking up, that's where you get your lunch, and it doesn't happen that often. Well, it doesn't happen that often.
Speaker 1:Well, you wear your seatbelt. Do you get an accident every day in your car? I wear mine all the time and I haven't hit my car hard enough to need it yet, but we wear it anyway. Same thing, no difference. If you're not doing it, you own it and insures man and that is your bag of shit to deal with. The way you fix it is before the incident, by drawing it out and saying when we get to this point, this is the way we're going to manage it and that's it. There is no doubt when nobody's arguing about it.
Speaker 1:If you're well organized, you can make changes to an incident action plan. It's beautiful to watch. It's beautiful to watch. I would call that a professional operation, whereas if you're not doing that, it's more of an amateur hobby for you. So I mean, that's kind of the difference. If you're serious about it and you do it for a living, eventually you figure out. This is the best way for me to keep track of all this and to be in control of things where I feel comfortable that we're not going to toast the shift. I said I was going to shut up but I'm not going to. You know that right.
Speaker 1:It's yeah, well, we'll keep prompting you.
Speaker 2:The other thing here, what I think is very helpful for the IC is the senior advisor being the resource officer for them, getting them what they need. So I've been on these large incidents like a fire at a recycling plant and a front-end loader is needed. For some reason, the IC doesn't have to worry about requesting it. The senior advisor acknowledges hey, I heard that I'll get it for you and that's all the support officer needs to know. They let the IC know and then the senior advisors magically making that stuff appear IE Whoa, this was a four alarm fire, I didn't know. Well, yeah, the senior advisors keep an apart level of so many companies and staging. Once we get down to, you know one truck left and we're getting other resources there and that helps out that IC. Once again on their focus, their sole focus being the incident and the hazard zone.
Speaker 3:And I think the sooner you can plan on this and set it up. I mean, that's a critical piece, right? So we'll just take it back to deployment that if you're calling a second alarm, then you have to have the people there to manage the second alarm. And when you get to, when you get, once you get to this point and you have a command van set up with all those positions, you know you can run it out a long way and Nick's done, you know, a fabulous job on a few different times showing like how many people can you really manage once you have a command van in place and division bosses, and it's a shitload of companies. Oh yeah, so it's.
Speaker 1:I mean, we got well, we'll put the graphics up. There's more of them we can show you. But you put a couple of division bosses between the command team and the task level and that's what it is. That is truly. You are organizing the hazard zone now. So for years we argued well, is it a sector, a division or a group? No, no, no, it's a tactical level. Boss is what it is.
Speaker 1:And if somebody has got the juice that can say no, ancient five, you're going to stand there and you're not going to do anything. You're going to stand by till I tell you what you're going to do next. It's not going to be the captain of engine five. Captain of engine five tells the captain of ladder 11 that we're going to tie him up and we're going to take all the stat coins from him. But tie in chief does it is. I'm going to have to find a union rep before I take those kind of actions. So it's going to stop it.
Speaker 1:We use a rank structure to organize the administrative day to day function of the fire department when there's no hazard and then when there's a hazard, oh, I'll just use captains. The city did that to us for a while. No, we're not going to pay chiefs over time because they're middle managers, they can't work here. Just hire a captain, the fire chiefs, like we just hire captains to run the whole goddamn thing. Then you think that's not the way it works, pal. Uh-uh, there's different levels in this thing.
Speaker 2:Well, and we've talked to captains that have a May Day, and one of them is presenting at the conference Captain Grandin from Lubbock. He had a May Day and probably the biggest heartache for him was once the May Day was resolved he was outside. He even forgot about the guy humping the hose in. So how are you going to be a division boss when a May Day happens to you and you're the one who's also supervising crews and also carrying out tasks? It's impossible.
Speaker 1:Well, and everybody recognized that and they said that's why you have to make a rescue group immediately as soon as there's a May Day, because that's their job. And you think, no, it's a division, it's a. It is that that division's job to first of all keep May Days from occurring in the first place. So we prevent 100% of them. You don't have to react to them. But in the odd chance that one occurs, is you have a strong hand at that entry point into the hazard zone. And if you don't have that, southwest supermarkets, when the first chief showed up to it would have been Alfa, bravo, that's where they were all going in.
Speaker 1:Bravo 10, 15 companies by the time the first chief got over there. You know how many people were outside. Bravo Zero, they were all inside. The captain who was running it at the time was inside fighting which way the hose went. So until they could put that organization in, the command team floundered. There was nothing they could do. It was just turn the radios off. It don't matter. Until we get division bosses here, we will not get control of this incident back. And once they got it, they got it back. It was too late, it was done Too little, too late.
Speaker 2:That's part of that challenge in verify too that the senior advisor is going to provide for IC number two, that if they don't have that in place and they don't have the proper command structure, they're going to be the ones to initiate that and to advise the IC to put it in place and get it done. So that's one of the great things about that role.
Speaker 3:I think, sometimes on, we talk about exercising the system, and I'm not about, you know, though, and too many people at it to over manage something whatever. But you know it doesn't hurt to exercise it sometime, and sometimes I think you can get a senior advisor into place and and help coach and develop ICs further also, right, so, not in the middle of a bunch of shit happening, but, you know, having a discussion in the command post once, once things have settled, like okay, like it's not over yet, but how did this? How did this really go? What else did we not think about? Or why did you do that? And that's not the time to do it Isn't when a bunch of shit's happening.
Speaker 3:But you know, I see it a bunch of times around around suburbia that a chief will get into that backseat, and whether you want to say it's a senior advisor or not, you know they're getting into there to to basically like, hey, what's going on here? Is everything okay? Do you need anything? Because it's, you know, seven or eight fire departments coming together and the fire chief from that community showed up and everything is going fine. But they just want to see, like, okay, where's everything at? Do you need me to do anything? Yeah, and oftentimes the IC will say what are we missing something? Did we not like a, not like a? We know we're missing something, but are we missing something? What, what, what else do we need to do?
Speaker 1:Yeah, they need, like their boss, to come in with another set of eyes and kind of evaluate am I okay with where I'm at now?
Speaker 3:Right, and it's just a, just a. I think it comes in. I think it comes back to that task saturation and and do we get focused too much on on one thing? And and looking at, if the strategic ICs at 30,000 feet, then the senior advisors at 50,000 feet? Yeah, so I think that's the, that's a big piece of it in the, in the suburban world of what I think 90% of the U S fire service. You know how, how it ends up breaking down.
Speaker 1:So Well, the command post is a big deal too in it. See, when I did it it like in the urban setting as we showed up with the command van. So we would set the command van up first and then we just learned, as you just transferred command, you go on the radio command van to command the CV, one to command Go ahead, cv set up. We're transferring command to the CV now. And we got into that because we would just tell them, hey, cv set up and ready to go. When would they end up in the command van? You said it task saturation Never. They're never going to leave their suburban or whatever they drove there in. So we just no.
Speaker 1:So if somebody said, well, command, enter 15 to command, I would answer I cover the IC, command, go ahead. Well, they figured out, he's not bullshitting. I need to get in the command band if I want to stay in command. So they're running, they come in, they sit down. I would print them off a resource list and then we could do a snapshot and overhead with the computer system and the way the trucks had AVL, the footprint of the building and then the saturation, the apparatus placement around it. So I'd give them both of those say you're good to go, we're going to get you more resources. You got the half an alarm left. Have at it, and then off they go. And then we would do just we would call alarms for them behind them. They wouldn't know, they'd have no idea.
Speaker 1:So, but I said it earlier, the key is to do that before the event. It shouldn't be the fire chief. While I listened to a podcast yesterday and now I'm going to show up and I'm going to be a senior advisor. No, no, no, no. Man, you got to sit down and come up with a plan and it doesn't. Josh said it doesn't have to be signed in blood. It's like, hey, if I get there and you're taking care of the front end of this is I'm going to kind of help you flesh out the back end before you really need it, and then when you get to that point, it's done. So you don't have the media knocking on the window. So we're going for a big fire department had some huge benefits.
Speaker 1:It's like the PIO just showed up. They're at the end of the street and the media wants to talk to them. They don't want to beat on our window because we're not going to open it. They know they're going to get the most usable stuff out of the PIO. The PIO.
Speaker 1:What they did is they wrote down a few facts that were just holes in their narrative about. We got here so fast and we took great risks and we save small children and puppies and the rest of it and engine five and this and that and the details of the occupancy and the rest of it, and so that system over time turned into about five to eight minutes a night on every network news broadcast and we got to the point where our video unit was actually like doing B roll for them, sending them, and so all they. It was a hug and a kick. You talk about making your own advertising is what it was. I mean it was, and you could see man, the honey just kept stacking in the thing. I mean we became more and more popular because of it and all you were doing was sharing with the public. This is what happened today in the city and this is how the fire department responded to it and the PIO telling the story.
Speaker 2:I mean it was well, we accomplished that by having dual roll people. So fire marshals, deputy fire marshals, also serve as the PIO, as a senior advisor, even a support officer. If the media is showing up to the command post, I'm shagging them out of there. We don't want people beating on the door. So I'll say go, stand over there. I'm going to have somebody over there to talk to you real soon. So you're going to get the official statement and that's fine and you know so, even without that dedicated PIO, which is such a blessing to have. I mean, we were talking about like places like South Metro. South Metro, colorado, just had some huge incidents and they probably have the best PIO channel in the country right now. You haven't checked them out. Look up South Metro's YouTube page because it is fantastic. So you look at what they're doing and you can. You can scale that down to smaller fire departments. You can scale that down to the kind of organization we have. It's more function based than just having that title and somebody who's dedicated.
Speaker 1:There is one person in your strategic command team that wants to talk to the media. But they just want to. I mean, that's their deal. They love talking to the media. Tell them the story. It was been a million years ago. There was a rodeo Chetis sky wildfire in Arizona Big, gigantic it was at the time was one of the biggest fires in the history of fires. There was a guy named Jim Paxton who was the PIO for that and it was kind of an accidental and they wouldn't let him in the command post. So he started talking to the media. Well, man, he starts spinning this thing. He says today the monster won and you know, you're having down drafts where whole like thermal columns are smashing and spreading fire for 20 miles in each direction. Well, he's narrating this thing like Shakespeare, you know, and he's like an old grandpa and he's drinking his coffee and he's a rugged a fire line guy. It's like the CBS shows now with the convex center. You think, yeah, I'm fine.
Speaker 2:That Cal fires upset about they didn't get PIO input into the script.
Speaker 1:Approval on it. Exactly that it was.
Speaker 2:Well, you guys want to do a timeless tactical truth Hell yeah, We'll be, as well.
Speaker 1:man Garrison was quite impressive. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Timeless tactical truth from Alan Brunassini. This one's talking about the continuous improvement model and he said standard management, cycle procedures, training, execution, critiquing, revising and back around. If we keep doing this, we are always fixing ourselves and I think even to the point of exercising having a policy for your senior advisor or other other things on the fire ground. Then you train on it, you execute it and then you tweak it and make it better. Let's talk about some examples of that and how it improves the organization.
Speaker 1:The review and revision pace. That's where you you know really we would start that with. You would do it. Okay, what were the critical factors when you got here? So you're painting the picture, okay, this is what we had. And then the best ones I was ever part of it was like what would be the best thing to do, the least number of people, the quickest way to put this out, and then that's the way we talk about it and about 90% of the time that's pretty much the action they took in the beginning and you think excellent job.
Speaker 1:Sometimes it wouldn't go that way and the only way to make sense of it was to talk about it, figure out why it didn't and then take any corrective action that needed to be taken. Sometimes it just couldn't be helped for whatever reason, and you know you needed to understand that and say, well, the ball bounced funny that day and it just got screwed up a little bit and you know, the next time we'll look for this and this Other times. Well, no, the first three companies got here, nobody laid a supply line and, yeah, when the trucks cavitated, the attic kind of took off on us. That's not good. So it kind of gave you that approach to fix little problems but bigger problems. They didn't really come out that way. Very often it was more, I think, the more you train and fix things, because when I got hired this is the system they were using. So they were already five years into doing this. So you weren't fixing the same problem. There was always something new. And we got to the point once where there was about a six or seven year period where we figured out our SOPs, conflicted enough that we were going to have to rewrite some major shit, and we had started doing that probably about six months before my own man retired. And then, once he left, things switched and they went different directions to do a different thing. So all I just kind of that got swept off and they did whatever they were going to do next.
Speaker 1:But you got to that point where you thought, okay, because like operations manuals and the SOPs and those are living documents. You never put them on the shelf and said we're not going to quit doing these. You're always going on one call after the next. So you got to the point where you said, no, this has got some, it's got landmines in here, To the point like when you were doing promotional exams. You didn't ask certain kind of questions about rapid intervention and certain kind of overhaul techniques and there was no, and really we kind of fixed it with blue card after we all retired. Okay, we took this and we were able to do it in enough departments and enough places that you thought, okay, this is where this goes.
Speaker 1:A lot of it got fixed with removing rapid intervention as its own thing and just kind of using it as, okay, we're responsible. The response that shows up at the scene is responsible for their safety and welfare. There's not a piece of rick that flies out of the sky. We always thought was no, it's got to be built in. And when you built it in like that, we figured out you could actually organize and manage it. Then, as it wasn't a separate add on thing as you were doing it, we really saw it as a true. Rapid intervention is the capability of the response. It's not a job to a task level unit.
Speaker 3:So I guess, that's my example.
Speaker 3:This thing is all about making sure we try to do it better, right? So we say we in a state of constantly trying to fix ourselves, and so many people are like, well, we don't have to fix shit because everybody went home and we put the fire out, and it's like, well, that's a piss poor measurement of success, right? And that's where that accidental success thing pops up. So when we talk about that the procedures if you lay a supply line, you lay a supply line. If you didn't lay a supply line, then we're going to talk about why didn't you lay a supply line? And if the answer is, well, you didn't train me to do that, well, then that's a problem, right?
Speaker 3:So you got to look at your procedures, make sure they're accurate, train everybody on it and say, okay, does everybody got that? And then, when they have it, make sure that it's working. And if it's not working, then you need to adjust it and then it's just back to the top again. But we should be looking at every aspect of it. And firemen seem to be pretty connected to sports and I relate this thing every single time to when the quarterback comes off the field and they hand them the electronic device that shows exactly what just happened and sometimes they're like what the fuck was that? And they're like I don't know what that was either.
Speaker 3:That's where they throw the thing down on the grass, but I mean that's that right there, we were doing this and this is what it looked like or what it didn't look like. And there's a reason why the most successful teams out there that are playing a game to win which is very important, though we sometimes on the fire ground don't take it as serious on the fire ground as they do, just trying to get the most points. There's a reason why that some of those teams right, wrong and different They'll run. They'll run the score up because they're there to score as much as they can and keep you from scoring as much as they can. Right, and you're one by 70 points in a football, in a college football game, and they still are going to talk about it tomorrow Like we could have done this better and we should have done that better, and we're not going to do that anymore.
Speaker 3:And they fix it Right. But on the fire ground it's like we put the fire out and nobody got hurt and people high five and like that was successful. And I think it comes back to the tailboard thing. I think you can fix a lot of those little things and have discussions there of engine one why didn't you catch a water supply? Well, this is what's going on and it's like, oh okay, well, that that makes sense there, that was a good reason, but let's make sure we communicate that then, that you didn't lay a water supply, so we make sure we get one Right.
Speaker 3:And I think there's a lot of things with this can be, I think, fixed at the incident, at the, at the tailboard, and then you know, you take some notes on that and if things need to be revised or fixed further in the bigger picture, then you do that.
Speaker 1:Well, and you said, it is like a football team. The football team that wins the game makes the best adjustments at halftime. So they've already they know how to play football, they know how to throw the ball, they know how to run, they know how to do all that. They don't know all the plays. Well, the first half they did this to stop us. So the teams that have the best results, their coaches, say, no, we're going to do this this half and see if they can stop us this way.
Speaker 1:So you said a lot of times we want to want to train. Well, it's practice. We're just practicing so we don't get it wrong. And this is what it looks like all the time. So the fire ain't the same all the time.
Speaker 1:So we need to have these different tactics that we could use to exercise. I mean, the most glaring one was that I've witnessed was the water application Is now you can put outside water in an offensive strategy and that just caused people to lose their shit. No, no, no, no, we can't do that. Well, yeah, you can. I mean, if you can knock 75% of the energy out of the fire before you open that door, why the hell wouldn't you Now if Mike Tyson was on the other side and you knew you opened that door and Mike Tyson was going to whoop your ass. What would you do? Well, I'd have a shotgun, I'd have eight friends, I'd have six dogs. Well, that fire burned Mike Tyson up that fast. He'd make him gone. But so sometimes we don't have the regard for the fire that we should have is when, yeah, sometimes, when the fire knocks on you, it's very painful, yeah practicing the system and making sure that we have an appropriate way of taking care of it, and we're constantly tweaking.
Speaker 2:It is really that you know you can learn something from every single incident, and a lot of us aren't going to a fire every day. We're on duty. Maybe we're doing a couple of fires a month. So let's learn as much as we can from those two fires a month and share that information with others within the organization to what you just said, and Nick said it.
Speaker 3:90% of the time these things worked and there wasn't really even nothing maybe to talk about. Well, reinforcing that good behavior is a huge thing too. So everybody hears no, this is the way we're going to do it. And this did work. And sometimes it's like, well, why did you do that? But it worked. And it's like, oh, that's what we're going to start doing. Exactly so it's, it's what is the best way.
Speaker 1:When I was a young firefighter, I had watched water get put in from the outside before out of like deck guns and things, and the effect it had when you're like stop doing, don't do that is. We have been waiting for this moment and you've ruined it for us. And you said well, no, you can't, young firefighters don't get to run the tactics of the fire department for a reason, because you know it's. You can't manage recreation, it's impossible. And man, you can Fofa.
Speaker 3:Fofa, fofa, more on that to come.
Speaker 1:You know, this was more fun than usual. I don't know why. I think it worked out well. I don't know the pancakes or something.
Speaker 2:All right, fellas, I think we've done it. So thank you so much, everyone for joining us on B shifter. Make sure you look at our conference. It's coming up, starting September 30th, right outside Cincinnati Ohio, in Sharonville. Here is the website below that you can go to register and check out what we have going on and for information on us and what we talked about today, you can check out the show notes.
Speaker 3:John, I just want to mention we're offering a May Day workshop at the conference. There's only I think there's less than 20 seats left now, so if you were thinking about making it a four day event coming to the conference, you need to get registered sooner than later, that that piece is filling up very quickly.
Speaker 2:So get on it All right Till next time. Thanks so much for listening to B shifter.