B Shifter
Fire command and leadership conversations for B Shifters and beyond (all shifts welcome)!
B Shifter
Live from the 2024 Blue Card Hazard Zone Conference
Thanks to our panel: Chris Stewart, Erik Phillips, Jeffery King, Shane Ray, Nick Brunicini, and Dan Madrzykowski.
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This episode was recorded at the Sharonville Convention Center on October 4, 2024.
All right, welcome to the V-Shifter podcast recorded live at the 2024 Blue Card Hazard Zone Conference. I'm your host, john Vance. We have in the house Chris Stewart, eric Phillips, jeff King, also Shane Ray, nick Brunicini and Dan Madrakowski, and we have an intimate gathering here, but we want to thank everyone who hung out and hung out for the recording here this afternoon on Friday. How was the conference for you guys? Any epiphanies? And you're going to have to pass the microphones and speak into the microphone. Please, jeffrey, are we good? Yeah?
Speaker 3:No, this has been wonderful. It's been a great conference. So far, all right. I think the turnout has been wonderful. What? 30%, 45% more than we saw last year. Got a great group of speakers, got wonderful music that kicks in while you're speaking.
Speaker 2:You can't beat those things. You can't beat it.
Speaker 1:That's extra money we have to pay for that. That's absolutely great. It feels like the May Day workshop was weeks ago.
Speaker 6:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Day workshop was weeks ago. Yeah.
Speaker 2:There's been a lot of stuff jammed into this week in a very good way. Yeah, you had a baby. Oh, by the way, just so for the folks who are kind enough to stick around, we are going to end today with a visit from the world's most interesting IC. So you know, we couldn't let the year go by without the most interesting IC showing up, and he will be here to tell us a story that will get our weekend launched and also maybe be a little educational for us as well. So stick around for that, because that's how we're going to wrap things up today. Hey, dan, I've got a question for you. So we've got some questions that came in through our app, and the first question is what percentage of battery fires happen during charging? Is the hazard eliminated if the battery isn't being charged? Not regarding vehicles, but the smaller items like the scooters.
Speaker 7:So batteries can fail in any number of ways. Batteries can fail when they're charging, if they're being overcharged. Batteries can fail if they're discharging too fast. Batteries can short out or fail if there's mechanical damage. Batteries can fail if they're getting overheated or potentially even if they're too cold. They like to stay in sort of a sweet spot.
Speaker 7:I don't know that we've got great data, but certainly anecdotally, a lot of fires occur while the batteries are charging.
Speaker 7:However, we have also seen videos of micromobility devices or other tools that are being used, or especially things like vape pens or e-cigarettes that may not have a very good battery management system. So if you keep the contacts closed too long or that's in your pocket and it gets pressed in the on position for a long time, it could drive the battery, overheat the battery and drive it in a thermal runaway. But generally batteries at a lower state of charge, needless to say, are safer. So if you're, you know, just have batteries at 100% state of charge sitting around, if they were to get damaged and go into thermal runaway, that would be worse. So, kind of, if you're using them, you use them, let them sit and then when you need them, they charge up pretty quick. So watch it while you're charging it, Don't just leave it on the charger and you can learn all these tricks if you go to batteriesafetyorg. It's got our take charge campaign on there, which talks about using listed products and how to treat them and charge them and store them.
Speaker 2:Dan, how much of the onus is this on fire code versus on landlords, particularly in the larger buildings like we're seeing in densely populated areas like New York City, Chicago, where people are using these scooters for work, as we pointed out the other day? Is there education for the landlords that might have a resource for fire marshals out there?
Speaker 7:I mean. Certainly part of the question is what are you legally allowed to control? Right, they're not going to stop people from bringing laptops into their home or certain kind of handheld batteries in their home. The handheld tools are getting bigger. Some of them are up to 60 volts now, which is the equivalent voltage of, say, a micromobility device. So there's some issues there.
Speaker 7:I just saw an article recently that the law that was passed in New York City, where they are trying to outlaw uncertified or untested batteries, appears to be having some effect. So last year at this time in New York City, I believe they had 14 deaths already. This year four, it's down to four. I believe they had 120-some injuries. This year it's in the 80s. At the moment, hopefully the numbers stay low, but it's looked like it's having some effect. What that law did was allow them basically to go into battery shops and bike shops and look for illegal batteries and a lot of the batteries some of them were being handmade in those shops and they confiscated them and then they went back another week or two later and if the shop looked like it did two weeks before they actually started to arrest the owners and I think that you know when you arrest people and you put it on the cover of the Daily News. I think that starts to make a difference, and they certainly had good reason, because a few months earlier one of the shops caught fire and killed some people that lived in an apartment above it, so they're having some impact. San Francisco recently passed a similar law, and so we'll see how that moves.
Speaker 7:But that's sort of one of the pieces. The other thing that we know, whether it's the government as a landlord or other people, they're trying to provide a space, a good space, for people to park their e-scooters, and so do they put them in the basement of the government office building, they put them by the loading dock. Where do they put them? And certainly one thing we see that if they put them in a sprinklered area, that will certainly mitigate the hazard. It's not going to stop the thermal runaway. That battery box is going to burn out, but it's going to burn out in a relatively short period of time a minute, maybe a minute and a half and what the sprinklers do is limit the spread, cool the smoke, knock down some of the particulate the metal particulate that's in the smoke, and drop it down. So it really limits the hazard and controls it.
Speaker 2:Shane, you want to speak to that a little bit with the sprinklers controlling particular lithium-ion battery fires.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we had an over and under bet when we were doing the burns with some of the e-scooters and sprinklers. It's like it's just like a Christmas tree Back in the day, when they said sprinklers won't put out the Christmas tree fire. It's like, said sprinklers won't put out the Christmas tree fire, it's like, yeah, but they won't let nothing else catch on fire. So that's kind of the same thing. And then to the batteries being unregulated. We need the same thing with batteries that we have in the sprinkler industry, because, right, you can't get a sprinkler and install it in this building that's not UL listed or FM approved.
Speaker 4:And there's a reason for that, because they got to work right. They got to save people's lives and protect property and the fire problem in America. It's safe to say we're going to leave here and go to the US Fire Administrator Summit next week and there it's like, all right, the fire problem's getting worse. Well, it's getting worse because of all this unregulated stuff we have that we have no enforcement to and, as Dan said, we struggle with the laws about what can we enforce and what can't we. And in this deregulate-everything society it makes our jobs even more challenging and puts us all at more risk.
Speaker 2:Have you seen any big losses with your follow-up on sprinkler-controlled fires that had to do with batteries? I know there was one recently a car on a lift in Carmel, indiana, that overnight had caught on fire. Are they pretty successful with vehicles as well?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean everything. I think I got one in this week's. Every Friday I send out a spotlight on sprinklers and we had a lithium ion battery controlled fire this week. So I think it's safe to say that probably every day in this country there's a sprinkler controlled fire that keeps it from the batteries from going and spreading into other places. Like I said, I showed you the video today the e-scooter we burned at UL's test site in Pennsylvania. It's like the scooter burned all to hell, but the couch next two feet away wasn't even scorched. So it does its job Excellent.
Speaker 2:Do you guys have any questions on that for these guys?
Speaker 4:Yeah well, put your batteries up, leave them low charge. Yeah well, put your batteries up, leave them low charge.
Speaker 1:Yeah, every time Dan talks about those batteries it makes me think about all the shit I have in my garage that is potentially getting ready to burn.
Speaker 2:Hey, by the way, if anybody in the audience has a question, josh is out there and just put your hand up and Josh will come over to you. And if you have a question for anybody on the panel up here, we'd love to hear from you. You know, at this conference we introduced the After Action Review Module and that is available to Blue Card instructors. Let's just touch on that a little bit for the podcast listeners and how we think that's going to hook up for continuous improvement and what that's all about.
Speaker 8:We hope that people find value in it. They start to use it and we start to really kind of evaluate how we're really doing on the scene as it pertains to incident command, and how are we saying things and how are we going to train our folks really Like, how are we really doing? So? Be able to get the data out of it that you put into the program, I think we feel is going to be valuable. You're going to be able to upload the video helmet, cam, tick footage, pictures. You know that's all things that we're super excited about too.
Speaker 8:When you're sitting in class looking at a fire, talking about it, you link all those together and now it's like that's why I did what I did, right. So we think that's going to be sweet to be able to look at, but we hope everybody's going to find value in it. We certainly think it's going to be valuable. We think it's going to drive change not only in the organization, but the end result is we're going to do something different on the fire ground, because now we can actually review it and see what's going on.
Speaker 1:Well. So if you do a little bit of math, based on what Nick had up there early 3,300 departments inside Blue Card if even in the next two, three months, each one of those departments puts in 10, that becomes 33,000 reports then that's going to be a lot of data to actually look through. Is how are we doing in a general sense on the key fundamental elements inside the blue card incident management system and then looking at, okay, how were we actually performing? What was the legitimate outcome of all these fires? Pile of data that we can cull through and actually start to figure out and maybe start working with people who really are data professionals to be able to help us understand what it all means.
Speaker 6:There's already been 100 people log in. Over 100 people have already logged in and started looking at the after action. And then, right before we started this podcast, they were back with some folks from new mexico because they had a fire last night. They sent up, they sent it to the chiefs that were here and the chiefs dumped it into the program and started messing with it already. So it's going to be a good problem to have a whole lot of, whole lot of data in the in in that space that we can continue to learn from and make adjustments and refine what we do.
Speaker 8:I think we have a couple goals, jv. It's important to keep in mind for our podcast listeners Two goals of the program firefighter-friendly it's got to be easy to use or we're not going to use it right. So that's been one of the goals that we've kept on the forefront to make it easy to use for the firefighters. But the second goal is that it reinforces good behavior and improves bad behavior.
Speaker 8:When you think about that, we do a poor job in the fire service of saying a good job when you do a good job. We're not really good at that. But, more importantly, where can we improve on? We say we want to get better. We come to training and we always talk about well, I think we could do better at this or that. Now you're going to have that data there to support that, to truly doing better. So that's the two goals Firefighter friendly it's got to be easy to use. But, more important, we got to reinforce good behavior and try to improve on different areas. So we think that's going to be successful with those two goals in mind.
Speaker 2:Jeffrey, we have a question that came in on the app about implementing BlueCard within the department. Somebody is trying to implement BlueCard right now, but they're a junior-level officer, they're not in the front office, but he was tasked with checking it out and evaluating it for his department. He came here, he talked to a lot of people and he is sold. He wants to get it, but there's a lot of trepidation back home. He wants to get it, but there's a lot of trepidation back home. What do you say to somebody who's trying to implement change within their organization, particularly when it comes to command training.
Speaker 3:That is a loaded question. I'm going to be honest. It can absolutely be done from the middle but it has to have support from the top. If you don't have a fire chief that is committed and if you don't have a command staff that is on the same page and everybody working out of the same hymnal, at least from that spot down, it's going to be very challenging to get it done. But if you do have that support and you do have the willingness of those people, then once you go out with the program and you're honest about what you're delivering, then what you're going to see over a period of time is positive results.
Speaker 3:The first thing you start to see organizationally is the benefit of how it impacts the front end of your operations. Just by stabling that front end communication with your initial radio report, your follow-up report, you set the ball rolling in a really good direction so that IC number two comes in and has the ability to take over event and really help it get to the conclusion that you're looking for. If you're talking about setting the program up, set some two comes in and has the ability to take over event and really help it get to the conclusion that you're looking for. If you're talking about setting the program up, set some honest goals, make them very achievable. Like Eric talked about with the after action, it's got to be easy for the firefighters to do. Set them up for success on the online program. Once they finish in the online program, get them into the Sets and Reps lab as soon as possible, so it's still fresh, and then get them out in the field practicing and using it. And then go back to what Eric was talking about. You've got to reinforce the good behavior. If we don't reinforce the good behavior and if we don't acknowledge when somebody is doing something at an exceptional level, we're not going to do it.
Speaker 3:I think one of the things that's going to be an unintended consequence of the after action program is the natural competitiveness that exists in the fire service, and if I see somebody from the A shift got themselves an 86 on their last fire that they ran and the last one we was a 72,.
Speaker 3:Well, I'm going to go out there and try to improve on those scores because I want to make myself better than anybody else and that's a natural byproduct of who we are. So now that, with the ability to quantify how effective we are, measure how effective we are with the AIR. That person starting a new program has got a tremendous tool at their side that they didn't have two days ago. So this is part of that ever improving sense that we have in this organization. So my words for them hey, feel free to give me a call, give Eric a call. I think we've both been in a position where we've been kind of in the middle, forced to carry a lot of the load, but it is absolutely doable and you can see some positive changes, independent of what anybody who comes in behind you might say. Excellent.
Speaker 2:Thank you, shane. So here's one for you, because we're on the road a lot. We're teaching new people and ever since I heard pull up and hook up, that's what we're saying now in our big box classes. We get pushback. About one out of every 10 times. Somebody has a bunch of excuses why they can't do it. They're going to be robbing water from that facility, those kind of things. What do you say to folks when they have all these reasons for, you know, not pumping the FTC?
Speaker 4:It'll be a bad reason. It's like that's the reason they put it on the building and I kind of jokingly say you know, fire department connection, right. And then too, so many buildings sprinklers used to have a safety margin that was so great, and then now, because of all those things we were just talking about, that margin has thinned out and so they do need some help sometimes. And so when you pull up, hook up, if you've got a working fire pump, that thing, and then too, as we say in the big box class that we do, we give you the reasons why. And then now I've even got some new material.
Speaker 4:We were just at one of our pump manufacturers and distributors, underwood Pump over in Michigan, and so we got the fire department came out. They have one of the best pump labs in the world and so they got a diesel pump, three electric pumps and all in this room glass. You can sit outside, watch inside of it and see them operate those things. So we brought the fire department in and let them take over. It's like, so you got a decision to make. Do you want to take over the pump? You could do that with your pump Because again, you just brought. The only difference is yours is on wheels and theirs is fixed. And so we brought that and showed how it says all right, if this thing's running at 160 pounds and you want to take control of the whole thing, that's fine. And the biggest piece we showed them was the pump will be fine as well, because it cools itself. So it just sits there and kind of says all right, great, I'll chill out for a little bit. So there's lots of things and reasons why you should pump it, pull up, hook up, pump the system. It's designed for that, it's made for that. It's inspected, it's supposed to be maintained. For that You're not going to break it and so it's not going to hurt anything, even if you don't get any water into it. Right? If you're pumping it at 150 and it's at 160, then it's fine, it don't need you yet. But if it opens five more sprinklers, you ain't going to know that, right? But then I showed you today we went out. I went to Indiana a couple of months ago, met with Peerless Pumps, one of our manufacturers, and they've got a new digital component to their pumps that's going to put it right in the palm of the hands of the facility manager, and now they're working on a module that says it's going to put it in the hand of the incident commander when it's time for you to show up so that you know what that pump's doing. And so that's where it's like the technology is going so much further, and then you'll be able to sit right there on your phone and say, okay, we're at 160. Okay, we're at 150. Okay, we're at 140. Okay, oh shit, right, what does it need? It needs some help now, right. And so the technology is there. It's just like we got to put thinking, and I tried today. We had so many, so much good feedback here.
Speaker 4:And the one thing I'd say about being here at the Hazard Zone Conference every single person I met over the course of the last two days, eager to do better and hungry to learn, and it's like where else would you want to go for that? But as we had them out there today, I'm trying to say you see all this stuff? Because when they get in the room with all our valves, it's like this is intimidating, and I'm like it's no different than your fire truck. We just don't put a bunch of shiny stuff in front of it, right? If we put a bunch of shiny stuff on this, then you know me. I'm standing there going oh yeah, I need a lot of diamond plate, I need some levers that go like this or like this, instead of stuff you got to crank and turn. I'm like it's the same thing you got to intake, you got to discharge. So lots of good stuff, all fun things, but when you pull up, you better hook up and if there's anything visible in the building, just pump the dang thing.
Speaker 2:To your trailers? How are those available? How does somebody get access to one of your trailers to do that kind of training? Because there is an intimidation out there where I think that's why failures happen. How do we make the firefighters not intimidated and educate them better by using these trailers?
Speaker 4:Yeah, great, we got four trailers. That's like what we have here. That's our valve trailers, our side-by-side burn demonstration trailers where you burn one room with sprinklers, one room without sprinklers. We have 41 of those across the country, but we have four valve trailers. We have three more that's going to roll off the assembly line at Mobile Concepts by Scotty this year. So they'll be in service hopefully early spring, because our members go in and our sprinkler fitters unions go in and put the sprinklers in the trailers. So those will be online in 2025.
Speaker 4:But just go to our website, nfsaorg. There's a piece in there about trailers. You go up there to our resources and put in a request, so there's a trailer request form whether you want a side-by-side or a valve trailer. Now I don't have the staff, so the good news is there. We're working on a project with the North American fire training directors. So the North American fire training directors have been gracious enough to help us and use us as the subject matter experts. So our goal is that they are the experts in developing curriculum, so we're going to let them take our information and put it into things that we can just hand off. So, for example, chief Reardon in Ohio, your state fire marshal interested in putting in for one of those.
Speaker 4:Those trailers are a high priority on the AFG grants. So the assistance firefighter grants, they're a high priority for state agencies and for a regional approach. They're not a high priority for one-off fire department to do it right because it doesn't get the bang for the buck. But the North American Fire Training Director is working on a project with us to develop the curriculum so we can get more of those trailers in the field. So we just hand the curriculum off and every time NFPA 1700 or 13E, every time those change NFPA 25, because we use those trailers to train the company's inspectors. We train them to train AHJs and fire marshals. But the operations side is kind of new that I've been pushing to say. This is the way we mitigate risk for everybody for our members, for the fire service, for companies, for owners. We mitigate that risk. If you're watching what's going on in Georgia, the lawsuits are like stacking up right, and so that's what the trailers are for. But, nfsaorg, click on the button sign up and we'll get to you as fast as possible.
Speaker 2:All right. Another question for Shane, and maybe Dan will chime in on this one too Fire attack and a sprinkler-controlled fire in a big box. We get conflicting information depending on whose class you go to. What you're listening to right now, and we hear these guys saying you got to pull a two and a half if it's a sprinkler-controlled fire in a big box warehouse store. What are your thoughts?
Speaker 4:I say a little dab will do you. As I said today and I had many of those questions outside if you have a properly installed, maintained and functioning system and they say, well, that's the problem, they all don't work. I'm like I got data otherwise right, I'm 96% effective here, pal. So you got to really get your pencil sharper and make a lot of shit up. That's going to counter that. You got to really get your pencil sharper, make a lot of shit up. That it's going to counter that. It's like, look and I showed you pictures of all the ceiling tile blowed out in the target For one six foot piece of shelf space, right, and it's like, again, just get your line in place and again, a little dab will do you. I'm being serious If this thing. If you've been patient, you're prepared, you've done everything I've said and said all right, I got here, I can see it, it's right there. It's like guess what? Just spray.
Speaker 4:And our Minnesota team can attest to this when we opened that first lineup. And again, ignorance when you don't know, it's just a lack of knowledge on my part, on our part, everybody in the building. We opened that first lineup full bore because why? That's what we trained the firefighter to do. It's like here, son, you came to kill this, not play with it. And he opened it up. It hit that first line of shelves that was burning and it blowed stuff all the way to the other side of the building. It didn't stop until it hit the wall.
Speaker 4:Well, if that would have been in a real big box store, what we just blowed out there it's on fire. There's nothing back there where you just blowed it, that's on fire. And guess what's not going off back there? The sprinklers yet, right, but wait, there's more, it's coming. So it's like I just say, if you can get a single line in place, that you can manage to get in there. And, as I said today, I would love to have all the video footage that exists of us trying to stretch a line in any retail store, right, because it's not fun to get around in there period, let alone when it's smoky. You can't hardly see. There's alarms going off and all the other things. So again, I never could as a fire officer, never was in a system like FDNY or Chicago or all those places that had enough people to operate a two and a half effectively. So if you are truly in a sprinkler control fire, and I don't care whether it's in a million square foot space or whether it's in a 12,000 square foot retail space or a single family detached dwelling.
Speaker 4:All you need to do is get water. When you see it is get water directly on the fire and again a little dab will do you. You don't want to blow that away, you don't want to compromise the ceiling, you just need a little bit that you can manage and the faster you can get to it. We used the thing when we were doing Spartanburg Burns fast water, do not delay the water. Well, that's why our whole term of sprinklers are fastest water, right, we can't beat that, but it still needs us. Thus the partners in progress, right. So the faster you can get there to it and get water directly on it, because the sprinklers are getting it from the top. It just needs you to get what the sprinkler can't get.
Speaker 2:Dan, you got a follow-up to that.
Speaker 7:Well, I think also in the big box stores the ceiling configurations are not like they are in residential, and I think you'll find, if you had an opportunity to train in an abandoned strip mall or something like that, the bar joists, corrug, roofing, all these things, vents in the roof, whatnot. They tend to eat the stream, so you don't have the reach that you may think you have in there. Um, but again, if it's a sprinkler building and the sprinklers are controlling the gases up top, up top, keeping them cool, limiting spread, you can go right to the seat of the fire.
Speaker 2:Just one more question for Dan, and then I've got one for Nick. You showed some videos this week where it took and even in my mind I'm thinking big water on some of the fires that you showed, and really the application, if it was correct, didn't take a lot of water at all. So are we changing what was the traditional fire flow formulas and how we figured out what our gallon per minute should be, or where are we going on that with that research that you've been doing lately?
Speaker 7:I mean we know that the fire control formulas were not based in research per se. They were a consensus of chiefs based on experience. And the fire control formulas really, if you peel them back a little bit, they're looking at water supply. So if you have a building about this big, you know you're doing the geometry of the building. How much water do you think you're going to need for that? And that's part of the pre-plan. As you're rolling up, if you're hauling your own water you may need to get some other units rolling or do you have appropriate hydrants and whatnot for that kind of water. So I don't know that there's a big rush to adjust that at the moment. You know err on the side of safety quite a bit, but we do know in experiments that we've done at least on the residential scale, that those estimates are high, provided you know what you're doing. Sometimes I do things and we create data and I don't even know it. So one example is we had some house burns at FDIC a number of years ago. They found an 8,000-square-foot house and the house has a great story to it, but it's for another time. But it was owned house and the house has a great story to it, but it's for another time. But it was owned by this guy that owned a suntan lotion company and he and his wife were getting a divorce, and so the result of this was the house was going to get burnt down and it's a big house and so we were able to divide it and we were going to do hot classes at FDIC four burns in one side of the house one day and the next day, on Tuesday, we'd do four burns on the other side. So you know, we're engineers, but people never call us engineers. They always think like, oh, those are the fire scientists and you've got to protect the fire scientists from themselves, I guess. So the fire service is watching over us. So they brought out over 12,000 gallons of water for us to make sure that we had an abundance of water, because there are no hydrants out there. And so we you know, we saw these tankers or tenders, depending on where you're from roll up and all this stuff, and every day backup lines got charged, our lines got charged that we were going to have the firefighters use and all this kind of stuff, and they drained them at night. The next morning we filled them up again and we burnt the house and life was good.
Speaker 7:We delivered our talks and we collected our equipment, left and the next year I did sort of a summary presentation and this guy came up to me and he says you know, the most amazing thing about all the burns you did and I was expecting that he was going to say that we burned in the morning and reduced the data driving in the car from the farm to the convention center and present the data. But that's not what he said. He said you know, I was one of the guys that helped haul all that water out there. And he says you had eight burns and we didn't even use 2,000 gallons. And he says we get on a fire scene and 3,000, 5,000 gallons are gone, just like that.
Speaker 7:It's like where are you putting the water? I said you know we had an advantage, we started the fire. So we do know. But you know, we're also giving you tips about how to size up what, to assess, where's the flow path and where to make effective use of your water. And he's like, yeah, that just blew me away that you didn't need hardly any of that water. So I think, for the moment, using the water supply estimators are good, they're conservative. But I also think that with training, good training, fire departments can make more effective use of their water and it's amazing what you can do on just tank water again in the essence of speed.
Speaker 7:And I had a great mentor, dr John Bryan, and he was an old volunteer firefighter from Pennsylvania and then he went out to Oklahoma State University to get some education about the fire service and fighting fire and fire safety in the 1950s and then he came back to start the fire protection engineering program at the University of Maryland and after he retired I'd meet him for lunch every now and then and I was just so happy with myself because we're doing these suppression tests and we're knocking the fires out and very little water and all this kind of stuff. And so I'm telling John Bryan about it and he looks at me and he says, well, you know, dan, he says that's why NFPA 1901 requires our fire engines to carry tank water on. I guess that's right. So again, you know, use your tools and a little bit of common sense and some knowledge go a long way.
Speaker 2:All right, nick. We had a couple of questions that came in about the third edition of Fire Command. We announced today that the third edition is going to be available by April of 2025. What is going to be different in the third edition of Fire Command that we don't have right now? What are the additions to it?
Speaker 9:It has the same eight functions. They're up to date. Really, when you look at it it's the most accurate. Current version of Fire Command is Blue Card, so they're going to match each other. It's easier to update an online program than a book, so that was kind of it. In fact I was kind of done with the book. I thought we don't need it, we've got Blue Card. That's the thing. And everybody in the educational food chain said no, books are still important, idiot. So it'll have all eight functions.
Speaker 9:The front of it in the second edition it was upfront stuff and it kind of had the body parts and effective IC, what the system does for you. And that's going to get changed. It's going to have kind of the history and evolution of the program and kind of the updates as it went along and the changes in it and then the effect, really how that embeds safety within the regular operations. So safety isn't an add-on. If you look at kind of the evolution of it, fire Command the first edition came out in 85. Well, we've integrated safety officers as part of the regular incident operation.
Speaker 9:You can't anytime you try to separate something out of a fire attack. It doesn't work anymore. So, like we did that with safety officers, we did that with rapid intervention, and we did it on purpose, because when things go to shit on the inside of a fire, those were supposed to be unaffected and just move in and take over. But they can't. It's too little, too late. So it's like the sign says if you're not doing everything right when something goes wrong, then you're pretty much screwed. So that's going to be the front of it. And then the other addition is the back end of it is going to be Mayday operations. So we're going to put a Mayday chapter kind of in the back and that'll tie a bow on it. So right now it's about 90% finished and that's one of those things that we'd be working on it. And then something else come up and we put it off to the side Because the second edition still does what it needs to do and then yeah, so I'm pretty confident that by April we can have it done.
Speaker 2:Well, guys, do you have any closing thoughts over here from this side?
Speaker 8:No, it's been a great week. It was awesome to see a lot of existing customers that we've seen through the years, but it was also good to connect with a few new ones asking about the system, getting a little taste for it, and I think, like Shane said earlier, it was awesome to see everybody come out wanting to learn, wanting to talk about the system, go to some classes that maybe we didn't have an opportunity to go to last year. So, overall, I think it was a great week. Jb, I agree.
Speaker 2:It was a great week.
Speaker 4:Thank, you yeah.
Speaker 2:You guys have any last words?
Speaker 4:Just like to say looking forward to doing it again. I hope next year we get the burn and really set something on fire more trailers and more operations and again flowing water. It's like who don't want to do that. It's so satisfying, let's do it. Maybe not just their positive back. But what the hell? Dan and I don't need any excuses. Everybody wants some.
Speaker 2:All right, guys. Thank you very much for joining us up on the stage. We appreciate it. Thank you very much for also sharing everything that you did this week with our participants here at the Hazard Zone Conference. It's been awesome. But before we go, we are going to have a little bit of a story time. This will get our weekend kicked off here and we're going to bring in right now live from his lair the most interesting I see in the world. Please enjoy world, please enjoy.
Speaker 5:That he could read fire service stories until he went blind.
Speaker 9:And the reason for this is because the stories is the way we communicate and immortalize and record our work and labors and our occupational journey, fellow B-Shifters.
Speaker 5:So in this, vein in light, I would like to welcome you to the very first story time where I myself reads the B-Shifters, the stories that pertain to our occupational journey and work.
Speaker 5:Blue Skies' big day at the circus and, as you can see on the cover of the book, there is an elephant. Stories with firefighters and elephants are so interesting. Shall we begin the community of Blue Sky? Every spring would come together to celebrate the passing of winter with the circus coming to town. This was a very special circus as this was going to be the very first show with the brand new act and that is Jumpin' Janie and Cleo Cannonball, her high diving palomino in Cleo Cannonball, her high diving Palomino. And they took center ring, 30 feet above the sky, where they would dive from a platform into 48 inches of water. It is very epic. The community made their way into the big top. As they took their seats and got their popcorn, they sat in rapid amazement as the ringmaster built tension with his commanding voice announcing what was going to happen next. Janie, preparing for the jump, took a final drag off her cigarette and unknowingly flicked it away, where it landed below in a pile of hay and started a small fire as the ringmaster continued his oration and the drum roll built and then Janie and Cleo left the platform. In all the confusion. No one noticed the smoke as it slowly rose up into the top of the big top.
Speaker 5:Now the clowns have noticed. They were the first to notice the fire. The clowns have moved into action. Now, ladies and gentlemen, you may not know this, but it's a common fact in higher tactical circles that clowns are all a bunch of freelancers. So they did what freelancers typically do and they started throwing water at the fire, which was the proper action to take at this time. But once the fire attack started the uncoordinated clown fire attack and then jumping Janie and Cleo hit the water that splashed the clowns. Well, once you splash a clown with water, they are completely unusable, and they went from throwing buckets of water onto the fire to beating each other with hammers. So now the fire is allowed to grow again. So now the fire is allowed to grow again. Now everybody is starting to notice the growing fire and the threat it presents to everybody under the big top, and when your personal safety is in jeopardy, it will cause a reaction, one of two things.
Speaker 5:It is known as the flight or fight response. Well, freddie Plough was the king of the flyers, and what he did is fueled by well-intentioned ignorance, an abundance of arrogance and a keen sense of survival as he screamed at the top of his lungs, run for your lives. And then he started directing people towards the exit. You see, freddie was flying to get out of the burning tent, which is really a pretty good idea. But the problem is with that is the critical factors add up and they say no, no, no, no. Fire intent, not good thing, canvas burns too quickly. So the other side of the flight or fight is the fight.
Speaker 5:Well, mario Plum was also in the audience and he represents the fighters in the Blue Sky Village community, and what he decided is the fire attack needed to be reinforced, especially once the clowns became distracted and started beating one another with the hammers. So what Mario did is his career as a blacksmith apprentice is it taught him about the magic of combustion and he knew that the tent would burn down before only 5% of the people could get out of the tent before it burnt down and killed everybody. So he said no, we have to put the fire out if I want to live. So the other thing that Mario was more more importantly than having the soul of a B-shifter and understanding about fire is he was an elephant whisperer and he saw the elephants and he says this is the missing ingredient in the fire attack. So Mario jumped into action. He made a psychic connection by looking straight in the eyes of the giant pachyderm, the bull mare named Marco Polo. Now, he took him over to the jump bucket with 48 inches of water.
Speaker 5:Marco Polo took a big drink and then Mario directed his trunk, as a master stream nozzle, onto the seat of the fire and he took what was a high-risk, low-frequency event and he turned it into a low-risk, low-frequency event which bought enough time for the entire town of Blue Sky and all the circus performers and administrative people to get out of the Big Tap unscathed. In fact, mario's quick action saved the Big Top and everything else and everything else. Thank you very much for attending this first chapter of Blue Sky's Big Day at the Circus. Come back, join us again. We will notify you when the second reading of chapter two is available, and this is the formation and creation of one owns fire department. So we will join our champions of the blue sky community and watch as voyeurs as they form their own emergency response system to protect themselves, which is the highest and greatest form of government that exists in the world today form of government that exists in the world today.
Speaker 2:Thank you again. The most interesting I see in the world, ladies and gentlemen, and with that that concludes the B-Shifter podcast. Thanks so much for hanging out with us and we'll talk to you next time. Thanks for listening to B-Shifter.