B Shifter
Fire command and leadership conversations for B Shifters and beyond (all shifts welcome)!
B Shifter
What Is Command Safety?
This episode features Nick Brunacini and John Vance.
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This episode was recorded at the AVB CTC in Phoenix, AZ on February 13, 2025.
Command Safety intertwines safety with effective firefighting tactics and operational control. Each discussion point highlights critical aspects of situational awareness and fire behavior.
• Introduction to Command Safety and its significance
• Reflection on past firefighting incidents and lessons learned
• Importance of dynamic situational awareness for firefighters
• The cultural shift needed around safety in the firefighting community
• How Command Safety evolves traditional firefighting tactics
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Welcome to the B Shifter podcast. Got John Vance, nick Bernasini, hanging out today waving, waving by to the girls. They're leaving, we're staying. That that's it. We're committed to podcasting. That's what we do. It's what we're all about. How are you doing today, nick? I'm doing well, jv. How about you?
Speaker 2:doing good doing good.
Speaker 1:We're just uh wrapping up a train the trainer here. We had a good group of folks, beautiful visiting us at the avb ctc. That's it so we turn the lights on for another week yep, yeah, we'll be back again next month doing the same thing woohoo.
Speaker 2:And then in between there's probably two, three or four of them going on on the road somewhere in america.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, excellent, sorry for drinking on the air, that's that not cool.
Speaker 2:It's clear nutritious fluid that we're taking in Water, which is a yeah, that's like number one on the Maslow list right there.
Speaker 1:It's funny because I think the first couple of podcasts ever that we recorded several years ago we would drink beer and then that just kind of became not a good idea. Remember we would drink a beer while we were doing the podcast.
Speaker 2:It demands.
Speaker 1:It's all yeah water under the bridge in the old building, we we'd pop a beer open really in the yeah and the thomas road facility.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, that's. I've warehoused many of those memories. Yeah, across the way the hall from the urologist.
Speaker 1:Which smelled kind of like a urologist's office.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was a very urban office building.
Speaker 1:Well here.
Speaker 2:we are now Got to start somewhere.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, so we've evolved. This is HQ3 or HQ2?
Speaker 2:Because really one was out in Indiana and then here and then yeah, but they had one in Ohio there for a while and, yeah, they've been all over. So we've had an opportunity to refine the way it's supposed to look and operate.
Speaker 1:HQ2 Phoenix. We would say that there you go.
Speaker 2:Well, as Rare Forms says on their door, this is our world headquarters now. So yeah, I don't foresee another one. If it happens, it's going to be crazy. Yes, In fact, maybe a flotilla. The blue card yeah, arc.
Speaker 1:I've always wanted a pirate radio ship. You know where we could broadcast international waters without getting in trouble with the FCC not that anyone listens to FM anymore well, but we'd have to do it from, maybe like a submarine, underwater, yeah, so they really couldn't locate us at any moment.
Speaker 2:It'd be where we were streaming from, streaming from the Gulf Stream yeah, but not too deep, because I think we've all learned a lesson from the Explorer Challenger episode, where you shouldn't undertake any recreational activity which is really what that was, you know just taking tourists to go see the Titanic, where when there's a mechanical failure, it kills you faster than your nerves your nerves.
Speaker 1:No, I, I, I would uh just avoid getting into a submersible watercraft that was built in gus's garage, yeah, and, and a controller from a nintendo is what uh drives it and the restroom is a five gallon bucket behind a shower curtain and I paid fifteen thousand dollars for this. Yeah, you're gonna blow up, sir.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly not to make light of it.
Speaker 1:Today let's talk about command safety and specifically I wanted to talk about Command Safety the book, because it's really a must-read for fire officers, because it bridges what traditional fire ground tactics are the blue card system or fire command and it's safety-focused, but also there's the focus is on getting the job done too, and I think today we're living in a world where safety is a four letter word and gets criticized sometimes, and I wanted to talk about the intent of the book and the thought behind it and how it's really meant to get the job done while being safe. And it's something that Bruno used to say all the time that you know, the number one job of the IC is to keep people safe on the fire ground and I think that message gets lost with people a lot of times, that that is really what the IC is there for. You know, first and foremost, is that right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and really what it is. Firefighting is an occupation and like any other occupation, especially a high risk one, is you have to build the safety into it as a regular part of just performing structural firefighting. So like if you worked in a foundry, as an example, the people that work in a foundry this is a very hazardous place to work and you'd have to go probably a lot further in our country to find a foundry. But back when there was a lot of them operating, especially in the Midwest, is there were a robust set of safety rules because if you make a mistake at anywhere during that process you're dead. I mean you burn to death, you lose a limb, whatever it is.
Speaker 2:We were doing fire command stuff at a place and I forgot where it was, but they hung up as a safety reminder a three-quarter ton pickup truck that had violated a traffic law inside the foundry Big giant, you know work area there and there's giant machinery that is moving that you have to stop because if it hits your truck, as was evidenced by this, is it flattened. A three-quarter ton floor pickup truck where the tallest part of it was maybe six to eight inches, and you're like well, jesus Christ, and you looked at it and the thing you were left with is it killed the guy and they said yeah, it did. You're like, well, is he still in there? I mean, could you even recover? So I'm drifting.
Speaker 1:They drained the truck afterwards, probably they had to do whatever.
Speaker 2:And then they hung it up and this thing is, I mean, it's as big as a room and you're like it took a minute to figure out and they wrote on it safety is up to you. So basically this guy chose not to be safe and he's dead now. So that's kind of it. And I guess to answer your question about command safety is the fire command curriculum package, because that's kind of what it was. The second edition was a full-blown curriculum package where you could teach essentially two semesters Tactics 101 and Tactics 201. Now, mobile ICs, strategic position ICs. That whole thing was out in 2000,. I think I want to say Right around. Then the whole package was done and going and in fact it's still in effect today. The second edition is still. I mean, we're revising it and we'll be here sooner than later with the third edition will come out.
Speaker 2:But what happened right after the second edition in 2001, the Southwest supermarkets Tarver ended up getting killed in a fire in a grocery store, so and that's had kind of a lasting effect on a lot of things. But really what that was is well, the fire chief at the time made the observation that we were using residential tactics to fight all of our fires, because 80, 85% of all your fires occur in residential properties and those tend to be smaller buildings, and so your water is a lot more effective because the fire doesn't get as big and you know it's quicker to get to and all those other things that make fighting fires in smaller structures. Those evolutions look a certain way. Well, we essentially would port those same tactics over to commercial buildings and they worked most of the time, I mean, if you're able to get water on it quick enough and get around it and control the fire. That's kind of where our success came from. Well, at Southwest Supermarkets. That's not what happened.
Speaker 2:Everybody knows the outcome of that thing, and during my career I got hired in 1980, during my career, I got hired in 1980, and this is 2001. So 21 years later, the only line of duty death from structural firefighting was that one during my career. So one, and, like I said, fire command had just come out. So we go through this, we're going through this recovery process to figure out, okay, what went wrong here and why did everything blow up the way it did. So I don't know, it's probably four or five months into that process you could start to pull some takeaways from it and you could see where we were going to start making changes. And that's kind of where the rapid intervention going from a task level assignment to a capability of the entire response. And so, you know, you formulated the on deck and you had the help order and all the other stuff.
Speaker 2:Well, a lot of, I mean the first thing that happened is a lot of the fire service thought, jesus Christ, they killed a firefighter in Phoenix because I'm sure three quarters of the country thought that we didn't even think they went into burning buildings. You know this whole, like you said, four letter word. Well, see, what we had figured out, at least in my department, is that effectiveness and safety kind of go hand in hand. So if you're doing everything the way you're supposed to be doing is you're going to have operational effectiveness on the other side, especially if you match and do size up and all the rest of it. So that was, and in fact we were very forward in attacking the fire. You know people say fast, aggressive, blah, blah, blah, all those words that we love to use. Well, we live that and I really do believe that the reason that we had the success we had, especially in the safety area, is because we had a system where the task level would pace the way we engaged into the.
Speaker 2:So the first company would get there and they would take command, right, and then they're doing a set of actions. See, they're like, okay, you're taking commands, so nobody's doing anything. You're like, well, no, we have four-person companies, you've established a water supply, the officer's doing a size up, they're making the hookups for the water supply, the other firefighter is advancing an attack line to where it needs to go, and they're all going to catch up. So within a minute is you're pressing from the time the airbrake set. A minute later you're figuring out where your attack point is and we're getting ready to go inside. So it was a very fast unfolding thing.
Speaker 2:But then there was a sequence to it. So the next company in just couldn't blow in and do. What they wanted is they had to stage, and then they got assigned to the incident action plan. So whatever they did supported what the first company did. So there was never anything at odds. So anyway, during the course of my career, most of the time we'd put the fire out. That would eliminate the hazards, remove them, and so it got a lot safer In the event that we didn't, is command would quickly.
Speaker 2:It typically always started off with a company officer who was a mobile IC. They'd assign the first two or three companies and then by then a BC's there. C They'd assign the first two or three companies and then by then a BC's there. Well, so the BC let's say BC takes command seven at the seven, eight minute mark of the deal. Well, you've had the initial operation, has been putting water on the fire for a minute or two. In most cases that's enough to switch it, as we've gone from an offensive fire to now we got knocked down and we're doing post fire control stuff where we're overhauling, checking for extension and those things.
Speaker 2:Well, in the event that that's not what happened and the fire keeps going and garrison talked about it the other day in a podcast we were doing, um, as you get there as ic number two, and now you're doing a size up. You're doing everything the first one did and you're like well, we've been putting task level action on this thing for two or three minutes and I think it's gotten bigger. So then what you would do is you'd readjust the incident action plan so you could maybe do a second push on the fire and if that wasn't working, typically in the world of structural firefighting you get one revision and then, if that doesn't do it, you're looking more like defensive conditions now, because the fire has been burning 10 minutes maybe and it's traveling into places where it's affecting the structure and all the other stuff. So what happened is IC number two is in command and it gets passed offensive and they pull us out, they declare defensive and we all come out and do the roll call and you know, boom, boom, boom, and then the buildings it's going to burn down. Well, and that's what happens, whether you want it to or not. That's just science and facts. So you're not. There's a number of burning buildings, probably, I don't know. In urban places they get a very rapid fire response. I don't know. 20 percent, 15 percent are going to burn to the ground. That's the nature of it. Don't have a fire if you don't want your building to burn to the ground. That's that's kind of what happens.
Speaker 2:So the IC says no, there's the risk isn't worth the gain. You see these T-shirts that you know. Yes, it's worth the risk. Well, you've got to qualify that. What's worth the risk? I don't know. Is that worth the risk? Well, it's all worth the risk. No, it ain't, buddy, uh-uh. No, what it is is that's negligence. In fact it's amateurish. Is what it is? No negligence, in fact it's amateurish. Is what it is.
Speaker 2:No, I'm going to stick with this attack. It doesn't matter, because we won't be chased out. Well, when the fire says you will be, you will be. And we're seeing that now out of fire departments where they'll send a crew in without water to do a search or whatever. And now they're taking three firefighters to the hospital that will never return to work again because of the fire. That's what it does. I mean, we understand that.
Speaker 2:So, anyway, command, we've got the system. Southwest Supermarkets happens. We're going through the recovery process and the fire chief says some things have changed and we need to somehow deal with this. So we're making the changes in our own fire department and he's taking a set of notes. So I end up on a note. At some point it was about six months in this process we sit down and he says hey, we need to produce another book on the safety effect that fire command has, and because we're going to fix some things as far as commercial fires go in our own fire department where this thing blew up on us the way it did, and it's demonstrated a couple things.
Speaker 2:Well, during your career there's always these pet peeves. You have these little things you put in your pocket and think we got to fix this somehow, but I just don't know how to do it and it conflicts with too many other things and it's just kind of we don't know how to wrap our head around it. Well, when in our department, when we had our line of duty death, it's like we were galvanized because of the walkthrough that we did. I'm going to say 98% of the Phoenix fire department went through a walkthrough within three days of that event happening. And so we saw and these are like firefighters, even like the vapid A-shift ladder people were trying. They had to control their emotions because they knew what happened in there and what a certain point. It's like no, you get out ahead of this because this building's going to the dump. Offensive tactics do not put out defensive fire conditions. They don't, they never have. And in fact if the building's big enough, it'll be on the national news because that's just what happens. So we were galvanized to make sure that didn't occur again.
Speaker 2:So that was really during my 29-year career that was the most unified the Phoenix Fire Department ever was was the two or three years coming out of the Southwest supermarket incident. Well, during that, as my dad's kind of sitting in the background driving the thing, he's taking notes. And so he asked you know if you'll do the layout for like for each function and put like the key stuff that we found on the thing? We'll do that together. And then he says I'll flesh out the rest of it and then we'll hook up and get it illustrated. Ok, perfect. So I don't know, it took him about a year, I don't know, a year maybe something like that. And then you had command safety, which was the companion textbook to fire command. That told the safety effect of what well managed look like and kind of how that paid off, and that really that whole process led to embedding kind of the concept of safety into structural firefighting.
Speaker 2:And really we started looking at it like any kind of other high risk adventure, like if you're a scuba diver what we talked about with the people under sea to start this thing or a skydiver is like OK, we're going to have a safety officer as we skydive and jump out of the plane, and you're like, well, what the hell do they do? Because it's too late, we've jump out of the plane. And you're like, well, what the hell do they do? Because it's too late, we've already committed to the jump and now we're falling at terminal velocity. So if there's some kind of safety thing they can do, maybe they have a harpoon gun. They shoot you through like the ass A net, yeah. So it's one of those deals. If you ain't doing it as part of the activity, it's one of those deals. If you ain't doing it as part of the activity, it isn't going to get done and you're going to get the consequences of whatever that is. So that's really what command safety was about. So if you will just manage yourself in a standard kind of way is you can recover from certain things a lot of times, whether it's you took it through the wrong door or whatever it was.
Speaker 2:The fire did this when everybody thought it would do that. So and we say, you got to be doing everything right when something goes wrong, because if you're not, there's no way to unpack it. And we demonstrated that in a 25,000 square foot grocery store that had a very senior fire in it that we weren't going to put out. Once it got up in the attic, which happened in the first two or three minutes of the fire, it's over. Once that thing's running in the attic, you're done. The wind's blowing, so you put a 25 mile an hour wind to it and you got smoke puffing up in the attic and it took them 15 or 20 minutes to really figure out where that thing was burning and the way that funky building was laid out. Well, you had people on the back on the Charlie side, chiefs coming home from work, had people on the back on the charlie side, chiefs coming home from work, and they're trying to get on the radio to tell the ic you get them out. Now you got smoke puffing out of all the attic vents on the back of this building. Man, it is lit up. They can't because they're maydaying that just to the cows come home on the inside of that thing.
Speaker 2:So it it was, and really the thing that I think a lot of us took away from that is hey, man, we killed one person and we there were 16 people in here, and if this roof would have collapsed like it should have, we're at. We're 40 minutes into it in a senior attic fire. I have never been to a building, 25,000 square feet, where the roof was still up that long. So it was everyone, knew Everyone, with any time at all or any kind that had any kind of juice in the system. No, we're we. We, we to say that we lost somebody. And we're lucky To say that we lost somebody and we're lucky. And you have like a whole battalion and a whole shift that is going to have some issues with this for the rest of their lives as they were at this thing and it was, there were 20 people who were convinced they were going to die in this thing and went in anyway to pull him out and it was like, well, they knew, in the command van, he said shit, he's been dead for a while now, so just living through that is is really.
Speaker 2:You know, you hear Vinnie Dunn talk about it. He, he was at the father's days fire and a bunch of others. And he says what I did, instead of going crazy is he says it must've been therapeutic for him. He said I started writing books and researching and so he became the building construction. Don't let it kill you, guy. And I think that's what my dad did, just with command safety and say, no, if the system isn't protecting you in real time, then it ain't protecting you, because when the wall falls, if you're under it, you're dead. There's no one ringing that bell and it isn't worth the risk to die when you know.
Speaker 2:Pulling up to the scene. Well, picture this the building slated for demolition has got a fence around it and you end up with the fatality off of that after the fire. You can't justify that. It's like, no, well, no, it was worth the risk, there could have been somebody in there. And this is what we do. No, that's not what uh-uh. People with a pension don't just disregard their lives as fodder and paper and say, well, no, this is. You know, we're throwing another virgin down. The volcano almost is what it sounds like. So really effective structural firefighting operations. They're very quick to unload and put into place and you have to react to it. You've got to be conscious. You just can't say, well, this worked last time and now I've got a different building that will maybe work this time. You have to be present and manage the thing, and really that's kind of what command safety tells the story for, and it just goes through each of the functions and say, okay with deployment. This is how we do this organization strategy and incident action planning. Yada, yada, yada.
Speaker 1:And continuing on with that thought on strategy, because that's really where the incident commander saves the lives of the firefighters working under their command. I think the book talks about. It's the term survivability profile, right? Yeah, that's in the book. So you know, part of that is it's not a one size fits all for survivability profile, and I think that's something that gets left out a lot of times when we're, you know, breaching a fence and then going into search in a secured, abandoned building or something like that. So what does survivability profile look like to you?
Speaker 2:Survivability is the ability. When we talk about it, it's the ability of an unprotected person to survive in that fire compartment. So fire compartments have very low survivability traits about them. One of the examples we used is see and firefighters almost disregard that sometimes because we're protected. But you're seeing incidents now where you're burning firefighters up in buildings and you think why were you in there doing that? Well, we were doing a search. Well, you didn't have an attack line with you. That's one reason you got burned. But well, we wouldn't take the attack line because it slows the search down.
Speaker 2:You think you won't, you will never return to duty. You have, you have suffered heavy burn, trauma and you were fully protected. The person that you're going in there to save has, they were dead before they. You see, and a lot of people you can't. Are you God? You can't see, you don't know what's going on? Yeah, I do. I did it long enough, just as a firefighter and I have, like, read a lot.
Speaker 2:Look at any scientific study. You can't survive in these areas. The human skin is destroyed at 163 degrees, destroyed at 163 degrees, and now we're looking at having face piece lenses that last above six or 700 degrees. So you're like. It's not a proximity suit that we're wearing inside. You're not, you know. And then you look at all the manufacturers and the people that actually design that turnout gear and they say, no, you're not supposed to burn it, you're not supposed to get it that hot. It loses its ability to protect you and, in fact, your gear can survive certain things and it'll kill you as the wearer. It will radiate through and kill you.
Speaker 2:There's a number of line of duty deaths that talk about that, where they think, well, they look fine, no, it was. Their organs are screwed up from the fire man, they're dead. That's what happened. So that's part of the size up process. So if I pull up somewhere and I'm looking at it and think that fire compartment has gone to flashover, well, there's nobody alive in there to save. So what we're going to do is we're going to knock the fire down and really the search and rescue for that area there isn't any. What you're doing is you're looking for bodies, victims. That didn't make it out. That's why you're searching that You're going to find the bodies on the other side of where the fire is.
Speaker 2:So there's got to be separation walls or something that keeps the heat and smoke and fire gases and all the other toxic elements of those products of combustion off the survivable members, anybody that's trapped inside that building and it's. I mean, that's just the reality of it. So until you stop that fire from doing what it's doing, is everybody in or around that structure is at great risk. So if you and it's tough to do this, but like when the police go in if there's somebody shooting a gun at people, they're going straight in and they're going to take out that threat right. Well, if you look like a person with a gun, they kill anybody who they see and shoot at A structure. Fire kills everybody that's in the fire area. There's. No, it just doesn't. It's the laws of nature, it's humans can't survive in those same spaces.
Speaker 2:So and Blue Card does this is the first thing we do when we get to the scene is we control the fire, because the fire is where the problem is and that's what's killing people and that's really kind of command safety is written around that. So it stresses the importance of being ready to go to work when you get there and then when you pull up and you say it's offensive is we're putting water on the fire right now and in fact, command safety was written around offensive tactics of engaging the fire from inside the building. Cause that's what we believed in 2001 in Phoenix, arizona, is you did not put outside water in offensive situations. You went to the sea of the fire and that's the way you did your business.
Speaker 2:Coming out of that about 2007 to 10, in there somewhere they started doing studies and looking at that, because the scientists are like, why do you not do this? Well, because it'll steam people. And they're looking at you like, all right, you make steam at 212 degrees and at 168, your skin goes away. So what are you talking about? Well, we'll steam the firefighters. Well, you're wearing protective gear and you know you got a hood and this and that, and you know I've been steam burned a couple of times and it was our fault because we put water too close and it came back on us and whatever. But anyway, in fact, really what it was is it wasn't putting water on, we were just too close. You know, because that was kind of the deal is you get as close as you can and you kick its ass.
Speaker 1:So well then, the other myth, or whatever you want to call it, was attacking from the unburned side. And if you didn't do it that way, you're going to push the fire into uninvolved areas.
Speaker 2:And when I put when I when. When the fire department shows up and puts the fire fire out, it protects. It's the quickest way to protect life and property. Now, if you talk to the customer and say, what do you expect out of the fire department? When they get there, put the fire out. That's why we called you. Well, no, we're going to show up and we're going to do these six things ahead of putting the fire out, because this is what we feel we need to do.
Speaker 2:Well, every one of those that I know of that goes outside of putting the fire out is a detriment to an effective. Let's not even use the word safe, let's use effective. See, using the fire command system, you get to the scene and you're putting water on it within a minute. Two minutes later you got the fire controlled. You could do a lot of things now. You could make a lot of mistakes if you want that aren't going to be fatal, because there's not 2000 degrees and smoke and fire gases getting you. In fact, after you put the fire out, the thing that you're careful about is not getting the cancer on you, so you don't die 20 years later. I mean, that's kind of what you're looking at is now I've got a high risk thing that'll take me out. Right now I eliminate that, and now I've got a bunch of small hazards that'll lie dormant in my body until they blossom later on. Well, the quicker we put the fire out, the quicker those free radicals quit getting made by all that nasty heat.
Speaker 2:So, and in fact, a lot of these internet tacticians work for fire departments that will have two and three person staffing for the two or three units that they're going to take the world over with. So in those places, the best thing you can do is put the fire out. In fact, if you're not putting the fire out and you're doing something that isn't that and the initial part of that is you're really not taking the correct actions. In fact, I would call that into. Now I quit looking at all the nonsense on YouTube. It's just. All it does is just make you mad. You go about it, but every now and then you'll hear somebody say, nah, the comment section is where you need to be, because then you'll get somebody who's like a 25-year captain that says, oh, look at all you pros, not an attack line in sight, and you're all off gassing and burning right now. Way to get the job done, son.
Speaker 2:So it's almost like it's not a successful fire attack unless we have scorched our gear and then cut a hole somewhere. We've done a certain set of things that are like a checklist set of tactics that we use Every single fire that we go to. We do these things and you think, well, you didn't need to do that, you didn't need to cut that hole there. You could have done this and it would have been done three times as fast, it wouldn't have done the damage and you would have reduced your on-scene time by 30 minutes. I mean, you would have put it back that much quicker, you would have been done with the operation, and a lot of it is.
Speaker 2:There's just no—there's zero regulation for fire departments as it comes to structural firefighting. It's like no, we show up and we do what we're going to do, and nobody gets to look at it. And so a lot of these same individuals get pissed off. When NIOSH writes a report. How dare you criticize us? You're like they're doing an after action review. Pal, that's what we do. You know you kind of. Why did this happen and how do we keep it from happening again?
Speaker 1:So, and it's to help others, yeah, it's actually going to benefit the safety of our future brethren.
Speaker 2:Well, vance, if you. I just saw the email from Gary about the thing you guys did. Aggressive tacticians I mean that's just very aggressive and as aggressive as any fire department that's ever been. And they go to fires, oh, they get some, and it's almost like, oh, where has this been? We're better as firefighters doing it this way. We're tens down here where we had to do all these stupid things for our ego. We were threes. We were not the people. I don't want them coming. Don't burn yourself up in my fire, just put the water on it and knock it down and yeah, so in the book we're talking strategy and managing the strategy, and that's the safety impact.
Speaker 1:And then there's a lot about situational awareness and I'm wondering you, as an IC sitting in the buggy in command, how did you make let's just walk through situational awareness and what that looks like, how much of it is your visual cues, what you're seeing versus can reports, versus anything else that you're getting versus?
Speaker 2:can reports versus anything else that you're getting. Well, it's a collage of all those things. So, especially for IC number two, because you're going to get there after the first three or four companies. So everybody's responding you see smoke on the horizon, you know God's out and working, yada, yada, yada. So now what we're waiting for is the very first unit to clear. So let's say it's in engine 25's first two area.
Speaker 2:When you hear engine 25 clear, that means in our system that engine 25 wants to say something to the dispatch center. That's going to be more than just the one sentence thing. So the dispatch center comes back and says, go ahead, engine 25. And the other thing that does is it ensures to that company officer that they're on the correct tactical radio channel. Because and this was part of training, is that how many of you have given an initial radio report over channel one and all the old guys raise their hand and say, yeah, it sucks. The best initial radio reporter I ever gave was over channel one and all the old guys raise their hand and say, yeah, it sucks. The best initial radio reporter I ever gave was on channel one and they told me to go to another channel. It was a shit show from there on out. And you're like, yeah, exactly, so that's how we make sure that we don't do that. And so, like, if you go engine 25 clear and the dispatch center says 25, your traffic's on channel three, good, 25 clear, go ahead, 25. Well, everybody else responding knows you're about to say something. So to the point that, look, I worked on a ladder, I turned the sirens off, we would go code two while we listened to what they were doing, and then that would dictate how we would respond. The rest of our deal so anyway.
Speaker 2:So now they give their initial radio report and let's say I'm on scene of a house with a working fire offensive, doing X, y and Z. Well, so now I'm thinking, okay, good, so they've got less than 2,000 square foot, usually single level, maybe two story, no basements in Phoenix. So you know, we didn't even think about that. So I got a certain set of things going on in my mind as I see number two. So that's where my thought process is and I'm like, okay, based on my experience going to these house fires, it's going to take a minute, maybe a minute and a half, and that black smoke should start to be knocked down and I should start to see conversion. Right, that's it. So like when the when they pick a new Pope, black smoke, black smoke, white smoke, new Pope, white smoke has fires being controlled, so I'm looking for the white smoke baby. Then when it's so, let's say it's not, it keeps going black.
Speaker 2:Well, I get there and I think, okay, this is, it's not going out. I'm going to transfer command of the thing. So now I figure out. So what you got to do is think, okay, this is what it looked like when they got there. So you got to, kind of okay, but probably was here, and now it's a little bigger here and they're just not getting water on. It is what it is. So I'll transfer command and then I'll usually go to the IC.
Speaker 2:I mean, this is one of these things where this really happened. I got it out here, engine 8. I've done all that. Have you dropped the ceilings yet? No, we're still getting to the back. No, stop right now and open some ceilings and put water in the attic right now. Oh, okay, you raised your voice. It's where the fire is.
Speaker 2:So now my expectation is in the next 30 seconds to a minute, I should start to see something different, whether it's the smoke starts to change color a little bit. We're going to get some push and poking, because now I'm going to have some expansion up into the attic with my water vapor and all the other stuff. So this is what I'm looking for. I'm also looking at the roof, making sure that it's got its shape. It doesn't have any big sags in it. We don't have a bunch of fire coming in it. You're looking at the eaves to see what kind of heat you got, you know, with the tar coming off the thing. So just kind of, the structure is keeping its shape. I don't have a bunch of cracks. So it's still an offensive set of things. But the fire's getting bigger and bigger until we put water in it.
Speaker 2:So now what I'm doing is I'm getting other companies up. Now. Command to whoever do this, command to the latter, do this. Blah, blah, blah. So we're doing the actions that we would typically do. If a minute or two later it's not happening, then I'm going to go back inside. What's going on, give me a can report, and then they're going to. In this case, once they got the ceilings open, they put water in it. Then the fire started going out. So, okay, perfect. So now, now it's just keeping people doing what they're doing and it's like, okay, in another minute it's smoke's going away, and now I just got this. So then we're going to slow this thing down, we're going to get it ventilated, we'll finish the search in the thing. Other companies are coming in now and starting to do that piece of it. So that's kind of the way you maintain.
Speaker 2:For me as the IC, most of the safety stuff, especially at structural fires, was us controlling the fire, and so that's kind of what you're looking for. And then one of the safety stuff, especially structural fires, was us controlling the fire, and so that's kind of what you're looking for. And then one of the things that came out of command safety or command safety talks about and this was after the recovery process is any attack position where you've got three or more task level companies assigned and operating. Is you need, especially if you don't have fire control, is you need a division boss, a true tactical boss? So that would be BC number two coming in, and we went through this with you. Know, a company officer could do it. They have the skills. No, this isn't about that. They are a working boss. They don't provide entry control and a tactical boss does so. They can't provide entry control and their work cycle is too dynamic. They got about 10 minutes at the most on air and then they're going to have to recycle outside and then they go back on deck when they're ready to go back to work. Well, the supervisor managing that task level crew can't manage the tactics for that attack position. There's too many things going on.
Speaker 2:So, and that became a thing that you had to get through to both company officers and chief officers, because company officers said well, we could do it. You're like how to work at Southwest Supermarkets. Yeah, you're right. So what it was is they had new information that broke their beliefs and they thought, no, we can't do that anymore, man. And so now they start going back to a bad place and it's like no, we got it, we have to stay out of.
Speaker 2:That kind of trouble is, once we get in that deep, we're done. If we survive, it's just by chance. It's nothing we did that caused us to survive, it was just dumb luck. So you know, eric Phillips and Chris Stewart talk about accidental success just dumb luck. So you know, eric Phillips and Chris Stewart talk about accidental success. Well, I don't think we had accidental success quickly attacking the fire. That's intentional success. You know, in freelancing, if you're the company that put water on it, your plan was right, but you can't manage. Freelancing is the problem. And so once you get five, 10 minutes into that, you end up with it's nothing different than Southwest supermarkets.
Speaker 2:So, and they did not take strategic control of that fire until they had tactical bosses on the Bravo side of that thing. They just didn't. You lost all control until you put a tactical boss in place. So I mean I just kind of stress the importance in bigger buildings, more active attack positions, is putting that chief up sooner. Well, captain saw that, but then it was getting the BCs.
Speaker 2:He's like well, man, my turnouts are made out of Nomex and I think there's like a whole colony of spiders in them because we don't wear them. I mean, come on Like well, it's a new day, and if you're number two, you're going to be. And they're like well, and they would almost you could see it in training they almost said well, just don't, just don't use us that way. And so, like when you were the IC though it's like bullshit, you're, you're going to get assigned, because that's the only way I'm going to stay in control of this is to put one of my counterparts is the tactical boss. That's what you're there for.
Speaker 2:So you think, well, right, you know, if a fire department gets I don't know, two or three working fires in a day, one of them may be of a big enough scope where you actually assign a BC as a tactical boss. But it didn't happen often because you put the fire out so quickly. So if I put the fire out in the first five minutes with an attack line and two crews, it eliminates my need in most cases to build an organization on the tactical level because we've eliminated those risks. So now you've got a captain can manage that because you're getting into a place where you're not tied to inside air SCBA air you're going to ventilate, then you can use a filter mask or whatever, and then you can make you don't have a bunch of people wanting to push to get in where you need to keep entry control and lobby in the thing. So it's like, well, no, we're just overhauling now, and now we got. So it may be that you move some. Let's say you're doing overhauling a Home Depot, right, and you controlled the fire and you had a sprinkler activation. Now you got rack storage. Well, you're probably going to put a division boss inside there If you're doing like overhaul operations, just to make sure that companies are operating in a safe way, because now it's the fallen stuff and you think, well, no, we got the fire control.
Speaker 2:We shouldn't let like a box full of wet shit kill us now. So stay out of its way and we need to extinguish it. What we really want to do is give this store back to the Home Depot people. So if the fire's out and there's a big mess in the middle of the aisle, that is their issue and they've got systems to deal with that. We're not cleaning this thing out. This ain't 1960 anymore, where we like use squeegees on, uh, spalted concrete is our final deal before we leave. So it's uh, yeah, more in fact, vance, I'm getting off track again, but there's more and more.
Speaker 2:As the building becomes more technical, the more likely overhaul is going to be done by the building owners. Because if you have like a, let's say, a warehouse that does logistics, shipping, and it's got conveyor belts and shit like that, we ain't, we ain't dicking with it, we put the fire out. We're sure the fire's out. There's an overhaul issue. We're giving the building back to you. We'll stand by, but we're not this. This is off limits. There's people that do this. I mean, there's companies that take care of this, and they know who they are and that's really what they want, these building owners. They said no, we spent millions of dollars for the fire protection and now we want to put this building back in service in two weeks. So please leave, and it's nothing for you, but just a very complicated building. The people in here are going to be supervised by structural engineers. This is a different operation.
Speaker 1:So one of the things that it talks so we're managing our strategy, we've got good situational awareness, risk management. Then, after the incident, the book talks about post-incident analysis. How has that evolved in the 20 years or so? Now we've got the AAR, but was that the same thing or was that done any different?
Speaker 2:How all this came from is the first edition of Fire Command and into the second edition of Fire Command. You talked about strategy and instant action planning, coming up with an instant action plan. Well, I was a battalion chief and I started teaching tactics with Garrison. He was at BC about a year or two ahead of me, so the two of us kind of did the A101 and 201 tactics right and so I'm on my first class with him and we're going through size up and incident action planning, the critical factors and all that you know and the tactical priorities. So I couldn't, it didn't make any sense to me. Incident action planning it was hard to teach because I really didn't understand it. It's like offensive quick water on the thing. So that's where the strategic decision-making model was born is sitting down and saying, no, there's got to be a simpler way where it really kind of all these elements, you got to sequence them in a way. So it was almost like they put it in but the directions weren't there so you had to kind of wander through the forest a little bit. So that's kind of what Garrison and I ended up doing and it kind of changed the way the department taught tactics. Well, it just because it was simpler and it made more sense. See, you had to have a B shifter in there at some point to decipher what the A shifters had created. So that's what happened that system where you got to the scene and you absorbed the critical fire ground factors and then you context those against both the completion of the tactical priorities and the risk management plan, the survivability of the compartment. We're dealing with all that stuff. So it's like well, no, this fire attack is not going to save anybody in the fire compartment because they're all dead. It realizes that and that's the way it operates. Reality. So what we're going to do is we're going to go in and we're going to attack that first. Well, that's not where you're going to find the victims. The victims are on the other side of the walls. So that's where that came from. And then what happens is we use that same exact process where we figure out okay, this is the strategy, and then the corresponding incident action plan. Well, that is the same model we use to run the after action review. So we would get the first in-company officer. And this is I mean now. This is this was ahead of Southwest Supermarkets. This is probably two or three years ahead of Southwest Supermarkets. So I'm a battalion chief, I get to the scene. I ended up taking command. 15 minutes later we got fire control big ass apartment complex. Now we're doing the after action review. There's four engines, two ladders, two BCs. We canceled the other alarms. They're going.
Speaker 2:So it's us in the front 10 minutes, right, okay, guy named John was the IC engine. Five, john, what'd you have? Well, nick, I got here, I had a working fire in this unit. I knew it was in the attic and so I came in, did fire attack. And then the big end is engine 14 was next to I. Put them over there, get an all clear, get up in the attic, stop horizontal spread and the little land I had, engine 25, go over there. I had the cut the roof. That's what we did back in the day. You know that was kind of the tactics, still. So, boom, boom, boom. You got here, you took it over, excellent, so you know what.
Speaker 2:So then he talked about the effect of the attack. We got in, we knocked it down pretty quick. We had a little bit of fire in the attic but you know, on both sides they got the ceilings down. Boom, boom, boom, so like, and these were pretty good sized occupancies, probably at least 25, 30, 40 feet long each in the building, these units. So the one thing we talked about is where do you pull your ceiling to stop it? They said, well, I pulled it on the wall that it shared with the fire occupancy.
Speaker 2:I had fire in the attic, so I went to the other end, pulled it. It was clear. We pulled it bigger. We got up there and we started putting water in the attic. So we got ahead of it and I thought, okay, what'd that look like? Well, we made a mess on one side and then we made a mess on the other side. But you know, that's said well, one burned out, two suffered fire damage. There's 40 units that have nothing wrong with them today.
Speaker 2:See that, if we would have, if if John would have taken his crew and done blind searches, we would have, we would have lost half the building at least. So that's where I'm talking effective. He went in, he puts fire out, so that's really so. What happened is that sold it as you do that eight or nine times over a period of three or four months, and then the workforce gloms onto it. It's like no man. This is too good. And then we look like cheerleaders in the after action review.
Speaker 2:It is, you know, it's just, it's a better, safer way to do it. And now we're starting to understand this. It's not a mystery anymore, and so it's so. We're communicating on B shift turns at that point, so it becomes so everybody's a little bit happier. I mean, you're, it's a successful operation. Uh, john has got his gold star. His crew thinks a little more highly of him. He feels a little bit better. I mean, maybe I don't know I'm making this shit up now. Vance, his kids go to college, they become doctors and they, yeah, that's how evolution happens.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that's really kind of the way we did that. Well that, so we just took that same system and put it on steroids, and then what we did is we wrapped. We said, okay, we've been doing rapid intervention this way for a long time, well, let's see how that works. And so you ran it through that process of okay, the critical factors, and then that's going to lead me to risk management strategy, life safety, blah, blah, blah, blah. So people could start to make sense of things even ahead of it. So when you started saying, hey, man, rapid intervention don't work. And well, the task level knew that when you assign somebody to become a RIC, most companies were pissed. They were, oh Jesus Christ, in fact to the point that, like, the third-end company would not stage, they would wait for somebody else to stage, and then the third-engine stages or they would stage for them. I had that happen where engine 14 staged for engine 25. And so that one didn't work, though Thanks, geofencing.
Speaker 1:Now you can't do that.
Speaker 2:Well, it didn't matter, because we needed another line. We didn't need a RIC crew, I needed a line to stop the fire from burning down the next house. So that's what we did. So engine 14 said copy, because they thought they were going to be the RIC. And then Engine 25 goes. Hey, engine 25 is last, engine 25, ric. So Engine 25 is going to file a grievance after the thing, because I was the third. You assigned the third unit to firefighting. I said, well, yeah, I needed to because there was fire to fight. And I assigned the fourth unit to take Rick because all the firefighting was covered. It was. It was an excellent system for like understanding what you were actually doing and why you were doing it. So you almost had to justify the actions you took. Is what? Why did you do this? It just kind of like your mom. Why did you do this, this one, why did you throw the rock through the window?
Speaker 1:Well, because it felt good, well, don't do it again. I think fire command really gives us the basis for everything as far as the book goes. But uh, fire, uh, I'm sorry. Command safety if you haven't read it. It's a modern look at the safety philosophies that an incident commander should have. Probably is the best way to describe it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it all kind of starts with your firefighter's gear has a limit to what it can take and it's not designed to be an entry suit. It's designed to protect them against something that you don't want to happen to them. Changing conditions yeah, and it's like, no, this isn't. I was young and dumb and did the same thing. I'm flowing water and smoking and I'm like, well, god, that hurts, but what are they going to say about me? You know, it's that whole deal, and what you rely on then is a captain grabbing you and saying you're going too fast, knock it off, moron here, and put the water on it, and then we'll move. Yeah, uh-uh, no more of this. So yeah, you know, and the problem is, is that's a tough way to educate yourself, because first of all, you're getting burned unnecessarily and the other thing is it'll kill you. So now you're doing occupational suicide.
Speaker 2:It's tactical Russian roulette. You're like, no, this is. And fires are even more unpredictable today. They burn hotter and faster than they did when I was doing this in the 80s and 90s. It's uh-uh. Want to do a timeless tactical truth. We may as well Vance. That's the way we end these things.
Speaker 1:Timeless tactical truth from Alan Bernasini the eight of hearts. Effective control by the IC equals worker safety. Effective control by the IC.
Speaker 2:So define control. The IC controls position and function of all operating resource at the incident scene. So the other thing the system gets you is so if the IC could control your position and function. The other thing is, when you do that and connect that to a well thought out incident action plan is you will more quickly achieve the completion of the tactical priorities, as the incident will just run smoother and everything will happen faster as you don't have people working at odds. And then the other thing is if it starts off in an offensive strategy and the conditions worsen to the point that people need to be removed from the building, so the IC uses the strategy.
Speaker 2:So, first of all, the firefighters can kill the fire. Second of all, it keeps the fire from killing the firefighters. So if the conditions deteriorate let's say that it moves up in the attic and you need to move everybody out right Then if you can control position and function, you withdraw them from the building, you confirm that with the PAR and then it's okay, we're out. We're going to keep you in safe areas, so stay out of the collapse zones and we'll do whatever we need to keep this fire from spreading and threatening other lives and property. So that's what operational control looks like. Cool yeah.
Speaker 1:Nick Bernasini. Thanks, man. Thank you, john Vance. All right, good seeing you, and thanks to everyone for listening to B Shifter. Talk to you soon, ciao.