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30 Fires You Must Know: The Southwest Supermarket Fire
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This episode features Frank Leeb, Chris Stewart and John Vance.
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This episode was recorded on February 12, 2025.
This episode delves into the critical importance of learning from past firefighting tragedies through the lens of the book "30 Fires You Must Know," co-authored by Chief Billy Goldfeder and Chief Frank Leeb. We explore how documenting these historical incidents creates a powerful learning tool for preventing future line-of-duty deaths.
• The book examines 31 fires that have significantly impacted the fire service, with all royalties supporting firefighter charities
• Chief Frank Leeb discusses fighting the "historical illiteracy" that leads to repeating the same mistakes that cost firefighter lives
• Detailed examination of the 2001 Southwest Supermarket fire that killed Phoenix Firefighter Bret Tarver
• How an exterior fire at a loading dock quickly spread through a grocery store, creating deadly conditions
• The 13 maydays called during rescue attempts and the lessons learned about rapid intervention
• Phoenix Fire Chief Brunacini's courageous decision to be completely transparent about what went wrong
• How the incident fundamentally changed the fire service's approach to commercial structure fires
• Why exterior fires must be extinguished from the exterior before moving to interior operations
• The critical importance of understanding that residential tactics don't work in commercial buildings
• How these lessons continue to shape firefighter training and response protocols today
Welcome to the B Shifter Podcast
Speaker 2I want to welcome you to the B Shifter podcast.
Introducing 30 Fires You Must Know
Speaker 2You've got John Vance here today, chris Stewart is with me, along with Frank Lieb, and today we're going to be talking about 30 Fires, you Must Know, and this book is authored by Chief Billy Goldfeder and Chief Frank Lieb.
Speaker 2It was published in the summer of 2024. And it's really an in-depth examination of 30 significant fires that have deeply impacted the fire service over the past few decades, and every chapter in the book really offers a really nice detailed narrative and firsthand accounts from individuals who were directly involved in the incidents, ensuring a very clear understanding of those events, which really makes a huge difference because they are fires that people should know about. The book also includes overviews to set the stage for each chapter and lessons plans designed to facilitate training and reflection within your department. There's a companion website that goes along with that, called 30fires, the number 30firescom, and the other nice thing about this is all royalties from this book are donated equally to four key charities supporting the fire service community the Firefighter Cancer Support Network, the First Responder Center of Excellence, the Deputy Chief Ray Downey Scholarship Charity Fund and the Tunnel to Towers Foundation. Chris and Chief Lieb, thanks for being here today. It's really nice to see you.
Speaker 3I'm thrilled to be here. I'm thrilled to be here. I'm thrilled to be here with Frank.
Speaker 2Frank, how are you doing Now? We are going to air this episode, just to be clear, sometime in March, but you have a birthday coming up, I understand.
Speaker 3I do, yeah, so my birthday is coming up tomorrow actually.
Speaker 2All right, well, happy birthday, my friend.
Speaker 1More importantly, mrs Lieb's birthday is on Thursday. I just want, I want to make that very clear that that one matters too.
Speaker 3Yeah, Well, yeah, In fact that one is way more important, which is why that was a no fly zone day for me being on the podcast, because you know I'm I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I know not to call airstrikes. You know me being on the podcast because you know I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I know not to call airstrikes. You know myself and do podcasts on Mrs Leib's birthday.
Speaker 2Very wise, my friend, Very wise. Well, tell us a little bit about this book, first of all, because you guys you and Billy collaborated with a lot of other folks in order to make this book happen. Let's talk about a few of the fires first, and then we'll get into the Brett Tarver incident.
Why Historical Knowledge Matters
Speaker 3Yeah, so it's interesting. And again, thanks again for having me on the show. While it's 30 fires, you must know it is actually 31 fires in the book because one of the chapters you know two modern single family dwelling fires, because one of the chapters you know, two modern single family dwelling fires, chapter 11, has two fires and so there's 31 fires. So that means 31 different people. Who who gave their input? But we also, chapter one, the Black Sunday fire, had three different people that we used to write in their own words, which you know, just the whole book. The value of the book is really in the stories of their own words, right? So for Brett Tarver, that's what Chris wrote, and because you get some of the nuances from the fire and some of the stuff that even when there's a NIOSH report done that may not make the final report for various reasons and different things that come out.
Speaker 3And this book was a true labor of love. You know Billy and myself had spoken back and forth about. It aggravates me to no end when I go somewhere and there's a memorial in a firehouse or in a courtyard or wherever, and you go and you talk to the firefighters that work there and I've done this. This has happened in a couple of places around the country where they don't even know why there's a plaque on their wall. And you know, if we don't learn from our history, especially our own history, we're going to repeat it. If we don't learn from our history, especially our own history, we're going to repeat it. And we shouldn't need to repeat the history. We should. You know, we should be better than that and not just learn from our own history but learn from others, because when we lose a brother or sister on the fire ground, it is a generational impact. You know it continues to reverberate 20, 30, 40, 50 years later. You know it continues to reverberate 20, 30, 40, 50 years later. The New York telephone fire we're coming up. By the time this broadcast is, it'll be past its 50th anniversary. The end of February will be 50 years Still, you know, knowing Danny Noonan's, his daughters, his cousins, and just seeing the impact that that has right and Danny passed away last year, which you could say he was one of the lucky ones that he lived a relatively long life, even though he battled occupational cancer for a long time.
Speaker 3But you know we have to understand the history. Far too often we're historically illiterate. And when we're historically illiterate, we run the risk of having to repeat lessons and put families and our brothers and sisters and ourselves through through a great deal of grief and pain, perhaps unnecessarily, because these are in this book. These fires, these 31 different fires are five. You know fires that can happen anywhere in any community. Um, you know from whether we're talking about a night's at col or a McDonald's, a propane explosion, you know, these are all you know. Or a supermarket in Phoenix. These are everyday occupancies that every community has. And even you know places of worship, like the Ebenezer Baptist Church fire in Pittsburgh. I mean, every community has these type of buildings.
Speaker 2There are several of these that we talk about when we do our classes, in particular the Hackensack Ford fire, and I am just amazed how much coverage that had at the time because we had FETN at my department.
Speaker 2So remember the old FETN was real educational and they covered it extensively and people just don't know about it, you know. And now I'm able to refer them to the book to say, hey, there's, there's more about that fire here and some of the other ones. But yeah, we, we owe it to to the fire service to let people know. And I have a question for you guys, and I don't know if there's an answer to this, but Jeff, who we work with, says firefighters have this flaw that, unless it happens to us, it didn't happen. You know, it's kind of a proclivity towards that. How can we change that? I mean, of course the book helps, but how do we get the book and the information into folks' hands so we change that pattern?
Speaker 1information into folks' hands. So we changed that pattern. Well, the term that Frank just used, historically illiterate that might be the best way I've heard it put in quite a while and that's truly not knowing and understanding some history or the things that have occurred that have put us in bad positions or had bad outcomes, and the recognition of. I don't want to do that again, or I've got to learn from that so that I don't put myself in that position. I don't put my crew, my company, you know all the firefighters at the incident in that same position. So, yeah, I think Jeffrey's right, and Jeffrey's right about a fair amount of things, right, and that we do. Yeah, you can tell me the stove's hot, but I still am going to touch it just to make sure that it's hot and that's not a long-term successful plan for how the fire service is going to improve.
The Southwest Supermarket Fire Background
Speaker 1So that's why this book, the things that get taught about these fires, the work that NIOSH does, the work that all taught about these fires, the work that NIOSH does, the work that all these independent groups do and the groups inside these departments that have these tragedies. We've got to be able to look at all these and utilize them and not allow that to be used in vain and that we're doing things differently and better because of what happened, right? And so, yeah, I don't. Frank, you see a lot of it too, like you're all over the country, and it's interesting how we get that temperature from. Anywhere we go of, we see a lot of firefighters who are interested and want to know, but yet we also see a fair amount of firefighters who don't have any idea about this, and so, trying to bridge that gap, I got to think you're seeing the same thing.
Speaker 3What we see in the value of the book to really be is that you can drill on a topic, right. So, on the anniversary of Brett Tarver's in a month, right, not even on just March 14th, but in the month. This is something that you should be drilling on and understanding the difference between commercial and residential tactics through the eyes, through the fact that we are 20 plus years forward and through the lens of it in 2025, on how much more we know today than we knew in 2001 and um that. But these stories are culled down. So when you, when you read this, the chapter, you can read the chapter in 10-15 minutes where a NIOSH report, to read the NIOSH report and break it down of of, of other, of some of these fires, where they're a couple hundred pages long, some firefighters, they don't even know where to start. There's so much information.
Speaker 3So we've pulled them together to read the story, understand the nuances behind it.
Speaker 3And then here's some things to drill upon at the end, and when you took the whole book in its totality, we could have just taken a NIOSH, five or or um a bunch of points and made them, every single point, right, every fire.
Speaker 3This is the learning point but we wanted to make it where they mesh together, where, if you take every fire and throughout the year, you you will see a wide range of different topics that you should be drilling on. So we've seen departments that have told me they're going to make different will see a wide range of different topics that you should be drilling on. So we've seen departments that have told me they're going to make different PowerPoints on it and if they're training on it, the different fires, one per week, different things and we're hoping that they share their resources. So then we can put them on the website that you mentioned earlier, john, the www.30firescom the www.30firescom, because that'll give us all the additional learning tools that we need to make sure that we minimize the chance of us having these repeat and we fight back against that historical illiteracy that we mentioned earlier.
Speaker 2Well, we are coming up on the anniversary of the Brett Tarver fire at the Southwest supermarket and maybe to transition into that and talk about that incident and really what we walk through with the book. But what was that day like, what were the pre-fire conditions, like what led up to this event, uh, that that ultimately took brett tarver?
Speaker 1so it was, uh, march, early march 14th to be exact, um, and it was like phoenix can get in march. It was starting to get hot already. We were up into the 90s and, uh, you know, beautiful desert weather, um, uh, and and uh. What typically comes with that is a fairly strong wind out of the south, or typically out of the west or the southwest, and so on that day a guy who had been, you know, arrested previously for shoplifting in the store is upset at the store it's kind of a longtime community grocery store. He goes over to the grocery store and lights the cardboard on the outside and the loading dock area on the south, kind of the southwest corner of the store and lights that off.
Speaker 1It just so happened to be that that was the windward side on a nice breezy, windy, warm day. So it kind of like was the perfect uh scenario, if you will, for not only that fire building but then then uh, extending uh, very, you know, without much resistance into that into the grocery store. So it was kind of kind of a whole bunch of stuff coming together and maybe we'll tie it all to the uh. To put a bow on. The beginning is Engine 14, who's the first new engine company you know to that address is out of service getting work done on the rig, so they're not even in quarters when the fire begins.
Speaker 2And what was the original call for and what was the dispatch dispatched as? Was it dispatched as a structure fire or was it dispatched as an outside fire?
Speaker 1No, it was dispatched as a garbage fire, trash, box fire. Second due engine gets it engine 24. They're coming from a little bit farther away, so they're maybe four or five minutes away, but it doesn't go unnoticed very long. So engine 14 sees it coming back from the shop, coming back to quarters Battalion 3, who's the battalion chief for that area? They see the smoke.
Brett Tarver's Final Assignment
Speaker 1They all started heading that way and then soon after Engine 24 arriving and figuring out what they had going on and some complications with downed power lines and arcing and unable to get water on it right away, the Battalion 3 recognizes the issue and they ask for a first alarm assignment.
Speaker 1And so in our system at the time it was four engines and a truck and a couple of battalion chiefs, or four engines and two trucks and a couple of battalion chiefs. And so he gets help coming very quickly. But it tends to spiral a little bit from that point with trying to access it and figure out exactly where the fire is. And then you know, to Frank's point, knowing what we know now, if we have an exterior fire extending to the interior of any structure, residential or commercial, we need to start that exterior fire and then work our way to the interior for the most effective fire control. So we didn't really know that at the time. It's kind of what happened, but there were things getting in the way of us actually doing a better job that day of getting water on the fire.
Speaker 2Frank, what's your experience with those outside fires that become inside fires? Have you seen this generally happen, because I know there are a couple of occasions in the book where you're talking about a few similar incidents.
Speaker 3To where the fire started and you know everybody wants to be. You know we, locally, right, we have a fire service that wants to be interior firefighters and they want to go inside and they do that. But we need to make sure that we're getting fire. We need to get water on the fire when it starts on the outside, on the outside right. The chapter ends with a pretty good quote, right, chris the? You know I got to find it because it's a great thing. The last quote really drives home the fact that it happens way too often. So in the end, the safest way to do something is also the quickest and most effective. It must become the only way you perform. So if we don't put water on an exterior fire, that fire generator is going to go to the inside of the structure quickly.
Speaker 3And, as you mentioned, there's other fires in his book that were exterior fires, that became interior fires, and that only puts us in a worse predicament.
Speaker 3Now, if you're in resource rich areas, you can probably do those things simultaneously, but we cannot have a delay on putting water on where the fire has begun and because far too often we see exterior fires become interior fires, which is why I say that is.
Speaker 3There's no doubt that's an Achilles heel in the fire service and oftentimes it could be rubbish, it could be a cigarette started in the mulch, it could be a car fire extending into the dwelling. I don't care how good you are inside, if you don't put that car fire out, that fire is going to continue to work its way into the dwelling, into the eaves and areas that you're not going to be able to extinguish from the outside. So in a department that doesn't have a robust response, that first line must go, must go to that exterior fire. And in departments that have robust experiences, the first line still should go to that exterior. But if not, there cannot be a delay in getting that second line into that position as quickly as possible, because we're not putting the fire out until we put out the cause of the fire, which is that exterior fire. It's that simple.
Speaker 2So what was Firefighter Tarver's assignment that day and what was his company doing, and at what point did conditions change and the mayday occur?
Speaker 1Yeah. So Engine 14 then showed up shortly after Engine 24 did, showed up shortly after Engine 24 did, and they knew Engine 24 was dealing with the exterior portion of the fire on the south side, and Engine 14, engine 21, and Engine 3 are all working on the front side of this building. And when I say building, it was the grocery store. But then in the I'll call it the Alpha Bravo corner, there were three occupancies a hardware store, a beauty salon and a clothing store mom and pop clothing store that were kind of carved out of the overall building, if you will, and so it appeared that the fire was at the back of all of these stores the hardware store and the beauty salon. And so the initial companies went into those occupancies, expecting to be able to get to the back of the building, to where the fire was impinging. Well, as it turns out, they actually dead-ended in there, and behind them was the storage room for the grocery store in there, and behind them was the storage room for the grocery store. And so there's companies going interior into these positions and not being able to get to the fire and saying, hey, listen, we simply can't get to it from here, and then having to redeploy and then send subsequent companies into the grocery store. Engine 14 was actually the first company into the grocery store. They stretched a dry line to the back of the grocery store. In their words, you know, they had relatively light smoke inside the store itself down low. They definitely saw a significant amount of smoke up high and it was definitely starting to build and you could tell that there was a decent fire burning in the building somewhere. And it turns out to be over that storage area at the Bravo Charlie corner and they work their way back into the back of the building. Again, and I make the point, they brought in a dry line because they weren't sure where they were going and then they brought in, probably you know, what we decided was just a ton of hose and once the line got charged it created big coils of hose and then when the water charged in the line also caused it to expand. Knocking a whole bunch of stuff down from displays Also caused it to expand, knocking a whole bunch of stuff down from displays. So really created this maze and obstacle course being able to get from their position in the back of the store out to leave through the front, the way they came in and when they recognized hey, man, this is getting worse in here. We're not actually being able to affect it with water, we're getting low on air, we need to back out.
The Mayday and Rescue Attempts
Speaker 1That is about the time when conditions are starting to really get bad. Everybody on the crew feels that they're moving towards the exit. As it turns out, the officer and the driver that day are in fact moving towards the exit, and Brett and his firefighter partner, cy Joy, were going in a different direction because they had gotten disoriented, lost contact with the line and ended up going farther into the structure and to the point where they became lost. And then the initial call for help wasn't what we would call a textbook mayday. In fact, brett didn't even use the term mayday. He said I'm in trouble, I'm lost, I'm in the back of the store and I'm running out of air. And it got treated as a mayday.
Speaker 1We operationalized it as a mayday at that point, but again, we hadn't spent a lot of time dealing with maydays, and so having a standardized process of what to communicate when you get in trouble just wasn't there yet, and that's obviously one of the things that we worked on, you know, after that point. But it was a wrap A rapid change in conditions that we were unable to effectively manage on the inside, causing us to have to leave, and when those firefighters were leaving, they actually ended up getting lost and put in a pretty bad position.
Speaker 3So I think about the we teach firefighters to the whole bumps, to the pumps thing, right, and that works great when you have a line stretched in training and it's stretched out nice and straight and there's there's no loops and, like you said, there's no spaghetti where. But we have spaghetti at almost every fire to some degree, right, or um, or a loop that's going up in the air or a loop that's going down the stairwell or wherever right. And I I think to myself because I've been in situations where I've tried to follow the hose line out and I wind up in a circle it's threaded underneath another hose line and I just I think to myself, oh, is that a sound practice that we teach firefighters? We should know that the bumps lead to the pumps. But to say that that's going to save us, to me is just absolutely false. And because what we need?
Speaker 3I remember I ran out of air in a fire in a multiple dwelling. This was small, I was trying to get myself out of the air and there were a ton of firefighters. There's no way I should have been in trouble. But I'm not going to tell anybody that I'm having trouble. My vibro alert's going off and all you need is firefighters that know where the exit is is to say, hey, brother, this way, because somebody if you know where the exit is, when people's vibro alerts are going off or you think they're trying to get out simply sometimes just saying hey, the exit's over here, will mean a world of good for somebody who's struggling.
Speaker 3And we see this when they don't give them a mayday. I'm sure Brett didn't give a mayday because he was pretty sure he was going to find his way out any second. Now, right, with a little bit of help. And I just think about that, and I know of other instances where firefighters have wind up going deeper in instead of to the exit, where we have enough people in the building that know where the exit is and, um and I don't know if that would have made any difference here, but I know that in in my case, um, I wound up finding it on my own, but if I just would have had somebody say, hey, the exits over here, boy, they would have. They would have relieved. I probably have a few less gray hairs right now.
Speaker 1So so you reminded, but with the story you reminded me something.
Speaker 1So Frank was nice enough to have me on on on the getting salty experience to talk about the book and this fire, Right, and.
Speaker 1But at the same, in the same episode, they were also talking about another fire, that they had the Father's Day fire, Right, I'm remembering that, right, Frank? Yeah, so, and it was interesting to hear those guys tell the story and the things that actually lined up from that fire and that story, lining up with what was happening or what had happened at Southwest Supermarket, maybe a few years previous, I think to it was very interesting. And I think firefighters in general have a lot of those similar experiences at different incidents. And so this story, this incident, this book, all of those are just doing a really nice job of kind of connecting those dots. And you may not get it from the Southwest supermarket fire, but if you get it from the Father's Day fire, you get it from the Hack's Day fire, you get it from the Hackensack fire, you get it from the Worcester cold storage, fine, whatever it is. But there's a ton of consistencies to all of them which is valuable in this conversation, I think.
Speaker 2Frank, do you have some of the similarities that those two fires have?
Phoenix Fire Department's Response Afterward
Speaker 3I think, just the communication, I think making sure that you know again, we all, we're, we're all our brother's keeper and knowing, and that communication on the scene of where a firefighter is, where somebody comes up to you, like you know, to pull you in a certain direction, hey, the exits's this way. I think those little nuances are so often forgotten and, like chris says, we could pull these from all these different fires there's. There's a lot of similar threads here, but I look at the importance of um, of that one, of just making sure that, uh, if you see a firefighter who's getting up onto the aerial and he has way more tools than he should normally have, and you see he's a new firefighter, somebody's got to say something to stop. You know that could be another domino falling right.
Speaker 3Um, you know we are, safety is a byproduct of our training and our ability to, for our well-trained firefighters on scene when they see someone who may not be as well-trained, we have to. We have to say something when we see something that could that could lead to, um, that could lead to a serious injury or death and um, so that was all I know. I didn't answer your question. But, um, there's, um, I gotta think about that. What, what are the more more of the threads that we could pull from the two of those fires? But there was another point of you know, as I hear Chris talking, I'm like fire that we're talking about. They're learning points to make us better in the long run and collectively right, whether it's these 31 fires and the 30 fires you must know, or other experience that Chris has had, I've had, or you've had, that we could call these together and say, hey, you know, the bumps to the pump thing is something that annoys me, that we teach our firefighters that, as that's the saving grace to get out of the building.
Speaker 2Right Once they realized, or you know, firefighter Tarver realized he was in trouble and that gets transmitted and command realizes he's in trouble. What were some of the challenges that the rapid intervention team faced? The other firefighters there, the command staff, you know what. What happened from that moment on?
Speaker 1So I'll say that there was not dedicated rapid intervention at that moment. So what occurred was all of the, because it's early on, early enough on in the incident that all the crews that just came out of the building, that were in there with Brett, immediately respond to Brett being in trouble and they're turning right back around and headed into the building, regardless of how much air is in their bottle of their you know. Oh, I remembered being there. I know where to go. Whether they really did or they didn't, who actually know? Only they actually really know.
Speaker 1So there was an unorganized response, well-intended, well-intentioned, unorganized response, initially to going back in, to getting him, and that's really what creates these additional maydays. So there's a there's original or this initial wave of folks going in oh, I know where Brett is, we'll go get him. Then there's another group of companies that arrived that are sent into the building that have not been in the building yet. So they're full of air and they're, but they're spending a lot of time looking for him and then, once they actually find him and get hands on him, uh, brett was, uh, he had been breathing smoke for quite a while. He was, you know, had a lot of uh, uh, carbon monoxide toxicity and and and was not rational in any way, and he was literally starting to fight against them, you know, and pushing them away. And and Brett was a big old rascal and he's not somebody I wanted to wrestle on a good day, let alone in in a smoky environment, uh, and trying to get him out, and so, uh, ultimately, once he goes unconscious, they have then the ability to kind of recognize where he is, develop a plan on who's going to get him, and I say a plan like it was well-organized.
Speaker 1It really really wasn't. Until almost the very end, with them sending companies in from a couple different directions, they recognized that they were actually closer to the loading dock on the Bravo side to be able to. That was a shorter distance to get him out, and so they started working from that side of the building. But there were a lot of obstacles, a lot of things challenging him, including the fact that the fire was growing. There really was no evidence that any water was flowed after the initial mayday and we were ventilating that building like you couldn't believe. And so, again, unbeknownst to us in the moment, what we thought was the right thing to do was ultimately making it more difficult for us to work in there and creating worse fire and smoke conditions. How many more May Days were there? I think there's a total of 13 May Days.
Speaker 2Oh wow, and there were also some other respiratory arrests that occurred.
Speaker 1Yeah, so the two firefighters two other firefighters came out of the building in respiratory arrest. They both were revived on the way to the hospital and unfortunately Brett wasn't.
Speaker 2Okay, so they get Firefighter Tarver out. Any resuscitation attempts unsuccessful and unfortunately the, you know, the fire department suffered this loss and went through a tremendous period of recovery where all that that was learned in real time was shared with the American fire service, cause I remember FDIC 2002, there were classes already about the incident and what had been learned so far, 2003, 2004,. You know, it just went on and everything was being shared. So talk about the aftermath and what really changed not only for the Phoenix Fire Service but the American Fire Service as a whole because of this incident.
Lessons for the American Fire Service
Speaker 1Well, I can talk about Phoenix and maybe Frank can talk a little bit about the fire service, because I only saw it from you know, basically you know from the front row. But I would be remiss every single time I talk about this if I don't talk about the level of courage it took Chief Bernasini to do to make the decisions he made about how he was going to tackle this. And I'll even use a quote that Billy used when we were speaking about it on the last show was that he asked Bruno like hey, man, why this is like pretty treacherous ground you're headed towards? And he asked Bruno like hey, man, why this is like pretty treacherous ground you're headed towards? And he's like, hey, the attorneys are going to find out anyway, so we might as well talk about it. Right? This is the. There isn't going to be any mysteries here as to what went on. Whether we talk about it or somebody else does, let's get out in front of this and let's let's act like it. It matters to the fire service because it should and it does, and so that, like I can't put a number on it, I think it's less than 1% of the leadership of the American Fire Service then and today would have the courage to handle it that way, because there's so many things pulling us in a bunch of different directions. So I'm thankful that it did. I'm thankful for the example that it set and then I'm thankful for the changes that actually made, both internally and for the broader perspective. One of the very first decisions that he made was to bring every single crew regionally on duty through the back of the building, and that could not have been a better decision to set the tone for how this thing was going to go, because we know firefighters, we know how they behave, we know our mindset and attitudes. If, if there isn't some shared perspective, it's very easy for firefighters to go. Well, that wouldn't happen to us, wouldn't it? Nah, that's that's, that's. This was a C-shift fire, that's a C-shift thing. I was a B-shift at the time. That ain't happened on a B-shift, that bullshit. It really it's highly likely. It would have and could have, and so that set the tone.
Speaker 1And then, as I look back on my career, there was not a more focused part of my time in the Phoenix Fire Department, from 2001 to 2006, when Bruno ultimately retired Because everything the department did and everything we did on the inside was focusing on what can we learn from this incident, how can we do it better? And then, how are we going to share that? And we didn't have time to bitch and snivel about the stuff that firefighters find time to bitch and snivel about, because we were, we had this really important shared focus that we were working on and I it's sad to say that tragedy has to kind of create that in a lot of organizations, but but I think we've seen it in multiple places, not just in this instance. So that was like I don't want the incident to ever happen again. However, man, if I could relive those five years over and over in my career and perpetuate those in my career, man, we would have gotten a lot more stuff done, as we know, as, as we, as we, you know move through the fire service mature.
Speaker 1So, um, I, I saw that from the inside, and then everything, like I said, was focused on how are we not going to let this happen again? Uh and uh, we were very, very good at saying, uh, um, that didn't work. We tried, we, we tried to make our policies and procedures work. They didn't work. So we said, all right, what do we got to do?
Speaker 1The fire chief, the executives of the organization, listened to the fire companies. The fire company said what you're asking us to do is not achievable, like we can't do it. So we're like all right, well, what is achievable? We sat down, we worked on it and that's actually today the way that the system's built and we've exercised it and we know that it works and we spent the time to practice. So I know it's one of the things that we talked about in the chapter in editing it, because I had a line in there. There's no firehouse accountants doing the math here on what actually happened, because we brought in real people to actually measure data and do the things that we needed to to get better. So that's what we were focused on and that's what I felt in my experience inside the fire department. And well, you and Frank probably have a better clue of what happened outside than I do.
Speaker 2And, frank, what's your perspective on what happened then with the American Fire Service after this?
Speaker 3Yeah, so I think first of all leadership matters, right.
Speaker 3That can't be lost on this right. So I know that anytime at FDIC or a conference, when someone's going to speak about a fire, especially one that lost, where somebody lost their life, I attend that and I remember attending one on this fire and it was standing room only. Everybody wants to learn from these instances. But in this book, when we were determining which fires we were going to highlight, there were departments that did not want their fire featured and therefore those fires in several, several cases are not in this book and in some cases. So time has a way of making it where it has a little too soon. But there were departments that didn't want this. So when you think about the leadership and you know, bruno set the tone for what was going to happen in his department and it happened in his department. The report was released not even a year later, right the day before, a year later, like that's exceptional and that has set the bar for when these reports should be done. For the one-year anniversary, the FDNYR reports we strive for one year, I think that fired to me. One of the immediate takeaways from it was the fact that when someone has been exposed to a high level of CO, that they become irrational. We have to be thinking of that. That when we have somebody we need to, you know the person's not rescued until you have them and you transfer them to EMS. Um, that that we get them off of that, we get them off of the scene that was something I had never even thought about today. Um, with the Sino kits and the Carbide to hemoglobin that we could administer on scene is going to increase the likelihood not only of civilians surviving a fire but also firefighters. So if you don't have those kits available everywhere, should have those, and if you don't have them in your department or you're a small department, then get together with other departments and make sure you have them coming to every working structural fire. The modern day medicine has changed the game.
Speaker 3I think some of the research into tactics have been as a direct result of what came out of that fire. Don't use residential tactics on commercial fires. That's something that we preach and talk about today a lot. Your big box class could probably even be related back to its origins. Was some of these fires right? The Scotty Dean fire in San Antonio was in a crossfit gym. The Soul Flare Superstore was a large retail store. This was a large retail store, even the Knights of Columbus while not the same size.
Speaker 3The firefighter mindset shift. And now the research, all these years later, about all these different things, the way we have to attack a fire that's in a large area, a large volume area, has been a game changer changer and we're not done. We're not done learning about these, because now these, these buildings are getting bigger and bigger and our ability to, to protect them is is becoming more and more of a challenge. I think about these. You know you have a fire in the middle of a target store or a home depot, or you know and like, how far in can we go if the sprinkler system is not operational and be able to successfully get people out and extinguish the fire? And think about the Amazon and Walmart distribution centers If these sprinklers aren't on.
Speaker 3This is the next level from these supermarket fires and these CrossFit gym fires that are featured in the book that, hey, what's the plan? What's the plan with these? Because if you're using 30-minute bottles, that's not going to be effective. A 45 may not even be effective. So, having a plan, these are challenges that we're still going to see, the impacts of the which, I believe largely got to origins from this fire and as we continue to build off of it the building blocks of a seminal fire such as this.
Speaker 1So there's an interesting story connected to this market. A young NIST scientist named Dan Ramzkowski was with his staff in Phoenix getting ready to burn a Bowstrung warehouse and they had been at the building setting it up. That fire happens the next. The Southwest supermarket happens the next day. They're supposed to burn on the 15th. They're supposed're supposed to burn on the 15th. Uh, they're supposed to do the experiments on the 15th.
Speaker 1Obviously, that gets put off for a while, but then they come back and do that, and and One of the things that we changed in what we were looking for in Dan's original experiment was oxygen levels and carbon monoxide levels inside the building, and that was directly related to what occurred and what happened to Brett in the building. So Dan was able to not only do what Dan was going to do, but then add another layer onto it, which really was the first time we've looked at that stuff and it was incredibly valuable. And then Dan goes on to well, as I like to say, dan is my favorite scientist, you know, truly a hundred pound brain guy, and so you know the contribution from him based on this fire and based on things that Frank were talking about, is huge.
Speaker 2What message do you guys want firefighters to take from this incident? That we can ensure that the legacy of Brett Tarver and what happened here continues to live on.
Speaker 1So those lessons are passed on to the future firefighters lessons are passed on to the future firefighters I'm going to say. The first thing I'm going to say is, if we would have, if we would have or could have been successful at putting the fire out, brett never gets lost and Brett never runs out of air. That's like number one. So that focus on putting water on the fire matters. Putting the fire out matters.
Speaker 1When we have to do actions that are simultaneous, where it's more complicated than that, or you know, it's going to take a little work to get lines to where you need to get water on the fire, then we need to start paying attention to how far we are in the building, how much air it actually takes to get in the building, but also how much air it takes to get out of the building, and that an incident commander has got to have a plan and organization for layering resources in order to be able to do that effectively and keep the work going. So, and I think that's that's a you know that's as brief a summary as I guess I could give for the things that we took away, but, like at the end of the chapter, frank writes the drill, the documents about hey, these are the things to train on, these are the things to drill on, and so I'll leave that to you. What, what do you see?
Speaker 3In 2002. And I think that's the beauty of the time is that we know so much more about again, I'll reiterate the you know, making sure that we're applying commercial tactics to commercial structures, that there's a huge difference between commercial and residential. Understanding the modern fire environment, understanding heat release rates, understanding that the fire is going to grow directly proportionate to the air that we allow it to have, that we can't ventilate our way out of the problem. I think those are hugely important points. And the last point I'll mention in one of these big box retail stores or supermarkets is when we pull up and again there's going to be things that piss me off.
Speaker 3We pull up to these for alarm ringing, right, and we immediately say nothing's showing. And I'm like, like. So then I asked to ask well, how much fire do you need to have in there for something to be showing? We have to fill up an enormous space for we, for us to show smoke on arrival out of a door in a 22 foot uh, structure. So are we setting ourselves up for failure when we say nothing's showing when there could be a fire in there? Because even the occupants, because they're not going to be in a smoke layer, they're going to be? What are they going to be doing? They're going to be Facebook live or tick, tocking the fire live when they can, and they're not going to, and we see that when we just go on YouTube and and check those out. But yeah, the takeaways I think the takeaways are vastly different today than they would have if we wrote 35 years, you know, 19 years ago.
Speaker 1Great point.
Speaker 2Well, is there anything else you guys would like to add about this particular chapter before we move on?
Speaker 1No, I feel like we kind of got everything out there and I appreciate the perspective of inside and outside the organization, so I don't have anything.
Speaker 2Well, do you have anything, Chief Lee?
Speaker 3I'll just add that you know the Phoenix Fire Department learned an awful lot from that fire, and so did the American Fire Service, that there's a lot of stuff that was a lot of strategies, a lot of tactics that took place there, that were taking place everywhere all around the country, and this fire shed the light on that and has led to a lot of the research and to where we are today. And you know, the ultimate aim of this book is to educate firefighters on these incidents to ensure that the lessons learned don't become lessons lost. And the fact that you know Chris is putting himself out there he was willing to write about this. We walk a fine line when we critique fires and you know Monday morning quarterback and whatever Monday morning quarterback and whatever right. So and this book walks a fine line with that to make sure that we are honoring our brothers and sisters that paid the ultimate price so we could preserve lives and property in the future 30 Fires.
Speaker 2You Must Know it's authored by Chief Billy Goldfeder and Chief Frank Lieb. Get the book, pass it on to people. It is well worth the read. It should be part of your training library. Chief Lieb, thank you so much for your contributions. I know we appreciate what Chief Goldfeder did here, and Chris Stewart, thank you very much for your contribution to this one too, and you know I think it's something that we talk about.
Speaker 2I talk about it every month, you know once a month at least we're talking about the Tarver incident and even reading through this and looking at the drills that were put together, it tripped some more light bulbs for me. So it's something worth revisiting, even if you think it's a fire you know about. Go revisit it, learn a little more about it, get those drills and pass it on. Absolutely All right, chief, do you want to stay around for Timeless Tactical Truth? Absolutely All right, here we go. The music makes us so happy.
Speaker 2Okay, timeless Tactical Truth from Chief Alan Brunicini. Today we have the Nine of Diamonds and it says when conditions change, the IC must consider changing the overall strategy and the incident action plan to match those changing conditions. That is very easily said when you don't have somebody in the building, including a firefighter. On this incident, we'll start with Chris and then we'll bounce over to Chief Lee the decision to. I mean they had to have their finger on the trigger to go defensive during the Tarver fire. Talk to us a little bit about that. Then the overall tactical truth.
Speaker 1Yeah, so the IC was actually moving towards going defensive. He said no, this is not getting any better, we need to go defensive. He was pulling people out of the building in order to make that happen. When Brett and Cy get disoriented and get lost, and so the recognition was there in the process of it happening is when the maydays occur, and it caused us then to operate inside the building for another 25 minutes attempting to get them out. And you know sheer luck divine intervention.
Speaker 1I don't know how you're going to, how you want to quantify it.
Speaker 1I don't want to quantify it, but the fact that that building tolerated us doing that in order to remove him and it didn't kill a half a dozen or a dozen of us is pretty amazing. So that recognition of the changing conditions if you don't have a standard system and somebody and I see actually paying attention to the conditions and balancing that off, what's going on in and around the building, things should be getting better, and if they're not, why? And if it's a small adjustment, make a small adjustment. If it's a big adjustment, like changing strategy and getting everybody out of the building, we can't delay that. Our need to actually communicate that and be decisive in the moment and so, and without a standard process and without standard training you know where you're actually exercising doing that then we don't actually get good at it and we then that creates, you know, trepidation with even making the call, like now we're done here, because if you don't know when to make the call, then you're likely going to miss the opportunity to do it.
Speaker 2Chief Lee.
Speaker 3John, you hit it on the head, right. So this is. This is pretty simple, right, it sounds this is simple, but operationalizing it is sometimes a huge challenge. But that's why we have incident benchmarks. That's why we have to make sure that when you're 20 minutes into the operation, the dispatcher is going to let you know. That's why you have to give progress reports, Because when you're saying what's going on and sometimes you're realizing, hey, this is like the same progress report I just gave 20 minutes ago, so you know something may be going on.
Speaker 3It's also why we have successive commanders come in. Additional commanders might come in and maybe have a different, a fresh viewpoint on something. Where you get there and say, maybe have a different, a fresh viewpoint on something where you get there and say, hey, I think we may need to reevaluate this right. So size up is an ongoing, it has to be an ongoing activity and we can never forget that point, that we have to continue sizing it up. And you know that's important. That's a good. That's a good, as all of the the uh, timeless, uh, uh, I'm forgetting what they're called tactical turrets.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, they're all they're all good.
Speaker 3I love the music especially. Yeah, I'm just here for the music.
Speaker 2That's why we're here I'm here for the sets and reps, so that's really why. All right, uh, chief leave. Did you have any uh closing thoughts for for the v shifter listeners?
Speaker 3just thanks again for having me and um and just you know, let's fight against, let's make sure that we're not historically illiterate. Read the stories, remember, remember brett.
Speaker 1We honor him by learning and learning the lessons that they provide uh, two things I'm going to take away historically illiterate, that's going in my normal conversation. And then the fact that Frank Leib said carboxyhemoglobin on this podcast excites me to no end.
Speaker 2Are you really working as a paramedic in your retirement from the FDNY?
Speaker 3Well, listen, it's the holistic approach to our profession, when we know that there's something that has made the survival rate for victims right. You look at the firefighter rescue survey. You know the thousands of ones of rescues they have. You know, let's get that to 10 000 and one of the ways we're going to do it is by utilizing medicine and quality pre-hospital care as well 100 I got pre-hospital care in there, yeah, but it completes the cycle.
Speaker 1Right Is finding them and getting them out is not, is not the end. All right, there's another component to getting those folks to what they need to actually be survived.
Speaker 2Chief Lee, thanks for being here today. It's always good to see you, buddy, and you take care, enjoy your birthday and enjoy your wife's birthday and Valentine's Day, because they're all kind of probably taxing the system, so to speak, right now. But thanks for being here. It's always good to see you, buddy. Thanks, good to see you too. All right, thanks for joining us on this B Shifter podcast. Thanks to Chris Stewart, who will be back around with us very soon. Once again, take care and be safe.