Who Is Training The Senior Advisor?

The Silverbacks are in the studio this week, talking about "who is training the Senior Advisor?"

This episode features Nick Brunacini, Terry Garrison, and John Vance.

We dig into the senior advisor’s real job on the fireground, why command vans work when they’re quiet and disciplined, and how multi-channel operations keep tactics moving while logistics and safety hum in the background. Stories from Phoenix show how training, structure, and clear roles turn chaos into control.

• Command evolution from lone IC to five-person team
• Senior advisor scope across logistics and safety
• Protecting the command post from distraction and drift
• Two- and three-channel setups for tactics, logistics and safety
• Staging flow, resource rosters and timely CAN reports
• Aligning training with operations for consistent outcomes
• Handling stakeholders by phone, not on the tactical channel
• Small-system playbook for staffing senior advisors
• Long-game risks: demob, rehab, PIO and political impacts
• Culture: dealing with brick throwers and enforcing alignment

Buy “Timeless Tactical Truths from Alan Brunacini” at bshifter.com in our store for only $10!

This episode was recorded at the Alan V. Brunacini Command Training Center in Phoenix on November 5, 2025.

For Waldorf University Blue Card credit and discounts: https://www.waldorf.edu/blue-card/

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Transcript

Setting The Stage: Command Roles

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Welcome to the B Shifter Podcast. Today, got a couple of the silverbacks in the house. We've got Terry Garrison, Nick Brunacini. How are you, gentlemen, doing this fine day?

SPEAKER_01 1:05

I'm fine. He's dandy. We're fine and dandy.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

The comedy duo of fine and dandy. That's it. Last week we were talking with Josh and Chris Stewart about who is training your firefighters. It was a really good conversation. And uh we thought we would continue that on, but but in a in a little different realm with you guys about senior advisors and really the role of the senior advisor, maybe where that comes in with accountability. So I don't know who wants to kick that. Oh, well, first of all, I think I think for folks as especially that aren't maybe 100% immersed in Blue Card, or you don't usually have a senior advisor in your system, let's talk about what the role of the senior advisor is.

SPEAKER_03 1:49

Right.

From Lone IC To Command Teams

Offensive, Defensive, And Staying In The Car

Birth Of The Command Van

Enter The Senior Advisor Role

SPEAKER_02 1:50

We started messing around with command teams, I don't know, in the late 80s, early 90s, maybe. You know, before it evolved from like one incident commander getting there and then managing the entire response. Well, and that that quickly became like the first in officer would uh establish command, and then that was followed up where you would have a response chief get to the scene within the next, I don't know, a few minutes to within the next five to seven minutes would be on the scene, and then they would transfer command, and then that's the way we improved command. So, like in fact, the huge safety system that I operated with my entire career is we took command. So that eliminated a lot of trauma and accidents happening to us because it was you, it it was a well-thought-out incident operation. It wasn't a just blind attack type of a thing. So you had to verbalize what you were doing in the beginning in a way that made sense to everybody. So that really got the whole thing going straight lines. Well, then once the IC number one, the mobile IC, got it up and running, is really from the time I was hired in 1980, it was it was like focused on the fire attack. Is that's the reason you're here, you're firefighters, this is what we do. So we were very aggressive of putting water on the fire. But back in those days, it was like you didn't put it on from the outside. If it was offensive, it had to be inside. So all that's changed and evolved as we learned more and got better. But then IC number two would show up and they would transfer command, especially of an incident operation where you still had a major hazard zone going. So, like if we weren't able to put the fire out in the first few minutes of the thing, which is really kind of the way a fire attack goes, right? Offensive fires, you put them out within a few minutes. It's not, and when I started my career, I had this idea that it's it, and you would hear it from the older guys, like they would have these 30 to 40 minute firefights where like they're winning, the fire's winning, and it's back and forth. And it really never added up because it didn't go that way. It's like, well, if the fire's winning, it's kicking our ass, we're getting out of here, and the building's falling down. I mean, and that happens in the first 15, 20 minutes of the fire. So, I mean, it's got to be a pretty robust system to be able to account for everyone. So I see number two gets there, and their whole deal is put the fire out. Well, they get to the point they think, nah, you guys can't put this out. It's too big, you got to get out, it's gonna kill you. So, command kept the fire from killing us, but in the very beginning, it made us more effective so we could kill it. So that was the game you were playing. Well, so it was all command IC related, and then it became stay in the car. I mean, that was one of the main things you talk to the old guys who raised us, like two generations away, you know. So they got hired in the 50s, and then so what's happening there is now IC number two gets there, and they're used to being outside running around figuring it out. Well, they said, no, you're not effective. That's what the first guy was doing, and it didn't work. So you doubling down on it just because you're a chief, ain't gonna make it any better. So then they figure, okay, stay in the car, stay in the car. So they developed that routine. Well, they pull up, and I don't know, I'm gonna say probably 5% of the fires I went on started off offensive and they ended up defensive, where you had to be pulled out because the build the fire was gonna kill you. It's gonna destroy the building and the fire was gonna burn you up, one of the two. So, and they would pull us out, and that's really kind of the way we delivered the mail and kept firefighters safe. Well, as that system evolves and becomes more refined, and we we we look at it more and input and make changes to kind of match what's going on, is they okay. See, and this is kind of happening with Chiefs AIDS today. Is we're in a place where like the people that know what chiefs aides do, they're like, no, they're not aides, they're actual working members. Don't quit calling them an aide because they're not an aide. They're a two paramedics, there's not a paramedic aide. You're both doing the same thing. So a response chief had two officers in it. That's the system we grew up in. Well, that's that's what, maybe five, 10% of the fire service. 90%, you got one person in the car. So anyway, and ours, ours is now you got the support officer, and that's the person really who maintains the tactical worksheet and knows where everybody is in the thing. And then the IC is really kind of more concentrated and focused on the firefighters that are killing the hazard right now. Tactical priorities. Yeah, exactly. Well, and it's like, okay, we got to get this fire controlled, and I got engine three here and engine twos over here, and like it looked like this, and now I got a lot more conversion, so it's going the right way. So we're gonna keep doing this. So the support officer's the one tracking that. And then in the middle of this, is your focus thinking, no, this is good, good, good, blah, blah. And then the support officer is like, no, you need another company over here in the back because we haven't covered this area. You got the utility still on, and oh, okay, thanks, man. So that's kind of the way that works during the incident management phase. So then the next thing is we had a command van early on in probably the early 80s, as they took an old Mac Gherkin Slagger rescue squad and converted it into probably America's first command van, at least in a municipal fire department. And essentially they just cut windows in it and put some office space desk and chairs and a bunch of radios and became a command van. Well, so now they got the, and so they said, we're gonna pull the IC, we're gonna take this stay in the car to the next level and get them in the command post, right? And so it's gonna be a bigger command post. Because back in the day when they're inventing all this, they weren't in suburbans, they were in like station wagons and crown vic yeah, dodge uh hornets and you know, big ass four-doors that got real shitty mileage. So now we've evolved into command bands, and they I they've identified, okay, you got an IC and a support officer, because that was kind of the way we we grew up, and it just made the most sense. Well, so that was a very powerful unit in the thing, as those two. And then you added the third person who was the senior advisor. Well, and then you had NIMS going on, and then the NIM system, you had the section positions. So you had the five sections of operations, planning, uh, logistics, finance, and whatever the fifth was. They said, we really don't do that on NIMS type four and five incidents. We don't have a finance section come out because all that's embedded in the fire department cost centers. They run with a budget and research department in the fire department that would be responsible for that section thing. I mean, we do that day to day. We don't do it for an incident. So typically at least, you know, most we don't do that for fours and fives, right? So we thought we don't use these section positions and like logistics. We have somebody show up in level two staging with specialized equipment, and that's kind of what that does. So we're you know, and they're inventing incident command as they're going between what they're doing in the LA basin and kind of what's happening in Maricopa County here with the departments in Maricopa County, kind of led by Phoenix at the thing. The big department was kind of leading that effort. And so they said, we're gonna put there's something else going on here where you're managing the whole incident because like the IC and support officer are doing the hazard zone piece, and then you got these functional sectors that provide support, like level two staging, firefighter rehab, logistics, if you got that, you know. So you got this other network of organization you build on the back end to support what's going on with the incident operation. And you know, it a bigger, like a multiple alarm incident. So we would go from like a we did two engines, a ladder, and like a battalion chief when we were hired. That was your response to a house fire. You would get four engines, two ladders, and two chiefs for a commercial assignment. And then it started to evolve once they started building the incident command system. As they said, well, and then you okay, so then we added another unit for rapid intervention in the early 80s. So now if you said work and fire, you got a third. So it just kept growing. And they said, you know, you got this going on in the back end. A lot of them are not or finished early. Like you get there and the incident lasts half an hour. Well, you only need an IC and a support officer working out of a suburban to manage that. Now I got a greater alarm where I've got like three or four buildings on fire, and I'm protecting three or four more with whatever's going on. Well, now I'm in a command post and I've got like a five-hour firefight that I'm gonna do. So I'm gonna have to relieve companies that were there first and replace them with new, you know, fresh companies. And then I've got to put like sector division bosses to manage the attack positions in the thing. And we didn't do that very often. We would use company officers to do that back in the day. Because we thought it worked. Well, and it and it it works when you put the fire out. So when you get there and from like if the clock's ticking, you think, okay, we can use captains to manage the the tactical organization here if the fire's not going to last longer than five minutes. Because they don't the hazard's gone, and then they they can do it because they're not tied to an SCBA and all the other stuff with the structure fire. But if you don't have fire control, they can't manage it. So you you we started seeing problems where like you're you're late into the thing. So you're you really need to go defensive because the conditions are bad, right? Well, and you got three or let's say you got three captains who are acting as your division bosses. Well, they're inside on the attack line, they're not doing entry control or anything else. They're not a real division boss. All they are is a communication partner that we just called them that because it was easier. So the more you study that and looked at it, you thought, no, they're not tactical bosses, they're task-level supervisors and workers. So we got to change that. Well, so now you're on the like the working end of the shovel, and now back on the other end, it's like, okay, how does this command post work? Well, when we got hired, we had shift commanders. That's who managed. A shift commander was a deputy chief, was the elevation of the rank, and then all the on-duty battalion chiefs reported to them. So you had an A-Shift shift commander who was he was like an A-Shift prototype person. It matched, they had like 8% body fat, perfect haircut, his teeth were perfect. We weren't on it. Yeah, we were being well, you could have been, but we were a gold necklace? Several. Yeah, maybe with Italian horns. If they were a medic. Yeah. If he had been a paramedic, yes. Definitely. Girlfriend's name, Ashley? Girlfriends. Okay. Yeah. And maybe Bruce. I don't know. Yeah. You know, the whole world's goop when you're that beautiful. Yeah, it really doesn't. Yeah, when you're that pretty, it's we're all just thankful to be in your presence. And then you had B shift, C shift, and all the chiefs reported to them. And it was, and they did the morning staffing, and then they ran the city. They were the ranking on-duty officer. And then the city's growing, a bunch of stuff happens, and we switched to districts. So it's almost it's more like boroughs. So every battalion became a district, and it was run by a staff deputy that worked a hybrid schedule. So you had all these essentially office workers that worked across the fire department, but not in operations, most of them, as they had promoted and gone off and run major programs and budget stuff. And so they're very talented at what they did, but like operationally focused, they weren't. I mean, they lost touch with operations 10 years ago. So what would happen is now I'm a battalion chief and Garrison's a battalion chief. I'm in the 3rd Battalion, he's at the 1st Battalion. He's got the command van, he's the informal support officer, basically for the whole city. So, and really we were just they described and defined Battalion One as you guys are the ranking battalion chiefs of the city. Same rank, just yeah. So basically they were boning them out of a promotion and pay to be our boss because it made his boss more comfortable because he wasn't challenged by somebody of an equal rank. Right. So it you know, it you know, they're slow going, but uh eventually that changed. Well, you had these deputy chiefs that would pull the deputy or that pull the duty, excuse me, and they would take turns spending the night, right? And so that's they would do incident response. So my boss would work a 40-hour week, and then he would pull the duty, and he'd work a Friday and a Monday is the way they they that's the example I use. He pulls the duty Friday, so at the end of his day, he just stays, he pulls his Murphy bed down and he spends the night at work. Saturday, we both wake up and go home. We come back Monday, do the same thing. He pulls the duty Monday night, Tuesday we get off. Tuesday we're having our coffee. He says, I'll see you in three weeks. And that's it. He's gone for three weeks, man. I mean, you're like, who invented your schedule? He says, none of your business. Well, it was Earl Roberts in Madison, Wisconsin. And they called it the Madison Schedule. And he did that as soon as he got there, so he could put shift commanders and senior advisors into an organization that had that did that staffing differently. Yeah. So that's and so that's what we were doing. And at the time I thought, why are we having these guys spend the night as our babysitters and sit in the command van and watch us? Because they don't that wasn't their expertise. My my boss's expertise at that time was building fire stations. I mean, he knew more about that than anybody because that's what he had just done. And now he's running a district. Well, so we're managing a fire in a warehouse one night, and he sits down and he says, To me, do you have a par? And I said, No, not right this minute, but we'll get one here in about 10 minutes. And he says, Well, I need one right now. And I looked at him and I thought, I said, No, I'm not going to do that right now because we're doing more important things. He says, There's a so he starts, and so Garrison kicks me under the table and says, Just give him a par. And that's like, oh, I got a par. Thank you, he says, and then he goes back to sleep.

SPEAKER_00 17:08

Well, that's all he knew.

SPEAKER_02 17:10

Well, and yeah, that was it. And see, in their meeting that he had with the ops chief, that's what the ops chief said. He said, You know, we got to be safe and make sure you got a par all the time. You the way are you done? Yeah, go no, go ahead, man. I was looking for somebody to take the reins on this person.

Sections, Channels, And Structure

SPEAKER_01 17:25

On this podcast, I noticed I actually watched one the other day. And we interrupted each other, and I thought, okay, I'm gonna try to be. So so I was thinking, and you were as you were talking, you were going, so I was thinking, okay, I'm gonna cover this, and then you covered it, and I said, No, okay, I'll cover this, and then you covered it. But in the what you said we went to camp together, you know, back to that senior advisor position, is that in a type four and five incident, the senior advisor is the highest ranking command officer within the system that manages all those areas that if you went to a three or a two or a one, type one, two, or three, you would have an entire team doing that. But because it's not that, you know, it's an expandable command, you only make it as big as necessary. So that one person, the senior advisor, manages he's the highest level person within that system and manages those other activities outside the hazard zone. So the the IC is managing the hazard zone, and he's focusing on tactical objectives, and the support officer is helping him and making sure that he has the right amount of logistics and that he has the right safety system in place, and he's helping him through that. It's like doing a little bit of short-term forecasting right there within the hazard zone. And then the senior advisor is looking at everything above that. And if you look at the old, the last fire command book, it would say that the senior advisor manages, and I wrote it down here because I wanted to get it right, because it's been a while since I looked at it, so just let me read it. Is the senior advisor is is managing the logistics piece, which is responsible for the rehab staging and kind of the critical incident debriefing piece. He's also managing the planning piece, which is the information management, the long-term term forecasting of resources, and the demo plan, the mobilization, my demobilization plan. But here's the most important thing he does is he's managing the admin piece. And I found myself when I was a senior advisor, I did a lot of that. And and by managing the city officials and the elected people within the system and the other chief officers within the system that are similar rank, he's managing by keeping them away from the command post. And that would that became our biggest role. And the reason we did that, and we talked about it earlier today, Nick, and you you described how that system evolved. But when we got to the point where we were in the command post, the command van we call it, as the ins, as either the well, we were the IC. Earlier we were a support officer, but then we had an aide, so we became the IC. And the biggest problem we had is people would enter that command van and they would be sit standing behind us in the command van. And you have a you have an escalating incident. That's why you have the command van. You know, you had that plane that crashed the other day with that fireball that took out a city block. That would be a perfect example of where that may be considered, depending on the duration of that incident and how many resources it had. That could be a type four and five incident for Phoenix if it happened in Phoenix, because we'd manage it within our automatic aid system. But we would use a command van for that, but that's going to be going on for a while. So we would be we the IC is trying to manage that. The support officer, they're talking to each other, they're they're like glued together. And then you would have people standing behind and talking about the football game from last night because that's what we did, right? You didn't see somebody for a long time. You're talking about your kids, your football, and the command van was just a place where it was kind of like good old buddies met.

SPEAKER_02 21:35

It was like a rehab for Chiefs.

SPEAKER_01 21:37

It was a big incident that year, it's exactly what would happen. And so, and what we would say is that, and and it became interesting because I think one of us, it might even have been him, I don't know, it doesn't matter which one of us, I don't want to go to the effing command van. Why? Because all those knuckleheads are talking in there. I'm gonna stay on my suburban. I'm not going. No, you got to go. No, I'm not going because when I get in there, I can't. So we we found that the reason you go there is to be more supported. You know, you you you take that command position so that it's quieter, you can focus more, you have more resources, you got people that are kind of helping you there.

SPEAKER_02 22:18

Well, it supports the radio communication system. Is you go into a a five-person command post to do three radio channels. Exactly. See, and what we ended up with is let's say you got a big thing working, and it's lunchtime and it's downtown. You're gonna have eight deputy chiefs inside the command van and they outrank everybody else, all the battalion chiefs. And everyone wants a part. Yeah, and they do, and they all come in and you turn around and you tell them to shut up. You're making too much noise, and they glare at you. And then you go back to them and you say, What are you all doing in here? We're the senior advisor. And you're like, There's only one, there's nine of you in here. What they did is they went back and had a meeting and they put in section books. And so they put planning, just to air, logistics. Yeah. And so that's what the senior advisor is responsible for, or all five section positions until you assign them. So now the deputy chiefs come in and they give them a book, a three-ring binder, and they put it down and they forget what they were, and they talk about the football game and what kind of bullshit the assistant chiefs are making them do next week. And yada, yada, yada.

SPEAKER_01 23:30

No, I remember one chief coming in that outranked me in the in the positional world, but in the roles and responsibility on the fire ground. I was a senior advisor and he walked in and I said, What position you want? And I handed him one of those notebooks, and he said, I'm not taking that. I said, Then get out. Well, you can't tell. No, I'm telling you, you need to get out. I'm gonna be very polite to you. And then I had a very large guy at the door there who didn't care about rank. But it's like you got to exit because you're not gonna help. If you're not gonna take this position and support what we're doing in here, you need to get out because it's it's not a place for you guys to hang out.

SPEAKER_00 24:08

I I'm I'm laughing right now because you guys started talking about this. We we've got a command van because we we were trying to be Phoenix. And we we got we got this command van, and we have some major incidents, some kind of community-wide emergency. And we're in there, and it's like there was a very diminutive man with like pop bottle glasses, and and he had all these radios and stuff. And Schauble or somebody at some point goes, and who's that? Oh, it's the president of the ham radio club. Well, what who the hell let him? And like he f he just saw the command van and saw all the antennas and figured, well, that's where I need to be. So yeah, we figured out how to get rid of because good the Red Cross wants to be in there.

SPEAKER_02 24:48

Then you got you know, somebody don't they just think that they don't want to be there.

SPEAKER_00 24:53

They want to be out of the well, in our area, they want to be out of the element.

SPEAKER_02 24:56

Yeah, they want to be in the air conditioning, and that's what it was. Yeah, first air conditioning for you. And the they're too big. It is the thing was too because we know we need a big enough to have a full like secretaries in it. And you're like, what no? It they're too giant, they make them too big. Well, it was though you go to Houston and they put a telescope where you can see the moons of of Mars, but you can't look out the windows at the building on fire.

SPEAKER_01 25:20

Yes, and that was a one of the problems that a lot of cities had is that police departments use their command vans in a completely different way.

SPEAKER_02 25:28

You can't have windows because they'll read your lifts.

Keeping The Van Clear And Focused

SPEAKER_01 25:30

Yeah, and they want they want to hide information and and they got a whole different uh set of priorities. So some fire departments want to share command vans with police departments. No, the first thing you got to do is you got to take a hacksaw or a jigsaw and cut a big window in it for us because we need to see what we're doing. I yeah, I've seen I've seen command vans where they have giant computer screens. It's like, dude, just cut a window. We put a put a window in here and we'll see what's going on. Just park in the right location, and you can kind of see what's going on. But really, the the and you were saying it too, Nick, is the senior advisor's job is to align, just like you got strategic, tactical, and task, is to make sure everything's aligned within that system. The problem with and the issue is some of those logistics and finance and the admin, that needs to align within that system too. If somebody's doing something that's not supporting what's happening within that alignment right there, then the senior advisor said, no, you're you're you you need to get back over here. For us, the senior advisor the did a great job because when you get a major incident, Nick and I had a had a call. And I'll I'll say what he does first and I'll tell you about the call. But what he what the senior advisor does is he makes sure that the the rest of the system, whether you're a multi-jurisdictional system or a big city, is their gut, they have the resources they need to take care of the continuing calls because the calls aren't going to stop anywhere else within the system. So you need to kind of manage that and work with the alarm room and make sure you're bringing in. We would bring resources from cities or jurisdictions a couple over saying, hey, come in and cover this part of our city because we have a an incident. So we had one that was wonderful. It was, I think the vice president came in town to the president that windy day when we had the big four-alarm building fire. And we had a fire that started on one of our every day the wind blows in Phoenix, just like Houston and just like Oceanside. It's just a matter of which way it blows. In Phoenix, the way it blows is the sun pushes it. So in the morning it blows that way, in the afternoon it blows that way. And at noon, you can kind of see the shift. And we've seen people put a command post in the wrong location and say, What's this? Because the wind's gonna change here in about 30 minutes, and it's gonna, they're gonna be right in the so we had a we had a fire that was blowing through three or four city blocks. How many buildings, Nick? Five, six large warehouses were on fire, and large cardboard boxes were just flying through the air over the elevated freeway, landing blocks and blocks away. And we're watching this thing move, and Nick was the support officer. Were you the IC? You were the IC, and Lynn was your support. So Nick got there, he's the IC number two, and he was in a suburban, and he was the he was the IC, and his driver was his support officer. So the command gets command van gets there, he moves into the command van. Am I saying this right, Nick? And he moves in the pan, he's still the IC. The support officer is still his partner that started with him. I get there, the command van gets set up, I'm the senior advisor, and my job is to do all those things we just talked about. Keep everybody out, make sure it's nice and quiet, make sure he could focus on the fire. All that was was happening exactly the way it was supposed to happen. There wasn't a lot of surprises going on. We had the fire chief show up. Alan Brunicini showed up at one point and he walked in. He goes, How's it going? He's had, you know, he has his hands in his pockets. He's allowed to be in there. But but the good news about this. There's a chief. But the good news about this, he's a he's allowed to be in there, but he wasn't disruptive. He was a fire chief of the largest, that large fire department, but he was never disruptive when he entered a command van. He would ask, How's it going? Looking good. And he would spend about two minutes, three minutes. He liked to watch what was going on, and then he would he would exit. But nobody else was in there unless they needed to be in there. Once again, the command system is expandable. And I see in my mind the highest level of expansion within a type four and five incident is using the senior advisor approach in the command van, having the IC and the support officer on one channel, focusing on the incident, having a second channel where safety's talking, and now it's an embedded safety where uh they may be talking about accountability and pars off the off the tactical channel. And then you have a logistics where they're talking about level two staging. And it worked out really well because it's almost like we use a lot of stickers, and so The the senior the senior advisor is kind of standing in the middle of all that that is happening and he looks down and he and he sees that they're getting low on the fire ground as far as resources. So he talks to the support officer and he goes, Hey, you guys need some, yeah, we need three or more companies over here. So the command, so the senior advisor is the one who walks over to the logistics guy and says, Hey, contact staging, send two more companies over this way. All that happens on a separate channel, right? It worked out really well.

Aligning Logistics And Staging

SPEAKER_02 31:16

Well, the way the system's designed is let's go back to that. The first wave gets there, right? It's led by a mobile IC. They're on one tactical channel and they're they're eliminate the hazard that's screwing everything up. Then the next that's the initial operation. The reinforced operation happens when IC number two gets there and transfers command. So there's now you've got a full alarm. So let's see IC2 gets there 10 minutes into it, and you got four companies assigned. Now let's say you got three more companies in level one staging, and IC number one upgraded the assignment. So now you dispatched a greater alarm on the staging channel. So now you're at the point in the operation where you got to be operating on two channels in the command post. Right. You got to run the tactical channel to run the to manage your IAP, and then you got the logistics channel to get your fresh resources assigned over into the tactical world, right? Right. Well, now you got an IC who's running the tactical, and you got a support officer who can manage the logistics channel. And he doesn't listen to it, he just manages it. So what he's doing is he's staying on the tack with IC number two, and then he periodically goes to staging. Who do you have? And he keeps a roster of the stage companies. And so then when you need, when somebody like one of the sector bosses, sector division boss, needs resources, alpha to command. I need two more companies. Well, it's a BC you're sending them to now, right? Right? So copy two companies. The support officer, command to staging, two companies to alpha. Who's it gonna be? I'm gonna send you engine five and engine nine. Copy. Engine five, nine, post-it note. Command to Alpha, you're getting engine five, engine nine, communicate to them directly. Five and nine are in staging. They go, they're monitoring the tactical channel. That's what they're interested in. They heard themselves get assigned, so they're waiting. Go ahead, Alpha. Engine five, I used to leave your you leave your rig in staging, bring your crew up on deck. Bring brothles with you. Copy. Boom, boom, boom. So now you've you've you're decentralizing this, you got tactical bosses in place, and they're running the the sector divisions, right? Two channels in the reinforced command post. If it goes bigger, you go into a five-person command van, and so you can do three channels. And Terry said it. The embedded safety officers that I have that are running the Alpha and Charlie divisions now with this thing. Is the IC can go to them and say, command to the division, South and Charlie, we're gonna we're putting the safety section up. Have your safety officers go to channel 16 for safety. So now you got in each division, you got a division boss with a safety officer who are married at the hip. One can give accountability updates over the safety channel. They can communicate also. We we kick this around of leaving it on the logistics channel because then everybody, you're either in or you're out, and you're on one of those. But and we screw with it and figure out what works best. But we got to a point where we said, well, if it's a third channel, it's easier because they can say what they want and they're not getting into logistics business or rehab business. So we we and they become a safety thing. So they just kind of go back and forth. But anyway, now the senior advisor is responsible for putting that in place. Once you get to a five-person command van, the senior advisor becomes the boss of the command post. Yeah. And that was in our system. So when the fire chief comes in, the fire chief's the boss of the fire department, including that command post, but the senior advisor is responsible for managing what goes on inside of it. Now, if the fire chief comes over, fire chief or the ops chief, they outranked the senior advisor. So that's just part of the hierarchy of ranks.

SPEAKER_00 35:29

Ultimately, though, who's in charge if you've got a senior advisor and say you have a fire chief in the command post who's really in charge?

SPEAKER_01 35:35

The of that incident, the senior advisor is in charge. And this and so the one of the first primary, and Nick says, and it's hard to kind of cover all this without charts and graphs and communication.

SPEAKER_00 35:49

If you're watching, we will put up a graphic of of how the command van's layers.

SPEAKER_02 35:54

It's pretty it's it's it's not complicated.

SPEAKER_01 35:55

But but I think senior advisors' number one responsibility is to get inside the command van, identify themselves as the senior advisor, identify whether we need to have a separate channel if you have the resources and you get people there. So we would have battalion chief, we would have chief officers show up to the command van and they would stand in front of the window and you would look at them and you could tell them to come in and say, okay, you're gonna be on the safety channel, you're gonna manage this, or you're gonna be on the logistics channel, and you're gonna manage this. So once you had those two set up, okay, now I got my command van set up. Now I can keep everybody out except for the fire chief who wants to show up. And now I got to start thinking about, okay, now the I need to talk to the alarm room a little bit and let them know that this is gonna be because they they're pretty smart people in the dispatch centers, alarm rooms, whatever you want to call them. But you can say, hey, this thing's gonna get bigger, it's gonna go several, several hours, make sure you we have resources coming, and you and you start talking to the rest of the fire department managing that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_02 37:06

You're using a cell phone as a senior advisor. You're not on a radio, you're talking to people face to face or on a cell phone.

SPEAKER_01 37:12

And and man it and the biggest thing, like I'll say it one more time, is keeping people out of that. Just like you talked about rolling up the window. It's it's it's kind of a formal, I'm rolling up the window on a command van. Nobody's coming in where the where the unless you got an assignment to the command van, unless you're the fire chief. And once again, the fire chief. And if it got where it was pretty hectic in there, even the fire chief knew when to come in and not come in.

SPEAKER_02 37:40

Sometimes he'd just stand out there and I think yeah, you asked the question the fire chief's there, who's the senior advisor? Well, the fire chief can be the senior advisor if they want to be, but they have to officially transfer and take it. So that's what I would do. So, like if I want to be the IC, I show up and I have to formally transfer command. Yeah, you would do the same thing with the senior advisor position.

SPEAKER_00 38:02

So, where where we kind of left off this evolution of things, we were at Battalion One was the ranking battalion chief, and they would be the senior advisor. But ideally, who is the senior advisor or what did that end up?

Three-Channel Command Post Operations

SPEAKER_01 38:14

So maybe in Oceanside or a place like that I worked with had four or five uh fire stations and a limited number of uh chief officers. You you could certainly have a fire chief get to the scene, but and it's better if people are already in response positions. You don't want responding from home, it's kind of difficult, but we know that a lot of the fire service responds from home. So you got to practice this. If the fire chief says, you know what, myself and my assistant chief are gonna play this senior advisor role, and we're gonna make ourselves available for fire responses or large incident responses. I'll take every other day, he'll take every other day. Then you practice that role and you orchestrate that, and this fire chief could get on a scene and say, I'm the senior advisor. How's things going? Because they could they have the ability to do this. You got enough channels, you got enough people, let me start managing the top layer of what an instant command system, incident management system would look like if it was a type one, two, or three, but we're at a type four or five. So let me manage the system and take care of all this. But it it takes practice, they got to think about that. It's not something that you can show up just because you are the fire chief. It's something that if you're gonna do that as a fire chief, I would recommend that you that you train with the crews and do that a few times so that the first time you do that isn't right then, right there, right? And but you could have a you could have an operations chief do that, you could have a fire chief do that. You got to play your position, the position has to be identified. The people that are gonna play that position. It doesn't the the rank, you could do it in a smaller system. If you train people on being the senior advisor, the it would be nice if they had positional rank because then they would have more authority in the system. And then when they start dealing with outside elected officials and stuff, they'd be more identifiable. But the best people fire chief could do that. You asked back to your question. I think a fire chief could absolutely do that. I don't think I think the problem with the fire chief doing it is twofold. One is they don't respond, they respond kind of voluntarily, not regularly. And who wants to be a fire chief who's on on duty 24 hours a day, seven days a week, they couldn't do their entire life? No, they couldn't do it.

SPEAKER_02 40:46

Like in a busy system like this, you could the fire chief could not do it. It'd be impossible.

SPEAKER_01 40:51

You know, it's weird because every department that that I have seen, or people that I have taught, I'm talking everyone. You talk to them about how simple this can be. It's it's not easy to do, but how simple you can it is to align operations and training and make sure that that the training division or the training officer is teaching the right stuff that you want throughout the organization. And every one of those departments you'll hear, well, we got this guy who won't do it. And that guy is a brick thrower somewhere high in the system. And you know, Bruno used to say one brick thrower can outperform a thousand bricklayers. There's one brick thrower somewhere located in that system that needs to be dealt with by the fire chief. Sometimes it is the fire chief, and that's very difficult. And I feel bad for people within those systems.

SPEAKER_02 41:47

Well, they just have to wait until that person leaves.

Who’s Really In Charge

SPEAKER_01 41:49

But you can't forward is organizationally, or what personally what we do, because I did it one time in my life or several times in my life. We all know who that guy is, but nobody tells or complains about that guy. Nobody officially says, hey, we could do this if it wasn't for Joe, because they don't want to hurt Joe's feeling because Joe's a good old boy in other places, he's good to drink with or just a good dude. He's good to drink with or good to fish with. But you know, I watched this special ops TV show series the other day, and those Green Beret guys and those Navy SEALs, they were getting these guys ready to go on a combat mission, all these celebrities. And they said, you know who you want with you? Not somebody who's pretty, not somebody you want to have a beer with, not somebody you want to dance with. You want somebody in there that's gonna have your back. That's who you want. Well, that's what you want with when you're trying to align your organization. There's always one person out of alignment that is allowed. Not always, I shouldn't say always, but there's you more times than not, there's somebody within that system. It's like a vertebrae out of whack, man. And that thing is not gonna walk straight if you got that out of whack vertebrae. So you got to get everybody in line on the incident scene. The senior advisor aligns everything and makes sure that everything is focusing on the fire ground. Those guys can do their job. They got the resources they needed, the rest of the system are able to perform and do continue to go on air calls. They're ready for the back end of it, end of it, because the IC is not thinking about eventually we're gonna have to have a demobilization plan, eventually we're gonna have to maybe have a critical debriefing plan. Eventually, we're not they're not thinking about that too much. That's the senior advisor's role is to say, okay, what are we gonna need in 30 minutes from now, other than on this within the hazard zone, and the line all that about to make sure that he could support the ancient commander.

SPEAKER_00 43:59

And I found it incredibly valuable when you had a senior advisor as the IC that was taking care of all that stuff. The the press would show up or the city manager would show up or call. It's like, you know, I've got an active incident here, I can't deal with that. Well, like you were saying with the cell phone. If if it's the right person, they're on the I'll take care of it, they're on the cell phone calling the city manager. So you can concentrate on the tactical channel and and the the operations.

SPEAKER_01 44:28

I think if you get if you're starting to train senior advisors, start with a phone list. And and so when we get it, when we get an answer, here's here's the critical phone numbers that you're gonna need to do. You're gonna have to call the mayor, you're gonna have to call the fire board, let them know we got a major fire because you don't want them all up your arse later on. Well, tell them we got a fire and they're not allowed to come to us. Yes, watch it on Twitter. And disqualification because they're not gonna get to go in a command van and all that. The perfect world for a fire chief to have a perfect department, and you and you see this a lot, would be to have all the company officers on the same page, right? We we work really hard to get the company officers at the task level on the same page to operate efficiently in the hazard zone, the same way. We're not as good. Now we got better at it, is getting the tactical level operating the same way on the hazard zone. So now you got this aligned, now you got this aligned. If you have the next level come up, the senior advisor, whoever those senior advisors are, they should operate the same way. You expect it down here. Why wouldn't you expect it up here? And when you get those three levels and you line them up with under the curriculum, like Nick says, focusing on the work in the same way and with the roles and responsibilities, then you got one organization. And how many times do you go, man? We got three fire departments. We got an A, a B, and a C. No, we got 30 fire departments because we got an A station one, a B station one, a C station one. And the same thing would happen with us. So once we all kind of got together and the three shift commanders that were managing the 40 stations or whatever we had, I don't know what it was.

SPEAKER_02 46:17

50, 60, it kept growing.

SPEAKER_01 46:19

Whatever it was. When we were on the same page, and and then you align that with training, it was really beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 46:27

In the positive sense of the meaning of this, as far as accountability goes, like holding people accountable to do what you trained to do, what you said you were going to do, whether it's part of the customer service aspect of it or just the service delivery, then who was that? Was that the senior advisor, the person in that role? Were they the ones holding people accountable?

Staffing Senior Advisors In Small Systems

SPEAKER_02 46:49

You know, Terry talked about it. It's training. You have to train people. And it can't be, okay, this is the way I think you should do it. This is the way we do it, is is our fire department. We had a fire one night in a four-story apartment building, had a breezeway, connected it to another four-story apartment building, right? So we think we got the fire knocked down in the in the building, and we got lines in the breezeway, whole thing. And I think, oh, we're done, man. And so I'm in the command van doing my thing. This is a senior advisor. And all of a sudden, somebody says, We got smoke in the other building. And I look over and I thought, there are whips of something over there. And a couple minutes later, it's like that it's jumped. We got a working attic fire, and that I'm gonna burn down. We saved one, we're gonna burn the second town. So I tell Bev, who's logistics, I said, send a BC to that building, and you tell them to come back with a can report to the IC of what they need. And she says, okay. And so she's doing her thing, and I go to the to the support officer and I say, Don't you worry about that. You tell them we're taking care of it. There's gonna be a BC coming up in about three or four minutes, give you a CAN report for what he needs to deal with that fire. So I get all that done, and Beth is like she she's just she's vertical. And she's I'm so sorry. I am so, so sorry. I said, for what? She says, I I told staging I needed a BC and they they I and they sent the BC and he said she says the BC's Battalion X and Battalion X was incompetent. Like the well-known incompetent. I'm like, okay. This'll be fun. But if you did, we'd I asked you, don't worry about it. Chief X had been to the last three or four command training things. He gets over to that building with his aide, and he comes back and he says, I need two engines here, and I need a ladder here, just give them to me. And so they give him two engines and a ladder, and we listen to him. Put the fire out, basically. Ten minutes later, he comes back to the IC and says, We have fire control. I have no further needs. Pete Holble, the ACF guy, I don't know where he was, but he called me on my cell phone. And it's like three in the morning, right? I'm like, What why are you he says, you win? Because he they had run up before we took over. And he says, if the current training program produced Chief X doing that, A shifts in.

SPEAKER_00 49:42

You can convert anyone.

SPEAKER_02 49:44

Yeah, and that was what it was. And so I went and found Chief X and did an after-action review with him and said, that was outstanding, man. I will you sounded like Rommel moving through Africa. And he says, you know, Nick, he says, Thank you for that. Yeah, I know. And he says, the training we've done, he says that it was really needed. A lot of guys were very deficient in these skill sets. And I'm chewing my tongue off. I'm like, mm-hmm. And those other guys. Yeah. Uh-huh. And it was like, you know, but you know, we know. And I'm like, well, there we go. You, me, and Pete Hobel. We're so that is kind of the effect you're looking for with the thing. Is it's just success and it should come eat. It's harder, but like when you're actually executing the job, it makes it easier. As you get to the end quicker with less trauma and pain. And I mean, that's when you have a hazard zone, there's trauma and pain there that's waiting for you. It's like, no, don't get none of that on you. That's not good. So that's kind of the senior advisor piece. Yeah. But I think that Vance, that kind of marries back into what you guys were talking about with who because that is every bit as important of who's training your troops. Right. I mean, that it's all part of that.

SPEAKER_01 50:54

It needs to be aligned.

SPEAKER_00 50:55

Yes, it does. And it's in a hugely important role. It really is. Well, whether it's permanently assigned, I mean, you guys had it permanently assigned, but if you're in any kind of jurisdiction where you don't have it, figure out how you're going to staff that because eventually you're going to have an incident of the scale where you're going to need it, but you also need to have those conversations well in advance of that incident to figure out exactly how that's going to go.

SPEAKER_02 51:21

Got it. Well, Terry said a re a resource list. If like our dispatch center had they could contact if you needed demolition equipment, I needed demo equipment. They would so what for? So that's a cell phone call. This is what I need. And they call, we have a demolition expert who's on call. Hydra was the company, and you call for them, and three hours later, you they're showing up with backhoes and front end loaders that are as big as buildings.

SPEAKER_00 51:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 51:51

And I mean, and they have a six-figure contract with the city of Phoenix.

SPEAKER_00 51:55

I don't know why the hell I just thought you guys had access to dynamite. I was like, geez, Phoenix did have everything. Yeah, we get blasting caps. No, you meant backhoes. Yeah. That kind of uh demolition.

SPEAKER_02 52:05

Well, they used to carry uh jet axes on the ladders.

SPEAKER_00 52:08

Wow.

Training, Accountability, And Culture

SPEAKER_01 52:08

The final thing about senior advisor is the the instant commander is managing, the IC is managing the hazard zone. The things that he or she's involved with will hurt you right now, right there. The senior advisor, if they don't have a pretty good list and idea of the job that they need to do, some of the things that you're gonna get are gonna hurt you on the long run. Like dealing with a politician, not calling the right people, not having a PIO identified, not taking care of the rest of the city and running out of resources for the entire system, not getting the water that you need to get. We we used to have to get water shut down on that part, or big, I don't know how they did the whole valves and all that. I don't know too much about watching the environmental effect of the smoke coming off, all that kind of stuff, the senior advisor. So if you get them and you train them and you they can help you for the long run and keep that entire fire department and system out of trouble. That's really their job. But their primary job, the number one, is keep people away from the incident commander and protect that guy so he can do his job.

SPEAKER_02 53:22

That's what you we did most of, is we kept the command man with who it was populated with, and whatever the IC you have to look at the incident and figure out, okay, we're good here, here. What are we lacking, if anything? So I mean it really for like a senior advisor level call in the system, we were fortunate because we work for a big metro place that had a lot of resources, and so you were able to kind of to to do a set of work to identify that better, to come up with better solutions.

SPEAKER_01 53:55

You know, in some systems, the senior advisor may be the guy standing outside the window keeping people from the IC. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 54:02

You know, Terry, when we didn't have the command van there, that's where I would go. I'd stand next to the the driver's side of the command.

SPEAKER_01 54:08

Keep people away from that guy, and and when all those politicians and all the cameras and everything have a place for him to go. But that's probably he's he's a protector within that system. You don't need a big command van to do that. But having a senior advisor say, I'm the senior advisor, I'm gonna sit in your back seat and tell you what to do as the instant commander is not a senior advisor. No, it doesn't work. That's a that's a guy who wants to be IC. Senior advisor, stand outside my window and take care of all this crap that's coming at me and keep us protected so we can manage the ends.

SPEAKER_00 54:42

It's real support. Yeah. Really excited that this book is back out. So we've got uh Timeless Tactical Truths from Alan Brunicini. These are available at bshifter.com in our store for only 10. Where can you buy a book full of this kind of wisdom for$10? Is that a pocket size? That's a pocket size. Can you put that in your pocket? I don't think so. Don't break your pocket. I think it's a back pocket. It's almost well, a cargo shorts pocket. You can put you can put them in there. But uh full full of great timeless tactile truths from Alan Bernassini. So you can buy that right now. So let's let's do one of those. A lesson is repeated until it is learned. Well, uh yeah, I think your senior advisor is going to be the one who's learned a lot of these lessons and can pass that on to the to the rest of the the team.

SPEAKER_02 55:47

The senior advisor would would be the most experienced member of the command team, essentially.

SPEAKER_01 55:54

I I saw my dog the other day, my little Chihuahua dog. And I I opened, I have we have Arcadia doors in in the Phoenix area. And I opened the glass one about a week ago, and I saw him run right into the screen one. He hasn't done that again. So I'm his senior advisor. So now I open one and I look at him, and he looks at me, and I open the other and he goes, Got it. He goes out. Protect the eye, protect people. Yeah. I don't know why I envision that, but just it's more of a role where you actually protect the incident commander. And I feel bad that I didn't help my dog the first time, but you learned a valuable lesson. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 56:38

One of the things I learned as a senior advisor is never ever help somebody do task-level labor. Yeah. So, like if you're going from your vehicle to the command post and an engineer's having trouble doing his hookups, just smile and wish him well and keep going to where you're supposed to. You got a role and responsibility. Yeah, you can't, yeah. If you're if you got tools in your hand, you ain't the senior advisor. It's distracting. Exactly. During the after action review. And it's like, hey man, you were humping to get your thing. I was humping to help him on the strategic level. I got yeah. Uh-huh.

unknown 57:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 57:14

Yeah. Sorry, Mongo. No, so it's all good.

SPEAKER_00 57:18

Well, thanks, guys. Well, thank you, JV. Nick Brunicini and Terry Garrison. Thanks for being here with us. John Vance. I'm a identify self-identifying, or you identify me.

SPEAKER_02 57:30

You know, Vance, there's not a lot of times we come to you and say we want to do a podcast. Yeah, you guys did. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 57:35

You knew what our topic was, and I think this was apropos for the last one. So thanks for bringing it to us today.

SPEAKER_02 57:41

Oh. No, we'll keep it. We'll be Garrison is moving ahead with Silverback. So we're we're like at least two modules haven't been released so far. Stand up. That's about alignment. Yeah, there you go. It's it's all good in the neighborhood.

SPEAKER_00 57:54

Thanks everyone for listening to the Beat Shifter podcast.