Three Levels Of Air Management

Our guest this week is Battalion Chief Ryan Eldridge, Blue Card Lead Instructor

Ryan Eldridge is a dedicated fire service professional with a career spanning over three decades. He began his journey in 1995 when he joined the Las Vegas Fire and Rescue Explorer Program. Directly out of high school, he worked for the Las Vegas Bureau of Land Management office as a wildland firefighter on a hand crew. From 1997 to 2002, he served as a reserve firefighter in Boulder City, Nev. Ryan joined Las Vegas Fire and Rescue as a firefighter in 2002. Throughout his career, he pursued further education and training, becoming an Honor Guard member in 2003 and serving as co-commander; an LVF&R Technical Rescue Team member in 2005; and a certified paramedic in 2006. He served as an Executive Board member for Local 1285 and chaired the EMS Committee for over 10 years. In 2014, Ryan was promoted to captain, serving Battalion 1 at Station 10. Ryan was promoted to battalion chief in January 2024 and serves LVF&R Battalion 10, B-Shift. He considers being a Blue Card lead instructor an honor and is proud to represent Big Al’s legacy. Ryan has been married for 28 years and has two awesome young adult children.

We break down how firefighter air management actually works  from a morning bottle check to the moment you decide it’s time to leave. Ryan  shares practical ways to measure real SCBA work times and shows how company officers and incident commanders can build a rotation system that prevents low-air alarms inside IDLH.

• treating air management as a Mayday prevention skill
• starting the shift with maximum cylinder pressure and consistent SCBA checks
• setting clear low-air communication methods between firefighters and officers
• understanding personal air consumption and the round-trip ticket mindset
• running realistic air consumption drills and tracking amber-to-vibra time
• company officer ownership of crew air and exit timing
• IC tools like elapsed-time “pokes” and CAN reports to catch problems early
• using on-deck and three-deep layering to keep crews cycling safely
• reinforcing the rule that there is no harmless smoke

Download the Air Consumption Drill Here: https://bshifter.com/download/air-consumption-exercise/

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This episode was recorded at the Alan V. Bruncini Command Training Center in Phoenix, AZ on April 16, 2026

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

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Welcome to the B Shifter Podcast. John Vance here today with Ryan Eldridge. Ryan is a battalion chief from the Las Vegas Fire and Rescue Department and also a blue card lead instructor. How are you doing? And welcome. It's your first time on the B Shifter Podcast.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Yes, yes, first time. Donut somewhere. Pie somewhere is going to be issued, I'm sure, for sure. All kinds of pie.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

You guys have that tradition with your department?

SPEAKER_00 0:41

We do, but I'm not telling anybody unless they find out themselves. We'll see just how popular or unpopular this podcast is.

Welcome And The Air Problem

SPEAKER_01 0:47

Today we want to talk about, and the topic that we're going to get into is air management. And I'm interested to pick your brain a little bit on air management from the aspect of the incident commander, but we're going to start on the task level.

SPEAKER_00 0:59

So that's where it all starts.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

Trevor Burrus, Jr. And you and you do a lot of work with air management. You've air consumption studies and a lot of training on that. So let's start off on air management at the task level and uh some of the things that you've done for us to better manage our air on that task level.

SPEAKER_00 1:17

Yeah, I'd say my thoughts started coming into when I started really diving into the Project Mayday information and started seeing air management. I still to come to think of that was the second leading cause of Maydays, started really making me think a little bit about why. Like, why are we having so many problems? And then reflecting, to be honest, reflecting, thinking about how many times I was in a ideal age environment or I was in training and the vibe alert was going on, and whatever, we got the exit right there, and what's the big deal? And just that that thought process, then that mentality of not recognizing the severity of the vibe alert going off, and then what we could do about it. So I'm, you know, I'm the first one to raise my hand that I've been in plenty of situations with my vibe alert going off and not really putting the ownership and the responsibility into what that meant to myself, and then when you know when should you reach that captain's level rank and then what your ownership and responsibility is that to your crew. And then you know how it filters that and my responsibility as a captain to my strategic commander, to my BC. And so I started kind of diving into that. I saw there's a need to start talking about it, right? Like really wanted to make sure people kind of understood, hey, is this important and and if it is important, why? And then and then just kind of bring it to light because I think there's some fundamentally there's some easy changes as if we're thinking about it, we're talking about it uh to be able to bring home to our departments.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

So on the task level, then what's the responsibility for the individual firefighter as far as their air management goes and their understanding of of how they consume air?

Task-Level Checks And Low-Air Signals

SPEAKER_00 2:47

Yeah, so I think that starts off with one, realizing the importance of checking your air, checking your air. Starts all the way up to the morning, your morning checkoff. You know, when you relieve somebody from the crew getting an idea of what was going on, and then having a systematic way that you check your gear, where you put your turnouts. And then when you go about checking your SCBA and you're looking at your bottle and you're getting to that decision. That's that's about 4,000 psi. Do I change my bottle out or not? Well, let's see, is it air pack day where I'm gonna get uh have to mark it down on paperwork? Yeah, I'll change it out. All right. Are we gonna do any kind of drills today? Maybe I'll change it out. And just to really make sure that that understanding that gauge of like, if you decide that just below 4,000 psi is still okay with you, realize that what that could potentially be for you at two o'clock in the morning when you get yourself into a situation where you really wish you had the most air that you possibly could. So we started down at that task level, that taking that ownership and making sure that yourself personally, even at the BC rank, man, I check out my bottle every single day. And, you know, I have to have that idea like, hey, if I'm gonna talk to talk, I need to walk the walk, and I need to make sure my bottle is appropriate too. So yeah, I think at that task level, just at that morning checkout, making sure that you're starting off your shift, most importantly, with as much air as you possibly can. And you know, there's some restrictions that some departments face as far as the abilities to fill up the bottles out completely. You know, in the Las Vegas area in the middle of the summer, getting a full bottle is extremely tough because of the amount of heat and pressure that it has and the way that we fill up our bottles. So there's some ownership that goes in both ways from our air management, our air resource guy that fills up the bottles and realizing that he might have to top bottles off every once in a while and not get mad that he's filling up a bottle because it's at 4,000 and try to top it off as much as he can because how important air could be when the when you need air. So I think that at that task level, it's important. And then you also need to make sure that there's some kind of communication that your firefighters, including yourself, have an idea of like how do you communicate that? How do you communicate when you're getting low on air? How do you communicate when you're, depending on your air pack system, if you have an amber or a yellow alert where it's telling you, hey, you're getting into your time to leave air, right? And you get into that 50% range. You know, how do you communicate that to your captain so that they have the ability to be able to communicate that all over the radio to be able to make sure that you leave the air and are able to exit the structure appropriately? Whether it's hand single, I was a big hand single guy, right? I'm surprised I'm not talking with my hands more often right now, but big hand single guy and it's a simple tap of the nose. What's that mean to your company officer? Maybe that means, hey, look at my nose piece because you know, uh at NFPA standards and air pack companies, like there's they own some responsibility for us to help out and being able to organize the idea of how much air we have quickly and efficiently. And, you know, it's our air packs are all lit up now. You know, that excuse of not being able to read your smoky gauge that's covered with soot and you can't tell where the needle's at anyway. You know, you just can't use that thought process anymore. And we have to have the ability to be able to communicate in an ideal age environment that you're in the process where you need to go outside to recycle because your air is getting low.

SPEAKER_01 5:35

How about how much air you consume? Because you you I'm sure you've had the crews as a as a captain and as a firefighter where you always had that one guy on the on the crew that seems to breathe down his bottle faster than each other. Or I've had people before, when I was on an engine, get on air before you're even getting off the truck. It's like, why are you breathing air right now? So let's talk about personal consumption and really what that means and how we monitor it.

Know Your Personal Air Consumption

SPEAKER_00 6:02

I think one of the most important parts when it comes to personal consumption is like, hey, do you know how long your bottle lasts? Do you have a personal idea of what we're talking about when I say, hey, how long does this 4,500 PSI bottle last? Because the the terminology of a 45-minute bottle is is kind of a misnomer, right? We need to really understand what our round-trip ticket uh thought process is, especially you individually. And then, you know, that kind of grows on from there as far as the individuals and the company officer knowing what each individual is kind of like and getting a rough idea. Uh so first you have you have to have an ability to figure out what kind of airbreather you are, what kind of mouth breather you are, right? Because uh, because everyone is a little bit different, man. The the newer you are, the more you're amped up, the more your heartbeat heart's beating, the more excited you are. To the to the guy that that really doesn't want to consume any smoke or anything like that, and he decides he wants to hook on to air before he even gets out of the rig, is going to affect the way that you have the ability to be able to do your round-trip ticket. So I think all those ideas as far as challenging yourself to make sure that you know personally how long your bottle lasts and what kind of work that you're doing. Do you have the ability to exercise when you're going from one task to another to slow your breathing down, gather your thoughts, help you out your breathing, slowing it down so that your bottle does last uh the appropriate amount of time for some task work to get done? So uh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:16

You guys have done some drills. Talk about some of the drills you've done on the task level as far as like trying to measure what that air consumption is, and then also how to make that bottle last, how to get yourself into a state because I know one of your counterparts that works with us, Eric, was talking about when he went into uh warning, he he made his bottle last another 43 minutes or something like that, right? Like uh at least that's what he's claiming. So talk about, you know, and and that's not an under strenuous work. That that's actually kind of getting yourself to a spot where you're calming down and and and breathing slow, right?

Drills To Measure Real Work Times

SPEAKER_00 7:50

Yeah. So when I when I think about like getting some knowledge about your own AirPac and your own breathing habits and your own responsibility to the way that you're breathing when you're in a self-contained breathing apparatus and you're in the ideal age and you're in a smoke environment, I think there's kind of like three levels that kind of come from that, right? The idea when we're exercising our ability to uh for air consumption, right? For air consumption, we have to make it as real as possible so it's valuable information for you. It's not just something that we're writing down on a piece of paper and putting a check to it. It's something that you're using as a tool for self-knowledge, for the crew's knowledge, for your battalion's knowledge, and get some real life times. So to answer that question easily, man, it can be anywhere from eight to 12 minutes before you're starting to hit your amber or your yellow activation. So, what I was noticing with asking a lot of challenging and validating through my company officers, through firefighters they're just talking to, Eric and I having discussions back and forth is like, hey, do we really know by the time we notice when it's yellow to actually vibe alert? Do you know that time? And sometimes you get that blank look in your stare, stare in your face because you haven't had that question posed to you, or you really wouldn't putting it into perspective when we're talking about some of the ways that we manage our error. So when it comes to the air consumption thought process, I kind of working with some other people on the job that are way smarter than I, then we started talking about these things. We had that standard air consumption test, a lot of your rookies would do, right? And it's basically work, work, work, work, work. And then as soon as your vibrant goes off, you hide in some corner, you get in the fetal position and you sit there and you skip breathe. I get it. I mean, I guess that's important kind of information to know. I think that's a it's a it's a value, but we need to think about if you are really put in that situation where you are getting low on air and now you're in that process that you need to conserve air, man, your pulse is still not going to be the point where you're almost falling asleep. Your skip breathing is gonna be a pattern, but but how good are you actually at doing that? How how do you have the strength and mind capacity to calm yourself down, to think about what you're responsible for for letting people know that you're in a mayday situation, that you're in conserving your air and doing those things. So I think there is a skill to that. But first thing I would I would introduce is let's get some real numbers. Let's get some ideas personally on the task level, the captain's level, and then on the strategic level about what a round trip ticket really looks like, whether it's for your department or for your battalion or for your company officer. So I think one of the first things that's important to do is we need to mimic as much as we can about fire ground activities with being realistic about it and then being in an environment where that we can do it to get some numbers and maintain it. So we kind of broke it down into three different areas where the first area is, hey, you're gonna do some jump and jacks or some push-ups or some mountain climbers. Just get your pulse up a little bit. Because for most part, even nowadays, whether it's four bells or your phone rings or however you get notified that you got a fire, your heart rate already starts to continue to go up. So, man, you get your heart rate up a little bit with doing some juggle jacks or some push-ups, then do a turnout drill because that's the same kind of thing that you're doing when you get inside the rig, you're getting your turnouts on. You do our turnout drill, now you're in a position, now you're gonna start to get yourself to an elevated position. Now let's do an air consumption exercise. So we've developed an area where you're gonna do some fire ground activities to mimic fire ground things, whether it's pulling hose, whether it's doing a farmer's carry, whether it's doing some barbell lifts to do like you're pulling ceiling. And then you're gonna walk in between these different stages of exercises so that you have the ability to exercise your idea of catching your breath, slowing down, getting ready for another assignment, slowing your breathing down to mimic the real life tasks that you're doing in the fire ground. We're not constantly working at 100 miles an hour when we're on the fire ground. You're doing an assignment, you're kind of finding figuring out what's going on, you're getting another assignment from a captain. So you're exercising that ability to be able to capture as much as you can out of your air. So you get those numbers. So we want to start off with doing that phase one, doing your turnout drills, and then going before we start off, what's the pressure that you're starting in your air bottle? And getting that idea, hey, what is the normal air pressure in your bottles for your department, for your station? You might be surprised with some of the numbers that you're getting. You know, I was a little surprised in some of our areas, but I completely understand where we're at. But our our roughly we're anywhere from 4,000 to 4,300. Very rarely, if I saw something written down at 4,500, I was like, hmm, really? But you get you measure your bottle, right? Once you measure your bottle, then you're gonna measure your time while doing the exercise. It's not a race, it's not a competition. It is for you to perform fire activities to get a basic idea of what your bottle lasts. So then we're kind of capturing that start that time when you first start the exercise till you notify or you see that your light went from for our Scots, it goes from two green to single green to amber or to yellow. When you notify that, you raise your hand, we mark down that time. And then you continue on that work to see what how much time do I really have to go from amber notification to where my vibe alert, my red, is going off. And then having that number so that we realize when we're talking about bottle work, we're talking about from full to amber notification, from amber notification to vibe alert. Now, what Eric was probably talking about is that idea when you go into vibe alert, now you're exercising something different that I think is a very valuable tool, but it kind of takes away a little bit from what I was trying to get an idea about your round trip ticket thought process and idea. So it's strategically I have an idea about when I assign somebody what I should be expecting them to do. But once you gather those numbers, then you start to organize those. So now the personnel have an idea about it. Now their captain has some numbers on it, and you pass that information on to your battalion chief. And then if you're getting all your stations within your battalion, now your battalion knows, hey, on the average, for some pretty good work, right? For some pretty good work, this is what I could expect our bottles to last when we're in fire ground operations. So that gives me an idea about my three-deep layering and what kind of people I want to have on deck, and it just helps the whole system kind of move around.

SPEAKER_01 13:46

What did you find anything surprising when when you did this?

SPEAKER_00 13:50

I think the biggest thing that I found surprising is the information that was gained by the people doing the the exercise. I think if you were to pose to your firefighters and say, hey, how long does your bottle last? You might get a little bit of a blank stare and then you guys get a reasonable guess about what they uh time that it is. I said, it wouldn't be really good if you exercise this and you actually know. So when someone asks you that question, well, well, I'm about 14 minutes-ish, I'm about 14 to 12 minutes-ish if I'm doing some pretty good work. That's what I know I know. And then the other surprising number for me was realizing if you hit amber and you know it right away, like you're paying attention to it. You're not off doing a task and it turns out and you didn't notice or peek down at your nose. That that number is anywhere from two to four, maybe, maybe pushing five minutes. So when the time that your firefighter gives you that knowledge of tapping their nose saying, Hey, I'm turning amber, I need to get on the radio and exit, you don't have all the time in the world to be able to do that. You don't have all that time that took you to get to that spot to get out of that spot. So I think just the knowledge was very impressive at that personal level. And then I wouldn't say necessarily surprised me, but I was happy to gain the information to feel more comfortable and confident as as a BCI, as a strategic IC, to kind of get an idea of what I should expect when we talk about that philosophy of round trip ticket and what that kind of means.

SPEAKER_01 15:07

So on the on the task level, that's some good info and some good drill to do. How about from the captain level, the task level, the responsibility for air management with the crew?

Company Officers Own Crew Air

SPEAKER_00 15:20

Yeah, so there's an ownership that has to take place in that for that for that company officer to realize they they own that ability. You know, and one of the this one of the stats in the project made it was the the captain didn't ask me, the company officer didn't ask me what my error was. And I thought, wow, that's a that's a that's a perspective that I wasn't going for because they're not taking necessarily not necessarily they're not taking ownership in it, but they're looking for their supervisor to, I don't know, supervise. And part of that supervision is to make sure that if we go in together, we're gonna come out together and we're gonna come out together the way we're supposed to be. And so that ownership of a company officer to to pay attention to that. If I got my guy, if my personnel are busy and they're doing work, then I need to be paying attention to their lighting and their air packs. I need to make it a forward-thinking part of my ability to supervise them. Not just the task that they're doing, but the amount of air that they have left to be able to do that task. So and then you need your company officers need to have the ability that or the expectation, how do your firefighters communicate that to you? Do you want them to yell in your ear? Do you want them to give you a hand signal? Do you have some some cool way of spinning it around in a circle? I I mean, I I personally don't care, but as long as your firefighters know how they communicate that to you so that you can uh take ownership in that and get everybody out safely.

SPEAKER_01 16:34

How about the strategic level then? What what responsibility for air management does the overall IC have?

Command Level Planning And CAN Checks

SPEAKER_00 16:41

Well, again, you know, the easy answer is you're responsible for everything. But the only way to be responsible for everything is that everyone knows their key portions and parts that it is to that strategic level, the task level and the tactical level. So, you know, that company officer has to understand their crew's ability. They have to understand their crew's air limitations, and part of their responsibility and limitations is their error. And then how the whole three-deep layering and on-deck works and how that's a smooth cycle if everyone's playing and within the structure and within the system appropriately. Strategically, I need to take some ownership and realizing, okay, I've got crews that are interior. Do I have enough crews on deck to be able to re-supply them if they're if they need any additional tasks to be handled in there, if they need to be replaced or they need to be replenished? Do I have the abilities in 3D playering to cover that? If I don't, then I need to make sure that I'm pushing people forward appropriately. I need my company officers to realize if you come out of the structure and to recycle, that you're not out of the game. There's a way and a method for us to be able to get in there, do as much work as we possibly can, come out, fill up with air for the Vegas area, take a little bit of hydration, get a little bit of uh water, and then being able to put back into a position on deck to be able to get back in the game appropriately. And then it's also giving us the ability for everyone that's being responding to that call to play a little part in the way that we mitigate that problem. So strategically, you know, some of the ways that I can help out to maybe make sure that the system is giving me that poke that I kind of talk about all the time, that poke, and hey, if I've got any elapse time, the dispatch comes up around and they give me an elapse time of 10 minutes. That's a great time for me to one, make sure I'm using my strategic decision and coming across where are we at in the event? Are we still in the right strategy? But then I'm going to start to reach out if I haven't heard from people, if I haven't heard from my companies that are in the interior position and they're in the hot zone, if I haven't heard from them in a little bit, I have the ability at the Strategic Command to ask for a Canada report just to see what they're dealing with and if they have any needs, and if part of those needs are to come out to get recycled and if they need any help within inside the structure.

SPEAKER_01 18:42

So as as a division boss, particularly, if if you have somebody within your division that they're letting their vibral alert go off, you hear it inside from the warm zone, what should you be doing at that point?

SPEAKER_00 18:54

Especially at that tactical level, I'm 100% going to start reaching out and doing some CAN reports to try to figure out what's going on and to make sure if if we're able to locate which crew is actually on low on air that they get out of the IDLH that I have I have an on deck to be able to re-reinforce that area that they might be working on. I think if the task level, the tactical level, the strategic level, we need to have that concept that we are not going to allow a viable alert fireground, that we need to be outside the ideal H prior to that happening. We have we have resources, we have a system that is expecting our company officers to be smart in the way that we're being able to do that. They should be understanding the round trip ticket philosophy and should be exercising it. So 100%, like on any one of my firegrounds, if I have a vibe alert going off and during a radio transmission, we're going to handle it at that point, and then we're probably going to have a bumper talk before we before we head out of there to make sure that they know that it's really not acceptable this day and age to be to be in that position where we're still in the ideal age with low air alarm. Because the last thing we want to be doing is you know, is breathing smoke.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

We talk a lot of times in in our classes about what solutions to why problems. And and people run out of air because they don't manage the air. That's that's the why, really, right? But a lot of times we also try to find uh like new gadgets and you know, telemetry and and data and everything else to try to manage it. But really, what's the best tried and true method to manage our error?

Systems Beat Gadgets For Air Safety

On-Deck Changes The Whole Game

SPEAKER_00 20:25

You know, JV, I had the opportunity to teach uh error management in the Hazard Zone Conference, and that question actually came up, and I'm like, to be honest, this is probably one of the biggest American fire service what questions that we've been answering for a long time and not understanding our role in managing the air. We can go way back when to call me an old timer, we can go way back when when the NFPA said 25% was our low air, and we had 30-minute bottles, you know. And then what happened? We are still running out of air. So, you know, everybody got together. Well, what do we need to do? Maybe, maybe we just need to give them more air, and they need more air. So, what do they do? Okay, we'll make 4,500 minute bottle, 4,500 psi, and we'll make a 45-minute bottle because 45 minutes certainly has got to be better than 30. Guess what we're still doing? We're still having problems. So, what does NFPA do? They they look at the situation, they got together and like, hey, we're still having some issues about running an out-of-air and smoke-filled ideal age environments. What should we do? Well, let's bump up our percentage to give them more time to get out, right? So maybe that will fix the problem. And so we still weren't managing the why we're running out of air because we weren't managing it. So the problem is that we've gone through that, and then some manufacturers were like, hey, if 45 minutes is good, guess what's even better? 60 minutes. Yeah, 60 minutes, let's go 60 minutes. And then, you know, the Project Mayday said that we're still having problems, we're still having ourselves and concerns where we're calling Maydays with 60 minute bottles. So, what do we need to do? We need to understand the why behind why we are running out of errors because we're not managing it appropriately. For our for my organization, I I would say the single biggest thing that we did to start answering that why question and started managing our error more appropriately is we had it in our tactics and strategy manuals for quite a while, but we didn't interpret it right. Was introducing on deck. On deck single-handedly gave us the ability to realize that once you get assigned to a task, you're going to go in there, you're going to finish that task, you're going to do that task the best that you can. You're going to come out appropriately, you're going to get another bottle, you're going to get hydration, and you're going to go on deck and you're going to get in the game appropriately again. You're going to get in the game correctly. What was happening prior to us using on deck is that once you got assigned and you left that environment, it was very hard to get another assignment. It was very hard to get another assignment. So everybody didn't want to do what? They didn't want to leave. They wanted to be able to stay in there as long as they possibly could, not realizing that everyone has a position that needs to go when you're setting yourself up for success when you're introduced with chaos. And that's what we're really trying to do. We're trying to manage that ability. And we manage that ability through on deck, through 3D playering, and through good sound TLO so everyone knows that their task and their responsibility.

SPEAKER_01 23:06

We have some tools that uh you you actually uh introduced to the conference that we're gonna make available to the V Shifter listeners. So just go to the show notes. You can click on air management downloads, and we'll have those in the download center for you. So, what is what are some of the tools that we're gonna offer to folks that uh they'll be able to download on there?

Downloadable Tools And Course Share

SPEAKER_00 23:25

So, again, we're just trying to help out for you to be able to see some value and getting that information about, getting your department's idea of what error uh air management looks like, what the times are as far as your personal firefighters at maybe several different points in their career from the academy side, from the academy side to a few years on the job, to your company officers, to your division bosses as far as what those that round trip ticket looks like and the numbers behind it. So we we have a course that is developed that I'd love to be able to share with all the B shifters, and I'm sure we could put that on our show notes. And this is just an idea. This is certainly not saying that this is the end all be all. We just wanted to kind of introduce some thoughts and then you you can adjust it, adapt it to whatever you think your area, your department, your area needs as far as to get those numbers that are pertinent, important to your membership, and that give value behind what it looks like to manage air with inside your organization. Because that's what we're really really trying to do. We're just trying to spur the kitchen table talk about what it takes to manage air, what it really looks like for that round trip ticket. So everyone knows their responsibility to it and and then watch the improvement that happens. Watch how much more effort you're gonna get out of this cruise because they know, hey, I'm gonna go in there, I'm gonna bust bust hump as best as I can. I'm gonna do the best I can because I know I'm gonna get to rest just a little bit and get some more air and get back in the game appropriately to finish out whatever needs to happen.

SPEAKER_01 24:44

Great. Well, Ryan, thanks for sharing this with us today. I appreciate you being on the podcast and talking about air management. And it's something that uh the IC definitely needs to consider, right?

SPEAKER_00 24:54

Yeah, I think, you know, knowledge is power. And when we're we're dealing with the knowledge and the uh and the abilities from the task, tactical and strategic level, the more we're gonna grow, the more we're gonna understand, the more we're gonna be able to manage it. And uh, you know, power is king. So want to do a timeless tactical truth? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 25:10

I think that's why it's my turn. It's my turn. Timeless tactical truth from Alan Brunacini. And uh, this book is available at the B Shifter store. There is no such thing as harmless smoke. All smoke is toxic and evil. The basic rule is pretty simple: don't ever breathe smoke. I had video twice this week of division bosses without even a tank on their back in pretty heavy smoke. Just because we're a chief level officer doesn't mean that we're immune now to the products of combustion. Uh, what what's your thoughts on that one?

Never Breathe Smoke Truth

SPEAKER_00 25:53

Well, you know, cancer's a high risk in the fire service for a reason, right? We have to look at smoke as toxic. We have to look at at our years of service and every time that we we uh underestimate our ability to breathe fresh air and when we get ourselves into positions where we start to breathe smoke. There's a reason why our tactical level bosses within our system are dressed appropriately with their air packs, that they're in the warm zone. The warm zone can change in a heartbeat with weather changes and with windjecting changes. We have to be prepared. When it goes down to even the attack bumper and the engineer, do they have the ability and the attitude to where if smoke's starting to lay down everywhere, they're putting on an air pack, even if that's the pumper level. So, you know, the statement has so much power, like right, but yet we we have to take pride in the ability for us to have a long, fruitful career and then enjoy retirement because we've earned it. Yeah, excellent.

SPEAKER_01 26:44

Thanks, Ryan, for being here, man. Today, appreciate it. It's always great teaching with you, too. We had a great week here at the AVB CTC. Absolutely. Look forward to seeing you again soon, buddy. Thanks, JV. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks everyone for listening to the B Shifter Podcast. We'll catch you next time.