Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: Welcome back to another episode of the Code 321 podcast. Prescott Naiz joining me from the beautiful metropolis of Hinesburg. Prescott, how are you?
[00:00:15] Speaker A: Very well, thank you.
[00:00:17] Speaker B: Hopefully all of you had a very pleasant holiday. You enjoyed time with your families. We want to welcome you back to the show for our final episode of season five. Today we're going to be talking a little bit about mistakes. It's a big topic that Prescott and I really enjoy. We're going to talk a lot about the human factors of error, maybe even a little James Clear. For those of you, that's a deep cut if you ever want to read any books about that.
And we're going to really talk about how mistakes happen, why good people make mistakes, and how we can do our best to try to avoid that from happening to us out in the field. So, Prescott, if you want to just get us a little jump start here, I want you to think about maybe a time that you made a mistake and how it impacted that same vein of your career in the future. You know, how did it change how you thought about your career? But there's ever a sobering moment you had where you're like, man, I'm not, I'm not invincible anymore. I got to start really paying attention to this stuff.
[00:01:10] Speaker A: Yeah, I'll go way back from my time when I was just a wee volunteer firefighter hanging around the station looking for some action. We caught a building fire with explosion, and for me at the time, that was like a. That was a big deal. I mean, for everyone, it's a big deal. But I absolutely remember the dispatch coming in. I was at the station, one of our trucks was already on the road, and I looked at the guy that I was going to be riding with on the tower ladder, and he was a super experienced, had been there, been in the town for decades. So I just sort of blindly trusted that he knew where he was going. And turns out he was doing the same thing. He just sort of said, do you know where you're going? And I said, yes.
And neither of us knew where we were going. And what that landed on was me just, you know, we, we passed by the scene and, you know, as the incident commander is screaming on the radio for, you know, where is where, where are you at? Ladder, where you at? We need extra people, some extra help, whatever. It turns out it was all of 60 to 90 seconds delay from where the actual incident was to where we landed and realized, oh, my God, I need to look this up in the map book. I looked it up on the map book. 60 seconds later, we're on scene.
That error has stuck with me, like, clearly I'm addressing it right now. But if you ask me, just on the spot side of the road, I would bring this error up as the same way, because now, to date, the onset of phones versus a map book is awesome, but that's not infallible either. And I look up addresses, even if it's 10 eagle crest, and for those in Williston, know that they go there daily.
I don't actually Google 10 eagle crest anymore, but I will tell you right now that if there's any anomaly in the address, or even if it's one that I have heard, but not maybe in a while, I don't want 60 or 90 seconds of an error because I didn't look up the address to be much greater than that, that it was a simple error and it sticks with me to this day.
[00:03:18] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a great example. I know when I was in Burlington, you have to learn every street in the city from start to finish, and which direction it goes and which side the numbers are on. Odds and evens, and it's a very laborious process, and it takes most of the first year of your time on probation. But it's kind of this rite of passage where everyone goes through it and they've all been through it and they know you're going through it, and it's your opportunity as a new person to really prove that you care about the job and that you really want to be good at it. That being said, there are many times where once you become a chauffeur or a driver, they have these big maps on the walls with coordinates and grids. And the thought is that you should have a background from your street knowledge where you kind of know where it is, right? You know what neighborhood it's in, which direction you're to go in. But I had a senior firefighter that was like, you will always check the map. As the driver, you will check the map while we're getting dressed, while we're putting our stuff on, you will check the map. And if you're 100% confident, it should be a very quick check. So I'm not really sure why there's any debate here, because if you know where you're going, double checking on the map and get in the truck. If you don't know where you're going, this is your opportunity to figure that out. And I expect if you don't 100% know and you haven't Seen it on the map that you tell me before you leave the station, because there's nothing worse than once the radio starts squawking and the siren starts going and you start driving, it's very difficult to try to figure out where you're going after that happens. So you really want it tuned up before you pull out of the station and. And definitely have had my fair share where you're really confident, you're like, oh yeah, yeah, no, North Winooski, I got you. And you pull out of the station and for whatever reason you go to North Willard or the calls on North Willard and you thought it was North Winooski. You're running dozens of calls a shift and it's 2 o' clock in the morning, you just gotta check. And so I think this dovetails really well into this idea of how do we give our people a structure of support both cognitively and with systems so that they do the right thing and the right thing is as easy as possible. Do you have any things you've instituted as the chief over there to try to help your guys have access to good mapping software or good paper maps or good access to information when they need it so that they don't repeat what happened to you?
[00:05:23] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, it's so I think what's really neat is being in a new department for just over a year here. It's afforded me the chance to be back in the boots of the learner, right? So I knew in where I came from, I knew the roads backwards and forwards, especially because of errors like I just described, you know. But now I'm in this new town, this new department and I google or I use the mapping software, whether it be our first do, app, whatever, you know, the various options that exist.
But one of the things that we've discussed here is putting together an old school map book because technology will fail. And right now in this town, if technology fails, the only in truck fail safe is your brain, your knowledge of generally speaking and of course the radio of like the awkward, awful transmission of dispatch. Could you give me a cross street? Because I don't know where I'm going. Right. Nobody wants to do that.
So putting in place old school map books. And another thing we've done from a training perspective is realistically so on our, you know, on the desk we have the poll pull tabs of like, you reach in there, you pull out a street. Where is the street? We, we don't do it every day.
But options like that from a training perspective, one that I love Which I wish I did more, but as a fire chief, I find myself, I don't have the time. The reality of it is, go through your previous day or week or month, whatever. If you're not busy enough to have it be a daily call volume, go through a week or a month's worth of call volumes and say, this, this is the last address I went to.
Or they went to, the crew went to. How do I get there from here? And then do yourself. Once you get that dialed in, do it one step further. I heard this on another podcast and I love it. Now from that address, you're at 123 Main Street. You get a call for 125 South Winooski, whatever right now from 123 Main. How do you get to, you know, 125 South Winooski? So you can really challenge yourself. And for me as the chief, it's just simply being in the learner seat. I now have the humility to be able to say, wow, it's not as easy as it once was. With 20 years experience of a town having those, you know, the knowledge under my belt.
[00:07:37] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. I know one of the big things we did when I was on probation, I had really good senior firefighters that we would be coming back from a fire call at 3 in the afternoon. They go, okay, you make a left on College Street. Name every third left street between, you know, the, the start of College street and the end of College Street. And they would just. And, and what they're looking for is that mental mapping of you being able to like, put yourself in the driver's seat, make that turn, see what's going on. Sometimes it'd even be like, okay, you make a right hand turn and then a quick left. What's the big building in front of you? Just to try to think of, like, do you know the city? And so I used to ride my bike. I used to get on my bike on my off days and ride around, listen my. Listen to my podcast or whatever and just kind of get on there and figure that out. And one of the cool things is once you start to blend the cognitive knowledge of what you see on paper versus your experience being in the city for a year or those people have been in there for 20 years. I'm sure you've been on calls where you get in the truck and you start to roll out and some old senior guy's like, chief, that truck won't make it up that hill there, son, you gotta take this one. And you're like, oh, thank you and then you get there and you're like, oh, I see this. That's critical knowledge. And we gotta preserve that as we go through generations of firefighters, like, making sure that, you know, we had great guys with the on the ladder companies I worked on, which knew all the secret little alleyways and every little back entrance and every little way to throw to the roof. And we'd be joking because sometimes we'd be, you know, on a porch with a hose line, and all of a sudden the tip of the ladder, too, or something would just come, like, right next to you. Like, how did you even get in here? They're like, oh, there's an old driveway back there. And you just move the fence and you back it right in. You can drop your. And part of that is because they're all huge nerds. Like, all they do when they're not on calls is take that truck out and train probies and find weird places to put the ladder and how to figure it out and how fitted everywhere. And that's what makes this job so cool. It's like in any field, whether fire, ems, polices, those people that just have the bug and get fed by the right senior folks and get mentored and encouraged, like, they'll get you what you need, they will get you water, they will get you a ladder when you need a ladder, despite where it's coming from. And that's so cool to see.
[00:09:39] Speaker A: Now, super quick, I want to. I want to. You know, I love that we're going to stay on the tune of, you know, mistakes and human error and things, but that good senior firefighter. I live in a combination world that is 90% volunteer right now or on call. And so my world doesn't exist necessarily in a place where we have those senior firefighters that are in this job every third day, fourth day, whatever your shift schedule is. So taking even more advantage of that, the coming back from a call, whether it be a medical call or the, you know, fire call, maybe your call volume is one a day or. Or one a week, whatever it ends up being. If you have 1 person, 2 person, 3 people on your engine, on your ambulance, whatever you're coming back from, you can still take advantage this, you know, the whole professional volunteer that exists. You just need to be that, you know, willing to own up and say, yeah, you might not even be the, quote, senior firefighter by rank, but you can be in terms of what we're just describing, which is taking advantage of every single moment you have.
[00:10:45] Speaker B: Yeah, 101 of the things that you can do in any level department is like you said, you already have the crew together, everyone's already dressed. Probably they're coming back from a call. Especially if it's like a nothing burger smells and bells or something. And you didn't really, you know, maybe your heart rate got up, but you didn't really get anything to do on that particular call you were staging. A lot of my companies, they would just drive past a city building and be like, okay, cross lay to the left door. And they would time you and it just, just see what's going on, right? Takes what, five minutes to repack the crossly with three people. Like, great. You get a rep out of it or hydrant's a great one, right? Every box alarm we ever went on, if you were the hydrant, if you were a second do engine, you would make the hydrant every time, 100% of the time, every time. And you would do it as if there was a huge five alarm fire. And you would get really good at not cross threading, you know, the two and a half, which is a pain in the nuts and always a problem, you know, getting the, the valves and the, the different controls in the right angle, making sure that you can open and close the hydrant really well. And if you do that, you know, 20 times every two months and then you do get a big fire, you're kind of like, all right compared to the guy who hasn't dressed a hydrant in five years. And all of a sudden you're like putting the Humat valve upside down and you're breaking off the stem because you're turning it the wrong way. All of things we have seen in all of our different departments, I think that's a. That the tale as old as time, the song as old as rhyme, Twisting the hydrant the wrong way, which is fine. There's an arrow on boys, don't worry about it.
And girls, so definitely take a peek at that. But I think just adding in what's something we can do that's low setup, can be done quickly, doesn't delay the folks getting back to the station if they have stuff to do. Right? But maybe just take that young guy or the young girl and just say, hey, there's a hydrant up here on the corner. We're going to make the corner. I'm going to throw the red lights on and I want you to just make the hydrant and then I'm going to time you and I'll help you pack it up and then we're going to go back to the station. Feels good for them, feels good for you. Great use of time.
[00:12:38] Speaker A: And I'll. I'll drop back to. You'd asked me a question earlier about sort of are there things that I've put in place as a chief of department to sort of help guide people and maybe avoid mistakes like my misdirection and things like that. And one of the things going back to the hydrogen example or the hose stretching example, where did they learn and how did they learn how to stretch the crossway to that door or how to address the hydrant properly? They did it with checklists.
So if checklists in my department didn't exist, they do now, or they're in process now. Because looking and saying in a high stress environment that we all work in, fire, police, ems, emergency services in general, a checklist is your saving grace. Because when you're in, you know, the blue sky, there's not a ton of stress. You're back behind your station, you got a fire hydrant there. Dress it, you have a timestamp of it and you have to, you know, you will do this step, this step and then this step in that order, and you're going to do it 10 times for it and make sure you dial it in in this amount of time. Awesome. So then when you're in the field, you have that benchmark as the senior firefighter, as the officer, you have that benchmark to say, hey, this was really good. You actually did a great job here. But you do notice that, you know, the humat is still upside down or, you know, whatever it is, your hydrant wrench is not locked in on top of the hydrant. So now if we had snowy conditions, where's your hydrant wrench? You've lost it. You know, those are the little things that I have begun to put in place and will continue to put in place, frankly, a lot because of errors that I have done, leaving the hydrant wrench off of the hydrant. So now we adjust the checklist to say it will be locked on to the top lug of your hydrant so you know exactly where it is. That's stuff that either I or colleagues of mine have messed up and we had the humility to say we messed up versus just having it go completely. Oh, yeah. Oh, how did that happen? Oh, weird. You know, it was you.
[00:14:25] Speaker B: You know who you are, all of you know who you are. And just for the record, you can put the human valve upside down and it does make it a lower profile, but it looks goofy so you got to make sure that was intentional decision and it wasn't. Wasn't backwards or something. But those can be tricky. You got four outlets and you got all kinds of different hose to put somewhere. But yeah, I 100% agree. And I think, you know, having a system in place, practicing the same way every time, you know, the whole adage, practicing until you can't get it wrong, you know, not just until you get it right, you know, but having the checklist. Here's the question I want to ask you too, because I've run into this in my. In my field. So let's say you are training someone to put the truck and pump, right? You're getting them set up to pump a first line fire.
You want them to follow a checklist and you want them to follow the same systematic approach. You don't want them to become a robot because when they start following the same systemic approach, if something doesn't work or something doesn't go right, they have nothing to fall back on. They just have that one trick. They're one trick pony. They just do the same thing every time.
So not so. So one of the things I want to ask you is like, for example, when you're putting the truck in pump, one of the really good pump operators that trained me always said, like, when you put it in a pump, pause a second before you get out of the cab, make sure you hear it. Make sure you hear it transfer and you hear it engage. Check the speedometer. Like, and we had a lot of really good pump guys that would give you techniques about like, look for this, look for that. If that's not happening, stop and ask yourself, did you do everything right so far? So let me ask you this.
[00:15:48] Speaker A: I.
[00:15:48] Speaker B: How do you find that balance of a systematic approach, a checklist approach, but also not creating these robots that only have one way to solve a problem?
[00:15:57] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm going to use a term that I. The first time I heard it, I was like, what the heck is that? I'm going to hear that once and forget about it because it seems like it's a mouthful and that's recognition prime decision making.
Rpdm.
Oh, God, I'm so embarrassed. I just forgot his name.
Uh, anyhow, I'll remember it by the end of this podcast. But where. Where I first heard it from, and. And basically drawing the balance there is this. So we have two. When something happens, right, we're. We're putting the truck in pump, one of two things is going to occur. We're either going to Pull from memory from training or our experience as to how to put that truck and pump.
And if training has been robotic, step one, step two and then step three and you're there.
Real life is not robotic. You can insert the checklist and hopefully have it be semi robotic so you get it right. But where RPDM comes in with training is scenario based training. So instead of just like hey, pull the truck out back, dress the hydrant, throw in pump and then spray water the deck on for 60 seconds.
Find something. I used to think that the senior guys were just messing with me and frankly they were. But uh, but I, I now realize the benefit in a little bit of the guys and gals messing with you and that is if you, you know, if you're doing it just to be malicious, then get off the fireground, you don't belong. If you're doing it to give some pause, if you're saying, oh, I'm going to open up, I'm going for my first draft on this new truck and I'm going to open up a drain valve on the other side of the truck to mess with the cadet. Well, the cadet is going to learn. Wow, God, why am I unable to pull this draft? Why am I have you done a 360 of your truck? Cause that you know, whether it's on your checklist or not, the real life example from training or again an incident that occurs will come from. Oh man. Yeah, I didn't close that drain valve or I didn't secure, you know, the O ring wasn't fully secured in that. So I need to make sure I do that in the future. That is where our PDM meets, you know, the scenario based training. So, so when you get that scenario in real life your two spots are. Oh yeah, I'm not just pulling from my checklist training, I'm pulling from training that the senior folks have messed with the, messed with me a little bit to make sure I'm, I'm dialed in. So it's not just step one, two and then three.
[00:18:19] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I 100% agree. That sounds very similar. When I was doing my senior firefighter promotional testing, they made us read this book called Managing a Fire Company by John Brunasini. I'm not sure if that's similar but he used to talk about classical approach and the like more of the situational approach.
So the classical approach to problem solving is you have to look at the problem, gather information, analyze the information in the problem, make a decision and then move from there. The kind of naturalistic approach is more. I've seen this before, it worked before, I'm going to just do it again. So. So thinking about which one of those your brain is set in and one of the things that I feel really passionate about where you just talked about this is the scaffolding approach, especially with new folks.
So when you first take someone out for pumping, the first time you take them out pumping, the worst possible thing you could do is start throwing a monkey wrench in what's going on because then they'll have no baseline for what is supposed to be normal. They'll have nothing to pull from. It's this law of primacy where the first thing that you learn is the most potent way you remember it. So if you bring someone out drafting and you're like, haha, I mess with you, your suction was disconnected, they're going to have no frame of reference because they're never going to remember what it was, you know, when it was done correctly.
So what I always did with the recruits and everybody was you do it really, really well until they're really confident and things are going really well and they have a good handle on exactly like what they're, what they're going to expect when things go well and then you start adding things in. And if you want the extra bonus, you can show them what the error is before you give it to them. They don't need the error to be, you know what it is to be a surprise. It's the timing that's the surprise. So you might say, hey, this is what it sounds like when you cavitate a pump. This is bad. This is how you fix it and you practice that until they're comfortable, then you go back to scenario based training and then you go do some evolutions and you throw some ground ladders and you come back and you do a first DEW drill and then you cavitate the pump and you say you remember how it's supposed to sound. Remember how we talked about this? This is what happens in real life because if you do it too quickly you destroy their confidence. And I call this like the Kobayashi Maru. I had literally had a talk on this. I don't know if or it's for those Star Trek nerds out there, but the idea of a Kobayashi Maru in Star Trek is it's this basically scenario that they give all the new captains and it's a no win scenario. There's no way to win it. Everyone dies on the ship and they're supposed to be training you to accept defeat. But Captain Kirk basically, like installs like a malware and beats the thing and eats an apple and everyone's like yelling at him and stuff. And it's kind of funny. But what I always tell people is Kobayashi Marus, do nothing for your students, like creating a no win scenario or this really complicated training environment where they can't do the right thing. You want them to be successful. You don't need to destroy their confidence to, like, assert your dominance. You want them to be successful. And I had a question once, the person was like, well, what do you do for those really cocky people, you know, that are, that need to be taken down a peg? And I was like, well, you certainly don't cheat by making a no win scenario. What you do is you take what they're really good at and you add more and more and more complexity within the bounds of fair play until they fail. And then you help them learn because now they feel challenged and validated. But you certainly don't change the rules or change the goal posts or makeup or, or, you know, if someone does connect the hose properly, you don't walk around and disconnect it. That's not realistic to what we would see on the fireground. That's just destroying their confidence for no reason. You know, But I think you have a lot of great points there and I think, you know, how do we do this? Training well and not destroy their confidence is such an important topic of today.
[00:21:53] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think I will share that not destroying confidence comes from that scaffolding approach where no matter if it's the, you know, we've all had the rockstar probi that gets it on the, you know, second or third time, maybe even the first time. Well, great. Continue to build them up and then you can, you know, continue to instill confidence with them. They will be that good senior firefighter if you treat them right, if you recognize their potential and continue to push them, because they do, you know, if they are starting to get a little cocky, they do need a gut check, but they need a respectful gut check. Staying within the parameters of, you know, the drill you're trying to achieve.
I couldn't agree more. Nick.
[00:22:33] Speaker B: Yeah, there's a, there's an old Dave Chappelle stand up. He talks about, I can't remember which one it is, but he's like, he's like, I'm going to tell you the punchline to this joke and then I'm going to tell you the joke and you won't see it coming. And he does it really well. It's like the stovetop stuffing. You can look it up online if you want. And.
And that, to me is like the perfect example of really well crafted training with a good narrative. It's. I'm going to tell you, you're going to, you're going to get entangled. And they go, okay, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. You're like, and here's how you get out of it. Let's practice this until you can't get it wrong. Okay? You're going to get entangled at some point and you know how to get out of it, right? Yep, yep, yep. And then you run the scenario. They get entangled and they can't get out of it. And you're like, do you remember the most important thing when you can't get yourself out is to call a mayday. And you did not call a Mayday. It's been 37 minutes.
You are out of air. It's 37 minutes and you still haven't called for help. And those, like, are very sobering training opportunities to help them understand. Like, so when you read these nice reports, it's not like, oh, that dumb fireman got himself tangled up in the attic. Like, you just did that and I told you was coming, and these guys didn't know it was coming. So, like, I always found that that's a really sobering parallel for folks when they're coming through training. And it helps emphasize the message. But it's fair, right? I told them was coming, we trained on how to get out of it, and they still did it wrong. And you just say, this is how it happens. And then to this day, people will be like, oh, man. I always remember that. Like, I call for help the minute I can't get out. And it's like, that's the goal. That is the goal.
[00:23:57] Speaker A: So I want to share a quick story about something that happened to me way back in my career. And then it literally happened one year ago, almost to the right, one of my first fires.
Rest of the crew is off somewhere. They're actually at a smoke investigation on the other end of town.
We get a church fire in front of the firehouse, basically, or where the fire fire trucks are being stored. We were getting a new building at the time, so.
And it was me and one other guy. We pulled up, you know, basically first due, and the whole cupola is on fire. It was absolutely wild. And we get there, you know, raised the ladder up. It was the perfect truck to have first do because we needed the elevated master stream oh, we had it dialed in. I had just gotten all my certifications. You know, water comes from the fire hydrant. We had a few more people arriving and nothing is coming out of the, you know, the gun. And we're like, what? Oh my God. Like the cupola is on fire. This historic church. We were there in 12 seconds because it was across the street. Everything is dialed in except there's no water coming out of the. The aerial master stream.
And so, you know, finally I'm. Meanwhile I'm. I'm in the bucket. I find lo and behold, that when I put the truck in park, I forgot this little step called putting the truck in pump.
The one step, putting a truck on pump. Fast forward 21 years later, almost to the month, and I'm the incident commander. One of my first fires here in, in Hinesburg. And you know, the. This guy comes to, one of the guys comes to me.
We're having trouble getting water from, you know, this truck to this truck. We don't really know what's going on. It's, you know, could you, could you just figures out low manpower situation, dancing. Commander may from time to time be called to figure out a pump issue. These things happen.
And that was the first thing that dropped in my brain because of the experience that I had had. And guess what the issue was that exact problem. The truck was not in pump. The first thing that jumped in my brain, it's because. So guess what? The end result of that was not. I kept it to myself and had this pride factor of like, oh, sweet, mail my mess up 21 years ago almost to the month is now been. It paid off. No, I told anyone who would listen, and it wasn't all this person didn't put the truck and pump and it messed it up like I did 21 years ago. No, it was, hey guys, listen to this. So if it ever, ever, ever occurs, you're having trouble with this, it may not be, you know, water in, water out issue. It may be something really fundamentally simple as the basics of putting the truck and pump, or in this case, it was actually hitting the D for drive button to make sure that the truck actually goes into pump. And sharing those lessons, being humble enough to say, especially if you're the one who has the mess up. I was talking pre show Nick about the after action process that we do. And I think at the end of the day that's the most important thing is whether you make the. You're the one that messed up or you're the one who's able to share in a respectful way so other people can learn.
[00:26:52] Speaker B: Yeah, 100%. And then using those scenarios to drive your training, I think that's so key too. And I'm a big fan of this as, like, I like to do analysis of, you know, what meds are we misadministering? Where are we making mistakes? What went wrong? I'll look at concern network trainings, you know, which is, which is kind of like our version of a NIOSH report or a near miss report, and we'll say like, okay, we use the same equipment. This is what happened to this other crew. And then I'll actually go out and simulate it with the pilots and be like, hey, this is how this helicopter crashed. And I had really good training with our lead pilot where I took NTSB reports from the last five years. I took like three of them from the last five years, and I, I made them into scenarios. So I read the narrative and I made them into scenarios, and I, and I compartmentalized the information and released it at the same cadence that the pilot had it. So, like, okay, here's what your tachometer says. Here's what your engine temperature. And he would ask questions and I would give him the information in the same cadence that the pilot had. And it was really both kind of heartwarming for me to see him follow his process because those pilots are so good. Those medevac pilots are like thousands of hours of training. And so for him, to. This, this pilot who crashed didn't have as much training. But this guy, you know, the first one of the ones was, for example, you know, the throttles where one was in manual and one was in fadec. And it just, he couldn't figure it out because the engine was going all over the place.
Kind of like a speed governor on a, on a pump apparatus. Similar, but with the throttles. And my pilot, when we ran the scenario, first thing he did was turn on the dome light and look down and align his throttles. That would have solved the problem, right? So, like, every. And that's not to say he wouldn't make a mistake in a different area, but, like, it's cool to see that he's been trained on that. This guy is a certified flight instructor. He's done this 100 times, and he's heard that and seen that, and that's happened to him. And he knows, like, instead of trying to manually move it around in the dark with his hand, he's just going to turn on the light and look down for a second. And that'll solve the problem in three seconds. Just like you on that call. Oh, you're not getting water. The first thing I would do, same thing like you as a pump operator, would be go to the truck that's supposed to be moving water, go back to the beginning, put it back in park, take it out of pump, take a look at everything, make sure we're connected, make sure the hydrants on, and then go back through the process. And sometimes it's like something really simple, like pushing drive and making sure that the speedometer goes up. And then the key is, at the end of it, you're not like some superhero. And you don't make the person feel bad because that could be you tomorrow. You just go like, listen, bro, I've been there, man. There was this one time I was fighting this church fire, and this little boy was like, how come the water's not coming out of the fire truck? My toy fire truck shoots water, it's burning so much. Why is that young firefighter not putting it out? And you go, oh, well, you got to put it in drive, son. Take that with you. There's your. There's your tidbit for the day.
[00:29:34] Speaker A: So I.
I have been such an avid proponent of the after action and the hot wash, right? So the difference between the after action and the hot wash is the hot wash occurs with your crew on your truck, immediately following, like, a tailboard debrief, right? So that's the very raw emotions, like, let's get it out there.
It doesn't have to be as raw as I'm making it sound, but I've definitely had a few of them that are like, let's get this. You know, this was heated. You know, you didn't hear my radio transmission. I needed you not to move, and you did. And you almost got yourself and myself killed. Right, the after action. And when I mentioned it briefly a second ago, but look up the National Fallen Firefighters foundation after action review process, right? The five questions they ask you, what was our mission?
What went well?
What could have gone better? What might we have done differently? And finally, who needs to know? So print it off, put it on your dry erase board somewhere around your station, and next time you do an after action, which is the more formalized process versus the, you know, immediate hot washer tailboard debrief doesn't have to be long and drawn out. I often pull audio tape so I have some audio if there's any video from it. I really try to make it a more involved process so people can learn and in this day and age, the learner is done, you know, via video and audio and pictures and things like that. So that I think works in our favor. But however you learn, like, take all of these small examples and do you have to after action review even like the small trainings you do? No, you don't. But when you're at the kitchen table or later down the road, you know, maybe next week or if you're a volunteer department, next, at your next monthly training meeting, whatever it is, there's association meeting, get together and say, hey guys, you know, just in the last like 15 or 20 minutes, this, this happened to me. I just want to know, like, what are your opinions, what are your thoughts? And sometimes even just that little bit of humility and thought provoking, you know, this happened in a training or this happened in an incident.
Let's learn from that. Can make a world of difference down the road, as you saw 21 years later when luckily we're able to troubleshoot that problem. So I didn't. Yeah. You know, have the same issue.
[00:31:37] Speaker B: No, 100%. No, I, I agree. And I think I've always had a lot of luck really showing people the playbook as to why it's built the way it's built. Especially when I was running the recruit academies. You have all these young folks coming in that are ambitious and excited in the fire service. Some have experience, some do not. And really making it out as you know, this is why this training exists. Like when we did the Denver drill, right, we built a Denver prop and we went over how to remove patients and some tight, you know, different maneuvers to get folks out of, you know, get up and over a high windowsill. It wasn't just like, oh, I want you to do this, make it happen. We sat down, we're like, hey, this is the, this is the guy that died. This is why he died. This is what they tried to do. Here's the NIOSH report. Here's the pictures. We actually would have the students do a. Each student had to do a full presentation, it's like 30 minute presentation on a NIOSH report. They were assigned a big NIOSH report, like the Charleston Nine, or, you know, Denver or Hackensack, New Jersey. Something that's like really fundamental to why we do what we do and the way we do it. And they were, they were actually up there talking about it in their own words of like, this is the research I've done and they would have weeks to prepare for it. And I think it's important if you if you lead with that, then when you do say like, hey, you need to get your mask on in 30 seconds. Like, it's not this, oh, Prescott says 30 seconds. But like my brother in law works in New Jersey and he has 45. It doesn't get into that. It's like we want to be as ready to go as quick as possible because every second counts. And here's five examples of why someone not being able to get their mask on or not having their CBA work in a, in a normal amount of time caused a delay in response which caused this person to die. Like, you kind of show them that and you don't tell them that's why they do it. You just show them the information and then they kind of become invested in their own trajectory and they buy into that shared mental model, that mission of like, you know, I don't, I don't want to jump into a building and not be able to get one of my brother or sister firefighters out of a window just because I didn't go to the training that was offered to me. Like, let's take care of this, let's make sure we're ready to rock and roll.
[00:33:37] Speaker A: I have another relative example that which is much more boring.
But I'm about to, you know, we're heading into the New year here, right? And it's a great opportunity to tell, you know, your respective departments, agencies, whatever, you know, let's, let's have this be our goal or resolution, whatever. Well, in, in the Heinzer Fire department, one of them is going to be data. And making sure we're capturing data in the most logical way we can. So the reality of it is it's data can be super boring. If you're not a nerd like me and you're not into it almost every day like me, it can be really boring. And so when you say things like you must use the tablet to check yourself en route on scene and clear, like I need those benchmark of times, it could be easy just to be like, oh God, the chief wants me to check this stupid tablet. What am I doing? I don't have service in this area and I have to check it. What am I? But then when you're able to say, hey, listen, if you benchmark these times for me, I then get to go in front of the select board and I get to say, here's our average response time for our primary and secondary units. And then I'm able to say, here's why we need to justify an additional staff person like all of these things are literally happening right now.
To be able to give them the why was a game changer for me as fire chief. Because prior to that, even as training captain, I had to give people the why. I also, like you, ran the recruit academies there. But prior to being a captain, when I was a senior firefighter, it was.
I had no idea. A lot of what I was saying was just that the guy before me taught me this. So that's the why. It was a big learning curve. And then training captain, even bigger learning. Now, as the fire chief, being able to. Almost everything I do has to have that why. I couldn't agree more.
[00:35:15] Speaker B: Oh, 100. And data is really the key. In the wise words of Matthew Kozlowski, you know, present the data and give. Give them the opportunity to make the decision and you can help your guys be like, listen, you give me this data, I'm going to go in front of the select board and be like, okay, guys, I'm happy to do whatever you want to do. You're in charge. I'm just the fire chief. Here's what I got going on. You can a get me more people and I can respond within the, you know, National Fire Prevention Agency required timing that we need for this area based on the law and the comparable cities around the United States, or we can do nothing. And we can not show up for 30 minutes to these people's homes when they're burning. And I'm happy to do whatever, just emphasizing that I'm here to help. This is what the data shows. So why don't you just go to the taxpayers and let them know what you think? This is how Steve Locke, the chief of Burlington, approached the third ambulance. It was phenomenal, right? He goes, he does all this standards of COVID work. He does all this mathematics. And basically the math shows that one out of every three times you call an ambulance in the city of Burlington, you're not getting one because they're too busy, right? And so he basically just went to the taxpayers and the city council and said, right now, every third time you call an ambulance, you're not getting a Burlington ambulance because there's no one available. So we can a add a staffed ambulance to the firehouse that already has an ambulance in the area that does not currently have a Burlington ambulance and put paramedics out there and respond and get there. So one every six times, you're not getting an ambulance or we can do nothing. And they gave it to the taxpayers. And taxpayers voted like 96%. It was like the Highest ballot item in history. And then Chief Lock was just like, okay, send me the money when you're ready and we'll get this going. And it was very easy. It wasn't like how my toddler asked for things where it's like, but I want the popsicle. I really want it. It's delicious and you should give it to, it's like, you know, no, I have low blood sugar. I have blood sugar of 32 and I require a popsicle. You know, you can let me stay at low blood sugar or you can provide me with the sustenance I need to raise my blood sugar. It's really up to you. Choice is yours. It's like data makes everything better.
[00:37:13] Speaker A: It makes everything better. And then ultimately getting back to the why is where, you know, you are showing everyone from the people who will be gathering the data for you why you need the data. And then you're showing the taxpayers, the select board, the decision makers at the end stream. The down downstream effect is to, is to, you know, it all follows suit, but without the why behind it and being able to defend that, you, you'd be stuck like Chuck.
[00:37:39] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think it's great. I think it's a great way to build morale in the organization because then people don't look at it as like, well, Prescott told me to do this. It's like, no, no, we are, we are giving this man the ammunition he needs to go fight for us in front of that select board and get us what we ultimately want, which is more staff, better equipment, better response times, better facilities, quicker response times. Everything that you guys all share, you know, and that's what the taxpayers want. And you know, I think that that's a great approach for sure. So as we, as we wrap up here, the last thing I just want to touch on, I do think it's important enough that we added in, even though we've been Talking for about 40 minutes here is what the mental courage looks like to accept that a mistake has been made and immediately act to rectify that mistake to your best of your ability. I think that that's a really important component of, you know, human behavior. And I'd love to get your take on it. And what I mean by that is like, let's say you, you're the pump operator on a first two fire, your crew pulls the line and you can't get water out of the truck. What would you expect from your guys, the guy who's behind the pump panel? What would you expect immediately when that happens? Immediately what would you expect?
[00:38:47] Speaker A: Yeah, the very first thing is to let someone know and let everyone who needs to know. It's the final question of the NFFF after action. Who needs to know the reason? It's the final question. There is. It should be the first question when any problem arises. Who needs to know that the pump is not. I'm having an issue. Well, if you've got folks that are about to enter or are worse yet in a burning building and there is a problem that could mean their lives down the road, not every problem will mean someone's life. But people need to know and they need to know right away that comes. And you sort of alluded to this earlier, Nick, that comes from a cultural shift. If every mistake is instantly punished to the furthest extent of the law, whatever that law is, SOG driven or actual law, then people are not going to want to admit their mistakes. They're going to try to hide those mistakes. They're not going to tell the people who need to know whether their lives are at stake or not. And you know, whether it be a training issue, a very small issue, if we empower people to admit their mistakes and realize that it is not going to be the end of the world, I'm not going to come down with the fullest extent of the law. What I'm going to do is say, how can we do this better next time? Another question from the NFFF after action format. How can we do this differently? How can we do this better? So people are. It is ingrained in their brain that it's all about learning to better ourselves for the next time so nobody gets injured or killed.
[00:40:14] Speaker B: Yeah, I 100% agree and I think it's very, very difficult, especially as a new person or a junior person on any company, whether you're in helicopter service or, or the fire department or ems, it's very difficult to have the courage to do that. There have been many times in my career where somebody wants something done and you know, they say, hey, throw the aerial to, to this location. And I set it up and I throw the aerial and I go, oh man, it's not going to reach. Like I'm in the wrong spot. I'm 10ft too far back and being able to say I'm not going to make it. You know, Ladder 4, can you hit this from in front of me? Or Chief, I need to reposition like, or anything like that. You know, sometimes you would stop the ladder truck and you'd think you're in the right spot and everyone Starts to get the pads out for you, they start to run the jet and you're like, stop, stop, stop. I'm not in the right spot. That's really hard to do because a lot it's tempting to go, like, let me see if I can get it. Like, maybe I. Maybe I'm okay. Maybe I. I don't want to make a move. Like, maybe I can get it. And. And having the discipline, you know, if you make a med error, if you know you can't get water out of the truck too, immediately let someone know. And I think everyone on that scene should go into immediate problem solving to get the problem solved first. That's the first thing, right? If you're not getting water, let's get you water, right? We'll deal with the training piece later. And if there's anyone on any crew that's getting into it with each other about like you should be able to do, like, that's useless, useless. It's just a waste of time in that moment. Get the problem solved and then figure it out. I had a guy that I worked with, we were together, came up together through the recruit academy. He was driving one engine, I was driving another. We just kind of paralleled each other through our careers. He was on. On one truck. He was first due to a fire. I was like two minutes behind him. We showed up and he's like, I can't reach a hydrant. I. I don't have time. I'm going to run out of water. They're inside, they're fighting the fire. And I was just like, I got you, I got it. And I just hooked him up to my truck, and I dumped the entire tank of water in my truck into his truck. And I'm like, I'll go get it. And so then we, we hooked up my truck, we started pumping, and the chief comes over, he's like, what the heck are you two doing? Why do you have a truck on the hydrant? And then another truck like 20ft away. And I explained it and I was like, he needed water now, and I gave him water now. You got two other engines coming. They'll figure out secondary water sources. And it's like, so what? It's the most expensive humat valve in the world. I just put a dead truck in the middle. But it's those things of like, when he says, I'm running out of water, I don't have a water supply. It's not like, well, why didn't you do this? Or, like, did you think of this? Or like, you should have done. I don't even do that. It's like, what do you need? You need water? I'll get you water. And then afterwards it's like, hey, bro, like, maybe don't open up three hand lines in the first two minutes of a fire without a water source. Like, I don't know, like, maybe, you know, but. But those are, like, it could have been easily been me. And I know I would have wanted someone coming in behind me as a second dude to say, you need water, I got you. Let's take care of it. Like, that's what I want in a response. And do you have any feedback on how do you even. Like, how do you build that culture? Like, how do you do that in your. In a department?
[00:43:10] Speaker A: Well, it starts with the little things, right? So I'll give the example of the scratched fire engine. We've all been there, right? You come around the corner and you look at the door and you're like, oh, my God, like, this is a brand new truck. And there's a big hack and scratch down the side of it.
[00:43:22] Speaker B: Definitely not that basketball hoop. I have no idea where that came from.
[00:43:25] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, Heck no.
It would be easy to come down, you know, shotgun approach where you just blast everyone and like, this is. This is horrible. This is a brand new truck. The Gold Leaf is messed up, you know, whatever. Now, if you have that ability to publish out there too, listen, non punitive. I just want to know, because if there is a systems approach to change this. If the scba, if where you dawn your SCBA and then shut the door and turn around, is directly relational to how that scratch occurred, I want to know that. And you will not be punished for that. It is a systems approach. If you truly were messing around, then, you know, basketball hoop, whatever, right? That's a different story. But the reality of it is it starts with those small things and letting the. You know, when I first came on here, whether they want to admit it or not, and some actually have, people were watching my every move. They wanted to know what type of leader am I? Am I the autocratic leader 99% of the time? Am I the Socratic leader? You know, what. What type, you know, how is he going to handle the little things? Because that ultimately will define how I handle the big things. So I think if you're a leader and you're listening, I think just, you know, and I know that's a bit generic, but I want to leave it a bit generic so. So folks can interpret that.
You can dive down to the minutiae of that fire truck door scratch example, if you'd like to. But making sure you handle the small things with a level of grace and understanding while not just letting it go completely, which, by the way, is the full other end of the spectrum. And that's where mistakes will continue to run rampant if you just don't handle anything.
[00:45:02] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I agree. I think also putting things in perspective is really important, and seeking first to understand before you seek to be understood is really key, you know, because, like, I. I've definitely been part of some situations where people are like, why did this happen? I can't believe you did this. This is horrible. I've never seen anyone do this before. And then, like, 10 seconds later, the senior fire was like, did you know we rescued a baby while doing that? And they're like, well, I guess that's. We could. We could. It'll buff. It'll be fine, right? And it's like, okay, maybe you're joyriding and you scratch it off a tree and there was no one in the other lane and you could have moved over a little bit. All right, let's have that conversation. That's fine. But also, like, you know, maybe have a conversation, be like, hey, what's going on with this truck? Like, it looks like it got scratched. Like, is there anything, you know, I should know about it? You know, and empowering that just culture where people can come to you and say, like, listen, I turned the corner too tight. There was a car coming the other way. I should have stopped and I turned the corner and I scratched it. And you can be like, sounds like you solved the issue. So let's go get that turtle wax, and you'll be on your way, like, no big deal. You know, figure it all out. So.
[00:46:04] Speaker A: The final thing I'll say about that is just that it goes right back to what we've preached again. Again, who needs to know, right?
If the ambulance backs into an area where it should not have backed into, and it scrapes the whole side of it and you end up needing. You know, it costs a few thousand bucks in damage. Who needs to know? You better hope that the next shift and the shift after that, you know, that it is a continual learning experience.
You know, many thousands of dollars were done just prior to my departure and damage.
And the fire chief at the time made a decision to have the crew call it punishment. I think it was brilliant. Have the crew then go and educate the other shifts and ensure that everyone on the department had knowledge of what occurred. What was done to repair it, how, how we are moving forward. So having them, the folks who are directly responsible, then educate, you know, in essence, four times over, or I guess three times over, two. Two additional shifts in the call staff, I think was a brilliant approach because, yes, there was quote, unquote, punishment, but it was a way that it gracefully still allowed for some solid learning to happen.
[00:47:12] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. And just. Just allow them to take some ownership of how that process goes. And, you know, I've never had a problem going to my supervisor and saying, like, hey, this mistake happened. This is going on. And I think a lot of that is creating the fabric of being someone who does the right thing in the right moments as best you can. You know, like, if you're doing the right thing for the right reasons as often as you can, and you're not being a dumb. Dumb, and you're not malfeasant or anything like that, 99% of the time, nothing bad is ever going to happen to you. Like, I've dinged trucks, I've made mistakes. I've had med errors. And you just. You face it. You have courage. You take responsibility for actions, and you make sure it doesn't happen again. You know, the patterns are what people really look to take care of. Same thing with your insurance company. You total four cars in a row. They're not going to insure you. Right. Same thing with the fire department, you know, and if I think everybody can take a little bit from that, just be courageous, trust the process, trust that there's good leadership that's been where you've been, and it can be a big relief off your shoulders when you say that. And then your senior guy or your lieutenant goes, well, you know, I put a. I put a ladder jack through a manhole cover once. So I got you, you know, like, things like that. You're like, all right, cool. Like, can you work here? And that's great. So I think learn from it. So, Prescott, I want to thank you. Help. Thanks for helping me close out season five here. We have a very exciting season six coming up in the middle of January. We'll get that out to you. I want to thank all the listeners for bearing with us through the holidays. We've been prioritizing some time with our family, which I think everyone, including us, appreciates. Prescott, be safe out there. Have a happy New Year. Those of you that are going out and celebrating New Year's, please make sure you have a ride home. You have my phone number, but I don't have a vehicle right now, so I can definitely hook you up with some Uber or some Lyft. Other than that, we will see you in the New year, Prescott. Be safe.
[00:48:52] Speaker A: Happy New Year. Take.
