NDOT Episode #57 W/ The HAZMAT Guys

Join the NDOT Crew and the HAZMAT Guys as we discuss, you guessed it, HAZMAT! Tune into a HAZMAT lesson you'll actually remember!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:45

Welcome back. Episode 57. I don't know why I always appear first. I don't know. It's weird.

SPEAKER_03 0:52

What's up, Chip Bags? Welcome back. I got Brandon self-conscious right off the hook. That's a perfect way to start. Uh, thank you guys, everyone, for tuning in. Uh, we're always excited to be here as always. Gotta thank all of our sponsors. Wouldn't be doing it without keeping on going. Uh, we're loving every minute of it, every episode that we've been doing. We hope you guys are uh enjoying. Uh, again, we want to thank everybody for doing the seamless transition back over to uh YouTube. That's been great. You guys have been doing some awesome support over there, building that channel uh so that we don't have to worry about our episodes disappearing on Facebook. So thank you guys. Uh thank you guys for that. Huge thank you to Toxic Suppression, Crufers Culture, Taylor Tins, uh Jobtown Graphics. Wouldn't be doing it without anyone. We haven't thrown that plug in a little bit uh in a while, but our merch, we still got some merch. Head over to the website if you're interested in that. Um, but other than that, it's enough rambling from us. Let's bring in uh people everyone else wants to hear from Mike and Bobby. Welcome, guys. Hey guys, how is it going? Thank you so much for being on.

SPEAKER_01 1:59

It is uh it is going. It's uh you know, moving and grooving over here in Long Island. We're going through uh we just came back from some conference stuff, and uh yeah, so things are going well. How about you all?

SPEAKER_03 2:09

Great, fantastic. Bobby is really good at playing the frozen picture. I saw the breathing. I saw the breathing.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

Oh, it wasn't the cars driving that it was like oh, there's freaking cars in the background of the movie. I was trying, I was trying to give as long as possible to make it as realistic as possible, and you still caught on.

SPEAKER_03 2:35

Uh, can't catch us that easy. Uh well, thank you guys so much for coming on. Uh, why don't we get started? You guys give a little introduction about yourself, tell everybody about you.

SPEAKER_02 2:46

Sure. Uh, I'm Bobby Salison. I'm one of the co-hosts of the Hasmat Guys podcast. Uh, been doing it for geez, over 10 years, so coming up on 11. Um, you know, episodes on on basically hazmat response, uh, which has evolved into a training company and now a software company and a media company, and we keep growing.

SPEAKER_00 3:07

Oh, that's awesome, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:09

And I'm Michael Monaco, I'm the other uh co-host of the Hazmat Guys, along with Bobby. And uh yeah, everything he said. We we we come from a background in uh the New York City fire department. So uh, you know, hopefully some old tricks we can give, and we're just gonna create more shipbags. We don't uncreate shipbags, so I I don't even know why we're here.

SPEAKER_03 3:28

Like the history of it is it can totally be a term of endearment. We've talked about it. Brent and I used to work together. Our crew, our captain was Captain Shipbag. You know, it's it's uh hit shipbag can be a term of endearment when you know you really aren't one. But our motto is if you show up to work and the only thing you think about is to not be an actual shipbag, you're gonna do great.

SPEAKER_01 3:50

So have you ever heard the term hairbag?

SPEAKER_03 3:53

No, but that's more PG.

SPEAKER_01 3:56

Yeah, it is a little more PG, but uh if uh if anyone's ever heard the term hairbag, it actually stems from the New York City Fire Department in a time where hairbag was considered to be a a shit bag. So there we go. That's a little local slang for you.

SPEAKER_03 4:11

My yeah, my chiefs have been asking for PG versions, so maybe that's what we just gotta do.

SPEAKER_01 4:15

A hairbag. And it helped be a hairbag. It stems from people getting time off. You know, they they were at the way back, 1800 style. Uh, they would get time off to go get a haircut, and uh if that policy was abused, you'd have to come back with a bag of your hair to prove that you got a haircut, and stems from being a hairbag.

SPEAKER_04 4:36

Wow, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 4:41

That's the end of the episode, guys.

SPEAKER_03 4:44

That's pure trick.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

Uh where did shit bag come from? Yeah, geez. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:48

Brennan Brennan inspired it by finding a sticker online.

SPEAKER_04 4:53

And Facebook.

SPEAKER_03 4:55

Yeah, there was a little bit of animosity uh maybe between crews and stuff, and also Brennan just slaps a sticker on the fridge and it just said don't be a shitbag, and uh the rest was history.

SPEAKER_00 5:05

So still there, by the way. Still there.

SPEAKER_03 5:15

Well, again, thank you guys for coming on. We'll jump into the questions we have. We did have some questions sent in, and he just double dipped, so we might give the same guy two questions, but we're gonna start off with uh really simple one that we want to hear, and that's why hazmat.

SPEAKER_01 5:30

Ooh. All right, all right. Go for it, you can let it go. Well, my my mine is mine is a uh a horrific tale. Uh, not really a horrific tale. Uh, I got voluntold to go to hazmat. I had a a random conversation with uh one of my in like insanely close mentees, uh Tony Tricarico, uh, who if you know him, you either love him or absolutely hate him. There's no in between. But uh he ended up was having a conversation while on a ski trip with one of the bosses in hazmat one at the time, and they he they called me and me were just kind of bullshitting and kapitsin' for about 45 minutes. I only had about three years on the job at the time, and he asked the question, Hey, like, do you ever see yourself coming to Hazmat one day? And I was like, Yeah, one day. I think that would be cool. Ended the conversation, didn't think anything about it. The next day I went into work, there was a detail slip to Hazmat 1. And I was like, That's how I got into Hazmat. You gotta understand at the time the uh company had been decimated after 9-11, and they were scraping the bottom of the barrel, and there I was stuck to the bottom of the barrel, they scraped me off.

SPEAKER_02 6:35

I was I was a little more premeditated. Uh, I was doing my chemistry uh, you know, uh school and stuff while I was sitting in an ambulance in uh East New York uh in the mid-90s, and uh and then I got on with the fire, uh, went through towel ladder, then 9-11 happened. I went over to a squad company and I kind of kept the whole chemistry thing behind closed doors. And then eventually when I went to enough fires and had enough fun, I was I kind of came out of the closet that I had a couple of you know, some chemistry degrees and stuff, and they were like, You gotta go over there with the nerds. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:13

Um I wonder, was that conversation anything like somebody actually like coming out to their parents where you like sat down with the cat and like I got I got something I gotta tell you?

SPEAKER_02 7:24

I I've yeah, because I had I had a like you know, I had to beat up on the nerds and everything like that when I was over in the squad. And then I'm like, I'm gonna go over and hang out with those.

SPEAKER_03 7:33

And then I you were you were probably the biggest bully too. You're the one that you had to try and make it known that that was the hazmat nerds. I'm nothing like them.

SPEAKER_02 7:41

I was I was an equal opportunity. If you were a shit bag, you were you are not gonna have a good time when I was in the firehouse. Like I was I I I would like to say I was merciless. I was, you know, and even when I got off like retired, the wife was like, Don't think you're bringing that shit home. Like she's like, You're not, I'm not your punching bag. I'm like, oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:00

Mine all the time. She shakes her head, she goes, You can take them out of the firehouse, but you can't take the firehouse out of them.

SPEAKER_00 8:06

Yeah, firehouse always comes home.

SPEAKER_02 8:08

You know, but like Hasmat was just the natural evolution of like where uh you know the the the trajectory of the of my career was I knew I was gonna eventually go there. And not for as stupid as it sounds, like you know, there's there's there's a shitload of firemen, right? But there's less hazmat guys, and everybody thinks they're gonna be the most badass firefighter out there, and then you know what happens is you retire, and then you're one of 10 billion badass firemen, and that's it's really hard to monetize that in the afterlife. But hazmat hazmat is incredibly lucrative, you know.

SPEAKER_01 8:52

There's not too many positions on LinkedIn looking for people to break windows with hooks, like they just it just doesn't exist.

SPEAKER_03 8:58

Yeah, that's fair, that's fair. Um, well, I think I'm gonna bring in uh our question from our guest because I think this will go back to maybe even some of your your origin stories, we'll say, but uh question from my coworker who we call Gravy. Uh he's on the hazmat team with me, and he says, What incident changed the way you approach or handle a scene? I know I'm I'm shocked too. It was a great question.

SPEAKER_01 9:27

Uh it's a it's a great question. And I I wish I could give like a straight up answer to it. Like there was this one aha moment in my life where everything changed, and that's just not the case. Uh, to be very honest with you, um, you know, very similar to how you operate as a firefighter, right? You you come on, you're new, you don't know what the hell you're doing, you're just trying not to get yourself and somebody else killed. You're trying to learn the job because God knows the academy doesn't actually teach you to be a technician any more than the academy teaches you to be a firefighter. And you just slowly develop these techniques over time that make you become who you are as you respond. For me, there was no real like, I mean, listen, I've got more things in my life that I've screwed up on the on the I guess we call it the hazmat field or the fire field for hazmat. Uh, but not one of them was a dramatic altercation for how I approached the scene. Every every every time I went out, things changed just gradually until I became who I was. Yeah, I agree with that.

SPEAKER_02 10:32

Because, you know, there was I can think about one instance where I proved out my own confirmation bias, right? Where I thought it was it was this kind of chemical, and even though all my meters would tell me something else, I was sure. I was sure it was this. And and I'm like, no, all these meters must be wrong. And like that, you know, like that kind of thing was like, okay, don't be an idiot, don't do that stuff again, you know. So, like, you know, good put up a ground ladder, you put it up correct. You don't put the foot up the top of the tip at the bottom, you know, like don't leave your water can, like your two and a half gallon extinguisher in a in a fire. It may or may not uh explode and open up, and then it can be bolted to your locker for two years. So all these little formative things are like speculations, you know. Yeah, just allegedly this might happen, you know. Uh it's all it's the summary of all of those little lessons that becomes that whole and and the guys that experience those things, take those lessons and aggregate them. Those are the guys that are truly talented, long range on the job. There's a shitload of guys that have the same amount of fires, same amount of incidences, same amount of lessons, but they're like, I don't have to listen to that, I'm better than that. And those guys are consistently shitbags.

SPEAKER_01 11:58

Yeah, and then if you you really want to take it one step further, you you know, you got the guys that won't listen to their own mistakes, and then you have the opposite end of the spectrum where somebody's got their ears open, their mouth shut, and they're learning from everybody else's mistakes, and those guys will, you know, cream rule fast rise to the top on that.

SPEAKER_02 12:17

Yeah, there's the old saying is a smart man learns from his mistakes, wise men learn from other people's mistakes. So you can you can 10x your whole career if you really keep your ears open.

SPEAKER_03 12:29

Yeah, absolutely. That it's kind of funny because we just talked on our last episode about recurring themes and fire hazmat, whatever, everything we talk about, it's failures. It's that learn from failures, learn to grow from them, um, and that they're the best lessons that we have in this job. Uh, next question that I have for you is how do you guys make hazmat training engaging and not just checking a box?

SPEAKER_02 12:56

Fart jokes. Tons of fart jokes. Uh no, you know what? We we actually have a class. We just we just came back from that the Massachusetts hazmat conference yesterday, and one of the classes that we teach is a class called You Sucker Teaching Hazmat. Right, and it's not it's not about hazmat at all, it's it's about the techniques that you need to master in order to teach adults. Right, and even when I say that, I'm saying you're teaching borderline autistic adults, right?

SPEAKER_00 13:32

That's very true. That's very true.

SPEAKER_02 13:34

Now you compound it with a topic which you can make an argument that is a dry topic, hazmat is a dry topic, but I don't think me and Mike, or even all of our instructors that we have with us, that anybody would go, yeah, that was boring as hell. Because the thing is, is that in order to make a topic, regardless, it's not hazmat, it could be fly fishing, it'd be tying your shoes, you have to it has to be a performance. You have to think about it less of a class and more of an experience. If you, as the instructor, start framing it in your head that I'm gonna provide a performance and an experience to these people, they are going to be strapped into a chair and just riding this whole thing. It's gonna, it's a it's a different feel.

SPEAKER_01 14:21

Yeah, and that performance can look completely different depending on the type of person that you are, right? You get to develop your own sense of performance. Like I always try to look at at mine as like uh uh a stand-up comedy bit, right? Where I'm trying to time, interject jokes, things like that. I know some guys who do it as a dad joke throughout the whole thing, right? Like everything's this horrific dad joke, but he owns the fact that the jokes are horrific, and that becomes the shtick. Uh, some people, you know, they'll they'll jump into the war stories uh as a form of of entertainment. And as long as all of it is done with the right mixture of you know uh injection, inflection, timing, it can all work to keep any topic entertaining and fun.

SPEAKER_02 15:08

Yeah, there's a lot, there's a lot that goes into uh delivering uh highly engaging uh content. There's a lot of it. There's a lot of subtle psychological tests and little um tricks and techniques, and um you know, this is like one of the pullouts, is like just standing to the left of the screen. Yep, right? If an instructor stands to the left of the screen, because we here in America we read left to right, that means you're gonna focus on me before you focus on the screen, and that subtle sublimation kind of thing that's going on in your head, it goes somewhere. Because if I give up the if I stand on the right side, well then you're staring at the screen and you never get to me, and I'm the performer. Like it's a million little things that makes that whole thing move.

SPEAKER_03 15:58

Yeah, and it it works. I mean, it was I had after taking your class at Wammer, um, and just absolutely for some reason not knowing how to talk about myself, but I after that I had to come up with a presentation that I did for one of our meta classes, and it was our on a trauma stuff. And I thought it was pretty funny because one of the students saw my presentation initially, and he saw that like I only had pictures in the opening, and then at the end, case study, he's like, Oh, you got all this, like it's just info information slides. I'm like, Yeah, but I'm the performer. I'm like, you aren't gonna know about it. And I mean, it was it was just that, it was a couple bullet points. We went through, and at the end of it, he was like, That was that was awesome. And I was like, Yeah, like you got scared when you didn't see the color in book and all the pictures. You're like, Oh my god, I'm gonna learn something, but it it worked out.

SPEAKER_01 16:44

It does work out, and that's that's developing your your style, and you'll go through and you know what are you like 14-15 right now? So, as you like got into your 20s uh and you start teaching more and more, you will develop a style of how you want to present that information, and with minimum information on the screen, sometimes you you'll get to the point you don't even actually need the PowerPoint. Yeah, like there's there's times I finish a lecture and I'm like, you know what, let's just flip through this real quick and make sure I didn't miss anything. And that in and of itself allows you to freelance the classroom because you know by the end of the day you're not gonna miss any information because it's all right there.

SPEAKER_02 17:27

No, but one thing I want to throw on top of that is like be careful of whatever your persona that you're gonna pick, and that's your your stage feel, be careful of doing something like carrot top, right? So, like, like that guy right now, he's 68 years old, he's probably regretting that whole shtick that he picked up. It was cute when he was 20, but now it's not so cute. So try to get something that has legs, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:49

Absolutely. Um, kind of keeping in the same wheelhouse. What has been the most rewarding part about utilizing your platform that you've developed?

SPEAKER_02 18:00

I'll say going to conferences, going to classes, meeting people out in the wild, and they're going, I got my promotion or I got my job because of you. I like that. That's cool. That's really cool.

SPEAKER_01 18:17

I like seeing and hearing about the connections that get made. So everything that we do in in Hazmat, it's all related to each other in some way, shape, or form, right? So when somebody initially sits down, they go through a tech class or a science class, like they they're learning all these individual points, and it feels like they're not connected. And then over time we connect them. And to see that look on somebody's face when it clicks and like that, Jesus, Brennan. What the hell is that? That was my pager. Um, that that to me is one of the most rewarding parts of all this. Nice.

SPEAKER_03 18:56

Awesome. Uh, I will go since we have got the time, allow Gravy to double dip here and come back with his second question that he has, which is Was there ever a moment where you thought this could go very wrong very fast? Now it can get into War Stories time.

SPEAKER_01 19:14

Oh, yeah. I I actually just I just talked about my answer in Massachusetts uh the other day. And I actually talk about it in almost every class that we're doing chemical physical properties or metering. Uh, and it has to do with the fact that uh uh there was a time in a propane run where I didn't have enough respect for the idea of vapor density. I didn't meter properly, and I uh ended up almost well, I did burn a lot of people, mild burn, uh, but you know, it I put them in a position where things could have gone very bad.

SPEAKER_02 19:46

I'm trying to think of one. I it probably wouldn't even be a hazmat thing, it would probably be more on the fire side that I uh perhaps took a little too much uh you know aggressive uh actions and uh you know uh it was specifically at a flashover where I I we actually put I pushed one of the newer guys out the second floor window um and uh because the whole place flashed over and I stayed inside. Probably wasn't a good idea.

SPEAKER_04 20:17

Just to see, just to like it was the flashover thing, but I don't think it's that bad.

SPEAKER_02 20:23

It was freaking hot. I remember that. Uh like it blew my whole my my my whole helmet came apart. Jeez, yeah, like it blew apart my front piece and and the back of the helmet, the the the tail of it came apart, and yeah, it was hot. Uh but luckily the engine was like there like in in like six seconds, so it wasn't I got a light toasting, we'll say awesome.

SPEAKER_03 20:47

Well, going going back to your incident a little bit, Mike. Like if you want to expand upon it a little bit, what were some of the things that that maybe you learned or that you took from them?

SPEAKER_01 20:54

Um that so the the and the reason I always bring it up when we talk about vapor density, uh, because in in hazmat vapor density is where you find a product, right? Whether it's going to go up in the air or down in the air. And it's it's a it's an important one to know, but everyone kind of glosses over it. We don't give it a ton of respect. And vapor density is very temperature dependent, right? So if I'm looking up information and I see that uh propane has a vapor density of 1.5, well, that's 1.5, assuming that both temperatures of the product are the same. If I start changing temperature, right, very similar to uh if I were to take a uh a steel ball and chill it, it'll become more dense. Well, the vapors become more dense and they become heavier. And we had this propane leak, and I was metering low, I but I wasn't metering low enough. I was about two inches off the ground. And if I had taken my probe and gotten another couple of millimeters down further, the difference between those few millimeters was the difference of being in an explosive atmosphere and not being in an explosive atmosphere. Um, so that little bit, that tiny little distance. Had the potential to make the difference of destroying two buildings and putting guys' lives in danger. And, you know, realizing that, oh my God, something's here. We need to expand our search out a little bit more. Uh, and basically we did a uh a barrel burn, which is a type of propane burnoff, uh, let out a tremendous amount of product in the process and you know created a fire front that that extended through the backyard and and up the driveway.

SPEAKER_03 22:29

All right. So you the the way that it was solved was that burnoff, and that's also what kind of started or ignited that incident or the additional propane.

SPEAKER_01 22:38

The propane was leaking to begin with. So we had propane that was leaking, and the burnoff caused the ignition of the propane in the atmosphere that was there, that that went undetected. Uh and uh it was because I didn't put the probe to the floor. Uh in all my other experiences, because of temperature differences, right? Propane, when it comes out in the liquid form, it auto-refrigerates very, very rapidly, becomes very cold. So those vapors are near minus 41 degrees. So you have a minus 41 degree vapor, you have a 70 degree you know, uh evening. It was an August evening, so that is a tremendous temperature difference. Right. We're looking at at over a hundred degree temperature difference, and it just squished those vapors right to the floor. Uh, and I just I didn't take that into account.

SPEAKER_03 23:26

Interesting. Very, very interesting. I appreciate expanding on it though, so everyone can kind of maybe learn from maybe that's the mistake that someone needs, but uh especially kind of in our area, because we do deal with um, especially Brennan's area, he's got a lot more of a rural coverage, but we've got a lot of propane uh instance where you could even have that involved just at a house fire. I mean, if you get a rural house fire, especially you got a lot of propane tanks, it's there, line gets cut, something like that. Um, so propane's a gas we deal with a lot.

SPEAKER_01 23:54

Yep, put put your meter to the floor. That's all I can tell you.

SPEAKER_03 23:58

Awesome. Well, that uh it does the kind of targeted questions we have, but that doesn't mean the good ones are done because Brennan's got the rest of them for you.

SPEAKER_00 24:06

All right, so what do you got? So this one, um, we asked everybody, so you can take it however you want. Um, the question is, why are we here?

SPEAKER_01 24:16

Like philosophically? Well, you want why are we gonna mommy and daddy love each other?

SPEAKER_03 24:25

Why are we we've gotten we've gotten spiritual answers, we've gotten fire service answers, we've gotten the birds and the bees answers, whatever you want.

SPEAKER_00 24:35

You know what makes this question so fun. They're all different answers.

SPEAKER_02 24:39

I was talking to Brian yesterday, uh one of the guys that works with us, and uh, like all the choices that you make over your lifetime, like, would you want to change any of them? And I'm like, if I did, I wouldn't be sitting here. You know, so like I'm good with all the choices that I've made. Like, you know, I wouldn't be sitting here if I didn't see you at the conference uh a couple of months ago, right? I you know, I wouldn't be sitting here if I didn't, you know, ask Mike to come on the podcast. Like all these roads that put us in these seats personally are all because of I don't know, decisions I've made over the last like 15, 20, 30 years. And it's interesting how it all comes together, but that's mine.

SPEAKER_01 25:22

Yeah, I I guess if we look at it from I guess the answer is gonna depend on how you personally view things. If you're looking at it from like the one million foot view, right, then you start to get into the philosophical, you know, spiritual, you know, or we the universe is the universe, us, all that nonsense. Uh, but if you're asking it from the point of view of like what why we're doing what we're doing, um, well, one, right, we we want, we want to make money, right? We're all in in business to make money. And two, we have an opportunity to make money at the same time educate people and kind of live in a world that we lived and responded in and still be part of that world and not completely disconnect from a world that we absolutely loved.

SPEAKER_00 26:05

I like it. Um, what trainingslash conferences have been your favorite to attend? There's a lot of them around.

SPEAKER_01 26:15

The greatest conference ever was in Key West. That was our conference. I was being on the conference.

SPEAKER_04 26:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:26

I you know what? I've gone like uh over the last uh 10 plus years, I've gone to an awful lot of hazmat conferences. Um and I see ones that are great, I see ones that kind of are not so great. Um, you see ones that are uh blatant sales pitches, and you see ones yeah, I will say that the I don't know. I maybe this is kind of like a too too much of a into this question, but the conference that um it was Wisconsin, right? That's when we we so Wisconsin is unique because they do multiples of every single show, which is not typical. And the reason why I say that is because that's very much like uh centered on the experience of the people coming to it. And and the and the difference is if you go to let's say another conference, they'll have one instructor give one topic one time, right? And that is very different because they are looking for your department because you can't send you can't sit in multiple rooms at one time. What they're looking to do is have you send more people to their conference, meaning you get a little bit more coin, right? And and so Wisconsin is unique because they're set up for the people, they have that done over and over and over. Um, so there's pros and cons to like all the conferences. The networking, it's it's the same circus, different clowns.

SPEAKER_03 27:55

You know, yeah, but there's there's more beer up by us too. So absolutely and cheese, and cheese. And cheese, old fashioned, bourbon. We know we know how to party. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:06

You guys know how to do it. No, but like, you know, after you're doing the conference circuit for a while, you get to might meet all of those hazmat instructors. Um some of them have are current and are you know grinding their teeth and they're getting out there. Uh some of them have been around for a little while, they have a uh, you know, a good following, and then you'll see guys out there that um I'll nicely say are past their prime. Right? That are are still giving the stable shtick, although they haven't responded in like 10 years, 20 years. Um, I'm not saying they shouldn't do it, but at the same time, it's like when you're driving on the highway, you're gonna have to check your mirrors every once in a while. Because if somebody creeps up your ass, you're supposed to pull to the right lane, you know, and be self-aware of that kind of stuff. And that's one of the things that me and Mike struggle with is like, you know, you in general, um, when you retire, you got about a four-year shelf life before your expired milk. You know, and and us on the podcast, we we like to say that because we do so much of this stuff and we're so plugged in, we're talking to all these people, we might get 10 years out of it. But eventually it's over.

SPEAKER_01 29:23

Yeah, and we see it now. You know, we talk with the guys from the firehouse, new technologies are coming in, new runs have happening, new techniques, new new hazards are showing up. And if you're not actively trying to keep on top of it, you very quickly lose that connection with the audience. Because if you're if if experience is part of your connection, and then all of a sudden you're talking, you know, the the last event that you can tell a war story about is from 15 years ago, it you kind of disconnect from that the you that generational gap becomes extremely wide.

SPEAKER_02 29:54

And it it gets harder and harder. I uh you you guys are I would say on the newer side of of the careers, right? And you know, once you retire and you go back to your firehouse that you I I was in that firehouse for 20 plus years. I knew everybody, I knew where all the bodies were buried, I knew where all the tools were, and then I'm gone for a year or two years, and you knock on the door, and it's a face. I don't know who this guy is, yeah, and he don't know who the hell I am, but I was the biggest, oh it's Bobby, you know, like it but to me, I'm just the guy knocking on the door. Like, who the hell is this club?

SPEAKER_01 30:29

But the saddest day of my like, I guess, career in Hazmat wasn't when I retired, it wasn't when I put my papers in, it wasn't my last day, it wasn't when I cleaned out my locker, it was the day I realized I got taken off the group message in the fire. Like once I was off the group message, I had no idea what was going on, and it was like lights out. Yeah, yeah. I felt like uh the the the what was that uh Pacini and uh good fellas when he walks into the room and it's empty and he's like, oh crap, boom, lights out.

SPEAKER_00 31:02

Awesome, yeah, I like that.

SPEAKER_01 31:05

Um, how should we look at failures as the only path to success. When I when I was a proby, I was told over and over again if you're not fucking up, it's because you're not stepping up. Like end of story. You're just literally not trying hard. Um, you know, and there's tons and tons of examples of of people giving that, right? They give the number of times that uh Babe Ruth struck out, you know, uh is way more than the number of home runs that he ever hit. Um, there's uh a famous economist, not an economist, but uh a capitalist that's out there. I can't remember his name, but he says, you know, being successful is like being pregnant. Everybody congratulates you, but nobody talks about how many times you got fucked in the process. So the idea of failure is embedded in the very foundation of success. And if you can't handle failure, you're not gonna be able to get to where you want to go.

SPEAKER_00 32:01

Yeah, like that very much.

SPEAKER_02 32:03

I think I think as probies, we should be conditioned to think you know, failure is part of the thing, it's not a a point of weakness. We come in the firehouse and we don't want to screw up, we don't want to be that guy that I don't know how to mop. And not everybody like you know, not to not to paint, oh, when I came on, but like we were much more hands-on. Like we would we would tune the the the saws and we would you uh we would open up things and and you had to feed the horses, like you had to feed the horses, right?

SPEAKER_03 32:34

Yeah, you know it hurts, man. Hey, you call me 14. I had to find a way to get it back, man.

SPEAKER_02 32:41

No, like like nowadays it's it's a little bit it's a little bit more of um it's disposable. You know, we don't really um fix as much, we just get a new one. And and that's not a bad thing, but uh what you know the basics that we assume are true, like hey, uh, you know, help me out with this ratchet strap. I've seen a couple of guys that don't know how to operate a ratchet strap. And I'm not pissing on them. All I'm saying is when we're taking these guys in and we're bringing the new guy in, tell him it's your job to screw up. Like you have a free pass of five years. You can screw up as much as you want. I won't crush you, but after five years, if you're not taking those lessons and internalizing them and improving the game, well, now you're just a shitbag.

unknown 33:28

Right?

SPEAKER_02 33:29

Because now you're hiding behind the uh the cell.

SPEAKER_01 33:31

I think you're still gonna get crushed. I think you still I think you just have to be okay with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and you can crush people, but you can't destroy them, right? Like I well, I don't know, maybe this day and age, right? All you snowflakes running around, uh, you know, you you can't insult each other, you gotta, it's gotta be a safe place and all that crap.

SPEAKER_03 33:50

Um, but the Oreo technique compliments in between the I love your hair today. You really fucked up that ladder thought of like, oh, but man, that shirt looks great on you.

SPEAKER_01 34:00

Yes, exactly. All that all that nonsense. But if you can take, if you can both give and take, you know, like I'm gonna break your balls for fucking up, but I'm also knowing that I'm expecting you to fuck up, right? So the ball breaking is to make sure you don't forget the lesson, not to destroy who you are.

SPEAKER_03 34:18

Absolutely. Yeah, that goes right into your last question here, Brennan.

SPEAKER_00 34:23

What do you tell your probies to expect when they get hired? On day one, what uh what expectations are you given? Uh, the senior firefighter, uh, captain, lieutenant. Um we got we got two brand new pro we're coming on, and we kind of you know, give them a list of expectations, like hey, you'd be down the apparatus bay, you know, knowing your truck and everything like that. What what what do you guys expect?

SPEAKER_02 34:54

I think that is important is is articulating your expectations. I think that's I've seen firehouses and and and probies and and senior guys that did it right, and I have seen them the way they did it wrong. And uh and I'll give you examples like ones that they didn't clearly articulate. Hey, I expect you to be up until midnight. You're you're gonna be around the fire, you're gonna finish, you're gonna mop at the end of the night, you're gonna wake up, you're gonna be the first one downstairs, you're gonna go. Those things are articulated. So the guy is like, got it. Now I know the rules. If he screws up, he's gonna get the ball busting. But if you just go, why aren't you the first guy down? Because I didn't know I was supposed to be the first guy down. And so those are those asshole uh senior guys that are setting the kid up for failure over and over, and they're hated. And they're like, I don't know why everybody hates me, because I'm I'm so badass. It's like, no, because you're bad. You're dude. That's it, it's just bad. Yeah, just yeah, right? I like articulate. Uh there was one firehouse I went to, and I was not, I was we call it detailing, like when you uh when you have to go to another firehouse to kind of fill in a spot. And when the new proby came in, and I was happened to be there the first day, uh, they actually gave him like a book. And it was like, here's all the things we do in this firehouse. Take a week, read it, and then come back to me and talk about it. If you have any questions, I'm here for you, but this is your Bible right now. And I saw it and I was like, wow, that's really like you took it. They're like that book has been around since like the 40s, and and like it's handed on and it's passed on, and every new guy writes their updates in it, and it's a living document. And I said, that is amazing, yeah. And at the same time, uh intimidating because you're looking at somebody that was writing shit in there in the 60s, yeah. And and you know, when we might me Mike talk about this, it's like the paradigm, you know, why do we do this? Well, because we've always done it this way, right? And and like, oh, you know, so like we've learned the rules and we've never seen the reason why the rule came about, right? And so as the proby, as the new guy, they you should encourage them to not only accept the rules, the the rules of that book, but also to be okay to step outside the rules within reason, because we have to myth bust what you know, like the old say, like firemen love the way things are and hate change, right? They they hate the way things are and hate change, right? So, like, be okay with saying, hey, listen, why do we do it like this? You know what? That's a good point. I don't know. That's from like the horses being done.

SPEAKER_01 37:43

Right, right. Why do we have this tool? Why do we do it this way? Why do we if the answer is ever well, that's because the way we've always done it, then it's time to re-examine that technique. It may be correct, right? That may be the best technique in the world, but if you don't know why you're doing something, how do you know you're doing it the best way possible?

SPEAKER_00 38:02

Yeah, absolutely. I love that. I think people know have to know the why to actually be engaged in it and be passionate about it. Yeah, if they don't, I mean you like this dog always done it, and you're like, Well, it just doesn't make sense, right? Right. You either tell me if it makes sense or not.

SPEAKER_02 38:19

It's the why, like much to what you you're saying, Brennan. It the the why is the is the part the contextual part of the lesson. Right? I can tell you we do this, but it's just like okay, that's the rule. It doesn't, I don't, I don't, um, I don't internalize that. But if you convince me of like why this is the best thing, I am your most fervent supporter. I will fight people for you because now I get it.

SPEAKER_01 38:47

Yeah, now, but there's a caveat to that, right? We're not saying don't do anything until you know why. We're saying question everything, right? Like, if somebody comes at and is like, hey, I need you to go do this, do this this way, and you're in the middle of like a fire, and you're like, Well, I'm not gonna do that until you explain to me why, because I want to make sure that's the best way. You're gonna get your goddamn ass handed to you when you go back to the firehouse. Like, it's not don't do it until you know why. Like, you respectfully have to sometimes do things, but you can also figure out the best way of doing them later on. So, question things, but always listen, but question.

SPEAKER_03 39:26

Yeah, we've talked about before that that's probably the biggest generational gap, is what it used to be was people waited years probably to ask the why. It was you told you were told this, you did it because that's it. You have you have one mouth, two ears. You're supposed to shut up, listen there. Now you get probies coming in, you get brand new people coming in. When they're asking why, they're not like why. It's because they genuinely want to know. And it's just that that disconnect that it used to be shut up, listen, you do what you're told. Now it's kind of like a they're not trying to be disrespectful, but they they do in the appropriate times want to know why we're doing these things, why you're you're doing this, and the old guard might get it rubbed a little the wrong way because it's like, well, because I told you to.

SPEAKER_02 40:10

So well, that's that's incumbent on that senior guy that adjusting with the times as well, because he's got to be like, Listen, I I like that you asked me the whys. Not every time you ask why, I'm gonna give you the why. You're just gonna have to assume sometimes that I'm telling you the truth. And if I have the time to tell you or the the understanding to tell you, I will. But if even if I don't tell you the why, it there's a reason why I'm not doing that. Lots of why lots of whys. There is, and you gotta be up front with it.

SPEAKER_01 40:41

Yeah, I can I can, and that's the difference, right? Good senior man, bad senior. I can remember when I first got on the job, I was a proby. The the back of the the kitchen wall needed to be cleaned, right? It was all greasy and stuff like that. I swear to God, right? And the guy wanted me to just clean it with like soap and a rag, and he was insistent that I just clean it with a soap and a rag. And I was like, well, this is ridiculous. So I I when he left, I went to the to the the apparatus floor, I got truck wash, which has uh uh you know is really good for cleaning off dirt and grease and and it's got all the the chemicals needed to really do a job. I I I cleaned it with that, it came out spectacular, and he flipped his shit because I didn't do it the way he told me to. And when I tried to figure out why, his only answer was because I told you to do it that way. And I was like, you're a douchebag.

SPEAKER_00 41:30

Yeah, that's micromanagement. Long as you got the job done however you wanted to do it. Maybe even better. Yeah, better.

SPEAKER_01 41:37

I mean, if if he had a reason, if he had a reason, then he then that's great. Then I'm sorry I didn't listen to you. Like you had a reason. But if you don't have a reason, if you're just doing it to make somebody's life more difficult because you can, that's that's a that's a shit bag.

SPEAKER_03 41:51

Yeah, absolutely. Uh the question that we have from our previous guest, Jared, uh, is a two-parter. So it starts off with kind of what we talked about with teaching, but this is more for the op job engine and ladder guys. And his question is how do you make hazmat exciting for dumb engine and ladder guys? When you've got to teach your department, you've got to tell them, hey, this is this is hazmat. What are you really focusing on?

SPEAKER_01 42:18

My answer to that would be you don't. We do. So bring us in to teach your classes. Perfect.

SPEAKER_03 42:26

Moving on.

SPEAKER_01 42:27

Uh um you gotta make things relatable to to the to the audience, and that's it. Make it relatable to the audience. Give them a reason for listening to you, other than you have to sit here and listen to me.

SPEAKER_02 42:41

I mean, there's plenty of reasons out there, like it says it in NFPA, it says it in OSHA. You know, like it's required that we do it. You don't have to like doing it. And that's that's the repackaging. That's the whole, you know, um the the the hardest job of a boss is to get them not to do the job, but to want to do the job.

SPEAKER_04 43:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:04

Right. And that's like a little bit of psychological warfare. That's a little bit of uh being friendly and and not being standoffish, and is there's techniques because there's good bosses and there's shit bosses. There's leaders and there's bosses, right? And then, you know, um, you know, I I come from an area, I I think you guys have volunteers, fire departments up there. Oh, yeah, and you have paid fire departments, right? And and New York City is a large mass, uh, it's a medium-sized fire department uh in the northeast, right?

SPEAKER_03 43:34

And then you have not the largest in the country at all.

SPEAKER_02 43:39

You know, but then you have uh a shitload of volunteer fire departments, and the city guys will say, Oh, all it takes is it's social promotion in in the volunteers. All you need to be is a boss is to be somebody's popular friend. And in the fire in New York City fire department, you got to take a test, right? So I'm like, so what's better? I've got That takes a good test but is a complete asshole, or a guy that's a great leader but is dumb as a box of rocks. And there is no answer to that. No, you want typically the best of both worlds, but each system does not reward for both of them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:19

Yeah. And at least at least the uh at least the voting system can rule out incompetency on the the fire, you know, the fire ground that isn't knowledge based, right? Like you are an incompetent leader. I do not want you as my boss. Boom, I'm voting against you. I could, you know, you could have the most incompetent person in the world learn the information and pass the test and still never be a good boss.

SPEAKER_02 44:44

We have tons of those bosses that they got promoted, tried to go to a firehouse, the firehouse revolted against them, and they found their little closet at the training academy, and they spent the rest of their career in the closet. Because they just weren't bosses.

SPEAKER_03 45:02

Absolutely. Uh, the second part to his question, which I very much uh am interested in, especially because uh in our world, especially in this uh the northern area in Wisconsin with all that, we don't really have a designated team. It's not like we have a hazmat team that's staffed, it's someone that has to get filled. Um, so your first responding unit, and probably still even in New York, is going to be an engine or a ladder truck, someone that maybe not as specialized in hazmat. And his question is how can they affect the first five minutes better?

SPEAKER_02 45:42

I would say meter early and correctly. It will keep I I mean personally, I think monitoring your metering will keep more people safe long term than almost any other corrective action.

SPEAKER_01 46:06

For me, there's not a lot that operations people can do in the grand scheme of like so your first responder, right? I know I say operations, that's your your typical firefighters trained to the operations level. But the stuff that they can do needs to be done properly and with good intentions, and that can make a big difference, right? Like we we pull up on scene first. What's the first thing that we want to focus on? We always want to focus on life. Okay, great. If life is no longer part of the equation, now you're looking at what we call your defensive operations. So to know and understand your defensive operations, you will be able to defend the the scene outside of the hot zone and possibly prevent it from getting bigger, maybe help to bring the situation down from like a 10 to an eight, slow things down a little bit. Uh, and you can do it in a way that prevents people, your people, our people, firefighters, from getting injured, which is only going to make things more difficult when a hazardous material specialist or technician does show up on scene. So, like everything else in the fire service, it's knowing your job and doing it properly.

SPEAKER_03 47:15

Awesome. I like it. Well, that wraps up the questions that we have for you guys. So now the last part before we get to our wrap-up portion that we call the kitchen table, where you guys will just have the mic and share whatever you want, um, is the question for our next guest. Uh I'm going to introduce our next guest a little bit because it's going to be a unique episode because we are kind of doing a sticky subject with nowadays, and it's politics. Um, what we have, our next guest is going to be Mike Thoreau. Uh, he is a Milwaukee firefighter currently. He is a hazmat team member. In fact, he teaches hazmat, um, but he is running for Congress. He's running independent for our district in Wisconsin. Uh, he came to our union. I don't know if he's been years yet, Brennan, uh, because he's in both of our districts, uh, but gave his pitch. He's got some fantastic ideas. He is what Brennan and I truly believe the good person that nowadays everyone wants. It's not this, you have to choose one side. Uh, he's just doing going for what's right. Uh and so we we reached out to him after he came and talked and gave them a little bit of a platform to come on and share some knowledge. We're gonna ask him some firefighting questions as well, but then we're gonna let him get into his his pitch for why why he thinks uh he should get your guys' vote. So uh again, this is gonna be for the Wisconsin Fifth District, but we're kind of hoping that he still just gets a chance to share his story. We're gonna definitely still learn some stuff from him. He's a Milwaukee fire guy, he's got lots of experience. Uh, and I guess you can aim your question at him in whatever way you want. If you want the the Congress running side, the hazmat side, Milwaukee, whatever it is. Uh the floor is yours to come up with one one for him.

SPEAKER_02 48:56

I I have an idea. It might be dumb. It's it's it's a question that he's going to have to answer. I I would love for him to have to answer it live. Okay. So the question is demonstrate how long you can hold your breath. Right? And just have him hold his breath for as long as he can on the screen.

SPEAKER_00 49:22

I like it. I like it. That's a flip.

SPEAKER_02 49:25

Right? But like it's not really a question, it's just you gotta perform.

SPEAKER_03 49:30

And what happens when he asks? What's what is this gonna demonstrate for people? Just you know how much he wants the job.

SPEAKER_02 49:36

Just the longer you can hold it, the more votes you're gonna get. I'll start it ticking.

SPEAKER_01 49:44

I was going down a completely different rabbit hole.

SPEAKER_02 49:47

I wrote it down on the side. I'm like, how long can you hold your breath?

SPEAKER_01 49:53

I I I I would have said, assuming that you are a good guy, how do you how do you enter a system, affect the system without letting the system affect you?

SPEAKER_03 50:04

I love that.

SPEAKER_01 50:05

Like, how are you gonna maintain that I'm I'm I'm a good guy presence when all there is is you know malfeasance and corruption within the system.

SPEAKER_00 50:16

Yeah, yep. I like that. That's a good one. I also like the holding breath part. We shouldn't make them hold the breath.

SPEAKER_03 50:21

Well, we're just I I wrote it down. It's happening. He's happening. He's holding his breath. But that's I love that question because that's exactly what we're getting them uh in for because that was that was one of his his running points and what he told us about is that's that's kind of that's his goal. His his inspiration, I'm not gonna take much away from it, I'm gonna tell the story, but his inspiration basically came from corruption and laziness. He felt he felt that he yeah, you there was representation that just felt that they would get elected no matter what they did, and so they just ended up not doing anything. And he got he got really upset about that. And his his kid asked him, then do something about it.

SPEAKER_01 50:58

So yeah, how do you how do you how do you keep yourself from becoming a beast when you're fighting a beast?

SPEAKER_03 51:04

I love it. Awesome. So, like I said, the last part that we have is what we call the kitchen table, because as you guys know, all the world's problems are solved around it. Uh, and it is anything that you guys would like to share. Uh, the rest of this floor is yours. If there's people to shout out topics you want to dive into a little bit more that we didn't really hit on, uh, just just anything that that you wanted for the uh the listeners to know.

SPEAKER_02 51:27

Oh god. I'll shout out to you guys. I think this is great. And and you know what? The podcasting, um the building of communities, the um the sharing of ideas and concepts and not being afraid to put yourself out there. It's it's rather unique. I you know, we were talking before we started the the the podcast, is that we we started a media company to help incubate shows, you know, get guys that are like, oh, I got something to say, I just don't know how to do it. And um the the the threshold to get on one of these things has never been lower. You know, to start up your own podcast. Honestly, uh I was telling telling them before uh we can renovate this this podcast that costs zero, you know, like legitimately zero dollars, but it's not about the money, it's it's it's about being having the balls to put out what your opinions are and then standing by them. That's not in a lot of supply in today's world, I don't think.

SPEAKER_01 52:33

No, maybe justifying the opinion in a in a respectful, debateful way is in short supply. We could definitely use a little more of that.

SPEAKER_03 52:41

Yeah, yeah, no one's no one's been ever or no one's been less scared to share their opinion than everybody nowadays.

SPEAKER_02 52:49

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, but the conversation's needed. Uh not everybody, you know, just is just as much as uh, you know, everybody wants to have, you know, everybody wants to be the you know Joe Fireman. I want to be on get the irons, I want to get the the nozzle. Well, you know it as well as I do. There are guys that are barely good enough to be hydrants. Yeah, like your that's your whole job. You you pat him on the head and you're like, You you go boy, you'll hit the hydrant. And that's the best he's ever gonna get, right? So not everybody gets a microphone, but I think more people should take a swing and let the market demand it. If if 10 P, you know, if you did 10 episodes and you get some people listening to you and and they want to hear what you think, then you keep going. And if you suck, then hang it up and walk away. You know, absolutely. It's good, man. You guys should keep it up.

SPEAKER_03 53:43

Thank you very much. We appreciate it. We thank you guys extremely much for for taking the time out of your busy schedules to come on, uh, share some awesome knowledge that I know we get some people there. I know uh my old battalion chief is a big hazmat guy, and he tells everybody whenever conference we go to to take your guys' classes. So he was pretty excited to hear that we were going on. I don't think he's gonna listen. I don't know. We'll see. Um, but so I know it's it's kind of awesome because you guys have made that uh just impact. I mean, countrywide, especially maybe worldwide. I don't know exactly where you guys have been, but yeah, that that hazmat, hazmat can be fun, and even if it isn't isn't the hazmat, it's just learning something. And it's been it's been pretty cool to learn about. I love that you guys are reach are further expanding on helping things out as well with the media company and all that stuff, just not stopping. So uh thank you guys for for all that and for coming on.

SPEAKER_02 54:36

Oh, thank you guys for coming on. It was a pleasure. Pleasure, nice to meet you guys again.

SPEAKER_03 54:41

Nice to meet you as well. Thank you everybody for watching and listening. And as always, don't be a shit bag.

SPEAKER_00 54:47

Stay tuned for the next episode. Don't be a shitbag.