Scrap Solo Episode 6 - Justin McWilliams: Training for Search

👊 Guest: Justin McWilliams
‼️ Topic: Training for Search

SCRAP SOLO
A brand-new podcast by Corley, produced by Firehouse Vigilance.
SCRAP SOLO creates a focused space for meaningful conversations:
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➡️ One topic
➡️ One deep, intentional discussion

This platform allows Corley to sit down one-on-one with trusted professionals across all industries... Leaders, Thinkers, and Experts.
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You’ll also hear perspectives that challenge thinking, sharpen perspective, and drive growth no matter your profession or organization.

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Welcome to SCRAP SOLO

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Let's do it ready to solo.

SPEAKER_01 0:14

Scrap Solo episode number six. Welcome to the show, Justin McWilliams. My man, welcome to the solo.

SPEAKER_02 0:23

Thanks, Carly. I'm excited to see what we pop off today.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

Every time we do a solo, we like to say what topic are we going to drill into? What are the bumper rails we're going to stick on this bowling lane so that we don't go off on tangents? So what topic are we going to solo today?

SPEAKER_00 0:41

What's the topic gonna be?

SPEAKER_02 0:46

Like, I want to do training for search, all the way from the recruits and our recruit training for our programs there to our battalions. So with your 10, 15 years in this gig, five years in this gig is uh just training with them because it's always an adventure. Like we are always gonna grow and we gotta know that we we have been doing it wrong in the past because we don't have the information of the future.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

Training for search. Yes, sir. All right, all right, I'm ready to dig into it. Let's start right there and say, what what do you mean when you say training for search? Dig into it.

SPEAKER_02 1:21

Well, I mean, well, just even so last night, this came to me, but we were having uh last night at dinner, we uh we had a little fire, my first fire with my new battalion or my new crew, and we're talking about it. We're just talking about we start putting out fires on the on the uh on the on the screen, and we just start talking about like, what do you think I'm thinking? That's what I want to know. And they aren't training on search every day. And so like they're in a different battalion than I'm used to. So realistically, as like as I I just reflect, it's like we have always got to be training. We have always got to be moving forward and talking about what is now, what is new, because things have changed every single year. For our department, if we started us in recruit class, so when we break down search, when we talk about search, we're talking about like training on search, is that it breaks down on three pieces. It's mindset, it's rescue, and it's search. So we're gonna break that down to like how, what are we actually doing in the fire service to actually make it so it's digestible? We do a lot of things that aren't as digestible. There's a lot of information flowing. It's not set up for learning uh as easily as it is for teaching, because people say search and rescue, but if you look at our uh our manual, it says rescue and search. Anytime I try to try to type try to write it out, it's rescue and search. And I do that so I trigger people's brains, and then it's like, well, that's not as making any sense. It's because it's not a job of rescue and search, it's primary search or secondary search. Then we go to rescue. And so I think we've done ourselves a disservice by trying to just keep on clumping things together. We need to separate them out, walk, crawl, run, whatever you want to call it. I don't care. But it's more about like we got to take ourselves back in time and think about when we are brand new, how do we make it digestible for us when we are kids?

SPEAKER_01 3:14

Mindset rescue search. Is that in order? Is that what you're talking about? Is that a is that a sequentially that the way you want to teach them or the way you want them executed? Or talk to me.

SPEAKER_02 3:24

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, without the mindset, I mean, I use so we used to put search or this this class, so the whole search week in the very beginning because I wanted to set the mindset of the whole department. It worked. But what didn't work is that we were cramming too much in the fur in the beginning and they didn't understand the fire ground yet. So they didn't have like nozzles, strings, stretching lines. They had a little bit of forcing doors, a little bit of ladders, but they hadn't had like that fire ground pace of like understanding what they were actually gonna do. And so we actually had to separate it out. So we'd like to do mindset, and then later on, we start doing a few days of rescue and a little bit of search, and then later on, so we bring it through our 16 weeks, we started separating it way out. And this wasn't this uh I used to run most of the most of this, and now I pass it off to a whole college trade that they do, they they're the ones developing this, and that what they saw is that it was so much information for our recruits to take in and try to apply it that it we were getting stalled out and they're spending a lot of time trying to like let them know, like, hey, dude, well, fire attack is gonna do this. Well, some of them didn't don't know what fire attack's gonna do. They don't understand that they're gonna stretch lines through the front door. So, like, we got to allow them to stretch through the front doors. We gotta we gotta understand forcing the door for them. And then if they're in the way, we got to go around them. So without having all that in play, is that they're just playing on some of the make-believe. And I didn't really get that when I was there. I didn't understand, but we were also hiring a lot of laterals then and people from other departments. And so when that went away, probably like you know, 2020 era, I'd say, because it's a it was a lot different getting jobs prior to 2020, I believe. There's people now that are like leaving the service, and not as many people want to be uh, there's a lot of departments that are it's hard to recruit. And so I think we're getting a lot of people that they were they were in every industry, and they're like, nah, I never want to be a firefighter until uh, well, there's an application shows up and we're gonna check it out. And so, and there's a lot of them that are medics that you know they get rolled into a fire department because um they're a medic and they want to transport for a department that has like good benefits and good time off. And so they default default to they're gonna become firefighters. So we've got to learn how to break it down so they can actually digest it as well.

SPEAKER_01 5:54

That's a big deal, is understanding the people because your first attempt was was starting with just search and just filling them up with this mindset of there's just the right mindset towards search and rescue, and that was just information overload because they had no context to put it into a frame.

SPEAKER_02 6:08

And I was very short-sighted on that because my thing was is that I really wanted the mindset. I would go later on down uh into the academy and they'd still do searches later on, obviously, as we were doing fire ground operations, but it wasn't until like we really built out this cadre that we had guys that had the younger generation that uh were breaking down and really giving us like layouts and syllabuses of how we'd teach this, because I just do it off my mind. I just I didn't write anything down, I just do it. And so when they did that, I think it was more a digestible to understand what we need to implement and how we can separate it out. And so that definitely changed the trajectory of how we teach.

SPEAKER_01 6:48

So let me let me dig in real quick, because you're saying rescue and search, search and rescue. Most people just kind of use those synonymously as this one operation, you know, and and it's kind of a blanket term. So break it down for me in what you mean when you say and you when you're when you're saying that you're separating them in the mindset section and and building them out.

SPEAKER_02 7:07

I mean, so realistically, like when you say search and rescue, I mean, if you're a civilian, where's their mind go? Right away, they go to wild, like the wild, like out here in the forest, they think, oh yeah, you're part of search and rescue, you're looking for people. Well, that's kind of the mindset that I think people get into that is like, oh, we're search and rescue. And it's like, no, you're just like we didn't separate them out, and then it's like, no, we gotta focus on one than the other, because it's like if we're not good at one, we're not gonna be good at the other. And if we're not good at this one, we're not gonna be good at this one because we're not preparing for it. But when we're able to separate them out and understand, it's like building a sentence. You don't start building sentence and punctuations, you start understanding letters, capitalization, whatnot, how to do that, and then we start putting the letters, the words together, and then we take the words and then we put sentences, and then we start building on and continuing on. You cannot start the other way because now it's like, oh no, it's just writing. And it's like, no, we're not just writing. We actually have to come back and understand what that structure looks like. And so if you do, if you take too much of the time, we're setting ourselves up for failure. It's like, oh, it's just write as you talk, and it's like that's not how you work. I write as I talk, and people are like, holy crap, dude. We know when it's an email from you because you write how you talk, that's not how you write.

SPEAKER_01 8:22

This stream of consciousness is not working for us.

SPEAKER_02 8:24

No, no. So I do bullet points in my emails now. I'm like, this, this, bye. So that's what they're doing. Is that they're breaking that down because my stream of consciousness, when I was teaching back then, was all out of my brain. Like it was all off of what I've learned, how I how I want to teach it, all my failures, and I wouldn't have it written down. When you start writing it down, you start understanding what the layout is. And when that layout happens, then you can start breaking each piece of it down to where we're having issues. It's like, oh, we're having issues, people making decisions on where to enter. And it's like, well, why'd you enter there? Or how they're moving through the structure. And it's like, oh, well, we need to take time, back it up, talk about search, not rescue. Don't don't um interrupt their search with a victim. Because once you interrupt their search with a victim right away and they're still learning search, we're not doing them any good.

SPEAKER_01 9:16

Right, it's a whole other skill set at that point, and they haven't even mastered, they haven't even mastered the first set, right?

SPEAKER_02 9:22

Absolutely. Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_01 9:23

No, it's starting to make sense. It's starting to make sense.

SPEAKER_02 9:25

And so then when we start doing that, we start putting all these people in there, and then like we interrupt their search, and then what? And so, like, even on a on a you bring it even bigger, farther out, you start doing that on the fire ground. And like, how do you pass off a search? Are you going to do you go back and search that same area? What is the battalion doing? Are they gonna, are they going to upgrade the alarm and then like backfill that search? And then how do they do it? So realistically, we need to just break it way down. And I think that people, just like searching, just like training, we're going too fast and we're focused so much on, well, we don't have enough time. Well, you know what? We need to make time. Like 15 years ago, search was not a big thing with most departments. There's very few departments that we're really actually prioritizing the search.

SPEAKER_01 10:09

I think you're being very generous by saying 15 years. I think for some five years ago. I think no, I think you're being generous. But go ahead. Two years ago. Two years ago.

SPEAKER_02 10:18

I know, dude. There's very large departments that weren't searching two years ago. They weren't teaching search. They were just searching with people and saying, like, there's a lot, tons of the biggest departments in the nation were like teaching out of an IFSI book for an hour. They didn't teach uh search in the academy. Uh, they would just show up and just fill the fill the building with people and then and then over failures and people dying, dude. Um, and or they didn't have the culture in their department and they realized that. And so they're like, well, these departments are getting the people. Why? Well, the culture, like they they're talking about search, they're they're doing the job, and so they're realizing that they have to catch up. And that's a tough place to be, especially because if you don't do it and you haven't done it for years, and you're like, ah, we just soak it with people, is like you have to look out. And so what's been successful for like a lot of the what we have going on now is like with our manual is like whatever, 60, 70 pages just for the chapter of search. And um we have a layout for our our recruit classes that I just send all that paper out, the company performance standards to people. I'm like, take the information you want, cross off our name, put your name, and then adjust it to your department for your level right now. Because a lot of time they're like, oh, we can't do that. And it's like, no, you can't do that right now because you A, you don't understand it. Right B, because you like you can't break down every little piece when you read it of like this is why, this is why, this is how. Because like people will do all the what ifs. And it's like, it's not the what if. It's if this, then this. If this, then this. It's like you hear it all the time. It's like, oh, it depends on conditions. And it's like, no, let's talk about when it's these conditions, then we do this. When it's these conditions, then we do this. And so, but that is where we have to go. So the reason we broke it down like this is for understanding. And understanding, and so when you teach, you have to teach people, and you have to do it in a discussion. You cannot teach people. I try to go and present, I tell them it's not a presentation, this is a discussion. And it's a discussion for your understanding of simplification so that you can, when you do a job, when you go to search, you go to uh make a rescue, is that you can tell me why you did it, what steps you took, the process in your head. So very shortly, like this is the success, is that El Dorado Hills fire. They told me when I went in there in June, we don't do a lot of we don't do a lot of fires. Well, a lot of departments tell me that. They didn't do a lot of like searches, like they didn't know much about search. So we broke down the teacher whole department search. Then they took it, we made a progress for a year, about a nine months to a year, of how to do little pieces like parallel ladders, rescues, up and out of windows, down ladders. Like I'm talking like little pieces of blocks. And then we went into company drills, and then we went to multi-company drills, and then we went to battalion drills, and then we went to live fire battalion drills. December, they threw out a video of a working fire in McMansion. They're on the port, the roof of the first story on McMansion. They're dumping in windows. People are lighting them up in the comments, and their firefighters are coming back and typing out, hey, we had fire in the stairs. The lion was going through the front door. We wanted to go around them because we wanted to target the bedroom because fire had been located and they're confining it, so they're going to search the immediate fire area. And this is why we want to target the bedrooms. If we use the ladders, we are not only have direct access in, but when we locate a victim there, we have an ability to get them out and without waiting for a ladder. Or we'd have to pull them back through the structure, back over fire attack, back over the hose, back through the conditions. And so that is what we need to do. That's why it's so important to break this down. That's why training and breaking it down and not rushing it is so important.

SPEAKER_01 14:03

Right on, man. No, and to see that feedback, like in real time, uh, the the progress made from a single department, brother, that's gotta be that's gotta be rewarding.

SPEAKER_02 14:12

Oh, it's it's it's so it happens all the time. Lubbock Fire, Texas, they have changed drastically in the same amount of time about drastically. They're making rescues. They had two rescues uh in one fire a few months ago. And I mean, because of their actions, one guy going through a front door and doing life fire layout and understanding the life fire layout and the importance of it. When he he looked down, got some lift, made a grab. He when he made the grab, they've been training so hard and so like down to pieces. But they when he pulled them out, he shut the front door to control the flow path. How many people have that thought, right? Well, and the thing is, what's important about that is that he they had two other guys going through the backside making another grab. And so, how much that affected the firecrown in general and the outcome?

SPEAKER_01 15:01

The actual growth and everything. Allowing them to make that grab on the backside.

SPEAKER_02 15:05

Absolutely. And so, like, when people are like the original solo we were talking about doing is take a breath, it's like, dude, that guy took a breath and then he shut the door because of the training, the breakdown of it, because he understood the importance of that one piece and how one piece of everything that we do affects the rest of the fire ground, the progress, the outcome of our victims, the ability to search.

SPEAKER_01 15:28

And the thing that I really am already getting from what you're saying is it's not just teaching people what to do. I mean, that's obviously important and how to do it, but again, that that all-important word, that why, why are you doing this? Like, why are you making the decision that you're making in this moment, right? And that's where you chunk it down into those small pieces so that they are able to articulate the reason why they're doing that specific piece.

SPEAKER_02 15:53

Absolutely. I mean, and that's when I think that I'm successful on going out and doing what I do, is that I don't focus on a lot of like what are the uh when I teach with Brothers in Battle and we do a lot of hands-on classes, we're doing like uh we're doing awesome scenarios. I mean, you're not gonna get a lot better. FD FDTN does an amazing job with Life Fire and stuff like that as well. But like you're doing, you're making yourself better. If you bring your company, you're bringing your company's getting better, but you're doing it together. Is that there's a gap between getting hired and going through this training that we're getting and those classes, though, because those classes are more real life, but the gap that between it right here is that a lot of them get mindset, but they don't understand like the breakdown of the rescue, as in like just like a victim out of a window. So, what I love about outside influence is like we're all trying to get on the same page. It's ready, lift. That's not Justin McWilliams, that is Cody Tristrail, that's Ben Schultz, that's Corley Moore, because it's so important when we get into that, and we've had those rescues that people are saying on three, and it's like one, two, and then one guy lifts and the other guy doesn't, and then it's on three, and then they start lifting, and that's where we start failing. And so, like breaking it way down to just that piece alone, I think people think I'm crazy. But I'm like, if it's not just, oh, just grab them and go, we'll figure out when we get there. Because I have I know plenty of firefighters, including myself, that have made grabs, made multiple graphs, dude. That I know guys that made freaking a dozen, 15, 20 grabs. And if you and they didn't learn to really break it down and have this plan A and this execution for the best for the victim until years later, after we've already had 10, 12, and then we're like, what did we really do? Well, the outcome, we always used to base it on the outcome. Oh, they lived, so it's successful. No, it's about actions and the actions based on the decisions we made. That's what makes us successful. Because we've had a rescue, we had double rescue um a couple years ago that we pulled out two people. Air break to both victims out was three minutes. They both ended up dying. It was successful because of the actions of the decisions. Yeah, earlier that year we had another double rescue. Air break to both victims out was 10 minutes. They both lived. What was successful is their is their decisions and their actions on the fire ground, not the outcome. And you can talk to them and uh and and talk to these guys, and like they they can explain to you the decision process of from the air break to victim out to EMS, of all the steps of how they entered, why they moved, well, how they split search and why they're able to split search, why they decided to take the victim from the hallway to the bedroom instead of the hallway to the door area and then out the front door. That's what we're looking at. That's success. So we're seeing truth on the end, and not just my department. We're seeing it across the country because of the knowledge they get they have and understanding.

SPEAKER_01 18:53

Oh, the impact and the sharing and the yes, the the rising tide is raising the boats that are willing to listen. That's the way I'll say it, because it's not all boats. It is definitely not all boats. But I want to get back to the mindset rescue search. I want to I want to circle back to mindset and say, okay, what you lead off with mindset. So give me the the the as concise as you can make it. What is the what is the selling, not selling point, what is the opening point, the opening salvo of mindset?

SPEAKER_02 19:22

Well, how I open it now, because I always change it. I always change it, it's always upgrading, it's always doing something different. I'm always looking for feedback. Right now, how I'm opening it up is the most powerful number in the world, is one. I look in the audience, I grab people. You got a kid? Yes or no? Like, yeah, I got a kid. How many kids? Three. Does one of your kids matter? Yes or no? Obviously they do. I'm like, we sell as in 100 line of duty deaths a year. We're sell as in, oh, there's 2,500, 3,500 civilian deaths inside fire every year. There have been 18 civilian deaths in Florida to date. There's been 54 in Pennsylvania. Like we look at these numbers and we like, we use too many numbers and we try to sell the top number, whatever we're selling, is that like, oh, we have uh whatever, 3% of our victims are everybody's out, or 4%. People want numbers and data to sell to their chiefs, saying, Look at these numbers, these big numbers. Like we need to search, we need to prioritize search. But realistically, if we break it down, most of those numbers don't really matter. One is a number that matters. That's the only one that matters. Your last fire matters. Did you learn from it or you did not? When you did screw up, did you share that information? The last civilian rescue, what'd you learn from that? The last civilian death, what did you do about that? What was your timing? What was your actions? What was your decision? So, really, the next fire, the next victim, the next fatality we have, that's the only one I care about. The next one. The next time we have a Mayday, that's the one I'm preparing for. Because if we look at it, the numbers is that if you think, oh, 2,500 civilian deaths, okay, well, I'm not going to have that 2,500, not even my career. And those numbers don't affect how I search. The number that matters is the one. And so when we break down that mindset, that's how I usually open it up, is that why focus on this vague abyss, this huge lot when it's all realistically, it's like it's either right or it's wrong.

SPEAKER_01 21:27

No, I love, I love the one. I love the one. And if you can get people to buy into that, if you can get people to accept that as the norm, then that's where you're going to really start making an effect on the culture of that department when you start buying into that. Now, and that's not to say, and I don't think you're saying this at all, that all those numbers, other numbers don't matter because they do matter and they are relevant and they are important data points. But the mindset, when you're talking about mindset rescue search, the mindset is one, starting with the one. I really love like when you say this, I may even Steal it from you in the future is saying, You have kids. How many kids you got? All right. Does that one of those kids matter? I love that because that's starting to get relevant. That's starting to get very relevant in their mindset.

SPEAKER_02 22:12

I mean, you know me. I'm like, and when I go talking, like do discussions, like, dude, I always get in their brains. I am like, I can't just present. I hate it when I'm on a stage. It's very impersonal to me. I have to go out there and grab these people because that's the thing. It's like, okay, let's take this house fire. People over a house fire, the one house fire. And then uh I'm like, okay, well, your driver's kids are inside now, Lieutenant. Your chief's kids are inside. Your kids are inside. I mean, that's the thing. Is it like, would you do something different? And a lot of them used to. And a lot of them nowadays, they used to a lot. And now we're getting more into the answer is almost no. It's like, well, if it's good enough for your lieutenant's kids, your driver's kids, your kids, then why aren't we doing that at all fires? It doesn't make sense. We're not, and I'm not talking about like I'm talking about decision making of like stretching a line. The first two engine company stretches a line. The first line, the first engine, that's what allows us to do everything we else we're going to do. They go for confinement. So with the mindset, that's how I opened it up. But it always changes. We talk about a fire happened years ago, and um the priority on the fire ground. And so it's like you got multiple people jumping, you got multiple people trapped inside. First do engine company, what are you gonna do? I'm like, what's the priority for the second due rig? So we'll just say it's a second new as a truck, because usually people are like, oh, you're either gonna search or they're gonna go vent. And it's like, what are you gonna do? Right. And we talk about and discuss that of like, and then I asked, okay, the best company in your guys' state, the best in the state for topside vent, how long does it take airbreak to pop a hole in the ceiling? And this one fire, whatever, blah, blah, blah, to make it simple, is like they say four minutes, five minutes, eight minutes, depending where you're at in the country. And I'm like, okay, sounds good. Now you take that same company, you go all in for search. Now I go, why did they topside vent? And they usually go, well, because it's better for the for the victims and the search, it makes it easier. Okay, sounds good. How long does it take if you put all of them in for search in that same building? Three minutes. Okay, hold on a second. So if you can search it in three minutes without it venting from the top, but yet you're not helping anybody out then because you're venting topside after you can get the search done. So it's like kind of that kind of mindset of like, what's the priority on the fire ground? Would you have that victim inside? If two are topside and two are inside, or all are on topside, now what? It's like you got to wait for the next new company. Or it's gonna be fire attacks, so the heels got to do it by themselves. And so it's like, what is your plan for a victim? Not what is your plan for the fire ground? The fire ground will come. Obviously, we understand that. But it's like when we do have that victim, and why would we not always not assume or work? I don't like to use the word assume there's a victim inside. I'm just like, why don't we always operate like there is a victim inside? And then if that is the plan, it should be the plan always. Now, if you're an OSHA state and you've got to wait for two out, that's different. I get it. You know, you can't go, okay, we had no two out because we have reports people inside. I don't try to touch that, that wizard because I'm not here to argue with the Chiefs of like what is right and wrong, if we're gonna be OSHA compliant or not. That is way beyond what I want to talk about. I believe one way, but I can't waste I that's not where my specialty comes from. I want to talk about the priorities of the stuff.

SPEAKER_01 25:36

That's not where you're gonna spend your you're not gonna spend your energy against that machine and and fighting that fight, because that's not the point of the mindset. That's not the point of the mindset.

SPEAKER_02 25:46

Absolutely. Then we go down that, you know, I talk about a lot of line of duty deaths. Uh not a lot, I talk about line of duty deaths and like how they used to sell it and how we talk about it now. It used to be over a hundred, and now I'm like, you know, breaking it down now and like every year. We look talk about and then like this is how many firefighters died in line inside a burning structure, and like this is how many from Bill Carey, his numbers. And then this is how many firefighters died during search, like this year, this year, zero, one, zero, three. And like I take right, I pick like three of those, those, uh, three of those fires, and because I am super educated on those, is like, as in not just reading the NIASH reports, but I talked to those members. I talked to the members of the crew that they had a firefighter die. I talked to the Rick crew that pulled up out. Uh, I go visit those departments quite often, and I want to know what really happened. And when you do that, I can learn from that one fire, going back to the one. And I'm like, now we're learning from Ladder 35 San Antonio, 2017. The only firefighter that died in a burning structure was uh firefighter Jason Deemed that um ladder 35 in San Antonio, and we can talk about that. And like we can talk about what's one thing that we can take away from it. 2020, we had lost two firefighters in Porteville. We can talk about what happened there. 2025, Jeff Fiala died in Honolulu. And I'm like, this is what actually happened on this fire. This is how you can change it for your department today. This is the mindset is that it wasn't because they didn't have a line with the search company. That would not have helped them on floor two. What would have helped them was all these other little pieces because there's no line of duty death that I have read yet that ended up either the assignment killed them, because this is usually not the it's not the assignment that kills them, it's multiple pieces in on the fire ground, and it's very rarely just one firefighter that made a decision and then and then ended up dying. It's usually a bad size up, bad lines weren't stretched interior, multiple pieces were happening. So, like that's why you go down and so no effect. Absolutely. And then you go down the mindset of like searching through windows and searching through doors, and then obviously I'm not a huge acronym. I hate acronyms, I hate sayings, I hate all that bullshit because a lot of myths, like a lot of the sayings out there are myths. Cars in the driveway, they mean this. They don't mean shit. They kids hide underneath the bed. That's not true. There's a couple found underneath there. There's more 65-year-olds located underneath the bed than there is kids. Now, even if 99% of kids, this is where the numbers come from, they want to sell this. Even if 99% of kids were located underneath the bed, that's not the priority. The priority is top of the bed, then underneath, because of toxicity. Because the kid on top of the bed is going to die quicker than the kid underneath. And so it's like when you enter, and then we go window versus door, is that we enter doors because of this. We usually enter doors because we are searching for fire. That's the main body of fire area, typically. We want the line to go in the front door because it's easiest access to the stairs, the hallway, the kitchen, those areas. But when we do that and we break it down, then we break down like the line of duty desks. There's 19 to date from 08 till today of uh searching through a door. There's zero from 08 till today searching through windows. But you cannot compare those numbers. They're just numbers, statistical data from historic. But when a firefighter enters a window, what's the difference? If we're searching for life, not for fire, is that there's no difference is that when you force a door, I want to teach our firefighters, you're venting. When you break out a window, you're venting. And then people, I'm like, what do they teach you about vent on VES, like the acronym VES? And they're like, you know, a lot of the time they're like, well, they just like size it up, break it out, size it up, enter. And I'm like, the problem is that V, the VIN, is actually, we can talk probably eight hours just on that decision-making process and understanding the VINT. And realistically, if you're gonna have an acronym, it should be DNVES, it should be do not vent. Because if you could open that window and enter and shut the window to make sure you can go isolate, then you would. And like, and then people end up, they want to take out two panes when they should have just taken out the bottom pane and entered because they want to, they're told, oh, you take out the top panes so the fire, the smoke can lift because we want to vent. I'm like, you do not want to vent. Now, if you have knowledge that there's water on the fire and the fire is gonna knock down, okay, then you can vent. It's not that big a deal, and then you enter. But if you're on floor two, it's not gonna lift that well because you're getting all the smoke on floor one. If it's a floor one fire and it's a one-story house, then if you vent, then yeah, you'll start getting lift throughout the rest of the structure. And so that's the problem we have is like when we we break it down, we don't break it down, is we skip so much information. And so then between the door and the window, is it if you locate fire when you go through a uh a window and you go down the hallway and it while fire is coming out of bedroom? Do you want to confine it? Yes. Do you want to communicate it to the outside? Yes. Well, same with the door. When you go in a door and down a hallway and you go into a bedroom, do you want to shut the door? Yes. So the eye. And it's like, well, that's the same with the when you go through a window. It's the same thing. And so the decision-making process is the same. It's just that when we enter a window and we enter door are different decisions on when we want to do one versus the other.

SPEAKER_01 31:11

I want to ask something because this is very important to me as I talk to Justin McWilliams. You are search culture. And I know you separate yourself from that and say, well, you try to make your comments as search culture and things like that, and remove Justin McWilliams from it. But you know, you are you are synonymous with search, and you are a loud drum that beats. And one of the things I love about you is you love to bring up discussion. Like you do. You do you don't shy away from it. You say, here's what I'm saying, tell me why. Tell me why, so we can discuss it. You're not, it's not, you're not doing it for clickbait, you're not doing it for likes or anything else. You're like, I want to find out the best reason why. And I love that for for creating discussion. I love that for creating discussion. But the other part of it is you are search culture. And so a lot of people seem to get this idea from you that you are all about search is the first thing done, as opposed to, and I think you've already alluded to it a little bit, is line still's got to get stretched, water's got to get on the fire. That is still what the main, I mean, to talk to me about that that mindset side of it of people who I would say falsely attribute that to you, that you downplay the importance of water on the fire. It's crazy.

SPEAKER_02 32:15

It's because people assume, they assume, they assume, because I just want to talk about search. Well, I talk about search because, and then what affects search because that's the page. I got to stay it in my lane. I got to stay the barriers. Like, I can't go off and I'm talking about all the other things. We can a little bit, as in like everybody, anybody in my department would know. They show it to my house on Engine 11, first two engine, my wife's out front and says, hey, Paisley and Parker in that room right there in that window. They will stretch a line. It's a working fire, you will stretch a line for confinement. Because people believe that when you have reports to people inside, they start calling it, oh, we're gonna go in for rescue. No, you're not. You don't understand what you're doing. Rescue is after you locate them. You haven't located them yet. There's too many unknowns. You haven't, have you found the fire or no? Have you confined the fire or no? What's the extension of the fire? How big is the victim? Okay, you have Paisley and Parker in there who are light and little, but all of a sudden you look, you you fall into her mom's showing up, and my mom's in there, and then they're a little bit larger and it slows you down. And like, oh, just two minutes, the next two engines only two minutes away. Well, in two minutes, when they arrive, that that fire is four times that size. Now they have their stretch. Now it's eight times the size, it's one more minute. And like people don't understand that. And it's like, no, I talk about search to the depth of like I talk a lot about the first two engine company operations, and that their job is to locate fire and confine it. Which locating fire is the first job of search. Once they confine it, they give them enough hose for extinguishment. The heel searches the immediate fire area, which is the first place we search for life. So when those two things are done, which is done most fires across the nation, because the engine companies show up first for most apartments, almost every fire for them, then we can search for life as in toxicity, top down, or bedrooms on a one story because the toxicity is equal, and bedrooms back. And so when we do that and they understand that, that's why it's so important to have these deeper discussions, not just have present presentations. That's why I like the discussion piece, like you're saying. It's like it has to go back and forth, back and forth. People want me to do like videos and send them out and like for like the classes I have. And I'm like, no, I won't, I don't want a full class out there because you aren't in the room for discussing it. I can't have you interpreting what you what you think you're hearing in there. It's that if you're not part of the discussion, then you there's assumptions you're gonna start putting in there, and we cannot have that. And so, like the mindset, yeah, dude, it's mindset is more about the fire ground operations of how does it we allow and support search? How do we get that done? It's not that dangerous. We've had four line of duty deaths searching through windows in all the world all the time that we know that are documented. Four. And 1945 was the first one in London, and the last one was in 1989, ladder 131. Is that three of the four had to do with children? And they decided that they were gonna get injured or worse because they were searching for children. The fourth one was in Chicago, 1986, Super Bowl Sunday, is they had a hotel fire, they had like 34 rescues. And Edmund went in, he went in a window, third story, he knew he had to rescue a lady towards the end of the hall. And so he took a higher risk as well. And so all four laundry duty deaths, and like that's the mindset is the mindset is like we're not dying searching through windows because we're searching through windows and forgetting to the isolate. It's not that, it's because we're taking a higher risk. And then we are we the four have died in there because they had to report to people inside, which most departments only search through windows when they have reports of people inside. And that's dangerous to me. Right. Because when you do that, if you don't topside vent, and that's not a normal operation for your department, and you do it when only when you have to, that's when the risk goes up. Why do we want to put our firefighters at more risk? No one would say they would do that. But yet, if you break it down and we're only searching through windows when we've reported people inside, that's exactly what we're doing.

SPEAKER_01 36:05

We're turning it into a low frequency, high-risk event by choice almost. Yeah. No, that makes sense. That absolutely makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 36:13

So, like, that's how it goes. So the just the mindset alone, we go, you know, that's where we hit. I mean, I hit on it pretty hard, and but it's like it has like historical data, decision making, some of our myths and legends out there and whatnot. And so I just try to break it down and like I'm not a I I try not to go too hard on like I don't want to beat anybody down. I don't want anybody feeling uncomfortable because I want to I want to capture everybody in the audience. Is that I'm already aggressive enough as in like how I talk and what I do, and people are like, oh, well, is this fact? And I'm like, I just when I believe, I always talk with um, I always talk with uh confidence. Sure. Uh say something is like when I go to a class and you don't talk with confidence, I'm turned off. And so when I'm when I'm turned off, like I'm like, well, I don't want to do that as a as an instructor or as a discussioner. Like, I want you to speak with confidence. But yet, confidence enough in yourself that if you're wrong, then you admit it. And confidence enough when someone questions you is that you could have a discussion and you don't get your feelings hurt. You don't feel like it's a negative, it's actually a positive. Because when people try to question me or they do question me, it's good because they're listening, they're questioning me, they're they're educating me right now. As in, they're educating me that I didn't explain it well enough. Or I'm wrong.

SPEAKER_01 37:31

Right. No, and that's the thing. That confidence part is so important as an instructor because you need to have that confidence. Otherwise, like you said, if you come in there mealy mouth and and and lacking any sort of uh conviction, then you're gonna lose, you're gonna lose, especially firefighters, especially firefighters. But the the key is the confidence with the humility, because that humility is what allows you to say, okay, I'm I'm willing to learn. I can learn from you also. Let's have a discussion about it. Let's see if I am wrong. And I'm I'm okay with that because that means we're both getting better. And that has to be there because if you lack that humility, then it's just arrogance. And we all know what we think of arrogant instructors and how that plays out.

SPEAKER_02 38:07

Oh, anybody arrogant in the fire service or in your everyday life. You wouldn't choose to hang out with them and you're not gonna learn from them. Right. Like that humility piece is like it's stuff it's talked about a lot, but yet it's like a leadership quality and whatnot, but people don't actually, I don't see it as much in action. Like we can talk about all you want. You can go as many classes you want about humility, but it doesn't make you humble until you actually have the action. That's what's humble. And I'm not talking about the easy ones, I'm talking about being consistent of it. Is it when you admit you're wrong in front of 200 people, thousand people, three people, one person, dude? You just gain my trust. I don't have to like you, I don't have to agree with you, but you just started gaining my trust because I'm like, okay, we're good now. When you stop that and I start questioning that piece of you, you can't lead me anymore.

unknown 39:03

Right.

SPEAKER_02 39:03

I can't lead you. I cannot lead you if you do not trust the words that I say.

SPEAKER_01 39:08

Wait, wait, now now we're getting off the solo topic because this is beautiful. Yeah, we are. Damn it. Yeah, but but we'll get back to it. So mindset, you covered mindset. So let's let's let's swing back to rescue and search, and we'll stay soloed. We might have to do another solo just on humility, but yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:21

So let's go into rescue. So, like once we hit nine set, then we go out and we do rescue. Is that uh I do do a rescue class, like a presentation, but realistically, we can talk about all that rescue stuff on the fire ground. Let's get them moving. Everybody, like most people learn way more if we just do low pressure, be out there in shorts. I don't care. Like, let's just go out there. We don't have to have full gear. People like, oh, we gotta be in all our gear, and we don't. Stop that. Like, let's build up to it. It's gonna be fine. Let's get that that thought first. So when we do rescue, we talk about, we go out there, we talk about how to rescue first, not decision making on rescue, but how to rescue. So, like 15% of our victims, we usually walk or they crawl out. How do you manage that? Break it down. When they're combative and they're conscious, how do you manage this? You just walk through it. We use you, you use me as, and we just walk through that little pace. And then we go into, okay, now they are they're laying on the ground. How are we gonna drag them head first? This is our plan A. We don't have a plan A, B, 12, 13 for head first. We have like this is our plan so that when you and I show up, you know how to assist me on making that head first rescue. And then we go, how what do we do when we go feet first? This is how we do feet first. This is how we drag them out. Because you have shorter arms or smaller hands. This is how you crap them. Because when you get in there, it's like this is not just the way. This is our plan, but you have to understand with your arm length or your hand size, is that you might not help with this, but you might need to grab like a beaner that's on your belt or your belt loop, not a belt loop, but a uh the extension of your uh bailout belt or an SCB strap to get that grip. And so you break that piece down because everybody on the fire ground is different. And it's like we need to make you successful. And then when I need to have problems with the struggle busting with that, what's the next step? And that way you can break it down to like, hey, we like feet first versus head first because of the length of our rescue, because we're either 10 feet or we can be four feet long. And then inside of a building, you need to be four feet so you can go up and around things. Is that when you're laying down head first, is it you're 100% friction? When you're feet first, you're like 22% friction. I don't even know the number, but it's a lot less because and you're a lot shorter. A lot less. It's like this is why. And then we work through that, they do it on each other. And that they do it on each other because we need we don't do these big adult victims that are that are dummies and mannequins because they don't emulate what a real victim is at all. Not at all. Sure. They have too many handles, they got too much crap going on. So once we get through that and go into rescue, and then it's like, okay, what about a victim out of a window? The and the only thing we break it down to I don't like they show them how to grab them, but realistically, the biggest things are like head first, face down, ass up. That's what we do. And then after that, it's like we walk through these paces and we do ground floor. And when we do ground floor, people start coming up with ways. And then it's like, okay, now let's take them upstairs. And then when they go out the window on the on the upper story, they learn that the outside firefighter cannot help do the lift because it doesn't work out that way. So you have to have a real victim. You have to have you on being uh being rescued. And so it changes the game, it slows them down. They realize that you have to uh you put the head on the short side of the window. So when you get the legs, that uh you have more room on one side of the ladder versus the other. So when you get the legs out, that you don't have to go vertical, is that they have more room for them. And then we bring them down the ladder. And so, like when you break that down, so now you how you know how to drag head first, feet first, you know how to roll them over, you know how to spin them, you know how to take them out windows, you know how to take them out down ladders. So, like, there's not many other areas, and then you can talk about obviously window-to-door conversions, which you break that piece down and when we do that or isolate space. Then we work on sure decision making for how we are going to uh rescue a victim. Of like, now you go in the front door and you're in the main front door area in the fire area, you've been through the front door, you're gonna go through that. That's just how it's most likely gonna be done. Plan A. And then if you go through a window, if you find them in that room, you're coming out that window. Unless there's only two for fire attack, two for search. You went through an upper story window and you can't get them up and out of the window with two because they're 230 pounds. So it's like those are the pieces we have to break down. When you have a baby, okay, we'll keep them low. No matter what it looks like, you gotta keep them low. They realize that they breathe faster than we do. So do you run out? Like they still might take four breaths. So keep them low. You don't have to be down on the tripod. Just carry them down. Then you go to the window. There's no one to receive them on the outside of the window, and you're on floor one. What do you do with the baby? You drop them. You put them down there, you lean out the window. You don't drop them, but you play them on the ground, just like an adult victim. You'd be like, oh, drop them out and then dump over the top of them. So once you start getting into these little reps, they start understanding the decision-making process and what it actually takes to actually get somebody out because they're bringing you and I out. And so like it changes their thought process of going through a door or a window or what it's actually going to take at their ground floor or their upper floor. Who's on scene? And if you've already thrown a ladder, which if you work for my department and you're going to a multi-story structure and you're assigned search, you will throw a ladder to a window, no matter if you're going to go by window or not. You do not go back for ladders, you bring it with you. It does slow us down to get an air interior sometimes, but it gives us the option because too many people are worried about air brake, air break to victim location and not air break to victim out to EMS.

SPEAKER_01 45:08

The full picture.

SPEAKER_02 45:09

The full picture. And so we worry about all those pieces and the drags and the linoleum and the carpet and working over it because sometimes when you go to linoleum, people are naked. You got to pick them up. The one thing we don't really want to do is we don't want to pick them up usually, but we have to. We like, okay, it's linoleum, pick them up, move them to the next, and drop them back on the ground. If they're if they're gonna fight you, you gotta go with a bear hug and keep their airway up the one time we do because they're gonna pull off your mask. And so we we mimic that. We have we mimic people inside, what they're gonna do, and they start making these decisions and high this.

SPEAKER_00 45:42

With full vision.

SPEAKER_02 45:43

Yeah. And then and then we can roll into search. And so, like, once you break down that, then we roll into search. And when we roll into search, is that we do it opposite of most places, is that we search through windows before they search through doors. But when you search, start searching, we we cannot just start dumping them in and say, hey, there's the steps you're gonna do. It's like, hey man, let's take some time, let's go do a little field trip, let's go look at buildings. Where are the what do these windows lead to? On a two-story, where are the bedrooms? On a one-story, where are the bedrooms? What's the front door lead to? What do all exterior doors, most exterior doors not lead you to? And don't usually lead you to an isolatable room. When you go in for search and you go through a door, you want in your head of the line, you gotta shut it. Well, you don't shut it because we want to we want to stop the flow path, but we want to clamp it. So walk through those steps with them. You clamp it, you shut it so that when you want to go out and you're ahead of the line and it's getting hot, you can sweep the wall for the door that's sticking out an inch and a half because it's clamped and it's not shut. And you're looking for a little bit of a handle.

SPEAKER_01 46:56

And so, like, real quick, when you say clamp it, can you explain clamp it? Because I don't I I think I know what you mean, but you're talking like the the door clamp on the edge of the door that keeps it from closing.

SPEAKER_02 47:04

Yeah, absolutely. So, like, you know, like what are the 99 cent things from from Harbor Freight that we go grab that that squeezy squeeze, we put them on the front of us, not on the back of us, because we tell them how to their gear and their tools. So like they put them on the front of us because uh when you sit down, they come off in the rig and they're and they remind you when they're in the front. So like these are the pieces we really break down. And like we talk about the before you go in, we talk about tools. And it's like, okay, when you have a two-person company, you're searching for fire, these are the tools. When you have a three-person company, you have these are the same tools, but you can add a halligan. Four-person company, you're gonna split. These are the tools, this is how you use them, this is where you use them, and this is where you need them. So, because we're always we grab the we got three tools, we'll say, on the outside per person. So a can, axe, halligan. Halligan always stays with everybody. No matter what your tool compliment is for search, everybody goes down to a halligan. But you got to know the timing. So a can, if there's water on the fire, stays on the rig. If you're in the front yard and there's water on the fire, you drop it in the front yard. When you're interior and you're making pay through the living room and there's water on the fire, well, you drop the can. And so, like now you're down to your two with your axe. Well, your axe on a single family dwelling, you keep it outside because interior doors can be forced on a single-family dwelling with a one halligan. And if you can't do it one, your partner has another one and you just call them over and you force that door. Now, in a public hallway, different structure inside, if it's harder to force those doors, we're gonna either have a rabbit or we're gonna have a uh a set of irons with us. We usually don't have a set of irons, we'll just do it with uh bar to bar. So then we break that down of like you everybody goes down to a halligan. When you go locate fire, you get rid of the hook once you once you locate a fire, because now your job of poking ceiling is done. You use that and you and you stage it for overhaul. So now you're down to a halligan as well. The ladder comes up, you throw it, stays outside. So when you walk through those pieces, now you got to put it into play before we start searching. So like a half wall prop is my favorite, my favorite prop to actually teach people on departments. I do it almost all departments.

SPEAKER_01 49:08

Four foot wall, pallet wall type thing.

SPEAKER_02 49:10

Yep. And then you put some pieces of furniture in there, but the purpose is not to search all the furniture. The search furniture is to give you the idea of like, okay, we need to search this and then this, and like that. You show them each piece of furniture before you start searching. We show them how to search a pile of clothes, how to move, and different visibilities, how to search a bed, how to search a bunk bed, how to search a couch. So things that are uh and how to search a uh crypt. And so each of those pieces you break down before you get them to search even hide this, because I don't want to teach them once they're inside that room, even hide this. You do it out here, where we can all learn, go through it, and then break it down to an isolated piece. Then when we uh now they know their tools, now they know their decision making, now they understand the size up of the structure. Now we got to talk about searching the rooms. So we don't decide like where you search when you search yet, because that will come after they are able to search a room and another room. So then it's like they send them in a window. We always send a crew, so two or three in a window. No one stays outside. And the first person has their job. They go to the hallway and if it's searchable, they continue to search. If it's not, then they close the door and they stay in the room. That's the here's the decision making. So when they go, when the beginning, they go through windows. When they go through windows, they're talking to us and sizing it up of like, oh, this is the layout of the structure. I want to confirm that they already learned from us how to size up structures, what we're doing, how the layout's gonna look. Because if they already understand that layout, they already know how they're all gonna search. They all know the objective when they get interior. We don't come up with these plans once we get interior. We already have the structure and the expectations from the outside, and then we move in. When they move in, first one goes to the hallway. The second one comes in, they search their room. They already know that it's because of their size up and we talk about it. They already know the room type most likely, the size of it. They already know how to search a bed. They already know how to search a pile of clothes. They already know how to search all the things inside the room. Now they just got to place it and understand the movement inside the room. It's high viz. They don't get on the ground, they just get on the bed, search that, look underneath the bed. They go up, they do their search, and they go back in the hallway, and then they close the door and then they walk out. Like they don't search the next room yet. We're just doing one. Reps, reps, reps. Make sure they understand. Then we have them go across the hall. The first one goes across the hall and searches their own room. And so when they search their own room, now they go across the hall and then they go down to the next one and they search a bathroom and a bedroom. So now they've searched all of floor two. They can do that with three bedrooms and one bath, they can do that with five bedrooms and three baths. It doesn't matter. So once they do those reps, it's just going through a slow pace. They can wear shorts or whatever. I don't care. Later on, when you get when you get a little bit deeper, like it's a bigger bedroom, that's where the decision making comes from. Like it's say it's a master or a bonus room, is that that's where they they'd get in there, and they'll learn this later on when they're with us, is that hey, we're gonna search this room together because you sized up that it's a larger room, and so you can occupy that space together. And the reason why, we get to tell them why, of like it's usually about thresholds. So once they get that done, then you start smoking it out, and then you smoke it out more, and then you smoke it out more, and they do the reps. When they're doing these reps, they've already learned and like the half-wall prop, how to stage tools. Where to stage tools? So it's high viz, moderate viz, you leave the tool by the door, not to tell you where you're gonna go out because you're not gonna do it disoriented, so that when you search the room on the way out, it's right there and it's convenient. When it's low to zero viz, you're gonna bring your tool to the window. And they already know that because they need to break out the window. And then once they break out the window, they stage their tool at the window, search the room, and then grab their tool. This allows them to always, not always, most of the time come out in training in real fire grounds with their tool in their hand and have it accessible. And so it's not just being placed just anywhere. Is it before they if they locate a bed, they're gonna search a bed. They don't set their tool right below the bed because they don't want to kick it underneath the bed. And when you find a victim, you don't want to drop the victim on the on the halligan. So you set it away a little bit. So as they're working through this, they're also already learned to vent. We do not stop them from venting. One of the biggest, some of the one of the biggest, I hate saying that. Some of the big issues we have in the fire service is that you want to keep the smoke in. We want to keep the smoke in. You don't want to put the fire out. Don't put the fire all the way out. Spritz that thing, and then we have issues on the fire.

SPEAKER_01 53:48

One of the biggest issues in training. You're talking about training.

SPEAKER_02 53:50

Training we have is that we we we do it for the instructor and the time and the reset and the reps, but yet they're not good reps if we're actually not doing it. Right. We will we let them from the very beginning and we have them make decisions on breaking out windows from the interior or opening them and letting the building vent as they're going through the process of still just doing bedroom to bedroom to bathroom and getting those areas. That way they go through the process and decision making and they can tell us, hey, I'm like, hey, why did you do this? This is why. Okay. Why didn't you do this? This is why. Good. That way we know where we need to learn from and we need to educate deeper and we can have a discussion and we can move on from it. If you're not doing that now, when are you gonna do that? It's almost impossible. Now you're gonna micromanage them, and now you're not gonna want them to search their own rooms, and now you don't think they have enough experience to do make decisions on the inside because you you stopped them because you wanted to keep the smoke inside this building for the next evolution. And it's like, no. So if you have to make the next evolution and it's not as much smoke, good. Because now you're creating an environment that they have to read, and they're like, oh, this is moderate. I can I can walk. Good decision. What are you doing on the ground? Well, it's just no, you were just you didn't you're just playing fakes. Stop doing that. It's moderate smoke, then walk. We try to create all these environments that are perfect, but yet we're actually opposite of. Because when it's just natural and these flows, that's when we get the the understanding, if they understand. That's where they actually slow down a little bit, make a decision. Once they do all that, then they can start searching through the front door for life. So at this point, we're still only searching for life, not for fire. They got to understand, searching for life in the front door as well. Well, the front door, they got to make decisions because are they going up the stairs? How do you locate stairs? How far apart are you guys gonna get in the front door? You're not gonna go, oh, hey, take a left wall, because now they don't understand when they're in the train, they're like just on the left wall and they're just looking for stairs. You gotta give them objectives. So that's where they learn, like, hey, Corley, uh uh meet me in the meet me in the hallway. Well, on a one store, you're gonna know where the hallway is. That way we can spread out and you can start searching for victims on the way to the hallway, versus if you say, hey, dude, go left hand, and then we're gonna be stuck on the wall, left-hand wall, and you're just you don't know my objective yet. You don't know we're going to the hallway. You anticipate we're going to the hallway, we're gonna search the bedrooms, but why don't you just why don't you just tell me? Telling them those objectives is good. So you get there, and then your next objective is to be like, search Charlie. Well, that means you search the Charlie rooms, that means that I'm searching the alpha rooms. Now, it doesn't matter if we're doing a split search or a guided search at that point, because when you go search your room, that's all you gotta do. Your room, go to the next room, go to the next room. If you see me in the hallway, you'll know that I'm still in the hallway and we're doing a guided search. If you don't see me in the hallway, you know that I'm doing we're doing a split search. You'll know after we start doing reps of like fire attack and uh radio control, like like radio information of like fire is knocked down, you'll understand, and we'll talk about it, is that when fire is knocked down, or water's not a fire, we split search. When the fire is not under control, we have keep someone in the hallway for that understanding of communication and the environment in the hallway. But we're not there yet. I just want you to understand how to navigate these spaces. And so then we do the high viz. Okay, and then you go lower and lower and lower, and then we have them do the whole building, and then we go in, and then you can search for fire, and then you teach them how to search for fire. It's a whole separate piece. And so then when you start searching for fire, like you break down light fire layout, you force the door. You want it to vent. People are like, oh, how long is a light fire layout? Five seconds. No, not five seconds. It has to be very purposeful. One of my biggest purposes is to get smoke lift so that the firefighter, because I'm doing a 360 or whatever I'm doing, can a when it lifts, they can hopefully locate fire and they can start seeing underneath and the moves of the smoke and what's going on in the inlet and help you locate fire. The other thing is, very important, is they understand that the fire, the smoke doesn't lift, but yet they held the door open for like 10 seconds, not five. But 10 seconds, it doesn't lift. When they shut the door and it come back around, hey dude, smoke never didn't lift. Okay, do we have fire below us? That's a good indicator of understanding. Like, oh, do we have fire below us? Do we need to stretch another area? Does that actually does that line up what I was actually thinking on the outside?

SPEAKER_01 58:28

Right. Is it lining up with what with our initial read? Is it is everything playing together as it should be?

SPEAKER_02 58:33

Absolutely. And so obviously, like we don't have time to go through every little step, but these are just little pieces I'm talking about. Why it really matters. And then we go from there, then we uh I think nowadays we we break it up for a few weeks, and then we bring, and then we go to a 3,600 square foot, one story with a daylight basement uh house that we have that's fully furnished. I mean fully furnished with clothes, clutter, you name it. It's uh it's a normal house with normal doors, everything's rocking. It's an amazing house to do searches in. Every window you can break in or out, they're all Lexan. We can do window to door conversions on some of the areas. We can set up all these scenarios now. Now, though, we bring them in and so we search with them. So now they're doing very specific searches and um being very like methodical and our life or fire, and they're not making too many decisions yet, right? But when we bring them down to that area, the first day for sure, we try to do it every day. We bring down like engine 18, heavy rescue five, or whoever, and we search with them. So now you're searching with them, or I'm searching with them, and we split them off. So we do two-person, three-person, and four-person searches. So they understand when we're assigned two, this is what we do. When we're assigned three, this is what we do. When we assign four, we split, and this is how we how we search the building. We can uh we're searching for fire, we're searching for life, we start stretching lines, we do radios. So, like, hey, water's on the fire, uh, can't force the front door, we have hoarding conditions. And then when they're working with us, is that we're the ones making the decisions. We do the rep. And so they can just focus on doing their task. We come out, and then we do we we talk about what happened. Hey, what didn't what did you not like? What did you like? Where do we fail? And that way, when they they learn from us right away, that's one of the biggest pieces for training for search you can do is search with them and stop having recruits search with each other until they start start understanding the decision-making process.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:29

That decisions is where you want to get them. And so when you do that, then you can start, I mean, you can do a couple different ways, then you can swap and have them run it, and so they're making the decisions. But in real life, in our department, like a lot of our good crews, everybody makes decisions. So if you make a decision, we roll with it. If I make a decision, we roll with it. But in the beginning, you can't just have that. You know, you have some kind of structure. Sure. And so with enough of those absolutely. And then we build in different reps. So we build in like victims, no victims. Most of the time, we're not gonna have victims. We need to make them comfortable of calling a primary complete without victims.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:06

Yeah. No, that's a beautiful point right there. Because so many people just they I mean, they feel like, oh, I missed it, I missed it, I gotta go again, I missed it, I missed it, because it's in here somewhere. Because why would we have a drill if there's not a victim in here?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:17

Absolutely. We do a ton of different scenarios. We get pushed out by fire. If there's no lines in the fire, there's lines on the fire. Like you're on an engine company, you're on a truck company, you're on the medic unit, whatever you are. We don't medic units, but rescues, whatever you are. And that is really what allows them to start growing. We don't put instructors inside to tick and tell them what to do. You're a partner. So when you're walking, I grab you, just like in a real fire. Can you see better now? Move on. If they come out of a door and I don't think they vented, I just say, hey, did you break out the window? Yes or no? No? Go back in there and break out the window. I can't give up that learning piece right there on a real fire or a training event for them not to break out the window. They have to learn that piece now. So so realistically, like on this, is that is that we want to really emulate and break down as much as possible. You have to keep on fighting for more time in the training in our academies. We never black them out. We do not black out their masks. We create the environment. We cannot black out masks. That is a terrible idea. Is it blacking out masks? They learn, they'll either close their eyes so they can hear better, fine, whatever, or feel better. But they close, like if they don't close their eyes, who cares? Because why would they close, why would they keep their eyes open if they there's no chance of light? Right now it's sunny out. You can see windows through smoke. You can see a little bit of light, you can see fire. So now you're teaching them not to search for fire. You're not, you're teaching them not to look for lights, you're teaching them not to be able to use their ticks, you're teaching them not to be able to use uh a light, they're teaching them so I can't see you down the hall uh with like the the SCBA light flashing and whatnot. We never black them out. It is not good practice because it is not like you do search in zero viz every once in a while, that's fine, but there's always a chance of lift when you create a different environment, it changes. So if you want to black out, create the environment for blacking it out, but do not cover up their mask to black them out. Does that make sense? Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:20

I know this is definitely you're teaching them teaching them to not rely on one of the most important things they have, which is their eyes. Because how many times have we closed our eyes and and and done the work because we've been blacked out so many times? And and then and one thing I want to say on this, Justin, is it's almost unfair to have a solo on this topic because there's so much to cover. Like you're you're trying to cram into this solo. Like what you teach, you know, I don't know how long you spend if you recruits, but uh you're trying to cram so much in. So it's almost unfair. But I do want to ask you key takeaways. The key takeaways you want people to take away from this solo. What is takeaway number one from Justin McWilliams when we're talking about training for search?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:00

Takeaway number. When we go in, when we show up, when we make a decision on inside, take a breath. And what I'm telling you is that I want you to stop searching so damn fast. I want you to take a breath, take in the building. What's the size up of this building? Where's the fire at? Is there a line on the fire? When you go inside and you get to the hallway, take a breath. Hey, dude, this is my coordination of like, let's coordinate. You search alpha. If you get disoriented, go in there. And break out when you break out a window, when you isolate, you could the fire's confined or the fire's knocked down, stick your head out the window. So, like, if if we're getting in there and you get discombobulated, if you get confused, if you are getting frustrated, slow down, take a breath, and you're gonna make a way better decision by just giving it a couple seconds of thought.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:54

No, I like it. Okay, so takeaway number two. What is the second takeaway you wanted to have when we're talking about training for search?

SPEAKER_02 1:05:01

Takeaway number two. Search with them. Stop letting recruits search together all the time. Let them learn from you in your decision making, and then watch them grow. And then they will make the decisions that you are, and you will drastically reduce the the issues we have with search, like getting on the ground or not isolating or breaking windows, because they understand you're in your pace. The whole fast yet thorough is not a thing. You can't even describe it with a million words. You've got to show them. Go in there and be a partner, not an instructor.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:40

Being a partner, not an instructor, which takes us to takeaway number three that you want people to have from this solo. Justin McWilliams, take it away with takeaway number three.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:49

Takeaway number three. Fix one thing at a time. Do not overwhelm them. They already are under stress. You need to uh Uh you need to so if they're doing three things wrong, you take number one and you fix the one piece. And with that, stop assuming and start asking why with them. Is that they'll if they can answer the question and the answer of why they did something, you will stop looking like such an ass. You will understand that they are actually learning and they will blow your mind because when you search with them, they're gonna and you start educating and you take these piece by piece mindset, rescue, search, you're gonna start asking why. And their fire our fire grounds, as they promote, are gonna be better ran because you let them be a decision maker from day one.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:43

That's pretty damn good. That's pretty damn good. I love the way I love the way you wrapped it up right there. So that may be the point where we wrap up and end the thing, but I do want to give you a parting shot. Do you have a parting shot over training for search that you could that you want to leave them with just your overall message? We may use it, we may not. Justin McWilliams, what is your parting shot when it comes to training for search?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:05

The parting shot. I'd say that uh no matter how many searches I get, how many rescues I get, no matter what how many years on I have, is that I need to always train for search. And that every every time we go to battalion training or we go to a brothers in battle event, is if I put myself through my own training on that, is it I'm gonna have some things that I am not great at? I'm going to still mess up. Is it I try to take that opportunity when we go to training to be on rigs and not set up these events all the time myself anymore? Is it I want to go in there and not be prepared for just that one? I want to always be prepared because that is where I'm still learning. I'm still learning to an understanding other people, not just myself, but that I'm understanding that like the guys that have been in the job for a year, where they're at, and how I need to educate them or how I need to communicate with them and work with them. The guys that have been on there for 20 years, it's a little bit different. So there's not a time in my career that I'll ever, ever be a uh the top dog searcher, or I'll be a search that does search guy, because I am not. I am a firefighter. And I want to continually be humble on the fire ground. And the only way to do that is to put myself out there and and and not just prepare for that one event, but the next one.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:35

Thanks for listening. New episode of the solo drop of the first of every month. What topic do you want to hear sold? Make sure to let me know. See you at the next solo.