Safeguarding Our Saviors: Retired Battalion Chief Robert Avsec on the Mental Health Crusade in Firefighting

Jerry: 0:15

Welcome to today's episode of Enduring the Badge Podcast. I'm host Jerry Dean Lund, and if you haven't already done so, please take out your phone and hit that subscribe button. I don't want you to miss an upcoming episode. And hey, while your phone's out, please give us a rating and review. On whichever platform you listen to this podcast on, such as iTunes, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. It helps this podcast grow, and the reason why, when this gets positive ratings and reviews, platforms like App Podcasts and Spotify show this to other people who have never listened to this podcast before, and that allows our podcast to grow and make a more of an impact on other people's lives. So if you would do that, I would appreciate it from the bottom of my heart. My very special guest today is Robert Avsec. How are you doing, Robert?

Robert: 0:57

I'm doing well, jerry. Thanks for having me.

Jerry: 1:00

Yeah, thank you for taking time to be on. Robert, can you introduce yourself to the audience?

Robert: 1:06

Hi audience.

Jerry: 1:08

He's got quite a background, so this could be good.

Robert: 1:13

I'm Robert Absteck. As Jerry said, I'm a retired fire department battalion chief, served with the women and men of the Chesterfield Virginia Fire and EMS department for 26 years. Been retired now 16 years, which is wow. I just realized that a couple of days ago. And then in my second career I did a couple of different things and then really found my niche as a freelance writer and writing online content for fire and EMS trade journals, because everybody has to have content these days and you know just have been very fortunate to be able to. I was kind of working from home before it was cool or required.

Jerry: 2:03

That's good, you got a head start.

Robert: 2:05

Yeah, yeah, so I've also. You know, during my fire service career I was an instructor for not only my own department but Virginia Department of Fire Programs had a wonderful opportunity for 10 years to be a contract instructor with the National Fire Academy. I think I was very fortunate I only lived 190 miles away from Amnusburg so I was able to bid a lot of classes without airfare involved. So I think somewhere around 40 deliveries on campus, basically the two-day state weekend programs, which are fabulous, fabulous. I highly recommend anybody who's number one if you've never been to the fire academy before, go. Number two especially if you're a volunteer firefighter, you know, get hooked up with your state weekend. I mean that's just a fabulous learning opportunity. You know, I remember. I remember like one of the first or second times I taught on campus and it was Michigan State Weekend and three tour buses rolled up into the parking lot. Like this is a big deal, yeah.

Jerry: 3:34

That's awesome. What did you teach there?

Robert: 3:37

I started out, the very first course I ever taught was the supervisor's role in infection control. You know, back in the late 90s Well, actually the early 90s, you know when we first started paying attention to gloves and masks and gowns to protect us from blood-borne pathogens. Then the next series I got into was the incident command system for EMS, so helping to bring that perspective to incident command for those fire departments to provide EMS. And you know, we started getting folks from non-fire-based EMS coming to those classes as well. And then I think the last thing I was involved with was the response to terrorist activities type of stuff. So yeah, it was a good 10-year run.

Ad: 4:43

Yeah.

Robert: 4:44

And the fire academy folks were absolutely fabulous. I had the opportunity to meet and chat with Dr Dennis O'Neill on many occasions, especially on Saturday mornings. He'd come knocking on the door to your classroom and you know he'd have his khakis and his button-down shirt on, you know. But looking looking at Dr O'Neill casual and saying, you know, the wife sent me out for some milk and bread and I figured I'd stop in and see how things are going. You know, and it's just, it was just always a pleasure to see the good doctor knocking at your door.

Jerry: 5:22

That's very, very cool, very cool experience to be at the National Fire Academy Loved every time I was able to make it out there. It was an incredible experience, and meeting people from all over the country was the bonus. You know, just getting the different perspectives of everybody in their different departments and what they were going through in life and their different struggles was was pretty eye-opening. So I, too, suggest you go to the National Fire Academy. Robert, you're part of the Fire Service Psychology Association, is that correct?

Robert: 5:55

Yes, yes, fspa.

Jerry: 5:58

FSPA. What do you do for FSPA?

Robert: 6:02

Well, we're an organization we started back in 2017 by a psychologist in Southern California, dr Kristen Weldon, and our you know we're made up of fire service folks, psychologists, other mental health professionals like clinical social workers and licensed clinical counselors and our goal is to help bridge that gap between professional psychology and the fire service. Okay, because there's a. There's a real lack of mental health professionals who know what we do, why we do it, the conditions under which we do it, et cetera, and, at the same time, on the other side of the river is the fire service that doesn't really understand what all this mental health stuff is. Right, but we know. But we know we got a. We got a behavioral health epidemic on our hands.

Jerry: 7:02

Yes.

Robert: 7:03

Right, and you know, and and certainly you can do us any favors in that regard, you know, but we're we're losing more firefighters to suicide than we are on duty injuries.

Jerry: 7:16

Sure.

Robert: 7:17

And that's you know, and and and all the members who are undergoing cancer treatment and therapy people. You know that has certainly been on the big spot on the on the the fire service agenda cancer and firefighters. But you know, the thing that I think doesn't get talked about enough is what's the, what's the psychological aspect of that cancer care, right, I mean, you know, as, as firefighters, the worst thing for us is being off the job.

Jerry: 7:52

Right.

Robert: 7:54

You know it's, you know you're, you're, it's, it's almost like you've been taken away from your family and put over here for however long it takes to come back. And so you know, we, especially at FSPA, we, we feel like you know, yes, there's a lot of issues that are affecting firefighter behavioral, behavioral and mental health. Let's not forget the cancer, the folks who are going through those, those long-term cancer treatments, et cetera. But you know that's also a behavioral health component. Yeah, not taking, not taking anything away from the oncologist.

Jerry: 8:38

Right. Actually treating the disease, but yeah, when you have an element like that, there's right, there's, or pretty much any element, right, there's a mental aspect of it and there's the physical aspect of it, you can't really separate them. They're combined into one.

Robert: 8:56

No well, I mean, you know it's always at least I think it is one of those things that's always on the mind of a of a firefighter. You know we're like professional athletes. You know we're only one entry away from a career ending and we don't and we don't know if and when that will come. I mean, you know, obviously, with you know, over the past couple, the decade or so, you know we've become a lot more aware of the physical aspects of the job and you know a lot of firefighters are taking better care of themselves, et cetera. But still, you know we're we're we're tactical athletes. Yeah, you know, and and the job is it's. You know I wrote, you know I wrote a book about one time, I wrote an article, the seven truths about fire service retirement, and one of them is you finally get treatment for all those knee and shoulder injuries that you didn't get taken care of on the job, because, number one, here again, it would have taken you away from the job, whether it was, you know, eight or nine months to rehab an ACL injury or a, you know three or four months, because you got to get a rotator cuff fixed. You know, I got mine fixed in 2019. You know so we, you know we. There's a, there's a, there's a lot there.

Jerry: 10:22

Yeah, I was hurt on the job and I was out 500 days and uh, wow, yeah, that that led me down to a road, you know, of wanting to take my own life because of that. And I think part of that was like being gone from the department, like kind of being right, when you're on workers comp there's very strict rules about how you can engage and, with your department, how much time you can spend there. So trying to play by all those rules and then you just kind of, after being gone that long, you kind of fade away as a as a memory a little bit. But then on my side that gave me let's see, I've been in my career 20 plus 20 plus years with my volunteering part to your time to think about everything that had seen and gone through in my life. And so when you're sitting at home trying to rehab, those thoughts just creep up and they get wicked.

Robert: 11:17

Wow, wow. And there there's a perfect example of what we were talking about just a couple of minutes ago. Yeah, you know, it's not just the physical injury and it's not just having, you know, behavioral health persons whether it's a psychologist or a clinical social worker to work with. It's addressing those things like workers comp policies that limit your ability to stay connected with your, with your organization. You know, and and even from an organizational perspective, right to recognize that. Hey, you know, if, if we got somebody who's going to be out for let's just say, three months, four months, right, that's the projected time that they're gonna come, fire departments need to develop mechanisms to keep you connected.

Jerry: 12:12

Yes.

Robert: 12:13

Right, whether it's gathering everybody who's out on sick leave or injury leave right now for lunch, once a month or every couple of weeks or whatever and engaging with the leadership of the organization to let you know hey, jerry, you're still our guy.

Jerry: 12:36

Yes.

Robert: 12:38

How's your rehab going? Is there anything you need Hearing that kind of thing from the white shirts? That's important stuff.

Jerry: 12:49

Yeah.

Robert: 12:51

And what does it cost?

Jerry: 12:53

Not much at all. Not much at all.

Robert: 12:56

Wait less than it is to fire me and then to retrain me.

Jerry: 13:01

That got so disconnected from my fire department that they end up wanting to fire me while I was out, and that was crazy. Yeah, crazy, that's what I mean right Through another downward spiral of you know. With all that happening, I wanted to take my own life.

Robert: 13:23

Yeah, let's throw another brick on his load, right, right.

Jerry: 13:28

Making less money because you're out on work. You can't work. All your other side hustles, so you're trying to survive filling off all your prized possessions to maintain.

Robert: 13:40

There you go. Maintaining food there you go there's another aspect of the physical injury that we don't give enough emphasis to, and that is you know I dare say there's probably very few firefighters out there who are making it on their firefighter salary, right, you know whether it's to, you know, pay for their kid's education, or you know, getting that bigger house because the family's gotten bigger, or whatever. But you know, now, all of a sudden bing, you know you blow out a knee and you're out for five or six months. Boy, that's a big hit financially. So you know, there again, right.

Jerry: 14:29

Yeah.

Robert: 14:30

There are things that fire departments could do, you know, working with the local credit union to give you, you know, extremely low interest loan or whatever to carry it through that particular period. You know whatever, yeah, and that's you know at least recognize and address that. That's another element that we have to overcome if we're gonna get Jerry back on the job truly in the three or four months that the medical people are talking about.

Jerry: 15:01

Yeah, right, and I think to you know to go with that and what you're saying. You know, if you're that connected and still staying part of the department, I feel like that's gonna allow you to heal faster because you're not worried about your job, keeping your job. You're already stressed about your injury. So the more stress you have, I feel like the slower generally you're gonna heal.

Robert: 15:25

Oh, oh. Without a doubt, the medical folks will tell you that all the time. Okay, If you've got, if you're stressed out and you have a high level of stress, that's less energy that your body is devoting to that part of your immune system that's supposed to be rebuilding.

Jerry: 15:45

Yeah, yeah.

Robert: 15:46

You know. So it's again we know. I think the biggest thing that we can take away from this is helping fire departments and firefighters realize that an injury is not just an injury. It's got a mental health component, it's got a financial component, it's got a morale component. You know, and I wrote a piece a couple of years ago for firerescueonecom about this, you know, getting firefighters back on the job, et cetera, and it was Denver. Denver Fire Department had initiated this program. They had opened up a health and wellness center, right. So they had their own, basically, rehab facility and when firefighters got hurt, okay, that became their new assignment. Your new assignment is to show up at rehab Monday through Friday, for you know whatever block of time you should be doing rehab, right. So their approach was like that of professional professional teams or college teams, where you know your star quarterback goes down with an Achilles tear, right, they're not sitting at home for nine months, they're showing up at rehab every day. That's their new job assignment. And I think that would. I think that if more departments could do that kind of thing there again, there's another way to keep you connected with the department right. And also, you know it makes you feel better because you're going. You know I'm not I don't mean to say this in any negative way you know helps you feel like you're not a slug.

Jerry: 17:53

Yeah.

Robert: 17:55

You know the hey, I'm working, you know I'm putting in the work every day, just like my buddy's back at the fire station, right, and also that helps with the folks at the fire station. Yeah, you know, hey, we know where to find Jerry, monday through Friday, from eight to 12, right, so maybe they get off, maybe they get it off duty and they swing by and they spend 10 or 15 minutes with you.

Jerry: 18:23

Right, you know.

Robert: 18:24

But at least they know what Jerry's doing.

Jerry: 18:29

I couldn't agree with you more.

Robert: 18:31

Jerry's working his buns off to get back on the job. And then when you do return to the job, right, it's not the, it's Jerry. Up this yeah. You know it's hey, welcome back buddy, welcome back Boy. You were really kicking ass in that rehab, weren't you?

Jerry: 18:56

Yeah.

Robert: 18:57

There's just so many upsides to this.

Jerry: 19:00

I like it. I mean cause it means make me rethink some of the what I went through during those 500 days and what I didn't feel. I mean and it's just, I'm not accusing anybody right I didn't feel valued. I didn't feel valued to myself, I didn't feel of value to my family, right Cause I'm not, you know, being the most sure or take the load that I need to financially, and I don't feel of value to the department because I can't work. So then I sit there by myself and feel of no value and you know, when you don't feel of value, it tends to lead you to some pretty suicidal, ideational, you know, thoughts.

Robert: 19:47

Loneliness is a real bitch. Yeah, yeah, and you know, and that's, that's one of the things that you know. We at the fire service psychology association talk with firefighters and fire departments, et cetera. You know when they you know you talk about. Well, how do you, how do you know somebody's struggling, or whatever? I said, when you see a person who used to be part of the group and now they're off by themselves, that should be the, that should be one of the first red fly. Not that you gotta say, oh, let's go get him and and take him to, but that should be the first sign that says Jerry, what's up man?

Jerry: 20:29

Yeah.

Robert: 20:30

What's up, man? You know, that's where, that's where the buddy system really needs to come into play and and, and that's one of the things that we're working towards is developing training and guidelines, et cetera. That works with stuff that's already out there. I mean, there's been stuff put out by the IAWF, by the IAFC, by the National Volunteer Fire Council, okay, and so in a lot of cases we're not looking to to to rewrite the books or whatever, but you know, a lot of times there's so much stuff that's in these silos, right, and they can be five feet apart and don't know what each silo is doing. And so that's why we're, you know, I think that's the beauty of our organization is because we have fire service folks, because we have the mental health folks, we're always getting both perspectives, in fact. In fact, one of the things this is a very rare thing right here. Okay, you got a real rare thing going on and that is me on your podcast talking about the fire service psychology associates, because our general philosophy is it's always two of us, always a fire service person, always one of our psychology folks, so that it's you're. You're always getting that same, that same bilingual perspective.

Jerry: 21:57

Yeah.

Robert: 21:58

And and that we have found that that is and I would highly recommend that to anybody who's working in their local community Okay, the fire service folks, get out there and learn who your mental health folks are Right, get them interested in learning about who you are Right. And so then, when you start talking about how can we, how can we get things done, how can we start addressing some of those issues about the injured firefighter or the firefighter who's undergoing cancer treatment, or the firefighter who, jerry, comes to us and says, hey, I think, I think Robert is having a rough go, you know, maybe, maybe you know we should try to give him a little push in the right direction there. Okay, but cause, you know one and you know one of the biggest things that we're the encounter, and that is, hey, fire service is a very parochial profession, Right, very parochial. We've got a long history of oh, we'll solve our own problem, right, for the longest time there was a, there was that resistance to the, to the cancer folks.

Jerry: 23:22

Yeah.

Robert: 23:23

Right, we didn't want to, we didn't want to address that. What are the true hazards that we're being exposed to on the? You know? Thankfully now we're having those fruitful conversations and and the training programs and the treatment programs and and so forth. But you know what? We still got people coming down with cancer, you're right. And we still have, and we still have firefighters and fire officers who aren't following the guidelines, who aren't doing the right things. Dr Burton Clark, retired retired guy from the fire academy and author, and so forth. He's a member of our organization. The guy's got to be like 105 years old, right, still still getting it done. But you know what's one of the most frustrating things for the good doctor is 25, almost 30 years later, after he developed the firefight, the national firefighter sequel pledge right. We still got 50% of firefighters who aren't wearing their seat belts. You know it was back. I think it was November. Yeah, I think it was November. I kept track and we had six firefighter fatalities where the firefighters were ejected from the vehicle. Okay, when you look at today's fire apparatus, look at what the manufacturers have done to protect us. With the whole roll bar cage concept for the cab, you got airbags from every direction. I mean, I've written on this topic many, many times and they got systems now that are telling the airbags you should be deploying even before the impact occurs because the vehicle's orientation is off center, right. Yeah, so you don't even have to wait. You don't even with those systems. You don't even have to wait for the apparatus to land on its side. It's already deploying the airbags because the onboard computer is going. You can't recover from this. This is not good. You know. So we got all this stuff that the manufacturers are doing to protect us and we can't put it on our seatbelt. Now there's a psychological aspect of firefighting that really needs to be addressed, and it's not just that, it's a host of other things that you know. We give you the knowledge, give you the education, we give you the training. So why does an officer not go out and do a 360 assessment and realize, so that they don't know what's going on on the Charlie side of the building and somebody gets hurt or, worse, somebody dies?

Jerry: 26:36

Yeah, you know most. Excuse me, most of the way you're talking about, robert, I feel is like the fire service in general is we have gotten to a great place of knowing what to do. Knowing what to do, knowing you know more about mental health, knowing more like what you're talking about, apparatus more, but we're not doing. We're not doing. The initiative of doing these things is not. It's just it's not landing in the right places and it's not been set into people's brains to do it and that's, and that's.

Robert: 27:11

That's the big point that in fact Dr Clark just had an article published in firerescueonecom about the need to get psychology involved in the NIOSH firefighter fatality investigations. Okay, it's, you know, it's no longer good enough to to investigate a line of duty, death and say, oh, you know, and you know they don't, they don't seek to to point blame, right. In fact, I think they go to great lengths not to Right, I agree. They, you know they always wind up with that list of recommendations. You know fire departments should have standard operating guidelines for these types of fires. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Jerry: 27:58

Yeah.

Robert: 27:58

It's the same stuff every time. Okay, and Dr Clark's point, which is which is our, which is our stance at FSPA, is we need to get psychology involved in those investigations to find out why it happened.

Jerry: 28:17

Yeah.

Robert: 28:17

Okay, we, we got a great understanding of what happened. Okay, but we don't understand why. Because we don't understand what was going on leading up to that.

Jerry: 28:30

The chain of the events that happened before Right.

Robert: 28:33

Yeah, what? What was the? You know what do they call it in risk management? You know what is the failure tree? Look like, Because unless we, unless we get a clear picture of of what that, what that failure sequence looked like, we don't know what's the best place to intervene.

Jerry: 28:57

Yeah.

Robert: 28:58

You know Dr Weldon, who founded FSPA. She's our president and CEO. She cut her teeth in the California correction system, Okay. And shortly before, shortly before she got hired, they had a spat of inmate deaths. Now there's like eight or nine in a in a two or three month period, right. And so about the time she came on the job, they started, they started what they call forensic autopsy and they looked at every one of those deaths and said and found out what was the chain of events that led this person to take their own life in the correctional facility? Okay, and and that the outgrowth of that became a process of evaluation, right. That the psychologist in the in the correctional facility would engage in when the inmate first arrived, right.

Jerry: 30:08

Yeah.

Robert: 30:08

And they would be able and it gave them an objective criteria to say this person's low, medium, high risk of taking their own life in this facility. Because one of the big things they found out when they you know, here again, biggest part sometimes is just connecting all the dots, but one of the biggest things they found was with those eight or nine inmate fatalities was they were happening within 72 hours of being in the facility and so you know what they found was that you know when they would, when they would use this process and they identify the person is a low risk. But the fact that they've, the fact that they've earned some points on the process to begin with going to keep a little bit of a closer eye on this person right, whereas the person who's the high risk we need to do some psychological intervention before we put this person into a prison population.

Jerry: 31:15

Yeah, yeah.

Robert: 31:16

Okay. So you know it's that type of thing that you know we envisioned could really benefit the firefighter line of duty death investigation process that NIOSH engages in. Right, we're dealing with human beings, right? I mean, when the airline industry, you know, 30 years ago or whatever, was experiencing you know far too many human behavior crashes, right, and they developed the cockpit room management, right, it should come as no surprise that there were psychologists involved in that, because they they said, look, we got to understand what's what led up to this event, right, yeah, you know, you don't just have a plane crashing and a 25 or 20 year captain at the helm, you just don't make a mistake like that out of the blue. Yeah, and the more they came to understand that that's what they built into their simulator process and and and you know so it was not only, it wasn't only the the technical training of how to better hand, they all had the training. My god, they've been, they've been flying the airplanes for years.

Jerry: 32:47

Yeah.

Robert: 32:48

What went, what went wrong, had nothing to do with the airplane. It had to do with what was going on here, and you know when you, when you look at the big field, it seems these days in, in, in, especially professional sports, but even major college sports, is the sports psychologist.

Jerry: 33:12

Yeah.

Robert: 33:13

Okay, now what do you think this person is bringing to the table? Right, they're not helping me hit better. They're not helping me pass better Right. They're helping to get rid of the stuff that's going on in here that is hindering me from being the best player I could be.

Jerry: 33:34

Right.

Robert: 33:34

Right, and that's that's another aspect of psychology can offer to the fire services. When we're doing this incident command training, when we're putting people through simulations of events to you know where we need the psych coach right To help this person. Help this person, help me make better decisions than that simulator, because if I'm making better decisions than that simulator, I'm going to make better decisions on the fire ground or the emergency scene.

Jerry: 34:10

Yeah, no, you're right, you're right. I guess the biggest challenge to a lot of that is the lack of psychologists out there to help do these important things.

Robert: 34:25

Exactly, Exactly. But, like I said, you've got the psychology on this side of the river and the fire service on this side of the river, right. I think sometimes there's a hesitancy on the part of the fire service to okay, how do we get them over here? It's more like well, how are they going to get over here?

Jerry: 34:49

Yeah.

Robert: 34:52

And that's why we found that the more that we can engage, the more that we can realize that, hey, it'll be like a transcontinental railroad You've got to come from two directions.

Jerry: 35:06

Yeah.

Robert: 35:08

Right.

Jerry: 35:08

Yeah.

Robert: 35:10

And you know the great book. I forget who the author was. I always get confused David McCullough or Stephen Ambrose but the greatest thing on Earth is the story of the transcontinental railroad being built. Okay, which was the last major engineering project in the world that was done by hand. They tried to have shovels a couple of times on the coming from the California side. It didn't work so good, but anyway, the point of this is there was a very good reason why one railroad company wasn't given the whole contract to go either from east to west or west to east, and that was because of the Rocky Mountains. Okay, the railroad company over here in the east. They were real good at building railroads on flat ground. Yeah, guys over here in California. They were very good at building railroads where you had to go over hills, valleys, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Plus, they wanted to get this thing done in a hurry.

Jerry: 36:24

Right.

Robert: 36:25

Okay, but you know, those necessities, those driving forces are what helped us achieve that particular accomplishment I think, a similar, you know. I think that's a great analogy, for what psychology and the fire service needs to do is we have to recognize that neither one of us is going to get this bridge built all by ourselves.

Jerry: 36:49

Amen Okay.

Robert: 36:51

The fire service has got to. The fire service has to realize look, it's our job to get at least halfway across the river. Psychology it's our job to at least get halfway across the river, because if we each get halfway across with that bridge, guess what? We're driving that golden spike.

Jerry: 37:15

Yeah.

Robert: 37:16

Well, probably wouldn't drive a golden spike but yeah, you know what? I mean yeah, you know what I mean. The perverted wheel of golden spike, and that's yeah, yeah, I mean that's why it's so important. You know, we in my mind we really didn't start making really great strides in our approach to cancer with firefighters until the oncologists started getting involved, until we started getting research done, like the folks are doing down at the University of Miami I think it's the Sylvester Cancer Center. You know it's getting those kinds of resources involved so that we're not only developing treatment programs but we're also developing the research that helps us understand why are firefighters getting cancer? Where are the greatest threats of firefighter getting cancer? That's data-based decision making, right, I think. Sometimes in the fire service, in too many situations it's still, I think, I feel I believe method of decision making, and you know we can do better than that. I agree. And we have to do better than that, especially if we're going to attract young people to this profession. Okay, yeah, you know, they've got to know that. You know how many people do you think NASA would have recruited to be astronauts if one out of three blew up?

Jerry: 39:08

Yeah, not many.

Robert: 39:10

Not many, not many. I mean that was. I'm sure that was a huge part of their successful recruitment of astronauts. After the Mercury 7, right yeah, Was the safety record. You know, yeah, there was risk involved. But, boy, look at what we do to make it as safe as possible and, consequently, look what happened when they strayed from that safety culture. We had the challenger.

Jerry: 39:47

Yeah.

Robert: 39:48

Okay, and you know that. I'm sure that that took a huge chunk out of NASA's integrity, nasa's credibility. I don't know that it necessarily hurt their astronaut recruiting efforts, okay, but I bet there was more than one of them. It's like this ain't as easy as I thought it was going to be. Yeah, yeah, and the fire services has. You know, there are so many things in our business that are interrelated and yet we don't realize it right.

Jerry: 40:28

Or do we, do we realize it and then just or just don't want to maybe turn look at or turn a blind eye to it.

Robert: 40:34

Well, I think, I think, I think perhaps I just uncovered a new stone and that is look, we're having trouble recruiting people. Maybe it's because we haven't gotten as good as we need to be with keeping firefighters from getting cancer, keeping firefighters from taking their own lives by suicide, keeping firefighters from from whatever negative things can happen because of their work on the job right, I mean, those are the, those are the kinds of things that that I think the recruiting package of the future future being tomorrow, all right that fire departments would do well to accentuate what it is we are doing to make this a safe, safer profession. Okay, so that you can have a sense of security. I can, I can work for this place for 10 or 20 years and not think that I've given up 10 or 20 years of my life.

Jerry: 41:43

Yeah, so, robert, are you going to write an article about this?

Robert: 41:50

Man.

Ad: 41:52

I got.

Robert: 41:53

I got so many ideas out of this conversation. It ain't funny and I'll tell you what. You got a book in you and I would, I would, I would jump with the opportunity to be your ghost writer, because anybody who could, anybody who can come back from 500 days off the job, you no-transcript. You file that under inspirational stories.

Jerry: 42:26

Yeah, I'm serious.

Robert: 42:29

I appreciate that, you know and and and you know in the in the vein of, particularly in the vein of how, how fire departments could do a better. You know how, how the mythical fire department could do better if they had an employee going through a similar event. Okay, what would you do different? Yeah or what would you do at all? Yeah yeah, but I think the biggest thing that that certainly has come out of this conversation for me is Is the fact that man the dots do connect, and and until until we're absolutely certain that we If connected all the dots, we got to keep working at it. You know we got a tie cancer, psychological health, financial security, right, you know, all of those things have got family dynamics right family dynamics. Family dynamics, absolutely, you know I and. But you know the thing is there are already wonderful models out there, the things that our military services Do for their soldiers sailors, airmen, okay, and there are families to to keep to, you know.

Jerry: 44:05

Yeah, keep them connected right.

Robert: 44:07

I'm sure there will be some naysayers they does bull. But you know, I, one of my, one of my jobs after I retired was I worked in in Crystal City, virginia, which is Technically Arlington right, and I worked for the Army's fire chief. I was the contractor. They were transferring Installation management command from Virginia to San Antonio, part of part of the the the, the BRAC Move the shells around, Okay. Okay, got to keep this Congress district happy. Yeah, okay, but working, working for the Army's fire chief, we were responsible for for all the planning and logistics for 82 Army installations worldwide. Okay, and being an installation management command, I mean on the same floor of this of this huge office building right right next door, had law enforcement. I had physical security, which law enforcement handles everything inside the fence. Physical security handles the fence and everything outside of it. But also I, I came to appreciate how installation management command operates, every one of those installations like it's its own town and the and the and the base. The base commander is the mayor. Yeah okay, cuz cuz they, they got to provide education, they got to do the utility stuff streets, roads, lights, okay. But I also got to see a great appreciation for how they work to the families integrated, especially especially when you look at the fact that you know, every two or three years you and your family got to pick up All your shit and go someplace else. Yeah right and boom, you and your kids are now suddenly in a new neighborhood. Okay, a lot of it looks familiar because you know there's only so much you can do with a military base, right, but still you got the same. You got the same tools, the same functions, etc. And and a big part of that base commander's obligation as the mayor is to make sure that new families are adequately integrated into into the community. And so you know yeah, like you say, you know the, the families of our firefighters, right?

Jerry: 46:53

They're forgotten a lot.

Robert: 46:55

Yeah, but, and and you know, you know, you spoke of the impact on you as an individual of being out that length of time. Wait what? What kind of stress did that put on your family?

Jerry: 47:11

Well into the, into the relationship.

Robert: 47:13

I tell you that well, you know, and and that I'm you know, I'm just I'm sorry that that kind of thing happens. Yeah but, but it's gonna keep happening Until again. We there's another dot to connect Right, or another silo to break down Right, and that is to provide the necessary, necessary support to the family so that you know the spouse or the significant other isn't going. How the hell are we gonna pay the bills next week? You know, or you know, how do I get Jerry out of this funk? You know, or, if nothing else, to be able to recognize that Jerry is in a phone. Oh and what, what, what services are available to help both of us Get out of this funk together?

Jerry: 48:13

Yeah, it's kind of like when you work, all those jobs are your side, hustles and everything, and then you're hurt and then you land at home being at home all the time. Your family is not used to you being at home. You're not used to being at home, and so here comes some collision of, of, of thoughts, believes whatever, of.

Robert: 48:35

What's happening at home and there's a. There's another aspect of retirement yeah, yeah. You know, all say like you say, all of a sudden you're not gone Every other day, or or every three days, or what are you know, whatever the work schedule was. Um, you know, I know who used to laugh my, my wife would say, and I would say something or something she go, chief Afsak is the guy who went out that door yesterday. Okay, but he ain't the guy who came in the door today. Yeah, you're a robber.

Jerry: 49:14

Yeah. Yeah yeah, but that's not easy. Reality check, it's not easy.

Robert: 49:22

Oh no.

Jerry: 49:25

Robert you have. I Can imagine like your writing is got to be incredible, and I know it's all over the inter interwebs like how come people continue to follow you and hear what you read, what you're writing about, or even hear about it?

Robert: 49:42

well, I have, I have. I have my own blog. It's called talking shop for firing mess. I think talking shop is kind of a common term for us and that on that blog I know that's mine. So I, I, I write my thoughts, my feelings, my opinions. Boy, one of the biggest ones, that whoo when I when I wrote a blog about Interior structural firefighters should be obsolete.

Jerry: 50:16

Yeah. I can't imagine why you would get any feedback on that.

Robert: 50:19

Oh no, it wasn't. It wasn't like it wasn't, like I said. Oh, we shouldn't fight fire.

Jerry: 50:26

Yeah.

Robert: 50:27

Okay, but we got to get a heck of a lot smarter at how we do it. Okay, I mean, we got we got the best turnout gear on the planet, right? So why we still getting cancer? Why are we still getting people killed in fires?

Jerry: 50:52

I have my own opinion. Do you want it?

Robert: 50:56

Yeah, I.

Jerry: 50:58

Think a lot of it is. People feel like it's part of the job. I can run the chainsaw, do all this crap, every check out and every day, no hearing protection. I can go into the fire not wearing all my Protection, right, not my hood, you know there, it's just in. It's endless, it's endless. I feel like Firefighters just like this is this part of the job? This is what it? You know, I worked 25 in your 25 years in the fire service Are the job is getting cancer. Our job is this. It's not. I'm here to tell you it's not part of the job. It's. If it is, you're making it part of the job.

Robert: 51:36

Exactly, exactly, exactly. But you know, and I I didn't think so then, I don't think so now, I don't think my approach was that off the wall. Okay, we, we've now, for at least 10 years, we've had the concept of of transitional fire attack, where the hit it hard from the order, wherever you want to call it okay, but I mean there, there you look, and once again, because because we've brought science Into the equation right, we got all that testing by NIST and UL and New York Fire Department on structures and and you can't argue the fact that when you use a transitional attack you've essentially reset the environment. I mean, when you watch those thermal cup Temperatures go Right, all right. So you do a transitional attack, you reset the environment, all right. And now who goes in to do the mop, the mop up and the end to finish the job? Not people wearing firefighter, ppe, people wearing chemical protective equipment, because we keep saying fires, today's fires are like has mad incident. Why don't we approach them like there has mad?

Jerry: 53:04

It's a great. It's a great question because most of the I mean Right, we know whether we should come out and decon after fires, but how often is that happening? It's a man. I don't want to wash my gear, I don't want to be in my backup set of gear or I don't have the backup.

Robert: 53:22

Well, the other thing, too, is all right. I'm dealing with the realities of the job right in Many fire departments. It's not a case of me going in and Coming out and I'm done. Right right, I might have to, I might have to recycle and go back in for another tour. My approach Essentially does away with that. Right, because nobody really goes into the structure without the proper level of PPE. Right, I mean, you can, you can go in, you can go into a. The army's got it, the army's got chemical protective clothing. That's good to like 300 degrees Before it fails. Right, if I can get the interior temperature of a structure down around 200 degrees or less Through a transitional attack. And While that's going on, I'm getting, I'm getting two or three guys suited up in a, in a you know One and done Hasmat suits that we have now, right, zip them up, send them in there, make sure the fires out, start doing the ventilation stuff, right, and now, when they're done, they come out. And they come out like they've been in a hasmat. Yeah, I don't see this, see, but see, but see. That's not the way we've always done. That's right. No, you're right. And, and you know, to quote one of Bert Clark's, you know of Touchstones is Send the firefighters DNA fast, close, wet, get there as fast as you can, get as close to the fire as you can and put the wet stuff on the redstone. Yeah, man, that that has come from the bucket brigade days. Right, when if you didn't get there fast, pretty good chance the whole town is gonna burn down, right, yeah, had to get close because you can only throw a bucket of water so far. Right, and obviously you put wet stuff on there, stuff. Well, here we are. 250, 260 years later, we got fire streams that can extend a couple hundred yards, right. Yeah, yeah we can put as much water on the fire as we want. We're not limited by the number of buckets or, or, or. You know how big the wagon was or any of that stuff. But you know, we're I always equate it to like in the Civil War, right, besides the fact that we lost a whole bunch of people to disease, right camp living and all that, when you look at the, you look at the deaths from firearms, right, the biggest cause of that was the fact that Generals on both sides had not accepted the rifled musket. The rifled musket which which came about in the Crimeanian Wars, which several officers on both sides were over there as observers, right, they brought the tactics back with them, but they didn't, but they didn't bring a true understanding of what a game changer the rifle musket was. Because now, instead of having to get close Because my, my muzzle loader a single shot muzzle loader Was only accurate to maybe 50 or 60 yards, right, which is why the backup plan was always the bayonet. Yeah, right, yeah, if I don't get you with the shot, well, now I'm close enough that I get you with the bayonet. Well, with the rifle musket, all of a sudden, now you could shoot a couple hundred yards with a pretty high degree of accuracy, a Rifled musket, launching a frontal attack on guys who have rice rifle muskets, that's like. That's like throwing somebody into a wood chipper. Yeah and that's exactly what would happen. Yeah you know you got, you got. You got the guys who are playing defense behind you know Good embankments and they got a rifle that can shoot you down from two, three hundred yards away. Not a great recipe for success, and I think more and more fire service leaders have to have to embrace the notion that Some of our tactics are unrightful muskets. Yeah, yeah and agree with you and Unfortunately fire is still the defensive position, that's got rifle muskets.

Jerry: 58:35

Yeah, I like. I like the analogy and we're not.

Robert: 58:38

We're not gonna get any better of what we're doing by continuing to launch frontal assaults on fires. Okay, we got it. We got to use flanking maneuvers transitional attack over here At the window that's got fire out of it, right, and while we got the fires, attention over there Getting ready to make attack over here. Yeah and doing it, and doing it in chemical protective clothing. It's just, you know, we, we, just we. We have to get better at that.

Jerry: 59:17

Yeah, yep, there's certainly a lot of things that need to happen and change. Where can people find you and follow you? You have the talk shop blog.

Robert: 59:28

Maya Maya. My blog is a fire EMS leader pro all lowercase org. Okay, they can. They can also reach me on LinkedIn. I'm linked in Robert, I have second on LinkedIn and Also I've I've got the on Facebook. I've got the talking shop Is a is a link page on my Facebook.

Jerry: 1:00:01

Very good, robert. Thank you so much for being on great conversation. I'm excited to release this episode and get some thought-provoking you know thoughts out there, oh.

Robert: 1:00:16

I'm sure we tweaked a few.

Jerry: 1:00:18

Yeah.

Robert: 1:00:19

That's what you write right. That's what you do, man. You keep People as people frequently will say, you know whether it's me, whether somebody else who's right being something and they go. You know what are you thinking? No, it's not what I was thinking. It's what I want you to get thinking about. Okay, I'm not saying I got all the answers, but I believe I've got most of the questions. You know and I think is. I think it's it's our obligation, whether it's whether it's through the written word, whether it's through mediums like podcast. It's our obligation as, as those who have survived right.

Jerry: 1:01:07

Yeah.

Robert: 1:01:08

Now the question, so that today's, today's fire service leaders say we got to find the answer to that question right there.

Jerry: 1:01:18

Right right.

Robert: 1:01:19

That's a great thing we need. We need to work on how do we keep our folks connected when they're out. Yeah yeah, you know, whether it's an ankle injury, whether it's cancer treatment, whether it's, you know, behavioral health issue, you know, and whatever takes a guy or a gal away from the job for any length of time A fire department. I just think you got a moral obligation To take care of them while they're out there.

Jerry: 1:01:52

I agree, I agree. Well, thank you so much for being on today, robert. I really appreciate it. Thanks for taking the time so much, so much for your 30 minutes.

Robert: 1:02:00

Huh, that's all right.

Jerry: 1:02:02

I was like it was going so good. I was like Thank you, so Roll, yeah, roll with it. Yeah, jerry, thank you so much for the opportunity.

Robert: 1:02:13

You're most welcome. I appreciate it.

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