Weekly Scrap #293 - Steven Shaffer on Fire Dynamics, Training and Adversity

Corley: Here we go. It's almost time for the show, but I want to take a few seconds here to talk about Vigilantes. If you are not right there, man. If you are not a vigilante, why not? It's five bucks a month. It is less than the cost of a cup of coffee. And there is so many benefits The biggest benefit being you get to connect to like-minded individuals who think the same way that you think. And it's a powerful, powerful place to be. The Discord is where all of the interaction is going on. There is so much going on in there it's hard to explain. And the only way to be a part of it is to get on the Patreon so that you can get access to the Discord channel. It is a good good time. We'll become a part. There's new stuff we're working on. Last week we had a vigilante meetup in Louisiana at the Lyft conference. It was a phenomenal time. And the vigilantes and I got to sit there and discuss, hey, how can we make these even better How can we make these even better? And we did. We decided a way to give the Viceroy solid rules and ways to host the meeting. How to how to how did the open with the toast and close with the creed and to what to do with the coins and the numbered coins and the challenges involved. It was a good time man to make it even better. They're doing stuff like working on building the V drive, putting together this all this knowledge and files that they're building together. currently their project of they're collecting blueprints and plans to work for the for the the work of search, which is the supplement, the drill supplement for the book of search that's gonna be coming out soon. They're working on putting that together. It's just phenomenal what they got going on. Not to mention, you get swag discounts, access to the vigilante only shop, access to the after parties, and of course the vigilante meetups It's amazing. If you're not a part, why not? I have to ask you that. If you're still only on the Facebook, man, get with the times, get on the Patreon so you can be in the Discord. Do it. Quit Faffing about patreon. com slash the vigilantes.

Corley: Go join so you can get in the discord. Right now we're currently doing a v50. There's like 35 of us doing a v50 together We're on day two today and we got 48 days to go, but already it's challenging me and the accountability is amazing. So if you want to find like-minded souls, patreon. com slash the vigilantes. I'll see you on the Discord. Speaker 2: In the demanding world of firefighting, training against real-world scenarios is crucial. Yet, traditional training facilities often fall short in providing realistic Versatile and cost-effective training solutions. Affordable drill towers presents a groundbreaking solution. By positioning an affordable drill tower alongside your existing connex boxes, burn building. A realm of realistic, multi-level training scenarios is unlocked. This integration has been adopted successfully by various fire departments, enhancing their training capabilities exponentially. Delve into the heart of live fire training scenarios within the connex boxes, now amplified by the ADT's multi-floor access, providing an unparalleled training ground. Corley: We started looking at connex boxes about probably ten years ago. To me you can't beat them especially for the price The affordable drill tower was the same way. We've got six floors, we've got standpipes on every floor, we've got more anchor points than you can count, we've got removable floors, removable stairs. We can go into the second and third floor off the drill tower. So whether you want us to use it as an external stairwell or a high rise, we We can do all that and mimic just about any type of situation that the members of our fire department might encounter.

Speaker 2: Experience cost effectiveness, enhanced realistic training, versatile operations, easy multi-floor access. and innovative solutions to age-old training challenges. Take your fire department's training to the next level with affordable drill towers. Reach out to Affordable Drill Towers to elevate your training capabilities today. Corley: Corley Moore, Firehouse Vigilance. It is weekly scrap number 293. My guest tonight is Steven Schaefer. He has worked in the fire service for 34 years, first in Brookline, Massachusetts, and then with the Boston Fire Department, where he currently holds the rank of Deputy Chief. As the chief of training from 2018 to 2020, he developed numerous initiatives including officer development, fire dynamics, and firefighter safety and survival. He is a member of the ULFSRI Fire Dynamics Boot Camp. He is also a member of the Fallen Firefighter Foundation, where he helps incident commanders deal with the effects of experiencing a line of duty death. It's a heavy topic, and I look forward to the conversation we're going to have about all of these things. Welcome, my brother Steven Schaefer. You are officially the guest of Scrap No. 293. Awesome. Thanks for having me. I'm excited, my man. Is there anything I missed in the intro? Anything you would like to add?

Steven Schaefer: No, that that that about covers it. All the important things anyway. Corley: Fair enough. Let's talk about those beautiful sponsors and then we'll get to the show. Snap Tight Hose is in FDIC 2025 in Indianapolis. Witness their American-made top-tier hose solutions Stop by their indoor booth where you can delve into their complete product range. You can have all of your questions answered by their professionals, and then head outside and make sure to visit their outdoor booth for live hose demonstrations. Don't just hear about it, get an up-close look at how SnapTite products perform under real-world conditions. At SnapTite, they take pride in American craftsmanship and unmatched durability. Come see how Snaptight is supporting those on the front lines to protect what matters most. Snaptight hose. Reliable, durable, ready when you are. Affordable Drill Towers on a mission to bring you cost-effective and versatile training props like the Affordable Belout Prop, which allows you to practice window bailouts, ladder bailouts, and ladder high point rescues. They also make the affordable standpipe prop, which you can roll into the classroom for standpipe theory and then roll it into the parking lot and pump realistic flows and pressures. Of course, they also have their mainstay. The affordable drill tower. It comes in several configurations and standard with the standpipe system. You can choose from one or two sets of stairs, integrated into your existing connect boxes for multi-story access or free standing on a slab. All models are NFPA 1402 compliant and gain you ISO credit.

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Steven Schaefer: All right, so I I'm used to doing a presentation with the slideshow and and give some background, but I I guess I'll get right into the day of the fire. it was March twenty sixth, twenty fourteen, so it the eleventh year anniversary will be tomorrow. Oh wow. And I don't know if you know anybody listening from Boston understands that the the winter in Boston does not end. We don't really have much of a spring. It goes Cold, cold, cold, and then kind of right to hot summer, sometime in June. But March 26th was a really cold day. It was just above freezing. And at the time I was a district chief in District 4 and we had that that morning, I remember we had a chief meeting. All the on-duty district and deputy chiefs go down to headquarters and there's some kind of training. you know. One of the utility companies might come in. We might have some guest speaker, go over administrative stuff, have a pep talk from the commissioner Which is always interesting. but I can't remember for life for me what went on at that chief meeting, but I do remember at a break looking out the window and that's an old building was built in the 50s probably and not much has been done to it since and the windows were rattling from from the wind. The wind was Pretty much steady out of the northwest at close to 30 miles an hour. I mean it varied, but and if I look back at the weather reports, it gusted to up to 60. So I'm looking out the window at a break up there in Memorial Hall on the third floor, and I kind of say to nobody in particular, hey, it's a bad day for a fire. And I've said that phrase many times in my 35-year career. It's too hot, it's too cold, it's windy, it's raining, it's snowing. Lots of reasons it could be a bad day for a fire. I've never said, hey, it's a good day for a fire. I don't know what that would be, but But the you know the importance of that is that As you'll see a little bit later when I get get there, that I didn't remember that either. Like that when I when I went to the fire, I kind of missed remembering that in my size up.

Steven Schaefer: So the meeting's over. My driver and I, we are our chief officers have chauffeurs, aides, incident command technicians the official term, but driver and I go get lunch, go back to the station. now I assume that most fire departments are like those in the Northeast, Boston, Brookline, New York, and you usually get your training out of the way in the morning. You have lunch and then after lunch is the firehouse nap. It's one of my favorite parts of the job. Corley: Absolutely. Steven Schaefer: It's kind of like kindergarten, right? You get to lie down after lunch Corley: It's a safety nap. Steven Schaefer: Yes, right. So that's what I did. I said, hey, hold my calls. And you know, I went down for a for a nap. And my advice to you out there, or any of you rookies listening is You can take either a 10 to 15 minute cat nap to freshen up, or you've got to go through all cycles of sleep, 90 minutes. So if you're going to nap, do it right. Slow it down for a nice long nap And at about 2. 40 in the afternoon, the tones go off. Striking 1579 for 298 Beacon Street. They get up. Go to the pole, slide the pole, get my gear on, get in the buggy. In Mars station, there's a engine seven, ladder 17, and car four. In that station. Ladder 17 was out at headquarters at training. Engine 7 was in quarters, but they hadn't had a run in a while. So the garage doors had been down for a while. So my room, nice and warm, can't feel the wind. The Apparatus Bay, nice and warm. Can't feel the wind. It was the wind was coming from across that way, but directly across from that fire station is a 20-story high-rise. So, you know, it's not like it's rattling the doors Then we get in the buggy, which is nice and warm, and off to the fire, or off to the box anyway. So I wasn't cognizant of the wind at that point And I hadn't, as I was thinking, hey, you know, it's it's probably not a fire, it's it's that neighborhood, that time of day, it would be unusual to get a fire. You can get a fire anytime but I just was figuring steam for smoke or you know food on the stove or something, you know, it's probably probably not gonna be much.

Steven Schaefer: And I'll just interject here that one of the lessons learned should be don't ever get complacent The mindset getting on should be we're going with fire until it's proven otherwise when they strike a box, right? I mean, you know, e even if you it's an address you've been to a hundred times, you're like, I know it's the jockey pump or whatever you know, whatever is gonna set it off. don't don't let your guard down that you might turn the corner and smoke flames. I like to say, you know, trash collectors don't get excited and and freaked out when they turn the corner and they see they're a bunch of garbage cans. there. Now it's a little different. They know it's trash day it's going to be there, but it's like we we've got to assume that there's going to be a fire there when we're called for it until it's proven otherwise Anyway, so I'm I'm going there. I'm starting to think of the neighborhood. I don't know the exact building, but the back bay of Boston for those that aren't familiar it's it was a a tidal bay off the Charles River. It was filled in in the eighteen eighties and they built brown stones or we call 'em brownstones. They're mostly ordinary construction. Three to five stories. Most of them were originally built as single family homes for wealthy bosses. Contiguous buildings, the whole block, and then there's a a public alley in the back. You know, the you know the both both streets back up to that. anyway, so You know, I'm thinking, okay, that's the kind of construction. I'm not sure the building. And I hear engine 33 call off. Hey, we got smoke showing. Oh, okay, I better get my game face now. i Eddie Eddie Walsh, Lieutenant on 33, was a really, really sharp officer. There's no way he would have mistaken that for anything but a fire. So it another half a minute or so and we pull up and I pull up in front of the building. Now the the front of the building faces South, southeast. So it's that whole row of buildings is blocking the wind from behind it. Behind the building is that public alley, backstreet, which you know has no hydrants on it, and then a six-lane, at that point a six-lane sort of limited access highway basically called Starrow Drive, and then the Charles River.

Steven Schaefer: And at that point, the Charles River is over a third of a mile wide. So the wind was coming right across the water with nothing to stop it, hitting the back of that building But in the front, you couldn't feel it at all. And it was it wasn't quite the middle of the row, but it was towards the middle of the row. So it was not an easy, you know, they talk about doing 360s. It take you a while to get around there When I got there, I saw 33 had stopped short of the front of the building from the direction I was coming. I saw a line, their line, inch and three-quarter going up the steps. Up the stoop we call it the front stairs to that first floor. Now there's there was a partial basement or you know a basement level under the first floor that was The windows were about the bottom of the window was about even with grade level. The building is on a slight grade, so in the back, that basement apartment is fully above grade. Okay, it's walk out on a slight slope. So walk out in the back. So I'm looking, you know, I'm looking okay. I'm trying to get my my bearings thinking of my size up and The timeline from when I showed up and said, stepped out of my car and said, I'm command, to when the Mayday was called, or just before that when the shit hit the fan, was less than three minutes So a lot's going on at this time and it's been a while and I don't have my notes with me, but you know, so I I might have the the exact order of these things out, but I I look up and I'm I see lazy, you know, smoke. It's black, but it's it's just kind of flowing out laminar from that front door When I first saw it, I thought it might be coming out of the window next to it too, but it was coming out of the front door. And Eddie had called off his second report was we got smoke showing from floor one. So my initial assumption is the fire's on floor one And it's coming out of the just the top. It's not coming out of the hole, you know, top to bottom of the door.

Speaker 4: Sure. Steven Schaefer: Then I'm I'm looking at building, count stories, and I see Three people on the third floor bailing out to the fire escape. They're coming out their window, and the fire escape is a straight ladder bolted to the to the wall with a little you know a little platform outside the window and then a straight ladder with in between floors like a little birdcage around it. Corley: Okay. Steven Schaefer: if you can imagine that Something that I mean a regular fire escape a lot of people are uncomfortable negotiating. That's like something like a jungle gym on a playground. Corley: Right. Steven Schaefer: Right? Corley: They're not gonna use it unless they're serious about it. Steven Schaefer: Yeah, right. And they're coming out of that window In a hurry. They're not stopping and saying, Hey, I need a ladder, help me. They're just coming out. I don't know. They were, you know, youngish middle-age it looked like and so now that was my first like what's going on here because there was no smoke coming out of that window behind him it didn't look like conditions were bad enough that they would be in that much of a hurry and I'm trying to ask them is there anybody else out there being in there because now hey I've got a life safety problem. If they're home, who else is home? What are we you know? Right, right. What's going on? So the trucks were delayed. Like I said, Lada 17 and my quarters would be the second new truck. They were at headquarters. The first U truck, which is housed with engine 33, was at, I believe they were at fire alarm, getting their mobile computer worked on something. They weren't they weren't in in quarters.

Corley: An alarm is your dispatch, correct? Steven Schaefer: fire alarm is our dispatch center. Corley: Okay, okay. Steven Schaefer: It's dedicated to the fire. It's not a combined strictly they were Firearm. so the the you know the the first two trucks that were normally doing that card weren't there. Other trucks were covering them, but they took a little longer to get there So I 33's got the line going in up the stairs, and I hear a report saying it's in the basement. And then the we run in Boston that there's a on the engines, it's a driver and officer. A hydrant man and a pump man, because we usually front lay, you know, we we lay in. You drop the hydrant man off, he wraps the hydrant, they go forward, he hooks it up, gets a signal to charge it, and then he comes back up and follows the line in So that day the hydr man was detailed in from ladder 15 and he charged the hydrant, but instead of following the line right away, he decides to do some truck stuff. I didn't see this happen, but he came out. He had gone down into the basement. So there's under the stoop, there's a door, and then a little vestibule under the stoop, and then another door that goes into the front basement apartment. He had gone in there. Not you know, I can talk about what he what he actually did, but I he I just saw him coming up and he stops in front of me and he says, Chief, it's in there. It's right there. And he points at that front apartment I didn't stop to ask him what exactly do you mean by that. I just assumed that he went in there and said, hey, the seed of the fire is in there. So I got a report, hey, it's in the basement. He told me it's in the basement. Okay, so it's coming up the stairs, that's why it's coming out the first floor, and it, you know, that's that's the path, so that's why I don't see any smoke in the basement. But oh and I I forget engine seven had pulled up while you know in there while that's going on. And I I ordered the officer, Johnny Mack, a really experienced officer, I said, John, grab a big line, a two and a half inch line And back up 33, make sure you protect the interior stairs.

Steven Schaefer: Right? Because that's kind of tactics 101, right? You got to protect the interior stairs, a multi-story building. So that's the first two lines. Now the third line was I knew it was engine 22 was coming. They weren't there yet. And I radioed to fire alarm and I said, hey, have the third engine report to me in front of the building with a big line My idea was, okay, the fire is right there, and there's a door right there. Let's go right in at it, get water on it, and then we'll go home. Speaker 2: Yeah. Steven Schaefer: Right? So 22 comes up the street with their line and they're they're kind of setting up getting ready and that's when the shit hit the fan. Now all of that that I described happened in about two two and a half minutes And all of a sudden, coming out of that front door, instead of the black kind of laminar, laziish smoke was it was thick boiling black smoke coming out high velocity high pressure Like almost instantaneously. And I looked up at it and I I for a second I I wasn't I mean I saw it but I wasn't really sure what I was looking at, right? Because If you study, you know that you talk about recognition prime decision making. Like you see something and you have a slide in your slide deck, or you know, for the young guys a picture in your in your picture folder. of of something similar and you go, okay, that's what that is, and I I did this before. You know, you go from there. And what came to my mind, the only thing that came to my mind that looked similar was when I was a recruit in Brookline, we went down to the actually the Boston Academy and they s they still had diesel pits. These huge concrete pits where they would light diesel off. The idea being I guess you practice advancing with two two and a half overlapping 30 degree fog streams like you were going to shut off a valve, which I have never done in my career, but you know, we practiced it back then.

Speaker 2: You had the good training for it, right? Steven Schaefer: Yeah. But that, you know, when you light diesel off, you know, it it roils, it's not burning, it it that's what it looked like. So I thought, well, maybe there's a home heating oil tank in the basement that let go And as I'm trying to process that, I see I struck a second alarm when I saw that I I I think that's the time timing, but I see like what look like little ragdolls, they're guys in bunker gear, staggering and tumbling down the the front stoop out of the front doorway. And I just I had it in my head that that was engine 33. so I said firearm emergency message all members off the first floor. Now that's not Emergency message isn't part of our official radio communications, but it would have been urgent message, I guess. But I was a little rattled now, right? because I I I still didn't I I didn't really understand what had just happened. It turns out that was not engine 33. That was engine 7 and a couple of members of Latter 24 which had pulled up. They were going to do a search on the first floor. and they ended up all being, you know, anything that was exposed was a second-degree burn. Bunch of them went to the hospital. I think there were three or four from that first round. And then, well maybe it was then I struck the second because I think my striking the second alarm stepped on Eddie's first Mayday. And he got his Mayday out And he I struck a third. I ordered every complete evacuation of the building. And it took me just a just a bit to realize that Eddie and Mike were now trapped in the basement. What had happened was after the fact reconstructed, the fire was started in the back. There was a shed, a wood shed. There was an apputrance to the the back and a lot of the buildings there have such things. It was probably fifteen feet wide, if that, maybe ten by about twenty-five long. Wood frame, wood shingles You know, I I forg I forget what the roofing was. I think it was a s a low-pitched roof with you know asphalt shingles. It might have been flat with tar, but in any case, the next door building on the left which would be from the front would be the delta exposure and I'll just I'll just say my my two cents here We've gone to plain English for almost everything because people speak English so they understand it.

Steven Schaefer: Why can't we just say front, rear, left, and right? you know, from the front of the building. Whatever the front you even designate the front, that's the front, then you go, you know, to the left, to the rear, to the right. I always have to do a little mental, you know, little adjustment when someone says, oh, the, you know, this the free exposure or the d you know the delta exposure. I'm like, okay, I'm a fancy oh yes, they they mean the right side. So anyway. Fair question. It's a it's a good question for discussion. Why add another layer, right? Anyway, so they were installing something on the rear fire escape and either they had to do, they cut it, they grind it, they had to do some kind of heart work Which I don't think they were prepared you know, they didn't it was unpermitted, so I it was probably not you know, they didn't think they were gonna have to or just were gonna weld unpermitted or whatever it was, and some slag or a spark got underneath the shingles. And the shed. The wind was whipping up and it burned. Instead of burning up the outside, it burned through in into the inside of the shed up and somehow through the building. Now it's a it's a brick wall in the back, but it's probably the way that they connected the shed. There were probably some poke throughs or holes or utilities or something. And the fire, that's how the fire got into the building. Now, there was a 911 call made from a the tenant. one of the tenants. There were two women at home at the time on the the basement apartment and the rear, the first floor apartment, which was front to back, the three people upstairs, and then there was one more woman on the on the third floor or the fourth floor in the rear apartment. so the f the woman who called met 33 at the front steps and said, hey, it's in my apartment because she could smell and see smoke down there. And she left and said, you get down to it by going down the stairs. So 33 took the line past the stairs that go up. There's a little door, stairway, a dog leg, and then down to the hallway in the in the basement.

Steven Schaefer: While that was happening, the alarms in the building went off, but they didn't go to a central station. Or if they did, it wasn't transmitted to our fire alarm. It went to the building manager. He was local. He responded He goes to the rear, right, and he opens, there's three doors. There's the the an exterior door to get into the shed. Then there's another door inside the shed, a little vestibule. And the third, the last door, was the original door in the back of the building, which is a pretty robust wood door, but it had a two by two or so glass panel that wasn't fire rated. So this guy opens the two doors to the shed, sees fire in the shed, goes, oh, and screws. He leaves both of those doors open. Corley: Both doors open. Steven Schaefer: So now the only thing that's holding that wind that's 30 miles an hour and gusting to 60, pretty pretty much right in those doors, well close enough, last door. So what and Eddie might, but they think they weren't in that hallway. They went into her apartment. And the reason they think they were searching, they didn't see fire. If they'd seen fire, Eddie would have called for the line to be charged. They stepped it dry, right? And I Eddie's good enough officer that if it had been really hot down there, he probably would have called for the line to be charged So the hallway that they were in at the bottom of those stairs had a a second ceiling. It had a drop ceiling with you know steel, you know the cold gold steel ceiling choice and then and then a layer of drywall The apartment just had the original plaster and last ceiling. So it was probably felt hotter in the apartment because there was less insulation.

Corley: Yeah, less shape. Steven Schaefer: And so I I think they went in and they said, Oh, it must be in here because it's hotter in here. So let you know they're trying to find the fire when that glass must have failed. That's the theory anyway. I mean we don't really know when we didn't you know, I wasn't in the position, but I don't think they knew about the UL could do fire modeling and and that kind of stuff. So you know none of that was done, but I think that glass failed And fueled by the wind now when the fire dropped down, it was like a blowtorch going down that hallway and right up the stairs and out the front door, which was chalked open because that's where 33's line was. Right? Classic low intake, high exhaust, unidirectional flow path. Corley: Unidirectional flow path. Steven Schaefer: Now, Eddie and Mike were not caught in that flow path because they were in the apartment But the guys at the top of the stairs, which was engine seven and the one member of 24, and And it's my contention that had they made the stairs, even with a charge two and a half, we would have buried all three of them. And probably anybody at 24 that went down there with them. Because the you know the heat flux of those stairs, it it melted it it destroyed 33's line and it pretty much destroyed Engine 7's line, which they dropped and ran, you know, they backed out for their lives. Sure. John McManus, the officer I told to, you know, ordered to bring the line in, said in the after-action reviews, he was standing at the top, he was about to call for water. He said it wasn't that hot, it wasn't that smoky, you know, conditions weren't that they they were masked up, but it wasn't that bad. You know, they weren't kneeling down, they weren't like crouching down And he said it felt and sounded like a freight train came up those stairs. And they just dropped the line and bailed out. I mean it we must have been, you know, like that that that amount of heat hit you that quickly. something I didn't find out till much later from another friend of mine, Kenny Hayes, who's now our our training captain. Yeah the officer of ladder twenty-four that was up there searching and that somewhere in that hallway on the first floor felt that heat as well His instinct was to stand and he was going to take his face piece off, but he took his glove off first and the heat hit his hand.

Steven Schaefer: And then he just, you know, that that got him going and he got out. I've heard things like that before. When you're hit with heat like that, you you don't necessarily respond rationally. Right. So those guys fortunately, and I think that the stairs, so it went up the stairs, but at the top of the stairs there was a dog leg. And you know, this is unscientific. I I I've not done modeling, but I think that that dog leg really helped save them. Get them giving them enough time to get out. You know, maybe took a little of the energy out of it. But anyway, they bailed out And then for the next eight minutes or so, you know, Eddie was kind of screaming about the Mayday. I mean, I don't blame him. It was must have been horrific down there, but he regained his composure. And he kept saying, hey, you know, we we're we don't have any water, you need to charge our line. I mean he kept calling, charge, charge the line, charge. It was charged. At that point they charged it, but it had burned through. Now it's just an open butt falling down the stairways doing nothing.

Corley: Right. Steven Schaefer: He We were trying to figure out where it was. If you listen to the audio, it's pretty horrific. you know, I'm kind of yelling at fire alarm. Where are they? He said the front of the basement that we're coming towards the front So there was the, hey, the fires in the front, you know the report there. They say they're going towards the front. All our efforts were directed at getting in under the stoop, or at least the initial ones And it was not it was not happening. They had a fully flowing two and a half and they got I don't know the rescue one, engine twenty-two and engine thirty-seven, I mean, and some pretty tough guys and they got about five feet in and they all got burned there was more efforts to go through the first floor. That wasn't happening. So by the time we got enough, you know, and I when I struck the third, I I directed all the second arm units to the to the rear because I knew we were having a problem in the rear and that was probably gonna be the only way to get in there. But it took it took too long to get effective water back there They got it. They got there were bars on the windows. They ripped those off. But by the time they got water and and extinguished that that rear apartment, which didn't take all that long, was It was too eight. I I was still in command I struck the second and the deputy comes, but he didn't show up until About 10 minutes later. And if you look at the timeline, for those eight minutes or so since the made eight till Eddie's last transmission, which is we need a big line right away. It's hot down here. Basically the last thing he ever said. That was eight minutes. So if you can imagine those of you who have ever been in command in front of a building, standing out there with a ton of resources And having to listen, literally listen, to two guys. It was only Eddie on the radio, but I knew Mike was with him. Two guys die asking for us to come get him. And we you know it wasn't for lack of trying and we did get them, but it was too late by the time we got in there in the rear.

Steven Schaefer: So, you know, i th th the the big takeaways, I mean th there's a lot of them, but you know, f for for command is make sure that you, you know, when you are trying to size up a situation that's continual, that you take the weather, especially the wind. into account. Wind is a huge factor. If you go through the line of duty deaths and read the just you don't even have to go through, you know, the the NIASH reports. The executive summary is enough to give you an idea of what happened. Wind is a factor in a lot of fires. anything over about a 10 mile-an-hour wind can have significant impact on fire dynamics, how the fire behaves and increasing the heat rate and you know the flow pass and all that good stuff. wind is important. And whenever possible, just like they used to say for a lumber yard fire is you have to have the wind at your back You gotta, you know, you're just not gonna push against a wind-driven fire. So that's one. And the other is this was also a basement fire Which are very dangerous, right? And the best way to fight a basement fire, or any fire really, is on its own level. From on its own level or from below. Right, going from above down into is not good. I mean if it's a basement that's completely sealed up, that's probably the only way you're gonna get in. And then you can kind of get down there, you know, if you throw some water and and maybe get under that thermal layer. But if there are windows in there or even worse, an on-grade door or slider and that fails or you take it out Especially if there's wind, it's kinda game over. You can't outrun it, you can't outfight it. you you gotta So those are the kind of two tactical strategic takeaways. I talked about not being complacent at both as an instant commander and as a firefighter. You know, you gotta keep your head on the swivel. We a lot of fires I assume everywhere as they are in Boston are kinda routine. It's a one line, one room you know, by the numbers pretty much fire and that's great, but sometimes they're not. And I know a w we I call it the three decker syndrome up here.

Steven Schaefer: A three story wood frame building is our bread and butter. And the tactics that work there, and we're really good at those, do not translate to a commercial property, do not translate to a warehouse, do not translate to a high-rise, do not translate to an ordinary constructed, you know, five-story apartment building They're different different animals. And I was talking with Sammy, your engineer, before the show. He said, oh, most firefighters, you know, building construction, they fall asleep. Well, you you can't Right? Not only do you have to know how the fire behaves, you have to know your enemy, but you have to know where you're gonna fight it. You're gonna know the battleground. And that's the building. You gotta know your buildings Corley: No, it's powerful, man. Powerful. and I've listened to the audio and I can only I mean just only imagine It's one of the I I know when I talked to you, I think we were up in Washington State, and I talked to you, I said one of the very first presentations I ever built, one of the very first classes I ever built was was the Beacon Street Fire. Just going over, you know, the NIOSH report. Obviously, I wasn't there and didn't have your first hand experience with it. I've got some questions coming at you from the audience if you're ready. Bring him on. Joe Wiz coming at you. In fact, we saw him up at up in New York, me and you together at his retirement. he said, Chief, how do you separate the line of duty death from your feelings of being a firefighter on what happened?

Steven Schaefer: how do I separate my physical ideas? Oh, you mean how I how it impacted me as opposed to like looking at it tactically? Like sure. Yeah, that's a hard question to answer. I I guess I don't know, I I guess everybody processes things differently, right? In 35 years You know, in any department, but especially in a in municipal department, you know, a bigger city, and I'm sure you know FDNY is ten times our size basically, but you see a lot of stuff and some of it's, you know, pretty horrifying, but I I just I got the makeup where I I never really took that stuff home with me. You know? I remember one of the the guys at the drill academy says, hey you gotta remember It's it's not your emergency. It's not, you know, it was it wasn't your fault that that this happened. Now in this instance, it might be a little different. I I looked at it and I just I don't feel responsible for Mike and I's death. I do feel accountable. And the difference being, I don't think that I gave an order or or failed to give an order, given the circumstances I was in, that would have made a difference in those couple of minutes maybe if I hadn't ordered engine 22. They were, you know, they said in the after action thing that the officer's plan was to go to the rear, because typically the third engine goes to the rear of the building. there were no hydrants back there. I don't know if he was gonna plan to drop on Beacon Street. It's kind of a tough stretch. would that have made a difference if they had gotten water back there right away, even 500 gallons? Maybe but you know I i given what I knew then and and the situation, I I I probably would've would do the same, you know, I I mean that's that was that was the move I thought was the best.

Corley: No, hindsight's the only thing that changes it. Steven Schaefer: Yeah. So But being accountable is is trying to understand, and that's I guess to Joe's point of hey I I I have to take a good look at this. I mean nobody you know everybody says well we don't we want Monday morning quarterback, but first of all we all do and secondly As long as you're not critical and oh what were they thinking? you know just trying to noodle it out, it's it's kind of important. Like you gotta tease out the lessons learned from these things or they kind of keep happening, right? That's the whole point and that's why as as hard as it is for me to to do the presentations and kind of share that, especially when I gotta listen to the video again and or the the audio again and and relive it a little bit, it's important enough to pass along. So I I think that You know, that having that as a way to you know honor and make make good on their sacrifice that day kind of keeps me going. and s staves off some of the emotional stuff. Like I, you know, I I didn't process it right away, but looking back, and I'll say because I I I you know this this comes up in my presentation. Sometimes people ask me what kept you going and when the National Fallen firefighters, you know, they're always interested in the process, how do you process things. You know, my family was supportive The command staff were supportive. Eddie Walsh's family and Mike Kennedy's mother, a charity, they were all supportive. In fact, he came from a line of firefighters from Watertown, Massachusetts. And a couple of them reached out to me a few days later and said, hey, we just want to make sure you're okay, which was, you know, was very helpful. But what really really got me through the first few days was One of the firefighters at my station, Bill Hayhurst, his father was a district chief in District 4. And so, you know, family on the job and the legacy, he texted me and he said, hey chief, I just want you to know there's no one else we would have rather had outside that building than you. And he pretty much texts me on the anniversary every year, some kind of message.

Steven Schaefer: And I think it was that, you know, that direct and also just inferred that the the guys that I led still had confidence. Corley: Absolutely. Steven Schaefer: You know, they didn't go, oh we don't know we don't want to follow him anymore. You know, he he killed those two guys. so That that's that did it for me. I mean that was really the the most important thing for me was I still have the the the confidence and the trust of the guys I led. Corley: Kevin Cowan says, Chief, tell us what Boston has changed and what you have changed as an instant commander after the incident. Steven Schaefer: So Boston is a there's a whole if you and I'll When I plug the book, there's a way to get to the reports on it. And there were a whole bunch of recommendations. We don't have the time to go through them all. But it the best thing that came out of it was increased training. Which had kind of slacked off department wide in the years leading up to that, and especially engine company operations, You know, my own we emphasize now quick water. You gotta get water on the fire and you know the adage is you get water on the fire and everything gets better And it's usually true. You know, get that first line in where it needs to go and get water flowing. terms of my own style, I I I guess you know I'm probably slightly more risk adverse than I I was when I started. especially m as a chief officer I tell my guys from the trucks the most important thing we I mean we're getting into the search, but I want to hear the primary search is complete and if it's negative. Because once I get that, you know, I'm gonna make different decisions. You know, my my tolerance for for like you know risking people is gonna go way down. It's not that I don't care about the building, but It's not worth our lives to to save a building.

Corley: So, you know, and I do love I do love the way you you phrase that, which is I want to get the primary search complete and a negative and then You know, I cause there is. Yeah. No, absolutely. I don't think anyone, I don't believe anyone can argue with that. Steven Schaefer: No. But you gotta you know and and you gotta communicate that. I mean a lot of times guys will, you know, search and they won't say, hey, primary search complete. I I don't have x-ray vision. That's what I'm standing outside trying to run the show, but you gotta tell me what's going on. That's a benchmark I want to hear. And for we've added for the engine companies, water on the fire, meaning you're actually flowing water on something that's burning. Because you know it used to be just charge the line and then the next thing you hear is oh the fire is knocked down. And we all know that nothing bad can ever possibly happen between those two, right? Corley: Right, right. Benchmarks. You mentioned the benchmarks, primary search complete, and negative. And then of course water on the fire. Have you gotten More more stringent on your benchmarks and and your announcement of them?

Steven Schaefer: Well, I I mean I I tell my guys whenever I can and if it if it doesn't happen at a fire or a training I'll go over it. You know, and it's it's getting better, but it's it's still it's hit or miss. I mean it's we trained on it, but it seems to have you know maybe slacked off or it's you know it's it's it's hard. You gotta You can't go there's a mentality here and I probably down in New York too, maybe any place that where f firefighters, you know, when the war was on in the 70s, right? And fire you went to fires all the time, literally. That's already two generations or more ago. You can't, you know, and even the tactics that they used then, the the contents of those buildings were different. Right. The construction might not be. I you know, I don't we don't have a lot of lightweight stuff. It's mostly still legacy, but when they remodel, you gotta be careful because they can you know they can add lightweight components to what what you think, but You know, it it just you gotta stay current and you gotta train because we're not getting the work. and and and everything we do pretty much is a perishable skill. So if you're not constantly doing it It's gonna suffer.

Corley: It's perishing. It's perishing. No, hey, everybody, I know hearing Steve talk about the fire is is It's I don't want to say captivating, but it is. It's it's it's to get a firsthand account of something we've all studied, because it's in 30 fires you must know, which I know we're gonna talk about the book when we get the book, so I don't want to Take that from me. So if you have questions on it, please throw them in. Because if not, we're going to talk about officer development training, which you're so you're very passionate about from a training perspective. What are we getting right in officer development training and what do we need to work on Steven Schaefer: Well, so I'm I'm I'm a little out of it and I haven't been in training in several years now, but I remember back in twenty eighteen when I was talking with Mark Davidson, who was in Fairfax and some other guys. There really was nationwide it seemed like a lack of formal professional development for officers. You know, the mantra, or the the model certainly up my way was you take a test, you get promoted, you go, hey your bars, kid, good luck. Right. The idea was that you would learn on your job, and I guess the hope was that you had at some point in your career a role model of a good officer. Right? Right. And I just thought it was, you know, I said it's it's not really fair to the the department, the public, the officer himself. I think you get the most bang out of your buck by training the officers because they're the ones that are sort of expected to train their crews, right? They set the tone for the I mean the the company officer is the backbone of the fire service. It's like the NCOs in the military Right? They're where the rubber meets the road. If you have a good officer and he has expectations and trains his crew, they're gonna perform. If you have a bad officer, even if you have a good crew, it's it's gonna, you know It's not going to go so well. So, you know, and what what does a good officer development program look like? You know, we put together, I mean it would take a real one I think would take weeks I know in New York they take them off offline the lieutenants for six weeks at a time.

Steven Schaefer: But we don't have that kind of budget or, you know, it's like we don't have the ability to absorb that. But we did Develop the guys who were recently promoted and the guys on the top of the list, maybe twenty four or thirty or so. And And we, for the lieutenants, we came up with a five-day program. And the first two days were leadership based on what they're doing in New York on their frontline supervisor. There's a chief, so I'll applaud Joe Brossi was a genius. so we we sent guys down. I went down and a bunch of the training staff went down and sat in on on that training a couple of sessions And we boiled it down to two days, but it was all about leadership and mostly leadership, you know, sort of the concepts and focusing a lot on on not the fire ground, but the firehouse. Because as he said, give me the, you know, tell me the busiest company you have in your city. You know, what percentage of time do you think you're actually running an emergency response of any kind, let alone fires? And someone said five. He said, that's too much, but I'll give you that. I'll give you five percent. So that means 95% of the time, you're just in the firehouse or training or doing routine things That's where you gotta lead.

Corley: Yes. Absolutely. Steven Schaefer: Right. And Anthony, one of them talks about full contact leadership, I think it is, about soft environment and hard environment. The soft environment being the firehouse and the And he says, if you don't have some kind of discipline and expectations in the soft environment, don't expect it to magically appear on the fire ground. Corley: Right on. Steven Schaefer: So Corley: No, it's powerful. Absolutely. Steven Schaefer: And then the other the other days of the officer training were were administrative stuff and basically just bringing you know officers and chief officers in to say This is the basic expectation. This is what your ex lieutenant in the Boston Fire Department. And for for you guys it would be for I forget what department you are in in Oklahoma, but you know, specific to your department. These are what we expect lieutenants to do. And the same for captains. Captains we focused on acting as the battalion chief or our district chief. And then chief officers was command staff mostly. Just quick Quickly, I know we're we're getting close on time. We used some simulations and that was everyone's favorite part of the whole training. Using easy sims you share, simple stuff, but having them on the radio, actually having to make the decisions in real time.

Corley: No, I love that. Kevin Cowan has a qu and there's no the limit on time is it's a soft target, so we can float around it. But Kevin Cowan says thank you thank you for the answer, Chief. Talk about being an instructor with Phil Jose, tactical decision making, and how it has helped slash changed you and your students. Steven Schaefer: Oh, so tactical, yeah, Phil came up with during COVID Remote training. He worked with you know they they did tactical decision games. So they'd have a you know it was a military tactical problem and they'd have everybody come up with their solution and they'd say, okay, go give me a solution kind of in real time and then okay he did it and then they sort of dissect it talk about it so Phil translated that to kind of a simulation like I was talking about Here's the a little video of an actual fire ground and then he had the diagram and he said okay you're chief one you have this you know these resources and they're all you know What's your plan? Right. And then that chief would have to and we tried to say, all right, give give the orders like you give them on the radio, you know, for a little more little more stress, right? Instead of just saying, well, I would have the first engine on just done. Just say, hey, engine one, go to the front, you know, like Like you would have to do on a fire mount. they talked for a little while until Phil said, okay, let's let's stop there. What do you think of the plan? And then everybody go around and talk about the idea was to tease out You know, he he might have something specific in mind, or sometimes the discussion would go off, you know. in another direction. But it good because first of all I get different perspectives because there were chiefs from kind of there's some West Coast departments and east coast sometimes in the middle. But it was it was like I call them exercising my command muscles. It was like Like it was as close as we could come to hey you're in command, what do you do? You had to kind of practice that and think of it in somewhat close to real time with a little bit of stress.

Steven Schaefer: So it's you know it's practicing being in command basically. Corley: No, it sounds it sounds amazing. really good times. like you said, the tactical games the military does, but doing it for the fire ground. but no, we are having some trouble with your internet. You're pausing on us, so I'm gonna move to the book or books. it's still coming through, but it is getting it it seems to be getting worse. But I don't think there's much we can do about it. So we're gonna move to book or books that you think firefighters should be reading. Steven Schaefer: I'm gonna plug the the one because partly because I've got one little chapter in there about the Beacon Street Fire But it's called 30 Fires You Must Know. Frank Lieb and Billy Goldfetter put put it together. They both submitted a list to each other of, you know, hey, these are the fires, and they whittled it down to 30 that they thought were significant, that firefighters now should know about because of the lessons that they you know they they highlight. And it's good. Some wildland stuff sort of runs the gamut. And the story, they asked me to submit, I think, about a thousand words. You know, it felt like a high school writing assignment. And so I wrote it out and I submitted it and they sent me back the proof and I was like, oh my god, I'm making East Belane. You know, the editing was pretty good. Anyways, short, so it doesn't it doesn't get into the meat of it, but the good thing about that book is at the end, you they've they've got the the website, www. 35znow. com, I think it is but didn't find it. And so for each fire they list all the resources they have, which are video, some pictures. The NIASH report, in our case it was a Board of Inquiry report. So all of that ancillary material, so you can read about it. And if you want to dig deeper, it's all kind of right there for you. and you know and I think they're actually coming out with another volume because you know they're more than 30 fires that you should probably know. Oh absolutely you know and it's a good way to get into looking at NIASH reports and And you know, after action reports because you know if you if you look at a lot of them, like I said, you you see not the NIOSH five, I mean that's there, but you kind of see repeating recurring patterns of breakdown of communication, lack of awareness of of you know change in grade or what floors you're talking about.

Steven Schaefer: you know, problems with water supply. I mean whatever you you just you start to see sort of patterns and and that that might help you look out for when s things are starting to go a little squirrely that you might recognize something before it becomes a tragedy. Corley: Right on, man. And if and if anything that would that can avert that, it would be, yeah, it's worth it. And no, Frank and Billy did an amazing job on the book. And I'm that's pretty awesome that they're doing a volume too. So absolutely. Steven Schaefer: Well I that I that we're talking about it. I I can't swear that they're doing it. Corley: No, no, even even a couple people in the Alan Glugofsky said I believe they are working on book two. So I I and if not, we'll tell them they need to. So we'll get on we'll we'll get the pressure going. All right. So that takes us to the five questions for firefighters. So this is my favorite part of the scrap for me where I get to ask you questions that have no right or wrong answers. There's just your opinion, your opinion only. I got opinion. I'm ready. Oh, you're from Boston. You're s that they're they're known for having an opinion. I'm actually I grew up in New York City, which is even more. Okay, there you go. So you're a you're a double bower own a New Yorker transplanted Bostonian.

Steven Schaefer: You bet Corley: Okay, let's pull them up here. there are no right answers, only your opinions, and the points are arbitrary passed out by me with the help of the audience, which steve mouch has already given you max points already for the 30 fires you must know so you're off to a good start but number one you're the proby once more and you have to cook the meal at the firehouse what is your go-to meal Steven Schaefer: All right. So we I made a spaghetti dinner, which I was I was not asked to repeat, but I think if you're gonna probing, you're gonna make a meal, if you can make a halfway decent chili, that's a really good meal. It's not too hard to put together. It's basically one pot And if you get a run, even a long one, and you turn it off, you come back, you haven't ruined it. Right? There are a lot of things that you know if you're in the middle of cooking and you turn it off, it kind of ruins it. Chili's not that way. It's it's good three hours later. keep going chugging. So I would say a nice spicy chili.

Corley: I like it because you said like you said one pot and it's safe. It's safe if you catch the run. And you also threw in spicy, which absolutely will sell out, get you max points. So Tanner wanted to know beans or no beans in your chili? Oh, absolutely beans, yeah. He's saying beans, absolutely. Okay. All right, number two. And you got max points for the chili. number two, it's job town. It is time. You're in route and responding like the scene from backdraft where he slaps that tape into that cassette deck. What song are you playing while in route? Steven Schaefer: All right. I thought about this one and I really couldn't come up with anything. So I probably won't get any points for this. But I just have to say I always thought that was a ridiculous scene in back I've never seen anybody pop a cassette in on my way. You should be paying attention to the radio and thinking about your job and what you're doing. It's not the time to listen to music. In fact, backdraft, it's funny, that came out in what ninety maybe? I had just gotten on the job and two things. One we we rented it at at work. So it must have been a little after it came out. But anyway, you got a DVD There was an old timer, Jack Borges, his nickname was Porky. He had been on since like 1959. And he sat down in the first scene where they raised the aerial and then the guy leaps like seven feet onto a balcony. Jack said, fuck this. He got up and he walked out, wouldn't watch the rest of the movie. So people would ask me, 'cause I had just gotten on, I was, you know, young, oh backdraft, yeah, is it like that? And I was like, not really. You know, the fires, there's no smoke and I said, you know the scene where they're at a party, everybody's drunk, and they get into a fight? I said, that's dead on. They got that one dead on.

Corley: They got that part right. Steven Schaefer: But so if I had to fix some music, I'd just say just keep playing the cavalry charge. That's what we're that's what we're going in for. Corley: Just a cavalry charge. All right. The number three. Okay. Whose boots, past, present, or future, would you like to spend 24 hours in? Steven Schaefer: And I thought about that one and I I think the answer is it it's it's not a name, it's not an actual person, it's a firefighter of the future. I I'd really like to be able to see what the firefighter of 30 or 35 years, you know, so the span from what now, or maybe 40, from when I retire to My point in my career now, what does the gear look like? What are the tactics? What's happening? Have we improved? is it still a hundred line of duty deaths a year or you know whatever averages now? I mean I just You know, I won't be around, right? I'm not gonna last that long, but I I'd love to be able to see where we're at. you know, at somebody who's who's Maybe just coming on now or a few years from now, at the end of their career, what does it look like?

Corley: Oh I love that brother. That is a great that's a great I love that band. That's a max points for sure on number three. And I've no one's ever said anything like that before. So I do love that answer. And now you actually got my brain thinking. Everybody in the chat is saying max points, maximum points They love that answer as much as I did. Number four, you are retired. You're sitting on the beach somewhere enjoying some Mai Thai's. What do you want to hear through the grapevine that the people you used to work with, how do they describe you to the new guys? Steven Schaefer: So, well, you know, I I don't know if that is the term Jake universal. We used to when I first got on, everybody a firefighters, the nickname for a firefighter was a Jake. Okay. It must be a Northeast thing. So you know, if a guy was a good Jake, that was like saying he was you know, you're solid. So I'd want to hear that. But in terms of, you know, I I spent when I retire, I'll probably have spent half my career in a or more, company officer and then chief officer, and I'd like to to hear that that I was a the kind of leader that guys respected and wanted to follow You know, I I always thought you're doing leadership right if the guys don't do the right thing because they're afraid of punishment or getting an ass chewing or they're doing it right because they don't want to let you down, they don't want to disappoint you, they don't want to lose your respect for them. If you're doing that, you probably got it right. So I'd like to hear something along those lines. That's the kind of guy we'd follow down the gates of hell, that kind of thing.

Corley: you know yeah yeah if you're doing that if you're doing that you're a good Jake yeah there you go I like it brother no that's solid that's max points absolutely respected and wanted to follow not because of punishment Absolutely beautiful. Four max points on number four. Number five, heavy fire, searchable space. Would you rather be assigned to the nozzle or first in on VES? Steven Schaefer: Okay, so let me say, having having been on both a truck and an engine, there is absolutely nothing like being on the pipe, the nozzle, and getting the fire. But that said, I think in the heart of every firefighter worth his salt, they want to make a grab. We want to make a grab. We want to actually save someone's life. And so, hands down, I want to go through that window for the VES to make the grab Corley: There you go. Boom. Number five, max points. And there it is. The five questions for firefighters from Steven Schaefer, which officially puts 293 in the books Stephen Schaefer, man, thank you for spending your evening with us. Amazing. You're entirely welcome. It was great. It was fun, brother. If someone wants to get a I mean, it was riveting. I don't know if fun is the actual right term for the first half as far as because that's almost like a gut punch as you as you laid out everything. But if someone wants to get a hold of you, what's the best way to do so?

Steven Schaefer: actually the best way is my work email, which is my name steven. schafer at boston. gov. Corley: Boom, there you go. are we at I will be asking, oh yeah, a challenge. I'm always asking the guests, do you have a challenge? For the people who are listening, something they can try to get done between now and the next scrap. What kind of challenge do you have? Steven Schaefer: All right, my challenge is I want everyone to identify A skill in particular or something about their job that they know they have a weakness. And I want them to develop a training. on that how are they going to address that what what are they gonna do to address that so you know hey I'm not I'm not stretching hose throwing a ladder You know, running the pump, whatever it is, and either the if it's an officer, hey, come up with a drill for your men. If it's one of the guys, you you can either come up with a drill or how you how are you going to address that So identify something you know, you know, we all know what we're not so great at, and come up with a plan to improve that one thing.

Corley: Love it. Identify a weakness. Develop a training for it. I love it. That's a beautiful challenge right there. I want to, I'm anxious. I'm gonna actually have to follow up and see what everybody did. we could turn it into a whole nother resource, but I'm always looking for people that should be on the scrap. And you may have somebody, you may have somebody that you think should come back on the scrap. But Do you have somebody you would suggest as a guest to be on the scrap? Steven Schaefer: Yeah, I was I was talking with Sam about that. I think Danny Sheridan, who has retired recently from FDNY He I don't know if he still has his podcast called First Two Battalion Chief, but excuse me, I gotta get the little guy here. No problem. He's gonna make noise. Yeah, just come up. So yeah, Danny Sheridan. Corley: Okay. Steven Schaefer: No, that's always that's always a Corley: Perfect. Danny Sheridan. Okay. Excellent. Which takes me to that's it. Let's do the let's do the wrap-up, man. Go to patreon. com, be a vigilante. Vigilantees are awesome. If you're looking for like-minded souls who love the job, man, become a vigilante. It's the they're the cool, it's the cool kids club, plain and simple. And one of the coolest parts about being a vigilante is you get to go to the after party where we're gonna roast Stephen Schaefer, Chief Schaefer. We're going to roast him here shortly. Next week, coming up on the show, it is Chris Dragon Scott. we are going to talk about yeah, it's gonna be fun. That's gonna be a lot of fun, followed by the one and only Cody Trestrel, which Has the most listened to scrap of all time. I was looking at the numbers the other day. So Cody coming back on the scrap to talk about firemanship. So you do not want to miss out on the next two coming up. And that's enough jabbering for me. That's enough about the scrap. Audience, thank you for tuning in tonight. You always ask the best questions. You are always the best part of the scrap. And I can never thank you enough for being here. And with all that being said. Chief Schaefer, thank you again for coming on.

Speaker 4: You are most welcome. My pleasure. Everybody else, I hope the tone stays silent unless it is burning. Everybody, stay safe out there.