Weekly Scrap #315 - Scott Hewlett Hosts with guest Andrew Brassard

Scott Hewlett: Hello everyone. It's episode 315 of the weekly scrap brought to you by Firehouse Vigilance. I'm your guest host, Scott Hewlett. So not only did Corley extend the honor this opportunity, he also offered the guest host the privilege privilege and pleasure of choosing their own guest. And tonight we're very excited to bring you Andrew Brassard. Although on the surface it seems like a Canadian takeover, Barrass is a friend, colleague, and mentor to many firefighters on both sides of the border. He's a career firefighter with over 25 years of experience in career and volunteer departments in Southern Ontario. He's an instructor for Take the Door Training, FDIC, Southwest Fire Academy, and Firemanship And he's taught at many other training organizations, including the Fire Department Training Network. He's a welder fabricator and metal worker and the co-owner of the firefighting prop manufacturing company called Rescue Squad Ironworks. And they specialize in forceable entry and machinery rescue training props. I'm deeply grateful for our friendship and I'm stoked that we're able to make this happen. Welcome my brother Brass to episode 315. Andrew Brassard: Outstanding. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. Scott Hewlett: So we're going to kick it off with some questions that we talked about and then we're going to be pulling from the listenership, just like Corley does. I love that he does that. And let's kick it off with is the fire service still a blue collar job?

Andrew Brassard: Well, I mean I think it is. I think the the fire service is always gonna kind of be a blue collar job, you know. To kind of steal a quote from Andy Fredericks, you know, the job to me is always going to be, you know, covered in dirt, you know, after a good job pulling ceiling. It's still going to be about you know, brass nozzles and you know you know the tools of the trade, the axe, the halligan, it's gonna be the simple things. you know, the tools of our trade. I think that it is a blue-collar job. I think that there has been a huge push, especially you know, in in the Ontario Fire Service and the Canadian Fire Service to try to transfer this job from being a blue-color trade to a profession. you know, I think back, you know, as a young firefighter, I can remember I was talking to a good friend of mine who is a Who's a firefighter in a large metropolitan fire department around here? And he's a big union guy and we were chatting back and forth. And he said, listen, he goes, we we're trying to transfer this job from being a trade to being a profession. And I said, why is that? And he said, well, you know, at the time in the early 2000s, the money wasn't there for the trades You know, the money was, you know, you you can probably remember Scott, there was a huge push for go to university, get a university degree. That's where the money is. That's how you're gonna make a hundred grand And then go back to university and get your master's degree. So all the money, it seemed, was in professions, right? and then the trades weren't really making the money So the fire service to try to maximize our our money, we were pushing for trades. We wanted or we were pushing away from trades to try to get it to a profession. And we were really focusing on hiring people that had degrees and a lot of that stuff. And instead of having the kind of the hands-on skills, the the the the the kind of the people that were we were hiring before that, right? The the plumbers, the welders, the electricians, the farm kids, you know, that type of stuff. So I think the fire service kind of kind of did that direction where we wanted you know, to hire more professional people, more professions.

Andrew Brassard: but in doing that, I think, you know, it's kind of funny now. Where's all the money? It's in the trades. Scott Hewlett: So and ironically now ironically now with the AI and you hear Mike Rowe talking about the best thing you can do is to become a plumber. Andrew Brassard: Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of come full circle, right? When it when you think about a lot of the jobs that that are making the money now, right? You know, welders, plumbers, all those guys, you know, they're the guys that are that are crushing it, right? And The people with a five-year degree are you know, asking you what you want with your fries. Scott Hewlett: When we chatted last at the cottage when we connected, you brought up a really great piece of conversation. and we won't name names. We were talking to a chief. and they were sort of mistaken about how prepared their firefighters are. So our chiefs in general mistaken on how prepared their firefighters are. Andrew Brassard: Yeah, so you know I was talking to this chief. And they were they were kind of going on to me about how the firefighters that we're getting that all have pre-service now, they have their firefighter one and two. you know, they're just they're just not where they need to be firefighter-wise And I said to that chief, I'm like, well, you're you're giving your firefighters 16 weeks of academy when they come through the door. You know, you should be able to mold them into a kind of whatever you want, you know. But I I think that we're getting away from the main thing being the main thing, right? Like the the the main thing is still that we go out the door and we fight fires. Right? You know, I look at a lot of the recruit classes that are being run and we have you know four weeks of you know getting a guy's fire prevention certificate. We have six weeks of medical. We have, you know four weeks of public education public educator and we do an hour of forcible entry we do an afternoon of live fire We do zero building construction. We do zero fire behavior. so we're kind of saying that they're not getting it in pre-service, then they're not getting it in You know, in recruit class. And then, you know, what that chief said to me was, Well, we hope that they're gonna get it when they get to the stations.

Andrew Brassard: And I kind of laughed and I said, Are they? Are they actually getting it when they get to the stations? And they said, well, no, because you know, there's just so many, you know, the call volume's increasing. we have, you know, we have way more fire prevention stuff for them to do, way more public education stuff for them to do. We have way more, just in general, way more things for them to do. And I'm like, okay, that's great. So they're not getting it in pre-service. They're not getting it in recruit class and now they're not getting it on the streets. So now when are they gonna get it? Then we promote them And they still don't have it. You know, they're still lacking sometimes the most basic fundamental skills. You know, I mean, it's crazy to me, but a friend of mine that's on the fire service just told me that they just got promoted to a lieutenant's position. And they had not stretched hose unless it was at an actual fire in training since before they were in the academy for their department. And they've been on seven years. Speaker 5: Wow. Andrew Brassard: Seven years on the department. So they've never trained on it at their station. The department's not making them train on it. And they didn't do it in recruit class. You know, I I I think we're kind of missing the boat. We're trying to make everybody able to do anything that they possibly can can need us to do, but we're kind of missing the fact that at the end of the day you know, when the tones hit, we're firefighters and we gotta go out there and we gotta fight fires.

Scott Hewlett: Is it more challenging for smaller departments though because they don't have the divisions Right. So a lot more of it falls on the firefighters themselves. Is it more of like a size of the department issue, or how do we in general ensure that firefighters are getting the training that they need? Andrew Brassard: I I I mean my biggest thing is we just need to to get back to really focusing on the absolute basics of this job. and we have to kind of take a look at what we're spending all of our time training on. You know We need three hours of spider bike training and we need three hours of this type of training. We need to, you know, but there's no mandatory thing that you need to have be able to stretch a line. force a door. you know, that's the stuff, you know, I always say it, right? Like, it doesn't matter how many hours of training you get as long as you spend those hours wisely, right? If you have to do a writ drill or you get to do a stretching a line, doing a search, forcing a door drill, you know, do that one. Right? Try to keep yourself out of trouble. you know, you're probably much better off to do that, I think. Yeah, I don't know. I I think that you know we're just being pulled in so many directions nowadays that we're kind of losing sight of what are still our main focuses, and that is fighting fires. It's going out the door and fighting fires you know, because there's nobody else that can do that job other than us. you know, there's somebody else that's assigned to doing fire prevention tasks. There's people that are assigned into the public education. divisions and stuff like that. And I do understand that all that stuff is is is insanely important. But we still have to be able to make time to stretch hose, force doors, practice cutting roofs. And I think a lot of that stuff is going to come back to, you know, company level training. You know, I always say there's two types of training, right? There's the training that the department needs you to do, and there's the training that you need to do. Right. So the department, they need you to do the stuff that's required, right?

Andrew Brassard: That's under requirement. They need to make sure that they have your name with a checkbox beside it. And you know, I get it. It's you know, for the liability, for all that kind of stuff. But we still are you know working 24 hours a day, you know, 24 hour shifts. We should still be able to muster up 40 minutes to get out back, stretch hose, practice doing searches, practice forcing some doors, throwing ladders. VS, all those kind of things. We have to make it a priority and we have to just, you know, accept that we have to do it at every shift, you know? Scott Hewlett: Yeah, Ike was saying in in his most recent episode that if you can't find thirty minutes to even do a tabletop discussion, it's it's negligent. He was he pretty much nailed it on the head. Andrew Brassard: Well yeah, I mean absolutely. I mean we can find 30 minutes to talk about, you know, Yeti coolers or the leaves, or we can talk about, you know, whatever. Right? A million other things. Right. We always have 30 minutes to talk about anything else. Why can't we have 30 minutes to talk about something fire ground related? Sure. You know It takes five minutes to pull up the whiteboard and talk about the priorities of rooftop ventilation and flat roof buildings, or talk about how to cut a hockey puck lock, or talk about how to cut roll-down gates. again, you know, 30 minutes. It's it's it's crazy to me that we can't kind of muster that time together to talk about that kind of stuff.

Scott Hewlett: So Kyle Piverall's got a follow-up question for the blue collar one that we started off with. So what are some of the ways we can keep the blue collar nature of the fire service strong and proud? Andrew Brassard: You know what's interesting when we talk about blue collar stuff. I had a friend of mine say one time on a podcast that You know, he thinks that the job needs to be what he he kind of coined as gray collar, right? The job needed to have have a gray collar thing. So it needs to have some of the professional atmosphere of it, but it also needs to have, you know, still that blue color grit to it. And I agree with the concept that he's saying, but I just have always kind of said that, you know, having the knowledge and the skills. Is being a blue-collar guy. You know, if you've ever met a guy that's a welder, met a guy that's an ironworker, met a guy that's a boilermaker, right? All those guys have a tremendous knowledge. Right? They know their job inside and out. Right? They study it. They think about it. They read about it. They watch videos on it. They, you know, they're there a lot of the times, you know Those types of jobs, iron workers, boiler makers, all those things, they're just as ate up as the job as a lot of the firefighters that are into the job. You know, they're around it 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. So they have that knowledge, skills, and abilities, so they're doing it. And I I think that a lot of that comes from I think that the fire service kind of needs to adopt almost like a you know almost like a an apprenticeship. Like when you get hired, right, to be an ironworker, let's just say, you go and you become an apprentice, right? So you have a four-year apprenticeship. And in that four years, you know, you have to, there's times where you have to go to school. There's times where you're working out in the fields. There's times when you're, you know, doing all those things. So I think that If the fire service kind of adopted that kind of mentality and they started to look at, hey, why don't we, you know, we hire you, we give you the 16 weeks of recruit class and then one month out of every year until you're first class firefighter you have to you come off the truck You go to school and we're going to teach you some of the advanced skills.

Andrew Brassard: Like, okay, we're you know, we're gonna look at we're gonna do live fire live fire. We're going to do, you know, force bluntry, but we're going to take it up that next notch. We're going to make you do it with your gear on, high speed, you know, live fire, the whole nine yards. Right. And then at the end of that four years, you know, you become in the ironworker world, you become a journeyman. Right. And You know, I think that's to me, like if we did it in the fire service that way where you had a apprenticeship that was four years, five years, whatever the number is. And then at the end of that, you became yeah, that's when you become a firefighter, is at the end of those four years. You don't become a firefighter the day that you get hired. You become an apprentice. Right? I think that a lot of that I think would make the job that much better. I think that it would alleviate a lot of the problems that we have. with the training and stuff like that. You know, I just you know, have a new rookie on my shift and I just think about how much training We need to get that person in such a short amount of time. You know, it would be great if we could, you know, take them off the truck for a month at the end and say, okay, you know, we're gonna take you through a lot more training, you know, a week worth of training, a month worth of training this year. So yeah, I just I think that you know some of those things I think they would definitely you know they would definitely benefit the fire service. And then the next big one is you know, the people we got to look at who we're hiring again. You know, I mean, I I remember I was teaching a a kid one time and he says, you know, he's like, I got a master's degree. I was like, oh, that's that's great. I was like, I can't tell you how many times I've been crawling down a hallway and said, I really hope the guy behind me's got a master's degree. You know, so it's I think that we need to get back to hiring people that come to the job with a certain amount of skills that they already have.

Andrew Brassard: I mean, you know, I, you know, I kind of asked the same question, right? So you own a mechanic shop, Scott. Would you hire someone that had a master's degree and went to university for five years, but had no mechanical experience whatsoever? Or would you have a guy that grew up on a farm, was a mechanic, his dad was a mechanic, his uncle's armour mechanics, right? We would hire, you know, every other job it seems in the world, we hire people that bring the skills to the table that we need. And it kind of seems like in the fire service we've kind of gotten away from that a bit. And I think we need to kind of push to get that back. Scott Hewlett: I'm gonna tie in what Greg Carter is saying here and Luke Stevenson. So Greg's saying in today's fire service, it seems we have a focus on being a supervisor and less on being a fireman. Where do you think the focus would should be? And you've tied a lot of that in. and Luke's saying, do you think that refocusing on the blue collar aspect of the job will reduce our capacity to manage people, which is, you know, in parentheses it's a more white-collar skill. So i I'm you know I sort of got to follow up with that too to tie these together is that are we in a way disrespecting the trades by saying they don't have the capacity to do what white collar quote unquote jobs do? And are we romanticizing the white collar jobs saying that they're the only people that have the capability of managing? So You know, a lot of tradespeople are entrepreneurs. They run their own businesses. They are their admin staff, right? So is there a lot of disrespect just for the title of blue collar? We immediately think undereducated.

Andrew Brassard: Yeah, when again in my experience has been the the exact opposite. And I mean I think in here lies some of the problem that we run into is you know are the iron workers hiring white collar guys to be their leaders? Probably not, right? Who are they? Who are they the leaders for you know the ironworker trades or the boiler makers or the electricians? They're guys that came up through the ranks. Right? You know, they're guys that understand what those guys go through on a day in and day out basis. And I bet those guys make phenomenal, phenomenal bosses. And I think One of the big things too is, and Scott, you may you you may have kind of seen this is when you start to get people that work at the top that maybe don't have the same or didn't come from the same streets that you did you know, guys tend to, you know, whether they're they have every letter under the sun next to their name or whether they don't. Maybe some guys will tend not to respect them as much or kind of look to them as, you know, being the a leader that they that they are. I know for myself, right? Like, you know, when I played lacrosse, you know, at a high level, right? Who was the guy that you wanted to be the team captain? The guy that's been on that team for a long time, who bleeds the the team name, the team colors, and the guy that's you know gonna get it done at the end of the day, do whatever it takes for his team. If he needs if you need you need a big goal, he's the guy to get it for you. You need a big hit, he's the guy to get it for you. Someone needs to drop the gloves, set the tone for the game, he was the guy that would do it. Right. And those are the guys that tend to be the guys that I mean I've always respected a lot. you know Whether it be sports at a high level or whether it be you know on the job. And a lot of the times the guys don't really have that and they just come in, there's a lot of problems usually, I think.

Scott Hewlett: Sticking with misconceptions, let's talk about something that we sort of discussed to bring up here. what misconceptions do Canadian firefighters have about American firefighters and how is it detrimental to their own growth and performance? Andrew Brassard: You know, that's it's such an interesting question. And I think that for me the absolute biggest thing and and I know you'll probably be able to relate to this, Scott, is when you hear a Canadian instructor say, well, that's why they kill 100 guys a year, right? you know, I've had it where they they that's why they kill 300 guys a year down there. I'm like, what 300 guys a year. You think they act that you know and there but again if that's a guy that's you know a a highly respected instructor and he goes around saying that stuff, Then people start to think that that's true because typically they're not gonna go ahead and look at their own, you know, do their own you know, digging and stuff like that. And I mean You know, Bill Carey's done the you know the research on that years and years and years ago. And, you know, I mean You know, with the exception of 9-11, I think, you know, in the States, it's less than, you know, six or eight a year that get killed in the line of duty. But I mean, you know, we got guys up here that are going, oh, that's why they kill 300 guys a year. That's why they kill 200 guys a year. And it's just like, you know. It's just that mantra being repeated, repeated over and over and over and over again. Right? And it's just

Scott Hewlett: The way I framed it for someone recently was do you honestly think that two million firefighters in the States are all morons? Like they don't know what they're doing, that they are guys like us that have tried trying to figure things out and have you know, taking kicks at the can and realize what works and what doesn't. Do you think they would go to jobs every run and just do stuff off the top of their head without any any thought to it? Like, do you honestly think that's what's going on? That's just such a it's such an idiotic Perception. Andrew Brassard: Yeah, you know, so I mean that's one of the big ones that I always see. That's a huge misconception. you know, and it just is one of the things that constantly gets just beaten to death. and the other one that it always drives me crazy is we can't do in order of arrival deployment in Canada. Right? So the first in engines doing this, second in engine's doing this, first dude truck companies doing this, second dude truck companies doing this, rescue squad are doing these and these things. Right. that almost is non-existent in Canada. You know, we like to have 35 trucks show up, everybody stand on the front lawn, and then, you know, hey, I'm gonna assign these guys this, this you know that tends to be the way that we deploy our companies here. and yeah I mean it just again the misconception of it is is just everyone always says well we can't do that here. We can't do that. That doesn't work here. It's like, well, have we ever tried it? Have we ever actually done it?

Scott Hewlett: Which is really the the question that should be asked about every misconception is like, have you actually tried it? Have you looked into why they do the things the way they do it? Andrew Brassard: Yeah, you know, and I and I and I think that you know, if you know, again, you know, I always say, right, like You we can learn a ton from the way that they operate doing fires. and they've been doing it up for a long, long time. And I think that you know, we would be you know, far better if we you know, I always say this, right? Do you think that you know, Drew Brees Quarterback walked up to the line of scrimmage and just said, okay, buddy, I want you to do this, you to do this, you to do this. Or do you think all those guys know the play the minute that it's called? Right? This is the play they were running. Go. Right? Everybody goes and does their job You know, and I I think that that's a far better you know method of deployment for the fire service, in my opinion. You know, than just everybody show up and then I'll give you a job when you get here.

Scott Hewlett: Yeah, you know, and who best to speak about what could be brought to our fire service than people like yourself that have worked. you know, worked with guys in the States and across the border. Like you've you've spent time in both. So who has a better perspective than someone that's been on both sides? Andrew Brassard: Yeah, you know, like I mean, you know, first and foremost, right? Like, you know you know, I'm a huge fire buff, right? Like, you know, and in in my early days, you know, I used to spend a lot of time. I used to cross the border, go down and and you know, go to fires in Buffalo and ride a bit down there. Just go to Detroit quite a bit, been to, you know, Orlando, New York City, a couple of other places along the way. So I've seen the way that we fight fires and I've seen the way that they fight fires and you know I think that you know predetermined arrival you know jobs just is Hands and you know head and shoulders above when it comes to that stuff. I think that a lot of the times with the hey we're gonna you know deploy these guys like this we tend to do it When we need to, right? So do we do we stretch a second line to the floor above? When do we do it usually? When we need to

Scott Hewlett: So reactive. Andrew Brassard: It's react it's very reactive when I think that in the states that a lot of it is you know those positions just End up being in the right place at the right time because of they know that hey the first in engine goes to the fire floor, second in engine goes to the floor above. First do trucks doing search, forcible entry search to the fire, you know, second due companies doing outside van, roof, whatever, however the you deploy it, but everybody's got a task and a job before they even show up So on the ride into the fire, you're getting your head wrapped around, okay, we're the second in, we're the second in engine. I gotta get a line to that floor above the minute we get there. You roll up, you know it's two and a half story wood frame, heavy fire in the first floor, you're stretching that line to the floor above, you know where you're going, you know what you're doing, and not a single person has had to say a single thing to you You get off the truck, you look at the building, you say, okay, I'm going to need 150-foot pre-connect. Boom. We go make it happen. Nobody's needed needed to tell me a thing

Scott Hewlett: So you know, and how much radio traffic do you decrease because you don't need to be telling everybody what to do and expecting a response. Andrew Brassard: Yeah, you know, and I I think that, you know, I I don't know what it is, but it seems like lately just people love to talk on their radio. It just it's I you know I always say that some of the best fires that I ever went to, you know, I w I remember I went to a fire in Boston one time and I watched And they had heavy fire on the first, second floor on a two and a half wood frame. And you heard almost nothing on the radio. And I turned to the guy I was with and I said, are we on the wrong tactical channel? He goes, No. Didn't hear a word. Right? Everybody just knew their job and went and did it. Scott Hewlett: Unless something unless something different happens that we're not expecting, we don't need to talk about it. Andrew Brassard: Yeah, what does a quarterback say when he gets to the line of scrimmage? If he likes the look of what he sees, he doesn't say anything. If he doesn't like the look of what he sees, he calls it audible. Right?

Scott Hewlett: I don't understand any different touching on training and keeping in line with sort of engine truck model. Jeremy Humphrey is asking, do you think it would help to create a more structured training plan for new recruits when they arrive to the engines or trucks? What are your thoughts? Andrew Brassard: Yeah, I mean I I think that you know if I was running a 16-week recruit class, I mean they would be stretching hose every single day. They would be forcing doors every single day. They would be, you know, throwing ladders every single day. You know, I I think that having the whole engine truck kind of mindset to me would work really well in recruit class. We're gonna start you with engine work Okay, you're really good at that. Every day you're gonna be stretching holes. You're gonna be flowing and moving. You're gonna be doing the basics over and over and over and over and over again. You know? And then once you kind of have a good, really good grasp on that, and then we're going to move over and you're going to start to learn how to force doors. You start to learn how to cut roofs, throw ladders, vendor search, do primary searches, read fire buildings. all those kind of things. Do overhaul. I just think that again, like that's to me, that's what a recruit class is meant to do is to to You know, firefighter one and two before you become a firefighter is meant to give you the overview and to get you certified and to give to so you have a base knowledge when you go in there. And then if your fire department is hiring people, I think your recruit academy is its job is to make those people your firefighters. Right? You're supposed to teach them the way that you do business, the way you stretch hoes, the way you pack your pre-connect, the way you do all that stuff. And I think it does that to a certain extent, but I just think that like, you know, when I hear that they're getting, you know, one day of stretching hose, one day of flowing water, one one hour of forcible entry. No building construction, no fire behavior, none of that stuff. You know, half a day for for fire or for live fire, I think if we're doing a disservice to our people and we're setting themselves up for failure.

Andrew Brassard: I think when we go out the door. Scott Hewlett: I think one thing we'd both want people, you know, across the border to realize is that there's a lot of us that are paying attention and listening and have been, you know, strongly influenced by a lot of the same people that they are. you know, I know Sean Duffy's presentation on searchable versus survivable is huge. Like that's been you've seen that proliferate proliferate more. through guys like us that are trying to be echoes and amplifiers. We talked about being echoes and amplifiers before we went live here. Speaker 5: Yeah. Scott Hewlett: That we are paying attention, that we are trying to you know push for a stronger more aggressive firefighting, right? and then so I'll just touch on Colton Mann's question here in regards to aggressive firefighting. I've heard the American Fire Service referred to as death before dishonor And that the Canadian Fire Service is more along the lines of safety before civilians. If those two terms were a spectrum, where do you think Canadian Fire Service actually lies and how do you balance the risk versus reward mindset? while keeping a victim-first mindset. So yeah, sort of building off of what I was seeing. you know, I think we are trying to push just as hard as, you know, a lot of our our brothers and sisters at the south of the border.

Andrew Brassard: Yeah, I mean that's that's a that's a tough question to answer, kind of. Scott Hewlett: Like are you encouraged? Like do you feel that there's still a lot of resistance? I know there's there's a there's a number of departments that don't even have a plan for when they show up. They just whoever grabs whatever, they just you know that And I'm always disappointed when I hear that. But are you encouraged to see that there is more of this influence that's coming into our culture and we're and we're moving in a positive direction? Andrew Brassard: Yeah, I mean a hundred percent. I think that, you know, like You know, I I think that you know like back when I started teaching forceful entry in the province of Ontario, you know who else was teaching it? Nobody. I mean most of the fire departments up here didn't even have irons on their trucks You know, didn't even have haligans. I mean, we're talking mid-2000s, there was fire departments that still had no halligans on their rigs. You know, and we're not talking about small fire departments either. Like we're talking about some some fairly large-sized fire departments that did not have a halligan on their truck. So, you know, I was teaching for school entry up here. Well, where did I learn how to do that? In the States, right? I learned how to do it in the States. You know, Brent Brooks, you know, another guy from Canada here, who's doing tremendous things with high-rise up here, long, long, long, long overdue. where'd he learn all that stuff? You know, a lot of it he he's picking up when he goes down and he teaches in the States. You know, so, you know, I think that the the influence is starting to happen more and more and we're you know we're getting more people that are going out and taking more classes. a lot of guys are traveling to the States to take classes and stuff like that and they're starting to see that you know, maybe it's It's not all doom and gloom like people have said it is before and that, you know, there's a lot of stuff that we can take that's that's that's great from

Scott Hewlett: Let's jump off from you mentioned tools there. So tell me about how Rescue Ironworks got started. and then I want you to talk about how that we ensure the firefighters are getting the concepts and skills required for the job while using props that don't behave like the real thing, right? Everything from burned buildings to doors. So maybe just jump right there. Tell me how you got started and tell me about how you're trying to rectify that. Andrew Brassard: Well, so when I was a very, very young firefighter, you know, I'd heard about FDIC. I actually heard about it from Mike Lombardo. I was riding at at Buffalo Rescue 1, and he was the captain, and he's just like, hey man, he's like, yeah, I heard of FDIC, and I was like, No, I was like 19 years old. I was like, I've never never heard of it. He's like, man, you gotta go. He's like, you gotta go. And I was like, okay. So that year I went. No money. I slept in my car and yeah, I took Captain Bob Morris's forceful entry class. And I remember it that year it was it was in a vacant like a supermarket, like a strip mall with a supermarket on the end of it. And, you know, again, a very young firefighter, I remember we actually walked around the back of the building and there was a hole breached in the wall. And we crawled through this hole in the wall and I remember looking up. And again, this is early 2000s. There was no forcible entry door props you know, all the commercially available ones that are out there now, none of that stuff existed. So what the guys had done was they had welded iBeam into the found into the structure of this of the supermarket. And I remember when we walked in, I looked up and I saw this guy, and he was welding the bottom of the the I-beam onto the the plate that they had bolted into the into the ground. And I just remember going like this is this is unreal like this is this is what training is is supposed to be Right? And I remember it was a it was a the the class wasn't sold out, so there wasn't a ton of guys in the class. And I just remember looking over and they had a stack of doors and there had to have been three or four hundred doors, real doors.

Andrew Brassard: And they'd plop these real doors in and they close it and they'd screw the door in and then they bolt the angle iron on simulating the locks and Well, because there wasn't a lot of guys there, we just got rap after rap after rap after rap. It was it was unbelievable. It was kind of my first ever real introduction into how I think training needs to be and how realistic and how intense and how hard those guys pushed us. and it was just absolutely phenomenal. It was probably one of the biggest things that kind of stood out in my mind. And I was like, how do I how do I recreate this back in my firehouse? And then one of the guys that I met in the class, who was an instructor, he worked at ladder 28 in New York City. at the Harlem Hilton. And he said, hey, kid, if you're ever in New York City, he says, stop by ladder 28. He's like, we'd love to have you. He's like, you'd love it. He goes, we got a lot of these door props and stuff like that at the firehouse. And I was like I gotta see this. I gotta see it. So a couple months later I ended up packing up the car and I headed down to New York City for one of my first times I've ever been there. And I remember stone going to 28 truck. And you know, just amazing guys. They woke me in. They were like, hey brother, you know, like come on in and show me the firehouse and show me the firehouse. They take me down in the basement. And you know, again, I'm a young, young, very young fireman at the time. And literally, dude, it was like you were walking down the you were a little kid and you were walking into the dressing room of the Toronto Maple Leafs. It was it was absolutely kind of mind-blowing, you know, the the history, the tradition. Like You know, you walk down in that basement, you could almost hear the irons hitting each other down there from, you know, guys for years and years gone by, you know, senior guys passing down the trade to these young firemen that were there. it absolutely you know had a huge impact on me. And then you know when I got back, I started kind of drawing some different ideas I had for a door prop.

Andrew Brassard: You know, my job wasn't going to let me start welding these things into structural members of the firehouse. So you know, I kind of came up with this game plan on how I was gonna build this door prop. So I went down. You know, I didn't have any money. I was broke at the time, a young father, and so went down to a welding shop local in town and I just kind of begged borrowed and stealed anything that I could and you know they helped me kind of build the first ever prop that I ever ever kind of made and it was a forcible entry door and it still sits out back of my firehouse And yeah, held held real doors and you know we bolted them shut and it just still to this day probably the best forceable entry door that's out there. You know, it collapses, it crushes, it bends, it folds. It reacts like a real door because it is a real door. So that is kind of how I got into starting to build forcible entry props. And because there was nothing like it up in the province of Ontario at the time, you know, I worked for another training company at the time, and their big thing was rope and confined space and all that kind of stuff. And So I pitched the idea of doing a forcible entry class up here for them. And they they liked it. So I ended up starting to build props and different stuff and coming up with ideas you know for building different props even way back then and then just kind of snowballed from there you know I've been building forcible entry props now for twenty plus years and worked for a couple different companies up here that that make you know commercially available forceful entry door props and You know, one of my best friends from high school, a great friend of mine, a guy by the name of Dave. he owns a metal shop here in the in the town that I that I work in as a firefighter. And every morning before work, you know, six o'clock, I would stop by the stop by the welding shop and we would talk and we'd cheat the shit and we'd have a cup of coffee together and Yeah, just one day he said to me, he's like, hey, he's like, why don't we start building some forcible entry props and some machine stuff and you know make a business out of this?

Andrew Brassard: So that's kind of how it it all came to be. And we've been going for a couple of months now and you know building some of the props that I've had rattling around in my coconut for the last 20 years. And So that's how that's how the whole thing got started. Scott Hewlett: Is one of the most important things we can lead off with as instructors is to To let students know that what they're about to use, it does not behave like the real thing. So and so then to frame what are the actual concepts and skills we're trying to take away from this prop Right, so that they actually leave with something functional. Andrew Brassard: you know, one of the big things I always say to guys, right, is that a door prop is a thousand pounds of metal. If you don't have proper instruction, right? And I think that we're starting to see this a lot in the social media and stuff like that is that there's a lot of people that are learning how to beat a prop. instead of running through the repetition of forcing a door. Right? And you know, I've I've had the extreme privilege to to teach with some guys like, you know, like the Bob Morrises. Jim McCormick, you know, Mike Lombardo, Bob Pressler, guys like that. And, you know, those guys of force thousands of times more doors than I'll ever even dream of. and every single one of those guys has always said the kind of the same thing to me. Gap set force, the simple basics of forcing a door, has never not worked. So I think that a lot of the times that we can in the fire service we can kind of have solutions looking for a problem. Right? And I think a lot of the force-pleentry stuff that we're starting to see out there is a is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. You know, and I think that the props have a lot of the times kind of lent to that because door props react a certain way. As an example, right? When I put the ads in and I gap a door, right, on the spring-mounted you know, doors, right? The red, blue, the red door, the blue door, the green door, all those. If you gap it and you're breaking a piece of two by two on the back side, you can almost always guarantee that you are going to get a gap.

Andrew Brassard: Right? Well, I've forced doors before where I stick the ads in between the door and the jam, and there's literally been two of us jumping on this tool, bouncing on it, and the door doesn't gap at all. Right? So guys aren't used to really setting those forks without gapping the door first and getting a massive gap when they gap that door. You know, you get a tight apartment door and you stick the ads in there and you gap it and the door doesn't gap. What's the next play? Well, you have to be good at driving those forks in between the door and the frame. with no gap, with almost no daylight. You know, that's where the art and science, I think, of forcible entry kind of comes from. You know, is being able to finesse that tool, right? on a door prop, if I take the forks and I stick them in between the jam and I have someone that can hit fairly hard, my technique is irrelevant If they just swing as hard as they can, that tool will automatically kind of snake and find its way through in between the door and the jam. Well, you can't do that on a real door. If your technique sucks, you're gonna bury the forks right into the frame. And you're not going to get the door open. So I think that door props, I mean props in general, but door props have given us a false sense, right? We never fail Right? We we never fail on a door prop. So door props are great, don't get me wrong, but they you have to have quality instruction with them. You know, even it's a simple thing to do with your at your firehouses. Don't allow your guys to gap. See if they can drive the forks in between the door and the frame without gapping. Because sooner or later you're gonna hit a door. that you're not going to be able to gap and really get a good crush and a and a and a good gap on that door with and you're also not realizing whether your tools are set up for success as well because if you have a

Scott Hewlett: you know, really thick forks on your halligan. And you've got a door that no matter how hard you hit it, it's gonna go through. You don't you're not gonna figure out like, oh, we need to tune these or the forks are too thick. Andrew Brassard: Yeah. You know, you're a hundred percent right. So I I I think that if with you know I encourage everybody if they've ever bought a door prop is to get out there and and really seek out you know guys that have have done this stuff a lot and really take take full advantage of taking a class with them because they will teach you the nuance of and of the job and and and how the Driving the forks in between the door and the frame is really all about feel, right? It's really about how the tool feels in your hand when you're pushing If you're getting the right amount of pressure, if you can see the tips of the forks dragging on the frame, you're probably not putting enough pressure. You know, it it's it's really you know A beautiful ballet, if you will, of you know the finite little movements and stuff like that. that's what's gonna make you successful on the fire ground, is those little movements here and there.

Scott Hewlett: So the good instructors can focus you on those feelings and those things to look for, even though the door is not going to behave that way. Andrew Brassard: Yeah, yeah, you know, and and and the the biggest thing that I try to drive home, right, is that you know, really focus on the basics, right? You know, Jim McCormick's, you know, famous saying is the basics always work, right? You know I've been doing doing this job 25 years. Super fortunate to force a ton of doors, you know, like not only at work, but You know, we've had some amazing classes over the 25 years where we've been teaching at we taught at a vacant casino one time and literally Thousands of doors, metal doors, metal frames, high security, multiple locks. we taught at an armory in Ohio that was an armory for the National Guard. so again, tons of locks. steel doors that had stiffeners in them getting a chance to force a lot of those doors and and you know what opened every single one of them The basics, right? Cap set force opened every single one of them. So yeah, I just think that I think we tend to think that it's more difficult than it than it is. And we try to, you know, it makes us like, you know, think that we're smarter than we are.

Scott Hewlett: Another thing that stood to me when I took your advanced forcible entry class and we did it under live fire conditions, you know, set up in the flash can so you're in low visibility or to no visibility, right? Yeah. And and Because anytime we've ever trained on fourth century, you're you always have full visibility. You know, most of the time you're you're in a t-shirt and your bunker pants and maybe your helmet and a set of gloves and away you go. So just to realize how difficult it's gonna be when you can't see and it's and unless you've had to do it, you don't realize that the first door you the the first door you force may be in good visibility outside, but you're gonna have subsequent boxes you're gonna have to open inside and it's not gonna be that easy Andrew Brassard: It's a very quick humbler, right? I think it it it it shows people like, you know, we'll see a guy that'll be out on the you know out in the the good condition and he'll be able to force the door like It's nobody's business. He's got all the moves. He's got right? You put him into the the smoke and you can't see and all of a sudden that game plan goes out of the out of the out of the, you know

Scott Hewlett: The window, yeah. Andrew Brassard: Out of the window pretty quick, right? So again, I just kind of reiterate, go back to what works right and and what I find is when I'm teaching especially in zero visibility you'll see guys start to get off the script Right? They'll start to go, well, this isn't working, so oh I'm gonna try this, or maybe I'll try this, or maybe I'll try this. And it's and I and I always say to them, Stick to the script. How did we force this door when we were outside? We gapped it, we set the tool, we forced the door. Just do that. Right. And it almost when you bring guys back, it almost always they get the door in the next, you know, 15 to 20 seconds. Right. Just stick to the basics, right? I think back to that, you know, I don't know if you remember the movie Varsity Blues. Speaker 5: Yep. Andrew Brassard: Right in the coach He would always whack everybody on the head with his whistle and he'd yell, stick to the basics, stick to the basics, stick to the basics. He's like, we don't have trick plays here. We stick to the basics. You know, and I I I always run through that thing in my mind when I when I see guys, you know, that are trying to make it I think a lot more difficult than it needs to be a lot of the times.

Scott Hewlett: Rob Fisher's got a great question here. What mods do you like and not like done by companies manufacturing halligan bars? Andrew Brassard: Well, that is a great question. You know, so as a young fireman, right, you know, you you you you know I kind of got up caught up in the whole Motting out your your your halligan and stuff like that. You know, and I mean you tell guys nowadays, like you buy a halligan, it comes with the squared off shoulders, it comes with all the the notches marked and stuff like that And none of that stuff existed when like you know, you probably remember Scott, none of that stuff was around when we started, right? So, you know, how would we how would we get the squirt off shoulder and the notches? stuff we would have to do them all ourselves right so now you buy a halligan and they all come that way they all come with the squared off shoulders they all come with that kind of stuff The biggest thing that I would say is thinning out the forks, right? So a lot of times when you get forks nowadays, they come in there a little bit stocky and they kind of have like a bit of a peak on them. On the edge, you really need to thin that out so that it's able to kind of drive it in and around the corner in between the door and the jam easier That's one of the big things that I will say is that if you're you're you know you're buying one of those halligans without the thinned out forks, is thin out those forks. And I've and I've kind of changed my stance on this over the years, right? Like I used to be a big guy for, you know, You know, putting all the notches on there, right? My thing that I'm kind of at now is if you know what you're doing. And you know you're doing extremely well. Do you need that notch on there? Probably not. Right? It's just like working at the shop here. My buddy Dave can look across the he's been doing this his his whole life since he was in high school. He can look across the shop and go and I and I'm taking a bolt apart and he goes, that's a three-quarter bolt He can tell that from across the shop, right?

Andrew Brassard: Well, I can tell when I'm gonna be at the stop before I'm even at the stop by how far the fo the the ads is driven in. Scott Hewlett: You know, so would the notches be beneficial for a recruit first learning until they get the feeling. Andrew Brassard: And I'm and again, I'm not against putting those things in there. I'm just saying I I think that they might we might over-rely on them a bit too Scott Hewlett: much do you like the wider ads on the Pro Max you can actually get it in and have the third move? Yeah. Andrew Brassard: Yeah kind of a funny thing about the the wide ads was like I was one of the guys that me and another guy that I was teaching with back in the day guy by the name of Kevin Legacy who is he's a rescue three guy in New York City now. We were one of the guys that helped develop the wide ads for ASL and that was the first ever it was called the Monster Ads back then. And that was kind of the first ever commercially sold white ads that was out there. And the kind of the interesting thing about that was back then that was More for one firefighter forceful entry, right? So if a guy was by himself and in New York City they they tend to operate on the truck company, there's positions where they'll operate independently. So it was for one guy to be able to gap the door and really get a good throw. And a lot of the times on private dwelling doors or on doors that only had a key and knob lock, tubular, or deadbolt, you were able to get the door open on that gap. So having that wider ads was handy, right? I mean if you see a lot of the videos now it's like I'm gonna gap the door and then I'm gonna stick a chalk in behind and I'm gonna gap it again And then I'm going to move the chalk up and I'm going to gap it again. Well, you know, the the white ads just did all that for you. Right? It got you kind of that to that point right off the hop. Now it kind of seems like it's going the opposite way, right? Because it was, well, if the wider the ads, the less mechanical advantage you would get.

Andrew Brassard: So now we're going thinner. We want a thinner ads that'll give us more mechanical advantage. I don't know. Scott Hewlett: Splitting hairs sometimes. Andrew Brassard: I don't know. Yeah. Why don't we split the difference and stick with a pro bar two inch ads? Scott Hewlett: There you go. you mentioned one. Andrew Brassard: I I love the squirt off shoulders. Yeah. I definitely think that you should have squared off shoulders on your bar. You know, one of the big ones where I've used it in the field is you get a set of stairs that run up the side of a building. And then it's a 90-degree turn, and there's a door right there. A lot of the times you put the halligan in between the door and the frame, and the guy that's on the stairs doesn't have the room to get out behind on the back of the stairs to drive that in. you can use that squared off shoulder to slide it and drive the forks in that way. So there's definitely definitely benefits to using the the squared off shoulders. I definitely like that one. I like putting the notches there. You get a new rookie or something like that on your crew, and they know that how deep they need to drive those forks in or how deep they need to drive the ads in. Definitely helps them out.

Scott Hewlett: You mentioned with that wider ads and that one firefighter ability. what are your thoughts on on guys being capable or teaching guys to do one one man forcible entry techniques and do you have certain techniques that you feel are are best and Greg Carter that's I'm I'm stealing off his question there. Andrew Brassard: Yeah, I mean you and I have had this conversation several times, right? Like you show up on a four-man engine company, right One guy's assigned the irons position, one guy's assigned the nozzle position. Is it better for one guy to go force the door by himself and the other guy to stretch the line by himself with the officer's doing his 360? Or is it better for the officer to go do his 360, the irons guy, and the nozzle firefighter stretch the door or the line together, get to the door, and then force the door together? I think that's a better way to do it, right? you know, we've done a lot of time trials and stuff like that with with my crews and and stuff like that over the years. We think by splitting the work we can do it quicker. And I think a lot of the times we can almost always do it quicker if we're working together Right? Because if you're stretching that line by yourself, you got it shouldered, you got the bite, and then you get it hooked around a set of ties a tire or something like that on a car that's parked on the street. What do you got to do? You gotta go back. Maybe you gotta drop your line. Now you gotta try to, you know, finagle it out from underneath that tire. Whereas if you had it on your shoulder, you had the bite, you got it hooked underneath the tire, what would the irons guy do? He would clear it for you and you'd move on. Right? You'd get to the front of the house, you'd flake out the line together, which you can probably do way quicker because there's two of you. You get to the front door, you call for water, you force the door as a team Right, if whether you need him or not, and then you you know you mask up and you go and you do your thing. So One firefighter forcible entry, if your department operates where you are operating independently a lot of the time, then of course, yeah, you need to learn, you know, you need to learn that.

Andrew Brassard: But a lot of the times I think that that One man forceful entry is I don't know. Scott Hewlett: Is it crew and Situation dependent like I really it'd be kind I think it'd be kind of insulting if I came up behind you and expected that you'd need my help. Andrew Brassard: I wouldn't be insulted at all. Like I you know, I would rather have you hit for me than me try to do both. Okay. Right. So you know, I mean This is supposed to be the greatest team sport in the world, right? So I think that, you know, I would I would have no problem if you came up and said, hey Brass, need me to hit? Yeah, absolutely. I need you to hit. Scott Hewlett: Take your kid to work day. Yeah. Andrew Brassard: Yeah. You know, I I think that yeah, I I don't know. I think it's definitely a skill that you need to have. And you definitely need to be able to do it. you know, you know, even where I think about, you know, two-man forcible entry is a crew of three heading around to the seaside of a building. Then you would have the officer kind of working independently and two guys forcing doors as you go. so it, you know, single firefighter, forcible entry techniques, absolutely you gotta know them, you gotta have them. I just think that You know, having two firefighters for using that door, if you have those two firefighters, is definitely a better option for my in my opinion.

Scott Hewlett: I'm gonna switch gears a little here. I want to pick your brain on the on your mindset around this. How's being a part of the fire service on a broader scale scale helped you persevere through any frustrations you may have within your own department Andrew Brassard: Well, I think I think for the you know we always say like we go to FDIC it recharges our batteries, right? We go you know, hang out a firemanship it recharges our batteries. You know, when I go to those places, I get to hang out with guys that that think exactly the same way that I do. And it really, you know, recharges my batteries. It also lets me know that, you know, the problems and things like that that I go through are not unique to me, are not unique to my fire department. You know, we every fire department has their problems. Some of them are the same, some of them are different, but we all have them. Right? So you know, it lets you know that hey, you know, you're not on an island by yourself Right. You know, it's it lets you know that you know a lot of the times there's guys that are just like you going through just the exact same stuff. So That's the biggest, you know, kind of the biggest thing I would say to guys if you're super into the job is yeah, you need to get out there, you need to go to those conferences, you need to meet those people that are like-minded.

Scott Hewlett: And are firefighters really missing out on only experiencing their own department that they're not realizing if they're they're missing out on the experience of being a part of the fire service as a whole? Andrew Brassard: One thousand percent, right? I I I think the more that you can get outside your own walls of your own fire department. the better off you're gonna be, right? The you know, the the more exposure you can have to the different ways you can do things. Right. You know, I I I've been from East Coast to West Coast, North South. I've been to fire, you know, my wife always jokes that we don't go on vacation, we just visit fire stations all over the world. you know, a lot of that's true, right? You know, I'd be lying if I say that I didn't go to places, you know, on you know, I literally I can remember when my twins were like six months old and we were driving to Florida with my young my oldest son who was a young kid at the time and two brand new six month old twins and you know we were stopping in Washington DC to go riding and And stuff like that. So, you know, I but all that different stuff and every department's culture is different. And it allows you to kind of pick the stuff that you really love and that you really value and that you really appreciate. And it allows you to try to bring some of that stuff back in a small way and and and try to you know incorporate it into your own fire department So I think that you know getting out of your your bubble and getting out of your the four walls of your own fire department is absolutely critical You know, I I remember you telling me, Scott, you went to New Zealand on a on a firefighter exchange, right? Do you think that that experience made you a better firefighter?

Scott Hewlett: Oh, absolutely. Andrew Brassard: Yeah. You know, and I can't imagine anybody that wouldn't agree with it. I mean, even if you went there and you said, you know what? I don't really like the way that those guys do business, it still made you a better firefighter. Mm-hmm. Right. Scott Hewlett: So I don't know we were talking we were talking, you know, helmets. in the in the pre-chat there and yeah when we were talking about exactly that right someone said hey try this euro helmet and you know in their their perspective was If you haven't tried it, you can't say you don't like it, right? So and you did and you gave the feedback and you actually, you know, you didn't end up liking it, but you actually took the time to see if you actually liked it or not. Andrew Brassard: Yeah, you know what's you know what's always funny to me is you know like I remember one year at FDIC, you know, one a g there was a guy and he was, I want to say he was from the United Kingdom somewhere. Like he might have been from Ireland, Scotland, somewhere over there. I don't really remember where. You know, but he we were talking about the Euro helmet and I was kind of busting his chops about it. And He she said to me at the time, he goes, and well have you ever tried it? And I said, at the time I hadn't. And I said, no, I hadn't. He says, well, can you really say anything about it if you haven't tried it? And I said, that's a good point. I said, you ever tried a leather helmet? Well, no. I said, well, you can't really talk bad about it unless you've tried it. Right? So you know, I I I think that you know that has to go both ways. Right. But you know, like to your point, right? You know, I was teaching a class, it was a live fire class, and the the lead instructor said, Hey, I want you to try this. Hands me a Euro helmet. I said, Ah it's not for me. And he was like, oh no, I really want you to try it. I said, okay. He said, well, you don't you can't complain about it unless you've ever tried it. So I said, okay. So I wore for the three days for the class.

Andrew Brassard: And I gave it back to him and he said, Well, how'd you like it? And I said, Well, you can't hear a thing. You can't hear a thing out of that thing. I found it extremely difficult to tell where people were calling, where people were yelling, where pass alarms are going off. It just I found it very, very difficult to kind of try to hear. So you know, that's my takeaway from it. that it's it's very difficult to kind of try to pick up where you're hearing things from. Scott Hewlett: And would you say the same approach to skills should be taken, that you really can't critique a skill until you've learned to do it properly and then you can measure it against what you already do properly. You can I think it's frustrating when you try to teach a firefighter a new skill or show them something. They try it once, they can't do it because they literally just learned it 30 seconds ago and they're like, that sucks And it's like, no, you you just suck at doing the skill because you literally just learned it. Should we should we take the time to learn the skill to do it properly?

Andrew Brassard: Cause then you can measure it against what you already do. Yeah, I mean imagine if Leonardo da Vinci painted one picture and he went, oh man, that sucked. Crumpled it up through in the garbage and then never painted again, right? Nobody picks up anything and is amazing at it the first time they do it. Right. Right. You know You don't think Wayne Gretzky didn't suck for a lot of years before he was unbelievable? Yeah, he probably did, right? Michael Jordan got cut from his varsity basketball team, right? Because they said he wasn't good enough. Right. You know, you're you're not good until you're until you've put the time in and the effort, right? you know I I wouldn't expect a recruit that I get day one to be unbelievable at searching. I wouldn't expect them, unless they were a roof or something like that on the side, to be phenomenal at throwing ladders. Guess what? They're gonna drop it on their head. They're gonna really, really suck at it for a long, long time. And it's whether you're willing to put the time in for the reps for them to get good at it or not. That's really all it comes down to, right? You know, you know, playing sports at a high level. You know, I played sports at a really high level when I was when I was younger. And you know, how did I get to that level? It wasn't I picked up the stick one day and I said, oh geez, I'm really good at this. I picked up the stick one day and said, man, I really suck at this. I have to spend a lot of time before I'm good. You know, that's everything, right? So how do you get good at forcing doors? You put the time in to get good at it. How do you get good at doing searches? You put the time in to get good at it. How do you get good at anything in this job You gotta put the time in to get good at it.

Scott Hewlett: Touching back on conferences, I think people can give us a little grace and give a little Canadian shout out here. So Sean Burns is asking after the true north fools conference, obviously, and then FDIC, what conference training event would you recommend or suggest? Andrew Brassard: absolutely any single one that you can afford to go to. Right. If it's close and you can afford to go, go. Right. for me, I mean, two of the biggest ones that I'll say is you know, firemanship. Right? They do it in Aurora, Illinois is a big one. FDTN, Fire Department Training Network in Indianapolis, Indiana, Jim McCormick. Firefighting Disneyland. Right? I remember the first time I went to FDTN. It literally was two cans in a in a cornfield and a flashover container. Right. I mean it might have been three cans, but I mean it was a long time ago that I went for the first time. And to see what Jim has built out there is is in it truly and is inspiring. You know, like he is The fire service is should be so thankful that they have him. You know, he what he has built out there is Just it's awe-inspiring and it's just it's literally it's firefighter Disneyland, man. the best classes that money can buy, hands down, the most realistic fires. You know, there's just a ton of opportunities out there. you know, there's the Orlando Fire Conference. There's the You know, even just different states have like the Ohio State Fire Academy at Bowling Green University, had the opportunity to teach there quite a bit over the years. Unbelievable people, unbelievable class. you know And even up in Canada, you know, SFA where me and you teach, we teach we have a bunch of classes that we teach up there. you know, fantastic classes that you can get for the brothers and sisters that are north of the border.

Scott Hewlett: Absolutely. Andrew Brassard: We were talking no take anyone that you can. Scott Hewlett: We were talking nozzles as well before we we went live here. so that me that leads me to what things in the fire service have been improved by technology and what things have suffered or at or at risk of becoming less effective. Andrew Brassard: I mean one of the biggest things that I think you know is definitely better, without question, is thermal imaging. Right. I think thermal imaging has really truly, you know, changed the way that we operate, you know, and For guys that weren't in the fire service when they weren't around. I mean, they were just, I mean, you would heard it talked about and then I don't know if you kind of experienced this too, Scott. We bought one of these monstrosities that went on clipped on your helmet. Scott Hewlett: I wore it. Yeah. Andrew Brassard: Yeah. I mean, right? And one of the two things that those cameras hated. Heat and water, right? I think there's neither of those around. but yeah, thermal imaging has kind of really tr kind of transformed the fire service, and I think it allows us to do our job you know, a thousand times better than than we've ever been able to do it before.

Scott Hewlett: So that is one thing that I think our our generation is benefits from is that we've seen you know, the very beginnings of thermal imaging cameras and all the iterations to today. Whereas if you get on the fire service now and the first one you pick up is a personal seek, it's like, well, this is the way it's always been. Yeah. You haven't you haven't seen the progression and touched all the aspects of it. Just like music, right? You start it with records and eight tracks and you've seen everything come all the way to streaming. So you have a a greater understanding of the progression as opposed to a kid that just can't gets handed up an iPhone. Andrew Brassard: Yeah, you remember the old Bullards? It was like dragging a car battery around at a fire? Right? You know, like you know, the kids don't the kids nowadays don't appreciate that thing, right? Yeah, because they get this little seat camera that's this big instead of this car battery. Right. Scott Hewlett: So what what else what else comes to mind? Andrew Brassard: I mean th for so for things that have benefited, definitely. you know, and I I think about thermal imaging things that I don't think are better, right? what is the deal with the SCBA? We had steel bottles when I got on, and the SEBA is heavier today than it ever was ever before. Right? Like And the pass alarm, like if you're cutting a padlock, you're forcing a door, you're do literally doing any task on the fire ground, your pass alarm is going off. And I'm like, I don't ever remember that being a thing when we first kind of when I first got on the job. Like the past alarms that we had, yeah, you have to turn it on manually, but The thing never went off. If you were moving and you were bumping into stuff, it was always constantly resetting. They were never going off. Now the pass alarms are going off all the time. The SCBA is bigger and heavier than it's ever been before. Right? I mean hey Scott, remember the 90s with the you know your your cell phone right it was like it was like this big right now you can get them they're this big everything's shrinking right In the fire service, the SCBA is like three times the size that it was before.

Andrew Brassard: It just doesn't make any sense to me. Right. I I don't know. I I think that the SEBA is needs a a serious look at. and trucks Right? You know, think about an old Mac back in the day, a 1970s, 80s Mac. How many days of that thing out of service? None in 20 years. Right? You probably go pull one out of a field somewhere and spray some carb cleaner in it, put a new battery on it, and it'll start. Right. Nowadays the trucks were spending millions of dollars on these things and they are out of service constantly. Right? I don't know. Like I'm a I'm a owner. I want to own a pickup truck that has roll-down windows, a vent window, right? you know, no s no radio, like metal floor, metal roof. You know? Scott Hewlett: Given where we work, I think we could agree that that heat's a good good technology to have. Andrew Brassard: That's you know what I I missed the days of putting my hands over top of the we had this old They had this old international, I think it was in 83 or 4 international that was still in service as a spare when I got on. And yeah, you'd ride to the call in the middle of the s the the the snowstorm with your hands over the engine to keep them warm. Yeah, you know what? Heat heat heat yeah, I'll take it, but I just I don't know. I think that a lot of the things that we're you know we're trying to buy G-Wagons instead of fire trucks. Buy fire trucks.

Scott Hewlett: Do you think we romanticized riding the back step? because when we pictured it's always on a beautiful day or coming back on a nice, you know, beautiful night and it's it's not that, you know, minus 40 and you're frozen solid. We've we don't analyze it too much. Andrew Brassard: Yeah. I think it'd still be pretty cool. I'd love to give it a shot. I'd love to give it a shot and let you know. Scott Hewlett: Yeah, yeah. Andrew Brassard: If I like it or not. Scott Hewlett: I guess that's that that's where good stories come from. Andrew Brassard: Yeah, absolutely. Scott Hewlett: Nathaniel Wynins was asking here, best back to ticks, guys put a lot of faith in the tick, often without the training to go with it. What's your best tip on using the tick effectively? My first thought is to like, you know, look up Andy Starnes and dig it, dig deep into his content. But beyond that, you know, give me your take. Andrew Brassard: You know, great, great, great kind of story. Like I was, again, I was young fireman and you know thermal imaging was kind of all the craze and you know I thought I knew how to use it. Like there's the power button and you look through it and That's how you use it, right? And that's all the training that we really had on it. And I went and took a class with Bobby Athanis from Safe IR. He was a rescue three New York City guy. Unbelievable class. Like literally, I was sitting in the middle of that class going, I am a complete idiot and I have no idea what I'm doing in this job. It was that kind of level, right? And I think that the thermal imaging camera, a lot of people have no idea what it can and can't do. and you know like you're you're constantly seeing pictures online and hearing stories of people using their ticks in ways that you know is not gonna work for them. So you you know it's it's the thermal emergy camera is the exact same thing as a forcible entry door prop It's just a hunk of plastic and metal and stuff if you don't know how to use it properly. So the biggest thing about ticks is you can absolutely become too over-reliant on them. You should know how to do your job with or without it A good friend of mine was telling me a story.

Andrew Brassard: They get a fire call reported possibly people trapped. They get up to the front and his boss turns around to say something to him and the pike of the halligan goes right through the screen on the thermal image camera that's hanging. Now what? Well now we don't have a thermal image camera. They still went in, they still did their search, they still knew how to do their search without a camera. So can we become over-reliant on thermal imaging cameras? Without question. You know, and again, that comes back to focusing on the basics. Teach people how to search without it without a thermal imaging camera, then teach them how to search with a thermal imaging camera. The thermal imaging camera is designed to enhance your search and not to completely change it, I don't think Scott Hewlett: So Yeah and speaking about tools that training and speaking about tools that aren't necessarily behaving like the real thing, even though the tick is the real tool. One of the aha moments for me was, you know, when it was pointed out that when we're constantly training with it, you're looking for, you know, white lit up, bright silhouette bodies, right? But because of the temperature difference. But in the real fire What you're looking for is the dark silhouette. So it's that especially under high stress, you're amped up, right? Your decision making isn't as clear. that training scar could really be detrimental.

Andrew Brassard: Without question, right? And again, that comes back to you know just bad training, right? And then those training scars. the other big thing that I always, you know, kind of drives me crazy about thermal imaging training and and just burn buildings in general is how many burn buildings you ever been into that have that are furnished? That are furnished like a real house Right? So when we do thermal imaging training, we crawl into a room that's completely empty and there's the dummy laying on the floor. Well, you know, unless you're searching in a vacant house, which I mean definitely has is possible, you know, the the rescues that I've made, it's you know, you see a foot sticking out from underneath a blanket You're looking for heat where there isn't supposed to be any, or you're looking for cold where there isn't supposed to be any. You're looking for temperature variations where there probably shouldn't be those. Right? And that those should kind of warrant further investigation. So a lot of the times, you know, like You know, the rescues that I've been a part of, it was never a person laying there. They were covered in blankets. They were in bed. They were laying on a couch covered in a blanket. You were looking for areas that you needed to search because you couldn't see with the camera. Right? So it's supposed to enhance your your search and not completely change your search.

Scott Hewlett: Jumping off you saying about burn buildings and not being furnished, like I I definitely want to in this with this opportunity to like give incredible gratitude to the American fire companies that are doing acquired structure burns and yeah you know recording them get getting tick footage like it's been paramount to trying to you know properly discuss tactics when talking about fire behavior so Just thank you so much to everybody for that. And just maybe giving your take on, you know, the safety factor that we're trying to make these buildings super safe so that no one gets hurt in training versus the risk of actually, you know, the first real fire you fight is a an actual house fire. Andrew Brassard: Well yeah, I mean again it's I mean even just the fire condition itself, right? Like you go into these massive burn buildings that are concrete. That I mean it's next to impossible to keep the smoke in there. And then they're like, oh, you can only burn one pallet. You can only burn two pallets and one bale of hay. It's like you open up the door, you force the door on the first floor, and you can see out the back door and you can see the traffic driving by on the road on the way by. It's like You know, just completely unrealistic to what we do day to day. I, you know, and again, I I cannot stress it enough. I think that if you really want to get the best quality training, live fire training that you possibly can, go to the fire department training network in Indianapolis because Jim has done that entire thing correctly. you know the fires, zero visibility. You're searching in like zero vis lights out condition. It's hot. It's smoky. It's punishing. It's the way it's gonna be at a real thing. I think, you know, for me, a lot of the live fire classes that I've taken, a lot of the live fire training that I've done. You might as well not do it because there's no smoke, there's no heat, there's very little fire, like I don't know.

Scott Hewlett: In those cases, are you better off than really focusing on the skills of the hose handling, of the stream application, the water mapping? Like just hammer out the skills at least so when they do end up, they've got that habit when they end up in the real thing. Andrew Brassard: Yeah, I absolutely. I think you know your time's better spent showing people how to flow and move, right? Flow and move, force entry and you know in zero visibility. Anytime you can operate in anything that we do in zero visibility conditions, the better off you're gonna be. I mean, because that's really what we work in. And that's, you know, people will say, well, you know, not every time is it zero visibility. I'm like, well, yeah, but do you have a hard time searching those places? Probably not. Right? Where do you have trouble? Is when it's zero visibility. So train as much as you possibly can in zero visibility conditions. I think that you know I think the other big problem is, you know, we buy a $10 million training facility and poured concrete building, and every single person in the build in the department runs through the training one year And then the next year, everybody knows the layout of the building. So there's no there's no mystery to it. Right? Everyone goes, oh yeah, they lit the fire on the second floor. You go in here. Hang a left, go up the stairs, hang a right, fires right there, knock it down. Right? Everybody searching knows where the bedrooms are, right? And nobody searches the first two rooms very good because they know that they don't put the dummy in the first two rooms. They always put it in the third one. Well you gotta search them all, right? So everybody goes through the motions and you know And then we end up with crappy training, you know, that that really doesn't you know do you know serve us our our best, right? So I think that we would be better off to do skills, you know, build your skills to the next level. Right. If they're not gonna let us burn the way that we need to burn to to be better, I think that we should at least have really polished skills. and then I also I Strongly suggest everybody gets down to take Jim McCormick's classes because what an eye-opener.

Andrew Brassard: You really find out what you're made of at at his class. Scott Hewlett: Nice. All right, let's jump into some standards on the on the weekly scrap here. Let's do book or books that you recommend that firefighters read, and they can be fire related or not. Andrew Brassard: All right. Every single person that knows me really well right now that's listening in on this is laughing. Not not a huge reader, I will be the first to admit it. and I know Corley's probably not gonna like my answer because he he's a big reader, but I will I will say this. I want everybody out there that's listening to put their books down for a bit. And I want them to learn a new skill. So I want them not to read anything. I want them to learn a new skill, right? So if you've always wanted to do woodworking, I want you to go out and I want you to learn how to do some woodworking. Guess what? You're gonna suck at it. You're gonna suck at it for a while until you start to slowly get better at it. I want you to go out there if you've always wanted to learn how to weld. I want you to go out there and I want you to learn how to weld. I want you to go out there and learn a new skill. That you have to use your hands for. Right? If you always want to be a blacksmith, go take a blacksmith course. If you've always wanted to learn how to to paint, go out there and paint So I want everybody to learn a new skill with their hands. And then the next thing I want everybody to do is learn something or try something creative that they've never done before. Okay, if you've never painted before, try painting. If you've never drawn before, try drawing. If you've never sculpted before, try sculpting. If you've never, You know, made pottery before, try that. I want you to learn a new skill And I want you to try something creative because I think those two things are absolutely vital for people. I think people are meant to be creative. I think people are meant to build things with their hands. And I think that there's no greater sense of accomplishment than learning how to do something.

Andrew Brassard: And then when you finally start to get good at it. you know the the the sense of accomplishment that you will have from that is is something that nobody can ever take away from you. So I want everyone to put their book down. I want everyone to learn a new skill and I want everyone to do something creative. And I think both those things you know, will do your soul some good. Scott Hewlett: It's always cool to learn something new about someone you've known for a while and and that they know a skill or they're great at something that you you didn't expect. Like I've I've I've complimented you a number of times now on the art that you're doing for your social media page for Rescue Ironworks. It's phenomenal. And I was like, brass, who's doing this? You're like, I'm doing it. I'm like, dude, that's amazing. I mean I always laugh, right? Andrew Brassard: People see me, you know, and and then you know when they find out that I I draw and I paint and I do all these other things and I I try to make Yeah, I I homestead and I raise animals and I you know, I try to you know, I try to be a metal artist and stuff like that. you know always makes them laugh right but yeah you know I want people to try something new right can you learn something from a book without question it makes your mind better For sure. But I I think that it unlocks some different things inside of you if you're trying to build something with your hands or you're trying to be creative in a way that you haven't been before. And I think both of those things are good for your soul.

Scott Hewlett: Nice. You ready for the five questions? Andrew Brassard: I'm ready. Let's rock and roll. Scott Hewlett: So yeah, this is a brand new set. Not many people have answered them. we talked about one of them being on the clock and the record is yet to be set. So we gave you a few tips on that. See what I can do. All right. And I mentioned homesteading. I'm gonna just throw that out there as a as I would that would be my guess for number one here. But you can do anything in the world except be a firefighter. What would you choose to be? Andrew Brassard: Wow, if I could be anything in the world other than a firefighter, I would probably, ooh geez, well, I would be a New York City firefighter in the 70s. Scott Hewlett: Still a firefighter. Yeah. Andrew Brassard: Yeah, no, I would probably be an ironworker. I've always enjoyed you know that stuff ever since I was a young guy. you know, I looked up at those guys and, you know, tough, tough dudes, man. And you know, those were kind of the guys that I looked up to, you know, the guys that were tough. showed up to work every day. you know, iron men.

Scott Hewlett: How about an iron worker in New York in the 70s? Andrew Brassard: See that that'd be perfect. I think the ultimate job would be a new a New York City firefighter in the seventies. The second best job would be a New York City iron worker in the Scott Hewlett: Part-time, yeah. All right, we'll definitely give you max points on that one, even though I was wrong. I I was sure Homesteader would have been the weak. Because I I know how much you would love to just, you know, have a cabin in the woods somewhere in the mountains and just be left alone and do your thing with your family. Andrew Brassard: Absolutely. More trees, less people. Scott Hewlett: Okay. Great job, Max Points so far. Number two, it's job town. It's time. You're rolling out of the station and responding. Think of the scene from Backtrap where he slaps a cassette tape into the deck. What song are you playing? Andrew Brassard: All right, this is gonna be a really weird answer. Scott Hewlett: I love it. Andrew Brassard: So I gotta tell you, I used to back when I was a a young a young firefighter. and I used to you know listen to stuff all the time on my headset and stuff. I used to listen to the FDNY Warriors video recordings. you know, they used to have you know You still be able to listen to the old recordings from, you know, when they were going up multiple fires at the same time all over the Bronx and Brooklyn. The place was just burning like crazy. And I used to listen to the the audio recordings from those years. And man, I tell you, I'd be able to walk through a wall after listening to that stuff. So that stuff would get me pretty fired up but I don't think the other guys in the rig would appreciate it too much. Literally anything, any music from the movie again, this is probably you know, I know I definitely love my heavy metal music But I I really love like the soundtrack from The Last of the Mohicans, Gladiator Braveheart, all those things, kind of some of the the you know the softer music, you know, those things that get me fired up and ready to go to run through a brick wall. So

Scott Hewlett: How about you nail down one for the playlist? So maybe like a theme song from one of those movies if you had to do that. Andrew Brassard: Whatever the theme song is from Last of the Mohicans. I don't remember what it's called. Scott Hewlett: Alright, leave that leave that up to Sam to try and track that down. Yeah. Awesome. Okay, number three. When you wake up tomorrow morning, you are chief of your fire department. You have the authority to change whatever you want. What is the first change that you're making? Andrew Brassard: the first thing I would do, well, there'd be a lot of them. There'd be we'd have low hose beds on the trucks. Right. Scott Hewlett: Yeah, have me at low hose beds. I'm good. Yeah. Andrew Brassard: Yeah. Low hose beds on the trucks. Aerial apparatus with no pumps and no water on them. Black gear. Leather helmets. I think if we did that stuff, it's a good start. Scott Hewlett: It's a good start. Throw me a bone, give me a lower hose bed. Yeah. Andrew Brassard: Yeah. Give me a lower hose bed and I'm good. Scott Hewlett: Okay, so now you're going on the clock, right? We talked about this. Yep. you're riding backwards, your backseat firefighter, it's a four-person engine. You get to choose your crew. Who's your dream company to ride with? So you're going to choose a driver, an officer, and another firefighter.

Andrew Brassard: Bob Morris, FDNY Rescue One, Stanford, Connecticut now. Bob Pressler, retired FDNY Rescue Company 3, Mike Lombardo. Buffalo, Christianifier. And then last but not least, because if those three guys were working, I certainly wouldn't be getting on that truck. I didn't definitely don't deserve to be on there The last guy that I would add would be Timmy Clett, New York City Engine 88 Retired. Those would be my guys So you're pulling a a loot day and you're gonna go buff and watch them I'm gonna show up every fire that they go to and I'm just gonna watch the magic unfold Scott Hewlett: I love it. That's that's definite definitely humble of you. and yeah solid. I'll get max points for that as well. Okay, number five. Let's bring this one home. Have you fire searchable space? Would you rather be assigned to the nozzle or first in on a window initiated search? Andrew Brassard: yeah, so I'm taking the pipe. Taking the pipes. All right. And that might again surprise most people, but I'm taking the pipe all day. Because not only might putting the fire out save the person in that window's life, but it also might save the lives of the crew that are searching in that window. You know, everybody always thinks about the window rescue, right? The window rescue. Well, what about the other three people that were in the bin in the building also? That the engine company putting the water on the fire and putting the fire out facilitated rescuing those other people. So I'll take the pipe.

Scott Hewlett: Nice. Andrew Brassard: Yeah. Scott Hewlett: And you already offered a few challenges up to listeners with doing something creative and also trying something new that you may suck at and having that experience, put put a book down, but Let's let's put a time frame on this one, right? So it's giving the listeners a challenge that they can complete before next week's scrap. So they got a week. What would you like to dig into before the next scrap? Andrew Brassard: Oh Geez. Scott Hewlett: Is there an is there an article? Is there something else? Andrew Brassard: All three of the all four of the names that I read out? Scott Hewlett: Yeah. Andrew Brassard: Bob Morris, Mike Lombardo, Bob Pressler, and Timmy Clett, Google every single one of their names and read absolutely everything that those people have committed to paper. Scott Hewlett: Awesome. I love it. Okay, Brass. I gotta say personally, like my incredible gratitude to you, how much I appreciate you. and you came on early days to multiple calls. And if people want to listen to more of your backstory, I just want to turn them to that because it was special for me, but I I know people will get a lot of benefit out of it. and I know I speak to everyone that's interacted with you that they feel the same way, that we're grateful that you're a part of the fire service, that we're working at the same time you are working. yeah, we we owe you a huge debt of gratitude. and I know you're an incredibly humble guy. but you know you don't get to say whether you're an inspiration to other people, we get to say whether you're an inspiration to us, and you've Yeah, you've been that to so many so on on both sides of the border. So I just want to say thanks so much. and I'm really glad you agreed to do this with me. That's super special too. So yeah, man. Thanks for coming out. Thanks for doing this. I know Corley appreciates it. Yeah, and if there's anything you want to to say to wrap this up, we'll land the plane.

Andrew Brassard: just hey, you know what? I I was beyond shocked that you asked me to come on. you know The biggest thing that you know in my entire career that I've always tried to do was you know, someone told me early on that we just want to try to make the job better than we found it. And that's, you know, at the end of the day, that is all I have ever tried to do is just try to make the job better than I found it. You know, it it the job's not about me. It's it's a it's about all of us collectively. And The big thing that I try to push on to everybody is, you know, just try to leave the job better than you found it. you may not make a thousand changes out there, but You can make one or two in your career. you know, you can look back and say that you really did something special. So awesome. you know, everybody out there, if you ever need anything from me, by all means feel free to hit me up. I'll you know I'll help you any way that I possibly can. you can hit me up either direct message me through rescue squad ironworks on Instagram or you can hit me up at rescuesquadironworks at gmail. com That's probably the best way. Yeah. I just that's all I gotta say, man. I I I'm extremely humbled that you would even ask me to come on here. really appreciate it. you know it's been a it's been a trip. And yeah, hopefully everybody learns a new skill, does something creative.

Scott Hewlett: All right, well I think that officially makes it 315 scraps in the books. we're gonna wrap it up. Thank you so much to Corley for giving us this opportunity and allowing a couple Canadians to to handle his baby with care while he's away. So I hope he's safe and enjoying his vacation with his family and you know I'm sure he's gonna get some pleasure out of listening to you chat so Thanks everybody. We really appreciate you. And as Crowley always says, the job can't be safe. Speaker 5: And I think basically the you know his adage is if you can't be safe, be good. Outstanding. All right. Good night, everyone.