Weekly Scrap #242 - Ian Bennett, Live Fire

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Corley: Very, very easy. Be a part. Be one of the cool kids. Why not? Make it happen. Love you all. See ya. Ian Bennett: One, two, three. We use it for others. Push, train, learn, after ourselves. Never easy. Never quit. Corley: Corley Moore, Firehouse Vigilance, it is weekly scrap. Number 242. Tonight's guest is Ian Bennett. He has been in the fire service since 2006 for Seattle Fire Department. He is taught to the Washington State Fire Training Academy, taught at Seattle Fires Risk Recruit School, was involved with SFD's Acquire Structure Live Fire Program. He was instrumental in developing what would be the foundation for West Coast Fire Training and also the SFD's live fire training curriculum. In 2018, he started West Coast Fire Training to help other departments improve their live fire training. He has helped several departments in his area start their own acquired structure live fire training programs. At this point, Ian has been involved in close to 70 different acquired structure burns. He is involved with NFPA 1400, which of course includes 1403. He loves being a firefighter. He loves training. He loves teaching people how to train effectively. I also He also has an amazing family that has let him pursue his passion for the fire service and live fire training. It is my absolute pleasure to have him on as the guest of scrap number 242. Welcome, my brother, Ian Bennett. What's up, Curly? Man, I'm excited. I'm excited about the topics. I'm excited to have you here. It's been long in coming and it's been too long, but I'm glad you're finally here

Ian Bennett: Well, me too. I'm I'm humbled to be here considering a lot of the guests you've had already. So but love talking live fire training with anybody who will listen Corley: Well, you got a bunch of people already logging in that will listen and we're excited about talking about live fire training. Is there anything in the intro that I missed? Anything that you would like to add? No, that's good. Beautiful. Let's talk about those beautiful sponsors so we can get to that beautiful training talk. The OG sponsor of the scrap is Keyhose. And with that, we are through the sponsors and we are ready to scrap. So let me get you caught up to speed. I'm gonna pull this up here one second while I work a computer. Not one of my strengths, as I'm well known. There we go. Cody Brooks says on shift checking in from Florida. There's an LFG. People are chiming in. They are checking in on Instagram. If you have questions for Ian, if you have questions for myself, Kyle Romagus is in the chats. He is monitoring the chats. He is grabbing your questions. So if you have them, please post them. And we will throw them at Ian, especially around live fire, 1403, or training. Those are the things we're really going to attack tonight. So, Ian, are you ready? I'm ready. What's up, Kyle? Glad to see you there. Awesome. There we go. Coming at you with the first topic. What is the true purpose of most live fire? What is the true purpose that most live fire training should be?

Ian Bennett: so I think thanks for starting with this. I think when we're doing live fire training, we a lot of the problems that we run into come from not having a clearly defined mission that we're trying to accomplish with live fire training. It's just that we tend to view it as the place where we throw all the skill sets together. Okay, you spent all this time. Okay, let's just Get a bunch of stuff all done at once. And we're missing the fact that people don't actually spend a lot of time in the live fire environment. I mean, if you look at your average department, how many fires they go to every year It's not that many. And if you think about all the different positions that are occupied at each fire response, how many times did you actually get to flow from the nozzle at a fire? How many times did you actually get to do a VES? So the amount that we're learning about the wide variety of skill sets that we have as firefighters by going to fires, it can be sometimes very small. It's you totally unique, valuable training that you get at real fires. There's stuff you can't experience anywhere else. Right. But the true purpose of live fire training is Number one, it's what we at West College of Fire Training call normalization of the live fire environment. Right? The live fire environment inside of a burning building is like nothing else in the human experience. Right. There's no corollary to it. There's nothing else that you can do in normal life that's going to get you ready for the inside of a burning building. And so we just need to give people time to be inside a burning building with a realistic fire. So that it can they can experience heat. They can see how smoke, flame, and heat travel based on the vent profile and how those conditions change based on our fire ground actions of extinguishment. Moving around, just from room to room. Simple things like the fact that heat banks down differently from room to room based on header sizes and how much a door is open or whether or not there's a door closed People just need time to experience that stuff. And we rush past that. So we need to spend time just normalizing the live fire environment.

Ian Bennett: That's why in our training we spend a lot of time with guys just in what we call observation groups Where basically their whole role is just move around, no tasks involved, so they can actually focus on what's happening while the fire is burning. Second thing after normalization of the lab fire environment is building cues and context for the skills that you already have. Right. So you get somebody fresh out of the recruit academy and they go to a fire, most of the time they do something wrong. And you ask them, well, how come you didn't flow water here? Or how come you didn't you open that door or didn't open that door? They're like, well, I wasn't sure if I was supposed to. Well, we taught you to do that in recruit school, but the problem is they don't actually have a slide that goes with that skill set Right. It's like saying, okay, we're gonna teach you how to box. I love combat sports, so we'll use a lot of fighting analogies. Okay. We're gonna teach it, we're gonna teach you how to box, right? So we're gonna hit the heavy bag a lot. Well, you can learn a lot of good things hitting the heavy bag, but you're not going to be able to react when someone throws a punch at you because you've never actually had to read the human, the other human's body movements Right? No. And it's the same in the live fire environment, right? We need to generate a visual, a heat, or a sound cue that tells people, okay, now it's time to open the line. Or how many times have you told a new guy, oh, you should have flowed water there? Or why did you shouldn't have flowed water there? Well, it's because they've never seen that condition before. So they have no, they're just guessing, right? They have a skill set, but they're just guessing when to apply it. So live fire training is for building those cues that say, okay, you see this amount of fire, you see this amount of smoke, that means you need to flow water because and you can move them through that environment back and forth. So Okay, you see the smoke condition at the front door. Now we're going to move inside to room number one. You can feel a heat level, a smoke, see a smoke level.

Ian Bennett: Move to the next room, to the next room. Okay, now you can see rollover over your head. Okay, let's back up And so they can tie visual and heat conditions as they move through the environment to a decision tree that they've already been taught. Right. And most live fire training isn't doing that. It's just Go. Okay, you're on scene. Find the fire, put it out. And then we'll yell at you later about how you meh you messed it up. Corley: So is it the is it is it the building of the of the the neural connections between the the the separate tasks in the environment, like the associate phase, basically? Ian Bennett: Yeah, yes, 100%. That's our second most important thing. And the third most important thing is we're trying to build confidence in people, right? When you have folks who have 500 gallons of water in their and four people on their engine and they don't make entry, why is that? Well is it they say it's because it's unsafe, but it's unsafe because they don't know what's happening inside Right. when you take them inside and then you make them comfortable in the environment, right? Because they just hang out in there and they move through it and they're they know how it's going to change from room to room based on the fire conditions And then they know how and when to apply their skill sets of search or vent or extinguishment based on the conditions that happen from room to room or space to space, suddenly their confidence goes through the roof. I mean this I'll give you a quick story. So we did in the first set of acquired structure burns that kind of led to the formation of West Coast Fire Training We did three days worth of live fire up in Watkin County District 7. Last day we get one shift and it's kind of they're not the most confident. Right. And we go through, we have a we focus on all the things I just mentioned, and we do the last burn, which is the biggest burn. And after it's all over, one of the lieutenants comes out and he's like, hey man, I just want to say thanks. Up until today, that fire that you just had us go in on, that would have been an exterior attack first right out of the gate.

Ian Bennett: Wow. Right. But now I feel comfortable sending my tailboarder through the front door making that left hand turn and flowing and moving down the hallway to the bedroom and what had changed? Well essentially nothing Equipment hadn't changed, skill set hadn't changed, right, response time hasn't changed, but everything had changed. because they understood what was going to happen in the environment based on the fire presentation. They understood when and how to use their skills in that specific environment. That's the other piece with the cues and context. Right. Sometimes we learn a skill set like flowing and moving is the most common one. And we do it either in a parking lot or we do it in a hallway. But we don't understand when we're new how to alter that skill set based on the specific environment that we're in. So we make common mistakes Right. How many times when people are new and they're flowing water, flowing and moving, and you black them out, do they get literally this close to a wall flowing and you can hear the roaring of the of the hose stream against the wall? And it's because they don't know what that means.

Corley: Right. Right. Ian Bennett: They've only ever flowed it right, either outside or in the hallway. And so they have no context for what that sound means to them. and how to use that to change their behavior in the in the environment. And they don't have confidence to shut the line down because they've never been in that environment before. So if we can give them all those things, then suddenly everything gets easier. So I love it. Corley: No, no, it just context. It really is building context. Ian Bennett: Yeah, it's normalizing the live fire environment because we just don't spend a lot of time. And most of the time, if you just learn through experience, right, there's there's stuff on the line, right? You got to move fast. I don't have time to take Colin, my proby, right now into an actual house fire and say, hey, let's just hang out here for a second. Right. Yeah, look down at yeah, let's take a look around. Let's let this thing grow for another 30 seconds. See see it travel around the door a little bit more No, I mean because that's 30 seconds that a victim might not have. Right. Right. Or that's 30 seconds of their stuff getting more burned up, which and so I I just can't do that from a moral standpoint, but I can create all those conditions in training. over and over and over again to reinforce the things I want him to do.

Corley: Just to build the Rolodex as best as I mean, obviously nothing builds it as good as experience, but we just don't have the the sheer amount of reps that is possible to make it happen in the real world. Ian Bennett: Yeah, and that's the other piece though, like a lot of those things I just said, those three things that I just said, don't make sense when your vision of live fire training is the campfire in the corner. Corley: Right. Ian Bennett: Right. So we refer we affectionately refer to, you know, like the four to six pallet fire in in the conic box or the fixed facility as the campfire in the corner. Right. that's that's what it is right it's just it's just a big flame it bounces off the ceiling a little bit there's a little bit of smoke maybe a fair amount if you've got some smoke barrels going But people often don't understand the fuel loads necessary or how to alter vent profiles to create conditions in a fixed facility that more realistically mimic real conditions. Right. And it's not hard to do. I mean I could show you in probably a day how to do it. But you have to have the underlying skill set of how to generate those conditions without frying yourself as the instructor or frying your students. Right. That's why later on I mentioned we need to talk about common instructor errors. Right, right. But at the last fixed facility burns we did in early February, I mean we had a 40-foot connex box like a three connex box system, you know, two 40-foot connexes next to each other like this, and then one at the end, which is the burn cell. And we had rollover traveling 20 feet down both connex boxes, zero visibility conditions from the front door to the back. You know, I mean You you can generate these conditions, you just have to know how to do it. And you have to have facility managers that will allow you to do it.

Corley: Allow you. to generate that that flame and that heat. Ian Bennett: But and that goes to selling that goes to selling the program and how you build over time. It's like Corley: Yeah, that that's a whole process. Okay. John Shackleford has the first question coming at you from the audience. Are you ready for your first question? Let's do it He says, what is the best, because we're on this topic, what is the best fuel package you have found for Connex burn buildings, pallets or OSB? Ian Bennett: it's a combination. so pallets are a great base fuel because they're bigger, they're thicker, they'll sustain the burn longer, right? If you just use OSB It's hard to get a base fuel that or a base fire that's large enough to get the suspended OSB fuels going. So generally it's what we call this the stack which is pallets with probably some scrap OSB sheeting in the top half of the stack And then suspended OSB sheets on the upper walls and in chains. I think that that's a pretty common setup in a lot of steel connex facilities. Corley: Right. Ian Bennett: But OSB is great. Corley: Love it. Jay Obbs wants to know what training do you recommend for small companies, i. e. two, maybe three on an engine?

Ian Bennett: So I would to me when we're talking about those main goals that I mentioned earlier, the training doesn't change based on company size. Right, because once you make the choice to make entry, you're gonna the nozzle or the search team, they're gonna encounter that and have to deal and make choices in those conditions regardless of your staffing level Okay. Right. and so the needs of a two-person company in terms of being able to recognize conditions are the same as the needs of you know a metropolitan department my size. Again, the the piece where people, I think, where we have gone wrong in the history of live fire training is that we treat live fire training as operations drills is like we drill fire responses. Right? We when really what a fire response is, is it's a coordination drill Right, if I want, and that's important, right, as a as a comp as a department that throws a lot of people at a single family residence fire, we need to coordinate those operations well if we want to be as efficient and as effective as possible. And so we need to practice that in live conditions or not live conditions, but you know in real time, right? Hey, engine one arrives, you deploy, engine two, truck one, all that stuff. The mistake we make is that we add live fire to that. And we don't need to add live fire to that. And in fact, we most of the time we shouldn't add live fire to that. because it distracts from the coordination drill and it makes the live fire portion much more dangerous. When we do unscripted When we do these big freeform drills where people respond in, the ability to control the live fire conditions and account for possible errors or uncontrolled fire conditions gets much, much harder. And the other thing is that the learning value for anyone who's not on the nozzle or the search team goes way down.

Corley: Right. Right. Ian Bennett: Because you might as well be doing those things with a hood over your face, right, once you go inside. Because it So that's why when we do our live fire training, we don't focus on response orders or operations. It's just single skill sets, right? extinguishment. Right, you're and it's literally you're gonna we're gonna start with the charge line here in the living room and you're gonna flow and move down the hallway to the bathroom. That's it. Or up the stairs to the bedroom on floor two. That's it. All that other stuff, like dry stretching, pumping, all that stuff can be drilled without live fire. And it should be drilled without live fire most of the time. Occasionally it's nice to work in LiveFire just as as a kind of a reward for the guys, but that shouldn't be the main focus of your live fire training. Because it's just live fire training is is dangerous, it's dirty, it's really expensive, it takes a long time, and so you want to get the maximum value out of it, and the maximum value is getting it as realistic as possible. and putting people in there as much as possible, as long as possible. So that you can work on those those skills and those recognition education pieces that you can only do with live fire.

Corley: Right. Ian Bennett: Right. Corley: So I love this question coming at you. This one's coming from Instagram. It's coming from Caleb McLaughlin, which has been a long time since I've seen you, Caleb. It's been a whopping three or four days. But he asked. What's the best way to train if you don't have a burn facility close? Which ties right into what you're saying. Ian Bennett: if you so to tr prep yourself for live fire if you don't have a burn facility, in that case What we do often is YouTube firefighting, right? So you can still do some stuff with cues and context with with online videos, right? Because now interior footage is really good with the proliferation of helmet cameras and recording ticks. You can really show people some stuff. it you can't obviously you can't drill the heat. You know, you can't drill the sound or the feel in the same way that you can in a burned building. But that's what we do and we do that on shift ever every shift. That's part of our morning roll call. You know, just you watch a f you watch a couple of fires in the morning and you talk about okay, which line are we gonna lay, where are we gonna lay it, once you get inside, what conditions do you expect to face? Which direction you're going to turn, left or right? You know, how soon would you expect to flow water? Where would you expect to go if you're on the truck? You know, would you do we think the room is open? That that's what that's what you're gonna have to do. But to m to drill those other things like getting confident in in heat, I mean I mean that's like you you just can't do it without heat. It's like how do you learn to swim? Like you eventually you got you gotta get in the water.

Corley: Right. Right. No, great answer. Great question. Thank you for sending it. Let me let me pull it up here. Eventually. Whoop whoop whoop coming at you. Kyle's grabbing them. Thank you for the question. John, thank you for the question. James Michelisco, Ian. Is the NFA NFPA still trying to outlaw OSB as a class A material? Ian Bennett: Been waiting for this question. I thought it would come up sooner no. And I can speak directly to that. So who anybody who might have missed it in the intro, I'm on the NFPA committee. I'm an alternate voting member under Brian Brush We just met for the root upcoming revision to 1400, which includes 1403. We met back in February in Florida. There was a long discussion about this. We are not trying to ban OSB. In fact, we're the committee is, I can't say we're going in the other direction, but we're we're intentionally preserving OSB. And if for anyone who's interested, do you want me to dive into the details on that discussion? Corley: Absolutely. Absolutely. Ian Bennett: Yeah, so so anyone who's read the UL research on this stuff. What they show you is that any fuel in a vent-limited condition generates smoke that is toxic. Okay. Doesn't matter if it's pallets, doesn't matter if it's hay, doesn't matter if it's wood, OSB, it it all generates toxic byproducts because it's incomplete combustion It's just which toxic byproducts do you want, right? Some produce more hydrogen cyanide, some produce more other benzene, some produce other more nasty stuff. And when you actually look at the statistics and the error bars of OSB versus pallets, it's They're in this they're within the same error bars, right? OSB might be like a tiny percentage worse than pallets, but it it it's it's so close that Honestly, if if what you're going to say is that we need to burn, we need to ban OSB because of the cancer risk that it that it creates for firefighters, then the only moral choice that you can make is you have to ban all Class A fuels and just go to gas prompts. Right. That's the only and we there's an interesting discussion about risk mitigation that actually comes from OSHA. There's lots of ways to mitigate risk. And the first one is you can eliminate But the thing is there's no substitute for class A fuels, right?

Ian Bennett: Gas props and fake smoke just do not generate conditions that Mimic close enough interior firefighting. Right? You cannot, it it's our belief, it's my belief, is current with current technology, we cannot effectively prepare people with gas props alone. That you have to use class A fuels. Now you can do a lot of I mean I've been able to do grapefires with just pallets and hay. OSB is great, it's very convenient, but it's not 100% necessary. But yeah, you got to have Class A fuels. And so that's why it's it's sticking around. Corley: Love it. And Brian Brush just chimed in and said, no greater partners on the side of live fire training in the NFPA right now. And I said it wrong. I'm sorry. Brian Crush. Brian Crush just timed in. So I had to get it right. Everybody does, man. One of the best. Absolutely one of the best. David Pruitt says, I love the coordination aspect. Can you talk about your process to vet participants before they are allowed to get into Live Fire? Ian Bennett: yeah, so this is a this is a key point. and when you look at the history of the line of duty deaths and close calls around live fire training, you you see this come up a lot. We often ask people to do things in live fire training that they are not prepared to do. And when I say prepared, I don't mean like they're not like mentally ready. Like they literally don't have the skills to do it. Right. and so when we do our training, especially when we do open classes where we don't know the participant's skill level, we literally do a skills test at the beginning of day one. and depending on their level of skill at certain tasks, they don't get to do certain things. And that's that's for their safety and for ours, right? So if we're gonna create a If somebody cannot say flow and move effectively and manipulate the line and the pattern and the stream where it needs to go accurately, they just don't get to be on the nozzle And like I have no qualms about that because it means if we if you can't do that, that means we can't generate certain fire conditions safely. Right. And it's the same thing. Like if you don't have, I need to know if you have the athleticism.

Ian Bennett: Like one of the tests we do is hey, everybody put on all your gear and then kneel down and stand up 10 times in a row. Corley: Right. Ian Bennett: That's it. Because how many times have you gone to a training and with a bad knee or the dude who's 75 pounds overweight? Like you say, okay, it's time to move. And you know that that's a process, right? It's it's a it's a thing that's gonna take a minute. And that doesn't mean we're not gonna put you inside, but that's something we need to account for. when we move you around in the building, because I mean we're gonna start you as close to the fire as we possibly can because we want you to see the growth But then you're gonna move back from room to room to room, and then we might have you move forward again from room to room. And if you know, and if you're that guy who's, you know, a 60-year-old volunteer who's a little overweight and two bad knees, well There's some things you might not see. And it's nothing personal. It's just that we can't you put you in a position where you're gonna be unsafe. And that's that's one of the things. Once you start to generate more realistic conditions, there's you have to be honest with people. about their their skill sets and and what that means for their ability to perform.

Corley: Love it. Love it. I absolutely do. Josh Everett chiming in and said South Texas iPhone boy here. Yeah proud of that man I love it. Kyle Romagas is asking you a question, Ian, my brother, what are some of the common mistakes you have seen from nozzlemen that moved from the parking lot or drill towers into the acquired structure burns? Ian Bennett: okay, so the first one that we see is guys, one, they advance too close to the fire before they open the line. So this is especially true when people don't they're not familiar with limited visibility conditions, right? Because what what you realize once you spend some time inside these buildings is that The fire builds up, you see rollover form, and then actually rollover goes away because the whole place gets vent limited, right? The smoke builds up. And so the heat's there, but you can't see the fire anymore. And we're such visual creatures that until people have gotten it into their heads that the heat's there, but I can't see fire anymore, they'll proceed way too far forward before opening the line. And so that's just something you got to teach them. Then the thing that we see is they advance too fast. Right? You're used to being able to just sprint forward when you're flowing in a hallway. But once you put, you know, super high heat, you know, 1500 degrees at the ceiling, 800 degrees waste level, you need time to cool that space. effectively before you should move into it. And this is especially true. It's less true in hallways because hallways are very forgiving because they're small. But when you go into a big room, like say you move from the kitchen into the living room, and it's a 900 square foot living room and we've had fire in that living room down to the like chest level all throughout the living room. You'll have guys just cram themselves in there and they won't they won't hit those gases off to the layer left and right and they'll have fire wrapping rack back around behind them. They need to move inside, just chill You know, and then let the water do the work, let the stream reach out and cool those spaces. So moving too far forward. moving too fast forward once they're flowing water. And then the other big one is people struggle when it's not a hallway.

Ian Bennett: So at least in a lot of places, you know, you have houses that are room to room to room. There's no hallway. Right? That that making sense? No, no, so in a hallway, right, the stream, you can you can do this within the stream real easily because it the the hallway confines the the water for you Right. And even if you're not super accurate, it's just going to travel the walls and the ceiling and just cool all that stuff, even if you're not very good. But when you go big room just the doorway to big room again. Guys will cool the room, but then they they're looking for those walls. They want that audio feedback of the whack, whack, whack, whack on the walls and the ceiling. And so they never put water through the doorway So the old fire just pump or hot hot gas is just pumping through that doorway, but they're not cooling anything. So then they start to get to a bunch of steam because the water falls down, breaks up on the walls. But it's not cooling anything. So you just got this jet of fire and hot gases just blowing all this steam back on them. They're like, what, this thing doesn't work? Well, you're not putting water in the right place. So they don't they don't cool the room and then narrow the stream up to seal the next space. I mean fields says it's right. It's like you got to use the reach, then you got a coat, but then the last one is you got to seal that next space

Corley: Seal. Ian Bennett: And if you're if you're not sealing it, then and it's easy to seal in a hallway, but room to room, it's harder. It takes a higher level of skill. Corley: No, and and even Kyle said hallways are a pickup game, like bowling with the rails up. Ian Bennett: Yeah. Corley: Nothing. Yeah, so I had a question coming at you from Instagram. I wanted to see it real quick. great grateful dad said, GR8 Full Dad, when will the next West Coast Fire Trading Live Fire be? And can I help load pallets? Ian Bennett: Okay, the line out the door to help load pallets is pretty long at this point. I'm sorry, my brother, probably not. when is the next one? That that is a good question The next one that's firmly on the books is going to be in October with at Brian Brush's facility out there in Midwest City. So we were hoping to do the PNW conference out here in an acquired structure, but we couldn't line up a building, so didn't Corley: I'll look forward to seeing you when you come back down here to Midwest City because that's that's right in my neck of the woods. Ian Bennett: So yeah. Yeah.

Corley: I just gotta be in state when you're in my state. Ian Bennett: Right? Right. And and if anybody wants to invite us out to their place, right, we're happy we're happy to travel. Corley: Always, always, always. Kyle Ramag is coming at you, Yinks. I love his questions, man. He just sends great questions at you. Ian Bennett: Yeah, Kyle's a deep thinker. Corley: What are some tips for making an acquired structure last during live burns? Are there some essential tactics people can use to prep the structure that you would recommend? Ian Bennett: that my question back to Kyle and since he's in the chat, maybe you can ask him, what do you mean by last? Right? Because do you mean six days? Do you mean two days? Do you mean till the end of one day, right? Because those different levels are require very different prep. Now if you want it to last just one day, you don't have to do much. What you have to do is not burn too long in any one room. and then once that room is done, it's best to seal it up. Corley: Okay. Ian Bennett: Right. Corley: Take it out of the equation. Take it out of the equation. Ian Bennett: Yeah, because what people will do is that rooms all it's all destroyed anyway. It's you're not like you want to seal stuff in there. And usually part of the ceiling will fail. If you're just doing one-day burns and you don't do any reinforcement and so then fire can travel into the attic and that's bad. And plus it also lets smoke out of the normal pathways and so the the fire behavior doesn't act like you expect The main problem is that is people I think it often has less to do with reinforcement, especially if you're doing one-day burns, and it has to do with people not understanding how to control the vent profile And so they burn too long in the in a room. And so then it gets into the void spaces right away.

Corley: Right. Ian Bennett: And then once it gets into the void spaces, they don't know what to do. It's funny, I I run into this, I've run into this a couple of times where it'll get into the void spaces and people kind of look like, oh God, like it's in the attic. What do we do now? It's like Let me ask you a question. So what would you do if it was in the attic at a real fire? Corley: At a real fire. Ian Bennett: Oh I well, I'd I I'd throw a ladder up there and I'd I'd I'd dig it out. Corley: Right. Ian Bennett: Yeah, that's what we're gonna do right now It's gonna be okay. If it's just a smoldering void space fire, it's easy. Now, if you want to go longer. You know, if you want to burn more than once in the same room. Corley: He clarified, he clarified, just so I give you context. Couple days. Tricks to keep the fire from going north. There you go. Ian Bennett: Yeah. So you got to reinforce the ceiling. Right. Anywhere there's going to be direct flame impingement and especially direct flame impingement and water application, you've got to put what basically either plywood or OSB sheeting up. Right. And it like extra sheets of sheetrock, don't waste your time. That's just gonna fall down. Right. It's just gonna get wet, it's gonna get hot, and then it's gonna get wet, and it's gonna disintegrate. The best solution is just put a like literally cover the whole ceiling with a layer of OSB Then you burn once, and then if you want to burn again, you just tack more OSB on top of the charred OSB that you got there. Right, it's a fresh layer, so it'll burn again. It'll keep the bottom layer from burning off, and you don't have to search for studs anymore because you just have a solid layer of OSB underneath. Same in hallways, just any ceiling area that's gonna take any significant, especially water application. Right. And then If you're gonna burn like real heavy in a room or anywhere, you're gonna have the this the burn stack right up in a corner it's best to like throw a couple of OSB sheets on the upper walls right where you're gonna have direct flame impingement from the stack itself. But other than that, that's about it. Just cover your penetrations and Yeah, that's the main thing.

Ian Bennett: And then don't be lazy about like getting into the room and pulling stuff out. Like the reset put like there's gotta be a team, either the attack team or the safety line or whoever's gotta go in there and pull that burn stuff out. I mean they don't have to like shovel it out, but you gotta pull the big stuff out so you don't have a fire going in there or You know, and you gotta inspect the ceiling. But yeah, solid sheets. Don't waste your time with sheetrock. Corley: Jake Jorgensen following up said, would you recommend the ceiling be reinforced with plywood and layers of sheetrock or just a couple layers of sheetrock? Ian Bennett: No sheetrock. Don't waste your time with sheetrock. Just plywood or OSB. Nice. Okay. Like a single layer, a single layer of plywood or OSB, standard, you know standard thickness. You know, thicker sheets will last longer. Plywood will last generally a little bit longer than OSB. But if you're doing the the vent profile and your ignition sequence correctly, your burn shouldn't last longer than five to eight minutes. And so your your OSB is not really going to disintegrate completely. Corley: Like it. Love it. There's your answer. Great question.

Ian Bennett: We used to do the layering of sheetrock and OSB, sheetrock and OSB. But what we found is the sheetrock just falls apart and then you kind of burn through the OSB a little bit and then you end up pulling like multiple layers. It's a giant pain in the ass. Corley: Right. Ian Bennett: So just a single layer and then relayer over that. Corley: Okay. Ian Bennett: Because you actually have easier access. If it burns all the way through and gets into the attic a little bit, you can see where where it's happening. So Corley: Love it. Too many questions. Too many questions coming at you. I want to get to Brian's but also there's a there's a couple that are kind of in the same realm. basically, in your opinion, this one comes from James Michelisco up out of Indiana. in your opinion. What are some changes that can be added or eliminated from 1403? So I know we're going to get to 1403. So I didn't know if you wanted to address it here and talk about what's coming, or do you want to keep going with you tell me which way you want to go with it. Ian Bennett: well when whenever we choose to address 1403, let's just do it all at once and then get that out of the way.

Corley: Okay, then I'll then we'll get your 1403 questions in because there's quite a few There's a few of them that are kind of in that realm. So we'll get we'll get those at the end. I'll go back to instructing and live fire burns and go to Brian Crush. He said aside from the technical parts of burns Ian, can you explain your process for instructional humility and awareness in a post-action review? Ian Bennett: Yeah, so you you probably noticed on our website our number one value at West Coast Fire Training is humility. Right. Without humility, there is no learning. Right. You cannot learn and you cannot admit error. Without humility, and if you can't admit error, then you can't grow and you'll eventually engage in in dangerous practices. And that has to be and and students if if you as instructors do not model humility, your students will never admit mistakes. In fact, they'll hide mistakes, and so they'll won't learn Or they won't learn as fast, right? I mean, we use we're pretty good at that in my department right now, but we used to be terrible about it. And we used to have these company drills and we would all meet at our training facility in the pavilion. And you know, those of us who are the instructors used to call it the pavilion of lives. because everyone would go there. It's like, hey, how'd the drill go? Lieutenant? Oh, great. Oh, you were a first in on the nozzle, how'd it go? Perfect. Yeah, no, no changes. Right. Right. And that's because we had a culture that that wasn't humble and we couldn't admit mistakes because once you you people I mean, this is pretty basic stuff, but people have to feel safe admitting error. And what we have I think what Brian's probably driving at is that we have to recognize that live fire training is training. Right? Training is where we make mistakes so that we can learn. Right? It's not a performance test. Right, and you so your guys have to be feel safe making mistakes and admitting ignorance, otherwise they'll never learn. Right. and that's critical for long-term safety. And we can get in more into this later, but you know, there's There's a lot of like PhD level research into organizations that are able to do high-risk activities for long periods of time without catastrophic failure.

Ian Bennett: And one of the critical components of that is they call it something different, but it's essentially humility, right? You have to be able to learn from your mistakes, recognize your errors. And and we as instructors have to model that, right? And I'll give you a couple of examples. Like whenever we teach our train the trainer class after the basically the introductions, the first thing I show is one of the first burns that I was in charge of. as the ignition as the instructor in charge, I essentially almost killed myself and 15 students. Wow. Right. It was like a It was a single point failure event. Like nothing happened. And the crazy thing about it, Corley, is that except for me and one other guy who was there, nobody even knew what had happened. Right. Everyone else is just like, oh, that was kind of cool. Yeah, that was pretty hot. Yeah, that was awesome, right guys? And so we had to sit down and be like, hey, just so we're all on the same page Like that was this this close right we we almost had an event that could have changed live fire training in Washington State forever Right. Right. Right. But some but not every close call ends up with injuries, gear damage, right? Sometimes it's just like, whoo. And as an instructor, it's it's very easy to walk past those things But you can't. You literally cannot walk past those things. You have to share them. I think I hope that's what Brian was driving at.

Corley: No, it's beautiful. Timestamp, boom, max points for this question already. Yeah, they absolutely crushed the answer, man. And I think that's what he was driving at. He was he was he was giving you the toss right down the middle so you could crush it. Yeah, it's got it's nice to have a plant in the audience. And Smoothboard Cartel said, just so we're clear, we almost died But no, it's it's part of it, man. That's beautiful, man. And the ability to make it. Jake Jorgensen said, I know you talked about identifying your skill set, but what do you do if a student makes it to a live bird and then shows sign of panic when they're in the ideal age? Ian Bennett: So this has only happened one time. And then that is relies on one of our main safety procedures is what we call instructor positioning. Right. panic only really matters that much if you're on the nozzle, right? Because the nozzle is the one who's going to be closest to The threat, right? And they're they'll be the going to be the ones engaging with and making the push on the fire. And so we always have the instructor always has to be in a position to experience heat at the same time or before the student does.

Corley: Okay. Ian Bennett: Right. So that way when the student either fails to engage correctly with the threat, the the instructor can stop them. Or they can literally take the nozzle from them. Or in the case of one student, we the instructor had to grab the student and keep him from pulling his face piece off. And escort him out. But usually you can figure out if that's going to be an issue. That that incident was why we instituted the skills test in the beginning. Right. Because we kind of figured out early on when we watched this guy trying to put his gear on that he wasn't super confident. just not very familiar with his gear. Right. And so when you f have people do things like bunk up for time, go on air for time, move around in their gear, just like do a quick search crawl back and forth, flow water for a little bit, you're you get a really good feel real easily with someone's experience and comfort level. Right. So but yeah, great answer in the IDLH it's it's instructor positioning. Right? The instructor has to be in a position to literally control the student. who's closest to the threat.

Corley: Love it. looking here Matt Cokewell, how do you scale realistic and difficult trainings at work without chipping away at guys' confidence and making sure they leave with a successful positive outcome while challenging them simultaneously? Ian Bennett: well the first thing you should do is you have to tell guys what you're trying to do. Right? This whole piece of normalizing the live fire environment, building cues and confidence. creating an educational environment, you have to tell people that you're gonna do that. Right. In my department now, we don't have to say that every time because it's part of our training culture now. Corley: Right. Ian Bennett: But especially if you're working with groups that you don't know. that is often not the case. You know, it's not super common that that's the training culture that people come from. So you have to just say right up front, like, hey guys, this is what we're working on. So we're going to focus way less on performance. We're going to focus way more on you just spending time. And if you make mistakes, that's totally fine. Right. That's what we're here for. So you just have to clearly articulate all those things. Corley: Right. Ian Bennett: Up front. So then then people know like it kind of takes the weight off their shoulders. Like, oof. All right, if I make a mistake, it's not gonna be the end of the world. The instructor's gonna not gonna chew me out in front of everybody and make fun of me. Now, people are still gonna feel bad. Sure. Right? but The next thing is you graduate training, right? You don't start off on the first burn with, you know, rollover traveling 30 feet in zero visibility conditions, right? You you you scale the training. Right, you start off with a fire that's that's smaller, you start off with higher visibility conditions, and then you know, so you start easy, right? It's just like it's like lifting weights. Right? You you you don't start off and be like, hey, you look like you're a pretty big guy. We're just gonna throw three plates on both of this side and just rep out some bench, right? No, you you just start with a bar, you make sure that people have good technique and that's the skills test out front, and then you just You throw on some warm-up sets to make sure everyone's clear on what the procedures are and what we're doing here after you've explained it, and then you slowly build it up.

Corley: Right. Ian Bennett: Right. Beautiful, beautiful analogy. Yeah, and depending on people's skill sets, right, you could you can you can alter it up and down, right? So at our last fixed facility training, we had this group of three from a department that were highly, highly skilled. Like they could have taught any of the stations what we were running. And so when we were doing our final sets of fire attacks, right, we threw some some twists in for them. Like we threw victims in the way of the hose line that nobody else had to deal with. Because we knew they could handle it, right? We're not gonna crush them. This is gonna be a nice challenge. But that that is the instructor, you just have to figure out where your student's skill set is, where the comfort level is, and either meet that or exceed it just a little bit. Corley: Awesome. No, great question, Matt. Thank you for sending it. another one coming back from Kyle. In cases of rapid I love this question, so I'm skipping to it. In cases of rapid fire development in a big room, there's a lot of misinformation in old war stories. of full fog needing to be used for protection. With the amount of burns you have conducted, I'm positive you have had instances of rapid fire development in big rooms. What would you recommend the reaction to be from the Nozzleman to shut down rapid fire development after it occurs in a big room? And by big room, he's saying 400 to 600 square foot living rooms, for example.

Ian Bennett: Yeah, open the line and keep it open and move it around. Like open the line and go like this. There you go. All over all over the place. And it it's funny in that in that close call that I talked about, a small piece of that was me in a weird instruct, I got in this weird instructor versus survival mode But I could see what was happening. I could see that the room was progressing to flashover, but I didn't want to put the fire out right away because I was like, oh man, we're going to end this training experience. sooner than I wanted. We're not going to hit all the teaching points that I want. So I'll just gonna see if I can knock back this thing a little bit. And we don't have time to pull up the video right now, but you can see me pencil. It just stirs the smoke layer up. Everything starts catching on fire even more. And then I was just like, okay, game on. Yeah, just open the line. Open the line, keep it open, move it around. That solves all your issues. Corley: There you go. And Smooth War Cartel said it sounds simple because it is. Yeah, yeah. Don't play with it. Right? Right. No, I love it. Oh I got a good here's one which you you were involved in this so that I'm gonna throw this one at you. What are you there