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Leadership Conversations @ The Kitchen Table
Ep. 94: Chuck DeSmith, Deputy Fire Chief (ret.) - Resiliency & Peer Support
01:29:24
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- [00:02]
Chief Chuck D. Smith
So the chance to actually build resiliency at work is tough. The best thing we can do is, like you said, connect with it, create that environment where we're doing tailboards. We're just talking, saying, hey, this was a tough one. You know, I'm, or, you know, telling be able to tell somebody, I just had a huge fight, my wife kicked me out of the house last night. And, you know, I can tell something's on your mind. It's like, we got you. You know, this is, we still would say this is our kind of home away from home, the fire station. And you're there with your brothers and sisters. And if you're facing life and death, sometimes we can share things and you can tell when you're a little bit off and to be able to talk to each other, have trusted people, it's tough to do that at work. So creating opportunities outside of work and supporting that.
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Skyler Nagorski
Building.
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Chief Chuck D. Smith
The First Responder Liaison Network is proud to present to you the Kitchen Table podcast. Join us as we explore leadership from perspectives around the globe. From firefighters to fire chiefs, civilians to
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Berlin
CEOs,
- [01:14]
Chief Chuck D. Smith
our conversations have one simple goal. Build more leaders
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Skyler Nagorski
right through check for extension.
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Berlin
Good afternoon and welcome to the 94th episode of the Kitchen Table. On the show today, we welcome Deputy Chief Chuck D. Smith. And in our conversation today, we're going to dive deep into first responder wellness, resiliency, peer support and more. Chuck D. Smith is a retired deputy fire chief. 35 years of experience serving the greater Renton community with emergency care here in the State of Washington. He specializes in supporting emergency medical services, community health support and organizational safety and well being for the Renton Regional Fire Authority. He has a Master's degree in Organizational leadership and a bachelor's degree in Fire science and support. Being a lifetime learner, Chuck is passionate about whole person medical care for our community members and he inspires for our workforce to continually represent our diverse community through emergency care. Chuck also focused on firefighter peer support and well being for our first responders on and off duty, and an advocate as well for resiliency with ptsd, ptsi, moral injury, burnout and suicide. The Chief was a member of numerous communities in King County, Washington with EMS Region 3 Trauma Council, Zone 3 Integrated Health Lead, King County Wellness Committee, Zone 3 OPS Chiefs and EMS Advisory Committee, King County Mobile Integrated Health and BLS Working Groups. He was born and raised in Renton and lived in the Issaquah area. Good afternoon, Chief. How are you today?
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Chief Chuck D. Smith
Yeah, thanks Berlin. Great to be here.
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Berlin
Now, before we get going we have another special guest today. This is a friend and mentor of mine, someone who had the privilege of working alongside Chief De Smith for many years. Skyler Nagorski. Skyler Nagorski is an individual currently training to become a licensed clinical social worker for veterans, first responders and their families. With over a decade of service as a Special Operations Forces, tactical paramedic and civilian firefighter, his professional path has always centered around one purpose, caring for those who serve. With his passion and experience working with people, helping people, and caring for people, he is an advocate for peer support and individual wellness. And what better person to help me introduce the Chief onto the show today? Surrounding the topics that we're going to discuss. Hey, Ski, how are you today?
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Skyler Nagorski
Hey, thanks, Berlin. Thanks, Chuck, for letting me steal some of your airtime for you kitchen table guests out there. If you haven't had a chance to meet Chief De Smith, I think we can list his accolades. They're long, whether they're on the fire ground or they're on, on the executive side, I think I, I just want to take some time to talk about him as a person. Life's pretty short and, you know, it's always funny. You could talk, well about Chuck behind his back, but now he's sitting right here, you know, it's a little harder. I think the couple things I just really want to hammer home for the guests listening today is overall, I would say, is Chuck's competence. So I got to work for Chief De Smith as his line firefighter from 2018 to about 2023. Pushed on, just wanted to become a therapist and a counselor. And I think in, in no small way, that was part of the peer support team that Chuck had built. When I was there as a medic in the Army, I've always answered the call. But when I got to Renton Regional, I saw that there was a, a deep desire to help those in a really transparent and authentic way. And I think for any of us who have been in the first responder circles, or quite frankly, any blue collar work in general, a lot of how the job site runs comes from the top down. You know what, whether we'd like to admit it or not, we think a lot of us who are kind of in the trenches, we kind of have a lot of say. But the reality is we can get pretty hamstrung if people up top don't understand what we need. And Chuck is one of those people who eat, sleeps, and breathes the fire service in a healthy way. He put his people first. And even as A young buck, just like a young firefighter, I. I could see that coming down from the top, all the way down to me. And one thing I want to hit home for you guess is as you sit and listen to him today, try and think to yourself and envision someone in your life who is really embodied authentic leadership, who doesn't come down and tell you what to do, but rather listens to you first, equips you. And also in a healthy way, going back to his competence, he really just set some really healthy left and right boundaries, something I was used to on the military side and the infantry side. But in the. In the fire service, we have to rely on people who can kind of make decisions on their own and in peer support, at least from my time there. It. It's a deep well, and it's wide, and it's dark down there. And there was just certain people who held lamps, and I think Chuck would be one of them. I just want to talk about three other things. Real short, too, is chief dismissed. Kindness. I don't think that can be underestimated. We have a lot of fire chiefs that are fire breathers, and we need those. A lot of us gravitate toward those individuals. Chuck held that, but he. He held it in a safe manner. Again, I keep using the word light or porch or. Or lamp. When you guys listen to him today, I. I would challenge you to not just listen to what he's saying, but how he's saying it and how he sets up the scene and how he's really trying to. He just has a gift for letting you keep your passion, but he helps you and guides it in a safe, directed way. There's, you know, again, all of us wear headlamps. I would hope most of us wear headlamps on our helmets. Really doesn't do much good to talk to my officer, giving him a report of his tlo and I shine my light straight in his face. I can't. You know, if Chuck's my officer and he's pointing at where I need to go, I can't see anything. Points it directly my eyes. He's one of those leaders that. He takes that intensity and he shines it where you need to see, not at you. I wish I had better words to explain what type of man you're listening to today. I think I can just kind of wrap it up in two things. Chuck, along with some of the officers that he was in charge of, really gave a lot of us a long leash. And I think for any of you senior officers, Listening or recently retired and pushing on to whatever you're doing next. That's probably the biggest gift you can give to creative, strong, capable self. Starters that you hired is that long leash. But it doesn't start with us as your junior corps. Chuck showed it that it started with who he was as an individual. His competence gave him. I'm speaking for him, he'll tell you later today as he talks of Berlin is from. From the outside looking in chief to Smith gave me and a lot of individuals long leash because I think he felt that he was competent. He didn't have to micromanage us because he had set the tone first. Again, think those of us who, who work the line, whether PD or fire or ems, we all have those bosses that we walk into and we're just like, we just want to work hard for certain individuals. They just seem to get who we are and they don't let us go rogue either. Goes back to that lantern idea. They gave us some really healthy boundaries. This man that you're going to get to listen to, I hope you got a notepad out. I would challenge you to not just listen to what he says, how he says it, how he sets it up. He's again in a. It's hard, I think as men, I think I'm just going through a certain season in life where I just got a lot of people I love and respect and I really want to share it with them. So I'm glad you guys get to. I'm glad Berlin finally whittled him away and got him on here. And then last thing I just want to hammer home is just a little bit less ethereal and more pragmatic. On the peer support side, if you're in a. If you're in a department that doesn't have a peer support program, it's not rocket science. But if you don't know where to start, Berlin can give you Chuck's information during this. Probably at the end of the podcast. You can reach out to Kitchen table anytime and Chuck will gladly walk you through that. He's not. He's not a recipe guy. He's not just going to tell you three eggs and, you know, a cup of flour. He's going to listen to what you need and he's going to listen to where you're coming at and he can customize that for you. And again, more importantly, again, that long leash and really just being there and walking with you and beside you. I think if I had a sum up Chuck to Smith, he's just an individual that he's a. He's one of the best leaders I've ever worked with. I wish I would have stayed longer so I could have kind of rose to the ranks and got to be a little closer to him on the professional side. But for those of you listening today, please grab out some notebooks, just listen. Hope you challenge them. He loves conversation. He loves dialogue. He's not afraid of admitting when he's wrong, which is not often, but happens. And I hope those of you even have a remote inclination to reach out. Like, don't be shy. Just get on the horn, hit him up today. Hit up Berlin. This, what a blessing. We get to listen to Chuck to Smith today. I know he's going to downplay himself, but for those of us sitting by, we're eager and we're ready. So welcome to the Kitchen Table podcast.
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Chief Chuck D. Smith
Wow. That's insanely humbling. Thank you, Skyler. I wish we could add more years together, too. So thank you.
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Berlin
Thank you, Skyler, for that introduction. And what a way to get today's conversation going. And what I'm going to say, first, Chief, is based on everything that Skyler said, obviously today's conversation is going to be. It's only going to be a snapshot of what we could talk about. And I do to second what Skyler's saying. I do hope people do reach out. We'll leave information at the end of today if people do decide to reach out, which we encourage them to if needed and if wanted. But let's. Let's start here. T. So you're recently retired but still deep in this work?
- [11:10]
Chief Chuck D. Smith
Yeah, just last February in 25, after 35 years. Retired. Yeah, it's. It's no one. Everyone hears this often. They can't prepare you for retirement. There's so much that's everything about the fire services, your life. And yeah, you put all of it into it. And so. And Skyler knows this, you need that energy to go into other things, too. Um, I do have a new why to why I care so much about the service. It's not just like great people like you, Berlin, and what Skylar's trying to do and so many back in Renton. It's. My daughter is actually getting on with the fire service too, so she's just starting. She's in eastern Washington. But that's. I want a better world. I. I think we had some amazing years in the 80s and 90s and 2000s, and I want to see that continue. I want a better fire service. So I'm choosing to Stay involved and. And hopefully to make things better and to. Whatever I have left is to keep learning, but also share.
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Berlin
I love that you continue to see a better fire service. That's. I mean, that's not leadership by itself. I don't know what is. We hear it all the time. Right. Leave it better than what you found it and 35 years and moving on, but you still want to make sure it's still better. Before we dive into the main topics today, Chief, I mean, I understand that you have a retirement party. You're in Chicago now. You're flying back home for your retirement party next week. Does that sound right?
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Chief Chuck D. Smith
Yeah, yeah. Renton does a great thing. It's kind of an awards banquet, but then it grabs all the people who retired in a year, and we all get together. So it's going to be a great, great time to reconnect. It's going to be my first time not back in Renton. I've got family there, but it'll be a lot reconnecting with some of the folks that I retired with. So, yeah, I'm going to come back and see it. So I'm not sure I've got some. Yeah, it could be a pretty emotional night, but we'll see what happens. So I leave. I leave on Friday.
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Berlin
Leave on Friday. Awesome. Okay, so this is where I'd like to start, Chief, based on what Skyler said, he said you're an individual that eats, sleeps, and breathes fire service. And he said in a healthy way. The fact that we sometimes have to say that in a healthy way. I'm curious on concept of doing what you do and did, but in this healthy way and creating those boundaries, what does that look like? And what is that to you?
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Chief Chuck D. Smith
Yeah, that's a great question. And healthy way. So I. I think of it Berlin, a little bit like relationships. So I. I really treasure my relationships. I try to stay connected. We know that we're all only going to be here for a while, and so we try to make sure we appreciate in the people in our lives, but also we start learning more about ourselves and that we're okay if at times we're alone. And so that's when I was thinking about the fire service. I started thinking about the aspects of the job that I was never settled on. I always thought we could do things a little bit different, a little bit better. I wanted to listen to people. I wanted to, you know, inspire them to be much better than we are. It's almost like your kids, you know, it's. You've got new firefighters just like your kids. You want them to have better relationships, have better jobs, make more money. You want the best for your kids. And so I want, you know, the upcoming leaders, whether engineers, lieutenants, captains, they. It's going to get more and more challenging. So that's the job as leaders to actually, they have to be better than we are. And so you've got to give them everything to make sure that they do a better job. I. I didn't want to leave a hole at Renton. I wanted to actually wanted Renton to. To grow and same everything that Skyler did when he left. We. He wanted things to continue and he created some ways to sustain it. You know, either printed materials, actually physical things that we can keep things going. So. And that was the healthy way I, I wanted to. But also I wanted to work on myself in retirement when I'm able to step out of it. It didn't. As a person, I hope and I try to be a wonderful partner, a wonderful father first off, and a man of God and also a person that tried to give as much as they could to the fire service. So right now it doesn't define me. So that's just like relationships, you know, And I'm okay. I've learned to be okay at times when I'm alone and out of this job, but I really appreciate it when I'm there. So hopefully that kind of answered your question.
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Berlin
No, it totally did. And I guess speak to the challenge of the balance, because there is a challenge of balance, whether it be too engaged or we'll say the other end of the spectrum, not engaged enough, whatever that looks like, we all struggle with it. And I would like to hope that we all in the fire service and, you know, in first responder pd, ems, even in the military, that we give it all, we can give it all. We with it with our heart, mind or soul, and to do the best we can, to serve the best we can, others and ourselves. But maintaining that balance through a long career is hard. How does one create boundaries early? We'll say, how about speak to that. Creating boundaries early and being okay with that, I guess being okay with having those boundaries.
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Chief Chuck D. Smith
Yeah. Another good question. And I was not. We were not, I think as an industry back in the 80s and 90s, we weren't very good at this. We were very fraternal and a lot of us lived close to the area that we worked for. So we would spend a lot of time. We weren't mandatory overtime wasn't a thing for a long for 20, 25, 30 years almost. And we had our time off. And so not taking the job home was really hard. We didn't have anybody to teach us about having boundaries because when you get home and there was dishes in the sink and it just reminded you of the call that you were at and the house was a mess and some things would kind of set you off and you needed time away, but you didn't know how to describe it. So we really didn't have a good, healthy, active life. With that, I think we have to go even back further. Berlan. I love getting upstream and look at the core of why we even chose this work. Why some of us went into the military before the fire service, and then after serving in the military, we served in the fire, police. What's. What is in us to do this type of work? That hyper vigilance, that being prepared, that sense of just. Even when you were on the playground, you were kind of watching others. Maybe you led the team and, you know, you had these. You were drawn to something. And so us, which is amazing for the job, being hyper vigilant, boy, that makes us great. How do you turn that off? We don't have two brains. We have the same brain when we're at work, and it's the same brain when we go home. So there's a lot of things that we're actively working on with peer support to actually support that when you are away, because you and I have talked about this. One of the great things, because we didn't have mandatory overtime, we had side work. Firefighters, we're blue collar. We, you know, our pay was very average. We all had friends who made a lot more. But our job was the cool one, so we got to share at parties. But to. To support that, we had side work. And a lot of us did construction or, you know, tree service with chainsaws and teaching cpr, first aid, whatever we did. And that was a great outlet for us to work together to get things out, to not do. And now I believe a lot of firefighters, their side job is overtime. And so it's back and there really isn't a break. So you take that hyper vigilance on who we are and why we do this job and which makes us great at work. It just keeps it going. And the stress that it has on the body is something I'm really at almost. I'm 60 soon. I'm really understanding now what it's doing to my health, and I'm really having to aggressively pursue that. So I'VE had some challenges with my health, and it's because of these years of being on the gas for a long time.
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Berlin
It's just such an interesting point that you make regarding. Yeah, our time away, even though we were, say, had side jobs, we were just as busy. We'll say it was an opportunity for us to get away from, we'll say, the chaos from the trauma, like physical, mental trauma, you know, being on. On shift. We'll say. But now those side gigs are so that we're less busy or more busy. We're just inundated in this stuff more now, which certainly does not contribute to our mental wellness, our health, our physical wellness, and everything downstream from that. So I. I appreciate that parable that I never had an opportunity to really think about till you said that. So thank you for providing that. What are we. Is the fire service making. Are we addressing this? Are we recognizing this? And if so, what do we doing?
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Chief Chuck D. Smith
I. Great, Great question. So it's got to be intentional. The great thing about peer support, and we were able. I was able to be part of it early on, and 20 years ago was a lot of times led by chaplains, and we had some great chaplains in the area, but chaplains who are not responders, in some communities, they are. So I don't want to, you know, put that as a blanket statement. Some are responders, most in larger URB areas or not. They. They deal really well with secondary trauma. And so a good example of this was I went to with my crew of three. We had an infant cpr, and it was. The father was home, the mom was just away, and the baby died in the crib. And so we started cpr. That's primary trauma. I'm okay with that. We could do CPR on this child. The child didn't make it. But I've prepared for this. This is what I've trained for. This has been my calling. So that trauma, what I wasn't able to deal with is when the mom came home, the pulling, the screaming, the do something, that. That. That secondary trauma was extremely hard. And that's when, thankfully, our chaplain, Loretta, who's just an angel, who's retiring with me, so I'll see her in a week. She came in, grabbed both the mom and dad in a big hug, looked at me and my crew and said, you can leave now. I got them. And that was just, like, so good for us. And we did an early stage of decompression break. We went out for coffee because that was a tough one. And we Were out of service and department supported that. So peer support really became of us on duty and off duty. It was ours as firefighters. It didn't. It wasn't a program by admin type of thing. Yeah, there was some oversight and some budget, but it was really ours. And so helping us with resiliency kind of started there. We had excellent firefighters with good, whether it's couples retreats, we had. One person said, hey, I've done some sound bathing and Himalayan salt rooms that I want to try sending us. I want our peer support to be the healthiest people in our department. I said, oh, that. Why is that? Why do you want? I don't want to, you know, I want some equity here with our department. I say no, you don't understand. When we're in peer support, it's not just when we're at work, but it's off duty. We're never off duty. As a peer supporter. And I want to remodel resiliency. So there's that word again. We've got eight dimensions of resiliency, of just what makes us well, and it's all those things. And if we can make our peer support those people who are modeling it and not just being kind of bogged down by all the stuff that they're hearing from members, that was a way to support that. So that's if I think departments are getting better at supporting peer support. But for chiefs, you have to learn it's not yours. You have your own chief support group, and I had mine and a lot of in zone three, and it's theirs. So you ask them what you need. And back to Skylar, who was so good about saying, hey, can we do that? Why not? This is yours. How this grows. We have a lot of 20 and 30 year olds. What they do to relax is different than what we did in the 80s and 90s. So listening to your people, supporting them, it's. They want to do this job and it's your job. Just like my job. If you're going into a fire, I want you to have the best training, the best equipment, the best decom procedures to keep you safe. If you're going into tough calls or life gets tough, challenges with finances, relationships, children, I want to support that side, just like I would support you with gear. So it's listening to our people, it's advocating for that and going through peer support to do that.
- [24:39]
Berlin
I want to highlight real quick. You said, first of all, you got to be intentional, whether it be from a chief officer standpoint, program manager of the Peer support, whatever it may be. But then you also, do you think that peer support teams nowadays are,
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Chief Chuck D. Smith
are
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Berlin
they more robust now or less robust? But also how do we ensure that we continue the. I don't know how to best word it. It seems like to me I was on the peer support team, what is it, 15 years ago? I was on it for about seven years we'll say. But as she stepped down. But the reason I stepped down was not less passion on the work. It was because I felt like I was not adequately being prepared and or trained. Last thing I wanted to do. Like many people, you don't want to be a mentor of somebody or be a subject matter expert when you're not actually the expert. You want to be adequately prepared if you're going to train someone or help someone. But some programs will say is not as robust as others. So obviously you said intentional, which I love. But also there's some intentional ownership from each individual that's on that team as well to make sure that they are the best peer supporter. We'll say if they want to be on that team. So are we, are we trending in the right direction or what work do we still need to do to make sure that these peer support teams are fully equipped?
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Chief Chuck D. Smith
Yeah, yeah, great, great question. And it can be like everything else in well being and people are out there. There's apps to sell and there's, there's, you know, workbooks and classes and basically you have to understand. So I try to speak with chiefs and leaders, budget heads. Don't treat this like a program because I hear the word program.
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Skyler Nagorski
Yeah.
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Chief Chuck D. Smith
And I did this for a long time, but I hear the word program personally and I think it's going to be grant funded and it's going to last a year. You know, there's no system program and programs are usually the first thing cut. We won't cut operational things if they're in the budget. We're not going to cut. There's a, you know, staffing and we're not going to cut that, but we are going to cut a program. So if peer support is important, you make it part of the budget and then you add, not only budget, you add policy. It's got to be policy. Policy outlives us as people. We retire, we move on. Policies are there and they're able to, you know, evolve and grow and get redesigned. So you get it in policy. What does a peer support mean? Is it voted by the people for the people type of thing? Is there a limit on size and Then you look at, again, budgeting for it and adding to it. So there's a lot of different things you can do on the chief side to make sure that it's continuing, it's going past a passionate person. I was very passionate about it, but I made sure that there's living documents that keep it going. Things like a decompression break that. That's in the policy from 30 to 60 minutes. Doesn't matter on the call. You don't have to meet criteria. If a crew says, you know what, my. We're going to take 30 minutes or we're going to take a decompression break and they let their BC know they can eat, workout, meditate, pray, you know, go out for coffee, whatever they want to do just to unwind. And that puts, again, the officer should be in sync and they should be able to be that much caring for their crew. And maybe Skyler did anything. Was there anything resembling a decompression break in the military? I guess I'm. I know we just kind of randomly fell into it, but it had to been done before.
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Skyler Nagorski
Yeah, Chuck, I'm gonna go with no, not. Not till you got. Not till it was overt and it was unhidable from, you know, the higher ups, you know, drinking problems, DV issues, you know, unchecked on. On, you know, non therapy, ptsd. So, yeah, the first, the closest thing I came to was. The first healthy thing I came to was Renton, where it was very proactive. It was very. Before this happens, because guys have been doing the job three decades, they're like, you're not broken. You know, that'll be a different topic. Maybe you could talk on that, Chuck, pretty hard, because I think maybe that's a passion of both of ours. But the closest to healthy side was Renton, where it's like, hey, you're going to see some stuff, you're going to experience it. And hey, when that day comes, you're not broken.
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Berlin
But.
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Skyler Nagorski
And then decompression can be different for every single person on the crew. So I don't. I don't know how officers handle that in a pragmatic sense.
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Berlin
Right.
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Skyler Nagorski
Because I just had to worry about little old me. Yeah. There just seems like there's so much to it and like you said, and there can be a written policy, but if there's no practice either. Right. So I, I just felt like. I felt like people. The biggest takeaway that I got out of that department is people gave it. People cared. You know, like, to me, as a New firefighter that was like 90 of the kind of probably what I needed in the decompression. So. Yeah. Military wise, though, if there was, I didn't experience it in the seven years I was there. So.
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Chief Chuck D. Smith
Yeah. And that's the thing. If we're on duty, we have to be ready. Yeah. You could go through a tough call right now, but could be a tougher one in another hour or two. You don't know. And part of it, it's, we've got to stay in a ready state. If we just also. So we. It's the way of just checking yourself. And that's a healthy check because that if you can actually tell your bc, hey, we're gonna. When we do this with fires, we'll. We'll take time to decon, go back and shower. We'll stay out of service. We need to put that priority also for a call that just. And it moves us in different ways. Everyone. That's the worst question I think we all get from people out in the world is, oh, tell me about your worst call. And I want to tell them, oh, tell me about the worst horrible, you know, incident that happened in your childhood. No, I don't want to talk about.
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Berlin
Wow.
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Chief Chuck D. Smith
But, you know, mine ended up being. I had to slowly watch a German shepherd, a dog in a car accident in the middle of the night. And the driver was dead, but this dog, I couldn't get. We couldn't cut. Get to the dog. And it was slowly dying. And that tore at me. I'm just. I love dogs. And. And it wasn't a human at all. So everyone's impacted a little bit differently. And it's. It's like you said, Skylar, it's not that you're broken. It's. It's just checking that. Hey, you okay? That was kind of messed up. It's just saying those words. Yeah, I know I've chosen this call, this career. I know I've chosen to go and type these type of calls, but it's okay to say, hey, that was a little rough. Let me just center myself a little bit. Let me just breathe and process it. Because we do this. What do we. What do we call it? So Berlin, if you have a fire or big training, you know, fire training drill, what do you do right after the drill at, you know, at the engine where there's a multi company.
- [31:41]
Berlin
Yeah. He said tailboard, Pia hot wash.
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Chief Chuck D. Smith
Hot wash. Pia, tailboard talk. We do it all the time. And what are you doing when you do that? You are getting the facts because maybe you just did the search on the second. You had no idea what was going on the first floor, what they were doing on the roof. You get perspective of the call. You learn from lessons being learned. Like, oh, that's right, you know, why didn't we pick that hydrant? We picked the wrong one. We're on. On the wrong side of the building. We've learned to do that with other traumatic calls too. And that's what we call a TR2. Tactical readiness and resilience. That's a whole thing and I'm teaching out there of us processing a call for some reason. We could go on a multi fatality wreck with children. And we just go back in service.
- [32:29]
Skyler Nagorski
Right?
- [32:29]
Chief Chuck D. Smith
Yeah, that was a rough call. And then we go into a critical incident stress debriefings 5, 6 days later, which is. Can be fine. But in those days, you're gonna, you're gonna have this negative spin. You're gonna, you're gonna feel it all through that, and you won't get out of that loop. So we tailboard talk and we make it okay to say, hey, that was kind of tough call. Did you say? Yeah, I was really trying to get to this patient and the person outside was screaming. I could hear that. And I was, oh, I was right next to you. And all of a sudden you're getting perspective. You just talk facts. You don't talk emotion, just like you do on a tailboard talk. You don't talk about. Well, I was really kind of stressed getting the hose line. No, you just talk about facts. So that is a kind of a brain shift for people to do that with a traumatic call. So we do that. And once you process it, this is what our brains need to process facts. Because if we don't, we'll go to the negative. This happened because I didn't do this. So we've learned to do the same with calls, and that helps build resiliency for the next one because we talk about it and we talk about the facts. Emotions don't always have to. It doesn't mean we're getting touchy and feely because we still finishing out a 24 hour shift. We have to be ready.
- [33:46]
Skyler Nagorski
Yeah.
- [33:46]
Chief Chuck D. Smith
And so that's tactical readiness and resilience. That's TR2 that we're actually working a lot with, with other peer support groups. Wow.
- [33:55]
Berlin
Sounds like it's obviously more. I mean, I know some departments, some crews will say are better than others, but tailboard talks, Pia, Hotwatch, whatever you want to call them, the encouragement there is to have more of them, right? Doesn't need more of them. Just, you know, wherever you're at now, do more of them. Right? Because you never know. You said people will react differently, people will resonate differently with calls or carry different things. And it's just, it's, it's necessary and, you know, you don't know who you're going to touch and. Or encourage or help will say by having those additional tailboard. And I always think that it's always the culture that is always the hardest thing to beat. Like, it's not that anyone doesn't think that that'd be a good idea. I would believe that everyone thinks it's a great idea, but it's getting there. It's like, well, we don't do tailboard. We don't do hot washes after. We only do about fires. It's like, great, why don't we do them for these calls? It's just a cultural shift. So the encouragement here today is for those listening is start with, start with, you know, your next call, right? It could be an EMS call, an NVC with, you know, one yellow patient. You know, and we're not saying do a 30 minute debrief. You know, you might be. How's everybody doing? Anybody have any needs? Anybody to take a minute to go out of service for half hour, you know, whatever it may be, right, Whatever that looks like, I think that's the start. Another thing I want to mention here is I love how you worded the peer support. Got to be a part of the operational budget. Gotta be in policy, not a program. The way you worded that is so accurate. In fact, when I was talking about peer support programs, I called it a program. Right. Words matter. The decompression breaks. The question I have is that's something that you. That is built into the policy in Renton is. That's built in.
- [35:36]
Chief Chuck D. Smith
Yeah, yeah. We actually, in all the Zone three, we shared it. We, we, we listened. It was. Ryan Dudley was amazing. There's a number of people in Zone three. We had our own Zone three peer support leads from each department in Zone three. That kind of helped. And we shared this document. And you make it your own. Put your logo, department logo on it. If there's certain wording that you want to do, put that. But this is what we're going to do. Just like mutual aid, when we had, I think as a Clallam fire firefighter passed away in, in his bunker room, in his dorm room on duty. Talk about a tough one. You can't really, just move out of a station, they're going to pat who wants to sleep in that room over. And I mean, tough. But they had support from around the zone, the state that came in, peer supporters from outside, just like mutual aid, because their people were so devastated. So it's the same thing. Renting. We can only handle, you know, a certain size of fire. But if it's a large apartment fire, no, we depend on all these other agencies. So same thing. You have a. You lose a member firefighter, and for all the officers out there, be the example. So maybe the call didn't really rock you, but lead by example. If it was a tough call in general terms, why don't you lead by example, saying, you know what? I've called the VC, we're just going to take 30 minutes. I'm going to go have something to eat. That was kind of messed up. I'm just going to center myself a little bit. I'm going to go work out. You guys are free to do what you do. And that becomes just 30 minutes. That's it. We're just not getting called. We're just going to take a short break or, hey, coffee on me, you guys, we would even leave. I bought, you know, I left cash or Starbucks gift cards in every aid kit that if crews or officers wanted just. That was just my way of just saying, hey, go grab some coffee. There's no reason you can't. You're off at a service. Go talk about, you know, hiking and if, maybe if you went hunting or your kids, whatever it is, just talk about that. Now, you're still going to go back to duty, but it's a chance just to breathe. And sometimes the mdc, the calls just keep coming in and all of a sudden, just like you said, all this time passes and you didn't get a chance to breathe, and now you're. It's all. You got to unpack it at some point. So you end up unpacking it at home, and you want to be able to somehow unpack it at work. And that's why people work out sometimes for hours to try to unpack throughout the day. We live under the gun. We live for that bell to go, and then it hits us. So sometimes just unpacking and breathing a little bit, knowing that you're not under the gun says it all. So.
- [38:17]
Berlin
Yeah, I totally agree. Sometimes just knowing that, right, that you could be whatever you could be at a slow station that day, and, you know, if you were to put your money on it, you're not gonna get another call. But it's still just the knowing that you could be with your crew, you could decompress. You're not going to get another call. It's it. And sometimes that's enough to unpack psychologically, mentally, spiritually. Your body just might have this sense of like, oh, and then be ready to get in a half hour, hour, whatever it may be. So I love that. Let's switch gears a little bit. Chief. EMS in the fire service ownership or our dirty little secret?
- [38:58]
Chief Chuck D. Smith
Yeah, that's kind of a funny time. That's. That's one of the. Yes, I'm very passionate about ems.
- [39:03]
Berlin
Yes.
- [39:04]
Chief Chuck D. Smith
You know, just to tie it into. It's. It's going to be. You reflect back on your career. The. Probably the first call you went on, the call that really hit you hardest, or they're happy, joyful, or really rough. Sometimes even the last call you ride will be public ems. It's just what it is, you know, and it's always been 80% of the calls, 20% of the budget. It's what we do. And so for some reason we always call it the fire service. You know, could it be the emergency medical and fire and rescue? I don't know. People are playing with names where firefighter EMTs, or should we be EMT firefighters? What if what we're doing the most should be up front is. Is you'll talk to any business. We got to think a little bit more business. Like talk to any business. It's what you do kind of goes up front. So, yes, I would advocate for this. I think King county to grow up in the, in the 80s and, and be in the fire service in the 80s. Oh my gosh. The mass pats, the early defibrillators. Renton was one of the first that they let. The firefighters actually used defibrillators in the 70s. So we were here. Exciting times in King County. They always said, if you're going to have a heart attack, have it in King County, Washington, because you're going to have more people trained, you know, better access to defibrillation. King county is not leading the way anymore. And that. That hurts. You got incredible people like Copus who have passed away. You know, some people are doing a lot, as much as they can. But boy, ems, let's not make it the, the. The side hustle, you know what I mean?
- [40:41]
Berlin
I do.
- [40:41]
Chief Chuck D. Smith
Let's just own it. Own it. Eastside fire. Good for you. You guys transport. I'm a fan of door to door service, but as. As we can talk a little bit. What does that mean to own, ems? What is it to be at the front door? Because it's evolving, it's moving. We're. We're. We're on the tail end of the healthcare system. We're getting wagged by the dog. And it's kind of hitting us. The political side's hitting us. We're available. We're 24 hours. We'll meet you wherever you are in your time of need. Could be in a homeless encampment, could be on the side of the street in the rain. Two in the morning. We are there. We've had adult care facilities that are making millions that will lean on you to pick up somebody that they should have staffed for. They. They will lean on us. And so we can take it and say, well, that's just part of the job and suffer through it. And this is what happens, ems. This is why I get it pushed down. This is why fires. And here's a statement that. Tell me if you've heard this, Berlin. You get people that are kind of itchy. They've been running some lift assists for shifts. They've been doing some narcanning, and they're seeing the same homeless person. And somebody says this, which sounds awful, but they say, you know what we need? We need a good fire.
- [42:04]
Berlin
I hear it all the time, unfortunately.
- [42:06]
Chief Chuck D. Smith
So really dive into that psychology. What is that saying? Someone says, we need a good fire. What are they saying? So I really like to step back and get to the core of that. That's not meaning they're wishing something awful on somebody because that is. That is a rough time in someone's life. They're saying something deeper and going back to why we chose this. And I believe in purpose. I believe in calling. We can do hard things. This is a job that fills us for the rest of our lives with purpose. I. You know, it. There's. How many people get to actually say, there was a moment where I put my life on the line. It was scary. I can share that with you. But there was a moment where I. I put myself in danger to save. Save someone else. People dream of that. You know what? A small population actually gets to do that. You and I get to do that. We did that. We get the opportunity to actually be a hero and put ourselves. Ordinary people are doing extraordinary things out there, but a lot of them are just like, I don't know what I do. You know, we have the opportunity. It's part of our job, right, to do that. And so what a What a calling and what a gift. So we just need to support that because we gotta, we gotta listen to our people when they're talking ems, what is it? And you, I think it was you that said something really important that, you know, maybe we'll get to this, that we said the calls are killing us. Somebody, I don't know if it's you. Somebody else said that as a, as a firefighter. They said, chief, the calls are starting to kill us. And I, I, I tried to get to the core of that one, too.
- [43:49]
Berlin
Yeah. So I guess what one of the things is, as you mentioned, you know, we just need a good fire or we just need a good grinder. We'll say, you know, for, you know, the car accident. Like, what have you found that the psychology behind some of that. Like, obviously some, to an extent, it's kind of just a lighten the mood, you know, get a little Joe, you know, a little laughter. But there's some truth behind it that people would rather go fight a fire then go to the next EMS run.
- [44:15]
Chief Chuck D. Smith
Yeah.
- [44:15]
Berlin
What is that saying about where we're at as firefighters, as first responders, but also as a fire and EMS service? That when our people are saying things like that.
- [44:26]
Chief Chuck D. Smith
Yeah, yeah. So go back to when you're the chief at the time you were hired and you were in your firefighter interview, and they asked, so, Berlin, why do you want to be an east side firefighter? You know, and you, you may have said, you know, one of six things of. I want to be there on someone's worst day. If the building's on fire and people are running out, I want to be the one running in. I want to make a difference. I want to help somebody in that emergent way. If I, if I have to even risk my life, that's crazy. Who's going to risk their life for a total stranger? Not even that. I've. I've done. I've kind of risked myself to help someone who just committed a crime and they were bleeding badly, and I put everything into my treatment for their wound, and they just committed a crime. I mean, I didn't. We don't know any different sometimes. So go back to really what you said to the chief on why you want to be a firefighter, specifically there. So think about that. That purpose that we have that really drives us to do it. We, once we have that calling and we know what we want to do, that can carry us through really hard things. So when we say something like, we want to continue our purpose, so there's what's growing in EMS right now. And everyone around the nation can see this is the rise in chronic calls. These are chronic needs. So a good example of a chronic need is someone who's chronically homeless, they're chronically addicted to opiates, they have schizophrenia. You're not going to cure any of those Things with a 911 call with an engine. You're not going to fix that problems. And so we are fixers. If you're bleeding, we're going to stop the bleeding. If the house on fire, we're putting it out. So that's when you think, what about rekindles? What is what kills us about rekindles? Well, it's, it's, it was exciting the first time it goes out, but you hear the house catch on fire. It's like we didn't do our job. And it's like a chronic needs patient that keeps coming back. Every shift feels like we didn't do anything. So you think about your purpose, you think about your calling, you think about those shifts that when you checked out at 7 or 8 in the morning after 24 hours, and you had, like you said, a fire or big grinder where the team works so well, you got everyone packaged, you got a cpr, you defibrillated someone, they saved you. Help somebody. It's one of those days that you had an amazing training event that just clicked. You felt like you did something in the community, you had an impact that made it better, and you left the station saying, that is why I'm a firefighter, because I made a difference today. I'm willing to risk my life to make a difference that is ingrained in us. So when we're doing chronic calls that keep coming back, we're on a treadmill. And it really doesn't feel, it feels like we're on this treadmill and we're not making a difference. That's what kills our soul as a firefighter. That's the rekindle, that's the bleed that keeps bleeding. It doesn't stop. We're transactional. We go to the call, we mitigate it, we send them to the hospital, we put it out, we go back in service, we do it again. That's where we thrive as humans and as calling as a first responder. So what do we do? You know, how can you stop that? I, I blame a little bit of us in the 80s because 911 was taught in schools. There was coloring books. And you may remember it in the 90s, I mean, we just told people call 911 because they weren't calling that much. We wanted more staffing, we wanted bigger budgets. We wanted to have more than one or two calls a shift. We told people to call 911 and guess what? They are. They're calling too much. And we're like, whoa, you can stop now. You know, you can stop calling.
- [48:24]
Berlin
Right?
- [48:24]
Chief Chuck D. Smith
So we can't. That. We can't. The. We squeeze the tooth, tube of toothpaste, we can't put it back in. But now there's. There's ways that we can start actually understanding what calls should we be on and understanding why we're feeling this way, why somebody would say, man, we just need a good grinder right now. It's not wishing somebody something awful. Right. It's. It's. We're. We're reaching for that purpose to say, this is me. This is why I come in. This is why I'm kind of on the edge today. Yeah, I'm ready to go.
- [48:56]
Berlin
Yeah.
- [48:56]
Chief Chuck D. Smith
And that's not a bad thing, Burnley. And that's really not. I want my firefighters to be ready. And, you know, and I, I'm. I've learned. I've had to learn the really hard way on some calls, and I've learned from our female firefighters that were very open with me saying, I have a hard time speaking up when a call has hit me. I. I'm trying to already prove myself as a female because there's less of us. The last thing I'm going to do is say, hey, that call really bothered me, so I can't do that, you know, and so that's real talk. So how do we move past that? So, yeah, that's. I think that's the psychology behind it. We really want to tie into our purpose when we say things like that.
- [49:37]
Skyler Nagorski
Yeah.
- [49:37]
Berlin
No, thank you for sharing advocacy for resiliency. I mean, resiliency we've mentioned a few times here today. Obviously, very important, especially in first responders, especially when we're talking about, you know, high performance or, you know, trying to deliver a, you know, a service that is, you know, life dependent, high stakes, all the above. Talk about resiliency and the importance of it. You talked about some of the steps.
- [50:01]
Chief Chuck D. Smith
Yeah. And it's. That's why I always like to say on and off duty, there's only so much things you can do on duty. And the call loads are increasing. This is part of the system. And there's other things we can talk about another time for solutions for that, but it is, it's part of A solution, you know, a part of what the system we're in. So the chance to actually build resiliency at work is tough. The best thing we can do is, like you said, connect with it. Create that environment where we're doing tailboards, we're just talking, they're saying, hey, this was a tough one. You know, I'm, or, you know, telling Bill to tell somebody, I just had a huge fight. My wife kicked me out of the house last night. And, you know, I can tell something's on your mind. It's like, we got you. You know, this is, we still would say this is our kind of home away from home, the fire station. And you're there with your brothers and sisters. And if you're facing life and death, sometimes we can share things and you can tell when you're a little bit off and to be able to talk to each other, have trouble, trusted people, it's tough to do that at work. So creating opportunities outside of work and supporting that. So a lot of chiefs and a lot of departments are saying, hey, we want you to go take leadership classes or we want you to learn about reading Smoke for the 20th time and go to the National Fire Academy and send you to conferences. But I believe that a good thing to teach us is to okay the community needs 100% of you. And sometimes you can think about like charging up your phone and batteries. If you never let it fully charge, it kind of keeps slowly wearing down. And so when we have mandatory overtime, it seems like our batteries never get fully recharged and we wait for some big extravagant vacation once a year with our family or something to get away and get off the grid. And then it even hits us harder when we come back and there's stacks of paperwork and emails and problems and everything else. And so it's, it's actually teaching people resiliency, understanding the eight dimensions of well being. So community financial, we've sent people to financial classes. Actually the union at our time, our local was very supportive of that. Having people make sure because you can, people are making a decent wage now and they can get into financial debt really quick. So being smart with your money, actually it's a good thing to talk about because that's another strain. Relationships is another stronger families. Great workshop there, making sure you have good community. And we even brought in on the health and well and the health side nutritionalists into the fire station. How are you eating outside of work? Are you drinking? And finally, alcohol has been labeled as, you know, more of a carcinogen. Now, and we're understanding what that is because that was kind of celebrated in the fire department. That's what we did was like, oh,
- [52:53]
Berlin
let's go for a beer, right? Let's go.
- [52:54]
Chief Chuck D. Smith
Yeah, let's go for a beer.
- [52:55]
Berlin
It's never just one, right?
- [52:57]
Chief Chuck D. Smith
So we're really understand the spiritual side. We're understanding more what people want to choose meditation. So that's really. It gets hard. I. I have some resistance from chi saying, you know, you know what, Chuck, that sounds good, but I. My job is to make sure they have good fire stations, good apparatus, good gear, you know, for at work. They've got a good job here. You know, why. Why would I support them off duty? That is up to them. And just like I would say, you know, we. A lot of chiefs believe in, you know, you reading books on your off time. You know, hey, if you want to be a leader, go to this or go at the outside training. Think of it that way. Way, you know, we have no problem sending someone to the National Fire Academy, hopefully, if it's open, sending people out to conferences, those things to get outside learning. But same thing with resilience. Think of the eight dimensions. I'll send it to you. That's a great way to think of the. Oh, the full eight dimensions. And you'll find yourself in there. And a lot of it's community, you know, a lot of our firefighters to get the most, to try to recharge. They move and they live in farms, you know, three hours away from Renton in eastern Washington. They're doing that to get away, to. To not see homelessness, to not see, you know, this urban sprawl. They're trying to find peace, but also they end up isolating a little bit too much more, and they don't get to meet up with their crews. So, you know, we had a health and wellness fund where we. It. If they, you know, did certain health activities during the year, they would get, you know, gift cards to go. They went knife building one time, you know, from that Forged and Fire show. Yeah, you can actually go out as crews golfing, they went to Mariners games, they go bowling, they went hiking. We would try to, as a department, encourage that. Say, get with your crew.
- [54:52]
Skyler Nagorski
Yeah, yeah.
- [54:53]
Chief Chuck D. Smith
You only get to know. They figure 25%. I gotta find that stat. You get to know of a person while you're at work, but you go and hang out with them on a hike, and you'll get to know where they're from, the family dynamics, you know, their kids, stuff that they really, their hobbies that they really like doing, they're not going to talk about a lot of that stuff at work, especially if you had a busy station. So getting chiefs to understand, it's. It's very similar. You want them to grow in leadership and fire skills and EMS skills, think of their own dimensions of well being and support that.
- [55:28]
Skyler Nagorski
Absolutely.
- [55:29]
Chief Chuck D. Smith
It's a mind shift. And then you got to get your commissioners and everything else, but you start where you can. And I don't want to bash getting a grant. You need to start where you can.
- [55:38]
Berlin
Right.
- [55:39]
Chief Chuck D. Smith
But, boy, make it part, because it'll be cut. Or if the grant doesn't show up again, it'll be cut. Make it a part. This is what we do. This is skin in the game. Yeah.
- [55:50]
Skyler Nagorski
Yeah.
- [55:50]
Chief Chuck D. Smith
So I'm, I'm proven. And we got up to, you know, 150,000 a year going just to peer support and health and wellness for retreats, getaways. That's all picked by the peer support members. I'd say, hey, you got this much money, I'll book it for you. I'll handle all that. You guys chip pick. And they said, oh, we want this big giant cabin in the woods. You know, we want to play cornhole and go on hikes and have big bonfires. Okay.
- [56:16]
Berlin
Yeah. Okay. There you go. And what's so important, I love how you say community because it's something that we don't talk about enough, and yet it's so true. But something you said that was so key that we don't mention is when your firefighters are more resilient, when, you know, they are getting together off duty to, whether it be to digest, unpack, whatever it may be, they can now come back on duty and perform better, perform at a higher level, be healthier in 19 different ways. And so it's not, it's not necessarily just that direct impact, but it's the indirect that we don't get to see and measure. So that's key. And so I'll ask this question to you because I like to kind of just ask, you know, crazy questions on the show sometimes. What would the fire service look like? What would EMS and fire service look like? I'll throw that out there. If there was mandatory classes on resiliency for our firefighters.
- [57:11]
Chief Chuck D. Smith
I love that. I love that. Yeah. And I. Because there is a data stat, I want to. Just to tie that back in, we were able to show a decrease year after year in sickly views. So, chiefs, that's another thing. I said, watch sickly views. I Bet they're going to take their time and they wanted. We used to not touch sick leave. That was our bank. You know, don't call in sick for 10 years. Build up a bank because if you hurt your leg skiing or whatever, you're going to need it. And that we, we would retire with a ton of sick leave. And now they're using it more. They're. That's telling us something. Those are signs. Listen to those. So when we started leaning more into building resiliency, having those times we're thinking about you off duty, we saw a return in less sick leave. And that is a direct impact to your budget on overtime and every everything else. So I'll tie into that. I just also want to mention, you know, there's really no higher calling than to help out another human that's in a medical need. That is. No fire has ever thanked me.
- [58:20]
Berlin
Right.
- [58:21]
Chief Chuck D. Smith
No, I've delivered babies that I've got to see. And we gave like back then savings bonds every year of their birthday. And then she came back, you know, and I. There's sometimes you run into people who you really didn't think about it was another day for you. But you, you impacted their lives and they come back and you want to see tears flow. It's, it's, it's then. So EMS is, is another human. It's our big human to human. And we can't lose sight of that, can't lose sight of human dignity. They need help and, and you are actually being paid to. You get the opportunity to help them. I just want to align that with our purpose and our calling. And we are more emergency focused. That's why in Renton and Puget Sound, we hired nurses and social workers who understand chronic needs. That's what they do. We do the emergency stuff, then we hand it off to them. So getting the right people for the job. And so where EMS is aligned, we are feeling fulfilled. We're going on the calls that fill our purpose, the right ones for the right people. We're ending a shift feeling like we made a difference. Where the mandatory classes are ones that again, work with labor. Labor's like, well, great, okay, if they're. I want to try to keep them around this area and we'll set up if they have to travel too far, travel time, all that. Is it covered? You know, they always want to know that. Let's get into the details. Like, okay, we can get into the details. Yeah. I'm setting this as a priority. If I was going to cover your time to go to A CBT class or something else. We're going to create the same thing.
- [59:57]
Skyler Nagorski
Yeah.
- [59:57]
Chief Chuck D. Smith
So put in as a priority and listening to what they want. Me as almost 60 year old is going to be different as a chief. My, my viewpoint is very different. I really wanted to listen to the 20 year olds and 30 year olds and they're not going to tell me. So that's where we hired a group called Melios and Kelly Ortega to come in and taking, you know, the same name that you had, they, they went to the kitchen table and this is where all things are solved in the fire service.
- [60:26]
Berlin
Yes, they are.
- [60:27]
Chief Chuck D. Smith
A cup of coffee and you can relax. Well, they would talk to her and she was able to anonymously gather a whole bunch of, you know, themes that would resonate over and over. This is all through zone three. She went to Vashon Island, Enumclaw, Virfa and there are some real consistent things that she was able to put together and some things I wouldn't have guessed. You know, we have a chief in Renton. I was thankful that he took one of them. That was, they actually wanted him to be at the station around 7:30 right at shift change to have coffee. I would have never guessed that because usually when I was in shift change the last thing I want to see is the chief come through. I trying to pass things off and get ready for home and all that kind of stuff. They actually want more facetime with the chief. So he's out there, he's going out there. That was, that was just from those kitchen table talks. So we, we learn a lot from those. But boy, listen to your people. The needs of the 20 and 30 year olds are different and it's, it's, it's okay that it's different. You can't say, well in my day we were just fine. No, it's not going to work. So be the, be the supporter. I'm one of the biggest champions for ems. I want ems. I want us to own it. I want us to treat it called to do hot washes, to put them on a priority because it is human life insurance can't bring people back like they can buildings. So I want us to care, I want us to go on the right calls. I want us to feel great, not just okay at our job. I want us to be great.
- [61:59]
Berlin
Yep, agree. I always, I'd always said that like to be a good firefighter you have to be a good emt. Right. And that's just a must. You can't if you're mediocre emt, we'll say like you can't be a great firefighter. Right. Because then you're only okay at 80 of the job. If you want to be really, really good at something, you got to be really, really good at what you're going to be doing most of the time. And so yeah, with what you're saying is, yeah, EMS is very important and it needs to continue to be very, very, very, very important. I want to ask you something real quick, Chief, because you said something that is very humbling, very important, but I'm just going to go ahead and say it. Something that is not necessarily the same thought as we'll say veteran members of the fire service or even chief officers. We'll say you said we got to listen to 20 and 30 year olds in the fire service. That is not something that immediately is jumped out at senior members in EMS and fire. A lot of the times what you do hear instead is, well, you're new, you got to be quiet for a little bit or wait till you have some seniority before you have voice, put your time in before you get on that committee. Right. But if you actually look at it right across American Fire Service, 50% of the American Fire Service is under five years of experience, meaning majority of them are probably in their 20s and 30s. But if we're not listening to the majority of the people, we're only listening to the minority. So I guess where I go with that, Chief, you mentioned it and I think it's so important because I agree that listening to these newer members is key because they are the future, they're the now and they're the future people like me. I'm the now, but not so much of the future. So I tell people that like the new wave of individuals, the 20 and 30 year olds, they are going to be this fire service longer than me because I'm going to be gone sooner than they are. So can you talk about that, Chief? Because not everyone has that mindset of what you said is listening to our young people.
- [63:59]
Chief Chuck D. Smith
Yeah. And I think it's important to, to, to have that boundary of listening. It's not enabling.
- [64:05]
Berlin
Right.
- [64:05]
Chief Chuck D. Smith
You know, it's not just like anything you guys want. And it's of course because I'm seeing this with contracts, there's, I worry about tax fatigue in the community. It wasn't, we didn't get into the job to make a lot of money. We want to be paid and we should be paid and, and be able to live and, and have houses and family. I I get that. But that was never. That was never. We wanted. The job is just too cool. And the time off was amazing. I got to see. I got to be the dad. And there's moms out there that gets to volunteer at school on the day. I mean, how cool is that? I got to be there for story time. My kids remember that and what a gift that is. So it was. That wasn't always the case. So it wasn't just throwing, you know, paying them more and more is only going to get. They're going to feel great for a few months and then they're back to it. So tying back into their purpose. And some of them want to experience some old school. I'm noticing about the 2030s or old, whether they'll, you know, the guys will have a big mustache and some of them want to watch some of those just Leatherhead videos and. And New York just. They want to. They want to. They want some of that old school. Sometimes they gravitate to some real, you know, at the academy, somebody barking at them. They want to feel, you know, some deep traditions. So I. It's a balance Berlin, and it's a tough one. So I don't think I have the right answers for that, but that this is where peer support comes in. So you have peer support leaders and leads that if I, as a chief, saying, you know what, you know, I'm. There's a lot of sick leave, or I'm. I'm. Is, you know, or they come up to me instead of waiting for a union grievance, you know, saying, hey, chief, we're really unhappy. This is having them have pathways for communication, having. Not just saying no to ideas. So a classic one was they wanted to explore getting a sauna at one of the fire stations. And they had. They did some homework. They had all this paperwork of, hey, this is all the great benefits of having sauna in a fire station. You know, we have seven fire stations. So they were just speaking up for theirs. And I. I said, hey, that's. Thank you for bringing that to my attention. I've seen some of the data. I've seen some for and against. I would love your help on this. So I want you to think about a few things from the chief level. They felt comfortable enough to bring this, and they're respectful, but I wanted them to think about all the things, the cost of them get a department that's had them for a while and how's it going? Or is there policies that need to be, what are you going to wear if there's are they, can a male and a female be in there at the same time? Who's going to clean them, maintain them, you know, all this, how does it stay going through the budget and, and get into it and what do they cost? And he's like, why? That's a lot. And I'm like, well yeah, welcome to my world a little bit. But it's not a bad idea and it may be a no for now, but I don't know, maybe we do move towards having saunas and I really glad that you're thinking about it, but it takes a lot. And they, you know, we got to the point where it wasn't quite right now, but I don't know, maybe someday they do, but it's not squashing ideas right away when they come out because we didn't have YouTube to show us how to clean a chainsaw. They, they don't need you anymore. We needed those veterans. We needed the 20 year olds to say, how do you reset this fire alarm? Because I don't even know, I'm trying to acknowledge it and it's still going off. And they wouldn't tell you because they like that power, you know, they said, well, come to me when you want to reset this and I'll show you how to do, you know, kind of thing. Yeah, they can just look it up. So it's a balance. Some of them really want to keep some tradition in there, but they also want to be heard, seen and valued. So how do you create those pathways? So peer support has been this great way of bringing up concerns that get to filter a little bit and not just squashing something because no, no, that's a dumb idea. Well, how do I know it's a bad idea? It's like, well, it's everything. You can put through some paces to understand it. Then that person that brought up the sauna idea just got a whole new perspective, not just on saunas, but what if they wanted, you know, I don't, I don't know, they wanted a jacuzzi or something. You know, they, they understand there's bigger impacts, there's HR impacts, you know, there's maintenance impact, impact. So it's empowering them to actually think and be solution minded.
- [68:35]
Berlin
Totally. Oh, you said that so well, Chief, regarding if we empower individuals or we listen to them, going back to what you said several minutes ago about listening to them, sometimes it's not about the end result, sometimes it's about the learning that took place, the development of whether it be the Junior chief officer, whether it be the individual themselves that did the research you mentioned. You get to learn perspective. Let get to learn what it is like to be in a chief shoes with their imagining, managing budgets, the decisions that they go through, the HR kind of intricacies and all that like that. There's development happening along the way just because you listen and empowered somebody and then some of these projects will actually become implemented. Not all of them, of course not all of them, maybe only 5% of them. But I think what you said is so key because people will learn along the way and hopefully they will share their experiences along the way. Someone else has an idea of bringing something forward. It's not about, hey, that's a dumb idea because mine got shut down. It's well, maybe yours will get shut down. Here's my experience, here's what I learned along the way and it, it's so downstream and I think that's what's we don't talk about much. What we only talk about and hear a lot at the kitchen table is yeah, the chief shut that down. He said no and that's it. And it's like, well, let's talk about the rest of that. What, what transpired, you know, and let's talk about the reasons and here's what I learned from it. And so now that people can hopefully have some self awareness and say, you know what?
- [69:53]
Chief Chuck D. Smith
Good point.
- [69:54]
Berlin
Thank you for sharing. Obviously that's a long shot. Right, because that's not every conversation in the firehouse. If only every, you know, conversation in the firehouse ended with thank you, thank you for sharing. You know, I appreciate that and I think we'd be in a better place, but constant challenge. But I'm going to kind of wind this down a little bit being very action oriented with our conversation today. Obviously there could be a million things, million answers to what I'm about to say, but we'll see where it goes. If you can give one piece of advice for young leaders in the fire service, specifically young leaders in the fire service regarding anything we talked about today, what would that advice be?
- [70:31]
Chief Chuck D. Smith
I hear this a lot and, and it can, it can change to me leadership and I, I, there's, you know, pick mentors out there. Simon Sinek's one for me. But leadership to me is about influence and it's not always what you say, but how you make someone feel, feel. And again, just beyond humbling when Skyler Nagorski is someone in his caliber can say how he felt when, when I, you know, talked to somebody that just means the world. So I, I had to work really hard because just like us as parents, we parent our kids sometimes the way we were parented because we don't know anything unless we really take the time to understand, well, why am I getting upset? You know why I. Get to know yourself. So this is a mistake that departments can do is that they'll put potential lieutenants, captains, battalion chiefs through a promotional process. And in that process, you have written whether SOPs and policies and books and tactics to read up on. Then you have performing in front of people, you know, tactics and employee problems and oral interviews and those things. We think people are learning how to be a leader through that promotional process. You're not. You're testing someone. You're not learning. A lot of us as we go through our career like, and you said it so well, Berlin, We've, everyone, every department can look in the last 10 years, five to 10 years, and say, and look how much they've hired. These people are going to move like a herd. And they may have been quiet and it may, for me, it was, you know, hey, wait till you got 10 years on. Keep your head down and be quiet. Work hard, listen, be a sponge, and then you can have something to say. These folks aren't, as soon as they're getting out of probate, they're. They have something to say. They're used to being heard. You know, they've got good ideas and they should, they're, this is their fire service. I'm just trying to help them out and lead and create a service and influence the best I can. So they have, you know, a service that's constantly evolving on them. So don't just find the mentors that are doing it right, look at the ones that aren't and learn from those. But 100%, get to know yourself first, really, because there's deep things and, you know, when we hire and we do preference points on military, you've got some people that have seen some things and they're coming in and they may make decisions based on some of their experiences. We all go through life and a lot of things are tied to our core where we get our backs to the wall and we feel threatened. We're going to go to those spaces and that's how we're going to lead. And there's no leadership book that's going to do it. It's going to happen in seconds. So understand yourself. Get a trusted group of people and write down your core values. So what your, what are your principles? What is near and dear. To give examples of what you value and what are your principles and show and as examples of what you do. 1. I, I thought I learned the difference between being kind and being nice. And I was a very. I was a nice person growing up, and there's a difference. Have you ever heard that before?
- [73:52]
Berlin
I have not. Would you share?
- [73:54]
Chief Chuck D. Smith
Well, it's, it's just, in short, a nice thing to do is. Is you hold the door open for someone that's walking through.
- [74:02]
Skyler Nagorski
Yeah.
- [74:02]
Chief Chuck D. Smith
And when they don't say thank you or they just don't even acknowledge you, just like, well, come on, you know.
- [74:07]
Skyler Nagorski
Yeah.
- [74:08]
Chief Chuck D. Smith
So it's doing something and kind of expecting some kind of confirmation from it. It's buying your wife, spouse flowers and hoping there's, you know, some engagement after that, you know, there's some. There's something that, you know, you get from that. Being kind is doing it just because it's the right thing to do and being kind in those actions. And so I had to understand about myself, am I really doing this to not just get a pat on the back? Am I. Am I doing this because it's the right thing to do? So I had to really look at my own values and I made mistakes and owning those mistakes and especially being okay to say, hey, I don't know that answer. I'm going to look it up. That's a great question. There's no threat as a chief officer that I had to say, I don't know, let me go look that up. I think that's sign of. It's not being vulnerable, it's being more transparent. I'm not asking for their sympathy, empathy. I'm just actually saying, I don't know. So know yourself. Be okay with not knowing all the answers and when you screw up, own it. That was one thing that I got close, very close with, with Skyler King County, Washington, as you know, had a tough time during COVID and vaccinations and mandates. I had some personal. And I, I had to personally wait. It was tough. We lost some people as, as Eastside did too. So owning that and connecting, sometimes that's just one. Do you acknowledge that? Are you just trying to sweep it away?
- [75:41]
Berlin
Right.
- [75:41]
Chief Chuck D. Smith
You did what you said, so not just what you say. It's how you make people feel. Getting to know yourself, deep dive into your own personal core values and really, you know, just kind of living by those rules. And if you don't know something, you know, be honest about it and then look into that, you'll learn Something too, and you'll be a better leader for it.
- [76:04]
Berlin
Wow, thank you. Thank you for sharing that, Chief. I could go in many directions, but I kind of want to leave that as is because you said it so well. Before we go to the leadership challenge,
- [76:15]
Chief Chuck D. Smith
just the last thing I, I want everyone to out there to know this is just some experience. Pass it on. That. When I started in the 80s, we had the firefighter health insurance card. Everyone you talk to, any firefighter, 80s and 90s, there was no CO pays. That was the community's way of saying, you are going to risk your life out there. Remember, every. Even if it's a yellow patient, a minor injury on the freeway, you're hanging out there, people are getting hit by cars out there, you're risking your life out there. That was the community's way of saying, you're looking out for us, you're going to risk your life for us. We want you and your family to be as healthy as possible. That means if you need health care, your kids need health care, because that gets you back to work, right? It gets you back to your purpose, back to serving. So what's happened? Just like a frog and slowly boiling water is our healthcare insurance. And it's. The whole system we're tied into is a shell of itself and it's really rough in retirement. Left one's got it good. Left two, even though you can save with VEBAs and MERPs and there's money, it's part of a system that's. It's not broken. It's broken by design. And so there's big blue companies, the big blue Shields, Regents and all those, they make it hard to access your funds. They make it hard to be proactive. And so a lot of them are fairly good that once you get cancer, all of them are pretty good. Once you get, you know, an angina pain or an mi, they'll cover that. But if you want to do proactive screening and everything else and DEXA scans and, you know, calcium scores, it gets tough for them to cover. And we're paying CO pays or our cards get locked out with a vba, we can't access funds. All the work gets put onto the firefighter to upload receipts for every. None of that was there. You took that card and you slapped it down and that. Nothing. You had nothing. And that was our way of just focusing on, you know, our families and ourselves and getting back to work. And so that's. I want to see that get back. And that's something we're trying to do is get better healthcare to our firefighters in a proactive health care. We're getting there with screening and everything else, but it's still when we need something, you can talk to firefighters. Some of the access to their VEBA funds. It's very difficult. It's a big system part problem.
- [78:44]
Berlin
Let me ask a quick question on that, Chief. Just to. Just to further that real quick is what can we do? Obviously union involvement, labor management. Right.
- [78:52]
Chief Chuck D. Smith
What.
- [78:52]
Berlin
What can we do to continue or to start that conversation because you're one of now I'm not in every room, but I haven't heard. I hear you say this. I'm like heck yeah, let's go. But I haven't. This is not at the forefront of a lot of labor management discussions. I don't think right now maybe it is and I hope it is, but what can we do?
- [79:10]
Chief Chuck D. Smith
100 go through the union. It and it should go to the chief. So when you think of your budget, you know, payroll is always going to be the number one budget line item in the year. And then capital improvement projects, engines. But in that third spot, it's going to be your healthcare premiums. Your premiums. And sometimes you have these years of we have a lot of healthcare needs, but we, we needed people. People were getting couples counseling and it wasn't even covered. And they were. Part of why they were getting, you know, separated was financial. And so they were just going on this downwards. It's like, you're kidding. This is what we should be covering. And so go through the union. If you're in a trust, it doesn't mean throw things out, but advocate for yourself saying it's got to be better than this. Have people. Some people just don't know. Chiefs don't know. I didn't know. Health care insurance. How do you. Who do you even talk to? Educate ourselves. A lot of times it gets pushed out to hr, but it's having an insurance committee. Firefighters should be. The union should be involved in that. You get somebody from admin hr, have an insurance committee and get the best insurance for you. We're caught up in this tough. And that's all you hear about is health care insurance and everything else with the public. Guess what? It's with us too. And if you or your children are hurt, you know that, oh, you're going to call. I could take them pov. I'm going to go right into the waiting area. I'm going to sit there for a couple hours. If it's, you know, a busy hospital, can I Just get right in. Can you just transport my kid? I want to get, you know, we know what needs to be done. It's not like we want elitist thing, but we, we know the system and we do. I, I, it used to be one of these things that the community says, this is our thank you. And the last thing I want to say, and tying back to, because I learned a lot from the military, is that when you serve in the military, maybe you do four years, six years, 10 years, three years, they'll say, thank you for your service, thank you for your tour of duty in Iraq. When you retire from being a police officer, firefighter, 20 years, 25, 30 years, no one ever says, you know, thank you for your tour of duty. No, you don't. We don't have a veterans health care. We don't have, you know, a lot of the things that we give to vets. But think about how much trauma you're going to see in 30 years, a 30 year tour of duty. We don't think of it that way. We just think, oh, you get to have a pension, go with fishing and golfing and everything else. It's like, yeah, great. But I'm, I'm, I've got a lot of exposures. I'm dealing with some cancer issues and I can't sleep. I'm still reliving some stuff. And so it's, it's, we, we got to wrap our heads. Think military, think of the, the support we want for our vets. Think of police and fire like vets. And so that's my retirement soapbox there.
- [82:07]
Berlin
Oh, thank you so much, Chief, for that. That is such a. Well, before we close today, Chief, we can't let you go before we add the leadership challenge because this is what allows us to continue the conversation on leadership. Because I don't make my own challenges. We're not even here today because of my personal. You and I had great conversations around these topics. Six months ago, you and I talked about this. Skyler Nagorski talked highly of you. So these challenges are because people are saying, bring these individuals on because they have a message to share. So first of all, thank you for being here today. But I get to ask you, is there someone out there you'd like to be our next guest?
- [82:44]
Chief Chuck D. Smith
Yeah, well, if I've got three people, I think, but Larry Johnson is one of my favorites from New Mexico and he has a way because it feels like EMS is evolving and going right past us and we're being drug along with it. He has a great Outlook on how if we consider EMS as healthcare and some start their healthcare journey, they could be a 48 year old that starts getting chest pain at work. Now it all started with a 911 call. Your crew. The medics diagnosed him with having an mi, got in, got a stent, changed his life. But now he's on this healthcare journey now he's got medications and doctor's visits and blood work work and everything else. It starts with us. We are part of the health care system. So how do we get reimbursed? How fire departments, how do we support EMS to put it up on a budget line? We get nothing from fires. We really don't. Yeah, fire permits, minuscule. We, we lose. We spend a lot of money fighting a fire. That EMS can actually help us be sustainable, help our people have good, healthy careers, good insurance, good pay, that we can keep going because it's going to keep moving and if we don't, we're going to be kind of yesterday's, we're going to be drug into that. So I would say Larry Johnson or Donnie Woodyard, those two really get how we can move forward as an EMS to be sustainable, to stay engaged and stay purposeful with our calling to be emergency workers, not just, you know, health care and helping out adult family homes with lift assists, but to actually make a difference. And it's okay, you're going to have those calls and you make the best of them. You engage and you thank people for, for, you know, all these years of supporting through taxes. But that is not why you're driving an engine, you know, and you're in an emergency situation. That's, that's a need that we want them to be, to go from that falling down to getting better care. So that would be the person.
- [84:51]
Berlin
Awesome. Well, thanks so much. We'll reach out to Larry Johnson and Donnie Woodyard to see if they would take up Chief to Smith's leadership challenge. So before we officially close here, Chief I do want to give an opportunity to share. How do we find Chief to Smith to learn a little bit more about the work you continue to do, to reach out if people, you know, resonate with today's message and people to get a hold of you. How do we do?
- [85:15]
Chief Chuck D. Smith
So yeah, the best way is, and I'm on LinkedIn, if you're on LinkedIn and then also through email is the best way to get a hold of me. And I'm, I'll respond, this stuff is exciting to me. I'll answer all questions if you want. We do we do have. We can help you design, if you would like, peer support, all the things we talked about. Tactical readiness and resiliency, being more proactive and actually building on resiliency on and off duty. So those are the two best ways.
- [85:46]
Berlin
Perfect. And your email, Chief, just to make it public here.
- [85:49]
Chief Chuck D. Smith
Yep. C.DeSmith864mail.com Perfect.
- [85:57]
Berlin
Thank you so much, Chief. All right. Lasting message, Chief, Lasting thought. Before we shut it down
- [86:06]
Chief Chuck D. Smith
again. Just leaning back to when I started. Fire prevention was big. And we switched it to in the 90s and 2000s to community risk reduction. We even rented would do things called heart month. We're out there texting, checking blood sugars and blood pressure checks, trying to, in a way to give people some awareness to get help. Don't wait till a 911 call. So being proactive out there and to do that. And we would work with large senior housing facilities. We would try to help Prevent the next 911 call. The same way our fire prevention fire marshal is there to prevent the next fire. We're out there doing community risk reduction because we've gotten busier training needs have increased, calls have increased. We've. We've kind of cut back on that. And what has happened is that I felt it too. All of a sudden, I went to my chief and I said, look, we just did 25,000 calls that we're. We keep increasing. We're increasing at a rate, chief, of like 4,000 a year. And he's like, wow, that's historic. That's. I go, this is. That's a lot of calls. And he's like, yeah, the community really needs us. And I could see there was some pride in both of us. It's like, wow, we're really busy. Is that a good thing?
- [87:30]
Berlin
Right.
- [87:30]
Chief Chuck D. Smith
You really start thinking, you know, it's. Something went wrong. And that's why they call 91 1. If we're really doing it. Best fires, when they never start. If we're really doing that, if we're on it calls, if we're trying to make our community safer. And we say that as chiefs.
- [87:46]
Berlin
Right.
- [87:46]
Chief Chuck D. Smith
Should calls actually go down. But it's a source of pride. And so unfortunately, that becomes our identity and value structure because that means a bigger budget. Maybe we can have more staffing, more engines. It feeds a lot into this, you know, and labor gets it, too. Hey, we're busier. We need more pay, more time off. Let's switch. And I. I'm a fan of the 2472. If you have a Gary I forgot his name. He's. Yeah, he's one that's big pushing, and they've done it everywhere. I'm all in for new shifts and how can we do things better and better sleep. But really understanding the identity and how we're valued out in the community, and that is just to stop and think. Okay. Calls are increasing. Are we doing anything about that? Because if we're doing our job, they should be going down. So just a little something to think about.
- [88:42]
Berlin
Wow, that's so. I think he said, like, 10 nuggets today, Chief, where I had never heard before, but it's gonna stick, and that was one of them. I mean, you gave, like, 30 nuggets, but there's another one that. You're totally right. You're totally right. So thank you for leaving us with that. I think it's a great way for us to really reframe or just frame how we go about our day and how we, you know, set our value system, like what you said, and. And really think about that. So thank you. Thanks, everyone, for tuning in today to the kitchen table. We truly hope that you found this time valuable, and we hope we've inspired you to take action, to lead, and to spread the leadership conversation. Till next time, be safe, be intentional, and stay curious.