Develop TIC discipline

This episode of the Better Every Shift podcast is sponsored by the Firestore. Learn more about getting high quality gear at prices you can afford by visiting thefirestore.com. Now let's get into the show. Hey everybody welcome to the Better Every Shift podcast. I'm your host Aaron Zamzow. With me today is a very special friend, a special guest. If you want to know and learn anything about thermal imaging, Tic cameras, and the future of Tic cameras, the way to train on Tics, you are in the right place because I have with me the one and only Andy Starnes. Welcome back buddy. Good to see you. How are you? I am blessed and better not deserved. Thank you for having me, sir. You and I have great conversations. Always first behind the scenes and then hopefully we're going to bring out some of those things we talked about. But for those that don't know you, you're the founder of Insight Fire Training. You are the thermal imager and fire behavior expert. One of my gurus, my go-tos, whenever I have any questions when it comes to thermal imaging, you're a very well studied individual and one that I try to aspire to step my research up to. You're part of Project Kilde Flash over and you've been a fire captain and an officer for 35 years plus in the fire service and now you get to your tour and all over the world talking about thermal imaging and its application. You're also doing some work with the fire store and seek and by the way, fire store has been a great organization helping sponsor not only this podcast but not only this episode, I should say this podcast for over three years here with the Better Every Shift. So I want to first thank them and you are part of a cohort that works with Seek and the fire store and this episode is really possible because of them and because of all of your expertise. So thank you for being here. We're going to talk a little bit about FDIC because every year you and I for the last couple years have talked about some of the things that we'll see and look forward to at FDIC. We're going to talk about these things right here. This is Seek thermal imager. You got a bigger one obviously there and for those that are just listening to the program, we're going to talk about them a little bit. But first and foremost buddy, every year at FDIC, I get to see you, you know, big hug, see how you're doing, see how you're feeling. Before we get into the thermal imagers, you know, what do you always look forward to at like conferences like FDIC? You're talking about an amazing opportunity for networking, fellowship, learning, training, getting to talk to people you may not ever get to talk to. You've met them on social media, get to meet them in person. You can have dinners with instructors. A lot of people are very open. You'll find that a lot of these guys are not, you know, you may think they're a rock star, but they're just a human being. Like you were calling me all these nice names. Listen, I'm not a fire behavior expert or thermal engine expert. You need to understand that the fire service textbooks are written at sixth grade level. I'm just saying I might be at eighth grade level. I'm trying to get to high school. My goal was to simplify the complex. My scientific friends like to argue about scientific definitions. I'm trying to create what I call experientially relevant definitions where they can figure them out quickly. And if you want to argue about how I used a word wrong, I'm trying to give them something that will help save their life quickly. And then I'm also working with textbooks and with organizations to try to change things. So yes, there's that side of it where you get to go and meet network. And like you talk about, we get to sit, maybe have a cup of coffee or you can pick on something I'm doing wrong and fitness. Who knows? But for me, it's a great opportunity for my guys. They love it for a lot of reasons. One, we get we have been blessed to go back. This is our fourth year doing a hands on training event. Thomas Anderson is a lead instructor running on search operations with the tick. It's aggressive tick operations, aggressive search operations with the tick. So we get two days, you know, we get four classes crammed in there. And then he's doing a general lecture conference lecture. I'm going to be out at Lucas Oil Stadium doing free demos at the Sikh thermal booths with the Max Firebox and some other things. So I'm there to work and he's there to work. But my boys get to work really hard for three days and then they get to go network and play. So they really enjoy that. And that's kind of a reward for doing that for them. So huge opportunity, huge, wonderful place. Like I said, if you can go, don't ever not go. If it's in your wheelhouse and financially able to go, go, you won't regret it. Just make sure you get outside of your comfort zone. Go talk to people, take classes that you may not have ever taken because you never know if you're going to get that opportunity again. And go just enjoy that. You have people who are experts in the field that are willing to share. And you may find, as you and I were discussing before, they may have had the same problems you do. And they might want to talk to you about that. So you'll find some bonds there. So overall, it's a huge positive. I love the fact you said, hey, get out of your comfort zone and meet the people that you read about or you listen to and make those connections and really go for the right reasons. I think sometimes you hear the stories where people just go and it's a good time. Yeah, that's part of it. But really go and get some education, some knowledge and make those connections. I'll be running around the show floor. I'll look forward to always seeing you and like you were saying, you're going to be available for people to ask questions. If they hear this episode, they're like, hey, I elaborate more. Man, I've watched you in action. You will talk to every single person through that. And one of the things, right? Like I'm not an extrovert. So for me, it's getting out of my comfort zone a little bit. And I love the fact that you started with that. But it is a great opportunity. And the fire store has always been good to us. I always go and see them say, hi. And there's always a ton of products. I wind up buying one or two things. Last year, you and I talked about, my crew got these. And you could probably describe what I'm holding up a little better than anybody else. Is this the fire pro 300? And this is second generation that I'm holding onto? Well, technically, it is the official product. They've made major changes in the product over the time. So, so seek has unlike a lot of companies, they don't tell their customer when they're making changes, but seek has continuously improved their product each time each year. So, the first year it came out second year, third year, each time they've made improvements in firmware, they've made improvements in design. A lot of companies don't do that. They just said it, forget it. But one of the things that you'll find too, is if you go to their website, there's a firmware update that's issued so every so often. A lot of firefighters don't even do that. Seek actually improves their image quality, fixes bugs and things of that nature. So it makes your product work even better. So you bought it say two years ago, and you had an update of your firmware, you update your firmware like, oh, it's sharper now or something's changed and it's better. They don't charge you for that. They're doing that as part of their constant improvement of their product. But yes, they have made changes to the product over the years, but the customer doesn't really see it. I see it because I'm involved in it. But you see an improvement in the product because they are constantly trying to improve it. So last year we talked about, you know, I really love the fact that you said, hey, Zamp, you got to make sure you reiterate to your crew, this is a tool. It's just like an axe. It's like a halogen. You got to not only understand it, but learn how to use it and then practice. And so we've had these now, let's say, and I'm going to use my crew as an example, we've had them on the truck for a year. There are some things that we've learned the hard way and some, you know, like one of the things you and I were just talking about was, you know, this has a flashlight option. And if you're not paying attention, that can be, you know, turned on and can drain a battery easily. And so talk, give me a little bit of breakdown. So I'm, I'm a new Lieutenant, we got these on the truck. Give me like your kind of checklist or one of the things or some of the things that I need to start making sure my crew understands with these and that we all understand these. Well, first of all, I had somebody on social media say, well, the problem being an expert, she think you always have to use them. What if they take my class or any of my guys classes, they know the first thing we tell them is that device doesn't replace you, you're a force multiplier. But 25 years ago, you didn't have to wear an airpank. You didn't have a panace device. You didn't have to do this, that and others. So certain things are improvements in our service delivery model that's made our job better. But the first thing we teach some XAM is not to over-rely or be solely dependent on that device. We say training before technology. What is your experience, your skill level? What is your gut telling you, if you're feeling heat and the camera's not telling you it's hot, what do you think I want you to trust? Your experience, what's your body's telling you at that point? So no upfront, it doesn't replace you. You need to use your fundamental skills first. And I'll give you a good example. You're a lieutenant, been on a little while, I'm gonna say out of scale one to 10, you're a nine out of 10. Your skill set is bang it, right? I'd say five, but I love the nine. We'll go with the nine. You were too kind to me. I'm gonna turn around and do the favor back. But let's just say that device makes you 10 times more efficient based on our research, such as I find the bedroom faster, I find the fire faster, instead of just using my site and sentences. So now you're 90 times more efficient and effective with that device by not over-reliant on it, but by looking, communicating and putting it down. Okay. But if I'm a new recruit and my skill set is zero, 10 times zero equals zero means I stink. Do not give me a camera yet until I have fundamentals in place. Cause my concern is, is if I give this to you and you're a brand new firefighter, for example, like when I gave our, we gave our daughter a phone at 13, shoot a weighted to she was 16. Once the phone was in her hands, behavior change, the way she got results changed, it was, I'll look at this. I'll look at this. Well, if you're solely dependent on this for information and you have no background or depth, then this is a detriment to you. We want this to be an asset or a forced multiplier, like a lever allows you to lift more, you know, a pulley allows you, you know, more mechanical advantage. So that's the first thing we tell them is, Hey, this makes you better if you're already good. But if you've got things to work on, let's, let's work on the basics before we add this to it. And then we can, we can explain as we move forward the types of cameras. So first of all, know that. Second of all, we need to know the limitations right off the bat. What does it not do? This is the number one problem right now with these devices. And it's been going on for years. I've been even persecuted for it. I don't even advocate for this. I advocate against it. These devices are not thermometers. They're not designed to measure temperature. If you take a thermography class, first thing they'll tell you is these devices calculate temperature. They don't measure it. Well, if you use a four gas or multi gas meter, for example, does it really measure the gas that's in that room? Or does it compare it to a calibration gas? If you're using a thermometer, you're using a smoke detector. It doesn't detect smoke. It detects something that interferes with something that causes an alarm to go off and it thinks it's smoke. So your device does not measure temperature. Okay, it calculates it based on a preset engineered algorithm that was calibrated in an air conditioned warehouse at around ambient temperatures at a preset distance perpendicular to a target with no variables between you and the target. What happens if you're at an angle? What happens if you're farther away? What happens if the smoke is thicker? There's high moisture content. What if you fail to wipe the lens like we talked about last time? Does that change it? What if I stick this up in the heat and this lens hits 300 degrees Celsius, energy stops going through it? All those variables come into play that firefighters don't know because they haven't even read the instructions on this thing. And they've received very little training. So it doesn't matter. It's not a thermometer. So that's gotten firefighters killed. Five years ago, they took that number away. If you turn on a seat product, they're the one that's you that does this. The number's not there to begin with, whether it's an NFBA certified camera or not, you have to push a button to engage the spot temperature back. There's several incidents I can send to you in a separate document. Someone wants to go over them as recent as last September, where a firefighter called out an exact measurement, sadly, tragically that firefighter passed away. And so we don't use it to measure temperature. We use it to give us information about the environment so we can communicate that, put that down and go be a firefighter. Like I want to be able to look down at hallway and you say there's season the last bedroom on the right and I see three doors and I know where that bedroom is, put the camera and go to that bedroom, for example. Yeah. The other thing is these are not hazmat cameras. They don't detect gases. That's another false misnomer. Firefighters are using these more incorrectly than correctly. They're using on hazmat scenes, thinking they're seeing gases. They don't. They pick up surface temperatures. They're not to be used to measure temperature on lithium ion batteries to look at an outside of a battery. There are people telling them to crawl under the battery and point it and look for thermal runaway. I would not put my face anywhere near a battery that you think is hot. After what my friends, Dalen Zartman and Webb Marsden have showed me what those batteries do when they pop. I want to have some, you know, I'm not a hazmat guy. Yeah. I want to have distance to it. So this is, this is not designed for that. It's designed to see heat, see objects. And then we also need to know that if we use these incorrectly or over rely on them, what are the chances, Sam, that a lithium powered device with electronics in it could possibly fail in a high heat environment? Pretty probably. And the last thing I'll tell you is this. If you go into a environment with a lot of water, good luck. See, because moisture is kryptonite list and if firefighters don't wipe this lens every time they pick it up, they're not going to see anything anyway. But if you're in a sprinkler head activation environment, you're operating above the fire, you're standing up in an exhaust, you're not going to see a darn thing because cameras haven't whited out due to heat in over 30 years. You will see a white screen due to failure to wipe the lens. If you're in a full exhaust, for example, high moisture content, you can't clear the lens. Basically, if you're scanning and the camera goes from a cold environment, hot environment, some cameras freeze, this one does not. And as a brief white pause, or the last one, you're a lieutenant, I'll give you this one. What do you do every morning when you come to work? Do you put your gear on the truck a certain way? Do you check that device? How do you check it? Each member has one, like we have, each member has one. My personal one is kind of like what you have there. The Tiger one, the larger version. Turn it on, right? We hold it up typically to, you know, I look through it, try to scan, like I would, you know, on a location. Like, I try to mimic as much as I can how I would use it. Check the power in it, check the battery power. I'm trying to get into that, like, hey, I'm scanning, you know, as you had said last time, always scan the same way, same direction, same speed. But some days it's rushed, right? People are like, Xamarin Hippocrates, I've seen you, you know? So I try to be as good as I can be with it. But what am I missing though, too, right? There's got to be something, right? Well, let's talk about that. First, pick it up, look at it. Is your connection points good? This little part right here on most cameras use a Kevlar piece. These will dry out over time, right? Pull that cord that you have, check it, inspect it. I'm not a big fan of the Spectra nylon on that one. I like the metal cables if you're doing a retractable, okay? And then look at, take this, turn around, and take your cell phone flashlight and inspect the black lens. That's the lens of the camera. What did you see when you pointed your flashlight at that black lens? Yeah, so those are, they just listen to us. We're looking at each one of our ticks. And you're, I'm looking into, you know, the black lens. It looks clear. There's a little speck on it, actually, but so when you clean that Xam, you clean it with an alcohol wipe or the harshest thing you want to go with is like a dish detergent, not a solvent. Don't use like an abrasive on that lens or on the screen. You can use something mildly abrasive on the sides like a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser, but that is abrasive. Know that it will take color off, but I don't recommend that. I just use like a fire white to gross decon it and then go back to station and use regular dish liquid. But do not, do not open the battery compartment and then submerge this in water. Don't do that. I've seen people do that. Don't do that. Battery has to be in it. You're going to dunk in the water. But check your lens for scratches, chips, things of that nature, because if you do have that, it will diminish your image quality. So that's your first thing. Yeah. And you're talking a little bit about the, the advantages that the Sikhs have with their lenses too. They have what they call lens redundancy. There's only a couple of manufacturers that offer that, but basically this is a window. The real lens is hidden behind it. So if a firefighter breaks this in a fire, which is going to happen, fire chiefs hear me when I say this, these are not fragile little toys. They will get broken. And if you're not budgeting for batteries, the lens replacements, you're going to get sticker shock down the road because this will get hit on something. It will break it. You're going to have to send it back, get it fixed. So if they break this in a fire, the real lens is hidden behind it. They will be still be able to function and get out of the fire, then send the camera back to have it repaired. Many manufacturers, when you break this lens, the detector is right behind it. The moisture goes in that lens. You got a very expensive repair, I can tell you, or goes into the detector, you got a very expensive. So this is, but it makes that obsolete in that scene, right, right at that moment, instead of buying you a little more time in a way. Correct. And you look at the front, this has a kind of cantilever lip on it. So when I hit it, I'm hitting the lip, not this. So that's designed that way to prevent firefighters. Yours has a smaller lip on it. So don't crawl this on the floor like a came. I've seen that and they wonder why it got broken. Don't break a window out with it. It's not a halogen. So that's that part. Now, when you turned it on, I need you next time you turn it on, I want you to hit your stopwatch on your phone and see, does it take longer than 30 seconds to turn on? Because this is a common problem. You're going to laugh about this. Firefighters go into a building and forget to turn on. Then they turn on, they think it should be ready like that. And this is the email I get. This thing was clicking and freezing. It was garbage. I was like, all right, let's, I have to play the role of the understanding parent, right? Back up. Tell me what happened. Well, I got off the fire truck, did my size up? Did you use camera? No. Went inside. Oh, I forgot to turn the camera, turn it on. Where were you at? I was 10 feet inside. And then the camera was freezing and clicking. How long does it take, Sam, when you hit the power button on your multi gas meter for it to warm up and be ready to go? Oh, yeah, at least 55 to 75 seconds, I think is what we timed ours at. Yeah. Yeah, it's going through a calibration process, right? Yeah. This every, every newer camera from 2013 on from the time I hit this power button has to be fully operational in 30 seconds. Yep. Took my 12. I just timed it 12 seconds on this one. Well, you think, you think that you think that, but it's, it's longer. The screen goes, the splash screen goes away. But if you look at it again, and you hear it clicking, or every four seconds, you see the screen freeze, it's going through a process called flat field correction. So after the splash logo goes away, it fires a shutter every four seconds until it's ready. So if you try to scan with it, it's going to freeze. And all cameras do that in some way, shape or form. Some are faster, some are slower. But turn it on on the way to the call. So you just checked it in the morning, the last thing after you scan, like you already said, you would do, which is a great thing. Make sure it's working correctly. Take your portable radio, this on and key the mic up right next to it should do absolutely nothing. All of these cameras from 2013 to now have a coating put inside the circuit board for event radio frequency interference. They call it electromagnetic immunity or something. So what that prevents is by key up the radio, I'm not killing this or causing interference in my radio vice versa. Cameras that have been damaged or that has been installed improperly. The screen XAM will look like the old black and white TV or the TV when the antenna had to be used. It'll go white and and freeze. If that happens during the checkout process in the morning, take this out of service, it needs to go in. So in the last thing I would last thing you should do when you put it back on the truck is make sure it's stowed properly where it's going to come off with you and stowed properly means not stowed in an environment below 32 degrees Fahrenheit or above 112 degrees. Why? Because the battery will discharge. Do not lay it on the dash like this pointing at the glass because the sun will come through here and burn this entire element out. It says in the back of every instruction manual do not point this at the sun on or off the lens is open. It fires and shutters when it's on. It doesn't fire when it's off so it can damage or permanently ruin the device. And if it's just sitting here getting hot, you turn it on at the fire, you wonder why your battery is dead. It will discharge if it gets below freezing or above a certain temperature. So think about that where you're keeping it. That's the last thing. I was going to ask too, like where would you recommend because like on our, you know, we have, you talked about, you know, the seats, they have a great way that you can clip it onto your gear. You like not the nylon strap, you like the metal. For that one. Yes, sir. And I would change your carabiner you're using too. That squeeze that squeeze lock right there. Yeah, cause you cause you major problems, brother. My friend RJ calls it a $2 death trap. RJ, if you listen, I quote you. So look, look at, look at this. You ready? Yeah. What's that supposed to do? Yep. They, they're supposed to click back, but they're, it's the easiest piece to break right that spring. Well, and then this falls off or you're going fishing and you're at a bait and you get hooked on something. Yeah. Okay. So change that to a 99 cent swivel lock carabiner instead. So that it's harder for it to fall off. And whatever you do for the bigger ones, do not put a key ring here. Key rings are not rated for two plus pounds. It will pull apart. You'll lose your camera. Okay. And then when you store it, here's what I would tell you, you can carry it any way you want. Retractable strap, all it just makes sure it doesn't swing around where you'll lose it or damage it. But if you want to damage a camera, take that very same setup and clip it behind you on your SCBA. And I promise you, it's not if it's when you will snag something, it will break the retractable, the camera will fall off and you won't have it. I've done more studies where departments carry that way and they are damaging, damaging cameras left and right. Where people are carrying what Rob Ramirez calls the action area from my two shoulders down to the corners of my waist. That is the area I can reach if I'm never pinned down in a Mayday. This is where I should like my radio, my wire cutters, my camera, all that should be in that area somewhere where you're used to it. You choose based on your setup and what you do, engine, truck work, the time sheet, however you do it. I'm not going to tell you the way I'm going to tell you a way and I'm going to tell you that if you clip it behind you over your shoulder or behind you, you're going to have problems. I promise. Yeah. So you keep it in within this area here you're talking about which is top or bottoms? Shoulders to hips basically. I like us. I like a strap on my lower right hand side because I crawl with my right knee down in the tripod position. Okay. So that's the way I crawl and that I can easily grab the camera and I'm used to that. Like I said, it's a personal choice, but what you're going to learn is firefighters have to develop a tick discipline when they're carrying it, especially if they're truckies and they're going through windows or going in and out of spaces. If you go through a window, the camera's got to go in first. If you leave it hanging behind you, I've seen people hanging from a window and the tick is holding them like a chalk or a halogen bar and then it breaks and they fall and the camera falls 20 feet to the ground. Yeah. Well, I think that brings up a great point. Like you're just saying as part of, you know, from a training standpoint, sometimes we won't clip these in and I'm like, wait a minute, we're going into a window. We want our train our members like, hey, what am I going to do with this? We know if something's going to get caught, it's going to get, a little things are going to get caught. You mentioned the carabiner. So some of these things, we need to train with these like we would have them on in a scenario. And I also want to reiterate too, like when you're looking at them in the morning, you know, try to scan the way you would, slow and consistent, you know, everything from where you store it, get in the idea even when training, if we're training with ticks, right? How often should we be wiping that lens? Well, that's a, it depends comment. If you develop a habit, every time I pick up the lens, my first, my first thing is to wipe it because I want to wipe the lens knowing that if odds are my face pieces fogging up in front of this is, and if this is covered with moisture, then it's either diminished or it's inefficient. I can't see anything. Could have insulation on it. You could have debris from what you crawled through, clear it. And they're like, well, my fire gloves dirty. Listen, I understand that. But until you figure out a way to put a, a lint free alcohol, wipe on the end of your glove and not get it dirty, let me know. But right now a lot of people will simply wipe this or I've seen firefighters even use the knuckle method. I'm not that talented, but wipe it and then scan. But what I'm going to tell you is if you're in an active flow path, fire and smoke and heat and moisture moving, that image is not going to stay clear, but for a matter of seconds. And the biggest difference is conditions dictate position. If it's not that bad and you're up on one knee and you can see with the camera, great. But if you can't see, you need to get low. And if you're laying on the floor and he is hitting you on the floor and fogging up the camera, first, you need to consider where you are. Second, it's not going to work because you're constantly being bombarded and there is no windshield wiper on this. So you're going to wipe and it's going to instantly fog right back up. So you've got to do something we call the deck of cards game. We have pictures of different environments, kitchens, living rooms, bedrooms, fires. I hold it up on an iPad to use them. And I let you look at it for five seconds. And I take it away. And I ask you questions. Where was the window? Where was the hose? Did you see a victim? Which way was the fire? And then I give you three seconds, two seconds, one, you know why I do that? Because I've studied may days and firefighters have gotten trouble. The longest scan that in May Day, a firefighter did in May Day was 6.2 seconds, the longest one. And it was by somebody I trained as one of my lead instructors who is jam up and his, his even as smooth as it was. The only reason he knew what he was looking at is because of his background and his dedication, his training and grace of God. But if you don't train them to identify objects and hazards, then it doesn't matter because they what does a door look like? What does a window look like? What does a, what does a set of stairs look like? This wood, carpeted, metal, it matters. You know what a panic bar looks like 15 feet away through a thermal engine camera sticks out like a sore thumb because it's metal and reflects. Firefighter May Day surveys am 66% of 100 May Days. Those firefighters in distress, 66% of them were within a 20 or 20 feet from a door couldn't see it. And 34% of them had a tick. I don't know if they used it. I don't know what they had and how they used it, but you're an exercise guy. How bad would you feel if you ran that whole marathon and you got 20 feet from the stop sign or finish line, you said, I'm done. I quit. Yeah. Right. Like we're so close. These May Days and line of duty desk, they're right by the door when they got. So we train them to identify objects and hazards with their camera. And if they get good at that, guess what we'll, guess what we eliminate? The filmmaker firefighter problem where they sit here and they stare at the camera going, Sam, you're doing great. Okay. You got a couch here. You got a chair that and we do not advocate for that at all. We advocate you scan, communicate, put it down. And if we see one of our students staring at it during the skill acquisition phase, we take the camera from them. At the fire store, we're committed to outfitting every firefighter with the gear they trust and the support they deserve from trusted brands to expert service. Our team lives and breathes the fire service because you do too. We know the right equipment is not just a tool. It is your lifeline. Whether you're upgrading your turnouts, enhancing your tools or preparing for the call ahead, you can find everything but the truck at the firestore.com shop trusted brands including msa, Streamlight, seek 511 tactical and more from the station to the frontline. We are proud to support those who serve. Now let's get back to the show. See, and that's an awesome thing. So we'll reiterate that for a minute. Yeah, I love that idea for Hey, if you're if you're right now listening to this and you want to do a drill for the day, simple like hey, do it, put up an iPad, put up a picture, show someone for five seconds and say, What did you see? Right? Talk about that using the tick as a tool that way, but not as a camera motion picture camera or what do you say a movie theater screen? We call it we call it we call them filmmaker firefighters. They like to hold the camera and they think my job is to hold the camera and narrate. No, your job is to take information from this and go do your job, not hold it. This will help you do that. But if you're looking at this, you still have to act, right? I love the fact that after our last conversation, you were like, Hey, Sam, this is just another tool to put in your toolbox, but you got to use it. You're one month to write like the moment you get it on the truck know how to use it. But every single time you get your hands on it refresh, right? Valuable tool. But it's like in my refrigerator is milk and eggs. After two weeks, they go back. I got to use them. This is a valuable tool. You take one class and touch it one time. And six months later, you have a fire and wonder why you're no good at it. You haven't done any skills. I see guys masking up with gloves on all the time. I see guys practicing forcing doors. I see guys for stretching lines. That is awesome. Do that. You know what I don't see? I don't see them practicing using this. They just think I turn it on. Red is hot. Read a little number to bottom right hand corner. Can't see through glass. That's enough information to get you killed. And then what they'll do is they'll get frustrated with this. They'll blame it and they'll quit using it. 50% of the time this is staying on the fire truck anyway in the United States. That's how slack we are out of 10,000 people we trained last year, less than 1% of them Sam had one to two hours of actual hands on live fire training with their current device. That's not good. And then we have existing standards in place that say you should all do this and fire departments are going, wow, we don't have to do that. You know, it's that's a that's a recommendation. That's not a well, let me talk to you about legal obligations, litigation, tragedy, and who OSHA quotes, they quote NFBA standards. Right, right. Yeah. And that's why I love this, doing this pocket because I'm like, this is a great spark for training on these and and you always reiterate why and how and you said you had like a 10 point checklist. I think we covered a couple of them. What else is on that one? One was one was don't over rely on the camera. Okay. Second one is power the device up early on the way the call. You do it twice. Check out and early on the way the call. I can check and see if the battery is good. Make sure you have a battery. You can change it. Some cameras are integrated batteries. You can't change that. You don't have six hours to recharge that. Okay. If you leave it on the charger for one hour, most cameras will hit 70% just a little cheat code. Right. And then in this camera's option in your fire pro threes, 300 options. If I know I'm the company officer and I'm going to be doing size up, I can go ahead and preset this by double clicking these buttons. One, two times the screen turns blue and now it's in survey mode, which is going to highlight the problem at 150 degrees Fahrenheit or 65 degrees Celsius for my friends overseas. So when you get off the truck, Xan, you do your size up and if you see yellow spots on the side of the building, well, how much energy did it take to go through a four or six inch wall to highlight that at 150 degrees? Number one, that should be a red flag. And number two, when you get ready to go into the building, all we ask firefighters do is tap that power button one time and do not touch the cameras for settings again, because now it goes back to TI basic. They're not pushing buttons in there. So that's your first two things. And then the other one is the other and then actual right in TI mode. Yep. And we discussed point three, which is how you carry it. It has to be some way that's usable, functional, doesn't come off, doesn't create a problem. And we advocate some different ways, but we don't say it has to be a certain way. I just told you one way will get you in trouble. Right. Okay. And that's where training comes into it. Figure that out for yourselves. Right. That's what that's where we go to the next thing, which is have you had training on your device, not generalized, customized. This device is different than any other camera on the market. Period. Every other camera is either a single gain, dual gain or tri gain camera. They look at the environment differently based on that program. If you have an iPhone, and I have an Android, those are two different operating systems. There are four operating systems being used by thermo engine cameras right now. Single gain, dual gain, tri gain, mixed gain. If you've ever driven a manual transmission, you understand I have to clutch it, crank it, get enough RPM, press the clutch and shift gears. That's how dual gain and tri gain cameras work. They look at a cold environment, they get enough heat, the camera pauses, switches over. Other one. Yep. Those listeners that are under the age of 30, there used to be you'd actually have to shift, you push a clutch in and shift like a race car. That's how you know, that's, that's how I was surprised that you're sorry, I just had to inflect that. Go ahead. But you're right, like, right? First gear, colder environment, second gear goes to a different. Hotter environment. And my friend Joe DeVito says it best, those cameras will have a triangle pointing in the upper left hand corner. And that's called low sensitivity. He says, if your camera changes modes, so should your tactics. And if it's in low sensitivity, you should be low. I've taught firefighters for years, you couldn't understand that little triangle. I said, the triangle's pointing up, your butt should be down and water should be going somewhere. But this device is the only one. No symbols in that upper left hand corner because all you have to do is interpret the image. Each pixel switches independently. It's an automatic transmission between high and low gain. And how that benefits you is when you start to train on your device, you understand that the cooler area will be in focus and bright because the camera's keeping those in high gain. And the hotter area will switch the low gain and will emphasize those in color, but it balances the image out. Every other camera has to shift based on the overall energy in front of them. This one is the only one on the market that does that automatically. It's the easiest to train firefighters on. I don't have to teach them high and low gain. I don't have to teach them triangle. Those are great cameras. Don't get me wrong. Because I got three cameras. I love the depth. None of them are perfect. This is one of them. But when you talk about mixed gain, this is easier for the firefighter to interpret and it's faster because each pixel switches at 25 frames a second instead of a percentage of pixels, having to hit a certain point and then switch. So that's that clutch we talk about. Some are faster. Some are slower. But I have to get training on my device. And this is where we break down how it works. Right. And then we look at existing training standards and say, what are we doing and what are we not doing? So let's look at those for a second. Right now, Xam, there are three NFBA standards that say you shall do training for firefighters at three different phases, recruits, operations, instructor or your level, company officer. The majority of fire departments are not doing them, period. The new standard that used to be called NFBA 1001, which is your firefighter qualification standard, is now NFBA 1010. If you've noticed NFBA has consolidated a bunch of standards into one. 1010, 1400, 1930, it's all the same and it can consolidate. So 1010 now says in chapter seven, one little paragraph that says all new firefighters shall have training on a thermo-injure and be able to do these things. They shall have requisite knowledge, the stuff we talk about, operate it, maintenance, know how to use it, interpret it, carry it, contraindications, and do three things with it. Locate and identify a fire. Locate and identify a victim and load a zero visibility. That concerns me and I'll tell you why. That's tough. Yeah. Well, there's worse than that. And the third one, identify a fluid level in a container. You can't always do that. Depends on the container, right? Exactly. Look at the Chris Paff guy from Hazmat Minutes. He's brilliant. I have no interest in Hazmat whatsoever. And because of his videos, I got interested in it because he makes it fun like you talked about. But what I was going to tell you is they have to do those basic things. And if you look at point number one, locate and identify a fire, you're a well-read guy. Think about Don Abbott's work, Project Mayday. He describes in his thousands of Maydays he studied 25 contributors to a Mayday, one of which was encountering high heat conditions unable to locate a fire. Before that, William Mora studied it in preventing firefighter disorientation. He did a study and he wrote a book on it. And he says, if you hear this, you are going to have a Mayday or a line of duty death encountering high heat conditions unable to locate the fire. Right. And then NIOSH over and over and over again, talk about inadequate size up, difficulty to locate the fire, failure to read fire behavior conditions, failure to coordinate suppression with ventilation, firefighters between found themselves between the vent point and the fire that sells. And they had difficulty looking at the fire. Boom! We've been saying the same thing for 30 years and all these studies. And now we have a standard that says, let's teach the recruits not to do that and learn how to do it correctly, which is great. Don't get me wrong. But then you have textbooks telling them to do something to get them hurt. They're not pure of you. They're not lining up, are they? They're not lining up. For example, if I gave you point two and I said, I want you to locate and identify a victim and load a zero visibility and I don't give you any guidelines or boundaries in that, what you'll see is well meaning people will fill a building full of artificial smoke and put a heated mannequin and say, go play hide and seek with this device. A victim doesn't present that way in a fire. No, because the rest of the environment is just as hot as the victim is. It's the inverse depending on three variables. The background temperature. Right now, if I looked at you with your thermal energy camera, you'd be white hot around your face or visible skin. Your skin temp is between 92 and 96 degrees Fahrenheit on average. Average. Don't quote me on exacts, my scientific friends. They like to slaughter me on numbers. And I love you still, my buddies. Don't get me wrong. I'm wrong all the time, but just I'm giving firefighters swag at estimates here. So you look white hot through your camera. But if I change that room you're sitting in to 200 plus degrees, you're not going to look white hot anymore. No, now I'm cooler than the environment. Right. Exactly. You're the inverse. They used to call that thermal inversion. There's not technically there isn't such a thing, but we'll get into definitions later. But so anyways, that makes you look darker if you have visible skin. And if you get variable two, right, which is you are alive. If you are alive, breathing unconscious, not deceased, and your temperature is colder than the environment, you could be black, could be gray. Or if you are deceased and been dead a while, your, your skin is no longer regulating temperature. There's three types of emitters in infrared science, active, passive and direct. Active and direct emitters are emitting energy. When you're alive, you're active. You're dead. You're a sponge. You're passively absorbing energy. So you can blend in or disappear or God forbid you might even heat up and have white spots on you if you're on fire. And then the worst one is you may not see them at all because of the third variable, the camera. Am I using this correctly? Am I scanning high like they told me to Zam? How many victims have you seen come crawling across the ceiling? I have not seen any. Yeah, I'm out. You know, if you want to watch a horror movie, I'm out. I'm not. You can crawl across ceiling. I think I would probably leave if I did. I'd be like, I'm out of here. Right? Like, yeah, yeah, call me a coward. I'm out. So firefighter rescue survey points out where victims are found. Great data. It also talks about their, their height position. A lot of them are found four foot and down. I call it two S furniture and floor incapacity. Some are in bunk beds. Some on stairs. They can be higher than that, but typically they're in that area. So they need to know what a victim will look like, how to scan properly, and they can't use a heated mannequin. They should inverse it and cool the mannequin, lay that cold mannequin in a hot environment, and sit there and watch as the fire grows. And what do you think happens to that mannequin that's been sitting in an ice chest? Well, baby doll over three minutes as it sits in a flow path. What do you think happens to it? It just heats up, right? It's up and it goes, it goes from dark to gray to possibly white. And you're seeing a change in it based on the environment because we're not allowed to use live victims, right? So that's part of your NFPA 1010. That is your basic recruit training that operations personnel are not even getting. Think about that. Yeah. So, so, and in that training there, which they don't mention comes to our next point is teaching them how to scan properly. And if we go into NFPA 1400, which now consists of 1408, it says, Zam, that all operations personnel, affected persons with this camera shall train annually on 23 topics using this device. Classroom, hands-on, live fire. My 32-hour class does not cover 23 topics. So you're going to do that in a day? Yeah. I've seen people advertising a 1408 class in a four-hour format. You could do a discussion on it. You can't do hands-on in four hours. So what you need to do is break down those objectives and, hey, we're doing fire attack training day. We're going to incorporate the tick. We're doing company officer training. We're going to talk about size up and incorporate. But in that requisite training, that requisite knowledge in 41010, I need to teach them how to scan properly, low to high, wiping the lens, object and hazard identification. So that fundamental skill goes into operations personnel and then training personnel so they know how to do the base as well. And then also identifying quickly too. I love that little nugget you gave us with. Look, don't be staring at this thing for 20, 30 seconds. We don't have that time. Five to 10 seconds max. So when you're training on this, yeah, make sure you're incorporating that in. I love our conversations. And we could literally, you do a four-hour plus class on this. And I'm trying to condense it into 45 minutes. But already, our listeners, you should be writing some things down, figuring out how you can transfer this to your crew and to your own training within your department. If you were me, I got a crew, we use these. What else would you want me to say, hey, we've had them on our trucks now for a year. What do you want my crew to make sure they're working on or I'm working on with them? Easy. First of all, I make them watch three videos. I make them watch thermal imaging 101 or webinar on what a camera will do and what it won't do. That's important. So they know, hey, it's not a thermometer. I shouldn't use it on hazmat. I shouldn't use it to measure temperatures on a EV battery and look for thermal runaway in the way I've been told. There's other ways. Then I'd watch our 10 tips for thermal imaging success webinar, which is the 10 things. It's 45 minutes long. Are these available on seek? On my YouTube channel and seeks to. Okay. Yeah. But my YouTube channel go there. It's under webinars. It's free. They can watch it. And then when they've done that, we've got hours and hours of skill based ones. And the first one I would recommend them doing is look at what Thomas Anderson us did. We have fire engineering training minutes has the four principles of scanning techniques. He's got a video on it. He gave me a bunch from the seek website. We'll try to link to some of those. Yes. Right. Like, so give somebody you got some of these videos to do to write like a perfect start. But then the second side, we got to do hands, hands on. Yeah. Yeah. So how often do you get to do live fire train? Not enough. So we need a heat source. The first letter in tick is thermal. So I need a 300 plus degree heat source to start with. That could be a burner that could be a campfire that could be a sternocan could be whatever I need something hot enough that would engage colorization and device I'm using. And I would show them a scanning techniques with a heat source in front of them somewhere and let them see how well they can see it. Can they identify it? I would show them what convection looks like coming off that heat source. I would show them a reflection if I have a gas stove and I have that metal background, I would show them how the reflection is not the same as the actual fire itself. Because reflections can cause disorientation. I was taught to wave at it or angle in and out when I was doing to tell the difference in reflection. Do that with a new camera in a commercial grade kitchen and you will get lost because it'll be five of you waving back. What nobody taught me was two things. If it's a true heat source, convection will trail off of it and go from hot to cold. I can follow it. And if I put water on a heat source, it will change. If I put water on a reflection, it won't do anything. It won't change. So my litmus test as an engine company guy is look for convection and also use the water to determine the direction of the heat source. We always say convection says direction. So we do these little simple scanning drills. We show them standard grip versus gangster grip showing you go from 42 degrees vertically on this camera to 57 degrees horizontally. So I'm no math guy, but 57 is bigger than 42. If I hold it this way, I can see Florida ceiling. If you hold up your Fire Pro 300, what you'll notice is they've already changed it in the orientation. So you don't have to turn it sideways. Hold it straight up like you had it. Like you hold yourself on. That's 57 degrees tall. It's like an Instagram short, right? Or a tic tac or whatever those kids, right? It's that same size video, but you're looking Florida ceiling, which is teach them that and you can see it because of the way that they process the heat. It's not two phases. See, I did listen earlier. They don't have to write. So you get the different right? That's one of the advantages of it. Yeah. And when you show them no matter how they hold it, you need to show them that their field of view is diminished on any camera. And if they stare at this, there are certain areas they're not seeing. So if they don't scan properly, you can literally show them in a controlled environment how they miss things. Like not scanning wall to wall, like in Thomas's four principles, scanning technique videos that we did. Not scanning from low to high. If I look up first, they seldom look down. The other problem is we also teach them to XAMP. Then when they come in, they do a life fire layout and sweep with their body and their eyes. They don't pick this up first. If you teach them to pick this up first, you develop a crutch. We have had horror stories from fire departments who come in a front door of a fire, pick the camera up red conditions and went straight to the fire and crawled right past the victim. And that's not the camera's fault. It's the person holding it. We got that first person shooter game mentality. And you'll appreciate this because you're my age. If you're over 40 and you stare at that bright screen for more than 30 seconds or a minute in the dark and you put it down, it can take 20 to 30 minutes or more for your eyes to adjust. That's not good. That's why we teach them short, quick, detailed information that they absorb fast. That's why I said that little card game. What is this? What do you see next? I love that. I'm putting that in. I'm putting that in. I can send you slides. We've already done on it. I'm about to release it. I love to get some of those too. That's the basics, right? And once they get the basics down, then we can start going and look at it buildings and start, let's scan this building when it's not on fire and look for normal heat signatures. We talked about this our last one versus abnormal heat signatures. So they get used to it. Where would you go if the fire was here? Get them thinking. What would you do if you saw this? Incorporate the deck of cards game with them. And then when you finally get to go do your two to three times a year live fire training, how much more prepared are these guys going to be when they do it? But I would say the biggest thing you need to give them after you've done all that is how you communicate with this device. Prevent the narrator syndrome like I talked about where they're sitting there and talking the whole time. We call it the TED talk. We give them three points of information if necessary. The type of room, egress points and direction they either search or flow water. So if me and you are going into a room and I'm your searching firefighter and you say crib right, you don't have to say kids room because if you say crib right, I'm thinking, okay, but if you sound like this, but if you're holding the screen up and I see that crib and I understand you, I see a crib. I'm going directly to the crib. Now you as the boss can isolate that room and identify the rest of the room and an egress point. So you see a window at 12 o'clock and you say window 12 o'clock. Now, unless they're under 20 years old, never seen a real clock before, they know where you're going. And if you're at that window and they talk about this in search and UL search study, the search culture page talks about isolate the door, open the window because now we increase visibility. We're bringing in fresh air. And if you say victim, victim, victim, we take the victim outside. We don't take that. We don't take them back down that hallway. They don't have an SCBA. They don't have an airpack, but that is a simple concise methodology of communicating. And to quote one of my instructors, John Lackley says, yell for volume, not for anger. Short, loud pauses between words. Because if you run them together, it sounds like Charlie Brown's teacher. Okay. Yeah. Want, want, want, want. Perfect. That's oh, by the way, yeah. Want, want, want, want is what Charlie Brown's teacher. And I think too, like when you combine that with, you know, the, the deck of cards game, right? That's training that transfers on to everything that we do on the fire ground, right? Being able to decisively look at something, understand what you have, make a decision, take an action and communicate it back quickly and effectively. There's so much that we've covered in this episode, buddy, I greatly appreciate all your knowledge and see I love the fact that the reason I call you my guru is because I'm like force gump, like you communicate these high scientific kind of topics into a usable, manageable, you know, language for me to quickly understand like mommy used to do at force gump. So I continually will, will seek you out. No pun intended there. And, and thank you for all your knowledge, brother. With that, I think we gave quite a bit. So for our listeners, you know, there's a lot of things that you could should be starting to integrate in with tick training, and even fire training. And, you know, I just, I love your passion, buddy. And, my last question is, you know, what's the one be all end all golden rule? And I think we probably covered it here with thermal imaging. You know, and by the way, thanks again for the fire store and seek for setting this all up and getting us together. But you know, what's the one other thing you want or that maybe haven't covered that that you can kind of give people a little nugget to end with? It's pretty straightforward. It's kind of our mission. Our mission is to get firefighters in and out of building and get them home and have a family to go home to. So my mission is to fold. So that's why I do two things, thermal gene behavioral health. But here's what I would tell firefighters to do. If you're not a fundamentally sound firefighter first, don't pick this up. Okay. Secondarily, then start working on this with somebody who has the experience with this device, who's also a good firefighter in your eyes. There's between certified and qualified. They're qualified. You've seen them do the job well. Then use that knowledge and experience to make you better. This is a force multiplier. It does not replace you. In my opinion, every firefighter should have one. But to quote a friend of mine from years ago, he said, every firefighter should have a radio, but every fourth one should have a battery. So we prevent everybody from want to talk on a radio. Because if you give these, you give these devices of people without training, you end up with filmmakers. That's why my friends who teach search hate them, because they're constantly staring at it instead of doing their job. So let's, let's stay fundamentally grounded and know that we use technology as a force multiplier, not to replace you. But I want more than anything, Sam, firefighters to win, get in, do their mission and get out. I think, and I may be way out of my lane saying this, but I don't think any firefighters should die in a residential context in today's environment. But the amount of information, training, technology we have, if the Uber driver can find me within three feet, I should be able to find a fire, find the victim and find my fellow firefighters who consistently get lost and consistently get found right by an egress point. That should not happen. We should be able to find them and we need to invest in that so that when something bad happens, not if that we can make a difference. Because that's, people don't call you when you're having a good day. They call you when they're having a bad day. We used to say, Lord, don't let nothing burn. But if it does, let me be first to, right? We were weird like that. Yeah, we still like, we, everybody still is, we still feel that way. But we got to prep and prepare for that. Like we would. And I, again, I, I'm 100% behind that mission. I think that's really what we stand for here on the Better Every Shift podcast, which is why I always love having you on, brother. You fire me up to be better. Hopefully this motivated other listeners to do the same. Cause you know, again, thank you for being here. Cause we're all about the mission here of learning something, doing something and sharing something to make you and those around you better every shift. Thanks for being here, Starnsie. Love you, brother. Thank you.