January 27, 2025 • 54 mins
In this episode, Evelyn Erives sits down with Eric Sherwin, the Public Information Officer for San Bernardino Fire, to discuss the inner workings of the fire agency and its critical role in the community. Eric shares insights into the daily operations of the department, the importance of having a well-prepared evacuation plan, and how residents can stay informed and safe during emergencies. Tune in to learn valuable tips on disaster preparedness and hear real-life stories of bravery and resilience from the front lines.
For more information on this show's topic visit IEHP.org or (800) 440-IEHP.
For more about Ready SB County, visit prepare.sbcounty.gov
If you are in Riverside, you can visit Ready Riverside here.
Reach out to Evelyn via Instagram @evelynerives or email her at EvelynErives@iHeartMedia.com
For more information on this show's topic visit IEHP.org or (800) 440-IEHP.
For more about Ready SB County, visit prepare.sbcounty.gov
If you are in Riverside, you can visit Ready Riverside here.
Reach out to Evelyn via Instagram @evelynerives or email her at EvelynErives@iHeartMedia.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey there, welcome back to another episode of Covering Your
Health with Evalanarives, presented by IEHP. As we promised, we're
here with another episode. The second episode on the importance
of emergency preparedness following the recent firestorms in Los Angeles
and with fire season expanding to really kind of a
(00:20):
year round scenario, and as these temperatures continue to rise
and very little rain in the forecast. You know what
I'm saying here, We really are making this every everyday reality, right.
So that's why these type of episodes are so important,
and we want to make sure that you are prepared.
Like in the last episode, we want to utilize this
space with open and honest conversation. And today we are
(00:44):
welcomed by Eric Sherwin. He is a public information officer
with Sanberdandino County Fire who's really going to dive into
how the agency operates, why it's important to have an
evacuation plan, and really just so much more. You're going
to get so much out of this episode. I promise.
I already wrote down so many notes and so many
(01:08):
things that my own family is going to take away
from this conversation. So I hope that you get your
pen and paper out too, because I think you might
need it, or at least get that phone handy and
be ready to start downloading some really informative apps. And
without further ado, we'll get started.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Welcome to Covering your Health, a wellness podcast dedicated to
covering all areas of living a healthy and happy lifestyle,
from healthy hearts to understanding health plans and everything in between.
Each episode will provide you with a better understanding of
managing your health, preventative care, and staying on the.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Right path for your family's wellness journey.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
The Covering Your Health podcast is presented by i EhP.
Now your host, Evelina Revez.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
All right, well let's get started. High Eric surewin, welcome
to the show.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
I'm so happy to have you. Okay, so obviously the
very critical time time to talk, but I want to
know about you. You got to tell me how did
you get into this line of work?
Speaker 4 (02:06):
You know, I started very early.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
I grew up in Newport Beach and my first job
in public safety was working as an ocean lifeguard for
Newport Oh cool, Yeah, I started that in high school,
continued on into college and at the time if you
wanted to promote out of the towers and work in
the trucks or on the boats.
Speaker 4 (02:24):
You needed to have your EMT. So I went and
got my Emergency.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Medical Technician certificate while going to college at the local
community college just for lifeguarding.
Speaker 4 (02:35):
I had no idea that that was.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Something you could also use until another lifeguard I worked
with found out he worked on ambulances in the off season.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Oh well, that's that's awesome. Okay, great, So I was
opened a door for you.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
I went to a university that had its own ambulance
on campus and they worked with with paramedic partners and
started seeing what paramedics were doing.
Speaker 4 (02:59):
Oh, that's kind of cool.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
So ultimately went to paramedic school and worked as a
paramedic for a long time and worked all over southwestern
United States.
Speaker 4 (03:08):
Had the ability I work.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
In international race support, worked for NASCAR for a few
years here at the California Auto Club Speedway, worked on
a helicopter, and then finally started seeing the fire department
what they were doing and specifically sand Bernardino County Fire. Wow, okay,
and said, hey, I think I want to give this
a shot.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
So what age were you at that point? So you
had all this already. You've been doing a paramedic all
over which sounds like a ton of fun. And when
you're young, yes.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
Absolutely it was fun.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
You work so hard to get through through paramedic school
that it was what exactly can I do with this
license that I now have aside from working on an ambulance? Yeah? Yeah,
you know, so when you start working these races. Now
you have paramedics working on cruise ships. You can travel
the world and get paid for it really really fun.
The thing is, what is the retirement? Do I really
(03:59):
want to be loading a gurney and do an ambulance
when I'm sixty five years old?
Speaker 4 (04:03):
And that's where the fire.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
Service was became very attractive. The ability to continue to
be a paramedic but also increase your skill set, start
looking into some of these specialties like urban search and rescue, aviation,
and have a retirement on the back end so that
hopefully you're not doing this.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Yeah. Many pathways, yes.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
Very true, and they come together and now there's even
more when we see in different entry points and talking
to people and their stories how they came to the
fire service.
Speaker 4 (04:35):
You know, some were in law.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
Enforcement, some were prior service military and had that plan
and still to this day people that grew up, No,
I knew from the time I was five years old
I was going to be a firefighter. So there's many
pathways into this career.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
It's funny, that's I mean, I think that's with every
kind of career. You know. Oh, I always wanted to
be a radio DJ, or I always wanted to be
in front of the camera. For a lot of people,
it had to be spoken into them almost. You know
some people, No, don't you know you're really good at this?
Oh did you know you like life, you know, like
being a lifeguard. Did you know there's other pathways down
(05:10):
this avenue? I mean, you probably got into it at
first because you just love the ocean. One percent.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
You were playing water polo and that was the natural. Yeah,
if you played water polo, you were going to be
a guard. And it was crazy to think back now
to the responsibility that we put on at the time.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
Sixteen year old kids.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Oh my gosh, right, like you now are responsible for
anybody that shows up in this quarter mile stretch of beach.
So some days you might have one hundred people. There
are towers where you literally have sixteen year old kids
vested with responsibility of the safety of five thousand people
in that area.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Oh my god, that's crazy, really.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Good at it. Yeah, that's the thing, you know, teaching
responsibility at that age and it's still that that work
ethic that carried me through to this point.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
It was a lot of fun.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
But I still look back fondly on those days city
those towers, watching people have a good time.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Oh that's so cool. What a cool way to start
your career.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
And you didn't even know it now, didn't know I
would get me to hear. But that's very good. Yeah, now, firefighter,
and look at now we're.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Here at we have been this conversation. Yeah, with your
with your position now, So Sambarddino County Fire covers more
than twenty thousand square miles of our region. That's massive.
How does that agency train for all of the terrain
that is here?
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Now?
Speaker 1 (06:31):
You you've I know you've been all over terrain based
on just your backstory, But how do you train for
all of that?
Speaker 3 (06:38):
You bring up a good point, Samrido County. It's the
largest county in the United States. You know, it's over
twenty thousand miles. We're responsible for providing service to over nineteen.
Speaker 4 (06:47):
Thousand of those square miles.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
And we're an all risk department.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
That means we provide fire ems rescue services across the
entire footprint of our service area, and it's very diverse.
That's another thing that attracted me to this department. If
you get bored working in this department, it's your own fault.
Because you can work in the dense urban areas of
San Bardino City where we're sending a whole lot of
(07:13):
resources to an incident. You can go work up in
the mountain communities, be up in the clean, fresh air
where you know the potential. The call volume isn't as high,
but the potential can.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Be greater working denseness of the forest.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
Sambarnido National Forest has the largest residential population of any national.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
Forest in the country.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
I did not know that.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Yes, so the calls aren't as frequent, but the threat
in the potential is constantly there. You can go work
out in the vast expanse of the Mojave National Preserve,
can work out in Baker where you can call for
backup and we'll get it on the road. But there's
a high likelihood that you're going to bring a resolution
(07:55):
to your incident before that backup arrived.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
So you know, work out on the Colorado River and
have as through landing or needles, you know, where you're
working on a fireboat doing amazing things. You can go
to our wild Land Division, work on a handcrew, be
a heavy equipment operator, pushing a bulldozer up the.
Speaker 4 (08:13):
Side of a mountain. Wow.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
Go to aviation where you're working with our sheriff partners. Yeah,
you know in a variety of missions that there are
so many opportunities within this department and that's what really
attracted into it.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
So how do you so how do you train? So
does every region or every area train differently, you know
for the snow or for you know, the mountains, or
for the deserts and the heat.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
So as an all risk the fire Service has a
really fun history. If we go back, you know, a
little bit deeper into history, the fire service was was
often a second job for the men at the time. Oh,
they all existed in other trades. You had electricians, you
had framers, you had plumbers. And that's where I think
(09:03):
the concept of hey, when we don't know what to do,
call the fire Department, because there's a high likelihood one
of the guys on that engine showing up is going
to have an idea on how to approach the situation.
Flash forward to current time. That's still the reality. We're
still showing up at these incidents, but we've now realized
(09:23):
that we need additional training for some of these and
some of those specialties include hazardous materials, urban search and rescue,
specializing in our wildland environment. So how does County Fire
approach that everybody is trained to a minimum standard that
allows us to get the ball rolling at any incident,
(09:44):
but then to recognize the importance of Hey, if we
have somebody that's stuck down in a tunnel, we have
a whole group of people that are specially trained and
equipped to mitigate that emergency. So we are required to
perform two hours of training every shift and the focus,
the bulk of that training is maintaining currencies on a
(10:07):
lot of these certificates that we possess, and it's it
follows an annual cycle. You know, we'll talk about wildfire,
but we and this is firefires across the state of
California are required to renew proficiencies in wildland training we
begin that this month, so that and we complete it
(10:30):
in April, so that everybody is current, all our gear
is ready to go for when the land starts drying
out and we traditionally begin to see.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Yeah, wildfire st Yeah, I know this year has been
a little bit different with that kind of with no water.
We haven't had any water at all this winter.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
So yes, on the heels of two above average rainfall years,
you know, there was a very healthy grass crop that
was allowed to grow back.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
I remember, yeah.
Speaker 4 (11:01):
Throughout southern California.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Yeah, it was really green for a while. We were like, wow,
look at this, and.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
Then we had a really hot summer, Yes, and it
all dried out. You know, if we think back to
late spring, early summer, the grass crop had cured and
we had some pretty significant grass fires, but all the
heavier fuels maintained their moisture. Yeah, we proceeded through a
very hot summer that all dried out, and that's when
we began seeing.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
Those long duration fires.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
When we look at Bridge and Line and Airport all
burning at the same time, that speaks to what the
region as a whole went through weather wise. And we're
still in that situation because now we're in a significantly
dry season. These winds are not atypical, the strength are,
but typically when we have these winds come through it
this time of year, we've already had wedding rains. Yeah,
(11:51):
so the fire doesn't have a fuel to carry it.
Now we have fuel to carry the fire, and we
have wind to push the fire. We're seeing fire activity
that we traditionally see September.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
I was going to say, like October September, that's usually
when I remember those kinds of things happening. In fact,
well that's when we had the initial round of fires
here in the Inland Empire. So that's so fascinating, so
much to touch on. But there with your training and your specialties,
it's so amazing to think when you think of a firefighter,
(12:26):
there's just really this well rounded person. It's not just
this one. They're not just holding a hose and you know,
and and aiming it at a fire. There's just all
these avenues of what you do. And that's I mean,
that's hard to be.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
You work so hard to get your foot in the
door with the department, and when you come to County
Fire and you pass probation, it's congratulations.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
What are you going to do now?
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Yeah, what's your specialty?
Speaker 3 (12:52):
Correct you're going to specialize? Is it going to be
going to paramedic school? Is it going to becoming a
heavy rescue technician? Urban search and rescue has matt aircraft rescue? Firefighting?
Are you going wilin? Are you going helicopter? The days
of being a one trick pony. The call volume and
the call types in the area we cover don't allow that,
so we make sure we have a roster.
Speaker 4 (13:15):
In each of these specialties.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
That's so cool, it really really is. Well. On that note,
what type of role does a public information officer play
in all of that?
Speaker 3 (13:26):
In case of an emergency, my role as public information
officer or PIO is to, you know, the easiest definition
for us is to provide timely and accurate information to
our affected residents and stakeholders for an emergency incident.
Speaker 4 (13:44):
When we think of and we use something called the incident.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
Command structure to handle our incidents, and that ensures unity
of command and chain of command that each person assigned
to an incident only has one supervisor, that you're not
getting pulled in multiple directions. The public information officer's job
is to act as the spokesperson for the incident commander
(14:08):
to take that obligation off of their shoulders so they
can remain focused on mitigating the incident. So to that point,
we develop and maintain a really nice relationship with our
local media, from print, TV, radio, even to our network
news and international news because and when they're smoking the air,
(14:32):
the phone start ringing, Hey, what do you have going on?
And that's very important because the media is another way
that we use, or another avenue we use to inform
the public of what's taking place.
Speaker 4 (14:46):
It's a symbiotic relationship. You know.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
Many times the media is looking to tell the story
and we're going to provide the facts that support that story,
factually correct information. Outside of emergency incidents, we're talking about
what the department does on a daily basis. What are
your firefighters doing today? You know, are we training on something,
here's a community outreach program, Hey check it out. We
(15:09):
went and did a school visit and talked to a
lot of people about fire safety. So we're the messaging platform.
And I think we'll get into a little bit later
about some of those platforms.
Speaker 5 (15:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
Yeah, the evolution of our job and things that have
made our job easier or.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
Easier to communicate with the people we surface.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Like social media. I mean, it's got to be a
little easier now, right.
Speaker 4 (15:31):
The short answer is absolutely.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
I made social media's a whole other beast, but I imagine.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
It is, and it's you know, there's pros and cons
to everything. You know. Again, and I keep talking anecdotally
and going back. You know, gone are the days of
the traditional news cycle. Yeah, when somebody sees smoke in
the air, they'll turn on the evening news, Hey, what
was happening up there on the hill?
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Truth?
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Or go out and get the morning paper. Did somebody
write us story on it? Social media has created a
thirst for instant information oh yeah, oh yeah, and it's available,
you know. Now somebody is just as likely, you know,
they're going to turn on the TV to see what's happening,
but they're more likely to pick up their phone.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
And that was our entrance into the social media space,
like this is where people are going. We need to
be here, oh yeah. And it started with Facebook and
then Twitter, and it's expanded into Instagram, TikTok. We're going
where the people are because we want them again to
get factually correct information of course, in we're not good
(16:43):
at existing in that void. If there's a void of information,
somebody is going to fill it. And if we're not
out there quickly providing that information, we're going to wind
up spending a fair amount of time unwinding incorrect information.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Makes perfect sense to me, Yep, it really does.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
So.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
See, we're not immune to fires here. We've got a
ton of brush fires that have happened, happened every year.
Why do you think that the Los Angeles fires have
been such an eye opening experience for so many people?
Speaker 3 (17:15):
It's been an eye opening experience just because of the
scope of these incidents and how many people. You know,
we're used to seeing fire to through.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Wildland, right right, when it.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
Gets into a community, it gets a lot more real. Yeah,
firefighters are very accustomed to working in these large fires.
When it gets into communities, it hits us by no
means am I saying it hits us as much as
a homeowner, right, But we we take that seriously, right,
you know, our our goal is to stop the fire,
(17:49):
and when fire takes homes that that's a hard one.
That that's a very hard one. We approach any incident
with three priorities, the first one being life. We need
to save lives, we need to remove the endangered, we
need to mitigate the incident, and we need to provide
(18:12):
stabilization and ultimately a resolution to the incident. Right when
fire approaches a community, our priorities are solely focused on
life safety and the reality is structures are going to
burn so that lives can be saved, which comes back
to something that we've been talking about for years. But
(18:33):
you've heard us try and drive this home throughout this
season of please respect.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
The evacuation orders.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
The Bridge fire was a great example of that where
we saw a fire rapidly explode into a community. Rightwood
is a designated firewise community with a fire safe council.
They have a plan in place and they didn't even
wait for evacuation orders. They know their community, they know
their mountain, They saw fire and they left. Yeah. That
(19:07):
allowed us to come into that community with the mindset
of now that life safety has been addressed, we can
focus on saving structures. And it was the communities plan
that allowed us to focus on saving the TWN.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
That's wonderful. Yeah, And it's a cooperative effort, it really is,
and it's going to help. It helps everybody help in
the end.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
When we have communities working with public safety agencies. The
benefit I don't know if you can quantify it other
than looking at and I use right Wood because it
was one of our incidents I remember, and I can
speak very specifically to that. There's a huge benefit to that,
(19:54):
to having communities that engage with their fire departments, that
have their fire safe councils, that have a plan in
place and don't wait.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Yeah you know.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Sometimes if you wait until an order comes up, you
might be behind the power curve.
Speaker 4 (20:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
Yeah, And I think that's why this has been so
eye opening, because I think there's towns like Rightwood who
obviously they were being proactive. We know that this could
be a big problem if we have a fire here,
and then you have communities like like Pacific Palisades where
it's almost like, well, we didn't think this even could
happen here like this right. So, now, hopefully with everything
(20:31):
and everybody seeing what's happened over the last few weeks,
specifically people more cities can get these plans in place.
They can have even just your home have a plan
in place to be ready to go in case you
have to well, and we have.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
You know, the one fund or not fun.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
But the one thing I like about LA is there's
no hesitation to go wall to wall on news coverage
to bring that accurate, immediate infa into people's homes.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
True, very true.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
At the same time, we will watch a wildfire burn
all day long throughout the news day, and sometimes that
mindset comes of this fire is burning and I've been
watching it for eight hours, and it's easy to forget
how quickly these fires can explode and impact a community.
(21:23):
And that's why having a plan is so important. Yeah,
and utilizing that plan. And I think we're going to
talk about that here in a few minutes.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Yeah, yeah, we will. How can someone get started? Let's
talk about it now. So how can someone get started
making a plan?
Speaker 2 (21:37):
How?
Speaker 1 (21:37):
And what kind of things should they include in their
go kit? Okay, everybody's been using that word now, right.
Speaker 4 (21:43):
Yes, a way?
Speaker 1 (21:44):
What's in my kit?
Speaker 3 (21:45):
It is? And here's the great thing about planning. It's
never too early to begin planning.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
And the cool thing is what I like about planning.
Sometimes it seems like a daunting task, but you get
to tailor it to your needs, the needs of you
your family and your community. So I like talking with
my family members. Hey, this is this is where my
head is at in this planning process. What do we
(22:14):
need to do if we need to leave? And the
more ahead of time you plan, the easier it becomes. Yea,
you know, and when you love less.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Scary, probably even if you have kids.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
Involved, correct, right, you know, and this goes Let's take
it all the way back to the beginning to me
being a sixteen year old kid going through lifeguard academy.
The whole goal was to identify a victim before they
know they're in trouble and to get to them before
panic sets in, because once panic sets in, it's a
(22:49):
lot more difficult to maintain a clear thought process, and
planning prevents panic. I've never thought about this, what do
I need to grab? You know, when you see people
that evacuate in a hurry, it would be interesting to Okay, hey,
are you willing to share what you put in your car?
(23:10):
You know, and people like I just started grabbing.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
Stuff whatever I could grab.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
Yeah, yeah, as opposed to having a plan, like I know,
you know, and we'll talk about what happens if you
have five minutes to go, what happens if you have
thirty minutes ago. What happens if you have an hour ago?
And that determines where your priority should be and it
should already be identified, you know, and that go bag
is your default, your five minutes. This is what I'm getting.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
This is the last thing I can grab.
Speaker 4 (23:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
Uh, there are a lot of app Samardino Accounting, our
Office of Emergency Services has developed a really nice app
called sb Ready, and it gives you ideas on how
to begin developing your own plan. A very important component
of a plan is evacuation routes.
Speaker 4 (23:57):
Where are you going to go? And really where you live?
Speaker 3 (24:01):
You know, if you live in a community that only
has one way out, your trigger point to get out.
And when we're looking at posting evacuation warnings for orders,
those are things we take into consideration. What's the population
density within a given community, what are the evacuation routes,
what's the integrity of those evacuation routes? When do we
need to hit that management action point to start getting
(24:24):
those residents out of the area.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
That makes a lot of sense in my head now,
because I think I in some cases I was wondering,
I'm like these also don't look like they would necessarily
be in danger. Why are they evacuating them? But that
makes perfect sense. Well, if there's only one in and out,
they need to start getting out now just in case.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
Or if my plan says I'm going north, yeah, and
now suddenly I have a fire that's coming from the north. Right,
have I already identified what my evacuation route is going
to be and realizing that half of the if there's
a north and south evacuation, if half of that that
means the half of your residence. We've now doubled the
traffic on the south. It's going to take longer to
get out.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Yeah, it is. And we saw that with you know,
some of the fires recently one hundred percent they had
only one lane and cars ended up being abandoned.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
I come back to the Bridge fire when it came
into Rightwood and we lost our western evacuation route, oh right,
only teased out highway to to the one thirty eight
mm hm, you know, and we had and again comes
back to planning, to working with our sheriff partner CHP Partners, like,
we need to make sure we can decompress Highway one
thirty eight because it's during the evening commute. Yeah, such
(25:31):
that we can prioritize these residents getting out versus people
moving on through. You know, our desert community is trying
to get home to feeling Pinion Hills.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
And it comes back to a plan.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
It really does. It really does. And I feel like
my son has brought this up to us, and he
literally just walked up. We've been watching all the fire coverage.
We're just going through, you know, like everybody else, you know,
shock and sadness and all of these things. And my
son's like, what would you take? And like he just
walked up to and he's like, what would you take?
What would you take right now? And I'm like, oh
(26:06):
my god, I don't even think I've thought about that. Yeah,
Aiden like, I that's a great question. And we all
pubaly should need to sit down and talk about this.
And he's like, maybe we could put something on our fridge.
And I was like, that's not a bad idea. Like
let's have a little a little thing that just is
up there just to remind us if we see it.
We're like, oh, yeah, that's my job. My job's to
grabe this.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
And almost as important as having a plan is reevaluating
your pain? Yeah, yeah, you know, put yourself in the
situation of what our LA residents went through. Yeah yeah,
you know, how does your plan hold up? You know?
And this is a time we be very humble and
honest with yourself. And this is where it helps to
talk with a family member or somebody else that has
(26:46):
a pretty good plan. Yeah, and talk with your neighbor,
talk with your friend, talk with your coworker. Hey, you know,
has your plan changed? It all based on what we
just saw, right right?
Speaker 1 (26:55):
Good point.
Speaker 3 (26:56):
You know, when we have two hours or twenty four
hours to evacuate versus is you have fifteen minutes? Yep?
Speaker 1 (27:01):
And that's it?
Speaker 4 (27:02):
What are you taking?
Speaker 3 (27:04):
So to that point, a go kit and again you
get to tailor this to your needs. But a go
kit needs to include some of those things that we
don't have the ability to take when we don't have
the time. So how do we do that? We talk
about having all your documents. So are your documents in
(27:26):
a filing cabinet? Are they locked in a safe? Are
they behind something that you might not have the time
to get to. The easiest way to do that now
with technology is stored all in a flash drive yep,
you know, go through your house, run a five minute
video looking at stuff, so God forbid your house is
destroyed in an incident, whether it be a fire, earthquake, flood.
(27:49):
It's a lot easier for you when you begin working
with your insurance adjusters that you can document note this
is what I have, you know, and a thumb drive
takes up no space in your line.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
I know, it's just so easy, it's almost too easy.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
You don't think critical documents, you know, when you at
birth certificate, social Security cards, insurance. You know, that can
take up space. You know, especially people that are carrying
multiple policies or writers for various things in their home.
You know, as long as you have some documentation to
help start the process, and if you can.
Speaker 4 (28:20):
Digitally store that, it.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
Minimizes the footprint of stuff you need to take should
you not be able.
Speaker 4 (28:27):
To bring it along with you.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
We were just talking with Erica Hernandez on the last episode.
We were talking about she had lost her house in
the Edgehill fire and one of the things she's going
through right now still is remembering all the things in
her house. Yeah, for her claims, and she's just like,
I wish I had just taken video of my home.
(28:48):
I wish I would have just gone through because they
want every They want to know how many plates you had,
They want to know how many forks you had. Like
they it's down to those kinds of things. And then
let alone own the things you're not thinking about, you know,
the family heirlooms and all of these other things. And
she's like, I just that's one of the biggest pieces
of advice I would tell them, was make sure you're
(29:11):
documenting the things that are in your house you're not
thinking about it. Just it's so easy. Now take your
camera your phone out and just film it.
Speaker 3 (29:20):
You know. And and when you're working with your insurance company,
you know you can minimize.
Speaker 4 (29:25):
So much of the back and forth.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
Yes, if you've taken a couple hours out of one
of your days to document what you have, you know,
we're paying these insurance policies.
Speaker 4 (29:36):
You know.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
Now it's the time, you know, if we're processing a claim,
if you're in the unfortunate place where you have to
play and it doesn't matter what the situation is. Yeah,
if you are the victim of burglary and people take
stuff out, you know you you don't want to put
them in the situation of I'm sorry, but I need
to force you to provide proof that this was actually.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah, you're right, or floods or any
of that. Yeah, you're you're totally right.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
It's hard to find an area that in this country
that isn't immune from a type of natural disaster. You know,
we look at hurricanes on the east and South. We
look at flooding in the South. We have earthquakes over here.
We all have wildfires. You know, California is pretty unique
in that, you know, we have multiple threats. We live
under the constant threat of earthquakes. We look at wildfire,
(30:25):
We look at the potential tsunami for our coastal residents.
You know, there there are a number of threats, you know, wildfire.
Sometimes we think we're going to have enough time. You know,
there's no time for an earthquake. There can be little
warning for a tsunami. Mud and debris flows. We can
recognize the potential, but from when that debris starts moving
(30:48):
to the time to get out, no time. Yeah, and
that's going to be the next threat on the heels
of these wildfires, right, and it's something that that are
management teams as soon as you know, or even before
the fires out, we're beginning to assess mud and debrief
float potential. And you saw that happen over in the
Mount Baldy Canyon where there's k rail up throughout that community,
(31:09):
both through Ellie County and San Bernardino County, and they're
already talking about how to address that very real threat
over they eaten.
Speaker 4 (31:17):
And Palisades fire scars.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
Uh. We need precipitation, We need rain. The whole region
needs rain to finally put this fire threat to rest
for a few months. We need little amounts of rain
at slow rates.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
Gotcha. We don't need this request. Yes, you're right.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
That being said, it's something that that all our all
of our counties are already talking about. Yeah, and we
began talking about this last summer on the heels of
Bridge Line and Airport fires. What's that flood response going
to look like? And we need to be ready for
when it happens. The reality is there's so much material
up on those hillsides that our ability to manage that
(32:05):
does not exist. We can try and minimize the impact
that there's going to be an impact, and because of that,
when evacuation orders come up for mud and debris flow,
they need to be they need to be respected. Now,
fire moves through a community more often than not, it
leaves the road system intact. When eight feet of mud
comes through a community, we can't get in and you
(32:27):
can't get out. Yes, right, And it takes a lot
longer to move mud than it does to move fallen
trees from a wind event.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
You're right, Yeah, you're right. Does technology play a role
in helping with some of this? I mean, let's talk
about that because there's so much technology now. We've all
been using apps, and we've all been using our phones
for the last so many well forever, but now for
the fires, we're all learning about these other technology based
apps that we can have to know more. How is
(32:55):
that playing a role in firefighting now?
Speaker 3 (32:59):
One of the goals that fire Chief Dan Munsely for
our district has put forth is we are a fire
district that is going to innovate. It's going to we
are going to leverage current and emerging emerging technology to
the greatest extent possible. There there are a lot of
(33:21):
programs and apps out there that are available not only
to the public, but other apps that are available to
public safety, and County Fire has been working very hard
to incorporate that technology to the benefit of the citizens
and also us. What are some examples. Genesis is a
(33:43):
great program that's coming out that is helping us to
develop evacuation zones. You know, it wasn't too long ago
that the fire would be coming down and we would
have a map out going, Okay, we want our evacuation
box to run from this street to this street. Well,
what do you think about it there? And maybe we
should bring it down now. With Genesis, they've already been
(34:04):
pre identified and that's through the various counties.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
I've seen that. I've seen that in work. How that's
and it's fascinating because it's you don't it's it's not
like it's all squares or anything like that. They're kind of,
you know, different shapes there. But it's like, oh, my
house is in this particular zone.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
Uh, And it's a lot easier for us. We bring
up the map, we look at Genesis and it's just one, two, three,
four these zones go yeah, yeah, And that gets shipped
off to our Sheriff's Department Emergency Operations Division, uh, and
they begin crafting that message and it minimizes the timeline
from when the decision is made to when the citizen
is notified.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
Right, right, that's technology for yeah.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
Cool, What else do we have?
Speaker 4 (34:50):
Can't not talk about watch Duty?
Speaker 1 (34:52):
Oh my gosh, I know I was going to bring
it up, but I'm like, watch Duty has been I mean,
it's everywhere now and it's for good reason.
Speaker 4 (34:59):
It's so was going to absolutely good reason.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
Uh. Watch Duty was created and I had a huge
fortune to uh to meet with the creator of this
app a couple of weeks ago. Cool and to hear
his vision and how this this app came to be.
And you're right, it provides immediate information. Uh. They have
(35:25):
seasoned people that and most of this is driven by
radio traffic and monitoring radios and getting that information out. Now,
there's been some pushback that watch Duty is faster than
we are, Oh, which is not.
Speaker 4 (35:46):
Let's explain this.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
Yeah, yeah, I want to hear that.
Speaker 3 (35:49):
Not faster than we are, because we're the ones initiating
the radio.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
Right, you're the one saying what's happening.
Speaker 3 (35:55):
There's a process, there's a process where information makes its
way from the field to incident command to that decision
point being made. And that's the whole advantage of the
incident command system and maintaining that thirty thousand foot view
over an incident where we might have a division group
supervisor who says, hey, I need this highway shut down,
(36:15):
and he's over here and he's realizing what he needs,
and you have the broader scope that's maintaining that broader
view of going, hey, if we we're going to have
other impacts if we shut down this. However, we can
meet the division's needs if we shut down a one
mile section of that. And that's the few times that
watch duty might be incorrect as they're going off saying hey,
(36:38):
we've closed this freeway and what ultimately winds up is
a smaller segment of that. When we hear, hey, we're
going to evacuate this community. Understanding that comes from a
division that goes to incident command and unified incident command.
We have fire people there, we have law enforcement here
in California. Law enforcement declares evacuations based on recommendation from
(37:00):
fire professionals on where we think this fire is going
to go. But obviously that captain, that deputy chief there
at the command post is not the one creating that
evacuation nose. You know, he or she has a whole
staff underneath him. So that message comes up, that message
goes down, that message is crafted, that message is disseminated.
(37:22):
The bigger the incident, the more moving parts there are,
it takes a little bit longer for that message and
decision to be made. So watch Duty is great at
priming people for what is likely to happen.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
That's what I was going to say. It's almost like
just just hey, be alert, this might happen.
Speaker 3 (37:40):
Absolutely, yeah, yeah, And watch Duty continues to expand their
capabilities and when they start integrating with other software that's
out there, such as providing accurate fire perimeters and fire
perimeters over time, so you can literally go back and
scroll and see, Okay, the fire was here, now it's
to hear.
Speaker 4 (37:58):
Now it's to hear.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
They work with Genesis though, too, right, because I've seen
that on the watch Shooty app So I'm like, oh,
that's that's so interesting.
Speaker 3 (38:07):
And what I took away from from my meeting with
mister John Mills was his commitment to continue to expand
his product to make sure that people are getting actionable information,
you know, and if we can work with them. I
can't fault him for being quick and he respects the
process that takes place on our end. Oh yeah, and
(38:29):
realizing there there is a place for this and an
important place for citizens in the sense not everybody has
a radio scanner, not everybody has the ability to listen
to radios like a news station that's monitoring looking for
if something happens. But if it's it's a push based
product rather than pull I don't have to go to
a website and look for information. This app is going
(38:52):
to alert me when they think I need to pay
attention to something that is happening near me.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
So so cool. I mean, I I could see how
that little pushback might happen, because I think in some
cases I've seen it where it's like per radio traffic,
you know, ten more units are being requested. I think,
you know, I think to myself, I'm like, wow, is
that overstepping? I thought that at one point, I was like,
(39:18):
I wonder if that's overstepping because they're listening to this.
But also, on the other hand, I want to know
that there is more going to that fire right now,
because that means that fire is not controlled yet. Those
people in the neighborhood. They probably need to be knowing
they need to be getting out of there.
Speaker 3 (39:35):
And this is a product that's been out there in
blogs and websites for years, people listening to scanner traffic
and posting the.
Speaker 4 (39:41):
Information right right.
Speaker 1 (39:42):
I've seen it on like Twitter for many years. That's
the way it used to kind of get out.
Speaker 3 (39:47):
To have an app that pushes it to you rather
than having to pull it is you know it's going
to save lives?
Speaker 1 (39:53):
Yeah, I do agree. Are there any other I know
you were saying, there's a host of things on Ready.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
So.
Speaker 4 (40:02):
Ready.
Speaker 3 (40:03):
The other program we really want, at least our residence
to do is to register for the TEN system telephone
emergency notification system. We have two options available to us
when we want to mass notify impacted residents. The most
(40:23):
commonly known is WEA and that's the Wireless Emergency Alert System,
and that is an indiscriminate program where we draw a
box and we want every cellular device capable of receiving
a signal in here to receive the following message. TENS
(40:44):
requires a user to register their phone number. The good
thing about TENS is that if you're out of the
affected area.
Speaker 4 (40:53):
You will still get the alert.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
Oh okay, well that makes perfect sense.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
So somebody in Rightwood that is down the hill at work,
we'll get that message saying, hey, there's an evacuation going
on at home. And we use both of them. We
don't use one or the other as the county because
especially when we look at Rightwood and we have so
many visitors to the community, especially this time of year
(41:18):
when the mountains open. Yeah, anybody coming into that community
is going to be captured through WEIA. Anybody that lives
in that community that wants to be alerted, whether or
not they're in community, in the community at the time,
needs a register for TENS because the WEA system, the
way WEA looks at it as Okay, this person isn't
(41:39):
in the community, so they're not threatened. Therefore they don't
receive the alert. But TENS is available through the sb
ready app. It's available through our website. We'll get to
that a little bit later on how to register for TENS.
I think I did it in three minutes. Yeah, it's
a name, it's an email, it's an address. You can
(42:00):
enter your home address, you can enter your work address,
and then the number that you want to be notified
at that's great. So TENSI is a huge, yet another
way for us to communicate to people in an emergency situation.
You don't get day to day updates. We don't push out,
hey there's wind coming. This is evacuation warnings, evacuation orders.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
Is that just for Sanmberdandino County for the ten system
for us, Yes, we'll be pushing out to Sambordino.
Speaker 4 (42:27):
Now.
Speaker 3 (42:27):
For residents in Riverside County, you can go to Riverside
County's website and they have ways to register, and then
they even have cities within the county within Riverside that
maintain their own systems, and Riverside County has done a
very good job of making it easy for residents to
figure out where to go to register so that they
(42:49):
can be alerted in the case of emergency. So again,
we as passive tens is active. It takes the end
user to register to get the alert.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
Perfect. That's great information and I'll put as much as
I can in our description to on the podcast so
everybody can get those links right away.
Speaker 3 (43:09):
What are some apps that we as the Fire Service
are using. Yeah, oh, help us do our job. Something
alert California. It's a product put together. It comes out
of UC San Diego through a variety of cameras that
are posted up and down the state to monitor for
the start of wildfires that acknowledges a heat source that
(43:32):
camera can swing to it. They're automated or they can
be manually directed based on our end users and they're
specific people that have the ability to tilt and rotate cameras. Yeah,
to zoom in and hey, here's smoke, and yes, what
is this, what's it doing? Where's it going to begin
(43:53):
for our command centers to identify this might need a
reinforced response and begin moving assets into the area. And
there are hundreds of cameras, oh yeah, just throughout this region,
and it's not uncommon for our dispatch center to already
be looking at a camera and we'll see it pop
(44:15):
up as a note or a dispatcher will come over
and talk to us, Hey we have smoke showing in
the San Savane one camera. And then on our tablet
so Technology County Fire. All of our emergency apparatus we
use iPads and we run a software program called tablet Command,
which is a very strong tool for us as far
(44:38):
as being able to be dispatched to an incident, routed
to an incident, to see other responding units on the map.
You talk about safety, just going to a simple traffic
collision where one engine's coming from the east, one engine's
coming from the north, and the captain can say, hey,
you have engine two's coming from the east up at
this intersection. Just be on lookout so we can minimize
(45:00):
red on red events. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
Asset tracking once we get to a scene, once we
get to a large incident, and we begin assigning these
resources into these divisions, and we can have thirty forty
fifty sixty units.
Speaker 4 (45:13):
Who's where?
Speaker 3 (45:14):
You know, we used to write it on a whiteboard.
Before a whiteboard, it was a legal pad. And then
in the sant Ana Win when we're using legal pads.
Just when you get it all figured out, here comes
a gusta wiz tears it off into the fire and
you're like, okay, I had who where? Tablet command allows
us to digitally assign resources so we can track them,
(45:36):
we can set time or so we can check in
on them. The radio traffic got weird, it got scratchy.
I didn't quite hear who I got assigned to well,
I see the incident. Commander moved me to Division Alphare okay,
who's running Division Alpha? Oh, it's Captain to twenty one.
All right, Now I know my point of contact. I
know I'm working. I can see on the map where
all these units are lined out. All right, this is
(45:58):
where I'm going. It's a very very powerful tool. And
we've tied in with Alert California. We can bring the
cameras up.
Speaker 5 (46:06):
That's so cool. Yes, it's really cool. That's software from hardware.
Let's talk about a new program. Are unmanned aerial systems
or drones?
Speaker 1 (46:17):
Oh yeah, okay.
Speaker 3 (46:19):
County Fire is trialing right now a program called drone
as a First Responder or DFR, and we are conducting
this study in the city of San Bernardino.
Speaker 4 (46:30):
We're running it at night.
Speaker 3 (46:31):
It's a thirty day study right now to check the
feasibility and is this the right right thing to do?
But we are launching a drone using drone operator in
their suppression personnel to the call type we're investigating our
unknown type fires. That's where somebody is called nine one one.
It says they think they see a fire, they might
(46:52):
see smoke, but it's not a building. It's not a car,
it's not vegetation.
Speaker 4 (46:57):
I don't know what it is.
Speaker 3 (47:00):
We get a lot of these calls in the river
bottom with homeless encampments and they're hard to locate when
you're down at the road level, and if you can
see it, well, what's the pathway to get into that.
In the last three months of twenty four October November December,
the city of San Bernardino alone ran eight hundred and
thirty three unknown type fires.
Speaker 1 (47:22):
Oh wow.
Speaker 3 (47:24):
The majority of those fires we were unable to locate anything.
It was a good intent caller by a passer, by
a good intent called by a passer by thought they
might have seen a fire, but ultimately there was no fire.
Of the remaining a significant subset of the remaining calls
were warming fires.
Speaker 4 (47:43):
That presented no threat.
Speaker 3 (47:46):
It's an attended fire, no chance of it escaping based
on where it's burning, and we allow those to burn.
That's a legal fire. It's legal to allow somebody to
stay warm. But if we look at an engine, it
might take them thirty minutes to locate and ultimately access
to find.
Speaker 4 (48:04):
Out that this is a permitted fire or it was.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
Unfounded, and that takes away a resource correct in case
there is.
Speaker 3 (48:11):
So if engine one is looking for this call and
a chess pain comes out in their district, now that
resident is waiting for engine two to come across. They're
waiting longer. We are now sending drones to these types
of incidents as the only unit dispatched. Wow. And if
they're able to locate, the calls cleared out. If they
(48:31):
can locate in and determine that there is no threat,
the call is cleared out. If there is a threat,
but it's an attended fire, that drone has a PA
system on it and they can speak to the person
tending fire. This is Semernino County fire. You need to
put the fire out. And we have yet to advise
(48:52):
somebody of that and not have compliance with it.
Speaker 2 (48:54):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (48:55):
If they do determine, hey, this is a fire and
it needs to be addressed, we can add an engine
company or whatever is needed to that response, and then
that drone stays overseen to direct them in. You know, well,
what is my access on this? Hey, you're going to
come in and they're watching them come in? Okay, angle
left on that dirt road, come down, stop there, jump out.
(49:16):
I need to move off to your right one hundred
and fifty feet you'll be right on top of it.
So in the early stages, the first couple weeks of
this study, we found that it's very very efficient. Great
and we're not We don't deal with traffic, we don't
have to drive around the buildings, we go over them.
We have response times that we're measuring in seconds. We
(49:37):
have calls that we're clearing out in four minutes when
the response time for the engine just to get in
the area would be six minutes. So early indications show
that this is a very successful tool that we can
use to the benefit of the citizens.
Speaker 4 (49:54):
And the firefighters.
Speaker 1 (49:56):
That sounds amazing.
Speaker 3 (49:57):
It really is so cool.
Speaker 1 (49:59):
So how do you you know after these thirty days
that there's a group of people that decide, Okay, we're
going to move forward with this, or it has to
be adopted by the county, or how does that work?
Speaker 4 (50:09):
Absolutely, so.
Speaker 1 (50:11):
I'm going to vote yes.
Speaker 3 (50:12):
The manager of the robotics program. And the drone is
just one example that the UAS Command Aerial systems. And
we say UAS because the drone is the UAV, it's
just the flying unit. Yeah, but when you look at
the suite of sensors and it's equipped with high definition cameras,
thermal imaging cameras. Yeah, and then the operator and all
the software back at the base station and they're working
(50:34):
from a top of building. They have line of side
of these guys moving around. But so we have the
aerial systems, we have ground based systems, we have subterranean systems.
We're working or looking at aquatic systems that can submerge
and go locate submerged victims and bring them to the surface.
Speaker 4 (50:55):
This is technology that's out here.
Speaker 3 (50:58):
Now and does it have a place in public safety?
And we have a fire chief who's supported by a
board of supervisors that is willing to investigate that and
see if it will benefit the residents.
Speaker 1 (51:15):
Well, that makes me really happy.
Speaker 4 (51:17):
It's a fun time. You know, there's a joke.
Speaker 3 (51:21):
Two things that firefighters fear, or two things that firefighters
don't like, are.
Speaker 4 (51:25):
Change and the way things are.
Speaker 3 (51:30):
That's funny, like I said, And I keep coming back
to having a fire chief with an executive staff who
are supported by the board of supervisors that are willing
to do their part to try to move the needle.
Speaker 4 (51:44):
Oh, yes, it's a very fun time. To be a
part of this agency.
Speaker 1 (51:51):
That's super cool. I'm going to have another talk with
my son and say, so you were caring about the ready,
said go, how about being a firefighter?
Speaker 3 (51:59):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (52:01):
Before I let you go, this has been so informative
and I really appreciate you being here. Let's talk about
three takeaways. I always end the podcast this way, just
to wrap things up. What are the three main things
that you want our listeners and our viewers to come
away with today?
Speaker 3 (52:22):
If if you take anything away from our conversation here,
it's never too early to begin planning. And the easiest
way to begin planning is look at our app Ready
SB Ready SB County. It will it will walk you
(52:42):
through it, and there are a variety of other tools
out there. There is a tool out there that's right
for you that will make it easy for you to
feel comfortable making a plan to keep yourself and your
family safe. Register for TENS. If you live in San
Bernardino County, please register for TENS. We want Nothing would
(53:04):
make me happier than if an evacuation order came down
to your community and you got frustrated by how much
your phone was going off. I don't want I don't
want there to be a doubt in anybody's mind that
we think you need to leave. Yes, if your community
comes under the evacuation order, please respect it. Like I said,
(53:29):
we have a very different mindset when we come into
a community knowing that life safety has been addressed. That
gives us the greatest chance possible of moving on to
the next step, which is protecting homes and structures.
Speaker 1 (53:47):
That's perfect.
Speaker 3 (53:49):
Register for tens and heed those evacuation orders.
Speaker 1 (53:52):
Get out when you have to get out. Thank you
so much. Oh, this has been really, really wonderful. I
appreciate your time. I appreciate everything that you're doing to
keep us safe, and I hope to have you back again.
That this would be wonderful.
Speaker 3 (54:05):
Thanks for the opportunity everyone, It's been fun. Mm hmm
Hey there, welcome back to another episode of Covering Your
Health with Evalanarives, presented by IEHP. As we promised, we're
here with another episode. The second episode on the importance
of emergency preparedness following the recent firestorms in Los Angeles
and with fire season expanding to really kind of a
(00:20):
year round scenario, and as these temperatures continue to rise
and very little rain in the forecast. You know what
I'm saying here, We really are making this every everyday reality, right.
So that's why these type of episodes are so important,
and we want to make sure that you are prepared.
Like in the last episode, we want to utilize this
space with open and honest conversation. And today we are
(00:44):
welcomed by Eric Sherwin. He is a public information officer
with Sanberdandino County Fire who's really going to dive into
how the agency operates, why it's important to have an
evacuation plan, and really just so much more. You're going
to get so much out of this episode. I promise.
I already wrote down so many notes and so many
(01:08):
things that my own family is going to take away
from this conversation. So I hope that you get your
pen and paper out too, because I think you might
need it, or at least get that phone handy and
be ready to start downloading some really informative apps. And
without further ado, we'll get started.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Welcome to Covering your Health, a wellness podcast dedicated to
covering all areas of living a healthy and happy lifestyle,
from healthy hearts to understanding health plans and everything in between.
Each episode will provide you with a better understanding of
managing your health, preventative care, and staying on the.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Right path for your family's wellness journey.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
The Covering Your Health podcast is presented by i EhP.
Now your host, Evelina Revez.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
All right, well let's get started. High Eric surewin, welcome
to the show.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
I'm so happy to have you. Okay, so obviously the
very critical time time to talk, but I want to
know about you. You got to tell me how did
you get into this line of work?
Speaker 4 (02:06):
You know, I started very early.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
I grew up in Newport Beach and my first job
in public safety was working as an ocean lifeguard for
Newport Oh cool, Yeah, I started that in high school,
continued on into college and at the time if you
wanted to promote out of the towers and work in
the trucks or on the boats.
Speaker 4 (02:24):
You needed to have your EMT. So I went and
got my Emergency.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Medical Technician certificate while going to college at the local
community college just for lifeguarding.
Speaker 4 (02:35):
I had no idea that that was.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Something you could also use until another lifeguard I worked
with found out he worked on ambulances in the off season.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Oh well, that's that's awesome. Okay, great, So I was
opened a door for you.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
I went to a university that had its own ambulance
on campus and they worked with with paramedic partners and
started seeing what paramedics were doing.
Speaker 4 (02:59):
Oh, that's kind of cool.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
So ultimately went to paramedic school and worked as a
paramedic for a long time and worked all over southwestern
United States.
Speaker 4 (03:08):
Had the ability I work.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
In international race support, worked for NASCAR for a few
years here at the California Auto Club Speedway, worked on
a helicopter, and then finally started seeing the fire department
what they were doing and specifically sand Bernardino County Fire. Wow, okay,
and said, hey, I think I want to give this
a shot.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
So what age were you at that point? So you
had all this already. You've been doing a paramedic all
over which sounds like a ton of fun. And when
you're young, yes.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
Absolutely it was fun.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
You work so hard to get through through paramedic school
that it was what exactly can I do with this
license that I now have aside from working on an ambulance? Yeah? Yeah,
you know, so when you start working these races. Now
you have paramedics working on cruise ships. You can travel
the world and get paid for it really really fun.
The thing is, what is the retirement? Do I really
(03:59):
want to be loading a gurney and do an ambulance
when I'm sixty five years old?
Speaker 4 (04:03):
And that's where the fire.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
Service was became very attractive. The ability to continue to
be a paramedic but also increase your skill set, start
looking into some of these specialties like urban search and rescue, aviation,
and have a retirement on the back end so that
hopefully you're not doing this.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Yeah. Many pathways, yes.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
Very true, and they come together and now there's even
more when we see in different entry points and talking
to people and their stories how they came to the
fire service.
Speaker 4 (04:35):
You know, some were in law.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
Enforcement, some were prior service military and had that plan
and still to this day people that grew up, No,
I knew from the time I was five years old
I was going to be a firefighter. So there's many
pathways into this career.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
It's funny, that's I mean, I think that's with every
kind of career. You know. Oh, I always wanted to
be a radio DJ, or I always wanted to be
in front of the camera. For a lot of people,
it had to be spoken into them almost. You know
some people, No, don't you know you're really good at this?
Oh did you know you like life, you know, like
being a lifeguard. Did you know there's other pathways down
(05:10):
this avenue? I mean, you probably got into it at
first because you just love the ocean. One percent.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
You were playing water polo and that was the natural. Yeah,
if you played water polo, you were going to be
a guard. And it was crazy to think back now
to the responsibility that we put on at the time.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
Sixteen year old kids.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Oh my gosh, right, like you now are responsible for
anybody that shows up in this quarter mile stretch of beach.
So some days you might have one hundred people. There
are towers where you literally have sixteen year old kids
vested with responsibility of the safety of five thousand people
in that area.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Oh my god, that's crazy, really.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Good at it. Yeah, that's the thing, you know, teaching
responsibility at that age and it's still that that work
ethic that carried me through to this point.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
It was a lot of fun.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
But I still look back fondly on those days city
those towers, watching people have a good time.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Oh that's so cool. What a cool way to start
your career.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
And you didn't even know it now, didn't know I
would get me to hear. But that's very good. Yeah, now, firefighter,
and look at now we're.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Here at we have been this conversation. Yeah, with your
with your position now, So Sambarddino County Fire covers more
than twenty thousand square miles of our region. That's massive.
How does that agency train for all of the terrain
that is here?
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Now?
Speaker 1 (06:31):
You you've I know you've been all over terrain based
on just your backstory, But how do you train for
all of that?
Speaker 3 (06:38):
You bring up a good point, Samrido County. It's the
largest county in the United States. You know, it's over
twenty thousand miles. We're responsible for providing service to over nineteen.
Speaker 4 (06:47):
Thousand of those square miles.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
And we're an all risk department.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
That means we provide fire ems rescue services across the
entire footprint of our service area, and it's very diverse.
That's another thing that attracted me to this department. If
you get bored working in this department, it's your own fault.
Because you can work in the dense urban areas of
San Bardino City where we're sending a whole lot of
(07:13):
resources to an incident. You can go work up in
the mountain communities, be up in the clean, fresh air
where you know the potential. The call volume isn't as high,
but the potential can.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Be greater working denseness of the forest.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
Sambarnido National Forest has the largest residential population of any national.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
Forest in the country.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
I did not know that.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Yes, so the calls aren't as frequent, but the threat
in the potential is constantly there. You can go work
out in the vast expanse of the Mojave National Preserve,
can work out in Baker where you can call for
backup and we'll get it on the road. But there's
a high likelihood that you're going to bring a resolution
(07:55):
to your incident before that backup arrived.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
So you know, work out on the Colorado River and
have as through landing or needles, you know, where you're
working on a fireboat doing amazing things. You can go
to our wild Land Division, work on a handcrew, be
a heavy equipment operator, pushing a bulldozer up the.
Speaker 4 (08:13):
Side of a mountain. Wow.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
Go to aviation where you're working with our sheriff partners. Yeah,
you know in a variety of missions that there are
so many opportunities within this department and that's what really
attracted into it.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
So how do you so how do you train? So
does every region or every area train differently, you know
for the snow or for you know, the mountains, or
for the deserts and the heat.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
So as an all risk the fire Service has a
really fun history. If we go back, you know, a
little bit deeper into history, the fire service was was
often a second job for the men at the time. Oh,
they all existed in other trades. You had electricians, you
had framers, you had plumbers. And that's where I think
(09:03):
the concept of hey, when we don't know what to do,
call the fire Department, because there's a high likelihood one
of the guys on that engine showing up is going
to have an idea on how to approach the situation.
Flash forward to current time. That's still the reality. We're
still showing up at these incidents, but we've now realized
(09:23):
that we need additional training for some of these and
some of those specialties include hazardous materials, urban search and rescue,
specializing in our wildland environment. So how does County Fire
approach that everybody is trained to a minimum standard that
allows us to get the ball rolling at any incident,
(09:44):
but then to recognize the importance of Hey, if we
have somebody that's stuck down in a tunnel, we have
a whole group of people that are specially trained and
equipped to mitigate that emergency. So we are required to
perform two hours of training every shift and the focus,
the bulk of that training is maintaining currencies on a
(10:07):
lot of these certificates that we possess, and it's it
follows an annual cycle. You know, we'll talk about wildfire,
but we and this is firefires across the state of
California are required to renew proficiencies in wildland training we
begin that this month, so that and we complete it
(10:30):
in April, so that everybody is current, all our gear
is ready to go for when the land starts drying
out and we traditionally begin to see.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Yeah, wildfire st Yeah, I know this year has been
a little bit different with that kind of with no water.
We haven't had any water at all this winter.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
So yes, on the heels of two above average rainfall years,
you know, there was a very healthy grass crop that
was allowed to grow back.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
I remember, yeah.
Speaker 4 (11:01):
Throughout southern California.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Yeah, it was really green for a while. We were like, wow,
look at this, and.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
Then we had a really hot summer, Yes, and it
all dried out. You know, if we think back to
late spring, early summer, the grass crop had cured and
we had some pretty significant grass fires, but all the
heavier fuels maintained their moisture. Yeah, we proceeded through a
very hot summer that all dried out, and that's when
we began seeing.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
Those long duration fires.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
When we look at Bridge and Line and Airport all
burning at the same time, that speaks to what the
region as a whole went through weather wise. And we're
still in that situation because now we're in a significantly
dry season. These winds are not atypical, the strength are,
but typically when we have these winds come through it
this time of year, we've already had wedding rains. Yeah,
(11:51):
so the fire doesn't have a fuel to carry it.
Now we have fuel to carry the fire, and we
have wind to push the fire. We're seeing fire activity
that we traditionally see September.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
I was going to say, like October September, that's usually
when I remember those kinds of things happening. In fact,
well that's when we had the initial round of fires
here in the Inland Empire. So that's so fascinating, so
much to touch on. But there with your training and your specialties,
it's so amazing to think when you think of a firefighter,
(12:26):
there's just really this well rounded person. It's not just
this one. They're not just holding a hose and you know,
and and aiming it at a fire. There's just all
these avenues of what you do. And that's I mean,
that's hard to be.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
You work so hard to get your foot in the
door with the department, and when you come to County
Fire and you pass probation, it's congratulations.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
What are you going to do now?
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Yeah, what's your specialty?
Speaker 3 (12:52):
Correct you're going to specialize? Is it going to be
going to paramedic school? Is it going to becoming a
heavy rescue technician? Urban search and rescue has matt aircraft rescue? Firefighting?
Are you going wilin? Are you going helicopter? The days
of being a one trick pony. The call volume and
the call types in the area we cover don't allow that,
so we make sure we have a roster.
Speaker 4 (13:15):
In each of these specialties.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
That's so cool, it really really is. Well. On that note,
what type of role does a public information officer play
in all of that?
Speaker 3 (13:26):
In case of an emergency, my role as public information
officer or PIO is to, you know, the easiest definition
for us is to provide timely and accurate information to
our affected residents and stakeholders for an emergency incident.
Speaker 4 (13:44):
When we think of and we use something called the incident.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
Command structure to handle our incidents, and that ensures unity
of command and chain of command that each person assigned
to an incident only has one supervisor, that you're not
getting pulled in multiple directions. The public information officer's job
is to act as the spokesperson for the incident commander
(14:08):
to take that obligation off of their shoulders so they
can remain focused on mitigating the incident. So to that point,
we develop and maintain a really nice relationship with our
local media, from print, TV, radio, even to our network
news and international news because and when they're smoking the air,
(14:32):
the phone start ringing, Hey, what do you have going on?
And that's very important because the media is another way
that we use, or another avenue we use to inform
the public of what's taking place.
Speaker 4 (14:46):
It's a symbiotic relationship. You know.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
Many times the media is looking to tell the story
and we're going to provide the facts that support that story,
factually correct information. Outside of emergency incidents, we're talking about
what the department does on a daily basis. What are
your firefighters doing today? You know, are we training on something,
here's a community outreach program, Hey check it out. We
(15:09):
went and did a school visit and talked to a
lot of people about fire safety. So we're the messaging platform.
And I think we'll get into a little bit later
about some of those platforms.
Speaker 5 (15:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
Yeah, the evolution of our job and things that have
made our job easier or.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
Easier to communicate with the people we surface.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Like social media. I mean, it's got to be a
little easier now, right.
Speaker 4 (15:31):
The short answer is absolutely.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
I made social media's a whole other beast, but I imagine.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
It is, and it's you know, there's pros and cons
to everything. You know. Again, and I keep talking anecdotally
and going back. You know, gone are the days of
the traditional news cycle. Yeah, when somebody sees smoke in
the air, they'll turn on the evening news, Hey, what
was happening up there on the hill?
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Truth?
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Or go out and get the morning paper. Did somebody
write us story on it? Social media has created a
thirst for instant information oh yeah, oh yeah, and it's available,
you know. Now somebody is just as likely, you know,
they're going to turn on the TV to see what's happening,
but they're more likely to pick up their phone.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
And that was our entrance into the social media space,
like this is where people are going. We need to
be here, oh yeah. And it started with Facebook and
then Twitter, and it's expanded into Instagram, TikTok. We're going
where the people are because we want them again to
get factually correct information of course, in we're not good
(16:43):
at existing in that void. If there's a void of information,
somebody is going to fill it. And if we're not
out there quickly providing that information, we're going to wind
up spending a fair amount of time unwinding incorrect information.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Makes perfect sense to me, Yep, it really does.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
So.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
See, we're not immune to fires here. We've got a
ton of brush fires that have happened, happened every year.
Why do you think that the Los Angeles fires have
been such an eye opening experience for so many people?
Speaker 3 (17:15):
It's been an eye opening experience just because of the
scope of these incidents and how many people. You know,
we're used to seeing fire to through.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Wildland, right right, when it.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
Gets into a community, it gets a lot more real. Yeah,
firefighters are very accustomed to working in these large fires.
When it gets into communities, it hits us by no
means am I saying it hits us as much as
a homeowner, right, But we we take that seriously, right,
you know, our our goal is to stop the fire,
(17:49):
and when fire takes homes that that's a hard one.
That that's a very hard one. We approach any incident
with three priorities, the first one being life. We need
to save lives, we need to remove the endangered, we
need to mitigate the incident, and we need to provide
(18:12):
stabilization and ultimately a resolution to the incident. Right when
fire approaches a community, our priorities are solely focused on
life safety and the reality is structures are going to
burn so that lives can be saved, which comes back
to something that we've been talking about for years. But
(18:33):
you've heard us try and drive this home throughout this
season of please respect.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
The evacuation orders.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
The Bridge fire was a great example of that where
we saw a fire rapidly explode into a community. Rightwood
is a designated firewise community with a fire safe council.
They have a plan in place and they didn't even
wait for evacuation orders. They know their community, they know
their mountain, They saw fire and they left. Yeah. That
(19:07):
allowed us to come into that community with the mindset
of now that life safety has been addressed, we can
focus on saving structures. And it was the communities plan
that allowed us to focus on saving the TWN.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
That's wonderful. Yeah, And it's a cooperative effort, it really is,
and it's going to help. It helps everybody help in
the end.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
When we have communities working with public safety agencies. The
benefit I don't know if you can quantify it other
than looking at and I use right Wood because it
was one of our incidents I remember, and I can
speak very specifically to that. There's a huge benefit to that,
(19:54):
to having communities that engage with their fire departments, that
have their fire safe councils, that have a plan in
place and don't wait.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Yeah you know.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Sometimes if you wait until an order comes up, you
might be behind the power curve.
Speaker 4 (20:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
Yeah, And I think that's why this has been so
eye opening, because I think there's towns like Rightwood who
obviously they were being proactive. We know that this could
be a big problem if we have a fire here,
and then you have communities like like Pacific Palisades where
it's almost like, well, we didn't think this even could
happen here like this right. So, now, hopefully with everything
(20:31):
and everybody seeing what's happened over the last few weeks,
specifically people more cities can get these plans in place.
They can have even just your home have a plan
in place to be ready to go in case you
have to well, and we have.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
You know, the one fund or not fun.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
But the one thing I like about LA is there's
no hesitation to go wall to wall on news coverage
to bring that accurate, immediate infa into people's homes.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
True, very true.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
At the same time, we will watch a wildfire burn
all day long throughout the news day, and sometimes that
mindset comes of this fire is burning and I've been
watching it for eight hours, and it's easy to forget
how quickly these fires can explode and impact a community.
(21:23):
And that's why having a plan is so important. Yeah,
and utilizing that plan. And I think we're going to
talk about that here in a few minutes.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Yeah, yeah, we will. How can someone get started? Let's
talk about it now. So how can someone get started
making a plan?
Speaker 2 (21:37):
How?
Speaker 1 (21:37):
And what kind of things should they include in their
go kit? Okay, everybody's been using that word now, right.
Speaker 4 (21:43):
Yes, a way?
Speaker 1 (21:44):
What's in my kit?
Speaker 3 (21:45):
It is? And here's the great thing about planning. It's
never too early to begin planning.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
And the cool thing is what I like about planning.
Sometimes it seems like a daunting task, but you get
to tailor it to your needs, the needs of you
your family and your community. So I like talking with
my family members. Hey, this is this is where my
head is at in this planning process. What do we
(22:14):
need to do if we need to leave? And the
more ahead of time you plan, the easier it becomes. Yea,
you know, and when you love less.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Scary, probably even if you have kids.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
Involved, correct, right, you know, and this goes Let's take
it all the way back to the beginning to me
being a sixteen year old kid going through lifeguard academy.
The whole goal was to identify a victim before they
know they're in trouble and to get to them before
panic sets in, because once panic sets in, it's a
(22:49):
lot more difficult to maintain a clear thought process, and
planning prevents panic. I've never thought about this, what do
I need to grab? You know, when you see people
that evacuate in a hurry, it would be interesting to Okay, hey,
are you willing to share what you put in your car?
(23:10):
You know, and people like I just started grabbing.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
Stuff whatever I could grab.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
Yeah, yeah, as opposed to having a plan, like I know,
you know, and we'll talk about what happens if you
have five minutes to go, what happens if you have
thirty minutes ago. What happens if you have an hour ago?
And that determines where your priority should be and it
should already be identified, you know, and that go bag
is your default, your five minutes. This is what I'm getting.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
This is the last thing I can grab.
Speaker 4 (23:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
Uh, there are a lot of app Samardino Accounting, our
Office of Emergency Services has developed a really nice app
called sb Ready, and it gives you ideas on how
to begin developing your own plan. A very important component
of a plan is evacuation routes.
Speaker 4 (23:57):
Where are you going to go? And really where you live?
Speaker 3 (24:01):
You know, if you live in a community that only
has one way out, your trigger point to get out.
And when we're looking at posting evacuation warnings for orders,
those are things we take into consideration. What's the population
density within a given community, what are the evacuation routes,
what's the integrity of those evacuation routes? When do we
need to hit that management action point to start getting
(24:24):
those residents out of the area.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
That makes a lot of sense in my head now,
because I think I in some cases I was wondering,
I'm like these also don't look like they would necessarily
be in danger. Why are they evacuating them? But that
makes perfect sense. Well, if there's only one in and out,
they need to start getting out now just in case.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
Or if my plan says I'm going north, yeah, and
now suddenly I have a fire that's coming from the north. Right,
have I already identified what my evacuation route is going
to be and realizing that half of the if there's
a north and south evacuation, if half of that that
means the half of your residence. We've now doubled the
traffic on the south. It's going to take longer to
get out.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Yeah, it is. And we saw that with you know,
some of the fires recently one hundred percent they had
only one lane and cars ended up being abandoned.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
I come back to the Bridge fire when it came
into Rightwood and we lost our western evacuation route, oh right,
only teased out highway to to the one thirty eight
mm hm, you know, and we had and again comes
back to planning, to working with our sheriff partner CHP Partners, like,
we need to make sure we can decompress Highway one
thirty eight because it's during the evening commute. Yeah, such
(25:31):
that we can prioritize these residents getting out versus people
moving on through. You know, our desert community is trying
to get home to feeling Pinion Hills.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
And it comes back to a plan.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
It really does. It really does. And I feel like
my son has brought this up to us, and he
literally just walked up. We've been watching all the fire coverage.
We're just going through, you know, like everybody else, you know,
shock and sadness and all of these things. And my
son's like, what would you take? And like he just
walked up to and he's like, what would you take?
What would you take right now? And I'm like, oh
(26:06):
my god, I don't even think I've thought about that. Yeah,
Aiden like, I that's a great question. And we all
pubaly should need to sit down and talk about this.
And he's like, maybe we could put something on our fridge.
And I was like, that's not a bad idea. Like
let's have a little a little thing that just is
up there just to remind us if we see it.
We're like, oh, yeah, that's my job. My job's to
grabe this.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
And almost as important as having a plan is reevaluating
your pain? Yeah, yeah, you know, put yourself in the
situation of what our LA residents went through. Yeah yeah,
you know, how does your plan hold up? You know?
And this is a time we be very humble and
honest with yourself. And this is where it helps to
talk with a family member or somebody else that has
(26:46):
a pretty good plan. Yeah, and talk with your neighbor,
talk with your friend, talk with your coworker. Hey, you know,
has your plan changed? It all based on what we
just saw, right right?
Speaker 1 (26:55):
Good point.
Speaker 3 (26:56):
You know, when we have two hours or twenty four
hours to evacuate versus is you have fifteen minutes? Yep?
Speaker 1 (27:01):
And that's it?
Speaker 4 (27:02):
What are you taking?
Speaker 3 (27:04):
So to that point, a go kit and again you
get to tailor this to your needs. But a go
kit needs to include some of those things that we
don't have the ability to take when we don't have
the time. So how do we do that? We talk
about having all your documents. So are your documents in
(27:26):
a filing cabinet? Are they locked in a safe? Are
they behind something that you might not have the time
to get to. The easiest way to do that now
with technology is stored all in a flash drive yep,
you know, go through your house, run a five minute
video looking at stuff, so God forbid your house is
destroyed in an incident, whether it be a fire, earthquake, flood.
(27:49):
It's a lot easier for you when you begin working
with your insurance adjusters that you can document note this
is what I have, you know, and a thumb drive
takes up no space in your line.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
I know, it's just so easy, it's almost too easy.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
You don't think critical documents, you know, when you at
birth certificate, social Security cards, insurance. You know, that can
take up space. You know, especially people that are carrying
multiple policies or writers for various things in their home.
You know, as long as you have some documentation to
help start the process, and if you can.
Speaker 4 (28:20):
Digitally store that, it.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
Minimizes the footprint of stuff you need to take should
you not be able.
Speaker 4 (28:27):
To bring it along with you.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
We were just talking with Erica Hernandez on the last episode.
We were talking about she had lost her house in
the Edgehill fire and one of the things she's going
through right now still is remembering all the things in
her house. Yeah, for her claims, and she's just like,
I wish I had just taken video of my home.
(28:48):
I wish I would have just gone through because they
want every They want to know how many plates you had,
They want to know how many forks you had. Like
they it's down to those kinds of things. And then
let alone own the things you're not thinking about, you know,
the family heirlooms and all of these other things. And
she's like, I just that's one of the biggest pieces
of advice I would tell them, was make sure you're
(29:11):
documenting the things that are in your house you're not
thinking about it. Just it's so easy. Now take your
camera your phone out and just film it.
Speaker 3 (29:20):
You know. And and when you're working with your insurance company,
you know you can minimize.
Speaker 4 (29:25):
So much of the back and forth.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
Yes, if you've taken a couple hours out of one
of your days to document what you have, you know,
we're paying these insurance policies.
Speaker 4 (29:36):
You know.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
Now it's the time, you know, if we're processing a claim,
if you're in the unfortunate place where you have to
play and it doesn't matter what the situation is. Yeah,
if you are the victim of burglary and people take
stuff out, you know you you don't want to put
them in the situation of I'm sorry, but I need
to force you to provide proof that this was actually.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah, you're right, or floods or any
of that. Yeah, you're you're totally right.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
It's hard to find an area that in this country
that isn't immune from a type of natural disaster. You know,
we look at hurricanes on the east and South. We
look at flooding in the South. We have earthquakes over here.
We all have wildfires. You know, California is pretty unique
in that, you know, we have multiple threats. We live
under the constant threat of earthquakes. We look at wildfire,
(30:25):
We look at the potential tsunami for our coastal residents.
You know, there there are a number of threats, you know, wildfire.
Sometimes we think we're going to have enough time. You know,
there's no time for an earthquake. There can be little
warning for a tsunami. Mud and debris flows. We can
recognize the potential, but from when that debris starts moving
(30:48):
to the time to get out, no time. Yeah, and
that's going to be the next threat on the heels
of these wildfires, right, and it's something that that are
management teams as soon as you know, or even before
the fires out, we're beginning to assess mud and debrief
float potential. And you saw that happen over in the
Mount Baldy Canyon where there's k rail up throughout that community,
(31:09):
both through Ellie County and San Bernardino County, and they're
already talking about how to address that very real threat
over they eaten.
Speaker 4 (31:17):
And Palisades fire scars.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
Uh. We need precipitation, We need rain. The whole region
needs rain to finally put this fire threat to rest
for a few months. We need little amounts of rain
at slow rates.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
Gotcha. We don't need this request. Yes, you're right.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
That being said, it's something that that all our all
of our counties are already talking about. Yeah, and we
began talking about this last summer on the heels of
Bridge Line and Airport fires. What's that flood response going
to look like? And we need to be ready for
when it happens. The reality is there's so much material
up on those hillsides that our ability to manage that
(32:05):
does not exist. We can try and minimize the impact
that there's going to be an impact, and because of that,
when evacuation orders come up for mud and debris flow,
they need to be they need to be respected. Now,
fire moves through a community more often than not, it
leaves the road system intact. When eight feet of mud
comes through a community, we can't get in and you
(32:27):
can't get out. Yes, right, And it takes a lot
longer to move mud than it does to move fallen
trees from a wind event.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
You're right, Yeah, you're right. Does technology play a role
in helping with some of this? I mean, let's talk
about that because there's so much technology now. We've all
been using apps, and we've all been using our phones
for the last so many well forever, but now for
the fires, we're all learning about these other technology based
apps that we can have to know more. How is
(32:55):
that playing a role in firefighting now?
Speaker 3 (32:59):
One of the goals that fire Chief Dan Munsely for
our district has put forth is we are a fire
district that is going to innovate. It's going to we
are going to leverage current and emerging emerging technology to
the greatest extent possible. There there are a lot of
(33:21):
programs and apps out there that are available not only
to the public, but other apps that are available to
public safety, and County Fire has been working very hard
to incorporate that technology to the benefit of the citizens
and also us. What are some examples. Genesis is a
(33:43):
great program that's coming out that is helping us to
develop evacuation zones. You know, it wasn't too long ago
that the fire would be coming down and we would
have a map out going, Okay, we want our evacuation
box to run from this street to this street. Well,
what do you think about it there? And maybe we
should bring it down now. With Genesis, they've already been
(34:04):
pre identified and that's through the various counties.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
I've seen that. I've seen that in work. How that's
and it's fascinating because it's you don't it's it's not
like it's all squares or anything like that. They're kind of,
you know, different shapes there. But it's like, oh, my
house is in this particular zone.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
Uh, And it's a lot easier for us. We bring
up the map, we look at Genesis and it's just one, two, three,
four these zones go yeah, yeah, And that gets shipped
off to our Sheriff's Department Emergency Operations Division, uh, and
they begin crafting that message and it minimizes the timeline
from when the decision is made to when the citizen
is notified.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
Right, right, that's technology for yeah.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
Cool, What else do we have?
Speaker 4 (34:50):
Can't not talk about watch Duty?
Speaker 1 (34:52):
Oh my gosh, I know I was going to bring
it up, but I'm like, watch Duty has been I mean,
it's everywhere now and it's for good reason.
Speaker 4 (34:59):
It's so was going to absolutely good reason.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
Uh. Watch Duty was created and I had a huge
fortune to uh to meet with the creator of this
app a couple of weeks ago. Cool and to hear
his vision and how this this app came to be.
And you're right, it provides immediate information. Uh. They have
(35:25):
seasoned people that and most of this is driven by
radio traffic and monitoring radios and getting that information out. Now,
there's been some pushback that watch Duty is faster than
we are, Oh, which is not.
Speaker 4 (35:46):
Let's explain this.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
Yeah, yeah, I want to hear that.
Speaker 3 (35:49):
Not faster than we are, because we're the ones initiating
the radio.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
Right, you're the one saying what's happening.
Speaker 3 (35:55):
There's a process, there's a process where information makes its
way from the field to incident command to that decision
point being made. And that's the whole advantage of the
incident command system and maintaining that thirty thousand foot view
over an incident where we might have a division group
supervisor who says, hey, I need this highway shut down,
(36:15):
and he's over here and he's realizing what he needs,
and you have the broader scope that's maintaining that broader
view of going, hey, if we we're going to have
other impacts if we shut down this. However, we can
meet the division's needs if we shut down a one
mile section of that. And that's the few times that
watch duty might be incorrect as they're going off saying hey,
(36:38):
we've closed this freeway and what ultimately winds up is
a smaller segment of that. When we hear, hey, we're
going to evacuate this community. Understanding that comes from a
division that goes to incident command and unified incident command.
We have fire people there, we have law enforcement here
in California. Law enforcement declares evacuations based on recommendation from
(37:00):
fire professionals on where we think this fire is going
to go. But obviously that captain, that deputy chief there
at the command post is not the one creating that
evacuation nose. You know, he or she has a whole
staff underneath him. So that message comes up, that message
goes down, that message is crafted, that message is disseminated.
(37:22):
The bigger the incident, the more moving parts there are,
it takes a little bit longer for that message and
decision to be made. So watch Duty is great at
priming people for what is likely to happen.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
That's what I was going to say. It's almost like
just just hey, be alert, this might happen.
Speaker 3 (37:40):
Absolutely, yeah, yeah, And watch Duty continues to expand their
capabilities and when they start integrating with other software that's
out there, such as providing accurate fire perimeters and fire
perimeters over time, so you can literally go back and
scroll and see, Okay, the fire was here, now it's
to hear.
Speaker 4 (37:58):
Now it's to hear.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
They work with Genesis though, too, right, because I've seen
that on the watch Shooty app So I'm like, oh,
that's that's so interesting.
Speaker 3 (38:07):
And what I took away from from my meeting with
mister John Mills was his commitment to continue to expand
his product to make sure that people are getting actionable information,
you know, and if we can work with them. I
can't fault him for being quick and he respects the
process that takes place on our end. Oh yeah, and
(38:29):
realizing there there is a place for this and an
important place for citizens in the sense not everybody has
a radio scanner, not everybody has the ability to listen
to radios like a news station that's monitoring looking for
if something happens. But if it's it's a push based
product rather than pull I don't have to go to
a website and look for information. This app is going
(38:52):
to alert me when they think I need to pay
attention to something that is happening near me.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
So so cool. I mean, I I could see how
that little pushback might happen, because I think in some
cases I've seen it where it's like per radio traffic,
you know, ten more units are being requested. I think,
you know, I think to myself, I'm like, wow, is
that overstepping? I thought that at one point, I was like,
(39:18):
I wonder if that's overstepping because they're listening to this.
But also, on the other hand, I want to know
that there is more going to that fire right now,
because that means that fire is not controlled yet. Those
people in the neighborhood. They probably need to be knowing
they need to be getting out of there.
Speaker 3 (39:35):
And this is a product that's been out there in
blogs and websites for years, people listening to scanner traffic
and posting the.
Speaker 4 (39:41):
Information right right.
Speaker 1 (39:42):
I've seen it on like Twitter for many years. That's
the way it used to kind of get out.
Speaker 3 (39:47):
To have an app that pushes it to you rather
than having to pull it is you know it's going
to save lives?
Speaker 1 (39:53):
Yeah, I do agree. Are there any other I know
you were saying, there's a host of things on Ready.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
So.
Speaker 4 (40:02):
Ready.
Speaker 3 (40:03):
The other program we really want, at least our residence
to do is to register for the TEN system telephone
emergency notification system. We have two options available to us
when we want to mass notify impacted residents. The most
(40:23):
commonly known is WEA and that's the Wireless Emergency Alert System,
and that is an indiscriminate program where we draw a
box and we want every cellular device capable of receiving
a signal in here to receive the following message. TENS
(40:44):
requires a user to register their phone number. The good
thing about TENS is that if you're out of the
affected area.
Speaker 4 (40:53):
You will still get the alert.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
Oh okay, well that makes perfect sense.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
So somebody in Rightwood that is down the hill at work,
we'll get that message saying, hey, there's an evacuation going
on at home. And we use both of them. We
don't use one or the other as the county because
especially when we look at Rightwood and we have so
many visitors to the community, especially this time of year
(41:18):
when the mountains open. Yeah, anybody coming into that community
is going to be captured through WEIA. Anybody that lives
in that community that wants to be alerted, whether or
not they're in community, in the community at the time,
needs a register for TENS because the WEA system, the
way WEA looks at it as Okay, this person isn't
(41:39):
in the community, so they're not threatened. Therefore they don't
receive the alert. But TENS is available through the sb
ready app. It's available through our website. We'll get to
that a little bit later on how to register for TENS.
I think I did it in three minutes. Yeah, it's
a name, it's an email, it's an address. You can
(42:00):
enter your home address, you can enter your work address,
and then the number that you want to be notified
at that's great. So TENSI is a huge, yet another
way for us to communicate to people in an emergency situation.
You don't get day to day updates. We don't push out,
hey there's wind coming. This is evacuation warnings, evacuation orders.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
Is that just for Sanmberdandino County for the ten system
for us, Yes, we'll be pushing out to Sambordino.
Speaker 4 (42:27):
Now.
Speaker 3 (42:27):
For residents in Riverside County, you can go to Riverside
County's website and they have ways to register, and then
they even have cities within the county within Riverside that
maintain their own systems, and Riverside County has done a
very good job of making it easy for residents to
figure out where to go to register so that they
(42:49):
can be alerted in the case of emergency. So again,
we as passive tens is active. It takes the end
user to register to get the alert.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
Perfect. That's great information and I'll put as much as
I can in our description to on the podcast so
everybody can get those links right away.
Speaker 3 (43:09):
What are some apps that we as the Fire Service
are using. Yeah, oh, help us do our job. Something
alert California. It's a product put together. It comes out
of UC San Diego through a variety of cameras that
are posted up and down the state to monitor for
the start of wildfires that acknowledges a heat source that
(43:32):
camera can swing to it. They're automated or they can
be manually directed based on our end users and they're
specific people that have the ability to tilt and rotate cameras. Yeah,
to zoom in and hey, here's smoke, and yes, what
is this, what's it doing? Where's it going to begin
(43:53):
for our command centers to identify this might need a
reinforced response and begin moving assets into the area. And
there are hundreds of cameras, oh yeah, just throughout this region,
and it's not uncommon for our dispatch center to already
be looking at a camera and we'll see it pop
(44:15):
up as a note or a dispatcher will come over
and talk to us, Hey we have smoke showing in
the San Savane one camera. And then on our tablet
so Technology County Fire. All of our emergency apparatus we
use iPads and we run a software program called tablet Command,
which is a very strong tool for us as far
(44:38):
as being able to be dispatched to an incident, routed
to an incident, to see other responding units on the map.
You talk about safety, just going to a simple traffic
collision where one engine's coming from the east, one engine's
coming from the north, and the captain can say, hey,
you have engine two's coming from the east up at
this intersection. Just be on lookout so we can minimize
(45:00):
red on red events. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
Asset tracking once we get to a scene, once we
get to a large incident, and we begin assigning these
resources into these divisions, and we can have thirty forty
fifty sixty units.
Speaker 4 (45:13):
Who's where?
Speaker 3 (45:14):
You know, we used to write it on a whiteboard.
Before a whiteboard, it was a legal pad. And then
in the sant Ana Win when we're using legal pads.
Just when you get it all figured out, here comes
a gusta wiz tears it off into the fire and
you're like, okay, I had who where? Tablet command allows
us to digitally assign resources so we can track them,
(45:36):
we can set time or so we can check in
on them. The radio traffic got weird, it got scratchy.
I didn't quite hear who I got assigned to well,
I see the incident. Commander moved me to Division Alphare okay,
who's running Division Alpha? Oh, it's Captain to twenty one.
All right, Now I know my point of contact. I
know I'm working. I can see on the map where
all these units are lined out. All right, this is
(45:58):
where I'm going. It's a very very powerful tool. And
we've tied in with Alert California. We can bring the
cameras up.
Speaker 5 (46:06):
That's so cool. Yes, it's really cool. That's software from hardware.
Let's talk about a new program. Are unmanned aerial systems
or drones?
Speaker 1 (46:17):
Oh yeah, okay.
Speaker 3 (46:19):
County Fire is trialing right now a program called drone
as a First Responder or DFR, and we are conducting
this study in the city of San Bernardino.
Speaker 4 (46:30):
We're running it at night.
Speaker 3 (46:31):
It's a thirty day study right now to check the
feasibility and is this the right right thing to do?
But we are launching a drone using drone operator in
their suppression personnel to the call type we're investigating our
unknown type fires. That's where somebody is called nine one one.
It says they think they see a fire, they might
(46:52):
see smoke, but it's not a building. It's not a car,
it's not vegetation.
Speaker 4 (46:57):
I don't know what it is.
Speaker 3 (47:00):
We get a lot of these calls in the river
bottom with homeless encampments and they're hard to locate when
you're down at the road level, and if you can
see it, well, what's the pathway to get into that.
In the last three months of twenty four October November December,
the city of San Bernardino alone ran eight hundred and
thirty three unknown type fires.
Speaker 1 (47:22):
Oh wow.
Speaker 3 (47:24):
The majority of those fires we were unable to locate anything.
It was a good intent caller by a passer, by
a good intent called by a passer by thought they
might have seen a fire, but ultimately there was no fire.
Of the remaining a significant subset of the remaining calls
were warming fires.
Speaker 4 (47:43):
That presented no threat.
Speaker 3 (47:46):
It's an attended fire, no chance of it escaping based
on where it's burning, and we allow those to burn.
That's a legal fire. It's legal to allow somebody to
stay warm. But if we look at an engine, it
might take them thirty minutes to locate and ultimately access
to find.
Speaker 4 (48:04):
Out that this is a permitted fire or it was.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
Unfounded, and that takes away a resource correct in case
there is.
Speaker 3 (48:11):
So if engine one is looking for this call and
a chess pain comes out in their district, now that
resident is waiting for engine two to come across. They're
waiting longer. We are now sending drones to these types
of incidents as the only unit dispatched. Wow. And if
they're able to locate, the calls cleared out. If they
(48:31):
can locate in and determine that there is no threat,
the call is cleared out. If there is a threat,
but it's an attended fire, that drone has a PA
system on it and they can speak to the person
tending fire. This is Semernino County fire. You need to
put the fire out. And we have yet to advise
(48:52):
somebody of that and not have compliance with it.
Speaker 2 (48:54):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (48:55):
If they do determine, hey, this is a fire and
it needs to be addressed, we can add an engine
company or whatever is needed to that response, and then
that drone stays overseen to direct them in. You know, well,
what is my access on this? Hey, you're going to
come in and they're watching them come in? Okay, angle
left on that dirt road, come down, stop there, jump out.
(49:16):
I need to move off to your right one hundred
and fifty feet you'll be right on top of it.
So in the early stages, the first couple weeks of
this study, we found that it's very very efficient. Great
and we're not We don't deal with traffic, we don't
have to drive around the buildings, we go over them.
We have response times that we're measuring in seconds. We
(49:37):
have calls that we're clearing out in four minutes when
the response time for the engine just to get in
the area would be six minutes. So early indications show
that this is a very successful tool that we can
use to the benefit of the citizens.
Speaker 4 (49:54):
And the firefighters.
Speaker 1 (49:56):
That sounds amazing.
Speaker 3 (49:57):
It really is so cool.
Speaker 1 (49:59):
So how do you you know after these thirty days
that there's a group of people that decide, Okay, we're
going to move forward with this, or it has to
be adopted by the county, or how does that work?
Speaker 4 (50:09):
Absolutely, so.
Speaker 1 (50:11):
I'm going to vote yes.
Speaker 3 (50:12):
The manager of the robotics program. And the drone is
just one example that the UAS Command Aerial systems. And
we say UAS because the drone is the UAV, it's
just the flying unit. Yeah, but when you look at
the suite of sensors and it's equipped with high definition cameras,
thermal imaging cameras. Yeah, and then the operator and all
the software back at the base station and they're working
(50:34):
from a top of building. They have line of side
of these guys moving around. But so we have the
aerial systems, we have ground based systems, we have subterranean systems.
We're working or looking at aquatic systems that can submerge
and go locate submerged victims and bring them to the surface.
Speaker 4 (50:55):
This is technology that's out here.
Speaker 3 (50:58):
Now and does it have a place in public safety?
And we have a fire chief who's supported by a
board of supervisors that is willing to investigate that and
see if it will benefit the residents.
Speaker 1 (51:15):
Well, that makes me really happy.
Speaker 4 (51:17):
It's a fun time. You know, there's a joke.
Speaker 3 (51:21):
Two things that firefighters fear, or two things that firefighters
don't like, are.
Speaker 4 (51:25):
Change and the way things are.
Speaker 3 (51:30):
That's funny, like I said, And I keep coming back
to having a fire chief with an executive staff who
are supported by the board of supervisors that are willing
to do their part to try to move the needle.
Speaker 4 (51:44):
Oh, yes, it's a very fun time. To be a
part of this agency.
Speaker 1 (51:51):
That's super cool. I'm going to have another talk with
my son and say, so you were caring about the ready,
said go, how about being a firefighter?
Speaker 3 (51:59):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (52:01):
Before I let you go, this has been so informative
and I really appreciate you being here. Let's talk about
three takeaways. I always end the podcast this way, just
to wrap things up. What are the three main things
that you want our listeners and our viewers to come
away with today?
Speaker 3 (52:22):
If if you take anything away from our conversation here,
it's never too early to begin planning. And the easiest
way to begin planning is look at our app Ready
SB Ready SB County. It will it will walk you
(52:42):
through it, and there are a variety of other tools
out there. There is a tool out there that's right
for you that will make it easy for you to
feel comfortable making a plan to keep yourself and your
family safe. Register for TENS. If you live in San
Bernardino County, please register for TENS. We want Nothing would
(53:04):
make me happier than if an evacuation order came down
to your community and you got frustrated by how much
your phone was going off. I don't want I don't
want there to be a doubt in anybody's mind that
we think you need to leave. Yes, if your community
comes under the evacuation order, please respect it. Like I said,
(53:29):
we have a very different mindset when we come into
a community knowing that life safety has been addressed. That
gives us the greatest chance possible of moving on to
the next step, which is protecting homes and structures.
Speaker 1 (53:47):
That's perfect.
Speaker 3 (53:49):
Register for tens and heed those evacuation orders.
Speaker 1 (53:52):
Get out when you have to get out. Thank you
so much. Oh, this has been really, really wonderful. I
appreciate your time. I appreciate everything that you're doing to
keep us safe, and I hope to have you back again.
That this would be wonderful.
Speaker 3 (54:05):
Thanks for the opportunity everyone, It's been fun. Mm hmm
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