Episode 202: Firefighting in the Digital Age: Insights on How to Embrace Innovation with Shawn Downs

Episode notes

Embracing technology requires a mindset of evolution, not revolution...

Hello Smart Firefighting Community!

Welcome to another episode of covering real world innovations via interviews with fire service and technology industry experts that empower YOU to develop your very own Smart Firefighting strategy!

Thanks for joining us for our 4 part TSI Mini Series! The Technology Summit International (TSI) , held in Texas from December 5-7, 2023, focused on the practical implementation of technology in fire services. Its aim was to bring together the brightest minds in the fire service to explore technologies that made a real difference in firefighter safety and decision making.

It wasn't just about new tools; it was about effectively integrating them into the everyday realities of firefighting. The summit delved into the root cause of fire service challenges while exploring new ideas and pushing the boundaries of what was possible in firefighting.

In this episode:

How can technology enhance firefighting without changing tradition?

What are the key challenges and solutions in achieving interoperability and a common operating picture?

How can technology firms and fire departments better work together to enhance the safety and efficiency of firefighting services?

Find out from Shawn Downs - Deputy Fire Chief of Washington DC's Fire and EMS Department.

Chief Downs talks about the transformative impact of technology in the fire service industry, highlighting his experiences at the TSI.

He emphasizes the role of tech in enhancing firefighter training, safety, and operational effectiveness. He also stresses the importance of interoperability among fire departments and advocates for a collaborative approach to problem-solving between tech companies and emergency services.

So click play now to find out what he has to share! And stay tuned for the rest of our TSI Mini Series!

Head to www.smartfirefighting.com to discover how SFF accelerates innovation for emergency responders, to find out when our next event is, or review our curated resources!

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Chapters

1. 0:00 Intro
2. 1:12 Live at Technology Summit International with Shawn Downs
3. 1:58 Why a fireman belongs at a tech conference
4. 3:28 The main stage, NERIS and the energy at TSI
5. 5:50 Evolution, not revolution, from typewriters forward
6. 8:12 Bringing stakeholders together
7. 10:24 A healthier, safer fire department
8. 14:09 Line of duty death versus occupational fatality
9. 17:21 Locating firefighters on the fireground
10. 19:54 Checking the oil on our trucks and on our firefighters
11. 22:54 How the fire service and vendors should work together
12. 25:41 Be bold and listen to the firefighters
13. 31:05 Why we are still talking about it
14. 36:19 What DC Fire and EMS has started
15. 37:55 Takeaways from TSI
16. 43:13 How tech can improve firefighter health and safety
17. 48:11 Physiological tracking and GIS on the fireground
18. 50:17 Interoperability and a common operating picture
19. 54:49 Put your swords away and collaborate
20. 57:08 Parting words, share and ask questions
21. 59:31 Outro

Questions answered in this episode

What is TSI and what was its focus?

TSI is the Technology Summit International. Shawn Downs says it focused on the integration of technology in the fire service, the importance of embracing change management, and the need for interoperability in the common operating picture. He was surprised to find it was not tech people telling firefighters how to do their jobs, but intelligent people trying to design and enhance products for firefighter health and safety.

Hear it at 1:58

Why does Shawn Downs distinguish between line of duty death and occupational fatality?

Shawn Downs believes every firefighter who dies as a result of the job is a hero, but far too many deaths are unnecessary. He says cancer and cardiac events account for over 70% of firefighter fatalities, and many could be reduced by using PPE properly, cleaning up after fires, and taking care of their bodies. He finds it difficult to accept line of duty death when something could have been done to prevent it.

Hear it at 14:09

What is Shawn Downs's vision for using wearable technology in firefighting?

He wants firefighters to wear devices like smartwatches, rings, or armbands that track basic vital signs, similar to how millions of Americans already use wearables. If something goes wrong internally, an alert would be sent to someone in the agency to check on the firefighter before they become the next occupational fatality. He compares it to a gauge cluster in a car that warns you when something is wrong.

Hear it at 10:24

What is Shawn Downs's advice to tech companies wanting to work with the fire service?

Be bold and seek out departments that run a significant number of calls, not just small volunteer departments. Find people willing to be brutally honest, not stroke your ego. Listen to feedback and be willing to adapt your product. He says if you want to help solve a problem in the fire service, firefighters will give you all the feedback you need.

Hear it at 25:41

Why does Shawn Downs say we are still talking about common operating picture?

Because the fire service is still not doing it. He says after 9-11, NIMS was introduced to create a common set of nomenclature and incident command across police, fire, and EMS, but 22 years later, departments are still not communicating the same way. He heard someone at the conference refer to the rear of a structure as side three, which is not what NIMS calls it.

Hear it at 31:05

Transcript

Machine transcript of the published audio. Names may be misspelled and some sections are missing.

Ep 202 transcript

Firefighting in the Digital Age: Insights on How to Embrace Innovation with Shawn Downs

Speakers: Kevin Sofen, Shawn Downs

Source: Whisper medium.en machine transcription of the published Podbean audio (no original transcript found in Drive), lightly cleaned. Speakers were separated by voice clustering and then checked and assigned by hand at every speaker change. Gaps where the model returned no usable text are marked [inaudible m:ss].

[0:00] Kevin Sofen: Welcome to the Smart Firefighting Podcast, where we cover firefighter technology trends in change management. With over 300 podcasts created, this might be one of my favorite episodes ever produced. Today, we welcome Washington, D.C. Deputy Chief Shawn Downs, who recaps the experience at the Technology Summit International, TSI, especially around the integration of technology in the fire service, the importance of embracing change management, and the need for interoperability in the common operating picture. We discuss the improvement of firefighter health and safety through technology, the prevention of occupational fatalities, and the utilization of software tools in the fire service. We also cover how emerging technology tools using body worn wearables, such as localization tracking and biometrics, while leveraging a 5G LTE connected world, can enable new insights for incident commanders. There's a lot of valuable nuggets in this one and enjoy the show. The fourth and maybe the last, unless something else happens tonight, podcast of the TSI obsession sitting here alongside deputy fire chief of health and safety and DC fire, the one and only Shawn Downs. Shawn, how you doing?

[1:12] Shawn Downs: I am doing well, man. The conference hall is empty. Everyone is out of here except for the bodybuilding show downstairs, which is quite the contrast to what we've experienced.

[1:24] Kevin Sofen: The same, very different. Yes. walking in the show floor or walking in the first floor lobby and it was some bodybuilders which was very different than some of the fire tech and the fire entrepreneurs that were just here but you know all important I guess nonetheless right?

[1:40] Shawn Downs: They're very important I would just have to say a little more intimidating. There's a few people that I thought could rip my face off.

[1:48] Kevin Sofen: Indeed. We're eating it. Both. So we're here in Irving we had an awesome couple days here. Tell me about your experience at TSI.

[1:58] Shawn Downs: So, I would have to say I'm shocked, right? When I originally got asked to come down here and be a part of this, I was kind of befuddled. Why? I'm a fireman. Why are you inviting me to a tech conference? Even more so, why are you inviting me to speak at a tech conference? And then it all began to make so much sense. Everything that we were looking at everything that we're doing, everything the world is doing, let alone the fire service, is moving towards more and more tech integration. With that being said, I came down here with a very open mind. I was eager to see, though I was a little apprehensive to listen to a bunch of fellow nerds tell me how to do my job. That's not what it was at all. What it was a bunch of really intelligent people that are trying their best to design products, enhance products, create interoperability between products or platforms, all in the name of firefighter health and safety and public health and safety in general. I was amazed, man. I mean, really, it was truly awe-inspiring to learn everything that I did this week, and I can't wait for year three now.

[3:16] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, expand on that a little bit more from just the, not only the people who are here, but kind of the energy, the vibes. There was main stage sessions, there were these breakout sessions. Double-click into that a little bit more.

[3:28] Shawn Downs: Yeah, so the main stage, highlighted by beginning with Dr. Lori and talking about NERIS and everything that the service as a general is going towards was amazing, right? You always want to know what the end goal is or the next step. I don't believe that's the end. the next step so that you as a service know why you're doing what you're doing and what you're working towards, right? And then obviously hearing from Chief Butler and all of the support that IFC gives every entity within it, but the tech group especially in your somewhat infancy in the TSI in general platform, the breakout sessions, hearing from Chief Pavlitz and things that we're doing from a common operating picture or, you know, the group and all the stuff that's going on with the training and how tech, AI, realistic training simulators, things like that, how that can advance the service, all while maybe not putting our men and women through the same exact things that we have to. Nothing will ever replace real live fire training, but real live fire training does come at a cost. And for most departments, the opportunity is few and far between. Most departments aren't like Washington DC with a very robust training grounds where we're burning almost every single week, but the platforms that are out there, the things that you can use to get your people the reps that they desperately need, the possibilities are endless in a place like this to start talking about it and even more so the feedback that you can give to guide the direction of the next phase of these products.

[5:04] Kevin Sofen: Only a hundred things I want to expand upon into so to figure out where to particularly go, I mean you mentioned even like immersive learning, virtual reality in terms of how it can be a piece of the puzzle, how we can integrate it, where it's not necessarily replacing live fire training, it's complementing, it's supplementing, and I love the whole the phrase and not or. What are your thoughts in terms of how the fire service needs to kind of maybe continue to rethink how we're approaching the technology integration, the tech management, ultimately the change management to embracing how technology can start to have this sort of evolution on a revolution mindset kind of integrating maybe you know starting slow but also eventually how do we kind of continue to embrace the tech change management mindset.

[5:50] Shawn Downs: So I think you do it by digesting what you've already done. When I joined the fire service in the 1990s many departments were still operating with typewriters. We heard from Chief Deal this week, that Philadelphia was as recent as 2016, which is...

[6:06] Kevin Sofen: The typewriters are very cyber secure.

[6:08] Shawn Downs: Yeah. I mean, it's kind of like when Gordon Graham comes to town and he wants his little projector, you know, with the clear, projectable film and little markers to draw on. But we, as departments have, we've revolutionized, right? We've adopted computer systems. Many of us are getting away from paper forms and we're going to fillable PDFs or other platforms to be able to speed up and retain files instead of file drawers everywhere. We're going to Cloud-based storage systems. We're not using cards for dispatch procedures. I mean, that's what it was when I joined in the 90s, at least in the volunteer world, we had legitimate cards that they would pull to tell what units were supposed to respond for a particular address. Now, computer-aided dispatch does all of that for us. So everyone that's apprehensive to embracing tech, I don't think they realize they have already, right? Like we're not using strings and Dixie cups to communicate with one another, we're using radios, right? And we're not using just radios, we're using the latest and greatest radios on the latest and greatest networks. We have the ability to talk statewide in certain regions. It's utterly amazing. and you have to be willing to embrace all of that again, the and or. No, you've got to do this and that. You need redundancy in everything that you're doing, at least as you transition over, right? I think we learned that with the big, I'm not gonna use their name, but the big crash to a staffing platform a couple of years ago that sent every department, mine included, into a whirlwind. You still have to have a backup plan because sometimes things will fail. But if you are failing to embrace what tech can do to speed up your processes, to make everything safer, and dare I say, to maybe even help you make decisions, then I think you're really missing out.

[8:12] Kevin Sofen: And that's one of the reasons why TSI exists is to bring together these different stakeholders, the academia, the institutional partners, the .gov, .org, .edu's, the small companies, big companies, to have these forums to ultimately talk about, how can we come together to move technology forward? And you talked about driving the conversation. So this technology can help first responders make better decisions. So we can help make first responders better, faster, safer. And if it's not accomplishing that, then it's, frankly, a waste of time. But we are doing that. And sort of with that, in terms of this collective mindset embracing how can we, you know, share best practices. And one thing that I took a lot away from the show is in some aspects of industry you'll find maybe there will be competitors. There's companies that have similar products. But in the fire service, no one's really competing with each other. You have never found a firefighter that would be like, I don't want that other firefighter to also succeed. And a lot of the fire service members here want to continue to collaborate with each other, want to continue to share what they've done. But And one thing I heard many times today and throughout the show is, well, what Brian Norris is doing in San Antonio with telemedicine, incredible. What Quik Kessler is doing with drones as a first responder, amazing. What these different applications, but it's sort of like, well, where do I start? And that's where it's kind of the birth of this idea of the sort of like the how I built this series, but sort of how I did this. And frankly, I hope to continue to use you as a case study, but how can we learn from some of these other departments around the country about how they did something? And some of it could have been like how they used Google or Microsoft in some manner to help them save a little bit of time, to help them sleep better at night because they know there was some type of better accountability done by an AI tool that helped them better do quality assurance on some report. whatever it may be. And so I guess one question I'd ask you for this about like, what are some ways that you see that technology can be integrated to the FHIR service? I mean, you know, one certain aspects that I know you've talked a lot about are biometrics, tracking, but it's less about the biometrics and the tracking. It's sort of, what is it that you actually get from some of these aspects of technology and how are you thinking about that?

[10:24] Shawn Downs: So me in particular, when you talk about those couple of points that I discussed in the presentation that we did. I look to gain a healthier, safer fire department on the other end of it, right? One of the things that I always preach is an equal emphasis on the health and safety of the community we serve as well as the health and safety of our responders. I don't prioritize one above the other. I say that at 16 years old when I joined the volunteer fire department, I signed my name on a dotted line saying that I would trade my life for someone that I did not know. However, that doesn't mean that I will willy-nilly go and do something incredibly stupid just for maybe that chance, right? And as I've aged and as I've spent a quarter of a century in this service, I've realize that there are things that happen to firefighters that probably don't need to happen. So you talked about the biometrics or the physiological tracking of firefighters. I know that sounds crazy, but is it really crazy? I mean, how many millions of Americans, and we'll just stay right here in the country, walk around every day with a smartwatch on their arm that can tell them their simple, basic vital signs, that can tell them how many steps they took, that can tell them a lot about their human body and how it's operating, right? It isn't any different than the gauge cluster that's on your automobile. You look at that every time you're in your vehicle, like you don't even realize it. Just imagine if we could embrace that and make that just a standard across the board for all firefighters in this country that, hey, you're going to have some type of wearable, whether it's a watch, it's a ring, it's a necklace, it's an arm band, whatever works for you, because there are multiple things that you could do this with, that you would just have a gauge on yourself. Oh, and if something happens internally within your engine and your oil's running low, you're running out of gas, you're overheating, whatever the case may be, an alert is sent to someone that's identified within your agency to say, Hey, you need to check on this person before they become that next occupational fatality. And I think it's, it's where we have to go for our members. And again, I learned this week from John Oates, right? Becoming a very good friend of mine already was for the last couple of years as we've adopted in force in Washington, DC, and we're doing everything in accordance with NFPA 1500, as far as exposure tracking goes for our members, but he talked about the physiological tracking of F1 drivers, right? They do that. They're driving a race car. Their lives aren't on the line. They're not mission critical people. They're not tactical athletes. They drive a race car and in their line of work, it's a standard and it's what they do because their driver's life means that much. Our firefighters' lives that much.

[13:33] Kevin Sofen: I mean one phrase that you said that I heard about Burt Clark brought it up but the whole idea of occupational fatality versus line of duty death and I know this gets kind of a touchy subject in a lot of ways but how unfortunate Bert talks about this in his book and he talked about his talk and I'd love to hear you expand upon it but there's a lot of preventable situations in the fire service and due to a failure of protocols and sometimes failure of culture it leads to an unfortunate situation happening. Explain to me why there's a difference between the two and what are your thoughts on that?

[14:09] Shawn Downs: I believe the phrase line of duty death is very heroic and I believe that every firefighter that dies as a result of this job is a hero. However, a lot, far too many of them are unnecessary and I won't even talk about the operational ones right now. Okay, I'll remove those away. I don't want to throw that stone. I don't want to cast that stone. That's another day in another platform. We'll just talk about cancer or cardiac, which are the two leading causes, over 70% combined, of our firefighter fatalities. And I know, as sure as I'm sitting here, that while we cannot prevent 100% of our cancer deaths, that the general public has a high rate, thus we're going to have a high rate, that we could reduce that additional exposure simply by utilizing our PPE that is provided to us, simply by taking care of our bodies and doing what four-year-olds do after they come inside after playing. After a fire, we should be doing the same thing. We should be cleaning ourselves. We should be putting on clean clothes, and in our case, clean gear, and all these other things that are very elementary level tasks. They're not even tech-related that could ultimately reduce that. So I do find it very difficult to digest line of duty, death, and all that honor when we could do something about this, right? Not distracting or detracting from that particular member. And I really walk a fine line when I say that dart is being thrown at the service, because we can do more. The same thing on the cardiac. I cannot tell you how many fire department conferences I've gone to where I've listened to personnel talk about new ways of fighting fires for a safer fire environment. This week we learned about a smart nozzle where you can operate the pump panel from the tip of a nozzle, which is some otherworldly level technology for someone like me. I didn't even know that existed. It was pretty interesting to see, and this was not the case this week, but far too often it is the case that the people that are standing up there teaching you are 350 pounds. They're stuffing their face with quadruple cheeseburgers and smoking two packs of Marlboro Reds and we can do better. So, when that cardiac event happens to that, yes, it's line of duty, but it's, man, we could have been better. We just could have been better.

[16:54] Kevin Sofen: I mean, thank you for sharing all that, and I agree, we've been talking about all this tech is great. Coming back to Burt, and he talks about, I mean, if we can't even put on our damn seat belt, what is some of this new technology going to help us with? And a part of that's just doing a hundred little things right, but if we can't do something as simple as putting in your seatbelt, how can you expect all these other little protocols that need to happen for the fire service to maintain safety for themselves and the community to be safe?

[17:21] Shawn Downs: It's funny you say that. We spoke to one vendor this week that has a product that we're interested in that would help locate firefighters or map out a fire ground and pinpoint where firefighters are on the X, Y, and Z axis. And the Z axis has been lacking in the fire service forever, right? Like, They're one of the first ones to ever really figure this out and just recently won a competition. Kudos to them. I mean, they're great people. But when we were talking to them the other night, Bert's thoughts came through my head and ultimately out of my mouth when they were talking about charging this device and that they could mount a charger in the back of the unit and the device could sit in the charger. And then when firefighters were going down the road, they could take it out of the charger and put it on the air pack and I said it'll never happen and they're like what do you mean I was like if it's not already on there I'm ready to go it's not going to happen so I told him I said the only way it's going to work if it's already affixed to the SCBA strap and you have a little magnetic charger on the base of it that's tethered to the wall of the fire truck that way they don't even have to disconnect anything when they put their SCBA on it automatically detracts but that's that same thing that Bert's saying right like it's 2023. Seat belts have been standardized in automobiles at least since the 1980s. I know the first few vehicles I rode in as a child didn't have them, especially in the back of the station wagon that I remember riding in. But since the 1980s, they've been really standardized in vehicles and we still can't get people to wear them. Like, do we really need tech to come in and make these things automatic, like Marty McFly style with his shoelaces and clip these things in? I know we don't kill a lot of firefighters every year because of that and that's not burt's message burt's message is exactly like you said if we can't do that how in the world are we going to do the big stuff which goes back to that phrase i said to them the other night when we were speaking if you have to trust someone to take this out of a charger and put it even though it's for their life it's not going to happen and that's that's unfortunate that we know that and ultimately that We accept that.

[19:34] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, and bring this back to the occupational health side of it, and going back to John, that was one phrase I heard him say in the session when I was in there, he talked about, we change the oil in our truck more than we change the oil in our people. And again, that could be for a multitude of reasons, but from what you learned from John this week, as well as that comment, what are your thoughts?

[19:54] Shawn Downs: So I'm going to rephrase it just a little bit. I'm going to say we check the oil in our trucks more than we can. check the oil in our people, right? I believe that you can relate what I'm getting ready to say a little bit better by saying that. Every single day, our firefighters come into the firehouse in Washington, DC, we have technicians that drive all of our apparatus. The technicians thoroughly, I mean, I'm talking like a DOT level inspection of the apparatus that they're responsible for. Part of that is checking the oil, checking every nook and cranny, every tool, every appliance, making sure everything is squared away and that thing's ready to go. Not one person that comes into the firehouse, and I'm not proud of this, I learned this week, right? Not one person checks their vital signs to even see, hey, am I okay to be here, right? Twice this year, we had firefighters in their early 40s on duty experience a cardiac event that ultimately led them in the cath lab and a short stay in the hospital and both are still off. They'll both make a full recovery. They'll both come back to work. But you have to wonder, man, if we had a wearable in these people, could we have known, oh man, something's off. Or if we just got into the habit of, hey, every morning when you come in, if nothing else, just check your vital signs. We did it during COVID. We had to do our temperature during COVID. Everybody adjusted to it. Everybody got used to it. We had to do it again at 1,900 hours, which was the midpoint of the shift. Easy things to do, right? I mean, you can walk in CVS. You could slide your arm in a blood pressure cuff that spits out your blood pressure, your O2 saturation, your pulse rate, and everything in 10 seconds. We spend 15 minutes checking out a fire truck.

[21:44] Kevin Sofen: Well, and this is an opportunity where tech can be an enabler that's happening in the background that can help provide information, again, on biometrics, also aspects of location. And earlier, you had mentioned the idea of data that's being created. I know one of the challenges we talk about here is data overload. If it's just a bunch of ones and zeros and it's not synthesized in a way to where I can understand it, especially during the environment of when I'm driving to a scene and I have either just minimal time, minimal screen, a suspension with the screen, that's a frame that's bouncing, and just the stress needing to get all the information into the environment, there's just a lot going on. So this data that's created needs to be synthesized, processed in a way where you can ultimately get it to a green or red light, or a go, no go, or an exact, the other idea of alerts. Again, like dashboards, I heard this phrase, dashboards are dead. But it's really, it's alerts that are important. How do you see, and what are your thoughts in terms of how the technology can be integrated, but particularly how the data needs be considered when we're providing some type of information and insight to the first responder?

[22:54] Shawn Downs: So I think first and foremost the service itself has got to actively participate in events like this. I think vendors have an idea but ultimately don't know the service, right? So we as the fire service have got to be actively involved in telling people what we need. So what do we need? Well, We need exactly what you're saying. I don't need 50 million pieces of information up here that I have to decipher. I need to know I'm going to go with a vendor that we currently use, Haas Alert has a great product. They could have shown me a map where everything is and I can see that sitting. If I want to bring up the computer version, the dashboard and all that, I can see where every unit is in Washington DC at any given hour, I can see the route of travel, I can see their speed, I can see this, that, and the other. That's not what we told Haas we needed. We needed to know if this vehicle's traveling at this speed and this route, and there's a vehicle over here that's traveling at this speed and this route, if nothing changes, they don't change their course, they don't speed up, slow down, they're going to intersect. Dumb that all the way down to there's a blinking light that is in front of our driver that blinks, and our driver just knows, I need to slow down and I need to look because somebody else is coming. And now they've integrated that with Waze and Apple CarPlay and everything else. They send alerts when you're approaching an emergency vehicle and our road work and things like that, right? That's an example of the fire industry telling a tech company, this is exactly what we need. A tech company, because I was in a lot of those early conversations with Corey Hosts wanting this big display with this big map and things like that. And it's amazing. It really is sitting in my office. But driving down the street, no. Make it as simple as can be, just a little blinking light. Now we're actually talking about maybe adding an audible alarm as well to it, because sometimes you just need that extra eye-catcher. And I think that is the perfect example of what you're trying to say.

[25:04] Kevin Sofen: Well said. And yeah, Corey is an inspiring, thoughtful entrepreneur. And I think one of the best things that he's done that anyone listening that's trying to integrate with the fire service you need to go and live a day in the life of a firefighter. You need to go and do ride-alongs. You need to go and spend time in the fire station, break bread, talk shop. And I know that there are some other companies that you've experienced over the time and some that you're working with now. And just what would be your message or thoughts about the message to entrepreneurs about how they should approach integrating to the fire service and really trying to find, to build partnerships with the fire service?

[25:41] Shawn Downs: So I would say be bold, it's easy and it's convenient and please don't take what I'm getting ready to say as a knock on a small volunteer department, right? Because I'm from a volunteer department, that's where I got my start. I'll be at two stations and 160 people and a partridge in a pear tree. But if your only exposure to the fire service is going to the local volunteer fire department that ran 13 calls last year. I'm walking a fine line with what I'm about to say. I question the amount of experience that you're gonna have giving you direction. Go to your NERIS larger area and talk to them. I'm not saying you need to come to a Washington DC or an FDNY or Chicago or whatever, but there are many sizable departments that are going on at least a few thousand runs a year that can say, hey, this is our issue. This is what we need solved. And then from there, branch out, go get different opinions. One of the big things that I've told an up and coming tech company right now that is kicking rear ends left and right in the fire service and in tech in general is don't take my word for it, right? Like this is just what I'm saying I need. Go talk to this one, talk to that one. So be bold and find people that are willing to not stroke your ego, but be 100% brutally honest. I'll tell you a quick story. The same company I've talked about a couple of times now first showed up in Washington DC with an iPhone 14 affixed to the front of their helmet. And I laughed at them. I said, get that off or we're done. And they were like, excuse me? I said, you're on the Eastern seaboard of the United States of America in Washington DC. No firefighter is going to walk around with something on the front of their helmet. I won't even talk about, you know, the unbalanced weight and the neck strain and things like that. I'm talking sheer aesthetics. You're not blocking a firefighter's placard in Washington, it's not happening, you know? Okay, right then and there, took it right off, cut a pouch off of a rucksack, duct taped things together and we made it work. Ultimately went back, re-engineered their entire product and listened to the feedback that they have. And other than a couple of pictures this week, which actually they laughed at, I haven't, you know, heard anything else about anything being mounted to the helmet, right? So again, do that. Find someone that is, and I'm not saying it has to be me, right, but there are thousands and thousands of people just like me in the fire service that if you want to know, we'll tell you. I won't yell and scream, but I will be brutally honest. I promise you that.

[28:24] Kevin Sofen: Yeah. of first responder members that want to have that dialogue with industry, and then they're not sort of looking at industry as like, you're trying to sell me something. It's having that actually conversation of, hey, we can help each other. And the industry is, yes, there's a capitalistic mindset to the industry. Having said that, if there is a company with good intentions, I can almost guarantee most firefighters would love to have a 30-minute conversation with you, would love to walk around the fire station, maybe even take you on a call. And I think that is one of the most important things that everyone needs to consider when talking about bringing tech to the fire service. It's way different when you're in front of the whiteboard and you're looking at Excel spreadsheets and talking about how great your model is. But when it comes to the end of the day, it's got to be the Haas Alert approach of how they took the tech to market and made it took all their capabilities and all that data and getting it to that flashing red light that while you're driving down the street.

[29:19] Shawn Downs: Yep. simplified it, listened, took all the feedback that they needed and are continuing to. They wouldn't have to alter their product. They honestly, from a business standpoint, and I have an MBA, their product line is solid and they've integrated it so much into just everyday usage in the tech world that if they could make enough money and be perfectly fine, never adopting any new technology, never adapting anything they're doing. And when this runs its course, if it fails to evolve beyond here, everyone that has any kind of ownership in that company would be perfectly fine. It's not what they're doing. They're continuing to talk. what can we do to enhance this? What can we do to make this better? It's not going to cost anything additional. There isn't any profit to be made there, not from the fire service at least, right? But it's because they're trying to solve a problem. And I think that's the biggest difference in a fly-by-night company, not just in tech, but in general, that wants to make money versus someone that's trying to solve a problem. If you come to any fire department in the United States with the mindset that you want to help solve a problem, especially if that problem has to do with the life of the community we serve or our own lives. I promise you will get all the feedback in the world.

[30:41] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, and you're living proof of it, so thank you. Yes, sir. And to bring it back to something you said earlier, you, I heard you say the word interoperability in this conference, there was a whole session on common operating picture. actually titled, why are we still talking about common operating pictures? And we already have it. But this idea of interoperability, COP, in your terms, what does that mean?

[31:05] Shawn Downs: So I'm going to say why we're still talking about it, right? And I didn't get to sit in that session and that stinks because I tried to support everything that Chief Pavlitz did this week, because I really do enjoy Dave and everything he stands for, not to mention he's right across the river from us. So I'm going to go off on a tangent without any knowledge about what they said. I'm going to say, why are we still talking about it? Because we're still not doing it. After 9-11, NIMS was brought to the forefront. We were going to have this common set of, you know, nomenclature, this common way of incident command, and it was going to be common across police, fire, EMS, everything. I'm not going to reference particular events, but I think we've seen time and again where, on the police side of things, a failure to have a true command structure has ultimately led to an event that didn't go quite as well as it should have or as smooth as it should have and even in the fireside. This week I won't throw the fire department out because I have a lot of respect for the fire department but I heard a person that was presenting refer to the rear of a structure in their jurisdiction as side three which is not what NIMS calls it right and it was just like the latest and greatest example of how we're still not communicating the same way. And I'll go a little bit deeper on that. Every NIOSH report that I've ever read, every single one, if you go to the dominoes, the key factors that ultimately led to this firefighter's death, one of the top two or three always is communications. So here we are, 22 years later, after 9-11, 20 years after NIMS became federally accepted that this is what we're going to do. This is how we're going to talk. This is our common operating picture. And we're still not there. Why? It's my sandbox. You can't tell me how to do things in my sandbox. And we've got to break that. I'll speak really quick on the COG region since I've run the health and safety subcommittee now for three years. One thing that we realized really early on, something we spoke about 20 minutes ago now, which is, I'm operating and working on the same project you are, and you're operating and working on the same project that Montgomery County is. Montgomery County is working on the same thing that Loudon is. What if we just started sharing information? Hey, here's my policy, man. Bounce that off of yours. Don't reinvent the wheel. Like, use this, you know, whatever. Okay, well, what happens if we come into your area, oh, well this and on and on and on. Like we're getting that. We put the swords back in their sheaths, right? Like we don't hold them out. We meet regularly and we do business when we meet. That has now grown into a nationwide group that I've had the pleasure of running now for a year with Julie Oberg, who's getting ready to retire from Spokane, Washington. And I mean, this week I picked up Lindsay Judah on that. Awesome. Right? She wants to be involved in that team but that's the answer come to these come to these and talk to people this week you know i found out that there were departments in texas that are begging for the stuff that we're working on in washington dc simple exchange of information you know i've already fired off probably half a dozen emails to them hey here's what i have on this here's what i have on this you know like really what good does it do to stay married to the same old way of doing something which is outside of what you should be doing as a national standard, all in the name of, in my opinion, you can't tell me what to do.

[34:48] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, the amount of times I heard people this week say that, oh my gosh, I guess I had no idea this was going on was quite a bit. And even from the IFC, there's the wildfire evacuation tool, there's these incredible amount of resource from the IFC that maybe haven't been presented in the right way, but are free tools that can be used to save you time, to save you effort, give you new capability. I was talking with Greg Campanella from Pensacola, and one thing he talked about, he wanted to have more of these breakout sessions with Microsoft and with some of these other software companies here, like the Interos of the world, particularly with Microsoft. Let's say that for a second. He was like, well, I have a fairly basic functioning knowledge of it, but there's some of these new amazing tools from Microsoft that are part of the Microsoft Suite, where if you pay for the Microsoft Suite, There's an incredible amount of capabilities that come with it and would love to be able to expand upon, hey, I'd love to have a workshop. So I'm at the 20-yard line. I want to now be able to squeeze the line with whatever subscription we have on how you can use these different large language learning models, how you can use these different aspects of AI to do quality assurance, how you can use pivot tables, how you can do surveys to create graphs. Like, there is a lot of capability that we have from the tools that we're already paying for that we're not using. And that, to me, is something that is just, like, so fundamentally addressable, and that's what excites me, because that's, like, a major, we can have a force multiplier, we can move the ball down the field and like that. What are your thoughts?

[36:19] Shawn Downs: I love it, right? We began a couple of years ago, well, I've been in this role now for two years and a couple of months. And right after taking over, my big push to my team was, hey, we need to modernize everything. I hate fillable form or like handwritten forms, like everything's going here. We started moving everything to like office forms and exactly what you're talking about, automating graphs and things. This past year, we've been working through Power BI and taking dashboards to another level. When it comes to reporting accidents, it used to be a fricking spreadsheet with 300 rows and probably 30 columns. and you're sitting there bashing your head against a wall, trying to extrapolate data from that. And you've created that in Excel, you move that over to Power BI, you've identified the fields. Now my team can go in and they can say, hey, in the first battalion on number one platoon, here's our number one style of accident. In the third battalion, it's this. On all of number four platoon, it's this. You know what I mean? Like you said, by something we've already done. So how does TSI help with that? I'm gonna throw this back at you. but they set it up, right? A virtual learning experience with Microsoft, with as many of us as use Microsoft, I'm quite certain they would love to do that. 90 minutes on Microsoft Forms this week, next month it's 90 minutes on Power BI, next month, or maybe start small, just Word and Excel and PowerPoint, right?

[37:55] Kevin Sofen: I mean, there's a lot of ideas and takeaways, and if you're listening to this and you came to TSI, and whenever this comes out, if you've got an idea that can make it better, please reach out to me directly. But one of the key takeaways was, I want to work with the first responders like yourself, like Campanella, like Norris, like just a lot of these amazing first responders, you know, Pflugerville, all these departments that are doing amazing stuff. The whole, how I built this and building a case study around it and kind of showing how they did it, allowing them to speak, giving them this sort of the case study around, here's the problem, here's the solution, here's the economic implications, the social implications, the political implications, the cultural implications, and just context around it, the information around it, the templates around it, to where that person, that first responder, speaks on it virtually and or in person for 10, 20, 30 minutes, and then has this sort of case study roadmap on, hey Shawn, you wanna start a drone as a first responder program? Here is your 50 hours of homework. And it's sort of like this mini masterclass, where again, this is just sharing best practices on how to use Microsoft tools, how Brian Norris is doing this virtual telemedicine program, which when I sat through that presentation, I saw the videos of what they're doing. And I saw just the ability to send, when someone calls dispatch to be able to send out a link to their phone to be able to have an immediate FaceTime with an EMT at the dispatch center and what that's done to reduce the amount of ambulance runs they've had to do, but particularly he showed this video of teaching this mother whose child almost drowned had to do CPR on a nine-month-old, or this one lady who, this one family who this one they, their daughter had a baby at the home and the dad was holding the baby in the bathroom and wasn't keeping it warm enough and the guy told him, hey you got to put on more towels, the kid, the newborn can't keep himself warm. Then the other was asking like where the placenta was and he looked over and he was holding the baby about at his chest and the placenta was at the sink below and he was like, hey you got to have the placenta higher so it's still getting blood flow And that was like just that whole idea of a picture is worth a thousand words for the video is worth a million or whatever it may be but the whole like Brian, how did you do that? And I think that's a, I would love to see how that can be replicated. And again, that there's no competition in the fire service. There is a brotherhood, a sisterhood that is unlike anything else. And to me, that's a big priority as well as how we do all this I'm talking about, but doing the virtual forums, podcasts, roundtables, webinars that yeah, coming together and hanging out and having barbecue and talk to shop, love it. And I hope we get to do that as much as possible. You can also do it once a month and a virtual kitchen table talk for 25, 50 people and have one, two speakers. And it's not expensive. People will maybe get really into virtual events during COVID, but then it's evolved. But there's still a demand and an interest for stuff because we all want to keep learning, but we can't always just drop everything we're doing and go hang out in Texas for three days. So I think that's a big priority of mine, as well as just, I mean, that mindset that the ball is bouncing every day the year and we got to continue to integrate this concept at the other IFC events from CRR but the wild end event WUI at the at their EMS event so IFC has a great foundation and framework that I'm excited to continue to build upon and it's been amazing to see the IFC top brass from chief Butler to chief Wolford to you know past president-in-chief Donna Black and Rebecca Harnett, and just name dropping all these amazing people, Jeff Doolin, and particularly the tech council, Corey Claiborne, Dan Munsey, Scott Roseberry, all these individuals are so committed to really continuing to be a catalyst and force for good in the fire service. So I leave TSI more fired up and inspired than ever to be that force, and it's also different for me because, and this is my ask to you in the fire service, is that I'm not a firefighter, but I've been working with the fire service for 11 years, and nothing gets me more fired up and being able to work with individuals like yourself. But I'm not fun fire. So I do have the time to do some of these other things that when you are in the fire service, you don't have the time. You just have another job. So that's my kind of ask to you, or my kind of plea to you and to others that myself, I, and others on my team want to help you to help get the ball. If you get a crazy idea, like there's probably maybe another company that's already doing something around that. There's someone who can connect you with. or if you have this idea or you're using something, let's see how we can double down into that and figure out how we can share with the best practices. So this was me going on a little rant from your question, but there you go.

[42:31] Shawn Downs: Nice, I like it, man, I do. And all the people you just named, amazing, right? Again, I know that this is year two. I'm excited already for year three. I've always said I'm a closet nerd. I said that to the team of the company that I was talking about throughout this podcast. I guess the cat's out of the bag. Now everybody knows I'm a nerd.

[42:53] Kevin Sofen: Now I'm a nerd. Hey, nothing wrong with being a nerd and hanging out with other nerds. And this has been a wonderful 44 minutes. And I actually feel like I could keep going. I do want to go into one more thing before we close out is your breakout session. You've alluded to it a little bit. Tell me what the title was, what the overall description was. And tell me who the other speakers were and what it was like.

[43:13] Shawn Downs: So our session was called How Tech can improve firefighter health and safety. I was honored. I was humbled. I was intimidated. That was the word I used on day one. I said in 25 years, I've never been intimidated, but I was, but I was there with Dr. Sarah Janke, you know, nationally known, amazing speaker, amazing research, just wow, okay. John Oates, again, amazing fire service career and what he's doing right now with IPSDI and everything within force just wow. And then Dr. Clark, I mean, fire service legend, 50 plus years in the service, NFA legend, a Washington DC alum, you know, Kentland volunteer fire department alum, just here I am the new kid on the block, right? Who's just now starting to venture outside of Washington DC and people are starting to figure out, hey, DC keeps some little secrets. They have some people that really have something to say, and I'm not the only one, trust me. Being invited to sit alongside them was just humbling. So what was the thing about tech and how it can improve firefighter health and safety? Well, we've touched on some of the things I spoke about, but we'll go into Dr. Sarah Jahnke's, her message. And her message is all around firefighter resiliency, and it's all around the mental health space, and it's all around everything that she talks about and how we can really improve our service through technology. And I would challenge everybody listening to this to go pull everything you can on her that she's ever published, and then find the next place where she's speaking and go listen to her. Probably one of the most down to earth people I've ever met in my life. This was only the second time I ever got to meet her, but I honestly feel like I could just sit there and talk to her for hours. You know, in Washington, D.C., we're really excited. We just opened our first ever in-house behavioral health resiliency center. And talking to her about that and talking to her through that was just so amazing. John Oates, talking about tech and how we improve overall firefighter safety and health and things that I just had no idea. I'd always wondered, at least since watching the movie, Concussion, hey, what do head injuries look like in the fire service? Like, what are the cumulative effects of those? But I didn't know that technology existed for a microchip the size of your pinky nail to be embedded in a helmet, a firefighter helmet. And we could measure the amount of impact that somebody took, you know, with debris falling or with a ladder falling or with them falling, you know? And then eventually calculate the cumulative effects of that. Like, how is that not being done? Just amazing, you know? So again, we're gonna go back, we're gonna have those conversations with our PPE manufacturers. Like, hey, why are we not doing this? The same thing with the Formula One driver and how they measure their physiological state. They do it in the glove. Like, wow, you know, why are we not doing this, right? And it makes you wonder, like, have we ever even asked our glove manufacturers, you know, can you do this? The answer is probably no, we have not. And then Dr. Clark, we've talked about what Dr. Clark talked about. If you can't wear your seatbelt, you're not going to do this. And it's not even a, can you? It's a, you're not going to do it. And he's right. We have got to, as a service, understand that we need to do everything right 100% of the time that we're supposed to do. There are going to be actions that occur in our line of work that ultimately cost us lives, even when we do everything right. And those we not accept, but we understand, and I think it's an unfortunate consequence of the line of work we do, but that majority, I just don't think we have to accept them, and that's his message. And again, if you have not got the chance to listen to Dr. Clark, please do.

[47:33] Kevin Sofen: Or read his book.

[47:34] Shawn Downs: Or read his book, yes. I mean, I'm already on chapter three of that, just from, you know, getting back at night and kind of sitting down for a few minutes and unwinding.

[47:43] Kevin Sofen: It's nice because it's a bunch of short stories with little nuances and a lot about fire service culture.

[47:48] Shawn Downs: Yeah. And it is the culture, right? Like that is his message. It's the culture. We do it to ourselves. Yeah, just a great session, a wonderful session. I mean, a little plug here. I think we could have led the entire thing this week. I think we could have been the kickoff right behind Dr. Lori, but that's just me.

[48:08] Kevin Sofen: I don't disagree. Well, what did you talk about in your session?

[48:11] Shawn Downs: So I talked about firefighter physiological tracking and I talked about GIS on the fireground. Most importantly, tracking our firefighters whereabouts on the X, Y, and Z axis, as well as 3D imaging back to the fireground, all in one common operating platform, which is an incident command platform. That's my dream, right? and where this technology would be able to tell you the state, the location, the actions, the assignment of every single one of your companies on the fire ground at any given time. And then, because I don't want to be overloaded, because I don't want my incident commanders to be overloaded, to alert the incident commander when something is outside the norm, i.e. somebody's blood pressures through the roof, somebody's pulse is through the roof, a mayday has been declared, a firefighter has fallen X number of feet, whatever we set at the parameters, in this many amount of seconds, you know, they've detected a drop in this many feet in this many seconds, or we've seen a sudden rise in temperature this many degrees in this many seconds, or whatever the case may be, all these different alerts that we've set that would at least clue an incident commander in to ask questions. My message is I never, ever want to replace training, knowledge, and experience of my incident commanders. I want to enhance training, knowledge, and experience through the introduction of technology and the way of just cluing on them in, no different than the wagon driver and the Haas alert system. I trust my wagon drivers in Washington, DC. They are the best of the best of the best. I'd put them up. against anyone nationwide. But yet we still have collisions, right? So why wouldn't I want something to alert them that, hey, if you continue doing what you're doing and you don't change it, there's gonna be a catastrophic outcome. That's all I'm saying.

[50:17] Kevin Sofen: And something you talked about was the interoperability, the common operating picture of this. And we had a conversation earlier after we went to the first net breakfast and talking about this dynamic the timing of our world now is that there's a lot of 5G, there's LTE, there's a strong foundational capability to communicate. Of course, there's always times things go down, but then there's this evolution of other modes, nodes of communication with mesh and satcoms, but particularly in a 5G LTE connected world, that's allowing us to do certain capabilities that we were not able to do before. And some of that particularly is with the biometrics and tracking and I know we talked about this concept of when looking at the fireground there's when talking about tech there's this there are these data creation components there is this data display dynamic and then there's this network that's allowing this all kind of happen so I think we're it's we're kind of getting you a tipping point where all this stuff is actually it's not pie in the sky this isn't like matrix type stuff and maybe we're getting close for the matrix every day I don't know which is terrifying but still this is the whole thing that it's possible now, but this data creator, data displayer, and the network connectivity in unison, in harmony. You just kind of mentioned that sort of your vision, but what does that look like? And what does that mean? And talk me through that a little bit more.

[51:36] Shawn Downs: So I think it means we are where we need to be. So I'm not going to drop the person's name or where they work, but I spoke to a highly respected, very tenured chief officer of a department for my region about six months ago and some of my dreams, and I was laughed at in my face. Yeah, we've been trying to do that for 20 years. And the message was, we're there now. I understand 20 years ago, you guys were dreaming about it's right in front of us. All the players that need to make this happen exist. We just need to connect those players. We as the fire service need to collectively take a company that has a network that's reliable, that we all depend on and say, hey, look, you're the center hub of what this company over here is trying to do with the physiological tracking, what this company over here is trying to do with the GPS mapping and the locating, what this company over here is doing with an incident command platform. And this week, some of those conversations happen. happened. So, rewind the clock to Saturday, before I got in town, and we were a step behind where we are now. Where that chief officer was talking about, he was miles down the road. Twenty years ago, we were. Twenty years ago, we were still working with 3G. You know, twenty years ago, the running joke was, can you hear me now? Twenty years ago, the latest and greatest technology was with a next tell in the push to talk. You know, I've been down here now all week long. Not one time have I not had a cell phone signal. Not one time have I not had the ability to access the internet. Not one time have I not been able to make a call, send a text message, whatever. We're not where we were 20 years ago. The time is now. Like, we're here. That's what this is. So never say never. Thank you guys for laying the groundwork. Everybody that came before us, like you did all of the dreaming, right? Like we are sharing the same dream. The difference is we're actually being able to put the dreams into action now. So there's a network that is here today which is different than it was

[54:00] Kevin Sofen: and in addition to that is this data creator data display or conversation where there's a lot of companies out there that are doing good work and some of them have their own special sauce, their own IP. But nonetheless, as you know, this problem is too big and too great for one entity to solve. As great as some industry partners are, and they may have these grandiose goals, if you do not have a collaboration into your number one verb and word in your vocabulary, then you are gravely mistaken. What is your message, and why is it so important that companies need to continue to explore how they can integrate with each other, particularly how does that tie into this whole future data standard in terms of open API and whole narrows conversation of data must be kind of needs to be in this format so it's on a silver platter kind of female male plug type connection.

[54:49] Shawn Downs: So what I'm going to say is if you want to last, if you want to help us solve the problem, much like we as a fire service need to put our swords away, you need to put your swords away. There are enough emergency calls, there are enough people that need our help in the fire and EMS community nationwide, where we can put our swords away and we're all still going to be extremely busy. Put your sword away, figure out how to come together, solve the problem with us, and let's make the entire nation as safe as it can absolutely be. That's Dr. Lori's message. That's what she wants with NERIS. That's where we're going as a fire service and the companies that are able to do that the companies that are looking to solve a problem while making a profit not looking to make a profit while trying to solve a problem are the companies that are going to make it and that's who we need right now so i don't know how many of those companies listen to your podcast but if any of them are that's my message and my plea to you is trust me if you help us solve these problems and you help us get these things to the finish line First and foremost, you are saving lives. You are saving firefighters lives. You are saving citizens lives So kudos to you, right? Like you did a great thing And you stand to make a lot of money because once it's done Wow, you know if you were keeping your ducks close to you under lock and key and you're not sharing what you're working on And you're not willing to let anyone in your sandbox you're not saving lives right and you're not going to be there at the end you're not going to be part of the solution and unfortunately your business probably isn't going to be around. If you do good and you are good to others and you have an open collaborative mindset there's a lot more gold at the end there for you as opposed to trying to build a big moat around it and trying to just do it all yourself.

[56:48] Kevin Sofen: Indeed. So that was a good kind of final closing comment that it could end it on there but I want to give you at least one more sort of a chance to leave us with a quote, a challenge, a question, 2024 goals, it could be a couple of these things, but yeah, what would you leave us with here today?

[57:08] Shawn Downs: So my parting words are going to be twofold. First and foremost, it's going to be share. anything that you're working on help someone else solve a problem because if someone led in the right way if someone collaborated in the right way if someone was neighborly in the right way you didn't have to create it yourself either someone helped you along the way just because you pushed it to the finish line as in the fire service right or in tech wherever you may be share it with somebody else, right? Because we're all trying to do the same thing, more so in the fire service than the business world, I understand. The second thing is I'm gonna say the same thing I said as my closing statement in our session that I did not realize had the impact it did until I received not one, not two, but three different messages from people in that room on LinkedIn afterwards saying man, I loved that. And that's ask questions. Never be afraid to ask questions. I'm here this week because I ask questions. I'm not here because I have an engineering degree or because I'm super tech savvy, you know. I'm a fireman. I'm a fireman that went to school for 14 years to finally get an associate, you know, in between raising kids and everything else. I figured, man I have that I might as well get a bachelor's after 18 years I had that then was like huh might as well go ahead and get a master's and did that's what I am though I'm a fireman but I ask questions I share my opinion I share what I'm working on so please ask questions.

[58:58] Kevin Sofen: Shawn well said curiosity is one of my favorite words and I truly believe that curiosity is a winning strategy, whether it's in the fire service or the business world. So thank you for your time today. And man, I guess I look forward to collaborating and hopefully getting the opportunity to do some ride along.

[59:16] Shawn Downs: Yeah, for sure. Come to D.C., we'll throw you on a wagon and let you have a good time. Throw you in the back of the squad. You'll really have fun there.

[59:21] Kevin Sofen: I look forward to it. Shawn, thank you for everything they do for the fire service and look forward to the next time.

[59:25] Shawn Downs: Indeed. All right.

[59:31] Kevin Sofen: Thank you so much for listening to the Smart Firefighting podcast today. If you enjoyed what you heard and got any value, please drop us a rating, leave us a comment or reach out to us on social media. Have a great day and together we can advance the future of smart firefighting.