Episode 278: Harnessing Tech for Real-World Firefighting Challenges with Kevin Swat

Published 2025-06-13

Topics: Comms & FirstNet, Drones & Robotics, Health & Safety

Episode notes

Tech isn’t just a toy. Tech helps save lives. Here’s how:

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!

In this episode:

Why drones and ROVs are critical tools that provide real-time eyes in otherwise inaccessible places

How wearables are a safety net for firefighters

Insights on department-wide technology adoption

Hear from Lieutenant Kevin Swat from Mount Prospect Fire Department and the Team Manager for Medical Division, Illinois Water Rescue One.

Kevin shares his perspective as an end user on how emerging technologies like underwater ROVs, drones, and wearables are reshaping real-world fire and rescue operations. His insights shed light on bridging the gap between tech innovation and field realities, while exploring how drones can save critical time and reduce responder risk.

The conversation touches on how SARCOP and satellite connectivity are vital in maintaining command and communication in chaotic environments. Listeners gain a deeper understanding of how these tools, backed by solid buy-in from leadership to the field, are revolutionizing rescue work.

So take a listen to hear what he has to share!

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

0:00 Intro
1:17 Kevin Swat joins
1:35 Coming off shift
3:50 No days off: swift water and the plane crash response
5:33 Swift water rescue, two categories
7:45 Continuous air and comms for divers
8:58 Underwater ROVs and drones
13:32 Saving time on the search
15:20 Trial by fire: vetting new tech
18:09 Hurricane Helene and SARCOP
21:43 Why the tools aren't used more widely
24:48 Passive AI cameras
25:34 Wearables and firefighter location
31:36 Not a revolution, an evolution
32:03 Satellite comms and Starlink
34:40 Blending networks for redundancy
36:41 Bridging the fire service and industry
40:12 Nominating the next guest
41:51 Coping with the job
45:35 Jiu-jitsu, kickboxing and resetting
46:37 Words to live by
48:12 Wrap

Questions answered in this episode

What is SARCOP and how does it help search and rescue teams during disasters?

Kevin Swat says SARCOP is Search and Rescue Common Operating Picture. Teams use it on cell phones to track their location in real time as they go door to door. At each house they take a photo, log what type of search was done, and note what resources are needed. That information goes back to command so they can see where crews are, what they are encountering, and allocate resources like excavators or canines.

Hear it at 19:10

How did drones save time during Hurricane Helene operations?

Kevin Swat describes a house about half a mile up a mountainside that would have taken an hour to hike to. Another team sent a drone and made contact with the resident in about five minutes, confirming everyone was okay. That saved two hours the crew used to search other locations, because the work was endless.

Hear it at 9:36

Why are wearables with heart rate monitoring valuable for firefighters?

Kevin Swat says cardiovascular issues are a leading cause of firefighter death. A safety officer could watch heart rates on a tablet and see who is working at dangerously high levels. He mentions his own heart rate hitting 192 during roof ventilation, which he says should be monitored to prevent injuries.

Hear it at 26:10

How does location tracking on wearables improve firefighter safety?

Kevin Swat explains that in zero visibility inside large buildings, crews can become disoriented. If something goes wrong, command can see exactly where firefighters are on a map, for example third floor Charlie side halfway into a unit, and send a rescue team. Right now crews rely only on radio reports like halfway down the hallway, which can be off by a lot in a 200 foot corridor.

Hear it at 26:10

How did Starlink satellite communication help during Hurricane Helene?

Kevin Swat says there was zero cell service, no Wi-Fi, no infrastructure after the storm. Starlink was the best communication tool they had. Once it was running, crews went from having no communication to being able to FaceTime home and maintain constant contact with command in the field.

Hear it at 33:01

Transcript

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

Ep 278 transcript

Harnessing Tech for Real-World Firefighting Challenges with Kevin Swat

Speakers: Kevin Sofen, Kevin Swat

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. Kevin Sofen here, where we cover all things related to the future of smart technology for first responders around the world. Please enjoy the show and let me know what you want to learn about next. Today's episode is a great one for many reasons. One being that I interviewed another guy named Kevin S. Yes, today you're going to hear from a guy named Kevin Swat, a lieutenant from Mount Prospect Fire Department, who's also a team manager at the Illinois Water Rescue One Mavis. Kevin gave me the ground level view on how drones, ROVs and wearables are reshaping what it means to be ready and stay safe in the field. He breaks down how tools like SARCOP, real time mapping and Starlink satellite communication are stepping up when it matters most during disasters. If you're in the fire service or emergency response, this conversation is packed of practical takeaways for you. All right, happy Tuesday, everyone. Welcome back to the Smart Firefighting Podcast. Super excited to be alongside another Kevin S. There's not many of us out there. Kevin Swat, Lieutenant for Mount Prospect Fire Department and with Mabus, Illinois, Team Manager for Medical Division for Illinois Water Rescue One, the Deployment Team, K. Swat, how you doing, man?

[1:18] Kevin Swat: Very good, thank you very much for having me. It's an honor. I've been listening to some of your podcasts and I feel like I'm the end user of a lot of these big technologies and these people that you have on the podcast. So it's been an eye-opening experience listening to your podcast as well too.

[1:35] Kevin Sofen: Thanks, man. Well, this is what it's all about. It's great to have a lot of the industry.gov.org.edu, academia and everything, but everything is about empowering first responders, firefighters like yourself with technology in the field. And sometimes we overlook actually the end user like yourself. So it's extremely valuable to hear your insights. And I guess, for example, just asked you before, you're just getting off shift now. Tell me a little bit about the last shift. I mean, when did you get on? You're just getting off now. What were some of the calls like? Give me a little bit of average day in the life just yesterday.

[2:08] Kevin Swat: Yeah, I tried to start my morning pretty early. I don't want to bore you guys, but I get there a little bit early, try and work out a little bit. And we just recently got a cold plunge too at the station. So get there at probably about 6.45, work out for half an hour, been trying out the cold plunge. So that's been kind of cool little thing as well. And then shift starts at eight o'clock. I'm at station 13, so we have a tower, an ambulance and a battalion chief there and all the admin as well. So get there, start shift at eight o'clock and go out there, check all the vehicles, make sure all the rigs are in, all the tools and equipment are accounted for, check your air pack every morning, make sure that's fully filled up. Your daily inventory, so making sure just everything is ready to go and start the day. And throughout the day then, yeah, we obviously get calls. And in the morning, we usually have training. So it's going to be, like yesterday, we had ice rescue training. We go over PowerPoint presentation on all the aspects of doing ice rescue. So if somebody goes through any of the ice in local areas of the ponds and stuff, we're prepared. We have special suits and equipment policies and procedures of how to go and approach that as well. So last shift, we spent a lot of time just kind of going over little hands-on of the suit, of the equipment policies, procedures, who does what. And then this week we're going to focus on actually getting in the water and rescuing the victims and stuff. So doing that outside. And yeah, throughout the day, just ambulance calls and some more training. We go over gear and air packs every day, make sure that everything's ready to go for when we do have those big critical incidences.

[3:50] Kevin Sofen: I mean, it's like we were talking about before, but just truly no days off. And that's the importance of ongoing training. And you just never know when that big incident may happen. I mean, it seems like sometimes it's the day-to-day mundane stuff from the falls and the health issues. But again, even just seeing everything happening in DC and looking at a lot of this swift water rescue they're doing right now and the fricted temperatures, I'm sure, I mean, what are your thoughts in terms of just the incident, but kind of the response side of it in terms of how the responders are dealing with it and any kind of insights or thoughts you've seen as they've been approaching the recovery of that tragic plane crash?

[4:26] Kevin Swat: Yeah, they're a huge organization and with those big organizations, they're always, they have a lot of, they're really squared away, it seems like, and very systematic approach where, I don't want to say that those incidents happen all the time, which they clearly don't, but they're prepared because they have such a large scale of population where incidents, not to that extent, but maybe a little bit smaller happen quite frequently. So they're out there doing that work a lot more often than we are. So very squared away, very structured, and I saw they kind of had the same Zodiac quotes we use as well, too. A lot of the same gear, swift water gear, but it's another animal, too. The temperatures are very cold. You're dealing with ice, hypothermia, and just a lot of other critical medical issues, too. That's a tough task. Then they got to deploy divers down as well, too. You're dealing with surface operations and dive operations at the same time. A lot going on, but large city, they have the resources, the organization, and the structure to be able to accomplish that.

[5:33] Kevin Sofen: I was curious as that response is going on, and frankly, in your role with everything that you're doing within Water Rescue One and the deployment team, and with the involvement of robots, not just aerial robots, but underwater robots, are you using any underwater ROVs in any capacity, and how are those pieces of technology tools in the tool bag that are used within these kind of swift water rescue scenarios?

[5:57] Kevin Swat: Yeah, so there's two different categories. So there's swift water rescue, which is, it doesn't have to be necessarily swift water, but it's just any moving current of water. It's very hard to deploy divers in. So you gotta kind of separate swift water from more of, you know, moving water, doing large area searches and more surface rescue, if you will, versus actual dive and recovery operations. So we do utilize side scan sonar and we have an ROV. So it's a robot that's controlled. It's like a submarine, essentially, that we can send down in the water and that can do searches and stuff. So obviously out here in the Chicagoland area, we have a lot of ice for half the year, essentially. So instead of sending divers down underneath the ice, which we also train for as well, we can send these ROVs to search and find the missing person that we're looking for. So a lot of technology, yeah, especially with that side scan sonar, you can pull up all the data points and with that ROV submersible, you got a live feed of what's going on under you. So we've used that a few times as well too. So technology always plays a role and we got new Interspiro gear, which is we're now diving with Interspiro. So it's all surface applied air. So we're no longer on just our bottles on our back. We still have them, but they're a smaller condensed version. and we have a umbilical cord that essentially goes from our mask to the surface where we're supplied with communications and a unlimited amount of air. So if anything goes wrong, we have policies and procedures that we can just, we know how to react to that situation and we can send in our safety divers and get our 90% divers ready as well.

[7:45] Kevin Sofen: Wow, so I'm assuming that kind of continuous air and the continuous comms and frankly that little bit of a safety net too of having that cord probably gives you a bigger sense of comfort and confidence while you're doing the job?

[7:58] Kevin Swat: Yeah, absolutely. It really is because if something goes wrong there, that's a ideal age, right? It's your immediate, there's really very little ways to recover from if your mass comes off. I mean, you have your octo right next to you, which is just a smaller breathing apparatus, but you're tethered in and you know you have. You've got a whole entire crew of guys working up on the top making sure that the air is being supplied to you, that comms are constantly being established. So, it gives you a lot more ease of mind to be able to focus on doing your job rather than worrying about how much air that you have. Especially in conditions where when we dive in these areas, we can't even see two feet in front of us. So, sometimes it's even hard to check how much air that we have. The conditions are, it's zero visibility. So just knowing that we have unlimited air on the top, it lets your mind work towards other goals and issues.

[8:58] Kevin Sofen: Yeah. Well, to kind of build on the earlier point of the underwater ROVs, I know we were first talking about all things drones and aerial platforms, and there's no shortage of news about them in terms of what you can buy, what you can't buy, but leaning more into how you can use them and how their tools as a really being a force multiplier within particularly I'm interested in your work with Mabus. I know you were deployed for a couple weeks to down to Hurricane Helene in North Carolina. I'd love to hear about how are you using drones? How are drones a force multiplier and you know what are some use cases of drones within fire service operations?

[9:36] Kevin Swat: Yeah sure so for Mabus we don't have we're in the early infancy stages of research and development. they have very good language on policies and procedures of what they want, what they're looking for, and how to use them. We're still in the area of trying to actually acquire them. So, when we were down in Helene and North... Carolina, we even saw the need to get them more. So, that's why I've been kind of trying to bridge the gap of, hey, these are the issues that we saw out here in North Carolina, and I know that there's all this technology. I've been doing a ton of research on drones and all the software behind it and stuff. So, I want to try and kind of bridge that gap of what we need and how do we get that. Being down there, we were able to utilize another team that had a, I believe it was a DJI drone. And there was a house probably about a half a mile up in the mountainside. And everywhere we were was just completely washed out roads, water running over everything, very inaccessible areas. So this one house, it would have taken us probably about a good hour to hike up it just to ensure that everybody was okay because we go essentially door to door checking, making sure that everybody was accounted for and if they needed anything. So we were able to utilize this other team's drone. They sent it right up and within five minutes and make contact with the person that was at home, we assured that everything was all right. So that saved us figuring an hour going up and then an hour coming back down. So that was two hours that we were able to save just by deploying one drone one time and that allowed us now to go work another two additional hours searching other people's houses because the work is just endless. So that really struck me there. I'm like, if we can save this much time just using the drone one time, imagine if we had one drone or five drones or if we split our team into two or three or four groups and each one had a drone, we can really accomplish a lot more house searches and doing forward observation to see if the roads are washed out. You know, hey, we have this grid area search that we have to go to. Can we do forward recon on that and ensure that there's no power lines down or there's no trees blocking the way so that we can get our vehicles up there? Or do we need to take our ATV? What other resource? Do we need chainsaws? So the uses for drones are, it's really unlimited in that area of water rescue and search and rescue. We had another incident as well that we had multiple reports of somebody that was trapped in the embankment of where all the flooding water was going through. And some of the calls kind of get a little bit lost in the fog of communication as well too. if there was a person there or not. And to be able to ensure that this person wasn't there, we would have had to have deployed boats into pretty much the worst water possible. And it was kind of an eye-opening thought too. It was like, hey, we can use... Unfortunately, at that time, we didn't have drones for that particular search, but it would have been very helpful to say, hey, let's set up this drone, do a search of this area where we're getting a report of a stranded person, instead of putting six guys, you know, or a couple of guys into, or six guys into two separate boats to go and search for this person that at the end of the day was a false call. So it would be great to be able to use this, use the drones to make sure that, to validate the call, and then we can put the resources in place to go make those rescues.

[13:32] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, I mean, a lot of good use cases there, you're talking about saving time, reducing risk in any way, shape or form, if you don't have to put a first responder at risk to get that information on what's going on a couple, you know, a mile down the road and thinking too about just the age old phrase of, you know, by the crow flies. Like if you could go direct air without having to hike and go around, it's just, you don't need to be that good at math or that even that smart to know that it's a valuable tool.

[13:59] Kevin Swat: Yeah, and then now too, with all the, and once again, I'm kind of more just the end user, I'm no drone wizard by any means or anything, but with the LiDAR mapping now too, I don't know if you can speak on this behalf, but we have essentially satellite data that we can overlay into our map and tracking systems. And a lot of that data seems those, the map picture might be from a month ago or two months ago. And my thought would be with this mapping capabilities that the drones have using LiDAR, that we could send it up at nighttime or during the day to do a lot of the mapping and give us real time conditions and feedbacks of even of all the topography of what roads are, like I said, what roads are impassable, what areas are completely washed away, what houses or what vehicles have shifted off their foundation and floated down 100 yards versus using maybe last week's or two weeks ago, GIS data that everything's in place. So just kind of transferring some of the data from mapping to real time to our SRCOP tracking system would be pretty incredible. And I don't know if that really exists or if that's just kind of a pipe dream of like, hey, this sounds great, but it's really not a feasible thing to do.

[15:20] Kevin Sofen: I mean, that's absolutely feasible. And I know I connect you with Bobby Ortiz, who's the head of the drone committee. And so I got to nudge you guys again if you haven't talked yet, because he's quite the practitioner. There's a lot of guys and gals within the IFC tech council subcommittee on UAVs and drones. And I think it's interesting to hear you talk about where there's a lot of these roadmaps out there. And one thing we're working on now is we don't need another roadmap. What we need are, in my opinion, are these cookbooks, these guidelines, these sort of recipes to follow on. So you want to effectively implement drones. So you want to effectively implement wearables and what are the obstacles you face, what are the challenges you face, how do you effectively implement and sustain this? And frankly, I'm curious in your thoughts in terms of examples of how to actually implement new tech. I mean, you're going through this with drones, you had mentioned the Inspire stuff, you had mentioned with the underwater UAV, from your perspective and stuff that's worked and what doesn't work when you're thinking about truly identifying new tech, and then effectively implementing it and most importantly sustaining it beyond just that one champion who is pushing the tech.

[16:30] Kevin Swat: Yeah, in our culture, it's literally trial by fire, I would say. For any new technology that comes in, it really has to be vetted for a while. As chaotic and crazy as the job can be, we're still kind of creatures of habit and routine. So if we're getting introduced new technology, it has to make sense. It has to work. It has to be easily adaptable. At Mount Prospect Fire Department, where I work, we have a lot of committees, and I think that's actually a really strong point of our fire department there is because in these committees, we have them for the app. We have an apparatus committee that looks at designing all the vehicles and all the new little technology and nuances that are out there. We have a PT committee, we have a training committee, a safety committee. So, we have all these, we have a group of people then that, or each committee has its own separate people, and we get buy-in from Blue Shirts to the lieutenants, from the battalion chiefs, training officer, and the admin personnel as well to all the chiefs. So, we're kind of getting buy-in on these new technologies from everybody. So if you can say that from the ground floor up to the chiefs, everybody agrees with this technology, it's a lot easier to adapt and to sustain in the long run. So I think having those committees set up in that way is really important just for the buy-in and then just small adaptations over time add up as well too. So, yeah.

[18:09] Kevin Sofen: Well, I know you as well kind of going down to Hurricane Helene, you saw some different technologies. You were, you know, obviously drones is top of mind. But the word you said earlier that piqued my interest is the word SARCOP. You hear some of these different common operating platforms, interactive maps. There's a range of them. They're commercially available, some that are kind of quasi-government funded and put out there. But SARTAC is a big one. Obviously, there's a whole community around that and SARCOP as well. And they're fundamentally very different, but both have a lot of value they bring. In your opinion, I'd love to know, what is SRCOP? How did you use it? Why was it a valuable tool, and how is it something that really helped support your fire ground operations?

[18:50] Kevin Swat: Yeah, SRCOP was the Search and Rescue, the COP, I don't remember what that stands for.

[18:57] Kevin Sofen: Search and Rescue Common Operating Picture. Thank you. I think.

[19:01] Kevin Swat: Like I said, I'm the end user of this stuff. I might not be the...

[19:03] Kevin Sofen: you need a true 101 Bible of acronyms within public safety and military. It's hard to keep track.

[19:10] Kevin Swat: Yeah, there are millions of them. And then also at Mavis too, we have our logistics and our communications expert, Cody Regan. So he's really the guy that you should be talking to about all the SARCOP, all the little integrations of all the radios and the new technologies that we've used that we've used because he really started all of this technology and has brought it down to our level where we're now using the Sarcop platform. Out in Helene, what we were able to do was essentially we get the map or the grid from FEMA and that has all the locations on a grid search pattern area. With the Sarcop platform, each team leader of the group has a... cell phone. And on that cell phone, when we're going door to door or searching whatever roads or areas that were affected, we have a tracking log that's being activated. So when we get up to the house that needs to be searched, we can just use quick capture, which is the taking a picture of the house, essentially, or the vehicle. And then underneath that, there's a bunch of boxes that say what type of search that we were doing, primary search, hasty search, secondary search, detailed search, and what additional resources are needed. So the devastation was so overwhelming and so massive. There was a lot of areas that had to... We take a picture of it was logged in. That information was then sent back to our command board where they have almost the real-time picture of where we're at, what we're doing, the situations that we're encountering, and then we can also update that SRCOP platform with saying, hey, we got this house, we're unable to make access into it, or there's a large, you know, when I say large brush pile, I'm talking the size of a small house that we would kind of have to search, or we would say we need additional crews, we need heavy excavators. We need canines to come and search this pile for additional help. So back at the command base, they're getting all that information, and then they're backfilling and allocating those resources to come and help us out. And meanwhile, we can go keep on doing our forward progress and kind of doing that primary search and looking for victims that need to be rescued or recovered.

[21:43] Kevin Sofen: And digging into that a bit more, I mean, what would have been done before using a tool like that and, you know, what's the hesitation with adopting that more mainstream within all operations that you do?

[21:57] Kevin Swat: Yeah, I don't really know because it is, it's an incredible platform. And I know that Ascent Technologies, they're working on that using the wearables that even measure the biometrics on that. I've been thinking about that as well too, is that if each individual person has their own wearable device or whatever technology that Ascent is using, that's 10 more people that can send out data points. Because with the search and rescue and the water recovery, it's labor-intensive and data point driven. If you have more people wearing those devices and able to capture all that data, and sending that back to command, you're just filling that up with good information and data that they can use to collect, to paint that picture of, hey, this was the hardest hit area, this area wasn't as affected as some other areas, and then they can alter where a lot of those heavy resources come in. With the Sarcop, we were limited to the team leader having one phone and taking pictures with that, and relaying the data and the information just through one phone. Granted, we split our teams up into about four or five different groups. So there was four or five phones working, but once again, you're limited to sending one guy out to search that house. You gotta wait for him to come back to report their findings. You gotta spray the house, paint it, make sure that we're checking all our boxes off and then sending that information. If we can multiply that with every guy being able to send out the information from the car that they searched or the brush pile that they searched, you're talking hundreds, thousands more data points that could be sent back and analyzed. Also, I was listening to one of your other podcasts about the Australian, he works for Amazon Web Services, and he was saying how they're deploying little cameras at the riverbeds, I guess, of whatever streams or rivers, and they're using the AI data to analyze or predict the future flooding aspects of that. Like that's an incredible technology because now you can, if you start to see the rise in these rivers, now you can allocate your resources coming from wherever and deploying them and dropping them off at said location where you're predicting these flow models. So I thought that was really an interesting technology development that would be incredibly useful in deployment. It's all, it's tracking all these data points and how can we use this data to paint the picture and allocate resources. That way when we're on the ground, we can use this and we can figure out where to go and all that, so.

[24:48] Kevin Sofen: I love hearing you say that about the conversation that I had in Australia with AWS. I think it was Craig Lawton, if I remember his name. There's also a department in Georgia that just down at TSI Technology Summit International hosted by the International Association of Fire Chiefs. We had a first responder innovation award and one of the departments was doing that same thing of deploying cameras. They're just fairly cheap off-the-shelf cameras embedded with some type of passive AI detection of detecting what is debris, but then also what is a person, and because there's these big rapids and the issue of a lot of drownings and just being able to have early notification detection of person in distress. So I'll make sure I connect you, I believe it's Daniel Mecone and Daniel. It was Daniel and Daniel, kind of like Kevin.

[25:32] Kevin Swat: Kevin, here we go. Yeah.

[25:34] Kevin Sofen: But you mentioned something about wearables, and that's definitely one piece of tech I was interested in diving into a bit more and getting your feedback on. But the site dynamic of a wearable, a smartwatch for location tracking, for health alerting, I'd love to hear from an end-user perspective, from both those nuances and, I guess, moments of value for a firefighter, someone on the ground, location tracking and health alerting, in creating data points. Why is that valuable? Why is it something that you see is kind of necessary within the fire service? And how do you see that being integrated within these different common operating platform tools?

[26:10] Kevin Swat: Yeah, I haven't personally worn the wearables, but I am kind of familiar with talking to those guys from Ascent as well. And they were showing me their platform, the watch, and it is kind of killing two birds with one stone, I guess, with that, you're measuring the biometrics, right? So safety issue number one right there is, I think we still, one of the leading causes of firefighter death is cardiovascular related. And that was the biggest parameter on the wearable was the heart rate, right? So if we can have our safety officer on a fire incident, Kind of watching heart rates and seeing who's going above what level heart rate, are they working? You can tell a lot from a heart rate, right? Whether it's very low or very high, right? We want to look for those. And I think that'd be an incredible thing for a safety officer to be able to have a tablet that's just pulled up and showing all the biometrics of the firefighters. I was up on a roof a couple months ago at a fire and we're doing ventilation and I was wearing my eye watch, and at the end of the day, I was like, or at the end of the fire, I looked at it and it was tracking my heart rate, and I think I was at 192 or something like that. So, you know, I looked at that and kind of gave me pause too. I was like, you know, that's getting up there, and that's something that should be monitored, I think. You know, we don't want to cause any more injuries or anything like that, and that's the whole entire purpose of these technologies is to essentially, at the end of the day, to limit any adverse effects and let us go home and to our families and stuff and so you got the biometrics on there and then you got the real time tracking as well and that would be pretty impressive as well too so if you can have your crew members wearing those watches and they're going into a large residential building or commercial building to be for incident command or once again the safety officer to kind of keep an eye on them of saying exactly how far into the building have they gone. Or maybe the opposite of like, hey, they've only made 10, 20, 30 feet of push into that building. There's something wrong then, right? Like if it's been five minutes, 10 minutes, and they've only gone 30 feet in the building, they're encountering bad conditions, maybe it's time to pull out, maybe it's time to reevaluate, considerate tactics, and switch to defensive modes. as well too. We train all the time for incidents that go well. Even at Mount Prospect, we train for incidents that don't go bad. We do a lot of May Day training and stuff, but when fires go bad, they go bad quickly. And you go from having visibility to zero visibility very quickly. And sometimes there's disorientation, there's confusion, and you're accountable for other people as well too. So now you got all your crew members that you're accountable for with zero visibility and conditions and you're in a large building, and if something bad happens, that command would be able to locate where you and your personnel are. From the way that I understand it's overlaid on the map, which would be incredible because now the command can be like, hey, these people, they're on the third floor on the Charlie side, halfway into the units and they can activate RIT. And you're kind of painting that picture of what's going on, who's where. Because right now, everybody's still so reliant on communications of radio communications. And it's up to me then as a lieutenant to relay to ops of, hey, fire attacks on the third floor, we're halfway down the hallway. Okay, well, I'm probably not able to see the apartment number of the unit that we're in, so how am I relaying my location? It's just by me saying I'm halfway down or I'm a quarter of the way down. And that's a pretty wide span of disinformation, I want to say, because that hallway can be 200 feet long, and I could be off quite a bit. So to be able to have that asset of location would be pretty incredible. We were on the third floor of an apartment fire, I don't know, six or nine months ago, visibility went down to zero and we kind of had to get out of there rapidly and we had to go off the balcony and it took a you know a couple minutes or a minute or so to get the ladders over to where we needed to get off and having a watch that would be able to provide that instantaneous feedback to command that would be able to say hey they're at five apartments down or five balconies over, let's get the ladders to them right away, would be pretty invaluable. And then, you know, I was looking at the South Carolina Super Sofa fire. I don't know if you're familiar with that fire where nine firefighters died and obviously a tragic incident, but there was, and not to, you know, I obviously wasn't there by any means and it was a long time. It was, what, 15 years ago probably. So, you kind of look back to and say, hey, how could some of this technology. What do we learn from these incidences? What do we learn from these firefighter deaths? You know, and these technologies that these companies are bringing forward are going to solve a lot of these issues. It's just how do we slowly implement that into the fire service of us traditional, you know, people that have such a routine every day.

[31:39] Kevin Sofen: My mom always ingrained this in me growing up of, Kevin, it's not a revolution, it's an evolution. And what are these different ways to kind of crawl, walk, run and just brick by brick all these cliche phrases to truly implement change and a lot of that kind of comes from this sort of hand-to-hand combat of talking like this and gaining trust and taking it kind of one thing at a time and a little bit of exposure therapy of hearing a success story and seeing it firsthand. There's a few other things that I was actually curious about that I didn't ask about earlier so I want to jump back super quick but within Hurricane Helene you mentioned some of the challenges with communications and of course communications is arguably one of the most important aspects of being a firefighter. Granted we don't want to always have to communicate this is where I am you know we've talked about wearables and tracking and that nuance but the rise of satellite connectivity and the ability to use it as a kind of a failback and you know if something goes wrong with LTE-based networks how can we use satellite communications? Give me, I'd love some context on how you used satellite connectivity, how it was helpful, and what are some of the advantages that you see with that being another source of redundancy for communications?

[32:53] Kevin Swat: So I would assume that's Starlink, that's the satellite communication, correct?

[32:57] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, there's a couple, but yeah, Starlink, I assume is what you were using.

[33:01] Kevin Swat: Yeah, so we use Starlink, and once again, Cody Riggan, he's our communications specialist, he can break down the nuances of everything from using building Wi-Fi. We have built out Wi-Fi routers. We use AT&T's first net responder. And then we also use Starlink because when we were in Helene, there was zero communications, there was zero cell service, no Wi-Fi, no running water, there was no infrastructure. Every single thing was gone. The best thing that we had for communications was Starlink, and it was incredible once we got that up and running to be able to see the difference of not having any communications to what we're able to do then once we had Starlink up and running, and how we're now able to use that source of communication to FaceTime back home at the end of the night to see our families and talk to them. And we went from not having anything to being able to FaceTime, so it was pretty incredible. And then we had the smaller portable one as well that we're able to bring out in the field with us. And once again, you're just enhancing the communications and as with every fire or search and rescue operation, communications is always going to be the biggest point of failure. And with that being able to use Starlink, you're solidifying that communication bond between us and command. So they're able to constantly check in on us, see where we're at, see what additional resources that we need, and once again, kind of paint that picture of what's going on.

[34:40] Kevin Sofen: That's awesome. Yeah, I've been really impressed with a lot of the different communication companies I've had the fortune of learning from, whether it be IP Access, who's kind of a system integrator of all that, to Degero is a really interesting tech you should check out. They're a Canadian-based company. They have these patents on this blending technology they can take multiple LTE networks and SATCOM and blend it together to create the strongest available pipeline. So you can take T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon, and Starlink and blend it to create the largest available pipeline. A lot of it depends on how much bandwidth you really need, how much upload capacity do you really need. Are you flying one drones or 10 drones? So those are some things to check out. I'll send you some more info on that.

[35:25] Kevin Swat: Yeah, and that's the cool part is like talking to you is that we, it's some of this stuff that being a fireman paramedic, it's hard to kind of keep your finger on the pulse of all this information. I mean, if you're not really involved in the technology world, it's very hard to keep up. It's very hard to understand all the language, all the information coming at you, because we're so focused on providing EMS and keeping up to date with policies and procedures with that and doing trainings for fires and running fire calls and so it's kind of hard to juggle both of those things of being the end user and also trying to be an expert, not that I am by any means, but of what's going on in the technology field. So I really see the need for communication on platforms like this of just kind of reaching out to other people and seeing what's going on in the world of firefighting and technology, and there's so many corporations and businesses from, you know, like I said, I was listening at one with AWS, your podcast the other day, and I never knew Amazon had, you know, their data centers that were hosting, holding the information for first responders and stuff, or, you know, all the stuff that he was talking about, so.

[36:41] Kevin Sofen: Well, part is that you're busy doing your job, which is important, but like you said, I mean, you've got to keep the pulse on this. That's one reason, and I appreciate that kind of why Smart Firefighting exists. And I'm curious in the aspect of networking and kind of creating that bridge between the fire service and industry, as well as other docgov.org.edu's. I kind of look at it as that we're all on the same team. There's definitely some industry egos. And recently there was a bunch of people in the drone community pretty upset. And if you saw Flock and Axon just sort of XNA, their APIs, and it was purely, it seems like a commercially motivated interest and something like that is really frustrating for me and for everyone because it was not putting the first responders best interest at hand, it was more putting commercial interests at hand. I don't think that's always the case. I know a lot of people could go off on CAD and RMS providers and some of the challenges there, but I'd love to hear any other thoughts you have on that kind of the dynamic of networking to kind of continuing to share ideas, best practices between firefighters, fire captains, lieutenants, chiefs, with industries, startups, emerging technologies, universities, yeah, any other thoughts on continuing that idea?

[37:57] Kevin Swat: Yeah, invaluable. Like I said, from just, we review NIST studies too, which are a lot of the tragic fires, and the biggest thing that always comes down to is communications, is how can we, What was the breaking point? What was the failure point? It's communications. It's they lost spatial awareness. They lost accountability. So I see the problem. I think whenever we're talking about technologies, we got to find, or maybe we don't have to find the problem, but there has to be a problem that we are trying to solve. And it seems like everybody is focused on that communication aspect one way or another, whether it's visual spatial awareness using drones, whether it's using real-time tracking, it seems like everybody has found this pain point of the breakdown of communications, and they're all centered around that, trying to work on a platform that addresses that. Like I said, we're really reliant just on radio communications of, whether that's in the fire service, in a fire or doing search and rescue or water rescue, is we're only painting that picture one-dimensionally through the use of radio communications. And if any of these startups or big companies or government organizations, which are out there and exist, if they're all working on that, they're really gonna make some great changes in the fire service, especially seeing where we've come from 20, 30 years ago to now the evolution of AI and capturing all these data points and how can we use this data point to make our jobs better. It's really incredible. And to do that, we need to, like I said, as an end user, we've got to kind of reach out and, you know, meet with other people just like we're doing this and talk to others, other people in the industries of the technology and figure out what's going on or, you know, talking to buddies at other departments and seeing what technology, what are they doing? How are they running their operations? And then I just like to try. and steal the best information and bring it back to my organization and try and make small little improvements each day or step-by-step. And hopefully we can eliminate some of these communication breakdowns.

[40:12] Kevin Sofen: Well, one thing that you got me thinking about on this pod, I've never actually done this before, but you mentioned Cody Riggins twice. And I think something I'd love is sort of a speaker like yourself to nominate someone else. So I need you to introduce me to Cody because I want to dive deeper in some of the comms and just the data platforms.

[40:32] Kevin Swat: It's really, Illinois Water Rescue One, we have a really good group of guys that are really tuned into their specialties, whether that's logistics, communications, medical operations, we got rope rescue stuff, we got boats, vehicles, everything. So we have, kind of like those committees I was talking about in Mount Prospect, we have specialized little groups of guys that focus on one area and stuff. and I would love to nominate Cody to talk to you, to kind of pass along. You would do it much more eloquently than I have about the technology and stuff because there really is a lot of incredible stuff that we are using. I just don't know all the nuances of exactly how it works. And Cody knows that a lot better than I do. And I give him a ton of credit for, he spent tons of hours researching, developing all these policies and protocols that we use that literally can change the outcome of a large disaster like Helene. With all those data tracking points of where we've been, what are we doing right now, and where are we going tomorrow or in four hours? So all those three aspects are really the most crucial in those search and rescue, want to rescue type of issues. And he's nailed that pretty well.

[41:51] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, well, Cody, you're up next. And earlier you mentioned something that we talked a little bit about before when we first talked, but kind of different coping mechanisms, especially being a firefighter, just different things that you encounter. And it's tough in a lot of different ways. I know being a firefighter of like, sometimes it's not the one large event, it's sort of a death by a thousand cuts, just like a lot of little things that can cause some different aspects of trauma over time. And I know, I personally have picked up kickboxing within recent months. I also love doing Wim Hof breathing and then followed by cold showers, cold plunging. My mom always gets mad at me when I jump in the lake in like December, but it definitely is a good shock to the system. But I know you've got into jiu-jitsu. I'd love to hear kind of how you've used jiu-jitsu as something to kind of help with your ongoing mental health and kind of stress relief and any other kind of thoughts you have in terms of kind of the status of mental health and ways to cope in the fire service.

[42:56] Kevin Swat: Yeah, so just like I'm not an expert on any of this technology stuff, I'm not an expert at jiu-jitsu either. That's the whole entire premise of it, is that it just takes so long to get there. And I've been training at Team Curran under Jeff Curran, who fought in the UFC for about seven years now. and it's been a really impactful hobby or lifestyle, essentially, that I've adopted. People always talk about how hard firefighting is and being a paramedic is, and it really is. It is a demanding job that has good calls and bad calls, and you need a way to kind of mitigate some of that stress. And I found jiu-jitsu was the perfect way to do that. It's a physical game. It's a super competitive sport that each role you're exerting a lot of energy. And the whole entire point too is that I'm obviously doing it wrong if I'm exerting that much energy. The more that I train, the less energy and force I should be applying and the more skill that I should be using. So it's a physical game, and it's also a mental game as well, too. It's kind of like a game of chess, essentially, where if my opponent is trying to do one move or position or whatever, I'm trying to be two steps ahead of him and try and think about his reaction and my reaction, and it just evolves from there. And at current, it's a really good group of guys, and it's been a huge stress reliever to be able to an hour and a half of training it can really improve your mental focus on that and you know like we said firefighting is very hard but also training jiu-jitsu is probably more physically demanding on a daily basis so i figure if i can have do something harder on my days off than firefighting which i think jiu-jitsu is then it makes firefighting and being a paramedic look a little bit easier as well too. And then plus too, I got to keep everything squared away, right? Like the hardest part is getting there for me. The hardest part is having all my kids squared away. My wife, you know, she's on her lunch break while I go and train. So it's, there's a lot of moving parts and stuff. It just keeps you honest and making sure that everything's squared away and whatnot. And I couldn't recommend it enough for first responders. It's been really a game changer and just positive energy coming throughout.

[45:35] Kevin Sofen: But I also got to introduce you to another friend who he was a firefighter. I think he's stepped down. And now he works for a company called Flame Systems. It's a virtual reality training company called, his name's Evan Wing. I'll make sure I connect you guys. But I know he's picked up jiu-jitsu like you and it's changed his life for the better. So I'll make sure that you guys could vibe on that amongst many other things.

[45:59] Kevin Swat: Where are you training at?

[46:00] Kevin Sofen: I'm not training. Evan, he's up in Madison area, Wisconsin. So I go to a gym called Nine Round. It's a kickboxing gym and it's right by my house. But for me, when I'm kickboxing, I just, I love it because A, does kind of, it kicks my butt and I don't think about anything but boxing. And I think just kind of having that no phone, nothing else, just focusing on the bag, focusing on different punching tactics, focusing on different kicking tactics, having that 45 minutes or so of just locked in on that has just sets me up for success the rest of the day.

[46:36] Kevin Swat: 100%.

[46:37] Kevin Sofen: So just a kind of final thing. I don't know if I had told you about this, but I'd love to know if there's any sort of a quote or word of wisdom that maybe that is ingrained within Mabus or Mount Prospect or any sort of quote that you've lived by that is something that gives you motivation or an insight or something that you can maybe that you leave us with here today?

[47:02] Kevin Swat: I would have to probably just steal it from Jocko Willink. I don't know if you're familiar with him. Famous Navy Seal guy. He's got a great podcast as well, too. And he was the one that kind of introduced me into the thought process of jiu-jitsu. And one of his famous sayings is essentially good. So at the end of the day, whether we've had a good shift or a bad shift, if things went our way or things didn't go our way, what's the mindset that we're coming out with at the end of the day? And to me, that's always good. Did you have a bad day at work? I did have a bad day at work, let's say, but good. What can I take away from those bad days, those bad calls? It's that mindset of like, hey, some bad things are going to happen, but we need to learn and we need to move forward and progress and implement new ideas and procedures into our everyday tactics to improve ourselves. So I just try and kind of live by that no matter what happens, whether it's good or bad, it's just at the end of the day, we're all good. Just kind of try and move on from there.

[48:12] Kevin Sofen: Kev, well said. From another Kevin S to another Kevin S, it's really been just awesome to, really reinvigorating and exciting for me. We've had a lot of other first responders, active firefighters on the pod, but it's maybe been a few months. So I'm excited to continue to lean into end users this year about how they're using and adopting tech and guys like you and your teammates are really the reason why I get excited about waking up in the morning. So just appreciate the opportunity to dive in further and I look forward to continue conversations with Bobby Ortiz and Evan Wing and connecting with Cody and yeah, hopefully we're both in Chicago. So we'll have to chop it up again in person sometime soon.

[48:52] Kevin Swat: Yeah, well, thank you very much for having me. And like I said, all this technology that you guys are coming up with and inventing and implementing, it's for us. So we really owe you the thank you because at the end of the day, it's gonna be helping us and saving our lives. So thanks for reaching out and letting me be part of this podcast. I appreciate it.

[49:12] Kevin Sofen: Right on. And yeah, shout out to Gerald for the connection. So thanks, Gerald. All right, Kev, we'll talk soon.

[49:16] Kevin Swat: All right, bye, thank you.

[49:17] Kevin Sofen: Thanks for joining another episode of the Smart Firefighting Podcast. We hope you learned something today and if so, please consider leaving us a review or a comment so we can keep creating the best content for you. Have a great day and thanks for all that you do for public safety.