"How to Kill a Firefighter in 5 Easy Steps" With James Geering

From episode: Burning Out: Tackling Firefighter Health and Well-being

so you talked about your blog for a second and I want to talk about it for a minute because I was reading through your website this morning and this blog really caught my attention it's from 2018 so you probably remember the how to kill a firefighter in five easy steps yes and it's still the same problem today so by that point it had been a couple of years talking about some very pertinent things which is flogging a dead horse to some people if they listen to the podcast a lot but it blows my mind how people are still completely oblivious to it but yeah for example we talk about cancer oh it's you know wash your gear absolutely a small part of the overall thing but the strength of the individual's human body to carcinogens resist is a massive part of that mental health oh james it was what you saw with that you know decapitated three -year -olds absolutely that's a part of it but if you know for example my own personal journey and I never actually I was very very fortunate I had so many positive coping mechanisms given to me just by accident I mean none of us can manipulate our childhood but I was extremely lucky but I almost died in a house fire when I was four so you know you could look at the the three -year -old thing and be like why isn't he getting better well maybe I've never addressed the four -year -old me thing before I ever put the uniform on so that piece was really seeing that this information was kind of getting out there and people completely still refusing to address that so for example sleep deprivation the shifts one of the things that die on my sword elements is that the insanity that if you go into a bank or a grocery store right now 99 of the people working there their work week ends at 40 hours but the person that wakes up from a dead sleep at three in the morning slides down a two -story pole gets in the back of a rig drives lights and sirens against traffic goes to a fire makes entry does a search pulls someone out maybe even then doffs their gear and functions as a paramedic 56 hour week is perfectly acceptable before mandatory so this was the big thing is like yeah if you want to kill firefighters and just keep doing the same thing that you're doing and you're smashing it congratulations you're reaching your quota which is what is a body count again or we could actually take a step back listen to all the science that's already out there from every other profession except ours and police and realize that we're killing our people and until we invest in our first responders and give them the rest and the recovery that we need in our profession I would argue that a 2472 should be an industry standard at minimum then I mean the longer time goes on the more blood is on your hands and you have the information like just my podcast alone 800 experts from neuroscientists sleep medicine experts coaches and nutritionists and you name it so you can't say you didn't know so now it's knowingly burying your peoples and that was 2018 that's five years ago I was already just angry about it because I myself had put two years worth of information out there for free anyone can access no Patreon no exclusive membership just open source for the whole world so they say about insanity doing the same thing expecting different results you know push -ups haven't fixed mental health clean cabs I'm all for that concept not surgically but leaning that way but we're still losing people hand over fist from cancer so it's not just the fires it's not just the exposures to trauma there's other elements that we have to bring into this conversation