It's been five years since the horrific Pulse Nightclub Shooter. The Incident Commander for Fire, Chief Bryan Davis, walks through his experience, lessons learned, and current initiatives to help reduce impact of active shooters.
Chief Bryan Davis was called to respond to the active shooter in progress at the Pulse Nightclub Shooting. Unlike other active shooter incidents, there was no question - this catastrophe was a terrorist attack. An attack on all Americans by a coward shooter who took hostages, remained on site for hours, and even called news stations. It was an active shooter like we haven't seen before. Chief Davis had to act swiftly and with precision to control the triage and life-saving mission for those impacted by the shooter. We talk about his experience on our show to help those in the field gain leadership skills in times of crisis.
Now, Chief Davis is focusing on another crisis- the impact of disaster on first responders. Keenly aware of these impacts, Chief Davis is an advocate to care for first responders and their families who experience catastrophic events.
If you have experienced a disaster, choose to be Disaster Tough by talking to someone about it, don't bottle it up. Processing these events in healthy ways allows us to keep doing our jobs. If you are looking for ways to manage and move on, please contact our show and we will point you in the right direction.
This Podcast has moved to the Readiness Lab.
Host: John Scardena (0s):
You've just entered the Disaster Tough Podcast, the place for emergency managers, first responders, and humanitarians who want to get the job done. Stories, lessons, and tips are provided by field experts. I'm your host to John Scardena, owner of Doberman Emergency Management and former federal emergency response official who's responded to some of the most extreme disasters. Disaster Tough is our mantra, it combines experience, training, and analytics in order to be successful at any stage within the disaster lifecycle, it means being a professional in emergency and disaster services, Doberman Emergency Management lives by this. If your organization needs to fill a gap, please contact us we can help. Contact info is in the show notes.
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Host: John Scardena (1m 53s):
Welcome come back to the show, everybody, it's Your Host: John Scardena. Man, I am weirdly excited about this episode because it's one, a super horrific topic, but a very important topic to cover, especially on Father’s Day weekend and we're going to be covering some of that, the mental health side in a second. But before I introduce my guests here, I just want to preference this episode, on our show we cover actual events as I've talked before with other guests. Some of those events of course are manmade, and we don't want to turn it into an entertaining thing. We don't want to turn it into something light, but what we do want to do is say, Hey, this is the actual event with real people and let's figure out the after actions of what we can do to make it better. So, even though we're talking about it on the show, I hope you can understand that the seriousness of the topic, you can understand the weight of it and most importantly how prevent it, if you can prevent it and prevent the impacts of it, which we're going to be covering a little bit, you know, we can do better in this field. We're going to be talking about the Pulse Nightclub shooting that happened about five years ago. In fact, almost to the date of this episode, we're going to be talking to the incident commander, Chief Brian Davis, who actually responded to the event and is going to be talking to us about that. Then finally, we're going to be talking about if you've been involved in this event, which some of us unfortunately have, or if it's going to happen in the future, which we feel like at this point, it's kind of inevitable. How can you help yourself and your family move on from a horrific scene? Brian's a really great example of doing that. He's going to be talking about those experiences today. Chief, welcome to the show.
Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (3m 42s):
John, thank you so much man. I'm happy to be here and I appreciate the opportunity.
Host: John Scardena (3m 46s):
Yeah, it's kind of this weird thing about our field, right? Because we all have had a response experiences, a lot of us have a response experiences, especially the guests and myself. So, you have this weight or this responsibility, this badge even of, I've had these crazy response experiences and it allows us to go into these topics. But at the same time, it's like man I wish I didn't have to have that badge and I wish I didn't have to have that associated. So, understanding that you carry that weight again I think it's a great honor for us to have you on the show again, before we even get started and like just thank you for responding. I've heard amazing things about the things you did in that response and want to break that up. But even post event, you've done a lot to be able to help out the responders and their families to be their advocate, to be able to move on. And so that's a huge pitch for our show is it's like mental health and emotional health. So again, thanks for taking the time for coming on.
Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (4m 57s):
Yeah, absolutely. John, and you know, it's one of those things. It's not something you want to be on the top of your resume. I mean, it is something you want to be proud of, but I've coined it as that worst, best day ever type thing. It's the worst scenario, your heart pours out for the victims and both the victims from the shooter and the individuals that have suffered trauma as a result of the incident. But it was my best day and that I couldn't be prouder of the men and the women that actually rally to the cause that evening. We were able to affect a lot of rescues and save a lot of wives in the process.
I mean, we weren't able to save the 49 that died as a result of these horrendous acts, and that part of it makes us really sad, but we were able to actually save over 30 that were critically injured and wounded and they made it to the trauma center and they survived the surgeries and everything. So, we talk about my involvement in that and I would like to allude and everybody understands this, I'm sure in the EM world and also in emergency response, it's a team effort and I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge the men and the women that were there on that event. It was some of the most professional actions I've ever witnessed. It's not something that we were ready for. Quite honestly, we've talked about it. I think agencies across the country were talking about it, but it wasn't really on the forefront of what fire departments and EMS providers were prepared for and it was large-scale huge magnitude when it hit
Host: John Scardena (6m 42s):
Well, when it hit, it was the worst, unfortunately to date it's not but at the time it was the worst active shooter event in us history. It was unique for so many different reasons. For the listeners who somehow were hiding on a rock for the last five years and didn't know about this. If I may sir, I'm going to probably set up the context here a little bit and then you can, I'll set up like that with the pre-end and you can talk about like the response we don't ever share again. For our listeners, we would encourage anybody in the field who's listening to this, please adopt this methodology, never share the shooters or the terrorist’s names. We don't feel like they're worth sharing and we want to change that mentality.
Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (7m 28s):
So yeah, you can call them evil.
Host: John Scardena (7m 30s):
You can call them broken, you can call them whatever you want. Just don't call them by their name. It's not worth remembering. So, the shooter goes into Pulse Nightclub. It is a gay nightclub in Orlando, goes in there, checks out the scene. There is an off-duty officer there and security actually leaves and comes back. If I recall there's an upper stage, a lower stage, a patio area, on the upper stage, the DJ I'm talking like I've been there. I haven't been there, but you know, done lots of attractions on it. Yeah. I love going there. The DJ has the booth, was on the upper end with bathrooms on the back end, where the upper end was. So, you have 320 people packed inside this club with some people on the patio when the shooting started around 02:02 in the morning and you have people on the patio, a lot of confusion obviously, because you already have sounds in a nightclub, but then you have to deal with shooting before we get into like really anything. What I find is most fascinating, what I always bring this up in our active shooter classes, telling people to know your exits and the DJ had enough situational awareness.
In fact, some of the members to understand that there was an exit behind the DJ and so you had a flood of people going out, but essentially, they were locked in there with this shooter. So, the fact that out of 320 people, it is horrible that 49 people lost their lives. However, it could have been much higher even. That's the stage. So, you get this call around two o'clock in the morning, can you kind of walk us through that process of like the next actions you took?
Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (9m 32s):
Yeah, it's one of those things that's a bit surreal, you know, been in the fire service and a first responder worked as a flight paramedic for a local program and a trauma flight program for many years, you know? So, you get accustomed to what the units are and what they're responding to and everything else. When that call was dispatched, the units that were assigned to the call seemed a bit out of the norm for me, I’m like wait a minute. What are we going to? Because it was just a myriad of units. Most departments have an SOP, you know, where they have a mass casualty assignment that consists of so many units and so on and so forth and this one didn't really meet that. Like I wasn't really sure at first and it was a lot of units, so I'm thinking, okay, what's really going on two o'clock in the morning, downtown Orlando, one of the busiest nights of the week in the city, they've got events all up and down orange avenue, they've got concerts going on that have streets closed. It's just one of the busiest nights for us. We automatically move over to an operational tactic and everybody gives responding. Before that, probably one of the most revered and admired lieutenants in our organization now retired. He was the company officer that was at the station that was right next to the Pulse Nightclub.
Rarely if ever, did you hear any fluctuations in his voice, on the radio? He was usually pretty calm, cool collective. He came across the radio in this very, I don't want to call it high pitched, but several tones higher than normal. Very rapid. I'm like, all right, something's not right because I've never seen that in this Lieutenant. This is a guy that you can count on to be really cool, calm, and collective, and in moments like that I'm sure in the years after when people had an opportunity to review the audio, you can actually hear gunfire occurring in the background. You know, my immediate response is holy crap. My guys are in the middle of this and I'm a mile away, but yet there's not a thing I can do. Even when I get there, it's like, we just got to figure out what we got and what we have going on. So immediately just went into, you know, they're telling us multiple, multiple victims. We've read our communications division was overwhelmed with phone calls. I mean, 500, 600 calls within no time at all, because it was members or it was people that were there and their families and everybody else, because this is breaking. This is hitting the news everywhere immediately. So, resources were big, obviously in an emergency management and disaster preparedness and stuff. That's something we talk about a lot.
So, I asked for the world, I said, you know what I’m being told I've got 20 to 30 victims. We're a department that consists of 17 stations. We provide our own transport in addition with private ambulance service and then mutual aid agreements with other departments and stuff. I'm like, man if I've got 30 victims, my transport situation has already completely overwhelmed our hospitals, which fortunately for us, and this isn't always the case but fortunately for us, our level one trauma center was literally six, seven blocks away. Our other trauma center that it's not a dedicated trauma center, but one that can receive overflow was six or seven miles away. So, we have hospitals but I've traveled to parts of the US to talk about active shooter and their closest trauma facility is an hour away and that by flight, we were very fortunate and unfortunate, good. You know, like I said best day, worst day ever, you know, in best case scenario, we were aware, we were when it happened and law enforcement was really active initially in getting some of those people out of there. Actually, they saw how overwhelmed this was going to be. But the biggest thing for me was in this realm of chaos that we were diving into, somebody had to be that voice that just brings it all down.
I seem to be that a shit magnet, sorry I'm sure others that know me will tell you that, but it used to be whatever can happen, will happen whenever I'm working. So, it's something I've really tried to focus on as a Chief Officer, but we had to bring it down a level and the biggest piece of that and I'm sure in your world of emergency management and disaster preparedness and stuff like that, you know one of the biggest things is getting everything set up and having the resources organized. Priority was the safety of the men and women that were responding and the safety of my crews that were already literally a hundred feet from this nightclub where this is taking place. Then basically I just kind of pulled the reins back on everybody and said, listen, we just can't go running in there. We can't just all come pull it into this dead end and have no way out. We have to set this up for success. We have to set up the divisions, the groups, everything that you need with that. A lot of departments are myself included, we spent a lot of time with table exercises and even in mass casualty or disaster preparedness for hurricanes or tornadoes or earthquakes or whatever it may be. When we talk about all that stuff, it's amazing how different it is when it actually happens, because the reality of it sets in and you're like, oh, this is insane, but held everybody back.
Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (15m 10s):
I actually moved myself into a forward position in the scene very early on. Again, it's not anything I want anybody to relive emotionally because this will, some people will look at that and they'll remember it. I mean, I have still had the visual of driving down Orange avenue and individuals running the other direction against me carrying shooting victims and just trying to get them somewhere other than the immediacy of the nightclub itself. But got in, got set up, got positioned, made immediate contact with the station. I actually chose to set up the command post and stuff a little bit away from the station, but yet I still had a visual on everything that was going on. Probably initially, maybe a little too close for us, but I really needed to get a grasp. The one thing too, you know, law enforcement was there in numbers. We had agencies from all over Central Florida, FHP, Orange county, UCF police, Winter park police, there were more Cop Carson, blue lights there. Then I think you could count in a year on any other.
Host: John Scardena (16m 18s):
Of what you want in that situation though, honestly overwhelmed.
Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (16m 21s):
And we're there to help each other, right? We're there for, you know, they're gone, we understand active shooter, you've done a lot with it. You know, they really have three objectives. They're either going to confine, kill, or capture the shooter and they want to stop the event. We know most active shooter events by definition, depending on whose definition you read they're over within 10 minutes, this wasn't. This individual was actually shooting for more than 10 minutes and it wasn't until he was barricaded into an area that the nightclub that was pretty inaccessible to law enforcement, that now this evolved into a hostage situation.
So really, this thing came in waves for us. We set up an MCI. We operated under that premise. We had all our groups and divisions working. Again, the discipline of the members that were responding really are what made this to the degree it was successful because they were disciplined. They use a little bit or reserve, and they knew that it was absolutely critical that we really built on the foundation for this and made sure that we all just didn't come running in and then we couldn't get out. Meaning we can't get our transport groups set up. We don't have any communications with the hospital. We don't have any communications with law enforcement, which was impartially the case and we learned a lot from that. I hope as an industry, the importance of that unified command and having those communications and having a liaison and everything else. But yeah, it was just really surreal and I mean, I've had some pretty enormous events in my career and this one definitely just immediately stood out and really what stood out and beginning was the Lieutenant and just his voice, just the change. He never waivers in that at all. Just to hear it in his voice, I knew, then I said, this is not just a shooting where we've got one or two or three victims. This is a big deal. Especially when each tee’s up and you can hear the shooting in the background, I'm like, wake up what do we got? Yeah, you're right there.
Host: John Scardena (18m 31s):
You bring up a lot of different, you bringing up a lot of points to show why it was so unique. So yeah, you're right. Temper. Most like 90% of active shooters are under 10 minutes. You got 10 minutes to save people's lives and run, hide, fight. Doesn't just mean run, hide, fight, it means a lot more than that. The other thing that you brought up is there's a discussion, I really pushed back on the discussion. I think its semantics and I think it's stupid most of the time, but there's no question with this active shooter. People say active shooters are not terrorists. Well, they are terrorists. But this guy especially was, I mean, he claimed affiliation and allegiance to ISIS. He talked about strapping people. He had hostages. It was very different than I hate to say normal, but the most common active shooter, which is psychologically broken, just goes in there for a headcount, bang, bang, bang and then kill myself done, right. That’s kind of their typical MO so three hours versus 10 minutes claiming allegiance to ISIS, calling 9-1-1 multiple times, calling a new station, posting on Facebook. There’re so many differences of why this was even outside of what we would have been training for.
You brought up the uniqueness of this and we're talking about it, right? So, the other two that are unique in my mind are the Aurora shooting with the theater, which, you know, you talk about being six blocks away. In this world, people can make their own choices and they should. Most of the time it's good choices, but sometimes it's absolutely horrific, but you know, there's still sometimes the hand of God that just gets placed in like, okay, this horrific thing happened, but the trauma center is six blocks away. Or the fact in the Roar shooting, like I just brought up the will. The time the active shooter started was the transfer time for all law enforcement. So, all the guys getting off and all the guys getting on, everybody was able to respond and they were able to save a lot of people on there.
Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (20m 42s):
Yeah and actually, I've written a couple of papers just for some classes and I've focused on Aurora, Aurora was one that I looked at. I looked at the after-action reviews and it was fortunate they had just completed. Actually, there was a SWAT training that was taking place just miles from there that had just completed. They had those resources they're really quite fast as did we, I mean, I had OPD officers and other law enforcement members coming by me. Like I was standing still and I don't exactly stand still when I'm responding to them, they come by me. I'm like, holy cow, you really start to grasp what's going on here more by what's happening in your surroundings than you are actually what you're visually seeing in the scene. That a lot of times for me is kind of how I gauge the severity or the enormity of the event is what's happening in their periphery, if you will, and everything else.
Host: John Scardena (21m 43s):
That's an excellent point because I went from Hurricane Harvey directly to the Northern California wildfires. Hurricane Harvey, it was like the same thing, if you stopped to look around you at all the different parts that were moving and how fast people were going, you would have gotten behind the curve because you would have just been blown away by all the media parts for lifesaving. But in the wildfires, at least for the role that I got out there, they were also calling it a type one most catastrophic, and it was catastrophic for sure, for the people there. But in terms of like complexity, people were working 12 hour shifts and going home, like that's not type one. I'm probably going to get a lot of pushback from the people because obviously lives are impacted, not talking about that. I'm just talking about the complexity Pulse Nightclub is a type one event because again, not 10 minutes, three hours claiming affiliation with ISIS. As you noted, a million things happening all at the same time. So, what I like to tell people is it's sometimes hard to figure out when you're in what, like to classify type one, type two, type three. I don't know really what a type two is, but I always know what a type three is, you know, a county flood.
Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (23m 3s):
Yeah, exactly and I know what a type one is, right.
Host: John Scardena (23m 6s):
So that's interesting that you researched Aurora too, though.
Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (23m 15s):
I've done others. I mean, obviously I had an opportunity at the request of, did some things for Department of Homeland security and just had an opportunity to do some stuff up in Indiana and Indianapolis and some other departments. It was in the moment. It was definitely, get that message out there with them, you can never be too prepared. But it's like I mentioned early on, we do spend a lot of time, a lot of departments spend an inordinate amount of time in preparing for mass casualty and what we've always known mass casualty to be is, and I'm sure if you tabletop one, it's that hurricane, it's a tornado, it's an overturned school bus, it's a tanker truck that dumped all its acid all over the road. We got a chemical cloud, but we've never really, until the last five years as an industry, we've never really sat down and said, okay, this is what just happened, and what measures were in place, what did the after-action review, which in my opinion, fairly accurate, but not really in the eyes of the individuals that were with that event. I can say that I looked at the Las Vegas event a year later, actually had an opportunity to meet some of the individuals that were working that event a year later, because we did have members that travel from Orlando to Las Vegas, part of our peer support program and stuff that they were trying to launch at the time go out there.
You know, when we had Pulse happen and I'm Segway in a sidebar a little bit, but this is going to get into your peer support and your mental wellness and stuff like that. But we had a tremendous amount of outpouring from other departments. FDNY, Boston FD, the individuals that have been through very similar tragedies and they traveled down here with the international association of firefighters on their own accord, because they had just been through a tragedy themselves, whether it be the Boston Marathon Bombing or 9/11, whatever, it's going to impact people. But with this event, you know, it evolved over three hours. We’ve hit on that a couple of different times. It went from an active shooter with a high-level MCI acuity to an EOD for us, if everybody's using the same terminology, it's an explosive ordinance device. They had several bomb sniffing dogs there that actually had positive hits on the same vehicle and in a hostage situation. You know, it evolved. It really had several moving parts, several components that were occurring. During these three hours, it actually went in waves because there were opportunities where law enforcement was able to get into the nightclub while they had this guy barricaded in the back and continue to remove victims and get them out to us. You know for us the idea of ballistics and all that wasn't something that was fully introduced to the department. Yet it wasn't readily accessible for us and we weren't really prepared to operate in that hot zone if you will.
Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (26m 18s):
Now five years have passed, and there's been a lot of discussions of where EMS providers will and will not operate. Even to this day, speaking with some of the high-end command law enforcement officers, they've said, we didn't expect you to go into the nightclub and sometimes there's an expectation and that's the big thing John. I, as the incident commander and as the guy calling the shots at one point, I basically had to say no, we're not doing that. I'm not putting my individuals in that position. We've not been trained for it. I mean, I understand it. We're first responders, right? What we do has evolved.
It's no longer, we don't just get 911 calls for catching the tree and houses that are on fire. We get called for anything that somebody deemed an emergency in their eyes, and that's what we've evolved to. So, we've added all these components. We've added hazmat, we've added aviation rescue, whatever disaster, preparedness, tornadoes, hurricanes, wildfires, you name it. This industry has evolved and its whole lot of data and a lot of information for us to keep up with. So, I feel like a lot of things went really well for us where there some opportunities for improvement in what we do, that's going to be the case with anything. Unfortunately, it takes that event to actually occur before you know what your weaknesses are. You're not able to exploit those weaknesses, sitting on a table top exercise. It just doesn't happen.
Host: John Scardena (27m 48s):
Your process can be flawless and yet you can still have casualty, right. That's just like the reality of the field. I like that phrase. What’s that other phrase, you can do every scene, everything right and still lose. That's like a really big thing and I guess for our field, like I said, we have emergency managers, first responders on here, military personnel, whatever you talk about after-action reviews, what are some of the high-level things that any department could, in fact, I want to bring up the other thing too, in a second, about how it's expanding into other areas. So, we've talked about that, but what are your specific after actions, what you did really well and what you think other people should at least ingest or digest for their departments?
Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (28m 43s):
Yeah. We've seen a lot of activity in the last couple of years, you know, disheartening obviously, right. We just had one at our railroad or a facility, we've had one at a distribution center with 5, 7, 10 casualties and certainly, you don't like to sit and listen to that, but those were confined in terms of the geographies, the systems necessity of that. They happened in a very small, localized area of a warehouse or in a yard or something of that nature. The things that worked really well in this scenario and I can't overemphasize this enough, the use of ICS and the incident command structure and understanding NIMS, even though it was derived from wildland firefighting and you know, adapted into the world of first responders and stuff that absolutely proves beneficial. You've got to get those things moving early. Even if you anticipate that this thing is going to expand, are going to grow, it's easier to get those resources moving early.
I've heard some people not specifically this event, but I've heard others, Ah, you know, they overreacted, they did this, not specifically the polls for me but just in general conversations. Sometimes when we talk about disasters and stuff, oh way too many resources, what a waste or this or that. No, I don't believe you can have too many resources when it is scaling and it's growing exponentially. So, getting these groups and divisions and understanding ICS, I mean, there was an opportunity for improvement, obviously in our unified command.
Obviously, that's identified in the after-action review and I own part of that as the incident commander, even though I wasn't the highest ranking official, and it really was probably outside of my scope of what I should be doing. It was identified and at the end of the day, I represented the members in the organization that were present on that scene. I saw an opportunity for work, we could have done better with that, but so did the other agency, we were supposed to be working together with in that unified command. So, you know, things that went well, right? The guys just operating with some control and maturity and just taking it step-by-step, they knew they had a task in front of them unlike any other they've had in their career and most of these individuals I've worked with for my entire career at the fire department and I knew what to expect. Right. You know your strengths and weaknesses, you know what you can expect, but these men and women were flawless in their execution of doing what we had to do, but yeah, getting that early, getting it set up really understanding, yeah. What you have and how in the enormity of it, whether it's 5 patients, 10 patients, 50 patients, 420, like you said, there were well over 300 people in that nightclub. I mean, the reports say this because this is what they're supposed to have, but closer to 5, 4, or 500,000, okay. 400 or 500 people in that nightclub, but regardless could have been a lot worse.
Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (31m 53s):
The biggest challenge is when I look at an event like that, and also when I reviewed the Las Vegas response, geographically the size of the event was spread out over several blocks. I mean, Las Vegas people were running into the hotels and seeking shelter and in some of the resorts and stuff there, and a lot of that happened with us too. You know, one of my lessons and one of the things I would do differently is I would look at that geographic difference separated into maybe a Northern division and a Southern division or, North or South because we did have indices that actually fled to the south of that night club and our entire operation, including the trauma was north on the north side.
We were cut off from getting down that main artery, Orange avenue, which basically runs that North to the South venue, we were cut off because that was the hot zone with that as it evolved. I did decide to move some units down to that south side and start looking at, do we have anybody down there that we need to be accountable for? You know, going back to what really worked well. We had a lot of resources from our department. We had a lot of resources from her joining departments through our mutual aid agreements and utilize those resources. I had liaisons go to the trauma center because that way I have eyes and ears on what's going on there.
I mean, Orlando health, a level one trauma center, they said bring them all. I'm thinking, all right I've been in this system a long time. I used to fly on that helicopter that goes into that system. How are they going to handle them all? Somehow, miraculously, anything that was a trauma or read by our NCI category, they wanted it all and mandate they handled it and they didn't lose a single one of them that were transported to that, incredible. We created this flow and that was the thing early on. You got to pull the reins back on all those transport units and you got to get them to staging and then start bringing them in as you need them in coordinating all those efforts. So, the discipline, the amount of discipline that was presented by all the officers that were put into those positions is what allowed this thing to really just move.
Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (34m 13s):
It was very fluid if you will, in that when there was a demand and it did, it peaked on us a couple of times, OPD would bring out another dozen victims and we were ready to receive them at the edge of that hot zone, if you will. We moved them into whether we could just move them into triage or get them right into transport and get them going to the trauma center. So, a lot of things went well John, at the end of the day, you're always professional. You're going to go back and look at it and say, okay, were there some opportunities for us to do things a little bit differently at the end of the day, I still stand firmly that the opportunities I speak of would not have changed the outcome of the event.
We would have still had 49 victims. We would've still had close to 40 that we rescued because those operational changes that the presence in that unified command post towards the end. Would it have made a difference in the outcome for the individuals that were already deceased within the club? I don't believe it would have. It's unfortunate because that's not what we like to do. We like to get in and get it done, say wives. I mean, that's what we're about. We're really strong type a success driven individuals. We don't like to fail. I don't know a single person that's in emergency management or in fire, EMS, or anything as a first responder that likes failure.
Host: John Scardena (35m 39s):
There's only one person in the Pulse Nightclub shooting that failed and it was the shooter.
Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (35m 46s):
Absolutely. Absolutely, and I'm not talking about it that you brought that up, so we'll keep that there, but it's not worth my time or energy at this point.
Host: John Scardena (35m 57s):
Good point. But yeah, like on that same vein of that, you're talking about from the responder side, you know, disasters, whether it's natural or man-made, when you're dealing with life operations and really life impacting operations. I've had friends who've worked in congregate shelters and just seeing people lose everything and that causes them to break down. You know, we are success driven where a lot of us are A type personalities, but that comes at a cost sometimes because we're unwilling to face the reality of that, despite all the training, despite whatever the stuff that we deal with is not normal and there's an impact to you.
I've brought this up on the show before, but there's also an impact to your family. My wife is a graphic designer, she is amazing. She has like so many accolades to her name. She didn't sign up to like walk over to the tornado and punched the tornado in the face and try to pull people out of buildings, right? Like there was one time where USAR came up to me in a Georgia tornado and they asked to figure out the math because I did analytics at the national team. Hey, there was a boy that was sucked out of a home, could you figure out where all the different possibilities of where he could have gone and how far? You know, unfortunately did the math and it basically, because of my degrees, I knew he would have been disintegrated in the tornado. I still gave the trajectories of where it could have gone based off of rotation and speed and all this other stuff, but never found him, that is an incident that really frustrates me, but I understand it.
My wife didn't sign up for that and especially when I started doing the man-made stuff, especially in DC. I don't talk about that too much, but I told her about it one time and it like really shook her for three days. Like, oh this is what my husband really does. I think we have to talk about that, you know, Pulse Nightclub, you just said that literally everybody was flying by, you are flying into the scene and trying to deal with this. That's a lot of people and their families who for three hours were worrying about this terrorist. What would you say to if he could influence the country somehow? What would you say to that aspect?
Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (38m 40s):
Well you know, John, obviously this, this will shouldn't come as a surprise. Obviously the first responders we talked about it, we talked about strong type A personality. We seem impervious to emotion and we don't on the outside. In most cases, we don't even seem like things like that, rock us. Like, you know, that's just not in our genes. We just don't do that. But even if you look back as far as 9/11, there's tons of photography out there that show you these members from FD and Y and Port Authority, police departments and stuff that were already grieving over the enormity of the event.
So, you know, we see that a lot and our mainstream media, a lot of times they'll do a good job of showing all the great things and all the video and stuff like that. They also show all the horrific things that have occurred the loss of life and doing it with some regard to the sensitivity of the situation. But the first responders for a long time, we've always just kind of, yeah, we did what we did and we, man, I wish we could have done more. Then we move on to the next day and in this case, John, I can tell you personally, not the case. My number one goal in the days and weeks following that, I was genuinely concerned about the members that responded to that call.
Now you have some that are callused and hard, and they may not ever show you that it's bothering them, or it bothered them that we couldn't do more. I'm the incident commander. I wore that weight on my shoulders, that there wasn't more we could have done for the individuals in the club, but given the information I had at the time, based on the resources I had at the time and the enormity of the event, I mean, mass casualty is not a nice thing because in mass casualty, you are actually being asked to triage. That's what we do, and if you have a black, you move on in, in normal responses to say, just a shooting with one or two victims. That may be an individual that we actually initiate life saving measures, and we try to resuscitate, but in a mass casualty, when you have limited resources, and you're really trying to impact those that have an opportunity for survival, that's the mode that you are trained to operate in.
Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (41m 8s):
Sometimes it just gets nuts. I spent a good or more on a time. Our department was in its incipient phase of developing a peer support group. You know, a lot of departments across the country rely on worker's comp and things like that and they have IAP, and then they have EAP (employee assistance programs) that the reality of those employee assistance programs as they are contracted by the city. You know, I probably will catch flack on this again, but it's a contracted service, low bid for mental health providers that can come in and help somebody if they're having a difficult time.
But I don't know that they really have the ability to relate to what just occurred. So, in the days following, we did some debriefings and we got all that organized through the efforts of our local and other members. We had members that came from Boston and they were part of the Boston strong effort. We had members that came from FD and why we had members that came from all over the country, who convened in the city of Orlando to be there for the first responders. Now, the city themselves, they did an amazing job in their response for the victims of the event. There was a lot of relief efforts set up and stuff like that. I caused some scrutiny over this in the months and years following, but I feel like it's got to be said the responders in my opinion, weren't given priority.
I'm not saying that we needed a priority, but we were asked three days later to go back to work and be ready to do the same thing over yet.
Host: John Scardena (49m 49s):
I was just wondering how long you guys had off, three days.
Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (49m 51s):
Actually, the unfortunate thing of its John is we demobilized the event just after 5:00 AM and a couple of units actually got caught on calls going back to the station. Now that was not my call. I was still in the demobilization phase of the event and units were being returned to return back to the station. You know, here's a unit that just worked an MCI with 49 victims, 38, 39, you know, critically wounded, a couple of debts that were just all of that on their station. They catch a man down that is a homeless individual, sleeping on a bench or something like that. Why do you think they have the patients or the willingness to know? So, it has to occur immediately, that process has to start the minute you start demobilizing that. There’re some opportunities we learned city did an amazing job with the victims and stuff. The city stepped into a degree, but it was our peer support group that was in a very incipient phase of development and the relationships we had with UCF, University of Central Florida and they have a program out there that has grown significantly for them.
Then the support of all the other departments across the country that came in to help provide that. There were individuals that were having some difficulty with that. John I've seen a lot of things, but some guys saw things that they would never see in their entire career and it was all within one night. I mean, multiple victims and anybody that understands firearms and stuff like that, what these wounds may or may not look like or what these individuals may look like, we had the victims being brought out and being brought to us that were well past the point of, I mean, they were triaged as a black and these bystanders that were helping the club goers themselves. They were trying to help and I applaud those efforts tremendously.
They're bringing that out to us. So not only are they seeing it and it's maybe their best friend or somebody they were clubbing with at night, but we're seeing it as first responders. We don't get an opportunity to do anything, but just pull the sheet and that impacts people. So, from my level as incident commander, I were to wait for several years of whether or not the decisions I made that night were in the best interest of the event. I spent a lot of time, two days later, I won't lie. You know, I can't really, I can't lie about this. I was pissed, I was pissed that not one member of my leadership team at the organization that was above me, even reached out to me to say, hey, man, I know you had a really bad night and I'd love to talk about it.
Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (45m 38s):
If you need anything, you know, let me know, and it didn't happen. Maybe I was expecting too much. I don't know. But at that point in time, I feel like I was failed as the member that was representing our presence. There, just a phone call just say hey, and I know you had a shitty night, we want to talk about it and just want to make sure you're okay. You know, a lot of stuff went on. So, I took it upon myself in the days following, I actually compiled the list of every OSD member that was on that call and I tried to personally call them myself, whether I got a voicemail or whatever. I said Hey, this Brian Davis, I'm just calling to see how you're doing tremendous work the other night. I know it was a lot, you know, and that was a dry for me and I felt it important. Then our peer support group, along with some of the actions of these other groups from across the country, they finally got guys on track and I didn't realize the impact it was really having on me. It was driving things at home. Like you said, you take this home to your family. I mean, my wife was up at five o'clock that morning and it's on news. She knew I was there. She's like, I knew you were there. I knew it had to be you there's no time I've ever turned on the TV where there's something bad in the City of Orlando happening and you're not connected to it, but really hard to on end. About two years after the event, one of my lieutenants who I consider one of my best friends, he came to me he said, all right, man, he said, it's your turn. And I'm like, what are you talking about? Because you got to take care of you. You've been dealing with this for two years, it's time. You know, not a lot of people know this, but I had to seek professional help. I had to go see somebody to deal with the PTSD because it was creating something of me that I wasn't proud of. A lot of that had to do with just bearing that weight of an event like that, you know, where you want to give it all and do everything within your power and you feel like you failed. I mean, I was left. I had a tremendous amount of support from the men and women that were there on that call, my immediate supervisor, good support, he was off that night, not on duty, actually.
I should say she, the Assistant Chief that would normally be my supervisor that night, she was off. I had some other Chiefs from other departments that I've remained acquaintance with since they retired and moved on to other departments, you know, they reached out and called and maybe my expectation was too much, but just a phone call in some cases goes a long way just to touch somebody and say Hey man, how you doing? You know, we've never dealt with anything like that. We've seen stuff like this throughout our entire life, you’re affiliated with USAR and that's how we made our acquaintance through those connections. You know, I couldn't imagine, I've had one interaction in USAR and I actually, I was a flight medic on a flight program and we flew to New Orleans after Katrina and we were there specifically just to evacuate ICU patients out of hospitals and move them in. But I got to see it, you know, or everything. We saw what it looked like and I'm like, holy cow, we're here dealing with ICU patients, just stuff that just needs me to transport to outlying hospitals, but you're still seeing the tragedy and the huge loss of life that occurred from that event. So, things impact you, man, they stick with you forever. You talked about having visual reminders. You know that the Pulse Nightclub is still in memoriam of the victims that lost her wife. But we have individuals who drive by that scene every third day that were part of that scene.
Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (49m 20s):
At some point, you know that's got to weigh on them. They've got to see that and remember, and they have these flashbacks because we do it in first responders. I'm sure it's the same in emergency management. If you've had those experiences, you have this Rolodex of carbs and it's constantly spinning in your memory bank and sound will trigger something with you. I will tell you that for two years, a very loud sound that sounded similar to that of a weapon would startle me a door. You talked about, you know, how your wife and same with mine, how your wife was kind of living it through you. Call it a crazy but I go into a restaurant, I'm looking at exits. I'm actually sitting with my back to a door because I want to know that I have an exit to get out of something. I taught my wife and my son, kids, it's quite scary actually, because you're like, you don't want to do that. You don't want to feel like you're over-cautious, but that's what events like this do to you as a human being. I don't care if you're a firefighter, I don't care if you're a nurse, a graphic designer. It doesn't matter if you've been involved with something like that, the individuals that were involved in the Pulse nightclub, all the patrons that were there, this will impact them for the rest of their lives. So, it's not just us as first responders, it's everybody is going to be impacted by that.
Now what we're seeing is because of all the avenues with social media and stuff like that, you see it immediately. Lost his wife in California, you know, after being shot by another firefighter, what a tragedy that is. But you knew within minutes that was happening and you're like, we didn't have that 10 years ago or 15 years ago. You didn't know that something this big was going on in California, other than the news, you didn't see it in social media, Twitter, or Facebook or whatever it is you're using for those platforms. But the recovery piece of it, I was doing some presentations as I shared with you.
I coined it the before, during, and after of an active shooter event, and that was a presentation about an hour long. I started really diving into that thing. I'm like, man, you know, really what I want people to get out of this is the aftermath. I changed it to the before, during, and aftermath of an active shooter event and keeping in mind our thoughts and prayers and feelings for the victims of an event like that. But this was geared more towards taking care of each other and our first responders that are dealing with that because we see this day in and day out, day in and day out. It's not to this magnitude, but we're still dealing with it. You know, you were still dealing with individuals who lost their wives over senseless, acts, things of that nature and it'll take you back. You just see that.
Host: John Scardena (52m 20s):
So, you make two really good points and I'm going to actually start with the second point. I'm going to go to the first point after that, the people are in this weird place right now, when they hear that this one aspect of this one topic is important to me, you can name any topic. It’s gay pride month right now right? So gay pride month, black history month, right? You hear other people have like, why isn't there this month or that month. It's like, okay, you can still talk about this. It doesn't have to diminish this other piece.
I think it's a hundred percent acceptable to say as a first responder, as the incident commander, as somebody who would have really appreciated somebody reaching out and that catastrophic events, saying how are you doing to say hey, I think we need to be aware that there's this group over here, the first responders and their families that need mental and emotional care first aid. I don't even like care. I like saying first aid, mental first aid, right? You've been through a mentally traumatic event that requires a medicine. That medicine might be sitting around the table and talking to people who don't have that really go through the event with, it might be talking to a professional, which I think by the way that it's one of the toughest things you can do. It's like to own up to that, man up, woman up, whatever, and say hey, all right, I'm going to tell my buddy that he needs to take care of this.
That's a tough thing to do and then it's even tougher to say, you're right, I'm going to take care of this. So, I applaud you. I'm a big fan of that. I think it's okay to say that. I think it's also okay to just to note inherently, duh, you should also be taking care of, you know, the victims and their families. When you have to say, duh, I think that’s the point of the conversation. You're like, oh, okay, like it's not offensive one way or the other, things are obvious.
Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (54m 33s):
Yeah and it is tough. You just mentioned, you know, it took me a while to really, I don't want to use the word concede, but address that help was needed. I think you've met enough officers throughout your career in emergency management and disaster preparedness and what you do with USAR, I mean those guys are put to task time and time again with similar situations, but it is one of those things, it's tough as a chief officer to be able to say, Hey man, I'm really not doing well with this because you don't want your peers to look at that as a weakness. I'd like to believe that our industry has evolved to where individuals don't see that as a weakness in their superior officers or their leaders.
They see it more that we are vulnerable just like anybody else and it does impact you. If anything, it's made me more aware about how it impacts our members and it's just one of those things. Like I said, I talked about changing that to where it was the before during an aftermath. It was the aftermath in the mental health and mental awareness that first responders across the globe, not just here, but anywhere that deals with this type of event, what they may need because we're asked to go back and do that.
Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (56m 30s):
You know, we just got to spend a little more time focusing on our first responders because we're asked to go back and do that job the very next day, time and time again and it's tough. I think whatever part we got cut out there with thank you technology, and we're still trying to figure it out. But you know, it's hard as a chief officer or somebody that is revered or admired or respected throughout the ranks. It's hard to reach out and say, hey, you know, I need a little bit of help with this. I hope that across the country, I hope that that message is resounding to where we as first responders.
I mean, number one because of suicide rates amongst first responders is the highest it's ever been in years. I was part of 10 years ago of looking at a line of duty protocol and looking at what was in place by the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation and all that, there was a time where suicide wasn't even considered as part of a line of duty death, PTSD wasn't really talked about. It was believed that suicide was a choice and that those individuals did that on their own. So why should they get benefits of a line of duty death or something like that?
That's a ball right now. We're talking about suicide amongst first responders and we're talking about how important it is that they get the help they need. So, you know, I take the pulse event, I'm very proud and sad in the same moment. I felt like it was a shining moment for me personally. Yes, is that what you want to put on a resume when you're applying to do something or go somewhere or do it? It's not really, shouldn't be the highlight of that because there was a lot of sadness that came out of that. It wasn't the highlight of the career. Again, the men and the women that partook in that event and our mutual aid responders and everybody else came in. John at the end of the day, they're the ones that really made it happen.
Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (58m 39s):
Sure. You put the plan in motion. You're the guy that's coming up with this plan. You're the guy, as you described waterflows and protectories and all this to hopefully find this young child. But at the end of the day, those people are the ones that are out there actually doing the work and making it happen. So, I made it a priority couple of years, really trying to make sure that these guys, we had a lot of people that really did a tremendous job and trying to get involved and make that happen. Then finally, a couple of years after I got the tap on the shoulder and said hey, it's your turn. So, you know, I understand this Disaster Tough. We're talking about preparedness and stuff like that. We can be prepared as that before, right.
The before, the during don't always match. But it's really the after, the after is the piece. Yeah. We talk about cleaning up, we talk about rebuilding our communities, we talk about getting infrastructure back in place and everything else, but the rebuilding part of that is the aftermath. Then an event like that may have on the responders that were there. I'm not a wildland firefighter, but I couldn't imagine losing one of my groups that got overtaken by a wildland fire. I couldn't imagine that, I wouldn't know what to do with that.
Host: John Scardena (59m 54s):
Yeah man, so I'm going to go back to that. The second point that I wanted to talk about and you kind of just highlighted it again. So, like most of my career has have been focused on the response pieces. You know, operations and planning for specifically response. So, it's kind of funny like disaster preparedness in my mind, the best disaster preparedness you can do is mitigation. I'm not talking about doing safe driving and I'm like super against that actually. But I'm talking about, actually going way back in the conversation, talking about the physical makeup of the club. There was no egress in the hallway of the bathrooms. There's no way to get out. So, what they ended up in one of the bathrooms, he ended up punching through that the AC unit. Right, and that's how they got out of the other.
Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (1h 0m 50s):
Yep. They were pulling victims out of that opening, yeah.
Host: John Scardena (1h 0m 53s):
There's something like building codes, that's mitigating a potential loss of life just by changing building codes. Schools in I believe Utah, all new schools in Utah are built with two exits in every classroom. That's good emergency preparedness. Right. But there's also the MOU and getting the supplies and getting everybody integrated. I think a big part of that is I am lucky enough to have gone to that USAR training with Walter who connected us, you know, really grateful for that. His show just aired and Joe Hernandez and some of these other guys, because I'm looking at it from, I deployed you all the time.
I was the guy that nobody saw that was trying to figure out, do you go to A or B? And now that I can see that integration, I'm like man, we need a bunch more integrated. But that all aside, let me talk about this one point, because it's really important, especially for Father’s Day weekend. You talk about the before and you talked about you checking up on everybody, whether it's a phone call or whether it was just like a touch point, whatever you felt there was responsibility. My thesis in my master's program was all about the psychology of a disaster specifically to survivors and preventing disaster. The data is very, I said this around Mother’s Day because I brought up too, like good parents prevent disasters like this from happening. I mean, it's not a given or it's not a guarantee rather, but you know, checking up on people, getting in good environments. We have a problem where despite in our field wanting to help people, sometimes we forget that the best thing you could do is probably help your family. The best mitigation of a disaster you can do is in the walls of your own home. So, I kind of wanted to call that out. I don't know how you feel about that, but you kind of took on that parental role anyways of just doing what another human being should do. Just check on people who should be checked on, right.
Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (1h 3m 10s):
Yeah and it was tough, John because you're dealing with at that level, you're morally, you're torn because you wanted to do more, you know, you will get the patches of, the badges and the things that you're wearing in that time. You know that there was, you wish you could have done more, right. We go to a house fire with a victim that we're not able to rescue and they perished in that fire. I've seen crews, you know, beat themselves up. That's a normal reaction they go through, what could we have done differently? Could we have gotten in there quicker and stuff? Those are situations that you keep adding that little car to your Rolodex of emotions and your Rolodex of experiences. At some point you're going to see something, hear something, or do something that is going to remind you of that moment in time. It's going to trigger an emotional response with you. You know, I'm not a doctor, I don't have any background in psychology or psychiatry. But I can tell you I've done enough with it over the last few years that I know just from the experience, you know, what that looks like. So that's a big deal.
Host: John Scardena (1h 4m 16s):
I do have to give this caveat. I am not a doctor or a psychologist, but it that the psychology of disasters and how people, like the social vulnerability of going through something traumatic, we don't get political on the show. So, we're not going to get political, but the news that just came out about not continuing the support of the family is pretty mind boggling to me, or not the family that the victim has rather. I think we have a responsibility to provide a long-term awareness of the people who have been through this because they could end up hurting themselves and they just survived.
Do you want to keep them surviving? That might be two years down the road, that might be five years down the road. You know, we had Joe Hernandez, a legend and Neustar was telling me about an experience of a firefighter who had pulled the children out of the nursery of Oklahoma City bombing. Everybody, if you know that story, you know that all those children had deceased. A couple of years later, he had a kid and the kid was sleeping in the same position and looked like the one of the children he had pulled out, game over and the career right. Who would've ever thought that years later you would have had a kid? The kid was just sleeping in a toddler position, probably the butt up in the air, that's how my son sleeps. Anyways, he's two years old, he kicks his butt up in the air, it's hilarious. But a normal event triggers something in the background and without adequate recognition, like the same people who provide first aid on the daily, you guys need to have the reality of like the first eight of your mental and emotional health. I think we've kind of beat that one quite a bit, but I appreciate you.
Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (1h 6m 16s):
In the firehouse, we sit around the table and we break bread together. I mean, that is part of the traditions and the cultures as a first responder. That does help a lot, but we are peers and that's why we call it peer support. That level of training may or may not be anything more than other, just being somebody that's willing to listen. You know, it's not just us, it's across the country. It's probably across the globe with first responders that there has to be some type of support mechanism there because we are the ones and, and we'll get our military, I mean, we'll get the horrendous things that they are involved with and what they do to protect our freedoms as an American. What mechanisms do they have in place, because that's where PTSD originated from, the bleed through the military.
Then now it's progressed into being identified in the work of first responders and disaster preparedness and things of that nature. So, you know, it is a crisis if you will. Again, I'm no expert, but wrapping it up with the event, a lot of great things to talk about the event, the men and the women that were on that event did a phenomenal job. We could spend a whole other cast talking about just the structure and the operations like that and a five-year anniversary this year. I make it a point every year, those 52 members of my organization that are still there, whether it's via email, text message or phone call, I make it a point every year just to remind them that, you know, people are there if they need them.
Sometimes you'd rather do that in person. But I think just the touch, just the, Hey, I'm thinking about you type thing goes a long way. I hope that our commanders that were at some of the other horrific events that have occurred across this country, whether it had the 5 victims or 50 victims or you know, in between, that they understand their first responders, police, fire, EMS, hospital workers, all need that mechanism in place to help cope with those situations.
Host: John Scardena (1h 8m 26s):
I think we we've been highlighting this a lot without actually using the word and the word is leadership. Thus is a great discussion, not just for the after actions of what happened and good ideas, but also if you're an emergency manager and you are responding to your local flood, which is not the Pulse Nightclub type one incident, but if you're responding to this and you’re the emergency manager, the mitigation officer down the room is freaking out because it was their job to make sure that levee was fixed and it didn't get fixed. You know, 500 homes got flooded because of that, that's impactful for that person.
Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (1h 9m 13s):
It's impactful, John, if they care. Yeah.
Host: John Scardena (1h 9m 19s):
But that's the thing I actually think most. Yeah. Well, I think that is a minority really. I mean, we all got in the field because we liked helping people.
Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (1h 9m 29s):
Right? Yeah. You will come across an individual from time to time who genuinely is disconnected from the event emotionally because they really don't care. Or at least that's the way they appear. So very, very small percentage.
Host: John Scardena (1h 9m 46s):
For me, what I found more often with those types of people is that they have, obviously there's always a jerk, but I would say most people in that situation, they've been through enough things that they cannot take the emotional toll anymore. So, they're there, I'm here to do the job, but in any case, like we're going back to that mitigation officer. Yeah. Absolutely. Check on that person, anytime you see a behavior change, anytime you do something that's impacting people's lives, you know, that's a good time to say hey, how are you doing? I think that's a great leadership skill. I think that's a great note to end on.
We typically do like 45-minute episodes, obviously I like talking to you because you know, we're about an hour and 20 into this now. So, it's awesome, I just want to thank you again, you said for the first two years that you kind of struggled. I hope that you're beyond that because people like me who do look at the after-action reviews, people like Walt, your colleague who says this guy's the man, the guy who we look at a Pulse Nightclub and we do after actions on it, because of it's just so unique. He did great. There's a lot of people that you haven't met who have looked at your work and highly respect what you've done and not just you, but everybody who responded to the active shooter, like one of the worst-case scenarios, because it's murdering innocent life.
When you're dealing with that I think one of the toughest things you've ever did, you proved that you are disaster tough by saying, Hey, I'm going to address this. But I just wanted to let you know that you have our respect. We'd love to have you come back on the show and talk about some of those other aspects. But yeah, thanks again, Chief. You know you're always welcome in fact, to the Chief's point, especially being Father’s Day weekend and everything else at long-term care, if anybody needs to reach out, send us an email at info@dobermanemg.com. Hey, we'll hear you out, we'll point you in the right direction, whatever, we'll do what we can. You know, we did this with Joe as well. So, having to get those emails happy to help out, if you don't want to let anybody know, you want to talk to a stranger, we'll figure something out, man. Thanks again, chief.
Guest: Chief Bryan Davis (1h 12m 17s):
Absolutely. I appreciate the opportunity and hopefully the message, I mean obviously preparedness, because that's what you're talking about. I coined it before, during, and after. We talk about that in emergency management MCI and USAR and we do these drills and we do all this training. It's different. We plan it, we talk about it and a lot of the components of it do work, but as an incident commander and something that has what I call tactical fluidity, you have to be fluid with the moment. So, when it changes from an active shooter to an MCI, to a hostage situation, to an explosive ordinance device, when all those things are happening, there are so many moving pieces in that you have to have that operational fluidity and you have to be a proactive commander, meaning you're not reacting to what's occurring.
You're actually trying to stay a step ahead of that and anticipate the growth of the event or the projection of the event, if you will. So that's one of the big things. Then, like I said, we changed that last word from after the aftermath. That's the piece that I think is important. We've done tremendous work with UCF restores our own peer support group, which has done through our benevolent association and then other groups that came to RA during this tragedy. Then we reciprocated that a year later in Las Vegas, and then some of these other events that are occurring. So, if the messages there John, I appreciate the support. I'm humbled by the outpouring of accolade for the event. Again, it wasn't just me, it was the men and the women that came to that event that evening that made it what it is and appreciate. Walt is always, he's been a good peer of mine for many, many years, and we share a lot of discussions back and forth about stuff. So, thank you again for the opportunity I look forward, if there's another opportunity to divulge into a little bit.
Host: John Scardena (1h 14m 13s):
Absolutely, so I’ll actually get Ashley on that right now. So, hey I got to do the super cheesy part. The part that I kind of hate, but everybody, this is why I hate it because it sounds so cheesy, but it is important because it shows that like, Hey, this matters. So, if you liked what Chief Davis was talking about today, if you got something out of it, which you should have, you need to give us, gosh, this sounds so cheesy. You got to have is giving us that five-star rating. You need to subscribe. You can help him get back on the shows. Follow us on social media, Disaster Tough Podcast, Instagram and Facebook, or you can follow us our business Doberman Emergency Management on LinkedIn and on Facebook as well. We're also on Instagram, we're all over the place. So, make sure you follow us. We're going to be posting more about Chief Davis and some of the quotes, some of the stuff that he's had on here on the show. So, it's going to be really great next week and we'll see you back every week. Thanks.