Forging Resilience
Join us as we explore experiences and stories to help gain fresh insights into the art of resilience and the true meaning of success.
Whether you're seeking to overcome personal challenges, enhance your leadership skills, or simply navigate life's twists and turns, "Forging Resilience" offers a unique and inspiring perspective for you to apply in your own life.
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Forging Resilience
41 David O'Neill: "Be a leader by creating an environment where people can open up".
Join us as we uncover the fascinating journey of David O'Neill, a former London Fire Brigade officer with over three decades of experience, now at the helm of the Institute of Search and Technical Rescue and the charity FireAid.
From leading search and rescue teams across the globe to pioneering the redistribution of fire equipment to countries in need, David's story is one of resilience, leadership, and profound dedication.
You'll gain insights into the rigorous selection and training processes for these high-pressure roles and learn from David's candid reflections on the psychological impact of international disaster operations.
This episode offers an intriguing blend of authenticity, connection, and support, providing valuable lessons not just for leaders and responders, but for anyone navigating complex emotional landscapes.
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Welcome to Forging Resilience, exploring for a different perspective on strength and leadership. Join me as we discuss experiences and stories with guests to help gain fresh insights around challenge, success and leadership. Today, on Forging Resilience, we're joined by David O'Neill, who is a former London Fire Brigade officer who's seen over more than 30 years' experience there. He's now Director of Operations at the Institute of Search and Technical Rescue, as well as Chairman of the charity FireAid. David comes with a wealth of experience, some really interesting stories and insights from both his professional experience and his own development, and I'm really looking forward to getting into more of that today. So, david, welcome to the show. Buddy, yeah, hi.
Speaker 1:Aaron great to be here. Thanks, mate, appreciate your time. Um, I always hand it straight over to my guests to give a bit of a run-up of what leads us to be talking to this conversation today. So what's relevant for for people that are listening, mate, in terms of your career, and we'll take it from there.
Speaker 2:So within my career in the London Fire Brigade, I had the absolute privilege of leading our international search and rescue teams, which is a team which forms part of a wider UK team that deploy on behalf of the UK government to natural disasters around the world, deploy on behalf of the UK government to natural disasters around the world and, as such, you know, through those experiences of deployment to disasters and capacity building, training for those disasters, you know we've obviously dealt with a lot of traumatic incidents and we've developed mechanisms of coping with those experiences. And that's the kind of stuff I want to get across really is how valuable I found that in my career Some of the strange things that have come out of incidents both overseas and domestically such as, you know, things like the Grenfell Tower fire, high profile, shocking incidents and how we've kind of tried to change a culture really to be more open about talking about this kind of stuff and sharing our experiences, yeah, there's so much already there.
Speaker 1:That's fascinating to me, mate. Going back a tiny bit in terms of the international search and rescue stuff, mate, is that a completely separate unit to the normal fire brigade? Is there a selection process to get on to that? What? What do you do to get yourself into that position?
Speaker 2:basically, so, um, yeah, that that team's drawn from, uh, the uk fire service. There's 14 fire services that contribute to that, that national response team, um, as well as some attached arms. So we we've got full-time doctors and paramedics that are attached to us and they go through a selection process. So initially, everyone needs to be trained in urban search and rescue, which is the training that really started in earnest after 9-11, when a lot of fire services sent their teams out to Texas to almost relearn the training that we'd forgotten since the blitz. Really, uh, the americans were still using it for their natural disasters and we went back out to relearn kind of what we'd forgotten. Uh, it was very interesting because some of the pamphlets and and information we were given were literally wartime pictures and drawings of search and rescue, you know, during blitz operations. So that's a kind of start point really. You need to be an urban search and rescue technician and then from there you can volunteer to attend a selection process to get on the international team.
Speaker 1:What's some of the fundamental differences, then? For the people that don't really understand, um, in terms of international search and rescue, I guess logistics come straight to my mind. But again, what's some of the key differences that that make those challenges so, so real when you're overseas working?
Speaker 2:I think. I think the the biggest one really is the kind of scale, the scale of the disaster you're responding to, where you're training for a kind of fairly contained, small incident in the UK which could be, you know, kind of a gas explosion, kind of collapse up to sort of the terrorist related incidents. Switching to a scale, uh, we'll take turkey's example. You know over 50 000 people killed by a single event. So the scale is is noticeably different.
Speaker 2:Um, the pressure that comes with that, the kind of you know where do you start when you, when you hit the ground, really on something so big, um, it is the biggest impact. But again, like you listeners who are ex-military will understand that kind of frustration of hurry up and wait, all the time waiting for the green light to go getting out on the ground. You know there's a lot of frustrations with sometimes some political decisions and political direction which takes us away from our kind of humanitarian core, you know, on occasions. But I think it's kind of the scale and the fact that you'll keep repeating, you're going back to the same place day after day after day, whereas in the fire service generally you'll do your shift at an incident and you'll return back to the station, and very rarely would you go back to the same incident yeah, how do you find, or what some of the things that you were drawing on when you were away then working long periods in high pressure environments like like, like turkey mate to manage that sort of constant, um yeah, stress and pressure?
Speaker 2:well, a lot of that's factored into our training process actually. So, uh, you know, the the volunteers will attend um an event. It's normally held in the lake district and it's run over a couple of days. Where they're, they don't get a great deal of food, uh, they don't get a great deal of sleep. Um, you know, they're carrying a fair bit of kit and navigating across terrain to different command tasks.
Speaker 2:So it's kind of their technical abilities is kind of taken for granted before they get to that point. So that's not tested so much, it's more their thinking when the kind of chips are down, really, and their ability to work in a team. So, because we put so much emphasis into that during our training and that includes training in austere environments, so extreme hot weather, extreme cold weather, um, all of that helps build that kind of personal resilience really to then, you know, to be able to go out and be effective on the ground and and what's, the key things, at least in your experience, that you've been able to do, be it international or or back at home, in terms of it's something that fascinates me, that thinking under pressure.
Speaker 1:Obviously you do a lot of training, obviously there's a lot of drills, but sometimes you know better than I that things don't quite go to plan.
Speaker 2:The key is remaining flexible, really, and being able to adapt, because you know, all the time we're getting curveballs in.
Speaker 2:I mean to take us back to um our experience in nepal following the earthquake in in 2015.
Speaker 2:Um, kind of katmandu and everest were that were the key priorities for the country at the time get the capital back up and running and get everest kind of back up and running really.
Speaker 2:You, you know a massive part of the national income.
Speaker 2:And then we soon found out there was a lot of the outlying villages were really badly affected out in the kind of foothills of the Himalayas, and there was this kind of real effort to try and get out to some of those villages and at one point we had a helicopter lined up to take us out to one of the villages where we knew there were thousands of people affected and that helicopter was taken away from us on the decision of a very senior UK politician to go and lift a family or a party off of Everest who weren't injured, weren't trapped, but it was kind of made a good news story on the run up to an election and that kind of frustration there that that asset would have been able to get several small teams out to different villages to do a needs assessment was kind of taken from us really and as a kind of team leader, you have to manage that.
Speaker 2:You have to manage those frustrations in the team. Where they know there's people dying, they know they can do something to help. But there's kind of bigger political decisions that are stopping the kind of obvious really and it's just managing those frustrations and steering people to see sometimes, you know, a bigger picture yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1:And what are some things that you do make to manage your own frustrations and to not carry those out onto the team, given that you're exposed to those sorts of decisions quote, unquote from above probably a fairly regular basis as well.
Speaker 2:Well, I think personally, you know, I've had a fair bit of experience of that happening across other high-profile national incidents. I take an example when we were deployed to a gas explosion up in Scotland and we were searching an area that was, for those that may remember, the Maryhill gas explosion. Nine people died, unfortunately, of that incident. But there was a time when they were invited families to come down and lay some flowers and there was a lot of press attention and we had to draw a team away from a kind of meaningful task to get back into an area that had already been searched to make a kind of backdrop for the media, so this kind of greater good stuff.
Speaker 2:So that's kind of where this level of, you know it's not interference, I wouldn't call it interference, but this, this, this level of kind of um, decision making, uh, started with me and that was an example actually that we used on our own training further down the line and it's just getting people used to these curveballs and actually it was, it was probably the right decision.
Speaker 2:It, you know, they wanted to give the impression that rescuers were all over this building, you know, searching it. We'd already searched that area, but it did give the right impression it did give, give some comfort to families and people associated with those that lost their lives. So that's kind of where that resilience started to build really, and we've had a lot of that over the years. And then you know it just increases in scale to when you go to international incidents. But being able to draw my own experiences helps me to explain to the team and reassure the team that we've got to roll with it. And all of these deployments are political deployments, they're not humanitarian deployments. And again, all of these experiences we push back into the training for the next generation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what I'm hearing, just like you've reiterated there, is that, yeah, that personal experience and the perspective. It's just part of the picture. Focus on what you can do, understanding that there's bigger powers at play and each and everyone's got their their own job. Mate I'm giving, I'm making the assumption that during 30 years of service which is pretty incredible that you'd have seen some changes during your time from both the equipment, um, techniques, strategies, tactics, um, and also management tools as well. Can you talk us through some of the biggest ones, or most impactful ones for you, that you've seen over those 30 years?
Speaker 2:So yeah, in my time, from when I joined back in 93, you know, I pretty much joined London's burning. For anyone who remembers it or wants to look it up, that that was that was. That was fairly realistic of the culture at the time. You know it, it was a kind of macho organization full of pranks and nicknames and all the rest of it. Um, it was, you know, it was always a well-meaning culture.
Speaker 2:I've never had any particularly bad experiences but, um, of course it's had to change and adapt and really, after events like the March and S the party boat that was sunk on the Thames, like 9-11, these early events have really made us a very kind of technical organization and we've had to adapt and we've had to reinvent ourselves and with that comes a culture. Uh, you know, it's a big firm, it does represent society and it has moved away from this kind of very much a macho uh environment. Um, with the diversity of recruitment and with that the culture's had to change. So, from being a very kind of macho sit around the mess table, hold on to your feelings, you know, don't give anything very kind of macho. Sit around the mess table, hold on to your feelings, you know, don't give anything away kind of organization. I've seen it transition really, and actually I've been part of the one driving this change to open up about experiences. Talk about experiences. You know people in the fire service have unpleasant experiences, you know, on a weekly, if not daily, basis in in, certainly in the capital and some of the big metropolitan services, and a lot of that stuff gets bottled up and pushed away until a point comes where something triggers the opening of that box and I've seen it so many times and all this stuff that people have been sort of pushing, pushing to the back of their mind is all of a sudden exposed, uh, and so that's something as part of that cultural change, I've definitely tried to introduce with um, the introduction of our trauma risk management program, uh, where we've, anytime anyone deploys now on a serious capacity building project or, you know, or a disaster deployment, it's now an expectation.
Speaker 2:This is something we were taught by the Royal Marines, um, a guy called Cameron March who effectively coined the phrase of trauma risk management. Uh, he taught us back in 2012, you know, the, the tools we needed to introduce this to our team, um, and so now it's become a given. So now people will come back from a deployment, um, and ask for this. You know when's the intervention, when are we going to meet, and that that relays out onto their kind of day-to-day stuff as well. So we got the benefit of that being on the. You know the high profile disaster response teams. But that's very important on a local scale as well. That change of culture, that opening up and sharing is massively important.
Speaker 2:So is that done on a group and individual basis, then, mate uh, so for us, yeah, we'll start off on a group session, we'll have a couple of group sessions and then from there we'll kind of identify individuals that perhaps need an individual follow-up. And you know I'm a trauma risk manager, you know I'm not, I'm not medically trained. Uh, I, what I can do is signpost people. But, uh, you know, kind of knowing your team and knowing changes in behavior and how people you know talk at these kind of events allows me to kind of pull people out individually and then signpost them.
Speaker 2:And I've got to say, without exception, every time've used it, it's thrown up something that's unexpected. It's thrown up a different experience that maybe, as a team leader, I knew nothing about at the time. And that kind of comfort zone I suppose that we've created, which encourages people to open up and I'm always the first to open up created which encourages people to open up, and I'm always the first to open up. I'm always happy to talk about my experiences, uh, to try and encourage others to do the same without fail. It's bought up something that probably would never come out without it. Now, that may not be hugely significant and maybe just sharing it then, and there is enough. But for others, uh, certainly, you know, following some of the high profile incidents we've been to, individuals have been signposted and gone on to have, you know, long-going kind of professional help, with uh coming to terms with some of their experiences so.
Speaker 1:So, before this sort of thing was put in place, then, mate, could you, could you see the evidence or need for it was a lot of denial around being able to to express and process these, um yeah, emotions, feelings after a high profile incident I think I think back in the day it all depended on the managers you had around you.
Speaker 2:really, um, there was a bit of a man up culture. You know that back in the day there was there was nothing formal in place we used to have a kind of you know, mess table sort of debrief after you know a fatality or traumatic incident, particularly stuff like car crashes involving children and stuff like that you know, so that you know that's discussed kind of around a mess table but the culture's changed's discussed kind of around the mess table but the culture's changed from a kind of almost a dark humour. Let's make fun of it, you know, to an extent let's make comedy out of it as a way of kind of depersonalising it, in a way of kind of I don't know, making it, you know less oppressive, I suppose, than it really was, and that's changed to something a lot more formal now, with people who understand the need for it.
Speaker 2:And you know it's not just the event itself, of course. You know people are carrying baggage with them. This is something before we deploy, that we try and check on people's mental capacity to deploy, so it's not just about their availability. You know, as a team leader, certainly for Turkey, I was responsible for a team of 70 people drawn from around the country. I don't know all these people individually. I'm relying on their local commanders to select the right people to send forward. So certainly for our own team in London, we were able to do a kind of mental check to make sure people were mentally prepared to deploy, and that was, you know, that was a lesson learned from Nepal. We had someone that come with us that probably wasn't in the right place to deploy. They were desperate to deploy, as most people are, because you know that's what they train for, but was carrying a lot of personal baggage at the time and so actually you're sending someone who is kind of emotional bank, is already pretty full up before we've exposed them to anything you know traumatic, and that's that's obviously not a good thing. You're not going to get the best out of your people. So having that awareness and having the courage to actually put your hand up and say no, this isn't the right time for me. It's something we've had to read really, because everyone, everyone's desperate to get this under their belt.
Speaker 2:And with more deployments comes, you know, I suppose, more confidence. Uh, but we had teams in the past, you know, know, went for 14, 15 years of their career and never deploying overseas. So of course people are desperate to go and they'll hide illnesses. They'll hide, you know, colds, flu, covid, as well as, you know, their own personal baggage just to get out the doors. And of course, when you hit the ground and you're exhausted and all the rest of it and you're dealing with very traumatic incidents, that stuff you can't hide that stuff for very long and it has the risk of bringing others down. Certainly the medical stuff and we have a medical screening before we deploy but still people, you know, kind of still managed or did in the past managed to kind of hide stuff or did in the past, managed to kind of hide stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I bet and I and I can relate to that, as you know from from the military and the stuff that you've done, mate is people are desperate to get out and to do what they're trained to do, and and that need, um, is a really strong driver. I think there's two key things that you said. For me, though, that that awareness of when that emotional bucket is full, but also having the courage to speak up, and I'm really curious, um, what is it you lean into? I know you alluded to that. It depends about the, the managers once upon a time who you had around you, and copying what you did, but I'm curious to hear you speak a bit more about that, the awareness and courage to speak up in in helping people express their experiences it's only something we can, we can cross people to do.
Speaker 2:You know, we we bring up a lot in in our training. Um, we kind of talk to people that are closer to the individuals, because people know stuff's going on in people's lives, um, so we do do our checks and balances. You know, before we, before we deploy, we've got plenty of um of options, so we've got a fair amount of kind of capacity within the team that we're not reliant on everyone going out the door at the same time. We we've got that flexibility. So, um, it's that honesty and we can only breed that honesty. Uh, and actually you know the example of nepal, where we took someone with us that was kind of maxed out really before they got there.
Speaker 2:And interestingly, on top of that, that person and you know, I've heard a lot of this in the military had a kind of specific outcome in their own mind. They built up this mission success, what they wanted to achieve, in order to achieve their own personal mission success, and that didn't happen. So, on that particular deployment, rather than pulling the baby out of the rubble, the kind of money shot that you know people are hoping for, trained for whatever, actually we were far more effective than that. We were getting out to villages bringing in aid to thousands of people who had no running water, no food, no shelter, so what was actually a far more successful deployment.
Speaker 2:It couldn't be seen by this individual. They hadn't achieved their personal objective and therefore it was a complete failure. It was a failure for them. They didn't want to speak about it on return. They didn't feel they're the hero Not that anyone was a hero, but they didn't feel that they'd achieved their mission of success, whereas, almost without exception, everyone else could see the absolute value in what was achieved. But it's interesting for that one person and I've heard the same for military deployments where they didn't go and kill all the baddies and come back. You know, if you're deploying, you don't get a firefight, there's something missing from your expectations, for example. So then all we can do is use these examples back into our training to say this happened to someone, don't let this be you. You know and and and trust people.
Speaker 1:Use the examples, live examples, factor it back in the training and trust people to do the right thing yeah, and I know, um, yeah, we talked about this on our last conversation as well, mate, and yeah, obviously there's stuff like you alluded to that's going on in the background there, but it is so interesting that we can't sometimes see beyond what we want to, in that case, recognize those massive achievements of helping thousands of others just for our own personal thing, achievements of helping thousands of others just to for our own personal thing. Um, in terms of, um, your own personal challenges, mate, or something that you talk about, what are some of the examples that you give of things that you've, uh, not maybe struggled to deal with, but that you felt the need to express? And and therefore like setting the tone, um, maybe with some examples, without giving too much away if you don't want or need to?
Speaker 2:A couple of kind of high profile examples, the most recent example being deployed as a team leader to Turkey, taking 70 people out last year to what was a very high risk environment, very high pressured, huge disaster, massive pressure on the team, both from the UK and locally, to perform. And you know, whilst I was very content with not only the team's performance was outstanding, you know, every single person was outstanding. It was all I could do to get them back out of the country really. But I suppose my example for that was I didn't realise I was carrying this burden of responsibility really. So you know, people are performing fairly risky rescues in in tunnels, in and experiencing aftershocks. So you can, you can prepare yourself for the kind of environment you find yourself in. You can't prepare for an aftershock. You're not getting any notice of that that's happening, uh, and that's a scary thing. It's a scary thing personally, but it's a scary thing as a leader when you've got these people that you're kind of responsible for and you want to get them all back safely and carrying that burden of responsibility for me. I think I didn't realize till I got home and that was something I was able to unload on the team and say, look, I was carrying this responsibility, able to unload on the team, and say, look, I was carrying this responsibility. I didn't realize it myself. You've got the full picture of the trauma. You see, you know in front of you that probably you take for granted very quickly what's unusual normally for you on day one soon becomes the normality. So I found myself, straight after we came back from um turkey, I went on a family holiday to india and we did a kind of mumbai by dawn tour with some friends to sort of expose the kids really to um, real life, real life mumbai. And then on the streets of people sleeping on the pavements almost in line with blankets over them, that's, that's normal. I've been to india, I've seen that stuff, but having just come back from an earthquake zone, they're all dead to me. They're all dead people to the point where I find myself actually kicking them to see if they're still alive and it just. It's those sights that just take you back, that probably hadn't realized had an impact um on me at the time, uh, and you're just thrown back into it in a different environment.
Speaker 2:I think um similarly as well, the the grenfell tower fire. So I was deployed to the fire as a commander and then I was responsible for the body recovery operation for the two weeks after the fire and that meant going back day after day to a very, very, very traumatic environment. Traumatic for all of those affected by it, but also for the crews that were there on the fire, the crews that have come back to help the police to do the disaster victim identification process and recover those that were deceased and give them a dignified recovery so their families could take some sort of comfort from it. A painstakingly slow process that again very quickly becomes normal because you've got a job to do, so you just adapt to it. Um, but I think myself and most of the team that working with me there on a daily basis probably didn't realize at all it had taken on us.
Speaker 2:Personally, I found myself, uh, drinking a lot after the event, very short-tempered, couldn't sleep at night, I'm, you know, listening to music or podcasts, and that became my new normal. That became normal to me and I I couldn't see the wood for the trees really, uh. And again, we went through this trauma risk management process and you got other people saying I was happy to talk about this stuff, you know, and other people saying that's me, I'm doing the same, I'm doing the same. And when you join the dots up, you kind of realize, wow, we were massively affected by it. I really didn't. I really didn't Whether I didn't admit it or didn't recognize it at the time, even with my training in trauma risk management, I kind of, you know, I thought, well, I'm drinking a lot more straight after that incident.
Speaker 2:But it got to a point where I just like, let's take a day off. There was a couple of us that were, you know, fully immersed in the whole kind of mission. Really. We said, like, let's just take a day off. I took a decision, let's take a day off. I took a decision, let's take a day out, let's just have a break from it. Uh, and it was the best, best decision I made, really, um, and then to go back into it, fresh recharge, really knowing what we're going back into. But we just got to that point, I think, where we were just topped up and you can almost physically feel yourself topped up, you know, uh, the top of your mind almost, he just feels full and cloudy. Um, and then, a bit of time out, talk about it, which I did, you know, quite open about, um, my experiences and they're not all pleasant, but, um, being able to talk to the right people about it, just to unload, really, and then go back, uh, go back into it fresh.
Speaker 1:Is that something still to this day, then, that people in your experience struggle with starting that conversation, appearing slightly vulnerable, but that they are affected by these things?
Speaker 2:I think it's getting better. So I think there are. I mean, you know, I'll give you an example of one of the experiences in Turkey. So during one of the rescue missions, um, the translator called over one of one of my team and there was a, an older gentleman there, very distressed, um, so he went over to help. You know, we thought this was a repeat of what was happening to us every half an hour. You know, can you come and get my, my family out, kind of thing. But what he did is he handed two carrier bags over to one of my teammates and each one had a dead 18 month old twin in in the carrier bags and he said the mother's in that pile of body bags there. Can you find the mother and repatriate the children with their mother? Now, obviously we can do that. Of course we can. It goes against all of our protocols. And there's another example where you do the right thing rather than what you're prescribed to do the mother. Until they got to the point, lifting blankets, opening body bags, until the gentleman said yes, that's her, let the children in with the mother, close it up, let him leave the scene and then take them back out again, give them their own body bears, give them their own identity to fall in line with the protocols that we've trained to, to adhere to, you know so singularly. That's a pretty traumatic, I'd say. And it was only through that trauma risk management stuff that the person most affected by that was able to open up about it. They hadn't talked about it, hadn't mentioned it, kind of just thought that was the job.
Speaker 2:But I always think, I kind of think there's different. As well as the kind of baggage that you might be carrying, your emotional baggage, I think people are carrying life baggage. So they've, you know whether they've been traumatized as a child and they're carrying something with them from I don't know a breakup, I don't know an abusive childhood, whatever that is. You probably don't know that about your team. Unless you're really diligent manager, you probably don't know what kind of baggage people are carrying. It's not just in the moment. You know who knows what, what people have got gone on in their background. So you kind of got that as a start point. We've then got kind of the baggage that they've probably carrying from their career. So we've got something like Grenfell where you're seeing a kind of career's worth of fatalities in one go. It's probably going to unlock some other stuff that people have buried, which we know it did. I also think, as well as the kind of obviously traumatic experiences like the two children, I think if people feel personally threatened also can have an impact where people feel vulnerable. Now that could be the aftershock, that could be mines you know, which was experiencing in Bosnia in a in a flood environment where legacy landmines are now surfacing. So as people are tearing down the waterway in boats, they've now got this additional hazard of landmines.
Speaker 2:We had an example in Nepal where we'd done some of these needs assessment in the villages and we had these. My team were on one kind of side of a valley. The team was on the other side and there was um, there'd been a landslide about one kilometer wide and it'd taken out an entire village and there was a whole village buried and we were asked if we could go and recover the wealth from the village. So the village elder had all of the gold for the village and the wealth of the village on her. Could we go down and dig for that wealth, which we refused because we were there as a rescue team. That's not something we were there to do.
Speaker 2:We carried on with our task and as we were lifted from one side of the valley by the helicopters, there was a big aftershock and the team that was waiting on the opposite side for this chopper to return for them, uh, the kind of little sub team leader for that team got it in his head that actually, if, if there was a landslide where they were, they'd never be found.
Speaker 2:So he's looking at this landslide opposite him, one kilometer wide, an entire village buried, and he felt vulnerable. And I think once he personally felt vulnerable, that was him done for the rest of the mission. He, he, he was just a kind of different person and again, it didn't really come out at the time until after we discussed this when we got back. But it's kind of yet another example of one person harboring an experience and not sharing it, and I don't want to wait till we get back. You know we've got better talking about it when we get back. The next step is to talk about it at the time, immediately, and start sharing it and start, you know, relieving the burden on yourself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I guess that takes time though, mate, and, as you know, as middle-aged men, even though we're now encouraged to, it still takes time and it still takes practice. So, yeah, but the consequences, the knock-on effect there of somebody not speaking up, yeah, like you alluded to, it could be massive. It could be massive there. I really appreciate that sort of side of it. It is fascinating for me. But I'd love to give you the opportunity to speak about some of the other stuff you do now with, like the fire aid stuff, the really important work that you do there, and also as director of operations as well. Mate, do you want to give us a quick overview of those two other parts of your life, now that you've transitioned from full-time fire service to to the civilian world, mate?
Speaker 2:yeah, sure, so, uh, so I'm the director of operations for the institute of search and technical rescue and I'm the co-founder of that, and that's. That's an organization that gives um professional accreditation and continue professional development opportunities to people working in the search and rescue sector, and that's something that an ex-boss of mine and I set up a few years ago, recognizing that actually there's not a lot of development opportunities, certainly in the fire service, other than promotion. So you know, if you want to develop someone, oh, promotion, promotion, promotion. Well, we've got a lot of really good people, most of whom have excelled and found themselves on these international teams, who don't want to get promoted. They're really happy doing what they do, they're really really good at what they do and there's very little development opportunity for them. So it's recognizing if that happens in our service, that must be amplified across all of those involved in in search and rescue. And whilst a lot of professions have their own institute of chartered surveyors, institute of whatever, whatever, there wasn't one for us. So we kind of, so we created it really, and what we've managed to do is bring together responders, managers and kind of students really aspiring to be in organizations as diverse as Coast Guard, volunteer search and rescue, mountain rescue cave you know as well as the blue light kind of traditional blue light services and military and bring them together to one family so they can network, meet each other and learn from each other.
Speaker 2:And again, there's an opportunity there. We've seen it. Some of the lowland search and rescue volunteers that will get people come and volunteer. They may be financially secure, they might want to give something back to society. So they join their local lowland search and rescue team much unprepared for what they might find and so, using some of our experiences and it's not all of them, but but some of them haven't got that kind of welfare support mechanism. So actually, if you're going out looking for that person, that missing person and everyone hopes for a good news story if you find that person hanging from a tree, how prepared are you to deal with that, that eventuality? So we're kind of trying to bring all of this learning in to support each other and that's taken off well. We've got a global membership. Now we're partnering with the University of Portsmouth to offer internal examinations so people can go on that continued professional development sort of journey.
Speaker 2:So that kind of takes up most of my time and I'm also the chair of a charity, Fire Aid and International Development, and that's a charity that moves redundant fire equipment from the UK fire and rescue equipment around the world, so equipment that has a load of life left in it that by our own rules we've decided it's redundant or you know, we're replacing and go out and be used. So we've done seven convoys to ukraine, hundreds of fire engines fully equipped, um. We're just loading next week now a kind of load of breathing apparatus, um from london fire brigade uh have replaced their breathing apparatus sets and we've got hundreds of sets going out to the Ukraine to be used on the front line. We're also partnering with the Dubai Civil Defence on a project across five African countries where they're providing us with 10 wildfire vehicles to go out to five different African countries and this is a kind of pilot project. Hopefully, if this goes well, we're talking about building fire stations and much wider projects.
Speaker 2:Uh, we've got one of our members following the uh the nepal deployment. One of our members, um, from the scottish fire service, has has since built the everest fire department almost single-handedly using some of it. You know from his experience in the Nepal earthquake. He's gone back there and he's almost single-handedly built a fire service, so we've been able to support that with, you know, ppe and equipment. So that's again very rewarding, trying to give something back to the sector, really. But uh, yeah, I'm off to kenya next month to see the arrival of these wildfire vehicles. So, um, we know they're going to be put to good use, they're going to save lives and ultimately stop small fires becoming big wildfires.
Speaker 1:So that's, that's the kind of aspiration yeah, I love it, mate, in terms of the company you set up and the institute, institute of search and rescue. What's what's next? What's what's on your what's on your like horizon or plans to, to, to do with that right?
Speaker 2:so um, continue to build the network. We've got to get these exams up and running, um, and then get out to bigger organizations. Really, why aren't you invested in your people? You know, for the sake of not much more than an hour's overtime per year, why aren't you signing your people up to this and giving them the opportunity and invested in your people? So it's going to go out and spread the word really. And then we're looking to build the numbers globally where we get to the point where we've got kind of regional branches. So we offer a free conference in London each year, but I'd like to see that rolled out across the country and across the world and then bringing in these kind of masterclasses for want of a better word or this knowledge sharing events where we can bring people together, get a few experts in from the membership and just thrash out good ideas.
Speaker 2:That's missing person search. You know the use of drones now is massive in in search and rescue, uh, and just calling the expertise we've got and sharing it, because people are still working in silos. They might not have access to other agencies. Particularly, and we're doing a lot of work with the military. We're working with the Royal Marines Assault Engineers and preparing them to respond to the hurricane season down in the Caribbean. So we're doing kind of you know, chainsawing and other kind of activities with them. So again, that military engagement, where this civil side crosses over to the military side, I think is a massively untapped resource, certainly for the royal navy, I think. Um. So we're working with various people from um defense on how we can share some of our best practice for them to use. So we want to continue with that really love it, mate, love it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is a wealth of experience. It'd be a shame for it to to go on unused. Um, mate, I I've really enjoyed today's conversation. I'd love to give you the opportunity. Is there anything you'd like to mention before we start to wrap up that we've not talked about so far?
Speaker 2:dave, really, I think. I think my message really from from all of this is um, is about if you're in a team, it's kind of getting to know your people really Getting to know your people, getting to know their background, get to know what baggage they may be carrying. And, as a team leader or a sub-team leader, you know, don't assume that everyone has the same experience as you, has the same experience as you. That's my message really is um, because no two people, almost you know, have the same. You could be looking at the same thing but depending on your background, your baggage, your experience, your own personal resilience, you'll have a very different experience. So being aware of that and talking about it amongst your team, I think, stands everyone in good stead for this, this kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:If you're operating in traumatic environments, just be aware, be aware that not everyone's going to have the same experience and encourage people to talk, encourage people to open up. Create the environment and the safe environment for people to do that, because if they don't feel safe, they're never going to do it, you know. So create that safe environment. Show a bit of vulnerability yourself to try and lead the way. Really, uh, and then um, yeah, let's, let's let's talk, encourage people to talk, don't bottle it up, um, don't be macho, um, and let's share our experiences, because other people will benefit and learn from it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, love it, mate. Powerful message there. Yeah, where can people find out a bit more about you, mate, or get in touch with you, should they be interested?
Speaker 2:on LinkedIn or check out the Institute website, which is rescue-instituteorg, and find out more about the charity. So FireAid and International Development. Have a look at the website. Feel free to donate if you can or get involved. We've got some volunteering opportunities there. It'd be great to hear from anyone really that wants to get involved. Awesome, mate, love it. We've got some volunteering opportunities there.
Speaker 1:So, um, yeah, it'd be great to hear from anyone really that wants to get involved. Awesome, mate, love it. I've got one last question before we go. Mate, and I love on your profile never invite a polar bear to a giraffe disco. Can you talk us through that quickly, or so?
Speaker 2:don't invite a giraffe to a polar bears only disco.
Speaker 2:So that that. That was a quote that I picked up on. I did a, a CBRN, you know, the chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear CBRN gold command course, and the guys from the police college there used to say it, and and in that context it was don't bring in these. What if? Certain people in the fire service are very good at bringing in these what-ifs and overcomplicating something? What if they did that? What if they ran off this way? What if they got on this train?
Speaker 2:And that was his way of drawing everyone back Stick to the facts, deal with what you know and then when you know something else, we'll deal with that. You know, stop going off at tangents, but I thought it was better than that for me personally. It resonated with me. It was kind of don't mix your civilian life with your military life. Don't mix your civilian life with your or your fire service life. Uh it, it stood me in good stead, I think, over the years. Don't invite a giraffe to a polar bears only disco. There's, there's certain certain times. You just need those people in the same place, really. So yeah, it's a quote I like it causes a lot of attention actually.
Speaker 1:But yeah, that's my example. Brilliant mate Love it. I had to ask while I got you here, mate. Well, dave, mate, thank you very much for your time. Thanks for sharing some of your insights.
Speaker 2:Thank you Well, dave mate, thank you very much for your time.
Speaker 1:Thanks for sharing some of your insights and being open to show that courage and vulnerability of talking about your experiences as well. Mate, Really appreciate that. Yeah, it means a lot.
Speaker 2:Thanks very much, Aaron. It's good to talk about it.