USA vs. Australia: What each fire service does better

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

This episode of the Better Every Shift Podcast is brought to you by Lexipol, the experts in policy, training, wellness support, and grants assistance for first responders and government leaders. To learn more, visit lexipol.com. That's lexipol.com.

Now let's get into the show.

Aaron Zamzow (0:25)

Hey, everybody, welcome to the Better Every Shift Podcast. My name is Aaron Zamzow. I am with a good friend, mentor, colleague, and you may know him as one of the head advisors here for FireRescue1, the one, the only Jason Caughey with the Laramie County Fire Authority in Wyoming and our trusty senior advisor, as I said before. We're here to talk about USA versus other fire departments, districts in the world, namely Australia. You and I both, this last year, had great trips to Australia. One of the cool things about being and doing what we're doing here is we get to go and see, with a kind of a different mind's eye, what is working, maybe what challenges other countries have. You made a trip to Australia a while back.

First and foremost, what stood out to you?

Jason Caughey (1:25)

Absolutely. I had the great opportunity, like you said, gaining perspective by seeing the rest of the world fire service. They have challenges. Their challenges are sometimes similar to ours and sometimes different than ours. But the New South Wales Fire Department, the Victoria Fire Department, Brisbane, Melbourne Fire Department were all outstanding. But what stood out to me? Advancements in technology, the ability to adapt and change, even though they're very big systems, they're state-run fire service in those communities.

They had already adopted very progressive cancer mitigation programs for on the fire ground, for deconing their gear, for having PPE that's instantly swapped out after a fire without having a huge logistics nightmare.

Technology and science-driven tactics where they're utilizing science and, you know, they've been utilizing door control and flow path and all those terms that for the last 10 years for the US Fire Service have really become vogue, but they've been using them for a decade prior to us. So those are the things that really stood out for me. And then the second part, the next part is they all have the same challenges, right? They all have the same challenges that we do have here in the states, and not one system is perfect, and there's always opportunities to improve those systems. So yeah, how about you? What did you see? What did you do? What was your experience?

Aaron Zamzow (2:48)

I was just there a little while back, about a month or two ago from us recording this, but I think, you know, very similar experience as you had. One of the things I think it's important to just kind of clarify is that they've run, you know, in their large areas, they run each providence or state as basically its own entity. And within that entity, you have, you know, wild land challenges, you know, like when I was in Melbourne. So Melbourne was covered by that state entity, but then you also spread out into smaller rural areas. And then, of course, you get more rural, you get into the volunteers. So looking at kind of their structure, you know, they look at each state, and each state is kind of run a little differently, right? And that's one of the challenges. But you had mentioned something right away that caught my eye was from the moment they joined the fire service, from the moment they are in their academies, they are taught proper procedures on decon. They are taught proper procedures on PPE, wearing it at all times. They also have specialty apparatus that are assigned to each fire for rehab and that purpose of decon and getting, you know, crews the equipment they need right away. It's just ingrained within their system, which means they've been doing it for, you know, a longer time than what we have here in the US. And it was one of those things that every single one, every single firefighter and an officer that I talked to bought into that, and they actually then have transferred, you know, that knowledge and research into how they set their rigs up.

From, you know, putting the heavier equipment on lower shelves to some of the lighter equipment up high.

One of the cool conversations I had was with one of the chiefs that's also working hand in hand with the apparatus manufacturers. And one of the cool things I found out was that the Australia, like each state, will put together the specs that they want for their rigs. And they say, we want to make it this way, this way, this way, this way, this way. And then they go back and they bid it to two or three different manufacturers, and that's how they get it, which I thought was very unique. Did you find that same thing when you looked at apparatus?