#6 Travis Howze - Heroic Firefighter

In episode #006 of "The Shawn Ryan Show" Shawn sits down with Travis Howze. Travis is a Marine Corps Veteran, former Firefighter, former Police Officer, Stand Up Comedian, author of "Create Your Own Light" and PTSD Awareness Advocate. He was a Charleston firefighter who responded to the deadly Sofa Superstore Charleston 9 fire in 2007 which took the lives of 9 brave men (This was the deadliest firefighter disaster in the US since the September 11 attacks). Shawn and Travis sit down and discuss in depth about the events that happened during the Sofa Super Store Fire, how it lead Travis down a very dark depressing road, and his journey overcoming PTSD "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder" by finding his new purpose in life. Find Travis Howze and his book "Create Your Own Light" at: Book: https://amzn.to/3mpFPdC Website: https://www.travishowze.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/travishowze Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website - https://www.shawnryanshow.com Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/VigilanceElite TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@shawnryanshow Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/shawnryan762 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the House Majority PAC dot com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  Mr. President? My company tore me of the explosion on our rig. On October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me. Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and the Revenant.

• 0:46Speaker 02

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You stall, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 0:50Speaker 01

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 0:53Speaker 02

  I'm not the first then.

• 0:54Speaker 01

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.

• 1:01Shawn Ryan?

  This episode of The Sean Ryan Show is brought to you by Vigilance Elite Patreon. Vigilance Elite Patreon is how you support the show. It also has an entire library of tactical training and behind-the-scenes footage of The Sean Ryan Show. Go to vigilanceelite.com, click the Training tab. It'll take you right to Vigilance Elite Training on Patreon. Get a subscription, support the show. Thank you. Let's get on with it.

• 1:43Speaker 04

  We were all told the Superstore is on fire, and we all knew that that was a horrible place to have a fire. We often referred to that as a death trap.

• 1:54Speaker 02

  We lost them all, all, out of the building. We're telling everybody out of the building. We still can't find a cabinet, I'm telling you.

• 2:03Speaker 02

  I love you.

• 2:05Speaker 04

  There's one thing when you've got a dead body there is you can recognize, but when you know it's one of yours and you don't know who the fuck it is.

• 2:31Shawn Ryan?

  Welcome back to the Sean Ryan Show. I want to kick things off by saying thank you for the overwhelming response we've received on Patreon since the last show. We now have over 80 videos of exclusive content for our patrons, and the live chats have been pretty cool, too. Also, thank you for all the iTunes reviews. Every single show we've released has been in the top 100 in society and culture on iTunes, and that's because of those reviews. If you haven't yet, and you're new to the show, head over to iTunes, please leave us

• 3:13Shawn Ryan?

  a review, leave at least one word in the comments section. That's what takes the show to the next level.

• 3:58Speaker 05

  Hey, bro. Where'd you get that hat?

• 4:00Shawn Ryan?

  VigilanceDelete.com

• 4:02Speaker 05

  Thanks, bro. Appreciate it.

• 4:04Shawn Ryan?

  Roger that.

• 4:05Speaker 05

  See you later.

• 4:10Shawn Ryan?

  And now for my next guest. He's a Marine Corps veteran, a firefighter, a police officer, a stand-up comedian, and a stand-up human, an author, and now motivational speaker. Ladies and gents, we have been looking for the perfect firefighter to bring on this show for over a year now, and we finally have found one.

• 4:37Shawn Ryan?

  He was part of the sofa superstore fire in Charleston, South Carolina, which is one of the deadliest fires to ever take place in the United States. He is going to tell us his story and how he moved past his inner demons. At the end of this, we have created a firefighter hat, Vigilance Elite firefighter hat, which we have for sale and are donating all of the proceeds to a firefighter charity of his choice. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Mr. Travis Howze.

• 5:14Shawn Ryan?

  Travis Howze, welcome to the Sean Ryan Show.

• 5:18Speaker 04

  Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

• 5:20Shawn Ryan?

  Me too. I'm excited you're here. I've been wanting to get a firefighter on for, ever since I've been doing this, I've been kind of looking for someone that's a right fit, uh, that's a firefighter. And, um, I put a couple feelers out and it was always, they were, they just kept sending me, this firefighter was a SEAL, or this firefighter was a Marine, or this, and I didn't want to focus on the veteran stuff or the mil stuff. I wanted to focus on, uh, the actual, you know, being a firefighter. And, uh, because I know you guys see a lot of traumatic stuff and, and, um, I think, uh, you're another occupation that's extremely underappreciated by the general population.

• 6:04Shawn Ryan?

  And, um, so anyways, you reached out, we connected, and, uh, I think you are the perfect fit, uh, to be here. So, thank you for coming.

• 6:16Speaker 04

  That's the nicest thing anybody's ever said to me. I appreciate that.

• 6:20Shawn Ryan?

  Is that a tear?

• 6:21Speaker 04

  Yes, it's just a little one.

• 6:22Shawn Ryan?

  Alright.

• 6:22Speaker 04

  Don't make me cry too much.

• 6:24Shawn Ryan?

  Over.

• 6:24Speaker 04

  No, it certainly is my pleasure to be here. I'm certainly an honor. I love what you guys do. And it's just to be a part of it, it means a lot.

• 6:31Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you. Thank you. Well, I did a, a bunch of research on you and, uh, kind of talked about that in the warm up, but, you know, he got a new book out, read that. Um, listened to your podcast and then because I don't really know anything about being a firefighter, I did, uh, I researched, I spent some time researching kind of, uh,

• 6:58Shawn Ryan?

  You know, what you guys go through on the day to day type stuff and, and kind of the camaraderie and, and got as good of a feel as I think I would get by watching videos and, and talking to friends. But, uh, in your background, you've had a lot of careers.

• 7:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:15Shawn Ryan?

  You, uh, out of high, right out of high school, you went in the Marine Corps. Then you became a firefighter. Then you were a police officer.

• 7:25Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:25Shawn Ryan?

  Firefighter again, stand-up comedian, motivational speaker, author. And I mean, then, then as I researched you a little bit more, I found out that, uh, you were a limousine driver.

• 7:41Speaker 04

  Oh, no, I was a limousine owner.

• 7:43Shawn Ryan?

  A limousine owner?

• 7:44Speaker 04

  Well, I did drive too, but.

• 7:47Shawn Ryan?

  I'll bet you got some good stories of shit that was going on in the back of that limo.

• 7:50Speaker 04

  So all my, all my drivers were cops and firefighters and I certainly have some good stories. Some stories that would make some people lose their jobs.

• 7:58Shawn Ryan?

  Nice. And, uh, what I was really surprised about is I, I had no idea that you are a survival expert.

• 8:10Speaker 04

  Oh, you found that out?

• 8:11Shawn Ryan?

  I did not know that. And, uh, you know, so I want to go ahead and roll the tape of what I found.

• 8:18Speaker 04

  Oh, all right.

• 8:22Speaker 04

  Hey, it's Travis Howes. I'm out here in the desert in Nevada. Uh, I'm a United States Marine Corps veteran, so I like to consider myself kind of a survival expert in different climates.

• 8:31Shawn Ryan?

  Yes.

• 8:32Speaker 04

  Right now, I'm going to show you just really quick how you can get water from a cactus. Just any, any average Joe can get water from a cactus.

• 8:38Shawn Ryan?

  Anybody.

• 8:39Speaker 04

  What you're going to do, you're going to go down to the cactus and you're going to just reach in, pull out your bottled water.

• 8:51Speaker 04

  It's perfect, man. Any of you guys can do this. Stay safe out there. Stay hydrated. Dasani.

• 9:00Shawn Ryan?

  So.

• 9:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, you dug that. You dug that out of the archives.

• 9:03Shawn Ryan?

  I did, I did. You know, and had I not, I would still be wondering how the fuck I'm gonna get water out of a cactus if I, you know, wind up in a desert somewhere.

• 9:12Speaker 04

  You know what's so funny about that video? Um, I was doing comedy out in Laughlin, Nevada, and that was in the Grapevine Canyon, and I went out hiking one day and I was dying. And I never really got into putting, pumping content and all this. And I walked by this big ass cactus and I was thinking, man, people, you can survive off of these. And I had a bottle of water. And it was just impromptu, but what gets me is I did that video just to have fun.

• 9:35Speaker 04

  And the hate, if you go into comments, these people are talking about your mother hates you. I was like, come on. Where's your sense of you, fucker?

• 9:43Shawn Ryan?

  All the keyboard commando YouTube fucking clowns.

• 9:46Speaker 04

  You were like, come on, they don't teach us that shit in Marines. We get MREs.

• 9:50Shawn Ryan?

  Man.

• 9:51Speaker 04

  In canteens, water buffaloes with water. We don't have to go search forage for it.

• 9:55Shawn Ryan?

  The, uh, I mean,

• 9:59Shawn Ryan?

  I can't, like, how low is their intelligence level to not realize that is a fucking joke? But it is a joke, right?

• 10:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm a, look, I'm a dumb bastard. I barely got through high school and I could understand that's a joke. So I do not understand when people can watch that and take it so seriously, but, I mean, you know, you pump content, you know.

• 10:17Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I totally get it. But, uh, for those of you listening, you can check out his YouTube. There is a ton of solid survival information on there.

• 10:27Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 10:28Shawn Ryan?

  That, uh, you know, you're gonna learn a lot.

• 10:30Speaker 04

  I got into that for a little while and then I got bored with it and quit doing it, man. But you know what? You might have reinvigorated me. I might need to go out and start making some survival videos again.

• 10:39Shawn Ryan?

  The Naked and Afraid one is.

• 10:41Speaker 04

  You saw that one too?

• 10:41Shawn Ryan?

  I saw all of them.

• 10:42Speaker 04

  I forgot, man. You, you, you do research. I feel like now that you were saying this, like, I feel like I was passing a background test for law enforcement just to get on this damn show.

• 10:53Shawn Ryan?

  But, uh, and you know, you're a new author and, uh, how long's your book been out?

• 10:59Speaker 04

  Uh, two months. It came out May 25th.

• 11:01Shawn Ryan?

  Right on.

• 11:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:02Shawn Ryan?

  Well, uh, you never were into reading or writing, you said, so.

• 11:06Speaker 04

  Nope.

• 11:07Shawn Ryan?

  And, uh, being a survival expert and a, and a, and an author, I always give everybody a gift that comes here, so.

• 11:19Shawn Ryan?

  I got you a little something.

• 11:22Speaker 04

  What's in the box?

• 11:25Shawn Ryan?

  No peeking.

• 11:27Speaker 04

  See that, let's see.

• 11:32Speaker 04

  Oh, sweet.

• 11:34Shawn Ryan?

  Little survival hat for you.

• 11:36Speaker 04

  I saw your hat the other day and I was thinking about asking you for one, so this works out.

• 11:40Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, you know.

• 11:41Speaker 04

  Hey, the gummy bears.

• 11:43Shawn Ryan?

  Some survival rations for you.

• 11:45Speaker 04

  Dude, you will never go hungry or you never go without the proper calories without these.

• 11:49Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 11:49Speaker 04

  I'll keep these in my cargo pockets.

• 11:52Shawn Ryan?

  Right on. And if you ever run out, you know, you can just hit the website and there's all kinds of survival stuff on there.

• 11:58Speaker 04

  So if I run out of gummy bears, is it safe to say, ask you, do you have some?

• 12:02Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I got a couple.

• 12:04Speaker 04

  A little inside.

• 12:05Shawn Ryan?

  Just a couple of bags.

• 12:07Speaker 04

  Thank you, man. I really appreciate it.

• 12:08Shawn Ryan?

  You're welcome.

• 12:08Speaker 04

  Thank you so much. I'll give you the box back.

• 12:11Shawn Ryan?

  Everybody gives me the box back. I don't know why. I've given this box to.

• 12:16Speaker 04

  I can't take it on the plane?

• 12:17Shawn Ryan?

  That kinda sounds weird.

• 12:18Speaker 04

  Can we give you my box back?

• 12:19Shawn Ryan?

  I'm gonna stop that conversation right now.

• 12:23Speaker 04

  Oh, this is good. Thank you. And it's my color too.

• 12:26Shawn Ryan?

  And, you know, since you're a new author, I picked up a book for you. You might wanna read that. There's really good writing style. I like that writing style that this guy used to write this book, so. And I know how much you like cupcakes.

• 12:42Speaker 04

  I love it. Did you wrap this?

• 12:45Shawn Ryan?

  My wife did.

• 12:46Speaker 04

  Okay, I was about to say.

• 12:48Speaker 04

  Damn, she wrapped this thing tight.

• 12:51Speaker 04

  Wait a second. Look at this.

• 12:56Speaker 04

  I got my own book for a present.

• 12:58Shawn Ryan?

  Is it?

• 12:59Speaker 04

  I love it, man. Thank you.

• 13:01Shawn Ryan?

  Create your own light, so.

• 13:03Speaker 04

  This is awesome.

• 13:04Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, you know.

• 13:05Speaker 04

  I don't even know what to say. I got my own book as a present.

• 13:08Shawn Ryan?

  That was given to me by the author and.

• 13:10Speaker 04

  And it sucks so bad you're giving it back?

• 13:12Shawn Ryan?

  And, well, I thought you might wanna read it, so.

• 13:16Speaker 04

  This is great, man.

• 13:18Shawn Ryan?

  Anyways, you can get, create your own light on Amazon, right?

• 13:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, so you can find this, that's kind of a cool surprise. There, take it back to.

• 13:27Shawn Ryan?

  Thanks, okay.

• 13:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, you can get it on Amazon and it's surprisingly doing very, very well. And I say surprisingly because I wrote this book just kind of for me about all the traumatic experiences I've had and how I dealt with getting over them. I didn't expect to put it out there and for, for it to sell the way it is, but it's getting, you know, we had a conversation, it's getting into our communities and military emergency services pretty deeply and it's getting a lot of great feedback from it. So, appreciate the support everybody's giving the book. Means a lot.

• 14:03Shawn Ryan?

  It's a good book and you know, there's a lot of heart and soul in there, which is, which is cool. You know, I like the way you just wrote how you speak.

• 14:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:13Shawn Ryan?

  And, and it's helping a lot of fucking people and you know, and, and even after that, you know, when we first spoke or messaged, I think you sent me the book and you were like, I don't know if you like reading or writing. I fucking hate it. And then I wound up writing a book and I was like, yeah, right. But after talking to you, I actually believe you. I fucking hate reading.

• 14:39Speaker 04

  It's the worst.

• 14:40Shawn Ryan?

  And I hate writing and it's, it's actually, it's so bad that people give me something and I'm just like, I mean, I'm just, I'm not gonna read it. But I did, I did read that.

• 14:54Speaker 04

  I appreciate it.

• 14:55Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 14:56Speaker 04

  That's, it's tough because people have given me books before and they're like, read my book. And I'm like, fuck.

• 15:00Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 15:01Speaker 04

  Because I don't read.

• 15:02Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 15:03Speaker 04

  The crazy thing is that I'm a Marine and I wrote this without crayons. And it's crazy. Everybody's like, well, we just got lots of pictures.

• 15:10Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 15:10Speaker 04

  And it's like, no, there's, there's some pictures, but yeah, and the subtitles, Finding Post Traumatic Purpose. You know, we didn't, I didn't say that. But I, thanks for support. Thanks for reading it. It means a lot.

• 15:22Shawn Ryan?

  My pleasure. And, uh, so, yeah, if you want to pick up the book, it's on Amazon. Uh, it also inspired me because I've been wanting to write a book and, uh, if you can do it. I can do it. So, um, and I mean that, uh, in a good way, but it, for somebody else that doesn't like to read, that wrote a book, I'm like, oh, I guess it is fucking possible. So maybe I will, uh, get my ass in gear. So

• 15:50Shawn Ryan?

  reading that book and listening to your other podcasts, I mean,

• 15:56Shawn Ryan?

  you have seen a metric fuck ton of trauma in your lifetime and, uh,

• 16:05Shawn Ryan?

  a ton of it. And even without, uh, you know, the, the, uh, your career as a law enforcement officer and, and even your childhood, uh, part of what I want to do with this podcast, I want to squash a, uh, I guess it's not a rumor, but I get a ton of emails from firefighters and we kind of talked about this and it's almost like a, uh, every, how you measure up and the emails always start, even with cops and it's, I haven't fucking seen it, what you've seen, or I can't compare to what you've seen or what you've done and, uh, I want to squash that fucking rumor right now. I can guarantee you that you have seen

• 16:47Shawn Ryan?

  a hundred times the amount of traumatic shit that I have as a firefighter and it is every fucking day, right where you live and, uh, you know, uh, one thing, uh, in the military, when you're on ops and whatever, you know, we come home. For me to go back and witness some of that stuff, I gotta go to fucking Yemen or I gotta go to Afghanistan or, or not witness, but see the locations that happen as a firefighter or as a police officer or a, uh, uh, whatever, a first responder. This shit's happening right in your fucking hometown, right where you live, where your kids go to school, uh, where your wife's going to the grocery store and, uh,

• 17:32Shawn Ryan?

  I can't even imagine how many places there are in Charleston, South Carolina that you've responded to and seen traumatic shit that you have to fucking drive by every day or every week or whatever and, um,

• 17:49Shawn Ryan?

  Anyways, got a little long-winded there, but I wanted to just put that out there.

• 17:54Speaker 04

  Picking up what you're putting down, man, it's um, no truer words. And you know, like I told you, no matter what background you come from, whether you did thirty years in SEAL Teams, or you were a twenty-year infantry, marine, army, police officer, firefighter, this isn't a competition about who's been through more.

• 18:12Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 18:12Speaker 04

  Unfortunately, some people do experience more than others. Um, so I do have people that they reach out and they say, Travis, I've never experienced what you have, so I couldn't imagine. And I stop them there, I'm like, this isn't about you and me. This is just about your experiences and how you're handling your experiences with trauma, and how trauma is affecting your life. Don't, don't try to wear my shoes, I'm not gonna try to wear yours.

• 18:36Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 18:37Speaker 04

  Trauma fucked me up. I was exposed to it, like you said, uh, on a grand scale, and it was at a very early age, and it just never left my life. Um, so I've had to learn how to live and be successful with all of that going on. Um, and it's, it's been a hard road a hoe.

• 18:57Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 18:58Speaker 04

  But man, I'm, I'm in the happiest place I've ever been in my life right now. And that's what I like when I, you know, when I do these, these speeches and everything. I like to show people that no matter what is going on in your life, you too can find purpose and you, you can live a healthy and successful life again.

• 19:16Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 19:17Speaker 04

  You just gotta have the mindset to do it.

• 19:19Shawn Ryan?

  Well, you're helping a, a ton of people. Um, your book says it all. Like I said, it's all heart and soul. And, uh, I mean, it's just awesome, you know, that you have found that happiness, because you definitely fucking deserve it. But, uh, you know, and, and, and you do that through your book and, uh, and your stand-up comedy, and, and now your motivational speaking. And, um, anyways, so now I wanna dive right in. Uh, and we're gonna start with childhood, but, you know, not just you, but...

• 19:56Shawn Ryan?

  Your entire family on both sides

• 20:01Shawn Ryan?

  is no stranger to traumatic events. And just what, yesterday or the day before, we were down having lunch in the kitchen and and you had brought up a wallet. And we were talking about, we were talking about pass down items. And

• 20:21Shawn Ryan?

  so, and you were worried that your daughters might not appreciate that wallet. So why don't you go ahead and tell us a story about that wallet?

• 20:30Speaker 04

  So that wallet, August 6, 1944.

• 20:41Speaker 04

  Fuck you, Sean.

• 20:46Speaker 04

  I, um,

• 20:48Speaker 04

  I've never gotten emotional talking about this. I don't know why I used to, I, I do jokes about it on stage. But I guess when you're talking about the meaning of it,

• 20:58Speaker 04

  it's a little bit different.

• 21:01Speaker 04

  So that wallet was in my,

• 21:06Speaker 04

  my grandfather's left breast pocket. And he, uh, he was in, in the Normandy invasion. He was with the Canadian Army, that, that grandfather was. And he was, uh, they hit Juneau Beach alongside of Utah Beach and all that at the same time. I don't know what wave he was in, but he was up there in the front. From my understanding, he died when I was five.

• 21:27Speaker 04

  But without that wallet, I wouldn't be here, or my kids wouldn't be here. So what happened was later on, after that invasion,

• 21:36Speaker 04

  that was in June, two months later in August, wherever his unit was in, was in Holland. And he took a German round to the chest. And that wallet is the only reason he lived and was able to, you know, have his own family, which put me here. And I have that wallet. When you hold it up, there's a bullet hole going right through the middle of that motherfucker. And when you turn it around, you can see where the bullet changed its trajectory once it hit. And, uh, so I have that wallet with all of his war medals and everything. And it's, it hangs on my wall underneath my medals and by my father's military stuff as well. And I have the

• 22:17Speaker 04

  The original telegram that the Canadian army sent my grand or my great grandmother. Uh, just says, your son Earl Michaux was shot in the chest in combat. Condition unknown. That's it.

• 22:29Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 22:30Speaker 04

  August sixth, nineteen forty-four.

• 22:32Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 22:33Speaker 04

  That's all it says. And it's just a reminder when I go in there and look to what, what, and not like I really need the reminder because I know. But it's just, it's, it's, it's such a special thing to me to see that. And to know that my grandfather, you know, risked it all. You know, just so we could have, have a little bit.

• 22:53Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 22:54Speaker 04

  Yeah. So special.

• 22:56Shawn Ryan?

  That's a, that's a hell of a pass down item, man. And, uh, I'm. I was actually gonna say, you know, um, if, if you're looking for a way to, you know, for that to resonate with your daughters. I would just say you're, you just said it, but I mean. Your dad wouldn't be here. Was it your dad or your mom?

• 23:16Speaker 04

  My mother.

• 23:16Shawn Ryan?

  Your mother wouldn't be here, which means you wouldn't fucking be here, which means your daughters wouldn't be here. And it's kind of crazy to think about it, you know? If it wasn't for a fucking wallet.

• 23:27Speaker 04

  Right.

• 23:28Shawn Ryan?

  Um. You know? Wow.

• 23:31Speaker 04

  Well, I told you the funny part of that story, my tattoo right here, this is a, a big windmill and that's one of the main symbols of Holland. My daughter's name is Holland because that's where my grandfather was shot.

• 23:41Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 23:42Speaker 04

  And these other flowers, these are poppies, my other daughter's poppy. But I used to do the joke on stage was, um, I couldn't name my daughter Wallet. Because that's a dumb ass name and then I would freak out anytime you saw that Capital One commercial, what's in your wallet? It wasn't my wallet.

• 23:58Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit. Yeah. Well, uh. So anyways, I wanted to bring that up. I, I thought that was an amazing story and, uh, actually I didn't realize he was in Normandy. And I actually have some beach sand from Normandy. Uh. That I've been wanting to frame. I'm going to give it, I'm going to give you some of it.

• 24:17Speaker 04

  No shit.

• 24:18Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I'll give you some of it.

• 24:19Speaker 04

  Thank you, man.

• 24:20Shawn Ryan?

  You know, do what you.

• 24:21Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 24:21Shawn Ryan?

  What you need to.

• 24:22Speaker 04

  I'll put it, I'll put it right there with this stuff.

• 24:24Shawn Ryan?

  Cool. But, um. So moving on to your childhood. You were exposed to. Some very traumatic events. At a very young age and, um. It sounds like it all kind of started with Little League.

• 24:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, I have some funny traumatic events in there. When I was run over by a golf cart when I was three and in my book, I talk about remembering very specific details and I won't, you know, I'm not going to get long-winded about that, but trauma has a way of working its way into our brain and searing our brains like a cattle iron. You can remember very, very specific details about traumatic incidents dating back to as early as three years old for me. And I remember it being trapped underneath a golf cart. I could tell you the names of who, who were there, people, I can remember specific conversations, what I was wearing, which way that golf cart was traveling, the color of the golf cart. It is insane at the things you can remember in traumatic events. Damn, you remember that from three years old? Just the detail, yeah. And I put that in the book and my, my family and I never really

• 25:27Speaker 04

  talked about it. We joked about getting run over by a golf cart when I was little, but we never covered any details. And when I decided to write my book, I sat down with my mom and I told her, you know, look, I'm going to start as early as I can remember writing about trauma. And she, she didn't think I could remember back that, that, that long ago in my life. And I said, well, stop me if I'm wrong about the golf cart when I got ran over when we lived in a little trailer park when I was growing up. She said, okay. And when I was finished telling her and my father, they were like,

• 25:57Speaker 04

  how do you remember that? I said, that's trauma. That's what trauma does to you.

• 26:02Speaker 04

  But moving on from the golf cart. So I had, I had, I had a normal childhood. It was great and everything, but trauma finds it, finds its way into your life sometimes. And for me, it all started when I was in a little league baseball. One of my best friends, his father was our little league coach. And, um, you know, I went camping with these people. I spent many, many, I spent the nights at, at his house and he spent the night at my house many a times. And his dad was a tough guy, you know, and he was a, he was a hard-nosed baseball coach. Everybody wanted to play on his team kind of thing. And he was a great dude, but one day my mom picks me up from school and told me that a coach had just shot my friend, his son, and then shot, shot his wife in the face and then shot his, his

• 26:46Speaker 04

  mother-in-law in the face and turned the gun on himself and blew his brains out. And I was 11 ish around that time. And I don't know, when you're that young, you don't really understand the magnitude of that. Yeah. Fortunately, all the other folks lived.

• 27:07Speaker 04

  But I just remember being really confused at an early age, like how violent this world could be and like, what do we do with that kind of information? And it wasn't long after that that another friend of mine was was shot with a high powered rifle in his chest and he was killed. His cousin shot him. And um, yeah.

• 27:26Shawn Ryan?

  Did you ever get a reason on why the, why your uh, friend's dad fucking?

• 27:33Speaker 04

  You know, that's their story to tell kind of thing and uh, but I believe it it all boiled down to divorce.

• 27:40Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 27:40Speaker 04

  At the end of the, at the end of the day and um, I I I'm very careful in that book to not put names and to try to tell my side of it. Because of that, because I wouldn't want somebody trying to tell my stories.

• 27:55Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 27:55Speaker 04

  You know, these are mine and I just, I I kind of go over it and paraphrase a little bit. So uh, then when I was fourteen, you know, and they say when emergency services, a lot of people that go into military emergency services come from traumatic childhoods. Whether it be, there's a very high percentage Sean, I don't know if it's um, I don't know the percentage, but it's extremely high. Whether it be sexual trauma, physical trauma, mental trauma, or actually experiencing traumatic events like my case. Um, when I was fourteen, I was exposed to possible sexual trauma. I ended up taking a summer job with a guy that owned a construction company and he was a one man show and uh, he hired me. And I I go over this in my book as well, uh, in great detail on how this man would take me to these job sites.

• 28:40Speaker 04

  It was just he and I and he would say these very derogatory things and at fourteen, I didn't really understand the magnitude and I couldn't grasp what he was trying to do, but what he was ultimately doing was trying to earn my trust. And he would say very perverted things and uh, he never touched me or anything like that, but I think what he was doing, no, I know what he was doing was trying to earn my trust. And I was fortunate, he hired another kid that I knew who was seventeen years old and I knew this kid very well as well. Um, he came onto the job and it was, then it was fun, you know, but the guy was still making the comments that he would make towards me. And uh, eventually got unco- so uncomfortable, I quit, I didn't, I didn't want to work for him anymore.

• 29:22Speaker 04

  And literally about three weeks after I quit, the other, the other kid, my friend, uh, committed suicide.

• 29:29Shawn Ryan?

  Fuck.

• 29:30Speaker 04

  And nobody knows why, and that's only left to the imagination. No, I think we all know now. You know, and I don't.

• 29:39Speaker 04

  I don't know, man, and it's, um.

• 29:43Speaker 04

  That was when I was fourteen and. I'd already experienced all of that. Yeah. And so. This is becoming normal in my life now. Yeah. And so when I'm fifteen, I start hanging around the fire stations. And I get, I get brought into this brotherhood. I experience it, you know, because our, our middle school is right across the street from the firehouse. And I would often find myself in between bells, running over just to have a conversation with, with the firemen. And I ended up. Knowing these firemen, getting to know them. I, I actually loved them because. They would start breaking my balls when I'm in middle school and we're just having a good time. And. I saw this family atmosphere that they had, and I had a great home. I had a great family atmosphere. So it wasn't like I was looking for that because I didn't have it.

• 30:28Speaker 04

  I just saw these grown men fucking off at work and getting paid to do it and having a good time. And I was just drawn to it. Um. So at fifteen. I started hanging around there during the summers, you know, and, um. July ninth nineteen ninety-three is a date that I'll never forget, um. Cause I, I was hanging out at the fire station in, uh, during the summer.

• 30:52Speaker 04

  And, uh, this firefighter Ronnie Bergen runs out and says, hey, kid, you wanna go on a call? I was like, yeah, fuck yeah, I wanna go on a call, you know, I'm, every kid wants to ride a fire truck, right? Yeah. Yeah, that doesn't happen anymore because of, you know, laws and, and all these, you know, everything's in place to. You know, cover your ass, but back then it was, it was very loose. So I hop on the truck with Ronnie. All I knew is that we were going to, to a, a motor vehicle accident. But what I didn't realize is. That was my very first call going to, and I can remember all the details because that very first call was also to the death of a, of another firefighter. Yeah. Well, uh, what was it like when you got on scene there? It was horrible, man. And it was something I wasn't prepared to see at fifteen years old. Um.

• 31:35Speaker 04

  So his name was Sammy Singleton. He was. He's also a Marine Corps veteran. And he was a brand new firefighter and he worked for the, the city next to us and I didn't know him personally. But when I got there, what happened is, uh, there was a line of cars. Because there was a traffic accident ahead on a, on a little two lane bridge going from Beaufort, South Carolina over to Bluffton, South Carolina.

• 32:01Speaker 04

  And Sammy was the last in line. He had just finished his shift and he was coming home from, from work and, uh, there was a hump in the bridge to let, you know, for that, for a boat channel underneath. And Sammy was on one side of that hump and a concrete truck mixer, truck was barreling down on them and, and couldn't see him. And when he came over to that hump, he couldn't stop in time and he drove right over the back of Sammy's car. And his car was literally, when we got there, we had to get on our knees and crawl to see it underneath. It was like it, it not only just drove over the top of it, but it's like it sucked it up into the frame. It was weird.

• 32:35Speaker 04

  And initially, right away, we didn't know that it was a firefighter. Um,

• 32:41Speaker 04

  but they soon found out when, when they were able to pull that, pull that car free. And I was standing closer to me, about halfway from me to you, away from it the whole time. All these guys were trying to get Sammy out of this car and he was, he was a complete mess. He was, um, something I can't even describe, man. Yeah. And at 15 years old, when they all start passing the word that this is a firefighter, you felt this heaviness just, just come over the top of you. Yeah. And you could see it affect these men, these grown men, these,

• 33:16Speaker 04

  these were men amongst men and you could see the effect that it had on them. And I immediately had that same feeling they had. It was just heavy. And you think, you know, you're like, these are firemen. They're here to protect people and they're out here getting, getting killed like this. Um, and I remember that, that ride back to the firehouse, it was very somber. We didn't say a word. And I could see Ronnie's dead now, but I could see his face still driving down the road to stare and he had this blank stare on his face. At fifteen, I was trying to just understand, understand this thing.

• 33:50Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, you know, I'm not trying to make you revisit every fucking thing that happened to you in your childhood, but I really wanted to kind of bring out, you know, how early uh the traumatic events started, uh because it's such a big part of your story. And I also want to bring up the fact that, you know, all the shit that's going on nowadays and everybody's got a fucking excuse on why they're not successful. Or they can't fucking do this and they can't do that. I had a rough childhood. Shut the fuck up. You know, you're a living example of you didn't, you grew up poor, correct? And there's, and just eleven to fifteen fucking years old, you've seen

• 34:33Shawn Ryan?

  more trauma than most people will ever see in their entire life. So, uh, you know, if you can't make it happen, that's on you. You come up with all the fucking excuses in the world you can think of, but right here is a living example of somebody who's dealt with traumatic events from a very early age. And uh, you're doing fucking great now. So, um, I wanted to kind of highlight that and put that message out there.

• 35:02Speaker 04

  Well, thank you.

• 35:03Shawn Ryan?

  But, um, yeah.

• 35:04Speaker 04

  I talk about that extensively, you know, everybody wants to, wants to point the finger, but nobody wants to turn that finger around and point him at, at themselves.

• 35:11Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 35:12Speaker 04

  And, you know, you always hear this, you can do whatever you want, but it is, there's no truer words. We, we are our worst fucking enemy. Once we get inside of our own head, that's the worst thing we can do. Anything is absolutely possible. And even after I hit the complete rock bottom, this is just scratching the surface of the stuff that I've had to go through. That fucked me up later in life and I was able to somehow turn it all around.

• 35:37Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, and, uh, and, uh, you know.

• 35:42Shawn Ryan?

  Fucking losers are great at finding excuses on why they're a fucking loser rather than putting the time in to figure out how to not be a loser. And so anyways, I just wanted to bring that up and and move forward now. But so another thing that I kind of noticed, and I think me and you are very similar in this aspect, but going through a story, I kind of picked some things out. You were labeled class clown in middle school and in high school. And it kind of sounds like you didn't really appreciate that label.

• 36:26Shawn Ryan?

  And in order to prove something, you joined the Marine Corps at, was it seventeen years old? Eighteen years old, right out of high school, you're in the Marine Corps. And so is that, is that why you joined the Marine Corps?

• 36:43Speaker 04

  That has a little bit to do with it, actually. I mean, it has a lot to do with it, but I also grew up right across from Marine Corps Boot Camp Paris Island. And we played little league football over there and we would see those recruits getting smoked by those drill instructors and I was always like drawn to that, not to mention I watched Full Metal Jacket like three or four hundred fucking times and I was like, I gotta do this, I gotta do it. Yeah, so I got, when I got class clown in eighth grade, I was like, all right, this is great, this is cool. And so I was always a very fun outgoing person. And that certainly carried on through high school and I became the class clown in high school, but my father wasn't too happy with that.

• 37:20Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 37:21Speaker 04

  He was like, you know, this is, this is what you do with our family name? What are you gonna be a fucking comedian? And low and behold, right? But you know, yeah, to try to show my father, I was, you know, I had, I was kind of a man and I could be, I could be a man if I needed to be, I joined the United States Marine Corps.

• 37:38Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 37:39Speaker 04

  You know, and I, I had something to prove to myself, I had something to prove to him, certainly. Not that, that he asked me to, but I felt this burning desire inside, you know, as I'm my father's son, to show him that I'm worthy of carrying that title and, and I'm gonna make him fucking proud, so.

• 37:54Shawn Ryan?

  How'd that feel when you finally did?

• 37:57Speaker 04

  Fucking amazing.

• 37:58Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah? Was it very proud?

• 38:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think he's always been proud of me, man. It's just, uh, that's, but that was certainly a special moment. Um, my father's not one of those to wear his feelings on his sleeves, you know?

• 38:11Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 38:12Speaker 04

  But yeah, he was certainly proud.

• 38:14Shawn Ryan?

  Well, that's awesome. You know, um, would you say it played, you know? I mean, it definitely played a role in you joining, but then again, going through your book. Um, I saw kinda like the same kinda thing. Uh, maybe in the same wheelhouse happened again at your fire station. When you, uh, you wanted to do a comedy skit in front of everybody and, uh, your friend Rob.

• 38:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:45Shawn Ryan?

  Basically told you, you fucking blow, get the fuck out of here. And you took that to heart and, uh, I'll be damned, you're doing stand-up comedy with fucking people like Kevin Hart.

• 39:00Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 39:00Shawn Ryan?

  And, uh, and, uh, so anyways, I just, uh, I have that drive too. And, uh, sometimes people's, uh, perception of me is what drives me when somebody says I can't do something and, uh, it seems like you're the exact same way.

• 39:17Speaker 04

  Tell me I can't do something, fuck you, watch this.

• 39:19Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 39:19Speaker 04

  I don't care how long it takes.

• 39:21Shawn Ryan?

  Hold my beer, motherfucker.

• 39:22Speaker 04

  I will fucking get it done. It's getting done.

• 39:24Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Um, and you do get it done, which is fucking awesome.

• 39:28Speaker 04

  There's no other way.

• 39:29Shawn Ryan?

  Yep. Uh, it's a great feeling.

• 39:32Speaker 04

  That's fucking phenomenal.

• 39:34Shawn Ryan?

  To prove people wrong like that. But, um,

• 39:39Shawn Ryan?

  so I don't wanna go too much into your career as a Marine because, um, your firefighting career is, is, is what really shines and, and, and stands out when it comes to, uh, all the different

• 39:59Shawn Ryan?

  services you've, uh, served in. And, um, so leaving the Marine Corps, you walked right into.

• 40:07Shawn Ryan?

  Being a firefighter, correct?

• 40:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, man, I got out of, so I did four years Marine Corps infantry and then I got out in 2000. And I was always intrigued by police as well. I wanted to, I wanted to be a police officer, but I also wanted to be a fireman. And I went back to my hometown when I got out of the Marine Corps. And went and talked with my buddy who was on the job there. And he walked me into the chief's office and the chief remembered me from hanging around. My nickname was Scrotum back in the day. So when I walked in, my friend had said, you remember Travis? He's like, yeah, Scrotum, come on in. So it's like, oh shit, man. Firehouse is ball busting ass place. I have no idea, I never pulled my balls out. I don't know why they called me Scrotum. That's just the name that stuck. So I was, I was known as Scrotum.

• 40:48Speaker 04

  Uh, so he pretty much, you know, we, we had a conversation and he told me that, uh, you know, he, he had an opening and he'd like to send me to the, to the fire academy and everything. So that's what happened. I went to eight week fire academy and I was on the job. I was doing it.

• 41:04Shawn Ryan?

  Can you kind of, uh, I am not familiar, you know, uh, with the life of a firefighter. So can you kind of walk us through, I wouldn't say like a typical day, but, um, you know,

• 41:18Shawn Ryan?

  what's it like when you're, you know, with the boys? Um, and I know you guys are super fucking tight. It's a brotherhood and, uh, at least while you're in, and we'll talk about that later.

• 41:31Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 41:31Shawn Ryan?

  But, um, you know, can you kind of go through the feeling of when you get that call? And you're at the firehouse and, and you know, it's, it's something fucking real. It's, it's going to be dangerous. You're going to see some, some horrific stuff. And, uh, when does that, when does that adrenaline kind of start kicking in? And what's the feeling? And, and, and kind of walk us through.

• 42:01Speaker 04

  What that's like. All right. So when you typical morning, when you come in at seven, eight o'clock, you just never know what the you know, you're on for a 24 hour shift. You never know what the day is going to bring you. As a young guy, of course, you want all the action. We all sign up to do these jobs because we want the adrenaline rushes. But over over a long lengthy career, those adrenaline, what we call them adrenaline dumps is the rush of getting that that hit of adrenaline and then the call turns out to be nothing and then it goes back down. You know, and you just you ride the highs and lows through a career and that's what that kills a lot of people over the years, man. Heart disease and gives them heart attacks. I mean, it it will fuck you up. It rewires your entire fucking brain having that many adrenaline dumps. It it. Yes, it's fucking crazy. I I paint I do. I talk about a scenario, one call or one day on the job.

• 42:47Speaker 04

  Where we have multiple calls throughout the day, but all of a sudden, I remember one night in in my bed and we're asleep and you get rocked, you get up, you you jump on the rig, you're going to a hot call that you think is hot. And dispatch call says you're not needed. So you're like, fuck, you turn around, you go back to the firehouse, you back the truck in your heart rate's fucking 190,000 beats a minute. You get back in your bed, you're trying to go to sleep, you can't go to sleep. And then you go off, you finally drift off to sleep and bam, you get hit again. And you're back in the truck and you're hauling ass and it turns out to be another alarm or a call that you're not needed on. So you come back to the house. Now it's two o'clock in the morning. You get back in the bed after about another hour, you finally doze off to sleep. Bam, you get hit again. And this is a real, real call that we went on. This is an exact scenario that's in my book.

• 43:33Speaker 04

  It was two something in the morning, Christmas Eve, and we're going to a a fatal vehicle wreck. We didn't know it was fatal at the time. We pull up on scene, a truck had went off the road, flew through a telephone pole. It was upside down.

• 43:48Speaker 04

  There's a guy sitting next to the bumper, just sitting there, talking to himself. There's beer cans everywhere. And the the song Every Rose Has Its Thorn is on by Poison. And I would never forget that because every time I hear that song, I can instantly smell this call. And the reason I say smell it is I smell the the grass that they hit and through it flung mud everywhere. And then I smell the alcohol and the man's breath that I had to crawl up underneath some live hot power lines to pull him out from underneath. They were about two, two feet off the ground. And my my lieutenant's yelling at me to get back and I just went, I had tunnel vision. I just saw. A man that needed my help and I went to get him. Um, and, and he had agonal breathing. All of his teeth are busted out. He has massive facial trauma.

• 44:33Speaker 04

  And my face is really close to his because I'm, I'm having to do a low profile drag to pull him out. And I can smell the beer emanating from his breath. So just from hearing that song, it takes me right back to that. Um, and man, he expired right there, pissed his pants and died. Um, so it's, it's stuff like that. And then when you get done with that call as a firefighter. Firemen, we don't talk about this stuff.

• 44:55Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 44:56Speaker 04

  We don't, we bury it. We go back to the house and you just fucking deal with it.

• 45:00Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 45:01Speaker 04

  We gotta go get, we gotta go make breakfast now.

• 45:03Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 45:03Speaker 04

  That's a typical day, or you can show up and nothing happened. And you're waiting all day and you're anticipating and it's, where's it at? Where's that? Where's the call? Where's the call? And nothing ever happens.

• 45:13Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, is it a good feeling?

• 45:16Speaker 04

  When nothing happens?

• 45:17Shawn Ryan?

  No, when, when something's happening, is it a good feeling?

• 45:21Speaker 04

  Man, so I've never done, I've never done drug. I smoked marijuana twice in my whole life. Um, but I would have to, from what I've heard about crack cocaine, I would think it's that kind of high. It's an immediate rush.

• 45:35Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 45:35Speaker 04

  And you just can't get there fast enough. And what you have to be careful of, it's the tunnel vision, like I said, because that's what gets people hurt.

• 45:42Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 45:42Speaker 04

  You gotta keep an open mind frame.

• 45:44Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 45:44Speaker 04

  Or mindset. And, but your world gets very narrow real quick because you're seeing this emergency call the whole way, the approach to it when you get there. And afterwards, all that goes away, that euphoric feeling that, that high that you experienced goes away.

• 45:59Shawn Ryan?

  Do you crave it?

• 46:00Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 46:00Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 46:01Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 46:02Shawn Ryan?

  You know, I'm trying to, uh, put myself in your guys' shoes and, and, uh, like, I wasn't planning on talking about tunnel vision, but you know, it does fucking kill people and, uh, and, uh, I never really thought about tunnel vision and, uh, and EMS or fire service capacity, but you know, even being in a fucking gunfight, you know, if you have to be able to come off of your gun, look around, see what the fuck is going on around you. Um, and a lot of guys, um,

• 46:35Shawn Ryan?

  Especially that aren't in soft, they get that tunnel vision and it's they're focused in on one, on one threat that's shooting at them and they don't see the 50 other threats, you know, that are in buildings and, and, uh, and, uh, so I'm, I'm so I can totally relate. I know it can be hard to, you know, come off the immediate task and, and, and get a better understanding and some situational awareness of what everything, what else is going on in the big picture.

• 47:05Speaker 04

  The fog of war on emergency scene is the exact same. You know, it's like you said, everybody's focusing on the burning building in front of them, but what they're not looking at is the fucking power lines that the pole is also burning and now that high power line is about to fall and, and land in a puddle of water because we all have water and whoever's standing in it's about to get lit the fuck up. You know, I mean, it's stuff like that. It's the cars passing by on the street looking at the fire and that you're not watching the cars and the fucking dumbass driving the car is rubbernecking and runs over a fireman. Don't think that shit doesn't happen. It happens all the time.

• 47:38Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 47:39Speaker 04

  You know, and it's shit like that. So you have to be able to see the whole picture.

• 47:44Shawn Ryan?

  What's it like in the truck on the way to the call?

• 47:49Shawn Ryan?

  I try to put myself in those shoes and, uh, that, uh, for me

• 47:57Shawn Ryan?

  was almost maybe even, uh, more because it's the anticipation of you, uh,

• 48:04Shawn Ryan?

  getting ready to do whatever you're gonna do and I, uh, I feel like it might be kind of similar to like us when we're in a helicopter and we're on the way to a fucking target.

• 48:17Shawn Ryan?

  You know, and then you get that five minutes out, you get that one minute out, 30 seconds out and every time hack, it's just like shit, like it's fucking going down in 30 seconds and then you're on the ground and, uh, and, and, uh, sometimes things kind of I don't want to say slow down, but you don't have fucking time to be nervous anymore. You now it's, it's, it's, it's all performance and, uh, and the, and the preparation, the mental preparation that you're giving yourself and the helo on the way to the target.

• 48:55Shawn Ryan?

  What are you guys doing in the fire truck? You get in the fire truck. Uh, when do you find out what the fuck you're responding to?

• 49:01Speaker 04

  So that's, that's the million dollar question, right? So what we're going off of, we're going off of information relayed from someone who's on scene with no emergency training, relaying that to a dispatcher who has emergency training, who in turn tries to paint a picture to us. We've been on tons of calls and it's never like you think it is. It's, it's, it's usually more fucked up than you can imagine. So it's eerily quiet on the way to call. So you hear the, we're not all high fiving and dancing in the back of the thing. We're, we're all getting into like our assignment mode, depending on what position I'm riding in the rig. If I'm a roof guy, if I'm a vent guy, you're listening to, to that call, trying to what we call a scene size up.

• 49:44Speaker 04

  Uh, normally the incident commander, whoever that is, the first arriving unit tries to do a scene size up and paint you a beautiful picture of what's going on. Cause now that is boots on the ground for us. That is the trained personnel, the professional who's been there, done it. And now they can paint you a Picasso of what the fuck you're coming into. And usually you're right, you're literally right behind them and right on top of them. So you only have like a few seconds to process that information. So if I hear, you know, we have a fully involved structure, fire vented through the roof. I know, okay, I'm a vent guy on a ladder truck. We're the guys that go on the roof and cut the holes. That's out the window right now. We don't need to do that, put the saws up. But if you hear, um, 25% involvement, uh, we got, we got people trapped.

• 50:29Speaker 04

  Now you're thinking, okay, instead of vent mode, I might have to go into, you know, search and rescue mode. Cause that's what we guys on the trucks do. I'm, I'm a truck guy, what we call a truckie. And we talked about that last night. Engine company guys, they carry the hose, right? And they go in and put, put, put the water, put the fire out with water. The truck guys, we do search and rescue and ventilation operations where we try to expel all the toxic fumes and the superheated gases from a structure. And we try to get that out to take a little pressure off of the guys with the hose company that goes in to put the fire out. So there can be multiple different assignments you're going into and it's just very chaotic when you're getting there. So everybody's usually quiet and then when we get there, we just figure it out and we go and it's game time.

• 51:09Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. So you're doing as much, you know, mission planning as you can on the way there?

• 51:15Speaker 04

  With the information that you're providing.

• 51:17Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. And you said usually it's more fucked up?

• 51:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, because you're going off of, you know, information that's relayed to you by untrained professionals and they don't know really what to look for.

• 51:28Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 51:29Speaker 04

  And being the civilians, you know, and then when you get there, it's, there's usually a hundred other fucking things going on.

• 51:35Shawn Ryan?

  Shit.

• 51:35Speaker 04

  Then that they're not seeing. I'm talking on a really, really good hot call, not every single call. They just don't do a great job at painting the picture for us when it comes through dispatcher. All we know is, hey, we got a, we got a fire. That, that's all we know right now, but when you get there, you find out there's more to it. It's a fucking fire and on the backside, there's a pool, you know, and that's a threat to firemen because you can fucking drown and that's part of that tunnel vision that I'm talking about. You're running around the back of a house, not paying attention and your ass is in the bottom of a fucking pool carrying all this gear.

• 52:07Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:08Speaker 04

  You know?

• 52:09Shawn Ryan?

  Well, what's the first major fire that you responded to?

• 52:18Speaker 04

  Hmm, been to a lot of them. I don't, this.

• 52:22Shawn Ryan?

  Not June 18th, 2007. Pick any other one, but you know, preferably like the first like major fire. I want to know like, you know?

• 52:34Speaker 04

  I got it.

• 52:35Shawn Ryan?

  What was the call? Did you think it was serious? And what was it like when you were in the fucking truck and?

• 52:47Shawn Ryan?

  You finally see the smoke of where you're getting ready to respond to. Does that?

• 52:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, so the first, yeah, certainly. The, uh, the first one was a two-story house. It was an older house, probably built in the eighteen hundreds sometime around there. Um, we caught the call and as soon as we left the station, uh, we got maybe a mile down the road, you could see the smoke and it was just big black smoke. This isn't white smoke like somebody burning yard debris. This is everything in the fucking world is on fire kind of smoke.

• 53:16Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 53:16Speaker 04

  And it's pushing. It's got velocity behind it, which means you've got a, a big raging fire that's pumping that thing. When we pull up, it was eating ass off of the back of this house. I mean, half of the, half of the back, the back half of the house was, was fully involved. And so we start flaking hose out and we run up to the front door and this is, I'm brand new. This is gonna be my first interior attack. And I hit my knees. I'm going to put my mask on and I'm reaching out for the door just to kind of push it open to get it ahead of us. And literally as I'm reaching out for the door, the rest of the house, the flames just instantly moved forward and just what we call flashed. When everything reaches its combustible limit at one time and it just completely out the front door,

• 53:57Speaker 04

  out the windows and right over our heads and we're under this old time and porch and we have the hose line. We're like, oh shit. And so now we have to back up. There's no going into this house.

• 54:06Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 54:06Speaker 04

  Like the whole thing's on fire now, right? So we back up. This is the first department I worked for, my hometown department, which is a small department. We were severely, um, we were very small. We only had three stations. So you didn't have a lot of manpower when stuff like this happened. Um, and I just remember that was my first experience getting up on top of a fire. You're like that close to a big, big fire and the amount of heat that it puts off, it's overwhelming. I mean, it backed us out of there so fast. And then we were doing what we call a defensive attack and we started pulling bigger hose lines and we had to fight it from the outside. We didn't even get to get inside on that one.

• 54:41Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Scale of one to 10, you pull up to something like that, what's your adrenaline at?

• 54:47Speaker 04

  Twelve.

• 54:47Shawn Ryan?

  Twelve?

• 54:48Speaker 04

  If not higher, yeah.

• 54:49Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 54:50Speaker 04

  It's thumping, man.

• 54:50Shawn Ryan?

  It gets fucking serious real fast.

• 54:52Speaker 04

  Real fast, yeah. The problem is, I think, as a young guy, you don't really understand the element of danger that's there.

• 55:00Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 55:01Speaker 04

  You don't take it seriously. When you do some, you get, you get pretty close to this thing. You, you hang out in places you shouldn't be hanging out in, like I'm saying, when that fire's getting out of that whole house and, and licking the, the top of the porch, this two-story porch that's over the top of you. That amount of fire, fire doubles in size every, I, I, forgive me, I know some people are gonna correct me, but every, every like ninety seconds or something like that, fire doubles in size. And I'm not looking for statistics here, I'm just saying. So we probably hung out under that porch playing firemen a little too long, like, oh yeah, bad, you motherfucker. And you're, you're getting after it, like, this is what we do until it's like, hey, this shit's getting serious, we need to back up. But anytime that porch could fall on top of you and kill you.

• 55:40Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 55:40Speaker 04

  But when you're a young man, you're just getting after it. It doesn't seem real.

• 55:43Shawn Ryan?

  It seems, uh, again, it seems very similar, you know?

• 55:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 55:48Shawn Ryan?

  You wanna fucking work, that's what you train, you know, even in, in, you know, in the teams at the agency, you know? If you're in a fucking gunfight, um, it sounds weird, but there's nowhere else you would rather be.

• 56:04Speaker 04

  Than right there.

• 56:04Shawn Ryan?

  Than right there in a fucking gunfight.

• 56:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 56:07Shawn Ryan?

  And, uh, and going through your book and, uh, and, and, and listening to your content and talking to other guys. It seems like that's, uh,

• 56:21Shawn Ryan?

  the exact same thing with firefighters, uh, is, is, is someone like me in a gunfight. It's firefighters fucking fighting fire, like, it's dangerous as fuck. You wouldn't wanna be anywhere else with anyone else. And, uh, you know, you're with your fucking brothers who eventually become your family and, uh,

• 56:44Speaker 04

  It's time to get some.

• 56:45Shawn Ryan?

  Yep, it's time to get some.

• 56:47Speaker 04

  The some is different, but it's time to get some.

• 56:49Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 56:50Speaker 04

  That's all it is.

• 56:51Shawn Ryan?

  But, uh, but you said, so is that just the, the younger guys that are newer, or does that kinda wear off?

• 56:58Speaker 04

  Um, it, it wears off as you get older, and certainly as, um, you start to experience a lot of the things that I started to experience later in my career, because you realize just how real it is and how fucking deadly it is and how it can just change everybody's life. It's not just you, it's the people's houses that's burning, it affects everybody, the community. It fucks people up, man.

• 57:19Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 57:19Speaker 04

  And it's. It's it's fun because that's what you get paid to do. And like you said, you don't want to be anywhere else because that is your job. That's what you sign the fuck up to do. But as we get older and mature and you go through, like I say, things we went through. You're still there to do the job, but you just don't wish it anymore. Well, we would sit around wishing and hoping for fires.

• 57:41Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 57:42Speaker 04

  After my fucking friend, all my friends were killed, I never wished for another fire again.

• 57:46Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 57:46Speaker 04

  It was like, if it happens, we go and we do our job.

• 57:50Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 57:50Speaker 04

  But I'm not coming to work all motivated, man, I hope we fucking catch one today.

• 57:54Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 57:54Speaker 04

  I hope we fucking don't because I don't want to be. Looking at my dead friends burnt bodies and looking at their faces burn off of their fucking skulls. I don't want to do that again.

• 58:06Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 58:07Speaker 04

  But if I have to, I will.

• 58:11Shawn Ryan?

  I got another question.

• 58:15Shawn Ryan?

  So in combat.

• 58:18Shawn Ryan?

  If somebody's killed in the in the line of duty. Uh, there's a instantaneous feeling of you want to get fucking revenge. And you want to go after the people that fucking killed uh your brother. Or your friend, your fucking teammate. And uh, you know. A lot of times it doesn't happen immediately and you have to wait, but um, and it might be in a completely.

• 58:46Shawn Ryan?

  It might be a completely different fucking organization, you know, but you get that uh, sometimes you get that feeling of like, yeah, fuck you, you got. You got mine and now I'm gonna fucking get yours.

• 59:01Shawn Ryan?

  But you guys don't uh, I mean, when you lose somebody.

• 59:07Shawn Ryan?

  Where does that? Where does that uh? Rage go?

• 59:12Speaker 04

  There's no get back.

• 59:13Shawn Ryan?

  That's what I'm getting at.

• 59:14Speaker 04

  There is no get back and it's unless somebody intentionally set a fire that killed your guys, then it's like, all right, let's go, let's hunt this motherfucker. But then realistically, we're not in war.

• 59:25Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 59:26Speaker 04

  We're going to be held accountable for our actions if we go. Grab this motherfucker and kill him and anybody he fucking loves. Of course, we would have that mindset.

• 59:34Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 59:35Speaker 04

  But unfortunately, there's consequences to those actions.

• 59:38Shawn Ryan?

  I guess what I'm getting at is, is where's the energy go?

• 59:42Speaker 04

  You know, it goes into a bottle.

• 59:43Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 59:44Speaker 04

  And you drink it down and it goes into this, this place inside of you that you try to bury it. There's no satisfaction. It's just all, um, why, why, why, why? Constant whys. And it's the stacking effect of trauma. All this other trauma that you experienced stacks up. And now you take that and you put that on top of the pile too.

• 1:00:08Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:08Speaker 04

  There's nothing you can do with it because it just keeps stacking up.

• 1:00:11Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:12Speaker 04

  And it fucks you up over time.

• 1:00:15Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, I ju- I just, uh.

• 1:00:19Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I was just, you know, it, it, it never leaves, you know, uh, me. I mean, it never leaves, but you do sometimes get that sense of like, um. I don't know what the fuck you call it, but, um, it's definitely not closure, but, um, you know, you, you. It's always with you. But you get that, I don't know, retribution maybe is the fucking word that I'm looking for, but I mean, you, you just. You guys are never gonna feel that. I, I can't imagine you would ever, there would ever be a scenario where you're like, fuck it. You know what? Like, you can't. It's a fuck, it's a thing, it's a fire.

• 1:01:01Speaker 04

  You can never make it right.

• 1:01:02Shawn Ryan?

  And, um, I mean, that's, uh, that's, that's.

• 1:01:07Shawn Ryan?

  That's fucking tough to deal with and, and, uh, but I just wanted to hear, you know, from somebody that's been there.

• 1:01:13Speaker 04

  Well, we try to find, you try to find outlets, you know, like anybody, how to, how do you manage all of this stuff? And, you know, guys work out and we find hobbies and all of that, but over time, as you know, someone who's experienced this stuff. It ultimately eats all of that away.

• 1:01:28Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:28Speaker 04

  I'll tell, I'll tell people PTSD will kill you and everything you fucking love.

• 1:01:32Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:33Speaker 04

  Not instantly. It's a slow death.

• 1:01:35Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:36Speaker 04

  But it'll, it'll eventually consume you and everybody, you, everybody too.

• 1:01:41Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Well, you can't get rid of it.

• 1:01:43Speaker 04

  Nope.

• 1:01:43Shawn Ryan?

  But, uh, you can learn to live with it and, uh, and, and still be an effective and, and, and contributing member of society.

• 1:01:54Shawn Ryan?

  So how long, how long were you a firefighter the first go around?

• 1:01:58Speaker 04

  First time I was a firefighter, I was, it was three years.

• 1:02:00Shawn Ryan?

  Three years?

• 1:02:01Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:02:02Shawn Ryan?

  Three years and you decided you wanted to change your pace?

• 1:02:07Speaker 04

  It kinda just happened. Um, I didn't really decide it. Uh, I had a great, great career going. I was having a lot of fun doing what I love to do. I, by this time I had switched fire departments. I went from the small town I grew up in to Charleston, South Carolina, which isn't a metropolitan area like New York or Chicago, but Charleston is a very old city and there was a lot of fires back then. So we were getting more action than, than you could have hoped for as a young fireman. I was living the life I wanted and uh, one day I was at the gym and a cop walks in and he starts bragging about being a police officer. And I was always a little curious anyway, because you know, they say um, cops and firefighters all have one thing in common. They both wanna be firemen, right?

• 1:02:51Shawn Ryan?

  I've heard that.

• 1:02:52Speaker 04

  You heard that? And I uh, I was the opposite. I was always really curious about being a police officer too. But I couldn't do both because of the schedule. So somehow this guy talked me into doing a ride along with him and-

• 1:03:04Shawn Ryan?

  Are there people that do both?

• 1:03:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, there are. There are some that they, they're able to figure it out.

• 1:03:08Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 1:03:09Speaker 04

  But there's not many of them. Um, usually one or the other because the schedules are so stringent and they, they, they overlap too much. So I uh, at the gym I was working at part-time, um, this, this cop starts bragging about being a cop and how much fun they have. And he was in the city of North Charleston, which is obviously just north of us. And it was a, it was a very violent city back then. It was fifth most, most violent city in the nation per capita. And the things he would tell me, I was like, man, there's no way. He said, come do a ride along with me. And I did a ride along and it was over.

• 1:03:41Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:42Speaker 04

  It, it's no different than if the SEALs took you for a ride along.

• 1:03:46Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:47Speaker 04

  Or they're like, hey, or go, go sit on the ship in the galley and you wanna do that, you wanna do this.

• 1:03:52Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:53Speaker 04

  And it was another level of um, of emergency services, just aside, I never got to see, you know, and uh- I had to do it. I had to. I've always been a guy. If something interests me, I have to try it. I cannot live with the fact that I didn't try something I wanted to do.

• 1:04:08Shawn Ryan?

  You do, just going back, you do realize ninety nine point nine percent of the fucking population would rather sit on their ass in the galley and fucking get fat.

• 1:04:18Speaker 04

  I do.

• 1:04:19Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:04:21Speaker 04

  I know that now, and I am with that ninety nine percent because of what I know about law enforcement. There's a reason why I'm like, yeah, I'd rather do that. And I support the fuck out of cops.

• 1:04:30Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:31Speaker 04

  There ain't no way in hell I'd ever do it again.

• 1:04:33Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:35Speaker 04

  So, yeah, I gave it a go.

• 1:04:37Shawn Ryan?

  Sorry to interrupt you, but, um, but yeah, so.

• 1:04:42Shawn Ryan?

  You.

• 1:04:44Shawn Ryan?

  You talk about, uh, kind of your career as law enforcement and, um.

• 1:04:52Shawn Ryan?

  You brought to light something else where, um, you had.

• 1:04:58Shawn Ryan?

  You were on the ground, you were getting your face beat in.

• 1:05:03Shawn Ryan?

  Then you went to a domestic call. And then you went to, uh, there was like a fucking dog disturbance or something, which was nothing. And you were trying to, and you did a very good job, paint the picture of. I'm fighting for my life in the middle of the fucking street. Somebody's beating your face in, trying to kill you to. A domestic violence call to.

• 1:05:30Shawn Ryan?

  A little old lady or whoever the hell it was that just was complaining about a dog.

• 1:05:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:05:35Shawn Ryan?

  And, you know, you, you had two, one, you just about lost your fucking life in the middle of the street. And, and, and how long was it until? You have to listen to somebody bitch about a fucking noise complaint?

• 1:05:51Speaker 04

  Minutes.

• 1:05:52Shawn Ryan?

  Minutes?

• 1:05:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, before they call and complain to a supervisor.

• 1:05:56Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:05:57Speaker 04

  So, uh.

• 1:05:58Shawn Ryan?

  That's, that's, that's, that's, that's fucking impossible to, uh, switch that off. It's physically fucking impossible.

• 1:06:07Speaker 04

  You imagine going from like two gunfights to having to go play patty cake with a motherfucker, the mindset you're in?

• 1:06:12Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 1:06:12Speaker 04

  When it's time for patty cake?

• 1:06:13Shawn Ryan?

  N- no, I can't.

• 1:06:16Speaker 04

  That's what it's like.

• 1:06:17Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:17Speaker 04

  This is like being a cop, you're literally in a fight for your life. I got a guy on top of me, beating me senseless, trying to take my weapon, he had it halfway out. Had it not been for another police officer, I'd have died right near that parking lot that night. And he told us, he was going, he was going to blow my brains out with my weapon. Yeah, because he was going back to prison, all because I found cocaine on him. I didn't know this man, I didn't know who he was, I didn't know what he was capable of doing, he sucker punched me. Uh, my knees got weak when that happens, I mean, I'm human and I fall down and before I could get up, he's on top of me. Ground and pound, and he's, he's striking me in the face and I'm guarding my face and next thing I know is I feel my whole left side, or excuse me, my right side where I carry my weapon being pulled up. And what I'm trying to do is block his blows with one hand so I can stay conscious, stay in the fight.

• 1:07:02Speaker 04

  And keep him from ripping my weapon off of my body with the other hand and, uh, in good fortune that night, um, my old training officer was literally right around the corner and he saved me. He beat the shit out of that guy. Got him off of me and we were able to, uh, get him under arrest and within five, 10 minutes, I'm on a, I'm on another call, go into a disturbance call or a domestic dispute call. And then when you get there, guy's clearly beat a woman, he needs to go to jail. You start locking him up, now you're fighting the fucking wife, cause now you're locking her husband up. She's the one that called. Now you're fighting her, you don't have the handcuffs on him. Now he's fighting you. And you're in the fight for your life again, like you, now you don't want to go back to where you were, I don't want to be on my back.

• 1:07:47Speaker 04

  I'm fighting two people, I don't want anybody on top of me, striking me. You finally get them both subdued because your backup arrives again in the nick of time. And, uh, they go to jail and then a few minutes later, you're at a bark and dog call, there's no time for decompression. It's call, call, call. And, uh, pardon me if my fucking tone is a little off when I'm talking to you about your bark and dog.

• 1:08:11Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:11Speaker 04

  But I almost just got killed twice.

• 1:08:13Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:14Speaker 04

  And I'm not in the mood for this shit. Sorry I didn't put my kid gloves on.

• 1:08:18Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:18Speaker 04

  And then before you know it, you're in the supervisor's office dancing on the carpet trying to explain your actions. Because your tone was inappropriate.

• 1:08:27Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:28Speaker 04

  Why are you calling me for this fucking barking dog? You know what I mean?

• 1:08:31Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:32Speaker 04

  And when they start talking about defund the police, initially I thought it was a bad thing, but you know what? Defund them and let other people come, civilians, take those barking dog calls. Cause you don't need to be sending people that are damn near getting their faces beat in sending them to that call.

• 1:08:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:48Speaker 04

  That's insane.

• 1:08:50Shawn Ryan?

  I'm with you on that. Um. You know, it's, it's just in today's society, it's, it's so fucking easy. For people to, to judge and tell you how to do your fucking job. And, uh, you know, sit behind a fucking desk and, and, and, and, you know, cause a fucking. Seen when they've never, they've never taken one step in those shoes.

• 1:09:19Speaker 04

  I like that saying, um, people sleep peacefully at night because men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

• 1:09:24Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:25Speaker 04

  And it's, it's an awesome saying because there are people out there who are doing violence, who are in harms way constantly. So people can live these comfortable judgmental lives.

• 1:09:35Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:35Speaker 04

  They've never even seen a bloody fucking nose and they're telling you how somebody should be doing something. Fuck off.

• 1:09:41Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. It's a, it's a fucking disgrace. But, um, back to defunding the police, I, I was a hundred percent against it too. And, and, um. Then I thought about it and I actually had kind of a same, the same opinion that you had. They shouldn't be. Responding to a fucking barking dog or a noise complaint.

• 1:10:10Shawn Ryan?

  Or, you know, and and unfortunately, well, not unfortunately, there always has to be fucking compromise. And if if half the population is fucking pissed, you know, about something and the other half isn't. I mean, I think there is definitely a way to fucking compromise, and that would be the perfect thing. Because I don't think cops should be doing that anyways. And, oh, you want the fucking police to fund it? Here we go, you know? No more speeding tickets, you know? They have fucking cameras that can do that shit. We can put a fucking camera at a red light. And then, you know what? That alleviates prob- I don't know how much, but I'm gonna say what? Maybe seventy-five percent of interactions between police and, uh, you know, the community's citizens.

• 1:10:54Shawn Ryan?

  But then you put a camera at a red light and you put a fucking speed trap out. And then everybody fucking bitches because it's, you know what I mean? Because, oh, that's a fucking hidden camera. That's illegal. You can't do that. And it's like, well, what the fuck do you want? You know, here we are. We just, that's a defund, right? Now we don't have to have guys on the street writing fucking speeding tickets. I'd rather just speed everywhere and get my picture taken and mail the check in. But, you know, it's, it's, people are gonna fucking whine and moan no matter what, you know, is, is done, but.

• 1:11:34Speaker 04

  It's never enough, and this is that coddled-ass society that we live in. We have too much.

• 1:11:41Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:41Speaker 04

  And it's just never enough, and people just wanna complain until they take it all from us and strip it from us. And then they'll wanna go back to the way it used to be.

• 1:11:48Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:49Speaker 04

  So.

• 1:11:51Shawn Ryan?

  Well, hopefully it's not coming to that.

• 1:11:53Speaker 04

  I hope not.

• 1:11:54Shawn Ryan?

  But, um, yeah, but so it's impossible to flip that switch and go from, I was getting, I was getting ready to be murdered in the middle of the fucking street to now.

• 1:12:10Shawn Ryan?

  Can you please, uh, can you please, uh, you know?

• 1:12:13Speaker 04

  Put your puppy away?

• 1:12:14Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, put your puppy away. You're disturbing the neighbor.

• 1:12:17Speaker 04

  Put that fucking dog away!

• 1:12:19Shawn Ryan?

  But, uh, but you actually, uh, ran into, what year was it? This was 2003 to 2005, correct?

• 1:12:28Speaker 04

  Yes, correct.

• 1:12:28Shawn Ryan?

  As a police officer?

• 1:12:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:12:29Shawn Ryan?

  And, um, and there were a lot of politics going on back then. And, uh, you actually got fired.

• 1:12:36Speaker 04

  I did.

• 1:12:36Shawn Ryan?

  From the police department.

• 1:12:37Speaker 04

  Best thing that ever happened to me. I realize that now, as an old, wiser man.

• 1:12:42Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:42Speaker 04

  Not old, older. Um, yeah, I got, you know, I've never experienced a political machine before because the fire department wasn't like that. When I was on the job, I've heard stories now, it's a little bit more political. But, um, when I was there, it was just so much fun to be there. But man, when I transitioned from fire department, where we just fucked off every single day, played pranks on each other, then you go to the police department and you're doing your job and you're getting in trouble for it and you get investigated for it and you get cleared for it and you still have to explain things? It, it's like no other world I can, I can explain. Only police officers will understand what the fuck I'm talking about right now. Where you wake up every day and you're worried about, all right, am I getting fired today?

• 1:13:26Speaker 04

  Because of something I said yesterday? Something I did yesterday? When I know I did the right thing? It's a matter of how you're portrayed. Um, we, we were very aggressive back then and not overly aggressive. Like we're, we weren't violating rights and all that shit. That's not what I'm talking about. We were proactive police officers, so we went out looking for the bad guy. And where I worked back then, there was a lot of bad guys running around. And the problem is when you interact with bad guys, they're not fucking nice to you. They're not polite to you. They try to kill you, case in point, the last conversation. Okay? You get in fights with men with guns. You know what that's like. A lot of people don't understand what that's like to have physically be in a fight with a man that has a gun. And if he gets to that gun, he's going to kill you with it.

• 1:14:12Speaker 04

  You know, so yeah, sometimes you throw him down a little fucking harder than. Society would have liked you to. His head bounced off the fucking concrete. My bad. I can't apologize for that. Man was gonna fucking shoot me. Um, I had to explain myself all the time, man. I get, um, I chased a guy down one, uh, one afternoon. He was in a stolen car. He had a stolen handgun. He had a lot of crack cocaine on him. We got into a fight in a parking lot. His handgun falls onto the, onto the concrete and I had a decision to make. He was reaching for it. I could have shot him. I would have been justified all day. Um, but I didn't. I holstered up and went, went toe to toe with the man and ended up getting police officer of the month for this. Right. And the reason I tell you this is because just a couple of months later, same exact scenario happens. And I'm getting fucking reprimanded for it.

• 1:14:58Speaker 04

  Nothing changed. It's just optics, right? What it looked like. So. Uh, I ended up, what I got fired for was just something completely, it was just complete bullshit. I get pulled up into the, um. Deputy chief's office with my captain and the deputy chief. And they asked if everything was okay. And I said, yes. And they said, uh, well, you're getting into a lot of stuff out here. We just needed to check and we want to bring the noise level down with you a little bit. So just answer your calls from here on out. And as twenty, twenty-five, twenty-six year old police officer. Them telling you to just answer your calls and not go be proactive is kind of a slap in the face.

• 1:15:35Shawn Ryan?

  That had to be demoralizing.

• 1:15:37Speaker 04

  It'd be like they taking you off of an operational unit and putting you behind a desk. That's about how it would feel. So I walk out of there with the mindset of like, yeah, whatever. Fuck y'all. And then literally 20 minutes, I'm in, I'm in a goddamn fight in an alley with a guy who just tried to bail out of a car on me. And, uh, they, another officer found drug evidence in a car. And before I knew it, I was getting fired for asking this officer supposedly to lie for me about. Where we found the drug evidence in the car. And that's another long story, but it never happened. And I was able to prove that eight years later and have that overturned. It's not like I was charged for anything, but I got fired because I was just making too much noise. And I didn't listen to the higher ups when they told me, hey, slow down.

• 1:16:20Speaker 04

  So they did. They had, they had reason to get rid of me.

• 1:16:23Shawn Ryan?

  What, what, what are the fucking repercussions of you? Uh, fighting real crime. Why is that a fucking bad thing for a police department? Is the, and I hear this shit all the ti- is the brass at a police department just a bunch of fucking pussies? Or what is the fucking issue?

• 1:16:40Speaker 04

  Long and short, yeah. What happens is the brass comes up doing exactly the same things these junior officers did. And now they're in positions of power, not saying they're abusing that power, but they're in positions now that where their jobs are secure and they don't want to lose their pension, their career. So now they have to pretty much tell other officers when they know you're doing a great job to stop doing a fucking great job. And it sucks because the city, honestly, I know, I talk about this in my book where I know teams that would get into too much trouble. So what they would do is they'd just go sit at the Waffle House for 10 hours, their entire fucking shift, and they would only go take their calls. And in the meantime, there's crime going on everywhere. And these officers are not in these communities. They were like, fuck that. We're not losing our jobs. Y'all want us to be quiet? We'll be quiet.

• 1:17:23Speaker 04

  And that's the result. And you see it happening right now. All these crime waves that are going on in cities, cops are like, fuck it. We're not being proactive because we're gonna lose our jobs. We're gonna get murdered in the process anyway.

• 1:17:33Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:34Speaker 04

  There's no point in it.

• 1:17:35Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:36Speaker 04

  And that's the political side of the police department that I hated. It's, we did a great job. What, what it boils down to is your supervisors are doing so much paperwork on you. And they have to do interdepartmentals. They have to justify everything you're doing on every call. And that gets old too. So I can't blame them in a sense. I mean, you have to document, document, document, document. It gets, it gets tiresome. It gets old. So.

• 1:17:59Shawn Ryan?

  Where does the fucking pressure come from though? Is it the mayor?

• 1:18:02Speaker 04

  Mayor.

• 1:18:02Shawn Ryan?

  Are they trying to like scrub the crime stats?

• 1:18:05Speaker 04

  The mayor, the citizens, city council, that's where it all comes from, man. Everybody wants to keep their little position of power until, instead of looking at people and saying, you know what? Shut the fuck up. These guys are doing a great job. They're out here protecting your fucking ass.

• 1:18:18Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:19Speaker 04

  And sorry if they're not doing it politely.

• 1:18:22Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:23Speaker 04

  You spit in a cop's face and he grabs you by the fucking neck and throws you down. Well, good for you. You know, you should be fucking thrown down. Shouldn't be able to do that to the police.

• 1:18:30Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:31Speaker 04

  You know what? That's, we've gotten so far away. From, I think it it all goes back to the home. There's no fucking parenting going on in these homes and there's no respect for authority. And all those kids have grown up now and they just be expect to be able to go piss right in authority's face. And then when the authority turns around and slaps them for it, it's a big fucking deal. Like, I don't understand that.

• 1:18:52Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, it's it's uh, there are uh, no more immediate consequences. There's still consequences, you know, we're seeing it right now in the fucking streets. This, the consequences that are coming from that are, you know, it'll take a minute. And then the pendulum's gonna swing back the other way. And it's a fucking accountability issue too. And and you know, I hear, uh, you know, like yourself, a lot of people are like, it's how these fucking kids were raised, these fucking millennials and blah, blah, blah. Well, who the fuck raised them? You know what I mean? Is it the one that's sitting there fucking bitching about them? Because that's your fuck, you know, you take accountability for that, you fucking piece of shit.

• 1:19:36Shawn Ryan?

  And uh, and nobody takes accountability anymore. It's always passed on, you know, to the, to the, to the, to the, you know, shit rolls downhill. And uh, there's no more accountability and the fucking consequences aren't immediate. And uh, and it's created.

• 1:19:55Speaker 04

  We're all about pay for that.

• 1:19:56Shawn Ryan?

  What we're looking at right now. But uh.

• 1:19:59Speaker 04

  You can bitch about that all day too.

• 1:20:01Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. But uh, yeah, it's pissing me off so much, my getting fucking goosebumps on the back of my neck.

• 1:20:07Speaker 04

  I can see it. See your trigger finger moving over there.

• 1:20:10Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:10Speaker 04

  Calm down.

• 1:20:11Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah. But um, well, on that note, um, let's take a quick commercial break. When we come back, um, we're gonna talk about June eighteenth, two thousand seven. Um, you know, the sofa superstore incident that uh, you know, was the second, second most tragic event and biggest loss of uh, firefighters, uh, only second to nine eleven.

• 1:20:42Speaker 04

  Structural firefighters, yeah.

• 1:20:43Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:44Speaker 04

  Some wildland firefighters. It's a bigger number, but.

• 1:20:46Shawn Ryan?

  Oh.

• 1:20:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:20:48Shawn Ryan?

  But um, we're gonna visit that when we come back.

• 1:20:51Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:20:53Shawn Ryan?

  Sometimes these episodes can be pretty long and they will always keep you on the edge of your seat. Rather than sit here and watch it alone,

• 1:21:03Shawn Ryan?

  why don't you head over to vigilanceelite.com, buy yourself some company and get some Vigilance Elite gummy bears.

• 1:21:25Shawn Ryan?

  Not bad.

• 1:21:28Shawn Ryan?

  Alright, man. We're back from the break and uh, getting ready to go into what happened on June 18th, 2007. So, the Sofa Superstore Fire, which claimed the lives of nine firefighters. And um, is one of the most tragic

• 1:21:52Shawn Ryan?

  events in American firefighter history if I'm, if I'm not mistaken. You're right. And you were a part of that and you responded to that and um, you've mentioned that um, this changed your life forever and out of all the traumatic events that you've witnessed and been a part of, uh, this is kinda what this is the straw that broke the camel's back and uh, kinda sent you into the downward spiral of PTSD.

• 1:22:28Shawn Ryan?

  And also, uh, I watched a, I did a lot of research on this too and uh, it seemed to be a very uh, controversial incident and a lot of lessons learned happened from it and uh, and uh, and it seems that the, the men, you know, like yourself that, that survived it are, are

• 1:22:51Shawn Ryan?

  considered legends uh, in the community. But,

• 1:22:58Shawn Ryan?

  I wanted to, before we get going on that, I kinda wanna put everybody in the mindset of how, how horrific this was, so I wanna roll the tape.

• 1:23:22Shawn Ryan?

  So I played that to get everybody in the mindset. I want them to know how fucking serious this is. And that was your best friend on the phone. And telling his wife that he loved her. And like, I really just want to set the tone on how fucking serious and tragic this was. The day started for you at a memorial golf tournament. And I'd like to start from from right there.

• 1:23:57Speaker 04

  Yeah. Um, yeah, his last words that you heard was my friend, my best friend, Louis Smokey, in his last dying words, as he was burning to death.

• 1:24:12Speaker 04

  Stuff to hear.

• 1:24:17Speaker 04

  January 18th, 2007 started out as a normal day for us. We certainly weren't expecting any of that. We, we actually all got together. I was off duty that day. And we were having a golf tournament for another friend of ours who's a firefighter who was killed four months to the day prior in a car accident. And that was another really good friend of mine who got me, who got me the job in Charleston, actually.

• 1:24:44Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 1:24:45Speaker 04

  Yeah. He was one of, one of my other best friends. I mean, it's, it is so, paying homage to him, trying to raise some money for his family at a golf tournament. And we're doing what, what firemen do. And just like, you know, what, what SEALs do when y'all get together and cops do when they get together. We get, we get drunk and we have a good time. And that's, that's what that golf tournament was about. But by the end of the day. You heard the tapes. That's what we were all thrown into and uh at the end of the golf tournament, we um everybody's phones kinda started ringing and uh we were all told the sofa superstore is on fire and we all knew that that was a horrible place to have a fire. We often referred to that as a as a death trap if

• 1:25:26Speaker 04

  if that's one of the calls we ever had to go on because we as firefighters you pre-plan buildings. That means you find buildings in your area and it could possibly be a threat or um get be very bad. So you had to like kinda strategically plan how how you would face this monster in the event that would happen.

• 1:25:44Shawn Ryan?

  How many buildings were like that in that city?

• 1:25:46Speaker 04

  Tons of them.

• 1:25:47Shawn Ryan?

  Tons of them?

• 1:25:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean they're they're everywhere. It's just old old furniture stores. Actually, an old grocery store that was converted into a uh a one-story furniture warehouse. I mean, so it was a huge like a hundred something thousand square feet. Don't quote me on the square footage, but it was a big showroom and then had a big storage storage facility behind it and that's where the fire started. So we found out that that building was on fire. We um we all got in our cars and just went.

• 1:26:17Shawn Ryan?

  What were you thinking on the way there?

• 1:26:25Speaker 04

  I had heard that my friend Louis was missing.

• 1:26:28Shawn Ryan?

  You heard that before you even arrived?

• 1:26:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:26:31Shawn Ryan?

  When you heard that it was the sofa superstore, did that, did you know it was gonna be fucking bad since since the that was already pinging on everybody's radar?

• 1:26:43Speaker 04

  Well, it's like I told you earlier, it doesn't uh never seems real until it's real.

• 1:26:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:47Speaker 04

  And uh it seemed like another fire. But when I heard he was missing,

• 1:26:53Speaker 04

  that extra adrenaline kicked in and I drove faster. I broke through a police barricade with my vehicle. I mean, I didn't drive through it like smoking a bandit or anything. We just went around it. The cop was like, what the fuck? And like, fuck you. I kept going. And when we got there, the building had just collapsed. So I got there right when everybody had been pulled out. And my girlfriend was driving my car at the time. My firehouse was right up the street. I told her, I said, go to my my locker in my firehouse, grab my shit and get it back to me. I gotta find out what's going on. And so this time you got hundreds of firemen on scene, man. I mean, hundreds. There's probably three hundred something plus people on the scene that night.

• 1:27:30Speaker 04

  It was just a sea of red lights everywhere and ran up to my buddy David Griffin who was pumping. He was the engineer on engine 11. And I ran up to him and I said, David, what do we have? And he turned around. He said, Louis is missing. And he said, Travis, we got a lot more guys in there, too. We don't know how many. And I was like, in that? I mean, because now the building is is down and there's just fire every fucking where everywhere you look, it's just fire blowing.

• 1:27:58Speaker 04

  And then

• 1:28:01Speaker 04

  in Charleston Fire Department, we didn't back out of fires. We were very cowboyish and we were very prideful of the way that we did things. And we were very, very aggressive. And this is hundreds of years of tradition. And it finally caught us. And it bit us and it cost us nine guys. And

• 1:28:21Speaker 04

  I remember hearing reports of like 19 or 20 initially is what they thought. But by the time the smoke settled, it was nine. And it was nine really good dudes and all those dudes I knew

• 1:28:34Speaker 04

  very personally. I've worked with every single one of them. We we sat around that table breaking bread many a nights. Having jokes, having laughs, you knew their families. And Louis was just happened to be my best friend because and I wasn't his best friend. He was one of those really cool dudes that had a lot of best friends, but he was my best friend. And he, when I started with Charleston Fire, he took me under his wing and showed me the ropes. And I had a very special connection with him. And I didn't know by the end of the night. I still didn't know what lie ahead. I didn't know that I'd be the one next to his burnt corpse. Sitting there looking at him.

• 1:29:16Speaker 04

  In a manner I I can try to describe, but it's gonna be hard.

• 1:29:22Shawn Ryan?

  You did make entry.

• 1:29:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:29:24Shawn Ryan?

  You know.

• 1:29:26Shawn Ryan?

  If I remember correctly, you, did you make entry and you got pulled back? Was that, was that right?

• 1:29:33Speaker 04

  Well, we went around the delta side of the building. So when you're looking at a building, the front is alpha and then you go around clockwise. So we got to the delta side, which is square building would be the right side. And we go through this place, man, it was, um, it was just twisted steel, like spaghetti, spaghetti noodles and it was still hot. There were still a lot of fire present and, uh, but we had guys missing. We didn't have time to not get in there. We really wanted to find these guys and I guess some of us thought that we were going to find them alive, but it's just not the case. There was, I think around 15 and 20 of us on the body recovery teams. We were all

• 1:30:09Speaker 04

  broken apart and put into five man teams and we all came in from different parts of the building. And, uh, my five man team, we went in and it was literally, you couldn't move two or three feet and you had to stop and you had to figure out a way to get through the voids that were there.

• 1:30:26Speaker 04

  There'd be like a little hollow opening here and we'd crawl through that and the next two seconds, you're standing on what used to be the roof.

• 1:30:33Shawn Ryan?

  So you're, you're in it at this point and how many guys are with you?

• 1:30:36Speaker 04

  Four other guys.

• 1:30:38Shawn Ryan?

  And so just to paint a picture, cause you got really descriptive in your book about the smoke, you can't see your fucking hand in front of your face, the heat and, and

• 1:30:51Shawn Ryan?

  there was nothing, uh, and I could see how it would be easy to get disoriented and, and fucking lost in something like that. And you couldn't even, uh, you couldn't even bring a hose in with you to retrace your steps to get the fuck out and, um, I mean, the amount of courage that takes, I mean, it, it, and it doesn't, uh,

• 1:31:17Shawn Ryan?

  Did it seem like it was even a courageous thing? Did it? Probably didn't even go through her fucking head.

• 1:31:21Speaker 04

  No, the only thing.

• 1:31:22Shawn Ryan?

  We're going.

• 1:31:22Speaker 04

  Only thing is, is they wanted volunteers and a lot of guys didn't raise their hand.

• 1:31:26Shawn Ryan?

  No shit.

• 1:31:27Speaker 04

  Very, I think, because those guys knew. They didn't want what was on the, on the inside of that building. It's not that they're less of a firefighter.

• 1:31:35Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:35Speaker 04

  I think that they just knew. I don't want to fuck with that.

• 1:31:40Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:40Speaker 04

  And we're here to do whatever we gotta do, but there was a select group of us that did and uh. I certainly. You know, often say the worst decision I ever made was going inside of that building that night, but the best decision I've ever made in my life was going inside of that fucking building that night and carrying them. Carrying them all home.

• 1:31:58Speaker 04

  And uh. It didn't seem like anything courageous is just what needed to be done. You know, our guys are down. We got guys down. We gotta do what we gotta do. Push forward and go get it. So we didn't. We didn't even have fucking air packs on our back because they were all used.

• 1:32:11Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:11Speaker 04

  So we're choking on smoke and we have what called flash hoods. Firefighters have flash hoods and when you put your face piece on, you pull your flash hood up and it protects. Skin right here protects your neck and your ears.

• 1:32:22Speaker 04

  So we're choking on smoke, literally gagging on black smoke. Um, and you, you, you can't see there's, you know, and you're crawling next to big flames, fires, and they have ladder. Companies dumping water on top of us and in a normal fire situation, you would never be operating inside of a fire. When you have tower units raining water down because they're just so powerful, it could hurt you. It could. You, you could injure a firefighter, blow debris on them. It could push fire on top of them and kill them. But we had no choice. We had to go in. We had to do what needed to be done and. It seemed like it took a long time to get to, to them. And once we started finding them. Um, you would hear a team shout out, I got somebody and, and, and we would do the same and. Um.

• 1:33:12Speaker 06

  I saw something silver and um it didn't look like anything we had seen up until this point because everything was just black and then I I saw something and I went over to investigate what it was and it was by myself and I crawled up there on my hands and knees.

• 1:33:38Speaker 06

  I started looking at this thing and I say it in my book, I was just turning my head like a curious dog trying to figure out what the fuck is this?

• 1:33:49Speaker 06

  And I realized that uh it was an air pack of one of our, one of our guys. It was uh, we wore silver, silver, silver Scott air packs. And then busted open, it didn't look like an air pack, it was just like, it was like filleted open. And uh, once I realized what it was, I had my hands, I looked down and I realized my hands were on the shoulders of one of our guys and we wore black gear. It just looked like a pile of black shit, like debris. And then when I realized that, I pushed, I pushed back and I looked down and uh, I realized these were his shoulders, that's his back because the pack is on her back. So this, his head should be right here. But there was no head.

• 1:34:31Speaker 06

  There was nothing, it was uh, there was, there was just a couple of teeth, there was no helmet, there was no skull.

• 1:34:39Speaker 06

  It was just teeth. And um, I looked down at the opening, there was an opening and there's a spinal column sticking out and I just, when it got real for me and I realized, because I'd been to calls where we had burned up kids on Christmas, I've seen burnt kids, I've been to burnt people many times, but.

• 1:35:03Shawn Ryan?

  Nothing hit like that one.

• 1:35:04Speaker 06

  No.

• 1:35:06Speaker 06

  No.

• 1:35:09Speaker 06

  I realized, right then, whoever's in here is dead. Whatever count that they have on the outside, every one of them's fucking dead. And I knew Louis was in there and we just, we had no way to tell who was who. It's one thing when you got a dead body there that you can recognize, but when you know it's one of yours and you don't know who the fuck it is.

• 1:35:32Speaker 06

  So what we had to do is, um, we were tasked with not moving the bodies and just trying to identify them the best way that we could,

• 1:35:42Speaker 06

  without doing too much. And what the coroner was going to do after all the smoke cleared was come in and GPS them and locate where their bodies were. So that's what we did. So

• 1:35:55Speaker 06

  this, this one individual,

• 1:35:59Speaker 06

  Captain Billy was a really good dude. He'd been in fire service thirty something years. He was off engine nineteen and, um,

• 1:36:09Speaker 06

  we ended up pulling his fire pants down and his wallet was in his pants and we, he opened it up and we saw his, his driver's license with his credit cards, man. And it was just like, god damn it. It's one thing when you're working with dead people and you have no relationship, you don't know them because it's not real. You go to these things and it sucks. It fucks with you from time to time, but it's not personal. This is personal.

• 1:36:32Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:33Speaker 06

  There's no get back like we talked about and you're just like, what the fuck do I do? So, but we got a job to do, man, and

• 1:36:43Speaker 06

  we can't sit around too long. So we, we gotta find more of our brothers and then we go, we, we, we go not too far away and stumble on another one. Cause at this point, smoke's starting to lift a little bit more. As the fire got knocked down and, um, we found Mark and, um, he was, uh, he was face down.

• 1:37:04Speaker 04

  Rolled him over, his hands were in front of his face and it's almost like, like he saw the flashover that happened in that building. It's not a backdraft, that's movie shit. I mean, those things happen, but flashovers happen all the time in fires and that's when everything reaches its combustible limit at the same exact time and everything just, the, all the superheated gases in the building go, and it's just a big ball of fire and 99% of firemen that are caught in these things die because it's so quick and it's so violent. It's almost like he felt it or saw it and did like this and then turned and fell. His hands were like this, but I didn't know it was Mark. Mark was off of my truck, ladder five, and I had a fucking great relationship with Mark. We worked together, um, many times.

• 1:37:48Speaker 04

  So we roll him. Yeah, I think your bodies are still hot, man. You can still feel when you're touching them. I'm not wearing gloves at this point and I had them, I would take them off from time to time, but every once in a while, we'd roll a guy over and you'd have your gloves off and you could feel that heat in your hands from their gear, how hot it was and they were fucking burnt so bad. And when I rolled Mark over, the best description I can give you is we have a plastic face piece right here that covers our eyes and right here is usually rubber and it's black. I don't know if you've ever seen ultrasound of a, of a baby, 3D, that's what his face looked like. It was baked into his mask. Damn.

• 1:38:28Speaker 04

  And, um, we undid his coat, pull his coat open and we had metal name tags back then and it had his name right there. And that's how we identified Mark and we heard other teams yelling out that they were finding guys and, you know, it sounds selfish and everything, but I was so worried about Louis. You know, all of these guys were important to me, but this is, this is my dude. Yeah, it's your best friend. And I don't want it to be real and I want to hurry up and find everybody and I'm not wishing that it was somebody else, but you can't help, but in that moment to be like, please, don't be my friend.

• 1:39:04Speaker 04

  And uh, next brother we found was Brandon, my team. We go into this back storage room. It's like one of the only pieces of building that was really left intact. There was a lot of smoke damage, not a lot of fire damage. Um, Brandon was huddled down in a corner and his body was just normal. We rolled them out of this corner and he just had a cut over his eye. And what happened is Brandon ran out of air, but he got away from the fire, but he died from smoke. Damn. And he just looked peaceful, man. And uh, his um, his wedding invitations were in the mail.

• 1:39:43Speaker 04

  Were still being delivered everywhere around and he died that night. He was actually just working for somebody else. He did a buddy shift for somebody else and it cost him his life. Damn.

• 1:39:54Speaker 04

  So that Brandon was, I knew we had eight at that point and, and by this time it had come through that we have nine confirmed. Cause this is hours into the night and um. What's the uh, what? Was the fire completely out? Was there still smoke? At this point, smoke was, smoke was still there, but it was nothing like it was. I mean, it was, we were in there for hours. Yeah. Um, so the, the whole fucking building came down and there was really nowhere for the smoke to go, except into the atmosphere. Part of the showroom was still, still there, but after bulk of the fire was knocked down. Cause you gotta think fire was in all these different little pockets where the collapses were. Yeah. And so once those were done, man, all the smoke pretty much dissipated. And that's why I think it took us so long to start finding guys is because there was so much smoke.

• 1:40:38Speaker 04

  I really think we probably crawled over them a couple of times possibly. Shit. I just didn't know it.

• 1:40:44Speaker 04

  So uh, now I know we have eight.

• 1:40:49Speaker 04

  And some guys were in there with Brandon and I love Brandon too, man. And just like, I want to spend some time with him, do whatever we need to do, but I gotta find Louis, you know?

• 1:41:00Speaker 04

  Um, that limousine company you talked about that I owned, I, I drove for Louis's wedding. We had a lot of fucking fun together, man. And uh, he, this is actually the night after his anniversary. He lived one, one year and one, one day after his anniversary.

• 1:41:16Speaker 06

  So I put my helmet on and I got a job to do, man, and I was actually in a part of the building where you could stand up and I started walking out and man, I probably made it ten or fifteen feet and I walked through what seemed to be a doorway. I'm having to relive this because it's, I can't describe it to you.

• 1:41:36Speaker 06

  And when I did, as soon as I cleared that doorway, I looked to my left and he was laying right there. So.

• 1:41:48Speaker 06

  I knew it was him just by looking at his skull, you know? I didn't need confirmation. I knew. Because he had to, he had a distinct face and even when when his skin is baked off of somebody's face, you can still recognize him and it's a sick thing to say. But I've, I've, I've witnessed that.

• 1:42:08Speaker 06

  And Louis was on his back, man, and his, um, his left leg was underneath his right. His right leg was straight out and there was a piece of big ass, piece of steel across it and we ended up having to dig that out, but his arms were sticking up in the air and his fucking sleeves were burnt off, his fire coat. All the skin was burnt off of him and just his arm bones were sticking up. His radius and all that, his hands were burnt off and, uh, his head was, his head was back and his eyeballs were burnt out and the fucking skin was burnt off of his face and his mouth was wide open. And, uh, I just got on my knees next to him.

• 1:42:50Speaker 06

  Told him how much I loved him.

• 1:42:54Speaker 06

  And the shitty thing about that is

• 1:42:58Speaker 06

  just four years prior to that,

• 1:43:02Speaker 06

  before I went to the police department, Louis and I were on a call with Engine Six. And we went to a call where a man was murdered and burned to death and, um, he was set on fire with gasoline.

• 1:43:19Speaker 06

  And Louis was on his knees on one side of the man. His name was Rodney, this guy. And I was on my knees next to, next to him, or across from Louis, but next to Rodney. And I remember us locking eyes during this call. And just, we both had this, what the fuck moment, we were thinking about, like, what the fuck is going on? Why, why does somebody do this to this human being?

• 1:43:45Speaker 06

  And just four years later, I'd be on my knees next to Louis, burnt, even worse condition than that man was.

• 1:43:53Speaker 06

  And when we rolled that man over that night, his fucking arm snapped off because it was burnt so bad. And so that night when we're putting Louis into his body bag.

• 1:44:02Speaker 06

  And all of our other guys, I, I wanted to be very careful because

• 1:44:08Speaker 06

  I didn't want to hurt my friend.

• 1:44:11Speaker 06

  You're fucking dead and I didn't want to hurt him. Yeah.

• 1:44:15Speaker 06

  Yeah. So, uh,

• 1:44:18Speaker 06

  we get them all bagged up.

• 1:44:22Speaker 06

  And then we, uh, we get the American flags, we drape them.

• 1:44:29Speaker 06

  And then my team's tasked with carrying every single one of them out.

• 1:44:33Speaker 06

  So that's what we did. We carried them out one by one.

• 1:44:47Speaker 06

  Sorry, man.

• 1:44:50Speaker 06

  This is real, this is, this is real. Yeah. Because this is the fucking job. Yeah.

• 1:44:58Speaker 06

  I signed up for it. Sorry. I signed up for it. Didn't realize how real it would get. Yeah.

• 1:45:10Shawn Ryan?

  How long was the chain of events up until this point?

• 1:45:15Shawn Ryan?

  We talking all day and all night?

• 1:45:19Speaker 06

  So, uh,

• 1:45:22Speaker 06

  my shift started at eight o'clock the next morning and I started from inside of that building.

• 1:45:26Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:27Speaker 06

  I got there around seven thirty, eight o'clock that night. Pulled a full twelve hours inside of that building. We didn't come out. We stayed in there. As soon as we were able to get in, we got in and we stayed there all night searching and digging and cutting steel and moving heaven and earth to get these guys out. And then, um, we got them out. Hey, I got a job due. Your shift is up and we need y'all back in the firehouse.

• 1:45:49Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:50Speaker 06

  And then, uh, you had ATF and all these other FBI, everybody's coming in and investigate this thing. We need y'all in the rigs. Y'all gotta go to work. And that's the problem. Like you said, in combat, when you leave combat, you leave it over there.

• 1:46:02Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:03Speaker 06

  We gotta go and serve this same community that we just dropped nine of our own in.

• 1:46:08Speaker 06

  So we go to the firehouse, we back the rig in and now we're there and, uh, we lost three guys out of my house. And their fucking cell phones wouldn't stop ringing. Cause everybody's trying to figure out, it's now made national news that nine guys are dead, but nobody knows except us who they are.

• 1:46:24Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:25Speaker 06

  And you hear these guys' phones ringing, man, and, and we had, we had to go back there and shut them all off. And you know it's their families just freaking the fuck out. We couldn't take it. And then you got fucking reporters showing up, like leeches within fucking minutes. Trying to shove a microphone in somebody's face to find out, hey, how do you feel? How the fuck you think I feel?

• 1:46:46Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:48Speaker 06

  You know, I'm not trying to glorify this shit. This fucking sucks.

• 1:46:51Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:52Speaker 06

  But we got a job to do because there's other fires to go to. There's wrecks. People are fucking killing themselves. Goddamn babies are drowning in pools. And we just gotta stack this on top of the other bullshit and fucking keep going.

• 1:47:05Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Did they offer, um, I mean, I know this is early on, but I mean, was there any, they offer any help at all, the department?

• 1:47:16Speaker 06

  Man, I can't. So, our department did the best they could with what we had at the time. We'd never, in the fire service, there had been other incidents, but not like this magnitude, I guess. And so, it was kind of like a free fall to try to figure out the best way to help guys. And they, they came up with, uh, with some counselors really quickly. I don't know the timeline on it. But they wanted guys, hey, man, we got these counselors for y'all, go talk to. And of course, me being alpha male like I am, I'm like, fuck them. I was like, these motherfuckers, they've never looked at their friends like we have. They've never fucking held dead babies in their fucking arms. They've read books. Who the fuck are they? To tell us how to feel and how to be?

• 1:47:59Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:00Speaker 06

  And that was the problem. Cause looking back, that was the worst fucking thing I could have ever done. I hurt myself with that mentality and I hurt other guys around me. Because I would tell them to, if you go talk to anybody, you're a fucking pussy. And that's one of the biggest regrets I have because I talk about being a coward. And it's not easy to say that. That's me being a coward. That's me being too manly, too macho, and having too much of a fucking ego to accept the help that is available to us. We had people, licensed professionals,

• 1:48:31Speaker 06

  who would listen to us. Maybe had I listened to them, I wouldn't have fucking shoved a gun down my throat and pulled the fucking trigger. Maybe if I listened to them, I wouldn't have burned my entire fucking inner circle down to the ground. You know, but I wouldn't even give it a chance. Cause I was too macho, the culture that I had been exposed to my entire life. And that's what I speak on now. I speak about how we're killing each other with this suck it up mentality, cause it's bullshit.

• 1:48:56Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:57Speaker 06

  I understand it. Suck it up. We have to deal with certain things. But there's nothing wrong with, hey, suck it up while we're doing this. We got a job to do. Let's go get our guys. And when we come back, if it, if it fucking bothers you, let's talk about it. Cause there's nothing wrong with me and you being completely human and not being okay. It's okay to not be okay. And that's what I'm trying to instill in when I speak at conferences and everything. It's okay. Doesn't make you less of a man. Fuck, it makes you more of a man.

• 1:49:24Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:26Shawn Ryan?

  You know, that's it's unfortunate because uh that mentality is fucking through, you know, it's uh as far as I know, it's in just about every uh community that that that uh continuously deals with these type of events or or uh you know, traumatic stuff and and but it is, you know, it's starting to change from, you know, guys like yourself coming out and saying like, hey, the shit isn't right, what we've been doing for the last, you know, however many fucking years forever. And uh it it is starting to change, I think, and and and

• 1:50:06Shawn Ryan?

  and uh across all the services and and and military too. But um, you know, you're spearheading it in your community and uh

• 1:50:20Shawn Ryan?

  that takes a lot of fucking courage.

• 1:50:23Speaker 04

  This sucks, man, because this is what it does to you. And you have to relive it. And it's hard. And when these cameras shut off, and when I go get in my fucking car today, and I take that hour-long drive to the airport, I'm alone and I've just relived this thing, and it is fucking brutal. But you know what? It's worth me doing that if it reaches one fucking person in our community or even outside. And it helps them become a better mother, father, husband, wife, child, whatever. If it helps them realize that they need help and they can go get the help they want, then fuck it, I'll relive it. Because that's what we do. We lift people up. We don't fucking help bring them down.

• 1:51:05Speaker 04

  And I got caught in this vicious cycle of bringing people down because I was so fucked up for so long. When my whole world crumbled down on top of me right after that, when everything just started, I mean, everything just started eating shit around me. I fell into the victim mindset, and it was the whole, why me, why me, why me? Why have I been exposed to all this? Why have I experienced this? I got scared to go to fucking sleep at night. I was, I would cry alone, away from my wife. I would be in another room crying because I was afraid to go to fucking sleep because of what was coming for me in the middle of the night. I knew it. And I would hide that. And I'm not ashamed of that anymore.

• 1:51:49Shawn Ryan?

  We'll get into, um, we're gonna get into, you know, some, uh, the after effects and how it affected your life and your family life and all your, your, your team and, and everything changed your, your, your entire fucking life, uh, forever. We'll get into that in a minute, but, um,

• 1:52:10Shawn Ryan?

  a lot of controversy happened after that fire, um, and I'm not, I could not find why. Can you just, would, if you were in charge, would something have happened, would you have done anything different?

• 1:52:24Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:52:25Shawn Ryan?

  No?

• 1:52:26Speaker 04

  I back our chief, man. And it's, it's the way we were taught. And here's the problem.

• 1:52:32Shawn Ryan?

  Was it the culture?

• 1:52:33Speaker 04

  It was the culture. It wasn't the chief. He took good care of his department. We had a cowboy culture and back then it was okay and it was accepted and it was expected, right? Everybody Monday morning in the fire service, people Monday morning quarterback this fucking fire like you wouldn't believe. I never read the NIOSH reports. I don't care. You know why? Cause I was fucking there.

• 1:52:54Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:55Speaker 04

  It doesn't matter what happened. We lost nine guys. We learned from that. I mean, I guess it, it does matter what happened because it's implemented change throughout the entire fire service. Um, but we were only doing what we were taught to do and which is go get it, be aggressive. Now those guys went in there, there was, somebody was trapped inside of that building and it wasn't necessarily those nine guys that saved them. It was another crew. But they went in there, they knew somebody was in there, needed to come out. They were in there after the fire. Shit just broke bad in an instant and there was no fucking escaping it. You just couldn't get away from it.

• 1:53:31Speaker 04

  Had I been in charge, since, since you asked, back then with the culture that we were in and the mentality and the training and how we did things, I don't see that I would have done anything differently. It was just an entire set of circumstances that led to that.

• 1:53:46Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:48Speaker 04

  A lot of folks were like, well, y'all, y'all didn't use enough water. You didn't have big enough hose lines. We had every fucking hose on every truck in that building. Even the little hoses that we call booster hoses. And there are people were saying we didn't have big enough supply lines. Well, that may have been true, but that's all changed since then. We went from two and a half inch supply lines to five inch supply lines and. That may be speaking over your head because if you don't understand firefight in terms, but that means getting more water to the engines that are pumping the fires, which in turn can get more water. So there's no lack of water supply. I'm not trying to get scientific. But those things have changed, but you know as well as I do, Sean. Shitty things have to happen for better things to happen. And that's just something we have to accept.

• 1:54:30Speaker 04

  Things in the military happen shitty things shitty things in law enforcement happen. That's the only way things change.

• 1:54:38Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:39Speaker 04

  It's it's kind of a necessary evil. I hate to say that.

• 1:54:43Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:46Shawn Ryan?

  The only thing that you would go back if you could and change would be the culture. And, uh, I mean, I understand that, but that's fucking impossible to change. And that and our culture was very similar, you know? I mean,

• 1:55:03Shawn Ryan?

  as much as I hate to say it, that's what you fucking sign up to do. And just like we talked about earlier, you know, that is, uh, that's, that's what you want to fucking do. You want to be in that, you know, and, and, uh, and, uh, you, you feel fucking invincible. I mean, how many fucking fires had you gone to prior to that? You know, and you get that sense of invincibility. And, uh, and, and you fucking crave it. Um, and you especially, I mean, the culture started for you at, uh, what 15 fucking years old?

• 1:55:38Speaker 04

  15, yeah.

• 1:55:38Shawn Ryan?

  You know, you grew up in a firehouse. You left it for what four years?

• 1:55:43Speaker 04

  Four years.

• 1:55:44Shawn Ryan?

  Came right back, left it for three, two years, came right back. And so that's just fucking who you are, you know? It's, it's no different than, you know, people being raised, but, you know, but it's how you were fucking raised. You grew up in it.

• 1:56:00Speaker 04

  You know, and of course, if I could change it, I would. If I could go back and say, hey, this is coming and what can we do to prevent this? I would, but what I, what I know now is I cannot live in the past and, and do the whys. Why did this happen? Well, you know what? It fucking happened. It's called ownership and acceptance.

• 1:56:17Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:17Speaker 04

  Own the fact that it happened, accept it and press the fuck forward and do the best that you can with the life and the time that you have left. And that is what changed my life. It was that perspective, but it took a long time to fucking get there.

• 1:56:29Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:34Shawn Ryan?

  Well, where I'm going with this is, um, you know, uh,

• 1:56:41Shawn Ryan?

  guilt and you wouldn't have changed anything. And I'm willing to bet that, um, your best friend Louis wouldn't have fucking changed anything either. And

• 1:56:57Shawn Ryan?

  they died doing what they wanted to do. And, uh, and, uh, you know, we were gonna do a video on, uh, accepting loss and kind of moving past it. And, um, you know, in professions like this,

• 1:57:13Shawn Ryan?

  a lot of times, you know, that's, um, I'm not gonna say that's how you wanna go out, but

• 1:57:20Shawn Ryan?

  the guys I know, I don't think they would have fucking gone out any other way.

• 1:57:24Speaker 04

  You don't wanna go out ninety years old, somebody wiping your fucking ass and feeding you pudding?

• 1:57:28Shawn Ryan?

  Nope.

• 1:57:29Speaker 04

  That's, I get it. So, yeah, I'm the same way. And they're the same way. It's, it's shitty if it happens,

• 1:57:38Speaker 04

  but go out like a fucking warrior.

• 1:57:39Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 1:57:40Speaker 04

  Doing what you were put here to fucking do.

• 1:57:43Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:45Shawn Ryan?

  But, um, that's why I was bringing that up.

• 1:57:51Shawn Ryan?

  How long did it take you to, uh, be able to, to talk about that?

• 1:57:57Speaker 04

  Long time, many years to talk about it the way that I talk about it now.

• 1:58:01Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:02Speaker 04

  I, lo- long time, fucking decade. I've, I tried, I tried later on in life to talk about it and I shut down. Every time, just couldn't do it.

• 1:58:12Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:13Speaker 04

  But I realized at some point that my experiences may help other people too. And by me speaking about it, it may help me as well. And that it did. And that's why I do now.

• 1:58:26Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:30Shawn Ryan?

  You're changing the culture, man. You are changing the fucking culture. And, uh,

• 1:58:38Shawn Ryan?

  you're the only one I know that's actually doing it, that's actually out putting yourself out there. And I'll bet you get a lot of fucking hate.

• 1:58:44Speaker 04

  I do.

• 1:58:45Shawn Ryan?

  And I'll bet you also get a lot of praise, but, um,

• 1:58:50Shawn Ryan?

  Moving forward just a little bit, you know, when it comes to the culture.

• 1:58:56Shawn Ryan?

  On page two twenty seven in your book.

• 1:59:01Shawn Ryan?

  Excuse me, I don't want to butcher his name, but Captain John.

• 1:59:05Speaker 04

  McGinnigle.

• 1:59:06Shawn Ryan?

  Yes, of ladder five told me in the parking lot. The very day that he retired and left the job after nearly forty years. Captain John retired before June eighteenth, two thousand and seven sofa superstore that claimed the lives of nine of our bravest.

• 1:59:26Shawn Ryan?

  And. This guy fucking had it right, you know, and. His parting words to me before getting into his car and leaving after his final shift were. End quotes Travis, be careful. We're going to lose a lot of men the way we fight fire one day. We're not going to lose just one. We're going to lose multiple companies. End quote.

• 1:59:54Shawn Ryan?

  And you say that those words still resonate with you to this day.

• 1:59:59Speaker 04

  I think about it all the time.

• 2:00:00Shawn Ryan?

  Was he talking about? The culture?

• 2:00:04Speaker 04

  He was, yup, he was talking about the way we fight fire because that there's one story that he told me. So Captain John. Versus telling me, hey, it was a nice couple of years working with you, Travis. I had a lot of fun with you. That was his parting words. It was be careful. We're going to kill a bunch of men the way that we do things. He knew it.

• 2:00:20Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:20Speaker 04

  And he told me a story one time about an abandoned house that they were in and he goes, he made fun of it. He's like. I don't know how to fucking house didn't fall over and then he stepped and he goes, I know, I know. I didn't fucking hop fall over. There were goddamn hundred of us in there whole fucking holding it up and that's how it come and didn't fall over. But what he was getting at. There was no need to be inside of this thing and it was burning asshole to elbows and end to end, top to bottom. And every guy was in there. And that's what it was like. You gotta go get some. I talk about being on fires where we have five houses burning at one time. Back in the day. And everybody's in them like and there's fire everywhere. And you didn't want to be the man outside and that's a saying. An old saying in the Charleston Fire Department, don't get caught outside.

• 2:01:03Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:04Speaker 04

  That's the culture. Because you were, you were considered a pussy or somebody trying to get out of the harms way. And as a young man, twenty five, twenty six years old, you don't want to be that guy.

• 2:01:17Speaker 04

  You want to show everybody I got what it takes to be here.

• 2:01:19Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:20Speaker 04

  That's the culture.

• 2:01:22Shawn Ryan?

  Is that culture starting to change now?

• 2:01:23Speaker 04

  I think slowly.

• 2:01:25Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:25Speaker 04

  It's still there, though.

• 2:01:26Shawn Ryan?

  When did you see it start to turn a little bit?

• 2:01:29Speaker 04

  It was years after this fire took place with us and we had multiple regime changes. Come in, many of our older guys were either retired or they were pushed out by the new regimes that were coming in because they understood.

• 2:01:45Speaker 04

  They did not favor the culture of our fire department. We were straight fucking cowboys. There is no way to put that, other way to put it. And they knew the way that we did things were wrong and dangerous, extremely dangerous. Couldn't tell us that.

• 2:01:58Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:58Speaker 04

  And it was butting heads because when we, new chiefs were coming in, we butted heads with them because we still wanted to do it the old school way. Even though we just got bit in the ass because that's the way we were trained. It's like you have a pit bull who's trained to fucking fight. And then you want to take him to the goddamn dog park and get mad at him when he bites the head off a fucking another dog.

• 2:02:16Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:16Speaker 04

  You know, that's who we were at the time.

• 2:02:19Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:19Speaker 04

  Not saying it was right, but that's who we were. And now it's a much different fire department these days. It's still a great fire department and it's probably better. I mean, they're more.

• 2:02:31Speaker 04

  Productive on scenes. I mean, they, they have their shit wired tight now and it's done the right way. So it's just, I was just a part of it at a different time.

• 2:02:39Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. And 2008.

• 2:02:43Shawn Ryan?

  John Carr. Sounds like he took over the, the whole thing.

• 2:02:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:02:50Shawn Ryan?

  What was the morale like when he came in?

• 2:02:53Speaker 04

  Not good because we didn't welcome outsiders. And it was, he wasn't received well at first, but he was a great man and he's a great chief. And he was actually, after he got there. He tried the best that he could, but he went downhill. He got pretty sick very quickly. He wasn't there that long. But we all started slowly to accept him because he was there to implement change. We knew that. And it wasn't like, hey, I'm going to come in and punish you guys for being who you are. Although it felt like that in a sense at first because we just were not.

• 2:03:26Speaker 04

  Used to a different command structure, command staff.

• 2:03:29Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:29Speaker 04

  You know, so it was, we had to learn how to adapt to it.

• 2:03:34Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I mean, in a sense, he's fucking with tradition.

• 2:03:38Speaker 04

  That's exactly what it was. And so where we would on a, on a normal response, you got one engine, one ladder, or two engines, one ladder truck and a battalion chief on a fire, that could be three houses fucking burning. Back then, the culture was, hey, y'all better be able to handle it and not make me have to call another fucking company to come down here.

• 2:03:57Shawn Ryan?

  Shit.

• 2:03:58Speaker 04

  And you're undermanned, understaffed, and if it starts getting away from you, it was looked down upon if the fucking winds could control the fire. You know what I mean?

• 2:04:07Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:07Speaker 04

  You get an ass ripping, piss ripping fire like that, and the battalion chief has to call somebody else. The higher ups didn't like that. They're like, oh, you, you boys couldn't put that fucking fire out?

• 2:04:19Speaker 04

  And then people would slowly start getting transferred.

• 2:04:22Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:22Speaker 04

  That happens too many times. So you had to be aggressive, man, if you wanted to keep your spot. So when Carr came in, he changed all of that. So then I remember he changed it to, you're, I think it's like you're getting maybe four ladders, or no, four engine companies, two ladder companies, a battalion chief. And now all of a sudden at these fires, we had more than enough help. And it's like, damn, it's kind of fucking easy now. We didn't like the change at first, but then slowly started kind of taking on, it's like, hey, man, it's kind of reducing our workload a little bit. This is kind of nice.

• 2:04:50Shawn Ryan?

  Damn. Well, that's, I mean, that's good. How long, how long was he in there before he started implementing these changes? Was it like fucking immediately?

• 2:04:59Speaker 04

  No, not that I remember. I think it was, it was a slow, slow progression. But we had so much turmoil going on with all the old guys, like all of our old captains, like the John McGinnigals. And when this, this, when Chief Carr came in, everybody's like, fuck this, I'm leaving the department and all this, all this fear got injected into our department on what they were going to do, what they weren't going to do. So there was so much turmoil going on within the rank and file. You know, he didn't even really have to do much. We were all killing ourselves slowly inside.

• 2:05:30Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 2:05:31Speaker 04

  But, you know, he came in and, you know, so long ago, I know he started changing SOP slowly, but surely he, he changed the, the, what we would call the initial response. He changed that up immediately, like, hey, you guys are undermanned, too, way too undermanned for these calls. We need to step it up and start sending you some more units. And he would do stuff like that. They started doing training on the LDH hose, which was large diameter hose. And I remember that pissing off a lot of the old school guys because it's five inch hose that we would have to take out and put on our trucks for bigger water supply. We didn't like that. It was honestly, it was the smartest fucking thing you could possibly do, but we didn't like it because it's changed. Nobody likes change.

• 2:06:10Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:11Speaker 04

  But I was only there for two and a half years after that fire. So I didn't, unfortunately, I didn't experience too much change. The guys now are the ones that experienced all the change, the ones that are left.

• 2:06:24Shawn Ryan?

  Are there still guys in?

• 2:06:25Speaker 04

  Very, very few. Very few. We lost, I want to say roughly a hundred men within the first year or two.

• 2:06:32Shawn Ryan?

  Fuck.

• 2:06:34Speaker 04

  Huge turnover after that. I mean, and you're talking a twenty, thirty year guys on the jobs just saying, fuck it, I'm leaving.

• 2:06:42Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 2:06:42Speaker 04

  I mean, yeah.

• 2:06:44Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I mean, we're talking about courage. That takes, that takes a lot of courage too. A car coming in there knowing, I mean, because I mean, that culture is, I mean, that culture is probably, I'm guessing is in, in somewhat in every department across the US.

• 2:07:06Speaker 04

  For sure. A hundred percent.

• 2:07:07Shawn Ryan?

  So he's coming in knowing I'm, I'm about to piss every motherfucker off out here. They're all gonna hate me, but I gotta do it.

• 2:07:17Speaker 04

  And then when you're coming into a hundred plus year old fire department, who's rich in tradition and try to stir that up, that just doesn't go well. This wasn't a young fire department. I mean, this is a very, very old fire department.

• 2:07:29Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:30Speaker 04

  So, yeah, it was tough.

• 2:07:33Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I'm glad we talked about that and, and I think it definitely paints a picture of how fucking real things can get when it comes to being a firefighter. And on that note, let's take another break and, and, and we'll come back and go down the downward spiral.

• 2:07:57Speaker 04

  All right. Sounds good.

• 2:07:58Shawn Ryan?

  All right, man.

• 2:08:09Shawn Ryan?

  I hope you guys are enjoying the show. I think this is a pretty good one. Hit pause, go over to vigilanceelite.com, pick yourself up one of these sweet shirts, and if you're lucky, maybe these hats will be in stock too.

• 2:08:33Shawn Ryan?

  Alright, we're back from the break again, and uh, the last section was uh, pretty tough, I know. And um, and so now we're kinda going towards the downward spiral, what you call the downward spiral on your book, and uh,

• 2:08:50Shawn Ryan?

  I've read a part, you're in a fire, and uh, you've got a guy, a new guy with you that you refer to as uh, Sweet Onion.

• 2:08:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:08:58Shawn Ryan?

  And uh,

• 2:09:01Shawn Ryan?

  for me, it kinda sounded like this is where it started slipping uh, the most, and um, and your, your actual, I wouldn't say your performance, but you got a little more ballsy than maybe you used to be, it sounded like, in that section. Um, and you even referred to uh, the fact that you were running out of air, you kinda left the team, you were off on your own, didn't, you know what I mean? And uh, and then you actually had the thoughts going through your head of, of,

• 2:09:35Shawn Ryan?

  maybe you'll die in the fire like, like your best friend Louis did.

• 2:09:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:09:40Shawn Ryan?

  And found a window, opened the window and got some fucking air. And uh, and then, and uh, Sweet Onion sounded like he was kicking ass at that point.

• 2:09:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:09:51Shawn Ryan?

  And uh, you got recalled, three, I guess three horns is the, is the signal?

• 2:09:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's called evacuation, so they'll, they'll hit three horns to, to make everybody back out of the building. And like I said, back in Charleston, we didn't do that. So it was, this was new territory for us, for backing out.

• 2:10:08Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Well, there was another guy on scene there, uh, who you refer to in your book as Captain Silva.

• 2:10:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, Silver, I changed his name to protect his identity though.

• 2:10:19Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, well, uh, we got him on the line here. So.

• 2:10:24Speaker 04

  Huh?

• 2:10:25Shawn Ryan?

  We got him on the line here. So uh, Captain Silva.

• 2:10:31Speaker 04

  What?

• 2:10:32Shawn Ryan?

  How's it going Captain Silva? I'm sitting here with Travis Howze and uh

• 2:10:40Shawn Ryan?

  he was talking about a call or a fire that you guys were in and uh in his book and there was a new guy with him and you guys got recalled out of the building and I just kinda wanted to uh

• 2:10:58Shawn Ryan?

  see if you guys could go over that actions on objective.

• 2:11:04Speaker 02

  Sure, sure. Actually Travis was actually at the fire. I was on, I came back on the sixth day. So specifically me and Travis being in the building at the same time, you know, that, that didn't, that didn't occur. That was somebody else, but um.

• 2:11:19Speaker 04

  No, he's got the wrong phone.

• 2:11:21Speaker 02

  Part of that thing um the whole time. Is Travis online with you now?

• 2:11:25Shawn Ryan?

  He's right here.

• 2:11:26Speaker 04

  That's Chief.

• 2:11:27Speaker 02

  Trav, what's up?

• 2:11:28Speaker 04

  Chief Ricky.

• 2:11:30Speaker 02

  Travis, I got something for you, bro. It's waiting on you.

• 2:11:33Speaker 04

  You got what?

• 2:11:35Speaker 02

  I got something for you. You know what the deal is?

• 2:11:37Speaker 04

  Uh yeah, them big old balls of yours. He's got the biggest balls in six counties. We call him Ricky, Ricky all balls, no shaft. How the fuck did y'all get his number? Hey Chief, no, I was talking about that fire on Daniel Island where the townhouses were ripping and they, they backed us out of it.

• 2:11:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The one in the yard where I was reaping hill because he pulled us out.

• 2:11:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, that one.

• 2:11:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, cool. Yeah, Sean, I, I had two fires mixed up. So we on the same page now.

• 2:12:04Shawn Ryan?

  Oh right, right on. I'm glad Travis could clarify.

• 2:12:08Speaker 04

  He's like, I didn't go to that one. I'm like, the fuck you weren't? I changed his name and I changed your name in the book to protect your identity, but the lid's blown off now.

• 2:12:16Shawn Ryan?

  Oh well, shit happens.

• 2:12:17Speaker 04

  Holy shit.

• 2:12:19Speaker 02

  Don't worry Sean, I can't read.

• 2:12:22Speaker 04

  That guy's money.

• 2:12:23Shawn Ryan?

  Neither can I, but uh.

• 2:12:27Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I just wanted to kind of go over, we know where Travis was and what he was doing during that fire, when the siren rang out for the recall to get out, and we were wondering where, what were you doing at that time?

• 2:12:40Speaker 02

  Well, on that particular fire right there, I had that thing by the nozzle, so to speak. Me and a guy named Handy Andy went in there, and we moved it down real well, and then we, there was some extension, and Sean, if I get the stuff you don't understand, just pull me in and I'll reel in a little bit, but there was some extension, and me and the other guys went in there for an extension, and also Travis, where were you, were you in the truck house in, I can't remember?

• 2:13:07Speaker 04

  No, I was driving engine sixteen that day, and we got called over for that thing.

• 2:13:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, if you remember, I robbed that thing from Bubbles.

• 2:13:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, I do.

• 2:13:18Speaker 02

  Remember Bubbles?

• 2:13:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:13:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I took that fire from Bubbles, to be honest with you, and me and Handy Andy was my fireman at the time, and me and Handy, we went in, and we knocked it down, I mean, we beat it up pretty good, but there was some extension, and I know that as they were getting into the extension, they pulled us out, Sean, and naturally, I wasn't real happy about that, at all.

• 2:13:39Shawn Ryan?

  It doesn't sound like anybody was very happy about that call.

• 2:13:42Speaker 02

  Nah, nah, we was making good progress and all that, and that was, Travis, that was before the main fire, wasn't it?

• 2:13:53Speaker 04

  No, it was after, because remember, they blew those air horns to back us out, and we're all old now, but they blew those air horns to back us out, and we weren't used to evacuating, remember that?

• 2:14:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right, that's right. We made a lot of changes in SOP, Sean, and then during that time, that was the acclamation time for us, so as we was going through that transformation, you know, we could be quite as aggressive as we were back in our old days, our heydays, so to speak, so you're right, when the horns came off and we had to come out, there was a bunch of unhappy firemen, we were sitting in the backyard, Travis, if I remember, David Ishmell came back there, and I think I started on Poro Ish.

• 2:14:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, you were letting everybody have it. I remember, because I was one of the last guys out of the building and uh, you, you were on engine six and you fucking let me have it. And I was like, the fuck are you yelling? You're like, god damn it, we had it. We had it by the balls, Trav. What the fuck? We don't do this shit. We don't do this shit. I just remember you coming unglued. And I was like, calm down, old man. Shit.

• 2:14:54Speaker 07

  Yeah, I think, I think you, I think you let me know the next day on the way to work. I don't know, there was something about on the way to work, and then I flipped your ass off. I remember that part of it.

• 2:15:01Speaker 04

  Damn.

• 2:15:02Speaker 07

  On the way to work, the, the, the next shift. Um, but anyway, yeah, Chad, Sean, that was a, that was actually a good fire. Unfortunately, we got, we got pulled out, man. Travis, everything good? You doing alright?

• 2:15:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, man. This is amazing, man. I, I love you, man.

• 2:15:18Shawn Ryan?

  When's the last time you guys, uh, connected?

• 2:15:22Speaker 04

  I saw him at a swingers party about, um,

• 2:15:27Speaker 04

  That fucker's wild right there.

• 2:15:30Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah. Sean, there was two people there, me and Travis.

• 2:15:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:15:38Shawn Ryan?

  Next time, let me know.

• 2:15:39Speaker 04

  And the back of your balls were bruised, not, not mine.

• 2:15:41Shawn Ryan?

  Let me know if you need a third. I'll send somebody over.

• 2:15:47Speaker 07

  I told Katie when she, she locked this up, I said, do not get me and Travis together. You don't know what you're getting into. But they went on with it anyway.

• 2:15:57Shawn Ryan?

  Well,

• 2:15:58Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 2:15:59Shawn Ryan?

  Well, when is the last time you guys connected?

• 2:16:01Speaker 04

  That's been a few months.

• 2:16:03Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:04Speaker 04

  Nah, I'm just taking it all in.

• 2:16:06Shawn Ryan?

  I don't think he believed, uh, that you were on the phone here, but.

• 2:16:09Speaker 04

  I didn't. I thought this was some prank. Then I heard his voice. I was like, oh, god damn.

• 2:16:14Shawn Ryan?

  Well.

• 2:16:14Speaker 04

  That guy's a legend, man. He's a legend in the fire service. Charles.

• 2:16:17Shawn Ryan?

  That's awesome.

• 2:16:17Speaker 04

  He's a fucking man.

• 2:16:19Shawn Ryan?

  Well, Chief, uh, Silva?

• 2:16:22Speaker 04

  Ricky. Well, his codename was Silva in the book.

• 2:16:25Shawn Ryan?

  Okay. Well, hey, I appreciate your time and I, I really appreciate, uh, you letting us give you a call. I just wanted to reconnect you guys here and, and, uh, and, uh, relive the good old days. But, but, uh, I think we'll wrap it up for now. You guys got anything you want to say?

• 2:16:43Speaker 04

  Hey, Chief Ricky, I'll call you later, alright, baby?

• 2:16:46Speaker 07

  Alright, stay light, Travis.

• 2:16:47Shawn Ryan?

  Talk to you, Sean. Good talking to you too, man. You too. It was a pleasure. Be safe.

• 2:16:51Speaker 04

  I love you, Che.

• 2:16:52Shawn Ryan?

  Alright guys, later. Bye bye.

• 2:16:55Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 2:17:00Speaker 04

  You guys, god damn.

• 2:17:04Speaker 04

  I heard that guy's voice. I thought you were pranking. I was like, what the fuck's he doing?

• 2:17:08Shawn Ryan?

  You thought I was fucking around?

• 2:17:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:17:11Shawn Ryan?

  I literally thought I had the wrong guy there for a minute. You're like, that's not him. I was like, oh shit.

• 2:17:15Speaker 04

  Well, because you were saying the wrong name because there's a code name in the book. And I was like, yeah, whatever.

• 2:17:19Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:20Speaker 04

  And then I heard his voice. I was like, my fucking face hurts, man.

• 2:17:23Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:23Speaker 04

  Needed that after that last session. Holy shit.

• 2:17:26Shawn Ryan?

  You might want to check your pants.

• 2:17:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, that guy's gold, man. He's a great, he's a great human being. He's a fantastic fireman. He was on the job thirty, thirty something years and uh, that fire I was talking about was when he was a captain, but he later promoted to battalion chief. Uh, he was battalion chief downtown and he was just fucking good as gold, man. God damn.

• 2:17:45Shawn Ryan?

  Well, that's cool, man.

• 2:17:46Speaker 04

  Thank you for that.

• 2:17:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, you're welcome.

• 2:17:48Speaker 04

  I felt like I was back in firehouse for a second.

• 2:17:50Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, a good feeling, isn't it?

• 2:17:51Speaker 04

  It's amazing.

• 2:17:52Shawn Ryan?

  Right on, man.

• 2:17:53Speaker 04

  It's that chemistry you have with certain people, you know?

• 2:17:56Shawn Ryan?

  That's the brotherhood.

• 2:17:57Speaker 04

  That's it. That's it right there.

• 2:17:58Shawn Ryan?

  That's, that's uh, there it is. But um,

• 2:18:03Speaker 04

  I gotta figure out, I gotta find out how y'all made that happen after the show.

• 2:18:06Shawn Ryan?

  You want his number? I'll give it to you.

• 2:18:08Speaker 04

  I got it.

• 2:18:08Shawn Ryan?

  I'm just fucking with you.

• 2:18:10Speaker 04

  Fucking crazy.

• 2:18:11Shawn Ryan?

  But uh, I told you we do our research. But um,

• 2:18:17Shawn Ryan?

  so moving out, you um, you got in a fight. Things started fucking, things started getting weird before you started going down the downward spiral. We know your mindset now in that fire, you know, we're kind of where you were at mentally, which uh, is not a good spot to be in. And then um,

• 2:18:38Shawn Ryan?

  what eventually ended your career in the fire service?

• 2:18:41Speaker 04

  Um, so it was a culmination of a lot of things building up to one, one major incident. So you say, I got in a fight. What, I ended up going hands on with a lot of guys in the department over, over the course of two and a half years. And it's not something I'm proud of. I'm actually very uh, embarrassed about it. But it happened and it needs to be talked about because the reason I talk about it is you can see a shift in people's behavior. Like we're family and when you see somebody acting differently, something is wrong. And nobody ever pulled me to the side to help me. Nobody ever pulled me to a side this to the side to try to figure out what was going on. What happened was this new behavior that I was taking on was just becoming normal. At the funeral for one of our guys, I I got into a physical altercation on the bus. We had it. We had a bunch of buses brought in.

• 2:19:26Speaker 04

  Cause the funerals were so big, we couldn't take everybody's cars. So they had to bring families on buses. And firemen mixed with families and I was on a bus with some firemen and some families, some young children, some old people and. Something was said to another fireman and and he threw his hat at me and kind of joking around, but kind of not and. I just stood up and slapped him and slapped him into the seat, the empty seat. And.

• 2:19:53Speaker 04

  Everybody witnessed it. Yeah. And this is somebody I'm supposedly love, you know, and protect. And I just did that. In that event, everybody got up, they they left the bus and I was kind of alone on the bus after that. And then after that was more of the same. I got into physical altercations at the training facility where I assaulted one of our our guys that needed help. He fell down and he was having flashbacks of the fire. He was there that night too. And he was screaming all of our dead guys' names and. I picked him up and started slamming him into the wall with all of his gear. And I was like, knock it the fuck off. And. When I did one of the training, instructors came over and grabbed me and turned me around. And when he did, I threw him into the wall and told him, you put your fucking hands on me, I'll kill you.

• 2:20:34Speaker 04

  And then we had an academy instructor standing right there and I looked at him and I threatened to throw him out of a window. And that was accepted and it swept under the rug. And then again, behind a grocery store. Training one day, I slapped one of our other guys right in the face because he just came close to me and said something and I just lashed out and hit him.

• 2:20:53Speaker 04

  And at this time I was drinking a lot though, you know, I was I was drinking. I was coming to work drunk and everything. It wasn't acceptable. It's it's embarrassing, man, but nobody. It was just not an issue to anybody else. And it was just kind of. All this was on my plate for me to deal with and to figure it out. And this is what happens to these cops and these firemen out there. They end up losing their jobs or hurting somebody else. Because of all the shit that they're going through and they bring it to work. And that's what I was doing. I had no outlet for it.

• 2:21:20Speaker 04

  The straw that broke the camel's back for me was, um, I came to work one day, my, my, my house, engine ten, ladder five, and, uh, we had a new guy in our, in our house and he, he put his coffee cup on a, on our dead guy's monument. And it pissed me off. I went over there and I grabbed it and I shattered it on the ground and I opened the door and told him if he wants his cup, it's in a million pieces. And if he does it again, I'll fucking kill him. And those are the words that I used. And that's how it truly felt. Yeah. And when I said that, one of my other good friends said, why are you being such an asshole? And when he did, I took that as him defending the new guy's actions and not defending our guy's honor. Yeah. And I told him, if he says another word to me, I will kill him too, in a minute.

• 2:22:01Speaker 04

  And he said something to me. And, um, at that time, a bomb was lit inside of me and the fuse was about that fucking short. And when he said what he said, it's like somebody poured gasoline on that fuse and it, and then the bomb ignited. And I, to this day, I can't tell you what happened. Yeah. Because I completely lost it and I blacked out. And I, I just remember being outside with my captain shaking me. And I'm, I'm crying. And he just pretty much told me that I'd assaulted my entire firehouse and the cops were called and they were on the way to arrest me. Damn. And my battalion chief showed up. And, uh, at this, at this time, I was getting mental health counseling, but it wasn't, it wasn't enough and I didn't do it in time. How often?

• 2:22:44Speaker 04

  Back then, I, I was just starting, man. So, once, once a week, maybe once every two weeks, but I would go there and I wouldn't say shit. You were skeptical? You didn't, you hadn't built the trust yet? Uh, the trust wasn't there. I would just sit there and just kind of look and not really open up. But my battalion chief and my captain knew. Nobody else knew. I was still putting down people that was getting help. I was too ashamed to let anybody know I was doing it. Um, I was, I had this tough guy image that I had to put out there. I had to, I had to be a big, strong, tough guy. I couldn't show any kind of vulnerability. So my chief shows up before the cops and he told me, he says, get your counselor, they're coming here to lock you up. And that was my last day on the job. Damn.

• 2:23:26Speaker 04

  You were just, uh,

• 2:23:29Speaker 04

  portraying, uh,

• 2:23:34Shawn Ryan?

  Who you thought everybody thought you needed to be?

• 2:23:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, you're exactly right. I was like a closet closet homosexual in the NFL. Seriously, seriously, you hear about it all the time. And they have to be big, strong, tough guys and they just have this image pretending to be something or not. And they can't come out and and and tell people who they really are. And that's what I was, man. I was hurt. I was injured and I needed fucking help. But I was too afraid to say it out of judgment. Yeah. Because I was surrounded by those kind of men. Just like me.

• 2:24:04Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:24:05Speaker 04

  My captain was on the body recovery team with me. To this day, thirteen years later, we haven't spoken a word about it. Nothing, not one fucking word.

• 2:24:13Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. I mean, it just goes to show you how fucking um toxic uh that culture, that culture can be, it's same shit, you know, with uh what I used to do. Um but but how long um, you know, what was your family life like during this time? I mean, you sounds like you completely ruined almost all the relationships uh within your team. What was family life like?

• 2:24:40Speaker 04

  So at that point when I left, I was still um

• 2:24:44Speaker 04

  I wasn't married yet. I just started dating uh dating my wife at the time. We had been dating for some time and that was all fine at that point because I was still a fireman doing the job. I was drinking a lot more than I normally did, but I was still a very outgoing guy. I had some problems that I was just trying to figure out on my own.

• 2:25:03Speaker 04

  Um she was a safe place for me. Um and I shielded her from a lot of that. And unfortunately, somewhere along the line, I dropped that shield. And she got heavily exposed to it and it and it um it started affecting our family and everybody around us. And that was years, years later.

• 2:25:23Speaker 04

  But when I left the fire department, you know, I was already doing stand up comedy on the side for two years. It was like a a part time job for me. And I just threw myself into comedy. The day that I left, I just threw myself into comedy and I was on the road six years straight for forty weeks a year. And I was running from Running from what made me sick, the place that made me sick, Charleston and everything that happened there and through my career. And comedy was like, that adage, laughter is the best medicine, comedy was like my crack cocaine. It just made me feel invincible and it made me feel amazing. And I couldn't get enough of it. It's the only thing that made me feel alive. After everything inside of me had died.

• 2:26:07Speaker 04

  I'd always been a fun outgoing guy, but when the, somewhere that that switch got flipped and the old me was dead and I was this new version of Travis. And just a soulless human being.

• 2:26:21Shawn Ryan?

  How long did it take you for the new version?

• 2:26:28Speaker 04

  Thirteen years.

• 2:26:29Shawn Ryan?

  Thirteen fucking years?

• 2:26:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:26:32Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, man. I mean, you know, just the fact that you, of all the shit that you have been through and everything you've experienced, to turn it around and become a fucking stand-up comedian is, I mean, that's, that's like a miracle in itself.

• 2:26:51Speaker 04

  Well, it's like you, man. When you get passionate about something, I see what you do. You throw yourself into it and you give it everything you've got and that's how I am. I stopped at nothing and I created some opportunities for myself. Nothing was handed to me. I made things happen because that's what we do and we don't make excuses, we just make shit happen. And I did get some decent breaks, but it's because I put myself in these positions for that to happen. And so comedy took off for me and it got, it turned into something amazing.

• 2:27:22Speaker 04

  And you know as well as I do with this whole PTSD thing and the depression, the anxiety, first thing we want to do is self-destruct.

• 2:27:30Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:30Speaker 04

  You don't feel like you deserve it. You don't feel like you deserve anything. So I pulled the plug on it in 2016 and I just fucking walked away from it.

• 2:27:42Shawn Ryan?

  You mentioned uh

• 2:27:45Shawn Ryan?

  some of the things that helped you and uh you like very subtly mentioned, I can't remember if it was in a podcast or in your book or or where I found it, but it resonated with me because one thing that I believe helped me uh kind of pull myself out is getting the fuck away from uh the community for a minute.

• 2:28:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:28:04Shawn Ryan?

  And

• 2:28:08Shawn Ryan?

  and it seemed like the farther that I leave it, the better uh the better off I am. And then uh it wasn't until

• 2:28:17Shawn Ryan?

  shit, to be honest with you, it wasn't until I started this fucking show uh then I kind of started reconnecting uh with some of the guys and and uh you know, I mean, I talked about going to Marcus Luttrell's with Rob and and Dave and how fucking tense that was and I hated that, to be honest with you. I couldn't fucking stand being there uh at first and then, you know, and then the tension kind of wore off, but it um anyways, alls I'm getting at is like is the toxicity of being around um and and and how it helped helped me get better and

• 2:28:58Shawn Ryan?

  and then to hear you say, being on the road, doing comedy, you were out of the firehouse, you weren't, you weren't in Charleston, you you weren't in communication with with the boys and uh and it accelerated your uh your recovery.

• 2:29:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, um, oh, good.

• 2:29:19Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I mean, do you think that helped a lot getting out of there?

• 2:29:23Speaker 04

  Man, I I always say, when you're in a place that makes you sick, you can't get better. It's like a cancer patient testing cigarettes from Marlboro or whoever. You're only gonna get sicker. I tried to stay a hung on tooth and nail, man, but I realized when I realized I had problems and something needed to change when I finally because people ask me, what made you reach out for help?

• 2:29:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:29:47Speaker 04

  You know, and it was me sitting in my living room, dry firing a weapon in my mouth while I'm choking on the on the on the weapon. The barrel down my throat with slobber and drool all over it, my tears running down my face and a bottle of whiskey next to me. And then I load it. And then I go to pull the trigger and I stopped right where I thought it would go off. And luckily I stopped prior to it going off and I knew right then I needed help. So I got the help, but it wasn't in time. But yes, to answer your question, um, when I got away from the fire department, things started drastically changing for me, the anxiety, the, um, I always had the nightmare shit, I still do.

• 2:30:30Speaker 04

  But that, that rage inside of you, it, it calms. So getting away from there was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. I didn't want to leave like that. I wanted to stay on the job thirty years. I wanted to be, I wanted to retire, wanted to do the right thing for my guys, ride that rig for them. But it wasn't in the cards for me. So I got away from there for a long time and now I'm back. And now I do a lot of work with fire departments, police departments, but I'm better now. And I'm, I'm with them at a different capacity now, you know? So I'm not completely immersed in it all the time. I can step away from it. Yeah. Yeah.

• 2:31:08Speaker 04

  When did you decide to put the bottle down?

• 2:31:12Speaker 04

  That's the day after our wedding in, uh, twenty twelve. No shit? Yeah, man, I got so fucked up at our, at our wedding that my, my poor wife, she, um, she had to eat cold grits with the, uh, with the cab driver that took us to our hotel because her husband was passed out upstairs. Oh shit. Yeah, a great first night together. Oh shit. Nah, but I, I had been thinking about it for a while. That was just, for me, that was just the thing. I woke up the next morning and I said, man, I don't ever want to touch this stuff again. And I haven't. Cold turkey, done. Yeah, I looked at it and I, I started looking at if I'm ever going to get better, it's going to, it's going to be a long road to hoe. But I need to look at the things I can control right now that are not helping me.

• 2:31:57Speaker 04

  And the biggest one that stuck out to me was alcohol. There was, it, it didn't add any positive thing in my life, nothing. Yeah. Everything that it offered me was negative. So I was like, dude, just gotta go. Yeah. So I just, I quit cold turkey right then.

• 2:32:12Shawn Ryan?

  That's uh, that's not easy to do.

• 2:32:15Speaker 04

  No, but it's at first, you know, the hardest part about it is now being the sober guy around all the people that are drinking.

• 2:32:22Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:22Speaker 04

  And you're sitting there when you, when you don't want to be there, like you talk about in your social anxiety posts. I get it.

• 2:32:29Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:29Speaker 04

  Cause I don't want to fucking be here, but I have to put on this smile and that doesn't mean I'm not contemplating fucking everybody up in this room.

• 2:32:37Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:38Speaker 04

  Um, but it's just something I've had to learn to, to accept and, and, and, and deal with. And I'd rather have that than going back home with that bottle and putting myself in a position to not be here anymore.

• 2:32:49Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, well, for, for everybody that's listening, who is from, you know, the fire service or military police, who's fucking drowning themselves in a bottle right now, and there's a lot of them. I mean, how fast after you quit drinking, did, how fast did that acceleration start uh, to get you into a better mental state? And, and I'm sure your business fucking started taking off too at that point.

• 2:33:18Speaker 04

  Well, honestly, I'd love to tell you it was lightning fast, but it wasn't. It was a culmination of things because I was so fucked up. It, the biggest hurdle I had yet to face was ownership and acceptance of everything.

• 2:33:28Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:29Speaker 04

  And I, I

• 2:33:32Speaker 04

  always was asking why, and it was, I became the victim of like, this only happens to me, why me? My life is in such a horrible spot, even though I wasn't drinking, I still had that mentality. And that's never who I was prior to all of this. I was a very positive upbeat guy, but this thing does something to you. It rewires your brain and you have to be your own surgeon and go in and fucking reconfigure the wire. It took years of me going in and trying to rewire until I finally fixed it. And it wasn't until um, last year, when I realized what it was. It was something as simple as how.

• 2:34:11Speaker 04

  The word is perspective. Something as simple as perspective. How do I want to view my world? Do I want to look at it through this victim? Feeling bad, horrible, fucking poor, poor me lens? Or do I want to look at it from a standpoint of, look, you have this beautiful life, you have these horrible experiences, yes, but you can do something with them for the greater good. And you can make a positive impact on people with what you have experienced. And so I chose that. And the second I chose that is it was like a light switch. Well, how the fuck did that come to you? It's funny you ask that. It came to me sitting in my car with a gun in my hand, ready to blow my brains out for the second time.

• 2:34:52Speaker 04

  So I quit comedy in 2016. I'd been on the road for six years and we had a, we had a young daughter at home. And my wife was pregnant with our second one. And by this time, I was already doing tours overseas for the troops. I was headlining major comedy clubs all over the country. I was getting on television. I was doing all these things that I loved and I thought, thought, hey, this is my purpose now is, is being a comedian. And this makes me better. But in the same token, I felt guilty for having any, any level of success. I don't pretend to be a household name. That's not what I'm trying to say. But I had success in my own right and I felt horrible for it. And then at the same token, I now have a wife and kids at home. And I felt horrible because I'm not there.

• 2:35:35Speaker 04

  And I tried to juggle the two and balance the two, and I just couldn't get it right. So I quit, I pulled the plug on comedy. And when I did, I, I started resenting everybody for that. I started resenting my own family. Like it was their fault that I chose to do this, you know? But I felt it's what I needed to do. And so for three years I carried that and I, I worked around home, flipping houses in real estate and I was doing, doing well. But I was empty inside. I was missing something. I was craving that stage and I was too ashamed to, to even try to go back because I had bowed out. And I'd pretty much accepted defeat. And this was my new life and I was trying to force something that wasn't natural.

• 2:36:17Speaker 04

  And I was meant to be on a comedy stage. So one day I got in my car, I just couldn't live this life anymore. I was miserable, yet I have a family that loves me. Financially, I'm stable. I live in a fucking wonderful place and I wanted none of it. I just wanted to die.

• 2:36:37Speaker 04

  All I knew was empty and I just didn't want it anymore. So I went, I drove out to the, to the forest on a rainy day. And I was sitting out there in my truck and something happened that made me smile. And uh, when it did, I hadn't smiled in a long time and I hadn't felt a sense of um, satisfaction or joy in a long time. And the second that happened, I threw my gun in the glove box. I said, I know what I need to do. I still have some joy left in me. And I realized it and I said, I'm going back to work. I'm going back to get on the comedy stage. All these shitty things happen in my life. I can't fucking change it, but I'm gonna make the fucking best of it. And it starts right now. And when I did that, that's when I opened up more about speaking.

• 2:37:20Speaker 04

  And I started getting speaking engagements on mental health. And I'd go up there and I'd cry like a fucking baby, just like I did on the show, because it's very, very, very difficult to talk about this stuff. Cause you have to relive it. If you want it to be authentic, you have to relive it.

• 2:37:32Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:37:34Speaker 04

  And I started doing that and I saw the impact that that was making. And I started seeing the, the responses I was getting from people was so overwhelming in our communities, like, man, I'm going through the same thing. And hearing your message made me realize I need to get help. And it's touching other first responders and military families. And it's, I'm not saying that I'm the cure all. That's by any means, I'm not that dude. But I'm just willing to be fucking vulnerable now and share my experiences in hopes that my mistakes won't be made by others who are quickly approaching where I was.

• 2:38:09Shawn Ryan?

  Well, it's working. I mean, you fucking put yourself out there and you know, you're reaching a shit ton of people. So you're gonna reach a shit ton more and uh, people are buying your book and, and uh, I know that's helping a ton of people and. So you're doing fucking great work, man.

• 2:38:30Speaker 04

  Thank you, man. And it said, this honestly means the world to me doing what I do now. Where I thought my purpose in life was comedy. But that's why I say our life is a bunch of redirecting points in our life. You think you're where you need to be, but you never know where you need to be.

• 2:38:44Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 2:38:44Speaker 04

  The universe, I'm not spiritual. I'm not, I'm not a religious. But I do know the universe will stop you when it's ready and point you in a different direction. And if you fight it, that's when your life is utterly fucking miserable. Because it's trying to tell you, you needed to go this route. This is the way you go until I stop you and turn you somewhere else. And that's what happened with comedy.

• 2:39:06Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:39:07Speaker 04

  It introduced me to speaking. And now I'm speaking all over. And it is a fucking wonderful feeling to be able to do what I get to do. And I couldn't be more blessed.

• 2:39:17Shawn Ryan?

  That's awesome.

• 2:39:21Shawn Ryan?

  Just going back just a little bit, we talked about the addiction to adrenaline. And um, we were kind of talking the other night about, I asked you, I said, how do you? I was asking, how do you get your fix now of adrenaline? I still have to fucking have it. And uh, and uh, you know, I get it in various ways, but.

• 2:39:41Shawn Ryan?

  Comedy, jumping up in front of people on a stage and doing comedy. You, you had said, kind of filled that void. And uh, do you still have that now or?

• 2:39:55Speaker 04

  With comedy, yeah. Um, not as, it's not as big of a shot of adrenaline as it used to be. But it's still there because you are 100% at other people's mercy. And it, it feels good. It's like, all right, let's get this thing going, right? And it's, it's the whole make me laugh, motherfucker. And it's like, all right, let's go. And you never know what you're getting. Comedy's wild, man. It can get pretty wild out there. And uh, with speaking, not so much because when you go to speak, it's not, people obviously don't want you to suck. But it's a nice, quiet, calm crowd. And you don't have drunk people out there like with this whole prove it mentality. So speaking, the adrenaline's not there. Comedy, you still feel, you still feel the PP about to come out sometimes, you know what I mean?

• 2:40:39Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Well, I think. I've been thinking a lot about, you know, uh, cause I know you told me that you don't get the same adrenaline rush as you, uh, speaking as you do with the comedy or in definitely not fighting fires, but, um, just kinda thinking on it. How many people, how many people do you think you maybe have saved as a firefighter? Like pulling a baby out of a fire, pulling a woman out of a man, I don't know. How many people you think you've saved? Have you ever thought about that?

• 2:41:13Speaker 04

  No, never thought about it. Cause you, you think about ones you couldn't.

• 2:41:17Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:41:17Speaker 04

  That's, that's the truth. I've been involved in some stuff and, um, that's, that's helped some people. But those are, I don't know. I mean, I hope that those folks go on to become wonderful people and do wonderful things in their lives, but it's, it's ones that you can't get back to stick with you.

• 2:41:39Shawn Ryan?

  Let me rephrase that. What is it like when you do save somebody? And you know, they would have fucking died if you had not responded. What's that feeling like?

• 2:41:50Speaker 04

  It's amazing.

• 2:41:51Shawn Ryan?

  Do you get that fucking feeling now? When you get an email or somebody's, somebody pulls you aside after the show? I mean, cause now you're helping thousands and thousands and thousands of fucking people. And so you might not be getting your adrenaline fix, but you're getting that, you're getting another fix. I don't know what the hell you would call it.

• 2:42:14Speaker 04

  Satisfaction.

• 2:42:15Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:42:15Speaker 04

  Yeah. So that is a very good way to, to, to word that.

• 2:42:21Speaker 04

  I didn't realize when I first started speaking, the power this thing had. I, I knew that we had problems in our communities. You know, you hear it all the time. Firefighters, suicides, police suicides and, and military. Military has been addressed for years and years and years. Maybe not as much as it needs to, but it's no secret. The military has PTSD problems. Over the last few years, law enforcement, emergency services have hit the forefront too, where they were kinda left in the cold for a little while and people are starting to realize, hey, they might be just as, if not more severely fucked up than the military.

• 2:42:59Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:42:59Speaker 04

  Cause they live it for 30 fucking years, day in, day out, and they never get to leave it. So I knew what I had to say was important, but I had no idea at the magnitude of it. And when I started, it got addicting because, yeah, people come out of the woodworks and they want to share what they've experienced and they want to share the, so many people are like, hey, man, because of your story, I realized I'm messed up and I need to get help to help my family too. And I've gotten, we've talked about this, about the emails that come through and it's an overwhelming feeling of gratitude that I can't explain.

• 2:43:40Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:43:41Speaker 04

  And it's, I look at my life and I feel like I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be because of everything that's happened. And I feel like now all of that stuff may have happened because maybe I am strong enough to weather it all and to package it up, own it and accept it and do something positive with it.

• 2:44:01Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:44:02Speaker 04

  And I'm just taking it a day at a time.

• 2:44:03Shawn Ryan?

  It's pretty fucking fulfilling, isn't it?

• 2:44:05Speaker 04

  It's amazing.

• 2:44:06Shawn Ryan?

  But, uh, well, you're doing great now and, uh, I don't want to keep going down the dark road. So I want to take a break and, uh, and when we come back, we just got a quick thing and then we're going to wrap it up.

• 2:44:20Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:44:22Shawn Ryan?

  This episode of the Sean Ryan Show is brought to you by Vigilance Elite Patreon. Vigilance Elite Patreon is how you support the show. It also has an entire library of tactical training and behind the scenes footage of the Sean Ryan Show. Go to vigilanceelite.com, click the training tab. It'll take you right to Vigilance Elite Training on Patreon. Get a subscription, support the show. Thank you. Let's get on with it.

• 2:44:54Speaker 04

  All right, man. So.

• 2:44:56Shawn Ryan?

  Once again, we are back from the break. We're gonna wrap it up here pretty soon, but um, you know, since you are in the business of uh helping fellow firefighters and police and mil and and um and everything like that, I have a personal friend uh who works for Boca Raton Fire Rescue and uh his name's Mike Sklar. He's getting ready to, he's uh putting in for retirement, getting ready to uh, you know, open up the next chapter of his life. And uh I know he's, you know, seen a lot of fucked up shit too. In fact, uh, one thing that comes in my mind is I

• 2:45:38Shawn Ryan?

  remember uh going out to breakfast with him uh when I lived in Florida. We used to go to breakfast together all the time. And um he responded to a call on an overpass and uh I can't remember the specifics of who it was. I think he was a, I think he might have been a uh truck driver, a tow truck driver. But um he fucking fell off the damn overpass and uh, you know, fucking died right there. And uh, an hour later, he's sitting there eating breakfast with me and uh and his wife, and I think Katie was there too. And I remember thinking while we were eating breakfast, I was

• 2:46:22Shawn Ryan?

  like, Jesus Christ, man, like, how was this dude fucking kinda keeping it together, you know, playing, playing husband and and, you know, I'm just looking at him like, how the fuck are you pulling this shit off? You know, that's some heavy shit. Um, so anyways, uh, he's getting ready to retire and I uh called him and told him that you were coming out here and and uh, and uh who you are, and I know he's been researching you. And so I think he's got a question for you, and I thought maybe a transitioning firefighter coming out of the service, opening up his new chapter. I mean, who better to, you know, ask than you, so?

• 2:47:08Shawn Ryan?

  Hey Mike, you on here?

• 2:47:10Speaker 07

  Yeah, I'm here. Hey, thanks for having me. It's an honor to be speaking with the two of you today.

• 2:47:16Shawn Ryan?

  Well, thanks for coming on, man.

• 2:47:18Speaker 04

  Pleasure's mine, Mike.

• 2:47:20Shawn Ryan?

  But, uh, so I have Travis here and we're getting ready to wrap it up and, and so the floor's yours, man.

• 2:47:32Speaker 07

  Hey, first of all, I'd like to say Travis, you got a great interview there. Sean's been around and I don't think he'd bring anybody on that he didn't have high respect for, brother, so welcome.

• 2:47:45Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 2:47:46Speaker 07

  Hey, I just have to apologize. Yeah, I would like to have read your whole book. I just got it yesterday afternoon, but I've only got about 20 pages left. Uh, that's amazing. I'm just, I'm blown away that an individual can actually open up like that because a lot of us can't. And very impressed, very impressed.

• 2:48:10Speaker 04

  Thank you, man.

• 2:48:11Speaker 07

  You've had quite a journey, it looks like, along the way. And some of us seem to be magnets for stuff.

• 2:48:20Speaker 07

  And you seem to be one of those magnets. My hat's off to you.

• 2:48:25Speaker 04

  Well, thank you so much. I really, I appreciate your support, bro.

• 2:48:29Speaker 07

  Uh, I do have a question for you.

• 2:48:32Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 2:48:32Speaker 07

  Um, since you've written your book and you've started doing comedy, it seems like you've really opened up and exposed these issues. Not just in the fire service, police service, you know, also in the military and the day-to-day stress that gets the people. How often do you get a call from somebody saying, "Hey, I need help," and I don't know where to start?

• 2:48:55Speaker 04

  Uh, I don't receive too many phone calls, but I get a ton of emails in inboxes, whether it be Instagram or Facebook. And it's now it's gotten to the point where it's sometimes it's multiple times a day. And it's usually brothers and sisters in, uh, in the, in the services. And I've actually experienced many of them are from actual family members of those individuals. So it's, uh, it's one of those things that, um, you know, I think when people hear it, they realize there's more of us out there. And we don't have to sit here and shoulder all of this on our own. So it happens pretty frequently.

• 2:49:31Speaker 07

  Wow, that's, uh, that's pretty impactful. I, uh, when I was reading your book, I, I see your friends with Jeremy Heard.

• 2:49:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, I know Jeremy well.

• 2:49:42Speaker 07

  So here's what's funny, I'm, I'm a face person, I'm not a name person. So when I read his name in your book, I'm like, well, let me look him up. And I knew his face right away because he did something for me and I've only met him once.

• 2:49:56Speaker 07

  So you talk about that light bulb that comes on.

• 2:49:58Speaker 04

  Yes, sir.

• 2:50:01Speaker 07

  For years, when somebody's at a critical time, whether it's your family, somebody else's family, sometimes it's just showing up and being there for that person or that family, whatever they might need. For years, I could describe it, but I didn't have a name for it. And, uh, friend of a coworker, uh, had passed away and he was there. And he and I had a great conversation and everything and I explained to him what I was feeling. He goes, oh, that's called the ministry of presence. And I said, man, thank you so much. I have been looking for a name for that for the last fifteen years. And, uh, very impactful.

• 2:50:46Speaker 04

  Man, that's, uh, that's good stuff, man. That's, yeah, I'm, I'm blown away.

• 2:50:55Speaker 07

  It, uh, but like you, like you said, and I see some people get it, some people don't. Uh, it's about relationships.

• 2:51:05Speaker 07

  I think that's what it all boils down to.

• 2:51:07Speaker 04

  That's exactly right. And unfortunately for so many of us, we ruin those relationships before we ever get to really build them and strengthen them to, to the, you know, the best ability that we can. And unfortunately, in my case, I'm certainly speaking for me. I've ruined a lot of those and I'm spending a lot of time repairing them now.

• 2:51:27Speaker 07

  Yeah, I'll tell you, I'm, I'm really happy that you've come out ahead. Uh, in recent years, there, there have been a lot of brothers and sisters that haven't. You know, and they've, they've fallen just, you know, by their own hand and, uh, it's tough, it's tough for all of us in the community to shoulder, but, uh, man, I can't, I can't tell you, I'm gonna, I'm gonna turn more guys on to, uh, your book. And, uh, I'll, I'll really help try to get the word out there. I don't think it's as common as a lot of people think. That people understand there's more support out there for them. But, uh, just phenomenal.

• 2:52:05Speaker 04

  Well, I appreciate that, bud. Yeah, you know, it, it means the world and that's what it's about. It's about leaning on one another, helping one another out. Whether that means putting the right literature in front of guys, uh, turning them on to someone who is talking about it openly and vulnerably. To show them that, hey, you two, you know, you hear this guy's story. Maybe it's not mine, maybe it's somebody else's, but we gotta be, we, we, we preach the word brotherhood. And Sean and I were talking about this. It sounds a lot cooler than what it really is sometimes because sometimes it doesn't exist. We want it to, but in order for that to exist, we really gotta lift one another up. And that's where it starts, starts with, with, with lifting each other up.

• 2:52:45Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head right there. Um, I think in a lot of industries, they don't, it's hard. Most people just go to a job every day. They work that job for eight hours, they come home. They don't actually live with the people. I think when you, when you live with a crew or you have a job or you're extended and you depend that much on somebody, whether it's your life or just anything in the day to day where you're instrumental in each other's lives like that. Yeah, there's that, there's that tight bond that forms and, uh, it's, it's no joke. It's no joke.

• 2:53:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:53:22Speaker 07

  And it gets you through.

• 2:53:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's an unexplainable bond that, uh, if you haven't lived it, you, you just don't know. It's a beautiful thing.

• 2:53:31Speaker 07

  Yeah, absolutely. And Steve also has spoken at FDIC. That's a huge room.

• 2:53:39Speaker 04

  Well, I haven't, I haven't spoken at FDIC. I, I performed comedy events there and I have another one coming up in 2021 and it's for the actual firefighter cancer support network.

• 2:53:50Speaker 07

  Wow.

• 2:53:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:53:52Speaker 07

  Yeah. Another big issue facing a lot of us these days.

• 2:53:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, it is. And that's why it's, you know, cancer, it's getting the best of a lot of us. And, you know, we don't, we just don't know. From the way that I was brought up in the fire service, we did, we did everything wrong. And at some point, it inevitably catches up with many of us. And that's why I, I, I took a real hard look at myself and said, I'm going to make the most of, of the time that I have left, however much that may be. And I'll put my pride to the side and, and start opening up about this stuff and talking about it. And hopefully it, it makes a difference. And I'm, I'm so pleased to be a part of the firefighter cancer support network for four years now, doing shows for them to help, help our brothers and sisters.

• 2:54:36Speaker 07

  That's awesome, man. That's awesome. Thank you for all you do. Really appreciate it.

• 2:54:40Speaker 04

  Thank, thank you for what you do, man.

• 2:54:42Speaker 07

  A lot of people would say, thank you for your service. We really need people like you in the community. It's, not everybody can do the job. And you get people that come into the military, they may be very short-lived. They may not even make it through boot camp. I'm sure you too know.

• 2:54:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:55:01Speaker 07

  Police and firefighting, everybody's different. Everybody's wired different. It takes a special person.

• 2:55:07Speaker 04

  Yeah. Well, it does, man. I, I appreciate your service. And like I say, when people thank me for mine, honestly, it is a pleasure of my life. It really, it really has been. So, a- as you transition out, man, I wish you nothing but the best in your transition out. And I hope you turn the page and, and have a wonderful, wonderful retirement, bro.

• 2:55:25Speaker 07

  Thank you, man. I really appreciate it. Hey, again, thank you guys for having me today. It's been amazing.

• 2:55:31Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, Mike, when are you going back to work?

• 2:55:34Speaker 07

  Uh, I go back tomorrow.

• 2:55:36Shawn Ryan?

  All right, man.

• 2:55:37Speaker 04

  Stay safe, brother.

• 2:55:38Shawn Ryan?

  Be safe out there.

• 2:55:39Speaker 07

  Thank you so much, guys.

• 2:55:40Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 2:55:41Shawn Ryan?

  Take care.

• 2:55:42Speaker 07

  Thanks. You too. Bye-bye.

• 2:55:49Speaker 04

  You guys in this phone already.

• 2:55:51Shawn Ryan?

  What's that?

• 2:55:51Speaker 04

  You guys in this phone.

• 2:55:53Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Well, hey, thanks for taking that call. I mean.

• 2:55:57Speaker 04

  It's my pleasure.

• 2:55:58Shawn Ryan?

  He's a good friend of mine and I know he is really. He's, I think he's scared of, you know, leaving the community.

• 2:56:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:56:07Shawn Ryan?

  And what it's gonna be like, putting that behind him and we've talked several times about it. And so I just thought. You're paving the way, you know?

• 2:56:16Speaker 04

  It's scary because it's, it doesn't have to be the end, you know?

• 2:56:20Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:56:21Speaker 04

  And for me, it was hard when I left. I left it on, not on my own terms. And it was just the end, but it doesn't have to be, you know, you just turn the, our book, I like to think our, our, our life is, is a book with multiple chapters. It's not just one chapter and. Being in the fire service, being in the SEAL teams, being a police officer, that's just one chapter, no matter how thin or thick it is. At some point, it's gonna end.

• 2:56:45Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 2:56:46Speaker 04

  And you can't let that define who you are as a human being. And that's what crushes people at the end and that's what puts these folks in. In these positions where they feel like they have nothing left because they let that job define them and now they, they have this emptiness inside. But I'm telling you, I've had that same emptiness and you just have to go and create your own light.

• 2:57:06Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 2:57:08Shawn Ryan?

  Well, you're doing a hell of a job at paving the way, man. You really are. And on that note, I want to kind of wrap this thing up and, but I just, you know, I just want to say, you know, you're the first mill guy or the first non-mill guy, even though you are a mill guy, but we didn't focus on that. And, and I wasn't a hundred percent sure how this was gonna go and, but when I announced that you were coming on the show, just, you know, for, just so you know what your owner's saying about you.

• 2:57:45Shawn Ryan?

  We got a shit ton of emails, messages, comments and everybody, a ton of people know who you are. A lot of people are calling you a legend in the fire community. And it's just been a real honor to, you know, pull your story out of you and, and have you sit in that fucking chair, man, like.

• 2:58:08Speaker 04

  That's heavy words, man. And, and I thank you. But legend, I don't know about that. It's not, I've, I've walked amongst legends. Ricky Williams is one that you fucking talk to. I'm just trying to do what I feel is right in my heart to help, you know, um, help guys and girls stay in the fight as long as they can. And, and, and I can't thank you enough for having me on your platform for sharing this with me. I know you said a lot of bad motherfuckers have sat in this chair and I told you that I'm not one of them.

• 2:58:35Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, you are.

• 2:58:36Speaker 04

  I feel like, I feel like I'm staining this chair. So.

• 2:58:40Shawn Ryan?

  You might be.

• 2:58:41Speaker 04

  I've seen the dudes you've had on this show and I'm, you know, and it's an honor to sit here. It really is with you, with your crew, with your wife, your family. So, thank you and thank you for having me.

• 2:58:51Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, you're welcome. And, uh, you know, taking a compliment is not a fucking easy task.

• 2:58:57Speaker 04

  It's almost like a joke, right?

• 2:58:58Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:58:59Speaker 04

  If you can take a, if you can take a.

• 2:59:01Shawn Ryan?

  If you can take a dick.

• 2:59:02Speaker 04

  There you go.

• 2:59:03Shawn Ryan?

  You can take a joke.

• 2:59:04Speaker 04

  That's exactly right.

• 2:59:05Shawn Ryan?

  But, uh, I did want to say a couple of things and, um, we at Vigilance Elite have given a ton, uh, to the veteran community.

• 2:59:17Shawn Ryan?

  Donations, connections, uh, all kinds of stuff. We, we gave to the law enforcement community.

• 2:59:27Shawn Ryan?

  I actually, I made a, a, a piece of apparel and donated all the proceeds back to law enforcement. And, uh, I've been really wanting to do something for the fire community as well, but, um, you know, unfortunately as time goes on, I have lost faith in just about every fucking nonprofit out there. There's only one that I actually vouch for anymore.

• 2:59:54Shawn Ryan?

  So what I'd like to do is, uh, I'm gonna make a, a, uh, a fire service hat, the Thin Red Line, um, which by the time this airs, it'll be out. So the link's up top. You can click the link, buy the hat. I'm gonna give you all the proceeds, uh, from the hat. So, um, I don't know how many we're gonna make yet, but I'm gonna give you all the proceeds. I don't know a good organization to donate it to, but, um, I want to give you the proceeds and you do with it what you think is necessary.

• 3:00:37Shawn Ryan?

  Whether it's donating to a nonprofit or, uh,

• 3:00:42Shawn Ryan?

  Buying as many of those books that you wrote as you can and get them at every fucking fire station in the country, whatever you think you need to do, all I ask is just tell us where it went and uh, and uh, if there's have been any results. So I just, you know, I think you're a stand-up motherfucker dude. I know it takes balls to do what you're doing, paving the way like that. And uh, I just want to help. So we're gonna have that done.

• 3:01:13Speaker 04

  I don't even know what to say because like I told you before, when we were just chatting, nobody's ever done anything for me, you know, like to, to help do what I do. And I just told you downstairs, everything I do is by myself. I will certainly put that to use to do some good in these communities. And I can't thank you enough. From the bottom of my heart, for real. I, I have some ideas and we can talk about that. Um, but wow, that's, that's tremendous, man.

• 3:01:49Shawn Ryan?

  Cool.

• 3:01:50Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 3:01:51Shawn Ryan?

  You're welcome. I'm just gonna need some help designing it. I don't want to uh, I don't want to put anything on it that shouldn't be on there, but uh, but yeah, the design will be catered uh, a hundred percent towards uh, your community. So.

• 3:02:04Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 3:02:05Shawn Ryan?

  That'll be fucking awesome.

• 3:02:06Speaker 04

  And they'll certainly appreciate the fuck out of it, man.

• 3:02:08Shawn Ryan?

  Cool.

• 3:02:09Speaker 04

  We'll make sure that, that it goes to the right places.

• 3:02:12Shawn Ryan?

  I know you will. And uh, with that being said, if somebody wanted to reach you on social media, your website, how do they get ahold of you? Is it, do they still call uh, nine one one or?

• 3:02:26Speaker 04

  Just, yeah, you just call nine one, that's for Travis, man. No, it's uh, I'm pretty simple, man. Just, it's my name, it's my website, uh, Travis Howes, H O W Z E dot com. But I'm asking everybody, because when I quit comedy, I deleted most of my social media. So I've been a pain in the ass to rebuild it. And I'm asking folks to inundate Instagram. I'm just focusing on Instagram. So give me a follow at Instagram, at uh, Travis Howes, H O W Z E. I'd really appreciate the fuck out of it. Um, cause the more people that I can get in my corner, the more we can spread this message and hopefully help some folks out. You know, that's what it's all about.

• 3:03:03Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. And if they want to buy your book?

• 3:03:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, so if they want to buy my book, Create Your Own Light, it's available on Amazon. Amazon kind of fluctuates on the price. They'll drop it on sale sometimes. You just go click the link and grab it. It's getting a ton of great reviews. We have, I'm surprised at the amount of books that have been sold. And like I said in the beginning, I didn't expect this. And it's doing tremendously well. And I just believe it's because it's such a specific message for our communities that has not, no one's talked about it. And it's time. It's much, much needed and long overdue. So you can go to Amazon and grab that. It's the best place.

• 3:03:43Shawn Ryan?

  Right on, man. Well,

• 3:03:47Shawn Ryan?

  keep paving the way and

• 3:03:50Shawn Ryan?

  doing good things and best of luck to you.

• 3:03:54Speaker 04

  Thank you, brother. I appreciate it.

• 3:04:04Speaker 08

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