patrick halloran: Hey, ⁓ PJ Halloran. Welcome back to the Rescue Lab Podcast. We've got an awesome episode lined up today. Today we're pulling back the curtain on one of the most unique technical rescue teams in the world. ⁓ while most rescuers use rope, confined space, shoring, and hazmat skills to save lives. Kevin Johnson used the same rope skills to recover evidence, support terrorism investigations, and operate in some of the most hazardous crime scenes imaginable as part of the FBI's laboratory's Technical Hazards Response Unit, or the THU. Kevin, thank you so much for joining us today. I know I've been hounding you for a little bit, ⁓ but it's awesome to have you here. And I I I think I reached out to you, I saw you posted a think it was a job opening for the through online. Sure did. And I I was like, man, I was like, what is this unit? And I had to reach out and the story, you know, we were able to connect. The story that you told me and the the background of that unit was was just unreal. And I think it's it's important for people in tech rescue to understand that there's this whole different side of tech rescue that's out there. And and and that's why I think this episode is so cool. But Just to begin, how did you go from, you know, a traditional emergency services background to one of the most specialized response units in the federal government? Great question. So first off, ⁓ thank you for having me on the on the podcast. Appreciate it. Of course. So I started my public safety career in ⁓ Jefferson County, Kentucky, which is where the city of Wobble sits. Started as a volunteer in seventy six and that quickly transitioned to a paid career. We had a third service EMS system, fully paid, ⁓ Jefferson County Emergency Medical Services. And so I started in doing the EMS thing. I was still stayed on the volunteer fire department. The the department I was on was automatic response to a neighboring department. Well the department I was on was Dixie Suburban. Lake Dream was a neighboring department and they had about twenty five, twenty six chemical plants along the Ohio River in a area called Rubbertown. And so that's how I learned Hazmat by default. I was You're the guy. I w well we were just there. And this is you gotta understand this is before Sarah Title III. This is before Superfund. This is before Right to know. So it it was trial by fire. And we we went to these things. So my public safety career transitioned to a paid career with the EMS system, which was third service. And when Sarah Title III can was enacted in nineteen eighty-six and particularly the rules on establishment of hazmat teams in communities within an LAPC local emergency planning committee. The county had a need to start a a hazmat team that was comparable to the city of Lobel's fire department hazmat team. The problem was we had 22 volunteer fire departments. So the challenge for that was ⁓ they actually looked to EMS. And so we in EMS we started the hazmat team. And this was a type one mitigation hazmat team, patching and plugging the whole bit. Yeah. And so we were doing that, and everything was great. And this is where the tech rescue comes in. In nineteen ninety-four, OSHA passed nineteen ten one twenty one forty-six for confined space standard for permit required confined spaces. And again, The fire departments working with the EMS system where I worked. The we created a technical rescue unit in the EMS system as a subset of the hazmat team. Because as you know, there's not a big leap from hazmat to confined space. A lot of the same tools ⁓ that that are used. So so we started the technical rescue unit for the county EMS system. Very quickly, got some pretty high profile jobs. We had a A a rescue and a concrete silo and j we had a bunch of we just started developing a trench rescue team with the county fire departments. We had a bunch of actual rec ⁓ rescues, which is unusual in the trench rescue business. Yeah. So we we did that and this I was living my life. I was working part time as a flight paramedic at university level trauma center. Life was good. I was on the di I was on the county police dive team as a dive rescue medic. So I was just I was just this is where I thought I was gonna be. And then in nineteen ninety-eight, I found out about this unit at the FBI. And the reason I found out about it is because a friend of mine who I taught with, not not with him, but in other classes at the at the hazmat conference in Baltimore. Yep. At the time it was in Towson, Maryland. Guy named Steve Patrick. Steve Patrick was a Virginia State hazmat officer. And so he covered Northern Virginia. And he was a r he was retired from Newport Newport News as a fire. paramedic and it was a flight paramedic. It's the same old story, right? Yeah. So I found out about this job from Steve and I'm ta I was talking to him about some work we were doing in in Louisville area for preparation for WMD stuff. And I actually met him in his office in Quantico. And about halfway through the conversation he says, Hey, you want a job? And I said, Well I have a job. Yeah. He said, No no no no You want another job? You want another job with with the FBI because we're starting this team and I'm putting the I'm putting the band together. So so that started the process. I Turned in my application February of ninety nine and by July I was working at or August first, I was working at the FBI. So that's that's so cool. I mean, especially if they were putting the program together and you know you were on the ground floor of that. And yeah. Yeah. There were seven of us to start. And it was really cool being in that because we and I use the analogy and Steve Patrick would would say this often that we we were building the airplane while we were flying it. Yeah. ⁓ yeah. And we didn't know we didn't know. 'Cause little we thought we were coming in to just do white powder colo letters and things like that. Little did we know within three years or two years, within two years, we were gonna be at nine eleven sites and then a month after that working the anthrax case for the next eight years and then all the other stuff in between. So ⁓ it was it was really great getting it on the ground floor. Absolutely. But I mean, when you first heard about it, when he first approached you and said, Hey, you know, I got this, we're standing up this technical hazard response unit. I mean, was that immediate? Like, yeah, I'm in. Urgent? Yeah. Yeah. 'cause and you got to understand the culture of of the FBI. So at that time, the the culture of the FBI was we will we will train our our existing agents to do anything that needs to be done. And that was how they did things, which was, you know, which is fine. But you gotta remember what was going on in the country in the late nineties. We had after the attacks overseas in Japan with with Nerve Agent and then ⁓ Oklahoma City, that was those are both in ninety five. And then we had the Olympics coming to town in ninety-six. So the Bureau had actually the FBI laboratory had started a process to build this unit. And again, they were planning to use the people who were already working in the lab. They hired Steve Patrick and another gentleman who's retired from our unit, Steve Ray, who at the time was a captain with the Fairfax County Fire Department on the over the hazmat station and who was also The hazmat guy on Virginia Task Force One, they hired both them to teach a hazmat class for the people who were going to the Olympics. And and somewhere between vapor pressure and and bullying point, they were like, whoa, we need to hire ⁓ it. We need to hire people like you. So that's how the whole thing started. And and I could tell you, as time went on, in the early days, there was a lot of skepticism as we went to work with fire departments. ⁓ it's the FBI, you're here to take over. And that absolutely was not. The case with our unit, especially because we had been on the other side of the fence. And it was, it was funny that in the early days we would go on a mission to someplace and we go to the fire station, introduce ourselves, and ⁓ they're at the FBI's here. And I I could sense that they were not digging it, right? Of course. So I'd look over, hey, that's a good looking Pierce Quentin. You there. Is it about a 1250 pump on that thing? And they're like, Who's this FBI guy talking the second language? Talking about a language and and It that I cannot tell you how much that has paid off over my entire career having the fire service background. Yeah. Because you just until you've been in the shoes of a public safety responder, you just don't understand the the the culture, you don't understand the challenges that they have. Yeah. I I think that's super important, especially the culture side. Like you can just blend right in and go to work and you know, you don't have to worry about it. So when you were getting on When you were getting on the team, what did the selection process look like so early on? And was there anything that surprised you as you went through it? It was the most rigorous background check I had ever experienced. I mean, they went all the way back to high school. Yeah. But you gotta understand every single FBI employee has at least a top secret clearance. And for our unit, because we were gonna be d doing weapons of mass destruction, I needed top secret plus SCI, which is sensitive compartmentalized information. So that was it was very rigorous. So background investigators, talking to your neighbors, talking to your teachers, talking to your coworkers, talking to your bosses. Yep. Polygraph. ⁓ wow. Which is not fun. No. But that's that's that's that was the process. The early people that were approached by Steve Patrick were all his his idea. So let me give you a a p a picture. And and understand because it was the Bureau and because it was this national high level team, that we attracted the be best of the best. And I'm not saying that 'cause I'm sitting here talking to you. I'm I'm t I I when I'll tell you who the first seven people were, you'll get it. Yeah. We h They hired a guy who's actually now the current unichief. And by the way, I'm not going to use any names of any current employees. Understood. But the the guy he he was a a chief at a rescue squad in ⁓ Northern Virginia and he ⁓ worked for the National Fire Academy and actually wrote the f the first fire fire academy's weapons of mass destruction terrorism course. So hired him and also he had worked for FEMA and was at Oklahoma City. Makes sense. For them. We hired co-worker of his who was a ⁓ microbiologist who's also on the rescue squad but as a microbiologist for the ⁓ for the Navy. We hired a assistant chief from Wilkesbury, Pennsylvania, who was on Pennsylvania's task force, USAR task force. We hired a, of course, Steve Steve Raya told you about. And so this this was the caliber of the people that we were bringing on board. And as time went on and yet as we start moving this conversation to tech rescue, We did the same thing well with tech our tech rescue folks. So so yeah. So that was ha that was the transition. Got on board. We ⁓ I could tell you a part of a big part of the early days was to train field teams. So the FBI has fifty six field offices. Ten of those were selected to be the first hazardous evidence response teams. And so these would be people who collect hazardous evidence. So so we spent a a tremendous amount of our first couple of years getting these people on board. And because there were only seven of us and we still had missions running, we actually recruited fire service instructors to help us teach. And this is another who's who that helped us teach. Bob Royal, Houston Fire, Bill Hand, Houston Fire, Danny Snell, Houston Fire. ⁓ Tony Musafidi. Yeah. And Bob Bob Ingram from FDNY. We hired I say hired, they were contract. They were not they were not beer employees. But we we already knew all these guys. Yeah. It was Bob Stout from Virginia State Police and Andy Burns from Utah from Oram, Utah. So it was it was like every time we taught a class, it was like old home week. It was it was it was a lot of fun. Yeah. Each of these classes. ⁓ Glenn Rudner, who's with the state of Virginia. So I I I know I'm not naming everybody, but you this is because of who we were, we were able to attract this and get these quality instructors. Of course, I mean if you're standing up a unit of that caliber, you know, you need the best of the best. to to roll that out. Now you do. You do. And and w there was also an expectation that we weren't going to hire you and then teach you how to be a tech rescue hazmat guy. You already needed to know how to be a tech rescue hazmat guy. We and then the Bureau would teach you how to deal with evidence. Yes. And how to that's an important part I think you bring up. So you know obviously Fire a firefighter was tuning in, you know, he's heard he's heard of the FBI. Everyone's heard of the FBI. But when they hear through and they hear the technical hazard response unit. You know, I think they're thinking, hey, you know, they're gonna jump in through a window on rope and rescue a hostage, but what is the through's actual mission? Thank you. That's great great analogy. So there are people in the bureau that do jump through a window. Pretty cool too. Those pretty cool. So so and those folks are with the SWAT teams and with with the ⁓ the other the other unit at Quantico. The that's all tactical. That's for the purposes of dealing with adversarial threats and things like that. Our unit was actually part of the FBI laboratory, and our mission was to Collect hazardous evidence in support of complex forensic operations. So you you gotta understand there are fifty-six field officers or fifty-six evidence response teams in those office. And every day you you've all watched the news. When you see them go into a house and they're walking out with the file boxes and and everything else, that's what they're doing. And they also they do homicide scenes, they do they do everything. They do bank robberies, they do it's full. Well, I hate the analogy, CSI stuff. With CSI though. I'm a Miami guy. You know what I mean? Yeah, ⁓ crime scene investigation. But it doesn't happen in an hour, I can tell you that. But so on a normal day, they're fine that they're they're hundred percent good to go. But what happens when that evidence is in a hole? What happens when I I'll give you a great example. We were in ⁓ we got called by Boston Field Office. Their ERT had re reports there was a a body from decades ago at the bottom in the in the basically behind an old abandoned power station in Providence, Rhode Island. It was a mafia j job. And they said, Hey, we need to dig this body out. And I say, Well, yeah, but you need to not let it be a trench. And so we went up there to help them make it not a trench to get and to get to the body. So that kind of stuff Now did you guys have to employ any type of shoring? Are you able to work around that and No. And so kind of getting ahead of myself here with the shoring stuff. Whenever we could, we avoided allowing things to become a technical job. You know, that sounds weird. Yeah. So for for example, in that case, I d didn't trench it, I benched it back. I made it an excavation. So it was not a trench. And and which was a switch, right? Because in my trench rescue days, we would just dig a hole, throw the shores in, throw the what throw the the panels in, you know, and then you know, use whalers and subshorers and that's what we did. I that All that stuff is in the way if you're trying to look for a a body. So and he and tie and here's the other thing. Time is on your hand. It's evidence. It's not going anywhere. So so we have I think you mentioned it's a recovery at that point. You were able to slow it down to the point where you can look all this stuff over. Hundred percent. Yeah. So so anyway, kind of get back to to ⁓ where I was going with the the early days. We fat, dumb, and happy, we were going along, and then nine eleven happens. So and we if For whatever reason, all seven of us were sitting in our office at Quantico. And that almost never happened. But that morning and we like we had one TV in in the shop and one of the guys is in a break room. And one of the guys says, Hey, some idiot just flew a plane into the World Trade Center. Like thinking it was a private plane, like we all did, right? So we all walk come in and look. ⁓ that's weird. And then we watched the other plane hit and we went, ⁓ okay, here we go. Yep. So by the end of the day, ⁓ myself And another the gentleman who was the assistant chief in Wilkesbury had responded to Shanksville. But the two guys who worked for the who were on the rescue squad in Northern Virginia that we had hired, they knew everybody at the Pentagon. So they went to the Pentagon. Steve, Patrick Steve Ray went to and ⁓ we had another gentleman who had come to us from Colorado, went to the Trade Center. And also at this time we had we had just hired another gentleman from Virginia from Chesterfield County, and he went to the trade center. So we had four at the trade center, two at the Pentagon, two in Shanksville, and that was it. We're done we're we're done. Yeah. So so so we rolled up and by the way, it was it was the weirdest drive. So we were heading to Shanks, but we went by ground and we were I was hauling a trailer of equipment and we actually started out ⁓ running code and I'm like, there's nobody on the interstate. Yeah. There was nobody anywhere. So I'm on the radio with my my partner. I'm like, okay, I I'm shutting all this down. I'm just gonna drive. No, get out of the way. Because I don't think anybody cares. Yeah, at that point. So so we we haul all the way up there and ⁓ funny story, we're on the Pennsylvania Turnpike and we're getting ready to get off at the Somerset exit. At the time the Somerset exit was exit ten, it was like the Jersey Turnpike. You you told people where you live by what exit off the turnpike you were, right? Right. So we're coming up to the exit and he goes, Well, get your money ready for the toll. And I'm like, Get my money ready for the toll? What are you talking about? ⁓ yeah, nobody rides a turnpike for free. Even the FBI. Right. So so we get off. Well, they were waving us through. They're they're that it was like, No, come on through. So we get there and by this time it was getting later in the evening. Remember the September sun was going down earlier. And our first call, because it 'cause you gotta remember the can you you cannot fathom the pressure that's being put on by the White House and by Congress. What is going on? They wanted stuff right now. And so we roll in and the the the investigators from the Pittsburgh office who were already there, a lot of them were, Hey, let's go, let's get out there and do it. Well, it's it's getting dark. Do we're in the middle of you're middle of Of a field in Pennsylvania, it is beyond dark out here. We're good you're gonna get somebody hurt. So we we were able to convince them, look, let's stop. We need to survey this this crash site for hazards. We'll we'll be here first thing, first crack of light tomorrow morning, we'll clear it and then we can start. So that's how from the very beginning we were trying to set the safety mindset into this operation. We didn't want anybody to get hurt digging this airplane out of the ground. Yeah. So that's how that's how the whole thing started at Shanksville. How did ⁓ mean when you show up on scene, you're the safety officer there. I mean, are you technically in charge of that scene? Are you the IC or what's the what's the blend? No, it's it's instant command. ⁓ this the safety part is it's just like it would be ⁓ a safety officer during a structure fire. It's it they're a member of the ⁓ the command staff. They advise the instant commanders of problems, but the at this particular because at Shanksville is such a high profile was an assistant ⁓ we'll call an ASAC, assistant special agent in charge of the Pittsburgh office. And he was in charge, and make no question of it, but we would advise him of of the hazards. And early on, and ⁓ we we we knew him, which was fortunate. He he understood that this was gonna be a major undertaking because we got out there the next morning and there was very little visible signs of an aircraft. There were there was the engines, because they were big, they were on the surface, landing gear was on the surface, but the rest of that aircraft had gone into the ground or back into a forest. And so i it was we knew it was gonna be a an extended operation. So ⁓ we wrote a site safety plan written just as you're supposed to do it and we did a survey of the site and for the next fourteen days we dug it ⁓ that that aircraft out of the ground. And I mean we spoke earlier. How how far down would you say that airport that the airplane dug itself in when it crashed? So we brought in heavy equipment operators and so we started digging that that hole. And again, I did not want it to be a trench. And I and y this the other here's the other problem. that that aircraft w hit a reclaimed strip mine, meaning they had got all the coal out that they wanted and filled it all back in with dirt. So it was not it was it was disturbed dirt. It was runny. So I I did so I I told the the heavy equipment operators when we got there, this cannot become a trench. This I need this hole to remain one and a half times wider than it is deep at all times, which they didn't like because they were have to move a whole lot more stuff. They were going to have to do benching, but they did it. They well, they didn't have a choice, they were working for us. But right. So they they ended up one day, we were there about day probably day ten or so. One of them called me over and said, Hey, I've hit this undisturbed dirt. They know, they know with the bucket. I've I've hit the bottom. Okay. So so that was at thirty four feet. So thirty four feet into the ground, we we stopped the dig ⁓ because he basically there's no there's nothing past here. This is all hard, hard ground at below this. Now the challenge was all the dirt we pulled out had to be sifted. Every bit of it. Yeah, it's a crime scene. It's a crime scene. And we're looking for like teeth. ⁓ you gotta understand this thing hit so hard, there were no intact bodies. I know and your listeners, I know all your listeners have probably made a pedestrian struck where the dude gets knocked out of his shoes. Right. We were finding buckled pants where person had been knocked out of their clothes. So we were finding bits and pieces. And that was all that was all critical evidence. We and we did, we were able to recover forty-four distinct DNA. signatures. Forty crew members, four hijackers. How how long did that whole process take you guys? Two weeks. We were there, we were there until Saturday the twenty fourth, I think it was. But how did that from your from your associates that were at the Pentagon and at the World Trade Center, how you know, how are their experiences dealing with, you know, obviously they were still digging for people at the time, but that's all still crime scene too, right? So I mean that's even more complicated. Yep. It was more complicated. So Both those sites were still active rescue operations. ⁓ not so much Pentagon, but definitely Trade Center was still an active rescue operation. And this is something that's some very, very important again for your listeners. No amount of evidence, no I and it doesn't matter how important the evidence is, nothing comes ahead of public safety. It's the same, it's the same thing you were taught. And it public safety put so lives come first, life safety comes first, property conservation, or I'm sorry, stabilization comes next. To me, the state. as part of stabilization is where the evidence, the crime scene phase happens. And then you have the the last part, which is property conservation. Well, we certainly don't want to destroy any evidence until we are done processing. So the hierarchy, if you will, life safety, stabilization and the stabilization somewhere in there is the crime scene phase. And then property conservation. Yeah. So so yeah. So the guys at the Pentagon were working hand in hand with USAR and with Arlington County again. That relationship they already had with Jim Schwartz, who was the who was the on scene instinct commander from Arlington County, paid off tremendously. Yeah. Because they they were able to anything they were getting ready to do, hey, we we want to do this. Good. We want to do that. Let's wait. So so yeah, so that that all happened a little bit slower there. Ours was cut and dry. It was very clear that was there was no rescue to be made. So we were immediately able to secure it and go into a crime scene phase. And sorry. I was gonna say I mean, I think you gave two pretty good examples of what the through deal with deals with as far as a deployment goes. I mean, you're talking a national level terrorist event and you talked about the recovery of a body, you know, from a mob hit decades earlier. Is the rest of the scope of mission, you know, up and down that chart of what you're dealing with? Right. So the through mission, ⁓ I I I'm sorry I keep going on tangents. So that's good so many so many stories. Yeah, that's what we want. The the T H R E mission is to protect the health, welfare and safety of the investigators work in these scenes. So all the evidence response teams, if they have something weird, they've got evidence down a well, which happens a lot by the way. For whatever reason, people like to throw their guns down a well. And sometimes the bodies. Yeah. Confined spaces, high angle. We w dude, we have the the unit has been to some amazing places doing evidence recovery. We had a team go to Unalaska, Alaska, which is where they filmed the deadliest catch. It's Dutch Harbor. Dutch Harbor, Alaska. There's a homicide case. And and the evidence was a thousand or eleven hundred feet down the side of a mountain. Jesus. And ⁓ we were asked to come do that because ⁓ just because of the scope of it. Yeah. So so but yeah, so high angle structural collapse. I'll give you an example, Nashville, Christmas, three Christmases ago. That it was a bombing. So so there so there's a c very weird thing, right? You have a a post blast scene, a bombing scene. Yes, that has damaged the integrity of the structures around it. Right. So now what? Right? So so our guys went and they were able to ⁓ work with Nashville Fire to basically designate go no go areas and then if the evidence response team out of the n out of the I think it was the Knoxville office that was processing it at the time. Is it either Memphis or Knoxville? I can't remember. Anyway, I'm sure they were both there. Yeah. They they decided, hey, we really want to get in there to do well then we have to make a decision about shoring that structure. So again, it's to protect their health and welfare. And about half and I will tell you the unit grew during this time frame because of nine eleven, because of the anthrax case. Right. I'm gonna talk about the hazmat piece in a second, but we we grew to a point where we had about thirty five ish operators in the unit, half of those national registered paramedics. And we'll t we can talk about the paramedic piece a little later if we have time. But so so that's yeah, that's that's the mission of the unit. So all the evidence response teams would call us if they had something strange. ⁓ landfill digs. You w we would get called to handle all the logistics and safety while they we dig through a landfill looking for a body. Yeah, just because we don't know the nature of it. Yeah. Because you i yeah, well it's it's not well it's not a hazardous wasteland field. Yeah, right. What'd you throw away today? Yeah. Right? Yeah. I can't tell you. Right. Right. And and everybody does it. We know that. So we we would do that and we would we broke jobs. And another big thing that we started in the in the later about the last ten years of my career, the the laboratory division is responsible for not only supervising the evidence response teams, but on a major shooting. So I'm t what I'm talking about. Pulse Nightclub, Navy Yard, the the the Dallas shootings, the the ambush of the police officers in Florence, South Carolina, all the Walmart shootings, all the school shootings. It just goes on, unfortunately. Yeah. The lab sends a team and they are reconstruction specialists. So you got people from the firearms tool marks unit. You got people from our operational projects unit that are high end scanner and photography people. Yeah. You got you got people from our the mothership evidence response team unit and they would go to these shooting scenes and you think, Well, it's a shooting scene, it's no big deal. Well, until it's a shooting scene at a nightclub and it hit the sprinkler pipes and now you got bloodborne pathogens mixed in with sprinkler water. And ⁓ by and ⁓ by the way, when SWAT breached the building with a bear cat, they took out a l part of a load bearing wall. ⁓ Yeah. And if you think of that. W right. And and so very quickly our unit started being an automatic deployment on the shooting on the what's called El Sir, lab shooting reconstruction team. So that became another big part of the mission over time. So it so essentially anything weird that happened from a traditional crime scene perspective, holes, trenches, tanks, you know examples. The shooting, the Jason Aldean Route ninety one shooting in Vegas. Yeah. The guy that was shooting for the Mandalay Bay chucked a couple of rounds into fuel storage tanks on the Cairn Airport. Wow. That's evidence. Yeah. So that's a permit required confined space. They had they had to drain the tanks of all the jet fuel. And ⁓ between my my guys, guys on my team and guys from the armor team from Vegas Metro PD did a permit required confined space to go in and get those rounds out of that tank. That's crazy. So it just just when you think you heard it and seen it all, it just it was never a dull moment. No, and that's exactly why, you know, when I first heard about this, I knew obviously not to the c extent, but I knew, you know, it would bring tech rescue to strange places and that's, you know, that's the very that's the interesting part, I think, to me. Let's talk go for it. Go ahead. ⁓ yeah. So let's talk about the that the tech rescue piece. So I told you as time went on, we started really getting more and more involved away from Hazmat, 'cause the original name of the unit was a hazard material response unit. Nine eleven changed that. Right. Cause they s they they sent us knowingly to to I I I still remember the conversations. Hey, we need safety officers at these sites. You guys you guys were safety officers before in your old jobs. Why don't you go do it? Okay, we got yeah, we got this. Yeah. It's what we do. Right. So so after that, and our and Steve Patrick saw the writing on the wall, he changed he had a our unit's name changed from the hazardous material response unit, which pigeonholed us into just doing hazmat. I hadn't even started talking about hazmat with you yet. Yeah. To to to the technical hazardous response unit, which covered anything hazardous. Yeah. Smart. Smoke. Unless they were on two feet shooting a gun. That wasn't what we did. We were we were after evidence. And that's w and now we would come in after the the shooting stopped, obviously. But so as we built this unit, we started focusing a lot more heavily on the tech rescue piece. We started hiring people, again, because of who we were. We hired a guy named Charlie. He's retired, so I'm gonna and I I asked his permission. So Charlie Isley. Charlie Isley was in his pre prebureau career, he was a down at Virginia Beach tidewater area and he was kind of the guy on ropes and technical rescue. And he actually helped write, if he didn't write it all himself, he helped write the Virginia Department of Fire programs rescue program. And then he got hired by the Maryland State Police as a on their trooper rescue helicopters. And he was doing that. And while he was in Maryland, he helped write Maryland's tech rescue book. Which looked amazingly like Virginia's. Yeah, surprising. Yeah. So we hired Charlie and shocker, our stuff looks a lot like Virginia far. But and here's the other thing. We also hired a guy who still works there, so I'm not gonna use his name, but he was and still is, God love him. He's still a assistant chief as a volunteer with Carolina County, Virginia. But he was also a Virginia State trooper. Yeah. And he was kind of the guy in the Richmond area for tech rescue. Teaches every year at the structural collapse school down at Virginia Beach and teaches at the rescue school Virginia has his every year. And we hired him. So and then we hired a guy. Again, he's working there, I'm not gonna use his name. He was a ⁓ mobile fire department. He was an Alabama task force guy and he was on the NFPA sixteen seventy committee. So we hired him. So so so you I think you're getting the picture. Yeah, you guys are supporting everybody. Yes. Yeah. We did why not? Why not? Because and that's that's just it. We cause number one, it it it was a cool gig, right? And it is a cool gig. A hundred percent a good now it it it comes with sacrifice. Yes. And I I do have some questions about that. Yeah, we'll we'll s whole table that we'll come back to it. Yes. But we were able to build this this res tech rescue program within the unit. And by the way, we never forgot where we came from. We maintained a relationship with Virginia fire programs. We actually got a state number. For training. So so all of our programs all that we would teach, all pro board, all good to go with Virginia Fire programs, are are we would b encourage our guys to go teach on weekends at the fire schools or if it was during the week, the the structural collab schools all week. We sent our guys to teach. That's where I ran into one of your boys out there. That's where I saw them. Yes. That's where this all began. Hundred percent. Yeah. So so we understood the importance of maintaining that relationship with the fire service tech rescue world. as we as we built because and you know this, if you don't stay on top of what's new. I mean, good grief. Look at look at rope rescue between crolls and and MPDs and all the thing that's happened over the past decade and rope rescue. My gosh, if if you if you're not out there teaching every week, you there is no way you're gonna stay on top of that stuff. Yeah, falling behind. And when we started I mean I was a grumpy old school rescue. They they walked in with okay, number one, we're starting to call our ropes in millimeters. It's like, okay, well fine. And then they kept getting smaller. We're gonna do eleven. We're gonna do ten. We're gonna do nine. And I'm like, what are we doing here? Yeah. Where are we gonna let me give you this is this is one of my favorite tech rescue stories. ⁓ and it really was and I've got to stop using the word tech rescue because we were not in the rescue business. We were we were using the skills a tech rescue technician has to recover evidence. So and the scope of our unit was global. So let me give you a great example. I got approached one day that we we were gonna be escorting a investigative team, not even an evidence recovery team, but an investigative team from the New York office as they searched a seized vessel from one of our adversaries. I'll leave it at that, that had been seized in all in the waters in Indonesian waters off of the ⁓ it's like you can't make this up. The name of this the city was Bel Balik Papon, which is on the former island of Borneo. My God. All right. And they said this thing is A rust bucket and is hazardous, and we need you guys to go and make sure the air quality on the ship is good. It's a cargo ship, it's a freighter, it's a big boat. And you can look it up. It was the wise honest. And so, ⁓ and by the way, you're gonna be boarding by boat because it's still sitting, it's still sitting off the coast. Yeah. And you can only carry what's on your back. That's crazy. So we had to do hazardous air wandering. We had to clear hazards on the ship. We we knew we were gonna have potentially to do rope. So we actually built an all soft gear tech bag. Everything on it was soft. No carabiners, no nothing. We couldn't. It just because of the weight and everything else. Yeah. And and so we we everything, very small diameter. It was totally safe. Yeah. Everything we did, but it was me and actually the guy from from Alabama that boarded it and it mission went great. The ship was hazardous. We were able to isolate the hazard area so they could do the search. But that's what our unit did. It it it all it allowed the traditional forensic investigator to do their job Right. Without getting hurt. Yes. And and so that was that became the the the mantra and the mindset that w that we did during this mission. Now you talk I mean you alluded to some deployments. Let's talk about those deployments and what it takes. You know, the phone rings. You could be going anywhere in the world. And and what is what is a I guess there's no typical schedule, but what does a year look like in, you know, the through unit and what are you facing as far as deployments and time away from home and what's typical? Wow. So a typical day it and or the the higher ups at the girl will hate this. A typical a typical day at at the office is no not much different than a typical day in a fire station. Everybody in the unit has a program to run. Whether that program be rope equipment, whether it be confined space equipment, whether it be tools, whether it be PPE, breathing apparatus, everybody has a job. So when you're in the office, not on a call, you're doing that. So Very similar to what station duties. And by the way, if any of your people have a chance to see our facility, and I know a lot of them may have, it was spotless. It was a it was a fire like a fire station. The trucks were clean. Heaven help me if you brought a dirty truck back into the bay low on fuel. That's anywhere. Right. Yeah. Because you and I both know, because you and I both know the set you within 30 seconds of walking in any fire station in this country, you know the level of professionalism and and how they feel about the the job. Course. And it was no different in our place. The floors are spotless, the trucks are spotless, and we always got that comment. It's like, wow, this is this is amazing. This is everything's so clean. Yeah, we know. Perception. It is perception. And a lot and another perception. ⁓ it's yep, yeah, they got money. They just buy new trucks. No. We got a heavy rescue sitting in that station. That heavy rescue is two thousand and four Pierce heavy rescue. Two thousand and four. It's twenty-two years old. It still rolls out and it's still clean as could be. And it it's been an all or it's been driven all over the country. Yeah. So so yeah. So so that's a typical day. So how we get sent on missions happens two ways. One, something big would happen and we we kind of laugh. We we had the the T V news on and all over the the the place because like the bombing in Nashville. No, that was Christmas. That was little different. Yeah. But I I'm telling you the guys that were on call that Christmas saw that blow up and they're like it's open source intelligence. That's right. So So one way we get a call is that something happens. Somehow it's figured out that it's gonna be a federal investigation. If it's a federal investigation, it's definitely gonna be the FBI going. If the FBI going, the evidence response team would then call back to the evidence response team unit in our same building there in Fredericksburg, and they would do a conference call and say, Look, here's what we have. I'll you I'll use Nashville as an example. We a bomb's blowing up. We got blast debris for X number of blocks, and we've got buildings that or structurally damaged. Hearing that, ERTU then goes, okay, we're gonna send you, not only we're gonna send you more ERT teams from around you, because they manage the whole bureau, but we're gonna send THRU to do medical, your logistics, and your safety. And then they deploy the and how how who deploys and how much, that's a case by case. There's no, there's no cookie cutter. In in that particular case, we knew we needed structural equipment. We knew we needed communication. So all that rolled. And then once you get there, that first on scene guide and that ticker case it was the guy who from Carolina County, Virginia that we hired. He seeks out the instant commander and he ⁓ says, look, here's here's the our objectives. We're we gotta collect this evidence. We're gonna do it safely. We're gonna we need to blend into your instant command structure and do this together. And that's the other thing. All this the stuff, ⁓ we're the FBI here. You guys can leave now. That never happens. Yeah. My unit never I was there twenty five years. We never, ever told anyone, okay, we're here, you can go. Right. In fact, the opposite often happened. Yeah. Where I I'll give you an example. ⁓ we did a lab shooting in Colorado. I was at at a ⁓ Jewish synagogue and we rolled up and started working with the fire guys and ⁓ I need I said, Hey, I again the fire service, hey you guys got a roof ladder? I said, fourteen foot if you got it. Yeah. So they get the roof ladder and they go they go at we're and we're working this thing. Of course we take a long time and we're painfully slow, right? Yeah. Just it is what it is. That eventually in the evening got hey ⁓ you guys got this. Right. Yeah. We got it. But we love having you here. Yeah, we ⁓ can we just leave you a bunch of ladders and We got we got food in this we got food in the kitchen back at the station. That's funny. So said ⁓ we're gonna go back to station. If you need us, call us back out. But you you guys are good. And it's like that doesn't happen unless you you had that connection, right? So so so so that's one way missions go is ⁓ no notice. The other one's based on Intel. That's that's kinda where it gets a little more challenging. So we get it we get like ⁓ that great example. The the the guy the guy in the in the gro the ground behind the power station Providence. That was all intel based. So when we roll into town on something like that, that's when you get that's when you're gonna get you'll be sitting at this at your station, you're gonna get that call from some random FBI dude that says, Hey, ⁓ not for nothing, but we're in your town now and tomorrow morning at eight o'clock, well We usually serve them early. At six o'clock, we're gonna serve a warrant on this property and there's a pick your poison, there's a there's a well, there's a yeah, something this involving tech rescue or hazmat on your property, and we'd really like your assistance. So if if you could have your rescue company meet me in the Walmart parking lot. Yeah. Man, that's cool. On Broadway at at five thirty, that would be great. And that kind of stuff happens often actually happens more often than than you think. And When we had that and it's it's a case again, building that relationship, hey, I get it. I can't tell you the address. I can't tell you the name of the people we're going to serve a warrant on. It's offsec. You you can't you cannot tip your hand before the warrant is served. Of course. And I mean, I'll I'll go all the way back to Waco. That whole thing, the reason they knew ATF was coming was because somebody told somebody they were coming. Yeah. So we certainly don't want to do that. So so so Either something happens or we get intel that that something's going on. That's how we get involved. So I haven't talked about the hazmat piece. Yes. At all. And I know this is a tech rescue show and I'm so I'm not gonna spend a lot of time. We do talk hazmat. That's the dark art. We love it. We do love it. That's right. That's right. So our unit let me back up. The FBI laboratory has built a system between agents, supervisory agents that we train in hazmat. Kim Biole. Rad scientists from our scientific response and analysis unit, they did this did the same thing with the scientists they did with the hazmat guys. They cherry picked PhD chemists, PhD microbiologists, nuclear specialists. Dude, our nuclear specialists either ran reactors on on land or ran reactors on vessels. The underwater type. The underwater type. Yeah. Or were heavily involved in the weapon systems. I mean, dude, I mean this the scientists were are a who's who and I I gotta tell I got so spoiled. I go on a on a like a ricin job and I got a PhD microbiologist standing next to me. I said, What do you think? I'm not worried about it. Well if you're not worried about it That's a good thing. I'm not worried about it. So so ⁓ and then the hazmat officers that that that triad, the the experienced CBR and train agent, the the experienced scientist, experienced hazmat officer, that set the stage for what we were able to accomplish During the anthrax case and and beyond. Over that time, the field offices, we we upped their hazmat response teams, the people that work in the office that we train at our facility to 24 teams throughout the United States. That's where it is currently today. It was higher at one point, it's been brought back to 24. That's the bigger offices. Yeah. But they're so essentially, if you get that real bio, chem, rad mission, these are the folks that are gonna come and be the evidence collectors because. As you know, hazmat is terribly unforgiving of mistakes. It is normally our policy that if we are doing a hazmat job, scientists, hazmat officer and that agent from the lab are gonna jump be on a jet and be there when they go downrange because we're acting as our hazmat safety officer and their hazmat scientist and the folks in the field, they're very good, but it's it's it's their it's their not their day job. Yeah. Their day job is white collar crime and healthcare fraud and crimes against children and counterintelligence and foreign counterintelligence and just amazing skill sets that they have. And we've we've asked them to put on the hazmat hat. Yeah. So we want to make sure that they're totally safe when they do that. The other thing is is once we process that crime scene, all that evidence has to get taken back to a national forensic lab. You you can't put that stuff in FedEx. Yeah. Yeah. So an yet another job of T H R U. is to move all hazardous evidence from around the world it's coming back to a national FBI laboratory. Interesting. We I mean I've I've been I've literally done the global round trip on FBI aircraft to pick up evidence in some foreign country to get it back to the FBI lab. And they always they like to fly with prevailing winds at their back. So they'll take off headed headed east. Yeah. And they'll land wherever on the other side of the world then they'll take off and head east again. Yeah. And next thing you know, you've circled the the globe in a Gulf Stream. You you probably have a good point about going overseas. How does that work when you go when you guys go overseas? You know, you just you just fall under that attache for whatever that country is, or how do those inter those intercountry relationships work? Yep. So the FBI, as you mentioned, the FBI has legal attaches that are not called ⁓ anymore, they're not called law enforcement liaisons or law enforcement attach attaches now. It changes since I left. So apologies if I got it wrong. But in last count, That I knew about eighty to ninety embassies and consulates around the world as an FBI employee. At least one. And they're called League Aths. And they have ⁓ assistant League Aths called A Lats. So Lee Gats and A Lats, their job is to ⁓ interact with the local law enforcement in that country and to build a relationship. So when something weird happens, you immediately get a call. So great story on that. I'm sitting in the office one day and Steve Patrick comes in and says, Hey, how soon can you get to the airport? We gotta go to Georgia. And I'm like, Cool. Well, you know. ⁓ Quick flight on the Gulf Stream right forty five minutes to Georgia. No, no, no, no, no. Not the Republic of Georgia. Because they just found their prime minister lying dead in an apartment. And this is in two thousand five and it's only ⁓ about ten years out of their independence from USSR. You can imagine that everybody's kinda freaking out a little bit. So so we loaded up Kit and we had intel that potentially he had died from carbon monoxide poisoning. But they had no they had no way to to prove it. No way whatsoever. So we loaded up our stuff, jumped on the Gulf Stream, flew non stop. To to Belize, Georgia. We were we were flying above 50,000 feet to save fuel. My lord. I mean, it all you could do is look out the window and go, man, if something if one of these windows break, it is just it won't even matter. It is just over. But anyway, so we land, immediately got to work, and we set up remote multi gas monitors in in the apartment. ⁓ relit the gas fired space heater that was there and ⁓ we're able to recreate the very hypoxic down to 18% percent O2 and and also the presence of CO from from the space heater. So with that, based on that and I'm sorry, we were able to help them with lab testing and we found carboxyhemoglobin in the tissue samples. So so based on all that, we were able to tell the Georgians, hey, it kind of looks like carboxy you know CO poisoning. Cause of death. So stuff like that would happen. That's pretty cool stuff. So that and but that all that happened because the legal attache there in Tbilisi had a a relationship with the Georgian National Police. Yeah. And as soon as they realized they had a problem, they immediately called him and and said, Can you get these people here for us? And of course we said yes. Last f funny part of that, we land because we didn't have visas. We didn't have anything. We we we just literally picked up our stuff and went. Yeah. And so we're thinking, How how are we gonna get this? visas and all this. So we land at the airport and this dude from the Georgia National Police gets on and he he immediately comes on a big grin on his face. He says, My American friends, FBI National Academy, graduate. Yeah. Like, there's your visa. There's your and he took he literally took our passports and went, And there you go. We're good. Nice. So that's like that's awesome. Yeah. So and how how how many times are you called out overseas? Like in a in a given time like how o is that often is it it's hard it's hard to say. Several times a year, when I was there, several at least several times a year, we would get called overseas. Certainly not as much w work as we had in the in the United States. Yeah. Yeah, busy enough. And and here's the other thing too with the with the unit. We saw in my time there the the start of the use of anthrax as a weapon, start of really large scale use of ricin as an assassination tool, 'cause that's really what it is. We saw the uptick in fentanyl. happen and we s ⁓ just it just one and then we saw the arrival and concern about fourth generation nerve agents. And we as each one of those things would happen, we would stay in front of it and our unit would be help the scientists and the other people at the lab get the word out, at least inside the bureau and in a lot of cases, I'll use fentanyl as a case, we had the gentleman who's now the unit chief was spending his days at the White House writing the the guidance that eventually you had for fentanyl. Yeah. And so and a lot of and a lot of the challenges we would have when people with this stuff would happen, people immediately like, ⁓ my gosh, we gotta have fully encapsulating suits and are like, Hey, let's follow the science, shall we? We we were huge proponents of risk based response. We processed the entire anthrax case from two thousand and one till two thousand and nine in level C with with a with a respirator and t and Serenx essentially. That's all you needed. Totally safe. Yeah. The entire time that I was there, we went fully encapsulating suit that I know of twice. Really? Twice. One was at Graniteville, the train derailment, because ⁓ something else was I got to tell you. We have a memorandum the la FBI lab has a memorandum of agreement with NTSB to assist with major crash scenes. Matter of fact, some of my four co-workers were just in Louisville at the UPS plane crash. Helping NTSB the but they're there for NTSB and helping them stay safe while they process the scene. But at Graniteville, we were helping NTSB collection of evidence from the train derailment. But there was still a chlorine release. So that was that was one time. The other time was in the biosafety level four suite at USAMRID at Fort Detrick. And that's the only times I remember ev ever being in fully encapsulating suits because we followed a risk based response. Yeah. I mean you got the people there to tell you. I mean, for sure. Right. Right. Now Granted, we're we we have the ability to put on the brakes a little bit and do a r a good assessment on things, right? Right. Yeah. And that I think that was that goes back to some of the questions of like you guys and you sound almost like a USAR team in a sense, but you operate very differently in the fact that you are able to slow things down and look at that recovery base side and take that time. The equipment's the same. This air air everything's the same. Air shores and and we actually switched to hydraulics. For the rope guys, Arizona Vortex, everything everything's the same. Yeah. Everything's the same. Except we're not going after ⁓ live people. Right. Exactly. But so I mean, I've and you talked about, you know, the caliber of people that obviously joined the team early on. What are the type of people that the through unit looks for when they are nowadays, if they're taking applications, who are they looking for? So ⁓ thanks for mentioning that. We are still it's ⁓ it's open, it's open ended. And you can go to my Facebook page and see it, ⁓ my LinkedIn page and see it. But the email address is and if you on a Uton post or whatever, but it's it's ⁓ labrecruiting at FBI.gov. And just tell just send a resume and tell them you're interested, but we'll we'll come back to that. The kind of people we're looking for are self-motivators. We're looking for people with in two buckets, either at the end of their fire service public safety career that need it, doesn't need to be fire service, it could be a law enforcement. At the end of their public safety career, looking to not quite hang it up yet, or they have they're in that weird five to ten year I I've been in long enough to learn some things, but I haven't been in there long enough where if I walk away from my pension it's gonna bother me. Yeah. Right. It's hard for us to get the people at in the last five years of their public safety career 'cause they they they are looking at that pension rainbow. So those are harder to get. But so those are the two buckets. The reason we want the younger people is for continuity. Right. 'Cause the old guys, they'll give us ten years tops, right? Some some will stay longer, but anyway. So skills, hazmat technician. This is if if the perfect candidate, hazmat technician on a type one mitigation team. Not that you're gonna be patching and plugging rail cars, but I need you to know everything about rail cars. You're not you're not gonna be putting a C kit on. Don't care. But I need you to need you to know that there's two liquid valves, two vapor valves, and a pressure relief device in the dome of that DOT one ⁓ five J car. Because if it's rolled over at a crime scene, I need you to go, okay. So you you know the threat, right? So or so hazmat tech. Technical rescue technician. Perfect world. Thousand six, sixteen seventy. I know they changed the numbers. I can't keep up. Rope, high angle, confined space, permit required, confined space, lockout, tag out. Trench rescue. So nineteen twenty six, six fifty, six fifty one, six fifty two. Up on that. ⁓ we actually s will send you to ⁓ OSHA competent person for soil and everything, believe it or not. Yep. And then ⁓ structural collapse. I'm missing something. Trench, rope, structural collapse. Heavy tool. Heavy tool. Yeah. Go ahead, I'm sorry. I was gonna say, do you guys do any swift water? You deal with the water. Thank you. See, that's why you're here. That's exactly it. So so the Bureau has four underwater search and recovery teams. They're called U CERTS underwater search and evidence and evidence recovery teams. One in Miami, one in LA, one in Washington field office, and one in New York. They go they go all over the world. THRU is their surface support. So if they're gonna dive, do a a current dive in a in a stream or a river, we set the high lines and we do the we do the control of the of the if they're working off a boat in the w in the river, we do all the control line stuff for the boat. We are their dive medical technicians. So all of our medics are cross trained. We send them to to the the school at down at Florida State Univers or Florida Institute of Underwater Technology down in Florida to be to get their DMT. Yes. Twist my arm, you're gonna send me to Key Largo for Yeah exactly. Yeah. So anyway, but it is what it is. So we have a very, very engaged support for them. We prep the site for them because if they're doing a river entry and there's there's brush in the way, we clear the brush. It's just all all the little things on the water side to to allow the divers to do nothing but focus on diving. Your divers shouldn't be wearing themselves out, clearing trees out the way. Yeah. Your divers shouldn't be wearing themselves out hanging ropes across the the the river. So that's that's that's where our support to Maritime comes in. Gotcha. And the talking about getting on the team like that, you know, you so you bring these people on. You you guys you obviously you've been around, you work with local teams. Is there anything that local rescue teams can do to better prepare for incidents that are eventually going to scale up to the federal level? Just beyond their making sure they've got good skill sets for their their normal operations. And and the biggest thing is to recognize when, you know, I know this thing came out as a as a rescue and a well. But something's not adding up here. So and then so making that call to law enforcement. And as I told you, if it goes federal, we'll be involved. But in some cases, the support that we provide is in support of local and state law enforcement just because they don't have the equipment or the expertise to pull it off. Yeah. So so the big thing is stay up on your skills. Don't recognize when is when ⁓ when something's getting ready to potentially be criminal, that's huge. And notify notify their local law enforcement. To get that ball rolling. One thing to not do. Don't don't change anything you normally do thinking it's what you think the FBI would want you to do. That that makes any sense. Yeah. Don't don't say, ⁓ well, we ought to we ought to start doing it this way because no, do things as you would normally do them. That's defensible in court. That's a hundred percent defensible in court. What's not defensible in court is, well, Mr. Howard, why did you rig your rope system this way? Well, I thought it's what they would want me to do. Yeah. Well, Mr. Howard, why you're not law enforcement, are you? And so all because all they're trying to do is to discredit you and what you do to in the hopes of getting their client off. Of course. So just do what you do. Yeah. And I I could tell you when we go again, when we go on these things, we're not going to tell you to leave. Dude, it we need the manpower. Yeah, of course. That's the US you just about it's not unusual for us to send out a send out a crew on a rope job with three, four people. Yeah. Because we are depending on getting that manpower on the other end. Now, we're gonna request that the and I I'll this is what's really interesting. We get like a high angle job where there's ⁓ there's evidence to be like the side of a of a cliff or something. We're gonna this is gonna sound weird. We're gonna strap a evidence response team member from the field office in a harness and we're gonna str we're gonna build a system and we're gonna lower them down. precisely to that piece of evidence so they can collect it, photograph it, collect it properly, and then they're gonna say, I'm good. And we're gonna go, okay. And we're gonna bring them back up. Because that's the that's the best possible scenario when it goes to court. Right. Yeah. Now I got all everybody in our unit has been cross-training evidence collection. But in a perfect world, our job is to pave the way where a normal evidence response team person can go and collect that evidence safely. Whether it's at the bottom of an excavation, whether it's at Confined spaces are different, right? Because you can't engineer out a lot of that. So usually confined space is gonna be our my guys or my well, I say my guys, our my old team doing it, but structural collapse. We'll shore it up. Okay. Go do whatever you need to do. Don't go there. Don't touch this. Yeah. We we say that a lot in the and we would say that like, all right, don't touch it, don't lick it, don't move it. Yeah. Typical amongst firefighters. We have to talk about that too. Right. So and you ask you you also asked about a typic so a typical day I kinda gave you. You're on call. You're on call two out of three weeks. Do you have to be down in the Quanago area? Two out of three weeks. You have to be down in that area two out of three. So you have to move. You have to live in the in the in the Fredericksburg area within reason. And you're you're on call for two out of three weeks. One of those weeks is is ever anything goes. If a shooting comes out, if a tech rescue or tech rescue, a technical operation comes out, if a if a if a a dive mission comes out, if a Hazmat mission comes out, you're primarily on the hook for that. So you you pretty much know that week you're gonna go someplace. It's almost unheard of if you we call it it's green status. If you're in green status, you're gonna go somewhere. The other week that you're on call is to be on call if a improvised nuclear device detonates and it's gone it fist sile, it's gone boom. Mm-hmm. Now you're on a team that has a very short window. To get there and collect debris and get it to a lab. They just a matter of fact, they just exercise that in Colorado this week or last week. That's cool. But that that mission's called National Technical Nuclear it's N T N F National Technical Nuclear Forensics Program. And it's it's kind of weird looking back in retrospect, it was weird that everybody in the shop, it's just normal. Yeah. Wait for the nuclear bomb to go off. Yeah. Yeah. So so you you're on you're on call for those mission sets. You're in the house. Hey, are you you are you on call this week? Yeah, I'm on call for the render safe mission and the and the ⁓ NT and F. Okay, cool. Yeah. Do you want to grab a beer later? Dude, right? Yeah. It's like so no, you can't can't grab a beer. ⁓ you're on call, yeah. You're on call, baby. Yeah. A non alcoholic O Duels. There you go. That's yeah. Yeah, perfect. So so to answer to a to finish up that discussion on a typical day, working your programs, being on call for the all that all those mission sets, being on call for the national readiness missions. And then other duties as as given. Any NSSE, national special security event, you're probably gonna go. Pol political conventions, inauguration, inauguration's the difference. It's in DC. Council of governments, because what what the philosophy is you move these national resources closer to the problem, potential problem in case something happens. So so sprinkle in a few of those in the year. And before you know it, you've had a busy year. It is a tremendous commitment by the people who work there. Yeah. The min the men and women who work there, it is a tremendous, tremendous commitment to not only move to Virginia, well move to a specific part of Virginia, to be on call two out of three weeks to maintain this skill set. So there's a lot of training that goes on. But I'll be honest with you, a lot of our training is on the job because, well, I guess we don't have to practice ropes tomorrow because we just did a rope job, right? Yeah, right. So ⁓ it it is it it is it it's tremendous a commitment. Now it and they but they're compensated well for it. Yeah. It's it's a it's a relatively high GS job. W just coming in? Yeah. Yeah. C coming in, GS, I forget what the posting was. I think it's like you started a GS nine through eleven based on skills plus DC locality pay, but within one year it's GS twelve and within another year it's GS thirteen. Wow, that's up there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're you're s you're big time six figures. Yeah. That's like by time. That's like the high executive ⁓ GS positions that people have fifty fifteen's as high as it goes so supervisors and our and THRU are 14s. Wow, okay. And the unity's and the unities are fifteen. There you go. So you talked about the you know staying current on the skills and and working on those skills. For the for the regular fire service crews and and and USAR teams, what are ways that you know they should be looking to to better themselves? How can how can teams better themselves? Just regular USAR teams or fire teams or Yeah, what what advice do you have for them? As as far as ⁓ as far as stain current as yeah, as far as, you know, bettering their own teams. Absolutely. Number one, don't live in a don't live in a stovepipe. I cannot and I will not mention any names. I cannot tell you how many times over the years I have gone out on a job to a place you would think has the best people in the world and has the best techniques and modern equipment. And you get there and it's like, Holy smokes. Yeah, the the curtain's been pulled. These guys are s these guys are still back in the in the they're still still using figure eights and and and racks. And you're like, dude, the the world has passed you by. What happened? Well we you know we don't have a budget to send send people out. We we can't afford to send people to conferences. Well I you I got it. It it shows. You have got to and you don't have to send the whole team, but send your some of your more experienced send them to a to a conference. You know, you and I mentioned it we I'm going to the Ba Hasmat conference in Baltimore next week. I I've been going to that conference every year since the nine mid nineties. And it's not I mean, I teach there, I get it. I get it. All right. But I also go and I sit in on people's lectures because I always learn something. Yeah. I think it's impossible to walk out without meeting one person or learning one new thing. It's impossible. You're right. So my advice is you number one, all your mutual aid companies, spend time together, train together. Because you never know when you're gonna have the big job that goes for hours and hours and hours and you need bodies or you need extra equipment. So make sure you at least with your mutual aid companies, your neighbors, that you're you've work with them. Second thing, send people to conferences. And and and I don't mean this is gonna no matter how I say this is going to sound bad. Don't limit it to your regional conferences and your state conferences. No, no, absolutely not. You have you have got to send people to the national, NASAR, USAR, all that stuff, at least if not annually, every other year because and and then the other thing, I don't see how you cannot do this. All your big companies, Petzel, CMC, all these guys, they have seminars. They have conferences. Send them because I mean, gosh, the the equipment that those people have rolled out in the last five years alone to make your life easier. Yep. I mean belaying somebody is like it used to be like the worst job ever. Yeah. And now it's like it pretty much takes care of itself. And yes, very much so. And and and I don't know about I know you're you're audio guys. We had a hands off or what we call the whistle test. We had people on rope, so it blows a whistle. If everybody lets go, nobody moves. Nothing moves. And that was a good drill. Yeah, it's a great drill. Yeah. You had you had cat catch systems in place and that's the way we trained. But the only reason we knew that is because our people stay at stayed active and and went to conferences. Yeah. No, I I think that is a that's an incredibly and some people just don't it's exactly like, ⁓ we're not gonna send this guy, but It's so important just to to bring that outside view back to the department. And that's the key. You gotta tell, okay, we're sending you to this conference. But our expectation on the back end is that you tell us what you learned. So and and you also can't discount the the value of having an outside instructor. Yes. I don't care how I mean, I was spoiled. I was spoiled rotten. I had national level instructors in my my building every day. And I'm not I'm a ha I my my big background's hazmat. I mean, I I I do tech rescue. As Charlie Iceland would say, I'm mediocre at best. Okay. I I can set a system and I can I will I'll I will make sure you have a safe day, but I am not gonna be the think outside of the box guy for tech rescue. But I had a bunch of people in the building that were think outside of the box guys in tech rescue or tech tech operations. So that's what the team's for. My my point my point here is all right, you can't afford to send people to conferences. Maybe you need to have somebody come in and do a class for you. Have somebody come into the class from one of the big companies or have, you know, it just I I know you understand what I'm saying. But no, expand your horizon. I mean that's that's it. From so the big the big takeaway if coming back around to your original question on as we started this session this part of the the podcast, i if if something's going criminal and you know that ⁓ that the bureau is getting involved, just be open minded because you gotta understand they're looking at things from a different mindset. They're looking at things from the perspective of putting someone in jail. For a long time. To do that, certain things have to be done that that your typical public safety team just doesn't come across like warrants. Right. Yeah. Well, I know we're here, but we can't go into your well yet because we don't have a search warrant yet. And that happens more than often than you would think, by the way. So just make sure you're working with the Bureau. Now I can tell you if my unit comes there, my guys are gonna gravitate to you like crazy because that's their world they came from and they're gonna you'll know. Because they'll kind of suck over to where you are and give me the secret handshake. And from that point on, you'll be working side by side. Nashville's a great example of that. Yeah. The guys who are there in Nashville, hooked up with Nashville Fire, and they work that entire scene side by side. They're standing together, right? And this isn't this isn't the unified command post. That's that's over there. This is ops people together. So the so the big takeaway, ⁓ be looking for that the technical if i if the FBI laboratory is coming, make sure that you're staying in good liaison with them. If it even if they're not coming, make sure that you're looking out for the safety of those FBI employees who are very good at what they do, but sometimes the safety is the last thing on their mind. And it's w one of the biggest challenges we have is when we get a new scientist in the in the scientific unit because they they love science and now all of a sudden they're going to no they're going to real stuff. Right. They're going to real nerve agent. They're going to real ricin. Yeah. Cause we our unit does all that. And okay, okay. Got it. Dude. It's cool. Yeah. We gotta we gotta make sure that this environment is is safe for you to go in before you do your thing. Yeah. So we it's kind of a running joke we have because they are very, very, very smart. So kind of the running joke is all the scientists keep us technically advised on all all the the science and THRU has keep them from killing themselves while they do it. So that's fair. That's a fair trade off. Yeah. It's a great trade off. It's a great trade off. And I will I will mention if you needed another incentive, any real, any real use of C B R N E that happens in the United States for sure and around the world again, anything that's real, this that team is going. Mild unit is going. Right. Any anything. Yeah. Nerve agents, mustard, Lewisite, Cloropychrin. We had a core picrin case, believe it not. ⁓ really? Yeah. In Hawaii. Anthrax, smallpox, you name it, they're going. Ricin, toxins. Chitrodotoxin. Who are pufferfish toxin? Who the heck? We had a case in Chicago. Our guys went. So anything that's real, this unit's going. So it's a very job satisfaction is up here, right? Yeah. Wear and tear on the family and commitment is up here. So it is a it's a trade off. Yeah. It's a trade off. But you're working at the highest level. And that's I think that's ⁓ you were working a highest level and that's the other thing. Now I re so I retired a year and a half ago now. I couldn't stop. I knew I couldn't stop. So I I'm I'm moved back to my home state to Kentucky. I actually rejoined my old fire department. Nice as a as a training instructor, helped them out with hazmat stuff. I'm fortunately now back and will be able to help more than I have been in the last year. I I was on the NFPA technical committee for hazmat response personnel. I stayed on that. as a representative of of my fire my new fire department. Well it's actually my old fire department that I was on thirty years ago. It's hilarious. But I'm still helping to teach FBI classes because I can't couldn't stop. Yeah it's such a thing it's not the addiction. It's well I mean I guess it is an addiction. It's just it was such a high level pace. I think stopping would have been devastating. Of course. So I'm gonna And plus I imagine it's it's the the quality of the people makes it that much better too. Dude, the quality of the people you're you're You're in the same building with the A team. And I mean, I it's the A team in everything in our world. Right. The best has met people, the best scientists, the best rope rope guys, the best trench guys. Yeah, that's hard to come down from. The best the best forensic guys. Like they actually shared the building with us. Just a ma and and it I got like I say, I got spoiled. You know, something weird. I I'll give you some weird bio thing would pop up on the news. I'm like, what the hell's that? So I just walked down to the Michael Bodges. Hey. What's this? That's bada bada bada bada bada. Cool. ⁓ you you get you get used to that. And when you don't have it anymore, like it hurts, right? It's a void. So yeah. Well, I I I could certainly understand that. And that's but it's good to see that you're still out there. And I wish I was able to see you at the ⁓ the hazmat conference this week. ⁓ maybe next year. We'll get to it next year for sure. But in closing, I I just wanted to say You know, thank you very much for coming on and you know, I've given us a a behind the scenes look at the ⁓ the THRU and I know you you had some information again. If you just want to say it one more time for anyone interested in, you know, the FBI's THRU unit, where can they look? Yep, so they can ⁓ send just send an email with their resume. That's all you need to do. Just you don't don't have to write anything, just I'm interested in the technical hazard response unit or the THRU position and their resume. And they send it to lab lab recruiting, lab recruiting all one word at FBI. Perfect. We'll get that ⁓ we can get that link up too. In closing, I have one final question for you. Stanley Goodspeed from ⁓ The Rock. Is that a good rendition? I mean, did they nail it or what? We love Stanley Goodspeed. So you got you it's funny you said that. Of course. All right. Elegant string of pearls configuration doesn't exist. Yeah. Okay. It looked cool. It looked cool. It's it it's a fun movie. It's a fun movie. Intercardiac epine ⁓ atropine, not recommended. No. That w that was yeah. Especially not on yourself. Yes. Cool movie. We love it. ⁓ but there is actually we made a certificate of completion for our hazardous evidence course. Yeah. And it's it's a it's two it's two weeks. It's hard. It's it's a it's 'cause we're training these people in the field how to be hazmat evidence collectors. But we made a certificate for Stanley Goodspeed and we put it in the classroom. Doctor Stanley Goodspeed has passed hazardous evidence crime scene course and all these new agents would come in and they're going, Doctor Stanley Goodspeed, who who's this guy? Who's Dr. Stanley Goodspeed? And like, it was kill it was k we finally had to take it down just 'cause it was killing us. No, you should you should make the movie part of the class. You have to watch it. Right, right. Yep, yep. So yeah, yeah. We love Stanley Goodspeed. Yes, that's good. He's cool. I'm sure recruitment jumped after ⁓ after that movie, for sure. Well, I'm I'm sh ⁓ I I think for the Bureau it probably did. Exactly. It's amazing. I I I won't I know we're gonna stretch it out, but big events cause upticks in recruiting. Yeah. So I'll leave it that. No, that's ⁓ and we and we appreciate we appreciate your time. And maybe next time it'll be at Quantigo. Maybe we can meet up at Quantigo and you know, we'll do a tour. I think that'd be pretty cool. I know you got an inn over there. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. All right, we can make that happen. Yes, that's perfect. Well, sir, thank you very much again. And ⁓ I got your patch. It's awesome. I appreciate it. And I and I I got yours, thank you. Perfect. It's on display. And ⁓ we'll definitely see you next time on the ⁓ on the rescue lab. Everyone else, hey. Thank you for joining us and we'll see you on the next one. All right, great. Thanks. Thanks for listening to the Rescue Lab. If you found value in today's conversation and want to help strengthen the rescue community, consider supporting the New England Rescue Collaborative Foundation. Every donation helps fund technical rescue scholarships, training opportunities, and educational incentives that prepare rescuers before the next call comes in. You can learn more or make a tax deductible donation at NE Rescue Collaborative. And one last favor, if you enjoy the Rescue Lab, best way to help us grow is by leaving a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform. It helps more rescuers discover these conversations and keeps us bringing you stories and lessons from some of the world's best rescue professionals. Until next time, keep learning, keep training, and remember, no one else is coming, it's up to us. I'm PJ Halloran and this is the Rescue Lab.