Sep 30, 2014
This episode is Part 1 of a 2-part interview with Captain John Lightly. John as served as a member of the Youngstown, Ohio Fire Department for 13 years. Youngstown FD has 8 stations and a sworn strength of 135 firefighters. John’s married and has twin daughters who are in 3rd grade. So you can imagine how exciting… and hectic John’s life is. I really appreciate him sitting down with me and sharing his close call survivor story where he almost died as a result of being caught in a flashover. For reasons that will become obvious during the interview, I title this episode “3 feet from death” and dedicate to all the firefighters who’ve been caught in a flashover and did not live to tell their story.
In this two-part story, you will learn:
1.How John conducted his size up and made a determination, based on clues and cues that formed his situational awareness, that there was a high probability the house was occupied.
2.How the flashover occurred within two minutes of entry – a recurring theme I see at flashover casualty incidents.
3.How communications challenges influenced understanding among crew members.
4.How John experienced TachyPsychia – or a slowing down of time when the flashover occurred.
5.Listen to John describe how he felt intuition – in the form of a sick feeling in his gut – and a feeling that someone had punched him in the stomach.
6.John will also talk about self-speak – the neurological phenomenon where we talk to ourselves during high consequence situations – only John doesn’t call it self-speak. I’ll let him explain.
7.How John’s entry the first two times were under the premise of assuming the risk of being a firefighter. Yet he admits his entry the third time – he was creating risk… not assuming it.
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Contact Rich Gasaway
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