Shawn Ryan Show - #6 Travis Howze - Heroic Firefighter

Episode Date: October 27, 2020

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

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On Patreon, get a subscription, support the show. Thank you. Let's get on with it. We were all told to suffer superstars on fire and we all knew that that was a horrible place to have a fire We were often referred to that as a death trap This one thing when you got a dead body there is you can recognize but you know it's when he was and you don't know who fuck it is 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 a review, leave at least one word in the comment section. That's what takes little bit of the same thing. Hey bro, where's your get the hat? Vigilancedelate.com. Thanks bro. Appreciate it. Roger that.

See you later. 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 fire fighter to bring on this show for over a year now, and we finally have found one. He was part of the sofa super store 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 House. Travis House, welcome to the Sean Ryan show. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. Me too. I'm excited to hear. 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. That's a firefighter.

And I put a couple of 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 mill stuff. I wanted to focus on the actual, you know, being a firefighter. And because I know you guys see a lot of traumatic stuff, and I think you're another occupation that's extremely underappreciated by the general population. And so anyways, you reached out, we connected. And I think you are the perfect fit to be here. So thank you for coming. That's the nicest thing anybody's ever said to me.

I appreciate that. Is that a tear? Yes, it's just a little one. All right. Don't make me cry too much. I'll be sure. It certainly is my pleasure to be here. I'm certainly in honor. I love what you guys do. And it's just to be a part of it. It means a lot. Thank you. Thank you.

Well, I did a bunch of research on you. And I kind of talked about that in the warm up. But you know, he got a new book out, read that. Listen to your podcast. And then because I don't really know anything about being a firefighter, I did, I researched, I spent some time researching kind of, you know, what you guys go through on the day-to-day type stuff and kind of the camaraderie. And got as good of a feel as I think I would get by watching videos and and talking to friends. But in your background, you've had a lot of careers. Yeah. You 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, then you were a police officer, firefighter again, stand up comedian, motivational speaker, author, and I mean, then as I researched you a little bit more, I found out that you were a limousine driver. I don't know, I was a limousine owner. A limousine owner? Well, I didn't drive a limo. I didn't drive too, but I was so glad you got to show me that old story. I was a shit that was going, I didn't drive the limo. I didn't drive too, but I'm sure that I own the shit that was going on in the bag of the limo. 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. Nice. And what I was really surprised about is I had no idea that you are a survival expert. Oh, you found that? I did not know that. And, you know, so I want to go ahead and roll the tape of what I found. Oh, all right. Hey, it's Travis Howells.

I'm out here in the desert in Nevada. I'm in the United States Marine Corps veteran, so I like to consider myself kind of a survival expert in different climates. Right now I'm gonna show you just really quick how you can get water from a cactus. Just any, any average joke can get water from a cactus. Anybody? What you gonna do,

is you're gonna go down to the cactus and you're gonna just reach in, pull out your bottle of water. Oh, my gosh. It's perfect, man. He knew you guys can do this. Stay safe out there. Stay hydrated. Designy.

So you dug that out of the archives. I did. I did. You know, in the head I nod. I would still be wondering how the fuck I'm going to get water out of a cactus. I learned, you know, wind up in a desert similar. You know what's so funny about that? I'm going to get water out of the cactus. I'm going to get water out of the cactus. I'm going to get water out be wondering how the fuck I'm gonna get water out of a cactus

It's very you know wind up in a desert similar. You know something funny about that video 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 I mean 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 and to hate, if you go into comments, these people are talking about your mother hates you.

Oh, it's like, come on. Where's your sense of humor, fucker? You know the keyboard, commando, you two are talking around. You were like, come on, they're gonna teach us that shit in Marines. We get MREs and canteens, water buffaloes with water. We don't have to go search for it for it. I mean, I can't like how low is their intelligence level

to not realize that as a fucking joke, what it is a joke, right? Yeah, I'm a, look, I'm a dumb bastard. I barely got through high school and I could understand that's a fucking joke. What, it is a joke, right? 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?

Yeah, I totally get it. But for those of you listening, you can check out as YouTube. There is a ton of solid survival information on there Oh, yeah. That, you know, you're going to learn a lot. I got into that for a little while. to there is a ton of solid survival information on there. That you know, you're gonna learn a lot. 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. The naked and afraid one is, I saw all of them. I forgot, man. 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. But and you know, you're a new author. How long's your book been out? Two months. It came out May 25th. All right. Yeah. Well, you never were under reading or writing.

You said so. And being a survival expert and an author, I always give everybody a gift that comes here. So. I got you a little something, you know. What's in the box? No peaking. Let's see that, let's see. Oh, sweet.

Little survival hat for you. I saw your hat the other day, and I was thinking about asking you for one, so this works out. Yeah, you know. And you can't pay the gummy bears. Some survival rations for you. Dude, you will never go hungry

or you never go without the proper calories without these. I'll keep these in my cargo pockets. Well, that's nice. Right on. And if you ever run out, you can just hit the website and there's all kinds of survival stuff on there. Survival stuff.

So if I run out of gummy bears, is it safe to say, ask you, do you have some? Yeah, I got a couple. A little inside just a couple bags. Thank you, man, I really appreciate it. You're a lot of so much. Give me the box back. Everybody gives me the box back. I don't know why ever I've given this box to I can't take it on that kind of sounds weird. Can we give you my box back? Stop that conversation right now. Oh, thank you. And it's my color too. And you know, since you're a new author, I picked up a book for you.

You might want to 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 cupcake. Did you wrap this? My wife did. Oh, okay. I was about to say. Damn, she wrote this in tight. Wait a second, look at this. You got my own book for a present. Is it?

I love it, man. Thank you. Create your own light. So. This is awesome. Yeah. I don't even know what to say. I got my own book as a present.

That was given to me by the author and. And it sucks, man, you're giving it back. And well, I thought you might want to read it. So I'm just, but it's great, man. Anyways, you can get, create your own light on Amazon, right? Yes, so you can find this, that's kind of a cool surprise here. Say it back to you. Thanks. Okay. Yeah, you can get it on Amazon and it's, it's, it's a, it's a, surprisingly

doing very, very well. And I say surprisingly because I wrote this book just kind of for me about all the, you know, traumatic experiences I've had and how I dealt with getting over them. I didn't expect to put it out there and for 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 given the book. It means a lot. It's a good book and, you know, there's a lot of heart and soul in there which is cool. You know, I like the way you just wrote how you speak. And it's helping a lot of fucking people.

And you know, and even after that, you know, when we first spoke or messaged, I think you sent me the book and you're like, I don't know if you're 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. It's the worst. And I hate writing. And it's actually, it's so bad that people gave me something and I'm just like, I mean,

I'm just, I'm not gonna read it. But I did read that. I appreciate it. Yeah. That's tough because people have given me books before and they're like, read my book and I'm like, fuck. Yeah. Cause I don't read.

Yeah. The crazy thing is that I'm a marine and I wrote this without crayons and I think crazy everybody's like, well, we've just got a lot to pictures. Yeah. And it's like, no, is that there's some pictures. But yeah, in 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. My pleasure. And so, yeah, if you want to pick up the book, it's on Amazon. It also inspired me because I've been wanting to write a book and if you can do it, I can do it. So, and I mean that in a good way, but for somebody else that doesn't like to read that wrote a book,

I'm like, I guess it is fucking possible. So maybe I will get my ass in gear. So reading that book and listening to your other podcasts, I mean, you have seen a metric fuck ton of trauma in your lifetime and a ton of it. And even without the your career's law enforcement officer and even your childhood, part of what I wanna do with this podcast, I wanna squash a, I guess it's not a rumor, but I get a ton of emails from firefighters and we kinda talked about this

and it's almost like a how you measure up and the emails always start even with cops and it's I haven't fucking seen what you've seen or I can't compare to what you've seen or what you've done and I want to squash that fucking rumor right now. I can guarantee you that you have seen 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 you know, one thing 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 got to go to fucking Yemen or I got to go to Afghanistan or not witness but see the locations that happen. Is a firefighter or as a police officer or whatever, a first responder, this shit's happening right in your fucking hometown, right where you live, where your kids go to school, where your wife's going to the grocery store, and 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, anyways, got a little long-winded there, but I wanted to just put that out there.

Picking up what you're putting down, man, it's, um, no true words. And, you know, like I told you, no matter what background you come from, whether you did 30 years in SEAL teams or you were a 20-year infantry marine army. Police officer firefighter, Susan a competition about who's been through more. Yeah.

Unfortunately, some people do experience more than others. 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 and 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 try to, where am I? She was, I'm not gonna try to wear yours. Yeah. Trauma fucked me up. I was exposed to it. Like you said, on a grand scale and it was at a very early age and it just never left my life.

So I've had to learn how to live and be successful with all of that going on. And it's been a hard road a hoe. Yeah. But man, I'm in the happiest place I've ever been in my life right now and that's what I like when I do 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 can live a healthy

and successful life again. You just got to have the mindset to do it. Well, you're helping a ton of people. Your book says it all, like I said, it's all heart and soul. And I mean, it's just awesome, you know, that you have found that happiness because you definitely fucking deserve it. But, you know, and you do that through your book and your stand-up comedy and now your motivational speaking. And anyways, so now I want to dive right in. And we're going to start with childhood. But, you know, not just you, but your entire family on both sides is no stranger to traumatic events. And just what yesterday or the day before we were down, having lunch in the kitchen and you'd brought up a wallet. And we were talking about

we were talking about past down items. And 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. So that wallet August 6, 1944. Fuck you, John. I, um, I've never gotten emotional talking about this. I don't know why I used to I do jokes about it on stage, but I guess When you're talking about the meaning of it, it's a little bit different So that wall it was in Maya My grandfather's left-press pocket. And he was in the Normandy invasion. He was with

the Canadian army. That grandfather was. And they hit Juno 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. For my understanding, he died when I was five. But without that wallet, I wouldn't be here and word my kids wouldn't be here. So what happened was later on after that invasion, that was in June, two months later in August, wherever his unit 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 and when you hold it up to pull it whole 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 so I have that wallet with all of his war medals and everything and it hangs on my wall underneath my medals and by my father's military stuff as well and I have the the original telegram that the Canadian army sent my grandmother or my great-grandmother just says your son Earl Macho was shot in the chest in combat Condition unknown. That's it. Oh my god. Oh, August 6th 1944

Wow, 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 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. Yeah, so special.

That's a hell of a pass down item, man. And I was actually gonna say, you know, if you're looking for a way to, you know, for that to be a resident with your daughters, I would just say, you're, did you're looking for a way to, you know, for that's a resident with your daughters, I would just say, you're, did you just set it? But I mean, your dad wouldn't be here. What was your dad or your mom? My mother.

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. You know, wow. Well, I told you the funny part of that story, my tattoo right here, this is 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. Damn. And these other flowers, these are poppies, my other daughter's poppy. But I used to do the joke on stage was, I couldn't name my daughter, wallet.

Because that's a dumbass name, but then I would freak out. Anytime you saw that Capital One commercial, what's in your wallet? I wasn't my wallet. Shit. Yeah. Well, so anyways, I wanted to bring that up,

but I thought that was an amazing story. And actually I didn't realize he was in Normandy. And I actually have some beach sand from Normandy that I've been wanting to frame. I'm going to give it. I'm going to give you some of it. Oh, shit. Yeah. I'll give you some of it.

Thank you, man. You know, do what you, wow. What you need to. I'll put it right there with the stuff. Cool. But so moving on to your childhood, you were exposed to some very traumatic events at a very young age. And it sounds like it all kind of started with Little League.

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 gonna get long-winded about that, but trauma has a way of working its way into our brain and searing our brains like a catalyrene. 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 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.

Yeah, you remember that from three years old? Just the detail, yeah. And I put that in the book. And my family and I never really talked about it. We joked about getting run over by a golf cart when I was a 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 didn't think I could remember back that long, that long ago in my life. And I said, well, stop me if I'm wrong about the golf cart when I get ran over when we live in the little trailer park when I was growing up. But she said, OK. And when I was finished telling her and my father, they were like, how do you remember that? I said, that's trauma. That's what trauma does to you.

But moving on from the golf cart, so I had a normal childhood. It was great and everything. But trauma finds its way into your life sometimes. And for me, that 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 and many of us spend the nights at his house. And he spent the night at my house many times. His dad was a tough guy. He was a hard-nosed baseball coach.

Everybody wanted to play on his team kind of thing. His 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 his wife in the face and then shot his wife in the face, and then shot his 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. But I just remember being really confused at 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 shot with a high-powered rifle in his chest and he was killed, his cousin shot him. And yeah, did you ever get a reason on why your friends dad fucking? You know, that's their story to tell kind of thing and but I believe it it all boiled down to divorce. Wow.

At the end of the day and 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. Now, you know, these are mine and I just, I kind of go over it and I'll paraphrase a little bit. So then when I was 14, you know, and they say when emergency services, a lot of people that go in the military emergency services come from traumatic childhoods, whether it be, there's a very high percentage shown. I don't know if it's, 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. When I was 14, 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 he hired me. And I go over this in my book as well and great detail on how this man would take me to these job sites. It was just he and I. And he would say these very derogatory things and at 14, 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 he never touched me or anything like that, but I think what he was doing, I know what he was doing was trying to earn my trust. And I was fortunate. He hired another kid that I knew knew who was 17 years old. I knew this kid very well as well. 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 eventually got so uncomfortable. I quit. I didn't want to work for him anymore. And literally about three weeks after I quit, the other, the other kid, my friend, committed suicide. Fuck. 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...

I don't know, man, and it's... that was when I was 14, I'd already experienced all of that. And so this has become a normal in my life now. And so when I'm 15, I start hanging around the fire stations. And I get brought into this brotherhood. I experience it because 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 fireman.

And I ended up knowing these firemen getting to know them. 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. I just saw these grown men fucking off at work and getting paid to do it and having 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. 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. So at 15, I started hanging around there during the summers. You know, and July 9, 1993 was a day that I'll never forget because I was hanging out at the fire station during the summer. And this firefighter Ronnie Berg and runs out and says, Hey, kid, you want to go to call? I was like, yeah, fuck yeah, I want to go to call, you know, every kid wants to run fire truck, right? Yeah.

Yeah, that doesn't happen anymore because of, you know, laws 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 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, of another firefighter. Yeah.

Well, what was the like when you got on scene there? It was horrible, man. And it was something I wasn't prepared to see at 15 years old. It's a name of Sammy Singleton. He was also a Marine Corps veteran. And he was a brand new firefighter. And he worked for the city next to us. And I didn't know him personally.

But when I got there, what happened is, there was a line of cars because there was a traffic accident ahead on a little two lane bridge going from Bufert, South Carolina over to Bluffton, South Carolina. And Sammy was the last in line. He had just finished his shift and he was coming home from work. And there was a hump in the bridge to let,

you know, 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 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, not only just drove over the top of it, but it's like it sucked it up into the frame. It was weird. And initially right away, we didn't know that it was a firefighter, 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 while these guys were trying to get Sammy out of this car. And he was a complete mess. He was something I can't even describe in. Yeah. And at 15 years old when they all start passing the word, that this is a firefighter, you felt this heaviness, just come over the top of you. Yeah.

And you could see it affect these men, these grown men, these, 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 protect people. And they're out here getting killed like this. And I remember that ride back to the firehouse. It was very somber. We didn't say a word. And I could see Ronnie dead now, but I can see his face still driving down the road just staring. He had his blank stare on his face. And at 15, I was trying to just understand, understand this thing. Yeah.

You know, I'm not trying to make you revisit every fucking thing that happened to in your childhood, but I really wanted to kind of bring out, you know, how early the traumatic events started 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 grew up poor, correct? And there's and just 11 to 15 fucking years old, you've seen more trauma than most people will ever see in their entire life. So, 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 an a living example of somebody who's dealt with traumatic events from a very early age and you're doing fucking great now. So I wanted to kind of highlight that and put that message out there. Well, thank you. But yeah, 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 it at themselves. Yeah. And you know, you always hear this, you can do whatever you want, but it is, there's no true words. We, we are a worse 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. Yeah. And, you know, fucking losers are graded finding excuses on why they're a fucking loser rather than put in

the time and to figure out how to not be a loser. And so anyways, I just want to bring that up 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 noticed, and I think me and you are very similar in this aspect, but going through a story, I kind of pick some things out, your labeled class clown, and middle school, and in high school. And it kind of sounds like you didn't really appreciate appreciate that label. And in order to prove something, you joined the Marine Corps at 17 years old, 18 years old, right out of high school, you're running the Marine Corps. And so is that, is that why you joined the Marine Corps? That has a little bit to do with it. Actually, I mean, it has a lot to do with it, but also grew up right across from Marine Corps bootcamp

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 a watch full metal jacket like three or four hundred fucking times. And I was like, I got to do this. I got to 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 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 now 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 lower my whole? this is what you do with our family name, where are you gonna be a fucking comedian and lo 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 United States Marine Corps, you know, and I had something to prove to myself. I had something to prove to him, certainly. Not that he asked me to, but I felt this burning desire inside, you

know, is my father's son to show him that I'm worthy of carrying that title and I'm going to make him fucking proud. So, uh, how'd that feel when you finally did fucking amazing? Yeah. Yeah. Was it very proud? Yeah, I think he's always been proud of me, man. It's just, uh, that's, but that was certainly a special moment. My father's not one of those where his feelings when it sleeves, you know? But yeah, we're certainly proud. Well, that's awesome. You know,

would you say I played, you know, I mean, a definitely played a role in you joining. But then again, going through your book, I saw kind of like the same kind of thing, maybe in the same wheelhouse happened again at your fire station when you You wanted to do a comedy skid in front of everybody and your friend Rob. Yeah, basically told you You fucking blow get the fuck out of here. And you took that to heart and I'll be damned.

You're doing stand up comedy with fucking people like Kevin Hart. And so anyways, I just, I have that drive too. And sometimes people's perception of me is what drives me when somebody says I can't do something. And it seems like you're the exact same way. Tell me I can't do something. Fuck you watch this.

Yeah. I don't care how long it takes. Hold my beer by the fucker. Yeah. We'll fucking get it done. It's getting done. Yeah. And you do get it done, which is fucking awesome.

There's no other way. Yep. It's a great feeling. That's fucking phenomenal. To prove people wrong like that. But so I don't want to go too much into your career is a marine because your firefighting career is what really shines and stands out when it comes to all the different services you've served in. So leaving the Marine Corps, you walked right into being a firefighter, correct? Yeah, man. I got out of the, so I did four the Marine Corps, you walked right into being a firefighter, correct? Yeah, man, I got out of, so I did four years of 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 also wanted to be a fireman. And I went back to my hometown when I got out of the Marine Corps.

And I 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 Scrodom back in the day. So when I walked in my friend and said, you remember Travis, he's like, yeah, Scrodom, come on in. And so it's like, oh, shit.

Firehouse is ball-busting ass place. I have no idea. I never pulled my balls out. I don't know why they called me Scrodom. That's just the name that stuck. So I was known as Scrodom. So he pretty much, you know, we had a conversation and he told me that, you know, he had an opening and he'd like to send me 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.

Can you kind of, I am not familiar, you know, with the life of a firefighter. So can you kind of walk us through, I wouldn't say like a typical day, but, you know, what's it like when you're, you know, with the boys, and I know you guys are super fucking tight, it's a brotherhood, and at least while you're in, and we'll talk about that later. But, you know, can you kind of go through the feeling of when you get that call and you're at the firehouse and you know it's something fucking real.

It's gonna be dangerous. You're gonna see some horrific stuff. And when does that adrenaline kind of start kicking in? And what's the feeling and kind of walk us through 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 you're for a 24 hour shift.

You never know what the day's gonna 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 a long lengthy career. Those adrenaline, what we call them adrenaline dumps is the rush of getting that that's hit of adrenaline. And then the call turns out to be nothing

and then it goes back down. And 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 give some heart attacks. I mean it will fuck you up. It rewires your entire fucking brain having that many adrenaline dogs. It yes, it's fucking crazy. I paint I do it. I talk about a scenario one call or one day on the job where we have multiple goals throughout the day, but all of a sudden, I remember one night in my bed and we're asleep and you get rocked, you get up, you jump on the rig, you're going to a hot call that you think is hot and dispatch calls as you're not needed.

So you're like, fuck, you turn around and you go back to the firehouse, you're back the truck and your heart rates, 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.

This is a real, real call that we went on. It's just an exact scenario that's in my book. It was two something in the morning, Christmas Eve, and we're going to a fatal vehicle wreck. We didn't know it was fatal at the time. We pull up on the scene. A truck had went off the road, flew through a telephone pole. It was upside down.

There's a guy sitting next to the bumper, just sitting there talking to himself. There's beer cans everywhere. And the song, every rose has its thorns on by poison. And I would never forget that, because every time I hear that song, I can instantly smell this coal. And the reason I say smell it is I smell the grass that they hit and through it, 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. And he had agonal breathing, all of his teeth are busted out. He has massive facial trauma. And my face is really close to his because 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 here in that song, it takes me right back to that. And man, he expired, right there, Pistach Pants and Dodd. So it's stuff like that. Um, and man, he expired right there, Pistons pants and died. Um, so it's, it's stuff like that. And then when you get done with that call, is a firefighter fireman, we don't talk about this stuff. Yeah. We don't, we bury it. We go back to the house and you just fucking deal with it. Yeah. We gotta go get, we gotta go make breakfast now. Now, that's a typical day or you can show up and nothing happened and you And you're waiting all day and you're anticipating, and where's it at?

Where's the call, where's the call? And nothing ever happens. I mean, is it a good feeling when nothing happens? No, when something's happened, and is it a good feeling? Man, so I've never done, I've never done drug. I smoke marijuana twice in my whole life. 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, 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.

Now, you got to keep an open mind frame, and 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 you for it feeling that high that you experience goes away. Do you crave it? Yes. Yeah, absolutely.

You know, I'm trying to put myself in your guys' shoes and like I wasn't planning on talking about tunnel vision, but you know, it does fucking kill people. And I never really thought about tunnel vision 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. And a lot of guys, 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

that are in buildings and so I can totally relate. I know it can be hard to come off the immediate test and get a better understanding and some situational awareness of what everything, what else is going on in the big picture. The fog of war on emergency seem 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 the power lines about to fall and land in a puddle of water because we all have water and whoever's standing in is about to get lit the fuck up. 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 rubber neck and runs over a fireman. Don't think that shit doesn't happen. It happens all the time. Yeah, you know, and it's shit like that. So you have to be able to see the whole picture. What's it like in the truck on the way to the call? I try to put myself in those shoes and that, for me, was almost maybe even more because it's the anticipation of you getting ready to do whatever you're gonna do. And 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. 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 and and sometimes things kind of I don't want to say slow down but you don't have fucking time to be nervous anymore. It's all performance. And the preparation, the mental preparation

that you're giving yourself and the healer on the way to the target. What are you guys doing in the fire truck? You get in the fire truck. When do you find out what the fuck you're responding to? So 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 usually more fucked up than you can imagine. So it's eerily quiet on the way to calls. You hear the, we're not all high five in and dancing in the back of the thing. Where 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 scene size up,

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, because 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 a few seconds to process that information. So if I hear, you know, we have a fully involved structure, fired vented through the roof. I know, okay, I'm a vent guy on a ladder truck, where are the guys that go in the roof and cut the holes? That's how the window right now. We don't need to do that, put the saws up. But if you hear 25% involvement, we got people trapped.

Now you're thinking, OK, instead of vent mode, I might have to go into search and rescue mode, because that's what we guys on the trucks do. I'm a truck guy. I'm what we call a trucky. And we talked about that last night. Engine company guys, they carry the hose, and they go in and 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 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. So you're doing as much mission planning as you can on the way there with the information that you're providing. Yeah. And you said usually it's more fucked up? Yeah, because you're going off of information

that's related to you by untrained professionals, and they don't know really what to look for. right? And be in the civilians, you know, and when you get there, there's usually a hundred other fucking things going on. 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 to dispatch. Or all we know is, hey, we got it. We got a fire. That's that's all we know right now. But when you get there, you find out there's more to it.

And it's a it's a fucking fire. And on on the backside, there's a pool, you know, and that's a threat to fireman 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 to your ass as in the bottom of a fucking pool carrying all this gear. Yeah. you know. Well, um, let's say first major fire that you responded to.

Hmm, I've been to a lot of them. I don't this. Not June 18th, 2007. I took any other one, but you know, prefoot was like the first major fire. I want to know like, you know, I got it. What was the call? Did you think it was serious? And what was it like when you were in the fucking truck?

And you finally see the smoke of where you're getting ready to respond to. Does that? Yeah, so the first one was a two story house. It was an older house, probably built in the 1800s sometime around there. We caught the call and as soon as we left the station, 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. And it's pushing. It's got velocity behind it, which means you've got a big rage and fire that's pumping that thing. When we pulled up, it was eating the ass off of the back of this house. I mean, half of the back half of the house 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 going to 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 flame 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, out the windows and right over our heads and we're under this old time in porch and we have the hose on and we're like, oh shit. Now, so now we have the backup. There's no going into this house.

Like, the whole thing's on fire now, right? we have the backup. There's no going into this house. Yeah, like the whole things on fire now, right? So we backup. This is the first department I worked for my hometown department, which is a small department. We were severely We were very small. We only had three stations. So you didn't have a lot of manpower when stuff like this happened I just remember that was my first experience getting up On top of a fire You 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 get to get inside of that one. Yeah. Scale one to 10. You pull up to something like that, which you're journaling at 12.

12 if not higher. Yeah. Yeah, it's thumping man. It gets fucking serious real fast. Yeah. The problem is I think that as a young guy, you don't really understand the element of danger that's there. Yeah. You don't take it seriously. I mean, 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 fires, getting out of that whole house and, and licking the, the top of the porch, this two story, porch is over the top of you.

That amount of fire, fire doubles in size. Every I forgive me. I know some people are going to correct me, but every, every like 90 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 play environment a little too long like, oh yeah, you're motherfucker. You're having a 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 at any time that porch could fall on top of you and kill you. But when you're a young man, you're just getting after it. Yeah. It doesn't seem real. It seems again, it seems very similar, you know, you want to fucking work. That's what you train, you know, even in, you know, in the teams at the agency, you know, if you're in a fucking gunfight, it sounds weird, but there's nowhere else you would rather be then right there and a fucking gunfight. And going through your book and listening to your content and talking to other guys, it seems like that's the exact same thing

with firefighters is someone like me and a gunfight. It's firefighters fucking fighting fire. Like it's dangerous as fuck. You wouldn't want to be anywhere else with anyone else. And you know, you're with your fucking brothers who eventually become your family. And it's time to get some. Yeah, it's time to get some. The sum is different, but it's time to get some. Yep, it's time to get some. The sum is different, but it's time to get some. Yeah, that's all it is. But you said, so is that just the younger guys that are newer or does that kind of wear off?

It wears off as you get older, certainly as 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. It's burning. It affects everybody. The community. It fucks people up, man. 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, the 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. Yeah. After my fucking friends, all my friends were killed. I never wished for another fire again. Yeah. It was like, if it happens, we go and we do our job. Yeah, but I'm not coming to work all motivated. Man, I hope we fucking catch one today.

Yeah, 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. Yeah, but if I have to, I will. I get another question. faces burn off of their fucking skulls. I don't want to do that again. Yeah, but if I have to, I will. I get another question. So in combat, if somebody's killed in the in the line of duty, there's a instantaneous feeling of you want to get fucking revenge. And you want to go after the people that fucking killed your brother, or your friend, your fucking teammate.

And, you know, a lot of times it doesn't happen immediately and you have to wait. But, and it might be a completely, it might be a completely different fucking organization, you know, but you get that, sometimes you get that feeling of like, yeah, fuck you, you got, you got mine. And now I'm going to fucking get yours. But you guys don't, I mean, when you lose somebody, where does that, where does that rage go? There's no get back.

That's what I'm getting at. 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. Yeah. We're gonna 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. And but unfortunately, there's consequences to those actions. I guess when I'm getting at is, is, where's the energy go? You know, it goes into a bottle and you drink it down and And it goes into this place inside of you that you try to bury it. There's no satisfaction. It's just all why, why, why, why, constant wise.

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. Yeah. And there's nothing you can do with it, because it just keeps stacking up. Yeah. And it fucks you up over time.

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

like, you can't, it's a fuck, it's a, it's a fire. It's never made. And, I mean, that's, that's, that's, that's fucking tough to deal with. And, but I just wanted to's, that's, that's fucking tough to deal with. And, but I just wanted to hear, you know, from somebody that's been there. Well, we try to find, you try to find outlets, you know, like anybody, 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.

Now, I'll tell people PTSD will kill you and everything you fucking love. Yeah, not instantly, it's a slow death, but it'll eventually consume you and everybody you, everybody too. Yeah. Well, you can't get rid of it, but you can learn to live with it and still be an effective and contributing member of society. So how long were you a firefighter the first go around? First time I was a firefighter, it was three years.

Three years, three years and you decided you wanted to change your pace. It kinda just happened. I didn't really decide it. I had a great career going. I was having a lot of fun doing what I love to do. By this time, I had switched fire departments. I went from the small town, I grew up into 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 you could have hoped for as a young fireman. I was living the life I wanted. And 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 they say cops and firefighters all have one thing in common. They both want to be firemen, right? I've heard that. You heard that. And I, uh, I was the opposite.

I was always really curious about being a police officer too. I couldn't do both because of schedules. So somehow this guy talked me into doing ride along with him. And other people that do both? Yeah, there are. There are some that they're able to figure it out. Oh, really? Sure. But there's not many of them. Um, usually one or the other. Because the schedules are so stringent. And they they overlapped 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 was like,

man, there's no way he said come do a ride along with me. I did a ride along and it was over. I have it. It's no different than if the seals took you for a ride along. They're like, hey, or go go sit on the ship in the galley and you want to do that? You won't do this yeah, and it was another level of Emergency services just aside. I never got to see you know and 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. You do just go back. You do realize 99.9% of the fucking population would rather sit on their ass in the galley and fucking get fat.

I do. I do. Okay. I know that now. And I am with that 99% because of what I know about law enforcement. There's a reason why I'm like, yeah, I'd rather do that. All right. I support the fuck out of cops. Yeah. They ain't no way in hell I'd ever do it again. Yeah. So yeah, I gave it a go.

Sorry to interrupt you, but yeah. So you talk about kind of your career as law enforcement So you talk about kind of your career as law enforcement and you brought to light something else where you had, you were on the ground, you were getting your face beat and then you went to a domestic call and then you went to there was like a fucking dog disturbance or something, which was nothing and you were trying to and you did a very good job painting the picture of I'm fighting for my life in the middle of the fucking street.

Somebody's beating your face and trying to kill you to a domestic violence call to a little, a little later, or whoever the hell it was, that just was complaining about a dog. And, you know, 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? Minutes. Minutes.

Yeah, before they call and complain to a super bother. Wow. So, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's fucking impossible to switch that off. It's physically fucking impossible. You imagine going from like two gun fights, they're having to go play patty cake with the motherfucker, the mindset you're in.

No. When it's time for patty cake? No, I can't. That's what it's like. Yeah, this is like being a cop, you 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 and had it not been for another police officer.

I started to die right here in a parking lot at night. And he told us he was going to blow my brains out with my weapon. He had it halfway out and had it not been for another police officer. I started died right here in the 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. My knees got weak when that happens. I mean, I'm human and I'll fall down and before I could get up, he's on top of me of me grounded pound and 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 and keep him from ripping my weapon off of my body with the other hand. And in good fortune that night, 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 get him under arrest. And within five, 10 minutes, I'm on another call, go into a disturbance call or a domestic dispute call. And then when you get there, guys clearly beat a woman, he needs to go to jail. You start locking him up. Now you're fighting the fucking wife because now you're locking her husband up.

She's one of 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. I'm fighting two people. I don't want to go back to where you were. I don't want to be on my back. I'm fighting two people.

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

But I almost just got killed twice. Yeah. And I'm not in the mood for this shit. Sorry, I didn't put my kid gloves on. Yeah. And then before you know it, you're in a supervisor's office, Danson, on the carpet trying to explain your actions because your tone was inappropriate. Yeah. Where you call me for this fucking barking dog, you know tone was inappropriate. Yeah.

Why are you calling me for this fucking barking dog, you know what I mean? Yeah. 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. Because you don't need to be sending people that are damn getting your faces beat in sending them to that call. Yeah, what's insane?

I'm with him on that. You know, it's just in today's society, it's so fucking easy for people to judge and tell you how to do your fucking job. And, you know, sit behind a fucking desk and, you know, cause a fucking scene when they've never taken one step in those shoes. I like that saying people sleep peacefully at night

because men stand ready to do violence on their behalf. Yeah. And it's an awesome saying because there are people out there who are doing violence, who are in harm's way constantly. So people can live these comfortable judgmental lives. Man. They've never even seen a bloody fucking nose. And they're telling you how somebody

should be doing something, fuck off. Man, it's a fucking disgrace. But back to defunding the police, I was 100% against it too. And then I thought about it, and I actually had kind of the same opinion that you had. They shouldn't be responding to a fucking barking dog or a noise complaint or, you know, and unfortunately, well, not unfortunately, there always has to be fucking compromise. And if half the population is fucking pissed, you know, about something and the other half isn't, I mean, I think there is definitely 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 find 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 to red light. And then you know what, that alleviates problem.

I don't know how much, but I'm going to say, what, maybe 75% of interactions between police and, you know, the community's citizens. But then you put a camera to 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 know what I mean? Because, oh, that's a fucking head and 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 right in 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, it's, people are going to fucking wine and moan no matter what, you know, is done. But it's never enough.

And this is that coddled ass society that we live in. We have too much. Yeah. And it's just never enough. And people just want to complain until they take it all from us and strip it from us. And then they want to go back to the way it used to be. Yeah. So, well, hopefully it's not coming to that. I don't know.

But, um, yeah. Right. 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 Can you please can you please you know put your puppy away? Yeah, put your puppy away. You're disturbing the neighbor But you actually ran into What year was this was two was 2003 to 2005, correct? That's correct.

And, um, and there were a lot of politics going on back then. And, uh, you actually got fired. I did from the police department. Best thing ever happened to me. I realized that now as an old wiser man, 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 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 because of something I said yesterday? worried about, all right, am I getting fired today? 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. We were very aggressive back then and not overly aggressive, like we weren't violating rights and all that's just 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 gonna kill you with it 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 red man It's gonna fucking shoot me I had to explain myself all the time man. I get my chase a guy down one 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 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. But I didn't. I holstered

up went toe to toe with the man and ended up getting police officer of the month for this, 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 Nothing changed. It's just Optics right what it looked like so I ended up what I got fired for was just something completely, it was just complete bullshit. I get pulled up into the 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, 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 25, 26 year old police officer, them telling you to just answer your calls and not go be proactive. It's kind of a slap in the face. That had to be demoralizing. It'd be like they taken you off of an operational unit and put you behind a desk. That's about how it would feel. So I walk out of there with the

mindset of like, yeah, whatever are fuck y'all? And then literally 20 minutes, I'm in a goddamn fightin' an alley with a guy who just tried to bail out of a car on me. And 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 a slowdown. So they did, they had reason to get rid of me. What are the fucking repercussions of you fighting real crime? Why is that a fucking bad thing for a police department? Is the, and I hear this shit all the time, is the brass at a police department just a bunch of fucking posses? Or what is the fucking issue? Long and short, yeah. What happens is the brass comes up doing exactly the same things that junior officers did. And now

they're in positions of power, not saying they're 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 wanna 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 just go sit at the waffle house for 10 hours. They're 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. 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 going to lose our jobs. We're going to get murdered in the process anyway.

There's no point in it. 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 enter departmentals. 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 tiresome. Where does the fucking pressure come from though? Is it the mayor? Are they trying to like scrub the

crime stats? The mayor, the citizens, city council, that's where it all comes from, man. Everybody wants to keep their little position of power 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. And sorry if they're not doing it politely. You spit in a cop's face and he grabs you

by the fucking neck and throws you down. Well, good for you. You should be fucking thrown down. You shouldn't be able to do that to the police man. You know what? That's we've gotten so far away From I think 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 then 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. Yeah, there are no more immediate consequences. There are still consequences. You know, we're seeing it right now in the fucking streets. Yes. The consequences that are coming from that are, you know, it'll take a minute. And then the pendulum's going to swing back the other way. And it's a fucking accountability issue too. And you know, I hear, you know, like yourself, a lot of people are like, it's how these fucking

kids will raise 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. And nobody takes accountability anymore. It's always passed on, you know,

to the, to the, to the, you know, shit rolls downhill. And there's no more accountability and the fucking consequences aren't immediate. to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the,ing me off so much, I'm getting fucking goosebumps on the back of my neck. I can see it. I can see your trigger figure moving over there. Yeah, calm down. Yeah, yeah. But well, on that note, let's take a quick commercial break. When we come back, we're gonna talk about June 18th, 2007,

you know, the sofa super store incident that, you know, was the second, second most tragic event and biggest loss of firefighters, only second to 9-11. Structural firefighters, yeah. Yeah. Some wildland firefighters. It's a bigger number of bit. Oh, yeah. But we're going gonna visit that when we come back. But 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, why don't you head over to VigilanceElite.com Buy yourself some company and get some Vigilance Elite gummy bears Not bad All right, man, we're back from the break and getting ready to go into what happened on June 18th, 2007. So the sofa super store fire, which claimed the lives of nine firefighters and is one of the most tragic 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 you mentioned that this changed your life forever and out of all the traumatic events that you've witnessed

and been a part of, this is kind of what this is a straw that broke the camel's back and kind of sent you into the downward spiral of PTSD. And also, I watched a, I did a lot of research on this too and it seemed to be a very controversial incident and a lot of lessons learned happened from it and it seems that the men, you know, like yourself that survived it are considered legends in the community. But I wanted to, before we get going on that,

I kind of want to put everybody in the mindset of how horrific this was. So I want to roll the tape. So I played that to get everybody in the mindset. I want to know how fucking serious this is. And that was your best friend on the phone. And, uh, telling his wife that he loved her.

And, uh, like, um, 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. Yeah um yeah as the last words that you heard was my friend my best friend Louis Moky and his last dying words as he was burning the death. What's up to here? Genetieth 2007 started out as a normal day for us.

We certainly weren't expecting any of that. We actually all got together. I was off duty that day. And we were having a golf tournament for another Fernivore who was a firefighter who was killed four months to the day prior in a car accident. And that was another really good for a new mind who got me the job in Charleston, actually.

Really? Yeah. He was one of my other best friends. I mean, it's, it is so pay an homage to him trying to raise some money for his family at a golf tournament and we're doing what Fireman do and just like, you know, what what seals do when you all get together and cops do and they get together and 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

At the end of the golf tournament we Everybody's phones kind of started ringing and we were all told us of a super store 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 if 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 get be very bad so you had to like kind of strategically plan how how you would face this monster in the event that would happen. How many buildings were like that in that city? Tons of them. Tons of them? Yeah, I mean, there everywhere is just old furniture stores.

Actually, an old grocery store that was converted into a one-story furniture warehouse. I mean, so it was a huge, like a hundred something thousand square feet. Don't quote me on a square footage, but it was a big showroom and then had big storage storage facility behind it. And that's where the fire started. So we found out that building was on fire. We, um, we all got our cars and just went, um, what were you thinking on the way there? I'd heard that my friend Louis was missing. You heard that before you even arrived?

Yeah. When you heard that it was the sofa super store that did you know it was going to be fucking bad since the that was already hanging on everybody's radar. Well, it's like I told you earlier, it doesn't, never seems real until it's real, man. And it seemed like I told you earlier, it doesn't, uh, never seems real until it's real, man. And, uh, she seemed like another fire. But when I heard he was missing, I'd extra adrenaline kicked in and I drove fast or I broke through a police barricade with my vehicle, hunting on and drive through it like smoke, hand-banned or anything.

We just went around in the cops, 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. My girlfriend was driving my car at the time. My firehouse was right up the street. I told her I said, go to my locker in my firehouse,

grab my shit and get it back to me. I got to find out what's going on. And so this time you got hundreds of firemen on scene, man, I mean hundreds. There's probably 300 something plus people on the scene that night. 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, Lewis 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 down and there's just fire every fucking, where everywhere you look, it's just fire blowing. And 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 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 I remember hearing reports of like 19 or 20 initially is what they thought. But by the time of smoke settled it was nine and it was nine really good dudes and all those dudes I knew very personally. I've worked with every single one of them. We sat around that table breaking bread, many a nights having jokes, having laughs, you knew their families. And Lewis was just happy to be my best friend because and I wasn't his best friend. He was one of those really cool dudes. I 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 a lot of 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 in a manner I can try to describe, but it's going to be hard. You did make entry. Yeah, you know, if I remember correctly, you did you make entry and you got pulled back? Was that right?

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 where a building would be the right side. And we go through this place, man. It was, it was just twisted steel. It looks spaghetti, spaghetti noodles. And we go through this place, man, it was, it was just twisted steel, look, spaghetti, spaghetti noodles, and it was still hot. There were still a lot of fire present, and, but we had guys miss and 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 to 20 of us on the body recovery teams, we were all broken apart and put into five maintains and we all came in from different parts of the building. And 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. 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. So you're in it at this point and how many guys are with you? Four other guys.

And so just a pan of picture because 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 there was nothing, and I can see how it will be easy to get disoriented and fucking lost and something like that. And you couldn't even bring a hose in with you to retrace your steps to get the fuck out. And I mean, the amount of courage that takes, I mean, it doesn't, uh, did it seem like it was even a courageous thing?

Did it probably didn't even go through your fucking mind? No, the only thing we're going. The only thing is is they wanted volunteers and a lot of guys didn't raise their hand. No, it was very, very, I think because those guys knew they didn't want what was on the inside of that building. It's not that they're less of a firefighter. Now, I think that they just knew I don't want to fuck with that. Man, we're here to do whatever we got to do, but there was a select group of us that did. And 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 all home. And 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 got to do what we got to do. Let's push forward and go get it.

So we didn't have fucking air packs on our back because they were all used now So we're choking on smoke and we have what called flash heads of firefighters have flash heads and when you put your face piece on You pull your flash hood up and it protects the skin right here protects your neck and your ears So we're choking on smoke literally gagging on black smoke And you you can't see there's you know in're crawling next to big flames, fires, and you have ladder. Companies dumping water on top of us 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, 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. It seemed like it took a long time to get to them. And once we started finding them, you would hear a team shout out,

I got somebody and we would do the same. I saw something silver and it didn't look like anything we had seen up into this point because everything was just black and then 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. No, I started looking at this thing and I say it in my book. I just turn it in a head like a curious dog trying to figure out what the fuck is this. I was just turning my head like a curious dog trying to figure out what the fuck is this and I realized that it was an air pack of one of our one of our guys

It was uh, we were several silver scot air packs and it busted open it didn't look like an air pack. It was just like it was like full-ade open And uh, once I realized what it was I had hands, I looked down and I realized my hands were on the shoulders of one of our guys. And we were black gear. It just looked like a poly black shit like debris. And then I realized that I pushed my push back and I looked down and I realized these were his shoulders. That's his back because the pack is the back. So this, his head should be right here. But there was no head. There was nothing. It was, it was, it was just a couple of teeth. There was no helmet. There was no skull. It was just teeth. And, um, I look 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've been to calls where we had burned up kids on Christmas. I've seen burned kids. I've been to burnt people many times, but nothing had life that one. No. No. I realized right then whoever's in here is dead. Whatever count that they have on the outside,

every one of them is fucking dead. And I knew Lewis was in there. And we just, we had no way to tell who was who. That'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 fuck it is So what we had to do is We were tasked with not moving the bodies and just trying to identify them the best way that we could

Without doing too much and what the coroner was gonna do after all the smoke clear does come in and GPS them And locate where their bodies were. So that's what we did. So this one individual, Captain Billy was a really good dude. He'd been in fire service 30 something years. He was off engine 19 and um we ended up pulling his fire pants down in his wallet was in his pants and we opened it up and he saw 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. Now you go to these things and it sucks. It fucks with you from time to time, but it's not personal. It's personal.

Now, 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 we can't sit around too long. So we got to find more of our brothers. And then we go, we go not too far away and stumble on another one, because at this point, smoke starting to lift a little bit more. Has the fire got knocked down and found Mark.

And he was, he was face down, rolled him over. His hands were in front of his face and it's almost like he saw the flash over that happened in that building. It's not a backdraft. That's movie shit. I mean, those things happen, but flash overs happen all the time and fires and that's when everything reaches it's combustible limit at the same exact time and everything just that all the super heated 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 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, latter five and I had a great relationship with Mark. We worked together many times.

So we roll and you gotta 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 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. The covers are eyes and right here's usually rubber and it's black. And if you've ever seen an ultrasound of a baby, 3D, that's what his face looked like. It was baked into his mask. Damn. And we did his coat, pull his coat open,

and we had metal named tags coming 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 Lewis. You know, all of these guys are 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. And 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 him out of this corner and he just had a cut over his eye and what happened was bringing rain out of air But he got away from the fire, but he died from smoke damn and he just looked peaceful man and his His wedding invitations were in the mail We're still being delivered everywhere around and he died that night and he was actually just working for somebody else

He did a body shift for somebody else and it cost him his life. Damn So the Brandon was I knew we had eight at that point and by this time it had come through it We have nine confirmed as this is hours into the night and um, what's the what? Was the fire completely out? Was it still smoke and this kind of smoke was still there, but it was nothing like it was. I mean, it was, we were in there for hours. And so 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 there, but after bulk of the fire was knocked down, because yeah, I 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. That's why I think it took us so long to start finding guys is because there was so much

smoke. I really think we probably crawled over a couple of times possibly. We just didn't know it. So now I know we have eight and some guys are 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've got to find Lewis. You know, that limousine company you talked about that I owned, I drove for Lewis's wedding.

We had a lot of fucking fun together, man. This is actually the night after his anniversary. He lived one year and one day after his anniversary. So I put my helmet on and I got a job to do, man, and I was actually part of the building where you could stand up and I start walking out. And man, I probably made it 10 or 15 feet. And I walked through what seemed to be a doorway. I'm having to relive this because it's

I can describe it to you and and what I did as soon as I cleared that doorway I looked to my left and he was laying right there. So 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 the skin is baked off of somebody's face, you can still recognize him. And it's a sick thing to say, but I've witnessed that. And Lewis was on his back, man, and his left leg was underneath his right leg, was straight out, and there was a piece of big ass piece of steel across it.

And we ended up having dig that out, but his arms were sticking up in the air, and his fucking sleeves were burned off his firecoat. All the skin was burned off of him, and just his arm bones were sticking up. His radius and all his hands were burned off of him and just as our bones were sticking up, his radius and all his hands were burned off and his head was his head was back and his eyeballs were burned out and fucking skin was burned off of his face and his mouth was wide open. And I just got on my knees next to him and told him how much I loved him. And the shitty thing about that is just four years prior to that, before I went to the police

department, Lewis 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 he was set on fire with gasoline. Lewis was on his knees on one side of the man. His name was Rodney, this guy. That was on my knees next to him, next to him. I'd cross from Lewis, but next to Rodney. And 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 does somebody do this as human being? Just four years later, I'd be on my knees next to Lewis burn, even worse condition than that man was. And when we rolled that man over that night, it's fucking arm snapped off because it was burnt so bad. And so that night when we're putting Lewis into his body bag, and all of our other guys, I, I wanted to be very careful because I didn't want to hurt my friend. You're fucking dead, not even want to hurt him. Yeah, so we get them all bagged up. And then we get the American flags, we drape them.

And then my team's task with carrying every single one of them out. That's what we did. We carried them out one by one. Sorry, man. This is real. This is real. Yeah. This is the fucking job.

Yeah. I signed up for him. Sorry. I signed up for it. Didn't realize how real it would get. Yeah. How long was the chain of events up until this point? We're talking all day and all night.

So my shift started at eight o'clock the next morning, I started from inside of that building. Yeah. I got there around seven, 38 o'clock the next morning and I started from inside of that building. Yeah. I got there around 738 o'clock that night. Pulled a full 12 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 in their own night searching and digging and cutting steel and moving heaven and earth to get these guys out and then we got them out. Hey, I got a job due. Your shift is up and we need you all back in the firehouse. Yeah, and then You got ATF and all these other FBI everybody's coming in and investigate this thing We need you all in the rigs. You're gonna go to work and that's the problem

Like you say in combat When you leave combat you leave it over there. Yeah, we got to go and serve this same community that we just dropped nine of our own in So we go to the firehouse we back the rig in and now we're there and We lost three guys out of my house And their fucking cell phones wouldn't stop ringing because 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 Yeah, and you hear these guys phones ringing man and we had to go back there and shut them all off. And you know what's their family just freaking the fuck out. We couldn't

take it. And then you got fucking reporter showing up like leeches within fucking minutes, trying to stop shove a microphone in somebody's face to find out, hey, how do you feel? How the fuck you think I feel? Yeah. You know, I'm not trying to glorify this shit. It's fucking sucks. Yeah. 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 got to stack this on top of the other bowl shit and fucking keep going. Yeah. Did they offer, I mean, I know this is early on, but I mean, was there any, they offering help at all the department? I can't. So our department did the best they could with what we had at the time. We've never in the fire service. There had been other incidents, but I like this magnitude, I guess. Man, so it was kind of like a free fall to try to figure out the best way to help guys.

And they came up with some counselors really quickly. I don't know the timeline, but they wanted guys, hey, man, we got these counselors for y'all, I 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 yeah, and that was the problem because 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, 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 because those two 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 the suck it up mentality because it's bullshit You know, I understand it suck it up. We have to deal with certain things

But there's nothing wrong with a suck it up while we're doing this We got a job to do let's go get our guides and when we come back if it fucking bothers you Let's talk about it because 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. Yeah You know, that's it's unfortunate because that mentality is fucking man. You know, it's unfortunate because that mentality is fucking through, you know, it's as far as I know,

it's just about every community that continuously deals with these type of events or traumatic stuff. But it is, you know, it's starting to change from guys like yourself coming out and saying, hey, the shit isn't right. What we've been doing for the last however many fucking years forever. And it is starting to change, I think, and across all the services and military too. But, you know, your spearhead and your community, and that takes a lot of fucking courage. This sucks, man, because this is what it does to you.

And you have to relive it. And it's hard when these cameras shut off. And when I go get 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. 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 to eat and shit around me. I fell into the victim mindset. 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 from me in the middle of the night. I knew it. Yeah, and I would hide that And I'm not ashamed of that anymore I'm not ashamed of that anymore. We'll get into, we're going to get into, you know, some, the After Effects and how it affected your life and your family life and all your, your team and everything. Change your, your entire fucking life forever.

We'll get into that in a minute. But a lot of controversy happened after that fire. And I'm not, I could not find why. Can you just what if you were in charge with something if happened, would you have done anything different? No. No. I'll back our chief, man. And it's the way we were taught. And here's the problem. Was it the culture? It was a 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, and the fire service, people Monday morning quarterback, this fucking fire like you wouldn't believe. I never read the Nios reports. I don't care. You know why? Because I was fucking there. Yeah. And it doesn't matter what

happened. We lost nine guys. We learned from that. I mean, I guess it does matter what happened because it's implemented changed throughout the entire fire service. 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 him. It was another crew. But they went in there.

They knew somebody was in there and 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. Had I been in charge 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. Yeah. 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 we're 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

Yeah, for better things to happen and that's just something things have to happen for better things to happen. And that's just something we have to accept. Things in the military happen, shitty things, shitty things, and law enforcement happen. That's the only way things change. Yeah. It's kind of a necessary evil. I hate to say that. Yeah. The only thing that you would go back if you could and change would be the culture. And I mean, I understand that, but that's fucking impossible to change. And our culture was very similar. You know, I mean, as much as I hate to say, that's what you fucking sign up to do. Yeah. Just like we talked about earlier, that's what you want to fucking do.

You want to be in that. And you feel fucking invincible. I mean, how many fucking fires have you gone to prior to that? And you get that sense of invincibility and you fucking crave it. And you especially, I mean, the culture started for you at what 15 fucking years old. You know, you grew up in a firehouse. You left it for what four years, four years, 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 no different than, you know, people being raised, but, you know, that's how you were fucking raised. You threw up in it. 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 know now is I cannot live in the past and do the wise. Why did this happen? Well, you know what? It fucking happened. It's called ownership and acceptance. Yeah. On 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. Yeah. Well, more I'm going with this is, you know, guilt. And you wouldn't have changed anything. And I'm willing to bet that your best friend, Lewis, wouldn't have fucking changed anything either. And they died doing what they wanted to do. And we were going to do a video on accepting loss and kind of moving past it. And, you know, and professions like this. A lot of times, you know, that's, I'm not going to say that's how you want to

go out, but the guys I know, I don't think they would have fucking gone out any other way. You don't want to go out 90 years old, somebody wipe in your fucking ass and feed in your pudding. No, that's, I get it. So yeah, I'm the same way. And they're the same way. It's shitty if it happens, but go out like a fucking warrior. Yeah, doing what you were put here to fucking do.

Yeah. But, that's why I was bringing that up. How long did it take you to be able to talk about that? Long time, many years. To talk about it, the way that I talk about it now. Yeah. A long time, fucking decade. I tried.

I tried later on in life to talk about it and I shut down every time. I just couldn't do it. Yeah. 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 know. Yeah. well and that it did. That's why I do know. Yeah. Um, you're changing the culture, man. You are changing the fucking culture. And, uh, you're the only one I know that's actually doing it. That's actually I'll put yourself out there and I'll bet you get a lot of fucking hate. I do. And I'll bet you also get a lot of praise. But moving forward just a little bit, you know, when it comes to the culture on page 227 in your book, excuse me, I don't want to butcher his name, but Captain John McGinnigal.

Yes. Of latter five, told me in the parking lot. The very day that he retired and left the job after nearly 40 years, Captain John retired. For June 18th, 2007, Sophie Superstore, that claimed the lives of nine of our bravest. 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, in quotes, Travis, be careful. We're gonna 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. And you say that those words still resonate with you to this day. I think about it all the time. Was he talking about the culture? Who's to, yep, he was talking about the way we fight fire because 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. Yeah. And he told me a story one time about an abandoned house that they were in.

And he made fun of it. He's like, I don't know how to fucking house didn't fall over and then he stepped me and he was like, I know I didn't fucking fall over. They were goddamn hundreds of us in there if whole fucking holding it up. And that's how it come and didn't fall over. But what he was getting that, there was no need to be inside of this thing.

And it was burning ass hole to elbows and into 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 wanna be the man outside. And that's a saying, an old saying in the Charleston Fire Department. Don't get caught outside. Now, that's the culture. Because you were considered a pussy or somebody trying to get out of the harm's way.

Then as a young man, 25, 26 years old, you don't want to be that guy. You want to show everybody I got what it takes to be here. Yeah, that's the culture. Is that culture starting to change now? I think slowly. Yeah, it's still there though. When did you see it start to turn a little bit?

That 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 they did not favor the culture of our defy our 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 it was dangerous, extremely dangerous. Couldn't tell us that. And it was button heads because when we had new chiefs were coming in, we put it heads with them because we still want 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 part and get mad at him when he bites a head off and fucking another dog.

Now, you know, that's who we were at the time. Now, not saying it was right, 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 productive on scenes. I mean, they have their shit wired tight now and it's done the right way.

So, I was just a part of it at a different time. Yeah. In 2008, John Carr sounds like he took over the whole thing. John Carr sounds like he took over the whole thing. Yeah. What was the morale like when he came in? Not good, because we didn't welcome outsiders. 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 and punish you guys for being who you are, although it felt like that in a sense at first, because we just were not used to a different command structure, command staff, you know. So it was, we had to learn how to adapt to it. Well, I mean, in a sense, he's fucking with tradition. That's exactly what it was. And so where we would want to, 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, y'all better be able to handle it and not make me have to call another fucking company to come down here. And your underman to understaff, 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? You get an ass rip and piss rip and fire like that and the battalion she has to call somebody else. The higher ups didn't like that and they're like, oh you boys couldn't put that fucking fire out. And then people would slowly start getting transferred. That happens to me

times. So you had to be aggressive man. If you want to keep your spot. So when car came in, he changed all of that. So then he, I remember he changed it to your, I think it's like you're getting maybe four ladders or enough four engine companies, two ladder companies, a potential 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 it all. I was like, hey, man, it's kind of reducing our workload a little bit. It's kind of nice. And well, that's, I mean, that's good.

How long, how long was he in there before I started implementing these changes? Was it like fucking immediately? No, not that I remember. I think it was, it was a slow, slow progression. Um, 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 have to do much. We were all killing ourselves slowly inside. Damn. 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 under manned to way to under man 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. 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 a bigger water supply. We didn't like that. It was honestly the smartest fucking thing you could possibly do, but we didn't like it because it's changed. Nobody likes change. Yeah. 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 that experienced all the change, the ones that are left. There's no guys then very, very few, very few. We lost, I want to say,

roughly a hundred men within the first year to fuck a huge turnover after that. I mean, you're talking 20, 30-year guys on the job, just saying, fuck it, I'm leaving. Damn, I mean, I mean, uh, well, I mean, we're talking about courage. That takes, that takes a lot of courage to, uh, car coming in there. No, and I mean, because I mean, I mean, that culture is, uh, I mean, that culture is probably, I'm guessing is in, in someone in every department across the US for sure. 100%. someone in every department across the US. For sure.

100%. So he's coming in now and I'm about to piss every mother fucker off out here. They're all going to hate me, but I got to do it. And then when you're coming into 100 plus year old fire department, which 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. Yeah.

So yeah, it was tough. Well, I'm glad we talked about that. 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 say another break get when it comes to being a firefighter. And on that note, let's take another break and we'll come back and go down the downward spiral.

All right, sounds good. All right, man. I hope you guys are enjoying the show. I think this is a pretty good one. Hit pause, go over to vigilanceelete.com, pick yourself up one of these sweet shirts. And if you're lucky, maybe these hats will be in stock too. Alright, we're back from the break again and the last section was pretty tough I know. So now we're kind of going towards the downward spiral, which you call the downward spiral on your book. And I've heard a part, you're in a fire and you've got a guy, a new guy with you

that you refer to as a sweet onion. Yeah. And for me, it kind of sounded like this is where it started slipping the most and 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. And you even referred to the fact that you were running out of air. You kind of left the team. You're off on your own, didn't, you know what I mean? And then you actually had the thoughts going through your head

of maybe you'll die in the fire like your best friend Louis did. Yeah. And found a window, opened the window, got some fucking air. And then and sweet onion sound like he was kicking ass at that point. And you got recalled three, I guess three horns as the as the signal. Yes, it's a calculation. So they'll hit three horns

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 a new territory for us for backing out. Yeah. Well, there's another guy on scene there who you refer to in your book is Captain Silva. Yeah, yeah, Silver, like, changes name to protect his identity, though. Yeah. Well, we got him on the line here. So, huh? We got him on the line here. So Captain Silva What how's it going Captain Silva? I'm sitting here with Travis House and He was talking about a call or a fire that you guys were in and

in his book and there was a new guy with him and you guys got recalled out of the building and I just kind of wanted to see if you guys could go over that actions on objective sure sure actually at the fire I was up I came back on the Sixth day so specifically me and Travis being in the building at the same time that you know that that didn't that didn't occur That was somebody else but no he's wrong For that thing the whole time is Travis alive with you now he's right here chief What's up chief Ricky? I

You got what? I Yeah, and big old balls of yours. He's got the biggest balls in six counties We call him Ricky Ricky all balls no shaft. No fuck did you'll get his over? Hey chief? No, I was talking about that fire on Daniel Island where the townhouses were ripping and they they back this out of it Yeah, that one Right on I'm glad Travis could clarify I think it's like I didn't go to that one like the fuck you were I changed his name and I changed your name in the book to protect your identity, but the lid's blown off now. Oh well shit happens

Shit Guys money neither can I but money. Neither can I. But we know I have to worry about that. 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're wondering, what were you doing at that time? Well, in that particular fire right there, I had that thing bought a novel so to speak. Minicot named Andy Andy went went in there and we did it down real well and then we there was some extension and I saw if I get the stuff you don't understand just 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 um to have us where you are you in the truck house and I can't remember now is that i was uh... i was driving in june sixteen at the end we got called over for that thing yeah we have you remember i i brought that thing from uh... bubble yeah i do yet i took that far from bubble the honest with you and me and i had to

and he was my fireman at the time and he and he went in and we we we knocked it and we 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 that's really I wasn't real happy about that at all. It doesn't sound like anybody was very happy about that call. Yeah, we were making good progress and all that. And that was before the main fire wasn't it? No, it was after, because remember, they blew those air horns to back us out, and we're all old now.

But air horns back us out, and we weren't used to evacuating. Remember that? Yeah, that's right. That's right. We've learned a lot of changes in SOP shot and during that time, that was the acclamation time for us. So, as we were going through that transformation, we couldn't be quite as aggressive as we were back in our old days or hey, days, 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 Hiss to come out there was a bunch of unhappy firemen. We were sitting in the backyard crab us if I remember. David Ishmael came back there and I

think I started on poor wish. Yeah you were letting everybody have it I remember because I was one of the last guys out at a building and you were on inches six and you fucking let me have it. And I was like the fucking y'all you're like god damn it we had it. We had it by the balls. Travel what the fuck we don't do this shit. We don't do this shit I just remember you coming on glue now. They calm down old man shit I think 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 On the way to work It's been mixed shift But anyway, yeah, Sean, that was a home. That was actually a good fire. Unfortunately, we got pulled out, man. So I have everything good you do it right? Yeah, man.

This is amazing, man. I love you, man. Once the last time you guys connected. I saw him at a swingers party about, um, I'm, uh, fuckers while ready. Yeah. him at a swingers party about um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um I'll send somebody over I Together you don't know what you didn't But they went on with it anyway well, wow

Well, one is the last time you guys connected. That's been a few months. Yeah Take it all out. I don't think he believed me that you were on the phone here, but I didn't I thought this was some prank And then I heard his voice. I was like, Oh God damn Well that guy's a legend man. He's a legend in a fire service. So awesome. You're the fucking man. Well Chief Silva Ricky where there's code name was silver in the book. Okay Well, hey, I appreciate your time and I really appreciate you letting us give you a call. I just wanted to reconnect you guys here and and and really the good old days, but, but

I think we'll wrap it up for now. You guys got anything you want to say? Hey, Chief Ricky, I'll call you later, all right, baby. I stay light, pal. It's good talk to you. Shine, good talk to you too, man. You too. It was cheap Ricky. I call you later. All right, baby You too is a pleasure be safe. I love you cheat Bye-bye Wow

You guys goddamn I heard that guys voice I thought you were pranking. I was like, what the fuck's he doing? He thought I was fucking around. This, yeah. I literally thought I had the wrong guy there for a minute. You like, that's not him. I was like, oh shit. Well, because you were saying the wrong name

because there's a code name in the book. And I was like, yeah, whatever. Yeah. And I heard his voice. I was like, what the fuck, face hurts, man. And he did that after that last session. Holy shit. You might want to check your pants.

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 30, 30 something years and that fire I was talking about was when he was a captain, but he later promoted to battalion chief. He was a battalion chief downtown and he was just fucking good as gold, man. God damn. Well, that's cool, man. Thank you for that. Yeah, we were welcome. I felt like I was back in Firehouse for a second. Good. I'm good feeling, isn't it? It's amazing. Right on man.

What's that chemistry you have with certain people, you know? That's the brotherhood. That's it, that's it right there. That's it, there it is. But I gotta figure out, I gotta find out how you all made that happen after the show. You won his number, I'll give it to you. I got it, I just fucking was.

It's fucking crazy. But I told you we do our research. But so moving out, 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 worried we're at mentally, which is not a good spot to be in. And then what eventually ended your career

in the fire service? So it was a culmination of a lot of things building up to 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 a course of two and a half years. And it's not something I'm proud of. I'm actually very embarrassed about it,

but it happened and it needs to be talked about because the reason I talk about it, it's 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 the side to the side to try to figure out what was going on. What happened was this new behavior that I was taking on, which is becoming normal.

I did at the funeral for one of our guys. I got into a physical altercation on the bus. We had it. We had a bunch of buses brought in because 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 Heathrow has had it 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 everybody witnessed it. Yeah, and this is somebody I'm supposedly love, you know, and protect.

And I just did that. And that event, everybody got up, they left the bus and I was kind of alone on the bus after that. And then after that was more the same. I got into physical altercations at the training facility where I assaulted one of 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 at

the fuck off. And when I did one of the training on structures came over and grabbed me and turned me around and we did a through him into the wall and told him, you put your fucking hands on me, I'll kill you. 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 I 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. And at this time, I was drinking a lot though.

You know, I was drinking, I was coming to work, drinking everything, it wasn't acceptable. It's embarrassed and man, but nobody, it wasn't 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 at these cops and he's firemen out there.

They end up losing their jobs or hurting somebody else because of all the shit that they're going through. They bring it to work. And that's what I was doing. I had no outlet for it. The straw that broke the camel's back for me was I came to work one day. My house engine 10 lighter five and we had a new guy in our house, and he put his coffee cup 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. 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 guys

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. And he said something to me. And 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 it's only poured gasoline on that fuse and in the bomb ignited.

I, to this day, I can't tell you what happened. Man. Because I completely lost it and I'm blacked out. And I just remember being outside with my captain shaking me. And 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 at this time I was getting mental health counseling, but it wasn't enough and I didn't do it in time. How often? Back then, I was just starting, man man so 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 yet and built the trust yet. 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. I had this tough guy image that I had to put out there. 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 to your counselors, they're coming here to lock you up. And that was my last day on the job.

Damn. You were just portraying who you thought everybody thought you needed to be. Yeah, you're exactly right. I was like a closet, closet homosexual in the NFL. Seriously. So you hear about it all the time and they have to be big, strong, tough guys, and they just have this image, opportunity to be something or not. And they can't come out 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. Yeah, my captain was on the body recovery team with me. To this day 13 years later, we hadn't spoken word about it. Nothing, not one fucking word. Yeah. I mean, it just goes to show you how fucking toxic that culture, that culture can be, it's same shit, you know, with what I used to. But, but how long, you know, what was your family life like during this time? I mean, you could, sounds like you completely ruined almost all the

relationships within your team. What was family life like? So at that point, when I left, I was still, I wasn't married yet. I'll just start 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. She was a safe place for me. I now 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 started affecting our family and everybody around us, and that was years later. But when I left Fire Department, I was already doing stand-up comedy on the side for two years. It was like 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 40 weeks a year. And I was 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 the 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. I'd always been a fun outgoing guy, but when the somewhere that switch got flipped and the old me was dead,

and I was this new version of Travis and just a soulless human being. How long did it take you off for the new version? 13 years? 13 fucking years. Yeah. Damn, man. I mean, you know, just the fact that you bought 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, there's, I mean, that's like a miracle on itself. Well, it's like you, man, when you get passionate about something, I see what you do. I don't know if you throw yourself into it

and you give it everything you got. And that's how I am. I stopped it nothing and I created some opportunities for myself. Nothing was handed to me. I made things happen because that's what we do. We don't make excuses. We just make shit happen. And I did get some, 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. 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. Now, 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 want it away from it. You mentioned some of the things that helped you and 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 kind of pull myself out is getting the fuck away from the community for a minute. And and it seemed like the farther that I leave it, the better off I am.

And then I wasn't until, shit, to be honest with, it wasn't until I started this fucking show that I kind of started reconnecting with some of the guys. And, you know, I mean, I talked about going to Marcus LaTrell's with Rob and Dave and how fucking tense that was. And I hated that, to be honest with you. I couldn't fucking stand being there. At first and then, you know,

and then the tension kind of wore off. But it, anyways, all I'm getting at is the toxicity of being around and how to help me get better. And then to hear you say, being on the road, doing comedy, you're out of the firehouse, you weren't in Charleston, you weren't in communication with the boys. And it accelerated your recovery.

Yeah, okay. Well, I mean, do you think that helped a lot getting out of there? Man, I always say when you're in a place that makes you sick, you can't get better. It's like a cancer, patient, test and cigarettes from Arbor or whoever. You're only going to get sicker. I tried to stay, I hung on tooth and nail, man, but I realized what I had problems and something needed to change when I finally, because people ask me, what made you reach out for help?

You know, and it was me sitting in my living room, dry fire and a weapon in my mouth while I'm choking on the, on the, on the weapon. The barrel down my throat was slumber and drool all over it. My tears were in and down my face and a bottle of whiskey next to me. And then I load it. And then I go to pull a trigger and I stop 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, when I got away from the fire department, things started drastically changing for me. The anxiety, I always had the nightmare, or shit I still do. But that rage inside of you, it calms. So getting away from there was the best thing

it could have ever happened to me. I didn't want to leave like that. I wanted to stay on the job, 30 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 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. immersed in it all the time, I can step away from it. Yeah. Yeah. When did you decide to put the bottle down? That's the day after our wedding in 2012. No, shit. Yeah, man, I guess I fucked up at our wedding that 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. Look great first night together. Oh, shit. Not, but 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. I said, man, I don't ever want to touch this stuff again. And I haven't. Cold turkey. Yeah. I looked at it and I started looking at, if I'm ever gonna get better, it's gonna be a long road ahead, but I need to look at the things I can control right now

that are not helping me. And the biggest one that stuck out to me was alcohol. It didn't add any positive thing in my life, nothing. Everything that it offered me was negative. So I was like, dude, just gotta go. So I just, I quit cold turkey right then. That's, that's not easy to do. 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. And you're sitting there when you don't want to be there, like you talk about in your social anxiety posts,

I get it. 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, you know, but it's just something I've had to learn to accept and deal with. And I'd rather have that than going back home with that bottle and put myself in a position to not be here anymore. Well, for everybody that's listening who is from, you know, the fire service or a 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 to get you into a better mental state. And I'm sure your business fucking started taking off to it at that point. 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 at the biggest hurdle I had yet to face was ownership and acceptance of everything. Ma'am. And I 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 very positive about be 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 last year when I realized what it was, it was something as simple as how 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 meelons? 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, it was like a light switch. Well, how the fuck did that come to you? That's funny. You asked how it came to me sitting in my car with a gun in my hand ready to blow my brains out for the second time. 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, what thought, hey, this is my purpose now 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 it's same token. I know how a wife and kids at home and I felt horrible because I'm not there. 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 and comedy.

And when I did, 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 worked around home, flipping houses in real estate and I was 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 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. All I knew was empty. And I just didn't want it anymore. So I went, I drove out to the forest on a rainy day.

And I'll sit now there in my truck and something happened that made me smile. to the forest on a rainy day. And I'll sit now there in my truck and something happened that made me smile. And when it did, I hadn't smiled in a long time. I hadn't felt a sense of satisfaction or joy in a long time. And the second that happened, I threw my gun in the glove box and said, I don't 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 will 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 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 this show because it's very, very, very difficult to talk about this stuff because you have to relive it.

If you want it to be authentic, you have to relive it. And I started doing that and I saw the impact that that was making and I started seeing 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. 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 people are buying your book and I know that's helping a ton of people. And so you're going to fucking great work, man. But thank you, man. And it's 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. The universe, I'm not spiritual. I'm not a religious I'm not 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 need 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.

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. That's awesome. Just going back just a little bit. We talked about the addiction to adrenaline and 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, and, you would say kind of filled that void. And do you still have that now or with comedy?

Yeah. 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 feels good. It's like, all right, Let's get this thing going right and 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 Who's 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 is not there comedy. You still feel you still feel the pp about to come out sometimes you don't Yeah Well, I think I've been thinking a lot about you know, because I know you told me that you don't get the same journal in Russia as you speak and as you do with the comedy or definitely not fight with fires, but just kind of 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 man, I don't know, how many people do you think you've saved? Have you ever thought about that?

No, I've never thought about it because you think about ones you couldn't. Yeah, that's the truth. I've been involved in some stuff and that's helped some people. But those are, I don't know, I mean, I hope those folks go on to become wonderful people and do wonderful things in their lives,

but it's one that you can't get back the stick with you. 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. It's a good feeling, like, it's amazing. Do you get that fucking feeling now when you get an email or somebody's, somebody pulls you aside after the show?

I mean, because 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. Satisfaction. Yeah. Yeah, so that is a very good way to word that. I didn't realize when I first started speaking,

the power, this thing had. I knew that we had problems in our communities. You know, you hear it all the time, firefighter, suicides, police suicides, 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 hit the forefront too, where they were kind of 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 because 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. 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 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. Yeah, and I'm just taking it a day to time.

It's pretty fucking fulfilling and that's amazing. But, well, you're doing great now. And I don't want to keep going down the dark road. So, I want to take a break. And when we come back, we just got a quick thing and then we're going to wrap it up. Okay. This episode of the Sean Ryan Show is brought to you by

Vigilance Elite Patreon. 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 Vigilance Elite.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.

All right, man. So once again, we are back from the break. We're going to wrap it up here pretty soon. But you know, since you are in the business of helping fellow firefighters and police and mill and and and everything like that, I have a personal friend who works for Bokeh Raton Fire Rescue. And his name is Mike Sklark. He's getting ready to he's putting in for retirement. You're getting ready to you know open up the next chapter of his life. And I know he's seen a lot of fucked up shit too. In fact, one thing that comes in my mind is I remember going out to breakfast with him

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

And I remember thinking while we were eating breakfast, I was like, Jesus Christ man, how was this dude? Fucking keeping it together, you know, plan, plan 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. So anyways, he's getting ready to retire. And I called him and told him that you were coming out here and, and, and who you are. And I know him and told him that you were coming out here and who you are.

And I know he's been researching in. 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 ask than you. So. Hey, Mike Mike you on here Well, thanks for coming on man pleasure's mind Mike, but I have

Travis here and we're getting ready to wrap it up and and so the floor is yours man. Hey, first of all I'd like to say Travis, you got a great interview over 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. Thank you. Hey, I just have to apologize. Yeah, I would like to have read your whole book. I just got to get straight after you, but I've only got about 20 pages left. 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 and very impressed. Very impressed. Thank you, man. You've had quite a journey, it looks like along the way. And some of us seem to be magnets for stuff. And you seem to be one of those magnets,

my hat's up to you. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate your support, bro. I do have a question for you. Sure. 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 in 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? I don't receive too many phone calls, but I get a ton of emails and 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 the services and I've actually experienced many of them are from actual family members of those individuals. So it's one of those things that 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. Wow, that's pretty impactful. When I was reading your book, I see your friends with Jeremy heard. Yeah, no Jeremy will. So here's what's funny. I'm a face person. I'm not a name person.

So when I read it 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. So you talk about that light bulb that comes on. Yes, sir. For years, when somebody is a critical time, whether it's your family, somebody else's family, sometimes it's just shown 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 a friend of a coworker had passed away and he was there and he and I had a great conversation and everything and I explained him when 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 15 years. And very impactful. Man, that's a that's good stuff, man. That's, again, I'm blown away. Like you said, I see some people get it, some people don't. It's about relationships. That's I think that's what we're all boils down to. 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 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've spent a lot of time repairing them now.

Yeah. I'll say, I'm really happy that of time repairing them now. Yeah. I'll say, I'm really happy that you've come out ahead. In recent years, there have been a lot of brothers and sisters that haven't. And they've fallen just by their own hand. And it's tough for all of us in the community to shoulder. But man, I can't tell you.

I'm going to turn more guys on to your book. And 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 just phenomenal. Well, I appreciate that, bud. You, you know, 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,

turning them on to someone who is talking about it openly and vulnerable 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 got to be somebody else's, but 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 got to lift one another up and that's where it starts, starts with lifting each other up.

Yeah, yeah. I think you hit the nail on the head right there. 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 live with a crew or you have a job or you are extended and you depend that much on somebody whether it's your life or just anything in the day-to-day or your

instrumental in each other's lives like that. Yeah there's that there's that tight bond that forms and it's no joke. It's no joke. Yeah it's a true. Yeah it's an unexplainable bond that if you haven't lived it, you just don't know. That's a beautiful thing. Yeah, absolutely. I see you've also spoken at FDIC. That's a huge room. Well, I haven't spoken at FDIC.

I performed comedy events there, and I have another one coming up in 2021, and it's for the actual firefighter cancer support network. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Another big issue facing a lot of us these days. 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 everything wrong. And at some point, it inevitably catches up

with many of us. And that's why I took a real hard look at myself and said, I'm gonna make the most of the time that I have left. However much that may be. And I will put my pride to the side and start opening up about this stuff and talking about it.

And hopefully it makes a difference. And I'm so pleased to be a part of the Firefighter Cancer Support Network for four years now, doing shows for them to help our brothers and sisters. That's awesome, Matt. That's awesome. Thank you for all you do. I really appreciate it. Thank you for what you do, Mia. 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 a true boot camp. I'm sure you change those. Police and firefighting, everybody's different, everybody's wired different, it takes a special person. Yeah. Well, it does, man.

I appreciate your service and like to say, when people thank me for mine, it honestly, it's a pleasure of my life. It really, it really has been. So as you transition out, man, I wish you nothing but the best in your transition out and I hope you turn the page and have a wonderful, wonderful retirement, bro. Thank you, man. I really appreciate it. Hey, again, thank you guys for having me today

It's been amazing Yeah, Mike. What are you going back to work? I go back tomorrow. All right, man. Stay safe brother. Be safe out there. All right. Thank you so much guys. Thank you Thanks you too. Bye-bye You too. Bye. Bye. You guys in this phone already. What's that you guys in this phone? Yeah. Well, yeah, thanks for taking that call. I mean, I'm in my pleasure. He's a good friend of mine. And I know he is really.

He's I think he's scared of, well, you know, leaving the community. Yeah and what it's going to be like putting that behind him and with talks several times about it. So I just thought, you're paving the way. It's scary because it doesn't have to be the end. For me, it was hard when I left. I left it on not on 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 life is a book with multiple chapters. It's not just one chapter and being in the fire service, being in the seal teams, being police officers, that's just one chapter, no matter how thin or thick it is. At some point, it's going to end. 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 life. Yeah. Well, you're doing a hell of a job at Pave and the Way, man.

You really are. And on that note, I want to kind of wrap this thing up. But I just want to say, 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 I wasn't 100% sure how this was going to go. But when I announced that you were coming on the show, just so you know what you're your own or saying about you, 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

have you sit in that fucking chair man like, that's heavy words man and I thank you but legend, I don't know about that. It's not, I've walked amongst legends. Ricky Williams is one that you can talk to. I'm just trying to do what I feel is right in my heart to help you know, help guys and girls stay in the fight as long as they can 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. I feel like I feel like I'm staining this chair. So you might be I've seen the dude you've had on this show and 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. Yeah, you're welcome. And, you know, taking a compliment is not a fucking easy task.

It's almost like a joke, right? Yeah, if you can take it, if you can take it... If you can take a dick. Yeah, you can take a joke. That's exactly right. But I did want to say a couple of things and we at Vigilance Elite have given a ton to the veteran community, donations, connections, all kinds of stuff. We gave to the law enforcement community. I actually made a piece of apparel

and donated all the proceeds back to law enforcement. And I've been really wanted to do something for the fire community as well, but 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. So what I'd like to do is I'm going to make a a a fire service hat, the thin red line, which by the time this air is it'll be

out. So the links up top, you can click the link by the hat. I'm going to give you all the proceeds from the hat. So I don't know how many we're going to make yet, but I'm going to give you all the proceeds. I don't know a good organization to donate it to, but I want to give you the proceeds and you do with it, what you think is necessary, whether it's donating to a nonprofit or 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 if there's 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 I just want to help. So we're going to have that done. 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 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 for the bottom of my heart for real. I have some ideas and we can talk about that. But wow, that's tremendous, man. Cool, thank you.

You're welcome. I'm just gonna need some help designing it. And I don't wanna put anything on it. That shouldn't be on there, but yeah, the design will be catered 100% towards your community. So, thank you. That'll be fucking awesome. And they'll certainly appreciate the

fuck out of it, man. Cool. We'll make sure that that it goes to the right places. I know you will. And with that being said, if somebody wanted to reach you on social media, your website, how do they get a hold of you? Is it, do they still call 911 or? Yeah, you just call 911 for Travis. No, I'm pretty simple, man. It's my name is my website, TravisHaus, www.ze.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 in and day Instagram. I'm just focusing on Instagram So give me a follow at Instagram at Travis house H.O.W. Z.E. I'd really appreciate the fuck out of it because the more people that I can get in my corner the more we can spread this message and hopefully helps folks out You know, that's what it's all about. Yeah And then want to buy your book Yeah, so if they want to buy my book create your own light

It's 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 that that have been sold and like I said in the beginning I didn't expect this and it's doing 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. That's the best place. Right on, man. Well, keep paving the way and doing good things and best love to you. Thank you brother. I appreciate it. Find suitable mental health medications can be a challenge. The gene site test may help. Did you know that genetics can play an important role in gaining insight on how a person may respond to various medications?

Understanding this may help reduce medication trial and error. Gene site is a genetic test that analyzes variations in DNA. It shows how genes may affect someone's metabolism or response to medications commonly prescribed to treat depression, anxiety, and other mental health conditions. Visit genesite.com for more information. The Bullwork Podcast focuses on political analysis and reporting without partisan loyalties. Real sense of day jubos sprinkled on our PTSD. So things are going well, I guess.

Every Monday through Friday, Charlie Sykes speaks with guests about the latest stories from Inside Washington and around the world. You document in a very compelling way all of the positive things have come out of this, but it also feels like we have this massive hangover. No shouting or grandstanding. Principles over partisanship. The Bullwalk Podcast. Wherever you listen.

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