Jest Out of Jurisdiction
Law Enforcement / First Responder stories and experiences with a focus on comedic blunders, events, and the lighter side of stressful jobs. Stories are firsthand accounts told by the hosts Flash and T-Dot with accompanying guest interviews.
Jest Out of Jurisdiction
Golf Scrambles, Attack Pigs, and an F4: Shift Work Gets Weird
A mile-wide storm doesn’t just rearrange a neighborhood—it reshapes the people who run toward it. We sit with Mark and Noah Rudder, a father–son team spanning decades of fire, EMS, and rescue work, to walk through the night an F4 tornado cut across London, Kentucky. You’ll hear how basements became shelters, how triage feels when you’re standing in the rain with a flashlight and gas hissing around you, and why seventy‑six transports and a community’s grit added up to lives saved before sunrise. The details are raw and real: airport rigs that somehow survived, smoke alarms screaming across the dark, and the strange quiet after the roar when survivors step out of the debris and into the beam of a headlamp.
Stuart Walker was like, you got it. I was like, okay. And I just rode around that golf cart and watched watched him take it away. I was like, this is great. Yeah. Yeah. I mean the street sweepers ain't gang, but I was just watching all the trucks leave and all that start to disappear. Oh yeah. I didn't go up there one time this year. I played in a golf scramble with John Whitehead. Or uh it was a tournament. I was like, I didn't know you even golfed, John. And it was we had a ball. What's right? I thought we had I hadn't seen him in years, and it's like we never missed a beat.
SPEAKER_02:So he's still doing his heat and air.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah. Making it.
SPEAKER_02:Killing, he's smarter than we are.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, we're kinda dumb.
SPEAKER_03:Of all the people. Yeah, of all the people. The the funny part last night is uh so we have the airport truck now. Yeah, I saw that. That was and um impressive. It's great to break streets with.
SPEAKER_06:And it's a great blocker to nobody's gonna go through that. No. Well that's good. When did y'all get that?
SPEAKER_03:Uh a year or two ago. Maybe two years. Yeah. Did it just stay out there at the airport? It's out there at the airport. It didn't even get a scratch on it from the tornado. I don't know how.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, rich weight. The three truck the three trucks that needed to get hit by something. Yeah. There was leaves stuck on the side of them. That was it.
SPEAKER_03:Wow. The so we used to have a uh airport hanger near PHI's hangar.
SPEAKER_06:Up there close to the end to the Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:So you go through the gate and it's right there. And that one got obliterated. But the trucks wasn't in it. No. They were sitting out in the open. Yeah. Rich apparently went and moved them or something. They were having a that flying or whatever theory was. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:So he had left the trucks that not. Yeah, they didn't get a script. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Wow.
SPEAKER_06:But uh something needing to get totaling out didn't get it.
SPEAKER_03:We have that old 1980s style fire truck that we always you can always hear it coming down the road with its Detroit motor. Big load of coal coming through town. So Yeah, it was. It's a big board truck. The big blue hazmat truck truck.
SPEAKER_02:That's awesome.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, they were all three sitting out. Cody Evans and I walked over about 3 30 that morning and we're like, we need to check these trucks. Yeah, they went there was leaves stuck on them. That's awesome.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah. How much would an airport truck cost?
SPEAKER_04:That's gotta be how a regular fire engine now is costing close to a million dollars.
SPEAKER_03:Oh but you gotta wait about two years for it because they're in so much to make it. Some of them are up to four years. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Hey, listen, speaking of, you know, million dollar trucks, we used the aerial the other day on a reconstruction to take pictures. That was I was like, that is a good idea.
SPEAKER_06:They brought the aerial truck and just Newport overheads. I went to Academy Class with a Newport guy. He's like, check this out. And I was it was aerial shots, and I was like, Man, that's great. And then he shows me this body. I'm like, where's his head? He said, That's that's what I was wanting to show you. This turd got he was a really bad dope dealer, and he'd changing his tire on the side of the road, and Big Rig rolled him up in between the trailer tires. His head was down his it was in his in his stomach. Pushed it straight down. I was like, he didn't show me that part. I just sound like a rig up.
SPEAKER_02:It was not a big goodness. Not technically. What would you call that?
SPEAKER_06:Inversion. I told you. But I was like, you don't know how to say that. Where's his head, man? I was like, did y'all find his head? Oh yeah, we found it finally when it went to the corner.
SPEAKER_02:So they were actively looking for it. Like I was a connection. I had no idea.
SPEAKER_06:Wow.
SPEAKER_04:Wow.
SPEAKER_06:I see I 75.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. It doesn't end, does it? Does not end. No.
SPEAKER_06:It's not just here.
SPEAKER_04:No. Wow.
SPEAKER_02:Hey guys, I just want to take a moment and thank our sponsor. We've got Ascend Wellness. It's a family-owned mental health practice in London, Kentucky. They've got over 65 years of combined experience. They specialize in trauma-focused care, offering MDR therapy for first responders and others impacted by traumatic events. If you're not familiar with that, a lot of our guys have taken the time to do that type of therapy. And it really allows you to kind of get your mind wrapped around the trauma that you may or may not know that you're holding on to. Travis himself has done it and and swears by it. Said that he opened up to things he didn't even know that was bothering him. So definitely something you might want to check out. Services include individual marriage and family counseling. Let's be honest, as first responders, our marriages, our families sometimes take a second second seat or a back seat to the job. So I can't imagine that we would any of us would ever need marriage counseling or anything to fix the problems at home. Hopefully you don't, but if you do, they're good at what they do, so they can help you out there. Um family counseling, MAT, substance abuse counseling, parenting classes, supervised visitation, and medication management, all delivered in a supportive, client-centered environment. They are located at 148 Commercial Drive in London, Kentucky. And Ascend Wellness is here to help you rise. If you are interested in visiting or contacting them, you can find them at ascendwellness.org or call 606-260-8532.
SPEAKER_00:Y'all ready? Ready? Everybody ready?
SPEAKER_06:Whatever you are. When the notes are out like this, it makes me so happy.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, we've done our homework. That's awesome. They've done more of much more work. It's better when our guests are doing more work.
SPEAKER_04:Noah's more well-versed on things than I am. See he's got I think he's just a black cloud magnet. I I can I can relate. There's a reason I want the black cloud to work three years in a row with ambulance service.
SPEAKER_06:So we got ambulance, we got fire, we got rescue, we got a plethora. Law enforcement kinda. That's the big word of the. I guess that's what we do. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I mean, we don't do it very well.
SPEAKER_06:Who was I talking to? Oh, I was talking to John the other day. I said, John. I was like when we were when I got promoted to sergeant, every three people came up. I was like, man, John's gonna be your he's gonna just give you a part-time. I was like, so I was like, hey John, let's go out and eat. I took him to a Chinese restaurant or something. We went and sat down and ate. I said, listen, I know you didn't put in for this job, so I you can't say I got promoted over. You didn't put in. I said, but I know you're better than me at policing. I know it. You've got more time. You're gonna you're you can find dope on any anywhere, anytime. I said you're smarter than everybody at the PD. I know it. I said, just don't give me a hard time.
SPEAKER_05:I'm gonna stay out of your way. Just work with me, man. Just work with me, man.
SPEAKER_06:He's like, he said, you're the only person that's ever came up and just had this conversation. He said, I got you, buddy. I said, he probably never let you down, did he? No, he never let me down. Simple communication. Just talk to people. Just talk to people. That's all you gotta do.
SPEAKER_01:That's right, yeah.
SPEAKER_06:But I learned a lot from that guy. So I I give him a hard time. He can't hit a golf ball often. He hit it, he finds the fairway like Lodge Holland used to. Every time. Boom, right in the middle. Then that second shot, it's made like a putt.
SPEAKER_05:How do you not? I'd be having to climb trees and everything.
SPEAKER_04:Horrible. I had a horrible. I'd spend more time off the fairway. Yeah, I would call golf. Golf is not for me.
SPEAKER_03:Did you get banned? Uh that did. That did. As long as you don't fall off. There's a reason they have them nets there.
SPEAKER_02:I'd do it. Alright, guys, we're back with another episode. Yeah. Travis is always amazed that I'm recording already. We've been rambling for a while, anyways. But we've got a couple of good guests for you today. Got uh all kinds of experience. Fire, rescue, EMS. I think this may be our first guest that has any kind of EMS experience, EMS stories. They are also father and son. So without further ado, our guests Mark and Noah Rudder. I guess uh we want to go we want to go young or old.
SPEAKER_06:Ah, whichever, but let them jump in.
SPEAKER_02:Let the elders go first.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, of course. Of course. Age before getting how Mark's for sure.
SPEAKER_06:Mark is up.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_06:We've known each other basically my whole policing career. I mean, of you known, you know, so it's been twenty plus years of working in some capacity together. And um we're really glad to have you on and your experience and just tell us everything that how you got into it, what all you've all the shenanigans I know that you've got to be.
SPEAKER_04:Well, there's there's not many shenanigans. You have to be real real calm and mundane and and not be involved in shenanigans, maybe. Now um so this year marks 35 years for me in the fire service, legally. Legally. Right. Um dad was a founding member of the Bush Fire Department. Uh they founded in 1975. I was born the day after Christmas in 72, so that gives you an idea of how that progressed for me. Um, so I say legally, I had to wait until I turned 18 to be a bona fide firefighter. Right. Um and so with dad being there growing up, uh, it was kind of a uh, I guess just uh a calling, something I always wanted to do. Um so at at age of 18, you kind of joined the fire department. By the time I was uh 19 and a half, we'll say, I became an EMT and started working at Amletz Incorporated. Uh so there's been a lot of part-time work there. I worked there for over 10 years, and that's where uh that's where you really get into the the meat of things. A lot has changed now that Noah's in the service and doing five basically the same things 25 years later. Uh there's a big difference. When I worked EMS, uh there was two crews during the daytime and basically at 4 p.m. in the afternoon everybody the the first out crew stayed on basically, and then you had backup. Right. So uh I lived about 10 minutes from the city limits and would be on backup sometimes, so uh you'd need to stay in closer to town. And um, you know, some of the partners I had, well, the first amulet run I ever transported with was Les Leatherman.
SPEAKER_01:Wow.
SPEAKER_04:And you know, we lost Les in a tornado. Um But you know, you just look back on all those things and see those people. Uh and that that was the first time I ever transported in the back of an ambulance uh was a tractor accident. And Les was driving. He said, You got it, buddy. You know, you know, I said, So yeah, I sure hope so. I hope for this patient I've got it, right? But but that's just the way uh my mom and dad both worked part-time, some for the EMS throughout the years. Uh maybe they went to school to an EMT class ten years before I did, but I went every night to the class with them. So I guess you could say I was I went through before I could certify just going to their class. I was the patient all the time, right? So it's that's how you get started into this things. And and obviously uh we look at firefighting in general, um, or emergency services in general, and a lot of times there is that family connection of some sort. Uh and we just all kind of follow down that path. It's kind of the destination, unfortunately, for Noah. He got stuck with those genes, and now he's doing a great job serving the community, but it also has the drawbacks of the first response life that we all learn to live with.
SPEAKER_06:I know. Hopefully. Now my family didn't come from that. I was kind of the oddball going into policing, which I was the oddball. I went to the Marine Corps, and my my grandfather was in the you know, in the army and served in World War II, and you know, I just looked up to him. I had some friends that went to the Marines and stuff, so that's the route I took. But I just don't see my son going that route too. I you know, I think I was just the Yeah, I don't think. I'm j it's funny. Maybe it's policing and just saw something, you know, that's like but fire seems like fire, and then you'll ask that your father, and and it's just his tradition. And I think more.
SPEAKER_04:And I think that's it. It is a tradition in the fire service you hear of more than anything. And I think it's just that adrenaline junkie piece in you. And it's no I mean, it's like law enforcement or anything else. We're all type A personalities. Now that's good and bad. Right. Uh it takes that kind of that eagerness to go forward, but we also have that edge that we tend to my way or the highway. And even with other first responders at times, right? I mean, we can we all probably have those situations where we the whole person they're helping us we fight with or whatever.
SPEAKER_06:That's the thing about it, is like we're gonna have to fight and get this out of the way again.
SPEAKER_02:That's the thing, it's the thing that you can do, is that you know, with everybody having that mentality, it's like, okay, let's have our words and then we'll shake and hug it out and we'll be done with it. And then go on. And you're good after that.
SPEAKER_04:Because they they're the ones who have your back on the next call, which could be right in the middle of the argument. I may be cussing you right now, but I know that you're gonna have a lot of people. I take my chair of blowing up almost to you. You know, we don't call you blow up, you get aggravated, you vet, because we're bad for that too. But I guess that's part of what we need to do.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah. Um getting it all, you know, and the people like, man, why are the police officers, why are firefighters so grumpy after or whatever? Well, we've had this pinned up aggression. Uh we've seen things that we shouldn't have seen. And sometimes letting that out doesn't because we're we're we are stubborn and we are we don't deal with it the right way sometimes. But I think that's our way of coping. And sometimes, you know, we may get into it with each other. However, I think all of us are adult enough to be like, I'm not gonna take too much offense to that. I can get older, I can get past it.
SPEAKER_04:And right. And I think that's part of the also goes with that's that sick sense of humor. Yes, guys, we truly have a sick sense of humor that you have to, and that's kind of your way of dealing with things, you know. Um when a group of people, whether it be police or fire, EMS or combination of all, go out to dinner, you're not exactly sure what the dinner topics are going to be around the table. And other people would probably just freak out at some of the things we talk about, but really that's a coping making isn't it?
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, funny everybody bonding. Yeah, funny story about that one time. Me and J Mac and while I was working on um that interdiction team, memorize on that back in the day. We were sitting at Wendy's talking about going through the um psychological stuff at the going into police academy. And he was we was just talking about these stories, and I was like, it's untelling what we were saying. We we thought we were quiet, but you know how we are, we just we can't help it. And these people we're getting we just start hearing them start laughing, just chuckling. And we were like, look over, she's like, You guys, that's the most fun and the most entertaining dinner we've ever like. We were just talking about the questions that were asking, like going through it in our head. This was like, Well, I'll be I'm definitely crazy. But they they laughed and carried on. I was like, I'm so glad we we didn't go down a different rabbit hole.
SPEAKER_04:But you know, you mentioned you mentioned that though. Uh yeah, definitely don't go down the wrong rabbit hole because they were listening too much. But but you mentioned about going out to eat as a group. That's also got its drawbacks. Yeah, very much. Because many times those people working in those restaurants might have crossed your path somewhere outside of the restaurant.
SPEAKER_02:We were we were at Frisch's and uh we were sitting there and one of the guys ordered a burger and it comes out and it's got a thumbprint right in the top of it. Right in the right in the bun. And what's in the thumbprint, just a short and curly, right in the middle of it.
SPEAKER_04:So somebody just plucked the pube and right then we were working EMS one night, and uh back in the day there wasn't a lot of places to eat at night. Y'all work night shift for a long time, but uh it wasn't the burger boy, uh, it was Perkins. And we we had gone out there and and that's kind of what we would do. Some we'd go one place or the other and sit back and wait, right? You know, this is 30 years ago. Maybe it protected us that it's over with at this point. But Perkins has been gone a little while for that. A long time, yeah. So so we're sitting there and uh enjoying our meal and getting done, and we're just sitting around because that's kind of what you did. Uh we sat around and talked, and a guy walks out of the kitchen, he walks over to the person next to me and he says, You don't remember me, but I remember you. This is not gonna end well. And he rattled out, said, I told you that day I'd get even. He said, I hope you enjoyed your hamburger on the cook, and he turned around and walked back to the kitchen. Uh at least y'all got tipped off a little. I mean, I didn't want to go puke somebody. I mean, that was just match.
SPEAKER_02:Even that it it makes me wonder how many, you know, logies or whatever you know. You've seen that movie Waiting? Have you ever seen it? Yes, yeah. I I'm sure that that goes on. It's but we even now, like where I work now, though somebody'll come in and be like, well, it's not safe to go eat at Wendy's for a little while because you know we just arrested.
SPEAKER_06:So you share that with me.
SPEAKER_02:Just eat the customer. Just ask, yeah. Just do what we do. Go all these, come back to the break room.
SPEAKER_04:It it's a shame though that you that you have to be alert and aware of that stuff.
SPEAKER_06:I mean, it it EMS or anybody, you're gonna cross these paths and you go into places that anytime you deal with public, you know, police takes away people's rights and then uh house them in you know in the jail, or what we take away their liberties, whatever. EMS, though. You didn't get there fast enough. You've it's your fault. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:We took your high away.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that now we're allowed to be. That's a big yeah, we got to experience that when we started carrying our camp. That was a lot of us. Are you coming up puking and fighting? Or combination, yeah. I mean, it's yeah.
SPEAKER_04:But now going back to the original the the history and how I got started, you know, and then um my wife, uh she also became an EMT and worked EMS. So she's too afraid to come on.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, she's she's not a we could not talk green. I don't know how that worked. But she could have sat there and kept here.
SPEAKER_04:So that's you know, that even keeps it in the line of uh why Noah, now our daughter, uh, she flat out said nothing medical. Nothing. No part, she's a school teacher, God help her. So uh you know I would say that worse. She's an angel in her own in her own way, right there, in my mind anyway, yeah. Uh getting to do that. But when when Heather was pregnant with Noah, um it was about the day before she went into the hospital to be induced, uh, we went on a rescue call. It was a double fatality to teenagers, and Noah went as in the womb. Um unfortunately that was a terrible situation. Noah was just a few days old and he ended up on a rescue call because some knucklehead was trying to steal Pepsi's out of a Pepsi machine and got his arm stuck. So, you know, and Noah was just in in the just barely out of the womb at that point. So he he was he was glutton for punishment. I mean, that's you know, and then of course, with uh our daughter being the second child, she didn't get exposed to all that, because by then Heather stayed home with Noah and her. So Well they're yeah, I mean they're predisposed.
SPEAKER_02:I mean, you we it all it happened to all of us. You see, you see that lifestyle, you see what they do, and you look up to them and they're heroes. Yeah, I mean they're heroes. And hopefully that, you know we're law enforcement and you know, fire, and I mean not so much fire. I mean, fire can your house can burn down and you're still a hero, but it doesn't depend, you know.
SPEAKER_04:You know, that's why police officers try to go in and do the firefighters' jobs before they get there. That's true. Because you want to be one.
SPEAKER_02:That's exactly right. I I question my constituents.
SPEAKER_04:Firefighters pass the test. That's exactly right.
SPEAKER_06:What wasn't that uh they said the civil life. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:But yeah, you you see it and you the I mean these kids see heroes, which I mean the media portrays a lot of different things.
SPEAKER_04:But now it's a lot different than it was, you know, when I started, like I said, over thirty years ago. No one has to deal with and you all still active. I mean, as far as there's nothing you're gonna do that's gonna make all the public happy.
SPEAKER_02:No, you can't make everybody starters.
SPEAKER_04:I pick up my phone with a camera and a video camera. Yeah. You know, uh it's portrayed as something it isn't a lot of times now. When you've got a 10-second clip that doesn't show context of anything, you could it's but they show the cop or the the EMS worker smacking the person across the head to get them off of 'em because they're going to kill them if they don't, you know. You don't get all that other part.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, you you you miss the the the whole lead up to that. It it's so it's so tough because you all know that you're arriving on a scene where somebody may have drug problems, they may have all kinds of medical problems, they may have mental health issues, and we show up and we don't know these people. And we're making all these decisions or trying to make, you know, come to a good um reasoning at that coffee pot back there.
SPEAKER_01:Uh just randomly goes all the way into the coming on.
SPEAKER_06:But they had well, you know, we go to these things, we're making these split second decisions with people's lives, and the and we don't know their family history of everything going on. And we're trying to s solve this mysteries of that they can't get figured out.
SPEAKER_04:Basically. Seconds and minutes that's taken them years to get it. Yes. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And it's just a tough and you've got to fight being, you know, getting complacent because this may be your fifteenth call of the same thing that day. Or you'll be the same person you go to a whole time. But you've got to try and fight that and keep in mind that this is the worst, you know, maybe the worst day that they've ever had. So it's you know, it's it's just Tuesday for us, but it's the worst, worst day they've ever had.
SPEAKER_06:I remember going I don't know if I was in class or what it was, or somebody reminded me one time that little parking lot wreck, the one that we've worked thousands of, might be that person's first and the worst thing that's ever happened to them. And they're over there freaking out.
SPEAKER_04:And their family as well, when they come screeching in to us you know we're over there like registration and all it's like same singing out the same song out of the songbook every time or whatever, you know.
SPEAKER_06:So that empathy and that's learning to deal and to show like some grace to people is so so hard. It's hard. But yeah, you have to.
SPEAKER_04:But you know, and I'll add that that was something that uh that I could learn a lot from my dad because uh anybody that knew dad knew he kind of w went above and beyond with people. He very rarely did you ever see him get frustrated with people. I, on the other hand, normally start out frustrated. You know I'm ready to be frustrated.
SPEAKER_06:Well, he had all kinds of different things in his well, that's right.
SPEAKER_04:That's right, you know, and you know, being a school teacher and then a school principal. He was my assistant principal in high school. So that was uh I didn't do a whole lot of bad stuff in high school because he could have done anything to me in school that would have rival rivaled what he would have done at home. So, you know, but uh, you know, you look at that and and people have spoken a lot about him that that was something that he he made a positive impact in their life. And I guess every one of us should strive to be more like that every day.
SPEAKER_06:I saw on Facebook, did he have a birthday here or something that last Thursday was the fourth anniversary of his day. Okay, so I saw him out, you know, you just remember those four how good he was, not you know legendary fire, you know, you know, police, all that stuff. Not to mention legendary, you know, with the school system here, and just it's man. We've lost he when he left, when he died, he he left a big holes.
SPEAKER_04:He did, he did, and you don't realize what all somebody does until they're gone. Right. Oh, yeah. Everybody was like, hey, we need to do so and so. And they're like, well, he already took care of that. Well, all right, we have to figure out how to do it now. So you know that's you take those things for granted while they're here.
SPEAKER_03:Well, while we were at our old church, Providence, when he passed away, everybody realized how much he'd done for the money and the attendance and the bulletins and the sound system. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:And he did all that at church and he did equal with the fire department, you know, and it was like, uh now it takes two or three people to do each job that he did, you know, and I understand. Uh but no we talk about how good of a guy he was. Noah's got a video or an audio clip of him uh almost losing his religion on a f on a fire one night. He drove in, and you know, uh it Terry Wattenberger's always the one to capture these good moments or bring out the best in us or something like that. Of course, Booger would I think Booger uh fed Noah with a an audio right here that this is dad pulling up on a fire scene, uh and just a lot of excitement occurs while he's trying to talk on the radio.
SPEAKER_03:So it And he's normally cool, calm, and collected, but backstory car fire about ten o'clock at night. In the middle of nowhere. Yeah, so probably stolen. Probably, yeah. Well, little did we know this stolen vehicle quotation marks had about four or five propane tanks in the middle of the truck. So no. You go up this little gravel road to a cemetery, and there's a vehicle fully involved. And you're walking up to an IED.
SPEAKER_06:I've never heard him.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, he almost got him.
SPEAKER_03:Everybody at the fire department or the rescue squad heard that. And they were like, Did he already cuss on the radio? I said, No. No, no, but he uh he lost his train of thought.
SPEAKER_04:You know what I mean? Saying that we treat the best of us that did.
SPEAKER_03:We got there and I said, You good? And he said, buddy, I thought that thing was gonna blow up on me. And then I said, Well, here's your core break, these propane things blowing up. Yeah. Oh my gosh. There was when he was working at the SO, he'd always do school traffic at Bush Elementary, and he was so OCD, and he would say, Well, I'm so CDO because he had to put it in alphabetical order.
SPEAKER_06:That's how he was. Is Troy like that too? I don't know.
SPEAKER_03:But every day you would know when he goes on scene at the school and when he's leaving, because an exact point is when he would go 9798. Yep. Always. Didn't miss that. And then it was like Phil Bernard took over.
SPEAKER_04:And it would be like on the like at least if I try to do something like that, it'd be on every five minutes. His would be like 723 or something. Because that's just that's him. That's what he did. That's the way he did it. I'm like, no, no, I can't do it. Wow.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah. I'm missing. I know how you almost it must be.
SPEAKER_04:Absolutely. But uh, you know, that's one of those things anytime you lose somebody that's important to you and has had an influence on your life, you just have to sit back and there's times you just have to relax and and those answers are in you, you know, it and and you've got those embedded in you, and that's just how you get through those things, you know. And and obviously he's a he was a very religious man, so I know that uh he's not suffering anymore, and that's the best way to think about that, to know that uh I could be selfish and wishing by care, but his rewards are a lot more than anything on this cruel world. I know. So that's that's honestly what you have to that's how you have to get through the loss of somebody like that. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_03:He's with his daddy and Susan. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. That was his girl, Susie Susie Q is Q.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, man. I think that's something that we don't talk about enough is in this line of profession. I mean, it just is is your faith. I mean, it's uh how important it is to have to have some kind of a faith.
SPEAKER_06:I mean you know, yeah, we we talk a lot and we're sponsored by great, you know, great company about with mental health, but really if you could tie the two, uh more importantly than anything is our faith. And not not just you know, with with everything that's happened this last couple weeks with Charlie and all this stuff, you start awakening you see these things, you're like, wow we need revival really badly. Absolutely, absolutely maybe happening, and it's really neat to see.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:You have to hope so anyway, and and you have to stay focused on those positives. And that was one of the things that um when dad first retired, he uh would transport prisoners, you know, to either to take them to prison or go pick them up somewhere or whatever. And uh he always listened to gospel music, so they got to listen to gospel music. So that was his ministry to them sometimes. But I bet he prayed for them. Oh, you know he did. You know, and he would stop and I there's times I know he stopped and bought them cheeseburgers to feed them before he took them to prison. Here, enjoy your McDonald's cheeseburger before you go into prison or whatever. And those those are the things that I mean we can all have a little bit of ER in us and do a lot better. But he had people come back and tell him, Thank you. You're treated me like a human. Yeah. Right. And um, I think sometimes we all kind of forget that.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, we fall short a lot. I think we forget about we want justice a lot of time, we forget about the mercy side of it.
SPEAKER_02:And um it's easy to get jaded and not and not realize what type of opportunity you have and how many opportunities that you've had to to witness or do or do something in that that aspect.
SPEAKER_06:And it's a really good spot when they're sitting in the back, you know, unless they're fighting to carry on, but in the back of that car, turning on the you know, the Christian music, the Kalos or whatever, and or just saying, Hey man, I'm I'm praying for you. Is there anything, you know, I've done it? And then there's times to feel that you can treat them like a human and then they'll work.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. There's so many times though that you have to have that you've got to be that firm. And then we all get rough because it is that like Noah said you go to the same place over and over, or you get the same call over and over, but we don't know what they're going through at the time. And sometimes you can make a difference because they have no hope any other way of getting out of there and changing their ways. So maybe maybe w each time we can make a positive light, but we also tend to stop anymore. And I guess that's the the bad part about being a first responder, is we put up those barriers. And we don't we almost you hate to say you don't care, but it's almost to the point that we put up those barriers so thick that we don't want in their mass. Yeah, we don't want to. We don't need to show that personal side of us to them or vice versa. Yeah. I and and you you know when you look at the stuff that we see and the stuff that we deal with, you you almost at the moment you can't live into that you know, that craziness that's occurring because it'll make you go eat nuts.
SPEAKER_06:The walls we build because we've been we've seen the worst, we've seen people humanity it it's all you know, it's it's brokenness. And the walls we build a lot of times not just to protect us, but to keep you out. And um those walls then transfer into our family. Um and how many times um I got to hear you know Dan's testimony yesterday.
SPEAKER_04:I listened to it afterwards.
SPEAKER_06:And I was just like broken because I was sitting there listening to a man who, you know, and I'm like a lot of it hit home. Yeah, you're gonna be able to do that.
SPEAKER_04:You know, hit home. And and that's what I guess honestly to me that's one of the things that is the hardest for me is seeing Noah go right into the same stuff. And you know, Noah's got several just calls that stand out that especially being on the rescue squad. Because he's there with those things. He he works EMS, he's worked fire, he's still a volunteer firefighter, and then he's a volunteer rescue man, and he's going on those calls all the time. And just I mean, that stuff takes a toll on you, man. It Noah has seen stuff that No, no young man.
SPEAKER_06:How old are you now? 26. Yeah. You know? That's when I started, and he's already seen well, he's already but I mean the things that you've seen no young man should see, really, honestly. You've seen more things than people that's been in some bad combat zones have seen. So you we And I think we're saying all this to make sure that you're trying to make sure that make sure it doesn't lay up on you, and you know, you've always got people to talk to.
SPEAKER_04:And I mean, I I think back as it even before I became a a full-fledged firefighter and responding. And, you know, um one call that really sticks out to me was a girl that I went to school with. She was a couple years older than me, and it was her 16th birthday, and uh she was out with some friends and the car rolled over and she was trapped under it, and all that you could see was her feet. And I recognized her shoes because I rode the bus with her. You know, and you see those things, and it's like those those things never disappear, right? They never disappear. We all have them. Uh, and and but you have to also think of the blessings that we've we've made a difference somewhere along the line. Um of the things we never know, the outcomes. I mean, Noah is like the king of finding bad stuff and putting them on helicopters, it seems like. But we think we don't know the difference we've made in those calls. You know, he never hears the the positive outcomes. Unfortunately, we hear the bad ones because they end up at the funeral home or something right now.
SPEAKER_06:That's the tough part of our line. You look, you know, you start looking at obituaries and be like, did they make it? or or then you just become jaded and you don't even look. You don't even care. You know, it's not that you don't care, you just you don't want that constant reminder of things.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. You know, Noah may not have it written down there or not, but Noah was the ambulance that responded when Logan got hit. Yeah. You know, those are those are times that we'll never forget. Uh I'll never forget Noah calling me, telling me, and uh me looking at Heather and saying, I'll be back. I mean, you just leave and go to help him or help anybody else. Um, you're not prepared for those things. No. None of us are.
SPEAKER_06:Because he's about your age, right? I mean, just a little older.
SPEAKER_03:He's he was a couple years older than me, but we went to school together.
SPEAKER_02:I was so thankful that I was not working that night. That that I wasn't there, that I didn't see what everybody else saw.
SPEAKER_03:I it's like I tell everybody I said besides the tornado, I said that was the worst call I'd been on. Yeah. That's that's because really you want to help 'em, but in my line of work You also know that you know that there's really nothing you can do. And that was the hardest time telling your friends that he's gone. Right. And I can still see everybody's faces. And some of them did get angry, but you know, but that's the response knew was coming. Because a couple of them knew he was gone and some of them just couldn't accept it. And then later on, a couple of days later, even at his funeral, I had people come up to me saying, Dude, I'm so sorry for yelling at you. I'm like, dude, I it's fine. And I'm sorry that we couldn't do nothing. I wanted to do something. Grief and shock.
SPEAKER_06:When it's a when it's a colleague and a friend or probably the worst thing that you can go through now.
SPEAKER_02:And it's hard on on our side as far as law enforcement to show up to something like that and not go straight into anger and then allow that to override. Then you've got to sit and wait and say, well, if we do something, something happens and we we ruin the investigation. We ruin, you know.
SPEAKER_04:And that that one was that one was handled very professionally. It was. I was. I mean, it could have been it could have gone a lot of other ways. I mean, there's there's no other way of putting it. No, yeah, it's there's no other way of putting it. It could have been a good thing. But it was handled well. And our justice has been searched, you know, because of that.
SPEAKER_06:Well, we yeah, it wasn't because I didn't want to.
SPEAKER_04:No. I and that's understandable.
SPEAKER_06:And the hate and the um the anger was I mean, I could feel it. And I've never been that upset. I mean, I still had to go to counseling over it. And that's understandable. Um but and it all, I mean, it started for me that year as far as a lot of things coming back. You know, you know, and I'm I talked about Dan already, but when Dan Smoot was telling this story, you know, and and everybody needs to listen to that at uh uh it was on Facebook in London, Kentucky. It's on their Facebook page. Absolutely. If you listen to our podcast, you definitely need to listen to his story. But when he was talking about some of the things in the car wreck in Breathett County. Yes. Um right off the bat.
SPEAKER_04:But how many times have you closed your eyes at night and seen that that body, that person and I mean I've had I've had a 24-week gestation baby in my hands and done CPR on it that was born at home. And I'm talking from my wrist to my fingertips long. And for people to say that, you know, these babies aren't humans is just ridiculous. I've seen those things. And those are things that are embedded in your mind that you can't forget. Um, you know, we lost when we lost dad, it was a a medical uh line of duty death. He's classified as a national line of duty death in fire and EMS. And um, you know, Travis in the same way. You all had to deal with two line of duty deaths within a year in the PD. Totally different circumstances, but each one leaves a void that is just it you can't replace those people.
SPEAKER_06:I tell you this, and I I don't know if I've talked about this on on on this, but I'll tell you when I was when I was in the therapy session, Logan's devastated me. Don't get me wrong. But I kept going, I couldn't get past my grief with Travis because I hadn't dealt with it right. So I had to get through that hours worth before I could even talk about Logan because I kept I kept going here. I was not a good friend that I should have been. I was a lot of this guilt that had built up in me.
SPEAKER_04:And realistically, there was absolutely nothing. And I mean, we went through that, you know, we went through that with dad. The night mom called me and said, Your dad's having breathing trouble. We knew he was COVID positive. I was too at the time. Heather had locked me in the bedroom for a week. Uh and I had actually gone out to mow dad's yard that day, and I walked in his house and he looked at me and he said, What are you doing here? And I said, I had to get out of the house. I'm feeling better. He said, Are you sure? And I said, Yeah, I think I could walk to Manchester. They live about halfway between London and Manchester. He said, Well, I don't think you need to do that. I said, No, but I think I'll mow your yard. And he said, Well, you won't do it to suit me, don't do it. I told you. I still mowing the yard today, and I know every time I'm mowing, I'm not doing it to suit him. But you know, so when mom called me that night and said, Hey, your dad's having trouble breathing. Um, I said, I'm on my way. Noah's working. Noah transported him to the hospital. So, you know, I mean, those are just things, like I said, Noah's had some blows. I mean, he really has. He hauled dad his last trip to the hospital and he worked the the accident involving Logan. I mean, those are just things realistically that will lay. And he's 26 years old, and I'm thinking, you know, I'm an old man. But uh those things lay on you. Uh you're not that old.
SPEAKER_03:Come on, but it's something nobody should go through because three o'clock in the morning I'm asleep at work and my phone starts ringing, and you see dad pop up, and you're like, that's not good. And the first thing he says is, Come get your pa right now. I said, What's wrong? And he said, His oxygen levels are critically low, and you need to come out here.
SPEAKER_04:So, you know, I mean that's and then the the the deal with with Travis, I know exactly I mean, we went through that, and you think, man, what could I have done differently?
SPEAKER_06:You know Should uh you know all the missed opportunities of calling and the the what you know when we was patrolling together and the going over to this house, watching football games to you know, we got our family started getting you know older and we you know life happens. Life happens. Absolutely. Go from being buddies all the time to just work buddies when you're working together and you're like, man.
SPEAKER_04:You know, you feel what missed opportunities about you miss a lot of those things, but but we have to dwell on the good times that we had, not right, not the missed opportunities, but we hope to fix those with other people.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:And that's that's where we're at. And and you know, Dylan, you mentioned the the faith. Um the faith side of it is something that a lot of hard shell people just don't want to deal with, right? I mean, we again we put up those barriers and you don't want to seem weak or whatever, but uh I'll be honest, uh, I don't know how anybody without faith could have made it through some of these things that we've made it through.
SPEAKER_02:We joke a lot and say that you know there's some things that only me and Jesus know, but I mean that's true. That's very true. That's truly true, you know.
SPEAKER_04:And and you hope that you have that close enough relationship to get that peace and comfort because otherwise I I I'm not strong enough, I'll admit it, to make make it through this old cruel world on my own. I mean I need help.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah. I'm just I'm just one of the things I've learned I lost a buddy I was in the Marines with, and then with Travis, and with Logan, with with different people that we we we know that have gone on, is if somebody crosses your mind, reach out. That's what I've learned. I will call. I don't even text anymore. I'm uh you Dylan knows I'm not a I'm not much a texture because I'm usually riding around.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_06:And I will call if that you know, if I'm like, I need to check on. And it's I'm like, so if you get random phone calls you cross my mind, and I just I just want to say hello.
SPEAKER_04:But you don't know you don't know what put that thought in your mind, you know. And that's that's the thing, Spook.
SPEAKER_06:Because I I too too many missed opportunities to call my buddy Todd, you know. I'm like, you know, it crossed my mind, I didn't call Todd. It's close to the Marine Corps birthday. I need to give him a shout or something, and then not. And then you get a weird phone call from Flint, Michigan. You're like, I better take that. That's because that's where you live. And then you know, his sister's like, hey, he got killed in a car wreck, and I'm like, ah I mean that one you know, and we only knew it's weird. Knew each other. We'll we lived together for about two and a half years is it. But lifelong friend. You know, it's just something that's brotherhood. Yeah, it is in in states and mileage and distance does not you know once that brotherhood's made, it's there.
SPEAKER_04:I was in Canada last week and uh at a firefighter conference. Um and uh part of my job I'm the the state training director for the fire service. And um this conference was you know, the 50 states, there's 49 uh participating states, and then uh we have membership from I think five of the 13 provinces in Canada. And so several of those people were there, but you know, we see each other maybe twice a year. You know, we talk or we do a a Zoom meeting once a month or something, and it's a lot of the same stuff, but there was a lot of hugs exchanged before we left, you know. I mean, and that's that's what you do. That's it's that it's that family that's not blood that you have, and those are the things that, like you said, when you think about those people, you gotta reach out to them.
SPEAKER_06:Uh it's a common bond that brings you together, and and it's so important. I know what you got now. I'm gonna switch gears just a second.
SPEAKER_01:Let's go.
SPEAKER_06:The fire, you remember me and you had to do this. I went up with Buddy Blair. Well, they had it at the model, at model, some not model, some magnet school in Lexington. They had this fire show, like with this training from I I think I think it was y'all's organization. The state fire school.
SPEAKER_02:We had the guard though.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, we had the guard that contracted out, and we was up there guarding, and me and Buddy was out there all night long. That was a billing goes, and it wasn't quite the same night for real.
SPEAKER_02:No. So I'm sitting there and I'm I'm in their little L4 car, and this is an armed, you know, dude, because there's four six hours worth of equipment.
SPEAKER_04:It's not a real good neighborhood.
SPEAKER_02:No, it's a terrible neighborhood. I know that's going to be a good thing.
SPEAKER_05:But it was me and Buddy, so we we had we had two good engines.
SPEAKER_02:I'm sitting here by myself. It's like, you know, dark for me, whatever, whatever time it was. I've got the windows down, the lights are off, I'm just, you know, watching my YouTube, you know. So there I see a car comes by. I said, huh, well, that's odd. And then it comes back by and turns down the lane. Well, I'm backed in to a dead end right next to the to the dumpsters. So it keeps coming, keeps coming, keeps coming, and noses right up to me. I can't see because their lights are on. I can't see how you know how many times it's occupied or anything or who's in it.
SPEAKER_04:And at this point, you're you're policing goes in the phone with a standard security guy.
SPEAKER_02:I'm like, this is this is odd. So I so I just sit there and nobody gets out yet. So I lean out, nothing say, hey. Nobody says anything. So I was like, all right, so I just draw down, step out the car, and they so I don't know if they seen that car and thought that you know maybe it'd be something easy to break into with no lights on, but it was I still don't know. You was about to get robbed. Yeah, I was about to get kidnapped.
SPEAKER_05:I appreciate your due diligence of protecting assets.
SPEAKER_04:You're one of the I knew that was not a not a real good neighborhood, though. If you went in bound a little bit into Lexington, I think when we when we actually started talking about iron them, but they said, yeah, this probably should be an iron detail. Yeah. Good thing. It's just not the same.
SPEAKER_06:Now me and Buddy had no problems. We sit there and walked around and watched you know Netflix.
SPEAKER_02:Now it it very well could have been somebody coming in there to just tell it he and she in over there. I was like, I ain't taking no chances on this.
SPEAKER_05:But there's some crazy guys.
SPEAKER_02:What's it got? Oh, Crystal Mantheny coming out of that.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, that's that's just uh that's you never know what's next. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06:How long have you been with been with the fire service?
SPEAKER_04:I worked with the fire commission since uh 06 full time. Yeah. And then I've been the director since uh well, it's 10 years and uh it'll be 10 years Wednesday that I've been the director. So uh I joke our main office is in Paris, so I joke with everybody that I commute from London to Paris. So that's kind of my that's kind of my joke of things. I'll be talking with Noah and he'll say he's getting ready to go out of town. I say, well, the traffic will back up here and there because you know I drive it every day. So those are handy. Yeah, but it's bad for me.
SPEAKER_06:We know what time not to leave. Uh if you if you're trying to get to Danville from London, there's only one real good way, and it's you might get behind a tractor. Yes, or an ometry. I mean, yeah, you just don't know. And but so you kinda gotta know you gotta get there before.
SPEAKER_04:There's a there's a five or ten minute window that can make all the difference in the world on those type of commutes, you know. Uh when you drive. But uh but you know, driving, you get a lot of time to reflect and think. And I listen to a lot of podcasts.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, we're glad to help you on that. I I do too. Listen to a lot of podcasts, listen a lot of books now. I mean, I've I I'm like, I've left listen to every song on the radio, the ones I like. Yeah. Uh I have discovered I really like Jackson Brown now. And I'm like, I didn't know.
SPEAKER_04:You never know. There you go. No, it's another trying to we got there, though.
SPEAKER_06:Well, I know you got a lot. Uh three three pages here.
SPEAKER_03:Uh well, so I joined the Bush Fire Department in 2013 as a junior. So was it 15 now? Yeah. Instead of 14 when I started. Yep. Um started in 2013, stayed all the way up until I turned 18.
SPEAKER_06:And uh I was his SRO at the time.
SPEAKER_03:You didn't want me to say old. Uh so stayed on it. I'm still on it, Bush. Uh my first fire department job was part-time at London, not long after I graduated. And joined the rescue squad about the same time. No, I even worked part-time at Danville for a little while.
SPEAKER_04:So worked at Danville. Yeah. I don't know what to do with all of you. These London people in Danville. Hey, they're good to us.
SPEAKER_03:I just wish we could just get a little closer. We uh and then uh so I joined I went full-time at London in 2019, but due to some politic and stuff, I technically was full-time in 2018 and stayed at London till 2020 full-time. And then I started EMS. Been there since.
SPEAKER_06:Was you on the first, you know, when the when London started doing the full-time fire? Was that was you in that class?
SPEAKER_03:I was uh I think I was a junior or sophomore in high school when uh all them guys got hired for the first shift. Joey and all them. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:But now you were one of the first ones on the third shift, right? When I got hired, the third one.
SPEAKER_03:They originally they used to have an A and B shift, and then C shift would be well, you can stay the night and run fire calls, which was what I would do. And four of us got hired, and only two of 'em are still there now.
SPEAKER_02:That happens.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. But um just things have changed in the last couple years for good and bad. But that's everywhere. But it's different.
SPEAKER_02:With having experience in both fire and EMS, which profession do you prefer?
SPEAKER_01:Neither.
SPEAKER_03:I'm crazy enough that I like EMS better, but I s I can go fight fire all the time if I want to, volunteer-wise. And some people don't want to do EMS, and I understand why. Because I've seen on both perspectives.
SPEAKER_02:To me, that's a lot of responsibility, EMS. I don't know it's something that I would want to do because you're you're responsible for a life at that at that point in time. I mean, that's that's a lot of responsibility. I mean, as law enforcement, I'm just responsible for I mean, I can be responsible for lives, but it's not directly.
SPEAKER_00:Somebody get us an ambulance.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. And it's like working EMS with you all. You can hear the I can listen to the P D and SO on my radio and be like, well, uh, that's gonna be incarceratis.
SPEAKER_02:The shoplifter at Walmart or Oh, you would be yeah, you would be surprised how often that happens, but you all know. I mean, that or the the homeless guy that we've talked into having chest pains.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, and it seems like if you let Burger King at three o'clock in the morning have chest pains for some reason. It just so happens that law enforcement got called because he was hanging out because he missed his bus or something. Then all of a sudden he has chest pains. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Allergic to allergic to brace feeds. That's yeah.
SPEAKER_06:Happens.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Um when I was working at Danville, we had a fire at one of the plants on the parkway or the bypass. Yeah. Uh it was where they printed newspapers or something. And uh one of the assembly lines, the oil caught on fire, so the whole thing was burning. And when I was still doing my recruit class, they said they got a big fire down here at one of the plants, and we're going. So I was like, oh, okay, get there. And they're like, go in there and relieve them. All right.
SPEAKER_02:Wow.
SPEAKER_03:I was like, seriously.
SPEAKER_05:That is seriously trial by fire.
SPEAKER_03:I mean the firefighter long, so this is like whoa. Didn't we just have didn't Bordens just have something? So I was actually going into work when that happened.
SPEAKER_04:That's always good when you're breaking eight.
SPEAKER_03:So I live off 5th Street, and I'm just a rock throw over the hill to the ambulance service. So I take my time going to work. And whoever's listening, you know this.
SPEAKER_05:When you wake up, you're 10 8. I mean you're right.
SPEAKER_03:He's gonna do his 24 hours, so yeah. So I was getting ready and my radio went off, and we have the active 911, and my phone starts going nuts, and I was like, oh, it's probably a 46 or something. Well, I see explosion, and I noticed the address, and I was like, Borden's just blew up. And everybody's going by signal nine. Well, I get to work and I start listening to the radio, and they're like, Yeah. We got about four patients over here burned and we got one that's leg's broke and I'm like what happened? Well the crews that went didn't come back. They got exposed to the acid. Oh no. Yes. So there was there was things going on. Um apparently some contractors were working on some barrels, moving them, and it had acid in it, and some of the chemicals that you don't mix with acid were right next to it. So one plus one equals explosion.
SPEAKER_02:And I'm glad none of that happened while we were doing their access control.
SPEAKER_04:But that's that just shows you how quickly things can change, you know. Yeah. Because what else do you? I mean, you have growth. Oh Lord.
SPEAKER_06:So you got the rescue. I mean, you got I could imagine at 26 years old the closet.
SPEAKER_02:You've had to go a little bit. Oh man. So yeah, let's let's get into some. We've got the background down. Let's get into some some of the good stuff here.
SPEAKER_03:So before I became a junior, I was with dad, and they patched out a 46 on Tomcat Trail. So we went to this wreck, not knowing what was going on, pulled up. There's a guy dead laying outside of this pickup truck. And come to find out, these two boys have been drinking, been raining, terrible combination. They ran off the side of the road and one of them had his window down. He went right out the window and his head made contact with the tree, killed him.
SPEAKER_05:Jeez, OP.
SPEAKER_03:So that was my first experience being old enough to understand it. No, it was for Bush. For Bush. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06:I remember my very first 46 I ever worked. Because it was weird because I spent this whole time on night shift and uh, you know, training and like I had Josh Gaylor and Mike Holiday and Hoghead were my training, you know, pretty much the whole time. And somehow I kept avoiding or not getting 46s. I was like, yeah, I don't know how to work one.
SPEAKER_05:You know, it happens when you don't answer the record. I was gonna start this one time. No, no, no, no. I was like, oh, okay.
SPEAKER_06:But they said uh they were like uh doing my first one was a fatal. You know, it was uh out there past the middle school. We went out to help the sheriff's office on. We was right there at it. And um I think it was Joe Smith, which was another sergeant, but uh, we went out there and and I started taking all my because they were upside down in the creek, and I was like, I'm not gonna get my leather y'all. Yeah, I start seeing people just jump in. I was like, man, I'm such a jerk. It's like, oh my gosh. But that was my first one, was a was a fatal. And um I it's you still see them. It's weird.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. And those are the things that you don't forget. No, my first extrication was uh fatal.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:We had a drunk driver on East 80 go into the wrong lane and hit a coal truck head on.
SPEAKER_06:Oh gosh. Yeah. I I I used to get so nervous. East 80s, them straight stretches and stuff just freaked me out down there. And I remember I used to deliver packages for FedEx going to going out to Somerset, so West 80. And about the time I was delivering about that, one of them crossed the trying to pass and hit somebody head on right there, and got split a car in half. And I'm like, it just freaked me out to drive, you know, that road still.
SPEAKER_04:And I I mean I was I wasn't even involved, never even seen it, but uh, you know, I worked uh I worked a partial decapitation on West 80 early one morning. I mean, just just the things, you know, those are the things you remember. Yeah. It's like Noah standing out here in the parking lot going, I've been to that house.
SPEAKER_06:I mean I was gonna ask you, you know, you're young enough to remember all these calls. We've we've answered so many I forget them. But I mean, you can drive from from London up here to East Bernstead, and you can be like, that was a 46 year, I remember this, you know, right here at this intersection at you know 490 and and unfortunately it's you don't get rid of.
SPEAKER_04:I mean, there's there's more places that you remember having a response to than not.
SPEAKER_03:And you know addresses now that they're just burned into your memory.
SPEAKER_02:I can't remember phone numbers anymore, but I know I write spite off certain addresses, you know. Well that that's what I was telling Travis today. I said I was a much better officer here because I knew all the stuff, all the little stuff. Up up where I'm at now, it's kind of like I'm kind of like a ball lost in high weeds. I just go where they tell me to go. I don't really know.
SPEAKER_04:Don't you think there's a benefit to not absolutely responding to your community every day? That's a good point. Noah talks about all that stuff.
SPEAKER_02:He hogged, you know, he hauled his grandpa, but over there, you can detach detached and completely impartial, and I can hand you know handle a call there a lot differently than I might. There's things that aren't going on in the back of my head.
SPEAKER_04:Like what's you know I've talked to a lot of what are the political dangers of responders over that, and they they they talk about that. That there's a lot of difference because you know you mentioned you get called to a car wreck and it's the area you live in, you're thinking the whole way there, is it somebody I know?
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:When you start checking my three cents, it's Navy or Lexington or wherever, there's a whole lot less likelihood that it's being somebody you know. It's a lot easier to provide my job.
SPEAKER_06:There's some advantages to that. Yep.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_06:Let's hear some more. You got them.
SPEAKER_03:Oh boy. Um, let me think here. I got so many calls. Um, I'm trying trying to keep the bad ones to a minimum. I'm trying to think of some funny ones. It's easy for us to remember the bad ones, but it's it's really hard. Like I was asking people the other day, I was like, do y'all have any funny stories if you're with me? Well, that's they sound like you've just been had a lot of tragedies.
SPEAKER_02:Oh man. Luckily, when I first started in the you know, law enforcement, everybody told me they said, keep a journal, keep a journal. I was like, Well, that's silly. Well, now I'm kind of glad that I did write some of the stuff down. I think everybody started a new job show. Yeah, absolutely. Keep a journal of crazy stuff to see.
SPEAKER_06:Somebody's like, well, keep a journal though, indict you'll know though. But really, you you you can write down a couple little things to remind you of of something that happened. And I wish, and I probably was one that told you, like, hey, make sure you write some stuff down.
SPEAKER_04:Because it's not all bad. We've talked about some depressing things, but it's not all bad. Yeah, you the you know, you have those instances where you make a difference, but now I I'm there I was working EMS and carrying a I worked back before we had these electric stretches, you know, when we had to be real people and lift a stretcher. I went through some of it on both sides. I mean, I didn't push a button like Noah does, but no, um, we brought an elderly lady out of her house and her pig started chasing us and snapping at us. Um people make reference that to law enforcement, but no, this was a porky pig, Wilbur pig, you know. Uh it was a potbelly pig, and he was very, very upset that we were taking Granny or whoever she was to the to the ambulance, you know. And I mean, man, that pig, he was snapping the whole way at us, and I'm like, what do you do? You can't take the person's pig. You know, I mean, that's you know, you're like the very first ever attack pick. Apparently they're good uh guard dogs or whatever. You know, I've been bit by dogs. I got bit by a dog off North Hill Street one day. I I realized it was chained, but I underestimated the distance of the chain, the length of the chain to where I was standing, and it snapped and got me twice, but luckily it grabbed my pants and my wallet.
SPEAKER_06:So there's nothing worse than going up trying to help somebody. And I did a lot of home visits for the school system, and you go up and you'd be like, Man, and the principal or whoever be like, well, we we gotta go get this kid, he's not been schooled. I'm like, I don't, that's not my problem. That sounds like a different problem to me. Yeah, and sure enough, they always have some kind of vicious dog. Oh, yeah. And for whatever reason, they they must just smell bacon on the cop because they're they running, you know, the principal gets out and the dogs right there, and they come right over to me. I can't even get out of my. It's like, you're on the wrong. Good luck.
SPEAKER_04:I'll guard you out. You don't know what to expect on that.
SPEAKER_06:It's every, it seems like every call that I went on on a home visit, like a well check or something like that, with students not showing up school or sick or whether they're trying to get get a hold of a parent, there was always some kind of crazy dog up some holler that I'd never even heard of. And I was surprised. You all you all probably know this more, but there's a lot of homestead stuff in Laurel County. I was very shocked on that. And I I just thought maybe I live in the city too much.
SPEAKER_04:Noah's in Noah's in those homes more now than I.
SPEAKER_06:They got these camps and stuff, these homesteading places now that they just live off the land.
SPEAKER_04:Yes.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:It's crazy. And then the I guess working EMS, you realize how lucky you have it because you have a home that isn't falling in, or and some people choose to live that way. You know, and I mean, I always thought garbage went in a garbage can. Right. They not just everywhere in the house, and some of these homes that we go into are just a walking path cut through them and it just smells.
SPEAKER_02:I mean, man.
SPEAKER_06:Uncle Mike says cleaning is free. There is nothing expensive about going up and picking your trash up out of the yard.
SPEAKER_04:It's it's easy. It's like taking a bath, man. It rains every so often. Stand out in the rain or something.
SPEAKER_03:I mean, wash yourself. I've been in houses with dirt floors, and the kids be sitting in the dirt playing with their matchbox cars, and you're like, and granny over there sweeping the dirt.
SPEAKER_06:I've I've served search warrants in houses that had snakes inside from the dirt dirt, you know, just open stuff, and they'd come right in there in the closets, you're digging stuff, and you're like, oh my gosh. Yeah, it might have been done. You remember when you remember Jerry's restaurant, right? Love that place. Right before they're in the parish, by the way.
SPEAKER_04:Oh.
SPEAKER_05:I knew. Is it French food there?
SPEAKER_04:It's it's it's like French fry.
SPEAKER_06:So the like right as that place was closing up, they were going to, you know, everybody knew it, nobody really going there. And they call it like, hey, we got we got snakes underneath the like in the front lobby. There they had like a machine or something. I was like, you called, you have called the wrong person for this. I was like, I will shoot them. I was so I was like, I'm out. Yeah. I'm out on that. But I've seen, you know, I was telling this guy was like, I I work with, and he's a school teacher and great guy. And he was driving, he's man, it's he said, I was helping this guy out tired, you know, and he was like, let me go get you some money. He said, No, I'll just help you out. And and um he said, I got this huge basket for Christmas from that guy. He's some kind of doctor didn't know how to change a tire. I said, You know how many tires I've changed and never.
SPEAKER_05:Never got anything after. I was being a little like, yeah, good. Okay.
SPEAKER_06:But I was I was like, You know how many how many houses we've been in, got calls to, and just to turn the thermostat over from cold to heat, or run possums and raccoons and stuff. And and and those are the I'd I love going to those calls. I don't mind that a bit to help out our community.
SPEAKER_04:The elderly that don't, you know, they're just the people that won't take care of themselves or that wants to help anymore that put that bitterness in your life. You know, that bitter taste, so to speak. Yeah. And I think I got a lot of that back in the early 2000s, right after Noah was born, uh, cleaning up meth labs. Yeah. When O started. Yeah. I just some of the things.
SPEAKER_06:I mean Well, that changed this whole It changed the world.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. Noah don't know life without that. Dylan barely does, you know. Uh and here we went through that stuff. I mean, it was that was unreal. Uh, the changes in the the evolution of the people.
SPEAKER_06:When we were young men, you know, high school age, if somebody smoked a little weed or you know, did a you know, took a pill or something.
SPEAKER_04:When I went to high school, there was a smoke in the area.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:But with the bad ass was.
SPEAKER_06:We thought they were rebels, man. We had smoke. They were bad people. Yeah, you know, dad, you you don't hang out with them, you know. Um, but just the the way our world just it's fallen. We're it's a fallen world and it's gonna get, you know, without without Jesus, without our faith, it's just gonna it's gonna continue to get bad. We just got you're you're you know, Noah, you're we're telling you a lot of stories tonight as much as anything. Just guard your heart. I became such a cynical person, so bitter, because you know, you'd stop somebody and they'd be a deacon, somebody you knew, some church going guy, and you just man, I was so mad. I was like, there is no you know, I remember thinking it, you're like, ah, these people are just this whole town, and you know, and just this bitterness that came over me. I remember being broken, like, you know, I've if I'm going to do this, I've either got to just learn how to love people and know that everybody's got problems because a lot of that inward, like I've obviously got some problems too that people, you know, so just know that that hey, and you've done it in that five, I mean ten years already, ten, twelve, fourteen years already. But still, I'm like 26 is young, and you're gonna go the ups and downs and the ebbs and flows with with first responding. Um ride those ways, but remember that it can take you right down under, so be careful.
SPEAKER_03:And it's like what they always taught us in training, it's not your emergency, it's theirs. Yeah. So always understand that. And luckily, me being senior enough now, telling all these new people, treat them, treat your patient or whoever you come in contact with like they're your grandma or your grandpa or your family. Yeah. That's a great attitude to have.
SPEAKER_02:And that that brings up a good point, because I hate I hate dealing with like crisis, like CIT type stuff, like your your mental calls and things like that. I absolutely hate them. And uh I was talking to to mom, you know, Vent and being like, Man, they've got because Danville's got a lot of that going on. I was like, man, that's the worst, you know, doing MDOs and transports and stuff like that. Well, my grandma suffered from the same thing. She was bipolar and she had to be transported once. And and mom was like, Well, you know, you brought that up, treat them like you're they're your grandma. And she's like, Why don't you keep that mentality and treat them as like and that's kind of changed my okay, well, you know, if they get the help, because after she was transported, it took getting to that rock bottom for her to get the help that she needed and be, you know, mental health warrant and all that, get transported. And then after that, good as gold. But before that, so I mean, you gotta keep that mentality. We get it's easy to get jaded and not not see that that side of that.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, I'm sure you've already been. The difference I think that I didn't have that. My father's a pastor and love him, but we I don't want to say we're different sides of the thing, but I was dealing, you know, he was dealing with way probably worse things as far as p humanity too, and I think I just didn't relate those together and see mine as a mission as well. So I was just like I'm the PK, I'm a preacher's kid, and this, you know, and I was just like, why am I why am I so mad? You know, I go to try to go to church and fake it and stuff, then all of a sudden, man, that he preached something and it broke me. And I was like, oh no, just like Dan's thing, I was like, man, I needed to hear that too. And a lot of people need to hear that. But I was like, How do we get past, how do you get past hurt and anger? And you don't, you don't really, you're always gonna be set up for some kind of f fall or somebody's gonna hurt you. It's how we deal with with our internal and how we can cope with with our own lack, you know, our own shortcomings is what helps us all be better in our jobs. Um yeah.
SPEAKER_04:You know, Noah, when I worked EMS, we would uh generally work a few calls a day or whatever. No, they work a few calls an hour. You know what I mean? Yeah. They you know, they'll have 12,000 or 13,000 runs this year. And uh I remember when we had like 6,000 or 8,000. I mean, you know, I'm dating myself, but still you've got to have that time to unwind a little and and but every call, you know, Alan Brunicini was the chief of fe uh Phoenix Fire Department, and he kind of started a lot of the incident command stuff and all that, but but he he talked about the neighbor, Mrs. Smith. And he he put a customer service model into the fire service. He's been gone a few years, but that is still talked about today, and a lot of his speeches are still out there. That when Mrs. Smith calls for help, it's her worst day of her life. Right. And you have to remember that when you go. Man, that's hard.
SPEAKER_05:It is so hard.
SPEAKER_04:I think he was in Books class. It great when 300 or whatever.
SPEAKER_06:ICS. I was in ICS. Yeah. And he was talking about that. Yep. Mrs. Smith. Mrs. Smith still moves on today. Yeah, I was in uh Broad, uh, what's it called? Baldrock or something, way down there. That's where I did mine, one of them.
SPEAKER_04:But it's it's it's that Mrs. Smith was his personal the worst day of their life is when they call. And to us it's not. But it's so hard because we put up those barriers where we become so bitter. Uh, but you know, Noah, Noah's 26, but he's telling people that are coming into the service now that are his rookie or whatever. Don't forget that. You know, uh that is so hard.
SPEAKER_06:It's hard to, you know, the difference, I think, what I was gonna say, you know, part of what with dad is there was just you know a different relate relating with what I did for a living, what he did. Once I mesh them together, it was different. Like, oh, you're you're at the bad side of human humanity too. But you uh you already know what your father has done, and your grandfather and your mother and your your aunt and your I mean there's all kinds of things that that um that you can rely on and you're already probably supervising and doing things, you know, running it won't be long.
SPEAKER_05:Mentoring, I guess.
SPEAKER_06:Like that's the and that to me is if you can fall back and you have somebody to you're you know, you're kind of a legacy type in this field. So if you can learn from ER, if you can learn from you know all these things, don't forget them. Even though old school stuff, the way you're the way they treated people will always relate to the in the future. So I think that's a great great way to be and look at things.
SPEAKER_03:It's like every time I have a bad call, you get a phone call or a text, you and mom. Yep, and occasionally I would call Pa, ER, and he'd be like, Yeah, I heard you had a rough day today. Yeah. You okay?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I'm doing all right. You gotta have a sounding board. I mean, you gotta have some somebody, I mean, whether it be a a fellow first responder, you know, somebody that you can just go and be like, let me tell you about this. And then they know and they're not gonna sit there and try and go, oh my gosh, or they're gonna, you know. A lot of times like, that ain't nothing. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06:Let me tell you about this.
SPEAKER_05:Then you start one-up and each other.
SPEAKER_04:You know But I I made the comment on May the 17th uh of this year that you know, my job's to train first responders and to see that they have appropriate training all over the state. There was no level of training at all that ever prepared me for what that night and day was to bring. Um there we you just don't prepare for a tornado to go through a one of the most dense subdivisions. Uh, you know, and and I'm on I was over by the airport, Noah was in Sunshine Hills, and that's as a father, that was a terrible feeling.
SPEAKER_06:You know, I was there doing things I needed to be doing, but knowing that your son is on another end of this same he's doing what he had to do, and he's you're you know what you're seeing. Yeah, and you know he's seeing that and worse. Yep.
SPEAKER_04:And then, you know, that morning, um as the sun started coming up, I had stayed over and off Court Road that whole night in the airport area. And as the sun started coming up, I got in my truck and I thought I'm going over to the to that side to a command post. There was at Wine Pine. And uh I didn't realize how bad I looked at that point. I mean, I was soaking wet and mud up to my waist, and you know, I mean, just from what all we had been going through that night. And uh it it was a pretty good feeling for me to look over and see him over there, you know. And then other people as as certain ones had come in. Um we mentioned Booger when we heard Booger on the radio that night, but when he walked in that school, you just wanted to walk over and give him a bitch a hug. I mean, because um we had all made a difference that night. And that's that's as bad as that was, and as terrible as it was for the people that lost their homes and their families, as a first responder, what we pulled off that night, as I say we as a team, what everybody, and trust me, we saw things that you just can't imagine. But what we were able to pull off that night, and the lives that were probably saved, by the time the the trained, more heavily trained and equipped crews got in there and started taking off, there was no more rescues. Those people had already been found through the night. I mean, it was a team effort of police and fire and EMS and citizens, uh, just in general, that what went on that night was amazing. But those are times that, you know, Noah said he'd call me or other and text, but that night it was just like I we talked a couple of times through the night when we tried phone service, you know. It's like, hey, you all right, what's going on?
SPEAKER_06:I've never seen anything. Let's talk about the tornado because we haven't yet on this, and it's a good uh I mean, what you can, what you feel like doing. But I I'll tell you this.
SPEAKER_03:It's good to talk about stuff like this.
SPEAKER_06:In 20 all right, so at on that day, May 16th, right? It's the day of the tornado. We're I'm sitting there. There's a huge front at about what one o'clock that day, 12 30. There was a there was a big storm that came through.
SPEAKER_03:There was a storm that had come through first. Yeah. I had gotten off work that morning.
SPEAKER_06:It had blown down a tree over by my house on a property owner. You all probably was over there, the one that went across Whitley Street.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I remember that. Right. So we were I was asleep, just worked my 24-hour shift the day before, and they paged um damage to um a white lily or something like that, where Lowe's used to be. Yeah. So the whole roof on one section got blown off into the parking lot, the back parking lot, and I went to it, and some of them were talking, hey, this ain't the worst yet. They said I couldn't believe it. Tonight it's gonna be worse. It was bad enough, earlier.
SPEAKER_06:That that that I thought they were because that tree that fell over and then it blew that roof off. There I was down at Johnson Elementary, and I've never heard anything like that. You're like, ooh, that was scary. And then when well they were over there on that crew cutting up that tree trying to get that line across, and they were like, Well, be careful, it's kind of at about 10 or 11 tonight, it's gonna get worse.
SPEAKER_03:I was like, huh. So typically, if we hear bad weather at the rescue squad, we kind of hang around the building, just you know, pre-planting and everything. So that night dad called me and he was like, hey, um, turn on Ryan Hall. And for all you people that don't know, the Ryan Hall, y'all, is probably one of the best weather people to watch. Yeah, it's a popular. Yeah. And I'd watched tornadoes, what was it, a couple days before that in Arkansas and Tennessee and all that. Missouri, yeah. And the way he was acting, we were kind of like, ooh, this ain't gonna be good. And me being me, you know, I've always wanted to work a tornado because, you know, you don't really get to work a massive.
SPEAKER_04:Twister's one of your favorite movies. Yeah, I'd love that movie any day.
SPEAKER_03:But we were sitting around the rescue squad and there was people coming in with their families that night, and you could tell just the way it felt that night. I don't know, I can't I can't describe it. You just had this uneasy feeling and you knew something was coming. Well, quarter till eleven, we heard on post um a trooper say he is looking at a very large violent tornado on the ground in Russell County, Pulaski County. Yeah. So he was like, that ain't good. And you could hear another trooper, he's like, London, get us help. There is way too much damage for us to be able to handle it by ourselves. And not many people knew that it was coming towards London.
SPEAKER_06:Who would think it was gonna stay on the ground for 50-something miles, you know, in Australia?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_06:Well, we're at, you gotta go uphill to get to London. I mean, it's we're what around two fifteen hundred feet above twelve hundred or so.
SPEAKER_03:Yes, yeah. Yeah. But just the way that they were talking on post post channel, that you could tell it was bad. And me and one of the guys, we went and just stocked up on drinks, you know, because we knew it was gonna be a long night. Just if it came, it came. If it didn't, it didn't. And dad called me and he was like, Hey, you all need to get ready. I said, How bad is it? He says, It's coming. They they say it's not letting up.
SPEAKER_06:Is this when it hit Somerset by the night?
SPEAKER_03:When it went through the forest, it was about it actually was a mile wide. Yeah. And we were at the squad, and we had the haunted house, you know, the rent house that we had. We had the basement. And John Allen was like, hey, if y'all need to come to my house, come to the house and get in the basement. So John went with Drew Allen, his son. They went and checked everything and made sure the families were alright. And about eleven o'clock, that's when it started getting real bad in London. The lightning, the thunder. It wasn't it rained pretty bad for a while. And And I'd say about eleven twenty it just stopped. Yep. It just sucked up the calm before that.
SPEAKER_06:It got so weird feeling outside.
SPEAKER_04:Well, and that's and that's also something else that first responders do. We kind of go outside and look. Oh yeah. We're outside during the storm.
SPEAKER_03:But I was standing outside the rescue squad with Tyson Baker, and where the rescue squad is, you've got downtown to your left, and you've got Carnby Square to your right. Right around A.R. Dyke Cemetery, I counted five lightning bolts come down in the same spot and just boom. And I said, Oh, this ain't good. Yep. And uh that's when the tornado siren started going off in London. And we had I'd say about 30 people at the squad at this point. So I was like, get in get in the basement. Well, as I'm walking back into the bay, a minivan pulls up up front. No idea who these people were. And they was like, Do y'all have anywhere we can take shelter? We're not from here. We we just moved into Laurel County. Spark people down there. I was like, well, I'm not gonna tell these people no. No, yeah. I said, we got a basement over here. I said, just go park your car right over next to the fire department because the rescue squad and the fire department, for all the people that don't know, they're literally in the same parking lot. Yeah. And they come walking in, and I said, I'm gonna take you all over. And they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, we got our family coming. I said, This ain't your family. They're like, Yeah, this is it, but there's more of us. And I look towards the fire department, there's about 12 people walking over here. Meanwhile, uh, we could barely walk. I was like, Oh, you've got to be kidding me. So still brilliant people, you know. Hey, go for help. You know, you go through the basement and you know how small it is. There were 50 people in that basement at one point. Wow.
SPEAKER_06:I'm glad it didn't come that way.
SPEAKER_03:Well, before we went outside and started looking around, that's when it made that shift and it was coming straight for downtown.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, they they um I freaked out. I was in the basement at this time, and my daughter looks over, and we're she's like, Are we gonna be okay?
SPEAKER_03:I'm like, I don't, I'm like, I don't, I don't know. I like I said, we're all we're here together.
SPEAKER_06:She still gives me hard times like that.
SPEAKER_04:Heather and I were in our basement when when it started going, I I had been looking at her and saying, you know, I have to leave.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:I mean, that's a hard, that's a hard situation to be in.
SPEAKER_03:And John had told all of us, he said, don't just get in the truck and go somewhere when the tones drop. He says, We don't know where this thing's gonna be at, and I don't want you all driving straight into this and y'all get hit by this. Now, when the tornado came through, it was rain wrapped. So you couldn't see nothing. Well a firefighter on Laurel County screamed on the radio that Sunshine Hills had been hit and do an all page for Sunshine Hills, which which means they page every f emergency responder and everything to this one incident. So I'm in the first out truck, and me being the senior guy at the squad at the time, I had all these new people. So you're trying to figure out who can you trust to be the first response.
SPEAKER_06:Because direct path on that, when they probably dropped tones on that, it probably was still towards the airport at this time.
SPEAKER_04:It was just going out of Sunshine Hills.
SPEAKER_03:I think by the time we got to Phil Pot Road on 363, because originally we were going to Hart Church Road. That was the first 911 call. And then they had to wreck on the interstate. Yes. We had a car get blown off the interstate. See, I've not heard that. I didn't know that. So they paged, yeah, so they paged Hart Church Road for people trapped in a collapsed house. Then they paged a 46 with entrapment on the interstate car got hit by a tornado. Was that in the same area as the where it went across from? So a couple of the guys, they were in the second out crash truck, which goes to all the crashes and everything. They went down Philpot Road. I kept going down 363 towards Hart Church Road because I didn't know where this thing was. I knew it was coming down 192. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:So I'm literally turning right there, heading towards saddle road, you know, right straight stretch. There's a piece of wood and the power lines down in the road. And the guy in the backseat, all I heard was, oh my God. And I look over to my right, and there's nothing. Yeah. The neighborhood was destroyed. And I put the truck in the park and I said, Boys, get out and go. It's still white care. Look at driving down there.
SPEAKER_02:And they rebuilt quite a bit, but it's still an amazing recovery.
SPEAKER_06:I'm down in my basement. We're looking. I was watching Ryan and I'm looking. You know, my wife's like, Can you turn it down? Because I have my radio on. I've got this. I'm like, and she's like looking at somehow. My message came across from our my first cousin. It's like on Facebook. Like, is anybody mom? I was talking to mom on and she's all I can hear screaming. And and they, you know, sadly they give out this second tornado coming. Um so my wife's like, you're not leaving yet.
SPEAKER_04:And I know y'all probably like freeze everybody from Lexington and Frankfurt that was like, hey, y'all got another one coming the same path. That's when we had them start checking, and uh I yelled a dispatcher and I said, Hey, we're getting reports of a second one on us. Can you find out? And that's when they dropped the tones again. And I was talking to people on the scene going, I've got people everywhere. What you did find out what the weather's gonna do because they didn't know at that point if it was gonna come down the same path.
SPEAKER_06:Because that's happened up in Ohio or somewhere like twenty like one and a couple hours later, another.
SPEAKER_04:In our response district in Bush, I told our guys, go to the station if you want to, but don't leave the district because there is another one coming. And we were, you know, yeah, it basically went airborne through our fire district and hit a couple of houses.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Um, but one hour after the initial call is when we were notified to go to Cricket Creek. I'll let you figure that one out yourself. That's that's in an hour later. Wow. Because I was just out there. Uh-huh. You figure that one out.
SPEAKER_03:So where I was, you could not see everything. I didn't know what was going on on the other side of the town. And that I was expecting like one I two to be destroyed, everybody be going out there, you know, it lifted somewhere close to where we were. Well, somebody come running up to us and they said, Have you all heard about the airport and 1006? And I was like, No, they said, It's gone.
SPEAKER_06:You don't think about what a straight line when you're over, say it's Sunshine Hills area, wine road, you know, that due west, basically, oh yeah is the park. The air or the airport, the park. Right. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:You know, um and now that the trees are gone, you can kind of sit in the park and see all that now.
SPEAKER_06:You know, thinking about it in your head, I've got to go way around, you know, all this back to this road to get to the house.
SPEAKER_04:No, I mentioned Tyson being with him.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Tough. So Tyson Tyson and me went and checked the house. And the tree had fell on it. And this guy's like, hey, my wife's in here. And I said, Is she hurt? And he said, No. I said, Well, we'll get to her when we can. She's not hurt. That's a good thing, but she can't get out. Somebody yelled at me and they was like, Hey, come come down here, I need you. And I had the BLS bag, which has all our medical stuff in it, and I ran down. I had a guy that he was hurt really bad. And about this time's when they were saying second tornado's coming. Yeah. I said, I'm not leaving this guy. And his wife is sitting in the rubble going, I can't get down. I said, Are you hurt? She's like, No, I just can't get down. Well, Tyson comes up to me and he just had this look on his face. I said, What's wrong? He said, I think my house is gone. And I said, Where's your wife and kid? He said, Luckily, before all this, I told him to go to my mom and dad's and they lived on East 80. And he called his wife, and somebody had called him and said, Yeah, your house is gone. They went and checked it. He lived right in that curve right there by the airport. So the straight line? Yes. Yeah, it went right in the room. You don't even think about that.
SPEAKER_06:He probably was out there in Sunshine Hills thinking that's it. But he's working and working and working in his house.
SPEAKER_03:He's a victim. He's a victim. Yeah. We we recovered a couple bodies and helped a couple people out. And Tyson looked at me. He says, I gotta go. I said, I'll walk with you. Because I was really worried about him. He started getting pale and you know, you just lost your house. Yeah, you l I mean you've lost everything. Everything. And I said, Tyson, there's a there's a good thing about this. I said, Your wife and kids are safe. I said, That's on you. You did a good job. And he was like, you know what, you're right. And I said, I still got them.
SPEAKER_04:Tyson Tyson said after the fact, he said, uh, always trust your gut. And he had a gut feeling that he needed to call his wife and tell her to go to his mom and dad's. And you know, I mean, how many times in our life have we trusted our gut or sometimes we question it or whatever, but it always works out.
SPEAKER_06:The one I I want to question myself on on gut on my gut is like these burns to tornado in 2012.
SPEAKER_05:I decided not far from where we have it, right? Yeah.
SPEAKER_06:And um my wife went to Atlanta with my daughter to the American girl. You know, she's little. And me and my son, he was uh two or three, I mean little little guy. And I'm like, let's go down to mom and dad's house. And they're right down here on a filter plant road. You can hear that thing. I was like, maybe my gut wasn't right unless we take it down from that one. But but I just wanted to be with them. And I, you know, you know how it is. You're like, Well am I gonna do with this little guy if I had to run out and go help, if it comes, you know, because we they were given some crazy things I never heard of, like Torcons and stuff like that.
SPEAKER_05:It's like magnetic was new ones. Yeah, I was like, what is this?
SPEAKER_03:It's like polar vortexes here. What is all this made up stuff? They were like, Yeah, we're at a Torcon 3, and I'm like, that's still not good, but there's there's five levels. And the night it hit in May, it was a Torcon 3. Yeah. But um he he would try calling me, and I'd be like, Hey, you okay? And it'd be it I can't hear you, I gotta go.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, like that. I've never seen a community come together like that. And then I was impressed with some out of them them cage navy guys. And some of these came in from all over, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, it was it was beautiful to see the help and now they're you know, there's there's certain groups, the Mennonites are one example, are built, or they're framing up houses for people right now.
SPEAKER_06:That's the thing that's that's the thing about this after you're like, well, how can we help now? You know, uh now that all the you know the big name, the Red Cross, and all these people are gone, they're still they're still dealing with things. The school, you know, kids are still homeless some on it, some of them, and and smart.
SPEAKER_03:They canceled they they ended school that night. Yeah, and it was not supposed to end until like the next week.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, we had about a week and something left to graduate, you know. It was it was just a strange, hard time. We've it kind of felt like well, the way they did it was it felt like COVID again. Yeah, right. Like we just abruptly ended.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, and there's no closure. I mean, a lot of times you think if they would allow people to go back, because restoring to somewhat normal is how we recover from things, and that's that's kind of like us, you know. It was it was hard to want to get back in a saddle, so to speak.
SPEAKER_06:I I would say in just in uh Sunshine Hills and and Westland and across over there at on Court Road and stuff, I'm gonna say probably 10 to 15 teachers just at South South Middle and Wine Pine that were.
SPEAKER_04:Well, I think when Wine Pine got opened, it was by a teacher that walked over there and opened it to try to. We were already making the phone connection. I'm not sure we were making the phone calls to get it opened.
SPEAKER_03:He called me and he says, Are you around John Allen? And I said, Well, I'm like half a mile from him because the neighborhood I was in, it was a half a mile from the beginning of 363 to the end. And we carried one guy half a mile. Yeah. But he said, try to get John to get the command post set up at Wine Pine, get a hold of everybody. We were working to try to at least have somewhere to get people. And the problem.
SPEAKER_06:And then it jammed up 360 because I came out there, me and Danny Robbins, you couldn't get turned around, you couldn't get ambulances out. It was I was like, let's go back over here to to and help out on Wine Road because everybody's congregated right here, and they needed to be, but it was just like there's more, and I had no idea. You you know, like Cold Hill. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Just in this now, you think about this Cold Hill students and people in that school district.
SPEAKER_04:I didn't mess Cold Hill school up by much when you think about it.
SPEAKER_06:People got damaged there. Yeah. Winepine, Drick. You didn't know they were so close. Oh. Sublimity. Sublimity. South Laurel High School and middle school, right there, real close, and they're then right over to Bush. Yeah. I mean, you're like, this these schools take 15, 20 minutes to get to. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:And it was it was there in a matter of minutes. And I mean, I guess that just proves the power of mother nature that we don't know.
SPEAKER_03:Um So after after all this was said and done, um we had some people stay at the rescue squad that were helping some of the victims' families and everything out, trying to recover stuff and help them build back up. And one of the guys, he said, you know, just going out and looking at the damage, he said, if it had not gone through the forest like it did, we would have probably been hit by an F5. And that is the worst tornado that you can possibly get hit by. Did he just slow it down? So we kind of slowed it down a little bit, and it lifted there at 192 near West Sline Creek and all that. Yeah. And it sat back down. He said, You all got very lucky not to get hit by an F5. Now, when they first said it was an F3, we were all like, Oh God, no. No, this is an F4. I'd hate to see more than F five. Like Moore, Oklahoma, and Joplin. Moore, Oklahoma in 2013 is the last F five tornado in the United States. Wow.
SPEAKER_06:So good people, you know, Les and his uh heartbroken. And how many people in London ended up being 18.
SPEAKER_04:18 here and there was 17 the night of, and then one passed away later on, and then one in the last time.
SPEAKER_06:Twenty total. Twenty people, and it could have been hundreds.
SPEAKER_04:Absolutely. We're blessed that it wasn't. I mean it.
SPEAKER_06:And that's a credit to well quick response, I think, and just grace. I don't know. Absolutely. But you know, it's hard to say either like why them not the you know my aunt was in that house on one on on right there when it came across. If you look at her house, she she must have been right in the middle because it went over the hill into Sunshine Hills. And her car how her car was still in the garage, that was it. There was another house from across the road over there sitting sideways in it. She's in a pile of rubble. She she was fine. They found her and under a pile of rubble, probably 30 yards from the house, subflooring sucked out of this, out of there.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_06:And her red ball bottle in the basement. No, and I was surprised. That's what scares you about it.
SPEAKER_03:People died in basements in this. So I'll tell you a funny story about that night, and this is probably the only good thing that I could think of from that night. We were checking houses, and you know, you'd walk down and there'd be a house barely touched, and then right across the street there'd be one obliterated.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:We went and checked the basement of a house, and we forced the garage door up. There were 21 people sit standing in this basement. And they looked at us and they said, Oh, thank goodness, we were trapped in here. And the top of their house was destroyed. They said, Is it bad? And I said, Y'all don't know. And they was like, No, we heard it. Come over. And I said, Well, I'm just gonna tell you, be prepared. It's terrible. And I said, When you get out of here, walk straight down the road towards 363 where all the emergency vehicles are. But 21 people in this basement, and they were not hurt. They were like, Yeah, we've been praying.
SPEAKER_06:It worked. I I was just I've never seen anything like that. You I and I watch YouTube videos of Moore and Joplin. That there was a good Netflix series uh documentary that came out on Joplin. You're just like But to see what the devastation actually that of that night when it's still raining and getting flat tires in your you know in your car just trying to get you're like, Yeah, I've never seen pictures that we recover from probably the people like, hey, is this you know from Crooke in Crooke Creek and stuff that were at you know, way over here in Plasky or something crazy? I mean, just uh weren't they finding people's stuff in hazard?
SPEAKER_03:So there was some found in Pike County. Um Tyson told us one of his wedding pictures was found in Perry County. Yeah. Wow. That's amazing.
SPEAKER_06:So that's so that cell for for those that don't know and for in the future people that started off, that super cell started off in Missouri. It wasn't a tornado all the uh by the way, but it but when it hit that thing stayed together for f I forget a hundred something miles.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, I mean, it was like a mile wide that whole cell though was five years. Yeah, from way in Missouri. If we drive to the Mississippi River, it's gonna take us five and a half hours.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:And it and it came from there. Oh from further.
SPEAKER_06:I think it came over like from those arcs.
SPEAKER_04:So I mean, that's crazy.
SPEAKER_06:I've I've never I didn't know that, you know, you see these little pop-up supercells and they dissipate. For it to stay that tight and then drop a tornado in in Southeast Kentucky where we don't get we get them. Pulaski County and Laurel County get plenty of tornadoes. We have some. But not that extended.
SPEAKER_02:Usually the ones that we get, they pop down, they do a little damage, they go right back up.
SPEAKER_06:I mean, that's because I was in the one at Carnegie Square. I was living on Morgan Street. I just can't get away from it. Yeah, coming towards you.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, that was a chase state thing. Yeah, we're all that story is Don't Live by Travis. Meet me two years old. He's taking me tornado chasing through the downtown Carnival Square tornado.
SPEAKER_06:Right. Hey, listen, that one right there was sunshining. It was, I heard I heard it tinging off our door. I was like, what in the world? I said, get in the get in the bathroom. And I'm sitting in the bathroom, and Lisa had made some kind of blueberry pie. And I'm sitting on the toilet.
SPEAKER_01:She's loving letting it find out.
SPEAKER_06:No, just in case the electric went out, it did. She's holding a dog, and I'm sitting there eating a pie on a toilet like an idiot. And um, we pop our heads out when it's over, and Lodge Holland was building his house, and and you know, the police chief, and he pops his head out, looks around, he's like, in typical Lodge, he points around to everybody. Is everybody good? And um and the next thing you know, he'd owned that store. Uh the quick, I think he bought the quick stop. Quick stop or whatever from Danny Fisher and them, and they they pop around, it's gone. What we talking about. Somebody came down from the store, I guess we're all the you know, Carnegie Square and then Bossinger, and you know it it turned over cars and uh sucked up black talk.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, that's right.
SPEAKER_06:I'm like, how is you know that that one was it was sunshine outside when that thing it was weird.
SPEAKER_03:The the first tornado I experienced that I can actually say I remember um Livia's third birthday in 2006. There was a storm that came through and tornado dropped down in bush. It took the roof off of Lola's. Remember that? I remember watching dad get sucked out the front door. What?
SPEAKER_04:Opened the front door and it pulled me out of my knee. There he goes. And mom's going over.
SPEAKER_05:What am I doing? I'm going below. He's been abducted. Where'd he go? He's in awesome. That's it.
SPEAKER_06:But that day, May 16, 2025. I've never seen anything like that in my life. The response was awesome, but the devastation, I would never get that out of my mind. And going there and you're like, I couldn't find what's weird is how many times you've driven these roads and you could not recognize where we were.
SPEAKER_04:That's exactly. And there's no road signs. I mean, even if you because they were saying they were giving us like an address and a and a street, and I'm like, there's no numbers. Or there's no mailboxes, no load marks, there's no porches. I mean, you know, you couldn't tell anything, and and you don't realize how dark dark is, do you?
SPEAKER_06:Until you're standing out in the middle of something like that, uh with no you have a flashlight or whatever, but maybe it's a weird feeling, and I know y'all were out there doing what you had to do, but when you were going around with, you know, I'm a I was a school police. We, you know, we were just out there trying to do our best. Me and Danny Robinson, I think Jesse Williams were out. And at the this time, and it's so dark, and your flashlights are you're like, I'm not made for this anymore. I know. And you're like, All right, my aunt's gone, she's at the hospital. I can't get out of here in a trooper. I think, you know, Scotty Penny, or somebody was like, hey, can you help us? We're gonna go over here and look for bodies. I'm like, oh yeah. You know, I'm about I'm my mission focused on finding my ahmed turns into uh recovery in and look for still people trapped because we was out there probably an hour after it, you know, it was done. And I'm like, oh.
SPEAKER_04:And I'll tell you how we don't know who if there's anything that would be a trigger for me after that, is smoke detectors.
SPEAKER_06:Oh yeah, you could hear them all.
SPEAKER_04:I mean, yeah, I just wouldn't shut up. It was every house that had one, they were going off, and it was from the dust. Right. You know, and I said, if I hear smoke detectors, I can honestly see that being a trigger.
SPEAKER_03:If there is the smoke detectors and gas lines, just the smell, the the lime carrying on.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I was like everywhere. I could that one freaked me out because it was sucking, you know. I mean, and you know, as a firefighter, we're trying to go shut those off. Well, there wasn't a lot of things. We're gonna go shut them off. I mean they broke off, and that was crazy.
SPEAKER_06:Every time you'd be like, is it safe to start my car right now? You know, you know what I'm saying? I was like talking on your radio, yeah. That that can trigger it, and people don't know that.
SPEAKER_04:I was uh luckily it's probably dissipated when right out, but you were like I I remember thinking I'm the smell of natural gas and the sound of uh smoke detectors was just it was and you were out there over debris and nails every day. How many nail injuries did y'all I mean I honestly I didn't hear of that many? I stepped on three that they didn't go into my foot. Yeah, I heard the belt put my shoe off three times flat tires, but that's right. We found a diary.
SPEAKER_03:The rescue squad has their six by six. We blew every tire on that thing, and still we had patients in the back, and we were driving on the flat tires.
SPEAKER_04:But we do what we gotta do, yeah.
SPEAKER_06:But I I found my aunt, I went to the hospital. Luckily, she didn't go to wine. They could they were going to take her to Wine Pine and couldn't get up there, so he just took her to the hospital and got checked out. And I remember going in there and she really she was like, you know, glad to see me, but still in total shock. Oh, I don't want you know, oh, you don't see me like this. I'm like, oh yeah. I'm just glad you're intact. You you you don't need to go there for a little while at us and going through those things and seeing old pictures of you know, you're like, oh my gosh. Yeah. It it makes you realize that we we s it's just stuff that we we hoard and keep and stuff. The memories of the pictures and stuff are so important. But that other stuff is just stuff.
SPEAKER_04:You know, I I took a picture and actually posted on Facebook that morning of the 17th, and it was of uh Raggedy Andy or whatever laying out in the field. And it was just like, this brings it together out here. You know, yeah. There was no house anywhere around well, but there's this doll just laying there that was some kid's toy or whatever, you know. And that's just how in a matter of seconds your life can be just torn apart. And things that we think sometimes are not that important to us, or to but you don't know what that is to somebody else or whatever, and how that when it's all gone, I mean, I couldn't imagine starting over and having to build a house.
SPEAKER_02:No, absolutely not.
SPEAKER_04:And I sure don't think I could build back where a tornado. I mean, I don't know that I could live there.
SPEAKER_02:No, after that, my my wife's aunt was was in Sunshine Hills, and they were super lucky. I mean, they they said when it started coming over, they jumped in the bathtub and threw the, you know, threw a cushion over top of them. Said it for about two minutes they heard, you know, it's just a god awful sound every and then they got out, and then the only thing was standing was the wall that the bathtub was on, and then everything else was. And you've always heard that.
SPEAKER_04:And I thought, well, yeah, all right, go to the bathtub. Hey, bathtub saved a lot of people's lives. Yeah, they absolutely did. And that is all that just the whole front of the house gone, the sides gone, and there's just those center interior rooms. I mean, we always hear go to an interior room, you mentioned going to the bathroom in 20 or 20 years ago.
SPEAKER_02:They decided to rebuild there, but they really they really questioned it there for a little bit. My aunt's home, right? Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_06:My my aunt sold her place, you know, and and that that's gonna there's gonna be some that build, some that that sell.
SPEAKER_04:And it's not gonna look the same. You know, I mean that. And then and then for the kids, which there was not a lot of kids in that area. Thank God. Not like some areas. I mean, it was older. Primarily an elderly population.
SPEAKER_06:If this would have happened 15 years ago, their kids, you know, they would have been kids, yeah. Yeah, they would have, and they've moved off.
SPEAKER_04:You know, you think though that if there are kids there and they're used to their community, that's the bad thing, though. If they build back, then other people's kids aren't there. And I mean, it's just it's it's strange how it can change so fast.
SPEAKER_06:You know, Sunshine Hills was you know, I include Wesland with it. The Westland State. I mean, it's kind of it's probably a different subdivision. It is, but that thing was that whole area is Sunshine Hills to me. Yeah. But it was gone. And then Yeah, we're I went to a wedding over there at that venue next to the airport over there. And I was talking to Ben. We he was, you know, Ben Webb was he's a city police. I think he was working at ten, eight that night and That afternoon and and he said it's just hard for me to sit here at this wedding and not see know what I saw over here and here and here. And um you know Yeah. It j it was just tough.
SPEAKER_04:It is, it is tough. And it it's already done. I mean even drive back through there now. Oh yeah. Uh you know, you're excited to see people rebuilding their lives. But man of life, I it just uh those memories I can still see things that I saw that night or whatever, you know what just coming from where I was I saw more dead people on one call than I ever have combined probably and there was people hurt everywhere, but the one thing that really still gets to me is just watching the people walk towards you.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. It looked like the walking dead coming towards you. And the one kid that I saw that night, and he was just like, Our house is gone. I was like, Yeah, I mean, but you still got your family. Yeah. He's like, Yeah, I still got them, but we're we're gonna be okay. Yeah. I was like, that's the mentality to have, young man.
SPEAKER_06:It's tough. It's um it's gonna be years and years of of of trauma and shock, you know. I couldn't imagine what next spring well, the tornadoes that hit in it was December 10th.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, in 21. 21 in Mayfell.
SPEAKER_06:Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_04:I mean that went through downtown. Yeah. That was that was unbelievable as well.
SPEAKER_06:But I you know, that's my dad's birthday. Oh, yeah. We're talking about the first snow usually year is around his birthday. And um for a tornado, you know, so you just never know, but I couldn't imagine the spring and of of big storms coming into the cloud rolls in, you're gonna get worried. I still look at them now and you like you know, and I know you see that stuff too, and you hear the people they'll take pictures of these clouds, and you're like, yeah, it's gonna be tough to get through for a while. And and I don't blame nobody because um I know I'll look at it differently, you know.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, absolutely.
SPEAKER_06:It's it's scary.
SPEAKER_03:I I just can't say good things uh all the time, but seventy-six people got transported to the hospital that night. Seventy-six. That's how many people we were found and recovered. And the teams that came from other parts of the state, I they they had to go through the area because they were relieving all of the Law County crews. Um they wanted some people from home to go with them and try to look at the area. And the group I was with, they they looked at me and they said, There's we can't there's nothing for us to do. You all done it. By the morning, everybody had been found. That's awesome.
SPEAKER_02:Nobody that's best case scenario. It is, it is.
SPEAKER_06:That's dedication. You all have some very professional folks, and what they, you know, not every you know, you got new guys. What they lack in experience and that, they have the gumption and the grit to go after it, and that's good.
SPEAKER_03:And people being in it for the right reasons and not and there was there was like I said, there was a lot of new people on the rescue squad that were there that night. And it's hard to tell tell them, hey, we can't we can't help this person. And they're like, Well, they're right here. I said, Yeah, but they're dead. We we can't do nothing. We there's people over here that need our help. Triaging is make a bad call or not. That that'll haunt me forever. Because they teach you triage in the EMT class and they're like black tag.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And people could still be alive, but you know they're not gonna be alive, and you can't waste your time trying to help this person that's way too much.
SPEAKER_02:You've got to help you've got to help somebody whose likelihood of survival is is greater than so it's it's hard to hear and it's hard to to do.
SPEAKER_06:It's it's kind of when you're in this line of business, you want to help everybody.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, yeah. And um It's kind of like with active shooter training with with law enforcement. You're trained if you've got bodies on the floor, you've got people yelling that are shot, screaming out that need help. It's hard to go past that without but that's not your job at the time.
SPEAKER_03:You've got to step and you've got to stop. You've got to stop the threat in order to help these people.
SPEAKER_02:So it's the same with that, you know, with triage. You've got to you've got to stop, you know, you've got to help who you can and who you know that you you can actually save.
SPEAKER_03:And it's like that night, state police, my goodness, they helped us a lot. Yep. It was great. And they were trying to help somebody, and I said, hey, we we gotta get going. It's tough. It's it's tough stuff.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, yeah. Well, you've got a notebook full of stuff that we've uh we've been, you know, we've we've kind of derailed some, so let's let's lighten up a little bit. So we'll get the fun and stuff now. Hey, this stuff's great, though.
SPEAKER_06:I mean, it's it's stuff that needs to be talked about about the tornado because it's well, it's been four months, five months, four months. And sometimes the best therapy is to get it, you know, just talk so I it's gonna affect us for years and years.
SPEAKER_04:And and I don't know when I both maybe talked about it.
SPEAKER_02:Uh you know, you you think after what you saw and what's it did you know we talk about this about every episode with about each guest is that's kind of the reason we started this podcast. I mean, it's partially for entertainment and then it's partially, you know, it helps us to bounce these things off, these stories, these horrible calls that we've had off of each other. You get it off, you get it out into the open out.
SPEAKER_06:Sometimes talking like this will allow you to let your guard down a little bit, even though this mic's in front. But me asking a question about it and talking about it, may you may you two might talk about it, but maybe, maybe not. Right. But people need to hear, and you need to get it's a way to decompress too. So it's good for your soul, really.
SPEAKER_03:Um, so I know you all went to the floods in 2022. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02:I went to that. One of the greatest experiences of my life. So it was terrible, but it was uh it was an awesome and humbling experience.
SPEAKER_03:So the day it hit, I was supposed to be at work at eight o'clock. Now, being a swift water tech, those are the big things. Yeah. Um, we get called to Clay County for mutual aid, and Onita, they said Onita's underwater, we need help, and there's somebody trapped. Okay. So we meet up. Yeah. So we went to 421 and 11, and we start going down. You see the floods and everything. We get maybe about five miles down highway 11, and the Clay County boys were like, uh we're stuck. How are we stuck? There's a landslide up ahead. Oh, you got somebody coming? Yeah, they're gonna be here in about two hours. And I'm like, boy, I gotta be at work. But so where we were, there was no self-service, so I'm freaking out because I'm like, I'm probably gonna have a job when I get back. Okay. And they cleared it out. Well, there's another one, yeah. And it's bigger, so they clear that one. Well, we go up the road a little bit, and they're like, uh, there's an even bigger one. Half the mountain had come down, and there was trees standing straight up. Wow. It took us six hours to get to Onita on Highway 11. Jeez.
SPEAKER_04:And we were about faster on horseback.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, we were probably about three, four miles past Laurel Creek Nursing Home, if you know where that is.
SPEAKER_06:From downtown Manchester to over there is probably what 15 minutes if you're if everything's going good. Maybe a little longer.
SPEAKER_05:Or you're in the fire truck down there. Oh yeah, we've done that too. Way later. But it's a it's a good little haul from but still, it shouldn't be a six-hour ordeal.
SPEAKER_03:No and so we get to Onita, and obviously it it had flooded really bad. And they was like, Well, boys, we already got her. That'd been nice to have known.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah. But thanks for the thanks for the heads up.
SPEAKER_03:Thanks for the heads up. Well, we get turned around, we go to the Burger King there by Pizza Pro. Mm-hmm. And my boss or my captain calls me and he's like, Are you coming to work? I said, Um, well, no. And he's like, What do you mean no? I said, I'm in Clay County rescuing people, and not be like, Well, we just wasted our time. Yeah. But this is about the time they were needing help in Perry County, and they asked us to go. So I said, Well, I'm getting deployed to Perry County, so you're gonna have to call somebody in. And we get over there, not realizing how bad it was. We had heard helicopters were doing rooftop rescues, and there was boats getting people. We go down a road, and you're just looking around and you're like, oh my goodness, everything's gone. And I got pictures of it. There's a fire hydrant sucked out of the ground. Gosh. And it's just sitting there like this. And I said, just imagine how fast that water was going. And later that night, the first night that we were there, we had to go down this Bob's Road. I don't know where it was, but there's like a hundred-foot drop right next to you. And we're in the dive bus, if y'all know what our dive bus is. Ricky George looked at me and he said, Put your seatbelt on, I'm gonna get us out of here. And he backed up this road, and he's like, just don't let me get off. I said, if we get off, we're gone.
SPEAKER_04:I said, You'll know it if you hit up it. It'll be the last thing you remember.
SPEAKER_05:It's gonna be smooth for just a second.
SPEAKER_03:Being over there and just seeing the devastation and seeing how some of these people were living, you're like, we're blessed.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, absolutely. That's why you know we've taught the natural disaster stuff. Man, it's it's it's the power of water, of wind, fire. Y'all I it's worse than any.
SPEAKER_02:I remember driving up on the way up. I think Cody was driving, I was on the passenger side, and we went well just going through the town, it looked like you know, like Fallujah or something like a battle. Which town was it?
SPEAKER_06:Fleming. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And then, but on the way there, I'll never forget, I've got a picture of it. There was a trailer up on the hill on the side, and you had the you know, the river, how they all had bridges over to but there was a trailer over there, and I'm looking at like you just kind of at a glance, you see the car in the driveway. Well, the car's not in the driveway, the car is parked on the porch. It's in the porch. It had picked it up, flipped it upside down and parked inside and it's uh picked it up and put it on the porch. Yep. And I was like, that's the wildest thing.
SPEAKER_06:I remember I remember thinking it dried up by the time we got up there. But nobody had came to there was a lot of mud left there. Fleming was was, you know, we was walking down, it dried up, you know, and it was like dirt and weird. It felt like we was walking in a like a ghost town. You know, you they'd hit they'd already marked the big X's and stuff like that. Female. Yeah. And but I remember looking and seeing like this is how high the water, you know, six feet up, the mud line on the floor.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, the pharmacy was six and a half feet.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, and you're like, how in the world did all this stuff.
SPEAKER_04:And that's you know, the flash flooding. I mean, that happens over in a matter of an hour or something, you know, and then it's gone.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:We've definitely had our share in in the last few years.
SPEAKER_03:Absolutely. So we uh we went back a couple weeks afterwards, and they're like, Yeah, we just need you all to go search because at this time they hadn't found one person. And the place we went to was in Knock County, just over the line from Barrie County. And we had to you either go with this team, you search a nice straight flat land, and then you're on this side that's nothing but cliffs and riverbank. So I got blessed to be on the cliff side. Of course. Yep. So we go searching, and immediately there's a smell, and you're like, Well, we know that smell, you know that smell. The team behind us was canines with cadaver dogs, and they recovered a dog. Yeah, but there was a whole house under this bridge. And we get probably about five, six miles down this god-awful cliffside. You have to go up and down, up and down. We're scaling the rock face, and I have my radio clicked on my hip. And we're going down this rock face, and I hear click, and I look down, and there goes my radio. Boom, boom, bloop. I about cried. I tried to jump after it, and I was like, you idiot, there's floodwater. Literally, the water is swift water right below you. Yep, gone.
SPEAKER_06:That that was what was you start hearing about flooding part of you know, in in Perry County, in Clay County. So we're driving, we don't see nothing. We don't we get to hazard. Still, you're like, well, you know how Hazard's got the river, whatever runs right through the middle.
SPEAKER_04:You're like, nothing there, was it?
SPEAKER_06:Nothing there, no problem. Get down to you start to see a little bit of like uh some you know, some toilet paper trees and stuff like that. And you're like, that's not that bad. And then you get to Whites.
SPEAKER_04:Well, we went to Whitesburg first, and you're like coming in out of hazard was rough up when you pass the lake. Yeah, you got to the lake, man, we got bad.
SPEAKER_06:But we were like, okay. I because I for you know, hazard's down kind of in the whole part of that right there, those homes on the it just it went a different direction or whatever.
SPEAKER_04:It's so weird. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06:But down there, and they're like, they caught what the upper bottom or something. I don't know, you have an upper bottom. Yeah, I don't know what's up. Um it's just the neighborhood, and you're like, it got up to this high here, and you know, you're like, wow. And then the other side, and then it, you know, my buddy Nathan, he lived over there, he was from London, moved over there, and he was like, I need to show you something. He said, You you've not seen anything yet. So we go over there and meet with this chief of Fleming or Neon, whichever one. He said, Oh, I'm okay. I only had about an inch of mud in my house. I said, Go home. How do you get to the jail? He said, Gotta go pipe ball. I was like, eh. Don't arrest me, buddy. Yeah, we guess. And and you know, you start hearing the people. I got a chance to meet with um, I did an interview with because we ran ran to a fire call, and they were all like following, they were like, Oh, you all ran out of here on a call. What was going on? And it was uh national weather, it was Fox weather. I'd never I didn't even know about them at the time. And I did an interview with them, and we we went off, we was live, and I was like, Oh, they was like, Oh, we need somebody who's doing it, and everybody's like, You're the chief dude. Yeah, you get it. And um, but I started talking to that guy and I was like, You've not seen it neon yet. He's a what? I said, You need to go and you need to get some help here. And um people were bringing, you know, because Whitzberg did a really good job saying, hey, we need help, we need this and this and this. And little town like Fleming and Neon, and they don't have that resources of that. You know, you were talking about a couple hundred people who live there, but we started kidnapping and stealing these cars that all these people had brought in. We we was carjacking them. It was like you don't need all those, they need them. I mean, they was running, they was running F-150 through floodwaters and run them. They had nothing over there. You can't imagine. It was crazy. Craziest things I've ever seen.
SPEAKER_03:Seeing the roads destroyed, like there was roads waving and seeing all the oil from the cars in the water and just nasty propane tanks floating down the water. Like that was nice.
SPEAKER_04:The residential propane tanks.
SPEAKER_03:I think I saw about three or four like the big thousand gallon propane tanks just floating down the water.
SPEAKER_06:I'm hoping they get get get it all. I mean, it's still gonna be there again.
SPEAKER_04:Years of that's been three years ago now. Yeah, they're still rebuilding homes over there too. So none of it gets in done and dealt with fast. It happens in a minute and it's got takes years to recover. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Did did I ever work any calls with you boys that you can think of?
SPEAKER_02:I've I've seen you out on wrecks, I've seen you on a great bunch. So but um And I'm sure I've sent many of uh overdose or something. Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Oh yeah. Uh when when they're fighting after your Nord can't be.
SPEAKER_03:So speaking of overdose, so I was working one night, we get a call for possible overdose at the cookie factory. So we go down there and uh Drew Jackson was there. And we walk over to this car and I said, Where's the patient? And Drew goes, Oh, there he is. He's under the car, overdosed. Wow, completely unresponsive, barely breathing. And I'm like, Drew, we gotta get him out. So me and Drew are dragging this guy out from under this car. Him gurgling. Oh, yeah. And we get him loaded in the truck, and I'm not with the paramedic. So it's EMT and EMT. There really ain't much I can do. I mean, I could give him narkin up his nose. We we did that, and uh, I look down, oh boy quit breathing. I was like, oh no. Well, about two seconds later, he goes and opens his eyes and he looked at me. He goes, Where am I at? I said, buddy, uh, you you died. And he said, No, no. I said, Listen, you're not in trouble. Like, we have to ask him, like, what'd you take? And he's like, buddy, I didn't take nothing. Yeah, no, don't want to answer. And oh no.
SPEAKER_02:I mean, you probably used to at some point in time, but you don't. They're having a medical merch in there's a way of thinking.
SPEAKER_03:But they don't think uh fentanyl. Yeah, fentanyl. Fentanyl.
SPEAKER_06:And Jerry was like, Well, it's a scourge. I mean, that when that hit, I remember you're talking about when meth hit, and the pills hit hard, you know, the oxycontins and and we still didn't have the overdose oxyfentanol. No. When we went with the pills, yeah, when the oxycontin went away, when they made it harder to get than than heroin and just straight up fentanyl stuff started hitting, and that was the worst thing. I mean the opioid you know, the pandemic it was really ruined generations of it, especially in Kentucky, West Virginia, and Tennessee and wherever, but Ohio, that's south. But when when uh they couldn't get it so easy, it got worse.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_06:It got way worse.
SPEAKER_02:Well, they were they were cutting everything with fentanyl. I mean, we had guys with meth cut with fentanyl, which I mean I don't know how that works. I mean totally opposite. Yeah, you got it up and down. I mean, split in half. Then we had a bad batch of uh Xanax bars that they were pressing, and it was straight fentanyl. Yeah, it wasn't so it was. We had like 30 some overdoses in a week or two in the city, not to mention Ford County. Right.
SPEAKER_06:That's crazy.
SPEAKER_04:And get more Narcan than you ever thought.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, I know. You know, when they first gave us Narcan and uh the pharmacist came in, gave us a little quick talk about it, and um we're like, we'll never have to use this. I was like, we'll save that just in case we get it spotted.
SPEAKER_02:Oh my gosh. I had to narcate a guy just the other day. It was a goat roping. It gets awful. Went from foot pursuit to taking him to jail. He ate whatever he had. I guess it was fentanyl or what heroin or whatever he had. During the foot pursuit, get him to the jail. He's starting to all of a sudden. Yeah, he's he's starting to nod and he's like, I was like crap. I was like, I gotta get him in here, get him in there. OD's right in the middle of processing him. So it's it it turned into a goat rubbing. But he took eight milligrams of Narcan to get him back. Get him back.
SPEAKER_03:Y'all remember Flocca? Yeah, Floca. Oh buddy, I got a story about Flocca. Oh, let's hear it. So I went it was about three o'clock in the morning, and we have two stations, you know. We get a call in the south end, uh, Appaloosa Trail. Mm-hmm. Yep. Possible overdose. Okay. Well, we stood by an area, and SO gets down there, and they're like, Yeah, send him on in London. Okay. I walked in and deputy's like, he's right back there. So I walked back, I had my little flashlight, and I'm like, hello. Well, this dude just comes out like this. Just ready to go. And I said, Oh Lord. And I said, hi. And he just he comes right at me. And I was like, Well, here it is. So obviously I'm in my defense stage, and he takes a swing at me. Luckily, I just put my arm up and caught him, and the fight was on after that. And let me tell you, if you've never fought somebody on Flocca, it's like fighting 400 Mike Tysons at once.
SPEAKER_02:It's wild how str how how stare they get. Yep. And a taser will not affect you can't, they don't feel pain. They don't, you can't.
SPEAKER_06:Meth was that way for a while, you know, and uh I think Flocca, all this stuff is stimul uh like they get this ungodly strength. So I could imagine I could imagine finding somebody on the what that angel what's that stuff? Uh PCP 70s and I reckon they was way on the hard.
SPEAKER_02:You've got Molly now and all that MDMT or whatever it is. I'll tell you a story. One of our instructors told us in the academy. He worked, I think it was the Lexington Metro and worked narcotics that he's out on a guy. This this guy's blowed out of his mind on meth or flocca or something. One of those one of those hallucinogens. Can't get him a pain compliance. He's naked. In the middle of downtown Lexington, and he's chasing this guy around. He said, at some point in time, he said it kind of felt like this guy was chasing me around the car. He said he finally gets him down on the ground and cannot get him. And he said, he said, you know, it might not have been the best thing for me to do. He said, but I just happened to look down and he said, I seen that old little flaccid thing. He said, I just drove my knee right into it. He said, That pain compliance works. Oh. Oh.
SPEAKER_06:It's fun. I know you got a bunch more. We can come back and do something because we've been at it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. We're going on two and a half hours. Time flies when it when we're having a lot of things. So y'all want to adjourn and redo name later.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah. This was this is so much fun. It's good for the soul. Um I've I've really enjoyed you guys. It's fun to be around guys I've not got to see you no more. Honestly, I missed you guys.
SPEAKER_04:Appreciate y'all having us. Yeah. Definitely. It's been a it's been real.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely. It's been real, it's been fun, but it ain't been real for days. All right, guys. Thanks for coming. We'll catch you on the next one.