Innovating Fire Safety: Insights from Chief Joe Testa

In the ever-evolving landscape of public safety, fire departments face unique challenges exacerbated by climate change, urban expansion, and technological advancement. On a recent episode of the Capstone Conversation Podcast, hosted by Jared Asch, Chief Joe Testa of the Livermore Pleasanton Fire Department shared valuable insights into the evolving world of firefighting, fire safety, and the role of technology.

A Storied Career in Firefighting

Chief Joe Testa spoke about his extensive career, which began in the Discovery Bay area in 1994 and led him to Pleasanton in 1996. With nearly 30 years of service, Testa has ascended through the ranks, bringing a wealth of experience to his leadership role.

Recruitment Challenges in Fire Departments

The fire service, akin to the police force, is facing recruitment challenges. Chief Testa highlighted the ongoing struggle to find qualified candidates, especially those with paramedic licenses. The pandemic exacerbated this issue by temporarily closing paramedic schools, leading to a greater demand for fewer available professionals. However, emerging strategies, similar to those used in police academies, aim to alleviate these challenges by sponsoring educational paths for recruits.

Unique Structure and Operations

The Livermore Pleasanton Fire Department operates as a joint powers authority (JPA) between two cities, allowing shared resources and efficiencies. This unique structure enables rapid response and effective management of the escalating call volume, which now exceeds 17,000 calls a year.

The Increasing Call Volume Explained

The surge in call volume is multifaceted, stemming from population growth, climate changes, and evolving community service expectations. Chief Testa explained how the fire department’s role extends beyond traditional firefighting to include medical emergencies, which comprise a significant portion of their calls.

Leveraging Technology for Public Safety

Technological advancements have become indispensable in modern firefighting. Chief Testa discussed deploying systems that broadcast alerts to drivers through navigation apps to improve safety during roadside incidents. He anticipates further integration of technology, such as drones and GPS-based personnel tracking, to enhance operational efficiency and safety.

Dreaming Big: Future Tech in Fire Services

Chief Testa envisions a future where robotics and advanced geolocation technology play critical roles in firefighting. Potential developments could allow robots to navigate hazardous environments, providing unprecedented support and safety for firefighters and the communities they serve.

Fire Safety and Prevention: Community's Role

Preventive measures and community involvement are paramount in mitigating fire risks. Residents are advised to create evacuation plans, maintain defensible space by clearing combustible materials, and prepare for emergencies ahead of time. Chief Testa emphasized the importance of proper fire prevention practices, such as detailed engraving of fire-safe materials and systems that ensure timely alerts in case of fires.

Conclusion

Chief Joe Testa's insights underscore the critical role of innovation and community cooperation in addressing modern firefighting challenges. As technology continues to evolve, opportunities for improved safety, efficiency, and service delivery grow, paving the way for a future where fire departments are better equipped to protect and serve.

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#FireSafety #FireDepartment #PublicSafety #Innovation #TechnologyInFirefighting #EmergencyServices #CommunityResilience #ClimateChange #FirePrevention #SafetyInnovation #RecruitmentChallenges #JointPowersAuthority #ParamedicTraining #TechInGovernment #DronesInFirefighting #Geolocation #RoboticsInSafety #UrbanSafety #DefensibleSpace #FireTechSolutions #CapstoneConversation #JaredAsch #CapstoneGovernmentAffairs

For the Full Transcript

Welcome to the Capstone conversation where you learn about what's happening in the Greater East Bay. I am your host, Jared Asch.

  I am joined today by chief Joe Testa of the Livermore Pleasanton Fire Department, a special district that is designed to keep the people there safe.

And today we're gonna talk about fire safety as we head into fire, peak fire season, how the landscape is changing. From a longtime veteran in the Bay Area. Thanks chief for joining us today. Good to be here. Tell us a little bit more about yourself and your background.

I'm at the end of my career as as Fire Chief at the Livermore Pleasant Fire Department. I started in the fire service in 1994 out in the Discovery Bay area. And, went to another department over on the peninsula for about a year and then came over to Pleasanton in 1996. And then we joined with Livermore that same year at the end of the year where I've spent my whole career almost the last 30 years.

Worked my way up through the ranks. Started as a firefighter paramedic. Got to be a fire engineer who gets to drive and operate the apparatus. That's a great job. Fire captain. Leads the fire crew battalion chief, deputy chief, and then since 2022 Fire Chief.

We often hear about police recruitment being a problem? Is it the same thing in the firefighter world? Are there still enough people coming through the ranks or departments full of vacancies? How's that looking from your perspective?

We did not get hit as early as police did, and police are actually starting to come out of it.

There's some encouragement there in what I'm about to say. But we are fully hit with recruitment challenges now and in particular, for the positions that require a paramedic license that's where we struggle the most to recruit. In our fire department, all firefighters that start here are either a paramedic or an emergency medical technician.

A emergency medical technicians, a fairly brief class. It can be done in a matter of weeks. And qualify you for those jobs. The paramedic an accelerated program will take you a year. And a more normal PACE program is about a year and a half. Finding candidates with that requirement has been the big challenge, especially since the pandemic because the paramedic schools going into the pandemic.

We're turning out just enough paramedics to keep the system running. Great. And then the schools. Temporarily closed, and some of the schools are just restarting now. There's been a big demand for those fewer paramedics. I do see that correcting in the coming years though.

And then do people get paid as they go through those programs or like some of the police academy people, or is that No, you gotta go that's your schooling.

You gotta go to college, you gotta take out your loans. You'll have a job on the other side.

Historically the fire service expected you to come with a paramedic license. Some of the private companies would would help sponsor you through, if you're working for an ambulance company in our county, it's Falk, they would help sponsor you through EMT in becoming a paramedic.

The fire service having to adapt though. Fire departments in this county are now sending people to paramedic school and we're looking at ways that we can do the same thing. The path we're looking at, it's a little bit more like the police departments where we might have a cadet type rank and pay them some sort of amount that they could live on probably aren't gonna get rich on, but get them through school.

And that way it's open to a broader group of people. Depending on where you're on add in life and your background it can be a real challenge to pause income for a year to a year and a half. In order to get that paramedic. Some people are lucky, they can do it with family support or loans, but not everybody has that opportunity and we really wanna see that everyone in our community has a chance to get that license if it's something they wanna do.

Yeah. And would help keep the pipeline going talk to us a little bit about your district. In particular, how are you structured how does that compare to some other fire departments? You talked about working for, or just know in the area.

We're pretty unique. We're a joint powers authority between the two cities.

The two cities have signed an agreement. And there are, like you mentioned, special districts and other joint powers, authorities or jpa. For example, orange County Fire Authority is a JPA but they run more independently from the cities that they serve. Our.

Services other than fire service are provided to our JPA by the city. One city does human resources for our JPA, one city does finance, one city does it. It's a little bit unique of a structure not to have those things internal to the JPA. I think it provides a ton of efficiency and that's one of the reasons that we formed as a JPA was to operate more efficiently.

If. If we weren't, Livermore would probably have a fire chief in Pleasanton, would probably have a fire chief. And there's a number of other positions like mine that are shared 50 50 that each city would have to have independently, so their costs would go up. But the other thing that's happened in the, in our jurisdiction is the call volume wouldn't really allow a single city model anymore.

When we formed, we were running. About 6,000 calls a year, and we're now running over 17,000 calls a year. And we're able to do that by being dispatched by Alameda County Fire at their dispatch center out in the Lawrence Livermore lab. And then all the fire engines in the Tri-Valley have a GPS locator on them, and we're sending the closest unit.

Even though Dublin's not part of our JPA, at the field level, we run as if it were. And we'll go into Dublin. Dublin, we'll come into Pleasanton or Livermore. And we just run like one big department and we have to because of the call volume.

Fires don't stop because here's this artificial line.

Somebody drew on a map, they you gotta be able to go and call who's ever closest. That's just good to know. In general, why is that call volume increased? Is that just the drier climates we're facing? Is more development, more people that live here? What are you experiencing?

It? It's no one thing.

And I'll answer more observationally than scientifically, but, certainly the population has gone up. The borders of our cities have expanded and growth continues in the Tri-Valley. The climate has changed and things that didn't use to burn do burn now. We we didn't used to have the unhoused encampments that we do now.

And those encampments do generate a fair amount of calls, fire calls, medical calls and I feel like the service expectation has also changed over the years. Not that long ago. Maybe not quite in my lifetime, but not too far. Before, there weren't really ambulances, fire departments weren't doing medical calls.

If you had a problem like that, you would throw somebody in the station wagon and get 'em to the hospital. But now with having paramedics on every one of our fire engines and paramedics on the ambulance. Is we can provide proper splinting and pain medication before we load somebody onto the gurney with a broken leg.

People call us and they should be, it's great. But what we're called for is wider. I would say that the service level expectation has increased too, for good reasons, for positive reasons.

I think that answers part of my next question, right? 17,000. There's not 17,000 fires, right? No. I mean there's some big ones, but, and there's some house fires.

But it sounds like you're also getting the calls for the broken legs and for a cat stuck up in a tree, is that still a thing?

We're we brand ourselves as a fire department. We are Livermore and Pleasanton Fire Department. We're the only ones that are gonna come if it catches on fire. But that's about 3% of what we do.

97% of our calls are not fire. In, in the threat of fire, though, when you think about 3% of 17,000, you're north of 500. We are fighting a fire a day, and whenever I present to community groups, I ask, does it seem like we get a fire a day in Livermore and Pleasanton? And they say, no. And thank goodness, because we're able to get there quickly and get them out in their very early stages.

And you don't necessarily know that there was a fire in the house next door or down the street or in a field because we're getting them out real quick. 3% of. Our calls are fires. About 65% are medical calls. That's the lion's share of what we do. And then we do a lot of a lot of things around fire alarm calls.

A big category for us is what we call good intent calls. And that always raises people's curiosity. But an example of a good intent call is you look out the window and you're sure your neighbor's house is burning down and. We get there and it turns out that maybe their ribs were a little bit fatty and caught fire on the barbecue, and there's no hazard, but it is making a lot of smoke.

Yeah with all those different, I've never done that. I don't know what you're talking about. I think everyone's done that once or twice

from the expert. , are other agencies, fire agencies, do they tend to also be that medical service? 'cause a lot of times it is an outsourced medical ambulance group.

Yeah, we're a component and I, and most fire departments are at least in the Bay Area. In fact I would go as far as say all fire departments are in the Bay Area.

We're a component of that 9 1 1 Chain of Survival for medical calls. Because we have more stations than there are ambulances in the community I. We're able to get there quickly, start care. If they need defibrillation, that's one where seconds really count or we're our heart monitors can actually do a diagnostic level, EKG, and we can with a fair amount of certainty.

See if you're having a heart attack and notify. The receiving cardiac center and have them starting to get the catheterization lab ready. And there's things that we're able to do even before the ambulance gets there that can significantly benefit outcomes. And then the ambulances travel with two people, which a lot of times is plenty for a fairly basic.

Medical problem, but when you're dealing with a critical patient it really becomes an all hands. And it, it ends up with five people working on that incident. Most of them dedicated to the patient, but usually one fire person will be with the family, getting information and keeping them updated.

And then a lot of times we'll send one or two riders in with the ambulance on a critical call.

Depending on where you are, right? Because if you're on a roadway or highway and you're responding to a fire, there was a, gosh, probably been about a year, but I remember a big fire on 24 and two cars had gone up really high flames and the firefighters were just responding.

But you've gotta, now somebody's gotta go control traffic. They gotta keep other people away, right?

Yeah I think that freeway side calls are probably that most hazardous thing that we do these days. Anybody who's out driving a car knows that driving has changed and that people are looking at devices or infotainment systems and not the road as much as we used to.

Speeds are higher, stereos are on, they don't necessarily know that they're even approaching an incident scene. A couple things we've done as an organization and we're not alone in these other organizations have done or are doing the same. But we send two units to the freeways now and we park one unit well behind the call.

At an angle, and we call it the fend off unit. And that is really just if somebody's not paying attention and they're going to crash into the scene that we sacrifice a fire engine and not one of the not one of the patients on the scene or one of the firefighters. And then the other thing that we do, even newer and interesting is we've we've added a system to our fire engines that interacts with smartphone apps like Waze and Google Maps as well as infotainment systems in the car. And when our red lights are on, we're actually broadcasting a message to people that are using those smart systems and they get an advisory.

That either we're approaching or they're approaching. It doesn't know the difference who's approaching who, but it lets you know that there is a fire engine operating in the area.

Oh, that's cool. I haven't experienced that yet, but I think that is yeah, that, that's awesome. Do other fire departments, is that like becoming more standard or you're on the cutting edge sort of that?

I think for the Bay Area, we were an early adopter. But I did just hear a fire department up in Marin on the news over the weekend talking about moving to that technology. And I know. At least one other department in the county is either looking at it or has moved to it. It's out there.

It's gonna take a few years for the cars to catch up. Not all cars have infotainment systems. When we're driving around town, we're not usually using navigation 'cause we know our way. But people from out of town, certainly we, we'd get them. We've got in just a couple years of operation, we've got hundreds of thousands of notifications to vehicles.

That's cool. Are incredible. Yeah.

Yeah. I made that mistake the other night coming back from Palo Alto to the East Bay and didn't know they were doing the construction on five 80, and I was like I knew where I was going, I didn't think of. Checking. It's 10 o'clock at night. Yeah, nobody's I didn't expect traffic, but it took me two and a half hours to get home

I remember going to a class in the Los Angeles area and the instructor told me that he had used three apps to get the best navigation route to get there. And I thought to myself, we're not far behind that in the Bay Area. We're getting there.

Let's build on that.

What other tech are you seeing being used? Now? There's, let's start with drones, right? There's a lot of conversations I've been in where drones are maybe used for early detection. I don't know if you're deploying that, if you have any ideas on it.

We do not have a drone program yet in the fire department, but Livermore Police Department has recently fully implemented a drone program, including they call it, uAVs unmanned aerial vehicles in including including the ability to see hotspots on a fire. Thermal imaging is what they call that from their cameras. They're more than happy to come out to our scenes. I am interested in the fire department standing up a program. I think when we get busy, maybe we could help the the police department could help us, and when they get busy, maybe we could help them as that technology, gets wider used. Definitely looking forward to that. Right now on our fire engines, we we do have an iPad. In the fire engine the engineer drives and the captain sits in the right front seat and the captain's in charge. And it's the captain's responsibility to navigate the vehicle to learn what's going on.

Right now we have an iPad that provides us routing to the call. And then it provides us the location of the closest hydrant and pre-fire plans. We can take a look at, at plans that we've done before the actual incident. And then we've even more recently moved to a system, it's called Tablet Command, where we're actually tracking resources using that iPad.

Before we would have a sheet of paper and we would write down where we think the other fire crew is and now we're able to see where they really are based on their GPS location and then track their assignment that way in real time. That technology has helped us. Significantly in personnel track tracking.

And then it it integrates with our staffing software. Not only do we see where the fire engine is, we can see who's on it. That comes in handy for people that have special skills. Some people have technical rescue skills. We're members of the hazmat team, we're able to get that information in real time.

That's a couple things that we're doing state and national level. We're starting to see some really cool technology. We had a fire. On the Pleasanton Ridge in 2022, it started out in Kill Care Canyon and burned up over the ridge and we had to evacuate the Golden Eagle neighborhood, which is off of Foothill Road.

And then we had to put the Castlewood neighborhood, the golf course neighborhood on an evacuation watch based on where we thought that fire was heading. And the state had a fairly new program that's now become permanent called fi, and they were able to fly over that fire and give us information on exactly where the fire was.

If you're familiar with the Pleasanton Ridge it, it looks, it looks fairly densely forested. From the valley floor, it's really hard to tell where a fire is when you're looking up and just seeing smoke. But having that plane fly over and map out exactly where the fire is was super helpful.

And then the other one that the. We're seeing more and more as the conversion of the old fire watch towers in the back country. If you were a backpacker years ago you would see a tower out in the middle of nowhere and during the fire season there would actually be somebody working at that tower that would poke their head out now and again and make sure there was no fire as far as they could see.

And they've now got technology that that is able to. Monitor that every second, not just every few minutes or every little bit and detect those wildfires starting early. And I mentioned in our jurisdiction people don't realize that we have as many fires as we do. 'cause we get them put out really quick most of the time.

And if we can do that on forest fires, that is just a game changer. Being able to, pounce on those really quickly to get to 'em quickly, put 'em out quickly it can save it from ever being a big newsworthy event, which is always our goal.

That's really cool technology. What is your, what's a dream technology that might not be out there yet or something that you think Hey, I would love a technology to solve this problem for me.

Yeah I think robotics are gonna be an interesting one to track in the future. There are environments that are too hazardous to send our people into but if we could send a robot in and have them do the work inside I think that would be super helpful. I talked about tracking our personnel and we're doing a really good job now of tracking where our vehicles are at, but a good technology.

That lets us track where people are at in a building could be really important. If a firefighter becomes into stress or if they locate a victim, but they don't know exactly where they are. Being able to geolocate them in the building, not just not just right to left, but top to bottom since many buildings are multi-story I think would be super helpful.

I'm looking forward to that technology. There's definitely been some some beta level work in that field. And that would be super helpful to our personnel. I think we're gonna see more and more, done with thermal imaging. We're already able to see through smoke with the thermal imagers that we carry.

And we've actually thank, thankfully to a grant, we've been a able to add at least a very small thermal imager to every one of our personnel. But I think more and more you're gonna see that embedded in the masks and heads up display type things as the technology improves.

Interesting. And what about I just had a chief of police do an interview with me and they were complaining about paperwork time. Is that a big issue for fire departments? Two people. If you're responding to two, two fires a day, or two incidents today. Sounds like or more, is that taking a lot of time and budget and people out of the field by doing that paperwork or is it not the same problem?

Probably a little bit different. We do at least one report on every incident that we were respond to. On medical incidents, we do two reports. We do a patient care report and we do a, it's a, there's a fire incident reporting system, even though it includes far more than just fire, but that's what it's called.

National Fire Incident Reporting System. Those are fairly brief reports. They don't take long, and then we just do them at downtime at the station, the station wouldn't be out of service for the report. They would be waiting for the next call and catching up. On reports and that actually at our fire department, that's how we do most things.

Most of our training we do available and ready for the next call. Most of the projects that our people in the stations work on, if they get a call, they just leave the project. Even cooking dinner. If they're cooking dinner hopeful they shut off

The stove first we don't start another fire.

Our newer stations do that automatically. Oh, there you go. Yeah. I'm not, that's not, probably not the biggest solve though. I'm sure AI will help with that. Yeah. One that's already started and I think is gonna be more and more interesting is on the patient care front.

There's been some, some trial periods in the county where we've done telehealth and then the ambulance provider actually has does have a full on telehealth program. Historically our only thing we could do to help a patient was transport 'em to an emergency room. And candidly, not every patient needs an emergency room, and not everybody wants to get into the multi-hour process that an emergency room is.

I think you're gonna see more and more connecting patients with the right level of care and using technology to assist in that. And the capabilities of our our field assessment tools are just gonna keep increasing and supporting that. The more information we can get to a nurse or to a doctor from the field the better they're gonna be able to help us pair the patient with the right level of service.

Those are great tools. Let's get into fire safety a little bit.

In 30 years plus of being a firefighter. How have things in the field changed the, there's a lot of those headlines on the big fires. Share your thoughts. What's causing that? Is it really changed or is it just the news media's changed?

I. Yeah, they've they've been tracking large fires for many years, and I am very comfortable with the statement of of the frequency and intensity of the large fires ha has increased in the la in the last, number of years and it's not every year. Last year we actually had a fairly calm year. But 2020, as everybody remembers, was a very significant year for me. The the real wake up call for me, and maybe it should have happened sooner, but the tubs fire that burned into Santa Rosa. Burned across Highway 1 0 1, took out big box stores, nursing homes neighborhoods that weren't in the urban wildland interface area that were just neighborhoods got taken out in that fire.

And that was the real alarm to me that times have changed. There have always. Maybe not always for a very long time. There've been significant fires that burned down houses and unfortunately lives lost. But the magnitude of that, the idea of fire crossing a four-lane highway and burning down a big box store really made me think that.

We, yes, it can happen here. Our biggest threat in terms of wildfire is the Pleasanton Ridge in our jurisdiction. And for most of my career, the thought has been it it doesn't get the hot afternoon sun. The normal pattern winds from the bay don't hit it. But. With the offshore winds, that warm wind coming from the valley, the fuels being drier more fuels it, it does seem real to me that a fire like the Tubbs fire could happen in our community now.

And I don't think that was true 30 years ago or not as high of risk. It would've taken a couple really dry years and some start and some fire weather. And now I think it. It could happen with a higher probability. I hope it doesn't. We are doing things to try and keep it from happening, but I do think it has changed in my career.

What are some of those things that you're doing to keep that from happening?

Probably the biggest single thing right now is, with the City of Pleasanton Parks District, we were able to secure a grant for a million dollars to do fuels mitigation. The part of the Pleasanton Ridge that the city owns in the Augustine Burnell Park is not grazing land, is you get higher up on the ridge.

It. To east Bay Parks Pleasanton Ridge Park, there is grazing land and you can just really see the difference in the fuel model in, in the lands that have been grazed over the years versus haven't. They tend to have sparse trees and then we call it light flashy fuels, but seasonal grasses.

And then you go down into the Augustine Burnell Park and you've got heavy trees and bushes and plants and dead fuels on the ground. We're gonna, do some medication on that. With this grant we we're always happy to, and do reach out to the homeowners groups that live along that area and talk about the things that they can do to harden their home for wildfire.

And then as a fire department we try to make sure that we're prepared every one of our. Fire stations, I probably should have told you earlier, we have 10 fire stations and 10 fire companies. They deliver service on eight fire engines and two fire trucks. The fire engines are the ones that have the pumper and a big water tank.

And then the trucks are the ones that have a big ladder and a driver in back. But also at every station we have a wildland firefighting unit. And a big reason for that is, is the hills around Livermore and Pleasanton and the Pleasanton Ridge

and. We're recording this at the beginning of June, a couple weeks ago there, there was a quickly growing fire off of five 80 on the other side.

'cause you're talking about the Pleasanton Ridge. Now you're talking more open space, right?

Yeah.

Talk about that. And you guys seem to get on that pretty quick and keep it to open space,

yeah. Fires on either side of the Altamont Pass happen every year. Whether it's a a car that catches fire and they think they're doing the best thing they can by pulling off the freeway and it ignites the grass.

Or another, not that rare one as a train is dragging a chain or something, and it sparks a bunch and starts a bunch of fires as it goes down the track. We've had we've had, one year we had a copper wire thieves out at the windmills ignite a fire in their attempt at trying to get the copper.

All sorts of different things but it's because that that light grass is easy to ignite, especially when the weather's right, the humidity's low, the fuel moisture's low, the wind's high. Those fires tend to start on days like that and burn really quick. The good news, if any, is that there's just not a whole lot of structures out there.

Generally it gets contained by a road or a roadway or a canal. And we'll put some structure protection if there's a structure out there. But those are every year fires for us. They burned multiple counties. Alameda County Fire has the primary jurisdiction we of the Alameda County side of the Altamont, and then San Joaquin County on the other side.

South County Fire that covers Tracy and we all respond jointly. We all talk on the same radio channel, a coordinated effort. And then of course Cal Fire gets involved in all of those and sends units from all directions, including the air which is a huge help.

Cooperation and jumping on it is really important given that you're expecting it every year. Is there stuff that could be done in the meantime to reduce that risk or No, not really. 'cause it's just the type of land that it is and the type of conditions.

Yeah. When you're talking about that volume of acreage and then factor in that a lot of it is used for grazing.

There's really not a ton that we can do. The the Alameda County Fire Department and the Livermore Lab. We'll do some prescribed burning out at their site. 300 in the rural area of Alameda County. Just about every year, if not every year. We will do some smaller prescribed burns in and around town.

There's one at Shadow Cliffs this year. You mentioned this is being recorded in early June, June 11th and 12th there will be some smoke around Shadow Cliffs.

Okay. Let's talk about. What advice do you want to give to homeowners business owners? What should they know about being prepared to protect their home or just reducing the risk out there that might not be obvious to the common sense folks?

Yeah, I think, the number one is listen to this podcast and then go start today. 'Cause if you put it off till tomorrow or the next day or the weekend, it probably won't happen. 'Cause there's many com competing priorities in life right now. But there's a number of things that, that you can do.

And I would say if you live anywhere near. An area that could be impacted by wildfire, not just in the wildfire area. You should have a really good idea of what you want to take with you. If you have to evacuate and know that you might not be coming back to your house, that it might not be there.

If you have family treasures, fit, photos, hard drives, things like that, it's a great idea to just keep them in a box or two that you can grab and then maybe have a short checklist of things that you need to grab. Last minute. Like your medications things that you need for your pets to to support them.

Maybe a change of clothes or two to get you through the first couple of days, but just be ready for that evacuation. Know that if you get an evacuation warning that's for people. In an abundance of caution, you may just want to evacuate. If you need a little more time to evacuate special needs older people with livestock or pets you're gonna wanna evacuate.

When you get the warning. You're not gonna wanna wait for the formal evacuation order. Getting your house ready ahead of time is one of the best things that you can do. Keeping anything that can burn at least five feet away from your house. Minimal vegetation in that five to 30 foot range.

And then if you have grasses if you're living up in the hills make sure that you have those grasses mowed at least a hundred feet around the house. If you're gonna do a remodel or new construction, make sure that you're using fire safe construction techniques to be ready. And there's, we could talk about those, but there's a lot of really specific things that you can do to make your house non-combustible.

Getting out. I hit this before, but it's not a good outcome for the people that stay behind to try and save their house with a garden hose. We have much, much bigger hoses than garden hoses, and when it comes to these big fast moving wildfires they don't do a thing. If you followed, the fire that happened up in Paradise. The fire department's first couple hours were all spent assisting evacuation. There was no firefighting. They were just trying to save lives and get people out. I. Because the water's not effective when the fire's moving like that. Wetting down your roof does not do anything.

When the heat comes, it evaporates that water so fast. The best thing to do is gather up the things that are important to you and get out and then do those mitigating things. Ahead of time to get your house ready. When we come through we start getting resources from other cities in and we start deploying them, we'll go and survey houses and we'll say, this one's done a really good job of preparing.

We think we can defend this one. This one has trees growing right under the eaves and dry grass up to the walls. There's probably a, not a whole lot we can do to save this one. And we will put our resources on the ones that are the most saveable. Doing that work ahead of time is really important.

That's good. And I did an episode a couple months back with Danielle Cagan from CSAA insurance, and they were saying some of this stuff could be easy, right? Don't put the wood, the decorative wood chips within that five feet of your house. And I was like, oh, okay. And then I moved them all back and I didn't chop down the tree yet, but.

There's things like that, not putting up the fence, the wood fence on the side of the house right up to the house. Maybe that piece of the fence needs to be a different material or at least. Guarded you're not kindling your house in both of those cases. I'm waiting for the goats to come.

The county brings the goats behind my house into a dried canal bed to, to cut it down. And I think all those mitigation factors sound simple that people just need to start doing.

Yeah. And it's hard. I live in a area that has wildfire threat and I've been working on the, just moving everything that could burn five feet from the house.

And it is hard. I fill my green toter up every week and I've got a waste to go.

And how long do you have? When, like, when I see a fire at my neighbors or one going in the hills. I know you can't gimme a specific time, but like you talked about that warning, like. How quickly do I have to grab those two days of close?

Or is it just get The heck out as quick as you can?

Yeah, that's, it's a really situational answer. But if you, there are times when the fire spreads quicker than we can get the evacuation notice out. If you're watching the fire burn. A couple houses, two doors down, it's time. You're behind the curve.

But if it's a fire that's been burning for three or four days in a canyon south of town and we've put your neighborhood on warning we're, we'll once the fire is under that level of management we're gonna be able to get the word out that, no. Now's the time you need to go.

I remember people in that tubs fire passed because they couldn't get their cars 'cause cars couldn't get outta the garage. 'cause power gets cut beforehand. It goes back to don't wait too long,

right? Yeah. If the fire, if you're on a warning, have your car out in the driveway, or at the very least, know how to override your garage door by pulling that red cord and lifting the door up.

Yeah. What other tips do you want to give homeowners of being prepared or families just to refresh everybody on fire safety?

I we haven't talked all that much about prevention, but but the prevention side of things is huge. We're about to go into firework season and. And those start fires every year. Sometimes they're serious. Sometimes we're able to keep them small. But every single year fires are started in Livermore and Pleasanton by fireworks multiple times.

And those are illegal fireworks. There are no legal fireworks in Livermore and Pleasanton. With the exception of the the professional permitted shows. But even more simple things like making sure you keep your your chimney clean. We get chimney fires every year. Making sure that if you're using, good old school briquettes or having a fire with wood in the fireplace that you make sure it's fully extinguished. And the best way to do that is to immerse it in water. A fire that we've had that is not all that rare, is is a garbage can that that has some charcoal briquettes in it that they thought were out and ends up burning up under the eaves and into the attic and causing significant damage to a house.

Making sure that your systems are working to alert you if there's a fire. Checking your, your smoke detectors making sure they're working, if they're the battery style, making sure that those batteries are changing change. You get an early notification making sure that your fire extinguisher is charged and is of a recent enough vintage.

They do they do that cake. The ones that have the cake powder in them, it does settle down over time.

All right, I'm gonna leave that on a post-it note for myself.

All right.

Check Fire extinguisher. Yep. Yeah, change those

out every couple years.

I. Yeah, I noticed that my smoke detectors only run out of batteries at two 30 in the morning.

Yes. It seems impossible that they could do it at eight o'clock at night.

Yes. That is the only time that they chirp. I can confirm that with mine as well,

because it's not just me. Do you still, just going back to homeowners before I let you go here. It. Do you still wanna put stickers? I remember as a kid, and I don't do this for my kids, maybe I should, do, we put stickers on the bedroom windows that say these are where the kids are.

Do we have ladders and upstairs residential units, or is that stuff. Really just user choice kind of thing. Are those helpful tools? What do you recommend there?

Yeah, I would recommend two ways out of every room. That way if your plan is to go out through the door, but there's a fire in the hallway that you can go out the window and if it's on a higher floor than the first floor, you probably want one of those collapsing ladders that you don't have to make one of those heroic jumps.

Definitely two ways out. Definitely pre-plan that it's a great thing to do as a family. Have a meeting spot outside the house.

If we think there's somebody in the house or that there's a reasonable chance that there's somebody in the house, we're gonna check the whole house. Yeah. A sticker might be a good guide. We might look at it, but really we're gonna check everywhere because the kids might run to a different room.

Exactly. Yeah. And you don't even know it's we'll do everything we can to check check every spot in the house.

For kids in particular, it's really good to get them introduced to the fire department before an emergency. A lot of times the firefighters will put the gear on and even the breathing apparatus and let the kids know that, Hey, this is just me.

I'm the firefighter, even though I'm wearing all this stuff. If they ever do have a fire and we're coming in to rescue them, we don't want them hiding from us. And we want them to call out to us, let us let 'em know we're there, make that, make that we call it an e Edith plan, an exit drill in the home.

Make that Edith plan. The kids should all know how to stop, drop and roll. That really works. If your clothes catch fire, cover your face, drop to the ground and roll around and until it's over 'cause that's not the body's reaction is to fight or flight is to run. You have to over overpower the body's human reaction and do that.

Stop, drop and roll.

That's important. And yeah I'm on a, I have three young kids and I'm on a fairly decent traffic street, I necessarily wouldn't let them cross the street, but I don't necessarily want them to go to the neighbor's house. 'cause then That could also catch fire and wait in their driveway.

Maybe they have to go three or four houses down as our meeting spot then.

Thinking probably the neighbor's house would be fine for just about everything, but maybe a couple doors down would be even better.

Yeah.

All right. Chief Joe Testa, thank you for your service to the community.

Thank you for joining me on this podcast and I really appreciate your time and wisdom here. Likewise.

It was good spending time with you.

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