EP 114: Bubba Willis

Meet Bubba Willis. Bubba is a retired LAFD Firefighter who has been fighting fires with the busiest companies since he was a 14 year old explorer in South Central LA. He rose thru the department, working with a slew of LA Firefighting legends, & landing on the first LAFD Urban Search and Rescue task force. Bubba becomes a USAR expert and instructor, which he does to this day. We hear about the LAFD in the 80's, what it was like to be fighting fires in high school, having to get a GED to take the LAFD exam because you were still in 12th grade, getting hired for 2 positions in the LAFD at the same time, learning from old timers, being cool to rookies, deploying to 9/11 & arriving to find out that the entire FDNY USAR team you trained with died  in the World Trade Center collapse, deploying to mutliple hurricanes like Katrina & Ike, taking care of the search dogs, reverse Jenga for collapsed buildings, & how to teach urban search and rescue techniques without it being boring. Bubba is super cool & he also shares some memories of working with our dad back in the day & even calls him by his old nickname he hated. This is the episode youve been searching for.