Revolutionizing Home Emergency Preparedness with Firefighter Andrew Leith and the Dwell Secure App

March 19, 2024

127.  Revolutionizing Home Emergency Preparedness with Firefighter Andrew Leith and the Dwell Secure App

How prepared are you if a disaster strikes your home? Andrew Leith is a seasoned firefighter with 25 years under his belt, who's observed firsthand the chaos that ensues when homeowners are caught unprepared. Andrew introduces us to Dwell Secure, an innovative app designed to keep essential home information organized and accessible. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in safeguarding their home and loved ones. Andrew's insights not only highlight the importance of preparedness but also offer a unique perspective on the intersection of technology and home safety. So, buckle up for an informative deep dive into how Dwell Secure could revolutionize the way we think about home readiness.

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Here's the link to the trailer for the documentary film I'm making: Built to Last: Buyer Beware.

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Transcript

George Siegal: 0:00

One of the most important things we can all do is make sure we are prepared if a disaster hits our home. When it does, there's a big difference in how things go for those that had a plan and those that did not. That includes knowing your home, where the gas and water shutoffs are and the emergency service phone numbers, and you can't start making that plan right before the disaster happens. My guest today is Andrew Leith, a 25-year firefighter who saw a void that most of us have and is doing something about it. He created an app called Dwell Secure, and it will give you a central place of organization for all your important home information, so when that disaster happens, you are ready. I'm George Siegal, and this is Homeowners Be Aware, the podcast that teaches you everything you need to know about being a homeowner. Andrew, thank you so much for joining me today.

Andrew Leith: 0:52

Thank you, george, I'm happy to be on your podcast.

George Siegal: 0:56

Now you're talking, you're working on something really interesting called the Dwell Secure app, and I want to start off talking about that. Tell me about the app and what your goal is with it.

Andrew Leith: 1:09

So it came from. I was paired up with a public information officer I worked for I have 25 years in the fire department, and she asked if I could teach some disaster preparedness classes. So I taught several and I had the first four classes that I taught. I explained the 911 system, how it works who's coming when you call 911 and then I explained that if a disaster happens, there won't be enough resources to go around, and people did not like that answer. So then I would ask who here knows how to shut off their gas if you have natural gas flowing inside of your home, and out of the first four classes there was two people that knew where the gas meters were. There was one person that knew how to shut it off. So that's where the idea came from. So it allows you to mark utilities or resources inside of your home or office or any dwelling, and then you mark it on a satellite image of your property and you store photos and information regarding that resource.

George Siegal: 2:28

Now I love it. I think it sounds fantastic, but I do have a lot of questions about it, the first one being when I live in Florida, when Hurricane Michael hit in the panhandle, one of the first things that happened was Verizon went down, so that's your phone carrier. So now, if I'm relying on this app to help me with all those things and my phone goes out, what happens?

Andrew Leith: 2:55

So all of the information entered in the app will be stored on your device and in the cloud. So when you get a new device you download all the information. If your device gets cut off from all services, you will at a minimum have the information and the pictures, the satellite map. They still can't tell me if it's going to work or not, but at a minimum you'll see where you pinned it on your property and the picture of what you need to activate to shut off utilities.

George Siegal: 3:32

Now I think that's huge. Now it's interesting too. You're not just like a guy who was a truck driver and then decided to do a baking app. I mean, you're in the firefighting business, so you know about this stuff firsthand, and when a disaster hits, people don't think straight.

Andrew Leith: 3:50

No, definitely not. I've seen many cases where rational people and that's what I tell people in my class as well as, during a disaster, good people will do bad things to take care of their loved ones, so it's something to be aware of. I have food and water and ways to purify water, because I am not going to be in the grocery store wrestling with other fathers trying to feed their children, so that is one of the motivating factors for me to have supplies at my house.

George Siegal: 4:29

Yeah, another thing too. I mean, with my podcast and all the things I've learned about being a homeowner, I would still consider myself somewhat unprepared for a lot of things, and when you said one person in the class, that was actually high, I thought it would be nobody. I mean, sure, when you're doing your walkthrough, when you're moving into your house, they explain this stuff to you, but I don't remember any of it, and I imagine a lot of people are in that boat.

Andrew Leith: 4:54

Exactly so. My wife. She's currently a school teacher. Before she was a school teacher, she was an attorney. Before she was an attorney, she was a real estate agent. Before that, she played seven years of professional soccer. She can do anything, but she has never had to know where these resources are, nor cared to know. So she's.

Andrew Leith: 5:20

I think in the United States specifically, we've done a very good job at call 911. If you need help, call 911. And as a person who hops on the rig and shows up when you need help, we want you to call 911. We are happy to come. It is an honor to serve, but there will be times when resources will be completely overrun and we can't show up. And I think I've listened to several of your podcasts. I think most people that tune into this podcast will know all these things Right. They'll know where the utilities are, they'll know how to turn them off. But do their partners, roommates, spouses, do they know it? So I think for me.

Andrew Leith: 6:10

So if I'm at work and I get deployed I've been deployed to California multiple times. I went to Lahine after the fires last year for two weeks. I'm gone multiple weeks at a time. If I'm gone, my wife can open the app If a waterline breaks. She opens the app. She touches water. It shows a satellite image of where it's at, a description of the downstairs utility closet. She goes downstairs. There's a picture of the valve she needs to turn off. She turns it off and under contacts in that resource for water is the plumber that I've entered in the app and she just hit send and says I have a leak, can you please come fix it? So also water. I have reminders to change water filters and get things serviced as they need to be.

George Siegal: 7:05

Now, if I download the app and I set all this up, how will my wife have it on her phone? Does she have to have a separate account? How do we share that information? Will that all be doable?

Andrew Leith: 7:16

So because everybody I thought everyone should know this because, well, partly guilt that we can't be there when you need us. So you can download the app and you can enter a single property for free. Anybody can download it and enter the information and you can download the app and receive properties for free. So your wife, if you have teenage kids in the house, they can download the app, they can receive All the information on the property for free. If you had an office building with several employees, they you can enter the office building and they can receive it for free. Now, if you want to enter multiple properties, there's fees to enter multiple properties into the app.

George Siegal: 8:03

Now so. So once I set it up when you say a property once I've set up all the Contacts and where everything is, I could just send it to her and then she'll have everything, or my kids would yep, they'll have everything they need.

Andrew Leith: 8:14

They'll have right now they receive everything. In future builds we're going to have different layers of sharing. So let's say you had a Triplex and you had a Management company that manage that for you. You could share everything with the management company, the management company could share most of it with the maintenance company and Then the property owners would get the things that they need just for the property.

George Siegal: 8:46

Now, one of the things I've realized recently and and I learned this and as I was making my last film, which which is is not out yet, it's okay, I have a generator at my house and if my house flooded and we had to go upstairs, what I had never thought about was the power would still be on because my generator would be on. So I don't know in the fuse box which fuses I would turn off that are downstairs so we could come back down. Is that a layer of something that could be done in this app?

Andrew Leith: 9:17

So, yes, so you can enter anything you want into the app. So we have a generator and we have a laminated sheet of instructions on how to start the generator, and so you can store the photo of that sheet and Photo of the the cords and all that stuff. You can make a video, but video costs a lot more to store. So if you store videos then you're gonna have to pay to store the videos. But but you could, you could take a picture of your electrical panel and Mark the ones you need to and store that To know which ones you need to shut off. But yes, I'm glad you have a generator, but yet they are.

George Siegal: 10:06

They come with other items you need to be aware of, so well, they sure do, and they don't tell you that when you're buying it. I didn't even know you needed to put oil in it if it ran for a couple of days. You know I'm exposing how stupid I am, but I had no idea until I asked the guy, as he was doing a maintenance on it. So I didn't have oil, I didn't know what the keys were for and what I would need. So I thought of that stuff because it was hooked up to natural gas, that it would always just work and and that's not the case. So I guess I'm just bringing up my lack of knowledge just to impress upon people how little most of us know and how important an app like this might actually be for them.

Andrew Leith: 10:47

Yes, and so we can't. We can't change people's mindset on. Hey, you need to be prepared. You're doing a great job with all your Videos and podcasts. I'm doing what I can with classes and doing the app.

Andrew Leith: 11:05

But when, when the conversation comes up and People want to do something, this is something they can do for free when they're having the conversation and they can, they can enter those things. When you're looking those things up, like, hey, I need fuel, I need oil, I need you know this is the type of oil. For instance, your filter in your furnace you can take a picture of your furnace. You can take a picture of your your tag that has all the information model number and everything and a picture of your filter and you can set reminders. So when that reminder pops up, you can say, hey, I need to. It says change your first furnace filter. You open the app and it shows you what it is. You pick one up on the way home change it, set a new reminder. So it's when people are having these conversations.

Andrew Leith: 11:58

They can enter that stuff in the app because people won't think clearly when the disaster happens and they will have a reference guide. No-transcript If you're the one that has that knowledge but your spouse doesn't. You can enter it in the app. It'll be a reference guide if you're not home, all of those things. I'm hoping that this becomes similar to a home inspection. A home inspector could enter all of this into the app. You would have everything you need to know and you could just scroll through and figure out. When a window breaks in your house, you could take photos of before, after store who replaced the window. Then, when you sell the home to the next person, that information would be transferred. When their son breaks the window, they can just say, hey, fix it last time and call it out.

George Siegal: 12:55

I guess my next question would be obviously, unless you won the lottery and you're doing this for fun, how do you pay for all this? Because it's not cheap. I've tried coming up with ideas like that and it's time consuming If you're not actually a techie yourself. It's tough getting people that actually do what they say they're going to do, even though there's a lot of good people, it can be very expensive. How do you pay for all this?

Andrew Leith: 13:18

Yes, it has been very expensive. So we moved from. We lived in the suburbs of Seattle. We sold our house there, we moved out to the country, we refinanced our house to build a shop and I taught a few classes. I asked the wife if I could use the shop funds to do this app. After several discussions she said I don't care, it's your shop. See your shop or your app, do whatever you want. So we use all of that money to go through, start the process. Then we ran out and my mother-in-law, who is a self-made woman who just she's a real estate agent. She's a commercial and residential landlord. She's spent an entire life building up her portfolio. She said I believe in this, we're going to make this happen. So she bought in and she's been funding the latest endeavors with patent attorneys and contract attorneys and software companies. And yeah, it's a long road.

George Siegal: 14:35

Have you been able to get a patent on it? I mean, like if you were sitting on Shark Tank and I'm Mr Wonderful, what's the stop? Once this thing is great and I think it's just a phenomenal idea, what's the stop somebody else from just taking the idea and doing it themselves?

Andrew Leith: 14:49

I do have an issued US patent and I have a placeholder for international patents as well.

George Siegal: 14:55

So and then, once you've launched this and it's out there, how will you make money? I know your goal probably is not to get rich by it, but it's nice to sustain it. Will you be able to have ads on there? I mean, will there be a free version, a paid version? What's the long-term thought?

Andrew Leith: 15:13

So you can enter multiple properties for a fee and those properties can include what we're calling mobile properties. So if you have an RV, for example, or a boat, or you can store all of those properties. And if you had an RV and you need to know where the generator was, instead of marking on a satellite image of the property, you'd take pictures of the RV and it would be driver side rear compartment.

George Siegal: 15:43

But where's the revenue model in this business to sustain it over the long period of time? So the app is up there. Will there be a way that you can actually and I don't think there's anything wrong if you did make some money off of it, because I think you're gonna be helping a lot of people. But is there a plan for that? Because at 499 or whatever, you need a lot of people to make a lot of money with that.

Andrew Leith: 16:03

Yeah, so there'll be ads for the free version. Once several thousand people download it, then we'll be selling ads, so you will get top-up ads, because I have to pay to store all of the data entered in the app.

George Siegal: 16:21

So, of course and I'm not begrudging any of that man. I think that you absolutely nobody, unless they're Bill Gates, and he makes money off of making money, so he's probably a horrible example, but unless you're able to be such a philanthropist that you expect nothing back, you have to make money, and I know when there's an app that I like and there's a free version versus a paid, I'll buy it because I wanna support the person who's making the app. I think it's like wow, they're giving me something that's really making my life better and I think people should think that way. It's like we wanna encourage this kind of stuff.

Andrew Leith: 16:54

So commercial versions will pay. So we had a fire at Community College at the science laboratory. So there was a big gas line going into the building and the building had an elevated walkway all the way around it and underneath the walkway, all the way up to the building, on all sides, was Ivy, ground cover Ivy, and we had a fire in there. We put the fire out. We were looking for the gas meter to turn off gas to that building that had been compromised and we cut the roof and forced some doors and all this machinery was melted the we couldn't find the shutoff. The Community College maintenance staff didn't know where the shutoff was and when the gas company showed up it took them an hour to find the gas shutoff for that building. So if you have a big commercial complex or a campus, you can download the app, you can enter all these, all the information, store all the information and you, but you will be paying to use the app.

George Siegal: 18:05

In a commercial setting I would imagine something is frustrating for you as a firefighter is the things people just don't seem to get and unfortunately, in your case a lot of them endanger firefighters lives by their own. We'll say stupidity. You'll probably be nicer than I will. Driving into a deep water, staying during a storm and having to get plucked off the roof, trying to get out, stay in the house and fight the fire themselves. I mean all these things. It must really make you guys go. What am I doing here?

Andrew Leith: 18:39

It can be frustrating. I was in Napa, california, at a wildfire. We were prepping a house. A girl pulled up with her camera she was with the local news agency shoved her camera in my face and said hey, what do you say to the homeowner that didn't prep the structure? So now you're here risking your life, prepping the structure for them when they should have done it before they left. And I just said look, we came down from Washington state to do what we can. We were given the street to prep these structures. We're just doing our job. She was very disappointed in that answer and walked away. But it is. You know, we scratch our head. You have to practice your poker face when you walk in and you see what's happening and you ask how well, how do we get to this point? And you know it's usually some unbelievable story. But we do what we can. It's an entertaining job. But yeah, I mean, those poor decisions are. Is our job security?

George Siegal: 19:46

And they can also endanger your life sadly and put you guys at risk. What's the dumbest thing you've ever seen somebody do?

Andrew Leith: 19:56

Well, we get people who call 911 to have us flip their futon mattress. We get that, but they get built for that?

George Siegal: 20:03

Will they get charged for that, if you have to do that?

Andrew Leith: 20:05

Not in my agency. You know. We've had base jumpers jump off cell towers and get their their parachute caught up in the guy wires holding up the the tower. That man was a. He was a college professor and he got billed. The judge made him pay for the the overtime on that one. Yeah, there's, it's been 25 years. There's, there's a lot of them.

George Siegal: 20:32

You ever roll up to a scene and you look at it and you go, no, that was really stupid, we're out of here, we're not helping.

Andrew Leith: 20:40

We, we, we have laughed before we started helping, but we've helped everyone. We came in contact with how realistic?

George Siegal: 20:48

are those fire shows on TV like Chicago Fire, all those rescue shows? What do you think when you watch those things, or do you?

Andrew Leith: 20:56

not even bother. Actually, I actually don't watch those shows.

George Siegal: 21:00

To be honest, I I don't watch much TV where I have, you know, three kids there, two of them running all over the houses, yeah, it just makes it seem like when you're on call, you guys are always having a big feast and eating really well, and then, right when you sit down to dinner, the fire alarm goes off and you have to go out and risk your life in the middle of your meal.

Andrew Leith: 21:22

Well, that part is usually true. We usually make a meal and then have to heat it up later. But yeah, I work. I have a really good crew that I work with. I'm assigned to a heavy rescue. So we're that truck that was hanging off the bridge the other day where they did the rescue, with the ladders and the rope system. Like that's the stuff we drill on on a daily basis and cutting cars apart, shoring up structures that have compromised.

George Siegal: 21:56

And I think that's what people don't understand. It's like when you guys go out and do something heroic like that, it's not the I mean, maybe you'll run into things you haven't seen before. But you guys drill and prepare. Homeowners do not put in anywhere near the effort to prepare and then you think in a disaster you're gonna be able to function. I've been around this stuff for years, having to either report on it or worry about it myself. Your brain doesn't, as an average person, doesn't, work the same way. When all of a sudden something's barreling towards you, you don't think as quickly, you don't react as well.

Andrew Leith: 22:30

Right, and even if you did know what you're looking for, I've been on 30 calls. You know it doesn't snow very often up here in the Seattle area, but when it does and it freezes for a while, pipes freeze and break and then people call 911. And we show up and there is a huge number of old homes that don't have water shutoffs inside the home. The only shutoff is the valve near the street. And when we've asked them, hey, where's your water meter shutoff? No clue. So we're out there with shovels digging through the snow looking for their meter to shut it off, because nobody knows where it is. When it's just cold, you can find it. When it's covered in snow, you're digging, literally digging.

Andrew Leith: 23:23

So I called six different huge fire departments in Northern United States and I asked all of them hey, when there's water flowing in a home from a broken pipe that's frozen and there's no shutoff inside, how do you locate the water meter and the shutoff valve? I thought they'd talk to me about, about, excuse me, metal detectors or pre-planned maps or something. Every one of them said that's not a problem. We call the water district and we leave. So even emergency services can't. They don't have the bandwidth or the means. So there'll be another version of this app in the future where the fire department can see the utilities entered for each property.

George Siegal: 24:16

So if you're out front, Wow that would be great.

Andrew Leith: 24:18

Yeah, if I'm out front in the snow and water's flowing inside, I can have my driver. Hey, the meter is three feet right of the driveway. Start digging there.

George Siegal: 24:30

So when I go to set this app up and I'm gonna be one of your first users I want you to tell me when this thing goes live, because I need all this stuff and it'll be right at the beginning of hurricane season, so I think it'll be important. How do you gather all that information? If I no longer remember where the gas shutoff is or where the water shutoff is, how will I acquire that intel so I can put it in the app?

Andrew Leith: 24:53

So right now you have to manually enter everything. So if you don't know what you're looking for, you'll have to phone a friend, because we're in the very beginning stages. I'm hoping to pair up with building inspectors in the near future, because they have all the information, their license, they're bonded, they know what they're looking for. If they come over and enter your basic utilities, they could do it for a small fee. It would cost them nothing other than just their time. So right now you have to enter it yourself.

Andrew Leith: 25:27

I'm in talks with a software company where, hopefully within the next year, we're gonna integrate some type of AI into the app. Where you touch gas meter, it will give you instructions to point your phone at where the exterior wall meets the ground and walk around your property and then, when it sees the gas meter, it will tell you. They'll take a picture of it, it'll mark it, they'll say that is your gas meter and then I'll show you where the shutoff. The pipe comes out of the ground, goes through the meter into the house. New ones have shutoffs on both the sides of the meter. Old gas meters only have them on the pipe. It comes out of the ground.

George Siegal: 26:12

And if I call the local gas company and just say I'm not during a disaster but on a sunny day, you think would they help with that? I mean, I'm just thinking that a lot of people are gonna have to program it themselves initially, how to make that as easy as possible so they actually do it.

Andrew Leith: 26:30

Yes, we're gonna put a few videos on the website on what you're looking for, but, yes, right now it's find a friend. I don't know that the gas company would come out. I haven't talked to them specifically about this. I've talked to a few of the service members who go out in the field and do the work. They all said, hey, this is amazing, you should run with this. Like, yeah, I started this in 2020, I'm deep into this. It's just, they save five years for every startup. So we're working on it, but right now you have to manually enter everything or find a friend who knows what they're looking at.

George Siegal: 27:16

Hey, the gas company is really quick when you're telling me to smell gas, but I don't think that would be a good use of saying that. The other night we were out walking around and you could smell gas everywhere and we called and they were right out there and it ended up being a big gas leak in the neighborhood. But for your individual house, obviously, people need to just allow a lot of time. But as soon as you get the app, people should really put all their stuff in there, because they have no idea how valuable something like this can be. This is one of the best ideas I've heard of in a long time. So my hat's off to you, man. I think it's fantastic. And you said you have a couple I thoughts of when it might be out. You're really saying early summer, beginning or the end of May.

Andrew Leith: 27:58

Yeah, so we're gonna, we're. I'm telling people June, so tell me, but it should be out June of 24, so we'll have versions to test before that. But Please know it's a work in progress. We're doing the best we can. We're doing it with private money. We're trying to create something that will will save lives. So if there's bugs, please let us know and we'll we'll get them fixed as soon as we can. But yeah, this is not. This isn't some insurance company that has started something to save them money. This is just some random knuckle dragging firemen who saw a need and Said, hey, let's see what we can do here.

George Siegal: 28:45

Though, yeah, when I think of what you guys do, it reminds me of those fire ladders we have for our second floor of our house, the kind that did like accordion out and you set them up. And I had a guy on who made a fire ladder invention where it mounts on the side of your house and it's an actual ladder that can turn sideways and you don't see it and then it turns out so you're not on route rail and unraveling anything and you can actually practice climbing down it. And I thought about if I ever had to throw the cheap one I have out the window and use it, I would have no idea how to get out of my house. I mean, most people never practice with those things. I wouldn't even know how to mount it on a window.

Andrew Leith: 29:21

It's true, I, I have them for my kids rooms upstairs and I've shown them. But yeah, like you said, I don't know that they would. I Don't know they would know how to actually climb out the window. So yeah, we all have things we could be better at and do do better at.

George Siegal: 29:41

So yeah, the moral of my story is that this guy I don't think he was a firefighter, but he came up with a great invention. And you actually are a firefighter, firefighter and you came up with a great invention. So I think this thing is gonna be huge, because I a lot of times you think, well, there's now nobody's gonna do that. I can't think of why somebody wouldn't want to do this, other than we're all just complacent and lazy.

Andrew Leith: 30:02

And that's if it can become standard with a home inspection, I would love to tie in. Tie in with the inspection software. So is there entering it? All they have to do is go back and mark locations and it's all stored in there. Then you just have to go back and enter the contact information for who's responsible for Servicing your furnace, if you have a commercial property, who's Responsible for servicing your elevators, your fire suppression systems, your outdoor irrigation systems, all those things. It could be one stop for all Information need for your properties.

George Siegal: 30:39

So yeah, and that's one of the things we're learning as I learned with the podcast into my last film is that Regular maintenance on a house is something that's so important for maintaining it. So things like changing your filters, flushing the hot water tank, cleaning the dryer vent if you could program all those things in to the device that's in your hand, probably 99% of the time, that's pretty valuable.

Andrew Leith: 31:02

Yes, yeah and I. So I'm gonna have our house and I'm gonna have my wife's Grandmother's house and we're gonna have the same app, my wife and I. So my wife's gonna see the reminders to change her grandmother's furnace filters and if I don't do it, I'm gonna hear about it at the dinner table, right? So it's gonna be Incentive to get that stuff done and have those talks whenever reminder pops up. It's a tool to store information when you're calm and Can look things up, so use later when you're not calm and there's no help.

George Siegal: 31:44

So do you ever think of going on shark tank? I mean, I think they would be kinder to you than they would be to somebody like me, although you'd really have to show them a lot of numbers and everything, and so it might not be a Shark tank type of thing, but I always think of things in those terms about okay, how would these guys destroy this? They might get you on being a businessman, but they certainly have to love the idea.

Andrew Leith: 32:04

Yeah, so I actually did apply to shark tank. I had apparently there's Seven steps. I made it to six and I never heard back. But I'm actually really glad we didn't because of the time. At that time what we were asking, what the company was evaluated at was, was really low. So if we can get a, a working version out there, with several thousand users, that's a much different story. But I Think I'm hoping that you know it's not from insurance companies, but it would save insurance companies a lot of money, because even just water damage alone, when we go out all the time to shut people's water off and Every time I do is hey, just so you know, this is the tool we use your water meters here you should go pick one of these up and store it in your garage and you ever need to do this again. Turn it off here. But it's just something that people don't realize they need and yeah, yeah and it's tough to get the insurance company involved in proactive ideas.

George Siegal: 33:20

I haven't been able to get them to back any of my films because they just say, oh no, that's not something we'd spend money on. I said Do you realize, if people were proactive, the amount of money and lives that could be saved by thinking ahead? And I've never gotten a good response. I hope you do better than I did.

Andrew Leith: 33:38

Well, okay, I'll keep you posted. This could be if you knew where the shot off was. The pipe breaks, you go outside, you shut it off, you clean it up with towels, as opposed to calling 911. Where I live, there's some amazing volunteers that come when you call 911, but If everyone's pipes are breaking, those volunteers gonna be delayed in the city. If everyone's pipes are breaking, that's a low priority call. It's gonna be leaking and once we get there and we're digging through the snow, we've, you know, spent an hour and once. If that water leaks for an hour, that's a much bigger expense to the insurance company. Then it's cleaning up with towels.

George Siegal: 34:20

Yeah, which leaves me the last thing I really want to bring up and we were out for a film I did in the Malibu fire in in 2018, and what a lot of people found out when they went to use Suppression systems and and run water if they relied on water from the city or the county. When everybody's using their water, there's not much water for you in a disaster, so resources really do get strained when, when the chips are down.

Andrew Leith: 34:45

Yes, very much so. Yeah, even the systems Fail. So if there's a single incident, we've had huge apartment fires and we call the water district and say, bump up the pressure in the entire area and they can funnel more pressure and our rigs don't have to work as hard and we can, we can handle that incident, but you spread that out over the entire region. There's, there's nothing to bump up. It's there's.

George Siegal: 35:16

there's not enough volume, so you're just done so yeah, well, hey, andrew, thank you first off for the job you do as a firefighter, because we we count on you guys, and so thank you for that and good luck with the app. If you need volunteers like I say my hands in the air when you're ready for test dummies reach out to me and we could do another podcast about it. Talk about it. I just think it's a terrific idea and I wish you a lot of success with it.

Andrew Leith: 35:42

Thank you, I will keep you posted. Yeah, I'll let you know when it comes out. Thank you very much for taking the time to do today.

George Siegal: 35:48

If you have any great invention or idea to make the lives of your fellow homeowners better, I would love to hear from you. There's a contact form in the show notes. Fill it out and let's share your invention. And if you enjoyed what you just listened to, I hope you will become a regular subscriber. A new episode Comes out every Tuesday morning. Thanks again for listening today. See you next time.