Shawn Ryan Show
Peak Points | Travis Howze - The Saddest Moments with a Firefighter
Fri, 24 Jan 2025
We’re revisiting Episode #06 with former firefighter Travis Howze in this recap, focusing on his experience responding to the Charleston Sofa Super Store fire, a tragic event that claimed the lives of nine firefighters. This moment stands as a testament to the courage and sacrifice of those who risk everything to protect others. Shawn Ryan Links: Spotify - Full Episode Apple Podcasts - Full Episode Travis Howze Links: Website - https://www.travishowze.com Book - https://amzn.to/3mpFPdC Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/travishowze Please leave us a review on Apple & Spotify Podcasts. Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website | Patreon | TikTok | Instagram | Download Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What was the Charleston Sofa Superstore fire?
The smoke, you can't see your fucking hand in front of your face, the heat, and there was nothing, and I could see how it would be easy to get disoriented and fucking lost and something like that. And you couldn't even, uh, you couldn't even bring a hose in with you to retrace your steps to get the fuck out. And, um, I mean, the amount of courage that takes, I mean, it, it, it doesn't, uh,
Did it seem like it was even a courageous thing? It probably didn't even go through their fucking head. It was just, we're going.
The only thing is they wanted volunteers, and a lot of guys didn't raise their hand. No shit. I think because those guys knew they didn't want what was on the inside of that building. It's not that they're less of a firefighter. I think that they just knew, I don't want to fuck with that. We're here to do whatever we got to do, but there was a select group of us that did, and...
I certainly, you know, often say the worst decision I ever made was going inside of that building that night, but the best decision I've ever made in my life was going inside of that fucking building that night and carrying them all home. And it didn't seem like anything courageous. It's just what needed to be done. You know, our guys are down. We got guys down. We got to do what we got to do.
Let's push forward and go get it. So we didn't we didn't have fucking air packs on our back because they were all used. Yeah. So we're choking on smoke and we have what we call flash hoods. Firefighters have flash hoods. And when you put your face piece on, you pull your flash hood up and it protects the skin right here, protects your neck and your ears.
So we're choking on smoke, literally gagging on black smoke. And you can't see. And you're crawling next to big flames, fires, and they have ladder companies dumping water on top of us. And in a normal fire situation, you would never be operating inside of a fire when you have tower units raining water down because they're just so powerful. It could hurt you.
It could injure a firefighter, blow debris on them. It could push fire on top of them and kill them. but we had no choice. We had to go in, we had to do what needed to be done. And it seemed like it took a long time to get to, to them. And once we started finding them, um, you would hear a team shout out, I got somebody and, and we would do the same. And, um,
I saw something silver and it didn't look like anything we had seen up until this point because everything was just black. And then I saw something and I went over to investigate what it was and it was by myself. And I crawled up there on my hands and knees. No.
And I started looking at this thing and I say it in my book, I was just turning my head like a curious dog, trying to figure out what the fuck is this? And I realized that it was an air pack of one of our guys. And it was, we wore silver Scott air packs and it busted open. It didn't look like an air pack. It was just like, it was like filleted open. And once I realized what it was, I had my hands
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Chapter 2: How did Travis Howze cope with PTSD after the incident?
And when I rolled Mark over, the best description I can give you is we have a plastic face piece right here that covers our eyes. And right here is usually rubber and it's black. I don't know if you've ever seen an ultrasound of a baby, 3D. That's what his face looked like. It was baked into his mask. Damn.
And we undid his coat, pulled his coat open, and we had metal name tags back then, and it had his name right there. And that's how we identified Mark. And we heard other teams yelling out that they were finding guys. And, you know, it sounds selfish and everything, but I was so worried about Lewis. You know, all of these guys were important to me, but this is my dude. Yeah, he's your best friend.
And I don't want it to be real. And I want to hurry up and find everybody. And I'm not wishing that it was somebody else, but you can't help but in that moment to be like, please, don't be my friend. The next brother we found was Brandon, my team. We go into this back storage room. It's like one of the only pieces of building that was really left intact. There was a lot of smoke damage.
Not a lot of fire damage. Brandon was huddled down in a corner and his body was just normal. We rolled him out of this corner and he just had a cut over his eye. And what happened was Brandon ran out of air, but he got away from the fire, but he died from smoke. Damn. And he just looked peaceful, man. And his wedding invitations were in the mail. We're still being delivered everywhere around.
And he died that night and he was actually just working for somebody else. He did a buddy shift for somebody else and it cost him his life.
Damn.
So the Brandon was, I knew we had eight at that point. And by this time it had come through that we have nine confirmed. Cause this is hours into the night. And, um, what's the, uh, what, Was the fire completely out? Was there still smoke? At this point, smoke was still there, but it was nothing like it was. I mean, we were in there for hours.
So the whole fucking building came down, and there was really nowhere for the smoke to go except into the atmosphere. Part of the showroom was still... still there. But after bulk of the fire was knocked down, cause you gotta think fire was in all these different little pockets where the collapses were. And so once those were done, man, all the smoke pretty much dissipated.
And that's why I think it took us so long to start finding guys is cause there was so much smoke. I really think we probably crawled over them a couple of times possibly. I just didn't know it. So, uh, now I know we have eight and some guys are in there with Brandon and I love Brandon too, man. And just like, uh,
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Chapter 6: What lessons were learned from the Sofa Superstore incident?
You have these horrible experiences, yes, but you can do something with them for the greater good. And you can make a positive impact on people with what you have experienced. And so I chose that. And the second I chose that, it was like a light switch. Well, how the fuck did that come to you? That's funny you ask that.
It came to me sitting in my car with a gun in my hand, ready to blow my brains out for the second time.
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