Fire-Able

Training or Trouble?

2011-07-02T08:22:00.000-07:00

Idealistic Firefighter: "I think we should be doing more training on [x], so the guys at the station and I went out an played with the [x] equipment last weekend, it was pretty productive"

Concerned Officer: "How dare you? We don't have an official policy on that, you didn't have any training materials or curriculum to work off of, you aren't allowed to do that!"

How many times have I heard this conversation or something similar? It's a difficult situation, particularly for a volunteer fire department like ours. Young firefighters come out of the recruit class, only 4 months of training under their belts, full of motivation and energy, wanting to do stuff, and quickly disappointed. Formal training is only provided twice a month, and can be sterile; call volume is somewhat high, but mostly in-home medical calls, so it's impractical to do much "on-the-scene" training for working structure fires or rescues. As with most skills, those you don't practice you'll quickly forget.

It's hard to be surprised (and in fact it shows great intrinsic motivation) when firefighters take it upon themselves to get some practice. Four or more people hanging out at the station? Let's find something to do! Amongst their peers they practice emergency SCBA maneuvers, strategize for fires in neighborhoods where water supply is a challenge, try different configurations for the rescue gear, and overall put hands on their equipment enough that when they're called to deploy it they aren't having to figure it out on the spot.

There is great value here. Small groups produce training sessions on subjects they don't feel comfortable enough with, targeting gaps in operational readiness that are difficult to discover from the top organizational levels; it's hard to say to a chief "I don't feel like I can draft water into our engine very well", but it's easy to say to a couple of the experienced pump operators at the station "can you show me how to draft again? I need a little practice". Such sessions bring unique experiences to individuals, using their own equipment, in their own run area, with the very people they'll be running these actual calls with.

Then the station officers get wind of it. Our firefighters are out there, completely unsupervised, without our knowledge, doing whatever they want! They could be practicing mistakes! Who's making sure they're doing things right? Who's authority are they doing this under? Utter chaos! Mass pandemonium!

And so they come down on the group, sometimes by just giving our straight directives like "don't do that any more", sometimes more passively by creating enough procedural steps to be detrimental to any kind of impromptu training (you have to give me a curriculum copy before doing any kind of practice, with these forms filled out, scheduled at least 3 weeks in advance, etc). All that energy and enthusiasm is stoppered up and lost.

Such officers should be ashamed of themselves.

I cannot be absolutely sure whether such a reaction from an officer roots itself in a misguided but genuine concern for quality of service, or in an emotional reaction to a perceived usurping of authority. It almost doesn't matter. The end result in either case is that the firefighters are discouraged and chastened, no longer willing to strive for any sort of learning experience outside of the bi-monthly department-approved training sessions. The loss of line-personnel initiated impromptu training, targeting the needs and interests of the small group involved, is a true tragedy.

And here's the real loss: those impromptu sessions are occurring because somebody feels like they haven't had enough practice yet, and they're doing something about it. They're practicing something that they may be called upon to do in a real emergency TODAY, and by attempting to cut these minor trainings off, an officer is saying basically "Don't practice this because you might get it wrong, never-mind that you might be called upon to perform this exact skill tomorrow for real. It's better to learn frantically by guessing wilding during an emergency than to play with the equipment in a controlled setting when you have the opportunity". Talk about setting your guys up for failure.

One of my core principles driving my authorship of these articles is that I don't ever want to be a complainer; I have no intention of identifying problems without attempting to provide solutions.

To the officer who cares for quality and is scared to have their firefighters practicing on their own for fear of mistakes, there is a better path than simply disallowing or discouraging informal trainings. Your firefighters are showing you they have commitment and motivation, don't stifle that! Instead, tell them how pleased you are that they take their responsibilities seriously, tell them you want to play too and ask to be invited next time they're going out to train, and show that you want to help by getting every departmental SOP and SOG you can related to the things they want to work on into a binder they can have with them at the station to reference if you aren't around to supervise so you know they're working off of accurate material.

There may be concern in this case, like there is in my department, about not having an SOP covering this skill. The only thing I can say to that is your lack of an SOP is not an excuse not to train, unless it's also an excuse not to perform the skill on a real scene. If you could actually be called upon to cut a hole in a roof tomorrow at a fire, than not having a vent-saw SOP doesn't mean you shouldn't be practicing with the chainsaw (you must be practicing with any equipment you could be asked to use), it just means you need to write a vent-saw SOP. Period.

To the officer who's ego is wounded by their firefighters taking practice into their own hands: There's the door. You should be absolutely delighted that your guys want to do more than sit around and play X-box. Officers are put into place to ensure the operational readiness of their stations. They are there to break down obstacles to their motivated firefighters getting whatever they need to be the best public servants they can be, and to prevent bad apples from spoiling the bunch. Anyone who would stunt the growth of their station to preserve their sense of "authority" is not an officer in my book, they're just a bully with a different colored helmet.

And finally to the firefighter who wants to practice: don't let any of this junk stop you. Don't let politics stand in the way of you becoming a better firefighter. Find somebody who knows more than you, and stick close to them. Find somebody who knows less than you, and bring them along. Everything else will fall into place.

Round 2

2011-06-30T14:06:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time since I've had my voice out on the internet with respect to firefighting. During that time period when I was brand new to the game, I was having new experiences every week, always something different to write about. Once the novelty wore off, though, what did I have to say? Ran another fire? Saw another corpse? No sense in publishing material just for the sake of producing a wall of text.

Things are different now. Several years under my belt, hundreds of calls, many educational experiences both as a student and as an instructor. I'm no expert yet, not by a long shot, but I know enough now to have opinions that I think are worth spreading, and there should be a form somewhere for my brothers to pile on if they agree or fire back if they don't. It's time for round 2.

Never too smart to learn

2010-11-18T22:28:00.000-08:00

I've said before that pride is the one thing that gets in the way of learning, and I was forced to remember it again tonight.

Arriving at a routine medical call for a laceration on the back of a hand, I was first in the door and took patient contact. Checked the wound (top of the left hand), not too deep, roughly an inch long, I'd definitely seen worse. Smiling reassuringly I asked the patient to move her fingers for me, which she did without issue, and then I made sure that she had feeling throughout her hand and a strong distal pulse. Good on all counts, I asked if she wanted to go to the hospital, and she gave me an adamant "no", which I understood because I would have done the same if I were her.

Glancing back at one of the more experienced firefighters there on scene, I called out "she's refusing transport, we can return the ambulance". He looked uncertain, and after glancing at her hand, asked me "has she had a tetanus shot?". Realizing the thought hadn't even crossed my mind, I looked back at the woman and she said no. Furthermore he pointed out that she might need stitches anyway and that the best chance of not getting an infection was to have it cleaned well by a professional.

Keep in mind, on the whole I'm a very confidant person. I don't doubt myself easily, and that has it's advantages, but it also means that when someone else demonstrates better knowledge or skills than me I have to force myself to contain my pride well enough to learn from them. My instinct in this kind of situation, as it is for many people, is to think "oh, come on man, it's a little cut, she's going to be fine, would you just return the ambulance?".

Why is that? Is it because I'm sure that's the right thing to do, or is it because that's what I'd already decided we should do and I don't like being overruled?

I think the answer is obvious. We aren't in this job to play the numbers, however favorable they may be. Our job in patient care, past immediate stabilization, is to provide the patient with ALL the information necessary to make an educated decision about their treatment, and to always encourage treatment (liability is a mother, ain't it?).

The older firefighter was giving her the facts: you have a cut from a metal object, that means you can get tetanus, or another infection, and there could even be damage that we can't see just from looking at the surface. You're probably ok statistically speaking, but we recommend you get it looked at by a doctor. And next time, that's the information I'll give too. It's a little thing, but a habit of improving in all areas, every chance you get, has a cumulative effect over time in making you into a better and better firefighter, and once it's a habit you hardly even have to work at it anymore.

The best lesson to take from this, in my opinion, is that you're never so good that you can't get better.

The infamous hose stretcher

2010-10-10T13:46:00.000-07:00

Firefighting isn't all drama and speed. Although as an industry it's got it's own share of darkness (or maybe because of it), there is a lighter side that's worth examining.

Just yesterday, one of the rookies in my department's current recruit class asked me if I could help him find the hose stretcher, because he'd been sent to my station the night before and wasn't able to locate it. The guys who were home at the time told him that another station must have borrowed it for their own hose testing, since we'd already done ours a month ago.

I contained my hysterical laughter (barely) and composed myself before saying that I just wasn't sure myself, but the next station over had done their hose testing just last week and probably had it.

You see, with all the tools we have on our engines, it's not hard to understand why rookies make this mistake. They hear about a tool name like "hose stretcher" and they think of something like this:

Or this:

But when you think about a real fire incident, you realize what a hose stretcher actually looks like:

-----

That's right, rookie. You ARE the hose stretcher.

The things that get to you.

2010-05-10T10:33:00.000-07:00

You know how you sometimes see people walking down a street, and you think "man, that guy is just ASKING to get hit by a car"? That's what happened recently.

Delta response, auto pedestrian accident. The further is "a distraught complainant just keeps saying 'I hit her'".

First on scene, setup command. I really should have given a better sizeup. I should have said something useful like "one car, on it's wheels, moderate damage, patient is lying in the southbound lane apparently uncouncious with a serious amount of blood, make this a trauma alert". Instead I just got out something like "on the scene with *street* command, patient contact" before grabbing C-spine (I could hear her breathing, and my hands on her head could feel her pulse pounding in her temples, so there wasn't much to do but wait for backup).

She was hurt. About as bad as I've ever seen someone who wasn't already coding. One big laceration over the eye, another one down her back exposing some of that yellowish fatty tissue, blood and urine trickling out in a slow river downhill. She was twisted up like a rag doll, head facing one way, shoulders turned 90 degrees, hips another 30 degrees after that. No compound fractures that I could see, but with my hands tied up holding her head in place I couldn't do much but try to talk to her. It wasn't useful. All she could get out was "Hnnngh....Hnnngh....Hnnngh", every exhale another moan. I glanced over at the car that hit her, and the windshield was busted in like a bowling ball the size of a tractor wheel had been dropped on it. Hood was dented up, bumper flexed in, and the only thing it had hit was her body. The driver was a mess; physically fine, but crying and moaning.

The ambulance had been nearby and arrived quickly, and I was happy to see a paramedic. As she did an assessment, the clothes just came off in her hands, hardly had to cut a damn thing. a few other firefighters arrived too, and we managed to get her boarded and loaded pretty quick. In about 3 minutes, she was on her way to the hospital.

Finally I got to hear the story. This poor driver had been driving down the road late (no streetlights, no shoulders on the road, 45mph). He crests a hill, and there's a guy in front of him, wearing black, in the middle of the lane. With good reaction time, he swerves left....right into where the walker's friend (the patient) is walking in the other lane. Took her out hard, and it was probably her forehead and shoulder that busted in the windshield. Couldn't believe it, being in the middle of the road on a blind hill like that.

Yeah, the girl was hurt, but I don't mind so much looking at injuries anymore, after the first couple times, you're able to swallow most of the "horror" reaction. The driver is what really hit me. This was not his fault, not by any stretch of the imagination, and he was mentally broken up worse than anything I've seen before. Crying, gibbering, saying things like "I killed her...she's just a child...she's 17...I killed a CHILD". I know, sometimes people fake emotional responses to avoid lawsuits, but they usually say things like, "Oh god, I'm so sorry, there was no way I could have known!", not "I killed her" or other things that indicate it was his fault. I'd be willing to bet it's a few weeks before he sees anything else besides that girl coming through his windshield when he closes his eyes.

I didn't sleep really well that night, or the next. Luckily I have a new baby girl, so when most people ask why I look tired I can truthfully say the new baby keeps us up sometimes. In reality, I had a couple nightmares where I was that driver, unsuspecting, coming around a blind curve or over a hill and hearing the crunch as my bumper strikes an unsuspecting pedestrian.

I've heard it said before that everybody gets affected by different things. I've seen a man killed and baked by flames, a motorcyclist with organs protruding from the side of his body, a woman in labor drunk out of her mind, and I've felt pain for all of them. But the first thing that's really gotten into my mind since I've been a firefighter was this driver. His sobs echoed in my head the rest of the night, and I can still hear them sometimes. I guess what's most scary about it is that could so easily be me. You can't control what other people do, where they walk, what they think is a good idea. When you follow the rules of society you expect that everyone else will do the same, and suddenly when they don't you find that, though no fault of your own, you've potentially destroyed someone for the rest of their life.

There, but for the grace of God, go I.

New post on FireLink, how to deal with mistakes

2010-03-09T14:52:00.000-08:00

If you're interested in some of my more professional writing work, you can find my latest post on firelink.com here:

How to Shake Off the Mistakes

Special Forces in the Fire Service

2010-02-27T19:26:00.000-08:00

I just attended my first fire-service relate course this weekend that has to do with technical rescue. This is all the cool stuff that firefighters might have to do at incidents not necessarily related to a fire. Not gonna lie, this stuff looks fun, especially the rope rescue training. Not everybody is excited at the thought of dangling from a rope supported by an improvised anchor, but as a hobbyist rock-climber, I already enjoy heights.

Rock climbing is a long shot from rope-rescue, though. I've clipped into my share of carabiners, but that's about it. This is a little more advanced. Think more along the lines of rigging up a system capable of supporting 2 rescuers plus a victim, lowering all the equipment necessary to package the injured party into a stokes basket dangling from the same set of equipment, and safely transitioning this whole party of people and hardware back to solid ground.

It's not an easy proposition, but it's certainly challenging and exciting. So far all we've really done its work on knots and anchors, but we'll be doing our share of rappelling practice and such before the class is done. I have no doubt that this will be one of my favorite experiences so far in the fire service.

What occurs to me is what I've experienced to a lesser degree on previous "rare" calls. You see, we don't exactly go flying off cliffs for rescues every other week. This is a really uncommon occurrence, and that makes training for it tougher. How much time should we be spending preparing for calls that almost never happen?

That's a tough question to answer because it's true that we spend most of our time on home medical calls. Our most widely applicable training, the most "bang for our buck", is what time we put in making our basic patient care better.

But we can't just ignore our uncommon scenarios. Vehicle extrications, for example, are uncommon; but they're horrendously dangerous if done wrong. Without proper knowledge, it would't be hard to end up with a car on top of you. We almost have to train harder for these things because we run into them so infrequently that we don't get that much practice.

How much more does that ring true for something like rope-rescues where we may not run into a serious one for a year or more at a time? A poorly constructed anchor or an improper knot could tip the balance of the incident away from heroic rescue and towards horrendous tragedy. Yet that's what could happen all too simply with a skill that we almost never have to use.

Think of something you maybe haven't done much of for a while. How about calculus? If you were woken up tonight at three in the morning and asked to find the derivative of a large polynomial, with someone's life riding on the line, how would you feel about your odds?

That's why I'm happy to do this kind of training as often as we can: because I don't want to doubt myself in the slightest when the time comes to use it.

It's also a great excuse to spend a weekend playing around with some pretty cool toys. :)

Don't take yourself too seriously

2010-02-25T13:46:00.000-08:00

We interrupt this normally deep and serious string of blog posts for an amusing anecdote:

I've been starting to help with the recruit class for the latest group of rookies. I got my instructor I certification recently, and I've been wanting to put it to use, so what better way than to volunteer to assist with recruit class in my free-time, right?

Well, the officer in charge paired me with my old instructor from back when I was in the rookie program to act as his assistant instructor for the day when we were teaching SCBA donning and emergency techniques. After watching the old man work with the first couple crews that came through the class, I got a chance to take over and show what I could do with my own group of recruits.

Trying to be as serious and authoritative as possible, I carefully went through the parts-and-components lecture, and orchestrated some practice donning the SCBAs. Great so far.

Preparing to go outside and start our confidence maze, I addressed the crew:

"Are you getting this? Everything making sense?"

Nods all around the room.

"Ok, gear up! We're going outside to do this for weal."

Blank stares, then smiles. Damn it. You can't sound tough when you replace an "R" with a "W".

There was my old instructor at the back of the room, doubled up and shoulders shaking in silent laughter.

"That was my encouraging voice, you won't hear it again", I said, trying to shake it off and recover gracefully.

Oh well, no sense in taking yourself TOO seriously.

My new article on FireLink

2010-02-21T20:38:00.001-08:00

To anyone who has interest, I've written a new article that's been accepted to FireLink.com for my "Day in the life of a Probie" column. Check it out at the link below:

http://firelink.monster.com/benefits/articles/10545-how-to-save-a-life

The Big Day

2010-02-18T12:54:00.000-08:00

Today is a big deal for me. Since January of 2009, I've been preparing for the day that I'd get my red helmet. Today I found out I passed my written EMT-B exam, which was the last item on my list of requirements to move out of my probationary stage.

In my department, the color of your helmet signifies your rank, and is what officers use when deciding who to give tasks to on scene.

Orange = Recruit Firefighter

This is what I had during recruit class. It means that you shouldn't even be on a scene, it's just for training gear. It's a big thing when you get to graduation and get to adorn it with the decal that gives you the next level.

Orange w/ Green Stripe = Probationary Firefighter

I've been wearing one of these for almost a year now. As a probie, you get to fight fire with the best of them, but the officers will be sure to keep somebody experienced with you to make sure you don't slip up and get someone hurt.

Red = Firefighter

Less is more, as is evidenced by the step up in recognition you have when you drop the "Recruit/Probationary" from in front of your title. In our department, this means that you have your firefighter I & II certifications, your haz-mat awareness & operations certifications, you've demonstrated competence on every apparatus in your station to your company officers, and finally (the milestone I reached today), you've fulfilled all the requirements to obtain your EMT-B license.

It's a long road, but looking back on it I can't believe how quickly it's gone. Maybe next month I'll take a step back and plan what I'm going to do next. For now, I'm going to relax and revel in the afterglow of another completed journey.

Sometimes it works

2010-01-09T19:53:00.000-08:00

Nothing under the scope of emergency medicine is as exciting or dreaded as a full arrest. It's something we train for regularly with CPR classes, AED practice, and extensive analysis and practical skill time in EMT classes, but it's a comparatively rare call. In my experience, you've got around 70% of your medical calls coming from real emergency problems that don't even progress to the point of unconsciousness (diabetic problems, breathing difficulty, and chest pain/heart problem), 25% from non-emergencies (over-concerned parents, hypochondriacs, and poorer people with a small problem who don't know any other way to get medical help), and the last 5% are the adrenaline boosters. That's your severe trauma, or catastrophic medical call, and even out of those I'd say that only 1/4 end up in a full code (CPR, AED, intubation).

However, even noting how rare they are, I've worked on enough to know how they generally go. Check vitals, start CPR, apply AED, intubate, pronounce them dead and allow the police to take over. It's a sad reality, but most of the people we do CPR on don't come back. It's not because we're doing it wrong, it's just because they're usually too far gone. I know people who have been running calls for years who have never had one of their CPR patients end up being saved. Given how all the patients I've worked on have fared so far, I was willing to bet I was going to be in that same pool of people.

Until 12/31/2009.

On that day, I was lucky enough to be performing CPR on a man who did not die immediately thereafter, and I have to tell you that it was invigorating. I was suprised beyond speech because I had just never seen anything like that happen. We showed up and he was grey and cold, no discernible pulse. By the time he was in the ambulance he was awake. A new years miracle.

But what I found most interesting was not the play by play re-enactments, although those are fun. What I continue to think about even today, over a week later, is the reaction we all had afterward. "Great job in there", we say. "Nice work". As though it were through our superior efforts that this man was brought back to life. As though we were so incredibly skillful on this day that our will and talent alone carried him back from the grave.

In truth, we did nothing different or more for our patient that morning than we had done for many patients before. Same pattern, same rhythm, same tools, even most of the same people. The difference was the patient. His body wasn't ready to go, and it responded to our efforts as others hadn't. If anyone were to be congratulated, it was our friend with the IV in his arm for having such a resilient body.

And within that truth lies the reason behind our training. We train for hours and hours every year on the proper sequence for a full arrest, knowing that most of the recipients will never benefit from it. It's only in the knowledge that every so often, every once in a while, there's that one person who's not QUITE so far gone yet, and he deserves a chance to come back. This week we found that person, and it's made me that much more willing to try just as hard on every man down hoping to find another one.

Helping those who don't want to be helped

2009-11-28T01:21:00.000-08:00

Although firefighting is where the real excitement is, the majority of the calls we run are medical in nature. That's ok, though, I actually really enjoy medicals. I like the times when we're able to make a difference in a patient's life when things are going really badly. Helping someone out of a wrecked car, keeping an unstable patient alive until they get to the hospital, or even just providing a little comfort to someone who is dealing with a scary illness or injury; those things are all good experience and are their own reward.

Admittedly, there are many people you can't do much to help. Plenty of people are just not savable (already dead for too long, injury inconsistent with life, etc), and many others are not true emergencies and involve people who are just in a hard socio-economic group and the only way they know of to get medical help for any condition is to call 911.

But then there's a third class of medical call, one I had not experienced until just recently. You see, some people for one reason or another don't want your help at all and are angry at you for even being there. That's new to me.

The day of Thanksgiving, I ran a call to a middle-class neighborhood residence. It was dispatched as "Unconscious", and on the way we got enough information to know that this was a young guy who was visiting his parents for Thanksgiving, and who had gone into a really heavy state of sleep. So heavy that when he rolled off the bed and hit his head, he didn't even wake up. We were advised that he was taking Xanax, and one of the side-effects of Xanax is possible drowsiness, but this level of unresponsiveness was a little bit past "drowsy".

When we arrive, we walk into a bedroom and see...nothing.

"He's behind the bed!", the dad notes from the hallway.

We peak over the bed, and there he is, facedown and contorted up, wedged between the bed and the wall.

"Check his breathing, please" the Captain murmurs as he begins to open the med-bag.

Leaning close to the kid I can hear respiration and can feel it on my face. Smell it, too. Definitely breathing.

"He's breathing, but it's a little shallow, probably due to his position. Shall we move him?".

We each grab a body part and move him out into the center of the room. He moans and moves a bit as we move him, but goes flat out again as soon as we lay him down.

"Let's get him on some O's", I hear from over my shoulder.

I pull a non-rebreather out of the packaging and hook it up to the oxygen bottle that's already been primed for me, then apply it to the patient's face. He doesn't like that.

Sitting up groggily he yanks the mask off his face and asks what's going on.

"You were pretty unresponsive there, for a while", the captains says to him, checking his pupils (which are currently small pinpoints).

"I wass nnnapping" he slurs.

Now we have a paramedic from the ambulance in the room, already briefed by the parents, who asks what's been going on, pointing out that the heavy sleeping, The grogginess and slurred speech seem to indicated something is wrong.

"I'mmm sleeeepy" he manages to get out.

"Well, your behavior is not quite what we'd expect from someone who is just sleepy."

He REALLY doesn't like this

"Well! I didnn't knnnow...that..that...that therrre was a RIGHT wayyy to be SLLLEEPY!"

"Calm down, buddy..." the medic says

"NO! see, you'rrre starting to piss me off herrre! Herrre's what's going on...", his speech is improving a bit as his new found anger cuts through the haze, "...you all are in THIS house...telling ME how to be f***ing sleepy!....and I don't apppppreciate it....So all five of you motherf***ers can just take a flying f*** out the g**damn window....cause I swear if I find out where YOU live...."

by this point the medic's motioned everyone out of the room and were back out front, police on the way. Once someone starts to get potentially violent we are supposed to have law-enforcement on scene to handle that kind of stuff.

While we're talking out front, I'm still trying to figure this out. I mean, I don't even know this guy, so I shouldn't care, but the fact that he's so upset at us for coming in here to try and help him is bothering me a bit. It stings when you reach out with compassion and get met with anger.

As I though about it, I began to see why the guys who have been on the job for a long time seem more likely to be rather unconcerned regardless of the situation (almost to the point of being dispassionate). Apathy is hard to offend. If you don't care about someone that much, nothing short of a physical assault is really going to hurt you. But if you put yourself out there emotionally; if you try to feel some empathy for someone who's having a rough day and you do your best to have concern for them and help them, and they reject you, it feels like pretty much any other relationship where you get something nice pushed back in your face. Far safer to not care that much in the first place.

But is that unfairly punishing the patients who need empathy for the actions of those who are going to be a jerk about it? Certainly the number of people who call 911 who would benefit from some reassuring attention far outweigh those who are going to lash out at you. Should we dispense compassion based on nature of the call? Cardiac patients get sympathy, drug-addicts don't? That doesn't seem quite right either.

I guess I don't really have answers yet, just questions. Hopefully they'll come to me before the day arrives when I too start looking at patients with empty and uncaring eyes.

Bigger than you and me

2009-11-15T06:21:00.000-08:00

I went to my third firefighter graduation at my department this week. This is the ceremony where the new recruit who have been training for the last 5 months are finally given their badges and released to start running calls. It's a big deal for those who are participating, because it's the realization of a goal that used to seem to far into the future, but what's less talked about at the time is what a big deal it is for the department.

My first graduation was as an outsider, when my brother was just joining up. I didn't know anybody there except him, and I didn't have any particular interest in firefighting at the time, but I remember being very moved by the ceremony. Afterwords my eyes were a little wet as I congratulated him and it was a silent drive back to college for me as I thought about what I'd seen.

My second was as a participant, a new firefighter excited to start doing stuff that mattered. After my brother pinned my badge on me, I could hardly wait to get out of the building and to start doing all those things I'd been training for all those months.
Now I've just been to my third, as a member of the department welcoming in the new blood. It's emotional, but in a different way: I'm proud to be part of such an organization, one that was important enough and meaningful enough to these outsiders that they decided to invest and sacrifice of themselves in order to be part of it as well.

And it will keep happening. Year after year, new men and women will take up the mantle as the most experienced ones start to step down. Logically it would seem that this adds up to a department that is of a constant status. Like a glass of water, some is poured out, some refilled, and you're always looking at basically the same thing. But this is inaccurate; any organization like this is actually cumulative. It's more like a river: individual drops of water travel through on a seemingly set course, but slowly the water as a whole continues to erode a new path for itself, shifting the banks and making it's way as a result of all the drops that has ever flowed through it.

The department will always have one chief, but it's current culture and structure is the result of layer upon layer of past leadership. We will always have new recruits, but our training and policies improve every year as a result of experiments on and suggestions from each group of orange-helmets that step up to do their part.

The continued existence and renewal of this entity, this fire district, is an ongoing validation of the fact that what we are doing here is worthwhile and necessary. The life of this department reaches far into the future, as long as there are people in this area to protect, and each firefighter through his participation gains for himself a piece of the immortality that such organizations by their nature preserve for their alumni.

It's bigger than you and me, and in a way this humbling realization makes you want to pay tribute to such a cause. But what to do? What do you give an entity with no emotion or consciousness? How do you show loyalty to an intangible abstraction? In my opinion, the only show of appreciation that has any lasting effect is the kind of participation that only makes us better.

Do nothing to detract from our reputation, but in all encounters give others reason to respect us. Teach the new generations of our ranks not just with the knowledge that you were taught, but also with the wisdom gained from your own mistakes, and let them start off knowing more than you did. Most importantly (for my department anyway), continue to provide a helping hand as long as there is even one person out there who needs it.

Pedagogy of the fire-ground

2009-10-12T20:19:00.000-07:00

In a fire department, there are a lot of skills for new guys to learn. Fire suppression, apparatus operation, efficient communication, emergency medical care, vehicle extrication; the list goes on and on. One thing that I think should be placed higher on that list is pedagogy. If you're really great at vehicle extrication, you can make a difference when you're on the scene; if you're really great at TEACHING OTHER FIREFIGHTERS about vehicle extrication, then you make a difference every time one of the firefighters who learned something from you is cutting up a vehicle. The effects of a good teacher are like ripples that carry throughout a department as those who learn from the instructor teach others the way that they learned.

Let me give an example where we see three teaching styles on the same subject, and maybe it will be clear why this is such an important topic.

SCENE 1
Instructor: "don't forget this, it's important: when you are going to have the apparatus parked in one place for a while, engage the 'High Idle'".

Student: "Why is that? What does it do? Is it really important?"

Instructor: "What did I just say?"

Student: "When the apparatus is staying put for a while, engage the High Idle"

Instructor: "So what do you do when you're parking and you're going to leave the engine on?"

Student: "Engage the High Idle"

SCENE 2

Instructor: "don't forget this, it's important: when you are going to have the apparatus parked in one place for a while, engage the 'High Idle'".

Student: "Why is that? What does it do? Is it really important?"

Instructor: "That let's the engine generate more electricity so it's able to handle more things being on at once like warning equipment and panel lights, etc."

SCENE 3

Instructor: "don't forget this, it's important: when you are going to have the apparatus parked in one place for a while, engage the 'High Idle'".

Student: "Why is that? What does it do? Is it really important?"

Instructor: "well, what does your car do when it's idling?"

Student: "It's just running at a low speed"

Instructor: "And what does the term high-idle suggest?"

Student: "That it's running at a slightly higher than low speed?"

Instructor: "Good, that's right. Now, why would that be helpful?"

Student: "I don't know, I guess it's using more gas, that's actually BAD. Maybe it's maintenance related, do long periods of low idle damage the engine or something?"

Instructor: "Interesting thought, but no, you're thinking to specifically to the engine. What about all those blinking things on the apparatus?"

Student: "Warning lights?"

Instructor: "And what do they need in order to keep blinking?"

Student: "Electricity. I guess the high idle probably generates more electricity."

Instructor: "Right. All those lights take a toll on the battery, and if you leave it in low idle the load manager will eventually start switching lights off to conserve energy, which is a big deal if you're on a highway or something where you need all your warning equipment going."

Now let me give you a scenario: The student is now pumping the apparatus at a large vehicle fire, and the lights start to shut off one by one. High idle can't be engaged because it doesn't work when the apparatus is pumping. What will the student do about his quickly diminishing warning equipment? If he's been taught by the instructor in scene 1, probably nothing, as he won't even know there's a connection. This kind of teacher just bugs the hell out of me. Anytime someone answers a question with "Because I said so", they're doing the student a disservice. You can't think adaptively without having the necessary information to synthesize into a solution. If the student was taught by the instructor in scene 2, he'd probably suspect that he should be engaging high-idle, but he's been told he can't do that when pumping, so what should he do? After thinking about it, he'd probably have to resort to choosing which lights he needs least and manually shutting them down. He's been told what he needs to know, and he's doing the most he can with the information he has. But the student who learned from the instructor in scene 3 knows the mechanics of his truck. By having a long dialog on the subject, he's been forced to think it through and knows what the players in this equation are. He knows that the high-idle works by increasing the engine speed, thus generating more electricity. He also knows that pumping the apparatus involves using the engine to power the pump. Putting this information together, he'd probably figure out that all he has to do is gate down the water he's flowing out of the truck and throttle up the pump, causing the engine to work harder, and generating the extra electricity he needs.

Good firefighters aren't born, they're made. Let's recognize the great makers, and realize that within a department great teaching means better everything else.

Modern Emergency Medical Care

2009-09-14T15:35:00.000-07:00

You know what I've found about being a firefighter? Fire's don't happen very often. Oh we get plenty of calls, but they're mostly made up of heart attacks, traumatic injuries, and breathing trouble.

That's why my department requires that every member obtain their EMT-B certification, and that's what I'm spending most of my time training for this fall.

At least, that's what I WILL be training for. A lot of the training we've been through so far in EMT class has centered more around just trying not to get sued. More than other jobs, being an emergency rescuer is fraught with opportunities for legal action against you. Driving an emergency vehical, you can easily get caught up in a car accident; there's a law suit for failure to use due regard. Caring for a patient may involve you having to make a split second decision that causes someone's condition to worsen; now there's some legal action regarding negligence. Maybe you drop a patient off at the hospital and the paperwork to transfer doesn't quite get completed properly. The ER's busy and the nurses don't check in on the patient for 15 minutes, by which time his situation has grown dire; now you're going to court for abandonment. I could give example after example, because I've heard hundreds of them; enough to scare me into almost not wanting to put myself in the position of having to care for someone because of the legal risk if something goes wrong.

What's different today about our society that means we sue at the drop of a hat? When did we become entitled to have nothing ever go wrong in our lives? After all, that's where this originates, right? Something bad has happened to me, I think someone else could have prevented it, so I'm going to sue for all kinds of damages because I shouldn't ever have to experience hardship or trouble in my life.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not speaking out against actual maliciousness or incompetence. If someone is driving 40 MPH over the speed limit to get to a call and strikes a pedestrian, that was negligent. If an ambulance worker shows up to a scene, decides he doesn't like the patient, and leaves him to die, that was abandonment. But the cautionary tales I've heard are nothing like that. They're all based around split-second decisions where a tough choice had to be made, and someone made it (right or wrong), and the end result was a lawsuit against the ambulance company, the fire department, and the responder personally.

It's a mess. Unfortunately, complaining about it on my blog won't change anything. I, along with every other emergency responder, have to continue in this field knowing that every action I take may have ramifications that could land me in court. We all have to function with a certain amount of cognitive dissonance in that we have two relationships with our patients; one as allies working for their well-being, and one as adversaries trying to cover our asses. I guess all I can say is "be careful out there".

Learning how to Learn

2009-08-14T22:12:00.000-07:00

I am convinced that pride is the one thing that stands in the way of people achieving greatness.

Sounds silly doesn't it? After all, only those who are great would have reason to be proud, right?

Not exactly. Let me give you a few examples:

Recruit class, vehicle extrication practical; my crew is working with a Captain from the special operations division of the fire district. He sends me to retrieve a tool from the rescue squad on scene. When I return, he spends the next 5 minutes lecturing us on why we should be "moving with a purpose" at all times while staring directly into my eyes. The message was obvious; he felt like I wasn't moving quickly enough, and that it reflected some sort of attitude problem (like I didn't care about the tactic, or didn't have any respect for him or something like that). In truth, I didn't have an attitude problem just at the moment, but I didn't think I had been moving slowly the rest of my crew was witnessing him calling me out, so I was on the verge of developing one quickly.

My first vehicle fire, and it's in a different station's run box; I ride to the call with my younger brother (who's been doing this for a few years before me). The "fire" is really just a little smoke coming from the back axle of the vehicle. My brother tells me to go get the pressurized water can while he runs over to size it up. The engine from this station is different than the one at mine, and when I go to the compartment where it should be, I find that because of a different body design much of the equipment on this engine is stored in a different place. He yells over to ask what's taking so long, I tell him I don't know where the water can is, and as he rushes over and grabs it himself from another compartment he says in a frustrated voice "Exactly where it's SUPPOSED to be!". Words like "How the HELL am I supposed to know where anything is when the trucks are different!" fly through my head, but I stifle them.

Truck checks 2 weeks ago, at my home station; A week before the Sr. Firefighter at our station had admonished me for driving too slowly to a call a few miles down on the street that runs in front of our station. I stepped up my game and tried to put a little more speed on when driving to calls. Today the station captain is chastising me for driving too quickly and telling me to ease off on my adrenaline dump. In frustration, I want to say "Fine, that's the last time I drive, you can find someone else who's willing to freely spend their own time covering the station while the residents are out". I don't say it, of course.

A structure fire last week near my home; a good friend of mine who was my instructor in recruit class is first on the scene. It's a small fire, so it's quickly out. When I get inside, he tells me to go back out and get a scoop shovel from the engine to start carrying debris and ash out of the house. I set down the pike pole and radio I'm carrying and head outside to comply. On my way back in, I'm met at the garage door with a radio being thrust into my chest and a low growl saying "You need to hold onto your shit!". Having just had a fight with my wife over the phone not 30 minutes ago, my temper is already on edge, and I have to bite back the words I want to spit back in his face.

Each one of these scenarios has a common thread. I screwed up, and someone tried to correct me. Unfortunately, it doesn't always work. We all want to be good at what we do, and when someone points out our flaws, our pride is wounded. If you let it, that feeling of embarrassment and hurt can prevent you from becoming the capable, competent professional that we already want to think of ourselves as. It can, in fact, cause you to stubbornly continue doing things wrong just to prove to yourself that you weren't in the wrong to begin with. In every situation above, I wanted to lash out and tell them that I was doing fine and to lay off. The only problem is, I was wrong.

Everyone of the individuals above has been a firefighter for a long time, much longer than me. I probably wouldn't take advice from any of them when it comes to calculus, music, or software; but on the fireground, I'd pay attention to any one of them, even if it hurt my feelings just at the moment. Not moving quickly can mean someone dies before we can get them out; knowing where equipment is on different trucks is part of the job, and an important one; driving too fast can get you landed in court when you kill someone during an emergency response; and you need to keep your radio on you at all times because it's the only way the incident commander can get a-hold of you if there's an emergency. I know these things, but my actions indicated disregard for those truths, and my friends and brothers on the department were just trying to make me a better firefighter by pointing these things out. It's up to me to get past my desire to already be the best and take correction to heart.

Take pride in doing a job that helps people; but leave it at home while you're doing it.

Cross Country

2009-07-17T21:23:00.000-07:00

I just got back from a 2-week vacation to California with my wife, where we visited some family. While out there, it was nice to relax after the long recruit class I finally completed last month, but I also wasn't completely away from the fire service. Every city has a fire station, and ever since I've become involved in the service I've tried to visit them wherever I travel. I try not to make a nuisance of myself, but if there are firefighters outside who don't seem busy, or if I can see them hanging out in a dayroom, I'll stop to introduce myself and ask about the station.

So while on vacation this time, I happened upon a small station in a residential area of San Mateo where the firefighters were outside washing a couple very-nice looking trucks. After stopping and talking to them a while, I found that this was a unique station in that both of the apparatus had a specialty, one being the US&R (Urban Search and Rescue) truck for the area, and the other being an engine specifically tasked with carrying all the specialty equipment needed for a RIC (rapid intervention crew). I took a video of them both with my iPhone and have posted it below if you're interested.

I guess the really cool thing is how being part of my local fire department makes me also part of a world-wide community. These guys didn't know me, didn't have any obligation towards me, but took time out of their shift to show me around their apparatus and answer all the questions that I naturally had for them as a member of a more rural department. One of them was even willing to give me one of his personal duty shirts from the department to contribute to my brother's collection. It's the sort of instant friendliness that can only come out of a knowledge of similar experiences, and it's one that I am truly glad to have become a recipient of.

Fire and Rain

2009-06-14T17:07:00.000-07:00

It's been almost a week since my very first structure fire. I guess I've had a hard time sitting down to start writing about it. For days, I had been hoping for that first fire. Every time my pager went off, I was praying to hear some extra tightness in the dispatcher's voice as the words "structure fire" came over the radio. A week ago, it finally happened. But it wasn't exactly what I had in mind.

I was in bed, early in the morning, when the tones dropped. The first words to come over the radio were "commercial structure fire", and I was in my vehicle before they were even able to say anything else. My adrenaline and excitement were almost overwhelming. It was only just as I was reaching the highway that we got any further information from the dispatcher. Someone hadn't made it out yet. My excitement turned to dread, and although as personal vehicles we have no right to break traffic laws (preventing me from speeding), my fingers began to clutch the steering wheel even tighter than they had when I was merely suffering from adrenaline.

The first units on the scene gave a size up indicating that the house was already significantly involved in the fire. Still no sign of the man inside. All anyone knew was that he should be somewhere in the back right corner of the house. In the sky ahead of me, I could see the pillar of smoke rising up into the clouds. Although this was my first non-training fire, I knew enough to realize just how serious the fire must be given that huge visual indicator.

By the time I arrived, the whole of the House was mostly a wall of flames. I knew roughly what the odds were of someone still being alive in a situation like that, but I didn't want to admit that to myself. The crew I was assigned to was given the task of going in the back door to find this man. Reading the faces of my crewmates, I knew that this was probably a body recovery operation and not a rescue, but I didn't want to admit that to myself either. The flames were too intense for us to make a good entry, though, and eventually the roof came in. At the same time another crew of firefighters was cutting a hole in the wall of the house where they expected the man to be. Given the condition of what was left of the building, I was now certain of the outcome. But it wasn't until the hole was open and I saw the body that any real emotion hit me.

One of the division chiefs (the one who ran my training class) was standing by asking us to use the hose line to protect the body from the still raging flames, hoping to prevent any further damage for the sake of the family. I tried to focus on directing my water streamed towards hotspots in the room, but my mind was elsewhere. why wasn't he able to get out? why did it take so long to report the fire? How much fear must he have gone through, waking up in a blaze like that? how long was he conscious enough to experience it? Could we have saved him if we had arrived five minutes earlier? Did he feel any pain?

The man's charred remains held no answers for me. The gear on my body and the hose line in my hand, weapons to combat an enemy who had already won. I remembered bitterly how I had wanted so badly to get to fight a fire. well, I guess I got exactly what I wanted. As silly as it was, I felt a deep guilt for ever wishing for such a disaster to come into somebody's life, as though I might have prevented this incident by not desiring it so badly.

For the next couple hours we doused the entire building in water and foam, all to prevent it from reigniting. During that time I tried my best to focus on the task at hand and not to glance over at that corner where I knew the corpse lay. I kept a mantra going in my head, steeling myself for the time that I knew would be ahead when we would have to move the body from the building.

Finally the moment came, and other firefighters moved vehicles and strung up tarps to prevent the bystanders from witnessing what was about to occur. Me, I wanted to put my hands on the victim. I wanted to be the one to shoulder the unpleasant task of extricating the body from the smoldering remains of the house. As some sort of a self imposed penance, I wanted to force myself to deal with the consequences of the fire that I had been hoping for. And I did. The man, and a dog that had been trapped in the room with him, were both moved with as much dignity as possible into the vehicle that would carry them away.

I will be happy if I never have to do that again.

But with the pain and frustration and guilt came another emotion: relief. Ever since I started training to become a firefighter, my biggest worry had been that when I finally came face to face with gruesome and unjust death I would be unable to cope and unfit to perform my duties. I can think of very few scenarios that are worse in my mind than a fatality resulting from being trapped in a fire. yet there I was, witnessing one of the worst (I hope) calls I have or will ever have to deal with, and I was okay. Not happy, not calm, certainly not dispassionate, but able to perform efficiently the tasks assigned to me. Although I do not believe any amount of experience will stop me from feeling some sympathy for victims and patients, I know now that I can handle it. In the midst of my surprise and sadness at the loss of somebody's father I am relieved just to know that I can do my job.

I think I've had enough excitement for this week.

Getting Real

2009-06-09T18:03:00.000-07:00

I've had a lot of fun playing hero. The gear was cool, the calls were fun, but last night I got a perspective adjustment that hit me like a 2x4 between the eyes.

We had just gotten back from a gas odor call. Although the emergency itself was not of any particular interest, it was the first time I've actually gotten to ride to a call on the fire truck. Now THAT is a cool experience. Driving fast, sirens blaring, people making way for you on the road; not gonna lie, that's fun. So we made sure everything was safe while the utility company sent a truck out to fix the gas line, no big deal.

Just as we're getting back off the truck in the station, the tones go off again. Everybody smiles, excited that the night is turning out to be so lively. We all pile back into the engine as we listen for the dispatch.

"Engine 801, engine 1408, motorcycle accident..."

My smile drops. This could turn out to be a little more intense than I'd expected. My brother is driving the engine, and I can feel our speed increase a little as further information comes over the radio. It doesn't sound good. One motorcycle, ran into a guardrail, victim is not moving.

I start rehearsing in my head every thing that will need to happen once we arrived at the scene. We'll need the medical pack and the backboard for sure. I pull my latex gloves on in preparation, half anxious to help, half hoping someone else will take care of the victim so that I don't have to.

No time to think about it though. The engine stops and we all jump out, each grabbing the equipment we were assigned. I throw the backboard off the engine over my shoulder and immediately start striding towards the cluster of people I can see already pulling the victim back onto the roadway. Secretly I don't want to look; I've never seen any trauma before, and honestly, I'm scared of how I might react. Will I get sick? Will I just freeze? But this is what I signed up for, and I know it, so I try to stay focused on what I need to do instead of processing what I'm seeing.

I throw the backboard on the ground and start tearing off the straps. In theory, I know what is supposed to happen next; we will put this guy on a backboard and load him into the ambulance. This isn't the same as working with a dummy though; the weight of his limbs is eerily familiar. Exactly what my leg would feel like if I lifted it with my arm. Just by touch, I can tell this is a real human. And he is dying.

The injuries are extensive, and the odds don't look good, but we start CPR in a desperate attempt to save him. Now, I'm well trained in CPR; we went through all the mechanics and techniques during recruit class. But it's just not the same on a human. I don't think I ever realized just how fragile our bodies really are.

I can feel my companions working around me. Dressing wounds, clearing clothing, a well oiled machine working at a feverish pace. I don't want to think about it. I just keep my eyes on my hands, pumping his chest, trying to keep enough blood moving to save him. I know if I think too hard about what I'm looking at, it will be too much. I'll see the damage done to him and to think "what would that feel like?". But speculation is not a luxury I can afford at the moment.

The medics call for everybody to clear the body for a second so they can check his vitals. I sit back on my knees, hands in the air to show 'I'm clear'; and that's when the feeling really hits me. This guy is not going to make it. Eyes vacant, skin pale, he stares blankly at the sky. The medics glanced forlornly at the paper printing out of their machine. "One more round, and then we'll call it." Frustrated and a little shocked, I start compressing the chest again with renewed vigor, somehow convincing myself that if we were to just try hard enough we might make a difference.

Just believing something doesn't make it so.

"Thank you everyone", the medic says, "that was a really good attempt".

I feel sick.

As I walk back to the engine (slowly now, all urgency gone), I try to figure out how I feel about the whole situation. Somebody is dead, and in a very traumatic way. Do I feel bad about it? Yeah, I guess so. I'm a little stunned for sure, but somehow not "devastated" the way it seems like I should be. It's a strange bit of cognitive dissonance. It's almost like I WANT to feel bad, but I can't summon enough emotion and feel any amount of depression or loss. Just a vague sense of malaise and failed effort. What's wrong with me? This is somebody's son, someone's friend, who is never coming back. Why can't I feel for them the way I should?

And yet, I feel terrible. Terrible for not being able to make a difference. For not being able to save a life, and for not feeling bad enough about the loss of a fellow human being.

I don't know what to think. So I don't.

My brother pulls me aside later and asks how I'm doing. I answer him honestly, I'm doing better than I thought I would be, but somehow I'm unsatisfied. He had some advice I hope I can take heart: "This is not your fault. You didn't cause of the crash. You didn't cause his injuries. You came here to help, and you can't win them all. Be happy about the ones you CAN save, but don't get hung up on the ones you can't."

He's right. The amount of death and loss that firefighters encounter is staggering. Empathy for one's fellow man is an admirable and virtuous trait, but it comes at a cost. If your friend were to lose a parent, you could cope. You could bear a part of their pain and sadness. Maybe even the suffering of a few friends simultaneously. But if an emergency worker were to take on the guilt, pain, loss, and sorrow of every loss of life they witnessed, the burden would be too great for any one soul to bear.

So I just don't think about it. Well, that's a lie. I try not to think about it. The first fatality I ever witnessed will probably stick in my memory for the rest of my life. But no amount of sorrow or depression will save his life or heal any of the family members he left behind. I've done everything I can for him, God rest his soul, and now the only thing left to do is focus on those will need help in the future.

That's life.

In the Field

2009-06-06T16:47:00.000-07:00

It's been over a week since I graduated from recruit class. in that timeframe, I've run more calls than I expected to get my first month. So what has it taught me? A few things. For one, people really seem to like scheduling their emergencies for the middle of the night. that means I'm going to have to become accustomed to awaking around 2 AM, but that's actually okay for me because it means that there's less interference with my work or social life. A more important thing I've discovered, though, is that actual emergencies are nothing like recruit class. There are no coaches looking over my shoulder, making sure I don't screw up; the dummies we practiced on for medical care are now replaced with live human beings who are hurting and scared.

The rush of emotions that come with all these new experiences can be confusing in its variety. When driving to a call, I'm excited. It's all I can do to control my heart rate and the speed of my vehicle. When walking on to an emergency scene, I'm focused. What needs to be done? Who needs help? When actually performing my duties, I'm scared to hell. What if somebody realizes that I'm brand-new to this? What if a patient looks up at me and sees the uncertainty of someone who hasn't handled that many emergencies before? It can almost be overwhelming.

But I'm sure that will go away. Some day, maybe a year from now, I'll look back on these first calls as the building blocks of what will then be a confident and competent firefighter. For now, they are mostly notches in my belt; first-time experiences that will give me more knowledge and experience for next time.

In the last week, I've responded to emergencies of a surprising variety for such a short time span. The very first night I had my pager by my bed, a car went off a bridge in a rural area during early hours of the morning. The next night, a neighborhood women nearly gave birth in the middle of her driveway. A fall victim, a vehicle fire, respiratory distress, a flooded home, and most recently a head-on collision where one of the drivers needed to be extricated from her crumpled vehicle.

In a way it's exciting; I never know what's going to happen next or when it's going to happen. But the unpredictability can be intimidating. What if I'm the first one to show up at a major incident? Or any incident, really? Will I know what to do? Or will I freeze up?

I guess this post is kind of scattered, but that's how my mind is: half stoked, half freaked. Excited and frightened. That's the honest truth. But if anyone asks, just tell them I'm fine. Appearances are half the battle. And someday soon (I hope) my mind's state will match the confidence on my face when I go rushing in to help.

New Heat Exhaustion Article on Firelink

2009-06-01T11:36:00.000-07:00

If you've read my blog before, you know I've had some trouble with heat exhaustion in the past. I've written an article that contains some tips, and it's been published on firelink. Check the link below:

http://www.firelink.com/benefits/articles/7433-can-you-take-the-heat

Tactical Evolution #4

2009-05-22T14:38:00.000-07:00

Our final tactical scenario is here. After recovering from some mild heat exhaustion from our third scenario, I'm given the job of being the engineer for engine 1401 on this last structure fire. As I've mentioned before, I really enjoy pumping, so I'm looking forward to this.

Climbing into the cab, I glance around at the crew on board with me. 3 other recruits, all shoving their shoulders into the seat-mounted SCBA brackets, ready to pile out and fight fire as soon as the air brake deploys. I can't help pointing out here that I love this stuff.

The dispatch quickly comes out over the radio, and it's become very familiar by this point:

Radio: "Commercial Structure Fire, Big Bear Blvd. Engine 1401, Engine 701, Tanker 805, Tanker 905, Squad 104, Medic 111; Commercial Structure Fire, Big Bear Blvd. Engine 1401, Engine 701, Tanker 805, Tanker 905, Squad 104, Medic 111; Commercial Structure Fire, Big Bear Blvd, cross streets of Rangeline and Dead End. Timeout 18:33 KLK 578 KJY 848

Letting off the air brake with one hand, I use the other to press the talk button on my headset radio:

Engine 1401 Responding, Times 4

We're only a short way up the street, so it's only 60 seconds or so before we're parked in front of the building. The other recruits pile out as I transmit my size up back to "joint":

Columbia from engine 1401

1401, go ahead

Engine 1401 is on scene. 2-story commercial structure, light smoke showing, mark this Training Center command, all units check in on the white channel on arrival

receieved 1401, establishing Training Center Command, all units check in on white.

As I jump out of the cab, I come face to face with the other three recruits who rode in with me, all with airpacks on and ready to go. I quickly grab their accountability tags from their helmets:

"Alright, you guys will be Crew Schaefer. Take crosslay 1, enter side 1, do interior fire attack and primary search 1. "

"Crew Schaefer will enter side one for interior fire attack and primary search 1"

"Affirmative"

The lingo feels stilted, but it means we know what to say and what it means. The three of them run off around the other side of the truck while I throttle up the pump and wait for them to be ready for water. It doesn't take long before I see Jeff's hands in the air, so I pull the gate for their hose and watch my pressure gauges as the line charges with water. Just then, the fire chief taps me on the shoulder. Prepared for the transfer of command, I hand him the tags for each of my crewmates, and tell him what they're doing. He nods briefly, everything going according to plan, and radios into "joint communications" that he now has command of the incident. Knowing that more people will be coming in soon, I grab a tarp from the engine and lay it on the ground, then start throwing every air pack and tool I pull off the truck onto it. This way no-one will have to dig for anything, every item they need will be in that staging area. The radio in my hand crackles as the supply engine declares itself on-scene. I know they'll be grabbing the hydrant right now, so I start pulling off my supply line for them to hook up to. Estimating about a 200 foot distance, I pull the first 2 sections of hose of the back of the bed and break the connection, dragging the near end over to my pump and hooking it up to the inlet. 30 seconds later, I realize I've made a big mistake. The recruits from the supply engine are taking the other end of the hose to their truck, and it's definitely not going to be long enough. Dammit, should have waited.

oh well, they're trying to make the best of it, stretching that thing as far as it will go. I'm considering pulling down another section of hose, but there are 2 more crews around me asking for stuff, so i have no time to worry about it. One crew is taking the second crosslay in to go down the stairwell, so I charge their line, and gate down the first crosslay to equalize the pressure. At the same time, another crew wants to pull down the horseshoe load to take around the side of the building. I tell them to go ahead and pull the hose down, and I hustle around the far side of the truck and open an outlet for them to hook up to.

"Reddick, I've taken the cap off discharge 3!"

"Discharge 3, got it"

before long they're attached, and they want water too. Unfortunately, it's at that exact moment that the coach standing over my shoulder says "your tank is dry".

I look up at my tank gauge: 3/4 full. Confused, I turn to the coach and motion towards the gauge that indicates I am definitely NOT out of water, but he places his gloved hand over the indicator and insists again that the water is gone. Not wanting to argue, I pull the radio from my shoulder:

Command from engine 1401

1401, go ahead

1401 is apparently out of water

The chief is clearly unhappy

.....ok.....1401 out of water

The guys on the supply engine are still struggling to get the too short hose I pulled positioned so that they can get water to us, so until they figure it out, all the crews are effectively stuck outside the building, as you can't go in without a charged hoseline.

2 minutes go by. Three. Finally my inlet hose charges up, and I quickly tell command that we're flowing again. Without losing any time, all the staging crews charge inside and get back to work.

It's all over too soon, really. The recruits are back outside, all the dummies rescued, all the fire out. That was it, our very last piece of training. Supposedly, we're now ready to go out and do this for real. The chief calls us back around, and we talk about upcoming graduation and beyond. Are we really ready to do this?

Looking around, there's no way to give a good answer for that yet. Training is one thing, but under the real pressures of a real call, it could all fall apart. Only experience will tell. I'm truly excited to get out there and find out.

Tactical Evolution #3

2009-05-22T14:37:00.000-07:00

It's time for our third of four tactical tests, and this time is going to be really cool. For the last two scenarios, I've been one of the grunts, a guy focused on just one part of the overall incident. Today I've been assigned the role of Incident Commander, which means that I'll be directing the whole evolution from the side line as the first "officer" on scene.

This information, which I only received a few minutes ago, is both exciting and intimidating. I like strategy over tactics, anytime; that's my kind of thought process. However, there's a lot of responsibility involved in the IC role, and your mistakes are very glaring and evident.

But I'm never one to back down from an interesting challenge, so when it's announced I'm secretly quite thrilled to be in that role.

Because we've done so much at our burn building already, the chief tells everyone to get to their assigned apparatus and to start driving in convoy. We don't know where we're going, but we know that our next "commercial structure fire" isn't going to be in the same "commercial structure" that we've been practicing in for the last 5 months.

It should be noted that according to the NFPA standards, you aren't allowed to have a training fire in a building where you haven't given the trainees a full walkthrough. However, in a real incident there probably won't be a walkthrough time available before the fire breaks out, so the instructors got over this problem by using theater smoke and flares to simulate a live fire, choosing to give us some experience with the unknown layout problem, since we already have plenty of practice just shooting water at real fires.

So it's with excitement that we arrive at the training academy for our mutual aid department, the career department who works the metro area that our county surrounds. The instructors have us stop a ways back from the entrance while they all move in to the facility to get things prepared. While waiting, I lounge in the sun with my gear hanging open, not too concerned about heat or hydration as I won't be going into the structure myself. Every few minutes one of the other recruits in an apparatus or POV will motion me over to chat for a few minutes about the scenario that's about to start; you can tell we're still all as excited as we were for our first tactical evolution.

After maybe 15 minutes of waiting, the radio fires up as all the stations check off their preparedness:

"Dispatch, on blue?"

"..[crackle]..on blue."

"Interior Safety on blue?"

"On blue"

"Exterior Safety on blue?"

"Exterior is On blue"

"1401, on blue?"

"On blue"

"701 on blue?"

"701 is on blue"

"Dispatch, go ahead"

Time to get started:

Radio: "Commercial Structure Fire, Big Bear Blvd. Engine 1401, Engine 701, Tanker 805, Tanker 905, Squad 104, Medic 111; Commercial Structure Fire, Big Bear Blvd. Engine 1401, Engine 701, Tanker 805, Tanker 905, Squad 104, Medic 111; Commercial Structure Fire, Big Bear Blvd, cross streets of Rangeline and Dead End. Timeout 18:33 KLK 578 KJY 848

I wave as the recruits in Engine 1401 put themselves in as responding and drive up towards the building. After giving them a few minutes to get started, I start walking through the gates myself, and pull the radio on clipped to my chest close to my face:

"Columbia, this is car 1418"

"Car 1418, go ahead"

"Columbia, Car 1418 is on scene, assuming Training Center command"

Just as I'm arriving at the command post to assume my position, a new face appears next to me. It's the fire chief! The current top dog at our department is standing next to me, and he has on the same green vest and clipboard that I do, indicating Incident Command. He looks surprised as he sees my outfit, and comments quickly:

"Vizitei, are you initial command? Did you ride in on the engine?"

"No sir! I was assigned to play IC for the incident"

"Do you want to do that? Be in command, that is?"

Honestly, I do want to do it, but somehow when you're staring at somebody with that many bugles on his collar, it can be tough to articulate your exact intents and desires. My "Yes sir, it is my most compelling wish this evening to remain in command of this incident" somehow turns into "No sir, I have no preference, what do you need me to do?" by the time it reaches my mouth.

Damn. I'm probably going to be going inside now, aren't I?

Chief: "Alright, Vizitei, you'll be crew leader. Take Jones and Brandow, I want a primary search of the second story, left hand search"

Me: "Yes sir, Crew Vizitei will perform primary search 2, left hand search."

Chief: "Good, get to it".

Nothing for it now but to get to work. I quickly pull on my hood and gloves, and zip up my coat as I walk to the attack engine to pull on an airpack. As it drops onto my shoulders and I busy myself with the straps, I start thinking about the tactic ahead of us: moving hose up an interior stairwell just sucks. I remember that from the first night when the attic attack crew went up 2 stories just to be stuck in the stairwell because their hose was caught up. Now we're going to do the same thing, and hopefully come back down with a victim. However, that's the reality of this kind of work: it's tough.

I finish up my internal pep talk to myself just as I'm arriving at the door where my crew is waiting:

"Ok, guys, we're on primary search II. Brandow, take the nozzle, Jones, tools. Get on air now, let's go".

My crewmates snap their regulators onto their facepieces, and I hear their masks pressurize. They start moving up right next to the door as I call back to command to confirm orders:

"Command from Crew Vizitei"

"Crew Vizitei, this is command

"Crew Vizitei is entering side 1 for primary search II up the interior stairwell"

"Crew Vizitei, entering side 1, primary search II"

"Affirmative"

I wave to my crewmates to get inside as I hook up my mask to my airsupply and stand in the doorway. We're going to need a lot of hose to get up the stairs and around whatever rooms we find up there, so I start pulling hose into the first room, pushing about 50 feet into a coil along the ground by the door. As soon as that's in place, I follow the wall to my crew, who's already at the foot of the stairs. Already I'm breathing a bit too hard, so I concentrate on slowing it down as I help them pull the hoseline up step by step. About halfway up, we stop moving. No amount of pulling is getting us any farther, and we aren't even into our search zone yet. Signaling my 2 mates to stay where they are, I hustle back down the stairs and find that the first coupling on the line is caught around a corner. I dislodge it hurriedly, cursing the luck, and move back to the stairwell yelling "Keep Pulling!" up at the guys moving up the stairs. Just as I reach the top with them, the hose catches again. Under my breath I mutter a string of profanities while I key up my Radio:

"Command from Crew Vizitei"

"Crew Vizitei, this is command

"Crew Vizitei is unable to advance up the interior stairwell, hose is caught. We need assistance."

"Crew Vizitei, need assistance moving hose"

"Affirmative!"

30 seconds goes by, then 60. Unfortunately, any victims overcome on the second story just don't have that kind of time, so I get up and bolt down the stairs again, only to make it to the front door and see that the next attack crew has laid their line directly on top of ours, making the 2nd coupling catch solid against their line. I want to yell in frustration, but I know it won't accomplish anything, so I kick their line off a little bit, grab ours, and haul into the doorway. I can see that the line is pulling up the stairs a bit, so I know my crew is moving on, and they don't have a light since our flashlight is strapped around my shoulder. Frustrated and breathing heavily, I power up the stairs a third time, arriving beside them against the back wall in the first 2nd-floor room just as they're turning around to ask for direction. grabbing each others coat tails, we spread out on the floor to search, and no sooner have I moved away from the wall than my boots come into contact with our "victim" (a big red canvas dummy). The nozzle man needs to keep his head up for fire, so Jones and I each grab a shoulder and start dragging as I key up my radio again to let command know we're coming.

"Command from Crew Vizitei"

"Crew Vizitei, this is command

"Crew Vizitei has a victim found, 2nd story, Charlie quadrent. Making exit first floor 1, side 1"

"Crew Vizitei, victim found, exiting side one"

"Affirmative!"

My lungs are starting to burn. My head is acheing. Gotta keep going, though, nothing more useless than sitting back and resting in the middle of a fire. I try to set little goals in my head to keep focused. "Just a little farther to the corner, you can make it that far. Ok, now, it's only 10 feet or so back to the stairs, you'll make it". Just as we gratefully arrive at the top of the staircase, the dummy's legs get caught around the corner. I see the light on my Heads Up display blink yellow, meaning I'm down to half a tank of air.

"Grab his Legs, Jeremy!", I yell. Right now we're pushing and pulling on his trunk, and he ain't moving THAT way. Jones moves behind the victim as I get my arms under both shoulders and we start moving down the stairs one at a time. It's all I can do to stay focused, I feel like steam is forming inside my gear, pressure cooking my body. It's with great effort that we go through the pattern what seems like countless times: "one, two, three, pull!" down one step. "one, two, three, pull!" down another step. Reaching the bottom at last, I fall over backwards, tripping on a hoseline and coming to rest looking face up at a crew of 3 recruits waiting for their assignment at the front door:

"Help!" is all I can manage to yell at them as I point towards our victim at the foot of the stairs. Like the good guys they are, they don't waste a second charging in and helping haul that dummy to safety. I ask Jones to take over "CPR" while I call into command telling them that we're safe:

"Command from Crew Vizitei"

"Crew Vizitei, this is command

"Crew Vizitei has exited the structure side 1. We are par, plus one victim."

"Crew Vizitei, exited structure, par plus one"

"Affirmative"

I tear my gear off as quickly as I can manage, sighing gratefully as a cool breeze sucks some of the heat away from my body. We don't have time for a break, though.

"Crew Vizitei, rehab your air bottles and check back in with command"

Damn. I'm hurting. I don't WANT to check back in with command, I would be happy just to avoid puking. That's not the way it works, though. I repeat the order over the radio, and relay it to my crewmates, who both look amazingly un-exhausted. What's wrong with me? Why am I so tired?

I manage to drag all my stuff back to the rehab area, and I go to my knees to change out my air bottle. Somebody is trying to tell me something about my airpack, but I can hardly understand what she's saying. Why is she talking so loud? Oh well, I think, she has a lieutenant's helmet so I guess she can talk as loud as she wants. I mumble something that I hope sounds like "OK" as I swing my coat back on and throw my airpack onto my back. With my crew walking ahead of me, definitely somehow in better shape, we trudge back towards the command post.

My steps slow down, then stop. I don't feel so good. A wave of heat and nausea washes over me, and I go down to my knees for a second trying to rest enough to let it pass. It's not passing. One of my crewmates turns around and sees me. He's probably asking if I'm ok. Am I ok?

"I have to get out..." I mumble

I am definately not ok.

"I have to get out...."

I'm pushing ineffectively at my gear, trying to peel it off again. It feels like I'm drowning in heat, like I'm desperate to just have nothing against my skin. Three recruits rush over to help and my gear is soon off and I'm somehow sitting over on the grass with bottles of water surrounding me. Sombody is telling me to drink. Seems like good advice.

As a few bottles of water get pored over my head, and into my stomach, my lucidity returns. Realizing that I got overheated, I look down at the ground hoping no one else is noticing. It's a little embarrassing to be sprawled out and half collapsed while everyone else who just went through the same thing you did is standing around just fine. Glancing up, I realize that contrary to my hopes, EVERYONE is noticing, and I can now see my brother and the lead instructor for my crew sauntoring over to see what's up. One of my recruit buddies kneels next to me and asks if there's anything I need. Unhappy at the situation I'm in, I crack a wry joke:

"If you see my dignity laying over there on the asphalt somehwere I sure would appreciate it if you'd return it to me".

Now my brother is kneeling in front of me.

"You ok?"

"I've felt better."

"Did you make it out of the building first?"

"yeah"

"With the victim?"

"yeah"

"Good job. Guess you got too hot"

"yeah"

He smiles a bit, knowing that I'll be fine after a few minutes cooling down, and tells me to keep a cold water bottle against my groin to cool down quicker.

By the time I'm back on my feet, the tactic is over. I'm still a little shamed-faced over collapsing like that, but there's no point in dwelling on it. Pulling on my pants and helmet, I trudge over to help load the hose back on the truck. Evolution #3: partial success; I did find a few shreds of dignity discarded on the pavement after all.

Tactical Evolution #2

2009-05-22T14:36:00.001-07:00

Radio: "Commercial Structure Fire, Roger I Wilson Memorial Drive. Engine 1301, Engine 701, Tanker 105, Tanker 505, Squad 104, Medic 231; Commercial Structure Fire, Roger I Wilson Memorial Drive. Engine 1301, Engine 701, Tanker 105, Tanker 505, Squad 104, Medic 231; Commercial Structure Fire, Roger I Wilson Memorial Drive, cross streets of East County Road and East Prathersville Road. Timeout 18:33 KLK 578 KJY 848

Sitting in the cab of Engine 1301, I listen to the dispatch go out over our local training center channel. Our second evolution is beginning. This time I've been assigned to the attack engine as the engineer, so instead of going inside the building with my fellow recruits, I'll be operating the pump from the engine. It also means that until the first "officer" shows up, I'll be in command of the incident.

I release the air brake with one hand while I pull the radio off the dash and up to my face:

"Columbia from Engine 1301"

"Engine 1301, go ahead"

"Engine 1301 is responding, times 2"

The guys in 701 (the supply engine for this incident) give a good-luck wave to me as I ease the engine in to gear and make the loop towards the burn building. I'm a little nervous, because I know that for the first 3 or 4 minutes, everybody who shows up will be asking me for everything. Beyond anything else, I don't want to look overwhelmed; quiet competence is my goal.

I have one other recruit riding with me, Anya, the only female in our class, and as we approach we quickly split up the work that needs to be done as soon as we reach the fire. Stopping at the spot where we know the supply engine will stationed, she jumps out of the cab to pull off a supply line and leave it for them. That way, as soon as 701 shows up, they can hook up to it and be feeding us more water quickly.

As if on cue, the radio crackles and our buddies in the supply engine come on the air:

"Columbia from Engine 701"

"Engine 701, go ahead"

"Engine 701 is responding, times 2"

It takes a little longer than I expected, so while I wait for her to get back into the cab, I go over my size up in my head, wanting to make sure that my radio traffic sounds professional when I actually perform it. Then Anya is back in the cab and we pull up to the building, the supply hose playing out behind us from the bed of the truck.

The building is tall and bland, made out of concrete and other fireproof materials, with metal window coverings all shut to give all the heat, smoke, and darkness of a real structure fire. I know the coaches are in there stoking up the flames right now, but from where I'm sitting there's no outward indicator of the inferno raging inside, so I pull up the radio again and go through what I'd been rehearsing in my head ever since I got my assignment to drive:

"Columbia from Engine 1301"

"Engine 1301, go ahead"

"Engine 1301 is on the scene. This is a 2 story commercial structure, nothing showing. Make this Training Center command, all units check in on the White channel on arrival."

"Receieved, Training Center command. All responding units check in on White on arrival."

I don't have time to be pleased with myself, this is the most critical time block for a real fire. 30 seconds is how long it takes for a fire to double in size, so we need to have a hose line in there as soon as physically possible. Anya is already throwing an airpack onto her back as I switch the fire engine from drive into pump mode. Realizing that it's going to take her a few seconds to get everything on and fastened, I grab the hoseline that she'll be using off the truck myself and run it up to the building, flaking out the kinks so it will be ready and waiting for her when she is ready to go inside. Just as I arrive back at the truck to start pulling tools off for her too, Carl (one of the other recruits) shows up at my side. For this scenario, he's playing the first lieutenant to show up at the scene, so I turn command over to him:

Carl: "What do we have?"

Me: "Nothing showing yet, Tveritinova and I are the only ones on scene. She'll be leading the first attack crew"

Carl: "Have you done a 360 yet?"

Me: "..No, I'm on it!"

Damn! Missed that one. Instead of pulling tools and hose for Anya, what I really should have been doing was walking around the building to see the fire signs from all angles and to see if there were any other hazards or exposures present. No time to dwell, though. As Carl sets up his command post, I take off around the building. All the window coverings are shut tight, so not much is visible, but as I pull around the last corner I can see light smoke pushing from an attic vent on the 4th side (the right side of the building).

Getting back to Carl, I notify him of the smoke, and he tasks the first attack crew with getting inside. I make it back to the pump panel, and this is when it gets crazy:

The first attack crew is at the door. They need water. I pull open the discharge valve for crosslay-1, and the hose they're holding fills quickly with pressurized water. They're off and into the building just as the next crew on scene grabs crosslay 2 and makes for the door. I'm setting them up with water too just as the supply engine calls up on the radio asking if they can send water yet. I tell them I don't have a supply line connected yet and to hold off for just a minute. Finishing flowing for the second crew, I make my way to the back of the truck, dodging incoming recruits who are pulling airpacks and tools out of all the compartments. I almost collide with another crew who's pulling off the large 2-and-a-half hose to pull around back and make entrance through the back of the building. They ask me to hook them up with water as soon as possible, so I grab their line instead of the supply line from 701 and dash back to the panel. I'm just finishing hooking them up to one of the exposed discharge outlets as another recruit taps me on the shoulder asking urgently for a thermal imaging camera. I try to help him find one, but it looks like the first attack crew took it with them, so I send him down to the supply engine to grab theirs while I run back to grab the supply line again and get it hooked up to my tank. Before I can pull the supply line around to the inlet on my panel, the crew going in the back door is calling for water over the radio, so I drop the line again and run back to the pump, charging their line as quickly as possible while trying to remind myself to open the water gate slowly to avoid damaging any of the internals. Once they're set, I go back and grab the supply line again, and finally get it dragged around and hooked up to my pump inlet. Breathing a little heavily, I radio the supply engine and ask them to charge the supply line, which quickly makes the hose at my feet leap to life as it pressurizes against the closed inlet on my pump.

Taking a breath, I step back and examine all the gauges on the panel. All the deployed hoselines are still reading the correct pressure, my tank's about 3/4 full, there's water recirculating to keep the pump cool, the pressure relief valve is set to keep pressure spikes from hitting the guys inside: everything looks as it should. Slowly, I open the inlet valve to allow water from the supply engine to start refilling my tank, while backing off on the throttle trying to keep the discharge pressure steady as the transition takes place. Then I wait.

That's the thing about being the engineer on the attack engine: it's nuts for about 3 minutes, and from then on as long as nothing goes wrong you are basically watching and waiting. You might make some minor adjustments to keep your tank full of water from the supply engine, but basically you sit and wait for some emergency to occur (hoseline breaking, pump malfunction, etc). Fortunately for me, the rest of the evolution went smoothly. The guys inside did great, and I was able to just hang tight until everyone got back out and needed the water shut down and drained.

Although I like to keep a humble attitude when people tell me I did a good job, in my mind I was grinning from ear to ear. I'd count this one a success.

Tactical Evolution #1

2009-05-22T14:35:00.000-07:00

We're finally into our last few training sessions, and all real "training" is in the past. Now we're starting our first tactical evolution, a situation where the coaches setup a scenario as realistically as possible and have the recruits come in to deal with it as best they can.

Radio: "Commercial Structure Fire, Roger I Wilson Memorial Drive. Engine 1301, Engine 701, Tanker 105, Tanker 505, Squad 104, Medic 231; Commercial Structure Fire, Roger I Wilson Memorial Drive. Engine 1301, Engine 701, Tanker 105, Tanker 505, Squad 104, Medic 231; Commercial Structure Fire, Roger I Wilson Memorial Drive, cross streets of East County Road and East Prathersville Road. Timeout 18:33 KLK 578 KJY 848

Here we go. This is the very first time that we aren't involved in a closely supervised "tactic", the recruit class as a whole is just going to show up to this "incident" in waves and mitigate it as best we can.

"Columbia from Engine 1301"

"Engine 1301, go ahead"

"Engine 1301 is responding, times 2"

We're all parked on the far side of the training center, waiting for our chance to respond in, a coach at the front of the line doing traffic duty making sure we don't all show up at once.

For this scenario I'm a "POV", that is, I'm not coming on an apparatus from the station, I was just out around town when the call came in and I'm driving there in my car to help out. There's no real way to know what task you'll be taking care of until you show up.

The radio crackles again

"Columbia from Engine 701"

"Engine 701, go ahead"

"Engine 701 is responding, times 2"

I watch as the recruits in Engine 1301 pull around the last corner in their route and stop in front of the burn building, our commercial structure fire for the evening. I can hear the airbrake deploy as Jones (the recruit assigned as the operator) radios in his size up.

"Columbia, Engine 1301"

"Engine 1301, go ahead"

"Engine 1301 is on the scene. Got a....2 story....commercial structure...nothing showing. Make this Training Center command"

I'm too far away to see exactly what they're doing as they setup to go inside, but I've got too much to think about anyway. Being a POV is dangerous, for a host of reasons. The adrenaline can cause you to drive more erratically than you should, and personal vehicles don't draw attention the way fire trucks do, so accidents can happen easily if you are not serious about being careful. Then, once you've arrived, you're basically putting your gear on in a roadway, where it's too easy to get hit by passing traffic, distracted by the large incident ahead. Luckily in the safety of the training center that risk is mitigated, but you have to build habits the right way by always behaving as though you're in a real incident, on a real highway, with real danger.

Upon receiving the signal from our traffic coach, I drive off around the loop to report in to the fireground. As we were trained, I stop about 150' from the incident, put on my flashers, and throw my keys on the floorboard (so others can move it later if need be). Grabbing my gear bag out of the trunk, I toss it on the ground a little off the roadway and tear it open, keeping my head up watching for oncoming traffic. After 5 months of practice, the movements come naturally. Right boot, left boot, pants up, right suspender, left suspender...before I know it I have all my bunker gear on and I'm walking as fast as I can towards the command post.

My heart is already pounding, not from exertion but from excitement. Even though I know this isn't a real incident, there IS a real fire in there, and the adrenaline kicks in all the same.

Grabbing the tag off my helmet, I hand it to the incident commander (recruit Stephenson in this case), who tells me to go pack up and standby for assignment. Straining to show the watching officers some professionalism, I repeat my orders verbatim out loud, and make for the rear compartment of the attack engine where I can get myself an airpack.

This used to be a complicated process; no more. Although repetition isn't fun, it does it's job, and this is coming naturally. I yank the cord securing the pack in place, pull it off the rack, check to make sure it's full, open the bottle to pressurize the system (noting the correct sequence of sounds as the vibra-alert engages and the PASS system comes online), and throw the pack over my head and onto my shoulders. Walking back towards command, I pull all the straps tight against my body and check my face piece to make sure I'll have a good seal once I connect the airpack and start flowing oxygen.

Now the only question is what I'll be asked to do. On a large fire attack, there are many options. You need crews to search the building for victims, crews to attack the fire with hose lines, crews to wait by the doors to go in and help if something goes wrong.

The Incident commander grabs a group of 4 of us and pulls us towards him.

Stephenson (IC): "This will be Crew Vizitei, I need pitched roof ventilation, side 4"

Me: "Crew Vizitei will perform pitched roof ventilation, side 4"

Stephenson: "Affirmative!"

That's a tough tactic. Basically, he wants a hole cut in the roof, which is on a slant. It might seem like this is the "easy" work, since you aren't inside actually attacking the fire. All I can say is, you have to have attempted this to really appreciate how exhausting it can be. My job wasn't going to be bad - by designating us as "Crew Vizitei", he was indicating that I (Vizitei) would be the crew leader. My primary job would be to help the crew reach the roof, and stay in radio contact with command. It's the saw man who gets the tough job as he has to wield a chainsaw while standing precariously on a combination of ladders and axes, and then clear the hole he's made with a long and heavy pike pole. I know that whichever crewmember I assign that task is going to be beat afterward.

Tough, though, is what we signed up for. Handing out assignments to the other three crewmembers (one to wield the saw, one to support him on the roof with an axe, and one to hold the ladder), we go to work. It takes about 90 seconds to get the necessary equipment assembled at our climbing point, which is the easy part, and then the ladder is raised up against the roof and it's time to get started. My 2 roof crewmen are already climbing while I perform the necessary radio traffic to let the commander know we're starting:

"Command from Crew Vizitei"

"Crew Vizitei, this is Command

"Command, Crew Vizitei is beginning Pitched Roof Ventilation, Side 4"

"Crew Vizitei, beginning pitched roof ventilation, side 4"

"Affirmative!"

I snap my regluator into my facepiece, blinking as the first puff of air pressurizes the mask, grab an axe from the ground, and start my climb just as the 2nd of my crewmates disappears up over the lip of the roof.

Once at the top, I can see my guys are doing well so far. They've got the roof ladder secured over the peak of the roof, giving them a good place to stand, and the saw man already has his chainsaw in hand and running, just waiting for the tool man to give him a foot hold.

Handing the tool man the pick-headed axe, I remain on the ladder to watch, and to be available if something goes wrong. The tool man watches as the saw man sticks his foot out onto the roof showing where he wants to step. Then the saw man pulls his leg back to the ladder as the tool man swings high with the pick head of the axe, digging it deep into the roof to give the saw man a place to put his foot securely.

Then the cutting begins. I have nothing but sympathy for the guy doing that work, but he's doing great. After seven long cuts, a rectangle has been outlined in the roof, just waiting to be breached. The saw is handed back down to me on the ladder as the saw man picks up his pike pole and starts beating and tearing, opening the hole and digging down through the attic to breach the ceiling. Once it's good and open, we all make our way back down quickly and disconnect our face pieces to breathe fresh air again. Grabbing my radio clipped to my shoulder, I report back:

"Command from Crew Vizitei"

"Crew Vizitei, this is Command

"Command, Crew Vizitei has completed Pitched Roof Ventilation, Side 4. We are off the roof and PAR."

"Crew Vizitei, completed pitched roof ventilation, side 4, off the roof and PAR"

"Affirmative!"

"Rehab your bottles and check in with command"

"Received"

Guess that means we aren't getting a break. The four of us drop our tools in the staging area and make our way to the air truck where we exchange our depleted air tanks for full ones. Arriving back at the command post, they don't waste any time putting us back in the building.

Stephenson:"I need secondary searches on both floors. Split into two crews of two, Vizitei, you take Brandow and search the first floor. You other two, second story"

Me:"Crew Vizitei will enter structure side 1, and perform Secondary Search, first floor."

This is a bit of a break for us. Secondary search means that the primary team has already gone through looking for victims. We're going in to make sure they didn't miss anyone. Because the fire attack has already been through this section of the building, there is no longer any fire, and all the windows are open, so we have clear visibility and can walk around comfortably. It's just a matter of being thorough, making sure no one is trapped or hiding.

We're in and back out in about 5 minutes, just in time to hear the call for help come over the radio.

"Command, there IS fire extension in the attic. We cannot make attack! Hose is stuck in the stairwell, we need assistance."

The crew checking the attic has their hose caught up in 2 flights of stairs, which is a tough haul. Now they need to move farther in to stop the fire from coming back from the attic and undoing all our work, and they can't get in there to do it. The four of us closest to the door immediately are tasked with getting their hose up the stairs, and we charge in to help.

Hoses are extremely important to firefighting, as any observer could tell you. What most observers might not realize is just how heavy one of those hand-lines is. This is not a garden hose you're pulling. The hose is thick, and when full of water it's heavy and inflexible. It does indeed take all four of us spread out along the line to move that hose around the corners and up the stairs so that our buddies on the attack crew can get far enough into the attic to get their job done.

But they do it. All the victims are out and all the fire is extinguished, all that's left is chugging water and reloading all the equipment. Evolution #1 is a success. Time to reset everything and go again.

Firelink Article

2009-05-15T18:23:00.001-07:00

I have a new article out on firelink, check out the link here:

http://www.firelink.com/benefits/articles/7245-why-screaming-at-probies-is-the-best-way-to-show-love

Mayday, Mayday, Mayday

2009-05-07T12:50:00.000-07:00

What do you do, as a firefighter, if you are injured, lost, stuck, or otherwise incapacitated while inside a burning building? The answer might be obvious to you from an objective perspective: you call for help! But it's not as easy as all that when you're on the fireground. There are, unfortunately, many reasons that firefighters don't call for help when they should. Some of it is machismo, because you don't want to be the guy who others had to come in and carry out. Some of it is unavoidable: if you're unconcious, you aren't going to be able to call for help. But a lot of the reluctance to call for assistance from other firefighters is just a misunderstanding of the situation that you're in. If a piece of roof falls on you trapping you underneath, you might believe that if you just wriggle the right way you'll be able to escape. So you struggle, and push, and strain trying to get yourself free. By the time you realize how truly stuck you are, you've exhausted all your energy and are probably running low on air. The team who comes in to try to save you may only have 5 minutes or less before your air runs out, and it's going to be hard to find you in that amount of time.

A big part of our training last saturday was to be made aware of those facts first and foremost. As soon as you get in trouble of any kind, as soon as the situation stops going the way you expected it to, you need to start calling for help immediately. That at least gives the firefighters who are coming to get you a bigger margin of time to get to you, and you can always send them back if you manage to escape by yourself.

Then we got to play in the maze.

In full bunker gear, with breathing tanks on, and blindfolded with a translucent film over our facepiece, we had to crawl through a maze that simulates many of the hazards found in a structure fire. You'd be crawling along, and a large piece of wood would fall on top of you (helped along by your sadistic coach). Now you're being crushed, and you just have to hope you've got enough wiggle room to get to your radio:

"Mayday, Mayday, Mayday"

Command: "All units hold for emergency traffic. Unit calling mayday, go ahead."

"Crew Vizitei is trapped on 1st floor, Charlie quadrant, near side 3 while performing Primary Search. Please dispatch RIT team."

Command: "RIT team is en route, Crew Vizitei, attempt self-rescue"

Now in general, this went pretty well. However, none of us were actually scared or worked up. We knew that even though we were pretty well trapped, it was just our coach who was holding the weight down on top of us or tangling us up in a cord or whatever, and that if we were to get in any serious distress he'd cut us loose. That meant that our radio traffic was pretty smooth and understandable. But it isn't like that in real life. We watched a video that day that would send chills down anybody's neck.

http://vodpod.com/watch/639646-houston-texas-firefighter-mayday

If you watch that all the way through, what you hear will scare the hell out of you. That firefighter captain went back in by himself to retrieve victims and became trapped on the 5th floor. When you hear him speak over the radio, you can tell he's under real duress, and that he isn't sure if he's coming out alive, and it makes it almost impossible to understand him. Can you tell what he's saying? Where he is? I can only imagine trying to control my voice to make sure others can understand me while my mind is gradually becoming more certain that I'm not going to make it.

So although we now know what to do, this is one of those skills we're learning that I hope I never have to use.

Cold Water Rescue

2009-04-29T15:32:00.000-07:00

Training was not too tasking last night. Mostly what we're focusing on right now is knots and ropes. This should have worked out well for me as I'm an avid amateur rock climber, but it turns out that tying knots in fire gloves while under pressure is just a bit different from tying knots on a cool breezy day at the base of a rock face. I'll get there, though.

One of the more interesting things we got to play with was the cold water rescue suit. This is the piece of equipment that a firefighter dons when they need to go pull somebody up who has fallen through an iced over body of water. It's this big red piece of rubber that fits your body like a glove, stretching to fit all the way over your head, reminding me of a kid's onesie with a hood, entirely made out of 1-inch-thick-waterproof-thermal-insulating-material. Attached to the back is a large D-ring that a rescue rope is tied to so you are tethered to shore by your crewmates who are manning the rope, and in your pocket you carry an extension of that rope with a carabiner at the end to clip around your patient before pulling them out.

Once you're in, you have to start moving over the ice so that your weight is as spread out as possible, otherwise you'll just break through the ice in another spot, making it hard to get to the victim. In essence, they've found one of the better ways to do this is to lay flat on your side gripping your tether over your head and just to roll out to your victim like a bakers rolling pin. We practiced this in a grassy area, rolling out to rescue each other from the middle of a field, and it's a bizarre feeling. The suit holds air well, so as you roll from one side to the other, the pressure can change in the area around your head causing your ears to pop; your fingers don't move right because of the thickness of the material. I can only imagine how much tougher this would be on a cold day, moving over slippery ice, into a freezing hole in the center, all under the pressure of getting to a person who only will last mere minutes in that sort of environment.

Another interesting fact: we are taught a hand signal that means "I need help!". Sticking one arm straight up in the air means that you are in trouble and require assistance. My thought is, how is anybody going to help you? There's only one suit on the truck. You'd at least have to wait until the next due engine arrived for anyone else to get out there and lend a hand.

Firefighting is not always about fire, but it sure does seem to involve a lot of running straight into places most people should never go and doing things most people would be crazy to attempt.

What a cool job.

Water Supply for the layman

2009-04-25T20:46:00.000-07:00

Without water, it's going to be pretty hard to knock down a fire; that's why you need so many more people to fight a fire than just the few people running into the building with hoses. Where does all that water come from?

Well, you might say, the fire engine of course! That's where the hoses are coming from, so that's where the water is. Great job, you'd make an excellent detective! But consider this: each one of our fire engines contains 750 gallons of water. That sounds like a lot, but it actually won't last as long as you thing. One regular hand line (a hose carried into a building) is usually configured to spray 125 gallons per minute. That's about 6 minutes of water for 1 hose; that's not that long, and it's not likely that you're fighting a large fire with just one hose. On anything larger than a regular room-and-contents fire, you're going to need a little more than that 750 gallons showing up in the first engine.

That's one of the reasons you send more than 1 fire engine to a fire: you need to be getting your water somewhere, and the engine pumping water into the house (the "attack" engine) doesn't have time to find out where the best place to get water is. So the next engine to show up (the "supply" engine) hooks up a large supply hose to the intake of the 1st engine and sends all the water in it's tank shooting into the tank of the attack engine. Alright, now you have about 1500 gallons of water, that's pretty good. Except you might have 3 hoses being used by this point, so you could possibly be using somewhere around 500 gallons a minute. In fact, some of the larger deck guns can shoot up to 1000 gallons per minute just by themselves. If you have a hydrant around, that's super, and in most metro areas you do. A good hydrant can flow over 1500 gallons every minute by itself, which is pretty good. However, not all hydrants have that level of pressure, and if you're in a more rural area you may not have a hydrant near enough to hook the supply engine into. Now what?

Here's where the well-oiled machine of teamwork comes into play, and it's a pretty impressive operation when it's running smoothly. Picture this:

The attack engine is pumping water onto the house as fast as it can. The supply engine is sending every drop it has available into the tank of the attack engine. By the supply engine are 2 large "fold-a-tanks", big steel frames with tarps inside of them that basically form a small pool that can hold over 2000 gallons of water. The supply engine has a suction hose dipped into the nearest tank and is sucking water in from it, but how is the water getting into the fold-a-tank?

From the tankers. Tankers are big firetrucks who's main job is to shuttle large amounts of water from one place to another. Each one (on our department) holds about 1500 gallons of water, and can dump it all into one of these tanks in about 30 seconds. So you get 2-3 of these tankers that are driving a circuit to the nearest hydrant or other water source: Fill up the truck, drive to the supply engine, dumpt the water, drive back to the water source. As long your water source doesn't go dry and your trucks don't break down, you can now put water on the fire all day if you need to. It's a marvel to watch when it goes right and this system is clicking like an oversized bucket brigade.

So you see, the heros running into the building are depending upon a large team on the outside to keep them in action. Pretty cool, huh?

New Article on Firelink

2009-04-24T10:46:00.000-07:00

I have a new article that's been posted on firelink.com, this one regarding integrating into the crew as the new guy. Check it out at the following link:

The Brotherhood

My kind of firefighting

2009-04-16T05:54:00.000-07:00

This week is all about pumps. Maybe that doesn't sound that exciting to you, but for me this is a great week. You see, most of the necessary skills for firefighting have to do with physical ability. You need strength to move a victim, balance to climb and work from a ladder, endurance to spend time working in the heat of a fire environment without collapsing. I'm not BAD at that kind of thing; in fact, I'm in pretty good shape. But working the pump on a firetruck is mostly about simple math and abstract thought -- yes!

For those who are not part of the fire service, you should know that using the pump on a firetruck is more than just turning it on and letting the water flow. There are at least 8 points from where an engine can be discharging water, and each one of them has to have their pressure adjusted properly for the task at hand. Let me give you a simple example:

For a house fire, you might have 2 lines deployed off of the truck, both 1 3/4 inches in diameter. One might be 150 feet long because it's going in through the front door, the other might be 200 feet long because it's being taken in through the side of the house. Each one needs water pressure of 100 PSI (pounds per square inch) at the nozzle, and they each are running 125 gallons per minute of water through the hose. How much pressure does the pump need to be discharging at?

Well, when you push water through a 50ft stick of 1 3/4 inch hose at 125 GPM, it loses 12 PSI. So if you are pumping 112 PSI, by the time it reaches the end of that 50 foot length, it's down to 100. The longer of the 2 hoses deployed off the truck is 200 feet, which is 4 50 foot lengths, so the pump will have to be discharging 148 PSI to make sure that the longer hose has enough pressure. However, the shorter hose (the 150 foot one) only needs 136 PSI to have 100 PSI at the nozzle, so you would have the pump discharging at 148 PSI, and gate the shorter hose down to 136.

Now, there are many more complicated scenarios than that when you get into having multiple hoses of different sizes at different flow rates, and when you start incorporating things like standpipes to raise water up to a higher story in a building, and managing the intake into the truck at the same time from the water supply operations. This is the kind of material a geek can really get into.

Moral of the story: don't go thinking that firefighters are just brute muscle, they need some brains to get things done as well.

New article!

2009-03-31T19:56:00.001-07:00

I have a new article published on firelink, check out the link to read:

http://www.firelink.com/benefits/articles/6840-firefighters-do-the-right-thing

Drive Time

2009-03-30T08:58:00.000-07:00

What's one of the most pure-fun parts of becoming a firefighter? Driving big trucks. Every little kid wants to do it, and it's for good reason: it feels really cool to be in control of something that big.

Yesterday I got to complete my first hour of drive time. In my department, before you can get your red helmet (you keep your orange recruit helmet until this point), you have to be checked off on every front-line apparatus at your station. This entails doing at least 10 hours of "drive time", which gets you familiar with your apparatus and with the area it responds to. My brother's station has an engine, a tanker, and a brush truck, so it could take a while for a new recruit to lose the "Probie" label, but my station just has 1 engine, so it should be a pretty quick process for me.

I met my station commander there in the afternoon, and while he was getting some paperwork printed off for to document the training, the senior Firefighter at the station pulled me aside for a second.

"Hey man, about your drive time...."

"Yeah?"

"It's like this: 1401 is the only truck we have, right? So, if you fuck up my truck, well; nothing personal, but I WILL have to fuck you up. Bad. Like, GI bleed, bad. And it's not cause I don't like you, it's just the way it is, right?"

"...right..."

Nothing like picking on the new guy. :)

So we started by the captain having me do a "360" before leaving. That's exactly what it sounds like: you just walk around the truck to make sure nothing is amiss before you start driving. All the compartments should be shut, nothing should be left sitting on the bumper, nobody should be taking a nap in front of the wheels, etc.

After that I jumped in and started her up, pulled outside, and got to talk over a real radio channel for the first time. This was something that was pretty cool to me. I've done plenty of radio traffic at the training center to other recruits and to instructors, but this was me actually talking to joint communications, so I felt my voice deepen a little as I addressed the city with the gravity I felt such a monumental piece of radio traffic deserved:

"Columbia from engine 1401"

Ok, maybe I deepened my voice a little to much. Oh well, can't worry about it now:

"1401 go ahead"

"engine 1401 is on the air"

"1401 on the air 14:43"

Woo-hoo! That was awesome!....Well, ok, now it doesn't seem so amazing after the fact, but at the time that was a serious rush for me.

We spent the next 1.5 hours driving around my station's runbox, the captain pointing out previous scenes where they had responded for interesting incidents. Vehicle extrications, fires, ice rescues, all kinds of exciting stuff. By the time we got back to the station I felt like we'd only been gone for 15 minutes, and I wasn't ready to get down off my power high just yet. Luckily, there's something fun I got to look forward to right at the end of the drive:

"Columbia from engine 1401"

"1401 go ahead"

"Engine 1401 is in quarters"

"1401 in quarters 16:24"

Yeah, that was fun.

Thanks to the Readers

2009-03-27T07:24:00.000-07:00

These last couple of days have been amazing. Since my article went up on Firelink.com, I've gotten a huge influx of messages from firefighting veterans and recruits throughout the country. Some have sent stories of why they decided to become firefighters, others have just given me encouragement and advice for my training. I'm standing in awe at a community that is so quick to adopt and assist a newbie.

So this is my public thanks to all of the firefighters who contacted me either through comments or email, and to all those who were the inspiration for one of those individuals to join the fire service. I couldn't be more excited to be joining that family.

New Opportunity

2009-03-25T13:50:00.001-07:00

So, if you've enjoyed my writing so far on this blog, it's time to go take a look at my new platform as a featured writer on FireLink.com. I'll be doing a series for them on the recruit/probationary firefighter experience, and it should be interesting and fun reading. While you're there, if you want to support me, get an account with them (free) so you can rate my articles, comment on them, and connect with other members of the fire service community.

Here's the link:

http://www.firelink.com/benefits/articles/6802-firefighter-origins

Primary Search

2009-03-18T07:14:00.001-07:00

It's amazing what the human body can do when you push it hard enough.

Last night at fire training was the first time that I really felt just how physically tough this is going to be.

Chief:"Crew Vizitei, we've got a working fire! I want a primary search on floor 1, right hand search! Get going!"

Work on the fireground isn't the same as doing the same level of physical labor at the gym. You can't breathe freely, it's so hot under your gear, there's so much weight.

Me (into the radio):"Command, from Crew Vizitei! Smoke and flames showing on side 3! Crew Vizitei is making forcible entry on side 1, executing primary search 1, right hand search!"

You have to crawl everywhere, the heat would be too much to stand in, and you can't stand to get any hotter than you already are just from the exertion.

Me (to crewmate):"This door is hot! Get that nozzle ready, I'll open it on 3!...1!...2!...3!" (The door swings open, while my crewmate points the hose at the door just in case flames come shooting out)

It's dark. Too dark to see anything, even your crewmate crouched directly in front of you. You have to keep one hand on him all the time, or you won't know where you are anymore, or which way is out.

Crewmate:"I need more hose! I can't move forward!"

Me:"Hang on! Keep your head up, I'll pull in as much hose as I can!"

There's so much stuff to take with you. Flashlight, Thermal imager, axe, halligen, radio, not to mention the hose. Before you even pick up any of that stuff, you're already carrying 30 extra pounds on your back from the breathing tank on your back. And a hose that's pressurized with water doesn't move as easily as you might think.

Me (shouting at the top of my lungs):"Fire Department! Anybody in hear!?!"

You have to move fast, but you have to be thorough too. Kids like to hide under beds. People might be unconscious behind a piece of furniture. Shuffle, feel, shuffle, feel.

Me (into the radio):"Command, from Crew Vizitei! Victim Found! Making Exit side 1!"

Nothing is as hard to move as a limp body. Limbs can get caught around stuff, the body is heavy. You can't stand up because of the heat, you can't see where you're going, every time you pull with all your might, you only move about six inches. Your breathing gets fast, your body aches, you can't believe you have anything left in you to keep moving, but you're starting to run out of air and you can't stop because you have to get this victim out of the building. Your lungs burn, and your mind screams that you're at your limit, but you don't have a choice. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going.

Me (to crewmate):"Stone!(pant, pant) I'm stuck! (pant) The victims arm...(pant)...is caught...(pant)...on the hose! (pant, pant)...Help!"

Stone:Ok, buddy! Push on 3!...1! 2! 3! PUSH!

Even once you're out of the doorway, you can't stop. You have to get away from the building. It's SO hot. You can't breathe. As you struggle to keep dragging, you work equally hard to tear your mask off as quickly as possible. Even with fresh air coming in, you can't shed heat fast enough. You can feel your clothes soaked and heavy from sweat underneath your fire gear.

Instructor:"Don't stop, we aren't done yet! What do you do now!?"

Me:"Radio...(pant)...command!"

Instructor:"Well, your radio fell out of your pocket inside, so you'd better go talk to them face to face"

Gotta get the gear off. It's so hot. Can't breathe. Keep walking. So Hot. Keep walking.

Me:"Command, this is crew Vizitei! (pant, pant)...lost our radio....(pant)...Crew vizitei is par....(pant)..plus one victim...(pant, pant)...primary search complete..."

Command:"Crew vizitei, par plus one victim, primary search complete"

Me:"...affirmative..."

Now you can fall over. Now you can tear all your gear off. Now you can get your pack off your back. Now you can poor a bottle of water over your head. But don't pass out. Don't throw up. Whatever you do, just stay calm.

It's amazing what the human body can do when you push it hard enough.

Fire!

2009-02-25T07:28:00.001-08:00

"Ok, we got Crew Stone, standby on side 1"

This is it, we're finally going to get to play with real fire. My crew has just parked their vehicles, and we have all donned our gear before checking in with the "Incident Commander". Picking our boy Chris Stone as crew leader, it's time to go to work. I glance around as we wait a moment for Stone to dish out assignments. Here we are, the big burn building looming over us, charred in places from the hundreds of times firefighters have trained in this building. At my back, dwarfed by the structure, is the reserve engine 1308, ready to send huge amounts of water with us towards the blaze. It's nothing short of exciting.

Stone: "Berkel, you get the nozzle! Stoops, tools! Vizitei, vent fan!"

Assignments are handed out, and we all start moving at once to the compartment on the firetruck where the air packs were stored. Flipping open the door, we all try our hardest to show that we'd actually learned something last saturday when we were practicing this. I pull the release on my pack, and jerk it off it's mount as quickly as I dare. Glancing at the air gauge, I see about 4200 PSI, well above the required minimum of 4000. To my left I hear one of my crewmates shout over the rumbling of the fire truck: "I have a pack at 33,000! It's too low!". Our instructor calls back: "Good job! Always check! Now go ahead and use it, it will be OK for what we're doing!". Meanwhile I've shoved the pack over my head and have pulled all the straps tight around my body. Time to get the fan.

As I'm dragging the ventilation fan away from the engine, I glance around at all my crewmates (my peripherals being cut off by the mask I'm wearing). There's Berkel, tall and lanky, tossing out segments of the hose, dragging it over to the door. Stone is already disappearing around the side of the building, doing his size up from all sides. Stoops, having pulled the married set of irons from the truck, is helping get the hose ready for entry.

Instructor: "Let's go, guys! There's a fire in there, we don't have time to play around! Get your stuff done and get ready to get in there!"

Parking the fan next to the door, I turn it away as trained, and give the startup cord one sharp pull.

Fan: "Sputter...sputter..cough..."

Awesome. I give it a few more yanks just to be sure the first one was hard enough, but it ain't starting. I begin to fiddle with every switch on the damn thing, trying to find the choke, pulling the cord again every few seconds to check my progress. Finally, after yanking an unmarked bar away from the fan body, I'm rewarded with a roar as the fan starts blowing away. Pleased, I throttle it up, and step back while Berkel clears any air out of the hose by running water through it. Stone has just made it back around to our side of the building and has started radioing back to command, but I can't hear anything he's saying over the noise of the vent fan. Finally he comes to stand next to the other three of us and shouts: "Two exposures and a gas line on side 3! Smoke showing from the second story!"

The instructor steps forward to prepare us to get inside.

Instructor: "Alright, we're standing by, that means everybody needs to be in position with their regulator in one hand, and their tool in the other" (the regulator is the mouth-piece for your airpack, we don't want to start breathing air off of the pack until we need it) "Everybody should be along the hose. Nozzle-man, nozzle in one hand, regulator in the other. Next in line..." (pointing at me) "hose in one hand, regulator in the other." (I snap the regulator off my belt and clutch it in my left hand) "Tool-man, married set in one hand. Crew leader, radio in one hand. Now we wait for orders. When command tells us to move, we don't waste any time. You will snap those regulators into place and we will get to work!"

I hear the radio crackle in Stone's hand, and my heart starts beating a little faster.

Radio: "...[crackle]....Crew Stone, this is Command. make entry side one....[crackle]..."
Instructor: "Let's GO, boys!"

We all push our regulators against our face and snap them to the left, blinking as the first puff of air hits us in the face. Then it's time to work. Berkel heads in through the door to the stairwell and starts dragging the hose up to the second story. Here there's a landing with a closed door to the room where the fire is being stoked. The four of us, at the instructors command, haul up enough hose into the landing to supply us into the room, and then crouch by the door.

Instructor: "Ass down, gentlemen! When in a fire you stay low to the ground! Now, let's get in there!"

The door opens and we start crawling into the main room, dragging hose with us. There in the corner is a pile of wood and excelsior, with another firefighter standing near it bearing a road flare. As we move along the wall, we can feel the hands of our instructor pushing us back down any time we try to stand up to move more easily.

Instructor: "Stay down and along the wall!"

At a signal from the training chief who's in the building with us, the road flare touches the pile of fuel, and the room begins to glow.

Fire!

The chief starts into his lecture on pyrolysis and the behaviour of the fire, but our attention is mostly focused on the sheer power radiating from in front of us. Crouched behind Berkel (our nozzle-man), I can feel heat rolling over his shoulders and onto my neck. Our heartbeats start picking up even further and I can hear the increased air consumption as everyone's regulators start puffing more and more often. We're excited. Finally the chief gives the order to fire a burst of water to cool the fire a bit.

POW!!

The hose kicks as Berkel opens up towards the top of the flaming column, and it stops just as quickly as he shuts it off. Suddenly we feel the temperature go up as all the steam from the water he just fired settles around us. Who would have thought that we would be making the room even hotter by trying to put water on the flame? The chief keeps talking for a minute, and then it's my turn to cycle up and feel the flame from the nozzle position. I crawl forward on the hose and Berkel retreats to the rear of the crew. Picking up the nozzle in my hands, I push myself up against the wall to steady myself, and take in the bright glow of the flaming mass in front of me. Seeing it from behind another person is one thing, but now I'm bearing the full brunt of the radiant heat hitting me in the chest. I can see the flames licking across the ceiling, embers flying from the blaze in all directions, the blinding brightness piercing through my mask to light up my eyes. No one can see me behind my mask, so I permit myself a huge grin while my breathing speeds up even more. The order comes in to fire, so I grab the bale on the nozzle and pull it open, letting the force of the kickback wash through my coiled limbs like shock absorbers on an SUV. I crank it closed again and survey my work as the flames have shrunk down to a more manageable size again.

After everybody's had a turn, we back off, and pull out of the building, where our instructor tells us to take off our masks and go wait for him off to the side. Once he's not looking anymore, we start high-fiving like junior high students. When he comes back, though, the four of us put on our serious faces again and nod silently as he gives us a debriefing on what we just went through. The instructor talks through the fire development, gives some encouragement about improving some points in our tactics, and again admonishes us about moving with a purpose. Then he goes silent for a second as he surveys our faces, and the corners of his mouth twist upwards.

Instructor: "Ok, guys, NOW we can smile. That was pretty cool huh?"

Lame

2009-02-23T18:53:00.000-08:00

We just got our shiny new pagers, and a big lecture to go with them.

"This is for the purpose of learning," The instructor says. "You can now hear calls as they come out, and you can practice figuring out where to go. Now, this part is important: You may not go. You are NOT clear to run calls. If any one of you, as a recruit, actually shows up on the fire-ground, then you will quickly end up having a short conversation in the Chief's office that will end with you handing over your turnouts and you being off the district. I promise. We may cut you a little slack if there's a call right next door to you and you look out the window, but don't you DARE come outside. Are there any questions about this?"

There weren't, and I happily have been listening to my pager for the last two days, enjoying the stream of knowledge flowing to my belt. Until just now. Here I am sitting in my house with my wife at 1504 [My Street], and what do I hear?

"Bebebebebebebebebebebebebebebebebeeep: Engine 1401, Truck 806, Delta Response 1414 [My Street]. Be advised, you are responding to a 10-year old male, experiencing seizures, concious, but not responding. Labored breathing."

Come on. Come ON! I'm right HERE! and I can't even leave my house. Lame. LAME!

But that's the rules, and I can't break 'em. As a small condolance, my brother and a friend (a groomsman from my wedding, actually) stopped by after the call to talk with me (basically to make fun of me for not being able to go). I opened the door and smiled, about to greet them:

"Bebebebebebebebebebebebebebebebebeeep: Engine 801, Engine 1501, Residential Structure Fire"

LAME!!!!!!!!!!!!

The real deal

2009-02-21T18:50:00.000-08:00

"Let's go, let's go! Someone needs your help, move with a purpose!"

This will probably be a mantra circling my ears for the next few months. Today was our first full-day practical training, and while it was a lot of fun getting to play with the big toys, it was hard work. I can already tell I'm gonna be a little sore tomorrow.

All our previous classes have been held at the headquarters of the Fire District, but today in order to build crew solidarity, each one of the 4 crews in the recruit class got sent to a different county station to work with the big trucks and learn how to handle air tanks and hoses. Arriving at 8:00 AM, we all dumped our gear in the bay and ambled inside to great the residents of Station 8. First thing in the door, the instructor asks "What have we started every class with?". The recruits (myself included), remind him that all of our classes at headquarters have started with a gear drill.

"Go!"

Back out the door, into the bay where the trucks are, the bags fly open, and we start throwing our clothes on. Boots out, right foot, left foot, pants up, right suspender, left suspender ("MOVE guys, you gotta MOVE, you've got somebody who needs help NOW!"), close pants, don hood, coat out, right arm, left arm ("Come on, you should already be out the door, let's GO guys, move with a purpose!"), zip coat, close storm flap, close collar, helmet on, gloves out, right glove, left glove, DONE!

All that practice is finally paying off, cause I managed to don all that stuff first out of my class nearly every time. Feeling pretty proud of myself, I allowed a small smile to emerge on my face as I waited for one of the other members of my crew to finish getting his gear on.

The instructor keeps pushing the last guy on our crew until he's dressed and then turns to address all of us:

"Who is slow, here?"

We all point mutely to our buddy (no offense to him) who got dressed at least 15 seconds behind the rest of us. The instructor shakes his head.

"Do you get the truck out the door without your last crew member?"

We reply with the obvious "No".

"Than HE is not slow; CREW THREE is slow. You've gotta encourage your buddy here because you are all as slow as he is at getting to where you need to be."

My smile fades a bit.

"Get that gear off, and let's do it again".

We did a lot of work today with hoses and breathing tanks, but that mentality is I think what will stick with me the most. This isn't really a "competitive" job. I get no points even if I do everything twice as fast and twice as well as anyone else. If we work together and get our shit done, WE win. If my crew doesn't accomplish their objective, WE lose. Regardless of my individual contribution.

It can be frustrating, in a way. I can't practice FOR the other members of my team, I can only ask that they do so for the sake of all of us. But in another way, it's the pinnacle of the human chain. We aren't trying to jostle for position in the organization. We don't climb for the heights by stepping on the heads of our peers. Instead, we're trying to boost each other up, to make ourselves as a whole crew the best we can be.

And if we get to save lives in the process, so much the better.

My new best friend

2009-02-14T12:24:00.000-08:00

Thursday Recruit Class:

"The gear we're about to issue to you is very expensive. It costs over $2000 to outfit every firefighter with their basic Personal Protective Equipment, and you must take good care of it. Clean it after every major fire or hazardous material cleanup, take care of it, keep it out of the sun, don't leave it in a truck bed where anyone could come up and walk off with it, keep the velcro clear of fuzz that will keep it from closing tight, always store it in the gear bag that comes with it. Take care of your gear, and in return it will take care of you when you are in a life-threatening situation. This is your new best friend."

What an exciting night thursday was. We each got handed a bag full of fire gear, and I was stoked about getting to play with it. Lucky for me, we were about to spend the rest of the 4-hour class just learning how to put it on properly.

A firefighter has to be able to go from street-clothes to being fully dressed and ready for action in an extraordinarily short amount of time. Many of the calls they run are time sensitive, and another few minutes can mean the difference between a kitchen fire and a house fire, a simple rescue and an injury extrication, life and death. Because of the tendency for emergencies to continue to get worse until someone arrives to stabilize it, the training that goes into something as simple as getting dressed quickly is intense. By the end of the recruit class, we need to be able to don all of our gear in under 60 seconds. That might not sound like it's too terribly difficult, but as clumsy and bulky as all the bunker gear is, I'm not suprised to know that the most common point of failure for a new recruit when they're testing for their certification is being unable to meet that 60 second mark.

So how do you train someone to do this stuff by muscle memory?

Repetition. Repetition. Repetition.

Repetition. Repetition. Repetition.

You get the idea.

Before we even got to start touching the actual bunker gear, we were split up into crews and taken into the equipment bay, and each crew had one instructor who led them through a mime of the entire process. Yes, a mime. It probably sounds silly, and you know what? It looks silly too. But believe it or not, by the time we got to touching the gear, we all knew exactly what to do.

Instructor (holding an imaginary gear bag): "Your bag is in hand. Set it down, open it up. Kick off your street shoes" (we all kick off our shoes).

Instructor: "Mistake one. We are miming. You all just took your shoes off for real. Put them back on and try again." (I don't think he was trying to be demeaning here, I think the point was being made early that accuracy and precision in all actions is important, and that if we miss we start over).

Instructor: "Gear bag is in hand. Set it down, open it up. Shoes off..." (Nobody actually took off their shoes this time) "..Boots out. Right foot in, left foot in. Pants up. Right suspender, Left suspender. Close the pants fly, and lock it..."(There's a small hook and eye device that backs up the velcro that holds the bunker pants shut. Of course, at this point we're just waving our hands in the air, but we got the idea)"...Where is your hood? Right pants pocket. Hood out, over your head..." (Firefighters wear a hood made of Nomex, a fire-retardent material, to protect their necks and shoulders from being exposed where the coat and helmet don't meet)"...Tuck the hood into your right suspender, then into your left suspender. Coat out of the bag, right arm, left arm, zip it up, close the storm flap, pull the collar around and velcro it shut. Helmet on, chinstrap tight. Where are your gloves? Left pants pocket. Gloves out, right glove on, left glove on. Done, now we're dressed."

This process took about 5 minutes to go through the first time. At that moment cutting it down to 60 seconds seemed like a pretty daunting task. Even in the time that I've been practicing putting this stuff on at home since I got the gear on thursday, my best time is 71 seconds, still eleven seconds short of what I need to pass.

We continue throughout the evening putting the gear on and packing it away under different circumstances. Most interesting was the discussion on POV response. For those not in the know, POV means "Personally Operated Vehicle". When I'm driving my car to a fire (not driving or riding on a firetruck), I'm a POV. Here's the interesting part: When you get a page that indicates a call you need to respond to, you drive to it, following all traffic laws, and yielding to all emergency vehicles. Just because you're driving to a fire doesn't mean you get to speed, blow intersections, pass people on non-passing roads, seize the right of way at a four-way stop, or do anything else other than drive normally. I'm sure that surprised at least one of the recruits in the class, but it makes sense when you think about it. Yeah, you need to get there so that you can help out, but how much help will you be if you blow an intersection and get broadsided by a semi truck? Your accident scene will actually consume more emergency response personnel who could be working on the incident you were driving to. Must be tough, though, when you're riding an adrenaline rush knowing that you're about to get involved in something serious.

Anyway, I think I'm going to head back to the living room and try to beat my current best time for donning this stuff.

And we're off

2009-02-11T15:39:00.000-08:00

Last night was the first night of training for my recruit class, and I couldn't have been more excited. After sharing a sushi dinner with my brother in the parking lot of a local grocery store, I drove to the district office and found my classroom where all the other recruits were gathered. This part was everything I expected: "Welcome", this is the staff who will be teaching you, these are all the other recruits, everybody introduce yourselves, etc (after all, they wouldn't have us running into burning buildings on night one, would they?).

What I didn't expect was the meat of the lecture last night, which had nothing to do with fire, medical emergencies, hazardous materials, radios, chainsaws, big trucks, air packs, or anything else I was prepared to hear about; instead, we talked about customer service.

This is how you treat people.

This is how you DON'T treat people.

Soft skills? Really? No ropes, no hoses?

Not what I was expecting; but as it turned out, very interesting. We heard some pretty cool stories about things that firefighters have done in the past. They took care of a man's dog while he was in the hospital, cooked a families thanksgiving dinner in the station ovens after their kitchen caught fire, helped pack and move a families belongings after their house burned down. To condense it to a sentence, the primary job of a Firefighter is to "Do the Right Thing".

I don't have any gear yet; there are no lights on my car, no pager on my belt. It'll be a while before I can save a life. But I can start doing my primary job as a firefighter today, before I ever find myself on a fire-ground.

Who would've thought?

Sitting Out

2009-02-05T11:01:00.000-08:00

Here I am, blogging from a new location, live from my district's Station 8. I came out here to pick up my brother so that he and I could move some furniture for our parents, but right as I arrived a call came in for a Natural Cover Fire that his station had to respond to. Now I'm hanging out in their office while he and his buddies from the station ride off to put it out. Through the station speakers overhead, I can here the dispatcher giving out instructions, and my brother's voice coming back over the radio, sirens loud in the background. Yeah. I'm jealous.

Oh well, just a few more months until that's me too. Until then I'll have to be content just listing in and sitting out.

Crossfit

2009-02-04T06:51:00.000-08:00

Ever since my interview with the Fire District, I've been going to the gym regularly trying to get myself in better shape before training. In the course of that preparation, I came upon Crossfit on the web as a strong circuit-training program that could help me improve my overall health. 1 month in, and I'm a believer.

Crossfit gives you a different workout on their blog every day (1 out of 4 is just a "Rest Day", 3 on 1 off), and they are specifically designed not to get you into a routine. Some focus on strength, some on stamina, some on cardio-endurance, and you never get bored because you never know what's coming up next. Also, there's a large community behind the program that's more encouraging than competitive (the idea being that you're "competing with yourself"), and that makes it fun to push yourself a little bit.

Is fitness important for a firefighter? Let me put it this way: the cause of over 50% of all line-of-duty deaths is cardio-related. High-stress, lots of adrenaline spikes, combined with a life-style that may have more than average junk-food (it's a group of mostly guys living together, what do you expect?), your heart takes a beating. What's the best way to keep your heart healthy? Good food, and good exercise (So I've also been eating a lot of fruits and veggies, a habit I hope to continue throughout my life).

Anyway, recruit class is coming up fast, but now I feel ready at least for the physical component of it.

A Brotherhood

2009-01-28T19:00:00.000-08:00

I was at dinner the other night with my brother (Oliver) and a group of friends (some of which I hadn't met before). Upon seeing the jacket Oliver was wearing, one of the guys asked if Ollie was part of the local fire department, and proceeded to talk about his time as a volunteer firefighter in St. Louis County. Ollie had to leave shortly thereafter, but the guy was excited to hear that I was joining too and had all kinds of great stories and positive memories of the fire service. As I was listening, more than happy to participate in a little shop talk (despite my complete lack of experience), I thought back to a question Oliver asked me when I first brought up the whole Firefighting thing to him (to see if it would be stealing his thunder if I joined too). He asked me if maybe I didn't really want to fight fire, but just was lacking in male camaraderie and wanted some dudes to hang out with. After the great time I had last night, just vicariously experiencing the sense of brotherhood this guy had with the people he used to work with, I'm beginning to take a shine to the idea. Don't get me wrong, I want to fight fire, and I want to save lives, but a little camaraderie sure won't hurt.

Idle Musings

2009-01-24T14:15:00.000-08:00

Recruit class is approaching fast (Feb 10), and I'm getting more excited by the day. My wife, though, has seemed to become less so as the time gets closer. After talking to her about why her mood seems to be shifting (she's been very supportive about the whole thing) she confessed that she was worried about me. I tried pointing to some statistics that showed I was really unlikely to suffer any permanent damage during my time with the department, but she said that she wasn't really concerned about my body, but more about my mind.

An interesting conversation ensued. She told me about the conversations she'd heard other firefighters having about previous calls they had been on (particularly gruesome ones, in this case). In the face of the macabre, many of the men adopted an air of humor or jocularity that seemed inappropriate given the circumstances. A person has died, should they really be joking about it?

It's a tough issue to address, to be sure. I cannot speak from experience, as I'm not even a recruit yet and I've never seen anything more disturbing than a dead beloved pet. However, living vicariously through my brother (a firefighter) and a few friends I have who are soldiers or in other similar fields (Ambulance EMTs, Medical Chopper pilots, etc), I can attest to the fact that people have to find a way to process the horrible things they see. Certainly even when considering examples of a far less serious nature, we can see a parallel. A common suburbanite may become ill at the sight of a skinned animal, whereas a hunter who has experienced such things uncountable times sees nothing disturbing but only a future meal and is in fact happy to pick up where someone else left off by continuing to dismember the carcass. Is it so hard to imagine that a person who's line of work involves the witnessing of the loss of human life on a daily basis becomes desensitized to the process a bit? What sort of life would an emergency worker live if he was broken up and somber every time he witnessed death? The emotional weight would be unbearable, I imagine that depression and suicide among the people who we count on to protect our communities would be rampant.

The people who fill these jobs deserve to have happy lives outside of their daily struggle through the most tragic events the local community has to offer, and since none of them are blessed with the ability to simply forget what they have seen they must come to terms with their experience in a way that prevents them dwelling on these events. If for some, that route is humor, than who am I or anyone else to speak out against it? If it keeps them from succumbing to the morose existence that I see as the only alternative, then by all means, let them joke!

But now my thoughts turn to myself. Am I willing to expose myself to the inevitable erosion of my sensitivity to death and pain? By learning to eventually harden myself against it, will I lose any amount of compassion or empathy in the process? I can't answer these questions from where I stand, I suppose. I can only go forward knowing that everything gained in life has a price, including the experiences I'm about to undertake.

Gear fitting

2009-01-17T16:25:00.000-08:00

Still a few weeks yet until the first day of recruit class, but I went in and got fitted for gear a couple days ago. That was pretty exciting, in a way. Two outfits, one for structure fires (in buildings, that is) which they call "Bunker Gear", and one called "Wildland" gear which I assume is for wildfires or other outdoor situations. I didn't even know there was a difference until I saw the two sets, but it makes sense. After doing some research, I could even tell you the major differences.

Bunker Gear is heavily insulated. It's a thick, bulky outfit covering every part of your body, and it's probably very hot and uncomfortable to wear, but the reason it must be so is because it's intended to protect up close from high temperatures. Everything's double layered and well reinforced, so it can apparently be a bit restrictive, especially in the gloves, but I'm happy to sacrifice some dexterity for the amount of protection it provides.

The Wildland gear is protective as well (naturally), but much lighter and clearly intended to keep the wearer cool, shedding body heat much more easily than the thicker structural gear. This is probably due to the longer duration that the wearer has to don the gear, and to the fact that there is a lot more ground to cover when working outside (plus there are more strenuous and long-lasting activities).

I don't have it in my possession yet, but I'm eager to go through it piece by piece once it's been issued (is it immature to be excited about this?). Maybe I'll even put some pics up when that time comes.

Turn your head and cough!

2009-01-12T18:22:00.000-08:00

So today I took the next necessary step towards recruit class, as I went in to have a physical. You could see why this would be important information to have on hand before you go running into a burning building, because you don't want to wait until that point to discover that you have lung problems or something like that, but all the same I've never really enjoyed going to the doctor (who does, right?). Maybe it's because if something were really wrong with me, I'd almost be happier not knowing (silly, but true).

Anyway, the first thing I had to do when I arrived at the doc's office was to fill out a large stack of paperwork. I know that's standard operating procedure for most medical facilities, but the redundancy of the whole thing drove me crazy, and the software developer side of me just cringed at the repeated questions. Several forms required the same information: name, birthdate, address, social security number, etc. A software system could gather this information once at the beginning and not have to have the user input it on every form. Then there was the list of things my "job" would require me to do (Firefighting in this case), questions like "do you need to be able to lift more than 50 pounds?", or "will you be asked to breathe through a mask or respirator?" etc. That's just an organizational oversight: 15 new firefighters come through that office for every recruit class, they shouldn't each have to fill out the same job requirements for firefighting. A software system in that office could just ask "Are you here for a physical for the fire department?" and if the answer is yes, all the relevant job requirements would already be known from preloaded data.

Enough on that point, though, I'm not volunteering to implement a medical records system or anything.

After contracting carpal tunnel from all the paperwork, I turned the mountain in to the woman at the front desk (who smiled at me quite sympathetically) and then sat down to read while I waited. Being a technology guy, the first thing that caught my eye in the magazine pile was an article on Steve Jobs (CEO of Apple). Apparently he has fought a bout of pancreatic cancer and every public appearance seems to show his health waning. Awesome. Just what I wanted to read about before going to find out if anything is wrong with ME. I picked up an issue of sports illustrated instead...

After a short 20 minutes, I got asked back into the examination rooms, and was promptly asked to stand on a scale. Not having worked out much recently, I was relieved to see that I still weigh in between 155 and 160. It looks like my slowing metabolism hasn't caught up with me yet.

Then I had to do the thing where they give you the cup and ask you to go in a room and pee in it. No big deal, really. I do this everyday. But it's different when there's someone listening right outside the door. Not wanting to appear to be nervous about this thing, I went about making a noisy show of loosening my belt buckle and unzipping my fly. Happily, I had no pause before commencement and was able to begin filling the cup quickly, but no sooner had I started than I realized that the lady who had handed me this cup said she needed "At least 450cc's" which was about 1/4 of the total cup. I had already reached that mark, though, and thanks to some overzealous pre-physical-hydrating I was FAR from finished. What's the etiquette on this point? What did the "At least" qualifier mean? Would she prefer a full cup, if I had it in me? Or was that overkill? Or even impolite? Can you even BE any more impolite than handing someone a cup full of your own urine?

Already having exhausted my desire to think about the subject any further, I aborted the operation while half full and safely moved the cup out of the way before continuing, figuring that this was the closest to compromise I was going to get.

Immediately after surrendering the sample, I watched with interest as the nurse used a small disposable device to test for any sort of drug use. Now, I know I don't use drugs, but I'll admit I get a little nervous waiting for these things to develop. After all, what if there's a false positive? It's not like I can accuse my urine of lying! Fortunately, I did not have to ponder the moral moorings of disloyal fluids for long, as I ended up with a clean slate and a pass to the next part of the physical: the hearing booth.

This was actually pretty neat, because my natural interest in technology led me to marvel at the apparatus they had for testing my hearing. A headset with color coded earpieces was placed over my head, and a thumb stick similar to the device contestants use on jeopardy was given to me with instructions to push the button whenever I heard a beep. Then the door to the soundproof room was closed and I was left to concentrate. As I sat, clicking away at the infrequent and faint beeps, I wondered absently whether my past days as a drummer would affect my hearing at all. My wonder grew to mild concern as I saw the nurses face when she pulled the test results. Maybe I hadn't gotten as many as I'd hoped. Still, I participate in normal conversations everyday without any problem, even in crowded rooms, so I couldn't believe that it was all that bad.

I was wrong.

"Mr. Vizitei, do you have any trouble with your hearing?" the doctor asked as he scanned the results of my test. "No, not that I'm aware of" I replied cautiously. I tried to glance down at the test results he was holding in his hand, and realized immediately that they were very unbalanced. According to what I could decipher from the print out, I was entirely deaf in my right ear.

How could this be? How could I not have noticed this myself?

The doctor excused himself momentarily to talk to the nurse and I sat thinking about what I had just found out. Deaf? It wasn't possible! I plugged my left ear quickly and started making noises with my hand on the desk, trying to test how far gone my hearing really was, but it seemed no different from normal, I felt like I could hear everything without a problem. Or was this just my brain being very used to the level of hearing I had from my damaged right ear? I pondered this for a moment before the doctor walked in and told me that the right channel in the hearing booth had not been plugged in correctly.

Oh. That made more sense.

A wave of relief flooded over me, and I realized how ridiculous it had been that I began to doubt my own body as soon as some piece of advanced technology told me something was wrong that CLEARLY was not the case. Lame.

The doctor went through a series of exercises that must have made it look like we were sparring as he tested the flexibility and functionality of my body. Push here, pull now, resist this, lean back, etc. I must have passed OK as he had no point where he looked concerned. At the speed he was proceeding, I wondered how many times he had gone through this same ritual. Hundreds? Thousands? He could almost have been bored.

His unconcerned look continued unfazed as he blithely asked me to take my pants off.

I knew that was coming, so why the hell did it surprise me so much? Still, determined not to be singled out as nervous, I lowered my pants faster than was probably necessary. The doctors hands were cold against my flesh as he asked me to turn my head and cough, and although I knew the answer I asked him very professionally what exactly he was looking for just to ease the uncomfortable silence for myself.

Allowing me to assume my clothes again, we proceeded through a list of questions to lengthy to mention here regarding my health. Short version: I'm doing ok.

Then I went back for the EKG. If you've never had one of these, this is where they put electrodes on several different points on your body in order to check your heart rhythms. The test itself is no big deal, but I didn't enjoy it very much for a reason I'll be you can guess given 2 clues.

1) the electrodes are held in place with adhesive strips (think "tape").

2) I have a lot of body hair (think "wolverine").

Once that uncomfortable experience was past, I just had to prove I could see correctly and then it was on to lab work (in a different building down the street).

This part was kind of fun, because this was the first time I was having blood drawn when it wasn't because I suspected I had cancer or something like that. As I sat down and rolled up my sleeve, the nurse told me I had "wonderful" veins. Thanks, I guess.

Instinctively I looked away as she descended on me with the needle, but I recovered instantly as I thought to myself "Some firefighter I'll be if I can't even watch my own blood be taken". Bracing my other hand against the table in case of sudden dizziness or something, I looked directly down at my arm as the needle broke the skin. No problem there. I was then nothing short of shocked as she screwed a vial into the needle; my blood shot into that thing like it was being squeezed from a grapefruit. I asked the nurse if I had high blood pressure, and she said that speed was normal. I guess people with high blood pressure must shatter the vial.

And then after a chest x-ray, I was done and headed home. One more checkmark on the list towards achieving my goal.

As I walked into my house I checked my phone to see a text message from my brother:

"has the doc played with your balls yet?"

I smiled wryly as I responded:

"Yeah, but he was a gentleman about it"

The Phone-call

2009-01-05T19:07:00.000-08:00

Well, I stand duly chagrined for not being more patient. The day after I complain about waiting on my blog, the phone call comes through.

It happened today while I was working on my computer from home. My desk started vibrating, and I glanced at the face of my phone to see who it was. Not recognizing the number, I got that familiar jolt of excitement as I anticipated what I hoped was a call from the fire-department, but I didn't want to get my hopes up until I picked up the phone.

Sure enough, after giving my standard greeting ("Hello, this is Ethan". Not too formal, but still letting the party know who they're speaking with), I was informed that this call was originating from the Fire District. However, not wanting to give away the verdict in the opening statement, the man on the other end of the phone proceeded to tell me the origin of the decision. Like a game show host, he slowed down to build the tension:

"After conducting your interview....and discussing your merits....and making our recommendations to the executive board....and receiving a decision....and grabbing some lunch...and finishing up some paperwork that got held up last week because of the weather...we have decided...............that we would like you to be a part of our organization".

Man, it felt like he milked that last pause for all it was worth. Of course, it could just be my anticipation making the whole thing seem to slow down, but I was DYING to hear that last part. It's really happening! Now I know that come February 10, I'll be starting the training that will help me save lives in the years to come. My most recent dream-come-true. I finished my conversation with the official, thanking him for his time, and began a private celebration in my head as I contemplated the glory of the days to come.

Then the phone rings, this time my brother on the line:

"Hey, probie!"

Great...So now THAT part starts.....

Waiting

2009-01-03T20:36:00.000-08:00

I was never good at this.

Patience is supposed to be a virtue, but it's one I'm so clearly lacking in. My interview was quite a while ago, almost two weeks now. I was hoping to hear by Christmas, or at least New Years, whether I'd be joining the next recruit class or whether I'd have to try again in a few months.

It's not like anybody's life hangs in the balance, or even that I'm particularly anxious about the response. Yes, I sincerely hope I'm accepted, but will it wreck my life if I miss out? No way, I can always try again. What really gets to me is the little wave of excitement I get every time my cellphone vibrates, so quickly followed by disappointment as I see that it's a friend or family member. Even worse is when the phone rings showing a number I don't recognize, and I answer excitedly only to find out that I'm talking to the public library, or a friend calling from an unfamiliar land line. I'm always checking to make sure my phone's not out of batteries, and that I haven't gone somewhere where I can't get a signal.

Check...work...check again...eat....etc.

I guess it's an opportunity, really. That's always the better way to think about it. My patience is as important as my strength or resolve, and this is just a chance to work on it. So I'm dealing, for now. I'll keep writing, keep working, but all the time I'll keep listening as well. Listening for the call that will decide my short-term future.

Can't write anymore, need to check my phone....

The Interview

2008-12-22T09:24:00.000-08:00

This week was when I took my first significant step towards joining the local fire department. At the advice of my younger brother (already a long-term member) and of another good friend who works at the same station as my brother, I filled out an application and arrived at the District Office to interview for a position in the next recruit class.

Having been through a lot of job interviews in the last 3-4 years, I can tell you first hand that this was not at all the same. Walking through the front door, I felt my heart start beating a little faster and I could feel my hands trembling a bit. I was actually NERVOUS. This might not seem like a big deal to people who don't like being interviewed, but I've never really had a problem with it. I did a lot of stage work in high school, and was a music performance major in college, so I've never really had any nervousness about being up in front of people. The difference in this case, I guess, is that there was no alternative. Every job interview I've been to for my software career has been along the lines of "I know I'm good enough for this job, and even if they don't see it there are plenty of other companies who will". This was closer to "I have no experience as a firefighter, and I only get one shot at this because there aren't any other alternate volunteer districts I can join if I blow it".

I forced myself to breathe more slowly as the woman at the front desk called to the unnamed individuals in the back of the office that I would be meeting shortly, telling them that I had arrived. Did I dress correctly? Should I have cut my hair before coming in? Maybe it would have made a better first impression...

From the woman's hand signs as she smiled back at me, I could tell that I would have a few minutes to wait before the training chief could see me. "Great" I thought, "Icing the kicker". Feigning nonchalance, I stood up (trying to shake off my nerves) and started perusing the various photographs of firemen in action lining the walls of the lobby, wondering if I might spot my brother among them. No luck, though; before I could finish my search, the door to the back office opened, and a man a few years my senior asked if I was ready. Nodding my assent, I gathered my coat from where I'd been sitting and followed him back to a briefing/training room that had one man sitting behind a table who introduced himself as Chief Leake. I gave him a handshake as firm as I dared, and sat down across from him while the young man who had walked me in took a seat immediately at the Chief's right hand.

They both smiled pleasantly and opened up with the standard preliminaries: "Tell us about yourself", "where are you originally from?", "Are you prepared to work hard?" etc. The only question really worth mentioning here was the one when they asked me why I wanted to be a firefighter. Now THAT one I was prepared for.

You see, this "quest" began for me last February (almost a year ago now). I was the single witness to a bad car accident on a highway near my home. While driving home from work for lunch, a van swerved in front of me, and then off the side of the highway at around 70 MPH, down a steep ravine, over a creek, and into a patch of trees on the other side, no brake lights the whole time. I stopped my car at the side of the road, jumped out, and started scrambling down the steep hill using one hand for balance while trying to dial 911 with the other. As I reached the mangled vehicle and rounded the passenger side window, I saw something that has been burned in my memory for a while. The driver, a middle-aged woman, half-ejected from the van through the passenger window, arms and head drooping down the side of the car and blood running down her arms and dripping off her fingertips into the grass. I just stood there and stared blankly for the few minutes it took the emergency workers to arrive. Afterwards, driving home in my car, I remember wishing that I had been my younger brother in that moment; someone who had the training and the experience to know what to do for someone in a position like that. Instead I was just me, joe software developer, totally unprepared and feeling helpless in the face of a real emergency.

I don't want to feel that way ever again.

This answer seemed to be acceptable to my interviewers, and they began telling me about the commitment I'd be signing up for if I was selected for the department and decided to go forward with it. Long training hours (evenings and weekends), hard work, some disappointments (you can't save everyone, you know). Would I be able to stick with that sort of commitment? Would the benefits that come from that sort of experience outweigh the emotional costs?

Honestly, I couldn't say whether the balance would be favorable. I believe so, and from what I've seen in the lives of my brother and of my friend I could even say I have evidence of it. But I've never been there, and I won't claim knowledge of that which I haven't experienced. I've never been there with a kid who came home to find one of his parents had committed suicide. I've never seen new parents lose their infant child. I can't speak for whether the camaraderie and gratification I'd receive from being on a team like that and saving peoples lives can make up for the ones that you can't help. One thing I could say without fear of being wrong is that I would stick with it, and that every cent they invested in my training (which would be expensive) they would get paid back double in commitment and service. That's the best answer I could offer.

We talked about my family. Would my wife be ok with me leaving family functions if a call came in? We talked about logistics. Would I have the time to sit around a fire-station to be there while all the residents had somewhere else to be? We talked about all kinds of things, and most of what I can remember points towards me getting by the speech part of the interview OK. All I had to do then was dress down to my gym shorts and t-shirt and prove that I was in good enough physical condition to handle the job.

Chief Leake gave me a firm handshake and a smile as I left for the physical training area, telling me that he would make his recommendation to the executive board and that I'd be hearing about my selection status in the next couple weeks. Following the younger man again, I listened as he explained the tasks I was going to have to accomplish in order to show that I was in decent physical condition. None of them sounded too daunting, but I didn't want to get to optimistic before I'd even seen the course.

The training area was in the back of what looked like a storage warehouse. Smooth concrete floors, with big towers of shelving holding all manner of emergency gear. I didn't have time to persue them, though, as I was led to the back of the area where a single flight of stairs had been constructed in the middle of the floor, leading up to nowhere.

"Up and down 10 times in 2 minutes" where the instructions for this obstacle. I didn't think that would be a problem, but I didn't want to cut it too close either; no sense in leaving too much room for error in case I fell and needed a precious few extra seconds. I stretched a bit while the rest of the rules were being explained to me. One foot on each step, no skipping. No prizes for finishing faster than 2 minutes, and he would be calling out the time left for me at 30 second intervals. Nodding that I was ready, I stepped up to the starting line and at a word from the interviewer I powered up the stairs as fast as my legs would carry me, not knowing what kind of pace I would need to make it and trying to err conservatively on the side of finishing early. As I reached the top I spun on the ball of my foot and immediately began pseudo-falling down the stairs, just using a toe-touch on each step to slow my descent. After five repetitions of this exercise, I thought that surely the man in the room with me had forgotten his commitment to keep me informed of the time remaining. After all, I was half-way done and hadn't heard a word out of him. I was wrong.

6 steps into my sixth rep I heard the words "30 seconds" come from behind me. Inwardly I cursed. He hadn't forgotten anything, I was just being a fool as I burned out all my energy at a pace that was twice as fast as necessary. My lungs were burning a bit as I tried to slow my gait a little, but I was into such a rhythm at that point that it was more comfortable to just keep going than to try and figure out how much a 50% adjustment to speed would be. Finishing in around 1:10, I tried to slow my breathing so that it wouldn't be apparent how hard I had been working. The interviewer asked me to sit down in a chair to let my heart rate come down, and offered me a bottle of water that I gratefully accepted while trying not to seem too desperate for it.

After a couple minutes, I was given a fireman mask and told to put it on and tighten it around my head. Once it was on, I would not be allowed to remove it for the remainder of the obstacle course, which would show whether I had any amount of claustrophobia that would be problematic to working in full fire gear. Placing the mask over my face and pulling the straps tight, I tested my breath a few times to make sure I could still breathe ok. It wasn't as refreshing as open air, pulling through the filters on the front, but I'd make do. Turning away from the stairs, the young man showed me a life-size dummy that had a long strap wrapped under his armpits. Indicating some orange traffic cones set up at intervals along the concrete floor, he asked me to grab the strap and drag the dummy backwards in a figure-8 through the cones. Nothing too physically taxing, really. They dummy wasn't too heavy, and the floor was smooth with low frictional coefficients. The real problem was that the mask restricted my field of vision to the sides, somewhat, so I had trouble knowing whether or not I had come to a traffic cone or not. The exercise was not timed, but I didn't think that going super-slow would help my score any either, so I began getting into the habit of frequently turning my head from side-to-side to get a complete field of view as I moved. This sped up my progress significantly, and I brought the dummy back without incident, although I could still feel my legs burning a little from my unnecessarily speedy domination of the staircase.

The same process was then repeated with a fire-hose I had to drag over my shoulder, and a weighted ladder I had to carry. Both were uneventful, as I had now gotten comfortable with the veritable blinders on the sides of my head. The next event of significance was a test of strength. Given three scenarios: a rope over a pulley with a weight on the other side, a weighted and suspended pole that could be pulled from chin to chest, and another weighted pole to be pushed up from belly-button to chin, I was asked to perform varied number of repetitions on each. Being a rock-climber, I'm not a weakling, but I'll admit that a few weeks in an office chair will deplete your strength. I made it through, but not without making a commitment to myself that I would be visiting the gym more regularly before recruit class started. After proving that I could use a sledge hammer to forcibly enter a door, I was given the final task of demonstrating that I could crawl a short distance both on my stomach and on my hands and knees, both of which were no problem compared to the events that had transpired before hand.

And then, without much else in the way of fanfare or process, I was taken to the front desk and thanked for my time. I have no knowledge of whether this venture will prove successful, but what I can say now is that I've given it my best shot, so the rest is up to the guys at the headquarters office. Here's hoping.

Time to Branch Out

2008-12-22T09:08:00.000-08:00

I've been blogging for almost a year now over at CodeClimber, and I've found it to be a really great way to keep track of my progress as a software developer, to remember things I might otherwise forget, to help me work out my thoughts on a variety of subjects, and to share important/interesting information with others. The only problem is that my writing on CodeClimber has only been related to the software/technology portion of my life. I guess that's not really a PROBLEM, per se. After all, many of my readers probably are only interested in me insofar as whatever technical tips and experiences I have to offer. However, there are other things I want to write about, so I'm starting in a new direction here on Fire-Able. To be specific, I'm in the process of trying to join the local fire department, and I'm planning on using this blog as an outlet to catalog my experience throughout the process of attempting to become a volunteer firefighter. If that's something that interests you, subscribe to my RSS feed! Here's looking forward to a new volume of writing and a new life experience.

(By the way, you might be asking yourself, "Why 'Fire-Able'? Was that the best blog name he could come up with?". The answer to your question is no, I had like 15 other better titles that were already taken: fireside.blogspot.com, firewall.blogspot.com, firestorm.blogspot.com, firehose.blogspot.com, etc).