Cutting a Car Apart

The fun continues: last night, we cut two cars apart.

One thing that often happens in vehicle accidents is that stuff gets bent around in ways that make it hard or impossible to get victims out. Even in relatively simple accidents, doors can get bent and jammed, making them barriers to getting to patients.

But we have Tools (tm)!

One is a surprisingly simple little gizmo that looks like a Bic pen. When you press it against the corner of a window, a spring loads, then releases, striking the window hard enough to shatter it. This works on all car windows except the windshield, which is apparently more resistant to that type of thing.

For windshields, then, we have a saw with a pointed end that, when swung, makes nice little holes in windshields. The saw then cuts through the glass, and does so much more easily than, say, a handsaw cuts through wood. (We also played with taking out a windshield with an axe, but you tend to not do that with a patient sitting in the front seat.)

Then there are spreaders. These are tools with arms that come to a point, that when inserted into a door opening, can bend a car door in half, or can be reversed to grab and bend the edge of a door. We also used it over the top of the door's sill to pop the door edge out to make more room for inserting them.

And cutters. Big hook-shaped scissors that can cut through a door post in a few seconds. And rams, that when positioned properly on both sides of the car, can roll back the dashboard like tinfoil.

All of these tools are powered by a hydraulic power plant (think: portable electric generator, only with fluid tubes coming off, instead of wires), making these tools fairly portable around an accident scene (i.e. not limited to being connected to rescue apparatus). And the tools themselves are fairly hefty, maybe 20-30lbs each for the smaller ones, and 50lbs or more (requiring two people) for the larger ones.

For the most part, while the class was good fun, it was mostly an awareness-level class; we'll be taking a VRT (vehicle rescue technician) class at some point in the future, to get better at it all. Still, to remove the windows, doors, roof and dash of two cars in fairly short order was pretty impressive stuff.

Exterior Burn Session, and a Call

Now we're getting to the meat of the Essentials course, putting the stuff we've learned into practice. Last night, we went to our local traning center, and "put out" some training fires.

First up was a simulated car fire. The simulator is a metal car-like shell with propane burners. When the gas is turned on, the car lights up nice and hot, (i.e. from the air truck parked at least 100ft away, the heat was like a campfire). So we got our gear and airpacks on, and first time through, tackled a fire in the engine compartment. I was on nozzle twice, backup 3 times and Halligan bar (think: heavy steel pry bar, used in real life to pry the hood open) once.

Next up was a propane tank fire. The simulator there acted like a pipe leading out of the tank had ruptured and was enclosing the tank itself in flames. On the simulator, as in real life, you use fog nozzles to push the flames back, and shut off the emergency valve. I was on nozzle twice, backup once or twice, and valve once. Now, of course, when the nozzle guys are pushing the flames back, the valve guy is crawling through the water stream to get to the valve, so we all got quite wet.

Lastly, we did the car again, but this time with two hoselines, and the whole car was involved: engine, passenger compartment, truck, and a simulated fuel spill under the rear of the car. I was on nozzle first, working from the rear of the car up to the front. Of course, with teams on both sides, it was really easy for each nozzle guy to be accidentally hitting the other guy with his stream; more soakage.

Then the fun happened.

My second run, I was backing up a little guy, keeping my hand on his shoulder to counteract the force from the nozzle. So far, so good, but as we got up to the passenger compartment, all of a sudden, he starts moving quickly to the front of the car, and loses the nozzle. I'm about 8ft back of the nozzle, holding on to the now-flailing hose, trying to get it under control. Fortunately, the hose swung hard to the side, and I managed to get it kinked, allowing me to grab the nozzle, get it under control, and shut it down. Not what was supposed to happen.

All in all, the evening was good fun, (even the loose hose, after the fact), and I learned a good bit about fire attack. It was pretty impressive that what was somewhat warm w/o gear at 100ft wasn't a problem at all only 5ft away with gear. Add to that a post-session conversation with my chief (who was there acting as the burn tech), and it was well worth the evening.

Then we head back to station, hang our soaked gear up and go home, only to get paged about 10 mins after I crawled into bed, with a vehicle accident. Having to reassemble my wet gear, I missed E2, and rode out on Squad, only to watch others clean up, and return to station.

Ventilation

Inside a burning building is a dangerous place to be, for a variety of reasons: 1) heat, 2) smoke, 3) dangerous gases, like carbon monoxide (CO). It's important, also for a variety of reasons, to get all three out of the building.

First situation: food in an oven. This produces lots of smoke, but is often easily contained and extinguished. Still, the air will be filled with smoke. To help the homeowner, we set up a fan in a doorway and push outside air in, to clear the air. That's called PPV, or positive pressure ventilation. You put a PPV fan outside the door, such that the cone of air covers the door, and open a window in the smoke-filled room. (If you put the fan inside the door, some/much of the air you were pulling in at ground level would come right back out the door above the fan.) Assuming that the smoke has gone throughout the house, you open a window in one room at a time until the air is clear throughout the house.

Second situation: building on fire. Heat builds up, making the interior much more dangerous. Heat from the fire (as well as the smoke it gives off) rises, and collects on the upper floors, endangering occupants. While some FFs (from the engine company, often) prepare hose lines to go in and extinguish the fire, other FFs (from a truck company, often) can go onto the roof and cut holes to allow the hot gases to escape. This clears the air inside, and makes it safer for both occupants still in the building as well as the engine co. FFs about to go in. (In other situations, a fire can be "self-ventilating", meaning it burns through either a roof or wall, or breaks a window, allowing the heat/smoke/gases to vent on their own.)

Third situation: building no longer on fire. Even though the fire's out, there's still heat, smoke and gases inside. FFs need to go through the building, remove smoldering materials, and ensure that all hot spots are gone (so they don't reignite in the near future). To do that work, they either continue to wear airpacks, or completely ventilate the building so that it's safe to breath ambient air while they work.

Fourth situation: gas leaks, CO alarms, etc. These situations also require ventilation, in addition to figuring out and dealing with the source of the dangerous gas. FFs have hand-held meters to assist in determining the source of gas and in knowing whether ventilation is successful. (As a side note, sometimes the source is obvious; our instructor told us about a CO call, fortunately not involving fatalities, where residents of a row home decided to roast a pig in their basement. Not good.)

So we ventilate, to make things safer for occupants and FFs, during and after a fire, and to assist occupants in putting things back to normal.

Air Packs

Last night's training involved donning air packs.

There are a few steps involved in putting an airpack on. Some of these can be done in different orders, but my sequence was:

1) Put on the pack. It's like a backpack, with the air cylinder fastened to the frame. It's got a waist strap, too, so that the 30-40lbs of weight rest on your hips, not your shoulders.

2) Put on the face piece. This has webbing that wraps around your head, and 4 straps that you tighten to secure it to your head, and create an air-tight seal.

3) Attach the regulator to the face piece. In our case (MSA), the regulator starts off attached to a clip on the waist belt, and you unclip it from that and clip it into an opening in front of your mouth, (on the outside of the face piece). At this point, you should check your seal by breathing in; since you haven't opened the air yet, you should get nothing coming into the face piece around the outside.

4) Now, (before you run out of breath), turn on the air cylinder by reaching around the bottom-right side of the backpack and opening the valve. If you're mask is tight enough, air flows into the face piece when you breathe in, but doesn't leak out the sides. (These masks are positive-pressure, meaning it provides just slightly more than 1 atmosphere of pressure, rather than requiring you to pull air in via lung effort; this makes it safer in the case of a mask leak, meaning smoke won't come in when you breathe in.)

5) Now that you're breathing air, pull your hood up over the face piece, and put on your helmet and gloves. Done.

Now, do all that in 60 seconds. Yeah, it's about as hard as it sounds. The point of doing it timed is to make sure you're comfortable doing it, and can be ready in an emergency situation. Like the 60 seconds to put on gear, in real life, you'll most likely have more time than that, but you need to be comfortable with what you're doing.

Now, the frustration. I'd never touched an airpack before. Apparently, I was one of two or three in the class in that situation, and it just didn't occur to the instructor to ask. So I figured most of the above out by myself. Several things tripped me up along the way, but I worked them out as I went; the pressure was that each attempt was timed, and I didn't get to work my way fully through the process before we were told (as a class) to start over.

On the positive side, each attempt got easier, and on the try where I forgot my hood, I got everything else on in the 60 seconds, with a bit of fumbling around. So I'm pretty confident that I'll get it worked out for next class. And we've got a night off next week to be able to practice at our station as well. Just one more thing to master.

Two Calls At Once, and a Fire

So after a couple of sparse weeks, Saturday we get not just one but two vehicle accidents at once. Page comes in, I get to station, get suited up, E2 is full so I'm first on Squad. As soon as I get on, call comes over the radio for an ambulance, our E1 and another company's engine to a 2nd accident.

At this point, we're short a driver, so I and Squad's driver head over to E1, while another driver arrives for Squad, and the rest of the FF's in station split up for the two calls. Everything got staffed, and both accidents turned out to be easily handled and fairly minor.

Then Saturday evening, we get called for a trash fire. Apparently, folks at a local church had a cookout, and the coals weren't cold enough when they emptied them into the dumpster. The trash line took care of it easily, and I got to pack the hose away when it was over. (So far, for the record, that was the closest I've come to actually seeing flame in my illustrious, 4-month firefighting career...)

Forced Entry

Last night's class was quite interesting. Say there's a fire, or at least the threat of one (i.e. an automatic alarm is going off). Say the door's locked, (whether it's a business or residence), and nobody's there to open it for you. The class was all about forced entry, i.e. how to get past obstacles to either investigate or extinguish a fire.

Gone are the days of taking an axe and chopping a door down. Not to say that that wouldn't work, but there are much better ways of getting in, that do much less damage. And minimizing damage is certainly a concern. The basic ways of forcing entry are: 1) conventional (prying the door open), 2) through the lock (pulling the key cylinder out and messing with the mechanism), and 3) power tools (cutting holes in garage doors with saws, etc.)

And no, it wasn't lost on anyone that, as one guy said, "Hey, they're training us to be criminals". We're needing to know how to do what would be illegal in other circumstances. We're dealing with an "arms race"; making buildings more secure against criminals makes them less accessible when *WE* need to get in. Then criminals figure out how to get in, and we need to learn more advanced methods.

Training Night 9/16

Got the week off from Essentials, so I got to go to my own company's training night. We put hard-sleeve hose into a creek to draft into the engine, resting the hose on a roof ladder, and using a rope from the other side of the creek to guide it into place, then tie it off.

We then played with various nozzles, on 1.75" and 2.5" hoses. The nozzles affect how much kick you get when flowing water on a fire; the older nozzles produce a lot more backward force than the newer ones, and the old brass nozzle (that they used back around WWII, and keep around as a relic) takes 4 guys to wrestle.

It's easy to let a hose get away from you. I was on the nozzle at one point, and my backup guy wasn't paying attention to what I was doing, and I ended up coming close to losing control of it (and ended up spraying the guys on an adjacent hose, too). One good thing about the way nozzles work is that if your hand is on the bail, having the hose push back will naturally shut off the water; that would have happened for us had the hose slipped back another foot or so.

There are ways for one guy to flow water, though, by looping the hose around such that the top of the loop sits on the end about 2-3ft back from the nozzle, then put your feet/knees on the top hose, on either side of the nozzle. You do have to shut down the hose to move it very far, but when you need to do it, it's possible to do.

After shutting everything down and packing up the engine(s), we took the drafting engine to a hydrant and flushed out the pump; the creek wasn't that deep, and we ended up pulling a lot of mud through at various times. Our engines can sure flow the water.

All in all, this was a welcome break from Essentials, especially as I got to work with more of the guys from my own company.

AFA

Calls have been rather light for the past week or two, but got an automatic fire alarm (AFA) this afternoon late. IIRC, this was the first call that I've been on since getting chief's official blessing to ride the engines, and I got to ride engine 1, along with two regular FFs (i.e. that could go inside) and two other probie/junior FFs (like me). Engine 2 and squad also responded, somewhat light on crew.

As with most AFA's, it turned out to be not much of anything. The alarm apparently reset itself, and three of our guys went inside with the thermal camera to make sure there wasn't anything. They found nothing, and after 15-20 mins of standing by outside, we returned.

Ladders

Training continues. Tue was ladder practicals, which I arrived late for, so I missed throwing roof ladders (i.e. putting a short ladder up against a wall, ready to climb), and was late to get in line for the one-man throw of a 28-ft extension ladder. Last night made up for that.

I was among the first to throw the 28-ft, which unfortunately meant that the instructor assisted me more than I would have liked, (rather than just reminding me of things, like he did with later students), but it was fairly easy. Putting a ladder like that up yourself, it's a bit unwieldy, but as long as you know where it's likely to move, pretty easy to control.

Then we did a 4-man raise of a 3-section extension ladder. In our group, I manned the halyard, which meant I pulled the rope to raise the thing, lifting 2/3rds of the weight with the ladder's pulley system. Much heavier than the 28-ft. Initially, we put it up to the 3rd floor level of the training tower, and climbed up empty-handed, then with an axe in hand. Simple enough, although I tended to hug the ladder more than I should have, making it harder than it needed to be. After a couple of tries, I did a much better job of keeping my arms straight and my legs in front of me, and it went much better.

After that, they raised the ladder to the roof of the 3-story tower, and had us each climb up to the top, to be the "victim", while another student was the "rescuer", who climbed up behind the victim and guided him down. I got to be each, once. At one point, as victim, I got a bit worried at the height of it all, but recovered and did fine. I'm pretty sure nobody's going to name me class mountain goat, though. (And for some reason, I'm a bit stiff today...)

We've got next week off from class, coming back for two more weeks, the Thu of the 2nd week being the Exterior test night.

Support Test

Our last Support module class last night was a review, then the test, then waiting for the instructor to grade it, then getting the results. I missed 3 out of 75 questions, which was better than anyone else I saw, although I didn't exactly go around asking. (Nobody likes a show-off...)

Starting next week: Exterior (all the fun things you can do from outside a burning building: use ladders, ventilate roofs, etc.) It'll run five weeks (if we don't do weekends).

Hazmat

The last few classes in the Support module were haz-mat. We'll end up getting a Hazmat Awareness certificate out of this, once we pass the test, which is only the first of several levels of hazmat training. At the awareness level, all we're qualified to do is say "Hey, looks like hazmat, let's call someone else to deal with it".

So what did I learn about hazmat? Vehicles carrying hazmat have placards on all four sides, with a color and a number or two. The color is orange for explosives, green for non-flammable gases, and what other colors and meanings I forget. The 4-digit number is the UNNA number, which you can use to look up what exactly is being carried. The 1-digit number indicated the class of material, which (in order) are: 1 Explosives, 2 gases, 3 flammable liquids, 4 flammable solids, 5 oxidizers, 6 poisons, (unlucky) 7 nuclear, 8 corrosives, and the ever-popular 9 other.

When dealing with a spill, you want to be upwind and uphill of it. (And no, we didn't talk about what to do if upwind is downhill; I'm thinking of being to one side or the other, but maybe uphill is more important, as winds change and hills don't. I suppose that'll be in the next level of training.) You then establish zones: hot zone is closest, where you wear all of the needed protective gear to even be there; warm zone is next, which is less restrictive; cold zone is next, which is where first responders will be, but which will still be free of civilians.

Tank trucks have distinctive shapes that will indicate generally what they're carrying. If it's oval-shaped (from the rear), it's carrying non-pressurized liquids. Circular, with a flat end is liquids, perhaps under pressure. Circular with bands around the belly are corrosives (asphault gets carried in these, among numerous other things). Circular with a rounded end is pressurized gases (which are likely pressurized into liquid form in the truck). Propane would be in one of these. Circular w/rounded end and refrigeration unit on the end is refrigerated gases, like liquid nitrogen (among other things); unlike the unrefrigerated gases, these have issues with not being very very (cryogenically) cold, and may rupture the tank if the cooling goes out.

Our engines each contain a copy of the ERG (Emergency Response Guide), which has a list of UNNA numbers and what to do when each are spilled, (i.e. evacuate for 100 meters, evacuate for 2 miles downwind, etc.) You can actually get a PDF of the ERG at the DOT website (how many TLAs can I fit sensibly into one sentence?).

We also covered hazmat gear (what the instructor called a body bag with a view), getting info from waybills, bills of lading, etc, and I'm sure there's more I'm forgetting. But those are the highpoints. So now I'm noticing all the trucks I pass a little bit more closely to see what they might be carrying.

Vehicle Accident and Gas Leak

Responded to a vehicle accident around lunchtime. A truck hopped the curb, clipped a gas line, and hit a traffic light pole. The driver had already been taken out when we got there, and we (from squad) assisted EMS in getting the passenger out and transported. We (4-5 of us) pulled the pax door open (it had been damaged by the impact, but not so much that we couldn't wrestle it open) to give EMS access to the passenger, and used cribbing to stabilize the vehicle.

Others (from engine 2) kept water on the gas leak until the gas company could get there and shut it off. (There were posts in front of the gas pipe, but the vehicle traveled behind the posts and caught the pipe anyway.) Then we rolled up 400ft of 5" and 200-300 ft of handline, (which was the tiring part of it all), and watched the tow truck remove the vehicle.

Spill Control

Got a call for spill control, responded class 3 (i.e. no lights or sirens), acid spilled from a battery. Usually those are found at wrecks of some kind, but not this one. This one was a dumpster sitting on top (!) of a car battery. (Presumably what happened was the trash company came by, emptied the dumpster, didn't see the battery sitting beside it, and set the dumpster down on top of it, cracking it.) Engine 2 and squad responded, w/me on eng. 2.

So we covered the acid w/baking soda, then used air bags to lift the dumpster off the battery and move it out so it could be disposed of. Turned into more of a training call than an emergency. Then we went back to the station, and cleaned off our gear with more baking soda and water.

I also got to talk to the chief about riding on the engine. The last few calls, engine 2 has been short staffed, and folks already on have told me to climb on, but I figured I should ask about it, and chief said as long as I'm not displacing someone who can pack (i.e. wear an airpack into a building), I'm fine to ride on the engine.

Fire at the Hospital

Well, sort of. We got called last night around 9:30pm for an auto alarm at the Hospital. On the way to the station, dispatch said they were upgrading it to a first alarm building fire, with something happening in an elevator shaft. I rode in on engine 2, (full sirens; gotta admit, it's a rush). We got there, staged, and waited. As a side job, chief had us check the mulch around the parking lot, as he'd smelled something when he came in. (One guy guessed it was his brakes burning...).

Other things of note: a mutual aid engine responded as well, and left first, but staged at a neighboring station to cover. The text messages I got showed we were first paged for engine 2, then engine 1 when it upgraded, but 1 was first out, then us on 2, then both squads (we've got a smaller pickup squad truck as well, squad 2, maybe? when I mention "squad", I usually mean the bigger one, which would be squad 1) and traffic as well.

After maybe 30 mins, we and squad got released, but engine 1 stuck around, as apparently a sprinkler head opened, and they needed to have the elevator shaft pumped out. So I assume there was something in there, but I stayed outside, and saw nothing.

Medical Assist

Got paged as I was making breakfast this morning, and ran out the door. (Amazingly enough, Dog didn't eat the sausage I left on the stove; sometimes I do love our dog!)

This call was a medical assist. EMTs can call for fire company assistance for a couple different reasons (that I know of, anyway): forced entry and help with a patient. Today's call was for help getting a patient to the ambulance.

A little bit of background here. Today, we have medical regulations known as HIPAA. From what little I understand about it, HIPAA does various things, but one of the big ones (from an emergency services perspective, as well as from a computer programmer's perspective) is to try to ensure patient confidentiality. (I won't launch into a soapbox about what a nuisance idea personal privacy has become; just assume I'm not fond of it.)

Anyway, because of HIPAA, I'm pretty sure that I can't tell you much more than I already have about this morning's call. But rest assured that the two fit, robust (no sarcasm here) male EMTs did actually need the assistance of 4-5 firefighters to complete this call.

FF Training and Fitness

More hose work at training last night. Went much better than last week, because a) I knew a little better what I was doing, and b) I paced myself better. Was still winded (didn't get that much more in shape over one week), but was more relaxed, and took my time at places where I needed to.

In other (fitness) news, I got about half my weight equipment set up over the weekend, and got a light workout in this morning, with the goal of being overall more fit, both for cardio and strength (and perhaps in flexibility, once I get settled into a good routine).

Oven Fire

... that I didn't quite see. Called in as a dwelling fire, rode out on squad, but got recalled half-way there. Food apparently caught fire in their oven, but was out at least before squad got there, if not the engines.

Wrestling Hose

Last night was the first of our practical hose nights. We got to go to the County training center to do this part. We split the night into two parts: hydrant ops and hose advancing.

The group I was in did hydrant ops first. The instructor showed us how it worked, then gave us each a chance to close off a hydrant, verify that it drained properly, then wrap 5" around the hydrant, simulate the engine departing, and connecting a gate valve to the hydrant and bleeding off the air. It's fascinating how doing a thing makes all the difference, compared to reading about it or even seeing someone else do it.

After a break, we switched stations, and did hose loading and advancement. We worked with Minuteman loads, which are two sections of hose, pre-connected to the engine, each in their own vertically stacked slot. One has the nozzle, the other has loops to ease getting it off the engine. I got two chances to load loose hose onto the engine, (again making it make much more sense than just having it explained).

Then came the challenge: we got to take the hose off the truck and advance it into a building, up to the 2nd floor, lay it out, call to have it charged, and discharge from the nozzle, simulating putting out a fire, then ventilate the room using a fog pattern. For starters, I backed up a nozzle-man, then we switched and I got a chance.

Let me just say that all illusions that my past year of cycling had me in good shape flew out the window. It kicked my butt, solidly. Wearing full turnout gear, helping move the hose up stairs, then moving the charged hoseline around and supporting the nozzle-man wasn't as easy as it looked earlier. Wrestling the nozzle was also a challenge, especially when venting and I was doing it alone (as the instructor showed my support guy the effects of ventilation). By the end of it, I was very winded and fairly exhausted, at which point I had to shoulder-load the nozzle-connected section of hose and drain it, working down the stairs. (The instructor helped me out with the last 3-4 loops, embarrasingly enough.) And, as the instructor pointed out, we didn't have either SCBA on, or an actual fire heating things up.

And as a footnote, this morning I looked at the skills requirements for the Firefigher I, and was even more intimidated. Granted, many of the skills are items from the 3rd and 4th modules of this course, which we haven't gotten to yet, but I'm gonna need to get into better shape for that, too.

The bottom line is that I have quite a ways to go to get into good enough shape to be proficient at this. So yes, I have my work cut out for me.

Auto Alarm

Fire call at 4:45am, automatic fire alarm. Chief arrived on-scene as I was heading to station, and downgraded the call from both engines and squad to just engine 1. Presumably someone from the business met him there and let him in. Got to the station, suited up, climbed on, got out the door and up to the light when chief recalled us. False alarm. So we drove around the block, signed the logbook and went home.

Support Training 7/22

After yesterday's call, finished work, then went to another training class. This class was on water supply.

Actually, we started class with a quiz on fire behavior. 40 questions, which we then went over and got scored. I missed 4 out of 40 questions, and if I heard right, got the highest score in the class.

Anyway, water supply. The easiest way to get water is to have it on your engine already when you get there. Modern engines like ours are quad-combination engines, meaning that they carry water (in a 500-1000 gallon tank), a pump, tools, and firefighters to a call. (There are also vehicles called quints that have a ladder as well.) I'm probably going to get this wrong, but engine 1-6-1 has the smaller tank of our two engines, at 500-750 gallons, while 1-6-2 has a 1000 gallon tank. (? I need to ask about that next time I'm at the station; I do know engine 2 has the larger tank.)

The next easiest way to get water is from a hydrant. We learned about hydrant systems (the water usually comes from the same source as drinking water, although some larger cities (i.e. NYC) might have separate systems). We learned about types of hydrants (dry barrel and wet barrel) and the layout of the mains that they're connected to (grid, loops, or dead ends).

Lastly, there's rural water supply. We discussed (argued :) about whether a vehicle that supplies water to an engine is called a tender or a tanker. Out west, tankers have wings and drop water or foam onto fires from the air. The "standard" term for our vehicles is a tender, although Lancaster County dispatches them as tankers.

Regardless, tankers (to use our term) go to the water, fill up, bring the water to the fire, and empty the water either into an engine, using hoses, or into a portable pool, that the engines then draft from. They then shuttle back and forth until no longer needed. We discussed determining how much water (in gallons per minute) you'll need to put out a fire (typically the square footage of the fire, i.e. if a 10x10ft room is involved, you need 100 gallons/min flow to put it out), and discussed how many tankers you need to support that (one tanker can provide G/T gallons/min, where G is the tank size, and T is the time to load, transport, empty and return to the load point, i.e. a complete round trip; divide your needs by what each tanker provides to get how many tankers you'll need dispatched).

We had a substitute instructor tonight, which was nice in that he went on a few more tangents than our usual instructor, talking about things outside the scope of the class but very much of interest (to me, anyway).

We finished up a little early, so the instructor offered to give us a tour of one of Schoeneck's engines. We got about halfway through that, when the host company got a fire call, at which point class ended, and we stepped out of the way to let them get going. Quite exciting, getting to watch them go, rather than be hurrying to get ready myself.

Tomorrow we start working w/hoses, getting them connected to hydrants and engines, and learning how to put them away for next time. Can't wait!

A/C Fire

Just ran a fire call. Page sounded serious, from the number of units they were calling out (ambulance, our engines, an engine from one m.a. (mutual aid) company, a tanker from another, the tones went on for a while). Got to the station, got suited up, heard over the radio of "thick black smoke" coming from the dwelling.

Then we got there, and (apparently, I didn't see it) the A/C had burned out, and was not burning (or even smoking) when we got there. Command turned the call into an investigation; engine 2 and the tanker were recalled right away (didn't even see the tanker). I and the rest of the probies and juniors stayed out at the engines, then we returned.

FF training, 2nd module

Tuesday night was the start of the 2nd training module, Fireground Support. (Sorry I didn't post about it sooner...) Tuesday was a lecture, on fire behavior.

Without meaning to, in my last post, I talked about much of what we covered, with fire classes, and the ways of putting each out.

We also talked about heat: convective, radiative and conductive.

There's conduction, i.e. why the handle on a pan on the stove gets hot. Heat travels along material, and the more dense the material, in general, the better it conducts heat.

Convection is the whole hot-air-rises thing, only in fires, (especially in a confined space) it's much more pronounced. Fire greatly heats air, which rises and spreads out. (This is why FF's often crawl: to stay out of the hot gases that rise to the ceiling, not to mention staying out of the smoke and other toxic stuff that's up high.) In a multi-story fire, the hot gases can "mushroom". A fire on the first floor can generate hot gas that rises and fills first the fourth floor, then third, then second and finally first.

We touched on the need for ventilation: to get rid of the hot gases and make the interior safer for FF's and any trapped victims. But it's important to ventilate in the right place. Ventilating up (i.e. opening up a hole in the roof) can be much better than opening (i.e. breaking) a window, as opening a window will allow extra/excess oxygen to enter the building, and will draw the fire towards that window. But there are times when that can work to your advantage, if the opening you're creating is near the fire, and can serve to hold the fire at that location. Later modules will cover this in greater detail.

Then there's radiation (i.e. how the sun heats the earth). A fire will give off lots of radiant heat, which will heat materials around it. A fire in a corner will spread faster than a fire in the center of the room, partly because of proximity to fuel (i.e. curtains, paneling, etc.), but partly because any wall materials will absorb and re-radiate the heat given off by the fire. A fire can spread from one house to an adjacent building strictly by radiation. (On the recent fire near us, that I was on standby for, the neighboring house had its siding melted by the heat of the house fire; one fire company task is "protecting the exposures", or making sure that such adjacent properties stay cool enough to not combust.)

Last night was all about fire extinguishers. They're rated for certain classes of fires, with the most common ones being for Class ABC or Class BC fires. There are also Class D dry powder ext's for use on metal fires, but they'll most likely be found in industrial settings where those metals are more likely to be found. It's quite important to use the right ext. for your class of fire, as the wrong one can make things much worse (i.e. pressurized water on a metals fire or liquid fuel fire can cause an explosion).

Common ext's are dry chemical or CO2, with Class A pressurized water being available as well. Fire apparatus need to have a wide variety of ext's, and will probably have most or all of the above mentioned types.

Operating one is done by the acronym "PASS": Pull the pin, Aim the nozzle at the base of the flame, Squeeze the handle and Sweep the nozzle over the fire. You do want to be careful, though, as you're aiming at the base, to not shoot the material INTO the fuel (esp. on a liquid fuel fire), or you'll just spread the fuel around, making things worse.

The highlight of last night, though, was getting to put out a fuel oil fire with an ABC dry-chemical extinguisher. I got picked to go first out of the 20+ FFs, got the fire out in short order, and then found that my (old, ready-to-be-scrapped) ext. wouldn't turn off. There's not much material in one, so it didn't go on for long, and finally I was told to turn it upside down, which vents the propellant w/o spraying much powder. Then, after everyone got a chance, some of us went a 2nd or 3rd time. The fire was in a pan, with water being put in first, then a layer of fuel oil that the instructor lit with a road flare. (Somewhat surprisingly, it took a bit of time to get the oil hot enough to burn; it didn't just catch right away the first time. After it got hot from the flames, it was easier to re-light, though.)

Coming up in the next couple of weeks will be water supply (i.e. working w/hydrants) and hoses (hooking them up to both hydrants and engines). Looking forward to it all.

Foam Training

With the Essentials classes on break for a week, I got to go to our training night last night, and was really glad I did. The main focus of the evening was on foam.

A little background: there are different classes of fire. Class A is wood, rubber, "normal" fires, Class B is liquid fuels fires (in the past, this included cooking grease fires, although that's becoming Class K these days), Class C is electrical fires (which usually, when you cut the power, become Class A fires), and Class D is combustible metals (which are often nasty and require really weird stuff to put out).

More background: the fire tetrahedron. Four things are needed for fire: heat, fuel, oxygen and the chemical reaction of fire itself. With Class A fires, you spray them with water, which most times cools things down enough that you've removed the necessary heat, and the fire goes out. Class C I mentioned above; you cut the power, and they become Class A. Class D fires often require removal of the oxygen or fuel, or messes chemically with the reaction necessary for fire (although honestly, I don't know much about metals fires, so don't rely on what I say about them just yet).

That leaves Class B/K fires. I'll have to dig up a link to a YouTube video I saw, where they poured a cup (i.e. 8 oz) of water on a grease fire in a pan on a stove. The thing positively exploded. Here's why: water is heavier than oil. Pour water on a grease fire, and it sinks, then heats, turns to steam, and expands. Violently. Spraying lit fuel everywhere. But more importantly, atomizing it, allowing it to mix with available oxygen, and burn much MUCH more rapidly. Hence the explosion.

Class B CO2 extinguishers work nicely in this case (if I understand things right), as they remove both heat and oxygen, causing the fire to go out. Simply covering the flaming pan (i.e. with a lid or damp towel) cuts off the oxygen as well (although it's very easy for such a fire to reignite when you remove the lid, as you're just reintroducing oxygen, and the needed heat is still there; it's very important to then turn off the stove and allow the pan to cool before doing anything else, like moving it). But not all liquid fuel fires are small enough to be put out with an extinguisher.

That's where foam comes in. Imagine soap suds. Apparently it's more high-tech than that, but that's what it smells and feels like (well, unscented soap suds, anyway; nothing lemony fresh about what we did last night...). There's the foam stuff (liquid? gel?) in a container, with a venturi tube that comes up to the hose. Water flows through the hose, pulls up the gel, mixes with it, and comes out foam.

For Class B fires, foam is good in a couple of ways. First, as with Class A fires, (and perhaps even FOR Class A fires, as it supposedly uses less water), it cools things down, hopefully below the heat of combustion. Second, with the air mixed in, it remains lighter than the fuel, and sits on top of it, rather than doing the sink-and-explode thing that plain water does.

We've got 2 or 3 ways to flow foam: a foam extinguisher, a ProPak kit, (which holds a couple of nozzles and a smallish quantity of gel), and an eduction appliance (which fits in between 2.5" hose and a 1.25"/1.5" handline, with a tube that goes into a stand-alone bucket of gel).

We tested out the necessary water pressure needed to get the eductor to work, and found it to be pretty close to 200psi (whereas normal pressure for those lines, IIRC, was 100psi or less). We also got a chance to flow foam both from a handline and from the ProPak, and see how each of the nozzles work.

We talked about situations how and where you'd apply foam. As mentioned above, it is very useful for Class B fires. Also, if you have a fuel spill (unignited), you might cover it with foam to make sure it doesn't ignite. Applying it also has its fine points. If you spray it directly onto the spill or fire, you're likely to push the fuel around, perhaps making a bad situation worse. OTOH, you can aim the nozzle at the ground between yourself and the fuel, allowing the foam to build up in front of you, then use pressure to push that foam over the fuel. Alternatively, you can aim high and let the foam rain down, or aim for a nearby wall and let it flow down off of that.

One thing to be careful about is, once you've put a layer of foam over a spill or fire, not to walk through the foam. Apart from the fact that the fuel is still down there, walking through it breaks the vapor barrier that the foam creates, making it much less useful (and making the situation once again much more hazardous).

Anyway, the evening was quite interesting, and probably the coolest part was that I got to flow something (foam, in this case) from a nozzle. I've certainly got lots more to learn, but it was quite exciting.

Vehicle Accident

Ran a call this morning. Just finishing up breakfast, and got a call for a vehicle accident w/possible entrapment. Both engines and squad got called up, and all 3 ran, with me on squad. My first response with the sirens going, too.

Police were already there when we got there, and although an ambulance was called for, it was either recalled, or came and left. No entrapment, either. Apparently, somebody ran a red light. One car had a smashed front end, the other a smashed passenger door.

Our two basic jobs (on this one, at least) were spill control and cleanup. Vehicle accidents break stuff, and when some of that stuff is a fluid tank or line, fluids leak. On this morning's call, there were a few spills, which we treated with this stuff that looks a lot like cat litter, that absorbs the fluids so they can be swept up/aside, or at least kept from running into drain water.

So my job this morning was basically to push a broom for a couple of minutes. Messed up doing even that, though. I wasn't paying attention to the spill areas, and swept through one of them; got corrected by an officer, no big deal. Live and learn. If all my mistakes are little ones like that, I'll be doing good.

4th of July Fireworks

Went to the fire company around 8pm yesterday for a scheduled standby for the fireworks. Had folks from our two mutual aid companies come out to assist us as well. I had signed up to ride on the Squad, but as there was no driver for it, I got to go on Engine 2 instead.

We went down to the field where they were setup to shoot the fireworks off from, and got a briefing from the lead fireworks guy. He wanted to be sure that, if something went wrong, we wouldn't come onto the field until he asked for us, as they would know better when it was safe for us to come over; (apparently they're better practiced at running and ducking than we are). He also said not to worry if he was running around with his hat caught on fire. (!?)

We were still pretty close, maybe 100 yards away, and once they started, the fireworks were almost going off over our heads. They started at 9:30pm, and ended somewhere around 10pm. I was pretty glad our IC gave us ear protection; it was fairly loud even with that.

All in all, nothing unusual happened, and we returned to the station shortly after the show finished.

Essentials, Test Night

Last night was test night. We did some review, then took the test. 30 questions, a few true/false, the rest multiple-choice. They graded the tests right there, and I passed, getting only one wrong out of the 30.

We took a break, then went outside for the practical part, which was getting our gear on in less than 60 seconds. I got everything on my first try, except for my neck strap, which I had plenty of time for, but couldn't find the Velcro. 2nd try worked fine, though, and I passed.

Afterwards, we went back inside, got our books signed (indicating that we passed the practicals and written test), and discussed the schedule for the next module.

The Essentials course is broken into four modules: Intro (which I just finished), Support, Exterior and Interior. We'll start the Support module in two weeks, with classes on Tue and Thu, and some Saturdays. (So we get a week off, although I'll just go to our local training night next Tue.) Intro was 16 hours, Support will be 48; we'll learn how to do hose lays, work with ladders, etc. Should be fun.

After we got let out, we went back to put our gear up, and I signed up for standby for the fireworks on the 4th. We will have one engine at the park and the other engine and squad at the launch site for the fireworks. With a little luck, Wife and Kids will be able to join me there, and I'll get Wife to take a picture of me in my gear. We'll see...

Essentials, 3rd Night (and a semi-call)

Last night's class covered PPE (personal protective equipment, aka "turnout gear"), starting off with a bit of lecture, then getting practical. We brought our gear with us, and got a chance both to perform a gear inspection and go through donning our full gear.

The requirement is to be able to don full gear in less than 1 minute. On calls, I've been pretty sure I've met that, but in class realized that I wasn't putting everything on. I haven't been wearing both my hood and my turnout gloves, which is fine for now as I'm not doing any interior work. Plus, on real calls, you're pretty interested in getting on the apparatus, and gloves and hood can go on once you're loaded up.

Anyway, in class, I missed the 60-second requirement the first time, but got it on the 2nd. You do get to have your gear laid out however will be most efficient, and the 2nd time around, I did a better job of preparing before the clock started.

After donning our gear, we got to board the engine and get strapped in. Folks were joking about why they put seatbelts in apparatus, but the official position is: wear them. In fact, there's a seatbelt poster hanging at our station showing an engine that wrecked and rolled over, and the FFs on board had their seatbelts on. So next time I'm in the station, gotta find where the belts are on Squad.

Then, about 15 minutes before the end of class, our pagers went off. I'd thought we were too far from the station for us to bother responding, but the folks I was with grabbed their gear and ran, so I did too. Usually that wouldn't have been a problem, except I needed to leave right after class to go pick my family up from the airport, so I got a bit uptight. Making it worse was the fact that we didn't go back to the station, (where I could have opted out, got in my car, and headed on), but we drove straight to the call. Fortunately (for the homeowner and for me), we got released shortly after arriving (it was something at a nearby trailer park; we were mutual aid, and weren't needed), and I got to the airport in plenty of time to get my fam back.

Assisting Mutual Aid Company

3:30am this morning, pager went off, "Standby in Station". The page was for engine 1, which I don't get to ride yet, but I went anyway to see what it was about. Maybe 6-8 of us made it in, and sat around talking. "Standby" means be in station, ready to run if they need us; in this case, "they" were an adjacent mutual aid comapny, at a dwelling fire.

4:00am, they call County (via radio), requests Squad for additional manpower. So we dress and respond in non-emergency mode (i.e. no sirens, no running red lights, etc). As we arrived, everything had been put out, and we were there to help with cleanup of the dwelling.

Not only do we put the fire out, but we also need to make sure that it doesn't start back up again, and we need to make at least an initial determination as to what started the fire. That process (overhaul) means pulling out anything exposed to the (now-extinguished) fire and making sure that everything else is cool enough to not re-ignite. That takes work, which is what they wanted help with. We had a couple of guys in airpacks go inside to assist, while I and others setup lights outside, then once it was deemed safe to remove the airpacks, we went inside to help ferry out bins of ash and other debris.

An ambulance was there as a precaution; apparently the residents got out safely and were uninjured. They also had water available for all of us workers, and while it wasn't that hot out, and even though we took off our turnout coats fairly soon after arriving, I was still working, walking up and down both stairs and an inclined driveway, and was still in helmet and bunker pants, so I was sweating a good bit, and the water was welcome.

I could see the practical side of safety. While all the firefighting had finished before we arrived, lots of people were going up and down both interior and exterior stairs that were shared between people, charged hoselines and electrical cables. It really pays to be attentive to surroundings, as even if you're accustomed to the environment normally (which we weren't, never having been there before), it's not normal conditions now.

An air unit was dispatched to the scene. Presumably among other many things, an air unit will recharge airpacks, and a few of us were tasked with making sure all of our airpacks were charged and put back on Squad.

We also helped bring equipment back out to the primary company's engines as they finished with it, and did some light clean-up in the residence with a Shop-Vac, then packed up and returned to station, getting back around 5:20am, and back home around 5:30am. My 2nd call.

Essentials, 2nd Night

Tonight we finished up the section on safety, and went over Chain of Command. Pretty straightforward stuff: "span of control" says that everybody reports to someone, and nobody has too many people reporting to them (5 is ideal, 3-7 is okay). We talked about how larger paid departments work, with a larger chain of command.

In between lectures, we got to see the host station testing their 5" lines. They put a draft into a pond, and laid what must've been 2000' of 5" up the hill, around the pavilion and back down to the engine. Then they drained it and put it all away. They had a very interesting looking appliance on the end of the line; several connections (w/valve handles) to allow them to split off smaller lines or continue on to another 5". I assume I'll learn more about those in the next class (Fireground Support), which our instructor intends to start up as soon as this one's over.

Toward the end of the class, we watched a history video that was fairly interesting, going from colonial times up to the MGM Grand fire in 1980. I remember hearing about that one on the news; I would have been 13 at the time. It struck me that nobody else at my table was even alive when that happened (all of my fellow station classmates are 16 or 17). (Yeah, I'm getting old.)

Next week's class will be on donning our gear and boarding the engine properly, and hazmat; the week following will be review and the test.

Two Non-Calls in 8 Hours

Last night, after finishing work, I poked around a bit, then noticed it getting dark early. Glanced outside to see it getting stormy, and checked online to see severe weather warnings posted for us. Went up to Subway, grabbed dinner, then headed for the station, just in case. Three others showed up, it blew around for 10 mins or so, let fall 2-3 drops of rain, then cleared off for blue skies and a beautiful night. You just never know.

So I went home, walked the dog, read a bit, and went to bed. I'd seen on the radar a line of showers coming toward us, but it wasn't going to hit 'til midnight, and I was tired, so I turned in. Sure enough, a little after midnight, thunder and lightning. I fought the urge to hop up and get dressed, and just listened to it all, and drifted back to sleep.

About 2 minutes later, pager goes off. You get tones, then a pause, then the dispatcher comes on and gives the address and type of the incident, and lists what apparatus is being dispatched. This time, she calls out the address, says it's a dwelling fire (I think; I was half asleep), then says "disregard tones, will handle". Harumph. I get undressed, go back to bed, and lay there for an hour or so, all keyed up.

So now I'm short on sleep, but thanks to working at home this week and an understanding boss, I decide to sleep in. Well, 8am, pager goes off again, waking me up again. Automatic fire alarm at the middle school. I roll out of bed, dress, get to the station. I'm curious as to whether enough folks show up for a day call to run Squad. Engine 1 responds, and another driver arrives, sees me waiting by the Squad, and decides to respond in it. So I climb aboard. Two or three other guys are getting suited up, and heading over. And the call comes over the radio to recall. I wait around for E1 to return, then head home.

All part of the job. (But I'm still waiting for my 2nd call...)

A Family Tradition

I called my dad today to wish him a happy Father's Day, and we talked for an hour or so. Among other things, we talked about my recent fire service training, and it turns out that as a teenager, he had been a volunteer firefighter as well, as had his father.

Dad spent part of his growing up years in Rexford, NY, where, according to him, "everybody was a volunteer. The siren went off, and you knew from the sound what part of town the fire was in, and everybody went to help. The gear was kept on one of the trucks, and you put it on when you got there, depending on what the situation was." His dad served at the same time period, often on the same calls, depending on whether he had the car with him, or whether it was at home with dad's mom.

He said training back then was light compared to what it sounds like I'm going through (especially considering the almost-1000-page Essentials manual I told him about).

He told me of a couple of incidents: one at a grocery store, where the #10 cans were exploding from the heat and shooting out into the crowd of onlookers, and where the barber next door had moved his chairs out into the parking lot, and it looked like he was offering haircuts to the bystanders. Another one involved a lumber yard, where they arrived to find it too far gone to do anything, and let it burn.

This was something I never knew about my dad, but then again, mom didn't know either, so I don't feel too bad :).

So whaddya know, it's a family tradition!

Essentials, 1st Night (and a call)

Went to the fire company after work, and rode up with four other FFs for the first night of the Essentials class. (Actually, the official name of the class is Introduction to the Fire Service.) It's the 16-hr first of four classes that end up being 160+ hours of instruction, with the later classes being much more hands-on than this first.

The instructor (whose name I forget) is pretty likable and seemed quite knowledgeable, and I'm thinking I'll like the class. We got materials: 1 course book and 1 workbook, both of which are pretty thick, and will be used for all four classes. We went through about an hour of history, and a couple hours of safety. Apparently it's easy to be unsafe when you're in a hurry; most on-scene injuries happen at the beginning (when you're rushing around and not sure what's where) and at the end (when you're not paying as much attention and/or fatigued from the call). Also of interest, fully half of FF deaths are from heart attacks, many preventable simply by not over-exerting while being in full gear.

Anyway, after class I went home, went to bed, then got paged at 4am. Got to the station, but while Squad got dispatched, it didn't go out, (perhaps just because of no driver?), so I sat around for a few minutes, just to be sure, then went back home. Apparently it was a truck fire that was easily contained. Again, had I not been new and hence not allowed on the engines, I would have easily made either engine out. So I guess I'm still waiting for my 2nd call.

Training Night 6/10

Well, last night was to be the first night of the Essentials class, but it got postponed, so I went to our training night.

Actually, a little after 6pm, the sky got dark and lightning started flashing, so I started watching the radar (via the NWS website), then opened up WebCAD, and was just amazed. Usually, there are 10-15 active medical calls, and one or two active fire calls; last night there were maybe 7-8 medical and twice that for fire. So I headed down to the station at 6:30pm, and I was one of the last few to arrive. Fortunately, the storm largely passed south of us, and we didn't get called out.

While waiting to see what would happen, a captain gave me a tour of the compartments on the squad vehicle. There are five on each side, (six if you count the one on the bottom), each containing various pieces of equipment for use in various types of calls. There are also items inside, on both sides of the crew seats. After going through them all, he let me know that I can feel free to go through things on my own, and that he will show me around the engines another night. I then spent a while going around making sure I'd at least be able to remember the general contents of each compartment without having to open each one.

After seeing that we probably weren't going to be called out for the storms, we then went into the training room, and had Chief go over a few items, after which we did a gear inspection, and got issued reflective vests to be used either over or in place of our bunker coats, as appropriate for the call.

After getting set with that, I headed on home, looking forward to Thursday night.

My First Call

Of course, it's Murphy's Law. As soon as I get my pager (Tue night), no calls come in for days. Mind you, no calls mean a peaceful district, but I've still been wondering when I get to go out.

Well, 3am this morning, the pager goes off. An "investigation" at a nearby convenience store. The shock of jumping out of bed had my heart pumping more than anything else, but I got quickly dressed and was out the door. By the time I got to my car, I was mostly calmed down, and drove (quickly but safely!) to the station. The store was actually closer to my house than the station, but you go to the station and suit up first.

I was maybe 4th or 5th out of a total of 12-15 FFs who responded. Had I been qualified, I would have easily made the 1st engine out, but I rode the squad as instructed, with the driver and one other guy. (The call was for both engines and the squad.) I didn't time it, but I'm fairly certain I had my gear on in less than 60 secs, (which is one of the things to get checked off for training).

By the time the squad was ready to go, the chief(s) were already on-scene, and had determined that we didn't need engine 2, and squad was instructed to come in non-emergency (which means no sirens for me this call).

Turns out, an oven got turned on with some paper in it, and was generating some smoke. We put a large fan at the back door, propped open the front, and ventilated; the chiefs then checked things out to make sure all was well. Then we rode back to the station, signed the call book, and went home. I was back in bed by 4am.

Of course, when I say "we" above, I simply watched as others did the doing. Completely expected.

A neat, uneventful first call.

I'm a Firefighter!

I went to the fire hall last night around 7pm, hung around and chatted with folks for a bit, then had one of the captains come over and inform me that first Tue is the monthly business meeting, for members only. The good news, he said, was that they'd be voting on my application, and that he should be able to give me a call by 9pm and let me know, and then maybe I could get my gear and pager and get started next week.

So I went home, played with my kids, and went out to walk the dog before it started raining. When I walked in the door, Diane said "they'd like you to come back down to the fire hall". I pretty much floated out to my car, and went back, at which point the captain was there at the back door, and told me that I'd been accepted!

Yes, folks, I'm now a firefighter!

Actually, I'm a probationary firefighter, or probie. I'll be on probation for the next 6 months, and will be expected to do a good bit of training during that time before becoming a full FF. For my first few calls, I'll be asked to ride in the squad vehicle (rather than on an engine), until I understand what's what.

They gave me a pager (a Minitor II, in case you were wondering), and showed me how it works. There's a setting to receive just our dispatches, a setting to receive all fire and ambulance dispatches for the county, and a setting to receive fireground transmissions (which at the beginning of a call, will likely be the chief arriving on-scene and giving information to County and our arriving apparatus as to what's occurring).

They gave me a "training manual", which is largely a checklist of things I'll be expected to learn in the first few months. I'll be using that at the station, mostly, while I'm going over equipment and such, to know at least some of the right questions to ask, and for me and them to assess my progress.

The first training course that I need to take during my first 18 months is Essentials of Firefighting, which, by sheer luck, is starting next week at a neighboring company, and I was told that there's room for me to go. So I'll actually miss our training night for the next few weeks as I attend that.

I got my turnout gear last night as well: pants, coat, boots, 2 pair of gloves (one fireproof, one lighter weight for non-fire/clean-up work), Nomex hood (fire resistant, to wear under my helmet) and helmet. Got a flashlight as well. Got shown how to store the gear on the rack, and got given my own space on the rack, complete with name tag.

So now I'm ready to run calls. When the pager goes off, I drive (safely, obeying traffic laws) to the station, get my gear on, head for the squad vehicle, and follow instructions given to me by pretty much anyone else.

I'm a firefighter!

Training Night 5/27

Went to fire station last night. Not sure what was planned, but as a storm was approaching, we went into the training room, watched some video, and discussed.

So what did I learn?

Let's start with the mundane: wear socks to fire calls. Bare feet in our older boots turn into blisters pretty quick, especially on longer calls. Shorts are okay, as are sweat pants, jeans and t-shirts. In winter months, dress warmly; even turn-out gear gets cold when it gets wet, and you'll get wet.

Got a reminder to sound floors as you enter a building. Modern construction is fine when it's not on fire, but newer floors tend to give way quicker when burning.

Got a reminder to stay hydrated. One of the videos shown had six FF with minor injuries: 2 with cuts, 4 dehydrated. It was a long call, and they didn't drink enough. On calls like that, a medic unit will be on-hand, and will have water; take advantage of it.

There were other videos shown, but I didn't follow all of it well enough to repeat it here, so I won't.

Found out that I'll be needing to take the Essentials class first. There's one coming up next month, although there may not be any slots left; if not, there are others coming along all the time. Also, the deputy chief mentioned that my membership discussion could be coming up at their next meeting, so I could become a probie (probationary firefighter) in the next week or two. Obviously, I'll post about that here :).

Fireman Small

Well, I finally gave into a desire that's been rattling around in my head for the last few years. Last night, I went down to my local fire company and put in an application to be a volunteer firefighter.

About three years ago, our street was ablaze with fire apparatus lights at 4:30am as a house (two doors down from us), still under construction, had smoke coming from the vents. About two years ago, residents in the same unit (the other side of the duplex) had the firefighters out for another incident around the same time of day. Both times, it got me thinking about who responds, and what could happen if they didn't.

Now, unless anyone starts to worry, (hi, Mom!), there's loads of training that needs to take place before they ask me to "rush in while everyone else is rushing out". There's an Essentials course (that has about 80 hours of instruction) that (IIRC) I need to complete before I get to enter a building, and plenty of concern about doing what we do safely.

So I put in my application, after which they'll run a background check, call me in for an interview/orientation, and have a vote to determine if I can join. Then the training begins.

Tuesday nights are local training nights, and I got to watch last night's session. They reviewed some recent calls, and did some work with equipment that they had recently used. While they were doing some of the training, one of the assistant chiefs gave me an overview of one of the trucks and how the hoses are arranged. (I now know that I have yet to learn even how much I don't know; the title of this post refers not to my height, but to my level of understanding.)

I'll be trying to post here as I go along, with info on training and on the calls that I go out on. Our company goes on an average of 3-4 calls per week, and as I work an hour away from home, I'll be missing most of the daytime calls, but they assure me that I'll still be able to be useful.

Some tidbits from last night that I remember:

When arriving at an accident scene (around half of our calls are vehicle accidents), first thing is to "secure the area", meaning (at least) to be familiar with the surroundings of the vehicles involved. Then, identify any hazardous materials (fuel, oil, etc.) spilled. Then, secure the vehicle (which means making sure it's not going to roll over, but also that it's not going to roll away). THEN you get to work getting the victim out, which can involve cutting doors off, using spreaders, etc., and working with EMS folks, who may or may not have already arrived on the scene.

When arriving at a fire, as you're getting off the truck and preparing to approach the building, take a tool with you. Not only does this assist in having tools available when you need them, but you'll also want them to use to "sound" floors, i.e. make sure that the floor in front of you will support your weight when you put a foot there.

Responders at a scene have markings on their helmets. Most are black helmets. Red crosses are junior firefighters; they don't go into the buildings at all. White stripes are probationary (that'll be me, to start); we can pretend to be adults :), but don't go into buildings either. Yellow reflectors only are full-fledged firefighters. White, yellow and red helmets are chiefs, assistant chiefs, etc. (I forget what the red ones are.)

5-inch hose comes from the hydrant to the truck. 3-inch and 2.5-inch goes from the truck to the fire, with smaller hoses that can be split off (with a Y) to put water on the fire. There's a much smaller hose on the front of the truck that can be used for dumpster or mulch fires. The truck I was looking at has a 500-gallon tank that is full when the truck leaves the station; this means that small fires don't require a hydrant hookup, and also that water can start to be put on larger fires before the hydrant gets hooked up. Our other truck has an even larger tank (2500 gallons?).

One of the asst. chiefs asked me my age. When I told him "40", he replied "oh, good, you can be a driver, then". Needless to say, I've been salivating ever since, and was also pleased to learn that I won't need a commercial license either, due to a fire service exemption. But apparently, being a driver is maybe 5% driving, and 95% operating the pumps, etc., on the truck at the scene. (Those among you worried for my safety (hi again, Mom) will note that being a driver will probably keep me away from actual fires. We'll see.)

There are loads of other little things that I've already half-forgotten; we'll see how much I can think of to put here as I go along. I'm quite excited about doing this, and am quite looking forward to being able to help out. (Now, which end of this hose does the water come out of?)