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.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Friday, July 25, 2008
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.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
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!
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!
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
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.
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.
Friday, July 18, 2008
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.
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.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
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.
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.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
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.
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.
Saturday, July 5, 2008
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.
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.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
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...
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...
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