fireman questions, couple of technicals

[galaxygoddess]

Ok, so I'm working on YET ANOTHER story, which will get half done then I'll get distracted by something shiney and not go back and finish until I forget what the story is about >.>


I swear I finished my fairy story! I just won't be posting the ending to lit sorry.


There's a couple of quick stories I will finish and post, but not right now, I left them at home (who knew I'd spend most my vacation sick and unable to get out and enjoy it ;.; )

Well, while I'm stuck in place, I might as well flex the old creative juices.


So first of all, is there anywhere I can go to look up information on being a fireman? I tried doing a few searches but didn't yeild answers to my dinky little questions...

#1 do they technically have "partners"? You know, an assigned person they always go out to a call with? Like a cop does? Or is it who ever is there to respond?


#2 do firemen need degrees of any kind? or can they go to a training program?



That kinda thing. there were a few more, but by time I got to this point in my typing I forgot *sigh*

 

[starrkers]

THIS site may help.

 

[Noor]

Ok, so I'm working on YET ANOTHER story, which will get half done then I'll get distracted by something shiney and not go back and finish until I forget what the story is about >.>


I swear I finished my fairy story! I just won't be posting the ending to lit sorry.


There's a couple of quick stories I will finish and post, but not right now, I left them at home (who knew I'd spend most my vacation sick and unable to get out and enjoy it ;.; )

Well, while I'm stuck in place, I might as well flex the old creative juices.


So first of all, is there anywhere I can go to look up information on being a fireman? I tried doing a few searches but didn't yeild answers to my dinky little questions...

#1 do they technically have "partners"? You know, an assigned person they always go out to a call with? Like a cop does? Or is it who ever is there to respond?


#2 do firemen need degrees of any kind? or can they go to a training program?



That kinda thing. there were a few more, but by time I got to this point in my typing I forgot *sigh*

This is from a long time ago but no, we didn't have partners. We did have shifts and our squad vs other ones.

We were fire & ambulance. I was an EMT (so I had that training & internship) and did O2, triage, controlled burn, and first responder training. For a while I was one of the first people inside a fire, and there was training for that, but I can't remember what it was called.

Different places have different cross training. In my parent's town its police/fire/emts/paramedics combined.

 

[galaxygoddess]

This is from a long time ago but no, we didn't have partners. We did have shifts and our squad vs other ones.

We were fire & ambulance. I was an EMT (so I had that training & internship) and did O2, triage, controlled burn, and first responder training. For a while I was one of the first people inside a fire, and there was training for that, but I can't remember what it was called.

Different places have different cross training. In my parent's town its police/fire/emts/paramedics combined.

Thank you both.

The site is extremely helpful.


*Deletes a couple of sentances*

Ok, that cleared that part up too thank you

My mother was a paramedic for somewhere in the range of 15-20 years, so she can help me with that end of it, but she didn't know particular questions about firemen.

thanks bunches

 

[Noor]

Thank you both.

The site is extremely helpful.


*Deletes a couple of sentances*

Ok, that cleared that part up too thank you

My mother was a paramedic for somewhere in the range of 15-20 years, so she can help me with that end of it, but she didn't know particular questions about firemen.

thanks bunches

What no one ever mentions is that at times you will smell like smoke. There are times when you shower and everything forever and still all you smell is smoke.

 

[galaxygoddess]

What no one ever mentions is that at times you will smell like smoke. There are times when you shower and everything forever and still all you smell is smoke.

lol that actually will be a VERY useful tidbit of information for this one

 

[neonlyte]

You need Cant... he knows all things firemanish...ly

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I was a fireman until 1977, but things have changed a lot in 30 years.

 

[Guest]

You need Cant... he knows all things firemanish...ly

I was going to say the same thing. PM cantdog with questions. He has answers, and many fun fireman stories.

 

[Noor]

There are quite a few fireman on lit, they mainly inhabit the general board.

 

[cantdog]

the Fireground and Partners

You're going to find a lot more about the training end of the biz, when you look firefighters up on the 'net, than about the way the task is done. So I'll just talk about the latter. If you need more, ask me any time.

Coverage for a city or other unit (with 911, the coverage areas became larger and involve many different local departments; we use a countywide 911 here) splits the department up into numerous stations. The stations are manned on a shift basis, so you have people coming in and replacing the current crew at change of shift. Then, there's fireground organization itself, which is determined by the tools, really. The pumper truck, or "engine" guys, and the ladder trucks and ventilation people, or "truck" guys, and then the ambulance guys, and the command unit, usually a regular sedan with the chief in it. I'll take that in order.


1) Back when we only covered locally and were called for directly by our own fire department phone number, my city had four fire stations in it. One was the structure fire truck the city maintained at the airport. This one was housed in the same fire station as the airport's crash rescue department (the crash trucks were manned and budgeted out of the National Guard). Two others were local stations at strategic points around the town, originally chosen because they were very near the two hospitals, and one on each side of the river. Then, Central. Central station had an engine and a ladder truck which were local, that is, responded to calls in Central's local area. It also had some stuff we sent to every call, all over town. One engine for that use, the chief's car, the ventilation and lighting truck, and the rescue/ambulance which went to every call.

That means when you came on shift, you went to your assignment based on what machine you rode on, basically. In big departments, the crew of a given truck or engine is called a "company" and the term includes the people on one vehicle, over all the different shifts. So if I worked Engine 2, say, the one that responded all over town, the pumper, I would be considered to belong to Engine Company 2.

Shifts are pretty clear and obvious. One shift of men is a "crew" and the crew you are on is much more important, socially, than the truck or engine or ambulance you're on. You work with your crew all the time. A Crew is quite often a different kind of place to work than C Crew. Each crew, the place I worked, had it's own Assistant Chief, who came to work at Central station. His leadership style set the tone for what the crew was like, especially downtown at Central. If you were in a small outside station, you only went to Central for training and meetings and shit, and you got to hang out with the same four guys or the same seven guys all the time, mostly.

Your own captain or lieutenant set the tone, there at an outside station, although we manned Central from that pool of men who wanted to be seen. People who were looking to be promoted need to be downtown where the Chief and Assistant Chief get to see them all the time, if you get me. So the outside stations were a bad assignment for the officers, because all officers want to be promoted. Whereas the dregs like it at the outside stations. I was a dreg for fifteen of my twenty years.

That term "dreg" is very local indeed. Only about sixteen of us dregs even called us that. Dregs like me, we ran the union, for instance. A guy who was an officer in the union definitely wasn't going to be promoted. But every man in the department who had a medal for exceptional bravery and address on the fireground was a dreg, and a union man. That's because it's municipal government, riddled with nepotism, cronyism, and corruption, that runs a fire department. The higher you went on the promotional ladder, the more really crappy stuff you saw being done, and your career path would no longer rise if you did much complaining about it to outside ears. Or, let's be frank, you were doing that stuff yourself, and you were not even thinking about complaining, only covering your ass if someone else complained.

3) Engine Company 2 would have a couple of firefighters, a pump operator/driver/chauffeur (the term used varies town to town) and an officer, which would be a captain or lieutenant. The officer sits up front, shotgun, and the firefighters have seats behind them.

A ladder company, or truck company, again according to what they call it in your town, usually has a driver, an officer, and truck dudes, but when the manpower was low, we sent it with just a driver, and pulled people from the engines or the ventilation truck or the ambulance to help him if he had to actually use the ladder. The important thing was to get the equipment there. Trucks and engines are set up with compartments all over them; the things are covered with doors. You can see that in any image. Every one of those is full of gear of one kind or another, and we all knew where everything was on every vehicle in the city.

If the lieutenant with the hose company inside a building called for a Sawzall, we knew where that was, in the rear compartment on the driver's side of Ladder 1, and someone would fetch it in to where the Lieutenant wanted something chopped up.

So a company would look different depending on the vehicle. But each company had a portable radio of its own, even if it consisted of only one fireman, as our ventilation truck did.

Nowadays, with cell phone tech, every man is wired up, and portable radios are a redundancy. That's not to say we don't still use portables, because we do. They are reliable in wet environments, tried and true.

Fireground tasks fall into several categories pretty much naturally. Someone has to get water into some hoses, someone has to get hoses into the building, someone has to walk around with axes tearing and breaking, which is loads of fun, actually.

When you find yourself pulling up to a burning building, one of the first things you want done is to kill the power, so no one has to worry about getting fried. Suddenly, with the power cut, there is a need for lights, and we had some, on the ladder truck, mostly, but also on the engines. To use those, you have reels of wiring, and somebody deploys those and sets up lights. At the outside end of the wires is the generator, and there were several of those, too. The vent truck had one, the ladders had one, and the newer engines had a plug or four on the side of them, as well. We used the generators before we did the plugs on the engines, though.

Those same wires ran fans, too, for ventilation. Clearing out smoke and superheated gases is a worthy goal; it lets the hose advance to the seat of the flames, and it prevents flashbacks if you do it right. With ventilation techniques, you can actually direct the fire where to go next, under good conditions.

Then there's the hoses. We generally only called them hoses when they were coiled up or being maintained. On the fireground, they are "lines" or "hose lines." They have to moved into place by main force, and then charged and used.

The chief officer doesn't go in. He stays outside on the street and works the radio, directing the rest of the crew to their various tasks.

cantdog

 

[Noor]

Reading cant's description reminds me how much different rural and small town departments are from big city ones.

I worked in a rural area and we carried scanners. We worked with a mix of paid and volunteer firefighters. When a call came in whoever was at the firehouse went out, then rest of the departments and the volunteers could be called on the scanner as well as neighboring communities departments depending on size of fire and what equipment was needed.

We rarely dealt with anything above 4 stories and electricity was easily shut off. The scariest thing for us was barns and fuel tanks, like propane. The first time you see propane tanks blow out a large barn from each side you never forget it. My first one the sides blew out maybe a 1/8 mile each way and then the roof collapses on top of it. No people inside, but some livestock didn't make it out, we watched some horses run back INTO the fire. Grass fires could be a big problem and tornadoes. We were in a serious tornado area and had to get all of our equipment in various safe places before they hit. We also had a local explosive addict which kept us on our toes. He mainly blew up things in dumpsters but not always. We also had recreational rock climbing, kayaking and canoeing in the area.

Parts of training were mind numbingly boring and repetitive, esp the EMT part. However, it did help a lot when you were running on no sleep and/or exhausted.
Fun parts of training were controlled burns, getting people out of smashed cars, climbing and water rescue. I used to be able to take a windshield out in about 2 minutes without breaking it!

Horrible stuff was motorcycle/car accidents, kids with fireworks, drug labs, trapped and dead people. Being in a rural area, you often knew everyone involved so going into auto pilot mode was essential at times.

 

[Noor]

Fun stuff

Another thing we did after a run was go to the local dairy which served ice cream and pig out. No one minded how we smelled there Everyone knew this so sometimes a bunch of people would be there waiting there. Sometimes we would have eating contests.

 

[galaxygoddess]

I bow, all of this I wouldn't have thought to ask, until I either came to it or wrote it and then someone said "you screwed that up"

That actually makes things a lot easier to work with.


I know the local firemen from where we moved from came out when mom had a heart attack once, so I only have a vague recollection of what they did, so I was going to ask mom about that part, but the rest of it is very helpful to what I want to do with what I'm working on.

Thank you lots






and an added thanks for your service, though I'm sure you heard it alot

 

[cantdog]

Firefighters are responsible for everything that isn't the mandate of some other particular agency. Chlorine leaks, organophosphate spills, tank farm explosions, train wrecks, rescues from high places, people trapped by floods-- unless there was someone else whose province it was, it devolved on us to deal with it. It's a very cool thing to make ready to go to work knowing that you can have no idea what you might be called to do that day.