I Recently completed EMT class. I am now a certified EMT again.
I I have lost about 30 pounds and I haven’t been in this good of shape for 20+ years.
I attended a week long “pump academy” run by a neighboring departmentfor training on pumping and water supply operations.
I am now authorized/certified to drive Ambulances, fire engines, and water tenders. No big aerial trucks…sorry.
I have been responding to 911 calls since August.
Overall I’m having a blast and learning something new every day. We recently finished crew quarters at our station so we can actually hang out at the station waiting for calls if we want to.
Nicely done, dude! Volunteer firefighters in Canada are sometimes underappreciated. You are doing important and necessary work, and it sounds really fulfilling. Make sure you are taking some time off and looking after your health.
I have been a volunteer firefighter for close to 20 years. We rarely do over 100 calls, and I got to say while early on there was anticipation of the excitement of a call, over time I appreciate the rare emergency(s) better.
Firefighting in a district with a high number of calls tends to become one’s family, identity and life. Which is fine if that’s what one wants, but I do appreciate the other aspects, identities and families I have found outside of firefighting as they add a good deal of perspective and variety to my life.
In the late 80’s early 90’s I was a VFF. Did my training and certification. Since I lived on the opposite side of the village from the firehouse, I responded to the scene, my turnout gear in my trunk. I was excited and psyched when my tone alert went off in the middle of the night. My very first call!!!
It was a small dead tree on fire. I could have put it out with a garden hose.
One of the wildest fires in my tenure was a house painters garage, filled with hundreds of cans of paint. Lots of exploding cans of paint.
Your tree fire reminds me of one I saw. The fire was in a patch of short, dry grass between an airport terminal and a taxiway. The flames were maybe 2”/50mm high. I could have peed it out. By the time the $1million+ airport fire truck arrived, the fire had burnt about 1 square meter of grass. The truck shot a 1-second stream of water from its cannon and it was all over.
The first major fire I went to was a barn on a pig farm. We laid out 2,000 feet of 2 1/2 inch canvas covered hose to relay water. Naturally it became completely saturated with pig shit. Pressure washed it for days, looked clean. Reloaded it in the bed of the truck. On sunny days the stench would drop an elephant in its tracks. That summer we didn’t get the usual invites to area field days.
