i always assumed that they fight fires from a safe distance and only risk their lives when there are other lives to be saved. is this wrong?
What makes you think that’s wrong?
“a safe distance” is not a static measure easily applied in every situation, it’s a calculated risk and sometimes chance is against you.
That’s the theory. Unfortunately, Fire didn’t read the Policies and Procedures manual. Sometimes what was a safe spot to fight a fire from becomes a not-safe-spot in, literally, seconds. They do a lot of education, research and practice to try to learn everything they can about how fire moves, what will accelerate or retard the fire, and there are lots of guidelines for making firefighting as safe as an inherently dangerous occupation can be…but they don’t always win.
Their job is also to do paperwork, keep their gear and rigs in good order, being tour guides and role models to visiting school children, keeping in good physical shape and in many forces, attending EMT and/or paramedic training and keeping up with their continuing education to keep that certification. In most places, firefighters are also EMTs, and many cities still combine fire and paramedicine on one dispatch and one building, and so you may be battling a blaze one day and responding to a medical emergency the next.
A few weeks ago I watched a few firefighters put out a small car (well, van) fire. The fire was in the engine bay and they were struggling to get the hood unlatched. I watched one of the firefighters literally stand in the flames since that was the only way he could get the nozzle into the small space they had made between the hood and the rest of the car with their prybars. I don’t actually know if he purposely walked into the flames or didn’t see them there, but they didn’t seem to bother him with all his gear.
Firefighter’s job: put the wet stuff on the red stuff.
If this is in reference to the firefighters in Arizona, they were not intentionally risking their lives more than usual. It is my understanding that they were making a fire break and got caught in a freak flare up caused by high winds. In general you don’t put your life at risk for property. But when dealing with such situations there is always some risk.
yes, this is in reference to the Arizona forest fire.
Except for people in fire, police and similar occupations you wouldn’t expect that people should be risking their life at all going to work–yet their were 4609 job-related deaths in 2011.
As to firefighters here are some numbers: 83 firefighter deaths in 2012 of which 41 were heart attack or stroke and 18 vehicle collisions:
http://www.usfa.fema.gov/media/press/2013releases/010713a.shtm
This was out of 1,100,000 firefighters [344,000 (31%) career firefighters and 756,000 (69%) volunteer firefighters] in 2011.
Looking at those numbers firefighting doesn’t look particularly dangerous overall.
Yes. On top of what’s already been mentioned they also do fire safety, fire training, fire inspections, forensics, community work, rescue cats from trees, and much more.
Actually for the majority of their working time they are doing nothing at all–other than sleeping or lounging around the firehouse. A common firefighting shift is 24 hours–they are sleeping several hours of this, watching TV etc.
I am most emphatically not a firefighter (that would be rather interesting, since I am paraplegic), but it seems to me that fighting a fire from a safe distance is not necessarily compatible with stopping the damn thing from spreading and incinerating the nearest village/town.
Unlike the Drama of the 1991 Film Backdraft where the fire was always portrayed as an unpredictable evil force, Wild Land fires are much more unpredictable.
Firefighters can most times control the environmental conditions in a structure with ventilation techniques that are imposable to control in the Wild.
The family’s of the lost firefighters are in my Prayers.
As a side note, I hated Wild land fires when I was a Firefighter. Most fires need to burn. Fire is a natural renewal that we are forced to combat to protect our lives and property
Our forests are not being managed for present day conditions IMO
Everyone wants the forest to look like they think it might have looked 10,000< years ago.
My husband (a retired paramedic/firefighter) describes it as “endless hours of boredom punctuated by minutes of pure adrenaline.” 
If they get too bored, they do “training exercises” out back, which consist of setting shit on fire and putting it out. Bored guys + oxygen tanks + a dumpster of trash = insanity. Back in the old days, they’d sometimes play darts with syringes (but I suspect that’s frowned on today) and play pranks on each other. Lots of pranks. They can get insanely goofy and childish…until the buzzer rings. Then it’s instant business.
Most professional fire departments fill the time when they are not sleeping with training and PT. There is certainly down time, but that is because you can’t predict when an emergency will happen.
Wildland fire fighting and structure fire fighting are not the same thing. Other than things burn, that’s about where the similarities end.
It would sure be great to have the tools of a structural fire fighter. Like water. 
Structural firefighter here… Yep… Water is nice; Hydrants are better… (: You wildland firefighters need a different moniker … maybe Super-Firefighters… cause it really is a totally different ball of wax.
Anyway, in reply to the van fire with the guy standing in the fire, I do this quite often. Back in the ole days, cars were made of metal and you could almost always grab the release latch and pop the hood. Nowadays there’s usually plastic that melts into the latching mechanism and then we get the oh so wonderful job and prying up the hood with haligans and spreaders… It’s a royal pain in the butt…
Firefighters are unusual people. They run in the opposite direction of other people, towards danger instead of away from it. Usually common sense and good training keep them out of trouble, but not always. Their sense of duty and professionalism can cause them to disregard their own safety beyond what is required of them. In recent years management of firefighters has evolved to help avoid these dangerous situations. In this recent wildfire tragedy a rapid change in the direction and speed of the fire overwhelmed them, perhaps unforeseeable. It is a dangerous job, not one where unforeseeable consequences can be avoided.
Mid-1980s. Late summer. Colville National Forest in northeast Washington State. Lightning fire. Bloody dry, and hot. Fire at the time burning along ridge-lines. Great danger the embers would roll down the slopes and create catastrophic fire. Not good for the logging industry at the time, let alone the Forest itself.
We were flown in by helicopters to a ridge-top. Single skid landing because there wasn’t much to the ridge-top. Hike for a mile or so to the fire further along the ridge-line and descending to get under the fire as it burned down the slope. Slopes maybe 45 degrees. Orders were to backburn a line maybe 50 feet downslope from the fire. Our fire would burn upslope as the fire came downslope. Back burning has it’s own dangers. Doing it on a slope a bit more so.
Worked like a charm. That was part one. Huh?
Part two was ensuring the line stayed cold. The crew I was part of lined up in the burn area parallel to the fire line, pretty much all along the same elevation for maybe 200 feet. Everyone had to be near a tree just big enough to put your arms around and lock your hands. Can’t use a smaller tree. We did this to create a yellow line (yellow fire shirts) visible from the air for the air strike. What the …?
The water bomber came in low and hot, parallel to the ridge-line with a bead dead on all the yellow shirts line up. Others away from the line had radios on ready to bark orders. We all stood out in the open so the pilot could see us. As the bomber approached orders came fast to grab your tree (lee side), head down, goggles on and wait. The pilot lined up on us and dropped fire retardant along our line. We all got slimed by the pink slurry. Cold, wet fire line. Fire wouldn’t burn through it and any rolling embers from above wouldn’t survive, either.
You never, ever washed a fire shirt if you’ve been slimed. It was kinda like a badge of honor back then. So no matter what fire you next wore it, it would spark a conversation and stories told again. And occasionally you spotted someone else on a different fire wearing a pink and yellow fire shirt.
It’s not done that way anymore. Fire science and fire safety have improved quite a bit.
Firefighters do many more paramedic calls than actual fire calls. By a ratio of about 2-to-1, I believe.
(This is for city firefighters; those fighting wildfires may be different.)
We do 0 paramedic calls … thankfully