Greatest Job

Ladders are one of the most well recognized pieces of equipment in the fire service. Much like contractors, we have to be able to reach different parts of buildings, parts not normally accesible to regular people. Ladders come in handy, but you need to know how to set them up properly, how to foot them and keep them stable while you work off of them.
In an effort to practice with this vital pice of equipment, my class met at the Mass Firefighting Academy's facility in Stow. the facility has a large, three story burn and smoke building in the center of the drill yard. We set up ladders to each floor and spent the day climbing in and out of the windows and practicing weaving a leg through the rungs so as to hold ourselves in place when our hands are busy.
It was a particularly cold day for late October and snow was falling as we scrambled up and down ladders. When a firefighter climbs a ladder, he has to check that the pawls, locks that keep the fly section of the lader extended. Upon checking that, the firefighter has to yell "Pawls locked!"
The day was long, running around with ladders weighing upwards of 450 pounds on our shoulders, scaling buildings and raising and lowering our tools. Exhaustion set in on the way home, with hopes of the next day be relaxing as there was no academy class scheduled.
Waking up to sound of my pager, I rushed to the station. Apparently, a car had struck a bicyclist, killing him instantly. To his luck, the driver of the car was a former EMT, he performed CPR on the body until our Squad arrived and shocked him back to life with an AED. He died again and the AED brought him back to life, is blood pressure soaring over two hundred. A LifeFlight helicopter was flown in to transport him to a trauma center in downtown Boston. Helicopters carry alot of fuel and therefore require an engine on standby should they crash or burst into flames.
The LifeFlight pilot, a Nam vet called Rat, dove the chopper in like he was back in the paddies of Southeast Asia. The two flight doctors onboard and the EMT they take with them bailed out and spent a good twenty minutes trying to establish an airway on the patient. Once again, no airway, no patient. Eventually they managed to get an OPA into his throat and treat him with drugs available in hospitals.
Upon returning to the station, the tones went off again for a chimney fire. We rushed right back out and I realized I have the greatest job on the face of the earth.