Cooking , Cleaning and Pumping

My job makes me feel like a janitor sometimes. When theres no fire or medical calls, the station needs to be cleaned. Toilets need to be scrubbed, floors mopped, dishes washed. My last 96 hours of work have been devoid of calls. The preceeding shifts often quiping that they have done all the calls for us as their shift had nine or ten calls.
I have become intimately familar with Comet.
My dreams are haunted by mildewed dish racks and greasy pans.
Fournately my cooking prowess has improved. I've baked chicken with lemon peppercorn dressing (made from scratch), portobello mushroom burgers with pesto mayonaise and spicy pico de gaullo.
While the shifts have been devoid of calls I did start my driver operator training. Last night was spent learning the ins and outs of centrifugal fire pumps as presented by New Hampshire Fire Academy instructors on an overhead projector.
Theres a good deal of abstraction in the whole pumping process. Different pressures are acheived at various levels by cycling the water threw the pump a certain amount of times. As we serve a town with no pressurized hydrants, we need to create all the pressure ourselves through drafting. Pumps need to be set at certain pressures on the pump end so the guys on the nozzle have a consistent pressure high enough to knock down the fire.
The pump is basically another gear on the transmission of the engine. You put the truck into neutral and set the pump brake, and wait for the truck to idle down and then flip the switch to push the drive shaft up into the pump. It should catch with minimal grinding of gears. Then you get out and place wheel chocks and set your suction. Handlines or feeder lines are run off the truck or it is attatched to anothe engine or a tanker. Then you get to follow a bunch of gauges and listen for noises, monitor pressures and flow water for the guys in the fire actually enjoying themselves.
I chose to get involved in the driver operator program because, one I wanted to be able to drive the engines (what kid big or small doesn't want to drive the engine and toot the big airhorn?) but I also want to get a broader understanding of all the roles involved in the fire service. I worked for a while as a firefighter/EMT down in Mass. and I always had someone else driving the truck and running the pump. I spent a lot of time honing my rescue skills through the MFA's Rescue Technician program and eventually I went to paramedic school. I studied rural and urban search and rescue. Basically I spent alot of time learning all of the specialty skills of the fire service and I decided to take the driver operator program as a sort of return to the basics. I have found, however, that the intricacies of running a pump efficently are not all that basic, in fact its pretty challenging as there are a lot of numbers to keep track of.
Once we start the practicals, I'm told, everything will make a lot more sense. And I believe it, I always learn best by having the machine or equipment infront of me and playing with it until I figgure it out. Its just that Engine 2 is very expensive and I'm afraid my learning process will damage it.
And pumps are only half of the fun, next I get to learn to drive E 2 in all sorts of weather and conditions.
While all this is going on, I'm still working on getting myself in the best possible shape for the Wildland Academy. My body is constantly stiff from pack hikes, woodspliting, weightlifting, snow shoveling and stair climbing. A persistant ache in my left ankle has me smelling of IcyHot for most of the time.
But the pain is very focusing. Its like when I used to wear a fire academy ball cap at the gym so that everytime I passed the mirror I had a reminder of my goal. Eevrytime my ankle aches I have brief fantasies about carrying a Stihl with a 24 inch bar on a long hike into the backwoods. A crew of tired, aching firefighters treks behind me lugging shovels and axes, rakes and saws.
For years I did landscaping work with my father and it was great to be outside, working with my hands and, in all honesty, wearing a set of ear phones to drone out the din of the machines and the nagging customers requesting we "leave the lawn a bit shaggy" or "weed the garden and plant my turnups" or any one of a million other tasks that eighty something year old Italian men feel absolutely must be accomplished at noon in 90 some odd degree weather. While I love working as a fire/medic, people can sometimes get to me. 911 calls at 0400 for a toothache lasting six months try my patience.
But trees won't complain if the ride is bumpy, wildlife will be smart enough to flee once they smell smoke. Doing seasonal work in the wildland arena will recharge my batteries, so to speak.

Red Card

I was having flashbacks to my days in college when I decided it was a good idea to throw a forty five pound plate into my backpack and run a mile. In short it was not a good idea back then or really now either

Today the weight was a little over half of what it was in college but the distance was three times the above. I walked a mile and a half a way from my apartment complex in a light misting rain and turned around and walked back with the weighted pack.

No, I am not going stir crazy, well yes I am but thats not why I did it. As I mentioned before I am starting training to do seasonal wildland fire work. A spot on the state, and federal or private, crew is closely guarded. In addition to completing my up coming wildland firefighter and fire behavior class, I need three letters of recomendation and I need to pass "The Pack Test"-- a three mile hike in forty five minutes or less with forty five pounds on your back.

I plan on alternating with running and pack hiking for cardio on four out of seven days a week. I will still be following the mass building program that I picked up about a month ago involving kettlebells.

The pack test itself needs to be completed in the boots you will be wearing should you be accepted to the crew. I need a pair of boots anywhere for the class so I have invested in a pair of White's SmokeJumper boots. They're all leather 10 inch boots which will need a good deal of breaking in so as to be comfortable for my purposes. Once the weather gets better I plan on wearing the boots for my recreation hikes as well as my training. Antecdotes on how to cure the leather and break in the boots include filling them with boiling water or wearing them in the tub. Most guys I've talked to say you just need to keep wearing them and applying shoe grease or mink oil.

My current routine brings me back to my college days and, a bit sadly, it reminds me that those were a little while ago. Today's hike was not a killer but I felt it when I was done. My knees tend to pop and crack when I do my kettlebell front squats. And I'm still sore from four hours of spliting wood for my father in law.

The State fire crew is exceedingly competitive so I have also started making contacts with people in various federal organizations. As I am only part time (though I do get a decent amount of hours allowing me to live my lavish lifestyle) at Northern Fire Rescue, I could conceivably be a seasonal bum. In other words I could work out west on a handcrew or a helitack unit durring fire season and come back to New Hampshire for the off season.

As of right now, my wife says she would be okay with me doing the seasonal thing. Most guys don't even work on their off time as the money made from a season is padded generously with overtime. I think doing both would certainly be a nice balance. But I am trying not to get ahead of myself. I need to take one thing at a time and not get too excited because the reality is that I might not be accepted to the crew despite jumping through the hoops.

Red Sky at Morning....

I grew up on Narragansett Bay in Warwick Rhode Island. My uncle is a lobster boat fishermen and my father used to work with him on occasion before starting his own buisness. Kayacking and fishing from the breakwall were main sources of childhood, and later adulthood play. Along the way you pick up little superstitions. One is the saying "Red sky at night, sailor's delight. Red sky at morning, sailor take warning."
That little adage was playing through my head yesterday on the drive into Northern Fire Rescue as I saw the cherry red sky litterally over the station.
Day shift of my tour, 0700 to 1700 was acutally not all that bad. At around 0900 a sweet little old lady living with her sweet little old sister called 911. It seems that the sister was suffering severe hip pain and did not want to get up off the couch. We take the ambulance and find the woman sitting there on the couch with a can of ginger ale (with a bendable sippy straw) and a small plate of potatoe chips. She says she was vacuuming the day before and now it just aches.
Her grandson is "supposed to go to work and I don't want to bother him.." She doesn't realize that since he is her next door neighbor, he will see the big lights on the big green ambulance and drop what he's doing to come over and see if his eighty something year old grandmother and her ninety something year old sister (sitting quietly knitting in a chair) are okay. She wants us to take her to her doctor in the next town over.
While my partner BT explains that we can't do that and that we would have to take her to an emergency department, her grandson comes bursting in.
"Whats going on? Is everything okay."
I turn to him and say "Yeah, its cool. Hey, aren't you suposed to be going to work?" He smiles and we tell him his grandmother needs a ride to her doctor for a possible muscle pull. All of my exams showed gooseegg so I had no problem signing her off and releasing her to his care.
We go back to the station and inventory the EMS equipment until the tones come through at around 1800 (told you day shift was slow) for an elderly male who had fallen. But its the address that gives us pause, on a previous call a member of the service was assualted by the elderly man's meth head son. PD arrives before us and we end up signing the guy off as well.
Then we settle in for the night and I acutally get to watch the TV show that I wait all week for, following a fictional Toronto Police tactical team in their activities.
At four minutes after ten PM the tones come through for a structure fire. We scramble into bunker gear and jump on Engine 2, following the deputy chief out the shoot and down to what we think is the house. A simple two story ballon frame with nothing showing. Then we see a cop coming running down a long, long driveway waving his flashlight.
"You guys got heavy smoke conditions in a two story woodframe structure." He yells as we back the engine up and go up the driveway.
As advertised smoke is billowing out the door way of a pretty cool looking farm house. We pack up as BT charges an inch and three quarter and I take two vollies inside. Smoke conditions are pretty thick indeed, dark tarry smoke cascades through the front door as I push boxes of god only knows what out of the way. We can hear dogs yelping and barking and the report comes over the radio of at least ten dogs known to be in the house. Both human occupants, an invalid and a mentally retarded girl are clear of the dwelling and sitting in the chief's SUV.
The fire was reported on the second floor and thats where it seems to be as we drag the hose through a maze of stacked newspapers, old furniture and other pack rat odds and ends. I can feel things crunching under my knees so I start duck walking for fear of needles or other badness sticking through and getting me. On the stairs we start breaking long sets of windows to vent the smoke and I let a vollie take the nozzle while I get up behind him approaching the backroom where the fire is cooking.
A pretty decent little blaze is going, fueled by electrical entertainment equipment as my buddy cracks the line and starts to douse it. We break a few more windows and let the place air out. In all we maybe used 50 gallons of water, not wanting to reall damage the place. Little yappy dogs are skittering around everywhere along with a huge German Shepherd who refuses to leave his little corner of the room. Once we get the fire knocked down and the smoke clears I realize that the crunchy things I was crawling through was dog shit, about ankle deep and its all over my bunker gear.
We mop up and get out of there after midnight. Clean up back at the station has us hanging hose on the drying tower and repacking the four inch feeders we'd laid up the driveway. We scrub all the masks and refill the air pack bottles we used.
I have no sooner laid down in my bunk then the entire station goes pitch black and the phone rings.
"This is Brenda from Home Security, who am I speaking with?
"Nick from Norther Fire, what's going on?"
"Sir, this is important. How is the weather?"
"What? Its fuckin' cold. Wheres my power?"
"Sir is there an intruder in the building, if there is just say 'My aunt is ill."
I realize she wants some sort of password so I give my badge number and tell her the power went out and to leave us alone until later. While I hang up the phone the tones are dropping for an activated fire alarm at town hall and a medical service call at a frequent flyer's house. We try to call in on the radio as the phone rings again.
I get the phone while BT tells dispatch we're responding to the fire alarm. On the phone its the frequent flyer telling us not to rush, she just needs her oxygen bottle turned on because her home condenser unit is offline with the power outtage. We go next door to town hall, disable the alarm and then shoot over to the frequent flyer's house to take care of her O2.
Once we get back we begin the process of setting up the generator for the station and responding to numerous more service calls.
In short, my tour ends at 0700. I got out at 0900 and drove home, went to bed and woke up just now. Now its time for more sleep I think.

Survior Man Can Play

I started reading Survive by Les Stroud, the creator, writer, producer and host of the widley aclaimed Survivor Man. Through the course of learning how to make lean to shelters and catch scorpions, I found out he is also a singer song writer. Follow the links below as his music is really catchy and funky in that Canadian bluesy kind of way.

http://www.lesstroudonline.com/music/les_and_the_pikes/player/les_pikes_player.php

http://www.lesstroudonline.com/music/les_les_stroud/player/les_les_stroud.php