Me

Volunteer fire departments are the backbone of the US fire service. No one has more respect for the spirit of volunteer firefighters- I began my career as a volunteer before moving on to do the job part time, then finally transitioning to being a full time, career firefighter.

There are advantages to both systems. The volunteer system is perfect for rural areas where the department doesn’t see more than a few calls a month. It’s inexpensive in terms of dollars, and this makes it cost effective.

Out of 461 total registered fire departments in Florida, roughly 315 departments use volunteers in some capacity. That ranges from a few auxiliary firefighters who will ride a fire truck along with a full time crew, to the more than 200 departments heavily utilizing volunteers to sustain daily operations.

The disadvantages to the volunteer fire system are:

• you are asking some citizens to assume the burden of protecting the community, while the vast majority of the community enjoys that protection at little to no cost. Those volunteers are paying for the community’s protection with their time, effort, and skill in exchange for a nominal fee or donation to the VFD.
• because their time is limited, volunteers don’t have the time to become as skilled as full time firefighters.
• Also because their time is limited, it is very difficult for volunteers to cover for a large number of calls. As a result, there is a limit to the number of calls that can be covered by volunteers before they begin to balk.

The traditional volunteer system has a fire station where the trucks and equipment are stored, and when a fire or other emergency is reported, volunteers respond to the scene while a few volunteers stopping by the station to bring the fire truck(s). Once call loads get to a certain point, and in my experience that’s about 1,200 call outs per year, it becomes more and more difficult to maintain this system. Some volunteer systems respond to EMS calls, and those departments are nearly always over that limit.

It’s at this point that volunteer stations begin having a crew stay at the station, just like a career department. The volunteer crews at the station carry the bulk of the runs, if not all of them.

Even then, there are only a few volunteer departments who manage to maintain a large call volume, and it’s getting more and more difficult to find volunteers nowadays. Especially with the modern trend of EMS and fire being combined, it’s even more difficult. It’s much easier to attract volunteers to fight fires (which volunteers and career firefighters both love to do) than it is to get volunteers to climb out of bed at 2am to wipe some old lady’s ass while picking her up off the bathroom floor. Most EMS calls are not life or death emergencies, and volunteers (neither do career, but you can make them) just don’t like getting out of bed for them.

For those reasons, the busier volunteer departments have to rely on paid EMS and fire crews for at least part of the day each day for the most part, because there simply aren’t enough volunteers to cover those stations at those call volumes.

Those 200 Florida departments who heavily use volunteers tend to be in rural areas where call loads are lower. In fact, all but 19 of those departments are north of Gainesville, with 15 of the 19 in the state’s peninsula being in Glades (pop 13,000 with 5 VFDs), Highlands (pop 100,000 with 6 VFDs), and Hendry (pop 40,000 with 4 VFDs) counties, all counties on the west bank of Lake Okechobee.

There are a large number of hybrid departments- where paid crews are augmented in some way with volunteers, but even that becomes difficult to maintain. One large fire department that is hybrid of which I am aware is Virginia Beach, VA, who staff the EMS side of the department with volunteer rescue personnel.

I was a volunteer for years: in Florida and Virginia Beach, where volunteers spent the night at the station assigned to a fire truck or Rescue Squad (volunteers no longer staff fire engines there), at several departments in Arkansas and in Florida where volunteers respond directly from home. Some of those departments had me getting paid to staff the station during the day while the volunteers were at work.

So what happens after you get hired? For the first several weeks, you attend a training program that is taught by some of the firefighters you will be working with. There are things and procedures specific to your individual department.

The SCBA your department uses, the medical protocols the department follows, personnel accountability, standard procedures for various functions like firefighting, extrication, operating our powered equipment, and more. After three weeks of training, you are assigned to the crew you will be working with. Most firefighters work 24 hour shifts, and each crew is called by its company number and crew letter: Station 1 A shift, or Ladder 72 C Shift.

Each piece of fire apparatus has what’s called “minimum staffing,” that is, the minimum number of firefighters that must be assigned to the vehicle at any one time. For example, at a station there might be a fire engine and a rescue unit, with 4 people assigned to the engine and 2 to the rescue for the day, but minimum staffing for them is 3 on the engine and 2 on the rescue. This means one of the personnel assigned to that crew can be off on vacation, sick leave, or temporary assignment at any one time. If the number falls below that, a spare firefighter can be “floated” to that crew for the day, or if none are available, someone from another shift is assigned overtime for the shift.

When you are new to the crew, you don’t count towards minimum staffing, you are supernumerary. You remain in that status until you are approved to count towards staffing. To do that, you must prove to the crew you can operate as a part of that crew and contribute to its mission. The officer in charge of that crew is the one who decides, but most officers make it a vote amongst the crew. Hey, if the new guy isn’t up to scratch, it’s their lives on the line, so it’s a fair way of doing it. The process usually takes 5-7 shifts, which is about 2 or 3 weeks. Until then, you concentrate on learning what you need to learn in order to be a help instead of a hindrance.

When you arrive at a station to be a new crewmember, you learn a few important things:

• Don’t touch the thermostat. You haven’t been here long enough to have earned that right.
• Don’t touch the remote for the TV. Shouldn’t you be learning something right now instead of goofing off?
• Don’t be the first person to sit down. Don’t be the last one to get up when there is work to be done.
• If you are 5 minutes early, you are already 10 minutes too late.
• You better make sure your assigned truck and the kitchen are clean.
• If another crew member asks you to do something on an emergency scene do it and do it well.
• If you don’t know how to do it, ask. No one wants someone winging it. They will respect you more if you ask than if you screw it up.
• We don’t care what you did, where you worked, or who you were before you were hired. You work here now, and you need to earn the right to be one of us. Act like you want to be one of us.

Those first shifts are spent memorizing everything about the truck you are assigned to- where every single piece of equipment is. How to operate every single piece of that equipment. Once your crewmembers are satisfied that you are knowledgeable enough to operate as part of the crew, your officer notifies the battalion chief that you now count for staffing. Now you are part of the crew. Time to prove to them that you deserve to stay there.

You spend the entire first year mastering the basics of being a firefighter. You are on probation for at least the first year. The leather front on your fire helmet is orange and says “Probationary” on it, and the reflective tape on your helmet is also orange. That way everyone on the emergency scene knows you are still learning the job, so they won’t expect more than you are capable of handling.

During that first year, you should spend every spare minute on shift studying something about the job.

Each 90 days, there is a course of instruction for you. There are things you must master during that 3 month period, and there is a written and practical test at the end of each period. The first one contains a map test, among other things. It has questions like:

You are driving south on First Avenue on the way to a call at 804 West Main Street. When you approach Main Street, do you take a left or a right?

If you happen to be a paramedic, you are also precepting at this time. You get paired with a senior paramedic whose job it is to teach you the protocols for medical emergencies. It’s up to that person to decide when you are ready to face the medical director’s exam. Fail it, and your precepting continues. That exam is where you sit in front of the department EMS chief and the medical director (who is a doctor) and they pepper you with questions on medical issues. Pass, and you can practice as a paramedic. Fail, and you have to remain precepting for a bit longer. If you can’t successfully complete that preceptorship in a reasonable amount of time, you are fired.

After you count for minimums, you will likely be on a rescue squad for at least the next month. Then you will rotate back and forth between that rescue and the engine.

Once you pass that first 90 day exam, you are now eligible to float to other stations, where you will be assigned to a rescue unit for the shift. Why a rescue? Because every rescue in the city is identical to every other, and has exactly the same job. No one has to worry that you don’t know what you are doing.

During that year, you have a lot to learn. You learn how to refill SCBA bottles, how to perform vehicle extrications, and how the department you now work for operates. Once that first year is done, you now know the absolute minimum you need to know in order to be successful. You can never know enough when you work in the fire department. There is always more to learn.

It all sounds difficult, but it really isn’t, as long as you are willing to work at it and aren’t a complete idiot. I was a preceptor and an officer, and in all the years I did it, I only saw a dozen or so who had their probation or preceptorship extended, and of those I only remember three who were let go. One of them (23 years old!) quit after his first shift because his mother said firefighting was too dangerous and wouldn’t let him do it. Imagine being a grown man, spending a year and $10,000 to become a firefighter, only to have your mother tell you you weren’t allowed to do the job.

So at the end of that first year, your officer and crew have decided you have learned all you need in order to be a permanent fixture. You are invited to a city commission meeting where you are sworn in, taking an oath that is remarkably like the one when joining the military. At the conclusion of that ceremony, you get your permanent leather front to your helmet, and a new set of yellow reflective tapes to replace the orange ones. You are now one of us and you get to uphold the traditions of the department while also ensuring those who come after you do the same.

Central Florida Fire Academy

To orient you: On the grounds of the fire academy, the classrooms were in th5 buildings in the lower right corner. The building labeled “2966” was the burn building. Three stories tall, it’s where we did all of our practice fires. The building just above the word “Central” was set up for climbing, rappelling, and ladder drills. The field just below it and to the left was where we practiced natural gas and vehicle fires. The large building just below the pond had a fire station and some dark mazes in it.

There were field sessions and classroom sessions. Classroom sessions were where we learned regulations, fire theory, and which NFPA chapter regulated what activity. I remember the fire academy was divided into two sections- the first section lasted about 3 months, and we did about 1/3 field work and 2/3 classroom. Session two was flipped- another three months of about 80% field work.

We began every field day in the fire academy the same way:

We would line up in ranks on the pavement in front of that fire station with our gear on the ground in front of us. The chief instructor would walk in and yell “GO!” and you would have 60 seconds to get all of your gear on properly. Then the drills would start.

I went to the academy on a schedule that saw us doing field sessions all through the summer. That was brutal. You learn not to eat breakfast or lunch. All we would have for breakfast and lunch was gallon jugs of Gatoraide. I swear I was drinking two to three gallons of that stuff every single day I was in school. The instructors used to tell us that, if we did eat, we should eat something colorful so our vomit would be entertaining. They called it our art project. I think I threw up in training at least once a month. You try not to get it on you or your teammates, wipe your mouth, and keep going. For God’s sake don’t throw up while you have an SCBA mask on.

Half of the field days in session two was always us doing the “Big Three.” You would put on an airpack for time and score, then pull an uncharged hose from the hose bed about 200 feet, charge it, then use the water stream to knock down three cones that were 50 feet away. Then move over to pick up and carry a 100 pound ladder through an obstacle course and raise it against that ladder drill building. All in full gear, all for time, and all of it with the instructors grading everything.

You could lose points:

• If you forgot to sing out that both of the pressure gauges on the SCBA were within 100 psi of each other
• Didn’t call out that you had checked that the dogs on the ladder were both locked, points off
• staggered on your feet when water pressure was applied, points off.
• Face shield on your helmet not all the way down, points off
• If either end of the ladder touched anything it wasn’t supposed to (the ground, a cone, another student), you guessed it…

There seemed to be an endless list of things that got points deducted.

We did hundreds of drills that included:

• crawling through pitch black mazes that went up and down stairs, had ropes in them set up to entangle you, dolls and mannequins hidden in them you had to find, sometimes with choke points so small that in order to make it through you had to take the tank off your back while keeping the mask on, pass the tank through first, then put it back on after clearing the choke point.
• raising a 30 foot ladder to completely vertical, fellow students holding it there with ropes while you climbed up one side, went over the top, then climbed back down the other side.
• Rappelling from the third floor to the ground, then learning to rappel from the third floor in to the second floor window, tie a harness on to another student, attach them to your gear, then out that window with them to the ground.
• We ran the combat challenge once a month

And of course we put out fires: Basement fires, car fires, gas fires, you name it, we learned to put it out. It was an incredibly fun and rewarding experience. We did everything you could think of that a basic firefighter would do. Practiced with axes, saws, pike poles, air chisels, crowbars, you name it.

Even training like this was dangerous. Several firefighter candidates have been killed in training. One in Miami died from heat stress. Another in Orlando after falling from the ladder building was giving her class a thumbs up as they took her to the hospital. Her aorta ruptured after she got to the ED, and she died right there. It’s a dangerous business.

At the end of all of that training, a state examiner came and tested our skills. First a written exam, followed by “the Big Three,” then 5 random skills and an oral quiz about HAZMAT procedures. My class started with 30 people. Of them 24 graduated, and 22 of us passed the state exam.

As far as I know, all but two of us is now retired, and those two are now chief level officers.

For the most part, the women didn’t do as well. There were 5 women in my class. Two didn’t get certified. Of the three who did, one was a beast. She was a Native American and I swear her Indian name had to be Kicks Lots of Ass. That woman was a true warrior who didn’t know what the word quit meant. She was also the oldest one of us. I can’t imagine going through that class as a 40 year old.

One of the guys who didn’t pass was a heartthrob. Women loved him, he was a good looking guy who had abs that looked like he did sit-ups in his sleep. Strong as an ox and could run laps for days. He was a nice guy, but he was dumb as a post. He was so good looking that he was the one the local news channel did a story on how hard it was to become a firefighter. So why did he fail?

I spent 4 hours the day before the state test trying to teach him the eight knots you had to know to pass the state test. In that four hours, I managed to get him to tie one of them correctly on a consistent basis: a bowline. (Some of the others were clove hitch, figure eight, figure eight on a bight, chimney knot, sheep shank, sheet bend, I can’t remember what the eighth was, it’s been 30 years) Anyhow, as luck would have it, the knot he was asked to tie by the examiner was the one knot he had been able to master- the bowline.

He got it wrong and failed the exam.

That fire academy no longer exists. It shut down, and a chapter of central Florida history came to a close. 48 years of teaching young recruits to become firefighters. Three classes a year most years, usually 20-30 per class. Thousands of firefighters began their careers there.

Everyone seems to enjoy the inside information from the fire department. So here is a brief series about what the fire department in Florida is like. Of course details vary by department, and we aren’t like departments up north, where the department pays your way through the academy. (unless you are a minority or a woman- see below)

Licensure

Firefighting is a pretty popular career. To become a firefighter in Florida, the law says you have to be licensed by the state. There are two ways to do that-

• Go through the fire academy, which takes from 4-6 months (depending on how many hours you go per week). When I went, we trained three nights per week for 4 hours each, and 8 hours on Saturday. It took 6 months. About 80% of those who began my class went on to pass the licensing exam.
• Or, if you can prove you were a certified firefighter from another state, you could challenge the exam. Most who do this don’t pass, mostly because they don’t understand the little things the examiners are looking for.

That licensing exam is a beast. First, a written test, followed by a practical exam. The practical exam is things like knot tying, hazardous materials awareness, and the “big three.” There are many small places where you can lose points, and missing more than a few of them means you fail. Passing says you have passed “minimum standards” to work as a firefighter in Florida. The journey is just beginning.

Once you complete that hurdle, you have to become either an EMT-Basic, or a Paramedic. It isnt’ required by law, but I don’t know of a single fire department that hires firefighters who aren’t also certified in one of these. EMT takes 1-3 months, and Paramedic takes 6 months to a year, depending on how many hours per week your school holds class. Then of course, there is the obligatory licensing exam.

There are a few departments who will hire EMTs and Medics without fire certifications, but they can’t fight fire, and get A LOT less money. Some other departments will hire paramedics and then put them through the fire academy, medic school is more demanding than the fire academy.

Many applicants will work for an ambulance company somewhere while waiting to be hired. The pay is not very good (Taco Bell pays more than EMTs make driving an ambulance), and spending too long at one of these companies (more than 2 years or so) gets you labeled as unhirable. Departments just assume there is something wrong with you.

Hiring Process

So now you are a certified firefighter. How do you get a job? You look for fire departments that are hiring. Some departments are better than others. Each has different pay and benefit structures. Some are better at their jobs or better equipped than others. You really should research a department before you apply.

Some departments have additional requirements. Some require that you be certified as a HAZMAT Technician, some hire paramedics only, some require that you be a certified Emergency Vehicle Operator. It varies by department. Generally, the more certs a department requires, the more it pays, the better it is to work there, and the more competitive the hiring process.

Some departments don’t get enough qualified minority applicants, so they will hire a limited number of uncertified people. The competition is fierce for these spots. One department I know of got applicants from all over the USA for these spots. If selected, those departments pay you to attend the schools to get your certification. Some departments play it shady to increase minority applications for those programs- one even ran the ads for it only in Spanish and only in the Spanish only newspapers in the area.

When my old department would have an opening, we would get about 200 applications for each open position. Departments like Boca Raton and Orlando have very high starting pay and great benefits. As a result, they get the pick of the best, and will get up to a thousand applicants for each open position. There had to be a way to filter out the lazy and stupid. There are numerous ways to do that.

We had a written exam, as most departments do. Of those who took the exam, the top 25% were invited to return for the practical exam. The practical exam can be as simple as a combat challenge, or a more complex one. Here is the combat challenge, which looks easy, but certainly is not:

You have to finish that in less than 8 minutes to even be considered, many can’t finish at all. My best time is 3 minutes and 42 seconds, and that is a good time. The stuff you see them using in that video is full weight firefighting equipment. These guys in the video are some of the fastest in the world at that drill. In fact, the world record is 1:14.76, so the guy in that video is only about 3 seconds from a world record.

• That firefighting gear is heavy and hot. It’s like exercising while wearing a 40 pound sleeping bag.
• Those rolled up hoses at the beginning on the stairs? the one he carries is about 70 pounds. The roll he hoists with a rope is about 50 pounds. Those gloves are slick, and they make that hoist a challenge
• Your feet have to touch every step on the way down.
• That metal beam on the sled that he’s hitting and driving with a sledge? It weighs 150 pounds
• That charged hose he’s dragging weighs about 170 pounds with the water in it
• The dummy he’s carrying weighs about 200 pounds.

These exercises are designed to wear you down, upper and lower body, as well as cardio. It’s difficult. As I said, many people can’t do it. When I did my personal best of 3:42, I almost passed out at the end. I had to have people help me get my gear off because my arms refused to work and I was seeing stars, which before that point I thought was a myth.

Some departments have you crawl through mazes in the dark, with the mazes being very nearly to small to fit through. Other departments have medical scenarios. The end result is the same- the department generates a hiring list that narrows down those hundreds of applicants to a ranked list of perhaps 20 or 30 recruits, and the department hires from that list. The people who tend to be at the top of one department’s list tend to be at the top of everyone’s list, so most departments only consider their lists valid for six months before retesting to generate another list.

When an applicant is offered the job, they are background tested. Those requirements vary. All will exclude people with felonies. Some departments will exclude anyone with a misdemeanor, or require waivers. My department was no criminal convictions ever, and no traffic tickets in the past 36 months.

When I was hired, I tested for three different fire departments:

• In the first, I was #7 on the selectee list. They hired numbers 1-5, number 14, and number 19. Why did they skip? Number 14 was a paramedic, and number 19 was a woman. There are very, very few women firefighters. Quotas, don’t you know.
• The second one, I don’t know why I didn’t get it.
• I was hired by the third department- there were two of us hired that year. It was the first time in 2 years they had hired anyone, and the other firefighter hired with me was a woman.

Yeah, being a woman, a minority, or a paramedic makes it much easier to get hired. If you can manage to be all three, you can pretty much have your choice of any department you want. White EMTs without experience? Your odds are about 1 in 400 of getting hired by the time you consider schooling and the hiring process. Some don’t make it through training, and many people go through the licensure process and never get hired before their firefighting license expires. They will never get hired. Like sperm, they die off before ever becoming what they could have been.

Hired

From there, you are hired as a probationary firefighter. There is a training program for most departments, then you make it on to a crew. Once you report to the crew, there is still more training before you can operate on your own, and before you can get off probation. Your crew and the training officers decide if you make it all the way through your probation. That’s a future post.

Fire engines are all built the same basic way. They have a pump, some mounted in front of the powerplant, some behind. The vast majority of fire pumps are centrifugal pumps. That is, the shaft of the pump spins a sort of pinwheel called in impeller that throws water from the center of the impeller to the outside.

One thing is always in common- the intakes for the pump are always located at or below the centerline of the pump, and the discharges are located above the centerline of the pump. Here is a fire pump that has been removed from the fire engine and has cutaways for students to learn how a pump works.

Fire pumps on trucks are rated by gallons per minute that can flow from the pump while it is drawing a suction from a static source like groundwater up a 10-foot vertical lift and a discharge pressure of 150 psi. If they are being supplied by pressurized water, like from a hydrant, they can pump far more. The pump on my last engine was rated for 1625 gpm, but we went out and tested it for training once while hooked up to a hydrant on a 36 inch water main and got more than 2800 gpm.

You can quickly see a pump’s capacity without even looking at the data plate by just counting the discharges. The only ones that count are 2.5 inches or larger.

• 2.5 inch discharge: Rated for 250 GPM
• 4-inch discharge: Rated for 625 GPM
• 5-inch discharge: Rated for 1,000 GPM
• 6-inch discharge: Rated for 1,440 GPM

As an example, my engine had 4 inch and a half discharges, which don’t count. It also had 4 two and a half inch discharges and a 4 inch discharge.

For supply connections, we had one on each side of the engine, and one on the front bumper. Since that one on the front bumper had piping that had to bend around the engine, front axle, and other structures, it was not as effective due to friction losses as the ones on the side of the truck, which went directly into the pump itself.

Fire engines can have a water tank as small as 300 gallons, although 500 is typical. Since we were in a an outlying area of town with hydrants that could be farther away, the tank on my engine was 1250 gallons of water and 50 gallons of foam concentrate. The other engines in the city had 750 gallon tanks.

The hose carried on a fire truck is impressive, and the smaller the tank, the more hose and other equipment it can carry. My engine carried:

• 1200 feet of 5 inch supply line
• 500 feet of 3 inch supply line
• 300 feet of a 2.5 inch attack line in the hose bed
• 250 feet of 2.5 inch attack line in a crosslay
• a pair of 200 foot long 1.75 inch attack line in two different crosslays
• 100 foot of attack line on the bumper for car and trash fires
• other miscellaneous short lines for odd jobs, which totaled another 300 feet or so

An engine with a small 300 gallon tank has quite a bit more room for hoses and other firefighting equipment. In addition to all of the hoses, we carried hose fittings, spare nozzles, fans, saws, extension cords, power tools, 12 spare air bottles for SCBA, a ground monitor for big deluge operations, another 25 gallons of Class A foam, medical equipment, thermal imaging equipment, hydraulic and pneumatic extrication equipment, 5 different ladders, and more.

A person who was going to drive that truck had to have at least 18 months on the job, spend at least 50 hours driving it under instruction from a senior driver, had to attend and pass a pump operator’s course, and be able to navigate our obstacle course made of traffic cones. Also, he had to demonstrate the basic maintenance and operation of every single item on the vehicle.

A new guy at our station had to, within 2 weeks of being hired, be able to draw from memory a diagram of the contents of the entire truck. Additionally, he had to be able to go get any piece of equipment when asked, without opening any compartment other than the one where the equipment was found. Firefighters who couldn’t do that would have their probation extended, and if they still couldn’t do it in a reasonable amount of time, they were terminated.

In a future post, I will explain everything it took to become a firefighter in my department.