Fire Academy

I thought I would start using the blog to keep y'all updated with my progress at the fire academy. From now on, I will be posting something often.

Today, Friday, September 10th, I got to the station early so I could fill up my SCBA (airpack) bottle. It was just barely below full, but they will make us do pushups if it is not completely full. After filling up my bottle, we lowered the flags to half mast in honor of those who lost their lives on September 11th, 2001. As the rest of the recruits started to arrive, we lined up in our stretching lines on the apron (fire truck driveway). We started our stretches and then jumped right into our PT (Physical Training) test.

The first week, I did 27 pushups in 1 minute, 31 situps in one minute, 2 pullups, and ran 1.5 miles in 14:05. This week, the second week, I did 37 pushups in one minute (10 more than last week), 35 situps in one minute (only because my abs were sore from the 50 situp punishment from the day before because a couple of people didn't have a pen on them), 4 pullups, and I ran the 1.5 miles in 13:05 (1 minute less than last week). Since last Tuesday, I have lost 12 pounds... I now weigh 236 pounds. I am not even close to where I need to be physically, but I will get there.

Yesterday and today, we were outside practicing ladder skills that we had learned in class on Wednesday. Yesterday, we practiced ladder carries, roof ladders, pompier ladders, attic ladders, and emergency ladder egress. Ladder carries were not hard at all, but carrying a 35 foot extension ladder with three sections is a lot more difficult than it sounds, simply because of the weight of the ladder. After lunch, I came back to practice the other skills. Well, during lunch, it rained, so all of the ladders and roofs were more slick. Lucky me! So I begin to practice setting up a roof ladder (ladder with hooks on the end so it can hook onto the peak of the roof). I carried the 20 foot roof ladder up a 24 foot straight ladder. Once I got to the top, I had to lock in with my legs (very difficult to do with large feet), so that I can use both hands to get the other ladder onto the roof. After pushing the roof ladder up, I climb it and come back down to the first ladder, do a leg lock, take the roof ladder off of the roof, then bring it back down to the ground.

Then I went to the next station. I practiced climbing up a folding attic ladder to the second floor, climbing through a hole in the floor to get there. After we get to the second floor, we got to practice an emergency ladder egress. For this, we crawl out of a window onto a ladder, then slide down the rails of the ladder to the ground (the most fun skill of the day). Once we completed that, we practice using a pompier ladder. A pompier ladder is used to scale the sides of highrise buildings. It is a single beam, with a big hook on the end, and cross bars to climb on. Basically, you swing the hook end of the ladder into the window of the floor above you. Once it is hooked on the window sill, you climb up into the window above you. For training, we placed a pompier ladder into a second floor window, climbed it up to the window, then came down through a different window, sliding down the ladder again.

Today, we set a 35 ft extension ladder up to the window of the fourth floor of the drill tower. We had to climb up with a sledge hammer to the fourth floor. Once we got to the fourth floor, we had to do a leg lock, then swing the sledge hammer into a panel beside the ladder. I was a little nervous about being four stories up, with no hands on the ladder, and swinging this sledge hammer around, but I got through it. Next, we climbed a 24 ft extension ladder to the second floor landing of a fire escape with a pike pole. Once we got to the landing, we practiced sounding out the floor, to make sure it will support our weight, and then we climbed up over the railing and onto the landing. After completing that evolution, we practiced raising all of the different types of ladders. While we were raising the 35 ft extension ladder, the halyard (the rope you pull to raise the ladder up) snapped and the two fly sections came crashing down. We were lucky that no one had their hands in the rungs, because it could have broken, if not severed something.

There's so much that I have experienced already, and I wish I could tell it all, but I've already typed too much for one post. Keep coming back, I'll be posting often.