Any firefighters outside of California on here?

Nice man! Keep up the hard work. Wait until you do a 10k hose lay on the side of some steep mountain.

August fire last season

 

Yikes! I'll stick to structural firefighting thank you

 

Does anyone else's body feel beat up the day after a working structure fire?

I'd like to think I'm in decent shape. So I feel like my fitness level is not a contributing factor to feeling tired the day or 2 after a good worker.

 

That’s totally normal. That level of physical exertion in bunker gear is extremely stressful on your body, and it can be really difficult to recover from even if you’re in really good shape. Your body can’t shed heat like it normally does and that really messes with your ability to clear lactic acid and such. It’s like doing a really hard workout but it takes twice as long to recover from.

 

Well that makes sense. My first structure fire last summer was an apartment building which had at least 6 units and eventually it all burned down to the ground. Between being on the nozzle, overhaul and cleanup and then smaller fire elsewhere that day coupled with a few medical runs throughout the night, I ended up feeling the exhaustion of it all for the next 3 days.

That was something I hadn't anticipated.

 

Rehab water at yesterday’s structure fire.

 

Gettin some!

 

RV fire that was fully engulfed when we got there, the propane tanks were venting super loud when I hopped out of the truck. It sounded like I was walking up to a dragon.

Duty officer assigned me to the nozzle, I nuked it with probably 800 gallons from the smooth bore to put it out and clean the debris off the highway. The dually tires really didn't want to go out, it took a lot more than I expected to get them extinguished.

Put the time in over the past few weeks to get L-180, S-190, and S-130 done to get my red card. It wasn't part of recruit school but we have a lot of brush fires around here and my department requires it to go on mutual aid calls.

Had my final exam in recruit school last night and passed (barely) with an 83%. The instructor stuffed it full of tough/trick questions. I'm just glad I passed on my first try and don't have to retake it.

 

Steep terrain brush fire behind a private campground a few days ago.
We were the first brush truck on scene, hit the head and advancing flank with water at the base of the hill until we couldn't extend any further, then switched to digging tools and continued up the hill. Lots of mutual aid from our neighbor departments, even the Forest Service sent a hand crew out to assist.

 

FF from Maricopa County here!

 

Snag some of those and send me down my way brother! That’s sick!

 

FF/MEDIC here. Can't believe I've never seen this group on the forum!!

Asheville, NC

 

A week or so ago our brush truck got tasked with monitoring the east flank of a fire on a nearby gov training faculty.

 

That looks like one of our Brush Trucks lol how was that?

 

It was a whole night of hurry up and wait.

 

IMO, I would move to TX, get a volunteer department to put you through EMT basic, and the FF1, or the other option is to apply for the FS, BLM, NPS, etc it will mainly be wildland work, it can be brutal but very rewarding. Downside is you will be gone alot in the summer however, you will earn your fft2, fft1, sawyer exp, tons of goodies that will help you if you ever decide to transition to city/county fire on the westcoast due to the wildfires. Before I was in the military I worked for the forest service and did several seasons as a per diem wildland FF. Shit was a blast man.

 

or repack 1000 progressive hose packs in the old ass shitty GSA greens.

 

I had one like that on the East Desert Fire here in Arizona. Stayed on a structure for 12-13 hours watching the fire dance up and down this hill before finally doing some suppression and clearing.

 

Spent this weekend getting my SRT1 cert.

 

congrats! Where did you go for your training?