Half-Life Fallout: Firefighting - Half-Life Fallout

...waterpig!

nah just joking man. glad you love what you do-I also love my job (loss prevention at a major retailer). Nothing like loving your job even if you don't make dick.

Haha this is so strange that this thread should pop up on the front page today! I just awoke from a dream where I was considering becoming a Firefighter.

I asked the dream person who suggested it, "What qualifications do you need?" and he answered, "Son, walking in there and saying, 'I want to be a Firefighter,' is qualification enough."

Is there a grain of truth in this or does my subconscious lie to me?

Mowgli, on Mar 27 2009, 05:51 AM, said:

Not sure about the UK (where I believe you live), but in the US it's very difficult and very competitive to become a firefighter, so I think your subconscious lied to you.

In the UK only they recruit so many (obviously) but get a lot of applications. My brother in law applied for it (I think he might have tried twice) but no luck.

Cake, I'm glad you went to CISD for that. Bodies are a sketchy thing. When I was 14 I went on a ride along with my neighbor, and I saw a decapitation on the freeway. It didn't hit me until almost a week later what I actually saw.



Thats what I will be rolling in this summer (Or actually in the back, with 12 other guys). Type II handcrew for the USFS. And this season might be a big one. Lets not hope for anything too crazy

Hm, why so competitive? Isn't firefighting a volunteer job? Or does it look good on your resume or something?

Firefighting is only a volunteer job in sparsely populated areas or something like that. In built up urban areas, it's a full-time job.

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Rest in peace brother

That is truly sad. Rest in peace.

Recently I've really started thinking about becoming a fireman. There isnt really anything else going over here that I think I'd fit with. Plus it seems like a pretty awesome job.

XJR, on May 6 2009, 06:32 AM, said:

Oh it is, there's nothing like it in the world.

Been awhile since I've posted here, thought it was long overdue. Had a birthday since, seen some things I didn't agree with, experienced others that were exciting and scary as well. Frequently, we'll run calls on the same person a couple of times a shift or in a month. A number of months ago, we were dispatched to a mother who was unconscious. She had stage 4 breast cancer (which is horrible to say the least, the cancer has spread to other parts of her body and can cause any number of problems depending on which organ it's in) and we took care of her while we waited for the ambulance to arrive. She was still breathing, still had a pulse, we just made sure she didn't get worse. She went to the hospital and that's the last we saw of her for a couple of weeks. The weird thing was, I used to work with her son when I was in retail. And he was there while we were working on her but he didn't recognize me. I used to bleach my hair for a year or so. Now it's mostly shaved and dark brown. Anyways, time goes by and we receive another call to the same address. Only this time, she wasn't breathing nor did she have a pulse. I'll save you all details on a few things here (it was messy), but after twenty minutes of CPR, we got pulses back. There's nothing like knowing you brought someone back.

We run into a few weird things everynow and then as well, for instance, an old lady concerned for her cat who managed to get stuck in her attic during july. While she's yelling at us to hurry and save her baby for fear of it starving or dying of heat exhaustion, yours truly is crawling around an sweltering attic trying to locate said feline. After two hours of searching, we had a few sightings, but the cat was too terrified of us to come anywhere close so that we could grab it. We left the attic way open with some food at the bottom and told her it would come down the same way it had come up when it wanted to. Sure enough, an hour or so later, she called the station to report that mittens (not the name of the cat, but I imagine it's not very far off) was safely in her arms, being spanked for disobeying her.

Over the course of a couple of years of being on the job, I have a great respect for car wrecks and being as safe as possible while on the road. From seeing fender benders to wrecks that no one should have survived from (but some do, even if it's just barely), I don't speed anymore and I'm not as aggressive on the road as I used to be.

Fires are a different beast altogether from the wrecks and medical calls we run. They can happen anytime, anywhere, and spread like you wouldn't believe. The reasons for most of them are almost always carelessness. During the summer, there was an apartment fire that started because some guy was trying to get rid of some ants that were crawling into and out of his patio wall. So, he believed the best solution was to use a can of hair spray and a lighter to burn them out. After it was all said and done, there was over a hundred thousand dollars worth of damage to his building but thankfully no one was hurt. I look at the news at how much (and how frequently) California is burning up and can't believe that all of those fires are either arson or just a careless cigarette. You would think that they would've learned after how many times it's gone up in smoke.

This was just an abridged version of the past four months, I haven't been updating this as much as I should or wanted to. But I'll start again from now on. The next day I work is two days from now (just got off this morning), so if there's anything to write about, you all will hear about it. Also, if there's anything I can think of that happened recently that I remember later, I'll add it here.

Well, it sure seems like quite the job.

Had a pretty odd thing happen at work yesterday. We get this knock on our door, so we answer it and it's this lady with a terrified look on her face standing next to a 3 year old boy. Apparently, he had been wandering around on our front lawn in front of a fairly busy street (speed limit is 45 on said street and trucks and 18 wheels drive up and down it all the time) when she was driving past. She stopped and picked him up and brought him to our front door. We had never seen him before, but he couldn't have been out there for very long, we had just gone inside after doing some training not more than five minutes before it happened. So we thanked her and watched over him while our LT called the sheriff's office. Twenty minutes later, they show up, but so do mom and dad. They tell us this isn't the first time he's "escaped" (their words, not mine) and it's happened while he was at daycare too. He just gets out somehow and walks around the neighborhood. We give them their son back and go on about our day. A couple of hours later, we see him again walking towards the station with mom this time screaming after him in her car. Was a pretty strange sight.

I have a great story about a pregnant lady I'll tell you guys about later on. Tired right now though.

A post in my old thread is long overdue, but this is about today. My department has acquired a piece of the world trade center towers (a steel beam) and have built a monument to display it outside of our fire station. I'll post pictures after the ceremony.

Oh and I'll tell you guys about that pregnant lady when I post pictures.

Whoah, I didn't even know this thread existed. Keep on keeping on, bro.