Half-Life Fallout: Firefighting - Half-Life Fallout

Brumisator, on 11 September 2011 - 05:48 AM, said:

Shitty admin =P

Today I saw the movie The Firemen's Story on TV.

It was a documentary about the firemen that where at the WTC at 9/11.
I have deep respect for those guys, it's very emotional to watch them tell their story's.

It is also on Youtube, for everyone that is interested you can see it here:




I always wanted to be a firefighter (or helicopter pilot , or drive an ambulance), but it's very hard here to become a professional firefighter, most of them are volunteers.
A few months ago are government lowered the amount of money that has to go to the firedepartments, I think it's on of the most stupid things to do...

This is some footage of the firedepartment of my city, those sirens are nice and loud, but I like the Americans better




We even have an Ambulance here with American sirens, it's the only 1 in the Netherlands, and you can hear it from miles !!

There were a lot more people there than I had expected, it was great to see so many from the community to join us in the unveiling. I'll take some better ones tomorrow when I work, ones that aren't blocked by a bunch of people.

I don't remember exactly how long ago it was, but we get a call in the middle of the night for an obstetrical emergency. These calls are few and far between, but most of the guys have families and have kids of their own so it's not foreign to them. We get down from the rig to see a car in the middle of an intersection, a guy jogs towards us and tells us that they were on the way to the hospital but had to stop since they didn't think they would be able to make it (the hospital is literally two minutes down the road) and called us. We come around to the other side of the car to see his wife in the back seat. Now, from the other side of the car, all we could see was the back of her head, she was leaning up against the driver side door in the back seat. Making our way to the other side, we can see she's propped her legs up on top of the seats to her right and left on the passenger side, spread eagle. She happened to be wearing a dress but no panties, it surprised us to say the least.

The first thing we're supposed to do is to check for crowning (of which there was none) so she actually helped us along. We asked her some other questions (how far along she was, how far apart the contractions were, etc.) and took a few vitals before the ambulance arrived. We loaded her in and asked if they needed a rider (an extra set of hands since there would only be one paramedic in the back while the other drove) but they said they wouldn't be going very far. We cleared the scene and hear later on that a minute later, she delivered in the back of the ambulance.

shampo0o, on 11 September 2011 - 11:16 PM, said:

I don't think it's working the ass in the red car (what is it a Nissan) doesn't make even the slightest effort of letting it pass first.

Better forewarning is necessary, though. I had an ambulance practically on my bumper, before I noticed it.

Berrie, on 13 September 2011 - 05:48 AM, said:

Looks like an old Hyundai Tiburon driven by someone who should have their license revoked.

Depending on how fast they were going, the siren only reaches so far. As the vehicle goes faster, the range of the siren decreases drastically. For example, if the fire truck I'm driving is going sixty, the normal "wail" siren we have here only travels 12 feet in front of me. That's why we have a queue (or wind up) and we use our air horn frequently.

I'm still a fire fighter, but I have my RDO, which means relief driver operator. I basically fill in if our normal driver is off for vacation/sick/whatever. I still like being a firefighter a lot more, you don't get to have as much fun as a driver, but there's nothing like driving code 3 to a call.

I think it would be a nice feeling to drive a big fire engine to the emergency you need to be at, you got a lot of responsibilty at that moment.
And Cake, when you are the driver, you only drive to the fire and control the pumps or something?

Doppler effect aside, that a-hole had plenty of time to move over and slow down. The bus was right behind him and lit up like a Christmas tree for a quarter mile.

shampo0o, on 13 September 2011 - 09:50 PM, said:

Pretty much, there's a lot more that a driver does (aside from ensuring everyone gets to the call in one piece which is a HUGE responsibility) but the main thing is that they usually don't go inside on a fire. Unless there's a rescue situation. We have a bunch of guidelines that are governed by NFPA (which, sadly, aren't realized until someone dies, then they figure out how to prevent that and make the new guideline) and one of them states that on every fire we need to have 2 inside and 2 outside. In case something happens to the 2 inside, we have 2 equally fit firefighters to go in and pull them out. That all goes out the window when there's a life in danger though. The fire attack team goes in as soon as they have water and are ready (sometimes the best way to save a life is to put out the fire, but everything's situational, they might go in without a charged line) and the remaining 2 grab another line and wait outside until they're needed.

Ahh, so I've been meaning to ask you cake, how is Austin doing? Friends down there have been saying it's pretty bad. Apperently they had to evacuate some really high end neighborhoods north of Austin.

It's a lot better, a week and a half ago was when all the fires started and I think at one point there were ten big wildfires. All the guys were working a lot, at pretty much every department. It was the pflugerville one you probably heard about. But there was one in leander, steiner ranch, pedernales, and not to mention the one in bastrop. It was pretty amazing, but all of them but the bastrop one are pretty much contained and in the mop up phase.

EDIT . . . someone made a wiki page if you want to learn more
http://en.wikipedia....Texas_wildfires

Be safe on the upcoming turkey day, these videos are both informative and hilarious

What is this? Cake is trying to teach SAFETY? so we can do HIS job for HIM? Screw you, man!
You're paid to repair other people's idiocy! Stop being a slacker, you know what happens to slackers.


Hehehe, Damn you Shatner, now I want a dingle dangle.

No one lives close to me on this site, otherwise I'd tell you to be as stupid as possible so I could fight more fires

I got voted into my local VFD by the commissioners board this week! I have my physical and my OSHA training tomorrow morning and then I can register for my firefighter 1 course at the county training center. I'll probably be on here picking your brain from time to time so I'm not a terrible FNG.