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My department is very flexible as we have several members in the reserve/guard and some that have deployed. I don't know the specifics since I'm not in either.
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Jul 31, 2011 16:52
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There's a medic at my station that has been assigned here for almost 2 years but has been active duty for almost the entire time. We have no idea when he'll actually return for good but there will be a spot here for him whenever that is.
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Aug 1, 2011 05:36
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I've been a medic for two years and have absolutely zero fire experience. I know that fire is hot and that I am flammable. And somehow I got hired onto my city's fire department on the first shot, provided the doc gives me the go ahead next week. Academy starts September 7. Once I'm working, from my understanding, it'll be about a 50/50 split ambulance vs. engine. Any tips on how to prepare for the next month?
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Aug 3, 2011 08:11
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b0bx13 posted:I've been a medic for two years and have absolutely zero fire experience. I know that fire is hot and that I am flammable. Cardio. invision fucked around with this message at 12:40 on Aug 3, 2011 |
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Aug 3, 2011 12:37
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Did you have to CPAT prior for the hiring process or are they depending on the post academy CPAT? If the latter, start climbing stairs everywhere and invision posted:Cardio
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Aug 3, 2011 14:11
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I'm already lifting 3x a week and doing running (3-5 miles)/HIIT 3x a week as well. The physical test during the hiring process was a "CPAT light," but I haven't heard anything about doing the actual CPAT. Any suggestions on studying/books in the meantime so I can catch up a bit to my fellow recruits?
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Aug 3, 2011 15:44
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b0bx13 posted:I'm already lifting 3x a week and doing running (3-5 miles)/HIIT 3x a week as well. The physical test during the hiring process was a "CPAT light," but I haven't heard anything about doing the actual CPAT. Any suggestions on studying/books in the meantime so I can catch up a bit to my fellow recruits? I'm assuming that the academy you'll be going to will make you sit through the local equivalent of what I call Fire I and Fire II which are both pretty straight forward in regards to course work. The two courses are pretty basic and if you can follow high school chemistry you can follow most of science-y sides of things pretty easily. The hardest part in my particular academy for most folks happened to be the ropework section for high angle rescue and the like. With those, it's really just a matter of learning the knots and understanding basic physics. If you live in an area with a sizeable volunteer populace, you can probably just bum the course books from one of your coworkers. If not, you can probably find them pretty readily online though amazon if not available directly from the academy.
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Aug 3, 2011 22:08
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If he's being hired for a paid position why should he have to supply the books or anything. They will train you to whatever level they want, just show up, don't be late, and don't fall asleep. This poo poo ain't that complicated.
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Aug 4, 2011 08:15
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Yeah, I know they'll provide everything. I just wouldn't mind getting a jumpstart since I have no experience in comparison with most of the rest of the recruits, even though I know they'll teach me everything I'll need to know.
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Aug 4, 2011 08:33
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b0bx13 posted:Yeah, I know they'll provide everything. I just wouldn't mind getting a jumpstart since I have no experience in comparison with most of the rest of the recruits, even though I know they'll teach me everything I'll need to know. It's really not that tricky, it's a demanding and challenging job for sure, but the mechanics of it are pretty simple.
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Aug 4, 2011 17:47
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b0bx13 posted:Yeah, I know they'll provide everything. I just wouldn't mind getting a jumpstart since I have no experience in comparison with most of the rest of the recruits, even though I know they'll teach me everything I'll need to know. Honestly, the best prep you can do is on the physical side. Not being absolutely wrecked by the physical requirements will allow you to focus on the coursework side of things. So: - find stairs, run up them. Lots. You probably want to be able to do 3 sets of four flights of stairs (up AND down) without collapsing (and preferably being able to talk coherently at the end). (Falling over going up is okay. Falling over going down is not so okay.) - After a week or so of that, add a 10 lb dumbbell in each hand (or a similarly weighted backpack/vest*). - Each week (or whenever you feel comfortable), add another 5 lb. * Make loving sure that if you go with a backpack that everything is strapped down tight (both backpack-to-back and weights-to-backpack). A weighted backpack bouncing around is a fast route to a back injury. Beyond that, you probably need to do some other exercises, but I'm not actually a FF myself. I have a couple of friends that are and every time they have to re-qualify they're like "loving stairs, man".
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Aug 5, 2011 01:03
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Similar precaution: I would only train with a weighted vest/backpack when going up and down stairs or doing calisthenics (push ups, pull ups, etc). Don't be a fool and go for a run with that poo poo, unless you want to destroy your joints even quicker than normal. But yeah, run, sprint, go up and down stairs, do push ups, pull ups, sit ups and other basic poo poo until you can do a lot of them with ease and you'll be fine. Kettle bells are a great workout tool for this type of training.
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Aug 6, 2011 00:17
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senor punk posted:Similar precaution: I would only train with a weighted vest/backpack when going up and down stairs or doing calisthenics (push ups, pull ups, etc). Don't be a fool and go for a run with that poo poo, unless you want to destroy your joints even quicker than normal. This is really really good advice. You need to work out. But don't over-do it, get hurt, then get screwed out of the academy because you're a broke rear end.
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Aug 6, 2011 02:17
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Passed all my tests (95/100 on written, "Pass" on the physical and don't know scores on oral). Now have to wait until November for final word on training class placements. Am I guaranteed a spot in a class at some point (even if it's years down the road) for having passed?
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Aug 11, 2011 14:32
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Bigass Moth posted:Passed all my tests (95/100 on written, "Pass" on the physical and don't know scores on oral). Now have to wait until November for final word on training class placements. Am I guaranteed a spot in a class at some point (even if it's years down the road) for having passed? They'll let you know if and when you have a spot. Some places let you know well in advance, some places are rather horrible and last minute. Can't vouch for the specifics of your circumstance. Congrats either way though!
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Aug 11, 2011 15:20
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Bigass Moth posted:Passed all my tests (95/100 on written, "Pass" on the physical and don't know scores on oral). Now have to wait until November for final word on training class placements. Am I guaranteed a spot in a class at some point (even if it's years down the road) for having passed? There's never a real guarantee. You have a pretty good score(congrats) so you should be fine. It's just a mess with budget cuts and all.
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Aug 12, 2011 01:11
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You can add me to the list of firefighters. Currently with a Volunteer Fire Department in NC. We're not a "high volume" department but we get our fair share of fire and medical calls, we're also 2nd due for 2 other fire districts around our area.
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Aug 27, 2011 14:45
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Welcome to the thread. As you may be able to tell, it functions much like an actual fire department - sudden flurries of activity, followed by days and days of boredom.
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Aug 28, 2011 05:11
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Val Helmethead posted:Welcome to the thread. As you may be able to tell, it functions much like an actual fire department - sudden flurries of activity, followed by days and days of boredom. Thanks for the welcome. I know the feeling, hell our department has gone a week now with out even a medical tone out, starting to wonder if they forgot we exist. Of course I'll jinx it and we'll be getting back to back calls for the next week. Not sure how many guys are volunteer in this thread, but was curious as to how ya'll get toned out? I've heard of a lot of places moving to text/alpha pagers over the Motorola Minitor's but I've heard that the alpha pagers can sometimes take a few minutes to get the tone out. I personally love my Minitor IV and have put it through hell including dropping it in the rain onto wet grass and having it get soaked by the rain and STILL be kicking without even having to dry it off.
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Aug 29, 2011 02:02
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We use the Minitors ourselves, as well as a text message system, which is helpful if you hear the tones but can't repeat it because you left the darn thing on the ops channel from last time and are trying to guess the address based on the name of the command that just got established.
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Sep 1, 2011 19:55
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Val Helmethead posted:We use the Minitors ourselves, as well as a text message system, which is helpful if you hear the tones but can't repeat it because you left the darn thing on the ops channel from last time and are trying to guess the address based on the name of the command that just got established. That doesn't work here when you have things like "Huge Fire IC"
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Sep 1, 2011 19:59
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invision posted:That doesn't work here when you have things like "Huge Fire IC" I love that name for an incident. I think we should use that for everything from here on out. "County, this is Two Car Fenderbender Command." We just love our NIMS too much to mess around with naming things based on location.
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Sep 2, 2011 00:46
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Norwegian firefighter signing in. Someone gotta rep the european smokeeaters too i guess. Currently got five hours left of a 48 hour shift with 18 /1...8,,,,) false call outs and about 5 instances where police called us out just to be "safe" (car accident with car hitting kid, no damages to car and kid on his way to hospital when we arrive) all we could do was clogg up trafic some more on a single carriage road. nothing burns anymore, im bored fjelltorsk fucked around with this message at 13:20 on Sep 3, 2011 |
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Sep 2, 2011 03:31
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We had an ultra-high-voltage transformer blow up at a high voltage transmission line substation today. I was on scene from 1700 until about 2400. It took literally all of 5 minutes to actually put the fire out. The rest was waiting on the energy company to shut the power down so it didn't murder us.
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Sep 2, 2011 07:14
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invision posted:It took literally all of 5 minutes to actually put the fire out. The rest was waiting on the energy company to shut the power down so it didn't murder us. I HATE calls that involve one of the local utilities. Power line down and "somethings on fire" (either a tree or the grass) we respond, no fire but now we have to wait around for the power company who takes an hour or more to respond, or gas line leak with the gas company based in another city 30-45 minutes away and no local office  .Had a false alarm call the other day for a place right across from the station, fastest response time ever. *WHACKER MODE* I have my scanner setup to scan the main FD dispatch channels for our area on the new digital system, a program that monitors the line-in on my computer which the scanner is plugged into to listen for the two tone tone outs, if our station gets toned out I have another program that gets activated to record a 30 second clip of the tone out and send it directly to my cell phone. Comes in handy if you can understand WTF they are saying. Our county is on a new Motorola APCO-25 Digital system but of course the minitors are all on the old VHF dispatch channel (which is linked to the digital system) so hearing what they are saying clearly can be a pain in the rear end considering I live in a valley and the signal is crap here at times. kicktd fucked around with this message at 17:17 on Sep 2, 2011 |
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Sep 2, 2011 17:12
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kicktd posted:Had a false alarm call the other day for a place right across from the station, fastest response time ever. Gonna one up you: We were driving a pumper to another one of our stations on the other side of town, when we drove past a fire at a lumber yard, before they even called it in.  Also I'm thinking about joining the county's dive rescue team. Anyone on here a diver? invision fucked around with this message at 19:54 on Sep 2, 2011 |
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Sep 2, 2011 19:52
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kicktd posted:*WHACKER MODE* Can you detail this for us? I've been trying to figure out how to do this forever, and gave up several months ago...
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Sep 2, 2011 19:55
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invision posted:
Im a Diver, whenever we get a "wet" call i respond on our diver van. Being a FD diver is a double edged sword. its alot of fun in training and sometimes we get to do awesome rescues. other times you have to do some real bad poo poo, pulling bodys in full decomp and so. Also kills the joy you have for spare time diving.
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Sep 3, 2011 10:26
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Zeo posted:Can you detail this for us? I've been trying to figure out how to do this forever, and gave up several months ago... Sure, I've been doing some tweaking so it's still in testing phase but so far it seems to be working just fine. If there is any interest in this I can probably work up a bundle and make my program more user friendly where you can set record length, station name to send tone outs to your cell phone for and all that jazz. That way all you have to do is setup your scanner, download the stuff required by TwoToneDetect and the installer for the program and install it, get your tone out frequencies and then my bundle would cover the rest. If it helps anyone else in the fire service I'm all for doing it. But here is how I have it done, it seems pretty complicated and it took a lot of messing around to get working but hey it works! Scanner setup to computer: [Scanner]<---Audio cable from either headphone or external speaker jack--->[Line in on computer] I have the scanner setup just scanning the Fire talk groups and 1 city Fire Dispatch frequency that hasn't joined the county digital system, with our (county) fire dispatch set as a Priority channel. Programs: TwoToneDetect 25.1 (Program shows it as v0.24) from here Guide to getting the frequencies of the tone outs for your station using Audacity (PDF download) ffmpeg for windows static build (choose either 32 or 64 bit) (used to convert to AMR for cellphone) from here Sox used to record 30 seconds of audio after the tone out is detect from here PsExec (Part of PsTools) from Microsoft here A simple bat file that uses PsExec to launch TwoToneLogger and pass the station name that was toned out by TwoToneDetect, if you don't use PsExec it ties up TwoToneDetect for some reason. Custom programs I made that tie it all together: TwoToneDetect Monitor - Luanches and monitors TwoToneDetect to see if it's "crashed" if so kill it and re-launch it, if it's not running start it up. TwoToneLogger - This is the one that does all the work. It logs the time and station that was toned out to a text file, executes Sox to record to an mp3 for 30 seconds if the station matches mine, then once it's done recording, ffmpeg is run and converts it to AMR format for cellphones and then it is emailed to my phone.
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Sep 4, 2011 22:01
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kicktd posted:Sure, I've been doing some tweaking so it's still in testing phase but so far it seems to be working just fine. I like it.
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Sep 4, 2011 22:46
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invision posted:I like it. Working on the programs today to make them user friendly and allow people to set their own options. After some testing (might take a couple of days to make sure all bugs are worked out) I'll package up my programs and all that is required to process the tone outs (ffmpeg and sox) and the bat file used to execute the "Toneout Logger" program into 1 zip file and put it up somewhere for download for ya'll. I can also help explain how to setup TwoToneDetect if need be. You will need the .NET 3.5 framework if you don't have it already (most do). This program already came in handy this morning, with the current weather and my living in a valley situation the VHF reception was crappy and I could barely even make out what was being toned out, soon as the tone out came to my phone (about 15 seconds after the actual tone out stopped) I was able to understand what was being said. kicktd fucked around with this message at 18:07 on Sep 5, 2011 |
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Sep 5, 2011 16:32
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Holy crap, that kinda rules!
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Sep 5, 2011 18:48
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How big (generally) are the files that it emails to you? We don't have 3g out here, so that might be an issue implementing the system.
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Sep 5, 2011 19:59
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invision posted:How big (generally) are the files that it emails to you? We don't have 3g out here, so that might be an issue implementing the system. I changed the recording time to 45 seconds as some tone outs tend to be a bit longer than others but the file size for the phones is 28.6 KB in size and should always be that size due to the way AMR format is encoded. I don't have 3G where I'm at either and signal is not the best but after the email is sent I usually receive it within 15-20 seconds. Total message size will probably be around 29.1 KB including the "subject", actual file size is pretty small and I had to make sure of that as my cell company will reject any message over a certain size (I believe around 35 KB) so I know how important it is to keep the file size low too. The program also can "archive" the MP3 copy to a folder of your choosing on your computer so you can save your tone outs for whatever you wish to do with them, the MP3 size is around 132 KB.
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Sep 5, 2011 20:19
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kicktd posted:over my head call stuff i take it you guys are working some sort of volunteer gig right? or are you listening on your other shifts to see if they have more fun than you? anyways, actually had a dive call today. been sweeping under a bridge for an alledged jumper about 3 hours, untill a local resident owned up to having tossed some stuff off the bridge. atleast we got some good searchpattern training out of the day. 30 hours left of the shift now. time to get some county payed sleep i guess
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Sep 6, 2011 00:46
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fjelltorsk posted:i take it you guys are working some sort of volunteer gig right I am not sure about the other people posting interest in it. It's all volunteer around here except in the city and they have a LONG waiting list to even apply, and none are taking anyone right now because things are "too slow" and this isn't just one city but all the surrounding paid cities are doing the same thing. I work from home anyways so not like I have to worry about losing my job responding to calls. Talk going around though of making our station a combo station but honestly I don't think we have enough call volume to support it and we usually have apparatus on scene within 5 minutes on most calls anyways but if they want to pay people to sit around watch TV and sleep I guess that's what we'll do. fjelltorsk posted:actually had a dive call today. been sweeping under a bridge for an alledged jumper about 3 hours, untill a local resident owned up to having tossed some stuff off the bridge. I hate when people waste time on things like that, I mean I know they have good intentions when they call in. What happened to the guy who finally owned up, he end up getting fined or anything?
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Sep 6, 2011 01:20
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kicktd posted:I hate when people waste time on things like that, I mean I know they have good intentions when they call in. What happened to the guy who finally owned up, he end up getting fined or anything? Yep, sort of sucks to have 80% of the city FDs dive resources a good 25 min drive away from the city center and holding them there for a long time because some idiot decided to dump his junk. The police fined him for some eviroment charge and we will probably fine him. not that any of my biz. Im just a Dive team leader, And if a dive call comes in, we dive. and due to the amazingly retarded way things are done in Norway, we keep on searching untill the senior cop on the site release us. Search diving is considered as first Aid and legally we have to provide it untill Police give consent to stop. Imagine how fun that is in a year we beat them in all sports in the emergency service Olympics....
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Sep 6, 2011 01:32
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I've got some training tonight and tomorrow night but if anyone is interested in testing out the programs I believe they are ready to be tested, just let me know if you're interested and Thursday I'll get everything put together and create a small guide on how to use the programs and put it up for download.
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Sep 6, 2011 19:37
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kicktd posted:I've got some training tonight and tomorrow night but if anyone is interested in testing out the programs I believe they are ready to be tested, just let me know if you're interested and Thursday I'll get everything put together and create a small guide on how to use the programs and put it up for download. doit
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Sep 7, 2011 00:21
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Yo. Don't know if ya'll have heard but Austin is on loving fire. http://www.kvue.com/ 600+ homes, 34000+ acres. Apparently the NFS came in and took things over (like they should.) I'm hoping they'll call for volunteers from around the state soon. gently caress guys 
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Sep 7, 2011 03:10
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