Fire School

As a winterover, you are required to be trained either as a fire fighter or for trauma. I was selected to be trained as a fire fighter. They took us to the building which is used for local city training, and we had an excellent captain lecture and demonstrate the basics (We only had a week, so it was necessarily compressed). One major difficulty was in efficiently suiting up in “bunker gear” and the SCBA*. The nationwide standard is 2 minutes, and this is something that needs practice.

Once we were familiar with that, we went and practiced moving and using the gear. We crawled through a surprisingly small maze with the awkward pack on the back and blindfolds. We also went into a small room to watch a pile of straw and palettes burn. The temperature in that room would likely melt cameras and phones, so I cannot get you a picture.

Outside of practicing with the gear, we practiced extinguishing fire and moving around in burning/smoky buildings. There was a separate building with remote controlled propane fire and theatrical smoke for training purposes.

After a week of full days, they gave us the chance to skip lunch and go up in the fire bucket. I think it was worth it.

They trained us as well as they could in a week. The goal is to never to have anything nearly that interesting happen at pole. Next up is Estes Park, and then we deploy.

*If we were underwater, the fire would be less of a problem

Bonus picture from inside the maze: