A Day In The Life Of A Firefighter
Today, the subject I'm going to cover is a day in the life of a firefighter. I'm lucky enough to have Aaron Fisher over here that's going to talk through the structure of his day, the incidents that he might attend or he has attended throughout his career and challenging incident that he's been to. So thanks very much for your time today Fischer.
Brent: Awesome mate. So can you just run us through sort of the structure of your day as a firefighter?
Aaron: So typically the day will start off, our first priority is checking the trucks first. So we'll go over sort of from one end to the other with trucks, make sure all our gear is ready to go operational-wise, make sure the pump's ready to go on the truck. That's our big toolbox on wheels basically so we want that really to go for whatever jobs we might get. So that's the first part of our day. That's a pretty important part of the day, making sure our gear is ready to go.
After that, we usually have different days during the week we're assigned with some different duties. So say one day might be committed to one truck where we'll do an inventory on the whole truck, running every bit of gear, making sure that everything that's meant to be on the truck is ticked off and that it is there. We also have time for personal training or development. So we have guys at different ranks, so at different stages of training you could say. So we'll develop and put in a bit of time for those guys to be able to get that development into that. But then new guys are coming in too, so that's a bit of a challenge in that we've got to do some consolidation training with them and get them up to speed. So let's sort of have a snapchat or…
Brent: Snapchat! Cool man. I suppose just to even clarify a bit further, what's sort of some of the stuff you've been working on, you know, the last couple of shifts as far as, you know, training and community sort of stuff.
Aaron: So one thing I guess we're looking at doing is we have pre-plans. We have law of premises. So what we've just started doing with that is making sure they're up to date but also is accurate in regards to the information they contain. So we might do a little bit of reconnaissance, getting photos, making sure contact details, water points, things like that, are important to us. Myself, next year I'm looking to go to another rank, so I've got some cool models that I've started to work on as well and that includes I guess what you're in Brent with some command and control stuff. So I know you've been taking me through some important drills and introducing me to that world of things too and that's been good.
Brent: Yeah, so there's a large range of stuff that you're exposed like Aaron has touched on at the pre-plan side of things. I know he's been helping one of the new guys with his driving, stuff like that. And there's also things like administration duties and cleaning and stuff that you do.
Aaron: Yeah. They might seem mundane but that's part of station life of getting things done throughout the day. That's probably the less glorified part but it's done year in year out as firefighter.
Brent: And that's the idea of this video today. It's just to give you a more realistic idea of what a firefighter gets up to day-to-day apart from going to fire etc. Another thing that sort of happens at the very start of the day is we have a master or a meeting where we all agree on the objectives and stuff for the day and everyone gets assigned their task and stuff like that. So that's something that goes on at the start. Now Aaron, what are some of the jobs that we might attend as far as emergencies go?
Aaron: As you are aware, emergencies come, big, small sizes, everything. So we'll go to a car accident where there was just a minor bin where we're just washing away a bit of mess off the ground or something that is a bit more involved and people may be trapped an injured. We also go to medical emergencies now as well and that's a big part of our job in regards to obviously helping save people's lives in that aspect. Fire. That's why we're firefighters. They can range from just a small bin fire. They're actually more common than you might think to a house fire that's fully going. It can be exciting but it can be quite dynamic at the same time. Come summer, we know what Australia is famous for in regards to the bush fire threat. That keeps us busy through that time as well.
Brent: Even if you're working for a service that doesn’t do the medical side of things, you'll be exposed with it some way through first aid and managing scenes and stuff. Another one is the HAZMAT, so the hazardous material sort of stuff. Less common in frequency but definitely something that gathers on as far as jobs go. So have you got sort of a specific job that sort of stands out just in type of brief that sort of challenged you as a firefighter mate?
Aaron: Probably early on in my career you touched on HAZMAT incidents there. We had one on the freeway. We had a Bob carrier, 20,000 liters of hydrochloric acid. That tank had sprang a leak and being a new firefighter, it was all pretty dynamic and challenging in obviously mitigating that incident that was taking place. The first setup was, I guess, that little bit of challenge of knowing what to do with and how to mitigate it. After that it was straight forward. But I guess in regards to challenges and jobs, instead of pinpointing one specific job, the biggest challenge I find as a firefighter is so much knowledge that you have to know in regards to the various incidents that we go to. The other, just get that training, the knowledge up here, I think that's the biggest challenge.
Brent: It's never a straight, forward sort of thing.
Aaron: Never, never.
Brent: It's something that we can definitely agree on. Thanks very much Aaron for coming on and sharing that with us. Hopefully that's given you a deeper insight into, you know, the general tasks and goings on of a firefighter day to day.
Aaron: Thank you.