(no subject)

Fire school started on Thursday, and this Sunday mumbly_joe and I reported to the Delco Emergency Services Training Center for our first Sunday drill. Today was just a long lecture day, over material that's important but quite dry (fire behavior, sprinklers, salvage and overhaul, and portable fire extinguishers). Next Sunday, however, we'll get to use some fire extinguishers, and for me, fight my first fire - a small tank of propane that we'll extinguish with a dry chemical extinguisher. We toured the ESTC facilities this afternoon, seeing where we'll do car fires, ladders, and eventually the live structural burn. The Delco ESTC, built on the site of a former garbage incinerator, trains not just firefighters at many levels, but EMS, police, and canine units as well. We were warned to keep well away from the dogs, as some of them are being trained to chase and bite suspects and might be attracted to fire gear.

I think it's only been in the last few days that what I'm going to be learning to do really hit -- a lot of the people in the class are from much busier companies where they actually get a significant number of working structural fires. One of the lecturers today, a chief from Collingdale, really drove home the events of September 11 and how his company, 06, had formed a close relationship with FDNY's Engine 6, which lost 4 members in the World Trade Center. Part of it also was watching the live burn video on the first night, where they showed previous firefighter classes going into the burn tower with smoke and fire showing, advancing hoses, climbing up ladders into windows, and knocking the fire down. I expect it will be both exhilarating and somewhat scary when it's my turn to do it. I do hope to see at least one working fire before I graduate (not that I'm wishing ill on people in Swarthmore), but I think the sheer volume of pointless calls we get does tend to make one forget about the worst-case things fire departments are established to deal with.