Brotherhood of Firemen

[FederalQ]

Low pay considering the amount of hours you put in. Very stressful at times and all the crud you‘re exposed to. Plus disturbed sleep schedule that I can attest is not healthy. Getting up in the middle of the night to lift assist someone gets old real fast. It seems today most fire departments have become emergency medical services that occasionally respond to a fire call.

 

[full chizel]

Low pay considering the amount of hours you put in. Very stressful at times and all the crud you‘re exposed to. Plus disturbed sleep schedule that I can attest is not healthy. Getting up in the middle of the night to lift assist someone gets old real fast. It seems today most fire departments have become emergency medical services that occasionally respond to a fire call.

Here you can’t even get hired without being a paramedic.

 

[Powerstroke Cowboy]

Here we are volunteers only on the fire depot. We've been called at all times of the day and night to help with lifting someone. Most times it's a town 25 miles away. But, I have not yet had to go. We have members that live in that town, so they get to do it.

Time and fuel spent as a volunteer adds up. The worst are false alarms. You run for nothing.

 

[Loony661]

Why don’t you become an EMT or Paramedic?

EMR is 40-50 hours of training, EMT is 180-200 hours of training, and Paramedic is 1900-2000 hours of training.. It’s not required of me to do any of these for my fire dept, it’s totally voluntary. I’m already giving as much as I can between the fire dept, running both my businesses, and being a dad who’s present for my family. I have no desire to become an EMT or Paramedic. And at my age, applying for a full time fire dept is not practical anymore, if I wanted to.

 

[redneckhillbilly]

the EMT situation in my area is a racket, they want volunteers to get/maintain certs and run ambulance calls for free, while the hospital bills $1,200 for a 15 mile ride.

EMR is the level of my training and I feel thats good enough.

EMT's on wildfire assignments dont get paid anything extra, they just get a heavier bag to hike in with.

 

[full chizel]

Not many volunteer departments around here. The biggest has about 150 members, but also some full-time.

 

[Loony661]

Not many volunteer departments around here. The biggest has about 150 members, but also some full-time.

Here’s a fact for ya: of all the fire dept’s in the United States, only 35% are Full Time, or career dept’s. The other 65% are volunteer. Of the Full Time dept’s, 18% cover 70% of the countries population… It’s quite a dynamic when you think about it. Most of the countries firemen are volunteer and rural, by nature. Consider yourself lucky to have a fully staffed, full time dept to respond to your house - that alone save so much valuable response time.

 

[Loony661]

How’s this dry spring treating you all? We were called for mutual aid today for a grass fire in an old auto salvage yard, which spread to the nearby woods and started climbing uphill.. while battling that, my brother who was 2 ridges over driving to a new logging site, drove up on a wildfire that was spreading. He is also a firefighter and called it in, then stomped out what he could. The responding dept was also mutual aid on the same fire I was at, so they hurried back to their own fire. Luckily 2 dozers were on scene and were able to cut a line in above the fire on the hill to stop it. It could have gotten ugly if we didn’t have them.

 

[Powerstroke Cowboy]

So far not to bad. Just a couple smaller fires that only took a couple rigs. We got good down before even making it to the fire.

It's been quite. That's a good thing!

 

[redneckhillbilly]

How’s this dry spring treating you all? We were called for mutual aid today for a grass fire in an old auto salvage yard, which spread to the nearby woods and started climbing uphill.. while battling that, my brother who was 2 ridges over driving to a new logging site, drove up on a wildfire that was spreading. He is also a firefighter and called it in, then stomped out what he could. The responding dept was also mutual aid on the same fire I was at, so they hurried back to their own fire. Luckily 2 dozers were on scene and were able to cut a line in above the fire on the hill to stop it. It could have gotten ugly if we didn’t have them.

thats alot of action, we still have saturated soil, dealing with spring break up, snow pack is pretty low this year, I think I saw something about 85%.

for us alot of spring rain makes the underbrush grow thicker and by august during our peak wildfire season all the underbrush makes situations worse, so it's a fine line between having enough moisture while not getting too much.

typically what happens is a lightening filled monsoon storm comes at us from the south, Texas or Arizona and by the time it gets to us it doesnt have any moisture left and its just dry lightening, we've had storms that spark off over 100 fires in one night.

 

[Powerstroke Cowboy]

typically what happens is a lightening filled monsoon storm comes at us from the south, Texas or Arizona and by the time it gets to us it doesnt have any moisture left and its just dry lightening, we've had storms that spark off over 100 fires in one night.

Now that's spooky!!!

 

[redneckhillbilly]

lightening doesnt spark up your side of the state?

 

[redneckhillbilly]

fire chief is always telling us if we end up over there fightin a grass fire to listen to the farmers, they know what there doing, ive seen videos of flames traveling across fields from trucks doing 70MPH and the flames are spreading just as fast.

 

[Powerstroke Cowboy]

lightening doesnt spark up your side of the state?

It does. But not that much. Maybe 4 or 5 a year.

 

[redneckhillbilly]

the strikes dont all show smoke right away, some will have a column visible the same day, but most take a few days before they get spotted

 

[Powerstroke Cowboy]

the strikes dont all show smoke right away, some will have a column visible the same day, but most take a few days before they get spotted

Okay, I would assume that due to the trees and mountain tarain?

Out here it's relatively flat. We have a problem with oil well sites and salt water disposal sites being hit by lightning. They make so much smoke you can't miss it.

 

[redneckhillbilly]

heavily forested, not much logging like there used to be, its pretty nasty in the urban interface near the cities, I'm nervous that we will loose a city or 2, its just a matter of time, the danger is real but the prevention is unfortunaley not taken serious, log em, graze em, or watch them burn is what I always tell people.

 

[redneckhillbilly]

Okay, I would assume that due to the trees and mountain tarain?

Out here it's relatively flat. We have a problem with oil well sites and salt water disposal sites being hit by lightning. They make so much smoke you can't miss it.

I've only been on your side of the divide a few times in my life, I went 15 years without going to Kalispell, and 2 years ago I went and got lost, the cowboys are gone and now the commies from cali run the place. I dont go too far from my neighborhood

 

[Powerstroke Cowboy]

The last time I was over your way was 12 years ago. I didn't like Kalispell then.. LOL