Firefighters Lifestyle > THE JOB > My Firefighter Shift
My Firefighter Shift
Welcome to my first post talking about my firefighter shift. Here I will be giving you a highly detailed description about what I do all day at the station. I want my readers to understand what exactly we do in a day and what takes up our time. Obviously, this will be different for every department you go to and as I post more of these you will see how different our day can be even working in the same department.
This day was a somewhat of a busy day, for me at least. Now when I say busy I mean there wasn’t too much down time to just relax. In my department, we usually work 48-hour shifts. I will write about one of the two days because it would be too long if I included both days as this will be part 1 of a 2 part post. Enjoy!
My firefighter shift for December 20, 2015
0703: I arrive at my station. I’m dressed in my regular clothes I wear at home as I get dressed in my uniform at my station. I leave all my fire station clothes (pants, shirts, sweats, boots, shorts, etc.) at my fire station. Some of us take them home to wash them or whatever, I personally just wash them at my station. I think it’s more of the fear that I might forget them at home one day and not have my clothes for work.
0710: I’m usually the first of 4 individuals to arrive at work and I see some of the guys who are getting off shift. They were finishing washing the rigs (what we call our fire engines and ambulance). I saw one of the guys cleaning up his things in my room. Star Wars just came out so I talk a little about the movie with him. Who are Rey’s parents? Is she a Skywalker, a Solo, maybe a Kenobi? We just don’t know.
My locker, yes I know it’s dirty.
0720: I get dressed in my workout clothes. Our policy is that we have workout time from 8 am-9:45 am. One reason I arrive early is because I need to check out my rig before the shift starts.
0731: I start checking out my gear and rig. I’m working on the ambulance today so I am in charge of making sure everything is stocked, check the fluids of the vehicle, switch out some batteries and clean the rig. I was riding passenger today this shift so I put my gear in the compartment on the right side of the vehicle. Even though my paramedic partner and I work on an ambulance we both carry our fire gear everywhere with us just in case we get a fire call.
0822: We get our first medical aid for the day. It was a female who had a “very severe headache”. Now I’ve had some pretty serious headaches before but have never called 9-1-1 for them. This lady seemed pretty calm for having a 9 out of 10 pain, but that’s not for me to decide. She felt like it was an emergency so we took her to the hospital.
0902: We leave the hospital and head back to our station. As we drive back I start to chart. We write documentation for every call we go on, this is what we call a “chart”. In our charts we put information like who was involved, the times of the call, our objective findings, a narrative of the call, and other small things. It’s like a police report if you have every seen one of those.
0927: We arrive back at the station.
0934: Our captain sits us down at the dinner table to talk about new memos for the week. There are four of us on shift, two on the fire engine and two on the ambulance. We talk about the plan for the day and any new stories on the news we should know about. Throughout this time we make some jokes to one another as firefighters normally do. The captain says he wants us to work on our engineers task book today. The task book is a list of skills that have to deal with our fire engines that we have to accomplish such as learning to pump, drive, read the “engineers” book and some other check-offs.
0955: We all get dressed in our uniforms. We did have any time to workout today.
1005: It was a Sunday today so we did our weekly checkouts. The weekly check is when we do an in-depth inventory of all our rigs and make sure everything is stocked. We also clean the whole bay area (where the fire engine, fire truck, and ambulance are parked). I’m in charge of checking the ambulance and help to clean around the station. I also help do the checkout of the engines to get a signoff for my task book.
1207: We eat lunch. Taco salad was on the menu and yes, it was delicious. This shift we decided to bring our own meals instead of going to the store. It is cheaper for us that way, though makes it a little hard at times because of the different diets people have these days.
1235: I finish eating and decide to finish my chart from earlier. Some of these charts take longer than others, it just depends on what happened on the call.
1252: Time for a little recliner time. I sit down for about 10 minutes until I realize that I have to work on this blog and do a little studying as well. I get up and get my computer to start doing some studying about some medical skills.
1342: It snowed the day before so our captain had us go out and clear our hydrants of snow so they’re easily accessible if we get a fire. When we went out today there was about 3-5 feet of snow that we had to dig out to get to the hydrant. Takes us about 15-20 min. per hydrant. My paramedic partner and I get our shovels and head out. It was really cold outside, 15 degrees if I remember correctly.
1433: Another call came in to go to a nearby district to “cover”. Covering a district means we go and help out a different fire department when they are so busy that they run out of resources. It took us almost 30 min. to get to the other district (we have a mountain to drive down). By the time we get into their town we get canceled and told to head back to our district.
1501: We are released from the coverage and head back to our district.
1520: While on our way back we get another call in our district. This time, it was a skier who fell and hurt his hip. When someone gets hurt at the ski resort in our district the ski patrol takes the injured patient down to us and we take them to the hospital. It took a while for the patient to come down the mountain. Once he arrived we realized that he fell and hit his head “really hard”. He didn’t look to good so we decided he should be seen at the hospital. He agreed and we took him to the hospital. Due to weather conditions and icy roads it took us awhile to get to the hospital.
1624: Leave the hospital, I start to chart about the call as we drive back.
1644: Arrive back at the station. I go straight to our medic computer to finish my chart.
1722: Tonight we decided to have dinner outside the station. We go to a nearby restaurant that we all like. We have a great relationship with the waiting staff there. Not to mention they have great food.
1833: We all get back to the station from dinner. They were a little busy tonight so took longer than usual.
1840: I decide to do some more studying and work on the blog. My EMT certification is ending next month, I have to recertify it online.
1911: A call comes in. A medical aid for a patient who had chest pain. Like a lot of our patients by the time we arrive on scene this one started to feel better. Though she did have mild chest pain it didn’t sound like a cardiac (heart) issue. We still told her that she should be seen at the hospital, either with us or a friend to drive her. She refused to go with us and patient signs an AMA (against medical advice) sheet. We return to the station and I start working on my blog again.
1941: Another medical aid comes in. I don’t remember what this call was. All I wrote in my notes for the day was that it was another AMA. Even though these patients don’t go to the hospital with us we still need to write a chart about what happened.
2034: Arrive back at the station. I work on my chart.
2112: I finish the chart and go around the station to make sure everything is ready for the night like make sure the dishwasher is going on, the flags are down, and new coffee grounds are ready for coffee the next day.
2140: I brush my teeth and get dressed to go asleep. I do one more walk around the station to make sure all the doors are locked and windows closed.
What my bed looks like at work.
2157: Lay in bed to go asleep.
That’s it for the shift. We didn’t get any calls at night or the next morning which was nice and unusual for a Sunday night (usually there’s around 3-7 calls for the weekend). I ended up waking up at 0630 the next morning for another day at the station, but I will write about that day on another post. I hope you enjoyed the post and if you have any questions just leave me a message or comment below. Don’t forget to subscribe to my newsletter for updates on further posts. Thanks for reading.