Officer.com Police Blogs & Podcasts

Tim Dees
Editor-in-Chief
Officer.com

I spent Thursday with my editor counterpart from Firehouse.com, creating videos of training presentations in connection with the Firehouse Expo in Baltimore. Firehouse Expo is the big fire service trade show, and between that, the hands-on training, and the classroom presentations that are offered, it draws thousands of firefighters from around the country. We’re going to be doing some similar work at IACP this October, so I needed to get a sense of the production process.

I’ve been to lots of police training sessions, both hands-on and practical, and some of them were fairly strenuous. Defensive tactics, baton training, and handcuffing techniques can all wear you out and have the potential to cause injury. But the hands-on training that the firefighters do is all that, and more.

Thursday was hot, with temperatures in the 90s, and the DC/Maryland area is extremely humid in the summer. I was wearing a golf shirt and jeans, and still went through at least four bottles of water by mid-afternoon (and all I was doing is standing and walking around). The firefighters were wearing heavy bunker gear and carrying air bottles and various “implements of DEE-struction,” as Arlo Guthrie called them. They were also doing some heavy physical labor, like climbing ladders, sawing through roofs, punching holes big enough to crawl through in walls, and carrying large-diameter fire hoses that were fully charged with water. Add to this that some of the training environments contained active fires, which raise the air temperature considerably. Of course, all of the real-world environments where they will use these skills will have those fires, and some of the training was focused on the possibility that a firefighter would be able to get into a room and then not be able to get out by the same route.

Every firefighter that I saw coming back from an exercise was soaked in sweat when they took off the bunker gear. The huge pile of cases of bottled water and sports drinks was testimonial to the need to rehydrate. Most of the participants would grab four or more bottles at a time, and drain them one after another. I can’t remember the last time I was that depleted.

And most of these guys (and gals) were volunteers. There were career firefighters in attendance, but the large majority were there on their own dime.

Cops often regard the fire service with some contempt. The career guys get about the same money for working maybe twelve days a month, and spend most of that time hanging out in the firehouse and/or sleeping. There is arguably a greater psychological burden in knowing that the biggest threat to your life is from another human being that will do his best to kill you, as opposed to having an inanimate object fall on you (although I’ll readily concede that burning to death would be pretty high on my list of Ways I Don’t Want To Go). And, of course, if you want to be loved, join the fire department. You sure won’t get your strokes in the cop biz.

But, on Thursday, I was reminded that firefighters work very hard when they work, and have to sustain a level of stamina not often seen in policing. And, since I work in an office that is maybe 1/3 people associated with the fire service in some way, I’ll lay off the fireman jokes for at least a week.