I know the frequency of my posting has dropped off over the last little while.  This is a result of my firefighter school hitting crunch time while we get in all of our practical training.  All I have been doing is training during the day, eating everything in site and sleeping.  I would have loved to have gotten some video or pictures but we are doing live fire training.  I am not allow to wear anything on me that isn’t part of my gear.  There is enough heat to easily melt a camera down if I tried to take it in.  Plus, my instructors would probably tear me a new asshole for trying to take action shots while I am supposed to be fighting a fire.  The days are usually split up into different stations where you need to demonstrate certain skills.  The last few days were split between fire attacks and search & rescue.  During search and rescue you are crawling around a smoke filled building trying to find artificial victims.  It is tiring as fuck and tears up your knees pretty good.  The fun stuff is when you go into the burn house to attack the fire.  I know most people (including myself) thought that all you do is throw water on the fire until it is out.  Depending on the conditions, that can shoot enough steam in the area to cook everyone around!  The last few days we practiced some indirect attacks.  This is where you shoot water at the ceiling above the fire and then close the door quickly and let the steam suffocate the fire.  It is pretty cool but it is a tough job to be the nozzle man.  You get in far enough to have flames kiss your helmet, you get a blast of steam hit you and you have to shut a door the is hot as hell!  I know it sounds crazy but it really is fun stuff for me.  Days like this are what keep me motivated in my efforts to become a firefighter.  Below is a video of a fire training session gone horribly wrong.  This is what should NOT happen.  The flames were just way too much for these guys to enter.  They didn’t have a chance in hell.  But, it shows you how dangerous training can be.  This is fire…it doesn’t exactly listen to instructions!

Well, I got my first recruitment test to be a firefighter under my belt.  I wrote for the city of Hamilton earlier today.  My god was it a long day.  The first test was over 2 hours long and had some math problems but was mostly situational stuff.  They would give you a scenario and you would have to list the order in which you would do things.  Then you would have to answer questions based on how confident you felt and whether you agreed with shit or not.  This test is only tough because you have no damn idea what they want to see.  It is pass/fail so if I fail I guess it will tell me that I am not human?  We then had a two hour break, which I used to go to a bar and get a nice beef dip sandwich.  Then it was back to writing another 2 hour test.  The second one was tough as well.  They read a passage for about 10 minutes and then you had to answer questions based on the specifics of the passage, but you couldn’t take notes or anything.  It was all memory.  Then we had a ton of math, geometry and mechanical type questions.  The cut off for that one is 85%.  I honestly felt pretty good about the test but I really can’t say whether I hit the cutoff or not.  I guess I will have to wait for a couple of weeks to find out.  One interesting thing was looking at the makeup of the people who are writing these tests.  Honestly, it is all a bunch of white guys!  There were about 500 people writing this test today (testing is over 3 days) and out of that I only saw 4 women and 3 visual minorities!  I wonder what it is about this career that keeps us darkies away?  If anyone has any opinions I would love to hear them.  Since my day was all about tests I thought I would give you some examples of answers I wish I could put down.  These are courtesy of Kontraband.  Enjoy!

Hey! It’s another comic that is loosely associated to my firefighter program. This is courtesy of SMBC. Sorry I cannot write anything more involved right now. We finally have a day above the freezing mark and the girl and I are headed downtown. If we end up having an interesting adventure I will post the pics on here. Enjoy your Saturday!

Not a good day to be in downtown Toronto today. Firefighters have been battling a 6-alarm blaze since 5am this morning. If you live in Toronto, this blaze is affecting pretty much the entire block near Queen and Portland. The heavy winds contributed to spreading this from building to building. There are no injuries reported as yet. The winds are also blowing the smoke from one end of the city to the other. This is causing massive traffic delays all over the place. You can read the full story from CityNews.

I also grabbed a neat little description of the “6 - Alarm” part of this story. I have never actually understood what the number of alarms meant. I assumed it had to do with fire fighting resources. CityNews again helped me provide this:

• 1st Alarm

2 pumpers, 1 aerial truck, and 1 district chief

If it’s downtown or involves a highrise building, a highrise truck is used. If it’s a working fire an air supply truck, which provides breathing cylinders, and a heavy rescue squad are called.

• 2nd Alarm

5 pumpers, 2 aerials, 1 squad, 1 hazardous materials truck, 2 district chiefs, 1 platoon chief, 1 air supply vehicle, and 1 incident command vehicle.

• 3rd Alarm

8 pumpers, 3 aerials, 1 squad, 3 district chiefs, 1 platoon, 1 air lights, 1 hazard, 1 command vehicle, 1 division commander

• 4th Alarm

11 pumpers, 4 aerials, 1 squad, 4 district chiefs, 1 platoon, 1 air supply vehicle, 1 hazardous materials truck, 1 command vehicle, 1 division commander

• 5th Alarm

14 pumpers, 5 aerials, 2 squads, 5 district chiefs, 1 platoon, 1 division commander, 1 command vehicles, 2 air supply trucks, 1 hazardous materials vehicles, other support staff if needed.

• 6th Alarm

17 pumpers, 6 aerials, 2 squads, 6 district chiefs, 1 platoon, 1 division commander, 1command vehicle, 2 air supply truck, 1 hazardous materials truck.

• 7th Alarm

20 pumpers, 7 aerials, 2 squads, 7 district chiefs, 1 platoon, 1 division commander, 1 command vehicle, 2 air supply trucks, 1 hazardous materials.