Day

Why am I always so tired after a shift at the firehouse? This is not a complaint just a notation of an average day of work for me:

04:04 -Wake Up (if I choose to skip morning workout I wake at 05:02)
05:15 - Workout at Louisville Athletic Club
06:30 - Arrive at Worthington Fire Station 3
Change into uniform and eat breakfast
Exchange info with 1st Platoon (what's broken etc.)

07:00-09:00 We do our "Daily Routine" which includes clean bathrooms (we have 3); Check duty trucks (Engine 1831 & rescue 1881) and run all equipment on duty trucks; Empty Trash; Scrub bay floors (M,W,F), Check emergency equipment and engine/pump operations on other apparatus (Quint 1857 & Tanker 1869); On Saturday we buff the waxed floors; Review apparatus maintenance requests (my platoon is responsable for apparatus maintenance and we have to either repair the truck or shuttle the apparatus to the appropriate maintenance facility) Weekly apparatus checks (every day we have an apparatus that we check all the fluids, inventory the apparatus, clean the tools, check tire pressure, and we perform monthly checks on ladders and SCBA)

09:00 - 11:30 Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday we have weekly training. Friday Saturday and Sunday we have monthly Special teams training (confined space resuce, rope rescue, hazmat, water rescue). If we do not have any training we continue the weekly apparatus check (takes three personnel approximatly two hours to complete these checks). Begin our Fire inspections, Hydrant testing, hose testing, truck visits (where we go to a location that has requested a fire apparatus to visit; birthday parties, community events, schools, events the Community Risk department have set up), Station visits (where a group has arranged to come to the fire station for a tour), Target Hazards (AKA pre-plans). We do not have all these each day but we usually have one or two of these events every day. Work on Cost Recovery forms (we bill non-residents for MVa's).

11:30 - 12:30 Lunch (usually moving more apparatus around to repair facilities)

12:30 - 15:00 Finish any weekly or monthly checks of apparatus; after lunch is kind of project time. Some people have tasks that they are assigned by the chief or the battalion chief. I am kind of the database management person, where I spend time writting reports in our DBMS (and I have three reports I am working on at the moment). We also use this time to prepare for classes we are teaching to either our recruit class or the department (each fire service instructor has to teach a certain amount of huors every year). We will also repair apparatus when we get parts in from supply stores. Continue the hydrant testing, fire inspections et al. Oh yeah and we have to respond to Fire & EMS runs during the entire 24 hour period.

15:00 - 16:00 Crew goes to workout (either at the gym or other outdoor activity)

16:00 - 17:00 Try to catch up on paper work. Although we try to enter runs after we get them. We also have to enter the truck check sheets, training activities, community risk activities, inspections (lots of compute work during this time). One person cooks dinner during this time also.

17:00 - 18:00 Dinner

18:00 - 19:00 evening cleaning. we empty the kitchen trash, mop the floors, empty the trash in the administrative offices.

Usually after the evening duties we can have our own time however we still have to finish all paperwork before our shift ends at 07:00 so the the officers are finishing their paper work. We average 3-5 runs per shift. Some days these are easy runs and other days they require a mountain of paperwork. Recently my shift has had most runs between 19:00 - 23:00.

I don't normally get to sleep until 00:00 (thats midnight). Sometimes we get more runs during the night. On average I am awake for twenty (20) hours when I am at work before I get the chance to sleep. Occasionally we have easy days (Sundays are good days). I have left out the quarterly training for special teams that a few of us attend. I am on the Hazmat Team, Trench Team and Water Rescue team. Once a quarter each of these teams have training that I am required to attend.

No wonder I am so tired when I get home.

Time

We seem to have more time around the firehouse these days. We recently changed the types of EMS runs we respond to, making only emergent runs. We had One run yesterday and it was to force entry to a house to help a woman get up. She refused treatment and we destroyed her door.

Weather or Not

Yes it is hot. Not unusually hot. This is the summer I expect. I guess I lived in Florida for too many years.

A few calls today. One full arrest. The Doctor called the PT at the hospital not more then 5 minutes after our arrival. First full arrest in some time. After downloading the SAED the PT was Asystole the whole time. Non-shockable rhythm. The family last spoke to her at 1am this morning. The call came in around 10:30am.

Fire alarms and food on the stove, thats about all. One Gas leak in a house. We shut off the gas main and ventilated the house.

Tuesday night is training night for our volunteers. We were supposed to do live burn exercises but that was canceled due to the heat. We stayed indoors and did a little First aid / CPR. Kind of Ironic. I just performed CPR for 20 + minutes this morning and now we are training on proper technique.

Water, Water everywhere

Today two members of my vrew at the firehouse set out to test hydrants (as we do every spring; we have over 900 hydrants in our district that we have to test annualy) and in the final few they broke the stem, leaving the hydrant partially open and water flowing everywhere. We have a "key" for the water main just incase we have to close a hydrant (it is not really key shaped but more of a very large nut driver on an eight foot pipe). As it turns out the shut off we saw was not for the hydrant but for the residents on the street. We had to wait for an hour for the water company to come and assist us. They had a hard time also (the previous paving company have laid asphalt over the hydrant shut off valve). Yes, the two firefighters got soaked. I was driving today and luckily I stayed dry.

Two runs so far both EMS. One siezure and the other an overhead door hit a worker in the head. The second patient was rushed to the trauma center for evaluation.

Rarely do we get to hear about how our patients fair after EMS carts them away.