Exhaustion...

Sun, 6 Apr 2008 01:20:08 -0400

I seriously don’t know how the hell I can still be awake. For those who don’t know, I recently became a Volunteer Firefighter and have been attending training every Saturday since the beginning of March. Today Yesterday we had an especially grueling, eight hour long, class. Not that the class is all that tough itself but it seemed that some people were really dragging ass, and not following simple directions. Unfortunately when one person drags their ass, everyone pays. Let me tell you pushups and running get really old fast when you have damn near thirty pounds of gear on.

In addition to our punishment motivational activities, today was comprised of hoisting and climbing ladders, as well as forceable entry and ventilation. Forceable entry and venting are actually pretty straight forward. Pretty much if it can be broken down or broken up with a Halligan and an Axe go to it, if not get bigger tools. Usually bigger tools make it easier anyway so not a big deal. However when it comes to the seemingly simple task of putting up a ladder things seem to get more difficult. It’s not that the act of putting up the ladder is difficult, rather getting five people to communicate effectively, so that no one goes home injured or dead. Perfect example, raising a thirty-five foot extension ladder (read: big enough to reach a 4th floor window).

Five person team, get ladder from truck, walk to the building, the guy footing the ladder (read: guy at the bottom) sets his end down and is now calling all the shots till the ladder is up. So he calls for two of the remaining four people to raise the ladder. Now the ladder is straight up and down (read: A HELL OF A LOT MORE DIFFICULT TO CONTROL). Now one person needs to untie the halyard and raise the ladder one rung at a time, while the other people continue to steady this ladder that is now straight up and down, but oops those two guys who didn’t help raise the ladder are now off talking to each other... how nice. Once they are wrangled back into the mix and the ladder begins to be hoisted up, but suddenly someone forgets that they need to be footing (read: have your DAMN foot on the base of the ladder steadying it!!!!) and Oh Shit the ladder that is now about mmmm thirtyish feet high is now swaying and moving. So get that back under control finish raising the damn thing, lean it against the building, and good right? WRONG that guy holding the halyard rope forgot to tie it off. So he ties it off, but look at that the guy supposed to be footing the ladder. He seems to have forgotten his task (which by the way is to just keep his foot on the bottom of the legs at all times). HOW HARD IS THIS!!!!!

A task that should have taken 1-3 minutes tops, rounds out at somewhere between 5-7 (read: we’re doing some sort of “motivational exercise” to pay back those lost minutes). It wouldn’t all be so bad if this happened only on the first attempt to put up this ladder, but when you’ve been working on it ALL DAY one would think by the end of the day mistakes would start to fade and the process would become pretty smooth... Not the case. We probably did this exercise or something very similar between twenty and thirty times today, and the last one wasn't much better that the first. All due to bad communication.

To compound it all we have a few cocky guys on in the class that feel the need to open their mouths and make excuses when an instructor tells them they are making a mistake or aren’t following the directions correctly. This does NOT, I repeat NOT, go over well when the instructors have been in the fire service for twenty plus years and were in the military before that. These cocky little guys need to learn to shut the fuck up cause they make it miserable for everyone else. If they do something wrong or make a mistake and get caught, they need to grow a pair and own up to it! Just say yes sir, sorry sir, absorb the information and move on. However , “Oh I was just doing that because...” or “No one ever told me...” or my favorite “I was!” are not acceptable responses to an instructor that is trying to make sure you know what you are doing so you don’t get killed or kill someone else.

Well enough of my ranting, hope you enjoyed!
Fin.

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Fri, 4 Apr 2008 08:42:43 -0400

Welcome back! This time I’m actually going to attempt to keep this up to date. Now that I have all this time commuting back and forth to NYC, I figure why not start a blog! It does help pass the time on the train and you all get to hear about my daily gripes. :-D Hope you all enjoy as this develops!

Sláinte!

Exhaustion...

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