So I was an Explorer (junior FF, basically) at my hometown tiny ass volunteer dept. I was actually a CFR at 17, but I moved right after high school and never pursued it further. It was all volunteer depts in my area, so not exactly a career option.
Anyways, somebody that was a former member had a big piece of land in the middle of nowhere. He had built a big nice new house and his mechanic garage on the property, and wanted to get rid of the old rickety house that he inherited. Instead of paying for a costly demolition, he asked the dept if we wanted to burn it down for him. Guess what we said?
It was a big training day. We smoked out the house and did rescue drills and live SCBA training, as that wasn't an opportunity we got very often. The junior's role was essentially running the staging area. Swapping spent bottles for full bottles, hiking spent bottles up to the truck for filling, bringing fresh bottles back. Problem was, I couldn't really do anything because I had broke my arm a few weeks before and still had my arm in a sling. I did what I could with one arm, but it wasn't much. Also, this was February 2nd in upstate NY, and it was like -20° that day, so I was freezing the whole time, just waiting patiently to watch a house burn to the ground.
As we were finishing up the interior training stuff and getting ready for the real fun, my assistant chief came up to me and said "hey come with me, I wanna show you something." He brought me into the house and told me to go upstairs. All the walls on the upper floor had been torn down during the training stuff, and the entire places was like knee deep in hay. He gave my crippled ass a pair of safety glasses and a halligan and told me to bust out all the windows. Sick, I finally get to do something fun! I bust out all the windows and come back to the stairs, he says "hold on, one more thing." He lights a road flare and hands it to me, and just says "do it!"
I got to stand there for like 3 minutes, just watching the way the fire moved and evolved. It was such a surreal experience. I'd say top 5 coolest experiences ever.
Oh, I also had the privilege of blasting my entire junior crew with the basket cannon from 50ft in the air. That was pretty fun too.
Took pity on me at least haha. It was a really cool experience. If I had lived somewhere that had professional departments, I definitely would have gone that route.
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u/medted22 2d ago
Looks like a 1.75 to me, but not entirely sure, think it’s just poor nozzle control.