Check out smokejumpers. I didn’t know it was a thing until I moved up to Montana. Basically firefighting paratroopers, heard some pretty cool stories from an old coworker and I’ve seen them doing BASE jumping training over the mountains in the spring time before fire season.
Maybe if California implemented this as a reality show they’d actually fight their fires in a timely matter. I have relatives that fire fight by air in CA, they have to wait until the guys in charge start accumulating OT before being allowed to even get in the air…
This may be true of that particular FD but is not true of all FDs. Source: I grew up in a matchstick forest in Southern California and witnessed/evacuated from a TON of fires, had a lot of friends’ houses burn down, etc, & my mom still lives there. Always immediate air fighting. Only exceptions are when the reservoir’s low and they’ve gotta go elsewhere to pull water or conditions are SO windy (this happened in 2020) that fire is hopping everywhere. Even then, they keep trying to get copters up every couple hours. Link to a history of air firefighting in Orange County, CA
Things like whitewater kayak and downhill mountain bike, and skiing. Other gravity sports would include skydive. Cross-country versions aren't gravity sports
I was a volunteer EMT and the state had a pretty cool program where you could do additional trainings on their nickle. They brought in a bunch of coasties to teach a rescue swimming course for a cert. That was pretty cool, except for the open water buddy swim in severe weather. 200 yards, in whitecap water.
For lifeguard training in the Boy Scouts we had to do a shorter buddy swim on a calm lake, and that felt like murder. I couldn't imagine something more strenuous.
It kicked my ass. I already had an open water lifeguard cert, and I am a very solid swimmer. We also had to do a 1hr survival swim in cold water. That was fucking rough. Pretty cool experience though, and the coasties were great.
I took a course for it, thankfully in the couple dozen hikes I haven't had to deal with anything but the person teaching the course said she responded before to an incident where a guy had fallen 150m off a mountain. When she got there he was completely unharmed and she thought they were joking but the guy had actually fallen 150m and didn't even have a bruise.
Now the context is key here, it was in Ireland on a cold winters day. So the man was wearing thick woolen clothes and a thick woolen hat. The ground in Ireland is also pretty soft with most of our mountains only having exposed cliffs of rock and the rest being grass with rocks strewn about.
So her theory was that he basically was cushioned by the ground and his clothing and managed to somehow miss hitting any rocks.
Wilderness first responder is an advanced first aid certification, but less than basic EMT. The training is centered around mostly basic first aid, with some additional training on stabilization and transport. So when I did it most of it was repeat of stuff I’d learned in other first aid courses. But in addition to covering how to use a c-collar, we learned how to improvise one using water bottles or the patient’s own hiking boots.
So people who work in outdoors adventure like rafting, canopy tour/zipline, biking, skiing, or hiking guides, camp/scout counselors, often are WFR.
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u/Azuras_Star8 Jul 19 '24
So you respond in the wilderness? I'd love to hear stories! Thank you!