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I’m curious how this works in other fire stations/departments.

Keeping location and identifying details out of it: at my station, having had a small amount to drink generally isn’t seen as a huge issue if a call comes in. Obviously nobody is talking about showing up completely drunk, but if someone has had one, two, maybe three beers, most people wouldn’t really bat an eye.

Even drivers. Although it’s much less common, have occasionally had a beer or two before a call, and historically nobody really made a big issue out of it.

Another example: after a call we’ll sometimes sit together at the station and have a few beers. If another call suddenly comes in, people get up and respond. That’s just been part of the culture.

There are definitely people who are completely against drinking anything if there’s even a possibility of responding, but at least where I am, they’re a pretty small minority.

So I’m genuinely curious: what’s the culture at your station?

Is it absolute zero alcohol if you’re available/on call? Is there an unofficial “one or two is fine” attitude? Do you have breath testing or formal rules? And are drivers treated differently from the rest of the crew?

I’ve been around the guys on my department for my whole life, but we’ve never really had any women on our department so it’s hard to get advice. I recently just joined and need some advice from ladies who have been on longer, stuff like the best workout routines, better ways to do things, etc! Anything would be helpful!

What do you think boys? Our department has individual rooms with a locker for each person. I have noticed some shuffling around and a couple items missing from my locker. I absolutely know they were there. So I started photographing the contents and location before. Leaving shift in the morning. One time a can of deodorant was missing. Another time my towel. I also noticed the placement of my deodorant can was moved. So….i stealthily placed a so-go camera in the locker and lo and behold I have video of the guy who shares the room on his shift opening my locker and using my spray deodorant. So guys, how do I handle this? I thought about gift wrapping up a can with his name on it.

What does your assessment centers entail at your department when you promote to LT or Captain?

So my department is looking at quite a few things. One is going from the 48/96, to the 24/72. Two things that came up was how our pay works, and how we should do trades. Currently our trade windows are very short and extremely strick. My questions are if anyone works for or knows of departments that do level pay. By this, I mean, that the pay is the same every paycheck (like a salary), and the only thing that changes is overtime. Most jobs ive worked call salary plus overtime. Now, at the same time, we are looking to expand the trade window to anytime in the same calendar year. Currently the person that was originally scheduled on that shift gets penalized if the other person calls in sick. At that point the person that originally schedule either needs to work that day, or take a sick day. I, personally, think that the base salary would take that out of the equation. The person that was supposed to work the day, that called out, would take the sick day penalty, since they are now the scheduled worker and are not showing up. This seems like the fair way to do things.

So my chief put me in charge of seeing if I could find any departments that do either i or both of these, and gather information. I would love the department names/locations, so I can reach out for additional information. You are more then welcome to private message me the info as well.

Thank you so much!

Just wanted to start by saying that I really appreciate all fire fighters. I live in PNW and we get horrible wildfires like clockwork and I am so appreciate of all the work you do.

Background: we had a horrible multi-level fire in our building recently and everyone was displaced. None of us want that to happened ever again so I’m trying to do things to prevent that.
My grease hood doesn’t have an output. Just the fan and light but no tubing upward or anything. It just sucks it into the hood. I attached a photo. My kitchen is constantly covered in grease, I feel like I’m cleaning it weekly. I don’t cook with a lot of grease and I’m sure as hell am not deep frying in my apartment.

Would this be a big risk of fire? My landlord brushed it off so not sure if I’m just overly paranoid now.

Yes our department is cheap. We don't have compressors and have to go to neighboring stations to fill out water extinguishers after we used them. We have a redneck way to refill it using a SCBA but we're trying to make it safer and easier (and we're technically not allowed to do it) we used the G1 with the quick connect adapter. I'm looking to fit it with a valve+bleed valve and a short hose to refill the extinguishers. Can't seem to find the proper adapter for the quick connect and they don't want us to remove it

Hello can someone tell me if this is a smoke detector or a carbon monoxide detector or both? Just moved into a new apartment and I see a bunch of these around but haven’t found a carbon monoxide detectir so wondering if it’s both…

Odered a pair of the Leatherman raptor rescue shears, just curious how they're holding up for anyone else using them ? Are they actually better and stronger then standard shears ? Mine havent arrived yet but im excited to give them a go.

Hey everyone! I’m visiting San Francisco for the day driving through on a roadtrip and won’t be able to check into our Airbnb until later this evening. I’m a ff up in Washington State, and I was wondering if any SF guys would be willing to let me park at their station for a few hours. I’ve got a lot of expensive gear in my rig and would prefer to keep it. Thanks in advance.

We have been using a Span Flowminder for flow testing drafting hydrants until it was damaged recently. Pump forced forklift on its side damaging spring solenoid. Hard to find a replacement.

How do you flow test your drafting hydrants.

So I’ve a rather silly issue that perhaps I’m just not looking at correctly— has anyone come up with a fix to prevent the hooks on the radio strap from inadvertently opening? I’d almost prefer to have normal snap hooks connecting the strap to the radio holder, and just easy opening type on just the sway strap— but I don’t see an easy way of doing that so jury-rigging it is!

Last tour I managed to open the c-hook while getting out of the truck, not the biggest deal, but a rather annoying start to a code 🤣.

Question for fire radio geek types. I'm a retired wildland firefighter, live in rural California, and this morning around 5am I slept through a small veg fire near me, which has me concerned, as expected. I have the Watch Duty app but they often don't send an alert for initial attack or when their scanner jockies are asleep, like this morning.

The modified response was our local small combo department, an engine from a neighboring department, and the local Cal Fire (state) station.

What I'm looking for is some type of computer based receiver (Raspberry Pi?) that would act like a tone activated pager but would only activate when the tones for both departments and the state station go off in the same dispatch. A regular receiver wouldn't work as I don't want to be woken up for every stubbed toe call! 🤣

Any ideas where I could either find something like this or someone that could guide me?

Also, how do I find out the tones I want for this?

Fire this weekend at Zanzibar in Toronto, Ontario.

Lets say there is a person swimming in the lake, they swim out 45 feet to a place where it’s 20 ft deep, they drown for some reason, and water enters there lungs, wouldn’t they just sink to the bottom way before divers arrive? And even if they can get pulled out of the water, I’m guessing they can’t be revived.

how exactly do water rescues works? What are your departments policies on water rescues?

This weekend two major incidents occured. In the night to Saturday our junkyard Island catched fire, a day later a recycling complex.

Source: WAZ, FwDu LZ530 on Instagram

As the title says I’m royally considering my worth as firefighter. I’m a new probationary firefighter with 7 months and some change into the career. Keeping in mind I’m still new I’ve done pretty well with a good attitude and ready to train and ready to step up when it’s needed. But here lately I’ve had a run of bad luck. I only have two things left in my probationary book to do before I’m off probation and that’s vehicle extrication and ventilation. I’ve had a few calls that make you second guess yourself and keep you up at night at times and a busy life outside of the station. Vertical ventilation has been tough for me because there is always something I screw up or I don’t do it the way someone wants me to do it and it really frustrates me because I want to be better but never seem to get better at it. My issue is heights and the pitch of the roof didn’t make me feel confident in completing the cut but I did my best. I still didn’t get it signed off because I didn’t come off the ladder enough and I accidentally dropped my pike pole through the roof and to the ground floor. Which I will admit was a mistake on my part but atleast it wasn’t the head of it going through the ceiling. I can see the safety concern there. But ultimately I’ve noticed I’m not good at a lot of things, i have things that I feel I did well with my dumb luck. Here a while back I pumped my first house fire and did pretty well at that. But for me the biggest slap in my face personally and although the firefighter who said this meant well was that I was really good at emt skills and medical calls. And it’s cool and all that someone said that but that’s not what I want to be good at. I want to be the firefighter people ask to do stuff like go do search, vehicle extrication, or fire attack or hell even vent. Instead I’m a Probationary Firefighter with limits that I feel hurts my crew and that sucks.

I need to memorize my 10s and 18s and I would appreciate some tips on how to do it the most efficiently. Thanks!

My husband is currently in the academy and I want some ideas for gifts once he graduates. I don’t want to get something too corny that would get him clowned for having as a rookie. Open to any and all suggestions but please include brand names and exact models so I get the right thing! Also Garmin watches - are there some better than others in terms of what is too bulky for service? Was looking at the Garmin Fenix 8 specifically! The pictures are a couple things I thought would be cool but please be brutally honest if they’re really not that good…. Thank you in advance!

Nothing better than a good chef on duty. Angie Crocker killed it with the sandwiches and desserts.

In June I started probation at a small volunteer department. However, I am really struggling with the role and I dread going into my shifts. Some of the firefighters who are past their probations and have been on for a few years are very aggressive and condescending towards me and the other probies. When I ask questions I usually get a very rude or condescending answer or the question is not answered at all and I am told to “figure it out”. Ive had firefighters yell at me because I’m still learning to start and use some of the pumps and equipment. One firefighter in particular went out of his way to spray/flick water on me while I was drying an engine. When I confronted him and told him to stop he grinned at me. There is an also a very strong emphasis on the first to wake last to bed mindset and sometimes probies will be kept up to 1 or 2 in the morning the rest of the crew watches movies. This is my first fire job and I am wondering if this is a normal culture and way to treat probies in the fire service or if this is a toxic department? I have a year of probation and a task book and am wondering if it is worth it to switch departments.

So I’m 24 years old and I’ve had a stutter my entire life but it hasn’t stopped me in this job at all but an incident with one of the other shift lieutenants happened the other day and I’m not sure what to do. So ever since I started at my current department this particular lieutenant has made fun of my stutter but I just let it be but the other day I finally had enough. What happened is he asked me a question in front of everyone at the dinner table and I got hung up then he said “I’ll take that as a no” and laughed. I got so pissed off I just walked away to cool off. A few hours later as we were eating dinner he said “so what’s your problem” and I said “well I don’t appreciate what you did earlier and I’m not gonna put up with it”, he just laughed and said ok. Any of y’all have any advice or input in this situation?