Run Sheet
00/11/30
Tonight was recruit graduation.
Eleven weeks ago fifteen new, fresh faces entered my firehall and changed their lives. They had applied, interviewed, been physically tested, interviewed again, submitted police checks and medical forms and had finally been accepted for training as recruit Firefighters.
Training is carried out all day every Sunday and three hours every Tuesday evening. Our training is intense and is carried out at our live burn facility. Eleven weeks ago these fifteen individuals had me look them all in the eye and tell them that it had just begun, that we would coach them, guide them and teach them, but we would not drive them. If they could not work without being driven then I would personally send them packing. I told them that their coaches and I were watching every move they made, and would do everything in our power to help them learn. The only thing we would not do would be to tell them to get to work. Firefighting is a team effort, everyone works till the job is done.
For the last eleven weeks thos poor bastards have been run ragged. We have drilled in the rain, in the sun, and in the dark. we have raised and lowered fourty-foot ladders until they couldn't lift their arms. They hauled hose and airpacks to the top of the three storey training tower and fought fires up there, they crawled miles dragging hose into the live burn room where the ambient temperature 175 degrees farenheit, if you don't crawl you get burned, if you don't fight the fire you get burned, if you panic, you go to the hospital, simple as that.
I told them "In training it's relatively safe, if you screw up bad enough you get hospitalized, out in the world you die"
I wasn't exaggerating.
In the seventh week I took one guy aside who wasn't pulling his weight, a guy we had warned twice and said "Go home Jim, strip off your gear and go home, don't come back" He was dumbstruck, he didn't think we'd do it.
Tonight the other fourteen graduated. One guy was fourty-five years old and had his entire family with him. He told me when he started "I've watched those red truck drive by for twenty years and wished I was riding on them, I figure this is my last chance" I was glad he made it.
The one woman in the class is fourty and had her teenage kids with her, she told me she applied because she saw the ad in the paper and said "Maybe I should try that" not really meaning it, and her son had burst out laughing. She knew then that she HAD to do it. After the certificates were handed out I said to her son "So, what do you think of the old broad now kid?" all he could do was shake his headin wonder looking at his mom in her uniform.
All too soon the ceremony was over, the recruits went home and would report to their firehalls on Tuesday. Their moms and dads, their brothers, sister, aunts, uncles and kids would never look at them in quite the same way ever again.
I suspect that they will never
see the person in the mirror quite the same ever again either.