You Gotta Be In It To Win It
I was eager when I got there. There were rumors that we were either going to the burn trailer or to Sugar Ridge to practice vehicle extrication, and whichever way it went for A Shift was fine with me because I'd finally be responsible for doing real firefighter duties.
We sat around the classroom joking while the Chief and Mike were in the back planning what we'd be doing. I was trying to visualize how I'd use the spreaders to pop a door, trying to remember how heavy that tool was when Rob took me out on 44 that day in the winter, trying to guess which other tools we might use. I was psyching myself into a cracked-out-ferret level of anxiety when finally Mike called my name, the names of the two other rookies, and Shawn's name, and told us all to go gear up. He sent a few more out and we loaded onto 44, the four of us riding in the back together. I was sitting next to Shawn and I noticed that he kept looking at my gear. He yanked on the nomex hood that I had tucked under the collar of my turn-out coat as if to make sure it was really my hood, and then leaned forward to address the other rookies.
"Rookies, gear up all the way. Neither of you two have your hoods on. When we go out on drills, we wear all our gear." One of them was still trying to get his coat on. The guy next to me asked how to put the hood on, how to wear it. That I had done it right and that they had to ask me for help was the ego stroke I needed to go into the evening's exercises and from the corner of the eye I could tell that I had climbed up a peg in Shawn's estimation.
We arrived and climbed out of the truck. Carlisle Twp. was at the junk yard doing the same drills we were going to be doing, there were probably 15 of them. You don't wear your helmet on the truck, so when I climbed out my head was uncovered and it's pretty obvious that I'm a girl when I don't have anything covering my head. I could see the Carlisle guys looking at me, and though I don't know for sure what they were thinking the general impression I got was "what's that girl gonna do?" Maybe I am just really aggro and always assume the worst, I don't know. I puffed up pretty good and donned my best 50 foot tall routine. Shawn told me to grab the halligan and flat head axe, and by the time I was back around the other side of the truck with the tools, he had the jaws set up.
The first exercise he had us do was bust the windows out. To do that one person had to hold the pointy side of the halligan against the window, and the other person takes the flat side of the axe and hits the halligan so that the halligan is the tool that actually breaks the glass. This way you don't have an axe crashing through the window and striking a patient. Mark and Kevin (the two other rookies) went first, with Mark using the axe. It took him three tries to do it because Mark wasn't bracing the halligan tight enough and it kept slipping. Shawn told him he was swinging like a girl to which I of course began yelling every manner of obscenity and asking for my turn. Before I got it they switched positions on the next window and Mark put the axe right through the glass. It was finally my turn. Kevin held the halligan tight against the window, I took a breath in, swung the axe back, swung it forward, hit the halligan right in the sweet spot and watched the window shatter. I thanked my mom and dad for all the years of softball as Shawn let out a "perfect," to my right. Shawn didn't say anymore jokes about doing things like a girl for the rest of the night.
We went around the van learning techniques and the proper way to do things and I tried to soak up as much as I could. The three of us took turns using the jaws on the doors, and by the time we got done with the passenger side we were really functioning as a team. We used the cutters to sever the A and B posts. We used the reciprocating saw to make relief cuts. Shawn wanted us to roll the roof back and I got under it and heaved with all I had and watched it peel back like a tuna can. We rolled it as high as it would go and Shawn got on my side to see if it would budge anymore and he couldn't move it. He got up into the driver's seat and put his back into and it still wouldn't budge. He looked at me and said, "Well Emily, since you're using your man muscles tonight, grab that axe and give me a dent." I made him the dent he wanted and he peeled the rough back a few more inches. I was keeping up my end of the physical just as well as the guys, and Kevin kept patting me on the back and saying, "You're doing awesome!"
Then we moved over to the driver's side. Shawn looked at the three of us and asked, what's the first thing we need to do? "Check and see if the doors are unlocked," I shot back. They were locked. "Now what?" he asked. I picked up the halligan and said, "we make a purchase point." The purchase point is a hole you pry into the door with the halligan so that the jaws operator can fit the tip of the jaws in between to door and the post. I wedged the halligan in, pryed up and down and up again, and pulled the halligan out, happy with the hole I had made. Shawn looked at the hole and looked at me. "Do you think that's a good purchase point?" he asked me. "Yeah," I said back with confidence, "you could definitely start from there." He looked at Kevin, who would be operating the jaws. "Do you think that's something you can work with?" Kevin just looked at him. Shawn looked back at me. "All right Emily, if you're so sure of your purchase point, get the jaws in there."
I picked up the jaws, wedged them into the opening, and started prying. The door started to give. It opened wide enough so that I could see the latch. I closed the jaws up, pulled them out, and repositioned them so that they were right under the latch. I started opening the jaws back up and within a minute I had the door open. Without skipping a beat I stepped forward and found a good point to start at the hinge side. I wanted to take the door completely off, and I didn't want anyone else to have a hand in it. I popped the top hinge and moved the jaws down to the bottom hinge. I could feel that I had the right spot. I started opening the jaws and called out a "watch out!" two seconds before the door came completely off the car. I stepped back, put the jaws down, and thought to myself "and that's how you do that."
The best part was that not only was my shift LT watching the whole thing, but the heavy rescue instructor/full-time LT was watching too. We finished tearing up the van and the drill was over, time to clean up. "Grab some brooms and shovels rookies!" Mark and Kevin asked him where to get them and I told them to follow me. We reappeared within a minute with all the clean up tools and I heard Shawn say to the full-time LT, "now see? You don’t have to tell her twice." We cleaned up everything, went back to the truck and finally were able to take off our goggles and helmets and unbutton our coats. I could see steam eminating from every open spot on my gear, and I looked around at the guys and saw the same thing happening to them. We were walking steam vents. Everyone was dripping sweat but we all had huge smiles on our faces. Shawn assembled all of us into a semi circle and asked us what we learned. No one said anything so I chimed in.
"We learned to check door handles first. Where, why, and how to make relief cuts. The proper way to open a window. How to make a purchase point that the jaws can really get into. Not to skin the door and why. Scene safety."
"Well ok," Shawn uttered slowly with his hillbilly drawl. "All I learned on my first day of extrication was that I was going to get a huge bruise the size of my entire thigh!"
Pat, one of the guys who’s been on for a little over a year, looked at me while talking to Shawn and said, "She’s smart as hell! She’s constantly rattling off shit that’s right."
I rode back with the biggest grin on my face, feeling pride in all 50 feet of me. And that grin was still on my face this morning when I woke, and got even bigger when I checked my thighs and saw no bruises to speak of.
We sat around the classroom joking while the Chief and Mike were in the back planning what we'd be doing. I was trying to visualize how I'd use the spreaders to pop a door, trying to remember how heavy that tool was when Rob took me out on 44 that day in the winter, trying to guess which other tools we might use. I was psyching myself into a cracked-out-ferret level of anxiety when finally Mike called my name, the names of the two other rookies, and Shawn's name, and told us all to go gear up. He sent a few more out and we loaded onto 44, the four of us riding in the back together. I was sitting next to Shawn and I noticed that he kept looking at my gear. He yanked on the nomex hood that I had tucked under the collar of my turn-out coat as if to make sure it was really my hood, and then leaned forward to address the other rookies.
"Rookies, gear up all the way. Neither of you two have your hoods on. When we go out on drills, we wear all our gear." One of them was still trying to get his coat on. The guy next to me asked how to put the hood on, how to wear it. That I had done it right and that they had to ask me for help was the ego stroke I needed to go into the evening's exercises and from the corner of the eye I could tell that I had climbed up a peg in Shawn's estimation.
We arrived and climbed out of the truck. Carlisle Twp. was at the junk yard doing the same drills we were going to be doing, there were probably 15 of them. You don't wear your helmet on the truck, so when I climbed out my head was uncovered and it's pretty obvious that I'm a girl when I don't have anything covering my head. I could see the Carlisle guys looking at me, and though I don't know for sure what they were thinking the general impression I got was "what's that girl gonna do?" Maybe I am just really aggro and always assume the worst, I don't know. I puffed up pretty good and donned my best 50 foot tall routine. Shawn told me to grab the halligan and flat head axe, and by the time I was back around the other side of the truck with the tools, he had the jaws set up.
The first exercise he had us do was bust the windows out. To do that one person had to hold the pointy side of the halligan against the window, and the other person takes the flat side of the axe and hits the halligan so that the halligan is the tool that actually breaks the glass. This way you don't have an axe crashing through the window and striking a patient. Mark and Kevin (the two other rookies) went first, with Mark using the axe. It took him three tries to do it because Mark wasn't bracing the halligan tight enough and it kept slipping. Shawn told him he was swinging like a girl to which I of course began yelling every manner of obscenity and asking for my turn. Before I got it they switched positions on the next window and Mark put the axe right through the glass. It was finally my turn. Kevin held the halligan tight against the window, I took a breath in, swung the axe back, swung it forward, hit the halligan right in the sweet spot and watched the window shatter. I thanked my mom and dad for all the years of softball as Shawn let out a "perfect," to my right. Shawn didn't say anymore jokes about doing things like a girl for the rest of the night.
We went around the van learning techniques and the proper way to do things and I tried to soak up as much as I could. The three of us took turns using the jaws on the doors, and by the time we got done with the passenger side we were really functioning as a team. We used the cutters to sever the A and B posts. We used the reciprocating saw to make relief cuts. Shawn wanted us to roll the roof back and I got under it and heaved with all I had and watched it peel back like a tuna can. We rolled it as high as it would go and Shawn got on my side to see if it would budge anymore and he couldn't move it. He got up into the driver's seat and put his back into and it still wouldn't budge. He looked at me and said, "Well Emily, since you're using your man muscles tonight, grab that axe and give me a dent." I made him the dent he wanted and he peeled the rough back a few more inches. I was keeping up my end of the physical just as well as the guys, and Kevin kept patting me on the back and saying, "You're doing awesome!"
Then we moved over to the driver's side. Shawn looked at the three of us and asked, what's the first thing we need to do? "Check and see if the doors are unlocked," I shot back. They were locked. "Now what?" he asked. I picked up the halligan and said, "we make a purchase point." The purchase point is a hole you pry into the door with the halligan so that the jaws operator can fit the tip of the jaws in between to door and the post. I wedged the halligan in, pryed up and down and up again, and pulled the halligan out, happy with the hole I had made. Shawn looked at the hole and looked at me. "Do you think that's a good purchase point?" he asked me. "Yeah," I said back with confidence, "you could definitely start from there." He looked at Kevin, who would be operating the jaws. "Do you think that's something you can work with?" Kevin just looked at him. Shawn looked back at me. "All right Emily, if you're so sure of your purchase point, get the jaws in there."
I picked up the jaws, wedged them into the opening, and started prying. The door started to give. It opened wide enough so that I could see the latch. I closed the jaws up, pulled them out, and repositioned them so that they were right under the latch. I started opening the jaws back up and within a minute I had the door open. Without skipping a beat I stepped forward and found a good point to start at the hinge side. I wanted to take the door completely off, and I didn't want anyone else to have a hand in it. I popped the top hinge and moved the jaws down to the bottom hinge. I could feel that I had the right spot. I started opening the jaws and called out a "watch out!" two seconds before the door came completely off the car. I stepped back, put the jaws down, and thought to myself "and that's how you do that."
The best part was that not only was my shift LT watching the whole thing, but the heavy rescue instructor/full-time LT was watching too. We finished tearing up the van and the drill was over, time to clean up. "Grab some brooms and shovels rookies!" Mark and Kevin asked him where to get them and I told them to follow me. We reappeared within a minute with all the clean up tools and I heard Shawn say to the full-time LT, "now see? You don’t have to tell her twice." We cleaned up everything, went back to the truck and finally were able to take off our goggles and helmets and unbutton our coats. I could see steam eminating from every open spot on my gear, and I looked around at the guys and saw the same thing happening to them. We were walking steam vents. Everyone was dripping sweat but we all had huge smiles on our faces. Shawn assembled all of us into a semi circle and asked us what we learned. No one said anything so I chimed in.
"We learned to check door handles first. Where, why, and how to make relief cuts. The proper way to open a window. How to make a purchase point that the jaws can really get into. Not to skin the door and why. Scene safety."
"Well ok," Shawn uttered slowly with his hillbilly drawl. "All I learned on my first day of extrication was that I was going to get a huge bruise the size of my entire thigh!"
Pat, one of the guys who’s been on for a little over a year, looked at me while talking to Shawn and said, "She’s smart as hell! She’s constantly rattling off shit that’s right."
I rode back with the biggest grin on my face, feeling pride in all 50 feet of me. And that grin was still on my face this morning when I woke, and got even bigger when I checked my thighs and saw no bruises to speak of.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home