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All of my energies at the
rescue squad have been focused on the goal of "moving up" on
the heavy rescue trucks. Surviving and passing firefighter training was
merely the first step; my squad requires everyone who wants to staff the
rescue trucks to complete a number of tests on our equipment and
standard practices. The process can take several additional months.
The minimum staffing on the
heavy rescue truck (which, confusingly enough, is also referred to as
a "rescue squad") is three people. My goal is to make it up
to certification as "third." First, though, I must become a
"fourth." Being "fourth" means I'm not necessary but
might be useful, whereas my current status, "observer," means
I might have potential but am basically window dressing. It's kind of
a bummer to go through the intense process of fire class, endure hardship
and yelling and stick with it to emerge as a newly minted firefighter,
yet still remain an "observer." But the point is to insure that
the rescue squad is staffed by people who really know what they're doing,
and I can't really argue with that. It's just a little bit like graduating
from middle school and discovering that in high school you're the absolute
bottom of the barrel.
To get my fourth status I have
to complete a test that requires knowledge of all the tools and pieces
of equipment on both our rescue squads. This is complicated by the fact
that the two vehicles, one newer than the other, are laid out differently
and in some cases hold different equipment. Still, it doesn't sound that
tough until you actually stand before one of the open outside compartments,
before a nest of pressure hoses connected to a positively sadistic array
of hydraulic equipment, comparing what you see to a page-length list of
the contents of that compartment alone; then you realize that this
whole firefighter thing might have been a bit more ambitious than you
actually feel.
There's no choice but to buckle
down and learn it, because even in moments I feel completely disheartened,
I can draw motivation from my aversion to failing embarrassingly in front
of other people. And I have another, newer reason to want to do well.
Last week was my graduation
ceremony from the training academy where I took firefighting class. The
academy often waits until several classes have gone through before scheduling
a graduation ceremony. My fire class would share the event with three
EMT classes. On our cue, we stood in our uniforms and strolled one by
one across the stage to receive our certificates. Then came a veritable
White House Dinner Receiving Line of chiefs proffering hands and congratulations.
"Congratulations."
"Thank you, sir."
"Well done."
"Thank you, sir."
"Congratulations."
"Thank you, sir."
If firefighting class taught
me anything, it was how to say sir (or ma'am, but let's
not kid ourselves about how often that happens in the Fire & Rescue
Service at large) to someone who "outranks" me in our consensual
hierarchy. I'm a volunteer, and to me that used to mean no one was inherently
more or less worthy of the formal markers of respect than anyone else.
Fire class changed that. Now I see the white uniform shirt of an officer
and it's all I can do to stop the sirs from flying out of my mouth.
Weeks and weeks of being yelled at will have that effect. And perhaps
I recognized that our rank system was set up to organize human beings
(with their legendary fallibility) into units that respond effectively
to the most trying circumstances. You must be prepared to trust those
people with your very life, and to some extent that means believing in
the system that governs them.
[As an aside, there's a military
school for errant adolescents that periodically advertises in the Post's
Sunday magazine. Their ad features this line: "We teach your son
to use a foreign language." Below that is a picture of a young lad
saluting, and a caption indicating his words: "Yes, sir." This
ad always horrifies me.]
After the certificates were
handed out, we moved on to the award for the highest academic achievement
in the class. I was utterly amazed to hear them call my name. Who would
have thought it? Certainly not me -- from the very beginning, my only
ambition for fire class was to survive it. I had been determined not to
quit and not to fail -- nothing more mattered. Yet somehow I'd managed
to place at the top of the class.
I went back up to receive my
plaque. Then the gamut of handshakes all over again, holding my plaque
and still feeling fairly confused. One of the chiefs clasped my hand.
"I knew him," he said in reference to the man for whom the award
was named, "and he'd be proud of your work." And that, for me,
was the highlight of the whole event.
A few days later, I stand in
front of one of the compartments on the newer rescue squad. The doors
are shut and I am reciting from memory what is inside. I imagine the doors
open again and recite systematically:
flexible ventilation tubing
for fans, stihl chainsaw, pro-saw, K12 saw, carbide tipped blade, spare
K12 blades, cable pulley, saw tools, 250' cord reel, Honda portable PPV,
unleaded gas, mixed gas, scene barricade tape, 4' ceiling hook, 2 sledgehammers,
2 pry bars, hand saw, 2 air boom caps, 2 pinch bars, 2 bolt cutters, padlock
breaker, pick head axe, folding shovel, 2 push brooms and squeegees, hydrant
wrench, 2 spanner wrenches, spare junction box
I open the doors and review
to make sure I haven't missed anything. Then I move on to the next compartment.
Plenty of work left for me to do here.
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