r/Firefighting

Several months ago there was a thread on this from a kid having a bad experience and y’all made some commentary about how a department that doesn’t invest in its people isn’t worth working for, and damn did that cut deep.

It cut deep because I was reading it the kid who posted it was sitting across the kitchen table from me on OT on my shift. It wasn’t a shock we’d created a culture where they weren’t comfortable reaching out for help internally. I’d had a couple of shitty probationary experiences in my career myself.

I took them aside at shift change and told them I’d read what they wrote, and asked them if this job and organization was for them. They said yes. I asked them to sign up for every OT on my shift that they could between then and the end of probation and we got them across the finish line. Kid then got moved to my shift and is thriving. We had a long chat the other night as we’re about to hire again about giving the next kids a better experience than they got and changing the culture from the bottom up.

I’m not sure what the point of this is besides recognizing how serendipitous it’s was to see the post. I’m proud of the kid for gutting it out, and no matter how salty you get, train your damn probies.

Just got hired on to my dream department and very excited but as one of the only black men in the entire department I don’t know who to talk to about shaving. My dad and dad’s dad all have no shave chits why they served and I’m able to get away with shaving every 3 days without completely ruining my skin. Any advice for how to approach this situation or should I just deal with the pain as I go through the academy?

So I’m a new probationer (about 3 months in) right out of the academy and I work with another probationer who was in the class before me. It’s starting to really bother me that he doesn’t seem to want to help out at all with all of the “probie duties”.
He won’t touch the log book, including if he’s on watch at night or if he arrives earlier than me. He’s only cooked once in the entire 3 months I’ve been here and has forgotten breakfast a couple times he was supposed to bring it.
He very rarely helps with dishes, and damn sure doesn’t help put them away and I find myself cooking and doing the dishes most times. Anytime there’s something that needs to be done and I’m his layout he says “you’re my layout you’re supposed to do everything for me”.
I understand I’m new than him and he’s technically senior, but I feel like he’s forgetting that he’s also on probation too.

Curious to hear from guys that currently work in either dept for a compare and contrast regarding the quality of life, culture, forces, specialty opportunities etc. THIS IS NOT an employment question I’m already doing the job, I’m just curious about the different departments in SoCal and how they do things

I work for FedFire and am thinking about joining the Reserves or NG. I just want to do something else than FFing. What do you guys do?

I've been a career firefighter for just over a year and a volunteer for almost 4 years.

Today I had someone ask me for the first time what my worst call was. I downplayed it and just said we sometimes see dead people on the job, to keep from going into details.

What the heck do you say in that situation? Some people are so clueless how that comes across.

Hi all,

Currently an EMT super interested in going into fire. I was chewed out pretty hard by my EMT instructor (who is also a firefighter) about wearing my uniform out in public. Had no idea at all this was a no go.

Are there any other social / professional faux pas I should be aware of going into the fire service?

Thanks in advance!

I watch a lot of Fire videos on YouTube, and I've noticed that, unlike the UK where I'm from, there is no standardised color for Firetrucks. I've seen white ones, yellow ones, red ones, and even a blue one. Can anyone explain to me why there's no fixed colour for them, please? Thanks!

So lemme explain. My company does 3 truck checks a week. M- Engine, T-Squad and W-Ladder. So in those 3 days the saws are run. But should the saws be ran everyday instead of just when those trucks are checked

Like many of you, I run with a small town volunteer department. People call us heroes and I get bothered by it. I’m no hero, I’m just a neighborhood guy who shows up when that bell rings. Anyone else feel the same way or am I insane?

I was on my local Paid on call department for 6 years. In that time, I made Lieutenant, was Department IT, Social Media, did a lot of community events, and even built a school supply drive. I emailed in my letter of resignation, because my Chief likes everything in email. I offered to stay on as IT/social media. Crickets for a week, until I reached out to my Deputy Chief and my Chief. Both responses were "Yeah, we saw it, we haven't decided on IT." I never did this for glory or anything like that, but I felt like responding to the email in a timely manner and if nothing else "Sorry to see you go, thank you for your time and service, we'll let you know on the IT matter later" would've felt more appropriate. Am I expecting too much? Was I wrong to feel a little off about it?

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I currently work at a full time paid department that runs front line ALS dual paramedic ambulances for our city. I am curious as to what other departments pay in compensation for their medic's / ambulance rides

From a few conversations I believe we are grossly under compensated for medic duties but wanted to get some more data.

I plan on creating a product to fight for increase in compensation as our depts medic pay compensation hasnt been touched in over 20 years. Mainly on pushing for % based compensation for the shift assigned to the medic, the limited talks ive had with firefighter/medics at different departments across the US seem to compensate between the 15 -25% range

Currently our department runs 100% Firefighter/Paramedic qualified for shift personnel and 100% of ALS BLS calls in our city.

Compensation / incentive is $50 flat for 24 hours duty on a medic unit(or $2.08 hourly increase)

$200 flat monthly salary increase for maintaining Paramedic license regardless of rank or billet (shift and 8-5 personnel)

We have 8 stations, about 180 full time personnell across 3 shifts, run front line medic units as dual medic ALS serving a city of just under 100,000. Medics typically run 4-20 calls a day with 8 as avg across the board (some medics are worse than others for UHU and volume as anywhere).

I am particularly looking for paramedic ambulance shift comoensation and salary incentives for departments that run ambulances or ALS squads or ambulance incentives in general, mainly from public sector fire departments but any data yall could give would be great. If you dont want to list your department and location, a relative size would be helpful as well as type of environment (metropolitan, city, suburban, semi-rural, rural)

Respectfully

Edit: typos, clarification

Hii I'm am looking for some people here who either do it or are data specialists/scientists. We do t have a lot of it on wildfires and firefighting here. But countries like Spain do a lot with it and can predict fires and behaviour days in advance.

What data do you use, and how do you get it. Are they public sources or like stations you put out there?

Basically looking for things we can use to our advantage and learn how to do it.