Friday, April 6, 2012

Being a Firefighter


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What makes a career firefighting an ultimate dream job? Passion! Doing what you love and loving what you do. I love everything about firefighting. I love dragging and/or rolling fire hoses. I love climbing the enormous, truck mounted ladders. I love riding the engine, code three, lights and sirens down the highway. I love being the first one on the team making entry into a burning building, watching the fire build, then doing what I am trained to do and knocking the fire down. I love wearing my turnouts (bunker gear) and helmet, wearing a heavy, air tank, and dragging a fire hose.

What do I love about firefighting? I love returning to the station, reloading the fire hose onto the engine. I love washing the engine. I love hand drying the engine and making sure all the equipment is secured, put away correctly and ready to use on the next call. I love being hot, sweaty, bruised and having tired muscles, because I feel like I earned them.

The firefighters I know jokingly say, "we show up, in the middle of the night, break the windows, cut holes in the roof, deluge the home with water, drag huge hoses through the landscape and then we are thanked for coming."

A career firefighter is an ultimate dream job because there are clearly defined goals and objectives. You put the wet stuff on the red (hot) stuff. You go in the structure and you put the fire out. It is not complicated, it is not political. You are helping people in their very worst hours, when their home has burned down, when they have been in a car crash or when they are suffering an unexpected medical emergency. You are there for them when they call. What else can you do as a career that would make such an impact?

Why is firefighting my ultimate dream job? At the end of the day, I have worked hard, I earned my sore muscles, I helped someone who needed assistance and when my five year old son introduces me to his friends he says, with a puffed out chest, "This is my mom, she's a firefighter!"

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