I am now officially a member of the Latir Volunteer Fire Department. This means that I have completed 2 trainings and 2 meetings and shown that I was trustworthy, or as much as people can learn about you in that time. I have known many of these people for 7 years and in a rural area you tend to know everyone’s business.
I began going to the meetings in September I went to one meeting and one training and then the life of a single mother came in. My daughter plays soccer and twice a week she had soccer practice. Every evening was something and I needed to stop going to trainings until November. I began again last week attending my second meeting and this week going to a fire training at a burn building. At this point due to being busy I missed a helicopter landing training, an EMT training and other things.
The meeting covered numbers and dates but the burn building was exciting. Latir had about ten people show up to the Red River Water Plant on a cold frosty night, where the mini academy had been held in late summer. Roy from Lama came and built a smoky fire in the burn building—an L shaped conglomerate of metal shipping boxes. The entrance building has a second box on top that you climb to via stairs inside leading to an upper back door. The structure has small walls, from what I could see to give the trainee some idea of going through a true building. The structure creates an L with another lower shipping box pointing south, this is where the fire is built, either to create the feeling or the atmosphere of a true fire.
I was not actually a member yet and hadn’t been taken through the building so legally I couldn’t go into the smoke. I helped on the outside lowering the ladder carrying it with another man who doesn’t go on oxygen, carrying the generator fan which clears the building of smoke as well as returning the tools to their original positions. It could seem mundane, but if you don’t practice then how will you know how it works and what to do in a true emergency? I learned how to place the ladder and raise it while one person stands on the ends and another walks it up or down. I climbed the ladder with a big axe to knock out a big metal window, having to lock my knee between rungs to secure myself. The clothing made this awkward but geez I didn’t even have a pack on. As a “truck crew” searched for a baby that a bad baby sitter had left in the building, I helped feed a heavy hose into the building for the “engine crew” which carried it in to find and fight the fire.
While I learned details on the outside other people alternated in the search for the baby, carrying water, and being the IC or Incident Commander the one calling the shots on the outside. During the final debrief even people who had been doing this for 25 years sited something that they learned or reinforced in the practice.
After the training I was asked to walk to my car, just as I arrived and was about to grab a warm coat they called me back. They had voted me in and asked whether I wanted to join the Latir Volunteer Fire Department. I said I do. During all of these months people have been really helpful in offering a place for my daughter to go in the case that I’m called or for trainings. Now I need to take people up on this and create the reality, I reckon. I do worry a bit about being called in the middle of the night and that process, or even during work. It’s all art and with a good imagination all of this can be dealt with….at least this is what I think now.
