arringnl
32 Years Experience
Goose Creek, SC
Male, 54
Currently serving Jasper County Fire Rescue in south Carolina along with Charleston County EMS.
Depends on department requirements and state certification requirements. My dept does not do physical endurance tests prior and during employment. Is this a good thing, technically no. A firefighter has to be in shape for hard work and hot environment. Example are community did a Silent Walk on 9-11 in memory of the firefighters that were lost in the WTC collapses. The event had the firefighters wearing all of our gear including SCBA and walk 2,5 miles across our main bridge and the 2.5 miles back. Temperature was 85 deg plus significant humidity which is common here. Many of the firefighters such as myself prepared for the event for weeks exercising in full gear getting body accustomed to the long hours working in gear. The ones that didn't was shown to them yesterday morning by the effects of the walk. Being fit, not necessarily olympic level is required to perform your job just due to the working conditions that we operate in. There is the CPAT test that are conducted and by doing a google search it reveals what you need to do and you will be able to judge your current fitness as a starting point.
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I can only speak for Sc but the curriculm is the same. Here they make the classes accomatable for the volunteers by doing classroom portion in the evenings and Sat. Takes approx 3 moths to get FF 1&2.
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Depends on the dealer and if they are custom fit. We have ours custom fit so it can take about a month..
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To go interior firefighting you have to be FF2. I would imagine your system is similar to SC in that it takes approx 4 months based on volunteers work fulltime jobs.
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Nurse Practitioner
Could a nurse practitioner do the job of a primary care physician?
Zookeeper and Animal Trainer
Are a lot of people in your line of work vegetarian/vegan?
Investment Banker
Did you experience the notorious 100-hour work weeks?
As the saying goes Paramedics save lives, EMT save paramedics. I have seen lousy paramedics over the years that is for sure. But either level is part of an team. So that can go either way. My personal opinion is that a FF should be a minimum of EMT since the majority of calls these days are medical.
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Go to town and get a quick knock down from the front and send crews to the back to check for access. The Charleston Fire Dept had their infamous Sofa Super Store fire and an employee was trapped in the back of the facility and they had to axe their way to him from the outside of the wall to bring him out that side.
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Generally if a dept does not have an aerial they dont do that but you still need to climb extension ladders. So you have two options work on your fear since extension ladders come with the job or change choices, but you usually cant have it both ways. Sorry being honest.
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