Two Misperceptions About Firefighting
You want to find a job as a firefighter — that’s great! It’s an outstanding career! But do you really know what the life of a firefighter is like? You’ve already read what I wrote about “The Day in the Life of a Firefighter” (check it out at Homeland inSecurity). Now I would like to share with you some thoughts about the fire service as a career and dispel a couple myths about the firefighting profession. Enjoy!
When you begin your journey into a firefighting career, talk to other firefighters about “the job.” Firefighters are generally a friendly bunch of people and they love to talk about what they do. Most are very proud of the work they do to ensure that the communities that they live and work in are safe. It’s a proud and honorable profession.
As you think about the fire service as a career, here are two myths that you should learn. They aren’t deal breakers — just the reality of the job.
Myth 1 — Shift Work Is Awesome!
If you work for a career fire department, the firefighters who work at the fire station are at work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. There are a huge variety of shift schedules to ensure that firefighters are on-duty and also have time off. Depending on the schedule, some schedules work out to be 40 hours a week, 48 hours a week, 53 hours a week, and 56 hours a week. In fact, federal firefighters (those that work for the U.S. Government) often work 72 hours a week. Those hourly totals are calculated by averaging the hour worked over a given length of time (fire departments calculate this differently). Here are some examples of different shift schedules:
10 hours on-duty/14 hours off-duty (rotate so that you work two 10 hour shifts, then two 14 hour shifts, then 4 days (96 hours) off-duty)
24 hours on-duty/48 hours off-duty
48 hours on-duty/96 hours off-duty
24 hours on-duty/24 hours off-duty/24 hours on-duty/24 hours off-duty/24 hours on-duty/96 hours off-duty
As you can see, there are a wide variety of shift schedules — and in general, shift work is awesome! So what’s the myth?
Since someone has to be on-duty 24/7/365, that means that firefighters are in the fire station on holidays — all of them. As such, if you go to work for a career fire department, you may have to work on the 4th of July,
Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, et cetera. You may be on-duty for your birthday, your children’s birthday, your anniversary, and other important family events. You will miss your children’s sports activities, school plays/band concerts, “back-to-school” night, and parent-teacher conferences. And let’s face it — the “regular” working world is scheduled around the Monday through Friday, 9 to 5 timetable. So when you are on-duty on a Saturday, you might have to miss the party that all of your friends are attending. I would offer that the shift schedule is awesome — but be aware of the reality.
Myth 2 — “The Job” is Non-Stop Excitement!
There is no doubt that the job of a firefighter in 2015 is exciting. We are an “all-hazards” profession. That means that the fire service responds just about anything and everything. This includes building fires, vehicle fires,
forest fires, garbage fires (really, about anything that burns!), traffic accidents, traffic accidents with people trapped in the vehicle(s), emergency medical calls (cardiac arrest, heart attacks, strokes, difficulty breathing, delivering babies, and many others), hazardous materials spills, terrorist attacks, rescues (from trenches, from building collapse, from rock cliffs, et cetera), airplane crashes, and many more. There is a lot to learn, a lot that you will be responsible for, and a lot of action!
As you can see, there is a lot of exciting opportunities in the fire service! So what’s the myth?
The fire department is a job just like any other. That means there is a lot of day-to-day, routine work to be done. Some examples include:
Cleaning the fire station — every day, including the bathrooms
Checking out the apparatus to make sure that all of the equipment is there
Maintaining and cleaning the fire trucks and equipment
Writing reports and memorandums
Sitting in front of a computer doing data entry
Attending meetings
Going to classes — some that have nothing to do with firefighting like sexual harassment classes, diversity classes, computer classes, fire inspection classes, and many more
Inspecting public buildings
The bottom line is that “firefighting” can become a routine job. Listed above are some of the tasks that have to be completed just about every day.
Also, the reality is there are even some emergency responses that become pretty boring. For example, responding to the same building three or four times in one shift for the fire alarm sounding (false alarms) isn’t very exciting.
You will meet lots of homeless people that call 9–1–1 saying they have chest pain when what they want is a ride to the shelter so they can get out of the weather.
There are many, many calls for building fires that end up being a smoke-filled house or apartment because someone burned their food. Those aren’t emergencies but do they ever smell bad!
Finally, the most common emergency calls that you will respond to are Emergency Medical System (EMS) calls. For some fire departments, more than 90% of their calls are EMS calls. EMS calls sometimes involve blood, vomit, urine, feces, and infectious diseases. That’s not pretty and that’s not exciting, that’s reality. The EMS calls listed above are truly emergencies and you need to be there with your expertise. However, there are a lot of routine medical calls. It doesn’t take long to realize that if you have seen one “alcohol overdose” (someone that is simply drunk), you’ve seen them all. Same with seizures. Lots of people have seizures, they are debilitating and embarrassing for the people that suffer from them, and I feel bad for them. But even seizures are routine events. Not all of the EMS calls are exciting.
There are a lot of things about the fire service that are exciting — but be aware of the reality.
The fire department offers a lot of benefits, opportunities, fun, and excitement. It’s a great career and I love going to work every day! But the news cameras don’t cover all of the work you will do …
“This message brought to you by the homeland security professionals of Homeland inSecurity — helping you understand how to get hired and then thrive in the homeland security community.”
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