Firefighting Complete with pictures

Heya Folks!,

So events in the life of todd to follow.
First of all sorry for the late post. firefighting did finish last friday and i did mean to get this post posted during the weekend but lets face it. mr. lazy/reaaaaallly tired got in the way. anyways enough of that.

The course we did was the 4 day basic Maritime fire fighting course. basically the first day was spent drilling the fire triangle into our heads (i'm sure you've all heard of it) so thoroughly we will now never not dream about it again.

Day 2 we finally got to the airport and went to the fire training ground they have there ( for those of you who have flown into Auckland you would have seen it. its the big very burnt plane at the start of the runway). The morning of this day to was further spent cementing that damned triangle of our dreams into our very essence. The afternoon though they got us familiar with our. Basically a really thick fire retardant jacket and pants followed by a helmet, burn hood, and nice big clomping boots and gloves. Then in the 20C heat we ran around carrying fire hoses and rolling them and unrolling them. then rolling them. oh wait, then unrolling them again. Let me tell you lots of sweat and sore muscles.

Day 3 rolled around next. by this point the waking up at 6 was really starting to hurt. but oh well thats life eh. On this day we were introduced to our lovely BA's (breathing apparatus). Basically a mask that feeds you air from a massive steel bottle on your back. made you sound like darth vader too. It was fun to wear until they made us to an obsticle course which involved crawling through very small spaces. I've known any better claustrophobia invoking device before.

Day 4 was the killer. we had been warned so too. didn't make it hurt any less. basically we suited up in all our fire retardant gear plus the BA sets (we got steel ones. the instructors got carbon fiber. the...........). Next they lit a fire in the building they had and heated it up to 40C inside. Then they got us to search the inside in zero visibility for bodies (they had giant bean bags weighing 70KG to act as people). and on top of that, they didn't let us use the stairs. we had to us the ladders. I've never known anything more exhausting than trying to climb a ladder in 40C of heat while wearing the equivalent of a parka, with a mask plastered to your face, and oh wait you couldn't see anything because it was so smokey and the instructor behind you yelling at you. All that added up to an exhausting day. Also a day i must say in which in which i learned alot about myself. Most notably its hard to think indignantly when someone is yelling advice in your ear (the instructors would would give you advice, the wrong advice to try to confuse you then when you hesitated he'd start 'telling' you to make a decision). all in all a very learning experience.


here's us all looking really tired. this is just after i got lost in the building. i was not happy.


Day 5 was the day we finally got to play with real fire. they took us to there finally training ground. this time we lugged around hoses and fought giant burning pools of fire. A step down from yesterday but was a bit harder since we all were a bit sore. well i claim everyone because i was. and lastly heres a picture of all of us afterwards.


thats all for now. i'll try to write next week too. don't forget to comment.

churs

todd