The end of the journey.

 

The thing about a journey is, that it has to end at some point.

You can plan a journey as much as you like, but along the way the scenery changes, there are unexpected stops, breakdowns and occasional disasters!

My journey with Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service, as you may have read the first year of, has been amazing. I have thoroughly enjoyed it, I’ve made the best kind of friends. The tough times have been ‘character building’ and I can take away from it a lot more in the way of life skills, and many happy and hilarious memories.

Why has my journey come to an end so abruptly?

I guess, you could say that I had stupidly double-booked my seat in two carriages!

I was already on one journey, with my main employment, my very own business, Fighting Fit Devon. I have spent nearly 9-years building up my business from nothing, to what it is now.

And when you have something so important, my, first class ticket, you can’t keep changing carriages.

I tried, it didn’t work.

Being on call, there are some jobs that work, even self-employment, sadly, personal training isn’t one of them, unless you only have a small client base.

I will be exiting my DSFRS carriage on Saturday 29^th February, taking with me, great memories, new skills, special friends, and a feeling of pride, that I was part of something important and special, even if it was only for 2 years and 4 months!

I would urge you, if you are reading this blog, considering becoming an on call firefighter, that you think about all aspects and make sure you get your priorities right. I know that I took a gamble, and sadly it didn’t pay off.

Good luck all.

Happy Firefighting!

House Fires.

We spend a lot of time training for pretty much every fire and rescue eventuality as you have read so far. The one thing you spend a lot of time on is house fires. Up and to this point, I hadn't been to one. I had been to many burnt dinners, but nothing more inside a dwelling.

The first thing you want on your first house fire when in development, is a former Breathing Apparatus (BA) instructor with you – check.

Yes, I was wearing BA with my boss,  Roger Williams on this particular occasion. Let me set the scene.

I was at home, thinking of an early night with a new book, casually moisturising my face and cleaning my teeth before bed, the beeper goes off. Off I pedal to the station, and find out when we get in that it's a house fire, persons reported. This is not just my first house fire, but also my first persons reported. This is the big deal, the thing we spend all that time training for.

There is a lot more pressure on you at that point, and I was trying very hard to not get into a flap about it, this was the time to calm down, methodically do everything I know how to do.

Putting the sets on with Roger he was very good at calming me down, telling me just to do things normally, we were the first on scene, the smoke was billowing out of the building, it was really going.

Roger asked me to grab the thermal image camera (TIC) and we headed around the corner, Roger in charge of the water, and we luckily heard that the three residents had made it out of the building and were waiting for the ambulance crew to arrive.

Flames were licking out at us from a blown out window, Roger used water on this from the outside, calming it down, we then entered the building.

This was when I got to see a true professional at work. The whole operation was textbook from Roger, with very little water being used, the fire was under control in what seemed like minutes. It's times like that when you actually really respect the knowledge and experience of firefighters who have been doing it their whole career, I learnt a lot that night just by watching.

Two more BA wearers joined us inside the building, I went around with the TIC, then ended up on a double extension ladder in the middle of the house cooling down beams. We eventually ran out of air from our BA cylinders and had to leave the building, leaving   the other two BA wearers in there to finish cooling hot spots and making sure that the place was safe.

It was a long night, there had to be an investigation into how the fire started, and we also had to wait for a window company to come out and board up the premises. There is a lot more to a job than just squirting a bit of water.

Back at the station we serviced our BA sets, put our kit in the laundry and eventually I made it from the shower and into bed by around 3am!

As you can tell by my blog, not every night on call is like this, you can have weeks where you get a good night sleep, and then you usually get three in a row of wake-ups, but that's what you sign up for. This is why I am writing this blog, for anyone wanting to join, that doesn't know quite the extent of how it changes your life. It changed mine for the better, so keep reading, there's more to come during my development.