Come on baby, light my fire!

Yesterday at work we had the fortunate opportunity to go out to the Suncor oil refinery and do some live fuel fire training. The Suncor Fire Department and Emergency Response Team members were all incredible; helpful, friendly, supportive, and so knowledgeable. They even offered to take pictures for us so we could just get out there and have fun. We had a complete blast!

The day began with some classroom time and then after lunch we did several hours of live fire evolutions. I was absolutely freezing all morning in the classroom so was really happy to get all my bunker gear on and out into some good heat. We started the afternoon practicing appropriate hose patterns, then single valve fuel fires, moved up to four and five valve fires, and ended the day applying foam to tanker fires. We all rotated through the positions; leader, nozzle-man, mule, and kinker (The fire service definitely does have some of the most interesting names and terminology!), and learned how important it is for all of the players/positions to communicate well. It was great practice for dealing with fuel tank vapor and fires and super fun to get to train with such great firefighters as well as a lot of live fire. The weather was perfect, the burn evolutions were great, no one got hurt, and we all learned so much.

Today we heard that our Suncor FD instructors were very impressed with how well we worked together, caught on, and learned quickly. They were pleasantly surprised that as a group of people with varying degrees of experience and limited time working together we did really great and were able to do a lot of more advanced evolutions. I felt honored to have gotten a personal "well-done" from one of our lead instructors, Manny. Thanks!

Everyone getting all geared up and ready to begin!


How much fun is it to have rainbow colored hoses? Love it!!!

Advancing in to keep the fire to the rear and away from the leader.


I'm at the nozzle on the far left team with the yellow chevron's on my helmet. We're controlling the fire from the top so it doesn't fall down onto the leader while shutting off valves.


This was the fire evolution where I was the leader with four valves to shut off. Bring it on, baby!

Carefully and deliberately moving in to shut off the first of four fuel valves. I'm in between hose teams one and two to the left of the photo with my arms outstretched shouting "Step!" "Step!" "Step!" "Step!"

Moving in with hose teams two and three to shut off the last two fuel valves. Imagine my surprise when a huge ball of flame flashed up into my face from underneath the hose streams from the tower straight in front of me while shutting off the lower valve!


The fire coming up around our feet was pretty crazy, I suppose that's a risk when you're wading in diesel/gasoline floating on water. It also gets really slippery and hard to stay upright.

What a sight... Sweet, sweet fire!!!!!!!

What am I doing?? I have no idea...

Power cone hoseline protection so the leader can shut off the valves.


Fuel tanker fire. Gorgeous, isn't it?!

The entire Louisville crew at the end of the day pleased with how well everything went. Such fun!!

I really love this firefighting stuff and feel so fortunate that all of my hard work over the last five years has paid off and I get to do this for a living each and every day. It truly is one of the best and most rewarding careers out there!