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!

No thanks

So, each time I have a clinical at the hospital I appreciate all that nurses and techs deal with and appreciate even more so that I am not, nor ever will be, one. Today I got to help with several Foley catheter placements (eek), place an NG tube with gastric lavage (gag), coach...see threaten...a lady to drink her activated charcoal twice after an OD on kitchen de-greaser, enjoy her vomiting it...again twice, and relieving herself in the bed...can you guess?..yep, twice. Needless to say, she and I became buddies as only those who have cleaned up another's feces can be (just wrong). She even told me she loves me... ha ha!

I am grateful for the millions of thankless tasks and services that nurses provide under so much workload, but there is no question in my mind that it's not for me...ever.

Fire, pharm, fun, and floor cleaners....

My life these days is all about fire training, work projects, physical training, paramedic school, pharmacology, and study time. Perhaps not super interesting to some, but really, I'm loving it. I will admit that we are all looking forward to the completion of our Fire Academy the end of next week and will be celebrating at our graduation ceremony on April 4th. I'm also amazed that this first phase of paramedic school is done in less than a month. My how time flies when you're living your dreams!

Going on air before entering the structure. We've got some fire to find & fight!

Squad 2 at the burn training center.

In the new ambo on the way to a visit/tour of Children's Hospital.


Studying during lunch at paramedic school.


Precisely why paramedics shouldn't do CPR.


Lunch break while training at an acquired structure.


Me with James, one of the paramedics I'll be working shift with.


My elbows rubbed right off doing "floor-cleaners" across the bay floor during PT one morning. Today several of us are still dealing with red, raw and painful elbows a week later!
(not loving that genetic double chin however...)

New update coming soon... It's hard to have anything interesting to post about some weeks!

Fire academy

For our first eight weeks we are going through an accelerated fire academy as there are a couple of guys who have no fire experience and for all nine of us to get used to working together. We have drill ground fire days three days a week and operations tasks two days a week. I'm loving the review of it all and the good physical work that comes along with it. Below are some random photos from a couple of fire academy days. Hopefully we'll be doing live burns the next few Fridays so I'll try to get some good photos then!

Practice hitting the hydrant...

...hose evolutions...


...reloading the preconnect attack lines, over and over and over...


...me and my paramedic squad partner Sean in front of one of our fantastic new ambulances...


...laying out hoselines up the stairs...

...a less than attractive me towards the end of the day!

We are all learning a lot and having so much fun together. I feel so fortunate to be working so closely with such a great group of people. And the best part is, it's only going to get better as time goes on!!!