Smoke Before Fire

We're Not Moving!

2011-08-10T16:06:00.007-06:00

So given the outcry of the rumor mill of having blogger change to Google Blogs and forever be associated with Google +. Google came out with some sort of press release stating that they would not be doing such a thing. So with that, Smoke Before Fire will not be moving. (A big apology to those who updated their links to reflect the wordpress address.

Please look forward to September when Smoke Before Fire will come back from Summer Vacation. But while you are waiting I would love for you guys to check out a new personal blog. Go to it by clicking the image below.

With that, stay tuned and stay safe!

We're Moving!

2011-07-06T20:00:00.000-06:00

Given that Blogger is changing to Google Blogs and further integrating with Google's own, very new, social network I did not want my blog integrated with my profile so I will be moving my blog to smokebeforefire.wordpress.com. So update your browsers and stay tuned. By the by if you head on over to that link now you will see a filler post and not much excitement, give it time, it will be up to snuff very soon!

Update: I was recently promoted to manager of the Billings branch of Eagle so I am currently trying to get that figured out. So as of right now, Smoke Before Fire will be going on hiatus until the end of July. Not much of a hiatus but don't abandon hope! I will return!

The Next Update

2011-06-15T12:43:00.000-06:00

What's going on ladies and gentlemen? Again it's been a while and I do apologize. Here is what I have been up to in bullet form:

Moved to Billings
Survived a hellish thunderstorm with tornadoes. Not in Billings exactly but in surrounding areas.
Playing catch up on I-99 studying. (Taking most of my time)
Building the Eagle web site. (You will be linked to it as soon as I get it up to par)
Took over on managing supplies and airport security stuff for Eagle.

All this coupled with the lack of stable internet means I can't get a good post on here. However we will be getting internet soon and posts galore! So stay tuned for that and stay safe!

P.S. Also here is a link to a video I took of the swirling clouds. Stay tuned for next time where I post a video of the gas explosion that happened!

Life Goes On: The Comeback

2011-05-22T15:41:00.000-06:00

So as you can see (for those of you that check) it's been a long time since my last update and I have a bunch of reasons why. First school was ending. Firefighter one was taxing an unsurmountable amount of time, coupled with working about 25 hours a week with the i-99 class I was struggling to find any spare time as it was. Then I graduated with a 3.79 GPA and right after that my fiancee and I moved to Billings. Finally after getting unpacked and back to Helena to finish cleaning the apartment, gotta get that deposit back, I finally had a moment to breathe.

The aftermath of living such a busy life includes:

- Little time with my sweetie
- Putting off getting a beer with a buddy and not being able to anymore because he was killed in a work related accident.
- Falling really behind in I-99 class but not too far behind.

The middle one really bothers me in that he was my friend and roommate and someone who I could count on. The first one bothers me because well, I love spending time with her and not getting to see her much was pretty lame.

But in that busy time my firefighting/ems career is moving forward. I am currently applying for a reserve firefighter position with Lockwood Fire Department which involves:

- Two 12 hour sleeper shifts a month
- One 24 hour on call period.
- General Alarm on call covering should the need arise.

Couple that with my full time EMT position I will have my fill of EMS. More on that as soon as I pass their physical and written consoritum tests. I will keep you posted.

As for everything else, that's about it, look for all the back posts I started that I will now have time to finish. Until then, stay tuned and stay safe.

Coming Soon

2011-04-20T06:27:00.001-06:00

so it has been a while since I have updated this. not out of abandoning but more out of
the fact that I have no time to edit the blog. I have had a few things to write about and I
will be updating the blog this weekend probably with everything that is going on firewise.
stay tuned!!!!

The Patriot Flag Ceremony

2011-03-22T15:34:00.000-06:00

On the third day of my internship was a ceremony for the Patriot Flag. For those that don't know the Patriot Flag is a giant, 30ft x 58ft to be exact or the size of a regular volleyball court, flag that will be flown at Fort McKinley. There is another flag that is signed by those participating in the ceremony along with a sort of guest book style book that you could sign. The flag will be displayed in each of the 50 states before it is flown permanently.

We started by shoveling the sidewalk of snow then brought weights up from the gym to weigh down the banner of the names of those that died in the terrorist attacks during 9/11. Afterwards we placed the banner and worked on the row of flags that adorned the side of the Civic Center. Afterwards the firefighters signed the flag and I stood back, not wanting to overstep my bounds in signing it I was told by the chief to sign it. As I was apart of putting the ceremony together I should be able to sign it. A humbling moment I am truly grateful for. Being able to sign something that will be on display at the memorial at Ground Zero was simply daunting. I didn't register it at first. I just signed it, but as the day drove on and I continued in helping with the ceremony the magnitude of it started sinking in.

I think the moment in which the gravity hit me was as we were raising the giant flag. It took a bunch of us to unroll the flag and as I looked up (picture left) to see the flag towering over me, blocking out the sun and casting a deep shadow. We waved the flag and as you can see from the pictures below it was a pretty impressive view.

Folding the flag was a task in itself. It took all of Helena Fire and a few others to fold it. The flag weighs 60lbs. We folded it up then set it inside it's case until the ceremony started.

We dressed in turnouts except those who were in the honor guard. They wore their Class A uniforms. We stood in a line as the honor guard brought the flag up to the podium. We watched as the governor, mayor, and a few others gave speeches and then we folded the flag. The ceremony finished and we packaged the flag and sent it to FedEx where it could be shipped to the next place of ceremony.

Those who died in the Towers; Police, EMS, the 343 firefighters, and civilians were given a fitting ceremony. They were honored and will forever be honored by the thousands of people who will share in seeing the flag flying in the breeze, those who signed the flag, and those who scribbled their chicken scratch in the signature book. They all came together with respect for the fallen. They all parted with the ceremony engraved in their minds.

I shared in a once in the lifetime moment with a brotherhood that I haven't fully been welcomed into but being able to participate in this, and having them share something so special with me put me one step closer. It's a memory I'll never forget.

You can read the Helena IR article here and watch the YouTube video here. Until next time, stay safe, and stay tuned!

Integrity: More Than Just a Word

2011-03-22T09:15:00.000-06:00

We are faced with choices everyday. Some are mundane as what we want to eat for lunch, others define who we are, our very character. Everyone has a price, that point in which they put aside their integrity for convenience. Why am I writing about this you ask? Well we watched a scene like this play out at our own local fire department.

I recently received a press release in my email about two Montana City Firefighters being arrested. At first I didn't think much about it but I wondered whom. We had a meeting that I missed but later found out the details of. Turns out that two of our firefighters, one a ranking captain that had been in the department for over 20 years were using the credit cards from our apparatuses to buy gas for their own cars. The amount totals somewhere between 8-12 thousand dollars. A felony. The captain had been doing this since 2005. His brother for a little over a year. However his brother, had also stolen an airpack from the station.

They were arrested and could face up to 5 years in jail. It created a need in the fire department for more accountability. What could have become an anti-trusting backlash turned into a push for everyone to be held accountable and a continuation of the trust officers have in the rest of us.

We all have a price. Watch the news, you can see it daily. I don't know what my price is. I don't know if it can ever be discovered. I don't look forward to the day it is. Those that chose to steal, commit fraud, etc choose to for a variety of reasons. Be it personal gain, be it falling on hard times, be it convenience and so on, we do it for benefit. Our captain fell on hard times in a lack of money. He found his price, his lack in integrity.

However it's not so black and white, with the human race it never is. I feel bad for the guy. He did what he had to because he was desperate. However, with the fire department it becomes that much more intense. We are held to a higher standard than most. Mostly because of the image we have to maintain. Pure, strong, moral are just three of the many positive traits we take on to maintain on and off duty. Does that make us infallible, not a chance.

Like I said, everyday we are faced with choices and everyone has a price. I don't know mine, and I don't know which direction I'd take. I like to think that because I have worked as hard as I have, overcome the upbringing I've had to get where I am that I am unmoving in my integrity, but everyone has a price. My drive will help me in keeping my moral compass true north, and each choice I make will continue to define who I am. That is all I can hope for, because hey, I'm only human.

Sexism and A Delay of Care

2011-03-02T13:09:00.000-07:00

The other day at work I witnessed something that has plagued my field for years. A call came in for a lady complaining of chest pain and shortness of breath. One of our ACLS EMT's was going to go on the call and we sent one of our EMT-B's up from Billings doing 911 ride a longs. Well the Advanced EMT needed a partner so I told one of our female EMT's to go with him, and as I did he bluntly stated that he wanted a male partner in case the patient was heavy. After stating that the female EMT partner would still go the other EMT refused to go on the call, delaying care for what could potentially be, a serious call. Luckily we had a paramedic on duty at the time who went in this EMT's place.

This to me is a shocking and yet common case in Firefighting, and EMS. We talk of the fire department being a boys club. I've heard firefighter's talking about women in the fire department will never be a common thing. There has been a major boom in the opposite direction though as more fire departments are hiring females to shatter this image. Even in volunteer departments this designation of it being a boy's club is starting to go by the way side. So why is it that even with the move towards more balanced fire departments does this problem of sexism come play over and over?

The simplest way of putting it is, tradition. Tradition is what holds a fire department together. The glue of the firehouse if you will. Long has the this been a boys club. Since it's earliest days in the United States the fire service has the fire department been staffed by men. This tradition, as with most traditions is slow changing. Listening to the older, experienced guys talk about how firefighting has been and always will be a man's game. The new firefighter, wanting to impress the older guys and learn the FD ways will take on this mentality. On tradition begets tradition.

How do we change this tradition? The simplest way to do it is to let the older firefighters believe in the boys club tradition, but not to let it change the new firefighter's mind frame. Welcoming everyone that can do the task and watch our backs shouldn't be discouraged. It should be our primary goal. So keep a positive outlook, welcome those who are willing to help, and don't let tradition of the wrong magnitude change your view on who is welcomed in the fire department. Doing that we can focus more on our customers.

Coming Soon!

2011-02-21T19:53:00.000-07:00

I haven't forgotten the blog, I am in the middle of a post on being Retired on Duty so look forward to that. Oh I also received a new laptop from google, so I will be talking about that some. Stay tuned!

The Firefighter Anthem

2011-01-30T09:07:00.000-07:00

I came home after a long day of work to find my sweetie bright eyed and grinning from ear to ear. I noticed her computer on youtube and she was like, "I have something awesome to show you." Well what she found was pretty awesome. In fact it is so awesome that it became my ringtone. These folk made a tribute to us Firefighters and I thank them for it. It does each one of us justice. So without further adieu... The Firefighter Anthem.

The Weight Vest

2011-01-30T08:10:00.000-07:00

Okay well I started this post and I thought I had finished and posted it but alas, I did not. That's what I get for taking 21 credits and working. So without anymore stalling here we go.

The Weight Vest

So this past Christmas my sweetie got me a weight vest. For those of you that don't know it is pretty much what the name says. A vest that is weighted. You can add weight in 2.5lb increments. The weights I have add up to 70lbs. You can add more but 70 pounds is the equivalent of turn outs and SCBA pack weight. As this is a new tool for me I am currently looking for new workouts that will help me in using this to the best of my ability. So as I find work outs I will post them on here under the heading Physical Training. So look for that.

Stay safe!

Complacency

2011-01-18T13:44:00.000-07:00

As described in the Fire Service it is a dulling of the senses, becoming content in routine and mulling over the day in/day out tasks. Complacency causes us to stop learning to look at calls as mundane. To not be prepared for the big one, if you will.

I haven't been in the EMS field long. Certainly not long enough to be a victim of complacency but after a recent call I had I couldn't help but dwell on the fact that I had in the very essence of the word, complacent. Here's the back story.

It was this past Sunday and I had just started my shift. A bright and early 7am. I had just finished the daily check lists and the phone rang. I recognized the number, a local nursing home. I thought to myself oh great what could it be this time? A stubbed toe? A presumed fall that didn't actually happen? Who knows. I received the information from the nurse and it was what I had presumed. A patient with shortness of breath and had an 02 saturation of less than 90%. This is usually a pretty run of the mill call. Bring in to the ER, they check them out for pneumonia and we bring them back. Well we ran code to the Nursing home as per our directives. When we got there a scene unfolded that I wasn't quite mentally prepared for. We walked in and the nurses told us to run, the patient is coding. For those of you that don't know, when a patient is coding they are void of a pulse or any other vital signs, circling the drain or on the brink of death.

I ran to get the heart monitor and jump kit as my medic partner went to assess the situation. As I was running back the hospital medic service was pulling in. We went in and I fielded all the tools my partner needed and I was amazed at being able to remember where everything was. Thank you daily/weekly checks, I will never take you for granted again. I jumped in and started doing chest compressions. This was the first call where I was having to do them. My partner was working on establishing an airway and the hospital medics were working on hooking up an IV. Well sadly to say we couldn't get a line and had been performing CPR for too long and the hospital medics called medical control and called the guy.

Now I bet you are probably wondering just where I became complacent or maybe you have an idea. It was at the beginning of the call. Through countless Nursing home calls that turned out to be nothing I grew accustom to the routine. I did not treat each call like the big one. Did the patient receive a lack of proper care because of it? No. I was lucky, we showed up and did everything we could, the best we could. Could we have done anything differently on the call? I'm not sure. I could have gone into the call with a better attitude for sure.

What sticks with me and what will stick with me is I let a series of mundane calls cloud my judgment on other calls. What I swore not to do is the very thing I did. However what I came to understand is that it happens. Complacency hits everyone and no one is free from it. But if we are more proactive about our jobs, and we look at each call differently, or each shift differently, the job doesn't become mundane, it doesn't become routine. This in itself brings us closer to becoming less complacent and better care providers.

A Year in Review, Resolutions, The Suicide and A Look Ahead

2010-12-31T09:22:00.000-07:00

Well howdy gang, it has been entirely too long since I have updated Smoke Before Fire. No I haven't abandoned the blog, I have just been entirely too busy. So let's kick it off, my last post of 2010.

Helena

So after living here for a year come August I came up with the amazing revelation that in such a short time I had built a complete life here. Friends, a worthwhile job that I enjoyed and finishing my schooling combined into a nice place to live and thrive. Throw into that equation the fact that my sweetie came back from Japan and we "took the next step" and moved in together it comes as a complete package. As I stated before, an amazing revelation.

A Year in Review

This year has been busy. I've come into my own as an EMT-Basic and have seen some incidents that I still think about. I have even pushed myself further in becoming an ALS provider by getting my endorsements. I admit I am still intimidated by the fact that I can do these procedures but I am slowly becoming comfortable with them. I have joined a volunteer fire department that I am proud to be apart of. We don't run a lot of calls, roughly 60 a year, but they take firefighting seriously and I am amazed at the amount of experience they bring to the table. All of this as helped push me further into the EMS field and I am thankful for every day I am apart of it.

Resolutions

As the year is coming to an end it's time for New Year's Resolutions... The promises we make to ourselves that seem to fizzle out and something we seem to start to dread every year we make them. Am I going to make a New Years resolution? Yes and no. I am going to work out more, I am going to love more, I am going to enjoy life more, not because I feel that I am obligated to make such resolutions, but more because that's how I want to live my life. So no in the aspect that it isn't a resolution and more of a daily choice. Lame sounding I know, but very true.

My Third Semester

Well I am 75% of the way done with school. This semester didn't end in the 4.0 I had expected but in a 3.5 bringing my accumulative GPA to a 3.8. Everyone chalks it up to my sweetie being back but I chalk it up to being busy. A 3.8 isn't bad in my eyes. So I'll accept it. This semester was a lot more book learning and a lot less hands on which made the semester drag on but I made it through.

The Suicide

About two months ago I wrote about that call. The one that haunts us and at the end of the post I wrote about how I would see more calls that would stick with me. Well about three weeks ago my medic buddy and I were working when we were paged out for an apparent suicide. We got there and came into see a person who had used a gun to commit suicide. Once we saw the gun we backed out and waited for law enforcement. I'm not going to go into details anymore other than I helped officers with their investigation and then helped transport the person to the morgue in Boulder. The person's kid found them and that is where it hit me. But thanks to my friends and family for being supportive of seeing something so shocking. My heartfelt condolences go out to the family in their loss.

A Look Ahead

So after a busy year I look forward to my final semester in Helena, my final few months here and a new start in Billings with my lady. I look forward to the internship with the local Fire Department and I look forward to a few pleasant surprises and whatever life plans to throw at me. I wish everyone a Happy New Year and hopes that you all get to spend it with the people that make you happiest. Thanks for reading in 2010 and I look forward to seeing you for another edition of Smoke Before Fire in 2011.

Updates!

2010-11-17T13:13:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone! It has been an entirely busy few weeks. I battled strep, registered for my final semester of fire and rescue classes, had some 911s, hunkered down for a blizzard and so on. Without wasting time lets jump into it.

My First IV Patients

Now I know what you're probably thinking. He's already talked about his first IV patient. Well that's true I have, but that was my first IV patient with people supervising. This was my first patient on my own after the endorsement was applied to my license. A 93 year old lady with dehydration etc. Every IV I tried to do I lost the vein. They would disappear. I was hoping to tell you all of my first successful patient stick but alas, I did not get one on this lady. I could have continued sticking her but rather than treat her like a pin cushion we just got her to the hospital.

Two Sundays back I had to run a trip to Kalispell for an ALS (Advanced Life Support) run. It was an ALS run because the hospital had a bag flowing with Normal Saline (NS). Plus the doctor wanted us to give the patient insulin. Which I didn't mind you because it is out of my scope of practice. But it wasn't bad. Just watched the bag to make sure it was flowing.

Wildland Fire v. Snow/Sleet Storm

Well it is November as you all know which for the state of Montana usually means cold rain storms that turn into sleet then snow. So it was safe to assume that our Wildland fire days for this year were over. Well it just so happened that during a storm like I stated above MCVFD was paged for a wildland fire. We all wore our structure gear and even though there was a combination of rain and snow hitting us, these spot fires had 20-25 foot flame lengths. Pretty amazing for being in a storm. However exciting as it sounded, all it turned out to be was two people with 7 slash piles burning. We waited with a charged hoseline for the fire department whos district it was to come down and tell us what they wanted to do. They were okay with the giant flames and we were cancelled. Lesson learned from this call, Wildland fires can happen all year round, even in cold wet rain/snow storms.

My Battle with Strep

Well about three days before Halloween I was hit with an obnoxious cold/flu thing. Fever, chills, nasty sore throat and so on. Real nasty. Well I expected to be over it in a few days. I wasn't. The sore throat was miserable. So I went to the doctor and my quick strep test was negative. So I thought I was fine, but I got a call the next day and the 24 hour culture test was positive. So after 10 days of sickness and 10 days of anti-biotics I am strep free and feeling awesome. Going back to the gym was rough but I did manage to get back up to speed.

Other than that, not much is going on. As I stated above I registered for my final semester of classes and I really can't wait to be done and off to paramedic school. I don't know why but I have the itch to learn more and more. I blame my sweetie. Always pushing me to be better and stuff. But I'm off for much needed gym time so stay safe and stay tuned!

To The Left...

2010-11-09T12:28:00.000-07:00

You all may have noticed a widget to the left of these posts showing the names, faces, fire departments and so on of various firefighters. This widget shows those who have died in the fire service, be it a Line of Duty Death (LODD) or something related. It is important to recognize what others have done in this service and what they have given for the safety of others.

Coming soon to a blog near you:

- My first IV patient
- Patient's since my IV endorsement
- A wildland fire in the middle of a rain/snow storm.
- My battle with strep throat!

So stay tuned!

That Call...

2010-10-27T20:23:00.000-06:00

When I first got into the EMS field I heard stories; stories of close calls that became saves, calls that turned out to be stranger than fiction, and even calls that turned out to be nothing Every EMT has them. Every EMT loves telling them. However when asked one simple question you get a completely opposite reaction. "What's the worst call you've ever been on?" Most people's face expressions become stoic, the moment they remember the call that continues to haunt their thoughts every so often, the one that still comes to them in their dreams.

It would randomly be brought up from time to time, some able to share that call that got to them, others just dismissing it by changing the subject. Others would blow off their own recollections with suggestions as what was to come for us new EMT folk. Most of the EMS people I talked to were curious as to how I would handle my first truly bad call. I have to be honest I wondered that myself, the thought coming up at least once every time I was paged to a call. Would it cause me to lose sleep like it does most? Would I freeze up being completely useless during the call? Was I cut out to be there in someone else's worst moment?

Well having that call is inevitable. Sooner or later it is going to happen. The best I can do is do what I have been trained to and do it to the best of my abilities. So I was told, and what I told myself.

Well I was hoping to finish this rambling with a quip about me still having yet to experience this call and how I think I can handle it. The truth is, Last Friday night, October 22nd I experienced that call. ATV crash with a patient who was DOA. I won't go into details on it as I would rather not like to think about it, but forever will the patient's face, body, everything be burned into my mind, forever will the screams of hysteria and the patient's significant other clutching me haunt my thoughts. I did my job and did what I was supposed to, but I didn't sleep the rest of that night. I'm still waking up every so often with my mind going to that night. Yeah these calls will become easier in time and yeah I am going to see a lot of these calls in my career.

I've been told that I need to not take my work home with me, and I am getting a stronger stomach in taking these calls but having people tell me that I will get to a point where they won't affect me at all. In all honesty I'm hoping I never reach that point. I have to learn to not let these calls take a hold of my life and strangle it and I need to learn to accept that call for what it is and move in but it won't. That call, my first bad call, will forever be with me. I hope to learn to let it not affect me so deeply but to not let it affect me at all in my opinion causes us to lose the very thing that made us want to lose sleep in the first place, to see people at their worst and help them. Without that empathy, without that sense of what those people are feeling and a longing to make that go away we become complacent. We lose our urge to do our best and we lose a chance to make a difference.

I end on the fact that I will probably continue to lose sleep thanks to my career choice and what I have/will see. I am learning how to handle these calls. Most importantly I am learning how to be empathetic without letting these calls eat me from the inside. It will take time, it will take struggle, but in the end, that's what makes it worth it.

Facing Your Fears... Or Those Things That Make You Question Your Sanity

2010-10-15T06:06:00.000-06:00

Hello everyone. Here it is, another blog post. I know, I know, it has been a bit since my past post. Well I have been busy. Cranking out three tests a week, volunteering at more than one place and work just seems to fill up my entire life. So here we go.

For our Rescue class I believe I mentioned the fact that I was going to be going repelling off of a 200ft cliff face. Well I did and it was a hoot. Moving on. Ha not really here we are. We go up to an area called Blue Cloud which for those of you who don't know where that is, it is by Baxendale Fire Department on the way to Missoula. The road was bumpy and it took some off-roading to get to, plus a half mile hike up the mountain and there you are. We had a stokes basket with 300lbs worth of gear to carry up too. Needless to say we got a workout before we even hit the actual cliff face. Once we got up there two facts were quite evident. One, the view was amazing, two, the view was amazing because we were really high up. The second fact playing a lot into what I am about to write.

We set up all our stuff and got it ready so that we could repel down the cliff face. Anchoring to a tree, getting our helmets and harnesses on, and strapping in. So we went one at a time and I spent most of the day taking pictures for the programs Fire and Rescue Facebook page. I was second to go over the cliff face. So I get strapped in and after triple checking my harness and rope I start making towards the point of no return. I get there. Staring down I see our belay guy staring up at me. Two thoughts are going through my mind, man are we high up, and this really gorgeous view isn't going to mean anything if this rope snaps. Words of encouragement are shouted, prayers to the powers that be are muttered and look out below. I was scared out of my mind but I proceeded cautiously. You know that feeling of panic you get when you're doing something that causes the voice in the back of your head to shout "WHAT THE HECK HAVE YOU BEEN SMOKING!?", the same feeling you get when you look at that first downward path of a rollercoaster? Well yeah that feeling was very much present. I very cautiously started leaning myself back until my legs were perpendicular to the rock face. The only thing between me and a very fast approaching ground being the grip of my left hand on the rope. I found that as I inched further down the feeling of dread went away and as I got more comfortable The repel came quicker and more comfortable. Once I hit the ground and shouted "Belay off!" I looked up. The wall had been conquered. My sanity had been questioned. My heart was still racing.

We spent a few more hours repelling and getting over our immediate fears of height. As the day progressed so did the wind and we decided to call it a day.

Unrelated Notes

On an unrelated note or two, my sweetie passed her first responder practicals. All she has left between her and her license is the National Registry test but as we all know she will pass with flying colors. We volunteered at the Boulder Rodeo and there were no injuries short of the minor breaks and usual dislocations.

Other than that, that's about it. So stay tuned. I'd make a mention of promises to update this more frequently but who knows when. So stay tuned. There will be updates. Sometime in the near future.

Coming Soon to a Blog Near You!

2010-10-11T21:00:00.002-06:00

Stay tuned for a new blog post tomorrow, complete with pictures!

School Part One

2010-09-17T10:18:00.000-06:00

Well hello everyone, it sure has been a while since I've updated this blog. I haven't forgotten nor have I abandoned it. School has been ridiculously busy. I've had a bunch of tests already and we are only a month into school. Here is a break down of each class.

Math - The first two months will be review, starting from 4th grade math to basic algebra. The math is so simple it's hard. What I mean by this is that I do it so much in my head that actually taking the time to write out the step by step arithmetic I make simple mistakes.

Rescue - This class is probably the most fun class I've had. Right now we are learning how to do low angle rescue with 3:1 pulley systems and repelling. We use these to go down hills lower than 30 degrees. We will be learning high angle but that will be coming later. We are tomorrow (09-18-2010) going out and doing live scenarios so expect a post about that with pictures.

Fire Inspection - So far a lot of book reading in this class with lectures. We are going to actually go out today and do mock fire inspections. I'll write more on that later, but we are going over the basics of fire inspection with an advanced class down the road.

Building Construction - We are learning various building techniques and construction methods used to build all sorts of occupancies. The basis of this class is to teach us what to look for in the new light weight construction that can kill us firefighters.

Fire Suppression & Detection Systems - We learn about different types of alarms for fires and the systems used to extinguish them. A lot of book learning to this class.

FIRE & EMS

We have had a few calls since I've written last. One was a structure fire with a CO count in the 600+ parts per million. As defined by OSHA, anything about 500 ppm, is something we shouldn't be in. In 2 minutes or so you die. Paper and yarn on a 100w bulb was the culprit of this fire.

We have had a few rollovers but everyone was fine and walked away. That is a good thing but still no chance to get my last two patient sticks for my IV endorsement. However I did just recently get hired on by Boulder Ambulance so I will probably have my endorsements here shortly.

Other than that, I'm spending my time working and going to school. Trying to get ahead in all of it. My sweetie has her interview to get into PA school so I'm wishing her a whole lot of luck. Stay tuned!

The Way I Look at Life

2010-09-02T11:32:00.000-06:00

Busy with school, and work, I will write on that here this next week, when I have time, but I was going through some old emails and what not and stumbled onto something I wrote a long time ago that kind of is the way I few life. It was written after my twin sister's passing and was inspired by that tragedy. Happy reading.

"They say how one deals with hardship is a definition of this person's character, I say that there is only so much character that any one human being should have to exhibit. When they don't realize their potential, they are deemed as a waste of time, discarded, thrown away like any common piece of trash. There are some that embrace this idea, and then there are some that take this idea and use it to fuel every movement, every action and every thought to rise above it and walk in their own path. Some lose the daily battle that is life, others will find a way to coexist with it, passing by without even a trace and there are those who will make an impact so monumental that it shapes lives. This impact is seldom derived by a single exploding moment but rather through a series of simple actions in the way one lives their life. There within holds the idea that even a small impact could possibly change the way another person views this existence called life, and wouldn't that be better than impacting no one at all? I think this, to change the outlook of even one person based on our actions, our ideas, or even ourselves, is just an opportunity too hard to just pass up..."

~ Anonymous

IV's and Seattle

2010-07-26T21:00:00.000-06:00

Alrighty everyone well I was hoping to keep this updated more but I am having a hard time finding the time to update this blog, but don't worry I will keep it going. You know how summer is. As I have said in earlier posts Summer has finally started and as it is really short, it's hard trying to get everything we want to do this summer done in a few short months. Anyway it has been a busy few weeks in the Fire/EMS world ending with a wedding in Seattle. So let us jump right into it.

EMT-B Endorsements

So this week I finally got the boss' okay to start my endorsements. So rather than just being an EMT-B that can assist patients with their medications I can actually give medications, place IV's and open airways etc. Well I have my monitoring endorsement already. I can place a 4-lead, monitor heart beats, check blood glucose and so on. These past few weeks I decided that I was going to just work on the cognitive parts of these endorsements myself. So I decided I was going to do the IV/IO initiation (starting) and IV/IO maintenance (monitoring) endorsements. Well the Paramedic/Instructor saw me working on these endorsements and decided to take it upon himself to teach me.

So after I got down the cognitive stuff it was time to do the psycho-motor stuff. My buddy from fire class and EMT coworker Dave decided that he was going to be my first IV poke. We were both nervous as hell but the paramedic was watching. Well the first one I totally missed the vein. Not so sucky for me, but a lot more sucky for Dave. Well the second one I nailed as you can see by the pictures. The first one is my IV technique and then my second one is the IV fully finished. After that I went 7 for 8. So that felt pretty good.

By the end of the day I was exhausted with IVs and I had fire training. We went over structure triage and went out and triaged a persons house that was out in the middle of a lot of trees. Beetle kill and all.

For those of you who don't know when I refer to the beetle kill, our winters haven't been cold enough in the past ten years to keep the pine beetle from entering Montana. These beetles burrow into the trees and lay eggs. The next spring the eggs hatch and the larva burrow and feed inward towards the core. Not only does this cause damage to the trees but when the beetles burrow in a deadly tree fungus is brought in, causing the trees to die. I don't know the science behind it but that is what I've heard.

Anyway after that it was time to head to Seattle for a wedding. The wedding was beautiful and original. The bride and groom had everyone let go balloons at the end of the wedding. It was awesome. Dinner was delicious and the band was epic. When I say epic I mean they were amazing . They went from singing 60's hits, to rapping eminem and lady gaga to Bon Jovi's Living on a Prayer to end the wedding. Ending on a natural high of good food, good music and good people we all went to my car to find the picture you see here.

Apparently a lady decided that she wanted my sweetie's sister in law's purse and had to shatter my window to get it. After a police report, canceled credit cards and so on, we finally taped it up with cardboard and went back to the hotel. We hung out and played games Saturday night then drove home Sunday. All and all it was a good time and meeting my sweetie's family was fun. They all enjoy each other and having fun and it was neat to be around.

Other than that not much is going on, I hope to get my first patient stick at work tomorrow but we will see. Wish me luck, until next time, stay safe and stay tuned!

KIeffner Ranch, Stupid Kids, and the Fourth of July

2010-07-05T21:31:00.000-06:00

Well this past week has been a very eventful week in the Fire & EMS field. We've had a fire, a big one at that, a kid who stole his grandmother's car and rolled it, and the Fire Department Independence Day BBQ. So without further ado here is my week.

The Kleffner Ranch Fire

The Kleffner Ranch is a famous ranch just south of Helena and west of East Helena that was developed in the 1880's and was abandoned in 1893 after The Silver Panic hit and set ruin to the owner. After being vacant for a number of years, Paul Kleffner bought the ranch in 1943 and set to restoring it to it's original beauty. He then sold it in 2005 where it was still being developed into a popular place for weddings, receptions and so on.

As you can see it pretty much is a big deal place in Helena. Everyone knows of it as a landmark. So let's get into it. It was roughly 00:45 (12:45am) and I was laying awake in bed. I don't know if it was the banging of branches and blinds caused by the breezy gusts of wind outside or just a general being awake but there I was, awake. I had just closed my eyes and had just started to nod off when the familar "beep, beep, beep" of the pager went off. After scrambling to put on my fire clothing. I raced off to Station 2. I made it right as the first truck was leaving and got on Tender 1.

We raced like Highway 518 and came around the bend to see an orange glow encompassing most of the area. As we got closer the barn came into sight. An image that will forever be burned into my brain lay before me. Flames shooting out of the roof roughly from what it seemed, about 20 ft high, heavy smoke was showing from all over and flames were jutting out from all the eves. Everyone was scrambling to get their gear on and get all masked up. I was part of the second crew and we ran up with the monitor and started blasting water into the structure. We couldn't get enough water pressure to run the 3inch going into the monitor, while balancing 120psi in the 1 3/4 inch pre-connect. After some juggling and finding a stable water source we were in business. We changed bottles three times before we were sent to rehab. Which we were supposed to rehab 10 minutes at least for every bottle of air we were on. I never ran out of air, usually getting down to about 50%.

Finally after being ordered to go to the ambulance and get checked out, get placed on O2 and relaxing a bit, I got bored and jumped back into the thick of it. This picture to the left is of me shooting water into the building to knock out some visible fire. After we did what we could we realized we just weren't going to get the fire from the angle we were out, so we called in an excavator and the City of Helena's Aerial Ladder Truck. The next picture is one I took of the Aerial and Excavator with the sun coming up. With this combo we made short work of the fire. Most of us rested and pounded down some BK sandwiches and crappy coffee. But at 5am after fighting fire for four straight hours, coffee is coffee.

At 07:25 after an hour of mop up and attempted salvage, and cleaning up/breaking down the hoses, we were clear of the scene. After almost 7hrs my first structure fire was knocked down. Here is an after shot of the building and a link to the Helena IR News Article.

EMS

Later that morning I had to work, so I was at that point going on 32 hours roughly of being awake. I ended up having to drive from Helena to Great Falls then over to Kalispell and back down. Here is a shot of some angry clouds on the way back. After the fire and getting back from work at about 22:30 (10:30pm) and being up four about 42 straight hours I managed to get some sleep.

Friday night I worked with Mike the Medic and we had a pretty quiet night until about 01:20hrs or so. A kid (15yrs old) decided that he needed to steal his grandmother's car and drive it to California to help a friend. Around the Seiben area was when the Highway Patrol started chasing him, and it wasn't until Boulder Pass that he hit the guard rail going 110mph. When we got there he was cuffed as he had a standoff with police. He was laying on the ground in cuffs with a sheriff's deputy holding c-spine. We boarded him and got him to the hospital. From what we could see he only had seat-belt bruises. Luckily.

Independence Day

The fourth of July was done in a typical fashion. BBQ's, Fireworks, beer, etc. The fire department had its annual BBQ. We had really good food. We sat around a fire as it was cold. Yeah, like 40's in the evening. Folks shot clay pigeons. Then we busted out the fireworks. As you can see by the picture.
But that is about it. My first really big structure fire. Stupid kids thinking they are invincible, and good food amongst fun people. Can't ask for anything more I guess. Stay tuned as the fire season looks to get into full swing!

The Para-God Complex: A Return to the Basics

2010-06-13T15:00:00.001-06:00

I have been a nationally registered EMT-Basic for a year and a half now and a licensed and practicing EMT since January. Needless to say I am not the most experienced EMT in the world but I am learning a lot. Over the past six months I have worked with a number of ALS and ACLS providers, ranging from a fully endorsed basic to a paramedic. Each one has given me a different perspective. Also in my six months working for Eagle I have run into many other health care providers in the various hospitals I've seen. Now a lot of the providers are awesome, care about the patients enough to listen to a patient report and there are those that feel inconvenienced by patients. This ranges from EMS providers to doctors.

To be fair I have worked with my fair share of folk from both of these categories. I've seen good EMTs and medics who care more in making the patient the most comfortable they can be. I've also seen those EMTs who just want to get the patient dropped off and get back to the barn. I've run into Medics who are nothing but friendly and are willing to take the time to teach us basics various tricks of the trade and I've seen some that don't even give you the time of day. It's the latter I will be focusing on for the rest of this post. Here's an example:

One night my partner and I were coming in from a 911 to a nursing home. The patient was in no means critical but in distress nonetheless. We called a patient report in to a very annoyed nurse. Apparently calls at 0300hrs just do not make anyone's morning. We get to the hospital, get the patient moved over to the hospital bed and while my partner is giving his report as he was the one who did patient care, I went to remake the cot and clean up the rig. Well I got all the sheets together saw one of the hospital paramedics walking towards me. I asked him if he would help me lift the cot as it was lowered and he just ignored me and walked by. Now he may not have heard me but ask anyone that knows me, they will tell you I am not a quiet guy and he was two feet away from me when the question was asked. I asked my partner what his deal was as my partner also works as a medic for the hospital and he explained that this particular medic felt that cot making was beneath him. He finished by telling me that this medic was a prime example of the Para-god complex: a feeling of being above people because he knows how to push drugs, knows more advanced life saving techniques and can generally do a lot more than basics can. This would not be my first run-in with this complex. Other examples include being dumped with stable patients that the hospital medics don't want to transport.

Now I understand that with all this knowledge paramedics have a lot more responsibilities with trying to save a patient and that this can go to one's head. Especially if they were to have a streak of saves in the back of an ambulance. However as one of my fire instructors taught me, they can push all the drugs they want but if they don't start with the basics, the stuff an EMT-B is fluent in, no amount of drugs pushed will help a patient. The basics include opening the airway, checking and remedying patient breathing problems, and finally checking for adequate circulation. Without these there is no point in pushing drugs on a patient. The point is, that even with all the medical training in the world at your disposal not forgetting the basics is paramount for a patient's survival.

This does not mean that I won't be going for my paramedic certification. I plan on going for it as soon as I am done with fire school. What it does mean is that feeling that certain calls, or certain duties are beneath you causes not only a disservice to your patient base but also causes you to be complacent in patient care. This complacency will cause anyone to forget the basics needed to be done in every call. Maybe not all the time, but some of the time, which is many times too many in my opinion. Remembering that we all once started out as basics, unless someone skipped that step and went straight to medic school, and remembering we were all at the bottom of the totem pole will create more humble health care providers who don't mind teaching those below us the tricks of the trade. This in turn creates a chain reaction that will snowball lower and lower creating EMS providers who are focused on the most important part of patient care. The well-being and betterment of their patient.

Blog Spring Cleaning, Long Trips, Fire Muster!

2010-06-13T13:22:00.002-06:00

Howdy all! Well as you can see there have been some changes made to Smoke Before Fire. What can I say other than that I was really bored with the look that Smoke Before Fire had. Then I discovered the new Template Designer by Google and as you can see, my blog got hot! Literally! Then my title image Just didn't fit the template and the sizing was off, so a new title image! So yeah, blog spring cleaning has come and I like the results. I mean I don't see it much because I don't read the blog myself, because honestly who reads their own blog? But I hope you all like it.

EMS

So work hasn't been too exciting. Thursday I spent 14 hours of my 21 hour shift in an ambulance. I got very familiar with Eagle VII that day. Here's how it went down. I get to work at 1000hrs and am told we have to leave at 1030 for a patient pick up in Butte. We get to Butte to find out that the patient's appointment at the FHVA is the following day. So we went to Butte for no reason. Well we make it back to Montana City and were getting off the interstate when our boss calls us to tell us that we have a patient transfer to Missoula for St. Peters. So we get there, drop the patient off and come back. On the way back we get a call from the VA saying we need to bring a patient to St. Peters from the VA. It was a behavioral patient so I had to do patient care with him as well. Well after we drop the patient off and get back to the shop, my partner Mike gets a call from the VA and we need to go up to Missoula again for another patient. So after maybe sitting and relaxing for 10 minutes we are on the road again. We get the patient and come back and get back to the shop at 12:30am.

Luckily we didn't have any calls that night, and I got to sleep for a few hours before I got up early to call my sweetie who is Stateside bound this Wednesday! Pretty stoked. But afterwards I went home and passed out for another four hours. That next night we didn't have any calls so I was going to go to bed early but our favorite sheriff's deputy came to visit us. So we talked with him for a bit. Again after getting to bed around midnight I woke up early. I didn't get to go back to bed when I got home because I had to get ready for Fire Muster.

Fire Muster

So every year a town about five miles west of Montana City by the name of Clancy holds a series of events known as Clancy Days. Basically it's a weekend of cook outs, flea markets, music, and fun. The Clancy Volunteer Fire Department uses this weekend to host it's Firefighter Competition known as Fire Muster. Basically you have teams of four doing three events.

The Fire hose relay is the first event where you have a hydrant, three lengths of hose and a nozzle. We start behind the hydrant, run to our respected areas of the hose and couple them together. Afterwards we raise our hands and the hydrant guy lets the water flow. We shoot one target, shut the water off, then couple a different nozzle and a different hose length and shoot the second target. The team with the fastest time wins. We had the second fastest time, because the first Clancy team cheated and didn't use gloves. Well they got a second time to go and got a faster time. None of the other teams got a second round. Our time was 53 seconds which wasn't bad. We would have had faster but our first guy didn't tighten the coupling tight enough and it burst. It soaked him and that was hilarious.

The second event was the Fold-A-Tank bucket relay. We had four buckets that we had to use to take water from the fold-a-tank and fill up a oil drum. The first person with the steady stream flowing out won. Well it was a good competition because Jefferson City and Montana City tied. But they gave it to Jefferson City because they were operating with three people instead of four.

The final event was the keg chase. No, we don't have to race against frat boys in hopes of being the first to get a hold of a beer keg. Basically it was a tug-o-war with fire hoses. We have an empty keg strung up on heavy duty cable wire in the air and the point is to use our 1 1/2 inch hose-lines to push the keg towards the other team and cross the line. We were first up against Jefferson City and we had a back and forth but we were able to push it past them. Both Clancy teams faced each other and the winner of that faced us. It was Clancy two. We were deadlocked in the middle for a while before our nozzle-man accidentally turned our nozzle off and we couldn't recover. But again we got second place.

By the end of the competition, our gear was drenched, we were freezing, because we were flowing water from a run-off filled creek, and we were the runners up. We did not receive any trophy but we did show the other departments that we were pretty skilled in what we did. Even when Clancy teams cheated some. So yeah, look out Clancy, next year Montana City is going to smoke you guys!

The Smoke Alarm

We had one call the other night around midnight. It was a smoke alarm going off. Turns out that the gentleman not being able to handle the beeping ripped out his smoke alarm, exposing live wires (another fire hazard) and leaving it at that. Well even after ripping out the alarm the beeping was still going off. After some exploring it was discovered that the alarm was the gentlemans UPS computer back-up system's low power warning. Yeah, a little ridiculous.

But that is about it, I hope to write more soon, but it's going to be a busy next few weeks, what with my sweetie returning home and us going to my buddy's wedding. So stay tuned!

Rain, Rain Here to Stay... Or So it Seems!

2010-06-02T16:21:00.002-06:00

So as the title states it's been rainy in Montana. Not a constant rain but the kind of rain that goes away long enough to make you think you can go outside and do things and will sneakily comeback moments later; The kind of rain that cakes your vehicle in mud; The kind of rain that turns into snow then back into rain at a moment's notice. So yes, it is officially spring in Montana. But as we enter into June we will be arriving very shortly into Summer. Montana is the kind of state where the seasons spring and fall do not stay long. You get used to it, enjoying the changing of colors that happen so rapidly. The dismal and constant white, changes to green and beautiful. Then to the brown of summer, with a rapid orange of fall back to the dismal constant white. But yeah it's raining.

It's been an interesting few weeks since I've last posted. I left off before with telling you that I had a fireman's funeral to attend. I won't go into detail, but I will say it was beautiful. They had an honor guard. We were to wear our uniforms, we saluted as the decease passed. The coolest part was the mile and a half parade of ambulances, fire trucks, cop cars, from all of the state coming to pay their respects for a fallen firefighter. These two pictures I have posted show just a fraction of the fire trucks that were in tow. I was in Engine two from MCVFD and we were the second fire truck in line. The most amazing part was the brotherhood of firemen that came to honor this firefighter they didn't even know. We did a military farewell at the Fort Harrison here in Helena and that was it. Afterwards we went up to our station one and had food and just spent time with everyone that knew the firefighter. Laughs were had, tears were shed but overall people just came together to honor one of our fallen. The weather was just a constant day of rain, which seemed fitting.

That evening I had stopped by my ambulance shop to pick up some stuff I left at work in my haste to go home and get ready for the funeral that morning. Well good thing that I was there because we had a page go out for a MVA (motor vehicle accident) with three patients, one ejected. I wasn't going to go with Eagle but the Fire Department got paged too so I went as a firefighter but did my EMT gig. We get there and the ejected patient was out. Not only out of the car, but unresponsive. So the ALS folk went to deal with her and they put me in charge of the other two patients that were seat belted in. Basically here is what went down. Both patients c-collared, backboarded, placed on O2. Once one of the ALS crew was done with the ejected patient they came in and did their IV thing.

The patients were stoned and hit a 35mph corner going 85mph. They were going so fast they cleared the 5ft high fence ten feet away from the road. Needless to say, they got distance. After we patched them up, got them to the hospital and dropped them off it was time to go home and relax. Well after we got the ambulance put back together. As you can see from the pictures... It was a disaster and these were taken after cleaning up the IV stuff. The rains I mentioned earlier, caused the roads to be muddy, wet and disgusting. But oh well. It can't be sunshiny and awesome all the time.

Speaking of doing IV stuff, sometime this month I will be starting the classes for the rest of my endorsements. Which I am pretty excited for. Out of all the people hired in February from our class (5) I'm the only one so far they have felt has stepped up to the plate and proven that they are ready to learn the endorsements. Not to toot my own horn, but it was definitely a yay me moment. So when I get those started I will write here on everything I'm doing.

That's about it in terms of EMS/Fire happenings. I'm working as much as I can preparing for my sweetie to come back from Japan and for us to go on our trip south to Bozeman for a wedding. I will be posting here more on a few things I've noticed in the EMS field. So stay tuned!

So This is What Vacation Is...

2010-05-22T21:42:00.000-06:00

Welcome ladies and gentlemen to the first summer post of 2010. Well the first post of summer vacation. It's not summer. In fact, as of today it's still late winter with the damp wet snows that Montana springs are so famous for. I would be surprised but honestly, I've seen it snow on my birthday, in August, late August, before. So no I am not surprised. It's been a busy few weeks to say the least. First I rocked this semester with a 4.0 again so I am sitting with a 4.0 for the year. It's a nice accomplishment considering the last time I rocked a 4.0 was a 6th grade. Not that I didn't do well in school after that, but being a teenage boy my focus was more on chasing girls and causing trouble. Mostly the first one. Anyway, having a 4.0 is nice. It's amazing to finally find something that I love and keeps my interest career wise.

Now it's time for summer. What is this? These random long periods of time where I don't have a paper to worry about, or training to do? These moments where I sit here and do nothing. Free time you say? I remember hearing something about that last August. So that is what this is, free time... Interesting concept. Actually I won't lie, it is nice to be able to just breathe a little bit. Something people close to me seem to tell me all the time. Just breathe Jack, just breathe. Yeah... It's nice.

So with this new found free time I am constantly finding myself looking for stuff to do. I've started looking over my EMT stuff again. The paramedic at my work is thinking of putting on a paramedic class and asked me to be apart of it. I've been back and forth on it, mostly because it's going to be a lot of information and it was three grand to do. Well a rumor has it that it might be a lot cheaper, half the initial price. So yeah there is a good chance that if it pans out like that I will definitely be talking the class. I think. I'm still on the fence. If I can juggle the rest of school, having a life, work and this class I will take it. If not I will wait until I am done with the degree I am working on now. I won't know for sure until I have all the information.

Speaking of work it's been an exhausting few days. During the school year I would work 60 hours a week and during my school vacation I was only scheduled for 30. Ridiculous eh? I would agree. However the new paramedic we hired, also named Mike started making the schedule and gave me 40 hours a week. I think the higher up folk that work there telling him to do so had something to do with that too. Which is nice. I enjoy full time. Well as I have said the past three days I have worked I have spent 25 out of the last 28 hours in an ambulance. I've been to Missoula twice, Deer Lodge, Whitehall/Cardwell, and Kalispell. Which is fine because it's all been Fort Harrison VA time. So it's federal time and after 12 hours on VA time, it's VA overtime which I have 13 hours of.

The fire department has been busy too. I went on my first wild land fire. So picture this. I'm in the bathroom giving myself a haircut. I'm about half way to two thirds of the way done when my pager goes off for a campfire gone astray that is now burning a 20' x 20' piece of land. Well here I am, clippers in one hand, pager in the other. What do I do? Well I raced through the rest of that hair cut and raced to the fire department. I was able to come back and clean up what I missed after don't worry. Anyway, I managed to get to the station as one of the engines was pulling out. But we took my Bravada there because it was faster. Two things I learned that day driving. One my car hates dirt roads, two, it can still handle the heck out of them.

We get there and the scene was amazing. 8 ft flames racing towards the pine beetle devastated blanket of orange that is the dead pines 15 feet away. Well we throw the water/foam combination on the flames and snuff it out. The rest is mop up work. Chipping away at smoldering logs and blasting it with the hose. What was left of the tent near the campfire? A tent spike melted in half and a cot frame. The irony was that the people who were hired to make sure the place was safer from wild fires were the ones that left the camp fire unattended. We then joked around with some of the DNRC staff and went to the station for rehab. This consisted of filling tenders. Then as I have said before, I wen't to finish my haircut.

There is something to be said about being able to run off, fight a fire, and come home after doing a job well done. It's nice.

That weekend we worked on tender 2. Scraping bed liner out of the tank because water had gotten under it and was causing it to mold. Not the most fun but taking pride in my department was cool. We had training this past week. It was wild land also. We learned how to assemble fold-a-tanks and drafting water. The pictures you see are dropping water from Tender 1 and me rocking the super banana fire suit. I spent most of that night driving Tender 1 as you see in the third picture. It's old and the air brakes are touchy. By touchy I mean that if you want to use them, rather than pressing slowly to slow into braking you have to tap them hard enough to slow you down without going through the windshield. That was itself a pain to master but I'm getting it. Also with being old, the tender only had a hand primer. Being the only young strapping gentleman in the group, that was my job. Get the air out of the line. We filled up the tank and went back to the station.

That's about it this for these past two weeks since school has been let out. We have a fireman's funeral precession we have to do on Monday. A friend, coworker and fire department member lost his wife to cancer. She was also a member of the department. While I am excited to experience what is a very honoring tradition of the fire service, I am sad for his loss.

I will write on that experience this week. Nothing in detail of the funeral itself out of respect for my friend and his family but just my thoughts on it. So stay tuned for that.

My First Year

2010-05-10T17:57:00.000-06:00

Well holy crap. I'm done for a bit. That's right, I made it a whole year. I wen't to 99.98% of my classes. I think I only missed three days? Either way it was very few. I've made the deans list. I've fought fire. I traveled to my first foreign country that isn't Canada. I held on to someone very dear to me with 6000+ miles of distance and 15 hours of time between us. I've made friends, I'm sure I've made a few enemies. I have an EMT job, I am a volunteer firefighter. I've had my ups, a lot of ups, I've had my downs, a few downs. So yeah, a year that I didn't know what was in store for me, turned out to be a very positive one. I'm hoping next year will be the same, but all I can do is take it one day at a time. I remember moving up here to Helena last August. What the hell was I doing ran through my head. Turn around, get the hell out. That's all I thought. Then I bit the bullet and now I'm here. I've learned a lot this year. I have a lot more to learn I am sure. But yeah that's it in a nutshell for this year. Now for current events.

As you know school is done and it is time for summer vacation. The last week of school had it's moments. Honestly this semester really didn't feel like I was in school. What with all the time we had off and teachers cancelling class and what not. However Wednesday of last week was amazing. I fought my first fire. It was a training exercise but until you feel the heat of the fire and see it rolling you just don't know. We were at the ARFF trainer. Basically it's a huge plane that they can light up anywhere. As we haven't had the ARFF class yet we treated it as a trailer fire. The cockpit was a bedroom, the seating area was the living room.The bathroom was well... the bathroom. So we got in there and sprayed the hell out of the bedroom. The instructor yelled at me to get in there. So I was a foot and a half away from the fire. By the time we finished that room and got into the main area. The flames were basically what you see in the movies. Rolling up the walls, and hitting the ceiling and rolling up across the ceiling. Then the heat hit me. You know that feeling you get when your clothing gets really hot after being right next to a camp fire and it barely touches the skin? It was like that, but a little less intense. 700 degrees though. Toastie.

After that I went to work and it was lame, a chica I work with was being dramatic. Nothing new. Wednesday after work I ended up getting my gear with the volunteer department. After we got our turnouts, then our wildland gear, our uniforms, and our pagers the guy issuing the gear told us it was about 5000 dollars worth of gear. Yeah I am now in possession of stuff that is worth more than what I make in about 5-6 months.Crazy, But other than that I think I'm in the right place. Saturday I got my first pager call. 15 gallon diesel spill. Yeah nothing too exciting but my response time was excellent. I was the only one there and then they cancelled the page. So as I was leaving I called a fire dept guy and he was like well I'm going to come fill out a report so if you want to see how that is done then come back to the station. So I did then the chief called and told us to respond. So we went over there. Placed dirt and absorbent on the spill then got a report. Like I said nothing exciting but still.

Other than that not much exciting is going on. Fully getting into the swing of Summer vacation. Stay tuned as I get more calls fire and EMS wise!

Busy Busy Busy

2010-04-20T14:50:00.000-06:00

So yeah every time I go to write this blog I somehow get distracted. It seems that 40 hours of work a week, plus 19 credits of school keep me busy enough that time escapes me. Seriously, wasn't it spring break like last week? But now that we get down to it we have 14 days of school left. It has been a very busy few weeks. Here's the scoop.

Classes are going well. Driving class has been by far the most fun. We've spent a few days driving on the interstate and in town driving. But the most fun came last weekend when we learned how to operate the engine water pump and aerial ladder. It ended in us using the 1.5" pre-connects to wash the aerial truck and having a water fight. Yeah it's been 70's in Montana and beautiful. I spent some time outside today. The driving instructor has kind of zeroed me out to get things done which is both good and bad. Good because it means I am doing well, bad because it means I'm on his radar. So yeah we have a presentation to work on for driving and that's it. Strategies and Tactics has been productive. We've run a bunch of scenarios and Monday we practiced flat roof venting. Chainsaws, pike poles, and ladders oh my. Tell you what, 70 degree weather on a black roof midday is a bit toasty. PT is going well for the most part. Basic working out and doing my own thing. As I have said 14 days of school left. I'm okay with that. I'm ready for summer.

Speaking of being ready for summer, we are starting to pick up in calls EMT wise. The other night I had my first real trauma call. Car vs. Elk. The car was a ford festiva type car. It rolled a few times, everyone is thinking 4. Anyway I was inside the car holding c-spine and trying to move the patient on the backboard when my boss came up and started cutting the patients clothes. A.) he was in a roll over, bleeding pretty good and probably had shock, B.) I didn't find this out until I was in the car already, the car was leaking gas and starting to smoke. Did I worry a little, yeah. C.) The patient was shivering and showing signs of hypothermia. We finally got the patient out and backboarded and in the ambulance. We went code to the hospital after bandaging and placing an IV because the patient was losing feeling in his left side. We got the patient to the hospital and checked out. He from what we gathered had a possible broken shoulder, neck and knee, and bleeding somewhere. That's all I know on that patient. We did bring a patient in later that morning and my previous patient was still backboarded. Scary.

The next day, yesterday, we ended up going on a 911 to a nursing home for a man with difficulty breathing. He had a stroke previously and was feeling dizzy. We hooked him up with a 3-lead heart monitor and he was throwing up random beats and problems so we got him into the ambulance. After that it was fluid like in how we operated. My boss was the main EMT on the call and I was his assist, I was hooking up the IV bag and getting it spiked and ready to go along with the blood draw kit ready. Well the IV wasn't pushing fluid and we didn't know why. My boss thought it was because he blew a vein or the iv stick closed off somehow. Well after fiddling with the iv for a bit he gave up and went to give a patient report to the hospital and I was sitting there looking at the patients arm and I noticed it was turning purple. I was uh oh, a clot or something then I saw it, the tourniquet. My boss forgot to take it off. After that the IV started flowing. We got the patient into the hospital and I didn't know what happened after that. That's the problem I guess, patient confidentiality stops us from knowing what happened and if the patient made it.

But yeah that is about it with the calls, I'm starting to work more on my endorsements that allow me to do IV's and advanced airway stuff. Then I will be able to do more than I could before on calls. Looking forward to that. But yeah other than that, life is plugging along, it's amazing how fast time goes when you don't have time to sit and think. The next two weeks will be busy, then I will have some time to breathe. We are going to be playing with live fire at the ARFF trainer on May 5th so definitely expect pictures and a blog about that. Until then hopefully I will be able to find time to work on the blog. Stay tuned!

The Stake Out

2010-04-03T06:02:00.001-06:00

So my Friday afternoon at work was not too exciting for the most part. Transfered one patient from Fort Harrison to the BSCC retirement center. He was a nice old guy (90 years old) who had all the nurses fawning over him. Seriously, they loved him. Turns out he would bake pies for him as a thank you for taking care of him. After that we went back to the shop where I cooked up the steaks that one of my co-workers brought for us. After finishing said steaks we got a call from dispatch that basically runs down like this:

Friday, April 2nd

1843* - Dispatch calls us via telephone to ask us to respond to a 72 year old female schizophrenia patient who is off her meds. They told us that they were going to try to convince the patient to come with us to St. Peter's on her own but chances were, that would wouldn't happen easily without a police escort. We were told to wait about 20 minutes before we arrived so that the local sheriff could get there first. Scene safety, it's a must!

1847 - We were called back from dispatch saying to go ahead and take off but to stage out at a different location and wait for the sheriff to call us in.

Around 1900 or so hours - Arrived at the staging area to wait for police. Shortly after the sheriff arrives and tells my partner and I to follow him.

1915 - Arrive on scene. We wait. My partner and I talk to each other for a while and randomly have conversations with the officers that are coming and going in and out of the house.

1925 - Montana Highway Patrol Arrives to help with patient.

1950 - Sheriffs inform us that they cannot find patient in her house and that previously during the day they couldn't find her because she ended up hiding in a bunch of boxes. Apparently this even has been going on all day... My partner suggests dispatching the local fire department to get their thermal imager.

2000 - Sheriff leaves to get his thermal imager and arrives roughly twenty minutes later. After searching they cannot find her.

2100 - We are cleared of the scene by the sheriff as the patient was picked up by a relative earlier that took her somewhere but was not telling officers where.

So yeah that was the last call I did for the night. It wasn't bad and we basically just sat in an ambulance and hung out but I was pretty excited/nervous because this was my first psych patient that needed a police escort. Afterwards I ended up clocking out and going home. Went to bed early because I have a big day of driving the firetruck to Butte. Hooray for driving.

Easter isn't going to be too eventful as I have to work until 0700 tomorrow and start working again at 1900. So yeah, so much for that holiday. I was really hoping for an Easter basket filled with Easter candy but I will probably just have to settle for Cadbury eggs. Ask anyone, they are like crack to me. Anyway, time to get ready for some driving, stay tuned for my adventure in driving the fire truck to Butte.

* - All times down in military time and are approximate.

Great Falls Hoooooooo!

2010-03-30T15:39:00.000-06:00

Okay so yesterday was a long day at work. I worked Sunday night 1900 to Monday morning 0700 which luckily in that time frame there were no calls. My partner and I just sat at the shop and watched Family Guy. The next morning after leaving work I had class from 0900 to 1200 then I was to be back at work at 1300. I started in on the weekly checklist for our 911 rig when one of my supervisors Bob told me to stop what I was doing and join him on the trip to Great Falls to drop off a patient who had hip surgery. I didn't know where the place was so Bob made me drive. So I would then remember where we went. There was a lot of road construction through the canyon as well. But for those of you who haven't been to Great Falls, it's a wee bit confusing to get places at first. Especially considering that one of the main roads had road construction happening and with the added benefit of detours the city was even more confusing. But the trip wasn't bad. It was windy and rainy in the canyon but after that it was sunny. The most amazing thing though was that everything is starting to turn green. Spring is here! Well, it's on its way! So that is a plus.

My partner/boss Bob and I discussed how getting emotionally attached to your patients can be both good and bad. It's good in that if you feel emotional towards the patient you will want to help them, well if you feel for the patient. The bad being that if you get too attached to the patient and it doesn't go the way you want it to the emotions could end up eating at you. The I guess proposed solution to such things is to keep at a distance. Bob told me that it comes with time and losing patients. I don't like the latter part of that but I guess it is the business we are in. Basically the way I see it, the more I study and learn the less likely that will happen, even though I know that it's just a matter of time before I experience my first real loss EMT wise.

Now that the mood is set to something bordering depressing it's time to be upbeat. Tomorrow night after my mandatory work meeting I will be going up to Station One to help fill eggs full of Easter candy for the egg hunt we are putting on this weekend. So that will be fun. But yeah other than that, it's not been too busy with work. and school. It's weird working 40 hours a week and going to school for 19 credits. It seems like a lot and I feel busy but it doesn't feel overwhelming. So that's a plus. Anyway it's time I be off. Stay tuned!

Classes, EMT, Firefighting etc!

2010-03-25T11:19:00.000-06:00

So it has been a really busy couple of weeks these past few weeks. It's only now that it's Spring Break that I have time to write this right now. There has been a lot going between the last time I wrote on here and now. Maybe I should start writing more frequently so that I don't have a lot to write down. Well here it goes.

Classes
So the first half of the semester has wound down which means that we had finals and a change into new classes. The semester wound down pretty smoothly with A's in Haz-mat, Wildland Firefighting, Radio Communication, and Emergency Apparatus Maintenance. I am now Haz-mat certified in both the Operations and Awareness Levels so I know enough to help out but not obligate myself into going into the scary dangerous green gases.

We started new classes last week. Fire Strategies and Tactics and Apparatus Driving classes. I'm pretty excited for both of those because we have less class time and more hands on time. Class time is needed mind you but who doesn't love skipping the bookwork and getting dirty.

So Tactics was off to a fast start with our first two quizzes handed out within the first two classes. Nothing exciting as we have to watch movies and read the chapters on it. But we're off to a good start. Turns out this class will be more of a hands on class and we will hit on everything we did first semester but with the added bonus of learning tactics that affect the overall strategies of the incidents.

Driving class is going well too. This past weekend we did a driving competency course. We had to drive straight through cones and reverse. I managed to hit 8 out of 11 cones on my first run but I was going at 25mph rather than inching along like most folk. But the rest of the test went well. A week from Saturday we will start our driving around town.

The EMT Job

So these past few weeks have been complete chaos. Transfers aside I've had a lot of 911 calls. Usually on the nights I have to spend the night. It's nice because they had beds there and we get to sleep. The only thing is if we get a 911 call in the middle of the night we have to respond. Well conveniently every time I spend the night we seem busy as hell. So here is the break down of the past three calls I've had as they are ones I remember in detail.

Friday March 19th

Friday was a busy night. My first call was a call to Big Sky Community Center for a woman complaining of shortness of breath. It was a pretty straight forward call. We did vitals and helped her onto the cot and drove her to the hospital. About 10:30pm we received a call from the hospital to return the woman back to the retirement center. Turns out she had fluid on the lungs. Well anyway my partner Anna and I decided to hit the hay after getting the 911 rig ready to go. Everything was going along just fine until 2:30am. We got paged out to Boulder for a woman complaining of abdominal pain. Boulder has its own ambulance service but they couldn't muster up a second person to go so we were called out.

We were called by our boss to wait for her to get to the shop before we could leave. When she got there we headed off. I do enjoy driving code 3 to incidents but at 2:30am I prefer sleep. So anyway I drove 100mph the whole time. Scary but the woman was complaining of 7 out of 10 abdominal pain, plus my boss was harassing me about going slow. Well we get there and her pain went from 7 to 9 out of 10. We got her in the ambulance and her husband wanted to come so he rode in the front with me. That is where the night took a turn for the crazy. The patient ended up having kidney stones but decided to stop taking her meds about 2 months ago. She had so many piercings setting off a metal detector would be a common occurrence but she wouldn't let us put an IV in because she was afraid of needles...

My experience up front was just as exciting. The husband was trying to fidget with the lights and buttons and I had to tell him to knock it off. He explained that he just wanted me to not be a distracted driver and he wanted to get to the hospital safely. Then he proceeded to pull out a portable dvd player. After that he started talking to me about nano technology and how DNA from sharks are curing blindness. Then he started explaining to me how the videogame series, Resident Evil was a cover up by the U.S. government for a cure for AIDS gone to far. I had to shake my head at that. Then he put his iPod on and started singing. We got her to the hospital and everything was fine. We filled out paperwork and returned to the shop. We got back into bed around 5:30am so I was able to get another hour of sleep before we had to get up.

Monday March 22nd

Monday night we had two legitimate 911 calls. First was a gentleman with COPD and a broken arm. He fell trying to fix his clock. We got there and helped him with his breathing treatment then rushed him off to the hospital. We got back to the shop around 12:30am we went to sleep about 1:00am or so then we got a call at 2:30am again for a gentleman who was bleeding profusely into his catheter. When we got there it was basically all blood. His blood pressure was 86/55 so yeah he wasn't doing good. It was one of those load and go situations. I again drove because my partner Ryan has all his endorsements so his scope of practice is a little more advanced than mine. We got the gentleman to the hospital after his nurse told us that this had been going on for four days. Awesome right? Well we got called back at 6:30am to return him to the retirement center so he wasn't as bad as we thought. Which is good.

But yeah that is about it for calls. We took a class this week on our monitoring endorsement. Nothing exciting. I can now test blood glucose, use a pulse oximeter, and put on a 3-lead heart monitor. We're going to do the other endorsements all together. IV monitoring, IV placement, medications and a few others. So I'm one step closer to being an aggressive EMT-B. I think that is what they are called.

Firefighting

The volunteer gig hasn't been to exciting, we had training the other night. Wildland this time. We learned about how these firefighters in South Dakota almost died because they didn't watch out for any of the watch out situations you're supposed to. 11 out of 15 watch out situations were violated. Then we practiced with fire shelters. We tried it without wind then we got the ventilation fan and did it with wind. That was fun. I just have one more meeting I need to go to before I am voted in as a full member.

The Wrap-Up

So yeah that is about it. Even on spring break I'm taking classes and am ridiculously busy. But that is okay because I don't mind the work and helping people is an awesome feeling. I know I've been saying this but I will try to update this more. Stay tuned!

Again I haven't forgotten about the blog.

2010-03-18T21:58:00.000-06:00

I haven't forgotten about the blog I promise I have a lot that I will fill everyone in on this Sunday. So Stay tuned!

Haz-Mat Hands On, Volunteering, EMTing, etc.

2010-03-06T15:40:00.000-07:00

So as most can see it has been a while since I have updated my blog. Honestly due to lack of content. It's hard to make school work and class time sound exciting. Well that changed yesterday when we started doing hands on Haz-Mat training.

For our Fire Fighter I Certification we have to demonstrate the abilities to establish a haz-mat hot zone, and create a decon area while being able to practice proper decon techniques. It was nice to get back in my turn outs and get to hands on stuff again. It's weird, I was ready at the end of last semester to get done with the evolutions but after 8 weeks of class room boringness I found I missed being in my gear. A good sign perhaps. Anyway, our first tactic was to spot the hazardous material, figure out what it was, then establish a perimeter for the hot zone. We used a gas meter to monitor the air for the mininum required 19.5% oxygen requirement. We also monitored for CO, LEL and other gases. Afterwards we went through decon techniques. Monday we learn how to take off our gear while still being on air. I promise to get pictures of that because it might be hilarious. Here are a few pictures.

Stewart, Wunderlich (Pronounced Wonderlick, yeah, that's his real name), and I practicing Decon techniques.

Me rocking the gas meter. Apparently there is a class I can do online to get certified in using that. I think I'm going to go for it.

Getting decontaminated or practicing for Dance of the Sugar-Plum Firemen, I'm not telling.

So yeah, that's been it for classes for the most part. We finished the ambulance and we have our class finals this week. Three finals this week. Friday we start new classes. One class is Fire Tactics and Operations so we will be doing more hands on stuff so expect more writings and pictures for that. Now on to volunteering.

So Wednesday was my first meeting with the Montana City Volunteer Fire Department. It was a business meeting where I was able to introduce myself and what not. Not ten minutes into the meeting were people joking with me and carrying on so I think I am going to fit in really well. I was assigned a mentor who is basically just around to show me how MCVFD does it. The funny thing is, is that the guy assigned to me for mentoring is my roommate's boss. So we joked around about all the expensive stuff my roommate has broken and got along awesomely. I stayed after the meeting to help with the monthly checklist on Engine One. Engine one is pretty cool but they just bought a new engine. Engine Two as it's called is dare I say it, a very sexy looking fire truck. I would love to roll to fires in that. It is the picture to our left here. But yeah, I overheard the president of the business meetings and the fire chief talking and basically I still have to go through the hoops of applying but they said it was a no-brainer on hiring us on. Now when I say being hired on I mean being voted into the organization but they call it hiring us on because for Wildland work we'll actually get paid if we are called by DNRC. So that is pretty cool.

I am planning on attending the Wildland Intermediate class at the end of this month which I am pretty excited for. I will then be one step closer to my Wildland Firefighter I certification. It's backwards in Wildland fire compared to structure fire in that Wildland Firefighter I is the best where as in structure fires Firefighter II is the highest.

My EMT job is going well for the most part. I have had a few problematic patients. One that was extremely heavy but decided he wanted to walk himself. He was starting to collapse as he was going up the stairs but I swooped in and managed to catch him. Good thing I work out because the 260lbs he weighed was a lot to shoulder. The next patient we had that same night kept trying to rip his I.V. out of his arm and touch my partner's private areas, so I had her drive and I dealt with the patient. He did not attempt to go for my privates.

Scheduling has been kind of off as there are a bunch of us new folk. But it seems as if I will be partnered a lot with this girl named Anna. She seems nice. They like to have a guy/girl partnership because there are some patients that do better with males vs. females and vice versa. I did my first overnight shift though last night. It was good. I worked that with Mike, a paramedic. He's the one that is going to help me with my endorsements. We were on call at a local hockey game. One of the perks of the job is free hockey games, plus the folks at the concession stands give us free food and drinks. Afterwards we went back to the shop and hung out. the nice thing about an overnight shift is that we get to sleep. The bad thing about an overnight shift is that the beds are less comfortable than cots and sleeping is hard to do. The shop dog stays there too and decided that at 4am I was the best person to play ball with. He was mistaken. I work again tomorrow at 7am to 7pm. Long shifts but it pays the bills.

Other than that not much has really gone on. I'm discovering that being busy makes time go by rather quickly as this past week really didn't exist, but the days are getting longer and the weather is warming up so things are looking up. I'll try to update about finals and such here this next weekend. Stay tuned!

Refreshers and Fire Positions

2010-02-21T20:00:00.000-07:00

So I'm tired. This is the third weekend I have had of schooling. But that's what happens I guess. This weekend at my job I had my 24 hour EMT refresher course. We went over a lot and covered a lot. The first night was pretty rocky because my boss was distracted but we learned how to spike bags, and intubate patients. So the ALS assist class turned into an ALS class. I still don't have that endorsement. Speaking of which I'm learning my monitoring endorsement. That consists of being able to use an oximeter which measures SpO2% or hemoglobin saturation. Only problem is that it doesn't distinguish what's saturating the blood. This means Carbon monoxide could throw off the readings. We will also be proficient in blood glucose readings and 3-lead heart monitor reading. Haven't done much reading into those yet but when I do I should be able to elaborate more.

Patient run wise this past week has been kind of intense. Apparently I get all the psyche patients. I can't have my trauma shears, pocket knife, forceps or anything in with me. However my partner decided to let one guy have his metal cane with him. I thought to myself, oh good, if he wanted to he could just beat me to death with that thing. I have to do patient care because girls aren't allowed to be with guy psyche patients. I had two of them. Then I had to do a Billings/Helena rendezvous in Bozeman. That wasn't bad. A lot of driving. Other than that there isn't much going on, I have my EMT outfit and I will post one of those pictures here soon.

School is plugging along. Quizzes and doing fire/haz-mat scenarios with matchbox cars. That is pretty fun. I miss playing with toy cars sometimes. We checked the lighting systems and electrical systems on the fire truck and added brand new oil.

So last Tuesday I submitted my application to join the Montana City Volunteer Fire Department. The president of the meetings told me that no matter how much he tried he couldn't make them say no and I am now a volunteer firefighter. Last time I joined a department I had no idea what was to be expected of me and it ended shortly. But with more training, being in better shape and what not I am more prepared for what is to come. So yeah. I am a volunteer firefighter now. They have an average amount of calls and train a lot. So with the emt job and this my resume will be a little less empty and show more experience to back up the training I've received. Speaking of training I am now a fully certified Wildland firefighter II. I mean basically I can dig on a hand crew but it's another certification!

Other than that, not much is going on fire wise. It's snowy as heck and there haven't been a lot of fires. Stay tuned for more exciting events as they unfold!

Running Around Madness

2010-02-10T14:03:00.000-07:00

Well hello everyone, it has been a long time since I have been able to update this. I have been really busy as of late. Here's the short version. School is busy, we are on 20 days of straight class, school was falling apart, and I recently joined an ambulance service. Now here's the long:

School

School has been good so far. Hazardous Materials has been intense. We have had a lot of stuff thrown at us in a short amount of time. We've had three quizzes in about two weeks and gone through 400 pages of material in 4 weeks. Doesn't seem that fast but with some stuff that could kill you super quick like you kind of want to take your time. In Emergency Apparatus Maintenance we've been greasing u-joints and what not, We cleaned the batteries and refilled them. Once we plugged those back in we hooked up the exhaust to fan system... then... we started checking out the air tanks for moisture. It was good up until the last one leaked all over me. But that is okay.

So with the retirement of our department head there has been a lack of leadership in our program. Instructors tell us to show up for classes then don't show up themselves. It's ridiculous. Instructors tell us to wear uniforms but wear jeans because they are in charge. Yeah, they are, but in a paramilitary structure such as the fire profession is, leading by example is key. Today though one of the instructors hit each of the points we were contesting, each of the problems we had if you will, and made a point to fix each one. It was good. That is about it on the school area of my life.

Job

So I recently got a job with Eagle Ambulance out of Montana City. Ask around Helena and you'll realize that Eagle isn't well liked. Why, because the last person that was in charge ran it into the ground and burned a lot of bridges. The new lady who is in charge is trying to get us back up to being a respected ambulance service. So far on my first real day of work I had a trauma call. Lady with a possible hip fracture. I got there after being told to take a deep breath and busted out some vitals. I held c-spine and helped backboard her. We got her to the hospital. She was talkative and as cheesy as it is to say, She probably won't remember me but I will probably think about her from time to time my whole life.

We also have had a few hospital transfers. For instance we had two between here and Missoula yesterday. We also got to standby at a hockey game. It was nice to watch the game for free. The Bozeman Icedogs played the Helena Big Horns... I was torn as I am from Bozeman. But the Big Horns won 7-3.

So yeah the EMT job is pretty good. It doesn't pay well, but having a job where I feel like I accomplish something and I help people is worth it. Once I get my endorsements I will be paid more.

Conclusion

So yeah. That is about it in a nutshell. Having a full time job and going to school full time doesn't afford me much in terms of free time. At least not for another weekend or two. After that I will be able to recharge my batteries. But until then I promise to get more on this posting deal. Stay tuned!

Not Forgotten!

2010-02-07T21:06:00.001-07:00

I haven't forgotten about this blog, I'm on day 8 of 20 of straight class here. I will write up one of these days my experiences for the last few weeks in the fire fighting and my new EMT job. Go Saints!

The First Week Back... School Thus Far... New Job Prospects

2010-01-22T21:27:00.000-07:00

So it has been a week since I arrived stateside. I had a hard time the first few days I was back adjusting back to a normal sleep schedule. When I first got back I slept for three hours, was awake for four then passed out for another four hours. This happened for most of the week. One day I took three naps. But enough about my sleeping. When I got back it was warm. Relatively, that is. It was 40 degrees. It was nice because it let me get used to being cold again after weeks of 60+ degrees. Now it's snowing and we have a Winter Storm Warning through Sunday.

School started off with a bang. Okay not really. It started on Tuesday at 7:00am with Emergency Apparatus Maintenance. Basically I get to be a diesel mechanic for six weeks. It's kind of cool though, because we get to go through the whole fire truck and fix it. After that we had Electronic Communications. We spent the first two classes learning the International Phonetic Alphabet. To learn it we got to do a word find. Yes, I am in college and yes, I did a word find. I finished my school day with Basic Microsoft Office. I learned about what a computer is which is good too because I was on the fence about it. Wednesday we had PT and Hazmat. I found out I will be certified in the operations level of hazmat. Preventative stuff for the most part. I'll write more on each as I get further into the classes because so far we've just touched on syllabi.

So Thursday I applied for an EMT-B job in Montana City which is 5 minutes south of Helena. The company is Eagle Ambulance. They do contract stuff with the V.A. Medical Center in Fort Harrison and St. Peter's Hospital. They also do a lot of transport stuff with nursing homes too. They also do 911 calls for parts of Helena. So yeah just a background. I filled out my application and talked to one of the main guys in charge. I got a phone call today saying that I start Monday. It will be sweet. I get to practice my Basic skills and will learn my endorsements that will put me to the equivalent of an EMT-I-85. I'll be able to start IVs and so on. I start that job on Monday.

Other than that it has been a busy week of trying to get back to normal. I find myself missing Japan more than I thought I would. But thats par for the course. Stay tuned for my first day as a paid EMT!

An Okinawa Recap... Coming Home.

2010-01-19T06:01:00.000-07:00

The Recap

There are times in everyone's life when they are presented with chances to do something out of their comfort zone. Something that can impact them in ways that even they themselves might not fully grasp for sometime. I believe that this trip to Japan was one of those times in my life. When I first got there I was overwhelmed by the concrete jungle with an actual jungle backdrop. The amount of people in one area was daunting. Everything seemed backwards to what I was used to, to what I expected. I spoke no Japanese so when stuff was said to me I just smiled and nodded. By the end I had a few phrases down. I tell you though, that either way going to Japan would have been an experience, but thanks to Maddie and her family it became something entirely more meaningful. Here is what I discovered in the 25 short days I was in Okinawa:

~ I love curry.
~ I still can't get over the colors of the Ocean.
~ I look at our vending machines and just sigh. Hey America, hot beverages and soups can be in vending machines!
~ Animals are 3x the size of American Animals. Fruit bats are the size of small dogs.
~ Shorts in January is nice.
~ You don't need to get to where you need to be as fast as you humanly can. It will still be there at a later time.
~ Being on a ferris wheel during a rainy, windy day causes you to re-evaluate that being a good idea.
~ For American bases you have to have a pass for everything.
~ Taking off your shoes in public places feels nice.
~ Plus many more things that I will continue to eventually talk about as I remember it down the road.

Okinawa was an amazing place. I spent the days I was there without my cell phone. Of course I checked my email, but if I didn't want to, I didn't have to. There was American tv, but we didn't have to watch. I guess it could be said that the same thing could happen here, but it's different. My favorite thing was getting ready in the mornings, jumping in the van, and rolling out to our next adventure. Driving everywhere was also an adventure. We got lost or went down different ways, Tensions were high, but it was mostly directed at the fact that there were no signs, or no signs in english. Usually ending up in all of us getting a good laugh out of it.

Museums were awesome. The castles were amazing. The history that happened in those very spots made me feel small, and not significant. I mean you hear people say that, but hundreds of years worth of battles, love, loss, death, despair, prosperity happened in those very spots about 250 years before the United States was even an idea. The Memorial site for the Battle of Okinawa was the same way in that knowing what happened on that island during World War II leaves you feeling somewhat humbled.

The food was interesting, a lot of it being in the pretty good to awesome category. I tried sushi for the time. Not the cooked California roll, fake crab stuff that restaurants do here stateside but fresh Yellowtail Tuna. Curry is awesome. I have found a sauce that makes rice more amazing. The sesame seed salad dressing I brought back is very tasty. They have crepe shops where you can get crepes with some sort of sweets in it.

I went to my very first real aquarium. That blew my mind. I wrote about it before and in case you missed it you can view that here.

So as I reflect about the whole trip, I've found that I miss Okinawa. I miss seeing Maddie everyday and I miss hanging out with her family. But I gotta plug along, she'll be back soon enough. It was an amazing escape, and it was a once in a lifetime opportunity making a greater impact thanks to the people I spent my time there with. I will remember everything I did, and I will think about being in Okinawa often. It was an amazing experience and something I wouldn't change. No matter how much I try, I don't think I could explain how awesome the trip was. I loved every moment of it. I think about it a lot, and I miss it. Now for the trip back.

The Trip Back...

So the trip back was not too eventful. I had to go through security with my bags just to get to the ticket counter. They set up my planes so I had an aisle seat. I like those because I can stretch out one of my legs. Plus with the long flight back I like being able to get up and walk around without crawling over people. I got into Taiwan and loaded up on the internet. I talked to Maddie and she told me right after I left they were hit with a decent sized earthquake. But she will probably write about that. I sat around for 3 hours waiting for my flight. I got on the plane and decided to try and sleep. That didn't work out well because I kept getting woken up to eat, or the jerk flight attendant kept bumping into me as I was sleeping. The flight wasn't as long as I thought. It was supposed to be around 11 hours but it only took nine hours. We flew up and around Alaska on the way there. On the way back we flew straight across the Pacific. Luckily I didn't know that until after we got close to California. The food was alright but it's definitely not something to write home about.

I got into San Francisco an hour earlier than I was planning. Which was good because Immigration and Customs took forever. Actually waiting for my bags took forever, going through Customs, not so much. Afterwords I met up with a buddy of mine who drove up from San Jose. We went and got food at a North Beach Pizzeria then watched Avatar. That was a brilliantly done movie and I recommend anyone to see it. Then we drove to a Travel Lodge and I passed out. I woke up 3ish hours later to get onto a plane home. I got some good coffee from the gate I flew out of. After that it was pretty straight forward. I flew home. I came home, unpacked and relaxed. I managed to stay awake until 10:30p.

My sleep schedule is sort of screwed up. As you can tell I'm writing this at 4am. Well I woke up the following morning at 3am then made it to 10:30am and passed out again. I'm exhausted.

So yeah, that's about it in a nut shell. It's back to reality. This break went by so quickly it seems as if I was dreaming and I had to wake up. I got to spend 3 fabulous weeks with someone I really care about, and the 1600 pictures tells me it wasn't a dream. I wouldn't change it, not a single moment. So there it is. Okinawa, Japan, a place full of history, a place full of amazement and a place that will be forever in my memory. It's been an interesting ride.

The American Village

2010-01-12T20:01:00.000-07:00

So yesterday (Tuesday the 12th) Maddie and I ventured down to the American Village. As I have stated before I don't really know how American it actually is but it was fine. We started our "American" adventure with a trip to A&W. It looked nice from the outside with drive up areas where you could park and order. Then an A&W worker would bring food to you. As neither Maddie nor I can really drive anywhere meaning we have to walk everywhere, we opted to go inside. They had a bunch of burgers and such. They also had different types of food. They had a teriyaki burger and a sweet and sour pork sandwich. I got the Super Mozza Burger that was being advertised. Maddie got the Melty Rich burger that had tartar sauce on it. Good thing she got the double too, because the burgers were TINY. As we were leaving I tried to ring the bell for good service but I failed at that. Yeah, I failed at ringing a bell. Don't ask me how, because I have no idea.

We then walked over to the actual American Village area where they had the ferris wheel. We had been planning to go on that since before I got to Okinawa. So we ventured onto it. We bought tickets for 500 yen a piece or about 5 dollars American. Now let me set up the scene for you guys at home,. Yesterday, it was overcast. Dark overcast. There was wind that pelted you with water droplets. When I say wind I mean gusty. As you will see from the pictures it was windy enough to create nasty surf conditions. But anyway, from the bottom of the ferris wheel the weather didn't seem so bad. From inside a box half the size of a ski resort gondola it seemed scary as hell. The wind shook us a little bit and while we were fine the wind shaking us about kind of made us nervous. The view was pretty amazing, the China Sea with it's teal blues and greens of color was covered in vicious whitecaps that invited injury to anyone stupid enough to venture out into the water. I don't know how high up were were, but the ferris wheel stands on top of a 3 story mall at its base. So including that we were up pretty high.

After we got back down and vowed never to do that again we went and shopped a little bit. Being my last few days in Okinawa I wanted a keychain or some other touristy item to secure the memories made on this trip. What can I say, I'm a sucker for being a tourist. Anyway, we were walking along and saw these Doctorfish as it was advertised. Fish that when you stick your feet in the water will eat the dead skin and what not off your feet. Maddie and I were reluctant to try it at first but we figured, where else in the world are we going to do it and why not. At first it tickled. The fish were bitting and sucking on our feet and it eventually started to feel like a massage. Maddie didn't like the big fish on her and would shoo them away with the flick of her feet. Some of the fish pinched a little. Afterwards our feet felt soft and tingly. It was an interesting experience.

We then walked along these areas of different shops. They did have more American brands so I guess that's why the call it the American Village. Maddie found a candy store where I got these packets that when you add water they look like beer. They weren't beer. One tasted like pineapple. Afterwards we went to Yogurt Land. Basically it was the Golden Corral of frozen yogurts. You go in, pick your flavor. Put it in either the large bowl or the extra large bowl and add toppings. They had a variety of yogurt flavors. I got tiramisu and Maddie got a mix of double cookies and coconut. Then came the toppings. I added caramel, oreos, cheesecake and Maddie added cheesecake, oreos, nuts and caramel. I spilled mine accidentally. Nobody saw though so I was in the clear.

After buying an Okinawan t-shirt, computer mouse pads you could put photos and such into and doing the photo picture booth thing, we went home and got ready to do the Water Aerobics. Tonight we are going to do sushi and try another different restaurant out. Can't wait. Stay tuned for when I get back to the states to wind down my very first international trip. A trip of a lifetime, a trip to Okinawa!

The Peace Prayer Park and Storming More Castles

2010-01-12T18:25:00.002-07:00

Saturday and Sunday we spent a lot of time hitting up some historical sites. Saturday we went to the Peace Prayer Park. It is the memorial site for those who died in the Battle of Okinawa. 240,000 was the last count. They had a fountain that had a torch in the middle of it that represented Okinawa. They also have marble stones with the names of everyone who died there.Then they had a bunch of monuments. That night we went to Thai in the Sky, I know, I know, we've eaten at a lot of restaurants in the sky. They've both had killer views though. The Indonesian Beef Curry, was a level three spice factor. It was angry. It tasted so good but it was so hot. Maddie decided that she was going to have green curry. It had a rating of seven peppers. Blistering can't describe how angry it was. After we ate, we went home and relaxed a bit.

Sunday we hit up two different castle ruins. Unlike the last castle that was restored and all fancy looking, these were more stones and ruins. They were neat. The first castle, Katsuren Castle, was used up until 1458 when it was destroyed because Amawari, the aji (castle lord) decided he was going to attack the main castle and usurp the throne. This however did not work and lead to the destruction of Katsuren. It was neat to see. They mostly had just stairs and walls but knowing the history and knowing that it happened right under my feet was kind of daunting. The top of the castle had a good 360 degree view which afforded good views all the way around.

The second castle we went to was the castle that Amawari successfully captured in his campaign to take over Okinawa. This one had more archways and ruins to it meaning that it was more intact. We walked through and it had some amazing views.One of the walls had a gecko in it that Maddie had her head about an inch away from. I wasn't there at that point but she said she screamed. This castle had a view of the "haunted hotel/resort" behind it. Apparently japanese workers started randomly dying when making this hotel and being a very superstitious lot they stopped working on it. A mainland Japan company decided to take over and finish it, but they started randomly dying to, so it never was finished. It looked abandoned and erie so we left it alone. That was about it for that day. It had been an exhausting weekend so we took it easy for that evening.

Other than that Maddie and I have been just hanging out and spending time with each other before I leave back to the States. Apparently traveling in the states is going to be a lot more fun thanks to random terrorists and government lack of efficiency. No this is not me showing my political standpoint, just stating what happened. Maddie and I hit up the American Village yesterday and I will write on that here in a little bit. So stay tuned.

New Looks, Markets and Island Touring

2010-01-10T17:45:00.000-07:00

So it's 2010. A time for bringing in the new. As you can see Smoke Before Fire has had some plastic surgery. I was looking at my posts the other day and I realized that I kind of had a lot going on the site. So I decided to de-clutter it a little bit. Here when I get stateside I'll finish up the site I have with my information. Anywho, these past four days have been rather busy. I don't think we stopped going all weekend. But that is alright, it was my last weekend here in Okinawa.

Friday we decided to visit the Awase Fish Market and the Vegetable Market. The fish market was kind of cool because it had a lot of fresh fish, but I've been told that they usually have a lot more. There were squid and octopus tentacles. They even had giant prawn to buy. We bought fresh tuna and had tuna steaks that night. I even witnessed trail mix with dried fish in it. Afterwards we drove on over to the Vegetable Market. There were a bunch of older folk there getting stuff. When the men wanted something, they clapped at the people who worked there. They would also stuff as many bean sprouts into a bag as possible. They did so because it was a set price per bag.

Later that day we went on a tour of some islands west of Okinawa. They were neat. We tried to find a castle there but it turned out there was just a monument where it used to be. After that we ended up going to this really nice beach that had giant shells on it. I'll take a picture of those and post them here this week. But yeah, it was a nice time to just walk along the beach and search for shells.

Next time I'll write on hitting up the Peace Prayer Park in the day time and the castle storming we did yesterday. So stay tuned!

The Churami Aquarium

2010-01-10T02:06:00.002-07:00

So yesterday we had to get up early. We had a big day ahead of us. We were going to the Churami Aquarium, second biggest aquarium in the world. We got there around ten thirty or so after hitting up the local family mart. We bought our tickets there because it was cheaper. That and we got coupons. There was also a winning ticket that one a thermos cup that doubled as a water bottle from the aquarium gift shop. That was cool. Saved 570 yen. Once we got there we went in and the view was amazing. Stairs after stairs leading down to one of those sidewalk fountains that squirted water in various patterns. In the background was an island with a rock that looked like a volcano. The water being a teal blue crashing onto the beaches. It was windy and overcast and you could feel rain droplets every so often but it didn't downpour. We thought we were lost but ended up talking to a lady that didn't speak very much English and she pointed us in the right direction.

The entrance was pretty standard.The first exhibit was a petting zoo type area where you could feel starfish and other sea creatures. Afterwards we started in the upper coral reef area. There were blue fish. Angel Fish that ranged from striped white and black to yellow. As we walked further down we got more and more into the deeper reef areas. There was a sea turtle, sharks, humphead wrasses, blowfish, etc. In fact, to save time I will just give a general overview list of the fish I saw in these tanks.

Bicolor parrot fish
Sapphire Devil
Horned Starfish
A lazy shark of sorts (there is an official name but I forget)
Plus a whole bunch of other fish
that would take a long time to name

We then got lower into the reefs. We saw giant lobsters that appeared to be over two feet in length. They were Painted Spiny Lobsters. Then we saw various smaller tanks that had crabs, clown fish, lionfish, sea horses and various other fish.

The next room is what makes the aquarium to be able to boast as being the second biggest in the world. It has the second largest single pane viewing class in the world. It was thick, about 600 plus millimeters thick. They had giant Manta rays, and whale sharks. That was amazing to see. There was an area where you could go under the tank and look up at the fish swimming over head.

Then we hit the end of the trail through there by going into the gift shop. I was going to get something from there but as always the only things they have in gift shops. Trinkets and stuffed animals. I don't mind looking at the stuff, but it's kind of hard to buy the stuff. Especially when I have all the pictures I've taken to make up for it.So far the picture count is 1,600 or so. Anywho, we hit up some food then went to the dolphin tanks where they were doing a dolphin show. We saw that and those mammals can shoot up high in the air. Afterwards we went to see the sea-turtles. They were draining the sea-turtle tanks to clean them but not before one of the turtles swam over to check me out. Then we checked out the Manatees. They were cool. One just liked to do barrel roll after barrel roll around the tank.

We hit up the dream center, which was a big flower area. Think lots of green houses with a lot, and by a lot I mean flowers covered everything. But I will probably come back here and link to Maddie's blog when she writes more about it. Not that it wasn't awesome, but she's into flowers and such a bit more.

We finished off the day with a Restaurant that was called Pizza in the Sky. It was a nice little place with an amazing view. Basically, when you ordered pizza, or salad, you got the salad of the day, or the pizza of the day. No ordering your own toppings and so forth. The pizza was made with loads of cheese and various meats. It even had corn on it, which was my first time with that vegetable on a pizza. It was really tasty. I also got to try sake for the first time. It was an apricot sake, and it was really strong, but tasted really good. Sometimes it had a cough medicine after taste to it, but I managed to drink most of it with help from Maddie and her parents.

We drove home and passed out early that night because we were exhausted from a day of walking.

I have more to post in the next few days on the Awase Fish Market, the Vegetable Market and castle storming and I could do it now, but I think it would be best if I broke it into chunks. So stay tuned.

New Year's Eve, Beach Walking and Storming Castles

2010-01-03T19:04:00.002-07:00

Well it's official. 2010 is here and whether you say twenty-ten or two thousand ten one thing is for certain, 2009 is gone. I don't know where it went, but it sure felt as if it didn't stay long. I could do a year in review for everyone or stuff to expect in the upcoming year but I'll spare you. We all know how 2009 was with the economy, celebrity deaths, politics, etc. No need to be reminded of it in detail. I don't know what 2010 has in store. I'll get 3/4 of school out of the way. People will be coming and going and a bunch of people will be getting married. So yeah, not including the stuff I can't predict, busy year.

For us ushering in 2010 was different. We had heard that there was going to be a fireworks show boasting 10,000 fireworks but we decided to bag that for something a little more cultural. We went to the Peace Prayer Park which is a memorial site for those who lost their lives in the Battle of Okinawa during WWII. There was a movie about it, in Japanese then speeches. Then during the lighting of the 7 candles they had there a lady sang. Afterwards everyone went outside to where they lowered a flaming wreathe to a torch down below. People lined up to light mini torches then went up to the main torch and stood in a circle. After everyone was in the circle they counted down to Midnight then lit the center torch. Singing and merry making commenced after that while others rang a giant bell.

The next day we went to a beach during low tide to check out the tide pools and look for shells. We saw a lot of sea urchins and sea cucumbers. What was really cool was the two crabs we saw. One had hairy-like legs and the other one was green and spotted and blended in with the algae. However, with the blue moon being New Years Day, the tides were pretty extreme so the tide was coming in, in a rapid pace. We then went to Cape Manzamo and looked around. The views of the waters around here are amazing .When the sun hits the water just right you get some awesome colors of blue.

We tried to hit some tide pools on the 2nd but we missed low tide. It was okay though because we hung out and walked on the beach. In the water there were about 10 - 15 people kite surfing. With the winds blowing they were moving along pretty fast. One guy lost his board. That was sad.

Sunday, we went to Shuri Castle which was the castle used by the royal family. Being that there were still New Year's celebrations going on there were a lot of people there. They had a stage with various Japanese dances going on and it interesting to see the different styles. After that we went into the castle. We had to take our shoes off as to not track dirt and such through out the castle. There were various parts of the castle we weren't allowed to take pictures of. We went through the gardens and throne room. They had a glass floor in spots to see down to where some of the original foundation was. They even had the original fountain head dating back from the early 1500's pouring water into the spring there. A lot of history going on. * There was a point too where you could over look the surrounding areas. It was used to monitor the seas for sea traffic and potential threats to the empire.

Other than that, we're doing the beach thing some more and hanging out. We are going to the Peace Prayer Park during the day this week so I can see the monuments and such. We are also going to the Ocean Expo Park this week, which I've heard is the second biggest aquarium in the world. So yeah pretty stoked to do that. But I need to get going it's time to clean shells and what not. Stay tuned for more Oceanic adventures of our international edition of Smoke Before Fire!

* - Paragraphs and descriptions don't do the actual viewing and experiences justice. To fully understand how epic it is, one must visit the sites and experience everything themselves.

Side Note: Toilets...

2009-12-31T00:48:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I forgot in my last post to state that I walked into another Japanese innovation in my travels. Something so advanced, something that is a facet of everyday life. The thunder mug, the john, the infamous toilet... This toilet had more buttons on it than most tv remotes. Exaggeration yes, far off no. It has buttons that make noises so when someone breaks wind people can't hear it. Oh also, the seats themselves are heated! Now here is the dilemma, I myself prefer a simple toilet, do your thing, flush, go about your business. But I can see where the heated seat would be nice. I mean no one likes to in the middle of winter be the first person in the morning to sit on the kamode. I mean it's so cold the shock itself has you on the ceiling. So yeah, good idea.

Okinawa Week One

2009-12-31T00:33:00.000-07:00

So the flying was pretty uneventful. I ran into Patrick Stewart as I was heading to my next gate in Salt Lake City. For those of you who don't know, he is most famous for playing Captain Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Professor Xavier in the X-men movie trilogy. I smiled and said hello, he said hello back but that was about it. Then I spent the next seven hours waiting for my flight. In that time I had a beer, some pizza and watched Monday Night Football. Then I got hit with some bad news. Salt Lake had an hour weather delay meaning that they were limiting the flights coming in and out. The culprit... fog... So our plane was late coming in and if it had to be de-iced I would get into San Francisco at 11:40pm. My plane left at 12:05am. So yeah, 25 minutes to get to the airline counter and through security. Luckily they didn't need to de-ice the plane. So the flight was only a half an hour late. That still put me into the terminal in San Francisco at 11:15pm. I still had to run like hell from Domestic flights to International flights and so on. I barely made the plane. I sat next to a little Japanese woman who glared at me a lot. But that is okay, I tried to sleep through out the trip but, I was woken up every hour for food or something ridiculous. They give you two full meals on the plane. That was sweet. Then I got into Taiwan, waited an hour then flew to Okinawa. Customs and quarantine weren't bad. Once I stepped out of that area Maddie and her mom were there waiting for me.

We then went to the car where I was hit with my first bit of culture. The steering wheel of the car was on the right side. They also drove on the opposite side of the road. Once I got over the fear that we were in the wrong lane and thus were going to get hit, I started taking in the sights. I was a bit overwhelmed with everything. Gone was the sparse areas of Montana where you could drive for 10 minutes and be in the middle of nowhere. In its place were mass amounts of urban sprawl. We drove through the city of Naha on our way to Camp Foster. The thing is, I really have no distinct idea of where one city ends and another begins. It all just seems to be a blend of flashing lights, signs written in Japanese, mixed with various areas of stores and hotels. Afterwards we met up with Maddie's dad and got my passes to get back on base. We then ate at Coco's Curry. It was really good considering it was my first curry experience. Afterwards we got settled in and hung out. The next night we went to the Botanical Gardens to view the lights. It was neat to see all the lights. Christmas we spent here inside the house as it was raining. In fact it didn't stop raining all day. I'm not talking the constant wet drizzle we get in the U.S. but down pouring.

The next day we stopped by a pottery village and checked out all the hand made pottery. Afterwards we checked out, Cape Zampa. The water was rough and it was crashing on the rocks. That was neat to see and feel as the wind blew the spray up at us. Also they have vending machines for everything. It's amazing. They even have hot drinks in them. The fire hydrants are weird too. Basically there is a sign and then a lid in the ground that you pull out.

During the weekend we went to Cape Hedo at the northern point of the island. Again the waters were rough and crashing. The waters are an awesome blue color and watching them crash on the rocks is just something else. Over on the other side we saw a bunch of little fish swimming about. Then we went back a different way through the jungles. There was a bike race or something going on because there were a ton of road bikes that we had to pass.

Monday Maddie and I then checked out Jusco which is like a mallish type place with department stores in it. We also stopped by American Village. I don't know how it's American really but I just went with it. Tuesday we checked out the 100 yen shop which is closely related to a dollar store. They had some silly stuff. Wednesday, Maddie, her mom and I went to Kokusai Street. Basically it's a street of shops and restaurants. They have Habu Sake. Basically they take the habu snakes which is a poisonous viper here on the island that they stick in sake. Apparently it ferments or something and the poison gives it a real kick.

Tonight is New Years Eve. We are going to Peace Prayer Park to see the light show there. They are also lighting a torch. So that will be awesome to see.

Anywho, I have to apologize, everything I have talked about is not in detail, because I've had a lot to experience my first week here. I'll write in more detail later. Stay tuned! Oh and a Happy New Year!!!

Winding Down the Semester

2009-12-18T17:21:00.000-07:00

So the end of the semester was like most with one twist. Papers, finals and stress galore plus the added benefit of the Silver Nozzle Competition. What that is, as was explained to us, is a competition where fire teams of three compete against each other for their names being engraved on the Silver Nozzle we have. We would compete in first floor search. This however was not the twist. The twist was that it would be done in the main entrance of the College. It wasn't graded for school but more of a benchmark to see how far along we have come and so on. For some of us, the change was significant and for others, not so much. The one rule we had 100% no give on was nozzle control. Open the hose in the school, you get disqualified. As Dave our instructor said. no one had that problem before.

We rolled up into the parking lot and the hose guy would drag the hose up to the door. We then sounded for victims and pounded for floor integrity. We had to tape a towel to the halligan tool because the floor in the main area of the campus is marble. Forceful pounding and marble don't mix in case you didn't know. Anyway, we made entrance and searched, checking for victims. We found the victim down the end of the first hall. He was a 280lb fire fighter. There is one thing that I learned in the beginning of classes back in September, 280lbs of weight is heavy. There is another thing that I learned in the end of classes here this last Wednesday, 280lbs is still heavy.

We got the victim packaged up and the tool guy started dragging him. As we were pulling him out, the tool guy made it 10 ft before he got tired from dragging the guy. After that it went down hill for our group, Team 4. Our nozzle guy lost nozzle control. Water sprayed everywhere down the hallway. There was a giant puddle. In our defense the floor needed cleaning. After that I had to take over in dragging the dummy. Now this is where some of us discover how far we've come or not. When I first started, I could not drag 175lb dummy out of a building, much less a 280lb person.

At the competition, I got behind the guy and started pulling. It hurt. My muscles screamed from lack of oxygen and over-exertion. I started sucking air from my mask. I almost got over-excited. But I calmed myself, started to control my breathing and started getting into a beat and pulling the guy out. By the time we were half way back down the 100ft hallway, the tool guy was low on air, as well as the hose guy. We all started at full tanks. By the time we were 80% of the way, they both had to take off their masks. We managed to get the victim out of the building and walk back to the truck before my low air alarm started buzzing. I was amazed. I managed to keep to under a tank of air.

Well needless to say, we got disqualified. It's okay though, because I improved in every way possible. I can control my breathing, I have the endurance I need to move a person out of a building. I can step in and help as needed. It was nice to do.

After that I had to turn in my proposal in for English. Got an A in that, as well as my other classes. So for my first semester in the Fire & Rescue Program I have a 4.0. The test in Incident Command seemed hard but I did way better than I thought I would. I got a Pass in Physical Training because I improved in all four of my baselines. So I feel somewhat accomplished and relieved.

Today we had a party with money we put into the swear jar. We had 58 dollars total. I had one dollar. One kid had $20.75. Dave our instructor, gave us his retirement speech as today is his last day, and sent us off. It was a pretty epic way to end the semester.

Now all I have to look forward to is hanging out in Bozeman for the weekend, then my trip to Japan. I leave Monday. I can't wait. Which reminds me, I need to continue packing. Stay tuned for our international version of Smoke Before Fire. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Obstacle Course, Club Duties and Truck Driving...

2009-12-07T13:40:00.000-07:00

So it's taken me a while to get back to the blog to update everyone on my adventures in Fire Fighting. It's been a busy few weeks. One of my co-workers gave me his cold. So I've been dealing with that. We have a lot in store for this blog, I've been busy. Alright, here we go.

So Wednesday of last week was filled with fun. We were in the class room that day and learned about venting and tiers of Incident Command and how they apply to fires; Such as tier two fires becoming tier three fires. Basically that means that when a tier two fire becomes big enough they call in an incident commander who has more experience and can handle the stresses of bigger crews, bigger fires, etc. Thus it becomes a tier 3 fire. While one instructor went over that sort of stuff, the other instructor blindfolded a few of us and explained to us which end of the fire hose faces towards the truck. The male coupling faces towards the truck. We then based on that were told to follow the hose through a hose maze sort of deal. We crawled over a fork lift, crawled under the fire truck and around the drive bay.

After that we had english then PT. PT was a blast. We did part of the CPAT (Candidate Physical Ability Test) for it. We carry hose up, down, and back up flights of stairs. Then we lifted more hose up through a second story window. After that we ran back down stairs and pulled an extension ladder so that it was fully extended it and then let it back down without losing control of the ladder. Then we had to drag the 175lb mannequin about 100 feet then dragged hose and pulled 50 more feet of hose. We were timed to see how fast we could do it. I got 2 minutes 1 second. The fastest time was 1 minute 15 seconds, but that kid took a supplement to increase his stamina and he was jacked on enough caffeine to drop a bull rhino. But average was about two minutes so I was pretty happy about that.

Thursday we had our first meeting of the Fire & Rescue Club. We met at Jorgenson's because the club president works there. We went over the constitution and figured out a little. As the treasurer I am in charge of the clubs finances. I get to buy stuff when needed. After that we closed the meeting.

Friday was sweet because it was the day that we started to learn driving the fire truck and ambulance. I started off with the Ambulance. That wasn't too bad. Basically driving a giant van. We went to the fair grounds so that way I wouldn't maim any people or ducks*. Afterwards I drove the fire truck. That was pretty sweet. It's big but it corners well. The air brakes are a little touchy. I had to back it up and get it close to this parked truck. I did pretty well.

Other than that not much is going on. We have one full week of school left. Then finals week. After that I will be on my way to Japan. I'm really excited. I can't wait. Stay tuned for competition news next week then Jack Does Japan!

The Ropes Course and EMT Evals...

2009-11-23T19:06:00.000-07:00

Today was pretty good. I took a test. I did not get the grade back for it, but I'm pretty sure I received a 100% on it. I got flak for being the fastest test taker again. But that is okay. Afterwards we went to Memorial Park for an obstacle and ropes course. Below will be a few pictures of me plugging along through it with my partner. It was good, we had to crawl through tight areas and keep in constant contact with our partner. We got turned around a few times, it was disorienting not being able to see, I almost got stuck in the tire swing. Afterwards I participated in EMT scenarios. Everyone did well, but we were outside and it was freezing. I got backboarded and c-collared 5 times. It was a hoot. After that I participated in a Mass Casualty Incident (MCI) as a fubar'd patient. It was a car crash, I didn't wear my seat belt. Always wear your seat belt. Anyway it was good, got backboarded and stuff again. After that I came home and thawed out. Other than that, there is nothing too exciting going on. I have one more day of classes then it's time for turkey! Until next time, Happy Thanksgiving!!!!!!

What Failure Breeds....

2009-11-18T19:02:00.002-07:00

Failure is a funny thing because it is a stepping stone into two completely different directions; one of despair, or one of triumph. Those who follow the first are doomed to live a life of sorrow. Those who follow the latter, will use failure as fuel to create a better life for themselves. We either learn to overcome it, or we are overcome by it. There is no middle ground..."

~ Anonymous

Today we spent the first little bit of class trying to figure out where everyone was. One of the instructors told us to go to the smokehouse, the other told us to go to the school through text messages. So as we went to the school one of the kids in my program was in charge of telling us to go to the smoke house. After we got all that sorted out we spent the first part of the morning going out the window, swinging down onto the ladder and sliding down from there. In the blog you will see a few pictures of me doing it. After that the morning took a turn for the not-so-awesome.

We were going through timed second story search tactics. Each group for every mistake they made had to do 30 push ups. For those who didn't go on air in time had to do 30 individually then after that each group mistake added 30. We didn't have the greatest of runs, it wasn't bad, but we had a bunch of little mistakes. I wasn't in as good as shape as I was before apparently because I was struggling. I had a hard time lifting the 50 ft of house into the second story window and dragging the victim out. Then the victim wasn't placed on my arms properly and we dropped him. Rescue Randy died from trauma. He will be missed. All in all after everything was tallied up we sat at 210 push ups. The comments that were said by certain folks during and after were out of line and rude, but I won't repeat them because I don't want to dwell on them.

In that moment though, I realized a lot about myself, it was a serious reality check into why I am here, and if I really want to be here. Most of my life I have spent time with a few people in my life telling me who I was and how I would not succeed. I would be nothing without them. I tried to shrug it off but after years of it, these things kind of sink in. I overcame it, and got help. I am working on a lot of it still because these things don't go away over night. There is someone in my life that will tell you that. Sometimes when you believe that you will fail, you will. Today, I gave it my all, and it wasn't enough. Before I would shut down and give up, but today I realized that I need to push harder, I've been doing the gym and running two or three times a week, but I am going to hit the gym everyday working different groups of muscles, I'm going to run everyday. I'm not going to do it, but I know I can achieve better so I am going to.

What I learned today, I guess, is something that I have subconsciously overcome the worst in my life to make the best I can out of it for me, and I will do the same for this. I don't know how to give up on a grand scale and I just need to use my minor defeats as a way to improve myself. I want this more than I've ever wanted anything so I am going to work for it. It's that simple.

Other than that, nothing exciting is going on. I have spent a lot of time on a few of the machines at work, so I am no longer bumping into stuff. I spent some time slinging bathtubs which are more awkward than they are heavy, but after 10 of them you get a little sore. I got done earlier than everyone so I got to go home. I'm counting down the days until Japan, 34 at the last count. I cannot wait to get over there and spend a near month exploring and hanging out. I'm excited. Other than that, stay tuned!

Holding My Breath... Part 3

2009-11-13T16:27:00.000-07:00

Today was a good day for school. We had a test which I completed in like 30 seconds and received a 100% on. That was cool. Dave just looked at me all astonished like and shook his head after he graded the test. He didn't know what to say. After that we went to the Smokehouse. Apparently there is a chance that we are going to be losing that building. The Helena Airport folk do not like us. But not because of anything we've done, but because others who use the training facilities do not clean up after themselves. So we're in talks about that. If it happens that we can't use that place we will find something else.

Anyway, we learned today how to rescue fire fighters that have falling to a floor below. I watched but I didn't participate because I was asked to instruct the class on how to backboard a victim. It was nice to do but I am nowhere certified to teach. I just explained what I knew and how I did it. One of the instructors interjected a lot with how he was trained but it went well overall. Apparently I remember a lot more than I thought I did. So that is cool. But it was good. People actually listened to me. Then we learned how to change our own air tanks which let me tell you is scary. Working against your own panic button. Once you get passed the I don't have air thing, it takes a bit of dexterity to turn the bottle, get the tank off, put a new tank on. I didn't make it my first time. I died if you will. But it comes with time.

This weekend I will probably hide out, I've been battling a mild case of the flu, my roommate had swine flu but I don't think I have that, who knows, I'm not going to a doctor to find out. I'm laying low, drinking fluids and not overworking myself. I'm probably going to spend most of the weekend playing x-box. Homework is light this weekend, I only have a 500 word paper to write. So not bad. Anyway, Monday we get to do second story diving onto a ladder techniques so I can't wait for that. I hope I feel like I am in a Bruce Willis movie. But I'll have pictures and a blog up for that Monday! Stay tuned!

Next Year...

2009-11-06T17:30:00.000-07:00

So today we spent most of the day running scenarios. I got to drag two heavy people in a first floor search. It sucked because we didn't have enough air for everyone so we had to pretend to be on air. But we did do well in rolling up on scene and going through the motions. I didn't do too bad at toolman either. Pounding and sounding are pretty easy. After that english went quick. I talked with my english teacher who thinks we are long lost relatives because we have the same last name. She and I discussed the proposal I have to write for my final paper. I asked her to critique it really hard as I am going to use it for a presentation to the City of Helena so I want it to be done really well.

Yesterday I forgot to write that I registered for classes for next semester. I wasn't supposed to be able to until next week because I am a first year student but being that I have credit for my EMT class I am considered a non first year student or something. The classes I registered are as follows:

Wildland Fire Fighting
Personal Physical Fitness II
Hazardous Materials
Electronic Communications
Emergency Equipment Maintenance
Fire Apparatus Operation
Fire Fighting Tactics and Strategies
Basic MS Office

So yeah, 19 credits worth but some of the classes are broken down into half semesters or quarters. I have 3 classes at 7:00am and one class from 8:00am - 4:50pm on Saturdays. Yeah it sucks that I don't get a Saturday to relax but I get to learn how to drive a fire truck and besides I spent a few years fooling around in Bozeman so I don't mind buckling down for these two years. Anyway my roommate is full of the H1N1 so I am bunkering down in my room and I am going to take a nap to battle that and prepare for work tonight, so stay tuned until next time!

A Whole Heck of a Lot....

2009-11-05T17:41:00.000-07:00

So these past few weeks have been pretty busy. I started a job at home depot and I've been trying to get used to my new classes. Well let us just say I am trying to get used to one class.

So I recently got a job at Home Depot. Six weeks after I applied there. I know right, one heck of a wait. I got hired on as freight crew. Yep that's right I stock shelves. I spent 4 days straight doing orientation. Sitting there and watching videos and taking online quizzes for that long can be rather boring. But I learned how to use a "Home Depot Saftey Knife" which is like a utility knife, but for 3 year olds. Seriously doesn't cut through much of anything. I did go in on Tuesday and learn to drive a fork lift, OP machine, which i forget what the exact name for it is but it is used to get heavy objects up to the top shelves. If you're afraid of heights I don't recommend that machine. It gets awfully wobbly the higher you get. I worked on a few more machines and I became certified to drive 4 of them. It is fun tooling around on each machine but it can be nerve racking.

I am the youngest guy there by about 20 years so making work friends, not so much. I basically work by myself stocking shelves and I wish I could use my iPod, but oh well. My boss is pretty cool. I think he's part of the mafia. I mean he had his hair slicked back. OH! He also had a prison tattoo on his hand. So yeah, he's pretty hardcore. His favorite phrase to say is, "The numbers don't jive man." That means that the SKU product numbers don't match. It's a pain in the behind.

School is going well. We are week three into our second set of classes. One of them is basically a continuation of fire 101 but for school administrative purposes it has to be divided into two classes. The other class we are talking is Incident Command systems, that's cool. We are going through scenarios and learning how to do scene size ups and do tactical worksheets (see picture).

We learned to do pitched roof ventilation which consists of using a roof ladder, a chain saw and a big hole in the roof. We touched on punching ceiling and walls but we will do more of that tomorrow. I will have pictures of it then.

For our final we are going to participate in something called the Silver Nozzle Competition. Basically we are going to practice first floor search in front of the school. The paper and local news crews are going to be there. So that will be cool.

We started a Fire & Rescue club and I was voted treasurer. So I get to handle the money. Also we are getting a new faculty administrator that will hopefully push the program further. We were asked by the school administration to select one of the students to be on the hiring committee as a voice for the students. Some people told me to do it, so I will probably volunteer for that.

Other than that not much is going on. I'm impatiently waiting to go to Japan. It's coming in 47 days! I really can't wait. I'm going to see my sweetie and hang out with her and her family in Japan, I really can't wait. I am kind of nervous though. But I'm sure it will pass with time. Anyway, that is about it, stay tuned for the continuing saga of Smoke Before Fire!

Chain Saws Again

2009-10-26T15:27:00.000-06:00

So I used a chain saw for the first time today. Yeah I'm from Montana, it's in the Montana code of conduct of being a Montanan to have used a chainsaw before I was ten. I dropped the ball I guess on that one. Well I redeemed myself today. I had a few hiccups but then again first time doing roof venting with a chainsaw.

We did two runs. The first run I was crew leader. That was cool. Easy. Second time I was chainsaw guy. Note to anyone who does roof venting, when you get to the top of a ladder with the chainsaw, go high enough that you aren't trying to swing the chainsaw over your head. Just saying. We all had to do the chainsaw today, so I wasn't the only one who did it. So we all had mini hiccups. My biggest one was the chain break. Don't forget that. But I went up there, and I was cutting some pretty sweet lines.

Afterwards we cleaned up and went to english. I have secretly become addicted to the Office, so I am going to go watch some of that. Stay tuned!

Ladders, Chainsaws and Credentials, Oh My!

2009-10-25T17:54:00.000-06:00

Wednesday we started going over Roof Ventilation and how to do it. We went over various ways of doing roof venting. Then we whipped out the chainsaw and pike poles and went over how to use these tools. Afterwards we went out into the engine bay and "practiced" how to sound a roof then cut the roof.

Friday we went out to the smoke house and practiced what we had learned on Wednesday. We only had 5 boards so only 5 people got to cut. That's okay though because the rest of us will get to cut on Monday. In this post are a few pictures of us without air. One of me on the ladder sounding, and one of us practicing group integrity.

We all got credentialed to get on and off the airport because that is where our training facility is. It's not exciting i don't get my own badge and card to open the gate, but it does mean that I am not considered a terrorist. That's pretty sweet. I do however at some point have to get my student ID turned into a name card. Meaning I have to wear it. But oh well.

Other than that nothing else exciting is going on. So stay tuned until next time!

Ladders Are For Climbing....

2009-10-16T16:08:00.000-06:00

So I was reading in my fire fighting book that a ladder is a device used to move up and down from one height to another. Deep I know. It was a good thought to start out our new training exercises: second story search and vent. What that consists of is:

placing a ladder
busting out a window
bringing the window to just under the the window sill
cleaning the window up of any attached glass
going in as a crew and searching the floor for victims
If a victim is found extricating them safely and quickly

The first few runs we went through and practiced without our air packs and a fully charged hose, just to get used to all the steps. Then we added a charged hose. Then our air packs. Then we added radios to practice speaking over them correctly. Then we added the incident command aspect to it. Scene size up, crews needed, assignments etc. At first it was kind of chaotic because everyone wanted to run through it as many times as possible. Some people struggled and we had some problems running through each scenario at first but that is the point of the class, to run out the kinks so that we can start doing it flawlessly. By our third time we had everything down and it couldn't have gone more smoothly.

I've been busting my butt in all my classes. I'm sitting in the A range for most of my classes and I have been doing really well on my Fire 101 tests. It's just been a lot of work, but I guess that is to be expected when you try to push four years of school into two.

I volunteered for a local cause last weekend. Women in Gear is a program that tries to get girls and women into the trade programs such as welding, fire fighting, etc. We had a good turn out. We let the girls try on our turn out gear, showed them crew integrity and let them try victim/patient rescue scenarios. We explained to them some of the training we are doing and how we go about getting into shape to do it.

Other than that nothing too exciting is going on, we're trying to start a Fire & Rescue Club so we can have fundraisers and do other things that require a club for. I don't know what that consists of but I hear we need a club to do most of it. So we are working on that. I have set up the Facebook page for us to post pictures for everyone to see. It's good for putting all the pictures up rather than having to put just a few up on here like I have been. It will give you more an idea of what we do.

Anywho, I'm off to upload pictures to Facebook. Stay tuned!!!!

Holding My Breath... Again...

2009-10-05T21:53:00.000-06:00

So it is cold again, not really that cold but it's snowy and we had a winter storm warning from Sunday to Today. We met at the smoke house this morning for some evolutions. Four people didn't show up so we had to change teams around a bit. We are slowly adding stuff to the mix. This class or set of classes as we divide the semester in half, will just give us the basics of what we need to know. We won't do an actual Fire Fighter I course until next fall. I don't care just because I enjoy being out at there working. But anyway, back to the story, we divided amongst ourselves which added to the general chaos of today. After spending some time trying to figure out where everyone was going to be we took some time to figure out who was all gone.

The group is fading fast. Some won't make it because they won't show up, others won't because they make poor decisions and so on. But the smoke house today was filled with smoke today. It was a good time. We did Primary Searches and threw a victim variable in there. The first time I went through I was on the initial team that found the victim, just to see how it would be with the smoke. Then I was on the RIT team. That was a hoot. The picture to the left is me in full gear waiting to be called in. Next I played the victim. I got tossed around worse than a crash test dummy but it was fun. We all had a laugh when one of the fire fighters ran in without his helmet.

Instructor: *taps guy on shoulder* Um... where is your helmet?

Fire fighter: *Feels around on his head.* Ah F%$#!

We all had a good laugh at that. The guy who I wrote about throwing a temper tantrum ended up doing it again, this time towards an instructor. After that failed attempt at a Primary Search our instructor grouped us up and started lecturing us about having a poor attitude. Then the kid started to talk back and finally after listening to it enough three of us snapped and told him to shut the heck up and listen. Seriously, attitude in this field is everything. Well attitude is a lot of it for most fields, but in a field where lives count on you, and people count on you to protect them and their belongings it's even more important. One bad attitude can mean the difference between life and death. So the rest of us were a little less than forgiving about this second tantrum.

After that we went to the school and received our shirts and hat. Tomorrow I'll post a picture of me fully outfitted up. I'll probably look dorky but that is okay. Anyway, I threw some pictures up of our training today. Enjoy!

Holding My Breath

2009-10-02T16:08:00.002-06:00

-------***Radio Transmission***------

"I.C. this is Engine Crew 41..."

"Engine Crew 41 this is I.C. go ahead..."

"We are on the Bravo Charlie corner of the structure with downed fire fighter Holt who has a low air warning. Requesting Scott 30 minute tank and an extrication."

"You have a downed fire fighter Holt from Engine crew 41 in the Bravo Charlie corner, you're requesting a Scott 30 minute bottle and extrication..."

"Affirmative..."

"We are sending in a RIT team in with a 30 minute bottle and to get you guys out of there hold tight..."

"RIT Crew inbound with air bottle and extrication..."

"Affirmative..."

Laying there I did the best I could to control my breathing. After all once the air was gone I would either be sucking mask or worse. I could be sucking in the contaminants in the air around me. It seemed like forever as I laid there with my crew telling me that a Rapid Intervention Team was inbound on our location. I don't remember what happened. All I knew is I was down, couldn't move. They were there in what seemed like an eternity. I was told slow my breathing and as they undid my air pack I would at the count of three have to take a deep breath in and hold it as they shut off my oxygen and changed the air pack. I slowed my breathing down the best that I could, not knowing what was going on around me other than my pack moving around. The one fireman that told me to slow my breathing counted to three.

"1...2...3..." tapping my shoulder at each count.

I sucked in as much air in as I could until I couldn't pull in anymore. I pushed back the thoughts of not making it and not being able to breathe again into the back of my mind. I was going to get air again. I was going to be extricated. What seemed like minutes passed which in actuality was about 40 seconds, I was tapped and told to suck air in. I heaved a sigh of relief. I could breathe again.

-----************-----

Then the training exercise was over. I got up and dusted the dirt of the engine bay off and popped off my mask. Our instructor Grady looked at all of us and said good job.

"Now that is what a RIT team response and bottle switch over is supposed to look like. Get used to radio chatter because that is what we will be practicing from now until you graduate..."

We had a test today that we were supposed to have on Wednesday. I rocked it and then we went over the chapters we are going to be tested on next week. After that we learned about the Incident Command System and general radio talk. Then we were set to our groups and we were told to have a man down so we could practice radio chatter and RIT team response involving a downed fire fighter with a low air warning. The downed fire fighter had to hold their breath until the next bottle was attached. I was the first downed man in my group because I can hold my breath the longest. We practiced that and rotated through that.

After that we left class with the announcement that we would be filling the smoke house with smoke on Monday. Which I am really excited for,. What I am not excited for is the Winter Storm Watch that will be taking place on Sunday. This next week I start my CE hours for my EMT-B certification. I have 24 hours to do which I can do amongst six, four hour classes.

Other than that just doing the counting down thing until December. Stay tuned!

The First Snow

2009-10-01T15:09:00.001-06:00

September 30th - 6:00am. I awoke in a daze. There was a sound near my dresser that sounded like a mouse or small critter clawing their way out. I turned on the lights and couldn't find anything. I went and made coffee. Then I came back into my room. The sound was still there. Then I discovered what it was. It was raining. It looked like a dark and gloomy day. Nothing too exciting just your general run of the mill gloom. Well okay that isn't true. It was cold. 39 degrees cold. Which in Montana is yes, shorts weather still. But there was wind. The biting wind that accompanies the rain and cold. I left my house and went to my car. As I was driving along I looked up at the mountains to the west of me like I normally do. What I saw should not have surprised me but it did! SNOW! I was stunned! I drove to school amazed. We got to class to take our test but it turned out that our instructor was snowed in at his place in Butte with the reports of a downed electrical power line. 10 inches in Butte. To the left here is a picture taken by my roommate from the top of Mcdonald's Pass.

After sitting around trying to figure out if we were going to take a test or not we ended up bagging that and going to the Smoke house. We practiced inner search techniques with patient rescue. Dragging a dummy is fun, but a lot of work. We went through a few tanks of air. We had some back ups but 15 people rotating bottles on a consistent basis makes having a bunch of bottles over having a few bottles a thing of paramount importance. So once we drained the bottles we ended up going back to the campus. It was cold and rainy and wet over at the smoke house and it felt good to be in our turn out gear. Back at campus I got my pack and went to English. Then it was time for PT.

We were going to be doing calisthenics by cards. Here is an example. Each suit equals a work out. Push ups, sit ups, etc. So say if hearts was push ups. For every hearts card that was drawn you would do 10 push ups. However Dave (our instructor) decided that we would just run. So we set out to run from campus, up and around the capital building and back. A two mile run up the mountain and back. It wasn't bad. The cold kept us from over heating. We were supposed to go as fast as our slowest person however a lot of people did not like that pace so they ran ahead. I went at a comfortable pace. I didn't want to over do it and I have nothing to prove. I'm just wanting to get in shape. From what I gather, in fire fighting, it's not how fast you can run, but how far you can run.

After that I went home and thawed out. Took a warm shower and started doing homework. Today October 1st is the only sunny day we're supposed to have a for a few days. After that it's supposed to rain and storm and be cold. But it sounds about right for this time of year. But that will help me keep my butt studying. I have big projects coming up. But anyway enough procrastinating, time to get my English Project done. Stay tuned for more news as it develops on Smoke Before Fire.

* Here is a photo taken outside of my house of the snow the day after it happened.*

Montana State EMT License

2009-09-26T20:26:00.000-06:00

Good news, I just got my Montana State EMT-B License, so I can now be a practicing EMT here in the state of Montana. I received a shiny certificate that I could put next to my other one. I may do that. I'm not sure. But the good news is, I will be more likely to be hired on a volunteer company now.

Smoke House Awesomeness

2009-09-26T20:22:00.000-06:00

So there I was a week ago. Sitting, and thinking about my trip to Bozeman. When my instructor told us that we would be going to Butte this upcoming Wednesday to try the smoke maze there. Well, that got changed to Friday because the instructor wanted to make sure we got our weekly dose of PT in. So yeah, standard week, up until today. This morning was like any other morning, talk to my sweetie, made breakfast, then I drove to school. I got there, turned in my paper that was due, then brought my bunker gear to one of the vans that we had borrowed for our college field trip. Yeah that's right, a college field trip. Well anyway, we start loading stuff in the vans, then something happened that ended up making the whole trip extremely more hilarious.*

Student One: Hey, can I put my stuff in here.

Student Two: Nope, looks like we're full, you'll have to carry your stuff in your lap!

Student One: Well F#$% this I'm not going,. I quit this F#$%ing program.

Student Two: What the hell did I say!?

After that we were ordered to pile into the vans to meet our instructor in Butte (he lives there). As we were driving off, Student One was seen throwing everything he had. Sunglasses, His EMT Book, etc. He threw a giant temper tantrum. Then he got into his truck and drove to Butte himself. Claimed that we had left him. We spent a lot of the car ride ribbing on each other and poking fun at the situation. Nothing too crazy but generalized good times.

We got to Butte and toured the Whalen Tire Fire, and a few other burned buildings. After that we drove back to the maze building to get ready to run through it, but it turns out we decided lunch was more important. Now since the first day of school our instructor, Dave, has been talking about this sandwich in Butte that is supposed to be delivered from God himself via the wings of a unicorn or something. Anyway, it's called the Wop Sandwich. It's like a deep fried porkchop sandwich that is supposed to be amazing from The Freeway Tavern. It was pretty good. Afterwards, we went back to the maze to get started.

We donned our PPE and SCBA gear and got ready to go in the maze. I was the ninth person or so and people weren't allowed to speak of what happened to them in there. When it was my turn I was a wee bit nervous but more excited. I got in and the first thing that I had to do was crawl. See it was pitch black in there, so the other way we could figure out where to go was to feel around. I had to climb up two stories, the first time it was hard because I wasn't used to compensating for the extra weight my turnouts and pack added. But I got it figured out and went on my way.

I was going along fine, then something happened that scared the crap out of me. One of the things that the second year students did was come from behind us, and turn off our airpacks. I'll tell you this, nothing causes you to panic more than trying to breathe air in and having nothing come back but your mask suck in back at you. I started to freak out just a little, but then I checked my pack and turned my air back on. After that I got through the maze pretty quick.

We then went in again in teams of two, this time with the goal of finding something. That something, piping cuplinks. We had to feel around while staying in contact with our partner. I found the cuplink, then led us to the back door. We were told not to go that way and we were to go back. So we found the actual exit, and that was that. We were told to pack our gear and get ready to go back to Helena. But first we had to take pictures. The one below is of all of us, taking by a first year student in my class named Angie.

So once we were done with the snap shots, we packed in the vans and drove home. Nothing too exciting happened. We mooned the guy who drove his truck there when he was passing us. We also continued to joke around and have a good time. We got back, put away our SCBA's then went home. Thus ending the smoke house field trip. Stay tuned to Smoke Before Fire for more late breaking news.

* - There are a few more fires popping up here. It's really smoky out and it's making it difficult to breathe for some, itchy throats for others. News on the fire can be found here. - *

Pluggin' Along

2009-09-21T15:38:00.000-06:00

So school has been going well. We have been doing evolutions Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Also we have had two tests in Fire 101. So far I have scored a 100% and a 96%. The second one might change to 100% because one of the questions we had said one thing while the book said another. So we will see. Either way I'm doing well. We had a contest today for our 1 minute and 2 minute PPE/SCBA drills today. I didn't win the PPE 1 minute drill, but managed to don (put-on) the gear in 43 seconds. I got third place in the SCBA 2 minute drill with a time if 1 minute 43 seconds. It would have been faster but people kept talking to me and tugging on my gear. So that was a bit distracting. But for my hard earned efforts I won five dollars. Over the past few weeks I have been making some friends in my department (classmates). I mean I don't see them outside of school but I have a few I hang/talk to during class.

So classes are going well. I talked to one of the instructors of Fire 101 to see if I could get on a volunteer crew. I told him that I am EMT-B certified and that my state license was on its way. He said that was good because the company was very selective about who they hired on. So I have an in. Other than that, not much is going on. We are going to be down at the smoke house on Wednesday to try out Offensive Fire Tactics and what not. Then friday we are going Butte to do the smoke/fire maze and feel what a house fire feels like. I'm pretty excited about that. Then this weekend I will probably stay here and start on my second Costumer Service (Fire 120) Project. That seems fun, we are to make S.O.P.'s for the fake fire department we made in the first project.

Other than that not much is going on. Spent the weekend in Bozeman. I went to get new tires for my bravada but turns out the size of tire for my car is rare and that makes them more expensive. But now that I have them, they make my car look beastly. Speaking of my car, I have decided to name it after the late Patrick Swayze being that he was a movie bad ass. My car which had been nameless for 10 months will now be called.... (pause for dramatic effect) The Dirty Dancer. It just sounds epic.

So yeah, school is school. Life is life. I'm plugging down the 91 more days until I go to Japan!!!!!!!! I can't wait. New culture, warm place during Christmas, seeing my lady. It's going to be good. But stay tuned until next time for another dramatic episode of Smoke Before Fire.

Physical Training

2009-09-12T09:00:00.001-06:00

So I was awake this morning at five a.m. That was fun. I arrived at the school this morning, to find a few people waiting for Physical Training. I was kind of out of it, and while I am not the most happy of morning people, I was doing alright. The one kid in our class who talks all the time anyway, was chatting up a storm. A few people were hung over I was not. Our instructor was late, so we all thought about leaving but then he showed up. The first thing we did was figure out what we wanted to do for our six tests. See we have six areas that he will take a baseline on then after that he will measure on if we improve our times and reps. I thought we were going to do the baselines today but we didn't. We started off after that with a mile run. A mile run when it's 43 degrees in the dark is a wee bit chilly. I pulled that off in about 10 minutes. Which is fine because I will improve on that.We were then set to see how many push ups and sit ups we could do in 2 minutes time. I did 60 and 50 respectively. I could have done more but I'll get there. By that time, the hung over boys were starting to get sick to their stomachs. The next thing we did, was drag a tire 150ft. Which let me tell you, was no easy task. It was a standard fire engine tire and unless you get a momentum it get's to be a struggle. The hung over boys ended up puking after that.

By that time everyone was dead tired and some people had to get back to their kids, so we cut out early. So now I'm just sitting here watching Back to the Future:III debating on starting my homework.

Side Note - On a side note as I was starting my laundry this morning I looked out the living room window to see six deer, just grazing outside. It was crazy to see. I have two photos here that show just how close they are. It was like how I explained in a previous post about how the deer are rampant here. They don't mind people and mostly keep to themselves. As you can see in the pictures They looked right at me. They didn't spook at all and just went back to eating, hell one went to relieving itself. Deer have no shame.

So yeah. So far it's been an interesting Saturday. I think I may go for a hike, or I may rest today and go for a hike tomorrow. There is a huge fire up near Holter Lake which has been blowing into Helena and causing the air to be somewhat harder to breathe. I mean the smell of the logs and stuff remind me of camp fires, but the implications of the fire don't help. You can read about it by clicking here.

Other than that, it's a homework, tv and studying day. I have a job interview on Monday for Home Depot which i hope will let me get some physical work in but we will see. Stay tuned to Smoke Before Fire as these late breaking stories develop.

Something To It

2009-09-09T15:11:00.001-06:00

So yeah, I write to you guys today, Wednesday the 9th, to tell you of all that has happened since our last installment of Smoke Before Fire. There hasn't been much excitement since I last wrote here. Well that isn't true, a lot has happened since then. But I will get to that shortly.

School is good. We've started going over the books we bought so they aren't a waste of money. Not that they aren't if we don't read them, but getting some class use out of them is nice. Today I dropped a few hundred bucks on my PPE (Personal Protective Equipment.) The boots, Nomex hood, and gloves are mine to keep because the chance for leaving body fluid in them is higher than the turnouts. We watched a movie on PPE gear and what not, then we did drills for the rest of class. The goal is to get the turn outs on in under a minute (state and national time.) Everytime we didn't get it on in under a minute after a few practice drills resulted in 15 push ups. I had 30. Then we did it as a group and the first time we tried to do it, for anyone that did not get it in under a minute we all had to go again. Then the last time was if everyone did it in under a minute we wouldn't have to do 20 push ups. Let's just say I did 50 push ups total. Which isn't hard but doing it in full PPE gear gets to be warm, and rather tiring. To the Left and Right here are pictures of me in just my turnout pants, and one in my full outfit. I have to get new pants because as you can see in the one in my suspenders the latch is broken. But I am doing that tomorrow.

Other than that school seems pretty straight forward. Technical Writing is good. They are teaching us how to write to the point and not write in essay format. Which I prefer because I hate writing so many word essays or so many paged essays. I ordered for my passport and I'm looking forward to Japan, it'll be warm in the Helena December cold. I can't wait.

Other than that not much is going on. Helena is plugging along, and so am I. Stay tuned for your next dose of Smoke Before Fire.

Getting there...

2009-09-03T14:28:00.003-06:00

So I started school this past Tuesday. It'll be my third attempt at school, but this time it's what I want and feels right. Helena is slowly starting to warm up on me, I've found my way around and even the malfunction junctions it has can't make me get lost. I've figured out that the easiest way to get to and from places is usually to take the interstate. Everything seems to be coming together.

So school started this past Tuesday and I've been plugging along. My first class was Customer Service. Our homework was to read the book for the class, which I have started but haven't finished. I'll probably read it when I am done with this. Our professor gave us two assignments for the class. One is to act as a Fire or EMS chief and figure out how our pretend department would handle Customer Service. Our second assignment will be to write out S.O.P.' s (Standard Operating Procedures) for a detailed account of how we want Customer Service handled. They are due on the 25th of September and the 22nd of October respectively. Shouldn't be too bad. That was my one class of the day.

Wednesday was not bad either, I have Fire 101 first at 9am and it's a 3 hour class. We spent the first day going over the syllabus and watching a documentary called "9/11." It isn't a Micheal Moore America is lame documentary but one that started out with a rookie fire fighter getting on the New York Fire Dept. Well, the rookie got on with the crew that was first into Tower 1 after the plane crashed into the tower on September 11th. It was kind of shocking to watch and see what happened in there, but it was good. Friday we are going to work on the engine we have which I'm really excited about because it'll be my first shot at getting to know what's all in a fire engine.

I then had Technical Writing, which is pretty self explanatory. It'll be a very involved course with a lot of writing but I'm not too worried about it. The text isn't hard reading and the assignments seem more busy work than they do hard work. I'm supposed to have Physical Training on Saturdays at six in the morning but this week being the labor day weekend we won't be having it. But I've been running a mile in a little under 8 minutes, about 9 minutes consistently. I can do the 25 push ups and 50 sit ups in about 23-25 seconds for the push ups and a minute thirty or so. So I'm where I need to be starting out. When we work out we're going to do the baseline test first so we know where we sit officially and can get better from there. Again a lot of work, but none unexpected.

My uniform for August/September weather is really toasty. I didn't realize that Nomex was so warm. It's comfortable. I get my turn out gear Wednesday September 9th. I can't wait, you'll get a picture of that when I get it. To the left here is a picture of me in my uniform. Notice that the shirt is just a standard navy blue T-shirt. We ordered our shirts today. I ordered 2 t-shirts, 1 long sleeve, and a ball cap. I don't know when we get those, but that is okay.

So all in all, classes are going well so far and they will be time consuming, but I have a goal in mind and I plan on accomplishing it and I have my celebratory vacation to Japan for winter break planned. I got the ticket and put in for my passport today. The gentleman helping me said it would probably be about four weeks. Once I get that, I'll be officially set for Japan! I can't wait, I have somebody very special and important there waiting for me.

Helena seems to be warming up to me. I have places that I go to, landmarks if you well that have grown on me. Rileys Pub is one of those places. This place has great bread bowls with Irish Stew. Another is the Staggering Ox. They have a good philly steak there. The deer here are ridiculous. I almost hit one last night coming home from Rileys. Well, almost 4, it was a doe and her three fawns. Every where you look they are just hanging out. All the gardens and plants in peoples yards have mesh or wire to protect them from the deer. I guess they are a real problem.

Other than that not much is going on. School, homework and life. Oh! Actually a sequel to one of my most favorite movies is finally coming out. The Boondock Saints: All Saint's Day after years of being rumored is finally coming out October 30th! The trailer can be seen here. Go there and enjoy. I'm so excited I could pee! Which reminds me...

Birthdays, School and the End of Summer

2009-08-25T08:22:00.004-06:00

So this past Sunday was my birthday. I turned 24. Not the most exciting of birthdays as say, 21 but thanks to my friends it was still a good time. We went to Old Chicago in Bozeman and had food then the waitress said that if I wanted to I could have a birthday shot on the bar. I thought this at first meant that the shot would be free, so I accepted. Turns out that when they meant on the bar, you had to be on top of the bar in front of everyone. I had to do the shot with some random Old Chicago worker because our waitress wore a skirt and didn't want to get up on the bar.

What happens after that folks (thanks to the reenactment of the dinner party) could be taken out of a Whitesnake Video. Shawn, was the guys name that I did the shot with, he asked me if I had ever done my shot of choice before. An

Irish car bomb, I know my way around them. But he went on to explain a little on how to do them. Afterwards everyone sang happy birthday to me in the restaurant then it happened. It was epic, a purple fog machine was in the background, I was surrounded by unicorns, and naked babes on 1950's muscle cars. The smoke from the fog machine hit the ceiling and condensed and became purple rain. I had my shot down in about a second and a half. Defeated Shawn the Old Chicago worker left defeated. After about an hour of a pyrotechnics show I came out victorious. I got on the magical unicorn and went off into the sunset.

Okay so it really didn't happen that way, I downed the shot in a second and a half, beat Shawn, people cheered. I went back to my table and got my stuff and left. As you can see, the other way sounds more epic, so we'll stick with that story.

After that we went to a buddy of mine's house and played beer pong and sat around a fire. I got a homemade clock, gift card for Subway and a pretty sweet laptop case/cooler (got this in June but it was a birthday present). I almost for got though probably the most awesome present of the actual birthday, a beer mug with a bike bell attached. In fact, here it is in all it's glory. After that I passed out because I had to get up early on my actual birthday to help a friend move to a town three hours away. That went well, however I hate driving u-hauls.

Fire and Rescue starts a week from today on September 1st. I went in today to see where my school refund check was but they said it was mailed yesterday so I should get today or tomorrow. Hopefully that is, because I need to get my books. I'm getting excited for it, mostly because I don't enjoy sitting on my ass and doing not much of anything. But I'm fully moved in and I am starting to go out to explore Helena. It's crazy so much wildlife around. I have a squirrel that just chills outside my bedroom window, I have named him nutsie and if it weren't for the fact that I would probably get rabies I would go pet him. Also it's crazy, the deer here just hang out and graze. They don't spook as easy as other deer. I may try to ride one.

Anyway, as the summer is winding down I'm kind of sad. It's been a good summer except for the fact that it rained for a good percentage of it, but there are less fires to contend with which makes it nice. I plan on just doing my workouts until school starts then and keeping in shape. Maybe do all the stuff I never got around to doing. Stay tuned.

Home Sweet Home?

2009-08-16T20:40:00.004-06:00

So the move to Helena was uneventful at best. My buddy Jake helped me move. Itwas an early day. I had to pick up the u-haul trailer around 8 am. Took about an hour an a half to to load the trailer. 3 cups of coffee later I had to pee like every fifteen seconds. On top of this I was wired beyond belief. We dealt with a lot of Washington folks driving like morons. I know, I know that is a generalization but one that hit the mark usually. We got up to Helena and it overcast with a hint of sun and then we unpacked everything. Took about an hour. We spent the night unpacking and hanging out and then drove over to Bozeman Sunday to drop off my U-haul. I drove back after that.

I was kind of sad to realize that I missed everybody back home, and was hating being alone, but I've since then got over it. I've been spending my time getting everything situated and unpacked. I discovered my new roommate keith's awesome tv, and the x-box 360 has never looked so beautiful.

I spent most of today driving around seeing the sights, the capital, Carroll College, etc. I got really lost but I somehow managed to make it back to my house. Anyway, dinner time, off to cause trouble. :D

A Few Hiccups

2009-08-11T12:52:00.005-06:00

Alrighty, well here we go, round two. It's been an interesting week so far. First I sent my girlfriend off to Japan for a year and I hope nothing but the best for her. Second, she's not even gone for four hours and I'm almost arrested.

Here is how it went down. I was out for a walk listening to my ipod and this cop drives by. I cross the street towards the apartment im staying at and the same cop parks his car behind me flashing his lights blocking the entrance way towards the apartment so cars cant get in and out. Here is the dialog from my best recollection of how it went down.

Officer: Hi I am officer so and so (forgot his name) and you look like a suspect we're looking for.

Me: Huh, well I don't think I'm the guy you're looking for but I'll do what I can to help.

Officer: Can I see your license please, you don't have a criminal record do you.

Me: No officer, not that I am aware of. So what happened?

Officer: We'll get to that in a second. Where were you friday night?

Me: Um, okay. well sir i was over at my girlfriend's cousin's house for a family dinner.

Officer: Well we're looking for a guy that approached a Dominos employee and tried to steal his car.

Me: Well i assure you it wasn't me officer I haven't been in a Dominos in years.

Officer: You didn't have to be it happened in the parking lot.

Me: You mean the suspect and not me right.

Officer: I'm still on the fence like that, do you mind if i take some photos?

Me: Um, sure I guess.

*this is the point where he made me stand profile views, and front, walk towards him, he then flashed his flash light on my shoes and my pants, give him the place that I am living and give him two alibis as to where I was friday evening*

Officer: Alright sir, I'll just make sure these alibis stand up. I'm sorry for the inconvienence I just have to eliminate everyone.

Me: Well I thought it was my boyish good looks.

Officer: It's definitely something, have a good night.

After that I continued walking into my apartment all shocked like. I so far have not heard anything back. I saw the police blotter thanks to my friend Ali and here is the description of what happened.

* On West Mendenhall Street at 3 a.m., a pizza restaurant employee said they were approached by an assailant who demanded the employee’s car. The suspect told the employee that he had a handgun and might use it. The employee got away and flagged down a police officer. The man remains at large and the investigation is continuing.

So yeah the guy threatened to use a handgun. I don't like guns. In fact I loathe guns. So that was that hiccup.

*This just in, a picture of the guy is there, I look nothing like this.*

So unless I am picnocio and have bad hair like that one corrupt illinois governor I think I'm the wrong guy.

Other than that, I am just gearing up for some moving here in 4 days. My little sister is going to come with me. Pictures will be soon to follow. I recently received my nomex pants so my legs will be fire free, and people can't call me liar liar pants on fire.

That's about it for now. Stay tuned for some more zany excitement.

Hello!

2009-07-31T09:09:00.002-06:00

Alrighty, well I decided to start a blog to catalog the times I'll be having in going to school for Fire & Rescue. I was accepted into the Fire and Rescue program at the University of Montana. I could have done it either in Missoula, or in Helena. I decided that the Helena College of Technology branch seemed to be a better fit. I currently live in Bozeman and plan on moving to Helena here in a few weeks. Until then, stay tuned :D