firefighter 2 DONE

After rocking the written test on the 19th, our class did less than stellar during the live burns. For live burns, the cement burn building (above) get strategically filled with wood palates and hay and set on fire for us to go in and put out. Oh, and the put life size/weight greased up dummies in there for us to pull out.

I was a nervous wreck. I hate live burns. When you are going to a real fire, you only have 5-10 minutes to get nervous and then you just do it. And if you don't do it book-perfectly then no one yells at you. As long as you put the fire out and stay safe, you are good to go. But at training burns, they yell at you when you do not do it the book way. Which is right and I understand why, I just hate it.

My stomach was churning so much that morning that I almost vomited and I may or may not have been on the brink of tears when I saw a girl friend of mine who happened to be teaching there. I don't handle being nervous very well. Or overwhelmed. I am doomed.

The burn building is pretty cool, it is a different set up on each side and it all melds together with a maze of rooms and stairs in the middle. We did three sets of burns before stopping, deploying different hose lines and throwing different ladders. My group did well with the exception of throwing ladders, but apparently there were a lot of mistakes made and instead of passing us, we were sentenced to two weeks of remediation on ladders and hose.

They were hard weeks, throwing ladders for a week and deploying hose lines into the building for a week. All of this was done in full turnout gear with SCBA on in 90-100 degree heat and 90% humidity. Those two weeks of remediation finished today, thank goodness, and we all passed. Yay!