I usually (with some exception) don’t write about the things going on in my fire department, but this time it is about myself and a little bit about the daily struggle.
I’m in my department for nearly 5 years (11 years if you count the junior firefighters brigade). I was promoted this year and got my SCBA permission, I got all my trainings and recieved most of the trainings one can archieve in my actual position. I’m the vice leader of the junior firefighters brigade and was the leader for over one year. My next goal is to get the squad leader permission next year and in some time I want to get group-leader. I spent at most 2 evenings at our station, sometimes just for nice talkings with my comrades, sometimes for hard work. I’m now responsible for the emergency medical equipment , which isn’t quite a deal but I have to train my comrades for it.
Last week was the first time where I put my “life in danger”, I went into a burning, over-smoked barn under respiratory protective equipment and sweated like a fucking hog. Normal people wouldn’t spent 20 minutes in a barn full of smoke and room temperature way over 40 degress celsius, but I’m not normal at all - I’m a fucking firefighter.
I don’t like the hero aspect of my work. Many people think that firefighters are heroes, and in fact many firefighters ARE heros but I’m not. I saved some people from disasters, I rescued a few guys from trucks or cars and took care of them. You can say I saved their lives, but that doesn’t make me necessarily a hero. A hero is somebody who goes into a unpredictable and dangerous situation and doesn’t give a shit about his life and maybe the other guys who have to rescue your ass. A hero is somebody who plays russian roulette with his luck and some coincidence.
We are fucking crazy mates in the fire department. Everybody is nuts, sometimes we shit about some procedures and sometimes we push our luck far beyond the protocol. On our last job we normally had to wait until we have a rescue squad manned in our truck, but we just had one squad with none of us as a squad-leader, the machinist and the group-leader. We took a deep shit at the protocol, because we saw smoke in the air and everybody silently agreed to the verbal contract about “Let’s just do this !”
This isn’t heroic, it is stupid but we know any aspect of this. We now that our stupidity will be compensated in some manner which we can’t define exactly, but let’s celebrate it worked!
As I came home and told my girlfriend about it she wasn’t happy, she wasn’t happy about the fact that I went into a burning barn. It was heavy, but it was in some way very cool and a fucking great thing to do, but she did not share my enthusiasm. A day later I checked the weather frequently because some storm came over Mönchengladbach. She declared me fucking crazy. “Stop checking the weather!”
Today I had to pump some basements because of a second storm and I was out from 16:00 to 21:00. I exchanged my chilly afternoon with an afternoon in wet boots and pants down in hot and sweaty basements with lots of dirty water and sitting around hours staring at wet floors and pumped water. I hate it, but I was a part of it.
For over 5 years from now on, I went up in the middle of the night to put out fires at paper-containers. I spent nights loading out collided trucks to turn them over. I stood on the street in pouring rain and waved away cars. On my rare free weekends I went up at 8:00 to go to the firefighters school and get my trainings. After my work where I was tired like fuck, I went to the evening firefighter classes until 11pm. I skipped parties and exchanged it to sweating my ass of in big fires or traffic accidents. Then I did something for fire-department festivals and spent hours in decorating or renovating the halls or cleaning the cars. Besides this I train the junior firefighters and do classes for them until I have no voice.
I cannot do this second work very good without interfering my private life. Everybody in the department knows this, and also the people affected knew this. But their understandment sometimes just lasts three times and after the fourth time it is over. And there is no solution to this point. Nothing but cancelling the whole thing.
This just for beeing a part of it. But this point (beeing a part of it) is the thing that holds our department and firefighters together.
Stephan
["If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear!"]
January 20th, 2010 von 
Daniel 
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