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Previous Issues > October 2007 > What's It Like To BE... > What's It Like To Be A Firefighter?
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 What's It Like To BE...
What's It Like To Be A Firefighter?
Five Prevention Week is in October, so it's a great time to talk to firefighters about the exciting job that they have. Have you ever wondered what its like to be a firefighter? I visited with Chief Alan Jarvis at the Spout Sprints Fire Department in Harnett County, North Carolina. They use both volunteer and paid firefighters to answer about 50 emergency calls a month, not including health emergencies. Chief Jarvis introduced me to two firefighters: Kenneth Watson, who has been a firefighter for 11 years (eight of those as a volunteer!), and Robert May, who has been fighting fires for four years (including two as a volunteer). They showed me their trucks and equipment and talked with me about what it's like to be a firefighter. Thanks, guys!
Truman: What does it take to become a firefighter?
MAY: First off, I think it takes dedication. It takes a lot of time. Being a volunteer takes a lot of personal time.
WATSON: Education wise, we do most of our training in house. If we have a brand- new volunteer that wants to volunteer with us, we train him from the ground up. You do have to have a high school diploma, even to volunteer.
Truman: Why did you first become interested in becoming a firefighter?
WATSON: I drove by the station everyday, and it was just something that I wanted to try out. When I first started I thought it was all about house fires, I didn't realize that we did fire and safety education, car wrecks, woods fires I thought it was all about house fires. I enjoy it. I like being able to help people.
Truman: So it's not all house fires. What kind of strange calls do you get? Do you really get cats out of trees?
WATSON: We chase cats out of trees and culverts. Our strangest call was probably one about an alligator. We also help out other departments. The sheriffs department was doing an investigation and needed some lights. So we helped out. Pretty much, anything that someone calls 911 for and no one else handles, we do it.
MAY: If they can't put the call to the police or the sheriff's department or the medical department, they'll send it to us. Sometimes we'll question ourselves, like "Why are we doing this?" But that's what we do. The fire department does everything no one else wants to do.
Truman: What do you do on a typical day?
WATSON: One of my additional duties is training officer, so I come in, now that we're on the evening shift, about 2 o'clock and work on my training stuff, try to get some of the paperwork straight. Since we're on the night shift, we don't do lunch, we do dinner. So about 6:30, we do dinner. Two or three nights a week, we do training for our new volunteer trainees. In between, we answer fire calls. We have additional duties, like cleaning the station and the trucks. And we have projects on the side, like we're restoring a truck.
Truman: What's the hardest part of your job?
MAY: Traffic control! It's hard directing traffic at an accident scene because we're not in control of the whole thing. At a fire scene, it may not seem like we're in control, but we all know what we're doing. We control the fire and we know where we're going to go and how we're going to do this. There are no outside influences. With traffic control, you're going to make somebody unhappy.
Truman: What is the best part of your job?
WATSON: When a group of kids comes in to get tours of the trucks, you see their faces light up. You put them on a fire truck, and their faces light up. To me that is the best part. Having them talk about how they want to be a firefighter, it gives me a good feeling inside.
Truman: How tall are the ladders that you use?
WATSON: Our tallest ladder is 35 feet, tall enough for a three-story building. If we need something taller, we have to call in the ladder truck from Spring Lake.
Truman: What about those hoses are they pretty heavy?
MAY: A charged (full of water) 200-foot hose, inch and 3/4 quarter line, which is our standard attack line its all you can do as a grown man to drag that. Typically, we like to have two or three people on a line.
Truman: Being a firefighter must take a lot of courage? Are you ever afraid to go into a burning building?
MAY: Afraid? It's more a fear of the unknown, fear of what you might encounter when you go through the door.
WATSON: Our equipment protects us fairly well. As long as you do what you're supposed to do, you're going to be safe. You're going somewhere where you don't know what's inside you don't know if there's somebody inside that you are going to have to pull out. That's probably the biggest anxiety.
MAY: Your adrenaline is usually running so hard that the fear of injury is the last thing on your mind. First and foremost is doing your job.
TRUMAN: Thank you, guys, for doing a great job every day! And thanks for talking to me about what it's like to be a firefighter and for showing me your truck!
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