The past two weeks...

So it's been a busy past couple of weeks. Their have been some long days, hence the lack of updates. Last week consisted of four ten hour days, with Friday off for the graduation of the 121st recruit class. It was four days of SCBA practicals consisting of daily checks, donning and doffing, EBSS, and the maze. I'll explain.

Daily checks is our daily procedures for checking out our SCBA's. Donning and doffing is taking our gear on and off. The requirement for this is to put on your gear, get in the fire engine, put on the SCBA, buckle the seatbelt, get out, finish getting the gear on, and get on air, all within three minutes. The EBSS station consist of following the hoseline with a blacked out facepiece, to a downed firefighter, hooking up the buddy breathing system, and dragging the person out to the place that you started. And last, but certainly not least, the maze. It's dark, it's small, you crawl, climb, turn around when you have no room, take your SCBA off, put it back on, try not to get tangeled up, and do all this while making sure you don't run out of air. Good times.

This week has also been a long one. We learned about hoses, pulling them, and then reracking them. It's been extremely physical, but fun as well. We've been flowing water, although it's only been into the air. Tomorrow is the first day in the burn building (yes, we have to work on Saturdays, but don't worry, I get Monday off). It's only going to be with water cans, but it's going to be real fire, up close and personal.

In other news, my computer died, so I ended up getting a new one last weekend. I'll see what I can do about getting some action shots tomorrow, and see if I can't get them up on the blog to give you a good idea of what's going on with my academy life. So until next time...