Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer
Working Hero: Firefighters are usually the first to arrive at an emergency. They train for situations as varied as pulling accident victims out of mangled cars, doing cliffside rescues and handling hazardous materials.
Firefighters becoming highly trained
More firefighters are extinguishing fewer fires as their roles continue to evolve
By Sandy Sims
The shrill scream of a fire engine barreling through town with brawny men hanging off the back used to mean there was a fire somewhere. Some citizens used to chase those big rigs hoping to get a glimpse of a roaring blaze, but that's rarely the case anymore.
Firefighters are more likely to wind up at the scene of an accident pulling a victim from a car or in someone's home giving emergency medical care to a heart attack victim.
"When I got on in 1972, no one really joined to be a first-aid provider," says Scott Wilson, firefighter-paramedic for the Willow Glen Fire Station, 1386 Cherry Ave. "We all wanted to go out and fight fire."
But Wilson says being trained, as he is, to do everything a firefighter does and also be a state licensed paramedic is common now at the San Jose Fire Department.
"It's the only way to get hired, pretty much," he says. "But the reality is, the vast majority were first aid calls, even when I started. It's the wave of the future."
Wilson says when he started 28 years ago in downtown San Jose, the station would receive one "good working fire per shift." Then, 75 percent of the calls weren't for structure fires, but for other emergencies. Now, 85 to 90 percent of calls aren't related to building fires, he says. The Willow Glen station receives between five and 10 medical calls a day, and his shift receives between six and 10 building fires a year.
"That's still a lot," he says. "But before, it was two to three times that."
"Putting out fires," says Kendall Pearson, support services captain for the Santa Clara County Fire Department, "is still the only job firefighters do from start to finish." Fire prevention programs, safety laws, and the advent of 911 have transformed fire departments from an agency that only fought fires into what Pearson calls a kind of referral service. They take care of the crisis and then refer the problem to the appropriate agency.
Today's firefighters are usually first at the scene of almost any crisis--unless it's strictly a police call, Pearson says. For example, if they go to a hazardous material (hazmat) spill, they identify the chemical's general category, get people out if necessary and then refer the problem to relevant agencies, such as the Coast Guard for a marine cleanup. Recently, Iowa firefighters dug for hours searching for a construction worker buried in a deep trench of dirt. They saved him and sent him off to the hospital.
What apparently hasn't changed is the firefighters' desire to help people and the kick they get from a job that promises something different on any given day.
Firefighters are a different breed says Mike Mckenna, recently retired fire science instructor at Mission College and a former firefighter. "We have an IQ of 20 degrees Celsius," Mckenna says laughing. "When everyone else, including the mice, are running away from a fire, we are running into it." During the Loma Prieta earthquake, Mckenna says, when everyone hurried home to their families, firefighters--after checking to see that everyone at home was OK--took off for work. Firefighters are immediate-action oriented; they like the adrenaline rush they get from their job, says Mckenna. "It's a way of life, 180 degrees different than other people think."
The roots of this dedication go way back. According to the book, Enjine! Enjine! : a story of fire protection by Kenneth Holcomb Dunshee--written in 1939 for the Home Insurance Company--the first New York fire departments demanded that when the alarm sounded, volunteer firefighters stop whatever they were doing, whether work or play, and "hasten to a conflagration." Otherwise, the volunteer would be heavily fined.
Much has changed in firefighting since the beginning of U.S. fire departments when in 1737 the colony of New York first appointed "42 able, discreet, sober men as [volunteer] firemen," unpaid but exempt from jury and military duty.
Back then firefighting was pretty basic. Residents hung leather buckets (made by shoemakers) on the front of their homes. When the fire bell rang, homeowners threw their buckets into the street so firemen and willing citizens, including women and children, could pick them up and run to fight the fire. "Want-to-be" firemen became bucket carriers and ran alongside the firemen, doing any manner of jobs to help out.
Hose carts and water pumps evolved into fire engines. Fire companies eventually established paid firefighter jobs. Companies became so tight knit that they even joined up for service in the Civil War together. They formed teams and held firefighter competitions called firemen's "musters."
Eighty-something Joe Krumme, a retired fire captain from Gardena, started firefighting in 1942. "We used to work 72 hours a week," Krumme says, "[We] showed up for work every other day for 24 hours."
Most of the men coming into the job were ex-military. The pay was low, so firemen had off-duty jobs. They were plumbers, contractors, or retail clerks. "One of our firefighters was an attorney," Krumme says.
In the 1950s, firefighter workdays were lowered to 100 a year (one work day is 24 hours), which amounts to about 56 hours a week. Better pay and fewer hours on duty allows some firefighters to stay home on their days off to care for their children. Firefighters, however, still spend a lot of time away from home, which can brew trouble in a marriage. Even on their days off, Mckenna says, firefighters often take classes and work out. This is one of the reasons firefighters' divorce rate is higher than average, Mckenna says.
But the turnover rate for firefighters is about 1 percent, says Dennis DeMelloPine, fire captain at the University Avenue Fire Station in Los Gatos, which is run by Santa Clara County. And once hired, firefighters usually don't leave the department where they started. DeMelloPine has been with the Los Gatos station for almost 20 of his 29 years as a firefighter. He's thinking about retirement.
DeMelloPine says, in the 1970s, firefighters began to get a handle on fire prevention. Insurance companies used to rate fire companies on how well they fought fires. "We found out we could keep fire ratings down," DeMelloPine says. "Towns liked that."
In the mid-1970s, he says, the state passed a law requiring smoke detectors. Then in the early 1980s, fire prevention became part of public school curriculum. "We learned we can get to the parents through the kids," Mckenna says. Fire inspections and preplanning for emergencies have also helped curb fires.
Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer
Public Servant: Firefighter Ceasar Tarango, as seen here reflected in one of San Jose Firestation No. 6 trucks, has been with the fire department for less than a year. Tarango says he will most likely finish his schooling to be a paramedic.
New recruits used to have a mechanical background, DeMelloPine says. "Now, they seldom know how to drive a standard transmission," he says. Only men were hired, and they had to be at least 5 feet 8 inches tall and weigh 150 pounds. Now federal laws prohibited discrimination. The Santa Clara County Fire Department, DeMelloPine says, now has about 250 firefighters, and about a dozen are females.
"We had to figure out how to make this thing work for women and smaller men," DeMelloPine says. For example, the ladders on fire trucks were too high and heavy for smaller people to handle. Now the ladders are lighter and on a hydraulic lift. The old brass nozzles that made hoses extremely heavy have been replaced by lighter metal.
Other improvements have made life better for firefighters.
The biggest improvement says Joe Krumme was the Scott Air Packs that came in the 1950s. "We got two air packs per rig in the '50s, one for the captain and one for the oldest fireman," Krumme says. "Now all the guys have them."
Ernie Kraule, Fire Chief for the Saratoga Fire District, recalls how he used to have to hold his breath and crawl under the smoke, doing what Mckenna calls "leather lunging it."
After fighting fires for 30 years, Krumme had to retire in his 50s on disability because of lung damage.
"It used to be, if you didn't retire on disability, something was wrong," DeMelloPine says.
Kraule says the guys riding on the back of the rig would sometimes fall off when they hit a bump in the road. Sometimes a car would plow into them. He says the "turn-outs" (firefighting gear) weren't fire retardant. Today, firefighters must ride enclosed in the cab, and the turnouts have fire-protective linings. For the first time, DeMelloPine says, we are seeing a generation of firefighters lasting 10 years past retirement.
Firefighting is still a dangerous job. Some 52 firefighters have already died in the United States this year. Fires remain the main cause of sudden, on-the-job deaths for firefighters because of relatively dangerous calls, like controlling a wild fire, DeMelloPine says. Also, firefighters tend to work in teams, and sometimes a whole team will perish together. Still, DeMelloPine says, firefighters face day-to-day dangers, such as hepatitis, tuberculosis, meningitis, asbestos and exposure to other hazardous materials. One firefighter was using large tools to pull someone from a car and accidentally deployed an air bag, which, ironically, caused his death.
A few months ago, firefighters from the University Avenue station went up to Black Road to put out a burning trailer. When the fire was extinguished, they went inside the trailer and found a huge pot, part of a drug lab. "We could have been blown up," DeMelloPine says.
Kendall Pearson from the county fire department says the effects of being exposed to hazardous materials can show up years later. Several firefighters who fought a paint store fire in Palo Alto some years ago have all died from the same type of cancer, Pearson says.
To care for work-related medical conditions, presumptive laws have been passed; for example, if a firefighter develops a lung, heart, or hernia problem, it is presumed the problem is a result of his or her work as a firefighter. As the workload is changing, firefighters are picking up other medical problems on the job. In 1983 certain kinds of cancer were deemed presumptive.
Getting involved in the community's medical problems began during the 1950s, DeMelloPine says, when firefighters began using their first aid kits on the public. When 911 came along, things really changed, Krumme says. "We only had Red Cross training, but we'd go out and do our best." He says CPR training didn't come along until 1972. Saratoga Fire Chief Ernie Kraule, says that's also when the practice of field medicine from the Vietnam War worked its way into firefighting in a big way.
When Joe Krumme started firefighting in the 1940s, he only needed a high school diploma. Training was an in-service thing: how to operate a pump, firefighting tactics and strategy. Firefighting back then, DeMelloPine says, was mostly brute force.
"Training was by exposure and the seat of our pants, trial by fire, so to speak," Mckenna says. "We used to light a fire and tell new recruits to go put it out," he says. "For medical training, we'd read a book."
These days a firefighter applicant must have at least an associate of arts degree, and firefighting is only part of what they need to know. They need to know how to identify or at least categorize some 200,000 hazardous materials and how to deal with them. They need to know medical procedures and how to use technology. They need chemistry and physics and writing skills. The last 10 years, DeMelloPine says, the test for firefighters has changed from a skilled labor test to medical, math and English.
Wilson, who has worked at the Willow Glen station for 12 years, says he decided to become a paramedic five years ago when he saw how the profession, and the skills it requires, were changing.
But some things haven't changed. The practice of "putting the wet stuff on the red stuff" is still the main method of fighting fires, says Mckenna. There's just not as much red stuff these days. But the job is still exciting, the days unpredictable, and some of the challenges from long ago remain. Those bucket carriers who used to trail after the firefighters in the 18th century worked hard to win a place as a volunteer on the early fire departments. Today's want-to-be firefighters are still working hard to get hired.
"Those days I was on the engine were the best times of my life," Joe Krumme says. "I went to work never knowing what was going to happen. That's what I loved about the job."
But fire engines are a lot different today with computers, air conditioning, telephones, hazardous materials directories, medical supplies, hydraulic ladders and more. Even the sirens are different. Because of noise pollution laws, the wail had to be toned down a few decibels. Still, when a fire engine's siren pierces the air, some still wonder if there's a fire somewhere.
Willow Glen, California Since 1992
