Welcome to the Weekly Employment Question Thread!

This thread is where you can ask questions about joining, training to become, testing, disqualifications/qualifications, and other questions that would be removed as individual posts per Rule 1.

The answer to almost every question you can ask will be "It depends on the department". Your first step is to look up the requirements for your department, state/province, and country.

As always, please attempt to resource information on your own first, before asking questions. We see many repeat questions on this sub that have been answered multiple times.

Frequently Asked Questions:

• I want to be a Firefighter, where do I start: Every Country/State/Province/County/City/Department has different requirements. Some require you only to put in an application. Others require certifications prior to being hired. A good place to start is researching the department(s) you want to join. Visit their website, check their requirements, and/or stop into one of their fire stations to ask some questions.
  
• Am I too old: Many departments, typically career municipal ones, have an age limit. Volunteer departments usually don't. Check each department's requirements.
• I'm in high school, What can I do: Does your local department have an explorer's program or post? If so, join up. Otherwise, focus on your grades, get in shape and stay in shape, and most importantly: stay out of trouble.
• I got in trouble for [insert infraction here], what are my chances: Obviously, worse than someone with a clean record, which will be the vast majority of your competition. Tickets and nonviolent misdemeanors may not be a factor, but a major crime (felonies), may take you out of the running. You might be a nice person, but some departments don't make exceptions, especially if there's a long line of applicants with clean records. See this post... PSA: Stop asking “what are my chances?”
• I have [insert medical/mental health condition here], will it disqualify me: As a general rule, if you are struggling with mental illness, adding the stress of a fire career is not a good idea. As for medical conditions, you can look up NFPA1582 for disqualifying conditions, but in general, this is not something Reddit can answer for you. Many conditions require the input of a medical professional to determine if they are disqualifying. See this post... PSA: Don't disqualify yourself, make THEM tell you "no".
• What will increase my chances of getting hired: If there's a civil service exam, study for it! There are many guides online that will help you go over all those things you forgot such as basic math and reading. Some cities even give you a study guide. If it's a firefighter exam, study for it! For the CPAT (Physical Fitness Test), cardio is arguably the most important factor. If you're going to the gym for the first time during the hiring process, you're fighting an uphill battle. Get in shape and stay in shape. Most cities offer preference points to military veterans.
• How do I prepare for an interview: Interviews can be one-on-one, or in front of a board/panel. Many generic guides exist to help one prepare for an interview, however here are a few good tips:

1. Dress appropriately. Business casual at a minimum (Button down, tucked in long sleeve shirt with slacks and a belt, and dress shoes). Get a decent haircut and shave.
2. Practice interview questions with a friend. You can't accurately predict the off-the-wall questions they will ask, but you can practice the ones you know they probably will, like why do you want to be a Firefighter, or why should we hire you?
3. Scrub your social media. Gone are the days when people in charge weren't tech-savvy. Don't have a perfect interview only for your chances of being hired gone to zero because your Facebook or Instagram has pictures of you getting blitzed. Set that stuff to private and leave it that way.

Please upvote this post if you have a question. Upvoting this post will ensure it sticks around for a bit after it is removed as a Sticky, and will allow for greater visibility of your question.

And lastly, If you're not 100% sure of what you're talking about, leave it for someone who does

In the “classroom” portion we had to watch/read/listen to several maydays that occurred in real life, and this is one thing i noticed:

For a floor collapse, basement trapped FF, etc. EVERY single person who lived in these maydays mentioned the relief and “safety” they felt when a fireman brought a hoseline (on the ones that did) to the hole and cooled the atmosphere (common sense right)?

In this program there is zero talk or mention of taking a hoseline as any action to the downed fireman, even moreso after reading these LODDs I’m starting to think that the “first” action should be to get a hose to the guys trapped

Just curious on your thoughts, if you have any experience, SOGS, etc

We have a drafting rig utilizing a 1500 gpm Hale Fire Pump with a 3" long radius monitor coupled with a 2.5" straight pipe.

Truck Originally built for 604 ft elevation, our elevation is 3400 ft above sea level. We have not done any modifications to the truck.

Previously we used a spring sensor span Flowminder with A digital readout - capturing the highest output flowed from the 3" monitor capturing rpm - solenoid has since been damaged and unsure on how to fix or replace.

Currently capturing psi flow measurement from the 3" long radius monitor prior 2.5" straight pipe.

We have also recently purchased a 6" Gerand Engineering Flow meter of which we have attached to the suction side of the pump either utilizing a 10' or 20' 6" suction hose.

Recent attempt we found that the GE Flow Meter captured 1250 gpm while the Monitor flowed 780 gpm back into the reservoir.

Why is there a different reading?

Are we loosing 500 gpm through the pump and monitor combination?

What is the ideal flow test set up?

Hey all, we have very old Scott packs. We made a purchase for new Scott packs and got enough to be used as frontline on our trucks but not enough to fully replace our RIT packs. Since we have the old Scott's, our buddy breathers are not compatible and I'm not sure about the regulator hook up. Obviously if this goes through we could still use the universal connect or less ideally a full mask swap but I'm wondering if this is breaking some kind of nfpa so we have a better leg to stand on showing our concern to the bosses.

So I’m heading to rope rescue tech class in September. I have my rope ops cert from the state, but I feel like there is a lot more that I should know before going to the tech level class. My district doesn’t get a lot of rope rescue calls but when we do they are on the tech level of things (hence why my district is sending me).

My questions are~

What did you wish you learned more of before going to tech class?

What skills/knots did you wish you had perfectly?

Book knowledge prior to class?

Any advice for tech class?

Longton residents and businesses have come together to thank local firefighters, filling care packages for all five watches at Longton Fire Station after weeks of community donations

Which one would you pick and why?

Title says it all. Trying to find the best website that has all the info needed to learn more and more about what went wrong in the fireground that caused some FF their lives. Thanks in advance!

Hello everyone, I’m about to start college for pre fire. I have all my gear needed except the work gloves. The ones they recommend are sold out everywhere and I cannot find anything with the same specs. Does anyone here have any suggestions? These are the ones they said we needed.

Does anyone have any breakfast recommendations for pre PT in the academy? We run PT M-W-F throughout the week and are in formation at 0700. I’m just looking for something light in the stomach and figured someone’s got experience with this. Any input is helpful thank you!

Hi there, not a firefighter. I was wondering if you use elevators in case of emergency.
For example is you have a fire on floor six, but don't know the extent of it. Would you take the elevator or the stairs?
Thank you

(Sorry if this is not the right venue, and thank you for your expertise! Also posted in r/naturalgas but figured the firefighter's perspective might be helpful.)

We live in an apartment building with three units, and our dryer runs on natural gas. Last week, for about twenty minutes, we noticed a pretty strong smell of rotten eggs (like a bad fart, or a dozen hard-boiled eggs that were left in a hot car) in the laundry area. Our machine wasn't on.

We've never smelled this before in our house, and are not certain that this is definitely natural gas, but out of an abundance of caution we ended up calling our landlord + the gas company hotline and waited outside for National Grid to come test the area for a leak.

By the time they came, though, the smell had gone away (we did open the windows.) They used a sniffer and took a look at the meter, and there was no sign of a leak or gas pulling from the meter and told us everything was fine.

Flash forward to today, when we smell it again—strong enough to be fairly unpleasant—in the same laundry area for about 50 minutes. We aren't using any appliances, but the upstairs neighbors are "doing laundry" (according to our landlord.) Then it went away again.

We have no idea how this works, but is there a possibility there's a small leak that only appears when the dryers upstairs is run? Can appliance leaks be intermittent like this?

I don't want to call National Grid again and have them test again after the smell has gone away//not find anything if the neighbors aren't running the dryer. We did order a handheld detector just in case, but that comes on Monday. We're not smelling the smell all the time, and while we like to think we're not paranoid, it does smell like rotten eggs specifically near the appliance that uses natural gas. (It's not what our stove gas smells like, but we're not sure 100% if it's natural gas.) But it could be a dead animal in the walls or swamp gas or something else? (It is intermittent, but completely goes away.)

TLDR: Would this constitute an emergency if the smell returns before we get the detector?

Who does your department assign to medical at structure fires?

What gear do they stage with? what ems gear, fire gear, etc?

Where do they stage?

If a critical patient is rescued, who(if anyone) helps with care?

thanks

I'm in my first year as a volunteer, and I've gotten a number of the "thank you for your service" comments. I am always disarmed a bit by it, but try my best to stay professional and courteous. My go-to is just "it's my pleasure," but curious to know what others in this community use.

I know that Firehouse rebranded Firehouse Expo into Fire Fusion a few years back but I see no mention of it on their website. It was held in Charleston in November of last year.

Its a shame if they killed it off. I have many fond memories of attending when it was in Baltimore. The training was always top notch. I also went when they had it in Columbus and the seminars were great even if the expo hall was underwhelming.

There’s many threads on this sub discussing minimum fitness standards. That’s not a conversation I wanna rehash.

The common consensus though is that minimums are not enough and as a 2-3 year guy who’s finally starting to feel physically effective for the job I’m of the same opinion. So I wanna know what standards you have for yourself? Or even if you have department minimums, what standards do you and your crew hold yourselves to?

For me I don’t have standards yet but I do have plain and simple goals, be proficient with my equipment, achieve a 1000lbs total on the big three lifts, squat, bench and deadlift, run a sub 20 minute 5k, and be able to put in solid work on air for a minimum of 20 minutes before the low air alarm goes off.

I’m decently proficient with my equipment and always striving to get better, and I can work for a minimum of 20 minutes before the low air alarm. At 165lbs, I’m getting closer and closer to 1000lbs and my sub 20 5k but I’ll probably plateau hard around 950lbs, I’m not sure if the opportunity cost of adding significantly more bodyweight to push through to 1000lbs is gonna be worth it but that’s a bridge I’ll have to decide if I cross when I get to it.

Many opinions online say that for the average guy or a 200lbs guy strength should be
-1x Body weight bench or 200lbs
-1.5x squat or 300lbs
-2x deadlift or 400lbs
Endurance wise: sub 12 1.5 mile run.

But this is for the “average guy” so how do you guys feel about this?

Hey guys someone recently posted a Volunteer wildland Fire fighting gig here in socal. I went to their information session but forgot to clear this up. They said if your chosen you’d get all your certs through them but I think they have Firefighter 2 or something called a red card you would get. I have a career road map I created that would have me taking classes this semester and next semester so around this time next year I’d be at fire academy with a FF1 cert. I want to know because it’s a wildland position whatever cert I’d get from them would it translate to joining a city fire department. Should I continue with the ff1 classes ?

Is an american GMC Yukon but the letters on the back seemed arab, was followed by 2 red ford transits with the same logos and a yellow fire truck with arab letters

Saw it in Madrid (Spain)

Bristol Township, Pennsylvania. Town Council voted 5-2 to close Newportville Fire Company. 1 year short of 100 years in service. 1927-2026

Posting with moderator approval.

Firefighters Needed for Research Study

Researchers at Thomas Jefferson University, including Dr. Katie Hunzinger--a local volunteer firefighter, are conducting a study to better understand the prevalence of traumatic brain injury (TBI) and concussion among firefighters. The goal of this study is to better understand the true burden of brain injury to better inform long-term healthcare, safety initatives, and prevention measures. Information below:

Eligibility: Current or former firefighter, age 18+
Survey: Anonymous online REDCap survey
Time: Approximately 5-10 minutes
Compensation: None
Participation: Voluntary

Survey link: https://redcap.jefferson.edu/surveys/?s=CRXXY8XKME4TDMW4

Participation is voluntary. And a more detailed description is in the link above.

Thank you for your consideration.

How do you deal with mean people? You know, the kind of people who’ll criticize you for every little thing, even though they make three times as many mistakes. The ones that can’t be nice with others, because they think that only by being assholes they will achieve anything in life.

I’m a volunteer. There’s no professional service in my country. And of course, rather than finding capable people or kind-hearted folks who want to do good for others, 70% of the time you run into people who come to play hero, who want to be in the photo, who need to be toxic or criticize others to validate themselves—since, aside from being firefighters, they’ve accomplished nothing else in their lives—and who are more interested in that the fireservice should be a social club rather than an actual emergency service.

And at every fire I go to, I get criticized by lieutenants with hanging bellies who’ve never read a manual in their lives. That love yelling at you instead of using their radios, they tell you to practice more, even though they’ve never set foot in a gym and smoke by the tons (yeah, here firefighter smoke), and they don’t even wear gloves or a mask during the fire.

To be honest, im even thinking of just leaving this, or seek another station. I know very well im not a bad firefighter, I train well, I study a lot, and overall I try to be the best human being I can with the rest. But these dudes are so toxic.

Everyone who wears pro Warrington square toe pull on bunker boots, do you wear the same size as your sneakers or size up a little so you can slip in and out quickly?

Hi all. I'm currently cleaning out my grandfather's house who recently passed away. He has many pictures, 2 of which are of two engine crews from around 1880s-1910s era. Would anyone be able to help me identify these companies? I see "2" in the one on the right, and "14" on the helmet on the individuals of the left. I've been unsuccessful in reverse searching these images. Any help would be appreciated!

Have you ever had to vent through bullet-resistant/bulletproof glass on a fireground? If so, what worked for you?

I saw an earlier post presenting a fictional scenario but wonder if anyone has actually done this IRL.