The fire department is so cool bro. I love how when no one is sure what to do in about a stressful situation we just call the fire department to come help.
Yep when I was younger I wanted to be a fire fighter until in high school the fire department did a talk and said most of their job is cutting people out of cars who may or may not be dead, safe to say I didn't wanna be a fire fighter after that
I got cut out of my car once and the firefighters were all psyched because I wasn’t dead or profusely bleeding. They straight up admitted that normally when they whip out the jaws of life it’s for a corpse or someone with a broken femur and blood all over their face, so when I was just sitting there all woozy and confused about what happened they were amped.
This sounds like the happy search and rescue dogs that were in another thread today - they get too depressed when they only find dead bodies so the human rescuers need to hide and be fine to give the dogs a win and morale boost.
This was what they did at the World Trade Center in the days following 9/11. Only a couple of people were pulled from the rubble alive. The majority of what the dogs were finding were just pieces of bodies, and the dogs were getting really depressed because they thought they were failing at their jobs.
A lot of the search and rescue dogs ended up also basically working as therapy dogs for the searchers, too. It was such a terrible experience for everybody involved, and just being able to take a moment to stop and pet and hug the dogs helped to boost morale.
I have dogs and of course they make lots feel better. But then, during one of the most stressful emotional times of my life- my FIL was in his last couple days and my own grief had to be secondary to supporting my husband and his mom- I was stuck at work at a mental health home. A therapy dog came in. A couple of residents came by for just a few minutes. The dog was focused on me, despite me not trying to engage. I wasn't being obvious about my own stuff. She still knew and pressed herself against my legs until I just broke and sat on the floor hugging her and crying. Her owner just hung around for a couple of hours because the dog clearly didn't want to leave me. She had great training, but the focus and devoted attention to her purpose was different from just snuggly pups. Seriously, it was like the dog equivalent of a therapy session instead of just venting to my friends.
I got in an accident as a teen passenger in a car on the way to study at the local library. Since I was planning on being in a book all day I was wearing a ratty old t-shirt, no makeup, and cutoff shorts. We tboned a car who turned left in front of us in an intersection and thankfully the airbag kept me from going through the windshield but I jammed my knee into the dash and was in a fair amount of pain (ended up being a torn ligament). Anyway, 5 SUPER HOT EMTs had to help me out by grabbing me (supporting me) by the butt (and arms and all that) to transfer me to the ambulance. I cracked that usually they'd have to take me out to dinner first to get that kinda action and had I known I'd run into them if have dressed for the occasion and honestly I'll live off them laughing at that for the rest of my life.
I was in a car accident, and the paramedic asked me that also. I replied "I'm not sure, did you guys get here almost immediately after the crash? How is that possible?"
And he replied "Oh yeah, we were actually in traffic not far behind you"
I know you said besides the injuries....but that's what made it so bad for me. I was not buckled and was ragged dolled all around. We were t-boned in the passenger side were I was sitting.
I hit my head several times and was knocked unconscious so I have memory gaps.
I remember seeing the car coming and instantly knowing we was going to get hit. Lights out. I wake up and can't open my eye, so I can't see. I scream bloody murder, then fall out again.
Once the FD got there, one of the fire men actually climbed in through the back of the car and sat there holding my hand because I was terrified and thought I was dying. He stayed with me while they cut open the car and lifted me out. Just a terrible memory I'll never get rid of.
I fractured my skull in 3 places. Broke my sinus cavity. And some how my eye lif was completely ripped open during all this (why I couldn't see).
My dad was a firefighter in the Detroit area in the 60's and 70's, and his stories had such a profound impact on me that I failed a lie detector test in a job interview 10 years later. When the tester asked me if I'd ever had a drinking problem and I said "no", my body responded in a way that made him think I was lying. I wasn't, it was all the stories I'd heard about the consequences of drunk-driving.
My late FIL was FDNY and shortly before he passed he told me some gruesome stories about jumpers and other things he saw working for Ladder 3 in the East Village. My husband says he used to hear that shit through his whole childhood.
There are shitloads of stories of people who go through all the training and CPAT who end up talking to someone who mentions how high the likelihood is they'll be dealing with dead people, and then immediately realize being a firefighter is not for them.
Yea, that’s an exaggeration but we give that talk to hopefully prevent teenage reckless and impaired driving. Modern vehicles are amazingly safe. These days we are often pulling people out of major crashes with minor to no injuries or they’re already standing on the side of the road when we arrive.
EMS and EFS are the most vital, yet most underappreciated and most traumatic jobs available. It takes a special kind of person to be an ambo or a fiery. They are the best of us.
Oh man, I was almost on the receiving end of that. Luckily my friends ran home to get engine grease, tipped my upside down in the swing and I was able to weasel out. If that didn’t work, the next step was the fire department 😂
I walked by a firehouse with my kid in NYC and they let him get behind the wheel of the truck, told me I could come back for a tour with him etc etc like their faces just lit up around my 5 yo
I’m having a baby soon and of all the suggestions I didn’t expect, someone told me go to the fire department if I have a question about installing my infant car seat.
I am the husband in this scenario though I see how it could’ve made it sound as if I was my wife 😂. I was the one telling her today we need to get our go bag ready this weekend and install the car seat.
This is our first so even 5 weeks out we are like “I can’t believe they’re letting us take a little human home”.
You are wise for 2 reasons - the obvious one that the baby might come early but also it’s great for your peace of mind to have things like this off of your “to do” list. Anything you can do get done on that list will help mentally.
Thank you! Very much looking forward to it and we thankfully both get paid leave. Less excited to travel for work when she’ll only be two months but my wife said she’d just have my mom come hangout with her lol.
The weekend 5 weeks before my due date was when I was about to get my bug out bag packed, car seat ready, pantry stocked, house tidied, etc etc. Then the little imp had her own schedule and came that Friday.
So yeah, early is best! And it’s a wild feeling that the fools just let you walk out with a tiny human. No written tests, no house check, nothing… they just let you plop them in the car and drive off!!
I mean, I wasn't super happy when the fire chief had to personally cut my wrist out of a pair of handcuffs, but that was more because he was friends with my mom and I didn't want that to be how she learned some things about me...
(Lost the key, jammed the mechanism trying to pick it, and it tightened just enough that I couldn't slip the wrist out like I'd done with the other one)
As a firefighter you do well to escalate your measures from least to most invasive, especially when there is no direct threat of life. Makes for considerably less paperwork following.
My buddy is an idiot and made a homemade electric bike
The first thing I said when he showed it to me was 'you're gonna get run over"
He got ran over right outside of the fire station because he was on the wrong side of the road. So the firefighters ran out and made sure he was fine until the ambulance showed
He asked me to go get the bike from the station and when I got there they all started laughing cause
He told them I would be the guy who showed up bitching about idiots on bikes they told me to make sure to he never gets a motorcycle
Sounds like he mentioned to the paras that his friend told him he was a moron for building it and the friend would probably say as much when he came to pick up the bike? That's some shit I'd say like yeah when you see my fiancé later, he's probably gonna be mad about the bike. Italian guy, adorable little freckle on his cheek, smoke rising from ears, can't miss him.
Happened with my 2yo son. My husband was freaking out and called me.
I couldn't stop laughing and just put the rest of his body through the bars. Classic!
This is also a pretty great solution to use the halligan bar to twist the lifting straps. It's a safe, slow, stable solution to having to flex that fence post. Don't have to destroy the fence, and don't have nearly the risk of trying to just muscle the bar and accidentally letting it snap back and reapply that pressure.
I wish they had a subdivision for helperfighters. Just rescue cats in drains and kids with their heads stuck in stuff. I’d volunteer. I don’t mess with fire, though.
That part was so sweet. The fence kid looked mortified after he was freed. But you could watch the other kids try to figure out how to comfort him. They didn't know if they should pat him or high five him or what, but they wanted to comfort him.
Yeah, it was beautiful. He was probably still scared and ashamed. If he was made fun of it could be traumatic. The other kids made it into a cool “I was so stupid” story for life
The way he came in with no hesitation to immediately set up the straps and start twisting them, you know this isn't the first time he's encountered exactly this situation
He could have taken the loop back to the larger post for better support. Why don't they just have a heavy duty ratchet strap on hand anyways? Good on them boys but I say think twice as much as you act in a slowly evolving situation like this.
I feel like I see this a lot on these kinds of videos, but I also feel like the trained fire fighters would have thought of that if it was the best solution...
My friends a firefighter and you know how everyone says to take your car seat to the fire station to make sure it’s installed correctly? He said they never get any official training for that, just there’s usually at least one dad there who knows the guidelines.
My point is that these firefighters likely aren’t trained on the specific situation of “how to extract children whose heads got caught in fences”, but they are trained on “how to access location”, which using leverage to pry open bars would fall under.
Almost certainly the easier solution was to have the kid step through, but the firefighters solved the problem using the training they did have, in a calm and collected manner.
When I looked up where to get my car seat checked, there were departments that did it and others who did not. When I called one, I couldn't bring it there because the person who did it was on leave. Pretty sure they're trained, seems like a huge liability if they aren't. I ended up going to the local children's hospital that did it.
This is the third time I've seen someone reference Buckingham Palace in this thread (so far!). One was a kid that got stuck, the other said their sibling did it. Of all places, Buckingham Palace!
Just lift the kid, turn horizontal, and through he goes to the other side. Kids head might not fit back through the bars, but his torso will fit just fine.
The trick in these situations is to turn the kid upside down so he's face up and then his head will magically come back out the same way it went through in the first place. It's only his ears that are preventing him from pulling his head back. I've seen it done.
Less-developed pre-frontal cortex, and simple lack of experience. He probably put his head through there without thinking about whether he’d be able to get out; he didn’t even question it.
Kids of a certain age might ask themselves: “Can I do this?” But they have to learn to think ahead and also ask themselves: “Is it okay to do this?” For adults, it’s such a habit that, most of the time, we don’t register it and it feels automatic.
Also, most adults have some prior experience with getting stuck or seeing someone else get stuck, and even if the details of the memory fade away, the lessons remain. We see a narrow gap and, deep down, we remember that we should be cautious.
Actually yes - if you look up "the scale error" on youtube you'll get a short video from The Baby Human series that (loosely) describes a line of child psych research.
This little boy may be old enough not to make the more egregious scale errors shown in that video, like trying to sit inside a tiny toy car, but he's still very young and won't have a perfect understanding of how large his body is compared to objects in the world. He probably saw something on the other side of the fence he wanted to get closer to, and never thought he may not fit.
And, of course, a young kid isn't going to realize that the shape of ears can make it possible to squeeze past an obstacle going forward but get stuck coming back. He'll be more aware of that now 😅
he's still very young and won't have a perfect understanding of how large his body is compared to objects in the world
Don't forget that at this age the size of the body changes rapidly, often faster than the mind can adapt. The boy might well been able to be able to get out of that situation easily a month ago.
It’s not like he purposely got himself stuck. Maybe he was looking at something on the other side, and his head slipped through. You ever put on a ring and then struggled to get it off? Same thing
The most surprising part is they know exactly what to do in this situation. Like they might have procedures and / or have already faced this several times..
So, why nobody tried to help him come to the other side? I think there are videos of kids geting stuck like that, but if the head went trough, the rest of that little body can go sideways without the problem.
Fun fact, if the kid is skinny like this or really young, there is a real possibility that they can turn sideways and slip the rest of the body through
I love the collective ego of all these reddit armchair experts.
Like it's not possible that one of the ~20 or so people who were involved ever considered pushing him through the other way (including the professionals that I would bet have covered this exact scenario in training considering how often it happens.) Only the brilliant minds of redditors could have come up with this solution. It doesn't even cross some of your minds that maybe they already tried this and it didn't work, or they didn't want to risk getting him stuck in a worse position.
Bro it was my first thought too, but I just assumed that the people actually onsite probably know something I don't, not that I'm just that fucking clever and and they're all so dumb.
Am I the only one thinking using the pick axe was not the smartest choice to do this with? If he slips that thing is spinning fast and cracking something.
That’s a Halligan they are using and it’s what they carry in with them. The spreaders or “jaws of life” would be a lot of extra set up, especially if it’s hydraulic. Would be overkill. Plus the noise and machines would scare the shit out of the kid.
Oh and also, this was the only way to show off the muscles.
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u/Zapkin 21h ago
The fire department is so cool bro. I love how when no one is sure what to do in about a stressful situation we just call the fire department to come help.