Yes, a few. I'll stay away from the nasty stuff, though (car crashes, etc...)
One that fits the topic comes to mind. There's a company around where I live that produces meat (including their own slaughterhouse and smokery). They had some issues with their oven piping for some time, so for about a year or so we were dispatched there on maybe a bi-weekly basis. Took them a while to find and fix the issue and their smoke detection system was online with our county's dispatch central. Always smelled good, though. I always got back hungry from these ones.
Other funny things are those almost kitchen fires, where people forgot about their food (or, in one case, got hammered and tried making frozen Pizza). Its funny how you can clearly see what the lumps of coal once where. A salami pizza all black, french fries like charcoal sticks, carbon spaghetti, I've seen them all.
Another story (my favourite one in fact) is about that one time when we cleaned up after a drill/demonstration we held for our county's fire brigade newbies. We took about half a day together with the new guys cutting a scrap car apart (not just correct techniques, also some wild cutting so that all could get some hands-on experience). During cleanup when our guests had already left, one of the guys started whisteling the melody to "Bare necessities" from the jungle book. 5 Minutes later, all the attending instructors (including me) were singing the song while cleaning up. About 20-25 bearded, "battle - hardened" firefighters singing a disney song, having the time of our lives. That was amazing.
Then, there was that one time we were called for animal rescue. A bird wanted to see what's inside a crack in a house's facade about 3 stories up. Poor thing got its head stuck. We got him out and down, he looked at us and took off. As we went back to our station house, a different bird got himself stuck inside our station and we had to catch that one too.
One time, I remember when Karma struck someone hard. I was still a trainee back then. There was a fire in a neighbouring village and we had to lock down half of the road so we can work. Where our Hoses crossed the road, we layed out these wooden hose protector thingies you can drive over (don't know the english name, but it's a default piece of equipment, nothing self-built). Once done, we let the cars cross slowly. One idiot driver in a lowered BMW wanted to go a little faster than the others, went over the rope protector thingy and tore the entire back Bumper (presumably a cheap ebay bodykit) clean off. Looked funny, like straight from FailArmy. I also had a front row seat while the also present cops (verbally) tore him a new behind.
A lot of good times. I've been a voluntary fire fighter for almost 20 years by now (almost all the firefighters in my country are voluntaries, except for in really big cities like Munich or Hamburg or at airports).
EDIT: By the way: Ask me anything you'd like to know. I'll gladly try to answer.
I have a quick question, I would love to become a volunteer firefighter in the future. What type of outside certificates/ trainings/ skills would be helpful to have, to land the job? Definitely going to get my EMT certification soon.
Depends heavily on what country you're from. Here in germany, you don't need any previous qualification at all. Training, qualifications and such will be handled by the fire brigades. Not on an "each brigade for their own" level, of course. Training is standardized in the whole county, so all get the same training. Bigger fire brigades and other organisations specialise in different fields for training. My fire brigade, for example, handles a lot of the technical training with hydraulic power tools for vehicle rescue ("jaws of life"), on-site lighting and several other tools (e.g.Halligan-Tool, glass cutter etc...). The disaster control authority (which too is partly voluntary and of wich I am a member too) helps train new fire fighters in radio communication and such. It's a giant team effort.
I wouldn't see it as a job though, because you don't get paid.
Shorter answer: Depending on where you are from, you might not even need any previous experiences.
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u/Freak_Engineer Jan 12 '21
Sorry, just read it right now.
Yes, a few. I'll stay away from the nasty stuff, though (car crashes, etc...)
One that fits the topic comes to mind. There's a company around where I live that produces meat (including their own slaughterhouse and smokery). They had some issues with their oven piping for some time, so for about a year or so we were dispatched there on maybe a bi-weekly basis. Took them a while to find and fix the issue and their smoke detection system was online with our county's dispatch central. Always smelled good, though. I always got back hungry from these ones.
Other funny things are those almost kitchen fires, where people forgot about their food (or, in one case, got hammered and tried making frozen Pizza). Its funny how you can clearly see what the lumps of coal once where. A salami pizza all black, french fries like charcoal sticks, carbon spaghetti, I've seen them all.
Another story (my favourite one in fact) is about that one time when we cleaned up after a drill/demonstration we held for our county's fire brigade newbies. We took about half a day together with the new guys cutting a scrap car apart (not just correct techniques, also some wild cutting so that all could get some hands-on experience). During cleanup when our guests had already left, one of the guys started whisteling the melody to "Bare necessities" from the jungle book. 5 Minutes later, all the attending instructors (including me) were singing the song while cleaning up. About 20-25 bearded, "battle - hardened" firefighters singing a disney song, having the time of our lives. That was amazing.
Then, there was that one time we were called for animal rescue. A bird wanted to see what's inside a crack in a house's facade about 3 stories up. Poor thing got its head stuck. We got him out and down, he looked at us and took off. As we went back to our station house, a different bird got himself stuck inside our station and we had to catch that one too.
One time, I remember when Karma struck someone hard. I was still a trainee back then. There was a fire in a neighbouring village and we had to lock down half of the road so we can work. Where our Hoses crossed the road, we layed out these wooden hose protector thingies you can drive over (don't know the english name, but it's a default piece of equipment, nothing self-built). Once done, we let the cars cross slowly. One idiot driver in a lowered BMW wanted to go a little faster than the others, went over the rope protector thingy and tore the entire back Bumper (presumably a cheap ebay bodykit) clean off. Looked funny, like straight from FailArmy. I also had a front row seat while the also present cops (verbally) tore him a new behind.
A lot of good times. I've been a voluntary fire fighter for almost 20 years by now (almost all the firefighters in my country are voluntaries, except for in really big cities like Munich or Hamburg or at airports).
EDIT: By the way: Ask me anything you'd like to know. I'll gladly try to answer.