job description

I am currently a firefighter and a lieutenant firefighter for the Seattle Fire Department Ladder Company 1. I became a lieutenant 12 years ago, but have been a firefighter since 1984, so about 24 years.

I really like working for the Seattle Fire Department, and really love firefighting. I considered leaving several years ago, when I was offered a chief position at the Burien Fire Department, but I stayed with Seattle because there's more opportunity here and we are bigger and get to see more action.

You have to take a series of tests to become a lieutenant, after and you have to have been a firefighter for many years. You have to take a written test and then do oral exams with a panel. Those exams are hard, and can take up to three hours to complete. After you complete all the tests, you are ranked based on your performance. Then you are pretty much hired off of the list, in whatever order you happen to be in.

Because we are the hazardous materials response team, we deal with the regular fire fighting responsibilities, as well as hazmat responsibilities. I am the team leader of the hazmat team, and that involves responsibilities such as attending and scheduling various trainings, equipment inspection and evaluation, and going to various committee meetings, as well as being on committees. I also travel all around the world to do different trainings for firefighters everywhere. I am also the supervisor of the crew on the ladder truck, which means that I am responsible for responding to the alarms, the going out on EMT calls, to fires, to accidents, whatever may come up. We also do mundane tasks, such as building inspections. Every two years, we have to go around to every commercial building in downtown Seattle and make sure that everything is fire safe, and if something isn't correct, we have to work with the responsible party to get it corrected. There are a lot of regular job training responsibilities, such as maintenance of the equipment and apparatus, as well as maintaining and cleaning the station. We also all have to maintain our certifications, such as EMT certifications, because we go out approximately 15 times a day with the aid car. We usually go out about 20-30 times a day for alarm response calls.

Basically, as a lieutenant, I am responsible for making sure that all of the required tasks get done. I also deal with all of the paperwork for cases, as well as sort out personnel issues and things of that nature.

education & career path

It's actually kind of an interesting story. When I was going to school at the University of Washington, my neighbor was a firefighter. I was in my senior year at UW, and didn't really know what I wanted to do with my degree after college, so my neighbor brought home an application from the Seattle Fire Department and told me they were hiring. I filled out the application, and was hired after that.

It was a very long hiring process, and required many different tests, such as written testing, physical testing, as well as two to four rounds of psychological testing. They usually get about 2,000 to 3,000 applicants, and usually only hire about 20 to 50 people, so I was very lucky to get hired. Departments usually hire about once a year, depending on the amount of retirements they have.

We go to the firefighting academy, called drill school, for usually about 14 to 15 weeks. We usually have 10 to 12 hour days, where we learn about everything that is needed to be a firefighter. All of our instructors are working Seattle Firefighters as well, so they are very experienced and teach us very well. Once you get through drill school, you are put on probation for one year and are assigned to a fire station, where you get to learn more about what the job is really about. During that year, new firefighters are also required to complete an entire workbook of exercises that show that you're doing everything that you're supposed to be doing. If you are successful after the year of probation, you are officially hired onto the station, and then must learn every little street, dead end, and alley of the area where you are stationed. You don't get to choose where you are stationed at first, because you are a rookie, and don't have seniority. It's based on if you want to do a certain job, such as hazmat response, as well as your performance in drill school and your performance in the year after. You don't get paid while in drill school, and you have to get an EMT license before you even go through training.

A high school diploma is all that's required, but having a college degree helps a lot. Because there are so many people that apply for fire fighting positions, any little advantage you can have over the next person will help your chances. It also helps while you're on the job, for you have to have a good memory to know where a fire or accident is, as well as have critical thinking skills to be able to make good decisions in tough situations. A college degree helps with all of that.

my day

We have 24-hour shifts when we work, and usually begin our days at 8 am. We begin each day with role call in the watch office, which is where people can come in off the street for help as well as where all of the alarms are dispatched. We have to have someone in the watch room 24 hours a day, seven days a week. At role call, we discuss any dispatches that have come out, as well as whatever else is important. The officers also lay out what they have planned for the day, as far as trainings or inspections. Then after that we start doing chores, such as cleaning the station and the equipment and rigs until about 9:00 a.m. Then we might go out and do a few inspections, and then we make lunch and eat. After lunch, we do some training, then more inspections, and then we have dinner. After dinner, we might do an equipment drill, but after 8:00 p.m. the firefighters have free time to do whatever they want to do. At 10:00 p.m., officers are allowed to go to bed, but most stay up later and read or just relax until they feel tired. At 7:00 a.m., the bells hit the alerter, which wakes everyone up. The officers who were on the day before go and move their cars for the officers who will be coming in after them, and between 7:30 and 8:00 a.m., everyone is relieved. In between all of this, we are always responding to alarms and various incidents as well.

There are usually 11 to 12 people at my station at one time. Some stations only have four people on a time, which is the minimum. At our station, we have four people to each apparatus, usually two to each EMT unit. Most of the downtown fire departments have at least ten people.

There is a ton of variety at my job. In the over 20 years I've been doing this, no two days have been the same. There's always something new that you're doing or someone new that you're meeting. One of the things that never changes though is false alarms: Every time someone pulls an alarm, even if it was false, we have to respond to it and see what caused it to go off, as well as reset it for them. It gets a little annoying sometimes.

I love going to fires, obviously; I like getting to cut up cars when we are called to accident scenes and have to cut people out of their vehicles, and interesting medical calls are always fun. We also have to help people when their pipes break and their business or house gets flooded. They call us, and we have to come check it out and then clean up all the water. In a way, it's glorified janitorial work. There are also a lot of people that we see over and over again, which gets very old because you obviously can't do very much to help them if you keep seeing them again and again for various reasons. It's frustrating, sad, and aggravating, but it's all part of the job. Some calls are also harder than others: murder, child abuse, and things like that. But we are trained very well to deal with those kinds of situations and to not let it affect us. We just have to focus on the job.

I love the people I work with. They are truly like family. We go through so much together on a day-to-day basis, and there are many times when you are depending on them for your life, and vice versa. It creates very strong bonds.

My station is a very active station. Because it's in downtown Seattle, it's one of the busiest in the city. It makes the day go by really fast though, which is good. Because we work 24-hour shifts as well, we only work two to three days a week. We usually have one day on, then two days off, then one day on again, then four days off. Every six weeks, we also do what is called a debit day, in which we give up one of our days off and help out a fire department outside of our district, so we get to get out of our domain for a day.

salary & lifestyle

The schedule is really good for having a family and doing family stuff. When my kids were younger, I didn't have to miss much, and didn't have to constantly put my kids in daycare, even though both my wife and I were working. It's really a good job for staying involved in the family. You can trade shifts if you need to be at something, which is really nice. A really good thing about this job is the schedule. It's also great that it's a career and you get paid pretty well, but the most rewarding thing is that you are really helping people. It's a nice feeling to know that you're helping people.

I make much more than most firefighters because I'm a hazmat officer as well as a lieutenant, but I probably made about $90,000 last year. With overtime and everything, some firefighters can make well into the six-figure salary. For a starting firefighter, the salary is usually about $50,000, but after your first year, you get a raise, and then five years later you get another raise.

Ongoing training is required to be a firefighter. When or how often though depends on your specific job: Some are quarterly and some are annually. Every firefighter has to be EMT certified, so every year you have to get that renewed. You have to demonstrate that you know how to do certain things such as CPR, use the defibrillator, as well as just to make sure that you're up-to-date on all the changes in the training methods. Because we are a hazmat department, we have to do annual training on that as well, such as training on small space rescues and accident rescues. There are different trainings every day that different people are going to because there are about 1,000 people in the Seattle Fire Department, and everyone has to get trained.

You tend to see the worst in people, and you see a lot of dead people and people when they are at their worst. Even though we're really good at keeping it together, it's not the job for everyone, and because we see the negative side of people so often, I think it can definitely change how you view the world.

pros, cons & trends

One major thing that has changed is how they look at the job in terms of safety. They are much more critical now when it comes to the safety of firefighters, and make us wear breathing masks all the time when we respond to a fire, regardless of how severe it is, which is something that didn't used to always happen when I first started: A lot of firefighters wouldn't wear their breathing masks. There are also more calls every year, particularly more medical calls. More safety precautions have also been taken in terms of the commercial buildings. When I first started fire fighting, there were a lot more catastrophic fires because of a lack of safety precautions, but now there are hardly any at all. It's a very good thing that things are becoming safer, and fewer and fewer large fires are occurring.

I really love the people I work with and the fact that every day is different. I love going to work everyday and not knowing what is going to happen or what I will be doing.

Having to see members of my fire department family get hurt or killed, as well as seeing innocent people get hurt or killed, is the hardest part of my job. I don't like to focus on the negatives though, which I think has really helped me over the years.

I feel very stable in my job. I know that I'm not going to get fired any time soon, and that my department isn't going to see any major cuts. As far as being able to transfer to another department, firefighters only really do that if they're getting promoted to a higher position within a different department. For the most part though, we usually stay at one station for our whole career, for transferring to another station would basically require you to be rehired.

advice

Compassion and patience are definitely important with this job: You must be compassionate towards people and have to be patient towards them as well as towards situations. You must be self-motivating as well, and must be able to work independently. Being able to work calmly under stress is also very important, for this job is very stressful at times and you need to know how to still work effectively. It's also important to be very sharp: There's a lot to retain and memorize when you're a firefighter. A lot of the firefighters I've met over the years have been extremely intelligent and bright people, which has been an asset to their success.

My advice would be to first go to a fire station, both one where you live and one where you don't, and come in and talk to the firefighters. Do the research and decide if it's really something that's right for you. I would also say to finish school and to really realize how competitive being a firefighter is. One out of 100 people who apply get hired, which is an extremely small margin. I would also tell anyone interested in becoming a firefighter to get into shape. To make it through drill school, you must be in shape and have a lot of endurance, because what you are being trained to do is extremely physically demanding and requires a lot.

I have a pension plan that I get from the city, so after I retire, I will get a pension check from them for the rest of my life. I plan to stay with the fire department for 30 years, so I have about another six to go before I can retire. I would also continue to teach at the Emergency Response Training Institute, so I would continue to pass on my knowledge of the firefighting to up and coming rookies.