ok i've been a firefighter since one thousand nine hundred eighty eight so for thirty twenty nine years i've been a firefighter and i've been working for the town almost thirty two years so it is not bad firefighting academy or recruit academy which is multiple weeks when i went it was seven weeks currently about ten weeks you learn all your basic firefighting at the fire academy and then when you come back for the first couple of years we give what you get what's called on the job training so it's all the things they can teach you at the academy that you then learn while you're back here in belmont and  this is a team effort so i've probably been involved in ten or more fires a year times twenty nine years so probably about three hundred fires i've been to but i've only put out a couple personally the rest of them of them put out cooperatively with all of the forces the all of the other firefighters that have been  the in belmont right now there are fifty four firefighters thank you so this fifty assigned to the shifts responding on trucks on four different groups and then this four of us that are work days in the office we call the staff the administrative staff so it is between eleven and thirteen on each group and they protect the town during the daytime and at night you you're welcome pretty much works every single day and they work a twenty four hour shift so they start at seven thirty in the morning and they work till seven thirty the next morning so it doesn't matter whether it's a monday or a saturday whether it's thanksgiving or christmas  they work every day of the week responding to calls and protecting the citizens in the town when you're not as well i am when it we're not responding to emergency calls i get to do paperwork and it do the administrative work for the parliament the firefighters when they're not responding to calls  they do maintenance they make sure their equipment ready to respond they make sure that they're physically fit they work out they clean the station so we don't have janitors or anything like that the firefighters actually clean the stations they do like maintenance and then they also do training so like last week i was in training all day doing summer and some medical training along with the other firefighters tomorrow i'll be in training all day doing bird seed medical training with the firefighters and then we go out and do inspections so we'll inspect schools and the nursing home and the hospital and things like that so they're busy when they're not responding to calls fire that is a very interesting question how long does it take to put out a fire with depends on how big the fire is so small fires take a small amount of time  could take a few minutes to put out and larger fires can actually go on for days on so we've had fires that have gone on multiple days before they are all the fire is out because of a very large fire are they are female firefighters yes we have three female firefighters tracy lizzie and brittany so they are all paramedics two of them a paramedics and tracy was our first firefighter takes us about four minutes to respond to calls that come in they get the call and they're dispatched and they have a minute to get down on the truck so that means if they were sleeping or resting or something like that they got to get themselves dressed down on the truck and be ready to respond then they have approximately four minutes to get to the call and we can cover almost all of belmont within that four minutes  so if they're at a fire fight really really depends upon where they are starting where they are running so for example the closest school here is the butler school so if we were at the butler school doing a fire drill and a call came in on white street we are right there a call came in for the other side of town or up and down one hill it would take us probably about four minutes to get there a fire ok the first thing that we do when we respond to a fire is stop what we're doing and listen to the dispatcher tell us what type of the fire is in the air it is at that point we stop what we're doing we go downstairs we put our gear on so we put our boots on and our pants and our coats and our helmets you know where we're going in and they purr the most important thing is when we leave the fire station is whether we're going left or right that's the first important decision you have to make when you leave the fire station what was that i have people ok so you want to know whether the fire department has a boat to rescue people right yes so we actually do have a boat that's kept down at station two it's a small inflatable boat that has a motor and we go and train with it and hopefully we don't have to rescue anybody but we do have a couple of bodies of water in belmont so we do have a boat yes how hot is a fire it all depends on how close you are to the fire so some fires if you're far enough away they aren't very hot other fires when you get closer to them they'll get to be four five hundred degrees as the temperature builds and more things burn it can get over a thousand degrees so that's why it's important if you are in a respond to so we get calls for many different things so we could be probably one of the funniest ones i was on was a mother went out to hang something on the clothesline the door shut behind her unlocked and she had a two year old and a four year old left in the house and so we threw a ladder to the second floor window and went up to and these little kids were looking at us and they had made a mess of the house w mom was outside the house so we respond to all types of calls and if basically if people don't know who to call they call the fire department how house how long  fire hoses so we we have different lengths and it depends upon how far we have to go so the shortest hose we have on the truck is about seventy five feet then one hundred fifty feet two hundred feet two hundred fifty feet then we have a thousand feet so we have all different lengths and all different diameters some hoses very small a little bit bigger than a garden hose and some hoses about four inches in diameter of truck how many people fit in a fire truck interesting question so normally we staff most of our trucks the fire engines with three people but we can actually see six in them so we can fit more than we actually staff just in case we have a few extras so if there's more than that it's not the fire department it may be the circus so did you have a question what they want you to do is stop what you're doing ok and then fall to the ground and then roll over repeatedly until the fire goes out ok so that stop what you do and drop the ground and then you're welcome thank you for having me dave quality program fire us so how can you prevent fires well there's a lot of different ways one is to make sure that you properly store trash that your house is relatively clean that you don't overuse extension cords that you use candles responsibly if you have a fireplace that you make sure that that fireplace is cleaned  when you're done using it and that the chimney your flue for a fireplace or a heating appliance is actually serviced in cleaned once a year on school and when one of wash and  seem like a very small fire to us could be very major to somebody else because it burned out the a bedroom or something like that about i'll say right you know we look at that is all that's a relatively small fire because the house is still intact it just was the bedroom to somebody it may be their world it's everything they own is in their bedroom so it really depends on what the person's you know activists they have a get a good question for you how high u ladders of those are the ones that the firefighters actually have to throw those range anywhere from a small is a four foot step ladder up to a thirty five foot extension ladder you know high high you could go all the  we never know we're ok it could be a fire five minutes from now or there could be four fires in the next couple of days we just never know so we we do somewhere between four so our uniforms there were distinctive so officers wear white and i'm an officer so i wear white most of the firefighters in the junior offices where i dark navy blue uniforms that's how we can tell who somebody is a chief officer or in charge on my color for these in the dalliance if they have what's called speaking trumpets on them and the more speaking trumpet somebody has the highe rank they have so lieutenant has one a captain has to when i have happen to have five the bad tells you what rank you are but also tells me that i work for the town of belmont it's got to the town seal on it and the patch on the shoulder tells me or tell somebody else that it's belmont fire department in bigger bolder letters so that's the kind of the differences in the uniforms and what the different things on the uniform m a call it is is it a police related call a fiery they call or an ambulance emacs emergency medical services call and from what you tell them all what they can gain for information they that then determine what is the appropriate response will it be just one engine company going will it be everybody that's working and it depends on the type of emergency you ha so who knows what this this piece of apparatus is it's an ambulance and i want yeah i'm sure it's an ambulance as what we call our ambulance is rescue yeah this here is what we call the engine this happens to be engine one it's our newest engine and it carries all sorts of different things behind this is a big water tank with five hundred gallons of water on it so that when we arrive at a fire we can start putting the fire out without connecting to one hydrant these are all the adapters that they use on all the different poses case they have different bread this is with a pump or operate a work tells you how long it is so this one is one hundred fifty feet this one's two hundred and this one is two hundred but as you can see this hose on the right is a little bit bigger than the hose on the left so the bigger  you think more or less water all water right so we'd use this for a bigger fire all right so in the back of the truck here is where the fire two of the firefighters can ride who's a good drive so those are all the tools of the firefighters  a hybrid when they get to a fire or they're going to a fire the first thing they do is take off their shoes then they take their pants out and put their or with their boots attached and they put their feet in their boots then they pull up their pants you guys can fall on ok they have their radios so that they can talk when they're inside of the building outside to the shift commander ok what do you think should go on next the jack a good idea is put the jacket on guys know although we're going to show you so there's all sorts of things they have velcro they have snaps they have hooks to keep their coats closed so they keep them safe  it's all right ok now turn around now we can tell that they work for the bell one fire department right and we also can tell what their name is and make a turn to the ok all right so next see we're going to put on is the well you know we're going to put one thing on the air pack we're going to put the air pack on for us because  mask goes on their head before the helmet goes on well then them ask so did you hear that beep beep beep that's for their pass alarm so if they get if they stop moving the area packed will go allow them to let people know that they are trapped or if they get trapped they can actually push the button and make it go off and now they can put their helmet on so now they're breathing turn around is ok so they they're actually breathing right now out of the tank on their back  thank you to the belmont media center for making