r/Firefighting • u/The_Road_is_Calling NH FF • Nov 25 '24

News Ohio fire department confronted about response to double fatal fire

https://chroniclet.com/news/411559/wakeman-fire-board-meeting-ends-in-shouting-match-over-fatal-fire/
201 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

164 comments sorted by

View all comments

123

u/tacosmuggler99 Nov 25 '24

I’ve never been a volunteer, but don’t these guys get toned out from their homes? Added response times, with a ton less firefighters, and fire spreading even faster than ever and unfortunately this is what happens. We aren’t super heroes, we are just people, and if you’ve got three people rolling up on a fully involved fire there’s a good chance they’re going defensive first.

47

u/FossMan21 Nov 25 '24

Yes we are at home or anywhere besides the station. It rarely happen that the pager goes off while we are there.

11

u/Phil_Tornado Nov 25 '24

I get toned out from home and it takes me 6 or so minutes just to get to my station

4

u/Tasty_Explanation_20 Nov 25 '24

Yes we do. Depends on the area and department on how fast that response is though. My department for example, myself and 4 other members live within 1 mile of the station, so we are usually rolling apparatus with a decent sized crew in under 5 minutes. All of those 5 people are fully certified too. Once in a while, we may get toned out while we are at the station training though which may well have been the case with this department being it was a Saturday morning. My department usually does training on Wednesday nights, but many do train on Saturdays

1

u/MRSAurus FF II & EMT-B Nov 26 '24

The station I volunteer at in Ohio is a manned station, but sounds that might be a rarity. We only staff overnights and weekends, so basically when they are off from their 9-5. Only a small few of us also work at career departments.

-6

u/lennybriscoe8220 Nov 25 '24

And not everyone is trained as a firefighter. I never went through fire training when I was a volley in Louisiana, but that was in early 2000.

3

u/hhpl15 Nov 25 '24

In Germany that's not possible. At least everyone has a base training done (80 hours theory and practical training). They can help laying hoses and fight fire from the outside where no air is needed (you must attend special training for that), but not much more. If you don't have the basic training, but are going to get one, you can come with the others (if there are remaining seats on the engine) but only look and learn and under no circumstances near any danger.