r/Firefighting • u/iheartMGs FF/EMT/Hazmat Tech • Apr 21 '25

Ask A Firefighter Are you at your forever department?

EDIT: I really appreciate all the feedback from everyone! Pretty cool to hear all the different responses! Stay safe brothers/sisters and wish everyone the best of luck throughout your careers!

Title says it all. Curious how many members have found their forever depts and why you made it your home for the rest of your career. The culture at my department is simply amazing. The chiefs know every member by first name and your put into a leadership role pretty early on if you’ve earned the trust of the officers. They will send you to virtually any training, deploy you across the nation, etc. Let’s hear what you have.

93 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

213 comments sorted by

View all comments

34

u/Right-Edge9320 Apr 21 '25

Worked for a small dept and then 3 years in went to a big. If I had to do it all over again I’d stay put.

9

u/iheartMGs FF/EMT/Hazmat Tech Apr 21 '25

I don’t blame you one bit. Big department big problems?

22

u/trapper2530 Apr 21 '25

But also more chances for fires more chances for promotion. You get hurt more chances for lighter duty jobs. More chances to go to.a slower house if thats what you need. Bad crew or officer more chances to go somewhere else. No small town politics of dealing with chiefs son or nephew being favored. Or it has less effect. Benefits yo both types of dept

7

u/iheartMGs FF/EMT/Hazmat Tech Apr 21 '25

That’s true, options are most definitely our friends.

3

u/trapper2530 Apr 21 '25

We definitely have bug problems here. But I hear friends working at small dept. They'll run 10 fires the whole dept all 3 shifts a year. While my engine itself ran 30 and the truck did close to 60. We have a truck that ran 140 fire last year and others 100+. Some engines doing 70+. We also have some companies that did 3 fires. And ran 900 runs the whole year.

2

u/iheartMGs FF/EMT/Hazmat Tech Apr 21 '25

That’s crazy work, but awesome that they get that many jobs a year.

3

u/trapper2530 Apr 22 '25

They run their ass off though. Close to 6000 runs a year just the truck.

1

u/iheartMGs FF/EMT/Hazmat Tech Apr 22 '25

😬😬

2

u/trapper2530 Apr 22 '25

The fires though.

1

u/iheartMGs FF/EMT/Hazmat Tech Apr 22 '25

I bet, wish we got that many.