A Day in the Life - Tower Engineer

hi i'm eric and this is the day in the life of a tower engineer my name is eric ritter i'm an engineer here at tower 45 b shift i just finished my 20th year just started the 21st been lucky to be on for 15 years as an engineer all of which have been on a truck a ladder truck straight stick or a tower [Music] checking his bluetooth out this morning 45 bravo 45 go ahead oh you read loud and clear so we have a bluetooth mask now from scott i borrowed your mask so it's integrated there's a bone mic in here it's integrated so you don't have to talk to your lapel mic anymore you feel right to the the bone mic inside once it's connected you get a blue light tells you it's connected once he turns on his radio then it's automatically connected as long as the blue light's on or he can hit this little button right here and it'll disconnect his bluetooth so when he gets on a call and it's a medical call he's not wearing his mask he can use the use the radio with the lapel mic when he gets to a fire he turns his masks on clicks that blue button right there that button right there and it'll turn his mask bluetooth to blue it means he's connected [Music] [Music] oh [Music] hands down best seat in the house love driving and making sure we get to the call in a timely manner hopefully and arrive safely and then as well as come back everybody our models work hard have fun and go home so everybody goes home at the end of the day pre-trip check we run the pump up and then i'm going to take it out of pump we'll set the aerial up and come up part of the morning routine is to run the ladder up and if we don't get a call that is typically we get a call right out of the shoots um it's monday so we're going to run it out run it all the way out full extension and then we're going to retract we're going to check the cable tension so we don't have to do that later on and we do that all the way out zero degrees just gonna walk the ladder check the cables the shivs all looks good now we're going to retract and make sure the cable tensioning is good so brake check time it's a dot we have to do every morning the first day of shift coming on make sure all of our brakes are within we do it on all the rigs at the station so again it's going to get really loud truck might roll a little bit let the air pressure settle and then we time it for a minute make sure it doesn't drop to two psi in that minute all right a couple more then it gets really loud let it settle so instead of having fluid in them these are run off air for air brakes so we just want to make sure all the saddle tanks are holding the uh the air pressure that needs to be held at the proper uh psi otherwise if it's if it drops more than the two to three psi we call fleet and it's out of service until they take a look at it it's going to get super loud now that one was good e-brakes should pop here in a second pop it's all good there's starter up i'll run the lights and check the outside why why that's running itself back up throwing itself back up [Music] we're good to go our brake check is complete rig's ready to go for the day now we'll shut it off and flip the cap so this is the control to raise and lower the cab and i always like to stand back so nothing falls from the back to the front and takes out our windshield [Music] just put our cab lock up there and i'll lower it down so it's so we make sure it's good there we go so a cab block is just the bar the stabilizer in case our the hydraulic rams were to fail the cab won't come down and squish me or you that'd be a bad day so yes the fleet has named all the rigs in the all the trucks anyway and lucy's name because when we got her and she went in for first pm there was a bunch of loose nuts on our pedestal that hold the ladder to the turntable along with various other things that were extremely loose so she got the name lucy here's a whole step-by-step procedure we do typically but after you've done it for a while you can just visualize it and get a lot of it taken care of just by looking at it i am going to crawl into the back after i lower the cab because we had some issues with our wheel bearings so i want to make sure those are good that's going to be a call to fleet just to have them check it hey g can you grab my phone i think it's on the table so i can take a picture of this so we'll go get breakfast uh and we're asking you uh i can just type some new sends with dive stuff because next set up is a meeting uh throw some letters close to my exporting door tomorrow at 10 for your physician follow-up that's what she just sent me awesome cool how many how about like 15 right i was going to say stakes wow yeah he said there's 15 or 16 guys down there 16 will get 16. yeah all right let's get to getting all right i don't know if it's the best but we love it it's really good we're here quite often these guys take here every morning and we uh like to support the local businesses we always try to shop local this is definitely one of them they got a dog on a good burrito good day okay told you we're gonna bring you some 16 dudes here today right what your heart told is 16 dudes how many people are you ready you guys got two five five well there's 15 burritos in there so three of these maybe put one in the fridge for gearheart all right did you see that the kind of pooling back up in there it's about the same i mean it needs to be replaced but it's not it's not to the point the other side was keep spinning okay faster right there oh yeah this is normally at 45's it collapsed rig check it out they're doing some work to it so joe's taking it through forcible entry on our door prop over there our door prop is a like a simulates a commercial metal door he's going to take the probationary guy through the steps of how to force that door how to open it norman i know they kind of you have some experience so like we're not going to insult your intelligence they need this stuff right just get some reps in okay conditions masked up right barbie anyone in here normally say what what are you gonna do if you see or hear anybody don't see it here anybody go grab them we'll get them right we'll get them yes sir i think there's more for us to do on a inspection say than an engine engineer we both have a pump we both have the same controls we both we pull up if we're the first do engine's not around we're still pumping that fire we're still pumping hand lines but take that a step further the truck engineer we get to do so much more i get to go search i get to go force doors i get to throw ladders i get it set up for vertical vents so we kind of do a corkscrew on a house think of it as a corkscrew we start low laddering softening the building which means taking off bars maybe on doors forcing doors so they're open we control them checking for people inside but then we go right to the roof if we need to with command us approval and we vent that structure so we get to do a lot more than just stand it be tied to the truck um alpha bravo so the alpha team is the engine excuse me hit lieutenant it sits in the front that gives us directions he's dad the guy that sits directly behind him is the charlie firefighter that becomes the alpha team myself the engineer and the delta firefighter which sits right behind the engineer is the bravo team fortunate enough to have greg allen as a bravo team member we split typically the alpha team typically will go inside bravo team stays outside we take care of everything outside that doesn't mean we don't all go in and search if we're all assigned all in search for known parties that are trapped something like that but typically alpha's interior bravo's exterior which means greg one half of the bravo team will do a 360 of the structure for us so we get a good eyes on it all the way around he'll typically take a ladder and a tool to the back and he's looking for ves opportunities if somebody's trapped he's forcing the back door he's looking inside the back door i'm in charge of the alpha side a lot of the office side i'm listening for the charlie firefighter if he's having a hard time or can't get that door forced i go help him do that and then greg and i will meet up and then we come up with a plan either to soften the building further or lap throw the rest of the ladders or help alpha team search get the hose line in place that type of thing [Music] great playlist [Music] so this is you guys good uh release a liability when we do lockouts um so there's any damage done to a vehicle we're not responsible for it we aren't locksmiths we sure do try it is not emergent right yeah all right i want to make sure no kiddos that's my that's usually what i do eric so you're clear right i'll be doing the paperwork and again the deal is is that if they if i beat them doing the paperwork which is very rare because these guys are very good at this then i get to do the next one i won once or twice and we chalked one up to merry christmas but last time was a legitimate win on my part so today's the day gentlemen back in the saddle gee i've opened up a lot of doors but it's been a couple years so hopefully i don't screw this up i don't think you pull on it i think you push try the handle first still got it i still got it i still got it i still got it oh i haven't done one in like five years he didn't beat joey doing the paperwork but stop i handily beat joey you did not it's documented that's alive so we got the alpha and the zulu and we're putting in that middle division to go and attack that firefront like this might be one where we don't necessarily go around the flanks initially we're gonna go straight at the head and try to catch it before it gets to the neighborhood over here yeah we could have like a lawnmower a bunch of gas in there aerial mva response oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] actually happened at uh lincoln and parker they pulled him to his national parking lot uh unknown good you're clear right thank you [Music] if possible pull to the right slow down and pull to the right if you can't when it's clear move one direction or the other but don't be zigzagging in and out of traffic you have to pick a direction typically to the right hopefully because we're going to be coming down on the left side but if you can't please just slow down and move over one direction or the other do you see that a lot where people just kind of aren't paying attention absolutely all every day yeah and then they're not sure what to do and they freeze they'll stop right in front of you some of them will put their hazards on and stop right in front of you and that that just bottlenecks traffic greg and i and aaron are all three on the tech team um jared lombardi is usually here and he's on a tech team too so we have we're lucky to have vortex on b shift so we want to keep up with our skills we haven't pulled rope out and been able to use rope in that setting for quite some time so somebody on a radio tower outside climbing on a building we could repel down a window washer and then bring them down to the ground um somebody a tree climber a tree climber tree trimmer um an arborist we can go up above them set an anchor rappel down if they had a medical emergency and then bring them to the ground how's it going lt it's fine this is the most comfortable i've been all day it's like being in an anti-grav like some i don't know i could be on moon boots very nice [Applause] you need to be next to greg what more could you ask it [Applause] are you [Applause] something you never want to hear why is that not working things are supposed to get better when the fire department gets there there we go all right whoo that was painful i have nothing but faith in you sir so i'm going to lower you down down to my system did you take this gluing off yes why do you have so many backups because i was nervous my buddy greg told me this rocks well where is this greg person took off baby fled hold you i did a bad thing there we go here we go all right here we go to the ground yes sir you doing okay i'm good you're good it's a matrix direction of travel which way we're going if it's north or if it's south um my lieutenant aaron cross and he does a great job of just giving me a direction so let's say south on this street west on this street you know gives me the first couple streets right out of the out of the chute so i at least can get going and he can get organized and then we go but direction travel is the biggest one it's a crew effort it's a team sport everybody's checking inside and we're making a right turn those guys are checking the inside to make sure nobody's bolting up greg's really good about pointing out people pine and 20 mile yep this guy's going out parker parker 20 mile and then right or left left on uh left on pine actually left on pine yeah so parker road parker road north that's on point [Music] thank you that truck nope nope okay you got it now [Music] pick up that inside will you uh your evening tower uh get a couple locations on this uh one car is reporting the location you're going to at pine and 20 miles the others reporting ponderosa and either 20 mile or length they're not sure so we'll start with this one you got two vehicles the person in the white vehicle appears in here you're welcome engine 24. um like the truck we had a truck today coming up on our side wasn't slowing down so he's very good about pointing that out if i don't see it um this driving the truck you have to have your head on the swivel intersection but i don't know oh no it's right in the intersection dispatch tower 45 tower we aren't seen on uh pine in 20 mile two vehicles minor damage we're gonna block this whole thing all right can you give me a vehicle description colors we want to make sure this is in two separately we have one white toyota and one dark color i look at it when we're coming in if we need to have a quick conversation with the officer but typically i want to take the most space for our guys to protect them so oncoming traffic to that to me was their most hazard so that's why we blocked that oncoming traffic we leave a little bit of space for the medic to pull behind us and then hopefully by that time pd is there to block the rest of it or we'll get out and direct traffic like we did you know not paying attention they're looking at the accident rather than looking at traffic or the traffic signals or us giving them direction where to go so absolutely that's probably one of the most dangerous spots to be is on the highway especially dancing noodle thank you couldn't remember the name of it pat thai most of us and she's having cashew chicken yeah another local business we try to eat about 5 30 because the old guys have to eat and keep the youngsters happy so no it's not usually normal we usually eat a little quicker earlier in the [Music] day aerial medical response power 45 minute 42 medical advice math page w 34 d at good good good good good good you got one coming one coming slow you're good thank you [Applause] nine month old female baby has a fever says they're seizing hey joey can you get me a mask [Applause] yeah this is the sweets baby's no longer seizing shallow breathing we're all emt basics um most calls are emt basic um until it's not and that's why we have the paramedics show up too and they're the transport um we're lucky enough to stay with trucks so we go home on the truck if they need an extra hand in there we'll jump in i've ridden in and somebody else has driven the truck back or we'll send one of the back seater guys to ride in with them and help them out you guys oh yeah can we get our next dr please gives them comfort and then we don't disturb them more than what they need to be she's just waking up so trying to keep them as comfortable as we can get the medic set up so when they get in they can do their stuff and off they go it's hit and miss we'll go maybe a month where we sleep all night and then we may go a month or two months where we're up all night long so it's hit and miss we hope tonight it's gonna be quiet but we'll see what happens [Music] we slept all night it was beautiful it's not always but like i said it goes hit and miss where sometimes we're up two or three times and other nights we get to sleep [Music] a gourmet meal for sure we're making handy hash eric candy's special tater tot smashed breakfast with sausage and some peppers in it and then scrambled egg or a scrambled egg if people want a breakfast burrito oh we have green chili too or fried egg on top with green chili it's a great job i'm very fortunate to have a great crew as you've seen all day today [Music] you

Channel: South Metro Fire Rescue Centennial, Colorado

Views: 349,859

Keywords: SMFR, South Metro Fire Rescue, A Day in the Life, Behind the scenes, Firefighter, EMT, Engineer, Career, Job, Tower 45, Pierce, Ladder Truck, Tower Ladder, Truck Company, Parker, Colorado, Arapahoe, Douglas, County, Emergent, Tones, Response Video, Q Siren, Airhorn, Emergency, Medical, MVA, Traffic Collision, Ride Along, Family, home away from home, Technical Rescue, Climbing wall, rappelling, funny, laughs, humor, vlog, gopro, mentor, learning, education, safety, community service, rescue, firehouse, life

Id: 7y_p9qEM2vE

Length: 25min 59sec (1559 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 12 2022