Fire Captain - A Day in the Life

hi i'm brett pickford and this is a day in the life of a captain at south metro fire rescue fire [Applause] engine 44 engine 15 44 44 district 1 italian chief 2 2018 netcom off 14 second alarm structure fire yeah so uh when we come in in the morning the first thing we do is is meet with our counterpart so as a captain i meet with the off-going lieutenant or captain that i'm um taking over from and so they have a pass down we have a log book in the uh officer's quarters that they document what they did throughout the day any anomalies that that occurred or anything out of the norm that we need to know about they let us know about calls anything that's up with the apparatus so we have quite a few here if there's any issues then they pass that down to us if there's anything we need to follow up with that's kind of our pass down process is is to get get information from them so we're not losing things in translation from a to b to c shift and if i delegate something to you know one of the crews making sure it gets followed back up with when i'm back here at work um i get to see each officer about once a week and so just making sure if they have any issues or they need anything from me that i'm taking care of that and then same thing with their crews if there's any needs or anything projects we're working on it that gives me time to touch base with them in the morning either before i go home or before they go home to uh to make sure that's all taken care of so once we once we do pass down we get all of our personal protective equipment and all of our gear on the the rigs so we'll we'll get all that on and check our air packs check our tools check uh both rigs and make sure we're not missing any equipment and make sure we don't need to you know go down to fleet or anything to get any repairs taken care of so that's our priority is make sure the ladders are all functional um set up the way we want them that the the tower ladders work in you know the the fire pump lights all that sort of stuff so once that's done you know we check our ems equipment as well and then we'll go in start breakfast i'll have a morning meeting while the the crews are cooking breakfast with the other officers in our battalion so um we're battalion three so there's multiple other fire houses in our battalion that we'll get on a conference call the chief goes over anything that he's he's got from the four day and then um like we went over the operational meeting minutes this this uh tour and then any questions that anybody has and then he kind of goes through and asks what our plans are for the day and the same sort of thing we talked about with the other officers he asked out of us if we have any needs and kind of sets his expectations they're doing the day in the life of brett pickford scary day in the life of superman yeah right well brad i couldn't think of a better captain to do that with so congratulations well thanks i appreciate it chief thank you an option not a requirement okay so right now you know the mandate is people's work coveralls and every medical [Music] [Music] that'll be caller by the mall going up to marshalls up by costco take a left in yosemite [Music] yeah we can for now let's see yeah reaction to blood pressure meds does it say what the reaction is now it's a lyft driver having reaction to his bp meds so left here yep [Music] 54 year old male conscious and breathing reaction because this is new medications 34 cups it's not this life the next one will take a right [Applause] [Music] [Applause] what's up and then uh just take that second entrance easier just park out a lot so we're fortunate enough today we've got uh three on the medic and four on the tower and eric's riding with us today is our pio so the meta gets pretty tight so on a lot of these calls that are not a critical call per se then some of it somebody usually stays outside and just kind of makes sure everything's good outside and kind of for safety as well so critical cause it gets pretty tight back there so the first thing i'll do is you know talk to the medic i want to make sure the car is clear and get kind of the big picture of you make sure you know in the house that somebody's standing back and that's usually the officer unless you know they're the only medic on scene or something but that officer is usually standing back making sure the other rooms are clear in the house and that there's no other hazards and then kind of help helping that crew you know between relaying information between the patient and family members and kind of that conduit to you know let them know what's going on too so if there's you know a family member that's there sometimes you need to get them removed from the scene just to get better patient care so that there's not as much uh you know involvement so that we can also get a history from them too and it helps sometimes to just get them away from the scene if it's if it's real involved so that they can calm down a little bit too and then the more information we can get from them then you can give that information to the medics and help them with that so they get the bigger picture um there's a gas line cut that came out while we were going on this call right when we got here so you're kind of listening to that too as far as if a fire drops and this you know they only need two people on this call then we would cut and go to the other call and prioritize you know what's needed so yeah we're always standing back you're on radio kind of listening to that in the background no matter what call because something else could be going on or there might be somebody else involved here that we don't know about or pds involved and we're trying to listen to what they're they have going on as well for sure so as we're approaching just kind of look at that parapet on the charlie side there versus you know going on the delta side yeah you know at least right there so we're just getting a rep in uh stratkins doing his task book for his engineer portion or for the tower portion so just getting a rep in where they send us to the roof so he'll set up the bottom and usually we'd have bunker pants on right now we have our ladder belts on anytime the ladder's moving we want to be secured in in case it starts uh moving or we hit something which is not predicted but just for safety so he's gonna get us to the roof and as we talked about in the cab we're looking at what parapets there are and where the best spot for him to uh position is to get us on the roof so when we get up there we don't have to use our parapet ladder if possible this one we're probably gonna have to but there's different positioning to go to the roof versus a rescue so for the guys doing their task books for training that's what the task book is is anybody through the engineer academy that wants to be an engineer has to go through this process so ryan's working on that today he's got so many reps that he's got to do for setting up the the truck and then going to the roof as well so that's one of them the reasons we'd go to the roof would be to investigate uh kind of get an overall view of what's going on if if we're gonna do a a roof ventilation or um kind of see what the conditions are up here so our first objective would be to do a roof report and so we'd give that to command to let them know what the conditions are before we get on the roof to make it and then you know if we're going to request for vertical ventilation we're basically painting that picture for him of what we see up here the type of roof um you know if it's flat or pitched if there's any firewalls any loads that we're looking at so as we look out over the roof we see all the hvac units so if if the crew is working in the you know bravo charlie corner we can let them know there's you know skylights above them if we need that for ventilation there's hvac units to be aware of you know especially if that roof's sagging or if we see anything that's that's critical how close do you think you are right there i'm fully extended yeah so you're fully extended and your left corner of the bucket is actually hanging over the parapet by maybe an inch right about flush to an inch over so i'd feel comfortable with that uh getting off the roof on that left side there's just a little bit of a void on the middle of it but uh if we need to use the the ladder we'd probably want to position a little bit more to the left which we have room so we could do that and on this roof we're definitely going to want to use the parapet ladder it's probably six to eight feet like we thought from the ground got it close there we go c470 westbound university off-ramp medic 34 engine 33 tower 34 pick everybody else up with the exception of the medic probably continuing that x-34 already this can pick up there's a physical fitness standard from the department which is really nice and it helps keep people stay on track and so for me um i feel like if you if you stay ready never have to get ready and so that's my part of that is physical fitness i graduated from colorado state university with a degree in health and exercise science and so that's been part of my culture growing up playing sports and with my kids in sports of trying to pass that down to them and i try to do the same thing here at work is you know i've been pretty fortunate to stay healthy throughout my career and i attribute a lot of that to injury prevention and physical fitness and a lot of that attributes you know to the fire ground if you're healthy and you're in shape you're able to do more work and you're able to you know stay healthy and and not get injured and have somebody else that needs to take care of you on the fire ground to add to the problems that we're already trying to solve hello this is part of our day where we get all of our food so we ate breakfast at the firehouse this morning so we usually pick up breakfast for that incoming shift the the tour before that way we're all ready to go in the morning and then we'll buy dinner for tonight and then breakfast for tomorrow and then the crew the medic crew will buy dinner tomorrow night and then breakfast for that next shift coming in so we don't have to go to the store that morning so we usually just rotate who cooks and today we're just gonna get some papa murphy's pizza and make it easy so sometimes it can be tough trying to find time to sit down and cook so sometimes the easier the meal the better depending on how much you know training we have planned or what the day looks like so we'll see how the rest of the day goes but at least we now have some food if we get busy this afternoon that's a good dinner see if we can make it back to the truck without dropping them tower 34 block out non-emergent oh we got a lockout so it's uh usually somebody locks their keys in their cars it's not emerging so there's no kid or dog in the car so we'll head over there and get the car unlocked for him and make sure everybody's okay so it's right over by the sky ridge hospital so not too far from here what are we looking for white hyundai said it's near the airlife hangar so we'll see is it even pushing i want to go much more yeah i don't know i don't know if the car is the battery in the car is dead or if those are down well we just changed these i put brand new ones in this morning oh man it might be a security key are you able to pull it patty he's hitting the button but can we go up and then go straight back towards you keep going back yeah you're on it there so her car battery was dead so not usually the case usually you can just get in and push the unlock button but this one or battery's dead so we had to just pull the unlock button or pull the button and got it open but some of the newer cars are all electric and they don't have that so her key was messed up from somebody trying to break into her car in the past so her key didn't work in her door either so we were looking at going under the hood and just trying to pop that cable to do like the hood release but it was behind the radiator so we couldn't do that so luckily patrick was able to get it with our lockout tool and that worked worked pretty good so now she's in [Applause] working with our engineers doing his engineer task book uh earlier we had him go to the roof on a commercial building and now we're working on more of the depth perception uh with a couple props we have set up on the roof for the tower to try to get to we've tied a kettlebell with some webbing to the bucket and then we have some five gallon buckets on the roof that you'll see that the goal is for him to put the kettlebell inside the bucket and kind of judge that depth perception so he knows how far he's extending out and then work on lowering the raising to to get it in there and make the fine tuning adjustments at the end and then at the station there's two other officers so we're on c shift a and b shift um are the other two here and so there's two other officers that i manage and coordinate to get projects done at the station and to make sure everything's working appropriately if there's something that needs to be done delegating tasks to them and their crews and then making sure that the culture in the station is is good with them and their crews as well so if there's an issue with personnel then we try to handle that before it goes to you know the battalion chief level or um up above that to try to just take care of it so really driving that culture in the station and setting expectations for the other two shifts of here's how we're going to run things you know at this station also at 34's we have the technical rescue team is based out of here so i'm the technical rescue team coordinator so there's a big part of that that i manage with the rest of the team so there's about 50 personnel that are on the tech rescue team and so i manage them and then i also delegate tasks for the team so one of my lieutenants joe sims he's in charge of more of the education portion of it some of the video capturing things like that uh some of the apparatus stuff and my other lieutenant rick peterson is in charge of the training so he coordinates the calendar for trainings we have a tech rescue academy coming up and he's pretty crucial with doing a lot of stuff for that and organizing that with we work with castle rock fire for our tech rescue academy so collaborating with other agencies and making sure that everything gets done with that so tech rescue has multiple disciplines there's confined space trench rescue building collapse vehicle extrication and rope rescue that encompass tech rescue so then there's five discipline leads and and sm subject matter experts all within those categories that i lean upon for for those monthly trainings that we do so it's quite a bit of quite a bit of work it's very fun and rewarding and i enjoy doing it so for firehouse 34 there's anywhere from usually eight to 10 people so just trying to do stuff that's easy to cook and it doesn't take a long time a lot of times i personally go get like costco ribs and smoke those those aren't too bad do the pot pies from there too it's really good and then well sometimes we'll end up going out so if we get busy then we'll end i'm going to get my pizza or go to a local restaurant and uh yeah just try to figure out what people like and try to stay away from odd type foods that not everybody would enjoy i guess last time we got pizza we were a little short so gotta make sure we get enough this time we got five pizzas for i don't know six six people so everybody almost gets their own pizza you want to be that guy that shorted the crew of food they'll never hear the end of that one have you ever shorted the korea food before no we can ask one of the guys here how that went good dinner's ready damn it's ready come and get it you know life happens at the firehouse table and so that's certainly the center point of any firehouse you probably got to see our firehouse table that's the pride we had in it we had guys here in the past that took an old trench panel and made you know our logo out of it and did an epoxy table years ago and so that's still with us today so that's part of that culture that you see in every firehouse and so you know dinner we solve all the world's problems or at least create a few in the process injury i know i really wanted to go back for more pizza oh yeah so we just had a uh came in as an mva and it ended up being a lady ended up hitting a a doe a little deer here and i guess she said a dog or two was chasing it and she avoided the dog and ended up hitting the deer so lone tree showed up and they're going to handle the situation they'll probably end up euthanizing the deer because it's not able to walk at all so there's nothing really we can do for that so [Music] a big part of what we do and we don't always realize it because we love what we do is um you know we're away from our family quite a bit and so just trying to stay connected with them uh during covet was was extremely tough because all the added pressures and and everything else going on you know all the different uniforms and pp had to to put on and things you had to do and worry about were part of it but at the same time you weren't allowed to have family you know at the station and so within the last month we've lifted that since the restrictions have lifted and families have been allowed to to come over so the crews that were working you know christmas and easter and fourth of july all the big holidays where your families usually come to the firehouse that wasn't happening and so i think people don't realize that side of it they just see you know watching these videos they see the calls we go on oh that's really cool but it's it really is a commitment um from your family too to make sure that they support you and you know you miss out on on lots of life and so the department's good at supporting us you know with vacation and good great benefits so that we can you know get to go on vacations with our family and and spend that time with them and so i i try to um tell the guys and girls that you know make that a priority and it's that work life balance that a lot of people don't see so if you're thinking of getting into the fire service whether you have a family or not just plan on that down the road that you know it's that work-life balance and making sure that you have a a good long healthy career but you're taking care of your family at the same time and it's not always easy to to balance that and so the families are the people that are behind us that truly support us and we really appreciate them so we couldn't do what we do without our wives and kids and moms and dads and family so we're pretty fortunate with that i usually sit down do more reports watch tv unwind for the day and then you know it's time for bed so we worked 48.96 so two days on four days off so then you know last night we were fortunate enough not to get any calls so i don't have a bunch of bags under my eyes and i'm not exhausted so we just we try to make sure that we uh take care of our firefighters if we get calls in the night then we'll try to sleep in a little bit to make sure that we're arrested and ready for the next call and if if not we can we can take a nap you know that second day so that we're arrested and ready you know for that call that's our priority and so we want to make sure we're taking care of ourselves so then we get up this morning and kind of start all over again crews are in there making breakfast right now and uh that's that's pretty much the day you know a general day obviously things change throughout the day and flexibility is huge as a firefighter because you may not get to eat breakfast and then it's you don't get eat until you know afternoon you might have got to eat till dinner you know unless they have food on scene from you know red cross or somebody goes and picks up food so you just got to stay flexible and always have something in the truck ready for you too so that you're you're prepared if that comes down [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: South Metro Fire Rescue - Centennial, Colorado

Views: 437,912

Rating: 4.9371266 out of 5

Keywords: SMFR, South Metro Fire Rescue, Brett Pickford, Captain, Officer, Day in the Life, What's Inside, Ride Along, Firefighter, Response Video, Code 3, Emergent, Q Siren, EMS, Medical, Vehicle Accident, Pierce Velocity, Tower Ladder, Truck Company, Platform, Training, Learning, Family, work, interview, career, Lone Tree, Centennial, Douglas County, Arapahoe County, Denver, Colorado, Park Meadows, Ridgegate, Helping, community, firehouse, fire station, rescue, emergency

Id: 0CSaXIue9aI

Length: 27min 26sec (1646 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 16 2021