First 24 Hours in a New Fire Station - A Day in the Life

hi i'm ronnie hi i'm jeremy i am nick i am bob and this is the first day in the life of station 20. [Applause] engine 22 engine 14 engine 44 315 44 kinetic 44 district 1 italian chief 2 jp 18 netcon off 14 second alarm structure fire yeah this morning was a ceremony to uh open the station [Music] in a coved friendly way i guess you could say where we had the firefighters of station 20 that are assigned here as well as some chief officers and board of directors and some other staff present essentially small ceremony to open the station in a what i would consider it a traditional way with a raising of the flag saluting the flag and pushing the truck into the station all very kind of old-school but important tradition for opening this [Music] [Music] station [Music] [Music] good [Music] [Music] uh [Music] [Music] and strength to do their job well may the light always shine from this place and may it serve as a safe place for those in need please place engine 20 and brush engine 20 in services didn't sleep great last night because i was just so excited i've been thinking about this for a long time and um the day is finally here and i just couldn't believe it was here and then it was a a real honor and super special that i was able to open the station the the response time into the back country as well as kind of some southern areas over off of macarthur griggs post in those areas over there this rig first of all being an engine it's just faster than the tower truck the tower truck is inherently slower it's just a slower rig so getting to the back country slower way more difficult for the tower truck to maneuver in the back country a little bit because of the roads and the way that the curves are and that sort of thing it just is a slower response the engine is faster more nimble and then it's a great location to get to the back country as well as these kind of other pockets that had poor response times to some degree yeah so everybody on this fire engine is medically trained uh there's not a medic unit here because essentially when you break down the data for uh the call and this call volume and the necessity for for those particular rigs at this point this area of highlands ranch is covered well with the medic units that are in place and that's medic 17 medic 18 medic 16 with occasionally medic 15 happen to come in but there's good coverage there and it's not warranted at this time but that doesn't mean that the few the future wouldn't hold a medic unit here someday if the call volume warrants it the station was built to accommodate a medic unit we spent some time today with the with douglas county traffic engineers testing the system one last time it had been tested a little before but testing it one last time to ensure that when when we respond we're capturing traffic lights appropriately and they're delayed appropriately they cycle appropriately and we're very committed to making sure that that that we ensure that that's going to be safe especially with the school being here and there was quite a bit of engineering that went involved in all of these traffic lights some crazy engineering actually with gps and opticom systems and all sorts of stuff so it's pretty impressive i feel confident that it's going to be very very safe yeah you can throw that in there [Music] some food items that we forgot to get out of our cabinet from the previous station um some personal stuff chips and energy workout stuff um will you just go snag that and the front of that truck um you know that food that's in that cabinet you guys can do whatever you want shift one yeah yeah i was looking through that earlier that or like there's that coffee is that yours up top we will use our siren and air horn when it's necessary and a lot of times that's at major intersections and to be honest these roads and highlands ranch are favorable for emergency response because they were designed wide and multiple lanes and a lot of times uh we we don't have to use a lot of sound to control traffic so we're able to respond without a lot of sound we have to use some because it's the law for us to make some sound but we don't use it excessively if we don't have too who thought it'd be a fire alarm yeah right i thought it would be residential i thought it's gonna where are we headed left on the cat here okay right it's gonna be uh not not this right but coming up soon alright it's grace boulevard this building right yeah dispatch engine 20. sounds good high school nothing we do have somebody out here waiting to talk to us we'll be investigating so you don't need us all right so let me uh take you guys around the station so this is our entryway into kind of the main living quarters here we'll go ahead and head this way um so in here we have the officers kind of computer work room and stuff this is where he does most of his reports for any sort of medical call that we run fire alarm fire or anything like that also if he needs to meet with the guys or anything like that normally he does that in here as we come in here this is kind of the main living area this is our kitchen and then our living room um so one cool thing about station 20 is that everything in here is brand new we're super fortunate to have all new stuff that's really well made and it's all just very nice we have four fridges here for a ship b shift and c shift and then we just have a kind of a station fund fridge that we keep condiments and things like that in um same thing over here with the cabinets a shift b shift c shift and then station fund this is where we do most of our online trainings and things like that we really don't hang out in here too much so here on the west side of the station we have a really cool patio at station 20 here it overlooks the mountains in most of the highlands ranch area this is where we have our grill and our trigger and in the future we're planning on putting a table and chairs out here just a place to hang out really but it's it's a fantastic view and it looks incredible um so as we go in here since this is a brand new station everything is pretty pretty bare right now we don't have anything in any of these cabinets yet but we can do food or you know towels for the kitchens um just kind of depends on whatever we need it for really but just lots of space because we have a lot of things so in here these are the bunk rooms station 20 has six bedrooms and three bathrooms each one of these again everything in here is brand new so we're still just working on getting everything put together and making it our home this is one of our bathrooms here [Music] is and another bedroom and another bathroom um they'll all be the same for the most part except for the officers the officers have a desk and a phone in their bedrooms um so this is our our kind of washroom this is where we keep the laundry stuff where we have all the things that we use to clean the floors and like the the table tops things like that we have an ice maker in here and mostly just our supplies and things like that so again this is just more area for storage we don't have anything in here either we're still just working on getting everything put together it's quite a long process to set up a brand new firehouse so in here this is the firefighter's office this is where we can do our own reports get fresh radio batteries check emails do trainings yeah really anything that the firefighters need to do is this is where it happens so if you come through here this is the entryway into the um into the apparatus bay and we use these spaces basically as a as a kind of cancer clean area so there's a bathroom in here if you need to wash off or anything like that but it's it's air locked so that we can try and keep out as much of that hazardous material as possible um just keeping up with cancer prevention and things like that for top metro so out here into the bay this is so this is going to be our our engine um we're in a reserve engine right now our our front line engine is supposed to be coming uh in april um this is what we'll respond to on medical calls fires fire alarms really any sort of public assist or anything like that then if we go over here this is a brush engine 20. this is a type 3 engine we'll use this on any wildland deployment or anything like that this is a wildland house so this is going to be one of the first units to deploy on a wild land fire we can also use these uh if we have big snowstorms or anything like that we'll basically take all of our gear put it on this brush truck and then we will respond to calls in the brush truck and that's just because it's four wheel drive it has a higher wheelbase and it it's less likely to get stuck in the snow so right here is our cart and so at station 20 there's a large area just to the south of us and that's called the back country for highlands ranch and we have a lot of people that will go running there mountain mountain bike um really any sort of outdoor activity and they can get pretty far back in there so we use this cart to get to them if they get hurt or anything and they can't they can't get off the trail on their own so this comes in handy quite a bit for anybody that's injured or anything like that in the backcountry so this is our fdo truck again this is a wildland house so we can have we use this truck for single resource response anybody that is working in logistics or planning and operations in wildland fires they'll take this truck out and then they can they can respond from from the station in this truck and it's basically got everything that they need for their wildland deployment if we come over here this is our tour room this is just where we can work on any of our hand tools or hose if we need to we've got spare bottles here this is where we'll keep all of our kind of our station maintenance stuff so lawnmowers snowblowers yeah that's really about it for the tool room here if we come over here this is going to be our ems closet so all of our engines are at the very least bls capable so they have a certain amount of medical equipment on them this is where we can come to restock so if we don't get restocked from the medic units what we can do is just use the stuff that's that's in here so in here is our bunk room this is where we just keep all of our bumper gear um every every firefighter that's at this station um that's bid into this station is a wildland firefighter so we all have our own wild land uh packs 14 day bags and um and then just our regular backup bunker gear coming over here this is so this if you can imagine the washroom inside of the living quarters this is kind of the washroom for the bunk area so we use this area for our truck towels to wash them just again we're just big on cancer prevention and things like that so we're trying to keep all this stuff separate this big guy right here is our extractor and that's for our bunker gear and everything like that so we can put all the all of our dirty bunker gear in there wash it dry it and then uh and then it's clean for us and that's also why we have a second set of bunker here so we come up here yeah uh so this is gonna be our wildland cache area it's empty right now we just don't have the lockers for it yet but uh this is basically gonna be the area for any sort of anything that you would need for a 14-day deployment like water mres extra hose or tents we'll eventually store our 14 day bags up here but that's what this area is going to be for it's just going to be for anything that you would need to grab quickly for a 14 day deployment um so this is station 20's weight room um it's just right here on the other side of the bay uh this is this is going to be the basic south metro complement of workout equipment that you'll see through throughout any south metro station we'll come in here normally once a day some guys make it in twice a day just kind of depends and really it's pretty wide open on when you want to work out it's it's more when you can work out we'll normally spend anywhere from an hour or two inside of the weight room and then once we're done we kind of just get back to our normal station living i'll let you go oh okay thank you so much this is this is just going to be our basic uh cleaning room for for outside of of the living area so we'll use all this stuff for anything that's around the bay or anything like that we have brushes for the for the engine all of our cleaning supplies are here we have wet wipes in case we need them for cleaning down any sort of thing inside of the cab of the engine mops for floors and things like that this is our opticon box here and basically what that allows us to do is if we were heading out to a call right now and depending on which way we were going down the street either to the east or to the west i can hit one of these buttons and what it'll do is actually change the light so that we can go through that specific light so if i was going to hit the right it would go to the the west light and if i was hitting left it would go to the east light if i hit all it'll it'll stop both of those lights so we can go through the through the light safely it's really nice to be able to hit this button and know that that light is now turning yellow and then red because it just doesn't turn red there's a good there's a good amount of slowing down and stopping before before we actually get the green light so that gives us the opportunity to leave the bay come down the street and then when we get to that stop light it's going to be green for us and then everybody else should be stopped at that stop light so one really cool thing that we have here at station 20 is we have bi-folding horizontal doors which is something different than some of the fire houses that you might see around or anything like that and what's cool about these is they're very quiet and they're actually very fast when they open so to open them we can just hit a button and it's basically the same thing as a garage door opener so and they're very fast to open and very fast to close and they really don't take up much room in the bay at all uh it makes our lives a lot easier and then we don't have to deal with the typical issues of a bay door that other other stations might yeah obviously uh covid uh has a monkey wrench in it for now uh hopefully uh fingers crossed that we'll move past that soon and after that if you see us out or the bay doors are open the trucks in the station feel free to uh stop by and uh if we don't uh have anything going on we're happy to show you around and and give you a tour of the place and show you the truck and the kids and everything else there's a lot of little stuff that has to be done you know putting toilet paper on the toilet paper hanger and you know putting cups away and making sure everything's all squared away it's just like moving into a new house for sure [Music] this is kind of a rare exception we this crew definitely uh eats together i mean we're all gonna eat together tonight but we all take turns cooking tonight it's kinda like everybody brought their own food in just because we decided it just might be easier to everybody kind of bring food in because we knew we were going to be busy we thought it was supposed to be snowing and crazy so we just brought our own food in but usually we switch off cooking eat together the fact that there's an additional firehouse an additional engine here helps the whole highlands ranch area in the fact that we now have another rig in place for when the other rigs are busy and 17s is one of our busiest stations i would imagine that we'll see engine 20 helping out the 17th district frequently just because they tend to be a much busier station so you know there's some depth there for the future for all of this area including 118's is busy six teams even to a degree it's just it's a backup to those districts provides you know that additional service well we're waiting for a neighbor to see if they can get a hold of their neighbor who happens to be in mexico to see if we might be able to go inside to stop the smoke detectors from sounding since it's generated some concern and calls but uh there's no indication there's any problem in the house from looking through the windows we don't see any smoke damage or smoke at all or anything like that so see if we can get in there to help them out get them off but we might not be able to [Music] so [Music] it's really a high point in my career it's a real honor and privilege to be able to come work at a station like this it's beautiful it's just very well done the the citizens of highlands ranch should be commended and i thank them for for supporting us it's it's um it's great to be part of an organization that has the community support that we have it's just very special

Channel: South Metro Fire Rescue - Centennial, Colorado

Views: 596,263

Rating: 4.9110909 out of 5

Keywords: SMFR, South Metro Fire Rescue, Station 20, Day in the life, firefighters, emt, ride along, what's inside, how it's made, tour, new house, construction, career, highlands ranch, colorado, douglas county, littleton, lone tree, denver, parker, greenwood village, station saturday, move in day, moving, tones, response video, wildland, type 3 engine, fire engine, behind the scenes, lifestyle, interior design

Id: VpihnIu4Pvs

Length: 27min 45sec (1665 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 19 2021