Firefighters

What to say about firefighters?

I would like to talk about it, because I was a volunteer fireman during 10 years. I really enjoyed it. You are part of a big family (not only local family, but worldwide) and you are helping people when they need it. This was really a great experience and I miss it. I needed to stop, because it became not manageable anymore in my life, especially with my job. When I stopped, I was working 1-1.5 hours from home and it really became unmanageable.

In Switzerland, only big cities have professional firefighters (like Geneva and Lausanne). In small villages, firefighters are trained for basic staff and do not have a lot of equipment. Medium cities often have a kind of reinforcement center. This means they have volunteer firefighters that are really trained and have a lot of kind of equipment to help people in their city and different others villages or cities in their area. Please note that it was like this when I stopped few years ago, but they are currently restructuring everything to optimize the service and costs.

When I was in Morges, we did everything about fire, flood, elevator, car accident, help for people transportation, rescue animals, natural catastrophe... In Yverdon, we did the same, but we also did everything that was linked to chemical disaster or contamination and pollution.

At the army, I was also member of the rescue troops. These troups are usually called for bigger catastrophes, like forest fire, important flood or earthquake (even to help others countries). During all the years where I was serving for the Swiss army, I was only called for a flood catastrophe. I was never called for any earthquake... I am somewhere happy because earthquake are not a real pleasure for anybody... but somewhere I really wanted to be called for an earthquake: For me, this is probably where you can make the difference, help people during an important disaster, because many people loose everything and really need your help. This is somewhere frustrating to be trained during years for something and never been called to help people when it happens.

This is something that could appear strange for some people: when I was on call for the firefighters and couldn't move from my city during the week-end, I was hoping to be called for something. Not because I wanted to get a catastrophe or something like that, but only to do what I have been trained for and help people.

As I told you, firefighters are like a big family. I still remember that sometimes when we needed something, we didn't always need to talk to our colleagues... sometimes, just looking at them in their eyes and they understood what we needed. This was due to the fact that we often trained in small teams, most of the time with same people and we were also part of the same intervention group.

During these 10 years, I learnt a lot from others people and also from every situation or intervention. Sometimes, we arrived to help people in the worst moment of their life, when they lost a lot of things... Sometimes they lost their car or part of their apartment, but sometimes they lost someone from their family or their farm with their animals. You cannot enjoy it when you see people losing everything, but you can at least help them in a really short term.

Sometimes people are thinking that it is really hard when you are called to help people and it is very important (like in car accident). In fact, it is not so easy to understand or explain how we feel (or how I feel).

The first phase is when you are called... you receive a message, but do not know exactly what you will find when you will arrive at the disaster location. When you are leaving to join your colleagues, you do not think about anything... just get your keys, your shoes and join them as fast as possible. After this, when the truck is leaving you often have time to think about what you could see when you will arrive and organize everybody's first task once arrived at destination.

When you arrive, you are so focused on what you need to do, so trained for this and have all your colleagues with you, which really helps. For me, even on important catastrophes, I didn't feel like too much implicated in the disaster... I mean, I was there, I saw what happened, I helped people but I didn't take any time to think a lot more during the intervention. You are doing your job, helping people, without any panic. But for sure, it is something really hard after, when you are going back home and now have time to think about what you saw. I remember some car accidents: it was not really too hard when we were on site, helping people... but it was much harder the night after when trying to sleep, or the days after... this is where this big family is important: The best was to externalize it is to talk about it and share it with people who were there or understand what you feel.

In Morges, we had about 300-350 interventions per year. This is really not too bad for volunteer firefighters. Of course, we had different groups: day groups (with people working in the city) and night groups (with people living in the city). For the night, for example, we were 4 groups. This means, once a month we were called for any intervention. The others weeks, we were only called if the primary group was already busy or needed some help.

What did I do?

I was first trained for basics, like everybody. This means how to fight fires, how to save people, how to use pumps... Then I was trained to use breath systems (with air bottles) and how to verify them and to the maintenance. I was trained very fast on breath systems with the firefighters, because I did it with the army too. With the firefighters, I became very fast responsible of the breath systems maintenance and started to train people on their usage (I didn't train them the basics, but few times ago every firefighter needed to practice it and remember all rules).

At the army, I was also responsible of the material. This was really interesting because I was really fast part of the catastrophe group and assigned to their specific equipment. This gave me the opportunity to see a lot of things and material. I was also called to train some people on different equipment, which helps to improve your knowledge at the same time and share your experience with other people.

At the army, it was really interesting because they knew I was a firefighter at the same time and gave me more interesting tasks... Like I said, I sometimes helped to train people, I helped to organize some exercises, I observed and graded some exercises, and I also had the occasion to help the commandant in a big exercise.

I really enjoyed it and sometimes really miss it... but you need to make choices in your life, you cannot do everything. When I left, it really became hard to manage with my job, as I was working far from home and wasn't flexible enough. And now I have others occupations, like sport and studies. But I continue to help when I can... for example, one time I saw something strange on the window... When I had a closer look, it looked like a fire in our building. Someone called the firefighters when I went to have a closer look: this was a sofa at the entry of our building. The flames were about 4-5 meters high when I arrived... There was a fire hose in the building, I took it and started to fight the fire. When the police and firefighters arrived, it was just over. I only had to explain them what happened, what I saw and what I did, explaining them what I moved... If they want to make some investigations, this is better to only move what is really needed and explain them what you moved and where it was.

I could say a lot more about firefighters, writing some stories... but there is so much to say about it!
In any case, I will post some pictures in my library, but feel free to contact me if there is any subject you would like to talk about and I will try to write something.

Thank you for visiting, enjoy your day.

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Written by Nicolas Buache

Created on Monday, 29 August 2011

Last Updated on Tuesday, 03 January 2012

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