July 1, 2011 Work to live. Live to work.

June 30th we put on the CFD Agility Physical Test.  It's a six station, job related physical skills assessment, monitored by two occupational therapists. The stations, in order of performance, are:
•125' Ladder climb at 65º
•Hose Lift... double hose roll(doughnut) with a nozzle tied to a heavy line, lifted hand-
   over- hand to a total of 50' ( This station is the hardest upper body strength test)
•Stair Climb... three flights twice carrying various loads, touching each step. No bounding
   ( This is the anaerobic endurance test... sounds easy, it is not)
•Dummy Drag/Carry... move a 175 pound rescue dummy 100' ( difficult for most)
•100' Hose Drag  (unloaded... if they get to this one , it's a piece of cake)
•Cot and Dummy Lift and Carry... mimics 90% of our physical efforts on the job.

Setting up the ladder climb.

We had scheduled 14 candidates but only 12 showed, as two are already FFs at other departments and chose to stay there. The one female candidate failed at the hose lift, but opted to continue the rest of the test.   Christy, a female FF on my shift did a reprise of the Lift at the end of the test.

Hose lift with ladder climb in background

Another candidate failed at the stair climb, becoming overheated and hyperventilating as a result, walking out   once he recovered.

Dummy Drag

With the SAFER grant money from the Feds we are hiring five new FFs, which will bring us back up to our complement of 48 for the first time in over a decade.  With eight planned retirements in the next nine months, we will be giving the paper Civil Service test soon with another Agility Test to follow.  Changes in hiring policies will require the candidates to have their 240 (professional) fire card before being hired.  The City also looks for Paramedic cards as a way of saving the costs of training. "Hiring cards" will certainly make for a different culture at CFD. To date the majority of us are miltary veterans who came to the department with no fire/ems training and were trained subsequently.  Add age, as in kids, to the change and it will be different soon.

Incidently, no promotion until August as neither of the testees passed the captain's test. They will take it again later this month and HOPEFULLY will pass it this time. For now (as with the three last years or so) I am Acting Lt permanently, waiting for a vacancy to be promoted.

My July 1st can be summed up in the following FB Message to Preston:
"Sorry I missed your call around 1300 our time. I don't know why it didn't come through.  I was at the Temple cleaning up a s**tstorm.  We had a sewer line on the fourth floor clog up and "effluent" came out a split in a horizontal line and onto a hallway on the 3rd floor.

We have been remodeling (John P and his friend Todd, along with Nephew Jeff) and are redoing the 3rd floor men's room. As a result we are using the 4th floor women's room as a backup AND IT DID!
I got a yellow and brown shower around 1030 by cutting out the ceiling to expose the leak... Yahoo!  Three hours and two different snakes later it is unclogged and temp fixed.  We will have to wait until we finish the 3rd floor in order to take the 4th floor out of service to repair it permanently.

Anyway, I hope all is ok. Call or message me when you can.
We love you, stay safe.
Sdad"

The July 4th weekend kicked off with Friday afternoon at the Cabin.  Saturday I rode 40 miles with the Roadies to Clarksburg and Frankfort where we skipped a planned stop at the new diner because we were soaking wet from a drizzling rain that started about 15 minutes into the ride.

Sunday will bring ushering at church, possibly another ride and then starting at 2000, 36 hours at work.  I am working half a shift for Evan as he is still off from his surgery. I am the fourth man to pull a half shift as a personal trade in order to preserve his sick leave.  Those 48 hours would take him a third of a year to make up.