Rookie Firefighter Challenge 2013

Me at the Firefighter Rookie Challenge

Photo By:

Sarah Weiser- Photographer 

The Provo Daily Herald



On March 23rd, I did probably the hardest thing that I have done in I don't know how many years. The Rookie Firefighter Challenge at UVU's Fire Academy, the Recruit Candidate Academy.
I entered this challenge to see what the academy will be like and get a glimpse of what the career is going to be like.  All I have to say is... Holy Crap! Am I Fat and Lazy, or what!?  It was soooo hard.

It was a 5-hour event that completely tested me, both physically and mentally. Let me tell you why!

The event started with a 1.5 mile run. Which I was only able to do in 13:00 min.  Not so good.  Then immediately upon completion of the run we did as many push-ups as we could in 1:00 min. I only got 24. Followed then by as many sit-ups as we could do in 1:00 min.  Got a whopping 28 there. Go me. Followed by as many pull- ups as we could do. Yep, all 3 is what I got. Just a pillar of strength (is not what I am).  Well, at least I was able to get through the PT section of the challenge.  A couple people did not.

After the PT section, we were drilled on putting on the PPE or "turn-out gear" as it is called.  This includes the boots, pants coats, helmets, hoods and gloves. Luckily we did not have to do the hoods.  The rest was hard enough.  But we had to have our shoes off and all the gear on in 50 seconds or less.  Only about 5 of the 13 participants could do it.  I would have been able to.  Its just the gloves that took me 15 secs to get on.  It wasn't until after the drills that I figured out how to get them on faster.

After drilling on that for about an hour, we drilled on getting the SCBA (Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus) operational and on. This was for about another half hour.  That got pretty tiring also.  Trying to get that stuff on as fast as I could took a lot more energy than one would expect.

After drilling on both the turn-out gear and the SCBA for a total of approximately 1 1/2 hours, we went outside in full gear and performed a couple of other drills.  We were divided into three groups, and remained in full gear for all the events. Keep in mind, all this gear together weighs about 50 lbs.

The first event that my group went to was a Search & Rescue Exercise. It was an extremely unique experience for me, well frankly the entire event almost was completely unique to me, but this one especially.  We went into a "building" (an old train boxcar, mimicking a house scenario) where we were blind-folded. Could not see a thing.  We had to rely on verbal communication and light touch to stay together while we crawled on all fours through this "house".  We had to search for bodies, conditions and do it well enough to be able to communicate what we noticed during this search.  Pretty crazy! It was very educational.

After that, my group went to a ladder drill.  In this drill, we had to climb about 20-25 ft up a ladder. Once we reached that height we were required to lock ourselves onto the ladder by putting one foot through the back, and then back to the front, locking our toe into the rung.  Once locked on, we were required to lean as far as we could to the left, and as far as we could back.  Essentially we were to have our belly button out past the left side of the ladder and lean back far enough to see the stars, if there were any. It was cloudy.  Then unlock from the ladder and come back down.

The final event was a hose pull.  This was the event that, quite frankly, almost killed me. This in addition to the weak PT test is what made me well aware of how far I have to go before I be a Firefighter or get onto ANW.  We were required to pull a hose about 100 ft, call for water, then run the hose back to the fire truck.  Then repeat, immediately, the same thing with a secondary hose.  I only got about 75 feet into the second pull before the hose dropped and I couldn't pick it up to continue.  I was physically unable.  At this point I was sent to the Emergency Response Team to make sure I wasn't in critical condition. When they took my pulse it was 160 bpm. Now I don't know how close to a heart attack I was, but I don't know if I want to know either.

Finally after a bit of a rest, I was able to get back into the final event.  A fire extinguisher drill.  They would light a container of gasoline on fire for each of us and we would put it out with a Special-K Fire Extinguisher.  For those of you who don't know, Special-K is a potassium based chemical for putting out chemical fires (such as gasoline). 

That event ended the night of non-stop drilling and running everywhere.  We closed with a 20-min Q&A session with instructors and current students.

Overall, I enjoyed the experience.  It taught me a lot about what to expect and where I need to get to fitness-wise.  I look forward to doing it again in the fall to see where I'm at compared to where I was last weekend.