I sat down to write this post about midnight. Finally home for the day, finally in my PJs, finally in bed working towards sleep, you get the picture and know the drill. No sooner had I begun this draft and given the post a title than I hear two slower, single pitch tones followed by *beep, beep, beep, beep, beep* real fast and successive. And those beeps, those fast, successive beeps mean one thing: we’ve got a call.

See, on the pager I can hear all emergency traffic for the county, so not every page that goes out applies to me, but this one did, it was for the department I volunteer with as an emergency medical responder (EMR) and support firefighter. You can probably guess that I got involved more for the medical side than the fire side, but fire is cool too and I am definitely learning a lot of things I didn’t know before.

So a call came in, I went and ran it, and, now, here I am, an hour later, finally starting what I was interrupted from. It was actually potentially the shortest call I have been on in my time with the department. Typically, you figure at least an hour for a call from start to finish, but usually a little more when it’s all said and done and you’re leaving the scene or the station after everything has wrapped up. Tonight, though, it was actually right around an hour from the time I got out of bed and got dressed to the time I got home and got back into my bed. What a time.

I’m sure at this point you have lots of questions. Like, what do you do on calls? Are you a paramedic? What sort of calls do you get? How did you get involved? Why do you do it?

I get asked these and more all the time when people are first finding out that I volunteer with a fire department (FD) and there’s usually some misconceptions involved. So while I really want to address the misconceptions and also some surprising responses I’ve gotten from people about my involvement with the FD, I don’t want this to get too long so today we’re just gonna focus on those questions above, some more I got from polling Instagram, and how things work, then I’ll dive into some of the nuances of the experience of being a first responder and a college student in a later post.

So what are you? Are you a paramedic?

Absolutely not. I cannot and would not ever claim to have my paramedic certification and cannot firmly enough tell people that I am not a paramedic when they ask. It’s flattering that they would assume that, but my certification is a much lower level, more basic cert. Paramedics typically go through 18 months-2 years of classes and have worked extremely hard to get to where they are and must complete their basic and then advanced emergency medical technician certs before even beginning to pursue paramedic. I cannot even begin to be compared to them, but it’s flattering.

What do you do on calls?

Well, it depends on the type of call. Obviously, medical calls are going to look very different from fire calls. And medical calls can break down further depending on if they are medical-medical or trauma calls. On fire calls- which are much less frequent than medical calls unless we’re talking about fire alarms from my college (basically the number of fire alarms is >> than actual structure fires)- I may do any number of things to help the guys on the inside more effectively and efficiently do their jobs. This can include changing their air-packs out, pulling hoses, taking tools to them, drafting water, potentially spraying water from the outside, and helping them get out of their gear when it’s all said and done. 

On medical calls, it’s a lot of history taking, vital taking, and basic patient assessment. There’s usually not a lot more we can do so we’re just preparing for the medics’ arrival as best we can. What a lot of people do not realize is that when a medical call goes out and we get paged, an ambulance is also paged simultaneously. They don’t realize that we do not respond on an ambulance and cannot transport patients. We’re called because we often are closer and faster than the nearest ambulance, so we can get on scene first, make contact with the patient, and offer basic life support if needed. Basically, we’re damage control and help make the medics’ job a little easier. Once they’re on scene, we can assist them in patient lifting and moving and other non-invasive things they need. We can’t start IVs but we can do things like help hook a patient up to the cardiac monitor. 

Trauma we can do a quick assessment, make sure airway, breathing, and circulation are good (gotta take care of life threats first), take patient history if there are no life-threats/they have been addressed, and then work with whatever the biggest non-life threatening issues are. This could be bleeding control, splinting, or stabilizing amongst other things.

What sort of calls do you get?

We get a lot of fire alarms at the college, but rarely is anything on fire. We get a lot of lift assist calls for patients who have fallen and may or may not have resulting injuries. A lot of chest pains/difficulty breathing/general sick calls. There have been a few motor vehicle accidents/motor vehicle collisions (MVAs/MVCs) but only one with major injuries in my time with the department.

How did you get involved?

In the Fall 2017 semester, my college sent out an email about starting a first response program. Such a program existed years and years ago but had died out and our new director of Safety & Security was interested in getting it going again and re-building the college’s relationship with the local FD that serves our campus. I went to the initial meeting held about it, and then to a few more, and eventually began the emergency medical responder course. Initially, there were maybe 50+ students at the first meeting, 20 of us went through the class and got certified. We finished our certification in Spring 2018 and got on the FD’s roster in Fall 2018. Now, Spring 2019, there’s six or seven of us actively running calls, and a few new faces working on certifications so they can join the ranks fully. 

Why do you do it?

I’m saving this one for the next post because it’s sort of complex. 

What are some challenges of it being a volunteer fire department and how do you overcome them?  

What a lot of people don’t realize is that the FD I volunteer at is 100% a volunteer FD. It always has been. It’s a non-profit organization funded largely by donations and with a little help from the county through tax dollars. The tax dollars don’t cover everything though, and we rely on donations for the rest. While none of the personnel are compensated for any of their work, the department still has lots of costs such as electricity, water, heat (can’t let the bays drop below freezing in the winter or the water in the trucks would freeze), etc at the station; fuel for the trucks, truck maintenance, equipment and gear maintenance, office supplies, and other odds and ends. We hold fundraisers to try and help with costs and rely on generous people to fill in the rest. 

Being volunteer also means calls are not always answered, although we run a really high percentage of the calls we receive. Our biggest weakness is calls that come in during the work/school day because all of our personnel have lives and jobs outside of the department. Luckily, some of the guys have flexible work schedules and are able to compensate for this a little, but we just do the best we can to balance our lives and the department.

As an individual, finding a balance between school and the FD is tough, but I’ll talk more about this balance in a future post. 

What’s the coolest call you’ve been on?

Mmm, easily the one I got to ride emergency traffic with the ambulance. The patient had a laceration aka a deep cut. We had the bleeding under control when the medics got there and they were transporting to the hospital. Part way there, the medics page for help. I happened to be behind them headed home and was able to quickly join them. Another responder also came and we both rode down with them to help control bleeding that had re-started and was proving difficult to control. It was the most hands-on I’ve gotten to be with a patient, and the ambulance ride didn’t hurt either.  

What’s your favorite part?

Mmmm, this is hard. I love the family I’ve gained at the FD. I love the excitement and adrenaline of good calls and lighting up the engines or response vehicles. I’m thankful for the hands-on patient experience. But most of all, it’s really rewarding to know you’ve helped someone. We don’t always hear “thank you” but sometimes body language expresses it as much as words would.