Weekly Post 10: Fire Station

This past week, I had the opportunity to be given an orientation in one of the city's fire stations. Part of the Health Science II program is working at fire stations and riding along on ambulance calls. It was really interesting to see the inside of an operational fire station and I can't wait to explain why.

Firstly, one neat aspect of the tour was that the entire time we were being showed around, announcements of different calls were being broadcasted over the speakers. Every now and then we would hear something along the lines as "beeeeeeeeeep. Medic 5' and then some words that nobody in our class could understand. Something I learnt during the orientation was that all the calls made for any fire station is broadcasted through every station. This meant that we could hear calls for a ambulance from fire station 4 while we were at fire station 8.

Another thing many of us found interesting was seeing the ambulance and firetruck up close. While we were in the area where these vehicles are parked, which is called the 'bay' by the crew at the station, I learnt lot of the terms and names they use. You've already heard about what they call the parking area, want to guess what they call the vehicles? This is a hard guess, but interestingly enough, they call them ‘apparatuses.' Furthermore, each ambulance and firetruck have their own names. Unfortunately, they don't seem to have any cute names but officially they are named after their station. For example, the ambulance at the station we were at was called Medic 8 because we were at Fire Station 8. Similarly, the fire truck was named Quint 8.

The whole experience was very unique and we got some helpful tips from our tour guide who is a Lieutenant. Advice such as to check for gloves before hand and to always wear a vest when on a ride-along. Overall, I can truthfully say that I am excited for my ride alongs in February.

~ Shrinidhi Joshi

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