Stories of fire rescue are often embellished, and with good reason.  Just like any job, that of firefighter is often glamorized in films.  I can relate to such gratuitous dramatizations as you find in movies such as Backdraft and Ladder 41, as a computer programmer.  I’ve never even met anyone nearly as hot as Angelina Jolie or Halle Berry on the job (excepting, of course, my gorgeous wife Candice).  I will attempt to not so overdramatize Nicholas and my foray into the firefighting industry last night.

So this might be boring.  There will most certainly not be any topless women.

I took Nicholas to the Fire Training Institute open house last night, and we had a great time.  I got several pictures, but no good ones.  However, Candice will be along later with a video from Nicholas, explaining the experience in his own words.  I coached him up in the car on the way home to say “They put out the fire.  They did a great job.  High five!”, but he forgot his lines as soon as he got in the house, so you’ll just have to take my word for it.

We pulled into the FTI and tried to find a parking spot.  It was quite crowded, but we managed to find one near the entrance.  We went through the garage, and Nicholas was immediately enamored of all the fire trucks.  Unfortunately, he thought that was all there was to see, and before we got to the real action, he had turned around and was heading back to the parking lot.

I managed to get him corralled, and we were off to the first (and most exciting) station.  There was a structure with the contents of a living room, ON FIRE!  Nicholas got to hold a fire hose and aim it at the blaze, helping to douse the flames.  He put out the fire, and he did a great job, and he earned a high five from his firefighter assistant.  Why does that sound familiar?

Me being the dad that I am, I was afraid that Nico would run into the fire, so I neglected to get out the camera for what proved to be the highlight of his experience.  I realized later that Nicholas isn’t a big idiot.  Fire is really hot, and as he got closer to it, he would figure out that a burning building would not be a good place to play.  Also, as motivated as I would be to dash into a fire to save my son, there were at least a half dozen clearly superior physical specimens nearby trained in the art of keeping people from dying.

Our next stop was the car accident rescue area.  Nicholas was quite dismayed that the cars were all upside down, and he wanted to fix them.  Sadly, we were just a bit too late for the jaws of life demonstration.

We moved on to the next station, where firefighters were dropping carabiners off a tall building and belaying down.  We got to the station just as one guy hit the ground, and had trouble unbuckling from the line.  We stood there for about five minutes, sure that something exciting would eventually happen, and nothing did.  Then, just as the next guy dropped his line and started to sidle up to the edge of the building, Nicholas decided he’d had enough, and ran off.  So, we missed all the action there too.

I spotted a couple of posters to the left, so we headed in that direction.  Nicholas was really interested in all the puddles the fire hoses were creating, so we had quite an adventure getting over that way; he was wearing sandals.  Once we arrived, he didn’t want to stay, but he soon changed his mind.  “What happened to that car?” I asked.  “It’s stuck!” he replied.  “We need to get it out of there!”  Quite frankly, I’m not sure why this stage was even set.  No one in that car was going to survive.

The concrete beam extends for 10 feet in either direction off the picture.  Talk about your overkill.  The sign reads “NO PARKING VIOLATORS WILL BE CRUSHED”.

We wandered around that area for a while, looking at all the buildings and other various structures that could collapse and trap a person.  Nicholas was especially interested in the big honking pile of rubble toward the back.  He wanted to climb it.  I calmly pointed out that the sign said “Instructors Only”, and when that didn’t dissuade him, I picked him up and carried him kicking and screaming away.

The wicked witch of the west is in there somewhere….

Nico was quickly assuaged when we stumbled upon a warehouse.  We went inside, and he had an immediate and accurate summary of the situation.  “It’s dark.”

For the next 20 minutes, Nicholas ran back and forth from the lot to the warehouse, depositing hands-full of rocks at a time into the darkness.  Meanwhile, I strained to hear what the firefighter instructor had to say about the building.  It’s a training ground where you go in, unfurling your big heavy hose behind you, in the pitch black.  You go ten feet one direction, hit a wall, and have to turn around.  Then you go twenty feet another direction, hit some stairs, and go up.  You might manage to drop 350 feet of hose without ever finding the fire.  And all the while, you’re wearing 150 pounds or more of gear.

After Nico tried to put a rock in his mouth, I decided it was time to move on.  It was getting quite dark now, but the open house was still going strong for another half hour.  Heading back toward the exit, we found a liquid tanker truck with stairs leading inside, and I just couldn’t resist.  Nicholas likes climbing on ladders, so he couldn’t resist either.  In fact, we revisited this truck three times before we were forced to leave.  Inside, we found  a plethora of gauges and valves.  I found it quite interesting to learn about all the various instrumentation inside a liquid tanker.  Nicholas, I think, just liked the idea of being inside a truck.

While we were outside the tanker, we were watching a squad of firefighters attempt to put out an actual liquid propane fire.  In the first demonstration, it looked like the fuel ran out before the firefighters managed to control the blaze.  The second demo went a little better, with a third hose coming in much sooner than before.

The third demo really switched things up, moving from a vertically oriented cylinder to a horizontal one.  One of the firefighters gave a debriefing to the crowd afterward, saying “I just suck it in there until it kisses the mouth, then I can push her right back to wherever I want her to go.”  I didn’t really understand what he said, and I missed a good amount of the preamble, but I think I might have actually learned something about controlling fires in that moment.

In the meantime, I think I’ll stick to my only proven firefighting skills: (1) don’t throw water on a grease fire, (2) when you pick up a fire extinguisher, always aim for the base of the fire, and (3) stop, drop, and roll.

As for what Nicholas learned, he now knows that firefighters don’t just put out fires.  They also rescue people that are in trouble.  We were able to demonstrate that later on in the evening, when Senor Frog got stuck in a canyon.  We spent several minutes debating how to get down into the canyon, until the firefighters showed up!  They lowered a rope down to reach Senor Frog.  Hooray!  He was rescued!

And then the rope was re-purposed as a microphone for Sing Star, much to my eternal chagrin.

I asked Nico as we drove away if he would like to be a firefighter when he grew up.  He said “Yes.” But I have to admit, it was a halfhearted “yes”, the kind that makes you wonder if he was guessing at the right answer.  Here are some old pictures of Nico looking like a fire chief.

He really likes hats.

And now, as a reward for all of you that read down this far, here’s a picture of Akilah in her presumptive Halloween outfit.  She’s going as a roll of Life Savers.

Although I must admit, it looks a lot better when she’s wearing it than when it was on the rack.  Rashida points out that it would be ironic if you died by choking on a Life Saver.