When did you want to be a firefighter?

[Jesse613]

I remember when I was a young one I wanted to be a firefighter all for the action. Running into fires and getting them out. I was probably around seven at the time.

[stcommodore]

I always loved seeing the fire house on the block in chicago and about a year ago i joined my local department in PA to work as a fire cop with my dad. Then from there we moved over to supression and have been taking FF 1 togther and now are just about through it. I rember on one of my first runs I was on the ladder and remeberd thinking 'i want to be a fire fighter' then looking down at myself in TOG and said 'damn i am one'.

[KVFDCAPTAIN21]

I'd say from the time i was about 5...Back home with my old man being Fire Chief and numerous other family memebers on the Fire Dept i'd always go with Dad when he'd go to the station to do work and run the odd call but i'd sit in the pickup while he did his stuff....Then my older brother joined when he was 15 and thats more or less when i said i was going to join too...So my 15th B-day i went and joined up and 21 years later i'm still doin it

[BucksEng91]

My dad was a firefighter in Philly for 30 years, so it was pretty much a done deal.

Roy & Johnny and Station 51 helped a little bit too...

[stcommodore]

I think we found out biggest factor: family invlovement.
If our dad was in the deparment for (my dad) a year before we joined or 30(joe's dad) its clear its a family business.

[shortytheFF]

I would have to say around 5 or so. I lived in Chicago and it was cool when all the hydrents were on and we would run through them. I always said one day I want to be able to turn one of these on. I always loved fire movies and books. When my brother was killed i a car accident that is when I realized what I had to do. So FF EMT I am!

[Moose2028]

my dad has been on the dept for ouer 24 years. me being 17 have grown up aleays wanting to be a ff. i rember when i was little i would go to the station and play on all of the trucks.

[fieldseng2]

I had to be about 6 years old. My mom, my buddy and his mom took the bus to downtown to see his dad at the fire house.

I was mezmorized by the awsome structure. The doors were open...guys were hanging out by the bay doors....half a dozen brass poles shining... His dad was on watch when all of the sudden I heard this loud clanging........

more guys sliding down the shiny brass poles.... pulling on their 3/4 boots, CANVAS coats, and leather helmets.... Jumping on the back step the trucks roared to life turning out of the house....They had an extra alram fire that day...my buddys dad had to be relieved on the seen the next morning..

It was that day I knew what my calling was...I knew why I was put on this earth.....I have been in love with the job ever since...

The old firehouse was in service only for another 6 years...I have been facinated by old enginehouses ever since....Here is a picture of it when it was brand new at the turn of the 20th century..

[firespec35]

I wanted to be a firefighter way before my dad went into it. I got all my certs less than 5 years after he did. I wanted to join as a little kid at 8 or 9 we took a field trip to a fire house and I gotta admit it was the truck. They brought the engine out on to their pad. I watched him put it into pump and fire up a trash line for us to play with and I was just so impressed with all the stuff to do and to work on the truck. I saw my first top mount panel a few years after that and I was hooked even more.

[hotboy]

when I was 15 guys from the neighborhood use to play football on the weekends. one day while we were playing the fire alarm sounded, about 4 guys took off running, the rest of us was like"were the hell are they running to"? They were junior members of the company. I wanted to be a firefighter at that point.

[UTFFEMT]

WEll I was a senior in High School and I watched a documentary late at night about Wildland Firefighting. That was all it took and I investigated it and got hired 2 weeks out of high school as a State Firefighter and never looked back Over 21 years now.

[Jesse613]

I thaught most people were going to say it was a family member. I dont have any family members that are firefighters.

[OCFD1224]

When I was like around 5 - 7 I used to always get woke up by flashing blue lights going past the house at night. We lived right down the road from one of the townships fire stations so we would always see them going to that station and then see fire trucks moments later. I always loved the look of the blue lights and still do. When I was 17 I would always see fire trucks or blue lights on POVs and wanted to do the same thing. When I turned 18 I decided to go an join the town fire dept.

[sts060]

I hear a lot of you saying it got you when you were, say, seven years old. Me, too - well seven plus thirty

Signed up as EMS only, saw that my vollie dept. needed more FFs, and now here I am. It's been very interesting, especially in a combination service that's now largely career in most of the county stations (including our house). Everybody has been great to work with, though, and being my age, having a career already, etc., means I can just concentrate on learning and doing the job. I love it.

[CaptBob]

I can remember at age 5 my Uncle Charlie took me to the firehouse in San Francisco. Up on the rigs I went with a full tour including ringing the bell on the rigs. While growing up in Oakland I had a firehouse on my paper route. They treated me like a mascot. One day while I was there the bell went off and the station emptied. I stood there in the exhaust as the sirens faded off in the distance, I could here the chatter on the radio and said some day. That day came and after retiring 28 years later , my son now a fire captain, I still remember that day standing in the exhaust on the apparatus floor.

Captain Bob

www.eatstress.com

[shaun191]

I use to live next to a firestation when i younger. My 1st grade class took a feild trip over to the station. It was at about that time that i wanted to become a firefighter. I alsways said that when i turned 16 i would join. But i somehow soon forgot at about it...until one day i got in trouble with the law. I was punished and confined to the limits of my room. I was reading the local newspaper and read an article about a program at the firehouse for teens between 14 and 15 who want to become firefighters. So from then on i have been a member of the Cape St. Claire Volunteer Fire Company...19

[ffexpCP]

I come from a long line of cops. I guess I'm the traitor in the family. I grew up hanging out at the station quite a bit. I was always fascinated watching the dispatcher answer the calls, flip the BIG switch on the wall and rattling the building with the fire siren. I would then run to the other end of the station and watch the fire trucks leave. I always knew I would eventually join the emergency services in some way.


Then I was in a CPR class with the boy scouts and the instructor mentioned the explorer program. I decided to show up and check it out. At the time I thought it was cool and would join to see how I liked it. Well, I never left. I am now in school for my fire and medic certs.

[cellblock]

I never really WANTED to be a firefighter. It just worked out way. I never REALLY wanted to be an EMT but after a couple of years as a FR my Chief told me that he figured I'd be good at it and if I passed the course then the FD would pay me the cost of tuition. I always like to take classes and collect certifications so it was easy for me. I'm one of those people who can enroll in and pass just about any class I find even mildly interesting. Just like I never really WANTED to be a forklift operater in a warehouse but I did that for 4 years. I never really WANTED to be a Corrections Officer but while breaking up a fight one day the Reserve Deputy who was with me told me that if I wanted to get paid to do the same thing then I should join him and work at the prison. I never WANTED to be a security officer but when the city started laying off FFs a guy from a local Guard service was looking for EMTs to work at a chemical plant where they were contracted to provide medically trained security. I can't ever remember sitting in the emergency room as a hospital volunteer when I was 16 years old and thinking that I would be a ex-tank driving, FF/EMT Security Guard by the age of 35. It just worked out that way.

[0ptical42]

I wish I could say that I wanted to become a firefighter since I was young but I can't. I enjoyed seeing the fire department when they had open houses at the local vollie dept in NJ, but it never sunk in. I'm kinda embarrassed to say this, but I think one reason I never grew that attached to the fire service when I was younger was that I thought at the time that many of the firefighters where dieing in fires. I would see the purple and black colors hanging outside the firehouse every so often and thought that another firefighter had died not realizing that those colors were displayed for life members who had died of natural causes.

Fastforward to the beginning of the summer of 2002. I had just finished my junior year in college and my younger bro had just graduated high school. He and a friend of his decided to join the local vollie fire department in NY on a whim after they found out that the department would accept them even though they would be away at college for about 8 months of the year as long as they trained when they were at home. I waited to join myself to see if he enjoyed being a FF and at teh end of the summer, I joined the department myself after hearing how much my bro loved it. That fall semester I was becoming unhappy with the job prospects of my major (Geographic Information Science) which went from excellent when I started college to almost nothing at all with the recent recession. Plus the jobs that are out there now are consisting of mondane computer lab work instead of going out into the field which is what originally attracted me to my major. I decided to take a year off from school in 2003 to figure out what I wanted to do with my future. While I was at home I trained heavily in FFing and loved every minute. By last summer I decided that this is where I want to be.

Now I am sitting here, finishing up my last semester of school and applying to a few departments to become a career FF. I'm still in GIS so I can have something under my belt, but I cannot wait till the day I start my career as a FF if God so wills it.