Skills

Firemen are supposed to be jacks of all trades. We are called to handle not only emergency situations but, for some reason, any possible situation that people can't handle on their own. We go to water leaks, lock outs, stuck wheel chairs, open cans of paint on the sidewalk, chemicals in the storm drain, ducklings in the storm drain, cats stuck in fences or up power poles, downed power lines or phone lines, and so on and on and on. I've responded code three for a man who, it turns out, couldn't get his voice mail on his answering machine. We are expected to mitigate any situation we are called for. We can't always do it, but we certainly try. Most of us therefore become jacks of all trades and masters of none. We know just enough about a lot of different things to hopefully do something about it and not get ourselves killed.

That...or we just wing it and hope for the best.

The cool thing about this aspect of the job is the exposure you get to these skills and tricks and access to the knowledge that each of us brings to the job from our own unique pasts. For example, just the other day we were responding to a lockout at the local elementary school. When the dispatch came in, we didn't know if it was a lock out of a building or a car. My firefighter quickly grabbed his lock pick tools in case it was a building we needed to get into. In the rig he informed us he had his tools. I responded, "Lock pick set? You have a lock pick set?" He replied very matter of factly, "Yeah, just in case."

Cool.

The call turned out to be for a car and they had it open before we got there but as soon as we got back to the station the questions began. Turns out this fireman had worked for a locksmith for a couple of years and learned a lot of great tricks for getting into locks.

 

I'm used to the fact that we normally just break things, in the cleanest way possible of course, to get in where we need to go so this peaked my interest. He had several tools for picking locks and I immediately went grabbed our door lock prop. This is basically a 16" by 20" solid piece of wood with four different door knobs it, each with a different style of lock. He proceeded to teach me about locking mechanisms, most of which I knew from basic firefighting books, and then how to pick the locks with different style tools. It's not easy and it is not an exact science but after only a few minutes I had successfully picked my first deadbolt lock.

I love learning new skills and getting to do things that I would never have learned, seen, or done in any other occupation. Now I can add cat burglar to that list.