First Day of my new Blog

I am committed to the fields of Emergency Medicine and Firefighting. I enjoy learning about the field, and in turn educating those in the career field about new technology, or techniques. And I also enjoy teaching the basics. I feel the best way to enrich EMS and Firefighting is to educate those who want to learn, to give the newest among us a solid base for them to expand on for the next 20 or so years. Our experience is leaving. I see it here, and I hear of it all over the country. Someone I work with here explained it pretty well. "When I got here, everyone had grey hair and harassed me. Now, I have the grey hair, and all these kids harass me." It is up to us who will still be here in 15 years to pick up the small bits of wisdom, the little pearls that aren't in the textbooks, and hold on to them, learn them, and share them with newer generations. In the fire service, we are pretty well programed to this format of passing on our history. EMS is getting there. Hopefully this blog will inspire those among us to do the same, share our history and take the time to learn new ideas, techniques and embrace new technology.

I am a career firefighter in a medium sized city in the northern plains. On my off days, I work twice a week as a paramedic for a hospital based EMS system, the only ALS within 100 miles. I also volunteer with the rural (vol) fire dept and I am a tactical paramedic for the SWAT team too. People assume I have no family life and that I am too busy even keep a goldfish company, but the truth is I work ten 24hr shifts at the FD, two 10hr shifts at the ambulance, and the volunteer guys meet twice a month for 4 hrs and the PD meets once a month at night. I have three days a week off. I spend most of my off time with my family. I am 28 years old, married, with two kids. My daughter is 4 and my son is 2. They are a handful to say the least.

I came out here with the US Air Force. I was enlisted for 8 years, Security Forces. I separated in 2007 as a Staff Sergeant to pursue my firefighting career. You could insert "family business" instead of "my career." I grew up in a firehouse, north of Boston MA. You could say I have 17 years of secondhand firefighting experience, and 11 years of hands on firefighting experience.

I hope this blog will have a good following of a diverse nature, and everyone will learn something, or at least get a good laugh out of it.