♪ [dramatic music] ♪​
-We believe that people
deserve a high quality firefighter
to show up on the doorstep in their time of need.
-We're challenging ourselves to be better every day.
♪♪​ [dramatic music]​
- The career of the fire service
is one of the hardest jobs that I know.
We're expected to work hard to get the job done.
And the amount of stress that we are exposed to
and it can be high.
So it's even going to be harder out in the real world.
So that's why we
put a big emphasis on their level of attention
and their level of ability
and their proficiency in their skills.
♪ [dramatic music]​ ♪​
In the first four weeks
of recruit training is just basic skills.
- Very physical, day one.
You know, the model is kind of
crawl, walk, run.
- Get them introduced to
the skills and to the equipment.
And then now we've progressed
into combining all those things together.
[hammering and wood cracking]
This training is, is very hard.
- I got a victim! - Good.
(CAPT. JORGE BERNAL) These weeks of recruit
training are very physically demanding.
In fact, it's been nicknamed “The Grind.”
- Yeah, it's a fitting name for it.
(CAPT. JORGE BERNAL) Recruits are constantly
doing evolutions, training,
resetting and doing them again so they can gain
proficiency in their skill.
With all these drills,
they start from the very beginning to the very end.
So that means you can see that, recruit firefighters
getting out of the rig, simulating
that they just pulled up to the structure fire.
And they’re deploying the hose, making entry.
- It's a big hose, it's a lot of water.
and it's super heavy.
(recruit’s speking to each other) inaudible
(CAPT. JORGE BERNAL) Making sure that they get the hose
to the proper location
and then work that fire with their nozzle streams.
- Putting everything together.
It's the most complex drills that were being tested on.
It's all gas, no brakes.
(CAPT. JORGE BERNAL) We're practicing our V.E.S.,
which stands for
vent, enter, search drills
And the,
recruit firefighters are laddering the building.
(sound of window obsticles being smashed)
Going up, searching that room, isolating that room,
and then exiting, then finding a simulated dummy
or a victim and bringing them down.
We have, recruit firefighters,
laddering to the roof line, establishing
[metal ladder clanging]
foot protection using a roofer and then
proceeding to practice their cut sequence,
(chainsaw cutting into wood)
vertical vent, pitched roof.
-It's a, it's a pretty long drill.
It's about 12 minutes.
The most fun for me because I,
used to work with a chainsaw in wildland fire,
and we get to cut a roof open.
- And that's all happening, all at once.
So now they're getting
a little taste of having to work around
all these obstacles
with other units performing their operations.
We are constantly correcting their mistakes.
- Shut it down!
- Giving them instructional ways to improve.
-You don’t, louver here, you gotta louver like this.
-Do it again.
-Line is good, alright go.
- When they receive that feedback that wasn't
they didn't do everything correctly.
It wasn't perfect.
- I would say you have to have a growth mindset.
Just take it for what it is and do better.
-And make the necessary adjustments for the next go around.
We’re at North Bend, Washington,
at the Washington State Fire Training Academy.
Our level of expectations is increased here.
Today is way more intense
than the training facility down in Seattle, Washington.
We have three floors and we're burning
simultaneously on each floor.
They have smoke. They have heat.
Even though this is a
controlled environment, we control the burns,
we time it just perfectly.
We have safety lines, Safety Chief, everything.
We still treat it as an immediate
danger to life and health.
[metal ladder clanging]
- Safety is the number one priority
for every drill that we do and everything that we do.
Because if we get hurt, we can't do our job.
- We're doing multi company operations today.
They're constantly being evaluated.
All the while you have to be focused on doing your job.
If someone doesn't do their job
correctly there's a trickle down effect
and it might affect your operations.
And you have to be able to in a split second
to adjust to that,
because we want to make sure
that they can operate safely on their own
and whether they're able to,
keep themselves safe and their partner safe.
The reality is, is not
everybody is going to be successful.
- You have to be
a specific type of person to want to do this work,
and to be able to do this work.
But if you want it bad enough, you can do it.
♪♪​ [dramatic music]
(CAPT. JORGE BERNAL) Car fires is, something that we expect
that they will encounter at some point.
Early point of their career.
- Car fires were new to me.
We’re jumping off the rig, like, ready to go.
We're already masked up.
It's a very realistic scenario.
And there's fire right there.
(CAPT. JORGE BERNAL) This is the closest they've ever been to flames.
And we also have simulated dummies in there,
we have to do a physical grab.
So they actually have to get
up underneath it, lift it up out
through the obstacle of the car.
- The urgency is there, obviously,
and that kind of drives it home, that,
you know, you are pulling somebody out of that car.
(CAPT. JORGE BERNAL) That's part of their firefighter one,
certification through the state.
They have to demonstrate
the proper use of the extinguisher
on different types of classes of fire.
[extingusher spraying a fire]
♪♪​ [dramatic music]
Currently, we're on week 13 of the training program,
what we call recruit house fires.
The recruits have two and a half
more weeks left in the training division.
We try to give them the foundational blocks
so that when they exit recruit training
and go out to the companies, they can actually start
building their career and their experience.
(RENEE FERNANDEZ) They prepare you for the worst case scenario.
The you know how to deal with it.
It's just second nature.
♪♪​ [dramatic music]
(CAPT. JORGE BERNAL) And if they happen
to make it out of this training program,
they're going to be able to start working right beside
some of the leading people in the nation.
♪♪​ [dramatic music]
- I feel so lucky to be able
to do this job
and work with some of the most incredible people.
It's it's the best job in the world.
It's like, winning the lottery is an understatement.
♪♪​ [dramatic music fades out]
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