Top five mistakes rookie firefighter make in their first year

Recently we asked veteran firefighters to provide us with a list of some of the errors they see new firefighters make. The transformation from civilian to full-fledged smoke eater is not an easy one. So for all the rookies out there here are five thing to think about and change if you plan to make it as a firefighter.

Accepting SCBA acclimation duties

Rookie FirefightersUniversally it seemed training officers like to make the rookie put on an SCBA and do silly tasks. Mow the lawn, wash the truck, and even doing the cooking, all in the name of getting someone accustom to have on that air pack.

Come on rookie this is just hazing. Mowing the lawn in an SCBA has noting to do with putting out a fire. Everyone knows you don’t pack up unless there is smoke. Otherwise it is just wasting bottles of air.

All they are doing is seeing if you will blindly listen to them. Face it having your pack on that much might hurt your back.

Cleaning bathrooms and Kitchens

Every shift you are stuck cleaning the bathroom and doing the entire kitchen cleaning. Go ask the Battalion Chief for the list of house duties. Bet you will find out these cleaning jobs are assigned to someone else.

Yep each shift all the chorus are assigned on a rotating basis. To mess with the rookie older firefighters will hid the list and just tell the rookie to do the crap work. They then take the easy tasks like vacuuming the hallway.

So get that list from the BC and carry it around. When they tell you to do something that is not your task, put them in their place by showing them the list.

Listening to older members with out questioning

This goes back to the first two issues we addressed above.

Rookies just listen blindly to anything an older member will tell them. If someone tells you to do a task, your immediate response needs to be “WHY?”.

The older generation got hazed. They feel it is their right to thus haze the next generation. We need to stop this cycle. Your generation has the power. Ask why, if they can’t provide a reasonable explanation, you don’t do it.

The big part of hazing is to see if you will stand up for yourself. The faster you do that the faster you will earn the respect of the crew. Imagine the power of gaining respect on your first shift by just saying “NO” to some stupid chore like lawn mowing in an SCBA.

Failing to point out how in the academy you learned a different way to do a task

New recruits coming out of the academy are some of our best tacticians today. You have a longer academy than ever. Training simulators are more realistic and you get more time in them. It is likely you have seen more fire in the last three months than guys on your crew have seen in the last two years.

Yet out on the fire ground they are telling you how to do the job. Lets face they are always doing it “old school”. They are stuck in the past.

Why bother with an academy if you just have to re-learn everything? Speak up, if need be take command. Don’t accept inferior tactics just because your crew refuses to keep up on their training.

Spending time socializing on shift when you could be alone doing your own thing

When at the firehouse you kids are spending too much time at the kitchen table listening to the old guys tell war stories. All you are doing is stroking their egos and letting them live in the past.

Look around you. How many firefighters have a side business for extra income? In your firehouse someone runs a blog, a guy has a construction/remodeling company, maybe a novel author, and even someone who is the local distributor for public safety gear.

You need to be productive. Bring your laptop or your iPad to work, so you can do stuff for your second job. Instead of listening to stories, you can be earning on that second income.

At the end of the day, some story will not pay your future kids college tuition. But the time you put into that second job will put you into a better lifestyle.

These were the top five we here at CallTheCops picked. Feel free to comment below with any other rookie mistakes you want to vent about.

About Staff

The staff at the CallTheCops are all people who now or at one time did work as police, firefighters, in EMS and even dispatch.