Fire

My two main goals in life are to be a professional photographer and to be a firefighter. I am well on my way in both directions. This post will be on some of the firefighting pictures I have taken. For now they are only of equipment and the rigs that they use. I haven't gotten a chance to get them in action on a fire yet. Fires are incredibly rare around Piedmont and I am not familiar with all the surrounding fire departments.

I have spent a lot of time with the Piedmont Fire Department because I want to try and learn as much as I can about being a firefighter and EMT (Emergency Medical Technician). As soon as I get out of high school I am hoping to have half of fire science degree completed. Next semester I am planning on taking a Wildland Firefighting class. The class is mostly going to be about the technical aspects of wildland firefighting, ex. How to set a controlled burn, how to use different tactics to put out a forest fire not using water. Also some labs will be worked in at some point.

By the end of next school year I plan to have my EMT certification allowing me to work with AMR or some other company, basically all mobile ambulance units that dont work out of a firehouse.Photography for me will always be the same as firefighting. For me my photographing career has already started and I am already starting to lift off the ground and soar with it.

I have been at the Piedmont firehouse doing ride-a -longs, basically doing everything a firefighter does for a day for ex. going on calls and what not. I have had a bunch of opportunities to take pictures of the rigs and all the equipment. Here's one from a while ago....

This is a turnout jacket. Turnouts are the clothes that firefighters use when they are fighting a fire.

These are the different hose lines that are carried by the truck, they are color coordinated to show the width and strength the hose can carry, psi.

Now these shots are from a couple days ago when I ran into some Piedmont fire guys learning how to pump water through the truck. The truck carries all of the ladders and some hoses. The engine carries all of the hoses and pumps the water from the hydrant and usually has to pump water through the truck, the engine also has a huge tank that holds water. The unique thing about the Piedmont Fire truck is that it holds water in a huge tank and can pump water from a hydrant, the term for that kind of truck is a Quint.

This is a shot of the guages that are used to keep track of the pressure of the water coming out of the truck and also which line it is coming out of, hose or ladder.

Another shot of the guages.

The Tele Squirt 65, this is the huge ladder that is on top of the truck that is used to reach buildings and what not. It has a massive nozzle on the end.

The lights are guages to how full the the tank is in the truck or quint. The little wheel thing in the corner opens up the tank so water can go in or out.

Another shot of the guages. I was really intrigued with how they looked that day.

This was my favorite shot out of the whole day. I saw the reflection and just took a bunch of pictures of it. Looked totally awesome. It was wet on the ground from all of the water that was being pumped and it just gave it a kick.

-Kellan