Fire Prevention Geek

Fire Prevention Geek

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Fire Service Training & Education Suzanne Freeman is a Professor of Fire Technology at Santa Ana College.

I use this site to post things related to Fire Service training and education, Fire Technology, and, of course, all things fire prevention-- both funny and serious--and anything else that I find remarkable- or think you might.

Operating as usual

12/09/2024

World Central Kitchen is providing free meals for evacuees and first responders from 12PM/noon until midnight tonight Thur. Sep 12th in the parking lot of The Home Depot in Victorville at 15655 Roy Rogers Dr, Victorville, CA 92394. Tell a friend.

13/08/2024

Interview with the fire prevention officer in charge of the Sint Maartin Airport

08/07/2024

I ❤️LA 😂

04/05/2024
03/05/2024

A great reminder 💜:
At age 23, Tina Fey was working at a YMCA.
At age 23, Oprah was fired from her first reporting job.
At age 24, Stephen King was working as a janitor and living in a trailer.
At age 27, Vincent Van Gogh failed as a missionary and decided to go to art school.
At age 28, J.K. Rowling was a single parent living on welfare who was clinically depressed and at times has contemplated su***de.
At age 28, Wayne Coyne (from The Flaming Lips) was a fry cook.
At age 30, Harrison Ford was a carpenter.
At age 30, Martha Stewart was a stockbroker.
At age 37, Ang Lee was a stay-at-home-dad working odd jobs.
Julia Child released her first cookbook at age 39, and got her own cooking show at age 51.
Vera Wang failed to make the Olympic figure skating team, didn’t get the Editor-in-Chief position at Vogue, and designed her first dress at age 40.
Stan Lee didn’t release his first big comic book until he was 40.
Alan Rickman gave up his graphic design career to pursue acting at age 42.
Samuel L. Jackson didn’t get his first major movie role until he was 40.
Morgan Freeman landed his first MAJOR movie role at age 52.
Kathryn Bigelow only reached international success when she made The Hurt Locker at age 57.
Grandma Moses didn’t begin her painting career until age 76.
Louise Bourgeois didn’t become a famous artist until she was 78.
Whatever your dream is, it is not too late to achieve it. You aren’t a failure because you haven’t found fame and fortune by the age of 21.
Hell, it’s okay if you don’t even know what your dream is yet. Even if you’re flipping burgers, waiting tables or answering phones today, you never know where you’ll end up tomorrow.
Never tell yourself you’re too old to make it.
Never tell yourself you missed your chance.
Never tell yourself that you aren’t good enough.
You can do it. Whatever it is that sets your soul on fire.

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Credit goes to the Respective Author / Owner

26/04/2024

25/04/2024

This. 💯❤️❤️❤️

By the time you are finished with your career in the fire service, everything about you will have changed. You will be old. You will be experienced. You will be confident, patient, and wise. Or, you will be old, disillusioned, angry, and bitter.

The people with whom you started your career won’t be the same, either. The friends you made along the way will be retired, on a different group, or in a different position. The ones who knew the idealistic kid who was just starting his life will be replaced by idealistic kids just starting theirs. They will know only what you project. They do not share your experiences or your passions that may or may not still be there. They did not know who you were; they only know who you are.

What you are is a culmination of the experiences that shaped you. The things you did, the things you saw, and the lives saved and lost all had an impact. Yours is not a normal life with a predictable trajectory. The ups and downs of a life in the fire service has ruined many good people and created its fair share of monsters. Fortunately, the firefighting life instills a sense of camaraderie, purpose, competence, and resilience in most of us.

So, who will they remember when your time is through?

The fearless firefighter with his entire career ahead of him, or the tired, old officer who is putting in his time so he can collect his pension?

The kid in the academy, fascinated with every new bit of knowledge obtained, eager to put it to use, or the guy who knows it all, done it all, and isn’t impressed?

The first one on the truck, or the old man who makes those eager kids fresh out of the academy wait?

The one who starts housework, or the guy who waits for someone else to pick up a mop?

The one who trained hard, or the one who goes through the motions?

The one who responded to every emergency with the desire to mitigate whatever waited, or the one who looked at the call as more of a problem than an opportunity to create a solution?

The one who wore the uniform, indicative of the person wearing it?

The one who looks back on his career with fondness or contempt?

The answer to these questions is completely up to you. In an unpredictable line of work, one thing is always under your control: how you handle it.

There are no perfect firefighters. Each and every one of us has survived moments we regret. During a long career, there will be times that you question your commitment. Excitement fades, routine sets in, and friends come and go. Politics wear you down, and time away from home becomes unbearable.

To successfully navigate it all, it is imperative to hold on to the person you were before you became a firefighter. Keep that person locked away in a place inside you. Talk to him when things get difficult. You weren’t always burdened with the knowledge that life is cruel; good people die for no reason; and, sometimes, the best you have to offer isn’t good enough. The “old” you is actually the real you, just without the baggage. If you can stay connected to him, you will be remembered as the firefighter who showed up, did the job, did it well, and left the job far better than it was before you came along.

By Michael Morse

Photo by Tim Olk

Originally published in Fire Engineering

09/04/2024

Wow.

05/04/2024

They used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all p*e in a pot & then once a day it was taken & sold to the tannery. If you had to do this to survive you were “p**s poor.”
But worse than that were the really poor folk who couldn’t even afford to buy a pot; they “didn’t have a pot to p**s in” & were the lowest of the low.

The next time you are washing your hands & complain because the water temperature isn’t just how you like it, think about how things used to be. Here are some facts about the 1500s.

Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and they still smelled pretty good by June. Since they were starting to smell, however, brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.

Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women, and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it … hence the saying, “Don’t throw the baby out with the Bath water!”

Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof, resulting in the idiom, “It’s raining cats and dogs.”

There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed, therefore, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That’s how canopy beds came into existence.

The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt, leading folks to coin the phrase “dirt poor.”

The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entrance-way, subsequently creating a “thresh hold.”

In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire.. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while, and thus the rhyme, “Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old.”

Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could, “bring home the bacon.” They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and “chew the fat.”

Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.

Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the “upper crust.”

Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial.. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up, creating the custom of holding a wake.

England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive, so they would tie a string on the wrist of the co**se, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift.) to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be, saved by the bell or was considered a dead ringer.

Now, whoever said History was boring?

10/03/2024

😵‍💫

⏰ 🔥

University of Alaska, Fairbanks 08/03/2024

Ready for fire and ice? Find out more March 18! Join us!

University of Alaska, Fairbanks Polar Pathway Information Session Interested in a little fire AND ice? Transfer to the University of Alaska Fairbanks and work as a paid...

02/03/2024

Close. the. Door. 😁Iykyk

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