Fire Muster

Last weekend the firefighters on base hosted a Fire Muster, where we non-firefighter types were able to come out and 'live the dream' we all had as kids of being a fireman. They set up a few different events in which we competed as teams as well as an individual event category.

Here is a picture of our EMEDs team:


That's (left to right) me, Dave Lewis (RN from Nellis), Melissa Dooley (ER doc from Eglin), Magnum MaCrae (MCC tech from Eglin) and Greg Stroup (Gen Surgeon from Travis). You can see that Greg, Melissa and I are pretty average and we pulled in the other two as 'ringers.' Dave is a big strong guy that used to play a lot of rugby and Magnum runs an off duty business as a personal fitness trainer.

Our first event was the tug-o-war - pretty basic except that we used a fire hose and there was a tank of water in the middle that the winning team had to pull the loosing team up a ramp to finish the competition. With Dave as the anchor and Magnum as the muscle, we figured we would be OK.

We started off loosing ground initially until a friend advised us to "get down." We dropped to the ground and let them wear themselves out trying to drag us and then we were able to pull them up the ramp into the pool. That was a long 1:34, my forearms were dying by the end of it!

The next event was a sequence where you had to unroll 2 firehoses, connect them up to each other as well as to the water source, put the nozzle on and shoot some targets (baskeballs on cones). After knocking the baskeballs off we had to disconnect everything and roll up the hoses to finish the event. We did really well here and got one of the fastest times.

(cant find my picture of this one - I'll add it later)

After that we did a bucket brigade, passing water in buckets to splash on the roof of a small house. The water (at least some of it) would collect in the raingutter and fill into a barrel at the end and the fastest team to fill the barrel would win. The only catch was that all of the buckets had a bunch of holes in them and most of the water you threw on the roof splashed away rather than ending up in the barrel. We had a pretty good system going, though, with our tallest guy (Dave) throwing the water on the roof.

We figured out that it was easier to slide the buckets on the wet concrete, so we saved some serious time in bucket transfers and ended up with one of the top 3 times on this event as well.

At that juncture they tallied the points and the top four teams (out of a field of 20 or so) advanced to the last challenge event: The firehose joust. We were second on the leaderboard, at this point, so we 'made the cut' and prepared for the joust.

This was a really cool competition that put the two teams at the opposite ends of a rope stretched taut with a hanging bucket in the middle. The objective was to push the bucket (with the water jet) to the other side of the rope past the opposing team.


If you've ever seen how they use firehoses for riot control, you can imagine how it was for us when the glancing blows of the opponents water hit us. Despite the fact that we all had eye protection on, it made it very difficult to target the bucket when you had a face full of water.

Unfortunately for us, we picked the side that had the weaker water pressure and we got beat in both of our turns on the hose. Now I know it sounds like I'm making a big ol' excuse for us (and I am) but out of 12 competitions done (both during and after the formal event), every single time the joust was won by the team using the hose that we didn't use. No worries, though, we felt pretty good about our showing and ended up with the consolation prize as 4th.

After the team competition, I decided to enter in the individual competition as well.

There were two events which were timed and added together, with the fastest overall time being the winner.

The first part of the individual competition was the Bunker drill, in which you had to put on the full complement of fireman gear (correctly) as quickly as possible. Above is a picture of SrA Matt Wright just getting started on this drill (no one has pictures of me for this event).

And here is a picture as he is nearly finished. This part of the competition really favored smaller guys like me, since it was so much easier to fit into the suits that were relatively large on us. I watched a couple of big guys run into trouble because their hands were so big they couldn't easily fit them into the sleeves of the coat, let alone put on the gloves.

Next we did an obstacle course with a continuous timer. The first part was the hose drag, pulling two sections of hose the full length of a basketball court.

Those hose sections are heavier than you would imagine (although Magnum just picked up the whole hose and ran down the court with it). Officially you were supposed to drag it down, then come back to the end and finish pulling the whole thing across the line. This is SrA Amber Kelly 'putting her shoulder' into the drag.

Next we picked up one of the 'jaws of life' (40-50 lbs) and carried it around a cone at 1/2 court.


Next came the shuttle relay, where you had to pick up rolled sections of hose at one cone (one at a time), then run and stack them at another cone. This was the easiest part of the individual competition, but you were already starting to get tired by then.


Next we had to use a 10 lb sledge to hit a sandbag weighted truck tire 10-15 feet. You could expend a lot of energy here and only have the sledge bounce off the tire without advancing it much at all. Below is a picture of Magnum getting after it.


I used a non-traditional approach and backed up to the tire and hit it backwards between my legs with short, choppy hits. It moved really well that way and I made up a fair amount of time (and conserved energy) here.

Next we pulled another weighted tire with a rope across the 1/2 court line and back. You had to keep your feet in a relatively small area (so no holding onto the rope and running away to drag the tire), which made this the most difficult of the events for me - and by then I was really feeling tired from the previous parts of the course.


The last part of the course was the Dummy Drag, in which we were to take a 140 lb dummy around a cone at 1/2 court and then back to the line. Once again, I took a non-standard approach and instead of holding the dummy around the waist and walking backwards (how everyone else did it), I grabbed the dummy by the feet and dragged it with the head and shoulders bouncing on the ground. Granted that wouldn't be the preferred approach with a real patient, but there was no rule dictating the manner in which we dragged the dummy for the competition.

I was pretty wiped out by the end of the obstacle course and I felt like it took me a really long time, so I was amazed when they told me that I had completed the combined course in record time and that I was in the lead! My time held up to the few competitors that were left and I recieved the 1st place award for the individual event.

I am looking forward to finding a nice place in our library or our office at home to hang this ax! What a cool award they came up with to commemerate the event!