Friday, March 20, 2009

A VISIT TO THE FIRE STATION

We went to visit a local fire station last week. It was actually the special activity that we picked out for Calvin's birthday but it doubled as a homeschool field trip and we invited the Oldlands to come along.
This is Benjamin with William Oldland. These two are the same age and have the exact same birthday. Here is Jocelyn with her girls and baby Jonathan.
Sam and Will. A fireman put on a video for the kids to watch before their tour.
Samuel Oldland and Calvin.
The fireman who was going to give our tour got called out on a fire call and so I think this is the Captain instead. Here he is showing us the kitchen. This firehouse has paid firefighters who have 24 hour shifts. They are paid to be there and wait for calls. The Captain told us that they use the kitchen quite a bit. While they're there they often have a lot of time to cook up good meals.
Here the kids are walking through the sleeping quarters or bedroom of the firemen.
Out in the garage, seeing and hearing about a truck.
Looking it over.
This is the pumping mechanism. It runs on the same engine as the truck. The truck stores 750 gallons of water. That's enough to pump water for about 5 minutes before the truck would have to hook up to a hydrant.
The hose coiled up below the pumping mechanism.
Talking about the ladders.
The Captain showed us all of the storage compartments and explained the equipment that was stored there and how it was used. There's an amazing amount of hose stored on these things!
More storage and baby Jonathan. :-)
This is full of nozzle fittings, Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus, flotation devices and other things.
I didn't realize that firemen carry many tarps to cover people's property in an effort to protect it during the spraying necessary to fight a fire.
Calvin is in the front row. He is intently viewing all of these interesting things! We knew he would be the one to especially enjoy this trip.
The firefighter who went out on a call returned and we were able to go over and take a look at the truck he brought back.
I asked the Captain about the fireman's uniforms and he showed me that the man on duty keeps his boots and pants stored right on the truck, as I photographed below. Just as you'd picture, they put their feet in their boots and then just pull up their pants and put their suspenders over their shoulders.
There's all of the kids.
Calvin enjoyed his fire visit!
As we were leaving he predictably said, "When I grow up, I'm going to be a fire engine man!"

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

How fun. Hey Julie, I am starting up my blog and I have a question. I will email you.

Anonymous said...

i saw the piece Brian Williams did on Morgantown on the Nightly News this week. I could hardly believe it but there he was. Morgantown looks so pretty.

Thanks for your encouragement. Now I just have to learn how to put in all the pictures and have text around them.

It's fun.