Ready to serve and protect

Dii dii daaaaa… “Good afternoon fire station Botkyrka, it’s go-time again, we have a priority one alarm, suspected fire in apartment 9th floor on X road, vehicles 8410, 8420 and 8430” When the speakers go silent we look at each other and I say “man, that’s a lot of stairs”, and then we continue with raising the ground cables with a 3 meter telescope arm – we are practicing grounding 16 000 V electricity cables for the railroad for when we need to work with train accidents. We have now completed 7 out of 9 weeks of training and have learnt more than I thought was possible at a pace that is slightly superhuman. From how to transform regular cars into cabriolets transformer style with huge scissor’s to grounding 16 000 V electricity cables that run the railroad. Pretty sweet. But what’s even sweeter is that when the first thing I comment on when that alarm sounds is that those stairs will be tough to run up carrying hoses, I am also indirectly indicating that I feel ready to do so. Progress always sneaks up on you, and I am slowly realizing that I am ready to start doing all those things that come with the job firefighter. It’s exciting. I never thought I’d ever become comfortable going into a house engulfed in fire and the biggest problem I have is wanting to speed up the search pattern. I am slowly turning into a fire fighter. Good thing, I start working the shift in two weeks.