Rodeo

On my shift one of the things we train on is called the "rodeo" (a term used by us). This simulates everything that a fireman may have to do here in Morongo Valley on a structure fire before help gets to him. This is roughly what we do. We first have the fireman (this time it was Grant) get dressed in his turnouts and SCBA and "click in" (this means he is using his air bottle to breath and not regular air). He then has to tag the fire hydrant (connect the hose from the engine to the hydrant and turn on the water). The fireman then runs to the engine and grabs one of the preconnected 1 3/4" hoses and drags it to the objective and flows water. This time there were some neighborhood kids at the park which enjoyed getting soaked by the training fireman. The fireman then has to run back to the engine to grab the "irons." He then has to return to the nozzle to flow some more water. He then makes the trip a several more time for different tools and flows water in between each trip. The last tool that he is instructed to grab is the 8 pound sledge hammer. He then has to swing it over his head and hit the target (the dirt or a tree stump) 50 times. About this time is where the firefighter is about to drop from exhaustion. The last time that we did this we had just started getting all the equipment back on the engine when we got a call for a vehicle over the side on the Morongo grade. We quickly loaded everything but the hose on the engine and ran the call. It turned out to be nothing. After clearing the call we headed back to the park to rebed our hose.