Firefighting

Dallas Allison is interviewed about his career as a full-time firefighter. He describes his daily tasks, such as checking equipment, training, and responding to calls. Dallas explains the educational requirements, certifications, and starting salary for firefighters. He also mentions the rewarding aspects of the job, the challenges he faced, and the impact he can have on people's lives. Dallas advises interested individuals to start with volunteer departments and highlights the importance of the brotherhood among firefighters. He also discusses the darker aspects of the job, including traumatic incidents. Overall, Dallas provides insights into the diverse responsibilities and experiences of a firefighter. I'm excited to interview a good friend of mine, Dallas Allison. We met together back in 2011 on the fire department. Since then, you've really excelled a lot, and now you're full-time career on Belmont, right? Yes, sir. What specifically do you do in your career field? So a shift day for me would consist of me coming in, I'll remove the turnout gear of the previous person who rode my seat, my truck rides four people, I have an engineer who drives the truck, I have a captain who calls all the shots, I'm a senior man in the back, and I have an 18-year-old who is my backup man, or I'm his backup man on the hose line. But a normal day for us consists of removing the previous person's gear, figuring out what tasks we have for the day ahead, cleaning the station, checking off the trucks, making sure the pumps work on the truck, making sure the saws are fueled, making sure the medical bags work. And then for the rest of the day, it's just we train, we cook together, sleep together, and then all between that time, we answer whatever calls may come in during the day. So that's a lot done, Pat. Essentially, it's not just fighting fire. You don't just sit at the station and wait around to fight fire. You cover a multitude of things. Yes. Just not to get too specific, essentially it sounds like your duties are to come in, make sure everything's good from the last shift, make sure everything's good for your shift, and then kind of collaborate with your crew. It sounds like you've got an officer above you, and then you lead everybody else under you. Yes. So for me, my captain will handle the day-to-day operations, anything from we have fire prevention, or we have to go test hydrants, or we have to go do a building inspection, those are usually the roles he handles. Or when we show up to a fire scene, he'll delegate assignments to people. But as far as I go for senior man in the back, it's my responsibility per my captain to take the younger guy in the back with me, train with him, teach him. Yesterday, we took ladders off a truck and showed in a proper way to put a ladder against a building, the proper way to put what we have, a roof ladder, which has two hooks to put it on the roof properly, how to properly cut a ventilation hole, just pretty much how to be most proficient in the role he's in at such a young age and so new to this career. So we haven't gotten into what kind of schooling you need, but it sounds like it's just a never-ending learning, like you continually sharpen your skills and continue to learn. Yes. Did you always know that you were going to be a firefighter? Yes, I've known my whole life. I've always wanted to do it. It's sort of a family tradition, and I was happy to follow into that footsteps of my grandfather, who was the first one who put in 30-plus years of fire service. What are the educational requirements for being a firefighter? We have to go through several hours, I think it's 300-plus hours of firefighter certifications, and to be on the full-time side, you also have to have your emergency medical technician, which is in and of itself another 200-plus hours. You just get your high school diploma and then go straight into the training. It's not college per se, but it's a specific training unique to the firefighting career field. Yes. It's not, you take them through a college, but they're not credited courses, but it is a North Carolina certification course. So each state has its own certifications? Yes. Some states accept other states if you were to relocate, but not every state accepts every other state's certification. So if you do get certified in one state and move to another state, I would check to make sure they accept that state's certifications. Does this career offer any incentives for furthering your education, i.e. more certifications or college stuff? Most fire departments will offer a tuition reimbursement plan, and once you complete your two-year, most departments will do a 5% pay raise. And if you complete your four-year, most departments will give you a 10% pay raise. As far as certifications go, you really started knocking them out. Yes. What's the most recent one you've completed? My driver operator to drive aerial apparatus. Aerial apparatus would be the official name for the ladder truck? Yes. We could spend all day going down the rabbit hole of the different types of trucks. Yes, big rabbit hole. What kind of starting salary are we looking at? What kind of range? Most departments, between $35,000 to $45,000 for your smaller departments, and that will depend upon what certifications you have, years of experience you have. Your bigger departments could start you out at closer to $50,000, $55,000. There's a wide range, just a lot of variables. Yes. What would you consider to be the most rewarding part of the job? The most rewarding thing for me is that point in the day where you've done all your check-offs, you've cleaned the station, and you've done all the tasks at hand for the day, and it's that moment of the day after lunch but before dinner that you just sit out in the bay in a computer chair with the guys and just pretty much just shoot the crap, talk crap, cut up, pretty much just bonding with your guys that you spend so much time with. It's really just a family. Pretty much, yes. It's a second family because every third day you spend 24 hours with these people, so you grow a strong bond with them. Can you tell me a time that you encountered a challenge in firefighting and how you overcame it? Yes, I got a good one. When I first got hired at Belmont, I had all my certifications I needed except for my emergency medical technician, which is a pretty challenging obstacle to get over. I failed a test. I was nervous. I thought about if I don't pass again, I'll lose my job, but then I just sit down and thought to myself, just buckle down, study really hard. I studied as much as I could for as long as I could. I'd take a break to eat lunch, eat dinner, but as soon as I finished, I was back in the books and the day of my retake came and I ended up making an 85 on that test. And then you were certified after that? Yes. Can you tell me a time where you helped or changed somebody's life? For the most part, you just run the call, do what you're trained to do, but for that person, it could mean the biggest difference in the world, but for you, it's just the day in, day out. You're just doing what you're trained to do, so you might not notice how much you impacted that person's life just by doing your job, but to them, it means the world. What advice would you give someone like me that's looking at going into this field? So a good bit of advice to give is some people get into it, but it's not for them. The best bit of advice I can give is you have three different departments. You have your 100% volunteer, you have your volunteer slash part-time, and you also have your full-time only departments. My best bit of advice would be seek out your local volunteer department, submit an application to join, go to their training nights, and see if it's something you enjoy, and if you enjoy that, that department will pay for you to go through your certification courses, and if you're still in love with the job after doing all that, then you can seek your full-time, or if it's something you 100% know you want to do, you have bigger departments who will hire you with zero experience, and they have their own academy that they will send you to, like the Charlotte Fire Department's one of them. They will hire you with zero experience, put you through their academy, you'll get your firefighter certification, your EMT certification, and then on top of all those, they will give you a bunch of other certifications, which are specialty certifications, and then they will put you on a truck. I saved story time for last, because I guess in firefighting, it can get a little bit darker than, you know, your run-of-the-mill career. Can you give me some examples of what you might expect to see? Yeah, it could vary, whether it be a car wreck where you know the person might not make it, but you still treat them with the same compassion that you do somebody who you know will make it, or it could be, you know, 8 o'clock at night, somebody just walking down the train tracks when they shouldn't be, and just don't hear a train coming, end up getting hit by a train, you pretty much just have to piece them back together in a body bag, or it could be a house fire that, you know, the homeowner didn't call in because they were unconscious from all the smoke inhalation, and then it gets out of hand, so the neighbor calls, and when you get there and find her and drag her out, she's immediately life-flighted by helicopter to a hospital, and then pronounced dead at the hospital, it's just, you just see so many different things, you just gotta find the best way you can to process it and move on from it. What's an unexpected part of the field that wound up being a really good thing? The best thing I found that was unexpected is people talk about the brotherhood, but until you actually get into a line of work that talks about the brotherhood, you really don't know, so when I got into this full-time, I found that, you know, you build a strong bond with the people you work with because you do spend so much time with them, and if, you know, you needed them at three in the afternoon, three in the morning, they wouldn't hesitate to drop whatever they're doing or wherever they're at to be there for you and go to the ends of the earth with you. Thanks for interviewing with us today, Dallas, I appreciate you taking the time. I'm sure that there's a lot of things that we didn't cover just because it's such a broad range of things you do, right? Yes, sir. I'm going to leave my email in the description so y'all can email questions in, you can send the questions in through Facebook, and if we get a lot, would you be open to kind of continuing this on another podcast? Yes, I would. Awesome. Well, that concludes today's podcast of My Next Career. We will see you next time. Bye-bye.