Summary Of The Brotherhood: Ethnography Of A Firefighter

Foundations of College Writing
November 9, 2013
The Brotherhood: Ethnography of a Firefighter In Cultural Experience: Ethnography in Complex Society, the writer’s, McCurdy, Spradley, and Shandy use the term “microculture” and define it as a culture associated with groups that form for a variety of reasons, but do not consume every hour of the member’s time (McCurdy 15). We learn that a microculture has its own language, behaviors, and standards that are shared amongst the group. People can be involved in multiple microcultures all at one time. For example, a firefighter is part of the firefighting microculture, but s/he could possibly be a member of the PTO at their child’s school, or maybe be a member of the bowling team. I have read
several ethnographies such as Juicing Their Way to the Top: Ethnography of a Tattoo Shop by Jennifer Boehlke, No Money, No Honey: An Ethnography of an Exotic Dancer by Melissa Cowell, and Getting the Truth: The Police Detective and the Art of Interviewing by Cole Akeson. Boehlke applies the concept of microculture by observing and interviewing the tattoo artists at the shop, Damascus. She is particularly interested in how the tattoo artist is like a chameleon in the social aspect when relating to customers and convincing them to come in and get a piercing or a tattoo. Akeson studied a police detective and analyzed how he uses body language to read people and assess if the person is telling the truth or not. Similarly, Cowell interviewed an exotic dancer and focused on the transformation aspect along with how the dancers deal with customers and unwanted sexual advances. Like Boehlke, Akeson, and Cowell, I too studied a microculture. I originally got interested in firefighting because I started dating my boyfriend, Weston, and he has been trying to figure out what to do with his life. He has come to the conclusion that he wants to be a firefighter. Throughout his classes and training, he has told me about some strategies and processes that firefighters use to save lives. Also, he has told me about some types of fires and equipment. I even got to try on his gear. Furthermore, Weston got me hooked on the television series, Chicago Fire. Learning all this information, seeing the show, and seeing his enthusiasm and interest in the subject, I chose to further investigate the rescuing aspect of the firefighting microculture. I studied firefighters and learned more about the training and application process of becoming a firefighter, their daily routine and equipment they use in rescues, types of situations they attend, challenges, and strategies and processes used to complete a rescue safely.
Methodology: Inside the Station
I arrived at Manchester Township Department of Fire services during the C-Squad’s 24-hour shift. I walked through the large garage-like doors in the back of the pad and entered the bay where I saw a large rig, a pumper, an ambo, and a rescue. To the right, along the wall, hung all the turnout gear and leathers. As I further explored the bay, I caught a glimpse of some New York hooks on the front of the rig and some other equipment within the rig and on the doors. Then, I entered through a set of grey double doors and took a peek at the watch room. I proceeded to the right, down a narrow hallway and entered a lounge room where four firefighters were resting on giant, comfy sofas. There, I met the captain, Rick Brocius, also known as Pee Wee, who has served the Manchester Department of Fire Services for eight and a half years. We went into his small office next door. While I was asking him questions, getting minimal, non-detailed answers, I overheard some of the radio calls. I was impressed with how firefighters understand all the codes used in the call. Unfortunately, I did not get to go on any of the calls because they were not related to this specific firehouse. Anyway, after the interview with Rick, he passed me off to Matt Russ, an EMT firefighter serving this department for five years and the Wrightsville Fire department as a volunteer for fifteen years. Matt took me on a tour through the station. On the tour, I saw the kitchen, the EOC (Emergency Operation Center), the sleeping area, and the weight room, where I met my third informant Celeste Jones, a woman firefighter. I asked her what it was like being a woman firefighter, if she is stereotyped against, and if she has a harder time fitting in. She responded, “She is like one of the guys” and is not treated any differently. She does feel like she has more to prove and that she works out more because she is trying to keep up. After the short interview with Celeste, Matt took me into the bay and further explained the vehicles I saw when I first walked in. He told me the differences between each vehicle and explained each vehicle’s purpose (refer to Figure 1).
For the second interview, I had to skype Weston. He is my fourth informant, having a different status than all the other informants, as a volunteer firefighter. He told me about some of the training processes and steps for saving a victim in a burning building and he expressed his knowledge of equipment used within the firehouse. Unfortunately, since we had to use skype, it was difficult to record him, so we had to do the interview twice. The second time, I just typed up everything he said. On my final interview, I made another site visit and spoke with Matt again. This time I obtained gruesome stories about some accidents he has ran and I took some pictures.

Vehicles Used
Length (in ft?) Smallest(1)
To biggest(3)
Nickname
Equipment/ Use
Color
# of Wheels
(axle)
Sound
# of people
Engine
1
(24-28 ft)
Wagon
Pumper
Gadgets for pumping water, storing water, hoses
Red, black, or white
6 wheels
(single)

Loud, siren
4
Truck
3
(48 ft)
Ladder Truck
Rig
Tower
Houses Ladders, bucket (can be extended),
Red, black, or white
10 Wheels
(tandem)
Loud, siren
6
Heavy Rescue
2
(36 ft 3 in)
Rescue
Squad
Saws, fans, jaws of life, etc.
Red, black, or white
6 wheels
(single)
Loud, siren
6
Figure 1- Paradigm- Comparing and Contrasting the Rescue Vehicles
How Do I Become A Firefighter? Perspective firefighters have to complete a lengthy process and a great deal of training before actually becoming a courageous firefighter. Captain Rick Brocius explains,
Well, all the career personnel go to a 3-month long career class. So, they go Monday through Friday to a military style fire academy, which is the same as a police academy, and you don’t have to have any training or skills to get hired since you go the military fire academy. And when you come out, there’s continued training.
The next step is the application process. Every three years, an eligibility list is advertised. One would fill out an application, get a notice in the mail about the test, and take the test. The test consists of one-hundred questions about mechanical aptitude, English, and reading comprehension. The second part of the test is a physical agility test or a C-PAT that requires the participant to wear a forty-five pound weight while completing ten obstacles in under ten minutes and twenty seconds. The final step is the oral interview with the captain. The training continues throughout the firefighter’s career whether it be in the drills during the shift or extra classes outside of the shift.
The Brotherhood Duties The Manchester Township Department of Fire Services has three different squads: the A-squad, B-squad, and the squad I interviewed, the C-Squad. Each squad runs 24-hour shifts starting at 7 a.m. When the squad first arrives at the station, they do a routine daily check. The daily check consists of making sure the rig (truck), the wagon (engine), the pumper (heavy rescue), and the ambo (ambulance) starts; checking the lights and sirens; putting water in the tank of the pumper; getting out the turnout gear (refer to Figure 2); and making sure the equipment is where it needs to be.

Parts of the Turnout Gear
Gloves

Coats

Pants

Boots

Leathers or Lids (Helmets)

Figure 2- Taxonomy- Parts of the Turnout Gear
The next part of a C-squad member’s day is to complete necessary housework such as sweeping, mopping, vacuuming, and cleaning bathrooms. After housework is complete, the members must complete at least two hours of drill work per shift practicing anything from raising ladders to visiting a site to practice emergency rescue steps.
Bee-do! Bee-do!* At any time during the firefighter’s shift, the claxton could go off and a call could come over the intercom. The firefighter’s rush to put on their turnout gear in under sixty-seconds. The call could come from any one of the twenty box assignments the department covers making the call to arrival time around five minutes or less. The Manchester Township Department of Fire Services is first alarm to cover Manchester, East Manchester, Conewago, Dover, Spring Garden, Springettsbury, and York City Township. They also cover all the boroughs within those townships. Usually, when the Manchester Department assists these other townships, the job is most likely to be a more life-threatening incident or a larger fire (refer to Figure 3) that needs more man power or extra hose lines to put excess water on the fire. They could also need a male or female coupling to connect more hoses. Other emergencies firefighters tend to are vehicles
*referenced from the movie Despicable. A term used by the minions meaning “fire, fire.”

Types of Fires
Trash

House

Business

Hotel

Flashover

Rollover

Black Fire

Back draft

Vehicle extractions or accidents, which require the “jaws of life”; floods; c-space entrapments or forcible entrees, which use the marriage set, consisting of a haligan bar and a flat head ax; rope rescue, which could need a 14-foot single section ladder, a 24 or 28-foot double sectioned ladder, or a 35-foot triple sectioned ladder; and medical calls, consisting of equipment inside the ambulance.

Figure 3- Taxonomy- Types of Fires
Search and Rescue Once they arrive at the job, say a fire, the firefighter’s do a size-up and determine the steps of action to take while either communicating face-to-face or over the radio. Next, they do a layout, which is when they secure the water supply line and wrap it around the hydrant. After the firefighters complete the size-up and layout, they determine whether the fire is offensive or defensive, meaning they decide to go in or stay out to fight the fire. If they decide to fight the fire from within the building, the firefighters get into a group of three or four. The first person is the nozzleman. He is the one who attacks the fire by controlling the hose. The second person is the back-up; he controls the back pressure of the water and helps pull the hose into the building. The third firefighter helps feed the line into the building and keeps an eye on the first two men to make sure they have enough hose. The last person stands outside of the building and helps feed in the line as well. If they would happen to hear screaming or yelling and they cannot get to the room or if the floor gave out, the firefighters would send another team of two from the outside, up a ladder to complete a search and rescue. The following excerpt is an explanation by Weston about how to complete this process.
First, you climb the ladder with an ax in hand, with another firefighter heeling [the ladder.] When you get to the top, you put your left foot over the window sill, and while you are straddling the window sill, you take your ax and with the handle part, you make a quick sweep down to the floor to check for any people below you. Then, you will sound the floor, which is where you take the handle and beat on the floor to make sure it’s sturdy and not weak. Then, you put your left foot on the floor carefully and swing your right foot over and slowly lower yourself to the floor. Once you are fully inside, you’ll get low and kneel or crawl. You can also squat. Make sure you keep your right hand on the wall at all times and your ax in your left hand and then, you’ll sweep the floor to see if you bump into any unconscious victims. If and when you find the person, you’ll back track against the wall and carry the person to the window sill and out the window.
During the interview, Weston explained how to carry a conscious person and unconscious person down a ladder. He explains:
When rescuing an unconscious victim, you would lay the body on its side facing towards yourself. Then, you put your left arm between their legs, and your right arm underneath the arm pit of their bottom arm. Then, you would hold on to the beam while the body is resting on your arms, climbing down one step at a time, sliding the body down slowly. Then, there’s the conscious victim. First, you would get onto the ladder and the victim would step on the ladder in front of you. Then, once the victim is secure, you would place your knee in the crotch of the victim. Then, you place your arms under the armpits of the victim and climb down one rung at a time. If the victim is scared or sick or would lose consciousness you can catch them without them falling.
When asked what would happen if the person was too big for one firefighter to carry down the ladder, Weston responded, “they’ll put up another ladder and a second firefighter would come up to help.”
Challenges
Besides having to worry about carrying victims that are too large down ladders, firefighters also have to worry about other challenges. For example, Matt expressed a situation in which he had to deal with an unruly victim after a chaotic truck accident on I- 83.
We pulled up just at that time the guys from 23 were dragging a person out from under the trucks over towards the Jersey barrier. So, we went up to him ‘cuz he was obviously going to be our priority patient. He looked like he had burns all over him, but he actually wasn’t that burnt. We weren’t really sure what was wrong with him because he just wasn’t acting right; he was totally out of it. The scene was just very chaotic, so we loaded him up into the ambulance. He fought us the whole way to the hospital. We took him to the trauma bay because we thought he could have had a head injury. It’s been a very severe crash, you know, two trucks were rear ended by a tractor trailer all because a mattress fell onto the highway.
Other than dealing with unruly victims or bystanders, firefighters have to maneuver through traffic to be able to get to the victim(s) before serious injury or death. If the accident is very serious, the victim could cause himself more harm by trying to move. Sometimes, when an accident occurs on a major highway, an entire lane could be blocked by the accident. Although resulting in a fatality, Matt shared a story about a time when the entire southbound lane was closed and he had to jump the Jersey barrier to find the victim fubar-ed (f*****d up beyond all recognition), but still barely living.
We’re first on scene.
It was all in the southbound lane and we were in the northbound lane, but we just parked there because there’s just people everywhere; they’re just screaming, crying, whatever. I jumped the Jersey barrier and this guy is just FUBAR-ed. He’s still alive; it would have been better if he was just dead, but he died in the back of the ambulance. What we think happened, or appeared to have happened, was that he wrecked his truck and as it was rolling down the interstate; he got ejected. His truck was sitting sideways south of the accident and the weird thing is that some of the bystanders said that right after that happened, he stood up, and then, he got hit 2 or 3 times by other vehicles. He was, for as bad as he was messed up, still moving his eyes, still breathing, and still had a pulse. We boarded him quick, threw him in the back of the ambulance. The medic met up with us. We didn’t leave right away because we had that feeling that he wasn’t gonna make it. It was pretty much a give-me that he wasn’t gonna live. They put him a monitor on him, his pulse was like 20, then went to 16, then like 14, then like 12, and his breathing was getting shallow, and the biggest thing is the color of his skin. It went from red like road- burn to purple and then, it just went white when his pulse hit zero, and then, he died; there was no way to save him. He had a hole the size of a soft ball missing out of the side of his head like right here beside his right eye.
[gestures to head] You could see the skull, but you couldn’t see any of the brains so, that’s good.
“It’s the Best Job in the World.”
Despite having to complete an enormous amount of training, having a rigorous, “always on your toes” kind of daily routine, attending life-threatening situations and learning safety strategies for each, and dealing with a multitude of challenges, Matt Russ claims that firefighting is still “the best job in the world.”
One aspect that I did not cover was how a firefighter manages their home life, what they do when they are not at the firehouse, and how firefighting has an effect on their home life.
Another aspect that I did not look at is how the job affects their mental stability, such as how they deal with deaths and gruesome sights. Although I did not look at these aspects, I carefully analyzed the rescue aspect in the interviews with Weston, Rick, Matt, and Celeste. Each informant had a different reason for becoming a firefighter and each of them have a different outlook on the firefighting microculture, but they were all brought together in the brotherhood with one common goal: saving
lives.

Works Cited
Akeson, Cole. “Getting the Truth: The Police Detective and the Art of Interviewing.” McCurdy, Spradley, and Shandy 103-111.
Boehlke, Jennifer. “Juicing Their Way to the Top: Ethnography of a Tattoo Shop.” McCurdy, Spradley, and Shandy 112-120.
Brocius, Rick. Personal Interview. 18 Oct. 2013
Cowell, Melissa. “No Money, No Honey: Ethnography of an Exotic Dancer.” McCurdy, Spradley, and Shandy 121-129.
Danfelt, Weston. Personal Interview. 27 Oct. 2013
Jones, Celeste. Personal Interview. 18 Oct. 2013
McCurdy, David W., James P. Spradley, and Dianna J. Shandy. The Cultural Experience: Ethnography in Complex Society. Eds. David W. McCurdy, 2nd ed. Long Grove, IL: Waveland P. 2005. Print.
Russ, Matt. Personal Interview. 18 Oct. 2013
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