Stop, Drop, and Roll!

We have officially finished our classroom phase of Onboarding and have moved on to the drills and it is heating up…literally! We spent my first week working through faith foundations so we are all on the same page as far as the character of the God we serve.

Some sweet moments worshipping together

We spent my second week on personal and interpersonal relationships, personality, living in community and conflict management (as there is bound to be some of that needed when you put 450 people from 40 different nations into one floating box together). 

Adding my take on personality by reading The Treasure Tree aloud to some of my friends

My third week was all about World View and how we get our own world view and how we can take off those glasses in order to better serve the people we have come to serve.

Our culture collage...displaying some of the world views we come from

This week we are focusing on fire drills, wet drills, CPR, and first aid training. Yesterday we learned quite a bit about the theory of firefighting, different classes of fires, which extinguishers to use on which types of fires, flash points, spontaneous combustion, conduction, convection, radiation, which parts of the ship are most susceptible to fire and lots more. Then we headed down to get fitted for our turnouts for fire fighting including turnout pants, jacket, boots, hood, helmet, gloves, and SCBA (Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus…think SCUBA gear, but not underwater). We then learned how to put everything on and how to operate our SCBAs and got to practice putting them all on and taking them all off. 

We were then timed (my least favorite things in the world). We had to be able to get our bunker gear on in three minutes or less and get our SCBAs running and breathing through them in sixty seconds or less. I passed! Having all the gear on felt incredibly similar to a certain job I had at Disneyland in both heat and bulkiness! At the end of the day we were told to drink water like crazy in order to be hydrated enough for the firefighting. I don’t think I’ve ever drunk so much water in my life! I was pretty nervous about this whole ordeal…fire is not my friend. As I was praying about it I was thinking about the story in the Bible of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego going into the fiery furnace...not that this was anything like that, but it just became a little more real to me. Sheesh, I got to know Daniel a little better after walking with lions in Zimbabwe and now these three? How do I get into these predicaments?!?

This morning I woke up at 5:30am because we had to be in the classroom and ready to go by 6am so we could try to beat the Texas heat. We were driven to where all of our bunker gear had been left the day before and started the process of getting suited up. Once we had it all on we got back in the van (with much difficulty…I now know why fire engines are so big! Squashing ourselves with all our equipment and masks and air containers into a 15 passenger van was not fun) and headed out to the firefighting site. One older man on our team, who has experience fighting fires, could tell how nervous I was and prayed for me and made sure that I was his partner for all of the drills, which was such a blessing and took a load off my mind!

My firefighting partner and me!

 At the site they have a container, which is like a train boxcar that is used to transport almost everything on ships. The first drill we did was a search and rescue. They had pumped smoke into the container (no fire this time) and my partner and I out on our gear and breathing apparatuses and crawled into the container together to find “Buck,” the practice dummy who is 160 pounds of dead weight! It was extremely hard to see anything and we crawled on hands and knees with my partner keeping his hand on the wall and me keeping my hand on him. We found Buck and my partner dragged him along while I kept contact with the wall for us and then we had to switch. I did my best to push Buck up so I could get my hands under him, but I couldn’t remotely lift him to  sitting position. One of the instructors helped me lift him, but his torso was too big for me to get both hands under his arms to drag so I had one arm under his and the other around his neck in a headlock! Poor Buck! I successfully moved him a grand total of about three inches and that literally took so much strength and willpower! It's always a weird feeling when I don't know if what's dripping down my cheeks are tears or sweat! The instructor finally said it was ok for us to back out of the container so we felt our way back to the door and exited. While the other teams went in I got to take off my jacket and helmet and hood and mask and get a Gatorade and rest for a bit before the next drill. 

The container

When everyone had their chance to rescue Buck, we got into fire hose teams of five and we got the chance to work together (nozzleman, valveman, anchorman, etc.) to put out a gas fire where we had to create a water shield in front of us so we could approach the fire and turn off the fuel valve. We all got a chance to try each of the five positions in the hose lineup, so we put that fire out five times! After that we got a chance to each practice using different types of fire extinguishers (foam and CO2) on different classes of fires.

Our water sheild

It would probably help to put out the flames if I had my eyes open!

Around 8am we got to take a break because breakfast arrived! We got to take off some of our gear and eat breakfast burritos and scones and drink lots of water. 

After breakfast we had the drill that I was most dreading. The instructors lit lots of wooden pallets on fire on one side of the container and shut all the metal doors to let it burn and get smoky and hot inside while we finished the fire extinguisher drills and then it was time to go into the burning container. My partner and I sprayed down the metal door with the fire hose and then I went over to feel if the door was hot. We opened it and both felt our way inside. I just kept thinking what the boys said in the book of Daniel about going in the fiery furnace, “Our God will deliver us.” I was pretty scared. Our instructor was inside too and he yelled at us to get low. We crawled along the ground with the fire hose in hand and I couldn’t see anything, just the vague brightness of the flames, the dark smoke and I could feel the heat pressing in. I think it was around 500 degrees in there. It was an awfully scary feeling not to be able to see anything in all that heat and it was hard to hear the instructions because my breathing apparatus made me sound like a loud Darth Vader. I did hear the instructor telling me to wipe off my mask and the inside of my visor and then I could see the flames quite clearly. My partner and I both got a chance to practice turning the hose on and spraying the fire and finally it was time to slowly back out through the container and out the big metal door. As soon as I got out people were around me helping me get my helmet and mask and jacket off and giving me an iced towel to put around my neck and water to drink and it felt so lovely out there in the wide open breathing with just my normal lungs!

So, all that to say, I don’t think I’ll be having a change of career any time soon. I don’t think I’d make a very good firefighter, but I’m perfectly ok with that. I was so blessed today with a kind and experienced partner who took such great care of me physically and emotionally and we were also blessed with great weather (meaning overcast, not as hot as usual in Texas in July, and a strong wind blowing to cool us off when we got to take off our bunker gear. I’m proud of myself for doing it, thankful for the people I know were praying for me, and glad that it’s over!

*This was all written a couple days ago and yesterday and today we counteracted all that fire training with our wet drill and water safety. We learned how to correctly inflate life rafts, what supplies should be found in a life raft, when to abandon ship, how to put on an immersion suit, how to stay warm while drifting at sea, how to set flares, how to make a mayday distress call, and lots more! I was most proud of actually being able to flip the life raft right side up all by myself! 

This was my practice mayday distress call that I got to make this morning in front of the class! Captain Jon told us we could be creative...what he doesn't know is that this is based on actual events that happened every Wednesday evening for Pirate Night when I worked on the Disney Magic! :0)

This is an example of the immersion suit we practiced in today!

“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.” -Isaiah 43:2