Mail Call!!

Well, it's here, the "big envelope." My National Registry numbers and certificate came yesterday. So now I can prove I'm official...12 weeks to learn EMT-B and EMT-I, that's a lot of info in a very short amount of time. Out of my class of 24 that took the exam, only 9 passed the written portion (everyone passed practicals). The scary thing is, those pass:fail ratios are normal. (At least you get 3 chances to pass) I was asked to try and help do some studying with a couple classmates who live nearby.

Lucky for me, we are still doing a lot of PT in the mornings. No I'm not being sarcastic, right now it's a good thing. I have almost completely sweated this cold out. The colds you get in the summer months are always the hardest to get rid of.

The past couple days at the academy haven't been too bad, a lot of time has been spent doing rapid-dress. We did a competition yesterday during PT to see which squad could run 1 lap around the academy while linking their ropes together with a bowline with a safety (type of knot), then rapid-dress and climb up and back down the tower (7 stories) as a group. My squad was not the first to finish our lap, but we were the only squad to have all of our knots tied correctly. As we made it to the top of the tower, 1st squad started catching up-minus one little problem- they weren't all together. We took off down the tower and were the first one's to finish. Our reward? Not having to do any extra PT, other than the 20 pushups each hour.

Later in the day, we grabbed our gear for practicals...pants, helmet, work gloves. We were also told to grab our facepieces and nomex hoods. The instructors set out a few cones and we put our facepieces on with the masks over them-backwards. The practical was to pair us up with a classmate and have us crawl from one cone to the other, then switch who was leading and find our way back to the first cone. All done to simulate doing a search, a lot harder than it seems. A couple groups were so far off track, we had to move out of the way so they wouldn't "find" us. When we go to the burn building Monday, the instructors are going to hide objects for us to find as we do our searches. Most of the people in the class claim they are not claustrophobic, many of those will probably change their minds in a couple days. The building will be full of smoke and will be on fire. Anyone who has ever worn a facepiece with the hood knows how much it decreases your peripherial vision, now add intense heat, smoke, and flames. It should be a very interesting day.

take care