BobbieOnFire

Back in 1996 I had recently quit my job as a Fire Captain at my Fire Department and had returned to school to get my Masters Degree. So I wasn’t currently working for a Fire Department or a Wildland Fire Agency. Instead I had been hired as a temporary firefighter for the summer and had been working for a State Agency and the Forest Service. Because I already had 22 years of experience at that point and carried the commensurate fire qualifications, I was utilized as a Division Supervisor when assigned to active fires. This particular fire was located in eastern Oregon. I was excited for the dispatch because I had never fought a fire in Oregon at this point of my career. So off I went to Oregon as I describe in the following audio story.

What is significant in this story was my perception of the man I was working for. I had never met him before but from the way he spoke to me, I assumed he thought I was a bit of a drone. But as you’ll hear in this story, he had a direct and lasting positive impact on my career. The lesson I learned from this is to not judge based on some hasty communications or limited knowledge of someone. My advice to other younger and often female firefighters I’ve mentored is to not be scared away from the gruff communications style of some of their supervisors. You don’t really know what’s going on behind his mustache. I hope you enjoy the story and please leave comments. Thanks.

As I’ve often mentioned on this site, you never know what’s going to happen in the course of your day, week, career or even your life. Today’s story is about a time when I was minding my own business and thought I was going to have a nice evening having dinner with an old family friend. My evening was surprisingly interrupted by a citizen’s request to respond to a fire instead. How I responded wasn’t all that dramatic but my reaction to the entire episode was something I still wonder about. Hope you enjoy this episode and as always, please share my site with your friends. Thanks!

In life you never know if you might be called upon to help fix a bad situation. You might not have any expertise to resolve it, but you’re it! You’re all there is. In this week’s story I’ll relate an experience when I was a responsible for rescuing a young boy from an abandoned mine. I had no training in mine rescue, let alone lead a group of firefighters into an old dangerous mine. My expertise was related to high angle rope rescue so I did have some specific experiences to draw upon, but this was definitely a new one for me. In life it’s nice to be “good” rather than just “lucky”. In this story I think I was equally good and lucky.

It’s Christmas this week and my story today is about how to accept a gift. It shouldn’t be that hard to accept a gift but I might have had a tough shell wrapped around my soft sweet center for all those years while I was working as a firefighter (maybe even still). I believe most women firefighters can identify with what happened to me. This story doesn’t include any knuckle dragging firefighters calling me a bitch. On the contrary, it is a story of a gentlemen wanting to be helpful to me while I was on duty. But it’s pretty funny in it’s own way. As you’ll hear, I was unsure how to react to his unnecessary kindness. All I could do was smile and say thank you. Hope you enjoy the story, love the meaning of our holiday season and accept whatever gift you’re given with grace and a smile. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all of you.

During our lives we’ll have many instances when we have the opportunity to listen to the little voice we hear coming from the back of our mind. We often want to make decisions based on clear facts. You know… Just the facts mam nothing but the facts. But in reality our decision making is a combination of facts, emoti0ns and some things in-between the two. The “things” in-between are inputs that your brain is receiving but your consciousness might not be recognizing them yet. I’ve had many experiences at work and at home where (after I made the decision) I realized I had been making a decision based in part on intuition.

This story is about a serious accident that nearly killed a young woman and how listening to the little voice in my head may have led to her being rescued.

This week’s story is interesting just on it’s surface, but there’s a whole lot more to it. The story really deals with how we deal with a supervisor. These interactions can be critical to our future profession. Over my working life I’ve often been asked how I gained my wildland fire qualifications so quickly. My flippant answer was because I found water in the desert. This story explains why I said that. But the bigger picture is how I dealt with my supervisors and provided leadership “UP”. We often think about providing leadership down in an organization. But leading up is important but can be difficult to figure out how to do. I’m not suggesting I know all the answers but I can share this example of how I dealt with a few opportunities early in my career.

If you have experiences you’d like to share leave a comment. We need to learn from everyone around us. Thanks for listening everyone.

Back when technology wasn’t exactly at our fingertips in the fire engine or command truck, we used old fashioned maps to find our way to emergencies. Having a hard copy map in your hand was always comforting but there is lots of room for human error. And if you’ve listened to more than one of these stories you already know I’m very human. Now in most modern fire apparatus, there is a computer screen with all the relevant information necessary to quickly and efficiently find the emergency scene.

This is a short and I hope funny story about something that happened to me almost 30 years ago. As you’ll hear when I tell the story, it could have been a tragic story but it wasn’t. I was to blame in this story and no one else. But as with many stories, the line between funny and tragic is very thin. If you live in a community and the Fire Department or emergency first responders are asking for funding for some new technology, I hope you give it a good luck and support their request. I hope listening to this story helps you with that decision.

Towards the end of the story you’ll notice a few blank seconds in the recording. Sorry for my lack of recording expertise. I’ll work on fixing those types of blips as I keep improving. And as always, if you enjoy listening to these stories, please share the website with your friends. Thanks everyone and see you next week.

Last week’s story was a bit more heavy than what I had originally intended for this site. So today I’m posting a story about what it’s like to be working on the holidays. Lots of folks have to work the holidays so I’m not trying to make this another “hero” story. If you’ve listened to my other stories you know that’s not my intention. But after 40 years of experiencing things like… being on a wildland fire and watching families across the lake from the fire having their weekend camping trip playing in the water; or missing my son’s first day of kindergarten because I was at the Yellowstone fires in ’88; or numerous holidays where I tried to incorporate my family and those of my co-workers into the fire station dinner the best we could.

This story relates a few of those outstanding memories from the years of having to work on the big holidays. Even though I’ve always enjoyed my work and have been happy to be of service, I have to admit to a certain melancholy when working on a holiday. For me, the best thing that could happen if you’re working the holiday is to be busy. Members of the public might not understand why a firefighter would want to be busy at work but you really want firefighters who are enthusiastic about going to work. And having a slow shift on a holiday when you’re separated from family was the worst for me. I hope this story gives you some insight to what’s going on behind those fire station doors on the holiday. Thanks for listening folks and I’d appreciate you “liking” and “sharing” to spread the word of this little site.

Last night I was having a drink and dinner with some friends of mine. We’re all 64+ year old women either retired, or getting close to retirement. Neither of my friends who I was enjoying the evening with are firefighters but they do enjoy the stories that you all listen to here. I don’t know how we got on the subject of the lasting impacts of being a firefighter but I probably mentioned something about how some of my co-workers and I share some internal “wounds” from things that we’ve experienced on the job. One of my friends was surprised to hear that firefighters might suffer from post traumatic stress (or PTSD). She thought it was something only soldiers have to deal with. I assured her that it wasn’t that uncommon amongst the ranks of firefighters and police. I described a story of how I became aware of how some of these emotional impacts surface in our lives. As we spoke she realized that she too had some lingering stress from the untimely passing of her daughter. Of course she does. We probably all do since none of us live in a bubble. This is a short story describing how my eyes were opened to my own scabbed over wounds. Please listen, like and share. It helps get the word out on this website. Thanks all and take care of yourselves, love ones and friends.

Over the years I’ve had some challenges to my leadership at fires. This story relates 3 separate instances one summer that have had a long term impact on me. I believe people are mostly good and mean to do well. But when folks are stressed and firefighters are often stressed at a fire, they may respond differently to an authority figure than they might do otherwise. It’s true that some men might not like taking orders from a female fire chief. You might think this wasn’t common but it surely was. Add to this dynamic that after 25 years of firefighting I just had no patience for putting up with any macho BS. Looking back on this time period I felt like a “quick draw” gunfighter. If someone was disrespectful or insubordinate I pulled my six shooter and kicked them off the fire. Strong women in positions of authority are often called a bitch. It’s not surprising and it’s not new. But the majority of guys who thought I was a bitch eventually come around to being a respected co-worker once we’ve worked together longer. Most of the knuckle dragging firefighters eventually come around.

See how I reacted to these challenges. In hindsight I could have done some things a bit better but it makes for a great story. Enjoy the story. Share and tell your friends. Thanks.