Fire Academy Recruitment

During the early summer of 2017 my local fire department was hosting a recruitment fair; I showed up and signed up to take the tests. I took a short interview and after meeting all the basic requirements, I was given a test briefing packet and told to come back in two weeks, prepared to test. I returned to the department two weeks later; after countless hours of studying and still being sore from working out, I took the tests. I walked away four hours later, after finishing the written test with a 96% and completing every activity in the CPAT test, passing with an overall 94%. It was at this point when I had to decide if formal education was the right path for me. I knew for me to climb the ranks as a firefighter I needed one of two things:

My next step was to attend a fire academy; Attending a fire academy can provide hands-on training with field equipment and special tactics, as well as training with hazardous materials. After some consideration I decided to move back up-state and attend the San Francisco Fire Academy, one of the highest rated fire academy’s in the state. Finally after close to four months and 600+ hours of training, I successfully walked away with my Firefighter 1 certificate.
With all of my desired prerequisites completed, all that was left was to apply!! I filled out four separate application forms, and gathered all the other required paperwork and shipped it off to my four dream district: NYC Fire Department, LA Fire Department, City of Chicago Fire Department, and SF Fire Department. Two long weeks later I got a letter back from 2 of the of the departments: San Francisco Fire Department, and City of Chicago Fire Department. Since I was already staying in SF, San Francisco Fire Department was the obvious choice; however, working at the City of Chicago Fire Department was always a dream for me, so I chose to pack my stuff up again and fly halfway across the country to start as a Basic Firefighter 1 working at Chicago

Aside from working the many knobs and levers on an engine pump and occasionally driving a water tanker, the job was reasonably easy compared to my previous Firefighter 1 rank, and was easily doable for the next few years. To my surprise, four years after being promoted to Fire Apparatus Engineer, I received another promotion, this time to Fire Captain. As a fire captain your duties includes giving instructions, delegating work, and maintaining order throughout the station. A Fire Captain trains new recruits how to fight fires, and operate tools, supervises and performs needed maintenance throughout the station; He also transports crews, operates power tools and heavy equipment, and enforces fire prevention