When this Fort Worth, Texas native first arrived in Austin, Texas, he started working at Motorola. I asked how this led him to become a firefighter and he smiled. "I didn’t want to do the big business thing. I always thought that my job sucked." After two and a half years at Motorola at about age 20, Clay realized that he needed a change. "Maybe I missed some of my dad." For almost 25 years now, Clay’s father has been a firefighter in the Fort Worth area.

The heroic job of being a firefighter has been a tradition in the families of most firefighters. One of Clay’s friends on the force is also the son of a firefighter. After talking to Captain Smith, Clay’s Captain, this family tradition became even more apparent. Like Clay and his friend, Captain Smith’s father had been a firefighter. Firefighter Stanley, another man from Clay’s station has several ties to firefighters. His father and brother are both firefighters and his nephew has recently joined the Force. Then there is Daniel, one of the lieutenants, whose Grandfather was one of the original firefighters at Clay’s station. Like most of these other men, Clay grew up at the station his father worked at and missed the atmosphere.

Oddly enough, Clay had never really played with the idea of being a firefighter. He actually never really wanted to do it. "It was Dad’s thing- I never considered it." After leaving Motorola he thought he would volunteer at a local fire station. There was one day that the volunteers went to College Station, Texas to practice putting out fires in a Burn House. This gave the volunteers the opportunity to practice putting fires out under certain conditions in a house specifically designed and built for the purpose of training firefighters. That particular day they were crawling in pitch darkness when Clay thought, "HELL YEAH!" and knew that this is what he really wanted to do. "It was the excitement of facing fear and not knowing what was in there," he said about reaching his decision of making fire fighting a career. It was then that he called his father and told him that he wanted to be a fireman. Both his parents were very supportive about his decision. His mom was thrilled and his dad was comfortable with the decision because he knew that during his years with the force he had been treated very well and knew that Clay would get the same treatment. His father recommended Clay find an academy and take his test.

The academy gives interested men and women more of an opportunity to get a job at a fire station, as they get certified through the state as a firefighters and as an EMT. One has to be at least 18 years old to attend an academy, and it makes testing at a small station a possibility. Usually, unless one has gone through the four months of the academy, they are not allowed to test at small stations for a position.

After testing, Clay got a job working at a small station at Lake Travis, Texas. After seven months, Clay moved to Station One, the location where he serves now. He is one of three men that work in B shift. There are three shifts that are defined by the letters A, B, and C. Their shifts rotate on a 24 hour cycle meaning they work 24 hours and then are off for 48 hours. Shift at Station One starts at 7 in the morning which requires Clay getting up at 5:45 to drive up from South Austin to Station One for another day of saving lives. Shift size varies depending on the size of the station. Presently Station One has small three men shifts.

The ranking also changes from department to department. When people start at the station as firefighters there is a probationary period where the young men and women are watched and observed for the first 6 months of their stay. During this time they are tested on maps of the area and learn all there is to know about the district they are in and its surroundings. The next step is becoming a driver. They are also referred to as apparatus operators or engineers. The driver’s main objective is to always drive the fire engines or fire trucks. Above the driver is the lieutenant. He is head of the company that is at the station at their particular shift time. The lieutenants respond to the Captain who goes out only on big calls. At Station One, the Captains respond only to the Chief, but in bigger departments like Austin, the chain of command is more elaborate. Over the Captain are the Battalion Chiefs who are under a Divisional Chief who is under the Assistant Chief who is the right hand man of the Chief. Unlike the other firefighters, the Chief makes a six figure salary, works an 8-5 office type job and does not participate in actual fire fighting. After a few hours of talking about Clay’s life as a firefighter, I was invited to come to the station and go on some real runs to see what it was like.

Upon my initial arrival to Station One, I walked around the building. This old building, originally built in 1892, has served as many city departments, including the Mayor’s office, the chambers of the city council, the city jail and now the fire station. Inside the fire station’s lobby is old Betsy, a Seagrave fire engine from 1922. Betsy, with her side ladder and bell, is kept in the "museum" of the station. Around the lobby there are pictures displaying the men that have fought the fires through the years. I rang the doorbell and soon I was greeted by a firefighter who led me up the spiral staircase to where the firefighters live when they are not running calls. The pole that the stairs curl around is the original pole that the firefighters used to slide down when they left to respond to a call.

When I walked in, Clay was on the phone so I sat on the living room’s couch and watched the turned on television that no one was previously watching. On the back of a nearby chair is Clay’s blue shirt that he wears over his navy tee shirt tucked into his navy pants. It is about 4:40 in the afternoon and already Clay has been at the station for eight hours. Upon first arriving, his shift and the last shift met for the "pass on" where they talked about what was done and passed along any important information needed to know. Routinely they checked all the trucks and equipment to make sure they were in working order. Then they had about two hours of PT: physical training. Behind the Quint, the biggest fire truck at the station, is their gym. There are about 5 pieces of equipment. That particular day Clay and the rest of the crew had been at a training session from one until about 4:20. I barley got comfortable on the couch when not ten minutes after I had walked in the door the alarm went off and I got to go on my first run. "You have GREAT timing," Clay said to me as we ran down the spiral staircase into the truck port and to the Quint.

"This is Debi, guys, she’s going to ride out with us."

"Well hi, Debi. Climb on in." Jared, the driver, opened the back door for me and let me into the back seat and we were off. This oversized fire truck holds six people and Clay and I were in the back where we rode backwards watching streets get farther instead of closer to us. As soon as we pulled out of the station we put on our blue headsets to hear each other talking and block out the other louder noises in the background. As we rode down the streets, the guys put on their plastic gloves and added a layer as they pulled on their fire resistant pants. We quickly arrived to the site and the guys immediately jumped out of the truck.

The station had been called to the scene of a medical call. In general, 60% of all calls that firefighters run at fire departments are medical, this was one of the 90% that Station One gets. There was a maroon Jeep side swiped in the middle of a street of an intersection and a white truck with a bent up front bumper on the street caddy corner to it. One ambulance had already arrived and the three victims from the maroon Jeep were standing outside. It appeared to be a mother with her two daughters. The younger girl seemed to be a little shaken up and the guys were talking to them and checking the severity of their wounds. They pulled out the stretchers from the ambulance and after securing their heads in the cervical collars they lowered them to the ground and used head blocks to secure their heads to the boards. This was to make sure their spines had not or did not continue to move out of place, causing spinal trauma. They could only work with one person at a time so they started with the youngest girl and had the mother wait to have her head stabilized. Another ambulance arrived on the scene and after stabilizing the last victim they were all taken to the local hospital. Within twenty minutes of first arriving to the scene, the guys were picking up all the medical supplies laid out on the street and we were back in the truck.

We put on the headphones and they started cracking jokes, and singing as Jared drove the Quint to Albertson’s to pick up some ice cream and a loaf of bread to accompany the jambalaya they were going to eat for dinner. Before going on to the video store to look for "Friday" and "Blazing Saddles," they dropped me off at the station and I left them for a couple of hours.

When I returned, the Quint was missing, as was Attack One and Captain Smith’s Suburban. I had missed a call, and I knew it was big because Captain Smith had gone along with them. I was walking around approximately ten minutes when the fire truck came rolling back. I walked over to the Quint and within minutes the guys were called out again. I hopped into the back of the Quint and we were off with Attack One following close behind. This time, Captain Smith stayed behind. I put on my blue headphones and Bowman filled me in.

"We just got back from looking for this fire. Apparently now they found it."

"Why is Attack One being brought out?"

"The Quint never leaves the pavement and they said this was a field fire. That is why Captain Smith went. When there is a call made and they say it’s something like a field fire we have Clay follow us in Attack One because it has four wheel drive." When we arrived at the location Bowman began to complain. There was a small red glow coming from beneath a metal panel in a field. "The police couldn’t have just kicked some dirt on this?" he said sarcastically. They jumped out of the truck and Bowman got a hose from Attack One and put the smoking glow out. We quickly returned to the station. That is when I asked Clay to show me around the Quint.

We went out to the truck port and walked around the big fire engine. The Quint, a custom made special engine, serves double duty. It has both a 75 foot ladder on top, many hoses and a 500 gallon water tank. Other trucks usually carry up to 750 gallons of water. I also noticed that when we were riding out, there were four seats in the back, three of which were usually empty. "The National Fire Protection Association has these guidelines and under their codes they recommend having a minimum of five men to work the Quint. The Union has done studies and has determined that for a crew to be 100% effective there has to be a minimum of five men working. With four men working you can be 65% effective and somewhere between 33-35% effective with a three man crew."

We continued to talk about the inadequacies of his department as we sat on the front of the Quint atop the door that leads to three more hoses. There are three stations in the department that Clay is a part of, all of which have three men crews. Sometime early Spring there will be a fourth station opening. All of these stations are undermanned. "We would like to have four men working per shift. It would be ideal to have five on each shift but the city is sticking our dicks in the dirt. The department needs to grow with the city but the city doesn’t want to raise our budget because they would rather spend tax money on making the area prettier."

The city’s population has grown from about 5,000 people in 1981 to over 25,000 this last year. The city is aware that if the Union, which they are not part of yet, gets involved, they will start involving lawyers to get the needs of the city fire department met. This is something the city does not want to occur. When we first started talking, Clay had just informally met with the other firefighters of the area in a secret meeting to discuss their decisions regarding their alliance with the Union of International Association of Fire Fighters. The International Association of Fire Fighters is a union that like others, works to protect their members and improve the conditions of such needs like salary, benefits, and working conditions. IAFF consists of all local unions and state and provincial associations. The Union has about 213,750 members. There are approximately 276,000 career firefighters.

Clay shared with me the results of a chart showing the budgets for the different city departments that shows them in order from highest to lowest amount allotted for such areas as the city police, utilities, Parks and Recreation and waste water conservation budget. "The general rule is that the police and fire departments should be first on the list. They should always be together and high on the top of the list. Of course the police are high, but the fire department is low on the list next to something like wastewater conservation."

I returned a couple of days later because I wanted to talk to the other guys at the station and get their point of view on the issue of working with a small company. I asked Jared first how he felt working a three man crew and he responded. "We need more than three. The city sucks, they are just waiting for someone to die." Jared thinks that only if the city were to see that someone died because the fire department could not attack a big fire with the few men that they had working or if all the men were working to put out another fire and could not make it out to help the other person who needed aid, they would open their eyes and acknowledge the need for a bigger department.

"When was the last time you felt like you had a situation where you were undermanned?"

"Every day. You were here when we did that car accident. We could have easily used another man." In a car accident like the call we went on, it is important to arrive immediately to make sure that the patients are attended to and their heads are kept centered to avoid spinal damage. In that particular incident Jared noted that if the accident had been more severe they would not have had enough people to stabilize all the patients quickly because if the three men in the crew had each been holding one person stable, then there would be no other person to put the people in the proper cervical collars and then onto the stretchers. "We’d just be standing there holding their heads in place."

Then Jared discussed what would happen if there were a commercial fire. If some commercial building like Jack in the Box was burning down, and I was in my house dying in a fire at the same time, I would be out of luck because all three stations would send their crews to the commercial fire. Because that is only a total of nine men working, there would not be any extra firefighters to come to my rescue. Alfred Whitehead, the President of IAFF writes an article called "From the General President’s Desk," periodically and in the January/February 1999 issue he wrote about Volunteer firefighters that were having the same problems with inadequate staffing. He mentioned the shortfalls of having an understaffed crew, such as "abnormally long response times that put lives and property in jeopardy." When all three stations are at one location, this hypothetical scenario could be a potential situation. I most likely would die before the next closest station was called in for mutual aid and arrived from 10-20 minutes away.

The fact is, in the event of a big fire there really would be about 6-8 men working it before mutual aid from surrounding areas came to help. From each crew, the driver always is the one that stays at the truck to make sure that the lieutenant and firefighter have water to put out the fire. That leaves only two men working the fire. For this reason a three person crew is only about 33-35% efficient. Jared was quick to point out, "Some people think there’s an I in team when there isn’t. It takes a team to do something successfully," and a team is made up of more than 2 men fighting the fire.

Jared’s frustrations were evident while we talked. He made it clear that he was unhappy with the system and if things do not change, he is going to leave Station One. Clay feels the same way. He wants to move to a bigger department where they are already part of the Union. He wants to feel that there are enough people to fight a fire adequately and be safe while doing so. "I would much rather work in a department that was over-manned than undermanned." In a station like Clay’s, the guys will go through about 5 or 6 bottles of air and then sit out to rehabilitate where at a bigger department where there are more people to work, they will go through one bottle and then have the opportunity to sit and rest because there are enough people to work efficiently.

San Jose State University did a study in 1997 that indicated fire fighting to be the 5^th most dangerous occupation in the Nation. They found an avg of 48.8 deaths per 100,000 and was listed 2-3 more times more dangerous than policing. When there are departments that are not growing at the proper proportions as the city they live in, their lives are put in even more danger than the amount they are already exposed to. The amount of pressure on one person to do the work of two or more causes their job to be harder on both their minds and their bodies.

In Texas/Oklahoma area there are 168 local unions and a total of about 15,600 active members. Within a few days, Station One will increase that local union number by one as they join IAFF. This will hopefully increase the amount of money allocated in budgeting for the fire department and that will increase the size of the force. This new alliance will hopefully be what the area needs to be a more efficient department where its residents will be more safely protected by a strong fire fighting force.

This was my favorite piece to write because I really had a chance to be involved with the people that I was going to interview. Writing an issue analysis on a bunch of firemen was fun. It took me a long time to figure out what I wanted to do at first.

Initially I wanted to study women firefighters and see what it was like to be a women in what is considered a man’s environment. Unfortunately, there were no women in the departments that were closest to me. Then I thought that I would do something about the hierarchy in the departments and focus on how the Rookies were treated.

What I found when I started to talk to Clay is that maybe that is not what I wanted to do. When we initially spoke we were on the phone over an hour and I then spent hours with him the first time we met. I had pages of notes from our initial meeting. It was after hours of time together and pages of notes that I had a vague idea of what I wanted to focus my paper on. I wanted to have the opportunity to go to the station so when I was invited I jumped at the opportunity.

The first time I went to visit the station I spent hours there too. I had a lot of information and when I went home I did not know how to sort it all. It was hard to find a place to start. I could not decide what to focus on. I felt that I just did not have all the necessary information. There had to be more than what I already had. That led me to visit the fire station a few more times. My pages of notes grew and grew.

Trying to sift through all the information took time but the result was something that I was proud of and that more importantly, made sense to me. I finally felt that I had a story.

I thought I had an idea going into this project but I kept my ears open just in case something else came up- and it did, and I went with it. It was really important for me to really get into the experience to really understand what it was that they were trying to convey to me. And although I did not know where I was going to take it all, I finally came up with an end result.

Hoover, Larry; Dowling, Jerry; Bouley, Eugene Jr. "The Erosion of Police and

Firefighter Wage Parity" Monthly Labor Review April 1996: 13-20.

(San Jose State University study)

Jennifer Lee Carrell, "Training to slay the Dragon." Smithsonian May 1999: 100-4+.

Whitehead, Alfred. "More Communities Learning There is No Free Lunch." From the

General President’s Desk Jan/Feb. 1999.

Personal Interviews with the men of Station One: particularly Clay, Captain Smith

and Jared.

WWW.IAFF.org to learn about the International Association of Fire Fighters