Say You're A Firefighter Without Saying You're A Firefighter

Most people think they understand the fire service. They hear the sirens, see the trucks, and picture the big moments—but there’s a whole side of the job that doesn’t get talked about nearly as much.

In this solo episode of Wind The Q — The Stories Behind The Sirens, Lt. Dodson takes a lighter, more relatable look at the fire service by breaking down the habits, behaviors, and everyday realities that only firefighters truly understand. From instinctively scanning every building you walk into, to backing into every parking space like it’s second nature, to hearing tones in your sleep—this job has a way of rewiring how you think, whether you realize it or not.

This episode dives into the unique culture of the firehouse—the conversations that don’t make sense to anyone on the outside, the humor that helps crews decompress, and the bond that’s built around the kitchen table. You’ll hear about the unwritten rules of firehouse meals, the personalities that show up at every shift, and why something as simple as deciding what’s for dinner can turn into an all-day event.

Lt. Dodson also touches on the “switch”—the ability firefighters develop to move from normal to chaos and back again in a matter of minutes. It’s a part of the job most people never see, but one that defines how firefighters operate day in and day out.

And then there are the little things—the ones that follow you home. Like playing the “hydrant game” with your kids and realizing that what feels like fun to them is something you’ve spent years working, maintaining, and memorizing. It’s in those moments you realize this job doesn’t just stay at the station—it becomes part of who you are.

This episode isn’t about tactics or training. It’s about perspective. It’s about the things that make firefighters who they are, both on and off duty.

If you’re in the fire service, you’ll hear yourself in this one. If you’re not, you’ll walk away with a better understanding of the people who do the job.

Because sometimes, the best way to explain it…

is to not say it at all.

This episode Includes dynamic content. If you feel impressed to help support the show, follow the link below. If not, please continue to like, share, follow, and subscribe for more great content!

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2605628/support

This episode Includes dynamic content. If you feel impressed to help support the show, follow the link below. If not, please continue to like, share, follow, and subscribe for more great content!

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2605628/support

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

You ever walk into a building, and before your brain even catches up, you've already found two exits. You've checked the ceiling and figured out how bad it's gonna go if something happens. Or you back your truck into a parking spot like somebody just called a working fire in a Kroger. Or check a fire extinguisher in a place that you don't even work, and you get frustrated when it's not up to date. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

You might be a funny firefighter with that today than you're a firefighter.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

That's today's topic. We're gonna keep it a little louder today. It's just me, no co-host. Welcome to Wine the Q, the stories behind the sirens. I'm Lieutenant Dodson, engine officer here in Northwest Georgia. This podcast is about real conversations in the fire service. It's about the jobs, about the brotherhood, and the lessons that we learn along the way. If you're in the fire service, there's things you do every single day that make absolutely no sense to anybody else. And the funny part is we don't even realize we're doing them anymore. There are habits this job gives you that just stick. You don't turn them on, you don't turn them off. Things like we mentioned earlier, walking into a business and scanning for exits, having a secondary means of egress, knowing if something happens, where am I going, what am I doing? That changes if you have your family with you. Knowing the layout, occupancy, building type. It's things we notice without even noticing. I mentioned backing into parking spots, even at the grocery store. I have a GMC truck, has the turn in radius of a school bus. So it's easier to back in. You go to the grocery store, all the trucks like mine are parked at the end of the parking lot. It's one of those things we do. Sitting where you can see everything, not like in your back to the door. When me and my family go into a restaurant, that's just how we sit. It's second nature now. Listening for or even hearing tones when we're not even on shift. You're around the house, the TV's on in the background, you think you hear a tone. You're in the store, somebody's paged over the intercom. You think you hear a tone. Happens every day. We can't even go to Walmart without sizing it up. We don't even realize we're doing it. It just happens naturally now. So you're somewhere with your family. You're halfway through a mental size up before you even realize what you're doing. And then she asks, are you even listening to me? And you think, what a weird way to start a conversation. There's things that are completely normal in the firehouse that would be insane anywhere else. Some examples may be walking the back parking lot or just chilling out in full gear. Why in the world would we do that? It's about acclimation and conditioning. Eating like you haven't seen food in days. We do this. I eat fast. I eat fast every time I eat. If you've been caught in the middle of a meal enough times, you eat fast. And then there's the conversations around the table. They jump from serious to ridiculous in seconds. Like it can turn from the most horrendous atrocity of a call that you could ever fathom. And in exactly 0.07 nanoseconds, nose dive to why do pajamas have pockets. There's another Walmart reference, by the way. And why do we fry bacon and bake fries? This is the way that the stories take a twist. Happens every shift. So you can go from talking about a call to arguing about food to laughing about something that makes zero sense to anybody, including half the people around the table. If somebody from the outside came in and sat down at our table with us, they they wouldn't last five minutes. But to us, that's one of the best parts of the job. The food at the firehouse, that deserves its very own episode. Or at least decide and watch for dinner. That process starts about 0900, and by 1700 we realize that the decision has snuck up on us. What are we going to do now? So we pick up something quick. Every shift has the guy who can cook. Pruitt, that's you. And the guy who thinks he can cook, sambor, that's you, and your steamed okra slime. And the guy who should never touch anything. The judge is still out on who this is exactly, but they should stay out of the kitchen, or at least just have a good conversation. So you can tell a lot about a shift by how dinner goes. And if you work a swap or you pick up overtime on a different shift than yours or a different crew than yours, you can see for yourself. It's a whole different dynamic. Every shift, every company, every crew has their own way of doing things. And that's across the board. But suppers tell the story. They're all different. My crew, some people are on health kicks and they bring their meals, they meal prep, and that's their thing. That's fine. Sometimes we all cook. Sometimes we pick up something quick depending on what the days had. But no matter what you eat, we all eat together. We all sit down at the table together. We spend that time together. We tell stories. We catch up on the day. I'm in a two-company house. Sometimes we have separate duties and separate tasks. So sometimes it's just about catching up. There's always that one guy who critiques the meal like he's on some kind of TV cooking show. And he's the one usually that comes up with these grand ideas of steaks and green beans and potatoes and mac and cheese and the very specific rolls that he likes. But he never helps in the kitchen. And getting his money is like pulling teeth. So a lot of people think that the department gives us money to go to the grocery store and provide our meals. That's not how it works, at least in my department, and all the departments that I'm aware of. So we come in in the morning, we decide what we're doing for lunch, we try to decide what's for supper, which usually ends up right before supper time. But we'll go to the grocery store and we'll buy whatever we need. And then when we come back, we eat, we split the bill, and everybody pays their part. That comes out of our pocket. It is not provided by the department. So when you have somebody who comes up with this grand idea and it's going to end up costing everybody $15 a piece, that's still a deal. I can't eat steak and green beans and potatoes and mac and cheese anywhere else for $15. But but usually that guy is the one that it is hardest to get the money from. So like I said, we may do different things. We may do our own thing for supper, but we do it together. Whatever we do, we at least sit down at the same time. We spend that time together. That's what's so important. So there's little things about this job that only firefighters do understand. The sound of tones dropping. So it may be the middle of the day, and you're working on reports, or you're inputting hydrants from hydrant maintenance, or we're doing pre-plans, and tones drop. And it doesn't matter how long you've been in the fire service. The second that the radio opens up and you hear those tones, your heart rate jumps for just a second. Now it is a goal to be able to control your emotions, to control your adrenaline, and that comes with time. It comes with experience and exposure. But for a split second, that heart rate jumps. The way that everybody moves when those tones drop. Everybody moves with purpose. We move immediately. Tones don't drop, and then we hang out where we're at for five minutes to see what's going on, and then we make our way to the truck. When tones drop, we go to the truck. There's radio, there's speakers all through the station. So as we're rushing to the truck, we're listening to information. When tones drop, go to the truck. There's no wasted motion. Everything we do should be with purpose. This brings efficiency. There's an old saying that slow is smooth and smooth is fast. Don't waste your motion. Don't waste your energy. Everything should have a purpose. From a crew standpoint, there's no better feeling for an officer or a crew leader to run a call and not have to talk. What I mean by this is to run a cardiac arrest. And everybody has a specific job. Somebody is bagging the patient, somebody's doing compression, somebody's setting up the AED, somebody is setting up drugs, and nobody has to talk about what they're doing. Your crew goes in, they know their job, everybody takes a task, and we complete the job efficiently. That is a good feeling for an officer. As an officer, I don't want to have to tell you every single step to make. If you're a brand new recruit that has just come on the truck, I'm going to do that a little more just to make sure you're headed in the right direction and your head's in the right place. But if you've been on the truck for five years, if I tell you to pull a line to the front door, pull an inch and three quarter to the front door and get ready to go in. If I want a two and a half or if I want something different, if I if my point of entry is at a different location on the structure, I'll tell you that. But I shouldn't have to tell you every single detail about how to do your job. I should be able to trust you to think and do your job yourself the right way. Another thing about when the tones drop, it's chaos. Everybody's trying to get to the truck. If it's a structure fire or a fire alarm or something where there's a two-company response or multiple companies responding, it's chaos until everybody gets on the truck and gets out of the bay. But it's controlled. We're not running over each other, we're not running, we're making our way to the truck with purpose. We get on the trucks, we roll out. It is chaos, but like I said, it's controlled. And then 10 minutes later, you're back at the station like nothing happened. So you're eating supper, and it is this great supper of steak and green beans and potatoes and mac and cheese. And halfway through it tones drop. And it's a regular that that just needs help up out of the floor. So you run the call, you get there, it's the most disgusting house you've ever seen. Help the person out of the floor, into the bed, you return to service, ten minutes, you're back, you're you finish eating, like nothing ever happened. So with that being said, let's talk about the switch. I've talked about this before. So you're sitting there eating, you catch this call. Like I said, tones drop, heart rate spikes. Make your way to the truck with purpose, you get on the truck, you roll out, and you get on scene. Maybe it's not what the CAD information said. Maybe something's different. Maybe it's way worse. I mentioned before that I run a difficulty breathing that turned out to be a patient shot multiple times in the chest. Sometimes it's not what CAD says it is. Sometimes it's totally different. But being able to flip the switch. Maybe you get on scene and it's someone who's been deceased for a few days. And family is there, family has found them. And we have to flip that switch between putting things in a box and moving on and just doing the job to being more empathetic with the family. It's that switch. I've mentioned before also there's the times that you run the calls that are extremely traumatic. And then on the way back to the station, you're still in that process mode. You're still trying to work through what you've seen and what you did and what you heard and what you smelled and everything that happened on that call when tones drop to help a regular get up out of the floor. And when you get there, you're still processing all these emotions and they cuss you out because it took you so long to get there. Being able to flip that switch is important. Sometimes we don't want to flip the switch. We want to just tell the people what we think, but we can't do that. We have to be professional and we have to learn to flip that switch and control our emotions. Flipping that switch is something most people will never understand. And it's the ability to go from intense to normal, to intense to normal, to intense to normal, over and over and over and over again. Until you get through that shift, you reset, the next shift starts, and you do it over and over again. I guess people think we sit in the trucks all day just waiting to respond or that we're playing checkers like old guys at the barbershop. In reality, we're trying our best to stay on top of dozens of administrative duties that get pushed down the hill until it lands on us. We're trying to stay fresh and up to date on our certification and training. We're trying to stay current on new methods and skills so that we're sharp when it counts. We're trying to lead, mentor, guide, and motivate those around us to be better. Oh yeah, and the cause. Imagine this with me for just a second. So you've had a very busy day of service and hydrants. You completed 75 and you feel good about that. You also got in two hours of company training, you washed all of the trucks and had a good supper. Oh yeah. And the cause. So pay attention to these times and how fast things change. Your head hits the pillow and you're out at 2200. At 0242, tones drop for a regular with chest pain. By 0244, you have gotten dressed, gotten your wits about you, made it down the pole without breaking your ankles, and you're on the truck formulating a plan. By 0248, you're on scene. It's the regular who never goes to the hospital and always recites her allergies and medication list in full detail every single time. But you treat her with the same grace that you try and treat every patient with. Back at the station, you complete the report and you're in bed by 0315 and you're out. At 0347, tones drop for an unresponsive infant and cardiac arrest. At 0349, you're on the truck formulating your plan. At 0351, you're on sync. You and your crew work them with everything that you have. You try everything. You give it every treatment and intervention possible, and you lose. At 0445, you're in service. At 0447, while you're still headed back to the stations, tone strop for a lift assist on the other side of your district. You immediately go en route, you arrive on scene, meet with the patient's spouse, who leads you to the patient who slipped in the floor while trying to get in the bed. She then barrages you with every cuss word possible. Most doesn't even fit together on how she's been on the floor for eight minutes. What could have taken us so long? She's the priority, she's the taxpayer and pays our salaries. That switch. Being able to flip that switch from processing what you just seen and what you just did to a whole different situation. It's hard, it can be gut wrenching, but please remember that we're human. We're most definitely not machines, and while it's not your problem, you have absolutely no idea what we've dealt with in the last 10 minutes. Alright, so let's lighten it up. Say you're a firefighter without saying you're a firefighter. We've discussed the typical parking spaces and the sunglasses and the mustaches. But here's another one for you. This is on a personal level. So we're in the car a lot with four kids, multiple side businesses, families, errands. It's always something. So my kids like to play the fire hydrant game. And it's simple. Someone says go, and you count as many fire hydrants as you can until someone gets to 21, which turns into 40, which turns into 75. It's pretty competitive when someone calls a hydrant that someone else has already called. But this is my job to spot a hydrant. And my job, there's no exceptions. Besides that, I've flowed and serviced and lubed and weed eated and roundupped and painted most of the hydrants at one point or another in the city. So they don't have a chance. Alright, so let's have some fun with this. Some ways to know that you're a fireman. You own more department shirts than regular clothes. Usually they're navy blue or they're OD green. You have strong opinions about hose loads and hamburger steak and green beans and yellow rice, which is the firehouse staple, by the way. Judge buildings everywhere you go. Oh yeah, that museum's type one construction. Notices things nobody else sees. Pool station in my city at the Longhorns, there was a pool station that went about a year before it was fixed. Noticed it every time I walked in. So it's not just about what we do, it's about how we think. The fire service does change you. And we've talked about this in depth in episode one and two. It changes you a lot. It changes how you perceive things, changes how you feel and how you act. But it changes how you see things, how you hear things. It can be on a big scale or a small scale. So it's not just about what you do, it's about how you think. Take care of your crew.

SPEAKER_00 18:18

Take care of the