I am Hero Man

Hello.

Some of you may know that I was going to change my name from Hero Boy to Hero
Man when I turned twenty-one, but that is no longer the case. In recent events,
much has changed. For starters, I just became a Firefighter today; I’ve been in
classes and training all week and got my Certificate upon completion of todays
final class: Field Day. Meaning, the Incident Commanders took us all out to the
river and lit the land on fire and had us put it out. They had engines on site
though in case we couldn’t handle it. But we hung in there and finished the job,
covered in soot and ash and sweat afterwards, dripping with water from the four
hundred feet of hoses hooked up to the Mark 3 pump. Some of us didn’t make it
(as in failed the class). One of the individuals was a friend so it was sad to
watch him get turned away while I had been chosen to stay on. I scored highest
in the class; I got 99% on two of the tests, 100% on another test and flew
through field day with flying colors and my Red Card is awaiting me at the
Office for me to pick it up on Tuesday once all the paper work has been finished
on their behalf.

Aside from being a
firefighter now, I have been staying true to an ideal I hold for quite some
time: Family. My mission is to make my little spot on the earth a little
brighter. I’ve come such a long way from a scrawney little kid locked in a
concrete cell with excessive amounts of tranquilizers coursing through my veins.
I’ve come such a long way from being mentally ill and having regular panic
attacks from all that happened back in Utah. I’ve come such a long way.
And
today, my father declared me a man. He told me flat out, “Son, you ar enot a boy
anymore, you are a man.” He told me, “In life it’s considered a tradition for a
father to present his son with a knife as a rite of passage into manhood.” He
gave me a Leatherman Supertool. He’s had it for as long as I can remember. He
told me he has had it for most of his life, and that when his father declared
him a man, that he gave my father his leatherman. And now, it wasmy turn to
carry it. And he told me for the first time that he was genuinely proud of me. A
few tears escaped. He has no idea how long I’ve waited to hear him say
that. And he's right. I am not a boy anymore, I am a man.


Stay true. Stay free. Stay safe.

–Hero Man

Congratulations on the step up to manhood. Welcome to a new kind of brotherhood.

Congrats

Thank you both.

Way to go Hero Man

Thanks Dark Ghost.

Hero Man,

Cool. Time to save the world!

Indeed!
Or at least the Countryside haha...which is like...everywhere here! In this State which is like, one third the size of the United States of America. There's a fire down south that got started way back, 1809 I believe. Fucker's still going; that's like, hell down there. Well heck, it feels a lot like hell in any wildfire! It's not the flames that kill firefighters, usually it's smoke inhalation, or their skin being burned off from the radiation; the flames by then would reach you, and then slowly, then you die....they showed us a lot of videos from helmet cams....I hope mine is never up there.

Stay true. Stay free. Stay safe.

--Hero Man

Oh wow. I didn't know that there's fires out there that are STILL going? Has there been any progress at all with it?

Nope. No hope at all. They're annual. Once a year it goes up and we get called to go contain it.

The reason they keep coming back and why Alaska is such a dangerous extreme for firefighters is because the ground has such an excessive amount of peat moss under the surface. Tons of it. So when a fire is started, we may be able to contain and control it and extinguish the flames, but the ground underneath the earth is still burning. When we get into summer here, the RH% nosedives and it doesn't take shit for one of those embers to ignite some flashy fuels or root systems, starting it all over again to the point it's an extremely dangerous force of nature. We're pretty well trained though and so only a little bit of the forest is diminshed each year. No two wildfires are the same, but fire is a lot like a living creature, a lot like humans. No two people are alike, but all people have specific behaviours, traits and habits and whatnot, and can be predictable and so that's a big advantage. Each year we learn something new and develop better techniques, most lessons being learned from firefighter deaths.

Stay true. Stay free. Stay safe.

--Hero Man

A small ember could burn under ground for centuries and pop up anywhere, traveling almost because of all the fuels under our soil.

I had forgotten about peat moss. I thought you were going to explain about the still-burning fires from coal veins underground! Congratulations across the board. Emergency personnel is so necessary, and specifically where you live, firefighting is a critical necessity.

Indeed. And we have that hear too; burning coal veins underground. XD
Do you have training in firefighting as well?

--Hero Man

Hero Man,

No, to be honest when you work in a major city police department, you tend to hate firefighters there. I have always appreciated and respected them, but Denver Fire absolutely suck. I avidly hate them!

I lived in the mountains for years, and the firefighters have seriously saved my house from destruction on more than one occasion. I've done tactical EMS, but no fire. Maybe you can tell me about your training sometime.

Coolness.
Haha, and don't worry, Delta Wildlnad Firefighters are probably the most infamous Widanders in the firefighting industry; no joke I learned Delta Junction is practically famous for their firefighters. We don't deal to much in structure fires but moreso wild forrest fires. We have sort of an issue with the Oregon firefiighters who get called up here occasionally or when we get called down to the lower 48 because their units can't handle it haha.
I'll be posting more on the training on here; a lot of it can be incorporated by RSH, especially on patrols; it's really changed my views when it comes to patroling; I used to be against patroling because it's so dangerous and doesn't do much towards solving isssues but only sorta puts a band aid on it; like sweeping dirt under a rug; eventually it will fester and rot. But with my training I'm seeing how to conduct safety patrols much more...safely haha. In the firefighting business we call them handcrews; you never fight fire without a handcrew. Same rules apply to patroling.

Stay true. Stay free. Stay safe.

--Hero Man

Im so thankful for
the permafrost
The tons of layers of
ice under the ground
here so that fires dont
start up Anyways Congrats
Heroman