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My BOB
- Thread starter Maximil
- Start date
I think we are all responsible for being aware of and appropriately reacting to our environments. Right or wrong, the facts of life are that if you present yourself as an outsider, you will be treated as one. That usually means hostility.
I see two solutions: become an emergency service worker, or blend in.
There are all kinds of ways to get involved in emergency services. You can volunteer in a fire department if you are rural. There have been some good threads here lately about search and rescue. There are civil defense organizations if you are urban. One I never thought of until recently is ham radio.
I am a firefighter and a ham, so I can have a lot of the "goodies" in my bag and no one will care.
But I still have the strategy of fitting in. My BOB is a Nike backback, and my emergency clothes will do equally well in the forest or in the mall.
My point is that you shouldn't limit yourself to one environment or the other -- you can be prepared and still mix with the mindless masses. There are plenty of good reasons for doing so, or at least for leaving that option open. Some would say that if you are good at "doing" emergencies then you have an obligation to help out.
Regardless of what your role is in a disaster, I think it is better to be flexible and adaptive than to be extremely prepared for the wrong environment.
Scott
I see two solutions: become an emergency service worker, or blend in.
There are all kinds of ways to get involved in emergency services. You can volunteer in a fire department if you are rural. There have been some good threads here lately about search and rescue. There are civil defense organizations if you are urban. One I never thought of until recently is ham radio.
I am a firefighter and a ham, so I can have a lot of the "goodies" in my bag and no one will care.
But I still have the strategy of fitting in. My BOB is a Nike backback, and my emergency clothes will do equally well in the forest or in the mall.
My point is that you shouldn't limit yourself to one environment or the other -- you can be prepared and still mix with the mindless masses. There are plenty of good reasons for doing so, or at least for leaving that option open. Some would say that if you are good at "doing" emergencies then you have an obligation to help out.
Regardless of what your role is in a disaster, I think it is better to be flexible and adaptive than to be extremely prepared for the wrong environment.
Scott
beezaur said:There are all kinds of ways to get involved in emergency services. You can volunteer in a fire department....
Scott
I was thinking along those very lines. Our local fire department is quite small and is all volunteer. They are always looking for warm bodies. I'm going to see if they offer a first aid course and/or some kind of Community Emergency Response Training.
The normal procedure with new volunteers in small rural districts in my area is to first train them in basic firefighting, vehicle rescue, and first aid. When I first joined, I did a couple of weekends of training, took a first aid class, and went home with my new bunker gear and pager.
The really great thing about volunteer fire service is that you get tons and tons of free training. When you think about it, that makes sense. When an alarm comes in, even out in the sticks, it could be anything from old Mrs. Fizzywig who can't get out of the tub to a wreck to a structure fire with trapped occupants. And you are one of a very small crew tasked with solving that problem.
In my first months, I was trained to:
- rescue people from burning buildings
- put out brush fires
- tear apart wrecked cars
- rescue people from those cars
- tear into buildings without making them collapse
- prop up buildings that have collapsed
- rescue people from those buildings
- care for the people I rescued
- use the communications systems
- drive and operate ambulances, pumpers, tankers (tenders) etc.
- ventilate buildings
- deal with hazardous spills and explosive atmospheres
- deal with natural disasters
And the list goes on and on, now to include terrorist attacks.
The usual beginner text is not a bad one to have ine one's library even if you are not a firefighter:
http://www.ifsta.org/html/catalog/36041.htm
Anyway, back to the original topic. If you want to have some really cool stuff for an emergency/disaster/other badness bag, join a fire department or other emergency organization. You will learn tons about what to do and how to do it.
Scott
The really great thing about volunteer fire service is that you get tons and tons of free training. When you think about it, that makes sense. When an alarm comes in, even out in the sticks, it could be anything from old Mrs. Fizzywig who can't get out of the tub to a wreck to a structure fire with trapped occupants. And you are one of a very small crew tasked with solving that problem.
In my first months, I was trained to:
- rescue people from burning buildings
- put out brush fires
- tear apart wrecked cars
- rescue people from those cars
- tear into buildings without making them collapse
- prop up buildings that have collapsed
- rescue people from those buildings
- care for the people I rescued
- use the communications systems
- drive and operate ambulances, pumpers, tankers (tenders) etc.
- ventilate buildings
- deal with hazardous spills and explosive atmospheres
- deal with natural disasters
And the list goes on and on, now to include terrorist attacks.
The usual beginner text is not a bad one to have ine one's library even if you are not a firefighter:
http://www.ifsta.org/html/catalog/36041.htm
Anyway, back to the original topic. If you want to have some really cool stuff for an emergency/disaster/other badness bag, join a fire department or other emergency organization. You will learn tons about what to do and how to do it.
Scott
beezaur said:The normal procedure with new volunteers in small rural districts in my area is to first train them in basic firefighting, vehicle rescue, and first aid. When I first joined, I did a couple of weekends of training, took a first aid class, and went home with my new bunker gear and pager.
Scott
I would think about joining them more seriously if I were built more, shall we say, substantially. I'm not fragile, but at 5-foot-10-inches and 140 pounds, it seems most fightfighting gear would easily outweigh me.
I was laughed at for being "skinny" in grade school. I'm 43 now, and even though some additional weight is creeping onto my frame, those same people are envious of my slender build. My lanky configuration, however, does not itself to lugging heaving equipment around.
That said, I'm still interested in re-learning the basics of first aid and in making myself useful if they can use someone like me.