Patch Asks Intermountain: What's a Typical Day Like at the Station?

In January, we asked readers what they would ask one of our volunteer firefighters over at Intermountain Fire and Rescue.

The department was established by "a concerned group of citizens who wanted to provide better fire protection for their community" and serves an area of 125 square miles bordering Ramona, Julian, Lake Henshaw and Palomar Mountain.

Readers submitted a variety of questions on the comments, like "How does it feel fighting fire?" and "How many calls do you get on a weekly basis?"

This week, Jesse Carbajal tells readers what a typical day might consist of at the Intermountain Fire and Rescue station:

"My name is Jesse Carbajal, I'm a firefighter here at Intermountain Fire and Rescue. I've been here since 2006 and I would love to be a full-time, career-paid firefighter.

What's a typical day like at Intermountain Fire and Rescue?

A typical day at Intermountain starts off at 7:30 to 7:15... We're required to be here 30 to 45 minutes early. At that time, shift changeover happens, where the crew that worked the day before kind of lets us know what's going on, what's broke, what's not broke, what they did, what they didn't do.

At around 8 a.m., we start our rig checks—making sure everything is where it needs to be, all of our tools are ready to go, the engine is ready to go. That lasts roughly an hour or so.

After that, we have our morning meetings. Our morning meetings consist of basically what we're going to do throughout the day—the training that needs to get done, any household work that needs to get done throughout the house. We like to knock that out first thing in the morning.

After that, it just goes into training. In between training and household things, we hopefully will get a call and get to do some work.

At around 5 o'clock you have downtime. So at downtime, you're allowed to take your uniform off, get comfortable. A lot of guys here at that time is when we like to work out... or we go for a run, go hiking—get out of the house a little bit.

We are here for 24 hours. A lot of people think that we're only here for 8 hours or volunteers respond from home. We actually are living here for 24 hours, sometimes 48 depending on how it goes.

The next day is a completely different crew and it all starts over again.

Have a burning question? Submit it in the comments below or to melissa.phy@patch.com

Patch would like to put out a special thanks to the Intermountain Fire and Rescue Department for not only volunteering their efforts as firefighters, but for also giving time to Patch and the community for Firefighter Friday!