First Days

They said not to sign up until April but our brigade took our names and numbers straight away. I signed up with my partner. On our first Sunday we got given spare yellows. It felt great getting into them, even if I am just a pair of boobs above britches when I have them on. We had to bring our own boots, so we said, "Oh yeah we have a pair each," then went out and bought a couple of pairs with KRudd's stimulus money, (well yes KRudd, we think it's going to a good cause, thanks.)

We have two piece jacket and pants, leather gloves and helmets with someone else's name on them. My britches are a tad too tight and so I have to strain like a constipated person when getting on and off the truck. That's OK because when we finally become qualified, we get to order a whole new wildfire outfit of our very own. They are worth a lot of money. We will also get a pager each.

Our brigade has five or six new recruits. Our area has had over 40 people sign up after Black Saturday. There seems to have been an influx of new recruits state wide after the fires. In fact there have been so many new recruits that they couldn't even send me out my induction pack.

We have training on Tuesday nights, and on Wednesday and Sunday there is brigade training. We can only make it out to Sunday brigade training at the moment, as partner is studying for his MA in editing on those nights.

On the first Sunday we went over the tankers and learned the parts of the trucks and what's in each locker. It's hard to recall it all and I had a bit of brain meltdown after about twenty minutes - not a thing got in after that. Second Sunday we did inventory of trucks (the same thing as the week before only with a list to check items off with.) Third Sunday we studied wildfire behaviour and movement. I managed a session in comms on Wednesday night the next week, and then we did our first session of draughting, (drawing water from the river to fill the truck up with.)