Saturday morning, the girls' girl scout group took a trip to the fire station. Five parents went along as well, and I think that the parents might have had more fun than the girls did.
We saw:
The kitchen - where the girls were impressed by the four different refrigerators there. There is one for each shift, plus one where condiments and other shared stuff is kept. They explained how, when the alarm goes off, everything in the kitchen shuts down so that nothing is burned while they go off on their call.
The bedrooms - where the girls wondered why the rooms weren't labeled with their names, and were slightly confused as to how exactly they shared the rooms, when there was only one bed. The firefighters work for 24 hours at a time, in three different shifts.
The media room - where the many recliners were quite impressive.
Offices - not very exciting.
The garage - This was where most of the fun was. Ambulances! Fire trucks! The girls got to go inside the ambulance and see all the different supplies. We learned about how there are different levels of answering a call, some are answered with aid cars, which are staffed by two EMTs, some with medic cars, which are staffed by two paramedics, and then the fire engine, for actual fires, and which can also double as an aid car. All the firefighters are EMTs, and all have been trained to use the defibrillators, and they said that King County has the highest resuscitation rate for cardiac arrests in the nation.
One of the firefighters got all dressed up in his fire-fighting gear, which was quite extensive. The girls also got to see equipment used for getting people out of cars and got to go on the fire engine. Shortly after they saw the fire engine, a call came in and they got to see two of the firefighters leave on the fire engine. They talked about how people tend to freak out when they see a fire engine or ambulance behind them.
The guys that were there were really nice and seemed to enjoy talking to all of us about what they do. Pictures of the visit are here.