Many apply, but few become Lincoln firefighters

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By LORI PILGER / Lincoln Journal Star

Reporter Lori Pilger and photojournalists Eric Gregory and Heidi Hoffman followed seven Lincoln Fire & Rescue recruits during their recent 14 weeks of training. Read about their ups and downs and the final outcome of their training.

HOSES, April 9

They pull the 100-foot fire hose down from Fire Engine 9 one at a time, hoist the nozzle over their shoulders and run to the hydrant.

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Capt. Tim Linke (from left) stands with Lamar Reil, Michael Vorderstrasse, Jon Wright, Capt. Dave Lorenzen, Jordan Petersen, Parry Siebenaler and Cole Henn after the recruits were able to take off their green "trainee" shirts and don the Lincoln Fire Department's blue T's as they became probationary firefighters Tuesday following their final test. (Eric Gregory)

Capt. Tim Linke (from left) stands with Lamar Reil, Michael Vorderstrasse, Jon Wright, Capt. Dave Lorenzen, Jordan Petersen, Parry Siebenaler and Cole Henn after the recruits were able to take off their green "trainee" shirts and don the Lincoln Fire Department's blue T's as they became probationary firefighters Tuesday following their final test. (Eric Gregory)

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Follow the seven recruits week by week as they progress through their training. (Laura Meerkatz / JournalStar.com)...

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Five weeks have passed since Cole Henn, Jordan Petersen, Lamar Reil, Parry Siebenaler, Mike Vorderstrasse, Jon Wright and Tony Grazziano got their green T-shirts marking them as recruits in Lincoln Fire & Rescue’s training academy.

It’s not easy, and they won’t all make it to the end.

Today, Capt. Tim Linke leads them, watching as they connect a fire hose and charge it with water. It’s the first time in the academy they’ve filled a fire hose, let alone anything else.

“They haven’t earned the right to spray water out of one of my nozzles yet,” Linke says.

On this particular chilly spring morning, it’s all about the basics.

“This is a very important function,” said Capt. Mark Munger, who has stopped by to help with training today. “It looks boring, but when you respond to a working fire, this is where it all begins. Right here. If you don’t get this right, nothing else goes right.”

Munger knows. He’s set to retire in a few months from a 33-year career fighting fires. When he started, he got a lesson on ladders, hydrants, hoses and breathing masks and was told to stick like glue to his officer. Scared to death, he did.

Now, when recruits come out of training, they’re expected to be ready to go — Day 1.

It’s about more than fires now, Munger said. Firefighters help in car crashes and on hazmat calls, medical emergencies and natural disasters.

But it still comes down to the basics.

“It’s not unlike a football team. If you don’t know how to block you’re not going to run it up the field. You need to know the fundamentals.”

When firefighters don’t, bad things happen.

So far this year, 52 U.S. firefighters — volunteer and career — have died in the line of duty, according to the U.S. Fire Administration. Some died of heart attacks. Others in crashes or trapped in fires.

Linke said that’s why he wants to get training back to basics, away from a national trend in which trainers piled on what-ifs like weapons of mass destruction, meth lab fires and dirty bombs.

“There are so many disciplines,” he said. “But it still says Lincoln Fire on the side of that rig.”

FIRST FIRE, April 15

Flames crackle and spit around pallets in a “burn box” that radiates heat in the training area at Southeast Community College in east Lincoln. Wind whips outside and smoke rolls out, sending tiny flakes of ash through the air.

Two at a time, the recruits head inside the cargo shipping box to knock down the fire inside.

They’re not trying to put it out. They’re watching how the water stream hits, how the fire rebuilds, how the smoke lets them know if a fire is growing or dying.

A little more than six weeks of class have built up to this day.  

The recruits have learned to pull fire hoses from a fire engine and to stretch it out, to charge the line and to hold it, to spray water and to direct the stream, to move it through a building, around corners and over chairs.

Today, they put water to fire.

“A lot of people think that if you just spray water on the fire it goes out,” Linke said. “But there’s a lot more to it with fires. If you don’t hit it just right, it can actually make things worse for you.”

Even with protective gear, the fire is definitely hot, said Cole Henn, who is 24 and comes from Petersburg, a town of about 300 in northeast Nebraska.

When Jordan Petersen, 25, of Elmwood, comes out, he heads for the water jug.

“It’s really smoky. Hot. You can see it’s pretty easy to get disoriented,” he said.

A real house fire would be even smokier, Linke said. In training, they burn pallets. In a real house fire, plastics and other materials can let off thick, black smoke.

Still, the burn box offers the closest thing to a house fire they’ve seen yet.

Parry Siebenaler comes out of the box, the heat still coming off his coat.

“I couldn’t even feel myself sweating,” he said.

Siebenaler, who moved to eastern Nebraska from Elm Creek, lived across the street from the volunteer fire department there, decided to volunteer “and kinda got hooked.”

Siebenaler, 33, said it didn’t take long as a volunteer to realize firefighting was what he wanted to do.

“Sometimes you don’t stop to think about how you’re leaving your family. You just get up and go,” Siebenaler said.

“I’ve left many dinners, many movies.”

With seven weeks of training under his belt and another seven to go, Siebenaler says that in many fire departments he and his fellow recruits would be on the job already.

“It’s nice to know we’ll have this solid before we have to do this for real,” he said.

SAVING THEIR OWN, May 8

The recruit class has narrowed from Linke’s Lucky Seven to Lucky Six.

Tony Grazziano is gone.

On April 25, Linke met him at the gate of the South Street training tower and sent him to the downtown station, where he was fired.

The recruits are quiet about his absence, until Jon Wright says he tries not to think about it.

“You have to focus on yourself,” he said.

That’s part of what they learn during RIT, or Rapid Intervention Training, this week.

On the previous day, they learned what to do if they get into trouble in a fire.

Today, they take on the sobering task of how to save one of their own. They work on drags and carries and getting air to a downed firefighter to buy some time.

Linke says it’s probably the most stressful thing they could encounter, and he’s seen it happen himself.

“Just doing this here is going to make you better firefighters,” he tells the men after their first try at finding and saving Rescue Randy, a 170-or-so pound dummy “trapped” in the SCC training tower.

Trainers complicate things by adding radio traffic, the noise of a fan, obscured vision by way of Press’n Seal over face masks.

A firefighter’s job is to try to bring order to chaos, Linke says.

The first try ends in failure, and faces are long, but Linke says he’s happy with how they’re doing.  

A second try and the first team of three finds Randy in a confined space. Then trainers throw another curve ball. Two of the rescuers just ran out of air, they say, and must stop and lie down.

Siebenaler is left to try to get air to the fallen recruits. He calls a second team with news that now three firefighters are down.

The next three, Henn, Petersen and Wright, scramble. In time, they all come out.

Mission accomplished.

Outside, they go over the drill.

“First thing is get our guy. If we can’t get him, save yourself. Don’t make the problem worse,” Lincoln Firefighter Mikael Tupe tells them.

Linke says he’s proud of how the recruits worked together.

“You’re going to keep getting thrown crappy deals, and learning to deal with them is part of the job.”

Not all days are so serious. One afternoon ends with Fire Apparatus Operator Dave Steward showing the recruits how to get a hose pumping water from the truck — and then turning the water on them.

“They’ve been great for me, but I don’t want them to know that,” he says before emptying the hose on them. “… When they’re wet behind the ears you’ve got to let ’em know.”

On another day, Fire Capt. Bob Borer has the recruits put on blue Hazmat suits for a scenario, then play Frisbee outside Station 14.

“I want to push it. I want them to see what it feels like,” Borer said.

AMBULANCES, May 23

It’s a rainy day, and Firefighter Dave Lorenzen takes the recruits for a spin in an ambulance. More accurately, they take him.

He rides shotgun. The recruits take turns: one behind the wheel, one strapped on a cot in back and a third checking a “patient’s” pulse and blood pressure.

The patient holds a Styrofoam cup filled with water at his chest to see how much sloshes out on the bumps. Lorenzen says the lesson is designed to give recruits an appreciation for what the ride feels like from the cot.

The point isn’t lost on Henn.

“Slow it down Parry,” he says.

“You wanna get to the hospital, Cole, don’t you?” Siebenaler responds from the driver’s seat.

Henn admits it’s tough finding the fine line between driving fast and driving smooth. Getting pulse and BP readings isn’t easy either.

“It’s an art form,” Lorenzen said. “It really is.”

Now imagine trying to start an IV, Siebenaler says.

HAZMAT, May 29

A chemistry video plays onto a whiteboard in an otherwise dark room at the Highlands fire station.

The door opens, and Deputy Chief Danny Wright walks in. The recruits spring to their feet. The video is paused. Lights flip on.

“How’s hazmat?” he asks.

“It’s hazardous,” answers recruit Jon Wright, who is also the deputy chief’s son.

The potential for a serious hazmat incident certainly is there, the deputy chief says. The number of ethanol train cars alone that go through town have taken a huge jump in the past couple of years.

“There’s lots of stuff out there.”

Another 10 days or so and the recruits will be out of there.

“Are you excited?” Wright asks.

They answer yes.

“I bet you are.”

Jon Wright notes that test day is still coming.

He grew up around the fire department, and he’s wanted to be a firefighter since he can remember — but not necessarily because of his dad.

“I did it because I like the job.”

He says he’s no different than the rest of the guys. They all went through the same process, and he hopes everyone knows it.

He knows his first fire could be just days away.

“It is dangerous, and it is what it is. Somebody’s having a bad day, and you’re going in there trying to help. Yeah, I’m excited, but I’m also nervous,” Jon Wright says. “I don’t want to get hurt, and I don’t want anybody else to get hurt. You never know what you’re going to get.”

His father is excited for him, but he knows some will watch and hold the bar higher for him.

“He’s a big boy,” he says. “He can stand on his own two feet.”

The bottom line is this, Danny Wright says: All of the recruits want to help people.

“That’ll start happening soon.”

TEST DAY, June 10

A 100-question test comes first, bright and early at 7:30.

Then nervous waiting in a hallway, as captains go over how they will handle the practicals.

There’s time for second-guessing. Was that sprinkler activation answer heat or smoke? Petersen jumps in with the answer — heat. He doesn’t think he did great, but he’s pretty sure he passed.

“Either way I’m getting rid of the green shirt today,” he says.

“Either way,” Henn echoes.

Deputy Chief Wright walks into the hall and asks if they’re ready. After they file in, he tells them about the six stations they’ll wind through next.

They’ll have to connect a hose to a fire hydrant, run a charged hose up a training tower, do two ladder carries, put gear on in less than two minutes, show their EMT skills and search and rescue for a dummy.

Soon after, they go outside and get started. It takes three hours.

At the end, Linke heads to the building.

“All right guys. Classroom.”

It’s been a long day, and it’s not quite 12:30 p.m. Their gear seems to hang heavier on shoulders.

But the work is over.

Inside, stacks of navy blue Lincoln Fire & Rescue T-shirts sit on a table. They file in and sit down.

Linke, at the front, congratulates the six, who he says no longer are recruits. Their paychecks will call them firefighters now.

First comes six months on probation. Then another test before they earn their badges.

Linke tells them to do everything they can to be the best firefighters they can be, and to watch out for each other.

“I am very proud of each and every one of you. … But you’re not a firefighter yet,” he said. “You won’t be a firefighter until your brothers and sisters out there call you a firefighter.”

The good news is they can get rid of the bright green T-shirts that have marked them as recruits for the past 14 weeks.

“Remember who you represent when you put on these lovely blue shirts and black pants,” Linke said after handing them out.

A note on the board in the hall lists recruitment and test dates for a new batch of future Lincoln firefighters.

In September, it begins again.

Reach Lori Pilger at 473-7237 or lpilger@journalstar.com.