ARFF Day 3

Day 3: Today was aircraft familiarization. Which means we looked at a lot of bungholes and wings and noses. Yes, this post is pg-13, I just like saying bungholes for shock value. But seriously, today was one of the toughest classes because all of the information was so concentrated. It was really neat to learn about the differences in Airbus vs Boeing and such...but realistically the Antarctic Fire Department isn't going to be seeing a 747 or even an Airbus 380 land in Mactown anytime soon. We learned about where some danger areas of the plane are, and how to operate the doors and other controls. It was a very informative class, don't get me wrong. After class, we took another tour of the two planes used for training here at DIA.

Fedex donated one of the planes to DIA ARFF and the other plane is used for flight attendant training and other random training at the airfield. We were given free reign to open up all the doors and mess around the plane. The only thing we had to avoid was the landing gear switch on the Fedex plane...because the fedex plane, is still fully operational.

The platform to the left of this paragraph is the DIA ARFF (Denver Fire's) stair platform. It is automatically dispatched to incidents where they think they have to do a mass evacuation of the plane. I can't imagine responding in that thing though. Must be pretty comical. "Stair 1, we are en route!" or something to that extent I'm sure. But the Apparatus here is really neat! They also use hummers, so that they can go fight fires in the subway tunnels under the airport. As you can see here the Hummer looks pretty B.A.

It was really cool to see what the cargo area looks like and even to walk around a cargo jet. Though it is very similar to walking around an empty LC-130. Taking off those over the wing doors was a challenge. Let me tell you, they are heavy. So overall, Day 3 was pretty intense with the training. But I learned a decent amount about airplanes, their controls and how to spot potential problems with certain aircraft. So see y'all tomorrow. Take care!






Mom, I was safe. Don't worry. Hey everyone look at me on the wing!