Hello, my name is Blake Powers and I love to go to fires!

Hello, my name is Blake Powers and I love to go to fires!

This day and time in the fire service you run into a lot of people who are negative, disgruntled, and generally just don't care about the calling. These negative attitudes don't affect me and will not ever bring me down. But, in my career to this date I have seen several awesome people sink in to the funk of the bad crew they are placed with. The Relentless Group on FB is taking over though!

Remember back to when you first decided you wanted to become a fireman, what were your motives? As a child did you see a firetruck screaming down the road and love it, becoming one of the few children that actually follow your original dreams? Did you study about the fire service and sit thinking that you could make a difference in the world? Did you think, man they have great benefits and the pay is not too bad for someone without a diploma? Did you need a job really bad and lucked up and got hired? Despite what your reasons were, your here now. There are tons of people across the world that would do absolutely anything to be able to come to work every 3rd day and ride on that truck. We all are very fortunate to say the least.

Remember when you successfully completed recruit school? Don't know about you, but it was one of the best days of my life. For us, it is the toughest mentally and physically 12 weeks we will ever go through. You get out of the academy and can't wait to get on the truck. I don't care who you are, after completing that course your hyped up, motivated as hell and ready to take on the world.

Remember your first day on shift? Your first morning, you walk in and nothing can wipe that grin off your face. Your anxious to make runs, as many as you can fit into a 24 hour shift. Your ready to roll up first due with heavy smoke showing, bust through the door and make the push. But it hardly ever happens that way. In reality, you start to realize how relaxed the environment is even on your first day. Shift after shift you come in and are less motivated than the one before. Eventually becoming part of the crew that doesn't want to do shit. Waking up when your working off shift and bitching to the oncoming crew about making 3 runs through the night hours. Most of us are guilty, including myself. But I battled through it and now I have come to terms that I will not get a full nights sleep, BECAUSE ITS MY JOB ITS WHAT I SIGNED UP FOR.

Remember when you came in last shift and didn't check off your truck, SCBA, radio, and all your other equipment? Yea the things that are your lifelines. Your failing yourself before the tones ever drop. Maybe you've talked to both other shifts and they didn't use anything. So what? Pressure changes in SCBA bottles daily, batteries fail daily, our equipment is not bulletproof. Simply put, shit breaks. It wears out and I'd rather you figure out it's broken at shift change and not when there are flames 10 ft from you. Bruce Stephens said it right a while back, leave the equipment better than when you found it.

Remember when you came in last shift and didn't train a bit? All of the trades that this job requires of us are easily forgotten little by little as time progresses. We must constantly pull out our equipment and at the minimum look it over. YouTube is a great teacher, there are thousands of videos pertaining to our exact equipment. You sit there in your recliner on your computer for hours, why not do some individual training.

I want everyone to value the job we have for what it is. Appreciate how blessed we all are to call ourselves fireman. Train everyday, be in good physical condition. Show up your next shift with the enthusiasm that you had on your first day. Take that mindset and make it positive for the whole crew. Before you sit down in that recliner make damn sure your battle ready! The fire service is great as a whole but it can be so much better. It's up to us to make it happen. We are the future, we are the relentless few and were taking over the fire service and there's nothing you can do about it!!

"Train as if your life depends on it, because it does"