The life of a Logan firefighter
Whether it’s pulling someone out of a rolled over car, helping someone who just broke their hip or helping a child with a seizure, Rhett Hellstern, Logan firefighter, will be there.
“You’re there to help somebody in the worst moment of their life and sometimes that worst moment of their life is very tragic,” said Hellstern.
Everyday in a firefighter’s life is different.
“I have never been on a single call that is exactly the same, ever. Doesn’t matter if it seems like a routine call there’s always something that’s going to catch you off guard or that’s going to be different. That’s what’s so awesome about this job,” he said.
He wanted to be a paramedic ever since he was little. He and his twin brother were born premature and his brother had seizures often.
“My mom and dad were all worried, but these guys would show up and they knew exactly what to do, and they were all calm and reassuring,” Hellstern said. “They were just giants to me, and I was just a little kid so they were just these huge guys that would come in and rescue the day. They would drive my brother to the hospital and everything would be okay,” he added.
He always wanted to be a paramedic but didn’t realize that they doubled as firefighters until he started working after he graduated high school in 1996.
He has been a firefighter ever since. He started out at Mendon, and then worked for Thiokol, a shuttle booster testing company, for two years, then in Ogden for two years.
While working for Ogden he, with six other firefighters, went to help families of the fallen of September 11th. They mainly helped with to-do lists of odd jobs around the house. They left on November 21, 2001 and stayed for five days, and helped three families.
After that he worked for the Roy fire department part time while also working in Logan and North Logan.
“When you become a firefighter you’ve got to learn to be a jack of all trades. It’s tough to be proficient at everything when you’ve got so much to know. That’s why we have specialty teams,” Hellstern said. He works on two specialty teams, the HASMAT (hazardous materials response team) and on the technical rescue team.
“I’m lucky enough to be on both,” he said.
In addition to those he works for the state of Utah on the Northern Utah Strike team, which helps with natural disasters around the state. While working for that team he was able to go down to St. George when they had flooding.
He was firefighter of the year in 2003 while working for the Logan Fire Department.
“I’ve been here for five years and I enjoy it,” he said.
As a full time firefighter he works 48 hour shifts with 13 other firefighters, who rotate between three shifts. The minimum staff is 11 and three of the 14 are off each day.
“There’s not a lot of down time in this job,” he said.
Beginning at 8 a.m. they have a round table and are given the minutes for the day, and told what crew they are assigned to, whether it’s the rescue crew (paramedics) or the engine (fires).
From about 8 to 9 a.m. they check out the trucks in the truck bay from the previous day and make sure all the equipment is put away and in working order.
Next they physically train for an hour in the weight room.
Firefighters carry 75 pounds with just their uniform and then at least 25 pounds of equipment they carried on each job. Hellstern said they need to be in shape.
Lunchtime is time for them to kick back, watch the news or start on their training.
But from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. it’s a scheduled day, where they plan lessons for their volunteer training groups.
“The best way to prevent a fire from happening is to teach people how to prevent a fire in the first place. That should be our number one and the second should be fire suppression,” Hellstern said.
Most days, although, planned to be organized, are not, with frequent calls in the middle of training.
“Today we’ve already had four or five calls and it’s just barely noon,” he said. “Some days you get skunked, where you don’t run a single call. But there are those days where this station has run up to 22 calls.”
Although the firefighters live for the sound of the call, they realize it takes so much out of them.
“The amount of stress that’s involved with that is very high, with all the emotions,” he said. “Especially when it deals with a child, the emotions are just outrageous, but there’s just that drive that keeps you going and you do the best you can for everybody you go to.”
When it comes to a tragedy in one of those calls they’ve got to keep their head on and push through it.
“You have to be on top of your game all the time. That’s why we consistently study. That’s why we’re always training,” he said. “There’s some you save and there’s just some you don’t and you’ve just got to learn how to deal with that emotion,” he added.
Each call lasts for about an hour, and if there’s 22 calls in a day, and the paperwork takes up to another hour per call, then that only leaves them with two hours for the rest of the day.
Hellstern said they run over 3,500 calls per year.
“Then if they get stacked up you have back to back calls, and you’ve got stacks of paper that’s just crazy,” Hellstern said.
Although most would think that being married to a firefighter would be tough, his wife knows exactly what he’s doing at all times, because she’s a 911 dispatcher.
“She tells me where to go here and at home. So, it really helps because the conversation at home really flows well, she understands where I’m coming from so it really helps,” he said.
A lot of people have misconceptions of firefighters; that they’re a “good ole boys club” and just sit and relax, Hellstern said. Although that my have been true in the past, it’s not now, he added.
“This isn’t just a big play sand box,” he said. “You don’t come to work to play, you come to work to save people’s lives to help them in their moment of need,” he added.
Logan’s fire department currently has two fire stations because of the growth to the area.
“We’re getting to be a big enough city and a big enough area in Cache County that the call volume has increased significantly,” Hellstern said.
One main one is located downtown at 76 East 200 North and the second, where Hellstern works, is by Snow Hall.
“The response time from downtown to here was excessive it was more than the five minutes that is optimal,” he said.
They added the fire station in 2003 to help with the response, because it took too long to get up the hill to get to the homes, apartments, or the canyon, he said.
And with 30,000 more students coming in each fall it’s a benefit for USU and all the people in the community, he said.
“This is my second family, I consider all the guys I work with my brothers. We’re all really good friends and get along pretty good,” he said. “You have those little trifles every once in a while like every family does but for the most part we’re a pretty close-knit family. That’s where you get that sense of team work, that sense of togetherness that really helps do the job.”
They all live together in the same building, with one hallway, a living room, workout room, kitchen and front desk. Their rooms are just big enough to fit a single bed and a desk.
“There’s not a lot of jobs out there that you count on your buddy or your co-worker to save your life, because you go into a fire and that buddy that’s walking in behind you may be the one carrying you back out,” he said.
-ranaebang@cc