Analysis by Kevin Bersett
SUN News Editor
Española Fire Chief John Kitchen had warned me.
“You are going to be sore for days,” he said.
He didn’t offer any encouragement either when I told him I wanted to join firefighter applicants Sept. 5 for the Department’s physical exam.
“You won’t make it,” he said.
If I didn’t complete it, I wouldn’t be the only one.
This test is designed to weed out those applicants who believe that all firefighters do is watch television and slide down poles. When the Department put candidates through the physical test in January, almost all six failed the first segment of the test.
“We wiped out four firefighters,” Kitchen said proudly.
This time around, only four applicants made it to the physical exam. The other 19 aspiring firefighters had already been disqualified after they failed the written test, a general knowledge exam that Kitchen said is high school level.
The under-staffed Department hoped to fill three vacancies in order to have three shifts of 15 firefighters, a National Fire Protection Association guideline, Kitchen said. The physical test is just one aspect of the four-part, single-day hiring process that also includes a trip up the fire engine’s 75-foot high ladder and an oral interview session.
“If we don’t get three out of it, we will start over,” he said.
The firefighters themselves take the test once or twice a year, they said. Although they were too stoic to say so, I imagine it is the most dreaded workday of the year.
Kitchen’s warning and a desire to pass the test did not translate into better preparation on my part. To their credit none of the four final applicants said they chose my dietary regimen of the previous 24 hours, which included a beer, a whiskey and coke and 10 minutes before the exam, the rest of a bag Gardetto’s Italian Cheese Blend snack mix (this last decision would come back to haunt me).
The one word I would choose to describe the exam is heavy. First off, there is the 40-pound oxygen tank that you have to keep strapped to your back. This metallic partner is with you the entire test as you carry a 45-pound hose, lift a 30-pound pulley, hammer a 50-pound sled, pull over 100 pounds of hose and drag a 160-pound dummy.
And all those exercises follow the first part of the test, which requires applicants to walk up, over and down a three-step staircase 150 times within 10 minutes. By the 90th repetition, my head was spinning and I briefly forgot where I was and why I was spending a Saturday morning carrying what felt like a large animal on my back.
Nevertheless, I finished this exercise in a respectable 8 minutes; better, I found out later, than a couple of the Department’s veteran firefighters. This glory was short-lived.
I was afforded a seven-minute break before the second half of the exam; time I spent gasping for air and walking in confused circles.
For the rest of the exam, a heavy firefighter jacket and helmet were added to my load. Inside this equipment, I felt like a child who was playing dress-up in his father’s uniform.
Then I returned to the dreaded staircase where this time I had to do 13 repetitions while carrying a hose that weighed the equivalent of five newborn babies. My previously swift pace was replaced with the sort of groggy stumble I use during a late night trip to the bathroom.
When I completed that drudgery, my reward was a pulley exercise, in which I had to lift, hand over hand, a folded hose to the ceiling of the two-story garage and back down. By this time the snack mix started to exit where it had entered and any fear I had of looking foolish in front of the firefighters and my wife quickly transformed into an immediate desire to quit. But somehow (the ceiling must have sunk a few feet) I was able to complete this round of torture.
At this point, in what can only be described as one of my less charitable moods, I was hoping the firefighters would be called to a fire, or at the very least time would run out — applicants must complete the five exercises that comprise the second half of the exam within six minutes. Fortunately, no fire appeared, but unfortunately, three minutes remained and the most difficult task awaited me.
My Waterloo came in the form of a machine called the Keiser. I was required to use a 9-pound sledgehammer to move a sled five feet. If somehow I overcame this hurdle, I realized I still had to pull a fully loaded hose 20 feet and direct the flow toward a cone, and finally, drag the aforementioned dummy a good 30 feet.
My confidence hit its nadir within a few swings of the hammer. On the verge of vomiting, I laid it down and stoically retired in a pool of sweat.
Luckily for Española, the city wasn’t relying on a SUN editor to fill the open firefighter slots. I was hoping to say I failed the course because at 33 years old I was much older than the applicants, but that excuse went out the window when a 46-year-old man completed the exam.
Instead, I apparently warmed up the course for the applicants; all except one passed with flying colors.
The only man to meet all the Department’s requirements and be offered a firefighter job was Jerome Archuleta, 23, of El Rito, who still needs to undergo the city’s background check and complete some other paperwork before he starts, Kitchen said.
“My stomach was a little woozy at the end,” Archuleta said in an attempt, I believe, to make me feel better.
The other two applicants who passed the physical but did not attain enough points to be hired, were told they could reapply, Kitchen said. He said the Department will hold its next entry exam Oct. 24.
As I write this story two days after the exam, the soreness in my legs and back still attest to the grueling step test. While I didn’t exactly ace the exam, at least I fared better than one of the past applicants, who ended up discharging more than sweat after the exam.
“A couple of years ago, we had a kid completely destroy the bathroom,” Kitchen said.