The 12-week academy got underway Tuesday at the Modesto Junior College Regional Fire Training Center, adjacent to the MJC West Campus. Eight MFD probationary firefighters were training alongside two firefighters from the Patterson department and will be joined Monday by three from the Stanislaus Consolidated Fire Protection District.
“Three of the department’s 11 stations are ALS (advanced life support) staffed, so there’s one paramedic on each company,” Battalion Chief Tim Tietjen said Friday as the recruits trained nearby on how to make forcible entry into a building. The department’s goal is to have a paramedic on each engine team in the city.
Being an emergency medical technician, or EMT, is standard for firefighters, Tietjen said. As paramedics, these recruits can go beyond offering basic care to provide advanced life support, including administering drugs and performing tracheal intubation, he said.
While the class will boost the paramedic ranks, the firefighters are filling department vacancies. This is the first hiring the MFD has done in three years, spokeswoman Jessica Smart said. Between promotions, retirements and employees leaving for other agencies, the department has lost about eight since summer, and several were paramedics.
There’s a pay incentive for being a paramedic – 6 percent above being an EMT, Tietjen said. But when department veterans – men who have gone from firefighter to engineer to captain and up – retire, bringing in someone at the paramedic level of pay still is a significant savings, Smart said.
The academy class was winnowed down in a process that ran from September through December. Each year, hundreds of people take the first step toward firefighting careers by applying through the Sacramento-based . From the list of test takers statewide, the Modesto department considered the top 90.
Of course, other departments are considering the same candidates. “That’s the challenge, because departments across the state are looking to hire,” Tietjen said. But as MFD was narrowing its pool, it lost only one contender to hiring by another department.
Of the eight firefighters in the academy now, all but one are from – or have ties to – the Modesto area. The other is from the Chico area. “With the amount of investment we put in, there’s a greater likelihood that if they’re from this area, they’ll stay with us and put down roots here,” Tietjen said.
In addition to the written test they take with the FCTC, the recruits did an initial interview with the MFD, then interviews with several chief officers. They underwent intensive background checks, psychiatric evaluations and full medical evaluations to ensure there are no injuries that would affect job performance, Tietjen said.
Now that they’re in the academy, meeting 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays, “the process they go through to graduate is very rigorous,” Tietjen said. It includes about a week and a half of engine company operations and a week and a half to two weeks of truck company orientation. There’s also a week set aside for pediatric and advanced life support.
That’s necessary in part because a couple of firefighters in the class are not approved to be paramedics in this area. They’ve done the job in other parts of the state or nation, but “you have to be accredited under the protocols of this region,” Tietjen said.
“We invest a lot in these firefighters by the time they get here,” he said. “When they step onto an engine, we want them to be highly qualified. This is the time we find that out.”
One of the eight in the MFD class is Alex Roussell, 37, who grew up in Modesto when his family moved here in 1989. After working in Tampa Bay, Fla., and then in Pasco County north of there, Roussell moved with his wife back to the area so they could be closer to family. They now live in Turlock.
He said it’s exciting to join a department as reputable as Modesto’s and good for the community that the MFD is able to make the paramedic hires. “Call volume is very high for a community of this size,” Roussell said. “It runs the whole gamut of medical calls, from hazmat to vehicle accidents” to illnesses and injuries.
He said the first week of the academy was a great experience. “We do PT (physical training) every morning at 7 to get the blood pumping and the camaraderie going,” Roussell said. “In just a couple of days, I’ve already jelled with the group I’ve been working with.”
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