The Crew That Gets It

One of the best things about this job is the people.

You can spend a couple of weeks on a deployment with someone you've barely met and trust them with your life. You can work alongside the same crew for years without ever having a conversation about feelings, yet somehow know exactly when one of them isn't travelling too well.

That's one of the strange things about firefighting. We spend more time with each other than we do with our own families. Christmases, birthdays, missed weekends, night shifts, station dinners, jobs we'd rather forget. Somewhere along the way, the people you work with stop feeling like workmates. They become your mates.

That's one of the best parts of the job.

Nobody has to explain what it's like to get home after a rough shift and sit in the driveway for ten minutes before going inside. Nobody has to explain why the conversation around the kitchen table can go from something genuinely horrific to someone arguing about who forgot to buy milk in the space of thirty seconds. It just makes sense because everyone was there.

Those friendships matter. More than most people probably realise.

But they can also become the only place we feel understood.

After a while, it becomes easier to talk to firefighters than anyone else. You stop trying to explain things to your partner because it feels impossible to put into words. Your mates outside the job stop asking because they don't really know what to ask anymore. Before long, your whole world starts revolving around the station.

You don't even notice it's happening.

The other thing this job is good at is making almost anything seem normal.

We've all heard it. "It's just part of the job." And sometimes it is. Seeing difficult things is part of the job. Having bad days is part of the job. But carrying everything around by yourself doesn't have to be.

When everyone around you is saying they're fine, it's pretty easy to convince yourself you should be too. We get good at pushing things aside because there's another job coming, another shift tomorrow, another truck to climb back into. It works for a while.

Until it doesn't.

I've also seen plenty of firefighters struggle when they leave the job. Retirement, injury, PTSD, medical retirement. It doesn't really matter why. If your entire identity has become wrapped up in being a firefighter, losing the job can feel like losing yourself.

The friendships aren't the problem. They're one of the biggest protective factors we have. The trick is making sure they're not the only ones.

Stay close to your crew, but stay close to your family as well. Keep in touch with mates outside the fire service. Have interests that don't involve a station, a uniform or a truck. And if something's been sitting with you longer than it should, talk to someone. That might be another firefighter, it might be your partner, a mate, peer support or a psychologist. The important part is that you don't carry it on your own.

One of the things I miss most about the fire service is the people.

The laughs. The trust. The feeling that no matter what happened on a job, there was always someone beside you who understood without you having to explain it.

Those friendships are worth protecting.

Just don't forget to protect yourself as well.