Peyton is a Firefighter and Paramedic with the Wales Genesee Fire Department. Working in a demanding dual-role career, Peyton walks us through a typical 24-hour shift, from prepping and training to responding to emergencies of all kind.
Transcript
>> My name's Peyton Lopponow. I'm a firefighter paramedic at Wales-Genesee Fire Department. You can get some pretty crazy like car accidents. So sometimes that's when we definitely need an engine and an ambulance. That's one call for sure. You need the ambulance crew to make sure that the patient is OK. And sometimes the patient can't get out of the car for whatever reason. If the door got hit too hard or for some reason, you know, you can't get any other doors open, and then the engine crew will have to come with tools to cut the door off and stuff. So sometimes the patient care, if you can get access to them, it'll start before you actually get them out of the car. Sometimes we have to go hold their head to make sure -- and then we get like a collar on them and stuff. So those can get kind of complex if it requires extraction with getting the patient out. We go on calls. We go on pediatric calls. We go on, I mean, any range of call. We've had drownings. We've had, you know, people on hospice. It just kind of depends and getting a history on your patient is really important to just kind of figure out what's going on. Yeah. There's not really any kind of call that we don't go on. So pretty much anything you can think of. So we have 12 hour shifts in the evening. So it's from 6PM to 6AM and then you're on a certain shift, a couple shifts a week, and then, at my department, we choose our weekends, which are our 12 or 24 hour shifts. So we start at 6PM, usually have dinner or go get something or make something. And then just kind of wait and see if we get a call. Otherwise, I'm in charge of checking off one of the ambulances and making sure that it's always stock and in good condition and everything it that. So sometimes when I'm on shift I'll do that kind of stuff. As far as full-time stuff, they do more of like 24 hour shifts and there's different schedules with that too just depending on the department. So it just kind of depends where you end up what your shift is like, but it's pretty much, you know, like cleaning around the fire department or just kind of making sure that everything is good to go in case you get a call.
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