Aroostook Republican photo/Natalie Bazinet
Students of Miss Anderson’s class interviewed Caribou Fire Chief Roy Woods in early February to find out all about the department. Participating in the interview included John Coleman Jr., Nicholas Lizotte, Coleson Theriault, Jessica Soucy, Jessica Leavitt, Chance Mills, Christian St. Peter, Kacie Haney, Sipsis Paul, Chelsea Levesque, Katrina Salch, Victoria Leavitt, Renee Stubbs, Justin Adams, William St. Pierre and Elliott Perley.
On Feb. 4, students of the Connor School flexed their journalistic muscles as they conducted an interview with Caribou Fire Chief Roy Woods. The students asked Chief Woods questions for almost an hour to find out all about the Caribou Fire and Ambulance Department, what it’s like to be a firefighter, and how people become firefighters.
After interviewing the chief, students were asked to make sure that their own homes had smoke detectors and to make certain that their house number was easily visible from the road. Chief Woods also invited the class to come visit the Fire Department for a field trip. A few of their questions are listed below:
Do all firefighters wear red?
Woods: No, they don’t. Most of the firefighter gear is actually black, and yellow; we don’t have too much red on our uniforms anymore, but they do have red suspenders usually.
How do you learn to drive the fire truck?
Woods: When you join the fire department you have to go through a lot of training, you have to go back to school to learn how to do different things. A fire truck is a lot different than driving a car, so it takes a lot of training and practice. It takes almost a year to learn how to drive it.
Why did you decide to become a firefighter?
Woods: Because I wanted to help other people.
How did you become a firefighter? Did you have to go to school?
Woods: You have to go to school, you have to apply just like any job, and then you go through an interview process where people talk to you about why you want to be a firefighter and then you have to go to school and it takes a couple of years just to get used to the equipment and knowing how to do things, and then after that you have to go with someone else who’s been there longer to learn.
Do you have to pass a physical fitness test? How often?
Woods: Every year my firefighters have to have a physical assessment done on how good they are and how good they can breathe and how much they can lift, those sorts of things, so they have to be physically fit to do the job.
What do you like best about your job?
Woods: Being able to help people, that’s why I wanted to be a firefighter in the first place and that’s what I do every day; helping other people.
How often do you practice fighting fires?
Woods: We practice every week; every Tuesday night, all my people have to gather and we have a training program, it’s like a school program and I assign what they’re going to be talking about or practicing and they have to do that before they can go back home every week.
How to you survive fires?
Woods: Firefighters wear special equipment to be able to go into smoke-filled areas and still breathe fresh air and we also have special clothing that resists the heat and keeps the heat away from us. So we have special gear to help us do that, because without it we wouldn’t be able to breathe.
Where do you get water when you are in the country and there are no hydrants?
Woods: When we respond to a fire, we bring water with us. A lot of our trucks have big water tanks that we bring with us so we haul the water back and fourth, and we also have a lot of ponds and brooks that we have places where we can cut a hole and get our water; then we have a buddy agreement with all the other towns around us, if we need help they come help us, if they need help we go help them. And we do that a lot.
Besides a hose, what tools do you use to fight fires?
Woods: We have axes, chainsaws, flashlights, Jaws of Life, ladders and a hook.
How long does it take to put on the gear?
Woods: That’s something that we have to practice all the time. The men are allowed three minutes to put their gear on. If they don’t get it on in 3 minutes, they have to start all over again and have to keep practicing until they do.
How much does your gear weigh?
Woods: it weighs about 50 pounds.
(Student Elliott Perley): So you have to carry 50 pounds each fire that you have?
Woods: You have to carry that plus when you go in and rescue somebody, you have to bring them out, so there’s another hundred and fifty pounds, so you need to be able to lift at least 200 pounds to be a firefighter.
How big was your last fire?
Woods: it was a house fire and it burned most of the inside of the house, we were there most of the night. A lot of our fires happen at night, do you know why? Because people are sleeping and they’re not watching like they do when they’re awake, and sometimes the fire gets going because everybody’s sleeping and they didn’t notice it. And that is why everybody has to have a smoke detector in their house. You should never, never go to bed without a smoke detector and you should make sure mom and dad check that smoke detector every once and a while to make sure that it’s working.
Do you know where Smokey is?
Woods: Yes, I do. But I can’t tell you.
Why are Smokey and Sparky both part of the fire department?
Woods: We use those two people to help us spread the word about fire safety and they’ve been around for a long time.
How many fire trucks does the Caribou Fire Department have?
Woods: We have six fire trucks and five ambulances.
