How would you describe what it means to be a firefighter? Does it mean to wear the uniform? Does it mean to drive the fire truck with the sirens blaring, rushing to the next fire?

How would you describe the atmosphere of a fire station? Being a firefighter is not a job to be taken lightly. They sometimes respond to situations with somber outcomes and innocent victims. Does that make the station like a serious and solemn stronghold of bravery and heroism?

With all these questions, we started to look for some answers, which only led to a larger question: Where would we find firefighters to interview? Deanna’s best idea was to start a fire, because then we could get some good photos too.

Okay so we were just kidding, but lucky for us, Deanna happens to be very close family friends with her neighbor, Toby McDonell. And Toby just happens to be a fire fighter for the Palo Alto Fire Department.

Actually, Toby has been a firefighter for 24 years. And in 1990 he was hired for the city of Palo Alto, and has now worked there for seventeen years. He has been a dedicated firefighter before he even got the job, “When I was hired I actually had to wait in line for two days and two nights. We had to camp out because they only accepted the first 250 applications for the position so there was a big line on Stanford campus. We just camped out in a parking lot and I was number one in line and they hired 11 of us at that time.”

We all know that firefighters don’t save kittens from tall trees all day. They respond to a large variety of calls; they are on the scene at fires, medical emergencies, traffic accidents, hazardous material spills and more. Our topic of research digs beneath the side of fire fighting we hear about on our television sets or what we catch a glimpse of while rubbernecking at a highway accident scene. There is a whole other side to being a firefighter that many people don’t know about unless they share a close relationship with a firefighter. Through the experiences they have in common, the firefighters share a bond with each other that you won’t find at any workplace. For a firefighter, the crew is a second family and the station is a second home.

This book follows a day in the life of a firefighter of the Palo Alto Fire Department. The schedule is a fictional story based on real events, and interviews of firefighters working for the PAFD. All the cited facts are true.

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