Finishing the Job
When the fire is out, the first priority is to search through the fire scene again. Your job is to cool down any smoldering furniture, walls or floors. Fires can flare up again unless every burning ember is fully extinguished.

Other people on the crew are knocking down and removing burned-out walls and floors as they go. Inspectors start examining the smoke and burn patterns, trying to figure out how the fire started and see how it spread.

Finally, it is time to head back to the station. You and the team rinse the ashes and grime off the hoses, the trucks and the equipment, pack it up and roll out.

Back to the House
Back in the fire house garage, you and the team remove all the dirty hoses, wash them down with soap and water and hang them up in a tall drying tower for a day. You also wash down the truck, check all the nozzles and equipment and make sure everything is in shape for the next call.

Another important thing to do after the fire is to critique the team's performance. The firefighters who were involved will meet for this critique. In this session, you and the crew go over everything that happened in detail, diagramming how the team attacked the fire and focusing on anything that didn't go according to plan. The goal is safety -- you are looking for anything you might have done that could improve safety on the next call.

By reviewing what went right and wrong with every specific fire and every new situation that comes up, firefighters get better and better at their incredibly difficult and very important jobs.