Word: firemanning
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...breaking his own world record of 8 ft. 2 in. Joule -all 5 ft. 5 in. of him-performed just as brilliantly, though it must be remembered that aqraorak is not his forte. Joule is the world champion in nalukataak, in which contestants bounce on a walrus hide held fireman-style by two dozen assistants. Joule bounced to within inches of the ceiling in the town's gymnasium but later confessed that he does not really know what determines a winner in his chosen sport. "I think it has something to do with height and form," he said...
Assigned at his own request to Engine Co. 82, the busiest fire-fighting unit in New York City, Fireman Dennis Smith (Badge No. 11389 N.Y.F.D.) soon discovered that the job of putting out fires in an urban ghetto is actuarially the most hazardous he could have found, financially one of the least rewarding, and emotionally about as soothing as selling U.S. Treasury Bonds in the streets of Hanoi. In this book he sums up an eight-year experience in which disillusionment battles with youthful pyromanticism-but never quite wins...
...Bronx, fire is not the only problem a fireman faces. Because the fire truck usually gets there faster than the squad car, ghetto people commonly rush to a firebox to get help when somebody has been stabbed, shot, raped, run over or overdosed. Fireman Smith spends much time caring for the victims. He doesn't complain about these extra social services; he grew up in a slum himself, and in helping poor people he feels he is helping his own kind. What stuns him, what drives him almost to despair, is that in return for his help almost...
...South Bronx, as Fireman Smith sees it, is a prison taken over by the inmates, who still think anything wearing a blue uniform is a cop. They turn in about twelve malicious false alarms a day to Smith's company alone (in Greater New York, MFAs are now coming in at the rate of 90,000 a year...
...quick, thin child with a runny nose and a big appetite; his brothers and sisters called him "Tin Can" because he ate so much. He used to hang around the fire station on his block, gagging it up with idle firemen. "He was always joking, always funny," says Fireman Ed Dawson...