How’s it toxic? People in the community constantly attack you for struggling. People constantly try and step on you and squish you like a bug. People are constantly just never able to take a joke and are hard asses on everyone. It’s the pity doll act that is toxic and how everyone wants to be the center of attention.
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There’s more than just that. Like I said earlier, it was the combination of all the small things + the fire/ems community that made it an enjoyable experience overall.
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Former SFM, JTO-I x2, and current 9th med member. Firestone isn’t based around Fire/EMS roleplay. You would get the bacon hair calling in a car fire every 2 seconds, which as a dual-cert, took up most of my day. You were constantly being trolled, which LEOs were often too busy to handle. Malpractice accusations were being thrown left and right, people had no medical experience, and ultimately that 1 hour shift was excessively hard to get. There are 2 scripted calls for SCFD, and beyond that it is fully roleplay that is rarely done correctly. People are toxic, snitching for little things, and overall will put others down if it may bring the possibility of them getting brought up. Zip made it hard(I got warned for shit talking Range_Law in private dms, and everyone who’s experienced him knows it had to happen), and we just don’t have enough support. Maybe one day I’ll join, but that’s my opinions
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Alex, Mack, Zip (in the beginning with swag) were the best chiefs of all time. Zip started to not include command into major discussion, not even his deputy, however, if zep and aes want to make it to that list, they have big shows to fill
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I remember when i first joined scfd back in 2017. I’ve accomplished so many things in the Fire/EMS community here. SCFD Captain. FFA Director. List goes on. But I genuinely believe that being a rookie in 2017 was the peak of my career. That was when I had the most fun. SCFD was fairly laid back, organized well, everyone was fun to be around, and the command staff were friendly and performed their duties.
Fast forward to 2021, I have over three years in the fire service here. I was miserable. I no longer enjoyed being part of SCFD. I felt some weird obligation to continue, but inside I knew it wasn’t worth it. Everything got repetitive. The people and the command staff weren’t fun to be around anymore. High command (specifically zip) were stubborn and didn’t know how to communicate or take advice. The department became so strict and demanding, you couldn’t really have proper fun or make jokes without getting in trouble. So I left.
Hopefully things are taking a turn for the better. I’ve heard good things about zepp and aes running SCFD, but there’s only so much the two of them can do. The glory days of fire/EMS in this state are over, and I don’t anticipate that ever changing. The job is dead.
Not trying to discourage anyone from joining, you may very well have fun. Those are just my two cents about it.
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arguably the worst decision you’ve made sky
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I’m not a fan of the departments administrative procedures and overall procedures in general. From my point of view, the firefighting abilities and methods are a bit misconstrued and wocky. As far back as I can remember, the department took procedures from American firefighting and European firefighting and combined the two and the result was… not a healthy look.
I was in SCFD from about 2016-2019ish, and things were a lot different when Mack was chief. During his tenure, there was absolutely zero drama in the department and everyone got along. When his administration overthrew him, things really went downhill from there and in my opinion the department was never the same after that. That’s really one of the major interest killers for me personally. Nowadays everything that goes on there is a power struggle, and there’s loads of drama from an outsiders perspective.
FFA is not a smooth process by any means and is probably the biggest discourager for membership for other people. No one likes a month long process to get a virtual piece of paper. For POST it’s a little different because it’s easier to entice people into law enforcement and there’s a much wider field of things to do as a LEO in Firestone as opposed to fire/EMS. The department would likely fair a lot better by cutting out the middleman and having their own academy again. Just this time, they should do a better job of setting it up and having it more structured than it was in recent years.
I think if things were run a little differently, the staffing procedures were a little different, and more people dedicated themselves to roleplaying, I’d join the department in a heartbeat.
(This is mostly a personal take from me.)
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What do you mean by staffing procedures?
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[quote=“jt7122, post:25, topic:20370”]
You would get the bacon hair calling in a car fire every 2 seconds
[/quote] Yeah, I agreee that the job can become very repetitive with civs doing lots of the same kinds of calls over and over. I’m working on some events with Public Information Office to try and encourage more varied scenarios, which will make our jobs more enjoyable and hopefully attract more people to the department. A lot of people have mentioned zip and it sounds like he made the department a real shitty place for a lot of people.
From what I’ve seen in other state groups, it seems like over time they often descend into just “cops vs robbers” with little actual RP unless developers can keep doing stuff to maintain interest in things other than just getting into pursuits all the time.
A few people have mentioned toxicity in the department, which genuinely isn’t something I’ve seen. That being said, I haven’t been in the department as long as some people so perhaps I’m just lucky enough to not be involved.
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okay i think i fucked up the quote
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As someone who is going through FFA right now, I have 0 intention of joining SCFD and I probably never will. It’s not that I dislike firefighting, hell I love doing it. The issue is SCFD itself, we have all heard the horrible instances of command nepotism, straight-up harassment of members, and the dreadful command being reluctant to change.
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honestly I think one of the least toxic communities to be in is a tactical unit or legal.
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You’re in for one hell of a surprise.
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Crosslay answered your question perfectly
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The tactical community is pretty spicy judging from my interactions with them. We can get pretty pretentious in the legal community, too (though I would argue ours is a bit more justified–at times–than other community sects’). Still better than the tactical though!
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Without going too much into detail. I’ve had many a complaint/heard of many rumours about a very hostile internal work environment (staff basically being shitty to each other), an out of touch high command (basically a HICOMM that doesn’t care about what’s going on beneath them, etc), and more serious allegations of favouritism and even corruption (alas there was never enough evidence (either because it was covered up, or people weren’t willing to get involved) for the corruption allegations, and if there was it wasn’t usually enough to warrant criminal charges).
This was particularly the case during the mrzip administration. I can’t comment on the current SCFD administration as I haven’t heard/seen as much about it, so who knows, maybe things have changed, but the reputation sticks, and until we see that this is no longer the case, it will keep those aware away from the department.
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I’ve certainly observed that the fire community is more “potently” conservative as compared to the community average, and have had some very vocal employees with some very hot takes. Might scare off some people and, imo, create a bit of a combative environment
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Okay so this is going to be a long winder:
I’m Range_Law and I’m a Former SCFD Lieutenant, FFA Junior Instructor certified in EMT-P, FF, WSAR, HAZMAT, etc…
Now through my time in SCFD when it first began with mrzip and swaggermanfighter as the high command in the department it was excellent. Until one day when mrzip had a mood change and started doing unethical and hostile things to move the department in a negative light. It was with this that his second in command decided to resign from the department and move to DHS.
After this, the department completely fell apart when mrzip wasn’t carrying his own weight and he suddenly resigned which left “lover 1” and “lover 2” in-charge of the department. Ever since, they have not carried any weight and the FD works like checks and balances through the Chain of Command where one person does something as a lower rank and it goes up the Chain of Command. However, the Chain of Command got lazy and started to only play Steam games with each other and Twitch stream which caused bigger issues for the department. Until one day they decided to remove the “Chief Paramedic” position and merge it into the “Assistant Chief” position. Now this would never work IRL as the said person who was promoted to this wasn’t at all aware how to do anything fire related and even admitted this. High Command did this only to prove they were “doing something”.
Since then, I have left Firestone and then one day I get a notice from SCFD and FFA saying I’m blacklisted for my opinions. Now how in the hell can you blacklist/revoke certifications because of an opinion someone else may have? Saying it was against the oath which beknowst to them I never taken which then they tried to hold against me. Anyways, enough about my rant. But I just believe that at this point in time with “lover 1” and “lover 2” in-charge the department is not at all up to any standards and lacks a lot of things.
Mods you can remove this post because I’m sure you will like ever other post I make when its always the truth. This place is like living in North Korea with the social media policy. When the dictators don’t want anyone to see the truth and continue to be brainwashed they take the post down.
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This 100% stands for the new High Command “lover 1” and “lover 2”. They got me blacklisted for a simple opinion about how bad the department is. Funny how whenever you speak the truth you get shut down much like living in North Korea where you have the dictator that limits your social media and blocks things that would make the North Koreans rebel against him.
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I don’t really approve of how the department is run nowadays considering all the work myself and others continuously put into it, but times continue to change. Most of the people who raised this department are either grown-up or gone at this point. I was a member for about three years and I can assure you the best time I ever had was running my own engine company with a few of the older guys. It was a hell of a reward to be recognized as the best performing company-but we were all family, Engine 11 carried on from Hellstiner. But as tower said the glory days are far over for this department, you will never be able to replace the people who built this department from the ground up.
This isn’t meant to glorify the department either, anything above Captain was a hellridge of political bullshit the department continued to retain it. The constant fighting and arguing and disagreements in early 2019 was quite possibly the worst timeline I personally ever witnessed for the SCFD.
After the whole scandal, the high command at the time were either terminated or demoted, After the Fire Chief was selected a candidacy was established for Deputy Fire Chief in late 2019, I had put in for it hoping to outperform others in which I was selected and promoted.
Close to the end of my career, the job felt a constant bug that ‘this just isn’t worth it anymore’ especially through constant demand and internal stress that seemed to never end.
No one wants to be a firefighter or paramedic in this state anymore, those who do either burn themselves out in the first three months or don’t want to join in the first place because of the command staff and how the department is run. The department nowadays doesn’t resemble the values the older one once held.
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