By Pat Carroll
Patriot News
HARRISBURG, Pa. — Some people want to stay in shape, some people have to. Their lives — and those of others — depend on their physical conditioning.
They’re firefighters.
On the job, they don’t get to stretch and warm up. At the sound of the alarm, they go from zero to 60 in an instant.
“Physical conditioning is critical,” said Harrisburg Fire Chief Donald Konkle.
The environment is hostile and hot. Hydration is for the guys stretched out on the ground at the fire scene, trying to recover and go back in. To enter this heroic world, volunteer firefighters take the two-year Fire Science curriculum at Harrisburg Area Community College, and if they can, they get jobs that guarantee to keep them in shape.
Few jobs rival junk removal.
Nearly half of the employees at Llona Stitch’s franchise business, 1-800-Got-Junk, are in the HACC fire school.
“You have to be in shape,” she said. “We’re in crawl spaces and attics where it’s over 100 degrees, and you have to be physically fit to get stuff out of there. We have 6 to 10 jobs a day, and there are one-hour windows for each job. You’ve got to get in, get the junk, get it in the truck, get it to the dump and get to the next job.”
It’s all in a day’s workout for Justin Martin and Adam Fritch, volunteer firefighters and students in the two-year Fire Science curriculum at Harrisburg Area Community College.
“It’s fun, it’s a good job,” said Fritch, whose hometown is Topton, near Reading. “There’s a lot of benefits for us, being firefighters.” One example: learning to reduce fire load by moving heavy stuff out of the way. “If there was a fire in the house, that stuff would contribute to fire spread, would make the room and contents fire area bigger,” Fritch said. “It would also make maneuverability harder within the structure. “We get rid of it so we can move and function better inside, as well as reducing the fire load inside the building.” Removing junk is hard in the 90-degree August heat, but it’s a snap compared to doing it in the 500- to 600-degree environment of a burning building. “You learn how to lift things,” said Martin, who’s from Mercersburg. “There’s so many things we have to pick up that it helps our upper body and our breathing.”
Nationally, Got Junk has used the lure of getting a workout at work to get all kinds of people into hauling unwanted piles of stuff from homes, businesses and government offices.
“I’m physically fit and I’m a grandma,” said Stitch, who’s a regular on the truck. Hauling junk is not just a guy thing, she said. “Women can do the job. You just have to be able to lift 50 or 60 pounds and work at a pretty fast pace.”
That’s how Nicole Beagle dropped two dress sizes working for the Got Junk franchise in East Hartford, Conn.
When a reporter from the Hartford Courant stopped by her worksite, Beagle was reducing the size of the load in her truck by breaking larger items into smaller, more condensable pieces. One after another, Beagle slammed heavy wooden chairs against the asphalt driveway until the legs and arms broke off.
“It gives me an adrenaline rush and a workout,” she said.
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