Hamden Fire Chief Shelly Carter

And I will say this when I told some of my folks inside the water company that you were coming on the show today, they all kind of had the same reaction, which is Hamden Fire Department is one of the best when it comes to training, because your department and my company, we collaborate a lot on training, confined spaces training with our the Whitney treatment plan and some other training.

So I just wanted you to know that my folks recognize that you guys do a lot of training and we're more than happy to help with that.

And, you know, we have our hazardous waste collection program.

It's in New Haven.

You know, if we could ever be of help training in that, you know, we work with Clean Harbors.

We're happy to help there.

Thank you.

That's awesome.

So was there, in your first kind of year or two as a full-time firefighter, was there anything that really surprised you about it? The whole thing? The whole thing.

Because 17 weeks earlier, I was pushing my kids.

You know, what surprised me is that I think some of, you know, we're told that we're a family.

So sometimes there are folks in our family who are a little bit dysfunctional.

Right.

Unless everyone has the perfect family out there.

Or maybe I'm dysfunctional.

It's very possible.

So just trying to learn all the different personalities.

kind of surprised me that everyone weren't, we're not six, four, 250 pound men, you know, there are women on the department, all different walks of life and backgrounds.

Um, what else kind of jarred me, if you will, was that people were looking to me, um, To help them.

And on a bad day, like, like complete strangers.

When I stepped off that truck, they didn't care who I was.

They didn't care if I was male, female, they didn't care if I was green, purple.

It didn't matter.

You are here to help me.

Please come help me.

And I will say this when I told some of my folks inside the water company that you were coming on the show today, they all kind of had the same reaction, which is Hamden Fire Department is one of the best when it comes to training, because your department and my company, we collaborate a lot on training, confined spaces training with our the Whitney treatment plan and some other training.

So I just wanted you to know that my folks recognize that you guys do a lot of training and we're more than happy to help with that.

And, you know, we have our hazardous waste collection program.

It's in New Haven.

You know, if we could ever be of help training in that, you know, we work with Clean Harbors.

We're happy to help there.

Thank you.

That's awesome.

So was there, in your first kind of year or two as a full-time firefighter, was there anything that really surprised you about it? The whole thing? The whole thing.

Because 17 weeks earlier, I was pushing my kids.

You know, what surprised me is that I think some of, you know, we're told that we're a family.

So sometimes there are folks in our family who are a little bit dysfunctional.

Right.

Unless everyone has the perfect family out there.

Or maybe I'm dysfunctional.

It's very possible.

So just trying to learn all the different personalities.

kind of surprised me that everyone weren't, we're not six, four, 250 pound men, you know, there are women on the department, all different walks of life and backgrounds.

Um, what else kind of jarred me, if you will, was that people were looking to me, um, To help them.

And on a bad day, like, like complete strangers.

When I stepped off that truck, they didn't care who I was.

They didn't care if I was male, female, they didn't care if I was green, purple.

It didn't matter.

You are here to help me.

Please come help me.