Wallace and Davies Follow Similar Paths
- Kassia Skorzewska
- Apr 23, 2023
- 7 min read
Clayton Wallace and Sean Davies are two members of the Ottawa Fire Services working out of Station 22 on Richmond Rd.
Wallace and Davies have similar stories in their journey to becoming firefighters and have both previously worked together at Station 37 on Riverside South.
“I actually originally wanted to be a police officer, and in my community there was a volunteer fire service, within Ottawa and Carp,” Wallace recalled.
“In doing that job, I realized that my passions truly aligned with the fire department, and the people in the fire department I really liked, so I was willing to go after either career, but I fell in love with firefighting and ended up getting hired here,” he added.
Similarly, Davies also had aspirations leaning towards policing.
“I had been looking towards policing as well, and did some volunteer work, worked with them, and ended up in corrections for about a decade, thinking it was a stepping stone towards police. And I had a lot of friends that moved into firefighting right out of high school and college,” said Davies.
Wallace has been a firefighter in a full-time capacity for 10 years now, while Davies is approaching his eighth year in the field.
With the popularity of emergency medical, police and fire shows on the rise, such as 911 Lone Star, 911, and Chicago Fire, being a firefighter in real life is different to those shows, but sometimes also a little bit similar.
“The major difference I’ve noticed in a firefighting tv show, is the visibility in a fire. When we go to a fire, it’s pitch black, you can’t see anything with smoke, so you’re verbally keeping in touch with your coworkers and you might see a glow of a fire, but it’s not an environment you can shoot a movie in. So, for those shows on tv, they always show fires being this clear environment where you can see what you’re doing,” said Wallace.
“But I think there are a lot of similarities, and I think that’s what’s fascinating about the job, because so many rescues can be so different, you have so many things that you’re capable of going and lending assistance, which is so great about the job,” Davies added.
One thing the shows do get right, though, is the camaraderie and friendships that firefighters build.
“Any call that we go on, you’re going as a team always, and a lot of that camaraderie is built in the station, building a close relationship with your teammates, and the stronger sort of a friendship and bond and dynamic that you can build in the station, it transfers over to calls,” said Wallace.
“Station life is awesome, there’s lots to keep us busy, we have pump, ladder, water rescue here, we’ve got to make sure all that equipment is always functioning properly. And then ourselves, we have a gym here, we work out, often as a team, and make sure that we’re in peak physical condition to do our job. And other than that, there’s a bit of downtime, we have some fun, we cook our meals together here,” he added.
On April 21, 2022, the meal menu was beef and barley soup for lunch and Pad Thai for dinner. Station 22 also has a tradition of eating spaghetti on Sunday’s.
Throughout the city of Ottawa, there are four platoons for shifts. Wallace and Davies are part of D platoon, and on April 21, all the fire stations around Ottawa had D platoon working.
“Our shifts are 24 hours. We shift change at around 6:30 in the morning, and we work until the following day. In the morning, when we get here, we take the boots and the equipment of the firefighter from the previous shift off, and take that position on the truck, and let that member know they’re good to go,” said Wallace.
Wallace and Davies are also both water rescue technicians, working at one of the four main water rescue stations in the city.
Station 22 has two trucks, the ladder truck and the pump truck, as well as water rescue equipment. With two trucks, seven firefighters work each shift.
When 911 is called, a Computer Automated Dispatch system, (CAD), will determine how many trucks, and what types of trucks to send to a call once dispatch enters some initial information.
“Say an alarm is ringing in a high-rise building, once they get the address, the computer knows how many trucks need to respond to that type of a call, and what are the closest trucks, and then when they press their button and send the call out, it would go to all of those stations for those rigs,” said Wallace.
During the interview with Wallace and Davies, a call came in to station 22, and Wallace had to leave to attend to the call.
“In the morning, we have seat assignments, on where we’re positioned, so today I’m driving the ladder, and Clayton is on the back of the pump,” said Davies, explaining why Wallace left in the pump truck.
The pump truck ended up returning 15 minutes later, as it was not needed as backup for the call.
“It was for a car accident, Carling and Maitland, so that’s actually in station 23’s district, so we’re backing them up on the call. They got there first, they could see okay, this is a very minor accident, there’s no need for two firetrucks, so they cancelled us and we turned around,” said Wallace.
Station 22’s district goes south towards the Queensway Carleton Hospital and west towards the suburb of Kanata, and then north towards Carlingwood Mall and east near Merivale.
“So, the majority of our calls are in district, but the ladder would respond to calls that are further away, because of the support system and the amount of ladders that there are. So, we do respond out of district, a lot of bordering districts the pump will go to depending on the resources, and also, we can cover off different stations,” said Davies.
“This new system too, Clayton talked about the CAD system, depending on where we are, if we’re out doing maintenance and we’re out of district, we can actually pick up calls if we’re close to a call even though we’re out of district,” he added.
The fire station also has different sounding tones for calls which also give the firefighters a sense of they will be responding to.
One intense call Wallace responded to was a fire at a three-storey apartment building in Overbrook.
“On the initial dispatch, it just came out as an alarm. Most of the time, when we go to a fire, we sort of know it on the way. With this, there was no report of any smoke, fire, we just knew there was an alarm going off,” said Wallace.
“And typically, you know it’s a fire, because our dispatch will tell us, we’re getting a lot of phone calls on this, which means, okay, we probably have something here. We didn’t get that, but when we pulled up to the building, we had reports from the first fire truck that got there, that there was a fire on the third storey, with a bunch of occupants in the building at their windows in their units needing to be rescued,” he added.
That day, Wallace’s team’s officer was calm, which, in turn, had the whole crew feeling calm.
“We ended up setting up ladders on that side of the building, and rescuing 6 or 7 people out of different windows, while our teammates on the other truck were inside, fighting the fire,” said Wallace.
Wallace and Davies have also had their share of animal rescue calls as well, such as the typical rescue of a cat from a tree.
“The last animal call we had, was, I think a parrot, actually, in a tree. It was a domesticated animal,” said Davies.
“A cat in a tree is a legitimate thing, you almost want to laugh talking about it, but this call we had a few months ago, was exactly what you’d expect. But it was cold, the cat had been there for a couple days, before they called to try to get somebody to help,” Wallace added.
Last summer, Station 22 had quite a few water rescues where people were trapped in the rapids.
Being on the Ottawa River and being at Station 22, Davies has said he enjoys the fact he works at a water rescue station.
“I remember a day where we had three water rescues with the same kind of calls, and that feeling where you’re out there and making a difference. I would say that day probably felt really good, just because we were there, and we were able to respond quickly, and we were able to help people who were really in trouble,” said Davies.
Davies’ favourite part of working as a firefighter is the way the community appreciates the job they do.
“Working with the community and the respect that you get from the community, people appreciate when you arrive. Even on their worst day, they seem very grateful for you to be there and help, and I think we underestimate how much that gives a good feeling to your position in your job, and you feel like you’re doing good work,” said Davies.
Similarly, Wallace praised the people and community of Ottawa for appreciating what firefighters do.
“Ottawa’s a great city, there’s good people all over the city. I’ve worked in different districts, east end, I’ve worked in the south end, and in the west end, and the people of Ottawa are great. It’s fun to get to work with the public, and meet a variety of different people, and I’d say one of the coolest parts of that is you see what the fire department has done,” said Wallace.
“The reputation that we’ve built over the last 50 plus years of serving the public, people are happy to see us, kids are waving at us, and it’s not just because of what we did in particular, it’s because the firefighters that came before us built that culture and built that relationship with the community,” he added.
Wallace also mentioned that he’s proud of not just fire related calls, but also minor calls – such as a cat in a tree.
“Sometimes we’ll get a call where we’re like wait, is this even a fire service call, like, this elderly female has a leaky hot water tank and her basement is flooding, and we get that call to go and see what the water issue is, and we’ll end up going above and beyond and staying and helping that person, and calming them down,” said Wallace.
“So, that’s not an intense call, but I’d say I’m equally as proud of those calls, and just the way that our fire service helps anybody in any situation whenever we can,” he added.
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