WESTFORD CENTER – Fighting brush fires, attending to medical emergencies and assisting with station operations – these are some of the day-to-day tasks and responsibilities that Westford firefighter and paramedic interns have taken on during their tenure with the department.
Since 2016, the Westford Fire Department has regularly accepted two to three interns from Westford Academy and Nashoba Valley Technical High School each year, who work with firefighters and paramedics several days a week to help support them with daily operations and emergency responses.
Interns can apply for the program as part of their senior capstone project, through assistance from their school guidance counselors, who get in contact with members of the fire department. Interns are then selected based on their qualifications, goals and ambitions and interest in pursuing a career as a firefighter, paramedic, or related-field.
This year, the fire department accepted two interns, Westford Academy seniors Brayden Carratu and Tommy Bonenfant. The Westford Village spoke to Carratu and Bonenfant, as well as Westford Fire Lieutenant Michael Hanley-McCarthy, who leads the program, to learn more about the internship, why they joined and what they hope to achieve in the future.
Q&A with WFD interns, Lt. Hanley-McCarthy
The Westford Villager: Thanks for joining us Brayden, could you talk a bit about this program, how you joined it and a bit about what an intern from the Westford Fire Department does?
Carratu: I’ve always been interested in firefighting. I’m in an EMT program and when I found out that we have a six-week capstone that we can do at the end of the year, I decided that I wanted to do this. It’s been a really cool experience so far. I’ve gotten a lot of in-field experience, which has been really cool – on top of the fact that I’m in the EMT program as well. So it’s been really cool to have the opportunity to go out into the field and see these paramedics use their skills.
Bonenfant: Growing up, I’ve always wanted to be a fireman. It was maybe my sophomore year, when they had a couple firemen come to our school and they told us about this intern program. So that’s how I really found out that I could do it here. So then last year, I got my name in the book, started emailing, talking and that’s pretty much how I got the internship here.
The Westford Villager: What inspired you to join this program? What inspired you to want to become a firefighter or paramedic?
Carratu: I’ve always wanted to help people. I’ve always wanted to work a job where I’m helping people. And you get to do cool stuff. You get to go into burning buildings, pull people and stuff. You get to administer medications to people that help other people out. And my cousin’s a first responder. My mom works in OBGYN. So I’ve always been around medicine. So it was just kind of a given for me, just to be a part of something like that.
The Westford Villager: How does a Westford Academy or Nashoba Tech student become part of this program?
Hanley-McCarthy: So we had multiple students that were interested in participating in the capstone with us this year. I believe we had six applicants. The problem is we can only accommodate up to essentially three students at a time. We accept two from Westford Academy and one from Nashoba Tech. Because it was so competitive, we opened an application process. So we essentially had resumés and an application that the students had to fill out, that would mimic basically a job application process for us here. And the students that matched our qualifications and their interests kind of aligned mostly with the department. We accepted those students as part of their capstone.
The Westford Villager: What does a typical day look like for an intern here? What are some of the responsibilities?
Bonenfant: So we get here at around 8 a.m. and we start by doing all the chores or helping out with the chores. So we sweep the floors, clean the bathrooms, that kind of thing.Then we wait for calls to come in. If there’s a call, I’m usually on the engine and we’ll go and I’ll carry bags and I’ll help with whatever they ask me to do. I’ll take the stretcher off the ambulance. Anything they really ask me to do, I can do.
Carratu: We do a lot of drilling too. We have a training facility near Beaver Brook, so we go there and we do some training sometimes. But if we’re not on any calls or anything like that, we’re just kind of hanging out. I like to pick people’s brains about medicine and stuff.
The Westford Villager: What are some of the most interesting things you’ve experienced as an intern here?
Carratu: So for starters, the first week when we were here, we had a small brush fire that I was able to fight off, which was really cool. They handed me a hose and they let me go around the perimeter and contain it. Then probably one of the hardest things that we’ve done is probably the training with the DCR. We were doing some digging and it was back-breaking work. We did that for probably about 20 minutes and they do it for six hours a day and we were all sweating. It was awesome. And then just the medical calls overall. We had a woman the other day who had a broken hip, so we had to figure out how to put her on the stretcher and then get her on the stretcher without moving that hip, which is kind of difficult to figure out. But it ended up being a really cool experience.
Bonenfant: There’s obviously been some medical things that have been hard to watch, but I think it’s still a cool learning experience and a very interesting, very cool thing to do.
The Westford Villager: Going off of that Hanley, what is something that you wish the public would understand more about the work that firefighters do, that maybe these interns have now experienced that is one of the hardest parts of the job?
Hanley-McCarthy: I would say that the amount of training that we put ourselves through. The interns got a special experience this year that was something we had never done before which is the Massachusetts Fire Academy Immersion Program. They offer it to mostly high school juniors and seniors and it allows them to go through a full day at the Massachusetts Fire Academy and go through different scenarios, different training evolutions, with some of their most experienced senior staff. So these interns got to pair up with interns from Chelmsford and Littleton and get to experience the Massachusetts Fire Academy, which is a very difficult ten week immersive training program that firefighters all have to go through to work as firefighters.
The Westford Villager: Why do you think it’s so important that this program exists and that Westford high schoolers have the opportunity to intern with the fire department?
Hanley-McCarthy: So there is a national shortage of paramedics. This is something that we have noticed a steady decrease of since COVID, where towns and cities are having more difficulty recruiting firefighters, EMTs and paramedics. So this program kind of allows them to have first-hand experience with us to see what this job actually is. They get to do medical calls, they get to go to fire calls, they understand that we do a lot more than just fire and EMS – we do rescue, we have a lot of fire prevention that we do and of course the training. So because of that shortage, this kind of allows us to see what our future recruits might look like and if we have an interested candidate, now that we’ve worked with them, it makes it a little bit easier for our hiring process to onboard them.
Bonenfant: Firefighters, EMTs and paramedics, they’re very important to the town. We need them, so we need to get people into the program and people to learn what they do. So if we have interns coming from Westford Academy and other schools, they can learn and we can get more people to fill these roles and it all just helps our community. It helps make our community a better place.
The Westford Villager: So after you complete the internship, what are your plans for the future?
Carratu: I’m in an EMT program right now and I actually just passed my class and then I passed my state protocol. So all I have left for my EMT class is my national registry and then I reached out to a private ambulance company called Pride Star and they already hired me. So all I need to do is complete my national registry and then up until June 15 I start off with Pride Star and then hopefully I’m going to start applying to fire stations. Hopefully I’ll get on and then eventually go to the Academy, but I’ve also been looking into MedFight as well.
Bonenfant: Next year I’ll be attending Norwich University and joining the Naval ROTC. So I plan on going into the Navy and then after I’m out of the Navy, I plan on joining the fire department and becoming an EMT. I’m going to go into nursing and on the side I’m hoping to be a firefighter/EMT/paramedic.
The Westford Villager: That’s awesome, congratulations guys!
