Workwear

I’ve been a firefighter for about a decade at this point (when did that happen?), and having worked shifts from two hours long to two+ days long (The Hotdog Blizzard Incident*) I’m pretty comfortable with how to pack and how to dress for pretty much anything you could throw at me.

Here’s what I wear to work here.

Layer 0: Skivvies. Heavy-duty sports bra for durability and support – mostly, they cost about the same as anything else I’m going to wear, and there’s a 0% chance it’s going anywhere except with me. Bottoms are some sort of short – girlboxer-briefs, or volleyball shorts. Comfort and coverage for worst-case scenario (eg, hazmat and needing to rapidly shed clothes. It’s not paranoia, it’s preparedness.
Underlayer: Long johns shirt and pants. At Station 2, I’m definitely going with the fuzzies, but at Station 1 I’ll go with the feather-weight stuff or not even wear it at all. Town’s warm. Phoenix on a cold day? I’ll stack that up like a deli sandwich. 20-layers-of-clothes-man style. Wool socks or similar cap it off.
Ground floor: T-shirt, uniform pants. We have polos too, but if I’m not wearing my job shirt, it means I’m going to be doing something I don’t want to get my polo dirty with. Formal-wear only, that polo.
Pack it on: Side-zip composite toe (steel conducts cold!) boots, job shirt.
Fill up those pockets: EDC here is skinnier than what I carry in the States. Trauma shears, sharpie, space pen (ink doesn’t freeze as easily!), belt, pager, sometimes phone. Phone serves as camera more than anything else – rarely a music player (sometimes during truck checks) or ebook reader (buuut I forgot to load it up with books. So.).
Top it off: Beanie or roll top hat, because you lose most of your heat from your head. Sunglasses in a pocket in the summer, absolutely necessary. Soft shemagh in the winter. I have one in a soft loose-weave cotton that rolled/doubled up traps a bubble of heat quickly and works well pulled up over my nose and mouth to filter air – gets damp from breath, dries quickly. Washes easily and dries in a couple hours. Keeps dust and flying snow out. Ended up being standard issue this past summer – we all ended up getting one.

So, issued gear:
3 t-shirts
1 job shirt
1 baseball hat (which I will never wear)
2 polos
2 pairs of pants
1 pair of boots

(Bring your own belt and so on.)

Some people they didn’t have size-in-stock for had to grab their own pants and boots in the US. My boots and pants I received prior to departure so factored that into my packing. I also ended up ordering an extra job shirt, a handful of extra t-shirts (I wear clothes pretty hard), and a smaller polo (so I could look sharp) and handed in my issued polos. Due to issues with mail flights, it took a LONG time to get my clothes, and was a really nice surprise when they arrived. Laundry dries really fast with the dry climate, fortunately, so having only 2 pairs of pants is less an issue than it might otherwise be.

About uniforms: YMMV — very important. What happens from year to year can be totally different based on what is available and any number of other factors – but this is what happened for me. Dress was semi-strict – had to have a collar (job shirt or polo) any time we were not actively doing work where we could get dirty, or we were outside of the firehouse. Not taking care of boots/having them polished was frowned upon, long johns/etc must be dark (navy blue or black). Pretty basic things, but leave your long johns with lime green stitching at home or keep them for off-duty and make sure your belt is actually black.