ORONO – “Come on, you’re doing great!” “Hurry it up, buddy – c’mon, c’mon, c’mon!” “Halfway though, pal, just keep it coming.”

At a timed fitness challenge Saturday morning, seasoned firefighters cheered on a handful of ambitious applicants for a single position that’s open in the Orono department.

The five candidates, ranging in age from 19 to 37, worked through a punishing course of eight exercises designed to simulate actual tasks they’re likely to encounter as part of their demanding, dangerous and life-saving work.

Wearing a cumbersome 50-pound vest, each candidate began the course by packing a hefty, 100-foot coil of hose up a steep, four-story stairwell in the bleachers of the Harold Alfond football stadium at the University of Maine.

Leaving the hose topside, the candidate descended the stairs and slammed through exercises that involved raising and extending ladders. At the next station, the candidate had to haul the fire hose straight out for 75 feet, wrap it around a stationary barrel, then pull it out another 50 feet.

By this point in the course, all the applicants were breathing hard and working up a sweat. But they were just getting warmed up.

At Station Four, they had to unload two industrial-sized power saws from a firetruck and lug them, quickly, one in each hand, 100 feet before returning them to the truck.

Then they wriggled on their bellies through a narrow tunnel made of three 55-gallon drums welded together. After that, they dragged an artificial 185-pound “victim” 70 feet along the asphalt surface of the parking lot.

Station Seven required them to whack a 70-pound steel block repeatedly with a 10-pound sledgehammer, moving the block 4 feet along a metal track – the kind of action they’d use to drive an ax through the roof of a blazing building. In a biceps-burning finale, they used a hooked pole to push straight up and pull straight down on heavily weighted platforms, four sets of five repetitions of each movement.

They had just eight minutes to finish the course in order to be considered for the coveted position in Orono. All managed to come in under that time, but in various stages of fatigue. For 19-year-old Andrew Spruce of Bangor, the course was “very hard, especially the stuff that involved my arms.”

Red-faced and recovering his breath, Spruce said he works out regularly with weights and cardiovascular exercise – but, he said, it took nothing less than “brute strength” to get through the firefighter challenge course.

Spruce volunteers on the Hudson firetrucks and ambulance as well as providing backup for Orono. He’s working on his paramedic license and hopes to make a life career of firefighting and emergency medical care.

“I like the challenge, and I like helping people,” he said. “Oh, yeah, and I like the adrenaline.”

Everyone likes the adrenaline, according to Lt. Scott Luciano of the Orono Fire Department, who is responsible for the training of the 18 professionals who work there.

Firefighting draws people from all backgrounds, he said.

Some like Spruce are drawn to the field early on. Others leave established careers to join the ranks of firefighters. Many sign up to serve on a volunteer squad and “fall in love” with the hard work, energy and camaraderie of the profession, he said.

But firefighters don’t just put out fires anymore.

“What we do now versus what we did 20 years ago are two completely different things,” Luciano said.

Most fire departments now include an ambulance service staffed not only with emergency medical technicians but also with more highly trained paramedics – who are also skilled firefighters.

Many departments, including the 18-member Orono crew, are trained and equipped to deal with hazardous spills and terrorist threats such as biological weapons and nerve gas.

When they’re not engaged in life-and-death activities, many departments are involved in community education and training, including teaching schoolchildren to “stop, drop and roll,” helping families develop fire exit routes and teaching the staff of residential care facilities how to use fire extinguishers properly.

All of this for a starting salary, in Orono, of less than $9 an hour and an upper limit of about $13. The standard, union-negotiated workweek is 56 hours long, with 53 hours of regular pay and three hours of overtime.

All in all, Luciano said, being a full-time member of a fire department is not for the faint of heart – or for the out of shape.

Heart attacks and strokes are a significant cause of firefighter deaths nationwide, he said, and while it’s unlikely that fire departments will mandate regular workouts or fitness measures anytime soon, physical health is essential to the safety of firefighters and their ability to serve their communities well.