Off-duty firefighter puts out blaze with his jet ski

The firefighter learned the moves from watching YouTube videos

A video of an off-duty firefighter putting out a blaze with his jet ski has gone viral.

Oscar Herrera sprang into action when a boat erupted in flames on a lake in New York State.

In the video, posted by the Rochester Fire Fighters Association, onlookers at Rochester’s Irondequoit Bay in Lake Ontario, on the border with Canada, cheered him on with applause, saying: "yeah, fu*k yeah, hell yeah! Keep it going."

"Sometimes off duty, but always a firefighter," the firefighter’s association said in the post.

While firefighter Herrera did not immediately respond to The Independent, he told local news WHAM that he learned the manoeuvres to create a wake of water over the flames from watching YouTube videos.

"I saw it. Naturally, I wanted to see what was going on so I went over and there were a couple of other jet skis basically staring at it," Mr Herrera said.

"And I thought, ‘What can I do to help?’ And I’d seen it on YouTube a couple of times so I wanted to try it myself."

Mr Herrera, who works at Engine 10, could end up being the next YouTube example of the firefighting technique as the video has been seen more than 25,000 times since it posted online late Wednesday.

Commenters to the video had nothing but praise for the impromptu emergency response.

“Dispatch cancel all unit. There is plenty of water here.  Lol.  Good job man. Quick thinking,” said Twitter user @HARVsalinas.