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Tuesday, June 30, 2009

First day as Lieutenant

The former Lieutenant, John, couldn't wait to give up his red helmet and LT shield. The position caused him a tremendous amount of stress this year, along with his financial problems and love-issues. To be honest, I don't think he fully thought the position through. I think he was more intent on wearing a red helmet than he was in managing a fire company.

Last night, he finally took the helmet and handed it over to me, making my officer status official. Within 6 hours of receiving the helmet we had 3 firecalls in town, allowing me about 4 hours sleep before work the next morning. Oh well. This should be an interesting year, looking at our increased working-fire count lately...

Thursday, June 25, 2009

House fire on Avenue B

After working the chemical plant fire all night, I took off work and went to sleep at about 7:30 AM. About noon I woke up for some food and to make a few phonecalls. About 3 PM, the pager goes off for smoke coming from the 2nd floor of a house on Avenue B. While driving down to the firehouse, dispatch comes again and says as per the Chief on scene, it's a confirmed working house fire.

I took the officer's seat and upon approach of the fire, the Chief routed us to the block behind to try an attack from the rear. I took the guys off the engine, leaving the driver and one guy to drive to the end of the block, wrap a hydrant, and come back. I ran to a few backyards, looking for our best attack position, before finding one with a nice wide walkway and a clear shot to the heavy fire blowing out of the second floor rear window. One of our juniors already had a garden hose on the eaves, which looked funny but actually helped keep the fire from spreading until we stretched 2 lines to the rear of the house.

I hadn't heard about any interior attacks, and since we had a clear shot, I let the guys open up the line into the window and to start hitting the eaves and the roof. The second line next to me was directed at the house next door to keep it wet and cool. We shut down the line a few seconds later and then heard there were interior crews making headway so we put the lines down.

A call came across the radios stating that a 14 year old girl was possibly inside. A few minutes later, she was accounted for by her parents and an aggressive attack finally put that fire to rest.
We set up a few ladders and pulled the eaves as the fire darkened down and the crews inside began to fog-vent.

Later I learned that while our guys in the back were putting water into the window from the outside, there actually were guys in the fire-room. They told me the outside line screwed up the thermal balance in the room and they had to bail out down the stairs that they originally came up. I felt horrible. There were about 15 of us in that backyard, and no one had that line shut down for a good minute nor did anyone know there were crews up there until apparently it was too late.

Better communication would have prevented this but still no water should have entered that building from the outside regardless. There was plenty of fire blowing out that back window, so the vent was already doing its job. Hitting the eaves and exposure building should have been the extent of the rear operations. I consider that a horrible call and very preventable with a little forethought.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

All Night Chemical Plant Fire

Out of all the days to stay late at work, my boss asked me Tuesday to stay until 8PM for a late meeting. Around 4:30 PM my phone starts ringing off the hook with my guys calling me to tell me there's a huge factory fire on Garibaldi Ave. I checked with a few sources to make sure it would still be burning when I got home (being that my commute is over an hour) and they reassured me it would be burning for a long time. I left work with apologies to my boss and let's just say that was the longest commute of my life.

Coming into my town I could smell and see the smoke. I grabbed a few granola bars, got dressed, went to headquarters and grabbed my gear and drove to the scene. The smoke engulfed a few city blocks and when I got close, police moved the barricades to let my car in.

When I met up with my crew, they were standing and watching as all the tower ladders were in full operation, and I was told this was a 100% defensive operation as the plant had unknown chemical and plastic contents and was vacant. As everyone was unsure of the quality of the air, we were all issued filter-masks similar to the ones surgeons wear, and some agency was already on scene doing air-quality testing.

I found my Captain and as I'm stepping up as Lieutenant in a month, I felt this was a great opportunity to work side by side and get some things done. Even though Engine Companies don't have much function at a defensive fire besides pumping water to the master streams, we found a metal staircase to a lower-set rooftop that had a door that led to one of the attached buildings that was not yet involved in fire.

After giving a heads up to the Chief and all operating ladder streams, we took a 3 man team up the attached metal stairs to set up a 2 1/2 inch line up hanging up and over the parapet next to an attached roof-access ladder. Next to us was a door to the building, which we cut off the hinges with a circular saw. We stretched the 2 1/2 up the stairs, made a big U into the room and back out of the room, 3 feet up the wall and hung it over the parapet.

I was standing a foot into the room when they charged it, unaware that I was standing right in the center of the U the line made. Water rushed throught he lines and the weight pulled the 2 1/2 tight and I quickly realized it would sweep my legs right out from under me. I only had about a second between hearing water rushing and seeing the line whipping towards my legs. I jumped as high as I could as it swept under my feet like lightning and it just caught my heel, tripping me slightly, before flying out the door and almost down the stairs. That was an extremely close call as it nearly brought me down the stairs with it. Crisis averted and let this be a lesson to me and anyone reading this to stay the hell away from a 2 1/2 as it's charging, even if your pump-operator is more gentle on the throttle than mine.

Our strategy was to set up one firefighter sitting on the 2 1/2" hoseline on the parapet, one firefighter on the landing beside him for support, one firefighter a foot into the room with a thermal camera to watch for encroaching fire, and an officer on the landing to coordinate it all.

100 feet across the roof from the nozzle-man was a set of windows which at this point all had massive amounts of fire rolling and blowing out of them. The idea was to hit the right-most window to keep the fire from moving right and entering the attached building. Every 7 minutes we rotated positions and sent 1 man down to be replaced with someone fresh from the ground below.

The attached room was hot and had a haze of smoke that got denser as time went by. At the far end of the room was a hallway which had fire that could be seen with the thermal camera, but not yet with the naked eye as the smoke was too thick down the hallway. An interior attack was out of the question as master streams operated above us, even though they were aware of our crew. As we rotated guys more and more, we noticed the fire was making its way down that hallway towards us, and we debated whether to wait for it to enter the room and make a final stand with the 2 1/2 from the landing at the doorway.

After about 45 minutes of fire attack, no improvement was seen in the windows we were hitting and the fire was getting even closer down the hallway. Too many towers were in operation flowing water, and we decided our attempts were futile and we backed down the metal stairs. 15 minutes later that entire building was overcome by heavy fire, creating furnace-like conditions.

A few hours later, I took a walk around the front of the building, which now had heavy flame blowing out of 3 or 4 windows, catching a nearby tree on fire as well. Rehab was set up in a deli across the street, and everyone operating with me earlier on the stairs went inside for some pizza and O2.


We set up our deck gun later on the same building we were trying to protect earlier and stayed for another 10 hours pumping water to all the master streams in operation. About 7 AM, my crew was relieved by one of the 16 towns helping out through the night. I went home, called my boss to take off work, and fell asleep until the pager went off a few hours later for a house fire on Avenue B...

Monday, June 15, 2009

I made Lieutenant

While on vacation, my company held elections and, although most of the guys said they'd nominate me for LT., I wasn't so sure. Although the old timers don't have much input on the fireground anymore, they still make a lot of the decisions around the firehouse and especially if the person involved isn't there to defend himself. Anyway, I got a text message while I was rushing back from the aiport that they unanimously voted me in as their next LT. I found out afterwards that the town also changed our terms for officers from 12 months to 18 months, so looks like I'm in it for the long-haul.