Dead dog in a trailer fire

I had a crowd of people over my house, all ready for a nice holiday dinner when dispatch came through and reported a trailer fire in one of our trailer courts. While we were on the way to the fire, the chief on scene reported heavy smoke pushing from the trailer. We took a detour up a street that precariously committed our engine to the street the fire was on, however the nearest hydrant was one block east, so I got on the radio and called out "Engine 6 1 5 is on scene without a water supply, I repeat, we do not have a water supply. Second due engines must drop in."

As we pulled up to the fire, I went to turn on my portable radio but it was completely dead, so I quickly fumbled to change the battery in it and jumped out. By this time, one of our 1 3/4" hoselines was being stretched off the side of the engine. I grabbed it and started flaking it out, then yelled to one of our probies "You see what I'm doing here? Keep doing it." and left her to finish the job. As I got closer to the trailer, my Lieutenant had a 2x4 piece of wood in his hand and was walking around the trailer breaking out windows in an attempt to ventilate the trailer so we could make an attack.

Second floor bedroom fire of the hobby-taxidermist

We had our monthly meeting when a firecall came through. The dispatcher sounded real excited, so I had a feeling it was something good, when they said "Your response is needed on Calvin Drive for reports of a house-fire!" Because we had our meeting, guys were practically fighting for a spot in the cab of the engine since there were so many of us. (One of the great things about being an officer is the front-seat is always reserved, I never have to fight for elbow-room in the rear)

As we were driving to the scene, the chief reported that he had visible fire coming from the second-floor windows. We pulled onto the block and stopped short, looking for a hydrant. I jumped off and walked up to the scene to take a quick inspection and saw something burning in the driveway (air conditioner unit maybe?) and heavy fire/smoke coming from the second floor window above it. An ex-chief came up to me and said he was just upstairs, the fire is in the bedroom to the right.

Bloody extrication with foot wedge

I just got home from dinner when my pager went off for a car accident with entrapment on the exact highway I was just on moments earlier. When we pulled up on scene, I yelled to the back to my guys "Stabilize that car. Cut the battery and secure the wheels." I saw a bunch of EMS standing around the car while a few of my guys went to pop the hood.

As my guys searched for the car battery, I went around to the driver-side where I took a look into the car and saw the driver pinned between his seat and the steering-wheel, with blood all over the dashboard. They had already thrown a blanket over him as the cutting began.

I called for a hoseline to be brought from my Engine and posted one of our newer members to stay with it throughout the extrication once it was charged with water.

Belly-crawling in an attic fire

We had a holiday weekend for the 4th of July, and I was out in the back w/ my little sister with a telescope when a call came in for a "small fire started by fireworks that is now out." I opted not to go, but 2 minutes later they re-broadcasted a working fire at the same address.

When I got to the firehouse, my engine already left so I jumped in the car with my Lieutenant and drove to the scene - a 3 story condo with smoke pushing out of the eaves and roof. I yelled to my Lieutenant "get dressed, we're doing a search." We got our gear secured, and I grabbed the thermal camera and we walked up the stairs, pulling a dry hoseline in as we went. I noticed small shoes and a baby-gate, which alerted me there could be kids inside. The crew on the 3rd floor came over the radio and said they did a search of all rooms for occupants.

Fire at the Sushi Cafe

Last night we had elections in my firehouse and I was voted in as the new Captain. Not 3 hours after I got home did the pager go off (around 12:30AM) for an activated fire alarm. I shot down to the firehouse and as I'm gearing up, dispatch came again and confirmed it was a working fire, and that the Police on scene stated there was heavy smoke coming from a strip-mall. My new Lieutenant was driving, and I had 1 experienced guy, 1 kinda-experienced guy and 1 new guy in the engine with us.


As we pulled up, I yelled that the 2 least experienced were to grab a hydrant and tie the engine in to the water supply, and being that it was a strip-mall, I told my experienced guy that him and I were to stretch a 2 1/2 inch line as the initial attack line.

We slowly rolled closer to the fire building. The strip mall had about 8 units in it, the middle-most unit was Sushi Cafe - the fire unit. Heavy smoke was coming from the eaves of the fire unit and both adjacent units. I stretched a dry hoseline to the front door to get a better look and noticed the front glass was jet-black with streaks coming down it. Something didn't feel right. I looked at the glass door and it had cracks in the glass from left to right. No smoke was coming from the door, just from the eaves.

Flashover training container

We've been pretty slow lately so I scheduled flashover training up at the fire academy for our company. Flashover is defined as the "near simultaneous ignition of all combustibles within a confined area." Basically this is when a room gets so hot due to fire that everything lights up at once. This typically happens when the temperature reaches between 800 and 1300 degrees F. This can happen as soon as a few minutes after a fire starts in a room. It's somewhat predictable by a few telltale signs: 1. thick, black smoke banking down from the ceiling 2. sudden increase in temperature which is felt even through fire gear  3. the rolling over of flame and fire across the ceiling.  The problem is that the first indicator usually masks the third. And with fire gear being so protective nowadays, the second indicator usually fails to give firefighters enough time to evacuate.

The flashover course is meant to give firefighters a heads up on what imminent flashover conditions look and feel like. Because survival is impossible for anyone in a room that flashes, the flashover container at the fire academy is built so the firefighters are actually set 3 feet below ground level. 

On the raised portion, the walls and ceiling are lined with inch-thick pressboard. A 50-gallon metal drum is placed in the middle and filled with some wood from broken up pallets. In front of the pail is a small pile of shredded paper. Paper ignites at around 300 degrees, so the shredded paper stands as a simple thermometer for us to tell when the floor of the room about to flash reaches that temperature.

We had 5 firefighters on their knees on the left side and 4 on the right side. Down the middle were two instructors, one with a hoseline and one who's job it was to monitor the conditions. Flares were used to ignite the barrel and we were told not to go on air until we absolutely feel the need to.

As the fire started growing, we used our temperature guns to detect the heat in the areas around and above the flame. A temperature gun (heat gun) shines a red laser dot on objects which then reflect back and tell us how hot that object is. Like thermal cameras, heat guns cannot detect the heat of the air - just the heat being radiated from a solid object.

As the fire grew, temperatures quickly shot up from 90 degrees to about 300 above the fire and smoke started increasing. The smoke was nearly down to the floor by the time the last of our guys tied the regulators of their air packs into their masks. Now, it was just a matter of time. As temperatures in the upper room got up to about 600 degrees, the back doors of the flashover container were opened to let in some fresh air. Then the fire really took off and think black smoke quickly banked down from the ceiling to about head-level where we were sitting (remember, we were 3 feet below the ground level of the fire-floor.)

The instructor yelled "VENT" which meant the front-most guy on the left side was to pull a lever, opening a small vent in the ceiling. Within seconds, the thick smoke began to clear as the fire grew exponentially. At once, the entire front compartment was ignited in vibrant, bright hot flame. The fire came back towards us right above our heads and danced around a bit before the instructor had the vent closed and the fire died down a bit.

Both sides of guys were told to rotate so the front guys could catch a break in the rear and someone else could have front-row seats. As the back door was opened again, we could see all the standing smoke above our heads rush towards the fire as it sucked in the fresh air. The fire in the barrel grew in intensity again and we could see slow-moving black smoke just being sucked out of the particle board lining the walls. This was mostly products of incomplete combustion and carbom monoxide. In a typical house fire, all the contents (couch, tv, carpet, walls) would give off this gas. Upon the vent being opened again, we all saw for ourselves that that gas was exactly what ignited in the air.

Now that most of the smoke was clear, we had a much better view of each subsequent flashover. Some flames slowly snaked through the air right above our heads to where we could actually reach up and touch them. It was truly amazing. Between flashovers, the thick black smoke slowly came down from the ceiling. It was thick and looked like bubbling soup from our view from our knees. The temperatures our heat guns displayed were between 300 and 400 degrees righit above our heads, and up above the fire-barrel went from 800 to off-the-charts when it flashed.

When there was no more fuel left for the fire, we all crawled out and slowly took off our smoking gear, keeping our gloves on so we wouldn't burn our bare hands on the buckles.

Cat in the couch

A caller phoned dispatch and said their kitchen was on fire. I shot down to the firehouse and someone said the homeowner now reported it was a dryer in the kitchen that was on fire. The chief told us there was a hydrant on the corner. We followed the ladder truck in and tied into the hydrant before realizing the fire was at the total opposite end of the block, so we laid probably like 600 feet of 3 inch supply lines when there happened to be another hydrant almost in front of the house. Oh well.

When we pulled up I didn't see much smoke, so I told 2 guys to stretch an 1 3/4 inch hoseline off our right side reel while I went to the back of the engine to get tools. As I approached the side door, I saw heavy smoke up 4 stairs in the kitchen, but there was already about 5 guys in there and no room for more, so I told the chief behind me not to let anyone else in the staircase to keep it clear in case guys needed to bail out.  The kitchen door had an auto-close mechanism on the top of it, and fresh out of door chocks I used the adz end of a halligan under the door to prop it open.

As I finally managed to work my way in, I saw the fire was knocked down with water cans only, so I took a few guys with me to open up every window in the house to start ventilation. The smoke cleared pretty rapidly when one of my guys showed me all melted plastics all over his gloved hands. Everyone had the same, and we realized there were a few plastic trays above the dryer that they all put their hands in while moving it out to secure the gas line behind it.

A word came from the outside there was a cat inside, so I took one of the young guys with me to search for it. I searched pretty thoroughly before the homeowner came in and said it's probably in a couch. WTF?   I lifted all the couches in one room aand looked under them, but the homeowner was convinced the cat was there. Finally he came in and as the couch was lifted he went up inside the cushions with his arm and pulled out a cat, apparently scared shitless.  Who woulda known that thing was way up in there like that.

In the end 2 cats were saved and the fire was knocked down before it could get up into the walls.

4 air bottles, 1 night

The call came through at about 12:45 AM simply reporting a fire in a home. We had a near-full crew of 8 guys on the engine, and got reports of heavy smoke pushing from the first floor as we made our final turn onto the block. I broke the guys into 2 hose teams, one with a 2 1/2 inch hoseline and the other with a 1 3/4 inch hoseline. We approached the front door which had heavy fire and smoke and started putting on our Scott masks. Finally, after a 2 minute wait, water came and we began crawling our way inside.

There was heavy fire directly in front of us, which we knocked down from the doorway, some fire to the right and very heavy fire directly in front of us, down a hallway into the kitchen. As we started humping the hoseline forward down the hallway, my Captain knocked over a large cat-scratch tower which was completely on fire - right away this told us there were pets. We hit the fire on the right as much as possible before backtracking into the main hallway again. As we made the kitchen, we saw fire everywhere, left, right, above. We hit the fire from across the room before I looked to the right and noticed my Captain was kneeling directly on a patch of fire, which was making his pants begin to smoke. I yelled and grabbed him and we patted it out. I then noticed fire behind a gap in a doorframe to my right. I yelled for one of our guys to back out towards me, since he was directly in front of the wall. When he was safely behind us, I swung once with a halligan and opened up a huge hole where fire blew out of. A few seconds later, our water supply was totally cut off and our hose went limp - time to leave.

We walked outside to the front of the house and my Captain asked if I wanted to go up a nearby ladder to do a quick search of the second floor of this 3 story house. We went up the ladder and he broke the window and cleared the shards of glass and entered it while I cleared and entered another. Visibility was totally zero, and the room was heating up rapidly so we both made our way out the same windows within a minute or two.


- Open gear - cool down - drink water - change air pack -

We went back into the building, this time hanging a left and following a hoseline up the staircase to the second floor. We tried opening up some walls and ceilings but hit a chimney and a lot of furniture. I took a walk around the corner and found yet another staircase, so I ventured up it with one of my guys. Only 10 seconds at the top of that staircase made me realize the temperature had to be around 800 degrees, and we had absolutely no business up there without a charged hoseline. I looked around and saw no visible fire, so we backed down the stairs as we heard manpower was needed for a fire attack around the right side of the house in a second floor apartment.

I brought a few tools with me up the stairs, and immediately went to work helping other guys pull ceilings down as 2 firefighters hit whatever flame was there. At one point, I searched a small room to the right and found a door whose entire frame was glowing with a red outline.

I slowly opened the door and looked directly into what I would assume hell looks like. Heavy orange, red flame was blowing and rolling around violently making a whipping sound. I closed the door and told another FF to hand me a hoseline, one which barely reached around the door to the side that I was about to open. I crouched down and had the other guy open the door about 6 inches, just enough for me to stick the nozzle in and knock down all the fire in wide sweeping motions. Right after this, we closed the door back up and my low-air alarm went off, so I made my way to the exit of the apartment and down the stairs.

- Open gear - cool down - drink water - change air pack -

About 6 guys from my company and I were again waiting at the front door as we knew the crews now fighting the fire in the attic were going to run out of their air packs soon. We were right, and a few minutes later I found myself once again making entry into the 3rd floor up the small staircase. The room was cooler this time due to some broken windows and vent holes cut in the roof, so I had the guy behind me hold the hoseline as I searched the room for fire. I encountered a bunch of pet cages and fish tanks, maybe about 20 total. Later we would find all sorts of dead reptiles and animals, ranging from snakes to lizards, ferrets and hedgehogs.

We found some fire to the rear of the attic, which we could only see once all flashlights were shut off. We hit that with the hose-stream, then started pulling walls and ceilings, knocking down even more fire. Command outside radioed in that just about all smoke was now gone from the eaves of the house - we were making good progress. At one point I was looking for fire up against a sloped wall when I felt high heat by my head and face. I leaned back and hit the wall with my halligan and a bunch of fire blew out from the hole. We finished up this attack when my low-air alarm went off again.

- Open gear - cool down - drink water - change air pack -

We made a few more small fire attacks that night, and a bunch of overhaul (taking down ceilings, clearing glass from windows, opening up walls.) I made sure my crew went to work every time there was a job to do; I did NOT want to be one of those towns who sits back and lets other towns come in and fight their fires. As tired as our guys were, we each went through at least 3 full air bottles, some of us even more. Sore necks, shoulders and backs proved we really worked this fire hard.

The next morning while most of us went to work, a rekindle required 2 more mutual aid towns to come in and assist another 2 hour fire attack.

Chief's Dinner w/ bagpipers

So the Chief and I engaged my buddy who works at VH1 to put together a video / photo montage with music and voice overs for his chief's dinner. We had the great idea of ending the video with a song the Bergen County Bagpiper's do, and when this song plays to have the actual bagpipers lined up outside, and play along.

When we got to the venue, things started going wrong. First, the video guy was nowhere to be found. Then we realized they set up the video equipment but not the audio equipment. Finally, with 260 people watching, they couldn't get the video to play at all. The bag pipers were lined up outside the door (secretly) and after 10 lonnng minutes, they got the video to play. We choreographed the pipers and they chimed in perfectly on the second measure of the song at the end of the video, surprising everyone.

They came in and played a sick show that everyone enjoyed and is still talking about.

Fish-tank warehouse with partial collapase

Last night we got called out to about 5 firecalls - sleep is overrated. One of them was a sprinkler-main break inside of a warehouse. It was about 19 degrees out, so on the approach we were met with a huge amount of flowing water which was just building upon the already thickening sheet of ice near the warehouse. Through the front glass doors we could all see the water main just dumping water out at a high velocity, and it was already about 3 feet deep behind the glass. Not gonna lie, it looked pretty awesome. The entire brick veneer had already separated from the building and collapsed into a pile.

We did a quick search for utility shut-offs in the second half of the building and shut off the sprinkler feed valve as much as we could before we just had to turn it over to the water company to deal with.

Holy electrical fire, batman!

Early on Saturday we got called for a light-fixture on fire in a church meeting room. It was a ballast, and my heat-gun registered about 300 degrees on it. It was surely burnt up, so we took most of the fixture down and cut the electricity to the ballast. We did not, however, take the ballast down as the Chief felt it was cool enough to ignore since the power was cut.

Well, about 2 hours later, we got called back to the scene where the residents reported the ceiling to be on fire. I got there late and went right to the scene, where I was met by a yelling Chief, an engine that couldn't get into pump, and a hoseline stretched into the building. I threw on a Scott pack and followed the line in.

I looked up once I entered the room and was met with a 15 foot cross-shaped exposed area of the ceiling that our guys took down with their pike poles, with some fire in the middle. I can't express how creepy it was to see this in a church. I said "did it have to be a crucifix?" and everyone laughed once they realized what they'd done.

In any case, the electricity was cut and ceilings were pulled into a pile of smoking debris on the floor. A member of another company ordered the nozzle-man to drench the debris before I cut in and said there's no need to create more of a mess, and that we were better off just carrying the debris outside and wetting it down there. I'm proud of that call as a few mins of manpower saved a lot of face - we had done enough damage already in checking for fire extension.

Late for a car fire - get out of my way, cop!

The pager went off for a car fire on an intersection I usually drive past to get to my firehouse. While driving down it with my blue-light on, I saw the plume of smoke from the car fire and noticed a cop parked across the street perpendicular, to block the road. I assumed he'd move so I, a fireman, can actually get to my firehouse. Wow was I wrong. The cop sat in his car and stared me down. I pulled my car up to his bumper and hit the horn a few times. He got out of the car and stared at me.

This caused me say f*ck this, bang a sharp right and go about 5 minutes out of my way to get to the firehouse. Inevitably this made me late to a fire that a minute ago I was ten feet away from.

Anyhow, now that I had my gear, I pulled up and saw the smoke was now a thick black color, which meant the plastics and rubbers were finally on fire now. I put my gear on about 20 feet from the fire as I watched my guys stretch a hoseline. Before you could blink your eyes, one of my guys had the circular saw on the front hood, and made a cut across the entire thing to gain access to the burning engine.

Later, I walked around and saw that all 4 car doors were open. I spoke with him and said it'd be wise next time to at least try the drivers door, and give the handle a pull - you never know. In 80% of car fires, the hood-release cable will be burnt away, but juuust sometimes it's intact enough to pop the hood open without breaking a sweat. Oh well, he complained the other day that he hasn't used the saw much - now he has.

The final odd thing was a guy from another company said "Did anyone cut the battery yet," and no one had. He then proceeded to cut what he thought was the battery and look around all proud. Looking down, I realized he just cut some loose wires that were coming from somewhere else, and I pointed out the battery was actually on the other side of the car. It was kinda funny to point this out after he was all cocky that he did something no one thought about.

Small kitchen fire in Devries Park apartments

I was working at home on a Friday and dispatch paged us out for reports of heavy smoke coming from a second floor window in the first of 4 garden apartments in a strip. My captain drove and when we pulled up onto the block I couldn't see any smoke but a few of the older guys ran over to the engine telling us it was definitely on fire. One of our younger members went with our captain and pulled both 3 inch supply lines off our giant rear reels on the engine, and wrapped a hydrant.

One of the older members got too excited and drove away fast and one of the supply lines came unwrapped and began to drag behind the engine. While everyone else stared at it, I ran and grabbed it and held it to the ground while the engine pulled away, then dragged it back to the hydrant so we would have both supply lines in operation.

Going back to the apartment, I masked up on the stairs because I could see heavy smoke coming from the second floor window and I assumed that's where the fire was - WRONG. As soon as we crawled into the front door, my captain made a hard right into the kitchen and the fire was right there, coming out of the cabinets. We ripped up some of the counter tops to get to the fire, which seems it started in a drawer (malfunctioned lighter?) We quickly set up a vent to get the smoke out and broke out one 12x12 inch window total, minimizing damage to the apartment.

I can safely say we came in, established our own water supply, put out the fire, checked for extension, vented and took up in a matter of 20 minutes.