A Not So Typical Day at Work

I debated on if I was going to write about this topic but after talking to my wife and my family I figured it might help me out, velvet girl's comment also had a good point so here goes:

Friday nights are usually pretty laid back at the fire department. I usually grab one of the recliners and my latest book and settle in for a good read hoping that the alarm doesn't go off. So I had just got comfortable, shoes kicked off and a nice frosty Coke from the vending machine sitting beside me when the horn blared.

Our fire house is probably the only one in the entire state that doesn't get dispatched by an emergency operator. We actually talk to the people on the phone who call in to 911 with an emergency. So anyway the horn goes off. I struggle out of the recliner because it's broken and you sit way down in it for some reason. I take off down the stairs because we can't use the fire pole anymore because one of the new guys practically broke his ankle on it so now we have to use the stairs.

I get the address of the fire from my Captain while he is paging the fire out to let those people off duty know we have a fire then while he is doing that I grab the second line that goes directly to our #2 substation and I let them know what we got because it is in their district. (The city is divided into three districts, with one station to each district) We hop into our gear and roll out in the big red firetruck - it's about 7 pm I think because I didn't look at the clock so I am not really sure.

I put on the Self Contained Breathing Apparatus while the truck is driving to the scene because it's in the seat so it is no problem and its not dangerous. We get to the house and smoke and fire and shooting out the front window. As I am jumping out of the truck I hear one of the police officers yelling at us, "There's someone still inside!"

Crap.

Now I have helped pull out one other guy in my almost 7 years on the fire department here and at the time I wasn't having to really do anything like CPR or what have you. They told us younger guys to grab this or that and I was ok with that. This was different. This person was in the house and it was blowing and going. So I grabbed the other guy that was already scotted up (had his SCBA on) and we pulled a line off of the lead truck and ran toward the house.

They charged the line and I hit the fire from the outside at first while the other guy finished getting his mask on, plus the fire was all around the front door and ceiling and I wanted to knock it down somewhat before we made entry. So once he got his mask on we charged in. Fire was all in the front room to the right.

We couldn't really see anything because of the smoke and fire. We started spraying water and hollering for the person still in the building. I asked the firefighter standing outside to get the thermal imager so we could see. He got it and brought it to me. I swept it down towards the floor and that is when I saw the person's leg.

It's weird but at first I swore it was a mannequin. The thought even flashed through my head, why is there a mannequin laying on the floor. The sad part was that we had found the person trapped in the house. I had the guy with me check the body because he is an EMT and more up to date on the whole medical thing than I am.

The victim was dead. No sign of life at all. So I called for a tarp to drape over the body and we sprayed the body very carefully with water to cool it down because it had been on fire when we went into the building. From then on till we wrapped up the fire scene it was really anticlimactic. My partner and I had put the fire out within the first 15 minutes, we spent the next couple of hours checking for hot spots and waiting on the coroner and the funeral home to come get the body.

It was a rough night all in all. I am pretty sure I knew the gentlemen that died. I just couldn't recognize the face and names really don't do anything for me so for me that is good. We got together after it was all said and done and our trucks were back in service. Some of the younger guys took it a bit to heart and I can't blame them. Our job isn't an easy one, sometimes we have to confront death and we always confront loss. It can wear on you.

But that is just part of the job, you either learn to cope or you find a new line of work. I personally am glad that today we have smoke detectors and people are more educated about fire safety and prevention. I talked to a few of the retired guys about it a few days later and they said it wasn't unheard of to have many burn victims and deaths before the enacted all the education and new building codes and such.

So that was my not so typical day at work. Hopefully I will be out of school and in a new job teaching before something like that happens again. The bad thing is that I think that once you get firefighting in your blood its hard to shake and more than likely I will always be some kind of volunteer firefighter where ever I go, when I finally hand my full time helmet on the hook for good. But maybe that is not such a bad thing after all.

~ Terhune