99/09/16

177 Structure Fire

I was in the office getting ready to go on a trip to William’s Lake this weekend. One of the Battalion Chiefs and I are going up there to teach a course to some Fire Officers. Of course today was going to be busy and hectic, and of COURSE we had to get a run right in the middle of it.

The pagers went off at 1030 this morning and we heard the dreaded words “Structure fire, mobile home”. A structure fire is a serious enough thing, but a mobile home is particularly nasty. This fire was in one of the mobile home parks that is known for having older models in it. It’s well kept and very nice, but it has a lot of long-term residents, so many of the mobiles are quite old. Made back when regulations were much more lax, we call them “Seven minute wonders” because that’s how long it takes to burn one down to the rails.

We rolled in on the pumper and saw smoke showing, which was a relief in this case, usually they have flames boiling out as we approach, this one looked like it might be a save. We laid in a couple of hundred feet of hydrant lay, pulled a couple of fighting lines, put on SCBA and rolled in, it looked good. When we got in we had lots of smoke, but no flames visible, so we did a full search and still found nothing. Back to the beginning. The smoke wasn’t getting thicker, so it looked like we would have some time to look around. First stop, fuse panel. One of the breakers had popped, and this homeowner had everything nicely tagged, so we were able to go straight to the furnace. After pulling off the access panel we found a bunch of burned wires, and some melted plastic, bingo.

Knowing what the problem was and that it was taken care of, we were able to set up the fans and clear the air. Next came air bottle changes, and picking up hose. Plenty of work to do before going back to the office. Every hour on the fireground requires at least an hour of cleanup.

Once we were finished there, I made it back to the office and spent the rest of the day finishing up preps for the trip. I’m not looking forward to some of it because I’m going to be teaching a part of the course that I’m not familiar with. I’ll pull it off, I always seem to, but I really don’t like going in cold like this.

I had that happen last Friday, I’ve thought about it a lot and it still makes me a bit steamed. I was dropping my boys off at school in the morning and got to talking with one of the teachers who knew my dad. My dad was a schoolteacher in this town for nearly 40 years; he was extremely well known, especially by other teachers.

The teacher I was talking to, asked me what I did for a living. I told her that I am the Training Officer for the Fire dept as well as a Fire Captain. She said “Did you ever consider becoming a teacher?”

I replied, “I am a teacher, I teach firefighters how to do their jobs.”

Her reply was “I know, but did you ever consider becoming a REAL teacher?”

I said “I teach firefighters how to fight fires, both in theory and in practice, how to perform first aid, how to operate fire apparatus, I teach them fire science, fire behaviour, fire investigation, Auto extrication and heavy rescue. I teach Fire Officers leadership and Incident Command, I teach Strategy and Tactics. I also schedule the training for the Fire Department and develop new programs, I’d say that I am a REAL teacher”

She said, “I guess that’s almost like teaching”

I walked away feeling pretty damned insulted. I guess I’m just too sensitive sometimes.

See you ladder
~Smoky

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