99.09.24

188 MVA / Rescue
189 Wires Down
190 Wires Down
191 Wires Down
 

Friday Night it was blowing and raining like fury outside. I love any extreme of nature so I really liked the weather. I just got back from and MVA / Rescue when the calls for the wires down came in. We ended up being out babysitting wires all night, from midnight till 0830 Sunday

 No one was seriously hurt in the MVA, but an innocent individual will be sore for awhile, and his brand-new pickup is a writeoff. All because some idiot decided he was “Okay to drive home”. He wasn’t.

I’m constantly amazed at how many people still do this. I’ve been cutting people, people’s kids,  bodies of people and pieces of people out of cars for most of eighteen years now. It’s something that you get hardened to, to a certain extent, but never something you get used to. Human suffering and death are like that. Friday night it was a guy in a van who was coming home from the bar. He ran a stop sign and was centerpunched by a pickup truck. His van came to rest against a power pole and the pickup ended up through a fence and in the middle of the lawn of a guy who had sold his house that morning.

People who drink and drive are idiots, murdering idiots, pure and simple. If you are one of the ones who hasn’t hurt anyone yet, you’re a murdering idiot too, you just haven’t managed to finish the job. If I had my way we’d give the drivers a breath test before we did the extrication and leave the drunks in their cars to die. Maybe I’m cold hearted, but I’m one of the guys who removes dead children from wrecks.

MVAs  sometimes really piss me off, ‘Nuff said on that subject.

We ended up Babysitting downed power lines for the rest of the night. Our area is heavily treed, there are thousands of big Douglas Fir trees throughout this resdiential area, and when the wind blows, they sometimes fall, or their branches fall on electrical lines. Often the lines break and the wires dangle down still charged with up to 16,000 volts. Enough to ruin your day big time. The Hydro guys take a long time to come out because they’re so busy, so we end up keeping watch at these sites untill they show up. It’s boring as hell but it’s necessary work. We were cleared from the scene at 0830 Saturday morning.

I went from the last wires call straight to Eli’s soccer game. He loves to play soccer and he’s a real lunatic on the field. I love to watch him go. My dad was a soccer fanatic and it hurts me that he is missing seeing my kids on the field. It seems I spend at least half the game with tears running down my face. Talking to his ghost.

I know he’s there when I hear his voice cheering through my mouth. I couldn’t honestly tell you who won. I don’t care, but all the kids had a ball so the objective was met.

Later

B