Fire Training Becomes Fire Work

Had an interesting day today during fire training. A major apartment complex caught fire this morning around 7 a.m. It was fully involved by the time the engine got there. As I understand it, the fire started on the first floor, but had spread to the third by the time the crews arrived. They fought the fire for several hours, and then the department deployed our training batallion (which sounds more impressive than it is - it's just a fancy name for fire academy trainees).

Anyway, we showed up to help during cleanup, and ended up rolling and storing somewhere between 2,000 and 5,000 feet of hose (depending on who you talk to). The hose had to be drained, rolled, piled onto trucks or trailers, hauled back to the station, unrolled, washed, then hung in the hose tower to dry. Then the engines had to be restocked with fresh, dry hoses and stocked with air bottles and other supplies. Top it off with the fact that today was Open House at the station for Fire Prevention Week, and it was a pretty busy Saturday. We may not have gotten a lot of forced entry or extinguisher training, but we're all pretty good at hose handling now. :)

Click here for some pics up of the aftermath of the fire. And the Daily News should have a story on it by tomorrow or Monday, I would guess, if you want to read more about the fire itself.

I'll get some pics from last week's hose training online later this week.