Spoke too Soon

There's a lot of superstition in the fire service. In some houses and around some firefighters, if you say something congenial as you leave shift - like "I hope you have a quiet, pleasant day" - sure enough someone will chew you out for jinxing the crew and will rant about how it's going to be a very busy day because of you.

I've never taken any of that seriously.

But after posting a blog entry about having a quiet night, it ended up being a pretty busy shift. It started with a medical call (possible stroke) late in the evening, which led to me taking an overnighter instead of going home to sleep. The next morning around 0430 or so, I got woke up for another medical call (chest pains). During that call, we got toned out for smoke in a residence. It wasn't far from where we were, so our paramedic and my EMT partner took the patient to the hospital, while I responded to the fire call in our utility vehicle - a Chevy Blazer commonly called the PRV (Paramedic Response Vehicle) or Utility-61. (I'll try to get some pics up of our apparatus, but I'm on my laptop at the station and don't have any handy; pics coming up in a future post, I promise).

Anyway, when I pulled up on scene, there was smoke pouring out of the roof around the chimney of a two-story wood residence. Smoke was coming from several other places along the roof as well, but no flames were visible. I set up command, made sure the place was evacuated, did a walk-around, then Engine-61 pulled up. Our assistant chief and I pulled an attack line and entered the building, climbing a VERY narrow staircase (my shoulders rubbed both walls of the stairwell), and entered the second story. It was thick with smoke, but still no fire. We searched the floor, found a room with substantial heat, but no flames. The fire was in the attic and the attic was completely inaccessible. When we recieved a radio report that flames had broken through the roof, we pulled out and set up attack lines outside the building.

A couple hours later, the fire was contained but much of the second floor was lost. The roof burned through and collapsed, and water damage was rampant on both floors. It took about 6 hours of salvage and overhaul to finally clear out the fires burning in the walls and attic. The building had been built in 1902 and remodeled MANY times, leaving layer upon layer of wall and ceiling board (including plywood, tongue-and-groove, sheetrock, plaster, and more), which meant we had to cut through the walls with a chainsaw to open them up enough to get to the fires.

In the end, the property owner was very grateful - we saved large portions of his house and many of his belongings. It was about a 7-hour scene and I was beat by the end of it. I slept like a rock last night, though, and I learned my lesson. I'm going to be very careful about blogging for an uneventful shift... :)