“Jesus Christ,
recruit. What’d you shine those shoes with, a brick?”
The rest of us
stood at attention and tried to stifle laughter. Carl, on the other hand, was
frozen in place so rigidly that I thought DCFD had slipped a uniform onto a
terra cotta warrior.
“Uh… no sir?”
was all he could eke out.
Instructor Lang
shook his head theatrically and moved onto the next recruit. Every so often
when he dropped a good one-liner that elicited some laughs, we would see the
beginnings of a smile peek out from under his moustache.
Today was not
one of those days, and he was letting us know it. Nobody was off the hook (my
sweatshirt was a bit rumpled near the waistband), and we stood at attention in
the apparatus bay for the better part of an hour while Lang scrutinized each
and every recruit in 994.
Just before he
dismissed us for PT, he offered us a few bits of advice that would be unwise to
ignore. As I’m sure anyone who is in the military can tell you, it’s a sobering
experience to have an entire group shouting in response to a single voice.
“Nine-nine-four,
am I understood?”
“YES, SIR!”
He walked out,
and the only sound that followed him was the hum of the apparatus bay heater.
_____
Seeing as the
majority of 994 had only just recently attained their EMT-Basic certifications,
DCFD’s medical director decided to pay the class a visit.
Assistant Chief
and Medical Director Dr. Augustine was one of those people who simply oozed
confidence and good humor. He spoke with the affable demeanor of a man who was
not only extremely competent at his job, but also loved every one of the
twenty-three years he had been doing it.
Growing up and
becoming a firefighter in Ohio, Dr. Augustine was involved in some of the
largest and most complicated incidents that happened in the US in the 1980s.
Speaking about the Miamisburg Train Incident in 1986, he described the large-scale
evacuations required of the Dayton Fire Department after a train containing
white phosphorus derailed and caught fire.
“There is
absolutely nothing like having someone come up to you and say ‘Hey, you appear
to be in charge. I need you to evacuate the city. Can you do it?’”
Up until this
point, the logistics required for evacuating 50,000+ people within several
hours had never been explored. The difficulties of sealing up hospitals, moving
nursing home patients, and dealing with the public’s demands were all crafted
on the fly. 117 paramedics from six surrounding counties were called in to
help, but it was still a command scenario modeled after a nightmare.
The real
problem came two days afterwards, when the not-yet-extinguished train car
exploded again. It sent another cloud of white phosphorus reeling towards the
city, and the evacuation had to be repeated a
second time.
The burning
train wasn’t the most fascinating part, however. Dr. Augustine had such a
soothing, colorful voice that he made incident command sound like a bedtime
story (complete with gruff voices for the bad guys and gentle high pitches for
the little old ladies). The entirety of 994 listened with rapt attention; we
were too engrossed to even shift in our seats, for fear of losing a detail in a
squeaky chair.
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