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Car vs. Tree… vs. Rescue Squad

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Whap!

“Keep your head down, dammit!”

Even with my head safely turtled into the collar of my turnout gear, I could still recognize the voice of Truck 15′s driver above me. He had given me a sharp smack on top of my helmet as a gentle reminder that there was a large hydraulic tool nestling its way into the space above my head.

As my legs started to cramp from my awkward placement between a tree and what used to be a car door, I wondered how I had arrived in this position.

“Units responding with the first battalion, respond on tac channel zero-alpha three.”

I stumbled out of the bunkroom and caught snippets of the radio transmission as I climbed into the wagon, trying to shake sleep from my brain the whole way there.

“…vehicle into a tree…”

“…report of persons trapped…”

I snapped up the last of my turnout coat and grabbed my helmet as the engine pulled up on scene. A four-door sedan had lost control on a turn and slammed broadside into a thick tree. The (now) horseshoe-shaped vehicle had only a single occupant, who was now pinned between the front edge of the passenger seat and the glove compartment.

“Hey, man! Get me the $@&* outta here! Pull me up, man!”

Okay, he’s breathing. That’s always good.

The layout man went over to put the car in park while I headed around to the passenger side. The vehicle had rebounded off of the tree, providing a two-foot space in which I could talk to the driver through the shattered side windows.

“Good thing the squad’s coming. They’re gonna have to cut this guy out.”

My officer’s voice spurred me into action. I saw an opportunity for something interesting, so I grabbed a c-collar and squeezed into the narrow space. I mean, if I’m going to be up at 3am, why not get my hands a little dirty?

With the collar firmly in place, I assumed my awkward half-crouch stance, arms extended to hold manual spine stabilization. I felt the rescue squad rumble up on the street behind me, and I could hear their voices discussing the best way to get the patient out. Suddenly, a sheet descended on the patient and I, whiting out our view of the surroundings but enabling me to clearly talk to him and determine the extent of his injuries.

Moments later, bits of windshield bounced off our makeshift tent as the glass saws went to work. As far as I could tell, he wasn’t banged up too bad; he was just pinned into the car. I tried to stretch my neck a bit to combat the strange angle I had it at in the window–which brings us back to the beginning.

I heard a hydraulic cutter hit the B-post of the car, inches above my head. It hissed to life as metal bit into metal, making the first of several cuts necessary to remove the roof.  Several minutes later, the top of the car and our covering were lifted, having completed the modification into a convertible.

This, of course, only served to give us a little more breathing room for the final steps: rolling the dash and extricating the patient. Using hydraulic rams, the squad guys actually pushed the dashboard further away from the seats, giving us enough space to wiggle the patient out. Now, it’s good-news/bad-news time.

Good news: while in the car, the patient had full functionality of his extremities, a normal blood pressure, and was answering all of my questions appropriately while denying any pain.

Bad news: having his torso/abdomen squeezed by the dash was apparently keeping his blood pressure at a decent level. When we stretched him out onto a backboard, we found his blood pressure had dropped to around 65-70 and he was acting a little woozy. Oh, and now everything hurts. While inside the medic unit, I helped package him up, started two IVs, and sent him on his way to the trauma center.

Back to sleep?

Well, it’s almost 4:30am.

Nah, might as well stay up and wait for the first relief to arrive.

Posted by raisingladders on November 30, 2009 • Filed under: Fires/Incidents, Patient Management, Rescues, Uncategorized

Holiday Week!

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Between working, traveling, cooking, photo editing, and prepping some upcoming side projects, this has been quite a week.

Whether you’re eating, flying, or collecting that lovely holiday pay when you read this, best Thanksgiving wishes to everyone. Stay safe, and I’ll see you on the far side of National Food Coma Day!

/RL

Posted by raisingladders on November 25, 2009 • Filed under: Uncategorized

Where have all the fires gone?

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I slung my bottle around and deposited it on the floor of the cab with a disappointed thunk.

Yet another box alarm that turned out to be nothing. A heavy sigh escaped me as I slowly unsnapped my coat and climbed up to the hosebed. I mean, I’m still learning (and still bright-eyed and eager to actually do this job), so I have no problem drilling or trying to absorb something useful from every call we run—but it’s no wonder that people on this job start to get complacent.

How am I supposed to become adept at fighting fires if I never get any practice?

I usually make it a point to ask the more senior members I come across what our city was like when it still burned. When you could run a good working fire as frequently as every few tours, if not more often. When Trinidad was the kind of neighborhood that only lives in stories now, and the guys on the engine didn’t even want to drive through there in full daylight.

We just don’t burn like we used to, say the old salts—they opine that nobody does anymore.

New York City? Nah, not really.

Detroit? Okay, maybe. West Baltimore, perhaps.

They scratch their chins and stare off into the distance, fondly remembering when being a firefighter was about fighting fires. ”All these medical locals be damned!” they declare. “We’re not the Big Red Ambulance! Times were better back when…”

I will, unfortunately, never know those times. I can only listen to the stories, and dream of being a firefighter in the generations before me. I knew that this job wouldn’t be like Dennis Smith’s Report From Engine Company 82, or Tom Downey’s The Last Men Out: Life on the Edge at Rescue 2.

But I still dream, and often the words from those dog-eared pages leap into my head at night. They rush right back out, however, as we run our first medical local within minutes of my arrival at work.

Stethoscopes and saline bags get more of a daily workout than helmets and halligan bars.

Any fire this city does have, however, doesn’t seem to be coming my way. Even shortly after I graduated from the Academy, I kept missing a room-and-contents here, a rear porch off there. I suppose it’s just my brain attaching significance to unrelated, unfortunately-coincidental events, but it’s disappointing nonetheless (I know that there’s an eponymous Law that describes this perfectly, but I can’t seem to remember it.)

July 8th, 2009: When I was still mentoring at E15, I was relieved one morning just two hours before the guys went to this.

July 30th, 2009: My mentor kept me at 15 for a few extra weeks; this, in turn, caused me to miss this multiple alarm (had I been on my current shift at E26, I would have been on that fire).

Last tour, I climbed into the back of 26 in the morning to relieve the lineman, and it smelled just… wonderful. The day before, they had been second due to this.

—————

I’m sick of writing about medical calls. Sure, they make for good copy—moments in the back of the ambulance can be touching, funny, heart-wrenching, or absurd. But I long for the day when I can sit down at this screen and crack my knuckles excitedly, knowing not where I shall begin. Trembling with excitement, I’ll lower a shaky coffee cup and put fingers to keys.

“My First Fire!”

No, no, no… too Play-Skool-esque. It must be… cool. Unique, and… and… I don’t know. [furiously hammers the Delete key]

I’ll wrack my brain for hours, typing and re-typing until it has just that right feel to it—and yet I probably still won’t like it. It’s been built-up and over-hyped for so long.

Damn it all, I spend the majority of 192 hours per month in the back of a fire engine… and yet I have no serious digital ink to lay down about firefighting. Expressions of my recent hot-headed frustrations were met with a soothing word from a more experienced, fire-savvy friend:

“Relax, playboy. It will come.”

But when?

Posted by raisingladders on November 17, 2009 • Filed under: Fire Rescue Topics

You know you’re a probationer when:

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RL_11_09_2009-1

• You’re telling your friends where to meet up later that night, but directions to the bar include “it’s right near the hydrant on the southwest corner,” or “…it’ll be in the twelve-hundred-block of  Connecticut Ave.”

• “Yes, sir” has entered your everyday lexicon, even at home.

• Directions to your house have ended with the phrase “…to box.”*

• When a late-night phone call suddenly wakes you up, your legs swing out of bed and you fumble around in the dark for your boots. Oh wait… yep, I’m in my apartment. Dammit.

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• When responding to even the simplest of questions, one must fight off the urge to recite what particular article, section, and sub-section the answer comes from in the Department Order Book.

• You have become very, very good at washing dishes.

• Between your name tag, Probationer tag, and your collar brass, various items get snagged or ripped off your uniform all the time. Thus, wearing any collared shirt at home has become an exercise in absent-mindedly touching your clothing to make sure everything is pinned on properly—and then realizing that you’re an idiot.

• While you’re running errands, the distinct ring of a multi-line phone system causes you to look around and think for a split second that you have to go answer it. You soon realize you’re in bank, or an office, or a restaurant.

• Similarly, you have an unexplainable urge to answer your cell phone within two rings.

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—————

Note: The phrase “…to box” is a reference to the information book in the firehouse. If you flip it open and look up a certain box number in our response area, the directions read something like this:

Box 1234: Left on Smith Street, right on Jones Avenue, right on Davis Terrace to box.

Posted by raisingladders on November 9, 2009 • Filed under: DCFD, Fire Photography, Firehouse Life, Probation

10am: Area Drills.

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“Uh, left on Rhode Island, right on Montana… uh… left on…”

Frustrated, I looked down at my paper. There were lots of street names, copied from the chalkboard—just no descriptions of how to get there, which was the purpose of the whole exercise.

It will come in due time, I suppose. I’ve been trying to learn the area as best I can without formally receiving any maps or running routes; it’s been mostly based off of talking with the wagon driver and the other guys on the back step with me. We’re all supposed to know our first-due area like the backs of our hands, and now that I passed my seventh-month test last tour, I’ll be receiving a list of common addresses to tackle—not to mention major buildings, abnormal addresses, hydrant locations, short streets, and a plethora of other data that we need to know.

I remember when I was sixteen and volunteering as an EMT, I had a map of our first-due area that I had drawn my self, and I used to drive around the area on the weekends to get a feel for it. I may have to do this again; granted, the area I’m supposed to know is much larger now, but I believe the process is the same.

Just add it to the pile of stuff to study; a fellow probationer told me that your eighth-month test is the hardest, because it’s more of those damned questions on top of trying to turn your head into a mapbook.

Either way, it’s just another step. As one of the more senior technicians told me last tour:

“One day, you’re going to be here at night, sleeping. And then the bells are going to go off. And as you wake up, you’ll hear the address… and a map is just going to pop right into your head. You’ll know exactly how to get there… and by the time you fully wake up, you’ll realize that you’re sitting outside of that very house with the parking brake on.”

—————

Note: Similar to “The Sitting Room,” “10am” will be reserved as a header title for anything related to drills and training—the name stems from the fact that by Department rules, every shift is to train on something at 10am each day (with certain exceptions, but the general idea holds true).

Posted by raisingladders on November 6, 2009 • Filed under: Training & Development, training-fire-rescue-topics

The Sitting Room: Space Exploration and You.

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“Damn, first they crashed two hunks of metal into the moon, and now they’re launching another rocket? Why in the hell is this worth spending money on? Going into space in the sixties and seventies didn’t do anything for us except make us proud that we beat the Russians, and it’s not going to do anything for us now. We should be fixing the budget with all that money.”

I saw him slap at the remote in frustration, trying to find something less infuriating to watch on the TV.

Trying to drown out the new sounds of some hunting or fishing show behind me (I couldn’t be sure, since I’m not allowed to watch TV in probation—all I heard was a southern accent saying “We got us a big ‘un right here!”), I closed my eyes and shook my head.

I need to get out of probation… because I’d like to have a high-volume discussion about why what you just said is stupid.

Alas, I had to finish my meal in silence, unable to weigh in on The Farm’s Space Talk. Little did any of them know…

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First off, NASA’s budget is barely perceptible on the fiscal radar. For FY2009, NASA announced a budget of $17.6 billion. In contrast, the Department of Defense was given just over $515 billion in “discretionary authority”—the allotment to repair and update our nation’s aircraft fleets is $17.3 billion alone.

More importantly, I find it inconceivable that someone—who was alive when a man set foot on the moon, mind you—is unable to grasp the tremendous impact that NASA and space exploration had on our lives as a whole. GPS units, medical imaging (MRI/CAT) machines, ear thermometers, satellite dishes, game controllers, anything made of plastic… the list goes on and on.

Oh, you’d like some more applicable specifics? Well, turn your head away from the TV I can’t watch (yes, Joe Hick’s Fishin’ and Huntin’ Time is being piped through the cable box, yet another invention from space) and listen here.

Power tools that we use, both here and in our homes? Well, a 238,857 mile-long extension cord doesn’t work very well for digging moon rocks.

Temper Foam, like the stuff inside our helmets? It was originally seat padding developed for both aircraft and spaceflight.

Fire-resistant clothing and material? The inherent fire risks associated with space travel (small compartment, oxygen tanks everywhere, sparks and wires, etc.) were unfortunately only addressed after the Apollo 1 fire that killed astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee.

Apollo1crew

While their poorly-designed suits were only part of the whole picture that led to the death of these heroes, properly flame-retardant gear might have helped keep them alive long enough to find a way out of the test cockpit—instead, Grissom and White’s suits were found melted together. Following this, a great deal of research was conducted into making the entirety of the suit (and much of the material, fabric or otherwise, inside the cockpit) heavily resistant to heat and flame. Today, much of what we all have in our gear lockers is a descendant of NASA material, having adopted and bettered the technology for modern-day firefighting.

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Now, you tell me that’s not impressive. Sure, everyone knows that a good deal of modern technology comes from the military—but did you know that a whole mess of other stuff came from the space program? Kindly don’t piss and moan about NASA. They’ve been working for decades to do more for humanity than many other agencies, and on a shoestring budget at that (they’re running with 3% of the DoD budget—a mere drop in the governmental bucket).

Besides, it’s just cool. It’s space. The Final Frontier… “to infinity and beyond…”

Who didn’t want to be an astronaut when they were a little kid? My parents have said that when they were younger and they watched a man get out of a spacecraft and walk on the damned moon was one of the most amazing things they’ve ever seen. I’m jealous I didn’t get to see it myself.

On a funnier note, writing this post reminds me of one of my favorite Onion articles.

So, whaddya think? Are we wasting our time with the Ares-1-X and the new Constellation Project?

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Constellation Project logo and Apollo 1 crew image courtesy of NASA in the public domain.

Ares launch pad image © Bill Ingalls/AP/NASA.

Note: If you haven’t already figured it out, I have created this new category/headline for specific types of posts—”The Sitting Room” shall be hereafter reserved for my take on a wide variety of conversations, serious or otherwise, that go on in the firehouse. No, it’s not gossip, and no, it won’t be getting anyone in trouble. Think of it like a “miscellaneous” category.

Posted by raisingladders on November 2, 2009 • Filed under: Fire Rescue Topics, News, Technology & Communications, The Sitting Room