TOOL

This week I talked to a bunch of people that I know from past association with the fire department. I was twice reminded of an incident where I was involuntarily used as a forcible entry tool. I began to wonder if this has happened to anyone else. I figure that the internet is a good place to pose the question: "Has anyone had their body used as a force-entry tool?" My story goes like this:

It was New Year's morning about twelve years ago, and nothing was going right for us. We went to a working fire in an apartment building at about 0430. The fire was in an area primarily covered by a different fire department than ours, and at the time they had a horrible history of fucking up fires. It was balls-ass cold outside, the fire was out of hand when we got there, and (predictably) the first-in engine company had made a cock of the whole thing. I was a firefighter, driving the tiller position on the ladder truck (for the uninitiated, this is the rear-steering position on a tractor-drawn ladder truck), and ended up on the third floor of this apartment building with one of my main firefighing sen-say's, whom we will call "Joel", who was driving the front. In this instance, our assignment was to search apartments immediately above the fire to insure that no one was in the way of the fire if it got any worse. Also with us was our lieutenant, whom we now call "Chief Jon". There were about five apartments that were seriously at risk from fire spread. Joel and I ended up at the middle of the five doors, but Jon had the forcible entry tools and was busy elsewhere trying to get people from other companies to put the fire out with more alacrity than they were then-displaying. (OK, he was knee-deep in putting his boots in the asses of the firemen on the hose lines, trying to convince them to put out the fire). Faced with a potentially dire situation and no tools other than fire hooks, Joel decided to make do with what he had. Before I knew what was going on, he grabbed me by my airpack straps and swung me bodily into the apartment door. The door flew off the hinges and we got into that apartment just as fire started to breach the floor in a rear bedroom. Just so you can understand the physics of it all, when I am geared up for firefighting I am about 6'8" tall and wiegh close to 300 lbs. inclusive of wet fire gear. He kept a hold of my straps so that I didn't go flying into the apartment. The door was a wooden panel door in a metal doorframe. My surpise at being tossed through the door was quickly replaced with admiration for what good thinking Joel did in that situation. We managed to hold that apartment with makeshift aids and two small Dry-Chems until Jon showed up with the calvalry (in the form of an engine company with a hose line). Joel remains an honorary member of our department, though he has long since moved on to the FDNY, where he works at some Rescue Company in Manhattan or something. They keep saying stuff like that is the "premier fire company on Earth" or somesuch.

So, anyone else been used as a battering ram, prybar, sledge, etc.? Put it up!

DTXMATT12

Laughing Lawyer in Lake Ridge

Sometimes, the fire department makes me think of my job as an attorney. I deal exclusively in criminal law, so it is a sure bet that sometimes we see stuff on the street that will end up in court. Take, for instance, a little call from Sunday morning...

There I was, snoozing away in the firehouse at 0230 when the station alerts went off. OK, as this blog progresses, I will tell you more about this firehouse, but for now, suffice it to say that I am new in this house and the wake-up alert system totally freaks me out. So the bells go off, and I find myself standing up in my cubicle not knowing exactly where I am. I stumble down to the engine, with my normal bleary-eyed condition enhanced by my not-quite-sufficiently-lubricated contact lenses sticking all over the place. The call is for an auto accident in a residential neighborhood. The ambulance is about a block ahead of us and they mark on the scene first. Oddly, we come up on a wrecked car in some yard and find no ambulance. The ambulance is around a corner with another wrecked car, occupied by a drunken party-girl, still plainly dressed for going out. Unfortunately for her, the series of little lacerations on her forehead have caused her to spill blood all over her preppy little sweater. OK, so that's the scene.

As I stumble out of the pumper and start doing my "check hazards" thing, this girl starts wailing about "Oh God! Where is my friend?" Now, I have to tell you, it was fucking freezing out that night, I was a sleep-deprived wreck, this party chick was just drunk enough to enhance her annoyance factor, and my contacts were still not right, but despite all of that, I realized that this girl was making a serious error in her play at avoiding her drunk driving charge.

You see, dear reader, there are a few ways to beat a DUI charge. I know most of them. I am not going to tip my hand too much when I say that the "The other (missing) guy/driver" defense is a time-tested defense ploy that is appropriate in a situation like party chick found herself in. It is hard to beat, if executed correctly. It goes like this: In an unwitnessed accident, smart drivers might say something like: "Gee whiz, officer, I was riding passenger because, clearly, I am too drunk to drive, and the dude who was driving me home said.....Hey, wait! Where did he go? He was here a couple of minutes ago. Gosh, I hope that he is alright. No, I didn't catch his name, and no, I don't really know what he looked like. I can't believe that mother-f'er left me hanging like this!" This leaves the police with a pseudo-plausible story where you are not the driver and are innocently sloshed (NOTE: I do not endorse this technique, I am only reciting it factually). The trouble was, the evidence at the scene (blood, hair, broken glass, seat belt damage, etc.) put her alone in the car; and her execution of the ruse was terrible. While griping about her friend to a police officer, she put herself driving the car and made a bunch of statements about being drunk. Ooops! I had to laugh, because this was the worst try at this ploy ever.

She was really tenacious, though. I considered for a moment that perhaps she really did have a friend. Nah! She knew she was in trouble and was acting like it. Just to be safe, I checked the paper and there weren't any missing young ladies from Lake Ridge on Monday. The aide on the ambulance said that the patient kept on complaining about losing her friend the whole way to the hospital, but that the cops found no evidence whatsoever that there was another person involved. I can only assume that this girl will end up a customer for one of my attorney brethren, whether it be for a DUI, or for knocking that first car up into someone's yard and driving off, or both. In the meantime, the better bet is to not drive drunk. You can avoid all of the legal muckety-muck and keep your blood on the inside.

Fire Department: How did I get wrapped up in this?

The fact that I have been in the fire department has framed every single aspect of my adult life. If it were not for the department and my life experiences there, I would not have my wife, my education, my kids, my job or anything that I own. Strange... it all started with a conversation over lunch in November 1986.

In the fall of 1986 I was in 11th grade. I had just turned 16 years old. I had an intentionally bad haircut. I intentionally wore bad clothes. I listened to bad music (which I still listen to today). I would hang out with kids that weren't bad, but who weren't really all that great either. None of us was particularly motivated or showed any obvious potential. This was true of the three guys that I ate lunch with every day. Despite being punked-out, the other thing that the four of us shared was that feeling that we were muddling through school and that a future outside of our fast food jobs seemed impossible. No shit, we were like live-action Beavis and Butt-Head before Beavis and Butt-Head were cool.

My lunch buddies were named Sean, Steve and David. Sean was my my best connection to the lunch pack. We weren't particularly close, but we knew each other from outside school and shared an english class just before lunch. Sean and Steve were tight. Sean was tall and very skinny. Steve was (to be fair), like, robo-fat. When they would travel together, they looked like a big "10" walking down the street. Hanging with Sean meant hanging with Steve and after sharing 30 lunches, we had long since become regular lunch acquaintences, if not friends. David was the mystery guy in the bunch. Steve knew David, who seemed older and more mature than us. He was a senior at the time, but he had this sort of look or presence that made him seem like he was twenty and just out of his element being in high school. My life was changed by these guys one Thursday.

I was the last one to the table. I sat down with my usual tray of nutritious food from the a la carte line (rectangle "cheese" pizza, 2 soft pretzels, 16 packs of ketchup, 2x chocolate milk). Upon my arrival, I find my friends in the middle of a spirted debate. Sean is advocating the merits of something called the "26-A", while David is telling him he is an idiot and that the "32-B" is the obvious choice. Additionally, David added, you could easily lose a finger using the "26-A". It was that comment from David that prompted me to ask "What the fuck are you talking about?" David and Sean say in unison "Cutting up cars". This peaked my interest. "Cool. Where do you get to do that?", I ask. "At the fire department." says Steve. Then, in what seemed to be one collectively shared breath, they tell me: that David's dad has been in the volunteer fire department for years, and that they have a junior program, and that they are all members, and that as a member you get to ride the Rescue Squad on calls, and no, the Rescue Squad is not an ambulance, and when you ride the Rescue Squad you get to cut up cars. "Bullshit", I said. "No shit", they said. And they essentially dared me to come to the firehouse and check it out.

I took them up on the dare. The firehouse turns out to be caddy-corner to the church where my mom took me for years. It is one block off the main road and tucked between some old commercial property and a 25 year-old subdivision of houses. I don't know how I didn't notice that place before. Inside the firehouse are some firetrucks and some ambulances. Nothing you wouldn't expect, but I probably hadn't set foot inside a firehouse in ten years, and it was all new to me.

Among these firetrucks was this thing called the Rescue Squad, a giant toolbox-on-wheels-looking thing with lots of compartments and no hose or ladders. This big toolbox the size of a school bus was what the guys wanted to show me. Great. They show me some helmets. They show me their coats. They show me around the Rescue Squad. They pay particular attention not to the firefighting equipment, but to the auto extrication tools. It turns out that the 26-A and the 32-B are two different versions of the fabled "Jaws of Life" rescue spreaders made by Hurst. The 26-A was a beast. Heavy and ill-balanced, it had no real handles and the operating levers (yes, lever[s]) were located inside of the moving arms right next to the moving hydraulic parts. David was right. You could lose a finger using that thing. The "32-B" looks more modern, has some handles to hold onto, has one operating switch, and will actually balance in your hands. It is a heavy mo-fo. It is explained to me that the 26-A opens to a total width of 26 inches. The 32-B opens to 32 inches. Duh.

All in all, I was a little underwhelmed with the whole situation. I left the house that day thinking that the experience had been cool, but not earth shattering. It took two more weeks of debate over the merits of various tools and the use of equipment that I couldn't conceptualize, plus some goading from my friends, to get me back to the firehouse.

More than anything, I wanted to see if the stuff that they were saying was true. I put in my application with the junior fire department at the December meeting in 1986. The process was that you put in an application, meet the membership, and then wait a month for a "second reading", whereupon you are voted into membership and start with the department. I was handed a list of 160 tools and items and a map describing the location of compartments on the Rescue Squad. I was told to come back to the meeting in January with the list of tool names and locations memorized. They told me that they would work with me from there.

So began my life's great adventure. During the month between my junior application readings, our department ran the fire that is still "the big one". More on that later.

DTXMATT12

So, why "DTXMATT12"?

My internet handle has for years been "DTXMATT12". The origins of this handle all go back to the fire department. My home-base firehouse is fire station #12, on the southside of Woodbridge, Virginia. The "MATT12" portion of the handle is derived from a habit many of us picked up over the years of referring to each other on the radio as if we were our own units.
A bit of explanation: Firetrucks and ambulances coming out of fire station 12 are referred to as "Engine 12" or "Medic 12" or whatever. We have had the same core of about 20 guys at our firehouse for about fifteen years. Many of us have now outlasted the service life of every vehicle in our house and seen them all replaced. As a prank, we will breach protocol on the radio and call each other by name with the station designation. This leads to radio traffic like "Engine 12 to Zark 12" or "Tower 12 to Jay 12". The other thing that you will see around our firehouse is that anyone with a custom sports jersey will have their name and the number 12 on the back. This leaves us with "BRIAN 12" or "CHRIS 12". So, for the longest time, I have been "MATT12"
The "DTX" is a different story. When my generation of firemen came into the firehouse as kids, we inherited two reputations and nicknames: One was the "Blacksheep" (for our members being mischevious misfits), and the other was "The Animal House" (for the general condition of the firehouse). The "animal house" model has been followed for years, and the bible of this religion is the movie by the same name. If you somehow haven't seen Animal House, the "zoo fraternity" in that movie is Delta Tau Chi. Spelled in Greek, that is Delta (the little triangle), Tau (simple T) and Chi (simple X). The Delta Tau Chi is on our station patch, is on our building, was traced in wet concrete in our parking lot, is integrated into our tee shirts, is on sports jerseys, and we even have a couple of actual fraternity sweatshirts lying around. For firehouse insiders, it is a symbol of our bond and our brotherhood. That having been said, the "Delta" character does not handily come out of the computer keyboard. I know that it is possible. I even have a shortcut on my keyboard at work. For the most part though, it is inconvenient. So, instead of "Delta", I subbed in "D" and got "DTX". It is not "DEE-TEE-EX" it is Delta Tau Chi (Delta TAU KAI).
Slap those two bits of firehouse lore together with my name and you get DTXMATT12. That's the story.

Getting Started

I was having so much fun posting comments on Chris G's "Nightruns" blog that I decided to get into the game myself. I don't know where this blog will take us. I have been in the fire department in Woodbridge for almost twenty years. I have been an attorney for nearly ten years. I have fished for nearly my entire life. I have many of stories to tell, and many lessons to share. Let's see what happens....

DTXMATT12