Saturday, February 16, 2008

LET'S NOT FIGHT FIRE- I still don't understand this plan.

Greetings! Last week, I went to a chimney fire and was reminded of a little problem that we have with some neighboring fire departments and the differences between us. The problem is that other departments seem to have SOP's or directives which make it so that they either cannot or will not fight fire. (See generally my earlier post about the "playbook"). This chimney fire, while generally unremarkable, sent my mind back to another call and another cluster-F situation...

The reason that I got sent down memory lane was pretty simple. I was assigned to drive the ladder truck, and we get woken up out of bed at about 0100 for the report of a chimney fire. It is a long way away, but we are the nearest truck, I guess. Riding officer with me is my friend David, who like me is semi-retired, which is to say that he has twenty years in the department and has decided that it is more fun to ride on the firetrucks than to work as an assistant chief. As I have written before on this blog, David is the finest of firemen. As we go out the door, it is apparent from radio traffic and computer updates that this will be a "real" chimney fire, as opposed to the more common "bullshit" chimney fire. In the world of chimney fires, it seems that in the last twenty years, things have calmed down significantly. Chimney fires occur when improperly used and/or poorly maintained chimney flues build up a layer of flammable gunk, which eventually catches on fire. In a "real" chimney fire, this results in a huge flame column shooting out of the top of the chimney and the sound of a jet engine or rocket motor. Good times. In a "bullshit" chimney fire, this results in a roof with a bunch of charred shit in a corona around the chimney, and a little bit of glowing material inside the flue. Bummer. In both cases, chimney fires are strange because with rare exception, they are not exceptionally hazardous to the building (which is not to say that they are non-hazardous), and are accordingly considered among firemen to be a nuisance-type call.

So we drove a very long way to get to this fire, and when we got there, there was some fire and sparks coming out of the chimney. My assessment was that we had missed most of the fuel burn off and we were seeing the end of the fire. I put up the bucket of our truck to get my guys access to the roof (which was really unnecessary except that the bucket has 1500 watts of lighting, and a ground ladder doesn't). David went inside, and the guys in back went up on the roof. An engine company was also on the roof with them. No one on the roof was doing anything. I went inside the house to see if David needed anything else, and it was there that I found a little surprise. The crew from the first due engine was inside, and had pulled a wood stove away from the fire box. OK, that's pretty normal. What was wierd was that they had a fireproof blanket out and they were holding it up with their hands on the top and standing on the bottom, using the blanket to block off the box from the rest of the house. It was like a big patch on the wall. They were making no effort to do anything about putting the fire out. David was busying himself making sure that there had been no fire spread to the house, which there hadn't, and talking to the homeowner. The homeowner said that he had had a prior chimney fire 20 years ago, and that in response, he had a stainless steel flue liner installed. This meant that there was nearly no chance of the fire spreading from inside the chimney to the rest of the house, no matter what we did.

See, there is really only one danger to working on a chimney fire. In a house with a ceramic or masonry chimney, if you put too much water on the fire too quickly, there is some chance of cracking the liner and allowing fire to escape the chimney, thereby putting the structure at risk. In our department, we address this risk by limiting the amount of water we put into play on a chimney fire. Ordinarily, spraying a couple of cups of water onto the fire in the fireplace or in the woodstove puts out the fire in the flue. Water expands by a factor of approximately 1700 times when changed from the liquid state to the gas state (steam), so spraying a little bit of water into a fireplace, generating a little steam at the bottom, converts into a very impressive high-pressure steam bath for the length of the chimney. This will put out most chimney fires in no time flat. The department whose area we visited this evening didn't subscribe to this theory, choosing instead to wait it out and let the fire run its course. When we were finally done, we got back into the rig, and David said something to the effect of "different strokes for different folks, I guess we'll play by their rules on their turf", to which I responded: "I do not understand this whole 'let's not fight fire plan'", which is a direct quote from my brother J from a fire a number of years ago.

A number of years ago, we were sent on our engine and ladder to a structure fire on (what was then) a rural road that connected two more developed areas. It was at nighttime and in either the late winter or early spring. The wind was howling, blowing thirty or forty mile per hour sustained and gusts much higher. We arrived on scene to find an abandonded old house that was fully involved. Becasue of hose in the road, we had to park some distance away and somewhat uphill from the building, and we were able to get a really good look at things as we walked down to the fire. The first-due engine (from the department referenced in the "playbook" post) had pulled into the driveway, and was pointing its deck gun/deluge set at the building. This deck gun had a "stack tip" smoothbore nozzle attached, and we arrived just as the driver was getting ready to send water. I noticed three important things during the walk down. First, that pumper was parked directly under some power lines. Second, the thermal column coming off of the house (like the visible heat disruption you see looking across a barbecue grill) was being blown right across the power lines. Third, sparks, flaming brands and other debris were being carried by the wind into a neighborhood of new and occupied homes and causing small fires all over the place. Suffice it to say that this was a big-time emergency and nothing was being done about it.

The very first thing that I did was to go up to the driver of the first engine and tell him (quite loudly and not very politely) that he needed to move his rig right away and get out from under the power lines, because he was at serious risk of having those (quite live) lines fall on his pumper. He didn't listen. He went about opening up the gate on his deck gun, sending about 250 gallons per minute (GPM) in the direction of the fire. While I have to admit, it was nice to see someone try to put water on the fire, the wind was blowing so strongly that the stream didn't make it to the building. It was readily apparent that he needed to shut down, remove all but the biggest tip from his stack tip smooth bore, and try again (with a thicker stream and more water). Meanwhile, our crews were working on getting hand lines in place to try to do a more conventional attack on the fire. We were then ordered by their chief (whom we all respect, but who leads a bunch of knuckleheads) to stop what we were doing and wait for the deck gun to knock down the fire first, and then hit it with our hoses. After a few minutes of deciding that we were right about using a larger stream to defeat the wind, the re-formatted deck gun was tried again, and again had no effect. Meanwhile, flaming debris continued to fall in the brand new residential neighborhood across the way, and there were now several brush fires threatening occupied homes. There was then this moment of odd quiet, as our men were chomping at the bit to go at this house and the standing order on the fireground was to do nothing.

We had no illusion that there was anything to save about this house. It was an abandonded wreck when the fire started, and it was a total loss before anyone got there. I think that we on our crews had the benefit of seeing the larger scene and knew the context of what was really going on, and some of those other guys didn't. My brother J was the officer on our engine, and he was right in the chief's ear, pleading with him to give our guys some water and a chance, all the while pointing out that if we didn't hurry, we would have a series of other fires to fight. We were literally in a "surround and drown" position with three or four hand lines right up against the building, and with an order not to do anything until the deck gun/master stream issue had been resolved. Once the big stream had been denied by the wind twice, someone of greater rank than me realized that the pumper was underneath the power lines and exposed to a bunch of heat. The new plan became that they would move the pumper closer to the house, out from under the lines, and try the deck gun again. Once this became apparent, we all began to question the chief about why we couldn't take a stab at the building. This might seem like a breach of discipline or a break in the chain of command, but in this instance, we had a whole gang of senior officers on our crews (like captains and up), who had all worked with this chief for a long time, and he usually respects our opinons on tactics.

J made the rounds of the various positions and talked to the not-doing-anything hose crews, and then walked up to the chief while I was standing with him, and said "Chief, I do NOT understand this whole 'wait, let's not fight fire plan', and if we don't do something now, we're going to burn down that whole fucking neighborhood". Finally, this got things moving, and the driver of that first-due engine was directed to let us have our water.

Then began the comedy...We got water to one 1 3/4" hose line, which was being operated by an angry-ass 19 year old kid with a born knack for extinguishment. His name was Mike, and our department has since lost him to some better-known fire department up in New York City where he now is a ladderman in Harlem. Mike stepped right up to the front porch of the now-partially-collapsing house and began an almost crazed fire attack. He put water through the door, under the eaves, through the windows, up the stairwell, all over the place. In the minute or so before all of the other lines got going, Mike had the bulk of the fire knocked down and was working on getting the rest. It was amazing. His entire body posture was "aggression". And the lesson? In this situation you can turn one motivated kid with a hose loose and you can do as much good (or even more) as the biggest weapon you carry on your rig. In the end, we spent about an hour or two getting the whole thing out-out-out and rendered non-hazardous, but the "fighting" part of the "firefighting" was over in a few seconds.

J's complaint to the chief became the stuff of legend. I am 100% certain that no one who was lucky enough to see that exchange and then to watch the result as Mike put out an entire building in a minute will ever think of firefighting in the same way again. I was an officer for years, and I always told my crews what I had been taught as a boy: "You can put out a whole lot of fire with one engine company". After this, I always told them the same thing, only knowing in the back of my head that you can put out a whole lot of fire with one man, so long as your plan is "Let's fight fire", rather than "Let's not fight fire". Aggression must always be balanced against our "culture of safety", but in the fire service we must always be mindful that aggression in doing our job can result in the quick conversion of a dangerous and out of control situation into a safe and easily controlled situation. It is what our customers expect of us, and as long as we can operate without taking unnecessary risk, it the way things should be done. I just wish that our neighbors would pick up on this plan.

So, riding home from last week's chimney fire, David and I, both of whom were witnesses to J's moment of genius, had a good laugh at the expense of our neighbors to the west. Maybe someday they'll learn.

Post a comment to let me know that you read this far, and to let me know if you think I'm crazy. I'll be back again soon.

DTXMATT12

Thursday, February 07, 2008

FIREHOUSE PRANKS- A little inter-station rivalry never hurt anyone...much.

Thanks to everyone who has been stopping by recently. The traffic on my blog has been much higher than usual lately, and I hope that you have been enjoying the recent thoughts posted here. I really appreciate it when comments are made, so feel free to just say "hi" if nothing else.

I recently got to thinking about all of the crazy pranks that I have seen played between firehouses, sometimes as the perpetrator, and sometimes as the victim. So, for a quick and easy post, I figured that today I would just make a quick list of some of the stuff that I have seen. Before I begin, a quick disclaimer: "Firehouse pranks may be a thing of the past. Often, they are juvenile and stupid, and are probably banned by most department's rules. No matter what, the prime rule of firehouse pranks is that they MUST NOT INTERFERE WITH OPERATIONAL READINESS UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. They probably shouldn't involve injury to persons or property either, but absolutely nothing should fuck with PPE or restrict apparatus from responding." OK, that having been said, here is a quick and far-from-complete list of stuff that I have seen, all of which is limited to pranks between companies:

1. The Banner (Phase I): Nothing says "owned" like making a banner out of a hospital sheet and some spray paint, with denigrating comments and placing it on your rival firehouse. This is customarily done around us by making a banner, sneaking to the other firehouse, duct taping the top of the banner to the bottom of the outside of the bay door, and leaving. This results in a situation where when the rival company gets a call, they raise their door and get a big banner in their face that not only says "You Suck", but which also says that you are not keeping a tight enough watch.

2. The Banner (Phase II): If the banner is funny, then doing a banner and making it very mean-spirited and making it look like it came from an uninvolved third firehouse, thereby causing an inter-station war of back-and-forth retaliation, is hilarious.

3. The Parking Lot Sprinkler: Done correctly, this has a very high chance of violating the rule about not damaging property (SO BE WARNED). Sneak into a rival firehouse on a sub-freezing night (15 to 20F) and stretch the garden hose from the apparatus bay to the parking lot. Once there, attach a garden sprinkler to the hose and put the sprinkler on top of the top guy's car. Leave. With any luck, no one will discover this antic until morning, and the victim's car and those around it will be coated in a ton of ice. SECOND WARNING: I saw this done, and so much ice built up on the car that the suspension was severely damaged, plus (in fairness) it sucks if the victim has to go anywhere (like work). My recommendation is to just think of this and laugh.

4. Insect Infestation: Before the explosion of growth in its area, one of our firehouses used to be surrounded by thick and damp/marshy woods. Back in the home response days, a couple of guys found the firehouse empty one night, so they turned on the light trailer that was stationed there, opened the bay doors with about 6000 watts of light in the bay and waited until about a gazillion moths, flies, aphids, mantises, mosquitoes and god knows what else came into the bay. They then turned off the generator/lights, closed the doors, and left. BTW, this is an all time favorite of mine.

5. The Trojan Truck: Drive to the vicinity of a rival firehouse and drop off two or three guys within walking distance, but out of sight of the firehouse. Drive your apparatus right up on the front ramp of the firehouse and do something obnoxious like lights/siren/horns/fire extinguishers/mooning or whatever, just cause a scene. While you are doing this (and hopefully drawing the attack/attention of everyone in the firehouse), the guys who were dropped off sneak into the firehouse while it is occupied, and do "The Banner" or any number of other tricks. And yes, some dumbass firehouse will fall for this more than once.

6. Messin' with PASS Devices- (Phase I): In our department, none of these tricks work anymore because our integrated Personal Alert Safety System (PASS) devices are permanently affixed to our SCBA and activated by breathing air, so any PASS hijinks violate rule number 1 and may not be done. In the past though, they were not permanently affixed, ran on battery power, and nobody used them anyway, so...GAME ON! Sneak into the rival firehouse at night after bedtime with one man for every SCBA carrying unit. Have an agreed upon signal, like snapping fingers, to indicate the start of the operation. Each person takes a piece of apparatus and upon receiving the signal, activates every pass device on their assigned rig, making sure to shake them so that they do not go off. Everyone runs out of the house at once. Thirty to forty seconds later, 20 alarms are going off at once, in the cabs, in the compartments, etc.

7. Messin' with PASS Devices (Phase II): Find a night when you have the keys to the captain's office at a rival firehouse, but no one staying in that firehouse does. Sneak into the firehouse well after bedtime. Take a PASS device off of the pack of your choice, and carry it into the captain's office. Take the phone off the hook and activate the station's overhead intercom system. Place the phone on the desk with the intercom open. Activate the PASS device and place it next to the phone, shaking it as you leave. Close and lock the door to the office. Leave the firehouse. Thirty to forty seconds later, one PASS device will be sounding very loudly everywhere in the house, and the guys in the house will have to call their captain to come from home to unlock the office and get it out.

8. Messin' with PASS Devices (Phase III): If you are wandering through a firehouse at night and just want to fuck with some people, one way to do it is to take a PASS device, activate it, shake it up to maximize the departure time, open the door to the bunkroom, slide it down the hall, and leave. Again, thirty to forty seconds later, everyone in bunkroom is up and confused, and you are already gone. Did I say that the days of these type pranks are over?

9 Messin' With Your Fill-Ins: Let's say you have members of another company covering your firehouse covering your house while your department is doing some activity (like medal day, installation, company picnic, elections, something involving drinking, etc.). One way to be less than gracious as hosts is to greet them and to show them where to sleep. Don't tell them that you have plugged in an alarm clock to every outlet in the bunkroom and randomly set them to go off every three to five minutes starting at about 0300 and lasting until about 0600. Take comfort in the fact that while you are enjoying your drunk-fest, they will be going crazy trying to end the agony of thirty alarms going off.

10. Retaliation for Getting Messed With By Your Hosts on A Fill-In: After the fourth clock goes off, destroy every alarm clock in the bunkroom by throwing them against the walls, smashing them to bits, and leaving the mess.

11. Furniture Swap: Find that your rivals are not paying enough attention to their firehouse? One way to let them know is to change entire rooms of furniture without being noticed or getting caught. By this I mean put all of the dayroom furniture in the kitchen, and all of the kitchen furniture in the dayroom. Take care to arrange the furniture in a manner that using it in the new area seems plausible. See how angry people get when they find your flair for interior design.

There are many, many more of these. For now, I'm getting tired. Bear in mind, that this post has been limited to inter-station pranks, and does not account for intra-station pranks, hazing, rookie gags, practical jokes, pointless quests and the other funny stuff that goes on. Fodder for more posts I guess.

OK, so there is no way that you can read this and not know about some sort of prank. Leave a comment and I'll compile some sort of handbook.

DTXMATT12

Monday, February 04, 2008

A RECENT "CHiPs" CRASH- Hey, this one happened this century

I'm back again, and this time with fresh tales of adventure from the WWW. Did you ever watch the show "CHiPs" about the two motorcycle highway patrolmen? Two things happened in every episode: 1. Ponch pulled some strange; and 2. there was a huge, stylized and and very complicated auto accident (usually on fire) in which no one was seriously injured.

As most of you know, we have a 6-8 lane stretch of I-95 with separate HOV lanes running through Woodbridge. It provides endless entertainment. For years, my brother J and I have been referring to big gnarly crashes on the interstate as "the CHiPs wreck", both as an homage to the show and as a shorthand to describe big, complicated, crash scenes. My brother and I now have 40 years experience between us, and there have been about 5 accidents that we have seen that warrant the actual label "CHiPs Crash". It just doesen't happen that often. One happened the other night....

So there we were, our old duty crew. On the pumper was my friend and fishing buddy Larry, who was driving, our boss Steve riding officer, a rookie fireman and two brand-new probationers (i.e., haven't completed initial firefighter training) On the ladder truck, J was driving, I was riding officer, and we had a couple of really competent firemen in the back. We were in the middle of a duty crew meeting at about 9:30 p.m., when our station alert tones went off.

Did I ever tell you about our station renovation? I won't bore you with it now, but when our house was renovated, we got this fancy alerting system that not only makes alert sounds, but also provides a visual cue in the form of colored lights to tell you in advance who will be dispatched.

When the tones went off this time, all of the lights came on... white for ambulance, blue for medic, red for engine company, green for truck company... Everybody goes! Whoop-de-doo, happens all the time. Usually that means a first-due fire call, but we hear on the way to the rigs that it is for an auto accident. When the ladder truck is dispatched to an auto accident, it is ordinarily because we are the closest available extrication-capable unit, which was the case here. The callback on dispatch provided the location as I-95 northbound, just north of our easiest access point, reported to be one vehicle overturned. As we loaded up, my mind focused on the limited capacity our ladder truck has to deal with overturned vehicles. Unlike a heavy Rescue Company, we do not carry a full compliment of hydraulic rescue tools, but more importantly, we do not carry a full compliment of cribbing and shoring to do a full-on extrication on an overturned or on-its-side vehicle. Fortunately, a rescue company was also dispatched.

So, we got on the road. We went somewhat out of order, in that we went engine, truck, ambulance, medic. Usually, we let the EMS units go first because the trucks are simply faster. Getting to the highway is easy. Leave the firehouse, go right at a traffic light, go about a mile down the road and past our hospital, and turn right to get on the highway northbound. Before we could get to the first light, we started getting dispatch updates through our computer aided dispatch (CAD) computer. It makes a little noise like "bleep-bleep" when it updates. The updates were coming fast and furious. Seriously, like every two or three seconds, there was an update. Each update represents a bit of information relayed to a call taker and then entered into the dispatch computer. Based on the number of updates, my guess was that our dispatch center was taking dozens of calls for this accident. While this ordinarily happens on the interstate, where everyone who sees the accident calls it in on their cell phone, the dispatchers don't usually forward every piece of information. In this case, though, the information kept getting more and more dire.

It starts with (bleep-bleep) "Now reported to be two cars overturned". Then adds: (bleep-bleep)"Total of five vehicles involved". And goes on to say: (bleep-bleep)"One of the overturned vehicles is on fire". A dispatcher comes over the radio to advise us of the report that one of the cars is on fire, which is simultaneously supplemented with a CAD update of (bleep-bleep)"cannot confirm all occupants out of cars, including one on fire", and then another to say (bleep-bleep) "passerby are attempting rescue now". On receipt of this information, I had the guys in the back put on their airpacks and get ready to fight fire. I started getting the rest of my gear on. I was dressed and had my airpack straps on by the time we were passing the hospital.

We went through a traffic light in front of the hospital, which is about two blocks from the highway entrance. J looked in the direction of the dispatched location, and said: "Oh yeah, its on fire, you can see the column from here." He was right. Despite it being nightime and the fact that we were a mile and a half away, there was one of those black columns of smoke illuminated by fire that means that it is time to go to work. I quickly ran through my plan for what to do with a car on fire with a victim trapped.

There actually is a plan for what to do with a car on fire with a victim trapped. The plan is essentially to dive into the car and pull out anyone you find as fast as you can. The plan is best executed under the protection of a hose line, but when you have a person stuck in a burning car, time is (of course) of the essence. An understatement, right?

So Steve and Larry get to the scene first. Steve, using his very best "iceman" radio-calm voice says: "engine 12 on the scene with two vehicles overturned, one on fire, no confirmation of occupants out of vehicle... give me a tanker for water supply and two additional EMS units. We will be out on extinguishment" About this time, J and I get to where we can see the fire. It is an SUV, on its side, pointing east in the northbound lane with its roof facing south. The back of the roof is leaning on a guardrail, which is keeping the vehicle from falling back onto its roof. It is on fire. It is vigorously on fire, almost strangely so. At any rate, it is what we call "getting it".

Steve said they had no confirmation of people out. This is one of those times when it is good to ride with your brother. Not much talking required, each of us knew what the other would do. Before our arrival, I put on my SCBA facepiece and got onto breathing air. J drives us past the engine, which by this time was deploying hose toward the fire, and parks us right next to the burning truck. There will be no one alive inside that truck, and if they are alive, they do not wish to be saved at this point. J gets out, I get out, J runs up to the SUV and quickly checks its stability while at the same time calling the engine crew a bunch of pussies for not getting closer to the fire. What he really was doing was trying to get them up close to the windshield, which had fallen/melted out of the car. The engine crew got up close to the windshield and began to spray into the passenger compartment of the SUV. The SUV's horn was going off continuously. I took a 90 degree flashlight, knelt down between the engine crew and the truck's open windshield, and did the dive into the burning truck routine, having been assured by my brother that the vehcile was stable. There was still some fire, visibility sucked, but using the flashlight I was able to check every seat and every space in the truck in a matter of seconds. Satisfied that no one was there, I climed back out the way I went in. The engine then finished the extinguishment in pretty short order.

Once I was out of the car, I took my gloves, helmet, hood and facepiece off and looked around to take full stock of the accident. The scene was approximately a quarter of a mile long. Shure as shit, there was another overturned car right up the road. The rescue company showed up. There were some other cars involved, all on their wheels. State troopers started coming out of the woodwork, along with some county police. My portable radio squalked about how something like nine patients were being evaluated. My guys went to work re-checking the security of the car and controlling hazards. We started looking around to make sure that we had found everyone involved in the accident and referred them to EMS. We evaluated some minor burns on J's hands. We did a little bit of traffic control until the interstate was completely shut down.

In the end, it turned out that the SUV that burned had been occupied by just one female, aged about 20, who was travelling through from Texas. After the accident, she ended up hanging by her seatbelt in her truck. A couple of people stopped to help, and as they tried to coach/assist her out of her seatbelt, a wire harness that had broken in the cargo area began to arc, setting the rear passenger compartment of the truck on fire. According to these guys, she freaked out (as I suppose that any of us would), dropped to the floor (which would then be the passenger side of the vehicle), and began to kick at the windshield to get out. Three of the bystanders helped her to get the windshield out of the truck, which explained why I found it on the ground all smoked over and broken. Those guys said that in the two minutes before our arrival the truck went from not on fire to fully involved, and they were stunned with the speed at which the fire progressed. Of course, no one bothered to tell us in avance that the girl was out, but I got to thinking that perhaps "the dive" wasn't so stupid and futile after all.

So, there were some oddities with this wreck that qualify it as a "CHiPs" level crash. First and foremost, it was an auto accident with secondary fire. Contrary to routine Hollywood portrayals, this almost never happens, and is absolutely the exception rather than the rule in auto accident operations. Secondly, there were two cars overturned in the same incident. I can only think of two other times in thousands of accidents that I have seen this. Thirdly, the scope of the accident scene was large, covering four lanes and more than a quarter mile. Lastly, almost no one was hurt, and there was a happy ending for everyone. The real heroes of the day were the civilians who stopped on the roadside to help a stranger out of a burning car. Without them, this girl almost certainly would have been gravely injured or died. Ironically, it turns out that they were the most severely injured persons in the incident, having cut their hands on the broken windshield while trying to get the girl out. Those guys deserve some serious credit.

So, instead of completing our meeting, we ended up out on the interstate. Someone asked if the SUV driver's ID was in her purse. One of my guys held up a melted purse-looking thing and said "Hey, you mean this?", to which we all laughed... and then FREEZE FRAME ON LAUGHING FIREMEN, ROLL END THEME MUSIC AND CREDITS...Duh-Duh-Da-Da-Dah

If you think that diving into burning cars is dumb, by all means, please leave a comment. I'll return later with more stories from the 21st century.

DTXMATT12