It was an incredibly slow day yesterday. Everyone was either on the computers watching free movies on bedroommedia.com or watching television. Sunday usually means brunch so there was a huge buffet of omellets and bacon and pan fried potatoes. Deliscious.
One of the guys filled a bag with propane from the grill and then put some kind of small fire in the outdoor pit. Once the bag burned through the edge of the bag "BOOM!" small explosion.
Then they were trying all kinds of new ways to make small explosive devices.
Like I said, kids at heart. Even though there is not one firefighter even close to early 20's.
Some of the men have been on the job for 44 years! Technically, if you figure in their pay and pension they are coming to work for free. Just like the guy who came to work last week for free here are old timers who work for free. They know, we know it.
I wonder if there is any other job in the world where men will work when they do not have too.
Once you are an adrenaline junkie there is no turning back. If the firehouse cannot go to a fire the firehouse creates a fire, or an explosion or something to get people going. In fact firefighters start fighting around the station when there are slow spurts. Normally we will go to 10 to 20 runs a day so there is not time to argue about who does the dishes or cleans the toilets.
We have an officer who is slightly Bi -Polar. One guy worked in a small garden we have all day and the next morning the Bi -Polar guy comes in and starts moving plants around. The two of them were screaming at each other at the top of their lungs. Then a run came in and the argument was over. Runs have a way of doing that.
One run yesterday two guys were fighting on the fast lane of the highway. cars were flying by and these two guys are in the road. No cars around, fighting. Man what a mess they would have made if they tried that crap on a Monday morning. If they had done that today instead of yesterday and people were trying to get to work they would have been splattered across the freeway.
That is about all, except a large boat crushed a little rec boat and we had to be there while they tried to figure out what to do with the 500 gallons of fuel the guy just pumped into his tank that morning.
Monday, June 2, 2008
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Living with 36 brothers.
Imagine your family. A sister, a brother, two three? Now get them all jacked up on weights and make them Alpha Males and get rid of the girls. If your gonna have any girls in the family it is because they can tow the line with the Alpha Males in every way. They know every dirty joke, they pull the heaviest hose. they get in to the dirtiest fires as much and as equally as the men, or they leave the job.
A fire house consist of thirty six or so kids that never grow up. Thay beat out thousands and thousands of other people on a test to get the job. Mostly men that broke the rules as kids- almost every one was a rules breaker of some sort. Ask yourself, what kind of person runs into a building people are running out of? I will let you in on a little secret. firefighters love fires. I had a friend who on the 11th hour of the last day of a 30 plus year career got a call for a house on fire. He let out a whoop as they turned the corner because he was going to get one more fire in before he had to retire at midnight. He later felt bad because someone may have heard him who owned the home and he didn't want to hurt their feelings. Fighting a fire is much like hunting and killing a wild animal. the animal is free inside the building and you are in charge to go get it. It will hide in deep smoke and creep into the walls and try and take your air and cause floors and ceilings to collapse and you must go in there and get it. I could never kill an animal but killing a fire is a great expierience every time. We are the lowest paid fire department in our state and we have more fires than any state for six states across but no one will ever leave this job. Last week a guy showed up at the staion the night before he was supposed to work. I knew exactly why he was there so I asked him if he wanted to work for me. His wife and kids were out of town and he was bored so he came into work to see if anyone wanted to go home. When is the last time you went to work on your day off for no pay and just worked, for free? That is the second time I have seen him do that in a month. His father and three brothers are also firefighters.
In America we live this wonderful dream of equality of everyone. Which is nice until men want to have babies or women want to play in the NFL or be Firefighters. I know it is selfish of me to expect my fellow Firemen to be able to pull me out of a burning house, with a fifty pound tank on and twenty five pounds of thick clothing trapped under, into or on top of burning debris. I understand equality in every way. In fact I feel that if a woman can pull me out of a burning house I am all for her getting the job.
I just have a problem when I think of a situation where someone says to me "hey I would like to pull you out of that house and save your life but I was hired BASED ON race, gender,ethnicity,religion or age and you are going to die because there is no way in hell I am strong enough to get you out of there. sorry."
I would love to carry and have children too but it isn't meant to be and I can accept that. Some things are just the way they are. Hiring weak firefighters, either mentally or physically just because of their sex or race is not only irresponsible, it is dangerous. If the NFL had to hire a certain percentage of women what would happen? Well the game would not be as interesting. Well firefighting is not a spectator sport. If you hire weaker individuals over other individuals people die. Period. We don't just get a touchdown scored against us we get buried. This is the real reason civil service workers get all fired up about affirmative action.
Fortunately,for some, when a person is hired because of their race they understand that this is a burden more than a blessing. Most of the guys I know are the hardest workers, the most studious and the best firefighters. Sure the affirmative action ticket got them in the door but now they are going to prove they were worth the price of admission. Usually, those firefighters turn out better than the ones that did not have the benefit of affirmative action.
BUT, there are the others. A free ride got them in and a free ride they will take. All the way to the top. We have chiefs that were promoted because they were Irish and we have chiefs that were promoted because they were African American. I dream of a day that we are promoted because we scored the highest on a test. Imagine that!
In the end we are 36 brothers no matter the gender or the race and, at least for now, there isn't anyone on the job that cannot carry me out of a building.
End.
A fire house consist of thirty six or so kids that never grow up. Thay beat out thousands and thousands of other people on a test to get the job. Mostly men that broke the rules as kids- almost every one was a rules breaker of some sort. Ask yourself, what kind of person runs into a building people are running out of? I will let you in on a little secret. firefighters love fires. I had a friend who on the 11th hour of the last day of a 30 plus year career got a call for a house on fire. He let out a whoop as they turned the corner because he was going to get one more fire in before he had to retire at midnight. He later felt bad because someone may have heard him who owned the home and he didn't want to hurt their feelings. Fighting a fire is much like hunting and killing a wild animal. the animal is free inside the building and you are in charge to go get it. It will hide in deep smoke and creep into the walls and try and take your air and cause floors and ceilings to collapse and you must go in there and get it. I could never kill an animal but killing a fire is a great expierience every time. We are the lowest paid fire department in our state and we have more fires than any state for six states across but no one will ever leave this job. Last week a guy showed up at the staion the night before he was supposed to work. I knew exactly why he was there so I asked him if he wanted to work for me. His wife and kids were out of town and he was bored so he came into work to see if anyone wanted to go home. When is the last time you went to work on your day off for no pay and just worked, for free? That is the second time I have seen him do that in a month. His father and three brothers are also firefighters.
In America we live this wonderful dream of equality of everyone. Which is nice until men want to have babies or women want to play in the NFL or be Firefighters. I know it is selfish of me to expect my fellow Firemen to be able to pull me out of a burning house, with a fifty pound tank on and twenty five pounds of thick clothing trapped under, into or on top of burning debris. I understand equality in every way. In fact I feel that if a woman can pull me out of a burning house I am all for her getting the job.
I just have a problem when I think of a situation where someone says to me "hey I would like to pull you out of that house and save your life but I was hired BASED ON race, gender,ethnicity,religion or age and you are going to die because there is no way in hell I am strong enough to get you out of there. sorry."
I would love to carry and have children too but it isn't meant to be and I can accept that. Some things are just the way they are. Hiring weak firefighters, either mentally or physically just because of their sex or race is not only irresponsible, it is dangerous. If the NFL had to hire a certain percentage of women what would happen? Well the game would not be as interesting. Well firefighting is not a spectator sport. If you hire weaker individuals over other individuals people die. Period. We don't just get a touchdown scored against us we get buried. This is the real reason civil service workers get all fired up about affirmative action.
Fortunately,for some, when a person is hired because of their race they understand that this is a burden more than a blessing. Most of the guys I know are the hardest workers, the most studious and the best firefighters. Sure the affirmative action ticket got them in the door but now they are going to prove they were worth the price of admission. Usually, those firefighters turn out better than the ones that did not have the benefit of affirmative action.
BUT, there are the others. A free ride got them in and a free ride they will take. All the way to the top. We have chiefs that were promoted because they were Irish and we have chiefs that were promoted because they were African American. I dream of a day that we are promoted because we scored the highest on a test. Imagine that!
In the end we are 36 brothers no matter the gender or the race and, at least for now, there isn't anyone on the job that cannot carry me out of a building.
End.
A Firefighters Day in the life of...Cantsay.
First day first Blog.
15 years ago I started writing notes as a new cadet in the Cannot say Fire department. shootings, car accidents, of course fires and everything in between. We were getting a fatal a day back then in that part of Town and as a new firefighter just starting out I was fascinated by it all.
As weeks and then months went by I stopped writing things down. someone asked me why and I told them that the runs were not interesting enough anymore for people to want to read them in the book I wanted to write. They asked me specifically what I meant and I told them that when I had first got on the job there were police chases where the car would hit a wall and we would be called to give medical assistance to the victims. As one young teen was dying he kept asking about his shoes. I started to realize that the car had hit the wall so hard that his shoes stayed stationary in the passenger floor of the car as he was launched out of the window. I found this interesting. Imagine the impact it takes to fly out of your shoes?
As the summer went on almost all of the car chases would result in accidents and shoeless victims. I still noticed it but it became mundane for me and I never wrote about it in the journal.
this is just a small example that What happens is that you become accustomed to insanity. I always wonder if it is not like that in combat as well. You adjust to something that is insane and it becomes normal.
While explaining this to my friend I realized that the it was not the street that become more or less normal. I had become more accepting of what I saw in the street.Which brings us here to this blog.
Last week a guy who owns an art gallery here in Cant name put a garbage bag over his head and shot himself. the writer in me wondered if it was some final work of art. Did he feel like he was garbage and the bag was a symbolic gesture? Was this a last great work of art lost on the civil service workers who wouldn't know a work of art from, well a dead guy in a bag? It was so emotional for the family and ,specifically, the friend who had found him. To us, it was like buying a gallon of milk at the grocery store. Exactly my point.
Are we inhuman? insensitive brutes? Do we not care? We care. Watch what happens when a child dies in a fire. Specifically one that hurts me every time I think about it. At one of the fire stations around the city there is a toy fire truck on a shelf, burned around the edges. Every time I look at it have to turn away from it because I know the story behind it.
While responding to a house fire the firemen were told there were children inside. As they searched the house they got all of the children out, except one. Trapped in the corner of his bedroom was a little boy clutching his fire truck and, I'm sure, saying to himself it would be OK because the firemen were coming. The boy was found dead clutching the fire truck and one of firemen who found him took the truck home to remind himself of future children out there. When I heard this story It hurt deeply but I wondered how the fireman could look at that truck every day. Well the short answer was that he couldn't. That is why the fire truck is back at the station next to another burnt fire truck. This time I am wise enough not to ask where the other fire truck came from
We live in a world of unimaginable pain and unimaginable greatness simultaneously. We don't live in an Old testament world and certainly not a new testament world but a combination of both. Recently, Cant name had a late season snow storm and I was watching a special on television about changing the way CPR is done in public. 300 chest compressions to one breath. Basically you keep pumping on the chest. The old way was always 5 to 1 and then it was revised and now they were saying just keep pumping. This new technique had not even been taught to us yet. Right about the time the story was ending on CNN we got a call for a 58 year old male in full arrest. We arrived on the scene and a 68 year old male was laying in the street. He had been shoveling his driveway and his wife noticed him on the ground. We set him up for EMS to arrive and Once the paramedics arrived we loaded him into the ambulance and I jumped into the back to continue CPR. His heart beat was ASystole. Basically this means that he would die. When a person is shocked the point is to shock them out of an off rhythm beat to what most people know as a normal heart beat. With Asystole, there is no beat to shock. We still have to continue CPR until a doctor at the hospital pronounces them dead but basically we hare physically working on a dead body. Because the man was going to be DOA and because of his age and because of the article on CNN I started CPR with continuous chest compression rather than a breaths to chest ratio
After a few moments one of the EMS guys told me to stop compressions. We all looked at the heart monitor and there, just at the bottom of the screen was a beating heart. A heart we could shock!
Once EMS shocked the guy his heart beat went from an out of rhythm beat to a beat with a rhythm! The best way to describe this is to start a car without a battery! If you believe in miracles that is about as close as it gets. We never check on patients after we drop them off because so many die and it will wear you down but when this guy went into the emergency room he was alive. Really alive with a beating heart on his own without CPR. I don't know what happened after that but I hope, for his wife's sake, that he made it.
15 years ago I started writing notes as a new cadet in the Cannot say Fire department. shootings, car accidents, of course fires and everything in between. We were getting a fatal a day back then in that part of Town and as a new firefighter just starting out I was fascinated by it all.
As weeks and then months went by I stopped writing things down. someone asked me why and I told them that the runs were not interesting enough anymore for people to want to read them in the book I wanted to write. They asked me specifically what I meant and I told them that when I had first got on the job there were police chases where the car would hit a wall and we would be called to give medical assistance to the victims. As one young teen was dying he kept asking about his shoes. I started to realize that the car had hit the wall so hard that his shoes stayed stationary in the passenger floor of the car as he was launched out of the window. I found this interesting. Imagine the impact it takes to fly out of your shoes?
As the summer went on almost all of the car chases would result in accidents and shoeless victims. I still noticed it but it became mundane for me and I never wrote about it in the journal.
this is just a small example that What happens is that you become accustomed to insanity. I always wonder if it is not like that in combat as well. You adjust to something that is insane and it becomes normal.
While explaining this to my friend I realized that the it was not the street that become more or less normal. I had become more accepting of what I saw in the street.Which brings us here to this blog.
Last week a guy who owns an art gallery here in Cant name put a garbage bag over his head and shot himself. the writer in me wondered if it was some final work of art. Did he feel like he was garbage and the bag was a symbolic gesture? Was this a last great work of art lost on the civil service workers who wouldn't know a work of art from, well a dead guy in a bag? It was so emotional for the family and ,specifically, the friend who had found him. To us, it was like buying a gallon of milk at the grocery store. Exactly my point.
Are we inhuman? insensitive brutes? Do we not care? We care. Watch what happens when a child dies in a fire. Specifically one that hurts me every time I think about it. At one of the fire stations around the city there is a toy fire truck on a shelf, burned around the edges. Every time I look at it have to turn away from it because I know the story behind it.
While responding to a house fire the firemen were told there were children inside. As they searched the house they got all of the children out, except one. Trapped in the corner of his bedroom was a little boy clutching his fire truck and, I'm sure, saying to himself it would be OK because the firemen were coming. The boy was found dead clutching the fire truck and one of firemen who found him took the truck home to remind himself of future children out there. When I heard this story It hurt deeply but I wondered how the fireman could look at that truck every day. Well the short answer was that he couldn't. That is why the fire truck is back at the station next to another burnt fire truck. This time I am wise enough not to ask where the other fire truck came from
We live in a world of unimaginable pain and unimaginable greatness simultaneously. We don't live in an Old testament world and certainly not a new testament world but a combination of both. Recently, Cant name had a late season snow storm and I was watching a special on television about changing the way CPR is done in public. 300 chest compressions to one breath. Basically you keep pumping on the chest. The old way was always 5 to 1 and then it was revised and now they were saying just keep pumping. This new technique had not even been taught to us yet. Right about the time the story was ending on CNN we got a call for a 58 year old male in full arrest. We arrived on the scene and a 68 year old male was laying in the street. He had been shoveling his driveway and his wife noticed him on the ground. We set him up for EMS to arrive and Once the paramedics arrived we loaded him into the ambulance and I jumped into the back to continue CPR. His heart beat was ASystole. Basically this means that he would die. When a person is shocked the point is to shock them out of an off rhythm beat to what most people know as a normal heart beat. With Asystole, there is no beat to shock. We still have to continue CPR until a doctor at the hospital pronounces them dead but basically we hare physically working on a dead body. Because the man was going to be DOA and because of his age and because of the article on CNN I started CPR with continuous chest compression rather than a breaths to chest ratio
After a few moments one of the EMS guys told me to stop compressions. We all looked at the heart monitor and there, just at the bottom of the screen was a beating heart. A heart we could shock!
Once EMS shocked the guy his heart beat went from an out of rhythm beat to a beat with a rhythm! The best way to describe this is to start a car without a battery! If you believe in miracles that is about as close as it gets. We never check on patients after we drop them off because so many die and it will wear you down but when this guy went into the emergency room he was alive. Really alive with a beating heart on his own without CPR. I don't know what happened after that but I hope, for his wife's sake, that he made it.
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