Explosions happen... real Fast

Back in the day, when timber was still king in Southern Oregon, having a fire at one of the local lumber mills was a big deal. If the pitch-laden mill were allowed to burn down, hundreds of men would be put out of work and our small band of firefighting volunteers would be looked upon with hostile scorn by the entire community.


... the late night mill fire was beginning to throw off some pretty good heat and sparks, as we quickly advanced our hose lines towards the hot fire burning under the mill out-feed chain. The firefighters knew they either had to put a stop to this beast right then or deal with the shame of failure afterwards. I pressed forward hard pulling my heavy hose line towards the fiery beast when suddenly, not too far beside me, I heard, KA-BOOM and felt the searing flash of heat. We wear those fire resistant turn outs for a reason. As I felt the compression come off the blast, I turned just in time to watch as a gas-acetylene tank rocketed up into the sky. With this newly-perceived danger getting my full attention, I watched as the cylindrical tank flipped end over end spewing hot flames as it propelled its self aloft. I got really concerned when I could no longer see the tank anymore—it had either been launched out of my eye sight or the propelling gases had burned off and it was returning to earth, quickly.

Instantly, I got a flashback to something that had always intrigued me— all the films I'd seen where the gunmen shoot wildly straight up over their heads celebrating some wondrous event, seemingly unconcerned about where all that hot lead would eventually fall. That thought snapped me back into reality because I was definitely concerned about where all the pieces of that exploded acetylene tank would fall. Still unable to see the tank through the smoke and darkness, I quickly ducked under a nearby roof overhang hoping that would be enough protection to deflect the shrapnel and tank shell enough to miss me. Suddenly without warning, a few feet away from me, in the nearby paved lumber stacking area, I hear  BOING… BOIng… Bong… bong as the tank landed and bounced several times as the sound echoed loudly across the fire ground. With that immediate concern now resolved, my concentration shot back to the real task at hand—getting the fiery beast under control. The odd thing about this single life-threatening event is that it all occurred in less than a ten second span of a two hour long fire fight. Firefighters deal with these sorts of dangers on a regular basis.  Hazards like this is what makes for a good story later on back at the fire station. 

We finally did get the stubborn fire snuffed out before too much damage had actually occurred to the mill—saving us all from sure humiliation from our community.

Just VOTE

I have not shared any of my political views before on my blog.  Thankful for you I'm not going to share many of them tonight with you either. I would be characterised by the media as one of those crazy "Tea Baggers".  I believe in a smaller, fiscally prudent government that follows what our fore fathers laid out for America in the Constitution.  I am a registered Independent VOTER because I have lost total faith in either of the other two dominate parties running Washington D.C. today. In my opinion the U.S. is heading down the same rocky road that the Romans and Greeks took centuries ago.

As we near this upcoming election Nov. 2,  I would simply encourage my readers to VOTE.  I truly don't care what candidate you choose to VOTE for.  I am discouraged by the fact that half of Americans are not even registered to VOTE.  Of the half that are registered to VOTE only half take time to cast a VOTE.  So now we find our country is VOTEing with only 25% of it's population.  Shameful in my opinion because so many people died sacrificing their lives to give us this right to VOTE for our leaders and for the direction "We as a People" would like to see "our Country" proceed. While I don't have a huge readership on my blog if each one of you who does follow along with my rants VOTE's themselves and then encourages a couple other folks too VOTE also it would be a start.

I just pray America is still here for you when you get older Ka'mya.

Garco

...Dalmatians are still chosen by many firefighters today as pets, in honor of their heroism displayed in the past.


When I acquired my Dalmatian puppy we of course had to
find a fitting name for him, not any name would do, either. We needed to find a really special name for him. Before the days when the hydraulic powered “Jaws of Life” was available to extricate victims from crushed cars, we extricated the injured people the old fashion way—using pry bars, chains, come-a-longs and brute strength. In the bottom of one of our rescue rigs tool compartments we had an unusually shaped pry bar we used for car-extrication's. In raised letters on the side of that tool was printed the word “Garco”. Nobody ever did figure out what that tool’s real name was, but we called it our “Garco Bar.” When we needed an extra strong pry-bar for a difficult job, it was my tool of choice; hence my new Dalmatian puppy was named “Garco”.

After Garco had gotten through his spoiled-rotten puppy months, he and I went to doggie training school. With extensive help from one of our local dog trainers, Garco was taught basic obedience training, but after many additional hours of training, Garco learned how to “Stop, Drop and Roll”. He also learned to listen for my voice commands and to watch for and follow my hand signals. When you took off his everyday goofing-around the house collar and put on his working-collar, he would stand at attention excitedly waiting for my next command.

Back in those days we did a lot of public service (educational) programs in the local elementary schools. There is nothing more exhilarating then standing in front of three or four hundred school-aged children at a school assembly and announce, “My name is Firefighter Billy Blaze and I would like you to meet my best friend”. Hidden towards the back of the large auditoriums, I would signal Garco to “come”. To hear and watch the kids’ reactions as Garco would proudly stride down the center aisle coming to find his rightful place sitting at my side was memorable. The noise in the room would start with quiet, ooohs and ahhhs towards the back of the gym, but it always ended with every child standing and clapping, straining to see this beautiful spotted dog as he sat down at my side. After taking a few minutes to get the kids calmed back down and sitting again in their chairs, all the while reassuring the concerned teachers this is how all groups of children reacted when my fire dog enters a room, we would begin our routine.  With a big voice I would announce to my audience, “Does anybody know what you should do if your clothes catch on fire?” and students’ eager hands would shoot up all over the room. I would then ask, “Garco, what would you do if you caught on fire?” Quickly standing up, he would run a couple tight circles around my legs then suddenly Stop, Drop (lay down) and start Rolling over and over till I would signal to him that the pretend fire had been put out. It was a huge crowd pleaser and, again, I would have to settle the children down before taking questions from the audience.

For several years I was invited to many of the parades the surrounding fire departments participated in. The phone would ring at home, the voice on the other end would say, “Hey Bill, what are you doing such and such weekend?” Replying, “I don’t think I have anything particular going on.” I’d hear, “Why don’t you come and join us in our local parade?” They always finished by asking “… ahhh, and could you bring Garco along, too?” They could have cared less if I, personally, was in their parade: they just wanted my spotted firedog to ride on top of, or run next to, their shiny fire engines in the parade. I did manage to get a lot of free lunches out of the deal, back when I was younger and could still run along side the engines with Garco.

Sitting cross-legged on the street curbs of any parade route, there are always hundreds of small children. As Garco and I would make our way along a parade route, we would stop and visit some of the kids and let them see him up close and personal. Sometimes the youngest children would be a bit timid when Garco would boldly approach them so I trained Garco to crawl on his belly the last few feet to them and place his head right in their lap. Within moments Garco would make another life-long friend with that child, that family and that taxpayer. After a particularly long, hot parade in Grants Pass, I noticed Garco at the end of the parade route was walking a bit bowlegged. Sitting him down and looking more closely at his belly, I noticed it was all scratched up and quite red. I had crawled Garco into so many small children’s lives that day, on the hot pavement, I had rubbed poor Garco’s belly almost raw.

Garco has been gone now for many years but I sincerely miss the faithful camaraderie he and I shared while serving together in the fire service.

Boot Check

When I started writing down the stories for my upcoming book, my personal therapist, Dr. Kate, advised me that I should start this blog.  She could tell I had many sore memories trapped in my head and she knew it would be good for me to just blurt them out on paper or in this case on screen.  Little did she know I had already developed a relative simple form of stress relief for myself years earlier... 

...we got called one night to another sharp corner in a road that had seen many wrecks through the years.  Pulling up to the scene, we saw an older car had skidded several feet off the roadway. Now setting back on its wheels out in the large field at the end of a trail of crushed fencing and bent over weeds. The scene showed us that the car had rolled over several times before arriving at its present position.  Hitting the scene-lighting button on the engine, the evening darkness is turned into daylight.  A faint foggy mist wafts in the air around the damaged vehicle. Grabbing one of the big Streamlight flashlights fastened to the floor next to my seat, I hopped out of the engine and walked towards the wreck.  I could see the wiggly silhouette of a collie dog in the backseat car window.  With its back legs in the backseat and its front paws up on the back portion of front seats, his tongue panting and tail was wagging a mile a minute, he seemed to be telling his owner, who I couldn’t see yet, “Let’s do it again, George!” 


As I crossed the open field I noticed something awful looking on the ground.  I stepped over it, it appeared to be barf.  Knowing that people sometimes stop to assist at car accidents, but not liking what they find, they throw-up and run back to their own vehicle, I didn’t think much about the ugly mess.  I approached the car and shone my light through the broken front door window on the driver's side, petting the excited puppy dog that greeted me.  Sure enough, there was a guy slumped over onto the passenger seat with his head away from me.  So I traipsed around the front of the car and opened the passenger side front door— then I immediately SLAMMED it shut.  By then some of the other fire guys also had made it out to the car crash and were looking at me somewhat dumbfounded.  Like why aren’t you opening the car door, Blaze?  One of the other guys opens the passenger side door again and immediately he slammed it shut, too.  With both of us looking at each other nervously we slowly, together, opened the door again to find that, during the course of this accident, the gentlemen had had the very top of his skull popped off and ALL his brains had been squashed out somewhere along the way; he was very much dead.  I can still remember to this day how perfectly crystal white the inside of his skull cavity was with virtually no blood showing at all.  About then my mind flashed back to the pile of gruel I had found while walking over to the accident site.  Since this guy was dead and there was nothing we could do for him, we headed back over towards the fire engine when we again come across the pile of "puke" now recognized to be brains smeared in the field.  This time though there was a big firemen’s boot print right in the middle of it.  I told my boys with a deeper stern voice, “Go line up in the light next to the fire truck.”  Again, they looked at me nonplussed, but as they were use to following my orders without question, off they marched. 


When I got to the fire engine I announced, “Boys its time for a boot check.”  By now I think they were really wondering if I had gone off the deep end, but each one complied by lifting each of his boots one at a time for me, so I could see the sole of it.  Sure enough, after checking a couple guys down the line, one lifts his boot up and there are brains hanging from the tread of his boot.  I pointed out the stringy remains to him, just before he jetted around to the other side of the fire truck where we could hear him puking. 


Boy, we all got a lot off our chest that night by laughing and making fun of him while he kept trying to scrub the sole of his boot clean back at the station.  Making fun of others does wonders for personal stress relief.

Father's Day Hill

After I had been involved with the fire department for a number of years, several of the younger firefighters sat down with me one training night and asked, “Blaze, what is the worst accident you have ever had to work on?" I have participated in over two hundred vehicle extrications plus twice that many “fender benders” (minor wrecks) during my career in the fire service, but it only took me a few minutes to recall the worst one.

One warm Sunday evening, Father's Day, I was sitting at home when the call came down, “Stations 1 and 3, respond to a M.V.A. (Motor Vehicle Accident)” located at such and such address on Highway 199." Piling into the extrication truck, we were lucky that night to be responding from our station (#1) with a full contingent of volunteers because we would be using all of them.

As you may recall, when I first arrive on any scene, it takes me several seconds to actually wrap my mind around what I am witnessing in front of me. In this case, it was two very badly damaged vehicles blocking both lanes of traffic on a main highway. One car was on fire and, through the flames; I could see the silhouettes of people trapped inside. The other car was a 1950ish, restored, antique car with heavy front-end damage— they built those cars much better in those days and when they show heavy damage, it indicates a very hard hit. The fireman’s motto has always been “protect life over limb” which, bluntly put, means we attempt to save someone’s life over trying to save someone’s arm or leg.

With one of the cars beginning to show heavy fire, and a fire engine not being on scene yet, I sprinted to the car on fire to see what I could do. Prying open the damaged driver’s car door with my Garco bar, I was met with an extreme amount of heat and acrid smoke. As I have mentioned before, when I find myself in these life-or-death situations, time seems to slow down for me. As the incident evolves, I see things I would normally miss— I seem to think more clearly. I found a big man behind the wheel, injured, his cloths were not on fire, but they were smoking. Looking across to the passenger seat, I was jolted back with amazement— why does this guy have a manikin setting in the front seat with him? I didn’t have time to worry about this aberration because the fire was intensifying and I needed to get him out—and in a hurry. He was far too big for me to move gently. Grabbing him by the nape of his neck and his clothing, I put both my feet on the lower car door frame and pulled with all my might. He tumbled out of the car landing on top of me on the hard pavement as I struggled back to my feet so I could pull him farther away from the ensuing inferno— adrenaline is a wonderful ally.

When you have a multiple causality incident like this one, firemen are trained to do triage, which means, when there are limited resources, you first rescue the people you believe have a chance of being saved, knowing in your mind that probably some of them will succumb also. It was numbing for me to leave that man to die along the shoulder of a dark highway, but my vehicle-extrication skills were needed at the second car involved in the wreck.

Dad had been driving, mom was in the passenger seat, the two teenage kids were riding in the back seat—this was before seat belts were required to be worn. This lovely family was on its way back home from a pleasant day at the beach celebrating Father's Day with dad. On their way home, a drunken man decided to pass a vehicle traveling in front of him, at a high rate of speed, on a small rise in the highway. The homeward bound family of four never knew what had hit them until they met the maniac head on at the top of the rise in the road.

My fire comrades had gotten the kids out of the wreckage and were taking care of their wounds. The extrication tools were hooked up and running as the “Jaws” were handed to me to start the battle against time. EMS personnel are taught that a severely injured person has what is called a “Golden Hour” —the targeted amount of time by which the patient should be receiving care in a hospital. It is believed that if you can get a seriously injured person to a hospital within one hour after a catastrophic injury, his chances of surviving are significantly better. By the time we received this call, had responded to the scene, had sized up the accident and had begun extricating the victims, we were already a half hour into our Golden Hour and, once extricated, victims would have at least another half hour of traveling time to the hospital. There was no time to spare if we were going to make our Golden Hour.

The mom had been extricated pretty easily by simply “popping” the door which means ripping the door off its hinges and throwing it to the side of the road to gain access to the patient. The medics had stepped in to stabilize and load her into the waiting ambulance. Dad was different. He had the steering wheel to contend with and the foot pedals in which he was entangled. He was in considerable pain. The driver’s door was also torn from its strong hinges by the powerful Jaws and thrown out of the way. More lights were brought over so we could better see exactly how he was trapped in all this carnage. The rubber pad on the brake pedal had come off and the metal pedal arm was skewered deep into his foot, trapping his foot against the firewall between the engine compartment and the passenger compartment. He screamed with excruciating pain every time we attempt to manipulate his foot to get him free. My mind was racing looking for ideas—any possible solution to free this poor man. “MacGyver” was not coming to my aid with any fresh ideas either—stepping back, I stood up to take another look at the problem when the teenage son leaned in between the rescuers and asked me in a quivery voice, “Is my dad going to live?” He was led gently over to the side of the road, but with that question, I refocused with all my will. And slowly, methodically, we freed the trapped man, secured him to a backboard, loaded him into the ambulance, and I banged on the back double-doors with my fist, signaling the ambulance to speed away. I had not met my goal—my Golden Hour had passed a half hour ago. Later I was informed that dad’s heart had stopped beating as the ambulance crossed the Applegate River Bridge, still eight miles from the nearest hospital. I had lost and I can tell you from experience firemen do not like to lose.

After the extrication, I stood there in the middle of the closed highway littered with broken auto parts and debris, exhausted, dripping with sweat, still not knowing at that time all the details of how the accident occurred, still wondering why the guy in the first car had a manikin in his car sitting beside him. Walking back over to the first car, which by then had its flames quenched, I noticed the white sheet covering the body of the man I had tried to pull to safety earlier. I leaned into his car and then realize that the manikin I thought I had seen earlier was actually another lady passenger whose cloths had burned off before I arrived on scene. By now my mind and body was numb—I had to force myself to think back to all the successful rescues I have participated in over many years. To this day, every time I travel down that short piece of highway leading to the coast, I still cringe remembering the dad I lost on what has become known to us firefighters as “Father's Day Hill”.

Whew, No Bullet Holes

I had probably been in the fire department about six months when we were called out for a structure fire. Upon arriving on scene, we found dense fire at the back of the house in the master bedroom. Flames were really beginning to roll down the hallway ceiling en-route to engulfing the rest of the home. In many small rural fire departments the inexperienced volunteers would have simply broken out a window adjoining the master bedroom to get to the fire.  They would continue blasting water into the burning room until water poured back out over the broken window ledge onto their boots. Jeff had trained us quite differently. After placing the back of our ungloved hand against the front door to check for any searing heat inside, we were trained to charge into the house staying low under the rancid smoke, hunt down that dragon and chase him out the nearest window or door by using the smallest amount of water possible that would get the job done—this helped us minimize water damage by not putting too much of the “Wet Stuff on the Red Stuff.” This is the name of the book I'm working on.

That evening we were short of volunteers, par for the course, I was the only fireman on the nozzle of the attack-hose line inside the house. This was well before the two man in, two man out rule we use today. I had gathered that mean old dragon up in my water fog stream and was briskly herding him back down the hallway, forcing him to go back into the bedroom where he had escaped from. When I reached the bedroom door, I struggled with him a bit, but I finally got him trapped back inside the confines of the bedroom. Cautiously, I advanced with my nozzle into the bedroom, when without any warning, I heard rapid fire, BANG, BANG, BANG as I felt hot lead hitting my turnout gear. I immediately recognized the ka-bang sound as being that of gunshots. BANG, BANG, POW! I knew many people stored ammunition in their bedrooms to keep it away from the kids— BANG, BANGITY, BANG! It sounded like an old Gatling gun going berserk. The hot lead from the stray bullets kept grazing my legs and zinging off my helmet—I dropped my charged fire hose and made one of the best "Starsky and Hutch" dives out of that bedroom door threshold you have ever seen . Rolling out into the narrow hallway and then running a few steps, I run smack into one of the more experienced fire guys coming inside to help back me up on the hose line. His reaction was, “What the hell are you doing?” I replied, “Can’t you hear all that ammunition going off inside that bedroom?....Don’t worry about me though. I don’t think I got hit too bad—I don’t think the bullets went all the way through my turnouts.” “You fricking rookies!” he yells at me. (but he didn’t really say "fricking.") I think he may have thrown a “you dumb as…,” in there too. He quickly explained to me that only the shell casings are flying when bullets explode in a hot fire. The lead of the bullet is a lot heavier, so it doesn’t travel more than a few inches when the bullets' powder ignites.

Quickly patting around on my body, feeling for obvious bullet holes, I'll be darn, there weren’t any! Now all I had to do was figure out how I was going catch that live, pressurized fire hose that was flailing around in the other room that I had so gracefully abandoned moments earlier in my effort to save my own skin. I think we ended up with a little extra water damage at that fire... but it was one of my very first live fire experiences.

Some Say Angels Were There That Day

Our traffic lane was clogged with stranded and curious motorists and vehicles were backed up more then a mile from the car-crash to which we were heading. With emergency lights flashing, we methodically crept our way through the oncoming-traffic. A fire unit stationed closer to the crash-site than we were had already reached the accident, but had not yet radioed any information about the scene. We just figured that they already had their hands full. Being the second fire-unit on site, we were anxious for the radio to feed us any info and instructions on what we were in for. As my extrication unit rolled onto the scene I was shocked by the devastation I saw.


Both north and south bound lanes of the highway were blocked with accident debris. I have been on scene at hundreds of car crashes over the course of my career, but this was one of the most horrific wrecks I had ever seen. The wreckage of a car was upside down in the middle of the highway looking like one of those squashed cubes of metal that is left after they crush a car in the wrecking yard. It is difficult to fathom that just minutes before, someone’s dad, mom, brothers or sisters had been riding in this car.

A safe distance from the carnage, I brought my extrication truck to a stop and stepped out. My brain was reeling trying to take in what had just happened here and what we were going to do about it when my eyes met those of the on-scene commander’s. We had been fighting fires together for many years and by now we were like blood brothers within the fire department— his eyes told me this was a bad one. I will never forget— all he yelled to me was, “Blaze!” and pointed over the edge of the highway. As I turned to look where he had directed my attention, I was shocked to see a fifteen-person passenger van lying on its side in the middle of a small shallow stream 30 foot over a steep embankment.

As is true in most small rural fire departments, there are never enough volunteers to fill all the boots needed during a horrific event and our small department also suffered from this manpower shortage. Usually, the first-arriving fire-crews of one or two guys would start working on resolving what was happening in the middle of the highway while waiting for additional crews to take care of what was going on over the bank.

I pulled tight the chin strap on my fire helmet and shot down the embankment. From the roadside I had only been able to see the under carriage of the van, but now I was hearing the cries for help. Off to my left I saw a man who obviously had been involved in the accident. He was sitting on a large rock slumped over holding his head in his blood soaked hands with his sock-covered feet still in the stream. I really had to fight the urge to run over to him to see how he was doing. But we are rigorously trained to walk completely around an incident before undertaking any action to resolve it. You must see the whole crash scene from all its different angles to assess its hidden dangers before acting; we call it performing the “Circle of Safety”.

As I began my circle around the back doors of the van, looking along the roofline of the overturned van, I was startled to see an elderly woman lying on her back. She had been partially ejected out one of the back side windows of the van. Only her head and shoulders were visible with the van’s weight pinning her down tightly. She had not been crushed by the van, but her face was under the surface of the stream most of the time. Periodically, she was able to find enough strength to lift her mouth and nose above the cold water and gasp for what she could only think would be her last breath.

My “Circle of Safety” stopped right there. I dropped to my knees in the cold water to help her keep her weary head above the waterline—all the while promising her that help was on its way. I knew there was no way I could lift the weight of the van to free grandma. I couldn’t leave grandma, but I kept hearing the continuous, moaning cries for help from inside the van. I still didn’t know what I would find on the other side of that van’s thin roof. Unable to leave grandma because I was holding her head out of the water, I noticed that the man I had seen sitting on the rock near me was now even more slumped over. He was in more distress than when first seen, but I wasn’t able to go to him. Still being the only firefighter down at the van I realized I was the only help these people had.

To this day I don’t know why when I am involved in emergencies like these, time seems to slow way down. For me it is like watching a graphic movie clip in slow motion, I see more detail; I seem to think more clearly, in some odd way I feel more alive. While I don’t have a religious background, I do believe every person on this earth has been placed here for some purpose. For many, many years now I have felt I was placed here on earth and lured into the fire service for one reason and one reason only—to take charge of things that have gone to hell in a hand-basket and to restore order to them. Like the popular T.V. show “MacGyver,” where in each episode the quiet hero collects simple objects around him to help him resolve the predicament in which he finds himself trapped, I believe any dedicated fireman possess that same ability— what I call “the art of MacGyverism”, i.e., finding simple things within your reach to help you handle the emergency at hand.

With grandma’s head still in my hands I shot a glance up to the highway looking for any firemen I could call for immediate assistance. None were to be found, but my “MacGyverism” did kick in.

Anytime there is a crash or fire you get what we call “looky loos.” These are people who stroll up to the scene to stand around just to get a closer view of the real life drama unfolding. As I looked up to the edge of the highway, seeing none of my fire buddies available to help, I did notice what I could only describe as three college football players looking down at me over the embankment. They obviously were linemen— big, square-shouldered, strong guys, wearing lettermen-jackets and nicely dressed. I yelled at them, “Get down here!” They looked back at me in disbelief so I made my order more emphatic for them to get down here “NOW!” I remember them glancing at each other, nodding, then sliding over the steep edge of the highway coming to grandma’s and my assistance. As they splashed into the water next to me, I barked, “Lift this van up and I will throw rocks under it!” I thought [hoped] it was possible that the weight of the van would be supported on the van’s window and doorframes. If that worked we could then slide grandma out of the van’s crushed window to a reasonable semblance of safety.

All three of the football players looked at me dumbfounded, knowing they, too, could not lift the weight of this van— but adrenaline is a wonderful drug. With me yelling, “Heave-ho!” and with their adrenaline surging like mine was, they slowly managed to rock the van a couple of feet into the air. With the van window frame now not pinning grandma so tightly against the stony stream bottom I left grandma to fend for her self for a few moments while I started throwing large rocks and boulders under any part of the van that I thought could support some weight when my team mates let it back down. I remember thinking to myself, “Man, those are some nice tennis shoes they are wearing in the water.” while I maneuvered around those heroes to wedge rocks under the wreck with quick looks back at grandma, to make sure she was doing ok on her own.

It was at about this time that a good fire department buddy of mine made it down into the water with me where he took over holding grandma out of the water as best he could. After my football players eased the weight of the van down onto my makeshift chock blocks, we tried to free grandma from the wreckage, but she was stuck. We couldn’t budge her. Upon getting a closer look inside the van for the first time I saw that practically everybody else in the van was lying on top of grandma’s lower body and legs. Before we could remove grandma we would have to extricate the rest of the van’s occupants. After kicking out the rest of the smashed front windshield with my steel-toed fire boot, I finally made first contact with the rest of the injured souls trapped in this mess. By now more firefighters were arriving on scene and some were scrambling to help remove the people trapped inside the van. Stacked like cord wood, one at a time, each victim was placed on a backboard, strapped securely, passed through the front window, and carried up the embankment to ambulances waiting for them on the highway. One by one they were removed—I’m still working my way toward my grandma.

Standing hunched over in the back of the van was an older gentleman. On a couple of occasions we offered to help him get out of the crumpled van, but he refused and kept shuffling further toward the rear of the van. Not having time to argue with him we just kept packaging patients and removing them to relative safety.

This was a very difficult extrication for several reasons— there were so many patients, we didn’t want to step on any of them while removing others and then there was the potato salad that had flown out of its bowl landing everywhere making everything very slick. Finally I had excavated down through the pile of humanity to find my grandma while the old guy, standing bent over, and obviously in pain watched. I said, “Sir, it’s time for us to get you out of here.” He replied, “Young man, that is my wife (indicating my grandma) laying there and I’m not going anywhere unless she goes first.” Now, you can’t argue with that kind of reasoning so we gently strapped grandma to the umpteenth backboard and carefully eased her through the front window frame and up the hill to the team of medics that had now assembled. It was then just me and grandpa left in the wreckage with both of us trying to keep our footing while skating in the potato salad that was lubricating all the uneven surfaces. I noticed that one of his legs was badly broken. While waiting for the last backboard to arrive so we could reunite grandpa with grandma, I ask him if he would like to lean on my shoulder and take some weight off his injured leg and he did. Putting his arm around my shoulder he whispered in my ear, “Young man, you did one hell of a job here today!”

 With grandpa loaded up and being hauled up the “mountain” (which at the beginning of this story was just small a hill), I was, simply put, exhausted. With help I managed to scramble up to the highway. While pulling off my sweat-soaked turnout garb, I looked around for my football players because I wanted to thank them for helping to lift that van. I looked up the road and down the road but couldn’t find them. I found the fireman who had first come to help me while I was piling the rocks under the van, and asked if he had seen where my football players had gone. He looked at me with a puzzled look. I was tired and was probably a bit irritable too. I said, “Eddie, those football dudes, where are they?” Looking around anxiously, Eddie said, “Bill, there wasn’t anybody else down there with you when I got there.” Eddie was the religious type. He told me I had angels help me that day.

One of the crazy things about this fire business is that most of the time you have no idea what happens to the injured victims once the ambulance door closes and they speed away. I have often wondered how my grandma’s health turned out, did the guy slumping on the rock live, did angels really help me that day?

Thank You for your Knowledge

After perusing over many of the stories I have written about over the past five months on my blog I needed to set my readers straight. I am no hero...

I have lived an adventuresome life style, sometimes wroth with danger. It is paramount for you to know that I did not simply grow up one day able to handle some of the life threatening situations I have been thrust into over these past thirty years while serving in the fire service. Yes some of the qualities it takes to scan over a dangerous event came from watching my folks when I was younger, when they ran the ambulance service in Cave Junction. It takes a special minded person, able to stay calm when everybody else is freaking out and to actually help resolve an emergency. I think I gleaned that ability from watching my mom and dad in action.

The real catalyst behind much of the success I have enjoyed serving in the fire service and now Josephine County Search and Rescue has come from the instructors I have been fortunate enough to learn from. Early on, Dixon Davis started my fire learning curve when I first joined the department many years ago. My first structure fire was fought beside the knowledgeable Mike Melton, shoving me into that first inferno together; I have never been the same since. During the center of my career it was the young Jeff Gavlik that took over training our rag-tag department. He would be the one I would credit with bringing our little fire department into step with some of the bigger more successful departments across Oregon. He too would be the one whom fought for the hard to find funding so he could purchase some of the more serious rescue gear they still use today. Simple things like having our own life jackets on the rescue rigs so we didn’t have to wait to save someone’s life trapped in the water, while jackets were driven to us. Mike Yanase was my mentor on the medical side of my life. He pushed his students to be some of the best "down and dirty" medics in the fire service. He trained us in how to scrape the mud, the blood, and the beer off our patients so they could be packaged and gotten to the hospital faster for the life saving medical care many of them needed.

Many of the things I find second nature today I learned by making mistakes and then not making the same mistakes on the next call. I have been fortunate to have had and still have employers that have allowed me to leave my paying job to go help when our community needed help. Rough and Ready Lumber Company were huge supporters of the volunteer fire department and firefighters in the Illinois Valley. The City of Cave Junction and City of Grants Pass have both been very supportive of my extra curricular career on the rescue side of my life.

Without all the training received and moral support from the aforementioned individuals I would never have been able to write about so many heroic sounding stories while living the life and times of billy blaze.

Facing your own Fears

I have been glued to my T.V. set these last couple nights after work watching with anticipation the rescue of the 33 miners that were trapped a half mile underground in Chile for the last 69 days. I watched with great admiration that first Chilean rescuer that descended down into the darkness of the twenty one inch rescue shaft to begin the evacuation of his trapped countrymen. A few times in my life I too have stood on the obis waiting to be sent over some dark edge to go help someone in trouble. I too know the feeling he must have felt swirling in the pit of his stomach. The uneasiness you feel soon leaves once you get to work doing what you are trained to do for your victims. While I am grateful that all the miners have been saved and are now on the surface again, for me the job is not nearly over till my Chilean brother is back on top also.

Several years ago my fellow firefighting buddy “Hollywood” and I traveled north to Tualatin Fire and Rescue for a comprehensive confined space training. Tualatin Fire had a confined space training facility underground where they would try to scare the hell out of you so it would prepare you for when the real deal happens. The last day of training they have sort of a final test where they grade your abilities and resolve, while you work through some very tight and snug situations. I was left in a bit of dismay when the firefighter going through the drill ahead of me panicked and needed to be rescued himself from the confined test space. He was a big man, proud looking guy. Once he was delivered to the surface unharmed, with tears in his eyes, he stomped off the training ground. I’m not sure if he even continued being a fireman because of the humiliation he felt by not being able to complete the exercise. Watching this nervous situation unfold right in front of me didn’t exactly leave me with a lot of confidence for my own attempt next, when the instructor said “ok buddy your next”…

…the tube is so small they have to load you into it like a torpedo on a submarine, with your arms stretched out over your head, your buddies slide you into the breach. Wearing a jumpsuit and a harness to where if you become stuck right away they can pull you back out. The tube is so tight you can’t even wipe the sweat from your own nose because your arm won’t bend in a way to reach it. You are only left with blowing the perspiration tickling the end of your nose off with your lips. You begin crawling forward using what I can only describe as the “Fred Flintstone method”, using only your fingers and toes to propel yourself forward. Things are snug but go pretty smoothly for the first twenty feet or so until you arrive at the first 90 degree turn in the pipe. You have to make a big decision at this point, continue on, knowing full well once you are around this corner they can no longer pull you back out around this corner using the harness and tag line you are wearing. Taking a couple deep breaths for confidence I squirm onto my side and wiggle around the abrupt 90 degree corner. For the first time you can now see the distance you need to travel to get out of this situation you have volunteered for. About now is when things really begin to close in around you and you start feeling sick to your stomach because of the claustrophobia enveloping around you. You can see the light at the end of the tunnel some 150 feet away but the opening truly looks like the size of the end of a pencil.

Remembering the failed firefighter just before me I press forward but am quickly being consumed by my own fears of also becoming trapped. The pipe at this point had a slight dip in it and a few inches of water had accumulated there. Almost to my braking point I lay my head down in the cool murky water. The coldness of the water actually made me feel better as it soaked into my clothing and helped cool my nervousness. I lay there for a few moments with my head laying in the wetness thinking what a dumb-ass I was for signing up for this crazy class. Suddenly far off in the distance I heard a voice coming from the end of the pipe I was lodged in. I thought it was saying “crawl to the pepper”. I yell “WHAT?”. Again I hear louder “Crawl to the Pepper” as I strain to look 100 feet ahead of me. Positioned right at the opening of my tomb was a Dr. Pepper hung from a rope by my good friend “Hollywood”. This simple act of camaraderie gave me the will power to push forward again. The closer I got to the opening the more confidence I felt. Finally reaching the end of the pipe the dilemma is not over. The pipe ends at a huge tank filled with water. From the manhole several feet above they have a rescue cable they swing to you. You have to catch it, latch the clip to the back of your harness and finally signal for them to “Hoist” you from the bowels of this training lesson. The only reason I was able to complete my training mission that day was because Greg took my mind off my worries and made slight of my bleak situation.

Thank You Friend, and congratulations to my Chilean brothers on their successful real life confined space rescue.  My hat is off to you tonight.

Life is not Like in the Movies

Completing the dangerous work that we do in the fire service, it is pretty easy to start thinking of yourself as some kind of hero. Periodically you get one of those calls that slams you back into some semblance of reality. We got this MVA call one night about midnight. Over the radio the dispatcher announced, “Vehicle over an embankment!” and it was way up some old mountain logging road. We finally pulled up to the scene, and sure enough, 100 feet over the road bank was a car barely hung-up on some brush. Repelling over the edge to get a closer look, we found a lady still trapped inside. We also determined that we needed to tie this vehicle off to something stable up on the road because with one false move around this car, it was going to roll further down this mountainside, possibly crushing one of us rescuers in the process. This was a challenging extrication due to the steepness and the need to stabilize the car before we could get our patient out. There were also all the hydraulic tools that needed to be winched down to us so we could pry her out while we were tethered over the edge on ropes. With some effort, I got myself wedged inside the car with the lady and ask her how she was doing. The first words out of her mouth were “What the hell took you so long to get here!” I checked my watch—12:45 AM. I told her I thought we were doing pretty well, what with getting the call at midnight, the driving time to the scene, plus all the preparation we had to do just to get down to her. She said, “Midnight??” She informed me that they had crashed at 8:00 PM. Come to find out, the drunken man with her crawled out of the wreck, clawed his way back up to the road, walked back down the mountain to their house, crawled into bed and went to sleep, woke up a few hours later feeling very sore and then remembered he had been in a wreck and had forgotten to call 911 so we could go rescue his wife. Suffice it to say, she was pissed-off. We had to extricate her from the vehicle while we were being suspended under the bottom of the car. When we were placing her into the rescue basket, she was concerned that we would drop her. The fact is, if we did drop her, she probably would have plummeted to her death down the steep mountainside. She kept screaming, “Don’t drop me! Don’t drop me!!!”

This car crash happened just a short time after the firemen’s movie “Backdraft” had come out in theaters. There is a scene where one of the actors (Bull) is holding his fallen comrade's (Axe) arm with just one hand while they both are dangling over the top of a burning pit of fire. The injured Axe longingly looks up at Bull and tells him, “Bull, just drop me, save yourself.” Bull looks intently back down at Axe and grunts, “If you go, we go.” Remembering this memorable line in the movie, I looked down intently at my injured and frightened lady and said, “Ma'am, if you go, we go.” She looked back up at me and glaringly said, “I don’t give a damn if you go, just don’t drop me!” quickly snapping me back into reality. Things in real life are not the same as in the movies.

Helicopter Rescue

This next adventure of mine was in no way directly affiliated with my local volunteer fire department. I say so not just because so many rules were broken that day, but it was only through my affiliation with the fire department that I was asked to go on this mission. My real, paying, day job was working at the local lumber mill. Whenever someone at the mill got hurt, the boss would send for me because I was the only one working at the mill that had had any formal medical training. I’d run over to the fallen mill worker, patch up his wound, tell him, “I’ve been hurt worse eating chicken,” slap him on the back, and tell him to get back to work.

One day while I was manning my lumber-stacking post, one of the mill owners came driving up toward me honking his horn and waving madly at me to hurry up and get into his brand new truck. I dropped everything and sprinted down the stairs and jumped into his cab. That's where I learned that he had a helicopter coming to pick me up in five minutes because he had an injured logger in the woods. At first, I thought he was a joking, but my interest peaked as we drove out the front gates and almost got airborne crossing the highway to reach the airport that stood directly across the street from the mill. I turned to the mill owner, “You're not kidding me are you?” The owner said, “No, we have a man down in the woods and I have a helicopter en-route to pick you up.” Reminding him that I didn’t have any first-aid supplies with me, he radioed over to the different divisions at the plant and told each of them to bring over their big first aid kits that hang on the walls around the mill. Sure enough, within just a few minutes, forklifts, jitneys, and old mill pickups were speeding across the highway to me with first aid kits. I kept quietly wondering to myself; doesn’t the Coast Guard or National Guard normally do this kind of helicopter rescue thing?

By this time, the other two mill owners had arrived at our impromptu heliport. Anyone who has ever seen these big white medical chests know that, in a real emergency, they are practically useless because each of the bandages has been individually wrapped. When you are treating a wound that is bleeding profusely, you need a handful of 4 x 4’s to slap on the injury to soak up the blood and help make the wound clot. So, here I have these three wealthy mill owners knelling down in the dirt going through a series of first aid kits to make up one for me that would be suitable for field first-aid. They tore open the individually wrapped bandages and stacked the 4 x 4’s together, got all the gauze rolls in one spot, made sure we had some tape and threw out the tweezers, aspirin and other silly things they throw in theses kits to appease OSHA.

Sure enough, off in the distance I began to hear the recognizable whomp-whomp sound of a chopper flying low and fast. With one quick circle around our improvised staging area, sending the discarded bandage wrappers flying everywhere, the pilot set down beside us and signaled for me to load up. So, with a spine board in one hand and our new “field ready” first aid kit in the other hand, I ducked down under the rotor blades and loaded myself into the whirlybird. Now, I had flown in helicopters a few times before, so that wasn’t new to me, but sitting right beside the pilot was new. All helicopter pilots wear those dark aviation glasses so you can’t see their eyes. This one signaled for me to put on the headset lying in my seat. Before I was even properly buckled into my seat, with a roar from the engine and a big surge of energy, we soared upward, circling up out of the landing zone for altitude.

With my seatbelt finally fastened and my mic and earphones in place, the pilot asked in his deep voice, "What rescue squadron are you with, buddy?" I answer, “Uhhh… Mill Rescue One?" He swiveled his head like an owl toward me and stared at me for a few seconds with those dark glasses on, and then, without saying a word, turned his head forward as we flew south. I began to get really concerned when I saw the Oregon Tunnel was passing below us. My EMT certification is only valid in Oregon, that tunnel is on the border between Oregon and California, and we had just flown into the adjoining state. Clearing my voice so as not to sound nervous before triggering the mic, I ask the pilot in the deepest voice I could muster given my nervousness, "Ahhh, where we going?” He rattled off some kind of coordinates I had never heard before in my life, but I just answered back in a even deeper voice, “Roger” I had heard that line in a movie once.

So a half-hour or more later, we came screaming over some mountainside to where this injured logger was supposed to be. Have you ever heard the old saying, looking for a needle in a haystack? Well, that’s what it felt like we were doing. After several quick, roaring banked turns and, I think, maybe one loopty-loop, I spotted loggers on the ground waving their hardhats to get our attention. Looking around to see what road we are going to be landing on, there were, to my surprise, no roads in sight. This location turned out to be a one square mile helicopter logging site in the middle of a wilderness area. They were flying out the cut timber several miles to a landing area away from the wilderness. The logger had been bucking the trees into removable lengths when he was catapulted several feet into the air before landing on a sharp snob of a broken-off limb that pierced deeply into the cheek of his buttocks. By keeping his butt muscles tightly clenched, he had kept himself from bleeding too profusely. The problem was that he had gotten hurt at 10:00 AM, it had taken awhile for his buddies to hike out to where they could make radio contact for help, and it was now 3:00 PM— this injured logger had been bleeding and clenching a long time.

The pilot’s deep voice came through my ear phones, “I want you to stand out on the landing rail (outside the helicopter) and watch my tail rotor. Make sure I don’t hit anything while I’m landing.” I turned my head to the pilot, owl-like and said, “WHAT?!!” Clearing my throat again, I said, “What?” without the benefit of any dark aviation glasses to conceal my big eyes. He elaborated, "If we hit anything with the tail-rotor, we’ll be going down in a blaze of glory," which meant Blaze would be dying. So, unbuckling, I nervously climbed out the door—holding on for dear life, I stood on the rail watching intently the small trees blowing around close to our tail rotor, reassuring the pilot over the mic, “Looks Good...Looking good” until I felt the helicopter's skid touch-down on something. Looking forward for the first time in several seconds, I was shocked to see the main overhead rotor was missing hitting a stump in front of us by only a few inches. This crazy pilot (they're all crazy by the way) not having a clear area in which to land had set down onto a log, and by keeping the machine throttled just so, he was able to hover with just one of the landing runners balanced on this huge log. Over my ear phones I heard the pilot yell, “Go get him!” Now I’m thinking to myself, the farther away I can get away from this wind-machine blowing crap everywhere around in this forest, the better my chances to survive when this maniac crashes. With no hesitation, I grabbed my improved first-aid kit from the chopper and away I went.

Remember now, I have told you several times that during each rescue you learn something new. In this particular case, too, I learned a great lesson— always, always remember to take your head set and mic off before jumping down out of a hovering helicopter. If you don’t, you, too, could find yourself hanging underneath this massive machine with the mic caught in your mouth like a fish caught on a fishing hook, your legs dangling precariously above ground. Meekly climbing back aboard and quickly taking the head set and mic off this time and placing both back in the seat, the pilot turned to me and gave me another icy stare. This time, just before his eyes turned forward again to concentrate on his job at hand, I could sense that he was thinking, "I thought the Coast Guard or National Guard normally did rescues like this."

Down the huge log I ran toward the fallen logger. The other loggers were hiding from the flying debris behind trees and stumps, pointing in the direction of their injured comrade. I suspect that they, too, thought the farther they could stay away from this tornado-making machine, the better chances they would have of living when this bird went down. Sliding down into the hole in the forest where the injured logger found himself, I finally got a look at his injury—it looked as if it hurt like hell. He had bled a lot; he was now tired and weak from keeping his butt muscles tight for so many hours to keep from bleeding to death. I asked him if he could stand and he indicated that he could. I told him this was going to hurt something awful, but I had to pack his wound with as many 4 x 4’s as I could and then I was going to grab him and haul him up that log and throw him in that chopper. He unhesitatingly nodded OK because we both knew that pilot could not hold his position forever. I crammed him full of bandages, like plugging a dike, and away we went up that log. With one of his arms around my neck, with his weight lifted up on my hip and one of my hands firmly clamped onto the cheek of his butt to keep the dressings in place, we climbed back through the wind tunnel that had tree limbs and flying debris sailing everywhere. I pushed him into the backseat of the chopper face down, so I could treat his wounds better once we got aloft...if we got aloft. I had to crawl under the suspended log the pilot was hovering on to load myself though the back door behind the pilot so I would be able to take care of my patient's wound. I had no sooner gotten in the helicopter, almost gotten the headset on that was in hanging behind the pilots seat and was just about to say, “I’m safely aboard,” when the pilot lifted off hard—he punched it with everything that machine had. I looked down at my new logger friend whose scared eyes were as big as saucers now. He inquired, “Do you do this kind of thing often?" I lied to that poor man and told him, "Hell yes! I am Mill Rescue One." I have never been so glad to see Oregon come back into view, to see the hospital in Grants Pass come into site and, ultimately, the total relief I felt when that chopper touched down on solid ground. And that was the end of the short history behind Airborne Mill Rescue One.

I’m Not a-Scared Anymore

Though I held down a pretty good job at the local sawmill I had decided many years earlier to start a small side business doing custom tractor work to help us afford the extra necessities any growing family needed. Over the years I had developed quite a loyal clientele of steady customers, partly due to the extra service I provided when roto-tilling their vegetable gardens in the spring. After finishing the paying part of the job, roto-tilling their garden, as a favor; if the family had small children, I would take the time to give the kids a short ride on my tractor with me before I roared out their driveway on my way to my next tractor job.

One sunny Saturday afternoon in the springtime I had arrived back at my house on the tractor and had gone inside to grab a quick snack. I had just kicked off my boots inside the back door when I heard my fire scanner in the other room alerting me that there was a possible drowning with children still in the water. The address for the scene of the accident I heard announced over the air was the same house address I had just left after giving two small children a ride with me on my tractor. They did live right next to the river. My mind raced. Throwing on my tennis shoes, I flew out the front door.

Even though the fire station was just up the street from my house, I drove my personal car madly to the accident scene. Skidding to a stop in the gravel driveway, my eyes searched wildly for the two small children who had been thrilled with the tractor ride moments before. From the driveway I caught some movement down towards the bank of the river so I dashed down the path to see if my kids were OK.

On reaching the steep bank overlooking the river edge my mind struggled to take in everything that was unfolding right in front of me. Over the riverbank 10 or 15 feet to my left was a woman standing in knee-deep water who appeared to be trying to revive an infant. I recognized her because she worked at the local medical clinic. Directly in front of me, a short distance out into the Illinois River was our local newspaper reporter bobbing down the river while being tossed by the swift current. He was gasping for air and spurting water out his mouth while dog paddling like hell to get to the shore just a short distance below where I was standing. I yelled to him, “Bob are you OK?” He nodded yes, but pointed out into the middle of the river.

Once again I am taken back by what I am seeing, trying to make sense out of what I am witnessing. A woman of petite stature, holding dearly onto a small blonde-haired little girl in her lap, was leaning with her back up against the cold, melting snow runoff in the river. Currents in the river are swift during the spring melt from the snowcaps in the Siskiyou Mountains. In the middle of this torrent she had found a rock just beneath the surface of the water that her butt had become lodged against. By leaning with her back against the steady pressure of the swift-moving water she was able to hold her position. She screamed for help, “Save my baby!” I surmised that if she slipped from her pinnacle of rock under the water, the child would surely be lost in the current and she, too, would most likely perish in the brackish water of the river. By this point the nurse had gotten the infant to start crying (better than a limp, quiet baby) and slogged her way out of the water and up the riverbank. The surrounding neighbors were beginning to show up. Someone brought a blanket to the heroic nurse and her now recovering infant.

I skidded down the steep gravel riverbank. The water didn’t look all that deep so I stepped out into it to retrieve the two stranded souls. "Oh my God! That water is cold as my feet went into the water!" When I had waded into the water up to my chest, I too, got swept away by the fast-moving current. Newspaper Bob offered me a helping hand and towed me to shore as I struggled to not float past him. He asked me if I was OK, but I wasn’t paying much attention to him. The river water was moving too fast for me to keep my footing on the river bottom and over the roar of the water, I could hear the woman shriek, “I’m slipping! I’m slipping! Please, save us!” The child in her arms was now crying inconsolably. I looked up on the raised riverbank for anything I might be able to put to use: fire guys, people I knew, a boat, anything! Meanwhile, I was still trying to make sense out of how all this had occurred.

Neighbors informed me that this family of four had been floating in the river a short distant up stream in a small four-man Kmart raft. Quickly counting in my head—one infant, one mom with one wailing child only makes three. Wildly searching across the river, I spotted a younger man running crazily up and down the opposite river bank helpless to reach his family.

A short distance up stream there was a small diversion-dam that collects irrigation water for some of the surrounding ranches. The victims had misjudged the swiftness of the early spring river current and had been swept over this 8 to 10 foot dam plunging this small family into the fast, frigid water. You just can’t believe some of the crazy-ass things people do and then how surprised they act after disaster strikes.

At about this time that MacGyver-syndrome finally kicked in with me. I start barking out orders to the concerned neighbors milling around. “Get me rope and lots of it!” I shouted. “Bring me extension cords if they are strong. I don’t care what it is; bring me anything I can make a rope out of.”

Back in the day, our fire department did not have the fancy rescue equipment that departments have today. We didn’t even own lifejackets for the fire guys to use. We simply didn’t have the money in our budget to buy “frivolous” items like “personal floatation devices”. We did have a few short pieces of utility rope on the rescue unit, but nothing substantial.

I could finally hear the sirens coming down the long driveway as I got my first piece of rope from an out of breath neighbor. I knew this part of the river well because as kids we swam in it every summer. I knew its width narrowed just a short distance up stream. Melting snow had widened the river now to almost flood-stage. I knew I couldn’t throw a rope across the river from where I was. I needed a place where the river was narrower and I would need that perfect sized rock to tie on the end of the rope. The rock had to be light enough so I could throw it the across the river, but heavy enough to carry the weight of the rope with it. Have you ever tried to find a rock just the right size while stumbling up a rocky riverbank, freezing your ass off from your first failed rescue attempt in the water while a mother pleads for her own and her daughter’s life and she is getting noticeably weaker? To say the least, it was a fuddrucker. Searching! Searching! Then, “Ah, that rock there might do!” I signal for the dad on the opposite bank to follow me up stream. I stopped only briefly to tie my patented “Hickerson Knot” used to tie the rock firmly onto one end of the rope. When I was retelling this story several days later some smart-alec asked me why I hadn’t taken off one of my socks, stowed a rock in it and then tied that to the end of the rope…where was he that day?

As I started running upstream I began coiling the rope so that when I threw it, it would play out without any snags in it. When I reached the narrower spot on the river’s edge, where I believed I could reach the other side with a mighty throw, I planted my feet firmly at the edge of the water, twirled a section of rope in the air with the rock tied to it to build up some momentum and then I let the improvised rescue-line fly. The trajectory of the rock looked perfect. The line was playing out just fine when suddenly the rope went taught and the end of the rope with the rock on it fell far short of the distant bank with a big SPLASH. Looking down at my feet I saw I had been standing on a loose loop in the rope and that kept it from playing out properly, “Damn!” I hauled back the sodden rope to my shore very relieved to see that my rock hadn’t fallen off. “Great! Now the rope was wet and heavier.” I re-checked my foot-placement and heaved that line with every ounce of strength I could muster. I put so much on that second toss that I almost threw myself into the river when I let it fly. It flew; it sailed and then it splashed into the water, but it fell just a short distance from the opposite river bank—close enough to the dad that he could fish it out of the water. I signaled to him to work the line back down stream towards his distraught wife and child.

As we were working the line back down stream my fire buddies finally showed up bringing me more rope from the rescue truck. We began adding their rope to my line as the river widened close to where the rescue needed to occur. We surmised that if we could get the rope tied to something substantial on the opposite river bank… which brings up a concern I had floating in the back of my head. I have just thrown one end of my rescue rope—that I am planning on working my way out into a swift moving river to a man who has just plunged his young family over a 10 foot dam in a four man Kmart raft. I am counting on him to tie a good knot to something very strong and my life will depend on it. Firemen put themselves in some crazy-assed places sometimes.

With our rope draped across the river just above our hypothermic mom and screaming child, five strong firemen tug with all their might testing the crazy dad’s knot tying ability across the river, but it holds firm. We do not have those fancy harnesses like they have today so I tied a makeshift harness out of a piece of webbing one of my fire buddies carried to me. He hands me a carabineer and I attach myself to the line.

The on scene fire captain had arrived by now and says to me “Blaze it is too dangerous to send you out into the water without a life jacket.” I say, “We don’t have any of them, Capy”. He says, “I know, the sheriff’s department is driving them code 3 to us right now so you hold your position.” Have you ever stood in knee deep freezing water, watching as a mom begs for you to save her and a frightened child’s life, while waiting for life jackets to be rushed to you from thirty miles away? It really is life-changing.

By the tone in the exhausted mom’s voice we could tell when she blurted out “I can’t hold on any longer” as her voice trailed off under the noise of the rushing water. Capy knew that she was almost finished. The Fire Captain shouted to me “BLAZE” “GO” and pointed his finger to the middle of the river. I was younger and stronger back then. I can clearly remember as I leaped into the freezing water and began handover handing myself along that rope made taut by the five firemen. The current was so strong that my body was skipping across the water surface like I was body surfing at some exotic beach. I pulled myself into the middle of the torrent, pointed my feet down river, while the team of firemen carefully lowered me onto the rock that the lady was glued to. Placing my feet just below her butt on her underwater perch, testing for steadfastness, I signaled for my fire buddies to hold me “right there”.

The women’s voice was weak and she sounded scared, she and the child were both shivering uncontrollably from the coldness of the water. I noticed that I, too, couldn’t feel my own legs. She said to me, “Please save my baby.” I hoped with all my might that I could get the small girl, maybe 5 years old, to come to me. Little kids normally don’t take to strangers very well especially when they are already really scared. I said to the little girl, “Honey, my name is Uncle Bill—will you let me hold you?” Without hesitation this little tyke leaped from her mother’s arms almost dislodging all of us from our perilous perch in the middle of the river, landing on my chest with her arms locked around my neck. I don’t ever remember being held onto so tightly in my whole life even when one of my brothers would be trying to strangle me during one of our brotherly fights. She was holding on so tight I actually could not breathe and I had to plead with her to let go ever so slightly so I could just take in a breath of air. I don’t know if I ever asked what her name was, she was sobbing and shaking violently from being so cold, I finally convinced her to let me give her a piggy back ride on my back. Rotating her from my chest to my back I could almost feel the skin on my neck being scrapped off by her grip. To calm her down and let her know (while hoping to myself) everything was going to be OK, I began singing children’s songs to her. I think at this point the mom was wondering if hypothermia was starting to get to me, and it was. With an extra webbing strap I had brought with me I looped it around mom’s torso, so being tied altogether now, if we were going to drown we were all going down together.

Looking back across the raging river to where my buddies were braced on the bank holding firm to my rope I saw that I had traveled a long way. I signaled to my gang of brothers that I was heading away from them to the relative safety of the opposite riverbank because it was much closer. They signaled back that they understood and would send a rescue team for us. By now the Captain had sent another fireman out on the rope in a life jacket finally provided by the sheriff’s department and carried an extra jacket for me. But I was wearing a little cold girl now and could not possibly get it on. He let it float away down the river as he took control of the mom’s safety. He and I looked wide-eyed at each other— knowing it was time to end this drama, we leapt off the temporary safety of our underwater rock and swam to the closest shore. My little girl was pretty upset about this— getting even wetter rescue plan we had conjured up but it had to be done. All together we inched our way along the rope to the closer shoreline. When I could sort of feel something hit my feet, but not being able to actually feel my lower body anymore, I knew I could begin to stand. Exhausted, I plodded out of the frozen river water. With my newfound friend still on my back I slowly scramble up the riverbank on the far shore. Her little head was lying next to my right ear. I could feel her quivery little mouth trembling against the side of my neck. As I reached the top of the riverbank she whispers in my ear, in a faint little voice, “I’m not a-scared anymore.” I’m not a fireman so I can play pool for free anymore. I asked her if I could hold her in my arms now. She relinquished and slipped around my shoulder and into my arms. The other firefighter had managed to get mom to shore by now.

For as long as I live I will never forget looking back across the river at our team of rescuers. As is common when there are accidents, many people had shown up to watch the afternoon’s drama unfold. Looking across the river it reminded me of those movies where the cowboy looks to the top of the cliff and sees nothing but a row of Indians intently watching him. I said to my little girl, “Honey, how about you waving to all those people over there and letting them know you’re OK?” This little fart popped up in my arms and gave the most precious parade wave I have ever seen before. Over the roar of the wild and scenic Illinois River we could hear the hoots and hollers of congratulations from the enthusiastic crowd that had formed along with the firefighters.

With my brain now so numb I was somewhat disoriented, I had to force myself to keep thinking straight. I was sure I could hear chain saws, many of them, running just up stream from where we had come ashore. I knew it had to be my guys coming for us. So our freezing-to-death little band stumbled towards the noise, pushing through the dense willows that grow along any river in southern Oregon. We hadn’t trekked far before a fireman, then another and another popped out of the brush and ran to our side. They had blankets and they offered to carry the little girl the rest of the way to safety and an ambulance waiting a quarter of a mile away. I told my buddies “I have gotten her this far and I am going to take her the rest of the way.” One of the fire guys, Moon Ewing, offered to carry the exhausted, soaking wet, heroic mom to safety.

That’s when one of the most unexpected things in my fire department career unfolded. The small lady jumped straight onto Moon’s chest with her arms tightly wrapped around his neck and her legs loosely wrapping around his hips. This was unlike any rescue carry I had been taught or seen before. It was one of the funniest things to watch as Moon waddled bow legged up the riverbank with his new found best friend. With me laughing almost uncontrollably, my little girl and I huddled, shivering together under the wool blanket, as we worked our way up through the swath of willows our rescuers had just hacked through to reach us—it looked like a freeway to me.

Making our way along the now stubbled pathway, I had been informing my little girl that my good friend, Michael, who owned and operated the local ambulance service in town now. He was waiting for us up at the road where he would have the heat turned up for her in the ambulance. Just before the steep bank heading up to the roadway and warmth was a wide irrigation ditch coming from the aforementioned infamous dam upstream. When my little girl saw all that water we would have to forge she started crying again. I held her closer and told her, “Honey, you don’t have to worry. Uncle Bill is the only one getting wet this time.” And he did. Many firemen were stationed along that steep part of trail just below the rural country road. In a line they reached out with their warm hands and helped pull us, hand over hand up that last steep spot to safety. Just as I had predicted Mike and his ambulance were waiting for us. In the last few steps I took before reaching the back doors of the ambulance I told my little girl, “Honey”, motioning towards Mike, “this is my good friend Michael. He has the heater turned up really high in the back of his ambulance just for you.” As soon as Mike stretched his arms out towards her, she leaped into his arms. Mike, absorbing the impact of my dripping wet little girl, wheeled around and rushed her inside to the warmth. Just a few short seconds later mom was reunited with her daughter in the back of the ambulance. As I stood in the middle of that narrow country road with fire guys slapping me on my wet back, congratulating me with high fives all around, I watched the ambulance speed away with my little girl snuggled inside.

I never did see “my little girl” again. My thoughts did flash back and took some comfort in the fact that at least we hadn’t just rescued the little kids I had given the tractor ride to an hour earlier. Of course, this drama was front page news in the local paper, mainly, I suspect, because the newspaper guy was a part of the story. The trouble with my fireman rescue picture being splattered all over the front page was that it is customary for the “famous” fireman to buy ice cream for all the boys at the station. Delivering the goods a few days later I quietly refused a dish of the icy treat because I had actually not yet been able to fully re-warm myself to my normal body temperature since the chilling adventure.

A couple weeks after this harrowing tale, I went to visit my ailing grandma who was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. After I bragged about my heroic deeds, she just quietly smiled at me. Several years after my grandmother had passed away my mom was still going through grandma’s private things. One day my mom came to my house and handed me a small rectangular box with what I thought were tears in her eyes. You’ve got to know my mom, she is tough as nails and she never cries. Not able to speak, she motioned for me to open the small box. Slowly lifting the lid and gently pulling the tissue paper aside, I found a perfect-sized rock, just the right size for throwing, with a natural hole bored through it. A handwritten note read, “For Little Billy and his next river rescue”. Signed, Grandma.

Pondering about what I would say

I have faded away from writing on my blog for a few weeks because of my last blog entry...

I probably have experienced a dozen fire calls through the past thirty years that have effected my life forever.  I had written about a little lady we helped rescue from a car accident almost twenty three years ago.  I'll be darn if the very next evening while I read my local newspaper there she was being honored as a "Hospital's No. 1 volunteer".  In a way I was left stunned by the coincidence of our two stories being told without any acknowledgement of each other.  Reading about her recovering from her horrific injuries and going on with her own life left me proud but at the same time speechless, which my mom will find unbelievable.

I have been encouraged to write a short note to Lillian but I find my mind confused not knowing what I would even say to her.