Sitting Pretty

The little volunteer fire department that I was a member of was like most other volunteer departments scattered across America.  They all are under staffed by a shrinking number of  devoted community members willing to donate their personal time for countless hours of training while still responding to real emergency calls.  In today's world 80% of the incidents firefighters respond too have no fire involvement in them at all, because they are actually medical calls.  In my personal opinion most people abuse the communities emergency medical responders today.  Let's say, John gets a "bad cough", with today's thinking he will call 911 so they can send him help, which in turn activates an ambulance service, a fire engine and when they are available a police officer in many cases, screaming code three (red lights a siren) to their location which is often not very well marked with an address sign.  The general citizenry has lost their ability to help resolve their own problems that they have most often gotten themselves into.  Today there is no such saying as "Buck-up Little Camper" or "I've  have been hurt worse eating chicken", like our parents told us when we were growing up.  I liked the old fire department mentality better, when we only responded to FIRES, CPR in progress, and my favorite task, prying people out of  CAR CRASHES.  I never had a hankering to grow up being an "ambulance chaser" I wanted to be a fireman...

Russo sends me a comment earlier today,  there was a roll-over MVA (Motor Vehicle Accident) one night out on the nasty turn on Lakeshore Drive. I was coming back from the lake with my girlfriend when we rounded the corner an came upon the accident. I called for help, then crawled part way into the car window to hold the lady's neck, a position I had to hold until help arrived. so there I was laying prone on the ground half in and half out of the car window (it was upside-down) when Bill arrived with the jaws crew...

My extrication crew arrives on scene and the duty officer instructs us to tear the door off the car so we can gain access to the badly injured lady still trapped inside the vehicle.  I noticed the dead body laying partly inside the car with his legs dangling precariously out the car window.  Normally when someone had succumb due to their injuries we left them lay and we worked around them.  It helped law enforcement with the investigation into the car wreck later on.  This car was up-side down over a steep embankment, hung-up on a Maple tree leaning over the swiftly moving Deer Creek.  I managed to get the Jaws down to the car and by straddling the dead guy I was able to begin tearing the car door away.  I'd never set on a dead guy before but it was a lot more comfortable then crawling around in the rocks like normal.  I had been working on that crushed door with the Jaws of Life for a couple of minutes trying to get it to pop off it's hinges.  Just then the dead guy I was setting on moves and mumbles "God Damn-it Blaze that hurts".  Scared the CRAP out of me. I almost peed my pants. 

Together we managed to finally get the young lady free and headed off towards the hospital.  I then went off to clean my drawers.