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.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
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.
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.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
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.
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.
Friday, October 22, 2010
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.
...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.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
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”.
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”.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
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.
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.
Monday, October 18, 2010
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?
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?
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