Don't use Smoke Bombs

...of course there was the year we decided to build a small house on Lauren's loyal float building trailer.  We planned on stashing a lovely family of four inside the home and right in front of the judges stand we would stage a heroic rescue...

...with Larrieann driving the, she was the only one who could figure out how to start the tractor that year, I was busy doing something else, tractor pulling the float trailer she crept ahead of the ensuing fire engine as we neared the judges booth set up on the Sentry Markets parking lot.  Of course any good rescue needed to have some wispy smoke involved in it to make the event look more realistic.  At just the precise moment our adult occupants hidden inside our humble abode mounted on our trailer would light the smoke grenades we had acquired from the National Guard. (Note to self:  Don't ever use that kind of smoking devil device again).

The fire fighters following in the engine would see the quaint SMOKEY signal wafting from the building prop down the street and respond in hot (code three with red lights and sirens blazing).  Lurching to a stop in the middle of Highway 199, the air brakes on the engine would set with a loud SWOOSH,  we would pull an attack line off the engine and charge it to life, while two more firefighters donned breathing apparatus, we would enter our play structure and pull our innocent family to safety.   The "Dramatic Rescue" would only take a couple minutes, wooing the dignitary parade judges into awarding I.V. Fire with another years Grand Marshall's Trophy.

Everything went pretty much as to planned until we lite the smoke grenades off.  As the putrid smoke wafted from our simple structure our role players inside the building began coughing in realistic enough sounding agony.  Their uncontrollable gaging could be heard as far as the judges stand located some distance away and the other guests lining the parade route began abandoning their viewing points as to escape the rank smelling smoke bomb fumes.  By the time we reached our delirious actors trapped inside we were able to up the excitement of our "big rescue event" by running back to the fire truck and bringing an oxygen cylinder so we could slap some O2 (oxygen) on our truly expiring actors.

I must admit after the parade was over I felt kind of bad because we made our captain, Mike Melton's, two cute little kid actors cry because the smokey conditions became so realistic.  Within an hour or so our fire victims had recovered almost fully but I don't believe we won the trophy for that years Labor Day Parade demonstration.   Every year afterwards my firefighter gang was a bit more apprehensive when I was developing the next years new parade theme for some reason.

...but the after hours Activites were the Best

"Rogue" commented the other day on my blog, " I love these stories Bill. You have so many colorful experiences to share about the good old days. We had fun, worked hard, laughed and cried"...

... volunteer fire departments scattered across our country depend almost entirely on their local communities unwavering support for them to even exist.  Those big red fire trucks don't come cheap, neither do all the life saving tools stored inside them.  Without community members pooling their money together no department could afford to continue operating.  Our little fire department perched out in the Illinois Valley was no exception.  The volunteer firefighters were constantly looking for ways to keep our fire department in the public eye through community outreach programs.  Our favorite event to participate in each year was the infamous Lions Labor Day Celebration held at Jubilee Park towards the end of each hot summer time...

...of course we manned our own quaint little I.V. Firefighters fund raising snack bar located along the right field fence line snuggled in close to the softball field where many games were cheered on during the festivities.  We always were able to raise a few hundred bucks over the three day weekend that we normally put towards some special project we had going on in the fire department at the time.   Weather it be for some newer rescue gear we wanted that the fire departments main budget couldn't afford, or adding the money towards another set of "Jaws" we needed for our growing community or even as simple as new ball caps with the I.V. Fire logo printed on them for the volunteers to wear proudly around town.  Nooo, the snack bar was not what we all anxiously awaited for all year long, it was the annual Labor Day Parade that marched it's way through downtown Cave Junction that we yearned for.  We never joined the parade route to just be in the parade itself we signed the parade entry form so we could win the Grand Marshall's Trophy every year.  It was quite prestigious to bring that big trophy back to the main fire station and place it along side all our other dusty pasted victories. Every year it took a more outlandish idea for this years upcoming float because all the other community groups in town were vying for our winning trophy also...

...like the time we decided to extricate (tear apart) a car with our "Jaws of Life" while we traveled down thou the parade route rolling through the middle of town.  We wanted our crashed vehicle to look realistic when it was mounted on the oversized trailer bed (16 feet wide) we had built for this years exciting demonstration.  "Moon" Ewing, who's day time job was working for the local cement redimix company. He drove their big front end loader up to my mom's, located across the street from our station, where our floats often times were assembled in secrecy behind the old shop out behind her house.  We chained the beat-up old car into the bucket of the loader with the feeble front grill dangling out the front of the enormous loader bucket.  Our evil plan was to roar out through the field in the gravel yards loader and smash into a huge tree stump located along the edge of the forest, giving us that real-life look smashed into the front of our car after it had been involved in a horrible crash.  Ten or fifteen of us firefighters hunkered down as "Moon"  tore out through the field in the loader...

... SMAAASH, after the dust sort of starts clearing we see Will holding his nose with both his hands and see the smear mark left from his nose smashing into the loaders thick front window, but the dent left on the front of the car was perfect.  We sawed the stump off and placed it along with our car prop on the trailers bed. By now the swelling was beginning to show on Will's nose and I think someone ran into mom's house real quick for some emergency ice.  We added a bunch of brush strategically on the float for that realistic "we left the road" look.  The next dilemma we encountered was when moving the float to where the procession route began... getting out my mom's driveway.  We had built the darn float so wide we couldn't fit between her driveway and a power pole blocking our only escape route.  Kind of like the guy who builds a boat in his own basement then can't figure out how to get it out of there. We didn't have time to go get the loader again to rip the power pole out of the ground, plus the PP&L guys would sort of frown on us doing that anyways.  Finally we "MacGyvered" a rickety bridge across the ditch along the State Highway and we were on the way down the roadway leading into town, taking up THE WHOLE HIGHWAY.  With our emergency lights flashing from our engines we escorted our monstrosity to the parade staging area. 


With cars being forced almost entirely off the road by this years winning behemoth the oncoming vehicles occupants simply waved at us and hooted encouragements towards us as we passed by.  They had become accustomed to their local firemen's outlandish behaviors by now.

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.

0 for 32

I attended my annual CPR continuing ed training (EMT recert stuff) a couple weeks ago.  I am amazed at the different CPR protocol changes that have been made through all the years I have been an Emergency Medical Technician.  I have to giggle at the new fire kids of today for they have no idea what mouth to mouth CPR was really like in the old days...

When my kids were still little I went through a churchy stint in life.  Micheal and Erica both went to private church school till they started going to public middle school later on.  We all went to Sunday School as a "Family", I even helped teach a little kid Sunday School Class, seems like in another life to me now.  I still know all the words and hand gestures to "The Devil is a Sly Old Fox", on a slow night I'll teach them to you... anyway I digress.  We get this medical call early one evening about dinner time, we respond to the scene at this older couples home.  It was an old guy that went to the same church I attended back then, he was down and not breathing with no pulse.  This was way before we had the cute little pocket mask protectors, hell this was before AID's was even invented yet. We went to banging on his chest and yep I knelt down and put my lips on his.  Mark Russo was doing the chest compressions and in between every fifth compression I watched this old guys chest rise as I blew my life giving air into his lungs.  Everything was proceeding along as expected, unless you are the dead guy getting your chest caved in by the compressions and another mans lips are on yours.  As the minutes slipped away I am still leaning low over our very dead dude, so I can methodically deliver my life giving breaths,  ...one thousand three, one thousand four, one thousand five, squeeze nose shut, lock lips, just then he pukes in my mouth.  His last dinner had just been launched into my mouth and it had ejected out my own nose because I had such a good lip lock on this old codger.  Lurching away with his chicken noodles still hanging out my nose.  Mark stares at me in horror and asks "you OK?"  As I dart for the front porch.  Firefighters are trained not to throw-up on the carpeting.  I can't stand the smell of chicken noodle soup even to this day without almost getting sick to my stomach again.

My CPR save record was pretty dismal until a few years ago.  I think it stood at something like 0 for 32 before I finally got a save in.  Life is crazy though, she suffered from terminal cancer.  She didn't have any DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) orders so we had to begin CPR on her.  She lived for awhile longer with a very sore chest before she died, again.

I had to do CPR on a infant one time that was being baby sit by my neighbors next door.  They found the baby smurfy blue in bed early one evening, knew I was "the fireman", rushed over to my house and asked me for a miracle.  I wasn't able to deliver.  Possibly one of the most heart wrenching nights in my life.  Doc's later on figured the baby had died from that mysterious phenomena called "crib death".  It didn't make me feel any better having them put a name on it for me.

These damn fire kids today with all their "Edison Medicine".  Supplied with their personal pocket masks, Latex gloves, power pads, wires, blinking lights on sleek looking machines that spit out graphs and tell them when to light their patient up.  I have often wondered if I had all these toys in the old days if could I have made that miracle happen that awful evening?

I am One of Those He Released onto the Planet

My mom sent me a message a few days ago...  I've reminded Mike several times to write or send you some reminders for stories. Guess you'll have to write one yourself about him, naming him or something dumb about him, or even better, embarrassing. Hummmm, well we won't do embarrassing or dumb because I know he has far more material on me then I have about him...

Stories about Captain Mike Melton.  I have found it strange looking back into my way back memory bank thinking about Mike.  I don't remember him having a nickname posted on the back of his helmet, like so many of us did.  It simply stated MELTON on the brim of his helmet.  Though I have seen those bold letters badly melted with drips of hot tar splattered across them many times after fighting the big one together.  I recall a Burn to Learn he was instructing, where he got her burning inside with a little bit too much zest and stumbled out of the blaze with his white helmet melted and his turn-out coat missing a couple layers of protection on it.  He sort of runs out of the training structure with his shoulders still smoldering and in a matter of fact voice yells back to the new recruits waiting to enter with thier hose line "Well go put that Som-bitch out".  Mike always lead the most realistic fire trainings.

If I were tasked with picking one individual person that most influenced the way I have fought fire aggressively all these years it would have to be Mike.  Mike was the firefighter on the hose line with me on my first structure fire.  To this very day, every time I fight a house fire I can still feel his fingers latched onto the back of my turn-out coat and his forearm pressing into the middle of my shoulders.  Yelling to me over my shoulder "Go Get Her Blaze, pointing, Knock that Down Over There, Damn-it don't let it get behind you, GO, GO, GO.  I don't know if I have to this day ever fought another fire that was hotter.  I literally had to put the flames out directly in front and swooshing around me or parish from the blistering heat he was pushing me into that night.  It was so translucently hot that you could literally look through the heat seeing the chain saw and tools sitting on the back work bench, spying the cans of gas stored precariously under the bench.  And Hell No we weren't wearing any B.A's, we were just going for it, or at least Mike was, I was just trying to stay alive.



I know I have fought many dozens of fires with Mike circling around outside the building but I don't remember actually fighting too many with him beside me.  Mike was our leader, he was on the perimeter directing the whole gang.  I was simply one of his firefighters inside dealing destruction to the beast.  Mike was the "spear chuck-er" and I was the tip of one of his spears.  Where he threw me is where I went and I didn't come back out till we got the job done.


Mike writes to my mom... "Having been that cocky kid gives me great insight as I've raised many more over the years and set them loose on the planet. Looking forward to catching up with Billy Blaze at our reunion this year."  To which I reply, Amen!

Don't Ever Bet Against Me...

...having all our chores done while pulling a shift on this wet Saturday has given me a bit more time to write this afternoon.  The stories are fire related so it is sort of like I'm doing fire related things around the station isn't it?  With my mom thinking I had backed the fire truck out that old muddy road in my last story it reminded me of another...

...we had been called to a fairly significant garage fire located on the base of Eight Dollar Mountain.  It too had a pretty nasty road leading into it, in fact it was quite steep for some distance at the beginning.  The road then flattened once you managed to get over the steep part but had soft potholes littering it with the house still nearly a half mile farther back in the woods.  People in Southern Oregon really like to live off the beaten path sometimes.  I had responded in the "first in" engine, again, barely beating the gang from our rival Station #2 located in Selma.  Yes, amazingly there are constant rivalries amongst fire stations within even the same fire departments.  I will try and share some of those stories in the near future.  By keeping the throttle on my engine pressed almost through the floor boards I was barely able to sneak over the steep section of driveway finally making it back into the fire scene.  Our engine only carried 1200 gallons of the "Wet Stuff we put on the Red Stuff" and it goes pretty fast when you're trying to control an inferno.  We depend heavily on the water tenders arriving in short order, they carried the big loads of water (3000 gallons plus) and plug into the back of the engine and supply us with the knock-out punch of water.

It takes some real tenacity to drive one of these heavy rigs when you know what your doing let alone drive one when you are a new rookie.  For some reason we always stuck the new drivers on the tenders too?  So here I am about ready to run out of water in my engine, just as my fire radio squawks "8942 to Command, I can't make it up the driveway it is too steep, I don't have enough gears to make it".  That was not the radio traffic I wanted to hear because we still had some dragon left in this fire.  I recognized the voice on the other end of the radio traffic and knew he was a new driver.  Figuring I could do anything in those days I had someone drive me back down to where the tender was located at the bottom of the hill where I found the driver nervously yearning to get to the blaze.  I told him, "If he couldn't drive that rig up that little mole hill he had no business even driving that truck in the first place".  I learned that harsh technique from Dixon Davis.  No not really mom. 

I said let me give her a try, knowing I made it over the top in the fire engine, I figured I could do it again in the tender.   I backed down the driveway a ways so I could get a good run at that steep hill.  I threw her into gear and began shifting through the gears trying to gain some speed.  Making it only half way up that darn hill I slowly backed farther down the driveway so I could really get some momentum up for this final try.  The engine in the heavy water laden tender was roaring as I passed the first driver cowering next to the driveway by now.  Almost to the top... almost over, damn just not enough power to drive it over the top.  Slowly I back down the mountain in disgust realizing even I couldn't get that precious water to the blaze.  In that moment of disappointment I remembered seeing my grandpa Buster back up some hill in his beat-up old Caterpillar that was too steep for him to climb going forward.

Knowing vehicles are lower geared when traveling in reverse I took the tender and turned it around in a wide spot in the road below.  In reverse I made it easily up and over that steep spot in the driveway but I still had to back the half mile down this narrow driveway into the fire.  I was simply amazed when I later found out that the fire guys still trying to fight the fire without any water by now were betting I wouldn't make it to the fire in that water tender either.  I scored a lot of  pay back Dr.Pepper off that adventure.  Betting against me, humph...

Mud Can be Fun Sometimes

My mom is now helping spur old stories back into my old head...    

Not sure if you remember but thought about a story for you. Was not long after you got into IVFD, was a Thanksgiving or Xmas and you drove #01 into a old Pole house fire off the road going into Forks Park. Up a narrow road, big mud hole, numerous big stumps and Dixon Davies got in your face about backing the truck out, not getting it stuck or scratching the fenders. As I remember you finally came home to reheated left over dinner, soaking wet but not from working the fire, but sweating blood backing the truck out. Mom


...you will have to climb into the way back machine with me for this adventure.  As mom stated this call occurred just a short time after I had joined the Illinois Valley Volunteer Fire Department some thirty years ago.  We didn't have the extensive drivers training programs for new engine operators like we have for today's new fire recruits.  No, no it was almost like if you had a pulse you could drive the big fire engine screaming down the road going code three (lights and siren) to an alarm.  How do you think we recruited new volunteer firefighters?  Yep, we promised the new souls that they too could drive a big shiny fire engine if they came an joined our motley firefighting crew.  Again I'm not sure how we didn't kill more firefighters or pedestrians in the old days by awkwardly doing things the way we did back then.  Wearing no breathing apparatus when it was so smoky in the house you couldn't see your own hand in front of your face.  Getting dressed into our turn-out gear while standing on the tailboard of the engine as it responded quickly to the next big event (Hell it's deemed too dangerous for firefighters to even ride the tailboard today let alone dress themselves while riding on it).  Or letting new people drive really fast down the highway while talking on the fire radio, with the siren and horn blaring in the background. And they say just chatting on a cell phone while driving is dangerous today?

...it was only my second or third time driving the engine to a actual structure fire so I was still very nervous that I was going to screw-up.  During trainings we had been told over and over by Dixon that if the engine didn't get to the scene safely we could never help save any ones life or their belongings.   He had really scared this point home with me during our weekly Tuesday night trainings.  It had been raining for several days before as I headed up the nicely graveled driveway leading to where a plume of dark smoke was billowing over the tree tops.  The solidly graveled driveway quickly changed though as I could begin to see the flames coming from the burning home through the thick forest.  Soon the road narrowed even more with deep mud holes in it, filled with two feet of water, coming as high as the running boards on the truck.  I was afraid of driving further down the rough road for fear of getting stuck in the middle of it but also afraid of not getting to the house on fire and letting the peoples things burn up because this "newbie" couldn't get the engine there.  So I gritted my teeth, told my passenger to pull the mirror on his side of the engine in and I went for it.  With my foot nervously pressing hard on the throttle pedal, helping keep my momentum up so I could plow through those deep mud holes, I kept moving down the narrowing cow path slipping and sliding around the corners, leading to this ramshackle of a home but I finally made it to where the real work began...

...we already had the flames knocked down pretty well when the duty officer, Dixon , finally arrived on scene.  He walked straight over to me, not to congratulate me on the fine job I did getting the engine in there or about the great job we had done knocking the fire down so quickly.  He firmly grabbed my shoulder and swung me around and yelled "If you put one GOD DAMN scratch on my engine I'm going to KICK YOUR ASS".  Still very nervous from the harrowing adventure I was able to meekly squeak out, " I... I didn't Sir" as he stomped off to look for proof on his engine.  He didn't even care about what the fire was doing, just if I had scratched his darn engine.

Miraculously I hadn't scratched the engine but it was decided that Aaron Gates would drive the rig back out the driveway when the alarm was over because he had so much more experience driving big trucks.  The rest of us were sent back to the station in a different rig where we began cleaning the gear before the next alarm.  Quite some time later the engine finally arrived back at the station.  Aaron sheepishly climbed down out of the truck cab and came over and asked, Bill (I was still so new I didn't have a cool nickname like today, other than maybe, Horses Ass) "How'd you get that damn engine in there?". "Hell we had to cut some trees down next to the driveway so we could get the engine back out of there because the corners in the road were too tight for the engine to negotiate around them".  I just said "good driving skills I guess" and went about washing the red mud off of my new engine.

Send me some of the stories you remember from the old days and I can make myself look bigger and better in them then you may have remembered.