Crater Lake is always beautiful !

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Life is a Roulette Wheel

Larrieann and I just got back from the JoCoSAR Christmas party where we were entertained with a raffle for some items local businesses had donated to SAR.  As the winning ticket numbers were being called out it reminded me of another raffle I was involved in many years ago while attending the annul OVFA (Oregon Volunteer Firefighters Association) Conference...

...after the fire training classes held during the daytime hours were over this particular years conference, held in Coos Bay, offered the firefighters attending from across Oregon a Casino Night, for the evenings fund raising entertainment.  I have never been a gambler type with my money but I joined in with the casino activities anyway because they were raising money for a worthwhile cause I fully support, the Shriner's Children's Hospital (burn ward).  After I purchased my poker chips for the evenings festivities I stepped out into the gambling arena.  The fire guys at Coos Bay had done a great job in decorating the casino up, it looked just like I had seen in the movies.  At this point in my life I had not yet traveled to Las Vegas or Reno to blow any of my hard earned cash before.

Not knowing how to play any of the gambling games I stepped over to the one that had nobody presently crowding around it.  It was the game with the "rollie wheel" thing.  How hard could it be to call out a number, roll a marble around, have it jump and skip a few times before landing in a slot with a red or black number in it and wait for the wheel to come to a stop?  I figured the quicker I lost my poker chips the faster those kids at the burn hospital would get my money.  I placed all my chips onto the table, cleared my throat and proudly announced "Red 21".  Red for the color of my fire engine and I had seen in a movie once that 21 was suppose to be a lucky number.  The female croupier at the wheel looked at me some what dumbfounded and asked me "are you sure".  I just calmly nodded back at her because I thought that would look cooler then saying I didn't know what I was doing.  So she gave the wheel, later I found out it was called a Roulette Wheel, a big spin.  A marble shoots in the opposite direction the wheel is spinning and I stand there waiting for my number not to be called so those poor burned children could begin receiving the medical care they desperately needed.  Finally as the wheel slows the marble jumps, bounces and skips before landing in a numbered slot.  I'll be damn if it didn't end up in "Red 21" where my hostess yells "WINNER" from her gambling station.  I am horrified.  I have just won money away from small burned children, as a crowd of firefighters and their wives begin to mill towards my wheel.  Desperately I look around, clear my voice again and in the deepest cowboy voice I could muster I say "Let her Ride".  I had heard that line in some John Wayne movie once and I always thought he was pretty smooth as I pushed my initial bet and winnings into the middle of the table.   Again my cheerful hostess asks, "Sir are you sure?"  To which I tipped my hat and said "Yep" but in a clever deep voice. 

By now a crowd had assembled around me watching as this crazy ass firefighting cowboy purposely tries to lose his pokers chips so unfortunate children in a hospital far away could receive the life saving medical treatment they needed.  The big wheel spins again, as a shush comes over the crowd.  With a jump, bounce, skip, the whole crowd erupts this time with "WINNER" as the wheel slows to a stop with the marble firmly lodged, again, in slot Red 21.  With the new winnings added the pile of chips heaped upon the table was enormous.

About then Larrieann saunters over to where a huge crowd had developed around me.  She asks "Bill, what's going on?"  I am almost in tears by now because I am stealing money from these poor burned children.  I told her what had just happened.  She gives me one of those looks like, "are you SH**ing me".  To where she begins to explain the rules of Casino Night to me.  Buy poker chips to use while gambling, turn your winnings in later for raffle tickets, where random raffle numbers would be called for gifts lining several tables along the side of the auditorium.

I had wondered what all the stuff on those tables was for. Lets just say it took several poker chip trays to carry away my winnings that night, several tables had to be cleared to line rows and rows of raffle tickets out on and my whole gang of fellow firefighters from I.V. to help find our winning numbers when announced.  Everybody went home with some great prizes that night, and the Shriner's Burn Center won big too.

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Have an Adventuresome Christmas

Fortunately when I moved into Grants Pass seven years ago I knew many of the firefighters at the new fire station I joined. I had actually helped train many of them to become firefighters when they were still kids, before they too moved away from my old rural community in Cave Junction. Everyone at the new station welcomed me with open arms and big pats on the back, except this one young guy nicknamed (Buttercup).  One day he came up to me and said “I’ve heard a lot about you". Continuing, he said “I’m going to kick your ass and leave you in the dust on the next fire”. I had to laugh at him because first I’m more of an “actions speak louder then words” kind of guy and also how could you take a guy with a nickname like “Buttercup” very seriously anyway...

Last winter Southern Oregon was suffering from one of the worst cold spells to hit our area in 25 years. The local roads literally had two inches of ice on them making them almost impassable even with traction devices on. Since it was just a few days before Christmas, even though the weather outside was frightful, like in the song, the adventurous were still scouring the surrounding mountains forests looking for that perfect Christmas tree when disaster struck. A family of five was returning home in the late afternoon, after a day with friends cutting down a Christmas tree. Their car skidded off a cliff on a remote icy mountain road. All the local fire departments, Search and Rescue, ambulance crews and the Sheriffs department responded to assist in the rescue...

For many years now my feet have had to fit into several different pair of work boots at the same time. Currently I am a member of JoCo SAR. On weekends I pull shifts with Rural Metro Fire. I work periodically with the fire boys at G.P. Fire and am a 23 year, past veteran of I.V. Fire, before Larrieann and I moved into Grants Pass to undertake a new job with the City of Grants Pass. My take on the tragic event on Shan Creek are my own thoughts and should not be considered an official statement by any of the aforementioned agencies. I am keenly aware that the victims’ family may read my blog someday. My hope is that if they do read my comments on the events that unraveled that night they will find comfort that everything possible was done to save their dad / husband.

After G.P. Fire shuttled the first load of rescuers and gear to the scene we began preparing for the descent. While I have been in the steep angle business for many years now I have never been one of the people left on top to assemble all the rigging. While I am aware of what rigging needs to be assembled, I am not particularly good at actually assembling it. When the word comes from command “who’s going over” I just always step forward because I know I can do more good down there…

…as Netti, Ben (soon to be called “Thing 1”, (because we ended up with 3 different Ben’s in the dark, on the side of the cliff that night) and myself latched into the stokes stretcher rails, pulling the chin straps on our helmets tight, we headed over the embankment. One of my R.M. fire "buddies" (Buttercup) had arrived at the scene earlier in the evening because he probably is the only person in the county who drives a 4 x 4 who could have gotten up that old road without chaining up first. He had already gone over the edge and was beginning to feed us spotty information from his portable radio. Being the first team over the edge “Rescue 1” we started our decent. It wasn’t too bad for the first 40 feet, while using just the light provided by our headlamps to proceed. Quickly we came to the cliff. Netta said “HOLD”. With her lamp shining brightly in my eyes she looks at me and in a calm voice informs me, “Blaze, we’re not in Kansas anymore”.  I began wondering how (Buttercup) had gotten down this fricking cliff when I noticed a tie down ratchet strap attached to a tree next to my feet with the end thrown over into the oblivion. At this time I did not know Ben (Thing 2, a family friend) had tied this conglomeration together trying to reach his injured friends below. If I did know that “Thing 2” had tied this mess I never would have done what I did next…

A rigging change needed to be made on top because of the new found dilemma (the sheer 100 foot cliff) and it was going to take a few minutes to set up. "Rescue 1" waited in the near total darkness listening to the family’s cries for help, still very far below us. Still thinking Engineer Buttercup had tied this self imposed decent line I told Netti “I have to go”. She just looked at me again and said “I know Bill, please be careful”. As I unsnapped from the basket, and down the tow strap, out of sight I slid. All I will say about this part of my evening is it was not OSHA approved. Finally meeting my new nemesis (Buttercup) at the bottom of the cliff he lined me out to where all the patients were plastered to the side of the mountain. As soon as I reached the family, I began doing what we are trained to do; patient assessment and helping re-adjust some of their positions to help them feel safer where they had came to rest on the side of that mountain. It wasn’t long before the rest of Rescue 1 had rejoined me and we began packaging mom and the young boy for their trip back to the relative safety of that slick logging road they had fallen off a couple hours earlier.

I have seen written where those of us over the edge that night were being called heroes. I have never claimed to be a hero before and still don’t think even after this arduous night, any of us rescuers are heroes still. We are all trained to do what we do. We learn how to fight back our personal fears and continue. I had personal heroes that night though. One of my heroes was the mom, for keeping her brood from any further injury while plastered to the side of that cold mountain waiting for the Calvary to arrive. She begged us not to take her on the first lift because she did not want to leave her two other children. We had to forcefully explain to her, your small son needs you most right now, so she allowed us to strap her and him into the basket for the journey aloft. Another hero of mine that evening was the teenage girl, hurt, cold, scared, holding the smaller sister in her lap she begged us to go help daddy, 200 feet farther down the steep mountain side. Leaving her in the darkness with just the dome light from the inside of the car slowly fading, I looked back and asked “Honey, are you going to be ok?” She just said “Please go help my dad” as Netti and I slide away over the mountain farther.

We now had slid so far down that mountain (550 feet) we couldn’t slide anymore because we were standing beside the iced over, Shan Creek. That’s where I met Ben “Thing 2” another of my heroes that night, personally for the first time. He was holding the dad trying to keep him as warm as he could under the circumstances, reminding him to hold on and not fall asleep, using his own body to deflect the rocks that were knocked loose periodically from above. He had sustained a pretty good lump to the back of his own head while shielding the dad. After quite a wait, G.P fireman, Ben, “Thing 3” arrived with the basket. The children’s father succumbed to his injuries as he was packaged for his trip to heaven…

…as we were pulled back up the mountain 200 feet to where the car crash was located, Netti and I peeled off to rejoin the two girls whom were by then sleeping and being held warmly in the arms of their two new best friends, Mr. G. and Thing 1. The Ben from below had helped carry our gear back to the crash site. He took the sleeping little girl in his arms already knowing he would be playing a different role in her life from now on. The rest of us quietly hunkered down awaiting the final lift for the two smaller girls because we too knew our lives will have changed after this experience that night. With the girl’s harnesses on, strapped in, away they went with Netti and with someone else, but I had lost track by now. Not wanting to wait for another shuttle to arrive, the remaining rescue members and Thing #2 began the hard steep walk out around the base of the cliff, back to the road carrying all the medical gear. I literally crawled onto the ice skating rink surface of the road at sometime around two in the morning, seven hours after we first descended over the bank.

...in the several days following the rescue we received several short notes thanking all of us for our efforts that extremely cold night. The compliment I most enjoyed hearing came to me in private though. Seeing Buttercup at the fire station a few days later he too admitted to me that “it was sure nice to see your ugly mug that night”, when I crawled down over that cliff to help him. After hearing that statement from Buttercup I slept very well indeed that evening.

Venture out and find a beautiful Christmas tree this holiday season. But please stay safe for all us rescuers this year.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

My Lies Reaching around the World

Blog hits from around the world...

United States 2,822
Canada 96
United Kingdom 90
Brazil 50
Russia 34
Germany 33
Pakistan 27
Poland 21
Czech Republic 20
Kuwait 19
Taiwan 19
Netherlands 20

The billy blaze blog stats show my misadventures are being followed from around the world.  I don't think I know anybody personally from the Czech Republic so I hope they understand my American humor.  All I need to find now is somebody who would like to help me publish a book.  We'll start with an English version first.

I recently ran into my long time firefighting buddy "Hollywood".  He went off on me about only having one story about him on my blog so far.  I told him "dude go write your own damn blog, this one's all about me".  No...  Hollywood and my mom have reminded me of some more stories I had forgotten about, which will follow once the holiday season slows down.  I have heard some of my long lost fire buddies are following along on my blog also. Just flash me an e-mail and I'd be happy to add your stories too.  Of coarse my version will make me look taller and more handsome then your version of the same story might.

Safe Holidays Everybody

Thursday, November 25, 2010

Happy Thanksgiving

Most of the stories on this blog are about some of my educational adventures over twenty three years as a Volunteer Firefighter with the Illinois Valley Fire Department and the last seven years with Rural Metro Fire in Grants Pass. I have been quite lucky fighting the beast all these years. I have only been seriously injured once in my career—at least so far. In the old days we did not wear the protective Nomex fire hoods all firefighters use today. Before the introduction of the flame-resistant hoods, our face, neck and ears were exposed to the mercy of the fire's heat and flames. Back in the day, we actually used the pain from the heat on our bare ears to indicate when it was getting too hot to be that close to the fire. When the blistering agony radiating from our thin-skinned ears got too intense to withstand any longer, that was when we knew it was time to retreat to a cooler location, normally outside the building.

On one occasion while I was fighting a fire in a fully involved kitchen, I heard something blowup just before I felt an excruciating pain grip me on the side of my face and neck. Some boiling-hot, thick material had just exploded onto me. I’ve heard that burning to death is the most painful way to go and I am inclined to believe it. I turned the fire hose on myself to wash the molten glop from the side of my face and neck. I staggered outside where I discovered the mysterious goo was just a can of creamed corn that had gotten so hot it exploded splattering the mushy contents onto my neck and ear. I loved those new fire hoods when we finally got them a few years later.

Besides the fact the new fire hoods helped protect our bare faces and necks from the flames, they also provided a level of anonymity from the general public when we wore them on a fire or accident scene. I truly enjoyed being able to walk down the street a few days after a big car crash knowing that the person limping towards me from the other direction was the very same person I'd helped get untangled from a car wreck just a few days earlier.  But because my face had been obscured by my hood, they had no idea that I was one of the firemen who had helped save them.


During this coming holiday
season be one of those people
who helps a stranger 
anonymously.

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Memories Etched in Stone

Ever since a grade school field trip to Crater Lake I have been intrigued with stone work.  The beautiful rock work guarding access into the steep volcanic caldera at Crater Lake is simply amazing.  I had opportunity when I was older to apprentice under a well known stone mason in the valley, Howard Woods.  I had a volunteer rock wall project I wanted to complete at Cave Junction's City Hall when I was a City Councilor and Howard agreed to show me the ropes of laying stone...


Placing stone is a hard, slow going labor of love when done properly.  First you have to gather your building stone material from the forest or a rock pit.  (Note to self: make sure your in the right rock pit before gathering your stone)  Unusual shaped pieces are best to work with, remembering that you may have to pick that same stone up several times before it finally fits into your work of art.  So too big of boulders are undesirable when working alone, and I almost always worked alone. You need to gather about 1 1/2 times the amount of material that you figure you will need for a particular project because every single stone will not find a home in your project.

Second it is best to sketch out a simple plan before starting your adventure.  Your final project hardly ever mirrors exactly what your rough draft looked like but it gives you a starting point to begin from.  Finally after your stones are meticulously placed you have to come back and grout the joints left between the rocks.  This at times is the most tedious part of any project, grouting and smoothing your joint seams.

There was a small piece of city property at the south end of Cave Junction.  I decided one day that Cave Junction needed a more fitting "Welcome to Cave Junction" sign.  After getting permission from our city fathers I began the complicated volunteer project.  I wanted a rock wall backdrop with a stream of water flowing from it much like happens at the Oregon Caves.  My stream would feature salmon fighting their way back towards the headwaters to spawn.  A landscaping area would grace a small pool where the water would recirculate from.  Simple, right? 


After the projects footing was poured, pool built, pump installed and tons of rock gathered the "simple" project finally began.  I would work on it sporadically after work and on weekends.  The weeks gradually turned into months as the rock sculpture slowly rose from the ground.  Being positioned right along Highway 199 I received many strange looks, a few motivational honks and occasionally a Dr. Pepper from the passing motorists.  Dr. Pepper has long been my drink of choice when creating a master piece.

I used to wear my old dirty Carhart coveralls when the weather got cold outside.  Over them I normally wore some beat up old sweatshirt too.  I specifically remember one cold Thanksgiving day I was working on my project before the big thanksgiving feast. A car drove up and a man got out, walked over and offered me a free Thanksgiving dinner down at the local rescue mission.  I think I was dressed so shabbily that he actually thought I was homeless.  My mom got a kick out of that story when I told it over dinner later that day.

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Shattered Memories

Sorry the stories are coming a bit slower lately but I'm busy again doing some more after hours sheet rocking for SAR (Search and Rescue), at our club house...

     I clearly remember once collecting an artifact at a fire scene from a two story building. I think the building had once been an old restaurant, but anyway, we had a late night fire call there. We got the fire knocked down pretty quickly on the first floor and headed to the second floor to see what the fire had done aloft. We found quite a bit of heat damage, but no actual fire had crawled up into the second story. In the corner of that upstairs room, we found an old hanging lamp made of plastic. It had gotten so hot it had melted and oozed into molten strips of plastic six feet long, almost all the way to the floor. After we had extinguished the fire downstairs, it had cooled the upstairs enough for the plastic to re-harden. It was a beautiful work of fire art. We asked the property owner if we could have that unique melted lamp and he said, "Sure, it’s all yours."

     So, with the fire still smoldering in spots below us, several of us firefighters got a spine-board out and by standing on the first floor's icy roof, carefully, ever so gently we managed to ease this brittle lamp down from it's hanger and lowered it onto its side. Carefully we began removing it out through the second floor window and down the ladder to the ground. That's about when the Fire Chief drove onto the fire scene. I suppose from a distance, in the dark it did look like we were evacuating an injured firefighter out of the building. Let’s just say he wasn't very happy when he found out what we were actually doing. That old melted lamp hung in our training room at my station for years and years before someone accidentally bumped into it one night and shattered it into a million pieces.

Monday, November 8, 2010

Annie, Annie are you ok?

For generations of Americans, fighting fire has always been a male dominated sport. Very few women participate in this strenuous and often times dangerous public service. There is a spattering of females in the fire service today, but they are a hardy breed. They have to be, if they want to survive the constant Tom Foolery found within the ranks of fire departments. Participating in and encouraging practical jokes is second nature to longtime firemen. The one cardinal rule is you don’t ever mess with a comrade's turnouts. No sharp objects hidden inside the boots, no hiding his gear, no icy-hot smeared inside his fire hood. Besides not messing around with one of the brethren's turnouts, pretty much everything else in a firemen’s life is up for exploitation and amusement.

It certainly is deemed OK to take the breastplate and cute blue jumpsuit off the "CPR-Annie" training manikin and put them on a live, petite, blonde-haired young lady. Go ahead and remove CPR-Annie’s plastic face mask and carefully place it on our afore mentioned young lady. Add some clean white tennis shoes to her wardrobe and— voilĂ . Who cares that the CPR test you are about ready to take is 50% of your final grade and one of the last steps before becoming a certified Emergency Medical Technician? How could you feel nervous when taking your final test?

By now I had practiced performing CPR in class till I could do it in my sleep. Following protocol, I would mundanely kneel down and shake Annie’s shoulder and shout, “Annie, Annie are you OK?” That’s when this new, improved Annie sits straight up and shouts back, “YES, I’M OK!” I grabbed both her shoulders and slammed her back down to the floor so hard I knocked the wind out of this new actor, but I did no permanent harm.

Now, standing off to the side in the shadows of the engine bays(having completed this important part of my test), I got to watch other rugged firemen shriek like little girls, and some even started to cry, after getting a huge shock from a very alive Annie— those were the best. Each subsequent, "Annie, Annie, are you OK?" victim would stand off to the side of the improvised training room pretending not to be watching the next classmate step forward to ask Annie if she was OK. We intently watched as one of our most macho fire guys knelt down to shake Annie's shoulder. When she sat bolt upright, he leaped a foot in the air and traveled 20 foot backwards without touching the floor till he slammed into the wheels on one of the fire engines— that was a pretty good one, too.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Without a Face

Because the sidewalks actually do roll up at 5 o’clock on Friday nights in small rural towns, you are left with just two options if you are looking for some evening action as a young adult. Option one, go to the local bars and carouse. Not being a drinker that wasn’t an option for me. Second option, attend the local high school football games and cheer them on. It was on one of those typically cold and quite foggy fall nights just after the football game was over when the call came in—a reported M.V.A. (Motor Vehicle Accident) on some deserted stretch of country road. I rushed up to the fire station and climbed into my cold turnout gear hanging on my hook waiting for me before I climbed into the driver's seat of the extrication truck and waited… Being that we were a volunteer department, no one ever knew how many firefighters would show up for any particular incident. Unlike me, our other volunteers actually had lives beyond the fire department and would go to the movies, or would be enjoying a nice dinner with their wives on a Friday night—all located in other towns several miles away. Some volunteers, heaven forbid, would actually crack open "a cold one" with friends, making them ineligible to respond to emergency call outs because they had been drinking. So, with the extrication rigs engine running, I sat and waited for anyone else to show up. We were trained to wait for five minutes for reinforcements to arrive before charging out on your own to any emergency. Fortunately, going solo didn't happen often, but this was one of those calls where I left the station alone with my overhead lights reflecting off the foggy darkness. Knowing the streets and lanes in my community like the back of my hand, I still had to drive with extra caution that night due to the dense fog.


Seeing someone’s four-way flashers illuminating the roadside where the accident most likely had occurred, I pulled to a stop and grabbed my "Streamlight" (a powerful flashlight) anchored next to my drivers seat. I stepped into the cold night, seeing my own breath in the headlights of my truck, — a bystander points into the woods. Aiming my beam of light into the forest I could see the rubble of a pathway left by a vehicle that had left the roadway out of control. Walking towards the wreck I could hear, but couldn't see, some man screaming, “She is dead! My sister is dead!” while he ran in circles around the crash site just beyond my view. On reaching the center of the chaos, I could see that a small Volkswagen beetle had caused all this carnage. Shinning my narrow beam of light through the smashed-out front windshield, I screamed. I’m not sure to this day if I screamed only in my mind or if I actually screamed out loud. Sitting slumped over in the passenger seat was what appeared to be a girl, but without any features to her face—no eyes, nose, or mouth, just raw flesh and lots of bloodied hair.

Gathering my composure, I slowly inched forward in the darkness to see what, if anything, I could do for her. Feeling for her pulse through the crushed side window, I got one! Looking more closely at her injuries, I saw she had been partially scalped and the loose hair and skin had fallen over her face covering up her facial features. The car doors were squashed shut and I could not get to her directly, but I finally squirmed my body (I was thinner in those days) through the small, almost undamaged frame of the back window that now had no glass in it. Kneeling in the back seat behind her, reaching round and over her seat I held her neck (C spine immobilization) and assured her that real help was on the way. She was bleeding badly from her serious head wounds, so like feeling for holes in a bowling ball, I placed my individual fingers over the spots that were bleeding most profusely to help stem the tide.

So here I was— alone, scared, on a dark, dark foggy night, squished in the back seat of a Volkswagen, trying to keep the precious, life-giving fluid in this young woman. Outside the vehicle I could still hear the man running around in the woods screaming, “My sister is dead!” I could actually hear him thud into a tree now and then, but he'd get back up and resume his panicked screaming—I never did see or find out what his injuries were. Finally, far off in the distance, I could hear the wail from the siren of the ambulance coming to my aid. I begged my young lady to hang on, “Help is coming!” She had bled so much by then that she had stopped bleeding as the ambulance crew jabbed her with two trauma IV lines, one in each of her arms. To my delight, while still kneeling behind her, holding her neck and head she began to bleed again indicating she had regained at least some blood pressure. As more firemen finally began showing up, they started extricating both of us from the wreckage. The young lady was loaded onto the gurney and placed in the back of the ambulance; the rear ambulance doors were slammed shut. A hard slap on the back door signals the ambulance driver to take off. With the interior lights in the ambulance illuminating the goings-on in there, they drove out of my life and into the stiff darkness toward the hospital.

On another Friday night several years later I was again walking into my local high school football stadium to see the annual, homecoming football game. By this time in my life I had gone through a divorce, I had ridden almost ten thousand miles on my mountain bike to help ease the pain of that time and I had met a new lady friend, of course at a Firemen’s Conference in some distant city. That evening was our first quasi date since we'd met, she had traveled to my little community. I was taking her to the local high school homecoming football game for our “special night” out. As we walked by the front of the overflowing crowd in the grandstands on the way to our seats, not even holding hands yet, I hear a woman yell my name from high up in the bleachers. Looking in her direction, a young lady jumps up and yells my name again, but this time even louder, “Bill!”

Firemen are the most notorious practical jokers known to man and my fire buddies knew this new girl friend of mine was coming to town. Looking anxiously towards the quickly advancing young woman (I had no idea who she was) screaming my name from the bleachers, I was searching for my firemen-culprits, giggling in the shadows, who had put her up to this stunt. The young lady pushed herself through the Cougar fans, ran down the bleacher stairs and leaped into my arms hugging me while gushing tears. Being the “gentleman” that I am, I caught her and held her for what seemed like an uncomfortably long time, all the while I’m glancing at the new girlfriend eying me from the sideline. Finally the sobbing woman stepped back and said to me, “You don’t know who I am, do you?" I replied, “Miss, I am so sorry, but, no, I do not.” as the new girlfriend narrowed her glare towards me. The young lady asked if I remembered a particular wreck that had occurred a few years earlier on a dark foggy night and I said, “Yes.” She then informed me “I was the girl in that wreck and you saved my life that night.” Stumbling backwards I said, “Oh, my God, you look so much better then how I remember you.” (They call that Firemen's tact,) I began pushing her long dark hair back away from the side of her face and admiring how the doctors had been able to hide the scares from the accident. We laughed, she smiled and we hugged a few more times before she ran back into the bleachers.

To this day I have no idea how she found out that I was holding her together on that cold foggy night. With my attention now drawn back to the new girl friend who was almost in tears by now, she asked, “Does this happen often?” I took a long pause… and said, “Oh yes, this kind of thing happens to me all the time. I’m a fireman”.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Explosions happen... real Fast

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


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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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”.

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.

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?

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Thank You for your Knowledge

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

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

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

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

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

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Facing your own Fears

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

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

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

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

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

Saturday, October 9, 2010

Life is not Like in the Movies

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

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

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Helicopter Rescue

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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