Spray me in the Face

Crazy things are always occurring on fire scenes and when you stop and look back at a particular incident, you wonder how anybody avoided getting hurt or killed...

Like the time we had this huge barn fire—this barn was really big, burning like a fuddrucker and it was full of penned-up pigs. We aggressively attacked this fire letting the pigs that had survived out of the pens as we advanced our way through the length of this flame-engulfed old barn. What seemed like an hour later, I came out the far end of the barn into the daylight with my fire hose still spraying water. I was double-dog exhausted. One of the very few women in our department came up to me and asked if I would like to take a short break, get a cold drink of water, while she would keep wetting-down some of the smoldering debris nearby. I quickly relinquished my fire nozzle to her.

I no sooner had turned to go get refreshment when I heard her scream at the top of her lungs. Whirling back around towards the noise, she was no where to be found. Almost in a panic, I desperately searched for her. Just then I saw her bob up out of a pig poop-laden puddle of water. Unbeknownst to us, at the end of this barn there was a big open holding tank where the farmer would wash all the pig poop from the barn. He would dilute it with water and then spray it onto his fields as fertilizer. Cheryl had fallen into this pit of pooh. If Mother Nature had not endowed her so generously with her two built-in personal floatation devices, I think she may have drowned.

She was screaming for me to help her out of the mess, but I didn’t want to actually have to touch her. For God's sake, she was drenched in thick pig poop. Finally helping her out of the vat of rancid pooh, she kept screaming, “Spray me in the face! Spray me in the face!” I must admit I did enjoy spraying her in the face with the fire hose— while I was laughing my ass off.