What will #3 be?
October 8, 2010
After a six week stretch with no fire calls I should have known there would eventually be a bunch in a row. We were all pretty exhausted leaving the fire hall last night at 10pm, after 8.5 hrs at the scene of the train wreck. What an intense experience. I don’t even know where to start to describe it all. I just wish I’d been able to get some photos but my phone battery had died early that morning. I took a lot on the fire department’s camera, but won’t have access to them for a week or two at least.
And then, after staying up until 3:30am last night working on a FarmOn video that I was supposed to have worked on in the afternoon, I was awoken at 8:30 this morning by my pager again. A farm shop on fire near Fernitosh, my first structural fire. On the way out, Mike and I got into full BA gear in the back of the rescue van (BA = Breathing Apparatus). When we got to the scene, the Ferintosh fire department already had the fire mostly under control, but there were some trusses still burning in the attic near where the fire originated, and we had to help them remove the metal siding of the building to gain access to the attic and fight the fire from within. It was pretty exciting going into a smoke filled building in full BA for the first time, and the work was pretty tiring, moving ladders and siding and carrying hose. It sure feels good to know you’re doing something that makes a difference to the community, and I do love the adrenaline rush when you’re heading out to an emergency with the sirens blaring. But, I really felt bad leaving Kelly to take care of Aubrey by herself two days in a row, plus the time away from FarmOn work when we’re right in the middle of some really important and time sensitive stuff.
They say bad things come in threes, so it makes me wonder what might happen tomorrow. If the pager does go off again, I just hope that like yesterday and today, nobody is seriously hurt or killed. As for the driver of the gravel truck that was hit by the train yesterday, it was a miracle that he survived. The cab of the truck was pushed about 500 or 600 feet down the track before it finally stopped, and it was an unrecognizable ball of twisted metal when we got to him, yet he was so alert he kept saying “guys I think I can walk out to the road”. Unbelievable.
