Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Jesus, Table For 14


One of my favorite things about going to calls is seeing the things that people have inside their homes. The other day we were at this house for a woman having a stroke. I stepped out of the room after it got crowded and went to stand in the living room when I saw this painting of the wall that intrigued me. It was a painting of  "The Last Supper" but in front of it was a lone chair facing the wall into an open spot on the painting's table similar to the opening you see below.


Perhaps someone sits there and eats dinner with Jesus? Or it could be a timeout chair where you have to look at Jesus and feel bad about what you did. It was something i've never seen before and I wish I would have asked someone in the house what it all about.

The rest of the shift went well. I worked on dinner with the rookie while the rest of the guys went Christmas crazy, hanging lights outside. They had been working on it for hours at this point. Later my wife and daughter stopped by for a visit and we finished off the night watching TV. Another hard days work.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

Black Friday

So a few minutes after I published that last post, surprise surprise our box gets a run to Target for a fall. We on the other hand aren't doing anything. We went on a cleaning frenzy, made breakfast, watched our rookie rewind the Q siren (which is completely unnecessary) and now we are all spread around doing our own thing. To hold us over, i'll tell another story from earlier last week.

We made a run to an apartment complex sometime in the evening for an overdose. Some guy drank a bottle of Benadryl and felt sleepy so we weren't really needed and went back in service once the ambulance got there. This apartment complex is rather small so there isn't much room to maneuver with a fire engine. The driveway which we were parked on was straight but the entrance gate behind us was at an angle. No idea why they designed it like that. We start backing up to the gate when my EO realizes the weird backward angle he is going have to make to get out of this place. I could see his nerves building as he tried to angle the back end but couldn't get it. One attempt, two attempts, then three attempts, all while i'm snickering at the frustrated EO. He couldn't get it angled correctly because we would have hit the gate trying to swing out and had a median behind us which prevented him from going any further so he pulls way up and straightened out to get his game plan together when I told him that I bet I could do it. My philosophy is that if it came in that way, it sure as hell can go back out, right? Well in his frustration, his door flies open, hands go in the air and he says, "FINE do it then!" He figured he didn't have anything to loose since he already couldn't do it and maybe he could pull off making his officer look stupid too. Little did he know that all my years as an EO were spent at a small station with narrow doors that we had to back into, all while against the traffic of a freeway feeder so backing out of a gate was nothing to me. I get in the ol' drivers seat, throw that bitch in reverse and back up with one hand on the wheel, making one little correction and into the street we go. The look on his face was priceless and of course the first thing he said was "I guess i'll make it in the blog again." The guys in the back were cracking up so I just put it in drive and kept on driving for a while. I will give him this, today he has been printing off blank maps so he could study the territory. And not to mention that despite his non-directional skills, and inability to back out of gates, he goes forward just fine and can pump the hell out of some water.

Friday, November 25, 2011

Chest Pain....It's Always Chest Pain

It was about 2:30 in the morning when we were dispatched to a run for chest pains in one of our hurricane relief government welfare neighborhoods. Nothing exciting ever happens there, just the usual stomach aches and an occasional overdose although we did have a riot a while back. Roughly 200 "gangstas"  fighting in the street. One of the most interesting call we have been on here was when one of my firefighters was punched in the face by a suicidal Asian gang member. He was on all kinds of drugs and sliced himself up pretty good. I remember walking into his house and seeing blood absolutely everywhere. He was upstairs in a tiny bedroom and started getting agitated so we walked him outside and put him on the cub to bandage him up. Once the firefighter started cleaning him off, out of the blue the patient jumps out and punches the firefighter in the face. Luckily a cop was behind the patient so the guy ended up going to jail.

So back to the chest pain, we pull up to her house and realize it is one of our frequent fliers. That's a term we use for people who we transport often, usually for non-emergent reasons. Every time we go to this house, the lady seems absolutely fine even though she says her chest hurts. This particular call was about 2:30 in the morning and she is all dressed up with a little hat on lounged out in a chair when we arrive. Who in the hell calls 911 that late and dresses up? So I ask her if her chest hurts and of course she tells me no, that she just had some small back pain. I realize pretty quick that she just wants us to drive her to the hospital on the taxpayers dime to score some pills. I ended up walking outside so I wouldn't say something stupid to her and  a few  minutes later, here she comes being wheeled out like a princess on the stretcher. He legs are crossed and she just looked comfortable as hell. Once we leave the scene I pulled up her call history on the computer and we had 11 prior incidents to her house, all for chest pain even though still to this day she has no history of heart problems or any actual pain in her chest. Another winning day in the ol' hood.

We had another run our next day on right as our favorite tv show came on. We missed the first showing so we purposely stayed up until midnight to watch it come on again We got all situated and I shit you not as the opening credits start playing, BOOM we get a run for chest pains...go figure. We pull up and knock on the door for a few minutes until a guy wonders out and messes around for almost a minute attempting to get his iron gate open. You would think that he would have all this ready by now. He gets it open and just turns around and walks in without saying a word so we assume to just follow him in. This guy is the patient who goes over and sits on the couch, looks at us and points to his leg and says "why is it shaking"? How the hell are we supposed to know that? I asked him if his chest hurt and he said a little bit but mainly he just felt nervous and wanted to be checked out. I don't know what the hell these people expect us to do for them when we get there.

Today is Black Friday and i'm surprised we haven't been to any fights at Walmart or Target. We actually haven't had anything yet but It's only 10:30 in the morning so we'll see what the next 20 hours bring. Our box did make some kind of bullshit this morning but I don't remember what it was, just heard them bitching about it when they got back to the station. Apparently yesterdays shift was pretty busy throughout most of the night, ending with another roll over fatality from a police chase early this morning before we came in. They said it looked like that scene from Wizard of Oz when the house fell on the witch because the his truck flipped on top of him leaving his feet sticking out. Classic.

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Automatic Waste of Time

Automatic fire alarms have been protecting people and annoying firefighters since the late 1890's. A helpful tool when the place is actually on fire but unfortunately they malfunction on a regular basis. There is also the horrible practice of pulling alarms for no reason. We have an apartment complex not far from our station where a group of kids regularly pull the alarms then run off. Not only is it annoying for the residents who have to listen to it all night, but for us as we still have to respond with lights and sirens. I bet those little brats don't know that if we were killed while responding to the false alarm that they would be charged with murder. Not funny anymore is it?


Last week we were sent to that apartment complex to what we assumed was another prank. Come to find out it was a woman's ignorance that decided to call 911 because her smoke detector was intermittently beeping. We get to the door and who else but the Jefferson's open up! (Pre East Side). The apartment was astonishing. There were several mountians of clothes, two 100lb bags of pecans, and "All in the Family" playing on tv.  The lady tried explaining to me how her smoke detector had been going off for the last three days and thought that it was somehow related to her air conditioner or washing machine. I told her that smoke detectors sometimes malfunction and that she should call maintenance to have it looked at. I also told her that there wasn't anything we could do for her unless it was on fire but she kept pointing to the thermostat and saying that maybe something inside here was causing it. I think she thought that the thermostat was the air conditioner by the way she was explaining it. Then she told us that when one detector went off, the others "did beep beep beep". I told her that they are wired together and they all go off at once but I don't think that registered in her head. She told me, "but this one went off then that one went off and they would all go off if this one went off." It's was no use explaining anything anymore. Her other theory was that the upstairs neighbors had possibly burnt food. I asked her if she had smelled or seen any smoke and she said of course she said no. 

The second alarm we made last week was at a party hall around 4:00 in the morning. Not expecting much at that time of night, we pulled up to a packed crowd partying the night away. It was some sort of African dance party with hundreds of people. Someone had pulled an alarm in the back room so we reset the system until we found out that some idiot pulled every single alarm in the building. Each and every one of them had to be reset. On our way out, we were stalked by an old drunk man who was telling us how good the food was. About a month prior, we had an automatic alarm in the same building. But this time intead of an African party, it was a  quinceanera. Thankfully that time, it was only one pull station by the restroom. We got the box reset so  myself and one of the firefighters went to figure out the main alarm panel while my Engineer and the other firefighter stayed behind to, I guess make sure no one else pulled the alarm. The alarm was a bitch to reset with trouble codes popping up so I ended up calling the alarm company to figure this out. I wouldn't normally call the alarm company but I didn't want to go back out there again, and not to mention that there were a crap load of people and if a fire really did break out, then they would need an alarm to let them know. We finally get everything reset and come back to find out that the hottest woman at the party (I think someone who worked there) came over to the two pull station guardians and brought them each a big ass piece of cake. So the two of us that were actually working got jack squat. Their excuse? Too busy "monitoring the pull station" or by that I mean watching the ass coming in and out of the restroom to remember to get us any cake. So we leave, half cakeless and go back to the station with stupid confetti and paper streamers stuck to our shoes. 

Tis the Season

The end of the year is approaching which means that we will see an increase in structure fires. The increase mostly comes from a mixture of the holidays and cooler weather but arson is also popular as the end of the year approaches. Lets not rule out human error which of course is prevalent at any time. We have already seen an increase with a few descent fires over the last couple weeks, including what I can say was the most boring fire of my career.

The call came in around 3 o'clock in the morning and we were the last engine company to arrive after a several minute trip down the freeway. I think the firefighters in back were asleep for part of the trip until we made our way on top of an over pass and I told them to look at the orange glow filling the sky. Over the radio, we could hear the first units arrive and report heavy fire from a 2 story and immediately went into defensive mode which means that the fire was too big and not safe for them to enter the structure. Defensive fires are usually a long drawn out process and I just knew that this would be the start of a very long night. Once we arrived, command had us man a 2-1/2" hose on the "delta side" (Right side of the house) which we did for about 30 minutes until most of the fire on our side was out.


They raised the aerial ladder and flooded the house from above so we went back to the front and waited for another 30 minutes where we started getting bored until command came up and told us we could go. It was great to hear those words and we got out of there as fast as we could. This house was empty and intentionally set. At that time of night, most people are asleep so the fire burned for a good while until it was noticed.

About a week before, we had a pretty good one early in the afternoon. We were the second engine to arrive and helped the ladder company set up to ventilate the roof, then went inside to help another engine company work on the fire until command misunderstood some radio traffic and pulled everyone out of the house. This included the roof team right as they were about to cut their hole which would have helped even though the fire was knocked down pretty fast once everyone was let back inside. The man living in the house said that he was cooking and fell asleep on the couch. When he woke up, his kitchen was on fire which had already made it's way into the attic by the time we arrived. The fire was contained to the kitchen and attic but the rest of the house had some pretty heavy smoke damage. Looking at the pictures below, you can see just how bad smoke and heat can damage a structure.


This water heater came down a few feet from my crew, making a loud crashing noise. At the time, I didn't know what it was but everyone was alright so we went on our way. A while later we found this which could have been deadly had a firefighter been standing underneath.

 

Here is a view from the side of the house and the only exterior damage. The kitchen where the fire started was on this side and you can see how it traveled up to the attic. The entire roof remained intact which is pretty good considering the amount of fire that was in there.


Stupid Keeps Us In Business

A few weeks ago, we were leaving a medical call when we heard a dispatch for "breathing problems" at a nearby gas station. It was only a couple of blocks away so we asked dispatch to add us to the record and headed that direction. I'm not sure what caused it but while en route, I started to get one of those bad feelings. It's somewhat of a sense you acquire after a while, although it happens more with fires than it does with medical runs. Right out of the blue, my mind said "cardiac arrest" and as I thought that, the medic who just arrived on location called CPR in progress on the radio. Just my luck, we pick up a call and end up with a cardiac arrest.

We arrived about a minute later and went to work on the patient who was laid out on the concrete in front of the store. A few people gathered around to watch the action, with one jackass recording it all on his iPhone. As for the patient, he did not make it although we tried for 20 minutes on scene before loading him up for the hospital. I am clearly not a doctor but i'm willing to bet that the all around poor decisions by him and his wife greatly contributed to his death. As I worked on my time sheet, I tried getting the story and patients history from his wife which turned out to be quite an interesting one. (The time sheet is something that the officer fills out during a cardiac arrest to log the times that drugs are administered)

According to the wife, they were driving down the road when he said that his chest hurt. Thankfully she was driving because he went down fairly quick. She told me that once he went down, she attempted doing CPR while driving him around. Can you visualize that? Didn't pull over, didn't call 911, just kept driving and doing CPR for the next 3 miles!!!! The funny thing is that the hospital was only about a mile and a half the other direction from where they started out. Now as for the man, he had a history of heart problems and had been taking un-prescribed Vicodin, Cocaine, and drinking Four Loko. Now i'm no expert but i'm pretty sure all of those things are extremely bad for your heart, especially if it's already a ticking piece of crap. So this guy's poor choice in recreational activities has landed him in a gas station parking lot getting his chest mashed on while some idiot stands there recording us on his iPhone. What a way to go out.

Oh and one last thing as we were wrapping up, one of the paramedics hands me a bloody needle and tells me to hold on to it. Bloody needles are not uncommon during a cardiac arrest but it wasn't one of our needles. It was laying next to him to what we can only assume fell out of his pocket. Stupid keeps us in business.