Saturday, December 31, 2011

Bring On The New Year!

Well it's that time of year again. A time when we bring the year to a close, futile resolutions are made, and stupid people fill the streets. A non-denominational holiday that is celebrated by almost every person in the world. What a great day to be at work! For my second year in a row, I am working on New Years Eve. Not that I mind it because it keeps me from being one of those stupid people out getting in trouble and I get to see more crazy in one night than I usually see in a tour. So far today has been pretty busy and I expect it to only get worse as the sun goes down. If it's anything compared to last year then we might be in trouble. Here is the run list for my pumper last NYE, in order from start to finish that I just pulled up on our CAD system.

Chest Pain: Heart Problem: Automatic Alarm: Grass Fire: Grass Fire: Unknown Fire: Seizure: Assault: Grass Fire: House Fire: Grass Fire: House Fire: House Fire: Bomb Threat (turned out to be an exploded mailbox): Chest Pain: Unconscious Person: Breathing Problem: Automatic Medical Alert: Motor Vehicle Incident: Grass Fire: Dumpster Fire: Dumpster Fire.

22 runs and mind you that most came in after 9pm. We have already had some noteworthy runs this shift but I will write about it all tomorrow in one long post. Before I go, I want to post this as my end of the year gift to you. It is a psychiatric call we made about a year ago where this lady's son called 911 to have his mother committed. Perhaps it will give you a feel for the people we deal with out here every single day. She was something else and i'm damn glad I decided to record it. By the way, she looks exactly how she sounds.


So what will 2012 have in store for us? I don't know either but I sure can't wait to find out. Happy New Year!

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Funny Kitchen Fire


Remember that kitchen fire we did a couple weeks ago where the kid threw water on the burning pan? Well one of my last days on, we get dispatched to an apartment fire a few blocks from the station. We were first into the complex and didn't see any smoke so I told everyone responding to level 1 stage outside the complex which means to wait out there so we don't have a bunch of fire trucks clogging up the complex. I get out of the pumper and this lady walks up and says "Hey remember me"? I didn't really until she said she was they lady who's house caught on fire a couple weeks ago. I guess she had moved into this apartment while her house was being repaired and managed to catch her stove on fire. Well it wasn't really on fire but she said it started smoking and wanted us to check it. I don't know why this was dispatched as an apartment fire but I disregarded all the units and we went in to look at the stove. Yep, looked like a stove. I told her to leave it unplugged and find a place to live without a kitchen.

So just to add on the end of this, as I was finishing up this post we get a walk-in at the station. I went out to have a cigarette and this car pulls up on our front pad. He said his son had just had a seizure (which was normal for him just like the lady earlier) and wanted us to check him out "just in case". I guess it's "just in case" seizure week.

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

I like it when the crazies come out

So I forgot about this post. It's been sitting in here waiting on me to finish the last paragraph for about 2 weeks. I've been on the ladder truck for the last few shifts so I haven't really been to any calls worthy of talking about on here. Actually I don't think we've been on any calls but i'm not complaining, I love riding on the ladder and wish I could stay on it forever but today i'm back to my pumper, ready to take on our little shit hole district. So far we haven't had anything good but most of the crew called in sick so i'm sure we'll have a fire at some point. A little while ago we made a run for seizures in a Church's Chicken parking lot. The lady apparently has seizures all the time so this was nothing out of the ordinary but her husband wanted her checked out "just in case". Just in case of what? We looked at her, looked liked she was alive, and went in service.

So here are my stories from a couple weeks ago...enjoy.

So we head off to the grocery store fairly late to pick up our usual, we're too lazy to cook (Hamburger Helper) dinner. We don't even get the first thing in the cart when we get a run for an overdose, way down at the bottom of our territory. It's actually in one of our better areas although lately it's been picking up lately with some interesting calls. It's a mix of townhouses and a few apartment complexes sitting on a dead end road. We pull onto the street at the same time as the ambulance when the dispatcher comes on and tell us we need to stage away form the location to wait for the police because apparently the scene wasn't safe. Well the ambulance ends up going all the way to the complex and is flagged down by the caller so we go up behind them and we enter the complex. At this point we were already committed to the scene so there wasn't much we could do. As we pull up, I look over to my left and see a man trying to fight with a female cop. The cop was by herself trying to keep the man back, while a woman who turned out to be the man's girlfriend yelled uncontrollably for him to stop. The cop had her beating stick out trying to keep him back but he began swinging at her and it didn't look like she would be able to hold him off much longer. She got in a damn good hit with her baton but I was worried he was going to overpower her so I jumped out of the pumper and ran her direction. I figured I would take the ass chewing later because I wasn't going to just sit there and watch this cop get her ass whopped. The rest of my crew jumped out and ran with me but we stopped short when another cop pulled up and tackled the guy. They wrestled for a couple minutes while the guy yelled "JUST FUCKING SHOOT ME" "KILL ME, I KNOW YOU WANT TO". He was looking for a suicide by cop scenario but they got him wrangled and threw him in the car. As the cops were dragging him to the car, I guess the man's ex wife ran up and was frantically asking the current girlfriend "OH GOD, DID THEY SHOOT HIM"? What the fuck do you think lady? No they didn't shoot him. Afterwards, my EO went up to the cop car and asked the guy what his birth date was. His response? "FUCK YOU". Turned out, the guy took several bottles of pills and now gets to wake up with a nice hangover on the floor of a jail cell.

We left that call and didn't feel like going back to the store so we decided to stop and grab something at Taco Cabana. I remember as we stood in line that this weird guy was walking around asking people for the time. He caught my eye because something just didn't seem right about him. Fairly young white guy with a tattered brown leather coat, possibly on drugs or some sort of mental disorder. I didn't think too much of it because we see freaks all the time so we ordered and went about our fine dining experience. We finished eating and ventured outside where this guy was lurking by the front door. He sees us and asks, "Hey have you guys even been in a fire?" I looked at him and told him no, kinda laughed and went to take out a cigarette. Yes I smoke, don't judge me. Of course this guy follows and asked us if we had a cigarette. I told him that I just lit my last one and showed him my pack but one of the firefighters gave him one. At this point it was just me and the firefighter because the other two knuckleheads knew better than to hang around this guy and went back to the pumper. When this guy came over for the cigarette, I noticed that in his right hand was a freakishly large ball of hair. Looked like something you would pull out of an old drain. He tossed it on the ground and my firefighter says to him "Hey, you dropped your hair." Without missing a beat, this guy looks at us and says "yea, it's my pubes". Now i'm trying as hard as I can not to laugh but the other guy just couldn't hold it so we started cracking up right in front of this poor guy. He looks at us again with a smirk and said, "but wouldn't that hurt though, if I just ripped them right out like that?" "Think about it. I guess it would be kinda like waxing". The firefighter told him, "nah waxing isn't that bad". "oh you know from experience" replied the weirdo. I guess our laughing just made this guy want to keep talking so hurried off and got back to the pumper.

Monday, December 12, 2011

Trucks aren't made to be sideways

The other morning, we got to cut a lady out of her truck. It was about 5:40 in the morning and 29 degrees (not my ideal conditions). I'm not really sure what caused the accident but the lady managed to flip onto the driver's side of the truck, so she was essentially stuck at the bottom. Lucky for her, she didn't have any significant injuries other than some standard back and neck pain. We ended up taking off the roof so we could pull her out from where she was laying.

I always find it amazing how easy it is to pull apart a vehicle. We broke out the windows, cut the pillars holding the roof and it just peeled it back like a can of sardines. The poor lady was nice as can be too, something we don't get very often on this side of town. Older woman, probably in her mid 60's just sat there calm while we were working. Lucky for us, we didn't do very much because our rescue truck was there pretty quick and they like doing all the fancy stuff.  But whatever took getting out of the cold fast was alright with us. Not to mention the sun was coming up and we were encroaching on shift change.

Here's a pic of her truck. It didn't come out very good but you can see the roof peeled back.


We really didn't do anything else other than a few more automatic alarms, another wreck, and some medical calls. The next day on, we made a run early in the morning for an unconscious person. It was supposed to be in a vehicle outside of a house but turned out the lady got up and went inside before we got there. We knocked on the door and this haggard lady peeks out and says she feel asleep in the car because her alarm didn't go off. I'm not really sure what the hell she was talking about but while the ambulance was getting the story, I started looking through the front window of the house. Jesus there was trash piled up to the bottom of the window and there were two small dogs trekking across the mess. I try to keep houses like this in my memory because if we ever get a fire there, I know the present hazards. It has happened before. Later on we made a huge pot of chili for lunch/dinner and had a fairly quiet evening. My kind of day.

Saturday, December 10, 2011

MORE FIRE ALARMS!!!!!! AHHHH!!!

I've been to so many fire alarms lately that I could just scream!! We had one the other day at a 55+ apartment complex nearby the station. Turns out someone burned some popcorn in the lobby kitchen so we were out of there within a minute and headed off to the grocery store. We get all loaded up and of course drop a run for a house fire with a truck full of meat and ice cream. Luckily It wasn't too far away but it looked as if we would be a close tie to second in so I give ol' Rand McNally directions and started putting my gear on. A ladder truck made location first with nothing showing, which was great news so we could get back with our food. We pulled into the neighborhood shortly after and came down the street until blocked by a fucking ambulance who decided they wanted to stop in the middle of the road, blocking every other suppression unit from getting to the house. I put my hand on the radio mic to say something when the fire was tapped out so we just followed the ambulance through the scene and got the hell out of there.

Later on back at the station while cooking dinner, one of the firefighters was outside and heard what sounded like a fire alarm in the distance. What do you know, it's the apartment complex again from earlier. You know, the one we went to right before the grocery store? I recognize the sound because they have the loudest alarm known to man. No kidding. When you are inside this place, your teeth and brain actually shake. Absolutely horrible. I tell the crew that we are about to get a run and the dispatch comes through about 5 seconds after.

Trashy Street

Why the in hell do people feel the need to dump things on the side of the road? I have never even had that thought.

"What do we do with this Clyde?" "Ah never mind i'll just go dump it by the park so it won't be my problem anymore."

We were sent to a trash fire on this deserted road next to a wooded area. It's technically a city park but it has just sat there as an overgrown waste of space for years.


The fire was only a bunch of oil, some rags, and 2 oil filters. Easy way to dispose of your oil change I guess. As you can see behind the fire, there is a large pile of trash and next to it a dear carcass. There isn't deer anywhere around here so I have no idea where this came from. Must have been the aftermath of a hunting trip or something. Several years ago this was the hot spot for burning stolen cars on a weekly basis. We also responded to a rape over here a few months ago where a police officer rolled up on a vehicle, occupied by a father raping his 14 year old daughter. Doesn't this make you feel great as a taxpayer, knowing that a city park can be such multipurpose?

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Grease + Heat + Water = Destruction

The shift started out pretty crazy because everyone except for myself and engineer called in sick. There was the last minute shuffle to pull a crew together but everything worked out pretty fast and the day went on. Around 6:30 or so in the evening, we were dispatched to a duplex fire, which doesn't surprise me because we manage to always get a fire when people call in sick. We were first on scene with light smoke coming from the front door so I picked up the radio and said "engine xx on location, light smoke from a single story duplex, we'll be investigating". Since the smoke was pretty light, I told the crew to stay put while I went to find out what was going on from the people standing in the yard. The lady told me that she had just come home from work when her 2 kids came running out saying the house was on fire. "They tried throwing water on it but the whole wall is still on fire". I go take a peek in the front door and see black smoke banked down about 5 feet from the ceiling so I turn around and tell the crew to pull a hand line and we make our way inside. There wasn't much to this one and we had it under control before anyone else arrived so I tapped it out holding us and the next in pumper. We did some overhaul, vented out the smoke and were out of there in about an hour. Here is the end result.

Whoops
The Captain on the other pumper had talked to the resident who said her 9 year old son was allegedly cooking. The 16 year old who was supposed to be watching him, wasn't doing too good of a job and I guess the skillet caught fire. He then threw water on the fire and BOOM, no more kitchen. Something like the video below except no extinguisher.


We leave there and get sent on 3 more runs before getting back to the station. Some lady down the road was having breathing problems after arguing with her boyfriend. We pull up and there 5 police cars, broken concrete in the road, and their garage door is hanging off by a string. We go inside and wade through a mess of boxes to find this lady freaking out in a tiny little bathroom. She saw us walk in and decided she wanted to have a full on panic attack and begin hyperventilating. We leave there and go straight to a "group home" which we frequent fairly often. These group homes are all over our territory and occupied with either sick and/or crazy people, usually watched by some African lady that pays absolutely no attention to them. This time it was an old man having a gastrointestinal bleed out of his ass. He was in a hall bathroom, kind of hunched over and naked from the waste down with blood EVERYWHERE. His legs were just saturated not to mention the bathroom which was also feces. We just kind of stood there for a second trying to figure out what the hell to do with this mess. It smelled so so bad that I have no clue how to describe it. We pretty much waited until the ambulance got there, doubled up on gloves and walked him out to the stretcher. The ambulance was from another station and had someone on it we didn't know. My Engineer walks up and tells the EMT that they may want to put down some towels or something for the blood but got some black stare, so he says, "awe fuck it, it's not my stretcher" and walks off. 

By this time we were all starving and really wanted to get back to the station when the computer pops up with a motor vehicle incident a few blocks down the road. They got smashed pretty good, cars totaled but no injuries so we we out of there quick and finally got back. We did get to eat and have a little down time before getting dispatched to another house fire a good distance away. The first pumper arrived and said "nothing showing" which usually means it's nothing so we were praying for a disregard before committing to the freeway, which we got so my Engineer takes the longest and bumpiest route possible back to the station and we sleep the rest of the night. Actually no, there was one more run later on but I can't remember for the life of me what it was. 

I had to throw that extra bit in about my EO because he gets all giddy when I talk about him on here. I told him this blog would make him famous and I could make him t-shirts, although no one knows who he is. Kind of like tales of a great ninja warrior, only allergic to directions and doesn't carry a sword. 


By the way, in case you didn't know, EO means Engineer Operator (the one who drives and pumps water). Also traditionally called a Chauffeur.