Today's Fire Call

I am a member of the local fire department as a volunteer fire police. Most times we assist emergency vehicles in reaching the scene - sometimes the ambulance personnel or outside fire responders, for example, do not know there way around St. James. The devlopment is confusing, so we post ourselves strategically to accelerate their reaching the scene. We also exercise traffic control around the scene.

I had a call today and sped in my car, red light flashing, to the scene and set up for traffic control. A contractor was hurt, probable back injury, on the second story of a house under construction. Since I was first on scene I had set up at the intersection to the short cul-de-sac where the house was located. The call was not a routine EMS emergency. The fire department was also called because they needed to get the person off the second story, no stairs had been built yet.

Soft ground and other issues ment the first two trucks, including our ladder truck, couldn't reach far enough for safe removal. A nearby town was called for their specialized equipment - whatever it was - and they couldn't do it. Another town responded but didn't have what was needed so we ended up calling a nearby facility that had an even bigger ladder rig. That did the job.

Now we had about 10 or more emergency vehicles spread around so a fire captain called me over to assist in moving one of the BRT's (that's fire department officialese for a fire truck and it means "big red truck"). He directed me to jump in the cab and to my surprise the siren started to wail. Now you have to understand that we seldom use sirens in the development as they can confuse and disrupt as much as help (check out insurance company stats). So I had to wonder where our BRT was headed that needed a siren. Turns out it was me! you know what? They have these buttons on the floor of the truck and all you have to do is step on one to sound the siren. Whoops.

Well we got the truck moved without further incident (the routine is to always have someone outside directing the driver when they back up). That was my particular job in the BRT.

The call took over two hours (usually around 25 minutes for medical) and no further problems, in fact I guess the way I handled the rest of the traffic was good because the fire captain sought me out after the call and complimented me. He probably did it though because it gave them a chance to laugh about the siren. Another day in the life of a fire policeman.