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What is That One Call
What is That one call you will never forget..Sad Funny Rare or anything else...tell us about it
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Permalink Reply by Jake Fireman on
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2 year old traumatic full arrest dying in my arms
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Permalink Reply by Moose on
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Numerous calls come to mind, and they all really stick out in my mind, like my first fatal fire, and my second fatal fire involving an 8 year old and 21 year old...that was a bad one.
One call that stands out for some reason more than some is one that happened before FAST came about, and before "Firefighter Survival" was taught.
I was at a structure fire in my neighboring town, an old farm house, 2 1/2 story balloon frame with a more modern addition off the side, 2 story wood frame platform construction. The fire started in the older portion of the house and gutted it, with only minor fire damage to the addition. When the fire was almost out, we needed to get into the second floor of the addition to hit some hot spots in the ceiling, but the stairs were gone. So the Chief of our neighboring town asked myself and my father (35 years in the FD, ex-capt of Northport FD on Long Island NY) to grab an attic ladder and go up and hit the fire.
At this point the building was wide open with great ventilation and little to no smoke in the addition, so my father and I opted to leave the packs for now. My father is a leather lung anyway and very rarely used them (with great protest on my part and constant badgering!! LOL) So, we entered the front door, placed the ladder to the second floor of the addition (Off to the left of the door) and my father went up first. When he got up there was some debris falling on my helmet and I dismissed it as my father kicking stuff on me and started to climb the ladder...Half way up I heard a "Crunch" noise followed by something hitting my shoulder and raking my back, as well as hot stuff in my collar of my coat...I started to scurry up the ladder as my father grabbed for me hollering at the top of his lungs. It was the roof of the house, it collapsed on us and a 2X8 rafter brushed my back on its way down, had I had a pack on it would have snagged the pack and pulled me into the collapse...Lucky? Or unlucky?
I was now on the second floor with no ladder or stairs with my father, who went to the nearest window and punched it out and yelled for help.
The guys quickly re positioned a ground ladder to our window and I actually went out head first all the way down the ladder. Everyone came to check on us and forced us to go see EMS.
I was stupid for not wearing my pack, and lucky at the same time. But that fire was about 14 years ago. My father has since retired from firefighting and I have gotten wiser for it, I took survival as soon as it came out too and joined my County FAST.
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Permalink Reply by BWN86 on
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My company responded to a neighboring community for a house fire. After all was said and done normal overhaul operations started. One crew in a finished attic area where one person was living started removing material. They were throwing the stuff through a hole that the fire burned through. I was with a hose line continuing to wet down what ever they dropped. Well the crew started to laugh and certain specific magizines stated to fall. When they were done the pile of these were piled up approx. 6 ft. high. This was the insulation which was in every rafter of the house. That was the best type of overall Ive seen in a long time.
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Permalink Reply by Nick Hinson on
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Haha my MOST memorable call was a medical call about a mile from our station. It came in as an assault victim. When we arrived on seen there was a drunk dwarf with his ear bitten off. Apparently he got in a fight with his 6 ft 6 drunk father-in-law (former special forces in the army) and lost very very bad. He was hit with a broom stick, body slammed and of course bitt'en. He had 3 broke ribs and a nice laceration above his nose and all he could say was "I like you firefighters, yall always come out here when we get to fight'n". That was an interesting night needless to say.
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Permalink Reply by Whitey on
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I have had a few calls where the family arrives on scene and that makes it even more difficult.
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Permalink Reply by Art "ChiefReason" Goodrich on
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Vinnie Cappaletti recalls his ONE call here: http://www.firefighternation.com/profiles/blogs/the-adventures-of-j...
I draw on personal experiences, people I know, accounts that I have read and my knowledge of the fire service to write Jake and Vinnie.
In this particular episode, most of what I described for Vinnie actually happened to ME on an ambulance run many years ago. A friend of mine committed suicide after having relationship problems. I found him in the basement near the furnace. He was still warm. I tilted his head back to start CPR and as soon as I blew breath into his mouth, I got blood in my mouth. When I leaned back, I saw the rifle on the washer and two spent cartridges on the floor. It didn't make sense for quite awhile and it seemed like days until that metallic taste was gone from my mouth.
Give it a read; most of it is very true.
TCSS.
Art
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Permalink Reply by Chad Furr on
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Just got on dept. @ days after completeing my schooling. Stuctre fire and Myself and another newbie (who is a whacker) were the only 2 to respond. Talking about out of the frying pan and into the fire. What a night
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Permalink Reply by chele on
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My worst was a medical call for a drowning. The lake is not in an easily accessable area and many miles from town. The boy has slipped into the water and when his cousins had failed to be able to help him they ran for help. The adults were able to locate him and started CPR prior to law enforcement arrival, which law enforcement continued until our arrival aprox 20 mins after we were paged. We took over CPR as we loaded him to take him up to the rim of the lake to meet the helicopter. The hard part came when the helicopter pulled away and boys Mother asked me if there was any hope.
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Permalink Reply by Matthew on
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I was the only one who responded to this one...it was a unseasonably warm and windy week, I was in math class when my uncle called to say we were paged out to a brush fire near a residence and no one (including himself, he was watching his kids) could go (our mutual aid was all at work as well). So I left class, drove 15 minutes to the residence and found the fire. It had burned about a acre of grass and started up a hill (not toward the house like we thought, up another hill into the national forest). I get there and I find an old man (who was on an oxegyn bottle) sitting atop a tractor, he said the wind had shifted and he caught the fire and plowed in a line about 5 minutes before I got there. We were just shooting the breeze waiting for the fire to finish burning out. He was sitting on his tractor, unaffected by the still dense smoke (thanks to his Oxegyn bottle). While he's Mr. Calm, cool and collected, my eyes were running and stinging like all get out and I sounded like I was about to hack up a damn lung from coughing. What shocked me was he called me a p**** because I couldn't "handle his smoke" lol
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Permalink Reply by Truckie Jay on
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First year in the fire service we got paged out for an aircraft down. While enroute to the area all units were given locations to search since the aircraft was down but not at the given location. My Engine was 2nd on scene when it was located. We had to hike up a hill, the plane had gone down just below an old fire lookout tower. All occupants of the plane were still seatbelted in and still burning when I got there. That is a smell and sight that will never leave.
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Permalink Reply by Matt Crawford on
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mine was christmas eve morning 2005. at about o'dark thirty the tones went off for a house fire apprx. 1 mile outside of the city limits. we are a vol. dept. so, i wound up behind the engine in my p.o.v. as we were in route the dispatcher changed the location from 1 mile outside the city limits to 8 miles outside the city limits and not a structure fire but a m.v.a. when we arrived on scene it was a head on collision between a ford explorer pulling a trailer and a honda something or another. the explorer was fully envolved with a ruptured fuel tank. the driver of the honda was intoxicated and entraped. the two victims of the explorer had somehow got out of the vehicle. to this day we still don't know how they got out. the two victims were so badly burned that i thought they were dead. at the time myself and another f/f were the only two medics in the county. i had only been an emt/b for about two months at the time. to complicate things worse, our county did not have an ambulance at the time. we relied on mutual aid from the county south of us. clay county sent an ambulance to transport the two burn victims for us. there second unit (which carried thier only set of jaws) was on another call and would be delayed for another hour. my chief made a mutual aid call to alabama for a set of jaws to extricate the entraped female. it was cold and rainy to make matters worse. it took us apprx. 30 min. to extinguish the vehicle fire (due to the fuel leak) and the poor girl that was entraped had to wait about an hour to extricated. the two burn victims were d.o.a. at the hospital (which was a 20 min ride). the hardest thing for me was when one of the widows came to our station to thank us for doing all we could to save her husband. i couln't even look her in her eyes. i did all i could,at the time i just didn't have the right equipment. now our county has two ambulances and our own set of jaws. hopefully our department will never have that helpless feeling again. that is one call that will stick with me, and i hope to never see again.
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