Hey, look! A train.

A friend and co-worker recently blogged about a fire he had near the railroad tracks which reminded me of a call I had early in my career which taught me a valuable lesson.

In the back of the district I was working in then there is a business park. Behind the business park is a small sound wall separating it from the railroad tracks. Behind the tracks is an empty field that runs right up to a freeway overpass. This field and the space under the overpass is routinely used as a homeless encampment and subsequently catches fire just about once a year.

We responded to a report of smoke in the area of the business park. We drove to the back of the buildings along the sound wall. This district and the overpass happen to border the city limits so we had an engine from the neighboring city responding as well. They were a few minutes behind us.

From over the sound wall we could see that there was a tree on fire across the tracks and that the field was starting to take off as well.

With our not so great position and lack of a convenient water supply and the real potential for the fire to spread quickly, my captain decided that we should use our deck gun and quickly knock down whatever we could hit. The deck gun is a large, turret mounted, fog nozzle up on the top of the rig. It is capable of putting out 1000-1200 gallons per minute. The water tank on the engine holds 500 gallons and without a water supply that meant we had less than 30 seconds to accomplish our goal before we had to shut down or risk cavitating the pump on the engine. We had a pretty good angle of attack over the sound wall and decided to douse the tree and whatever grass we could hit.

As we began to put water on the fire, the engine from the other city arrived. We knocked down a good chunk of the fire on the tree but not a lot of the spreading grass fire. Our water ran out and the field was still burning, so this other engine crew pulled a line off their rig, climbed over the sound wall, crossed the railroad tracks and began putting out the fire. In their minds, I'm sure it was a cool, cowboy move and they would be able to brag about how they put out our fire.
\We, on the other hand, were thinking like the one smart kid from Stand By Me who said, "Anybody know when the next train is due?"

As if on cue, we heard the horn in the distance.

"Trraaaaaaaainnnnnn!"

The other crew had about 100 feet of hose stretched across the tracks, fully charged. Which meant they couldn't just disconnect it because the pressure was too great. We shouted to the engineer to shut down and to the hose crew to 'bleed the line' (that is open the bale and let the water flow to help drain the hose) and, of course, to drop the hose immediately. We then joined the engineer in frantically pulling the line hand over hand back over the tracks and the sound wall. It was like a game of tug of war where the loser, instead of falling in the mud, gets hit by a train. In hindsight, it was quite comical. Even in the moment it was funny but we were a little too busy racing the train to laugh just yet.

We literally pulled the end of the line over the soundwall about 100 feet in front of the passing train. So, the valuable lessons learned were:

#1 - Don't ever stretch lines over train tracks.

#2 - Cowboys are stupid.

We work on the tracks plenty, but we never stretch lines across an active railroad track. If we are going to work on an active line, we radio whichever railroad runs on it and have them shut it down. We then confirm it is shut down before we go to work on it.

One of the things I did find funny about that incident was the fact that in most Fire Department Entry Level Physical Agility Tests there is an evolution in which you pull a hose 100 or so feet and then hand over hand pull all the hose over the finish line as fast as you can. I guess I now know why that's in the test.