Halloween

I signed up to work overtime at my old station with my old captain. The engineer on duty the next day was working overtime at a station right by my current one so he asked if we could swap. No big deal, I still had a good crew to work with and would be closer to my home station in the morning.

Unfortunately that station can get busy, especially at night. They had actually been shut out the day before (no calls) which is pretty unheard of for them so we kind of knew we were going to pay for that. We drilled and ran a couple calls during the day. As predicted, we wound up being up all night (four calls after midnight). Our first night call was for a diabetic who is one of their regulars. His blood sugar was in the teens and we started an IV and gave dextrose. He came around and of course didn't want to go with the ambulance. This sometimes happens and we just make sure the patient has some real food (longer lasting sugar) and someone to watch over them. We have to make sure they eat and are mentating well enough before we can leave. In this case we were on scene for an hour getting this guy to eat and stabilize. We probably should have just pulled the plug and made him go to the hospital but we were being excessively nice. After that we got up at 2 o'clock for back to back calls and again at 5 o'clock a.m. It was one of those nights where the calls are spaced just far enough apart to never get back to sleep again.

I went from that station to my regular house for my regular 48 hour shift. My house is supposed to be the slow one, but once again we ran a couple calls in the day and 2 more after midnight. I think I got 3 hours sleep on the overtime and maybe 4-4 1/2 on my first shift. The second shift wasn't as bad until the next morning when I was getting ready to come home.

At 7:30ish that morning I got a call from the BC telling me to stay put at my station because I might get mandatoried. They had one person to call before me but he was out on a medical call and they had to wait for him to get back to the station.

Did I mention this was Halloween?

Well, the guy ahead of me claimed Family Care issues (which is the only thing that can get you out of a mandatory) and so I got stuck with it. The mandatory was at my old station with my old firefighter so at least that part was good, but it meant that I would miss going out with my kids and that my wife would be stuck dealing with them for an additional 24 hours (now 96) by herself.

The firefighter had also been mandatoried and was as unhappy as I was about it. He made a good point that Halloween was the one holiday we can't do on a different day. If we work Christmas or Thanksgiving, we celebrate the day before or day after, no big deal. He asked if I though his neighbors would look at him funny when he took his kids trick or treating on November 1st.

We had an overtime captain with us for the first 12 hours and the regular captain was coming in at 8 that night. We kept the day low-key and did our regular engine and tool service and decided to just go pick up burritos instead of shopping and cooking. There is a small taqueria right across the street and down a couple so we decided to just walk over there and get dinner. So, at about 5:30 we put on our uniforms, grabbed radios, and headed across the street. We had just reached the door of the place when the radios went off: "Engine 56, Truck 57, Engine 57, Engine 40, Rescue 19 respond for a structure fire residential".

Well we took off running back to the station pulling off our uniform shirts as we went. I must admit, I always think of the scene in the Superman movie where he is running and pulls his shirt open to reveal the iconic S whenever we do that. In any case, as I put my turnouts on and checked the map for hydrant locations I knew that it was going to be a race to see who got there first. The house was in the next district over, but pretty close to the border of our district. As we flew down the street towards the address I commented that I couldn't see any smoke. Just as I said that though we could all smell it. We saw the other engine coming towards us from the opposite direction. We pretty much met at the intersection but they made the turn first and took command. We swung in after them and went to assess the structure for ventilation. There was a decent amount of light colored smoke coming from the garage as we made our way around the house. We could see in almost every window and most of the way through the house and it was all clear of smoke so we were pretty confident that whatever fire there was would be confined to the garage. A crew went upstairs to confirm there was no fire or people inside: all clear. The initial engine crew made there way into the garage by way of a side door and were able to move through the cluttered and smoky garage to unlatch the garage door which allowed us to open it up from the outside.

There was a smoldering fire in the middle of the packed garage which was quickly and easily extinguished. It really didn't classify as a 'structure fire' but it gave us something to do and added a little excitement to my day. We helped pick up and load all the hose for the attack engine and went back to our station. I realized on the way back that we didn't have anything to hand out to trick-or-treaters if we got any. We stopped at the little market on the corner and the firefighter ran in and got a bag of blow pops.

If we weren't hungry before we certainly were now, so we put our uniforms back on and went back to the taqueria. This time we got our food and ate without interruption. We only had one small group of kids come to the door but at least we were prepared.

That night, the engineer due to relieve me called in sick and I almost got mandoed again. There was only one guy ahead of me on the list with the proper qualifications and if he had cried Family Care, I would have been hit again. Fortunately he accepted the mando and I was able to go home.