Something Different Every Day

You really do learn new things all the time in this job. For instance, I didn't know that lumberyards and sawmills simply packed semi trailers completely full of sawdust to get rid of the stuff.

I suppose that seems obvious now that I think about it, but it hadn't occurred to me before.

I know this now because one of them caught fire.

We had started our day off with a code blue first thing after breakfast. The rest of the day had been training, exercising, and a couple more medical calls. About 8:30 that night the structure fire tones went off and we responded to a "commercial structure with a roof on fire" in the next district over. We were second on scene and were initially assigned water supply, which is not a great assignment for our particular rig. Fortunately another rig got there right behind us and took the hydrant for us which left us free to do truck work. We followed the first engine into a pallet yard where one of these sawdust trailers was sitting inside a covered structure of some sort. There must have been some sort of spontaneous combustion or else something got in the sawdust and smoldered until it broke through the top of the pile. There was active fire out the roof of the structure when we arrived.

The trailer itself is open at the top and so the flames had gone straight up and started burning through the roof. I put the aerial ladder up to the roof and the rest of my crew climbed up to start pulling the plywood roof sheeting off and then try to extinguish the fire from above. I set off to help the first engine with the water supply and connecting hoses. Pretty quickly it became apparent that we weren't going to be able to do much more than knock down the initial flames until someone could come and tow the trailer to someplace where we could access it better. It was just so packed full that the hoselines couldn't really penetrate. Parts of the side of the trailer had burned through and if we just tried to flood the thing with water, the weight would probably have caused the trailer to fail and burst open.

After awhile someone from the business showed up and moved the trailer out into the open. Our crew was assigned to overhaul the structure and extinguish any remaining fire there. When we finished that we went to see what was happening with the trailer. We found the other crew using a circular saw to cut open the panels on the side of the truck and attempting to poke at the sawdust with pike poles and roof rakes to get it to spill out. They were then hosing down what spilled out. It was like fighting a fire in the worlds largest hamster cage and it was not very effective. We decided to put a ladder up to the trailer and a couple of guys went inside with a hoseline flowing foam and just doused the thing. It made a hell of a mess but it worked. The foam helped the water penetrate deep enough to get the smoldering stuff and they'd pulled out enough sawdust to give the guys room to work and move around inside.

The whole thing took about three hours. By the time we got back to the station, cleaned all of our equipment, and showered it was after midnight. I laid down in bed at 12:13 and we responded to a medical at 12:23. We got back from that one about 01:00 and got up for the next one at 01:30. I think I fell asleep about 02:30 and slept until 07:00 when we got up to start day two of the tour.

But, hey...I learned something new.