Stay On Target....Stay On Target

Very early on in my career I responded to a report of a kitchen fire. When we pulled up on scene there was no smoke and the residents were standing in the driveway and a few still inside the house and garage. In my inexperience I took this as a sign that there was no fire and very little to be done. This turned out to be true but it is still the wrong attitude. The emergency is the emergency until proven otherwise. As my Captain headed inside to check it out I noticed that a teenager in the driveway looked like he had dipped his hand in wax and all the wax was running off the tips of his fingers. I then noticed the hose and the bucket of water at his feet and realized he was burned and that the skin was sloughing off of his hand.

Again, in my inexperience, I got tunnel visioned. I stopped to deal with the kid instead of following my Captain into what could have been a kitchen fire. Again, it wasn't, but I did the wrong thing. As a new medic and relatively new firefighter it can be very difficult not to get that tunnel vision. It is definitely a discipline to look at the bigger picture and prioritize your actions accordingly.

There had been a small grease fire in the kitchen that was quickly extinguished by the residents. The boy's hand had been burned by the boiling grease. There was no extension of the fire in the kitchen so we were able to turn our attention to the medical aspect of the call. We provided pain relief and continued cooling measures with the garden hose and the bucket until the ambulance arrived and took him off to the hospital.

That call really stuck with me. No harm was done by my mistakes and I handled the medical aspect well, but it definitely taught me a lesson about not letting my guard down, staying on task, and not taking anything for granted when it comes to fires. I had also never seen anything like that kid's hand before that day; it is truly a bizarre sight.