Thoughts, ideas, and narratives from a deaf firefighter
… and admittedly, I haven’t. That doesn’t mean we haven’t been busy lately. Here’s a brief recap along with what I did at those fires.
12/16/07: Single Family Dwelling Kitchen Fire: Arriving on the Ladder truck, I started to open up all exterior doors as requested by the officer of Ladder [...]
Since October and Fire Safety Month is almost upon us, I think this is as good a time as any to post this video of how quickly a small fire can become deadly. This video starts off with french (?) but it switches over to english subtitles. A great way to see how [...]
(EVOC = Emergency Vehicle Operators Course)
On Saturday, my department had their EVOC class. While training is a fact of life for those of us in emergency services, this was particularly exciting because it offered me the opportunity to learn about defensive driving AND drive a fire truck for the first time. In fact, [...]
Last week, I went on a rare daytime fire with my department. I say it’s rare because a) I’m usually too busy at work to be able to go and b) the paid guys in our department who work the daytime shifts (volunteers take over from 5:30pm to 7:30am) are usually gone by the [...]
I emailed my previous blog entry to the reporter of MSNBC’s coverage of PASS alarm shortcomings. In that posting, I indicated that I suspect firefighters’ prolonged exposure to loud noises and design limitations in regards to the alarms themselves should also be considered. Bill Dedman was very receptive and has kept me updated [...]
Link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16890732/
In this article, author Bill Dedman explores the shortcomings of the U.S. Government in investigating failures of the Personal Alert Safety System (PASS) devices that firefighters across the country wear.
The PASS devices are set up to emit a shrieking alarm if the user does not move for 30 seconds. Some other models also [...]
I saw some bloggers using bubbleply.com to create captions for their videos. So I decided to play around with it a bit and captioned the music video “Shine Your Light” from Ladder 49, sung by Robbie Robertson.
Ladder 49 has been held up as a more realistic version of what FF’s do day-in-and-day-out as well as [...]
In the midst of an IM discussion with Ridor discussing a bizarre phone call that came in at 2345 hours and managing the comments from my earlier posting, my FD pager went off.
23:49:01 12-01-07 150 DOMORAH DR: @TIMBERLANE WOODCRAFTERS INCORPORATED XST:
CORPORATE DR/REGENCY DR MUN:MONT NAT: BUILDING FIRE COMMERCIAL,MAP/BOX-PLAN:
47-18/ ADC:3145E5,I#F0700886,TIME: 00:06:31,NOTES: CALLER STATING A [...]
In 2005, my 1997 Saturn SL2 kicked the bucket. Really, I could’ve had it fixed but decided instead to donate it to the fire department so they could practice vehicle extrication. I figured I’d get more money back from the tax deduction that it would’ve cost me to actually fix the damn thing.
I [...]
INITIAL PAGE:
13:52:03 17-11-06 100BLK COMMERCE DR: @MIDATLANTIC PACKAGING COMPANY XST: STUMP RD/ENTERPRISE DR MUN:MONT NAT: BUILDING FIRE COMMERCIAL,MAP/BOX-PLAN:47-18/ ADC:3145D4, I#F0649650,TIME: 14:07:41, NOTES: CALLER STATED SHE WAS ADVISE TO CALL THE FIRE COMPANY CALLER DOES NOT KNOW WHAT IS ON FIRE BUT WAS TOLD BY THE SUPERVISER TO CALL CALLER IS TRYING TO FIND OUT [...]