Tornado! (long- but I will throw in some pics)

I finally got another shift on the engine. I was looking forward to running my one or two calls, and having a relaxing slow day off of the ambulance. We started our morning as usual- a cup of coffee with too much sugar, and some idle conversation. Then we got down to business, loading our turnout gear onto the truck, and checking the pump and equipment. We were almost done when our tones dropped. Structure fire. We hopped in the engine and raced towards the scene, as happy as that dog on the "before" picture of the Norman Rockwell vacation painting. I got dressed on the way, and donned my air pack. Thankfully it wasn't too hot outside yet. We showed up at the house only a minute or two after the first engine. There was smoke coming from the eaves, and the windows of an upstairs bedroom. It was good and thick and black. We snapped our regulators into place and began breathing our air from our cylinders. Going into the house, the first floor was surprisingly clear and visibility was good. The first team was already upstairs, and we could hear their muffled voices as they worked, along with the sound of breaking glass. We have to break the windows- this lets out the heat and some smoke, and makes the visibility a lot better for us. It also lets any victims have some better air to breathe, and in turn a better chance of surviving. The attack team put the fire out, and we got to go upstairs and do overhaul. Putting the fire out is fun. Overhaul- not so much. The fire had been contained to one bedroom, so it was our job to get rid of everything that was burnt. I took my axe and started wailing on the window frame. Breaking all of the wood out, we were able to throw the soaked remains of a mattress out the window. We worked hard to clean up the room, and make sure there was nothing else that was going to burn. We exited the house after a while, shed our now filthy and soaked gear, and grabbed some water to cool off. We were absolutely exhausted, and it wasn't even ten a.m. yet.

We went back to the station to get cleaned up, but ended up getting called to a crazy old lady, who wasn't sure what was wrong with her. We walked into the house, and she was walking around her living room, ranting and raving in a thick New York accent about "these damn phones don't work here. I could have dropped dead right here on the damn cahpet (carpet) and nobody would even know". I asked her to sit on her couch, and attempted to take her pulse. She was still carrying on, and was using her hands to aid in her animated complaints. I tried to hang on, but had to tell her three times to hold her arm still. I then began questioning her as to why she called 911, because she still hadn't told us what was bothering her. She looked at me in all seriousness, and said "ask my daughtah (daughter), she'll be here in an hour". The ambulance crew walked in then and I said to the paramedic "this is Mrs. So and so, she is 80 years old and is 24". He nodded in understanding. 24 means crazy. Not just a little crazy, but absolutely nuts. He tried to evaluate her, but she began stroking his face and talking about how young and handsome he was. He tried to determine if she was confused at all, and asked her who the president was. she replied with "oh that damn Bush!". He asked what her home address was, and she looked at him saying "how often do I mail myself a damn lettah? (letter)". She then gave him her address, and started screaming "don't make me angry! I am a New York Slovakian!" then started laughing, with her flock of seagulls hairdo bobbing above her head. Thankfully her family showed up and took her to her doctor in their car. She may have been nuts, but all her vital signs checked out just fine.

We went back in service, and headed back to the station to pick up supplies. We had hydrants to finish. Every six months, we have to manually check every fire hydrant. We turn it on to check the water, grease it, and paint it. They are slow going, and we can only do about 8 or 10 of them an hour. I did the first ten. My partner did the second ten, then we ate lunch, and went back at it. We had to be done by four for some reason (county policy- no turning hydrants after four or on weekends. I don't understand it but have to follow it.) We turned more after lunch, taking turns. All in all we got 52 hydrants done. That is a lot, especially given our busy morning.

We got back to the station and started doing paperwork. Fifteen minutes later, the guys on the ambulance called and asked us to meet them at a local restaurant for dinner. The four of us sat down and ordered our food. No sooner had the waitress walked off, than the ambulance got another call. Such is our life. My partner and I got our food and started inhaling. Unfortunately its a bad habit that everyone in this line of work picks up. You have no idea when you will get your next call, so you eat as quickly as you possibly can. We ate, and halfway watched some of the TVs along the wall. Slowly, each TV program was interrupted with a weather alert. Neither of us paid any attention, until dispatch came on with an all call- alerting everyone that the tones to alert us would no longer be dropping so everyone had to just listen for their unit number. They also advised that we were under a tornado warning. We paid our bill and headed back to our station. We were nice enough to pay for the ambulance crew's food and have it boxed up for them too. We backed into the bay, and watched the clouds roll in. This storm was headed straight for our station at forty miles an hour.

(Now, I enjoy blogging about work, it's a great way for me to get some of this stuff out. From here on out in this entry, I will try to make sense, but I have some cool pics to share too, so bear with my new form).

The clouds were pressing down on us. I grabbed my camera and tried to catch some of the spectacular lightening that was streaking through the sky. My shutter fingers weren't fast enough, so I took this pic of our flag:

Literally TWO MINUTES later, I took this picture of the stoplights in front of our station.

Those stoplights were blowing in the wind, and the poles supporting them bent in half, but didn't snap. The hail started pelting us in the bay. It was golf ball sized, and was coming in sideways and hard! I immediately thought of my nice new minivan and cringed. Thank goodness I have a low deductible on my insurance, because this stuff was surely breaking my windshield and beating up my hood. I didn't have time to sulk for long, because dispatch began sending units in every direction. We got called to a local trailer park with "multiple trees and power lines down on multiple homes with multiple people trapped". Here we go. We tried to turn out of our station, but were blocked by trees down in the road. We hopped out with a chainsaw and cut a lane open. We proceeded about ten feet further down the road, only to find another tree across the road. this was going to be slow going. The second tree had power lines in it. We can cut all the trees out of the road we want, but power lines are way out of our league. There is nothing we can do for that but wait for the power company. We turned around and rerouted ourselves towards the trailer park. We turned onto another road, only to be met by more trees, and more power lines. after a half hour we told dispatch we were absolutely trapped until the power company could get there. Dispatch sent more crews to the trailer park. There were only two neighborhoods that we had access to from our enclosure, and one happened to by by far the worst one hit. We spend the next six hours, going forward ten feet at a time and cutting trees. Then we had to go on foot, house to house, carrying the chainsaw and an axe and halligan tool, and search each one for people trapped. There were wires down everywhere. We found one house with a major gas leak from a falling tree. The roots had severed the line when they came up. The home owner had crimped the line off. We reminded them to support their nicotine habits elsewhere, and moved on. The gas company would be there sometime in the next six days. It amazed me how in the face of tragedy, neighbors who never said two words to each other began helping each other out. People who would have been in their cars, talking on their cell phones, and inconvenienced by us going to help someone else, suddenly waved as we slowly drove by. We came across this wonderful helpful guy too. I have a feeling he was already three sheets to the wind before the storm hit, but we found him with a cold beer in one hand, and a running chainsaw in the other, helping as best as he could. We moved away from that tree as fast as we could. If he was going to sever the wrong kind of limb, no ambulance could ever get to him, and I didn't want to watch. Gotta love the shirtless wonder.

We came upon this house. There is a tree on it, just like every other house in the neighborhood, but this picture amazes me because this is actually a two story house. The leaves had buried the entire first floor.

And then we came across more cars that looked like this than I could possibly count.

We ended up in that neighborhood all night long. After a certain point in time, there was only so much we could do, and all the neighborhood kids had their bright eyes on our flashing lights. I did what I could do make the tragedy a little better for these families, and began handing our little plastic fire hats to all of the kids. A couple of the adults got teary-eyed at the gesture.

After everything we had done today, I still managed to smile.

We finally made it back to our station around two thirty, stinky, sweaty, exhausted, but thankful to have no serious injuries or loss of life. On my way home from work, I had to detour through several neighborhoods because of cleanup still in progress, and got some more pics. The slight clearing you can see in this first one is actually the road!

The weather channel was even on location interviewing the people from this house about the six trees that landed on it.

This tree sliced through their garage, barely missing the custom hot rod parked below.

And finally some more storm damage. Thanks for reading. Stay safe out there.