Category Archives: fire

Reunion I

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When I was a young recruit, we trained a lot on our reserve engine. Engine 3 was a 1963 International/Howe with a 750 GPM pump and 500 gallons of water. She was a legend in our department.
 
When delivered in 1964, Engine 3 provided an 88% increase in the department’s pumping capacity. Although only rated at 750, she was documented to pump 1100 GPM on multiple occasions. She was physically our largest engine until 1987, even dwarfing 1979′s Engine 1. I learned my chauffeur’s trade with her. She had a Waterous pump with a rotary gear primer. You had to pull a switch to drop the clutch, shift the primer transmission in, then release the clutch to raise water. Pumping required reversing the procedure.
 
Driving her was equally interesting. She was cold and unhappy in the morning. Of course, as a fire engine you had to learn to drive her cold. She had a constant mesh (non-synchronized) transmission which required double clutching all shifts. Shifting up was hard; shifting down near impossible. Missing a shift meant coming to a complete stop and starting over. Legend has it that a synchro-mesh transmission would have cost an extra $17 in 1963. Ahh, small town politics.
 
By my day, Engine 3 ran as our third-due pump and as a tanker to support the brush trucks. In that capacity, I drove her a few times in my first four years. By modern standards she was a bear, but she had character and style, and she was reliable.
 
When she was replaced in 1993, no one wanted to see her go to a collector or to scrap. We eventually sold her to our sister department in rural Vermont. The most they could scrape together was $3000.
 
This week I was contacted by a collector. Our beloved Howe has been in his care for a few years now, but he could no longer afford to keep her. He offered her to me for the grand sum of $3000.
 
You can bet I scraped it together. 
 
The saga continues in part 2.

12 years

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At 18:13 hours on Friday, December 3, 1999, Worcester Fire Alarm struck box 1438 for the Worcester Cold Storage building at 266 Franklin Street. Before the night was over, six firefighters would perish inside the hulking, windowless six-story maze of a building. Two would lose their way while searching for possible occupants; four more would die attempting to rescue them. And a district chief would be forced to stand in a doorway, face his men, and tell them, “No more.”

It’s no easier to watch today than it was to attend back then. God bless, gentlemen.

Conflagration

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Thirty years ago tonight @0235 hours, Lynn Fire Alarm transmitted box 414 for a reported fire at 264-266 Broad Street. The first arriving engine found fire showing from the front of an eight story mill and called for the Working Fire at 0238. By 0245, the district chief had struck the second, third, and fourth alarms. The Chief of Department would go on to strike the fifth through tenth alarms by 0255.

At 0257 he took the unprecedented step of declaring a conflagration. 95 engines, 25 ladders, 2 rescue companies, and 10 Civil Defense engines would eventually respond.

My own small FD would not be among them. Legend has it that we had our own fire and were the only department in the county to not attend.

More history on the Great Lynn Fire of 1981 can be found at the Box 41 website, and there is a fine pictorial of all the Great Lynn Fires available in book form.

Nostalgia

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I was organizing my iPhoto library, and I came across these.

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Engine 1 v3.0 was our last ‘rural’ fire engine.  Gas engine, manual transmission, hydrovac brakes, 3″ supply hose and a Squad 51 lightbar.  It was a relic from another era when it was new, but it served valiantly for 21 years before retirement in 2000.

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When I first joined the department, we still rode this back step.  Now it seems stupid and dangerous.  Back then it was just cold and wet.  Some days I still miss it.

 

Frankenstein’s Engine

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Long standing readers of NfMH will know that I commonly use the designation Engine 68 in my writings. Engine 68 is entirely a creation of my imagination, using experiences and impressions from my days on the engine as well as my interactions with other fire units. The 68 is simply a random number from my past, taken from a favorite ambulance once ridden with a good friend.

Imagine how tickled I was today to read the story of Baltimore City Engine 68 in Fire Apparatus Journal:

Baltimore City has rebuilt the 1993 Pierce . . .that was the first Pierce to go into service in Baltimore. . . Reserve Engine 68 was wrecked in an accident, so the department rebuilt Engine 60 using parts from several dead-lined pumpers and put it back into reserve service [as] Engine 68.

I’m not much of a Pierce fan nor am I interested in the Baltimore FD, but the notion of a real Engine 68 constructed of parts of other engines fits right in here.  Life imitating art and all that stuff. . .

Situation Ready

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Many years ago I watched a volunteer firefighter climb down from the cab of his ladder truck in nothing but shorts, boots, and a helmet. He took a portable radio and went to investigate a box alarm. I was embarrassed — for him, for his agency, for the fire service in general and myself by extension. I don’t know what he intended to do if he actually found a problem.

Yesterday at the firehouse I was thumbing through the latest edition of Fire Chief magazine. There is a Pierce ad inside the front cover. It shows their newest shiny model Photoshopped into a Detroit fire scene. It’s a pretty truck, and it has some interesting engineering features. The mechanical engineer and apparatus buff in me is intrigued.

THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS TOO PREPARED. BE SITUATION READY blares the tagline. And directly below the ad copy is this guy:

T-shirt. Some kind of vest which looks like fleece. Orange fireball gloves(?!). And untied duty boots.

BE SITUATION READY. Hey, at least he is wearing a helmet.

I can only hope he’s an actor. He’s not SITUATION READY for anything more than fueling the truck on the way back to quarters.

I could philosophize about the stereotype that this encourages, or about how some city managers value shiny fire trucks over having sufficient numbers of skilled staff. I could rant about how someone at Pierce and someone at Fire Chief magazine should have caught this. (ORANGE RUBBER GLOVES!) I could note that Pierce has a major social media campaign on Facebook and YouTube for product engagement.

But I’m too embarrassed.

Code Red

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I found myself engaged in a bit of reflection today, for various reasons. Then I stumbled across this:

Code Red

I haven’t seen that video in a long time. It looks so old now. I was in Providence attending college and buffing the PFD when it was filmed. In my heart the PFD will always run a fleet of classic Macks and Maxims. They purchased their last Mack, a 1991 CF with body by Ranger, when I was a sophomore. It’s retired now. The modern rigs may be better/faster/safer, but they don’t have the same class.

My local firehouse had a matched pair with custom Fox Point crests on their noses.

Its a calm night on the porch. In the back of my mind I can still hear Ladder 8′s old Maxim diesel roaring up Brook Street.

A tip of the hat to Michael Morse. I knew I’d seen that link somewhere recently.

Taunting the EMS gods

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I picked up a duty shift at the firehouse on Saturday. Papa Smurf, the Rat and I spent 16 hours protecting the citizens of Hometown. It was a weekend, so something was bound to happen.IMG_1607.jpg

We did the daily checks on the rig. We did the weekly checks and the monthly checks. We opened the bay doors to let the fresh air in and let the citizens know we were on duty. We cleaned. We checked the other rigs. We mounted some new equipment. We reorganized.

It was a weekend, so something was bound to happen.

We went out for lunch. We ordered hot food, took it back to quarters, and ate it in a leisurely fashion. We unzipped our boots.

It was a weekend, so something was bound to happen.

We set up a home theater system using a laptop, the training room projector, and Netflix. We watched a couple episodes of Rescue Me. We started the Emergency Management generators to exercise them. We fueled and started every portable saw in the building.

It was a weekend, so something was bound to happen.

We took the engine out for fuel. We couldn’t get Ladder 49 or Backdraft on Netflix, so we spent almost three hours ridiculing Towering Inferno. While watching Steve McQueen crawling around in the ventilation ducts, we had a good laugh over the image of him running into Bruce Willis. Then we watched Die Hard.

It was a weekend, so something was bound to happen.  (Please?)

We watched an old training video. Then we watched a Holmatro sales video from 1982 and a CPR video from 1987 just for laughs.

And finally with 20 minutes left in the shift, the tones dropped. We got out late. Such is life in public safety.

Blue Wool

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Jasmine lifts her head to look as I enter the room. Most of our cats have been with us long enough to know the familiar rustle of the plastic bag, but this is only the second time she’s seen it.

Blue wool.

It’s kept wrapped in plastic from the cleaners and  locked away in an unused closet. The urge to power-shed begins the moment they spot my dress uniform. It has a companion light blue shirt, which isn’t nearly as fun but still shows the fur better than my white ambulance shirts.

And tonight I’m wearing it again.

He was a retired chief from a neighboring department. He died suddenly and unexpectedly on Sunday morning, Father’s Day. The crew from my engine company worked him to no avail.

It’s raining lightly this evening, and it’s supposed to pour later. I briefly consider polishing up my duty boots and wearing them below my Class A, but I dismiss the idea. A retired chief gets the full patent leather treatment even if it means risking my shoes in a puddle.

One of my collar pins breaks as I attach it to the shirt; I substitute a smaller one from my EMS uniform and hope no one will notice. The black elastic band goes over my badge. Some days I wonder why I ever take it off. We only wear the badges on our dress uniforms, and it seems we only wear our dress uniforms for somber occasions. My new belltop seems too big, which is odd. It’s only six months old, and I doubt my head has shrunk. I must’ve needed a haircut when I bought it.

For years, funerals were an obligation I felt to brother firefighters. We buried retired members and a few old-timers. As time passes we bury colleagues, men I’ve actually worked with. It’s an odd feeling. It’s more personal now.

There’s a good showing from the local fire departments. Approximately 50 of us march the short distance from the firehouse to the funeral home in the rain, following the newest engine. The chaplains say a prayer and read the 23rd Psalm, and then each of us takes a turn in front of the casket individually. We come to attention, hold a salute for about 5 seconds, and then turn to leave. I’ve never learned to do it with military precision, but it’s the gesture that counts.

As we leave, the heavens open up.

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And now I sit on the darkened screen porch savoring the rush of the rain outside and the cool night air. The cats have gone inside (in search of my uniform, perhaps?) but Cricket remains. She sniffs the darkness as I hoist a beer in memory of Chief Will, Bobby Bear, Smokey, Captain Ray, Arthur, and a few more men whose names will come to me later. Rest in peace, gentlemen, we’ve got the city covered for you.