Red Sky at Morning....

I grew up on Narragansett Bay in Warwick Rhode Island. My uncle is a lobster boat fishermen and my father used to work with him on occasion before starting his own buisness. Kayacking and fishing from the breakwall were main sources of childhood, and later adulthood play. Along the way you pick up little superstitions. One is the saying "Red sky at night, sailor's delight. Red sky at morning, sailor take warning."
That little adage was playing through my head yesterday on the drive into Northern Fire Rescue as I saw the cherry red sky litterally over the station.
Day shift of my tour, 0700 to 1700 was acutally not all that bad. At around 0900 a sweet little old lady living with her sweet little old sister called 911. It seems that the sister was suffering severe hip pain and did not want to get up off the couch. We take the ambulance and find the woman sitting there on the couch with a can of ginger ale (with a bendable sippy straw) and a small plate of potatoe chips. She says she was vacuuming the day before and now it just aches.
Her grandson is "supposed to go to work and I don't want to bother him.." She doesn't realize that since he is her next door neighbor, he will see the big lights on the big green ambulance and drop what he's doing to come over and see if his eighty something year old grandmother and her ninety something year old sister (sitting quietly knitting in a chair) are okay. She wants us to take her to her doctor in the next town over.
While my partner BT explains that we can't do that and that we would have to take her to an emergency department, her grandson comes bursting in.
"Whats going on? Is everything okay."
I turn to him and say "Yeah, its cool. Hey, aren't you suposed to be going to work?" He smiles and we tell him his grandmother needs a ride to her doctor for a possible muscle pull. All of my exams showed gooseegg so I had no problem signing her off and releasing her to his care.
We go back to the station and inventory the EMS equipment until the tones come through at around 1800 (told you day shift was slow) for an elderly male who had fallen. But its the address that gives us pause, on a previous call a member of the service was assualted by the elderly man's meth head son. PD arrives before us and we end up signing the guy off as well.
Then we settle in for the night and I acutally get to watch the TV show that I wait all week for, following a fictional Toronto Police tactical team in their activities.
At four minutes after ten PM the tones come through for a structure fire. We scramble into bunker gear and jump on Engine 2, following the deputy chief out the shoot and down to what we think is the house. A simple two story ballon frame with nothing showing. Then we see a cop coming running down a long, long driveway waving his flashlight.
"You guys got heavy smoke conditions in a two story woodframe structure." He yells as we back the engine up and go up the driveway.
As advertised smoke is billowing out the door way of a pretty cool looking farm house. We pack up as BT charges an inch and three quarter and I take two vollies inside. Smoke conditions are pretty thick indeed, dark tarry smoke cascades through the front door as I push boxes of god only knows what out of the way. We can hear dogs yelping and barking and the report comes over the radio of at least ten dogs known to be in the house. Both human occupants, an invalid and a mentally retarded girl are clear of the dwelling and sitting in the chief's SUV.
The fire was reported on the second floor and thats where it seems to be as we drag the hose through a maze of stacked newspapers, old furniture and other pack rat odds and ends. I can feel things crunching under my knees so I start duck walking for fear of needles or other badness sticking through and getting me. On the stairs we start breaking long sets of windows to vent the smoke and I let a vollie take the nozzle while I get up behind him approaching the backroom where the fire is cooking.
A pretty decent little blaze is going, fueled by electrical entertainment equipment as my buddy cracks the line and starts to douse it. We break a few more windows and let the place air out. In all we maybe used 50 gallons of water, not wanting to reall damage the place. Little yappy dogs are skittering around everywhere along with a huge German Shepherd who refuses to leave his little corner of the room. Once we get the fire knocked down and the smoke clears I realize that the crunchy things I was crawling through was dog shit, about ankle deep and its all over my bunker gear.
We mop up and get out of there after midnight. Clean up back at the station has us hanging hose on the drying tower and repacking the four inch feeders we'd laid up the driveway. We scrub all the masks and refill the air pack bottles we used.
I have no sooner laid down in my bunk then the entire station goes pitch black and the phone rings.
"This is Brenda from Home Security, who am I speaking with?
"Nick from Norther Fire, what's going on?"
"Sir, this is important. How is the weather?"
"What? Its fuckin' cold. Wheres my power?"
"Sir is there an intruder in the building, if there is just say 'My aunt is ill."
I realize she wants some sort of password so I give my badge number and tell her the power went out and to leave us alone until later. While I hang up the phone the tones are dropping for an activated fire alarm at town hall and a medical service call at a frequent flyer's house. We try to call in on the radio as the phone rings again.
I get the phone while BT tells dispatch we're responding to the fire alarm. On the phone its the frequent flyer telling us not to rush, she just needs her oxygen bottle turned on because her home condenser unit is offline with the power outtage. We go next door to town hall, disable the alarm and then shoot over to the frequent flyer's house to take care of her O2.
Once we get back we begin the process of setting up the generator for the station and responding to numerous more service calls.
In short, my tour ends at 0700. I got out at 0900 and drove home, went to bed and woke up just now. Now its time for more sleep I think.