What an interesting start to my April fools day. 1st we get paged out at 2am to the furthest most address in our fire district. A domestic dispute/patient versus train. My mind races with questions. Were told to stage and wait for LEA to clear the scene. 30 minutes later, LEA cancels us and the rescue because the guy is either not hurt or refuses treatment. We return to the station to discover that the bay door will not shut. Climb up on top of the engine and manually shut it. No problem. Back in bed by 3:15. Takes an unusually long time to fall back to sleep. Finally around 4:30 I succeed. Wifes alarm goes off at 5am, she gets ready and leaves, I fall back to sleep. The pager goes off at 6am, trash fire. Crud, I discover that I left my portable radio in the engine. Get to station and manually lift the door open, climb on top of engine to lock door open. Dispatcher mumbles the address but states clearly that its the same place we went to earlier. The subject that was hit by the train has a warming fire under a car port. We are instructed to stage and wait for LEA. We stage. After 30 minutes of waiting, we ask dispatch ETA for LEA. They state that they have just left a briefing at Tower Hill. Almost 30 minutes later, they show up and turn down the road. We continue to stage. LEA tells us we can cancel because the fire is out. We turn around and head back to the station. Two minutes later, dispatch comes up on the air and informs us that the patient is now going to need medical treatment/assessment. We turn back around, and head back. Dispatch informs us that the officers will bring the subject out to the mailboxes on the dirt road and not to go down the driveway. So we go to a batch of mailboxes that should be where the address is but none of them have the address that were dispatched to. We decide to wait there anyway. Rescue shows up and we wait some more. Eventually we see the two ASO units coming out. The patient is obviously injured, looks like a broken arm or collarbone. Turns out he was trying to jump onto the train so he can get to work. We help prepare him for transport and we are released. We return to the station at 7:45. We leave the engine outside and the center bay door open, head home for shower hoping to get to work before 8:30. Very thankful I have a boss that supports my work in the fire department.
Posted on: Tue, 01 Apr 2014 14:30:30 +0000