Posts Tagged ‘EMS’

After reading yesterday’s post, a firefighter friend (and the originator of the phrase “BedHead“) reminded me of that old firefighting maxim (I included it in Population 485), “Try before you pry!”

“I have blasted a lot of doors off cars,” he wrote, “only to find the other side opens easily with a lift of the handle…”

Been there, done that.

Another favorite comment about the post, from the Facebook page: “Our unofficial mantra at my volunteer department is that as long as we’re here, we might as well bust something.”

Seriously.  Try a window punch once and then just see if you’re not dying to use it at the very next opportunity…

After 20-plus years answering fire and EMS calls, one is frequently able to develop a fairly realistic and sometimes entertaining idea of what is going on at a scene even if one’s boots aren’t on the ground and the information is minimal.  For instance, when the pager went off this morning and the dispatcher said an alarm company was reporting that an individual had triggered their medical alert button and was now not responding to phone calls, I knew that A) more often than not, these things are inadvertent and turn out to be false alarms, but B) you never assume so and everyone would be responding at speed (the call was beyond my range, so I stayed put).

There wasn’t much radio traffic for a while, just enough so that I knew how many folks were responding and from where.  During the silences, I could picture the ambulance and the handful of responders in their vehicles, all converging on the address.

Shortly after the first responder radioed that he had arrived, he contacted dispatch again to report that the house was locked and he couldn’t get anyone to answer the door.  His voice was a touch animated.  I’ve been there.  You don’t know if the woman in question is somewhere inside unconscious on the floor, or if she bumped her button while getting her car keys and is now happily motoring to the grocery store (and wondering where all those emergency vehicles are headed).

Almost immediately, a second responder comes on the radio, and says, “Comm Center, I am on scene and I have a door-spreader in my possession.”

Then there is radio silence for a long while.  But I’m grinning.  Not gratuitously – we still don’t know how serious this call is – but after 22 years of this, I have a pretty clear picture of what is going on out there.  And I’m just tickled by that phrase: “and I have a door spreader in my possession.”

What is left unsaid: “…and I can’t wait to use it.”

Sure enough, it was a false alarm.  An inadvertent button push, and the lady in question was off on an errand.  So that’s good.  And I don’t know anything more than what I’ve written.  But if I was a bettin’ man, I’d say that somewhere out there a carpenter is standing before a splintered door jamb with estimate forms in hand…

Quite a bit of first responder training lately*, and even a call or two.  With every year (20 of’em now, if my math is right), I grow more grateful that I wandered into the firefighting/EMS world.  I cherish the camaraderie, I cherish the shared language, I cherish the action, I cherish the privilege of being able to get in there and do our best to help, and above all I love how carrying a pager keeps me centered on the idea that each and every one of us is a mortal vulnerable being, so breathe deep…

*Yes, I hear you, you blue-shirted wisenheimers chuckling about me showing up at the wrong class in the wrong place…(inside joke).

Due to my schedule I don’t make as many calls with my local first responder group as I’d like, and with book tour now pretty much underway I won’t make many or any for a while.  But I enjoyed going to training the other night.  It’s just comfortable to hang out in a fire hall with people who speak the language of smoke and rescue.

Safety is always big concern, especially when we work on or near a roadway.  Nowadays we are required to wear reflective vests.  Our training officer sent us a reminder email about this recently, and used a rhyme to drill it into our heads: “If your feet are on the street, your vest is on your chest.”

Looking forward to tour…but also looking forward to being back on the street, vest on my chest.