Half-Life Fallout: Firefighting - Half-Life Fallout

Went to my CISD debriefing yesterday. Met with a Lt. who's an Arson Investigator with AFD and we sat down and talked for about an hour. He got a little background information about me, my training and life over the past couple of years to find out what kinda person I am, then I went back through the call step by step from the time the tones dropped to the time we got back to the station.

After that, he looked at me and asked, "Given all that information, do you think that there was anything you could've done differently to change the outcome of this guy's death". I told him, "No, he was dead by the time we had gotten there."

He said that realizing that, is the hardest part. And before we do, is usually the time we spend grieving and being depressed about what happened and start second guessing ourselves (did I do everything I could have? If I had done this or that differently, would he/she still be alive?). Of course there are the other situations that won't be so cut and dry, where we'll have to perform CPR on someone and they don't make it or we try to stop someone from hemorrhaging and they bleed out anyways. But we train so much that everything just becomes second nature. Short of running someone over with the fire truck, there shouldn't ever be a time when we'll be right when we start doubting ourselves.

We talked for a little bit longer, I asked him about his experiences and if he ever forgets the images or names (that would be a no, his first dead body was a 6 month old who died of SIDS and he performed CPR on her, but she was already gone). Another reason why I'm glad that it was him that I talked to about it was because he was there, he was one of the arson investigators there and he was there at the autopsy as well. I can't imagine what that must've been like. Something that made us both feel a little better about the whole thing was that after the autopsy, they concluded he had died of CO inhalation and that he wasn't alive when he got burned. I'm glad he wasn't burned alive.

I still don't know how I'm going to react when someone dies in my arms while I'm trying to save them. I pray that it never happens, I'd much rather succeed in saving someone that never have the chance to try at all. But I know that it will always be a 50/50 chance every time it happens. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

I hope he's at peace.

EDIT . . . thanks headmonkeys, I always feel bad about double posting, but I'll remember that from now on

Stop posting depressing stuff.

Tell us about the calls you get from 5-year-old little girls about their kitties being stuck in trees.

srsly :(

A mutual firefighter friend had this quote on his sig on another forum:
"Courage is not the absence of fear; but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear"

You guys are everyday heroes.

Cloak*, on Aug 13 2008, 08:54 AM, said:

lol, don't worry, I prolly won't post anything that's depressing again for awhile, unless something horrible happens next shift. Like I said earlier, I want to try and make a good balance of a lot of awesome things and then a few sad things for this thread.

It's so hard to go back to sleep after you get back from a call that had woken you up in the middle of the night

Well I am sympathetic but trying to see the good in the situation:

You should count yourself lucky your first DOA wasn't an Infant.

Also I have a question for a report I'm doing for my FT-3 class, I have to write two essays of three pages each, one on Fire Suppression Agents and Principles, and the other on Portable Fire Extinguishers. They're due next week, but for reasons not entirely in my control, I have to do all of the research and the vast majority of the work today.

Do you know any resources I can use on-line to get these papers done? Already using Google, btw ;)

Also, I have a question about fire lines: Is the primary function of a fire-line group to stand look-out, or to suppress the fire from the fire-line by keeping things nice and moist?

Cake21, you have my respect for being a firefighter and trying to save peoples lives. Thank you! Nice to hear that you're doing fine after that incident also.

Sleeping Mind, on Sep 9 2008, 09:36 PM, said:

Thank you very much.

Transmaniacon MC, on Sep 9 2008, 09:00 PM, said:

Yea, I'm glad it wasn't an infant as well. It would've made my first DOS 1000 times worse.

If you're looking for a forum or a website with tons of information to help with your essays, try this one . . .
http://www.firehouse.com/

As for anything else, I have a lot of notes and a thick textbook that would have all that information in it, but I can't really send them to you over the internet, sadly. Be cool if I could.

And as for your question on fire lines; fire lines are strictly wildland related. I think you already know that, I'm just stating it for anyone else that's interested. The fire lines group is supposed to make the fire line and only that. After the task has been completed though, of course they might be given another task, but they don't have to worry about anything else while they're building it. There are usually one or two people assigned as lookouts and that's all they do. They're basically every group's safety for everyone that's working in the area to lookout for the fire. They don't have to worry about anything else but watching the fire, letting everyone know when it's getting too close, when it's slowed down, or basically anything it's doing that everyone needs to know. Fire lines can be built a number of different ways too. They can either spray an area with water (they can also add some foam to it too) to slow down the fire when it gets close to it, but it will only slow it down. To stop the fire from spreading further, you'd make a fire line by digging up all the brush, grass, tress, basically anything that would be fuel for the fire in a 3 foot wide line going however long you wanted it. Or they could ignite a line of grass in front of the brush fire so that when it gets to the fire line and everything you burned, there's no fuel for it and it'll stop. If you dig a fire line, for extra protection, you could stand and keep it a bay with a couple of hoses, but you usually wouldn't have to unless the fuel that was feeding the fire was big trees and not shrubbs and grass.

Being September 11th, I wanted to work today (I had to pick up an extra shift to do so, my regular shift isn't until tomorrow) so I could see if it was any different from any other day. So far, it's been awesome. A whole group of like ten chicks from HEB came in with $300 worth of food and cooked us breakfast. I ate so much and it was wonderful. We showed them our trucks and gear after that and took them on a tour of the station and took some pictures in front of the engine. If I can get a hold of some of those pictures, I'll post them here. I get to relax for the next hour or so, then we have some training this afternoon (that's nothing really that different, we usually have training on a regular basis anyways), which should be interesting. It's trench rescue training, but the trench we're supposed to train in is kinda filled with water, so I dunno if they emptied it out or if we're gonna do something else. I hope they emptied it out, I don't really wanna swim in a muddy trench for three hours. Would be kinda funny though.

I'll let you guys know how the rest of the day went.

It's been awhile since I've updated this thread. I haven't really been visiting the forum as regularly as I used to either. Been a whole lot of work and spending time with teh womens and not a lot of spare time for messing around on my computer. Which means, that I still haven't upgraded my computer, so all these awesome games that are out now, I have to wait to play.

The rest of Sept. 11th went by good, we had a couple of calls after training, nothing too exciting. It's been almost two months since I've told you guys how things are going at work and since then, I've encountered: numerous car wrecks, countless medical calls, a few fires, and one or two more of the deceased. As I thought, it does get easier the more you see it. If I had had a problem with the sight of blood, I would've been used to it by now.

I'm riding on the Quint now for a couple of months (the quint is both a ladder truck and a pumper, even though it has a smaller water reservoir than an engine) and I like it more than the engine. The district is a little different too, most of our area are rich people and all of their houses are gorgeous. We ran a fire alarm out on this one house a couple of weeks ago, no one was home but we could hear the alarm going off. We made a 360 around the house to check for signs of fire and it took us 2 minutes to make it around to the back of the house . . .

I've picked up a few more tricks when it's my turn to cook dinner. I try to make it a point to bring something for dessert as well. I always make so much food, the guys think I'm trying to fatten them up. But they say it's real good food, so I'm not going to change anything.

There's a lot more I could write (and I will), but I didn't get much sleep last night because we got a few calls in the middle of the night (I just got off of work a couple of hours ago, it's like 8:30 or so in the am here) so I think I'll try to get a few more hours and I'll post again later.

Those fires in Cali are atrocious right now. Anyone live near there??

Cake21, on Nov 6 2008, 03:07 PM, said:

There's always an in with people if you feed them well. Well done!



EDIT Warped,

It's so surprising those fires are happening in November. But it's Cali, so it was probably warm enough to keep the wind spreading those fires. It's terrible that the neighborhoods can't build any deterrents to the fires reaching their homes.

Take it easy and relax. Because no matter how long it takes to put it out... you're still screwed.

Cake21, on Aug 5 2008, 02:01 PM, said:

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=RFZrzg62Zj0

Comingsoon6, on Mar 26 2009, 11:51 PM, said:

lol, touche

Cake21, on Mar 26 2009, 04:53 PM, said:

He's been an insensitive ******* lately. Don't listen to him. We need more stories from one-nippled fire fighters.

EDIT: Haha, nevermind, just saw your post of that video in his thread.

Comingsoon6, on Mar 26 2009, 11:51 PM, said:

Why so rude dude?

Oh - right. It is a tit-for-tat.