Date: 2nd January 2008
Time: 1114
Type: Flat fire
Address: Normanston Drive Lowestoft
Initial Attendance: Normanhurst 01 and 02
Final Attendance: Make Pumps 3, persons reported – Normanshurst 05
It was my first full day back at work today. Felt like it was time to get my head around all that's got to be done in the year ahead. Also nice to get out of the house and away from the tins of chocs and other unhealthy fare.
Whenever my alerter goes off while I'm at work it seems to take an age to get out of the building, run to my car and then negotiate the journey to the station. But in reality, it probably takes me under four minutes to get in.
Today my patience was severely tested by a learner driver on St.Peters Street, outside Lowestoft College. The half mile or so from office to there went like a dream – no traffic allowing me to drive at a full thirty miles per hour. However, there was an ambulance that had pulled up next to a line of parked cars, dealing with their own incident. There was nothing coming from the other direction but this learner just sat there behind the ambulance. [Sentence deleted…]
We had just cleared this little 'jam' and got onto Normanston Drive to see Ladder 1 pulled up looking for the incident.
I wasn't in time to get on Ladder 2 but just as they were going mobile we heard the assistance message come in from Blue Watch. I drove the PRT (Normanshurst 05) the short distance to the incident.
Thankfully no one was in the flat which had quite a bit of damage to it.
As the last pump in we were the first to be made available. We immediately got a Fire Priority message from Control to proceed to an AFA (Automatic Fire Alarm) at Manor Court, Lowestoft. We got there to find that a tea towel placed on a hob had caught fire – not the best place to dry a tea towel, me thinks!
Just to explain a Fire Priority. This is the term used by Control when they need to mobilise a pump to an incident while the pump is away from its home station. As a retained crew we don't often get these so when Control call you with Fire Priority it's a bit of a shock to the system…
We hadn't been back on station more than a few minutes when the bells went sending Ladder 2 to an AFA at Lowestoft Police Station.
This time Horney Ben made the turnout but Rachael 'Princess' O'Connell didn't because she had, wait for it… gone to a Spice Girls concert!
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