Alerter blog

Month: April 2008

  • How not to catch a bus…

    Date: 23rd April  2008
    Time: 1045
    Type: RTC
    Address: A12, Lowestoft (junction with Blundeston Road)
    Initial Attendance: Normanshurst 05, 01 and 02

    Seems ages since our last shout… Always comes as a shock when your alerter goes off after such a long gap.

    Anyway, got to the station after what seemed the slowest drive ever. People weren’t just sticking to the speed limit, they were halving it instead!

    Blue Watch have taken the PRT (Normanshurst 05) and we take Ladder 1 (Normanshurst 01) with a crew of four. Mel Buck in charge, Pete Brown driving and myself and Al Soards riding BA.

    There wasn’t anything to do when we arrived. A double decker bus had been rear ended by a private car. The back of the bus was crumpled and it was leaking something on to the road, so Al just added more of the absorbent mixture we carry to the sack full put down by Blue Watch.

    The bus wasn’t in service at the time as it was on a test run with two mechanics who had only just finished some repairs on it… They’ll be putting in some overtime on it now!

    And that’s about it. So there we were, primed and ready for action but, thankfully, we weren’t needed to cut the car driver free.

  • Fire engine is rescued from beach

    This article is courtesy of the BBC and can be found on their news website…

    A fire engine had to be towed off a beach in Somerset after it became stuck in the sand.

    Stuckinsand Firefighters were called to Berrow beach – near Burnham-on-Sea – on Thursday evening after reports of a gorse fire on the sand dunes.

    Three tractors were needed to pull the trapped Devon and Somerset vehicle out.

    Five days ago an ambulance became stuck on Burnham-on-Sea beach and on 5 April a man and two young girls were rescued from a 4×4 stuck in the mud at Brean.

    Mark Newman from the Burnham Area Rescue Boat (Barb) charity said the firefighters were "simply unlucky".

    "We would advise other motorists to take special care when driving along the local beaches avoiding sand and mud.

    "It’s been a very active few weeks of beach incidents for Barb’s 24-hour rescue crews."

  • BA drill – search and rescue

    There always seems to be such a long gap between our BA drills. And we haven’t had any decent BA jobs recently so last nights BA drill was a welcome ‘refresher’.

    The scenario was that we had turned up to a ‘persons reported’ incident at a second-hand furniture store with a flat above.

    The first team committed were Andy ‘Cheesey’ Armes, Howard Clarke and Rachael ‘Princess’ O’Connell. They went into the smoke house at first floor level (the flat) and had to find their way to the staircase, down to the ‘shop’ and carry out search and rescue.

    Once they had reached the ground floor, our team (myself and Ian ‘Billy’ McMillan) were sent into the flat searching off the lefthand wall. I went as number one, feeling my way through the smoke, doing the BA Shuffle and keeping up a running commentary (this helps to plant the route in your mind and also keeps your oppo informed of what’s happening).
    We made our way through the kitchen, lounge and into a small bedroom – searching each room thoroughly as we went. In the bedroom I could just make out the cot and inside a tiny ‘baby’. By rummaging in the bed clothes I found another ‘infant’ while Billy checked the rest of the room. A quick radio message back to BA Entry Control to confirm we had casualties and were making our way out.

    Billy took over the lead while I followed carrying the two dummies. Once we had got these outside we checked the contents of our cylinders and then recommitted to complete the search of the ‘flat’.

    All in all, it was a good wear – we completed the task, found the casualties and only picked up a few minor learning points…

    Time then to service the BA sets and then make up the two hosereels from the Training pump.

    The station clock had just summoned up enough energy to nudge over to nine o’clock and the bells went – two pump shout…  Read more in the next post…

  • Is it bedtime yet?

    Date: 9th April  2008
    Time: 0120
    Type: Shed
    Address: Normanston Drive, Lowestoft
    Initial Attendance: Normanshurst 01
    Final Attendance: Normanshurst 01, 02

    Knowing that I’d got a heavy day of Learn and Live presentations today, I just knew that we’d get a shout in the middle of the night. Sod’s Law, call it what you like.

    I must have only been dozing because I heard the wholetime crew turnout – living barely 100 yards from the station and knowing (sadly) the sound of our engines means you don’t have to have the hearing capacity of a bat to know that! I remember thinking to myself, "What’s the betting the alerters go off?" And immediately fell asleep again. It could only have been a few minutes later and, yep, the blessed alerter kicks off, shattering the peace. I swear those things could raise the dead!

    Again, Sod’s Law states that whenever I can’t be arsed to get clothes ready for such an eventuality, we get a shout. It’s then a case of fumbling around looking for clothes, making sure you go to the right wardrobe – would be a tad unseemly to turnout dressed in womens clothing!

    Anyway, my slow departure from home meant I arrive at the station at the same time as Cheesey, who went as driver and I took one of the BA positions.

    It was a Make Pumps 2 to a shed between two houses on Normanston Drive, barely a quarter of a mile away.

    On arrival we gave our water to Ladder 1 (Green Watch). Howard Clarke and I donned our BA sets as Green Watch already had one team working on this made-to-last, brick built shed. We weren’t required so dumped our sets and ‘Horney’ Ben and I took Ladder 2 off in search of a hydrant. We were able to locate one nearby and were back to dump more water into Ladder 1 fairly quickly.

    It took the combined efforts of our two crews to remove tiles from the shed and to extinguish the smouldering joists and rafters.

    Everything wrapped up after 3am with our second crew also getting a turnout on the PRT to a washing machine that had been set alight in a car park off the High Street.

    I think I got back to sleep after 4am only to be woken by my alarm at 5.30am.

    Just hoping that I wouldn’t nod off in the Learn and Live presentations…

  • Fire in derelict building and pumping lots of water…

    I've lost track of the times that we've collectively commented that a Tuesday drill night passes so much quicker when we are actually doing something practical.

    And last night proved the point.

    After doing all the weekly, monthly and quarterly tests on Ladder 2, we changed into fire kit and mounted our trusty steeds (Ladder 2 and the PRT) for an exercise in the drill yard.

    I was driving Ladder 2 and we were the first to be mobilised to the incident – fire in a derelict building, persons reported. The story was that three children had been seen entering the building, smoke was then seen issuing from the windows but that the children hadn't been seen leaving.

    The two high pressure hosereels were run out, ready for two BA teams to be sent in searching for the children. A covering jet was also provided, as usual, just in case.

    The BA teams made good progress, finding two of the casualties before we were warned that the building was in danger of imminent collapse. We then needed to warn the BA crews to evacuate the building as quickly and safely as possible. BA Entry Control contacted the crews on their handheld radios backed up by the rest of us on our Acme Thunderers. These are whistles, similar to those used by football referees, which we all start blowing in short blasts until the BA teams have exited the building.

    A quick debrief followed and then all hands needed to make the kit up.

    Ladder 2 was due for its quarterly tests on the main pump and the Lightweight Portable Pump (LPP) – which is neither lightweight nor particularly portable!

    So it was off to Caldecott Road and set into Oulton Broad with the hard suction, primed the main pump and then suck water from the broad and squirt it back in again. After the required 15 minutes of this it was the turn of the LPP.

    And those two hours of drilling had flown by. [Section deleted…]