Alerter blog

Month: August 2008

  • Do you reckon we can get Ladder 2 round the KFC Drive-Thru?

    Date: 16th August 2008
    Time: 1755
    Type: Building
    Address: London Road South, Lowestoft
    Initial Attendance: Normanshurst 01, Clifton 01
    Final Attendance: Normanshurst 01, 02, 05, Clifton 01, Yarmouth HP, Yarmouth support pump, FCV.

    I had just started to cook my evening meal when I heard Ladder 1 go out on a shout. My alerter hadn't gone off so all seemed well for tonights culinary delight. Wrong!

    With only a matter of minutes to go before the whole thing was to be dished up and… sod it, the bloody alerter goes off. Make sure everything is turned off on the cooker and the saucepans removed from the hob – would be a tad embarassing having a fire in your own kitchen!

    Got over to the station to find Blue Watch turning out on the PRT. They were just about to take over from White Watch when the bells went (White Watch had taken Ladder 1). So, now it was Make Pumps four and the only thing left for us to ride was our trusty steed – Ladder 2.

    I was driving with Mel Buck in charge and in the back we had Pete Brown, Greg Osborn, Les Farr and Ben Horne.

    Traffic was a bit congested by the time we double-backed around the KFC in Marine Parade. The police hadn't, as yet, set up diversions so cars were being sent through the KFC and back out onto the southbound A12. I bet the KFC manager had hoped they would have been diverted firstly into his Drive-Thru!

    I parked Ladder 2 along with the PRT in Mill Road, leaving space for the Hydraulic Platform plus support pump from Great Yarmouth.

    The building that was on fire had smoke issuing from either the roof or the window of a flat – my view was obscured by the scaffolding at the front of the building. We already had a BA team in the building with a hosereel while others made their way up the outside using the scaffolding.

    Luckily the fire had been caught early and it didn't have a chance to spread to the roof.

    Being the driver on one of the last machines to arrive I found myself doing odd jobs – helping to check that all the flats were empty, ferrying BA sets between pumps and the BAECO board, forming the emergency BA team but nothing more exciting than that I'm afraid.

    Refreshments duly arrived from the KFC in the shape of around 30 cups of coffee – thanks KFC… Unfortunately, they couldn't provide us with anything more substantial. Ah well, perhaps we'll try and get the pump through the Drive -Thru when we leave!

    This gave us the chance to introduce ourselves to our new Norfolk colleagues, all of whom were blissfully unaware that Lowestoft is being given to them on some cheap Buy One Get One Free promotion. And Buy One Get One Free is about right – take a look on your Tesco till receipt and it says BOGOF. "What shall we do with Lowestoft?", said someone at the Boundary Committee. "BOGOF" was the reply…

    And that was that. Everything was made up and we eventually headed back to Normanshurst.

    I did get to eat my tea but over three hours after I'd planned too. A quick zap in the microwave and you never even noticed the skin that had formed on my chicken in white wine sauce!

  • New Season of Learn and Live Gets Underway

    It's been a while since I last did a Learn and Live presentation – back in May I think.

    So it was with some trepidation (regular readers will know that I like to use a few long words in my posts, just to keep them on their toes. If I've lost you already, just click on the word for a detailed explanation…) that I headed off last night to Halesworth with Rachael 'Princess' O'Connell to make two presentations.

    We arrived at Halesworth Fire Station with plenty of time to spare before the first 'gig'. I moved the pump out of the appliance bay and we started to transform the empty space into a makeshift lecture theatre / cinema.

    It seemed that most of the Halesworth crew then turned up to see the presentation and to help with crowd control. Unfortunately, the crowd control part of the job description wasn't required. Even sending an old fashioned press gang into Halesworth didn't get us any takers!
    So, the first presentation was kept in house with the Halesworth crew being our audience. Only one of them had seen the presentation so it was a good dress rehearsal for us.

    The press gang went out again and this time managed to 'persuade' eight young people to come along to the station.

    I'd asked Stuart Hostler, the Sub Officer at Halesworth, to do a short welcome including where the loos are, that refreshments were available and that this was an operational fire station and what to expect if they got a shout. Over then to Rachael for our introduction section and then me for the main part. I'd hardly got into my flow when the turnout printer (right next to me) sprang into life followed quickly by about ten alerters all going off! A short interlude followed while the crew got their fire kit on and legged it out to the pump.

    By the time we got to the section of road safety videos the pump was back. The crew quietly filed in and watched from the back. We wrapped up shortly after that with positive comments coming from our audience.

    We're back there again tonight. Hopefully there'll be a few more takers this time.