Alerter blog

Month: August 2009

  • RTC drill with car upside down…

    I must be keen…

    Saturday morning and I'm over at the fire station with two of my retained firefighter colleagues, taking part in an RTC drill.

    Green Watch with Mel in charge had got a fairly elaborate scenario set up and it really needed a few extra bods to make it work.

    The scenario was that the smoke house was actually a multi-storey car park and our car had come over the edge, landing on its roof in 6 foot high bushes. Where are all the neatly trimmed bushes when you need them?

    The car had two casualties, both still held in by their seatbelts.

    We made our equipment dump and, when looking at it afterwards, it looked like we had completely emptied the ERT of all its kit!

    By splitting into pairs we started to dismantle the car. The hatchback came off first simply by stripping the trim and undoing a couple of nuts. It was now that the child casualty took a turn for the worse and had to be removed immediately on a longboard.

    On the other side of the car, in the space created in the thick bush, both doors were removed, including the B post to give maximum space to get at the remaining casualty.

    And, after a bit more space creation we were ready to get our big casualty on to the longboard, strapped on and then out through the side of the car.

    That was it, job done.

    It was a good drill, giving us the opportunity to use a wide range of kit that's carried on the ERT. Rightly or wrongly, depending possibly on the rank you hold, the one piece of kit that is so obviously missing is a set of StabFast.
    The thinking is that the ERT will always have other appliances with it and they will have at least one set of StabFast. However, when the ERT arrives on scene first the quick deployment of StabFast could make all the difference in the minutes before the next appliance turns up.

    Anyway, I digress…

    Sad thing is that, just as we are getting acquainted with the ERT and its capabilities, we'll be waving goodbye to it in two months time when it disappears to the new Lowestoft South fire station. We then revert to a tin opener and a large hammer!

    Bitter and twisted? Me? Never!

  • Follow me on Twitter…

    Right…It's Friday and I'm getting far too technical for my own good!Twitter-01-large

    In a vain effort to acquaint myself with the intricacies of Social Networking, I have signed up with Twitter. Hopefully I've linked this blog with my Twitter account and, for anybody I know on FacePaint or whatever it is, that one too.

    If I Tweet it should appear on here, and if I blog it might just appear on Twitter!

    So, why not follow me on Twitter. With any luck there'll be information on shouts and much more.

  • Do Cows Doggy Paddle?

    If not perhaps they do the breast stroke or should it be the udder stroke?

    Anyway, Friday morning and I just about made it into work but found myself retracing my steps to the fire station at the behest of my alerter.

    The tip sheet said 'Cow in 6ft of water'. Silly cow – should have used the shallow end!

    So we now found ourselves in Ladder 1, following the Water Rescue van and with the Unimog trailing behind, as we headed off to Barsham, near Beccles. Unfortunately, the location we had been given was slightly out. We were on the south side of the River Waveney and we needed to be on the other side. So our little procession went to Bungay and doubled back along the Bungay bypass and then through the country lanes to Geldeston. We finally ended up at a small boatyard where Plan A and B were formulated.

    As it turned out Plan A worked. The water rescue team, fully suited and booted, went up the river in a pleasure boat, lassooed the cow and escorted it to a muddy slipway where it waddled up on to dry land.

    Job done.

  • Blanket Coverage at RTC in Lowestoft

    Firstly, apologies for the delay in posting about this RTC. It happened over a week ago but, what with one thing and another, I never got round to tapping away on the old keyboard.

    Anyway…

    Last Saturday evening I had just about managed to stay awake through the latest Indiana Jones film only in the vain hope that a bloody big marble would roll down a cobweb shrouded tunnel and run poor old Harrison Ford over… Sadly, I didn't make it and was woken from my slumbers by my little black number – that's my alerter and not the little black number that I wear on special occasions and at weekends (joking, honest!).

    Over at the fire station and it's a full house of lights up – the ERT (NT06) is already gone with the Watch onboard, next to go will be Ladder 1 (NT01) and finally Ladder 2 (NT02).

    The incident is barely a mile from the station, single vehicle totally demolished a section of 6 foot high wall before ending up across the road.

    The car is stabilised, glass managed and an equipment dump set up. While the cutting starts I put back an informative message to our Control and ask for an ETA of the ambulance.

    Once they've arrived and the paramedic is happy, the roof comes off and the young lady is removed on the long board. While being assessed on the ambulance trolley one of the firefighters covers the casualty with one of our ancient grey blankets. She is then wheeled away to the waiting ambulance.

    Then its packing all the gear up and also time to retrieve our blanket. The following conversation is real and I can only assume that the ambulance technician is very new or, indeed, still in training:

    Firefighter (after knocking politely on the ambulance door): Could we have our grey blanket back please?

    Technician: We're using it.

    Firefighter: Could you not swap it for one of yours?

    Technician: But we don't carry grey blankets.

    Firefighter: What have you got then?

    Technician: Just these white hospital blankets…

    Firefighter: Any chance of swapping our grey blanket for one of those then?

    Hmm…

  • Four Lowestoft Fire Engines head over to Norfolk…

    We had taken what seemed an age to line up three fire engines, the Unimog and the Water Rescue van in front of the Fire Station.

    Everything had to look just right. The pumps had been washed, tyre black had been applied and the Union Flag was flying dutifully at half mast.

    Normanshurst was preparing itself for the funeral cortege of Keith Boyce to pass the station. And, as Sod's Law predicts, the bells went with about 10 minutes to go. Blue Watch, with our own Dennis Newton in charge, were off to Great Yarmouth to a Make Pumps 5 incident (subsequently went to Make Pumps 9).

    As they disappeared off in the direction of Yarmouth we repositioned the vehicles to fill the gap that the departed Ladder 1 had left.

    And, as mentioned in my previous post, just as the 'stand at ease' command was given the bells went again and our alerters sprang into life too.

    We were off to Gorleston to an AFA at a sheltered accommodation complex.

    A slight stand off occurred between that nice Irish Lady who resides in our SatNav and Al, who lived in Gorleston, over the best route to the incident. We duly followed Al's directions, did three sides of a square and popped out on the road we had crossed just a few hundred metres back!

    Nice Irish Lady 1 – Al 0

    Seems that the culprit was a burnt piece of toast. If I didn't know better I'd think my mother-in-law had popped over to Gorleston for a visit! She is the only person who burns toast in our toaster, swears blind it's the toaster's fault and makes me consider having a BA set 'ready to go' at home!

    I'd just put in the Stop message when Control asked if either us or Clifton (they'd been sent to the same piece of toast) were now available. We were and they asked Clifton to standby which normally means they are about to get a Fire Priority. Then our mobile rings and its Control asking if we want to go to an RTC in Gorleston. I said that we'd love to go. So, all on board for a dash through some of the back roads of Gorleston. This time Al was determined to win in the fight with the Nice Irish Lady who lives in our SatNav. Al's instructions weren't quite as precise as that of the Nice Irish Lady and she definitely doesn't use as many expletives as him, but we got there just fine.

    So, via the back door we arrived at the RTC – two vehicles with one female casualty medically trapped. A pump from Sprowston was there, probably already on standby in Yarmouth what with the Make Pumps 9 still ongoing. It looked like no cutting was needed as the ambulance crew didn't want the roof removed. The ERT from Normanshurst was on its way but was turned back as it was no longer required.

    And so ended yet another drought of shouts and we had to send everything we had into Norfolk to get these…