We've gone through a really quiet spell since the beginning of the year. Sometimes a whole week has passed without us picking up a shout. And that's got to be good – everyone must be keeping themselves safe and not requiring our help…
But this week has seen us go from virtually nothing to seven shouts in just 5 days…
Just after 9pm on Monday the peace was shattered in the Carter household as my alerter sprang into life.
After opening the bay doors I saw from the tip sheet that we were off to the old Aldi store in Commercial Road. I was driving and, with a crew of six, we headed into Lowestoft.
As we pulled into Commercial Road we could see smoke coming from the roof and the wholetime crew (White watch) making efforts to gain entry to the blocked off car park. With the entrance now open I drove into the car park and round to the rear doors of the store. The BA board was already being set up and wearers starting to congregate close by.
We extended our hosereel so that the BA team would have 120m to play with once inside this sizeable building. A charged 45 was also readied by the entrance that the BA crews were about to use. Ladder 2 from Lowestoft South joined us, extending their own hosereel to allow another BA team to be committed to the building.
A hydrant was set into out on the road and run through to us with me keeping Ladder 2 topped up too.
While this was happening the job had been escalated to Make Pumps 4 and the Hydraulic Platform and its support pump had arrived from Great Yarmouth. Efforts were being made to gain entry to the store at the front but the security roller shutters were proving a tad problematic. However with cutters, spreaders, Remsaw and a host of other tools, access was gained.
Both our pump and Ladder 2 were then tasked with making up all our gear and hosereel and repositioning ourselves out on Commercial Road. It's about now that as the pump operator you look around for your crew to assist with making everything up. No one to be seen! They'd been given various other tasks and so it seemed very much like it was down to me then… Thankfully Gary and Dennis appeared and we were able to get things sorted quickly.
And that was the firefighting bit over… Once I'd got our pump out on to the road, run out the hosereel (extended again) I was told that it could now be made up (bugger!). All available crews were then in the store bringing down the ceiling to make sure there was no hotspots or likelihood of a fire starting again…
Little did any of us know that Commercial Road would be a regular destination for us in the coming week…