Linky
Uncle Bob has another fire tale for you kiddies, so gather 'round. Since this actually made the local news, and because my cyberstalker hasn’t bothered me for quite some time, I’ll reveal the IRL names for some of the towns in my area. Mayberry is Gatesville, NC; Hooterville is Gates, NC; and Pixley is Eure, NC. Not mentioned in any news is Betsytown, in reality Elizabeth City.
While on the way home yesterday, VWife wanted me to stop at WallyWorld to pick up some stuff. So, I did, which is only marginally relevant because it put me behind schedule for going home, and I had EMT class last night When I got out of there, I was whipping along a back road, and there’s a cap in the ditch, and a very upset woman getting out. 'Natch, I stopped, and I made sure she wasn’t injured. She wasn’t, but her car was STUCK, and she was upset about it. I tried to call the Suffolk (VA) dispatcher to report her car in the ditch, but my cell phone couldn’t keep a carrier, and the discussion was bad.
After I made sure she was all right, and after someone else called a tow truck, I left. I got about a mile down the road, and my phone rang. I must have gotten to the magical distance close or far enough to a tower to work, and it was the dispatcher. I relayed the info I had about the stuck lady, and she wanted to know exactly what happened and where, because there was another wreck on the same road about 2 miles farther south.
Okaaaaaaayyyy. Sure enough, no sooner than I hung up than I saw a pickup truck in the ditch also, but this one was all bashed in after having flipped and rolled. There were construction tools and paraphernalia all over the place. A bomb wouldn’t scatter stuff that far.
I got out again, introduced myself to the cops on scene as a rescue squad member, and asked if they needed any help. Well, yes. The driver was already gone, and he kept talking about a passenger he had with them. Oh, shit. He also was intoxicated and had head trauma, and anything he said was suspect. I helped the cops search the weeds for an ejected victim; no one was found. So I was delayed by about 20 more minute…
You might see where this is going. Nothing big ever happens out of the blue and by itself. Nothing big happens when you’re relaxed, either.
All this time, my pager is on, but because I’m out of my car, I don’t pay attention to it. It was busy, and because I was still in Virginia, all I hear are the clicks of people keying the mike to talk. It was happening a lot.
Soon after I got across the state line, the static was going away and I could hear the traffic. The rescue squad and the Hooterville and Pixley fire departments were evident, but I could not tell if Mayberry was there. It took me about 10[sup]-16[/sup] of a second to decide to detour through town and see if the station doors were open. They were, but the newlywed chief and 3 other guys were there hanging out. We were officially on standby. After a 30 second summary of the situation, I told them I was going home to get out of my office garb and to put on shorts and t-shirt, and drop off the stuff from Wally world. I was back in about 20 minutes, at roughly 5:30.
We sat and waited, and listened to the radio chatter. I talked to a TV reporter on the phone, and directed him to call the sheriff’s office because they were set up to deal with the media. The whole time, the smarmy bastard tried to get me to cough up what I knew (the woods are on fire. Duh), and acted like he was my best bud in the world. Jerk.
Around 6:30, I was literally opening my mouth to tell the chief I was going to grab my gear and take it with me to my EMT class, when we were paged out for tanker support. I hoped in the new tanker, the one you could operate in a tux, and not get dirty. Away we went.
The weather yesterday was upper 90s and very humid. It was hazy, and that hid the smoke. We couldn’t see it until we were nearly there, but once in it, it was as thick as the morning fog I love so much. We went to the fire line on Gatlington Road, where all available hands were setting up a defense around several houses.
I’ve been to my share of wildfires since I joined, but until yesterday, all were in the groundcover. That’s rather easy for ground units to extinguish. This fire, however was like the stereotypical forest fire, up in the treetops. Those are a cast iron bitch to battle with a truck and hose, and are better handled from the air. There were at least 3 bombers, 2 dipping choppers, and a spotter plane orbiting at around 2000 feet to direct the air attack. Add in the morons from the TV stations in their choppers, and it was like a big killer bee swarm in a frenzy.
We set up our drop tank, which is a portable above ground swimming pool we dump the water into, and filled it. Then we had to go find water to refill from. On the way in we saw a farm pond and thought cool, but then a dipping chopper swooped in to fill his bucket. Drafting a tank truck from the same pond a chopper is using is a very bad idea unless it’s big body, and this wasn’t, so we had to find somewhere else.
There was a little pond about a mile away, in swampy land and near the road. Well that’s being generous, because had we not been told where to look, I’d have never seen it on my own. The undergrowth between the road was very thick, too, and I was afraid we’d have to deal with Bengal tigers and hostile natives besides.
Out came the drafting hoses and the siphon, and into the water they went. The most dangerous part of a drafting operation is when the valve opens and the water comes running in. A 5" hose is a lot of water and a lot of mass, and the hose will jump. Someone standing in the wrong place can break a leg if the get smacked by that thing. That didn’t happen, but we did break one hose when it jumped. It held however, and we filled up.
We went to a staging point about 200 yard/meters west of the drop tank, and waited. The smoke was bad, and black ash and soot rained down on us. We couldn’t see any flame, but we could feel the heat. When the fire got closer, the raining ash turned white. We kept an eye out for embers, because the area was full of pine trees, and a single ember on the ground would spread the fire again.
While we waited, one of the Hooterville guys called their assistant chief to report that the engine on their tanker (identical to the one I was on; we trained them how to use it) was overheating.
Tank: “836, the engine is starting to overheat. What do I do?”
836: “Well, you start by shutting off the air conditioner. [pause] Dumbass.”
For all the bitching I do about the inherent idiocy of rural life in my county, there’s a lot of good, too. There’s a small grocery store in Hooterville (I started calling Gates Hooterville precisely because of the store), and the manager on her own rounded up several cases of water and Gatorade, iced them down, and rode with a rescue squad member to the various firelines handing them out to anyone who wanted them. A restaurant nearby also offered food to fire and rescue, but they were politely refused because the heat was so bad that no one was hungry. Stuff like that doesn’t happen in the big city unless the event is much bigger than this fire.
Around 8:00, the forestry guys declared that the fire was contained, and all the fire units were released. We picked our hoses and tank, got diesel, and filled the tank with clean water from a hydrant. I got home a little after nine, and was soon asleep. I was beat. FWIW, this was about 10 miles northwest of my house, and the fire was moving away to the north. The VunderLair was never in danger.
It’s only easy to catch someone using stock presets if you’re familiar with the unit or software they’re using and recognize it from there. The average person won’t know the difference though unless they’ve heard it used elsewhere because some other artist was just as lazy as you (which is precisely why it’s a bad idea to use them). 
I did a lot of research after that and had a HUGE argument with her the next year when she wanted to order the same (useless, in my particular case, according to the specialist) test again. She didn’t appreciate all the research I’d done, but I’m never going to put up with another scare like that if I can help it! So don’t worry, they probably just need to redo a test or something because the lab botched it or something.
They’re lucky to have you for a teacher, whether they know it or not!