The majority of my weekend was dominated by a class I took called HazMat Operations. Despite what you might think based on the title, it does not allow me to put on a moon suit and go play in the pool of acid. That’s something for the Hazmat Technician, which is a whole 'nuther level above me.
Hazardous Material Operations is the art and science of first response to a hazmat incident. It involves 3 broad topics: incident identification, confinement, and decontamination. Identification is the part where you say, “Holy Shit! That’s a leaking gasoline tanker!”, call for help, and run away real fast.
Confinement is the part where, after you quit running, you grow a real big pair, go back to the scene, and make sure the gasoline doesn’t go anywhere.
Decontamination is how you clean the gasoline off the people who have an even bigger pair than you, putting on those moon suits and jumping in to the spilled gasoline to stop the leak and suck up all that you contained.
If you’re not interested in the subject, I have to admit that the class is pretty boring. I was interested, and even I dozed off several times. Ninety percent of the time was lectures and movies. The only real fun part was playing in the sand outside, practicing dam building.
The Rescue building where the class was held is surrounded on 3 sides by deep ditches. They’re there for drainage, of course, but also they’re handy for training purposes, like this class. Our task was to make an underflow dam, because the exercise was a diesel fuel spill. Diesel fuel floats on water, so you build a dam with a pipe in it angled up so the water flows out, but the diesel stays penned up.
It was a lot of grunt work, because our sand pile was about 30 feet from the spot we were to build the dam, and we were wearing fire gear. The instructor said, “Put your dam here. I need 2 volunteers to grab those 2 shovels, and start carrying.”
Everyone looked around at each other. Finally, I grabbed the first shovel and announced, “I’m 47 years old. You young pups try to keep up.” I shoveled sand for about half of the dam.
When it was time to try it out, we backed up a fire tanker to the ditch, and dumped about a thousand gallons in. By golly, our dam held, and the pipe worked as intended, draining the water from the bottom of the ditch and leaving the ‘diesel’ (in reality, the grass clippings) floating on top.
What saved me from sleeping away the entire classroom portion of the class was a rescue call. Frequently mentioned buddies Sue and Eddie were the scheduled crew on Saturday. Right after lunch, they were paged on a BS rescue call. About 20 minutes later was another page. Cap’n Jack was the next one in line by hierarchy, so he taps me on the shoulder and I went with him.
The call was for an elderly lady near The VunderLair, having difficulty breathing, with some other gross things typical of a person with The Sick. The actual call was pretty boring, and we got her to the hospital in Suffolk without incident.
Cap’n Jack is a newlywed, and his bride is an ER nurse, 'natch, at the hospital where we were heading. Jack got on the radio to call in the patient report, and his wife was on the other end. There was kinda cool.
We took our patient in, and started transferring her from the stretcher to the hospital bed. Jack’s wife was in the room, as well as another nurse who was starting the registration process. Just as we finished our lift, the other nurse says in a stage whisper to Jack’s wife, “He’s cute!!!”
Never missing the opportunity, I replied, “Y’all are talking about me, right?” Hilarity ensued.
I did the usual BS of changing the sheets, cleaning up the back of the ambulance, restocking our supplies. When I was done, I peeked back in to the main desk, and Jack was talking to his missus, saying bye. I let them have their moment, and came over.
Addressing Mrs. Jack, “Just to twist the knife a little more, you can tell that other nurse I thought she was cute, too.” Jack lost it right there.
There were no more calls after that to interrupt the class. We broke up around 3:30, and I stopped to run an errand on the way home. When I walked in the door of the VunderLair, VWife asked me why I wasn’t taking the call on Taylor Mill Road.
“What call?” I reached down to my pager, twisted the knob, and it went through the startup beeps. I had shut it off during the other run to use the radio, and never turned it back on.
I called the dispatcher real fast, found out the details, and went BOH to the scene, which was less than 5 miles away. Sue and Eddie were there with the ambulance.
The patient had fallen off a ladder from a height greater than 10 feet, landing flat on her back. Fortunately for her, the ground is sandy, but she was still messed up. She managed to walk in to the house with assistance before we were called. She had severe back pain, pain in her right hip, left wrist, and a couple scalp lacerations.
She was layin on the couch, propped up on the end. That made backboarding her a real PITA, but we got it done. As much pain as she was in, we think she broke her back, not in the spinal sense, but where the ribs connect to the spine. She had sensation and movement in all of her extremities.
We took her down to Bugtussel because it was the nearest hospital, and she wound up going to Pitt Memorial, in Spaz’s neighborhood afterwards.
Sue got yelled at by one of the ER nurses for walking in to the room without knocking, because our patient was trauma stripped. “You need to knock for privacy reasons, because the patient has no clothes on.”
Sue, ever the diplomat, snapped back, “Yeah I know. I stripped her.” Eddie and I had to hold her back.
I finally got home around 6:00, only to be bitched at because I took the run instead of taking VWife to Real Chinese for dinner. I tried going to bed around 9:00, but a long string of dog walking, honeydos, and phone calls conspired against me. Around 11:00, I finally hit the hay for good.
It was midnight when the pager went off again. Dammit, I wanna sleep! The call was for a man in Hooterville, diving into a swimming pool, hit the bottom and was unconscious. I sat bolt upright and got dressed. I was the second to call in, the first guy living 2 doors away and running directly to the scene. I went for the ambulance.
I was about a mile from home when my cell phone rang. It was the rescue chief. “Bob, I really need you to step on it. The scene is at Ben Miller’s house. You know where that is?”
Not really, but Ben owns Hooterville Hardware, and I know he lives within walking distance of his store, so I can get within a quarter mile easily. “I’m doing 80 down Harrell Church Road now,” I answered. Harrell Church is not a road where you want to go much over 50, either for the turns or for the deer, and I don’t like going over 70 in the Foomobile anyway. When I got out onto 158, I found my speedometer at 90. I did 80 in the ambulance getting to the Miller’s.
Ben himself wasn’t the patient; it was the Hooterville assistant fire chief. Ben was having a pool party, and the chief was drunk on no shit honest-to-Og moonshine when he dove in to the pool, hit the bottom, and knocked himself cold on the bottom. Being a party, there were plenty of people to get him out onto the side of the pool.
He was flown to Norfolk immediately, with a concussion and neck injuries. Once again, sensation and movement in all extremities; twice in 24 hours. Around noon in class, we got word our patient went home. Phew. That’s one hangover I wouldn’t want to deal with…
