A long week past

It took a couple of days, but I finally got my first page and that started a whirlwind weekend that saw me spending nearly all of my waking hours in a set of fire coveralls between training and calls. This is covering the time from January 14-18.

Page #1 Midnight on Friday morning. Pretty simple, smoke alarm wouldn't stop going off. We determined it was a faulty detector and went home.

Page #2 3:45 Friday afternoon. Called to an MVC (motor vehicle collision) north of Sexsmith. 2 cars involved, people trapped. On arrival we found a crushed yellow tin can that was once a Pontiac Sunfire and a silver Honda. It took 2 hours to get the young woman in the Sunfire out of her car. 2 people including her were airlifted by STARS to the Grande Prairie hospital. Captain Nesbitt is one of the men I respect most on the department, and both as a cop and a firefighter he had never seen such a complex extrication. One of the issues was that our hydraulic pump failed and we totally needed it. Most vehicles you can take apart with just a reciprocating saw if you need to but not this car. Everyone left the scene alive and conscious which was a miracle. I could write more on this one but I need to move on...The story is here.

Page #3 9:30 Friday evening. A truck hit the ditch outside of Sexsmith and we were dispatched for one reason or another. I was in the county engine and we were told to stand down before we got there.

Page #4 3:45 Saturday afternoon. Chimney fire in a mobile home. All we ended up doing was putting out the fire at the bottom and dumping some snow down the chimney. Unfortunately when we tried to leave, the county truck ended up in the ditch because the driveway was so slick and snow-covered. So most of the guys had to wait for a tow truck to come pull them out. I got to leave early because I went in the rescue truck.

Page #5 3:00 Sunday afternoon. We were called to a rear-end collision with a tanker truck hitting a pickup. Highway 2 was clear, but when we turned on Emerson Trail we could not tell where the road was. We were watching the power poles to stay on sometimes. It was the worst road conditions I have ever driven in. I was assigned to medical treatment. When we arrived on scene the driver of the truck was walking around complaining of neck pain. I immediately began holding c-spine while she stayed standing. We eventually did a standing takedown, lying her down safely on a backboard. When we tried to leave we had to walk into the ditch to know where the range road was to turn the truck around.

Page #6 12:15 Tuesday afternoon. I was paged out while lining up in my nerd costume for nerd day in the dining hall. On my way out I loosened my belt and dropped my jeans from being around my rib cage to being normal. It was a fully involved structure fire across the county. It was in Wembley's jurisdiction but they didn't have enough guys to send a truck. So they paged Beaverlodge. Beaverlodge didn't have enough guys to send a truck. So they paged Hythe and Sexsmith. We got the page almost half an hour after the fire was first reported and it was a 45 minute drive out. Unfortunately the county truck was in the shop so we had to take the town ladder truck. On our way out somebody decided to pass us even though we were rolling with lights and sirens. When we finally got there the entire house was involved. For a time we thought we could save the garage, but we kept running out of water. At last we saw smoke pushing out of the garage and knew that nothing could be saved. So we backed off, waited for water and did as much as we could while not having a ton of water. It was disappointing that a lack of water meant that we couldn't save it, but it was an exciting structure fire.

It was a long week, but totally worth it. I got a huge amount of experience for an opening few days and I'm excited for what the future weeks and months will bring.