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Kurt’s Firefighter’s Words Blog features stories sent by firefighters, emt/paramedics, first responders, and their family members. It is important for others to know what these people do. The blog has readers around the world. Click to submit a story. Read the rest of this entry »
Monday July 11th, 2011
Blog Highlights
Friday February 3rd, 2012
FIREFIGHTER’S WORDS -572- TEARS
My wife had told me was pregnant with my first and only son on a Thursday evening. One week later while I was with the Edgewater Fire Dept. in Colorado we were sent to a structure fire in a 3rd floor apartment.. Dispatch informed us that there was a trapped party in the apartment. On our arrival, our chief stated that the trapped party was an 18 month old child. A good friend and fellow firefighter was on the search and rescue team and found the boy.
Unfortunately the child succumbed to smoke inhalation. My friend is the parent of an 18 month old girl and a 4 year old boy. When my friend returned from the hospital he attempted to joke about something. I laughed at him and when our eyes met, we both started crying. Our wives did not understand our outbursts of emotion and I don’t think they ever will. The child is buried at Crown Hill cemetery in Wheat Ridge CO.
Firefighters paid for his headstone.
Thursday February 2nd, 2012
A GREAT SAVE BY THE FIRE DEPARTMENT!
A toddler had to be cut free by firefighters – after getting a toilet seat stuck on his head.
Two-year-old Joshua Cullen was playing with a potty training seat and decided to see how it looked as a hat. But it became stuck – and his mother could not get it off. His grandad was called and he tried to remove it using soap – but it wouldn’t budge. So they took the tot to the fire station, where the crew cut the seat free using an industrial-strength cutter.
Fire Captain Chris Bradshaw said he had never seen a problem like it in his 27-year career. He added: “Lots of people have got stuff stuck on their body but never a kid and a toilet seat.”
Tuesday January 31st, 2012
HISTORY OF THE FIREPLUG
Fire Plug
Here is the story of the fire plug. Back before even horses pulled the steamers, and a set of irons meant taking your vitamins, the term fire plug was born. In the cities, the earliest water mains were made of hollowed out logs. I have seen the remnants of these under the streets of my own city (Winston Salem, which was founded by the Moravians).
The call went out for a fire, and the fire fighters rushed to the scene with their great new hand pumper. There only PPE was a helmet and a bucket. The buckets were required by law to be in each and every home and business and maintained by the owners. When fire fighters arrived they had to know the location of the water mains. They had to frantically dig a hole down to the main. They then took an auger and bored a hole in the water main and allowed the hole to fill with water. Then the hard suction pump went in, priming was done, and water would flow.
Plug Uglies, gang members, were persons used to guard the fire hydrant connections after they were opened to prevent other competing fire companies from disconnecting the hose from the hydrant, or keeping competing fire companies from finding the hydrant or plug openings. Fist fights would often occur between the plug uglies and the firefighters from competing fire companies as the house would burn to the ground.
By then all that was left of the original burning building was the chimney, front steps, and foundation. But a lot of work would be done to keep the fire from spreading to other structures.
When it was all done they had to stop the water. So a wooden plug was fashioned and driven into the bored hole with a wood mallet. Today our mallets are hard rubber, the pumpers are driven to the scene, but we still fight the red devil with the wet stuff.
Saturday January 28th, 2012
HISTORY OF THE MALTESE CROSS
History of the Maltese Cross
The Badge of a Fire Fighter is the Maltese Cross. The Maltese Cross is a symbol of protection and a badge of honor. Its story is hundreds of years old.
When a courageous band of crusaders known as The Knights of St. John fought the Saracens for possession of the holy land, they encountered a new weapon unknown to European warriors. It was a simple, but horrible device of war. It brought excruciating pain and agonizing death upon the brave fighters for the cross.
As the crusaders advanced on the walls of the city, they were struck by glass bombs containing naphtha. When they became saturated with the highly flammable liquid, the Saracens would hurl a flaming torch into their midst. Hundreds of the knights were burned alive; others risked their lives to save their brothers-in-arms from dying painful, fiery deaths.
Thus, these men became our first Fire Fighters and the first of a long list of courageous men. Their heroic efforts were recognized by fellow crusaders who awarded each hero a badge of honor – a cross similar to the one fire fighters wear today. Since the Knights of St. John lived for close to four centuries on a little island in the Mediterranean Sea named Malta, the cross came to be known as the Maltese Cross.
The Maltese Cross is our symbol of protection. It means that the Fire Fighter who wears this cross is willing to lay down his life for you just as the crusaders sacrificed their lives for their fellow man so many years ago. The Maltese Cross is a Fire Fighter’s badge of honor, signifying that he works in courage – a ladder’s rung away from death.
Thursday January 26th, 2012
FIREFIGHTER’S WORDS -571- BABY, ITS COLD OUT THERE!
One of the worst fires was during a snow storm. There was so much snow I could not see the 12 unit apartment burning and I was operating the pumper from about 40 feet away. The pump gauges were frozen and I was trying to draft from a portable tank and did not know how much water was coming in or going out. We lost the building and almost lost a fire truck.
In the midst of the structure fire yesterday, we hit a high of 25 degrees… Driving a cardiac patient the day after an ice storm hit was a bizarre slalom through piles of frozen branches, downed trees and tangled wires – a single lane race to the end of a maze before someone entered coming the other way, oblivious, despite flashing lights and the siren wail. We traveled around three towns to get to the hospital as the normal routes were blocked. When we arrived, the hospital staff told us (repeatedly) they were on diversion, and we couldn’t bring any more patients. We were told there was yet another patient waiting for us back in town. Each time the hospital staff would yell at us and we would patiently explain we had nowhere else to go – all of the roads to other hospitals were completely blocked. We d needed chainsaws to get through on some of the calls.
(Albino moose)
Wednesday January 25th, 2012
Public Safety Officer Disability Benefit Law
On November 29, 1990, the United States Congress established the Public Safety Officer Disability Benefit law. This is a benefit that is awarded to Police Officers, Paid Firefighters, Volunteer Firefighters, or EMTs with a total and permanent disability received in the line of duty.
There is a problem with this law, it does not include any public safety officer’s injured before the date this law was created. This is why the Public Safety Officer Fairness Act of 2011 was created, and has been submitted into the 112th Congress by Congressman Ed Towns of Brooklyn, NY. Congressman Tom Reed Corning, New York and Congressman Charles Rangel, New York, New York are co-sponsors to this bill.
Please contact your own Congressional Representative and ask them to be a co-sponsor H.R.-3367. They can contact Emily Sheety who is Congressman Towns Legislative Director in Washington, DC at 1-202-225-5936. I’d like to get some discussion and support from the Fire Service at the next FDIC in April 16-21 of 2012. This is something that would help any firefighter or volunteer firefighter that was seriously injured at authorized emergency response prior to November 29, 1990. Whomever decides what to discuss at the convention, please ask them to share this with those that attend the convention.
Thank you, Mike Nicholson-one of 38 total permanent disabled volunteer firefighters in New York…!
kevin113@rochester.rr.com
Sunday January 22nd, 2012
SEVERED FOOT STORIES
Is truth stranger than fiction? My new novel CODE BLOOD starts with a fire paramedic responding to an accident on Pacific Coast Highway. A woman’s foot has been severed and is missing – So begins the mystery.
Farfetched?? NO. Here’s a news report about severed feet which have been washing up on the shores of British Columbia.
——————–
The mystery of the feet washing ashore in Canada has widened with the discovery of yet another limb that has washed ashore of a lake in the region. The latest severed foot was found by young campers in a size 12 men’s hiking boot on British Columbia’s Sasamat Lake.
What separates this foot from the other 12 found in the British Columbia and Washington State since 2007 was that this was the first foot found in a hiking boot and not a running shoe. The other key difference was that this was the first limb found in freshwater and not saltwater. Authorities say the foot was separated from the rest of its body by natural causes and not a violent means.
The BC Coroners Service said: ‘It would be very difficult for anybody to separate a body without leaving small impressions, little nicks on the bones.’
The previous cases have suggested that they are not dealing with a ruthless serial killer or another nefarious possibility. Two of the feet were found to belong to a missing Canadian woman who jumped to her death. The discovery appears to bolster the theory the human remains could be the result of suicides instead of foul play, as it was suspected earlier this year.
Feet are most likely the first part of the body to naturally detach once a body has been submerged underwater and in strong currents. And in most cases, the feet may have floated to the surface because they were all in buoyant, lightweight rubber-soled sneakers.
FOOT MYSTERY THEORIES
• Belonging to victims of a boat or plane crash in the ocean
• Foul play: Victims of a sadistic killer
• Remains of the 2004 Asian tsunami victims
• The feet of missing persons who have committed suicide
• Limbs of stowaways who fell overboard
The severed feet began washing ashore along the northwestern coast in 2007 in a case which baffled police and sparked a flurry of speculation over how they got there.
What seemed initially like a bizarre coincidence has become the subject of a major investigation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and British Columbia’s coroner’s office.
Some theories being considered included that the feet belonged to the victims of a boat or plane crash, a killer or were even the remains of those who died in the Asian tsunami. However the theory that they belonged to victims of suicide who jumped to their deaths into the water seems the most likely explanation.
A foot found floating in the water along the shore of Vancouver’s False Creek in August still had part of a leg attached, police said. Since then a number of explanations have been put forward – some suggested the limbs might be from stowaways who smuggled themselves onto a container ship as it left Vancouver.
Others claimed the feet could be from victims of the Asian Tsunami in 2004, or part of a human trafficking ring. But when it emerged that one had apparently been deliberately severed, rumors began spreading that a serial killer with a twisted calling card might be at work.
Men and women are among those whose feet have come ashore
Complicating matters were claims by oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer who has said that the feet could have drifted as far as 1,000 miles.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2059676/Another-severed-foot-washes-ashore-British-Columbia–like-others.html#ixzz1kCvG8uUB
Friday January 20th, 2012
FIREFIGHTER’S WORDS -580- WHY I DO IT (4)
Ok, so I guess the only thing I know to do is tell you a little about me. Where to begin…I am a single mom of 3 girls. My volunteering started with the Red Cross in 2005-Katrina. Since I have been active in disaster services with them working closely with firefighters. But that is not how I came into the fire service. My daughter is a junior firefighter and she always asked me to come volunteer with her, so finally I did. After I joined they were offering NPQ1 and asked me if I was interested in taking it. I said sure not knowing what I was getting into. Now here I am 4 months later, two weeks away from my exam and lovin’ it. I absolutely have found a calling. Its very challenging but there is nothing I don’t like about it. I have been on couple of calls but nothing to serious, which is fine. It’s funny – one night there was a fire call I decided not to respond to. i was on call for the Red Cross that night because I am still an active Team leader and still got called out to the scene but not for fire, but as Red Cross to help. It’s crazy how things happen. So that in a nut shell is part of my story…
Wednesday January 18th, 2012
FIREFIGHTERS WORDS -579- WHY I DO IT (3)
I am from Colorado.I am just starting my classes to become a firefighter. The main inspiration was this-
Going to work one day, I saw firefighters/ ambulance, everything passing me. Not thinking anything of them heading towards my house, I go to work. As soon as I get there, I get a call that my four month old daughter had stopped breathing in my wife’s arms. I rushed home to meet the firemen/EMS paramedics. They got her stable and were on were then on their way to the hospital.
This was the most scary thing I have ever gone through, and the start of a long road with my daughter. My angel went through two surgeries at five months and at 13 months. But thanks to the real guardian angels that took care of her she has just had her 2 birthday and cannot be better.
So hopefully, soon I can give back and maybe do the same for someone else.
LET ME KNOW WHY YOU DO IT!!
Monday January 16th, 2012
FIREFIGHTER’S WORDS -578- WHY I DO IT (2)
I have been a firefighter for 17 years and and EMT-B for 15 years. As all young boys I thought that fire trucks and firefighters were ”cool”. It wasn’t until I met a guy who was a firefighter. I told him that O always thought it would be ”cool” to be a firefighter but my career path went another direction. His replie was we are volunteers here. You ought to join. And as they say, the rest is history.
My friend was my mentor through the fire service with his support I climbed the ranks (pased him) and became an assistant fire chief many many years later. Why I do it? Its not because of the cool red trucks. Its not because you get to drive really fast. Its not because ”chicks” dig friefighters( maybe just a little bit). Its because I want to be one of the guys there to help someone in their time of need.
We meet people on one of the worst day of their lives. If feel having a warm, caring, sympathetic, professional, there to help them through it. My reward is seeing them walking down the street after you caved them from a burning building or shocked their heart back to life. Seeing them alive is why I do it. Its not a job. Its a calling. One that I am proud to be a part of.
