Firefighters who put out a garage fire at a San Gabriel home found a house full of marijuana plants.

Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies say 1,000 plants were found Tuesday, along with 1,000-watt lights, aluminum light fixtures, air filters and electric ballasts. They say the bathroom was filled with garbage barrels used to mix fertilizer.

No suspects have been identified, but Detective David Mertens says the operation was linked to Asian organized crime.

Neighbors say they have never seen anyone at the home.

Firefighters say the fire was caused by electrical wiring that had been rigged to bypass Southern California Edison meters.

Authorities believe marijuana has been growing in the house since October.

There is one call I distinctly remember because it was on the day my father passed away in 1966.

I was living at the firehouse and it was my duty night.

We received the alert around six pm of a house fire in our second due and I jumped on the tower with the others putting on my breathing apparatus as we headed down the road.

Communication comes back that there is a victim inside and as we arrived on the scene, the house is fully engulfed.

I am the first one to the door but the heat is too intense and I back up and regain my senses. I let two others go in before me and they go to the left in the house while I continue to the back.

My training is coming back to me as I follow the hose line to what will be the kitchen where I take over for the other firefighter when his air is starting to run low.

I can see the lights outside of the other apparatus as I am putting this fire out.

The two others firefighters were able to find the victim and she survived.

The county recognized them and the station recognized me for saving a life on January 26, 1996.

You don’t get nothing as a volunteer but sometimes the reward is just giving someone another day to live.

We have a woman in our dept that can beat most of the guys up the steep hills fighting wildland fires. Then after the fires, she goes back to work at her business as a beautician. She cuts most of the guys hair in the fire dept. Awesome woman! I spent a week fighting fires down in San Diego w/ her on a strike team….she’s good!

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Girls Are Tuff They Get Down And Dirty!

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Fire chicks are HOT!!! Just ask my wife.

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Girls can do anything in the fire service that a man can do, plus the men always look out for us and keep us safe! What can be better than that!!

Woo Woo, hot stuff at the Palm Beach County Fire/Rescue Department

What happened. In May 2005, “Marshall” worked as a rescue captain for the Palm Beach County Fire Rescue Department. In that capacity, he arranged to have a female firefighter, “Rita,” transferred to his fire station as a subordinate.

Marshall, who was separated from his wife, began an intimate relationship with Rita. His wife filed for divorce in July 2005.

Shortly after Marshall moved into Rita’s home in October 2005, he learned that his direct supervisor had been using that home for extramarital trysts with another married firefighter and that that couple had twice invited Rita to join them in a sexual encounter.

The supervisor allegedly threatened disciplinary action against Marshall when Marshall asked Rita to stop letting the other couple use her home. In addition, the supervisor allegedly told Marshall to break up with Rita and made offensive comments about their relationship. The supervisor watched Rita closely, apparently trying to catch her doing something wrong.

Marshall and Rita did not end their relationship, and Marshall’s requests for transfers for himself and Rita were denied. After Marshall complained to his union representative, his supervisor allegedly threatened to demote Marshall.

The supervisor said Marshall’s relationship with Rita was hurting the effectiveness of his battalion. He issued an Employee Development Form (EDF) for Marshall on January 11, 2006, stating that his “preoccupation” with Rita was “caus[ing] a disruption for the station office and for the crew.”

The EDF warned that failure to return to his past level of performance could “lead to initiation of a special performance review or disciplinary action.”

On February 13, 2006, Marshall was demoted from captain to firefighter/paramedic by the county’s fire rescue administrator, who apparently had no knowledge of Marshall’s relationship with Rita before rendering that decision.

Marshall filed suit against his direct supervisor and the county, alleging that his First Amendment right to intimate association had been violated. The district court granted summary judgment to the supervisor and county, and Marshall appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, which covers Alabama, Georgia, and Florida.

What the court said. The appeals court affirmed the decision, saying that the defendants “did not violate the [U.S.] Constitution because the county’s interest in discouraging extramarital association between supervisors and subordinates is so critical to the effective functioning of the fire department that it outweighs the firefighter’s interest in extramarital association with a subordinate,” even assuming—for argument’s sake—that extramarital association is protected as a fundamental right under the First Amendment.

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Reproduced from HR AND EMPLOYMENT LAW NEWS

http://hr.blr.com/HR-news/HR-Administration/Employee-Privacy/Firefighter-Demoted-After-Extramarital-Affair-Clai/

A despondent and suicidal man who was rescued from a building ledge. Members of the police and fire departments negotiated and rescued the 20-year-old, who police said was despondent after he did not receive a job he wanted. Police negotiators and the Fire Department’s Urban Rescue Team rescued the man from the ledge of the  building.

The man had climbed 15 floors from the top of a five-story parking structure to the top of the building, crossed over the roof and climbed down the building’s north side to a ledge near the top by the time first responders arrived.

When a Police Department negotiator, arrived, he spoke to the man to persuade him not to jump from the side of the building and tried to reassure him that things would improve if he did not jump. The man did not speak much.

He remained on the ledge for two hours, at one point turning his back to the building and putting one foot over the edge, and at another point refusing a rope lowered down for him.

Rescue team members stayed out of sight on the roof to avoid pushing the man to take action. The situation grew more urgent when a storm hit and lightning began to strike the tops of buildings downtown. Responders evacuated all who were not immediately involved in the rescue operation.

Negotiators had persuaded the man to secure a rope around his waist, originally intended to save him should he slip on the wet footing while a firefighter in a harness descended to rescue him. He and five firefighters pulled on the rope around the man’s waist to haul him to safety.

Once the man was secured, officials transported him to a mental health center.

Run like hell

I see the smoke beginning to billow out of the roof and I know it is not good. Then I see the flames rising up higher and higher. I think to myself, this is going to be a bad one!

I get myself together and go in on a team, and we start attacking it from the front, with the flames licking at our backs. The fire rolls over us like a big wind. We open up the nozzle and start to put it out. Suddenly its getting out of control! We pull back a little bit and its keeps getting bigger. We put more water on it but the monster doesn’t want to go out!

I hear the horns blowing and people yelling at us to get out. We turn and run. I beat it across the yard,  looking back and seeing flames licking at the front of the house. I get to the truck and I’m out of breath my SBA alarm is going off like crazy. I look at my gauge. I was almost out of air, only 5% left.

Thank god I made I,  because I look behind me again and the front of the house caves in on itself and I’m thankful that I wasn’t  in there at that time.

I have only recently joined the volunteer fire dept. I am finding that it is a much bigger responsibility than I had ever imagined.  I have not been to a fire yet, but I have been to two freeway accidents. I am currently taking a first responders course, and soon I will take my first wildland fire training. I have been to two vehicle extraction exercises and have used the jaws of life twice.

I joined the dept. because I have high anxiety in the summer about wildfire. I live in a highly wooded forest in Northern California. I wanted to help in  case of a fire, instead of feeling helpless and leaving the responsibility to others in my community.

I have since found out that we respond to a number of other calls beside fire. We live a couple miles from the freeway, we respond to accidents and other medical calls more often than fires. Besides the overwhelming feeling of  ”what have I taken on?” and the huge responsibility, I have a great sense of pride! And my kids get to learn more about the responsibility we have to our community we live in to keep it a safe, wonderful place to live.

We get a new guy (never been on a call ) in our department a few summers ago. He is in the middle of a station orientation with two senior firefighters when we are called out to an unresponsive patient on the side of the freeway.

His eyes light up as the pagers go off and he is invited to jump in the engine. En route, they explain to him to be cautious of traffic and just be a spectator at this point. A moment later, the dispatcher comes on the radio and updates the situation as “CPR in progress.”

Suddenly a routine call gets very serious and the rookie is told to stay with one firefighter and take over compressions on the patient while senior firefighters ventilate and set up the AED. He is eager, nervous, and excited to say the least.

Upon arrival, there are several cars pulled off the side of the freeway and CPR is indeed in progress. The crew quickly goes to work, and the rookie is right in the mix and not missing a beat. Moments later the ALS ambulance arrives and begins to take over, and the rookie is the first to be relieved of his duty.

After exhausting all available resources the patient’s outcome has not changed. The ambulance crew and the two senior firefighters quickly finish packaging the patient for transport and the ambulance is off to the hospital.

The senior firefighters pack up the remaining gear and start toward the truck to find the rookie sitting on the tailboard of the engine… stunned.. in a daze… They ask, “Hey are you okay?”
“That guy just died?” the rookie asks.
“Well YEAH! If you hadn’t messed up the CPR compressions he would have been fine!” one of the senior firefighters told him and laughed under his breath.

About a week passed and we were at a training meeting when the rookie walked up to a group of us and asked if he had really killed that guy on the freeway.

We immediately burst out laughing at his expense… It was at this moment that we realized that a warped sense of humor is often necessary to continue to survive in the fields of fire/ems.

Well we are a department in a college town. It’s always nerve wracking when we get a call to a “college house” at 3/4/5 in the morning.

We got lucky today. At 0457 the tones when off and I groggily got out of bed and found a pen to write down the address. Dispatch’s next transmission informed the BC that there was one occupant trapped in the building, but still alive.

Before I arrived on scene I heard radio traffic stating two of our full time guys made entry and found the victim had shut herself in the 2nd story bathroom to try to escape the smoke. The fire was a small, smoldering, cool fire in the basement, but produced A LOT of smoke throughout the entire end unit apartment, as well as the unit next to it. The good news was, she was Alive!

This is a first for us in the last few years. It may have been at least 3 years since our last live grab. Typically, if we arrive on scene to one of these early morning college fires and the residents weren’t able to get out on their own, they were already dead upon our arrival. As bad as any fire is, today was a good day for the FD.

I’m not a firefighter, but I am a volunteer for the Tacoma Pierce County Fire Buff Battalion. We respond with firefighters to fires in our community. We provide a service that is much needed. We supply our tired and thirsty firefighters with water and Gatorade, cookies and sometimes a hot meal when needed.

In the past I had relied on the Tacoma Fire Department many times for emergency situations. I simply wanted to give back with what I had received. After graduating from the CERT class, it seemed like an interesting and most important thing to get involved with, and for the past five years, I have enjoyed every minute of it.

I train with the fire department and one of the best exercises for me was a collapsed building training. I volunteered to play victim in a scenario for a earthquake building collapse. This required me to crawl in a small dark wet area and stayed forseveral hours while three different training teams came to rescue me. I will remember that day forever. Initially, I had no idea that day what I was getting into.

I had chainsaws within inches of me, cutting to get to me. After they cut a hole in the simulated floor, they put me in a gurney and pulled me up through a simulated air shaft to an exit. Talk about tight spots. I can surely tell you that my heart was pounding all the way up to the exit. It was a wonderful experience to see the teams of rescuers who had come from all over to participate in this event.

Another time, I responded to a propane explosion. That day some of us spent eleven hours helping the firefighters, EMT’s, Public Utitlity, DOT and Police Department. What chaos. This was an excellent time to practice what really goes on when the whole city responds to a disaster.

Here in the Northwest, I know how important it is to have our Fire Department. One may never know when they are needed and it is why I choose to continue to volunteer for such a great group.