Second Seven In the Morning in a Row

April 17th, 2007

After waking up around one-thirty in the afternoon, I went to my computer to start to write the case report on the coroners case I worked last night. It took a little bit of time to work on the paperwork, answer some incoming phone calls, and keep up with various online conversations, but I finally completed it and E-mailed it to Pete.

When that was finally done I was just doing some stuff around the house until it was time to go to the fire station for the daily rig checks. One of the new guys was there so I made sure he knew how to do the rig checks and let him do most of the work so he knew what to look for.

Brian and I had been talking about CISD’s and the need for them and when one is needed. We also discussed going to Wesson’s retirement party. We made our way up there a little after seven o’clock pm, because dinner should have been done by then. We listened to the funny stories where Wesson was involved.

Finally I got a camera to take some pictures for Dragoo. I went around and snapped about one hundred pics in the next twenty minutes or so. We went back to the station and I had mentioned that it had been quiet. I figured that a call would come out and make people have to leave the retirement party.

When we got the rig back to the station I did my timecard and went home. I was trying to find some information online when we got dispatched to a lady who was assaulted. When we got onscene the ambulance cancelled us. We went back to the station. I went back home and worked some more to find the hoses and connectors I was looking for to use around the house.

That is when another call came in for a car accident. It was one Two-Seventy near mile post eight. A car had read-ended some of the construction rigs. When we pulled up on scene the car was about thirty feet off the road way. I was curious how this happened. Then after looking at the front of the car we could see there were two impact points. The driver had hit the plow blade of this big tractor. The car hit it and it made a deep narrow dent in the car. Then there was a second dent nearly identical to it about eighteen inches away.

From standing at the front of the car you could see where the gravel and dirt mixture had a slight disruption of the color, where the tires had driven across the gravel. You could actually see two sets of tire tracks about eighteen inches apart. It became clear that the car hit the tractor plow blade, then backed up and hit it again.

We went to the hospital to get Zettler who went with the ambulance. As we were leaving the hospital we got called out to a fire alarm at Terrel library, which is the new library next to Holland. They finally named it after about ten years of being called the new library.

When we got on scene we were first there, aside from the WSU cops. We could not see nor smell anything. I thought to myself, that even though on calls like this most of the people go in without SCBA and whatnot, that we should for good measure, but instead we went in like everyone else always does when appears to be a false call.

We talked to the cops and then Engine-thirty-two got onscene, we invited Clint to come in and play. He had the alarm key that allowed us to work the system. We found where the alarm was coming from. It was stairwell “C” on the first floor. We made our way there. When we went into the main room of the library on the first floor across the room I could see some hazy smoke in the air. We got closer and found that indeed it was smoke. Brian checked the door for heat.

Feeling none he opened it up staying low. There was a lot of smoke in the stairwell. We did not want to go into the environment without SCBA. And of course we left it in the rig. So we had to go out and get on air. When we made entry into the stairwell we made notification that we went on air. We went up and down the stairs and could not find the source of the smoke. The stairwell had a door that also lead to the CUB. That door was cracked open because of an extension cord that caused the door to not shut fully. After we made entry I noticed the smoke was not as bad. We allowed the building to naturally vent.

After a few minutes the stairwell was clear enough to reset the alarm. The main library area still had a good haze, but that would go away over some time of the HVAC system running. We had to fill our air bottles. Then went back to the Deuce as the sun was starting to rise. I went home and waited until seven o’clock to go to bed, just like yesterday.


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