They warned us it was going to snow. They are usually wrong. But today it went from rain to hail to snow in a matter of 30 minutes. The sky turned white and the heavens opened up. Crazy.
It piled up super fast and then the calls started coming in. (I was at work, probably should have mentioned that.) Ususally it's a slow day to be assigned on the Engine. But when things freeze all bets are off. We started by running a million calls for "wires down". The older side of our city has all their cable/phone/electricity wires up on poles instead of underground like most of us are used to.
When the wet snow caked on the wires they sagged over the roadways. And the cable lines, which were held to the houses by staples and thin wire, separated from the houses. So people called 911.
Because we are the power and cable company? Sure. Why not. We tied them up around whatever was near, threw a piece of caution tape on them and moved on. Luckily I found the above moment of Zen.
THE FIRE DEPARTMENT CAN ONLY FIX FIRES AND MEDICAL EMERGENCIES. That should be a PSA.
We got dispatched for a fire in a neighboring jurisdiction. The "fire" was no fire at all. One engine and a battalion chief SUV slid down the hill and got stuck in a ditch trying to get there. We made our way back to the station through this. Traffic. Cars were everywhere. That's a another thing people called 911 for "my car is stuck". Yeah.
Call a tow company. People's commutes took 5-9 hours. It made me thankful to know I had a 72 hour kit with food and water in the car. Remind me to add TP to the kit.
With all the calls in the perilous weather I never felt worried about our being out on the road. Mike was driving; he is a good chauffeur. Did I mention that we were so busy that we didn't get dinner until 10pm. Around 9pm I was hypoglycemic and grumpy and there was no end in sight. So when we did get to the station for two minutes I ran to a) the bathroom and b) grabbed the bag of dried mangoes out of my work 72 hour kit. They saved us. It was a long night but we got to bed around 1am. And so the season of blizzards begins...
It piled up super fast and then the calls started coming in. (I was at work, probably should have mentioned that.) Ususally it's a slow day to be assigned on the Engine. But when things freeze all bets are off. We started by running a million calls for "wires down". The older side of our city has all their cable/phone/electricity wires up on poles instead of underground like most of us are used to.
When the wet snow caked on the wires they sagged over the roadways. And the cable lines, which were held to the houses by staples and thin wire, separated from the houses. So people called 911. Because we are the power and cable company? Sure. Why not. We tied them up around whatever was near, threw a piece of caution tape on them and moved on. Luckily I found the above moment of Zen.
THE FIRE DEPARTMENT CAN ONLY FIX FIRES AND MEDICAL EMERGENCIES. That should be a PSA.
We got dispatched for a fire in a neighboring jurisdiction. The "fire" was no fire at all. One engine and a battalion chief SUV slid down the hill and got stuck in a ditch trying to get there. We made our way back to the station through this. Traffic. Cars were everywhere. That's a another thing people called 911 for "my car is stuck". Yeah. Call a tow company. People's commutes took 5-9 hours. It made me thankful to know I had a 72 hour kit with food and water in the car. Remind me to add TP to the kit.
With all the calls in the perilous weather I never felt worried about our being out on the road. Mike was driving; he is a good chauffeur. Did I mention that we were so busy that we didn't get dinner until 10pm. Around 9pm I was hypoglycemic and grumpy and there was no end in sight. So when we did get to the station for two minutes I ran to a) the bathroom and b) grabbed the bag of dried mangoes out of my work 72 hour kit. They saved us. It was a long night but we got to bed around 1am. And so the season of blizzards begins...
2 comments:
new post please, you are 4 months late
I was listening to the radio last week and an energy commercial came on telling people that if they should see a downed power line to go ahead and call 911. And I thought of you.
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