Blog Spring Cleaning, Long Trips, Fire Muster!

Howdy all! Well as you can see there have been some changes made to Smoke Before Fire. What can I say other than that I was really bored with the look that Smoke Before Fire had. Then I discovered the new Template Designer by Google and as you can see, my blog got hot! Literally! Then my title image Just didn't fit the template and the sizing was off, so a new title image! So yeah, blog spring cleaning has come and I like the results. I mean I don't see it much because I don't read the blog myself, because honestly who reads their own blog? But I hope you all like it.

EMS


So work hasn't been too exciting. Thursday I spent 14 hours of my 21 hour shift in an ambulance. I got very familiar with Eagle VII that day. Here's how it went down. I get to work at 1000hrs and am told we have to leave at 1030 for a patient pick up in Butte. We get to Butte to find out that the patient's appointment at the FHVA is the following day. So we went to Butte for no reason. Well we make it back to Montana City and were getting off the interstate when our boss calls us to tell us that we have a patient transfer to Missoula for St. Peters. So we get there, drop the patient off and come back. On the way back we get a call from the VA saying we need to bring a patient to St. Peters from the VA. It was a behavioral patient so I had to do patient care with him as well. Well after we drop the patient off and get back to the shop, my partner Mike gets a call from the VA and we need to go up to Missoula again for another patient. So after maybe sitting and relaxing for 10 minutes we are on the road again. We get the patient and come back and get back to the shop at 12:30am.

Luckily we didn't have any calls that night, and I got to sleep for a few hours before I got up early to call my sweetie who is Stateside bound this Wednesday! Pretty stoked. But afterwards I went home and passed out for another four hours. That next night we didn't have any calls so I was going to go to bed early but our favorite sheriff's deputy came to visit us. So we talked with him for a bit. Again after getting to bed around midnight I woke up early. I didn't get to go back to bed when I got home because I had to get ready for Fire Muster.

Fire Muster


So every year a town about five miles west of Montana City by the name of Clancy holds a series of events known as Clancy Days. Basically it's a weekend of cook outs, flea markets, music, and fun. The Clancy Volunteer Fire Department uses this weekend to host it's Firefighter Competition known as Fire Muster. Basically you have teams of four doing three events.

The Fire hose relay is the first event where you have a hydrant, three lengths of hose and a nozzle. We start behind the hydrant, run to our respected areas of the hose and couple them together. Afterwards we raise our hands and the hydrant guy lets the water flow. We shoot one target, shut the water off, then couple a different nozzle and a different hose length and shoot the second target. The team with the fastest time wins. We had the second fastest time, because the first Clancy team cheated and didn't use gloves. Well they got a second time to go and got a faster time. None of the other teams got a second round. Our time was 53 seconds which wasn't bad. We would have had faster but our first guy didn't tighten the coupling tight enough and it burst. It soaked him and that was hilarious.

The second event was the Fold-A-Tank bucket relay. We had four buckets that we had to use to take water from the fold-a-tank and fill up a oil drum. The first person with the steady stream flowing out won. Well it was a good competition because Jefferson City and Montana City tied. But they gave it to Jefferson City because they were operating with three people instead of four.

The final event was the keg chase. No, we don't have to race against frat boys in hopes of being the first to get a hold of a beer keg. Basically it was a tug-o-war with fire hoses. We have an empty keg strung up on heavy duty cable wire in the air and the point is to use our 1 1/2 inch hose-lines to push the keg towards the other team and cross the line. We were first up against Jefferson City and we had a back and forth but we were able to push it past them. Both Clancy teams faced each other and the winner of that faced us. It was Clancy two. We were deadlocked in the middle for a while before our nozzle-man accidentally turned our nozzle off and we couldn't recover. But again we got second place.

By the end of the competition, our gear was drenched, we were freezing, because we were flowing water from a run-off filled creek, and we were the runners up. We did not receive any trophy but we did show the other departments that we were pretty skilled in what we did. Even when Clancy teams cheated some. So yeah, look out Clancy, next year Montana City is going to smoke you guys!

The Smoke Alarm


We had one call the other night around midnight. It was a smoke alarm going off. Turns out that the gentleman not being able to handle the beeping ripped out his smoke alarm, exposing live wires (another fire hazard) and leaving it at that. Well even after ripping out the alarm the beeping was still going off. After some exploring it was discovered that the alarm was the gentlemans UPS computer back-up system's low power warning. Yeah, a little ridiculous.

But that is about it, I hope to write more soon, but it's going to be a busy next few weeks, what with my sweetie returning home and us going to my buddy's wedding. So stay tuned!