Interesting Week

Well, Ive been sick for a few days with a cold/flu. But Im feeling better today. Saturday while I was at work Co 1 was dispatched for a house fire in the West end of Leesburg. Kathleen on Tanker 1 along with 22 other pieces of fire apparatus responded to the house fire. Why so many you ask? No hyrdrants in the area. It was a matter finding a water source and using tankers to bring the water back to the scene. This was a large house with lots of open space inside which fire loves. To make a long story short, crews were inside for a short period of time attempting an interior attack when the evacuation tones were sounded and all the FF's exited. 6 minutes after the Deputy Chief called for the evacuation, the attic collapsed. The whole story is here Leesburg Fire.

Earlier last week Kathleen and I ran a call at the jail in downtown Leesburg. That was an interesting one. One of the gas lines feeding the jail had a leak and had spread to the lower levels. Most of the guards were using breathing apparatus when we arrived. We set up several fans to vent the gas from the structure. We ended up using all the fans we had on our trucks. We had to call for tower 2 for a few more fans. After all the gas was cleared out we headed home. I'll tell you one thing, this was my second time running a call to a jail. Im glad Im a free man.

It's pretty damn windy here today, 44mph winds. Im supposed to help Jon from work move today but he hasnt called me yet. So in the meantime I figured I'd update the Ol' journal. Enjoy the pics!

B

Catch Up

Im a little behind on posting pictures. Since the last time I posted pics we had our annual banquet at the firehouse which was alot of fun. We had some good food and music. During the banquet our new officers for the year were sworn in. The mayor stopped by for a visit to thank us. So that was nice. We had our yearly video with pictures and video from calls we ran through the year. That turned out really well.

The other pictures in here are from a fire alarm call we ran the other night in some business's under construction. Nothing too exciting there but thought I would post some pictures.

Tonight is my first night home since Friday. Ive been at the firehouse every night due to weather and my assigned duty crew. Ended up filling station 2 in Purcellville last night till about 2am while they were out on a house fire. That was pretty much our only excitement for the night.

Ive been tagged..

First, let me start this entry by saying the recent weather here in the Mid Atlantic can go ahead and bite my ass. Started out yesterday pretty decent with weather in the 50's. By the time I left work @ 6:30pm we had 40+ MPH winds with snow. Luckily the ground wasnt really cold enough so the snow didnt stick to anything. Unlike those in the Norfeast who I understand are getting hammered by the same storm. Its still pretty damn windy out with icy spots all over the road. I grew up in Tucson.. if it dropped below 50 there, people were busting out the parkas and building igloos.

Up until I moved here the winter never really bothered me. I even spent a few winters in Northern New Hampshire where the temp often dropped below 0. Even though I was working outside it still didnt bother me. But now, im getting all old and whiny. Our first winter here everyone was so quick to tell us how "Mild" the winters were here in the DC area. Uhhhh yeah, 6ft of snow later we realized that was not true. Oh well.

Enough about the weather. I actually havent spent more than 2 hours home since Fri morning @ 5am. Had duty Friday night, last night we had the big windstorm here so I spent the night at the station... and tonight, Im spending the night at the station. So, hopefully tommorow night will be spent in my own bed.

On a much much happier note, my friend Jon from work actually won $10,000 bucks last week at Iwon.com. Which came just in time since he is in the process of buying a house. Hopefully, we can get a free lunch out of him since he's loaded with all this cash now. He was talking about blinging out his Kia Rio with some spinners and some fuzzy dice. So hopefully he wont waste all his money "Pimpin" his ride. You can check out his blog here .

Well, apparently Ive been tagged (shut up Maki) by Sharon over at Welcome to my Nightmare. Im supposed to write 5 weird things about myself. This shouldnt be too hard.

1. Im listening to Bruce Hornsby's "The Show goes on" right now. Thats pretty weird in itself

2. I got an ant farm for Christmas, and Im actually pretty excited about it. Even though only 3 ants survived the trip, they are doing fine. Thanks Chris

3. I can not stand listening to other people eat food. It drives me nuts. If im on the phone, and someone on the other end is eating, they get hung up on.

4. I pay almost 3 dollars each way to drive to work on a private toll road because I have absolutely no patience for traffic lights, slow/stupid drivers who talk on their cell phones swerving all over the place in their SUV's with their stupid vanity plates.. while drinking Starbucks. ( Extremely common here in Northern VA.)

5. If you utter the "C" ( no, its not "Cat") word in front of me, it will result in a very long heated discussion about why I hate that word and those that use it.

5 days into 06

Well, New years eve was fun. Originally it looked like I was going to have to go run duty at the station for the night. But it turned out that I didnt have to. I spent the night partying with friends from the firehouse here in town. Although, I did have to be at work @ 6am so that kind of put a damper on things as far as me getting hammered. But oh well.

I put some pics up from an Auto Accident we ran on Monday afternoon in town. Im still not sure how the guy managed to do it, but as you can see he did quite a number on his car. Someone must have been looking out for him, because when we arrived on scene he was standing outside the car without a scratch on him. So other than AJ having a small issue with the windshield wipers, we really didnt have to do anything on the call. There were no fluids leaking and the airbags had already deployed. So the Sherrifs office took over and we left. That was about it for the day.

Kathleen and I are back on the same duty crew now after a year of being on different crews. We had our first night with our new crew last night. We ran 2 calls for the evening, one for forcing entry into a house for the ambulance crew, but they ended up not needing us. Just as we were sitting in the station discussing how the crew we moved to never catches any calls, the tones dropped for our company, and they just kept dropping. The call was for a light aircraft crash. Since planes randomly seem to fall out of the sky here in Leesburg, plus the fact it was foggy out, there was a good chance this one was for real. There have been 4 plane crashes in the last 3 years here in Leesburg. Anyway, we had probably 7 engines, 2 ambulances, 1 rescue squad, Our foam unit, numerous Cheifs, and the Foam Truck from Dulles Airport on standby on the way to the call.

After some investigation, it was determined the person who called it in had not seen an exploding plane rather he saw a flashing caution light that was reflecting off the fog. So, luckily no plane crash.

We closed out the night doing some hose drills around the station. I put some pics up of Kathleen messing around with some hose. Well, thats all I have. :)