Some Days
Posted by jaybeacham on 08 May 2009 at 11:22 pm | Tagged as: blog
I was telling a friend tonight of a time when I showed up as a volunteer fire fighter.
Well, a trailer had caught on fire because of a faulty crockpot left on in the kitchen. The owner had been burning weeds in his back yard so had his garden hose already in service to combat the blaze. The volunteers were all standing around waiting for the fire truck to come. My boss from work was going through an intersection on the way to the fire and in spite of the flashing lights on his pickup was struck by a car and never made it to the fire. Where is the fire truck? After the longest time it finally appeared. The driver was alone. “Why were you so late in arriving?” “I was the only one to show up at the station and it was locked, didn’t have a key to get in, had to get one.” By the time it arrived all the volunteers were very impatient to get some water on the trailer before it was completely gone, they grabbed the hose and ran it out only to discover that they had done it backwards. The big line of men turned it around by walking in a hugh circle and at last the hose was connected and water began to flow on the fire. Around this time, an electrician asked if someone had turned the propane gas off and switch the electric power off. No one had. He proceeded to the north of the trailer to switch the power off and I, even though I was at that time working for a power company, turned off the propane as I had been a propane serviceman prior to this time.
Eventually the fire was out but the trailer was so badly charred that it had to be replaced with a smaller unit. Some days we just don’t think and bad situations get worse.