It’s Good to be in N.D.

Another apartment fire

Logan has a really good post about the fire this morning. He has included some pictures from Larry Phillips on the post as well.Technorati Tags: firecall, fire, apartment, jamestown, north dakota

Welp - this was last night…

http://www.jamestownsun.com/articles/index.cfm?id=66091&section=homepage&freebie_check&CFID=35040813&CFTOKEN=52303811&jsessionid=8830eb945767206e486c

The article neglects to mention Jamestown Rural Fire Dept, the *First* responding fire units, and the ones who called the City Hazmat team… but the firetruck in the picture is ours (can’t see it but I am riding shotgun running radio, lights, and sirens) (Yea we were also out there two hours as opposed to their one… first fire on scene, last unit to leave… city boys I tell ya)  (Note, that’s friendly ribbing… we were quite happy to have the Hazmat team out there.  10,000 gallons of fuel certainly falls under that!)

Unfortunately they only put in the one pic… Larry got a bunch of good ones it looked like.  What you don’t see here is a half mile up the other semi, in pretty good shape, except for diesel streaming out of the back of the 10,000 gallon tanker.  (Watching the two empty tanker semi’s hop the median was interesting as well…)  Diesel has a pretty high ignition point, so we weren’t too worried - though right after the pic you see in the article was taken, we turned that truck around and ran out a hose line just in case.  Foam was available as well if it was needed, though we didn’t end up having to put any down.  (The batt on that truck was sparking pretty good till it was disconnected… though not a whole lot of fuel was leaking from it.)

After they got it towed out of the way, we managed to get one lane of traffic open, so we were helping direct traffic with Highway Patrol and Stutsman County Sheriff till they got marks noted down.  Then we got to charge the hose line and start trying to wash some of the diesel off of the road.  (Kinda worked, but after rolling up the hose my gloves reeked of diesel fuel.)  All in all - made for an interesting evening.  All departments worked quite well with each other.  (City, HP, County, and two Fire Departments.)  Another good thing was nobody was seriously hurt that I saw.

Technorati Tags: Jamestown, Firecall, North Dakota, JRFD, JFD, Hazmat, Stutsman County, tone out

You know… one of the first things that the guys fill you in on, is expect the unexpected.

It’s true… that tickle in the back of your head that the pager can go off any moment 24/7 is interesting. Well it has been a bit quiet for calls in the middle of winter, so I guess I have gotten a bit lax. This morning I didn’t bring my pager into the bathroom and set it on the counter (like I usually do) when hopping in the shower. A few minutes later I hear Jennie yelling, and after a couple of times of trying, I finally figure out she is letting me know my pager is going off!

We were paged out for a car fire down in Ypsi. If we had needed a third truck, I would have gone out, but the first two got everything under control fairly quickly. I don’t live that far away from the hall, but starting from still being in the shower, does give one a slight disadvantage in making it there quickly.

Technorati Tags: jamestown rural fire department, JRFD, North Dakota, Firefighter, Tone Out

Accidentally left the scanner volume a little high when I went to sleep this morning.  So I heard the tone out for the city from the bedroom.  Only half woke up since my pager wasn’t going off.  (For rural) though came wide awake when I heard the “Firecall, Firecall, Firecall…”  (This was at aprox 4:50am)

At that point I was awake, though now fully awake and realising it wasn’t a page for my department.  Lost some sleep, but anywho - garage fire early this morning.  Fire units and PD were fairly quick to be on scene.   Around 6am I heard units returning to base.

Technorati Tags: jamestown, firecall, JFD, scanner

City FD just got paged for a possible chimney fire.

Sounds like it was just a flare up…. which is good. 3 units on-site within a short period of time and 2 PD units helping to direct traffic. Good response time guys!

All units were retuning to base at 10:25pm.

Technorati Tags: Jamestown, North Dakota, Fire Dept, firecall

Well we got a rural firecall today. Strong smell of propane. There was a propane leak up there, but fortunately everything turned out well. Ottertail got out there fairly quickly and the guys were able to come back in fairly quickly.

It has been a fairly quiet winter so far, but it was also good that it wasn’t anything too dramatic.

Technorati Tags: Jamestown, North Dakota, Jamestown Rural Fire Department, Fire Dept, Propane, firecall