So yesterday was my first official day doing this, but I didn't get to drive. Chief Buckley showed me the ropes of what a battalion aide does and he did all the driving. We didn't do anything super exciting yesterday...while he attended a meeting, I sorted all the time sheets for the entire second battalion. Then we dropped off the spare battalion chief buggy and came back to the station. Today was a bit more interesting...
Today, A shift, Chief Resnick was the chief in charge. He has a very lively personality, so there was never a dull moment. He actually let me drive him around too! After I visited FROMS (basically the doctors office for firefighters in MoCo) for a follow up appointment, I headed back to station 7 (Chevy Chase) and joined the chief and the guys there for some HazMat training (Station 7 is where the county Hazardous Materials team resides...everyone who is assigned there is a HazMat technician). The guys busted out the new HazMat vehicle and trained in setting up a "multi-stage decontamination area." Basically, if there was ever a big HazMat incident where victims were contaminated by some substance, they would go through the decon area to get cleaned off. It was pretty cool to see it all come together, and I definitely learned some stuff that morning.
For lunch, the chief took me to the Chevy Chase Supermarket, where he said they make pretty good sandwiches. Even though I'm trying to cut out most of the bread in my diet, I took him up on his word and tried their roast beef on wheat. He was right...very tasty!
Later on in the afternoon, we started making our rounds of visiting all the stations in the battalion (or as many stations as we could get to). We ventured out to station 30 (Cabin John) and joined them for a drill they were about to have. Just as they were beginning, a box alarm was dispatched for a fire in station 11's (Glen Echo) area, which was part of out battalion! We raced out the door (I hobbled, actually) and took off down the road. We were several miles away from the fire, but we got there in good enough time.
We got there and smoke was definitely coming out of the house. The firefighters were already in the house putting the fire out and searching for any victims. Thankfully, there were none. Actually, I take that back. The dryer, where the fire originated, was definitely dead...all burnt up and banged up. All in all, it was a pretty small fire. I got to run (hobble) around the house looking for hazards, and I sat in the incident commander's buggy, assisting him in commanding the entire operation. Pretty cool, I must say!
When things were all over, the owner of the house, a lady who looked to be in her mid to late 30's, eventually came home and was not at all happy about things (when people's houses catch on fire, they tend to be a bit grumpy...I don't know why...). She was mostly unhappy about the damage done to her house by the firefighters. She questioned why some of her windows were broken when they could have just been opened. She did have a point, but that's a judgment call to be made by the firefighters inside actually fighting the blaze. Should they have opened the windows instead of smashing them? We can only speculate. The chief and I stayed on the scene with the lady for a while, along with a fire marshal, helping her figure out the next steps she needed to take to get her life back in order. I got to see how firefighting may be fun for us, but it's a true disaster for whomever it happens to. They're left to pick up the pieces of their lives, figuratively and literally.
Once we finished there, it was quitin' time for me. Battalion aides work a 10-hour day, and 5p was my 10th hour. While I don't wish disaster on anyone, if it does happen, I hope I'm there to help.
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