Point Break
Super Anarchist
- Thread starter
- #21
It’s a team Doc…it would mean nothing without you guys. You all are the best. But thanks…..we all do our part.
Cocoanut Grove Fire
- Thread starter Point Break
- Start date
Mrleft8
Super Anarchist
Hell yes, it's a team. And the fire fighters, EMTs, and drivers are a small but vital part of it. The ER people, the techs in the closets, and the rest of the med staff are the people who bear the real brunt of the situation.
The trauma of being the first ones there is bad, but dealing with the situation after the people get into the house must be even worse. God.............. The peeling skin, the rotting flesh, the pain, and the family..............
I've been on both sides, and I think I'll do my best to stay away from either side at this point.
SloopJonB
Super Anarchist
Threads like this make me glad of an uneventful life.
nota
Anarchist
live trees are far safer for xmass
and big fire extinguishers are cheap insurance
and big fire extinguishers are cheap insurance
burndoc
Super Anarchist
Not when your German wife uses real candles on the branches.
An uneventful life is boring.
Having worked in mental health and emergency medicine and it was very gratifying to help people in one kind of crisis or another. But in addition, there's a substantial adrenaline rush when you're in the middle of the mayhem, and it's addictive. I think most people in these lines of work feel the same way.
SloopJonB
Super Anarchist
My life hasn't been boring but if that was what it took to not know the smell of roasted human flesh or have ever heard the screams of burned people dying in agony then I'll take boring.
Point Break
Super Anarchist
- Thread starter
- #28
I think our (firefighters/pm’s) effort in the continuum of care is emotionally much easier. We see some pretty shitty things but then it’s gone. The burn center folks see the suffering all day…..every single day. They persevere because they can make a difference (which is the same reason we do) but I could hardly take even a day on the unit.
One moment I thought “okay, this really really sucks.” Two story house fire with a ton of fire on the second floor. It was so frigging hot that we couldn’t get all the way up the stairs. Couldn’t get past the top stair and down the hallway. Much of the heat at the stairwell was from a bedroom about 6 feet down the hallway with fire just blowing out the door into the hallway. We were pretty frantic to get down the hallway to a bedroom past the fire room because we had a very reliable report of a person trapped probably in that bedroom. His odds were not good but you never know.
My firefighter punched a hole through the drywall from the stairwell right at the top and into the bedroom. He opened the nozzle and stuck it through the hole into the fire room. The steam and heat drive down to the floor but soon the heat let up enough and we belly crawled over the debris from the ceiling and attic insulation falling in, past the bedroom and started the search while the hose team moved into the room and the truck got a hole in so things really improved. As visibility improved someone noticed the guy barely recognizable as a person mostly buried under the debris. He was clearly burned/dead way before we got up the stairway and down the hall but we had crawled over the debris and what was left of him in the zero visibility several times looking for him. Well…our turnouts were covered with remnants of skin and tissue that had rubbed into our turnouts as we passed over/through the debris.
As I stood outside looking at the front of my turnouts and gear the sight combined with the smell and the realization of what it was really rattled all of us. That was one moment I really hated. Still……….my entire awful experience on that fire lasted maybe an hour…..at the burn center they see it all day……every day.
No thanks.
Mrleft8
Super Anarchist
No, PB.... BIG THANKS!
I only did that job for several years, you did it for a career. BIG, BIG THANKS!
