So I had to go relieve at a different station yesterday, one of our more rural "country" stations, but along the North Shore. It's the station where the backyard ends, and the beach begins. It's awesome. Beautiful, and they're a chill crew too. Normally averages about a call a day. About the only downside to having to go here is the almost hour long drive, but hey, that was my commute to my previous inner city ambulance job so it's not all bad (and yup, the line on the transfer list to go to Sunset Beach is about a mile long lol)
I've worked there before, in fact last year I had a "Long Term Relief" where I was essentially temporarily assigned to this station for about a month (due to someone being out on injury). In that month, this 1 call a day station, we got 1 building fire, 1 multi company brush fire, a couple vehicle fires, and a few homeless camp (more of an unauthorized campfire than an actual brush fire). They half jokingly kept saying they were gonna ban me from going there in the future if that black cloud kept up
Cut to yesterday I'm relieving there again. I was actually scheduled to do our annual Water Safety training (more lifeguarding rescue techniques type stuff... not at all unimportant given this stations beach location, the sheer number of cooped up tourists flooding the island resulting in rescue calls all over the place...) This crew had already done theirs, and since my normal Engine company was coming up to do theirs at a nearby beach, I would just leave, do the training, and go back. An issue was that the Captain normally assigned to the Sunset Beach engine was out with his annual physical in the morning, so it was just me, their Engineer as Acting Captain, and one other Firefighter (Acting Engineer), so we had to wait for the Capt to come back to allow me to leave without pulling the Engine out of service.
Shortly he gets back, while I got my stuff gathered up to go, sure enough we get an Alarm. Not a regular medical or Activated Fire Alarm, but an Arcing Wires call. Get to the neighborhood, and sure enough, a tree branch had fallen and was on top of the high voltage power lines, and was arcing and sparking. Ok, so we call the Power Company (they had a 1 hour ETA due to traffic) so I have my turnouts on and my job is to go to the far side and cordon off the street, so we don't get any lookiloos (or just people driving thru) end up getting electrocuted. A few minutes later, and sure enough the tree branch on the wires practically explodes and the line breaks and live wires drop into the street. Actually next to the street. On top of some dudes poor car. And yup, a Toyota Corolla is no match for high voltage and promptly catches fire. Fire we (the Firefighters) can't do much about initially because well, water and high voltage electricity don't exactly mix well together either.
But yeah, the car is catching fire, the power pole is catching fire, the bushes are starting to catch... Now we're worried about the house catching fire! So our Acting Captain pulls out a hoseline and is starting to "pencil" (short bursts of water) just to try and contain the exposure so it doesn't spread. Which means the Acting Engineer is busy running the pump and getting the foam system into operation, so it falls to me to skirt around the wires (Does the term "bunny hopping" in this context sound familiar? I was def wondering if I would have to do that!) becuase I was the only one available to drag a 4in supply to the nearest hydrant and get a water supply (normally a car fire can just be blasted with tank water, but yeah, we could only contain the exposure until the power company got here to ensure we wouldn't get zapped....)
(Side note, how do you guys where there's this "Winter" thing deal with dry barrel hydrants?? We have a small handful scattered around, and this hydrant was one of them, and it was a damn pain to open!)
So yeah, of course I go and take over the handline, we're in a defensive posture maybe 30-50 feet away (basically the max range of the line to rain some foam around to contain), and we're there for that whole damn hour till Power Company guy arrives, where he promptly ensures the power is off, and we can approach (the now smoldering) and finish putting it out.
In the meantime, one of the neighbors must be a semi-professional (or full on professional) photographer because he apparently used a really nice camera to take really nice "action" shots of us at work. Cool pictures, the kind you'd want to frame at the fire station lol.
One problem.... Acting Captain was only in turnouts, no helmet, no SCBA during his initial "Need to pull a line and get some containment on this now before it spreads" and me, well I had my helmet on but no SCBA either (from running around far side of the street to snubbing the hydrant to defensive posture a good 30 feet away).... So what happens as soon as the pictures find their way to Social Media?
We barely had time to get back to the station after everything and our Battalion Chief is calling the station saying his Boss, the Operations Chief of the whole Dept, is asking him, why on earth we weren't fully suited up in full PPEs and everything. SO our reward was writing up an official memo to the Executive Staff explaining why we weren't wearing SCBAs...... -_-