| It was a beautiful morning and all the volunteers from both of Bay District's stations were up bright and early to get in some good hands on live fire training. Under the direction of Assistant Chief Robert Wahrenbrock a large two story frame house with many additions added to it was made available to burn for training purposes. The house was located off Maryland Route 237 just down the road a piece from station 9. For an August day the temp was just right for a house burn and we had plenty of house to burn. The guys from 3 and 9 did a great job getting the place ready for the burn and it promised to be a good day.
We started off as we always due by having a safety stand-down talk by the command. After the talk and crew assisignments it was time to lay some hose to get ready to light some fires. We had a excellent turnout of not only our firefighters but firefighters from Company 13 (NAS Patuxent River), Company 4 (Ridge VFD), Company 6 (Second District), District of Columbia Fire Department, and we had about 6 firefighters come all the way down from Rawlingsville VFD in Pa. A great group and everyone just ready to go.
Mr. Keith Fairfax our Water Supply Officer along with the help of Firefighter Mike Fuhrman had a well laid out plan for the water supply operation and I can tell you this about Keith. He does it right. You might call it overkill but if a fire has ever gotten away from you on a drill you will understand what I'm talking about. When he is taking care of your water supply needs you don't have to worry about it.
So we finally got ready to start lighting fires and the stokers were inside ready to go so the command was given by Chief Wahrenbrock to his Operations Officer Richard Sullivan to light it up.
We first started on the upstairs rooms and let me tell you they had some great burns before they had to move to the downstairs. They had enough crews to run everyone in many different times. Trust me when the decision was made by the command to let the building go everyone was ready and no one could say that they didn't get a chance to feel the heat.
We had the Lexington Park Rescue Squad checking for burns and vitals for each firefighter both before they went in and after they came out. We were also happy to have our Associates on the scene providing the men and women with snacks, drinks and more drinks. By the time afternoon rolled around everyone was ready to call it a day. To bad we didn't have a standby crew to come in and pick up all the equipment and hose. That's one thing we always gripe about is the clean up after the fire. Everyone loves to get the fire but picking up after is a bummer. Then back to the stations to clean, clean and clean some more. Hose, Masks, Turnout Gear. It's all got to be returned to service to be ready for the next call.
So a big thanks to all the mutual aid companies and we hoped that we showed the Penn. boys a good time. To the career guys from Patuxent and District of Columbia thanks for offering your all's advice to some of our newer firefighters. It's not often that you get a Battalion Fire Chief (Tommy Dean) to come down and play with us.
So at the end of a long day we had pizza and sat around for another couple of hours to talk about how we did. It was a good day. Very few small burns and a few helmets scorched. I think that our new probies that they call them can be ready for the real deal when it comes. |
