Tales From the Station

The HAVFD didn’t start out in the same manner it’s operating currently. In fact, we used to be called “Cellar Savers” due to the large amount of fires that resulted in smoking basements. Well one day Dad ended up driving the engine to a fire on State Road that involved an outbuilding built on a wooden foundation. When it was finally out the chief radioed him to find out how things were going. Dad responded “We lost it, even the basement burnt.”

Well, Dad had to stand tall before the man when he got back to the station. Apparently our reputation as “Cellar Savers” was well known and the Chief was livid over the whole county hearing we couldn’t even do that. After he calmed down Dad was able to explain what happened.

On one call I happened upon one day coming home from work we were fighting a losing battle with a car fire. The car went off the road and ruptured the fuel tank causing a rather large fire. We emptied the water out of the engine and called for a tanker. Even using foam we couldn’t get this fire out.

We had to call for another tanker. The Chief was at the station and calls up the engine over the radio and asks what we had. He was curious since it came in as a car fire and we were responding a third truck to the scene. Our engine operator responded “We’ve got a fire here, Chief!” There was a moment of silence as everyone heard the conversation over their pagers or the PA system on the truck then started laughing.

Someone finally came up with the idea to hit it with a fire extinguisher. With a quick squirt the fire went out. After that episode I started carrying a fire extinguisher in my truck, just in case. We got back to the station and the Chief was not pleased, not pleased at all. He made reference to our very intelligent posteriors.

More than once we’ve been dispatched to car accidents that were vacated by the foolish to avoid any kind of responsibility. We call these incidents “remote controls” since there’s usually no driver to be found. We get a call in the middle of the night and we hear one of our officer’s call out that he’s on scene as the trucks start rolling. He then cancels all but one truck and over the air states that it’s a “remote control car accident”.

Dispatch makes an honest effort to pronounce the Mohawk names in our territory. We give them credit for figuring out how to say “Akwesasne”, however the nicknames get the best of them. The worst effort by dispatch came over the air one day as a giggling report of a marsh fire behind the “Baking Powder” residence on River Road.

One of the funnier dispatches of the air was when one of the dispatchers called out “Standby Hogansburg Akwesasne fire. There is a grassfire located in the…….uhm.” He starts laughing and continues “Whoooooville…….area of Snye” and starts laughing again. He finally gets it out and then has to repeat it after the tones are set off. By this time he can barely talk and tries his best to repeat the message but gets it out only between laughs. It sure can be interesting and entertaining listening to the scanner. I think that’s why half the homes here have scanners.