Tales From the Station

When bad weather hits we can usually be found at the fire station waiting out a storm. One summer day the alarm went off and we were told to man our stations due to a severe storm heading right for us. We were sitting at the station and the radio starts going crazy. A tornado touched down in another town and their firefighters were watching it reporting the location and reporting damage. Luckily this region has a whole lot of nothing with some buildings here and there.

The tornado touched down in an open field and meandered around digging up brush and knocking down trees and not much else. Then we get a report of a tornado forming in St. Lawrence County heading for the county line. Radar picked it up and followed it through two towns south of us. Then the next town and then it took a turn towards us. Dispatch reported it was headed right for our station.

Like lemmings to the sea we ran outside to take a look and saw a sky so black it looked like nighttime. The wind picked up and began to howl. I don’t know what our plan was, but we were going to be first on scene if something happened. The radio screamed again and said radar picked up a tornado and it was a mile away. Again we just stood there in the parking lot watching and waiting.

Just as we suspected the tornado was going to bear right down on top of us the sky brightened. The clouds went away and everything cleared. One of our members claimed he did the right dance and kept the tornado away. The rest claimed it was because we’re in God’s country. We went back in and dispatch gave the all clear and we headed home.

On another occasion we were on our second night of Accident Victim Extrication Training in which we were more than happy to tear some cars apart in the parking lot. We were being trained on the Hurst Tool more commonly known as the “Jaws of Life”. A State Fire Instructor had come up to teach the course and had us running through the standard response issues. This included laying everything out on a tarp and assessing the accident scene.

I had invited a local hot dog vendor to set up shop in the parking lot since we hadn’t established a meal program for everyone. I thought it would be a good idea to have some hot food available since a lot of firefighters didn’t have time to eat before running to the station for training. He was set up and selling hot dogs, mostly to the curious public that always drives by when we’re doing something. We were planning to swarm the stand when a break was called.

During this time we noticed the sky turning black and the wind was getting stronger. We were going through the lesson plan and getting to the point where we start cribbing the car in preparation for an extrication. Once that was done the instructor was giving us a lecture. His back was to the sky and didn’t see the impending storm descending on us. We could see it clearly and we started getting antsy watching the storm develop. Here we were surrounded by big steel tools, a big yellow fire truck and a busted up car just itching to pull in a lighting strike.

The instructor was going over victim assessments and the do’s and don’ts of handling a patient during extrication when a huge wind blew in and startled him. He turned around and saw the ominous sky and immediately called a break. We didn’t waste any time and ran into the station just as the front hit us.

A bunch of us were standing in the truck bays watching the rain come down. It’s a guy thing, the best way to watch a summer storm is inside a garage with the door wide open. We were standing around talking and killing time and watching the neighborhood react to the storm.

Right across the street was a cluster of trees that we didn’t think anything about until a blinding bright blue flash lit up the sky followed by a tremendous BOOM! that shook us and the station to the core. We were all staggered backwards about six feet and shaken by the near miss. Some people, when startled, react with an involuntary spewing of expletives and that described about half of us. When we settled down it was one of those “I can’t believe that just happened” moments.

That’s when the hot dog vendor ran in the door with a bunch of hot dogs and tossed them on a stand inside the fire station. We had forgotten about him and he was riding out the storm in a hot dog shack. That strike must have been way too close to call because all he said was “Keep the hot dogs! I’m going home!” and immediately left. There was nothing but silence afterwards, we were still too stunned to say or do anything. Then the lions descended upon the kill and the hot dogs were quickly consumed.