Open (Fire) House

[kevin_standlee]

The North Lyon Fire Protection District, which includes the Fernley Fire Department, held an open house on Friday evening. Lisa (carrying travelswithkuma as usual) and I walked over to have a look.


One of the engines was parked out front and Lisa asked me to take a picture of pump control panel.

Inside, they served a barbeque and there were displays about volunteering for the department (the main reason for the open house, which was funded by a grant for attracting volunteers), how the paramedics work (interrupted because a call came in and they had to saddle up and roll), and a US Forest Service exhibit, which was like Old Home Week for me. Also, the USFS's mascot was there.


Kuma Bear got to meet Smokey Bear.


Out back of the fire house, there was a demonstration of how they use the power tools (which were themselves a donation, because their ordinary funding wouldn't pay for them) to take apart a car to do a rescue. This was a combination of demonstration and training for new fire fighters, so it was somewhat more leisurely than had there actually been someone trapped inside a wrecked vehicle. The vehicle was a genuine wreck, though, donated by a local wrecking yard.

Lisa and I spoke with the Chief, who remembers us (we're one of the few people who ever come to their meetings who isn't part of the department), and I'll be sending him pictures of how the local grocery store illegally barricades one of their doors during the late evening hours. It appears that there will be a proposal before the voters to increase the fire department property tax assessment by around $10/year for a typical home in this area, and I for one will be voting for it.

Comments

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

My father is a retired US Forest Service officer, and he would watch that show (which I liked as well) and when they did brushfire-related stories, say things like, "If they really did that, they'd be dead," and of course he knew from personal experience, having fought fires in that very terrain. In fact, when he got enough seniority that he could do so, he had a note put on his record that he would never accept an assignment to the three Southern California forests (Angeles, Cleveland, and Los Padres), on account of having nearly been killed on assignment there when his crew got trapped. (The fire jumped over them rather than burning them up, which is why I'm here to tell the tale myself because it was before he met my mother.)

[rono-60103.livejournal.com]

My wife cringes at plenty of the medical shows, and we both spot problems with CSI. So I'm well aware that TV has a less than perfect track record when it comes to preserving accuracy over eliciting or mystifying story lines.

That being said, I'm under the impression that Jack Webb was a bit of a stickler for accuracy, even when he was just one of the producers.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Yes, and my father had nothing to say about the paramedic and structure-fire elements, as they weren't in his specialty. I think Dad thinks the city fire people are crazy the same way some city fire people can't believe what the Forest Service people do. The fires they fight and the tactics and equipment so different they they might as well be from different planets sometimes. For that matter, the amount of time the USFS people spend in the field is huge; back when I was in seventh grade, the Laufman Ranger District of the Plumas National Forest had a particularly bad day with dry lightning and something like 22 separate fires, two of which turned into monsters and then burned into each other (I remember being on the base and seeing the huge red-brown plume shooting into the sky from over the high ridge that separated us from where those fires were. My father was Fire Suppression Officer (at that time the #3 person on a USFS district, and effectively the Field Commander for the forces fighting the fires). I didn't see him for nearly a month, that being how long he was out there fighting that and other fires that summer, eating in field kitchens and sleeping whenever he got a chance, but never getting a chance to come home. I'm proud of my father's work, but I'd never want to do it myself.