18 July 2006

Weather or Not

Yes it is hot. Not unusually hot. This is the summer I expect. I guess I lived in Florida for too many years.

A few calls today. One full arrest. The Doctor called the PT at the hospital not more then 5 minutes after our arrival. First full arrest in some time. After downloading the SAED the PT was Asystole the whole time. Non-shockable rhythm. The family last spoke to her at 1am this morning. The call came in around 10:30am.

Fire alarms and food on the stove, thats about all. One Gas leak in a house. We shut off the gas main and ventilated the house.

Tuesday night is training night for our volunteers. We were supposed to do live burn exercises but that was canceled due to the heat. We stayed indoors and did a little First aid / CPR. Kind of Ironic. I just performed CPR for 20 + minutes this morning and now we are training on proper technique.

19 May 2006

Water, Water everywhere

Today two members of my vrew at the firehouse set out to test hydrants (as we do every spring; we have over 900 hydrants in our district that we have to test annualy) and in the final few they broke the stem, leaving the hydrant partially open and water flowing everywhere. We have a "key" for the water main just incase we have to close a hydrant (it is not really key shaped but more of a very large nut driver on an eight foot pipe). As it turns out the shut off we saw was not for the hydrant but for the residents on the street. We had to wait for an hour for the water company to come and assist us. They had a hard time also (the previous paving company have laid asphalt over the hydrant shut off valve). Yes, the two firefighters got soaked. I was driving today and luckily I stayed dry.

Two runs so far both EMS. One siezure and the other an overhead door hit a worker in the head. The second patient was rushed to the trauma center for evaluation.

Rarely do we get to hear about how our patients fair after EMS carts them away.