Date: 21st October 2008
Time: 1214
Type: House
Address: Romany Road, Lowestoft
Initial Attendance: Normanshurst 01 and 02
Final Attendance: Make Pumps 4 - Normanshurst 05 and Clifton 01 plus Beccles 0G (FCV)
Sod's Law is alive and kicking...
Had just sat down at my desk after zapping and M&S Ham and Mushroom Tagliatelli in the microwave and my alerter starts giving it the biggun! Bollocks... I was looking forward to that.
When I got to the station it looked like I'd missed getting on Ladder 2. But a reshuffle saw me get the drivers tally. The call had come through as a house fire on Romany Road, Oulton Broad.
When we arrived we found Red Watch on Ladder 1 deploying a BA team and poor old Danny as pump operator trying to do a hundred and one tasks in the first few minutes.
Al got the BAECO board set up and Jason and Richard donned BA ready to enter the house. I started to dump our tank of water into Ladder 1 while Ben went off in search of a hydrant.
Rachael and Paul Henderson were the first BA team committed and were faced with multiple seats of fire - usually a good indication of arson. This also presents a far greater danger to firefighters entering the building as the fire spread and its location is all pretty unpredictable. It's not like a kitchen fire where, funnily enough, it's just the kitchen involved. I think there were at leats four separate fires in this property.
Rachael and Paul made it to the first floor and did a good job in knocking down a fire in one of the bedrooms. Other BA teams were committed to tackle the other blazes.
And all of this requires water, which we were rapidly running out of. The nearest hydrant was some distance away and, when the cover was lifted, full of earth. We had to dig this out by hand enough to be able to get the standpipe attached. Only problem now was that we couldn't actually get the thing turned on. Jammed solid. So, after much brute force (which isn't much from me and Ben!), we got water flowing - muddy at first - but at least we could now supply water to the pumps.
Eight lengths of 70 later and we had reached Ladder 1 - who needs to go to the gym?
It looked like the fire(s) had been successfully dealt with when we could see an ominous buildup of smoke rolling along the hall ceiling towards the open front door. The same dark smoke was now seeping from under the roof tiles and out of the dormer window. The two BA teams in the house and the team stripping tiles from the roof were ordered out of the property. An, as yet, undiscovered fire had really taken hold on the ground floor of the house. Begz and his BA partner were able, with a bit of effort, to make an entry to this room and start to knock down the flames.
It's easy to see how an incident like this eats up resources and can so easily endanger the lives of firefighters. Multiple seats of fire can catch out even the most experienced and switched on crews.
By now the incident had been made Make Pumps 4 and were joined by the Forward Control Vehicle (Beccles Zero Golf), acting as control point for the incident.
We now had SOCO on scene, followed by TV, radio and press - too late for the action but they got some good shots of us making up the 'miles' of hose and extended hosereels.
And, as quickly as it all started, we were off back to Normanshurst for tea and medals. Actually there was no tea but the medals are looking good!
Got back to my desk at 3.45pm, three and a half hours after dashing out, and picked up where I'd left off - eating my now cold and congealed M&S Ham and Mushroom Tagliatelli...