What a pleasure it was
What a pleasure it was to have my dad ride along with me last night.
What a nice day it was to do some fire training on roof ventilation. I never realized before how dangerous that stuff could be, even in training.
Showing some 3/4 CDX plywood decking who's boss with a fire axe can get out some great pent-up aggression. *
Getting home to a nice bowl of my wife's beef stroganoff after dropping off yet another person at the jail who insisted that they would have [my] job is good for a bit of schadenfreude, especially when you know what that person is having for breakfast.
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*NOTE: More fireman talk in comments.
Labels: day at the office, fireman, hobbies, so fine, The people you meet sometimes
posted by Matt G @ 6:59 AM
9 Comments:
What does your jail serve? In my town if you're booked in, you get bologna sandwiches for breakfast, lunch, and dinner until you see a judge. Depending on holidays etc, that may be four days.
Fire axe?
You know they have venitilation saws, right?
They get the same as the housed prisoners for breakfast, served on stackable plastic compartmentalized trays. Today it was grits, reconstituted eggs, and cold corn tortilla with a milk and a coffee, if desired. Honestly, it's healthy enough.
Mine was better, though. :)
Oh, we had a couple of vent saws. One was a designated ventilation saw, with a short chainsaw blade angled down to easily cut through about 10" of roofing. The other was a standard Stihl chainsaw with about an 18" blade. We also have a gasoline powered circular saw with a giant "cut ANYTHING" blade that's pretty cool, but isn't used much for roof work. But you always take a tool to sound the roof while moving on it, and on pitched rooves, a halligan tool makes a dandy step as well. We keep both an axe and a Halligan tool stowed together on the engine and brush trucks as "a set of irons."
We proved yesterday why you take up a tool not only for sounding the deck: it will get you through the roof when the saw fails. Ours did, when the brake (absolute necessity for taking a running saw up a pitched roof) mechanism failed and wouldn't let the chain run. This is another reason why we train-- to check the tools' functionality.
Also, once that hole's been cut, sometimes it takes some extra pounding to get the center knocked out of the hole. Having a 4 foot handle on the axe to keep you out from over the edge of a hole that you can expect to begin gusting a BUNCH of heat makes it easier to clear the hole safely, it seems to me. We practiced transitioning from saw to axe, and just using the axe to pound the hole right in without the saw. I did it right the first time (Vent saw failed, used the axe to finish), and then did it wrong the second time (Chain saw worked great, and I ripped down, then back up. They wanted all strokes toward the ladder, and down. In my defense, I got up, got my hole cut, and got down faster than anyone else did.)
Axes and Halligan tools DON'T require gas or batteries and they start EVERY time... Just sayin...
You know, NFO, I thought of you as I considered that very fact. :)
It is always enjoyable to share a meal and then to ride along.
There was a time I flattered myself that I might make a material contribution to your efforts. Alas, the years and old injuries have taken their toll, and my scuffling days are long past.
Still, it was fun to learn at least one new thing about police procedure, and a lot about firefighting.
Safe home, sir.
Heh, it was only a couple of years ago that you nearly laid a MagLite against a mouthy ex-con on a solicitor complaint with me, Dad.
MY department is so back in the woods that we ventilate roofs with pulaskis.
But given how spread-out things are, the roof is likely to have self-ventilated by the time we get there.
As the rural VFD chief says in Population 485, "We haven't lost a basement yet."
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