One night we had a big fire
in a huge winery. They made fruit
wines. After the fire was knocked down,
we were up on the roof standing next to a large hole we had opened. We could look down into the warehouse. Firefighter boots have loops on each boot so
you can pull them on easier. We tied a
rope between the loops and lowered the boots down to the warehouse floor. Another firefighter filled the boots with bottles
of wine. We did this over and over. It got to the point where we would yell down
to the fireman “no more blueberry – more strawberry.” You have to remember that the bottles had
been declared contaminated by the health department and couldn’t be sold. They were scheduled to be destroyed. That night, all of us went home with lots of
wine. It still tasted pretty good, even
if most of the label was burned off.
Another cold, snowy night a delivery truck
skidded into a bridge abutment and flipped over. The doors split open and hundreds of boxes of
Saucy Susan Shrimp Cocktail were scattered all over the road. Once the container boxes had been split open,
the contents (packed in glass jars) was no longer saleable – so we all had
shrimp cocktail for weeks and weeks.
In the firehouse where I worked, there was a
large Italian neighborhood in our first-due district. One Sunday afternoon, a fire alarm came in
from a 2 family house in that neighborhood.
In those days, most Italian families cooked a large pot of sauce from
early morning until their big Sunday dinner later in the day. After we put out the fire, some of the
firefighters crawled through the attic looking for any fire extension. One of the firefighters slipped off the
ceiling rafter and his leg went through the sheetrock. We didn’t know that Grandma had snuck back into
the kitchen to stir her sauce. The
pieces of sheetrock went into her sauce pot.
Grandma got very upset and started beating the firefighters boot leg
with a big wooden spoon and yelling, in broken English, that the firefighters
were “making too much dirt.”
One night I was called into work because there
was a major snow storm predicted to hit NY.
About 3 AM, we got a call via the Police Department that there was an
accident on the NY State Thruway. An
18-wheeler hit a bridge abutment and turned over. The police were taking the drive to the
hospital. There were so many accidents
on the Thruway that night that all the nearby fire crews were out on other
calls. We were about a mile away. They told us to close 2 lanes of the thruway,
leaving one open, and wait for a commercial truck-towing vehicle to
arrive. They would try to right the
tractor trailer, but, if not, a crane vehicle would be called in. In either case, with the weather conditions
as they were, it would have been hours before anyone showed up.
As we began to secure the accident scene, we
noticed that the trailer had been split open and there were frozen turkeys all
over the snowy road. Once again, food
products in that situation were considered contaminated and would be
destroyed. Since they would be a major
hazard to traffic once the lanes were opened, we had to remove the
turkeys. We couldn’t fit 33 turkeys
safely in the fire engine (32 firefighters and one for dinner tomorrow). One of the firefighters told me he lived
nearby and had a 4-man toboggan. I sent
him home to get it and, when he returned, we loaded up the toboggan with
turkeys and he and another firefighter pulled it to the firehouse. They unloaded it and returned to fill it up
again. By then, the tow vehicle arrived,
righted the truck, and that section of the Thruway was cleared. Everyone in our firehouse had a frozen turkey
in their freezer for the holidays.
Eating or drinking something that was in a fire
is really not a good idea – especially if it was open or exposed to smoke. We had a fire in a bakery and, after the fire
was out, firefighters started eating pastry that was still in the oven. They all got food poisoning and were sick for
days. Another fire was in a butcher
shop. A firefighter took a roast beef
that had been in the open case back to the firehouse and cooked it for
lunch. No one could eat it – the taste
of acrid smoke made them all sick.
After a fire is knocked down, firefighters are
looking for something to drink to hydrate themselves. Water is the best thing, but hydrant water is
unsafe to drink. The pipelines have been
super-charged and the water is black and full of rust. Opening a refrigerator that was in a smoky
room and drinking milk or orange juice from an open container is also a
NO-NO.
Firefighters are a tough breed and they learn
quickly! A cold, unopened bottle of beer
is usually safe to drink. It may not
taste as good as a fresh one – but it’s safe!
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