I was a full fledged firefighter now and had a few grass fire calls, smoke alarm at the assisted living apartments, but nothing real scary until March 1986. It was about 2:00am and the pager went off for a fully involved structure fire on Harrington Lagoon road two miles from my house. I ran out to the car and saw the sky glowing orange!! I was petrified!! I got to the station and pulled out our rig (Tanker), and awaited someone else to show up. The Captain showed up and we responded to the fire. We were the first at the scene and the house was totally ablaze!! There was no saving it. I saw a car in the driveway and nobody outside, and my stomach churned. We set up and I saw the wires falling and arching on the ground. We called for the power company to show up and turn off the power. I manned (or womaned) the gears on the tanker, and other rigs started showing up. They hooked up to me and we squirted water on the surrounding structures to protect them. About an hour into the call the bodies were found. A body was in the kitchen and another body in the bedroom on the floor. An elderly couple lived there.
I stayed with the bodies until the coroner showed up and I assisted moving them into the bags and then the van. I won’t go into the gory details, but it wasn’t a pretty sight or smell at all!! They were both burned beyond recognition. We were there until about 8:00am. The crew cleaned up and left to go to breakfast at the Tyee. I chose to stay with the Fire Inspector and be there when the son showed up from Issaquah. He showed up around 9:00 asking where they took his parents. I had no idea he didn’t know they were both dead. I had to tell him. He fell into my arms and we both cried like babies.
The inspector was going through the ashes and called me over. He showed me a strip of aluminum that is nailed to the floor when you separate carpeting from vinyl. He decided that was the cause of the fire. Sure enough, there were nails all in a row with sharp points and one nail had a flat melted point! The man built the house himself and knew the layout but forgot the wiring layout. When he was re-flooring his kitchen that day he nailed the strip to the floor and nailed it right into the big wiring that goes to the stove!! That must have smoldered for hours until it caught fire, and by the time he got to the kitchen he must’ve been overcome by the heavy smoke and collapsed. The wife was in the bedroom and probably got up to the smell of smoke and collapsed by the bed.
It was horribly sad. This fire was one month after the fire that killed the family of 5 which was 6 months after the fire that killed the mother and two kids. This is a small community of maybe 1,000 people. It was devastating!! There was a critical incident stress debriefing held at our station. I was really impressed that grown heroic men can sit and cry like us women!! Yes, they do have feelings!! I was proud to be part of the crew!! I hadn’t had my First Aid training yet, and they told me there was a First Responder class coming up in June. I told them I don’t like blood and I had a weak stomach. They said to take the class anyway. So I did. In September they handed me a different pager and said congratulations you are now part of the Elite Rescue Squad!!
WHAT??!!! No, wait, you don’t understand, I don’t do blood and gore!! No way!!
They said yes you do, you will do just fine!! So off I go in the middle of the night answering medical calls!! I get to my first heart attack call and thought I was having one myself. The EMT’s were all in Oak Harbor at a training class when the pager goes off for an MVA (motor vehicle accident) on Madrona Way. I drove to the station to get the Rescue Rig and me and another First Responder were the only ones to respond to the scene. The ambulance was coming from Oak Harbor, so we were all alone. We couldn’t get the doors open so we called for the Jaws of life from Oak Harbor (10 miles away). The driver was alive with a broken Femur, but the passenger was dead. They hit a pole sideways on the passenger side. They both just left the tavern. The Jaws showed up and they parked just in the driveway of the house in front of the scene. They looked at the rig I drove and they all laughed and said “That is why we don’t have women on our team!” I looked over at the rig and saw that I had pulled over to the side of the road and hit a branch of a low hanging tree and broke a flashing light. SWELL!! Just after that we all heard a big crash and looked at the driveway. The place where they parked had a sink hole under the driveway and it swallowed their rig!!! HAHAHAHAHA They had to call for a tow!!! He who laughs last!! Now don’t get me wrong, we don’t usually laugh at horrid times like that. (well maybe we do) A 20 year old man just lost his life and the other guy will be scarred for life, and here we are laughing!! That is what you call gallows humor. You have to get escape from the horror that is going on right before your eyes. We try not to let the public see this. I usually go home and cry in the shower like the rest of the men. (but not with the rest of the men)!
I answered calls for about three months and decided I wasn’t ready for the big stuff. There was an EMT class coming up and they told me to sign up for that. It started in march of 1987, and over in June.
Please...be a responsible drunk!! Do not drink and drive!! The driver usually lives but kills the passengers!!
Next….1987 a year to remember!!
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