Recently, I just got hired as a firefighter with our local VA Hospital, and had an exciting first day. Keeping in mind, as far as anyone can remember, there has only been a hand full of actual fires at the VA...a very, very low number considering what gets done there, and especially since the buildings are all prior WWII era buildings. Anyhow, it's my first (official) shift working, and all is good. We're eating dinner watching the hockey game and all of a sudden, we get a power surge and all the back up generators start up. Of course, following the power outage comes fire alarms which we recieved one for the main building. We respond to investigate and see what the problem is...nothing found. After about 45 minutes of looking around, we finally give up, and head back to the engine. Just as we get back to the engine, the boiler plant operator calls for us on our radio and screams, "Fire department, this is the boiler plant...there's something wrong over here. There is heavy smoke in the basement, so I think there's a fire!" Hearing his distress call via radio, we got back in the engine and flew over to the boiler plant. After a few moments, we arrive at the boiler plant and begin to make entry into the basement of the boiler room...all clear. We continue to investigate and go upstairs into the main level and we find smoke about chest level at the top of the stairs. Then we opened a door to the hallway and heavy smoke began to roll out. Time to mask up! We continued to look for the source of the fire in this smoke filled environment and still couldn't find anything. Then we make entry into the electrial room...bingo! Even more smoke flows out the door once opened, and there it is...a little orange glow seen on the other end of the room. Now, any firefighter can testify that standard operating procedures would be to bring in a charged handline...just as we did. Well the problem was this room we finally made entry into was the electrical generator room. Water + electric = funeral! So of course we used an ABC extinguisher to put out the refridgerator sized fire. Fire goes out, now it's time to ventilate, right? Well after a few minutes, we finally get the building ventilated and life is good, right? Wrong. Now, of course we asked (before extinguishment) if the electric to the building was shutdown, but unfortunately for us, the power that we were told was shut down, wasn't. We find out later that the power wasn't shut down (like we had asked) and was still in the process of shutting down. Then we find out that if two certain wires had touched that were only an eighth of an inch apart, we would've all been blown to pieces. It seemed like an unreal story...not us, right? Well I didn't believe it until it came straight from the electricians mouth. I couldn't believe how close I came to death. Well, I guess with great risk, comes great reward. We saved the building, in return saving all power supply to the hospital, and sparing our lives. No fire spread, no injuries...I'd say it's still a good day. I guess if you sat down and continued to think about things, you would "what if" yourself to death. No need to do that since all was well, right? What a first day, huh! Well, not as exciting as what a big city firefighter would have, but I guess that's why I'm not a big city firefighter! =)
