Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

I have alluded from time to time about the family nature of life at the firehouse and the fact that we are currently living under renovation, but I haven’t yet really posted on those topics much. While fun, interesting, “Big” calls are great for stories, the environment of the station, the crews and general life back at the house are a critical part of the department. I think this is particularly true in a volunteer house because, let’s face it, we aren’t getting paid…it damn well better be fun.

Our department has three stations, and they each have a different personality as a rule. They have different lay-outs, different neighborhoods and different specialty pieces, that leads to each of them being unique, and while everyone seems to develop a special attachment to “their” station (usually the one they are assigned to first) we work hard at conveying that we are one department, and not three stations. That common camaraderie is doing well now and growing I think, and it is being done without having to mute the individual aspects of each station that make us unique.

As Captain, I get to all of the stations, and have an appreciation for each of them, but 12 is where I started, and it is “home” to me for the sake of running calls. I have run calls from all three; 2 is the administrative home for all of us, and I am often there attending meetings and doing paperwork, and was assigned for my ALS precepting to 14 for about a year.

The due is a fairly diverse one, with older homes to the north, with a large and growing immigrant population, far and away Hispanic, but also various African and Mid-eastern contributions that add language and cultural variations to the EMS mix. (Something not really taught well in class, but quickly learned in the streets). Gangs have a foothold and seem to be getting more active there, as evidenced by the increasing trauma volume we are seeing the last few years. The south end is full of new homes being built, and is bringing a higher-density suburban “McMansion” sprawl aspect to us. The Potomac River is to the east, and in the summer that becomes a city population of it’s own. We are seeing more and more calls from there, and our Boat capabilities are being used with growing frequency. To the west is more suburban sprawl, and a large outlet mall that brings in tourists and plenty of traffic. Second Due to the south is the Quantico area, and plenty of lower-income housing and transient population.

We have never hurt for call volume, and used to go head-to-head for highest volume in the county with Co. 11 on the west side of the county. Now, we have more support from 24hr career units to our south and west, so the volume has settled some, but is growing again. In a 24hr weekend crew, you can count on 10 calls, and a weeknight will bring 3-5 a night I’d say. (Last week we got 5 between 7pm and 230am…NOT good for sleep before work the next day). All of our stations are starting to see that level of calls with the growth of the area.

Our station is known as the “Animal House” and has a station patch with a black sheep wearing a “Delta-Tau-Chi” necklace in front of a house with a roof on fire. The patch is painted on a wall over the door from the firebay to the rest of the building, and the benches out front are painted with it, and the phrase “Knowledge is good” (you find the reference) and “None”. The “None” is a reference to the motto of the department to our west which is “Second to none”. Grin, inter-department rivalry is alive and well, but kept at the appropriate level. We, as a station and a department, have a reputation of being aggressive on both sides of the house (EMS and Fire) and frankly we actively work to instill that in our people. (See Matt’s posting for some insights..) On the fire side, our people attack very aggressively and have found that most fires are less dangerous if you put them out than they are if you pussy-foot them. On the EMS side, we stress good, rapid assessment, focused aggressive treatment and rapid transports. There are arguments for playing and fixing inside someone’s house and I’m not against it, but it is not generally our style for most calls.

The station itself is a pretty big one. We have five drive-through bays side-by-side, and an attached split-level building for housing and offices etc. It was built something like 12 years ago, and is currently being renovated. We are redoing the floor plan for the bunk rooms, and locker rooms, redoing the air handlers, adding on to the far side of the firebays for storage etc and putting in common office space with network connections and modern furniture. The kitchen/dining room is being redone to open that area up and all in all I’m really excited about the end results. The price for all of this is that we are currently living in two single-wide trailers in the back parking lot. One is set up as a big-ass bunk room with as many beds in it as we can fit. The other has two rooms with live-ins and the medic bedroom as well as the kitchen and TV room.

It is not at all uncommon to have families in with us on duty nights. Prior to moving into the trailers, we often had wives or members come in and cook meals, and in particular weekend cook-out and big breakfasts are the norm. Children of various ages are often playing in the bays, tossing footballs or pretending to run calls. Cat and I do not have kids ourselves (two dogs fill that bill), but we have 10-20 nieces and nephews at the firehouse. I have to admit, sometimes it is kinda nice to come back from whatever car wreck, heart attack or whatever and be greeted by playing and giggling children back at the house.

Out front on the ramp the guys have built a pair of really nice benches that they also painted with the patch and the sayings I mentioned earlier. Now that the weather is warming those benches will start getting more use. Often times, if the call volume lets us, we can sit there at dusk, watch the few cars going by, enjoying a sunset and chatting. Summer brings rapid, strong thunderstorms in the evening, and I don’t know how many of those I have watched blow in from the ramp. When the rain starts, the bay doors stay up and we move in to the front bumper of the pumper. As sure as watching the clouds coming in, we can hear the calls being dispatched from the west end of the county and moving closer with the storm. Alarms, water hazards and auto accidents seem to be the big ones in the storms.

The back of the house has the big gas grill, and weekends often mean burgers, steaks, chicken or hot dogs on the grill. Here it is really nice to have someone who is not on a unit to watch the grill….we have our priorities. Dinner is a classic important part of firehouse life and we have several good cooks, each with their own ‘thing’. Jon does a mean cheesesteak sub. Zark likes to try lots of different things, but is a bit of a breakfast specialist in my opinion…I miss his Saturday specials. DTXMatt loves the grill, and taught me a love for Montreal Steak seasoning on steaks. He once showed me to butter the steak lightly, cover it in seasoning, wrap it in foil and grill it. Okay, so it is an MI on a plate, but damn it is good. Often times, dinner planning starts right after breakfast so we can start getting a head count and buying the food. Weekend dinner head counts means the crew, some family members, the station live ins and usually one or two folks who ‘drop by’. You can’t beat a good firehouse dinner, lots of food and because of the bulk nature it is pretty cheap per head. We just divide the cost of the groceries by the number of eaters and there ya go. The food is always fresh too, purchased at the store only hours before.

After dinner on a cool spring or summer night means sitting around the big metal table in the bay and telling stories. It is those stories that inspired this site eventually. Poker and movies in the TV room are big draws too. The poker at 12 has kinda died down in the trailers…space is a bit tight, but Matt has picked up the tradition at 14 where he was reassigned this year, so there is a game to be had. In the winter we have been known to play hockey in the back parking lot in our turnout gear for warmth. There is a big hill that rises behind the house, it is GREAT for sledding….until you hit the parking lot at the bottom but if you do it right, you can slide right into the bay. Our station houses “The Maze” training facility for the county and weekends sometimes bring in the fire fighter 1 classes to train. That means the day’s entertainment is watching the new guys running laps around the station in full gear on air to see how the bottles drain.

Life at the house is painted in bold colors, and even trying to touch on all of the things that you learn to love is almost impossible here. There are pranks, girlfriend dramas, card games, training events, boat calls, food, tales, family and friends that fill the spaces between Heart attacks, car wrecks, sicknesses, asthma attacks, assaults, traumas and the occasional actual fire. There are stories and blogs behind them all, and they all go to answering the question I get most often from folks at work, or friends who find out that I was just up all night running calls for free and going to work the next morning. That question, “Why do it?” always makes me smile. It is because we love it, the calls, the excitement, and the family we gain. Of course, how do you explain all of that to someone new too? “A twisted sense of a good time” is my standing answer. We each have our own answers, but as those of you running elsewhere know, you almost never get that question from people who live it.