As Good As It Gets

From the left: Battalion Chief (BC) Joe Tinsley, BC Maurice Gates, BC Melvin Carter, Assistant Chief Marty Greene, BC Shane Dobson, and yours truly.

All too often, I'm unable to see how good things are until they aren't so good anymore. This is the group of chiefs that I have been working with on C Shift.  We have been notified that Chief Carter will be transferred to a different shift on July 1st. Sunday was the last chance for us to all work together, so we took this picture.

No one is reading this blog but me, so I've got no reason to blow smoke up anyone's skirt. When I say that this is a ridiculously strong group of leaders within our department, I mean it. And when I say I'm the weakest link, I mean that too. But like the last player to get picked for the ball team, you're still on the team, and I wear that with pride.

Each of these men has my admiration. Joe Tinsley (first from the left) is an exceptionally experienced incident commander who really knows our rescue specialties. He has the love of his firefighters and the respect of the department.

Maurice Gates (second from the left) has managed two (that's right I said two) maydays in the last two years and did so with a calm and commanding presence that contributed to our firefighters getting out of a very bad situation. I hope I can get through my career without having to command a mayday, but if I can't, I hope I handle the incident as well as Maurice did...twice.

Melvin Carter (third from the left) not only has an excellent command presence on the fireground, he also carried me and my 40 lb ruck for over 400 yards up a steep hill on our first GoRuck when our cadre killed me off within sight of the finish. It was the damnedest display of physical fortitude I've ever witnessed, and I watched it while laid across his shoulders as he covered 50 feet at a time. He walked until his legs began to wobble, I would hop off, he would take three breaths, and then pick me up again. Unreal.

Marty Greene (third from the right) is one of those rare people who can make everyone feel that they are an important part of the team. He's the department's most experienced tactician and always makes the incident better when he arrives on scene. He has an ability to see through a situation to the core of what needs to be addressed. He's who I want to be when I grow up.

Shane Dobson (second from the right) is my work wife. He's incredibly humble, ridiculously knowledgable and talented, and someone I look up to. His passion and no-nonsense approach to fire scenes is something I try to remind myself of since I have a tendency to make things more complicated than they really are. Years ago, on a fire I was commanding as a very inexperienced incident commander, Shane almost lost his life. I often think about what I might have cheated our department out of if it had gone some other way. I love him like a brother.

Like I said, it's a great team. And there are great chiefs on the other shifts, but this group worked well together, laughed together, and moved C Shift forward together. And if you're not me and are reading this, I just wanted you to realize how great some of the folks protecting the citizens of DeKalb are. It's easy to see when a firefighter is holding a nozzle or climbing a ladder. But there are other skills, which are a little harder to see, but are just as important.

Maybe I'm Amazed

We fought a fire recently in Brookhaven that had a real head start on us. Before we got there, the two-level deck on the back of the house was completely engulfed. By the homeowner's account, when her neighbor woke her up to tell her about the fire, all she could see out of the back of her house was fire. That glow you can see in between the houses? Yep, that's the massive fire on the backside. From there the fire climbed up the outside wall and got into the roof.  It then breaks through the peak of the roof before we get there (notice no trucks in this neighbor's photo.)

Because of the way newer houses are constructed, we don't have as much time for interior firefighting before we have to start worrying about the house falling down on us. I don't want to get too far into firefighting tactics, but the shorthand is you don't ever want to be above the fire. Buildings have a tendency to weaken and then drop you into the fire.

On this fire we couldn't see into the basement from the outside. The only windows and doors were on the same side as the burning deck, and it was such a large fire we couldn't tell what was deck and what might be basement burning. Because it was the middle of the night and there was a high probability that there could be sleeping people inside, I asked a crew to do a search of the house knowing full well that I didn't know if there was fire under them. Very risky, but a calculated risk. That crew didn't find anyone on the first floor after a quick search, but found conditions inside deteriorating rapidly. As they were coming out, crews outside located the homeowner who confirmed that no one was inside.

That brought my stress level down considerably. Knowing that all of the occupants were out, I and the other battalion chief on scene made the decision to fight this one from the outside because of just how much of the house was burning. And considering how close the houses are together, we did a really good job keeping it from spreading to the house on the left and right. If it had, we might still be there fighting fire.

So the news shows up, and I have to go on camera as the department's representative. I give them the details of the fire; short, sweet and to the point, because if I talk too long I'm bound to say something stupid.

What I can't figure out is how the news gets it so screwed up when they report what I told them on tape. It's not like they can't rewind it and make sure they got the facts right. But after watching the news coverage the next day, they took the more juicy elements of the fire and mixed them up a little for the sake of sensationalism. Maybe I'm amazed at that, but not really. (Incidentally, I never saw my interview although co-workers said they did.)

Which leads me to the comments on an article posted on the local news website for that city. They quoted me talking to the news about our concerns about the houses to the left and right. What followed in the comments section on their website was an exceptionally heated back and forth between readers about building codes, the supposed privilege of the wealthy, and even a inference that building inspectors were bought off.

Whatever. I just want to let anyone reading this know that our firefighters did a great job. Yes, it is a horrible tragedy for the family who lost all of their possessions. I truly felt sorry for the homeowner as I talked to her while we both looked at the smoldering husk of her home. But her kids were away on vacation, and a neighbor woke her up in time to get out. Her family lived. And it's really easy for me to say, "it's just stuff" since it isn't my cherished stuff, but really it is just stuff. She got out safely. We operated safely and stopped the fire from becoming a conflagration.