August Fire Scenario: Trees down...

[Dalmation90]

Ok, so maybe this isn't about a fire per se...

But let me set up this scenario for everyone:
Last Friday, a neighboring department got hit by a "microburst" which had 70+ mph winds lasting a couple minutes. While this was going on, I was merrily mowing my lawn not five miles as the crow flies away and only had some light sprinkles pass through.

They got toned out for "numerous reports of numerous trees and wires down" and sure enough, they where out for many, many hours helping clear the streets of debris, and helping control traffic around streets blocked by downed wires. They, like every other department in my area I know of, respond to trees/wires down calls to evaluate the situation. If it's a tree down and no wires, we'll open up at least one lane of traffic so we can get a fire truck by if needed. If it's wires down, the response can be anything from a few cones or scene tape to setting up full blown traffic patterns (b.t.w...we have very low police presence, so the volunteer fire departments handle most of the traffic control duties at emergency scenes). And, since these storms often produce torrential downpours, we commonly are out loaning sump pumps to residents...and sometimes having to respond with a truck with a generator if they have a flooded basement, and no power to boot http://www.firehouse.com/interactive/boards/smile.gif

Of course, we haven't had any really good wind/snow/ice storms now in about 2 or 3 years, so plenty of dead wood is waiting to fall, so the next one to hit will be a doozy...

So, what do departments in other areas do? Do you respond and clear trees? Standbys at wires down? Traffic control? Pump basements?

Now...for a pepto bismol moment...imagine fighting a structure fire, all of a sudden have it be pushed by 70mph winds that came up out of nowhere, and meanwhile have a tree fall on your ladder truck, and wires come down across the pumper back at the hydrant http://www.firehouse.com/interactive/boards/smile.gif

Matt

[jsouza]

That same storm grazed by me a few hours later, and we only got a few sprinkles out of it, too. What do we do? Depends on the incident.

Flooded basements: Depends how bad the storm/flooding is. Heavy rains for a few days, we'll undoubtedly be loaning out sump pumps for basements. If its something more than that, like the days on end of downpours we had last June (wettest month ever for our area), we might send one of our smaller engines or forestry units out to pump basements (sump pumps have a hard time with 3' of water). I stress the "might" there....no use clogging up a $100,000 pumper because of a flooded basement. We also have some gasoline powered pumps that we can use, but we don't leave those at a residence. Also, we never tone out for flooded basements, the dispatcher will call a couple of people by phone so they can get a truck and go. We did have one incident a year or so ago where a freak tide flooded out a few houses, we had our boats pulling people out of the houses. That one was toned out. I don't know what happened with the basements after the tide receeded, though.
Downed power lines: Just plain depends. Sometimes we respond, sometimes we don't. I don't know the rationale behind it, sometimes the police will handle it, sometimes they send us. If there is a report that the pole is on fire, though, we are sent to it, no questions asked.
Downed trees: We'll only do something with downed trees if its during a hurricane or some other major event of that type. The highway department is much better equipped to handle downed trees than we are, so we let them handle it. In circumstances like hurricanes, obviously there are trees down everywhere, so we'll help out just to get the roads open faster, the more hands (and chainsaws) the better.



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"I can think of no more stirring symbol of man's humanity to man than a fire engine" -- Kurt Vonnegut

[DFDGREG]

The pepto-bismol moment sounds like all /%&#* just broke lose. I don't think i would like that one very much. Normally we don't respond to trees down with no power lines present. This spring we got a call for "tree down on a car in the road" turned out not on a car, but both lanes blocked, so we removed the tree. (normally we let the county road comm. handle them but they were swamped)

Greg

[Bob Snyder]

I wish the boro street crew handled these things, but they don't. For trees down, we will respond (non-emergency) and clear the lanes of traffic and any safety hazards (dangling limbs, etc.), but no more.

For wires down, we will respond and give a size-up to the power company, cordon off the area and deal with any part of the problem that we can, then turn the scene over to the Fire Police to wait for the power company and handle traffic control. We don't commit apparatus to traffic details of any kind.

As for that last part, I don't even want to think about it.

[Ledbelly]

You guys keep talking about basements and I still don't know what that is! http://www.firehouse.com/interactive/boards/wink.gif However, we do the standbys at powerlines; never had a major call involving lots of trees (aren't many here to start with...) but we'd probably clear the roads anyway. We had a "small" tornado this Spring (I was off duty) and I think the units that went mostly were into the search mode rather than "cleanup". I never heard if they had problems with access because of debris....

[Dalmation90]

Hey Led...
Just wait till it's December and we start talking about tire chains and shoveling out hydrants after snow storms http://www.firehouse.com/interactive/boards/smile.gif

[KNOBMAN]

closest wagon would responed NON-EMERGENCY, evaluate the scene if there is no life hazard we would call for the utility dept. or call for the city cops and leave. we would never sit for hours on a wires call.

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UNION AND PROUD OF IT!

[721]

If we can safely cut enough of the tree to get at least one traffic lane open, we do so. If wires are involved, advise county wide dispatch to respond the power company. Large trees hung in other trees are beyond our equipment and skills and we leave those to equipped and trained orginizations. This is often a tree service that has an arrangement with local government and utilties.

This past winter we were called out on trees down due to ice on one of the mountain roads. We started clearing with two crews, and a state road crew and made about a 1/4 mile progress when more trees started coming down due to ice. This was called due to being too dangerous, and the power company that was comming behind us also called it a night and regrouped to go back in the following morning.

Fortunately no emergency services were needed in the area overnight, but there are some acts of nature that man cannot overcome immediately. Poeple living in this area are prepared for such outages and isolation and have supplies, generators, etc. In fact our chief lives in this area and has a generator for his home.

We also have a snow plow mounted on our brush truck to plow some of the worst part of our district. We are not trying to compete with road crews, but to be proactive in providing emergency services in bad weather. This probably reverts back to failing to get to a heart attack victim. The eventual body removal was done in the back of a members 4 wheel drive pickup.