running hard

so we have been pretty busy with the fire dept lately. i was on another call a little while ago, so i counted the calls for just may. so far we are averaging a call a day, thats right we have had 16 calls this month already. 6 days this month we have had at least 2 calls on the same day. it's been busy enough that even our new guys havent been able to avoid getting envolved which is a good learning experience for them. it probably doesnt hurt that they are eager to go on calls either, so getting them out is good. currently we are in the process of some changes in policy at the dept, and we are still working on this 2nd station. i got promoted to a captains spot, the previous captain had to retire for medical reasons, i would gladly trade a whole bunch of stuff if we could have him back. jer was a really good guy and we will all miss him.

work has been fairly busy, steady may be a better word. we are in the process of building a new road into our equipment yard so thats fun to do, no real time constraints to deal with and we can spend some extra time learning. the weather lately had been screwy. i dont mind cooler temps, but the damn wind needs to go away. i eagerly await the bass opener coming up soon. i have some more reloading to do here in the next month or so, then i need to go do some more shooting. deer season will be upon me before i know it.

Posted by: pyro6999 on 5/16/2009 at 9:52 | Comments (3) | Permalink

Odd Birthday

so yesterday i turned 29. to bad for me the color of my hair indicates something more along the lines of 49. of course the card i got from my wife had to remind me of that. (thanks dear) the day started off pretty normal, i went to pick up some parts in Detroit Lakes first thing in the morning. i took said parts to our shop and traded my brother in law his pickup back. it was about 0920 hrs and i was just about to go pick up the kids from grandma's house when my fire dept pager went off. so i took a right turn down my drive way and called grandma. grandma was already informed about the fire, as grandpa left his pager in the charger on accident " go ahead and go to the fire i dont mind watching the kids". I had just been promoted to a captain on our dept last week and this would be my first structure fire in said position. I called the chief on my newly issued radio and let him know i was on the way, i figured we may end up short on man power. thankfully we ended up with enough people to do the job. as soon as i got to our fire hall it was just me and the chief, "hmm this isnt good" i thought to myself. brother in law #2 was on the way and got there shortly after i did so we jumped in our #1 truck and headed off. farguy and another firefighter came behind us with our water tender grandpa and tall guy showed up a little later with another tender. We have a lot of new guys on our dept right now, so this fire was the perfect place to let them "get dirty". As the engineer my job was to get water to my chief and so i first lowered our drop tank down and set it up behind our pumper, then i got the 6" suction hose and low level strainer our and hooked it to the truck, "now i just wait until my tender gets here to dump some water". The guys grabbed a hose and i charged the line for them and they sprayed around the perimeter until more help arrived. When help arrived we got the new guys in packs, and turned them loose under the  guidence of some of the vets of the dept. I think it was good experience for them, they found out that without even being inside of a burning building our protective gear gets very hot. i told them, yeah it does get hot just imagine it  being 85 degrees outside as opposed to the 55 degrees it was yesterday. This was the first time i can remember since i joined the dept that i was on a structure fire and didnt touch a nozzle.

that was an ok start to my birthday. later on in the day aubrey started to really sound like crap, so we decided to take her in to the hospital. we got there at 20:00hrs and she was admitted to the er. she sounds like crap, has a crappy cough crap coming out of her nose right eye and left ear.  the doctor felt fairly sure that it was viral, but he felt in her case it wouldnt hurt to give her some medicine to maybe prevent something bacterial from starting later. so we got home at like 2200hrs and put the kids in bed. i didnt even get to drink one of my leinenkugel beers! oh well i got some ice cream in me before bed. weirdest birthday i can ever remember.

Posted by: pyro6999 on 5/02/2009 at 8:44 | Comments (2) | Permalink

my flood time

well i went to fargo to help with the flood. my first experience was 16 hrs of watching the clay dikes being reinforced by heavy equipment. not a lot to see there, the area where we concentrated our efforts on wasnt developed yet. the next day i ended up in moorhead with the fire dept. we worked in the river shore area from 30th to 37th. it was strange for this wyoming boy to see so much water. it was amazing how fast a group of fire fighters could put up a sand bag dike too. they lost three homes on the very north edge of that street, and build dikes and began to pump water out of the fourth home into the yard of the third to save the fourth. the rest of the homes on the street were safe, but not out of the woods yet.

Posted by: pyro6999 on 3/30/2009 at 11:06 | Comments (3) | Permalink

phase II

So, we returned from the cities last night. We went down there for followups, we dont quite have phaseII completed just yet. The plastic surgeon saw what we saw, there is a small fistula (hole) in the middle of her palate, basically in the area where the two sides where stitched together is where the hole is. He though it may grown back together on its own, if not he said it would be fairly easy to repair. We had to visit the ear nose and throat dr. as well. They had aubrey do some hearing tests, and they noticed right away that she had issues with her right ear again. The left ear she passed with ease, the audioligst thought maybe her ear tube in her right ear was plugged, the e.n.t confirmed that, so we were told to place 3 drops of hydrogen peroxide in that ear twice a day until she gets fussy, then we know its open. If that doesnt solve the issue, we would be forced to replace the tube.

Posted by: pyro6999 on 2/18/2009 at 7:41 | Comments (2) | Permalink

People that piss me off!

So, i got a copy of the saturday paper, and on the front page they were talking about the upcoming septic rule changes and proposals of the hubbard county commissioners adding extra stuff to the rules. Fine, and dandy, but when i started to read more into it i became furious. There is a few people on the county commission that dont understand septics and its obvious to my based on there comments. I put septics in for a living i go to school every other year some times every year to keep up with the states continuing education process in this field. I feel i am pretty qualified to talk about septics, these people on the commissioners board however arent educated in the field, and in my opinion shouldnt shoot off there mouths when they dont know what the hell they are talking about. the univ of Minnesota has its own dept that spends a great deal of time year round not only researching but perfecting septics to be not only environmentally safe, but also effective in doing there job. these misinformed commissioners however must  not relize that. if they knew anything they would relize that most everything they talked about in that article is false, blaming properly installed septics on lake pollution is bullshit, any new system will not deliver septic water into any "water of the state". the only systems that are doing that are very old ones that wouldnt pass a compliance inspection anyway. then there is people online on that newspapers web page making it worse, talkign about drinking urine after passing through 3ft of sand, and saying its not safe. actually 3ft is a conservative number, good clean sand will actually filter septic water in 18 inches of clean sand, and it be safer to drink than the water that the city of St. Cloud consumes on a daily basis. people just dont understand septics, properly installed used and maintained septics are the best way to deal with waste water.

Posted by: pyro6999 on 1/27/2009 at 14:52 | Comments (4) | Permalink