Pull up a chair

Pull up a chair folks, Uncle Schmoe is going to offer you up some advice.

When sending out a snarky e-mail regarding a vacancy in the dick bureau due to the untimely demise of a not so popular detective, please please please make sure you click on the right "group" before clicking the send button.

This will prevent the Chief of Police from needing to have an apologetic tone in his e-mail, when he sends out the formal announcement of said detective's passing.

This action will also eliminate the need for you to send another e-mail, this one to the entire department, apologizing for the first e-mail. As sincere as it might be, no one who reads it will believe it.

Also remember that this kind of boo-boo may not result in formal discipline, but it will likely not be forgotten during the span of your career.

This is the best kind of advice folks, the free kind. Right now, there is an officer with a very thick layer of egg on his face. I don't think he'll ever get it off. I'm just glad he doesn't work for us.

******

Oops.

Thanks for reading,
Schmoe

Accountability at Dusk

For those of you who are actually good photographers, please pardon the poor technical quality of this image. It was shot with a point and shoot and I feel lucky to have captured anything. Having said that, the reason that I am sharing it with you, is that I just like the way it ended up. I liked that the camera captured the time/lighting component and the way that the various crews were captured taking a break.

This is an off-duty image taken of the Home Town F.D. I knew the Battalion Chief and he allowed me to take a few pictures. The fire was in a single family dwelling and was ripping pretty good when the crews arrived. It was knocked down with a couple of 1 1/2" pre-connects. The truckies felt validated as they got to chop a hole in the roof.

For the uninitiated, the two boards visible in the bed of the pick-up truck are accountability boards. Every person on the incident has a removable passport, which was their named embossed on it. When a firefighter enters the fire building, or goes up on the roof, their passport is placed on the board. When the firefighter exits the hazardous area, the passport is returned to them.

This procedure helps keep track of personnel when things go really bad. It's use was developed from a price paid in blood. There are several different ways to perform this function, I am unsure exactly how Home Town does it. I do know they take it pretty seriously.

Hopefully, Santa Claus will read my list (sent in early!) and bring me that new camera. With it, scenes like this will be a lot easier to capture. Time will tell on that, we'll see if I can stay out of trouble.

Thanks for reading,
Schmoe

Irony

I looked out over the crowd, sixty or so factory workers. They were staring at me, waiting for me to begin my presentation. I only had to speak for  fifteen minutes or so, as we had already used up another twenty minutes doing some master stream evolutions.

It was Safety Week at the rubber dog turd factory and we had been asked to give a presentation on disaster preparedness. It was the usual presentation covering earthquake and wildfire preparedness, survival and eascape plans.

I used a pamphlet as an outline, the same one that we handed out at the end of the presentation.  Some good information was presented, although I know most of the attendees will do little if anything to prepare for a disaster.If I can just get them to think about preparation and go out and get a flashlight and a couple of cases of water, I will view it as a success.

Before closing, I commented to the crowd about how the Big Rubber Dog Turd Company appeared to be committed to safety as we rarely went there on accident related calls. I further commented about how their forklift training program must be working as we never go there for forklift accidents. They have a bunch of forklifts bustling about the place, moving pallets of rubber turds and the raw materials needed to manufacture them.

I then closed, answered some questions and we left the plant.

We made it about one mile own the road before we were dispatched to the rubber dog turd factory for a fall victim. We went back to the plant and found plant medical services splinting a possible fractured arm . The patient was a contractor who screwed up, fell and broke his arm. Obviously, this patient hadn't been attending safety meetings.

Three shifts later, we received another call for medical aid at Rubber Dog Turd Inc. This was supposed to be for a fall victim with a foot injury. It was a foot injury alright, but it was quite mangled as it was the result of two forklifts colliding. This woman's foot had been caught between the two forklifts and had been crushed as a result. It was a rather gruesome interesting injury and would have made a great photo if it weren't for the HIPPA thing.

What are the odds of that? We hadn't been to the plant for an accident in a year or so, then within days of me commending them on their safety practices, two accidents occur, one of which was very serious.

Next time I have to speak to these people, I am not going to pay them any compliments. I am not going to mention anything about train derailments or plane crashes either.

Thanks for reading,
Schmoe