What a day at the Fire House

Yea, as crazy as that sounds...I had the opportunity to ride along with Columbia Firefighters today for a future HFR I'm working on. So it started out with the guys fixing one of the trucks, because a belt snapped. Those trucks are freakin' huge! But, they got the truck in service really fast..and I think it was one of the fire fighters that fixed it. It was cool.

Then we got our first call. It was really weird because they didn't like hop, skip, jump really fast...we just kinda briskly walked to the truck and got in. It was NOISY, BUMPY and a TIGHT SQUEEZE. It was just a call for a lady with chest pains though, so no fires. Columbia FD responds to all medical calls, they arrive along with a local ambulance. We were first this time. The response was fairly fast here, but more on that later.


After the call, we went back to the house and waited for the next...but, let me tell you there wasn't another one while I was there. I got a tour of the quarters...which are quite nice. They each have their own beds (they share the bed with 2 other people on other shifts). After that we just sat around and waited more...their conversations cracked me up. They were really a close group of guys...they chat a lot, poke fun at the new guys and they are really nice. It seemed like a boy scouts or something.

So, Im working on an HFR about fire response times in Columbia...it will air later this month probably. I'll keep you all posted on that. I am also going to create some sort of flash element for the story, as I learned how to do basic flash today. I'm going to post a lot of pictures from the event too. So look out for all of that interactivity stuff soon. I'll post a link to the story when its done.

Have a good week-end!