Thursday, August 24

Back to it.......

Since my last post I have been away from work on leave and have thoroughly enjoyed not being there. After the July we had I was so glad to hang my headset up for two weeks!!

My first day shift back was not what I was expecting. Newspapers had hyped up August as being even hotter than July, now whilst this had not been the case when I was trying to get a free sun tan in the garden, I was expecting it 'turn' as a kind of welcome back to work.

But no, we go from hundreds of calls reporting grass fires to hundreds of calls reporting flash flooding!!

One lady was quite annoyed with me when I explained that there really wasn't anything we could do for her. The rain water had built up in the street and was running in a stream into her garden. Obviously she was very worried that it would be entering her house imminently. The reason that the water was running into her garden was simply because the drains had filled up with all the other water that had fallen was already there. At this stage the water was not entering the house and therefore not affecting the electrics, this means there is very little the Fire Brigade could do. The equipment we do have for flooding incidents usually have to be submerged in about 2ft of water, and then the water is pumped from one area to another. If the flooding is caused by sheer amount of water everywhere then there is no-where for the water to be pumped to.

After I explained this to the lady she became quite aggressive. Basically saying that I didn't care that her carpet would be ruined, along with the sofa etc. I can only imagine how frustrating this type of incident can be for someone. I was trying to help her, give her some advice, yet all she wanted to do was shout at me. So after about 5mins I smiled to myself and thought, you're right - I don't care about your carpet or your sofa!!


One extreme to another. Glad to be back at work though. I was spending far too much time watching home improvement programs and was getting ideas..... maybe I should ring my lady friend back and tell her the times..... hee hee!

2 comments:

caramaena said...

good to have you back :)

Anonymous said...

It is good to have you back!!!

I was missing your tales of all things fire control.

I just found a new one
http://modernfirefighting.blogspot.com/

I think this CM ROB will be a very funny one to watch out for!

Take Care

Dave Stevenson