2008 November | briancoltrane.com

Archive for November, 2008

Damage Control

Friday, November 14th, 2008

When I was a kid, I had an uncle who was the fire chief of a rural, volunteer fire department. This was the kind of fire deparment that had cans of beer in the soda vending machine. Yep, instead of Coke, Orange Crush and Diet, they had Miller, Bud, and Pabst. Despite the kicking back and hangin’ out at the ol’ firehouse, when the siren went off, these guys were all business.

Nowadays, this same fire department has all the electronic alarms, automatic pagers and emergency dispatch coordination stuff. When I was a kid, they just blew the siren on top of the building to call in the volunteers. This damn thing was LOUD. As a bonus, the siren also went off precisely at noon every day for one long, loud blast, and did it again at six p.m. Ostensibly, it was to let the farmers know when it was time to come in from the fields and eat. Or if you had a hangover, it would have you up by noon and sober enough by six to go back out drinking again. If you were ice fishing, it told you it was time to come in off the damn frozen lake. If you were hunting, forget it, because the siren just scared the bejeezus out of the wildlife and probably caused you to fall out of your tree stand as well.

The siren also went off when lightning hit it, or when the wind was strong, or when somebody leaned against the switch, or when somebody couldn’t find their brother-in-law.

Anyway, my uncle spent most of his free time at the firehouse, but one day he was elsewhere and a four-alarm call went out. A hellacious barn fire was under way. I remember this distinctly because that siren went off for damn near five minutes straight at a howl to wake the dead. It was an all-hands-on-deck emergency, on a hot, windy day in July.

My uncle called up his son to grab his gear from the firehouse and meet him at the scene. I happened to be over at their house at the time, so I jumped in the car and rode along. What kid would miss this?

I tell ya, finding our way to the fire scene was easy. The smoke was like a black tornado, except wider, and slanted from the wind. We weren’t allowed very close to the property for obvious reasons, my cousin being the son of the fire chief or no, so he had to jump out of the car and run like hell, carrying this heavy load of fireman’s gear, boots and helmet and all. I was under strict orders to stay in the car.

Right. So I got out of the car and I could feel the heat of the blaze, even from the side of the highway where we were parked. Gradually I snuck in closer while staying beneath notice - a lifelong talent - and after a few minutes I spotted my uncle in his fire gear, yelling orders, with a two-way radio squelching in his hand. I have to say I was impressed by the sheer mass of trucks and firemen and water fighting this behemoth of a blaze. The wooden barn that was on fire was half-engulfed and housed a tractor and other expensive machinery. The firemen were doing their best to try and save it, but the wind was making a tough job nearly impossible.

I remember my uncle yelling suddenly into the radio, “Let it go! Let it go and save the other buildings!” There was another barn in an L-shaped layout on the farmstead, and next to that barn, the farmhouse. Chunks of flaming ash were heading for both as the wind shifted.

Immediately, everything the fire department had was hosing down the other barn and putting a wall of equipment between that one and the house. The barn that was not yet ablaze housed livestock. Fortunately most of the animals were in pasture at the time, but the milking parlor in that barn would have been another expensive operation to lose.

The barn that had been on fire burnt to the ground. The livestock barn and the farmhouse were protected, though you could see some scorching on the face of the surviving barn. Belatedly, it was realized that the second barn had in fact started to burn. It just couldn’t be seen by the naked eye because of the thick wall of smoke at the time. My uncle’s decision to change tactics and redirect manpower and resources kept a farmer’s loss from becoming a complete disaster.

I caught hell for being found standing there gawking, too close to the action. Little did they know this would become a blog post and a metaphoric story for the economy some umpteen years later. The moral being, when one has finate resources, you have to choose what to save, and what to let go, and you may have to do it blindly, having nothing to go on except the direction of the wind. You may have to do it without consensus or committee and without seeking everybody’s thoughts on the matter.

On an aside, the 1977 GMC pickup truck shown in the photo, is still in active service today with the same fire department. It was on the scene for that barn fire and countless other emergencies since then. Some things are worth keeping around…

Which, for you clever folk out there, tells you where I stand on certain economic bailout issues as well. Here’s to you, lil’ red lucky truck. *opens beer can*