Week in Review

I have been about half sick all week and if that wasn't the case things were breaking right and left. So here is a summary of my crappy week and I won't even list all the things that are broke.

Running:
Monday night I ran with Annette and Michele in Crooked Creek. I got 4 miles in but it was terrible. My foot started hurting and it was so humid it was just plain hard to run. I almost hate to even put this on here but my average pace for 4 miles was 12:09. That's how bad it sucked. Tuesday I had about came to the conclusion it was time to quit running. Why put up with the pain?

Wednesday night was a little better. Humidity was still pretty high and I just ran in the neighborhood after work. I ran down to the soccer fields and ended up running a few laps around them which was different and kinda neat. Pace was still slow for me. 11:04 for 3.4 miles.

That was the extent of my running for the week. Yes, it sucks.

Biking:
I ran Monday and Wednesday nights, Tuesday was Fire Department night, Thursday I decided to mow before the rains came in for the Hurricane. Friday night and Saturday was FD classes. So that left Sunday. Well, the morning was still very windy from the storms on Saturday and I still was not feeling really great. I did end up riding about 4 miles on the comfort bike to check out some of the storm damage. Worst week biking I have had all year I think.

Firefighting:
Friday night and Saturday was the last class of our Driver/Pump Operator class. We were suppose to have practicals on Sunday but since the weather was turning bad Saturday afternoon the instructor decided he would have us do them Saturday morning which worked out good. We ended up completing the last module on Relay Pumping around 2pm Saturday. This was the final class of the 80 hour course I had to take thank goodness. Next Saturday we take the IFSAC test to become Internationally Certified. I hope I pass!

After class Saturday we prepared for the incoming storms from Hurricane Ike. We knew we would get hit and we knew we would be running half the night so we fueled the trucks and went home to wait it out. I think it was about 4pm when the tornado warnings started up in our area. So I was storm spotting from my back porch. Since I am also a Ham Radio Operator I had communications available with the weather net and National Weather Service. Channel 4 was getting most of their reports direct from the ham operators as one of their guys is one too. Works pretty good for early warning. Wasn't long and the storm was right on top of us but it ended up going about a mile west from out house. Evidently there was some straight line winds that took out a mini-storage building and damaged some roofs on an apartment complex.

Around 7pm it started for the FD. We got paged for a vehicle accident, and dispatch made it sound like it had a possible 10-7(dead) person and several others injured. It was on a curve back behind the Air Base so it was possible. Then we heard that there was a tree on the car with a victim trapped inside. Until one of our guys gets there you just never really know.

Our first engine in immediately called for additional help from Jacksonville. I was rolling with a two man crew from my station. En route the truck I was driving seemed to be having brake problems, not good. They were working but just didn't feel right. I have driven this truck for 15 years so I knew how they were supposed to feel. They were just harder than normal, almost like I had a brake sticking. We made it to the scene ok and the brakes were not smoking. I was more concerned about helping the victims at that point anyway. If I could get the truck stopped we would be fine.

Well, it ended up being only a single care, single victim and they hit a tree. The victim was still alive, but the car was crushed back on the drivers side probably as bad as any vehicle I had seen. And to top it off that's where the tree was. The vehicle was also nosed down off the road. This ended up being one of the top two hardest extrication's we had ever done in my firefighting career. We had every tool that the City of Jacksonville had on their rescue truck along with everything we had on our truck. There was probably 17 men working to free this lady from the wreck. At one point we even hooked a chain to the rescue truck to pull the car away from the tree so more cutting could be done. It was amazing that the lady was still breathing but eventually she gave up the fight. We never gave up and after almost 2 hours got her out. Too late though. And probably if we had gotten her out in 5 minutes the end result would have been the same. The injuries were just to severe to survive. But, it's our job not to give up and we didn't until the Paramedic called it. Below is a photo of the vehicle after everything was done.



We had just gotten back to my station shortly after 10pm when we got a call for a tree down in power lines. I mean we had just started to back into the bay when this one came out. So we headed out to check it out. The winds had downed a very large tree in a persons front yard, took out the power line and pulled the meter clean off the house. There was really nothing we could do since it wasn't blocking a roadway so we advised the homeowner they would have to wait on the power company. We no longer got in the truck and the bottom fell out and it started to rain. And rain it did. This was the hurricane rain. Must have lasted all night and luckily we didn't have another call till about 6am.

It was a long night, I had actually expected more trees down and more storm damage in our area but it didn't happen.

I'm still fighting this flu bug or whatever it is so hopefully that will be gone come Monday. I have another busy week scheduled at work and I have to find some time to study for my test on Saturday. Doesn't look good for any running or biking this week.