Indian Time - A Voice from the Eastern Door

We have to deal with some bitter cold weather when answering calls in the winter. If we’re smart we bring our gear inside and make sure it’s nice and warm when we go to put it on. We usually put on our gear by the side of the road near the fire scene. If your gear is warm then you’re fine, if its cold then you’re in trouble.

At one large commercial fire the recorded temperature was 5 below zero, American. It was cold along with a bitter wind. I was in the back helping to cut an access hole in the wall. We got through the wall and found…. another wall. The same thing happened to the guys on the roof and from that point on we knew it was a lost cause.

The only way to get access inside the building was to use a backhoe, which was dispatched to the scene. By this time we were iced over and I mean iced. The backhoe came around back and started the dirty work of opening an access hole so we could get water on the fire.

The backhoe had already accessed the front, side and roof of the structure and we were the last crew to be assisted. Once the hole was open the fire was pretty much out. The backhoe sat there idling and I had an idea. I saw the vertical exhaust sticking out of the hood and I went over and wrapped my ice crusted gloves around it. I was trying to be discrete so no one would start pointing and yelling “WIMP!” With a muffled ssss my gloves started to thaw out.

I wasn’t there a second when three more pairs of hands gripped the exhaust pipe like kids with a baseball bat deciding the starting order. We’re all standing beside the backhoe warming up our hands when one of the Chiefs walks around back and looks at this strange sight and ordered us to take a break.

We went to the fire station and couldn’t figure out why it was such a struggle until we got inside. Our gear was encrusted with a half an inch of ice and we needed assistance to break the ice off the snaps on our jackets. Once we got our gear off we set it on the floor and to our amazement it stayed upright all by itself.

Some volunteers had shown up to the station and had made sandwiches and soup and were staring at us wide eyed as we cast off our gear which had frozen solid. Some EMT’s were at the station and checked us out for hypothermia and frostbite. We all had lower than normal body temperatures, but otherwise checked out OK.

My hands had stopped working by then and I had to put them under running water to warm them back up. Then they started to hurt. A volunteer put a towel in the microwave and gave it to me to warm my hands back up. It’s a really good idea, keep that in mind.

We sat around the station warming up and eating when one of the chiefs asked why we didn’t take a break earlier. We looked at each other and said “No one came out back to tell us!” He laughed and told us to warm up first and then go out in the bay to load hose off the shelves onto the trucks. The other crews were bringing in hose that looked like it had been chopped out of the ice and some of them actually were. These were thawed out and put back on the shelves at another date. For that night we were done and we all went home for some well deserved rest.