Indian Time - A Voice from the Eastern Door

The Hogansburg Akwesasne Volunteer Fire Department has a unique makeup with a station in New York, a station in Ontario and a station in Quebec. This causes some confusion at times with both countries having different measuring systems. The US uses the English system (ironically, the English don’t) and Canada uses the metric system.

If you’re exposed to both systems you can generally handle a few metric and English conversions easily. For instance, to get the Fahrenheit equivalent of Celsius just double the Celsius figure and add 30 and you’ll get a close approximation of the temperature. Remember, if it’s a negative temperature you need to double the negative number. Not many people know how many pounds are in a kilogram, but you’d be surprised how many people know exactly how many grams are in an ounce.

Anyway, now that that lesson is past you can imagine what it’s like for the fire department to work with both governments and still be somewhat efficient. A long time ago the fire department received a fire truck from a municipality in Ontario and took delivery. Of course all the couplings and connections were metric. Metric and English fittings don’t work whatsoever. One course of action is to buy numerous adapters and use them in the field which is a pain.

The other course of action shows the ingenuity of the fire department. The pump had adapters on it to change the fittings from English to metric. That only required removing the adapters and it was good to go. What the department did for the rest was beg, borrow and steal couplings from other fire departments and change every single fitting on the fire truck to match the rest of the fleet. I can’t even fathom the amount of work that took.

Of course, we still have problems responding in mutual aid to departments on the Canadian side but the problems we had were the same for all the other fire departments in the county. Our trucks couldn’t connect to their hydrants and our hoses would connect to their fittings and it’s an ongoing problem solved only by adapters and training.

It took some doing to get the Canadian government to understand we can’t use metric hydrants here. They’d install them and we would come along and say they’re no good, change them and they do. It took some doing for the MCA to get the ministries to understand this problem and we appreciate their hard work. Now the system runs smooth and we’re functioning efficiently.

Now as far as hydrants go we have had the Murphy’s Law effect no matter where we go. On one occasion we had a structure fire going on the Island and there was a hydrant right there. The water system had just been installed that year. The truck pulls up and connects, but the hydrant hadn’t been turned on yet. The guys grab the hose and drag it 200 meters to the next hydrant down the road. That hydrant is frozen! They grab the hose again and drag it another 200 meters down the road and finally get a good connection. Something to be said about the best laid plans of mice and men.

Most of these problems are caused by something completely beyond our control, John Q. Public. This clown does the most absurd things you could think of like using the hydrant to fill a pool and leaving it full of water so it will freeze. He’ll drive his vehicle right into a hydrant even if it means going off road for hundreds of yards. He’s also the guy who won’t pull over to the side of the road for a fire truck, or worse slams on the brakes thinking the 14 ton truck right behind him can stop on a dime. He is the weak link in the chain of response.

I was on the Island one day when we get a call for a structure fire. I pull the tanker out and start heading stateside. The Chief calls me up and tells me to return to the station, they have a hydrant connection. I return to the station and back the truck into the bay only to get called back out because the hydrant didn’t work, it was frozen. John Q. was at it again. I pull the truck back out and head to the fire muttering to myself “I could have been there already, but no….” The Chief was probably muttering “It was such a good plan, but no….”

One of the best stories of the water systems was from a garage fire in the village in the seventies. On several roads the last hydrant from the American system is within stones throw of the last hydrant from the Canadian system. In the village on one road the hydrants are on the same side and on the other road they are right across the road from each other. The garage fire is right down the hill from both hydrants. The Chief is running the scene when he hears the PA on the Engine scream “HEY CHIEF! DO YOU WANT AMERICAN OR CANADIAN WATER!?” Only in Akwesasne.