My parents had a friend out yesterday to cut down a few large dead trees in their backyard, and in their neighbor`s backyard. I drove out to watch with them and photographed it as well. It was actually pretty neat to watch, as two trees were huge, heavy, and solid….and after Leon and Dennis made the notch cuts on the side the second tree was leaning outwardly on, it came crashing down hard….
I sure saw some pretty sunbeams the other morning on my way home from work, the morning of Sept 11th, at first they started out rimming the edges of a pretty cloud above me just south of St Louis….
…by the time I reached St Clair, I had to pull over just west of the scalehouse and shoot what looked like a stairway to heaven….
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…one evening the week before, I had driven out to the end of Highway WW, north of Sullivan, to a neat pond that often gives me great reflections of sunset clouds and didn`t disappoint me then either….
…and while standing there waiting for the clouds to deepen in color and hue, I looked up above and saw the moon brightly shining up high in the skies….
…as I was driving back home, the very next valley to the south, was filled with a low hanging blanket of fog in a field full of cattle, with the sky filled with the soft glow of sunset…I stopped in the middle of the highway to record the moment….
Late Thursday night, Aug 28th, I heard Bourbon`s tones drop for a mobile home fire on Smith Lane, north of Bourbon, so I grabbed my camera and flashgun and headed out the door, Missy close on my heels. As we started down the interstate, I heard Sullivan`s tones drop to assist Bourbon with a pumper and tanker. As soon as I exited the highway, I fell in behind a Bourbon pumper headed north to the fire and shortly after was passed by a firefighter as well. Once I neared the turn off to Smith Lane, I observed a huge glow in the sky from the fire. After parking a few hundred feet back, along the roadway, I walked up and talked to Steve Kimker, who stated it was a vacant trailer that had been scrapped earlier in the day, and was now simply a pile of wood scraps on fire….
..leaving firefighters with the simple task of dragging hoselines around and putting out hot spots….
As I was getting ready for bed Friday night, August 22nd, I heard Bourbon Fire District toned out to assist Cuba Fire District on a first alarm residential structure fire at 607 School Street, so I grabbed my camera and flashgun and headed for the truck. Within a few minutes, I heard Sullivan and Steelville get toned for the second alarm, so I figured it must have been going pretty good, as Cuba struck the second alarm fairly soon after the first alarm. I arrived and parked half a block away and walked down the street to find a two story home with heavy smoke coming from the second floor windows and several firefighters fighting it from the roof of the porch above the front door….
…I didn`t stay long in this spot as I was pretty close to the attack pumper and there was a huge tree in the front yard blocking the view of the house as well, so I moved over to the west side of the house a few minutes later and within seconds, the flames broke out thru the roof and windows on the back side of the house….
..and within a few minutes of fire breaking through the roof, firefighters pulled an inch and a half line over to the west side to get some water on it…
…while over there, I was talking to some area kids who told me that everyone was able to safely evacuate the residence in time….
…and within moments, the entire roof of the residence was well involved in heavy fire….
…I walked back to the front of the house to snap a few from that view point…..
…and saw the huge fireball continue to grow from the roof of the home….
…so Cuba firefighters decided to try and hit the fire with their deck gun on their attack pumper….
..which did knock down the amount of fire at the front of the house, but within minutes it came back even stronger on the west side and rear of the house…due to the angles of the roofline, it was hard to get a good angle to where firefighters could hit the flames with a stream of water and huge trees hampered the use of their aerial ladder truck as well….
…firefighters on the west side resorted to climbing a ground ladder and spraying their line inside the double windows at the second story, which again, temporarily knocked down the heavy fire inside….
…before leaving, I took a photo of Cuba`s newer ladder truck, similar in design and like Sullivan`s, built by Sutphen out of Ohio, with a different color and paint scheme…one of Metro West`s former trucks….
Sullivan Fire District received a call late in the afternoon on July 21st to respond to westbound I-44 and assist the Bourbon Fire District with a pickup and trailer fire. I had heard the original call go out to Bourbon and failed to get out there on the first call, wish now I had, because I prob would have had some photos with flames in them. By the time I got there, Bourbon had the fire knocked down and Sullivan assisted in mopping things up…
…and while Bourbon`s guys were able to take a break and clean up their gear and equipment, Sullivan`s crew led by Captain Cody Martin, continued to mop up and extinguish hot spots in the trailer….
…here Cody assists Eric Lindemann on the hoseline…
…and then takes the nozzle himself….a rare treat for Captains these days….
…with assistance from Billy Harris….
