I slept in Saturday morning after putting in a good, long workout Friday evening, and had just woke up at 9 am and was debating about whether to get up and head south to go rockhunting now, or snooze another 30 minutes, when my fire pager decided the issue for me. We were dispatched to a house fire not far from me, so I got up and started getting dressed, while Missy went to the sunroom door and waited as she normally does. I had turned my pager to open monitor and as I did, I heard one of the ambulance crews report heavy smoke down Hwy WW, which was where the fire was located…I moved faster…grabbed my camera and headed to the truck. As I pulled out of my driveway on to the street, I saw heavy black smoke billowing up from the direction of Hwy WW myself…here is what it looked like as I crossed over the Elmont Road Bridge…

 

 

 

..as I turned on to the Service Road going west, I could see our ladder truck coming down the road half a mile behind me…it was traffic city getting to the scene, seemed like everyone in town had seen the smoke and decided to come see where it was coming from…I parked in a nearby drive so as not to block the entrance drive and ran down to the scene, finding the ambulance crew of Jesse and Danny pulling hose from the top of Pumper 854 to prepare for the tanker when it arrived….

 

 

 

 …Damon and Nolan were operating a hoseline at the front of the trailer while Cody was manning the pump controls on 854…the middle of the trailer was gone and they were alternating the hose stream on both exposed middle sides of the  trailer…. 

 

 

 

…it soon became evident to Damon that they werent getting enough water where it needed to be, so he and Nolan got up and moved in to get a better spot and I walked around the right side more…..

 

 

 

….as you can see, there was heavy fire in the east end of the remains of the trailer as well as heavy intense fire from a large steel shed behind the trailer, and the heavy black smoke was from a stack of tires behind the steel shed…

 

 

 

…and then to top it all off, the electric pole, located just a few feet from the trailer, started sparking and arcing, looked like the fourth of July again….

 

 

 

 More help soon arrived in the form of firefighters and tankers, and Bourbon and St Clair were sending trucks and manpower as well, so firefighters stretched additional hoselines and repositioned to get a better grip on the trailer fire first, starting at the west end where heavy flames were shooting out the end window….

 

 

 

…firefighters soon had a plan in mind and prepared to attack the west end fires….

 

 

…and began their attack….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

..and the flames were persistant…..

 

 

 

…and finally the flames were replaced with heavy white and yellow smoke….

 

 

 

..Damon came back over to give some instructions to the hose team and keep them updated to the rest of the scene…

 

 

 

…and to check on their progress as well….

 

 

 

 

 

…firefighters then tried to remove the siding from the south side of the trailer with a pike pole hook, however this didnt work and firefighters had to get a K-12 saw to do the trick…

 

 

 

…firefighters then made their way over to the flames coming out of the large metal shed….

 

 

 

…Casey ran out of hoseline so Jimmy stretched another line and added an extra hundred feet to the line to enable him to get around to the pile of tires on fire as well…

 

 

 

 

…by this time the fire in the large steel shed was gaining in intensity and strength….due to a heavy load of fuels inside, as well as acetylene bottles….

 

 

 

 

 

Jimmy approached and began spraying the flames from the tires first….

 

 

 

…then began working toward the shed….

 

 

 

…and pretty soon he moves closer to the stack of tires….

 

 

 

…and he then hit the stack of tires again…

 

 

 

 

…but he was having little effect on the tires, so he instead turned his attention to the shed once more…crews were on the other side working their way in from the east entrance toward the back wall where Jimmy was positioned…

 

 

 

…within minutes firefighters had the scene under control, with only the tire pile left to extinguish….electric crews showed up from Crawford and disconnected the power to the pole and requested fire crews to extinguish the pole itself, so St Clair`s young crew were assigned the task of wetting down the pole with a stream of water….

 

…and I soon left the scene and headed south to go rockhunting….