Friday the Thirteenth... ugh.

FF Carl Betz, Lt. Kevin Jutras, FF Ron LeFaivre, FF Chris Wagner





Friday, April 13, 2007

Okay, so I decided to run a day shift. Once again, the officer that I was supposed to ride with wasn’t going to be there, but I was riding anyway. I knew two of the other guys on the truck, so that would work fine. I got to Washington Street at seven in the morning – man, did that one hurt. Anyway, I showed up with a ton of brownies from my Mom and after waiting for FF Ronnie LeFaivre (who had worked a call back at another station the night before), I finally decided to go upstairs and find FF John Woodard instead. When I got to the lounge, there were a few guys up there that I knew. They were very happy to see the brownies from Mom, which I found exceedingly cute. We sat around and I caught up with a few friends I hadn’t seen in a while. When Ronnie got there, he introduced me to the third firefighter on their group, Chris Wagner. He and I seemed to get along well – talking about Ireland a great deal. We Irish ones tend to find common ground fairly quickly! Carl Betz also came around and said hello – I’d be riding with him, too.

Being that it was Friday the thirteenth, I knew that it was either going to be a weird, busy day or an absolutely dead day. Sadly, it was the latter of the two. However, after both Carl and Chris had been pulled from our truck to attend HazMat training and we were given a replacement firefighter, the Lieutenant had decided that we should take the truck out and check out the area.

After that, we almost got called out to a scene, but got turned around ten seconds after we pulled out of the station. Carl Betz and Chris Wagner got back from training and rejoined us. I did manage to get some footage of the guys cleaning in the station – John Woodard washing Ladder 1, stuff like that. Later on, we got called to a box alarm down near the North Main Street Station at Citizens Bank. I did get a little bit of footage there – caught Jay Fabrizio there checking out the alarm box in the hallway of the building with Battalion Chief Curt Varone. But otherwise, fairly uneventful. I think we were actually heading back to the station from that call when we got called to a nursing home down near Women & Infants’ Hospital. There was a patient who was bleeding from the shunt in her arm. She had just had dialysis treatment. We got there and after some chaos ensued (I won’t go there…) the rescue picked her up. Carl Betz spent the better part of thirty minutes holding this woman’s arm up in the air and keeping pressure on the shunt to keep her from bleeding out too much.

I ended up leaving around four-thirty, even though the shift ended at five. I had found out that my doctor and very dear family friend, Ernie Zuena, had died unexpectedly and his wake was that night. I did enjoy hanging out with my friends, but a fairly uneventful day, sad to say. At least I didn’t have to wear a turnout coat that day – just a short, black jacket with a PFD patch on the shoulder.