Reverend Ref +

FIRST RESPONSE

I didn't sleep all that well last night. I was hot. I was uncomfortable. I was thirsty. I kept waiting for the alarm clock to go off even though it was turned off. I was hot. Finally, at about 6 am or so, I fell into a deep sleep that could've taken me until 9 am (that's saying something). Then "it" happened.

"It" was the siren at the fire station. This has happened before at midnight. The siren gets out of sequence and will sound at 12 am (0000 for you military readers), then quit. Since I was sleeping so hard I figured this was the same thing; that is, until I looked at my clock. 7:06.

Here we go.

I threw a sweatshirt on, pulled on my bunker pants and drove up to the station. Pulled my coat, gloves and helmet out of my bag and jumped into the second rig headed out. The response was a ways out of town, so I had time to finish getting put together.

I learned something this morning: storing your gear in what seems to be a rational & logical system doesn't mean it's a good storage system. I modified how I store my gear.

As we made our way up the hill, we could see smoke rising up out of the trees. "Well," I said to the driver, "this is going to mess up my plans for the day." Driving up to the scene we could see a building and lots of flames. Once we actually got on site, though, we realized it could've been worse. The building was an old barn, well away from anything and surrounded by snow. The owners managed to rescue their horse and cow; however, the goats weren't so lucky. Apparently they would rather stay in the warm building than go out into the snow. Problem was, the building was pretty much gone when we arrived. So were the goats.

We secured the scene, drove back to the station, and had breakfast at the bakery. And you know what? I was still home in time to carry on with the day as planned.