You wouldn't block a hydrant, but . . .

The internet is filled with fun pictures of what happens to cars (especially police cars!) that block hydrants, but we in the fire service are all very familiar with bane of overgrown and hidden hydrants as well.



Spot the hydrant!

Mayor fail

Of course, you wouldn't block a hydrant or allow one to be overgrown on your property.  But hydrants are not the only things that need to be found promptly at 3AM in the rain sometimes.  Yes, another power company post, I present you the case of the beleagured and oft-neglected padmount transformer.

Where's the love?

When we are switching to restore power after an outage, my guys are usually working these hot, or are heating them up.  They have to stand several feet away and work with a hot stick, and there is always the risk of equipment failure and a flash arc.



Pay no mind to those tripping hazards.

A bad hydrant won't generally injure or kill you, transformers are a different story.  For this reason, there is a near-universal standard that utility companies require for clearances around transformers.  Not that very many people comply.  Generally speaking, 3' to the sides and rear, and 10' in front for working space as shown by the lineman switching above.

 

This comes up because of the topic of the previous post, where we've been out auditing a crap-ton of transformers in our system.  We often find occasional problems in the course of day-to-day operations just like we find the oddball hidden hydrant, but there are many more transformers out there than hydrants, and the special attention we've been giving them lately here has given rise to a large number of fun discoveries.

We get a lot of complaints when we have to trim them back in an outage to access a unit, but at least then those people were out of power and sort of get it.  It's when we find and trim some pre-emptively that people really cut loose.  They've been growing that shrub or bush for years to hide it, they say.  It's ugly, they say.  No one has opened it in 15 years they say.  Funny, since electricity is as essential as water is for fire protection (some would say more so), how almost no one complains about fire hydrants.  Even the ones not used for a fire in 15 years.

If you have one of these at your home, in your neighborhood, chances are good you never gave it much thought.  If it's overgrown, I am not going to tell you to clear it out, but I will tell you to not get your panties in a wad if one day the power company does it for you unannounced.  And to not complain too much when there are delays getting the power on while linemen wrangle chainsaws and heavy trimmers just to get to their stuff.

Now you know.  Knowing is half the battle.

Enjoy the gallery, it gradually gets better as you go down.



Even when you know it is there, you can't see it.



This one is actually behind that center tree trunk, way back.



Fence overbuild.  Priceless.

Thanks for reading.  Stay safe out there.

Would you like it gift wrapped, too?

Power company tale here.  Several months ago we got a request from our GIS department.  Seems that at the time of transition from AutoCAD feeder drawings to GIS drawings over ten years ago, a lot of data was not transferred properly.

Now that we're implementing a new asset-tracking platform, the missing data that has been known about for many years is now a problem.  No one really got after it before, because over time we get out to places and did an upgrade here, replacement there, added something on, and each time that happened a tiny little bit is filled in.  In theory I guess this means eventually you'll catch up, but eventually is now too long to wait.

Our project request was to identify in GIS every location where we had a padmount transformer installed with no asset data tied to it, and then send a serviceman out to that unit and record the necessary data.

We're talking somewhere along the lines of 2,000 units.  For realio.

So I've been working on this for months.  Identifying the units, assigning work orders, and collecting their data and funneling it back to the GIS group.  We use these jobs as filler when nothing else is going on, and a little fill is nice when you're bored, but doing 10 or 15 per shift per person on slow days gets old real fast for my guys.

Serviceman Pete is one of my most tenacious guys, but not in the usual sense.  He is tenacious about his time being used efficiently and effectively.  And this job was really bothering him.  He complained, and I told him we had our orders and it was our job to fulfill it.  He had some ideas he wanted to chase down, and I won't stand in the way of my guys, let alone get steamrolled by Pete on a mission.

Pete researched old database records and asked around, lo and behold he located a positively elderly but still functional database that had a great number of these lost units in it, and told the GIS leader about it.  Put two and two together, and most of the missing data was now recoverable with some GIS department desk time matching records up and making updates.

So I get to work today and get an email from the GIS leader with this data in it, explaining that it should help in our search for info, and we can use our established communication chain through the GIS system to get the data back to him.

(screeching, scratch across a vinyl record, full-stop sound effect.)

So, you mean to tell me that you had this data all along?

And, pray tell, why are you sending me the data, that you asked us to get for you?

Would you like me to put a pretty red bow on it and give it back to you, saying "here's the data you asked us to get for you"?

How about this: You keep your data, clean up your records to the best of your ability, and then come talk to us when you've exhausted your resources and actually need help filling in the gaps.

Honestly.  This happened.

Thank the good Lord for great employees like Pete who find solutions, and that I don't have the GIS guy anywhere in my management tree.

Well, now ya gotta do it anyway

Over four years ago I first told you about the bowling alley.

Within a year of that tale, the bowling alley was torn down.  It has been a gravelly rubble-strewn vacant lot for years.  The only thing left is the dead end power pole that used to serve the building.

Within a few months of the teardown, I submitted a recommendation to our planning group to have the pole, with the 3-phase transformers hanging on it, be removed to reduce our exposure to outages.  It is clear nothing is going to be built there for years, and those energized transformers weren't doing anything but asking to be smacked.  This is sort of what it looks like:

And of course, my dear readers, you can see where this is going.

Tonight we got a call, car vs. pole, wires down, transformers in the road, wires on the car.  This is bread and butter so I didn't think much of it until I pulled up the map.

Oh yes, they did.

Two of the transformers are leaking oil on the road, the haz mat contractor is en route, and we've got a hell of a mess out there.  The road is blocked, and it is very late on a Friday night so my dispatchers are still struggling to get enough manpower rounded up to head out there.

My recommendation is now being followed, out of necessity.

That's all this post is, just one long ungracious I-told-you-so moment.  Carry on and be safe out there.

Look again, you probably missed something

There were four of us working that night when the tones dropped for a police assist.  They were asking for scene lighting for something.  It was about 0230, and I was the junior guy on a very cold wintry night, so seniority played a role in me being sent out alone with the utility rig while the other guys stayed warm inside and went back to sleep.

As I rolled up, there were about six police cars arrayed along the edge of one of the city parks with a gaggle of cops not too far off the road in the soccer field, standing next to a pile of clothing that looked like it had been collected elsewhere and dropped for further review.  I tried to figure out where the clothes might have come from so I could figure out where they might want me to park the truck, but it was a mystery.

So I walked on over towards and then around the pile of clothes to get some directions.  They seemed a little annoyed at my proximity to the pile and the body language was clear as they moved away that I should as well.  Just put the lights right there on that, they said, as if it was obvious.  And walk back to the road that-a-way, one of them added, pointing to a longer return route.

It was not until I fired up the generator and was raising the scene lights that I was able to get a better glimpse of the now lighted scene.  There were tire tracks all over the field and a lot of damage, looked like someone was doing donuts, typical midwestern hooliganism.  I was still perplexed, though, at what warranted such an extensive middle-of-the-night investigation.  Then the ME's van showed up..... the heck?

I just stayed in the truck and watched as the ME and cops conferred, and then as they walked over to the pile of....... holy cripes!

It's a frickin' BODY.  It had been run over several times.  There was not enough blood to draw my attention, apparently because the person was dead before being run over several times.

One of my career's most epic situational awareness fails, I was traipsing and blundering through a murder scene, atypical of the stereotype that cops have for firefighters in crime scenes.  Lived it out right there.  At least I could try to blame it on being the new guy without experience.  I am amazed to this day that the ten or so cops there showed such amazing restraint when I would have expected to get a new one torn open by them, and rightfully so.

Pay attention you guys, things are often not at all as they seem, even when you think you've looked everything over.  Chances are you've still missed something.  Try to not let that something be a murder victim's body.

As dawn was breaking, I was released to return to quarters, and broke the utility truck on the way when it snapped the serpentine belt, and I had to fight the power steering pump the rest of the way back.  When it rains, it pours.

Happens to All of Us

Beeeeep.

Engine 54, Engine 51, Engine 53, respond to a smell of smoke in a home.....

Upon my solo arrival in Engine 51, 54's crew was already in the house with the TIC trying to find the source of the burned plastic odor.  The air was clear, no visible smoke, but the smell was unmistakable.  I was directed to bring my TIC in as well, to help investigate inside, as nothing at all was visible from the outside.

We weren't making any progress by the time 53 arrived, and they were detailed with going around the perimeter outside with their TIC.

Furnace?  No problems.  Attic?  Nothing.  Electrical?  Nada.  Bad ballast in a fluorescent fixture?  Nope.  We kept coming back to the living room where the odor was strongest.

The fun part of this call was that the homeowner was a firefighter for the Very Large City Fire Department north of here across the county line.  He had tried to find the source for himself without success for quite a while, and eventually hit the point where he had to swallow his pride and call us in, because having your home burn down after you self-patrolled it for 30 minutes without successfully finding the source is much more embarrassing than having to call in the local firefighters.

Finally, it was Trev's voice: "Got it!".  He was by the wood stove, which the guy used to heat his home.  We had searched around it, behind it, checked the walls around it from the front and behind in other rooms, and had thoroughly inspected the chimney's path through to the roof several times and found nothing other than the normal and safe heat signature expected, with nothing unusual found to explain the odor.  Until Trev took a fourth long look, and was the first of us to look under it.

There, on the brick base near the fireplace, were three toy cars melted nearly into blobs, that Trev had scooped out from the 2" gap under the wood stove.

There you go.  Darn kids!

Don't worry homeowner firefighter from the VLCFD, it happens to all of us.  We won't tell.  At least we're not naming names.  And to be fair, it took us forever to find it, too.

--------------

Our prayers and thoughts go out to those affected by Hurricane Sandy and the brave souls working to keep everyone safe from harm and get the power back on.  Read of some freakishly amazing feats of courage and heroism by many out there.  Well done, and please make sure you get back home to your families in one piece.

Would you let this man drive?

Just read the latest post at Notes from Mosquito Hill.

Nostalgia again

While I can't quite yet claim to having spent more than 50% of my lifetime as a firefighter, I am pretty darn close.

Replying to the post was not possible, the network here won't allow Disqus through to add a reply. So hopefully mack505 sees this post and knows that I am not ashamed to admit that it brought me silly goosebump chills. Bells and relay switches and halogens and actual mechanical operating devices.... yes! No, the recruit won't know it was a treat until much later, and even if it was explained now he won't be able to fully appreciate it.

Thanks for taking us along for the ride, 505.

Now then, back to business.

Tooling back to my edge of the world in Engine 51 from an errand across the district, I came upon a transit bus stopped in the road, with the driver in back opening the engine compartment. Apparently a minor uh-oh. The bus is blocking a lane of a busy street, and the driver has no eye at all on traffic, just waltzing out there and exposing his behind to oncoming bumpers.

Let's do him a favor and introduce him to how we turn BRTs into big traffic cones, shall we?

So the passengers are milling, and he tells me that the "check transmission" light came on with an audible warning (he said "beeping"), so he stopped right away. He's telling me he isn't sure what to do, as nothing is smoking or leaking on the ground.

Well, how about we start by checking the transmission fluid level, shall we?

I don't know how to do that, he says.

We have a retired transit bus on our fleet that serves as a mobile command post, so actually I have had some exposure to working on an actual bus. This isn't rocket science. Within a few moments the dipstick tube labeled "TRANSMISSION" has been located.

Wait, he says. I don't know if you're allowed to touch that.

I couldn't help the expression that showed. Are you freaking kidding me? What am I gonna do, make the engine fall out? He deflects the silliness and says he'll check with the bus garage to see if I am allowed to help.

It's not as if we're going to get the bus fixed here on the side of the road, it's just basic early troubleshooting. He asks me what it was I was about to do, and I explain it in simple terms, but the way he describes it to his garage tech by radio it is no surprise the tech declines the help. I hope the tech realizes that the driver is whack in the clue department and that there are not random firemen out there just itching to start pulling his coach engines apart for giggles.

The garage tech asks his driver where the bus is. He looks at me for a second and then says he is on whatever route he was on, on the main route, and if you go past McDonalds you'll find the bus a little ways up.

I should have expected things to keep getting goofy, but this was choice. You see, the McDonalds is about three miles back and in a different municipality. God forbid this guy ever have an emergency and have to describe his location.

Looking about 200' in front of the bus at the intersection with the traffic light, I tried to helpfully tell the driver that he was in fact south of the intersection of 45th and Harper, in the northbound lane.  He got back and the radio and somehow melded McDonalds in with the Harper part, making less sense than before.

That was enough, this guy was a real piece of work. I went back to the Engine and radioed for the City PD to send a unit over for traffic control if one was available.  I wasn't going to stay and play this silliness, but didn't feel like I could leave his passengers alone under his care.

So tell me..... how does a guy get his CDL and expect to make his living by driving when he cannot even locate the transmission dipstick let alone know what it is for, and doesn't know where he is with street signs in his face?

Maybe I am expecting too much, but shouldn't someone who is going to make their living on the road be able to hold a shop rag and dig around a little bit to troubleshoot, and know where he is in broad daylight with clear signage?

With our current levels of unemployment, there has to be better qualified persons out there. That was just scary to me.  Certainly this doesn't reflect on all bus drivers everywhere, but their overall group reputation sure did just take a hit.

Be safe out there.

Apathy

Two nameplates with the same typo at the same substation are better than one, said the engraver, and the installer.

-----------------------------------------

And hey, as long as we're posting pics, this one is due for Tuesday.... amazing to me that this is still alive after this long.

Genius Fail

So, we've got a guy who is not paying his electric bill. It is months and about a grand behind. It finally comes to the point that we cut him off, and a serviceman goes and boots the meter, mission accomplished.

Not so fast.

Because of previous drama at this address, a meter tech went by there to check things out a few days later. Found the lock ring and boot on the ground, meter back in and spinning. This is called a "self-restore" and a "tamper", which is an automatic $400 fine. Plus, we cut you off "more permanently".

So the next day, one of our nicest and most laid back servicemen, Paul, arrives in Truck 575 to cut this guy off from the pole's service drop. No one is home, but he chats with an elderly neighbor lady who sees him and comes out to visit. We're the Good Guys, after all. Service dropped, he's done and on his way, mission accomplished.

Not so fast.

Our customer service department gets a call, the recording of which I have not yet had a chance to hear, but the notes tell the story. Apparently the homeowner called in and said he was out of town but had heard from his family that the power was cut. That is to say, 217 members of his family. Yes, that is the precise number of people he claimed were at his home during a family reunion gathering, which was ruined by the power being cut off.

Aside #1: I had about 40-50 people at my house for a Memorial Day gathering. I actually did try to count once but couldn't do it. And I was actually present. How he got 217 while not physically present is an amazing feat.

Aside #2: If this family reunion drew 217 people to his home, then why precisely was he himself as host out of town during such an important event?

Aside #3: His house is 1080 sq ft. If all 217 were inside, they each individually had about 5 sq ft of personal space and were very quiet while Paul was there.

Aside #4: And where did those 217 people park their cars, anyway?

But wait, it gets better.

Dirtbag went on to claim that his grandson had approached Paul to ask "what was going on" when Paul went off and "smacked him with a wrench". He says the grandson is in the hospital and will incur medical expenses, and that a police report has already been filed with "80 witnesses".

Oddly, the brothers in blue did not come to arrest Paul on an assault charge, or even try to interview him, or even call any of us at all for any reason. Curious.

The first Paul heard about it is when I asked him if he carried a wrench on his service truck. A little crescent wrench, he said, that rarely gets used, why? Oh the fun we had telling him all about his violent ways that he kept hidden from us. He must have been plenty mad at the dirtbag's family, because he has no memory of the event at all and obviously blocked everything out except the nice chat with a little old lady in front of a small empty house.

Um, dirtbag, we're the power company, not plumbers. Our one-man service crews don't carry weapons-grade wrenches.... anywhere. Now if you piss one of our guys off you might get brained with a hotstick or something.

A wrench? 217 family members? While you're not home? That all stayed hidden? 80 witnesses? And no arrests?

I've stopped laughing, because it is absurd to the point of tragic. Good luck dirtbag. We'll probably bill you for any legal expenses you incur on us, on top of the arrears and tamper fine. Genius, you FAIL.

Mad Skilz

You have them.


(Yeah, I know I recycled the pic, but it is better in this format.)

Hydrant Map

Damned out of date map…. says it’s supposed to be right here.

Horseplay

Usually a problem in the fire station, right?

Many years ago, when I was just a power dispatch grunt....

Shawn was dispatching central division, and I was on the western division desk, with supervisor Rich on the east side and merely tolerating our presence.

Shawn and I had a goofy game for long slow night shifts where we would lightly toss a racquetball up about 12' to try to get it to settle on a narrow ledge formed by a support beam in the control room. If the ball bounced or rolled at all, it came back down. The trick was for the ball to make it just high enough, and land with no bounce. The competition was to see who could get the ball to stay up there in as few throws as possible.

Once it got parked up there, the contest continued to see who could get it down first by using another racquetball to bump it.

So I am futzing around on nothing in particular, and Shawn decides its time for a match. I stand up and he tosses the ball at me, calling for me to catch it. I am slow to react, and turn with perfect timing as the ball hits me perfectly square in the face, on the bridge of my nose right between the eyes. No harm done, it was rather hilarious, actually.

My brilliant revenge? Pick it up and chuck it back at him. With quite a bit more force. This turned out to be a situational awareness fail, as I did not consider what was behind Shawn when I threw the ball.

No, it was not Rich, the crusty supervisor. He was not remotely in the line of fire. It was the static display board, the large, painted sheet metal wall schematic of the transmission and distribution system, with colored magnets identifying opened switches, closed switches that are normally open, and switches locked and tagged out for jobs.

Things moved in slow motion as Shawn ducked, and the ball blasted into the static board, knocking every magnet and tag within four or five feet of the impact point off the board. They fell like Monopoly game pieces dropped when someone knocks the board off the table. A big mess.

Oh. Crap.

Shawn gave me the 'sucks to be you' grin.

Rich looked up. Sighed. Went back to his book.

It took Shawn and I just a little over half an hour to account for the proper locations of all the fallen magnets and tags from the midnight system conditions, log, and clearance ledger, and then re-check our work. No room for errors.

Rich never said anything about it, because he knew it wouldn't happen again. It didn't.

How Not to do Distribution

If you show up at the wreck or lines down call, and see a distribution pole like this, hopefully it is merely a bad dream. Roll over and go back to sleep. Hopefully it will go away.



I don't like to post pics too close together, but I am having a hard time getting up to write anything right now. Still circling around some of the issues that required some time off from the blog this past summer. Thanks for your understanding.

Hope you all had a good holiday.

Downgrade

Units can slow to Code 1. Man with bucket on scene can handle.

Classic Kaboom!

This clip has been around for a long time, so you may have seen it elsewhere.

This is a 138/23kV substation, and a capacitor bank on the low side (used to boost voltage) is for whatever reason experiencing a relatively low-current ground fault. For some reason, the station's protective equipment is not detecting and then clearing the fault.

The sustained fault arc is cooking and welding and destroying everything it can reach, like a death ray blaster stuck on maximum. How hot does an electrical arc get, you ask? Oh you didn't ask? Well I'll tell you anyway. Depending on the amperage and voltage of the arc, the temperature can vary widely between 9,000°F and 36,000°F. Hot. For reference, the outer visible surface of the sun, the photosphere, is only about 10,000°F. Hot.

So, where were we? Oh yes, this hotter-than-the-sun arc is blazing away next to this unlucky transformer. It doesn't take long for the transformer's flammable mineral oil to overheat, boil and expand, and finally cause the transformer's overpressure safety valves to release the oil as a high-pressure spray.

Incidentally, transformer banks are typically equipped with pressure relays to detect and de-energize the bank within a second or less when something like this goes down. Since there are two independent show-stopping problems going on (arc fault current and transformer overpressure) that are not causing any kind of shutdown, I have to conclude that the station's entire protective relaying system was inoperative.

Back to the long boring story. The high-pressure flammable oil spray meets the hotter-then-the-sun arc, and the result is a foregone conclusion. The spray and associated fireball with its conductive smoke particulate byproducts also seems to somehow finally cause a good hard high-side fault to occur (watch and listen for the flash/bang right as the fireball goes up), and this fault is at last detected, by whatever station is feeding this one. The other station says "Whoa, something's going down out there!" and opens up the feed. Alas, a tad late to save the day.

The transformer alone will cost perhaps about $750,000 to replace, the other destroyed station components at least that much again, and don't forget to add the cost of the environmental cleanup, and other peripherals.

Repeat message from an earlier post. Stay away from the pretty sparkly show:

Premature Charging

Sometimes things do get hot in a hurry, but there’s therapy for that.

Mad Skillz

You have them.

The Truth About Lying

The time has come for my full time employer, the power company, to initiate the very complicated, bureaucratic, and inefficient employee review process. It is a colossal waste of time, and I won't get into too many specifics, because you don't care, and you've got your own problems, I know.

Suffice to say that as long as you're not trying to sabotage your career and being a clueless knucklehead, your COLA raise is going to be what it is going to be, no matter what your review looks like or what nice things you say about yourself. Just give me my raise and let me get back to work.

Anyway, I digress.

One of the elements of the process requires the employee to pick out a couple of company-provided classes to attend in the next year. I'm pretty weak on Microsoft Access, so I ran a search through the course listings for "microsoft".

I did a triple-take on the #5 result: "How to Lie with Charts"

Really.  You can click the image above to see the bigger version, or just look at this next one:

So is this "lie" like deceive, or attempt procreation with? Like you, I couldn't tell. Let's investigate.

I opened the description. It is a very normal description about a course on making useful charts for presentations to help get your point across. Nothing in the description turned the title into a witty joke. At least it wasn't a primer on creating little chartlings, though this company has taught me to not be surprised by anything.

All I can figure is whoever made up the course had to give it a title and couldn't think of what to use at the moment, just slapping in how they really feel. And forgot to go back later.

It made it through all the pre-publication reviews. And there it is.

Awesome.

 

My New Record

It was a normal, rather quiet shift at Station 53.  You know these shifts.  The nondescript routine days where you are just minutes away from setting a new and infamous department record.

The call was for a wildland fire, well outside of our service area, for resources.  Station 56 and 54 covered the initial response for requested resources.  But then, as these kinds of days are apt to do, they promptly called us for our tanker.  Stu was my partner for the day, poor guy.  He suffered the role of helpless spectator as events unfolded.  We grabbed our wildland costumes and tossed them aboard Tanker 53.  Have no fear, 53 is on the way.

We'd been driving quite a while, and were now down south in the boonies, just minding our own business, when the air line blew out.  It was pretty loud.  In the cab, it was like a sudden fighter jet cockpit alarm in a movie, as the low pressure alarm came on and a light flashed, adding to the noise.  Funny stuff.  I had about 30 seconds to find a pull-off to avoid blocking the dirt road.  Air pressure went down to just 10psi and held, rising only as high as 15psi when I increased the RPMs.  Not nearly enough to keep the brakes off.  We were done.

How I hate calling the IC and dispatch with that kind of news.  If we had been under cell coverage, that conversation would not have been broadcast.  Oh well.

Three hours later, a very big tow truck arrived.  Gloriously, he had the parts with him to fix us on the spot.

The fire was controlled by then, so we were released to mope back to Station 53.  We had emptied the tank, anticipating being towed, so now needed to refill the tank first.

Long drive back to town.

Pulling away from the hydrant, there was an odd smell.  I know that smell very well.  Mirror check.  Mother of...... we're trailing a plume of coolant steam like an acrobatic airplane at a show.  You have got to be kidding.

We were close to home, so I watched the temperature and limped Tanker 53 back to quarters without further incident.  It was like a cartoon episode when I shut down the engine and we sat in the bay without speaking, the hissing from under the hood, steam blowing out, audible dripping underneath.

Tanker 53 is out of service in quarters.

So, the record?  Yeah.

For the first time in department history, as far as anyone can remember, the Grumpy Dispatcher is the first guy to drive and then break a piece of apparatus, to un-driveable condition, twice, on a single incident.

Sweet.  Where's my commemorative engraved plaque?

Teamwork Fail

Working together means sharing the credit instead of hogging it all for yourself.

Update @ 14:25: I've been posting periodic fire and EMS "fails" for a while, and figured I had taunted my own ilk enough that I could safely take a good-natured poke at the guys in blue. I swear I had forgotten that MotorCop had just put up a post about Teamwork a few days ago. Really!

Losing Sight of the Purpose

I cannot explain - maybe some of my readers can - the train of thought that prompts some of my brethren to place apparatus wheel chocks at an angle to the tire.

Wheel chocks are designed to take the brunt of a rolling tire square on, so as to evenly transfer the force against the lower far edge of the chock to the ground.

Placing the chock at an angle creates imbalanced transfer of forces, inviting lots of interesting new scenario outcomes. One interesting possible outcome is the violent launching of the wheel chock.

So, seriously, why do some guys do this? Maybe I should ask, I admit I have not done so. The only thing I can come up with is that it makes it easier to see from the mirror so you don't miss it and leave it behind and/or drive over it.

If you do your walk around and practice good apparatus operator habits, this should not be a problem. That said, I've driven over a few wheel chocks myself.

But, I digress.

I recently came across this wheel chock deployment on Engine 55.

When you reach the point of modifying your practices so far that you nullify the point of the practice in the first place... well, I don't know what to call your behavior, but wake up and pay attention to what you're doing, please. Seriously.

I took the proper steps to get this corrected here. If it's happening at your place, here's your chance to see what lies ahead and why you should nip it now.

That is all.