Truck 579 has been parked or occasionally borrowed by other servicemen as a reserve rig since I got here. But 579 is not a reserve rig. It is Howie's ride. Or rather, it was.
Howie announced his retirement yesterday. He has been off work since shortly before I started here. I actually have never met him, because he has not stopped by when I happened to be on duty. Howie has been fighting cancer since mid-summer. He had a major surgery at the beginning of September, and when he went home to recuperate, pretty much all of our servicemen - on and off duty - were at his house to greet him. They had arranged a couple of trucks to have the buckets raised and crossed over his driveway, a "welcome home" banner stretched between them.
As an aside...what a great company this is. That would never have happened at the old place.
Anyway, yesterday we got word that he was putting in his papers. He found out on Monday that new cancer spots were found in many places, including on his lungs. The doctors prescribed pain meds and told him to go home and get his house in order. All I hear is how he isn't at all concerned for himself. All his worries are about his wife and parents and children. That is character.
The gloom in the control center is palpable. Howie is very well-liked and well-respected across the board. Although I never got to meet him, I am sad by association because my guys are all down about it.
His name has been on the board by 579 for months awaiting his return, but with the papers filed he isn't coming back. I haven't found the courage to remove it, but sooner or later another name will be assigned to Truck 579 and I won't be able to avoid it any longer.
If you are willing, send positive thoughts in whatever way you choose to do so to Howie and his family.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Bad News
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Bucket List Calls
None of us really wants bad things to happen to anyone, but we all like being the ones to go take care of it when it happens. This is especially true when those rare and interesting calls come in that will get talked about for a long time. I call them "bucket list" calls, things that will be checked off as noteworthy after retirement and seem to happen to all of us eventually at least once.
One of those items recently got checked off my list. The dispatcher's voice had "the edge" when listing assigned units, and he was naming a lot of rigs, so we knew it was a "good" one right away. Then the words came out: Aircraft incident.
Wooooo. Well OK, then.
Engine 51 was fourth due, so at least I didn't have to take command. Whew.
Engine 77 arrived first and reported a small private plane on the ground in a clearing, with no fire. Then they reported three patients requiring extrication.
Patients? Not bodies? Well OK, then.
Medic 98 requested a second and third medic. Not anticipating survivors, we weren't hammering it much, but I expect all of us not yet on scene pressed a little more after that tidbit.
Cut to E51's arrival. Stuff is now under control for the most part, so a late one-man engine is nearly irrelevant here. But what an interesting sight. There's a plane, upright, broken in half and roof torn off, wings collapsed. Hoses are stretched, charged, and laying on the ground. OK, that's all normal, but here is where it got strange. The pilot is still sitting in his seat, his head in a c-spine hold by the passenger in back (!?), and the third is sitting on the wing cross-legged, all surrounded by yellow and black-clad firefighters.
I'm still not clear on what went wrong, but these guys were waaaaaay lucky. The plane lost power for whatever reason, clipped some random tree and went sideways, bounced off its nose into a cartwheel and somehow landed right side up. Pilot had two broken ankles, while the other guys were treated for cuts and bruises and merely transported as a precaution.
Wow. Well OK, then.
That turned out pretty great for everyone. The patients have a great survival story and all of us fire guys checked off a bucket list line item: Plane crash.
Sorry I haven't made it on here as much lately. Not that I figure anyone is really losing sleep over my slow posts (ha!), but the new job is keeping me plenty busy.
Stay safe out there, so that your career can run long enough for your bucket list to get filled in.
One of those items recently got checked off my list. The dispatcher's voice had "the edge" when listing assigned units, and he was naming a lot of rigs, so we knew it was a "good" one right away. Then the words came out: Aircraft incident.
Wooooo. Well OK, then.
Engine 51 was fourth due, so at least I didn't have to take command. Whew.
Engine 77 arrived first and reported a small private plane on the ground in a clearing, with no fire. Then they reported three patients requiring extrication.
Patients? Not bodies? Well OK, then.
Medic 98 requested a second and third medic. Not anticipating survivors, we weren't hammering it much, but I expect all of us not yet on scene pressed a little more after that tidbit.
Cut to E51's arrival. Stuff is now under control for the most part, so a late one-man engine is nearly irrelevant here. But what an interesting sight. There's a plane, upright, broken in half and roof torn off, wings collapsed. Hoses are stretched, charged, and laying on the ground. OK, that's all normal, but here is where it got strange. The pilot is still sitting in his seat, his head in a c-spine hold by the passenger in back (!?), and the third is sitting on the wing cross-legged, all surrounded by yellow and black-clad firefighters.
I'm still not clear on what went wrong, but these guys were waaaaaay lucky. The plane lost power for whatever reason, clipped some random tree and went sideways, bounced off its nose into a cartwheel and somehow landed right side up. Pilot had two broken ankles, while the other guys were treated for cuts and bruises and merely transported as a precaution.
Wow. Well OK, then.
That turned out pretty great for everyone. The patients have a great survival story and all of us fire guys checked off a bucket list line item: Plane crash.
Sorry I haven't made it on here as much lately. Not that I figure anyone is really losing sleep over my slow posts (ha!), but the new job is keeping me plenty busy.
Stay safe out there, so that your career can run long enough for your bucket list to get filled in.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Loving It, Not Loving It
Being part of a smaller utility is going to suit me very well for the most part.
I've been riding with service crews every other or third day or so since starting here. It is so refreshing to put on the old FR clothes and work boots, and get some sun. Got a new hardhat, decorated it with a little bling, and it's been all business since.
My new company has a good reputation, and works hard to maintain it. Last week on Truck 586 with Timo, we got called off the job we were en route to for a report of flickering lights. It happened to be that we were really close. The guy who answered the door and met the two power company guys in denim and hardhats was impressed. "I only had time to take the garbage out after calling, and here you are!" Nice. Ninety minutes and a spliced neutral wire later, we moved on. Sun, air, happy customers, lunch at the park sitting on the tailboard. I'm loving it.
On Monday I was running with Pete on 577. Pete has been around since Hector was a pup, as Mom likes to say. We were getting run back and forth via the state highway from one end of the service area to the other and back, over and over for petty little things. At one point we drove right past the lovely Mrs. Grumpy Dispatcher as she was picking kids up from school. Working the system where I live. I'm loving it.
Near the end of the day, Pete's MDT chirped with three more jobs. All credit shutoffs. If you don't pay your bill, you eventually get to this point. Now, it doesn't come to this unless you've missed your bill for about three months, have ignored calls from the company to set up a plan, or failed to meet the terms of your payback. The company does not want to shut people off, but electricity is not free. Finally, the day before the shutoff visit, a final phone call is made, and a door-hanger left at the property. So there are no plausible surprises on the customer's part when the service truck arrives.
We arrived at the first home, and the middle-aged woman who answered the door remained mostly hidden behind it. It was a rather nice upper middle class home in a quiet neighborhood. Pete advised why we were there and asked if she could make any kind of payment by phone to make the credit people happy. She said she'd try, and Pete said we'd give her 10 minutes. We waited in the truck, and just about the time we figured the jig was up, the dispatchers called to report that the credit people were happy, and waved us off. We left without talking to her again.
The second home was in a trailer park. In front was a pretty nice Jeep Grand Cherokee, and in the carport was a Lexus. To their credit, the Lexus was marked as for sale. The tatooed and pierced young man who answered the door claimed he had met the terms of the credit people, but that is not an argument we can engage in. Pete called the credit people himself to check, and they disagreed. Pete let the young man know what was what and gave him ten minutes. Once again, the call came to wave off.
Finally we arrived at a well-worn small apartment building. This ticket was marked that meter access was difficult, we would need to go through the apartment to the rear, or climb some fences if no one was home. A quiet young lady answered the door, holding a child perhaps a year old. She was alone. She didn't even argue, she just waved us through, seeming resigned. As we stood on the back deck and Pete opened the meter box, I looked into the sparsely-appointed apartment and saw the small stack of children's movie DVDs on the TV. For a single parent, sometimes you need a DVD distraction to get a few things done, and that option was about to go away. I wondered if she had family or friends, where she would go, if there was a man away at work or not, what would happen to the food in the fridge - if there was any.
Damn. This absolutely sucks.
I was feeling pretty low in the truck after we left. Pete told me how some people game the system by changing to relatives names to escape the bills, or string credit along, or ask for help over and over knowing they'll get it and then planning to use it as a permanent help instead of a crutch. He told me how at first he wanted to throw down the occasional $100 for those who seemed to really need it, but how the crusty guys when he started told of how people learned to look needy and played them for help. Anyway, it has been against company policy to do that for a long time, now.
I'm used to "macro" operations - that is, a very high view where I deal with dropped feeders and stations affecting a minimum of a few hundred up to several thousand customers at a time. Now, I am in charge of a group dealing with "micro" operations, where along with the usual feeder and station trips, I will regularly be meeting with customers face-to-face for special situations. For the guy who barely got his garbage taken out, that's cool, but for the lonely single mother resigned to getting her power shut off.... I'm not loving it. And in my position there is absolutely nothing I can do about it.
I'll like it here. It isn't perfect, but it's pretty close. Thanks for reading and stay safe out there.
I've been riding with service crews every other or third day or so since starting here. It is so refreshing to put on the old FR clothes and work boots, and get some sun. Got a new hardhat, decorated it with a little bling, and it's been all business since.
My new company has a good reputation, and works hard to maintain it. Last week on Truck 586 with Timo, we got called off the job we were en route to for a report of flickering lights. It happened to be that we were really close. The guy who answered the door and met the two power company guys in denim and hardhats was impressed. "I only had time to take the garbage out after calling, and here you are!" Nice. Ninety minutes and a spliced neutral wire later, we moved on. Sun, air, happy customers, lunch at the park sitting on the tailboard. I'm loving it.
On Monday I was running with Pete on 577. Pete has been around since Hector was a pup, as Mom likes to say. We were getting run back and forth via the state highway from one end of the service area to the other and back, over and over for petty little things. At one point we drove right past the lovely Mrs. Grumpy Dispatcher as she was picking kids up from school. Working the system where I live. I'm loving it.
Near the end of the day, Pete's MDT chirped with three more jobs. All credit shutoffs. If you don't pay your bill, you eventually get to this point. Now, it doesn't come to this unless you've missed your bill for about three months, have ignored calls from the company to set up a plan, or failed to meet the terms of your payback. The company does not want to shut people off, but electricity is not free. Finally, the day before the shutoff visit, a final phone call is made, and a door-hanger left at the property. So there are no plausible surprises on the customer's part when the service truck arrives.
We arrived at the first home, and the middle-aged woman who answered the door remained mostly hidden behind it. It was a rather nice upper middle class home in a quiet neighborhood. Pete advised why we were there and asked if she could make any kind of payment by phone to make the credit people happy. She said she'd try, and Pete said we'd give her 10 minutes. We waited in the truck, and just about the time we figured the jig was up, the dispatchers called to report that the credit people were happy, and waved us off. We left without talking to her again.
The second home was in a trailer park. In front was a pretty nice Jeep Grand Cherokee, and in the carport was a Lexus. To their credit, the Lexus was marked as for sale. The tatooed and pierced young man who answered the door claimed he had met the terms of the credit people, but that is not an argument we can engage in. Pete called the credit people himself to check, and they disagreed. Pete let the young man know what was what and gave him ten minutes. Once again, the call came to wave off.
Finally we arrived at a well-worn small apartment building. This ticket was marked that meter access was difficult, we would need to go through the apartment to the rear, or climb some fences if no one was home. A quiet young lady answered the door, holding a child perhaps a year old. She was alone. She didn't even argue, she just waved us through, seeming resigned. As we stood on the back deck and Pete opened the meter box, I looked into the sparsely-appointed apartment and saw the small stack of children's movie DVDs on the TV. For a single parent, sometimes you need a DVD distraction to get a few things done, and that option was about to go away. I wondered if she had family or friends, where she would go, if there was a man away at work or not, what would happen to the food in the fridge - if there was any.
Damn. This absolutely sucks.
I was feeling pretty low in the truck after we left. Pete told me how some people game the system by changing to relatives names to escape the bills, or string credit along, or ask for help over and over knowing they'll get it and then planning to use it as a permanent help instead of a crutch. He told me how at first he wanted to throw down the occasional $100 for those who seemed to really need it, but how the crusty guys when he started told of how people learned to look needy and played them for help. Anyway, it has been against company policy to do that for a long time, now.
I'm used to "macro" operations - that is, a very high view where I deal with dropped feeders and stations affecting a minimum of a few hundred up to several thousand customers at a time. Now, I am in charge of a group dealing with "micro" operations, where along with the usual feeder and station trips, I will regularly be meeting with customers face-to-face for special situations. For the guy who barely got his garbage taken out, that's cool, but for the lonely single mother resigned to getting her power shut off.... I'm not loving it. And in my position there is absolutely nothing I can do about it.
I'll like it here. It isn't perfect, but it's pretty close. Thanks for reading and stay safe out there.
Friday, September 9, 2011
Checking in - New Job
Sorry for the post drought.
Got the new job. Went on a two-week vacation before starting it. Been very, very busy.
I was a shift supervisor at my old job, at the monster-sized utility company.
Now I am over all of the dispatchers at my new company, a smaller and more intimate local utility company. Sometimes I will also have to watch out for the service guys on the trucks, too.
It's like going from Division Chief at a large FD where you drive a desk all the time, to Assistant Chief at a small career FD where you end up running a lot of calls simply because you need all hands sometimes.
Anyway, the training curve to get up to speed here will occupy a lot of my time for a while, but the blog is not dead. Thanks for your patience, I'll be back when I can. And now that I'll sometimes be out in the field and face-to-face with some of the excitement instead of hiding aboard the mothership, there should be some good power company tales to tell, to go with the fire department stuff.
Stay safe out there.
Got the new job. Went on a two-week vacation before starting it. Been very, very busy.
I was a shift supervisor at my old job, at the monster-sized utility company.
Now I am over all of the dispatchers at my new company, a smaller and more intimate local utility company. Sometimes I will also have to watch out for the service guys on the trucks, too.
It's like going from Division Chief at a large FD where you drive a desk all the time, to Assistant Chief at a small career FD where you end up running a lot of calls simply because you need all hands sometimes.
Anyway, the training curve to get up to speed here will occupy a lot of my time for a while, but the blog is not dead. Thanks for your patience, I'll be back when I can. And now that I'll sometimes be out in the field and face-to-face with some of the excitement instead of hiding aboard the mothership, there should be some good power company tales to tell, to go with the fire department stuff.
Stay safe out there.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
A Little Time Off
Getting hard to think of good stuff to write that I think anyone wants to read. Part of the ebb and flow of blogging I guess.
I just wanted to check in and verify that I am still alive.
I just wanted to check in and verify that I am still alive.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)