Pyromania

So, Fisherman's Bend is gone.

From KINY Radio:

Fisherman's Bend store destroyed by fire Capital City Fire Rescue responded to Fisherman's Bend Store and gas station on Glacier Highway after receiving a report of smoke in the building just after 12 a.m. Saturday morning.

No injuries have been reported. 

Temperatures at the the time of the fire hovered around the zero degree mark with gusting winds.

I got the all-out pager alert right at midnight, after about a half hour of sleep.  I left the fire scene at 0700, came home, ate breakfast with Skor, then went back at 0830 to help clean up and return the equipment to service.  While we were rolling hose at the station, we got called back to the fire scene to extinguish some flareups.  I stayed until just after 1400 before finally getting too tired to keep working.

It was certainly a very educational experience, and my first time on a major fire scene as a participant.

That is all for now.

Saturday was SCBA training at the FTC for Firefighter I.  We practiced donning, doffing, and crawling around in pitch-black smoke-filled mazes.  The instructors sent us through the courses in teams of three or four through passages too small to turn around in.  At times I had to take off my SCBA backpack/tank and pass it through spaces barely large enough to squeeze through - taking care not to kink the hose or rip my facemask off in the process.  The instructors stood by with tools, ready to pull away access panels in the plywood maze if anyone freaked out.  Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get my skill sheets signed off, because one of the students had a medical emergency while in the maze.  The instructors stopped training at that point so we cleaned up and went home.  We're redoing the last parts of the training tonight and Wednesday night instead.

That is all for now.