In which I fail. But only a little.
Jun. 26th, 2009 10:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
i_id6/21
Monday, when we got to the N.R.O. the tables were in a different arrangement for the first time. We sat in our new groups. I'm not very impressed with mine. D is an irritating, over-reacting older woman who thinks only interfering busybodies call C.P.S., and P and M have been in the maritime industry for so long that they feel no need to listen carefully to our instructors, preferring to waste their time and mine telling tales of the good ol' days. And M seems both temperamental and slow-witted, a bad combination. I was nonplussed to find that we'd not only have to work together the entire day, but also be scored as a group.
That said, by lunch-time and the crowd management exam, all of our group scores were perfect. As was my exam, though I'd dithered over a question about whether or not passengers could help search evacuation zones. (They can, for future reference.)
There's a book I need to look for, The Unthinkable, by Amanda Ripley. I also want to recommend it to vivian_shaw, as it seems it'd be a good source for her disaster blog.
The engineer taking bits of this course with us was there again that day, too. His name is Waldemar, pronounced Voldemort. At least he was named long before Ms. Rowling was even born.
We did a fair bit of role-playing that day, being crew in a variety of emergency situations communicating with other crew and the passengers. It's an important skill, as the passengers will have numbers vastly on their side. We have a roll of duct tape in our assembly kit bags. It is, we're told, expressly and officially for restraining passengers who are threatening the livelihood of the whole.
At the end of Monday, we got out early (having sacrificed half our lunch break for the privilege) and I booked it south, through the tangle of Seattle. I hit the terminal just in time to roll straight onto the Kitsap to Bremerton. It was a nice crossing, sunny and crowded, but my cell service dropped out seconds before we reached the opposite dock. It kind of set the tone for Bremerton as a whole. The entire town seemed under construction, and I followed pot-holed detour after detour to find my Super 8 Motel. Nice enough place, but the first room they gave me was a smoking room. That's not even legal in Washington anymore. At least they fixed it readily.
So, being in a srs adult mindset, I headed right out again to be absolutely sure I knew where I would be going the next morning. A mistake. At the very first light, a state patrol car pulled up right behind me. He was right behind me at the next light, too. I watched him in the mirror, and I could see the moment he checked my license plate. I knew my tabs were expired; just hadn't had the chance or the funds to pay for new ones yet. $216.
That killed my appetite and my energy, pretty thoroughly, and I just finished finding the place. It was so easy to find that I felt foolish and resentful of the effort I'd taken. I felt very, very low when I returned to the hotel room, and couldn't summon the energy to go scare up dinner. I wasn't hungry, anyway. And the promised wireless internet never worked, though my computer could see the hotel's wireless network. I gave up on the day entirely. Just watched Mythbusters and Dirty Jobs until I was able to force myself to fall asleep.
6/23
I let myself sleep in the next morning, Tuesday, until nearly seven, which was exactly why I'd opted for a hotel room, rather than crossing via the hour-long ferry ride each morning and night. I dressed carefully, I'd thought, in cotton layers and high socks. I shook off the previous day's malaise, and scooted down to the Readiness Center, enthusiasm beginning to set in and give me the energy I thought I'd need.
The first half of the day was classroom. We all sat through four hours of the physics of fires, causes and methods of fire spreads and evolutions, increasingly antsy as we looked out the windows at the five-story firetower just outside. (And the troops of singing National Guard that kept marching by in their circular route) But they made us wait until after lunch.
Once we came back from eating, each clutching our water bottles, they shepherded us out (finally!) to the courtyard between the main building, the fire tower, and the woods that are being slowly made into a body farm for coroner training. There was a carport there, and waiting there were a dozen sets of bunker gear. Massively thick coats and pants, bright yellow helmets and heavy leather gloves, and the most important, the balaklava-like nomex flashhood. We tried them all on, checking sizes and fits and learning the tricks of putting boots into pants before donning both. They walked us through it all nicely, as we'd be tested on it eventually. And our lives would depend upon it before then.
They they showed us how to go on air. We claimed our tanks and masks and dinked around with going on and off air, trying to make it second-nature to turn on the suction-deactivated breath-saver before detaching the respirator from the mask, to save our meager twenty minutes of air. On air, we all felt and sounded a little like Darth Vader.
The day was sunny, unfortunately. It wasn't long at all before we were all panting in our fire gear. They made us suit up entirely, and at least the air from our tanks was cool. It helped a little. Still suited up, we toured the fire tower, practicing search and follow techniques, and just familiarizing with the feeling of being bunkered up. I started okay, but there was a point, not long into it, when I began stumbling, dragging at the person in front of me. I flagged down Willie, told him I was getting shaky, and he pulled me out of the tower, took me over to the little first aid cabin, a tiny pre-fab unit, and handed me over to the on-site paramedic. She checked out my pulse, my o-sat, all the usual things, while I sipped at water and told her that no, I don't have diabetes, no, this had never happened before, no diabetes, no epilepsy, no diabetes, no. We got me out of my airpack and jacket and I felt like the steam was rolling off of me.
After a cool-down, I was very glad to be able to rejoin the class in time for hose-handling. First, we did foam, which was fun. Long jets (70`) of thick suds. We lobbed, bounced, and rolled them onto the flames, a massive propane-fueled fire from a deck out in the open air. Then, without time to cool down ourselves, we moved onto the long drill. The problem with having a low helmet number (#2) was that I promptly got selected to help demonstrate the nozzle position.
The exercise wasn't hard, technically. It involved that same deck fire, and four teams on hundred-foot fire hoses. The nozzle person controlled the spray (straight vs narrow fog vs wide fog) and the aim. The backup person supported the weight of the hose for them, and helped them control it. This was the hardest position. That hose, empty, weighed five pounds per foot. The water filling each foot added nearly another three, increasing as the hose material saturates. That water's moving at 95 gallons a minute, through an aperature an inch and a half wide. There's a kick every time you turn the water on, strong enough to knock an unsupported nozzleman on his or her arse. They showed us an unmanned hose, lashing around wildly and unapproachably despite the eight pound bronze nozzle on the end, flinging water and earth and rocks across a 50` radius. A direct strike probably would have broken a leg, if not torn it straight off.
Behind the backup person is the hose tender, hanging about eight or ten feet back with the hose over her shoulder, manhandling that weight forward and back for the front team, keeping it out from under their feet while allowing them to advance and retreat as needed.
After I helped demo the nozzle, I did two rotations as hose tender for my four-man hose team, this time against live fire. The hose was getting heavier and heavier with repetition, the afternoon sun fully upon us, and now we were advancing clear into the fingers off a vast propane blaze again and again. I stumbled on my way up to the backup position, my vision just beginning to wobble. Trying to muscle through it, I did my best to backup the nameless bunkersuit in front of me, and then it was my real turn on the nozzle.
The fumes from the propane washed up under my face mask (we weren't on air for this), tangling me in layers of gray nausea, and the weight of the nozzle seemed unbelievable, unbearable. I shouted to the instructor a foot away from my shoulder, telling him I'd already handled the nozzle and needed to set down. He looked closely at my face and shook his head. I had to fight the actual fire, he said. I had to.
So I did. I advanced up to the flames, step by step, sweeping the twenty-foot flames at their seat, opening my spray from a firefighting stream to a shielding fog, and retreated again, step by step. And then my turn on the nozzle was over. I almost fell over at the kick of turning off the hose.
I moved over to the back-up hose to do it all over again, but my limit was reached. I'd only just picked up the bight and propped it only my shoulder when the world, already gray and shaky, disappeared in a sudden snow of black. I knew Willie was at the nozzle of this hose, a dozen feet away, and I screamed for him, my voice strange in my ears. I remember shoving the hose away from myself at an approaching presence.
Then I was moving, my feet stumbling and dragging and my arm over someone's shoulders, someone pulling my helmet and flashhood off of me. I tried to pull my own gloves off and couldn't, too clumsy.. And too afraid. Had I just failed fire school?
"I don't want to fail fire school!" I remember sobbing over and over as Willie - it was Willie's shoulder under my arm - half-carried me back to that same first aid cabin. That was all that mattered to me, but I was too disoriented to even try to go back to the hoses.
The paramedic didn't seem surprised to see me again. They stripped me all the way out of my fire gear this time, down to my sweat-soaked clothes, and put ice-packs on my stomach and under my arms, asking all the questions again. No, I don't have diabetes.
Willie got me a bottle of Gatorade (which was, I've since learned, specifically designed to chemically mimic human sweat), and the paramedic cut it with water and made me drink it all. She tested my reactions, and made me rest their, feet higher than my head, for I don't know how long. My panic didn't begin to abate until the fire-master came in and told Willie that I had, in fact, completed the day's all-important fire-handling proficiencies, and that I'd done very well, besides. Only then did my heart rate begin to fall back out of the 150 range down towards my usual 90.
By the time I got out of there, after letting them fill out a patient report, most of my classmates were gone, the day done. I fought out only the next day that they'd had to keep running those hoses, in that sun, for more than an hour. I'd made it about half that before I collapsed. A trainer, Beth, made sure to walk me to my car and tested my reactions again before she gave me my keys back. I left feeling terrified about the day still to come, but certainly not alone.
I was, of course. I went back to my hotel alone, and then out to dinner alone. Following the paramedic's recommendations, I had protein for dinner; steak and shrimp and mushrooms and dark green veggies, and then I went and found a grocery store and got Smart Water (electrolytes!) and a healthy lunch for the next day. And a pair of cotton shorts. I drank a bottle of that water before falling sound asleep.
Monday, when we got to the N.R.O. the tables were in a different arrangement for the first time. We sat in our new groups. I'm not very impressed with mine. D is an irritating, over-reacting older woman who thinks only interfering busybodies call C.P.S., and P and M have been in the maritime industry for so long that they feel no need to listen carefully to our instructors, preferring to waste their time and mine telling tales of the good ol' days. And M seems both temperamental and slow-witted, a bad combination. I was nonplussed to find that we'd not only have to work together the entire day, but also be scored as a group.
That said, by lunch-time and the crowd management exam, all of our group scores were perfect. As was my exam, though I'd dithered over a question about whether or not passengers could help search evacuation zones. (They can, for future reference.)
There's a book I need to look for, The Unthinkable, by Amanda Ripley. I also want to recommend it to vivian_shaw, as it seems it'd be a good source for her disaster blog.
The engineer taking bits of this course with us was there again that day, too. His name is Waldemar, pronounced Voldemort. At least he was named long before Ms. Rowling was even born.
We did a fair bit of role-playing that day, being crew in a variety of emergency situations communicating with other crew and the passengers. It's an important skill, as the passengers will have numbers vastly on their side. We have a roll of duct tape in our assembly kit bags. It is, we're told, expressly and officially for restraining passengers who are threatening the livelihood of the whole.
At the end of Monday, we got out early (having sacrificed half our lunch break for the privilege) and I booked it south, through the tangle of Seattle. I hit the terminal just in time to roll straight onto the Kitsap to Bremerton. It was a nice crossing, sunny and crowded, but my cell service dropped out seconds before we reached the opposite dock. It kind of set the tone for Bremerton as a whole. The entire town seemed under construction, and I followed pot-holed detour after detour to find my Super 8 Motel. Nice enough place, but the first room they gave me was a smoking room. That's not even legal in Washington anymore. At least they fixed it readily.
So, being in a srs adult mindset, I headed right out again to be absolutely sure I knew where I would be going the next morning. A mistake. At the very first light, a state patrol car pulled up right behind me. He was right behind me at the next light, too. I watched him in the mirror, and I could see the moment he checked my license plate. I knew my tabs were expired; just hadn't had the chance or the funds to pay for new ones yet. $216.
That killed my appetite and my energy, pretty thoroughly, and I just finished finding the place. It was so easy to find that I felt foolish and resentful of the effort I'd taken. I felt very, very low when I returned to the hotel room, and couldn't summon the energy to go scare up dinner. I wasn't hungry, anyway. And the promised wireless internet never worked, though my computer could see the hotel's wireless network. I gave up on the day entirely. Just watched Mythbusters and Dirty Jobs until I was able to force myself to fall asleep.
6/23
I let myself sleep in the next morning, Tuesday, until nearly seven, which was exactly why I'd opted for a hotel room, rather than crossing via the hour-long ferry ride each morning and night. I dressed carefully, I'd thought, in cotton layers and high socks. I shook off the previous day's malaise, and scooted down to the Readiness Center, enthusiasm beginning to set in and give me the energy I thought I'd need.
The first half of the day was classroom. We all sat through four hours of the physics of fires, causes and methods of fire spreads and evolutions, increasingly antsy as we looked out the windows at the five-story firetower just outside. (And the troops of singing National Guard that kept marching by in their circular route) But they made us wait until after lunch.
Once we came back from eating, each clutching our water bottles, they shepherded us out (finally!) to the courtyard between the main building, the fire tower, and the woods that are being slowly made into a body farm for coroner training. There was a carport there, and waiting there were a dozen sets of bunker gear. Massively thick coats and pants, bright yellow helmets and heavy leather gloves, and the most important, the balaklava-like nomex flashhood. We tried them all on, checking sizes and fits and learning the tricks of putting boots into pants before donning both. They walked us through it all nicely, as we'd be tested on it eventually. And our lives would depend upon it before then.
They they showed us how to go on air. We claimed our tanks and masks and dinked around with going on and off air, trying to make it second-nature to turn on the suction-deactivated breath-saver before detaching the respirator from the mask, to save our meager twenty minutes of air. On air, we all felt and sounded a little like Darth Vader.
The day was sunny, unfortunately. It wasn't long at all before we were all panting in our fire gear. They made us suit up entirely, and at least the air from our tanks was cool. It helped a little. Still suited up, we toured the fire tower, practicing search and follow techniques, and just familiarizing with the feeling of being bunkered up. I started okay, but there was a point, not long into it, when I began stumbling, dragging at the person in front of me. I flagged down Willie, told him I was getting shaky, and he pulled me out of the tower, took me over to the little first aid cabin, a tiny pre-fab unit, and handed me over to the on-site paramedic. She checked out my pulse, my o-sat, all the usual things, while I sipped at water and told her that no, I don't have diabetes, no, this had never happened before, no diabetes, no epilepsy, no diabetes, no. We got me out of my airpack and jacket and I felt like the steam was rolling off of me.
After a cool-down, I was very glad to be able to rejoin the class in time for hose-handling. First, we did foam, which was fun. Long jets (70`) of thick suds. We lobbed, bounced, and rolled them onto the flames, a massive propane-fueled fire from a deck out in the open air. Then, without time to cool down ourselves, we moved onto the long drill. The problem with having a low helmet number (#2) was that I promptly got selected to help demonstrate the nozzle position.
The exercise wasn't hard, technically. It involved that same deck fire, and four teams on hundred-foot fire hoses. The nozzle person controlled the spray (straight vs narrow fog vs wide fog) and the aim. The backup person supported the weight of the hose for them, and helped them control it. This was the hardest position. That hose, empty, weighed five pounds per foot. The water filling each foot added nearly another three, increasing as the hose material saturates. That water's moving at 95 gallons a minute, through an aperature an inch and a half wide. There's a kick every time you turn the water on, strong enough to knock an unsupported nozzleman on his or her arse. They showed us an unmanned hose, lashing around wildly and unapproachably despite the eight pound bronze nozzle on the end, flinging water and earth and rocks across a 50` radius. A direct strike probably would have broken a leg, if not torn it straight off.
Behind the backup person is the hose tender, hanging about eight or ten feet back with the hose over her shoulder, manhandling that weight forward and back for the front team, keeping it out from under their feet while allowing them to advance and retreat as needed.
After I helped demo the nozzle, I did two rotations as hose tender for my four-man hose team, this time against live fire. The hose was getting heavier and heavier with repetition, the afternoon sun fully upon us, and now we were advancing clear into the fingers off a vast propane blaze again and again. I stumbled on my way up to the backup position, my vision just beginning to wobble. Trying to muscle through it, I did my best to backup the nameless bunkersuit in front of me, and then it was my real turn on the nozzle.
The fumes from the propane washed up under my face mask (we weren't on air for this), tangling me in layers of gray nausea, and the weight of the nozzle seemed unbelievable, unbearable. I shouted to the instructor a foot away from my shoulder, telling him I'd already handled the nozzle and needed to set down. He looked closely at my face and shook his head. I had to fight the actual fire, he said. I had to.
So I did. I advanced up to the flames, step by step, sweeping the twenty-foot flames at their seat, opening my spray from a firefighting stream to a shielding fog, and retreated again, step by step. And then my turn on the nozzle was over. I almost fell over at the kick of turning off the hose.
I moved over to the back-up hose to do it all over again, but my limit was reached. I'd only just picked up the bight and propped it only my shoulder when the world, already gray and shaky, disappeared in a sudden snow of black. I knew Willie was at the nozzle of this hose, a dozen feet away, and I screamed for him, my voice strange in my ears. I remember shoving the hose away from myself at an approaching presence.
Then I was moving, my feet stumbling and dragging and my arm over someone's shoulders, someone pulling my helmet and flashhood off of me. I tried to pull my own gloves off and couldn't, too clumsy.. And too afraid. Had I just failed fire school?
"I don't want to fail fire school!" I remember sobbing over and over as Willie - it was Willie's shoulder under my arm - half-carried me back to that same first aid cabin. That was all that mattered to me, but I was too disoriented to even try to go back to the hoses.
The paramedic didn't seem surprised to see me again. They stripped me all the way out of my fire gear this time, down to my sweat-soaked clothes, and put ice-packs on my stomach and under my arms, asking all the questions again. No, I don't have diabetes.
Willie got me a bottle of Gatorade (which was, I've since learned, specifically designed to chemically mimic human sweat), and the paramedic cut it with water and made me drink it all. She tested my reactions, and made me rest their, feet higher than my head, for I don't know how long. My panic didn't begin to abate until the fire-master came in and told Willie that I had, in fact, completed the day's all-important fire-handling proficiencies, and that I'd done very well, besides. Only then did my heart rate begin to fall back out of the 150 range down towards my usual 90.
By the time I got out of there, after letting them fill out a patient report, most of my classmates were gone, the day done. I fought out only the next day that they'd had to keep running those hoses, in that sun, for more than an hour. I'd made it about half that before I collapsed. A trainer, Beth, made sure to walk me to my car and tested my reactions again before she gave me my keys back. I left feeling terrified about the day still to come, but certainly not alone.
I was, of course. I went back to my hotel alone, and then out to dinner alone. Following the paramedic's recommendations, I had protein for dinner; steak and shrimp and mushrooms and dark green veggies, and then I went and found a grocery store and got Smart Water (electrolytes!) and a healthy lunch for the next day. And a pair of cotton shorts. I drank a bottle of that water before falling sound asleep.
