BRRRRRRRRRR! Cold and busy for A-Shift with a hat trick on structure fires!

Good day to our blog buddies. A-Shift is back for middle day and it has been eventful. With the temperature at 18 degrees this morning, I was topping off our 500 gallon tank and watching the drops of water freeze as they hit the ground. Before I was able to pull the beast back inside our first call goes out: we got us a working commercial fire. This Hotel was close to the Salem/Roanoke City line so we got some help from our buddies on Salem Engine 2. They rolled in with Ladder 13, our glorious beast (E9), E4, Battalion 2, RS1 and Medic 4. The Salem boys even got to mark a working fire! Good job fella's. Here are some pics I got to take once I brought CJ from Salem E2 some water supply and got him patched in to our communication. Again a good job by everyone on this one. Not only fighting fire and saving the hotel, but not getting hurt on the instant sheets of ice we were making.




Well, I tried to post about our hotel fire earlier, but we caught another one. This was a grease fire on the stove into the cabinets, etc. Again another large structure, a 3 story apartment building. We had 1 civilian hurt on this one. We are not allowed to post interior pics due to privacy issues and we respect that request. One request I will not grant is the one where The Hippies didn't want to hear us having fun at their expense.....well all I want to know is.....I saw you turn in front of me, but I never saw you on scene. I know its weird when you guys finally beat us into your first due, but you can at least stick around. Did you just get close to the scene, celebrate, cut your lights off and leave? If so....uh you forgot something. I don't get it. Are you guys lost? If anyone finds a truck full of confused looking hippies, please send them home. You know we are kidding. We love you guys. No one brings us water as good as you do! By the way, since you didn't get to see it, here is a picture of the building we got the call to.

Oh I know, this is like one of those C-Shift posts and I am sorry. I really do like them fella's. Hey, one day I might even be on C-shift....*hint*hint*.
Anyway, you guessed it. As I started to finish up the post....another working fire!
This time we rolled in with E5 at the door. We grabbed the guys a hydrant and established command. Captain Swecker let us know it was ok to invite more friends when he advised Captain Weeks we had a working fire. This time we had E5, E9, M7, RS1, Battalion 2, Ladder 2 and another request to the Investigation boys. Thanks again to the Southies for the fresh bottles on the service truck. Wheels got a little kidding from his buddy Lt. Good O on the first fire this morning, about how he can wrap the hydrant connection up anyway he wanted, because I wont ever have to catch the hydrant. Well I didn't hear it through his mask, but I am sure he laughed his but off when that mean old cranky Karma showed up on scene and tapped me on the shoulder then pointed at the hydrant! Yep, I got to hand lay the line and catch the hydrant. I admit it, payback sucked. After supply was established I did get to link up with FF Wheels and Captain Weeks on the basement division and do some work. All in all, another good stop. No one hurt and the house was saved, good knock down 5. Here are a few pics from this job.


Since that call, we have been canceled in route on an EMS call. We finally got to do the most important thing of the day. We got to the store and bought coffee!
With the wind-chill making it anywhere from -5 to -20 tonight, I am afraid we will need it. I hope not, but if there is more in the next half of the shift, I will try to post it. Be safe out there everyone, keep warm and lets go home in the morning.

BACK IN THE SADDLE AGAIN

I have to admit, it feels good to be back home. I've been riding the "car" (Battalion 2)for the past few cycles but got to return to the Officer's seat of the ol War Wagon today. Our Department recently switched shifts for our Operations Battalion Chiefs. After all the names shook out, C-Shift North Battalion got Chief Bobby Slayton. Chief Slayton was hired on with the Roanoke Fire Department back on December 6, 1965 (I was born in 1969). He was already a Battalion Chief when I got hired in 1991. Needless to say, we are gaining a LOT LOT LOT of fire experience. There are a few more tie ins with Chief Slayton, myself and Station #9 as well. For starters, Bobby spent many of his younger years right here at station #9 (C-shift). Here's an older pic that I stole..errrrr borrowed from Mikey Overacker. That's Bobby coming down the stairs at #9. Check out some more older pics of the station from over at Mikey's site here. The other tie in is that my dad (now retired) was assigned as Bobby's driver (aide) for years. He has pretty much seen me grow up, apply and get hired on the Department and make promotions to Captain. All of our Battalions are top notch but for me, getting Bobby feels right. Anyhow, since the moves, he hasn't reported for duty. He basically had the month of December off for vacation and we were beginning to wonder if he would return at all (now that he holds the record for longest on the job with the Fire Department... Captains Givens and Swanson respectfully bumped to 2nd and 3rd). Today, he quieted all the rumors and reported for his first shift as the C-shift North side Battalion (and just in time for ol blog boy Fleitz to bang out sick). Here's the pic of Chief Slayton this morning.. So, with Bobby on duty, I'm back in the saddle of E9 (where I belong). Welcome back to C-shift Chief, it's gonna be a BLAST! OK...I know the New Year's post was a let down. Excuses are like a certain body part..everybody has one, but in my defence, I do have a good one. It was Tyrone's fault! LOL. On Holidays, other than station chores and running calls, I pretty much give the boys the day off (no training, pre-plans etc). Well, Bugg got one of the new Atari games for Christmas .."Duty is Calling.. New Age Killing part 40", or something like that. Anyway, he brought it in and we plugged her up. While I was trying to pull together all my writing skills to make the last post of 2009 a good one, Tyrone was raining death and destruction on some poor unknowing souls at mega loud volume. Writers block, shell shock and just plain mayhem. .

Regardless of the last posts quality, I felt like we've had a good year here at #9 and that the blog has done pretty good as well. I know we've had fun keeping it updated and as fate would have it, New Year's Eve was our busiest day ever for blog traffic with 798 hits! To follow up on the events of New Year's Eve and Day, Medic 9 had the honor (if that's what you want to call it) of running the last call in the City for 2009 and then the 1st for 2010. The engine had an interesting one as well. While staging for an assault, a man ran down the street to find some help for the person stabbed. Guess who he found... yep E9. When they didn't respond to his waves to "come this way" he decided he'd just go fetch em. When he couldn't coax them out of the Engine, he decided he'd just get in and make them get out. Oh yea, he got up on the side board and tried to get in the War Wagon. How'd that work out for him???? NOT TOO GOOD! Let's just say he didn't make it in and Roanoke's Finest soon had him in cuffs. The boys are fine and the patient (who was a few blocks away)received treatment after RCPD secured the scene (**TRAINING NOTE** on assault calls, stabbings and /or gun shot wounds, stage a SAFE distance away from the dispatched address and remain ALERT. If someone approaches you, LEAVE. Cops don't put out fires and Firemen don't...errrrr SHOULDN'T carry guns!). Nothing too exciting to report on today. I guess a little good and bad news. The good news is that it's NOT snowing again.

The bad news is that it's COLD. REAL COLD. I mean 20 degrees COLD! And WINDY too! Did I mention it's COLD? Well it is! The boys always laugh at me about wearing long johns and using an electric blanket on my bed.. well who's laughing now? I've warned em too... I'm sleeping with a halagan tonight and the first fool who tries to get under that blanket with me is gonna regret it LOL. I guess that's one downside to an older house.. the windows are old too and don't have the best seal. I'm in the Captain's office downstairs and can hear the blinds blowing in the upstairs bedroom from here. It's past "drafty" up there and just about at the right temp to hang meat. Another thing I wanted to share with you all is from last day. I was riding the Battalion so that means you run out of "The Deuce" aka Station #2. Well, that's where Zack Obenchain is assigned and he took the time to stop by for lunch with his crew. He again express thanks from his family for all the thoughts, prayers and support. He said that everyone is doing as well as can be expected. Here's a pic of Zack at the kitchen table and one with me


Oh yea, for all you Tech fans out there...that was a Tenn. Vols shirt he had on...poor little "tink tink" (**adults only** look it up..you'll laugh your butt off). Ok, that's enough for tonight. Don't forget to put a "cold weather bag" on the rig tonight if you haven't already. Everyone stay safe, warm and in house. We start 4 day in the morning...SEE YA GEEKS!
Captain Wines

Happy New Year from A-Shift!

Well here we go. This will be the last year for #9 House. They are shutting her down in March/April. The blog I guess will fall as well. Hopefully we will ride it out to the last shift.
Today has been pretty laid back, being a holiday and all. Some of us may have relaxed a little too much, as seen here in a picture of the station 9 sitting room.

FF's Dixon, Wheels and Christmas(Noell) take advantage of some down time. With the addition of another recliner, life is good at T.V. time. Our very own FF Franks is out on an elective surgery that HIPAA prevents me from disclosing. However to show how much we miss him here this cycle, we have a short music clip from our #9 kitchen as we prepared a meal today. Jerry this is for you. Please enjoy the music as well.

If we get into some photo worthy stuff, we'll be sure to post an update. Until next day, be safe out there and have a great new year.

Looking back at 2009

What a year! There's only 3 1/2 hours left of 2009 and I can't wait to see what 2010 brings. This past year has seen good and bad times but when the Melrose Misfits are involved, there is hardly ever a dull moment. Tonight's post will be the 239th post of the year (248 since our start)and we've had over 59,867 hits. We have evolved to uploading to "picture book" (face book) and "churp churp" (twitter). Even my typing skills have evolved in that I'm now using 3 fingers vs. the old 2 digit method. The blog was created to show a little of our lives around the station and I think we've given you a pretty good dose. Some of it has been serious while the majority has had a taste of the comical. We've seen members come and go due to transfers (and 1 "retirement")but have maintained a strong house on all 3 shifts. Plans were made and ground broken for a new station that will house us, our brothers from #5 aka The 12th Street Express the Ladder from Lucky #13, the North Battalion and a part time medic unit (in addition to our Medic unit). The station is scheduled for completion sometime in March of 2010. Before that date even gets here, we are facing the possibility of multiple transfers in and out of the house (due to upcoming promotions and the Chiefs wanting to get the "right people" in the "right places" before vacation sign ups and the new station opens). We gave a short blog tour of our house back in Feb. 2009 here. We designed and updated a station logo and even had shirts made. Challenge coins were made as well and quickly sold out. St. Patty's Day was a BLAST and our 2009 shirts turned out great. We broke a lot of bread with friends and family. Made a gallon or 20 of home made ice cream and managed to squeeze in a game or two of corn hole. We've developed a skill of scaring the crap out of Tyrone and Dixon and made it through the year with only minor injuries.
We ended up running about 1300 on the Engine and 2440 on the Medic. We've trained, worked and played hard all year while documenting most of it here. The previous post asked for our readers to vote for what you think was our "best post of 2009". We haven't gotten a lot of responses but hope you all have enjoyed following our exploits. We want to wish everyone a safe and happy new year and look forward to entertaining you in 2010.
Captain Wines

NEW YEARS EVE 2009

2009 is quickly winding down and all I can say is WOW! What a year. Our blog is a little over 1 year old and has had some pretty good posts. I'm planning on doing a "look back" kind of post tonight and that got me to thinking... I was looking back through past post and wondered which I would consider the best post of 2009. I have my favorite and thought it would be cool to see which post our readers considered the best of 2009. Here are a few that I thought would make good candidates. Vote for one of these or a favorite not listed here using the comment section. Check back tonight for the official standings and our final post of 2009.
Lt. scared of a tiny little mouse
Suprise
Sorry Dixon
Why we don't post
You wanted a post
It took until23:30
You'd better sit down
Another wild one
A shift closes another cycle
Lost video found
Time to pump you up
Busy day for C-shift
Out of their league
Rainy A-shift
Taking one for the team

LOOKING TOWARDS 2010

What a year! Kind of an emotional roller coaster for the Melrose Misfits and our Department as a whole. A-shift has worked their last day of 2009 so I guess C-shift will try a "best of" or "highlight" post next day (Thursday) to kind of sum up the year. Yep, not only did the C-shift Misfits get to work Christmas Eve, we also have the honor of pulling New Year's Eve as well. Oh well, someone has to do it and we'll do our best to get a worthy post up. I mentioned an emotional roller coaster and by now, you should all know that we laid to rest one of our most respected members yesterday...Retired Battalion Chief Billy Obenchain. Rhett and Mikey Overacker have some great photo coverage of the funeral here and here. I must admit that once again I was humbled by the turn out (local news coverage here). The "Sea of Blue" behind the hearse would make any brother swell with pride. As with Brother Chris Brown's funeral, members from all around the Valley attended the service while our brothers and sisters from Roanoke County and Salem helped to fill our rigs and stations. I did not get nor compile the list of those brothers and sisters this time, but without naming each of you, please accept our sincere appreciation and THANKS! Our Honor Guard....WOW! What an awesome display of respect for a fallen brother! Just look at some of those pictures linked above. What's not so obvious was the weather and well... it sucked. Freezing cold with high wind. FREEZING COLD! Those guys never swayed at either service (Church or graveside). At the Church, somehow or another our very own Lt. Bugg and Lt. Songer (Station #10-C) had the honor of being posted by our fallen Chief's casket during the service (as they did at Capt. Brown's service). Another solid 45+ minutes on "guard" without a flinch. To each of our Honor Guard members, at both of the viewings, during the Church Service and at the Graveside Ceremony, WELL DONE LADS! You made us all proud. The stories have been told at every station today. Everything from the wooden spoon beatings to kitchen table wash downs and spiced up cigars. It was even said that he's most likely somewhere in heaven conducting a hose line drill, teaching strategy and tactics or testing a new nozzle. Fitting I'd say. Gone but never forgotten, REST IN PEACE CHIEF BILLY.
Ok, like so many other times this year, and like Billy would have expected, we got back on the trucks today. Another cold and windy day and busy on top of that. It seems as though the day has been all about vehicle accidents and car fires. On the North side, we had one rolling under a car port. A quick response and knock down by "Smoke and More, Running 4" (with our crippled War Wagon on their tail) kept it from extending into the structure. Responding companies were E4, E9, E5, L13, M4, B2 and RS1. Working fire was signaled due to the volume of fire and it's location of being under the carport, but additional companies were turned around. A good job by all members on scene. Lt. George Perdue of Lucky Ladder 13 was able to overcome the obstacle of Officers strewn in the front yard to force entry and conduct a search with negative results. Companies were up and back in service quickly with only minor injuries to an ankle and some Captain pride :-) Here are some pics

Yea, our ole War Wagon blew a radiator hose while en route but still managed to make it in, and YES....this time WE laid the line (lol).
Think I'll wrap it up here for tonight. I'll close with saying thanks for all the thoughts and prayers sent to the Obenchain family and our Department. I'd ask that you continue to keep the Obenchains and Brown families on your mind and near your heart as they continue to deal with these losses. I'd also mention a brother from the opposite side of the Country (and his Department as well) who seems to be struggling through a loss of their own. Follow Captain Schmoe's blog here ANYTHING you need Capt. we're a phone call or key stroke away.
Captain Wines

A-shift's Last Day of 2009

Photo: left to right FF Noell, FF Wheeling, Chief Billy, Capt. Weeks, & Lt. Goodwin

This is A-shift's last tour of the year, we will be back to start the much anticipated( hopefully better) new year. Please keep the Obenchain family in your prayers, we will be honoring a HERO tomorrow. K.Weeks