The Lost Tool

In the fall of 2020, I think it was the end of August to the beginning of September, I joined the Wales Fire Department. When I joined my parents told me it was like the military, if something breaks or goes missing it is normally blamed on the lowest person or the newest person. Not knowing that they were joking I took them seriously, maybe a little too seriously. When I joined I met Lieutenant Deforge, a third-generation firefighter. To me, a first-generation firefighter, he was very impressive he knew so much stuff. At the time walking into the station and looking at all the big apparatus and the equipment was a lot to take in.

When I got all set up to go to trainings and calls, Lt Deforge made it clear that no tool should be left behind or go missing. So I tried to not let myself mess up and made sure that every tool that came off the truck went back on the truck that it came from for our department. Until one day when we, Firefighter Beaule, Firefighter Dobson, Jr Firefighter Beaule, myself Jr Firefighter Thibeault. Went to the other side of Litchfield down by the Libby Tozer School for a working structure fire. It was the Maine State Department of Transport building right next to the highway. We all were on Forestry 35 which is our brush truck that normally does not respond to building fires unless they need manpower. In this case, Litchfield needed as many people and apparatus as they could get. Departments from the lower Kennebec County, Androscoggin County, and Sagadahoc County all respond to this call. Wales sent Engine 31 with a crew of 6, Forestry 35 with a crew of 4, and Tank 33 with a crew of 2.

When we arrived on the scene the fire was blowing out of the roof and the first thing I noticed was no one was hitting the fire with water. Including the ladder truck from Gardner, everyone looked like they had never seen something this big like a state of shock. So as I got around the forestry I noticed all the compartments were shut nothing was missing, and continued to follow the officer of the truck firefighter Beaule. This was the first Structure fire I had ever attended so naturally I was a bit nervous, it was not my first call, just the first fire. We got to Engine 31 and asked Firefighter Galipeau what he needed. He replied water, none of the trucks had water–which explained why they were not extinguishing the fire. The tank trucks did not get water to the scene when they needed it. Some time passed by Tanker shuttling happened to the point where they were keeping a steady fight against the fire, they had to call multiple agencies for tank trucks. We got asked to take forestry back to the station with the empty air bottles for are SCBA packs to refill them and then come back if the fire was not out by the time we were done refilling them. So we did what we were told to do but I forgot to check if the truck had everything accounted for.

When all the units returned to Wales someone made the comment that the chains were missing from the forestry and I started to panic. Thinking that someone took the tools off our truck and never put them back, I was going to be in trouble. But just as I thought that the driver of tank 33 said,” I took them off the truck, and they are on tank 33 now”. What had happened was that West Gardner’s tanker broke down while dumping and he needed to drag the tanker out of the way. So he could dump his load of water, and so the in did not interrupt the other tankers that were on the way. So what I took out of this incident is not to panic before you know the facts.

“LAFD Battles Major Emergency Structure Fire in Boyle Heights” by LAFD is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.