The Siren Song Every time I hear sirens now I smile. Before the Old Fire struck, every time I heard sirens, I felt dread that the big one was coming. Now I feel comforted. I stayed up here reporting from and camping in my home during most of the evacuation. During that whole time, in which major emergencies were happening nearly every moment, there was nothing but the constant hum of a dozen generators across the Lake Gregory bowl, the blatting back-off of a diesel fire unit going down a hill, and the sound of that one guy on the Harley every once in a while. But there were no sirens, because they didn’t need them. They didn’t have any traffic to part as they rushed from one hot spot to another. Even Chief Bagnell told me it seemed eerie. After having worked as the editor of Rescue magazine for nine years, and as one of the editors for the Journal of Emergency Medical Services (JEMS), I know the difference between the sound of a medical call and the sound of a fire call. When we heard sirens at the JEMS offices, someone would always yell out, “They’re playing our song!” But there are different melodies to that song, and because you weren’t here during the evacuation, it is probably still not music to your ears. When you hear a strong siren with a deep bass “BOMP-BOMP” horn every once in a while, and then you soon hear another siren coming from the same place and going in the same direction, chances are good that you are hearing a medical call rather than a fire call. What you’re hearing is the first-responder firefighters, some of whom are paramedics or emergency medical technicians, coming out to respond quickly to provide basic life support in the first few critical minutes. Right behind them is the ambulance with paramedics who back up the first responders with advanced life support (ALS). In our town, we are much better off than many communities, especially rural ones, because our first responders are ALS-trained and our structural firefighting rigs have all of the ALS equipment the ambulance has. The only difference between the fire truck and the ambulance is that it can’t transport you to the hospital lying down. Feel fortunate. As a co-founder of what used to be the emergency medical services branch of the National Rural Health Association, I have seen many communities who could not even get critical trauma or cardiac patients to the hospital within what emergency personnel call “the golden hour.” In some places in Alaska, they call it “the golden day,” because from some towns that’s how long it takes to get critical patients to the hospital. In some rural communities in America the first responding unit is stationed at the home of someone who is trained in basic life support, CPR and first aid, and the unit may be the family car. The ambulance with the paramedic might be 15 or 20 miles away. So we are blessed here. The next melody is the fire call, which is what I heard on Saturday, October 25. When you hear a strong siren with a deep bass “BOMP-BOMP” horn, and then another, and another and another, and they’re coming from all directions and going to the same place, then you have a fire call. That’s when you need to start paying really close attention nowadays. For now, I’m comforted by the sirens, and it looks like Mother Nature or God or Allah or Buddha or whatever you believe, is smiling on us with cold, high humidity and some precipitation very early in the season. Before I wrote this I paced off the distance between my house and the point where our brave firefighters stopped the advance of the flames in Skyland. There were only 487 yards of nothing but overgrown forest between my house and that point. So in late spring, when things start to get dry again, we really need to be ready in case the sirens start playing our song. And as for our firefighters, you just can’t help but give them a big thumbs-up every time you see them. I know I do now. |
. © 2003 Winning Words and Crestline Courier-News For our search engine optimization and search engine placement services, go to:
|
