Bruce's PSA: Wear your helmet!

This was a call we ran on earlier this week. The car T-boned a bicyclist. Notice the imprint of the chain and front crank on the pumper on the first photo. Amazingly, the rider appeared not to be too seriously injured. His helmet probably saved his life though...it had sustained some serious impact. Wear your helmet!

Word of the Week

I don't know where it came from but I have caught myself using the word "Bizarre" more than usual this past week. Ok, I don't really know how much I use any word much less the word Bizarre but I figure I just hear it coming out of my mouth more than I would expect. Today I was at work and it didn't even come out of my mouth. I was looking over a report or something and after I read something that was in no way bizarre, it just popped in my head. That's really when I noticed the pattern.
Being the visual person I am, I did a Google Image search just for fun. I do that a lot actually, just to see what kind of photos / images pop up for a particular word.
These were my favorites from the bizarre image search:


Bizarre indeed....I'd kinda like to have the bug book. I also realized that I misspell bizarre 90% of the time.

Town Hall For HOPE

I am so tired of the fear-mongering that has been going around in both government and especially media over the past several months. I have even had to limit my exposure to the media lately because I started to become aware of how it was affecting me. Just watch 30 minutes of any news channel and tell me you don't feel a little dirty, a little darker, or maybe even a little bit of anger. I have had some first hand experience with the media through the fire service and it is evident that the media for the most part no longer reports the news...they are in the business of making the news and most of it is negative.
I was proud that my church had invited Dave Ramsey to speak to us over the past three weeks and remind everyone that would listen that we serve a God that is so much bigger than any of the trash the world would have us believe. The same God that says: "For every beast of the forest is Mine, The cattle on a thousand hills. I know every bird of the mountains, And everything that moves in the field is Mine. If I were hungry I would not tell you, For the world is Mine, and all it contains...Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I shall rescue you, and you will honor Me."(versus found in Psalm 50)
Refreshing huh?

I'm not sure if it came about through Dave's being at our church or if it was planned before, but I am so glad that this truth and a message of hope will soon reach a lot more people.



It's going to be available all over the place...check it out!
http://www.townhallforhope.com/

Messin Around

Our Assistant Chief is also the Pierce Rep for this area. This works out well for us because whenever he has a piece of apparatus on loan from Pierce to demo he brings it by the department for us to play with. This past weekend we all got together for lunch and some flag football. Afterward (when our legs were nice and fatigued from playing football for a couple of hours) we extended the ladder all the way out and took turns climbing it. I have climbed much higher ladder trucks in my time as a firefighter. Edmond has a 105 footer I had to climb to the top of while it was extended strait up into the air on a windy day. This Quint is only a 75 footer but I wasn't going to pass up the opportunity to climb something I hadn't yet climbed. It was windy on Sunday as well...this always makes it more interesting...the tip of the ladder will sway back and forth as much as 2-3 feet in both directions if the wind hits it right. (click for big pics)looking up
I'm at the top (in off-duty garb)...looking for my house...still looking.
FOUND IT! See guys, there it is over there.Matt taking his turn.On his way down
Eli at the top
When Eli was about halfway down Luke climbed in the truck and blasted the air horn. This is Eli's reaction.


Good times...I want one!

Helicopters Make Me Smile

I'm not sure how I got here in my mind this morning, but something reminded me of my first helicopter ride. I have been fascinated with anything that flies for most of my life, and helicopters are at the peak of that fascination. My friends think I am a freak because I can tell you what kind of helicopter it is by the sound it makes as it flies over. They also laugh because when I hear one, after I tell them what kind it is, I almost always drop whatever I am doing to go take a look. My parents tell me that I road in a helicopter when I was very young but unfortunately I spent most of my life up to last year without the memory of a helicopter flight experience.
In the spring of last year, my fire department hosted Mediflight course for ground school training. This is where they show you how to set up and emergency landing zone, how to communicate with the incoming pilot, and just about everything else you may need to know about landing a helicopter on an emergency scene. We actually land Mediflight helicopters quite often related to serious motor vehicle accidents due to our being on the opposite side of the metro area from OU Medical Center which is the only level 1 trauma center we have. I had been looking farward to the training for a while, but was most excited about the possilibilty of going up in one of their "birds"...that's what all the flight medics call them. Throughout the whole course it wasn't looking good though. The helicopters assigned to out area where all on calls most of the evening and it looked like they would not be free to come to our station, but at the last minute they all got freed up and they sent one to us.
We set up a mock LZ behind the station and practiced bringing them in. Then they would load 2 or 3 of us into the cockpit and take us for about a 10 minute ride and then we would do it all over again. I was assigned to be LZ command for the first landing and after I brought him in I also went up with the first group. I had perma-grin the whole time.
On our flight we followed Hefner Parkway a little past Lake Hefner and made a big loop toward the east over The Village and back towards the station. We buzzed Quail Springs Mall and I caught myself thinking about all of the times I see a helicopter flying over and thinking to myself how cool it would be to be one of the guys on it...when I saw the people in the parking lot looking up I thought "I AM THAT GUY!"
I took some video and stills with the stations digital camera and made a real cheesy compilation video last year. The quality isn't that good but I watched it again today for the first time in a while and it still makes me smile.

Mediflight Training


I sat next to the pilot so I had a great view. It was the coolest feeling taking off and descending vertically. I studied the pilots moves the whole flight. Several months after the ride I had a dream that I had to fly and land a helicopter. I did pretty good...in my dreams!
My dad worked in an office for a couple of years that was right next to the Addison Airport in the Dallas area. When I was in town I would just sit and watch planes land and takeoff. On rare lucky occassions, I would be there when they were having a helicopter class. One day I went down and asked them how much it costs to get a helicopter pilot license. I don't remember the exact figure, but I do remember being shocked and thinking I would just stick to the plan to get my fixed wing license one of these days.

New Years Eve

In the spirit of posting some older photos I've taken this year, I thought I should at least post some of my favorites. On this past New Years Eve, I was at the house getting ready to have some friends over. I was just about done making my famous guacamole and we got paged to assist Piedmont with a fully involved structure fire. I threw the guacamole in the fridge and took off. I was still on medical and couldn't ride out on the engine so I grabbed my camera and followed our trucks in the chiefs command truck. When I got there, they had contained the fire and were finishing the knockdown. Our guys got assigned to salvage and overhaul on the back side of the building. They had set up some scene lights aimed at the front of the building and when I got around to our guys and saw how the scene lights were illuminating the steam and smoke from the building I knew I had something good. It took some experimenting to get the aperture and shutter right for the effect I was going for. These are some of my favorite firefighting photos I have taken to date....click to enlarge....
I love how these convey an emotion so distinct from most photos of firefighting subjects. Most of the photos I take while fighting fire are dramatic and busy. These seem peaceful, mysterious, and distant. Also, notice the crescent moon in the top of some of the photos.

It's almost hard to believe that there was a literal fight between fire and man shortly before these were taken. I take a lot of photos of the fight, but these are the first where I have been able to catch some of the emotions after the fight...the respectful acceptance of surrender from a worthy adversary.

Destroyed in Seconds (I should work for the Discovery Channel)

I took these back in the fall and sadly I am just getting around to posting them. My parents currently live in Midland, Texas. My dad knows just about everybody down there through his work and when he got word that they were doing a controlled demolition downtown he got permission to get on the roof of a high rise building they do some work in. Later we got word that this was a big deal. I just happened to pick that weekend to drive down and visit the parents and even though I got in after midnight I was up at about 5:30 am to go get in position for a very early morning demolition. While we were making our way through all the security, we saw over 20 people with Discovery Channel shirts on carrying all kinds of camera equipment.
I brought my Nikon D40 and shot some test shots to get the aperture and shutter speed where I wanted it. Then we hung out on the roof and waited for the sirens to sound. The City of Midland tried to turn it into a big event...I guess there isn't too much excitement in Midland. I have to admit, there were more people in the viewing area at ground level than I thought would be there. The sirens sounded and I set my shutter to rapid fire. I think they are really cool.
The first series of explosions went off and they were really loud. You could feel them in your chest. But nothing happened. Even though I have seen these on TV I caught myself thinking that they might have screwed up.Then second series of explosions......and then we went home.